A Passionate Girl (45 page)

We passed ample rooms crowded with furniture and mounted a curving staircase to the second floor. Down a wide hall we went to a room at the rear. It was a playroom, full of toys, a small swing, a doll house. A boy was sprawled full length in the middle of the room, with hundreds of toy soldiers spread before him. He wore loose linen pantaloons and a gray shirt. He looked over his shoulder at us as we walked into the room. There was a quickness to the movement that reminded me of a forest animal or a hunted man. But he did not rise. He remained prone, gazing at us with a cool self-possession that struck me as remarkable.

“Stand up when a lady comes into the room,” his father snarled. His voice was like a lash, and it was clear that it had the impact of a blow on the lad. He stood up slowly and gazed at me as if I were an accomplice in his unjust punishment.

“This is your new governess, Miss Elizabeth Stark,” Jonathan Stapleton said. “You're to obey her as if her commands came from me. If I hear of any defiance or disobedience, I'll punish you. Is that clear?”

“Yes, Father,” the boy said.

Rawdon had thick wavy black hair and dark green eyes beneath a high forehead remarkably like his father's. But the rest of his face was more conventionally handsome than Jonathan Stapleton's. In fact, Rawdon was one of the handsomest children I have ever seen—so handsome that he did not seem a child. He was tall for his age, and his cool, distant manner added to the impression of maturity. I found it hard to believe he was only eleven. He could easily have passed for fifteen or sixteen.

“What's this you're doing?” Jonathan Stapleton said, walking past Rawdon to look down at the soldiers.

“Nashville,” Rawdon said.

“You have it all wrong,” Jonathan Stapleton said. His voice trembled slightly. He grew angry, perhaps because he, too, noticed the tremor. “If you're going to play at war, do it right. General Thomas concentrated most of his army on the left flank the first day. Generals don't spread their troops evenly. They mass their guns and men at one point to outnumber the enemy there.”

Rawdon followed his father's directing hand as it swung over his little battlefield. “Where did Uncle Paul die?” he asked.

Jonathan Stapleton's agitation was out of all proportion to the mildness of the boy's question. “You've asked me that twice,” he snapped. “On the right flank. In the second day's attack.”

“Could we go there someday, Father? We would get there by train.”

“I don't want to go near the place. There's no point in this—this glorifying the dead. Where's your brother?

“Grandmother took him to the cemetery.”

Jonathan Stapleton literally flinched at the words. “Miss Stark,” he said, turning to me, “you might as well settle yourself in your room. It's above us here, on the third floor. Jackson and his wife, Bertha, our cook, are the only servants who live in. The rest are local girls. Jackson will introduce you to them.”

“Certainly, General,” said Jackson, who had been standing in the door of the nursery this while.

“I'll see you at dinner, Miss Stark. We've missed lunch, I'm afraid, but Bertha will be glad to fix you a plate. I'm going to try to get some sleep.”

He went down the hall with long, swift strides and vanished into a room at the end of it. Jackson led me to the door of the nursery. It revealed a flight of stairs to the top floor. The heat beneath the roof was stifling, but my room was large and tasefully fuirnished, with a wide brass bed and several bureaus and chests. Jackson opened both windows, and a dull breeze stirred the chintz curtains.

“You won't get much sleep up here,” Jackson said. “It's hotter than Mississippi. We should rightly be at the shore. But Madam won't go, and the general ain't got the courage to make her.”

“Why won't she?”

“Too many memories of the dead,” Jackson said, in a voice that might have come from a sepulchre. He sighed heavily. “You've come to a troubled house. It'll be hard for you to believe, but seven short years ago it was the happiest of places.”

His face and his voice were so melancholy, my heart almost ceased beating. What could I bring to such a family but more grief, more melancholy? I was swept by new doubts about the wisdom of this deception, but I lacked the strength of will to end it.

The sound of horse's hooves on the drive drew us to the window. A tall gray-haired woman was being helped from another fine coach, this one dark brown, trimmed with gold, drawn by white horses. She was dressed entirely in black. She had a small blond boy with her, dressed in a sailor's suit.

