An Acquaintance with Darkness

by Ann Rinaldi

  "And you think you know that I'm going to come and live here?"

  "Yes."

  "Well, you're wrong."

  She sighed. "You'd best go inside and clean up. You've got flour on your face.... He'll be here soon. He likes his guests to be on time. He's a good man. He gives money to the Ebenezer Free School. He cares for the health of my students free of charge. Christmas Day there is a constant stream of visitors here, people bringing him gifts because he helped them somehow. Here." She bent to cut a night-blooming cereus. "Wrap it in a wet cloth, then put it in water. Spanish servants in the sixteenth century dipped the branches in oil and burned them as torches at night."

  I turned and went back into the house. Maude was bustling around as if President Lincoln himself were coming for lunch. She wrapped the flower in wet paper for me.

  "Who is she?" I asked about Marietta.

  She wiped the flour off my face. "Someone very special."

  "I don't like her."

  "Your uncle does. Very much. So be careful what you say about her."

  It was just the two of us at the long, polished dining room table. Maude served. For the honor, she had changed into gray moiré with a white pinafore apron. The dress rustled as she moved about the room. She had made something called felet de beef. The windows were open and the mild April air ruffled the curtains. From outside could be heard the pop-pop-popping of some firecrackers a block or so away.

  When she left the room, I waited to speak. I did not know what the purpose of this luncheon was; I would find out before I went mouthing off about anything.

  "On the way here I saw a group of hoodlums attacking a Negro," he said. "I had to send for a policeman. I'm afraid that prejudice is becoming stronger against the Negro." He paused to take a sip of wine. His table manners were impeccable, I noticed, just like everything about his person. He was clean-shaven and his hands were long, the nails trimmed and clean. His shirt was the whitest, his cravat of good silk. And he gave off some spicy scent. Was it tobacco? Soap? I didn't know. But he fascinated me.

  "Washington has lived through all kinds of threats. That of a Confederate takeover. Betrayal, physical hardship, and loss of spirit. Now some of our best Southern families here and elsewhere will suffer dishonor and poverty. I wrote asking your aunt Susan to come and live with me. A widow. What will she do in Richmond? It's all but destroyed. But no, she's as stubborn as your mother. This is my home,' she 'Here I will stay. Richmond will rebuild.'" He shook his head. "I just never will understand women."

  Aunt Susie was the youngest in their family. Before I could reply, he gave the conversation a new turn. "Have you ever heard of Alexander Shepherd?"

  "No, sir."

  "In 1861 he was a gas fitter's assistant. He is now one of four owners of the Evening Star newspaper. Family and heritage no longer matter. The war has made instant millionaires. People for whom money is the only reward." He shook his head and spooned his felet de beef into his mouth.

  "Mrs. McQuade, my teacher, says the next thirty years will make many millionaires," I told him.

  "She's a good woman. Very smart. I have been to visit her at the school. She says you are getting the highest marks in French, English literature, composition, and drama."

  "You visited my school?"

  "I wanted Mrs. McQuade to know you are not without family. She asked when you are coming back."

  I was dumbstruck. In all the time we'd lived in Washington, Mama had never set foot in my school.

  "All the girls there have family paying close mind to their progress," he said.

  I thought of Myra Mott, Stephanie Wilson, Melanie Hawkes. Family? They had more than family. They had kinfolk that went back to the original settlers of Maryland and Virginia. The girls lived in houses that would make this look like a shack on Murder Bay. Before the war they had summered in Saratoga and their mothers had taken shopping trips to New York. Their fathers had business dealings in Lexington, New Orleans, connections in Boston. They banked in London, were on familiar terms with Du Ponts in Delaware.

  "Mrs. McQuade knows your mother did not have time to attend theatricals you were in. Or your piano recitals. Because she had to work for a living. I would be most happy to attend. If my presence does not offend you."

  He was being so kind. It made me ashamed for giving him an uneven time of it.

