The Railroad War (48 page)

A shrapnel burst gravely wounded Colonel Lamar Kemble during the Battle of Chickamauga. Within an hour of the event the colonel
was transferred from the battlefield to a surgical station, where three large and several smaller shell fragments were removed
from his body. The battlefield surgeons accomplished these delicate and excruciatingly painful operations without the aid
of either morphine or chloroform, since both drugs were almost impossible to come by in Georgia. Confederate wounded were
asked to substitute courage in their stead.

Colonel Kemble was transported by rail from the battlefield surgery to the large hospital complex recently constructed at
the fair grounds in Atlanta. It was one of the many military hospitals that had sprung up in that city as a result of the
war.

There he was expected to die.

His closest relatives, prominent Georgians, were so notified. The instant they received word, Ashbel and Miranda Kemble, Ariel
Edge, and Colonel Kemble’s mother, Fanny Shaw, sped from Raven’s Wing to Atlanta to be with Lam during his last moments.

Colonel Kemble failed to die.

It wasn’t just that his decline was slow—his condition actually improved. The wounds were clean and remained clean, his injured
flesh quickly turned pink and healthy looking, and there was no evidence of gangrene or septicemia. He was feverish, which
was only natural, but not alarmingly so.

Lam’s change for the better did not actually astonish his doctors; they had much too much on their minds for that. And, more
to the point, they had seen other young men beat the odds and triumph over wounds that would have felled ninety-nine other
men. The one in ninety-nine apparently possessed some extra measure of will and vital energy, and perhaps the help of God.

Survival for Lam was not going to be an unmixed blessing, however. If he lived, Lam would have the use of only one eye, since
a sliver of iron had punctured the other. There would also be terrible, disfiguring scars on his face, skull, and body, and
it was doubtful that he’d have full use of his right arm.

Soon after Lam’s family arrived in Atlanta, Ash Kemble obtained the loan of a lovely, substantial, and currently vacant house
on Pryor Street next door to The Terraces, the most famous residence in Atlanta. As soon as the family moved in, Lam was transferred
there from the military hospital.

“You don’t want to stay in a hospital,” Ash told him. “You can
die
in that damned place.”

Lam put up no resistance to his uncle’s suggestion. The surgical hospital was a human abattoir. Death bred there. The faster
he escaped from it, Lam knew, the greater would be his own chance of living a normal life span.

Once he arrived at the house on Pryor Street, it was immediately established that the nursing chores for the recovering patient
would be shared by his two sisters and mother. But most of these duties, as it turned out, fell on Ariel Edge and Fanny Shaw.
This came about not because Miranda schemed to evade her responsibilities to her brother, but because she was the one woman
in the family who could plausibly handle necessary functions outside the immediate household, and there were a good many of
these. The Kembles were an eminent family, and Ash was a magnet of society. He received invitations as a flower receives bees—and
for good reason. He was wealthy, he was handsome, he was a genuine adventurer, he was a sparkling conversationlist, and he
was unattached. Whenever he accepted selected invitations, he took Miranda along as his companion. He did this partly to discourage
attempts to set up a fresh attachment, but mostly because he liked having his niece along.

Ariel Edge was in mourning for her husband, Ben, and this limited her social life. And the mere presence in Atlanta of Fanny
Shaw had to be kept quiet; she ranked near Harriet Beecher Stowe as an object of southern hostility. It was hard to imagine
propaganda more abhorrent to the Great Cause than her published journals.

It was, needless to say, impossible to keep Fanny’s presence anywhere secret. She could be kept behind the doors of the borrowed
house on Pryor Street, but she could not be made invisible.

As it turned out, however, when word was whispered around Atlanta that Fanny was in residence for the sake of her wounded
hero son, she was not driven out of town.

On Sunday, October 10, Miranda accompanied Ash to an outdoor gathering—a late afternoon buffet followed by dancing—at The
Terraces. It was an event aimed at raising funds for the hospitals, and everyone who was anyone in Atlanta attended. The suggested
door offering was a hundred Confederate dollars, and there were contests, raffles, and prizes as well. Ash gave twice the
suggested donation for himself and Miranda.

