LAURA LAY IN BED, AGAIN, WHEN THE NEW LETTER ARRIVED from her brother. It had the same sure, optimistic tenor his letters usually did, but something more as well.
“My dearest little sister Laura Ann. I have for months back admired Lexington. But now, for the first time, have I truly and fully appreciated it. Of all the places that have come under my observation in the United States, this little village is the most beautiful. Please talk to and love dear, blessed little Tommy and Elizabeth as I would were I with you. Your loving older brother, Thomas.”
The next letter, a few weeks later, actually explained why Lexington had shown itself so splendid in Tom's eyes. Though, of course, Laura knew why by reading this one closely—and not even that closely, actually. For she knew Tommy, had always known him, and could most assuredly discern when love for the first time clutched him in its inescapable hand. Just as she knew when it had forsaken her. Don't trust love, poor Tommy, she thought but would never dare tell him. Read your Good Book where it says “Vain is the hope we place in men.” Enjoy your moment in the warm, happy sun, but never, never trust it, dear Tommy.
Indeed, the spring of 1853 was the brightest and most beautiful ever for Tom Jackson. Who was this woman, and what were these feelings sweeping over him? The days after that first awkward invitation last autumn had displayed her for the first time cool and aloof, as though pulling back from his clear designs on a relationship more cordial than friendship. Then, even as the winter set in and the air grew cold, and with it discouragement and doubt about the possibilities of such a pleasant prospect, she began to thaw and blossom anew. And this time more fully and vividly than when just as an acquaintance and friend. This time, he began to catch the first glimmer of the true, boundless beauty of her character and nature. He began to stagger at the enormity of what God had wrought in woman and most especially in this woman, Elinor Junkin.
For Ellie's part, she too, at twenty-eight, felt the advent of feelings never before experienced. Oh, the boys had been at that same Junkin front door where James Walker had raised such a stink, for as long as she could remember. Many had been good, fine boys, and with a couple she had actually been...close?—no, not really. Nothing remotely similar to this gloriously earnest, unpretentious, sincere, and kind man.
“Only after having come to know him with the intimacy of hourly converse,” she told Maggie one day during a ride through the fields on the high ground east of town, “have I found that much we have attributed to eccentricity is the result of the deepest underlying principle. It compels in me a respect, Sister, that both accompanies newfound affection and that I—we each—had dare not withhold.”
Maggie smiled, so happy for her most beloved soulmate, yet so increasingly doubtful regarding Jackson's suitability and qualification for her and so—no, she wasn't hurt; she merely, as all soldiers of the cross, must deny herself, take up her cross daily, and follow Him. No, she most definitely was not hurt. Why, what a preposterous notion! She knew a single woman her age was apt to have silly notions just as a woman of any other age. But God had called her to other duties to this point, more important duties. And if the Almighty intended her to have a man, He was more than capable of providing one. In fact, He alone could know the identity of that proper mate.
In any event, it certainly was not that major with his dyspepsia, his embarrassing stiff-backed posture, his heavy side, and his ridiculous flying arm. And besides, was he not an absolute failure in his chosen profession? No, more than that, was he not a pitiable figure of scorn and ridicule, from student and faculty member alike? The more Maggie gnawed on these thoughts as the weeks passed (she was finding it difficult to write much poetry these days), the more convinced she became Jackson was not only someone she herself could never have been matched with—oh, never in a million lifetimes!—but neither was he worthy of the apple of both their eyes. In fact, the way that Father and the rest of the family was warming to Major Jackson, it perhaps fell to her alone the duty to break loose any bonds beyond natural affection and sentiment Ellie, herself closer now to thirty every day, may have allowed to creep in through curiosity and the persistent efforts of this ungainly and embarrassing suitor. But she must be careful in such an undertaking, so as never to harm her innocent, guileless sister.
“He is a good, decent, and honest fellow,” Maggie said as they walked their winded mounts. “But I feel constrained to worry about such a sinful past, Sister. Why, he has belonged to the church barely more than a year, for goodness’ sake. He still has doubts about such foundational truths as predestination and election, and you and I both suspect his lack of regard for the holding to of the Sabbath. And he himself has admitted to you his past bouts with many such evils as drinking, cards, and attending the theater! I just don't understand what you can see in him, dear sister. I just believe you deserving of so much more and—yes—better a man.”
Ellie smiled and reached to touch Maggie softly on her arm. Her words were soft and richly seasoned with gentleness. “Yes, I find it hard to believe myself, Sister. He does not seem at all what I would have expected in a man I would—,” Maggie's face whipped around toward her, “feel such...such regard for.”
Maggie's face was pallid. “So you...you do have feelings for the major, feelings more than those for a...brother?”
