Adam found living with himself difficult, as Nate well knew. Adam was a stern and demanding young man, espe­cially of himself. He might forgive weakness in others, but not in his own character. "So why did you come back?" Starbuck went on the attack. "Just to raise your father's hopes before disappointing him? My God, Adam, you talk about my duty to my father, what's yours? To preach to him? To break his heart? Why are you here? Because you expect your tenants and neighbors to fight, but think you can sit the battle out because you've got scruples? My God, Adam, you'd have done better to stay in the North."

  Adam paused a long time before responding. "I'm here because I'm weak."

  "Weak!" That was the last quality Starbuck would have ascribed to his friend.

  "Because you're right; I can't disappoint Father. Because I know what he wants, and it doesn't seem such a great deal to give him." Adam shook his head. "He's such a generous man, and he's so often disappointed in people. I really would like to make him happy."

  "Then for God's sake put on the uniform, play soldiers and pray for peace. Besides," Starbuck said, deliberately lightening the mood, "I can't bear the thought of a summer without your company. Can you imagine just me and Ethan as your father's aides?"

  "You don't like Ethan?" Adam had detected the distaste in Starbuck's voice and seemed surprised by it.

  "He seems not to like me. I took fifty bucks off him in a bet and he hasn't forgiven me for it."

  "He's touchy about money," Adam agreed. "In fact I some­times wonder if that's why he wants to marry Anna, but that's a very unworthy suspicion, isn't it?"

  "Is it?"

  "Of course it is."

  Starbuck remembered Belvedere Delaney voicing the same suspicion, but did not mention it. "Why does Anna want to marry Ethan?" he asked instead.

  "She just wants to escape," Adam said. "Can you imagine life in Seven Springs? She sees marriage as her ticket to free­dom." Adam suddenly leaped to his feet and scrambled to pull on his trousers, his haste occasioned by the approach of a small dog cart that was being driven by Anna herself. "She's here!" Adam warned Starbuck who, like his friend, hurriedly tugged on his pants and shirt and was just pulling on his stockings as Anna reined in. Her cart was escorted by three yapping spaniels that now leaped excitedly at Adam and Starbuck.

  Anna, sheltered from the sun by a wide, lace-fringed para­sol, stared reproachfully at her brother. "You're late for din­ner, Adam."

  "My Lord, is that the time?" Adam fumbled for his watch among his rumpled clothes. One of the spaniels leaped up and down at him while the other two lapped noisily from the river.

  "It doesn't really matter that you're late," Anna said, "because there's been some trouble at the camp."

  "What trouble?" Starbuck asked.

  "Truslow discovered his son-in-law had joined the Legion while he was away. So he hit him!" Anna seemed very shocked at the violence.

  "He hit Decker?"

  "Is that his name?" Anna asked.

  "What happened to Decker's wife?" Starbuck asked a little too urgently.

  "I'll tell you at dinner," Anna said. "Now why don't you finish dressing, Mister Starbuck, then tie your tired horse to the back of the cart and ride home with me. You can hold the parasol and tell me all about the raid. I want to hear everything."

  Ethan Ridley took Sally Truslow to Muggeridge's Drapery and Millinery in Exchange Alley where he bought her a parasol in printed calico to match her pale green linen cambric dress. She was also wearing a fringed paisley shawl, yarn stockings, a wide-brimmed hat trimmed with silk lilies, white ankle-length boots and white lace gloves. She carried a small beaded hand­bag and, in rude contrast, her old canvas bag.

  "Let me hold the bag for you," Ridley said. Sally wanted to try on a linen hat with a stiffened brim and a muslin veil.

  "Take care of it." Sally gave him the bag reluctantly.

  "Of course." The canvas bag was heavy, and Ridley won­dered if she did have a gun in there. Ridley himself had a gun at his hip as part of his uniform. He was in the yellow trimmed gray of the Faulconer Legion, with a saber at his left hip and the revolver on his right side.

  Sally turned around in front of the cheval mirror, admiring the hat. "It's real nice," she said.

