Bon Marche

by Chet Hagan

  He’d need an ally to make certain he’d stay at Elkwood.

  Martha?

  If not one daughter, then the other. But it had to be handled carefully. That much he now understood.

  III

  UNDERSTANDING?

  It came with study.

  Elkwood itself was an encyclopedia for Charles Dewey.

  He found it a complex society, a microcosm of a city, but one that was almost wholly self-sufficient. It produced its own food: corn, wheat, oats, barley, vegetables in great variety, fruits, beef, mutton, lamb, and fowl, milk and cheeses, wild game, fish from the nearby James River. It made its own products: leather tanned from hides, cloth spun from cotton and wool, lumber cut from its trees, bricks shaped from its red clay, bread baked from its grains, wine pressed from its fruits. It had its own exports: tobacco and cotton chief among them but also including lumber and wheat and sweet hay and indigo plants, from which an excellent blue vat dye could be made. It provided its own entertainments: horse racing, fox hunting, cockfighting, wild game hunting. It reveled in the beauty of its plant life; wildflowers, apple and cherry blossoms, boxwood, yew, pine, tulip poplar, dogwood.

  Indeed, except for the need to go outside for the simple commodity of salt, Elkwood might have stood completely alone in the world, secure on its nearly six thousand acres.

  What made the community unique and, at the same time, commonplace in Virginia, was that most of its inhabitants were in bondage.

  Marshall Statler was, Charles believed, a kind man. But he owned more than one hundred fifty slaves, and it was impossible that one man could superintend the day-to-day activities of them all. Thus, he employed five overseers: four white men and a black freeman—Dewey found it difficult to understand that—and the treatment of the slaves was as diverse as five different men could make it. Statler gave his overseers full rein with their charges, exercising his own authority only when a Negro appealed directly to the “big house” for some kind of justice in a dispute. That such an appeal was allowed at all was a measure of Statler’s sense of fairness. But Dewey recognized that the master’s justice was often single-minded. Myopic, perhaps.

  Charles was on hand in Statler’s drawing room one day when Abner Caldwell, the overseer of the field hands, brought in a black man named Cephas. The slave knelt in supplication in front of Statler and, hands clasped in a prayerful attitude, said that Caldwell had denied his weekly ration of a peck of corn.

  Cephas, although he was old—a lot of gray showed in his hair—seemed in good health and was well clothed. There was no indication that he had been physically mistreated. But his corn—his food—had been taken from him.

  Statler heard the simple complaint without interruption. At the end, he looked at the overseer. “Well, Mr. Caldwell?”

  “He’s lazy, sir. He shirks, and the others see it.”

  Statler nodded. “Are you lazy, Cephas?” It was asked in a kindly manner.

  “Oh, no, suh!” he protested. “Ah does what Mistah Caldwell sez.”

  “But Mr. Caldwell says you don’t do as he asks. He says you shirk.”

  The Negro’s gaze was on the floor. “Yas, suh.” He had carried his complaint as far as he dared.

  “Is that all?” asked Statler.

  There was no reply.

  “Well, Cephas, I think you’d better be more diligent hereafter.”

  And the matter was closed. The slave bowed his way out of the room, probably wondering what diligent meant, the overseer following him, and the penalty of withholding the ration of corn was allowed to stand. Trying for understanding, Charles reasoned that Statler had to support his overseers in matters of discipline. Nevertheless, the denial of food to an old man who was supposed to work hard in the fields made no sense to him. The logic of it defied understanding.

  Statler didn’t permit gratuitous beating of his slaves by the overseers. Dewey was to discover, however, that such a firm prohibition didn’t apply on all Virginia plantations. The overseers at John Lee’s Marsh Run, he had heard, had well-earned reputations for what came close to bestiality. And even at Elkwood, when there was a serious breech of discipline, a slave was whipped. Fighting was a reason for whipping. So, too, were stealing and showing open hostility toward an overseer. And when a whipping was ordered, the master of Elkwood was always a witness, lending his authority to the punishment.

