MY THEODOSIA (23 page)

The brig plowed steadily southward, rocking easily over the smooth Atlantic combers. A single yellow star sparkled in the eastern sky, hung trembling against the dark. How pretty it is, she thought idly, and then suddenly, as though it had been a bolt of lightning from out that gentle sky, her mind twisted with sharp pain.

Why? She asked it half aloud, and, bewildered, stared
around the empty decks. How could one feel poignant sorrow and not know its source! The recognition lagged behind the fact, but it came gradually. In the fo'castle some sailor was playing on his flute. She had been hearing the music for some time without noticing it. The sailor had just now changed his tune, and it was this new soft strain that hurt her. Yet why? She still did not recognize it. It was something she had heard long ago, but where——

And then the words slipped quietly within the melody, and she heard again the rustling leaves in an enchanted garden, felt intolerable sweetness and yearning.

Water, parted from the sea, may increase the river's tide——

That song—but she had not heard it since, nor thought of the captain in many months. Why, then, should there be pain?

Heart of mine, away from thee, sever'd from its only rest,
Tosses as a troubled sea, bound within my aching breast.
Thou alone canst give release, sprayed my burning eyes with brine.
Swelling e'er with love's increase, let my heart find rest in thine.

She flung off the rug which wrapped her.

'Eleanore!' she called sharply.

The French nursemaid came running, her broad peasant face anxious, 'Oui, Madame?'

'I'm cold. I wish to go to my cabin. And tell that sailor who is playing the flute to stop it. He makes a hideous noise, it vexes me.'

J
OSEPH
stood on the wharf at Georgetown, awaiting the brig, and he was surrounded by Alstons. Theo counted them ruefully while the vessel slid up to the dock: Colonel William, John Ashe and Sally, William Algernon, Lady Nisbett, Charlotte, a collection of milling children, and black servants.

Her heart sank. She had pictured their reunion otherwise, this reunion that was to start for them a new and closer married life.

And Joseph had altered; for a moment she had scarcely recognized him. He had always been swarthy, but now in his new indigo-blue suit his skin had a greenish tinge. He had grown fatter. And why, she thought impatiently, had he had his hair cut so short as to stand up like a fan from its own wiry coarseness?

They greeted each other with constraint, exchanged a brief kiss, before all the relatives crowded around to exclaim over the baby. Theo was once more swamped in Alstons. Fifteen minutes after she had landed, Colonel Alston was talking rice again. 'We have had a most unusual fall freshet, my dear. We thought for a few hours that the fields at Rose Hill would be quite ruined, but fortunately it subsided in time. How, by the way, is the price holding in New York?'

It was the only question they asked her about her voyage. Their lives, she thought, were bounded by the Waccamaw Neck, even though their bodies could and did move around elsewhere, occasionally.

Theo and Joseph went home to the Oaks by barge, poling and rowing up the river even as she had descended it over six months before. Only then, she had not yet had the baby. She looked at him, rosy and sleeping in Eleanore's arms, his deep auburn curls stirred enchantingly under his little cap by the breeze off the water. He shouldn't be caught by the deadly monotony of this country; he should grow up, in spite of them, alert and broad-visioned, worthy of his Burr name. If only—if only——A confused terror stole over her. A baby's life was tenuous, so easily assailed by the creeping evils that lived in these swamps. On the ship she had felt brave, confident that nothing could touch them. A little effort of the will, a few precautions, and this place would be as healthy as anywhere. After all, there were diseases and fevers in the North too.

But as the cumbersome barge veered slowly from the Waccamaw River into the Oaks Plantation creek, she felt the old foreboding and melancholy which she had thought conquered. Here every manifestation of nature was dark, weird, and fantastically shaped. The inky water, stained by the gnarled black cypresses, gave forth no reflections. The moss hung
down above them like gray tresses of witches' hair. When one of these clumps brushed her cheek, she bit her lips so as not to cry out. The barge progressed ever more sluggishly, butting its prow into the soft mud, first on one bank and then the other. The six negroes who propelled it burst into a minor chant—'Yowdah ... Rowdah ... De weary, weary load'. Their mournful wail mingled with the sucking of the water on their oars. The fetid odor of the swamp and drained rice fields stole around them.

