Paxton Pride (15 page)

“I'm not going to tell you about the ranch, the hacienda. You have to see it yourself. When we ride out there we'll go by Horse Belly Creek and the bluff. Arrive about four in the afternoon when the sun hits it from behind and you can see the mesa outlined behind it. You'll see why I don't want to tell you about it. I guess it's the most beautiful place in the world.”

Neither spoke for some minutes, rather listened to their own thoughts and the myriad bees and insects humming in the noonday sun. “It all sounds so marvelous,” Karen finally said quietly. “Like visions in a dream. There's nothing like that here.” She leaned on the wall, her back to Vance. The words came carefully, almost as if she was afraid to ask them, as if she still wasn't quite sure Vance meant to take her. “When are you going back?”

Vance moved to her, placed his hands on her shoulders and turned her around to face him. His eyes traveled the length of her body and stopped at hers. No longer was there a question. He was committed, body and soul. “That depends on you, Karen.”

Karen found herself holding her breath. The tension was too great, the happiness too much for her, too much to handle seriously else she would break into tears. She spun coyly from the wall so she wouldn't have to look him in the eye. “Why, whatever do you mean, Mr. Paxton?”

“Plain and simple,” he answered matter-of-factly from behind her. “I'm not leaving Washington without you.” He swept her into his arms and she thrilled to the heat of his nearness, the rising ferment of her own passion. “
Love beckons, and one must go, for it will not tarry.
” A line from one of Gabriel's sonnets.
How true, how terribly, wondrously true. One must go. Quickly. Quickly
.

“Then we'd better make plans soon, my darling,” was all Karen said.

Karen floated across the meadow toward the garden and house. She felt weightless, light and ephemeral, her body translucent and glowing. The 'ilac border, fragrant perfume in the sun, streamed past to either side of her in pastel clusters of pink, white, lilac and green. The pool sent the friendly, smiling sky back to her from below, increasing the floating sensation. To her right an old gnarled cedar bestowed the wisdom of its years on her, bestowed its blessing. A wood duck exploded from the foliage in front of her and beat its sudden way past her to disappear beyond the lilacs, sobering her instantly, bringing her back to earth.
It's one of the last times I'll see the house from here. One of the last times. And then I'll be gone
.

The kitchen was hot and full of the smell of freshly-cooked pie. Ravenous after her rendezvous with Vance, Karen snitched a piece of crust and slowly nibbled at it as she walked from the kitchen toward the front hall. Retta's pie, she could tell. The black woman would have scolded her more from bemusement than anger had she been there to see her pie disfigured. As it was, Karen found the treat slightly less enjoyable without Retta's chidings. She pushed open the door to the hall.

Iantha was waiting for her, standing for all the world like a queen by the door to the front parlor. “Karen,” she called imperiously, “may I speak with you for a moment, please.”

Karen let the kitchen door swing closed behind her, stood quietly while she finished the piece of crust. Two women, mother and daughter, staring at each other from opposite ends of the hall, symbol of the greater distance between them. The last crumb gone, Karen impudently licked her fingers and moved up the hall to follow her mother into the parlor and wait in the doorway while Iantha primly seated herself in one of the high-backed chairs. The older woman dabbed at an eye from time to time lest Karen forget the indignity and pain she had caused.

“Hello, Mother,” Karen said, her thoughts wandering to Vance, wondering where he was, where he went after leaving her in the meadow.

“Sit down please.”

Karen sat. Perhaps he was preparing for their departure.
Our departure. Our departure
.

“… and it was monstrously rude of you to disappear from your own party without saying a single word. After all, the evening was planned in your honor. Alfred was upset and I, for one, can't say I blame him.”

“I'm sorry, Mother,” Karen answered automatically, wondering how much of her mother's sentence she had missed. “I'm sorry if I've made you unhappy.”

Iantha brightened. The prospect of a swift victory and a suitable act of contrition loomed as a distinct possibility. “Now, Karen. Your father has talked to Alfred and his father. He has sent word you won't even have to go there in person. A nice letter will do.”

“What letter?”

“Why to Alfred, of course, apologizing and indicating you have been ill of late, repeating what your father told him and begging him to continue with the wedding plans.”

