This is Adam (Lightwood History Collection Book 4)

by Brainard Cheney

  “I’ll accept the blame!” Edward said. His jaw loosened and his lips pursed and he made a vague incipient gesture, as if he were going to take her in his arms.

  Lucy shook her head, as if against dizziness. “Please don’t, Edward!” she said in a low granular voice. She touched his fingers in her gloved hand to soften the severity of her manner. “Now, let me see, where I was. . .” She focused on the clear sharp doorway. “Oh, merciful saints, yes! Here. I let you run on on the ferryboat, this morning, coming over from the Island, because—well, because, I hadn’t quite steeled myself to it then. And maybe, because I wanted you a little longer by myself, alone—pretending that!” She drew in her breath and considered for a moment. “A woman,” she said, a little sententiously, “is like a secret. Once it has been shared and its contents committed to others, whatever happens, it can never come to you the same secret again, solely your own, unattached.”

  Eyeing her from a clear, expectant face, Edward smiled lightly. “Your children?” He shrugged this off. “Well, of course! I have considered your children, all along, Lucy! Don’t be absurd. From the very first. I wrote you so.”

  She shook her head again. “Ah, yes, Edward! But you have never had children—not of your own. You don’t know, you can’t, what the involvement is! You simply don’t know what you are talking about!”

  He said, with detached assurance, glancing over her shoulder, “Remember I am the principal of a high school. And I’m not entirely without imagination.”

  She caught the frown gathering at her brows, pretending to search for something in her pocketbook, until he had finished. “Oh, I know, I know, Edward!” she said, giving him her attention again. “If you weren’t the most intelligent man I know, did not know me so well, weren’t—if there were any less love between us, I wouldn’t for a moment—”

  He interrupted positively, “Listen, Lucy! It’s been done before! And with a high degree of success!”

  With her off hand she readjusted the position of the scuffed, tan leather bag on the floor beside her, beyond the end of the bench. “I wonder. And besides, you! Edward, how can I pretend to love you as much as I do and do this to you!” She lifted a hand to forestall his interruption. “No, no! I’m not being sentimental! You can’t know what you are about to get yourself into! Can’t!”

  Edward gripped the arms of his seat, frowning. “Lucy, I’m used to children! You haven’t forgotten there were seven in my family, four of them younger than I am.”

  Meeting his annoyed, open gaze, Lucy stared for a moment with her eyes widening, then abruptly pulled down her veil against their burning, to hide the tears. “If you didn’t love me as much as you do, it would be a lot simpler,” she concluded.

  A sympathetic gloom overspread his sensitive face. He lowered his gaze and said grimly, “It isn’t love, if it can’t endure!”

  She sighed. “But, Edward, you can’t just marry me. You’ve got to marry my three children, as well! You’ve got to love them, too, to make any sort of a job of it—another man’s children!” She put her hands on the arched metal arms and came to her feet, and he rose with her. “And the chances are,” she continued, “at my age that we won’t have any children of our own!”

  He took her hand, and brought it under his arm and led her through swinging doors and onto the deserted platform beside the tracks. They walked a little way. Then suddenly he swung her into his grasp, crushing her against him, and kissed her with a paralyzing fierceness.

  When she had righted herself on her feet, they walked on in silence. She leaned on his arm heavily, unable to do more than breathe for a time. Her feelings were a confusion, but when they finally settled down into some order, she could not find anything further to say. When they turned about to walk back, she raised her voice plaintively, with a feeble try at facetiousness. “One reason I’m marrying you, Edward, I might let you know, is to get Marse a father. I want to resign the job!”

  She added, more ominously than she meant, “It won’t be easy!”

  17.

  ON MONDAY AFTERNOON, Lucy opened the door and led the way into her own parlor, followed by Elinor and Lucinda Morrow. She moved across the room to raise the shade a little against the room’s too dim sanctity. She allowed the cream-colored blind to roll up far enough to conceal partly its elaborate, embossed, silver and gold design of flowers. The girls had followed her in curiously, gingerly, and a little reluctantly. They stood, Elinor with an arm about Row’s shoulders, on the angora goatskin rug at the entrance.

