The Seeker

by Ann H. Gabhart

  It was hard to understand how the man leaned in the current civil strife. He claimed to support the Union, but a slaveholder and a Unionist didn’t seem to go together to Adam, who had spent most of his years in Massachusetts where abolition seemed the only policy for a man of morals. But here abolitionists were looked upon with suspicion and distrust by all, Union or Secessionist. So much so that most of them worked under the cover of darkness or hastened to the friendlier climes of the North to do their campaigning for the end of slavery. That wasn’t a problem for Adam. His art trumped his political leanings every time, and he had no trouble observing and recording without revealing his inner thoughts.

  At least he knew what those thoughts were even if he didn’t bother trying to bring others around to his way of thinking. A man should not be able to own another man. States did not have the right to withdraw from the Union. The federal government in Washington, D.C., had to make that absolutely clear. The Union must be preserved by whatever means necessary.

  But the politicians and perhaps the whole populace in Kentucky seemed in a state of denial as they entertained the idea that if war came—and few doubted Lincoln could avoid some sort of armed conflict—then their state, their people could remain neutral without declaring support for the North or South. They were dreamers who were trying to erect a fence of words around their borders. Senator Vance had explained it to Adam at great length in the carriage ride from the train station to the party in spite of the obvious boredom of his new wife at his political talk.

  “Kentucky is a Union state. We believe in the Union first and foremost. That goes back to Henry Clay, our greatest son. The Great Compromiser.” His face puffed up with pride. “I knew him well.”

  “What about President Lincoln? Wasn’t he born in Kentucky?” Adam had asked, already knowing the answer, but sometimes he couldn’t keep from trying to stir a bit of fire into a conversation.

  “While I can’t deny Mr. Lincoln was born inside the borders of our great state, I regret to say he shows little evidence of being a Kentucky son now. Illinois seems to have stamped her mark upon him,” Senator Vance answered with feeling. “They report he only got one vote in the whole of Lexington even though his wife was born and raised there. That surely tells you something about the man.”

  “Or Kentucky,” Adam said.

  The senator glowered at him as if thinking of stopping the carriage to put such a nettlesome Northerner out. But his bride wanted her portrait finished, and she was well practiced in the art of changing the atmosphere around her when change was desired.

  She put a gloved hand on her new husband’s cheek and spoke to him with the hint of a pout. “Now, Charles, you know how your political blathering wears me down and I do so want to look fresh and lovely for your guests. Can we not find a more amusing topic than the state of the political world?” She flashed her eyes toward Adam with a bright smile that was meant to charm him into submission. “I’m sure our famous young artist didn’t mean to raise your dander or bore me into an unladylike frown. Now did you, Mr. Wade?”

  “Of course not, Mrs. Vance,” Adam agreed with an answering smile that was as empty as her own as he settled back in the corner of the carriage seat with his sketchbook.

  The lady lifted her chin and turned her profile to its most flattering side, sure he was practicing his strokes for her portrait. He let her think what she wished even as he began sketching his memory of the village they’d just passed through where a blacksmith had been ringing his hammer down on an anvil while a barefoot black boy had stared at their carriage, his eyes wide and hungry. Adam had come to Kentucky to capture its citizens’ confusion of thought in pictures. The senator’s wife’s portrait was simply a bothersome side venture to placate his sister.

  Now he had unwisely complicated the life of the senator’s daughter. He had told her the truth when he said he didn’t kiss and tell, but he also never kissed and lingered. Often not even long enough for a second kiss no matter how delightful the first had been. And Charlotte Vance’s lips had been soft and yielding. While he would not look with disfavor on a second or third such encounter, he had no intention of settling down to one hearth and home. Something the senator’s daughter seemed quite anxious to establish in her own life even to the point of browbeating a most unwilling and, to Adam’s eyes, unlikely candidate into meeting her at the altar of matrimony.

