Honoria turned from her contemplation of the ocean. “Never, Miss Livia? Miss Mado, she got through the darkness. She knowed love has to work itself all the way through the dark feelings; you can’t go around them; they has to be gone through, all the way through.”
“Only on love’s terrible other side,” Aunt Olivia said softly, “is found the place where lion and lamb abide.” She reached one small gloved hand towards Honoria. “They did well, didn’t they, Honoria? The people we have loved. They were lights to lighten the darkness. And I—I cannot sleep at night without leaving a candle burning.”
I made an impulsive rush to Aunt Olivia, kneeling on the veranda beside her rocking chair. She put her hand lightly on my head. “Don’t fret, lambie. I’ll probably be cross and repulsive the rest of the day—that’s my usual reaction to pain—and make you suffer for it. I’m not good about my fear and pain the way Mado was, I give in to it, I always have, and now death is just around the corner, and it’s time I came to terms with the past.”
“Remember Miss Mado,” Honoria said. “She will teach you.”
“Honoria, when we were all young you used just to call her Mado.”
Honoria gave her strange, disturbing smile. “When I was a chattel of Mr. Claudius Broadley I called my friend Mado. When I became my own self I deemed it necessary to call her Miss Mado.”
“Why?”
“Don’t you know?”
“I can guess,” Aunt Olivia said, and then, fiercely, “I hate the world, Honoria! Why do things have to be this way?”
Aunt Irene, looking like a fashion plate from The Queen, swept out on the veranda, letting the screen door bang behind her. “What’s the matter, Auntie?”
“Out of the north an evil shall break forth upon all the inhabitants of the land.”
“Jeremiah.” Aunt Mary Desborough came around the corner of the veranda, dressed in ancient and rusty brown, carrying, prayer book and gloves. “Chapter two.”
“All right. Your point. Daz it. The trouble is that the evil breaks forth out of our own hearts. We’d like to blame it on the north, but it’s everywhere, like the plague.”
“Miss Olivia,” Honoria said, “let us go to the carriage.”
We drove slowly along the beach, two carriages, one behind the other. Uncle Hoadley led the way with Honoria in his small phaeton. The great-aunts and I, driven by Clive, followed. Aunt Mary Desborough, shiny with heat, decided to instruct me on Jefferson, “because you’ll be going in with Irene when she goes to get supplies. Olivia and Honoria and Clive and I manage perfectly well in the winter, but Irene can’t get on without all kinds of fancy city foods.”
“Not at all, Auntie.” Aunt Irene sat stiff and straight and over-corseted. Her face looked flushed in the light which filtered through the fringed canvas canopy which protected us from the sun. “I notice you and Aunt Olivia enjoy the delicacies Hoadley and I provide.”
“Remember it’s Sunday, Des,” Aunt Olivia said. “We must be patient.”
Aunt Irene twirled her furled pink taffeta parasol. “I am not the one likely to forget it’s Sunday.”
“Has it ever occurred to you, Irene,” Aunt Olivia asked, “to put your light back under a bushel?”
I said swiftly, “Do tell me about Jefferson. I look forward to seeing it.”
Aunt Mary Desborough slipped happily into her reminiscing voice: “Social Jefferson is divided by Ecclesiastes Street, Stella. East of Ecclesiastes is ante-bellum South, and west of Ecclesiastes are the carpetbaggers and people from other states. Sometimes I wish we could go back to Charleston. I don’t think Charleston is changing the way Jefferson is.”
“The whole world is changing,” Aunt Irene said. “At least Jefferson is keeping abreast of the world.”
“Is that a good thing?” Aunt Olivia demanded.
“Perhaps it’s all right for you aunties to live in the past. But Hoadley and I have to think of the future. So does Stella.”
Aunt Olivia rapped on the floor of the carriage with her pearl-grey parasol, as she sometimes banged for emphasis with her cane. “The day I stop thinking of the future, Irene, you can put me under. But I think about it with my reason. I don’t go running to tea leaves and cards and stars.”
I asked, “How long a drive is it to Cousin James’s?”
