North and South Trilogy Page 33
“I will, but they’s worse I’m to do to the boy,” Samuel said. “Mist’ Justin told me to pour a bucket on his wounds.”
“A bucket of what?”
The humiliated driver looked away.
“Did you hear me, Samuel? What is the bucket to contain?”
“Turp’tine.”
“Oh, my God.” She pressed her mouth. “That’s liable to kill him.”
A sorrowing shrug. “Mist’ Justin, he was mighty mad. I got to do it.”
She laced her hands together at her breast, thinking. “If someone hands you that bucket, Samuel, you’re not responsible for what it contains.”
He peered at her, starting to understand. “You right, Miz Madeline.” He wanted to smile but didn’t dare.
“I’ll fetch the bucket of turpentine myself. I’ll give it to you, and you can then do with it as you must. Just make certain we don’t have a crowd of witnesses who might tell my husband what they did or did not smell in that bucket.”
“No, ma’am, won’t be nobody watchin’. Mist’ Justin don’t require that.”
So Tom was whipped, rather than being whipped and tortured. It wasn’t much of a victory for Madeline or the boy. But she knew that if she ran away from Resolute, there would be no victories at all.
Much of what Madeline knew about plantation life and a responsible woman’s place in it she learned from half a dozen neighbors, the most important being Clarissa Main. Although from different backgrounds, the two women were temperamentally similar. And perhaps Clarissa sensed something of her son’s feeling for Justin’s wife. At any rate, Clarissa spent hours with Madeline at Mont Royal, patiently teaching.
Among the things Madeline learned was midwifery. Early in February, around ten o’clock on a moonlit night, she was called to the slave community to attend a field wench named Jane. It was Jane’s first baby and Madeline’s tenth.
Several black women were gathered in Jane’s cabin. Madeline knelt and let the pregnant girl clutch her hands as the spasms shook her. Another woman had knelt there first, but Jane had refused her help. Madeline was the trusted one, the mistress. Whatever healing power that conferred, she was glad to share it.
She helped tie Jane’s ankles in position, then watched the ancient midwife, Aunt Belle Nin, manipulate her wood forceps. At less complicated deliveries, Madeline was in charge. This time, because of difficulties, she deferred to Aunt Belle, who had been specially summoned. The baby was badly positioned. But Aunt Belle turned it smartly with the forceps and soon brought it popping into the nippy air.
Aunt Belle Nin was a stringy octoroon of sixty-five, perhaps seventy. She lived far back in the marshes, alone, and rode out to help with difficult confinements when she was needed. She took her pay in food, bolts of cloth, and snuff for her cheek. Now she fondled the damp, cocoa-colored newborn as if it were her own.
“He’ll do just fine,” she said. “I should know. I’ve survived hell, hurricanes, and husbands. If I can do that, think of what this youngster can do.”
Madeline glanced around the mean cabin. It had been years since a coat of whitewash was applied to the walls. She wondered why any woman would bring a child into the world if that child could only spend its life in enforced poverty and servitude. Of late she had begun to have a fuller understanding of what the abolitionists were after and why.
Jane wanted Madeline to hold the baby, which she did, thinking how much she would like Orry to see the child. Later, as she was about to leave, a bent, wrinkled woman with sorrowful eyes made an imploring gesture. Madeline stopped.
“I be the mother of little Tom. The one whipped for being uppity.”
“Oh, yes. I hope he’s all right.”
“He be better. He never be all right. He be marked on his back all his life. Samuel—” She pressed her lips together, briefly fearful. “Samuel tole me what you done. I thank you, Miz Madeline. You a good Christian woman.”
Madeline was startled to hear murmurs of agreement. Among those who were behind her, listening, was Aunt Belle Nin. After firing up her clay pipe, Aunt Belle spoke.
“They all say that of you, mistress. I watched you tonight. I think they’re right. If ever you have a problem I could help with, you can find me.”
