San Antone. V. J. Banis

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СКАЧАТЬ 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.

      Chapter Two

      She had been a mere fifteen when her parents died, in an outbreak of cholera; first her mother, and only two weeks later her father. “He simply couldn’t live without her,” many had said, and Joanna had been left mistress of Eaton Hall.

      Uncle Horace, her father’s brother and now her guardian, had made his position clear from the very first. “You’ll have to marry,” he said. “Eaton Hall needs a master.”

      At first she had demurred, resisted. She knew more about running a plantation than most women did, more than many men, in fact.

      Her upbringing had been unique. Few of the men she knew, and virtually none of the women, had what could be remotely described as an education. True, on the wealthier plantations, there were tutors who graced the young aristocrats in French and the social niceties. The men learned to hunt, and to run their plantations, often badly. The women learned to flirt, to sew and embroider, and to gossip.

      For entertainment, they made house visits. They came uninvited, unannounced. Family. Friends. Sometimes actual strangers, with no more claim on hospitality than a mutual acquaintance. Wagons were packed with trunks and boxes, slaves dangled their feet over the rear or walked behind in the dust of the road. The distances and the awkwardness of travel made short visits inappropriate. They came to stay, and stay they did; for weeks, often for months. Most southerners welcomed the break in routine. Joanna, however, never minded solitude; indeed, since the death of her parents, in whose company she had delighted, she had come to prefer it.

      Her father had wanted a boy, and without stinting on affection toward his only daughter, he good-naturedly chafed her for failing to match his expectations. He had raised her in many ways as he would have raised a son: She had been taught to read and write at an early age; more than that, to think, “Else,” he said, “you might as well be gaggling about with the other women.” She could ride, and she had learned much of running a place like Eaton Hall from accompanying him when he was about the business of it.

      She might have turned out one of those mannish women who make others uncomfortable and look ill at ease with themselves; but her mother had been so lovely and loving, such a gay, laughing creature, that Joanna’s femininity had developed unimpaired. They were considered a peculiar family, of course, but none of them had minded.

      And then, Joanna had found herself an orphan, and mistress of a great plantation. Having been raised to think for herself, she had thought she would manage on her own, and had put off her uncle and his suggestions of marriage.

      She had soon been dissuaded of the notion. It was not that she lacked ability; no one took her seriously. Perhaps if she had been older, a little more sure of herself...or perhaps that wouldn’t have mattered, perhaps the problems she encountered were indigenous to the southern way of life.

      She ordered things from stores and they did not come, or the wrong thing altogether was sent: “I thought this was probably what you really wanted” was the excuse. She issued orders to her overseer; he looked at her with a condescending smile and did exactly as he chose. She fired him; he stayed on, running things his own way in defiance of her. She went to the sheriff; he smiled, too, and suggested she consult her uncle.

      Which, finally, she had to do, or see Eaton Hall fairly sink into the ground on which it stood. He uncle’s position was still the same: Eaton Hall needed a master. She must marry.

      Lewis Harte had been handsome; the second son of a nearby plantation, neither grand nor shabby. She had looked over the men her uncle suggested, had been looked over in return. She had married Lewis.

      It was unfair of her, really, to blame Lewis. It was doubtful if marriage to any of the other swains who had sought her hand would have satisfied her any better. She had looked at them again since, wondering if she’d chosen badly; gradually it had come to seem to her that there wasn’t much to choose among them.

      The truth was, even if one of them had been different, the lifestyle common to them all, the way of life demanded of “the southern gentleman,” forced them to fit a common mold. Would any of them, after all, have welcomed her early efforts to help run things, to “correct” what she saw as Lewis’s mistakes?

      It was doubtful. Probably any one of them would have been just as resentful as Lewis had been at being informed by a mere woman how to manage a plantation—resentful and increasingly stubborn.

      Of course it had been a mistake on her part. If she had been more subtle.... But she hadn’t been raised that way; she had been taught all her life to value her own intelligence, her knowledge, for the special thing it was.

      Even her uncle, to whom she had turned expecting support, had been unconditional in his opinion that she was in the wrong: Eaton Hall was no longer hers; it had become her husband’s, to do with as he saw fit. She had become her husband’s property, hardly more than his slave.

      Against that, she had stormed, she had railed, she had wept and pouted—she СКАЧАТЬ