Adelsverein

by Celia Hayes

“Oh, don’t be ridiculous, Peter. One can’t take meals with the servants—even those who have ideas above themselves. It’s just not proper!” Over her shoulder to Hetty she added, as she escorted Peter towards the dining room, “Another place—in the dining room, Hetty.”

  On the whole, Peter would have preferred the kitchen to the all-but empty table in the dining room, where young Horrie kicked his heels against the legs of a chair too tall for him. He and Horrie exchanged sympathetic looks. Horrie dogged his footsteps also, but it did not annoy Peter in quite the same way. His young nephew craved attention and he was lonely for company, over and above Hetty and Daddy Hurst who treated him with considerable affection. But they were old, and had their own work about the place. Peter wondered why Amelia did not want to send him to school. Privately he thought she wanted to make a constant display of her maternal devotion, for she really seemed to care little for the boy, other than as an intelligent pet who talked. Horrie did not seem to care all that much either, to judge by the way that he squirmed out of Amelia’s lap when she took him up onto it, or the way he turned his cheek away from her kisses, enduring such demonstrations with a stoic face.

  “You should rightfully sit at the head of the table,” Amelia added, as a tight-lipped Hetty carried in a tray with a fresh pot of coffee and another place setting on it. “You may move my place to the right, Hetty.”

  “It seems very dull without any boarders.” Peter took the chair at the head of the table from which his mother had always presided, feeling as though he were usurping a place to which he had no real right. Behind Amelia’s back, Hetty’s lips twisted soundlessly in agreement, with a silent Gaelic imprecation added for good measure. “Had you not considered continuing as my mother did? It always made for the most interesting meals.”

  “Oh, really, Peter,” Amelia laughed, that irritatingly sweet tinkling laugh. “I couldn’t possibly engage in a business as vulgar as running a boarding house! Imagine—all those strangers and their impositions! It’s just not suitable for a respectable woman to do!”

  “It was respectable enough for my mother,” Peter answered.

  Hetty added spitefully, “Aye, so it was, Miss Amelia—an’ what d’ye say to that?”

  “Hetty!” Amelia sounded desperate. “I am talking about family . . .”

  “And we’re not family?” Hetty answered crisply, and set down the coffee pot with a decided thump. “Sure and the mistress did not think herself too good to work in the kitchen next to me, or bargain with the tradesmen, while some as I could mention sat in the parlor, all airs and graces an’ la-te-dah! Not family! ‘Tis why herself did what she did, leaving Hurst and I our lifetime in wages and said clear that we should live here as long as we liked! No one otherwise would do a lick of work, Miss Amelia, while the house fell down around ye!” Horrie listened, round-eyed and wary. Peter wondered of he had often observed this kind of scene, while Amelia’s eyes filled as if being berated by Hetty were the greatest tragedy imaginable.

  Peter cleared his throat and asked, “Hetty, might I have some breakfast now?”

  Hetty’s ill-temper vanished magically, and she beamed fondly at Peter and Horrie, “Of course you may! Here I am, forgetting myself again, with you and the little lad waiting on me!” She bustled away.

  Amelia dabbed at her swimming eyes. “She does so forget herself,” she quavered. “I know that your dearest mama carried on so bravely . . .under such a tragic loss! But times were so different, Peter. No one thought the tiniest bit ill of her, then. But times have changed and I am helpless . . .” And quite willing to remain so, Peter thought cynically. Mr. Stoddard’s gently raised daughter would rather sit in genteel poverty in the parlor of an empty house than carry on from where Margaret had been forced to lay down the labor of caring for her family.

  He reached across the tabletop for the coffee pot. Amelia touched his hand and raised her eyes winsomely. “But now that you have returned, you shall be able to look out for our interests—all of our interests,” she added. It took Peter more than a moment to take in the implication. “Mother Williamson reposed such confidence and trust in you, Peter. She had such hopes of you returning safely, and of all of us being a proper family again.” Peter gently slid his hand out from under hers, carefully keeping his face utterly blank. Amelia, setting her cap at him? Good God, what a thought! He poured himself coffee, while Amelia continued artlessly, “I would so much rather be guided by someone stronger and wiser. I have no head for such worldly matters.”

