by Anya Seton
'A little fatigued,' replied Theo, clinging to the stair, rail. 'It has been rather a long journey, you know.'
'To be sure,' replied Maria. 'I think you very brave to have withstood it so well'. She smiled a quick, tight-lipped grimace which was meant to be ingratiating and patted Theo's shoulder, which she topped by a good five inches. 'And how did you leave the dear Vice-President? Sir John—my husband, you know—has every intention of waiting on him in Washington. Though Sir John has not been home to England in some time, he is conversant with British affairs. Perhaps he may be of use to your father.'
Or vice versa, you mean, thought Theo cynically. She was not drawn to her sister-in-law, who struck her as both spinsterish and pretentious.
'I hope Mrs. Alston is not seriously ill,' she offered.
Maria flushed. 'Oh, no—just a slight indisposition. Here is her chamber'. She knocked and they entered in response^to a murmur.
The cause of the 'slight indisposition' was immediately apparent even to Theo's inexperienced eyes. She gave a little shocked cry, as she saw the clumsy figure on the bed. Her husband's stepmother was a faded blonde, with weak, watery blue eyes and an obvious desire to be both welcoming and kindly, but her forehead was beaded with sweat, the hand she held out to Theodosia shook, and even as Theo clasped it, the woman's face contorted and she gave an involuntary moan of pain.
Theo turned sharply to her sister-in-law. 'But Mrs. Alston is——' she stammered. 'Isn't she—I mean, isn't anyone helping her? She's suffering.'
Maria drew herself up. 'Maum Chloe is taking care of her'. She indicated an old negress who sat back in the shadows muttering to herself.
The crone raised her head and shuffled forward, thrusting her wizened face up into Theo's. 'Maum Chloe brung heap o' babies, buckra, nigger, all come dis same way. Mistiss she doin' fine. Knife under she bed cut pains.'
Bewildered, Theo followed the gnarled pointing finger. The high four-posted bed on which lay Mrs. Alston cleared the floor by two feet, and in the exact center beneath it lay a long sharp butcher's knife.
Theo turned indignantly on Maria, who stood silent and apparently bored beside the window. 'But that's barbarous,' she cried. 'Surely you will get a doctor—someone to help Mrs. Alston besides this superstitious old hag.'
Maria frowned. 'Maum Chloe is very skilled,' she said coldly. 'And I cannot think what you mean by a doctor. No modest woman would endure the presence of a man at such a time. You must have very strange notions of propriety up North.'
Theo swallowed an indignant answer remembering Joseph's warning, but she thought, When—and if—I have a baby, I shall have all the doctors that can be got and the Alstons may whistle for their propriety.
'Don't look so worried, child,' said a weak voice from the bed. 'I'm sorry that my—my situation is as it is right now. It is quite unexpectedly early. I would not have chosen to greet you like this'. She smiled apologetically.
Theo started to reply, but the old negress interrupted. 'You'm early, Mistiss,'case you'm got two of dem in dere and dey's rarin' to git out. De loggerhead he call twice from de swamp las' night. Dat mean twins. Bimeby buckra see Maum Chloe say true. She know better den highfalutin po' white trash doctor.'
She darted a resentful look at Theo from her rheumy old eyes and hobbled over to her mistress. Mrs. Alston was tossing monotonously from side to side, no longer conscious of her visitors.
Theo, embarrassed and tom by pity, tried to signal to Maria. If they could do nothing, surely they should leave. But her sister-in-law had moved to the far corner of the shadowy room and was engaged in snuffing a guttering candle, meticulously collecting any small wax drippings which might make an untidy appearance.
How can she be so heartless! thought Theo angrily, and turned to go, when she was held motionless by a strange scene at the bedside.
Mrs. Alston cried out once, sharply, and the negress bent over her muttering. Neither patient nor midwife seemed aware of Theo's startled exclamation, while Maum Chloe drew a small object from within her dirty blouse, murmured to it, then placed it ceremoniously upon the sheet which covered Mrs. Alston's abdomen. She held it there with one skinny hand, and her head weaved back and forth in a snakelike motion. Her shriveled lips parted as she muttered a whispering chant—guttural syllables repeated over and over like the thumping of a hidden drum.
