Jesse’s employer had never visited her home before. “Mr. Chepstow, I ’shamed. This wet laundry and steam and nothing cooked ’cept Jesse’s supper. Would you take a chicken wing, a nice cornbread?”
No, Mr. Chepstow didn’t care for cornbread. Mr. Chepstow wondered if there was another room where he might wait more comfortably, so Sudie ushered him into their bedroom, which before his arrival had seemed larger and nicer.
“I kin make sassafras tea. You want some tea?”
Mr. Chepstow sat on Sudie and Jesse’s marital bed. He didn’t want any tea but wondered if they had another lamp, he supposed the city gas didn’t come down this far.
“Oh, we don’t use the gas,” Sudie said airily. “Ol’ kerosene lamp good enough for niggers.” Then she flushed. “We ain’t got ’nother kerosene lamp.”
Chepstow hadn’t removed his hat. He folded his hands on his lap. “Must I tarry long?”
“Oh, no, Master. Jesse come home in a wink. He’s out doin’ his politickin’. You want anything to read while you’re waitin’? Jesse, he’s readin all the time! Jesse readin’ Mr. Garrison and Mr. Whitman.
“Mr. Whitman is a dangerous versifier,” Chepstow said.
“Oh, yes, sir. Yes, sir. That’s what Jesse says. I don’t expect he’ll be readin’ that Whitman no more. You like to read Mr. Garrison’s paper? I can’t read myself. Jesse, he tryin’ to learn me, but I swear the littlest child learn quicker’n I do.”
“You musn’t underrate yourself, Sudie,” Chepstow instructed. “Those who enslaved you approve negroes with a low opinion of themselves. That is why they belittle your people. For if you do not feel worthy of your rights, how can you assert them?”
“Thank you, Mr. Chepstow. You kind to tell me what white mens do. Mr. Chepstow, Miss Hankins’s things needn’ ironing.”
His eyes flickered, but he recaptured his pedantic tone. “Yes, Sudie. You must strike while the iron is hot.”
Sudie ironed, exchanging cooled irons for heated ones. She heard Mr. Chepstow walking around her bedroom, inspecting things. A portrait of Abraham Lincoln hung on one wall, and a newspaper engraving of Frederick Douglass was glued above their headboard. A daguerreotype man had made an image of Sudie and Jesse and Jimson at their wedding and that picture stood on the old blanket chest.
Sudie heard Jesse’s familiar footstep, gratefully. “Jesse, you’ll never guess. Mr. Chepstow, he payin’ us a call.”
Jesse’s eyes were tired. “Ah,” he said. “You give him something to eat?”
“I have scant appetite.” Chepstow spoke from the bedroom doorway. “I trust President Johnson’s head will entirely satisfy my hunger, after sufficient boiling to extract the alcohol from it.”
Sudie said, “Mr. President Johnson no friend to us coloreds.”
“Impeachment is certain?” Jesse asked.
“Tomorrow, the glorious sixteenth of May, the Senate of the United States will send that scoundrel back whence he came: unfrocked, de-Presidented, the object of honest men’s scorn.”
“Some coloreds think Mr. Stevens can’t bring it off.”
“I give you my word and my hand upon it.” Mr. Chepstow ducked under a damp nightgown to clasp Jesse’s hand.
Mr. Chepstow was out of favor. Republican donations had dried up and the state advertising contract had not been renewed. Although Mr. Chepstow had campaigned vigorously for the Republican nomination for governor, that nomination had gone to another. At the same convention Jesse had been nominated for the legislature from Richmond’s Marshall Ward.
“How do negroes see the impeachment?”
“Tell the truth, sir, they’re more concerned about the Virginia election. There’s twelve Richmond seats in the legislature—coloreds running against whites and the whites have the money.”
“From Mahone.”
“General Mahone is as quick to buy a black man as a white. He doesn’t care who wins—just so long as the winner’s in his pocket.”
“You are acquaintanced with Mahone’s henchman.”
“Duncan Gatewood. Yes, sir.”
Chepstow sighed and turned into a pair of hanging bloomers, which he pawed away from his face. “This afternoon prominent Republicans called at the office. They intend to establish their own newspaper in Richmond! They have employed an editor and pressmen. As an alternative, they offered to buy the New Nation. I am a realist, Jesse. A realist.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I am called ‘radical,’ but I am a realist. I made them a price.”
