Michener, James A. (108 page)

. . . The Royal Bank of Liverpool suspended business.

. . . Numerous business houses of great antiquity and reputation closed.

. . Many contracts with American shippers voided without recourse.

. . . Forced abdication of King Louis Philippe from throne of France.

... All Europe in worst condition since 1789.

. . . Angry mobs of Chartists threaten the peace in England.

. . . Population of Ireland in an unruly mood.

'Surely,' Cobb protested, 'our marvelous victory in Mexico must have affected the market favorably,' but with his ruler the editor pointed to a minor note at the very end of his gloomy report: 'This shows how the rest of the world evaluated your war. "Our own war with Mexico was brought to a successful close by Mexico's cession of California &c. to the U.S." '

'What can be done?' Cobb asked.

'You long-staple Sea Island men, you don't have to worry.' He showed Cobb his summary: South Carolina short staple, 280,671 five-hundred-pound bales, 7 9 /W; they lost a fortune on that. Sea Island long staple, 18,111 bales, much of it from Edisto; price held reasonably firm, \9Vi

And there was the difference: short staple, eight cents; long staple, nineteen cents, and Edisto grew only the long. Other plantations, of course, would have grown Sea Island had their land permitted, but it did not, and they were condemned to growing the more difficult and less profitable short.

'Haven't you a brother in Georgia who grows short?' the editor asked, and Persifer smiled: 'A cousin. My father's brother became insulted over some fancied grievance years ago, about 1822 if I recall, and off he trundled to Georgia, predicting that he'd make a fortune. But of course he couldn't grow Sea Island up in those red hills. He was stuck with short, and he's never done too well with it.'

'Why didn't he return to Edisto?'

'When a Cobb leaves, he leaves.'

'Did you say you were leaving the army?'

'I did.'

'But in case of trouble . . .' The editor paused exactly as Brigadier Cavendish had paused.

Cobb, who had refused to consider such a possibility in Vera Cruz, now responded as an honorable soldier would: if real trouble threatened the Union, of course I'd report. So would you.' A long silence ensued, and it was obvious that neither man wished to be the one to break it. Then the editor surprised Cobb by switching subject matter dramatically.

'Your cousin in Georgia should study this,' and he shoved a provisional report into Cobb's hands, i was going to print it in this

year's summary, but I wanted to verify some of the amazing statistics." And Cobb read:

AVERAGE YIELD PER ACRE (ACTUAL) OF COTTON CROP IN NINE STATES

'Could these figures be real?' Cobb asked, astonished by that last line. 'We think so,' the editor said, 'but we're going to double certify. If they prove out, we'll print them. So you and your cousin both ought to move to Texas. Looks as if it's to be our major cotton state.'

When Cobb started to ridicule the idea, the editor returned to his gloomy summary, tapping it with his pen: 'The lesson, Cobb, is that cotton prospers, and you and I prosper, when things around the world are kept in order. Why would the French throw out a perfectly good king? Why would the damned Chartists raise trouble in England, along with those idiotic revolutionaries in the Germanys and the Austrian Empire? For that matter, you tell me why the abolitionists are allowed to rant and rave in this country?'

'They'd better not rant and rave in South Carolina.' In swift, inevitable steps Persifer Cobb had progressed from being against any war, to defending the Union in case of trouble, to championing the South.

'The world would be so much better off,' the editor said, 'if only people would remain content with things as they are. Tell me, in Texas did you hear any agitation against slavery?'

'In Texas I heard nothing except the buzz of mosquitoes.'

'I envy you that plantation on Edisto. One of the world's best.'

T aim to keep it that way.'

Edisto Island was a lowlying paradise formed in the Atlantic Ocean by silt brought down the Edisto River, a meandering stream that wound its way from the higher lands of South Carolina. An irregular pentagon about ten miles long on the ocean side, the island's highest elevation was six feet and its dominant physical

characteristic large groves of splendid oak trees, some deciduous but most live, which were decorated with magnificent pendants of Spanish moss. Its fields were miraculously productive, with soil so soft and even that it could be plowed with a teaspoon.

