He’s working for Charleston. He doesn’t care if public opinion is against him now, it’s happened before. He has always prevailed.
Dawson is forty-eight years old, hale and energetic, in his prime. He’s five foot nine, a bit portly, actually, though he thinks of himself as strong. Powerful. Blue-eyed and fair-skinned, a broad forehead, straight thick nose, a firm mouth and forceful gaze. Thick wavy brown hair that refuses to lie flat, a long but sparse mustache curling down over his lip. During the war he couldn’t raise a mustache, and now he sports a long one, to make up. He gives his belly an affirming pat.
Sarah puts her legs over the side of the bed and slides her white feet into her slippers.
“I had a strange dream, too,” she says.
She stands, putting on her thin silk robe. She takes her long braid in both hands, lifts it from inside the robe and drops it outside, down her back. Her hair is thick and honey-colored. The sight of her two-handed gesture, the toppling braid, touches Dawson with its intimacy.
Sarah is in his life. Every day he watches her handling the soft honey-colored braid, putting on her worn slippers. Lifting her chin when she disagrees, pursing her lips when she tries not to laugh. He feels a wave of gratitude.
“Tell me about your dream.” He feels protective now.
Sarah goes to the window and pulls back the heavy portieres, and a wide shaft of light enters the room. The sheer inner curtains blur the view of Bull Street, tree-lined. A shrimp woman calls outside, walking slowly, Raw shrimp, raw shrimp.
Sarah turns. “My dream was that a woman dressed all in black was scattering burning coals on the floor in the parlor.” She’s entering the dream again. “You and I were walking on them, in our bare feet. The bottoms of our feet were burning. I could smell the scorched flesh.”
“And what does your dream mean?” Dawson asks.
He’s only being courteous now; the dreamworld is subsiding. Beyond the railing are high branches, the leaves spring-green, stirring in the early breeze. Mourning doves, invisible, purr to each other their secret messages. From below comes the slow rhythmic clop of hooves, the grinding of cart wheels. The shrimp woman is coming closer. Sarah opens the curtains at the other window and the room is now full of light. Nothing, now, suggests that drop into blackness. He’s back in this world.
“It means that a woman will make trouble for us,” says Sarah darkly, and turns to face him.
Sarah is small, with delicate bones. High forehead, straight nose, low straight brows. Her skin is very white, her eyes a pale fiery blue. She has the gaze of a visionary.
“Never,” says Dawson firmly. “No woman can make trouble for us.” They’ve been married for fifteen years, and he has been in love with her since he first saw her, coming out onto the porch at Hampton’s. “Who did she look like?” he asks; Sarah always asks this.
“Sue Covington,” Sarah says, broodingly.
This makes him laugh. Sue Covington is an old friend of Sarah’s from Louisiana, a tiny energetic woman with snapping eyes and a pointed nose. He can’t picture her scattering coals in their parlor.
“My darling chuck-chuck,” he says, “I promise that Sue Covington will never come between us.”
Now Sarah laughs, too. “I’m glad.”
He takes her in his arms. She’s small and light. Her shoulder blades shift beneath his hand, her hair smells thick and yeasty. When they draw back she looks up at him, smiling.
Fear has subsided. The little slipper chair where Sarah lays her robe for the night, the silver brush and comb on her dressing table, the wide wash of sun across the patterned carpet: all this is now more real than the shadowy terrors of the night.
“Have the children left yet?” he asks.
“Hélène’s taken them to school,” Sarah says.
Marie-Hélène Burdayron is the Swiss girl who lives with them. Ethel is fourteen, Warrington, ten. Sarah and the children spent two years in Europe, because Dawson wanted them to have fluency in French and a good Catholic education. Sarah wouldn’t let them go alone. When she came back, Sarah brought home the French-speaking girl. They call her Hélène, and they love her. Hélène has meals with the family; she’s treated almost as a daughter. She lost her own mother when she was a teenager. The children go now to a local school; Hélène takes them each morning and picks them up.
“Ethel came in earlier. She was upset because she couldn’t find her schoolbooks,” Sarah says. “You were asleep, but you still had something to say about it.”
