by Kyle Onstott
‘A nice young gen’leman, and right well fixed, seems like,’ opined Mrs. Satherwait. ‘A good wife will bring him right to Jesus.’
‘I aims to,’ said Blanche possessively.
8
The horse under him again, the saddle between his legs, felt good to Hammond. The horse was fresh and broke into a slow canter. Hammond was not aimless, but he was in no haste except to escape from the cloying affability of Crowfoot. The sunshine poured down upon him.
Well, he had accomplished his errand, had got what he had come for. He was satisfied. Marriage was an obligation to his Hammond blood, which should not be permitted to perish. Blanche was petulant and would need to be humoured. But what was a white lady for but to humour? This one was certainly pretty, at least what parts of her he could see. He reflected on the challis dress. How small Blanche’s waist! How full her breasts, and she so young! Hammond had little misgivings about her shape. What still bothered him was the expanse of pale flesh. But he would no doubt get used to it.
The road was good and he let the stallion have his head for a stretch, but the girth seemed loose and he drew up, dismounted and tightened it. The road led through a wood and Hammond felt strangely lonely. It was a new sensation; he had never been lonely. He had no desire to return to Crowfoot, but rather a longing to get back to Falconhurst, to see his Negroes and put them to work.
It was his father’s errands quite as much as his own that took Hammond from home; it was his father’s desire, even more than his own, that he be married; his father’s passion for pure Mandingos was taking him to Coign Plantation. Riding out of the woods into a clearing, Hammond saw turkey buzzards against the blue of the sky; he watched the ease and grace with which they soared and glided. Further on, down the wind from a clump of trees, his nostrils caught the stench of carrion.
He had come five, possibly six, miles on his unhurried way without meeting anybody, but was sure he was on the right way to Coign when behind him he heard a horse at a hard gallop. He turned in the saddle and the other horseman raised his arm and beckoned him to wait. It was Charles.
‘I’m a-goin’ with you,’ Charles declared, out of breath.
‘No, you not. You turnin’ around and a-goin’ right back to Crowfoot. You runnin’ off.’
‘No, I not. Papa done say I kin,’ protested the boy.
‘Say you kin whut?’ Hammond demanded.
‘Say I kin go home with you to Falconhurst. Don’ you want me?’
‘I wants you, all right. You welcome. But you lyin’.’
‘Papa did so, he said,’ Charles was vehement. ‘I ast him, and he say I should ketch up and go along with you. I swear he say it, I swear on the Bible.’
‘You hadn’t ought to run your horse like that. He all over foam and he breathin’,’ admonished the older boy.
‘I had to ketch up, didn’ I?’
‘I still thinks you lyin’ to me.’
Charles made an effort to focus his eyes to look Hammond in the face. ‘I swear,’ he said.
Hammond still did not credit the youth’s oath, but his dislike for him had moderated, and Charles’ company took the edge off his loneliness.
They reached their destination some hours later, after a leisurely journey spent mainly in discussing the desirability of owning fighting niggers. Coign sat on an eminence that was hardly to be called a hill. ‘The Coign’ in letters of Gothic, surrounded by filigree of wrought iron, stretched about the two gates of the same material, which stood open. The gilded knobs at the tops of the pickets which made the gates were so tarnished that they were nearer black than golden. Beyond the gates stretched a straight avenue of walnut trees, their branches meeting and interlacing, between the sturdy trunks of which could be seen the pillars of a Doric portico. Ham had not anticipated such magnificence.
The walnut trees ended abruptly on a lawn, but the driveway continued around the lawn in a symmetrical oval. The expanse of grass and weeds was broad enough to permit one coming up the avenue to stop at its end and enjoy the complete façade of the brick Georgian mansion, including the wings which flanked it at either end.
This was a mansion indeed. Chaste, and even austere, the house was uncluttered with ornamentation, and the eye was left free to appraise the delicate, yet sturdy, proportions of the whole edifice. Four tall chimneys took flight from the ends of the main part of the house, but failed to relieve the sombre picture. The white paint scaled from the heavy cornice and from the window frames of the wings, but under the roof of the portico it was unmarred.
