“Or used to,” Honoria said.
Clive turned to her. “Mr. Hoadley love Mr. Therro. That a fact.”
I asked, “And Jimmy and Therro were friends?”
Clive said slowly, “Our Jimmy was many years younger than Mr. Therro and Mr. Hoadley. It all right when they still boys, but when they grew to be young men they moved into different worlds.”
“Did they?” Honoria asked. Her voice was deep, harsh. She looked at Clive as she had been looking at him when I came into the room.
“In the nature of things,” Clive said gently.
Honoria was not gentle. “The black world and the white world. But there is a shadow world that overlaps.”
In Honoria, who had never been a slave, I sensed a smoldering anger.
To try to ease the tension I said, “I met Jimmy’s wife last night.”
It was as though my innocent statement had turned me into Medusa and Clive and Honoria to stone. For a long, frightened moment—I had no idea what I had said or done—I thought they would never move or speak to me again.
Then Clive sat down on the edge of the bed, the creak of rusty springs loud as thunder in the silence, took a Bible from the bed table, and turned it, turned it in his dark fingers, as though seeking strength.
Honoria rose. She towered over me; she seemed to have grown taller, as she had with Uncle Hoadley on the veranda. “Where you hear about Jimmy and Belle Zenumin?”
“I didn’t! I met Belle last night when I went for my walk up the beach.”
“What she say?”
“I don’t—she was very kind to me, very friendly—”
“Where she take you?”
I looked from Honoria’s stern face to Clive, still turning the Bible in his hands. He saw my consternation. “Honoria. Be gentle with Miss Stella. She don’t know.”
Honoria repeated her question, but her voice was less guttural and strange. “Where she take you?”
I answered reluctantly, “We went back behind the dunes to the creek.”
“Who was there?”
“Belle’s grandmother. She—oh, Honoria, she frightened me.”
“Miss Stella. When you went on your walk last night—tell me: tell me everybody you see.”
“Well, I saw—I saw Ron, first. And then I walked on farther, and I saw the twins. And then Belle and her grandmother. Everything was all right except the Granddam and I don’t know why she frightened me so, she just—” I wanted Honoria to reassure me, to comfort me as she had comforted Aunt Olivia during the storm the night before.
But she turned to Clive. “It is the Rule of Three. Ron. The twins. The Zenumin. One is not chance, two is not coincidence, but three mean—” She sat down, withdrawing herself, holding her arms about herself and rocking slightly back and forth. Again she spoke only to Clive. “I told you what I saw. I told you. It will happen again. We cannot prevent it. And I am too old now, I cannot carry enough pain, it will be unbearable—”
“Honoria.” Clive put the Bible back down on the table. “Miss Stella, it is not good that you should go near the Zenumin.”
“God,” Honoria said. “Oh, my Lord.”
I could not reach out to touch Honoria. She had gone to some cold, dark place beyond human comfort. Clive was not offering her comfort. He was, in a strange sense, giving judgment.
Honoria rose, ponderously. For a moment she stood, silent, motionless, while strength and dignity returned to her. “Better go downstairs now, Miss Stella.” I was not being dismissed because of what I had said or done: I did not know what it was only that it had brought an agony almost too great to be borne.
I followed them down to the kitchen, feeling shaky, and strangely chilled.
The kitchen was empty. The old enamel coffee pot was still on the back of the stove, and Honoria poured me a cup of the cold and muddy brew, then went to the old stone sink and began washing rice in a colander. Clive sat down across from me at the table and continued with his work of polishing silver. “Sulphur water blacken the silver. Have to keep at it every day. Ain’t never done.”
The outer door slammed, and Ron came into the kitchen. He spoke to me courteously, and asked if I had been enjoying the morning.
“Yes. Thank you.” I looked round the big kitchen. The back veranda deflected some of the fierceness of the sun’s rage, and light shifted through the vines in shifting, dappled patterns on the worn floor. The wooden shutters let in whisperings of breeze. Finbarr lay snoring lightly under the large black range, which was used only in winter. “I’ve been exploring the house,” I said, and waited.
