Property (Vintage Contemporaries)

by Valerie Martin

  House servants were another matter. I can remember only one instance of a runaway from our house. It happened just after the fearful insurrection downriver when I was a girl. We were never in any danger from it, but Father went to the city just afterward and on his return told us what an alarming state the countryside was in. Five hundred slaves had simply gone mad and marched down the river road toward New Orleans, banging drums and waving flags. They killed Major Andry’s son and wounded the major himself, set fire to mills and barns, raided the biggest houses. A stream of planters’ families in wagons and carts, having taken flight in whatever vehicle they could quickly find, preceded the rebels into town.

  It took almost ten days to rout the negroes. The governor called out the militia and every patrol in fifty miles. It cost the state so much the treasury was bankrupted, and the reimbursements had to be paid in installments. Father told Mother, when he thought I was asleep, though I was listening breathlessly on the landing, that the heads of the leaders were strung up in the trees all along the river from New Orleans to Major Andry’s plantation, and many a planter took his negroes out to see this display.

  That was when our housemaid Celeste disappeared. Father went back to the city and made inquiries until he learned that she had a brother among the insurrectionists. He was in fact one of the leaders. Father took a room in the hotel and spent several days following every rumor he could scare up. In the end he found Celeste hiding out in the restaurant kitchen where her mother worked as a cook. “You have comforted one another mightily,” Father told her, “but now it is time to come home.” She did not resist, returned to our house and stayed with us, always useful and even-tempered, until Father died.

  I doubted that Sarah would be so tractable on her return. And if she made me spend much time or money tracking her down, I would not be so lenient.

  HOW WAS I to remember exactly what she was wearing? I was running for my life. Sarah’s costume didn’t present itself as a remarkable feature of the evening. “She had three dresses,” I told my aunt. “One very like the other. What does it matter?”

  “Well, it would help,” my aunt said, with a testiness that suggested she was wearying of my difficulties, though not so much as I. “It is usually included.”

  I closed my eyes and tried to recall the sleeve which I had clutched, endeavoring to stop her, the skirt rising in two puffs over the saddle as she rode away. “It must have been the brown linsey,” I said. “And she had the baby wrapped in her shawl, indigo wool; it was an old one of Mother’s.”

  “Very well,” my aunt said, bending over the page on which she was writing out the notice. “That will have to do.”

  Aunt Lelia was convinced that Sarah was in the city, though my husband’s horse had been found wandering on the levee a few miles north of here. “She probably rode up to the landing at Bayou Sara, spent the night in hiding, and got on the ferry the next morning. She wouldn’t have been so foolish as to ride south into the fracas. She will need money if she hopes to get anywhere, and she will doubtless call on Mr. Roget for help.”

  “Perhaps he has already provided for her,” I said. “She had half a dozen opportunities to spin out a scheme with him when Mother was ill.”

  But my aunt remained convinced that Sarah would not leave the area without meeting Mr. Roget. “She will try to pass for a free negro,” she said. “With her color, she can easily bring it off.”

  “Are you putting that in the notice?” I asked.

  “Yes,” she said.

  There were moments when I thought Sarah had plotted the entire insurrection, she and Mr. Roget whispering together under my mother’s house, though that was surely unlikely. She would not have been as frightened as she was, nor taken the precaution of getting her baby outside the house at the start. She only took advantage of the confusion, and of that event she must have longed for, my husband’s death. She assumed I would be murdered as well and it would be several days before anyone would think to look for her. “Number the slaves at the master’s funeral,” my uncle is fond of saying. “There is always one who will bolt.”

  “I think this will do,” my aunt said, blotting her page. “Shall I read it to you?”

  “I suppose so,” I said.

  “ ‘Seventy-five dollars reward,’ ” she read.

  “Isn’t that rather high?” I asked.

  “No, I think not. I have seen rewards as high as one hundred dollars for a house servant. They are often difficult to apprehend.”

  “Go on,” I said.

  “ ‘The girl, Sarah, about twenty-seven years old, and her eight-month-old baby girl, called Nell, ran away October 27 from R. P. Gaudet plantation in Ascension Parish, tall, slender, fine-featured, light complexion, speaks English and some French, wearing brown linsey dress, indigo woolen shawl, no shoes, very likely, has scar behind left ear . . .’ ”

  “I didn’t know that,” I said.

  “She fell into a fence when she was small,” my aunt said. “It was mentioned in the title.” She continued her reading. “ ‘Well spoken, of good address.’ ”

  “I wouldn’t say so,” I said. “I would say she was of sullen address.”

  My aunt gave me a long look. “She will be trying to get on,” she said. “ ‘Will probably make her way to New Orleans, may pass as a free negro, fifty-dollar additional reward on proof to conviction of any person who may harbor her.’ ”

  “Won’t that last bit just encourage Mr. Roget to send her out of town?”

  “She won’t stay with him,” my aunt replied. “That would be too obvious.”

