Chesapeake by James A. Michener
On the sail back to Devon he kept telling Eden that he had never meant to harm her, that he actually liked her and considered her one of his best servants. He promised not to pester her again about Mrs. Steed’s whereabouts, and he made other resolves, all tending to prove that he would henceforth be a considerate master. But she had been at Devon only a few days before he came raging into the big room upstairs, again demanding to know where Susan was, and when Eden remained silent, he began whipping her with a strap, and she would not cry out, until the strap fell from his hand and he whimpered, “Eden, I do not mean to hurt you. But where is my wife?” And when she looked at him, without sneering, without contempt, only with sadness, he tried to make amends, but she winced as blood trickled down the middle of her back, and he saw this and took her in his arms and whispered, “I didn’t meant to hurt you. I didn’t mean ...” And he fell onto the bed, and tore away her clothes and wiped her bruised back and consoled her and stayed with her there, day after day.
Now it was summer. Cardinals flashed among the trees and blue herons tiptoed sedately where the geese had once congregated so noisily. Slaves trapped soft-shell crabs with gratifying frequency, and insects droned in the afternoon sun. Mosquitoes became a major problem, but Paul had devised a canvas sack into which men and women alike could thrust their feet, shoes on, and then draw it tight about the waist. With this protection, only the hands and face needed personal attention, and two slaves were stationed in rooms where people met, waving fans to keep the fierce insects away.
Susan enjoyed the fanciful stories about mosquitoes. Mr. Landis from the Miles River told of overhearing two that had carried off one of his calves and were about to eat it. The first said, “Let’s drag it down to the Choptank and eat it on the beach,” but the second said, “No! Down there the big ones would take it away from us.”
In July the weather became brutally hot. Whole days would elapse without a breeze and ships would sit becalmed in the bay, their captains cursing for a zephyr. When the ships did move, they left wakes that remained visible for miles as waves moved out from the bow. Over the river settled a shimmering haze, and few birds were willing to brave the intense heat that reflected from it. Sometimes, just before sunset, osprey could be seen patrolling the glassy river, searching for fish.
The loblollies stood motionless, hours passing without a needle dipping, and human life appeared to be in suspension too. Tiberius, keeping watch at the door, dozed in his chair, not wishing to speculate on where his mistress might be this time; he liked Susan and had known the generous manner in which she treated the slaves. He had watched her being kind to Eden and attentive to the black children when they fell ill. As for Eden herself, he had always considered her a choice human being, better fitted than most of the slaves to protect herself, and if she had chosen her present course to escape the bearings that were being inflicted upon her, he was not going to protest. Sometimes, when she stayed for protracted periods in the big bedroom with the master, he wished that she had remained in the fields, living a more normal life of husband and children, but in no way could he blame her.
“Girl got only so many chances,” he told her once when he carried food to the big room and found her alone. “Best she take ’em.” When their paths crossed, as they did more infrequently now, he treated her with respect.
Matt and Susan spent the long summer in a dream world of content. They were most often in his small house in Patamoke, and on her first night there Susan asked, “Captain Gatch really did bombard this house, didn’t he? Is it true that one of the cannonballs killed your wife?”
“Who told you that?”
“Eden.”
“Five struck. You can still see where they ripped away the wall.”
“You didn’t feel it necessary to keep them plastered in place? To demonstrate how brave you were?”
“Forget him, Susan.”
During the hottest days of August they reveled in a passion which seemed inexhaustible; after their wild wrestling matches, and their sleep, Susan would pester him by drawing one thumbnail across his forehead, onto his nose and down upon his upper lip. “Waken up, Matthew. Day’s awasting.”
One afternoon he looked at her in drowsy disbelief. “Did your mother ever tell you ... This sounds ridiculous, but I proposed marriage to her.”
Susan squealed with delight and belabored his chest with her fists. “You horrible old man! You went to bed with my mother?”
“God, no! You can’t imagine how proper we were.”
“Did she ever come here? Like this?”
“You’re a naughty girl. I wanted to marry your mother. She was quite handsome, you know.” He began to chuckle. “Did anyone tell you that I tended her when she was a baby?” Then the wonder of having Penny Steed’s daughter in bed with him became overwhelming, and he had no more to say.
Susan guessed what thoughts were going through his mind. “You were saved for me. My mother did the scouting, like an Indian. Dear God, I wish we were both just beginning—with a whole life ahead of us.”
If they were unrestrained in their love-making, they endeavored to preserve at least a show of decency in the community. They behaved circumspectly, never flaunted their affair in public, and gave the townspeople an opportunity to ignore it if they wished. Indeed, Susan looked more like a devout housewife than a mistress, and after five or six days of self-indulgence in the Patamoke house, she would discreetly slip back to Devon, where she resumed her role of dutiful mother.
Paul’s public spectacle when buying Eden back was the only incident so far which had created anything close to a public scandal, and it had been quickly superseded by Matt’s dignified deportment. It was a curious affair, and for the present it remained within manageable limits. As one knowing Patamoke housewife predicted, “Summer will end, and the Ariel will return, and Captain Matt will sail; and that’ll be the end of it.”