“Yes, sir.”
“You are a trained pressman, doubtless you can find work elsewhere.”
“Sir?”
“I fear the New Nation has no more need for your services.”
“Sir?”
Sudie’s face went gray.
“When they impeach that traitor Johnson, Jesse, we shall be vindicated!”
“Sir?”
With a nod as stiff as his collar, Charles Chepstow left their home.
“Jesse, what we gonna do?”
Jesse took a deep breath. “I suppose we’ll do what we have been doin’.”
“I can’t keep us goin’ on what I makes washin’. How many white newspapers gonna hire a nigger pressman?”
Jesse looked at his ink-smudged hands. “Oh, I don’t know,” he said. “Might be I work cheaper than a white man would.”
CHAPTER 33
A HAPPY OCCASION
COUSIN MOLLY SEMPLE WAS PINNING PAULINE’S HEM. “DEAR, dear. I don’t believe I’ve ever seen a more beautiful bride. Leona’s gown fits you perfectly.”
“Eben wanted something extravagant, but when I said how much my dear mother’s wedding dress meant to me, he acquiesced. Oh, Molly, tell me you like Eben a little?”
“Of course I do, dear.” Molly had set aside her apprehensions. “My dear, I’m sure you will be happy!”
“Cousin,” Pauline said, “if it is within a wife’s power to assure family happiness, we shall be happy.”
“Mr. Barnwell seems fond of Stratford. I hope we’ll see more of him.”
“I couldn’t bear to be entirely separated from Stratford. Cousin Molly, how will I adapt myself to New York City? All those people. That awful hurly-burly! I shan’t know a soul.” The bride’s mouth trembled. “Dear Cousin, all my expectations are unlike what they were. The fixed stars of my modest universe are out of their orbits. I so wish Sallie could be with me today.”
“Dear—”
“I know, I know. Her newborn is ill, so of course Sallie cannot come. As a child I dreamed of my wedding day. I had play weddings with my dolls. Abigail and my mother would be present and my father, Catesby, would give me away. I thought they would wait for me to become a woman.”
Cousin Molly cocked her head. “Child, all your dear ones will smile down from heaven today. How can you doubt it?”
Pauline’s brave face ached Molly’s heart. She coughed to change the subject. “Now, as your nearest kinswoman, it is my duty to address a topic you might wish to avoid.”
“Cousin Molly! Dearest Molly! If you mean to advise me on my marital duties, I have a fair idea.”
“Many women, dear, find them disagreeable,” Cousin Molly replied.
“I am certain I shan’t. Eben has confessed to possessing a heightened ‘amative’ bump.”
Molly raised an eyebrow. “You shall be the judge of that, my dear.”
“WHAT DO OUR ENGLISH investors say?” General Mahone said.
Eben fumbled a jade link into his cuff. “General, they are shaken. Gould and Fisk made fortunes running up Erie stock, but when they took the Erie into receivership, many English investors were ruined. Now they tar every American railroad with the same brush.”
Just two years ago, Eben had bought his Madison Square home with commissions earned selling Atlantic, Mississippi & Ohio bonds. Nowadays, he couldn’t sell a hundred dollars in a fortnight. Despite Eben’s candid, accurate explanations, General Mahone presumed this was due to
Eben’s indifference or indolence. Eben never came to Petersburg anymore and had stopped reading Mahone’s angry telegrams.
His Pauline had wanted to be married in the little chapel she had attended all her life. Eben had to invite the General but had hoped he wouldn’t travel to this remote mountain plantation. When the General accepted, Eben briefly considered postponing the wedding.
Eben Barnwell sometimes worried he mightn’t accomplish his purposes, but since the Knapps, he hadn’t been afraid of another man. Eben was afraid of William Mahone. He feared the tiny, furious General would hurl himself across the room and seize him by the throat.
“General, there is no enthusiasm for a new A.M.&O. bond—no matter what interest we are willing to pay. If we float a new issue but withdraw it unsold, the failure will put frightful pressure on our outstanding bonds.”
Mahone snapped, “I have never defaulted on an interest payment! I am not Mr. Gould. Nor am I Mr. Jim Fisk!”
“No, sir. Of course not.”
