“Are you sure there’s no mistake in your figures?” I asked.
He looked up. “Will you sit down?” he said, gesturing to a chair. I was so surprised by his civil tone that I did as he asked, and busied myself arranging my skirts until he should be moved to reveal the motive of his summons.
“Three of Joel Borden’s negroes ran away on Sunday,” he began. “Last night one of them broke into Duplantier’s smokehouse. The houseboy saw him and raised the alarm, but they didn’t catch him. Duplantier says he was carrying a pistol, though where he got it no one knows. Borden isn’t missing any firearms.”
“I see,” I said.
“So they’re coming this way.”
“Yes,” I agreed.
“They’ll probably try to pass through the bottomland and get to the boat landing. I’m joining the patrol at dark. I’ve got two sentries I can trust here; they’ll be moving around all night. I’ll lock the house and put the dogs in the kitchen.”
“Delphine is afraid of the dogs.”
“Well, she’ll just have to be afraid,” he said impatiently. “She’ll be a heap more scared if one of these bucks comes through the window with a pistol.”
“That’s true,” I said.
“I want you and Sarah to stay in your room, lock the door, and don’t come out for anything until I come back.”
I kept my eyes down. “Wouldn’t it be better for Sarah to stay in the kitchen with Delphine?”
“Don’t worry about Delphine. She’ll have Walter and Rose with her.”
Walter is a mad child and Rose a flighty girl. Neither would be of much use in a crisis. “And Sarah will be safer with me,” I observed.
“You’ll be safer together,” he corrected me, scowling at my impertinence, then neatly changing the subject. “It’s all Borden’s fault. He doesn’t half-feed his negroes and his overseer is the meanest man on earth. The ham they got from Duplantier was probably the first decent food they’d had in a year.”
“Is Joel here or in town?”
“He came up quick enough when he heard about it. Now he’s grumbling that he’ll be out two thousand dollars if we kill them. Not one man on the patrol is going to risk his life to save one of these damned runaways. If we can find them, they’ll be better off dead than dragged back to Borden’s overseer, and I’ve no doubt they know it.”
“Then they must be desperate.”
He gave me a long look, trying to detect any mockery in this remark. Evidently he found none and his inspection shifted from my mood to my person, where he found cause for a suspicion of extravagance. “Is that a new dress?” he asked.
“No,” I replied. “I retrimmed it with some lace Aunt Lelia sent.”
His eyes swept over my figure in that rapacious way I find so unsettling. “You’ve changed the neck.”
He couldn’t be dismissed as an unobservant man. “Yes,” I said. “The styles have changed.”
“I wonder how you know when you have so little society.”
“I copied it from a paper my aunt sent with the lace.”
“It’s very becoming,” he said.
There was a time when I was moved by compliments, but that time is long behind us, as we both know. Still he manages to work up some feeling about what he imagines is my ingratitude. “I’m sorry to vex you by remarking on your appearance, Manon,” he said. “You are free to leave, if you’ve no business of your own to discuss with me.”
I stood up. What business might that be? I wondered. Perhaps he’d care to have a look at my accounts: on one side my grievances, on the other my resolutions, all in perfect balance. I allowed my eyes to rest upon his face. He brought his hand to his mustache, smoothing down one side of it, a nervous habit of his. It’s always the right side, never the left. Looking at him makes my spine stiffen; I could feel the straightness of it, the elongation of my neck as I turned away. There was the rustling sound of my skirt sweeping against the carpet as I left the room, terminating thereby another lively interview with my husband.
MY MOTHER ALWAYS slept with a servant in the room, a practice I disdain in my own house. I had Sarah bring up a pallet and put it next to her baby’s box. At first I thought I would place the screen so that I wouldn’t have to see her sleeping, then I decided to block off an area for the chamber pot, as I was even less inclined to witness her at that activity. “I hope you don’t snore,” I said, as she was struggling with the screen.
It was hot in the room and I was vexed by the stupid business, the unnecessary panic, the stamping and bellowing of the men who had already descended upon our dining room, where they were displaying their rifles to each other and gulping down his best whiskey. Their voices washed in under the door, droning and raucous by turns. There was much bandying about of Joel Borden’s name. They consider him a fop and a dandy, too interested in the next gala party to attend to his own crops. He is in the city more than at his own house, and the result is that his negroes are loose in the countryside.