  "There are no strings attached. I assure you. By the way, did you know that Mrs. McQuade's maiden name is Desrayaux? That her parents were guillotined in the French Revolution?"

  "No."

  "Yes. She was brought to this country as an infant in 1794. To French Azilum, in the Pennsylvania farmland. It was a log-cabin community built for emigres fleeing the terror of the Revolution. They built a great-house for Marie-Antoinette. And settled in to await her arrival. And that of Louis-Charles, her son, the dauphin."

  I was stunned. "She never told us."

  He shrugged. "People confide in me. Did you meet Marietta?"

  "Yes."

  "A fine girl. A wonderful girl."

  "She's got powers," I told him.

  "We all have powers, if we choose to recognize them. Hers are exceptional. And that garden of hers is really beautiful, isn't it?"

  "Did you save her life?"

  "Others found her and brought me to her ... I was hoping you two could be friends."

  He talked some more about Louis-Charles. "Over a dozen men came forth over the years claiming to be the dauphin, but their claims were never proven. Imagine that he may be in this country somewhere, perhaps living as a backwoodsman."

  "The girls at school say he is the owner of Gautier's, the sweetshop."

  He raised his wineglass to me. "Then the next time you go for ice cream, think of who made it. We never know who people really are, Emily. Remember that, always."

  It seemed to be the point of the story, the whole point he was trying to make.

  When the meal was over I made a pretty little speech. "I appreciate your having this luncheon for me, Uncle Valentine," I said. "I'm beholden to you for what you did at the cemetery and for posting a guard at Mama's grave. And for going to my school. And I'm sure we can be friends."

  He walked me out to the hack in front. "You are welcome here, Emily," he said. "Anytime." He kissed me. "I hate to think of you going back to that empty house tonight."

  "I'll be fine. It's only for one night."

  "Lock your doors. And remember, I am here if you need me."

  I thanked him again. He seemed distracted, as if his mind was somewhere else.

  It was. He told me just before I left that he was going to Ford's Theater that night with a doctor friend. He was looking forward to seeing the Lincolns.

  8. Home Alone

  UNCLE VALENTINE had been right. Home was dreary and dismal. My footsteps echoed in the deserted rooms. The landlord had come in my absence and taken up the rugs for cleaning. All my things were in boxes. The dust made me sneeze. I went into the kitchen and put the night-blooming cereus in a vase of water. I would put it in my bedroom. On my way upstairs I avoided the parlor, where they had laid Mama out. I would have avoided her bedroom, too, but I was missing a good shawl. I stopped in the doorway, saw the bed where she'd lain for the last six weeks, the imprint of her head on the pillow—and fled. Forget the shawl. But there were still some boxes of her things to go through. So I took them into my room.

  One box held old love letters to her from my daddy. I read them all on the floor of my room, with the dust motes floating in the late-afternoon sunbeams and the night-blooming cereus in a vase on the floor beside me. I devoured them. When I looked up finally, it was dusk, shadows everywhere. I was starved for food. That's what the love letters had done to me.

  But downstairs I couldn't find matches or candles. Finally I discovered some matches on the mantel in the dining room. Then I remembered the candles Annie had given me. I crept into the parlor. The mirrors were still covered and the cloth draping them was ghostly white. I fetched the two c
andles and took them into the kitchen. The parlor was not to be borne.

  The fire in the stove had gone out. There was some kindling but no paper. I searched and searched. Now what to do? No fire, no tea. I fetched the box of love letters, put them in the stove, piled the kindling on top, and watched them burn. They made a good fire. Mama would have cried, I thought, but my daddy would have said, "Good girl, that world's all over with, and you must go on." I set some water to boil, searched in the larder to see what was to be had to eat. Not much. Some cold ham and leftover hard biscuits. No milk, no butter. Hadn't there been a pot of strawberry jam this morning?

  The place was wiped clean. Maude had taken everything. Why? Because she wanted me to be miserable when I came back here. So I would flee back to Uncle Valentine's. Well, I would settle for cold ham, hard biscuits, and tea without milk. I sat down and waited for the water to boil.

