The Bride of Texas (28 page)

In an old article in the
Cincinnati Daily Gazette
I had seen Vallandigham’s name connected with John Brown. The article was published shortly after the incident at Harpers Ferry, before Brown was hanged. They’d captured him, and he lay wounded in jail awaiting the gallows. By that time Vallandigham was a congressman, and although he was hurrying to an election meeting in Dayton he got off the train at Harpers Ferry and went straight to the jailhouse.

“He wanted to see Brown with his own eyes,” said Humphrey. “He was interested in him. Vallandigham is one of the most determined opponents of emancipation.”

“If he’d merely wanted to set eyes on him, we might call it curiosity — though in dubious taste, considering that Brown was staring death in the eye. But he tried to extract information from him to use in the campaign.”

“Brown was no politician,” said Ambrose.

“But some of his people came from Ohio. Brown himself had once spent some time in Ashtabula County, which was the election district where Joshua Giddings was running, a man Vallandigham couldn’t abide.”

“Did he think Giddings had a hand in Brown’s uprising?” asked Ambrose. He was trying to get his bearings in the hornets’ nest that was the pro-peace Midwest.

I responded, “He hoped to be able to cast a shadow of suspicion on Giddings. He knew that the idea of a Republican congressman who cared about his career conspiring with a religious fanatic was utter fantasy, but Vallandigham was a master of transforming suspicion into the illusion of fact. He hoped to get Brown to admit to having met Giddings in Ashtabula County. Brown was no fool, though, and wouldn’t admit to
anything. And that’s my argument, Humphrey,” I turned to my husband. “Vallandigham doesn’t care a fig for the Union or emancipation, and certainly not for truth. The only thing he cares about is the career and future of Clement Vallandigham. If that is idealism, then I agree, Comely Clem is the most idealistic politician in this land.”

“It’s a bit too apparent that you don’t care for him, Lorraine,” said my objective husband. He was right — call it female intuition, but I simply didn’t like him. “Aren’t you being a little unfair to him?”

Jasmine entered the dining room. She smiled pleasantly at Ambrose and placed a carafe with brandy on the table, while Ambrose ran his fingers through the dense whiskers framing his face. It was the face of a bandit from a schoolboy’s adventure novel.

The story of Jasmine is in my drawer too. She had been assigned by Mr. Carmichael to help Gospel. Not long before, Hasdrubal had arrived on the plantation and removed the spell from Gospel. He hexed her again, briefly, when Mr. Carmichael, who already had a footman, tried to put him to work in the fields. He removed the hex as soon as he received permission to dress in silk stockings and assist the former footman — now elevated to head footman — by standing in the dining room and looking decorative.

He was decorative indeed, and it turned out that, although he was redundant as a footman, he was not totally without his uses. Mr. Carmichael had no intention of remarrying. He liked to say that one yoke per lifetime was enough, by which he meant the marriage that had produced his only daughter, who
was now married to a Yankee factory owner in Cleveland. But he enjoyed chatting with the opposite sex, and he discovered that Hasdrubal tended to draw colour-blind ladies to the plantation for visits, despite Mr. Carmichael’s legendary unwillingness to marry.

Black or white, it was Jasmine who enjoyed looking at Hasdrubal most of all. Just when their romance was in flower, Mr. Carmichael’s daughter, Beate Morris, arrived with her husband and two little boys to celebrate her twenty-eighth birthday.

The discussion around the dinner table on the eve of the birthday celebration would have been civilized had it remained between the two men, who were gentlemen in the British mould, unwilling to raise their voices though they might be ready to burst with rage. Mr. Carmichael defended the “peculiar institution” and Mr. Morris attacked it, not out of some inner conviction but for purely practical reasons. But then Beate got involved. Physically and emotionally the living image of her temperamental mother — who during a happily brief marriage had nearly driven Mr. Carmichael insane — Beate had fallen under the sway of passionate abolitionists in Cleveland, and was not prepared to hold her tongue. So the dinner discussion became heated, and erupted in a minor family upheaval when Beate Morris said something that her principled father did not deserve to hear:

“I’m leaving tomorrow and I’ll not come back until all the disgusting slave-owners like you, Papa, are hanged!”

“Beate!” said her husband, shocked.