Theo's spine prickled. She peered at the object on the sheet, unwilling to believe that she could be seeing truly. It was a small crude doll made of dried mud. The chant stopped. The old negress cocked her head as though she were listening.
Mrs. Alston struggled up from the pillows. 'How much longer will it be, Maum Chloe?' she panted.
Maum Chloe thrust the doll back into her bosom.'Conjuh say not till fust cock-crow, Mistiss.'
The woman sank back on the bed with a sobbing sigh. 'Such a long time—I don't know if I can——'
'Sho yo' kin, Mistiss. Yo' jus' chaw on dis bit o' conjuh root. He gib yo' sleep'. She thrust a hand into a bag that dangled from her apron strings and fished out a twisted black root. Its pungent smell filled Theo's nostrils.
Mrs. Alston let the negress put it into her mouth and sucked on it feebly.
'Good, Mistiss, enty? En Maum Chloe e'en cut de pain mo''. She fumbled beneath the bed, brought up the knife, thrust it rhythmically backward and forward a foot above the tossing, restless figure. Mrs. Alston grew quieter, her eyelids fell slowly.
Maria returned from the mantelpiece, a pile of wax pellets and fuzz in her cupped hand. 'Those worthless niggers—they never think to clean, unless you stand over them every minute. I found dust near half an inch thick over there behind the clock. If this were my house, I'd order ten lashes apiece for the whole parcel of them. They'd soon mend their ways.'
'Oh, hush,' begged Theo. 'Mrs. Alston is sleeping, and I
—I'm very tired. Won't you please show me my room?'
When Maria at last complied, Theo dropped down on the bed too exhausted to remove her dress. The fatigues of the long journey, her difficulties with Joseph, the ordeal of meeting the Alstons, were all overshadowed by the weird scene she had just witnessed in the great front chamber. How could intelligent people accept all the huggermuggery and black magic of the African mind for their own! Twins because a bird had called twice, a brandished knife and a dirty piece of root to deaden pain! Most monstrous of all, the hideous doll that was supposed to prophesy the exact moment of deliverance!
She pictured her father's incredulous amusement when she should tell him of this. She knew so well his hearty scorn for superstition, his calm, realistic approach to fact. Yet with it he had immense sympathy for suffering. He would have been as appalled as she by Maria's callous indifference, and the rest of the family's elaborate ignoring of Mrs. Alston's danger. Mrs. Alston. But I am Mrs. Alston too. This is now my family, my home, my country.
She buried her face in the pillow. 'I hate it here; I want to go home,' she whispered, and at the sound of her own voice she burst into tears.
She did not hear the door open, and started as Joseph touched her, saying, 'Why, Theo, my dearest girl, what is the matter?'
He raised her, holding her quivering body close to him.
'What in the world has happened?' he insisted.
She could not tell him that she was lonely and frightened, that she longed bitterly for her father, but she was grateful for the comfort of his arms about her. Her head fell against his breast, her sobs quieted.
Finding that she would not speak beyond a murmur of 'headache,' he kissed her and dismissed the matter as female vagary.
'The family are pleased with you,' he said presently, and went to the mirror to rearrange his stock. 'They find you pretty. My father and brothers agree that they have never seen so fine a pair of dark eyes, and Mrs. Huger—Aunt Allston that was, of the double "1" branch—says you are a sweet creature.'
Theo wiped her eyes on her cambric handkerchief. 'I'm glad of that. She watched him with a certain mournful amusement a
s he rolled up his sleeves and washed his hands in the Wedgwood basin. He whistled tunelessly and dried his hands with a flourish. She realized that he was pleased with himself and her. He was, in fact, in a very good humor, had enjoyed playing the traveled man of the world before his brothers, had been delighted to hear that his overseer, Mr. Smith, at the Oaks saw prospects of a bumper rice crop, and that seven nigger wenches at the plantation had produced healthy brats—fertile niggers were mighty good assets.
