Darkwater (3 page)

Miss Alicia was something else. She was not a Dere except in that she had married Mr. Walter. “More's the pity,” Bess would say often. It was plain to Bess that there was a war going on right here in this house, between the Deres, especially Walter and his wife, Alicia. That woman was trying to break that man, and she was winning, wearing down his spirit, trying his temper and his patience.

Lord knows, he had been patient enough with her moanings and cryings and screamings. Bess didn't see how he had kept his head for so long, but he was changing. He, who had once been so happy and smiling all the time, and never worried about a thing, not even in the worst of the war, and he hardly smiled at all now, or if he did, it was so tinged with sorrow and tiredness that he looked like a different man.

And where will it all end, she asked herself silently, tasting the stew in her pot? A house divided against itself cannot stand. That was what Mr. Lincoln had said and it was true. She had seen the omens herself, even if Miss Helen ordered her not to practice the arts anymore. Something was going to happen here, something bad, and it was coming soon, she was as sure of it as sure could be.

“It'll be her that brings trouble on the house, too,” Bess told herself grimly. “With all her mysterious aches and pains and the doctor can't find anything wrong with her except she's spoiled and a Longstreet, and they always thought they was too good for anybody. And she can't stand to think anybody else is happy or having any pleasantness.”

For a fleeting moment Bess's thoughts left that subject and went to the visitor. Well, of course, there was going to be trouble there. Miss Alicia was never going to put up with having someone young and pretty like that around the house.

“Lord knows, and she knows it too, Mr. Walter isn't getting any loving from the woman he's married to,” she said, muttering to herself. “And a pretty face like that could turn a man's head easy enough.”

The door opened noiselessly and Liza slipped into the room, moving quietly, the way she always did.
Like a rat
, Bess thought.

“And you are another one, always bringing trouble,” Bess said aloud, eyeing her darkly and with no welcome. “What you been up to in Miss Alicia's room, making her holler? You take her a snake or what?”

“I didn't do anything,” Liza said, running her fingers along the edge of the table and casting hungry glances around the kitchen for something to eat. “I went to visit her, and I just happened to tell her about the pretty lady that came in with Walter, and she started hitting the pillow with her fists and screaming.”

Bess chuckled at the picture, for although she considered Liza odd and a nuisance, that feeling paled to nothingness beside her dislike for Alicia.

She quickly recovered herself and assumed a stern expression. “You go on now, get out of here,” she said, “and don't be piecing before dinner.”

“I'm hungry. I want something to eat,” Liza said, undaunted by what she called the black woman's “airs.” “You can't stop me from getting something to eat.”

Bess's eyes flashed angrily and she shook a long wooden spoon in the girl's direction. “Go on, git, or I'll tell Mr. Walter.”

The girl's own eyes grew menacing, but she said defiantly, “He doesn't care about my coming into the kitchen. You can't scare me away.”

Bess leaned toward her until their faces were only inches apart and they stared eye-to-eye at one another. Bess said, in a voice so low it was almost a whisper, “I'll tell him about the time last week when you put that spider in Miss Alicia's tea and you didn't think I was watching you do it.”

Lisa's face paled and her jaw dropped open a little. For a moment she held her ground but Bess's wide grin undid her and with an angry toss of her head, she whirled about and ran toward the door.

Bess chuckled to herself. In fact, she had not seen Liza do that, but when the spider had showed up in Miss Alicia's tea, she'd had a good idea right away how it had gotten there.

At the door to the outside, Liza turned back long enough to say, in a menacing voice, “You damn nigger.” But she ran out, letting the door slam, before Bess had time to retaliate.

CHAPTER THREE

By the time she came down to dinner, Jennifer had restored both her usual neat appearance and her self-confidence. She would somehow convince the Deres to let her stay on here as the nurse-companion that the young Mrs. Dere was said to need. She would because she must. And she had learned over the past few years that desperation often made it possible to do the impossible. What a person made up her mind she must do, accepting no possibility of failure, then it was done.

Helen Dere awaited her in the parlor. Although it was summer, a small fire had been lit to fight the damp chill of the storm. The look Helen gave her guest seemed balanced somewhere between instinctive approval and reasoned misgiving.

“My, you look pretty,” she said with sincerity but with a touch of regret, too. It was certainly true. Before, wet with rain and tired from her travel, this young woman had still looked pretty, but now, her hair neatly tied back, her face glowing without benefit of rouge, she looked lovelier still. She wore a gown of pearl gray silk and although it was plainly not new and was well worn, it was a Worth, and still stunning. The absence of jewelry or adornment of any kind only enhanced the effect of old elegance.

“Thank you,” Jennifer replied, glad that she had decided to wear this, the last “good” dress she had left. Tonight of all nights she must be at her best. “I'm afraid I must have looked dreadful when you saw me earlier. I'm sure you must have been disappointed at first sight.”

“On the contrary, your appearance was rather more than I expected. Shall we go in to dinner? I should perhaps have explained, we dine rather informally at Darkwater. Since the war, there have been fewer servants and everyone works much more than before.”

“I understand,” Jennifer said. “We too went through the war. We lost...everything.”

