by Anya Seton
No one at the Oaks expected Theo back so soon, and the house seemed deserted and very quiet. Even Cuffey, the little errand boy, whose duty it was to open the front door, was nowhere to be seen. Far off, from the quarters, she heard the sound of laughter and singing, the strumming of banjos—African instruments the negroes made themselves. They were all down there, no doubt, as usual rejoicing at any opportunity to escape from work. She sighed wearily.
When she had dragged herself upstairs, panting and resting on each step, she noticed without surprise that her room door was ajar. She had given strict orders that it should be kept closed, for the day was uncommonly chilly, and she wished the room to retain all the heat from the little fire. But the servants never remembered anything for ten minutes at a time.
Her kid shoes made no sound on the carpeted floor as she trod painfully down the hall, and, putting her hand on the doorknob, pushed open the door.
There was a flash of sound, a streak of movement from within. Theo gave a startled cry and hung onto the doorknob. Venus confronted her, backed up against the long gilt mirror before which she had been posturing. The girl's eyes were dilated with fear and hatred. She flung her head back defiantly, glaring at her mistress, but she had thrown her arms high across her chest and around her throat in a quick gesture of concealment.
It took a moment for Theo to grasp the meaning of this tableau. Then she gasped. Her eyes slowly focused on Venus, and then she suddenly understood. 'You've got my dress on!
My dress——' she whispered. Not that dress, the white gown embroidered in gold which she had worn on her birthday night at Richmond Hill! The beautiful gown that she loved so much that she had never worn it since, but had kept it wrapped in linen in her cedar box! She shut her eyes dizzily. Horrible—dark brown arms, a brown column of throat against the whiteness of that dress.
Nausea welled in her, her face contorted. 'Take it off, you slut!' she panted, her hands twisting and untwisting on the doorknob.
Venus did not move, her thin mouth curled, her cheeks glowed dusky scarlet.
Theo darted forward. 'What have you got on your chest—what arc you hiding?'
For a second the girl shrank, hugging her arms tighter about her throat. Then her chin went up, her lips parted in a malevolent smile, supremely insolent. She dropped her arms. Glittering and fiery on her dark bosom lay Aaron's diamond necklace.
Rage brought a rush of blood to Theo's head. If she could have killed, she would have. She beat Venus across the face with her small swollen fists, dragging the necklace off with such violence that the clasp tore through the brown flesh.
'You're vile—vile! I hate you—I hate you——'
Her voice cracked, the room swirled around her, and she fell forward on the floor, cradling the necklace against her check. The other servants found her lying there, crumpled and still, when they returned from the 'street' later. They were frightened and placed her gently on the bed, applying rude restoratives.
When Joseph came home she was conscious and in pain: a grinding pain that tore through her at intervals and made speech impossible. Joseph sat on the bed beside her and patted her hand nervously. He was worried and upset, but he could not understand what had happened, nor did he realize what was likely to happen until Phoebe the cook, who hovered near the bed, remarked with gloomy satisfaction: 'Look lak dat babby comin' right now, Maussa. Yuh better fotch Maum Chloe fum Clifton, enty? Mistiss she gwine hab bad time.'
Joseph started. 'You think it's that? Send for Pompey at once, tell him to gallop to Clifton. Tell him——'
Theo opened her eyes. 'Joseph, no'. Her whisper held a desperation that checked him. He turned to her uncertainly. 'I'm not going to have the baby now. I—won't.'
Not till May when Father will be with me—I need him—I won't live through it if he's not near me.
Phoebe chuckled, shrugging her fat shoulders. 'Yo' kain' stop'em, Mistiss, wen dey wants ter come.'
Theo lay very quiet. Inside her racked body she gathered her will, consciously drawing strength until it flooded her with a compelling power. The pain receded.
'Joseph——'
He bent down quickly. 'What is it, my poor little Theo?'
'Laudanum,' she whispered. 'A big dose, now. And don't fetch Maum Chloe. I won't let her near me. I'm not going to have the baby yet. I won't.'
