The All-True Travels and Adventures of Lidie Newton (54 page)

"But, Helen," I remonstrated, "when Adam and Eve were banished from the Garden, He condemned them to labor for their own bread."

"Don’t you think that’s a terribly hard religion? I know it comes from that, but Papa said none of our family were Puritans like that, that the Puritans were hateful people, and even the Dutch couldn’t stand them, and so that’s why they had to go to the New World, not because they were persecuted, but because they were hateful. And I don’t think it’s fair that they should come to New England and that our people should come to Virginia, an utterly different sort of place, and that in the end, they should put their hatefulness and hard religion over on the rest of us, after all! And you know what? It was those very people that started the slave trade, just to get rich. They treated those slaves much more horribly on those ships than ever Papa or Mr. Harris would treat even a dog, even a rat! Papa said they used to have more slaves in Newport, Rhode Island, than anywhere else in the United States, until the Irishmen came in, and it was cheaper to pay the poor benighted Irishmen, who don’t know any better because of their religion, nothing and get rid of having to care for your slaves as a proper master does!"

"Helen ..." But I paused, wanting to be careful of what I said. I dared not openly argue with her.

"So I can’t go to one of those men who lives like that, with a wife and seventeen children. I don’t want to be the first wife, who dies, and I don’t want to be the second wife, who raises the first wife’s brats, and I don’t want my husband to be talking to me about my duty all the time! Isn’t it better to have two or three children, like Bella and Minna and me, and teach us to sing and play the piano and sew and draw and write a fine hand and even make a pudding if we have to—but my goodness, what if I had to slaughter a hog and watch the blood run out, and chop the head off a chicken?"

I almost admitted that I, too, had found these activities distasteful and that I had avoided them whenever I could, so that my niece, Annie, had been forced to take my place. But I hadn’t minded hunting, and dressing game, in K.T. I said, "When you are married, you’ll find yourself doing what you have to do and not minding it so much. You’ll love your husband, and you’ll love your children even more."

"But I was not reared to work every day, all day, and to have my looks go by the time I’m twenty-five, and if I have to live that way, I will certainly die first!" She said it petulantly, almost as a childish threat, but in fact, it was probably true. I said, "Surely your papa will find you a husband to your taste."

"Where? You saw the gallery last night. And if I were to go off, like Bella or Minna, I would have to leave Papa all alone. Don’t you love Papa? He’s so lively and dear! How could I leave him and go to Georgia or South Carolina or somewhere?" She lowered her voice. "You know, Papa’s always going on about land being good and money being evil, but if we were rich in money rather than in land, Papa and I could be together anywhere we chose. I think about this day and night, but I don’t see a solution! I suppose it’s better not to think about it at all, but just to let yourself be led about by the nose and to accept what happens to you, but my goodness, that seems an awfully spineless way to live!"

I finally laughed.

"Well, it is," said Helen.

There was a knock on the door, and I opened it. Outside it stood Lorna, with two trays. She said, "Well, at leas’ I done foun’ Missy. Two seconds later, and I woulda got worried. My land, you should see de dining room and de parlor. It look like dey had a war down dere! An’ de girl and I, we got to clean dat up before Massa Richard come down!"

I saw that she was annoyed with us for wasting her time. I said, "I’m sorry," and she said, "Ain’ your fault, unless you been throwin’ de dining room chaiahs about. Done broke a winder! I sweah!" She set the trays down, one on the bed and one on the chest, and we ate our toast. Helen said, "I know Papa will give me Lorna for my wedding, at least. I couldn’t stir a step without Lorna, and he knows that. She wouldn’t leave me like she did Bella, either, because she likes me, and she never did like Bella."

"Did Lorna try to escape?"

