“I am Marguerite now. Mrs. Silas Omohundru.”
“He? Is he . . .”
“At one time Silas speculated in slaves. He is a rich man. One of the richest men in the Confederacy.”
“But, Midge . . .”
“I loved you so much. More than my life. I loved you as only a young girl can love. You enjoyed the best of me, Master Duncan Gatewood.”
“Oh Christ!” Duncan looked out into the night, where snow was beginning to fall.
The servant brought her wrap. “Here you is, Missus. They’d took all the ladies coats upstairs into Mistress Semmes’s bedroom and I looked through the heap and I feared you’d be out here freezin’ to death. Why’d you go trustin’ an old woolly head like me?” The man wrapped Midge in her fine cloak. “Anything else I can fetch you? They gonna start the play-actin’ pretty quick.”
“What is your name?” Midge inquired quietly.
“Me? I’ze Samson.” Big grin.
Midge gave him a coin. “This, Samson, is for your taking trouble.”
Bowing, the old servant withdrew.
“They have destroyed you,” she said. “At first I did not know who you were.”
“I am altered so much?”
She looked at him wonderingly. “Duncan, you were so fancy.”
“Midge . . . I . . .”
“I am Marguerite Omohundru, Duncan. I have been in places that were not Stratford.”
“I didn’t know Father meant to sell you. How in God’s name could I have prevented it?”
“It is no small advantage to southern gentlemen that they can sell their embarrassments. That circumstance has preserved many a fine family’s honor.” A rectangle of light streamed from the house to stop at Duncan’s feet. Beyond, all was blackness. Very quietly Midge said, “Will you keep my secret?”
“Yes.”
“You give the matter no great thought,” she said falsely, gaily. She took a breath and shuddered. “I am truly sorry about your injuries.” She inspected him for the longest moment. “My dear Duncan. My poor lost love.” With her forefinger she touched the lobe of his ear.
How could anything so gentle burn so hot? In a choked voice he asked, “The child?”
“Jacob is my heart’s delight. There never has been a cleverer boy.”
“I . . . I never thought to see you again.”
“I’ve always expected to meet someone who knew. I’ve had dreams—vivid dreams—of being denounced in some public place: a railroad station, the Exchange Hotel . . .”
“Surely it’s a fearful risk.”
“Wilmington is not Richmond. Even so, I seldom go out in society. I am deemed unusually shy.”
“I wish . . .”
“Yes, you were so awfully good at wishes. . . .” She paused. “I suppose I was no better. Duncan, dear, I pictured us married! Me: the mistress of Stratford! Ignorant pickaninny playing the lady. Imagine!”
“And now you are a lady.”
“My Jacob will be a gentleman. On my life I swear he will! Did you know one of Napoleon’s marshals was a colored man? Did you know we had kings in Africa? Mighty kings!”
There were very many things Duncan should have said, but none reached his tongue. “I will keep your secret,” he repeated.
And she took him in her arms and kissed him, and she said, “Silas will be anxious about me. Darling love Duncan, goodbye,” and was gone.
Snow whitened Duncan Gatewood’s hair.
“You still here, sir?” It was the servant, Samson. “Miss Molly, she saving a seat for you. They about to start the charades. She say you best not dawdle.”
The arch to the family parlor served as proscenium for a makeshift theater. Rustlings could be heard behind the curtain, and occasionally the cloth indented or bulged. President and Varina Davis sat up front in Mrs. Semmes’s best armchairs. Other guests took wooden chairs. The younger children were seated on the floor.
At the front door, Marguerite and her escort were making their excuses, leaving.
In a costume of breathtaking shabbiness, Mrs. Semmes stepped through the curtain. Duncan vaguely heard her announce that this evening’s gaiety was dedicated to the unconquerable Confederate people. Mrs. Semmes begged that her guests not guess aloud the syllables of the charades as they were presented but wait until the word was presented entire. She thanked them all for coming out on such a wintery evening. On a narrow wooden chair beside Cousin Molly, Duncan wished he hadn’t.
When the curtain was drawn, people acted a charade. To Duncan they were like swimmers underwater. Why had his life been destroyed?
