MY THEODOSIA (15 page)

My beautiful river! But I'm on the Hudson now! The realization came with shock, yet it brought comfort. Her rivet that she loved cradled her now on its mighty waters: waters
that flowed relentlessly on like Time that could not be checked or diverted.

Meme. The short blunt name which she had never used slid into her thoughts. It gave her sharp pain. All these months she had kept his memory away from her. She pushed it back now with violence. It didn't happen the way I thought it did. There was no magic, no enchantment. It was trivial and cheap: Father said so. I must never think of it. For Time and the river have brought me on here to this clipped moment, and even now it slips into the past as I try to hold it.

'What must be must be, and there is no going back'. That is the river's eternal murmur.

'Theo!'

She looked up slowly to meet her young husband's eyes. The wine had given him courage. He flung across the room and seized her roughly by the shoulders. 'Kiss me!' he shouted, and his trembling fingers fumbled at her bodice.

She shrank convulsively, pushing against the chair-back. Her flesh seemed to gather itself up and recoil from his hands. She gave a moan of terror. 'No, please——'

His face flamed. 'What's the matter with you? You're my wife! You look——' His voice thickened, was nearly unintelligible. 'You look as though you hated me'. He dropped his hands and sank to his knees beside her chair. Theo huddled as far from him as possible. The sound of his heavy breathing filled the cabin.

'Theo——' His voice cracked. He swallowed.

Her heart pounded in sickening strokes. Slowly, inch by inch, she turned her head toward him. He was grotesque, crouching there, this great panting animal, an enemy, a wild beast. Suddenly his face pierced through the thick mist of fear. His mouth was twisted like that of a small child that has been unbearably humiliated and does not understand. His
eyes, bewildered and desperate, slid quickly away from hers. But before his mouth hardened back into its customary defiance, she had seen, and it cut through her own terror. He was not an enemy, not a wild beast, but a groping, unhappy human being, unsure of himself or his real worth. Her throat closed with pity, for she knew in that second that, under his clumsy show of masculinity, he was as frightened as she.

'Poor Joseph,' she whispered. The two words trembled between them. He stared, unbelieving, on guard. Tears filled her eyes and she smiled at him, the compassionate smile of maternal women through all the ages.

They did not belong together, their bodies had for each other no chemical attraction, their souls no communion. But they were both caught. Equally helpless bits of jetsam on the forward-surging river of life. And for well or ill they must remain together, nor hurt each other too much. She closed her eyes and, stretching out her arms, drew his head gently against her breast.

O
N
M
ARCH FOURTH
Theodosia and Joseph arrived in the new Federal City to witness President Jefferson's inauguration. They wedged themselves amongst the wildly excited crowd inside the Capitol, craning and jostling with the others for a clear view.

Aaron, splendid in black silk, as presiding officer of the Senate made a brief, graceful speech presenting the new President, for his inauguration, to the assemblage and to the new Chief Justice, John Marshall, who administered the prescribed oath. Jefferson's lanky, unkempt figure towered over him, yet Theo was not the only one in the Senate Chamber who felt that Aaron would have better suited the high position, and that Jefferson would make but an uncouth and grotesque representative for the growing nation.

It's all wrong, thought Theo bitterly. It should have been Father. Why are people so blind—so stupid?

Though Aaron privately shared this opinion, neither to friend nor enemy did he ever show the slightest disappointment at the eventual outcome of the tie vote. On the contrary, during the last weeks, when the election had finally been thrown into the House of Representatives, and that harassed body had doggedly cast indecisive vote after vote for thirty-five ballots, and on the thirty-sixth the Federalists voted in sufficient numbers to elect Jefferson, Burr had taken pains to disclaim all personal interest in the matter, assuring everyone of his dismay at the situation. 'How monstrous,' he said smoothly, 'that the plainly expressed will of the people for Jefferson should be blocked by a technicality.'

Aaron was a good loser, and if one avenue closed, his natural optimism at once suggested another. He had lost the Presidency by one electoral vote. Maddening—yes. Still, it was lost; he accepted the inevitable with his usual composure and made plans for the future. There would be other elections, other opportunities for dazzling achievement in this vast and unexploited country.