Ellie stopped her horse and gazed up at the clear blue winter sky and felt the soothing warmth of the sun's rays against her face as she closed her eyes. Maggie thought it the most beautiful and pure of all the faces ever created by the Master. She detected just a faint glistening of the porcelain skin from the hard ride just completed. Yes, Ellie deserves the best, she thought. And that is not Major Jackson.
“Yes, I have feelings, beloved sister,” Ellie said, her eyes still closed and a happy, dreamy smile spreading across her exquisite countenance. “Feelings like I have never before known. Feelings whose propriety should alarm me were I not so safely and firmly ensconced in the arms and the will of our glorious Savior. For I know that the feelings are of Him and that as long as He remains my Sovereign, He being their source and originator, I shall fear them not.”
Her eyes opened and she turned to Maggie, the gorgeous white smile still transfixed. “And I have already discussed the issues you raise with him, for indeed they are important issues.”
The look on Maggie's face wordlessly asked, And?
“And he said in that sweet, innocent, profound way of his, ‘Remember Ellie, I lived, then, up to all the light I had, and therefore I did not then, nor do I now, reproach myself for my past errors.’ You see, Sister, the important fact is he has a teachable heart, a heart so soft toward the will and leading of God that he has actually prayed to God to take him through whatever trial or struggle be necessary to prove and temper that heart. Yes, the major is still fairly young in the ways of our Lord, but I firmly believe him to be one of the most dedicated Christians in these parts and that in time he will prove to be one of the wisest and most mature of all.” The memory of these ruminations lit Ellie's face with enchantment and her eyes closed again in sublime joy. “Oh Sister, such a man, committed to holy living as he is, yet with such a deep hold on grace as he has. Oh Sister, I fear that my heart may—”
“No, Sister, no!” Maggie screamed as she turned and gouged her horse into a gallop across the field and back toward town.
Ellie stared after her, a puzzled expression washing away most of the smile. “Oh Sister, dear, dear Sister. Perhaps in time, you too will come to appreciate his qualities.”
When Jackson found himself alone with Ellie in the beautiful wooded settings of late winter and early spring, and the harbingers of new life that accompanied them—chirping birds of red, blue, yellow, and brown, and the fantastic arrays of trees coming back to multihued life—the perturbations of optics classes and Walker seemed far away. She was so comfortable, and so comforting. At first, her smile came slower than it had—did she not enjoy being alone with him? But she continued, with occasional exception, to accept his invitations for picnics and rides, and with time the smile increased in quickness and frequency. At first, though he himself talked so much it felt as if someone else were controlling his mouth, and he had nothing whatsoever to do with its operation, she spoke little. Did he direct the conversation toward subjects that bored her? (A quick remedy for that: continue speaking and moving from subject to subject until something peaks her interest.) After a time, however, her words flowed freely, and she herself began to direct the conversation where she wanted it, though she continually amazed him with her desire and ability to shepherd the rambling discussions to areas of his interest, without his needing to do so. In fact, she had a curious way of directing their talks along paths of great interest to him, but ones he would not himself have chosen or in some cases did not even realize were there to be explored. He found her helping him to open up stored-away areas of his life and thinking that had seen little or no light.
This phenomenon aided Jackson in a spate of ways, not the least of which was his performance at the Franklin Society. Public speaking was proving more difficult to master than the West Point academic curriculum. But a voice remained with him in times of adversity and dejection. A voice driving him onward. You may be whatever you resolve to be. So he practiced evenings in his rented hotel room, forcing himself to speak into a mirror as perspiration dotted his upper lip and dripped from his forehead and his right arm launched itself frequently toward the ceiling. The mirror helped because he had no problem with the physiological mechanics of speaking aloud on a subject with which he was familiar—when alone in a room. However, doing so with an audience continued to present a different challenge. Jackson found projecting to his own visage provided the next best thing to rehearsing before a live crowd. With tenacious, dogged perseverance, despite further humiliations at the Franklin, the professor gradually effected a fair presentation style, then even one of compelling style and skillful articulation and flow of argument.
Classroom success proved even more elusive than public oratory. Walker might be gone, but after two years even Jackson admitted in the quietness of his own heart his lack of talent and inclination in the challenging field of education. Complaints from students and letters from alumni continued finding their way to Superintendent Smith's office, as well as VMI's governing board of visitors. But Jackson's sterling character and exemplary effort, his (barely) acceptable performance, and a dearth of qualified replacement candidates in the subjects he taught combined to secure his continued employment at the school. The lengthy legacy of his war reputation, however, stood as the single strongest, though unspoken, support for Jackson's job security.