  Charles had seen brutal cat-o’-nine-tails floggings aboard the French warships, and what happened on the plantation was mild by comparison. The offender was bound with leather thongs to a heavy post, and the blows were struck with a riding crop in the hand of the black overseer, Moses. Welts were raised, but blood was seldom drawn. Statler himself counted out the lashes—the number determined by the severity of the infraction—and when it was done, it was Statler who released the thongs and who offered a few words of comfort. At Elkwood, though, a white man never struck a black man. That was Statler’s hard-and-fast rule.

  Dewey, when his own association with Statler was secure, asked him one day when a whipping had been administered whether there was an act by a slave that would bring more drastic punishment.

  “Of course,” Statler replied immediately, “murder. Or if one of the nigras should … uh … do harm to my daughters.”

  “What would be the penalty then?”

  “Execution.” There was no emotion in the answer.

  “Have you ever had to carry out such a sentence?”

  “Yes. Once.” Statler thought for a moment. “Eleven, twelve years ago. One of the blacks was killed in a fight over a woman. There was no choice but to punish his killer.”

  “How?”

  “A single pistol shot through the head.” Again, a response without emotion. “I did it myself.”

  “The civil authorities weren’t called in?”

  “No. In the first place, what civil authority there was wouldn’t have been interested.” Statler sighed. “Secondly, the reality is, Charles, that I am prosecutor, judge, jury, and, unhappily, executioner here.”

  He closed his eyes momentarily, as if trying to block out a disagreeable scene. “I would hope that someday we may see fit to give the nigras the benefit of public law, but such is not the situation now.”

  Charles kept silent and Statler continued: “This is an artificial society, you know. And imperfect. Hardly a day goes by that I don’t recognize those imperfections. Should one man own another? Probably not. It’s degrading to the owner as well as the owned. Strange things happen in such a society. Samuel, my butler, is a freeman—”

  “Really?”

  “I hired him in Philadelphia, where he was born and educated. He works here for wages. Yet after he had been here for some time, he began to take on the attitude of the slaves. He has become … how do I explain this?… more deferential than necessary. He’s free, but in this artificial society he doesn’t act free. Perhaps he can’t. Perhaps it was inevitable that this way of life would change him. Sad, isn’t it?

  “Some days I think that if I had it to do over again, I wouldn’t build Elkwood on the foundation of a need for slaves. Maybe I would use the hired labor of immigrants from other countries … European countries, perhaps … I don’t know. But a vast amount of labor is necessary for any enterprise as large as this estate, and that labor is … well, best found among the Africans. Economically, that’s so. Better men than I have wrestled with this problem and have not come up with a solution.”

  He rubbed a hand over his eyes.

  “It may be that we shall have to depend on time to solve it in its own inexorable way.”

  7

  ELKWOOD and Charles Dewey. They became synonymous.

  Time set up a tempo that far outpaced any dreams Charles might have had. Dreams were becoming realities.

  Except for one thing: Martha Statler.

  As days turned to weeks and weeks to months, Martha became his symbol of how much permanence he would have at Elkwood. The younger daughter could be a buffer, Charles was
certain, against whatever trouble Katherine might initiate. With Martha by his side his place at the plantation, already firm because of the affection Marshall Statler had for him, would become secure. And he wanted that!

  In his mind, then, the young girl became even more beautiful and more desirable. But as his desire heated—and he didn’t care that some might interpret desire as ambition—she became more cool.

  Comprehending that was like trying to grasp smoke. It wasn’t that she was uncordial; she seemed perfectly at ease with him in daily polite conversation. They even laughed together. But it became apparent, as time went on, that Martha would not allow herself to be alone with him. Charles knew that because he had tried to be alone with her. Numerous times. And each time she had somehow maneuvered the circumstances so that someone else was present: her father, MacCallum, her sister, a housemaid. But someone.

  At first, he put it down to her natural shyness. And then to simple bad luck. As he studied it, however, he realized that her actions were deliberate. She didn’t want to be alone with him. Upset and frustrated, Dewey turned to Andrew MacCallum with his problem.