She teases him about talking in his sleep. He enjoys her teasing; she’s the only one who does it. At the paper he’s stern. Now that Riordan has gone he has no one to laugh at him.
“You asked me what was the matter,” she says. “You said she’d be late for school. But you were completely asleep.”
“Well, it’s true,” Dawson says, laughing, defending his vulnerable sleeping self. “She would be.”
“You’re right,” she says. “Even in your sleep you’re right.”
He laughs again; she is his boon companion.
Dawson lives in two worlds. The world at the newspaper is noisy, vigorous, fractious, demanding. When he’s there his energy goes outward. He writes letters and editorials and comments and checks, makes decisions, responds to readers, job seekers, politicians, landowners, churchmen. The mayor and the councilmen. He has boundless energy, and he relishes all this.
His other world is here, where the household moves smoothly around him. Sarah makes sure of this. She makes sure that the children get to school, the garden flourishes, the meals are prompt and hot. This is his private kingdom, these his adored subjects. The children: Ethel, with her fine limp hair and pointed nose, her ethereal blue gaze, high-strung and melodramatic. Warrington, frail and hollow-chested, bookish, anxious. Dawson plays games with them, teaches them songs, takes them to the theater and to the opera. He’s taught Warrington to sail. They all have dinner together every afternoon; Dawson asks them about their day, asks their opinions.
The Dawson house stands on a little rise, in the middle of two lots. Unlike most Charleston houses it faces the street: this is why Sarah loves it. It’s three stories high, handsome white stucco, with white columns along the front of what Sarah would call the galerie, Charlestonians the verandah or the piazza, and the rest of the world the porch.
It was Sarah who’d bought the house, ten years ago, with the last of her family inheritance. It has high ceilings, bay windows, a pair of vast cloudy mirrors set in the parlor walls. They’d put in all the modern things: gas lights, running water, telephones. The bedrooms are on the third floor. Hélène lives up there with them, in a room reached through Warrington’s.
Now Sarah’s little French clock strikes a tiny silvery chime: eight thirty, time to enter the day. Dawson goes back to his dressing room.
He usually sleeps here, though he may be drawn to the larger bed by ardor. In the evenings he works here, reading or writing, until midnight or later. Sarah sits with him, reading or sewing, in the red plush armchair. Often they discuss what he is working on. Sarah has a formidable memory; he calls her his encyclopedia. She’s well-read and opinionated. While Dawson was courting her (which took him a full year) he persuaded her to write for the paper. She was reluctant: she disliked public scrutiny, and it was unseemly to write for money. Dawson reminded her that George Eliot wrote for money. But Sarah didn’t think her writing was any good. She said she’d throw each page on the floor as she wrote it, and if he wished to pick them up he was welcome. This made Dawson laugh. He said he’d be glad to pick them up.
She wrote under a pen name. That first piece was about the taxes in Louisiana, and how they were ruining the landowners. His readers loved it, and everyone began trying to guess her identity. She wrote lively pieces about social issues, and gained a following. But she never liked the deadlines, and she hated the attention. After they were married she stopped.
In the mornings the children have usually left for school when Dawso
n comes down. He has breakfast with Sarah and they go to the office together. When they take the buggy he drives down and she drives back. If she’s going shopping afterward they take the big phaeton, and then Isaac drives. When Frank comes home for dinner sometimes Sarah drives down to pick him up, and sometimes he takes the tram, which comes up Rutledge Avenue to the corner of Bull Street. Most of Charleston has dinner at three, but the Dawsons have it at four, because it suits Frank better. They all sit down together, Frank and Sarah, the children and Hélène. Afterward Dawson naps or works until six or six thirty, then goes back to the office. At ten he comes home for a late supper with Sarah.
This room is part dressing room, part study. It holds a desk and bookcases, his armoire, the narrow brass bed, the red plush chair where he sits to put on his socks, the marble washstand. On the bedside table is Trollope’s He Knew He Was Right. He likes to read novels before going to sleep, likes shifting his mind into someone else’s world, letting his own drop away. A life without books is death.
