by Frank Yerby
Then Stephen was reining Prince Michael to a stop.
“This,” he said, “is Harrow.”
Andre looked out over the tangled woodland. Here were wild cane and palmetto stretching out for endless miles. In the center of the uncleared land was a grove of stately oaks, trailing streamers of Spanish moss. Off to the south was a cypress grove. Andre’s reaction was simple.
“My God!” he said.
“Lovely, isn’t it?”
“Lovely?” Andre groaned. “It’s impossible! It will take you three years at the least to clear enough of it for even a small crop—five or six to clear it all. I assume it extends all the way to Waguespack’s?”
“Yes—and to D’Estrehan’s in the other direction. A huge place, Andre. A man needs room to breathe.”
“But how on earth . . .?”
“Will I clear it? Easily, Andre. Ye forget I’m not a Frenchman. I have no real aversion to hard work. God, but I’m tired! ‘Tis a long time since I’ve ridden a nag.”
“I’m hungry,” Andre said. “And fools that we are, we brought no lunch.”
“Ye’re right there,” Stephen said. “And ‘tis a long ride back to the city. The horses need water and rest, and in that they’re better off than we, because here they can have both.”
He swung down from the saddle, and knelt, digging his fingers in the black, rich earth.
“Harrow,” he said, his voice curiously soft. “The new Harrow, and such a place as the old one never was!”
“There was another Harrow?” Andre asked.
“Yes. ‘Tis in Ireland not very far from Dublin.” Stephen’s blue eyes looked past Andre out over the face of the river. “Different from this—a place of mist and cloud and a gypsy sun, never all there, ye ken. Rains whispering to ye in the night, and the greenest sod ever granted to the hands of mortals . . .”
“You lived there?”
“Yes.”
“And you loved it. Why did you leave?”
Stephen looked at his friend, a slow, crooked grin twisting his face.
“Ye’re not prying, me lad,” he said, “for the sake of some of those curiosity-stricken ladies ye told me about?”
“Heaven forbid! I’m curious about you myself, Stephen. You’re such a strange combination of gentility and rascality that I cannot help wondering . . .”
“How and who and what I am? ‘Tis a long tale, Andre, and perhaps a dull one.”
“Why not let me be the judge of that?”
Stephen stood up, and looked straight at Andre. “In the first place,” he said, grinning wickedly, “I’m a bastard.”
“I’ve often thought so,” Andre laughed. “But go on.”
“No, I mean truly. I was born out of wedlock. My mother never told me who my father was. How do ye like having a friend whose bar sinister blots out his whole damned escutcheon?”
“That’s nothing,” Andre chuckled, leaning forward. “Old Arceneaux swears that my family and his and nearly every other of any account in Louisiana are descended from a band of female petty thieves and prostitutes who were brought from La Salpêtrière, a house of correction in Paris!”
“Correction girls? I’ve heard of them. But, according to the histories, they had no children.”
Andre rocked with laughter.
“Who wrote the histories, my friend? Old Arceneaux has a diary reputed to have been written by the midwife, Madame Doville—Madame Sans Regret, they called her. Says he is going to publish it one day when he feels energetic enough to fight twenty duels a day everyday for three months. But I’m interrupting you—and you were going to tell me why you left.”
“Had to,” Stephen said. “I got possession of a certain article of value.” His fingers strayed upward to the great pearl gleaming softly at his throat.
“You—you stole it?”
“No. I won it gaming. But my opponent was the son of a man highly placed in life. The pearl was his father’s. I merely wouldn’t give it back.”
“Why not, Stephen? That would have been the simplest way.”
Stephen looked out over the river.
“Ye give me a task,” he said. “I don’t know why I wouldn’t. At the time it seems I couldn’t return it. There’s an alchemy about the thing, Andre. Perhaps it was some heritage of roguery in the blood.” He was silent for a long time, watching the river.
“ ‘Twas not its value that I wanted. I’ve lain in gutters with my belly caved in with hunger, holding the pearl in my fist when it would have brought me food. I’ve fought like all the devils in hell to keep it. I’ve never owned it, Andre; always it owned me.”
