Читать книгу San Antone - V. J. Banis - Страница 7

Chapter One

“San Antonio?” Ellen Goodman’s plump cheeks quivered on the words. “But that’s out west someplace, isn’t it?”

“Texas,” Lewis Harte said curtly.

“Texas? I don’t think I—”

“Our new state,” Mr. Mallory said. “Our twenty-eighth, I believe.”

“But, still, a wilderness.... Aren’t there Indians, and things like that?”

“Horse feathers,” Lewis said, and drained his glass of claret. The black man standing just behind his chair moved swiftly, silently, to refill it. Lewis’s wife, Joanna, counted mentally: his fifth glass.

“And you’ve actually been there, Mr. Mallory?” Ellen’s aunt Sarah turned her astonished gaze on that gentleman. “To this Santa—Santa....”

“Well,” Mr. Mallory said, “I haven’t exactly been to San Antonio, but I have seen Texas. Our ship stopped at the port of Galveston on the way here. I found it quite a civilized city, actually.”

“Perfect rice-growing country, he tells me,” Lewis emphasized. “Isn’t that right, Mallory?”

“As to that, I can’t really say, not being a grower myself. What I saw, however, seemed not unlike what I see hereabouts. Lowlands. Galveston sits on an island, but the mainland looks wet and marshy. The climate is hot, dampish. I can say this, it’s a booming port, and likely to become more so. Easy sea access. I should think that would be useful to a planter.” He directed this last remark to Joanna, in a conciliatory tone, as if to apologize for encouraging her husband’s scheme.

“Damned useful,” Lewis said. He shot his wife a glance and banged the table with his fist, causing his wine to spill over the rim of his glass. Joanna watched the crimson stain spread across the tablecloth.

Papa John, the slave at Lewis’s elbow, saw it, too, and made a move as if to clean up the spill. Lewis waved him away.

“Leave it,” he snapped. He looked at his wife with wine-clouded eyes, his expression stubborn and angry. “Well,” he demanded, “haven’t you anything to say?”

She knew that it was a mistake to argue with her husband when he’d been drinking as he had all evening; but she could not help feeling alarmed at the proposal he had just so unexpectedly made.

“Surely you can’t mean you’ve already made up your mind,” she said, attempting to placate him with a smile. “Such a big move. Couldn’t we talk this over, tomorrow, perhaps?”

Lewis turned to Mr. Mallory. “Unfortunately, as you can see, my wife is inclined to value her own opinions rather highly. Higher, sometimes, than those of her husband. That is what comes of permitting a woman to read and write.”

“But it’s not a question of reading,” Joanna said, knowing even as she spoke that she was inviting trouble. “To uproot your family, to carry your wife and children to some far-off wilderness, about which we know next to nothing....”

“I know enough,” Lewis said, his color darkening ominously. “I know that the new state has agreed, after lengthy negotiations, to honor that old land grant my father held from the Spanish—for a fee, of course, but the payment is a modest one, considering the amount of land involved: five hundred thousand acres. A half-million acres, I tell you, you’d think a woman would take pride—why, it’s a hundred times what we’ve got here. Yes, and what we’ve got here we’re not likely to have for long, the way things are headed. That damned fool, Lincoln, he wants war, there’s not a doubt of it, he wants to bring the South to her knees. And this talk of freeing the slaves, that alone spells our ruination. You couldn’t run Eaton Hall without slaves, no, nor any other plantation either. I ask you, Mallory, man to man”—he emphasized the matter of gender—”is that the truth or is it not?”

“I’m bound to say you’re right about that,” Mr. Mallory said, avoiding Joanna’s glance.

“You see? You see? If you were half as smart as you think....” Lewis turned on his wife, his arms flailing the air.

“But surely,” Joanna said, “if the president frees the slaves, they will be freed in Texas as well as South Carolina?”

“Texas is a far cry from here. Your Great Emancipator may march his armies into Dixie, but Texas is not so easy a matter—the distance alone would give him pause.”

“And, this is my home—”

“Do not say ‘my,’” Lewis shouted, standing up so abruptly that his chair toppled over backward. Papa John made an attempt at catching it, unsuccessfully. It hit the floor with a crash that made Ellen Goodman squeak with alarm.

“Do not be impertinent with me, madam. What was yours became mine the day we wed. I am master in this household, and I remind you, a wife owes her husband obedience, as I’m sure either of these fine ladies—neither of whom, I’m convinced, has been tainted by your so-called educational pursuits—will agree with me.” He glanced expectantly in the direction of their female guests.

“A woman’s place, certainly, is with her husband,” Sarah Goodman said, adding with perhaps a lack of conviction, “wherever that may be.”

