Heaven and Hell (57 page)

He wished he could be man enough to do what Virgilia talked about: grow up; look at the beast. He'd looked, but it was destroying him.

Captain Malcolm saw his visitor's state and remained silent. Malcolm himself was under great strain, along with every other staff officer unlucky enough to be posted to Washington. The whole department had teen in turmoil for months, following Johnson's suspension of Stanton

*s Secretary of War last August. Since a suspension was expressly prohibited by the Tenure of Office Act, Mr. Stanton, both a Radical and a clever lawyer, denied the validity of the suspension. Grant, nevertheess, was rather reluctantly serving as interim secretary.

The President had suspended Stanton to test the Tenure Act and

^fy the Radicals, and they were after him for it. Early in December 362 HEAVEN AND HELL

they had introduced an impeachment bill in the House. It had failed, but Malcom was assured the question would not be dropped. He understood the Senate was preparing to formalize its rejection of the suspension, and that might well provoke another attempt to oust Stanton. All of this made life difficult; Malcolm didn't know which of his departmental colleagues could be trusted with any remark beyond a pleasantry

. At least this tragic man seated on the other side of the desk was not a part of the conflict.

Presently George said, "I've hired the Pinkerton agency. I want to give them all available information."

"I have a man searching the Adjutant General's personnel records now. Let me see how he's coming."

Malcolm was gone twenty minutes. He returned with a slim file, which he laid on the cluttered desk. "There isn't much, I'm afraid. Bent was charged with cowardice at Shiloh while temporarily commanding a unit other than his own. Lacking conclusive evidence in the matter, General Sherman nevertheless ordered a notation in his record and exiled him to New Orleans. He remained there until the end of General Butler's tenure."

"Anything else?"

Malcolm went through it. "Created a disturbance at a sporting house owned by one Madam Conti. Apprehended stealing a painting that was her property. Before Bent could again be brought up on charges, he deserted.

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"There is one final entry, a year later. A man answering Bent's description worked briefly for Colonel Baker's detective unit."

George knew the work of Colonel Lafayette Baker. He recalled newspaper editors thrown into Old Capitol Prison for dissent about the war or criticism of Lincoln's policies and cabinet officers. "You're referring to the secret police employed by Mr. Stanton."

Malcolm lost his cordiality. "Mr. Stanton? I have no information, sir. I can't comment on that allegation."

George had seen enough bureaucrats to recognize the self-protective mode. Bitterly, he said, "Of course. Is that everything in the file?"

"Almost. Bent was seen last at Port Tobacco, where it's presumed he was arranging illegal entry into the Confederacy. There the trail runs out."

"Thank you, Captain. I'll convey the information to Pinkerton's."

He added a polite lie. "You've been very helpful."

He shook Malcolm's hand and left. He felt his gut boiling, and barely reached Willard's Hotel before he was again stricken with violent intestinal trouble.

The Year of the Locust 363

Virgilia found a doctor for him. The man sent to a chemist's for in opium compound that tightened up his gut but did nothing to stem he sudden fits of weeping that struck him at highly inopportune monents.

One such attack took place when he was escorting Virgilia to Dillard's dining room for a farewell supper.

With an exertion of will, he recovered his composure. His sister alked throughout the meal, trying to divert him with information about ier work at Scipio Brown's home for black waifs, and the mounting iadical frenzy to remove the President by impeachment. George heard ittle of it, then nothing when he put his face in his hands and wept igain. He was mortally ashamed, but he couldn't stop.

In his suite, Virgilia held him close before they parted. Her arms elt strong, while he felt weak, sick, worthless. She kissed his cheek

;ently. "Let us know where you are, George. And please take care of ourself.''

He held the door open, pale in the feeble light of low-trimmed

;as.

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"Why?" he said.

She went away without answering.

In New York he booked a first-class stateroom on the Grand Turk or Southampton. He was carrying the name of a London estate agent

fith good contacts in Europe, particularly Switzerland. The estate agent ecommended Lausanne, on the north shore of the Lake Geneva, saying tiat any number of American millionaires suffering from ill health had ound benefit there. George had indicated that he needed a restful haven.

