The President's Daughter (19 page)

Now, I thought, was the time to put my future in Thance's hands.

That night I slipped through the half-open door like a shadow, and I stood in the middle of his room and listened to the low rustle of delight in Thance's voice, its cadence and inflections, its hard northern accent and open vowels, and bright timbre as he spoke. The voice seemed to be drawing itself together in strange, violent pangs. He kept talking, begging me to listen to the love in his voice.

“There's a light in you I want to keep burning.” He said this as if he had been thinking of it for a long time.

“What kind of light?”

But he didn't answer. The silence hung still as the moon. I had to break it, break out, free myself.

“My life,” I began, “is a lie. I feel as if nobody could ever really love me.” I said this with half-closed eyes and a luminous pause between each word, utilizing the slow, languid Virginian drawl like a musical instrument: a high, clear clarinet note drawn out like a prelude to a dirge.

“That's ridiculous, Harriet. You only want to torture me.”

“You know that's not true!”

“Ah, well, words don't matter anyway, Harriet. You came.”

“Yes. I came ... I came to tell you . . .”

“Then how can anything else really matter?” He was touching my hand, talking disconnectedly. “If ever you go away, I have no other home,” he said in a voice so low and soft it seemed unspoken.

The moonbeams gathered in bunches on the polished floor and then separated, dispersing over the surface until another random movement of the curtains re-collected them.

Standing there, I thought of my mother's secret room filled with furtive presents, guilty bribes, melancholy mementos. Rag piles. I recalled a succession of Christmases when my mother would distribute the presents to the slaves—the pitiful molasses drops and cheap lengths of wool and calico, the cast-off finery of the white family, secondhand boots, mended undergarments,
but never paper for my music scores, or pen and ink.

Was I going to trade myself for a new enslavement, that of love?

“So much can be said without words when we love,” Thance said.

“Yes, no words are necessary between us,” I replied, and suddenly I felt like a person saved from the gallows by an act of God—not absolutely terrified, but stunned and bewildered in the face of a miracle. What was the use of a confession? Thance would have his own way, just as all men did. And deep down I was seduced by that idea. I stared at him with all the envious intensity of a person slowly awakening from a drugged sleep.

Sometimes I felt I was acting out a fictional scene in a novel. Did I really love him, or was this too an affair of the imagination—a blind, willful reconstitution of my childhood vow?

“Yes, I love you,” I said, not coming any closer to him. He said nothing; perhaps he didn't understand what importance was attached to my words. Perhaps he considered them natural since I was standing in the middle of his room in the middle of the night in my dressing gown. My heart had ceased beating. Let him see what he was getting, I thought. Let him see me without words. I let my wrapper fall from my shoulders to the floor in a heap of light, and stepped out of it. It was a delicious moment, for he remained as motionless as I did, without uttering a syllable.

Indeed, the woman who stood before Thance was really two persons. What in the flesh were all of Harriet Hemings's dilemmas to
me?
I tabulated, analyzed, copied, and wept over the future privileged life of Harriet
Petit,
but to
me,
to myself, my bones, my hair, my teeth, my flesh, all that was quite immaterial. It was my pride, my self-love, my selfishness which suffered or wept or rejoiced; but
I myself
was there only to love Thance and to watch, to relate, to reason over those great mysteries of white privilege, just as Gulliver must have looked at the Lilliputians.

I knew in some ways Thance was unreal. He was a supposition of what a romantic hero should be: good, refined, artistic, scientific, intuitive. He cut a handsome figure with his handsome silences and his handsome solitude. He caught my playful thoughts in flight, followed the ingenious idea, laughed and cried at the right moments. He had beautiful eyes and a caressing hand. His white teeth shone in his handsome mouth. He loved nature and trips and the countryside. Music and books. And he adored me. When described this way, he was banal, very banal, a scion of romance for girls. But he had a trait that made him unequaled: he recognized my true worth. And he was mine. Thus he was me. And for me, he was love.

“For God's sake . . .” came his husky voice finally, “please leave.”

