CHAPTER 8
Spring’s mantle of fragile green turned heavy as the early heat rolled out across the land. Any shade was welcome. On the porch, Will leaned back on two legs of a cane-bottom chair. The green check of Emily’s skirt whispered as she settled into the swing beside Charles.
“I’m going courting,” Will said. “Lucinda Morris from Winona.”
William had met Lucinda through a law school friend who fancied himself a matchmaker. Their father had been introduced to her and approved in relief. She was a few years older than Will, tall, well-bred, and handsome enough, yet so withdrawn that she said little and rarely looked anyone in the eye. She had the reputation, however, as an adept mistress of a small farm, efficient in the management of her property and slaves. Lucinda’s reticence fit Will’s restraint, and so he thought that, though it would not be a love match, they might make a harmonious and productive life. He had made two visits to Winona and arrangements for a third.
* * *
Meanwhile Belinda arranged to come home. On a Saturday in the oppressive heat of mid-June, she boarded the train and found her seat. Her legs and back wet with perspiration, she fidgeted throughout the trip. When at last the train slowed, Belinda stood, fanning her face with a limp handkerchief. Gripping the unpolished brass rails, she edged her way toward the car door. The depot appeared and with it Hammond’s glad face. Belinda’s stomach churned from the lurching train and from her dread of coming home.
“Belinda, you’re here. Was school a chore?” Hammond said, even as she descended. “Or did you love the learning? I think I would if I could go to school. Love it, that is. But now you’re home and I’m so glad.”
Belinda touched his ruddy, clean-shaven cheek. He was more handsome even than Charles, his whole demeanor bringing with it the solid quality of earth. Hammond managed her trunk onto the buckboard, helped her up, and took the reins. He was unnerved by her pallor, her uncharacteristic solemnity, and the looseness with which her dress hung on her.
At home, Belinda studied the modest house, whitewashed frame with a one-story porch along its length. The dogtrot had been enclosed to form a central hall. When Belinda entered, only Adeline was there to welcome her. Her father was off somewhere drunk. Charles was married and gone. Hammond struggled up the stairs, dragging her trunk, and the three of them sat down to supper. But eating was no more possible for Belinda that night than any recent night at school, in spite of the tender chicken and dumplings, boiled thick in salty broth. Nothing enticed her—not the peas nor the greens with ham hock. Not even the cobbler from Hammond’s foraged berries. Belinda picked at her plate and excused herself from the table.
“I’m only tired,” she said, and closed the door behind her, leaving the remnants of her family at the table.
Hammond helped Adeline clear the dishes. “Leave them be,” she said when the plates had been scraped. “They will hold till the morning.” She took the lamp and mounted the stairs, Hammond following.
In the dark, Belinda heard Adeline and Hammond mount the stairs and close their doors. The house grew still. The night thinned around her. She stared out at the moonlight for a long time. Then she was on her feet. A slight breeze from the half-open window penetrated the shift she wore, one she had begun to embroider after Will’s proposal. Now there were tiny roses on the left shoulder and a few scattered leaves that crossed her meager breast on a vine that went nowhere.
Belinda seized her shawl from the floor and wrapped it around her. The hinge creaked as she opened her door. She stopped, her hand on the porcelain knob. There was no other sound. In the hallway, her fingers guided her through the familiar darkness of home. She crept along the wall to the stairs. Below her the pale moonlight washed the lower step. A cough from Hammond’s room startled her. And she froze. There was only the sound of the murmuring creatures of the night. With sharpened caution, she descended into the shallow moonlight.
Sometime past midnight, Hammond woke with his back to the window. He heard it again, some unidentifiable sound. Propped on one elbow, he blinked sleep from his eyes and put a bare foot on the floor.
At the open window, Hammond shivered and almost went back to bed. But as he turned, a low sobbing came from the path near the fence. In the breeze he saw a billow of white fabric. Barefoot, he bolted down the stairs and fumbled with the latch until he realized it was already unbarred.
Far down the path, Hammond could make out a woman, stumbling. He leaped from the porch and down the path, not bothering as the gate clanged shut behind him. Near her, Hammond slowed, wary of frightening her. Her progress was erratic, her hair disheveled, her shawl hanging from one shoulder. She turned her head and seemed to listen. The moonlight caught her profile.
“Belinda?” Hammond whispered. He grasped her arm. “What are you doing out here in the night?” He pushed back the tangles of her thick hair and pulled the shawl around her shoulders.
“I have to see Will.”
