The Fathers, page 9
We went through a side gate into the yard where, of the many vehicles that I had seen earlier, only four or five remained. Coriolanus was sitting in his place on top of our carriage which was drawn up by the front door. I said, ‘Uncle Lanus!’ He turned his head and looked away through the trees. George Posey and Brother Semmes were walking towards the steps, but Semmes touched George Posey’s arm and said: ‘Maybe your Joe could tell the girls we’re ready.’
George Posey nodded and they came to a halt at the foot of the steps, as Joe went towards the door. The door opened and Mr Broadacre followed by Cousin John emerged, and stood on the top step. Neither of them spoke, but Mr Broadacre gazed at us one after another till at last his eye rested upon Semmes. ‘Well?’ he said.
There was no time for Semmes to answer. Mrs Broadacre came out, a white cap and faded blonde curls above an immense middle-aged body: Sister Susan was on her arm. They stopped just behind Mr Broadacre, to the side, Susan looking curiously at him, at Semmes, then at George Posey, and I saw her take a quick breath. Cousin John looked back at the door and I saw three girls come hurriedly out on to the porch and take their places on the other side of Mr Broadacre who now looked uneasily about him, I thought, as if he might need to escape. These newcomers had upset him and he lowered his eyes from the excited faces of the two Langton girls who were each grasping an arm of Araminta Lewis.
Mrs Broadacre sniffled. ‘Henry,’ she said weakly. ‘Henry, get my smelling salts!’
Mr Broadacre went over to her and took her hand, patting it and looking at her kindly. ‘Madam, I will do nothing of the sort!’ His own firmness had frightened him, for he backed away from her and distractedly ran his hand through his rumpled hair. He spoke in a low, pleading tone. ‘Semmes, for God’s sake, relieve the anxiety of all these people.’
Sister Susan pulled herself away from her hostess who was left swaying and neglected. She clenched both hands before her, the deep eyes lighting the pale strong face so brightly that I thought she had a fever.
‘Before anybody says anything,’ she said. ‘Before I know what happened I wish to say something.’ She fixed her burning eyes on George Posey. ‘I want you all to know that I shall ask papa to announce my engagement to Mr Posey.’
It was getting dark. A light breeze rustled the leaves and I wanted to cry, but the fixed figures before me held my eyes and I can still see them in that tableau — a group of ladies and gentlemen on a porch about to take leave of one another. George Posey was the first to move. He walked slowly up the steps to Susan and took her hand, and still holding it led her down to where we stood, by the carriage. He said, ‘My dear!’ and took both her hands and held them to his breast. He released her and turned to Mr Broadacre.
‘I didn’t kill John Langton. I didn’t even shoot him.’ He ran up the steps and bowed to Mrs Broadacre, and looking at her astonished husband he said, ‘I must thank you for the happiest day of my life, sir!’
He turned on his heel like a soldier and walked evenly down the steps where he stopped and looked at Semmes who came forward to meet him, removing his hat, and the two men shook hands. They separated. George Posey opened the carriage door and handed Susan in. Semmes looked at Minta.
‘I’ll just wait and come home with Will,’ she said, and led the Langton girls back into the house.
Everybody had forgotten me and I waited till the carriage door had closed upon Semmes, and I clambered up on top with Coriolanus. He pointed his whip in the twilight towards a large coach with four horses, that I had not noticed before.
‘He’s plumb forgot that hired coach and the fancy free nigger on top of it.’
‘Yes,’ I said. The gay party had been lost in the quarrel. Coriolanus threw the whip over the heads of the grays and we started briskly down the drive. When we came to the gate rabbit-eyed Joe, mounted on the mare, closed in behind us, leading Semmes’ black gelding. I heard the tap of the hooves on the pike as we turned towards the Court House. We passed the big elm where we had begun to eat our lunch, we came to the wide place in the street where the negroes had been and where, again, I saw the moon-faced man and the flash of Yellow Jim’s teeth; we passed the Court House and turning left to the edge of the village we passed the last house. Then it was dark, and we plunged into it.