“You talk riddles, Stephen.”
“No—truly. It was not to be sold. It must be worn. I think I always knew that. And it could not be worn by a ragged urchin; it could only be worn by a gentleman. I went up to Dublin, ‘twas the best place to hide. I slept n the streets, and lived by begging food and stealing from the green grocers. All the time, Andre, this was with me, driving the restlessness in so deep that it can never come out. This seems mad?”
“Of course not. Please go on.”
“It is, none the less. After a half year, I apprenticed myself as a printer’s devil, because I alone of the dozen scrawny, dirty, starved-out applicants could read and write a fair hand. He was a perverse old scoundrel, this printer, Andre; but above all else he had a mind. I slept in a loft up over the presses, and he allowed me to take up books to read by a stub inch or two of candle, after my fourteen hours of work. I prayed over that candle, and I pinched it and cursed it that it should not burn out before I’d turned a page.”
“My God!” Andre said. “When did you sleep?”
“I didn’t. Ye have no idea what a starved young mind can make a body do. The old scoundrel beat me and paid me not at all, but I was happy. I read all the classics, setting them up in fine type, and inking the presses. Before I left, I could read the principal modern tongues and falter through the ancients. I mended my speech and my pants and freed my body from vermin. I kept myself washed and my hair combed. Every Sunday, religiously, I blacked my worn boots and donned my third- or fourth-hand clothes. Thin I was like a rail and stooped, and with a squint from so much reading.”
“You’ve changed,” Andre observed.
“That I have. Ye see, the printer had a daughter off in England at school. She came back, Andre.” One corner of Stephen’s mouth crawled upward in a half smile.
“And that was the finish,” Andre laughed.
“I would have given her anything—except the pearl. I read Horace to her. The Odes, ye ken. But one day the old man found in her things a free translation from Sappho—inscribed in my own fine hand. ‘Twas one of the more passionate fragments, and the printer concluded from some rare allusion that perhaps his daughter knew the way to my dingy loft.”
“And did she?”
Stephen looked at his friend, one eyebrow lifting mockingly. “The virtue of a woman, Andre—and her age—are never topics for discussion.”
“You were discharged, of course?” Andre asked.
“I was impelled onto the wet cobblestones by a hobnailed boot against my rear. So I stowed away on the London boat and went to England. My first and only connection there was with a wine merchant in London. He neglected his trade to follow the cards. When he lacked other partners he taught me to play and won back all my miserable wages. Under the circumstances, I had to learn to win. He used to journey to Italy, and the south of France to obtain his wines. I went with him. He’d grown quite fond of me then. But in France the need for fine raiment grew upon me. The girls, ye see, were most affectionate—your Frenchwomen, Andre, are designed by nature for love. So I began to beat him too regularly and he discharged me. ‘Twas then I started my wanderings with nothing but the cards, and my fingers’ skill to sustain me. I wore the pearl in France for the first time, feeling all the time as though I’d committed a sacrilege. But I brazened it out.” He paused, frowning a little. “I’m still brazening
it out,” he added softly.
“But when you have held your land,” Andre asked, “will you then be able to wear your pearl in comfort?”
Instead of answering, Stephen scooped up a handful of earth, letting it run like water between his outstretched fingers.
“In one year,” he said, “I shall clear this land of debt. In the next, I shall build me such a house as was never matched in the Old World or the New. Ye believe me, Andre?”
Andre looked at him long and searchingly before answering. “Yes,” he said at last. “Yes, I believe you. You cannot be stopped. You must drive forward, because you can’t help it. ‘Tis a terrible thing, Stephen. Sometimes I pity you.”
“Save your pity,” Stephen said, rising. “I have an idea. We are not far from the lands of the gigantic Hugo. Let us presume upon his hospitality. He’ll probably offer to cut our throats, but he’ll end by feeding us. And for some good German cooking right now I’d endure even Hugo.”
Andre laughed, and they turned their horses’ heads again northward.
