Ruth’s Journey

by Donald McCaig

  Philippe’s bachelor abode hadn’t been feminized. Older guests recalled the drawing room wallpaper whose colors had been brighter twenty years ago. Younger ladies envied their elders’ weak eyesight, which couldn’t quite identify what was dwelling in the high, dark cornices.

  Ladies spotted the mop strings caught on furniture legs but didn’t drop a conversational stitch as they wiped their chairs before sitting.

  Balsam, mistletoe, and holly writhed along the chair rails, and a grand festoon of Spanish moss drooped from the chandelier.

  Antonia Sevier wondered, “Isn’t moss sacred to the savages?”

  In the drawing room too full of his parents’ last-century furniture, Philippe (who had already drunk more than wisdom prescribed) presented his Princess. “This is my darling wife, Osanalgi. Mrs. Haversham, Osanalgi.” He chuckled. “Call her Osa as I do.”

  The woman’s hair was very black, very shiny, and chopped off. Her fussy ball dress had been sewn for someone whose flesh didn’t crawl at its touch. Osa’s smile was pasted on, and her eyes skittered.

  “The Muscogee are Georgia’s first citizens. There are eight . . . perhaps nine subtribes depending on how we reckon them.”

  “Why, Philippe, that’s fascinatin’. Mrs. Robillard, you must tell us all about it.”

  “Yes,” Osa said but no more.

  So her guests moved on.

  Philippe had banned the stodgy, old-fashioned, happily familiar minuet, and when his musicians struck up the new (and some said indecent) waltz, Philippe and his bride sailed onto the floor so lost in each other they didn’t hear the whispers behind fans or see the uncharitable winks.

  Pierre did a cousin’s duty, working dance after dance through the widows and spinsters. Some ladies, who had known better days, lingered at a buffet their fastidious sisters avoided despite Pierre’s assurances no savage delicacies were concealed beneath the gumbo’s dark red roux.

  Still, strong punch lifted spirits, and soon enough, despite the waltz steps they must learn as they danced them, their silent Muscogee hostess and dour coachman, Philippe’s guests began to feel something like Christmas. They’d wanted to meet the Princess? Well, now they had. Might as well make the best of it. Havershams mingled with Seviers, Minnises with O’Haras.

  Their servants celebrated in the basement. Mammy Cerise had appointed Mammy Antigone to tend the children in the nursery, and the coachmen had picked an unsociable fellow to stay with the horses.

  The kitchen was brick nooks and candlelit crannies beside a tall fireplace where a kettle burbled cheerfully. Pierre Robillard had entrusted Nehemiah with a cask of Madeira. Seated at the head of a long plank table, Mammy Cerise kept a hawk eye on it when Nehemiah was about his duties, nodding when a tin cup might be charged, coughing disapproval when a cup had been charged too often.

  The dispenser of the Madeira hadn’t stinted herself and pressed Ruth about Jehu and private matters Ruth wouldn’t have confessed to anyone. Mammy Cerise knew how young girls are. “I was one myownself.”

  “Please, Mammy Cerise!”

  “We just the same, child; all us womens needin’ love.”

  Mammy Ruth fled to the nursery, where Pauline was building a block tower, which other children were as earnestly dismantling. Mammy Antigone waved off Ruth’s offer to relieve her. “I reckon I stays here with the children. I likes children better’n grown-ups.”

  Ruth hoped Mammy Cerise’s curiosity would have moved on to someone else’s secrets, but armed with Madeira and memories of what she’d got up to in her girlish days, Mammy Cerise went at Ruth again. “That Jehu shrewd. He make enough money one day for a wife ’n’ childrens. Might even buy he own house live in.”

  “Might be he do.”

  Mammy Cerise smiled as if she’d got to where she’d been heading all along. “Jehu talkin’ ’bout that Vesey? Preacher Vesey?”

  “Say he strong Christian man.”

  “Um-hum. Um-hum. Vesey free colored like Jehu. Won Charleston lottery and bought heself free. He say God give him the number. Vesey”—Mammy Cerise lowered her voice to a ­rumble—“he—”

  “He what? I goes to Mass every morning. Me and Pauline always be goin’.”

