by Frank Yerby
The letters which lay open and spread out before him were nearly all from Etienne; only one or two showed the neat, daintily feminine softness of Julie’s small hand. His eyes strayed over Etienne’s letters, and here and there a phrase leaped up to command his attention:
“The town of Lawrence was sacked last night—God be praised! Eight hundred men under the direction of my old friend the sheriff, and the United States Marshal performed this necessary task of extermination with neatness, efficiency and dispatch. They smashed the presses of that filthy abolitionist rag [Etienne’s language was often unfortunately intemperate, Stephen reflected] and burned that pest hole that the New England Emigrant Aid Society calls a hotel . . .”
Curiously, Stephen looked for the letter’s date. The ink had faded somewhat in the two years, and Etienne’s handwriting was none too clear, but he was able to make it out: “May, 1856.” Stephen frowned. The words in that angular, bewildering script kept tugging at him, demanding his attention.
“John Brown . . . a grim, and terrible man . . . you’ll hear more of him, mark me, Father . . . Pottowatomie Creek . . . five men murdered . . . cold blood . . . all proslavery.
“Osawatomie . . . Frederick Brown, son of this monster, was killed last night, and his demonic father forced to flee the country. Justice and right have prevailed.” This and the cryptic announcements of the births of Stephen’s grandchildren: Victor, 1856, Stephen II, 1857, Gail, the only granddaughter, 1858. A mention or two about the sad state of the new plantation, a word about Ceclie; but always again and again the bitter smoke and bloodshed of the flaming Kansas border. Here slavery was being fought over and men were dying.
Stephen frowned, picking up his short clay pipe.
The letter from Julie . . . It still must be answered. Walking over to the desk he picked it up and read it again:
“Dear Papa:
“I am at last becoming accustomed to this accursed school. Miss Shephard is really very kind, and Boston is a wonderful city. But I’m so homesick I could just die! How is Mother? Does ‘Tienne write often?
“I still haven’t seen Tom Meredith. I made inquiries, discreetly of course, and it seems that he and his father are abroad, but that they will return soon. I am very anxious to see Tom. I wonder if he has changed. Does all this sound silly—for a young lady of seventeen? Please write me and tell me about everything and I do mean everything!
Lovingly,
Julie
“Miss Angelina Shephard’s Female Academy
#30 Shirley Street, Boston
April 30, 1858”
He looked up, still holding the letter in his hand as old Jean-Jacques appeared in the doorway.
“Monsieur Andre, maître,” the old black murmured.
Andre was only a step behind him.
“Well,” he said, without any preliminaries; “they’ve done it!”
Stephen lay the letter back upon the desk and his brows rose. “Who?” he asked. “Who has done what? Ye aren’t very clear, Andre.”
“Sorry. Nobody or nothing is very clear any more. The country is hellbent for perdition! I tell you, Stephen, it means war. . . .”
Stephen lifted his hand in a futile effort to check the outburst. But Andre was already beyond the stopping point.
“A house divided against itself cannot stand! What does he mean by this nonsense, Stephen? War? Will he send an army down here to liberate the niggers? Oh, if he only would! We’d show him then how a Southern aristocrat fights. Why, we’d push his filthy mercantilists back into Canada within a month! And this is the man this gang of cutthroats intended to nominate for the presidency! This long, gangling, uncouth son of an ape! Have you seen his pictures, Stephen? Foi what an ugliness!”
“Drawings, Andre. Pen and ink sketches by caricaturists who think as ye do. They’re no authority. I think Mister Lincoln is quite a man . . .”
“My God!”
“And I also think he hasn’t a ghost of a chance. ‘Tis still almost two years ‘til election time, and long before then Douglas will have slipped a halter around Abe Lincoln’s neck. There’s your man to watch, Andre—little Stephen Douglas. But enough of politics—what say ye to a drink?”
“Time you offered me one,” Andre grumbled. “It’s hot enough to melt the hinges of hades! You’ve been to the city, Stephen?”
“No. How goes it there? Is the insurrection over?”
