The Railroad War (3 page)

Miranda glanced at her father. His mind was working hard, she could see. And she could see what he was thinking: The boy’s
from Georgia. His name is Ballard. He’s from a good family, and he has a future.

The boy, she saw when she returned her attention to him, did not seem as young looking as she had at first imagined. He had
a steady, penetrating expression which was becomingly military, she thought.

Then Lam moved to the other cadet, the tall, especially good-looking one, whom Miranda had noticed earlier. “This other…”
Lam paused significantly, after which he cleared his throat as conspicuously as he could manage. Finally, he allowed, in a
stagy whisper, “…man.” More laughter, more punches. “No,” he went on, “I’m being much too generous. This beast has a name.
It
was called Sam Houston Hawken by the poor wanderer who found this thing as a young child, living with a pack of coyotes on
the wild Texas plains.”

More bows, curtsies, and nice phrases followed.

His hair is long and shaggy; he does look a little wild, Miranda thought to herself as she made her curtsy. I like that.

“Lam is actually right about one thing,” Hawken said after the preliminaries were complete, “I’m truly from Texas.”

“A Texan, imagine,” Ariel said, as though Texas were as exotic as Kashmir.

“As your name demonstrates,” Ashbel said.

“Yes, it does,” the young Texan said with a shy smile. “

I sense a tale in that,” Ashbel said.

Hawken kept smiling modestly without replying. For an instant his eye caught Miranda’s, and the smile grew wider.

“And
you,
you little enchantress,” Lam said, approaching Miranda. “You’ve had a misfortune. You must tell me all about it.”

“Well I…” she said.

But her father interrupted. “You’ll hear all about it, I’m sure, soon enough. But first we have luggage.” He pointed to a
pile of baggage that had been deposited on the dock. “That,” he announced, “is what two young ladies require in order to survive
for five days in the wilds of the Hudson Valley. What I myself need I carry in a small valise.”

“Father!” the two girls protested. “Really!”

“That’s not fair,” Ariel said. “Father took us shopping in New York City.”

“And after that shopping expedition,” Ashbel broke in quickly, “there’ll be nothing left for the natives to wear for months.”

“Uncle!”

“The luggage! The luggage!” Pierce Kemble said. “We must take care of the luggage.” He paused and his face grew darker. “And
your mother,” he asked Lam, “has she arrived?”

“Yesterday, Father,” Lam answered.

“Well, then,” Pierce said, “we must face what we must face.”

“The luggage,” Ashbel said, pointing—and of course diverting attention from the discomforting nearness of Fanny Shaw.

“Servants, follow me,” Lam said to Noah and Sam. “Make yourselves useful. You owe me more than you can ever repay after I’ve
allowed you this sight of spectacular female pulchritude.”

“You do have most especially delightful sisters, Lam Kemble,” Sam Houston Hawken said with a twinkle in his eye and a smile.

A darling smile, Miranda thought, hoping that the wild-looking and handsome Texan was being sincere and not just polite.

In a moment the men were off to attend to the baggage. Soon after that, the little party was embarked in vehicles that climbed
the steep and winding road that led from the landing to the plain high above the river. Flanking the plain were the various
buildings of the Academy, including the hotel where they were headed.

* * *

A number of portraits of the young actress Fanny Shaw had been painted before she made her unhappy match with Pierce Kemble.
Two of the most notable dated from the time she was close to her daughter Ariel’s eighteen years. The portraits, by Thomas
Appleton and Sir Thomas Lawrence, revealed a radiant, breathtaking beauty, unusually slim of waist yet opulently bosomed and
delightfully wide of hip. The Fanny of the Lawrence was a young lady of the city, dressed in a daringly low-cut gown. Here
was a sophisticated, highly cultured girl, tall necked, proud, with an exquisite oval face and large, dark, magnetic eyes.
In the Appleton, she had become a country girl with a frank, open, and sweetly rustic look. She was wearing a loose and gauzy,
though equally low-cut, white cotton blouse. In the first her appearance was more controlled, more determined, more finely
detailed. She was clearly confident and utterly at her ease. In the second she was less restrained, less conventional, and
yet no less commanding. In both, the observer was attracted irresistibly to her dark, glowing eyes with their promise of mysteries
and fulfillment. She was at once splendidly lovely and soft, captivatingly feminine and magnificent, unyielding and dominant.