  “Vesey ain’t no Catholic man, honey. He say he for the colored man!”

  Ruth’s faint smile deferred to her elder.

  Mammy Cerise’s eyebrows knotted. “I doesn’t know, child. I just don’t know. That what worry me.” She poured Ruth a half cup of Madeira.

  “I don’t drink . . .”

  “Then it time you start. There ain’t so many good things in this world. Childrens, a good man’s lovin”—she poked Ruth in the ribs—“and this here. Sometimes I thinks it the best. For certain, it nearest to hand.”

  But Ruth didn’t like the taste, and soon as Mammy Cerise wasn’t watching she set her cup down. Some Mammies were laughin’ and carryin’ on, and what if their childrens need them?

  Master Wesley was red faced, laughing with Master Haversham and Master Pierre. Mistress Solange and Mistress Antonia were talking close like they’d been best friends forever. Ruth tugged Mistress Solange’s sleeve. “We go now, missus? Li’l Pauline need go home.”

  “It is Christmas, child. Surely I’m allowed to forget my cares one night a year.”

  Ruth couldn’t think what cares Mistress Solange needed forgetting. “I bein’ with Miss Pauline,” she said. In the nursery’s ancient love seat, two sleepy toddlers nestled against Mammy Antigone, who opened one eye in a slow wink.

  Ruth sat in the corner with her back against warm chimney bricks and slept fitfully, waking each time a Mammy collected her charge. When Nehemiah shook Ruth awake, her mouth was parched and her eyes felt like she had sand under the lids.

  Nehemiah passed the sleeping Pauline to Ruth in the entry hall. Since Philippe was unable to do so, Pierre Robillard said good night to his cousin’s guests. “Mrs. Evans, so good you condescended to attend. Philippe was so gratified you and Wesley could grace our little fete.” He whispered, “Philippe says the Evanses are ‘the cream of Savannah society.’”

  Having heard Pierre apply that happy compliment to others, Solange smiled. “Our hostess?”

  Pierre looked around. “Perhaps she’s . . .”

  When Solange returned to the drawing room, two drunks were sleeping in chairs and the bearded fellow curled in a corner was protesting to his servant, “Doan’ wanna go. Sleep here.”

  Mrs. Philippe Robillard’s hands were wrist-deep in the gumbo, and roux dribbled down her ball dress. She dropped something—a shrimp? sausage?—back in the tureen. Her eyes tried to bolt.

  “Why,” Solange said to the girl, “why, you are . . .” Solange touched her own pregnant belly. “As am I.”

  Impulsively, Osa snatched Solange’s hand. “We talk?” she said. “We talk?”

  Fighting the urge to wipe grease from her hand, Solange inclined her ear. They spoke for ten minutes—two expectant ­mothers—until Osa stopped trembling and her eyes quieted. When Solange said she must be going, hospitable Osa dipped a bowl into the tureen and offered it to her guest. Delicately and deliberately, Solange extracted a single gray-brown shrimp with her fingers and made every show of enjoying it. Osa beamed.

  “We are both refugees,” Solange told her. “Savannah can be so cruel.” She wiped her fingers on the tablecloth. “Refugees must become who they weren’t.”

  Ruth carried Pauline to the carriage. Since Wesley was very drunk, Solange laid Pauline on the front seat, and Ruth climbed up top beside the coachman. Ruth wasn’t tired—not one bit. The winter stars were so bright.

  The next morning their house was cold until Mammy Ruth laid a fire in the withdrawing room. Cook made oatmeal. Solange came downstairs yawning. Her hair was unkempt, she hadn’t scrubbed her face, and last night’s makeup was smeare
d like—Ruth didn’t giggle—a red Indian’s war paint. Solange appropriated Ruth’s oatmeal and demanded coffee—“boil chicory in it”—and the morning paper.

  Solange was on her second cup when she snorted, tapping a black-bordered advertisement. “Dear Mother of God.” She shook her head, incredulously.

  Aloud, she read the president of Haiti’s advertisement offering free land to any American free-colored craftsmen willing to immigrate. “Oh, dear me. Dear me, Ruth. Must I suppose you and your master stair builder will go to Haiti?”