  “Close the door and come over here!” Lucy said self-consciously, halting before the sofa. She had taken off her apron, as she came up the hall, and under it she held Edward’s photograph. She had been back from Charleston for two days, and she had not been able to say a word to her children about Edward. It was almost as if it were a clandestine affair! She had to tell somebody!

  The day before she had almost told Marse, then didn’t. He had picked up out of her suitcase the envelope with the photographs of her nephews and niece and the one of Edward, crying out, “Is this something else for me, Mamma?” She allowed him to look at them and when he came to Edward’s likeness, she had said, “You have heard me speak of Mr. Edward Louthan?”

  “What kin is he, Mamma?” he asked.

  She felt for a moment tongue-tied and said, when she did gain speech, perhaps with more feeling than she intended, “He’s a very fine man. I’ve known him since we were children together in Charleston.”

  He had given her a surprised, curious look. And, with a little “Oh!” laid the photograph down and went on to something else. It did not seem to be the right moment! So Lucy had decided to begin with her daughters, in the privacy of the parlor.

  “Sit down by me!” she said, in invitation, to Elinor, laying a cushion against the trim walnut arm of the sofa. Row took a stool at her feet. She cleared her throat and took Row’s hand. Trying to speak in a noncommittal voice, she said, “How would you all like to live in Charleston?”

  It sounded more mysterious than she intended. There was a pause, while both girls gazed at her uncertainly. She smiled to reassure them. And Row’s little, lean freckled face crinkled into a nervous laugh. “In Charleston?” she exclaimed, emphasizing the first syllable comically. Jerking her hand loose, she cried challengingly. “Can I take Jessie Tucker with me?”

  Lucy caught herself frowning and forced a tight-lipped smile. She shook her head patiently. “No, Row! This is not make-believe. This is real. Really and truly.”

  “Mamma!” Elinor put a hand on her knee. She spoke, conscious of the full maturity of her thirteen years. “You’ve talked about our going to school there. Is that what you mean?”

  “Yes, and more,” Lucy answered, looking toward her, still astonished at the difficulty she was having. “We might go there to live!”

  Elinor lifted her nose to think. “It sounds grand,” she said, more in wonder than enthusiasm. . . .”Will it depend on the Land Deal?”

  This comment took Lucy by surprise and she lifted her eyebrows, considering it before she replied. “In a way, yes,” she said. “But not altogether. There is something else.” As she gazed away her eyes darkened with a look of mystery. “Something that deeply concerns Mamma and means a lot to her. Something that,” she paused to choose her words, “that she hopes you all will want to join with her in”—she hesitated again—“well, in sharing.” She went on more hurriedly, feeling somehow threatened by their mystified faces. “This would mean a big change for us all. But Mamma would not then be so alone in the world. She would have somebody to help her look after you all, somebody to protect her against land sharks and shysters. Like—like those lawyers, who rooked me out of your father’s title records. . .” Beside her, the gray-green eyes, with their pupils as shining and slit-like as a cat’s, before her the wide, questioning, almost blank blue ones, began to be unnerving. She said with a summary lift of voice, “And we would all have a protector!” She paused and began trying to extrica
te the picture from its wrappings.

  “Yes, mamma,” they both said.

  Taking a deep breath, she unveiled the cabinet-size photograph, holding it up between her hands, the apron falling to the floor. “You all have heard me speak of Mr. Edward Louthan, my old friend?”

  They looked at it judiciously.

  “We have seen that before, Mamma,” Row said, pointing at it. “What are you going to do with it?” Suddenly her face took on a glib, childish cunning and she cocked her head. “Are you going to marry him, Mamma?”

  Elinor sat up, glaring at Row indignantly, crying, “Why, Row!”

  Lucy lifted Elinor’s hand from her knee and held it between hers. “Elinor, Elinor!” she remonstrated gently. “Row happens to be right!” She turned to Elinor, smiling. But behind her smile, the pupils of her eyes were big and staring with anxiety. “That is just what I do want to talk to you about. And I do so much hope you all will approve.” Her voice growing more intense, she went on. “Edward is such a grand person! Such a fine man! So brilliant! Such a wonderful school principal. And has been devoted to Mamma for so many, many years. We were sweethearts a long time ago before you were born.”