Karen shuddered, took a deep breath. “I'll do nothing of the sort, Mother. Am I to grovel to him, give him something else about which he can strut and brag like a drummer boy home from the war? No indeed. Should he choose to pay a visit, I'll apologize for losing track of time. And I'll explain why I can't and won't marry him, but that's all,” she finished, steeling herself for her mother's outburst.

Iantha paled. She sat upright, quivering with indignation. “I was told you and your father had settled …”

“We have, Mother, only he doesn't realize exactly
what
we settled because he no more listened to me this morning than he has at any other time in my life. I am getting married, as I told him, but not to Alfred.”

Iantha stiffened, her voice cutting, mocking. “Surely you're not intending to start seeing that mindless French would-be poet again? I had thought you were quite over him. After all, a youthful romance is a youthful romance, but this is …”

Karen sprang to her feet, anger flashing from her eyes, her voice harsh with tension. “Mother. There never was a youthful romance with Gabriel. We were friends, nothing more. A shy boy and a shy girl who talked to each other because no one else would ever talk with us. Had you ever listened to me you would know there was no ‘romance'.”

“You needn't shout in my presence. We are in the same room.” Iantha's voice was calm now, all pretense of tears gone behind a foreboding matriarchal mask. “Of course there has never been a romance. Why else would a silly girl flutter and giggle and carry on like a Fleet Street whore for every eligible male in two cities? Don't presume too much with your mother, Karen.”

“I shall have to presume too much with my mother if she can't tell the difference between flirtation as an accepted, highly desirable mode of social behavior and ‘romance,' as you put it, no doubt in stable imagery.”

Iantha rose to her full height. “Sit down this instant and shut your foul mouth.” Karen resisted for a moment, then gave way to the older woman's commanding presence and did as she was told. “Very well.” Iantha continued, collecting herself. “I see the child I bore is now a woman. Aware, of course, as is a full-grown woman, of her own needs, her own desires. Not an unusual occurrence, I would think, since every woman has gone through the same process of growing up. However, if you wish to be treated as a grown woman, I suggest you put away your childish thoughts and dwell more on the obligations all of us have to ourselves and our parents.” She stopped her pacing in front of a bouquet on the tea table, unconsciously started rearranging it. “It is,” she continued in as worldly a tone as possible, “entirely natural for any high-spirited woman to have her little romances, but …”

“Mother,” Karen interrupted her voice strained, “I want you to listen to me for once in your life. I want you to try to understand. I
am
in love. Really in love.”

“Of course you are, dear.” The fingers pinched and plucked, rearranged the dying flowers. “Who is it this time?”

“Vance Paxton.”

Iantha paused, one eye cocked, considering an out-of-place fern. She relaxed. Thank God, she thought, it was nothing serious. Another infatuation and purely physical at that. A final one, hopefully, if she had sunk so low as to pick the uncouth barbarian this Texan was said to be. And to think he had
wheedled
an invitation to the party. Thank God Alfred had his little peccadillos, too. At least he would understand … Karen was talking again.

“… has been decided. Vance and I will be leaving. I'm going with him to Texas.”

Iantha glanced understandingly at her daughter. “Karen, dear. Alfred won't wait forever. And there are plenty of girls who would just love to marry the Whitakers. So if you must have this final … fling … please be so kind as to conduct it discreetly. The sooner you patch things up with Alfred, the better for all of us. Perhaps I'll invite him over for dinner Tuesday night. You may even wear that daring bit of finery you had on the other night.…”

“Mother, stop it. Please stop it! I'm serious. I love Vance Paxton. I'm leaving with him for Texas within the next week or so. Why won't you listen to me?”

“Of course, dear,” Iantha said knowingly, stepping back from the bouquet, arranged now to her total satisfaction. “Now don't you think you ought to write your letter to Alfred? Be sure to invite him for Tuesday night.”

“Mother …” Karen started, the frustration almost too much to bear, “won't you please …”

“Karen. There is much to be arranged. Now run along. We haven't lost Alfred yet.”