“Three miles,” Aunt Mary Desborough answered. “When we pass the twins’ house we’re halfway. How Livia and I used to love Uncle James—dear James’s father—when we were little. Their house was out on the river—the Ashley—a lovely, lovely place. Uncle James had a long brown beard flecked with grey and he used to let us children pull it. On our birthdays he always drove into town in his buggy and brought us presents.”
“This was in Charleston?”
Aunt Irene patted my knee. “Don’t worry if you take a while to get things straight, honey. The aunties often get things confused.”
Aunt Olivia started to retort, then shut her mouth, murmuring, “Sunday.”
Aunt Des leaned forward, whispering loudly, “Irene has one of her headaches.”
I thought that it was a good thing that Cousin James did not live far away. “Aunt Olivia has been telling me a little about Nyssa, and how Terry’s grandfather was killed.”
Aunt Irene patted my knee again. “You must remember, Stella dear, that the aunties exaggerate.”
“Death,” said Aunt Olivia, “cannot be exaggerated.”
Aunt Irene smiled tolerantly. “Uncle Theron may not have been quite the hero his sisters make him out to be. But Hoadley and I feel that if they are a little blind on the subject it doesn’t do much harm.”
“If we were blind it would do untold harm!” Aunt Olivia’s eyes flashed. “I told Stella precisely what happened.”
Aunt Irene’s determined smile was like cracked china. “It’s only your interpretation that I question, Auntie.”
“How would you know?”
“I may be too young to have been there, Auntie, but I am married to your nephew, and he is your brother Mark’s son.”
“That still doesn’t make you one of us.”
Aunt Irene’s voice began to rise. “I’ve never had to apologize for my family’s treatment of the slaves—”
“Neither have we, since we had none to apologize for.”
“Your brother Mark had slaves, and would still have them if it weren’t for the war. Are you criticizing him?”
“Mark stayed in Charleston, and we are not discussing Mark. It’s James and Theron you’re criticizing, because they treated the people who worked and lived with them as—as human beings. Not as though they were chattels, or—or things. They treated them as persons.”
“And you think it was oh, so noble of them, freeing their slaves? setting them loose in a world where they couldn’t take care of themselves? You think that was treating them like human beings?”
Aunt Mary Desborough cried, “Theron and James did not just set them loose, like—like horses. They stayed on at Nyssa and worked with—with dignity and honor.”
“Yes, and what happened to them after the war?”
“If more people had been like James and Theron, and like Mado too, there might not have been a war.”
“Well, then, Aunt Des, how would you like it if Stella—” Aunt Irene’s angry smile was turned on me “—came to us from England and criticized the way we do things and got Terry to overturn a society which has been stable and workable for a number of years?”
Aunt Mary Desborough clenched her ringed fingers. “Mado did not do that, Irene! Nobody needed to tell Theron what to do!”
The anger in the carriage had built to an alarming degree, and at least part of it had been caused by my blundering. Aunt Olivia grasped her parasol as though she were going to strike Aunt Irene with it. “How could one young girl from France have started the war? Do you think she personally stood on the Battery and fired that first cannon? Because that’s what you’re accusing her of doing!”
“Don’t be idiotic,
Auntie, I’m doing no such thing!”
Aunt Mary Desborough began to cry. “You’re being vile, Irene, and in front of Stella, absolutely vile as only an Utteley can-be. I suppose you think William Hutlidge was right to stand by while Theron was murdered.”
Aunt Irene shot back, “If Theron had been a loyal—”
Aunt Olivia stood up.
“Sit down!” Aunt Irene shouted.
Aunt Olivia sat, and turned to her weeping sister. “Don’t, Des, dear Des. Don’t pay any attention to that utterly Utteley.” Then, back to Aunt Irene, and in the singsong drawl she occasionally affected, she said, “You lie, your feet smell, and you don’t love your Jesus.”
Aunt Mary Desborough’s sob turned into a hysterical laugh.
Aunt Irene was furious. “There were some people who felt they had reason to call Dr. Theron Renier a coward and his wife a—”
Aunt Olivia stood again and raised her parasol.
