Джон Джейкс: North and South

"Yes, but what's the use of owning land if you can't pay your quitrent and there's no crop that's accepted in lieu of cash?"

"Maybe there is such a crop now," the first man said. He displayed a plump little sack.

The others crowded around, curious. Even Charles drifted up to listen; the auction was stalled while the man with the sack answered a question put to him.

"This is seed. From Madagascar. The same kind of seed that's growing so well in those overwatered gardens in town."

A man pointed, excited. "Is that some of the rice Captain Thurber gave Dr. Woodward last year?" Thurber was captain of a brigantine that had put into Charles Town for repairs; Charles had heard the story of some rice brought ashore.

The man with the sack tucked it safely away in his pocket. "Aye. It thrives in wet ground. Nay — demands it, Many in town are agog over the possibilities. There's a rush for land all at once. And a feeling that a profitable use has been found for these benighted lowlands."

The doubter had another question: "Yes, but what white man could stand to work in swamps and marshes?"

"Not a one, Manigault. It will take men accustomed to intense heat and nearly unbearable conditions.'' The speaker paused for effect. "Africans. Many more than we have in the colony now, I warrant."

In France, Charles Main had suffered for his religion. But the hypocrisy of schemers like Emilion, and the cruelty inflicted on Jeanne, had all but destroyed the faith that had dragged him into the ordeal in the first place.

His own will, not some supernatural power, had sustained him under the hot irons of the torturers. So, although he still harbored a vague belief in a Supreme Being, his picture of that Being had changed.

God was indifferent. He had no benevolent plan for the cosmos or its creatures; very likely He had no plan at all. It therefore behooved a man to rely solely upon himself. It was all right to give God a courteous nod now and then, as you would a doddering uncle. But when it came to shaping the future, a wise man took matters into his own hands.

And yet, in that firelit clearing in the midst of a vast, dense wood that reeked of damp earth and rang with the cries of birds, a curious thing happened to Charles. He felt his old beliefs surge up with unexpected strength. For one intense moment he felt the presence of some outside force that had willed he survive the past couple of years in order to reach this place at this precise instant.

In that instant he set a new course. He wouldn't put a shilling of his earnings back into trade goods for the station. Whatever it cost to consult one of those twisty lawyers, he would pay, in order to learn how he might secure a grant of land down here, closer to the sea. He would investigate what he had just heard about the Madagascar seed. He was, first and foremost, a man who had worked the land. If he could raise grapes, he could raise rice.

But the labor did present a problem. He knew the inhospitable nature of these lowlands. He wouldn't last a month working waist-deep in the water that bore disease, not to mention alligators, on its slow, serpentine tides.

The answer was obvious. A Negro slave. Two, if his earnings would stretch that far.

With the warped logic of someone who knows he is guilty and must find a way to prove otherwise, Charles had always considered himself a man who sold slaves without endorsing the system. Deep in him something recoiled from the whole process. Moreover, he never saw what actually happened to the Indians he caught and sold. Perhaps — the ultimate saving sophistry — kindly owners later freed them.

Now, however, conscience had to abdicate completely. He himself had to own at least one prime African buck. It was a matter of economics. Of opportunity. Of survival.

A man did what he must.

"Gentlemen, gentlemen," exclaimed the auctioneer. "Too much talk diverts us from the choicest offering of the night."

Mounting the table, he raised the hide garment so that the girl's private parts were visible. The men were suddenly attentive.

A man did what he must. That same rule applied to the problem of heirs, Charles realized. If he was to rebuild his fortune in Carolina — and at last he had a glimmer of hope, something he had lacked for years — he had to accept certain realities. He had no intention of leaving his beloved Jeanne. At the same time he could no longer be overly scrupulous about fidelity.

"Gentlemen, who will begin the bidding for this comely tribal maiden? Who will give me a price of —?"

"Stop." With outward thrusts of his hands, Charles parted the group of men ahead of him.

"What's that, Main?" said the auctioneer, while the gentlemen Charles had pushed dusted their sleeves and sneered behind his back. He might be a Protestant, but he was also a churl. What else would you expect of a Frenchman?

Standing as straight as he ever had, Charles stared down the surprised, faintly annoyed auctioneer.

"I've changed my mind. She is not for sale."

Slowly he looked to the girl. The auctioneer let her garment fall. Her large eyes were fixed on Charles. She understood.

He knew better than to try to stay the night at a Charles Town lodging house. Not even the most sordid of them, down near the point of the peninsula where the two rivers met and flowed into the ocean, would welcome a white man with an Indian woman who was obviously not his slave.

Instead he found a secluded glade not far from the palisade. There, despite the risk of snakes and the threat of insects, he spread his blankets, placed his loaded weapons within reach, lay down beside her in the hot, damp dark, and took her.

He knew only rudimentary words of her language, none a term of endearment. Yet she knew his need and was eager for his touch. His mouth on her mouth, his hand on her belly — this was what she had wanted almost from the first. He had seen it in her eyes and failed to comprehend.

Charles was an accomplished lover, tender when necessary. The knowing, courtly ways had not been completely forgotten. Jeanne's plight and her need for consideration had assured that. Yet toward the end the style of his lovemaking changed. A slow, lazy rhythm was replaced by a quicker, more purposeful one. His excitement increased. So did hers. Passive pleasure became frantic response.

Lying on wet, fertile earth, a hundred kinds of life buzzing or crying out around them and scores of stars pricking the black sky, they clasped each other.

That night he planted his seed as methodically as he was to plant the crops that would create the Main fortune.

At that period Charles Town consisted of something less than a hundred rude homes and commercial buildings. Many of the Barbadian men talked of erecting those spacious, breezy houses typical of the islands from which they had come. But it would take a better economy, a thriving future, to bring that about. The town's air of gentility was obviously feigned and not a little shabby.

It didn't seem so to Charles the next morning. The day was bright and clear, the air freshened by a northeast wind off the harbor. He strolled to the wharf with the Indian girl following a step behind. His bearing had changed, touched now with certainty, force.

Charles couldn't help noticing the scornful stares of the gentry who were abroad. To have a liaison with a woman of color, whether brown or black, was acceptable. To flaunt it in public was something else.

The expressions of the gentlemen soon put a new thought in his head. Most Carolinians were infernally snobbish about their pedigrees. If he sired a child known to be half Cherokee, they would never admit him or the child to their circle, regardless of how much money he might accumulate — and never mind that his lineage was as good as theirs.