My Theodosia

by Anya Seton

  'With the family?' she asked in a small voice.

  'Of course with the family'. Joseph stared; and she said no more.

  Today, having momentarily escaped them, Theo walked swiftly down the plantation road toward the river, hurrying lest she should be caught by any more delays or admonitions. Once out of sight of the house, she gathered her muslin skirts high and ran in an access of freedom and released spirits. Her yellow chip straw hat flopped crazily about her face. Panting, she laughed at herself and ran the faster, plunging off the road and down a shady bypath into the forest. She reached an open clearing beneath a grove of longleaf pines, sank down on the moss, and fanned her face with her hat.

  It was enchanting to be quiet and free: ecstasy to be alone. The thought startled her. She began to count back. She had literally not been entirely alone for more than half an hour since her marriage. Even her one delight, the letters she wrote to and received from her father, were read or written surrounded by white faces or black.

  And at night, of course, there was Joseph. Dear Joseph, she thought guiltily. She was fond of him, to be sure. She wanted to please him and to make him happy. She knew well how insecure was his hold on happiness, how easily upset he was, how liable to be hurt and to react to hurt with anger. That he needed and loved her increasingly in his own way, she could not doubt. And she needed him too, down here where he was the only link with a happy past, the only person who knew her father, and with whom she might sometimes talk of him. Only here there never seemed any opportunity to talk with him. He was away all day with the other men, and at night he was either sleepy or amorous.

  She picked up a little stick and began absently to make small designs with it on the turf beside her. Sullivan's Island would be the same or worse: noisy children, wailing babies, hordes of slaves, Maria's inescapable and acid tongue, Mrs. Alston's vague complaints. And only two topics of conversation for each sex: domestic detail and family gossip for the women, race-horses and rice for the men.

  She tossed the stick aside with sudden resolution. The Alstons might go to Sullivan's Island if they liked, but she had other plans. Richmond Hill was waiting: Richmond Hill and Aaron. They had exchanged many letters about it. 'Of course you must spend the summer with me,' he had written. 'You will contrive some way to bring your husband to our way of thinking, I have no doubt.'

  Yes, indeed she would contrive! In the burst of joy at the prospect of liberation she thought, And I will be patient with them, and make them love me, even if they do weary me. I must learn to like this place too. After all, in its way, I suppose it is as beautiful as the North.

  For the first time Theo looked about her with unprejudiced eyes. Spring had sprinkled the forest with flowers—fragrant yellow jasmine, wild violets, and the flaunting scarlet redbud. A mockingbird, high in a hickory tree, was trilling its varied music, and she listened entranced. Even the everlasting moss did not seem sinister today, for spring sunlight had flecked its grayness with vivid green.

  She got up and sauntered aimlessly, enjoying the soft air and the peace, parting the hanging fronds in front of her until she saw through the interlacing branches a brown expanse of light. That was the Waccamaw down there, a great sluggish river like molasses. It was banded by the rice fields, emerald now with their waving masses of unripened rice.

  She gathered a handful of violets and buried her face in them. Fragrance as always gave her keen sensuous joy. Then, spying a charming red-berried vine, she tucked the violets into her bodice, and darted through tangled bushes to reach the vine. She stretched out her hand to pluck when a peculiar noise stopped her. A dry, sharp sound from the ground beside her foot, half rustle and half rattle. Puzzled, she searched for its source. Again came the noise, and turning her head she gave a moan of fear. Her heart stopped beating, sweat broke out on her forehead. Not two feet from her lay coiled an enormous mottled snake. She froze into a block of terror, motionless as the trees around her except for the tiny chattering of her teeth. And her paralysis saved her. The rattlesnake slowly uncoiled and glided away into the underbrush.

  Sobbing, stumbling, she fled back to the path, to the safety of the dusty plantation road. As her terror subsided, her gratitude for deliverance left one violent emotion behind: a loathing for this treacherous country. Her one effort to appreciate its beauties had been too brutally thwarted.

  She was to endure some more years of it, to accept it, and even to some extent to look upon it as home. But peculiarly sensitive to her environment, she had felt from her first glimpse that the Waccamaw Neck was hostile to her, and now she was sure of it. She told no one of her experience, knowing only too well that there would be scant sympathy, and that, in Joseph's case, fears for her safety would react as anger. But she never walked alone in the woods again.