“Clive!” I shouted, and grabbed the parasol.
Clive stopped the horses.
Had Uncle Hoadley heard the commotion? He, too, drew to a halt. Clive sat, impassive, holding the reins lightly. Uncle Hoadley jumped down onto the sand and walked back to our carriage.
Aunt Mary Desborough started to cry again. “Irene’s vile, absolutely vile.”
All the pink had gone from Aunt Olivia’s cheeks. She was white with rage. “Irene has gone too far.”
“Ladies.” Uncle Hoadley spoke sharply. “I’m surprised at you. All of you. Irene, I think you had better apologize to the great-aunts.”
“I? Why should I be the one to apologize when it’s they who—”
“Irene.”
“We wouldn’t be having all this trouble with the nig—”
“Irene.”
She subsided.
“I apologize.” Uncle Hoadley made me a small, courteous bow. “Irene, you will kindly go sit with Honoria.”
“But—”
“You will do as I say. Clive, you will please drive them.”
“Yes, sir.” Clive climbed down from his high seat. Uncle Hoadley took his place, waited until Clive had started, then slapped the reins lightly against the horses’ flanks, and we clopped placidly along the beach. The old ladies were silent, except for Aunt Mary Desborough’s hiccuping sniffles. Aunt Olivia fished in her handbag and gave her sister a handkerchief. Aunt Mary Desborough blew her nose with a loud honk. Silence.
Uncle Hoadley turned slightly. “You see, Stella, peace does not necessarily follow the cessation of war. I presume you were firing on Fort Sumter again?”
Aunt Mary Desborough put her handkerchief into her reticule and clicked it shut. Aunt Olivia carefully rested her parasol across her lap.
“You see, Stella—and please don’t interrupt, Aunties—my Uncle Theron thought he could solve problems by brushing them aside as though they didn’t exist. But they do exist, they still exist, and unless responsible people do something about them, our land is in for fresh disaster, brother against brother, black against white. Perhaps our government in Washington would like us to concentrate on the troubles in the Balkans so that we won’t notice the troubles in our own back yards. I, for one, do not intend to have my attention deflected. Dear Aunties, Irene was silly enough to argue with you precisely because she shares my grave concern about the future.”
“So do we,” Aunt Olivia started.
“Auntie, I told you not to interrupt. I’m not trying to undermine your love and admiration for Uncle Theron. But you must allow me my considered opinion that he acted against his time. There is always a right time for things: remember your Ecclesiastes, the Good Book, not the street. To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven; a time to be born and a time to die; a time to plant and a time to pluck up that which is planted; Uncle Theron tried to reap crops before the seeds were even planted, and that is always fatal.”
“He did not—” Aunt Olivia started, but Uncle Hoadley held up his thin hand for silence. He had turned completely around now and was facing us, holding the reins loosely. Despite the shade of our parasols the heat beat down on us, and my entire body felt drenched with perspiration.
“There is a time to keep silence and a time to speak, and Uncle Theron and Aunt Mado often spoke when silence would have been wiser.”
“Who doesn’t?” Aunt Olivia asked. ‘I hate old Ecclesiastes, anyhow. He didn’t believe in eternity, and as far as I’m concerned that means he didn’t believe in God.”
“Auntie. Wait. There is a time to love and a time to hate; a time of war and a time of peace; but we must know our own time and not be afraid of it. But we must know it. We must know the right moment. To misjudge is fatal.”
“But Theron—”
“I am not talking about Uncle Theron now. I’m talking about myself.” He turned back to the horses.
Ahead of us Clive brought the phaeton to a stop, and we pulled up behind him. High on the dunes was a low house of soft grey wood, half hidden by trees. I helped the old aunts out, Aunt Mary Desborough climbing down from the carriage briskly and standing blinking in the sunshine; Aunt Olivia leaning heavily so that I almost lifted her down—she was feather-light.
“In the old days in Charleston,” Aunt Mary Desborough said, “there was a palm-leaf fan with each prayer book and hymnal. It always means God to me, the sounds of hundreds of palm-leaf fans being waved in unison, like the sound of waves, or the rushing of wings.”
