Darkwater

by V. J. Banis

  “Yes, what is it?” a gruff voice asked.

  When Jennifer eyes had adjusted to the light, she was surprised to see that the voice belonged to a woman and not as she had initially supposed, to a man.

  “I’d like to see Doctor Goodman,” she said.

  “He’s busy.”

  Jennifer thought that the woman would have slammed the door in her face had she not quickly said, “I am Miss Hale, from Darkwater. I would like to talk to him about Mrs. Dere, if I may. When he has a moment, of course. I don’t wish to intrude.”

  The hand on the door paused. The woman said, after a moment, “You may come in, but I don’t know when he will be able to see you. He is busy.”

  When she had come into the hall and blinked her eyes once or twice, Jennifer could see that the housekeeper (for that she surely was, her white apron and cap marked her as a servant) more clearly. She was middle-aged and when she walked it was with a strange, rocking tread that made the floorboards creak.

  “Wait here,” she commanded, indicating a plain wooden chair that sat in the hallway. “I will see if the doctor has time to see you.”

  Her manner and tone made it plain that she resented having been forced to do so by virtue of Jennifer’s use of the name Dere, and Darkwater. The housekeeper would not have dared to refuse her admittance, knowing that she came from there, but she did not like being challenged.

  A very thin and obviously frightened maid suddenly appeared along the hall. She was hardly more than twelve or thirteen, without a curve to her spare body and she cringed in a habitual manner.

  The housekeeper saw a fit object for her anger and she roared, “Nelly where were you when the knocker was banging? What you want is a good whipping again and I’ll see that you get it good, you hear?”

  “Yes’m,” Nelly said, stepping aside and cowering, but her humble attitude and bent head did not prevent her receiving a resounding slap. The girl did not lift her eyes although she whimpered faintly.

  Jennifer made note of the girl’s pale complexion and her obvious fear, and she thought, if Walter sends Liza into servitude, that is what she will suffer. No, I cannot blame him for refusing to do that.

  The housekeeper disappeared through a door. At once the frightened little maid scurried away and was gone from sight as well.

  It was a shock to see such behavior and yet Jennifer knew it was not so unusual. So many girls had been driven into servitude since the war, and she was well aware that many of them were treated as badly as the unfortunate Nelly. Some of them, indeed, were treated far worse.

  It might be that Liza, if she were sent out to work, would fare better. Beyond question there were many good families in the South, families who treated their servants with affection and gentleness, but there was always the other possibility too.

  Liza was no meek lamb, either, like Nelly. Liza was proud and willful. Jennifer knew that first hand. What might Liza suffer if she found herself in confrontation with a cruel overseer?

  The housekeeper returned, moving along the hall in her curiously heavy way. “The doctor will see you,” she said, obviously unhappy to deliver the news. “Come with me.”

  Jennifer followed her. She found herself in a waiting room, painted a pristine white and as neat as a pin. Several chairs and a settee had been placed around the room and Jennifer seated herself in one of the chairs.

  She hadn’t long to wait. In a moment, an inner door opened and a man in a white smock appeared.

  “Miss Hale?” he greeted her. “I am Doctor Goodman. My housekeeper said you wanted to see me. Won’t you come in, please?”

  He led her into his examining room. Jennifer’s first impression of the doctor was favorable. He looked kindly and rather old-fashioned. His thatch of white hair refused to be combed, but stuck out impertinently on all sides. Spectacles hung at a precarious angle on the top of his nose, and behind them his eyes twinkled with a jollity that belied his serious expression and scientific profession.

  “Now then,” he said when Jennifer had seated herself in the chair he indicated, “what seems to be the matter?”

  “With me, nothing,” she said, smiling. “I’ve come to you about Mrs. Dere. Mrs. Alicia Dere, that is. I understand she is a patient of yours.”

  “Yes, that she is. And you are the new companion. We’ve heard of you here in town.” His twinkling eyes told her that she had been the object of much gossip and speculation since her arrival.