“Thank you, Aunt Belle.”
Gratified, she hurried back to the great house, where she found Justin examining a book of lithographs of race horses. The slaves might respect her, but he didn’t. That was again evident as soon as she told him where she’d been.
“Well,” he said, “how charmingly domestic you’re becoming. You can deliver nigger babies. What a pity you can’t manage to deliver one of your own.”
She turned away, appalled and hurt. He sensed that and went on to compound the hurt.
“Perhaps you need special assistance. Should I select one of the bucks and put him at stud? You seem to have an affinity for darkies. You certainly have none for me.”
Fury replaced the pain. “Justin, I have made a conscientious effort to be a good wife to you in every respect. You mustn’t keep blaming me because I don’t get pregnant.” Maybe you should blame yourself.
He flung one leg over the fragile arm of the Sheraton chair. “Why not? You’re never very lively on those occasions when we try to perpetuate this branch of the family. The occasions are getting less and less frequent, although I suppose I bear some responsibility for that. You see, I avoid you by choice. Your fondness for niggers is beginning to bore me. Good night, my love.”
He returned to his book.
It had been only a week since she was at Salvation Chapel, but the next morning, desperately unhappy, she paid a visit to Mont Royal so that Nancy could deliver a message to Orry.
“Do you think he knows about us?” Orry asked when they met at the chapel the following afternoon. It was a bright, balmy day, not unusual for February in the low country. Orry had discarded his coat and cravat.
Madeline shook her head. “If he did, we wouldn’t be wondering. Justin isn’t the kind to suffer in silence.”
Orry absently tapped a finger against the book he had brought. “Then why is he going out of his way to make you miserable?”
“Because there are no children. That’s the current reason, anyway. Justin’s one of those poor, wretched people who are always unhappy. But instead of examining his own mind to learn why, he blames some person or cause outside himself—and lashes out. Sometimes I wish he did know about us. Then I could be honest about my feelings. For him and for you.”
She had been pacing, but now she stopped. Orry was seated on the tabby foundation, his muddy boots dangling into the brown grass. Madeline crooked her arm around his neck and kissed him.
“I do thank you for coming today. I couldn’t stand Resolute one moment longer.”
The second kiss was more intense. Then she smoothed her skirt and walked toward the edge of the marsh. As she always did during their meetings, she began to describe incidents of the past few days. The birth of Jane’s son. The whipping of Tom. That brought her feelings about slavery to the surface. She usually avoided the topic, knowing how he felt. Today she couldn’t.
“I think Southerners would somehow view the system differently if they could see through the slaves’ eyes, so to speak.” She turned from the sunlit marsh and gazed at him with an earnest expression. “How would you feel watching a man put handcuffs and ankle chains on your mother and turn her over to someone who was going to tell her what to do until the day she died?”
Orry’s frown hinted at irritation. “My mother is a white woman. The boy you helped is an African.”
“Does that justify the crime? Does it even explain it satisfactorily? Tom may be an African, but can you deny he’s also a human being?”
“And I am now a criminal in your eyes?”
For a moment he sounded like Justin, implying she had no right to discuss the subject. She controlled a flare of temper and hurried back to him, trying to answer calmly and without animosity:
> “I’m not accusing you of anything, my darling. I only want you to see things clearly. You’re more reasonable than—” She was about to say “your father” but hastily changed course. “—than most. There is such terrible illogic in the South’s attitude about the whole system. You hand a man a new shirt every Christmas but deprive him of his liberty, and you expect him to be grateful. You expect the world to applaud!”
“Madeline, you’re talking about a man who is—”
“Inferior.” She held up both hands. “I’ve heard that excuse a thousand times. I simply don’t believe it. There are black men on Resolute with better minds than Justin’s—they’re just not permitted or encouraged to use them. But let that go. Assume for a second that there is some truth in the excuse and whites are, in some inexplicable fashion, superior. How does that justify robbing a man of his freedom? Shouldn’t it instead create an obligation to help him succeed because he’s less fortunate? Wouldn’t that be the Christian response?”
