“You remembered that.”
“Of course I did. It’s no more? Why is that?”
He sighed. “The climate of Charleston makes it difficult,” he said.
“For free men to meet and debate?”
“For free men of color to gather, no matter how innocent their purpose.”
“I hadn’t thought that free people of color would feel so,” she said, even as she remembered the conversation at the Sunday dinner table about the flight to Canada.
He said, “Oh, we do.” His face suddenly somber, he said, “Every day, I rue my father’s death and the loss of the opportunity to leave Charleston to live and study elsewhere.”
She wished that she could reach for his hand. “Your father, what was he like?”
His expression flickered.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to grieve you.”
“It’s sad to remember,” he said. “But it’s sadder still that no one asks, and I have no one to tell.”
She nodded.
“He loved us. He took care of us, but it was more than that. He cherished us. He never married, and we were his family. He felt so, and we knew it.”
“My father cherished me, too,” she said.
“And yet…” Danny’s expression hardened. “He loved us well, but it was all in private. He could never admit to us in public.”
“Ah, I know,” she said. “Why do you think my father kept us on St. Helena Island, far from the eyes and tongues of Charleston? We were his secret.”
Danny sighed. “I know it couldn’t be otherwise. But it hurt me. I let it hurt me. His funeral was held in the synagogue, and none of us were welcome there.”
She nodded. “And now you miss him. You miss the hope he offered you.”
He looked away. Did tears web his lashes? “My father believed in me,” he said. “He thought I was anyone’s equal in intelligence and that I should be able to exercise it freely. That was his dream for me.”
Very softly, she said, “My father didn’t know what to dream for me when he educated me. I dreamed for myself.”
“Oberlin College,” he said.
“You remembered.”
“Of course.” He raised his eyes to hers. His lashes were wet. “Why not? You’re anyone’s equal in intelligence, too.”
His words, meant to be kind, gave her pain. “And now I might as well want to fly or walk on the face of the moon.”
“Oh no,” he said, his expression determined. “But there must be a way.” He reached for her hand, and she let it rest in his. “Edinburgh. Oberlin. The two of us, here and now.”
He didn’t smile, but the clasp of his hand was a promise.
At the Sunday service, Caro continued to find herself squeezed between Anna and Charlotte. Danny gave her the smallest nod of greeting, but it warmed her as though he’d taken her hand.
At dinner, she listened to her cousins gossip. Anna said, “Caro, did you hear? Miss DeReef finally made up her mind. She’s engaged!”
The good fortune of the richest heiress of color in Charleston was remote enough to cause Caro no pain. She nodded.
Charlotte added, “And such a fuss! Her family is giving a party to celebrate her engagement.”
“When?” Caro asked.
“Two weeks hence,” Anna said.
“Mama,” Charlotte called to the end of the table. “Can we bring Caro along when we go?”
Charlotte’s mother frowned. “To Miss DeReef’s party?”
“Why not? There’s time for her to make a new dress.”
Thomas said to his daughter, “It’s not a matter of a dress, and you know it.”
His wife cast a disapproving look at Charlotte. “It’s cruel to talk of these things to Caro,” she said.
Charlotte looked perplexed. “Of an amusement?”
Thomas said, “Of our social obligations, which she does not share.”
Caro drew in her breath. Suddenly she saw herself as her mother had described her. The poor relation. The charity case. The recipient of a cast-off dress. Good enough to tuck away at the family dinner table but not to take to the celebrations of Charleston’s free persons of color, where marriages were hatched.
Anna laid her hand on Caro’s arm. “There are so many amusements in the summer,” she said. “Are you going to the German Festival?”
Caro said dully, “I don’t know. What is it?”
Charlotte cried out, “It’s such fun. All kinds of entertainments! Shooting matches, acrobatics, and music. And after the sun sets, a spectacular display of fireworks!”
