San Antone. V. J. Banis

Carolina had been, and not only in miles.

      It occurred to her suddenly that they had gone from being the landed gentry, the establishment, to being “settlers,” newcomers. Perhaps they would be resented by the local people, as the southern aristocracy had resented and disdained the more recent arrivals to their states.

      Certainly Lieutenant Price looked none too pleased with their arrival. “We shall try not to be a bother to you,” Joanna said.

      “I don’t see how a three-hundred-mile journey through a desert infested with unfriendly savages could be anything but a bother,” he replied.

      Joanna blinked. “Three hundred...but, I thought we were practically there?” None of the books she had had at Eaton Hall had contained maps, nor more than the sketchiest accounts of the new state.

      “Texas,” the lieutenant said, “is a large state, Mrs. Harte.”

      “Ah, here comes Mr. Harte now,” the captain said.

      Despite her feelings for her husband, Joanna could not help having a certain perverse admiration for him. Watching him now make his way along the deck, you would hardly know that when she’d last seen him, he had been in a drunken stupor. His rigidly controlled gait might have been nothing more than a landlubber’s adjustment to the motion of the ship’s deck.

      Could the lieutenant tell? she wondered. She glanced briefly sideways at him, but it was impossible to read those expressionless features.

      The captain made the introductions. “Excellent,” Lewis said, shaking the other’s hand. “We should be ready to leave in a day or so—no sense hanging around. I ordered a carriage before we left South Carolina. In the meantime, we’ll be staying with the Montgomerys, on Broadway. Maybe you know them.”

      “I’m afraid you’ll find a carriage ill-suited for the journey to San Antonio,” Lieutenant Price said. “A wagon would be far better. A covered one, of course; you’ll want protection from the elements. The trip is a rugged one, and Texas weather can be a trial for those not used to it.”

      “But surely it can’t take that long—a day or two....”

      “Two months. A little longer.”

      There was an awkward silence.

      “I should add,” the lieutenant said, “there are certain dangers as well. Though of course we’ll do all we can to minimize those.”

      Lewis had the look of a bewildered child—a bleary-eyed child; his face looked puffy and his hands, Joanna saw now, could not quite be kept from trembling.

      She realized belatedly that her husband had caught her staring at him, and she braced herself for one of his outbursts of temper.

      Instead, he said in a strained voice, “I must think of my family, of course. My wife, and my children. If you could apprise me more fully of the situation—I seem to have come ill-prepared....”

      His voice trailed off. Joanna felt an unexpected pang of sympathy for him. She knew he had made an effort; she could see the effort he was making now. If it weren’t for his sickness—and it was a sickness, to her way of thinking, a sickness of the spirit; she felt that Lewis was genuinely unable to control his drinking for any length of time and, once he’d begun to drink, unable to control his other actions as well.

      She had an uncomfortable thought: How much was she to blame for all that was wrong—with her husband, with their marriage, with their lives? She had done much that, surely, had driven him from her. Had she driven him from South Carolina as well?

      “I think there’s a great deal we need to discuss,” Lieutenant Price was saying. “If the captain will let us use his cabin?”

      “Of course,” the captain said; he hesitated briefly. “Perhaps you’d care to join us, Mrs. Harte?”

      It was none too subtle, and barely short of a slap at Lewis’s competence. She would have liked very much to join them. The truth was, ignorant as she was of conditions in Texas, she was likely to be the one to have to cope with them. She knew what happened when Lewis faced disappointment, unexpected difficulties; she’d seen him run his tongue over his lips just then, as if they were parched.

      But she’d seen something else as well, in his eyes, something unfamiliar and yet immediately recognizable; it had been a long time since her husband had asked anything without demanding it.

      And a woman did owe her husband loyalty, didn’t she? The more so, surely, if she could not love him.

      Unbidden, an image of the lieutenant’s blue eyes, like a splash of water on a warm day, came to her; she had avoided meeting them since that first, worrisome glance.

      “I think not,” she said aloud. “I prefer to leave those matters in my husband’s hands. I’ll just go get the children ready. We will be going ashore soon, won’t we, captain?”

      “In about an hour.” His tone was curt.

      Joanna watched them go, Lewis already talking in a voice a shade too hearty, clapping the lieutenant on the back as if they were old friends.

      Rugged journey. Texas weather. Dangers. It occurred to her that she was going to become, after all, one of those “pioneer women” she had admired so much. Traveling by covered wagon across a harsh wilderness, with three children to worry about....

      No, she amended, trying not to succumb to the despair that suddenly threatened to engulf her—four children. And one of them was a drunkard.

      Chapter Four

      Galveston had the look of a southern city—shuttered windows and long verandas; walled gardens and oleander blossoms. Joanna noticed as they drove that many of the houses were raised up off the ground—like elegant dowagers, veiled in trellises, comically standing on stilts.

      “Galveston Island is subject to floods and violent storms,” Lieutenant Price explained when she mentioned this fact. “Even with the stilts, the first floors are sometimes flooded.”

      “Is this the season for such storms?”

      “Yes, but you needn’t worry. Broadway, where you’re going, is somewhat elevated over the rest of the island.”

      She suspected, when she saw the street on which the Montgomerys lived, that he meant “elevated” in social status as well as the island’s topography. The houses here were large and grand. She found herself thinking, Nouveau riche, and then contritely reminded herself that the city was only about twenty years old. Charleston, by contrast, was nearly two hundred. All those years made a difference; time, certainly, to master bad habits.

      Alice Montgomery was an airy dumpling of a woman with pale eyes that seemed perpetually misted with about-to-be-shed tears, and a small mouth permanently fixed in a hesitant smile.

      Her husband, Clifford, appeared altogether too large and brutish to have wed her. The way he looked Joanna over reminded her of Vincent Mallory; indeed, it was Mr. Mallory who had arranged for them to stay with his acquaintances here.

      “We’re so happy to have you with us,” Mrs. Montgomery said, showing Joanna and the children to their rooms; she had been chattering nonstop since they had arrived, an effort, Joanna suspected, to mask her shyness. Lewis and Clifford Montgomery had retired to the latter’s study to discuss “business”—liquor business, Joanna supposed. Lieutenant Price had delivered them here and gone his own way.

      “We get so few visitors of the right sort,” her hostess was saying.

      “What sort is that?” Joanna asked, and was at once sorry for the gibe; Alice Montgomery seemed to consider the question seriously.

      “Why, you see, this is a seaport,” she explained in earnest. “All kinds of ships put in, people you couldn’t possibly invite into your home, if you follow my meaning. Ladies aren’t even permitted in the wharf area unescorted—for their own safety. But of course, there’s no problem up here—that class doesn’t come this far.”