My Theodosia

by Anya Seton

  She cut him short. 'Of course, Doctor Debow. I quite understand.'

  Yet, after she had silenced Joseph's shocked objections and induced him to wait in the hallway, the examination proved to have been quite unnecessary. The doctor put on his silver rimmed spectacles, held the vessel to the light, peered at if and through it, wagging his head, then placed it on a table. 'Entirely satisfactory, my dear madam. Entirely. Nullius ›ddictus jurare in verba magistri,' he added, rolling the rich syllables over his tongue.

  Theo had a fleeting impulse to giggle, immediately quenched by uneasy disappointment. If only she might consult Doctor Rush in Philadelphia, or Doctor Eustis at home. Would they, too, think her a silly, fanciful woman, unwarrantably, almost indecently concerned about her condition?

  'Nature, salubrious and omnipotent Mother Nature, will dispose of all these little inconveniences of which you complain. They are,' said the doctor, describing a sweeping gesture, 'the inherent concomitants of parturition. Nil disputandum. I will compound for you some Balm of Gilead, a sovereign remedy for nervous disability. Partake of it frequently, and remember'—he waggled his plump forefinger—'Mens sana in corpore sano.'

  He bowed himself out, after assuring her that he would await summons, 'whenever—that is—when circumstances force you to suspect that new developments may be imminent'. Joseph accompanied the doctor to the front door and returning said to Theo: 'A most gentlemanly physician, and learned too. Now that he has set your fears at rest, I hope that you will show a little more spirit. So much lying in bed can scarcely be good for you.'

  She smiled wanly. 'I know, Joseph; I'll try.'

  Theodosia dragged herself through the next week, forcing herself to eat and drink, fighting against the constant throb in her temples, the ever more frequent dizzy spells, when the world blurred and her eyes seemed filled with darting black flashes.

  On the sixth of May, she felt better and her spirits burst through the chains that weighted them when she received a letter from Aaron. He had arrived at Clifton, where her father-in-law had entertained him. He would be with her in three days.

  At once she plunged into feverish activity. She called the servants and impressed them with the unparalleled importance of the occasion, directed the sweeping and garnishing of Aaron's bedchamber herself. She harried the cook, ordering menus far beyond that placid black woman's comprehension, and finally in desperation engaged the best caterer in town for Thursday.

  'You are wearing yourself out,' said Joseph crossly. 'Your father will hardly expect such an elaborate welcome.'

  They were together in the drawing-room on the second floor, for Theo preferred this room to all others. Its graceful beauty gave her pleasure and some measure of peace. It always seemed cool there, for its cypress-paneled walls were tinted pale blue, and gold brocade draperies softened the pitiless heat from five tall windows, while in the center of the ceiling hung a gigantic chandelier like a reversed fountain of crystal ice. It held twelve candles, and lighted, as they were now, they threw tiny jets of color through the sparkling prisms to the polished floor beneath.

  Theo was bending over a small walnut desk, checking lists, her eyebrows puckered. She had not heard Joseph's remark. 'Father does not care for this type of Madeira,' she said. 'If this is all there is in the cellar here, we must order more'. She made a note.

  Joseph was sprawling on a sofa, chewing the end of a cheroot, since he could not, of course, smoke in the drawingroom. He removed his cigar and frowned. 'That Madeira is good enough for my father, so I cannot sec why Colonel Burr should object to it.'

  Theo looked up and smiled. 'Oh, Joseph, don't be out of temper. It's just that I wish everything to be perfect for Father. After all, he has never been South. I want him to see how well we live, what luxuries and elegance you provide for me.'

  Joseph granted, replacing the cheroot.

  'We must give a party for him,' she went on. 'Governor Drayton, the Richardsons, the Pinckneys, the Rutledges, they'll all be delighted to honor the Vice-President. How beautifully this room will lend itself to entertaining!' She saw it filled with brilliantly dressed guests, laughter, music, flowers, and Aaron in the midst of them standing against the black marble mantel charming them, investing the most trivial conversation with interest.

  'You surely do not propose to appear in public at this time,' cried Joseph.

