Ciji Ware (14 page)

“Did Clayton ever smoke?”

“No, never once! And that’s what got the doctors so mystified. How could the linin’ of the lungs of a twenty-seven-year-old be riddled with that damned disease, same as his cigar-smokin’ papa?”

“Secondhand smoke?” Daphne ventured.

“Marcus always smoked out on the veranda,
never
in the house or the car.”

“Oh, Maddy… it’s so awful,” Daphne blurted. “Between losing them and, then, your house practically falling down the bluff… you’ve had a really awful time of it, haven’t you? I’m sorry I’ve made you sad.”

“No…
no
, darlin’,” Maddy protested as Daphne nosed the car into the driveway and parked behind the dilapidated mansion. “You can’t imagine what a relief it is to have someone to talk to ’bout Marcus and Clay. Everyone else tiptoes ’round the subject as if my husband and son never existed. I think I’ve gone slightly mad not bein’ able to speak openly with folks about them these last three years.” She pointed at the roof where broken shingles dangled over rusted rain gutters. “I got to the point where I just didn’t care about anything, even if the house were eventually to fall off the bluff and crash into the river—with me in it.”

“You don’t feel like that now, do you?” Daphne asked, alarmed and wondering if Maddy should still be taking antidepressant drugs.

“I cannot lie, darlin’ girl,” Cousin Maddy admitted. “Some days those Whitaker blue devils get ahold of me so bad, I don’t even want to get out of bed.” She patted one of Daphne’s hands that rested on the steering wheel. “But not today. Today was good. Wonderful, in fact.”

“Even my playing that ‘vulgar music,’ as my mother called it?”

“You were absolutely enchantin’ at the reception and she’s a jealous fool,” Cousin Maddy replied tartly.

“Jealous?” Daphne echoed, shocked by Madeline’s blunt pronouncements.

“Always has been,” she said flatly. “She always gave Marcus the once-over whenever she came to Natchez to visit her Whitaker cousins.”

“No!”
Daphne said, giggling.

“Truth, I swear,” Maddy said, putting her hand over her heart. “And just look how she behaved toward her own sister—playin’ the Jezebel to Lafayette like that when she was a girl. Thank God those two finally got together again,” she sighed, referring to Aunt Bethany and King’s biological father. She reached for Daphne’s hand and cast her a level gaze. “Don’t you realize something, darlin’? Antoinette wants to be the star! That’s why she never lets anybody forget that she was Mardi Gras queen, way back in the mists of time. And that’s why she couldn’t stand you bein’ the center of attention for a few moments at King’s weddin’.” Maddy shook her head emphatically, chiding them both. “But let’s not turn into chattering ol’ gossips! The main thing I wanted to say was that I’ve been playing a harp all my life and
never
imagined a person could play jazz on it like that.”

“It was fun,” Daphne replied with a sidelong smile.

“Well, that young man who came in late and sat with you certainly seemed to be enjoying your performance.”

Daphne rolled her eyes and gave a self-deprecating laugh. “Well, he
is
taking me to dinner tomorrow night. That is, if you don’t mind my staying with you a while longer?”

“You’re welcome to stay as long as you like. You know that, dear.”

“How’s two weeks?” she asked impulsively, hoping during that time that Maddy might be able to offer some sound career advice regarding her options in New York. “You’d tell me, wouldn’t you, Maddy, if my staying that long isn’t convenient?”

“Two weeks is barely enough,” Maddy chided. She leaned across the car’s seat and chucked her chauffeur gently under her chin. “Daphne, darlin’—you can have the whole top floor of this mausoleum to yourself for as long as I’m on this earth, if you want it,” she insisted vehemently. “I was starting to feel sad that all of you had to leave so soon. I’ll sleep better, just knowing you’re under the roof a while longer—leaky ol’ thing that it is.” She opened the car door and ushered Daphne across the rear veranda and into the kitchen, flicking on a light and pointing to the door that led to the foyer. “Now, be a darlin’ and go right into the front parlor. If you’ll play me that pretty song again that you sang at the wedding, I’ll make us a nice hot pot of tea. I tuned both harps just this morning, and you know what? That ancient ol’ thing hardly needed it at all.”

