‘On the contrary,’ Bird said, ‘you shall have dinner with me.’
‘My dear Bird!’ Delaney pretended horror. ‘I cannot afford to eat on a country schoolmaster’s salary! The horrors of secession have stirred my appetites, and my delicate constitution requires only the richest of foods and the finest of wines. No, no! You shall eat with me, as will you, Mister Starbuck, for I am determined to hear all your father’s secret faults. Does he drink? Does he consort with evil women in the vestry? Reassure me on these matters, I beg you.’
‘You shall dine with me,’ Bird insisted, ‘and you will have the finest wine in the Spotswood’s cellars because, my dear Bird, it is not I who shall pay, but Washington Faulconer.’ ‘We are to eat on Faulconer’s account?’ Delaney asked in delight.
‘We are indeed,’ Bird answered with relish.
‘Then my business with Shaffer’s will wait for the morrow. Lead me to the trough! Lead on, dear Bird, lead on! Let us make gluttons of ourselves, let us redefine greed, let us consume comestibles as they have never been consumed before, let us wallow in the wines of France, and let us gossip. Above all, let us have gossip.’
‘I’m supposed to be buying petticoats,’ Starbuck demurred.
‘I suspect you look better in trousers,’ Delaney said sternly, ‘and besides, petticoats, like duty, can wait till the morrow. Pleasure summons us, Starbuck, pleasure summons us, let us surrender to its call.
SEVEN SPRINGS, Washington Faulconer’s house in Faulconer County, was everything Starbuck dreamed it would be, everything Adam had ever told him it would be, and everything Starbuck thought he might ever want a house to be. It was, he decided from the very first moment he saw it on that Sunday morning in late May, just perfect.
Seven Springs was a sprawling white building just two stories high except where a white clock tower surmounted a stable gate and where a rickety cupola, steepled with a weather-vane, graced the main roof. Starbuck had expected something altogether more pretentious, something with high pillars and elegant pilasters, with arching porticoes and frowning pediments, but instead the big house seemed more like a lavish farmhouse that over the years had absent-mindedly spread and multiplied and reproduced itself until it was a tangle of steep roofs, shadowed reentrants and creeper-hung walls. The heart of the house was made of thick fieldstone, the outer wings were timber, while the black-shuttered and iron-balconied windows were shaded by tall trees under which were set white painted benches, long-roped swings, and broad tables. Smaller trees were brilliant with red and white blossom that fell to make drifts of color on the well-scythed lawn. The house and its garden cradled a marvelous promise of warm domesticity and unassuming comforts.
Starbuck, greeted by a Negro servant in the front hall, had first been relieved of the paper-wrapped bundles containing Washington Faulconer’s new uniforms, then a second servant took the carpetbag containing Starbuck’s own uniform, and afterward a turbanned maid came for the two heavy bundles of petticoats that had hung so awkwardly from Starbuck’s saddle bow.
He waited. A longcase clock, its painted face orbiting with moons, stars and comets, ticked heavily in a corner of the tiled hallway. The walls were papered in a floral pattern on which hung gold-framed portraits of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and Washington Faulconer. The portrait of Faulconer depicted him mounted on his magnificent black horse, Saratoga, and gesturing toward what Starbuck took to be the estate surrounding Seven Springs. The hallway grate held the ashes of a fire, suggesting that the nights were still cold in this upland county. Fresh flowers stood in a crystal vase on the table where two newspapers lay folded, their headlines celebrating North Carolina’s formal secession to the Confederate cause. The house smelt of starch, lye soap and apples. Starbuck fidgeted as he waited. He did not quite know what was expected of him. Colonel Faulconer had insisted that Starbuck bring the three newly made uniforms directly to Faulconer Court House, but whether he was to be a guest in the house or was expected to find a berth with the encamped Legion, Starbuck still did not know, and the uncertainty made him nervous.
A flurry of feet on the stairs made him turn. A young woman, fair-haired, dressed in white, and excited, came running down the final flight, then checked on the bottom stair with her hand resting on the white-painted newel post. She solemnly inspected Starbuck. ‘You’re Nate Starbuck?’ she finally asked.
‘Indeed, ma’am.’ He offered her a small, awkward bow.
‘Don’t “ma’am” me, I’m Anna.’ She stepped down onto the hall floor. She was small, scarce more than five feet tall, with a pale, waiflike face that was so anxiously wan that Starbuck, if he had not known her to be one of Virginia’s wealthiest daughters, might have thought her an orphan.
Anna’s face was familiar to Starbuck from the portrait that hung in the Richmond town house, but however accurately the picture had caught her narrow head and diffident smile, the painter had somehow missed the essence of the girl, and that essence, Starbuck decided, was oddly pitiable. Anna, despite her prettiness, looked childishly nervous, almost terrified, as if she expected the world to mock her and cuff her and discard her as worthless. That look of extraordinary timidity was not helped by the hint of a strabismus in her left eye, though the squint, if it existed at all, was very slight. ‘I’m so glad you’ve come,’ she said, ‘because I was looking for an excuse not to attend church, and now I can talk to you.’
‘You received the petticoats?’ Starbuck asked.
‘Petticoats?’ Anna paused, frowning, as if the word were unfamiliar to her.
‘I brought you the petticoats you wanted,’ Starbuck explained, feeling as though he was speaking to a rather stupid child.
Anna shook her head. ‘The petticoats were for father, Mister Starbuck, not me, though why he should want them, I don’t know. Maybe he thinks the supply will be constricted by war? Mother says we must stock up on medicines because of the war. She’s ordered a hundredweight of camphor, and the Lord knows how much niter paper and hartshorn too. Is the sun very hot?’
‘No.’
‘I cannot go into too fierce a sunlight, you see, in case I burn. But you say it isn’t fierce?’ She asked the question very earnestly.
‘It isn’t, no.’
‘Then shall we go for a walk? Would you like that?’ She crossed the hall and slipped a hand under Starbuck’s arm and tugged him toward the wide front door. The impetuous gesture was strangely intimate for such a timid girl, yet Starbuck suspected it was a pathetic appeal for companionship. ‘I’ve been so wanting to meet you,’ Anna said. ‘Weren’t you supposed to come here yesterday?’
‘The uniforms were a day late,’ Starbuck lied. In truth his dinner with Thaddeus Bird and the beguiling Belvedere Delaney had stretched from the early afternoon to late supper-time, and so the petticoats had not been bought till late Saturday morning, but it hardly seemed