by Frank Yerby
Stephen turned the palamino in a mincing circle, and Julie rode the pony to the other side of the carriage. The driver flapped the reins and the little cavalcade moved slowly off in the direction of the house.
“You’re wondering why we came?” Thomas Meredith asked.
“Frankly, yes.”
“You have a son of mine buried upon your land. We came to view the grave and arrange for the removal of the body to Boston.”
Julie’s eyes opened wide.
“Oh, no!” she said.
“My sympathies, sir,” Stephen said gravely, “but about that last intent, I hope ye’ll change your mind. The grave has become quite a shrine for Julie, here. She tended the lad in his last hours, and he seems to have made a lasting impression upon her.”
“Dan was like that,” Thomas Meredith murmured. “His mother has never quite recovered from his loss. But you’ve made me feel better already . . . just knowing that he received such tender care.”
“We did all we could; but ‘twas quite hopeless. I don’t think the lad suffered too much.”
They rode the rest of the way in silence. On the far side of the carriage, young Tom Meredith was casting sidelong glances at Julie. She sat very straight upon the fat pony, but her cheeks were hot and red.
When they reached the house, Aurore was already waiting upon the upper gallery. The sharp eyes of the Negroes had seen the carriage a long way off, so that she had had ample warning. Thomas Meredith and his son got down from the carriage, and went up the broad stairs with Stephen and Julie.
Aurore smiled and put out her hand.
“Welcome to Harrow,” she said.
Thomas Meredith bowed over it.
“Thank you,” he said. “We’re doubly honored.”
“Aurore,” Stephen said, “may I present the Thomas Merediths—father and son—of Boston. Gentlemen, Madame Fox.” Aurore smiled.
“Come in,” she said. “You’re in time for late breakfast.”
They went into the great hall. Young Tom Meredith stood opened-mouthed, just inside the door.
“Tom!” his father said sharply.
“It’s—it’s a palace,” the boy whispered. “Like you read about in books.”
“Certainly there’s nothing like it in Boston,” his father declared. “Now you begin to understand our Southern friends?”
“Yes, Dad!” the boy said. “No wonder they fight so hard for—” He stopped suddenly, his face covered with confusion. “Sorry, Dad,” he said.
“It’s all right, son,” Thomas Meredith said. “But don’t forget again.”
Stephen’s white brows rose quizzically.
“Ye’re among friends, lad,” he said kindly; “here ye may speak freely.”
Aurore lifted a graceful hand.
“Come,” she said. “Breakfast is waiting.”
She ushered them into the dining salon. The moment they were seated, the Negroes appeared bearing the gleaming twin pitchers with the café au lait, and steaming mounds of pain perdu. Thomas Meredith tasted the strange food gingerly, but young Tom was staring curiously at the Negroes.
“Ye don’t have many blacks in Boston,” Stephen observed.
“Only a few,” the boy said; “I can’t get used to them.”
Julie put down her cup.
“But your brother Dan said you were abolitionists,” she blurted.
“Julie!” Aurore began, but Thomas Meredith was smiling.
“Dan was right,” he said softly; “but you’ll forgive us this time, won’t you, little Julie?”
Aurore looked at the tall man, and her face was puzzled.
“But you’re a Southerner,” she said.
“Yes, Madame. I was born in Alabama. When I was twenty, my father died and left me Pine Hill and three hundred slaves.”
“And ye freed them all and sold the place. I remember that well,” Stephen said. “It created quite a furor.”
“Yes,” Thomas Meredith said, smiling; “so much so in fact that I found myself most unwelcome in Alabama. That was when I went to Boston.”
“Why?” Aurore demanded. “Why did you do it, monsieur?”
“You ask me something very difficult to answer, Madame. It’s a thing about which people often feel very keenly . . .”
“Ye’ll find us strangely civilized,” Stephen laughed. “Please say what ye want to. Then perhaps my good wife will cease to think me mad.”
Thomas Meredith’s eyebrows rose.