  “There’s always your Pa,” Peter pointed out. He was amused to see a flash of irritation in Amelia’s lovely eyes. “Man of business— none better to look after your interests.”

  “Not like a husband would,” Amelia said.

  Peter thought with annoyance, As if her looking at me with eyes like a cow would make me change my mind—how much of a malleable fool does she think I am? That worked with Horace, but I’m damned if it will work with me!

  “No, probably not,” he answered agreeably. “So promise me one thing, ‘Melia: let me look over any of the suitors you are thinking serious about. I am Horrie’s uncle, after all.” On the whole, he thought later, he was lucky she didn’t throw the coffee pot at him. She was that riled by him deliberately missing all the hints she scattered like handfuls of chicken feed.

  But Amelia swallowed her considerable fury, saying only, “I shall be sure of consulting you, Peter—being that you are the nearest to a dear brother left to me,” which said much for Amelia’s powers of ladylike self-control. Still, Peter didn’t think she would give up the matter entirely. His brother’s wife was single-minded that way.

  The largest portion of Margaret’s property was left to him, including the house. Amelia was the second beneficiary. She was a widow with a small son, and with little inclination towards managing her own affairs. Looking around for someone who would masterfully take all these burdens from her, Amelia’s eyes couldn’t help but fall onto Peter. Against all those practical considerations and what she perceived as her overwhelming need, his disinclination was merely a small obstacle to be overcome. No doubt she thought it would be only a matter of time before she wore him down as she had worn down his brother, with tears, tantrums, and pretty displays of forgiveness and reconciliation. Peter had observed this from afar, indulgently thinking his brother could be forgiven that kind of soft-headedness; Horace had loved her, after all. But Peter did not, and he had no intention of being maneuvered into doing as Miss Amelia wished.

  In the end, he took counsel with Daddy Hurst. He correctly figured that Daddy Hurst’s little cabin, at the back of the house, behind the stables and the vegetable garden, was one place he was safe from Amelia’s ambush. He went down in the evening, after supper. There was still light in the sky over the weighted boughs of the apple trees, and the sun went down in a dark red smear of sky and purple clouds behind them.

  Daddy sat at ease on his porch, slapping at an occasional late-season mosquito. Peter waited below for permission to enter and said, “I’ve come for that drink of whiskey you promised.” It was one of his mother’s rules, instituted firmly when he was small and adventurous: ‘Wait until you are invited,’ Margaret told him sternly. ‘But why, Mama—he’s jus’ an old nigra slave.’ ‘Nonetheless,’ Margaret said, ‘Hurst or anyone else, black or white, is due the courtesy of deciding when and whom he might invite into his home.’

  “’Bout time,” the old man chuckled richly, “Come on up, set a spell.” He gestured casually at the other chair, before fixing Peter with a shrewd and stern look. “How long you think befoah Miz ‘Melia, she track you down?”

  “Don’t much care, Daddy—long as I can face up to her with a couple of drinks in me first!”

  Hurst shook his head, rising painfully and in several stages from his chair. “Marse Peter, it don’t do you no good a’tall to pour sperrits on your problems.”

  “I guess not,” Peter agreed with a sigh, “but it does render them temporarily more amusing!”
He settled into the other chair—surprisingly comfortable it was—as Daddy Hurst vanished into the dim doorway of his little house. He emerged with a dark glass bottle and a pair of battered tin mugs, silently pouring out a tot for each.

  “To home,” Peter lifted the tin cup in a mock toast, and the old man echoed it. Peter savored it in silence.

  After a long moment, Daddy Hurst added, “It ain’t the place, so much as dey people in it, Marse Peter.” Peter made a noncommittal sound, for Daddy Hurst had unerringly put his finger on it. He might be home, but the people who counted in it most—Margaret, Papa-Doctor, Horace, Johnny, and Jamie—they were all gone. Of all those who had fixed his mother’s house in his memory, and for whom he cared, only Daddy Hurst and Hetty remained. And little Horrie was the only one of his blood family left.

  “It’s not as if I can send her away from here,” Peter said, a little surprised to find himself thinking out loud. “She was my brother’s wife, after all. And for Horrie, this is all the home he’s ever had.” Daddy Hurst nodded thoughtfully in the twilight. He silently topped up both of their tin cups, the bottle clinking gently against each rim, while Peter continued, “Suit me right down to the ground if she sets her cap at some other fellow. Let him marry her, the poor bastard.”