There was a small pause. Then Honoria spoke calmly and without apology, “Most of the house excepting the main building is pretty dusty.”
I gazed at the unappetizing dregs in my coffee cup, asking after the fact, “Is there any place I oughtn’t to go?”
Ron James gave a small smile. “Like Bluebeard’s wife? Most Southern families—”
“Most families,” Honoria amended.
“—have skeletons in cupboards.”
The doctor’s smile had been turned inwards, not towards anybody, but I directed my smile straight to him. “And a closet full of Bluebeard’s dead wives?”
“You should have asked your husband that, not me.”
“Thee-ron.” Honoria swung round from the stove. “You go anywhere you like, Miss Stella. We even got a secret room in Illyria if you can find it. Mr. Claudius Broadley thought he might have to hide me out. Don’t you pay no mind to Ronnie’s humor. It’s ugly, ugly.”
“Somebody threw a flaming brand at the twins’ house last night, Grandmother. They were struggling to put it out when the storm broke and doused it for them before any real damage was done.”
“Why the twins?”
“Why anybody?” Ron countered.
“Was it because of you?” Honoria asked him.
“Who knows? The back stoop was burned off, but that was all. This time.” He turned to leave.
Clive asked, “Where you going, son?”
“There’s fever in one of the clearings back in the scrub. They asked me to come.”
“What kind of fever?”
“Probably typhoid. Don’t worry, Grandfather, I won’t bring anything back to Illyria.”
“When you be home?”
“By this evening.”
When he had gone I said, “Honoria, when I was in the library I leaned against some books and they moved—”
“Yes. They be a revolving door. Lead into the dancing room.”
“I went in. It’s a lovely room.”
“Don’t know what Mr. Claudius Broadley had in mind when he build him a room like that. But we used to have dances there after the war. Not balls, like in Jefferson, but Virginia reels, and all the young people laughing, and everybody able to forget, for a while. Miss Mado, she dance like a butterfly even when she an old lady. They’s been some happy times in Illyria. Miss Stella, your great-aunts was asking for you. They in the writing room.”
3
I soon learned that writing letters was more than an occupation with Aunt Des; it was a vocation; it held the family together. She wove the webs of her letters and patiently threw them to the cousins in Charleston, the cousins in Winchester, the cousins in Raleigh. With Aunt Olivia it was more haphazard. She wrote to whom she chose, when and if she chose, sometimes leaving a gap of years and then picking up the correspondence as though only a few days had gone by. I stood, now, in the doorway to the writing room, watching them. They sat, backs to each other, at writing desks on opposite sides of the room. The scratching of their pens on paper was counterpoint to the wind in the palms, the roll of the breakers.
“May I come in? I’d like to start a letter to Terry.”
“Come in, lovey,” Aunt Olivia welcomed. “My gracious, Stella, you look pale.”
“She’s not used to our heat,” Aunt Mary Desborough said.
I was offered a small rosewood lap desk by Aunt Olivia, note paper by Aunt M
ary Desborough, pen and ink by both. I took Aunt Olivia’s pen and Aunt Mary Desborough’s inkwell. My heart was so full, there was so much to write about, that I could say nothing. I looked down at the pale blue paper, finally told my husband how much I loved the strange and rambling house, the ocean, the dunes, how I already loved the old great-aunts, Honoria, and Clive, respected Uncle Hoadley as well as loved him. And I talked to him about Ron James, and my determination to make friends. “I wonder why he ever came back? Perhaps it’s because mere aren’t many doctors around the beach and he feels that he’s needed.” I chewed my pen again and then wrote about the storm. “Before the storm I heard a noise, different enough for me to get up and go to the balcony. And there was a group of horses ridden by hooded men.” I looked up from the page and asked the great-aunts, “Last night before the storm broke, were you asleep, or did you see the men on horseback?”
“What men?” Aunt Olivia asked sharply.
“Galloping along by the edge of the water—men in hoods.”
Aunt Olivia stood up angrily. “How dare they! How dare they come near Illyria!”