Eleanore, who had been watching the negroes with startled eyes as they sang, shuddered suddenly. 'Je n'aimepas ce pays, Madame. C'est triste.'

Joseph turned from contemplation of his rice fields. 'What does she say?' he snapped. 'Tell the woman to talk English'. Theo smiled faintly. 'She says it's sad here. I'm afraid she doesn't like it, and no more does Louis'. She indicated the gloomy chef, who crouched morosely at the far end of the barge, his chin on his hands, his nose wrinkled in a disgusted sniff which never left him during his stay on the Waccamaw.

Joseph shrugged. The management of the servants was Theo's business, and their emotions interested him not at all. He had been, moreover, exceedingly upset by an occurrence of the morning. His anger had overshadowed the reunion with Theo.

Once they gained the house and the baby had been settled into his cradle, Joseph ordered himself a glass of rum punch and requested Theo's presence in the drawing-room.

Whatever is the matter, Joseph?' she asked, sitting down. 'You have seemed preoccupied and out of sorts ever since my arrival. Is there anything wrong?'

He nodded curtly, leaned his elbow on the mantelpiece and drummed with his fingers, scowling fiercely at the top of the gilt clock.

She sighed. 'It isn't the elections, surely. You got your seat all right, did you not?'

Again he nodded.

'Well, then, what is it?' She began to be alarmed. She knew him too well to think that he was angry with her; at those times his behavior was quite different. Could it be some financial disaster, had a rice cargo been lost, or the factor proved dishonest?

Suddenly Joseph jerked a cigar from his pocket, bit off the end, and spat savagely into the fireplace. 'Venus has run away.'

Theo stared at him blankly, then, before she could check herself, laughed. Thank Heavens! she thought. Is that what he is making all this fuss about? She hastily composed her face, as she saw his expression.

'I'm so sorry, Joseph. I did not mean to laugh, but you see I expected some terrible occurrence, and this is not so serious, is it?'

'Not serious!' shouted Joseph, beside himself. 'Have you no comprehension at all? No Alston slave has ever run away. My father will be scandalized. It's a shameful occurrence. Shameful!' he repeated, glaring at her.

'I'm sorry, Joseph,' she said again lamely, wondering if it were her own relief at Venus's absence, for any reason, which made it impossible to understand his violence. Or was it but another of those inexplicable differences in their viewpoints? There had been many of these, and yet they never ceased to astonish her.

Accustomed as she was to her husband's sudden rages, she was appalled at his vindictiveness. A vein throbbed in his forehead and his voice shook. 'The ungrateful bitch! I was too lenient with her last spring. She should have had the lash. Now when she's brought back, she shall have more than the
lash. She shall have a chain around her yellow ankle, and at the other end a fine mate. I shall breed her to the Ape.'

'Oh, Joseph, no! Don't speak like that, you frighten me'. Theo stared at him horrified. The 'Ape' was a slobbering and dangerous idiot who dwelt in a remote cabin under the care of Maum Reba, his unfortunate mother. Even for Venus, Theo could not imagine such a fate.

Joseph slumped suddenly onto a chair, scowling at the floor. 'Couldn't you just let her go?' Theo ventured after a minute. 'What difference does one slave make? You can afford it'. 'Just let her go!' mimicked Joseph furiously; then he added more quietly, 'You don't know what you're talking about. She's worth near a thousand dollars, though that's not all. How long, think you, would our plantation system endure if runaway slaves were let go? How long before they would begin to feel themselves equal to the whites? Do you want an insurrection? Would you like the Oaks to be run by niggers?' She shook her head. 'But do you think you can find her?' 'She cannot have gone far. I've sent an advertisement to the
Gazette
and the
Courier.
She'll be hard to hide; she's an uncommonly handsome wench.'

Theo looked up quickly at something in his voice, but she saw that he had been unconscious of any unusual intonation, unconscious, too, of her recoil as he repeated slowly: 'When she's brought back, she shall have a taste of the cat on her deceitful yellow back, then she shall live with the idiot until such a time as I choose to sell her to the Spaniards in Florida. She shall see the rewards of disobedience and ingratitude.'

But the weeks went by and Venus was not found, though Joseph continued to advertise, and his overseer made many fruitless trips through the surrounding country.

