The Titans (6 page)

terms. It applied to the entire nation. It warned of the fate of men of good will who had failed to reach an accommodation before it was too late. That God permitted such a failure was one more reason Jephtha had stayed away from the church. It was Christ the merciful and forgiving in whom Jephtha had believed most passionately. Now events were being directed comif indeed there was any controlling hand at all-by a vengeful God; the God of the Old Testament who had somehow spoken a prophecy of this hour 94Colonel Lee through Christ's own disciple-and who now seemed determined to let suffering, not mercy, rule. Brown's raid had ignited fearful fires of emotionalism in all parts of the country. Throughout the South the scheme to foment an uprising stirred memories of horror that lay at the base of the section's fear of Negro freedom. In the past, black men themselves had made other attempts-grisly ones-to redress the wrongs done to them. Harper's Ferry conjured the ghost of the quasi-preacher, Nat Turner, who had led a mob of his fellow slaves on a rampage in Virginia's Southampton County in 1831, leaving a trail of fifty-seven innocent men, women and children killed and mutilated before he was caught and hanged. That was the ever-present specter. Free blacks turning on those who had used them. Jephtha saw Brown for what he was: a vicious murderer. But to add to the humiliation and anger of the South, the abolitionists equated him with history's great martyrs. With Socrates. With Christ Himself. Emerson wept over his downfall. The daughter of Amos Bronson Alcott, the reformer, herself a popular writer, Louisa May Alcott, called him "Saint John." In France, Victor Hugo praised him extravagantly- Factors complex and beyond clear separation had led to this evil time. On both sides, men of narrow mind had fostered the evil. And a God Jephtha no longer trusted had permitted it to happen. "And without shedding of blood is no remission-was Well, there would be blood in plenty now, Jephtha thought. Blood and suffering beyond any American's power to predict or comprehend. Tell me, Mr. Lincoln, he said to himself as he rode. Where in all the dark thafs coming down do you catch sight of those better angels of our nature? I see not one. The Titans95 IV As Jephtha drew near the heights of Arlington and the splendid house overlooking the river, he wondered whether change ever worked to a man's favor. He himself had undergone profound changes. And although he accepted his current lot, he was often depressed and miserable about it. After his personal moral torment forced him to speak out against the mistreatment of blacks, he had been denied a pulpit by the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, one of the two bodies left when the Church itself split over the slave question. His outspoken position had led to bitter arguments with his wife, and ultimately to his banishment from their house in Lexington. Strong in her beliefs, Fan had even turned his own sons against him. Refusing to leave the town, Jephtha hadn't been content with passive martyrdom. He'd involved himself in the business of smuggling runaway slaves north to freedom. His partner had been a quirky, unpleasant man named Syme. In 1852 they arranged the flight of a young Negro girl who belonged to Captain Tunworth. They sent her to Jephtha's cousin once removed, the wealthy Amanda Kent of New York City. Syme had been caught, then tortured into confessing. Jephtha barely escaped with a few personal belongings, including the copybooks-his journal-in which he'd recorded his most personal thoughts year by year. He fled to Washington, then went on to New York. When he arrived, he found that Amanda was dead. The interior of her mansion was in mins. It had been invaded by a mob that had come partly because she'd 96Colonel Lee been sheltering the runaway girl. Amanda had been shot during the attack. What remained of the household was in the care of Michael Boyle, the young Irish boy from the slums who had worked as Amanda's clerk and had grown close to her. As she lay dying, she'd appointed Michael the legal guardian of her son Louis, Jephtha's second cousin. Today, Louis managed the affairs of the family with Michael's assistance. Jephtha had never liked or trusted Louis. And the boy had been too young-and too preoccupied with himself-to be of any assistance when Jephtha first arrived in New York. It was Michael who had helped him rebuild his ruined life. Almost by accident. Throughout 1853 and "54 Jephtha had gone through a period of almost total despair. His wife informed him by letter that she was obtaining a divorce, and he would be denied the privilege of seeing his sons again. Another letter in '55 announced she had married the actor Edward Lamont, whom she'd met while visiting her father's relatives in Charleston. During those years Jephtha hadn't lived-merely existed in the rebuilt house in Madison Square. He repaid Michael's charity as best