Darkwater (8 page)

CHAPTER NINE

Helen had made plans to go into the town of Durieville and she suggested that Jennifer come with her.

“We'll both go, in the trap,” Helen said, made gay by the idea of an outing. “I have several things I want to shop for and it will give you an opportunity to look over the town. Not that there's so much to see, but still....”

“All right,” Jennifer said, pleased at a chance to take a vacation from Darkwater. Already it seemed as if she had been here a long time, and she thought vaguely that perhaps away from the house, and from Walter, things might seem a little clearer to her.

It was a fine day for a drive. When Jennifer had made this trip before, the night Walter picked her up at the station, it had been pouring rain and she had seen little but water. Now she could see that it was a lovely drive. The bayous, dark and mysterious, stretched from the side of the road into the distance, with the flash of colors from the many flowers, the calls of exotic birds, and the warm breeze that ruffled her hair.

Helen was a fine driver, handling the horses with the easy skill of long familiarity. She was good company too, chatting about people in the neighborhood and myriad trivial matters. She barely touched upon any of the problems at Darkwater—Alicia's illness, Walter's preoccupation (could she know the cause of it, Jennifer wondered for a brief, awful moment?) or Liza's unwelcome presence. She kept her conversation instead to less personal matters. By the time they had reached the town of Durieville, Jennifer too had all but forgotten Darkwater's problems and the unpleasant beginning to her morning.

Durieville was a plantation town. It was there to serve the needs of the nearby plantation owners, and had really no other reason to exist, but it was a pretty little town, seen in the golden light of this early summer afternoon.

This bayou part of Louisiana—or Lusianne, as the natives called it—was all marsh and woods and greenery, with spots of open water, lakes and streams, looking like they had been punched out of the green in random pattern. The water lay deep and gleaming, with the greenery pushed right up to its edges. There was some land, most of it flat but with a few gently rolling hills, where the forests had been cut away and only a low brush grew.

And of course there were the swamps, choked with reeds and cattails and marsh grass, so that you could not say for sure where the land ended and the water began.

Durieville lay as if some giant hand had held a fistful of buildings and thrown them to the ground in a haphazard pattern. They lay drawn together as they might have done if magnetized, the biggest toward the center in thick clusters and the smaller buildings scattered sparsely outward. There were none of the neat squares and corners to be found in cities planned by men.

Entering down the road from the bayou, one drifted between green banks for a mile or more before, coming down a gentle incline, one began to see the buildings that lay thin at the edge of town.

At the foot of this incline the road, straight until now, twisted around the white-painted Baptist Church, which sat directly in its path. Past the church, the road went straight a bit more before turning again, this time around the train station. This was as much as Jennifer had seen her first night here.

Beyond the station was the town hall, a neo-classic building that looked pretentious for such an unimportant town. It was shaded with magnolia trees and a big oak dripping with moss. The road passed the schoolhouse, where the town's poorer children had their lessons. It was a ramshackle looking wooden building in need of paint, with no playground but a dirt yard in the back. The Deres, of course, did not send their children to the school and if they had, the children in attendance would have been shocked.

Past the school lay the town's “business district,” a short street of storefronts where the local people did what shopping they had to do between trips to Shreveport or New Orleans, where they made their major purchases.

“What a pretty little town,” Jennifer said when Helen had parked the trap along the main street.

“Do you think so?” Helen said, faintly surprised. She glanced along the street as if seeing it for the first time. “I suppose it is. One gets used to seeing it. Like the face of someone you know well. It is too familiar to know if it is handsome or not.”

Jennifer thought, I would always know that Walter was handsome, but she pushed that thought roughly from her mind and looked again along the way they had come. Traveling through the South, on her way here, she had gotten used to seeing towns that had been desolated and were not yet rebuilt. Some of them would never be rebuilt. It seemed there was hardly a town without some buildings in ruins, blackened boards and broken windows testifying to the slow end of the war.

