San Antone. V. J. Banis

I have seen Texas. Our ship stopped at the port of Galveston on the way here. I found it quite a civilized city, actually.”

      “Perfect rice-growing country, he tells me,” Lewis emphasized. “Isn’t that right, Mallory?”

      “As to that, I can’t really say, not being a grower myself. What I saw, however, seemed not unlike what I see hereabouts. Lowlands. Galveston sits on an island, but the mainland looks wet and marshy. The climate is hot, dampish. I can say this, it’s a booming port, and likely to become more so. Easy sea access. I should think that would be useful to a planter.” He directed this last remark to Joanna, in a conciliatory tone, as if to apologize for encouraging her husband’s scheme.

      “Damned useful,” Lewis said. He shot his wife a glance and banged the table with his fist, causing his wine to spill over the rim of his glass. Joanna watched the crimson stain spread across the tablecloth.

      Papa John, the slave at Lewis’s elbow, saw it, too, and made a move as if to clean up the spill. Lewis waved him away.

      “Leave it,” he snapped. He looked at his wife with wine-clouded eyes, his expression stubborn and angry. “Well,” he demanded, “haven’t you anything to say?”

      She knew that it was a mistake to argue with her husband when he’d been drinking as he had all evening; but she could not help feeling alarmed at the proposal he had just so unexpectedly made.

      “Surely you can’t mean you’ve already made up your mind,” she said, attempting to placate him with a smile. “Such a big move. Couldn’t we talk this over, tomorrow, perhaps?”

      Lewis turned to Mr. Mallory. “Unfortunately, as you can see, my wife is inclined to value her own opinions rather highly. Higher, sometimes, than those of her husband. That is what comes of permitting a woman to read and write.”

      “But it’s not a question of reading,” Joanna said, knowing even as she spoke that she was inviting trouble. “To uproot your family, to carry your wife and children to some far-off wilderness, about which we know next to nothing....”

      “I know enough,” Lewis said, his color darkening ominously. “I know that the new state has agreed, after lengthy negotiations, to honor that old land grant my father held from the Spanish—for a fee, of course, but the payment is a modest one, considering the amount of land involved: five hundred thousand acres. A half-million acres, I tell you, you’d think a woman would take pride—why, it’s a hundred times what we’ve got here. Yes, and what we’ve got here we’re not likely to have for long, the way things are headed. That damned fool, Lincoln, he wants war, there’s not a doubt of it, he wants to bring the South to her knees. And this talk of freeing the slaves, that alone spells our ruination. You couldn’t run Eaton Hall without slaves, no, nor any other plantation either. I ask you, Mallory, man to man”—he emphasized the matter of gender—”is that the truth or is it not?”

      “I’m bound to say you’re right about that,” Mr. Mallory said, avoiding Joanna’s glance.

      “You see? You see? If you were half as smart as you think....” Lewis turned on his wife, his arms flailing the air.

      “But surely,” Joanna said, “if the president frees the slaves, they will be freed in Texas as well as South Carolina?”

      “Texas is a far cry from here. Your Great Emancipator may march his armies into Dixie, but Texas is not so easy a matter—the distance alone would give him pause.”

      “And, this is my home—”

      “Do not say ‘my,’” Lewis shouted, standing up so abruptly that his chair toppled over backward. Papa John made an attempt at catching it, unsuccessfully. It hit the floor with a crash that made Ellen Goodman squeak with alarm.

      “Do not be impertinent with me, madam. What was yours became mine the day we wed. I am master in this household, and I remind you, a wife owes her husband obedience, as I’m sure either of these fine ladies—neither of whom, I’m convinced, has been tainted by your so-called educational pursuits—will agree with me.” He glanced expectantly in the direction of their female guests.

      “A woman’s place, certainly, is with her husband,” Sarah Goodman said, adding with perhaps a lack of conviction, “wherever that may be.”

      “Exactly,” Lewis said, pacing rapidly to and fro; Papa John, trying to retrieve the fallen chair, was forced to dance an eccentric jig, avoiding his path. “The matter is settled, my mind’s made up. I’ve already instructed my bankers to make the transfer of funds. We’ll move to Texas before the year’s out. I mean to move the house, the slaves, the crops—and my family as well. No, not another word, Joanna. You try me too far.” He turned and strode swiftly from the room. A moment later the chandelier rattled an accompaniment to the slamming of the door.

      The silence that followed in its wake was intense. Now that he was gone, Joanna regretted pushing her husband as she had. She ought to have known that in front of others he’d be obligated to make a display of his authority. Perhaps if she had been more subtle in her arguments—oh, but that was wishful thinking, wasn’t it? Lewis was not a man to be dissuaded once he had set his mind to something, even something so monumentally dangerous and foolish as this appeared to her.

      Sarah Goodman rose from her chair, signaling her niece to do likewise. “Since we’ll be leaving early in the morning, perhaps it is as well if Ellen and I retire,” she said in a voice plainly indicating her disapproval.

      More rumors, Joanna thought, watching them go. More tales carried from plantation to plantation, for the Goodmans were inveterate visitors. Half the population of South Carolina—the half who weren’t already acquainted with the stories—would hear before year’s end of Lewis’s drinking, of his wife’s odd habit of educating not only herself but those of her slaves who wanted to learn as well.

      She remembered belatedly that she still had one guest at her table, and turned her eyes on him. “You’re leaving tomorrow, too, I believe, Mr. Mallory.”

      “Necessities of business,” he said. “And I can tell you I shall sorely regret my departure.”

      The remark, she knew, was intended to be flirtatious; she was not unmindful of the lust in the man’s eyes when he looked at her. As a young girl, Joanna had looked long and hard at herself, and accepted that she would never be pretty; she had settled for beauty instead.

      Perhaps if she loved her husband, his wenching and their lack of relations might have provoked her to jealousy, driven her to flirt, to welcome the attentions of men like Mr. Mallory. She had seen other marriages in which that happened.

      That charge, at least, could not be leveled at her. She regarded Lewis’s neglect of her as a welcome relief. They had three children, three fine children. There was no need.... Sometimes, it was true, she felt the emptiness. Surely there must be something else. She had observed couples, a few; she sensed something between them, something in the way they looked at one another, not only with love but with a desire that was warm and beautiful, that made her aware of some untouched sense of “womanness” within her, neglected, sleeping.

      But her instincts told her it was not what she saw in Mr. Mallory’s gaze, what she had seen in the eyes of other men.

      The truth was, though she would have admitted this to no one, she had never responded the same way with her husband on those few brief occasions when he had come to her bed. It was wrong of her, she knew; a woman had no right to resent her husband’s touch. She could not help herself. Even in the beginning, before he’d begun to drink so badly, it had been that way.

      She pushed her chair back. Mr. Mallory leaped up to help her, and Papa John moved swiftly around the table, but she was on her feet before either could give her assistance.

      “I’ll leave you to your port, Mr. Mallory,” she said.

      “Your husband will no doubt return soon to join me,” he said.

      “Perhaps.” She could have told him that was unlikely. By now,