  “Perhaps you’re right,” I said, feeling thoroughly bored and aggravated by the whole business. My shoulder felt as though a hot iron were pressed against it and my head ached. “Is it time for my medicine yet?”

  My aunt put the page aside and came to my bed. “My poor dear,” she said. “Are you in great pain?”

  “I am,” I said.

  She poured out a spoonful of the sleeping tincture. “Take this,” she said, “and rest a bit. I’ll go down and speak with Charles. He has brought his own driver over from Chatterly to serve as overseer here until you are well enough to decide what you want to do.”

  I swallowed the medicine. “I know what I want to do,” I said. “I want to sell it all, everything and everyone.”

  “We’ll talk about it when you are strong again,” my aunt said, soothing me as she might a sickly child.

  My head seemed to droop forward like a flower broken on its stalk. “I fear I will never be strong again,” I said.

  DR. LANDRY VISITED regularly to change the dressing on my shoulder and bring me news of the world. One morning he removed the bandages from my cheek and pulled the last stitches from my lip. “The redness will fade,” he said, when I requested the looking glass. “That gash in your cheek was so crooked it was the devil to sew.”

  I gazed at my reflection. “Now this is pitiful,” I said, pressing the swollen ridge that divided my lower lip. In truth it was not so bad as I had feared.

  “A beautiful woman is rendered more beautiful by a scar,” Dr. Landry opined. “It reminds a man of what suffering she has endured. In your case, we are all awed by your courage.”

  “The courage to run away and hide?”

  “Many a woman would not have had it.”

  I wondered if this were true. I remembered my state that night as one of general terror, punctuated by a few moments of clarity when I knew what to do. If that was courage, what good was it? Sarah, who had been terrified, was the one to ride away unharmed, and my husband, who even I could not deny had been brave, was dead. I was not so hypocritical as to be disturbed by the grim satisfaction I felt whenever that last fact surfaced in my consciousness. He was dead. He would be receiving no more reports. I smiled wanly at my altered reflection. It is worth it, I thought, handing the mirror back to Dr. Landry. “My husband saved my life,” I said honestly enough. The good doctor laid his hand upon my own and expressed again his deep
sympathy for my loss.

  Later, with his assistance, I was able to go downstairs for the first time. My aunt had put everything in order, but there was ample evidence of violence. The spyglass was dismantled and lay in pieces on the carpet, there were the gashes in the dining table, a curtain down, a mirror shattered so that only glass splinters remained in the frame. In my husband’s office there were shot holes in the wall just inside the door. “He fired and missed,” I observed to the doctor. “Then somehow he got out alive, but he left his second pistol behind.”

  “Unspeakable,” Dr. Landry said. A weakness in my legs caused me to lean hard upon his arm, and he led me to the chair, where I sank down gratefully. We heard a sound in the hall, a door slammed, there were quick footsteps coming toward us. Of course, I thought. I would not get off with just a few scars, a useless arm. My husband would have his revenge upon me, and he would have it every day for the rest of my life. Dr. Landry looked out the door, his brow furrowed as a low whine began. He stepped aside, allowing the creature to pass into the room.

  Delphine had cleaned him up and dressed him in short pants and a loose linen shirt half tucked in at the back. His face was still swollen, the bruise had faded to yellow. He came to my chair and began patting my knee, babbling nonsense with the confidence and intensity of a lawyer making an irresistible argument. I looked over his head at Dr. Landry, who covered his beard with his hand and shook his head slowly. “The heir apparent,” I said, and then, as if he understood me, Walter turned to the doctor and gave a shout of what sounded like joy.

  I HAVE NEVER liked my husband’s brother, Charles Gaudet. He’s an arrogant man, boorish and supercilious, like my husband, only worse because he has been successful. He is the youngest of three brothers and the richest of all. Since my husband’s murder, he has taken to strolling around this property as if he owned it, addressing me in solicitous tones, as if I were addled and must have every word repeated. As soon as I was well enough to receive a visitor, he was at the door, eager to get at my husband’s books to see what chance he had of being repaid the money he was fool enough to loan his brother.

  Rose was so poor at dressing my hair, I had her brush it out so it fell over my shoulders. I’d disguised my lip with rouge, my cheek with powder, and fixed my elbow so that it rested on the arm of the chair, thereby lifting my shoulder to a normal position. My recovery had left me thin and pale; the pallor intensified the blue of my eyes, or so I told myself. Charles’s eyes betrayed only the mildest alarm when he came into the parlor, where I had arranged myself to receive him. I held out my left hand as he approached and he bent over it, brushing his lips against the bridge of my fingers. “My dearest sister,” he said. “You have been in my prayers every minute.”

  “Do you pray so often?” I said.

  He stepped back, remembering that I had never been charmed by him. He tried another line. “Maybelle sends her love and her sympathy,” he said.

