by Jane Peart
On the way down to call a carriage to take me back to school, he said, "I hope you won't regret your decision."
"Why should I?" I asked, thinking that the enormous raise in pay and the opportunity to be near Mama again, not to mention being with his delightful children, seemed more a windfall than any cause for regret.
"Things are not always as they seem," he remarked enigmatically. "But then you are still very young. Life has not played many tricks on you yet."
There was no time to reply, for the carriage had come and he handed me courteously into it.
I drove away thinking that in one way, at least, he was right. I'd never seen such a twist and turn of fate as meeting him again—becoming his children's governess! Nor could I then see any reason to regret it.
chapter
5
FROM CHILDHOOD I had been taught to pray before making any decision—but how often do we seek God's blessing on what we have already decided to do?
Even Mama's cautionary reply when I wrote to her of Randall's offer and my plans to accept it, did nothing to dampen my own enthusiasm for the opportunity. Even Jonathan's more direct question—"Do you really think it's a good idea?"—did not deter me.
I knew there would be the predictable clucking among the aunts about the wisdom of my taking such a position. Everyone had assumed that upon Alair's death, Randall Bondurant need no longer be considered, even remotely, a part of the family.
I didn't care what people said. I had had enough of Thornycroft with its gaunt, gray halls, its strict regimen, its drafty classrooms, its indifferent students, and aloof faculty. Nor would I miss the cold porridge and lukewarm coffee served for breakfast, the stiff Parents' Day teas, and the unrelenting code of conduct for teachers, imposed by the formidable headmistress.
At the end of the term I left Thornycroft without a backward glance and boarded the train for Virginia with happy anticipation and high hopes.
The week I spent in Richmond with Mama at Aunt Nell's was a busy one. There were duty calls to make on some relatives, and visits from others, curious about my decision. Mama was a great help to me during these episodes, tactfully steering the conversation so that I, incensed by all the unasked-for advice, did not offend anyone with sharp retorts. Actually, I did not think it was anyone else's business. The money Randall was paying me far exceeded any inner doubts of my own about accepting the position.
We were also occupied with my wardrobe, eliminating the heavy winter things I'd needed up North and substituting those I would need for the hot Virginia summer. Mama surprised me with two pretty new dresses she had made for me.
With all the visits, the fittings, the whirl of activity, we had little time alone. It was only the night before I was to leave for Mayfield that we had a chance for a real talk.
Mama came into my bedroom as I was putting the last items into my trunk. "Are you all ready then?" she asked, a wistful note creeping into her voice.
"Yes, just about." I replied. Seeing the pensive expression on her face, I gave her a fierce hug. "Don't look so sad, Mama. I'm only going a few miles away this time. It's not the same as when I left for Thornycroft."
She held me close. "I know, dear. It's just that—"
I drew back, looked into her eyes. "Just what?"
"You're stepping into such a different world—one that changed Alair, took her away from her family—"
"But Mama, I'm not marrying Randall Bondurant!" I protested. "I'm simply going to work for him."
Mama patted my cheek. "Of course, dear."
"And I'll be near enough to visit often. Maybe I can bring the little girls. Oh, Mama, you'll love them! They look so much like Alair and they're so sweet—" I rattled on, hoping to banish that sad look from her eyes. Or was I trying to quiet any last-minute doubts of my own?
"Come, let me brush your hair as I did when you were a child," Mama said, picking up the hairbrush.
I sat on a low stool in front of her while she rhythmically stroked the brush through my long hair until my scalp tingled and I grew pleasantly drowsy.
"There now," she said at last. "Come, I'll even tuck you in like the old days."
As she leaned down to kiss me good-night, I reached up and put my arms around her. "Please don't worry about me, Mama. Everything's going to be fine."
"I hope so, darling," she said, then added gently, "Don't ever forget, Dru, who you are and what your values are. Remember . . . all the money in the world, all the luxuries—don't necessarily bring happiness. They didn't in Alair's case—" she broke off and then quickly went on, "Taking care of those children will be a heavy responsibility. Pray for guidance and read your Bible every day."