The winter dragged. Theo's early energy vanished. In
March she had a stiff bout with la Grippe, emerging white and weak, to lie once more on the sofa and long for her release in June. For that she would again go North to her father had come to be an accepted fact. She was much alone that winter while Joseph spent a great deal of time in Columbia pursuing his legislative duties; and the various Alstons spent two months in Charleston. But for this Theo was glad. Try as hard as she could—and she did try hard—she could not seem to establish any enduring basis of common interest or deep sympathy with them. She knew that they disapproved of her. Even her initial kinship with Sally, John Ashe's bride, had lapsed. For Sally was interested in nothing but her husband, and Theo found it difficult to sustain enthusiasm over John Ashe's peculiar preference for eggs roasted rather than boiled, or his distaste for French pomade and Virginia tobacco. Besides, Sally, along with the rest of the family, had decided that Theo was eccentric and gave herself airs. Witness the inordinate amount of time which she spent in reading and writing. Witness, especially, her slack methods of housekeeping and her French servants.

In truth, these latter presented problems which Theo had not anticipated. Eleanore was invaluable, but she would in no way co-operate with the blacks, and Louis, after a few weeks, did no work at all. He discovered that the negroes stood in awe of him and were prepared to obey him implicitly. So he gradually came to spend all his time in an armchair in the kitchen, languidly directing the operations of his underlings, while sampling Joseph's best wine and chewing on Joseph's best cigars. He lightened his boredom by a few affairs with the more personable of the wenches and a shortlived pursuit of Eleanore. But that shrewd peasant would have none of him, so that there was a state of war between the two. Eleanore loathed the Waccamaw; only her affection
for
Theo and her immense devotion to the baby kept her moderately contented. She, too, longed for June and the trip North.

Their release came sooner than they had expected. In the third week in May the
Enterprise
unexpectedly put in at Georgetown, and even Joseph agreed that this opportunity for sailing North on the familiar vessel should be seized. Especially since the fever season had begun early this year. Already a damp, suffocating heat had settled on the plantation. Green mold appeared upon the walls and upon their clothing. Meat spoiled in one day, and milk soured—the precious milk upon which the baby depended. Theo hung over his cradle and felt his little forehead a dozen times a day. It remained cool. The fever had so far spared them all except Louis. The unhappy chef no longer went to the kitchen house at all, but shivered and sweated in his attic room. He was, of course, to sail with Theo, Eleanore, and the baby.

'And kindly do not engage any more gibbering French monkeys,' said Joseph to Theo on the day before sailing. 'You must confess that the experiment has been a total failure. I wish you to get rid of Eleanore too. My son should have a mauma, as do all the Alston children.'

Oh, no, she thought. No dirty African wench is going to tend my baby, teaching him Gullah or frightening him with conjuh. This place is dismal enough without the added terror of spooks and plat-eye. But she had long ago learned the folly of combating Joseph openly, and she feared blighting their parting with one of his rages.

'You are entirely right,' she said gently. 'Louis has indeed been a failure. I was foolish to bring him. When, think you, will you arrive in the North? I shall be monstrous glad to see you.'

Joseph, this summer, was to join her as soon as the legislature adjourned.

'I'm not sure,' he answered, forgetting as she had hoped the subject of servants. 'When I leave Columbia, I shall go to Charleston. I'm not satisfied with the factor's accounting. He got exceedingly poor prices on the last rice shipment. We shall be beggared at this rate.'

She listened patiently to this familiar theme, fixing on him a look of bright interest, while she mentally tallied the trunks, bundles, and boxes which waited ready packed in the hall for conveyance down the river to the
Enterprise.

The sturdy brig made her usual quick voyage to New York. So quick that, when Theo disembarked, she found that Aaron had not been able to meet her. He was in Philadelphia and must stop in Washington before returning home. She was greatly disappointed at this delay until she thought of going to Washington and awaiting him there.

Accordingly she, Eleanore, and the baby took a packet to Alexandria and arrived two days later. At the wharf she hired a coachee, and they ferried across the Potomac, then bounced over dusty roads to Aaron's lodgings on Independence Avenue. He was expected from Philadelphia, 'maybe tomorrow or the day after,' the landlady informed them, and in the meantime she had a small apartment to place at Theo's disposal.