“Don’t tell Hoadley.” Aunt Mary Desborough nervously rolled her pen between her fingers.
“Of course I’m going to tell Hoadley! He’s got to put a stop to it! I wouldn’t have the Night Riders near Illyria! You know what Mado thought of them. I’ll get my guns. If they come again I’ll shoot, I’ll kill them, I’ll—”
“Olivia, don’t make threats you can’t carry out.”
“Oh, can’t I? You think I wouldn’t dare? Well, I would. I’m an excellent shot. I—”
“Sit down,” Aunt Mary Desborough said. “It’s none of our business.”
“If they come near Illyria it’s our business.”
“Who were they?” I asked.
“I suppose they were the Klan.” Aunt Mary Desborough dragged her words reluctantly.
“The what?”
“The Ku Klux Klan.”
“Daz on them,” Aunt Olivia shouted, and the small word was now definitely a malediction. “Daz, daz, daz. They’ve been outlawed—it’s illegal—”
“Olivia.”
“They get around it by calling themselves something else—the Great White Riders or whatever it is. How can you say they’re not our business. After what they did when—”
Aunt Mary Desborough did not allow her to finish. “Let Hoadley take care of it.”
“Hoadley didn’t take care of it before.”
“He couldn’t, then. That’s why he—”
“Somebody’s got to stop them from—oh, God, not again, not again—”
“Why should anything happen again?”
“I don’t know, I don’t know. I’m afraid. All that is required for the triumph of evil is that good men remain silent and do nothing.”
“Edmund Burke. Point for me.”
“I wasn’t playing! This is serious!”
I asked, “Were the Riders the ones who tried down to burn down the twins’ house last night?”
“Oh, God,” Aunt Mary Desborough whispered.
Aunt Olivia said, “Do you suppose it’s because Ron’s taken care of some sick people in the twins’ house?”
“Better there than here,” Aunt Mary Desborough said. “We can’t have people coming here.”
“Why not? Where better? Have you forgotten Nyssa?”
“Olivia, we can’t! Not today!” Aunt Mary Desborough’s voice rose to a wail. She asked me, “Who told you about the twins’ house?”
“I was in the kitchen when Ron told Honoria and Clive.”
“But what happened?” Aunt Olivia demanded.
“The storm broke and the rain put the fire out. I don’t think it did any damage. I’m sorry, perhaps I shouldn’t have mentioned it.”
“Of course you should have mentioned it!” Aunt Olivia said. “Never be afraid to tell us things, Stella, lovey.”
“If you’re going to throw a fit and talk about shooting people,” Aunt Mary Desborough said, “she certainly isn’t going to tell you things.”
Aunt Olivia stared at her sister. “Would you stand by and let anybody hurt the twins?”
“I don’t feel about the twins the way you do. They give me the creeps.”
“But would you? Come now, Des, give me an honest answer.”
“No.”
Aunt Olivia turned to me. “We are responsible for the twins. And not only because the Captain worked for us. I loved him—”
“You didn’t,” Aunt Mary Desborough contradicted. “You’re romanticizing. Anyhow he wasn’t anything but a cracker.”
“You sound like Irene.” Aunt Olivia winked at me. “Both you and I are old maids, Des, because we were so inordinately afraid of marrying beneath our station. But one thing that age, if not wisdom, has taught me is that one can’t marry beneath one’s station. If one does, then one is. And, conversely, one can’t marry above one’s station. If one does, then one is.”
“Livvy, stop chattering nonsense.”
I folded and addressed my letter, if one could call it addressing: it was in care of an office in Washington, and I could only trust that the letter would get to my husband. I put the little lap desk on the floor. Aunt Mary Desborough was sealing her envelope. Aunt Olivia was looking at me, as though waiting for something.
“Tell me about Mado, please,” I asked. “She was so important to Terry, and I know so little about her—”
Now they both smiled. The tension created by my reference to the hooded riders eased. The old ladies, like children, were easily diverted.
“She was a de la Valeur,” Aunt Mary Desborough said, as though that were all that needed saying.