“It’s the middle of the night, Belinda. Come on now. I’ll take you home.” He took a step toward the house.
“He has to talk to me.” Belinda struggled against him. “Let me go.”
Hammond did not let go. Her arm was so thin. A memory struck him: a fragile figurine he had shattered as a boy. He had a sudden fear that Belinda would break apart in his hands.
“Talk to me, Belinda. We can talk the sun up if you want.”
She allowed him to guide her home. As they neared, Hammond saw his mother’s face in the lamplight at the door.
“She took it in her head to go to Will, Mama, all wrought up like you see.” He reached for the lamp as Adeline helped Belinda into the house. “Not making sense.”
On the davenport, Belinda lay like a child who has cried herself to sleep, her breathing ragged. The moonlight accentuated her pallor. Belinda’s face disturbed Adeline, as it always had, in its fragility.
Belinda stirred. “I should have told him yes, Mama, straightaway.” She paused. “I just thought—well, I can’t say what I thought.” Belinda twisted a matt of hair. “I thought he’d be more persistent, more romantic, more—” Belinda hiccupped. “And then—well, then I wrote to him.” She raised up on her elbow and pointed her finger. “Yes, I did. I wrote and I said yes, I’d marry him.”
Adeline thought how Belinda’s fear had come into the world right with her, how agitated she had been as an infant. Belinda had seemed to Adeline like a little bird, liable to fall from the nest before she could fly.
“Why would he turn his back on me?” Belinda said. She continued to twist her hair. “It wasn’t three weeks—maybe four—well, I don’t know how long when I wrote him.” She twisted the hair tighter. “I did, Mama. I did write him. Now all this time and not one word from him.”
Hammond started for the kitchen, shuffled his feet, and came back.
“Let me go,” he said to Adeline. “Will’s a good man and an honest one. He ain’t unkind. Come daybreak I’ll go talk to him and get it clear. You want that, Belinda?”
She nodded, still pulling at her hair.
* * *
A pale fringe of morning lightened the sky. Hammond clutched his coat lapels between his hands, waiting for the slave to fetch William, who appeared with a napkin still in his hands.
“I’m here to speak to you about Belinda.”
“Belinda?”
“She set out in the night to come to you. All wrought up. Out of her head, if you take my meaning.”
“No, Hammond. I don’t follow you at all. What are you saying?”
“Why didn’t you answer her letter, Will? She said she wrote she would marry you. And you turn your back without a word and go to courting somebody else? She don’t deserve that.” Hammond’s voice was thick.
“I never heard from her.”
“What do you mean you never heard?”
“There was never any letter, Hammond.” Will’s voice was very calm. “Where is she?”
“Home.”
“Tell her I’ll be there in an hour.”
Before he left the house, Will wrote a brief note of apology to Lucinda Morris, canceling his projected visit to Winona. Will sealed the envelope and handed it to his father to post. The judge looked at the address. He held Will’s arm in a brief restraint. “Be careful with yourself, son,” he said, then shook his head and let him go. Will took the reins of his chestnut horse and rode away.
And so on the evening of July 6, 1859, Judge Matthews presided over a second Matthews–Slate marriage in his parlor. Belinda wore Emily’s dove gray silk, which Ginny had altered to fit Belinda’s thin waist. At Belinda’s insistence, the dress was reworked and adorned with silver buttons, yellow plaid ruffles edging the wide sleeves, and a sash of yellow silk ribbon for good measure. Adeline was once again witness, along with Charles. Hammond was again as giddy as a child. The house slaves had spent the day preparing a wedding supper to follow the vows. Emily attended to her new sister-in-law until the bridal couple slipped away upstairs.
“They will be happy,” Emily whispered to Charles, threading her fingers through his.
“We will all be happy, my dear,” he said, “if we can manage it.”
Emily looked at him, puzzled. Charles leaned down and kissed her, closing her mouth with his. “Let’s you and I be going home,” he said.
* * *
Dew lay across the fields in a glistening veil that seemed as if it could be lifted and shaken in the breeze, to fall again in a shower of silver light. At the end of a turn row, Will crouched, studying the cotton’s mid-summer growth as he crumbled bits of dark earth in his fingers. He heard the crunch of approaching boots and stood. From the perimeter of the field, Judge Matthews strolled toward his son.
“Out early, son.”
“Yes, sir.” Will brushed the soil from his hands. He stared out at the lustrous web of dew.