  “Meantime, thayer Miz Amelia be, like a cuckoo in a nest.” Daddy Hurst sounded like he was savoring the whiskey. “Mebbe you might have some bizness of yo’ own, tahk you away for a time. Might give Miz Amelia a notion that you ain’t so much interested.”

  “Something that would keep me way for a while,” Peter mused, thoughtfully. After a long moment he said, “I like that thought. I could say I’m looking for work, got itchy feet.”

  “Mmmm,” Daddy Hurst topped up the cups again. “Got me jest the idee, now! You could say you wuz goin’ up to Friedrichsburg, to see ‘bout Marse Carl’s fambly. They wus lef’ in a hard way, Miz Margaret she felt real bad ‘bout that. Don’ know if they is all dat better, even if de war is ober.”

  “If they’re still in a bad way, I can hang my hat there for a while and help them out,” Peter ventured slowly.

  Daddy Hurst chuckled again and nodded. “An if dey ain’t—wal’ dey yo’ kin! Jes’ stay wit ‘em for a bit, and Miz ‘Melia, she’ll nebber know de difference.”

  “Any port in a storm,” Peter agreed philosophically. The more he thought on that, the better the notion sounded; get away from his mother’s house, haunted with the memories of old happiness. His uncle’s children should not have been orphaned and left in penury. Peter cast his memory back to Horace’s wedding, the last time he had seen Uncle Carl, the only time he had met his cousins. Rudolph—that was the oldest boy, they called him Dolph. He had been about twelve then, now he would be close to a man grown. But the younger boy, Sam, and the daughter, what was her name? Hannah, that was it. They had been a little older than Horrie was now, an age where they might still need help, and from one of their kin. He could not recall much about Uncle Carl’s wife, only that she was dark and plain, nearly as tall as he was. But his mother had liked her very much, so there must have been something to her. He doubted very much that widowhood would have left her as helpless as it did Amelia.

  “You can’t be serious!?” Amelia exclaimed in horror the next morning when he broached the subject over breakfast. “Why should you pay the least mind to that foreign woman and her brats! Horrie—leave the table at once,” she added. Horrie had barely begun eating, and he cast an apprehensive glance at his uncle. Peter nodded reassuringly. Without another word, Horrie slipped down from his chair.

  As soon as the door closed behind him, Amelia continued, her voice rising with an edge of hysteria in it. “As for him—I’d think he had shamed us enough! He was a traitor to the cause, to everything that we fought against! I remember very well how he made a scene at our wedding! If you ask me, he got everything he deserved! My Papa said they didn’t hang enough of those filthy traitors when they had the chance—” She continued for some moments, while Peter crumbled a piece of toast in his hand, not particularly listening but waiting for her to be finished. He felt nothing but a sense of weary distaste; mostly for her, but a little for himself and the hot-tempered fool that he had been. His Uncle Carl had been kind, a soft-spoken and honorable man. He had not deserved what had happened to him, he did not deserve this spiteful calumny now, and his family deserved better consideration from his kinfolk, even if his politics had differed from theirs.

  “Are you done?” he asked when Amelia had quite run short of breath in mid-tirade. She nodded tearfully, and he spoke in that soft, dangerous voice that might have deceived someone who didn’t know him well into thinking that he wasn’t angry. “She was his lawful wife and his children are my blood kin. What I will do as regards their welfare is my own business and none of yours. Do not presume to lay down any rules for me, Amelia. You were my brother’s wife, not mine. For which I thank God, several times daily.”

  Amelia sprang up, sending her chair falling backwards to the floor with a clatter. For a moment, he thought she would throw the coffee pot at him for sure; instead she flung down her balled-up table napkin. Her face was pale, distorted with fury. No one who saw her at a moment like this would ever have thought she was pretty, Peter noted with a sense of calm detachment. Her mouth worked as if she were trying out words vile enough to express what she felt, at war with how she had always schooled herself to appear.

  “You—you are horrid!” she finally spat, almost incoherently. “A horrid, horrid man!”