***

Two empty teacups, one with a tiny chip on its gilded lip, sat on the book-laden coffee table next to a massive horsehair sofa whose plum velvet upholstery had seen far better days. The silhouettes of both harps cast graceful shadows on the wall. Madeline began putting the crockery on a black toile tray in preparation for returning the tea things to the kitchen.

“I’ll do that, Maddy,” Daphne offered quickly. “Just leave everything and toddle off to bed. You must be exhausted.”

“What about you?” her cousin asked, and yawned agreement.

“I always get jazzed when I’ve played,” she said, laughing. “I need a few more minutes to get sleepy again.”

“Well, I loved my private concert tonight. I had no idea you knew all those numbers and could sing ’em so well. You get such great bluesy sounds out of that big ol’ harp. You’re quite amazing, my dear.”

“This kind of music has become a hobby of mine.” She gave Maddy’s concert harp a fond pat. “I have a couple of friends in New York who love jazz tunes, too, and we go to the clubs all the time. It gives me a break from a life of
Swan
Lake
, if you know what I mean.”

“I can only imagine.” Daphne was tempted to bring up the subject of Rafe’s firing her, when Maddy added, “Well, sugar, your ol’ cousin’s going to go rest her weary bones.” Madeline bent and kissed Daphne on the top of her head. “I had a lovely day, and much of the credit goes to you, darlin’. Nighty-night.”

Daphne watched as her cousin turned off a sequence of hall lights en route to the back parlor that she had converted into a bedroom suite following the deaths of her husband and son. Daphne called after her, “Are you okay? Can you see all right?”

“Made it back here just fine, thank you,” her cousin answered. “G’night, again.”

And then Daphne heard the thick cypress door close, and absolute quiet descended upon the house. She carried the tray into the large, cluttered kitchen and began to rinse out the cups and saucers, placing them on the wooden drain board to dry. Overhead, huge metal cooking pots hung from a wrought iron rack attached to a beam in the ceiling. Nearby stood an outsized stove that contained two ovens, a warming cabinet, six burners, and a large griddle carbonized from long use. Stored on open shelves over the kitchen counters were several patterns of chinaware, each of which would provide service for at least twenty-four guests. Through the open pantry door, Daphne spied a forest of crystal glasses in every conceivable size, holdovers from an era when mint juleps and old-fashioneds were regularly dispensed on the wide veranda overlooking the river.

It had all been so grand, once, she thought sadly. Now, an entire style of life was close to tumbling over a bluff… into oblivion.

A piercing melancholy descended upon Daphne as she returned to the front sitting room. One by one, she began to switch off the lights. In the shadows, the huge horsehair Victorian sofa looked like a large jungle cat, curled up asleep for the night. Maddy’s two harps stood in a pool of light cast by a last, solitary lamp that glowed in the gloom. For some reason, Daphne was drawn to sit on the padded stool next to Maddy’s antique instrument and pull the harp against her shoulder.

Instead of fingering a modern tune, as she had done all evening, she began softly to play Bach’s Prelude and Fugue in C Major written for harpsichord. She strummed the strings lightly, fearful that she would awaken Maddy or make her think that the so-called ghost was making an appearance.

The music began to have a strange effect on Daphne. As she played, she seemed to be descending toward a dark, sorrow-filled place, a place where there was only suffering of a kind no human should ever have to endure. The familiar and haunting pattern of notes became steps spiraling down, down to the disconsolate depths of an emotional gloom she had never experienced, even in her darkest days after her aborted wedding.

As the music unfolded into minor chords, the notes reverberated in the marrow of her bones, intensifying the anguish that now held her in its grip. She plucked the strings as one possessed, seeking from each its deepest, most pensive tone, calling forth the sadness of a tortured soul, pushed to the breaking point. The lamp on the mahogany table nearby began eerily to glow. A glimmering and luminescent play of light and shadow danced upon the walls.

Candlelight
…

In an unfathomable convergence of time and space, the figure of a teenage girl, long, coiling, caramel tresses cascading down the back of her ruffled bed gown, sat at a small harp. All was darkness, except for the gilded instrument that shone like a specter in the flickering candlelight. The mournful music the girl played muffled the sound of her weeping as an avalanche of tears streamed from her amber eyes.