“ ‘Trial,’ ” Cousin Molly whispered triumphantly. “They are portraying a trial. Doesn’t Cooper DeLeon make a splendid criminal?”
The first syllable of the charade had been “in,” the second “dust,”—the word must be “industrial.” Mrs. Semmes, portraying the desperate criminal’s wife, stepped out of character to glare at Cousin Molly and put her finger to her lips.
“Yes,” Duncan licked his lips, “ ‘Trial.’ ”
The curtain drew back to reveal young ladies lounging about in filmy clothing few would have guessed they possessed let alone dared to wear. They lounged with surprising aptitude, guarded by fierce-looking gentlemen in turbans. “Harem,” Cousin Molly opined.
Duncan wondered if pashas had as much trouble with Christian women as Virginians did with colored ones.
On the makeshift stage, children pretended to torment an old woman. “ ‘Scarum.’ ” The audience seemed dissatisfied by this “harum-scarum” charade but applauded the children, who took bow after bow.
Cousin Molly craned back in her seat to gossip with Hetty Cary. In Virginia, everybody knew everything about everybody. That’s why honor was so precious: because gone, everyone knew it was gone. Duncan wished he were somewhere else.
The curtain drew back on the final charade, a sick man on his cot while an apothecary mixed nostrums, pestling until, with a flourish, he produced a pill the size of a horse bolus. He brandished this triumphantly as his patient mimed fear.
“ ‘Pill.’ ”
The second scene depicted dismal poverty, bare cupboards, a shabbily dressed man and wife. Their child was turned away from the table with an empty bowl.
Cousin Molly guessed, “ ‘Poor’? ‘Starved’?”
Mrs. Semmes poked her head around the curtain to hush Cousin Molly again.
If this bitter scene did not prophesy the Confederate future it certainly made everyone uneasy. The word “grim” rippled through the audience.
Duncan wondered if Midge would have lain with him if he hadn’t been the white young master. Innocent love. Was there anything more innocent than childish yearnings?
Duncan was a stranger inside his own body and felt acutely his missing arm, his broken gait, his whiskered ruined face. When he moved his jaw, his left cheek drew tighter than his right. He scratched his face, savagely.
In the next scene, Mrs. Semmes was transformed into a crone, her walking stick almost too heavy for her. She kept one hand in the small of her back, attempted to straighten, relapsed with a groan.
“ ‘Age,’ ” Cousin Molly guessed, briskly.
“They ought to have scenes to amuse us,” an officer behind them grumbled. “Something to make us laugh under the ribs of death, because, by God, that’s where we are.” Despite the audience’s regard for their hostess, applause was perfunctory.
It only remained to act out the complete word “pilgrimage,” and commotion behind the curtain suggested that was the thespians’ intent. The audience was restless, primed for oysters and more of Mr. Omohundru’s champagne.
Duncan was no longer the boy he had been. He could hardly remember what it felt like to embrace Midge, to enclose her in his two arms. He was no longer the “young master,” and “Captain Gatewood” was more a stranger to him than old friend. Where would Duncan’s pilgrimage end?
The shrine revealed was simple and magnificent: a pine chest covered wi
th a cloth of fine Belgian linen, ornate silver candlesticks burning bright. The crucifix was hand-carved black walnut.
Dressed in a gray nun’s habit, a pilgrim crossed herself and knelt behind the altar. A friar came into kneel beside her. Even without her golden diadem Mrs. Ould would have been unmistakably a queen. Regally, she bowed her head. Her king dropped to one knee beside the friar.
As a boy, Duncan had possessed grace and thought he would always have it. From here on, as a man, as Captain Gatewood, he would want plainer, sturdier virtues.
Burton Harrison, President Davis’s secretary, appeared as a red Indian chief in beaded quilled vest, leather breechclout, and moccasins and took his place beside the queen, arms crossed, expressionless.
The last pilgrim was General J.E.B. Stuart, and when the audience saw who he was, they went still. The Confederacy’s beau ideal, its perfect cavalier—every line in his face was a mark laughter leaves. In full-dress Confederate uniform, high-booted, gray cape lined with shimmering red silk, Stuart removed his plumed hat. The only sound was a gentle scrape when he drew his saber and laid it tenderly on the altar of his crucified Savior.