“Angel wings,” Aunt Olivia said. “Where are they now?”
8
Cousin James’s house was much smaller than Illyria, built Spanish-fashion, a red-tile-roofed rectangle with an open central court. Cousin James awaited us in the open doorway, an old man with white hair and Vandyke beard, his white suit a little loose on his bones, as though he had shrunk since buying it. His lightly trembling hand was raised in greeting, his wrinkled face alight with welcome.
I liked him, I liked him immediately, a gentle man, simultaneously shabby and elegant, radiating warmth and joy. After the first rush of greeting and welcome, he suggested that he take me to meet his elder sister, Xenia.
“Oh, good, James, it will mean so much to Xenia,” Aunt Des said.
“It will mean nothing to Cousin Xenia,” Aunt Irene whispered to me, “but it is a duty you might as well get over and done with.”
Cousin James led me off. “We will have Morning Prayer in Xenia’s room, because she is bedridden, and has been for several years, but she is considerably more aware of what is going on than may be easily apparent.” He called back to the others, “Go into the courtyard and relax in the breeze, dear friends, while Stella greets Xenia. Come and join us in five minutes.”
The large room to which he took me had the same musty smell as Aunt Olivia’s room, a smell of times past, of old winds held within the walls and mingling with the very present smell of salt, of living ocean. It was a paradox of openness and enclosure: dusk was enclosed to keep out the heat of the sun, yet there was a feeling that the shadows stretched into infinity. We stood in the open doorway and I could see across the room to a high bed which was turned so that it faced the window. A plain young woman sat by the head of the bed, reading aloud. Cousin James put his lightly palsied hand on my arm and we stood, listening.
Then being is distributed over the multitude of things, and nothing that is, however small, or however great, is devoid of it? And, indeed, the very supposition of this is absurd, for how can that which is, be devoid of being?
In no way.
And it is divided into the greatest and into the smallest, and into all kinds of being, and is broken up more than all things; the divisions of it have no limit.
Plato? I recognized the general style.
True. Then it has the greatest number of parts?
Yes. The greatest number.
Is there any of these which is a part of being and yet no part.
(Like those apples? Like Cousin Xenia?)
Impossible.
But if it is at all, and so long as it is, it must be one and cannot be none?
Cousin James led me into the room and up to the bed. The young woman closed the book on her finger, gave us a shy smile.
“Miss Harris,” Cousin James said, “I want you to meet Mrs. Theron Renier, our new cousin from England who has come to pay her respects to my sister. Stella—”
I stepped up to the bed, shook hands with Miss Harris, and then looked down at an old woman whose strong bone structure, showing sharply through the pale and wrinkled skin, belied the blank emptiness of her expression. Her steel-grey eyes were open, but they were not focused. She was covered with a sheet, and her liver-spotted hands lay motionless upon it. This was the Xenia who had run the school and the hospital at Nyssa, who had been Mado’s friend, who had been young and brilliant and alive. I reached down and took her inert hands into my own. “Cousin Xenia, I’m Stella, Terry’s wife.”
I thought the hands moved slightly in mine, so I bent closer and held them to my face. The fingers uncurled in response and I held them to my eyes, my nose, my lips. “Here I am, Cousin Xenia. Stella. Feel me.” I felt a pain deep within me so sharp that I almost cried out with the hurt of it. Not my pain. Cousin Xenia’s. It flowed between us. After a moment I could contain it no longer and I returned her hands to the sheet.
Cousin James had been watching closely. Now he put his arm around me and led me from the bed. “Terry is most dear to me. I am glad he chose you. Glad.” He pulled out a white lawn handkerchief and blew his nose. “Xenia had a beautiful and brilliant mind. I am convinced that it is still there, trapped by the paralysis which imprisoned her body when she had her stroke. I am certain that she hears. Certain. And this is all I can do.” He gestured towards Miss Harris, still marking the place in the volume of Plato.
I took Cousin James’s hand and held it. I loved him very much.
The Other Side of the Sun Page 17