MY THEODOSIA (48 page)

In the afternoon, however, William Algernon and Polly, the only other members of the family on the Waccamaw at the time, had dutifully endured the long drive over from their plantation. They were depressed by the gloom of Debordieu and impatient with Theodosia.

'She should rouse herself,' said Polly to Joseph, after leaving Theo's darkened room. 'It's cruel hard to lose a child, but it has happened to many, and one must make an effort for those
who are still here. Just now, too, that you have come into high position, you need a helpmeet.'

Never before had she dared criticize Theo to Joseph. The family had a nervous respect for his touchy temper. But really——What sort of governor's lady was this, lying silent and helpless in bed, protecting her strength? And for what? To leave her husband—as usual—and go to her disgraceful scamp of a father. It was exasperating.

Joseph did not answer. He tugged at his whiskers and frowned gloomily, as he helped himself to Christmas eggnog. He resented Theo's indifference to his new office. She seemed to have no conception whatever of the importance to which he had attained. He only dimly realized himself that half the pleasure of victory lay in the thought of her startled admiration. At last she must see the true worth of the man she had married: solid accomplishment compared to treasonable chimeras.

But Theo had received the news with the vague, gentle smile which was now her habitual response to all demands on her attention. 'How splendid, Joseph,' she had said politely, and turned from him to slip back into the borderland which she preferred.

'You should be more stem with her,' pursued Polly: 'awaken her to her responsibilities.'

Her husband nodded agreement, and as Joseph still said nothing, Timothy Green came to Theo's defense. 'Mrs. Alston is very ill, ma'am. She cannot rouse herself so easily as you suggest. And she must have a change of climate.'

Polly shrugged her plump shoulders. 'Oh, Theo has ever been in search of a change of climate,' she said, good-naturedly enough. 'It is no secret to us that she has never liked the Carolinas.'

Why should she? thought Green, when the climate has
killed her child and ruined her own health. But he held his peace. They were to sail in five days.

On Thursday, December thirtieth, Theodosia was carried to the largest plantation barge, which lay waiting in the creek behind Debordieu, and rowed around the point into Winyaw Bay. Timothy Green and Joseph sat with William Algernon in the cramped stern. The latter had come at Polly's suggestion in order to add a semblance of family ceremonial to the leave-taking, and accompany his brother back to Rose Hill after the parting was over. 'For Joseph will want a bit of cheering,' said Polly hospitably. 'He is always most downcast after Theo leaves him, though goodness knows he should be used to it by now'. She refrained from adding that it was beyond her what Joseph had ever seen in that sickly girl, who had brought him little but trouble and inconvenience. Still, poor thing, she had been pretty enough, and there was no accounting for masculine taste.

Eleanore, in her black stuff dress and newly starched white cap, sat in the bow with Theo's head on her lap. The Frenchwoman watched the receding shores of the Waccamaw Neck and was glad. 'May le bon Dieu grant that we never see that sinister country again,' she murmured. She looked with loathing at the six sweating black backs as they hunched over the oars and chanted their imbecile song:

'Rowdah, yowdah. De weary, weary load.'

She thought of the first time she had heard that chant: ten years ago, in this same barge, when she had come to the Carolinas with Madame. Only then there had been a curly-haired baby in her arms, le pauvre petit Gampy. Her rough red hands trembled and she turned her head quickly toward the bay.

The
Patriot
lay at anchor by the bar awaiting them, her hold bulging with rice from the Alston plantations. Joseph had
seized on this excellent opportunity for sending a shipment to New York. Captain Overstocks protested vehemently. He wanted no sluggish, laden ship to handle. The
Patriot
was not built for heavy cargo, and she carried already besides her dismantled guns the spoils from successful captures amongst the Leeward Islands.

Governor Alston, however, insisted and Overstocks at length gave in, for it went against his Yankee shrewdness to turn down good money, and the rice would sell dear in New York. So the Captain loaded her with thirty barrels of the polished white grain, stuffing them somehow into a hold already crowded with booty—raw silk and ivory and silver ingots.

The schooner sank very low in the water.

'She'll no come about sweetly if we hit heavy weather,' grumbled the sailing master.

'She'll do anything I want of her,' retorted the Captain, 'and I'll thank ye to hold your tongue.'