The tangled woodland dropped away abruptly and before them stretched cleared and cultivated fields. The work that had been done here was masterly, every tillable inch of ground laid out in precise, orderly rows.
“Ma foi!” Andre said. “But that Waguespack is a planter.” The road that led to the house was as precise and orderly as the fields; but as they approached the house all order disappeared. It was built of cypress, with soft brick between the walls, briquete entre poteaux, and had fallen into an advanced state of decay. Debris littered the yard, and four flaxen-haired children, dressed in rags, played in the dirt with the swine. They started up at the approach of the horsemen, looking like players in a minstrel show, their blue eyes widening strangely in their dirt-blackened face.
“Your father,” Andre began in French. “Is it that he is at home?”
The children stared blankly, their small mouths dropping open.
“Is your father at home?” Stephen asked.
Still the blank stares continued.
“Name of a camel!” Andre said. “Can’t they talk?”
“Yes,” Stephen said. “Watch this. Then he repeated the question in German, speaking very rapidly, rolling out the thick-throated gutturals.
At once all the mouths closed as one mouth and the children huddled into a little group like sheep.
“No,” one of the children said in Low German. “He has to the fields gone.”
“And your mother?”
“Yes, mama is to house.”
“Go thou,” Stephen said, “and tell her that two gentlemen wish with her to speak.”
“Ugh,” Andre said. “What a language! One clears one’s throat, and gargles, and showers every visage within twenty yards with spittle. That is from your Vienna days, isn’t it?”
“ ‘Tis the only thing I brought away,” Stephen laughed. The door of the house swung open, teetering perilously on its one remaining hinge, and a young woman came out. She was blond and pretty in a buxom sort of way. Andre was sure he had never seen such large breasts. It was her eyes, however, that stopped them; large and blue as the children’s, they kept shifting, glancing every half minute in the direction of the fields.
“Good morning, Madame,” Andre said. “I speak only German,” she said softly.
“Goodday, gracious lady,” Stephen said in German. “Greet God,” the woman answered softly. “We are friends of your husband’s,” Stephen said. “And we want to see him. But we have ridden many miles and are very hungry. . .”
At the sound of the sehr hungrig, the woman nodded rapidly. “Come in,” she said. “There is not in the house much to eat. But I can the Pfannkuchen and coffee make. If the gentlemen wish?”
“Pfannkuchen?” Andre said blankly. “What on earth?”
“Pancakes. They’re good,” Stephen declared. “Thank you very much, gracious lady.”
Inside the house, the furniture was falling to pieces, but the rooms were fairly clean. Frau Waguespack seated them at the big table and busied herself before the huge grate.
“In the house!” Andre said. “She cooks inside! Ma foi!”
“And what’s wrong with that?”
“In the city, nothing. But on a plantation where there are no fire brigades—a kitchen house of brick at least one hundred yards away from the house, remember that, Stephen, when you build.”
Frau Waguespack turned the pancakes over in the huge iron skillet, and the coffee gurgled softly on the hearth. Then she was approaching the table, huge stacks of pancakes piled in steaming, golden mounds on the thick china plates.
She brought the coffee and butter and a tall pitcher of syrup.
Andre watched Stephen.
“Not bad,” he said, after his first bite, then: “Good—very good, indeed!”
“What are you called?” Stephen asked Frau Waguespack.
“Minna—Minna Wagonsbeck.”
“Wagonsbeck?” Andre echoed.
“That is Hugo’s name. Waguespack is Frenchified.”
He turned to Minna.
“Thanks for your kindness,” he said. “And now if you will tell us where we may find your husband . . .”
Minna’s blue eyes wavered.
“Out there,” she said. “In the southwest fields, but—”
“Yes?” Stephen said.
“Do not to my husband say that you to this house have been. Please!”
Andre turned to her, his eyebrows raised, but Stephen lifted his hand warningly.
“Do not worry—Minna,” he said to the girl, for she was scarcely more. “I’ll say nothing!”
“Why?” Andre demanded as they mounted their horses.
“Ye’ll see,” Stephen said grimly.