  Theo escaped that summer as she-had planned and spent a few happy weeks with Aaron at Richmond Hill. Soon after her arrival, Natalie sailed for France to see her mother from whom she had been separated for six years. Theo missed her adopted sister, yet it was delightful to be entirely alone with Aaron. Almost she could forget that she was a wife. The Waccamaw Neck blurred into unimportance.

  In August, however, Joseph arrived in his own carriage, and this time with a full retinue of servants: a pleasanter, more tolerant Joseph. He had missed her more than he had thought possible, and during her absence it had even occurred to him that she had not been entirely happy on the Waccamaw. He had puzzled over this, finally admitting to himself that for a girl unused to a large family, his had perhaps been a bit overpowering. Accordingly he had ridden to the Oaks, decided upon the necessary improvements, and given orders for work to begin.

  'When we return South, we shall move into the Oaks,' he told her. 'I am having the establishment enlarged so that it will be fitting for people in our position.'

  'Oh, I'm so glad,' she cried, kissing him gratefully. She pictured an airy, spacious mansion, exquisitely furnished, for Joseph assured her that the original furnishings needed but a little polishing and repair to hold their own with those of Richmond Hill. She saw herself, composed and gracious, inspiring the slaves to efficient service, assisting Joseph in his budding political ambitions by adroit hospitality. There would be a well-stocked library and music, intelligent, sparkling conversation. A salon, perhaps—a small center of sophistication and culture, thought Theo, enthusiastically ignoring the isolation and the unpromising material she had so far discovered on the Waccamaw. 'With energy and ambition all things arc possible'. Had not Aaron said so a hundred times?

  After these romantic dreams the reality proved bitter. She and Joseph arrived at the Oaks in November, and she could not hide her dismay. She had shut her eyes to the tangle of unmowed grass, to the unfilled holes which rendered the plantation drive a bumping torture, but at her first sight of the house she turned on Joseph incredulously. 'But it's so small, scarcely bigger than our gardener's cottage at home, and—what's the matter with the roof?'

  The roof, half-covered with the original weathered shingles, and half-renewed with the raw yellow of unpainted pine, presented a singularly spotty and raffish appearance.

  'They haven't finished it,' said Joseph unhappily.

  Indeed, they had finished nothing. The porch still sagged, two of the six small rooms were littered with lumber and paint pots, and Theodosia suspected that evening a fact which she later repeatedly verified: fifty slaves could not accomplish as much as one skilled Yankee workman.

  They moved in, anyway. Discouraged as she was, Theo yet definitely vetoed Joseph's suggestion that they go to Clifton 'until the place was ready.'

  'No. Obviously we must be here to supervise'. And Joseph, ashamed of the failure of his plan, agreed.

  The house gradually became habitable. She sent to her father in New York for ornaments and furniture, Joseph's heirlooms having turned out to be few and rickety.

  'With energy all things are possible'. Yes. But what to do if the energy is lacking? thought Theo. The glowing health and enthusiasm
with which she had arrived on the Waccamaw ebbed day by day.

  By the end of November she knew that she was to have a baby, and she wrote to Aaron at once. He was delighted, wrote letter after letter of advice. He exhorted her to watch her diet, to attend to her teeth, and to take exercise.

  'You must walk a great deal. I do entreat you to get a very stout pair of overshoes or short boots, with one button to keep them on; thick enough, however, to turn water.... Without exercise you will suffer in the month of May.... Walk, if you must be in form, with ten negroes at your heels.'

  Theo tried to follow his advice in this, as in everything, but it was difficult. Not only was her body apathetic and heavy; but her mind also. Every movement, every thought required an expenditure of effort that appalled her. For longer and longer periods she lay on a sofa in her chamber, staring out of the window at the eternal drip, drip, drip of the gray moss. Books no longer interested her; she gradually gave up her attempt to fulfill the duties of plantation mistress. Even in the first month at the Oaks, before her health declined, she had not seemed able to cope with these duties satisfactorily.