Miranda and Ariel were both clearly daughters of that swan, but Miranda, at fifteen, was still gawky and angular and unsure
of herself. Ariel, though, was a near mirror image of her mother at the same age.

As the carriages moved up the long road from the South Dock, Fanny Shaw sat on a wicker love seat on the veranda of the West
Point Hotel, surrounded by admirers. Standing somewhat apart from these was a tall, haggard, nervous man who was at that time
the Secretary of War, Jefferson Davis. Her fame as an actress and beauty had been diminished neither by age—she was now in
her midforties—nor by divorce. She was no less captivating, magnificent, and exciting than the slender girl of the portraits.
But over the years, she’d filled out, matured, grown statuesque, grown (it must be admitted) stouter than she’d been back
when Pierce Kemble had recklessly pursued her from city to city, throwing roses at her, pouring seemingly endless champagne,
and making a total fool of himself to show his love of her.

Fanny and her father, Charles Shaw of the distinguished British theatrical family, had been on a tour of the United States.
And Pierce was in the front row at every performance, just as he was waiting by her dressing room after every performance
was finished. And she fell in love with him.

On the face of it, her marriage to him made sense. Pierce was good-looking and wealthy, and he came from a family of planters
that owned hundreds of acres of rice land in the islands below Savannah and thousands of acres of cotton land north of Atlanta.
All this he inherited, while his younger brother, Ashbel, received enough of a capital stake to give him a start as a merchant
trader.

Yet, though his wealth and property was in Georgia, Pierce Kemble lived in Philadelphia, where he was born and grew up. So
the reality of his ownership of hundreds of slaves had not impressed itself upon Fanny until she had actually visited the
Kemble plantations after her marriage.

Their union collapsed after Fanny had borne Pierce three children.

There were many reasons for the break: his irresponsibility, his indolence, his infidelities, his great and mounting debts,
for he gambled at both the card tables and the stock exchanges. His unpredictable and uncontrollable temper was loathsome
to Fanny, as was his ownership of slaves. But the greatest source of discord between them was her refusal to do as she was
told.

She could not submit her will to his, as wives were expected to do. She could no more be subservient to him than she could
approve of a slave’s subservience to his master. It was her belief that a wife was not a chattel, and that marriage was a
joint arrangement between two equals whose relations with one another would be on equal terms and governed by mutual consent.

Her views were not shared by her fellow southern ladies and gentleman.

And, in fact, these convictions did her no good either with the public, who followed her divorce proceedings with enormous
and eager appetite, or with the judge. For Fanny was branded a radical, and worse a “manly woman.”

In truth, Fanny was sometimes her own worst enemy, for she allowed herself to be seen in public all too often in “manly” garb,
doing “manly” things. She would, for instance, ride horses alone in manly dress, and she would ride into lonely places where
good women did not ride. She had even been known to put on breeches and go fishing.

When the divorce came to trial, most of the sympathies of the public—who were kept fully informed of the case by the press—understandably
went with Pierce. The judge sided with him, too, declaring that he was the wronged party: Fanny had deserted him.

Thus most of the disgrace of the divorce landed on Fanny, and as was customary, Pierce was granted custody of the children.

Fanny was not left empty-handed or childless, however. She was to be given a yearly income of $1,200 by Pierce, and she was
to have the children each year for two months during the summer. In addition, she had significant income from her acting and
her stage readings as well as from her published writings.

In fact, she made more money than Pierce did. Which was just as well, for he was only good for the $1,200 for three of the
years following their divorce.

After the commencement, Ariel and Miranda were to return with their mother to Lenox, Massachusetts, where she maintained her
permanent home. The two girls would spend the summer there.

When the carriages from the dock started to pull up at the hotel, Fanny rose and, excusing herself from her companions, walked
to the edge of the porch so that she could get a better view of those alighting. She missed her girls; she was eager to devote
her full attention and energy to them.

