by Kyle Onstott
‘This all?’ demanded Blanche, as the surrey stopped and she looked at the house.
‘This it!’ declared Hammond.
A boy appeared from the shadows and a candle was lighted in the kitchen. A light also shone from Maxwell’s bedroom.
‘Git Vulcan to take care of these horses,’ Hammond told the boy. ‘They hongry.’
Lucretia Borgia waddled onto the gallery. ‘Oh, suh, Masta, su’,’ she embraced Hammond with affection. ‘An’ this the new miz? Ain’t she purty?’ and the other arm went about Blanche, who disengaged herself. ‘Ever sence your mamma die, I been wantin’ ’nother purty white mist’ess, an’ now I got me one,’ continued Lucretia Borgia.
Meg scampered from the carriage and threw his arms about his mother’s wide thighs, claiming her attention.
The elder Maxwell, attended by Memnon, the blue coverlet around his shoulders, appeared in the front door. ‘Ham,’ was all he said as his son went to kiss him. He brushed a tear from his eye.
‘This Miz Blanche. This your daughter now, Papa. How you goin’ to like her?’ Hammond introduced his wife, a white figure in the dark.
The old man drew the girl towards him and kissed her forehead. ‘I goin’ to like her an’ you does, an’ she like you. Welcome home, my dear, to Falconhurst. ’Tain’t much, not fine-haired like Crowfoot, but it right comfortin’. We goin’ to be content.’
‘Whure at you goin’ to make the new house?’ asked Blanche.
‘Over on the knoll, I reckon,’ Hammond motioned, ‘—if we builds it.’
‘Come in, come in, an’ be at home. I’d a stayed up an’ I sure you comin’ tonight,’ said the old man.
‘Go in with Papa,’ Hammond told his wife. ‘I’ll wait fer Vulc to take the mares.’
As soon as the door was closed, he turned to Lucretia Borgia. ‘How Ellen?’ he asked. ‘Whure she?’
‘Ellen, pore thing, jest a-cryin’ an’ cryin’, ever sence you go, suh. She sleepin’ with me in the kitchen, suh. She not wantin’ to come out.’
‘You don’ reckon it make no difference with Ellen, me a-gettin’ married?’
‘No, suh, I reckon not,’ agreed Lucretia Borgia doubtfully.
‘Tell Ellen not cry. She my wench, an’ goin’ to be—always. You tell her. Tell her I see her, come mornin’. She knew I got to marry, Papa wantin’ a chil’.’
‘I know, Masta, suh, I tell her whut you says. Won’t do no good, but I tell her.’
‘Mede an’ them all right? Niggers all well?’ Hammond changed the subject.
‘Reckon you goin’ to barn Mede now. Big Pearl don’ need him no more; Lucy neither.’
‘They’s knocked?’ asked Ham with satisfaction.
‘Lucy say,’ Lucretia Borgia confirmed, but added, lest her own status be forgotten. ‘An’ me, I feels like havin’ me twins agin. Two of ’em. I feels jest like the other time.’
‘Cain’t tell yet, I reckon,’ said Hammond and went into the house.
Hammond had hardly seated himself when Meg appeared with a tray of steaming toddies, three of them.
‘Whut fer the other ’un?’ the master demanded.
The boy looked up in his fear of having offended. ‘It fer Mist’ess, suh. That right?’ he asked and sucked his lip.
‘Ladies don’ never drink corn. Don’ you know that?’
‘Corn? Inside the house?’ demanded Blanche, amazed. ‘I’m temp’ance. Ain’t goin’ to be no corn whure I at.’
‘Medicine,’ explained the older man soothingly. ‘Jest medicine. My rheumatiz.’
‘In that case——’ Blanche condoned.
‘An’ Hammond here, he tired. An’ you are. Better swallow a toddy fer your headache, an’ you got one. It vile, I knows; but it sovereign.’
‘I couldn’t. It ain’t right. Cain’t stan’ jest smellin’ it,’ protested Blanche.
‘Medicine,’ insisted Maxwell.
‘My head does ache me awful, a-jouncin’ in that surrey,’ said Blanche, reaching for the glass. She sniffed the drink, made a face, and tasted.
‘Drink it down—hot as you kin stan’,’ the old man urged.
The girl took another sip. ‘I reckon it do ease my head,’ she conceded. ‘But it taste awful.’
‘Sure do,’ agreed the father, drinking.