About fifty white people lived on the island's great plantations, and fifteen hundred black slaves. Except for small family gardens and some acreage of rice, the only crop grown was Sea Island cotton: sown in March, ginned in September, shipped to Liverpool in Edisto ships in January.

Every white family who owned a plantation home on Edisto— handsome affairs, with white pillars supporting the porch—also maintained a grander home along The Battery in Charleston, twenty-four miles away. In that congenial city the spacious life of the Carolina planter unfolded, and Cobb was most eager to renew his acquaintance with it. Both his father and his wife would be in Charleston, and he longed to see them, but he felt it his duty to report first to the plantation, where his brother would be in charge.

He liked Somerset, four years younger than himself, and had felt no qualms about turning the plantation over to him when he enrolled at West Point. His letters from the Mexican War had testified to their continuing rapport—they were more like those of a friend than of an older brother—and he was impatient to see Sett, as the family called him.

He therefore ended his homeward journey at a road junction some twenty miles west of Charleston; here the Cobbs maintained a small shack in which lived an elderly slave whose duty it was to drive members of the family down the long road to the ferry that would carry them across to Edisto. This slave bore the extraordinary name of Diocletian, because an earlier Colonel Cobb had loved Roman history, believing the gentlefolk of the South to be the descendants of Romans. He had named all his house servants after the emperors, except his personal servant-butler-valet, whom he invariably called Suetonius, on the logical grounds that 'Suetonius was responsible for all we know about the first Caesars. He wrote the book. So you, Suetonius, damn your hide, are responsible for all the Caesars in this house.' He usually worked it so that he had twelve house servants, which permitted him to make the joke: 'My Suetonius and his Twelve Caesars.'

Diocletian, an artful onetime house slave who knew that his welfare depended upon keeping various masters pacified, created the impression of being deliriously happy at seeing the colonel home from the wars. 'Get dem horses!' he shouted at his sons. 'We gwine carry Gen'ral Cobb to de ferry!' But when he was alone with

his aged wife he predicted: 'Ol' Stiff-and-Steady back with his bi$ ideas. Don't look good for Somerset.'

Rapidly a buggy was prepared, and with Cobb holding the reins he and Diocletian started the pleasant nine-mile ride to the ferry As they rode, the slave spoke of events on the island, and since h< had for some years served as a house servant, he could speal English rather well, but he was basically what was called a Gullal Nigger, and as such, used the lively, imaginative Gullah language Elizabethan English spiced with African Coast words. Since Cobl had learned it as a boy, he encouraged Diocletian to use it as the] talked of familiar things:

'E tief urn.' He stole it.

'Ontel um shum.' Until I saw her.

'Wuffuh um sha*ap r Why is she so smart?

'Hukkuh 1m farruh ent wot?' How come his father isn't

worth much ?

'Um lak buckra bittle.' He likes white man's food.

'Bumbye e gwine wedduh By-and-by it's going to rain

pontak Edisto.' upon Edisto.

But now, as they passed the interminable wetlands whose laz waters and wind-blown reeds pleased Cobb, for he had not seei them in five years, Diocletian switched subjects, and as he spok of Cobb affairs he used English: 'You wife, Miss Tessa Mae, sh never better. Sett's wife, Miss Millicent, she not too well, tw> chir'ns now.'

'Boys, aren't they?'

'Boy V a girl, bofe fine.'

Diocletian said that he himself had 'two gramchir'n, bofe fine When the buggy approached the ferry, he began to shout and sna; the whip, which he had taken from Persifer, and in this way h roused the boatman, who also gave the impression of being d< lighted to see the colonel after such a long absence.

'How dem Mexicans?' he wanted to know. 'Dem Mexican won ens, dey all dancey-dancey like dey say?'

The three men discussed the war, after which Diocletian bad his master farewell: 'We hopes you bees here long time, Colone Dis yere's you home.' In fluent Gullah, Persifer thanked the slav for the pleasant ride and immediately thereafter boarded the ferrj allowing its keeper to pole him across the shallow North Fork c | the Edisto River.

Before the little craft landed, slaves on the island side had saddled a horse for the colonel, dispatching one boy on a mule to alert the big house that Persifer was about to appear after his long absence. Down the tree-lined roadway the boy sped, kicking his mule in the sides as he shouted to everyone he met. 'Colonel Cobb, he come home!'