“Damned if I know.” Orry rose and slapped the slender book against his thigh. “You get me mightily confused with all this talk.”
“I’m sorry.”
She wasn’t, though. She was pleased. Orry wasn’t attempting to deny or refute her arguments. That might mean he was thinking about them. Perhaps she’d never be able to convince him that slavery was wrong, but if she could plant a doubt or two, she would consider it an accomplishment.
He was silent for a time. Then he shrugged. “I’m not smart enough to thread my way through all those arguments. Besides, I thought we were going to read.”
He showed her the gold-stamped spine of the book that had arrived on yesterday’s boat from Charleston: The Raven and Other Poems.
Madeline arranged her skirts and sat beside him. “E. A. Poe. Francis LaMotte’s wife mentioned him last week. She read a couple of his fantastic tales and absolutely hated them. She said he belonged in a lunatic asylum.”
For the first time that day, Orry laughed. “Typical reaction to a Yankee author. I’m afraid there’s no chance of locking him up. He died last year in Baltimore. He was only forty, but a notorious drunkard. There have been some articles about him in the Southern Literary Messenger. He was the editor for a while. What’s interesting to me is his West Point background.”
“Was he a cadet?”
“For one term. The fall of 1830, I think. Apparently he had a brilliant future. He was in the first section of every course. But something went wrong, and he was court-martialed for gross neglect of duty. Just prior to his dismissal, he was spending nearly all his time at Benny Haven’s.”
“Drinking?”
“I suppose—though the real attraction at Benny’s has always been the food. You wouldn’t understand how a plate of fried eggs could taste like heaven. You’ve never dined in the cadet mess hall.”
A soft note of reminiscence had come into his voice. His gaze rested somewhere above the marsh. How much he misses it, she thought, and slipped her arm through his. She always sat on his right side so that she wouldn’t accidentally call attention to his loss.
“Anyway”—he opened the book—“I’m no judge of poetry, but I do like some of these. They have a strange, marvelous music in them. Shall we start with this one?”
The title of the verse was “Annabel Lee.” She began:
“It was many and many a year ago,
In a kingdom by the sea,
That a maiden there lived whom you may know
By the name of Annabel Lee.”
Her pause at the end of the line was his cue to read.
“And this maiden she lived with no other thought
Than to love and be loved by me.”
By now they were comfortable reading poetry aloud. They had started a couple of months ago, when Orry had surprised her by bringing a book. Some of the poetry wasn’t very good, but they enjoyed the ritual, and once again today, responding to the verse, she felt a quiver of desire.
The physical reaction had startled her the first time it happened. Now she looked forward to it with delicious anticipation. The soft alternation of their voices took on a kind of sexual rhythm, as if they were possessing each other, making love to each other, in the only way that was possible. Each of them held the book; the back of her left hand brushed his knuckles. The contact seemed to generate heat all through her. She turned slightly so that she could look at him while they read on.
The anonymous lover in the poem lost his Annabel Lee. They experienced that loss as the stanzas swept on toward a climax. Her voice grew husky.
“For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee—”
Orry’s voice quickened the pace.
“And the stars never rise but I feel the bright eyes
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee.”
Her eyes flickered back and forth from the page to his face. Under her layers of clothing her breasts ached. Her loins felt molten.
“And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side
Of my darling—my darling—”
She stumbled and had to glance down hastily in order to finish the line.
“My life, and my bride—”
“‘In the sepulcher there by the sea,’” he read. “‘In her tomb by the sounding sea.’”
He closed the book and gripped her hand. They sat in silence, gazing at each other. Then, no longer able to restrain herself, she flung her arms around his neck with a little cry and brought her open mouth to his.
Orry rode home in the early dusk of the February afternoon. He felt as he always did after meeting Madeline. Their time together was never long enough. And reading poetry was no substitute for loving her properly, as God had intended when he designed man and woman.
