The Furies (36 page)

So strong and lucid a case did she present—remarkable on two counts: she is a female, and no longer young—that I of course consented. This produced an awful argument from Fan. In my cousin’s bold and forthright manner, she saw some fancied scheme to deprive our sons of what is rightfully theirs.

At last, after much stormy language, I was forced to demand Fan’s silence. I then signed a paper giving Mrs. de la Gura authority to act on my behalf. For the remainder of the visit, she and Fan were decidedly hostile to one another.

Mrs. de la Gura is a person not easily opposed, that much was clear soon after she arrived. She repeated more explicitly her determination to see the printing house restored to the hands of the founding family. In this pursuit, she said she would require the use of the California gold. Fan construed her words as glib fraud. Nothing I said would change her mind.

Before my cousin departed—having assured me she would be in touch when she was permanently located—my wife and I had yet another reason for disagreement. It was caused by an ugly scene which marred the farewell.

My second son, Matthew, six, owns a pet toad of repulsive mien and phlegmatic disposition. The boy Louis wished to examine the creature. Matthew, in one of those contrary moods that seize children from time to time, did not desire to have his treasure handled by anyone else. He refused—politely at first, then more vehemently as Mrs. de la Gura’s son continued to insist. Finally the latter snatched the toad from Matthew’s hand—whereupon my son burst into tears and the toad hopped into the shrubs, never to be seen again. When my cousin struck her boy’s cheek to admonish him, his eyes glowed with fury, and I thought for a moment that he might strike her back.

He did not, fearing her, I suppose. But she was visibly upset by the young man’s behavior. I cannot help but observe that he only imitates the behavior of his mother, who descends upon a person like that storm of which I wrote, and sweeps all away before—

When the carriage had departed, Fan berated me. I was so exercised that I could barely keep from speaking un-Christian words in reply.

I wanted to console Matthew over the loss of his pet but he would not admit me to his room. As a result of my cousin’s visit, I am more than ever an outcast in my own home.

June the 29th.
Today I received a communication from my bishop. I have paid dearly for my discourse at the prayer service.

The bishop chastised me for speaking against the cruelty of the death of Amos. My remarks were in violation of the ordinances of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. The bishop reminded me that the Church is apolitical, concerned only with the saving of souls, not the freeing of physical bodies from bondage. In his closing paragraph, he removed me from my itinerancy.

July the 5th.
President Taylor died yesterday, from ingesting too much iced water and a large quantity of cherries. The stomach ailment struck him after he participated in a celebration of our nation’s Independence in the capital. Mr. Fillmore has already been sworn in.

On hearing the news of the president’s death, I almost wished a similar fate might befall me. I am a pariah in my Church, my own house, and throughout Lexington. Only Christ’s ever-present and strengthening hand enables me to endure the tribulation.

July the 21st.
I can find no employment—no means of supporting my family. Fan and I fell into another terrible argument because of it. I refused her demands that I make a public retraction of my statements concerning Amos, and seek the bishop’s forgiveness.

My wife, become as a stranger to me, spoke words about my character whose bitterness I cannot begin to capture on paper. She accused me of robbing my own sons by giving control of the gold claim to Mrs. de la Gura. I confess without shame that I left the house with tears in my eyes.

My son Gideon was scything weeds in the yard. I spoke to him and he turned away. I suspected that Fan had been speaking against me, but this day I saw the proof.

As I stumbled from the yard, I cried silently, “Father, if Thou be willing, remove this cup from me!”

When I realized it was not to be, I was shaken by a mighty wrath—and only with the greatest effort did I pray the remainder of Our Lord’s appeal—

“Nevertheless not my will, but Thine be done.”

I tramped the countryside until dark, pausing once to fall on my knees and clasp my hands. Humiliated by my anger against the Lord, I admitted my sin in prayer.

Despite the day’s anguish, my convictions remained firm. I vowed I would neither flee Lexington nor the proximity of my family, in the hope that love and the bonds of Christian marriage would restore me to Fan and the boys. I love her, I thought. I love them. Yea, I love those who scorn me, for that is Christ’s way.