In fact, Walker was anything but gone. Absent from the VMI campus perhaps, but, living in the Lexington house of a friend, his initial anger at being expelled had evolved into a furious obsession. Ellie heard through friends that Walker intended an invitation to Jackson for a two-man duel with pistols! Marley caught wind of the same information through the institute's cadet grapevine, and Dr. Junkin's secretary reported to Maggie a similar, though not identical, story circulated to her by a Washington College faculty member. If such rumors concerned Jackson, he did not evidence it, even after Harvey Hill informed him two cadets had seen an official invitation Walker had prepared and was readying to forward to Jackson.
The major preferred directing his thoughts toward the delightful gatherings he shared with Ellie and other friends at the Junkin home, listening to her and her sister Maggie (their hair and dress prepared identically) perform animated duets on the pianoforte. Maggie would surreptitiously steam at the now-hated interloper, pouring her wrath into the keyboard. Ellie would play with joyful abandon and sneak winking little smiles at the man she was coming to love.
Even more enchanting were the idyllic country picnics on which Jackson and Ellie continued to embark. He loved it when she pulled her thick yellow hair back and tied it into a tail, because then he could see all the lovely, sun-kissed contours of her matchless face and enjoy her soft hair bouncing around on her back when she launched into one of her animated stories about Maggie or her father or young Julia and the Kennedy boy who was so smitten over her.
Ellie presented a radically different embodiment of the female species to Jackson than he had ever before witnessed. At times he felt consuming joy; at times, deep perplexion; and at other times awe of her magical radiance simply left him dumb.
A deep, abiding, contented faith constituted a major portion of that radiance. Jackson had long sought the secret to ordering his own heart and life. At times he had been somewhat successful in doing so; at other times, not as successful. The last couple of years especially, the Christianity to which he had increasingly devoted himself had proven quite efficacious for the task. Now, however, he reveled in the close witnessing of one—and a woman, at that!—who provided with her life a textbook outworking of all the truths, principles, and ideals embodied in that sublime religious faith. Sometimes it almost overwhelmed him. How could she be so trusting? he marveled. So sure, so calm? The entire Junkin clan still wondered how, when her mother had died the previous year, Ellie singularly bore the load and buoyed the troops. Her graceful winning smile cheered her brothers, her sweet favors helped pull her father out of his lost funks, and her loving words and consolation kept Maggie from what the spunky older sister herself admitted only to herself to have been the brink of an emotional collapse.
As Jackson learned—from other family members, not Ellie herself—her faith, so natural and certain, was not without great price. The precious, merrily dancing hazel eyes so entrancing to him were gradually, inexorably descending into permanent darkness. And sharp, shooting pain accompanied the descent every step of the way. The extent of notice conveyed to Jackson had been a couple of picnics ended early because Ellie was “fatigued.” Yet he remembered as he looked back seeing her stealthily rubbing her eyes and temples on the return rides home.
“Why? Why did you not see fit to tell me?” he pressed her in the Junkin's main sitting room upon learning of the condition from a tearful Julia.
Ellie's immediate response was one of silent embarrassment. She turned from Jackson, but he pulled her to him. Tears streamed from her eyes.
“Does it hurt badly, Ell?” he gasped, pain now creasing his own face.
She gently removed his hands from her arms and placed a soft, cool palm to his cheek, shaking her head.
“Dear Thomas, dear, dear Thomas,” she smiled, her voice strong, though the tears continued. When no words were forthcoming, Jackson shifted uncomfortably. She saw in his grieved eyes desperate yearning for some sort of answer. She removed her hand and looked to the floor. She moved to a high-backed wooden chair and sat. Her next words came slowly and with great tenderness.
“My Thomas, I shall tell you because you alone might understand. If not now, then someday.” She closed her eyes and looked upward. “‘Yet of myself I will not glory, but in mine infirmities. For though I would desire to glory, I shall not be a fool; for I will say the truth: but now I forbear, lest any man should think of me above that which he seeth me to be, or that he heareth of me.’”
Jackson stared, transfixed, as she continued, her eyes remaining shut.
“‘And lest I should be exalted above measure through the abundance of the revelations, there was given to me a thorn in the flesh, the messenger of Satan to buffet me, lest I should be exalted above measure. For this thing I besought the Lord thrice, that it might depart from me. And he said unto me, My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness. Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me.’”
Now she spoke very softly and quite slowly, careful lest she convey a spirit of pride to this man who had come to mean so much to her it concerned her lest her love for God and His Son be lessened any at all. “‘Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in necessities, in persecutions, in distresses for Christ's sake: for when I am weak, then am I strong.’” Her eyes opened again and peered at Jackson.
What manner of woman is this? “Have I seen today tears of joy in the midst of great physical pain?” His words were breathless and fragile as the fine English china lining the sideboard along the far wall of the room.
Ellie could not conceal her joy. She nodded, her beautiful ravaged eyes sparkling as they had so often for him. “You have.” She was practically giggling.