A rheumatic old mulatto, neatly dressed and shod, appeared from around the corner of the house to take the horses. ‘Good evenin’, gentlemen. Your horses are fatigued. I’ll see to them,’ he said, bowing but without obsequiousness, and gesturing, palm upward, toward the door.
Hammond, followed by Charles, stepped on the porch and raised the brass knocker. Tender spears of yellow grass grew in a crack between the flagging of the floor. The wait was long and Ham was startled by his own voice when he remarked, ‘Nobody here, seem like, but only that ol’ buck.’ He had reached toward the knocker a second time when the door swung silently open.
‘Gentlemen!’ the servant who opened it greeted the youths. ‘Mista Wilson is sleeping, but is due to wake. Will you not come in?’ he asked cordially but without enthusiasm, and led the way across the wide hall into a large drawing-room, where he invited them to wait. He adjusted the curtains to admit more light, then withdrew.
This ancient butler had Caucasian features and was all but white. His jowls sagged and there were heavy bags beneath his eyes, but he had been handsome and was still distinguished in manner and courtly in bearing. He wore a livery of dark blue satin, well rubbed but nowhere frayed, knee breeches and powdered wool, drawn back and braided. Stockings of white silk clothed his long legs.
The elegance of the room into which the boys were ushered left them ill at ease. They whispered when they spoke. The walls were of walnut with grey damask panels outlined in tarnished gold. The draperies were of unfigured peacock blue velvet. The Kirmanshaw carpet which covered the centre of the floor left a wide border of polished oak. The furniture, if not Hepplewhite, showed the Hepplewhite influence, and the chairs were covered in a damask of yellow faded to old gold.
Above the marble mantel hung a large portrait of a tall man of middle years but with sagging jowls and baggy eyelids, like those of the butler. His long right hand rested upon the shoulder of a young black Negro who looked up at him with admiration, and on his left was depicted a handsome but leggy hound with his eyes also fixed on his master. There were no other pictures or ornaments. The portrait might have been by Benjamin West, but was somewhat too late for his American period.
The boys did not hear the approach of Mr. Wilson when at length he came, and their backs were toward him. He greeted them with the single word, ‘Gentlemen.’
Old, feeble and palsied, Wilson still seemed a monarch. But here was another version of the portrait and the butler.
‘Gentlemen,’ he repeated, ‘I demand your pardon. I was sleeping and my servant refused to wake me. Your pardon, suhs.’
‘Mista Wilson, suh?’ Hammond asked.
‘The same, suh, at your service.’
‘I Hammond Maxwell, son of Mista Warren Maxwell of Falconhurst Plantation.’
‘You?’ the old man asked. ‘You?’ He placed his hand on the boy’s shoulder and led him toward a window, stepped back and looked him up and down and focused on his face. He nodded his head and extended his hand. ‘Well, well. I’m glad to see you, son.’ He looked at Charles and asked, ‘And this young man?’
‘Charles Woodford, Major Woodford’s son, of Crowfoot. I’m goin’ to marry me his daughter, the Major’s daughter that is, and this Charles ridin’ home with me to Falconhurst.’
‘I am acquainted with the Major—slightly that is; very estimable, I believe,’ the old man guarded his statement. ‘I’m glad to see you, suh,’ he said to Charles; he turned to
Hammond, ‘Congratulations on your approaching marriage. Warren Maxwell will be pleased. You are an only son, I believe? Or is there another?’
‘Ain’t no other. Ain’t nobody but Papa and me,’ said Hammond.
‘He is fortunate to have even one son,’ sighed Wilson. ‘My eldest son was killed, shot to death in a duel. The younger boy died of the fever. Two boys and four girls, all dead. One of the girls perished in childbirth, the others died young. Warren Maxwell is fortunate.’
The old man felt behind him for the seat of the chair on which he was about to drop. ‘How is your papa?’
‘He tol’able, except his rheumatiz purty bad. Betterin’ though,’ explained Hammond. ‘I reckon he right dismal with me away. He worry when I leaves Falconhurst.’
‘Well he may, well he may. All boys are damned fools, especially if they have any spirit. No knowing what they’re doing when you take your eyes off them. You’re young?’
‘I’m eighteen,’ Hammond remonstrated. ‘Nigh on to nineteen. And Papa don’t think I a damned fool. He trust me, but he like me with him—jest craves me.’