'I like not sailing with women, women in black too—'tis ill-omened,' persisted the other, gloomily watching the approach of the plantation barge. 'The crew's muttering, what there is of them. They say we'll no make port.'

'Ye claver like an old woman!' roared the Captain, and stumped angrily to the rail where the Alston party was boarding.

Theo was helped down the companionway to the cabin, which was cramped and dingy, with two tiny portholes and two rude bunks. It smelled of tar and bilge water, but it had been roughly tidied for her and was moderately clean. She subsided on one of the bunks, with her eyes closed, while Eleanore made her as comfortable as possible, and Joseph directed the disposition of the baggage. There was not much of this: a bundle of linen, a cowhide chest, and the casket
which contained Aaron's letters and various papers which he had entrusted to her before he left America.

When all was finished, Joseph made a sign to Eleanore, who vanished. Green had stayed above decks, and William Algernon had not come on board at all, but had remained in the barge.

Joseph stood by the bunk looking down at Theo. Greenish light from the porthole flickered across her shut face. She seemed hardly more than a child, lying there so small in her black dress. It did not seem possible that she had once lain with him and borne him a son. All traces of wifehood and maternity were gone. Though she was nearly thirty and wan with sickness, there was an ageless quality about her. He thought of the laughing, heedless girl whom he had first seen on a June night twelve years ago, and the memory was bitter.

Life has dealt hardly with her, he thought, and yet she has something of that untouched beauty she had then: untouched by me, or even her child, impervious to anything but her insensate devotion to her father. The familiar anger stirred in him. There's always been that between us: always she leaves me for him, as she is doing now. This illness, and all the others which she has proffered as excuse, the one argument no man can fight—they are but evasions. She recovers fast enough when she has her way.

He drew his breath sharply, and she opened her eyes.

'You are angry, Joseph? You look so black. 'She smiled up at him faintly, though pain twisted her mouth. 'Don't be angry now, when we say good-bye.'

Suddenly blood rushed to his forehead and pounded in his temples. 'You're not going!' he shouted. 'Do you hear? I won't have it! I forbid you to go!'

Her wide dark eyes remained fixed on him patiently, as though he had not spoken.

'Don't you understand me?' he cried furiously. 'You're not going! It's madness! Suppose this piddling vessel is captured by the British. It's not fitting for the Governor's lady to travel like this. And I
am
the Governor, though you seem to think nothing of it.'

An echo of the old pity touched her. His blustering anger that always had sought to mask his jealousy and the doubt of his own worth. Once she had been able to reassure him, responding as best she could to his need. That was long ago. She had no strength for Joseph now, or for anything left on earth, save one.

There came a thundering knock on the cabin door, and Captain Overstocks' rough voice. 'The breeze is fresh, the tide nearly on the turn, Excellency. We must be off.'

Joseph scowled. He went to the door and threw it open, angrily roaring at the astounded captain: 'You'll be off when I say so, and not before—damn your impertinence!'

He slammed the door and turned on Theo.

'Get up! Get your maid to help you. You can get well here on the Waccamaw, if you will but try.'

She focused her eyes on him slowly. His voice hurt her ears, so that a moment passed before she could respond. 'I must go, Joseph. The path to him is the only one left me. Nothing but death can keep me from him, since he has sent for me.'

She spoke so low that he had to bend close to hear, and yet he suddenly knew that it was final. There was no use trying to fool himself, he could not combat her. His rantings, his puny commands could not reach her. She possessed a stronger force.

'It's a dangerous trip in wartime,' he persisted, 'and you arc not strong enough to stand the voyage'. But he had lost conviction.

'Perhaps—but I must go. I have never failed him when he wants me'. She sighed and, turning wearily from him, added in a whisper, ' I've failed you and Gampy and Merne—but never him.'

What did she mean by that? She was feverish again. Who was Merne? The question slipped through his mind and vanished as the cabin door shook under renewed pounding: a fanfaronade of anger. The Captain's respect for the Governor had been swallowed up by rage at being ordered about on his own ship.

'Let be! I'm coming!' shouted Joseph. He bent over his wife. 'God speed you, Theo. Write to me at once upon your arrival.'

She nodded. With effort she raised her hand and touched his cheek.