Jackson had scant referent for this. “I...I wish you could have known my mother.”
They stared at one another for a long time. Whatever barriers may have remained between the two now melted away into oblivion. They did not touch one another. They did not even speak. But something deathless and unending was given birth in that golden moment married of sorrow and joy. And Jackson became acutely aware of the reality that a plane of human experience existed of which he had never before been aware. Some of it had to do directly with Ellie. And some of it did not.
The lion of ambition held roaring dominance even in the quiet places of Jackson's heart. He admitted it to himself, though to few others. He admitted it to God, but did not at this point know exactly how to dispose of it. Renouncing it and vowing purity from it, unlike with other undesired habits and practices in his life, had not worked. Yet this raw, unbridled, perhaps even mounting ambition held no strains nor even flecks of guile or subterfuge. Jackson merely plopped one foot in front of the other as he stepped through the days of his life. The University of Virginia would reject his application for employment, despite letters of commendation from such men of stature as fellow West Point graduate and Mexican War hero Robert E. Lee of Virginia, but Jackson would nonetheless write the application and speak honestly and openly of it when queried.
Walker's letter arrived the following Thursday. Jackson did not share it with Ellie or any other member of the Junkin family to which he was becoming so close. He went to Harvey Hill.
“The blessed young fool,” Harvey grimaced. “Walker threw away his career; now he's trying to do the same with his life.”
Jackson did not fear Walker. And though ambition gripped him, it did not own him, and he did not fear what any man could do to affect his goals and plans. They were God's to give out and to take away. And God was a God of order, as Jackson increasingly understood through his discussions with Ellie and the other Junkins, his Presbyterian pastor Dr. William White, and his readings of the Bible and Presbyterian literature such as the Lower and Higher Catechisms and the Westminster Confession of Faith. The concept of the eternal predestination of saved Christian souls for heaven that he once mocked to scorn even made increasing sense to him. And what of the souls God knew would not make it to heaven and His eternal presence and fellowship? Jackson did not yet have that one worked out.
But he trusted and feared God in a way he did no man, certainly the young ingrate Walker. And he knew that trustworthy God of order did not like loose ends or chaos.
The letter challenged Jackson to a duel with pistols, swords, or knives at six o'clock the following Thursday evening on the plateau of the hill commanding Lexington from the north. It was brief, concise, and signed in flowing script by James A. Walker, Esquire, of South Carolina.
“I believe I shall have a warrant issued binding Mr. Walker to keep the peace,” Jackson said.
This surprised Harvey. He could have found any number of explanations for the surprising statement had the officer and professor sitting erect across his desk from him been someone else. He had come to know that all Jackson did was tied up in duty and honor, or at least Jackson's perceptions of those elusive, and sometimes vastly overrated, commodities. What precisely the antecedent for this announcement might be he hadn't a clue, but he did know that it was a very poorly conceived strategy.
“I believe I should offer a hearty no to that proposal, my friend,” Harvey said. “You'll feel the chill winds of contempt and scorn run through you from the cadets should you pursue it.”
“They'll brand me as a coward.”
“Some inclined against you already probably will.”
“Thank you for your advice, my good friend,” Jackson said without rancor as he stood.
Jackson did not heed his friend's counsel. Nor did he initiate any attempts at rapprochement with Walker, whom he actually caught glimpses of a couple of times spying upon his movements about town. If Jackson handled the matter with aplomb and failed to tell even one person besides Harvey about the letter, Lexington was abuzz with speculation, gossip, and, especially among the dormitories of Walker's ex-mates in the class of ‘55, wagers pertaining to the outcome of any potential duel. Walker had informed numerous individuals of the letter and the specific information contained in it. As word spread, people assumed an oversight on Walker's part in the concurrent timing of the face off with the monthly Franklin Society gathering. Then whispers multiplied indicating the expelled cadet's scheduling as intentional in order to assure as large an audience as possible among the area's most respected men.
Twice Marley urged action by his professor and friend to stymie the dark impending event. Jackson said only that his comings and goings were marked by God and he would not succumb to such brutish behavior unless it was forced upon him, and then he would acquit himself as a man should do.
The situation with Ellie proved thornier. The considerable influence and respect her father commanded in Lexington prompted a multiplicity of concerned individuals to come to her with varying versions of the frightening news. So many people visited Ellie and her family, in fact, that a precisely accurate picture of the letter's contents eventually availed itself to her.
The normally winsome woman burned with anger at the young hothead from South Carolina. Eventually, her unhappiness veered toward Jackson.
“Why will he not talk to me of this ridiculous and disgraceful spectacle?” she finally asked Maggie. “I have beseeched him repeatedly, since even before word of this monstrous ‘challenge’ came to light. He says only that he has sought the magistrate, who has been conveniently absent from his post for most of the past week, and that beyond that he has entrusted his destiny to God.”
