North and South Trilogy Page 31

  George’s heart was beating fast. Brovnic squinted down at him. “You better not do this—”

  George had to tilt his head back to return the other man’s stare. “I said leave right now.”

  “I fix you for this,” Brovnic promised as he stalked off.

  A minute after Isabel left, Constance bowed her head and wept. She stood by a tall window in the parlor. Beyond it spread the panorama of the town, the sultry glitter of the river below. She didn’t see any of it. She clutched a drapery as if she feared she’d fall.

  The sobs went on and on. She despised herself for crying. She had done it very seldom while growing up in Texas, but here things were different. Sometimes, despite her love for George, she hated Lehigh Station and wanted to flee. Instead, she wept.

  She was sure Isabel had engineered the snub. Stanley’s wife hated her. There was no other word for it but hate. When George came home, she’d tell him what had happened. She tried never to put her troubles on her husband, but this was too much for her to bear by herself. Isabel had made an issue of her religion, but there were probably other reasons the haughty woman despised her. Isabel was a twisted, unhappy person—and she had the power to wound Constance deeply.

  “Ma’am, is there something wrong? I thought I heard—”

  The servant girl stopped. She tried to draw back out of the parlor door, which she had opened, without Constance’s being aware of it. Constance felt more embarrassed for the girl than for herself. She swept tears off her face with both palms.

  “I’m sorry for disturbing you, Bridgit. I just wasn’t myself for a moment or two. Please don’t mention it to anyone. Would you bring little William down if he’s awake?”

  “Right away, ma’am.” Relieved, Bridgit withdrew.

  A short time later, with her plump, gurgling son in her arms, Constance felt much better. She was sorry she had allowed Isabel to break her down. Of course she would say nothing to her husband. She would fight her own battles, as she always did. She had chosen to come to this part of the world because she loved George, and she wouldn’t let Isabel or a legion of the bigoted, for that matter, defeat her.

  She was angry with herself for having let down in front of Isabel, even for an instant. She knew Stanley’s wife had seen that her cruel little strategy had succeeded. But it’s the last time that shrew will ever have the satisfaction, she thought as she snuggled William on her shoulder.

  “We should give some thought to buying a summer residence,” Maude said. “The weather the past few months has been perfectly dreadful.”

  “I agree,” said Stanley. “Isabel complains of the heat day and night.” Bent over a ledger, George shot him a look as if to say Isabel was always complaining about something.

  “We can certainly afford a summer cottage,” Stanley went on.

  “Do you have any thoughts about where we might look for one, Mother?”

  “The Atlantic shore would be pleasant.”

  The little office was stifling. Two hours had passed since Brovnic had stormed away from the mill; Maude had just arrived for her weekly visit. She had begun those visits immediately after her husband died. Prior to that, she had never set foot on the grounds of Hazard Iron.

  Stanley had discouraged her interest at first, saying it was unseemly for a woman to involve herself in commerce. When George came home, he soon deduced the real reason for Stanley’s disapproval. In just a few months Maude had learned more about matters of manufacturing, inventory, and the flow of cash than her oldest son would know in a lifetime. It was that instinctive expertise that embarrassed Stanley, prodding him to put up an argument about her visits.

  The arguments did no good. In her unassuming way, Maude was as tough as the Hazard iron the canal boats carried downriver to market.

  Prompted by Maude’s remark about the shore, George said, “Orry once told me that a lot of South Carolina planters summer at Newport.”

  Maude clapped her hands. “Oh, yes. Aquidneck Island. I’ve heard it’s lovely.”

  Stanley was about to object to the suggestion when the door crashed open. Brovnic loomed in the opening, blowing whiskey fumes ahead of him and brandishing an old horse pistol.

  Maude gasped, then held rigidly still. Simultaneously, Stanley flung himself on the floor.

  “I told you!” Brovnic shouted, his body swaying, his eyes squinting down the barrel pointed at George. Without hesitation, George whipped the ink pot from his desk and flung the contents in Brovnic’s face.