Here, though, there was no sign of war, nothing to indicate that a nation had been at death grips with itself a few years before. There was only the quaintly twisting main street running under thick lush trees, the coziness and the charm, the rich green and the warm, scented breeze from the bayou.

“I want to look for some material from the Emporium,” Helen said, lifting her skirts above the dust of the street. “And there are some things we need for the kitchen. I'll get them at the general store. Do you want to walk along with me or do you have some errands of your own?”

Jennifer hesitated for a moment. Something had occurred to her earlier, although this was the first opportunity she'd had to act upon it.

“As a matter of fact there is something I want to do,” she said. “I wonder if you could tell me where to find the doctor?”

“Doctor Goodman? Why, his office is just over there, you can see it from here, with the shingle hanging above the door. But there isn't anything wrong, is there?” She looked suddenly so concerned that Jennifer hastened to put her mind at rest.

“No, nothing at all is wrong with me, I'm fine, really I am,” she said, laying a gloved hand on Helen's arm. “It's only that, so long as I am acting as a nurse to Alicia, I thought I might talk to him about her condition. Perhaps he can give me some suggestions for caring for her.”

“I see. Of course.” Helen looked so unconvinced, however, that Jennifer felt constrained to add a further remark.

“I often consulted with the doctor over my mother's condition.”

“There's no need for you to trouble yourself, really. I've talked to Doctor Goodman often about Alicia. But if it will make you feel better, by all means drop in on him. You will find him a bit absentminded in some ways, but quite competent. Ask him if he will join us for dinner tomorrow evening.”

Helen left her then, after again ascertaining that Jennifer knew which of the stores she would be in. Jennifer made her own way across the street, smiling at a group of children playing in the street, who stared wide-eyed at her as she passed. She guessed that the Deres were objects of awe here in Durieville, and that made her an object of no small curiosity herself.

She had scarcely banged the knocker on the door of the doctor's house before the door was yanked open. The inside was so dark in contrast to the harsh glare outside that for a moment Jennifer could not see in.

“Yes, what is it?” a gruff voice asked.

When Jennifer eyes had adjusted to the light, she was surprised to see that the voice belonged to a woman and not as she had initially supposed, to a man.

“I'd like to see Doctor Goodman,” she said.

“He's busy.”

Jennifer thought that the woman would have slammed the door in her face had she not quickly said, “I am Miss Hale, from Darkwater. I would like to talk to him about Mrs. Dere, if I may. When he has a moment, of course. I don't wish to intrude.”

The hand on the door paused. The woman said, after a moment, “You may come in, but I don't know when he will be able to see you. He is busy.”

When she had come into the hall and blinked her eyes once or twice, Jennifer could see that the housekeeper (for that she surely was, her white apron and cap marked her as a servant) more clearly. She was middle-aged and when she walked it was with a strange, rocking tread that made the floorboards creak.

“Wait here,” she commanded, indicating a plain wooden chair that sat in the hallway. “I will see if the doctor has time to see you.”

Her manner and tone made it plain that she resented having been forced to do so by virtue of Jennifer's use of the name Dere, and Darkwater. The housekeeper would not have dared to refuse her admittance, knowing that she came from there, but she did not like being challenged.

A very thin and obviously frightened maid suddenly appeared along the hall. She was hardly more than twelve or thirteen, without a curve to her spare body and she cringed in a habitual manner.

The housekeeper saw a fit object for her anger and she roared, “Nelly where were you when the knocker was banging? What you want is a good whipping again and I'll see that you get it good, you hear?”

“Yes'm,” Nelly said, stepping aside and cowering, but her humble attitude and bent head did not prevent her receiving a resounding slap. The girl did not lift her eyes although she whimpered faintly.

Jennifer made note of the girl's pale complexion and her obvious fear, and she thought, if Walter sends Liza into servitude, that is what she will suffer. No, I cannot blame him for refusing to do that.

The housekeeper disappeared through a door. At once the frightened little maid scurried away and was gone from sight as well.

