19
“You’ll be sorry.”
“I know,” she agreed.
“Never interfere in a marriage,” Casey said.
“If there’s any hope—”
“Do you believe there is?”
After breakfast with Benjamin, Sarah had returned to her bedroom to talk to Casey as he dressed. She rose at five or six o’clock, depending on the season; he rose at seven-thirty the year round. Casey took her hand and led her to the love seat by the fireplace, where they sat down. The love seat was turned to the room because it was summer; in winter it faced the fire. Folding her fingers, he rubbed the knuckles gently with his lips. It was one of his private endearments that soothed her when she was troubled, but this morning it had no effect.
“You see, Casey, I was doubtful about the alliance, but changed my mind and encouraged it.”
“Only because Benjamin wanted it.”
“I should have been wiser. I have always been unwise!”
He slapped her hand and dropped it into her lap. “If you’re going to criticize yourself, I must leave you. You may abuse anyone else as much as you please.”
She kissed his cheek. “You are forever surprising me. I think I can love you no more, and then I do.”
“Change your mind.”
“No. I must speak to her.”
He rose from the seat. “If you ask me later why I let you do it, I’ll take a stick to you.”
“What are you doing today?”
“Starting the painting of Jane.” It was something he’d thought of doing while working on the portrait of Frankie Saxon. “I’ve made a dozen sketches without her guessing why. For a beautiful woman, she has little vanity. She thinks I’m sketching the boys, or the goat they play with.”
“When he finds out, Daniel will be your friend forever.”
Casey said drily, “Daniel will not, and you know it. He’ll always be jealous because I married you.”
“Nonsense,” she said comfortably. “He adores Jane.”
“He adored you first. I haven’t forgotten the way he looked at you at Lauretta’s wedding.”
“All of fifteen years ago.”
“I see you don’t deny it. I want coffee.”
She took his arm as they left the bedroom and started for the dining room. “Eat a real breakfast. Josephine worries about you because she can’t fatten you up.”
“Coffee and a biscuit will do. I do not hew wood and draw water like you and Benjamin, so I do not require great bowls of grits and platters of meat and eggs.”
They paused at Nell’s door for Casey to say good morning. Sarah had visited her earlier. Nell shrank under the sheet and smirked. “Bianca has promised to curl my hair. She says everyone who comes will want to come see me.”
“And so they will if you let them,” Sarah acknowledged.
Casey said, “You’ll be the prettiest ninety-seven-year-old woman at the party.”
An hour later Sarah and Priscilla were seated alone on the porch of the house at the Glade. At a distance Velma played with Bruce on an old quilt spread in the shade beside the brook. Sarah’s eyes went to them often; Priscilla’s did not.
Sarah had told her she wanted to talk about family matters. “I apologize to begin,” she said. “I know it isn’t my business, but it concerns me. Benjamin mentioned at breakfast that you’ll not be joining the party tomorrow. Will you tell me why?”
“I thought to spend the day at home.”
“At your mother’s; you don’t mean here,” Sarah said to get it clear.
Priscilla nodded with a frown. “Papa has not been well.”
“He hasn’t been well since the war,” Sarah said. “I hope it’s nothing new or more serious?” She waited, but Priscilla offered no further comment. “I wish you would talk to me.”
“It is you who want to talk to me, Mrs. Troy.”
“I do, but I need your help. You appear to be withdrawing from us. We come to see you, and you used to come to see us, but you haven’t for some time. Is there any offense?”
Priscilla hesitated. “I am sorry if you and Jane think so.”
“Then why?” The younger woman did not reply, and after a moment Sarah, looking toward the brook, observed, “She is a happy child. We seem to have had her always. Have you noticed that about babies? As soon as they come, they belong to the family.”
“As I do not.” Priscilla looked startled, as if she’d meant only to think and not say it.
“I wish you did. I think you wanted to be one of us when you married Benjamin. You reminded me of myself. When I was a girl, I came here to visit, and then I fell in love, not just with Leon Kendrick but everyone—most of all with Beulah Land.”