“Another of the peculiar institutions of our adopted Southern homeland,” Maggie said with more than a trace of wryness. “That of the archaic and savage ‘duel.’ It speaks poorly of the South and worse for Major Jackson, who at least professes an education and a Christian faith.”
Maggie grabbed her sister's arm with urgency before the withering undercut of these utterances could sink in. “Oh dear sister, do you not now see how impossibly wrong this well-intentioned but ultimately brutish backwoodsman is for you? Not now nor ever should I desire anything but God's finest for my beloved, but it is impossible to understate the calamity in which you would be engaging should you act other than to terminate this sweet but impossibly flawed courtship at once. To do anything else would…” Her voice trailed off and (the intensity of her grip paining Ellie's arm and hand) her eyes looked down.
“Would what, dear sister?”
Maggie paused for effect, inwardly clutching with glee the advantage she knew some foolish young South Carolinian rascal had finally delivered to her. Her blue eyes locked in to the honest, questioning hazel ones she knew and loved so well.
“Would be to take complete leave of your senses.” How much of the tearful tremor resident in those last words was calculated and how much was true concern not even Margaret Junkin herself could know. But it attained its intended objective, and Ellie tearfully determined to postpone furtherance of her courtship with Jackson until an unspecified later date—if ever.
Maggie felt a pang of regret and guilt, for she knew the toll her disciplined and masterfully executed strategy of sabotage had taken on her sister's blossoming relationship with the roughhewn major these past months. Yes, she grudgingly admitted even to herself, he is a good man, and perhaps his desire to know and please God is inordinately sharp even in this town and state of inordinately devout Christian men and women. But she had no doubts that that same God had used her to interrupt pending catastrophe. Ellie—sweet, fair Ellie—deserved the best this troubled world had to offer. Even if Maggie herself, with her Greek and Latin, her poems and books, and her dark, mysterious cloud, would never deserve any of it. At least, for the first time in a long time, she felt as though God was truly pleased with her. She knew the God she had learned from her father and mother was a powerful one. And they had assured in every way they were able that He was a just and loving one. But it was that shadow, that dark, dark creeping, clawing accuser and mocker that hovered over her that forever taunted the truth Ellie and every single one of her siblings, even young Julia, had so readily embraced. So she would write of how things were, but more especially of how they should be. And she would wait—perhaps for the heaven she did believe awaited even the weak and doubting like herself. Yes, and she would grieve. But she would not grieve over the fracturing of Ellie and the major. No, never would she do that.
“So you can see, Harvey, it's a terrible predicament I'm in,” Jackson said sullenly as he again sat across the desk from his friend.
“Yes, I know it is. But you still have time to head this thing off and shake young Walker down before he can do harm to himself. And if he forces action upon you, I know you will conduct yourself with honor.”
The steely blue eyes were glassy, and Jackson seemed to have heard nothing of Harvey's comments. “I've never previously been possessed of such a strange feeling and having not the least idea of how to deal with it.”
Harvey gawked at his friend. “Fire and tarnation, Jackson, you knew how to deal with that cannonball at Chapultepec, and those people—all of them—heading into the City of Mexico. You've dealt for two full years now with vigorous, energetic cadets needing—depending on the moment—a boot, a bridle, or a fire under their backsides. And I must say, knowing your devotion to duty and God, and your desires for self-betterment, that you have forborne the scoundrel Walker to a degree nothing short of noble. But as to how to deal with this, this challenge...” This conversation was making Harvey confused and uncomfortable. He shook his head.
The hollowness of Jackson's eyes confirmed he still resided in his own little world, though this fact was lost on the befuddled Harvey. “I admit to having enjoyed the pleasures of other ladies’ company, even in Mexico. And some have ceased social interplay before I would have chosen. But this, this rejection from Ellie is so utterly different, so unexpected. I felt I knew her and the situation better than this.”
A smile began to wade across Harvey's countenance. This man has a duel with a champion marksman in half an hour, and it's the farthest thought from his mind. Harvey burst into merry laughter. He paused for a moment as Jackson snapped back to alertness and eyed him with bewilderment, then he exploded again into convulsions of high-pitched laughter that, despite Harvey's baritone speaking voice, sounded to Jackson rather like the screams of a hyena.
Harvey stopped long enough to wipe the tears of hilarity off his cheeks and offer, “Why, you're in love, my boy, that's what your problem is!” Then, knowing Elinor Junkin well and suspecting the source of what he believed to be merely a temporary courtship hiatus, he stepped around the desk and slapped the stonefaced Jackson hard on the back. “Relax and enjoy it, my boy. You'd be surprised at how many of us have been struck with the same affliction!”
