Darkwater

by V. J. Banis

  Waiters moved continuously about the room, seeing that none of the precious goblets were allowed to remain half empty.

  It was a feast such as had not been served in twenty years. Helen had spared nothing, neither creative effort nor expense, not because she was a showy, extravagant woman, nor because she had any particular desire to impress her neighbors. She was of a fine, old family and had no need to impress anyone.

  She knew human nature, however. She knew that this was her son’s second marriage, and that people around here who had not had to live with Alicia had a great respect for the woman. Alicia had died in what might be termed mysterious circumstances, and Jennifer, Walter’s second wife, had been living here at the time. Even after such a long wait, she knew tongues would wag.

  She had done all she could to forestall this by seeing that Jennifer met all the important women hereabout, knowing that Jennifer’s natural charm would help her greatly in winning their approval.

  She had reckoned too that this return to the opulence of the past would so overwhelm these ladies that they would relinquish their gossip and bend to Jennifer as an important social influence locally. These were women who thrived on luxury. A bride who could command such a wedding would by necessity be respected by them.

  She had not counted on help from outside, however. The shooting of the President had redirected everyone’s gossip even more effectively than the splendor of the wedding had. When the ladies left that day, they were whispering among themselves—she observed countless curled heads bent together—but it was not of Walter’s marriage to Jennifer they talked.

  They talked of the President and whether he would live or die, and how and why he had been shot. Men at the party had sent their servants into town for news, and some had even left themselves, offering their excuses to their hostess.

  “It was an omen,” Jennifer had said darkly while they waited for the uproar to cease so the wedding could resume.

  “What nonsense,” Helen had replied. “Now you’re talking like Bess, with all her fear of witches and black magic and the like.” But privately, she had to admit, it was not an auspicious beginning to a marriage.

  As to Bess, with her enormous workload now mostly behind her, she was thinking of a friend she knew that she should visit. Auntie Doreen, she called her, though they were not in fact blood relations. Auntie Doreen was an authority on the black arts. Bess had decided that she might have need of her expertise.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  It was a less auspicious beginning to Jennifer’s marriage than Helen realized.

  Alone in their bridal chamber, in the room that had been Walter’s bedroom, Jennifer had looked forward with tremulous passion to this first night in her husband’s arms.

  Walter had brought up a bottle of champagne and some glasses, and he poured a glass for each of them.

  “To us, and to our many happy years together,” he said, raising his glass in a toast.

  Jennifer raised her glass too, but her hand shook, partly with excitement and partly with the nervousness that had lingered after the unfortunate disruption of the wedding ceremony.

  It suddenly seemed to her that the room was intensely cold, although it was a midsummer night. The shadows in the room danced about her, leaping out from the corners where they had been crouching. She could not get her breath. It felt as if hands were at her throat, suddenly squeezing....

  When she regained consciousness, she was in bed, the bed that had been prepared for her wedding night with Walter. He leaned over her, a glass of water in his hands.

  “Feel better now?” he asked.

  “I....” She could not seem to collect her thoughts. “What happened?”

  “You fainted,” he said. When she started to sit up, he forcibly held her down. “It’s all right. It’s just all the excitement, and probably a bit more wine than you should have had. Mother did herself up proud, didn’t she?”

  His efforts to change the subject did not lessen her feelings of concern. “But Walter,” she said, her mind finally beginning to clear, “I didn’t drink at all. I only put my glass to my lips. You know I hardly ever drink wine. And I felt fine all day until...until just before it happened.”

  “It’s all right,” he told her again, leaning down to kiss her forehead. “You get some rest now. I’ll sleep right here in the chair.”

  Her protests were to no avail. Nothing would do but that he had to sleep in the chair, and at last she stopped trying to convince him otherwise and allowed him to put out the lamp.

  Lying in the darkness, she was haunted by an ugly thought: Just like Alicia. This is just like what he had with her.

  * * * * * * *

  In the morning Walter insisted upon sending for Doctor Goodman, who came and, to Jennifer’s further disappointment, prescribed a few days in bed.

  “But, really, doctor, I’m not sick,” she protested. “I feel well except for this odd choking in my throat.”

  “Nervous spasm, perhaps,” he said. “All the excitement of the wedding, crowds of people, that business with the President. No, you stay in bed for a few days, and keep yourself away from the children until we see just what’s what.”

  “Do you think it’s something contagious?”

  “It’s best to take no chances until we’re sure. It won’t hurt to rest for a few days. If that husband of yours becomes a nuisance, you tell him to see me.”

  Far from being a nuisance, Walter was a model of patience and solicitude. Jennifer remained in bed for four days and Walter could not find enough to do for her, until she began to feel like a pampered darling.

  I can see how a woman would want to remain in bed and convalesce like this, she thought on the fourth day, and that thought had no sooner formed in her mind than she had a feeling of dismay.

  When Walter came into the room next, he found her up and getting dressed, and when Doctor Goodman came to examine her, she said, “Walter had one invalid to coddle, he needn’t go through that again.”