He’s just begun this book and wishes he could talk about it with Courtenay, who is the most well-read man he knows, and one of his oldest friends in Charleston. Before the war William Ashmead Courtenay and his brother ran a bookstore and publishing business; he’d introduced Dawson to many Southern writers, in print and in person. Then Courtenay went into politics and became mayor, so he and Dawson became political allies as well as literary colleagues. But now Dawson can’t ask Courtenay about this book: they are no longer friends. In fact, it seems they are enemies, over a misunderstanding that has become fixed, apparently irrevocable.
Courtenay was mayor three years ago, on November 10, the twentieth anniversary of Dawson’s arrival in Charleston. Dawson was alone that day; Sarah and the children were in Europe. A heavy wooden case arrived from the mayor’s office. The case was lined with purple satin, swathing an ornate silver tea set, chased with flowery designs. A handwritten letter thanked Dawson for his services to the city. It was signed by Courtenay and twenty officials. Dawson read and reread the card from his friend.
That Christmas he spent at the office, since his family was away. He’d sent presents to his family, and had given presents to everyone at the paper; he’d even bought presents for the children of his best reporter, Carlyle McKinley. He gave most of the staff the day off so they could spend it with their families. It was a dreary day, and to keep himself busy he went to City Hall. Reading the minutes, he found some planned tax increases. Property owners had been devastated by the earthquake, and he knew they couldn’t afford any raises. Dawson was aware that the city had considered this, and he was on the watch. When he saw the plans he wrote a stern warning about them in the paper. Courtenay wrote Dawson a furious note, saying the figures were not official and should never have been made public. But Courtenay was famously tetchy, and if the tax figures were not real, why were they written in the margins of the agenda? It was Dawson’s job to keep an eye on these things. He was doing his duty by reporting them.
It took him some time to realize that he’d lost Courtenay’s friendship. They saw each other often, at meetings and receptions. Courtenay had often dropped by his office to talk about books and news. But after this, whenever they saw each other they never seemed to be in the same part of the room. Finally, in a crush at the Hibernian Society, Dawson made his way through the crowd. By the time he reached him the mayor’s back was turned, but Dawson put his hand on Courtenay’s shoulder, and when he turned around Dawson spoke.
“My dear chap, I’ve missed you,” he said. “I haven’t seen you in weeks. When are you coming by to talk books?”
Courtenay spoke without smiling. “I’m busy just now. I don’t know when I’ll have the time.”
His face was cold and fixed. It was his look, not his words, that gave Dawson a shock, like opening the door onto a wind-blown spate of rain. For a moment Dawson stared at him, trying to make Courtenay’s gaze into the one he’d always known. But Courtenay’s face wouldn’t change.
That was the last time they’d spoken. Courtenay, his good friend of twenty years, has become his enemy. He’s a backer of the hated World. There are three of them: Courtenay, William Huger, and Francis Rodgers. They’d all been his friends once; now they’re all his enemies. Politics means shifting alliances, and Dawson’s used to riding the waves, letting the crest of someone’s rage wash under him, dissipating in the open ocean. But this rage is growing, not abating.
He’s become used to anger and threats, though they’re different here. In England people disagree, but they don’t shoot each other. Here in the South they shoot each other. Dawson rejects violence on principle. He owns a pistol but won’t carry it. He keeps it in the drawer of his night table in case of burglars. The only time he’s ever used it was to shoot his poor dog, Nellie, when she got rabies. Actually, now he can’t even find it.
On the washstand are his toilet things, cleaned and laid out by the maid: the ivory-handled straight razor, the badger-hair brush dried to a soft point, the wooden pot of shaving cream. Bay Rum with its long testimonials, the fragrant amber oval of Pears soap. The local chemist sends to London for these; they’re what his father used. It occurs to him that he may not be able to afford them now. It is an odd idea.
He doesn’t want Sarah to know how bad things are. Last fall, he had to ask for money from Rudolf Siegling, president of his board. Siegling, who’s also head of the Bank of Charleston, gave it grudgingly. That loan should have been enough to tide them over until things improved, but they’ve gotten worse. The circulation has continued to fall: in one day they lost six hundred subscribers.