  Dripping black liquid, Brovnic bellowed and reeled against the door frame. The pistol discharged, but Brovnic’s arm had jerked upward by the time he fired. The ball plowed into the ceiling. By then George had vaulted over the rail that divided the office. He tore the pistol from Brovnic’s hand and bashed him on the bridge of the nose. The enraged man groped for him with inky hands. George retreated one pace, then slammed his hobnailed boot into Brovnic’s crotch.

  Brovnic screamed and windmilled his arms, falling backward out the door and down the steps. Only then did George feel the onset of panic. He clutched the door frame and waved to four passing workmen.

  “Grab that drunken idiot. One of you run down to the village and find the constable.”

  Stanley clambered to his feet. Maude had never moved. She looked at Stanley and said in a mild voice, “You should have helped your brother. He could have been killed.”

  Stanley reddened, too stunned to speak. For the first time his mother had chosen between her sons. It didn’t bode well for the future.

  By the time George returned to Belvedere that evening, Constance showed no sign of her earlier unhappiness. George chatted all through supper, obviously still excited by the violence at the mill. He had visited the injured worker at his home near the canal; the man would recover. Dr. Hopple thought his arm could be saved, though whether he would be able to do hard physical labor remained in doubt. If he could not, George would find him an easier job at Hazard’s. Brovnic was locked up in the constable’s office.

  In the house next door, the evening meal was already over. Maude had gone outside to stroll with Billy. Virgilia was in her room. Isabel had paid her ritualized five-minute visit to the twins, Laban and Levi, and had returned to the dining room. Now she and Stanley were alone there. She was just on the point of telling him about her triumphant moment with Constance when he again mentioned the trouble in the office. Since coming home, he had talked of it briefly, then lapsed into morose silence. Maude had conversed in a lively manner but avoided the subject of the shooting.

  “Mother looked at me as if I were the worst sort of coward,” he said with a forlorn expression. “I can’t get over it.”

  “Stanley, I appreciate that the incident upset you, but I’ve heard about it. I do wish you’d give me a chance to say—”

  He flung his balled napkin in her face. “Shut up, you harpy. Are you so stupid that you can’t see what’s happening? George is turning Mother against us! Next thing you know, she’ll give him control of the money. Then where will you be with your wasteful ways and fancy airs?”

  He yelled so loudly the pendants of the chandelier tinkled. Speechless, Isabel gazed at the napkin that had struck her chin and fallen into her empty sherbet dish.

  Her first reaction was to turn on her husband, savage him for this absolutely unheard-of display of temper. She quickly had second thoughts. He was only kicking her, so to speak, because his mother had kicked him. And deservedly so. Stanley was a coward. It didn’t matter so long as he maintained his authority in the family.

  She soon convinced herself that the person who should get the blame for this trouble was George. Pushy, arrogant little George. Today she had triumphed over George’s wife, but George had put Stanley in such a state he refused to listen to an account of her victory. Of course she took satisfaction merely from knowing that Constance was feeling miserable.

  But even that certainty was called into question a moment later. From the side lawn of Belvedere came the sound
of merry voices. Isabel walked to the window and saw George and Constance playing lawn bowls in the late-summer dusk. They were laughing and teasing each other like a pair of children.

  Stanley spoke to Isabel. She ignored him. She was staring at Maude, who was seated on the side loggia of George’s house, dandling little William on her knee. Young Billy lounged close by. Isabel seethed. Maude never paid that kind of attention to Laban and Levi.

  Constance looked happy. Happy. Somehow, her strength had undone the day’s victory. And it was now grimly clear to Isabel that Constance and her husband were working hard to turn Maude against Stanley.

  From that moment, Isabel hated the two of them even more passionately than she had before.

  “Another train derailed,” Constance said. “Four people killed. That’s the third wreck this month.” She shook her head and closed the paper.

