MY THEODOSIA (33 page)

'And he must come to us, at once. You must write, too, so that he will be assured of welcome.'

'I suppose so,' said Joseph unenthusiastically. The visit of a debonair Vice-President had been one thing, but the harboring of a disgraced fugitive with a murder charge, however unwarranted, hanging over him was quite another: particularly in view of Joseph's own growing importance in the legislature. Moreover, he was tired and hungry and sick of the subject, which had been disturbing him for many days.

'How can you speak so coldly?' she demanded with resentment. 'Were it one of your own family who was in trouble, you would stop at nothing to help him.'

'My own family wouldn't get into a mess like this,' he snapped.

Her eyes flashed. 'That's because they're a spineless, lily-livered lot without a thought in their heads except horse-racing and rice-growing.'

His face blackened, his underlip shot out. 'Thank you, madame, for the compliments. Spineless and lily-livered they may be, as you so sweetly put it, but at least not one of them is eternally trying to squeeze money from me as does your worthy father. He's a first-class leech.'

She gasped. Blind with anger they stared at each other.

Joseph was sorry to have said so much. After all, the financial arrangements between himself and Aaron were no woman's concern. They had always had a tacit agreement to keep her in ignorance. He tried to make allowances for her natural upset at his news; it was in order to minimize the shock that he had come himself to tell her. But she was infuriating in her eternal concentration on her father and indifference to his own reactions. How pretty she looked, though, with her eyes sparkling instead of brooding and remote as he so often saw them.

Hector walked in then, staggering under a loaded tray. The sight of approaching food mollified Joseph. He seated himself at the table and ladled a huge helping of shrimp and rice.

'Let's not quarrel, Theo. Sit down and join me. I judge from the looks of the victuals that Dido is indeed a good cook,' he said, offering an olive branch.

Theo was too angry and hurt to accept it. That he should dare to criticize her father! That he should dare to begrudge
any financial help which Aaron might need, and needed, she knew, only because he was so foolishly generous at times! Joseph was rich: he could well afford to be generous too: but he wasn't. He was compounded, she thought passionately, of small niggling traits, like the rest of his family. Caution, convention, prudence, with no trace of imagination or vision or genuine sympathy.

'I have already eaten,' she said angrily, 'and, if you will forgive me, I think I shall retire. I am tired and the news has been a shock.'

He gulped a great tumbler of wine, wiped his mouth on his handkerchief. 'I'll come with you, Theo. I, too, am tired. We will go to bed immediately.'

She turned to face him, and the inward shudder of repulsion seemed to diminish her body, so that she looked smaller, suddenly eclipsed.

'Eleanore will make the bed for you in there'—she indicated one of the small bedchambers. 'The boy is sometimes restless in his sleep. You will rest better, and I—I have a headache.'

'By God!' He banged his hand on the table so that the dishes rattled. 'I have not seen you for weeks, and this is the way you receive me! It is always the same story, is it not? Always a headache, or you are tired, or the boy may be disturbed. I will not stand for it, I tell you!'

Even as he shouted at her, he knew that his anger and bluster were futile. In a way he admired her frigidity toward him. It was a desirable feminine trait—all pure women should feel that way—and he never approached her without a feeling of guilt. She had nearly died in childbirth. But it was damnably hard.

'I'm sorry, Joseph,' she whispered, with one of the quick voltes-face of manner which she inherited from her father.
Now her voice was gentle, and she wistfully smiled at him. 'I know I'm not a very satisfactory wife. You should have married Anna Pinckney or one of the Middleton girls. They are bred to the plantations and would have managed far better than I. They could have given you a dozen—children'. She added, with a touch of malice, 'Their fathers, I'm sure, would never have proved troublesome to you.'

It was true, he thought, with a sensation of shock; perhaps he should have married one of the Middleton girls. But he hadn't wanted to, and, in spite of everything, he did not wish he had.

He put his arms around her almost timidly. 'I don't want anybody but you, Theodosia, you and little Burr'—for he could never bring himself to use Aaron's nickname of Gampy. 'I—I love you,' he said, stumbling over the word which he could use on paper, but which, when spoken, made him feel like a fool.