His former friends are backing the World, but the most powerful opposition comes from Tillman. Up in Edgefield the planters resent having to pay wages to men whom they used to own. These men used to work their fields for nothing. It galls the farmers to pay them. Now they’ve had to watch the Negroes take over government posts, which is against the natural order of things.
Tillman resents this. And he resents Charleston, the rich Low Country, with its dark loamy soil, the long-grain rice plantations, the English aristocratic tradition. Its disproportionate political power. Tillman feels snubbed, and he resents that. The voice of the Low Country is The News and Courier, and the voice of The News and Courier is Frank Dawson. He resents Dawson.
The circulation of the World is now larger than The News and Courier’s. When he thinks of this Dawson feels a small icy charge, like a cold bullet, in his chest. Last week Dawson asked Siegling again for money; he refused. Dawson used his own shares as collateral for personal loans. At one time the paper made $30,000 a year, but now it’s losing so much money he’s had to cut it down from sixteen pages to eight, and fire some of his staff.
He has always been able to make things work. When things have been bad he has worked harder. He paid off his father’s debts, sent his sister to school, supported his brother’s charitable ventures, lent money to his brother-in-law. He had helped keep the Raines family solvent; the family who had been so generous to him during the war, and who had fallen on such hard times after it. But now, no matter what he does, things get worse. Morale is sliding: three of his staff members have left him for the World.
Dawson feels a sharp tiny clench in his gut. He moves his head back and forth to ease it, though this doesn’t help. He sets the jug in the sink and turns on the cold water for his bath. He takes off his nightshirt and waits for the jug to fill.
He’s seen his doctor about the clench in his gut. Bellinger said it might be an ulcer. Dawson had no interest in having an ulcer, and shook his head at the word.
“It’s no good shaking your head, Dawson.” Amos Bellinger has a gingery beard and dry pale hands. He is the family doctor, and a friend. “What do you mean, no?”
“I haven’t time for an ulcer,” said Dawson. “Give me something I can take drops for and which will dry up nicely and go away. I can’t take the time for this.”
“I should have asked before I made the di
agnosis what you might have time for,” said Bellinger. “You don’t have to take the time to worry about the ulcer, Dawson. It will be there whether you worry about it or not. You don’t take any exercise, you know.”
“I mean to,” Dawson said, “but I haven’t time. I used to ride down to the office. I used to do those setting-up exercises.”
He’s not fat. He feels a private admiration for his solid heft, and thinks himself strong and fit. He thinks of the phrase “rude health.” His skin is pink and glowing after his cold bath. During the war they rode through the mountains in icy rain. They slept on the ground, heads pillowed on their saddles. They ate stale corn pone, bacon green with mold. The thought invigorates Dawson. He’s still that person. He could do it all again.
“Everyone used to do those exercises,” said Bellinger. “It’s the ones who still do them who get the benefit.”
Dawson smiled and shook his head. The war was something you always owned. If you fought, it was part of you, and nothing could take that from you.
Bellinger was writing something. It would be something Dawson didn’t want to read: about eating certain things, drinking certain things, not eating and drinking others. This was not the way he saw himself, as someone with an ulcer. Someone whose life was becoming circumscribed.
Bellinger wore pince-nez. When he’d finished writing he took them off and swiveled his chair around to face Dawson. He rubbed at the little oval indentations the pince-nez left in his pale skin.
“I want you to pay attention to this,” he said. “I told Martin Robertson to use this diet and he did not. You see the result.”
“I’m not going to die,” Dawson said, testy, “and I wish you’d be a bit more discreet. I don’t want to know about your patients.”
Bellinger shrugged. Robertson was dead; discretion was useless to him.
Amos Bellinger has been his family doctor for years, and except for the indiscretions he’s very good. Dawson thinks he has saved Sarah’s life, or anyway her health. At nineteen she was in a terrible carriage accident, and for a time she was paralyzed from the waist down. She has been frail ever since, and suffers from intermittent pain in her spine. Dawson depends on Bellinger to keep her healthy.
Dawson's Fall Page 2