“Is that Mrs. Stapleton—the general's mother?” I asked.

“Yes,” Jackson said with another sigh. “She goes to the cemetery every day. She took Master Rawdon with her till the general came home and put a stop to it. I suppose he thinks it can't do much harm to little George. But I wonder.”

Jackson turned his face away from the window, as if he found it hard to look at Mrs. Stapleton. “Dear God, how the general must regret the day he defied his mother and persuaded his father to let him go to war. We should have stayed quiet here and let the murdering madmen on both sides fight it out. We'd be a happy family still.”

“You've been with the Stapletons a long time?”

“All my life. My father was born a slave, property of the general's great-grandfather, the congressman. He freed my daddy, and Senator Stapleton, the general's father, decided to train me as a butler when I married the best cook in New Jersey.”

“I didn't know people in New Jersey owned slaves. I thought that was a Southern custom.”

“All the rich folks hereabouts owned them. There was twelve or thirteen here at Bowood. All dead now or gone away to try other things.”

“Didn't you want General Stapleton to fight to free your people in the South?”

Jackson shrugged. “Wasn't any talk of that around here. It was all about the Union, the Union must be saved, and the senator sayin' the Union was gone, gone forever, and the general—Mr. Jonathan he was then—tellin' his father he was a worn-out old man and didn't know what he was talkin' about. Far as I was concerned, I didn't want all them Southern niggers comin' up here to take jobs away from my children and grandchildren.”

Jackson led me to the kitchen, where his wife, Bertha, a tall, thin black woman, presided over a fat Irish girl my own age who was washing vegetables for a salad. I was given cold ham and well-buttered bread and a cup of tea. Bertha Jackson was as silent as her husband was talkative, but the Irish girl, Kate Sweeney, more than filled the vacuum.

Kate was as inquisitive as a detective about where I had come from in Ireland and as disappointed as Lucifer on Easter Sunday when I told her. She and almost everyone else in the city were from Connaught, the west of Ireland, and regarded those from the east with suspicion and dislike.

“'Tis the color of the ribbon that counts with you anyway,” Kate said, meaning I preferred Protestant orange to Catholic green.

“I'm no politician,” I said. “I'd like to see Ireland peaceful and prosperous for all.”

“But how is that to be when your kind side with the English and divide and ruin us?” Kate said, tearing apart lettuce as if she wished it were my flesh.

Three more maids, Mary, Ellen, and Hannah, trooped into the kitchen for their afternoon tea, rescuing me from the argument for the moment. But we were back at it within minutes of our introduction when Kate said, “She's fresh from Ireland with her orange garters and says she'd sooner wed the pope than cheer a Fenian.”

“I said no such thing,” I replied.

“What else do you mean with your peace talk?” Kate said. “We hear the Fenians are ready to rise. They're Ireland's only hope.”

“Then God help Ireland,” I said, surprised that I could say something I really meant and make it part of my new identity. “Excuse me now.”

My instruction book had made it very clear that a governess never associated with the servants or spoke to them on their level. As an educated woman, a governess was considered part of her employer's family. It pained me to be so aloof to my own people, but I could not help feeling they brought it on themselves with their aggressive hostility.

I went upstairs to the nursery to find Rawdon and his little brother George, in the midst of staging another battle. George squatted, fascinated, while Rawdon narrated the bloody drama. He had squads of soldiers posted on a height he had constructed from a pillow stuffed beneath the green rug. “The rebels were here on the hill, thousands of them,” Rawdon said in a low, tense voice. “Father's division was down here in the valley. The order came to charge. Up the hill they went—” He shoved a line of blue-clad soldiers up the slope. “Then blam! The rebels gave them a volley and down the hill they came—”

He tumbled them with a sweep of his hand. George gasped with delight.

“But that didn't stop Father,” Rawdon continued. “He rallied his men and led them up the hill again. Blam!” He swept another line of men down the hill. “The same thing happened. You know what they called Father?

Little George shook his head.

“The butcher. General Butcher.”

I was amazed. Was it true, the boy really thought his father was a murderer?