A knock at the door opened my eyes to the light. I could neither go to the door nor say come in, for two whole years had been canceled out, and I was rising from bed the next morning after the tournament until the knock had sounded a second time and I felt in my pocket the strap that I had found in the stable lot: those two years came back with the image of Brother George riding away under the cedars, and I knew all over again that my mother was dead. There was the crowd of people downstairs but there was deep silence. I heard the tall clock on the landing in the front part of the house strike two, through the floors and partitions; I hated the sound and I wished I too had ridden away, and I remembered, if not the words, the meaning, then, of the motto to one of Poe’s tales: No man need succumb to death utterly except by his own feeble will. I felt in me a surge of immense well-being and the desire to go to unknown realms, and then I was frightened, for I had come out of the dark.
The door was open and two men stood before me. Brother Charles came over and held out his hand. I took it and burst into tears. He pushed me back and I sat on the bed. Cousin John Semmes was still standing in the door. He closed it and came forward, speaking to me kindly, and moved over to the window and gazed out into the yard. Brother Charles spoke.
‘Lacy, it’s our duty. Why, son, they’ve left you all by yourself.’ He took me by the arm and led me to the washstand. ‘Wash your face,’ he said.
Cousin John turned. ‘It’s a damned outrage,’ he said quietly.
I changed the water and dipped my face into the bowl. Brother Charles handed me a towel. ‘There!’ he said. He walked over to the window and folded his arms. I had not seen him for more than a year and I had never known him very well, nor did anybody else: he was too much like papa. The handsomest young officer in the United States army, everybody said, and outdone in looks only by Colonel Lee. For some reason that was still talked about in the family he had married Lucy Sterrett last summer after a courtship of three weeks. At that time I saw him but little, and before that he had been away in the West at an army post for years; he was twenty-eight and like an uncle. It was Lucy’s vivacity that had captivated him, and that was all that mother, while papa was saying nothing, ever said about her. I suppose she had been too easily swept off her feet, and there were people who said that she had done the sweeping, for Brother Charles, like all the Buchans, was conventional and unimaginative, and could not have thought of anything so dashing as a three weeks’ courtship. I noted his attire, a black informal coat without waistcoat, and a low collar with a large black bow tie — Lucy’s notion, I was sure, for all the other men would be in dress coats. It gave him a kind of frivolous distinction, as if he had stepped out of the pages of Murger, but it didn’t suit his formal face whose eyes alone were sometimes capable of a smile.
‘Cousin John,’ he said, ‘we mustn’t judge him too harshly.’
‘I ain’t judging him,’ said Cousin John. He walked over to the slop-jar and spat out his quid. He poured a glass of water, rinsed out his mouth, and spat the water into the slop-jar. ‘No, I ain’t judging him, but I do say that his conduct has been outrageous.’
‘Susie ought to have made him stay.’
‘She tried but couldn’t. I asked her and she didn’t answer, and I knew he’d disregyarded her wishes.’
Brother Charles accepted this, indeed seemed not to have heard it. ‘George Posey has done a great deal for our family. Papa don’t know it yet. Look at what he’s done for Semmes.’
Cousin John pursed his lips, sucking them against his teeth; his flaccid dewlap hung lower than it had two years ago, his eyes were redder, his hair longer and whiter, and I wondered if his defeat in the race for Congress had aged him, and whether Miss Maggie had anything to do with the defeat; but I supposed not, for everywhere in Virginia the Union men had been elected, the Southern Rights party having been discredited as too extreme. Cousin John had resumed his law practice in Alexandria. His lips still pursed, he moved his jaw up and down: I decided that he was exercising his false teeth.
‘Has it ever occurred to you,’ Cousin John said, ‘that George Posey makes himself felt in this family when we make mistakes? Ain’t any question about his generosity. He’d give the shirt off his back.’
‘That’s true, Cousin John, very true. That’s what I meant about Semmes.’