  After another examination the doctor conceded that there was apparently nothing wrong with her and Jennifer took up for the first time her role as Walter’s wife.

  She did not tell him, however, or the doctor, of the lingering pain in her throat or the shortness of breath that accompanied it.

  * * * * * * *

  For all the bad omens, things went rather well for a time. Her strange lingering illness was an inconvenience but not so severe that she was incapacitated. Walter was a wonderfully loving husband in his way. He was not a particularly demonstrative man and she knew she would rarely hear sweet nothings whispered in her ears, but his presence at her side was evidence of his love for her and she was content with that. If only she could be free of her pain long enough to truly enjoy their marriage—but she kept that resolutely to herself.

  They had planned to leave for their honeymoon the morning after the wedding. Helen still owned her family home in New Orleans and Walter had suggested they go there for a few weeks.

  “New Orleans is not what it was before the war but it’s a lovely city nonetheless,” Helen said. “It’ll be a nice place to get away for a spell.”

  Jennifer’s illness had necessarily postponed the trip, but when she was out of bed they decided to go belatedly—and the first difficulty with Liza arose.

  When the suggestion was first made, that Liza go with them, Jennifer tried not to be too argumentative about it. “It is a little unusual, taking someone along on a honeymoon,” she said.

  “But it’s not as if it were really our honeymoon,” he pointed out. “I mean, we have been married two weeks now. That makes a difference, don’t you think? And anyway, Liza’s had no opportunity to get away from here since she first came.”’

  There were several answers to that, Jennifer thought, although she did not make them aloud. In the first place, Darkwater was not exactly at the end of the earth. And so far as Liza’s leaving Darkwater, that was something Alicia had suggested rather strongly numerous times.


  She was not surprised that Liza would ask to go. After all, for all that she was growing up, she was still half a child. She was a little more surprised, however, that Walter had agreed so readily.

  In the end, she went along with the arrangement because she did not want to start out her marriage being disagreeable. She had already followed in Alicia’s footsteps with her unexpected and mysterious sickness. To follow that up with a lot of quarreling over what was really an unimportant issue seemed mere folly. After all, Liza would not be sleeping in their bed. They would have plenty of time to themselves.

  * * * * * * *

  Since the town house was rarely used, there were only two servants in residence—Atlas, an old black man, and his sister, Eugenie, both of whom had been with the family for years.

  “You’ll have to take help with you,” Helen pointed out. “You’ll not be able to get any there and Atlas and Eugenie are both along in years.”

  So when finally they departed for New Orleans, two young women, Belle and Zerline, rode on the back of the carriage. Since Jennifer and Walter were in agreement that they would live simply while they were there, they anticipated no difficulties on that score.

  It was a day’s journey and it was evening by the time they arrived. Although they had come into the city for shopping before, always staying at hotels, this was the first time Jennifer would have a real opportunity to see the city.

  She found it charming, although the filth always shocked her. She knew there were periodic outbreaks of yellow fever and cholera, because the water was polluted and the sanitation was poor.

  The streets were twisting, mere lanes really, for the most part innocent of any pavement. Here and there stretches of broken cobblestone started and stopped with no apparent logic. Narrow sidewalks of brick, called banquettes by the Creoles, lined either side of the street and clung to the fronts of the brick and plaster houses.

  Deep ditches, lined with cypress wood, lay between banquette and road. Trash and sewage were regularly dumped in these open, water-filled ditches. As the carriage rolled through the darkening streets, Jennifer saw the bloated carcass of a dog, dead several days, floating in the gutter. She looked quickly away.

  The houses they passed had no walks or verandahs or even any sort of façade, but were built down to the very edge of the streets. When a person left the house he went from inner privacy to the bustle of the street with one step. Most of the houses, though, did have galleries, overhanging balconies rich with wrought iron ornamentation, and these provided the passengers on the banquettes below with some protection from sun and rain.

  Finally the carriage came to a stop. Walter alighted and, handing Jennifer and Liza down, he walked to a massive oaken door, lifting the iron knocker and letting it fall. While they waited, two nuns all in white passed by and smiled at them.

  They heard footsteps from within. To Jennifer’s surprise, the big door stayed closed and another, smaller one, cut within the large one, swung open instead. An old and tiny Negro woman, her apron stiffly starched, and wearing a red and blue and yellow tignon on her head, made a stiff curtsy and stood aside for them to enter.

  “Bon soir, Monsieur Walter,” she greeted him, her French accent impeccable, and to the ladies, “Watch your step here, it’s very high.”

  The passage within was cool and dark, and stretched before them fully fifty feet. Walter introduced the woman as Eugenie and presented Jennifer and Liza to her. She did another curtsy, and led the way down the corridor. It was paved with blue-gray flagstones, and the moldering walls were peeling in places, here and there revealing patches of bare brick. The ceiling was high overhead and beamed.

  At the end of the passage they entered into a large courtyard paved with more of the blue-gray flagstones. Bamboo grew in large pots and an immense banana tree rustled in the faint evening breeze. In the courtyard’s center, smaller pots of blooming oleander surrounded a gently splashing fountain. Balconies ran around three sides of the courtyard and stairs painted a faded green and festooned with a purple-flowered wisteria vine went up the fourth wall.