Priscilla considered what she had said. “With me it was more a turning away from my family.”
“Part of the same thing.”
“I have seen that I was unjust and come to understand that my mother is the best woman in the world. She only ever wanted what was best for me.”
“I think that is the way she saw it,” Sarah said. “Did we fail you?”
Priscilla colored. “Mrs. Troy, is this a conversation we must have?”
“Are you troubled about something you don’t altogether understand?” Sarah persisted. “It isn’t always easy to talk of intimate matters with one’s mother. Sometimes an outsider—”
Priscilla shook her head. “It is you and Benjamin who are troubled, not I any longer.”
Sarah said, “I know intimacy is not a thing that can be asked for. Forgive me if I seem to do that, but—have you never enjoyed ‘the night side’ of marriage?”
“Can any woman?” Priscilla answered coldly.
“I for one of many.”
“I have God’s love. Benjamin’s love is the devil’s.”
“I won’t argue God and the devil with you, but you are wrong.”
Priscilla looked about them. “This place you call the Glade has always seemed to have something evil and cursed about it, as if terrible things happened here in days gone by. Have you never felt that?”
“I love it as I love Beulah Land,” Sarah said simply.
“I hate it,” Priscilla said evenly, “as I hate Beulah Land.”
Sarah struggled to control herself. “It must be a hateful life for you then, to live here and not feel one of us.”
“I accept it as my punishment.”
“Is it not also a punishment for your husband?”
“If it is, so be it. I am the Lord’s servant and instrument. I cannot question His wisdom.”
“There was a time you questioned the wisdom of your mother.”
“I was wrong, and I have suffered for it. I shall endure what I must, but not debauchery.”
Sarah’s eyes stung with outrage and pity. She got up to leave. “I’m sorry. I beg your pardon for coming today.”
Priscilla’s voice stopped her at the steps. “You made the Marsh bastard welcome at Beulah Land.”
Sarah turned in surprise. “Benjamin’s son. You knew about him before his birth, long before your marriage. You cannot accuse anyone of deceiving you.”
“Where that child is welcome, I cannot be. They say in the kitchen that he comes tomorrow.”
“Yes.”
Sarah went down the steps and only waved to Bruce and Velma before taking the path down the hill. She found Otis where the fields met her back yards. He was stretching wire over the pit a younger man had dug for the barbecuing. Otis was Beulah Land born and had lived there, slave and free, his whole life. He and his twin sister Lotus had been among the first pupils in the cabin school Sarah started at Beulah Land when she was a young wife but not yet the plantation mistress. Lotus had married Floyd and died soon after giving birth to Abraham. Sarah talked to Otis a little now of his preparations for tomorrow, and he showed her the wood he had cured to make the right kind of ash for barbecuing the meats. She felt better by the time she continued to the house.
Leon was looking forward
to tomorrow, but he did not talk of it except to Granny Marsh, lest he be forbidden at the last to go. He had been ridiculed by his mother as well as Eugene Betchley for the manners he’d adopted at Beulah Land, and he had found that life was easier if he pretended to be unchanged from the old days. That he was different he knew, but he understood that he must not show it. Only to Granny Marsh did he speak of the plantation. She did not always listen, but now and then she would ask a question, usually about food.
As he watched the cow graze and she sat on a log with the cow’s halter rope around her ankle, they speculated on the food there would be tomorrow. When he quizzed her about looping the rope so, she told him Gene had taught her to do it. “Said I was good for nothing, but I can tend this old cow so she don’t stray. If she gets wandery, I know by the tug.”
“Davy doesn’t remember,” Leon said, “but he says he does. Bobby Lee remembers last year, though. He says there’ll be barbecue, pig and goat. They’ve a man, Otis; he watches the meat all night while it cooks slow. Josephine is to make something called Brunswick Stew.”
“I’ve had Brunswick Stew,” the old woman said. “It’s got corn and tomatoes and okry and butter beans in it, and ham and chicken shredded fine with the fingers, so you don’t hardly know what you’re eating. Brunswick Stew can be good.”
