MY THEODOSIA (7 page)

The musicians after several false starts struck up a recognizable rendition of 'The Lass of Richmond Hill'. There was laughter and an outburst of clapping. The song had been written in England and referred to a far different Richmond Hill, but its appropriate title pleased Aaron. He took Theodosia's hand and led her forward, started the singing himself, while she stood blushing beside him.

On Richmond Hill there lives a maid
   More bright than May-Day mom,
Whose charms all other maids surpass,
   A rose without a thorn.
This lass so neat, with smile so sweet,
   Has won my right good-will.
I'd crowns resign to call thee mine,
   Sweet lass of Richmond Hill.

As the song was finished, Aaron put his arm around Theo's waist. 'Is my lass of Richmond Hill enjoying her party?'

'Indeed I am, Father'. She smiled at him. 'They are all so kind, and you are so good to me.'

Her lassitude had gone. The sound of the music, the touch of her father's loving arm had dispelled it. And the prospect of dancing. She dearly loved to dance.

She saw Vanderlyn, Robert Swartwout, and Alston start toward her from different sides of the room with the evident intention of leading her out. She would tactfully choose Vanderlyn, she decided; he would best know the figures, having just returned from France.

The three young men reached her at the same moment. Vanderlyn and Swartwout spoke in undesigned duet. 'Miss Burr, I beseech the honor——' and broke off, glaring at each other.

But Alston said nothing, stood awkwardly before her, biting his lips, his face uncommonly flushed. His expression
had changed from its former surly indifference. He gazed at her now in a bold way that made her uncomfortable. He must have had plenty to drink, she thought, but would he never find his tongue?

'You wish to speak to me, Mr. Alston?'

He cleared his throat. 'To converse with you, yes. I was not going to ask you to dance. I do not like these outlandish dances.'

But I do, was at her tongue's tip. She raised her hand toward Vanderlyn who stepped forward eagerly.

Aaron slid himself between them, turning his back on the discomfited young artist, and addressed himself to Alston.

'I quite understand your aversion to dancing, Mr. Alston. I'm sure that Theodosia will be delighted to humor you. My dear'—he turned on her his brilliant gaze—'why do you not show Mr. Alston our picture gallery? It is of some interest, I believe. And he might like to view the gardens, as well. I know that they cannot compare with the beauties of those on his own plantations, but I trust he won't find them too dull.'

Disappointment choked her; she raised beseeching eyes to her father's face. Was it really necessary to go on trying to entertain this very boring and unmannerly planter? Must she miss the dancing—and on her birthday too?

Aaron's face softened as he met her look. Unperceived by the others, he shook his head, his lips formed words. 'To please me. You may dance later.'

She nodded with equal care. Of course, she could do that, or anything to please him. There was a delicious joy in being included in his plans, even though he seldom explained them to her. She gloried in being useful to him—important. But if only she knew his purpose in regard to Alston. She had received no definite hint, though her common sense told her
that there was need for flattery, and that he was not averse to impressing the planter with the lavishness of their establishment. It was a rôle she had played before, and she slipped into it expertly now that her momentary rebellion had passed.

'Shall we, Mr. Alston?' Her low voice was now enriched with a tone of intimate persuasion very like her father's. She smiled, glancing at him sideways from beneath her long lashes.

Alston's red face became redder. 'Delighted, ma'am,' he mumbled, and stalked after her into the hall.

She led the way upstairs to the long narrow picture gallery. It had been fashioned from three attic rooms, and it housed a collection of which Aaron was very proud. There were sketches and three finished portraits by Vanderlyn, rough studies by Stuart, and miscellaneous specimens of French and Italian art. Amongst the latter were two Venuses, and a copy of Titian's 'Sacred and Profane Love'. This picture, with its clothed and naked females, always tickled Aaron. 'How true a realist was this Venetian,' he was fond of saying. 'See how much more desirable he has made the profane lady, while the chaste one is well-behaved and pallid, very pallid.'

Theo had heard this and other comments many times, scarcely listening. The pictures were an old story to her. She enjoyed the rich colors and the surprised admiration of strangers upon first viewing the collection, but familiarity had dulled her interest.