‘Don’t wonder, don’t wonder at all. Must be twelve years or more since I saw Warren. He was much younger than I, much younger, but I liked him. Used to be crazy about black wenches, I remember, or any other colour for the matter of that, but the blacker the better. I envied him his youth and vigour. I was already ageing.’
‘Reckon he still craves ’em, only his rheumatiz——’
‘Last time I saw him, he came here and talked me out of as fine a big Mandingo wench as I ever saw and her female child, about three years old and big enough to be five—handsome. I didn’t want to sell them, but Warren had to have them—just crazy about Mandingos.’
‘Still is. That’s whut I come fer,’ declared Hammond.
‘Wonder whether he still has that wench and that child? The little one must be big enough to breed, almost.’
‘Still got ol’ Lucy, and Big Pearl we calls the young wench. They fine. Lucy still breedin’ and the young one ready. That whut I doin’ at Coign Plantation.’
Wilson levered himself upright with his hands on the arms of his chair. ‘Let us retire to the library where there is a fire, and we can talk better there,’ he suggested. ‘The evenings get chilly and at my age one likes the heat.’
He led the way and Charles put his hand on his arm to guide him.
‘Never mind,’ Wilson resented the aid. ‘I can still walk alone, a little feebly, but I can still walk.’
Despite his protest at Charles’ assistance, the aged man submitted to help from the butler who grasped his arm and steadied his way across the hall. Except for the clothes, and that the butler was younger, the two were singularly alike.
‘No good from trying to fight him off,’ smiled the elder appreciatively as the younger man eased him into a chair. ‘Bent upon having me helpless. That comes of having a son for a servant; he does what he wants to me and won’t take orders. Thinks he knows more than his master.’
‘You need help, suh,’ said the servant.
‘I know it,’ resigned the master. ‘Chairs, gentlemen.’
‘Do you want your paisley, suh?’
‘No, no, let me alone, Ben,’ replied the pampered old man. ‘But you might bring us a bottle of that Madeira, please; you know the kind, the Malvasia. The young gentlemen might enjoy it.’
‘Yes, suh; right away, suh.’
The old man nodded in the direction of the slave, and explained, ‘I wasn’t older than you, Mr. Maxwell, when old Ben was born—the first male I ever got and about the best. My get had all been girls before that—at least I believed them mine, although my older brother often poached on my domain and I wasn’t sure. Ben’s dam was a griffe wench my father had given me for my own use; I think she was his own get. I raised Ben and trained him and he has been faithful. One gets fond of a slave after seventy years. I think Ben is seventy-one or seventy-two. I’m eighty-seven. If you want a good servant, get him yourself and break him to your ways, and you know what you have.’
‘I kind of plan to sell off my bucks and keep my own wenches. Course, they all little yet, and not many,’ said Hammond.
‘Hold on to a nice, likely buck, too,’ the old man advised. ‘It’s comforting to have your own when you’re old.’
Cases of calf-bound books, a few with spines stained or cracked, lined the room, and above the bookcases the varnish over the white panelling had yellowed to tones of old ivory. Behind the four capacious chairs that ranged before the fireplace stretched a substantial table with account books, an inkwell, feather pens, a sand box, three or four of the calf-bound books for which there were vacancies in the cases, and a standing candelabrum at each end. This seemed to be the old man’s retreat.
‘Whut I come here fer was——’ Hammond began.
‘To pay me a visit, I hope.’ Wilson forestalled him from stating his errand. ‘This old tomb needs the sound of young voices. I could well wish that you might stay a week, a month, a year, as long as you will and listen to the garrulity of an old man.’
‘We has to git along towards Falconhurst,’ said Hammond.
‘Yes, yes, tomorrow or the day after, or the day after that. Meanwhile, to worry will do Warren good, teach him patience, give him to know what it means to have a son, how precious a son can be,’ and Wilson bent forward at the cost of some energy and reached out to pat Hammond on his stiffened knee.
‘I don’t crave that Papa should fret none about me. Papa count on me.’