  “I suppose newcomers are not so common here,” she said. “And no doubt anything to do with the Deres is of utmost interest.”

  “Exactly,” he said, bobbing his head to acknowledge that they did indeed understand one another. “But, about Mrs. Dere...?”

  “I thought perhaps you could tell me a little about her condition.” She saw his frown and quickly added, “I appreciate the doctor-patient relationship, of course. But I am meant to be her nurse as well as her companion, and I need to know a little more about what is wrong with her.”

  The doctor hesitated for a moment. Then, as if he had reached a decision, he said abruptly, “Nothing.”

  The brevity of his reply so startled her that she said, “I beg your pardon.”

  “Nothing is wrong with Mrs. Dere,” he said, seating himself on the opposite side of his desk from her. “That is to say, nothing medical. I have examined her again and again and I can find nothing at all wrong with the woman.”

  “I rather thought as much myself. I had the impression she was malingering. And yet....”

  He nodded his head in understanding. “Yes, there is that ‘and yet,’ isn’t there? There is no doubt that she feels poorly. She could not be pretending all of that.”

  “Frankly, there have been times when I thought surely her physical pain must be real. She suffers so with it.”

  “The mind is a powerful thing.”

  “Yes, that is true.” Jennifer paused, thinking. “Don’t you think that some fresh air and sunshine, and maybe a little exercise...?”

  “They would do no harm, and probably some good. If you could get her to agree to them. But there is more to it than that, I’m sure of it. She is tragically unhappy, and I believe it is this that is making her ill.”

  He looked for a moment as if he were going to venture his opinion as to the cause of this unhappiness, but at the last minute he thought better of it. She was, after all, only a paid servant of the Deres and he their physician, and they could hardly begin to gossip about the Dere’s personal business.

  Jennifer stood up. “Then there is nothing you can advise me to do so far as the care of Mrs. Dere?”

  “Try to keep her calm and avoid the sort of excitement that brings on her spells. And it might not be a bad idea to pursue your notion of getting her outside a little bit each day. But I wouldn’t insist on it if she doesn’t feel so inclined. Most of all, I think she wants babying. Perhaps if her husband spent a little time with her, it would cheer her up somewhat....” He let his voice trail off. That was as far as he dared venture into that subject.

  “I will do what I can.” She started for the door, but before she reached it, a thought occurred to her and she turned back.

  “Doctor, do you know a woman who lives in the swamp, Mrs. Hodges?”

  He smiled and nodded. “Yes. The people hereabouts call her the swamp witch. I would avoid her if I were you. She’s mostly harmless, but certainly unstable.”

  “Do you think...?” She hesitated. “Do you believe she is a witch?”

  He gave her a look of mild reproach. “No, I don’t believe that, but she has effected some cures that seemed like magic to folks hereabout. She’s very knowledgeable about herbs and natural methods of healing, and there are miracles that can be worked with them if one knows enough. I wish I knew more. She has cured one or two cases where medical science was helpless. But that is not real magic, it is only advanced knowledge. That is all the Middle Ages witches were, you know, people who were misfits and who were, in many cases, ahead of th
eir time in the knowledge they possessed, the same kind of knowledge, of herbs and berries and such. But why do you ask about Mrs. Hodges?”

  “I was only curious. I had heard she was the mother of a girl living at Darkwater, Liza. Do you know the child?”

  “Yes, but I could hardly believe she is Mrs. Hodges daughter. The woman is seventy if she’s a day, and Liza can’t be more than thirteen or fourteen.”

  “She could be a granddaughter, perhaps.”

  “It is possible,” he said with a shrug. “But I would still doubt it very much. That would presuppose that at some time Mrs. Hodges had a child of her own, and if she did, no one around here ever heard of it. She has lived in this neighborhood for decades, you see, and surely someone would have known if she had a child. Word gets around.”