  Row’s upturned face had been growing graver and graver, as she listened. A frightened embarrassment caught her like a blow. “But what will Papa say?” she asked, with bated breath—knowing that God had taken her father away and he would not return, but that he looked down on them from Heaven.

  For an instant Lucy’s face seemed sympathetically to reflect Row’s agitation, then she lifted her chin, her mouth sobering, and straightened her shoulder a little. “I’m glad you asked that, Row!” she said with too much insistence. “I think you all should know that your father very much wanted me to marry again when he died.” This was the interpretation she was placing on Marcellus’ having said, talking about property matters in his last troubled hours, “Lucy, I do hope you will find somebody to teach you to take care of these things better than I have.” Yet she was sincere.

  Row squirmed about on her stool, lifting clownishly a lock of her tow hair on top of her head. She had done so famously with her questions, she was inspired to go on, tilting her face again to ask, “Does he have lots of money, Mamma?”

  Lucy accepted her inquisition graciously. “He does much better,” she said, with a glowing firmness. “He has brains. And he is a very fine person along with it. And his position is an important one and pays him well. But we won’t be penniless ourselves, Row!” she went on with assurance, “if Mamma sells the Oconee swamp. And maybe the Okefenokee swamp, too!”

  Row nodded excitedly. But Elinor, Lucy observed, had remained distant throughout this with little to indicate her approval. She turned to her now, going on, if a little histrionically with a conviction that gave her persuasive grace. “Your mother’s life, Elinor, had been shipwrecked by your father’s death. She was left alone in the world with three small children and no experience in looking after things. Then the boy whom, a long time ago, she had grown up with in Charleston, who had professed his love for her in those early youthful days, before it was time to get married—this boy comes forward, now a man older than your mother. She had not thought of him since she met your father. But, he reveals to her that he has remained in love with her all of these years. . .” Lucy paused to catch her breath and to allow this testament to romance to take effect.

  Elinor’s already-shining eyes widened and a golden glow came over her usually sallow face. “How wonderful for you, Mamma! I never heard of anything so wonderful!” She turned to include Row. “Wonderful for all of us!”

  Row clapped her hands. “Oh, Mamma, can I tell Marse?”

  Lucy’s face paled and, automatically, she clasped the photograph to her. . . “No. No, you may not!” she said crisply.

  On the next afternoon, at the back steps, Mrs. Hightower was still the returned traveler, in her new white shirt-waist and skirt and shoes, handing Adam, who, with a foot planted midway, reached to receive them, the things she had brought back from Charleston. “Here’s horehound candy for Babe and the boys,” she said, “and a picture of Charleston harbor for your mother to hang on the wall and some tobacco for you—something special called perique that they smoke down on the coast. I thought you might like to try it.”

  Adam pushed himself back into a standing position with the paper bag in his hands, saying, “Ooee! S-so many things! That’s mighty nice, mighty nice, mighty nice!”

  She straightened up, smiling on him, a little color in her cheeks. “I guess you thought I wasn’t coming back, at all?”

  “Well’um, no’im.” He looked down into the bag. “H-hit was a right good stay, though! Howed you leave yo’ sister in South Ca-lina?”

  The glow remaining on her face, Mrs. Hightower replied, “She was much improved. And she recovered so rapidly after I got there that I really stayed on the second week almost as much to see some of my old friends and get about a little as to nurse her!” She added as an afterthought and a little as if it were a threat, “I liked not to have come back, you know?”

  Adam, who had seemed a little preoccupied as she talked on, broke into a smile. “Sho, glad you got a nice trip out’n it, too!” Looking into the bag in his hand, he fished out the package of tobacco and smelled of it.

  She eyed him, with a glint in her eyes, her brows twitching. “But I’m serious about it, Adam!” She paused while he finished sniffing the perique. “I’m thinking about pulling up stakes and leaving this country.”

  Adam smiled affably. “I knows how you feel! Charleston a fine city, I hear.”