Anna tried to repair the damage her mother had wrought. “Papa, why don’t we take Caro to the German Festival this year? It’s no obligation. Everyone goes there.”
Even slaves, Caro thought.
Her mother said sharply, “Anna, don’t raise your voice to your father, and take your elbows off the table!”
“Will you hire a carriage again this year? To take us there in style?”
“Anna!” her mother called back, her voice close to a shout. “You’re a young lady, not a market woman! Lower your voice, or your father will let you walk there!”
Maria shot Caro a look of reproach. Her voice was low, but it carried to the foot of the table. “Thomas, we’ll discuss it later,” she said.
Thomas said, “Now is not the time to decide, Anna.”
It would never be. Caro was too sick of charity to finish her dinner. She longed to leave the table and wished never to return.
The Bennett snub ate at her all week. It bothered her as she sewed, every seam and buttonhole reminding of her servitude to her uncle Thomas. It was all the bitterer because she could not refuse it. How would she and her mother manage without the charity of the Bennetts?
She folded her work into a bundle and set out for the shop. Once there, she laid the bundle on the counter. Despite Danny’s pleased smile, she said sharply, “Will you join your cousins to go to the German Festival?”
“Oh, Caro,” he said, his expression rueful.
“Will you go in the carriage?” she prodded.
He leaned forward. “I pleaded for you after you left.”
“Why did you bother?”
“Caro, I am so sorry.”
She stepped back from the counter. “Now you know what they think I’m good for. Pity. Charity. I’m not good enough to mingle with the DeReefs, and I’m not good enough for you.”
“They think so. I don’t.” He reached for her, but she stepped farther away. He pleaded with her. “You know what I think of you, and how I feel about you.”
“Do I?”
He was too upset for his usual flattery. “Caro, you are so lovely. So clever. We are so much alike.”
“Oh, we are not,” she said, letting the tears rise to her eyes. “You’re free and I am not.” She turned to go, not wanting him to see her cry.
Back at Tradd Street, she ignored Sophy’s greeting and went upstairs to the room where she and Emily had exchanged confidences. She lay on the rope bed and sobbed. She had been a fool to think that she and Danny could overcome the difference between slave and free. She thought of the light in his eyes and the hope in his voice as he talked about the future, and she sobbed afresh, overwhelmed with despair.
The tap on the door disturbed her. Sophy sat down on the bed and put a gentle hand on Caro’s shoulder. “Did that boy break your heart?” she said.
Caro sat up. She wiped her face with her sleeve, a gesture her mother would have chastised her for. She said, “Sophy, it’s all wrong, and I can’t make it right.”
“You quarrel?”
“His family. My mother.”
Sophy reached to stroke Caro’s hair. “I don’t know about them Bennetts, but I understand your mama. She bother you and hurt you, but she afraid for you. That why she so harsh on you about young Danny.”
“Sophy, who will I marry? Who will have me?”
“I
s this about getting married? Or do something else start it?”
“They snubbed me,” Caro said.
“Snub you! You cry your heart out because they rude to you?”
“I’m not good enough to go to the German Festival with them. The German Festival, where anyone can go, black or white, slave or free!”
Sophy said, “You break your heart over the German Festival?”
“Don’t laugh at me.”
“So them Bennetts go, and take young Danny along, and hurt your feelings because they don’t take you?”
Caro sat up. “Yes,” she said.
Now Sophy laughed in earnest. “Sunday and I go every year. We take you, if you want. Might cheer you.”
“It won’t fix a thing.”
“It always so crowded that no one notice if a boy and a girl find a spot to meet and talk,” Sophy said. She squeezed Caro’s hand. “You wear that pretty dress of yours when we go.”
Sunday didn’t hire a carriage, but he told them that his neighbor, a drayman, owed him a favor. Caro recognized the horse before she recognized the driver. “Mose!” she cried, throwing her arm over the animal’s dark-brown neck.