I wandered through the darkened house. It seemed that the blackness was
touching me, kissing, caressing me. I felt blessed. My flesh sang. My skin tingled. I touched myself. Everything was dark, soft, and beautiful like Thance's eyes. Outside the windows, little lights shone on the water and laughed from its surface. And I laughed back. I was free and alive. I ran outside. I was filled with inner sunlight and a breeze stirred like the one that had ruffled my mother's skirts the day I left home. The moonlight, which lay heavy on the branches and on the deep silence, intoxicated me. And into this silence I walked, the gravel spitting under my bare feet with a gentle crisp sound, and then peace and quiet. I listened. Was this happiness? What was I? Nothing. I who had been crying since the world began. What did I want to be? Everything. Why hadn't I told Thance who I was while I stood there? If anyone had seen me go into Thance's room, near midnight, not even the Almighty Himself would have been able to convince anybody that I was still innocent ... of everything.

“Do I understand that you have ferreted out something comic in the personage of Thance Wellington?” said Charlotte, as we walked arm-in-arm toward the beach, late in the summer.

“Comic? What makes you say that?”

“You laugh a lot these days,” said Charlotte.

“People laugh at absurdities that are very far from comic,” I replied.

“We laugh from a sense of superiority. We laugh at love because it often puts us into cruel or ridiculous situations,” said Charlotte, “which, for those of us who are fairly free from that delicacy of the heart, makes us feel pleasantly superior.”

“Do you always have an explanation for everything, Charlotte? I'm not feeling superior, or heartless, or triumphant,” I said.

“He's afraid of you,” said Charlotte darkly.

“Thance, afraid? Of me?”

“Well, Harriet, you are a formidable girl ... to lots of men. You have this . . . this mysterious, untouchable air of... of fatality about you. I've surprised you, staring off into space like a doomed heroine, waiting to be rescued. Then all at once, you'll just simply . . . extinguish yourself.”

“Extinguish myself?”

“Well, sort of like a dying star, millions of miles away. One moment you're there, shining and beautiful in a distant kind of way, and the next, you've simply vanished, as if someone had snuffed you out.”

I laughed nervously. This
was
comic and somewhat frightening, but fascinating.

“A young girl, you know, is something like a temple,” continued Charlotte. “You pass by and wonder what mysterious rites are going on in there, what prayers and what illusions. The privileged man—the lover, the father, the husband—who is given the key to the sanctuary hardly ever knows how to use it. At times, by chance, I've looked into your eyes, Harriet, and seen the saddest desecration—something I don't understand—as if some shadow had kept your childhood out of the sun.” I glanced sidelong into Charlotte's eyes. She was coming close, too close.

Her hand touched our interlaced arms.

“Some gratuitous cruelty you have suffered has left you reckless, or even more, ruthless . . . given you a kind of mournful callousness. Perhaps it is only the loss of your family. But if I were not afraid of wounding you, I would say you had a cynical vision of reality.”

“Does that mean you believe I could marry Thance without loving him?”

“Well, why not? Most women don't marry only for love. You are a person who has had everything snatched from you quite brutally.”

“Charlotte, spare me your magnanimity! I don't have to thank him for having fallen in love with me. If he loves me, what business is that of mine?”

Adrian Petit greeted me by tossing his hat and gloves onto a chair.

“You were right. My interview with the widow Wellington resembled an interview with Thomas Jefferson himself! She even smells like him,” said Petit.

“She likes horses, I believe.” I laughed. “She doesn't resemble Thance at all.”

“God knows that's true. However, she got down to business in her no-nonsense way. ‘I cannot, dear sir,' she said, ‘hope to, nor do I wish to, thwart our children in their hearts' desire. I will admit that I would have preferred a northern girl to a Virginian. Southern women, I find, have a
peculiar
outlook on life. Perhaps my prejudice against them is only that—I would hate to think I was so closed minded.'

“As a Frenchman who has lived in the South,” I told her, “I can assure you that my Harriet is of an entirely different breed.”