It was a shock to see such behavior and yet Jennifer knew it was not so unusual. So many girls had been driven into servitude since the war, and she was well aware that many of them were treated as badly as the unfortunate Nelly. Some of them, indeed, were treated far worse.

It might be that Liza, if she were sent out to work, would fare better. Beyond question there were many good families in the South, families who treated their servants with affection and gentleness, but there was always the other possibility too.

Liza was no meek lamb, either, like Nelly. Liza was proud and willful. Jennifer knew that first hand. What might Liza suffer if she found herself in confrontation with a cruel overseer?

The housekeeper returned, moving along the hall in her curiously heavy way. “The doctor will see you,” she said, obviously unhappy to deliver the news. “Come with me.”

Jennifer followed her. She found herself in a waiting room, painted a pristine white and as neat as a pin. Several chairs and a settee had been placed around the room and Jennifer seated herself in one of the chairs.

She hadn't long to wait. In a moment, an inner door opened and a man in a white smock appeared.

“Miss Hale?” he greeted her. “I am Doctor Goodman. My housekeeper said you wanted to see me. Won't you come in, please?”

He led her into his examining room. Jennifer's first impression of the doctor was favorable. He looked kindly and rather old-fashioned. His thatch of white hair refused to be combed, but stuck out impertinently on all sides. Spectacles hung at a precarious angle on the top of his nose, and behind them his eyes twinkled with a jollity that belied his serious expression and scientific profession.

“Now then,” he said when Jennifer had seated herself in the chair he indicated, “what seems to be the matter?”

“With me, nothing,” she said, smiling. “I've come to you about Mrs. Dere. Mrs. Alicia Dere, that is. I understand she is a patient of yours.”

“Yes, that she is. And you are the new companion. We've heard of you here in town.” His twinkling eyes told her that she had been the object of much gossip and speculation since her arrival.

“I suppose newcomers are not so common here,” she said. “And no doubt anything to do with the Deres is of utmost interest.”

“Exactly,” he said, bobbing his head to acknowledge that they did indeed understand one another. “But, about Mrs. Dere...?”

“I thought perhaps you could tell me a little about her condition.” She saw his frown and quickly added, “I appreciate the doctor-patient relationship, of course. But I am meant to be her nurse as well as her companion, and I need to know a little more about what is wrong with her.”

The doctor hesitated for a moment. Then, as if he had reached a decision, he said abruptly, “Nothing.”

The brevity of his reply so startled her that she said, “I beg your pardon.”

“Nothing is wrong with Mrs. Dere,” he said, seating himself on the opposite side of his desk from her. “That is to say, nothing medical. I have examined her again and again and I can find nothing at all wrong with the woman.”

“I rather thought as much myself. I had the impression she was malingering. And yet....”

He nodded his head in understanding. “Yes, there is that ‘and yet,' isn't there? There is no doubt that she feels poorly. She could not be pretending all of that.”

“Frankly, there have been times when I thought surely her physical pain must be real. She suffers so with it.”

“The mind is a powerful thing.”

“Yes, that is true.” Jennifer paused, thinking. “Don't you think that some fresh air and sunshine, and maybe a little exercise...?”

“They would do no harm, and probably some good. If you could get her to agree to them. But there is more to it than that, I'm sure of it. She is tragically unhappy, and I believe it is this that is making her ill.”

He looked for a moment as if he were going to venture his opinion as to the cause of this unhappiness, but at the last minute he thought better of it. She was, after all, only a paid servant of the Deres and he their physician, and they could hardly begin to gossip about the Dere's personal business.

Jennifer stood up. “Then there is nothing you can advise me to do so far as the care of Mrs. Dere?”

“Try to keep her calm and avoid the sort of excitement that brings on her spells. And it might not be a bad idea to pursue your notion of getting her outside a little bit each day. But I wouldn't insist on it if she doesn't feel so inclined. Most of all, I think she wants babying. Perhaps if her husband spent a little time with her, it would cheer her up somewhat....” He let his voice trail off. That was as far as he dared venture into that subject.