  George continued studying the architectural plans spread on the library table. Without looking up, he said, “The more miles of track that are built, and the more trains that are scheduled, the greater the chances for accidents.”

  “Surely that’s too simple an explanation. I’ve heard repeatedly that half the accidents—or more—are preventable.”

  “Well, perhaps. There are human errors in scheduling. Bad materials used on the roadbeds and rolling stock. It would help if all the railroads settled on a uniform gauge, too.”

  He rose, stretched, then reached down to adjust the position of the object he kept on display on the table, as if it were some priceless antique. It was nothing more than the fragment of iron meteorite that he had found near West Point during his cadet days. He treasured it because he said it summed up the scope and meaning of his work. She noticed that he moved the meteorite no more than a quarter of an inch. She smiled to herself.

  He walked to her chair and planted a kiss on her brow. “As Orry would say, I reckon progress always has its price.”

  “You haven’t had a letter from Orry in quite a while.”

  “Six weeks.” George strolled to the window. Outside, the lights of Lehigh Station blurred behind the first gentle snowfall. “I wrote to invite him to bring all the Mains to Newport next summer.”

  In October, George and Stanley had visited the island in Narragansett Bay and had purchased a large, rambling house and ten acres of ground on Bath Road, within easy walking distance of a beach. A Providence architect had just submitted plans for extensive modernization of the house; these were the plans George was examining. The architect promised that the remodeling would be complete before the opening of the 1850 summer season.

  “And you haven’t heard from him since then?”

  “No.”

  “Is anything wrong?”

  “If there is, I’m not aware of it.”

  “Newport is a Northern resort. Do you think he’ll accept the invitation?”

  “I see no reason why he shouldn’t. People from South Carolina still flock to the place in the summertime.”

  He wasn’t being completely honest with his wife. Orry’s infrequent letters, superficially pleasant, had a peculiar, bitter undertone. George was sensitive to it because he had known an earlier, more lighthearted Orry Main.

  In the letters Orry had several times referred to his “perennial bachelorhood.” He only occasionally answered George’s guarded inquiries about M., and he sometimes jumped unexpectedly from a bit of innocuous news to what could only be termed a diatribe against anti-slavery forces in the North. He was particularly antagonistic toward the so-called free-soil political groups, which were seeking to ensure that new states or territories would prohibit slavery. He also referred scathingly to the Wilmot Proviso. Apparently the South would hold a grudge over that for a long time.

  So, although George very much wanted to see his friend again, a part of him fretted about the eventual reunion.

  In mid-December he received word that such a reunion would in fact take place. The news came on a fiercely cold day. That night George crawled into bed next to his extremely pregnant wife and, as usual, began a drowsy discussion of the day’s events.

  “There was a letter from Orry.”

  “At last! Was it cheerful?” Her voice had a breathy quality whose significance he failed to understand immediately.

  “Not very. But he said he’d visit us next summer and bring as many of the others as he can persuade.”

  “That’s—splendid,” Constance gasped. “But I think—right now—you’d better issue an invitation to Dr. Hopple.”

  “What? It’s time? This minute? My Lord—that’s why you sounded so out of breath.”

  He scrambled out of bed and in his haste stepped into the chamber pot. Fortunately it was empty. But it upset his balance and pitched him onto his back. “Ow!”

  “Oh, good heavens,” she said, struggling to get up. “If you suffer and carry on this way, we’ll never be able to have any more children.”

  At dawn she brought Patricia Flynn Hazard into the world with no great difficulty. George received the news in the library, where he sat smiling sleepily and rubbing his bandaged foot.

  Billy, fourteen and growing taller every day, came home from boarding school over the Christmas holidays. He was impressed with his new niece and spent most of his time at Belvedere, even though all his belongings remained at Stanley’s.

  Billy was feeling adult and independent. He frequently teased his mother with threats of an imminent departure to the California gold fields. Half the nation had succumbed to the fever. Why shouldn’t he?