His cheerfulness infected Theodosia, and, for the three days that she and Joseph spent in Washington, the celebrations, receptions, banquets, and parades gave her no time to think of the approaching separation from her father. During the past month she had been able to make at least a partial adjustment to her marriage relation. She never quite lost the maternal compassion she had discovered on her wedding night: an emotion new to her, who had spent all of her seventeen years in the rôle of dependent and worshiper. It gave her strength to endure Joseph's ill temper and inept love-making.

The Alstons left Washington on the seventh. Joseph, fretting to be off, managed by his impatience to soften the pain of Theodosia's parting with Aaron. She clung to her father, repeating all the trivial instructions which occur to one at such
moments—'I forgot to give Katie the book I promised; please tell her I will send it at once from the South. And tell Natalie that my white cashmere shawl was forgotten on the top shelf of my cupboard at Richmond Hill. I want her to use it herself as long as she wishes, and——'

'The horses are waiting, Theo,' interrupted Joseph. 'We shall be late for the ferry.'

Aaron smiled wryly. 'Your husband is anxious to carry you away from me to his rice swamps, but I'll be down to see you soon, and in the meantime write me, madam, often and legibly. None of your careless scrawls, please.'

'Oh, I will,' she promised. 'And you, Papa, I shall count the days until I hear.'

Joseph scowled, angrily flicking tiny icicles from a bush. 'You said all that last night. Will you please to get into the coach, Theo?'

'I expect that Joseph is right, my dear,' said Aaron. 'It is never wise to prolong farewells'. He kissed her quickly and hurried away, his footsteps almost noiseless on the wooden planks that formed the sidewalk.

Joseph handed Theo brusquely into the coach; the horses strained forward into yellow mud that sucked around their hocks; the cumbersome vehicle moved sluggishly toward the Potomac ferry. They had started on their sixteen-day journey to Theodosia's new home.

This journey blurred into a tiresome haze of bumping coaches, dirty taverns whose unsatisfactory meals upset even their young stomachs; the general discomfort heightened from time to time by moments of danger when they forded rivers swollen by spring thaws.

Joseph was a difficult traveling companion, intolerant and demanding, treating all underlings in the imperious way that he treated his slaves. By a natural consequence he received
grudging service. Post-horses were delayed; he never seemed able to engage adequate accommodations in the crowded inns; he and Theodosia were given the dregs in the wine flask, the last cut on the roast.

Traveling with Aaron had been very different. Theo had had no conception of the effect of her father's lavish use of his personal magnetism upon all human contacts. And on the rare occasions when he encountered discomfort which he could not remedy, he accepted it good-humoredly. But Joseph sulked. Or, if he did not sulk, he fumed, railing against the weather, the roads, the folly of trying to travel in this barbarous fashion.

'If we had waited for a packet to sail from Alexandria, would it not have been easier?' Theo suggested once.

'Certainly not,' retorted Joseph. 'You know very well that I dislike traveling by water. This journey is hard because we are traveling like peasants. I am not accustomed to waiting on myself. It's undignified. I'm extremely uncomfortable.'

And so am I, she thought. But already she had become wise enough not to point out that their lack of private servants was due entirely to his own decision. On this trip to the North he had brought none of his slaves, having found them a nuisance on the previous visit, nor had he allowed her to take any of the Burr servants, saying with truth that more than a plenty awaited them on the plantations. In consequence they shifted for themselves and were a travel-stained, disheveled couple on the morning of March twenty-third, when they finally reached Yawhannah, and left the Lumber ton-Georgetown Mail.

The Alston chaise awaited them, on its box a
glistening
black coachman resplendent in the family livery—red and green stripes with brass buttons and a tall, shiny black hat.

'This is your new mistress, Pompey,' said Joseph, giving a groan of relief as he stretched his legs in the chaise.

Pompey grinned and murmured something unintelligible to Theo, who smiled helplessly, and, turning to Joseph, laughed, 'I can't understand a word he says. It might be Chinese for all of me.'

