CHAPTER 17
At the end of a week in which little was said between Charles and Emily, she left with Rosa Claire to spend a few days with her father. She settled into her old room with an ambivalence that vacillated between familiar comfort and a sense of displacement. The rosewood bed with its carved half canopy felt massive to her, the rose damask drapes at the window oppressive.
On the second night of her visit, with Rosa Claire tucked in, Emily sat after dinner by the fire with her father. If she had been some other woman, her hands would have been busy with a needle. But even now her stitches, like those of the motherless young girl she had been, remained clumsy and uneven, despite Ginny’s coaching. Instead, Emily sat with a book from her father’s study, open facedown, across her lap. The title had intrigued her, bold words about slavery as the economic and moral crisis of the South, but the text had proved very dense and somewhat inaccessible. She would take it home and attempt to focus more.
Emily stared at her father, his sloped shoulders outlined by the light from the flames. His silence at supper had been uncharacteristic. A deft conversationalist, her father generally prompted lively talk at the evening meal. Tonight, there had been only the two of them, in an uneasy quiet. Emily guessed that the reality of war had settled over him. Now alone, the two of them by the fire, Judge Matthews began to talk.
“This war will change us all,” he said. He rose from his chair, grasped the iron poker, stooping to nudge at the embers. “For the good, I pray, change who we are. Though for all the high rhetoric on both sides, Emily, the whole affair in the end is likely to be nothing but a living hell of blood and power and gain.”
“What are you implying, Papa?” Emily asked.
“I am not implying, Emily. I am trying to be plain.” Reaching into the woodbox, he threw another log on the fire. Sparks flew up the chimney.
“Then I must ask you to be more so.”
“There are so many things, Emily, that we imagine benefit us: intellect, position, wealth. At this stage in life, I have begun to wonder if we ever truly recognize those things for which we have real need, apart from survival. Things that can’t be quantified and possessed.” Small flames flickered as the log began to catch.
“I believe you, Papa.”
More sparks rose as he probed at the ashes. After a moment he straightened and continued, “We live our lives on second-best replacements, substitutes. We miss the sunlight looking for gold. I only see this in hindsight, mind you. I hadn’t such thoughts when I was as young as you.”
Emily nodded, pulled at her ear, unsure how to respond.
“I’m rambling.” Judge Matthews took his pipe from the mantel and tapped it against the bottom of his boot. “But you know, Emily, I had such grand ambitions. When I was young, I wanted to have honor, prestige, and recognition.”
“You have.”
“By some standards,” Judge Matthews said.
“Certainly by mine.” Emily smiled at him. “What was it you wanted that you failed at, Papa?”
He sighed, cradled the bowl of the empty pipe in his palm. His backlit white hair and beard took on a golden tinge.
“I wanted to be good,” he said. “I was the seventh child of nine, six of us who lived.”
“Yes, I know. You have told us those stories.” She brushed at some nonexistent lint on her skirt.
“My father farmed his land with a vengeance.” He continued as if he had not heard. “In Virginia. Not so long ago, but it seems another age. Mississippi was not even a state. We had land and slaves, a fair number of them. My father was not good to them, though he was not cruel. Indifferent is what he was. He used them like he used the mule and the plow. You take good care of plows and mules. And my father took care of his Negroes, fed them, brought the doctor in when one was sick, kept the mothers home to nurse their babies for several months. But who those people were? That was not in his realm of thinking, Emily. Any more than who the mule might be.”
“But you are better than that, Papa. You are a good man.”
“What good is being better? Because I know and care for our people? Even that phrase, the use of the possessive, is offensive. These people are not ours to possess. Or because I entered into a conspiracy with your tutor to teach them to read and write in spite of it being illegal? Because of my thwarted attempt at manumission, also illegal? The very concept that setting a man free should be illegal, should be a crime, is an abomination. More than that, that any man could be denied his innate freedom. And yet I succumbed.” The judge stamped at some embers fallen on the hearth.
“It is strikingly different from most of what I see around here,” Emily said.