  The slaves, outwardly docile, yet treated her orders with a bland indifference. Phoebe, the fat cook, listened to Theo's planned menus, said 'Yas'm, Mistiss,' then produced exactly what she pleased. Nor was she a good cook, but slovenly and inept.

  'The mistress of a plantation should order and direct the servants, should dispense supplies, should visit sick negroes and prescribe for them, should arbitrate disputes amongst the wenches, and occasionally deal out punishment'. This she knew from Joseph, and also from observation at Clifton. She had tried to follow this program. But when she visited the 'street' of negro cabins their laughter or singing was at once stilled, doors closed quickly at her approach, to open reluctantly at a knock, when a pickaninny would thrust his woolly head through the crack, murmuring that Mammy or Granny or Sis was out. They made her feel like an interloper, and completely superfluous.

  In the management of household detail she was no more successful. She tried to institute certain reforms. Every morning at about eleven, thumpings and bangings shattered the quiet air for half an hour, while three kitchen wenches pounded the unhusked rice in wooden mortars made from tree-trunks. They pounded one day's supply at a time, enough for the buckra table and the household servants.

  'On Monday morning,' Theo directed, 'call more girls from the quarters and pound enough rice for the whole week. We shall be spared this daily racket, nor will there be the constant nuisance of flying chaff and dust through the house.'

  They stared at her blankly, but the most intelligent one at last nodded. Next morning the pounding continued as usual. Theo remonstrated sharply. Next day there was no pounding, but there was also no rice on the table. This mattered not at all to Theo, but Joseph was furious.

  When she explained her plan, he retorted irritably: 'Let them alone. They always pound the rice every day'. 'Well, can't they do it somewhere else except under my windows?'

  'Of course not; the flagstones outside the kitchen house are the proper place.'

  So they pounded the rice each day; just as they made bayberry candles on a string instead of using the molds which Theo had had sent from New York; just as they refused to scald the plantation piggins—shallow wooden buckets in which all staples were carried. It was bad luck: it might sour the wheat, or mold the coffee beans, or rot the precious everlasting rice. A great many things seemed to be bad luck. If Phoebe heard a screech owl in the woods, she could not possibly set bread that night, it would never rise. If the laundress on her way to the house from the quarters encountered a rabbit, or a black cat—or almost anything at all, it seemed—there could be no washing that morning. Lizette returned to her cabin.

  'A plantation mistress should give her people simple religious instruction.'

  In the first burst of enthusiasm Theo had tried to follow this precept too. On her second Sunday at the Oaks, she dutifully accompanied Joseph to the little parish church three miles away, endured an interminable sermon, then in the afternoon summoned the pickaninnies from the 'street' to the big house for Bible stories.

  The children wriggled and squirmed, rolling longing eyes back toward the cabins, while Theo felt foolish and apologetic. She knew nothing of their previous Christian training—if any—and was suddenly conscious of her own deficiencies as a spiritual teacher.

  Aaron had only an amused tolerance for orthodox religion, and such matters had not been included in her education. Still, it was surely an easy matter to read a Bible story, and she embarked bravely on Jonah and the whale.

  When her voice stopped, all the kinky little black heads jerked, forty pairs of round eyes gazed at her unwinking.

  'So you see,' she added, feeling that some pointing of the moral was indicated, 'God punished Jonah for his wickedness.'

  The faces continued to regard her blankly.

  'You understand the story, don't you?'

  No answer for a moment, then a weedy ten-year-old broke into a pleased smile. 'Yas'm, Mistiss.'

  She turned to him gratefully. He was the only child she recognized, Phoebe's son. 'You know what a whale is, don't you, Chance?'

  He nodded, beaming. 'Ole wil'cat he wail in de woods'. 'No, that's different. I told you this was a big fish. It ate Jonah.'

  Chance nodded intelligently. 'Sho wil'cat eat'um big fish, many time.'

  She looked around at the others. 'Didn't any of you understand what I read you?'

  They lowered their eyes, digging dusty toes into the porch planks. Someone giggled.

  She sighed. 'Well, you may go now.'

