Caleb (10 page)

24

Jardine watched with approval as Missy served his evening meal. Caleb was right. The girl seemed like a fast learner and was very willing. She did not have Caleb’s style. That could not be expected. But she served quietly and efficiently and made no serious mistakes that he could see. She would do.

For the moment he was not sorry that he’d bought her, though he’d been arguing with himself over the wisdom of doing so. She was certainly a lot better to look at than Caleb. He hadn’t been wrong about her trim figure, though there was nothing immodest about the way she carried herself.

When she brought him his coffee and brandy and stood waiting quietly to see if Jardine wanted anything else, he said, “Missy?”

“Yes, Massa?”

“Do you like it here?”

“It’s just fine, Massa.”

“And your room is okay? You found the furnishings and things you need?”

“Yes, Massa. It’s very comfortable.”

“Well, that’s good,” said Jardine. “After you get this cleaned up, you’re finished for tonight. I might come up later to see what you’ve done with your room, to see if there is anything else that you need.”

“Yes, Massa.”

The following Friday afternoon, the Bentley party arrived in two carriages. Aside from Miss SallyAnne and the Bentleys, there was Pastor Buchanan, who, it seemed to Jardine, spent more time visiting the neighbors than he did running his church, and Mrs. Mayflower, Bentley’s widowed and elderly aunt, who also lived at Bellevue.

Jardine was on the broad front steps of the house when they rolled up. Caleb, Missy, Drusilla, and the other house girls were lined up behind him, all looking very spruce in their best outfits. Drusilla held little Boyd. Jardine figured that, of all the house girls, she was the one least likely to drop him. Just before the guests were scheduled to arrive, Jardine had had her go and get the baby from his wet nurse. Though he’d meant to see the child during the week before, Jardine had not got around to it. Now that he looked down at the red-faced infant, Jardine wondered why he did not feel a great surge of paternal pride rather than just pain and regret. He supposed that would come later on.

The women made a beeline for the baby, relieving Jardine of any need for an elaborate welcome. He did not yet feel comfortable in the role of host without Nancy. Jardine noticed that Martha Bentley, despite her eagerness to see little Boyd, favored Caleb and Missy with a penetrating, if brief, scrutiny. Standing slightly aside from the house girls, the two certainly seemed to make up a small unit of their own, though there was no overt show of feelings between them. Caleb, Jardine thought, had done a good job of telling the girl how to behave.

The weekend went smoothly enough. Jardine played the gracious host, but avoided paying SallyAnne Carter any special attentions that would encourage her to start daydreaming about being mistress of Three Rivers. She wasn’t a stupid girl, and once she’d put Jardine in the “interesting but not interested” category, she relaxed and enjoyed the country life she so seldom experienced down in Savannah.

At dinner on Saturday night, she leaned across the table and asked, “Mr. Jardine, do you really think there will be a war? I’ve been reading the Atlanta papers, and it looks very serious to me.”

“War?” asked Jardine. He hoped that his long pause made it appear that he was gathering his thoughts rather than wondering what the hell she was talking about. “I don’t think so, Miss Carter. The Yankees will hardly want to fight over the issues in question.” He rushed on before she could ask him specifically what he thought those issues were. “Of course, we are rather out of the way down here and seldom see the big city newspapers.”

“I brought some with me,” SallyAnne said, “to read on the train. I could leave them with you if you would be interested.”

“That would be most kind of you,” Jardine said smoothly, thinking that Miss Carter would make some man a good wife. Some other man.

After dinner, when Mrs. Mayflower and SallyAnne were taking turns trying to pound out a tune on Three Rivers’ Steinway piano, Martha Bentley motioned for Jardine to step out onto the veranda with her.

“You don’t like her, do you, Boyd?” Mrs. Bentley asked bluntly once they were out of earshot of the big parlor. She was famous for her uncommon directness.

“No, not that way, Martha,” Jardine said. No point trying to let her down easy. She’d see right through him.

“That’s a shame. I promised her mother I would see what I could do, and you looked like a sitting duck to me.”

“Thank you,” Jardine said.

“Well,” she said candidly and only a little defensively, “I thought that, without Nancy, by now you would be wallowing in bachelor squalor and might snap up any presentable girl of good family and reputation. She’s a virgin, you know.”

“I’m sure she is.” Jardine said. “And not bad looking, either.”

“Don’t praise my horse, Boyd Jardine,” she said sharply, “unless you are in a buyin’ mood. I saw you eyeing SallyAnne’s bosom with that ‘just looking’ expression on your face. I’ve got other prospects, you know, and I’ll place her before this visit’s out.”

“I’m sure you will, Martha,” said Jardine. “You’re a formidable woman.”

“Yes, I am,” she agreed. “And I know that you don’t need advice from me on how to run Three Rivers or your own life—”

“But you’re going to give me some,” Jardine cut in.

“Yes, I am,” she said. “Now, you may think you’re fooling me with this new girl of yours. What’s her name?”