Sunday’s neighbor was the drayman who had brought her to the Jarvie house from the docks. His name was Lewis. Sunday asked, “Where your wife today? Miss Celia?”
“She work,” Lewis said. “And so do I. Make a lot of money ferrying people to the festival.”
Sunday joined Lewis up front, but Sophy and Caro settled into the bed of the wagon, which was made more comfortable today with a lining of blankets.
As they got underway, Caro gazed around with interest. Driving, even in a cart, was a lost pleasure that she had once taken for granted. Vehicles jammed the street, smart little broughams as well as large, ornate private coaches owned by well-to-do families. Carriages shared the road with carts and wagons, doing a brisk business taking passengers to the festival. Lewis maneuvered swiftly in the thick of the traffic, urging the horse, “Get along, Mose! Get a move on!” And suddenly they stopped with such a jolt that Caro fell against Sophy, who cried, “What the matter?”
Caro righted herself. Just ahead, a hired hansom carriage had stopped inches from someone’s coach. It was someone grand, to judge from the shining paint and the glossy matching bay horses. The carriage door flew open, and the passenger leaped out. He wore the towering top hat favored by Charleston’s fops. He yelled at the hired coachman, “What in God’s name have you done?”
The coachman hopped from his seat. “What’s the matter?”
“You nearly ran into me!” the man cried. He took in the hired carriage and saw who stared out the windows at him. He said to the coachman, “This is what happens when niggers dressed in finery hire carriages to cavort around town.” He addressed the coachman. “You should be ashamed of yourself. A white man, transporting these people!”
The coachman raised his voice. “I drive this coach for hire,” he said, aggrieved. “I drive whoever pays me to hire it. I don’t inquire who they are, and I don’t turn them away.”
The man’s coachman, dressed in livery, approached his irate master. He said softly, “Massa, it’s all right. Ain’t no damage done here. Set down quiet in your own carriage, and I steady the horses. We go on our way.”
“Niggers dressed in finery!” the man repeated, and jumped into his own carriage, slamming the door shut.
As traffic began to move again, their wagon pulled alongside the hired coach. The occupants were visible through the open windows, and Caro recognized them. Her unease dissolved, replaced by anticipation. The people who had been insulted were her Bennett cousins.
Caro thought she had become used to crowds in the streets of Charleston, but the push and the swirl of the festival throng created a dust that made her eyes water. Black and white, families and couples, all mingled together, the brown of skin careful not to jostle the white. Caro delighted in the sight of so many people so fashionably dressed, black as well as white, the men in frock coats and tall beaver hats, the women in great swaying hoops and ruffled bonnets. The air smelled of sweat, perfume, horses, and frying sausages.
Sunday wanted to see the riflemen, whose marksmanship was the centerpiece of the festival. They found a spot in the crowd and watched. The sharpshooters’ tan suits were reminiscent of uniforms, and while most of them sported bowler hats against the sun, a few had donned metal helmets that looked as though they were remnants from the Napoleonic Wars.
The sound of gunshots made Sophy uneasy. She said to Caro, “They put me too much in mind of the militia and the Guard.”
Sunday said, “Sophy, honey, we go to watch the acrobats instead, if that please you.” His hand stole around Sophy’s, as though they were courting.
The acrobats, a group of trim young men in tight-fitting cotton outfits, were captivating. Even Caro’s attention was held by the way they leaped and tumbled and contorted themselves and built an impossibly high human pyramid. Sophy smiled as she watched.
After the acrobats, they were spectators at a bowling match, a sedate sport invigorated by the enthusiasm of the bowlers. They also watched a footrace, where competition enlivened the activity, and cheered the runners, even though they were German strangers.
Sunday remarked, “Them Germans do like their exercise.”
Caro shifted from one foot to another. She forced herself not to crane her neck as she scanned the crowd. Truly, all of Charleston was here today. How would she find Danny in this throng?
The brass band began to play, the drum punctuating the cheerful sound of the horns. Caro asked, “Will there be dancing later?” She thought of dancing with Danny and had to stifle a smile.