  For a moment they did not move until Chance nudged them, and then she realized that not only had they failed to comprehend what she had read them, but that they did not understand her speech. The field hands talked pure Gullah. It was only with the house negroes that she could communicate at all.

  Gradually, she gave up her efforts to manage the negroes. As her pregnancy advanced and increasing malaise and lethargy overpowered her, she could not feel the tolerance for their shortcomings that was requisite to dealing with them. 'Just treat them as children,' Maria Nisbett admonished her impatiently, when she once ventured to discuss her troubles. Still one wearied of being surrounded by, and dependent on, children. Also children eventually improved under tutelage, outgrew pilfering and lying and laziness. But the negroes didn't, they were always the same, and she found them tiresome or worse, as in the case of Venus.

  Theo had no idea that part of her difficulties in handling the slaves came from Venus's influence. The girl did her best to spread mutiny throughout the two hundred blacks who served the Alstons at the Oaks. She made little headway; the negroes only laughed at her, and their loyalty to Joseph, their hereditary ruler, was unshakable. Nor could she incite them against the overseer, who was a just man and understood their psychology. But the 'Yankee mistiss' was another matter. Was their allotment of groceries a trifle scant, or the temper of a new hoe not so keen as those dealt out last year? It was the foreign mistiss who had ordered it thus, said Venus. Old Fortune's rheumatism and Hagar's bloody flux, for which Theo had tried some Northern remedies, hadn't they got worse at once?

  And she had laughed at conjuh, telling them it was foolish, hadn't she? said Venus, who secretly had no use for conjuh herself, but understood this most powerful of all arguments. That was because young miss didn't believe in anything. She was no better than a heathen. Night after night, said Venus, she had waited and peeked to see if young miss said her prayers. But she never did. She never even opened the Good Book and read. She went to church only when maussa made her. She was bad, was young miss.

  All this made less trouble than she had hoped, for Venus was not popular in the 'street/ the women were jealous of her looks, and resented her air of superiority. The men were afraid of her, particularly those who had tried to bed her, and on whom she had turned scratching and snarling like a catamount.

  Yet Venus's campaign had i
ts effect and increased Theo's troubles. She gave Theodosia no overt cause for complaint, kept her clothes in perfect repair, obeyed orders with promptness, but with a sort of silky defiance and sullenness that was intangible. Until one day in March.

  Joseph's next youngest brother, John Ashe, had just been married to a girl from the Santee country, Sally McPherson, and had brought her back to the Waccamaw. Colonel William, according to custom, had presented his son with a plantation, Hagley, and the young couple were now in residence.

  Theo's health had not permitted her to attend the wedding, and she and Joseph set out on this March afternoon to pay their respects. Theo liked her new sister-in-law at once. Her giggles, curls, and vivacity reminded her of little Katie Brown at home. For an hour or so she forgot her discomfort and laughed with Sally. They whispered and made silly jokes like the eighteen-year-olds they both were.

  But by five o'clock Theo was exhausted. Her brief access of spirits vanished. She was within two months of her term, and her physical sufferings were insistent. She loathed her body as it had become—swollen, heavy, even the once trim ankles and tiny delicate hands. She could have endured this and the backaches, giddiness, and laboring heart, which everyone said was quite natural, if it had not been for the frequent clouds of depression. They floated down on her like masses of thick black gauze, stifling her, and flattening life into an endless gray wasteland.

  The blackness descended on her now, and she pulled herself clumsily to her feet, murmuring excuses to Sally. She wanted only to crawl home to her own room, to her soft sofa. There she could lie in peace without effort, if possible without thought.

  Sally was much concerned and wanted to call Joseph. The two brothers had gone walking over John's plantation to inspect the rice stand in the far fields.

  'Oh, no,' protested Theo, trying to smile. 'Please don't call him. Pompey is waiting and can drive me home, then come back for Joseph later.'

  Sally reluctantly agreed. She was worried. Theodosia looked badly, so pale, and her features blurred and puffy. It was hard to believe John Ashe's statement that the poor girl had been extremely pretty some months ago. Still, of course in that condition—Sally felt very mature and matronly—one must expect to lose one's looks, and one must be forgiven sudden crotchets like rushing back to the Oaks before the men had finished their visit together.