“Perhaps. But I doubt myself. My disguise is simply more subtle. Slavery is slavery, and my pitiful attempt to free these people has come to a shabby end.”
“You were prevented by the law, Papa.” She brushed again at her skirt.
“I was a coward, Emily. I hadn’t the power—no, that isn’t true. Maybe not legally, but somewhere I had the power. And perhaps I had some courage, but not enough to use it against the tide of greed and fear.” He ground his foot on the hearth. “Even that’s not true. I made a choice. I thought I could do good. I thought there was time. And I was afraid.”
“Afraid of what, Papa? Of war?”
“Not so much of what, as for whom. I am still afraid—for you, for me, for all of us.”
“So am I, Papa,” Emily said. “I am very afraid.” Agitated, she rose from her chair, her hands spread wide.
“None of us knows how this conflict will go, Emily. No more than we know our true nature. Not one of us knows who we really are. There is too much overlaid.” He pulled his white hair back away from his forehead. “This Confederacy is like an ornate plantation house with all its framing and brick and millwork and finery—that could go up in flames. All built on a foundation dug from the earth like a grave.”
“Papa, your hope seems to have evaporated. What dire talk. You leave me—” She dropped into her chair, staring at him.
“I’m sorry. I don’t know what has made me say these things. Will’s death. This bloody war I thought could not sustain itself goes on and on. So much more ghastly than anyone foresaw. Our boys coming home, if they come at all, without legs or arms, with half their faces gone. For what? To defend this other horror here at home?” Judge Matthews lifted his head to face her, as if only then aware of his daughter’s presence. “Forgive me, Emily. I’ve only added to your fears. I’m sorry. I want you happy. I have tried to protect you from life, ever since your mother died. I know now that was both impossible and foolish. It may have been a grave mistake.” He looked her in the eye. “I thought it was love.”
The judge laid his dead pipe on the mantel. At the edge of her chair, Emily struggled with the impulse to go to him, to hold him. She knew it would silence him, and whatever else he had to say would go back into hiding, like a salamander slipping beneath a rotten log. Her father was attempting to rearrange his mind, she knew. But the foundation would not change. His face was hidden, the fire illuminating the bush of his brow and the length of his beard as if from within.
“I blame myself, you know, for your mother’s death,” he said at last. “Sometimes I believe that I killed her. No, more than sometimes. It lies beneath me like her grave.”
Emily started from her chair, the book dropping to the floor, but his outstretched hand stayed her.
“I need to say this, Emily. And I believe you have the courage to hear me through. You are very like her, you know?” He turned his head toward Emily. She could not read his face in the backlit dark.
“It is worse for Jeremiah. Both of us carry the guilt of her death, and I cannot take his away with mine. Perhaps, we compete for our guilt. He believes he should not be alive. He believes I didn’t want him because I wanted her.” He hesitated, turning his face back to the fire. “He was right, Emily. I didn’t. I am deeply shamed by that. It has always lain between us. You see the results, Emily: his inability or unwillingness—I never know which—to see anything through; his obsession with land; the violence of his temper; and nothing ever enough to fill his emptiness.”
“Papa—” Emily leaned toward him, but he continued to hold up his hand.
“No, Emily. I bear the blame. I am not good, you see. And I have forfeited the love of my son. I forfeited Will. I should have taken control that day. And I am afraid that I have forfeited you.”
“Forfeited me, Papa?” she said.
He rubbed his eyes. “Emily, are you happy? Or should I say, at least content?”
She hesitated. “I am afraid,” she said.
“There is a great deal to fear.” He turned. “Emily, does Charles treat you well?”
“He—I suppose he does. I have no comparison. He is hardly ever at home and we disagree on certain basic things. Important things.”
“Things like slavery?”
“Yes, and the Union.”
“I believe Will had the same difficulties, plus Belinda’s wild moods. Such differing views on major issues make marriage difficult, in spite of love. I should have been more vocal to you both. I should have warned you what I thought—no, what I knew to be true.”
“I don’t want you to worry for me, Papa.”