Yet deeper and more important than these, more important even than Theo's initial success with his family, lay a simple primitive emotion. He was glad to be home. The Waccamaw Neck was dear to him. He had been born there, had romped and hunted over every foot of it. He knew each one of the thirty plantations strung in a row down the river like green beads on a brown silk cord—Brookgreen, Turkey Hill, True Blue, Hagley, Forlorn Hope, Rose Hill—their very names pleased him, and every one was connected with Alstons or Allstons. And, he thought complacently, his own place, the Oaks, was the original one; from the Oaks both branches had spread like creepers along the banks of the Waccamaw.
Tomorrow, or maybe the day after, he would ride up to the Oaks and inspect the young rice, at the same time deciding what must be done to make his house habitable. No hurry for that, however. They could stay at Clifton indefinitely.
It suddenly occurred to him that Theo was exceedingly quiet. He looked around to see her sitting dejectedly on the edge of the bed, staring out the window into the murmurous Carolina spring night.
'Theo, rouse yourself.'Tis nearly time for supper. Surely you wish to change your dress—though wait, I had almost forgot. You need a maid, of course. We no longer have to live like savages.'
He dapped his hands. Cato, his bodyservant, appeared and waited deferentially for orders.
'I ordered a maid sent from the Oaks for your mistress. Bring her here. Who is it, by the by?
'Venus, Maussa. Li'l Venus, Big Venus' gal. Li'l Venus she'm sma'test wench in de quarters.'
Joseph nodded dismissal.
Theo looked up, smiling a little. 'Oh, Joseph, must I really have a maid named Venus? I fear I shall laugh every time I see her black face.'
Her husband paid no attention to this attempt at frivolity. He was carefully brushing pomade into his cherished side whiskers preparatory to having Cato curl them, and he saw no point to her remark.
When Venus presented herself in a red-and-green cotton dress and bandanna, Theo felt no inclination to laugh, for the girl had the lithe grace of a tiger cat. Her skin, not black but copper-tinted, covered a face far different from the splaynosed, thick-lipped Gullahs. She was a Foulah, the Arabic strain plainly written in her aquiline nose and delicate bones. Her parents had been abducted, not from Angola like the Gullahs, but from the wild North African interior, twenty years ago, before Venus was born. After the first wild misery and rebellion they had accepted slavery in the strange new land, but Venus, who knew nothing else, had not.
She burned for freedom, her heart festered with resentment against the buckra. She hated them, and she hated her stupid companions in the 'street' of negro cabins at the Oaks, because they accepted their degradation so placidly. Almost she hated her parents, who had been chieftains in Africa, despising them for their quiescence.
She had come now under orders from the overseer to be maid to the new white mistress from the North. Her first rebellion had quieted when she realized that there would be advantages. She would learn buckra ways, she would insinuate herself craftily into their smug lives, until the time came when she could strike for freedom, perhaps even—far sweeter thought—for revenge.
Theo, knowing nothing of this, yet saw that her welcoming smile was tardily answered. She saw the look in the long sensual eyes slide from hers, while something inimical flickered in their depths. She felt rather than heard the hypocrisy in the slurring submissiveness of Venus's speech, and she knew from that first moment that her maid hated her. It scarcely mattered, she could dismiss the girl tomorrow: it was foolish to mind. But she did mind.
Like the black trees outside writhing amongst their spectral moss, like the fever-breeding swamps whose tainted air even now seeped through the windows, like Maum Chloe's conjuh, this slave girl's causeless hostility added to her desolation. She reasoned with herself, quoted Aaron's brisk sensible maxims, yet she could not shake off a sense of foreboding, formless fears which rendered sleepless and miserable her first night on the Waccamaw.
CHAPTER TEN
THEODOSIA continued to have new experiences in the next few weeks at Clifton—most of them unpleasant. The family were kind, but there were so many of them, even after the uncles, aunts, and cousins, who had come only to view the bride, had packed up and left for their respective plantations.
There was no privacy anywhere, even in her bedroom. Maria Nisbett assumed that Theo would be grateful for her company at any time, and Charlotte followed her around wideeyed and admiring in the throes of an adolescent infatuation for the beautiful new sister-in-law.