And then there they were!

“Miranda! Ariel!” she cried out, her face brightening, her eyes shining as she raced down the short flight of steps to the
drive.

In a moment Lam was helping his sisters down from the open carriage they’d been riding in, and Fanny was embracing her daughters
with all the fervor ten months’ absence from them could inspire in her.

Miranda, unable to help herself, recoiled in pain when her mother’s breast crushed against her own, and a thin film of sweat
covered her brow.

Fanny, misunderstanding, instantly feared that Miranda was recoiling from her. Fanny’s fear mobilized her to crush her daughter
even more tightly.

“Oh, my darling,” she cried between kisses and through the tears that had begun to flow freely. Miranda, stoically, made no
sound. “Oh, my dearest one, it has been so long, so very long…
too
long since I’ve held you like this.”

“Mother,” Lam was saying, but Fanny ignored him.

“What is the matter with you, my darling?” Fanny said with increasing passion and anxiety. “Why are you so pale?”

“Mother!” Lam repeated more loudly, and tried to split Fanny and Miranda apart.

“Don’t do that, Lamar,” Fanny ordered, but at least she was giving him her attention. “Can’t you see that I’m…”

“Mother,” Lamar said before she could finish her sentence, “Miranda is in pain. You mustn’t hold her so.”

“In… what?” Fanny said, withdrawing from her daughter with visible reluctance.

“In pain, Mother. She was burned on the train. A flaming cinder lit on her.”

“Oh!” Fanny cried, then sobbed and choked and fell silent.

“I’m sorry, Mother,” Miranda said, wishing to comfort her mother in her anguish. “I…”

“Oh, no, my dearest,” Fanny said. “You have nothing at all to be sorry about.” Fanny’s hands were clenched tightly together
at the level of her bosom. It was her way of restraining herself from touching Miranda, which was what she longed to do more
than anything else in the world. “But where?” she asked. “Where is the injury? You must tell me all about it. And then I must
minister to you. I will be your angel of mercy.”

Miranda lifted the edge of the shawl she was wearing so that her mother could catch a glimpse of the area of the burn. She
did this carefully, so that the exposed flesh would be visible only to her mother.

“Oh!” Fanny said, leaning closer to have a better look. “Oh, my poor, poor darling. Is the pain severe?”

“Not any longer,” Miranda said, forcing a brave smile.

“It must still ache, though, doesn’t it?”

“Yes, it aches.”

“Then we must take you into the hotel and do something about it.”

“I’ll be fine, Mother. I’m sure of it.”

During the commotion over Miranda, Fanny had momentarily lost sight of the approach of Pierce Kemble, who had not ridden on
the carriage with Fanny’s children but had taken a wagon with his brother, Ashbel, Lam’s two cadet friends, and the sisters’
baggage.

While she had been at West Point, Fanny had been as apprehensive about the arrival of her former husband as she’d been eager
to see her daughters, but—happily for her—the immediate presence of the girls had allowed her to ignore his approach.

But now Pierce was walking toward her with Ashbel on his heel. The two Kemble brothers were followed by the two cadets, Noah
and Sam.

Sam, she noted before she placed the full, withering force of her attention on Pierce, had his eyes exclusively on Miranda.
That did not displease Fanny. Though Miranda was only fifteen and too young to be courted by young men, it never hurt to line
up likely prospects. Sam was a nice-looking boy—though a bit shaggy and disheveled, especially for one about to graduate from
the United States Military Academy.

As it happened, she didn’t notice that the other cadet, Noah Ballard, was as intent upon Ariel as Sam was on Miranda.

When Fanny turned her gaze back toward Pierce, she saw that he had held back. That trace of cowardice in Pierce caused Fanny
to stand that much taller and to brace her legs, as though she were going to launch a physical onslaught against the man whom
she’d once loved.

It was quite clear to all present that Fanny Shaw was enormously energized now, for the mighty engines of her emotions had
already been worked up to full throttle by the force of the compassion she’d just expended on her daughter. It was only a
short step for the era’s greatest lady of the stage to turn from compassion to hostility.

But first she had to greet Ashbel, whom she liked, and who liked her.