  ”Because you don’t need the money, young man,” Maude responded on one occasion at the dinner table.

  “Yes, I do. I haven’t any of my own.” Then, weary of the game, he ran to her chair and hugged her. “I don’t really want to pan for gold.”

  “What do you want?”

  “I want to hear about the fight at Churubusco again.”

  Billy never tired of listening to the story. Telling it inevitably led George into a long, rambling account of his days at West Point. He enjoyed reminiscing by a roaring fire, and it was also a good way to keep his younger brother away from Stanley and Isabel for an extra hour. Stanley had grown sullen since the shooting incident, which had lately resulted in Brovnic’s imprisonment in Harrisburg. Isabel was as shrewish as ever. George deemed them bad influences. He was thankful Billy was off at school most of the year.

  “Orry sounds like a fine person,” Billy said after one of George’s monologues about the Academy.

  “He is. He’s also my best friend. You’ll meet him next summer, I hope.”

  “Does he beat his niggers?”

  “Why, I don’t think so.”

  “He owns some, doesn’t he?” Billy’s disapproval was evident.

  George frowned as he reached for the decanter of claret. It seemed there was no avoiding the issue.

  “Yes, he owns quite a few.”

  “Then I’ve changed my mind. I don’t think he’s as fine as you say.”

  George suppressed annoyance. “That’s because you’re almost fifteen. No one your age ever agrees with adults.”

  “Oh, yes, we do,” Billy shot back so quickly George burst out laughing.

  Billy didn’t understand the joke. He went ahead doggedly. “I agree with all you say about West Point. It sounds like a wonderful place.”

  George sipped wine and listened to the comfortable, familiar creaks and murmurs of the house. Families ought to have traditions, and he had just conceived of a splendid one. He didn’t want to promote it too directly to a headstrong adolescent, though. That would make it too easy for Billy to say no. He tiptoed around the subject:

  “Oh, there were hard times. But you felt much more of a man when you survived them. There were a lot of great times, too. I made some good friends. Tom Jackson—he’s teaching at a military college in Virginia. George Pickett. Good friends,” he murmured again, gazing back over a short span of years that already seemed much longer. “And there’s no question that West
Point provides the finest scientific education available in America.”

  Billy grinned. “I’m more interested in fighting battles.”

  George thought of the bloodshed at Churubusco and Orry’s arm blown away. Then you don’t understand what battle is really like. His smile fading, he kept the thought to himself. He let Billy make the suggestion, which he did, with some hesitancy, a moment later:

  “You know, George, I’ve been meaning to ask what you thought of my chances—”

  George concealed his elation. “Your chances for what?”

  The boy’s eyes showed his admiration for his older brother. “For going through the Academy the way you did.”

  “Do you think you’d like that?”

  “Yes, very much.”

  “Capital!”

  Soldiering was a rough, sometimes damned unattractive trade. In the thick of the war he had found it disgusting and inhuman. He still did. Even so, a man could do no better, in this age and this nation, than to begin his adult life with West Point training. George realized he hadn’t always believed that, however. The fact that he now believed it without question was another change in his character that struck him as surprising.

  “Of course there’s always fierce competition for the appointments,” he continued. “But you wouldn’t be ready to enter until—let’s see—three years from now. You’d be seventeen if you enrolled with the class of ’fifty-six. Ideal. I must see whether there’ll be a vacancy from the district. I’ll get to work on it immediately.”

  And he did.

  19

  BY LATE 1849 PEOPLE along the Ashley had a saying about Orry Main: every month his beard got a little longer and his conversations a little shorter.

  Orry never meant to be curt, just brief. In his head he was constantly sorting and organizing hundreds of details pertaining to the family and the operation of Mont Royal. Most of these details required him to take some action, which in turn had to be planned. Further, every week or so some kind of crisis required his intervention. Hence his time was short. He conserved it when he talked to others.