Today they had gone to the brink, almost surrendered to the hunger overwhelming them. Only extreme restraint, a herculean struggle to master their emotions, had kept them from tumbling into the brown grass beside the chapel foundation. Because they had come so close, Orry felt more lonely and frustrated than ever as he swung up the lane and turned his horse over to one of the house servants. The slave smiled and greeted him. Orry answered with a curt nod. What was the nigra really thinking? You hand me a shirt every Christmas and rob me of my liberty and expect me to kiss your hand. I’d sooner break it off. Damn Madeline for filling his head with doubts and questions about the system he had accepted as moral and proper for most of his life.
He stalked into the library and flung back the draperies to admit the faint rays of the sunset. It was torment to keep seeing her, and torment to think of giving her up. What was he to do?
He poured a heavy drink of whiskey. The last light was going. One by one highlights disappeared from the brasswork of his Army sword scabbard, which hung from a clothes stand he had placed in a corner. His dark blue uniform coat was draped over the stand. Not the coat he was wearing when his arm got blown off, needless to say; this one had both sleeves. The brass buttons, as well as the pommel of his sheathed sword, had a greenish cast, he noticed. Here and there patches of mold speckled the coat.
He sank into his favorite chair, brooding over the mementos. He ought to get rid of them. They were constant reminders of his thwarted ambition. They were slowly going to ruin, just like his own life. They had no purpose, and neither did he. They existed, that was all.
God, if only that day at Churubusco had been different. If only he had visited New Orleans when he was younger and chanced on Madeline there. If only! Somewhere there had to be an antidote for the poison of “if only.” But what was it?
He stumbled to the cabinet to fill his glass a second time. Upstairs his sisters were quarreling. They always seemed to be these days. They had reached the right age. He shut the windows and sat drinking and listening to the sound of phantom drums. Finally the uniform faded away in the dark.
Clarissa opened the door around eleven and discovered him passed out on the floor. Two servants carried him to his bed.
Although Ashton and Brett had reached adolescence, they still shared a spacious bedroom on the second floor. Ashton, fourteen and already a fully developed, flamboyantly beautiful young woman, constantly complained about the arrangement. Why did she have to surrender her privacy? Why did she have to live with, as she put it, “a twelve-year-old baby who’s still flat as a board?”
Tonight the room was exceptionally warm. Ashton, who slept in the bed nearest the window, kept muttering about her discomfort. Kept puffing her pillow noisily, and pressing the back of her wrist to her damp forehead, and sighing.
Finally, drowsy and irritated, her sister said: “Oh, for heaven’s sake, hush up and let me sleep.”
“I can’t. I’m tight as a drum inside.”
“Ashton, I don’t understand you sometimes.”
“Naturally not,” her sister huffed. “You’re just a baby. Baby white skin and baby white bloomers. You’ll probably be like that till you’re an old woman.”
“Ooo,” Brett said, and flung a pillow. Of all the insults Ashton heaped on her, none bothered her more than references to her failure thus far to show a single sign of what some called woman’s curse of shame. Once a month Ashton pranced around the room to be sure her sister saw her stained pantalets. This never failed to humiliate Brett, as did her lack of physical development.
Of course she wasn’t sure she wanted to grow up. Not if it meant she must roll her eyes and act sugary and coy around every man under thirty. She was positive she didn’t want to grow up if it meant cozying up to someone like lawyer Huntoon.
The thought of him gave Brett one of her few opportunities for reprisal. In imitation of her sister’s sweetest manner, she said, “I should think you would be blissfully happy tonight. James Huntoon is calling tomorrow—he and all those politicians Papa’s been hobnobbing with lately. You fancy Mr. Huntoon, don’t you?”
Ashton threw the pillow right back. “I think he’s a toad, and you know it. He’s an old man. Twenty, nearly. This is how I feel about him.”