“Exactly,” Lewis said, pacing rapidly to and fro; Papa John, trying to retrieve the fallen chair, was forced to dance an eccentric jig, avoiding his path. “The matter is settled, my mind’s made up. I’ve already instructed my bankers to make the transfer of funds. We’ll move to Texas before the year’s out. I mean to move the house, the slaves, the crops—and my family as well. No, not another word, Joanna. You try me too far.” He turned and strode swiftly from the room. A moment later the chandelier rattled an accompaniment to the slamming of the door.

The silence that followed in its wake was intense. Now that he was gone, Joanna regretted pushing her husband as she had. She ought to have known that in front of others he’d be obligated to make a display of his authority. Perhaps if she had been more subtle in her arguments—oh, but that was wishful thinking, wasn’t it? Lewis was not a man to be dissuaded once he had set his mind to something, even something so monumentally dangerous and foolish as this appeared to her.

Sarah Goodman rose from her chair, signaling her niece to do likewise. “Since we’ll be leaving early in the morning, perhaps it is as well if Ellen and I retire,” she said in a voice plainly indicating her disapproval.

More rumors, Joanna thought, watching them go. More tales carried from plantation to plantation, for the Goodmans were inveterate visitors. Half the population of South Carolina—the half who weren’t already acquainted with the stories—would hear before year’s end of Lewis’s drinking, of his wife’s odd habit of educating not only herself but those of her slaves who wanted to learn as well.

She remembered belatedly that she still had one guest at her table, and turned her eyes on him. “You’re leaving tomorrow, too, I believe, Mr. Mallory.”

“Necessities of business,” he said. “And I can tell you I shall sorely regret my departure.”

The remark, she knew, was intended to be flirtatious; she was not unmindful of the lust in the man’s eyes when he looked at her. As a young girl, Joanna had looked long and hard at herself, and accepted that she would never be pretty; she had settled for beauty instead.

Perhaps if she loved her husband, his wenching and their lack of relations might have provoked her to jealousy, driven her to flirt, to welcome the attentions of men like Mr. Mallory. She had seen other marriages in which that happened.

That charge, at least, could not be leveled at her. She regarded Lewis’s neglect of her as a welcome relief. They had three children, three fine children. There was no need.... Sometimes, it was true, she felt the emptiness. Surely there must be something else. She had observed couples, a few; she sensed something between them, something in the way they looked at one another, not only with love but with a desire that was warm and beautiful, that made her aware of some untouched sense of “womanness” within her, neglected, sleeping.

But her instincts told her it was not what she saw in Mr. Mallory’s gaze, what she had seen in the eyes of other men.

The truth was, though she would have admitted this to no one, she had never responded the same way with her husband on those few brief occasions when he had come to her bed. It was wrong of her, she knew; a woman had no right to resent her husband’s touch. She could not help herself. Even in the beginning, before he’d begun to drink so badly, it had been that way.

She pushed her chair back. Mr. Mallory leaped up to help her, and Papa John moved swiftly around the table, but she was on her feet before either could give her assistance.

“I’ll leave you to your port, Mr. Mallory,” she said.

“Your husband will no doubt return soon to join me,” he said.

“Perhaps.” She could have told him that was unlikely. By now, Lewis was with one or the other of the Negro wenches, whose company he preferred to that of his wife or his guests. It would be morning before he returned to the main house. “If you’ll excuse me—Papa John will see to your needs.”

With unmasked disappointment, he watched her go until she had disappeared up the stairs. Too bad, he thought, a lovely woman like that. That hair, all red and gold; there was a flower those colors that spilled over the arbor of his garden in Charleston; he must make a point of learning its name. And her eyes, green, but not cool as you’d expect; like a green fire, smoldering down deep in its ashes.

Diablerie, the French called it, that air of barely damped recklessness; she had that, all right.

And, so obviously unsatisfied. How he’d longed to lick that bead of sweat from the cleft of her breasts. It was the right man that she needed, not all that nonsense with books and learning. Her husband was right to disapprove of that; he ought to have beaten such ideas out of her long before this. He would make her forget such foolishness soon enough....

“Would the gentleman care for some port?”

The Negro voice startled him. He glanced at the slave waiting to hold his chair. “Yes,” he said. “And one of your master’s cigars.”

* * * *

There was a scurrying noise above her; Joanna glanced up to see three young faces peering at her through the balustrade.

“What on earth?” she said. “What are you three doing up at this hour?—as if I didn’t know. Listening, where you’ve got no business.”

They stood up as she finished climbing the stairs. It never failed to astonish her that her daughter, barely sixteen, was now as tall as she was. Gregory, at fourteen, was nearly as tall, but James was small-looking for his nine years, though apparently determined to make up for it in extra mischief.

“It’s not true, is it?” Melissa demanded in a whisper. “We’re not moving to that—that place, are we?”

“Will there be Indians?” James asked, looking entirely enthusiastic at the prospect. Gregory surveyed her in expectant silence.

“We’ll see,” Joanna said, giving each a brief hug. “Come along now, all of you, back to your beds. If your father had seen you, you’d have earned Mammy a good hiding, for no fault of her own. Scoot now, before I give you all one instead.”