Aunt Olivia’s silver laugh pealed. “But nobody in Charleston or Jefferson knew who the de la Valeurs were. You’d think nobody was good enough for a Renier. The first Theron Renier settled in Charleston a generation before the Revolution.”
“The American Revolution,” Aunt Mary Desborough specified, as though I, being a foreigner, might not know. She was not far wrong. “The de la Valeurs went back to Charlemagne. Or do I mean Richard Coeur de Lion?”
“Both, silly.” Aunt Olivia’s amused, child-like laugh came again. “Mado spoke perfect English, she had no accent, but there was always the French music behind her voice making the words sing. She had courtly manners. She accepted everybody.”
“Sometimes she carried that too far,” Aunt Mary Desborough said.
Aunt Olivia snapped, “We wouldn’t have a home in our old age if she hadn’t.”
“But that was different.”.
“Why? Oh, Stella, it must have seemed so strange to Mado, coming from the French court to Jefferson. Jefferson wasn’t—isn’t—a typical Southern town. It’s completely different from Charleston, where we were all born and raised. Even before the war a lot of Northern families had moved to Jefferson, mostly because it was supposed to be a healthy climate for people with weak chests.”
“But it’s a beautiful town,” Aunt Mary Desborough said. “You’ll see. On the west side of the river are the old Southerners, and that’s where Mado and Theron had their house—though Mado lost it, of course, after the war, like everything else she had—though we do have the furniture in Illyria. Stella, do you have any idea how awful it was right after the war? Nobody who was anybody had money, and there was Mado with small children, and the carpetbaggers descending on us like the barbarian hordes from the North—”
“The barbarians always come from the North,” Aunt Olivia said. “And it was hell for the emancipated slaves—”
“Olivia.”
“It was hell, there isn’t any other word. Nobody took any care of them, and they were shoved into positions for which they had no training and then blamed because they couldn’t do the jobs. Oh, Stella, slave-owning was bad, was evil, we did learn that, but so is everything that’s been done since the emancipation. It’s worse, because it bears a label of being good. And then there are people like—well, like the U
tteleys—”
“Aunt Irene said she and Uncle Hoadley are cousins. How is that?”
Aunt Mary Desborough snorted in annoyance. “Isn’t that just like Irene to claim kinship? Irene’s father was an Utteley from Chicago, and her mother was nobody. Nobody who was anybody would have married an Utteley. Her mother was an offshoot—very far off—of the Winchester Pagets—Winchester, Virginia, you know, it was one of the hotbeds of the Confederacy. Nobody we knew from Winchester would have married an Utteley.”
An Utteley: it sounded as generic as a Zenumin.
Aunt Olivia gave an enormous sigh. “Oh, Des, I feel about them just as you do—but we’d be a lot worse off than we are without Utteley money.”
“We’ve never had that much of it, just what Hoadley—” She put her hand to her mouth. “After all, dear Hoadley did marry—”
Aunt Olivia giggled.
Aunt Mary Desborough, the defender, continued, “Irene was the most ravishingly beautiful young girl I’ve ever seen—you know she was. I’m sure Hoadley didn’t give a hoot about Utteley money.”
“Certainly not,” Aunt Olivia affirmed, “or at any rate not much of a hoot. But we’ve all been a great deal more comfortable because of it. Though it’s been Honoria—”
“Honoria’s taken care of us,” Aunt Mary Desborough said. “Hoadley’s never taken anything from her.”
“But we have. We’ve taken everything.”
Aunt Mary Desborough spoke with dignity. “We were forced to. And we didn’t take it for granted.”
“Didn’t we? I’m afraid a lot of the time we did. Or at least I did. And still do.”
We heard a yelp, and Honoria stalked into the writing room, dragging a reluctant Finbarr by his collar.
“He may be old, and he may be aristocratic, though he don’t look it, like some others I could name, but he got no call to put those big paws of his up on my kitchen table when my back is turned and take that long tongue of his and eat up all the cookies I made special for Miss Stella.”
The Other Side of the Sun Page 12