The burden of the two misalliances fell most heavily on Paul. Never a man of outstanding character, he now revealed himself as exceedingly weak. There were rumors that he was conducting an extended affair with his wife’s black maid, and people were mildly amused. But the business health of the plantation began to decline, and what small attention he paid to Devon consisted of storming into the office, ranting at the help and making silly decisions. The young Steeds from the Refuge who were doing most of the work had begun whispering among themselves as to the possibility that he might have to be replaced. “He’s not only tearing his plantation apart. He’s beginning to affect ours, too.”
His most difficult problem, of course, was with Eden. In bed she could be wildly exciting; out of bed she was an aggravating enigma, and he often felt that as she moved about the room, tidying up the wardrobe in which Susan’s dresses were kept, she was laughing at him. Once when Susan had been absent for five days, an immense gloom settled over him, and he began to shout at Eden, “My wife belongs here—not you,” and he raised his hand to strike her. But this time she insolently grasped his wrist and said, “No more, Master,” and she stared him down, and slowly his arm dropped to his side. In other ways, too, she asserted herself, demanding prerogatives, but in her physical relations with him she was impeccable. “You want to stay longer, honey? All right, we stay, and pretty soon you sleep again.”
When he wakened she would be sitting on the edge of the bed, her hands folded in her lap. He noticed that never did she presume to wear any of Susan’s clothes, even though he invited her to do so. “That dress comes from Paris. Try it on, Eden.”
“No, that’s Missy’s.”
“It would fit you, almost.”
“Go back to sleep.” He spent much of this hot spell sleeping, but occasionally he would engage in a burst of reading: John Locke and Alexander Pope and David Hume. Then he would talk of great plans for a new theory of plantation management, but soon he would be asleep again. He admired Pope and tried reading passages to Eden, choosing those isolated lines which compressed so much of English commonplace
“For fools rush in where angels fear to tread ...”
“Hope springs eternal in the human breast ...”
“A little learning is a dangerous thing ...”
“The proper study of mankind is man ...”
Eden would listen attentively, but whether she caught any of the poet’s intended meaning Paul could not say; she was a good audience, and if Tiberius came to the door with a pitcher of lemonade, she cautioned him to leave it quickly, without interrupting.
But one afternoon in August, when the heat was almost unbearable, Paul was reading aloud from Pope when he came upon a quatrain which he started boldly, stumbled over, and finished in confusion:
“Vice is a monster of so frightful mien,
As to be hated needs but to be seen;
Yet seen too oft, familiar with her face,
We first endure, then pity, then embrace.”
He dropped the book, looked at Eden as if he were seeing her for the first time, and suffered a visible revulsion. “Get out of here! Damn you, leave this room!” And he grabbed the strap, intending to belabor her about the back and face, but again she resisted. Slowly, showing fierce contempt, she retreated toward the door, opened it quietly and withdrew into the hall, while all the slaves working in the house could hear the master’s cries of rage: “Don’t you ever come back here, you whore!” He pursued her down the hall, lashing at her with the strap in such a way as to be sure to miss. When she reached the main stairs used by the white folk she descended slowly, and Tiberius cried loud enough for the master to hear, “Don’t you come down them stairs, Sassy.” And he pretended to slap her, pushing her into the back part of the house.
That night she was back in the big room, smiling at the cannonballs as her master wept and begged forgiveness.
As happened so often in Patamoke, it was the Quakers who brought a touch of common sense to the ridiculous goings-on along the river. One morning, at the close of summer, George Paxmore knocked on the door of Captain Turlock’s home and said, “Matthew, my wife and I want to talk with thee.”
“Talk ahead,” Turlock snapped, holding the door so that his visitor could not peer inside.
“At our house. Elizabeth’s waiting.”
“I don’t believe I care to speak with Elizabeth. She talks and never listens.”
“As a friend, I beseech thee to come with me,” and he took Turlock by the arm and led him away.
The walk to the Paxmore house near the boatyard was an awkward one. Neither man wished to say anything substantial where full attention could not be paid, so Paxmore contented himself with observing that the ships heading for Baltimore seemed far more numerous than previously, and he gave it as his opinion that this new port had driven Annapolis out of business. “And Patamoke, too. We won’t see ships like yours coming here much in the future.”
“As long as I sail her you will.”
When they passed the Ariel, home from Africa, Paxmore asked, “Why did thee allow Mr. Goodbarn ...” But this was coming too close to the agenda and he did not finish his sentence.
When they reached Paxmore’s town house, a small white affair near the harbor, George deferred to the older man; after all, Captain Turlock was fifteen years his senior. “Please enter. We’re happy to have you as our guest.”
Elizabeth Paxmore, all in gray, still had the fair complexion of her youth, unsullied by powders or rouges; she was an attractive woman of thirty-nine, and Turlock found himself thinking: Damn, if I wasn’t mixed up with the other one, she’d be most acceptable. He bowed and took the chair she offered, noticing that their home was austere yet relaxing, with just enough chairs carved by the master, just enough decorations embroidered by the mistress.