'Farewell, dear Joseph.'

He kissed her pale forehead and left her.

How should he know that this parting was final? There had been so many partings. He knew her to be ill, of course, but now he half-shared the family's conviction of hypochondria. And despite his angry argument, he had no serious fears for the vessel's safety. He had written a safe-conduct for her, in case they should encounter the British fleet. And the British did not war on sick women: they would let her pass. He would have word of her arrival in a fortnight. He returned to his executive offices in Columbia, and plunged into work.

The
Patriot
skimmed out of Winyaw Bay with a fair wind. For two days she made nothing of the blue sea miles. On January second they were off Hatteras when the wind changed. The gentle rolling swells wrinkled and broke into angry crests. Choppy waves began to snap at the
Patriot's
hull like snarling dogs. The sky darkened, and vagrant snow flurries swirled through the rigging.

'There's dirty weather making,' said Captain Overstocks, and he gave the order to shorten sail.

In another hour the schooner was laboring, groaning, over mountainous seas, her decks shivering under the constant pounding of green water. And the wind was still rising. Overstocks shoved the helmsman aside and took the tiller himself, dismayed to feel how sluggishly the vessel responded to her helm. And he cursed the rice cargo. Undermanned, as they were, no hands now could be spared to heave it overboard, even if they could have managed the barrels in this tossing, furious sea. Sweat started from his body and face, and was frozen by the icy wind and spray.

Below in the cold cabin Theodosia had been dreaming of Richmond Hill. There was happiness in this, for soon she would be in Richmond Hill again. It would be June, of course, after the ship had made port, and the roses in bloom as they always were. Yellow roses. Aaron would put them in her room while she slept, so that she might wake in her white bed and be delighted with the fragrance. Roses yellow as gold—as Mexican gold. That was why his crown was golden like the roses.

It will be my birthday, she thought, and I will wear the necklace. I shall look pretty, and Father will tell me so. Perhaps he will be so pleased with me that he will let me dance with Meme.

She smiled a little, and though her body under the heavy bedcovers braced itself to the violent pitching of the boat beneath her, she knew nothing of that.

Merne is so tall, but he will dance with that same quiet grace with which he walks. We will dance the valse together. And then the musicians will play our song, 'Water, parted from the sea...'

Soon I shall see my river again—the Hudson. All my life
has been mingled with rivers. The Potomac—warmth and sunlight, the rich ecstasy of romantic love, laughter, and kisses. The Ohio—a blare of trumpets, ambition, and action. I was a queen there on the Ohio—'Your Highness'. The Waccamaw—ah, that is as ugly as its name, fetid and sinister. I hate it, but I don't have to think of it now. I'm going back to my own river. From the windows of my white bedroom I shall see it when I wake in the morning before Father calls me downstairs to study. I must remember to tell him how well Gampy is doing with his lessons. He knows as much Latin as I do. Father will be delighted with Gampy. He is growing tall. Maybe some day he will be as tall as Merne.

A tremendous wave seized the
Patriot
and the little ship moaned and twisted like a woman in labor. For a moment Theodosia opened her eyes to see the blackness of roaring water against the portholes. A single tiny oil lamp swung free from a plank overhead. It lurched back and forth in grotesque rhythm with the rolling of the ship.

Above the straining, creaking confusion, she heard a terrified sound. It was Eleanore, kneeling on the tilted planks, a crucifix in her hand, her eyes fixed upon her mistress.

'Madame, j'ai peur,' she whimpered. Her lips moved incessantly. 'Sainte Vierge, aidez-nous...'

What ails her? Theo thought. She's ugly. This place is ugly too. It's dark and cold—and there is so much noise. Her eyelids closed again. At once she saw Richmond Hill: a soft glow illumined it and it became transparent so that, in an indescribable way, she could see the whole of it at the same time. She saw each separate dark green leaf upon the box trees, each quivering yellow chestnut frond. The white pillars shone in the June sunlight, and yet within the house she saw the peaceful beauty of its ordered rooms. Every detail
of the familiar furnishings was as vivid as the warm, cleanly stables where Minerva beside the other horses munched contentedly upon her oats. There was a feeling of laughter and delicious expectancy. There was music in the drawing-room, and the perfume of roses was in her nostrils.