March (2 page)

Perhaps it was the darkness, or the different season. Perhaps my biliousness and grief and exhaustion. Perhaps simply that twenty years is a very long time for an active mind to retain any memory, much less one with dark and troubled edges, begging to be forgot. Whatever the case, I was halfway up the wide stone steps before I recognized the house. I had been there before.

CHAPTER TWO

A Wooden Nutmeg

I had been there, on a spring morning, when the fog stood so thick on the river that it looked as though the bowl of the sky had spilled all its milky clouds into the valley. I was eighteen years old, and I had walked, in stages, the long way from the port at Norfolk. I was lean and strong, with sun-bleached hair that stuck out near-white from under the brim of my straw hat.

There was a little barge-ferry then, that would stop on request, at a jetty on the island’s northern tip. I had alighted there on a whim and walked the mile and a half to the house, whistling the song of the boatman who had poled the crossing. The white dogwoods were in flower all the way up the drive, and the air seemed viscous and honey-fragrant, unlike the mud-scent of a chill May morning on Spindle Hill. I had two heavy trunks tied to the pole across my shoulder, and so I was defenseless when a brace of mastiffs came baying after me, sending the stones flying under their thick, swift paws. It was, you might say, a typical welcome for a Connecticut peddler, our reputation being less than luminous. Too many of us, in the quest for gain, had forsaken honesty for cunning, decency for coarseness. But I knew dogs: at home we’d had a collie that was like an extra pair of arms when you needed the sheep gathered in. And I’d learned a thing or two more on my way north from Norfolk, the most useful being that if a Cerberus comes at you barking and snarling, call him to you with a joyous enthusiasm. Nine dogs in ten will greet fear with aggression, and friendship with fine humor. By the time I reached the big house those two beasts were gamboling beside me, nuzzling their big drooly muzzles against my thighs.

A young servant stood atop the steps, looking surprised and perhaps a trifle annoyed by this. She whistled sharply, and the dogs’ ears flattened as they sidled off “Those two would more likely have a chunk each out of your hams before you’d got a halfway up the drive than be fawning like that.” Her voice was unexpected: refined, and resonant as a bell. She stood with arms akimbo, her long-fingered hands, dark brown on top and pale pink under-which contrast still surprised me-resting on the waistband of a starched skirt striped cream and gray, which she wore with a spotless, high-necked bodice. Around her head was knotted a rigolette, dyed the color of beet, that made a handsome effect against her copper-colored brow. Her appearance was an excellent omen: a household that got its slaves up so neatly was likely to be liberal-handed.

As she came down the steps to where I stood, I set down my tin trunks, swept off my hat, and affected what I hoped was my most ingratiating smile. Manners matter in the South; I had met even field hands, half-naked and barefoot, who comported themselves with more grace than the average educated New Englander. I had learned, too, that winning over the upper servants was the first object for a gentleman of the road in pursuit of a sale. It was they, after all, who presented one’s suit for admission to the master-or, of keener interest to me, to the mistress-and they could do that in any number of more or less helpful ways.

Since I stand more than six feet in my stockings, being eye to eye with a woman is not something that I have grown much used to. But that day, my pale blue eyes gazed into her dark ones, which were lit with a faint amusement. Even now I remember that I was the first to look away.

“Thinking to charm me, as well as the dogs,” she said, in that silvery voice. “Yankee, are you? From Connecticut?” She raised her chin sharply and made a slight clicking sound with her tongue. “The last peddler through here was a Connecticut boy, too. Sold the cook ajar of wooden nutmegs.”

“For shame!” I said, and meant it, though I’d seen many a likely fake whittled in the idle campfire hours of my competitors.

“I don’t believe the household will be interested to see your notions, but we’d be remiss if we did not offer you a cold draught on a warm morning.”