Karen stood and stalked from the parlor, left her mother still plotting, still trying to shape Karen's life.
Let her plot. Let her shape all she will. I will not be a bouquet to be arranged at the whim of others until I'm old and brittle and dry
. The girl-now-woman felt a sadness steal over her. They would never understand, not until her room was empty and she was gone from the house forever.
Oh, Papa, Mama, I said goodby to you today, goodby to you both, and neither of you heard
.

CHAPTER VII

The stream began its course with no thought of turning back. Eddies, swirling currents, foam-capped rocks with inverted v's trailing from their white heads, leaves, helpless as lovers caught in the ever increasing flow and borne to what destination only love itself could tell. Which is to say time passed. Time. A week. Days caught in the prism of a water bead to be split and fractured into component parts of hours, minutes, seconds, each dragging solemnly into tediousness and ennui. Empty mornings, emptier nights alone. Emptiest of all, dawn, when lovers should sit enfolded in warmth and watch the sun mother rise through pewter, pink and egg-blue eastern sky. But Karen missed these sunrises, missed them because she hadn't yet seen them with Vance, had only seen them in loneliness. How she wished time would hurry, get itself over with.

Then a rendezvous with Vance. A picnic or a meeting for an innocent tea. And what then of treacherous time? Did the hours, minutes, seconds drag then? Of course not. They flew. Many she never noticed, so quickly did they disappear into the past. Others she glimpsed only briefly, like the flash of a redwing blackbird bursting from a patch of cattails, gone before fully realized. Karen, in a strange turn of logic, begrudged those fleeting instants she had so sought but hours earlier, begrudged the moments leading to the end of each tryst with the man she loved.

Karen sat in her room overlooking the garden. She could see the very spot where Vance found her the night of the party. Their night. Had the intervening lifetime been only four days? Already she felt there was nothing more to be learned about Vance. She knew everything possible about him, for what unseen, unsuspected aspect of himself could he reveal that her heart had not already seen?
I love him. What more could I wish to know?
She remembered the poem and scribbled a line into her diary, pursing her lips from force of habit, looking quite like a child at her numbers. “How do I love thee, let me count the ways.…”

Retta soundlessly opened the door, hesitated and decided not to speak. Her little girl looked so intent. Karen was leaving. Retta knew it for a fact though Mr. and Mrs. Hampton had so far refused to take their daughter seriously, figuring the best way to handle this insane whim, this crazed infatuation, was to ignore it completely. But Retta knew, for she had helped pack the secret bags and the great trunk, then stood watch as Hermann carried them down the stairs at night to stow them in the coach. Had either Barrett or Iantha caught them at their task, the fireworks would have flown high enough for all Washington to see. Retta was frightened, but persevered.

The black woman couldn't decide whether she was happy or sad. Love. A powerful notion neither man nor beast might ever hope to restrain. Retta certainly wasn't about to attempt it. If Karen loved her man and was determined to follow him to Texas, all the powers that be wouldn't hold a candle to stopping her. That was the way love worked. For a moment Retta relived her own memories of the strong, free, dark-skinned man who had wooed and bedded her—even bought her so she would be his very own, then freed her, still his own—and then went off to die at Chickamauga like so many others. Retta and Charlie had been married twenty years and worked for the Hamptons all that time. Charlie was too old to fight for the Union cause, but had taken it into his hard head and couldn't be swayed. The war raged to free other black men and women from bondage and he would do his share.

Oh, they had had some times. Good and bad, harsh and easy. Friends, dancing, babies, fights, love-making in the tiny shack. Retta remembered Charlie's hands stirring her soul, his body probing, spitting life into her, his sweet smell as they lay exhausted side by side, sweat streaming from their naked bodies … ah,
that
was love. But Charlie was dead now, dead and lost in a nameless grave. Retta had known no other man like him. That, too, was the way of love.

Karen stirred, put her pen down and stretched her arms out, little fists clenched tightly. She yawned lazily and rose to go to the window and stare out. Retta's eyes grew moist and she dabbed at them with her apron.
You live yo' love, honey. Dat's what it all about. Live yo' love, live it long and good. Yo' ain't gonna get but one of 'em, de good Lawd knows
. The servant shut the door quietly and stepped off down the hall.