With a flash of insight Helen realized that the young woman walking beside her had lost far more than what they here at Darkwater had lost, and it made her more sympathetic to Jennifer's plight. Still, there was always the problem of Alicia....

“Of course we were so much more fortunate than most,” Helen said lamely. She knew so many had lost, as Jennifer had said, everything. Families, once proud, aristocratic, wealthy, had been reduced to living in abject poverty, on the tenuous charity of friends. Even a decade and a half after the war the South lay ravaged, and most of the wealth was in the hands of the Northerners who had descended upon the fallen Confederacy like swarms of locusts. Every night when she said her prayers, she thanked God that the Deres, had come through it so well, in large part thanks to her husband's business foresight.

“You have your home,” Jennifer said simply. “That is fortunate. What a pleasant room.”

The dining room was large and homey, dominated by a long table set informally. The dishes were mismatched and some of them chipped. Another couple was already seated at the table, with them three children: a boy about five, a girl who was obviously his sister and appeared to be about eight, and another girl who was older, probably fourteen, Jennifer guessed, but who looked not at all like the other two.

The adults stood as the two women came into the room, and Helen introduced them. “This is our guest, Miss Jennifer Hale, This is Susan Donally, my daughter, and her husband, Martin. They live in the cottage just behind Darkwater but they usually take their meals with us. We are somewhat isolated here, so we take comfort in one another's company.”

“You're fortunate it's so quiet tonight,” Susan said. She had a big, open smile and she made no effort to conceal her curiosity regarding their visitor. She was perhaps twenty, and Jennifer recognized her as typical of the generation that had grown up since the war, without the old forms of courtesy and rigid formality. “Anyone who happens to be passing by about this time stops in for dinner—people from town, neighbors, relatives, even traveling salesmen.”

“Hospitality is a tradition here,” Helen said.

“We're friendly folk, that's for certain,” Martin Donally said. “Comes from being stuck out here in the back country.”

“That fact also saved us from the fate that befell most of the South,” Helen said.

Like his wife, Martin was friendly and blatantly curious. They seemed to Jennifer surprisingly inelegant for this family. Despite a certain roughness, Walter Dere had the unmistakable stamp of class and his mother was obviously aristocratic, but Martin and Susan were like simple country people—cheerful, rough and unpolished.

“And the children?” Jennifer asked, indicating the three at the table who had been staring openly at her. “Surely they can't be yours.”

Susan gave an embarrassed little laugh and said, “Heavens, no, those are Walter's children.”

“That is to say,” Helen corrected her quickly, “the two young ones are Walter's. This is Peter, and Mary. And this is Liza.”

Jennifer noted that no one tried to explain whose child Liza was. She wondered if she should ask and decided not. The omission had been deliberate. An awkward little pause followed, which might have lengthened into an embarrassment had not Walter himself come into the dining room just then.

He had not taken time to change his clothes. His suit still hung damply about him and he had the look of a harried man. Despite this, though, Jennifer could not help remarking to herself what an attractive man he was.

In truth, at first glance, one might not necessarily think Walter Dere so attractive. He was ruggedly built, and his big powerful body lacked the sort of slim elegance that one expected in a Southern gentleman, but when he moved, he moved with surprising grace, quick and catlike, and with no wasted motion. His face was not conventionally handsome, either, the features were too florid. He had piercing eyes and thick dark hair, which the rain had made curly and which spilled over his forehead in wayward fashion. His nose was rather prominent, his lips thick nearly to the verge of grossness, and his chin square.

He had an extraordinary magnetism, however, and an aura of strength that appealed at once to a woman. When he smiled, his mouth lost some of its cruel sensuality and his eyes softened. His voice was low and gentle and vaguely musical sounding. He was completely manly, without being crude, polished without being effeminate, the sort of man other men liked and to whom women were attracted, and it was perhaps his most endearing quality that he remained quite unaware of the impression he made on others.

Now, he paused inside the dining room and said, without preamble, “Alicia is joining us.”

A little shock wave of surprise rippled about the table. Helen was the first to recover and when she spoke, it was not to him but to the three youngsters.

“Come along then, children,” she said, “You will eat in the kitchen. Hurry, now.”

Without argument, as if they were glad to go, the three children jumped up, helping her to clear their places, and in a moment they were gone into the kitchen. Susan sprang into action, rearranging the places that remained, so that in hardly more than the blinking of an eye, it was as if the children had never been there and the table had always been set for six adults.

Alicia is their mother, Jennifer thought, amazed that it should be necessary to spirit the children away. They were, after all, quiet and well-mannered and should not have been expected to disturb their mother, even if she were ill. Or was it merely the sight of them that disturbed her, so that they had to be removed from sight whenever she came around?

Helen came back from the kitchen, where she had set the children at a wooden table there. And not a moment too soon, Jennifer reflected, for a moment later there was a sound in the hall and a gentle cough as someone approached the dining room.

Walter went into the hall and Jennifer heard him say, “Why didn't you call me? I'd have come and helped you.”

“And have everyone laugh about how helpless I am?” A woman's voice, high and reedy, said. “No, thank you, I'm not quite dead yet. More's your regret, I suppose.”