“Yes’m,” Leon agreed, although he’d never tasted it. “There’ll be fried chicken on top of the barbecue. Pickles and beets and roasting ears. A washtub of potato salad! Mabella’s making that, she told me.” He paused to marvel. “Watermelons cooled in the creek, all kinds of pies and cakes. Chocolate and lemon and peach and blackberry. Devil’s food cake and angel’s food cake. Funny names.”
They sat on the log together thinking of the good things he might expect to see until Granny Marsh said conspiratorially, “They good to you there?”
“Yes’m.”
“Tell you what you do. Ask Miss Sarah to let you bring me some Brunswick Stew. None of the barbecue, for I can’t hold it; it pure turns my belly to knives. But I bet if you ask her, Miss Sarah will let you have some Brunswick Stew in a quart jar for me. Say it’s your notion; don’t tell her I put you up to it.”
“All right, Gran.”
“Now go get me a toothbrush. I’ve wore this’n out.” She showed him the old one he’d cut for her, blackened with snuff and hard use.
20
Every soul on Beulah Land woke to the scent of the peppery, vinegary sauce Otis had developed over the years and with which he basted the slow-cooking meats through the night. Otis himself would smell of the stuff for a week after his vigil; so pervaded were his senses as well as his clothes, he could neither smell nor taste it, and it was by guess and gumption that he applied it from the end of a stick swathed in rags.
Whereas Annabel Saxon’s dinner party at the end of every April was as welcome as weevils in the cotton, Sarah’s annual celebration of family ties on the Fourth of July elicited good-tempered expectations. The horses trotted more eagerly, it was said, and the wheels of the carriages spun more speedily toward Beulah Land than they ever did toward the banker’s house in Highboro. They came from country and town, and Sarah’s notions of family were generous—Annabel said ridiculous. Everyone in the county who could make a claim to a connection with Beulah Land would put himself forward in the hope of an invitation, and Sarah had a hospitable heart. She even asked the Oglethorpe family, but they always refused her.
From Elk Institute came the teachers black and white, led by Roman and Selma and Pauline. Roscoe Elk would come too, this year bringing bashful Claribell and bold Luck. Annabel shared the sectional feeling about separation of the races socially, but this was a family affair, and the land where the school stood had once been her family’s plantation. Most of the guests would eat standing; it was important that black and white not sit down together. And besides, Roscoe was rich; and wasn’t she herself the chief patron of his school? She chose to look on the presence of Negroes as a compliment to herself, and told everyone so, in just the way Sarah had counted on her doing.
From the Todd farm, which everyone except the Todds considered still a part of Beulah Land, came Daniel and Jane with Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis running ahead of them. Doreen Davis arrived early with her friend Eloise Kilmer, who was by now declared to be an honorary aunt. Before closing the door on their house in Highboro they would have kissed all their cats, admonishing them to be good (especially Toby) and promising them tidbits of goat on their return. From Highboro too came entire families, all tied together and allied to Beulah Land: Annabel and Blair Saxon; Blair II and his wife Prudence with their daughters Belle and Anna; Bonard and Frankie with son Blair III and daughter Fanny; and James Davis with his wife Maggie and their three daughters, Cora and Beatrice and Rebecca. Counting the servants these brought and the occasional house guest who had lingered beyond a planned stay, they would all together number seventy or eighty.
The only vehicle that rolled against the general tide that day was the buggy bearing Priscilla Davis to her mother’s house in town. Benjamin had watched her go, agreeing that he would not expect her home until the next noon. As soon as she left, he threw Bruce into the air, kissed her when he caught her, handed her to Velma, and mounted his horse. Riding to the Marsh farm, he found Leon ready and waiting on the gray, splintery porch that looked the same as when Benjamin had taken Bessie for buggy rides the year before he married. Old Mrs. Marsh was with her grandson, who had dressed in blouse and trousers made by Dorothea during his stay at Beulah Land. Bessie and Eugene were out of sight, she in the kitchen, he in the barn. Benjamin got down from his horse to pay courtesies to Mrs. Marsh, but he did not tarry when he saw Leon’s nervousness. The boy would not look at him; his old shyness had returned, causing a renewal of Benjamin’s. As they said goodbye, the grandmother whispered a reminder to the boy that he understood; and after setting Leon on the horse in front of the saddle, Benjamin mounted again. When they were on the main road out of sight of the house, Benjamin halted a moment in the shade of a tree. “You all right, boy?”