  "You look lovely," Ridley said, though in truth he had found her company ever more grating in these last few days. She had no education, no subtlety and no wit. What she had was the face of an angel, the body of a whore, and his bastard in her belly. She also had a desperation to escape the narrow world of her father's cramped homestead, but Ridley was too concerned for his own future to comprehend Sally's plight. He did not see her as attempting to escape from an unbearable past, but as an extortioner trying to gouge a parasitical future. He did not sec the fear in her, only the determination to take what she wanted. He despised her. At night, impassioned, he wanted nothing more than to be with her, but by day, exposed to her crude ideas and lacerating voice, he wanted only to be rid of her. And today he would be rid of her, but first it was necessary to lull her into complacency.

  . He took her to Lascelles Jewelry store on Eighth Street where he listened to the owner's splenetic complaints about the proposal to lay a railroad line directly outside his shop window. The line, which would run down the center of the steep street, was intended to connect the Richmond, Fredericksburg and Potomac rails with the Richmond and Petersburg line so that military supplies could be carried across the city without the need to unload one set of rail wagons into horse-drawn carts. "But have they considered the effect upon trade, Captain Rid­ley? Have they? No! And who will buy fine jewelry with loco­motives smoking outside? It's preposterous!"

  Ridley bought Sally a filigree necklace that was flashy enough to please her and cheap enough not to offend his parsi­mony. He also bought a narrow gold ring, scarce more than a curtain band, which he pushed into his uniform pocket. The purchases, with the parasol and linen hat, cost him fourteen dollars, and the brisket of beef that he bought as dinner in the Spotswood House cost another dollar thirty. He was lulling Sally's apprehensions, and the price was worth it if she went quietly to whatever fate awaited her. He gave her wine to drink with the meal, and brandy afterward. She wanted a cigar and was quite unworried that no other lady in the dining room chose to smoke. "I've always liked a cigar. My ma used a pipe, but I like a cigar." She smoked contentedly, oblivious of the amused stare of the other diners. "This is real nice." She had taken to luxury like a starved cat to a creamery.

  "You should get used to this sort of place," Ridley said. He lolled in his chair, an elegantly booted leg propped on the cold radiator that stood beneath the window and looked onto the hotel's courtyard. His scabbarded saber hung from its slings on the radiator's purge valve. "I am going to make you a lady," he lied to her. "I am going to teach you how a lady speaks, how a lady behaves, how a lady cats, how a lady dances, how a lady reads, how a lady dresses. I am going to make you into a great lady."

  She smiled. To be a great lady was Sally's dream. She imag­ined herself in silks and lace, ruling a parlor like the one in Belvedere Delaney's house, no, an even bigger parlor, a vast parlor, a parlor with cliffs for walls and a vaulted heaven for a ceiling and golden furniture and hot water all day long. "Are we really looking for a house this afternoon?" she asked wistfully. "I'm real tired of Mrs. Cobbold." Mrs. Cobbold owned the boardinghouse in Monroe Street and was suspicious of Rid­ley's relationship with Sally.

  "We're not looking for a house," Ridley corrected her, "but a set of rooms. My brother knows some that are for rent."

  "Rooms." She was suspicious.

  "Large rooms. Tall ceilings, carpets." Ridley waved his hands to suggest opulence. "A place you can keep your own niggers."

  "I can have a nigger?" she asked excitedly.

  "Two." Ridley embroidered his promise. "You can have a maid and a cook. Then, of course, when the baby comes, you can have a nurse."

  "I want a carriage, too. A carriage like that." She gestured through the window at a four-wheeled carriage that had an ele­gant shell body slung on leather springs and a black canvas hood folded back to reveal an interior of scarlet buttoned leather. The carriage was drawn by four matching bays. A Negro coachman sat on the box while another black, either slave or servant, handed a woman up into the open coach.

  "That's a barouche," Ridley told her.

  "Barouche." Sally tried the word and liked it.

  A tall, rather cadaverous man followed the woman into the barouche. "And that," Ridley told Sally, "is our president."

  "The skinny one!" She leaned forward to stare at Jefferson Davis who, his top hat in his hand, was standing in the carriage to finish a conversation with two men who stood on the hotel steps. His business finished, President Davis sat opposite his wife and crammed the glossy hat on his head. "Is that really Jeff Davis?" Sally asked.

  "It is. He's staying in the hotel while they find him a house."