he could, working as a handyman and doing chores the servants found too arduous or too distasteful. Of course, Michael reminded him often that he really didn't need to spend his days doing drudge work. He was a rich man. Amanda had proved a good steward of the profits of the Ophir mining operation in California's Sierra mountains. She had invested those profits in quality stocks, further compounding the wealth that belonged to the Virginia branch of the family. But Jephtha had an almost childlike disregard for money-perhaps a legacy from his Shoshoni mother, who had taught him to place a higher value on the mind and the spirit. He had no desire to travel to California The Titans97 to learn the mining business. Mathematics and all the other associated skills required for successful management of a fortune were foreign to him. He was content to continue the old arrangement; to let the family's financial advisers, and Louis when he came of age, administer his holdings. At his death the accumulated riches would pass directly to Gideon, Matthew and Jeremiah. A document was drawn up by the Kent attorneys guaranteeing it. Jephtha wasn't sure wealth would benefit his sons. It became increasingly clear that money hadn't improved Louis Kent's character very much. If anything, the young man had grown arrogant because of his wealth. Still, Jephtha knew he had no right to deny his sons their heritage when he died; nor would he ever attempt to do so. One of the stormiest periods of his relationship with his former wife concerned that very point. When he'd signed the paper permitting Amanda to handle the Ophir funds, Fan had accused him of defrauding the boys. It had been one of her most vituperative outbursts. The memory of it could still generate hatred of a most un-Christian sort. Gradually, Jephtha and Michael formed a strong friendship. They debated endlessly about the slave question. Michael was candid about his own difficult transition from the behavior patterns of a boy growing up in the Five Points slum. There, the immigrant Irish hated black men because black men, freed, would compete for menial jobs-the only kind the immigrant Irish could get. Amanda had brought Michael a long way from that attitude. He now believed America would have to decide, soon and for all time, whether the principles of equality on which the country was founded did or did not apply to all men. It was during one of their long night chats that Jephtha had first shown the young Irishman a portion of 98Colonel Lee the record of his own pilgrimage of the soul. His carefully kept journals; eighteen copybooks whose contents spanned the years since he had come east to attend the Bible college. Michael was taken with Jephtha's writing style- something to which Jephtha had never given any special notice. Michael grew excited, struck by an idea. Jephtha ought to use his brain for something more constructive than shoveling up turds in the coach house behind the mansion. Michael made a specific suggestion. At first Jephtha laughed. But Michael was persuasive. So Jephtha had permitted the younger man to introduce him to Theophilus Payne. Tentatively, andwitha feeling of great trepidation, he'd gone to work for Payne. Initially he'd been confined to a desk in Printing House Square, doing the simplest sort of editing and proofreading. To his surprise, he found he both liked the work and had a talent for it. He asked Payne for more responsibility. Within a year of starting at the Union, he was put on his own as a general reporter. Despite his share of beginner's blunders, he succeeded. Even drew an occasional compliment from the editor about a particular story. When the Union's Washington correspondent died of a stroke, Jephtha was chosen to replace him. Payne lectured him before he left for the capital. The assignment had nothing to do with Jephtha's family connections. He had become a good reporter; an able writer, aggressive in his search for news. If his performance didn't continue at that high level he'd be recalled. Fair enough, Jephtha said, excited by the new challenge. In Washington he'd performed well enough so that the possibility of recall soon vanished. He took to cigars; to whiskey. Then to a woman whose bed he now shared without benefit of wedlock. Ten years earlier The Titans99 such behavior would have struck him as grossly immoral. In terms of biblical absolutes, no doubt it still was. But like the South, he had been faced with an alternative. Change-or suffer as a prisoner of the past. He'd changed. Perhaps not entirely for the better. But at least he'd managed to build a new life out of the wreckage of the old. He seldom read scripture these days-and never with the full, mystic faith of his youth. That, together with the cigars, the whiskey, and Molly, occasionally produced painful twinges of guilt. But he was free of his yesterdays- As free, that is, as a father could be. The past still exerted a hold on him because of his sons. Sometimes he