“Virtually. The Know Nothings are still beating up a few Vigilantes—when they catch them. But for the most part the city is quiet.”
Stephen took the long, cool drink from the tray which Jean-Jacques had brought. He sat holding it untasted, staring past Andre out the window.
“Eleven dead,” he muttered. “Armed men taking over the city by force. Marches and counter-marches. Fraud, bribery, violence. And every election is the same. I tell ye, Andre, I sometimes think ‘twould be better for the black Republicans to take over. Perhaps they would clean house for us. God knows we won’t do it for ourselves.”
Andre snorted. Then, lifting his glass to his lips, he downed it in one long pull. A trickle of moisture dripped down over his pudgy chin onto his waistcoat. He stood up.
“I won’t quarrel with you,” he said. “In time you’ll see I was right about these things. Give my Stephen’s regards to Julie when you write—and mine.”
Stephen made no attempt to stop his abrupt departure. Andre, with his growing political sensitivity, was becoming a ticklish guest. And there was still this accursed letter to be written. He sighed and picked up his pen.
June melted into July in a blaze of heat. All over the land men waited. They read Hinton Helper’s Impending Crisis and George Fitzhugh’s Cannibals All or Slaves Without Masters and the arguments grew hot and fierce. Only two hundred and twenty-five thousand men actually held slaves ran the theme of Helper, while in the pine barrens and the clay hills and the swamp bottom white men rotted in idleness. Look at your Northern wage slave, shouted Fitzhugh. Ill-paid, overworked, abused, turned out in his old age to die— All over the land men waited, and tempers grew hourly shorter.
In the middle of July Julie came back to Harrow after a month’s visit with the Thorn family of New York. But she was a changed girl. No longer did she ride to the bottom lands with her beloved papa or meet the postrider to take the increasingly bulky letters from Etienne. Instead, she sat in the salon, playing pensive airs upon the grand piano, and answering her mother absently or not at all. At seventeen Julie was a true Arceneaux beauty with the lightest touch of the diablerie of the Foxes thrown in. The plumpness that had marked her girlhood had given way to a soft slimness that now, under her haphazard methods of eating, was becoming actual thinness.
“What ails ye, girl?” Stephen demanded. “Ye eat less than a bird, and one has to bellow in your ear to gain your attention. Are ye daft—or is there some lad?”
“No, Papa,” Julie said lifelessly. “There’s nobody. Only sometimes, life seems so useless . . .”
Stephen smiled.
“I’ll wager that in another year ye’ll find that it can be most interesting. Come, now—what say ye to some breast of chicken under glass and some Haute Sauterne?”
“Oh, no, Papa—I couldn’t eat a thing!”
“Ye know, Julie—I don’t think I’ll send ye back to that school. Boston doesn’t seem to have agreed with ye.”
“Papa! You wouldn’t do that! No, Papa! I’ve got to go back—don’t you understand? I’ve got to!”
“So—the wind still lies in that quarter, eh? I hope ye won’t be too disappointed when ye see your Yankee lad again.”
“If I see him again—Papa, why doesn’t he write?”
“I don’t know, light o’ my heart. But if ye want that pale ice-water stripling I’ll dust off the family shotgun . . .”
“Now you’re teasing me again! I think you’re being horrid!”
Then she was gone dashing up the stairs to her room.
“Poor little thing,” Stephen murmure
d. “Well, she’s a Fox, all right. What she wants, she wants with all her heart. I’ll have to do something about this . . .”
Going into his study he picked up his pen and drew a sheet of paper toward him.
“Thomas Meredith, Esquire,” he wrote, “Meredith & Son, Merchandizers, State Street, Boston . . . My dear sir . . .”
It was late September before a reply came. There were two letters, one of them addressed to Julie. She took it in her hand, holding it as though it were something fragile and precious, and walked up the stairs like a sleepwalker. It was, like the one addressed to Stephen, postmarked from Paris, France. Her fingers trembled as she broke the seals, and it was a long time before the letters stopped dancing.
