"I'll show you the marker we erected. The grave itself is empty."
"They didn't send the body home?"
"Oh, yes, they put it on a train, finally. Somewhere in North Carolina there was an accident on our splendid transportation system. The train derailed. A terrible smash-up. Forty pine coffins burned. George Pickett wrote to say there was nothing left."
George hurt as he seldom had in all his life. He heard April's fire bells dinning in his mind. He struggled to get the words out. "I'd still — like to see the marker and spend some time there alone."
"When would you like to do it?" Cooper asked.
"Now, if you don't mind. But first I must get something from my luggage."
Cooper described the route to the graveyard. Finding the marker, George drew from his pocket the letter he had kept in the satchel in his desk for four years. The letter to Orry. He knelt and dug a shallow hole in the sandy soil six inches In front of the marker. He folded the letter once and placed it in the hole, which he refilled, smoothing the sand afterward. Then, though never a deeply religious man, he clasped his hands and bowed his head. He stayed thirty minutes, making his farewell.
The afternoon was a trial. The Mains seemed a company of strangers. Or was that merely their plight distorting his own vision?
No, he decided, much had changed as a result of the destruction. It was most noticeable in Cooper, who had a certain forbidding politeness new to George. Orry's brother said he was glad to have an excuse to leave the fields for half a day, but his exhausted, anxious eyes belied that. Much had changed; did that mean everything had changed?
Supper lifted his spirits a bit. Although the meal was scanty — chiefly rice — the conversation was slightly livelier, less strained, than before. The exception was Cooper. He said little. George's anxiety deepened. Staring at Cooper was like trying to read a page of some Oriental language. Nothing could be deciphered.
When all of them had finished, they once again took places on the improvised furniture while the evening cooled and darkened around them. Madeline asked George about conditions in Charleston.
"Terrible," he replied. "I felt guilty because I couldn't hand a few dollars to each of the people on the streets."
"Black people," Jane said, not as a question.
"Whites, too. They all looked destitute — and hungry. On the docks, we saw dozens trying to catch fish with string. We saw scores tenting under blankets in vacant lots. What happened down here is dreadful."
"So was slavery, Mr. Hazard."
"Jane," Andy said, but her eyes defied him. George was dismayed to see brief anger on Cooper's face. Judith observed it, too, her mouth drawing into a tight line.
George's anxiety deepened. He had better say the rest, or he might never get it said.
"Of course you're right, Jane. I believe no person of conscience would assert any other view. But this is also true: there's been terrible damage to everyone. I don't mean loss of property. I mean damage to feelings. What's left, in the North as well as the South, is anger. Confusion. Bereavement —"
He and Madeline exchanged looks. Then he rose and walked a few steps down the lawn, locking hands at the small of his back as he struggled to focus his thoughts into the right words.
"The day Lincoln was shot, according to my brother Stanley, he told his cabinet about a dream he had the night before. He was in a boat rowing toward what he termed a dark, indefinite shore."
He turned, facing the semicircle of listeners, white and black, in front of the pine house not yet whitewashed. In the distance, the wisteria on the great chimney splashed the dusk with color.
"A dark, indefinite shore," he repeated. "It strikes me as an apt metaphor to describe our situation. Ours personally, and that of the country, too. It is one country again. Slavery's gone, and I say thank God. It was evil, and it was also brandished as a club over Northern heads for a long time."
"And when the club was finally put to use, it hurt us as much as you," Brett said.
George noticed another sharp look from Cooper. Had he indeed become someone else? Had the loss of his boy on the voyage from Liverpool destroyed the passionate convictions — the humanity — of his earlier days? George hoped this prickly new defensiveness, a trait he had seen in other Southerners but never before in Orry's brother, was a temporary aberration.
Self-conscious, George cleared his throat. "Anyway, we were friends, my family and yours, long before this terrible time." Brett leaned against Billy, who was standing behind her left shoulder. "More than friends, in some cases," he amended with a gentle smile.
Encouraged by a loving look from Constance, he went on, with a steadily strengthening voice. "We must remain so. Steadfastly. Four years ago, I believed we all faced a time of severe testing. Orry and I pledged to keep the bonds of friendship and affection between ourselves and our families intact despite a war —"
Then the fire came, and I feared we couldn't.
"We did —" he turned more directly to Cooper "— at least in my estimation."
Orry's brother stayed silent. With effort, George resumed. "Now I fear something else. The shore ahead is new but darker and more indefinite than ever. I think we're destined to pass through a second period of animosity and struggle which may, in its own way, be worse than war. How can we avoid it, with so much grief and loss on both sides? With a whole people newly freed but still justifiably enraged by the past? With venal men — I can name some, but I won't — waiting to take advantage of any misstep or show of weakness? We must be ready to weather all that. We must once again —"
A simple lift of his right hand; a glance slowly moving from face to face. Then, quietly: "Keep the bonds strong."
No one moved. No one spoke. God above, he had failed. He had failed personally, but, far worse, he had failed Orry. If only he knew how to speak properly, the way skilled politicians —
It was Brett who reacted first, reaching up and across to find and clasp Billy's hand. It was Madeline, her eyes tear-filled, who gave a single strong nod of agreement. But it was Cooper who gravely spoke for them all.
"Yes."
Almost dizzy from the sudden relief of his tension, George saw the Mains smiling, rising, starting forward. Hastily he held up both hands. "Just humor me a moment longer. One of the chief reasons I wanted to visit Mont Royal was to bring you a small token of my belief in what we have all reaffirmed."
He walked back to his log stool and the small satchel on the ground beside it. He slid the polished toe of his right boot forward, nudging the satchel.
"Does anyone recognize this?"
With a faint, puzzled smile, Cooper scratched his chin. "Wasn't it my brother's?"
"Exactly. In this bag Orry brought money to repay the loan I made to help finance the Star of Carolina. Orry traveled all the way to Lehigh Station at a very perilous time in the spring of '61, carrying over six hundred thousand dollars in cash — all he could raise of the sum I invested in your project. I never forgot that or —" again he cleared his throat "— or how much Orry himself meant to me. I came here to repay a debt of honor and friendship, just as he did. To put some of my resources into your hands, to help you rebuild."
He picked up the satchel and handed it to Cooper. "Before leaving home, I wasn't able to get reliable information about the banking situation in this state. I imagined it was still chaotic, however —"
Cooper nodded.
"Well, I am majority stockholder in the Bank of Lehigh Station, which I formed at the start of the war. Inside the satchel is a letter of credit drawn on my bank. The initial amount is forty thousand dollars" — Madeline gasped — "but there's more available. As much as you need. Now —"