  She flushed. For one blessed moment, she had indeed forgotten.

  'I suppose the party must come afterward,' she said slowly. She put down her pen, pushed back the paper. Afterward. After this strange thing which has transformed my poor body shall be painfully wrested from me. After I shall be released and alone again. But how if there is no 'afterward'? If the shadows which are closing on me should at last forget to lift? What then? This room will be here just the same. There will be laughter and music and flowers in it just the same—for others, even perhaps after a while for Father.

  'What is it, Theo?' Joseph hoisted himself from the sofa and strode over to her. 'Why do you look like that?'

  'I'm frightened,' she said. 'Frightened.'

  'Of your confinement?'

  She nodded.

  His face cleared, and he patted her shoulder encouragingly. 'Nonsense. You are in splendid health; Doctor Debow said so. After all, this happens every day. Every mortal being in the world has come the same way and——'

  'Such fears are only the natural hypochondria of my condi tion, I know,' she finished, with a wry little smile. 'I'll try to be good.'

  Theo spoke little during the next few days and spared Joseph all morbid fancies. On Thursday afternoon Aaron was expected. She dragged about her room and struggled to make herself presentable. She hid her distorted figure as best she could with an embroidered India muslin scarf, made repeated attempts to pile her hair into the coquettish mass of ringlets which Aaron was used to seeing. But she could not lift her arms so high, and the little black maid who had temporarily replaced Venus was stupid and clumsy.

  When she was ready, she went into the drawing-room to wait, and paused before the huge carved mirror which covered the southern wall.

  How ugly I look, she thought, and how old! The flesh around her eyes had puffed and darkened until they appeared small, and her skin was the color of putty.

  It was warm today, even in this room, and flies buzzed monotonously around the great chandelier's tempting glitter. From time to time the high whine of a mosquito made obbligato to the buzzing of the flies.

  Theo sank down on the sofa, trying to listen for the first clumping of horses' hoofs down King Street, but gradually a rushing and roaring in her ears, which had bothered her for long, obscured all other noises. Her heavy head tipped sideways against the arm of the sofa. She shivered. How strange that she should be cold! In some way she must surmount this aching, agonizing languor. I must not sleep, she thought, and, thinking that, fell into a stupor so heavy that no sound could touch her, even that for which she longed above everything on earth, the bustle of Aaron's arrival. And he, dashing from the carriage and up the massive oak stairs ahead of Joseph, found her like that.

  'God's blood, sir, what have you done to her!' he shouted, turning on Joseph furiously.

  Joseph's face darkened. 'I don't know what you mean. She's asleep. She sleeps a great deal.'

  'Look at her, you fool! She's ill, fearfully ill.'

  'It is but her condition; you have not seen her before. There is nothing alarming.'

  Aaron gave him one terrible look, and leaned over the sofa. 'Theodosia,' he called, with a tenderness that Joseph thought angrily was almost womanish.

  A long convulsive shudder shook her body. Her lips moved, but she did not rouse.

  Aaron gathered her up; he and the now alarmed Joseph carried her down the hall to her bedchamber. As her head touched the pillow, her muscles twitched, she jerked from side to side, her breathing stopped, while her face became suffused with a horrible dusky blue.

  'What ails her?' Joseph gasped. 'She was never like
this before.'

  Aaron Hung around violently. 'Don't stand there gibbering! Summon the doctor! Get hot water, brandy, blankets!' He bent over Theo, shaking her gently, chafing her cold arms, calling to her.

  When the excited servants ran in, he dashed brandy in her face, and forced some drops between her rigid lips. He piled blankets on her. 'Bring all the warming-pans in the house, fill them quickly with hot coals. We must get her warm.'

  Little by little Theo relaxed, the bluish hue fading to pink.

  When Joseph returned running, with Doctor Debow, she was breathing quietly, while Aaron paced up and down the floor beside her bed and his forehead glistened with sweat.

