Charleston (25 page)

Pretty as she was, and wealthy as she was, Ouida had few beaux. Young men who escorted her to a ball or concert seldom returned for more. She was too imperious, too quick to blame others for whatever unpleasantness befell her. Her detractors, and there were many, whispered that because she had witnessed her grandmother's horrible murder, she wasn't quite right in the head.

None of this bothered Dr. Xeno Hayward. He'd been attracted to Ouida's pink prettiness the first time he met her. Nor was he put off by her unfortunate personality traits. He thought of them as similar to disease symptoms. Over time they might respond to proper treatment: attention, concern, persuasion. His thoughtful, steady disposition included a large measure of patience.

He nagged Ouida gently about wearing her glasses, for her own safety. She refused to do it in public, but after a year of his urgings she relented at home. She sometimes wore them when she and Xeno were alone. Simms was grateful for the modest victory. “I'm not paying half of what I did to repair broken furniture before you two met.”

Ouida challenged the young doctor in many respects. He particularly wanted to moderate her hatred of coloreds. She constantly hectored her father to send this or
that offender to the workhouse for what more lenient masters would consider a trivial offense: placing a sugar bowl incorrectly; responding to a command too slowly.

Gibbes had described Lydia's death to Xeno: the blood all over his sister's face and clothes, her hysteria. The young doctor could understand why Ouida's spirit was scarred. He wanted to heal it if he could.

He was honest enough to admit to himself that he wasn't motivated solely by idealism. Before an untimely death at forty-seven Xeno's father had operated a flour mill in Greenville. Two older sisters had died in infancy, leaving Xeno an only child, in circumstances that were comfortable but far from opulent. His mother was confined to a home that cared for old people who no longer recognized surroundings or loved ones. He paid the fees.

Thus, early in the courtship, he concluded that marrying Ouida would free him of financial worry and allow him to pursue his career, perhaps even study abroad one day. From this mix of desire and practicality came a determination to stick with Ouida when others, far more eligible, fled. It was ironic and a bit odd; usually it was the girl who gave the mitten to a suitor.

Xeno was nervous when he proposed to Ouida. He had no sense of what her reaction might be. To his amazement she squealed like a happy child and kissed him frantically while tears flowed from her pale blue eyes. Tears of gratitude? he wondered in an uncharitable moment. He spoke to Simms and quickly gained his consent.

Only one person spoiled the prospect of alliance with the Simms Bell family, Ouida's brother, Gibbes, whom Xeno wholeheartedly disliked. Gibbes was vain, selfish, crude, heedless of the feelings of others. He held all the traditional opinions of the planter class: no Negro could be trusted. Northern abolitionists were disciples of Satan bent on destroying the South. Xeno had little interest in politics, apart from considering the Carolina Unionists courageous men and the Nullifiers dangerous ideologues, but he treated both, and all in between, as human beings who routinely fell ill and needed his services.

He particularly disliked Gibbes because he used women carnally. Paid for it; bragged on it. Gibbes genuinely admired only one woman, his second cousin, Alexandra. He made the surprising admission in February of 1834, soon after Xeno proposed.

Gibbes invited Xeno to the Planter's Hotel for cognac and cigars. Xeno's praise of Ouida led Gibbes to the subject of Alex. “I just adore that bitch. She hates me. But the faster she runs, the harder I want to chase her. Funny kettle of fish, eh, Mr. Doctor?”

“Kettle of lovelorn fish, I'd say,” Xeno replied, smiling.

Gibbes lolled in his armchair, puffing a Jamaican cigar. “Reckon you're right. Don't you dare tell anyone. I hear of it, I'll call you out, brother-in-law or no brother-in-law.”

The scoundrel meant it. Xeno countered with another smile. “Depend on my silence. I certainly wouldn't want to ruin your reputation as a Don Juan.”

Gibbes dropped his half-smoked cigar in the brandy snifter. “Isn't just a fairy tale, you know. At a party the other night one of those bump readers pawed my head and told everybody I have a roving disposition. I do, but then I come right back to my cousin. Goddamn, it makes me mad.”

 

The Bells planned the wedding for summer, before hurricane season. Xeno had little part in it. Ouida and Bethel took charge, Ouida showing more enthusiasm than Xeno had ever seen her demonstrate.