“ ‘You're French, Mr. Petit?' she asked. ‘Why, yes,' I answered as she looked at me suspiciously. ‘What did you think I was?' ‘German,' she answered. At that, I knew we were in the soup.

“ ‘We're a scientific family, Mr. Petit, not a rich one, although my husband left us in comfortable circumstances. But we do not make a criterion of
anyone's worth in terms of money. I do understand that your young orphan is penniless; nevertheless, my son is adamant. So I thought we should meet to discuss our young couple's future. My son is adamant,' she repeated. ‘He loves Harriet and will have no other. Money aside,' she continued, ‘we know nothing about her family,' and I thought, oh God, why couldn't they have eloped?

“Moreover,” continued Petit, “I didn't know what exactly, if anything, you had told Thance, and what Thance had told his mother. Anyway, I tried to be as honest with the widow Wellington as I could. ‘Some of the best blood in Virginia flows in her veins,' I said. ‘Unfortunately the epicurean tastes and lack of business sense of her menfolk bankrupted the family even before the yellow fever eliminated them all. There is no estate. No dowry. No inheritance. There are no other male family members, or women for that matter— only a few slaves too old to have any value. Her mother was educated in France and spoke the language well, as does Harriet. Harriet was gently reared. She's a good musician, but I'm afraid still quite countrified—' “

“Countrified!” I interrupted, but Petit went on talking.

“I told her I would provide the wedding. I remembered you said you wanted one, and a mount and carriage for you, and I would, of course, hand over the small amount I invested for you. ‘I'm afraid,' I said, ‘you must accept Harriet at face value, without justifications or third-party qualifications.'

“ ‘I know that, Mr. Petit,' the widow answered. ‘My son has already done that.'

“ ‘And she him,' I replied.

“ ‘I much enjoyed my interview with her. She is a charming individual and a very beautiful girl. Thance, of course, worships the ground she walks upon.' “

“ ‘I believe one of your daughters was a schoolmate of hers.'

“ ‘Yes, last year and the year before. Little did Lividia guess that she would become Harriet's sister-in-law. Lividia's opinion of Harriet is quite high, and she too holds her in great affection. In this we are fortunate.'

“ ‘So she has conquered the entire family?'

“ ‘Except for Thor, who will soon be home from Africa.'

“ ‘I wish I could do more out of loyalty to her father, but my means are somewhat limited. Once Harriet is married, I intend to return to France and to my mother, who is almost ninety. I have great debts and financial responsibilities. At my death, however—'

“ ‘I'm not concerned so much about finance, Mr. Petit. Thance will be a practicing pharmacist with his own apothecary, and is a stockholder in the
Wellington Drug Company. They will be quite comfortable.'

“ ‘And happy,' I added.

“ ‘We can't change history, can we?' said Mrs. Wellington. “I thought that was a strange but apt way to put things, and replied, ‘Or the human heart.'

“ ‘Do you believe in fate, Mr. Petit?'

“ ‘In chance, Mrs. Wellington.' “

Of one thing I am certain, that as the passage of slaves from one State to another, would not make a slave of a single human being who would not be so without it, so their diffusion over a greater surface would make them individually happier, and proportionately facilitate the accomplishment of their emancipation. . . .

Thomas Jefferson

The monthly meeting of the Anti-Slavery Society had just started when Robert Purvis entered the dim, cramped hall and sat down beside Thance and me. He took my hand, raised it to his lips, then issued a low whistle and wriggled my hand to make the sapphire sparkle.

“The stone, Harriet, is exquisite!”

“Thanks, Purvis. Now if you'll just let go of my fiancee's hand before you unscrew it.” Thance laughed.

“Something fantastic has happened in Richmond,” he said, barely able to suppress his excitement. “The Virginia legislature has passed an official resolution requesting the governor to ask President Monroe to obtain a territory on the African coast, or some other place not within any of the states or territories, as a colony for such persons of color, now free or who may be emancipated within Virginia, to which they may be transported. It's called the American Society of Colonizing the Free People of Color of the United States. Or getting rid of them.”

“You mean deport all Negroes who are not slaves out of the United States?” I asked incredulously.