"I will, Mama," I promised, seeing the concern in her eyes.
"Sleep well, then, and God bless." She went out of the room, carrying the lamp with her.
Lying in the darkness, waiting for sleep, I wondered why my mother had felt it necessary to give me even gentle warnings. It was as if she feared some unknown danger in my future.
I had not missed the subtle reservations, the ill-concealed misgivings of some of my relatives when they learned of the position I was taking, but I thought Mama understood my reasons, approved my motives. But then, did I really understand them myself?
Before I could answer that question truthfully, I drifted off to sleep.
I stepped off the train at the small, yellow frame station in Mayfield into glorious June sunshine. It was far different from the day nearly a year ago when I'd come for Alair's funeral.
"Miss Montrose?" I turned at the sound of my name to see a black man in fine livery smiling in welcome. He took off his square-crowned hat, revealing a grizzled gray head. "I'm from 'Bon Chance,' miss. Mr. Bondurant done sent me to fetch you."
"Thank you," I replied, thinking there was something vaguely familiar about the man. "There is my trunk—that small red one—and my bonnet box."
He led the way to a handsome open carriage, assisted me in, placed my hatbox carefully on the seat, and buckled on my trunk. Then he swung into his place beside me and picked up the buggy whip.
Before flicking it at the backs of the two chestnut horses, he turned around.
A wide grin split his dark face.
"Reckon you doan 'member me, miss. You wuz jest a li'l bit of a thing when you and yo' mama left Montclair. I'm Trice, miss. Susie's boy. I helped hide de horses when dem Yankees done come."
I had shadowy memories of the terrible time that we had all been huddled upstairs when the Union soldiers ransacked the house. It had all been mad confusion—noise, shouts, the sound of booted feet tramping across my grandmother's Aubusson rugs. We children had watched it all in wide-eyed horror.
"Well, you can't completely forget things like that," I told him. "I'm glad to see you again, Trice."
"And I'm glad to see you, miss, all growed up to a pretty young lady. I hear tell you's comin' to live at Montclair again, take care of Miss Alair's chillen."
"That's right."
"Dat's good news. De best we's had in a while. Been sorrowful times, fo' shure!" Trice shook his head then turned, clicked his tongue, and gave a smart slap to the pair.
As we trotted along the pleasant, shaded streets, quiet now in the mid-afternoon of this early summer day, I eagerly looked right and left for familiar landmarks.
The town had changed. The people on the streets were well-dressed; the businesses in the downtown section, thriving; the streets, paved; the houses we passed, freshly painted.
When I was growing up, Mayfield was full of widows and crippled soldiers. Not one home or family had been left untouched by the war. My memory is peopled with veterans with empty sleeves, or leaning on canes, or bundled in rugs, sitting in wheelchairs.
The South seemed to be slowly recovering from its long ordeal—like an invalid gradually beginning to come alive again.
At the edge of town we paused, then turned onto the wider country road leading out to the large plantations on their sweeping acres.
When we passed the tall wrought-iron gates of Cameron Hall, I knew it wouldn't be long until we'd be approaching Montclair. My pulse quickened in anticipation.
I leaned forward as the carriage rounded the last curve, and I glimpsed the house through the foliage beyond the beautifully kept lawns. The deep woods where I had played with my cousins was on the right; the river, on the left.
I could still feel the cool, mossy ground so familiar to my child's bare feet as I looked at the sloping bank and wiggled my toes, now tightly encased in my grown-up boots. Who would have ever imagined in those days that I would be returning to Montclair as governess to my cousin's children?
I thought again of Alair's funeral and how shocked Aunt Garnet had been that the family had not been received at Montclair; of how Randall, in his grief, had barricaded himself inside, refusing to see anyone. I had not seen the interior of the house since leaving it many years before.