“My husband has often expressed a desire to do exactly what you did,” Aurore explained. “But his friends and I have always held him back. Abolitionist sentiment has always seemed . . . well . . . a little peculiar. It isn’t too difficult to understand how a fanatical Northerner with no real knowledge of the Negro’s characteristics and no financial stake in the matter could thnk as they do, but a Southerner . . . and a cultivated gentleman like yourself . . .”
“Thank you for the kind words, Madame Fox. Frankly, I don’t like to talk about it. All the discussions seem to hinge on a sort of offensive assumption of moral superiority on the part of the anti-slave man. Some of my co-workers in the cause are indeed strange bedfellows for me. But let me put it this way: no matter how little grounds your Garrisons, Phillips, and Thompsons have for their bitter denunciations, the fact remains that from a moral standpoint slavery is wrong.”
“I don’t see it,” Aurore said crisply. “We treat the Negroes kindly—much more so, in fact, than you treat your mechanics and hired laborers in the North.”
Thomas Meredith smiled.
“Two and two do make four, don’t they, Madame? Except when two are apples, and two figs. Two wrongs have never yet added up into a right. And wrong is forever on the same side of the scale so you can’t make them balance out and cancel each other. Besides, there are abuses as Madame well knows.”
“Only a few—a very few.”
“More than I like to think about, Madame. The way that the blacks are brought in is unbelievably brutal. Oh, I know that the trade’s been abolished; but it still flourishes illegally. Has Madame ever seen a slave ship—or smelled one?”
Aurore shook her head.
“Often as many as half the Negroes aboard,” Thomas Meredith said, warming to his subject, “die during the voyage—from starvation, crowding, unsanitary conditions, and brutal treatment. Even in the interstate trade the mortality is high. Would Madame sit down to dinner with a slave trader?”
“Heaven forbid!” Aurore said.
“All over the South they are social pariahs. Why? They are coarse, cruel men. Again, why is the trade in the hands of men of that type? There is no moral stigma attached to buying a slave from one of them, but to make a living by dealing in black flesh is held despicable by the very people who sanction it—good, kindly Christian people like Madame herself.”
Aurore drew herself up very stiffly in her chair. Stephen looked at her out of the corner of his eye—a wicked grin upon his face.
“But most of all I’m opposed to it because of the way it demoralizes the Southern white and limits his chance of gaining a livelihood. More than three quarters—nay, eighty-five or ninety percent of the whites of our region don’t own slaves. Slavery is profitable—for us. But it keeps millions of whites scratching for food out of the rocky earth of the mountains and existing listlessly in the fetid, fever-ridden swamp bottoms. I’ve seen the cabins with dirt floors, children as dirty as pigs, and the emaciated slatternly women old years before their time. . . . Forgive me, Madame. I didn’t mean to offend you.”
“And you haven’t,” Aurore said. “Please go on. This is a way of thought that is new to me.”
“The point is—that as labor these whites can’t compete with the Negroes. And no section ever grew to greatness on a system that benefited such a small part of the population. Then there are other things—not perhaps fit for the ears of ladies.”
Stephen looked at Julie.
“Ye’ve finished? Well, suppose ye show you
ng Tom about the place. Peter will saddle a horse for him.”
Obediently Julie rose. Tom looked at his father, his thin face shining with eagerness. Thomas Meredith nodded. Julie put out her hand and young Tom took it. Together the two of them went out into the great hall.
“Before my wife,” Stephen said, “ye can speak freely. Ye’ll find her quite a feminist—much too enlightened for her own good!”
“What I meant—if Madame will forgive me—is the widespread practice of concubinage with slave women. Why, here in Louisiana I’ve seen Negroes as white as any Scandinavian. And these mulattos, quadroons, and octoroons constitute a real danger. They’re sensitive as all get out, and much more inclined to revolt than the blacks. Besides this debauching of our best young men doesn’t make for good physical health or mental stability.”
Aurore looked at Stephen.
“In that I agree,” she said. “Most heartily!”
Stephen’s face was beet red, and the great scar glowed clearly. “Ye’re right, of course,” he declared. “But the trouble is . . . I don’t see a solution. ‘Tis we who are enslaved no less than the blacks. Suppose I were to free my Negroes? What then? What would they do? Who would care for them? Ye’ve seen how freedmen fare. Your own Negroes for instance, how did they make out when they were set free?”