Her heart contracted. She touched his coarse crisp hair. He kissed her eagerly.

'Theodosia, I will write your father. He is always more than welcome to any home of mine.'

'Thank you, dear,' she said. Sometimes he was so like the sheep dog which Vanderlyn had long ago said he resembled: a dog that has snapped and snarled and is now trying once more to ingratiate himself.

'Good night,' she whispered.

Her rose perfume crept to him and stayed with him after she had gone into her room, shutting the door quietly behind her.

I
T WAS
October before Aaron finally arrived. An early sharp frost had made possible a return to the Oaks before his coming. Frost cut the fever, though no one was entirely agreed as to the reason. Either it 'froze the poisonous miasma which exuded from the swamplands,' or it 'produced a change of electrical fluid in the air and neutralized the excess acidity which was conducive to disease.'

At any rate, this October frost had rendered the plantations safe once more. The river road up the Neck swarmed with homecoming planters in coaches, while the house servants who had accompanied them on the summer exile were packed, along with the movable household goods, into mule-drawn spring wagons.

Colonel William and his family returned to Clifton. John Ashe and Sally, the family augmented now by the baby, Wil
liam, reopened Hagley. William Algernon took possession of Rose Hill, the plantation next but one to Clifton. His father had just given it to him in anticipation of his marriage to a charming widow who was also a cousin. Polly Young, née Allston, from the double '1' branch, was a buxom matron of twenty-eight, five years older than her prospective husband and encumbered, moreover, with a little girl, Eliza. But the staid William Algernon saw no disadvantage in that, particularly as Mrs. Young was possessed of a considerable fortune. He was all eagerness to establish himself and waited impatiently for Polly's second year of widowhood to end, that they might marry without offending convention.

Theodosia, drawn perforce into the whirl of family reunions, watched the delighted fuss being made over Mrs. Young's imminent entrance into the family and illogically was hurt. It was 'Polly dear' this and 'Darling Polly, what do you think of that?' No gathering was complete unless Polly were there. And they petted and made much of little Eliza, who was not even direct kin, paying her far more attention than they did Gampy.

Theo was fair enough, however, to realize that she had never been able to muster much appreciation for the Alstons. Still, human nature being what it is, it is one thing to withdraw from a group because you find it unattractive and quite another to have it withdraw from you. Particularly now, when Aaron needed all the friends and backing that could be had. Since Joseph's visit to the island, she had been startled out of her indifference to newspaper reading and had sent Hector on constant trips to Georgetown after the latest news. Though most of it was local, there was occasional mention of Aaron, and she had been appalled at the venom displayed. Decidedly he needed friends.

For some time the maddening difficulties in communication
had made his exact arrival uncertain; their letters crossed, or hers arrived after he had left. But she at last heard definitely that he was in Savannah and would board the first packet for Georgetown. He would be at the Oaks in five days, allowing for the ship's inevitable stop-over in Charleston.

She had acquiesced in Joseph's wish that her father's projected visit should not be mentioned to the family. The Oaks, an hour's ride from the other Alston plantations, would provide quiet asylum until Joseph could see how the land lay. His family never mentioned Aaron to Theo, but they did not disguise from Joseph their horror at the murder charge. If the papers said that the duel had been wickedly unfair, that Colonel Burr had most shamefully conspired to murder his enemy in cold blood, why, it was doubtless true. There was, at any rate, something fishy about the matter, and they preferred to ignore for the present the unfortunate relationship with which Joseph had saddled them.

Perhaps, thought Joseph hopefully, Colonel Burr may not arrive at all; he was apparently having much difficulty in finding transportation, or the money for it. So he tried to forget the matter.

He did not know about Theo's recent letter, and had no inkling of her decision that willy-nilly the family should assist at Aaron's welcome. The Vice-President in hiding at his daughter's home—never! Aaron was no skulking criminal, but a much-wronged man; he should be received with honor. But unfortunately one must first proceed with guile.

'I think we should give a party for William Algernon and Mrs. Young,' she announced one evening at dinner.