She went over and closed the door, then lowered her voice. "It was Bella’s fault. Bella has a miserable temper, you know. She can’t help it. But she hit Lorna with a rolling pin, right over the head, and raised a terrible bruise, even though you never hit a house servant like that, but she was the same with me when we were children, she always hit me with anything that she had in her hand, and so Lorna got her mad, and she happened to have the rolling pin in her hand, and so she hit her and knocked her down! Oh, Papa was furious with Bella, and Ralph—that’s Bella’s husband—was, too. But then Lorna made it worse by running off, and they had to advertise, and the catchers caught her, and they beat her worse than Bella did. Papa says sometimes you can’t control the catchers, because they are of a very low sort. Well, Bella was all set to sell her south, but Papa wouldn’t let her and brought her back here and made her promise never to run off, because that’s like stealing, you know, and so she has another chance, but it was such a to-do that if it happens again, Papa will surely just sell her south, because if the others see one run off and then go unpunished, well, it makes them restless."

We finished our breakfast and went out of the room. I felt well enough, in spite of my wakeful night, but everything about me had the quality of seeming magnified—larger, brighter, louder than usual—and I felt as though I were stretching myself to accommodate this, and that sometime the stretch might be too great, and I would snap.

Two days passed after the failure of my plan, and I told myself that I had to take things slowly and think carefully about what to do. I thought that I might write a letter to my sisters, asking them for money to get back to Quincy, but I had no way to post a letter, and secrecy was still such a habit with me that I couldn’t quite bring myself to entrust my letter to Papa. But in addition to that, posting such a letter amounted to giving up on finding Thomas’s killers, and I was so used to planning revenge that even without a plan, I couldn’t give up the revenge. I thought it would be easier to come up with a plan than settle for nothing, so I solaced myself by carefully thinking the same thoughts over and over. And indeed, this was a time of great news and perturbation. Very soon, we all knew, the invisible boundary between fighting and war would be crossed, and so, many times every day, my carefully thought thoughts were scattered by some rumor or fear. The prevailing belief was that if Lane could not be stopped, he would be killed, and if he was killed, the northern newspapers would raise such a fuss that someplace like Leavenworth or Westport would be attacked by the federals, and then war would roll from there eastward, widening and inexorably speeding up, until the whole nation was drawn in. Papa said that in the days when it took weeks to get to the east by boat or coach, there might not have been such a danger, but now, with trains and telegraphs, there would be no stopping it. Or sometimes, instead of rolling east, it was said, the war would suck everything west, as if Leavenworth were an ever-widening sinkhole that would soon enough engulf Boston, on the one hand, and Charleston, on the other. Under the influence of these thoughts, Papa wondered aloud what it might be like to go off to California, but really, he was too old for that, wasn’t he? And so all of us in the house— Helen, Papa, myself, Lorna, I suppose, and even Delia, who counted her stores over and over—were in our separate ways disheartened and perturbed. I wondered about my sisters, whether they were going along in their usual fashion, all unaware of the world outside Quincy and likely to be ever so piqued should it impose itself upon them.

I had been at Day’s End Plantation for about two weeks now, and every day had been hot, when suddenly there was a great summer storm, with thunder and lightning and hail, and the late-afternoon sky turned green, and we all had to go down into the cellar and wait it out, master, mistress, guest, and slaves. We had a couple of candles, and everyone was rather fearful, and so Papa said that we must sing songs, and began himself, by singing a song from an opera called Figaro’s Marriage, by Mozart, who also wrote some pieces that some of the girls had played in school, when I was with Miss Beecher. Helen sang a Scottish song about getting up early one morning and seeing a fair maiden in the valley below. I then sang "Hard Times, Hard Times, Come Around No More." I sang this with feeling, in my plain voice, keeping the tune as well as I could. After that, each of the slaves sang a song, none of them songs I had ever heard before. Not everyone sang well—Lorna, for example, seemed unwilling to actually produce a melody, and instead almost talked her song. But Malachi liked to sing and had a wonderful clear voice, and he sang first a song about calling the water boy, and second a hymn called "Deep River." Papa said it was one of his favorite hymns, and he smiled broadly the whole time Malachi was singing it. After all of the singing, we came up out of the cellar and saw that the weather had cleared and that the storm had taken down only a few tree limbs. It wasn’t even suppertime yet, but the air was cool and the haze had cleared off, and the fields that ran away from the house looked fresh and fruitful. Helen went up to her room, and I went into the day parlor, where I had the third volume of Miss Austen’s novel to finish. Just before supper, Papa came into the parlor.