  Mrs. Hightower bridled at this, half annoyed, but broke into a smile again. “No, really, Adam!” She paused to sober before going on. “While I’m at it, I think I’ll just sell out, lock, stock, and barrel, and move back to Charleston!”

  Adam’s eyes twinkled and his lips loosened. He said indulgently, “S-sho wouldn’t blame you!” He shook his head. “Hit’s a mean ole land, to live with it. And the folks you have to deal with, such sorry folks! And all the trouble we havin’ over this land deal on top of it. Hit’s a rough world ‘round this here place!”

  Mrs. Hightower’s mouth was firm. If he wanted to doubt her intention, she would give him the details. “When Mr. Lincoln comes back with his offer on the Okefenokee property,” she said precisely, “I intend to get him to make me an overall price, including the homeplace and all. That should give us enough to live on in Charleston.”

  Adam nodded in ready agreement. “’Nuff to live on anywheres!” he said.

  “I mean it, Adam!” she added, in irritation.

  Adam laughed gleefully. “Couldn’t blame you! Couldn’t blame you! Just sell and git shut of it,” he cried gustily. Sobering a little, he recalled, “Of course there’s still trouble in the Land Deal, looks like.” He shook his head. “Trouble. Then I reckon h-hit’s the same ole world over there, at last, that we got here, ain’t it?”

  Mrs. Hightower’s eyes were widening in astonishment and her brows, working nervously. Couldn’t he understand? Could Adam be deliberately putting her off? “Well, you’ll see!” she said grimly. “I’m just waiting on Mr. Lincoln’s report. I’m going to sell out!”

  Adam’s laugh was wry. “Well’um, that’s fine,” he said, with no more belief in her threat than before, but in the sobering tone of one who wants to restrain an excited person. “H-hit looks like right now they goin’ to sell me out!”

  Mrs. Hightower gazed at him for a moment to see if he could be more serious. “Sell you out? What do you mean? Who?”

  Adam’s preoccupation had returned. After a pause, he nodded. “You know that little piece of ground I bought from the Brights? . . .The b-bank’s ‘bout to foreclose on it.”

  “The bank! What on earth have they got to do with it?”

  Adam hesitated to consider and sighing, as if he saw no alternative, said glumly, “M-mr. Peter sold ‘em my mortgage. Said he had to have his money, because of the land deal blowin’ up�
�some of ‘em claimin’, since the Yankees left that hit’s blowed up.”

  Mrs. Hightower drew in her lips, smiling slightly, in incomprehension. “Well, we know better than that, Adam!”

  Nodding, Adam said ruefully, “Yessum. Look like I done knowed too much.”

  “How’s that?”

  “Well I should’ve kept my mouth shut when I didn’t!” He shook his head. “And then goin’ on to violate yo’ confidence, too!”

  “My confidence?”

  “Brights and some more of ‘em here think I knows more ‘bout the Land Deal than I do.” He went on, close-lipped, to detail his futile morning’s effort to convince old man Peter otherwise, concluding, “But he jump too far—he said ‘So she goin’ to sell ‘em that timber down there in the Okefenokee and just drop our deal, hanh?’ And there waun’t no way I could make him believe any different. . . .He told me then, that he done sold the mortgage to the bank.”

  Her shock over Adam’s story left Mrs. Hightower staring. “Why Adam, you had the money to pay off half of that note, I thought?”

  “Yessum. But he say he have to have it all.”

  She still stared. “But, if you pay half the bank will certainly renew it.”

  Adam lowered his gaze. “Mr. Littleton say, Nothin’ on paper ‘bout renewin’—say, Bank has to have full payment on the first.”

  Red flared in her cheeks. “What is this, Adam? I don’t understand what’s going on here? How does the land deal get into your business?”

  “C-curious, ain’t it?” Adam agreed wryly, guardedly. “But Mr. Lincoln went back up No’th and they think he’s gone for good.” He added, glancing at her dimly in passing, “Mr. Littleton, he don’t know any different, nuther.” He pulled meditatively at his mouth, chewing the ends of his mustache for a moment then said diffidently, “All of ‘em thinks I had a hand in it.”