Nor did she. For three days and nights she lay almost motionless on her bed. The pains gradually died away.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
ON THE fifth day after the averted crisis, Theodosia sat up, and Joseph was relieved to find that she felt much better. He drew a chair to her bedside and at last broached the subject of Venus.
'She told me the whole thing, my dear, and I was extremely angry with her, of course. I told her that she was not fit to be a house servant again for some time. She shall be punished by staying in the quarters until she has learned her lesson/ Theo stared at him, astounded. 'But Joseph—don't you realize what she did? She can't possibly remain on the plantation. I want you to sell her. Oh, don't you understand—the girl hates me.'
'That's unreasonable, Theo,' he said patiently. 'The wench was not going to steal your things, she has too much sense for that. She was simply trying them on; very imperti nent, of course, but scarcely a crime. She is very pretty for a nigger, and I dare say has female vanity like others of her sex.'
Theo slumped back against the pillows; she was very weak and tears pricked her eyelids. It wasn't so much that the girl had got around Joseph by a clever flank attack, or even that he should be so willfully blind to Venus's hostility, but that he couldn't realize that the dress and the necklace were not any chance part of her large wardrobe. They were her most cherished possessions. Venus had known it, that was why she had chosen them. And now they were desecrated. It was a part of herself that had been rubbed against that oily brown skin, had covered a heart that seethed with hatred and the passion to hurt.
There was no use explaining. Joseph would never understand. She had not the strength to argue with him. Yet there was one point she must make clear.
'I suppose you will do as you like about the disposition of Venus, except that she will never be a house servant again in any house that I occupy—never'. She paused a moment. 'Joseph—I've been thinking. Father might get me a French maid. I would like someone to speak French with—a French chef too, perhaps. You know Governor Drayton has one, and several of your father's friends in Charleston,' she added quickly.
'What's the matter with the victuals Phoebe provides?' he snapped, ruffling.
What indeed? thought Theo, except that she can apparently cook nothing but rice, fried pork, and kitchen greens swimming in grease.
'Phoebe cooks well enough, Joseph, but sometimes something a little more elaborate—when we entertain, I mean. I believe that Father could procure us a chef,' said Theo, who had already discussed it with Aaron.
Joseph was silent. He deplored her manifest inability to manage the blacks, and thought it foolish to import expensive white servants from the North, but on the other hand one must not cross women in her condition, they were always unreasonable, and his vanity was tickled at the thought of French servants. They would undoubtedly lend a certain luster to his plantation.
He lit a fat black cigar, leaned back on his chair, and changed the subject. 'When is your father coming South? Have you heard?'
She smiled suddenly, her strained eyes softened. 'Of course I've heard'. Unconsciously she touched her bosom, and Joseph saw a comer of a letter through the opening of her nightshift.
His mouth tightened. Anger seized him. He tapped his foot impatiently. 'When, then?'
'The first of May. That should be plenty of time. The baby isn't—shouldn't come until the middle of the month anyway'. She turned away, adding very low, half to herself, 'I know I wouldn't come through it if—he weren't here'. Joseph expelled a great mouthful of smoke with the effect of an explosion. 'That's nonsense, Theo! Ridiculous! What has he got to do with it? It's
unseemly to have men around at such a time anyway——'
He flung his cigar into the fireplace, and glared at her. Why must she always be different from other females? Why could she not accept this normal business of women in the natural way, as Mrs. Alston did, and his sister, and every other woman he had ever heard of? They kept their embarrassing condition as unobtrusive as possible, never mentioning it, never fussing, until at the proper moment they quietly disappeared from masculine eyes, and eventually reappeared with a new addition to the family.
Sometimes, though, they did not reappear. It occurred to him suddenly that his cousin Mary had died in childbirth. A trickle of fear extinguished his irritation. He examined Theo anxiously, consciously seeing her for the first time in weeks. She did not look right. Her small face was both puffy and pinched. Her glorious eyes had lost all their brightness. And her cheeks between limp auburn braids were as white as the newly plastered wall behind her.
His heart contracted. 'My darling——'
She raised her eyes, startled at his tenderness. 'Yes, Joseph?'