Montclair, as we had left it—crumbling plaster, faded curtains, ravaged furniture—had been typical of many of the great houses after the war, but even my mother's vivid recollections of the Montrose mansion in the "old days" before the war had not prepared me for what greeted my eyes as the carriage rolled around the circular drive and pulled to a stop in front of the columned porch.
"Montclair"! I breathed the magic name. "Bon Chance" seemed so oddly inappropriate, considering the tragedy that shrouded the place.
I could not conquer a certain sense of melancholy as I mounted the steps. Could a house really renounce its history? Would not the past always be a persistent whisper? Once, music and laughter had echoed through its great halls. Then came the war, with its accompanying toll of death and suffering, filling it with haunting memories. I recalled my mother's sad telling of the disintegration of Malcolm Montrose, heir to Montclair, when he returned after the war, losing himself in bouts of drinking and gambling until finally Montclair passed into Bondurant's hands on the turn of a card.
Once again tragedy had struck, and the instant I stepped across the threshold I felt an air of oppressive sadness that was almost palpable.
Inside, I found that much had changed. I looked around the circular center hall, noticing that all the crystal prisms of the great chandelier had been replaced. One by one, the precious hand-cut pieces had been stolen during the Yankee raids. Other changes immediately met my eye: The lovely wainscoting had been painted, and the floor and steps of the curving staircase, once polished to a mellow sheen by a house servant, was now covered with a moss green, velvety carpeting.
The double doors of the parlor were standing open. From where I stood, I could see that the parlor had been entirely redecorated. Carved furniture, upholstered in satin, replaced the delicate Sheraton tables and the crewel-embroidered, linen-covered wing chairs. Velvet draperies covered the windows and glass-globed lamps topped ornate tables. Over the fireplace hung a large, gold-framed mirror instead of the family portraits I recalled.
The white walls, dark woodwork, and the massive furniture set upon the lavish floral carpeting in red, blue, beige, and violet, imparted a sense of sumptuousness quite different from the elegant, more refined Montclair I remembered. Perhaps Alair, brought up in the patched shabbiness of the post-war houses we all lived in, wanted the most extravagant and colorful surroundings she could buy.
This house meant many things to me, and I was somewhat dismayed by the changes. As I looked about, I could not help missing the more spacious feeling of the former days. This was not the Montclair where I had grown up, but Bondurant's "Bon-Chance."
chapter
6
I'M NOT SURE how long I stood there, wrapped in reverie, until a soft voice drew my attention back to the present.
Standing at the foot of the staircase was a tall, striking-looking woman in a gray poplin dress with a wide, white collar and a starched apron and cap. Dark eyes set in a coffee-colored face studied me warily.
"Afternoon, miss," she said. "I'm Vinny. I'm to show you to your room and help you get settled."
"Well, thank you, Vinny."
I turned to see Trice bringing in my trunk and hatbox. "One of de house servants will carry dese upstairs for you, miss," he told me. Then, before he went back outside, he grinned. "Sho' is good to see you back at Montclair—I mean Bon Chance" He chuckled. "I keeps forgettin'."
So do I , I thought. So do I.
As I started up the broad circular stairway, with my hand resting lightly on the polished banister, I caught fragments of the past as they passed quickly through my mind. I imagined how many feet had trod these same steps . . . from the strong woman who had been mistress here in Colonial times to the last bride, Alair! All had come and gone and yet the house had survived them all and would remain forever "Montclair."
It had stood through Indian raids, fires, and clashes of neighbors on opposite sides of two wars—the War for Independence and the War Between the States, or "The War of Northern Aggression," as I was taught to call it.
Yes, this house had endured both national and personal tragedies and it would go on, whatever happened.
"Come this way, miss." Vinny picked up my hatbox and started up the stairs.
I followed her, pausing before the gallery of the brides of Montclair. Each young woman who had married a Montrose had been preserved in oil, her portrait commissioned by a world-renowned artist. When she had married Lee Montrose, Mama had followed the tradition, but I didn't remember ever having seen her picture. I wanted to see it now.
