Queen (99 page)

    "I was most pleased when you asked me to accompany you this evening."

"You are not from these parts?" Digby asked her.

    Queen hardly hesitated for a moment. The evening was flawless, and she

    had learned well from Alice. Mystery, Alice had told her, intrigues a

    man.

"No," she murmured. "My home is-far away-"

    "And your family?" Digby persisted, but still Queen did not fret.

    "A very old family, sir," she told him. "My pappy-" she cursed herself

    inwardly at the slip, smiled at him as if she had let loose a pet name,

    and corrected herself. "My papa was a colonel in the war. He lost an arm.

    "

Digby smiled ruefully and tapped his leg with his cane,

    "You fought in the war?" Queen asked him, to deflect attention from her

    own background.

602 ALEX HALEY'S QUEEN

    "It was my duty and my strong and passionate cause," Digby said softly.

    "Your father is Colonel-T'

    Queen fanned herself with her hankie, and pretended she hadn't heard him.

    "My," she said, "the evening is so warm. I wonder if we might find a cool

    drink somewhere? I declare I am dying of thirst."

    Digby laughed, and offered her his arm. "I cannot have you die, my dear,"

    he said. "I have waited too long to find you."

    They walked away toward the town, and talked of the weather. Digby didn't

    ask about her family again that evening, but spoke of the war, and the

    chaos of the reconstruction of the South. Queen sighed with relief,

    thinking she had got out of a difficult situation rather well.

    She saw him again the next day, and the next. Each evening they went for a

    stroll along the river, and he was never less than a gentleman to Queen.

    She loved his innate good manners and his poetic civility to her, and began

    to believe that this was how her father must have been, as a young man.

    Digby did not push the subject of her family further than Queen thought was

    tolerable. She admitted she came from Alabama, and that her father was

    Colonel Jackson, but she never referred to Florence, and spoke only of "the

    plantation" when talking about her home. She elaborated on her own

    childhood with stories of her half brothers and sisters as though they were

    full siblings, and gradually she came to believe her own stories, because

    they had so much of the truth in them. If Digby's questions became too

    provocative, she would ask him about his own family, and especially his

    mother.

    "She died from grief, I think," Digby said. "My father was killed in the

    war, but she accepted that. She believed it was our duty to fight and, if

    necessary, die for our country. When we lost the war, she lost her cause,

    and passed away grieving for our vanished world."

    The romantic in Queen completely understood, but the survivor in her was

    confused.

    "But she could have lived," she said, thinking of Jass, and Miss Lizzie and

    Miss Sally. "She could have gone on-"

    "In the cesspool that the South has become?" Digby said bitterly. He paused

    for a moment, as if looking for the words to express his deepest feelings.

    QUEEN 603

    "it is against God's law to pretend that the blacks are equal to us," he

    said.

    Queen did not dare turn away, but stared at him as if hypnotized. Her

    mind was crying, screaming. He could not be so cruel.

    "We offended God when we lost the war, and he is visiting a terrible

    judgment on us. Look what is happening to the country now. Imagine what

    it will be like when they start electing niggers to Congress. "

He looked at the twilight sky.

"I hope God is satisfied," he said.

    Queen knew she should say nothing, but she had to say something. She had

    to defend her indefensible position.

    "Do you hate black people so much?" she whispered, and added an

    outrageous variant on the truth. "I was always very fond of our nigras."

    To her surprise, Digby laughed. "I don't hate them; they simply are not

    our equals," he said. "But they are not to blame for what happened. The

    Yankees are to blame. It's the Yankees I hate."

    Queen breathed a small sigh of relief. She knew she was on the thinnest

    of ice, but as long as he didn't actually hate nigras, and as long as he

    never knew the truth about her, they could be happy together. For she

    hoped that they would be together.

Alice was less sanguine.

    "You be very careful," she said. "Sooner or later, he's going to have to

    know the truth."

    They were working in the soup kitchen, preparing food, whispering to each

    other,

"I already told him the truth," Queen said defensively.

    "That your mother was a slave?" Alice asked, in a taunting whisper, and

    Queen had to admit the truth.

    "No, not that part," she said. Why wouldn't Alice leave her alone? Why

    did she have to spoil it? Digby was the most beautiful thing that had

    ever happened to Queen. He had asked her out to the theater on the Fourth

    of July, and Queen had never been to a theater. Everything Digby did was

    new to Queen, and she loved him for it.

604 ALEX HALEY'S QUEEN

    "Oh, I could spank you," Alice said angrily, who had asked George about

    Digby. He knew very little about the man, but enough. "He's a white

    Southern gentleman from a good family, and he was an officer in the

    Confederate Army. How's he going to feel when he discovers he's paying

    court to a nigra?"

    Queen had no answer for her, except her usual, blind response. "if I

    don't tell him, he won't know!"

    Alice pressed her advantage. She wasn't worried that Queen was seeing

    Digby, she was worried that Queen was becoming much too fond of him.

    "Every moment you're with him, you're living a lie, and one day you'll

    slip," she said. Queen looked at her angrily.

    "He's good to me, he looks after me," she retorted. "I feel wonderful

    when I'm with him. For the first time in my life I feel as if a man cares

    about me."

    She looked so lost and lonely and vulnerable, and yet so alive, that

    Alice realized she had a hopeless case of infatuation on her hands. She

    prayed it didn't develop into love, for she remembered her own first love

    and the pain it had bought her, and she didn't want that same pain for

    Queen. But alarm bells were clanging in her head, for Digby was an enigma

    to her, and the unknown frightened Alice.