Hammond described his trip to his father, also told of Charles’s failure to return to his home, but said nothing of the Woodfords’ absence on his own arrival nor of their threats not to permit the marriage. He was undecided whether his father should know of the unpleasantness, and postponed the narration of it at least until Blanche was absent.
Memnon rang the supper bell and went to help his master, who rejected his aid. Maxwell rose from his chair and, only partly in need of their support, encircled the waists of Ham and Blanche as he propelled them toward the dining-room. He took his place at the head of the table, but ate nothing, having eaten his supper before he went to bed.
Meg, in clean clothes that fitted him better than those he had worn on the journey, stood at his master’s chair and heaped his plate with ham and fried eggs, begrudging Memnon the honour of pouring the coffee into which Meg hastened to pour molasses and cream. He concerned himself with Hammond only. Alph, even though there were no flies, stood on the other side of the table and waved the peacock brush.
Memnon served his mistress, who sought to impress her father-in-law with a display of her elegance. She toyed daintily with her napkin, extended her little finger, and was careful to rest her knife and fork, when not in use, on the bread beside her plate. Protesting that she was not hungry, she ate heartily.
Half-way through the meal, Hammond sent Meg to summon Lucretia Borgia, who came and planted herself confidently just inside the door from the kitchen passage.
‘That Tense, you got her in an’ ready?’
‘Yas, suh, Masta, suh; Tense all washed, like you says, an’ ready to wait on Miz Blanche.’
The master suggested that the girl should come in and Lucretia Borgia went to get her.
‘This the one I tellin’ you Papa an’ me pick out fer yourn, to wait on you an’ do whut you wants her,’ Hammond explained to Blanche. ‘She goin’ to be all yourn.’
Lucretia Borgia returned, leading by her shoulder the light yellow girl, her head hanging in her diffidence. Her plain frock, reaching to her naked ankles, was clean and over it Lucretia Borgia had pinned a white fichu.
Hammond extended his hand toward the girl in invitation. ‘Come on over here, Tense. Nobody not goin’ to do nothin’ to you.’
The girl, unafraid of the master, stepped forward.
‘No, other side the table,’ he said. ‘This your new mist’ess, like I tol’ you about. Curtsy to her, nice-like. You goin’ to be hern, and do fer her, goin’ to do whut she say, ever’thing she tell you. Un’erstan’?’
Hortense went to the other side of the table, as directed, and dropped what was meant for a curtsy, but remained out of the range of her mistress’s reach.
Hammond raised his eyes to his wife’s face to see her pleasure in the present he had made her. ‘How you like her?’ he asked.
‘That?’ demanded Blanche. ‘You ’speck me to put up with that? She your wench, that plain.’
‘Don’t talk so. Not front of Papa.’ Hammond’s face reddened as he spoke. ‘She ain’t. I ain’t touch her.’
‘Whut fer, then, she go to your side the table then. She ain’t skeared of you, an’ she is of me. Needn’t tell me—I knows. A purty one like that, an’ you ain’t never touch her? I tell by the way she roll her eyes towards you.’
Lucretia Borgia was unable to leave her master in the lurch. ‘No’m, Miz Blanche, ma’am,’ she protested. ‘Tense pure yet.’ She stooped to raise the girl’s skirt. ‘You kin feel fer your own self.’
‘No! No! Lucretia Borgia!’ cried Hammond. ‘Miz Blanche is a lady; don’ know nothin’ about them kind of things.’
‘Well, anyway, Tense a virgin. Masta ain’t took her, ain’t even look a
t her, yet,’ muttered the chastened Borgia. ‘Dido keepin’ her pure fer him, time come he ready.’
Hammond signalled with his head for Lucretia Borgia to retire. Maxwell cleared his throat, and rubbed one hand with the other to ease the pain, which had suddenly grown worse. Blanche’s flushed face flooded with tears; she regretted that she had raised such a subject. Hammond folded his arms and pushed his chair back from the table, waited for his wife’s weeping to stop.
At length her tears were exhausted and he spoke. ‘You doesn’t like this one, you kin have any of ’em. Go through the cabins an’ take your pick.’ (He made unspoken reservations concerning Ellen and Dite.) ‘This Tense, though, is the best we got—soun’ an’ spry, an’ well raised an’ pure—ain’t never been touched. Has she, Papa?’
‘I ain’t knowin’,’ the old man shook his head. ‘Whut difference? Ladies ain’t in’erested.’