There you are, I thought. A Negro slave, probably not even as old as I, yet with a style of address that would not shame a great peer. No one I knew at home talked like that, not even the minister. Spindle Hill, a thousand feet high and with only one narrow road leading up to it, was a terse place, where people spoke a spare dialect that even the folk in Hartford, not twenty miles distant, could not readily understand. I was, at home, a “loping nimshi,” rather than an idling fool. The plural of “house” in our thinly settled hamlet was “housen” and my father, when he wished to assert something, would end his declaration with the words “I snore.” Not even a century separated me from the great-grandparents who had wrested our fields out of pine and stone and oaken wilderness; our home, built by my father in a clearing made by an Indian deerhunter’s fire circle, was just three rooms of wide, unpainted board already falling into ruin. I hoped to help my father find the funds to build a new house, and I had used to look forward to the day I would return with profits from my peddling in hand. But somewhere along the York or the James, I had ceased to long for that day. Now, to my shame, I would find myself gazing at the planters’ idle, silken wives and blushing at the memory of my work-worn mother, her clay pipe perched on a chin that bristled with errant hairs, her hands engaged in ceaseless toil, from the time they touched the cow’s udder in the dim predawn to the time they set down the shuttle of the flax loom late at night.

“I would be most grateful for that kindness,” I replied, thinking that the great thing about being always among people of noble manners was the inevitable elevation of one’s own. The young woman led the way around to the side of the stone-walled house, through a low gate, and into an orderly kitchen garden, where the nobbly purple tips of asparagus stood straight as sentries and low strawberry beds hung heavy with early green fruit. They would be feasting on berries here before the ground at home had thawed. I followed, noting the way she walked: perfectly erect, yet perfectly at ease.

Inside the kitchen, wholesome morning smells of toasting hoe cake and good, rich coffee made my stomach contract with longing. “What you drugged in, Grace?” said the cook, a wide-hipped woman with a flattened, sweat-glistening face. My hunger must have been evident, for the cook, without even asking, laid a tin plate piled high with hoe cakes in front of me, even as she hectored me about the wicked ways of my kind, and how she didn’t cotton to those who made a fool of her. I nodded vigorously while spooning the food into my mouth.

“No nutmegs of any kind in my kit, ma’am,” I said. “Just a lot of useful and pretty things for the betterment of the body and the mind.”

“Is that right?” she said, her broad mouth turned down in an exaggerated attempt at a scowl. “Better show Annie you Yankee notions then, and be quick about it, for I ain’t got no time for dawdlin’.”

When I first set out from Norfolk, I had been proud of my beautifully japanned trunks with their interior nooks and shelves and clever fastenings for holding stock in place. The contents I had selected myself, with much thought, and I believed my stock, then, to be very fine. I had invested most heavily in goods likely to appeal to women, since I am easier in their company than among those of my own sex. I had combs of tortoiseshell which the fancy-goods dealer had assured me were the latest fashion; jewelry and amulets and garnets and pearls, reticule-clasps and rouge papers; essences and oils and fine soaps and pomatums; silver thimbles and gold and silver spectacles with shagreen cases; sewing silks and cottons and threads and buttons and needles with silver and gold eyes; pencil cases, pen knives, scissors (of Rogers’ make, at the dealer’s recommendation), playing cards, and wafers; fans and fiddle strings; and many diverting picture bricks and puzzles for children. At the floor of each case I had books. These I had not got from the Norfolk dealer, but traded for on my journey, anywhere I could. I would devour them, mastering all their contents, before I bartered them into new hands.

I had, as I said, been proud of these things when I set out so many long months earlier, but I now knew that most of what I had was tawdry. I had learned this slowly, for the planters’ wives had been courteous in their expressions of interest, exclaiming over the jewelry, but buying only utilitarian trifles like the sewing silks or games for the children. It wasn’t their words but my own eyes that had taught me the shortcomings of my wares, for many of the homes in which I had been received were temples of elegance, where even a small item such as a salt dish might be the work of a quattrocento silversmith from Florence or Bruges. And the jewelry! From the luster of the pearls that wrapped slender, unwattled necks and the luminous gems in ancient, heirloom settings, I soon learned to see my bits of paste for what they were.

But the books were another matter. Of these, at least, I did not need to be ashamed. I remember what I had with me that day in some detail, as these proved both the means of securing my place in that beautiful home and the cause of my abrupt departure. I had old favorites, such as
A Pilgrim’s Progress,
but also newer acquisitions such as the poems and prefaces of Wordsworth, Marsh’s edition of Coleridge’s
Aids
to
Riflection,
Cowper’s Life and Letters, Lavater’s
Physiognomy,
Johnson’s
Rasselas,
Goldsmith’s
Vicar of Wakefield,
and John Locke’s
An
Essay Concerning Human
Understanding.
For children, I had Noah
Webster’s American Spelling
Book and nicely illustrated little books of moral fables such as The Fox and Grapes and the tale of the milkmaid who spilled the milk.