“The Virginia Legislature favors the A.M.&O. Major Gatewood assures me we have a majority.”
“Sir, you are contesting with the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, which is, after the Pennsylvania, the wealthiest railroad in America. I am loyal to your purposes. I am your man, but—”
“Are you, indeed?”
Eben could not manage his second cufflink. He spoke rapidly, without intonation. “If you do not believe that I am acting in your best interests, sir, it would be best if you engaged another agent.”
Mahone eyed him, assessing Eben as coldly as he had assessed soldiers before suicidal assaults.
“You must do better than this, Barnwell.”
Eben’s cufflink fell from his fingers and he knelt to retrieve it. Though it had rolled beside Little Billy’s tiny, highly polished black shoes, the General didn’t move to help.
Eben stood and dusted his trouser knees. Quietly he said, “This is my wedding day, sir.”
“You have Otelia’s and my felicitations.”
“The odds favoring success, General, have always been long.”
Mahone’s hiss was sibilant. “Sir, I fought beside General Lee. What do long odds mean to me?”
BY MIDMORNING, the dew had lifted. Stratford’s mill wheel was motionless and its gangsaw silent. A breeze ruffled cattails in the millpond and shivered the mirrored water.
“This is a beautiful spot, Mr. Gatewood,” Otelia Mahone remarked. She turned her embroidery hoop to catch the sunlight streaming across Stratford’s front porch.
“I have always thought so.” Samuel offered to recharge Alexander Stuart’s glass, but that gentleman covered it with his palm.
“I’ve no head for whiskey.” Stuart smiled.
“Ah,” Samuel said. “Perhaps unfortunately, I do.”
Duncan Gatewood’s eyes were bright. “Mornings like this I’d saddle Gypsy and disappear up the mountain. Father thought me a degenerate loafer.”
Samuel Gatewood would have given anything for one more of those long slow mornings, watching his young son gallop Gypsy. He contented himself, as elders will, by inquiring about his newest grandchild.
“Baby Abigail is tiny, but Sallie says she has a will of iron.”
Duncan’s nephew, Thomas, had so immersed himself in politics that the vast universe outside politics and politicians had become somewhat unreal. Now Thomas fumed, “Just one honest senator’s vote saved the President of the United States from impeachment. What was President Andrew Johnson’s crime? He did not wish to obliterate the South. Thaddeus Stevens will concoct another excuse to impeach Johnson again.”
“Stevens has shot his bolt,” Alexander Stuart said. “The man is dying.”
“Mrs. Mahone,” Duncan said, “might prefer a different subject.”
“Thank you, Mr. Gatewood,“ Otelia replied amiably. “What with this Underwood Constitution, which may or may not come to a vote, and candidates running for an election, which may or may not be held, and yet another military governor, I’m afraid my weak woman’s head is spinning.” She forestalled them quickly. “Don’t feel under any obligation to enlighten me.”
Mr. Alexander Stuart stretched out his legs. “There’s one. There. A hummingbird in the honeysuckle.”
EARLIER, THOMAS BYRD, Duncan Gatewood, and Alexander Stuart had strolled beside the Jackson River, admiring beneficent nature and determining how closely Stuart’s and Mahone’s interests coincided.
Stuart wondered if a negro candidate for the Virginia Assembly had not come from Stratford Plantation.
“Jesse Burns, yes,” Duncan said.
“A Republican.” When Stuart stopped, the others stopped too. “Will we ever wean the negro from the Republican Party?”
Thomas said, “The Republicans promise them everything ignorant men desire.”
“Jesse Burns reads and writes better than most whites,” Duncan said. “I’ve no evidence colored candidates are less able than their white counterparts, and they may be less corruptible.”
“You would know something about corruptibility,” Thomas snapped.
Duncan smiled, “Nephew, Nephew . . .”
Alexander Stuart stared at the misty mountains without seeing them. “Duncan, didn’t you arrange for Jesse Burns’s employment?”
“Jesse works at the Customs House. ”
“Many believe that those whose bread they provide ought not act against their interests.”
“Mr. Stuart, General Mahone is building a railroad. He will build it under a Republican governor or under a Conservative governor. He will build it under military rule if he must.” Duncan knelt and cupped his hands to drink. “I have always loved this river. Downstream it joins the Cowpasture to form the James. The James is broad and powerful when it passes through Richmond, but the water is murky and no sane man would drink of it.”