To Miranda’s eye The Terraces’ reputation as Atlanta’s finest dwelling was well justified. Not only was the mansion itself
lovely and graceful, but it was surrounded by splendid gardens and lawns. It wasn’t merely a plot with a house and a border
of grass and flowers; it was a sprawling Provençal villa nestled in a botanical park. Even so late in the season, there were
blazing flowers still in abundance. This impressive establishment was owned by a hardware man from Vermont, Edward Rawson,
who was somehow able to live down his Yankee origin.

Among the notables present were the mayor, James Calhoun, and his brother Ezekial, a physician; Captain Lemuel Grant, an engineer,
who was in charge of building the extensive fortifications that were rising at the peripheries of the city; John Neal, a real
estate entrepreneur and the richest man in Atlanta; John Ballard, the president of the Atlanta and Western Railroad; Jabez
and Samuel Richards, who ran a book and stationery store; the plantation owner Thomas Maguire; Captain William Hottel of the
Railroad Bureau; Colonel Marcus Wright, commander of the city’s defense force; and the Reverend Charles Todd Quintard, Atlanta’s
leading clergyman—and the man who was truly Atlanta’s heart and soul, the city’s propagandist, for courage, self-sacrifice,
and honor.

It was a glittering affair. The air vibrated with laughter and graciousness and celebration. The South had won a great victory
at Chickamauga, Union-held Chattanooga was under Confederate siege, and Atlanta was safe from the Yankee invaders—at least
for the time being.

The joy was not without its edge, however, though few chose to recognize it. The laughter and the gaiety were brought forth
by dint of no little effort. Gaudy holiday clothes only barely covered the fears of doom that festered within most of these
illustrious Atlanta hearts.

“Do you see all those people out there?” Ash said to Miranda soon after their arrival. “They’re wearing happy faces, but there’s
panic in their eyes. Don’t you see it?” She told him she did, and he went on, “You’ll meet about as much real pleasure here
as you’d have found at one of those wild carnivals nobles threw while plague spread through the countryside.”

“Do you blame them for it?” Miranda asked.

“No, of course not,” Ash said with a smile. “Eat and be merry, darling.”
Cras moriemur.

Though Miranda couldn’t find it in herself to blame her Atlanta neighbors for trying to find pleasure in a dark time, she
didn’t look forward to a long evening of gaiety. She could put on her party clothes easily enough, but she could not so easily
make herself glitter or be gay.

Especially when she ached so terribly for Sam Hawken.

What was the use of dancing or chatting charmingly when she wasn’t doing it with Sam?

As things turned out, Miranda’s fear of a long and boring evening turned out to be unjustified.

To accommodate the diners, a constellation of over fifty white wicker tables with matching chairs had been arranged all about
the great lawn of The Terraces. This meant there were seating accommodations for more than three hundred people. Scattered
among these tables were dozens of flambeaux on poles, and many-colored Japanese lanterns were hung in the trees. It was indeed
a splendid gathering.

When the dinner bell was rung, Ash Kemble tracked down his niece, who had wandered off when he had settled into business gossip
with the owner of a rolling mill. He found her making conversation with a flock of sixteen-and seventeen-year-old girls. Ash
had few words for her when he fetched her; he looked thoughtful, preoccupied, and distant. She knew her uncle well. She could
discern urgency under the preoccupation, and that unsettled her.

After he filled a plate for himself and for her at the long, wide buffet boards, Ash maneuvered Miranda toward a table near
the edge of the lawn. John Ballard and Captain Will Hottel were seated there.

“I was talking to Mr. Ballard and the captain earlier this evening,” Ash explained as they made their way through the tables.
“You’ll be interested in them.”

“He’s Noah Ballard’s father, isn’t he?” Miranda said.

“That’s right,” Ash said. “And he’s the chief of the Atlanta and Western Railroad. Hottel,” he went on to explain, “is with
the Railroad Bureau. He’s just returned from Mississippi, where he and Noah worked together.”

Miranda had by that time related to Ash and her mother the story of her renewed relationship with Sam Hawken. Miranda’s mother
and her uncle approved of what they heard, as she knew they would. More than that, they were both richly delighted at the
prospective match, even though it was on its face an unusual one.