  The doctor was puffing, his flowing hair disordered, his fur collar awry, yet, despite the alarm and uncertainty in his eyes, he produced his bland smile, made Aaron a sweeping bow. 'Mr. Vice-President, it is indeed an honor——'

  'My daughter is very ill, sir. She has had a convulsion. She has come out of it this time, but I fear very much for the consequences if she should have another. What is the cause and what is the remedy?'

  The doctor drew a deep breath, arranged his spectacles, and bent upon Theo a portentously grave look. He touched her pulse with his fat fingers, tapped her chest.

  'Mirabilium est natura,' he remarked at length. 'One must expect that under certain unforeseen circumstances, when dealing with situations of a pertinent nature, there may perchance occur an unexpected discharge of either gaseous or bilious humors into the circulatory system, a certain effluvia——'

  'You are a fool, sir'. Aaron's words spat out. 'A fool and a charlatan. You do not know what to do for Mrs. Alston. You are dismissed.'

  He spun on his heel and, to Joseph: 'Is this fat prating ass the best physician your city has to offer?'

  Joseph, pallid and miserably frightened, started to speak.

  Aaron interrupted him. 'Bring them all to me here, at once. I will interview them—all.'

  Joseph's jaw dropped; he hesitated.

  Aaron took two strides, clapped his hands on his son-in-law's shoulders. 'My boy, do you not realize that your wife is in grave danger? I have heard of these convulsions which sometimes accompany childbirth. They almost invariably prove——' His voice thickened. He compressed his lips, strode rapidly to the window. With his back to the room he finished the sentence with a coldness and lack of emotion that were more terrifying to Joseph than tears would have been. 'You will lose both your wife and your unborn child unless there is a miracle.'

  The miracle was wrought, and wrought by Aaron.

  From the four other physicians in the city he selected the only one who seemed to his keen insight to have sufficient knowledge or intelligence to be of help to Theodosia: Doctor Ramsay.

  The doctor was installed in the house and spurred to extraordinary effort by Aaron's unceasing vigilance. Aaron supervised everything that was done for Theo, held the basin for the blood-letting, washed and tended her, slept on a chair in her room, alert for her feeblest cry. All through a blur of gray days and nights when she was sometimes wandering and sometimes in stupor.

  Doctor Ramsay thought it to be some failure of the renal function.

  'Then she must have water,' cried Aaron, 'to dilute the poisons. But city water is often impure. I long ago noted that tea-drinkers have fewer maladies. It is a more wholesome fluid.'

  So he forced Theo to drink frequent draughts of weak tea, and gradually the swelling in her limbs subsided, her head grew clearer, her strength came back a little, and then one afternoon toward dusk labor commenced.

  Through a suffocating red mist of new pain she heard noises of muted confusion through the house, servants running, shouted orders, the constant jangle of bells. There were faces, many faces. Dimly she recognized her mother-in-law and Maria peering nervously, murmuring.

  They must expect me to die if they have come back from Sullivan's Island, she thought impersonally. Death no longer seemed important.

  In a pause between pains she heard a dialogue at the door between Maria and Aaron.

  'Colonel Burr, I understand that Theodosia is in danger, but I must request you to leave her room. Your presence here is most unseemly at such a time. My father and Mrs. Alston are extremely distressed; they asked me to tell you.'

  Theo drew herself up—'No, Father! Don't leave me—please'. Her voice was high and thin.

  'I have no intention of leaving you, my dear child. Lady Nisbett, I deplore any wound that I may give to your sensibilities, but I shall do what I think best for my daughter.'

  'It is her husband who should be with her if any man must be,' returned Maria angrily.

  'When Theodosia asks for her husband, I will call him at once. She has not so far done so'. There was a faint edge of satisfaction in his cool speech.

  No, she had not called for Joseph; he seemed unreal and far away. He could not give her strength as her father did. Nor could he hold her hand and by the sheer force of his magnetism and desire keep her from slipping over into the bottomless gulf.

  So Joseph sat alone in the dining-room downstairs, as far as possible from the clack of disapproving women in the drawing-room, his stock thrown into the corner, his face buried in his hands, except that now and again, when a sharp scream penetrated through the ceiling from the floor above, he reached for the half-empty brandy bottle at his elbow.

