On Agate Hill

by Lee Smith

  The negros danced upon the piazza all day long. There were two fiddlers and a man who played the sticks and another who played the bones, and then the following day, horse-racing! Which all the Valiants are passionately devoted to. I sat with Eliza’s mother and her grandmother wearing hats and veils to keep out the dust. Ben won a third place ribbon and rode by our bench and tossed it to me, I shall keep it forever.

  Eliza won the next race, riding like a man, beating Ben and her father too. “When I am married,” she told me later, “I can not do this any more.” Though frankly it seems to me Mary White that when you are very rich like the Valiants, you can do anything. Finally there was a dance at their cousins’ house on the Battery and I was so thankful for all those times we had whirled about the room at Gymnasium doing the Andalusian in a huge circle, and the schottische, and the polka. Mrs. Tuttle used to call out, “Heel, toe, and away we go!” Professor Fogle was induced to waltz with us, though usually we waltzed with each other. But dancing with boys is different, especially the waltz, when they have to touch you and are embarrassed. Eliza’s cousin Martha says to each one, “Can I tell you a secret?” and whispers something, she says it does not matter what, in his ear. All the boys are in love with her, they rush to sign up on her dance card. She says it is the breath in their ears that does it! Eliza thinks this is terrible but I think it is funny. It is fun to flirt and feel powerful. I thought of Victoria, and wondered where she is now, and wished I could see her or even be her, just for a minute. Remember when we wanted a demon lover, Mary White? But Ben Valiant will never be one.

  “Oh, I hate to go back to school, don’t you?” Eliza said once we were in the coach, but though I said “Yes,” it was not really true. I am glad to get back here to our busy attic room and the echoing halls and the classrooms with their long wavy windows and Mrs. Snow’s greenhouse where I love to work and the big hall with its lemony early light when I go in to neaten up and wipe the slate before the school day commences. Everything happens at a certain time here, it is the very opposite of Agate Hill. I love this school in spite of Mrs. Snow who does not like me, I have never known why. Even Agnes admits it but says she does not know why either. I don’t care.

  In fact, I dread commencement as much as I anticipate it, in part because Mister Simon Black is coming. It has been four years, I can scarcely remember him, and yet I owe him everything, Mrs. Snow tells me this constantly. It makes me feel very odd. Please write me back if you can but I will write to you anyway.

  Your best friend forever, sealed in blood,

  Molly

  January 9, 1877

  A Love Story for Mary White

  Now before the others arrive I will tell you the story of Mime Peeler. For we are all convinced that she loved our former music teacher, M. Bienvenu, though she swears there was nothing between them. His first name was Jacques (you do not pronounce the “s”). He had a high wide forehead with very pale skin and huge dark liquid eyes that were always glistening, and went everywhere carrying a palmetto fan. We all thought he was so silly, but Mime liked him. He told her that she could be a concert pianist (he said “peeyaneest”) if she would “practeece, practeece, practeece,” which she did, faithfully, and went around with her head in the clouds and a look of purest exaltation on her face. As for him, he seemed always as if he would burst into tears, fanning himself with his fan, which we made terrible fun of, but Mime would not laugh at him, ever. She practeeced and practeeced.

  Once I came into a practice room bringing a freshly trimmed lamp to find her practeecing and M. Bienvenu very close behind her shoulder turning the pages. Red spots flamed on Mime’s china cheeks. They were both so solemn and intent that I came and went without either one of them even noticing I was there. Mime was sixteen then, I know he was thirty-five at least. They had a special tutorial session together three afternoons a week, to prepare her for the concert stage.

  That term, Mime was a prefect of the second study hall. M. Bienvenu used to pop in often, tiptoeing down the aisle in an exaggerated fashion which made all the girls laugh behind their hands, bringing Mime’s sheet music so she could look it over and be ready for their sessions together.

  But one morning Mrs. Snow chanced to appear in the doorway just after M. Bienvenu made his grand entrance, crossed over to Mime’s high desk, and deposited his folder. Mrs. Snow followed him right down the aisle and pounced like a cat upon the sheaf of papers, startling M. Bienvenu so much that he had to grasp the prefects’ desk for support. Deathly pale, Mime looked as if she wished she could sink through the floor.