  “Most likely,” Peter agreed, in a voice flat with indifference. That was the final straw for her. She burst into a storm of tears and ran out of the room, throwing the dining room door back so violently that it fairly bounced off the wall as she went by. Peter flicked the crumbs from his fingers, and found another piece of toast. He laid it on his plate and was laboriously spreading it with butter when Horrie peeked around the doorway.

  “May I come back now?” he asked in a plaintive voice. “She . . .Mama . . . is upstairs.”

  “Best place for her,” Peter remarked, heartlessly. “Now the both of us can have breakfast in peace. Have some toast, but you’ll have to butter it yourself.” With only one hand available, applying pressure to the butter knife sent it skidding all over the plate; he had not quite worked out a means of holding it steady. Amelia had always made a big show of offering to do things like that for him—another reason for being uncomfortable around her.

  Horrie scrambled up onto his chair again. The two of them crunched toast in companionable silence. At last Horrie ventured, “Are you really going away, Uncle Peter?” Poor little lad, he sounded terribly dejected.

  Peter sighed. “I’m afraid so, Horrie.”

  “Could I go with you?”

  “I don’t think so,” Peter answered gently. “The place for little boys is at home, and this is your home.”

  “I wouldn’t mind,” Horrie replied, stoutly. “I don’t like it much, anyway. ‘Cept for Hetty and Daddy, an’ Gran-Mere.”

  “Well,” Peter thoughtfully chewed the last crust and ventured, “If you liked, I could see that you went to school. You could board at the Johnson’s. That’s where I went to school sometimes, over on Bear Creek—that’s a mite south of here. The Professor, he runs a fine school. There’d be all kinds of other boys and girls to be friends with you. I’ll fix it with your Mama that you should go there, if you like.”

  “Could I?” Horrie beamed, his face instantly transformed to cheerfulness. Horrie wanted to be away nearly as much as Peter did. Peter could only think that his mother must have had the greater part of raising her grandson into such a sensible and fearless little lad.

  “There are a lot of older students,” Peter warned, “and you might be one of the very youngest. But if you really want, I’ll see what I can do.”

  Amelia put up no resistance to his suggestion that Horrie board at the Johnson school; cynically Peter concluded that having missed her immediate marital target, she
was indifferent to what either of them might do now. He and Daddy Hurst saw Horace’s son happily settled at school.

  The very next day Peter took the stage for Friedrichsburg. He tugged at his shirt collar and neck-cloth and thought how, sartorially speaking, he had been more comfortable living the tramp’s life. But riding in the stage was several leagues above walking and hitching rides on freight wagons. The stage stopped just long enough in New Braunfels for passengers to get out and stretch their legs and admire the pretty town with its wide streets and the gardens in front of the tidy plastered houses. Plants in pots hung from the eves of porches, and there was a smell of good bread baking and a general air of comfort and well-being.

  “’Pon my word, it looks as civilized as any town back east,” said one of Peter’s companions. “How long has this part of the county been settled?”

  “Hardly twenty years, if that.” Peter answered the man as shortly as possible. He was not much in the mood for talk. The sound of German speech from the folk in New Braunfels reminded him uncomfortably of his grandfather Becker. And some of them also looked too long at him, or quickly looked away from his pinned-up sleeve, another reminder that he was not a whole man. As if he needed reminding, or anyone’s swift and unthinking pity.

  The place did look peaceful, though, bustling and prosperous in a way that he had nearly forgotten existed. New Braunfels was a place that the war had seemingly left untouched, at least on the surface.

  On the final leg of the journey he sat in the corner of the swaying coach, leaning back with his hat pulled down over his eyes, and pretending to doze as he thought about how he would go about finding his uncle’s family. How would be introduce himself, and what could he say, after all this time? Feelings still ran pretty bitter about the war, if Amelia was any indication. The German settlers had been on the other side, if Hetty spoke true—and Peter had little doubt she did. He might, with a bit of effort, put the war behind him, put it away with the ragged uniform that Amelia made such a show of cherishing. But things like a stump and a scar, or the brothers he had once—those things pulled him back. He needed something new to do, something that would fill the day with interest so that at night he could sleep without dreams. He needed to put a thousand of those days between himself and the things he had seen in Tennessee and Virginia.