The Railroad War (36 page)

“You were saying something about Jane Featherstone,” she said sweetly, “were you not?”

“What I was going to say, goddamn it,” he snapped, “is that I like you better than I like her. That you don’t have to fear
her.”

As Sam spoke, Miranda began to feel giddy. Her mind was spinning, and her balance on the fork of the tree was becoming dangerously
precarious. Her hand found his, and that steadied her.

The last thing he said was very near to being the magic password.

“You don’t think I’d have ever had anything to fear from her, do you?” Miranda said. “She’s nothing. A snit.”

“Actually, Miranda, she’s better than that. And you have been afraid of her—don’t try lying about that. You’ve been jealous
of her from the instant you eyed us on the street.”

“No, I haven’t,” Miranda whispered.

“But the primary reason you have nothing to fear from her is that it’s you I love.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Yes, you do,” he said.

When Miranda looked at him, tears were in her eyes. And then she smiled through her tears. “I didn’t fall,” she said.

“What?” he asked, not understanding her.

“I didn’t fall off the branch,” she said, “when you told me that you loved me. And I didn’t take you with me,” she brightened,
“when I didn’t fall.”

“Oh, yes,” he said. “I should be grateful for that small favor.”

“It’s not a favor, Sam. It’s a reward. A reward for loving me—or at least saying that you do.” And then her face blazed with
her most enchanting, most magical expression. “Oh, and by the way, you’ve successfully uttered the secret password.”

“It’s lovely here, isn’t it?” Sam said to Miranda. “I can see the magic in it.” When Miranda led Sam up to her treetop refuge,
it was midafternoon—a hot and humid Georgia afternoon. Now, several hours later, the afternoon had faded into a balmy and
pleasant evening. But neither of them showed any desire to descend to the common world below them.

“I adore it here,” Miranda agreed. “And,” she added, “it’s mine.”

He looked at her, not quite understanding. “That’s important to you, is it, that it’s yours?” To Sam, pride of ownership seemed
to belong properly to the male of the species. But then he had never actually owned much more than the clothes on his back.

“It’s the reason that I’m here in Georgia, Sam, and not in England,” she said soberly, “if that’s what you mean. Finally,
in all my life, for the first time I possess and control something important to me.” She glanced momentarily through the window
of leaves. Then continued.

“When I was a girl, it was always a pull from my mother or my father. With her pulling for her own way, and him pulling for
his, there was very little left over for me. Now I have some things that are mine, and I refuse to give them up.”

“I guess, in a way, it is what I mean,” he said, “though you have the words for it and I don’t.” He stopped and drew in his
breath. “It’s just that you are a surprising young woman.”

“Surprising?”

“I’m taken aback by the choices you’ve made.”

“Choices?”

“The thing is, Miranda,” he went on, “I’m just a little astonished that you’ve taken on a large plantation in wartime.”

“First of all, Sam,” she said with a light, playful laugh, “it’s not a large plantation. It’s a rather small one. And secondly,
I take it that your astonishment stems from the fact that I am running it at all. A woman is not supposed to be capable of
such competence, isn’t that so?”

He smiled and then blushed—thereby admitting the truth of her charge.

“How many farms, plantations, and other enterprises in the South do you think women are managing?” she asked more seriously.
“Now that the men are all off fighting and dying,” she went on, “who do you think is taking care of all that’s left behind?”
She caught his eye. “What they do they’ve had to do. It’s what is necessary. What I do I’ve done from choice. I like it.”

“And you’ve given up the safety and the comforts and the pleasures of London—and your mother—in order to do it?”

“Yes, of course. It’s what my father wanted me to do on his deathbed, but it’s what I would have done anyway, even if he hadn’t
made the choice for me.”

“Amazing,” Sam said, liking Miranda all the more for her courage and integrity.

If Miranda Kemble had entertained any secret dreams of falling in love with Sam Hawken when she invited him to Raven’s Wing,
Sam’s first hours there had dashed them. As soon as Sam and Jane Featherstone arrived, Miranda began to have doubts about
the wisdom of her impulse.