  “Aha! Mendelssohn! ‘The Songs without Words’!” she announced in a loud hissing stage whisper. “Just what I was looking for! I shall return this to you in a second, Mime dear—”

  She swept the folder up, causing five or six thin pieces of paper (“French paper!” Eliza would later claim) to flutter down upon the floor. M. Bienvenu bowed from the waist and quickly raced away. Poor Mime ran around the desk and attempted to grab up the papers, but she was too late, all of this drama being enacted in front of the entire study hall.

  Mime is such a shy and private girl, she has never been quite the same since. M. Bienvenu was dismissed of course but she was forced to stay on at Gatewood by her parents who wished her to live down this scandal.

  Though Mime has repeatedly claimed it was nothing, and said she doesn’t care, sometimes she still gets up in the middle of the night and goes down into the great hall and plays the grand piano softly while we are all asleep, I have heard her, and once recently I snuck down to find her playing “Spring Song” with the moonlight from the tall windows falling across the keys. I am sure she was thinking of M. Bienvenu and his silly palmetto fan.

  But here comes the hack from town, I see it out our attic window, it is filled with girls, waving.

  I think of you all the time.

  Your friend,

  Molly

  FOR NO ONE’S EYES

  February 27, 1877

  Today I have been out all day in the cold, seeing to putting up three tremendous Hogs. The three weighed nearly eight hundred & I had no one to help Primus cut them up but little Billy Strudwick & he had only one hand he could use—then when I went into the wash-house to see about the Lard I found Mahala so tipsy that she was too foolish for me to put up with so I ordered her to her own kitchen or out of my sight & as Delia was here washing, I got her to help & now at nine o’clock have just washed off the grease & put on my dressing gown—

  Mariah Rutherford Snow

  Headmistress, Gatewood Academy

  Hopewell, Virginia

  FOR NO ONE’S EYES

  March 23, 1877

  Gave birth.

  Mariah Rutherford Snow

  Headmistress, Gatewood Academy

  Hopewell, Virginia

  Molly Petree

  Gatewood Academy

  Hopewell, Virginia

  May 4, 1877

  Dear Mary White,

  Here is another love story for you, with a sad ending. Last night was our final talent program of the year, and to our surprise a group of cadets from the military academy appeared, including that Calhoun Sparks who is sweet on Courtney. Since she was last on the program, he talked her into slipping out and running up the Cedar Walk with him to the drugstore for a soda.

  “Don’t do it,” Eliza whispered furiously. “There’s not time.”

  We were all in the back closet behind the great hall while Calhoun stood in the yard just below us.

  “Oh, come on,” he said with his long slow smile, “no one will ever know. We’ll be back in a minute.” He held out a white-gloved hand through the open door.

  Courtney could not stand it. “Oh, all right,” she said finally. Her black eyes shone as much as her jet bracelets which I so much admire. She tossed her curls once, grinned her pixie grin, and jumped down off the sill and was gone, running up the Cedar Walk between the ancient sighing trees, holding her pale blue satin skirt up with one hand. So that
was the last we saw of them: Calhoun Sparks’s white sash and gloves disappearing into the dark tunnel formed by the double row of trees.

  Inside the great hall, Emily Barry led off by singing “Kathleen Mavou-reen” in her thin, quavery voice. Eliza covered her mouth and squeezed my hand. The program continued. Lucy Lenoir recited “Abou Ben Adhem” followed by two of the little girls with a Schubert Serenade duet on piano and then poor Miranda Unsworth who played a terrible sort of polka over and over again until finally she turned crimson and burst into tears, exclaiming, “I’m so sorry, Mister Bonnard, I just cannot remember how to end it!” She jumped up and ran off the stage to general applause and laughter.

  Mrs. Snow poked her lacquered head back into the closet. “Girls, where is Courtney?” she asked in her sharp voice, over the noise.

  Eliza and I looked at each other.

  “We don’t know,” I said, at exactly the same time Eliza said, “She has gone to the necessary.”