  Then I felt sorry for him, because Maybelle is as fat as a hog. That thought led straight to a pang of guilt. Maybelle alone of my relatives showed me the courtesy of refraining from any mention of God in her condolence letter at Mother’s death. She recounted a kindness Mother had done for her when her son was ill and Mother directed her to a specialist. Everyone else felt the need to assure me that Mother’s death was part of God’s plan. Exactly, I wanted to shout after reading this sentiment half a dozen times—his plan is to kill us all, and if an innocent child dies in agony and a wicked man breathes his last at an advanced age in his sleep, who are we to call it injustice?

  “Please give Maybelle my warmest regards,” I said to Charles.

  He wandered away to a chair and lowered himself into it with the care of a man who has been riding all day. “Your aunt tells me that you are feeling well enough to take an interest in your affairs.”

  “I am,” I said. “It seems to me there’s a great deal to attend to.”

  “You needn’t be bothered with any of it,” he said. “We are in hopes that you will come to live with us at Chatterly.”

  My aunt has told him what Mother’s estate is worth, I thought. “That is kind,” I said. “But I long to be near my aunt, to be of use to her. She has been so good to me.”

  “I see,” he said. “The children will be disappointed.”

  This remark was shockingly transparent, as I hardly knew my nieces and nephew, nor have they ever expressed the slightest interest in my acquaintance. I looked about the room, resting my eyes upon various empty spaces where ghosts might reside, and indeed I felt a curious chill, such as I used to experience when my husband looked at me. “I can’t bear being in the country, Charles,” I said. “I never feel safe for one minute.”

  “Of course,” he said. “I hadn’t thought of that.”

  “I want to sell this place and everyone in it, except Delphine.”

  “I’m sure a buyer could be found,” he said. “But I fear the price will not be satisfactory.”

  “My husband was in debt to half the parish,” I said, enjoying the amazement that settled upon my counselor. “He owed you five thousand dollars, isn’t that correct? Close to six with interest.”

  “I’m not sure of the exact amount.”

  “He owed the banks a fortune, he owes the factor more than he would have made on this year’s crop. Still, I think if I sell everything, even at a poor price, it will clear out the debt.”

  “I would have to look into his books,” he offered, but tentatively now.

  “Yes, you should do that,” I said. “You might want to take a glass of whiskey with you, to brace yourself against the shock.”

  “My poor brother,” he said, considering the full extent of my husband’s folly, which included having a wife who knew what he was worth.

  “Fortunately, I have my mother’s estate,” I said. “I will move into her house in town. The income from her investments will be sufficient for my needs, so I should have no occasion to call upon the charity of my husband’s relatives.”

  He frowned. “I am pleased to learn that you will be independent,” he said. “I think you couldn’t be at peace any other way. But it is wrong for you to speak of the solemn obligation I bear my brother’s widow as charity. If you were penniless, I would consider it both my duty and an honor to provide for you.”

  It was the first time anyone had called me a widow to my face. I liked the sound of it. I pictured my fate in this man’s house if I were forced to rely upon his honor—the widowed aunt, sulking about with an embroidery hoop, called upon to play the piano when the young people wanted to dance—and I sent a heartfelt message of gratitude to my mother for her sound investments, her excellent financial sense.

  “Thank you, Charles,” I said. “May I rely upon you to see to the sale?”

  “I will speak to my agent today.” He looked about the room, valuing the furniture with what I suspected was an expert eye. “He will want to make an inventory.”

  “I’ll take a few small pieces,” I said. “The dresser and carpet in my bedroom. Delphine will doubtless want some indispensable pot or spoon.”

  “Of course,” he said.

  “If there is anything you want for yourself, or that Maybelle might want, please feel free . . .”

  “No,” he said. “That would not be correct, unless I deduct the value from my poor brother’s debt.”

  “At least take his pistols,” I said. “He would want them to stay in the family.”

  His eyes settled upon me, full of sentiment. “A thoughtful suggestion,” he said. “I will take them with pleasure.”

  My shoulder had begun to ache and I longed to terminate the interview, yet I couldn’t resist one final test of my relative’s goodwill. “I don’t suppose you would be willing to take Walter off my hands,” I said.

  His cheeks flushed and he gave a nervous cough. It was with difficulty that I maintained a frank, interested expression. “Manon . . .” he said, searching for words. This was one piece of his brother’
s property he wanted nothing to do with. I pictured Walter running across the veranda at Chatterly to greet the guests at the annual ball. “My little nephew,” Charles might explain, while Walter rubbed mud into some elegant gentleman’s waistcoat. “Maybelle . . .” Charles continued. “She hasn’t been well . . .”

  “It’s all right, Charles,” I said, taking pity on him. “You’ve no obligation to take him. Delphine is the only one who can manage him and for some reason she’s attached to him.”

  “Then it would be for the best . . .” he stammered.

  “It would be for the best if that child had never been born,” I said.

  My brother-in-law nodded sagely. “I understand the mother has run away.”

  “She has,” I said. “But I expect we will find her soon. Don’t put her name on the inventory. I don’t plan to sell her.”

  He gave me a questioning look. I could no longer bear the pain in my shoulder. I eased my elbow from its support and winced as my arm fell limp across my lap. “If I have to live with Walter,” I said, “so does she.”