Devil Water (71 page)

“I wonder,” said Rob, as they mounted their horses. “I heard in the spring that Colonel Byrd’s had no luck populating all those lands he took up to the southwest, near the Carolina border. Yet he’s a shrewd man when it comes to business.”

“Perhaps,” said Jenny thinking of the bad bargain Byrd had made when he had assumed his father-in-law’s debts. “I’ve never quite understood Mr. Byrd.”

They rode away down the road on the James’s north bank. This October day was not too warm. The blue air felt fresh even here in Tidewater. A flock of wild geese flew honking above, the squirrels bounded in the dappled woods searching for nuts. Rob felt buoyant. Thirty-six I am, he thought, and that’s not old. I’ve got more strength than I ever had, and I’ve accomplished much of what I wanted.

By afternoon they came to the fence and driveway which marked the entrance to Berkeley. “Ugh,” said Rob grinning. “I’ve no wish to go in
there.
Do you suppose any of the slaves’ve murdered Corby yet?”

“Oh, Robbie!” she said. “I’m glad you can laugh about it.” She thought of his back, the long welts and lumps which he would carry to the grave from Corby’s vicious floggings, and the scar on his neck where the iron collar had chafed.

“Laughter’s a healing thing,” said Rob as they headed on to Westover. “I’ve come to see that. I was ever too serious; and you, hinny, have grown so. Aye, we’ve had heartache and disappointment, and so has every mortal. ‘A merry heart maketh a cheerful countenance; but by sorrow of the heart the spirit is broken.’ “

She twisted in the saddle to stare at him. “Is that the Bible, Rob? Since when do you quote Scriptures?”

“Well,” he said a trifle embarrassed. “I’ve been reading them o’ nights at times, when you’re asleep. There’s meat in them to mull over when a man’s working.”

She gave the soft little chuckle which he hadn’t heard in years. “Long as I’ve known you, you can still surprise me, Rob Wilson,” she said.

They went up Westover driveway. The fields and the Quarters looked the same, but there was no house in the place it had been. Perplexed, they rode on, almost to the river, then pulled up their horses in astonishment. There was a new brick house at Westover. It was long and low and graceful, flanked on either side by brick dependencies. It nestled like a jewel beneath the towering poplars, and seemed as much part of its setting as the lawn and the new gardens and the bright river flowing nearby.

“Wuns!” said Rob in awe. “What a beauty! Four chimneys -- and look at that doorway! Mr. Gibbs himself might have done it;
I
never could!”

“You
could”
she said staunchly.

He shook his head. “I’m a master-builder, not an artist. There’s art in this house -- and maybe a bit o’ luck too. Look at the fenestration. It’s perfect.”

Jenny did not know what fenestration was, and as Rob seemed lost in professional admiration, she dismounted, and banged the handsome brass knocker. The door was opened by Eugene, who greeted her with beaming smiles and cries of welcome. “Lawd above, Miss Jenny -- yo’ shuah is a sight for sore eyes. Step in, step in! They’s all in the music room!”

Evelyn drifted out into the hall to see whom Eugene was welcoming, and gave a joyful cry when she saw Jenny. They rushed into each other’s arms, then stood back, both tearful, to look at each other. “You’ve not changed,” said Evelyn, tilting her head in the old way. “The wilderness suits you.”

Jenny tried to reply that Evelyn had not changed either, but the words stuck in her throat. Evelyn had altered woefully. Her great dark eyes, glowing like coals, were sunk back in her head. She had grown so thin that the cords stood out in her neck, and the bones of her face showed sharply through the tautened skin. On each cheekbone there was a patch of red, not the fresh color of her early years, but a hectic crimson. Even while she questioned Jenny eagerly, she coughed a little, a dry hacking of which she seemed unconscious, and Evelyn was possessed of a feverish gaiety, an excitement which Jenny did not understand.

The Byrd family were all at tea in the music room, and they also greeted the Wilsons cordially. Wilhelmina was not there, she had gone off on a visit to her Ludwell cousins, but Maria Byrd’s quartet were clustered around the tea table -- three little girls, Anne, Maria, and Jane. One boy, William Byrd the Third, who was nine, and the obvious darling of his father’s heart.

“Here is my son,” said Byrd presenting him proudly to the Wilsons. “He supports me against the gaggle of women at Westover! You have a son too, did not Evelyn tell me?”

“Not any more,” said Jenny briefly. They all looked at her rusty black dress, and there was a moment’s sympathetic silence.