  “I suppose that is so. But I’m told Mr. Dere found her with Mrs. Hodges. If she is not Mrs. Hodges daughter, where do you suppose she came from?”

  Another shrug. “There was so much confusion after the war. Children were abandoned by families who could not care for them. I suspect if the truth were known, and probably it never will be, that was the case with Liza. Someone—an unmarried woman, a derelict mother, a family whose fortunes had been destroyed—left her somewhere in the hope that someone would find her who could care for her. In this case, that someone was apparently Mrs. Hodges.”

  The doctor was right, of course. Mrs. Hodges was much too old to be Liza’s mother. If she herself had not been so shaken by her encounter with Mrs. Hodges, Jennifer would have realized this for herself at once. And Alicia, surely Alicia was intelligent enough to accept the truth for herself.

  Most likely the truth was something along the lines of the scenario the doctor had outlined. But if Liza’s was not Mrs. Hodge’s child, whose child was she, and how had she come to be living in the swamp with the old woman?

  CHAPTER TEN

  Helen had not yet returned to the trap. Jennifer went along to the Emporium and found Helen there, waiting while the clerk wrapped a bolt of fabric for her.

  “The children need some new clothes. Liza is too big already for her clothes. They were mostly hand-me-downs anyway.”

  Again Jennifer was struck with the treatment afforded Liza, as if she were one of the family and yet not quite that either. She knew Helen did not care for having Liza there, and resented her. At the same time, her sense of fairness and her natural affection for children made it impossible for her to be really cruel to the child.

  Surely, Jennifer thought, Liza must instinctively sense this ambivalence of feeling toward her. No doubt that was part of the explanation for her aloofness.

  By the time they had finished their shopping and had made the drive back to Darkwater it was later afternoon. The return trip was pleasant. Helen kept to herself any curiosity she might have felt regarding Jennifer’s visit to Doctor Goodman.

  Perhaps, Jennifer thought, that was because she had no curiosity. Surely by now she too had concluded there was nothing physically wrong with Alicia, and that her spells sprang from unhappiness and her possessively jealous nature.

  For that ailment, Jennifer saw no relief. She felt certain herself that sending Liza away would not solve the problem. With Liza gone, Alicia would only look around for someone else toward whom to direct her jealousy and resentment. And Jennifer did not have to look far to guess who that would be.

  “By the way,” Helen said as they came up the drive to Darkwater, “we will be having company this evening for dinner.”

  Since Jennifer had been at Darkwater there were frequently guests at dinner, but this, she gathered, was something a bit different.

  “Is there an occasion?”

  “Some of the local men are talking of forming a grange. They want to discuss it with Walter after dinner. Of course they’ll be bringing their families with them.”

  “Perhaps I can help by looking after the children.”

  “There will be servants enough for that. And some of the children are old enough to help look after the others. You will be more of an asset at the dinner table, and perhaps afterward, in the parlor. Do you play the pianoforte?”

  “A little. But I’m not an artist, I’m afraid.”

  Helen dismissed that with a wave of her hand. “Folks out here get hungry for entertainment. If you can manage to bang out a tune on the keys, they won’t be too critical, I assure you.”

  Jennifer hesitated a moment before asking, “Will Alicia be with us for dinner?”

  “She rarely feels well enough for company,” Helen said, her voice dry and noncommittal. “I rather expect she will have a tray in her room, as she usually does.”

  Later, in her own room, it occurred to Jennifer that she had been virtually asked to help act as hostess in Alicia’s place. It gave her a thrill to think of acting as Walter’s hostess, greeting his friends and entertaining them.

  She knew she should feel guilt for her happiness, but she could not. Surely it was innocent. Helen could not suspect how she felt about Walter. It was the sort of favor she would have asked of any female living in the house, but to her, it was like every wonderful happening rolled into one. For this night, at least, she could pretend, pretend that she and Walter were not doomed to be forever apart, that he did not have a wife already, and that there might be some prospect of happiness for them.