  The house was so silent. I wished I had a cat or a bird. I'd had both back in Surrattsville, but Mama wouldn't let me bring them here. Annie took care of them for me. The cat had been old and died. Annie had let the bird go free. I'd always wanted to, but Mama had said no.

  Mama again. Would I never stop thinking of her? Even in anger?

  Mama was gone! The fact of it closed in on me. How could she be gone? For my whole life she had been moving about in the background, telling me what to do, complaining, plaguing me for the most part, but there.

  Now she was gone. The quiet mocked me. I was worn down—there's the truth of it—from the last six weeks of nursing her. I was glad the drudgery was over. No more cleaning up bloodstained handkerchiefs or sheets. No more changing the bedding because she'd wet herself. No more hearing her hacking cough in the middle of the night. That's why I was unable to cry. Because I was glad it was over.

  By her own admission, she had been a selfish person. "My daddy spoiled me so." She was proud of it.

  Mama, Uncle Valentine, and Aunt Susie had grown up in a two-story frame house in Richmond. It had upstairs and downstairs galleries, and outbuildings for servants. Mama said her father was collector of the port, but I think he must have owned the port for all the money they had. Her family had eight slaves just to keep that house in Richmond. Her father also owned a country seat in Roanoke.

  My daddy never deceived her. He was not wealthy. But he had gone to West Point. He was still in the army when she met him. It was 1848 and he had just returned from the Mexican War, dashing and full of the Devil's own merriment, as Aunt Susie once told me.

  Uncle Valentine was back from Edinburgh, Scotland, a doctor already. "He has no money, Mary Louise," he told Mama. "And you need money to live."

  "Don't marry him," Aunt Susie begged her, "you'll kill each other." Aunt Susie was sixteen and had already toured Europe, where she had learned, apparently, how some men and women who are in love can kill each other.

  Mama married him. She did not think she needed money to live. She thought that what she needed was culture, gallantry, protection, tradition. Daddy had all those things. I remember her saying that Uncle Valentine was crude and cruel, Aunt Susie jealous.

  The water started to boil. I got up and made tea. I found an old pot of honey that had eluded Maude. I poured it into my tea, lots of it, and sat sipping the hot sweetness. I put some honey on the dried biscuits.

  Daddy stayed in the army for two years after they married. When he was sent to other posts Mama lived in Richmond with her family. That's when he wrote her all those love letters. Then in 1851 I was born; Daddy left the army and bought the place in Surrattsville from Johnny's daddy.

  He made it into a lovely little farm. He was a success. The only failure was in Mama's eyes because it was just a farm. She had wanted a country seat.

  And then, too, Daddy would not buy slaves. He and Mama argued constantly over it. She said a woman bred to gentility and culture had slaves. Daddy hired her one housemaid. All the other hired help was for the fields. Then came the panic of 1857. I don't know what a panic really is. It seems I've been in a panic all my life. But when it has to do with the failure of trust companies, shipping lines, and cotton crops, everybody loses money. Mama's parents, who have both died since, were wiped out. They lost near everything, or I think Mama would have taken me and gone home. We muddled on for four more years. That's a long time to muddle. When the war broke out, Daddy said he was duty bound to re-enlist.

  "The Confederate Army will honor your commission," Mama told him.

  "Most likely," Daddy answered, "but I prefer to get my old commission back in the army of the United States."

  This was the argument over slaves, with a new twist. Mama could not abide it. All our neighbors were going off to fight for the Confederacy. Daddy left for war a sad man, thinking he'd failed my mother. She let him think it.

  I have never forgiven her for that alone.

  She let the hired help go, let the fields go fallow. She and I lived on what we could grow in the kitchen garden. That's when she took up the occupation of the needle. Aunt Susie, who had married a wealthy planter, introduced her to some rich ladies in Richmond. Mama sewed for them. I think when Daddy was killed and Johnny's uncle foreclosed on the farm, she was glad to come to Washington.