  That was not a trap Adam was about to fall into no matter how delightful the lady’s lips. He needed to be free of ties. Even though he’d already been all the way to California and back looking for the father who had disappeared in search of gold when Adam was a child, there was much of the country out there yet to see. He didn’t know what scenes awaited him, but he did know he planned to capture the spirit of the country with his artist pencils and brushes so that those who never left the stuffy confines of their sitting rooms could feel the majesty of the country’s wide-open spaces. He considered himself more than an artist. He was a reporter.

  Still, it might be interesting to get to know the senator’s daughter better. She seemed to be as much a contradiction of feelings as her state of Kentucky. Speaking of marrying one man while quite willingly surrendering her lips to another. The strong lift of her chin contrasting to the soft line of her cheek. Her determination in the face of the impossibility of her dream of marriage if the young man fleeing her was serious about joining with the Shakers.

  Adam rubbed his fingertips and thumb together in anticipation at the thought of the Shakers. Their village just a few miles from where he stood in the senator’s garden—another reason he was not sorry to be in Mercer County. Sam Johnson, the editor at Harper’s Weekly, was eager to see sketches of their buildings and the graceful winding staircases that so amazed all visitors.

  While Adam was ready to supply whatever illustrations the editor requested, he was more curious about the peculiar people who would choose such a life. Men and women who had turned against all that was natural between a man and woman as if they believed the Lord had changed his mind about his initial command to Adam and Eve to be fruitful and multiply.

  With a reputation as peaceful, honest, and industrious, the Shakers nevertheless were generally depicted as being dour and exceedingly plain in appearance. Especially the sisters whose uniform white caps and shapeless dresses obscured any hint of feminine charm.

  Adam had once visited a Shaker village in the East, but had not been free to wander among the Believers, as they called themselves. Here in Kentucky, he’d heard the public road went straight through the village so a man could surely see much of the Shakers’ way of life without being invited into their midst. He wanted to see them when they weren’t presenting a face to the world they took such pains to shut away. He wanted to watch the children and see if they looked glad to be in the village or if they were uneasy captives. He wanted to sketch their likenesses when they weren’t aware of his pencil strokes, perhaps even sketch them whirling in their worship dances. He liked the challenge of capturing the illusion of movement in a drawing.

  Perhaps this Edwin Gilbey who had fled from the beautiful Charlotte could be his ticket into the village. Adam left the quiet of the garden behind with a bit of regret. Parties could be tiresome with too many young ladies concocting ploys to get his attention. Then as he climbed up the veranda steps, he thought of the senator’s daughter and how even now he could taste her sweet innocence on his lips. He knew which young lady his eyes would be seeking as the music continued to play into the night.

  His time in Kentucky stretched before him with much promise. In spite of the threat of a civil confrontation. Or perhaps because of it. What better place to be than in the middle of a divided state where it would be easy to sketch the faces of both sides.

  On the veranda, he paused where Charlotte had stood so motionless, but all he could see was the graceful lift of tree limbs not yet bedecked with leaves as they cast moonlit shadows over the long lane up to the house. His gaze lingered on the road as he wond
ered if her yearning had been to follow that road away from the life she knew. If so, she shared kinship with him. He’d never seen a road he wasn’t eager to travel.

  4

  It was past midnight when the last guests finally called for their carriages and the door shut behind them. Charlotte was left alone in the entryway with her father and his new wife.

  The silence that fell over them beat against Charlotte’s eardrums, but she didn’t trot out any polite words to ease the tension as she faced this woman who was going to climb the stairs and lie down in her mother’s bed. The woman returned her look with the hint of a smile that held little warmth. She wasn’t worried about winning Charlotte’s approval. She had the approval of the Vance who mattered.

  Beside her, Charlotte’s father yawned, obviously with no awareness at all of the strained air between the two women, or perhaps simply not caring. “A good gathering, Charley.” He clapped a hand down on her shoulder and gave it a squeeze.

  The praise and his use of her pet name almost softened her anger at him, but then he went on. “Send Mellie up to help Selena do whatever it is you ladies have to do to retire for the evening.” His sleepiness fell away and his eyes brightened as he turned to Selena. “You were especially lovely tonight, my dear Selena. I was, without a doubt, the envy of every man here.”

