Джон Джейкс - North and South

He shook his head. His exhaustion, and the whiskey consumed so quickly, produced an odd, light-headed state in which thoughts flowed freely, as did the words to express them. "And what are the South's resources for that kind of struggle? A vision of the future which is beginning to look pathetically outdated. Our rhetoric. Our slogans. And our soldiers."

"Southern officers are the cream of the Army, don't forget."

"Aye," Orry said, nodding. "And carrying out their orders will be a lot of tough farmers who can fight like the very devil, even though they never heard of Mahan or Jomini or, ironically, owned a single slave. But what are they up against? Your numbers. Your millions and millions of clerks and mechanics. Your infernal factories." The next was barely audible. "A new kind of war —"

Orry was silent a moment. Finally he went on, "Regardless of how it comes out — regardless of which side dictates the terms and which side accepts them — we'll all be the losers. We abdicated, George. We let the lunatics reign."

He flung his head back and poured the rest of the whiskey down his throat with a single gesture. After a moment he closed his eyes and shuddered. Slowly and with great care, George replaced the meteorite on the table and stared at it.

Orry opened his eyes. He thought he heard a distant tumult. George stirred. "Yes, the lunatics reign. But what could we have done?"

"I'm not sure. Cooper was always cautioning us with Burke." He struggled to remember and quote correctly. " 'When bad men combine, the good must associate, else they will fall one by one —' "

On his feet suddenly, he reached for the whiskey. "I don't know what the hell we could have done, but I know we didn't ask the question soon enough or forcefully enough. Or often enough."

He poured, drank two-thirds of a glass. George pondered what his friend had said. Then he too shook his head. "That's such a simple answer. Maybe too simple. The problem's incomprehensibly tangled. Sometimes I think one man is such a puny thing. How can he change anything when there are great forces stirring? Forces he doesn't understand or even recognize?"

Orry's reply was the same depressing truth he had admitted a few moments earlier. "I'm not sure. But if great forces and events aren't entirely accidental, they must be created and shaped by men. Created and shaped by positive action and by lack of it, too. I think we had a chance. I think we threw it away."

Inexplicably, his voice broke on the last words. He felt tears in his eyes. Tears of pain, of failure, frustration, and despair — he was damned if he knew all their wellsprings. For one blinding moment the friends stared at each other, stripped of every emotion save their realization of culpability and the fear it generated now that the slogan-chanting mobs were abroad in the North and the South. Abroad and marching steadfastly toward Mahan's new apocalypse —

Mob. The word, and certain noises, shattered Orry's dark reverie. He turned toward a window. He heard voices outside. Not a large crowd, but a ferocious one.

George frowned. "Sounds like a bunch of town roughnecks. What do you suppose they want?"

He reached for the velvet curtains. The sudden crash of the door spun him around.

" Virgilia !"

The moment Orry saw her, he knew why the mob had come.

Outside, the tumult increased. George pointed to the window, his voice mingling shock and rage. "Are you responsible for that, Virgilia?"

Her smile was sufficient answer.

"How the hell did they get here?" he demanded.

A rock smashed one of the windows. The heavy drapes kept the glass from flying, though it tinkled loudly on the floor beneath the curtain's gold fringe. Orry thought he heard someone shout the word traitor . He brushed his hand across his mouth.

"I sent one of the servants to the hotel." Virgilia looked at Orry "Right after I saw him step through the front door."

"In the name of God — why ?"

Orry could have answered George's question. And he was barely able to contain the revulsion the sight of Virgilia produced. She was only a few years his senior, but she looked twenty years older than that. Her print dress, faded from many washings, fit too tightly; she had gained at least fifteen pounds. But the weight was only one sign of a continuing deterioration. Her complexion was pasty, her eyes sunken. Wisps of hair straggled to her shoulders, and when she turned to answer her brother, Orry saw dirt on her neck.

"Because he's a traitor," she whispered. "A Southerner and a traitor. He murdered Grady."

"He had nothing to do with Grady's death. You've taken leave of your —''

"Murdered him," she repeated, her eyes on Orry again. Those eyes glowed with a hatred so intense, it was almost a physical force. "You did it, you and your kind."

George shouted at her. "The Federal troops killed Grady!" But she was beyond the reach of reason, and it was then Orry knew what it was that she had brought into the room. It was more than the odor of stale clothes or unclean flesh. It was the stink of death.

"I sent for those men," she said to him. "I hope they kill you."

Suddenly, like a bolting animal, she ran at the draperies hiding the broken window. "He's in here!" she screamed. George leaped after her, grabbed her arm, and flung her backward.

She fell, landing hard on hands and knees. Without warning, she began to sob, great, mindless bellows of pain. Her unpinned hair hung like a curtain on both sides of her drooping head. Mercifully, it hid her madwoman's face.

George eyed the drapes she had almost reached and opened. He pitched his voice low. "There is a local freight eastbound at eleven o'clock. I think it would be advisable for your own safety —"

"I agree," Orry cut in. "I'll go now. I don't want to endanger your family. I'll slip out the back way."

"The hell you will. They probably have someone watching there. You leave this to me."

George started toward the hall. Virgilia struggled to her feet. George turned back to look at her. "Virgilia —"

He was too overcome to continue. But he didn't need words. His eyes and his reddening face conveyed his feelings. She backed away from him, and he strode on to the front hall.

There, Constance, the two children, and half a dozen servants were anxiously watching the main door. Firelight shimmered on the fanlight above. The men outside had torches. Orry saw the door handle shake, but someone inside had been alert enough to shoot the bolt when the mob arrived.

"Who are those men?" Constance asked her husband. "What are they doing here?"

''They want Orry. It' s Virgilia's doing. Take the children upstairs.''

" Virgilia ? Oh, dear God, George —"

"Take them upstairs! The rest of you, clear the hall." To Orry: "Wait here a moment." As the servants scattered and Constance hurried the youngsters away, George disappeared into a wardrobe closet beneath the staircase.

He reappeared, struggling into his coat. On the lapel Orry noticed a patriotic rosette, smaller and much neater than his own. Over George's arm hung a military-issue gun belt. From the holster he plucked an 1847-model Colt repeater.

He flung the belt on a chair and quickly examined the gun. "I keep it loaded and handy in that closet because I've had a few surprise callers — employees I've discharged, that sort of thing —"

He twirled the cylinder, then turned toward the front door. A stone crashed through the fanlight, spilling glass over a wide area. "Dishonorable sons of bitches," George growled. "Follow me."

His short, stocky legs carried him straight toward the door, which he unlocked with no hesitation. Orry was right behind, frightened yet oddly delighted, too. The years had rolled away, and they were in battle again — George in the lead, as usual.