  Mrs. Snow’s sharp face darkened. “I see,” she said ominously, disappearing backstage as Ruth Ann Fuller started in on “The Dying Poet.”

  “I’m going to get her,” I decided, since I was not on the program. Eliza was next with “Listen to the Mockingbird.”

  “O, Molly, don’t, you will get into lots of trouble,” she said, but I said, “I am in trouble with Mrs. Snow all the time anyway,” which is true. I ran into the long tunnel of the Cedar Walk, my feet slipping on the cedar straw that lay everywhere like a fragrant quilt covering the earth, half expecting to come upon Courtney and Calhoun at any moment. A streetlight shone at the end of the Cedar Walk ahead, where it opens out into Main Street. Running as fast as I could, I was soon on the cobbled street outside the little store. Through the window, beyond the many-hued glow of the apothecary jars, I spied their backs as they sat on those high red stools facing the counter. Mister Vogelsong was drying glasses and talking to them. I ran right in. Courtney pulled her hand back from Calhoun’s as if she’d been stung by a bee.

  “You’d better come back right now,” I said to her. I was all out of breath. “Mrs. Snow is looking for you.”

  “Oh Molly, sit down and have some soda.” Calhoun Sparks is a big boy with drooping eyelids that give him a lazy, sneaky look. None of us can understand what Courtney sees in him.

  “Calhoun, I am serious,” I said. “Courtney has not got much time.”

  Courtney looked back and forth between the two of us, draining her soda through its straw. She wiped at her pouty red lips with a napkin.

  Mister Vogelsong stood behind the counter in his accustomed striped shirt and red tie and suspenders with his arms folded, watching all this. “Best to get on back, then, girls,” he said. “Let’s not have no trouble with the missus now,” for everybody in town is afraid of Mrs. Snow.

  Calhoun said something under his breath, still seated. Courtney was looking at him. “Well, all right then,” he said finally and stood up, but slowly, stretching like a cat.

  Suddenly I could not be bothered with him another minute.

  “Come on.” I grabbed Courtney’s hand and pulled her outside over the cobblestone street. We heard horse hoofs in the distance. Then we were running down the dark corridor of the Cedar Walk emerging into the back yard as Mime played “The Banjo” by Louis Moreau Gottschalk. It is very hard. The music poured out the open closet door. We paused by the Rose of Sharon bush to get our breath.

  “See, now, there is plenty of time, look what you did, Molly,” Courtney said, for she was to play after Mime.

  “Wrong!” It was Mrs. Snow who appeared to pluck Courtney right up from the grass. Sometimes when she is angry it seems she has supernatural strength. “You will go straight up to bed right now, young lady. Whatever would your poor dead mother have thought of this behavior?” she said. This was so cruel, she can be like a witch sometimes. “Go on. I shall deal with you tomorrow.”

  “Please don’t tell my father,” Courtney cried, but Mrs. Snow had already turned to leave. “Come along now, Molly,” she flung back over her shoulder.

  Courtney ran up the back stairs sobbing into her balled-up fist while Mrs. Snow went back inside where everyone was applauding. I looked down the Cedar Walk where all that could be seen of Calhoun Sparks now was a shadow in the shadow of the trees. Of course he was too much of a coward to show himself or to see Courtney properly home. Perhaps he will never be an honorable man. I followed Courtney up the stairs to our attic room where her dress already lay in a puddle of shining silk on the wooden floor and poor Courtney herself lay still as a stone in her bed with the covers pulled over her head.

  Your friend forever,

  Molly

  Molly Petree

  Gatewood Academy

  Hopewell, Virginia

  May 25, 1877

  Dear Mary White,

  Why have you never written again? I am afraid to know, yet I shall keep on waiting in hopes of a response for I am doing what you said, I am living for you, and I want you to know everything, and be a part of it.