Chapter 6

May 17, 1793

Miz Daphne, you’ve been playin’ that harp long enuf, y’hear? You stop that nonsense right now!” Mammy scolded in a low but insistent voice.

Her admonishments had begun at the archway leading to the front parlor and continued, without interruption, until the tall, slender black woman stood beside the thirteen-year-old daughter of the house, who had been playing the harp in the near dark at high volume for more than an hour.

Mammy put her hands on her hips, and declared in a harsh whisper, “Now, don’t
you
be cryin’! You jus’ makin’ things worse than they already
is
! Hush, now!”

Daphne Drake Whitaker, clad only in her nightdress, her pale cheeks wet with tears, stonily continued to play as if she were alone in the shadowy chamber. She utterly ignored the entreaties of the woman who had virtually raised her from babyhood, and continued to pluck the strings of her instrument like someone possessed. And though her fingers ached, in some perverse way the pain and the loudness of the music almost obliterated the crushing heat and keening cries emanating from her mother’s upstairs boudoir.

For at least two hours, now, Susannah Whitaker’s unrelenting sobs had rent the oppressive air inside Devon Oaks plantation house. Her daughter could think of nothing to dull the sound save for the resonant tones of Bach’s Prelude and Fugue in C Major. Daphne hadn’t mastered it in its entirety, but that didn’t matter. The first section mesmerized her like a carriage wheel that went round and round until everything became a blur. The young girl had resorted to playing her harp whenever her mother erupted into these explosions of rage and anguish. This was an almost daily occurrence since the afternoon a month earlier when Mammy had carried a small, blue-tinged body shrouded in a blanket down the broad staircase and out the back door to the wood shop. There, a minuscule coffin had been hastily constructed while Daphne’s mother howled to the heavens that God in his cruelty had taken her fifth child in as many years.

Daphne’s father, tall and grim-faced, had seen to the brief burial of yet another son in the family graveyard that perched on the rise overlooking Whitaker Creek—and, in the distance, the broad and muddy Mississippi. The grassy plot was enclosed in wrought iron fashioned by the plantation’s blacksmith, Willis, Mammy’s husband. The hallowed ground already had provided eternal sanctuary to Daphne’s little sister Phaedra, felled the previous summer by the fever that spared Phaedra’s twin, Eustice, but left him a sickly child. Beside Phaedra lay poor Charlie Boy, whose chronic respiratory ailments had choked the life from him by age ten. Next to him were two small plots with miniature tombstones marking the brief existence of stillborn infants born within eight months of each other.

And now the little baby boy with no name had been laid to rest. On the day of his birth, Daphne had heard him mewling for a brief while… then silence. Immediately, her mother’s wails had begun. That same dreadful afternoon, Susannah’s eldest surviving child had stood beside her father, Charles Whitaker Sr., while he tossed a mound of dirt on the newest grave, then ordered one of the slaves to saddle his gelding. Drinking deeply from a silver flask he kept inside his frock coat, he didn’t even bid Daphne farewell, but rather rode off to inspect the tobacco fields that barely fetched enough money to pay for the seed and the clothing and feeding of the fifty-three slaves who tended them.

A few hours later, the front door had been flung open, loudly banging against the wall. Daphne’s father burst into the front hallway and halted at the foot of the sweeping staircase. He stared into the parlor at his daughter while his wife’s incessant weeping pierced the air. Charles remained rooted to the garnet-and-sapphire Persian carpet, as if absorbing his wife’s cries into the pores of his skin. Then he had spun on his boot heels and, striding into his study, slammed the door, and vanished from sight until the next morning.

From that day to this, Daphne’s mother had suffered unremitting bouts of anguish. As for the young girl’s father, he’d kept to his inner sanctum, sleeping on the burgundy leather couch all night. The frightened youngster’s only relief from the misery engulfing Devon Oaks had been to play, play,
play
her harp till her fingers and mind were numb. Then, exhausted, she would go to her room and sleep with a pile of pillows on her head to shut out the continuing cries.