“Well, I do worry for you. I always have.” He rubbed his eyes again, faced away from her. “You know that our family has been somewhat shunned because of my attempt to free my slaves and for my stance on slavery. Perhaps, you are not as keenly aware of that as I am. I think Will was. Perhaps, I have managed to protect you there, if nowhere else.” The judge locked his gaze on her. She could feel it, though she could not see it for the backlit fire. “You hadn’t any suitors, Emily. Oh, a few who soon disappeared. I held myself to blame for that. Certainly not you, so beautiful and kind. So intelligent and sweet.” A log fell in the dwindling flames. Her father shifted his weight and pushed it back with the toe of his boot. “So like your mother, really.”
The judge reached into the woodbox and dropped another piece of wood onto the fire. He stoked the embers. “When Charles came courting and you brightened and seemed to bloom, I went against my judgment and gave my blessing. I felt myself to be a primary obstacle to your happiness. You and Will both. I wonder that I was not more careful with your life. I am afraid I failed you, Emily. I ignored my reservations. I thought because of me there might be no one else. If I had been stronger for you both, perhaps he’d be alive.”
He saw her quiet crying and paused. Then he said, “Now that I’ve commenced this rambling, saying things better left unsaid, I can’t seem to stop without saying it all.”
Emily wiped away her tears.
“Maybe that is all.” He took her hands. “Well, such rambling,” he said. “I’m very tired. Belinda’s endless haggling over the land exhausts me.” He cleared his throat. “That was unkind. Everything I have said tonight is unkind. You see what I mean about who I have become.”
Emily put her arms around him, feeling the residual heat of the fire on his back.
“Don’t be sorry,” she said. “I made my own choice. I had a chance at a family of my own. My own children to adore. You are not at fault. You have been my mother’s gift to me.”
His body sagged.
“Let’s go to bed now, Papa. Maybe tomorrow you will feel less burdened. Maybe I will, too.” She kissed his forehead, reached for his hand, and pressed it between hers. “I’ll bank the fire. Rest well.”
At the door, he looked back. Emily had not moved. He nodded and disappeared into the dark hall.
* * *
In the weeks following her stay with her father, Emily struggled with his confession to her; she could think of it as nothing else. She felt undone that he had approved Charles as a suitor without approving of him. His fear that there would be no one else because of his stance on slavery was a shock to her. That he felt he had sold her out triggered every insecurity she had lived with nearly all her life. Or at least since her mother’s death: her lack of real friendships, her hesitance at knowing the right fork to use on rare social outings, the feeling of something wrong in the way townsfolk looked at her, the distance some kept or the cold formality with which they spoke to her. She had been an outsider and would always be, she thought. She would not have burdened her father more by confessing the strain in her marriage since the Fourth of July. She was even more wary of her husband now, less at ease in the house that no longer felt like home, the house in which she was pervasively aware either of his presence or his absence. Sad as she had often been in her father’s house, she had felt at ease, accepted, safe—except for Jeremiah’s heedless taunts—and at rest without even realizing. Now she perpetually reminded herself to stop moving, to stop tapping, to stop drumming her fingers, to stop ruminating. Falling asleep had become an effort, and often she woke in the morning drained and fatigued.
With resolve to divert herself and focus on the cause against slavery, Emily picked up the book she had brought from her father’s, intent on reading, only to lay it down again. The book fell from its careless placement at the edge of the table and Emily stooped to retrieve it. She roamed from room to room, rearranging bric-a-brac one-handed, the book clutched to her breast with the other.
In the parlor Emily happened upon Ginny. On impulse Emily asked for help in improving her stitches. “Well,” said Ginny, “I reckon you gone have to put that book down somewhere.” Emily handed it over and Ginny laid it on the side table by the window. Even with her fresh intention, Emily’s work on new dresses for Rosa Claire and the baby was as uneven as ever, perhaps more so.
Charles came and went, sometimes without speaking, often in the night.
Emily did not sleep well and her fatigue showed in unusual crossness with Rosa Claire and sometimes with the slaves. It occurred to her that she had absorbed her father’s guilt and his lack of faith in her.