‘What’s he been up to?’ Cousin John sat down in a straight chair by the window and folded his arms. ‘I can’t figger that feller out — no, sir. I just can’t figger him out.’ He raised his eyelids towards Brother Charles. ‘I mean George Posey, Charlie. Why, he gave a beggar ten dollars one day this winter, old woman with starvation sores all over her face, and he was embarrassed when he did it! Now what do you think of that? But he won’t pay his free labor enough to buy bacon and meal. Cap’n Corse told me so only last week. I can’t figger him out.’ He paused as if he were about to make one more effort. ‘He don’t think it’s right to own negroes. I don’t either.’ He slapped his leg. ‘By God, I don’t own any. And I didn’t sell the negroes I had.’
‘Has George sold any negroes?’ Brother Charles spoke in a low voice.
‘He rode away from here today on the back of a bay negro.’ He watched for the effect of this on Charlie’s literal mind; but it had none. He gazed through the window. ‘We were coming over here. Last summer. We passed the prettiest stand of tobacco you ever saw, in Cyarter’s big field. Why, man, every leaf was pea-green and the light played on it like it does on a tropical sea. I called George’s attention to it. “Yes,” he says, “old Cyarter’s got it over his whole damn farm.” Charlie, it ain’t natural for a man not to like to see a fine stand of tobacco.’
‘Cousin John, you do George an injustice. Semmes says that George thinks tobacco is the ruination of everybody around here, that papa showed unusual judgment in giving it up.’
‘Yes. And George showed remarkable judgment last year in buying Cyarter’s tobacco and a lot more, for a profit of twenty thousand dollars!’
‘I never knew anything about his business.’
‘A Buchan understand business? You are all gentlemen.’ He laughed and leaned forward in his chair. ‘You may as well say what he’s done for Semmes.’
Charlie got up and put his hands in his pockets, ‘I thought you’d heard, Cousin John.’ There was no reply. Charlie looked down into the yard. ‘He bought those letters from the Stacy woman.’
Cousin John’s serene face did not move. ‘What Stacy woman? Where?’
‘You’d never think it of Semmes, now would you?’ Brother Charles asked it curiously as if he couldn’t believe it. ‘In Washington. A widow of good connections, from New York. Not more than twenty-five, mighty pretty and very presentable. Why, Cousin John, Semmes wanted to marry her, if she’d had sense enough to see it; but after she demanded money for the letters he just couldn’t, though I believe he still wanted to. If George hadn’t put up the money papa would have heard about it. I can’t understand it, Cousin John.’
‘Why can’t you?’ the older man said. ‘So you don’t see why she wouldn’t marry the boy? My God. Of course, any woman would break her neck to marry any Buchan!’ He stared at Brother Charles. ‘Tell me, did he have relations with the Stacy?’
‘No, Cousin John, no, he never said, but I doubt if he did.’
‘I thought not.’ He raised his voice. ‘Ain’t that a hell of a thing for a gentleman to get into? By God, Charlie, even John Langton would have more sense, and he ain’t got half the sense Semmes has.’
He rose and walked past me towards the door.
‘Let’s take the boy downstairs.’ As Brother Charlie left the window, Cousin John opened the door and held the tarnished brass door-knob. He emitted one word: ‘Letters!’ He glanced at Charles who was arranging his tie, then he addressed me.
‘Lacy, I’m going to tell you a story.’
‘Oh, Cousin John!’ I said. I put my face in my hands. Cousin John spoke in a kind, level voice.
‘Never mind, Lacy, I’m determined to tell you this story because you’ve got a long time to live.’ He was putting a new quid into his mouth, a small plug that made a slight bulge in his left cheek. I fixed my eye upon it. ‘A year or two before Mr Clay died I saw him at the National Hotel and he was in a temper when I was shown into his room. He had a letter in his hand which he tossed upon the table. He explained that a young kinsman of his in Kentucky had written letters to a fancy woman, and he said to me: “Mr Semmes, what is getting into these young fellows? They treat whores like ladies and ladies like whores. They ain’t worth a damn. They do their frigging with a pen!”’ Cousin John rolled his quid. ‘Boy, you remember that story!’ He lifted his sharp eye to Charlie’s face. ‘I reckon you know George Posey didn’t even go in to pay his respects to your pa before he went away?’
He walked out of the room, and as I followed him Brother Charles came up behind me, put his hand on my shoulder; I looked into his rigid face. We emerged into the light. Only a few hours before, Brother George had ridden away, but that was years and several lives ago. I heard the clump of our boots and saw the afternoon filled with weak sun as we descended the gallery stairs.