  "I never thought I'd see a president," Sally said, and watched wide-eyed as the barouche turned in the courtyard before clattering under the arch into Main Street. Sally smiled at Ridley. "You're trying real hard to be nice, aren't you?" she said, as though Ridley had personally arranged for the president of the Provisional Government of the Confederate States of America to parade for Sally's benefit.

  "I'm trying real hard," he said, and reached across the table to take hold of her left hand. He drew it toward him and kissed her fingers. "I'm going to go on trying real hard," he said, "so that you'll always be happy."

  "And the baby." Sally was beginning to feel motherly.

  "And our baby," Ridley said, though the words very nearly stuck in his craw, but he managed to smile, then took the new gold ring out of his pocket, shook it free of its small wash-leather bag and placed it on her ring finger. "You should have a wedding ring," he explained. Sally had started to wear the antique silver ring on her right hand, and her left was conse­quently bare.

  Sally examined the effect of the small gold ring on her fin­ger, then laughed. "Does this mean we're married?"

  "It means you should look respectable for a landlord," he said, then took her right hand in his and tugged the silver ring over her knuckle.

  "Careful!" Sally tried to pull her hand away, but Ridley kept firm hold.

  "I'm going to have it cleaned," he said. He placed the silver ring in the wash-leather bag. "I'll take good care of it," he promised, though in truth he had decided that the antique ring would make a good keepsake to remember Sally by. "Now come!" He glanced at the big clock above the carving table.

  "We have to meet my brother."

  They walked through the spring sunshine and folks thought what a fine couple they made; a handsome southern officer and his beautiful, graceful girl who, flushed with wine, laughed beside her man. Sally even danced a few steps as she imagined what happiness these next months would bring. She would be a respectable lady, with her own slaves and living in luxury. When Sally had been small her mother would sometimes talk about the fine houses of the wealthy and how they had candles in every room and feather mattresses on every bed and ate off golden plates and never knew what the cold was. Their water did not come from a stream that froze in winter, their beds had no lice and their hands were never chipped and sore like Sally's. Now Sally would live just like that. "Robert said I'd be happy if I just stopped dreaming," she confided in her lover, "and if he could see me now!"

  "Did you tell him you were coming here?" Ridley asked.

  "Of course not! I'm not wanting to see him ever again. Not till I'm a great lady and then I'll let him open my carriage door and he won't even know who I am." She laughed at that fine revenge on her previous poverty. "Is that your brother's coach?"

  They had come to the corner of Cary Street and Twenty-fourth. It was a grim quarter of town, close to the York River Railroad that lay between the cobbled street and the rocky riverbank. Ridley had explained to Sally that his brother did business in this part of town, which is why they needed to walk through its streets. Now, on the point of ridding himself of the girl, he felt a pang of remorse. Her company this afternoon had been light and easy, her laughter unforced, and the glances of other men in the streets had been flatteringly jealous. Then Ridley thought of her ambition that was so unrealistic and of the threat she represented, and so he hardened his heart to the inevitable. "That's the carriage," he said, guessing that the big, ugly, close-curtained coach was indeed Delaney's vehicle, though there was no sign of Delaney himself. Instead there was a massive Negro on the box and two gaunt sway-backed horses in the delapidated harness.

  The Negro looked down at Ridley. "You Mister Ridley, Massa?"

  "Yes." Ridley felt Sally's hands clutch fearfully at his arm.

  The Negro knocked twice on the coach roof and the cur­tained door opened to reveal a thin, middle-aged white man with a gap-toothed grin, dirty hair and a walleye. "Mister Rid­ley. And you must be Miss Truslow?"

  "Yes." Sally was nervous.

  "Welcome, ma'am. Welcome." The ugly creature leaped down from the carriage to offer Sally a deep bow. "My name is Tillotson, ma'am, Joseph Tillotson, and I am your servant, ma'am, your most obedient servant." He looked up at her from his bowed position, blinked in astonishment at her beauty and seemed to leer in anticipation as he swept his hand in an elabo­rate gesture inviting her into the coach's interior. "Be so pleased, dear lady, as to step inside the coach and I shall wave my wand and turn it into a golden carriage fit for a princess as lovely as you." He snuffled with laughter at his own wit.

  "This ain't your brother, Ethan." Sally was suspicious and apprehensive.

  "We're going to meet him, ma'am, indeed we are," Tillotson said and offered her his grotesque welcoming bow again.