  The tutor laughed at his concern. “You’ve simply been the victim of coincidence. Perhaps a series of coincidences.”

  “No—be serious,” Charles snapped, annoyed by the laughter. “Is there some reason you’ve been able to discern that would make Miss Martha … uh … want to shun my companionship?”

  MacCallum was still smiling broadly. “That’s a rather archaic way to phrase the question, but, no, I haven’t seen anything that would cause the young lady to, as you put it, shun your companionship.”

  “God damn it!”

  The outburst sobered MacCallum; he had never heard Charles curse before. “Well, well … I had no idea the situation was that serious. I thought you were concerned for purely social reasons. I see now that it’s deeper than that.”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “You mean to court her?”

  “Yes. But how can I under these circumstances?”

  Andrew shook his head disapprovingly. “I counseled you once, Charles, about staying clear of involvement with the Statler daughters…”

  “I know.” He thought of Katherine in his bedroom. He thought, too, of what he wanted at Elkwood.

  “… but since you now seem so determined, perhaps I can do some discreet investigating for you.”

  Charles’s face brightened. “Would you?”

  “I believe I’ve just volunteered for what may be one of the most foolish acts of my young life. I may find myself in a ‘damned if you do, damned if you don’t’ situation.”

  II

  THE bay mare Elkwood Mistress paced the stall nervously, a look of panic in her eyes, her teats dripping milk. It was dark in the barn, and two Negro grooms held oil lamps to illuminate the scene.

  “It won’t be long now,” Marshall Statler said softly.

  Charles nodded. Statler had briefed him on what to expect, but still he felt concern for the distressed animal. She stopped her pacing and pawed at the small pile of straw, seeming to search for something. Not finding it, she resumed the pacing, her tail elevated. She kicked lightly at her abdomen and turned her head full around to touch her nose to her quivering flanks. Her dark coat was gleaming with sweat.

  Suddenly the mare dropped down into the straw bedding, rolling on her side, her flanks heaving rapidly. A flood of mucouslike straw-colored water gushed out of her. Gallons, Charles thought. At that moment, he could see the two front feet of the foal—tiny, delicate, dark hooves. With a great heave the mare was on her feet again, walking in tight circles. Charles turned to Statler, worry showing on his face.

  “It’s all right, son,” the master of Elkwood assured him quietly. “She’s not quite ready yet.”

  A minute. Two minutes. Three. Pacing all the while. Then the mare went down again in the bedding.

  “Now,” said Statler.

  More of the feet showed, then the lower legs and the knees. As the knees became visible, Charles saw the muzzle of the foal lying against the foreleg just above the knee. Perhaps for the first time, as the head came into the light, he realized that this was a tiny horse being born. It was real—a living thing.

  The mare, in full labor, contracted her powerful muscles, and the foal’s shoulders slipped out. Statler moved quickly, removing a bit of fetal sac membrane from the foal’s nostrils, then stepping back again. Another mighty contraction as the broad hips came through the cervix. It was done.

  Charles marveled at how quickly it had happened. Certainly no more than ten minutes, once started.

  Again Statler went to the foal, gently pulling it away from behind the rear of the mother and placing it near her side. Dropping to his knees, he massaged the small body with a soft cloth, drying the curly coat.

  “Come here,” Statler ordered, gesturing to Charles. “Feel this.” He placed Charles’s hand on the coat.

  It was of the texture of the finest velvet. “Good Lord, it’s so soft.”

  “Hmmm. I’m firmly convinced that God gave us the sense of touch just to have the sheer enjoyment of feeling the coat of a newborn foal. And those who haven’t done so have been deprived. I can’t think of another sensation of touch that rivals it. None.”

  Statler got to his feet again, having completed his small chore. “So you see, son, the best thing, with a normal foaling, is simply to let the mare do her job. She knows what to do, believe me.”

  The mare turned her head to nuzzle her newborn baby, and it let out a little squeal.

  “What is it?” Charles asked.

  “A colt. Another son of Skullduggery, and a beauty, too. Solid bay except for the star on the forehead.”