Tonight Jackson would speak at the Franklin in favor of the proposition that God saves the heathen. But his central thesis took a different tack than that of most others who agreed with him on the general premise. They opined that a loving, and just, God would never consign an uncivilized barbarian who had not the opportunity to hear and believe the saving gospel of Christ to perdition. It would be against His magnanimous and unneedy character. Jackson agreed to this point, but he posited that God would find a way to deliver that gospel to those whom He would prompt to receive it. The others felt the heathen who had not “heard” would be saved by the same God, “using slightly different means.” Jackson wrapped the sixth verse of the fourteenth chapter of the New Testament Gospel of John around these men's necks and shook them with it. He took stronger issue with these who agreed with the concept of distant uncivilized pagans being won by God than he did with his ostensible opponents, who agreed with him to the brittleness of the universalistic position, but gave the unreached islanders, desert tribes, and other aboriginals no hope, since they were obviously, by the word of God and by their own heinously brutal and carnal lives, not resident in the chosen rolls of the “Lamb's book of life.”
Before holding forth about God and the heathen, Jackson decided to lodge a visit to Lexington magistrate Elkanah Clinton, with whom he would swear out a warrant.
Marching briskly down the steep grade from the VMI to Clinton's office (it had been better than a forty-five-degree angle until a long-term Lexington improvements program had finally put an end to most of the mule- and wagon-strewn calamities resulting from the steep slopes and thick muck caused by the heavier rains), Harvey, like most everyone else, practically had to run to keep up with Jackson.
They caught Clinton just as he himself was leaving for the Franklin convocation. Thus, the harelipped stoop-shouldered man of forty-five was not particularly predisposed to engage in discussion of a warrant, and when he heard for whom it was to be made out, he popped on his warm-weather top hat and asked Jackson and Harvey if they would care to accompany him to the meeting.
“Thank you, Mr. Clinton,” Jackson said, “but I should prefer to handle this warrant business before we go.”
Clinton stopped and shuffled back around toward Jackson. “I'll tell you honestly, Major Jackson. This is not an off-the-cuff decision. What with the rumors swirling around town and all, I've considered the possibility of somebody coming to me for a warrant. And I've decided that I'll not issue one. At least not for Mr. James Walker I won't. That man is intent on doing grievous bodily harm to somebody, and with his size and from what I hear about his marksmanship and pugilistic abilities, I'm not about to put myself in a position to be on the receiving end of what he's liable to be giving out.”
Jackson and Harvey stared at the magistrate, then at one another.
“Are you refusing to serve a warrant on that man?” Harvey asked.
Clinton turned back down the street. “I'm going to the Franklin to hear Mr. Jackson—whose oratorical skills have improved greatly in recent months, greatly—and others hold forth on the gospel and the heathen. I suggest you two gentlemen drop this notion of a warrant and come with me.” For just a moment, he returned his gaze to the tall Virginian. “And Major Jackson. Were I you, sir, with your martial skills, I should go to young Walker before he came to me—which I believe he most surely intends to do—and I should go soon.”
With that, Clinton waddled off. Harvey was perplexed by the man's behavior. All of Lexington now knew of Walker's announced intention to meet Jackson outside the Franklin meeting to once and for all settle accounts. Of the characteristics Harvey would attribute to Clinton, bravery was not one. Yet, the man had exhibited not only willingness but desire to accompany Jackson in what could prove a death march.
Jackson set off after Clinton while Harvey looked around, as if seeking a higher court to which he could appeal. As none was forthcoming, he muttered, “Ludicrous, absolutely ludicrous!” and took off after the other men.
A bent man with steps less than half the length of Jackson's, Clinton nonetheless matched the major's lumbering stride with the determination and energy usually, but not now, incumbent in his performance as magistrate. Practically running, and spewing forth a running (and vitriolic) verbal estimation of the situation, Harvey still could not catch the comically mismatched pair before they reached the county building.
“Most outlandish, foolhardy, unnecessary display of stupidity I've ever seen,” Harvey spouted. “Why, I'll horsewhip the young idiot myself when I see him; he's erased any doubts even his most ardent admirers might have had about the correctness of his expulsion; he's erased any doubts I had because it was a very, very unfortunate decision on Jackson's part to pursue such harsh discipline, and I'm beginning to wonder if Jackson really should be a classroom professor; the complaints and ridicule of the students and alumni truly is tiresome. My lands, the young fool is nowhere to be seen!”
A considerable cluster of would-be spectators, some Franklin members and some not, buzzed with lively conversations all around the steps in front of the building, but Walker was nowhere in sight. The noise stopped cold at Jackson's appearance. The crowd, a moment before rowdy and animated, uttered not a chirp as the major passed through it, his square jaw set like flint and his hard blue eyes set straight ahead. The strange silence lingered for a minute even after Jackson entered the building.