  Ruth smiled. Almost. “Thank you no, missus. I Mammy Ruth Fornier. I American.”

  Solange rubbed her forehead. “Yes, I suppose you are.” She folded the paper and laid it down. “She is intelligent, you know.”

  “Miz Robillard?”

  “She doesn’t have a doctor. Her people don’t have them—not our sort of doctors, anyway. Philippe is no help. I shall ask Dr. Michaels to call on her.”

  She turned to Ruth ferociously. “You see how cruel people are? How terribly cruel? Osa is the wife of the richest Frenchman in Savannah. Yet how the grand dames are chuckling this morning over their tea and toast! Princess Osa. ‘Poor, poor Princess Osa. Uncouth and so Indian!’” She brushed a wisp of hair off her forehead. “My precious Pauline. How will she behave when she’s Osa’s age? Will she be out of step, eccentric, a figure of mockery? Or will my daughter be one of those fortunates who set the tone for others?”

  Ruth told her Mistress, “Mammy Cerise say we all needs love. Love be-all and end-all.”

  Solange dropped her forehead into her hands. “Mammy Cerise! Mammy Cerise! The fount of good taste and deportment! Oh, dear me. Oh dear!”

  “Missus, what else—”

  “Pauline will not be a servant, Ruth. She will not care for another woman’s children. She will marry someone with a good competence or expectations of getting one. My Pauline and”—­Solange touched her belly tenderly—“this little one will live happily among their peers, knowing the benefits of civilization, providing charity to those less blessed. Pauline must be herself, but she must not stand out—as poor Osa does, as I did when I arrived on these shores. How they whispered: ‘Poor woman! One more “tragic” Saint-Domingue refugee!’ They whispered until I had my money.”

  “But, missus. You always stands out.”

  With a gesture Solange dismissed that compliment. “Mammy, I must inform you of the rules—nay the commandments—of polite society.” She bowed her head as if in prayer. “To be someone”—she searched for words—“one must first appear to be someone. Osa’s father is a potentate. Therefore, he acts like, dresses like, and speaks like his savage subjects expect a potentate to act. Do you understand?”

  “I ain’t never seen no poooot . . . I ain’t seen none, missus.”

  “Ah, but you have. When Wesley wobbles downstairs, he won’t seem like a potentate, but he’ll be one before he goes out to pursue his affairs. Mr. Haversham—in his very expensive, very plain black suit—he’s a potentate. And Pierre Robillard, despite his fusty ways and mannerisms—he’s one too. They are potentates because they match our notion of what such should be. As Pauline’s teacher, you must be alert to those marks that distinguish a young lady from the mere woman or”—she winced—“the slattern or slut. Those distinctions are as important as they are fine. Those fortunates with good breeding and refinement are distinguished by their deportment.”

  “‘Deportment,’ missus?” Although Ruth didn’t know what it was, she would heed and obey.

  * * *

  Solange was too shrewd to ignore handwriting on the wall. A prominent cotton factor, first cousin to Mrs. Sevier on her father’s side, was found dead in his office, having murdered himself with a dose of bitter arsenic dissolved in a glass of very old, very fine bourbon. High middling brought four cents a pound—if a buyer could be found. A full-task field hand, sound and obedient, could be had for four hundred dollars, half what he would have fetched last year. The riverfront was cluttered with cotton, like so many moldering snowbanks, abandoned when Up-country planters had failed to sell and gone home.

  Perhaps because she didn’t want to think about those snowbanks, Solange read to Pauline (who listened when her doll or kitten didn’t positively require her attention) and to Ruth, who was fascinated by the confident proscriptions of the little etiquette book.

  “The lady does not speak about herself. She lets others praise her.”

  “What if she done somethin’ special?”

  “‘By inquiring, others may learn of our achievements.’ Pauline, you must avoid popular phrases. ‘You may rely upon me’ is a sure sign of the cheat. ‘To be brief . . . ’ predicts long-windedness. And ‘Without boasting . . . ’ a braggart.”

  Every winter day rain kept Pauline indoors, Ruth brought out the etiquette book.

  “‘In the event a lady hears an indecency, she must promptly interrupt, rebuke its utterer, and, if he cannot be checked, the lady is free to depart with her dignity intact. A younger lady’s chaperone can be expected to intercede, if indecency is merely indelicacy.’”