It was about seven miles from the ferry landing to the gracious two-story white house in which Somerset Cobb, as plantation manager, lived with his wife, Millicent, and their two children, and as the ride ended, it became apparent that the messenger had spread his news effectively, for everyone inside the house, and from outlying work houses too, had crowded beside the long lane leading to the colonnaded porch, prepared to give him the kind of enthusiastic welcome he expected. Ten whites and about fifty blacks stood waving as he and his attendant cantered through the spacious gateway. Modestly but with no excessive show of subservience, the slave slowed his horse and stopped it by the side of the roadway while Persifer rode on ahead, wearing the uniform of his country but with no insignia marks to show that he had once been a colonel

He stopped and gazed in surprise, for from the porch came someone he had expected to be in the more salubrious climate of Charleston. It was his wife, Tessa Mae, daughter of a leading Carolina family, a slim, self-possessed young woman who rarely said anything thoughtlessly, and for that reason commanded his attention as well as his affection. 'Darling,' he cried. 'How wonderful to see you!' Easily he swung his right leg free of the saddle, leaped to the ground and took her in his arms.

Over her shoulder he saw his brother, a bit heavier now but with the same manly appearance he remembered so well. He was dressed, Persifer was glad to see, in expensive boots from England; trim trousers, made to order by a Charleston tailor; an open-neck shirt, of good French cloth; and a soft beige scarf from Italy, tied loosely about his neck. He was a fine-looking fellow of thirty-one, rather retiring in disposition, who appeared to have managed plantations all his life and intended continuing. Although he was quiet, there was about him none of the softness which so frequently attacked second sons of planter families when they realized they would not inherit the family estate and life goals became indistinct. It was also apparent that he liked his older brother very much, and he now waited for a proper chance to show it.

'Somerset!' the colonel cried, moving on to his brother. 'I've thought of you and this house whenever I sent you a letter.'

'How wonderful they were!' Millicent Cobb interrupted as she

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moved forward to receive an enthusiastic kiss. 'You should be a novelist, Persifer. I could see your Panther Komax coming at me through the woods.'

'That would be a very bad day for you, Lissa, when that one came at you.'

Did he wear a panther cap?' the Cobb boy asked, and Persifer said: 'Indeed he did, and he smelled like a panther, too.'

Turning to his wife, he asked, 'And where are our children?' and she replied. 'At school. In Charleston.'

It was quickly agreed that the four older Cobbs would leave once for Charleston to go to the great house on The Battery, and orders were sent to the plantation ferry— a much different one from the general ferry which Persifer had used to get to the island —to prepare the boat and the rowers for the delightful voyage to that golden city of the southern coast. But now Millicent, who seemed frail in everything but determination, put her foot down: 'We shall not go today. Persifer is tired, whether he realizes it or not, and we can go just as well in the morning.'

However, the brothers felt that servants should be sent ahead in a smaller boat to alert their father of his son's return, and Millicent saw nothing wrong with that: Td have preferred a surprise, and so would Father, I judge. But let it be.'

Talk turned to cotton prices, and Persifer reported what the New Orleans editor had said about how adverse conditions in Europe affected them.

'What the German barons ought to do,' Persifer said, 'is line those agitators up and spread a little canister about.'

'Give them time, they will.'

They both thought it unfair for peasants in Europe and especially in Ireland to be causing disturbances which unsettled the Liverpool market, and Somerset was astounded when his brother informed him of the collapse of Liverpool's Royal Bank: 'Good God! Rioters tearing down a great bank! I was damned pleased, Persifer, when you told us how your Texans handled those rioters in Mexico City. What they need in Europe is about six regiments of Texas Rangers.'

'Please!' the colonel said. 'Don't send them anywhere. Not even to the Ottoman Empire.'

Later in the evening, when the brothers were alone, each realized that he should speak openly of the altered situation on the plantation now that Persifer had resigned his commission, but each was loath to broach this delicate question, so Persifer raised one of more general significance: 'In New Orleans men spoke openly . . . well, not directly, but you knew what was on their

minds. They spoke of a possible rupture between our oppressors at the North and ourselves. Have you heard any such talk, Sett 7 '