The children swarmed all over the house like monkeys, chattering, screaming, and quarreling, eternally eluding their fat mauma, who waddled after first one and then the other, scolding and blandishing by turns, but powerless to control them.
Joseph, his father, and two brothers escaped from the turmoil during the day. They rode far and wide upon Waccamaw Neck inspecting the plantations, but Theo was not invited to accompany them. She was expected to amuse herself with proper feminine occupations—whatever they might be: apparently nothing except needlework and gossip. She was bored, and her nerves were frazzled by the constant pressure of people and noise.
A new noise had been added to the clamor on the morning after her arrival. Mrs. Alston had been duly delivered of twins a few minutes after the first cock-crow, and the incessant wailing of sickly babies now pervaded the house.
No one but Theo seemed astonished at this exact fulfillment of Maum Chloe's prophecies. Nor was anyone surprised three days later when the tiniest of the baby girls gave a brief feeble cry and was suddenly stilled forever. Maum Chloe had foreseen that too. Her conjuh had told her.
The little body was tucked into its oak coffin and buried that day. For an hour or two the men went around with solemn faces, and from the 'street' of negro cabins rose an outlandish keening for the dead, but even the mother did not mourn long. There had been so many babies, and she was too tired and spent to feel much. Besides, her arms were not empty, there was still a baby left to fill them: little Mary Motte, her own namesake.
But to Theodosia this casual acceptance of birth and death was painful and frightening. She wrote to her father about it, and in time had one of his breezy letters full of advice and common sense. 'You must not indulge yourself in morbid fancies,' wrote Aaron. 'Adapt yourself to the customs and temper of mind that you may find in your new environment. It would be wiser to be less critical, more tolerant, though indeed I know my little Theo well enough to be sure that she would never show outward discourtesy of any kind.'
Theo sighed as she read this. It wasn't exactly a question of criticism or intolerance. She was trying to adapt herself, but the ways and outlook of the Alstons were so alien. Nor did they make any effort to understand her.
She went out for a walk by herself one morning after breakfast and tried seriously to think out her problem. To get off alone had brought on a minor crisis. Maria had asked where she was going and why. First Charlotte and then two of the younger children had tried to accompany her and had had to be discouraged.
'At least,' said Maria, 'do not take any of the paths leading to the rice fields, because the field hands would think it most unseemly to see Mrs. Alston wandering around at such an hour. Do not go off the plantation road. Take one of the servants with you, or Venus—the proprieties will thus be better observed.'
Theo gently refused. She wished to go by herself, and she certainly did not want Venus. She saw more than enough of her maid as it was. Joseph had flown into a passion wh
en Theo had suggested getting rid of her. And, in truth, she had been unable to give any good reason. Venus was remarkably deft and efficient and prompt to answer a call: too prompt. Theo was convinced that the girl listened at doors and hid herself in corners, she moved so swiftly and quietly.
Theo longed for Minerva and the happy days of wild free rides across Manhattan Island. She might have ridden here; there was a large stable of horses—but not alone! Oh, never! A decorous trot, accompanied by one of the grooms, was all that was permissible, and that was considered eccentric for a married woman.
'Order a carriage if you wish to go somewhere,' said Joseph carelessly.
Theo had as yet seen nothing of the country except Clifton, and she longed more than ever for a sight of the sea. But it turned out that that was not so simple. The horses needed rest, or the coachman was drunk, or a spoke had broken in one of the wheels; the latter a simple matter to fix, thought Theo, in her first innocence, until she discovered that an excess of service often resulted in nothing being done. If the wheelwright was ailing, as he usually was, then the wheel must wait until he felt better. No one else would dream of touching it.
How different it will be when we are in our own home, thought Theo. Yet here, too, lay cause for disquiet. Though she had not yet seen the Oaks, she had now heard enough about the place to realize that it was uninhabitable in its present state.
'Then let us start at once to make it habitable,' she urged Joseph. 'If the roof leaks, it can be mended. If, as you say, the house is too small, we can build a wing.'
'To be sure,' he answered readily. 'But little can be done during the summer. The fever months will soon begin. In a week or two we shall move southward to Sullivan's Island.'