  A tall black man came to meet them, bearing a candle. “Good evening, Monsieur Walter,” he greeted them.

  “Good evening, Atlas. This is Mrs. Dere, and this is Liza. I trust we won’t be too much work for you while we are here.”

  “Not too much for me, Monsieur Walter. I put those two girls you brought to work. Will you be having dinner?”

  “Shortly,” Walter said. “I think the ladies would like to freshen up a bit first.”

  “Indeed. If you will come with me, Mesdames.”

  They walked through the cool rooms with their immensely high ceilings. Jennifer could see that the furnishings were magnificent and so highly polished that they gleamed even in the dim light. Crystal chandeliers tinkled softly.

  “This is lovely,” Jennifer said. “Why haven’t you lived here?”

  “Because I don’t care much for the city,” Walter said frankly. “It’s noisome, for one thing, and filthy. Every year or so there are outbreaks and half the population dies off. You’d think they’d leave and never come back, but they don’t seem to. Besides, in the country we can sustain ourselves well. Even the Deres are less wealthy since the war. And being isolated as we were, we were hardly touched during the war. People here lost much. This house was looted once, but they didn’t take the large things and the servants drove the soldiers away before they could do too much damage. If you look, you’ll find bullet holes in some walls, and a shortage of small ornamental pieces.”

  * * * * * * *

  As they were weary from travel, they retired soon after dinner. Walter led Jennifer through a maze of rooms and up sweeping flights of stairs to the master bedroom. It was a huge chamber, richly decorated, with a massive, canopied bed in its center.

  It would have the perfect setting for their belated honeymoon but for one difficulty. When Liza was shown to her room at the opposite end of the hall, she found that she was too much alone, and frightened in this big, unfamiliar house.

  “But she has lived in the swamp,” Jennifer pointed out when Walter explained this to her. “And at Darkwater she sleeps in her own room. I don’t see why she should be frightened here.”

  “It’s all new to her,” he said. “And she’s only a child.”

  Not so much a child, Jennifer thought, that she can’t fend for herself quite well at home. But she chided herself for being uncharitable, and said, “Well, the thing to do is to let one of the servants sleep in her room with her.”

  Walter looked a little embarrassed. “Actually,” he said, “she asked if she couldn’t just sleep in here with us until she got used to the house. I said it would be all right.”

  “Walter,” Jennifer said, truly shocked at this arrangement, “On our honeymoon...?”

  “Except it isn’t, really,” he pointed out again, with maddening persistence. “And it’s not as if it will be our only night to sleep together. We have a lifetime ahead of us, my darling. This will only be for a night or two.”

  Jennifer was prevented from arguing further by the arrival of Liza herself, in her nightgown which, Jennifer noticed, was already too small for her. Her legs, losing some of their adolescent gangliness, were rather generously revealed, almost to the knees. In a woman it would have been a shocking display. Jennifer thought it a bit immodest even for a girl.

  “I don’t want to be any trouble,” Liza said. “I can just wrap up in a blanket and sleep here on the floor.”

  “You’ll do no such thing,” Walter said. “You can sleep in the bed with Jennifer and I’ll curl up in that chair.”

  “But you’ll get no sleep that way,” Jennifer said.

  “I’m used to sleeping anywhere. Besides, it will only be for tonight. Tomorrow we’ll find another bed and have it moved in here.”

  Jennifer stilled her objections and went to bed, but she could not pretend to enjoy a honeymoon with her husband sleeping nearby in a chair and Liza, dropp
ing off at once to an untroubled sleep, in bed beside her.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Liza never did quite get over being afraid in the new house. For the rest of their visit, she shared Jennifer’s bed and Walter slept in the big chair, or in the adjoining bedroom. At first, Jennifer had argued about the arrangements, but nothing she said seemed to change Walter’s way of thinking.

  It was almost, she thought more than once, as if he were in a trance of some sort, or bewitched. But that sounded too much like the sort of things Alicia used to say, and she quickly dismissed that notion from her mind.

  Perhaps she would not have minded so much had she and Walter been able to make up for it otherwise with time to themselves, but the fact was, they were never alone. Liza was with them constantly, and Walter was so conscientious about doing this or the other to entertain and please her that Jennifer began to genuinely resent Liza’s presence.

  I feel as if Walter and Liza are on a trip together, she told herself in the mirror one evening, and I am along as a companion.

  Afterward, though, she would chide herself for her petty jealousy, and try again to enjoy the trip. Certainly Liza was enjoying herself, and she could not really blame Walter for sharing and even encouraging her high good spirits. She had never seemed quite so much a little girl.

  On Saturday they had been invited to a party at the Harrows. At the last minute (why not sooner, Jennifer wondered?) it was discovered that the dress Liza had intended to wear was much too small for her.

  “She’s just grown too much these last few months,” Walter said. “She’s going to be a woman soon.”