  I had no right to miss her now. But I did. I missed her so bad I wanted to die. You don't have to love somebody to miss them. You get used to having them around, like a cat or a bird. I finished my tea and went to bed. I had to be up early in the morning so I could move in with the Surratts.

  During the night I heard it. A sound outside my windows like a great cry, as if a wild beast had been loosed in the night. I roused myself and sat up.

  The first thing I saw was that flower on the night-stand, blooming for all it was worth. I made my way to the window. In the distance there were torchlights. Then I heard a drum and the sound of many pairs of feet marching, double time.

  Next came shouts. A man dashed by on horseback. A door opened in a house across the street. Another cry. "Shot, shot, I tell you!"

  So far no one had been shot in the revelry that reigned on Washington's streets. Now, finally someone had been. Likely some drunk. I went back to bed.

  Then, just as I was dozing off again, I heard it distinctly. Two short staccato raps on the wooden sidewalk, repeated three times. The danger signal of the Union League, a secret loyalist society. Annie had told me about it.

  I heard doors slamming. Again I went to the window. People were throwing on clothes as they poured out into the streets. They were huddling in bunches, lighting torches.

  Something had happened. What? Were the Confederates coming to attack though the war was over? Well, there was nothing I could do but wait until morning and then go over, as soon as I could, to the Surratts'. I lay awake for a while staring at the flower that fairly glowed in the room, listening to the commotion in the street, grateful for the safety the Surratt house would offer. Then the noise outside died down. I fell asleep. When I woke up it was to another noise.

  A pounding on a door, insistent, angry. I heard yelling.

  "Let us in! Police!"

  I sat bolt upright. Was it my door? I got up and knelt on the floor to look out the window. It was coming from down the street. I heard a door open, saw some light cast out onto the wooden sidewalk, but could not see whose door it was. Likely the drunk had lived on our street and the police were coming to inform his family. But who?

  I got back into bed. Annie would know. She knew all the gossip. She'd tell me in the morning.

  Again I dozed. And woke to more door pounding.

  This time it was my door.

  "Emily, Emily, are you home?" A hoarse voice, a voice filled with ominous urgency. Uncle Valentine's voice. I leaped out of bed, grabbed a robe, and went stumbling down the stairs. Thoughts raced through my mind like scurrying mice, tripping over one another. Someone had robbed Mama's grave! Aunt Susie was dead in Richmond! Johnny had been killed and the police had been pounding at the Surratts' door last night to tell his mother. Oh, God, not J
ohnny!

  But then why would Uncle Valentine be here? Why not Annie?

  "I'm coming!" I said, racing through the front hall. I opened the door. As I did the hall clock struck nine. Nine! Had I slept so late, then? I was supposed to be at the Surratts' for breakfast.

  "Thank God I caught up with you before you went to the Surratts'. You must come with me to my house, Emily. Now." Uncle Valentine stood there, without his cape or shawl or tall hat. He was unshaven and bleary-eyed.

  My distress turned into anger. "Uncle Valentine, I told you, I am not coming to live with you. And to wake me up and frighten me like this! Well, I think it's selfish and mean!"

  "There is need to be frightened, child." He had pushed his way into the hall. It was raining out and he was wet. "I never should have allowed you to come back here last night. Thank God you're safe. I have failed in my duty toward you. No girl your age should be without a protector. And I intend to be that, starting now. Where are your things? Are you packed?"

  Something was very wrong. "What's happened? You look terrible."

  "I've been up all night. I was in attendance at Peterson's lodginghouse with some other doctors."

  "Then go home and sleep."

  "I was the first doctor to respond when they called for physicians from the audience last night. But we could do nothing, Dr. Leale and I. Nothing. Leale tried to breathe air into his lungs, pour a little brandy down his throat. Laura Keane, the actress, held his head in her lap. Nothing."

  A cold chill came over me. "Uncle Valentine, tell me who it was you could do nothing for."

  He looked at me. I saw such pain in his eyes I knew that whatever had happened could never be fixed. Never.