Xeno lived in a cottage on a small lot on Beaufain Street, near the Ashley. A side door led to a bedroom converted to his surgery. Ouida hated the house, and the unfashionable neighborhood. Mrs. Ouida Glass Bell Hayward couldn't possibly live there permanently. They would remodel, expand the cottage, but stay no longer than two years. She was emphatic.

He observed that remodeling cost money. He summarized his modest fees: sixty cents for an office consultation, a dollar for a house call, subject to reduction if they fed his horse. Ouida assured him Simms would help.

Equally unsuitable was the old Jersey wagon he drove. The first owner had ripped out the rear seat and Xeno had never replaced it. He stabled horse and wagon in an open shed behind the cottage. Weather had faded and blistered the wagon's bilious yellow side panels. “I'll ride in that thing no more than a year,” Ouida said. “Jersey wagons haul passengers to depots and piers. People of our station don't own them.” Xeno felt sure another appeal to Simms was pending.

Ouida's spendthrift nature was most apparent in her insistence that they dispose of all of his old furniture, excepting his medical table and cabinets. They would replace it with new bespoke pieces. They went to Hamnet Strong, whom Ouida considered “one of the few half-civilized niggers in Charleston.”

As spring warmed the air, she and Xeno visited the carpenter shop once a week. Each time she had new ideas. Instead of one brass-bound, lead-lined cellarette, three.

“Three?” Xeno exclaimed. “Why on earth…?”

“To cool different kinds of wine, silly. We don't want to mix them.”

Xeno stifled an objection. Mr. Strong averted his eyes while making a note with his pencil. “Removable tub or a drain cock? The drain cock costs more.”

“That's what we'll have,” Ouida said. Her eyes sparkled.

So it went. Did Miss Simms wish bellflower inlays? Of course she did—imported African ivory. She wanted no ordinary mahogany for pieces visitors would see; she insisted on the rosy-hued, hard-grained Honduran variety, because it was found in all the best houses. A local mill did nothing but cut and finish it for veneers.

“Shall we discuss the new bedstead?” Hamnet asked.

“What time is it, Xeno?”

“Half past three.”

“We'll defer that until next time. Governor Hayne's in town. Mama's giving a tea for his wife. I must be home for it.”

“Certainly.” Hamnet laid his notes aside and ushered the visitors across the parlor of his small and tidy house.
He stepped aside to let them go first down the beautiful spiral stair he'd built.

Ouida heard the carpenter's wife and daughter somewhere in the rear of the house, then the daughter's brat, bawling. Childbirth terrified Ouida. “It is a cross all women bear,” Bethel had taught her. “Exquisite agony, and no better the second time than the first.”

They walked out through the ground-floor shop fragrant with the smell of newly sawed lumber. In the courtyard Xeno untied the horse and helped her into the Jersey wagon. He drove out past Hamnet's pony cart and waved good-bye as Hamnet's broad-shouldered son sauntered outside.

Xeno turned left onto John Street, intending to take a pleasant drive along the wharves before returning Ouida to Sword Gate. A block behind them someone shouted, “Alex.”

Xeno reined in the horse. He and Ouida turned to look. “Who is that?” she said. “I can't see clearly.”

“I believe it's your cousin.”

Alex was running from the direction of Meeting Street, her hair flying. At the courtyard entrance Hamnet's son waved to her.

“Is that the carpenter's boy?”

“Yes, the one who's been away.”

“Alex can't be buying furniture on her own accord. My glasses.” She found them in her reticule, nearly dropped them from excitement. She put them on just as Alex reached the house.

She and Henry Strong fairly leapt into each other's arms. He lifted her in the air and whirled her. She whispered something in his ear. He put her down, rushed her into the courtyard. It all happened quickly. Xeno felt sure he and Ouida hadn't been identified, shaded as they were by the wagon canopy.

“Xeno, why is my cousin throwing herself on that nigger?”

“I'm sure I don't know. They must be friends.”

“That was far more than a friendly greeting. Why, do you suppose?”

“I have no idea, and I don't expect I'll find out.”

I will,
Ouida thought.
Oh, yes, indeed
. She slipped her arm through his. “Drive on, we mustn't be late for tea. Don't tell a soul what we saw. It might cause trouble for cousin Alex.”

Xeno kept his vow of silence, but Ouida had no intention of doing so. She spoke to Gibbes at Malvern. He exploded. “Jesus Christ, what'n hell's going on?”