“And you’re not coming back either!” she snapped at him over her shoulder. She stormed out, slamming the door. Mr. Carmichael, looking as pale as death, sat stunned while Mr. Morris tried to control his temper. Then the slave-owner, damned by his own daughter, pointed to the liquor cabinet. Hasdrubal and the head footman understood without a word,
and until long past midnight continued topping up the two gentlemen’s glasses with bourbon, while they went on with their discussion. Mr. Carmichael defended himself from unspoken accusations of cruelty by saying that he was kind to his slaves and wondered what would become of them if he were to give them their freedom and turn them out into a world that was cruel to Negroes. Mr. Morris assured him that there was nothing personal in his position, but that he was simply opposed, on principle, to slavery. Mr. Carmichael declared that he too was opposed on principle to slavery, and suddenly the two men weren’t sure any longer what they were arguing about, or even if they were arguing at all. Mr. Morris, used to drinking scotch, was the first to succumb to the bourbon, and Mr. Carmichael followed suit a few minutes later. The two footmen had to carry them to their bedrooms.

Next morning, Jasmine traded jobs with the chambermaid, Lucretia, and brought Beate her breakfast in bed. The manufacturer’s wife was propped up on her pillows, still annoyed by last night’s arguments.

“Ma’am, …” Jasmine said shyly.

“What is it, child?”

“Ma’am, you be celebrating your twenty-fifth birthday today, is that right?” said Jasmine, intentionally making her younger.

“Twenty-eighth,” said the young matron, beaming, “and I don’t know that I’ll be celebrating.…”

“You mean after last night?”

“Well, well, now,” Beate said, sitting up straight, “and what do you know about last night?”

“Well, that young footman, Hasdrubal, he’s my sweetheart.”

“Congratulations, child,” the woman said, like an old hand.

“But I doesn’t want to marry him till I’s free. And neither
do he.” Jasmine burst into deliberately heart-rending tears.

Beate put her arms around the girl and the tears dripped down into the woman’s décolletage.

“I hoped, …” sobbed Jasmine, “but I dasn’t ask you.…”

“Please ask me, child!”

“It’s awfully impertinent —”

“I like impertinence,” she said. “The awfuller the better.”

“I got to thinking, since you’re such a friend of us niggers —” Jasmine paused.

“Why, of course I am, child.”

“That — if you could ask for me and Hasdrubal for your birthday. Hasdrubal is extra here. Massa don’t really need him.…”

“My God!” exclaimed the young matron.

“We’d work for you till we could buy our freedom, ma’am,” Jasmine added quickly.

“What an idea!” exclaimed Beate. “But after yesterday —”

“Oh, I know,” Jasmine said, with a touch of calculated despair in her voice.

Like all fanatics, Beate was prepared to lose face if she could get her way. The role of the liberator of young lovers moved her abolitionist heart. She bathed quickly and, perfumed and penitent, went to Mr. Carmichael’s bedroom, where he was attempting to cure the effects of the previous night’s bourbon with a diluted solution of the hair of the dog. With him in this condition, it was not difficult for Beate to make amends. He allowed her to kiss his cheek and she began: “Papa, I’m sure you got me a birthday gift.”

“I did,” said Mr. Carmichael. “I forgive you, but you still deserve to be punished.”

“You’re so right, Papa. You can punish me by keeping my present till next year —”

“Well —” said Mr. Carmichael.

“— and this year, you can give me something else instead, something that won’t cost you anywhere near as much as the jewellery.”

“How did you know I was planning to give you jewellery?”

“Because that’s what you’ve always given me.”

Mr. Carmichael frowned. “Aren’t you being just a little too clever, Beate? You remind me of your mother.”

“You’ve always said I’m just like her.”

Mr. Carmichael nodded gravely. “Hmm. And what is it you want, Beate?”

“In October we’re moving to a new house. Incidentally, you must come to the house-warming,” said Beate. She knew very well that her father did not care for Yankee cooking and probably wouldn’t take her up on it. “It’s twice as big and we’ll need a lot more servants than in the old place. For sentimental reasons, I’d like a pair of real southern Negroes.”

“Hmm,” said Mr. Carmichael, “yesterday I’d have said you were a damned abolitionist!”

“Of course, I’d give them their freedom. Once Tony and Billy grow up.”

“And you want me to give them to you today, as a birthday present, is that it?”

“You will, won’t you, Papa?”