“Some—a few—splendidly. They emigrated to Boston and New York and started small businesses: laundries, carpenter shops, bootblack stands. Some of them became paid house servants for wealthy New Yorkers. The vast bulk of them got along—a sort of hand-to-mouth existence; but the rest . . .”
“Aye,” Stephen said. “What about the rest?”
“They got into trouble. Petty thievery, mostly—and, asking your pardon again, Madame—prostitution. There was even a murder or two. The fact is, they weren’t ready for freedom. But that’s what we’ve got to do now—make them ready. For they’re going to be freed—either soon and violently—or, God willing, in the future gradually of our own free wills. That’s the way I’d like to see it. But we’ve talked enough about this, don’t you think? I’d like to see the spot where Dannie lies if you’ll be so good . . .”
Stephen rose.
“Come,” he said, “I’ll show ye.”
Young Tom Meredith sat uneasily on the gentle old nag that had been saddled for him and looked around over the vast acres.
“It—it’s so big!” he said.
Julie laughed.
“Come on,” she said. “You haven’t seen half of it yet!”
They rode away from the house past the pigeonnieres where the doves circled and wheeled. On the other side was another small but richly ornamented building.
“What’s that?” Tom demanded.
“That’s where you’re going to stay—you and your father. It’s called a garconniêre. It was built for ‘Tienne—he’s my brother—and his guests.”
“I’d like to see the slave quarters.”
“Why?”
“No reason—I just wanted to see them, that’s all.”
“Well—all right. But they’re nothing much to see. We go this way.”
A few minutes later, young Tom sat upon the nag looking down the long rows of neat, whitewashed brick cabins. Negro children played on the steps, and here and there old grandmothers came out to wave at Julie, their black faces shining with pleasure.
The boy’s thin, sensitive face was intent and frowning. He turned his great light grey eyes upon Julie.
“Where’s the whipping post?” he demanded.
“The what?”
“The whipping post—where you beat the Negroes.”
“You’ve been reading that horrible book!” Julie snapped. “I just wish I could get my hands on that old Mrs. Stowe! I’d show her, I’ll bet you!”
“But you do have one—somewhere—don’t you?” Tom asked almost hopefully.
“Of course not!” Julie said angrily. “We don’t beat our Negroes. You Yankees are so silly!”
“I—I’m sorry,” young Tom managed. “I didn’t mean to make you mad.”
Julie’s anger vanished at once.
“It’s all right,” she said. “You know, my father’s going to let me go North to school—when I’m sixteen.”
“He is! Then please come to Boston. We have some dandy schools for girls . . . and then I could see you . . . everyday, maybe.”
At thirteen, Julie was already a lady—and a Louisiana lady at that. Her eyelids fluttered slowly, and just a hint of warm huskiness crept into her voice.
“You—you’d like that—Tom?” she murmured.
“Would I,” Tom began, “would I!” Then he stopped, his face covered with blushes and confusion.
“I’m glad,” Julie said. “I was hoping you would. But come on, I’ve got a lot more to show you!”
Before he returned to the house, young Tom had seen the sugar house with its impressively massive machinery, the chapel, the infirmary which was mostly occupied by Negro babies busily sucking on bottles of herb tea or eating mush while their mothers worked in the fields, the steamboat landing, the still unremoved wreckage of the Creole Belle, and the grave of his brother.
He stood silently before the little mound of earth, gazing upon the great marble headstone that Stephen had caused to be erected. The corners of his wide mobile mouth trembled a little.
“He was a good boy, my brother,” he whispered. “He loved everybody. I don’t know a soul who disliked him either. I sometimes wonder why God lets things like that happen. If somebody had to die why did He have to take the smartest and the bravest and the best . . . me, now . . . nobody would have missed me.
“Oh, don’t say that, Tom! I’d have missed you—very much.”
Tom looked at her, his grey eyes very wide and grave. He put up his hand and pushed back the heavy lock of dark hair that persisted in falling across his forehead.