Joseph was not amused. 'He bade you welcome and wished you good luck. You must learn the Gullah dialect at once. You will be mistress of more than two hundred niggers and will have many duties amongst them.'

'Shall I?' She was startled. She had had little to do with the servants at home. Peggy and Alexis managed the household and neither expected nor welcomed supervision. Peggy, highly intelligent even for a mulatto, wrote nearly as good a hand as Theo did herself and competently dealt with all emergencies.

How little I know of this life I am going to lead! she thought, and barely suppressed the thought which followed: How little I wish to know of it! She gave herself an inward shake. 'No fears, no nerves, no self-indulgence'. That was one of Aaron's favorite maxims.

'What duties shall I have?' she asked, trying to sound enthusiastic. 'I thought an overseer looked after all the negroes.'

'The overseer is responsible for the field hands and the artisans, not the house servants. Besides, there are many other things——' He sighed. He was tired, and as every mile brought them nearer home, he began to feel misgivings which had never occurred to him up North.

Just how would Theo behave as a plantation mistress? What impression would she make on his family—the family which was even now gathered twenty strong at his father's plantation? They would be cordial and courteous, of course,
but would they approve of his choice? In so far as his nature permitted, Joseph was very much in love with Theo, yet these doubts provoked his ready distrust. He was seeing her through his family's eyes—an alien. That she was very pretty and charming and daughter to the Vice-President would, after all, count for little down here. The Waccamaw Neck was a principality in itself. He had married a foreigner, and one without money at that.

He had not known this latter awkward fact on his trip home in the fall. It was not until after the marriage that Aaron had exposed his deplorable financial condition. Nor, to do Joseph justice, had the discovery much upset him. He had money enough of his own. Yet the family might think differently.

Theo, watching, saw him frown.

'You must bear with my inexperience, Joseph,' she said quietly. 'I shall try to learn. But please remember that everything is so different down here. Even the landscape,' she added, shuddering a little.

They had descended into the swamplands that bordered the tangle of rice rivers, the Peedee and the Waccamaw. She looked in amazement at the dense vegetation unlike anything she had ever imagined—vines as big as her arm writhing about twisted black branches, and everywhere hanging fronds of ghostly gray moss. Here sunlight scarcely penetrated; the effect was mysteriously sinister and threatening.

Joseph stirred, crossing his legs. 'Theo,' he said abruptly, 'I've been meaning to speak to you on this subject'. He paused, fingering his cherished whiskers. 'Your upbringing has been quite unlike that of the ladies here. You must guard your speech or they will think you immodest. You discuss many subjects that are not here considered in good taste.'

'Do I? I don't understand what you mean.

'I suppose not. Your father has seen fit to allow you great
freedom of thought. For one thing, do not let them know you do not attend church. Down here you will go to All Saints' every Sunday.'

'Of course, if it is the custom. Father and I are not particularly orthodox. He always says he was steeped in too much dogma in his youth. His grandfather, Jonathan Edwards, was a renowned preacher, you know. Still, I have gone to several churches out of curiosity—the Roman Catholic, the Dutch, the Friends Meeting House——'

'Preposterous!' cut in Joseph. 'That's just what I mean. There is only one church for a gentleman—the Anglican. And another thing. You must not refer to—to an expected birth in the loose improper way which seems to be permissible at Richmond Hill.'

Theo colored, but her mouth was mutinous. 'I think what you say is silly. You hinted yourself that your stepmother was expecting another baby; it must be about due now. I don't see how one can ignore the fact.'

'You will ignore the fact,' he snapped. 'You will not mention it at all. They would think you lewd.'

She subsided. 'Very well, Joseph'. For after all, what did it matter? She realized that the approaching ordeal worried him. She, who had met so many different people and gained their liking without effort, found his anxiety to have her appear to advantage both amusing and pitiable.

'Don't look so solemn,' she said lightly. 'I will act pious as a preacher and avoid all inconvenient subjects, I promise you'. She touched his square, blunt-fingered hand with her little glove.

His face cleared. Always he melted at one of her rare caresses. He put his arm around her slender corseted waist and squeezed her tight. She submitted, smiling.