Joseph was surprised and pleased. Her share in the family hospitality had never been as whole-hearted as he wished.

'Splendid! I must go to Columbia next week, but when I return——'

'That is too long to wait,' she interrupted. 'I was thinking of Saturday. No,' she went on quickly, as she saw protest forming. He never liked sudden plans, particularly when they did not originate with him. 'I shall take care of everything. I have already written all the invitations. Pompey shall deliver them this evening. Besides, if we wait too long, Mrs. Young may be gone. She is contemplating a trip to Charleston to buy her wedding finery, you know.'

He nodded unwillingly. 'Well, but it seems hurried. We must do the thing right. It would never do to be niggardly. We entertain so seldom here.'

'Of course. We'll give a magnificent party. Waccamaw Neck will never forget it, I promise you.'

Especially after they discover who is to be the real guest of honor, she thought, secretly mirthful, and set about her plans.

It was to be a truly magnificent party. Everything from the food to the entertainment was to be as perfect as she could provide from the limited resources of the Waccamaw. This was to be none of their stodgy dinners of fried meats and rice washed down with rum punch, and followed by a desultory card game, or the plunkety-plunking of the children on the harpsichord. She would startle them out of their smugness, show them that, when she chose, she could entertain with lavishness and brilliance.

The invitations were all accepted, as she had known they would be. Social gatherings were scarce on their remote neck of land, and the family approved of her wish to entertain for the affianced couple, though they attributed this idea to Joseph.

Theo impressed Eleanore into service, and between them they bullied and inspired the servants to activity. Ever distrustful of Phoebe's cooking, Theo imported a free negro
caterer from Georgetown. Dido, of course, was not permitted by Phoebe in her kitchen, but even Dido could not rise to the culinary heights to which Theo was soaring. She was delighted to find that the caterer was capable of a dish on which she had set her heart. It was called 'Preserve of Fowl,' though this title in no way did justice to its intricate mysteries. It was fashioned like the nest of Chinese boxes which Aaron had once given her for a toy. A dove must be inserted into a partridge, the partridge into a guinea hen, this into a wild duck, then into a capon, the capon into a goose, and last all the amalgamated birds were enclosed in a mammoth turkey. Each fowl was first boned and seasoned with herbs and rich gravy. There were to be four of these creations, and Theo delegated a small army of helpers to the perspiring caterer—for the preparation took days.

She supervised the garnishing of the rooms herself. The floors were polished until they gleamed like brown mirrors. She impounded all the supplies of myrtleberry candles for the candelabra, and on Saturday afternoon filled every cranny of the rooms with massed armfuls of whatever blossoms she could find untouched by the frost.

She surveyed her handiwork critically: the rooms still looked a trifle bare. An idea struck her. She ran out to the clustering live-oaks and dragged from them great bunches of the hanging moss. She draped this over the branched sconces to try the effect; then, calling two of the servants, she had them bring in basketfuls and fasten the greenish-gray streamers to the ceilings, until the rooms were filled with a cloudy, swaying mistiness. The Alstons so admired their everlasting moss and considered it, for no reason at all, yet another proof of their superiority to the North. Well, they should have it, she thought, plenty of it!

Joseph came in from the rice fields just as she was finishing.
He had been watching the women burn the stubble of cut stalks—necessary fall procedure to prepare the land for its fresh crop. He stopped dead in the doorway.

'What in the world have you been doing? What's all this truck in here for?' he demanded, with marked displeasure.

She pushed back her disheveled hair with one hand and turned on him a flushed and laughing face. 'I wanted some decorations, and we have no bunting nor enough paper to make streamers, so I thought of this. I think it's pretty. And our ceilings aren't properly finished yet: this hides them.'

'I think it's confounded silly,' he snapped. 'Lot of vegetable matter in the house, sure to bring bugs'. But the effect was attractive, and there was no doubt that the ceilings were in a bad state. He had been rather ashamed of them, for the recent plastering had already scaled into brown patches. He abandoned the subject for one more urgent. 'I wanted to give Ishmael some orders and was told he had gone. It seems you sent him to Georgetown with six of our men in the big barge. Pray, why did you do that?'