JACK MITCHELL, HIS WIFE, and their infant Mim set out for the wedding in a rickety wagon drawn by a mule that wore on its head a broken straw hat Mrs. Mitchell had decorated with white peony blossoms.
Mrs. Mitchell disparaged SunRise Chapel in favor of the African Baptist church they presently attended. “I hates to climb up into that garret,” she said. “Nobody be there no more. Rufus, he gone, Aunt Opal in Richmond, Pompey dead. I despise sittin’ up in that garret thinkin’ ’bout them who is gone.”
Jack clucked at the mule. “Missus, we come to show our respect for Miss Pauline and the Gatewoods. We don’t got to care where they married, here, there, or somewheres else; we shows our respect.”
“What kind of respect they show us, Mister?”
“Master Samuel, he come to our wedding. Miss Abigail, Miss Pauline, Mr. Duncan, Miss Sallie, even Miss Molly—all them Gatewoods come. They give us a teapot.”
“They didn’t stay ten minutes afterwards.”
Jack smiled. “Missus, I don’t believe we stayed ten minutes neither.”
His wife punched his arm and they continued in silence until Mrs. Mitchell refreshed a familiar inquiry: why Billy Hansel, who worked for Jack, drew a dollar a day, same as Jack.
“On account of how we gets to live in our cabin for free and we gets all the mule feed we wants and picks apples and peaches and plums and rhubarb and horseradish whenever we needs some. Billy Hansel’s a white man. You think Mr. Samuel can pay a colored more’n his top white man?”
“I wished we didn’t live in the Quarters no more. It ghosty.”
“I tell Mr. Samuel he should rent them cabins out. If nobody livin’ in them, they be fallin’ down. Think how it’d be, Missus. Be a town of coloreds and you could get a Mammy look after Mim sometimes and Sunday evenings we’d sit on our front porch and rock and folks’d come along to pay their respects.”
Franky sniffed. “Be just like them old slavery days. They’s hirin’ at the Warm Springs Mill. Pay a dollar and a quarter.”
“That’s what they payin’ today. What be payin’ in the wintertime when nobody got no wheat nor corn for to grind? Missus, we stay here
. Might be more money somewheres else, but Stratford our home.”
“Stratford might not be Master Samuel’s no more. That Barnwell come pokin’ ’round askin’ questions: what ’bout this, how ’bout that, just like he’s the Master. I hear Stratford mortgaged to him.”
“Mortgaged”: that dread word froze Jack’s tongue.
“Master Samuel don’t care ’bout nothin’ but drinkin’ since Miss Abigail died. Miss Molly, she keepin’ the books, and you doin’ the mill. What use is Master Samuel anyway?”
“Missus, you got to remember he was a good man once.” The mule picked up its heels as they entered SunRise.
AFTER THEIR NUPTIALS, Eben and Pauline accepted congratulations. Yes, they would reside in New York. Yes, they hoped to visit Stratford frequently. How could they forget their dear Virginia friends? No, Mrs. Mitchell, Manhattan isn’t the Devil’s principal abode, He has lairs everywhere.
Pauline lingered longer than Eben might have wished and her goodbyes were more tearful. Eben meant to be a good husband and had asked a happily married friend, George Nutley, about his spousal duties. Patience, Nutley counseled, was a husband’s gift to matrimony. Eben resolved to be patient.
Eben had a bad moment when their carriage moved off and his weeping bride waved desperately from her window, apparently more in love with what she was losing than the husband she had gained. Eben perched stiffly across the seat, wondering how anyone as unworthy as himself had captured such a prize.
Eben was married and determined on intimacies he longed for but dreaded. What if the Knapp brothers were right and he was nothing; nothing at all? What if Pauline—his wife—learned who he truly was?
Pauline used her handkerchief, wiped her eyes, and patted the seat. “Please do sit nearer, dearest. I need your strength. Whatever was troubling General Mahone? He was so distant and unfriendly. I was so glad Jack and Franky came.” Pauline paused before continuing in the sweetest voice Eben had ever heard. “Dearest husband,” she whispered, “I shall try to be a good wife to you. Will you forgive my mistakes?”
“Oh,” Eben said happily, “I shall love you whatever they may be.”