From their initial encounter, Jane despised Miranda, but that was understandable. Jane was jealous. The virulence of her jealousy
was increased when Jane realized that she had never managed in the least bit to bind Sam to her. But when she realized that
Sam cared more for a girl whom he had briefly met years ago than he would ever care for Jane herself, she went into a silent
frenzy.

Yet Jane, for all her hostility, proved to be nothing but a bother for Miranda, a momentary irritation. Most of the time Jane
simply sulked alone in her room. She slept apart from Sam, of course. During those moments when Jane deigned to join the others,
she either complained or else begged Sam to stop wasting time. They had obligations; they ought to be on their way.

But Sam was another thing. He was not an irritation; he was a problem.

On the long wagon ride from Atlanta to Raven’s Wing, he had been silent or he dozed. After his initial flash of pleasure and
excitement when he finally admitted knowing Miranda, he’d lapsed into intense and almost frightening solitude. He was fiercely
untouchable. And he remained that way for the first part of his stay in Miranda’s home.

Sam resisted all her efforts, for instance, to charm him into talking about himself. He refused to discuss the seven lost
years, even though she made it clear she wouldn’t press him on the issues that most troubled her—his espionage and his connection
with the Featherstone woman. At other times he listened patiently but distractedly to her tales of the Kemble family.

The only time he showed a passing interest in Miranda’s ramblings came when she explained how her attachment to Raven’s Wing
was purely personal. It had nothing to do with the South, with the Great Cause, with the plantation aristocracy, or with slavery.

He even showed a tremor of astonishment when she told him that she had placed a document on file with her lawyer in Atlanta.
The document stated that those slaves she owned would become free upon her death or the termination of the war, whichever
came first. The Negroes she owned would be free today, she told Sam, if that had been a practical choice. But releasing her
slaves into freedom in the Georgia of 1863 would condemn them to much worse than anything they would possibly suffer at her
hands on her land. And they knew it.

And he showed even greater astonishment when he learned that she wished and hoped that the South would lose the war.

“You can’t mean that, Miranda,” Sam told her on the porch of the main house late on his second evening at Raven’s Wing. “How
can you be indifferent to the land of your birth? How can you wish it to be defeated?”

Miranda considered answering his question by asking the same one of him, but she had the good sense and the sensitivity to
drop that thought.

“I’m not indifferent,” she said. “I’m not at all indifferent. Just the reverse. I care so much for the South that I want my
people to shake off the soiled and evil garments we’ve clothed ourselves with. We can then grow and change and take the greatness
we have reached for and fought for. But, Sam, we must be stripped and naked first.”

The look he gave her was hard and appraising. And troubled.

“Meanwhile my primary attachment is to Raven’s Wing, and only Raven’s Wing.”

Sam’s face froze. Seconds later he abruptly leapt to his feet and, without explanation, strolled out into the night.

When he returned over an hour later, she was still seated in her rocking chair on the porch.

“You haven’t gone to bed yet?” he asked.

“It’s too hot to sleep,” she said, “And besides, I was waiting for you.”

“Waiting for me? Why?” His face showed genuine surprise. “I shouldn’t think I’ve been acting like someone you’d wish to wait
for.”

“I’ve waited seven years to see you again,” she blurted, without realizing as she said it that he could and would take a different
meaning from what she intended.

“I should be flattered, I guess,”he said with a chill in his voice that disturbed her. “But I’m not much moved by melodrama.
I can’t believe you, girl. Are you telling me, Miranda Kemble, that you actually
pined”
—the word curled sarcastically off his lips—“for me for seven years? I’m nothing but a passing encounter when you were, what
was it, fifteen? I don’t deserve so much romantic attention, dear girl.”

“You’re wrong!” she cried, hurt and angry. “Absolutely! Sam Hawken, I haven’t pined for you for seven years. I would never
pine”
—her sarcasm matched his—“for anyone for seven years. What I meant to say is that I liked you when we met seven years ago,
and I’m glad to see you again.”

In that, she was speaking the literal truth. But she was at the same time more than merely glad to see him. She knew, even
if he didn’t care to admit it, that a spark had been lit between them at West Point, and that it was growing now.