  When Saint Michael's church bells clanged six times across the fragrant May morning air, Doctor Ramsay decided that Mrs. Alston could stand no more. He fished in his dusty black bag and brought out a pair of iron forceps.

  Aaron winced, the comers of his nostrils indented sharply. 'Is it necessary?' he whispered.

  The doctor nodded. 'It is necessary. I assure you that I would not interfere if it were not. I notice that the incidence of childbed fever is greater when instruments are used. I don't know why. But we must risk it'. He rolled up his sleeves.

  Theo moistened her parched lips. 'Father, I can't. Not any more—I can't stand——'

  Aaron moved quickly to the head of the bed. He took her wet hand in his. 'Courage, Theodosia. What is to be must be. You shall stand it'. He spoke in a voice of cold parental authority, the voice which had always ordered her life, and to it there was only one response—obedience.

  She gave a choked, mewing cry, gripping his hand until the bones cracked, then was quiet. Aaron sat beside her pillow, his head averted, rigid as though molded in lead, until an incredible sound echoed through the room—the fretful wail of the newborn.

  Theo's hand fell open, releasing his; she sighed and, turning a little, fell at once into profound sleep.

  The doctor looked up, his sweating face triumphant. 'All's well, Colonel Burr.'Tis a fine, bouncing boy. Be so good as to call one of the women to tend him.'

  Aaron arose and walked lithely to the nested sheets where the doctor had laid the baby.

  Minute and dusky red, it stilled its restless cry as he looked down. Its slate-gray eyes stared back at him unwinking. Aaron bent closer. Deep in his heart there moved a strange joy. The baby, with the peculiarity of the newborn, showed a greater facial resemblance than it would again for many years. It was like Theodosia. It was like himself. It was pure Burr, with no hint or taint of Alston.

  Aaron drew a deep inaudible breath; his eyes softened as they had never done for anyone but Theodosia.

  At last I have a son! He softly touched the damp auburn fuzz on the baby's head. I will raise them high above ordi nary mortals. I will make them great—through me: Theodosia and her baby.

  He turned, and walking to the window gazed unseeing over the waking city's roof tops. The ways and means were not apparent yet, but one cannot hurry, though one may control destiny. Nothing was impossible to a disciplined, indomitable will. Nothing.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  THEODOSIA'S strength came back more quickly than anyone had thought possible. The eighteen-year-old body, freed of its burden and attendant poisons, surged again with vitality. Her convalescence was happy. S
he lay quiet in the big bed, lapped in the peaceful aftermath of childbirth, the actual agony faded to a dim, scarcely remembered haze.

  She delighted in her baby. The tugging of his lips at her breast gave her a physical delight keener than any she had ever known. She had indignantly refused the negro wetnurse that Mrs. Alston and Maria engaged. 'I wish to suckle him myself,' she averred, with a gentle firmness against which they could make no impression, cither by frowns or pleadings. So they gave it up. It was but one more of Theodosia's outlandish, immodest ways. They took themselves back to the beach, and left her to delicious quiet and the company of the three beings she loved: Aaron, the baby, and Joseph.

  Yes, Joseph. For when he had come to her on the day after the baby's birth and held his little son in his arms, she had seen how sharply hurt and unhappy he was. His face was haggard, his clothes disarranged, his eyes bloodshot.

  'Thank God, you're safe,' he muttered, and sank to his knees beside her. She pulled the baby close into the crook of her arm, where he nuzzled, settling down with a tiny sigh. The other arm she threw around Joseph's neck. And in that moment she felt close to him, of one mind, caught up together by the miracle of their parenthood.

  'Isn't the baby beautiful?' she whispered. 'Father says he is the most perfectly formed infant he has ever seen.'

  Joseph stiffened. 'Colonel Burr behaves as though the child were his.'

  Theo started to smile, but checked it. She realized something of Joseph's resentment: that the whole process of her illness and confinement had frightened and disgusted him, and that nevertheless he had been hurt by his exclusion. He loved her, had during the last hours been wild with fear for her safety, and yet she had not wanted him, had apparently not remembered his existence.