She was, therefore, astounded, after she had lit the candles, to hear Alston gasp as he took a hurried step backward.

They stood before one of the Venuses, a lush blonde adorned only by a necklet of pearls.

Theo had opened her mouth to launch upon her usual little speech of explanation—'Father had great difficulty in procuring this painting; the treatment of the flesh tones is con
sidered very fine——' But her speech was cut off at the source. She stared at her companion.

He turned his head slowly from side to side like a goaded bull, and yet his eyes darted down the line of pictures, passing over the portraits and landscapes to linger surreptitiously on the nudes. He threw her a peculiar sidewise glance and cleared his throat.

She was annoyed. His embarrassment, though she had never encountered the like, affected her by contagion. The brass candlestick trembled in her hands. She became conscious of her own body, her extravagant décolletage. Her irritation increased, though she dimly comprehended that he belonged to a much less sophisticated race than the men she knew.

His reasoning was simple. In South Carolina young ladies did not gaze upon lewd pictures in the company of young men, or at all for that matter. It shocked him, but it excited him as well.

He had never felt sexual interest in a girl of his own class. No gentleman would. There were women, both black and white, provided by a beneficent Providence for such purposes. One married eventually, of course, a girl of suitable wealth and family, and one begat children. But one did not expect to be stirred by one's wife; one sullied her purity as little as possible.

Theodosia's attitude baffled him.

'The pictures are very pretty,' he muttered. 'Now let us go out to the gardens, as your father suggested.'

She nodded quickly, glad to escape.

On the stairs going down he took her arm awkwardly; its bare cool flesh gave him unexpected pleasure. His hand tightened, and she drew away from his hot fingers.

A full moon lit the gardens, painting them with silver and
black. Against the darkness of leaves and well-trimmed grass, fireflies made tiny orange lights. The air was sweet with heliotrope and box.

She walked very fast, giving him no time to linger, pointing out the interesting features: the little maze, not yet grown high enough to be mysterious; the sundial from a Versailles garden; the pond, clamorous with bullfrogs. Alston was forced into an ungainly shamble in order to keep up with her swift feet.

'You go too fast,' he complained at last, as they entered the grape arbor. 'Let us sit down here on this bench.'

She hesitated. Through the open windows of the drawingroom music streamed, the mellow harmony of the fiddles, the joyous plink-plunk of the pianoforte. Dancers passed and repassed across the brightly lit rectangles, their heads swaying gracefully to valse rhythm. She saw a blur of smiling faces, heard Katie's unmistakable laugh. They were all having such a good time in there. She yearned to join them. Alston, who had previously only bored her, now made her extremely uncomfortable as well. That moment of mutual embarrassment in the picture gallery had changed their relationship. His attitude had become intimate, and tinctured with a definite flavor of pursuit. And she had no wish to be pursued. Still, her father would be displeased if they returned so soon, or if she refused to a guest any reasonable request. Particularly this guest. Aaron had made that quite clear.

She sighed, seating herself primly on the edge of the bench. Moonlight filtered through the grape leaves above and endowed her with a luminous beauty, softening the slight heaviness of her jaw line and enlarging her dark eyes to supernatural size. Theodosia was pretty by any light, but now she was breath-taking. A siren.

Alston flung himself down beside her and stared. His mouth watered and his heart pounded. New and disturbing impulses besieged him.

He looks, thought Theo impatiently, like a slaughtered sheep, with his pop-eyes and tight curls, and he has lost his tongue as usual.

'Do tell me more of your life down South, Mr. Alston. Do you have many hunting parties? I have no doubt you are a superb horseman. Have you large stables?'

He neither moved nor answered. He continued to stare as though she were one of the curiosities in Mr. Beller's South Street Museum.

She laughed nervously. 'Indeed, Mr. Alston, I asked you a question.'

Was he further gone in liquor than she had supposed? She edged farther from him. How unpleasantly audible his breathing had become.

'It's—it's getting chill. I think we had better go in now'. She started to rise, but shrank back petrified as he made a lunge at her.