Judge Matthews surveyed the sky, gauging the weather. Quiet enveloped the two men, punctuated by the chirping of a titmouse and a wren in flight. Judge Matthews rested his hand on his son’s shoulder. Will embraced him, his face hidden in the collar of his father’s coat. The two men released one another. Will brushed at his face with his jacket sleeve.
The judge waited.
“I can’t believe it all, Father. I—I don’t know how this came about. All my hopelessness. And hers, too, apparently. Letter gone astray.” He paused. “Speaking of letters, I was thinking of Lucinda. It would have been an arrangement of convenience, for both of us. But still, I wouldn’t like to have misled her.”
The judge laughed. “Lucinda Morris is a practical woman. And a gracious one. She would have made you a good wife, a very good one. She may yet make a good wife to someone else. But though you respect one another, you would never have had more than a relationship of gratitude. I know that. The kind that comes from years of cooperative sharing. Never like your Fran.” He sighed. “And not like Belinda, either.”
Will went still.
“I know you think about Fran—same as I do your mother,” Judge Matthews said. “And your baby boy buried there with her. I watched part of you die with them.” He stopped. “Well, and though you know I have reservations, I’ve seen some life in you again with Belinda. And your sadness all over again when you thought you had lost her, too. How you closed off. I have not provided a good example for you on that score. Perhaps you will be able to lower your guard a bit now that Belinda is here.”
“Perhaps.”
“Well, these things have a season of their own. Sometimes, gladness is as slow as grief.” The judge took his son by the elbow. “Now, let’s see what we can accomplish of some practicality in this season of budding marriage.”
“I’d say we were doing all right for the first day,” Will laughed.
“Yes, but there are generally quite a few more days than that in a lifetime.” Judge Matthews lifted his head to follow the flight of a red-winged blackbird. “So, I have a proposal for you this morning. You will need a home of your own. I intend to build you a house on the knoll just past the turnoff to the upper place. In fact, I have the men starting on it today. Perhaps two stories, four rooms to begin with. A summer kitchen, with basic outbuildings.”
“That’s very . . .”
“Don’t interrupt.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I think five hundred acres should make you a good beginning, same as the old starter land grants. Belinda can choose someone from the women to tend house and a garden boy. You and I will go over the field hands and make those decisions together. I expect we will be sharing a good many hands since part of my expectation—my condition, actually—is that you continue to oversee my acreage as well. For that, I will pay you two hundred and fifty dollars a year. You will need a barn and stock of your own. We’ll look through together and make the choice—some of the older calves and a few good breeders, a bull, a rooster, and some laying hens for Belinda.”
“You are very generous.”
“No, not generous. I’m both selfish and practical. Selfish enough to want you close by. And practical in that at least that portion of land—and more—will be yours at my death regardless.”
“I don’t know what to say, Father.”
The judge’s laugh was deep and full. “Thank you would be acceptable.”
“Thank you.” Will embraced him, his words smothered in his father’s coat, as his tears had been earlier.
“There are conditions, of course, which will be outlined in my will. An update on that is overdue and I have been far too distracted. So many changes lately.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Your children would inherit the land directly. In the unlikely event of your death before mine, Belinda will retain the house and garden as her own until her death or remarriage, in which case they will revert to Jeremiah. And she will retain at least two servants, if indeed we have them then. The remainder of the land will revert to my estate.”
“That’s very fair,” Will said.
“And should you die before me without children—”
“Father—”
“Don’t interrupt. This is reality. Should you die without children—” The red-winged blackbird distracted him again. “In that event, Belinda will still retain the house and the garden acreage under the same conditions and the remainder of the land will again revert to my estate. Technically by Mississippi law, Belinda has the right to inherit from you, but not the right to control. That means her father would have control. I will not see my land in the hands of Thomas Slate. If she remarries or dies, that lifetime inheritance of house, garden, and slaves will also revert to Jeremiah, since Emily has her own. Inheritance by direct lineage only.”
“You sound like a lawyer.”
“I am. That’s how I came to be a judge.”
“And talk legal to your eldest son?”
“And talk legal to my eldest son.”
Will surveyed the field, where the dew was vanishing in a low mist. “Thank you, Father. I’d like to talk to Belinda, if you don’t mind.” Will scraped the dirt off his boot with a stick.
“You might wait on the part about your dying young or childless. Save the legalities for another time. I’m not sure how cheerful she would find that on her first wedded morning. Now, go on.”
Will broke into a slow lope toward the house. Judge Matthews resumed his absorption with the blackbirds in the thicket.