For the first time in many months, Duncan felt light—as if he were riding Gypsy again, breathless into the wind. Come what may, he thought. Come what may.
A NICKEL-PLATED WATCH
NEAR MT. JACKSON, VIRGINIA
MARCH 9, 1864
“SO,” SETH DANZINGER asked, “what did you think of us? Aren’t our old German hymns so sad and beautiful?”
The Brethrens’ a cappella singing had been solemn and agreeable, and Alexander said so.
The horse was young and high-spirited, and with his family in the carriage, Seth kept a tight rein. The stars were very many, and a faint penumbra along the Blue Ridge limned the spot where the moon would rise.
It was the first time Alexander had been invited to their prayer service. Plainly dressed men sat on one side of the aisle, women on the other. Although the preacher (“bishop,” Seth called him) must have noticed a new face in his congregation of thirty, he did not remark on it, nor did he translate any of the service into English. Since Alexander couldn’t understand the words, he was free to enjoy the cadences. The preacher argued sweetly, thundered righteously, and when he smacked the podium several times with his fist, Alexander knew he was denouncing his congregation’s most grievous sins.
“What was the sermon about?” Alexander now asked.
“Hoop skirts,” Seth answered.
Since the two were side by side on the driver’s box, Seth sensed Alexander’s puzzlement. “Hoop skirts may seem a slight matter to you,” Seth continued seriously. “Do you think shunning wordly vanity is easy? Why, if it were, we would shun it easily. Little things it is that bring us into sin. Do we dress better than our neighbor? Do we take too much pride in our buggies, perhaps install brass lamps and polish them? Do we begin to value man’s goods more than God’s promises? Are we guided by the long experience of our people, or do we let ‘the learned professors’ sway us from our course? Guarding against hoop skirts, Alexander, prevents worse sins. Do you listen, Katrina?”
Like all Brethren children, in her sixteenth year Katrina Danzinger received special instruction in her faith. Once a week Alexander drove her to the bishop’s home (accompanied by Grandmother Danzinger as chaperon). Alexander thought Katrina’s neat white cap was the most delicate thing in the world. Shy at first, the girl soon began discussing her hopes and dreams, the chest she had filled with linens she would bring to her new home when she married, the sampler she was stitching to demonstrate her housewifely skills. Because Alexander had led—by Katrina’s standards—such an exotic life, Katrina sometimes tested the tenets of her faith against him. Now she leaned forward. “Alexander, do you think it is better to baptize infants or wait until a person is grown and can herself decide?”
“Oh, I don’t know.”
“But you must have an opinion, Alexander. You should not be afraid to voice it. On my next birthday, I must decide whether to remain in my church or choose another church or, perhaps . . .” She paused. “. . . cease to be a Christian,” she added all in a rush.
“Uncle was a Congregationalist when I was young, though he became a Unitarian later.”
“And what do Unitarians believe?” the young girl asked eagerly.
Alexander shook his head. “I was more interested in the ancient peoples. Did you know the Romans brought water from the Sabine Hills on aqueducts forty-four miles long?”
The girl said, “Alexander, had they no wells?”
“Rome was a big city. When you get so many people in one place, you must bring in water from outside. You must have sewers too.”
“Then it is not healthy!” Katrina sat back in her seat triumphantly, having routed not only Unitarianism and infant baptism but the vices of ancient cities as well.
Alexander’s uncle was neither a popular nor a successful preacher, but somewhere he had acquired an expensive edition of Piranesi’s engravings of classical Rome, and the boy Alexander sat with that book for hours—its gloomy, powerful depictions of ruined grandeur, the Via Appia, the Colosseum, the aqueducts. How Alexander had envied those ancient people! What he did not understand about them, he could dream, and his dreams were every bit as satisfactory as knowledge might have been.
“No,” he admitted, “Rome was not salubrious. . . .” But he scarcely heard his own words. He was wondering if ancient Rome was now as dead to him as it was to this young girl. The Brethren did not encourage converts, but if Alexander learned German and followed their rules—and the rules were not hard to understand—he might dwell with them quietly and safely.