“What manner of man is that, who fairly swoons at a speaker's podium, then stares down death as though it were an uninvited and unwelcome intruder?” one man whispered softly to a nearby friend (as if he were afraid Jackson might leap from the building and confront him for his words).
“The type of man this republic needs mightily when it is threatened, but perhaps has little use for in time of peace and security,” his friend replied.
Harvey, meanwhile, had stopped in the street, panting, and watched as Jackson and Clinton marched into the building. He gazed around, then up and down the street. No Walker. Well, do we have a blowhard on our hands, or just how long is this foolishness going to prevail? Then he realized his beating heart and sweating brow were not exclusively the result of his spirited walk. And he marveled at the lanky, awkward professor who had just ascended the steps leading to the Franklin convocation. He knew as well as any of Walker's announced intention to be waiting at those steps. And yet what waits inside that building causes him more fear than what could have been waiting outside it. In fact, I don't believe what could have been waiting outside causes him any fear whatsoever.
Jackson indeed was not without fear as he stood before the assembled body of the Franklin the next hour. And he indeed failed to secure his warrant that evening. But he did gain the lasting respect and admiration of the Society, whose ranks he never officially joined. Oblivious to threats to his life, aspersions cast on his character for ineptitude at his chosen profession, mistreatment of his former cadet Walker, and cowardice in the face of a challenge of honor, Thomas Jonathan Jackson stood and spoke without notes and without arms springing skyward, and he spoke with power and conviction and authority. He carried the night despite a running internal battle between fleshly fear and godly confidence. And at the end, as the stunned silence lingered following the dying echo of Jackson's final ringing words, it was Judge John W. Brockenbrough who stood and initiated the prolonged ovation. Sitting in his accustomed back row seat, Harvey Hill—well, Harvey Hill actually giggled at his odd friend.
Thus was Thomas Jackson's feeble mouth not opened in power for the sake of a speech.
James Walker did intend to meet Jackson as he arrived for the Franklin Society meeting. But he first had to make a stop at the Presbyterian church, where a cadet friend informed him that the arrogant effete snob from New York, Joe Kennedy, had escorted Julia Junkin each of the past several Thursdays to the Women's Missionary Guild meeting.
“He can scarce keep his hands off Julia,” the South Carolinian cadet, whose family owned one of the largest plantations with one of the largest contingent of slaves in the state, told Walker.
“Why, how does Julia react to such heathen overtures?” Walker had asked.
“Well, the girls I know tell me she tries to make light of it because somehow she is sort of infatuated with the skunk, but that it truly bothers her and she has actually had to slap his hand several times. I fear if any of the Junkins hear of this, especially young George Jr., there could be trouble.”
“They'll not hear of it,” Walker boiled, “because it shall not occur again. Lowlife Yankee pagans. Look down their noses at us Southern folk, and they with their pagan, godless ways. They pay their slaves but work them to death. They love nothing but money and treat our fair ladies like dogs. I'll brook no more such insolence from Yankee interlopers.”
The South Carolinian chose his words carefully. “Perhaps it is indeed time to send a message to all such uninvited scurvy that we don't brook their kind in our fair land.”
Walker eyed his friend. “Perhaps if I am efficient I can make time to do so and be in the flush of battle by the time I meet Professor Major Mister Jackson before the steps of the county building.”
“And what of Judge Brockenbrough?” He posed the question to solidify an answer, not discover one.
“Judge Brockenbrough's concerns mean less than nothing to me.”
All of this pleased the other man immensely, for he felt certain, as did his father and grandfathers, that God took a dim view of Yankees in general, and most especially those who dared bring their evil ways south with them. After all, such ways could be of no benefit to those whose hard work and resourcefulness had built the great plantations that provided, through the sweat of their dutiful Negro slaves, the civilized world with the cotton, rice, tobacco, peanuts, and other staples it had come to demand.
And besides, most of what he had told Walker about Kennedy's actions regarding Julia was true. Well, at least some of it was. What wasn't would soon be if left untended, right?
Walker was waiting at the front entrance of the church when Julia and Kennedy arrived. The two men did not like one another for many reasons, chief among them their shared feelings for the budding blond beauty about which both dreamed. But they also could scarcely have been more different. Both were willful, headstrong, and men of their culture. Kennedy had abolitionists in his family, who objected to his choice to travel south for his education. Walker knew that abolitionists, and the industrialists and politicians who supported them for their own mercenary reasons but cared not otherwise about African slaves, intended nothing less than the dismantling of the land and institutions from whose bowels he had sprung. Whether he confronted Joe Kennedy as a jealous lover or a defender of his heritage was a question a more mature Walker would often ask himself in the quietness of his final days.