  And so forth.

  Wesley ate dinners with his family and was tender to Solange and Pauline but afterward returned to his office to sleep, joking that his presence “keeps the bailiffs away.”

  Ruth slept badly. Too much mist hanging over the family and too many spirit voices.

  As if deportment could improve the price the mills paid for cotton and drag cotton piles from the promenade, Solange continued her instruction relentlessly. “ ‘The lady must vary her dress lest idlers amuse themselves by confusing their description of her dress with her person. In dress, society applauds the woman who is in no hurry to follow fashion yet adopts the démodé when her betters do.’”

  “You mean she dress like all them other ladies do.”

  “Precisely. ‘The young lady’s dress must be modest in form and ornaments lest her suitors conclude that she loves luxury.’”

  Over supper Wesley said, “Haversham is calling in loans. It’s not his idea. Credit him for that. But he’s Philadelphia’s dogsbody. Still it’s a damn, damn shame.”

  “Isn’t the Bank of the United States supposed to lend? To encourage commerce, I mean.”

  Wesley’s smile was knowing and bitter. “Six months ago, any man able to cast a shadow in bright sunlight qualified for a loan. ‘Sir, is that all you need?’ A man’s good reputation and credit meant nothing. The bank financed silly fellows who undercut honest men. Now the bank wants the silly fellows to pay up. Since they cannot pay, their disaster becomes our disaster.”

  The next morning Solange explained why an unmarried lady must not eat too much. “ ‘She must not be deemed too lusty in her appetites.’”

  “What if she hungry?”

  “A girl may have appetites. Indeed, she will have appetites. But she must not acknowledge them. Suitors don’t think respectable girls have appetites, and only reckless girls will disabuse them.”

  Solange noted the O’Haras’ prosperity in these hard times as an object lesson. “Prudence, Ruth, is the lady’s mightiest tool.”

  Pauline didn’t pay much attention, but Ruth was an eager student. She’d usually figured things out for herself, and being taught was a rare pleasure.

  * * *

  Wesley hadn’t been to the Pink House in the new year.

  When Solange told Mr. Jameson to abandon work on it, he objected, saying sixty days would see it finished.

  “I can pay your last bill,” Solange said. “But no more.”

  Jameson told her the attic cistern, though installed, had not been plumbed, the chair rails weren’t attached in the central hall, the circular staircase lacked balustrades, handrails, and varnishing. In short, the Pink House was incomplete.

  Solange found a smile. “As you say, sir. But we no
longer have means to complete it.”

  Mr. Jameson sputtered angrily. He inquired if she’d given a thought to the workmen he had assembled, men who like himself had families to support.

  “You can reassemble them when times improve,” she said.

  This pregnancy was more disagreeable than Solange’s first, and spring rains often kept her indoors. One overcast day when So­lange visited Pink House, workmen were disassembling scaffolding as Jehu stacked lumber in a decrepit wagon. Gloom descended on Solange so profound she slumped on a nail keg, clinging to consciousness.

  When she opened her eyes, Jehu was standing before her. “You wants water, missus? Somethin’ I can do?”

  “No, no.”

  “Mr. Jameson don’t come round no more. You want I fetch Master Wesley?”

  “No, I’ll be fine. Dizzy, that’s all.”

  He helped her up. How her back hurt. How glad she would be when all this was over.

  Jehu cleared his throat. “I been meanin’ talk to you, missus. ’Bout that Ruth gal.”

  “Not now,” Solange said. “Not now.”

  * * *

  Three days later, Sunday morning amid the clamor of church bells, Nehemiah stood on her front stoop with his hat in his hand and an expression on his face she’d never seen before. He was bursting with news he didn’t wish to deliver. After he did so, he helped her into the house, where Solange fainted.

  From the Factors’ Walk forty feet above him, Wesley looked like a dead blackbird with his cape wings flared across wet cobbles, a blackbird that had flown into window glass and fluttered dying to the dock below.

  “It were terrible slick, missus,” Nehemiah excused Wesley’s fall. “Why nobody hardly keep their feets. Wet cotton waste slicker’n axle grease.”