could bring himself to a calm understanding of the reason Fan had turned the boys against him. She believed she was right and he was dangerously wrong on the question of Negro freedom. Still, her actions had left scars. Occasionally, in the darkest part of the night, he would awaken sweating from a nightmare in which he saw himself striking his former wife. He was fearful that if he ever encountered Fan again he might not be able to refrain from doing her injury. His capacity for hate was a harrowing truth about himself that he couldn't wish away, despite the warning of a remembered passage from Proverbs: "Whoso diggeth a pit shall jail therein: and he that rolleth a stone, it will return upon him." In his own way, he supposed, he was as wicked as those men, North and South, who had fomented a war out of their hatreds and would now feel the crushing weight of the stone rolling back upon them. Jephtha jogged the mare up the long sunlit drive to the pillared house familiar to everyone in the capital. He had no idea where his boys were. Nor did his friend at the Virginia Military Institute in Lexington, 100Colonel Lee Professor Thomas Jackson, with whom he corresponded occasionally. Jackson wasn't on good terms with Fan's father, because of the way Tunworth abused his slaves. Consequently he knew nothing about Fan, her children or her new spouse, he wrote. And he doubted Tunworth would give him an answer even if he inquired. Once, in a moment of extreme despair, Jephtha had asked Jackson whether a visit to Lexington would be safe. He could make inquiries in person- Bluntly, Jackson warned him to stay away. His name was still remembered. He would certainly get no cooperation. He might even find his life in jeopardy. From time to time Jephtha saw a reference to Fan's husband in an old issue of a Southern paper. Twice he'd written to theaters where Lamont had been playing. One of the letters had been returned bearing a notation that the troupe had moved on. He'd heard nothing from the second. He supposed the boys might be traveling with their stepfather. But relying on outdated newspapers to verify it proved futile. Of one thing Jephtha was dismally sure. With Fan to inspire them, the boys might be hurt-die-in the coming war. He shook his head and slowed the mare to a walk as he approached Arlington House. The mansion had a solid, serene look. Twin wings extended from the massive main building to add a pleasing symmetry and create a facade Jephtha guessed to be something like a hundred and fifty feet wide. The entire building was stuccoed brick, painted over in buff with white trim. Its most imposing feature was its portico-exceptionally deep; at least twenty-five feet. Eight mammoth Doric columns supported the classic pediment. A savory smell of wood smoke drifted from vine- covered brick outbuildings he'd passed on his ride up the hillside. He dismounted, tied the mare to a ring The Titans101 block below the portico steps, and wiped sweat from his forehead with a pocket kerchief. Across the river below the tree-shaded lawn the sprawling city with its familiar landmarks had a deceptive look of sunlit calm. Standing with one dark-skinned hand on the neck of the horse, Jephtha suddenly wished he still had enough faith to say a prayer; enough faith to ask God to protect the lives of his sons, even if he never saw them again- But he didn't. The huge portico was cool with shadow. Jephtha hesitated before touching the great door knocker. The house itself seemed to speak of the sadness of disunion. Poor arthritic Mary Lee, the colonel's wife-seldom seen in Washington any longer-was the daughter of George Washington's adopted son, George Washington Parke Custis. The colonel's father, Light-Horse Harry, had served the general as a hard-fighting cavalry officer during the Revolution. At the first president's funeral, Light-Horse Harry had spoken the words that had lingered in the common memory ever since: "First in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen." If most Americans felt a sense of despair today, how much deeper it must be for the inhabitants of this mansion; people whose forebears had done so much to create and nurture the nation. Feeling somewhat like the violator of a shrine, Jephtha let the knocker fall. Presently an elderly white housekeeper answered. "Yes, sir?" "Forgive the intrusion, ma'am. My name is Kent. I'm a journalist with a New York paper-was The housekeeper's eyes narrowed with suspicion. 102Colonel Lee "If Colonel Lee's at home, I'd appreciate a few moments of his time." The woman started to shut the door. "The colonel is not seeing-was "Who's there, Hattie?" The housekeeper frowned. She was forced to turn and answer: "Some fellow from a newspaper, Colonel Lee." Jephtha heard the sound of boots and then the door swung all the way open. Though Washington was a relatively small city, Jephtha had never seen Robert Edward Lee in person until now. He judged him about fifty-five, not quite six feet,