  “It’s almost like a miracle.”

  “Not almost, son,” Statler responded soberly, “it is a miracle. It’s a proof—every time—that God is in His heaven.”

  They waited in the stall until the foal, all legs and wobbling erratically, struggled to its feet and instinctively sought the mare’s teats, where it nursed for the first time. Greedily, making surprisingly loud sucking noises. Charles laughed.

  Statler sighed contentedly. “Well … it’s time we were in bed. It must be well after midnight. The blacks will stay to make sure all goes well, and that the mare passes the afterbirth cleanly. In the morning we can put them out in the pasture and watch while she teaches her son to do what he was born to do—run!”

  As they walked toward the mansion, Statler asked, “Would you like to name him?”

  “I’d like that very much.” He paused in thought. “Since this is my first foal, so to speak, and the colt is marked as he is, would Premier Etoile—First Star—be appropriate?”

  “Just fine, son, just fine.” He chuckled. “Let’s hope he’s also a premier runner.”

  III

  “JUST when I think I understand that man,” Andrew MacCallum was saying, “he does something that I believe to be out of character.

  “You mean the Rebirth decision?” Dewey was grinning.

  “Of course, the Rebirth decision,” the tutor snapped. “Don’t take Mr. Statler’s decision lightly, Charles. It was a difficult one for him to make. I saw how much he admired that Fearnought when he bought it in Charlottesville. He likes nothing better than having a winning racehorse, and Rebirth has the potential to be a winner. And now—”

  Charles sobered. “You’re telling me that you think Mr. Statler made an error in turning the horse over to me.”

  “Of course I’m not,” Andrew responded defensively. “I’ve observed how good you are with horses. You have a natural talent. And Mr. Statler sees that, too.”

  “Then, why do I have the feeling that you disapprove of my training Rebirth for the races?”

  “Disapprove?” MacCallum pondered that. “No, Charles, it’s just that … well, I have great admiration for you, as I do for our employer. I don’t want to see either of you unhappy. But Marshall Statler, you should understand, is not a man who tol
erates losers with grace. It’s my guess that his heavy wagers on his horses make tolerance most difficult, and—”

  Dewey cut him off. “You’re making me very uneasy, Andrew.”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to do that.” He sighed. “Mr. Statler has placed a heavy burden on you, and I can only wish you well with it.”

  “Thank you.” The words were sullen.

  The tutor tried to change the heavy tone of the conversation. “Are you pleased with the horse’s progress?”

  “Very much so. He has good early speed, and he’s well muscled, with a competitive edge, I think.”

  MacCallum laughed heartily.

  Dewey bridled. “Did I say something humorous?”

  “Charles, Charles…” Andrew chuckled. “Six months ago you came here with a raw rear end from your first experience on horseback. I daresay you didn’t know one end of a nag from the other. Now look at you!”

  The young Frenchman finally smiled. “There has been a change, hasn’t there? I think I’ve found my niche, Andrew.”

  “It seems that way, doesn’t it?”

  “Hmmm.” A hesitation. “Uh, Andrew, have you spoken to Martha?”

  “I have.”

  “Well, what did she say?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Nothing?”

  “I asked her if she was displeased with you for any reason,” Andrew explained, “and she looked at me rather strangely, as if she considered the question stupid, and shook her head negatively. That was it. To me, that meant nothing. Or next to nothing.”

  Charles groaned. “Now what?”

  “Let’s go back to coincidence. That’s what it must be, Charles—just coincidence that has conspired against your being alone with her.”

  “I wish I could accept that explanation.”

  “Try.” MacCallum laughed again. “It might keep you from doing something rash.”

  It had been a day of exhilarating highs and depressing lows for Dewey.

  Statler had informed him that the seven-year-old bay horse of the Fearnought line, which had been named Rebirth, was his to train for the races. Statler would step out of the picture, he told the young man, and concentrate on the training of the five-year-old Arab, Elkwood’s White, and on the preparation of the three-year-old chestnut colt, which hadn’t yet been named because it was unlikely that it would be raced until the age of five or six.