A short while later, at dusk, I returned to my home in the hope of effecting a reconciliation. Fan ran out to meet me in the yard. She told me there was no place within her house for a traitor. She then brought out a few of my belongings and, when I requested it, my Bible and this book.

And so I crept away again, to the residence of a man in Lexington who I hoped would display Christian charity—the good Dr. William White, pastor of the First Presbyterian congregation. He has permitted me to sleep in a hut on his property.

By moonlight, seated in the hut’s doorway, I scribble out these lines—feeling for all the world exactly like a felon, and praying that the cup indeed may pass; that time may heal the injuries of the dispute with Fan, for whom I still find love within my heart.

But I will not effect reconciliation at the price of recantation. I have pondered long on what I was moved to say at the prayer service. I believe the Lord revealed His truth when he spoke with my tongue. Amos was a child of God just as much as any white man. If that be heresy, let me suffer for it; yea, let me burn!

Later.
I feel the Lord’s presence. A voice whispers what I would have called unthinkable a year ago—

There is, as Seward said, a higher law. God’s law of love and justice for all His creatures, a law which men have perverted.

Believing that helps ease my pain somewhat. I have been tardy in taking my stand. I will follow the heedings of that inner voice even to the gates of Hell.

September the 10th.
I am reduced to penury—living in a hovel and tending the stables for the smartly dressed young cadets at the Military Institute. I am an outcast among those I sought to serve. Only Dr. White’s merciful intercession enabled me to remain in Lexington at all, gaining for me as he did this lowly position. Captain Tunworth has assumed responsibility for the worldly needs of Fan and the boys—and is providing for them more handsomely, I am sure, than ever I could on my slim stipend as an itinerant preacher.

It is an irony that my cousin once removed, would I but make the effort to locate her, could rescue me from this wretched state by virtue of my father’s gold. Yet I am not willing to take steps to contact her. To throw myself upon her mercies would be to deny the dictates of my conscience—

So I wear rags. Subsist on the coarsest of fare. Perform menial work while enduring the jibes of some of the cadets. I know I am considered the worst sort of fool—a self-condemned martyr.

I also suspect that many in Lexington wish I would leave. I am conscience made visible. A pricking thorn. That is why I will not go. My resolve has become as a stone. I answer to God and His Son Jesus Christ and Their higher law, and to no others.

September the 11th.
Only my faith gave me the courage to endure an incident which transpired this afternoon. I saw Fan and the boys on the grounds of the Institute, bound upon some social errand or other.

Little Matthew would have spoken, but Fan pulled him sharply away and struck his hand when he resisted. Gideon showed, no expression whatever; I believe he knows it would not please his mother if he recognized me.

Jeremiah, four, is too small to do so—especially as I am an unkempt, threadbare figure—no longer the same man physically or spiritually that I was a mere six months ago.

I watched them until they passed from view. Not even Matthew would look back.

September the 12th.
A professor at the Institute informed me this morning that California has been admitted as a free state. After much struggle and many portents of failure, Clay’s program is at last being maneuvered through the Congress—largely with the help of a senator who belongs to the Democracy, Douglas of Illinois, whose support had not previously been counted on.

Old Webster is now in Fillmore’s cabinet, Secretary of State. Clay, exhausted, has gone to Rhode Island to rest. Neither can directly engage in the legislative battle. But Douglas has seen the danger, and responded to it—

If the rest of the compromise bills can be passed, perhaps the Union can be saved. That now appears more likely than it did at the start of this tumultuous season.

Autumn is coming to the valley. The coloring of the countryside, the hue of change, reminds me that men too must undergo change. So I have done, by speaking my beliefs and enduring the consequences.

I do not hate those in Lexington who abuse me openly or in private—the cadets, Captain Tunworth. I pray for reconciliation. I pray the Union may be preserved, though I am frequently pessimistic. I fear the issues are too deep and divisive for Clay’s compromise to bring more than a temporary tranquility.