To the sou’thwest fields was a short ride. As they rounded a cypress wood, a group of Negroes came in sight, digging furiously in the earth, laying the long stalks of cane end to end in the furrows.
“Never,” Andre declared, “have I seen blacks move that fast! I wonder . . .”
As if in answer they could hear Hugo’s bull-like voice roaring:
“Faster, you black swine!” and between each word came the singing whine of the lash, ending in a crack like a pistol shot.
“My God!” Andre said. “What bestiality!”
Another half turn and they were suddenly upon him. Hugo pulled up his nag so savagely that the ancient animal actually tried to rear. But the German’s great weight was too much. The old horse settled back on his feet, his thin neck hanging.
“Good day, gentlemen,” Hugo grinned. “This is an unexpected honor!”
“Your blacks,” Stephen said without ceremony. “I hear ye intend to sell them. I’ll buy the lot—now.”
“No, Monsieur Fox,” Hugo said smiling. “I must make sure that they are in good hands. I fear your sentimentality. You’d spoil them to the man.”
“My God!” Andre said in a hoarse whisper. “He’s beaten them all!”
“Only ten lashes apiece,” Hugo said. “I’m humane, Monsieur Le Blanc. Besides, your friend should be pleased that I take such excellent care of lands so soon to become his.”
“Have you asked for an extension?” Stephen demanded.
“From you,” Hugo said slowly, “nothing. I shall pay you the debt. I know you’re short of cash. With thirty thousand in the land, and twenty thousand more in that warehouse with that thieving Tom Warren, you’re plagued short.”
“Ye’re right,” Stephen said evenly. “But it’s entirely too much that ye know about my affairs.”
“It’s my business to know things,” Hugo said. “And fast!”
I’ve heard that phrase before, Andre thought. Somebody said it, somebody else—in almost the same words—but who? Where?
“You’ve got to have this land to make a crop. Yours can never be cleared in time. And you’ve got to have Nigras. And you’ve got to sell whatever it is you have in that warehouse. It seems to me, Monsieur Fox, that you’re in as bad
a spot as I.”
“That,” said Stephen, “is my affair. All I ask of ye is that ye sell me some of your blacks.”
“No,” Hugo said quietly. “No.”
Andre had got down from his horse and was bathing the face of an old Negro, who lay prostrate on the ground, with water another slave had brought from the spring.
Hugo climbed heavily from his horse.
“One moment, monsieur,” he said politely. Then with slow deliberation, he kicked the old Negro in the ribs, not quite hard enough to break them.
“Get up,” he said, “you old jackass!”
“You’re a swine!” Andre said; “You’re a dirty, German swine!”
“Softly, monsieur,” Hugo said calmly. “ ‘Twould be very convenient if you provoked me into a duel, wouldn’t it? You know I have no skill with the rapier or the clochemarde. And people would never know that you were killing me so that Monsieur Fox could get my land and my Nigras.”
Andre struck him then, hard across the face.
“Andre!” Stephen said.
“Don’t worry,” Hugo said calmly. “I shan’t give him the pleasure of killing me.”
“You may have pistols,” Andre cried. “Or rifles, or shot guns! You’re a good shot!”
“I don’t want to kill you either, monsieur. You’re a nice boy—although a little unwise in your choice of friends. Now may I suggest that you gentlemen cease delaying my planting? I’d like to be more hospitable; but time grows short.”
“Come, Andre,” Stephen said. “There is nothing we can do here.”
“Swine,” Andre half wept. “German swine!”
“The best breed there is. Such swine as will ultimately root up the whole world. Adieu, gentlemen!”
“Come, Andre,” Stephen said. “Come.”
IV
STEPHEN’S knees felt uncommonly stiff kneeling in the pew at the St. Louis Cathedral. The mass that Père Antoine was reciting seemed unusually long, and Stephen was having difficulty following it. Half a dozen times he rose late, after most of the parishioners were already on their feet; several other times only the rustle of feminine garments warned him in time to kneel. At his side, Andre, wearing the serious expression that came to his handsome young face only in church of a Sunday, could not entirely repress a smile at his friend’s flounderings.