‘This one good as any,’ Blanche resigned herself; but could not refrain from adding spitefully, ‘I reckon you’ve had all of ’em.’
‘One more toddy, jest one, afore we go up,’ suggested Maxwell, embarrassed by the quarrel. ‘Do you both good. You petered out, a-marryin’ an’ a-ridin’ an’ all. Let your boy stir ’em, Ham. He like to, an’ he stir better ones than Mem.’
The quarrel subsided. Blanche wondered why she had raised it. There was only Hortense’s delicacy and beauty to arouse her jealousy. She had no evidence for the charge she had made, but knew that such a wench could never have escaped Dick’s, Charles’, and probably even her father’s, favours at Crowfoot.
She drained her glass. Her headache had vanished but she felt slightly dizzy as Hammond rose to escort her to the room that had been his mother’s. He steadied her elbow as they climbed the stairs. Lucretia Borgia had taken Blanche’s bag to her room, had lighted the candles, and given final cautions to Tense, who waited in trepidation to serve her new mistress.
‘Git yourself ready an’ in bed,’ Hammond said. ‘I’ll come back.’
‘Whure you a-goin’?’ his wife asked in surprise.
‘Down an’ talk some more to Papa. Let you git off your clo’s. I comin’ back right away. Let Tense here do fer you.’
Reaching the foot of the stairs, Hammond detoured through the kitchen, where he knew he would find Ellen. He trembled in anticipation of seeing her. Meg was at the table eating the food that Hammond had left on his plate, and Ellen was drying dishes for Lucretia Borgia.
She looked up and saw her master in the doorway, spreading his arms to her. The plate she was wiping dropped from her hands and shattered on the brick floor as she moved ecstatically towards him. Hammond embraced her and kissed her eager mouth.
Tears came into the girl’s eyes, mingled fear and doubt and joy. She buried her face in his coat and shook with sobs. The boy held her close, saying nothing. At length he raised her head and kissed her tearful lids. A long while he held her in his arms, smiling down at her.
Meg went on intently eating his food, with an occasional furtive glance at the lovers. With this small servant or with his mother, the master had no reticence.
For minutes he stood, holding the girl without a word from either. At last he held her from him, looked into her eyes and said, ‘Tomorrow!’ He surrendered her and was gone.
He felt himself refreshed, cleansed, triumphant as he returned to the sitting-room, where his father was drinking a final toddy. Hammond felt no need for one.
‘That Miz Blanche, she techy like tonight. She tired. You not used to white ladies. Pay no ’tention when she key up,’ Maxwell advised his son, seeking to minimize the significance of Blanche’s outbreak. ‘She a Hammond—high-strung. She make a good wife, an’ she gits used to—things.’
‘Yes. She goin’ to be all right, I reckon.’
Ham rose to go to bed, and the old man signalled to Memnon to help him to his feet. At the top of the stairs Meg waited to aid his master with his boots. Hammond gave the father the anticipated kiss and went into Blanche’s room.
‘Whut you been doin’? Whut keepin’ you?’ she complained.
‘Jest Papa an’ me a-talkin’.’
‘He say about me?’
‘He reckon you real nice. Papa ain’t hard on nobody.’
‘Then he ain’t mad, whut I say at supper?’
‘He say you petered out.’ Meg was kneeling, removing his master’s boots and stockings. Hammond took off his coat and shirt, and sat down for Meg to strip off his trousers. He stood up in his underwear.
‘Whure this wench goin’ to sleep?’ Blanche demanded.
‘Let her spread out on the floor,’ the husband suggested; ‘here at the foot.’
‘Not here. Not right in the room,’ Blanche protested. ‘Put her out the door in the hall.’
‘But Meg; he always sleep in the hall, out my door. Cain’t have ’em together.’ Hammond hesitated; then he added, ‘At the foot is good enough. We isn’t go to do nothin’ this evenin’.’
14
Hammond was out of his bed early. He had been five days at home. Here was his heart—in these cabins and warehouses and barns, in the cotton fields and wood lots and pastures. He drew back the curtain and looked at his precious own earth before he opened the door and with his bare foot nudged Meg awake to help him put on his clothes. In boots and underwear, followed by his valet, he went down the hall to his own room, where he had left the drab clothes that he wore on the plantation. He limped down the stairs and, without waiting to eat breakfast, went out of the door and toward the cotton field. In the distance was the gang of his slaves slowly wielding their chopping hoes. After breakfast, on Eclipse, he would go across to the gang to inspect its work. Early control of the weeds forestalled the need of chopping larger ones. The trouble was that the Negroes often chopped the cotton plants along with the weeds, caution them as he did. He did not credit them with the foresight that the more plants they destroyed the less cotton they would have to pick. The plants would require to be thinned in any event, but systematically and not by heedless chopping. He had made allowance this year for the seed that should rot and should fail to germinate, but it seemed all to have come up better than last year when it had been necessary to replant at intervals. Perhaps the white seeds of Petit Gulf variety that he had persuaded his father to substitute for the Tennessee cotton with its black seeds, previously grown on Falconhurst, would sprout with less loss.