“Hmm,” said Mr. Carmichael again. “Who will choose them? Me or you?”

“I thought I would. I know exactly what I need.”

“Who would you choose, then?”

“Well,” said Beate, pretending to think, “I thought the cook’s helper, Jasmine, and the second footman, Hasdrubal, would make a nice pair. And besides, what do you need two footmen for?”

“I don’t,” replied Mr. Carmichael. “Jasmine, well, all right. But Hasdrubal cost me fifteen hundred.”

“Papa! You mean you’d only give me a present if it cost you nothing?”

“I’ve fed and clothed Jasmine for seventeen years. She’d bring at least as much as Hasdrubal today, she can cook —”

“But, Papa —”

“Of course” — Mr. Carmichael smiled craftily — “if your husband agrees, I’ll sell him Hasdrubal. For three thousand,” he added quickly.

“You said you only paid fifteen hundred for him!”

“Yes, but I paid five thousand for his mother. I have to recoup something.” And with that, he refused to discuss the matter any further.

But Mr. Morris objected. It was a matter not of money but of principle, he insisted; he was opposed to buying and selling people. A principle was a principle.

“But we’d set him free as soon as we got to Cleveland.”

“First I’d have to buy him, though.”

Beate looked searchingly into her husband’s eyes until he had to look away. “Morris,” she said, “what if he were to let you have him for a hundred dollars?”

“Well —” said her husband.

“A principle is a principle,” said Beate.

But Mr. Carmichael had not forgotten Hasdrubal’s magical powers, and the sale never materialized. The next day, Mr. and Mrs. Morris left for the North with Jasmine and a plan. Once at home, Beate would use her contacts in the abolitionist movement to help Hasdrubal escape to Cleveland on the Underground Railroad. Then Hasdrubal and Jasmine would save up to buy Gospel’s freedom, which, in the light of Hasdrubal’s magic, wasn’t likely to be too expensive.

But a week after returning to Cleveland, Mr. Morris, Beate, and both their sons were drowned in a storm on Lake Huron. I hired Jasmine.

Shortly after that, the war broke out.

So Jasmine’s yearning for a Union victory was based on more than just the natural interest of her race.

I may have been the only other person to have caught a glimpse, before the murder, into what lay beneath the apparently peaceful life of the aged father and the ageing son. But my testimony would hardly have changed the fate of the poor old man. That was in Vallandigham’s capable hands.

Once, when Jeremy showed up with eggs and chickens to sell, I noticed he was wearing a black rosette on the lapel of his coarse farmer’s jacket. He placed the packet of eggs on the table and his creased face seemed more sombre than usual.

“Has someone died, Jeremy?”

He shook his head and looked away. “It’s ten years today since my Mary was killed. And young Jeremy.”

It was a simple story. Their cart hit a hole in the road, the axle broke, the cart overturned and rolled over and over down the embankment to the river. The horse went over too, but the harness broke and it survived without so much as a broken bone. The farmer’s wife broke her back, and the ten-year-old boy was knocked unconscious and drowned in the river.

How can one respond to a story like that? I mumbled something about the inscrutable will of God, and the mild-mannered Jeremy suddenly became a heretic, spewing metaphysical hatred.

“The will of God, you say?” he replied. “I say He’s a rogue. A dastardly murderer.” It took my breath away.

“Inscrutable, you say?” Jeremy continued. “What did He give us reason for, if not to understand His ways?”

“Jeremy — Jeremy! I understand that —”

“He’s worse than a murderer!” yelled the farmer, not to be interrupted. “He’s omnipotent! What did my Mary do to Him? What did little Jeremy ever do to Him?” His eyes were burning.

I decided to say nothing more until he calmed down. Then, as quickly as he had lost control, he became quiet. The rage in his eyes subsided, giving way to sorrow.

“Forgive me, Mrs. Tracy,” he said in his usual meek voice, “but it’s been ten years today.”

It gave me something to think about. In the face of the farmer’s tragedy my romantic love stories seemed like wisps of lace and filigree. His terrible hatred had clearly been triggered by an equally powerful love. Why had he never remarried? He had been only forty when his wife was killed. In the simple formula that novels are written by, country folk take these things philosophically — a farmer needs a wife, a farm needs a home-maker. In life, however, there are always exceptions.

At the time I still knew nothing about old Elihu Lecklider, and I didn’t until the trial.