    "Then let him take care of you, but don't care for him too much. Don't

    let it become love," she said, knowing it was too late. "Love is

    dangerous for women like us."

    Queen, hopelessly, helplessly in love, bridled at the comparison. "I

    ain't like you," she growled, and turned away to serve food to a woman

    in the line. The woman, thin and hungry and rattily dressed, much like

    Queen had been not so very long ago, took her soup and biscuits

    gratefully. She looked around to make sure no one was listening, and

    whispered her awful gratitude.

"Thank you," she said. "Sister."

    It hit Queen like a thunderbolt. The woman scuttled away to eat, and

    Queen stood staring after her. How had she guessed? More important, why

    hadn't Queen known? Was it true? Did you become so secure you got

    careless? All her selfassurance flooded out of her. She turned away, and

    saw the flames in the small stove where the soup was kept hot. The flames

    danced in her mind, jolting her back to a nightmare

    QUEEN 605

chase through a dark forest, and a memory of two black men sitting round

a campfire who had rejected her when she was in such distress. She felt

the hunger she felt then, the need to eat, the need for comfort, the need

for protection and reassurance.

    She did an odd thing. She snatched a biscuit from the pile and stuffed

    it into her pocket.

    She turned away, feeling guilty and afraid, and saw Alice staring at her.

    "What are you doing?" Alice asked in amazement, for Queen had no need to

    filch food.

    "Nuttin'," Queen whispered miserably, slipping into dialect. "Ain't doin'

    nuttin'."

    70

Digby had guessed that Queen bad colored blood almost from the moment he

saw her, for he was a consummate liar himself and lived a fantasy

existence, of his own fabrication. Almost nothing that he told her was

true, although some of it had a basis in fact. His father, still living,

had not fought in the war, but was a moderately successful lawyer in Baton

Rouge, Louisiana, too often distracted by business to pay much attention

to his family. His mother, also still living, doted on her only surviving

son, and spoiled him as a boy, indulging his every whim. Strong, arrogant,

and handy with his fists, Digby had been a bully at school, who delighted

in beating up younger, smaller boys, and seemed to get some perverse

pleasure from it. His preferred victims were the younger sons of the

landed gentry. Digby resented his lowlier station, and despised his father

for not having made more of a fortune.

    Expelled from two schools, he was sent to a military academy, where,

    having,survived the violent initiation ceremonies himself, he became an

    expert at inflicting corporal punishment

606 ALEX HALEY'S QUEEN

on those who came after him. He was not unpopular with certain of his

like-minded peers, for he could present a pleasant face to the world. He

learned to cultivate that poetic melancholy that so entranced Queen,

ingratiated himself with his tutors, and persuaded them that he could not

possibly be guilty of the injuries he was sometimes accused of inflicting.

He did not lose his virginity at the military academy; he inflicted it,

forcefully, on an unwilling slave girl, in the company of two of his

friends. When the girl protested, Digby beat her until she bled, and when it

was his turn to have her, the taste of her blood on his lips, the sound of

her screams in his ears, were precious to him, and infinitely exciting.

    He was asked to leave college after a nasty incident involving another

    slave girl, whom he had beaten nearly to death. Her Massa had protested to

    the dean, and Digby was sent home in disgrace. His father despaired of him,

    but at his mother's urging gave him a job in his own office, as a law

    clerk. It bored Digby, who preferred to spend his time and his salary

    cultivating an image of himself as a gentleman during the day, and in

    taverns and houses of ill repute at night. He was discreet about his

    nocturnal pleasures, put some rein on his propensity for violence, and was

    favorably regarded as a scoundrel boy who had sown his wild oats and had

    rehabilitated himself into an eligible man. Although not welcome in the

    better country houses, he was popular among the small middle class, the

    city folk, and especially those parents seeking a good match for a

    less-attractive daughter.

He told Queen about the first love of his life, but a romantic version of

that ill-fated liaison. The young woman in question had fallen hopelessly in

love with Digby, and they had become engaged. Then the war came.

    "I don't know how or why," Digby said sadly to Queen, "but she changed. Or

    I changed. Who can tell? I knew she wasn't happy with me anymore, so I even

    persuaded her-"

He broke off. Queen was sure she saw a tear in his eye.

    "Forgive me, my sweet love; I shouldn't tell you this," he said in a tone

    of infinite regret. "I even let us become lovers, before marriage, thinking

    that might keep us together, butthere was a captain in the army. She ran

    away with him."

    QUEEN 607

    For a moment it appeared that he could not go on, and Queen touched his

    hand gently.

    "Perhaps she thought him more of a man than I,- Digby said ruefully. He

    indicated his leg.

    "I lost the full use of my leg in the battle of Wilson's Creek. I am not

    a complete man anymore."

    The truth was rather different. Digby and the young woman had become

    engaged, and had become lovers, but against her will. Unable to control

    his lust, obsessed with finding out what female blood looked like on

    white skin rather than black, Digby had raped his fianc6e, and beaten her

    violently. She told no one of her disgrace until she became pregnant and

    tried to kill herself. In the ensuing scandal, her brothers broke Digby's

    leg with an iron bar. They would have killed him but for their sister's

    hysterical intervention, and they contented themselves with twisting the

    fractured leg, to make it difficult to mend. Laudanum became his only

    comfort. Digby's father gave him a sum of money and promised a weekly