The following morning Emeritus Labiche took his guests on a tour of Le Petit Versailles. The two hexagonal-shaped garçonnières stood at a discreet distance to the back left and right of the house. ‘My twin sons stay in these when they are with us,’ Emeritus explained. Adjoining the garçonnières on the left was a house for tutors and guests. At a distance in front of the garçonnières were the pigeonnaires where baby pigeons were raised – a delicacy of the family.
Then, the kitchen, separated from the house in case of fire. Across from it in perfect symmetry the abode of the house slaves. Between house and kitchen stood a massive, cased bell, its bronze rim etched with the heroes of Ancient Greece. ‘Cast in Pittsburgh,’ he told them.
Green-sprigged boxwood hedges rectangled the whistling walk, from kitchen to house. Nearby a black, life-sized Venus in veined Italian marble, but otherwise unadorned, attracted some side glances from the young men.
The dependency buildings were completed by an ice house and a privy set. Both of these conveniences were well-distanced from each other. Behind the dependencies stretched an avenue, lined each side by twenty-six Virginia oaks, dripping with Spanish moss.
‘This is the avenue of the weeks.’ Oxy, in his element, continued to unlock the mysteries of Le Petit Versailles.
At the end was the house of the plantation overseer, Bayard Clinch. Manacled to a post outside this house was an exceptionally large dog, its ice-blue eyes coldly registering every human movement. ‘A Catahoula – a Spanish war-dog,’ their host explained. Beyond the overseer’s house sat the field slave cabins. Twenty-two of them – on stilts. Whitewashed inside and out and with blue or red-painted doors. Each cabin was divided in two. Each of the two units housed a family.
‘This is the most valuable part of the plantation,’ Emeritus Labiche pronounced. Patrick, remembering the piece of paper he had found asked,
‘How many slaves do you hold Monsieur Labiche?’
‘The plantation owns at any time four hundred working slaves. Mr Clinch and Beauty there, look after the field slaves. Some have been with the family for generations, like old Theophilus and his wife Theophile. Their sons and daughters were born here and their grandchildren. It’s a system that works well. Everybody knows where they fit.’ Emeritus Labiche talked openly, warmly.
‘The names they have – Theophilus and Theophile, Plato and Cato, Caesar and Cicero?’ Patrick questioned.
‘When each new child is born, the parents will ask that I name it – a name that befits the child’s character. The negroes like the classical Greco-Roman names of scholars and philosophers …’ He paused. ‘Usually I try – and Madame Labiche is of great assistance in this – to name them in matching pairs. This naming by the master and the mistress is very important to them. Gives them a sense of belonging.’
‘The low-bred with high ideas will always breed. It’s what keeps them low,’ Oxy asided, quietly to Patrick.
‘Their new children are likewise of importance to us – they are the future of the plantation. It is they who will keep the sugar mills grinding,’ Emeritus Labiche further explained, not hearing his guest’s remark.
In the afternoon, the two Miss Labiches, having spent some morning hours with their tutor, Dr Delarousse, took the young gentlemen to see the gardens. Queen, a matronly house slave in charge of all to do with domestic matters, accompanied them, to ensure that at no time were they left unchaperoned.
Patrick however, was able to engage in some conversation with Emmeline when the girl asked, ‘Do you like gardens, Mr O’Malley?’
‘Yes … if you are in them, Miss Emmeline.’
This caused her to fall silent and he was sorry he had made so bold with his reply.
‘The trees … the plants here?’ he began, in an attempt to restore the conversation.
‘Well, the cypress is our great tree,’ Emmeline replied. ‘Its roots can stay underwater for one hundred years and it never rots – termites don’t like it.’ She gave the hint of a smile. ‘The slave cabins are constructed from it. The Spanish moss, which drapes from its branches, is also put to good use. It is submerged in water for three months, then resurrected and hung out to dry. It turns then into black horsehair – the bousillage upon which you lay your head last night!’ He smiled and she continued, melodious in speech as she was in song.
‘The maples attract wasp nests. But of all trees, my favourite is the magnolia, which flowers throughout April, May and June. It is so scented and bounteous … so like the South itself.’ She paused, deep in thought.
He watched the soft rise and fall of her neck, where the words were formed. Wished she would talk forever in that rich-whispering way she had.
‘Do you think, Mr O’Malley, that there will be war between the States – Father says it is inevitable. That it will come next year, in 1861?’
He stopped. Looked at her standing there, framed by the creamy, darkening pink of magnolia blossoms, a Fleur du Sud – ‘Flower of the South’.
‘Miss Emmeline, I pray there will not but …’
‘But it will not be your war, Mr O’Malley. You are not an American, much less a Southerner – though we should be glad to have you,’ she quickly added, catching his arm. Queen shifted her feet, wanting them to keep walking.
‘It is true, I was not born in America, but in every other respect – by education and inclination – I am as American as the magnolia blossom!’
She laughed, ‘Oh, I do like you, Mr O’Malley – though a lady should never so openly profess to such a feeling in case she be thought not a lady. But you are able to make a lady laugh. Next to being a gentleman, it is the virtue I most admire in a man.’
Patrick looked at Emmeline scarcely believing she had lived but fifteen short summers.
‘I thank the day which brought me here,’ was his answer.
Both of them fell into silence and resumed walking.
‘May no Northern flags in Southern winds flutter,’ she said momentarily, causing him to blurt out, ‘I have met no one quite like you, Miss Emmeline. You are so passionate about the South. You speak of it as if it were altogether another country?’
‘Oh, but it is! It is!’ she repeated. ‘Don’t you understand, Mr O’Malley, it is altogether a different country?’
Patrick could. Life here was timeless, cocooned against change, filled with a great comforting certainty. Here, roles were clearly defined. Patrick liked that. Father, mother, daughters, overseer, slaves – a perfect pyramid of order like the house and its dependencies.
Order preserved things from change. Kept everything intact. Immutable.
The South was not like Boston, brash with commerce, bristling with change and the Nativist hate for all things not American.
Patrick decided there and then that if the call to arms came, he would answer it clad in honest grey and under the Bonnie Blue Flag of the South.