He looked down, embarrassed, touched her hand clumsily. 'Theo, we'll go to Charleston, as soon as you can travel. You shall have a——' He hesitated: the family would be shocked and contemptuous. He swallowed and went on. 'You shall have Doctor Debow, if you wish. I don't want you to worry. You must take care of yourself, I'——His face crumpled. 'Damme!' he shouted at her, 'why haven't you taken better care of yourself? You've had none of that medicine Maum Chloe made up for you. Look at it, there's the bottle—full!'
He pointed angrily at a viscous mixture of swamproot and chopped snakeskin which the Alston midwife had sent over to the Oaks.
Theo shook her head gently; her eyes glistened as she smiled at him.
'Poor Joseph, I do cause you a lot of trouble, don't I? You are good to me'. She raised her arms and, pulling his head down close to her, she pressed her pale lips softly against his whiskered cheek.
Six days later, Theodosia and Joseph made the trip to Charleston. It was not so difficult as she had feared. Pompey and Cato carried her on a litter from the house through the tangled woods to the Oaks Landing on the creek. A huge flatboat awaited them, and she was made comfortable upon it, while skilled boatmen rowed and poled it along the winding creek to the Waccamaw.
The tide was running out and swept the heavy craft downstream to Winyaw Bay, fifteen miles away, where they labored against the currents and whirlpools around the point, then up the Sampit River, to tic up at last beside the Alston Wharf in Georgetown.
Here a schooner awaited them, already loaded heavily with the precious rice, two hundred barrels of it, rough-polished and ready for sale in Charleston. Theo was carried on board, and the Live-Oak set sail, skimming along with a following wind the whole sixty miles.
They entered the Cooper River just as the Charleston city lights began to prick yellow against the darkening spring sky. Theo admired the graceful eluster of houses with its lofty church spires—slender, pointed silhouettes—but she never saw it without a sick yearning for that other skyline so many miles to the north. The two cities were so maddeningly similar in many ways—both built on points with two encircling rivers, both with batteries at their tips.
But the other was home, and this one, though more beautiful and certainly cleaner, was not. And never would be—for her.
They went, as a matter of course, to the great Alston House on King Street. The lovely Georgian mansion which Charlestonians still persisted in calling the Brewton House after its original owner, though Colonel William had bought it ten years ago when he married his present wife, Mary Motte, whose family had inherited it from the Brewtons.
Since it was customary for all the planters to spend at least two months of the year in Charleston, and since Joseph could well afford it, Theo had prodded him into getting a house of his own on Church Street. But it was not ready for them, of course. Nothing was ever ready on time, and only Yankee blood would expect the impossible.
So they drove, perforce, to the family mansion, and found to Theo's immense relief that Colonel William was there alone.
He greeted them with absent-minded cordiality and complete oblivion to the cause of their visit. 'Delighted to see you, my boy. Delighted. And Theodosia—how well you look!' He did not look at her at all, but at a point above her head. 'How unfortunate that you have just missed the others! They left yesterday for Sullivan's, where you will no doubt join them in a day or so.'
Oh, no, we won't, Theodosia thought. I'm not going to have my baby in that cramped beach cottage and in the company of Mrs. Alston, her six children, and Maria and Charlotte.
'The servants will show you to a room,' continued the Colonel vaguely. 'There must be one vacant for once. How did you leave things on the Waccamaw? I must run up there in a day or two. Hubbard writes me that the trunks need repairing on the west fields at Clifton. Can't have the young rice flooded at the wrong time, eh?'
Theo escaped from the rice talk and went upstairs to bed. Her father-in-law was kind and courteous, but he was so dull. He had but three topics of conversation—rice, his fighting days under General Marion, and his race-horses. They all bored her, though she hid it quite successfully. During race week in February she had made pretense of sharing the delirious excitement which apparently gripped the whole of South Carolina, but it had not really seemed very important that Colonel William's Maria was unaccountably beaten by Trumpeter for the Jockey Club Purse. Yet to the Alstons, including Joseph, it seemed to be stark tragedy. They had talked of nothing else for weeks.