“Alicia,” Walter said in a tone of gentle reproach.

They came into the dining room and it seemed to Jennifer that not only conversation but the passage of time itself was suspended for a moment or two. She saw the woman's eyes, dark and glittering like those of a hawk, sweep the room until they found and fastened on her.

No doubt Alicia Dere had been pretty at one time, and she had still a trace of hard beauty about her, but she was thin now to the point of gauntness and her features stood out sharp and harsh, so that she seemed to be without curves and all angles. Black shadows under her eyes suggested insomnia to Jennifer. She looked nearly as old as Walter's mother.

“Well, hello,” Alicia greeted Jennifer with a bright smile that was so artificial it was ghastly. “And you are Walter's friend, the young woman he brought back from town with him.”

“I am Jennifer Hale,” Jennifer replied, careful not to show that she had found the description offensive. “I came about the job.”

“About the job?” Alicia feigned surprise. “But that is quite ridiculous. They were sending an older woman. That's what they promised us. I insisted on an older woman.”

Before Jennifer could speak, Walter said, “The agency made a mistake, but it was too late for Miss Hale to return tonight. She is spending the evening and will be leaving in the morning. We could hardly allow her to spend the night in the station.”

“No, of course not,” Alicia murmured.

Jennifer felt disappointment rising like gall in her throat. She swallowed hard. It would be all the more difficult to press her case after so definite a statement on Mr. Dere's part, and particularly in view of Mrs. Dere's obvious resentment of her. She must think of something to do or say—but what?

“Shall we sit down?” Helen said, stepping into the breach.

They took their places about the table. Jennifer noted that Helen, and not Walter, sat at the head of the table. Walter sat beside his wife, even pulling his chair closer to hers. As the meal began, with the food brought in by a vast colored woman who eyed Jennifer with blunt curiosity, Walter began to spoon feed his wife as if she were a baby. To Jennifer's further amazement, the others apparently took this for granted.

“Come on, now, try a little of this,” Walter coaxed, holding a spoon to Alicia's lips. She made him wait for a few seconds before she parted her lips and reluctantly accepted a morsel of food.

“Everyone knows that I don't care for yams,” she said, rudely spitting the food back out.

“What would you like, then?” Walter asked patiently.

“I would like some of that gooseberry jelly,” she said, pointing at a green tinted jar in the center of the table. “And a biscuit.”

Susan Donally made an effort to start conversation. “You look very young to be out on your own,” she said, looking down the table at Jennifer. “Don't your parents worry about you?”

Jennifer lowered her eyes and said softly, “My parents are dead. My father was killed in the war, fighting for the Confederacy. My mother had been ill for some time and the shock was too great for her. She took to her bed and never really left it.”

“I am sorry,” Susan said, but she looked not at all sorry to have satisfied her curiosity.

Helen said, “That is where you got your nursing experience, then?”

“Yes, although I was trained to be a teacher, and I worked at that job until the last two years, when my mother's health deteriorated to the point where I had no choice but to be with her constantly.”

“A teacher?” Susan said. “That's interesting. The children here at Darkwater could certainly use a teacher. Their education has been pretty haphazard.”

Martin, her husband, who had been eating with gusto, said, “I suppose you taught girl children.”

“Why, yes, I did. I taught at a private school for girls. But why do you say so?”

“Well,” he said, grinning, “I know what boys are like. A little slip of a thing like you would have a hard time keeping a bunch of rowdy boys in line, I would say.”

Jennifer had no intention of being dragged into an argument with a man of his frame of mind, which was, she was certain, that woman was inadequate for any job outside the home. She wondered what he would think if he knew she was in sympathy with the Reverend Henry Ward Beecher and the American Woman Suffrage Association.

Martin was going on and on about the difficulties of managing boys. Jennifer let her glance move around the table.

Walter's wife puzzled her. This was the invalid, and she'd had experience with invalids who were really sick. Alicia was indeed very thin and her color was terrible, a gray, claylike pallor, but she did not look sick. Certainly she had a voracious appetite, for although she still insisted that Walter spoon feed her, and picked and chose what she wanted, she was managing nonetheless to put away a healthy quantity of food.

While Jennifer was studying the so-called invalid, Alicia, as if Jennifer's thoughts had intruded upon her own, suddenly looked in Jennifer's direction. She stared directly at Jennifer and the incident sent a cold chill up Jennifer's spine. This was a woman capable of extreme malice, Jennifer thought as she lowered her eyes to her plate.

“No,” Martin was concluding some lengthy monologue, “I think teaching is still a man's field. Excepting, perhaps, teaching in a girl's school. And a woman's place is in the home.”

Jennifer turned her luminous eyes on him and said frankly, “But that presupposes that only boys cause trouble, and that girls do not, but that is simply not the truth. Boys make a great to-do, but girls can be subtle and it sometimes takes wit to see what they are about.”

Alicia pushed aside the spoon Walter had raised to her lips, and she seemed on the verge of saying something, but Jennifer did not notice her and went on.

“The truth is, force alone is not the answer. A teacher must earn the student's respect, or punishment won't have any effect. But I should add, if corporal punishment is called for, I think myself capable of administering it.”