  “Thank you, my love.” Selena smiled up at him with practiced charm. She turned from him to lay her hand lightly on Charlotte’s arm. It was all Charlotte could do to stay still and not jerk away from the woman’s touch. “Your father and I do appreciate all you did to make my welcome here at Grayson so fine. I’m sure you have been invaluable to Charles in seeing to so many details of the household, and I’m even surer you will be greatly relieved to have that burden lifted from your young shoulders so that you can pursue the more lighthearted activities suited to a young lady.” She raised her perfectly shaped eyebrows at Charlotte. “I hear you plan to wed next month. We shall have to host a dozen parties for you before the big event.”

  Charlotte stared at the woman in front of her and was unable to push even the corners of her mouth up to fake a smile. The woman might as well have put both hands against Charlotte’s back to shove her out the front door behind the last guest. “Yes, well, Edwin is not extremely fond of social gatherings, and it’s not the best time for entertaining with the country so precariously divided.” Charlotte shifted her feet just enough to move out from under the woman’s hand.

  Selena pretended not to notice as she actually laughed. A sound as practiced as her smile. Lilting and feminine. Everything about her was lovely, from her rich brown hair swept up in the latest style to her soft white hands with perfectly shaped nails that showed no evidence of ever being used for anything other than fluttering a fan in front of her beautiful china doll face. Charlotte hid her own hands in the folds of her skirt. The woman in front of her would probably shrink back in horror if she knew how only that morning Charlotte had buried her hands wrist deep in dough to help Aunt Tish get the many tarts prepared for the party.

  “Oh, but my dear child, that is the very best time for light entertainments to help take our minds off such unpleasantness,” Selena was saying. A look of sympathy pulled down her lips. “And I do understand your Edwin’s reluctance, but sometimes a man only needs to be convinced of what he truly wants.” She glanced up through dark eyelashes at Charlotte’s father. “Isn’t that so, my love?”

  He laughed down at her. “I took little convincing.” His eyes drank her in and his voice was husky as he went on, “It’s late. Time to retire. You and Charlotte can discuss the need for such feminine wiles on the morrow.” He took Selena’s arm and ushered her toward the stairs. He didn’t even glance back at Charlotte as he said, “Tell Mellie to be quick, Charlotte.”

  Rooted to her spot, she stared after them and wanted to yell that Mellie was not his new wife’s to order about. Charlotte wanted Mellie to come to her room to help her pull the pins from her hair and undo her stays while they talked about the party. That’s how it had always been. Mellie helping her get ready for bed. But there was nothing for it but to do as her father said.

  “Don’t you be worrying, Miss Lottie. I’ll have that woman tucked under the covers ’fore she blinks twice,” Mellie promised when Charlotte delivered her father’s message. “I can see to the both of you. Come tomorrow maybe he’ll be bringin’ somebody else up to the house for her.”

  “He’ll dance to whatever tune she decides to play.” Charlotte didn’t try to keep the disgust out of her voice.

  “Ain’t no need gettin’ your dander up, Miss Lottie.” Mellie patted her shoulder. “That’s how he was with your mama too. You remember that. Whatever Miss Mayda wanted, that’s what we done. He’d a give his fortune to keep her happy.”

  “It was her fortune,” Charlotte muttered, but she knew Mellie was right. Her father had doted on her mother even after she withdrew from life with a multitude of health complaints. Charlotte had always thought the complaints were more in her head than her body, but then she’d been struck down in her garden. Charlotte sighed. “It’s all right, Mellie. You see to the new Mrs. Vance and keep everybody happy. I can take down my own hair.”

  “I ain’t hearin’ none of that. You best wait on me. You’ll get it all in a tangle for sure. And ruin that fine dress tryin’ to unbutton it.”

  In her room at last, Charlotte managed to reach a few of the tiny buttons up the back of the skintight bodice, but Mellie was right. To undo them all, she’d have to be a contortionist or rip them loose. She sat on the dressing stool and stared at her face in the mirror in the flickering lamplight. It was surely the most ridiculous thing in the world to wear a dress—no matter how lovely—that one could not put on or take off without aid.