GEORGE: We want to beg thee once more, Matthew, to quit thy abominable trade.
MATT: What trade?
GEORGE: Slavery. Thy ship trades nothing else.
MATT: I’ve just been plaguing Paul Steed to give me a shipment of wheat.
GEORGE: We know how thee trades a little wheat for a great many slaves. We know of thy stops in Africa and Brazil.
MATT: What business—
ELIZABETH: We’re neighbors, Matthew. What thee does affects us, too.
MATT: It shouldn’t.
ELIZABETH: It’s inescapable. Thee is my brother. Thee sails my ship. Thee brings thy slaves into my shadow.
MATT: I’d say you were sticking your nose into my affairs.
ELIZABETH: I am indeed. If thee won’t care for thy immortal soul, I must.
MATT: And I suppose God directs you to do this?
ELIZABETH: He does, Matthew. He directs thee, too, but thee doesn’t listen.
MATT: How can you be so goddamned certain—
GEORGE: If thee has a poor argument, Matthew, thee doesn’t strengthen it with profanity.
MATT: Excuse me, ma’am.
ELIZABETH: Would thee like some tea?
MATT: That I would.
GEORGE: Slavery is a terrible wrong. It does hideous things to people, maladjusts them. (At this, Matt Turlock looked down at his hands, thinking of what Susan had told him about her husband’s strange behavior.)
ELIZABETH: We cannot speak with thee logically, Matthew, unless thee acknowledges that slavery is this great evil. Thee sees that, doesn’t thee?
MATT: I see that fields need people to work them, and the best hands ever invented for that task are the niggers of Africa. God would not have allowed—
ELIZABETH: He works mysteriously. I sometimes think He has allowed this present generation to exist so as to prepare us.
GEORGE: Thy trade is corrupting thee, Matthew. Thee isn’t the man for whom I built the Ariel. Time has corroded—
MATT: It corrodes all of us. You as well as Mrs. Paxmore.
GEORGE: We have striven to adhere to the principles of humanity.
MATT: As you define them. Tell me this, do you really believe that you will live to see the day when slavery is outlawed in Maryland?
GEORGE: It’s been outlawed on the high seas. Sooner or later the British patrol will capture thee, and hang thee.
MATT: They’ll never. And you’ll never see the end of slavery.
ELIZABETH: (adjusting in her chair to signal that she was changing the subject): When George says that thy profession corrodes, he refers to thy regrettable behavior with the Steeds.
MATT: That has no relationship—
ELIZABETH: It does. A human life is all of a part. What thee does in Africa determines what thee will do in Patamoke.
MATT: I think you’re being damned fools.
GEORGE: We see a human soul destroying itself. Our anguish is no less than thine.
MATT: I feel no anguish, not in Africa nor in Patamoke.
GEORGE: Thee does, Matthew, because I feel the agitation, and I am thy brother. Elizabeth and I love thee. We love thy strength and willingness. We ask thee as friends and associates to quit this evil. Be done with it all. Get back to the sea. Burn the Ariel for its contamination. I’ll build thee a new ship, a better. Matthew ...
ELIZABETH: Will thee pray with us?
MATT: Pray when I’m gone.
ELIZABETH: When will thee be gone?
MATT: In about one minute.
ELIZABETH: I mean from Patamoke.
MATT: That’s my affair.
ELIZABETH: It’s not at all. Can’t thee see what thee’s doing to the Steeds?
MATT: I did not ask—
ELIZABETH: But thee can’t consciously goad two human beings into destroying themselves. Matthew, we’re talking about two immortal souls.
MATT: You take care of your soul, Mrs. Paxmore. I’ll take care of mine.
ELIZABETH: I shall pray that God sends thee light. I shall pray.
MATT: You know what I think, Mrs. Paxmore? I think you’re a goddamned busybody. You pray for yourself, and let me alone.
He stomped from the trim house, disgusted with its occupants, but on his way to his home, where Susan waited,
Any incipient compassion Turlock may have held for the Quakers vanished that afternoon when a deplorable scene took place at the harbor. While he was away from town visiting the widow of a Turlock who had died at sea, George Paxmore chanced to meet Mrs. Steed coming from a shop, and the evangelical mood possessed him so strongly that he accosted her. “Susan, would thee do me the honor of a brief visit?”
“I do not care to go to your house,” she said sharply, “in view of what you’ve said about Captain Turlock.”
“I did not invite thee to my house. To my clipper.”
This so surprised her that she half assented, but when she reached the harbor and from the rowboat saw that he was headed for the Ariel, she refused to get in. “That’s not yours. It’s Captain Turlock’s.”
“I built it,” Paxmore said, and he took her arm and persuaded her to join him. On the short trip to the Ariel he said nothing, but when the sailor on duty asked his mission, he said, “To inspect my clipper,” and he handed Susan up the ladder.
He allowed her only a brief moment on deck, during which she admired the neatness of the vessel; then he led her to the hatch and asked for a ladder. When the sailor brought it, he adjusted it so that Susan could climb down, and when she stood on the ’tween deck he joined her.