“But then you wouldn’t even have known me,” he said.
“That would have been worse,” Julie murmured.
“Julie,” Tom said, “Julie . . .”
“Yes, Tom?”
“I . . . I . . . we . . . I guess we’d better be getting back to the house.”
Julie looked at him, the tiniest smile playing about the corners of her mouth.
“All right, Tom,” she said. “And you’d better get some rest—we’ll be up late tonight.”
“Why?”
“Tonight’s the harvest and celebration. You’ll see some fun. Come on, now.”
She dug her heels into the pony’s fat sides, and started off at a brisk trot. Young Tom followed her more slowly on the ancient nag.
“Fool!” he whispered bitterly at himself as he rode. “Stupid fool!”
At eleven-thirty, all of Julie’s guests were present at Harrow. There were Victor and Hebert Le Blanc and their sister Aurore, and James Drumond and his two sisters Helen and Martha. All these children were about Julie’s own age. Young Stephen Le Blanc, although he complacently acquiesced in his father’s plan to marry him off to Julie when she came of age, scorned the company of these infants as he called them from the lofty vantage point of his twenty-four years, and rode away to the city to join in more adult pleasures together with his friends Pierre Aucoin, Henri Lascals, Jean Sompayrac, Bob Norton, and James Duckett. Walter McGarth, who like the rest, belonged to the same group of youths that had also included Etienne, was away at Harvard, studying law.
Promptly at midnight, the whistle upon the sugar house split the night with its cry, and a slave put the torch to a huge pile of dried cane stalks. The flames ran up them to the very top and pushed the night back with its leaping, yellowed light.
Stephen, Aurore, Thomas Meredith, Andre Le Blanc, Amelia, and Mr. and Mrs. James Drumond stood in front of the sugar house before the bonfire. The Negroes came running up laughing and cheering. Stephen nodded to one of the field hands, and the Negro opened the doors of the warehouse. Instantly the blacks swarmed in, and began rolling out the hogsheads of v
in de canne. Down near the slave cabins choice cuts of beef were already turning on the spits over beds of glowing coals. Truly the Negroes lived for this night.
“They’ll get drunker than lords,” Stephen told Thomas Meretlith. “But they deserve it. They’ve worked well this season.”
Meredith was looking at his son, running with the other children into the sugar house itself. His hands, like the others, were filled with almond sticks, called by the Creoles, batons amandes, and little pain patates, or potato cakes. Around his arms were strung long strings of pecan halves. These the children would dip into the boiling sugar to make a confection known as chapelets de pecanes.
“I’m awfully afraid, Mister Fox,” he whispered, “that you’re corrupting my son with so much magnificence. Before long you’ll have him insisting that I buy him a few hundred acres and as many Negroes!”
“The lad has the breeding and carriage of a Southerner,” Stephen declared aloud. “With so fine and sensitive a face, ye’ll never make a merchant of him.”
“You’re right there, Stephen,” Andre Le Blanc declared jestingly. “Why, that boy has the lines of a gentleman about him. ‘Twould be a crime to turn him into a Damnyankee!”
“I see I’m outnumbered,” Thomas Meredith laughed. “Well, I think I’ll partake of a bit of that barbeque. It smells amazingly good.”
“I see you’ve got it seasoned Texas style,” Jim Drumond said. “We learned a lot of things there, didn’t we, Stephen?”
“Aye. Chiefly, I think, how much misery, pain and discomfort a man can endure for a cause which he doesn’t even understand. Wait, Andre, I’ll help the ladies. I wouldn’t want ye to split that elegant waistcoat.”
“Isn’t he a disgrace!” Amelia laughed. “Remember how slim and handsome he was on the night that you introduced him to me, Stephen?”
“I do—well,” Stephen said; “but ye’ve forgiven me for that—I hope.”
Amelia smiled gently.
“We’ve been very happy, Stephen. In fact, I’m very grateful to you—really, I am.”
Stephen was bending over Aurore, placing the plate of steaming barbequein her hands.
“So have I,” he murmured, “divinely happy—much more than I ever deserved.”