“God’s Will be done!” said Byrd shaking his head. “I know what sorrow it is to lose them, and I feel deeply for you. ‘Tis best not to think about it.” He turned to Rob. “How do you like my house, eh? I don’t wish to offend you, but Ben Harrison doesn’t lord it over me about
his
house nowadays!”

“Your house is magnificent, sir,” said Rob. “May I look about?”

Byrd was delighted, and nodded complacently while Rob admired the stuccoed ceilings, the carved, pedimented doorways, the paneling, the huge embrasured windows. He minutely inspected the monumental black marble fireplace in the parlor saying that the only thing he’d ever seen to touch it was the one Gibbs made for Lord Lichfield at Ditchley. In the hall Rob ran his hands down the gleaming mahogany balustrade and its carved spindles. He turned to Byrd. “How
did
you get such work done here, sir?”

“Oh, we didn’t, not most of it!” said Evelyn, who was also watching. She laughed in a rather strident way. “We sent to England for the doorways and the balustrade and mantels. We weren’t niggardly with money,
were
we, Father!”

“We spent no more than suitable,” said Byrd stiffly who had gone further into debt over the house. “We built from drawings in Salmon’s
Palladio
and Gibbs’s book. Evelyn was invaluable, she directed the builders we got from Williamsburg, and selected those of my people here who had the most aptitude for this kind of work.”

“I congratulate you, Miss Byrd,” said Rob heartily. “You make a splendid architect.”

“Oh, it gave me an interest,” said Evelyn in her mocking tone. “What else could an old maid do!” She was seized by a spasm of coughing and her father frowned.

“I can’t see why that summer cold of yours hangs on so long,” he said. “You should be purged again, and I’ll give you ginseng root -- a sovereign remedy.”

“My cold is
nothing!”
said Evelyn with an angry fierceness Jenny did not understand. There seemed something here beyond the usual sparring with her father. Evelyn acted high-keyed, exhilarated, as though she had cause for secret elation. It was a little disturbing, and when Jenny later found out the reason she was not entirely relieved.

Byrd took Rob off to show him all the new outbuildings, which included two sumptuous necessary houses, each with a fireplace and five holes of differing sizes, to accommodate all ages.

Evelyn and Jenny drifted towards the garden. Byrd had planted it with box and imported shrubs of every kind, including mulberries and wisteria. They sat down in the summerhouse, beneath a mass of honeysuckle. Evelyn leaned forward and began to speak in a breathless, excited manner. “Jenny, I’ve so longed to see you, there’s nobody else I can tell. He’s coming! Wilfred’s coming here at last!”

“Oh, Evie,” Jenny whispered. “Eve, darling, can it be true . . . You’ve heard from him?”

“Yes. I’ve heard from him three times since you left. The last letter was a year ago, he always says he loves me, and in that letter he said he too felt it wouldn’t be long before we met again.”

“Is his wife -- ”

“I don’t know, he never mentions her. But he said he wasn’t happy, and if there’s a divorce it wouldn’t matter here, nobody’d know, or even if there’s
not
a divorce,” added Evelyn sternly.

“Mr. Byrd,” Jenny said, floundering, and still much startled.

Evelyn raised her chin, the flush deepened on her cheekbones.

“Father cannot stop me this time. I’m thirty years old, and I have my own property -- ‘Evelynton,’ which he finally gave me. Besides, he’s tired of having a spinster daughter around. He’s absorbed in his new family, especially little Will.”

This sounded reasonable, and Jenny said after a moment, “I’m so glad for you, Eve,” she put her hand over her friend’s dry, thin, hot one. “When did you hear that Sir Wilfred was on his way?”

“In a dream,” said Evelyn, with a tender reminiscent smile, her burning gaze looking into space.

“A dream -- ” Jenny repeated, trying not to show dismay. “You usen’t to believe in dreams.”

“I believe this one,” said Evelyn. “It was on the night of July thirteenth. I wasn’t quite asleep when I saw Wilfred standing beside my bed looking down at me. I saw him clear as I do you. He had on a green suit, and a cream waistcoat brocaded in a leaf pattern. Under his chin, pinned to the stock was a small dark tie -- such as we’ve never seen over here. He wore a white bag-wig with two rolls on either side his face, and his eyes held the rueful beckoning smile he so often gave me. He spoke to me and called me Lilith -- it was a joke we had.” Evelyn paused for breath, she coughed twice, yet she was smiling as she went on. “He called me Lilith because she was Adam’s first wife, and he found her far more fascinating than humdrum Eve.”