“I wish you would find out, brother dear.”

He scratched himself. A little redhead at Madam Boo's had given him crab lice. Three times a day he dabbed on juice of aloes in grain alcohol; hurt like fire. He'd revisited the slut to repay her—broken both her ankles with a hickory bat before Madam Boo threw him out, screaming profanely. She didn't dare order her house thug to hurt him. The Bells had friends who could close her establishment.

He noticed Ouida watching his hand, stopped scratching. He tilted back in his chair, rested bare heels on the rail of the piazza overlooking the river. “I'll scope him out. That boy can't fool with white women.”

“If Henry Strong spies you, he'll recognize you.”

“Hell, that's right. He's been to Sword Gate delivering furniture.”

“Good of you to recall,” Ouida said with an acerbic smile. She loved her intemperate brother but didn't consider him a model of intelligence.

“Tell you what. I'll set a couple of chums to the task. If we find out he's messing with Alex, that nigger will lose his privates.”

“Gibbes.” Ouida feigned shock. It was exactly the kind of response she wanted.

A black man poled by in a piragua piled high with chicken crates. He waved to them. Ouida and Gibbes stared. “Alex is just the sort to cross the line and experiment with colored boys,” she mused. “If word got out, the scandal would ruin her in Charleston, forever.”

What a pleasant thought.

 

Alex knew she'd erred in running impetuously to the Strong house. Soon after she arrived, Hamnet Strong said, “Your cousin was just here, ordering furniture with Dr. Hayward.”

Alex caught her breath. “Was he driving an old wagon?”

“He was.”

“I saw them down the street.”

But did they see me throw myself on Henry?
She prayed they hadn't. There was no point in agonizing over it, but it taught a lesson. When Hamnet went inside, she sat with Henry on the sunlit steps of the shop. “I can't come here again.”

“Where can we meet?”

“Not Bell's Bridge either. I'll think of something.”

“I've plenty to tell you. I went crazy down in Beaufort. They didn't mistreat me. Mr. Orlando Porcher pulled me out of the fields after two weeks, put me in the house in a fancy vest and stockings so I could use his library. I had a garret to myself. Hotter than sin, but I could hide my books. Read by candlelight. Anything to keep from thinking of you.”

He saw his mother observing them from an upstairs window, slid sideways to put more space between them. “I'll find a meeting place,” Alex promised.

“Just be mighty careful.”

They shared a handclasp at the courtyard entrance. A rag-and-bottle man passed, pulling his handcart and calling out his offers to buy. He never gave them a glance.

“Henry, I love you.”

“I don't dare say it aloud. Hardly dare say it to myself. You go now.” He spun on his heel and ran inside.

 

Alex's late father had called James L. Petigru the strongest Unionist in Charleston, perhaps in the whole state. The respected attorney was forty-five, a tall man with leonine hair turning gray. Petigru's unpopular opinions never seemed to harm his standing in the community. He was the solicitor for St. Michael's, a lifetime appointment. He served on boards of charitable institutions. The finest families welcomed him to their homes. On Sunday afternoons, while Simms Bell was riding horseback in the country and Crittenden Lark snoring in a hammock, Petigru and one of his slaves planted flowers and pulled weeds in St. Michael's churchyard.

He had been born James Petigrew; he reverted to the Huguenot spelling after a quarrel with his father. As a young man he taught at a Beaufort academy for a while, then read law. He practiced in a sand-colored two-story building in St. Michael's Alley, where he kept half a dozen clerks busy. One was Ham Bell.

Petigru had been raised to have sympathy for oppressed people. He frequently defended indigents and, occasionally, slaves. That encouraged Ham to climb the stair to Petigru's second-floor office, close the door, and pour out as much of Alex's story as he dared.

Coatless, Petigru sat on a library ladder with a book open on his knee. When Ham finished, Petigru said, “Your sister and her friend are in a dangerous position.”

“Alex knows that, sir. I'm the only person in whom she's confided.”

“Inevitably, if they choose to remain close, they must leave Charleston. Until then I'll allow them to meet across the street occasionally. When people conduct clandestine business in the open, they are hardly ever suspected. However, they must show no signs of intimacy. Henry Strong must act respectfully, as a hired man would.” Petigru smiled. “I'll have to tell my wife, Amelia, that I'm playing cupid. I won't say for whom.”

“Bless you, sir,” Ham said.