The children allowed themselves to be put back to bed, though James—“Jay Jay” to the family—gave every indication of being a long time awake, and Melissa’s complaints continued unabated.

“It’s not fair,” she grumbled, barely pausing to return her mother’s kiss. “I haven’t even come out. And you promised me, my next birthday, my first ball....”

“I’m quite certain, my darling, wherever there are young ladies, there will be parties as well,” Joanna assured her. “It’s one of the verities. And I’m equally certain you’ve got no concept whatever of what Texas is like, no more geography than you’ve been willing to learn.”

“Father says geography is unladylike.”

“He’s entirely right, but we needn’t let that sway us. To sleep now, or you’ll be much too haggard-looking to have birthday parties.”

She looked in one final time at the boys. Gregory was already asleep—he was never any bother. James’s determined pretense, eyes squinted tightly shut, was utterly unconvincing, but she did not challenge it. Little boys could be counted on to fall asleep eventually.

Her maid, Savannah, was asleep on the floor at the foot of her bed. Joanna did not trouble to waken her. She thought it silly that so many of the women of the South could not undress themselves without a slave’s help. Like so many of the conventions of southern living, it was more stifling than comforting. She had once even gone so far as to insist on some other—to her way of thinking, more suitable—sleeping place for the girl, only to have Savannah come to her in tears, begging to be told what she’d done to provoke her banishment. In the end, she’d found it easier to let Savannah sleep where she was accustomed to sleeping. Savannah was a heavy sleeper; not waking her when she came in was Joanna’s form of compromise.

Changing into her nightdress and a peignoir, Joanna sat at her dressing table and let down her hair for its nightly brushing. The routine was automatic; it left her thoughts free to turn where they would.

Texas. San Antonio. The truth was, she knew scarcely any more about them than her daughter did.

She’d heard of San Antonio, only because there had been that trouble there, a place called the Alamo. A sort of fort, if she remembered correctly, or a mission, maybe—she wasn’t clear. Mexicans and Texans, or perhaps they were already Americans then. The Texans had gotten the worst of it. It had all been years ago, when she had been quite young. “Remember the Alamo” had been a popular battle cry in the war with Mexico, though she suspected many of the men she’d heard mouthing it were not much better supplied with details than she was.

In the end, the Americans had triumphed, as it seemed they inevitably did. Texas had become a state. A slave state; on that question, at least, southerners were always clear.

So there was some logic on Lewis’s side: A slave state offered the consistency of their way of life. From his point of view, that was an argument in favor. Rice-growing land. That was, after all, what Lewis did, what he knew, what their sons were being prepared to do. And certainly he was talking of plenty of that land; she could not even imagine how much land a half-million acres represented. The acreage of Eaton Hall seemed large to her, and in comparison it was next to nothing.

Nor was Lewis the first to think of moving away from South Carolina; the talk of war and emancipation had prompted a number of others to make or consider such a move of late.

But a wilderness, the “Wild West.” Indians, yes, surely. She had heard the tales of what happened to those westward-journeying pioneers: massacres, scalpings, women and children carted off by savages, used in ways that defied imagining.

If it were only the two of them; if she had more confidence in her husband’s capabilities.... Lewis, however, couldn’t tame his thirst for whiskey—what could he hope to do with an untamed land?

Eaton Hall ran itself, or rather its slaves, its managers, its overseers ran it; ran it despite Lewis. Lewis drank and whored; or alternatively, whored and drank.

And there were the children to think of. Bad enough for the boys, but boys did, notwithstanding their mothers’ fears, take to adventure. James was already agog at the prospect; and Gregory, though he would take longer to decide just how he did feel about it, might very well look forward to the move also.

Melissa was another matter. She was right to fuss. Years lost from that time of your life were never really regained.

On the other hand, what could she do? Arguing with Lewis, resisting him, would only make him more contrary, perhaps solidify what was nothing more than a whim into a real decision.

She thought then of her uncle in Charleston, Horace Hampton. He had been her guardian when she was young, he was godfather to their children. Besides, he was a successful lawyer, and a friend; his advice could be counted on.

She would go to see him tomorrow; he would know how to dissuade Lewis, or thwart his will if necessary.

Her mind made up to that, she draped her peignoir over a chair back and, extinguishing the lamps, slipped into her bed. Savannah still snored discreetly from the floor.

In her mind, Joanna began to rehearse the conversation she would have the following day with her uncle, supplying his lines as well as her own. It was a habit she had, enacting beforehand many of the major occurrences of her life, so that often it seemed when she lived them that she was only repeating something that had happened to her before. She had never been sure whether she possessed some uncanny ability to read the future, or whether she made such a strong impression upon herself that it molded the circumstances to her will; but more often than not, things turned out strikingly as she had envisioned them.

This time, however, even when she finally fell asleep, still going over the dialogue in her mind, she was aware of a tiny doubt that kept confusing her intended line of argument.