I stopped in front of the stunning likeness of a young woman and gazed at it lovingly. Before my father was killed in the war, Mama's hair had been a lustrous sable brown. But it had turned snowy white overnight with the shock of his death.
Slowly I moved on to stand before each portrait of the other brides.
At the landing, I halted. Something was missing.
"Where is the portrait of the children's mother, Miss Alair?" I asked.
Vinny did not turn around right away, but I noticed a stiffening of her shoulders, a certain rigidity as she straightened her back.
"Vinny?" I persisted. "Mama said she was wearing her wedding gown. Randall . . . Mr. Bondurant . . . commissioned it before they were married, said no one was to see it before the wedding. But Aunt Harmony sent for Aunt Garnet and Mama to come see it before it was sent away to be framed. I understand it was life-size. Wasn't it ever hung?"
When Vinny turned around, I was startled at the change in her expression. The full mouth had tightened into a straight line; the huge dark eyes blazed with anger.
"Yes'm, it was. Right on the landin' of the staircase, so's you could see it from downstairs and as you was comin' up. Miss Alair look jest like an angel in that picture. But Mr. Randall... he had it taken down the day she died. Had Trice take it up to the attic. But I don't think that was right, ma'am. She the children's mother, no matter what. No ma'am. Not right." She shook her head.
I was taken aback by the trembling fury in her voice, the wild look in her eyes, the way her hands were clenched into tight fists at her side.
"But why would he do that . . . unless in his sorrow he couldn't bear to be reminded of his loss?" I mused aloud.
In our family it was considered more proper to hang portraits of dead relatives than of living ones. Usually these were draped with crepe, and often enclosed within the frame were pressed flowers from the casket or perhaps even a lock of hair. Southerners always mourned their dead openly and with great ceremony. That's why the missing portrait was so disturbing.
"No ma'am, I doan think—" She stopped mid-sentence, her eyes widening before she ducked quickly and scurried up the rest of the steps. I was left alone, puzzled for only a moment by her sudden departure, for just then I heard a voice behind me.
"I trust your journey was not too tiring, nor the trip from Richmond too uncomfortable."
I whirled around, grabbing hold of the banister to steady myself, and faced my employer, my dead cousin's husband. He stared at me
without expression.
"Not at all," I murmured, wondering how much of the conversation with Vinny he had overheard.
"The girls have been waiting impatiently for you all afternoon. They've been most anxious to see you. Perhaps after you've refreshed yourself, Vinny could take you to them," he said. Then, projecting his voice authoritatively in the direction of Vinny's flight, he asked, "Are Miss Lenora and Miss Lalage in the nursery wing?"
"Yes, sir, Mr. Randall," she called from her hiding place. "Matty tried to get them to take a rest before Miss Dru arrived, but I doan know for sure if they did," Vinny answered primly.
"Well, after you help Miss Montrose get settled, see about it."
"Yes sir."
"I hope everything will be satisfactory," he said to me. "I didn't know which room was yours when you lived here as a child, but I have ordered the rooms overlooking the gardens to be readied for you . . . unless you have some preference—" Randall's face was masked behind the brooding eyes.
"I'm sure everything will be fine," I replied, still wondering if he had heard my questions to Vinny.
"Then I shall leave you to get settled. I'll be dining out this evening, so you will have dinner alone with the children. It will give you a chance to get to know them better."
With that, he gave me a curt nod, turned, and walked back into one of the downstairs rooms, shutting the door behind him.
When Vinny reappeared, her subdued manner revealed that the master of Bon Chance was one whose word was law, and she intended to abide by it. There was no idle chatter as she led me to the room that had been prepared for me.
It was luxurious beyond my imagining—spacious and beautifully appointed. The furniture was French, of pale wood. Everything else was blue and white—the scrolled wallpaper, the blue draperies and white lace curtains adorning the windows that opened onto a balcony with a view of the river in the distance. Off the bedroom was a small sitting room with a fireplace of white marble, a daintily curved sofa upholstered in blue satin, a desk, and two armchairs.