“Missy.”

“Yes. She doesn’t look much like a Missy to me, and unless I am losing my touch, you haven’t got her matched up with that fancy buck darkie of yours in there, either.”

“They’re very fond of each other,” Jardine said, “considering the short time she has been with us.”

“Yes,” Mrs. Bentley said, “and I am the Queen of Australia. Boyd, I am a pretty good judge of chemistry, and there’s about as much going on between those two darkies as there is between you and SallyAnne.”

“I admire Miss Carter,” he said languidly.

“Well, that majordomo of yours
admires
your Missy, too. They make a good serving team, but you did not bring that doxy—”

“Strong language, Martha.”

“—here to warm his lonely bed.”

“You embarrass me,” Jardine said, without feeling the least bit embarrassed.

“So, I ask myself,” she plowed on, “if Missy is not warming—”

“Caleb.”

“—Caleb’s bed, whose bed is she warming? That’s what I ask myself.” She looked him directly in the eye.

“I appreciate your concern, Martha—”

“Save that for your Sunday sermon, Boyd,” she said with exasperation. “I’ve known you since you were still peeing on your shoes—”

“Martha!”

“—and I know you are relatively discreet. I just want to make sure that you stay that way. You know how things get around in this neighborhood. I would not want folks to get the wrong—or the right—idea about what is going on at Three Rivers. I want to keep on visiting here. I like your food.”

“Thank you.”

“You remember what happened to Jed Kimball after Rebekah died?”

“I heard some rumors,” Jardine said.

“Rumors, hell. It was a screaming scandal. Before Becky was a month in her grave, Jed had himself a yellow girl in his bed and not only in his bed, but also at his table. She took to styling herself Miz Kimball, until some right-thinking people took her to Hollerton Junction and put her on a southbound train.”

“And Jed shot himself.”

“He did that,” Martha Bentley said, snapping her mouth shut on the words like the trap on a gallows. “He was lucky that someone didn’t save him the trouble. Another word to the wise, Boyd: don’t shit where you eat.”

“Martha, you shock me.”

“That’s not all I’ll do to you if I hear
rumors
.”

“Do you have any other tidbits of advice before we rejoin the party?” Jardine asked, offering her his arm.

“Yes. Keep an eye on that Caleb. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but I think that fellow might just be a bit too good to be believed.”

“I’ll bear that in mind,” said Jardine as they went back into the house.

25

On Sunday evening, after the fanfare of the Bentley party’s departure had died down, Caleb and the house girls were tidying up. Jardine retired to his study with the Atlanta newspapers that SallyAnne had given him. Opening the big broadsheet, Jardine stared at the mass of information competing for his attention. Never much of a reader, he found the type swimming in front of his eyes.

“Caleb!” The slave appeared in the doorway to the study. “Have you got things under control out there?”

“The girls are just going to the quarter, Master. I’m putting out the lamps.”

“Well, hurry it up and then get yourself in here. These damned newssheets are giving me a headache.”

In a few minutes, Caleb was seated in his usual chair next to the sideboard that held the oil lamp. Half in shadow, Jardine lay limply in his father’s old leather armchair. The newspaper was the first Caleb had seen in over a year. At his last owner’s a slave being seen next to a newspaper would have been reason for a flogging. Caleb’s eyes devoured the columns of type like molasses candy.

“Well?” said Jardine impatiently. “Are you reading that to me or just to yourself?”

“There’s so much of it, Master. What would you like me to read to you about?”

“Oh, anything that catches your eye. You must have had some practice with that sort of thing back in Boston. Is there anything in there about cotton prices?”

For the next half hour, Caleb read aloud at random from the big pages of the newspaper. Court cases, stock reports, cotton prices dropping.

“Christ, wouldn’t you know it,” Jardine moaned. “Pretty soon we won’t be able to give the stuff away. Go on, go on. I can take it.”

Caleb went on, letting the neat formations of type pour into his brain, not always quite sure whether he was still reading aloud. But as long as Jardine wasn’t complaining, he just kept reading. After a while, Caleb looked up and saw that Jardine was asleep in the big chair, his mouth hanging open. At that, Caleb stopped reading for Jardine and continued reading for himself.

On an inside page, he found an article about negotiations for admission to the Union of two new states, Kansas and Nebraska. The issue was whether they would be admitted as slave states or free states. Though he hadn’t seen a map in some time, Caleb had a vague idea where those territories were. In his mind’s eye, he tried to trace a route from Three Rivers to either of those places where a man might find and keep freedom. He made a mental note to try to find a fairly recent map of the United States in old Mr. Jardine’s library.

It was well after midnight when Caleb found himself falling asleep over the gray expanse of the newspapers. Jardine was still snoring quietly in the chair. Folding the precious newspapers, he stacked them on the sideboard, laid a quilt over his sleeping master, blew out the lamp, and went up to bed with visions of headlines and little black type still before his eyes.