In cold and damp January twilight, he stood at the rail among first lass passengers who were waving, chattering, and celebrating. A stew rd handed him a glass of champagne. He muttered something but didn't rink. Soul-numbing despair still gripped him. He had lost twenty pounds, nd, because he was a short man, the loss seemed severe, lending him wasted look.

Trailing smoke, her whistle blasting, the great steamer left the dock id moved down the Hudson past the Jersey piers and the shanties sur3unding them. George's hand hung over the rail. A slight pitch of the essel spilled the champagne. It dispersed in the air, the droplets not isible by the time they reached the oily black water.

How like the life of poor Constance, and that of his dead friend

'ty. was the spilled champagne. A moment's sparkle, an accident, and othing.

He walked to the stern, the fur collar of his overcoat turned up Bainst the chill. With dead eyes he watched America vanish behind Illi- He expected he would never see it again.

364 heaven and hell

Madeline's journal

January, 1868. Back from Lehigh Station. A sorrowful trip. George not himself. Virgilia, reunited with the family after long estrangement--she is much softened in temperament--said privately that

she fears for G.'s mental stability. G.'s lawyer, Smith, warned us that the murderer, Bent, might strike any one of us. It is too monstrous to be believed. Yet the fate of poor Constance warns us not to dismiss it.

Surprised to find that the C'ston Courier carried a paragraph about the murder--Judith sent it to Prudence in my absence. I assume the story traveled widely because of its sensational nature.

Bent is named as the culprit.

Also found a letter from a Beaufort attorney who proposes to
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visit soon. The discovery at Lambs, still creating furor, will prove our salvation, he claims. . . .

Written on the 12th. Andy leaves tomorrow to walk to C'ston for the "Great Convention of the People of South Carolina"--the same gathering Gettys's wretched sheet calls "the black and tan meeting." Though I can ill afford it, I spent a dollar at the new Summerton junk shop for trousers and a worn but serviceable frock coat, dusty orange, that was once the pride of some white gentleman.

These I gave to A. Jane has sewn other garments for her husband, so he needn't be ashamed of his clothes.

Prudence found and presented Andy with an old four-volume set of Kent's Commentaries on American Law, which law students now use in place of Blackstone's. A. longs to study and understand the law. He reveres its power to protect his race. He will study solely for personal satisfaction, since he knows that even under the most liberal of regimes, it is likely that no man of his color would be able to practice profitably in Carolina. Indeed, his very presence at the convention with others of his race is an affront to men like Gettys. . . .

After midnight on January thirteenth, Judith carried a taper to her husband's study at Tradd Street. She found him amid a litter of newspapers, his reading spectacles on his nose and a book in his lap. It was a book she hadn't seen him open for years.

"The Bible, Cooper?"

His long white fingers tapped the rice-paper page. "Exodus. I was reading about the plagues. An appropriate study for these times, don't you think? After the plague of frogs and the plague of lice, the swarrn^

The Year of the Locust 365

of flies and the boils and the killing hail, Moses brandished his rod again, an east wind rose and blew all night, and in the morning it brought a plague of locusts."

Dismayed and alarmed by his fervency, Judith put down the taper and crossed her arms over her bed gown. Cooper picked up the Bible and read in a low voice. "Very grievous they were. Before them there were no such locusts as they . . . they did eat every herb of the land, and all the fruit of the trees which the hail had left: and there remained not any green thing in the trees, or in the herbs of the field, through all the land of Egypt."

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He took off his spectacles. "We have a north wind instead. Blowing in a plague of Carolina turncoats, Yankee adventurers, illiterate colored men--and they're all going to sit down in that convention tomorrow.

What a prospect! Ethiopian minstrelsy. Ham Radicalism in all its glory!"

"Cooper, the convention must meet. A new constitution's the price for readmission to the Union."

"And a new social order--is that another price we must pay?"

He picked up a Daily News and read, "The demagogue is to rule the mass, and vice and ignorance control the vast interests at stake. The delegates may well create a Negro bedlam." He tossed the paper down.