All Charleston knew that Petigru cherished his garden directly opposite the office. Two marble pillars flanked the entrance to the lot. A single huge magnolia towered over azaleas and camellias. Petigru often walked in the garden, hands behind his back, talking to himself as he planned an argument.

Alex and Henry met in the garden ten days after their reunion. She arranged it with a note sent to John Street. Henry reported to St. Michael's Alley that morning, and Petigru set him to weeding and pruning. Alex arrived at noon, with a cut glass decanter of ratafia for the office. She didn't care for the potent liqueur concocted of wine and brandy, fruit and almonds, but Ham liked it. He was providing drinks for the other clerks after hours, to celebrate his birthday.

She sat on a garden bench, shaded by the magnolia. “Tell me more about what you did in Beaufort.”

The tattered brim of Henry's straw hat hid his face. “Mostly I suffered. Wasn't for those books, I'd be crazy by now.” He tore weeds from the sandy soil. A redheaded lizard ran from under a bush, inspected Henry's busy hands, and ran off again.

“I read all of Shakespeare's plays. Every one. Missed the Charleston Theater something fierce. I decided for good and all that I'm going to be an actor. Play Othello someday.”

“That means you'll have to go North.”

“I will.”

“I'll go with you.”

He raised his head. Sweat glistened on his cheeks. “No.”

“Why do you say that? You know how I feel.”

“I feel the same way.”

“Then marry me. I'm nineteen, Henry. Old enough to make up my mind.”

“No,” he said again. “I'd never let you marry a colored man, even one light as I am.”

“What you're like on the outside doesn't matter. I read a poem by Samuel Coleridge, the English poet. I memorized it because it's what I feel.” Henry knelt with his hands resting on his thighs. He waited.

Henry pulled off his hat; wiped his shiny forehead as a horseman rode by in the street.

“Don't,” Henry whispered. “For God's sake, Alex, what does some English poet know about things in America? Marrying me would blight your life. I'd never put that on you.”

“You think conditions won't change? Get better for your people?”

“I do not. In Beaufort I saw how Mr. Porcher, kind as he was, couldn't live without his niggers. He wouldn't last an hour in a flooded rice field with the sun frying his skull. Only way he can keep his fine life is to keep slaves. And fight anybody who says he can't.”

“Then where's the end of it? How will the cycle ever be broken?”

“Down there in Beaufort I read something I wasn't 'sposed to see. A slave who'd been taught reading and writing in secret gave it to me.
Walker's Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World,
it's called. Never saw or heard of it in Charleston. Probably they'd hang a man for having a copy. David Walker's a Negro. Ran away from North Carolina, settled in Boston. Sells clothing there. A seaman bought a coat from him. Walker took his pamphlet apart and sewed pages into the coat lining, so all the pages would get to South Carolina. Walker says there's just one way for colored people to free themselves. By rising up and killing their masters.”

“Like Denmark Vesey, and Nat Turner? Do you believe that?”

Henry jammed his trowel in the ground. “I get mad enough to believe it.”

“This is a devil of a conversation for a reunion.”

“Can't help it. I won't let you throw your life away and live in some shanty in New York, despised and spat on because of your husband. I love you too much. Now get out of here, I have to weed this whole place before it's dark. I'll catch hell at home. I didn't tell Pa where I'd be all day.”

“Does he know about us?”

“Some. He doesn't like it too much.”

“When shall I come here again?”

“Better not. Not for a while. Too hard for me. Too hard for both of us.” He tipped his straw hat in a respectful way. “Good afternoon, ma'am.”

 

“I seen him,” beaky Archie Lescock III said. “Right there in Petigru's weed patch. I followed him in the morning, then kept watch. I rode by and saw him talking to Miss Alex Bell bold as you please. One thing for sure. He's the nigger I tangled with in the street.”

“You think the woman that night was my cousin?”

“Never saw her real clear, but I suspicion it was.”

Gibbes tilted forward in his chair; the legs banged on the piazza. “That dirty bitch. Free love, niggers—what else?” The thought of Alex lying with anyone but him enraged him. He shook a finger at his friend. “That boy's done for, Archie.”

Lescock beamed.

“Need to figure out how to do it,” Gibbes went on. “Got to be careful, so he gets what's coming but we keep our hands clean. Might take a week. Might take a year.”

“Worth waiting for, Gibbes.”

“Yes indeed.”