“Yes, sir,” Leon said without turning his head.
Benjamin’s arms tightened around him in a hug that had nothing to do with managing the reins. He felt his son relax against him, and they rode on to Beulah Land. “Bobby Lee’s been practicing. Says he can beat you at marbles now.”
“Maybe so,” Leon said. “Maybe not.” For no reason they could have explained, they laughed together, easier.
First they went to the Glade, which Leon had never seen, and Benjamin walked with him over the place, happy with his exclamations of discovery, remembering how it had appeared to him when he was a boy, although, in truth, his feelings about it had never changed. Freda had gone ahead with Zadok and the rest of her family, and when Benjamin called Velma to bring Bruce, the four went down the hill. Approaching the big house, they observed the orderly hurrying about of all who were part of that day, whether as servant or host or guest, and the roles were often blurred. Sarah was everywhere. Casey fussed quietly with his camera on the shady side of the porch; he would record much of the scene in photographs. Bianca had spread a light counterpane of exquisite crochet on the invalid’s bed and was heating tongs on the chimney of an oil lamp to curl Nell’s hair. Nell watched her with lips pursed critically.
They had begun to arrive before ten o’clock, Zebra managing the traffic and assigning a place to every carriage and wagon and buggy. Two stable boys stood by him to unhitch horses and mules for those who had not brought their own servants. Josephine commanded the kitchen, and by eight o’clock Mabella had cried twice, once when Josephine slapped her and again when she praised her potato salad. However, between them they marshaled the wives and daughters of the field hands into a staff of workers and runners. Even the smallest girls were employed to wave palmetto fronds over platters of food to keep flies from lighting.
The long porch around three sides of the big house was always thronged, though guests continually wandered i
n and out of doors. In the house several rooms had been prepared for the use of the party, two where the females might rest when they felt like withdrawing; two for the children and their mammies, well stocked with beds and pallet rolls and a variety of chamber pots. There was a smoking room for the men if they chose to come in from the sunshine, but one of Sarah’s few house rules was that no one might chew tobacco under her roof.
As soon as she arrived Annabel paid a duty call on Nell, as did everyone during the morning. They had never liked each other, Nell considering Annabel a vain, overbearing woman, and not slow to say so. Today Nell observed that Annabel’s neck was beginning to look like a lizard’s. Annabel countered by remarking that she certainly hadn’t expected to find the old lady alive another Fourth of July. Satisfied that they had drawn blood, each turned her attention to others. Sarah and Annabel too were old adversaries and would have a few shots to sling at each other as the day progressed, but a balance was usually struck between them, and they knew pretty well how far to go and when to stop, each enjoying the illusion that she saw through the other like spring water.
“I do love an old-fashioned country party,” Annabel said benignly. “Everything slapdash and no trouble to the mistress.”
Sarah, who had worked early and late for a week, observed obliquely, “Doesn’t Maggie lock young?” She knew that Annabel found any compliment to her sister-in-law irritating. Annabel considered that Maggie had twice betrayed their girlhood friendship, by marrying her brother James and by conniving to get Prudence, the daughter of her first marriage, married to the elder Saxon son.
Sidling toward them at the sound of her name, Maggie Davis said with gushing insincerity, “Miss Sarah, you are a walking angel, and everybody says so.”
Annabel yanked the sleeve of Maggie’s dress to suggest that it required adjustment. “Voile doesn’t suit the Junoesque figure,” she pronounced.
“James likes the feel of it,” Maggie said with twinkling rancor. “The sense of touch is so important to the blind.”
The Legacy of Beulah Land Page 12