“What a fascinating tale, Rawdon,” I said. “Did it really happen?”

“Fredericksburg. Marye's Heights,” he said, avoiding my eyes.

“The Irish Brigade made a great charge there, too. Did they call their general a butcher?”

“I don't know,” Rawdon said.

“Who said they called your father such a name?”

“It was in the newspaper. A man wrote a letter home. Do you want to see it?”

“Not now,” I said. “I must say hello to your brother George.”

I sat down in a chair and lifted the little fellow onto my knee. He was very shy. He shoved his thumb into his mouth and would not look at me. Rawdon crouched beside him and whispered, “Georgie porgie puddin' and pie, kissed the girls and made them cry. Kiss her, Georgie. She's pretty.”

George refused to do any such thing. For a moment he looked like he was going to cry, but I tickled his ribs until a smile appeared, then had Rawdon pull off his shoe and tickle his toes. George began to laugh. “There, you see,” I said. “We can laugh in spite of all. We need not always be thinking of battles and dying.”

The words made me think of Michael and Annie and Dan, of the shattered face of young Hennessy in the ditch at Ridgeway. I felt myself an infernal liar. Worse, I sensed or thought I sensed that Rawdon knew it. His fierce eyes fastened on my face. For a moment I thought scorn would curl his lip, but he remained impassive and turned away to stretch out beside his soldiers. He sent another line up the slope and tumbled them down again.

Watching him, seeing his somber young face, I was suddenly swept by the most terrible choking dread. It was as if a presence had entered the nursery and seized me by the throat. I had to struggle for breath. My heart pounded in my breast. I found myself clutching George to me as if he were in danger.

With a terrific effort I mastered this assault of nerves and spent the rest of the afternoon with the boys. I devoted most of my time to George, letting Rawdon immerse himself in his soldiers. I sensed that he was prepared to resist me as an intruder, although I did not know why. So I decided, not unlike a coquette who has studied how to win a standoffish man, to ignore him for the time being.

At about 5:00
P.M.
a large motherly woman appeared and announced herself as George's nurse, Mrs. Kent. She was the wife of the head coachman and looked a bit of a slattern to me. Her dress was soiled and damp, and her hair was streeling down the side of her face. But she seemed good-natured, and George ran to her without a qualm until Rawdon called, “George. She's going to put you to bed. Do you want to go to bed so early?”

Immediately George's round little face puckered, and he fled back to me with a howl. Mrs. Kent lost all her apparent good nature and wagged her finger at Rawdon. “You must stop that, young man, or I'll get your father to give you another hiding.”

“Try it,” Rawdon said. “I'll get you in worse trouble. I'll tell him how much you steal from the smoke house.”

“How dare you talk to me that way?” Mrs. Kent cried. Her agitation suggested that Rawdon had struck home. “You'll have your hands full teaching this one manners and obedience,” Mrs. Kent said, turning to me. “Come here now, George.”

George clung to me, his little face screwed into defiance. I ran my hand through his hair and said, “Now, George, go along with Mrs. Kent, and take this to play with in the tub.” I handed him a block. “When you're in bed, I'll come and tell you a story about a magical dwarf named Fer Fi, who lives within the lake near where I was born in Ireland. I'll tell you of the tricks he plays, the music he sings. We'll be laughing and singing while Rawdon is here playing with his old soldiers.”

George stopped crying and said, “You promise to come?”

“On my heart,” I said, crossing my breast.

George departed without further protests. Rawdon looked coldly at me. “You won't teach me obedience, except when I want to obey,” he said.

“I'm sorry to hear that,” I said. “I came here hoping to be your friend.”

“I have no friends,” he said.

“Why is that?” I asked.

“Because of my father. At school people point me out. They call after me, ‘Son of the Butcher.' I had a friend—George Talbot. His father was killed at Chancellorsville. He doesn't speak to me now. He hates me.”

I found this hard to believe. How did the North win the war if such feeling prevailed against the men who fought in it? I wondered if the boy's mind was disturbed to the point of madness and illusion. Yet little else in his manner suggested such a thing.