Ben returned with a dust-laden bottle and three glasses on a tray which he set carefully upon the table. He wiped the bottle on a napkin, tenderly, inserted the corkscrew and pulled the cork, raised the bottle gently to his nostrils to appraise the bouquet, and poured the wine into the glasses. He passed the salver first to his master, next to Charles, lastly to Hammond, with a manner like that of a sovereign bestowing decorations.
His owner passed the wine back and forth under his nose, savoured a short sip of it and nodded to the slave. He raised his glass toward Hammond and proposed a toast, ‘To Warren Maxwell and to his son who is like him,’ and then, as a polite afterthought, he added, bowing in Charles’ direction, ‘And to Major Woodford and his son, suh.’ He tasted the wine again, and smacked. ‘How do you like it, gentlemen?’
‘It good, but I not knowin’ whut is it. I never had none like this afore now,’ said Hammond candidly.
‘It is Madeira—Malmsey; one learns to like the sweet stuff,’ Wilson said. ‘You may have some, Ben. Get you a glass.’
‘Thank you, suh.’
Hammond was anxious to transact his business. He liked his ancient host but felt himself remiss to squander time. He failed to fathom the old man’s motive in his avoidance of the discussion of the mission, which was in fact merely to prolong Hammond’s stay. Wilson had not expected guests, but his pleasure in entertaining them was dampened by the dread of their early departure.
Hammond tried again. ‘Whut I come here fer, Mista Wilson, suh, was you got an ol’ Mandingo buck an’ Papa craves you to borrow the buck to him to breed them two wenches.’
‘The two you got from me? Warren knows that old buck was the sire of both of them, the young one in-bred to him already.’
‘Yas, suh, Mista Wilson. Papa know that, but he don’t know nobody else who gotten a Mandingo, a pure one. He craves to try it again, craves you to borrow him the buck. Won’t take long, and Papa will pay you.’
‘Nonsense. Pay? Nonsense. But I haven’t that buck. He’s dead. A bull gored him about three months ago and old Xerxes died.’
‘Papa had laid store,’ said Hammond, betraying his own disappointment.
‘Warren Maxwell and his Mandingos! He is Mandingo mad!’
‘Mighty sweet niggers; I likes ’em, too,’ Ham defended his father.
‘Of course you do; you’ve been taught to,’ said Wilson. ‘But there are Mandingos and Mandingos. I have known Mandingos that weren’t worth kill
ing, although they are admittedly hard to kill. They are tough. I was fortunate with the bozals I got and in the progeny they produced. The original pair were big handsome varmints; old Xerxes was the original buck. They were related somehow. They tried to tell me their kinship, but never could make it clear; possibly it wasn’t clear even to them.’
‘That makes Big Pearl more bred-in even than Papa knowin’; even Lucy was bred-in, seems like.’
‘No telling how far back the incest may go. I think it’s time to stop it. Of course, I know that it results in progeny of exceptional excellence or of more exceptional degeneration. There is no middle ground. It produces paragons or monsters—nobody knows why,’ Wilson expounded.
‘But, Big Pearl and Lucy?’ Hammond refused to be diverted. ‘Whut we goin’ to do?’
‘I’d look about for a good Mandingo buck of another strain, one quite unrelated,’ suggested Wilson, but without conviction. ‘Where? I don’t know.’
‘Folks says they is plenty in Cuba,’ despaired Hammond.
‘In Cuba, yes. But smuggling Negroes is dangerous, unless you are in the business as a business and bribe the authorities to let your contraband through. It doesn’t pay to smuggle a single buck; and, anyway, you should see the buck.’
The subject bored Charles. ‘Ain’t you got no buck niggers at all? A buck’s a buck. Don’t make no difference. Whut you craves is a sucker, ain’t it?’
‘The sire makes a great deal of difference, young man,’ said the old man. ‘Never breed a Mandingo to a member of another tribe. Keep the stock pure. A hybrid cross with a Mandingo, a Mandingo mule, as I call it, is treacherous, untrustworthy. Half the bad niggers you hear about have Mandingo blood somewhere, and the wenches are as bad as the bucks—worse.’
‘That whut Papa say. That why he craves your old buck fer them wenches.’
‘He’s right. A pure Mandingo is playful as a kitten, strong as a bull-elephant. A half Mandingo is a viper, a viper, suh. Now, I’ll tell you, I have the brother of that Pearl—do you call her?’