Later.
The voice of the higher law spoke to me again. I cannot remain passive in my protest—though I will be circumspect, so that I may be useful to the Lord for many months to come.

Tomorrow, I will seek out Syme and reveal my willingness to help him perform the secret work I am convinced must be done.

O
UTWARD BOUND FROM BOSTON HARBOR,
the gigantic six-masted steamship belched smoke from her stack. Louis Kent, watching from the port rail of
Yankee Arrow,
a much smaller coastal steamer, nearly lost his broad-brimmed wide-awake to a sudden gust of wind.

He caught the hat as it tumbled off his head, then exclaimed, “I can’t make out her name. But I see the British flag—”

A few steps further along the rail, clutching her parasol with one hand and her spoon bonnet with the other, Amanda turned to her companion, a broad-shouldered, six-foot Negro in his early thirties. He had a prominent nose, deep eye sockets that accentuated the darkness of his eyes, and skin of a lustrous bronze hue. His long hair, neatly trimmed at the line of his collar, tossed in the wind. He was faultlessly dressed in a frock coat and strapped trousers whose elastic bands fitted under the soles of polished boots.

“Is that one of the Cunard steamers, Mr. Douglass?” Amanda asked. She and Louis had made the gentleman’s acquaintance on the voyage up from Norfolk—he had boarded at Philadelphia—and had dined at his table, despite the purser’s whispered suggestion that they needn’t segregate themselves in that fashion. Amanda had remarked tartly that the other white passengers were the ones segregating themselves—foolishly—since the gentleman was delightful and provocative company.

“No,” Douglass answered in a mellow voice. “I believe that’s a sister ship of the
Great Britain.
A competitive line. At the end of my lecture tour in ’47, I came home on the
Great Britain.
She’s screw-driven—just like that one. Those masts are an innovation too. All but one’s hinged. They can be lowered to the horizontal for less wind resistance and greater speed.
Great Britain
brought me to America in just under thirteen days.”

Amanda marveled. “Thirteen days from Europe. Imagine! It seems machines are changing the whole world—”

Mr. Douglass smiled in a rueful way. “Every part of it except the most important. The human mind. Two years ago, I was the only male delegate at the conference on women’s rights in Seneca Falls. Afterward, I said publicly that I agreed with the ladies attending the conference—society does discriminate against women. The good folk in Rochester treated me as if I were twice a leper. Leprous once for being black, leprous again for daring to suggest women are entitled to equal treatment under the law. Those Rochestarians thought I was crazy! There’s not much a steam engine can do to change attitudes of that sort, I’m afraid.”

“I still don’t see why she carries sails,” Louis said, absorbed by the sight of the huge ship putting out to sea. He’d hooked his elbows over the rail and was hanging onto his wide-awake with both hands. He looked smart in his trim black jacket, vertically striped railroad trousers, button boots and dark green cravat.

“For the same reason we do,” Douglass said, gesturing to the masts of the
Arrow.
He spoke loudly because of the thump of the
Arrow
’s engines and the steady roar of water spilling down from her enclosed paddlewheels amidships. “To conserve coal—and the engines—when there’s a fair wind,” he explained to the boy. “To provide motive power if the engines fail.”

He settled his white summer top hat on his head. “We’ll be at the pier shortly. I’d better go below and sign that book for you, Mrs. de la Gura.”

“I thank you for that, Mr. Douglass—and for the pleasure of talking with you during the voyage.”

Amanda smiled as she said it. But she was decidedly uncomfortable in the four-foot-wide skirt of crinoline and the flounced, stiffened muslin petticoat beneath. Summer-weight the materials might be. But all the clothing was a burden to someone accustomed to the more casual dress of California.

Still, she was determined to get used to wearing what was proper. She looked quite attractive in the expensive outfit. Her hair was done in the style that had been popular for more than a decade: parted in the center, with the sides drawn down and beneath the ears and pinned up in a bun in back. Mercifully, daytime fashion permitted her to go without the annoying ready-made side ringlets held in place by cumbersome combs. The ringlets were mandatory in the evening.