  "You're coming, Ethan?" Sally still clung to her lover's arm.

  "Of course I am," Ridley reassured Sally, then persuaded her to walk toward the coach as Tillotson folded down a set of steps covered in threadbare carpet.

  "Give me your parasol, ma'am, and allow me." Tillotson took Sally's parasol, then handed her up into the dark, musty interior. The coach's windows were covered by leather-blinds that had been unrolled from their spindles and nailed to the bottom sill. Ridley stepped toward the coach, uncertain what to do next, but Tillotson pushed him unceremoniously away, folded up the carriage steps then leapt nimbly into the coach's dark interior. "Got her, Tommy!" he shouted to the driver. "Go on!" He tossed the brand-new parasol into the gutter and slammed the door.

  "Ethan!" Sally's voice called in pathetic protest as the big coach lurched forward. Then she called again, but louder. "Ethan!"

  There was the sound of a slap, a scream, then silence. The Negro coachman cracked his whip, the carriage's iron-rimmed wheels screeched on the cobbles as the heavy vehicle slewed around the corner, and thus Ridley was rid of his succuba. He felt remorse, for her voice had been so pathetic in that last des­perate cry, but he knew there had been no other alternative. Indeed, he told himself, the whole wretched business had been Sally's own fault, for she had made herself into a nuisance, good for one thing only, but now she was gone and he told himself he was well shot of her.

  He still held Sally's heavy bag. He pulled it open to find there was no gun inside, just the one hundred silver dollars he had originally paid to bribe her into silence. Each coin had been separately wrapped in a torn sheet of blue sugar paper, as if each was peculiarly special, and for a moment Ridley's heart was touched by that childish tribute, but then he realized that Sally had probably wrapped the coins to stop them chinking and thus attracting predatory attention. Whatever, the coins were now his again, which only seemed right. He tucked the bag under his arm, pulled on his gloves, tipped his uniform hat over his eyes, tugged his saber to a jaunty angle, and sauntered slowly home.

  "It seems"—Anna reached across the table for a bread roll that she broke into two, then dipped one half in gravy as a titbit for her noisy spaniels—"that Truslow has a daughter, and the daughter got herself pregnant, so he married her off to some poor boy and now the daughter's run away and the boy's in the Legion, and Truslow is angry."

  "Damned angry," her father said in high amusement. "Hit the boy."

  "Poor Truslow," Adam said.

  "Poor boy." Anna dropped another morsel of bread among her yapping, scrapping dogs. "Truslow broke his cheekbone, isn't that right, Papa?"

  "Broke it badly," Faulconer confirmed. The Colonel had managed to repair the ravages imposed on him by the abortive cavalry raid. He had bathed, trimmed his beard and donned uniform so that he once again looked like a dashing soldier. "The boy's called Robert Decker," the Colonel went on, "the son of Tom Decker, you remember him, Adam? Wretched man. He's dead now, it seems, and good riddance."

  "I remember Sally Truslow," Adam said idly. "A sullen thing, but real pretty."

  "Did you see the girl when you were up at Truslow's place, Nate?" Faulconer asked. The Colonel was trying very hard to be pleasant toward Starbuck to show that the morose disregard of the last few days was over and forgotten.

  "I don't remember noticing her, sir."

  "You would have noticed her," Adam said. "She's kind of noticeable."

  "Well, she's bolted," Faulconer said, "and Decker doesn't know where she's run to, and Truslow's mad at him. Seems he gave the happy couple his patch of land and they've just left it in Roper's care. You remember Roper, Adam? He's living up there now. Man's a rogue, but he knew how to manage horses."

  "I don't suppose they were ever properly married." Anna found the plight of the unhappy couple far more interesting than the fate of a freed slave.

  "I doubt it very much," her father agreed. "It would have been one quick jump over the broomstick, if they were even that formal."

  Starbuck stared down at his plate. Dinner had been a dish of boiled bacon, dried corn pie and fried potatoes. Washington Faulconer, his two children and Starbuck had been the only diners, and Truslow's attack on Robert Decker the only topic of conversation. "Where can the poor girl have gone?" Adam asked.

  "Richmond," his father said instantly. "All the bad girls go to Richmond. She'll find herself work," he said, glancing at Anna and making a rueful face, "of a kind."

 

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