When she saw the books the tall slave named Grace straightened and asked if I would like a ewer of warm water for my toilet before she showed me to the master’s room. I had shaved by the river that morning before I’d made my crossing, but I was pleased at the chance for a hot wash. When Grace returned, she said the master bade me to bring the books and leave the rest. She led the way through the narrow hall that joined the kitchen, warming room, and buttery to the cool expanse of the main house. The house was not especially large, nor by any means the grandest I had been in-some of the plantation homes along the James were more like palaces-but it was perfect in proportion and exquisite in appointments. White walls soared to high ceilings plastered with elaborate swags and rosettes. Turkey carpets in jewel colors warmed the dark wood floors. In the center of the house a sinuous staircase with acanthus leaf carving swept up from an oval entry hall. Grace gestured with her long-fingered hand-hands that did not appear accustomed to heavy chores, I noted-indicating I should sit upon a marble bench that fit the curve of the south wall, directly opposite a faux-grained door flanked by marbles of Apollo and Daphne and Prometheus Bound. “That is the master’s library. He will be with you presently,” Grace said, and swept away to her duties.

The home’s massive entrance was to my right, the wide door surrounded by lights of beveled glass, and I sat there, watching the golden morning sunshine fracture into tiny rainbows. Because I had been staring into the bright light, I could not see him well when he at last opened the library door, for he stood in its shadow. There was an impression only; of great height, very erect bearing, and a mellow voice.

“Good day to you, sir. Would you kindly come in?”

I entered and I stopped and twirled as if I were on a pivot. It was a double-height room, with a narrow gallery at the midpoint. Books lined every inch of it. A very large, plain, and beautiful rosewood desk stood in the center.

“Augustus Clement,” he said, holding out his hand. I shifted the weight of the books into the crook of my left arm and shook his hand absently, for I was transfixed by the magnitude of his collection. “I’ve always imagined paradise as something like a library. Now I know what it looks like.” I barely realized I had spoken aloud, but Mr. Clement laughed and clapped me on the shoulder.

“We get a few of you men through here, or we used to, before my daughter married. I think the word went out that she was-what do you call it? A mark? A touch? In any regards, she bought a bushel of worthless notions from your colleagues over the years; I think she just liked to talk to young men, actually. But I’ve never come across one of you with an interest in books. Set them down there, would you?”

I placed them on the rosewood desk, and he worked briskly through the pile. Now that I had seen the magnitude of his library, I doubted he would find anything of interest to him. But the Lavater
Phyisognomy
caught his eye. “This is a later edition than the one I have; I am curious to see his revisions. Tell Grace what you require for it and she will see to your payment.”

“Sir, I don’t sell the books for cash.”

“Oh?”

“I trade for them-barter-a book for a book, you know. That way I keep myself in something fresh to read along the journey.”

“Do you so! Capital idea!” he said. “Though no way to make a profit.”

“I am interested in money, of course sir; it is necessary for a young man in my circumstances to be so. But I trust you will not think me irresponsible if I tell you I am more interested in laying up the riches of the mind.”

“Well said, young Mr.—March, was it? Well, as it happens I have business elsewhere this day, so why don’t you make yourself free of the library. Do us the honor of taking dinner here, and you can tell me then what volume you would consider in barter for the Lavater.”

“Sir, I could not impose upon you—”

“Mr. March, you would be doing me a great kindness. My household is reduced, at present. My son is away with my manager on business. Solitude is no friend to science. You must know that we in the South suffer from a certain malnourishment of the mind: we value the art of conversation over literary pursuits, so that when we gather together it is all for gallantries and pleasure parties. There is much to be said for our agrarian way of life. But sometimes I envy your bustling Northern cities, where men of genius are thrown together thick as bees, and the honey of intellectual accomplishment is produced. I would like to talk about books with you; do be kind enough to spare me an evening.”