“Have you ever laid eyes on a true idiot, Lieutenant?” Parson said. “A true idiot is a creature of heaven, and as such casts no shadow upon the ground.”
Beauregard opened his mouth and shut it. “I’m afraid,” he said at last. “I’m afraid that I don’t—”
“Can you describe your own shadow for me?” Parson said, the smile fixed slant-wise on his face.
“No, sir, I cannot,” Beauregard said. “Now, if you’ll permit—”
“By all means, Lieutenant,” Parson said. “But attend to what I tell you—: there is a second world alongside and atop the one you cherish. And if you think I am speaking of the kingdom of heaven, then you, Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard, are but a finger-puppet.”
God help me if I understood this, but I laughed anyhow. The R— looked at me and winked. Beauregard nodded once, vaguely, then slipped from Parson’s hold.
“I’ll be in the bar, M—,” he said into his whiskers. He gave me a hard look as he passed.
When he was gone Virgil and the R— and Parson stood close together. “Thank our Parson, Virgil,” the R— said.
“I’m grateful to you, sir,” said Virgil. “If not for your intercession, I fear—”
“If he speaks of you that way again, kill him,” Parson said.
“Sir?” said Virgil. His neck went paler still.
The R— laughed. “Our boy would never. He has our best interests in mind.”
“Kill him,” said Parson. He smiled at Virgil in a motherly way.
“Pay no attention, Kansas,” the R— said, leading Parson off.
That left me alone with Virgil. He stood stock-still, staring out the door, opening his hands and closing them. But at last he condescended to remember me.
“They think I wouldn’t,” he said in a small voice.
I took his hand in mine. “Have you ever killed a man, Mr. Ball?”
“One thinks I’m too clever,” he said. “The other thinks I’m too dim.”
“Both think you’re too weak,” I said. Lord forgive me now for saying it. I was young then, and full of spite, and thought cowardice the most shameful of men’s failings. “Are you as weak as they think?”
“I’m a servant,” he said, turning his dull face toward me. “I told you that.”
“I didn’t believe it,” I said. “But I believe it now.”
He seemed not to hear me. “It’s a wonderful thing to have a purpose, Miss Gilchrist—; to know what it is, and to follow it.” He hushed a moment. “My purpose is to serve.”
“And mine is to take your masters to bed,” I said. “I wish you a pleasant evening.”
I gathered up my gown and left him. I had no gentlemen to wait on, only the rabble at the bar—; but his humiliation had worked itself under my stays. It had dug itself into me like a tick. Perhaps I felt a kinship to him already—: perhaps I felt it most when he’d been made a fool of by his betters. Love and shame both make your body hot, then chill it as the years pass near to freezing. Virgil tells me I loved him, and he may well be right. I know of no better word to describe the shame I felt — feel even now, remembering — than that word so abused by all who touch it.
“I’ll go down and find that lieutenant of yours,” I said to him.
And so I did.
The bar was well stocked with gentlemen, but I had no trouble finding Beauregard. He was seated at a corner booth, flanked by two great Araby ferns, talking quietly with the R—. The tiff upstairs looked to have been forgotten. Here and there, at tables or along the bar, I made out the others—; all were making a great show of being unacquainted. Virgil hadn’t followed me downstairs.
I came and sat down between them, pretty as you please. My anger made me bold. Neither looked at me. Beauregard was trying to get something out of the R—.
“Don’t condescend to me, M—,” he said.
“I’d not dream of it, Lieutenant. Drink your sherry.”
Beauregard scratched at the corner of his mouth. “You’ll have to kill those niggers,” he said. “That much is sure. They’d bear witness against you.”
“As I understand it, the bounty on escapees applies whether alive or dead,” the R— said in a comfortable way.
A silence fell. I looked from one of them to the other. My mouth was dry as parchment.
“Good God, sir,” said Beauregard.
The R— did not blink. His mouth was straight and solemn but it was not impossible to imagine it in a grin.
“You mean to carry this through, I see,” Beauregard said at last. “I appreciate that now.”
“You’ve never doubted my resolve in the past.” The R— sipped at a glass of rye. “Or my discretion.”
“No,” said Beauregard, the dash gone from his face.
“I have your support, then?” the R— said, letting his eyes drift idly across the room. They found Kennedy, hunched over at the bar, and settled.
“You have it,” said Beauregard. He looked weak and disbelieving, but there was something else in his look besides—: a flicker of excitement. “You have it, M—! You have it. Let your Irishman drink his porter.”
A Baptism
THE HOW OF IT WAS SIMPLE, Delamare says.
I came in on a packing-boat, by foot if the place was set back from the river, found myself a room or a corner someplace in the nigger-town, and stayed there. I might stay for a day, I might stay for a week. Sometimes one afternoon was enough to see I wasn’t welcome. But if the mood was right, if there was the slow, suspicious eagerness in their eyes and in the way they talked, if they stopped to say good-night as they came in from the fields, not looking me in the face but only at my clothes, my hair, my skin, I’d know the lay of the land was fine, and I’d stay on.
First I’d lay my clothes out on the cot, or on the pallet, if that was all I had—: jacket at the top, pressed shirts underneath, linens at the bottom. My second pair of boots I’d set at the open window, as if I hardly cared whether somebody ran off with them in the night. I’d sit on the stoop (if there was such a thing) and black them in the early evening, when it was still light. When they asked me about the boots and the rest, about the sweet blonde tobacco that I smoked, about the tonic for my hair, I’d say I’d got it up in Louisville, or Baltimore, or Cincinnati. No more than that. But that was all it took.
I looked about as much like them as a sherry-glass looks like a plate of beans, but anyone could see that I had nigger in me. That and the clothes, and the way I carried on, light-hearted and conceited, was enough to put the thought into their heads. I did no selling of it—: no prompting, no whispering, no missionary work. I let the idea do my whispering for me.
They came when it got toward dark, full and ready to receive. One or two might want to hear details of life in Boston, or Sandusky, or Ottawa, if only to hear those names spoken aloud. But by the time they asked they were as good as struck already. A white man, however nimble, would have held no sway for them—; but I was living, preening proof of freedom’s alchemy. The South they knew could never have engendered me.
Finding shelter was the hardest part of it, and that was no great work. I arrived in the early forenoon, when the men and a good deal of the women were in the fields, and looked for a cabin apart from the rest, neatly kept, with a woman inside it. Whether she was fat or thin, bright-eyed or stony-faced, made no difference to me at all. I looked for signs of children, and if I found any I moved on. If not, I stayed. Sometimes I was traveling for religion—; sometimes I was peddler—; I could have told them anything I liked. By the second or third night the men would start coming round and I’d bring out the idea and let it loose. Once I started I worked quick, pausing only to sleep, so that by the time word reached the big house I was back out on the river. I learned that early, about the quickness. I had marks on my back and on the soles of my feet to keep me mindful. By the end of a week — if I’d stayed that long — the marks would begin to itch and I’d light out within the hour. But not before I’d looked in on each of the men I’d struck. Not before I’d left each of them a token.