"I concur."

"But if I remember my Bible, soon after the locusts came, there was a west wind to cast them back in the Red Sea."

"And you remember what followed next, don't you? The plague of darkness. Then the plague of death."

Judith wanted to weep. She couldn't believe that this spent, embittered man was the same person she'd married. Only by immense will did she keep emotion from her face. "Are you planning to observe any of the proceedings?" she asked.

"I'd sooner watch wild animals. I'd sooner be hung."

In the morning, he left early for the offices of the Carolina Shipping Company. Judith felt sad and helpless. Cooper was indeed becoming a stranger to her. He no longer had anything at all to do with Madeline.

Marie-Louise wasn't much better company for her, though the reasons were different. Judith found her daughter at the sunny dining table, her chin on her hands, her breakfast untouched, her eyes fixed dreamily

°n some far unseen vista. She was neglecting her studies and she talked °f scarcely anything but boys. Marie-Louise especially admired some of

General Canby's occupying soldiers. Whatever the other consequences °f military Reconstruction, it was quite literally robbing Judith of a family.

366 HEAVEN AND HELL

Of the one hundred twenty-four delegates who convened on January 14, seventy-six were black. Only twenty-three of the white delegates were Carolina-born, but of those a fair number were former hotspurs.

Joe Crews had traded in slaves. J. M. Rutland had collected money for a new cane when Preston Brooks broke his over the head of Charles Sumner, almost killing him. Franklin Moses had helped pull down the American flag after Sumter surrendered.

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Andy sat among the delegates in his dusty orange frock coat, the first volume of James Kent's Commentaries on his knee. He was very erect, proud to be at the convention, but overawed, too; many of the Negro delegates were far better educated than he was. Alonzo Ransier, a native-born freedman, had chatted with him at length about the sweeping social changes the convention would produce. The most intimidating Negro was a handsome, tall, portly chap named Francis Cardozo. Although his skin was the color of old ivory, Cardozo, a free-born mulatto, proudly seated himself among the black delegates. He was an example of what a man could make of himself if he had unlimited opportunity, Andy thought. Cardozo had graduated from the University of Glasgow and formerly held a Presbyterian pulpit in New Haven, Connecticut.

To

overcome feelings of inferiority, Andy frequently recalled some earnest words that Jane spoke when she said good-bye to him at the river road. "You're just as good as any of them if you prove you are.

You all start out equal in the eyes of God. Mr. Jefferson said so, and that's what the war was really about. Whether you end up ahead of where you started is up to you."

She'd hugged him then, kissed him, and whispered, "Make us all proud." Remembering it, he sat a little straighter.

There was none of the predicted "Negro bedlam" on the convention floor, though enthusiastic black spectators in the gallery had to be gaveled to silence by the temporary chairman, T. J. Robertson, a well respected businessman of moderate views. The noisiest part of the hall was that occupied by members of the press, most of them Yankees.

Many were dressed in plaid suits and gaudy cravats. Andy saw one reporter spit a stream of tobacco juice on the floor. He felt smugly superior. Earlier, Cardozo had remarked to him and some other black delegates, "The reporters have come down here to measure this convention against Northern morality. They'll measure our utterances and our behavior as well. Take heed and act accordingly, gentlemen."

Robertson's gavel brought the hall to order. "Before I turn the chair over to our great and good friend Dr. Mackey--" he was another respected local man--"I should like to remind those assembled of our high purpose. We are gathered to frame a just and liberal constitution The Year of the Locust 367

for the Palmetto State, one which will guarantee equal rights to all, and gain us readmission to the Union."

The spectators demonstrated their approval. Again Robertson gaveled them down before continuing.

"We do not claim any preeminence of wisdom or virtue. We do
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claim, however, that we are following the progressive spirit of the age

. and that we shall be bold enough, honest enough, wise enough to trample obsolete and unworthy laws and customs underfoot, to initiate a new order of justice in South Carolina. Let every delegate turn his thoughts, and his utterances, solely to that purpose."