*
Cousin John and Brother Charles turned into the back parlor. I went on into the front hall and stood by the newel post. There was somebody at my elbow. It was Coriolanus, and he passed on to the front door, which he swung wide, moving against it with his foot a large conch shell to hold it to the wall. The front steps and the yard were covered with people. Coriolanus looked at me unseeingly and went into the front parlor. I was about to retreat into the back hall when I looked through the door and saw Will Lewis shaking hands with a young middle-aged gentleman who was examining the face of a watch which lay in the palm of his left hand. ‘Half an hour,’ he said. It was Captain Corse from Alexandria. Will was pumping his hand, up and down, in the fashion of men in that age. ‘Mr McBean is late, just got here,’ he said. A low buzz of voices drifted into the hall from the front parlor, and raising my head to hear it, I caught the average scent of many flowers which is the unnatural disguise of death.
I felt sick and I did not know where to go. There was a rustle of silk, and Aunt Myra and Minta Lewis came out of the parlor, leading old Mrs Langton who with a frilled handkerchief was dabbing the end of her nose. Aunt Myra saw me and came over and led me by the hand into mother’s bedroom. There were no men there, only women, and I noticed that Mrs Langton, as soon as she was seated, took out of a small reticule her knitting, to which she proceeded to give her placid attention.
I think Aunt Myra was called suddenly away: at any rate she left me alone in the middle of the room where I became the target of old, kindly eyes. Mrs Langton dropped the knitting into her lap, looked around her alertly, and said to no one in particular.
‘A motherless boy becomes an unsatisfactory husband. My dear,’ she said to Minta Lewis, who was looking out of the window, ‘let the poor child sit down. ... Come here,’ she said to me. I stood by her chair, my hand on the faded blue plush. ‘You have your ma’s eyes.’ She took my hand. ‘I think you’d better sit over there with Jane — is that your name, honey?’ She glanced at Jane who was leaning stiffly against the side of the big tester bed in the far corner of the room; but Jane only lowered her head. ‘Lacy, listen to me.’ She was oblivious of the other ladies. ‘Mind your pa. I take a great interest in your welfare.’
‘Yes, ma’m,’ I said but I didn’t know what she was talking about. I had seen Miss Ginnie, as we called Mrs Langton, many times since the ‘trouble’ between John and Brother George; the families were as intimate as ever, the Langtons never having mentioned it to any of us, assuming that John’s behavior had better be ignored because it could not be defended; we, for our part, and papa especially, were glad to accept that view, since John Langton’s boorishness on that now famous occasion had left Brother George’s conduct in a better light than it would have deserved had his opponent been an honorable man. These reflections had no place in my sensations of that room and that time: as I stood by Mrs Langton I saw familiar faces — the fat Mrs Broadacre and her three daughters with the vague eyes of their father; Minta Lewis, now sitting on an ottoman by the window, showing to a little boy a picture book that I had become tired of — Picturesque Niagara — one of the Broadacre grandchildren, I suppose — he seemed tolerant of Minta's simple delight in the pictures; and old Mrs Gunnell, her face a mass of wrinkles, holding a black ear-trumpet to first one ear and then the other but usually at the wrong ear to catch the talk; and there was Brother George’s mother, Aunt Jane Anne, we now called her, and her old maid sister, Miss Milly George Gibson who had lived with her ever since the death of old Mr Posey years before.
Aunt Jane Anne was a little old lady, not really old, but nearly sixty, whose features, tied up in a knot by her nose, bore an expression of sustained surprise: she had not spoken since I had come into the room. I was wondering how she had taken her son’s departure, whether indeed she knew he had gone, when she spoke to Mrs Langton.
‘We’d better return this evening, thank you. I can’t be away overnight.’ She spoke in a low, sweet voice. ‘We’d really have to stay with Susie and the poor major. But Milly George and I, both of us really do thank you for wanting us. I declare, I don’t know what people would do without kindness.’ She inclined her head gently, then sank into her chair as if she were frightened by the boldness of her speech.