“ ‘Dear Julie,’ ” she read, saying the words aloud, repeating them like a caress, “ ‘Dear Julie—I’ve wanted so long to write to you, but I dared not. You were something I dreamed about—like one dreams of angels. I couldn’t find the words to say, to tell you— I fear that I go too fast. Then your father’s frank and friendly letter was forwarded to us here, saying that you spoke of me often, that you asked about me—Julie, Julie, that brought a kind of happiness that a man shouldn’t be asked to endure too often. I thought I’d die of it.
“ ‘And you go to Miss Shephard’s school! I know it well. Then I shall see you, and soon! ‘Tis Harvard for me, instead of the University of Paris as I’d planned. Father was amenable to suggestion—for, in his own quiet way, he likes you as much almost as I. My pen falters. Au revoir, Julie—and now, at long last, I know exactly what that means!
“ ‘Ever
“ ‘Tom’ ”
XXXI
WHEN Stephen and Aurore pushed open the door after long unanswered knocking, they found Julie face down upon her bed sobbing into her pillow.
“Julie!” Stephen barked. “What ails ye, child? Did that young Yankee pup . . .”
But Aurore was looking at her daughter with a gentle half smile upon her face.
“Men are forever fools,” she said. “Don’t you remember how I cried, Stephen, upon the day we were married?”
“Holy Mother of God! But Julie is so young. I had no idea that this thing—this childish attachment could cut so deep.”
“She’s your daughter, Stephen—and mine. Come, leave her alone for a while.”
Going down the stairs, Stephen was frowning.
“I think ye’d better go with Julie this year to Boston. After all Julie is of my blood, and we Foxes are notoriously impulsive. A mother’s care . . .”
“Listen to the pater famiias! Don’t be so pompous, Stephen. I shan’t do anything of the kind. Julie has goodness bred into her bones, and this boy didn’t seem the type to . . .”
“Aye, but that was years ago. Since then he may have changed. He’s lived in Paris, remember.”
“You should know about Paris! But I doubt that the boy has developed into so accomplished a rake as the man I married. He’s had his father with him all the time, and I think he lacked the inclination.”
“No man lacks the inclination,” Stephen growled. “What most of them lack is opportunity!”
“Stephen, Stephen,” Aurore moaned. “What a thing for you to say!”
Afterwards, the whole of Harrow was changed. Music soared up from the grand piano, but it was joyous music. Julie’s eyes were bright. She ate well, and rode with Stephen again over the vast plantation. And between her and Aurore there were hours of whispered conversation, which broke off abruptly whenever Stephen entered the room.
What concerned Stephen most in his somewhat straitened circumstances since his bankers Hammerschlag & Brothers of Philadelphia had gone under in the speculative avalanche of ‘fifty-seven, was the sudden increase in bills. Most of these came from Olympe, the milliner; but their number was almost equalled by those from Pluche and Ferret, importers of Parisian fashions. Several times he was on the point of calling a halt, only to be met by a protesting:
“But, Papa, you wouldn’t want the Yankees to think me dowdy?”
Stephen groaned. Never had he been able to deny Julie anything.
Finally, upon the last day of the month, he and Aurore stood upon the wharf at New Orleans and watched the boat bearing Julie northward for her second term find its place in the five o’clock parade of upriver packets. It was an impressive sight, that parade: boat after boat slipped away from its moorings and headed upstream, the black clouds of wood smoke from their high twin stacks mingling in a pall of blackness that shut out the afternoon sun.
Winter came early in Boston that year. And Winter has never in any year been a time for lovers; but for Julie and Tom, it had to do. Tom came back from France early in the term and wasted a full month in vain attempts to see Julie. Miss Shephard would brook no contact between the young ladies of her school and members of the opposite sex. But no one in history has ever successfully devised a method short of murder that could keep apart a young couple determined to be together, and Miss Shephard succeeded no better than the rest.