She could not for the life of her understand why he was so cold and distant.

“You knew what we were, Jane and I,” he said, “when you picked us up off the street in Atlanta?”

“Yes,” she said. “You are Union spies.”

“And that doesn’t bother you?” he asked softly, patiently, as though he were addressing a child.

That softness stung her into fury. “Of course it bothers me!” she screamed, bursting into tears. “It bothers me that you lie
and steal and kill and betray, all for the sake of
what?
For the sake of the Union? For the sake of victory in a war? Is that the kind of price that makes victory worthwhile, Sam?
And it bothers me that you have been living with Jane Featherstone! As though
she
is your wife! It bothers me that she has had”—Miranda searched for the words—“carnal intercourse with you!”

“What business is that of yours, little girl?” He tossed that off casually, but his face, as she read it, was rigid with torment.

She didn’t spend a long time trying to read it, though, because she was out of her chair and pounding that face with half-closed
fists almost as the “little girl” taunt came out of his mouth.

Of course he didn’t spend a long time waiting to restrain her, and it didn’t take her long after that to put herself under
control and apologize for her outburst. But then when she was back in her chair, she saw that the torment was still in his
face and his eyes were moist with unshed tears.

They were both silent, neither knowing what to think or do next. Finally Sam spoke. “I don’t know what’s happening to me.”

“You don’t?” she asked, breathing the words in as she spoke them.

“Do you know you sound as though you think you do.”

“I don’t,” she admitted. But she liked much better this vulnerable side of him than the cold and solitary face he was attempting
to maintain.

“I’m ashamed to tell you this,” he said, “but all the time I’ve been here accepting your hospitality and safety, I’ve purposely
ignored you. And I’ve purposely paid no attention to all you’ve been telling me about yourself. I didn’t want this meeting,
and I didn’t want our reunion.” As he said this, he looked painfully at her. “I didn’t want our reunion to prosper. I didn’t
want you to touch me the way you have.”

“But I
have…
touched you?” she asked, not daring to show her hope.

He gave her no answer to that question. “I think I may have succeeded in keeping myself detached from you,” he said, pressing
on with his own agenda, “until earlier this evening, when you told me of your feelings about the war and the South and your
property. I’m ashamed to tell you this, too, maybe more than I’m ashamed of the other things. But when you talked then, I
saw instantly how you could be used for my purposes.”

“How do you mean?”

“For espionage,” he shrugged. “That’s when I left you and took a walk.”

“And now you have returned,” she said. “And…?”

“And I decided I won’t do that.”

“How would you have used me?” she asked.

“You have property. You have slaves. You have friends. You are respected. You have influence. And you have a secure place
from which to operate. Believe me, Miranda, you would be most useful to me.”

“What changed your mind?”

“You did. I couldn’t do it to you.”

“I’ve changed you?” she asked, smiling and grateful, liking him more than ever.

“No,” he said. “You haven’t changed me. I haven’t changed. People don’t change other people, and certainly not after a few
hours.”

“Yes, they do,” she said.

“I have to sleep,” he said. “I have to go to bed.”

The next morning Sam Hawken was actually smiling. For two days he had scarcely smiled at all. But now, though he didn’t lose
his reserve, he almost seemed cheerful.

The smiles disturbed Jane Featherstone, and in consequence she redoubled her demands that Sam immediately take her back to
Mississippi. She even began to threaten to leave by herself and take her own chances. “I’ll have to do that,” she said to
Sam in Miranda’s hearing, “as long as you persist in lazing away your life here in Lotus Land.”

Sam only laughed. Then he asked Miranda to join him for a stroll about her property. She accepted, of course, adding the suggestion
that they pack a lunch.

One thing led to another, and by midafternoon they were playing games with each other—children’s games like hide and seek.
But the hide and seek Sam and Miranda played was not quite the same sport that younger boys and girls enjoy.

“You
have
changed, Sam,” she announced as night fell and they finished their descent from her tree. “You aren’t a different man from
the one who came here the other day, but you’ve let parts of yourself out of hiding.”