  Commencement comes closer and closer. Our school days are almost over. But now I am in a strange position for unlike the others I will not be leaving. Dr. Snow has asked me to stay on as a teacher. He has told me in no uncertain terms that this is the wish of my benefactor, Mister Simon Black, since I am still so young. Dr. Snow reminds me that I owe everything to Mister Simon Black and Gatewood Academy. Well I know this is true, but I am sick and tired of hearing about it! For there is something awful about being beholden, I am just figuring it out. It makes me mad to be beholden! Though I am glad to stay on here where all is known and bells ring upon the hour. I bet I will be a pretty good teacher too!

  I am not like Eliza who cannot wait to fling herself into her engagement to that wild cousin I do not trust, or Emma Page who will go to Boston to work in a settlement home with her aunt, or Courtney who will take a grand tour of Europe, though I would love to do that myself someday, or even Mime Peeler who returns to Virginia with a secret locked in her heart forever. I am keeping my heart to myself! I can not see why all these other girls are just dying to be married. For it is the end of everything. Fern Whittaker and Mayme Ragsdale will both do it immediately after commencement, Eliza and Margaret Clark will both become engaged, the list goes on.

  I will be very happy to share Agnes’s little stone fairy house where I will have a room of my own for the first time ever in my life, a room so small it is like my cubbyhole at Agate Hill but nevertheless my own, it is a start. It has pink wallpaper with darker pink roses on it in a repeating lattice print, they are so beautiful. And a little window with a lace curtain and a view of the side yard and the giant elm with its great limbs making a leafy room where the day students gather around the old stump to eat their lunches in fair weather—and beyond that, the orchard, then the woods. And Agnes says we will have a cat too, I cannot wait! For Primus and Delia’s cat will be having kittens any day now.

  But here is a secret: Last Sunday evening when we were all walking home from church in the dark, following Agnes’s swaying lantern at the head of the line, with me bringing up the rear, suddenly I felt hot breath on my cheek and a hot whisper in my ear. “Don’t be scared, Miss Petree! You remember me, Louis Tutwiler—” He is a young teacher from the military institute. The cadets are always jumping in line to scare us as we march home from church. “I am wondering if I can come to call upon you next Saturday afternoon. Please don’t say no,” he added all in a rush, “for I’ve made a considerable wager on it.” Which got me so tickled I said, “Oh, perhaps . . . ,” drawing it out just to tease him, then finally “yes” in spite of myself, though I’m sure I don’t know what we will talk about as he seems a perfect dunce like all those boys. But in any case, I shall have a gentleman caller! And now Ben Valiant has written me a letter enclosing a four-leaf clover from South Carolina, he is coming for our commencement. The thought of seeing him again fills me with dread and also a sense of sweetness, it is very odd. I cannot describe it
.

  I will win the composition award if there is any justice in the world, we are all writing our graduation compositions now. My subject is “There is society where none intrudes” as suggested by Sister Agnes and taken from Childe Harold, it will be about our Willow House. Agate Hill has been sold now, Mary White, according to the awful Brown sisters. I do not know what has happened to Selena or Godfrey or Victoria or Blanche. It all seems as long ago and far away to me now as that cunning little town inside the globe which Ben gave me for Christmas.

  I am always your

  Molly

  Molly Petree

  Gatewood Academy

  Hopewell, Virginia

  June io, 1877

  Dear Mary White,

  I did not get an honor at the commencement, not one, not even the composition award which I surely deserved hands down. Instead it went to Josie Covington who is much too flowery and quivering in her sentiments. “Oh!” she cried, covering her face which has those awful bumps all over it, you ought to see it, so perhaps it is a good thing she has received this honor, but I do not think so. Agnes also seemed very surprised and stared a hole into Mrs. Snow who looked straight ahead at the audience when she announced it. I think prizes should go to the people who deserve them, don’t you? But Mrs. Snow is partial to Josie Covington, and she does not like me. I do not like her either. But no one could really like her, she is so strange and changeable, a wind blowing hot then cold. Oh I don’t really care, for at least Ida Brown got nothing either. Perhaps her little sister Adeline will be in my classroom next year, I can assure you that her mark will be only a passable. I know we are supposed to forgive our enemies Mary White, but I don’t. I can’t forgive. This is why I will never go to heaven and be an angel, for angels have no memories, unlike me, for I remember everything.

  And now, the commencement.