Julie saw Tom. On Sundays on her way to early Mass, which she and the other two Catholic girls in the school were permitted to attend unchaperoned; at night from her window while he stood shivering in the snow-blanketed street below; and upon the long afternoon constitutional walks that Miss Shephard insisted that they take—she would meet him—accidentally of course, but the accidents occurred with amazing frequency.
For them both this was a kind of torture. The words whispered hurriedly, the brief hot pressure of hands, the awkward, hasty kisses were building up slowly into a situation that had to end somehow, and showed more signs of ending disastrously than any other way. But, in the end, Miss Shephard herself brought matters to a happy conclusion. She did so by the simple expedient of walking into Julie’s room at two o’clock in the morning, just as Tom was walking away from a spot below Julie’s window after exchanging a few chattering words and many shivering sighs. Then she stunned Julie into speechlessness by making the accusation that Tom had been in Julie’s room and confined her to quarters until Stephen could be notified to come and get her.
There was only one answer to this. By eight o’clock of the same morning Julie’s note was already in Tom’s hands. Julie ate nothing, but spent the entire day in alternating storms of weeping and furious activity, hurling all her belongings into her traveling bags.
Promptly at midnight, Julie heard the gravel smacking against her window pane. Quietly she opened the window. There was a low, bumping sound as the ladder, its ends muffled with rags, came to rest against her casement. A moment later, Tom’s face appeared. He was shaking with nervousness, but a broad grin split his face.
“Julie,” he croaked.
Julie scurried across the room and came back with her bags. Tom took them and started down the ladder. A moment later Julie followed him. At the bottom, Tom took up the bags again. Julie looked up at the ladder.
“Leave it,” Tom grinned, “so old Shep can have apoplexy!” They dashed off then down the darkened street. At the end of it a carriage waited. Tom dropped both the bags and took Julie in his arms. He kissed her very long, and very hard. From inside the carriage there came a smothered giggle.
“Witnesses,” Tom said. “I’ve thought of everything.”
They were married by a Justice of the Peace, who lost his glasses and mumbled through the ceremony from memory, forgetting half of it. Then they took a train, an hour later, for New York. They went to the best of hotels, for Tom was well supplied with money for the honeymoon since the elder Meredith was in on the secret; but Julie lay in her new husband’s arms and cried and cried, thinking about Harrow.
Tom held her close to him, and brushed the long golden hair with his big hand.
XXXII
AURORE stood on the gallery and watched Stephen pounding up the alley of oaks at a hard gallop. He was standing in the stirrups waving something in his hand.
He shouldn’t ride like that, she thought, not at his age. But then Stephen never rememb
ers that he’s nearly sixty. Ma foi, how fast the years have gone! Here I am three times a grandmother, and ‘twas only yesterday that I used to ride that same road just to see him—“Stephen! Be careful for God’s sake!”
But Stephen was down from the still-plunging horse and running up the great stairs.
“They’re coming!” he cried. “They’re coming!”
Aurore smiled a puzzled smile.
“Would you please calm yourself, my husband, and tell me just who is coming?”
“Julie! Day after tomorrow! Call the servants, Aurore—the place must be cleaned inside and out!”
“Softly, Stephen. I take it that her impetuous Yankee is with her?”
“Aye,” Stephen growled. “ ‘Twill be a bitter pill, but I suppose we haven’t much choice in the matter.”
“No, Stephen. He seemed a good boy the little time we saw him before. But what’s done is done . . . and we really shouldn’t have expected cool heads of our children.”
“Ye’re right there. But this accusation that Miss Shephard makes against him and Julie . . .”
“She’s a vicious old witch—that woman! I don’t believe a word of it!”
“Nor I. Still I’d like to hear from Julie’s lips what really happened.”
Aurore walked over to her husband and took hold of the lapels of his coat.
“Stephen,” she said gently. “Don’t ask for an explanation. If Julie doesn’t volunteer to tell us, don’t assume that her silence is a confession of guilt. There are some things in the heart of a woman—and our little Julie is a woman grown, Stephen—that are not to be shared—not even with parents as tolerant as we try to be. Promise me, Stephen.”