Returning towards the house later, Hammond detoured among the cabins. He saw Tiger, his yellow first-begotten son, now four years old, and stooped down, extending his arms to the petted little slave. Tiger, usually so eager for his sire’s attention, turned and ran from him, and, running, tripped. Only his fall enabled Hammond to overtake him and gather him, screaming and kicking into his arms. Sukey, the child’s mother, appeared from her cabin, a younger and darker child on her hip.
‘Oh, it you, suh. You got him, suh,’ she faltered, seeing that the boy was safe.
Ham snuggled his face against the not-too-clean belly and kissed it before he placed the boy on the ground to scurry to his mother and hide behind her skirt.
‘They says you gone off an’ got ma’ied, Masta, suh—to a white lady?’ Sukey phrased the statement as a question, and waited for a reply. ‘Um, um!’ she mumbled. ‘I wishes you joy; sure does wish you joy.’ The woman sighed. She still enjoyed the status of having once borne a child to her young master.
Hammond thanked her and passed on to Lucy’s cabin to confirm what Lucretia Borgia had told him. Serpent oil assailed his nostrils before he reached the door. He found Mede luxuriating, naked on the bed, under Lucy’s massage. Big Pearl stood behind her mother, holding the bottle of oil. As their owner opened the door he had heard Mede grumble, ‘Ain’t you got no stren’th, woman? Now rub my shoulder hard. Hear? Hard. Twis’ it.’ The tone was at once petulant and imperious.
‘Lucy know how she goin’ to rub you. Leave her do it,’ Hammond reprimanded the young Mandingo. ‘You ain’t givin’ orders. Git up.’<
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‘That Mede!’ complained Big Pearl. ‘He always a-sayin’! Do this, do that. Reckon he done it all; don’ give nobody else no part.’
‘No part of whut?’ Hammond questioned.
‘No part of makin’ that sucker I got in me; Mammy say I got.’
‘Big Pearl, shut your mouth. Masta wantin’ to know, he ast,’ scolded Lucy, jealous that her daughter should blurt the proud tidings that it was her own prerogative to tell. ‘Big Pearl knocked, Masta, suh; she shore knocked, an’ me too.’
‘You sure?’
‘Shore! Cain’t fool ol’ Lucy.’
‘That mean a new dress,’ Hammond promised.
‘Red?’ asked Big Pearl.
‘Red an’ you wants it. Yourn red too, Lucy? We ain’t got no red on hand, but I’ll git it in Benson next time I goes. Dido will help you sew it. I right proud of them suckers you two got. Ol’ Masta, he goin’ to be proud too. Means a dollar, a whole silver dollar, each one, an’ you has ’em alive.’
‘Masta didn’t say about givin’ me no present,’ said Mede enviously after Hammond had left the cabin. ‘Had ought to have new pants—sompin’.’
‘Nev’ min’,’ Lucy sought to soothe the boy’s feelings. ‘I give you half o’ my dollar, Little Boy—when I gits it.’
Hammond was late for breakfast. He found his father and his wife, toddies in hand, waiting in the sitting-room.
‘Whut this?’ he asked, looking at Blanche’s drink. ‘I thought you temp’ance.’
‘I is; but my head ache me, and your papa reckon——’
‘It all right. Right weak, an’ her head hurtin’. Medicine.’ Maxwell tried to quiet his son’s displeasure.
Hammond watched askance as his wife lifted the goblet to her mouth, sipped from it tentatively and lowered it. What kind of woman had he married?
‘Ever’thin’ all right, did you find it?’ the father asked.
‘I reckon,’ said Hammond without conviction. ‘The Mandingo kickin’ up, talkin’ back at Lucy, an’ not a-workin’ hisself.’
‘Hide him. Touch him up,’ prescribed Maxwell.
Hammond withheld the pregnancies of the wenches as being too indelicate for his wife.