I was sitting on a sofa, and I have to say that I put down my book with some reluctance, as I was at the very interesting part where Elizabeth is caught visiting Mr. Darcy’s estate in Derbyshire. I saw that Papa was dressed differently than he had been down in the cellar. He was now wearing crisp black trousers, a red brocade waistcoat, a fresh white cravat, and a neatly cut black jacket. He carried a stick with a silver knob, too. He reminded me by contrast of how trim and sober a figure Thomas had made in his black clothes when I first met him. I wondered where Papa was going and whether Helen and I would be alone for supper, in which case we might have a light, quick meal, and I could then get on with my reading.

"Are you alone, then, Mrs. Bisket?" said Papa.

"Helen is in her room, if you would like me to get her."

"Perhaps later."

Papa looked bright, with something of the air of a little spinning top, but I in no way associated this with myself, and anyway, my mind was still running on Thomas, so I was entirely unprepared to hear Papa exclaim, "My dear Mrs. Bisket, I feel that you are heaven-sent to us for some special purpose, and I cannot rest until I make known to you my fervent desire to bring you into our family as my bride!" During this speech, Papa had swooped down and perched beside me on the couch, and now he seized my hand in his two little ones and stared into my face. "Do let me go on! Everything here at Day’s End Plantation is different since you came into the house. You are truly a presence! An angel, if I may say so, who brings us peace and a sense of well-being, even in these times of conflict and anxious dread. You make the two of us a family!"

"You haven’t spoken to Helen about this!" That idea especially appalled me.

"Not yet, but I know she loves you like a sister. What a short step, then, to loving you like a mother?"

"I’m but two years older than Helen."

"But your demeanor is, if I may say so, a lifetime more womanly. I don’t know your history, Mrs. Bisket, as yet. It’s my fond hope that the intimate bonds of marriage will, might, encourage you to confide in me someday...." He looked at me and hurried on. "But let’s not get too far ahead. For the moment, I feel that you have been given to us to ease our troubles! We don’t know what will happen. No one knows. Our nation is in great peril. I see no statesman, no Jefferson, nor even a Jackson, who can— d— me, Mrs. Bisket, but this Kansas-Nebraska Act was a deal made in the devil’s own kitchen, and the red men from whom the land was stolen have cursed it in perpetuity, that’s my opinion. I’ve told Harris that for years: you throw off those Indians, and they leave their curses behind! Did you know that I spent a considerable time with the Indians myself in my early days? And I never held with selling up the Cherokees and driving them off, but they got richer than some of their neighbors, and their neighbors couldn’t abide that! Excuse me!"

He got up and walked about the room, then sat down again. "On that subject, I will say only one thing: there has been enormous bungling from top to bottom; that’s all I will say on the subject right now!" He took my hand again, but I removed it. He said, "Ah, please don’t draw away. Let me believe that I have hope in my suit! Let me think that a few more days or weeks with us will persuade you to find us as necessary to your happiness as you are to mine, ours! Let me persuade myself that a longer sojourn at Day’s End Plantation will convince you that we do have a little paradise here, all the more so should you confer upon it your angelic presence!"

I have to say that these speeches made me dizzy, as perhaps they were calculated to do. Watching Papa was like watching something small and sparkling that was moving very rapidly, and indeed, he was moving all the time, either around the room or beside me on the sofa. He made me feel vast and immobile, especially when he referred to me as a "presence." At first I didn’t know what to say, as I was utterly surprised, but quickly I realized that Papa’s intentions made my position, if possible, even more precarious than it had been. I was no longer a mysterious but essentially indifferent guest, who could move off of her own volition. Now I was someone from whom Papa wanted something, wanted it with impatience and even ardor. I had become, to Papa, something that had no relationship to who or what I actually was. There was certainly danger in that situation. I didn’t think that I dared reject his suit right then and there, and I cast about for something to say. Finally, I managed, "Mr. Day, I don’t believe that you and I are truly of one mind in all things."

"Ah! You see there! Your very want of openness—which in principle I don’t disagree with, since I admire discretion in a lady—your very want of openness has prevented us from making the best use of our acquaintance here, but I truly feel that often, in these matters, it is better to act on instinct than on reason. My instinct is that we are of one mind!"