Before she could either run or struggle, he grabbed her roughly by the arms. Her head snapped back as his moist mouth closed on hers. Her hand flew out and landed a resounding slap on his ear. He clutched her the tighter, pressing her against the back of the bench until its rim cut sharply across her shoulders.

Her panic flamed to fury. She beat at his head with all the force of her fists.

Suddenly his arms dropped, limp as though they were broken. He slumped into the far corner of the bench.

'How dare you insult me like that—you yokel!' she whispered, shivering with anger and a sense of defilement. 'When I tell my father how you honor his hospitality, he will know
what to do. Though I doubt that he will deem you enough of a gentleman to be eligible for the code duello.'

A muffled sound came from Alston. He buried his face in his hands and his bulky shoulders shook.

God's mercy! Now the man was crying. Amazement extinguished her rage. This monster who had assaulted her transformed like this into a shamed, blubbering boy.

She distinguished broken words. 'Miss Burr—can never make amends. I forgot myself. Apologize—I lost my head. You looked so unearthly beautiful.'

She felt a twinge of exasperated pity. No woman can listen quite unmoved to a man who pleads that her beauty overcame him.

'Please forgive me, Miss Burr. Your good opinion means more than I dare tell you'. He raised his head, and she saw genuine shame in his face.

Suddenly she felt a hundred years older than he, and impatiently maternal. 'Very well, Mr. Alston, I will accept your apology. Doubtless the wine was strong, and the moonlight made you over—over-susceptible.'

'You are an angel,' he said humbly. 'I deserve no forgiveness'. He seized her hand and kissed it clumsily. She had much ado not to snatch it away. His lightest touch was distasteful to her, but she was sorry for him, sensing, as her father had done earlier, that beneath his undisciplined emotions and overbearing manner was the heart of an anxious small boy, unsure of himself.

She ran up to her room to repair the damages to her costume.

Two kisses in one day, she thought. Strange that kisses can be so different. The first had been sweet, affectionate almost—and unimportant. She had scarcely thought of it all day While the second—well, that had been thoroughly disagree
able, hot, sticky, and dirty as the mud springs at Ballston Spa, yet, once over, it had been unimportant too. Why did romances and people make it appear that kisses were soul-shattering experiences—delights of which one never had enough? Though that happened when one was 'in love'—whatever that was. Loving was easily comprehended: admiration, respect, perhaps a little fear, the way she felt toward Aaron. An immense desire to please him, a sense of unquestioning happiness in his company. But that state of sighings and blushings and dewy-eyed excitement over kisses, phenomena she had observed in several of her friends, why was that so desirable? Or anything but mawkish?

She forgot all speculation when she returned to the drawingroom. The older people had dispersed to the parlor and tearoom for cards, leaving Sophie du Pont, who did not care for high play, to chaperon the dancers.

Theo stood up at once with John Vanderlyn, and discovered that he did, indeed, know the new steps from France. He complimented her on her quickness in learning them, and she smiled with pleasure.

'I must paint you like that, Theo,' he whispered. 'You are youth and grace incarnate.'

She thanked him absently, engrossed with the pleasure of rhythmical motion.

She turned quickly away as Joseph Alston stalked into the room and seated himself alone in a corner. She had done her duty—and more—by that gentleman; she would take good care to avoid him in future.

She could not, however, help noticing that he never took his eyes off her, turning his head so that he might watch her as she passed up and down the floor. When other couples obscured his view, he scowled at them with disconcerting candor.

'You have made another conquest, I see,' laughed Vanderlyn. 'The haughty young man from South Carolina. I trust you don't reciprocate.'

'Fudge!' cried Theo, with an inelegance most unusual to her. 'I cannot abide the man. I vow he resembles a sheep. A fat purple sheep'. For she included Alston's plum-colored suit in her annoyance. Had he not offended sufficiently without making her conspicuous as well?

Vanderlyn laughed. 'Oh, come, you are too hard on him. All men cannot be as slender or as tastefully dressed as your father.'

Theo shrugged delicately. 'Listen,' she cried. 'There comes that slow measure. Will you show me once more how to do the reverse?'

Vanderlyn, nothing loath, slipped his arm around her slim waist and they pirouetted gaily down the room.