“They have a dance hall,” Sophy said, “but we ain’t welcome there.”
Caro now tried to stifle her disappointment.
“It’s all right,” Sunday said. “Plenty of other amusements here.”
Sophy exclaimed over the carousel, where children, black as well as white, rode the painted horses. Sunday stopped before the organ grinder, captivated by the capers of his monkey. They made their way to halt again in the crowd that gathered around a tall pole.
“What’s that?” Caro asked.
“That the greased pole,” Sunday said. “Whoever climb it win a prize.” They lingered as a white man made the attempt—probably a German, but who knew—but slipped before he was halfway to the top. A black man, dressed in patched clothes, was the next to try. The crowd cheered as he inched his way upward. But he failed, too, despite their encouragement.
Caro thought that it was a countrified, vulgar kind of amusement. She said nothing, since Sunday’s pleasure was so obvious, and Sophy was happy along with him. Caro glanced around the crowd again. She knew why she felt so listless. She had come here for Danny, and without him, all the pleasures of the festival were flat and dull.
Sunday turned to them and asked, “Ladies, is you hungry?”
“I am,” Sophy said.
“Miss Sass?” It was his affectionate, cajoling tone. He wanted her to enjoy herself.
She remembered her manners. “Oh yes,” she said, trying to sound eager.
They followed the smell of sausages to find the carts where food was sold. The festival vendors didn’t sing. They were gruff Germans, intent on the food they prepared.
Sunday said, “German food for a German Festival.”
When the food came, Caro looked surprised. Sophy said, “It’s sausage like them Germans eat it.”
“On a bread roll? And what is the garnish?”
Sunday chewed and swallowed. “Pickled cabbage!” he said.
Caro shook her head and tasted it. Remember your manners, she thought. “It’s not bad,” she said.
Sunday laughed. “Can tell by your face that you like oysters better. We get some later.”
After they ate, they strolled, finding their acquaintances among the crowd where black and white, slave and free, mingled tog
ether. As in the market, Sophy stopped frequently to greet someone she knew. Caro let her chatter. She wanted very badly to crane her neck to look for Danny. But she pretended that Sophy’s friends and acquaintances interested her and spoke politely as they asked after her.
She would never find Danny. She struggled not to sigh. She would remember her manners and pretend that everything at the festival interested and amused her.
And suddenly, there he was, arm in arm with Anna and Charlotte, who were chattering to each other as though he wasn’t there. His expression was determined. Seeing him, she wanted to laugh. He was pretending, just as she was.
Charlotte stopped so abruptly that several people bumped into her. She ignored them and said, “Caro! What a surprise to see you here!”
Caro said sweetly, “So it’s true! Everyone comes to the German Festival!”
Anna nodded in her direction but seemed to have difficulty speaking.
Danny unlaced himself from his cousins. Caro introduced Sophy and Sunday. Charlotte smiled, but Anna only inclined her head.
Danny said, “Anna, Charlotte, go on ahead. I’ll catch up to you soon. At the rifle range.”
“Danny.” Anna’s voice was a warning. Her father’s warning.
Sophy said, “We look after him for you. Keep an eye on him for you.”
“A few minutes,” Danny said firmly.
Charlotte took Anna’s arm, and with an ill grace, Anna allowed herself to be led away.
Danny said, “It’s such a press here. Shall we go into the park? It’s cooler there.” He led them from the rifle range into the park, which had been prettily arranged with paths that snaked around the trees. He found them a bench in the shade.
Sophy said, “Sunday, let’s sit, and the young folks can walk a bit, if they will.”
“Just for a moment,” Danny said gravely to Sophy.
Sophy nodded.
His face alight, he held out his arm to Caro, and her spirits rose as she took it.
He whispered, “If we leave the path, there’s a spot in the trees.”
“Who else have you taken there?” she teased.
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