Imagine Aaron, who lost the Presidency with airy grace and humor, being cast into deepest gloom at the loss of a trifling purse. There were so many more interesting things in life than rice and racing or prosy details of inconclusive battles fought long before she was born.
She sighed, turning her unwieldy body slowly in the bed, searching for a cooler spot. A melodious clangor of church bells jangled across the city. Saint Michael's, Saint Philip's, and the Huguenot Church one after another struck the hour. Only nine o'clock and a long night ahead. Of late, though she felt dull and heavy all the time, and occasionally drifted without warning into a dreamy stupor, yet real sleep eluded her.
I wish Father would come, she thought miserably. I want him so.
She struggled up from the bed, and fetched the small leather box in which she kept his letters, to re-read the last one. He had been upset by the carefully unalarming bulletins from Theo about her health. 'Why have you not gone to the mountains as I wished you to?' he wrote. 'All places on the Carolina seacoast are subject to excessive heat and fever at this time of year.'
To Joseph he had written more strongly: 'I learn with a good deal of regret that the mountain plan is abandoned.... With Theodosia's Northern constitution she will bring you some puny brat that will never last the summer out; but, in your mountains, one might expect to see it climb a precipice at three weeks old. Truly I mean to be serious, and beg to know whether you have, in fact, resolved, and whether the resolution has, in good faith, been the result of reflection or of inertness.'
Joseph had resented this particular attempt to regulate his conduct. Had he not already shown excessive caution by bringing Theo to the city long before it was necessary, and in granting her leave to consult a doctor? Moreover, he intended to transfer her to Sullivan's Island, as his father suggested. He was amazed to find that Theo had no such intention, and that to all his arguments she presented a quiet inflexibility. She would risk the fever, risk the waxing heat, but she would not leave Charleston until Aaron arrived.
The renowned and popular Doctor Debow waited upon young Mrs. Alston two days after her arrival. During these two days Theo had been feeling increasingly ill, and she had not realized how eagerly she had counted on the physician's visit, how much she had depended on his advice and help, until Joseph ushered him into her chamber.
'I'm so glad you've come, Doctor,' she cried. 'I don't feel well, I mean even in the circumstance
s, and I'm sure you can help me.'
The doctor bowed. He had flowing white hair, and in his fur-collared black robe he looked both impressive and priestly. 'Your confidence docs me great honor, madam. It is natural for ladies in your—ah—delicate situation to be concerned over trifling manifestations. You must not disquiet yourself. Secundam naturam, my dear Mrs. Alston. Secundam naturam, you know'. He balanced himself on his heels, crossed his fingertips upon his corpulent belly, and regarded her benevolently.
'Exactly,' said Joseph. 'Just what I tell her.'
'Oh, I know,' said Theo unhappily. 'I don't mean to make an unnecessary pother, but my head aches almost constantly, and I can't seem to see very well. It is as though little black fleck› floated across my eyes.'
'Ah—visual disturbances, madam, are by no means un common. You must keep your strength up. Plenty of good red meat, copious libations of hearty wine, between repasts as well as while partaking of them. It is wise to force one's inclination a trifle. You are providing nourishment for—ahem—for two, you know'. He swayed ponderously, beaming at her.
'But I can't eat more,' she protested. 'Food makes me ill, and I am getting so fat anyway.'
He nodded affably. 'Quite natural—quite. Hie et ubique. Corpulence is an encouraging sign.'
'I suppose so,' she agreed hesitatingly. 'Yet my feet and hands are so swollen that I can wear neither my shoes nor my gloves, and it is a peculiar kind of plumpness, when I press it.—Look'. She thrust a small puffed foot from beneath the bedclothes, touched the taut white flesh: the dent from her finger remained for some seconds.
Joseph made an impatient sound and turned to the window, but the doctor's eyes flickered, his tolerant smile slipping for an instant. 'Possibly a slight dropsical condition. Perhaps it would be as well to——' He paused, glanced hastily at Joseph's disapproving back, pursed his lips delicately, and went on in a lower voice, 'Pray do not think me offensive, but we should perhaps examine the—ah—water——'