  Of course Mellie had been helping her dress since they were both children, and Aunt Tish before that. Her mother said it was the only way for a lady to live. Cosseted and pampered. Waited on while engaging in refined activities such as poetry reading and that detested needlework. A lady couldn’t even lean down and pluck a stray weed out of her own flower garden.

  She had people for that. People for cooking and cleaning. People to open the door to guests and usher them into the parlor. People to empty the chamber pots and fill the lamps. People to drop the dresses over a lady’s head and fasten the buttons. People to work the fields and bring in the crops that made life in the big house so fine for the ladies and gentlemen who lived there. Her mother claimed it was how things were meant to be and that it was their Christian duty to take care of their people.

  The word slave never crossed her mother’s lips. Those who did her bidding and kept Grayson running were their people. But Charlotte knew the word from her father and from Aunt Tish and from Willis, the gentle black man who brought her pony out to her and taught her how to ride. Still, she was going on ten before she understood, really understood, what being a slave meant.

  At a festival in the town, she had gotten separated from her mother, and after wandering down the wrong street, came upon a crowd of mostly men, some dressed rough like her father’s overseer, Perkins, and others in gentlemen’s coats. A white man stood at a podium like a preacher, and to his side black men wore chains on their wrists and ankles that clanked when they moved.

  Charlotte stopped in her tracks and knew instinctively the scene before her was something her father would think unfit for her eyes. One part of her wanted to run from the sight, but another part of her couldn’t stop staring as a couple of men prodded a boy in chains up on the block. A black boy surely only a year or two older than Charlotte.

  He stared over the heads of the men eyeing him straight at Charlotte. She had expected to see fear on his face or perhaps dismay, but instead there was smoldering anger. Somehow she knew without a word passing between them that he hated her. Not because of anything she’d done, but because she had no chains to keep her from going where she willed. She looked straight at him, hoping he would see how sorry she felt, bu
t he jerked against his chains as his look grew fiercer. Later she decided it must have been the same as hot coals dropping on his heart to think about her walking away in freedom he would never know.

  “Keep your eyes down, boy,” the man behind him had shouted as he hit the boy so hard he fell to his knees under the blow.

  Charlotte whirled and ran back up the street the way she had come until she found her mother shopping for parasols while Willis sat in the carriage and waited.

  She didn’t tell her mother what she’d seen. She didn’t tell anyone, not even Mellie. Especially not Mellie. The raw hatred in the boy’s eyes haunted her sleep for weeks until Aunt Tish took her aside.

  “What’s the matter with you, chile? My Mellie says you ain’t sleepin’ hardly none at all. That you toss and turn till the sheets is all a-tumble on your bed. You best be comin’ clean to your Aunt Tish with whatever is tormentin’ you.”

  And so she let the words come out to say what she’d seen.

  Aunt Tish got too quiet as she sat beside her at the kitchen table. Charlotte couldn’t remember her ever sitting so quietly for so long.

  Finally Charlotte said, “I did see it. I’m not lying.”

  “I knows you did, chile. You don’t have to do no explainin’ what it looked like to me. I been there. Me and my Mellie both, though she was just a babe with no sense of nothin’ but her mammy’s arms. The Massah bought me off the block so’s I could wet-nurse you.”

  Charlotte looked at Aunt Tish. She’d always been part of her life, warm and kind. Full of wisdom and sometimes laughter. There was no laughter now. “Did you hate him?” Charlotte whispered. “The way that boy hated me.”

  “I didn’t think it would help anythin’ for me to let hatred build up in my innards. But I had to fight against it when he stopped shoutin’ out bids on Jonah. We’d done jumped the broom before Mellie was born. I thought then right at first maybe he didn’t have the money and as how I ought to be glad enough me and Mellie weren’t goin’ downriver. Little babies die goin’ down the river. That’s what Jonah told me. Not to worry none about him. He could take whatever they threw at him on those cotton plantations.”