Property(16)

“Then I won’t go down. Just bring me bread and coffee and a little Creole cheese.”

“Yes, missus,” she said again and went out.

I fell back among the pillows and closed my eyes against the racket of my thoughts. Through it, I could hear the same scratching in the wall I noticed last night: a mouse or squirrel doing no end of damage. Good, I thought. Eat a little every day until it all falls down around our ears. I heard Sarah on the stairs and roused myself. I was washing my face at the stand when she came in with the tray. “Is the mill burned to the ground?” I asked, bathing my face with my hands.

She put the tray on the side table and stood with her back to me. “I don’ know,” she said.

I patted my face with the hand towel, studying her back. Did she know I saw her last night, leaving his room? “I hate it when you pretend to be stupid,” I said.

This appealed to her vanity, which is immense. “They put it out,” she said. “Only the roof was half-burned and the rest fell in from the water.”

“Too bad,” I said, leaving her to guess if I’d hoped for more or less of our ruin.

I sat at the dressing table, touching the dark circles beneath my eyes while she poured out the coffee and brought it to me. As she leaned across me to place the brimming cup in the only space clear of bottles or pins, her reflection obscured my own. Her eyes were lowered, her hand steady, a single line of concentration on her brow all that gave evidence of any feeling about what she was doing. A very different look from the one I’d seen in the night as she rushed from my husband’s bedroom. A flood of anger rose in me, right up to my throat, so that I gasped for air. In panic, I raised my hand, and as I did I knocked her arm. The cup tipped out of the saucer, splattering coffee across the dresser. I leaped away to keep it from running onto my gown. “Why are you so clumsy?” I exclaimed. Sarah grabbed the hand towel and began mopping up the mess. I went to the window. It was already hot; the sky was the color of lead. “I can’t stand much more,” I said.



ACCORDING TO MY husband, the conflagration at the mill only proves that he is a flawless manager, far more intelligent and efficient than my father, who might be alive today if he’d had the benefit of his son-in-law’s advice.

The fire was started by a man who had been whipped for being too slow in the field. He told two of his fellows of his plan and they informed Cato, the driver, who made it his business to know at every moment the whereabouts of the malcontent. Late last night, when Cato learned the plotter had not been seen in the quarter since supper, he followed the procedure my husband had given him. He ran to Mr. Sutter’s house and bid him come to the mill at once. He then dispatched two men to alert my husband and another to ring the bell, summoning all hands to the scene. The culprit had managed to pull a few bales of hay inside the mill, douse them with kerosene and light the blaze, but as he came out the door Mr. Sutter ran up with his rifle and shot him. He is now in shackles awaiting justice. The bucket line, swiftly organized, proceeded to extinguish the flames. The roof was not a great loss, my husband maintains, as it had needed repairs. Indeed, the lumber is already cut.

“Then everything is as it should be,” I observed.

“I wish that were true,” he said, with a glance at Sarah that meant he could not convey some news of great import before a witness. This irritated me. “Come to my office when you have finished eating,” he said seriously. “I must speak to you in private.”

“As you wish,” I said. When he was gone, I dawdled over my coffee. Sarah cleared his place and went out, leaving me alone. The room was quiet, but not for long. No sooner had I taken a deep breath than I blew it out in a huff at the grotesque babbling and clatter just beyond the doors. It was Walter, set loose on the lawn. There is never a moment’s peace in this house, I thought. Then I got up and went to hear my husband’s report from the outside world.

As soon as I was inside his office, he bade me close the door. He was in an agitated state, unable to sit down. He insisted that I be seated as I would not be able to stand before the ghastly news he had to relate. I was weary from lack of sleep and in no mood for his self-important fantasies, but there was something odd about him, something new that interested me. Of course he looked haggard; he’d spent the night fighting the fire and the morning on horseback, but it wasn’t fatigue that had put such hectic color in his cheeks and a queer darting light in his eye. I took my chair willingly enough and gave my attention to his story.

Near dawn, when he was returning to the house, having extinguished the fire and much relieved that it had not altered his fortunes, a boy he recognized as belonging to his brother Charles rode up with an urgent summons. He was entreated to come at once to Charles’s plantation, Chatterly, and to bring Dr. Landry if he was still on our property. My husband and the doctor rode out together, arriving in time to find the family at breakfast, but an anxious and hurried meal it was. Maybelle, my sister-in-law, was prostrate from terror and exhaustion, their daughters were packing to leave for the safety of New Orleans; their son, Edmund, a boy of fifteen, had persuaded his father to let him stay.