For confront him he did. After physically removing the violently protesting Julia from harm's way and ordering the other nearby women off the street and into the building, Walker announced to Kennedy that he would no longer tolerate his presence so much as in the same room as Julia Junkin.
“And if I catch you or hear tell of you slighting or insulting any Southern woman at all, I'll break your filthy neck for you on the spot. I don't consider you man enough to call to the field of honor.”
“Field of honor,” Kennedy scoffed, detestation dripping from the words. “You and your pathetic honor. You haven't a notion of honor, you reckless buffoon. Look at yourself, you ignorant rogue. What do you intend, to fight here on the street, before the very door of the Presbyterian church while your beloved quakes inside wondering what will happen to whom? Why, you impudent selfish fool. No true man would dare choose for her through force of arms with whom perhaps she is to share her entire future. A man of any culture, any learning, any couth, any decency should put forth his best to win her, then leave to her the decision of whom she is to love. A man who cared more for her than himself would do that, don't you think, Mr. Walker?”
Now Kennedy laughed Walker to scorn. “But of course, what are we to expect from a sorry figure who, despite being a champion marksman, horseman, and pugilist, and from a rich and respected South Carolina slaver family, is yet disgracefully expelled from a sorry institution that postures as an academy of higher learning. An institution with such laughably pathetic ‘instructors’ as your favorite professor Jackson, men who could not be accepted as students on any decent campus. But then, I hear you and I are at least in agreement in our disregard for Mr. Jackson, for I understand you intend to proceed from here to kill him as well.”
For once in his life, Walker was speechless. This proved unfortunate, since what little restraint his mercurial personality possessed consisted chiefly of the ventilation of frequent violent and hurtful passions through verbal outbursts. Lacking this outlet, Walker was truly one dangerous individual.
“What, no smart response, ex-Cadet Walker?” Kennedy sneered. “No response of any sort? Then leave this church and go to your next fight, you miserable oaf.”
The New Yorker walked toward the door of the church. As he grabbed the handle, Walker exploded. “Ahhh!” Kennedy turned to see his foe charging him. He lifted his arms just in time to absorb some of the enormous impact of the strapping Southerner, but not enough to keep himself from being driven hard into the door with such force that, but for the door's oaken constitution, the two would have crashed through it. As it was, the door cracked loudly as the men fell to the paved ground.
They rolled over and over, slugging, grasping, and clawing. Walker possessed a good three-inch height advantage, but Kennedy's aristocratic bearing was offset by a squat but sturdy barrel-chested build, a formidable Irish temper, immense pride, and strong feelings for Julia. He fought back with vigor and force.
The two rolled chaotically into nearby bushes. Walker finally came up on top and began pounding the shorter man about the head and shoulders with wild, frenzied blows.
Inside the church entrance, Julia and the other women and girls heard the ruckus. Julia gasped and tried to shove the door open, but it was split and jammed shut. She ran to another door a few yards away and burst out, screaming and crying. When she saw Walker thrashing Kennedy, she unleashed such an earsplitting shriek that the South Carolinian in all his madness turned toward her. When he did, Kennedy slugged him full in the nose, breaking it and knocking Walker off him and flat onto his back.
Kennedy, bleeding from his own nostrils and mouth, and minus his two front teeth, staggered to his feet. Walker, blood pouring from his flattened nose, struggled to his knees. He grabbed his face and cried in pain. Kennedy cleared his foggy mind with a shake, then lifted his foot and kicked Walker hard, full in the head. The bleeding Southerner groaned and fell back. Again Julia shrieked, near fainting.
Kennedy started for Walker once more, but stopped, a devastating pain slicing through his right side. He grabbed his ribs, then screamed in pain. Walker's attack of him at the door had broken at least one rib and possibly more. He felt sharp stabs of hurt accompanying his heavy breathing and realized with terror that one of his lungs might be punctured. He saw the muscular Walker beginning to rise again and knew he must finish the animal off or himself be finished off. He whipped a knife from his tattered waistcoat and brandished the blade. At this, two or three of the watching women screamed and Julia finally fainted.
Walker turned painfully toward Kennedy, his knees threatening to buckle and his own head a throbbing, bleeding mass of pain. He could barely see through his eyes, which were already swelling up and were welling over with tears.
“I'm going to finish you now, you wicked, lowlife wretch,” Kennedy growled as he started for Walker.
Summoning all the force of his enormous will, Walker shook his head, cleared his eyes, ran to Kennedy, grabbed the stout arm that held the knife, broke it, and jammed the long blade deep into the man's heart.
Kennedy collapsed into Walker, who supported him for an instant, then stepped back and let him fall to the ground.
So did James Walker miss his appointment with Major Jackson.