  She wore her best dress that evening, the gray silk Worth, and although it was clearly well worn, she knew it made a good impression upon the ladies when she entered the dining room.

  She did not pay so much attention to what the men thought, except one. She glanced in Walter’s direction and found his eyes on her. Was it only her imagination or was there a gleam of appreciation in them? Surely he rose to his feet more quickly than the others, and moved to hold her chair for her.

  In addition to herself and Helen and Walter, and Susan and Martin Donally, there were three other couples, the Mortons, the Sands, and the Baumgardners.

  That these last two couples should even be at this dinner party said something about the new South that had emerged from the ashes of the war. The Sands, she knew at once, were creoles, descendants from the original French settlers of Louisiana. Of dark complexions and dark hair, the creoles had in the past looked with disdain upon the ’Merican coquin, those flatboatmen and swindlers from the North, as they saw it, who had dared to try to mingle with the aristocratic creoles.

  The Baumgardners were of that breed of German settlers who had come to this rich new land and had, many of them, carved out vast estates for themselves. He was a man of about fifty, fat and florid but with a sort of robust vitality that made him seem younger and slimmer. His wife was pale and puffy, a soft little creature without angles or lines, only lush curves. She spoke with the thick accent he had almost lost.

  The Mortons were young, in their thirties and energetic. It was such as these, Jennifer believed, who would rebuild the South. The old aristocracy had gone soft, spoiled by luxury. The Deres had fared well partly because they were strong, hard-working people. Even Helen, obviously bred to wealth and class, could put herself to work in the kitchen without any seeming distaste for menial tasks.

  For this occasion, Darkwater did itself proud. From somewhere Bess had produced extra servants to help prepare and serve the food. The dining room looked lovely. Although it was not furnished in what could be considered a luxuriant manner, the pieces there were good and old and handsome, and tonight they were at their best advantage, polished until one could see one’s face in the gleaming wood. Arrangements of flowers had been placed about the room and scores of candles flickered softly, and the mismatched dishes that the family used from day to day had been replaced with what was surely “the good china.”

  It had been many years since Jennifer had been seated at a meal like this. Because day to day life at Darkwater was simple, it was easy to forget that the Deres were aristocrats and, by the standards of the time, wealthy.

  On this night, she was reminded as course followed
course, each more beautiful and tastier than the one before. Bess had made use of the local food available, whereas in the past delicacies of every imaginable sort might have been imported for the occasion—but Louisiana could provide a table in abundance, as the dinner proved. From the swamps came frog’s legs and crayfish and shrimp, and from the forests, game birds and a wild pig. From right here on Darkwater came chicken for the poulet noir, and the greens and the sugar with which the yams were sweetened.

  Jennifer felt as if she were intoxicated, although she barely sipped at the wine set before her. She thought of her mother, and of the years of deprivation, and a wave of sadness made her eyes smart. The food at this table would have fed them for months.

  “I had thought you would enjoy the diversion,” Walter said at one point, leaning close to her, “but you look as if it makes you want to cry.”

  “Perhaps it does,” she said, but she beamed because he had noticed her and had taken the trouble to try to cheer her.

  Alicia did not appear at the table. As Helen had predicted, she remained in her room, ostensibly eating from a tray. She did manage to make her presence felt, however. As the group was sitting down to dinner, Alicia rang the bell in her room and demanded to see her husband. Dinner waited while he answered the summons. Jennifer could not know what transpired between husband and wife, but when Walter returned after several minutes, his face was flushed with anger.

  Later, as dinner progressed, he was twice more called away and Jennifer could see that his patience was being sorely strained. She herself could not understand why Alicia had chosen not to join the guests. She herself had tried to persuade Alicia that she was quite well enough to eat at the table with them, but Alicia had remained convinced otherwise.

  “What do you know of the way I feel?” Alicia had demanded petulantly. “I lie here suffering and no one knows or even cares.”

  Well then, Jennifer had thought, dropping the subject, let her sit alone and miss everything if she chooses.