“I see,” said Jenny, and now in maturity she did see many pathetic aspects of Evelyn’s strange love, which she had never glimpsed before. “What did he say in the dream?” she asked gently.

Evelyn clasped her hands, still staring into space. “He said, ‘You’ve had a long vigil, my poor girl, haven’t you! You’ve been faithful a long time to this laggard lover. ‘Tis over now, I sail today. I’m coming for you!’ “

Jenny was silent. She did not know whether she believed or not -- yet there was a night when she had dreamed of Rob, and seen him the next day. There was also the time here in the old house at West-over, when she had had a vision of Rob in the wilderness and seen the very stream now called Fluvanna, and the hill she had named Tosson.

“So you see,” Evelyn went on quite matter-of-factly, “if he sailed July thirteenth, he will be here any day, indeed I’ve been looking for a ship on the river this past month.”

Against Evelyn’s certainty and exaltation Jenny had nothing to offer. Three months was a long passage, but by no means unheard of, if the winds were contrary, if there were storms, or if the vessel encountered pirates. Evelyn had always had a secret and uncanny sureness. She was imbued with it now. Though again she was coughing, the short dry hackings which she covered with a handkerchief.

“Evelyn,” said Jenny, “you cough a good deal, dear, and you don’t seem well.”

Her friend turned on her, showing the same fierce anger she had shown her father. “It’s nothing!” she cried. “A stupid cold! Why do you all harp so!”

“It’s only that you want to be strong and at your very best when Sir Wilfred comes. Take the ginseng Mr. Byrd recommends, and eat a lot, won’t you, Evie?”

“Oh I do!” Evelyn said, her anger gone. “I choke down all the eggnogs they give me, and -- you haven’t commented on my gown. Wilfred likes green. Do you think it becoming?”

Of course! Jenny thought.
That’s
why she looks so different. Evelyn was no longer wearing the grays and whites of half mourning, her gown was a leaf-green velvet, over a hooped brocade petticoat of bottle-green.

“It’s most becoming!” said Jenny. “It vastly suits you. Only you need a flower in your hair.” She jumped up and picked two marigolds.

“There,” she said fastening them high to the left in Evelyn’s soft dark waves. She pulled a curl over one shoulder. “Now!” she said. “You look very like the portrait of you -- and as you did when Sir Wilfred last saw you!”

Evelyn smiled, then frowned. “I hate that portrait because of the cardinal above my shoulder. The horrid bloody thing. I made Father put the portrait in the attic.”

“How very silly,” said Jenny briskly. “You know, I believe you need diversion. Come with us to Williamsburg!”

Evelyn stared. There was a touch of her old impatient scorn as she said, “Didn’t you understand what I’ve been telling you? I must be here when the ship comes, which it will do very soon.”

Jenny thought of using reasonable arguments, that the ship might dock at Yorktown, and that wherever it docked Sir Wilfred would have no trouble finding Evelyn, yet she did not speak, for her friend went on in a happy voice, “You know it’s just occurred to me, Father’s going down to the Assembly next week. That’s probably when Wilfred will arrive, so that we may be alone together here for a while. I’m not in the least afraid of Father. But he does fuss so!”

Down Jenny’s back there went a quick shiver. Evelyn’s speech was perfectly lucid, granted that it was based on a premonition, her tone in speaking of William Byrd was quite as it used to be, and yet -- Then Jenny realized another change in Evelyn. For the first time in their long friendship Jenny felt herself much the older of the two. How strange and disturbing to feel maternal towards Evelyn.

During the two-day visit at Westover, Rob and William Byrd were unexpectedly congenial. Rob was impressed by Byrd’s new library, which contained nearly 4000 books in several languages, and he was impressed also to find that Byrd actually had read most of the books. Byrd warmed to Rob’s admiration and finally rather shyly asked if he would like to hear excerpts from some “English writing” he had toyed with. This writing proved to be a humorous, rather bawdy, and very informative “History of the Dividing Line” -- the boundary which Byrd and a large party had run between Virginia and North Carolina in 1728.

Rob was highly entertained by it, and said so. He asked why Byrd did not publish the account, and was surprised to have his question shrugged off with a smile. “I take a lesson from the mother bear,” Byrd said, “who never permits her cubs to be viewed by the world until they are quite licked into shape.”

Rob was startled by this modesty. Jenny was also, when Rob told her of it as they rode away from Westover. “How little we really know our fellow beings,” Rob said, and Jenny, thinking of Evelyn, agreed with a sigh.