Neither Ash nor Fanny had forgotten Sam from those June days at West Point long ago.

Sam Hawken was a far cry from the ordinary “nice” young gentleman who offered himself to Miranda. He was the very rare and
special young man who could act, and he could act with powerful effect. Once the war was over, they both saw a brilliant future
for him.

“Noah has also returned to Atlanta,” Ash went on. “He arrived yesterday evening after some sort of injury—nothing so serious,
I take it, as Lam’s.” He paused, gravely thoughtful. “And he’s brought news that concerns you, Miranda.”

Miranda’s brow furrowed. “What do you mean?” she asked.

“You’d best hear it from John Ballard,” Ash said. “And later, probably, from Noah himself.”

“Tell me now,” Miranda insisted, sensing the ominous edge in his tone.

“I can’t yet, darling. Listen to what the other people have to say first.”

“It’s about Sam?” she asked, beginning to guess why Ash was avoiding her questions.

He nodded a slow, grave acknowledgment.

“What’s happened to him?” she asked with growing alarm. “Has he been captured? Or”—she managed to keep from choking it out—“killed?”

He looked at her, pursing his lips thoughtfully. “I’m in the dark about Sam’s exact situation. Truly I don’t know…but,” he
added, reassuring her, “he’s in Confederate custody, and he’s alive.”

“That’s consolation,” she said, not especially consoled. “But you know more than you’re saying, Ash. I can see it in your
face. Tell me now. I don’t want to hear it from people I don’t know.”

He looked at her again. “Let’s go talk to Mr. Ballard and the captain. Then we’ll discuss it afterward, all right?”

“All right,” she agreed reluctantly.

“And a word of serious caution, my dear,” he went on. “Don’t blurt anything out. Let me do the talking. Play the belle. If
the subject of Captain Sam Hawken comes up, you don’t know him.” He stared hard at her. “All right?”

“All right.”

Will Hottel was a large, portly man, with a smooth manner and an air of crisp competence. It wasn’t any of these qualities
however, that most struck Miranda Kemble. It was his eyes. They blinked continuously and distractingly. That peculiar flutter
gave the big man a strangely abstracted look that disturbed Miranda.

Noah Ballard’s father was a pleasant-talking, good-looking, confident man in his midfifties. He was of slightly less than
medium height, with a full, rich head of curly silver-gray hair, and he had a sliding eye. It didn’t take Miranda long to
recognize that he was attracted to her. The slide almost always ended on some part of her body. That kind of attention normally
gave her pleasure; she was delighted when men delighted in her. But from this man, the attention left her cold. It was not
delight she saw in John Ballard’s eye, but a will to possess and control.

During the progress of the meal, Miranda left most of the talking to the men, as Ash had suggested.

Both railroad men, she could tell from the first, were eager for admiration. And Ash Kemble doled admiration out—though never
so copiously as to seem false or sycophantic. As a result, they both seemed to like Ash; he was a man after their own hearts,
one of their own kind. And so they both loosened up and talked freely.

During the chitchat and male gossip the three men produced, she smiled agreeably. Now and again she batted her eyelashes in
the manner prescribed for single women of her class, and she managed to look ever so slightly bored with the masculine talk
of railroads and locomotives and rolling stock.

Miranda was actually more interested than she appeared to be, and she was especially interested when Ash steered the conversation
to a topic the three men had apparently discussed earlier, before Miranda had joined them.

When Ash broached it, the two other men instantly filled with self-approval. Wide, satisfied smiles spread across their faces,
and Hottel actually speeded up his rapid-fire blinking.

“The two of you were talking to me before my niece joined us,” Ash said to them, “about—what was it, three score?” He looked
at John Ballard for confirmation. Ballard gave him a nod. “Right, three score locomotives in top condition that Captain Hottel
and your son”—he paused to glance at Ballard—“have caused to be brought all the way to Atlanta from northern Mississippi.”

“In point of fact,” John Ballard corrected him, “the total number that has reached Atlanta is forty-two. We had originally
slightly over three score. But there were casualties and other,”—his lips formed a sober smile—“losses.”