“Such a beautiful night God has given us,” Gretchen Danzinger sighed. “God has given us such a wonderful world. Why do men wish to spoil it?”
Grandmother Danzinger said something sharp in German—sarcastic, Alexander thought.
“What do you hope to accomplish?” he asked Seth.
“Oh,” the young man laughed. “I wish to be Vorsinger at our meeting—to be trusted to keep the melody of a holy humn: ‘Herr Gott! dich will ich loben.’ That hymn, Alexander, a martyr wrote it in prison the night before he was burned alive.” Translating as he went, in his young voice, Seth sang, “In flesh I am distrusting, it is too frail I see, In Thy word I am trusting . . .”
“Dich will ich loben,” the grandmother said with satisfaction.
“We have always been persecuted for our beliefs. We do not attempt to impose our ways on the worldly people. We do not cheat them or treat them with contempt. But to them we are like the big trout in the creek—you may not wish to eat that trout, you may enjoy watching the trout, how it turns and flashes in the sun, you may even admire it, but there will always be one man who cannot rest until he kills it. And so”—Seth shrugged—“many of our hymns are about martyrs, and this one is perhaps the loveliest. But so hard to sing. If I can be Vorsinger, I suppose it will be an accomplishment. Is that what you mean?”
“Not quite the same, no,” Alexander answered. “I mean doing something so important others would respect it, perhaps even admire you. . . .”
“All this getting admired and who is admired and who is not. What foolishness,” Gretchen Danzinger snorted.
“Riders ahead,” Willem noted.
“Keep driving,” Gretchen Danzinger advised. “When we come abreast, I will sing out a hello.”
“Mama . . .” little Lisle said.
“Hush.”
In the moonlight the riders formed a clot on the pale ribbon of road.
“Slave patrollers?” Alexander said.
As the buggy closed, the riders parted, a dark gauntlet on either side. The buggy’s side lamps slid over their unflinching faces.
“Beautiful evening,” Gretchen Danzinger called out. “It is a beautiful evening in God’s Kingdom.”
The riders were roughly dressed, but without the patrollers’ bullwhips. They had pistol holsters on their saddles a
nd carbines slung across their backs or resting on their pommels.
One fat rider blocked their passage, and another man leaned to grab their horse’s bridle.
The fat rider wore a tall silk hat tugged low over his brows. His eyes shone in the gleam of the side lights. “Stump’s Partisan Rangers,” he announced. “We’re waitin’ for the Danzingers.”
In a breathless voice, Gretchen Danzinger said, “That will be us, sir.”
His saddle creaked as he readjusted himself. “In particular, Seth Danzinger.”
“I am Seth Danzinger,” the young man replied.
“Then we was told right.” The man hitched a leg over his saddle horn. “How come you don’t do your prayin’ on Sunday like Christians?”
“We have Sunday services,” Gretchen Danzinger replied. “In midweek, we often meet for a prayer service. Don’t you think these times require prayer?”
The fat man turned to the horse holder. “How about that, Baxter? You think prayer might help?”
The man snorted.
A very dirty man with a turkey feather in his hat said, “I never once knew no Federal cavalry run off with prayin’.”
“Then, sir,” Gretchen Danzinger retorted, “perhaps you haven’t prayed as frequently as you ought. Or as humbly.”
The fat man whooped. “She got you there, Ollie! By God, didn’t she! If there’s one thing in this life you ain’t overdone it’s prayin’. Next time those bluebellies get after us, you give prayin’ a try. Can’t do worse than your shootin’.”
Ollie slapped his dusty hat against his knee and reset it. “Cap’n Stump, I’d be obliged to know which army they’re prayin’ for.”
“Sir, if you’ll let us pass. There are ladies in our buggy, and this night air is chill.”
The fat man ignored Alexander. “You got something there, Ollie, surely you do. If they’re prayin’ for Jeff Davis and the success of Confederate arms, that’s one thing. But suppose they were prayin’ for Colonel Dahlgren . . .”
Careful with his words, Seth said, “We are not acquainted with Colonel Dahlgren. Is he Confederate?”
Jacob's Ladder: A Story of Virginia During the War Page 41