Chapter 19
Iris stepped down at the rail depot in Coates with the feeling that she was come home to a place where she belonged. Baltimore had been too much for her: too many buildings, too many people, too much activity. Things rushed by at such speed that she never had time properly to think about them, and their coming and going had unsettled and frightened her � especially the two men at the Washington Monument. She followed Harriet, Jemma and Ellen into David�s house, and she knew she was entering a safe place, a sanctuary.
But she grew a little alarmed as David outlined his plans at dinner that night.
�I think we shall have to move, dearest.� He rested his knife and fork on his plate in the European fashion as he chewed at a last morsel of venison medallions cooked in cream and served with rice and caramelised carrots � Eulalia had returned to her kitchen with some fine Baltimore ideas.
�Move?� Iris was not sure that it was a comforting word.
�I think you know that the railroad has made me a director, and I think that means I should live in Nashville.� David beamed proudly. It is not often that a regional manager gains a directorship quite so rapidly. But the board of the C&NR had watched him successfully negotiate links with a number of other railroads west of the Appalachians, and had been impressed. David was also popular with his men, and Uriah�s funeral had added another feather to his cap. The C&NR directors had agreed that he was a man to value. He had already told Iris of his appointment, on the ride back from Baltimore. But he had kept deliberately from mentioning any need to move, lest it upset her. �I think we might buy something just out of town, so that you will have open land around you.�
Iris turned the thought in her mind. �Will we all be together?�
�Of course we will.�
David did not add that he was nursing a secret plan to make Iris even happier. That would have to depend on his negotiating skills.
Iris was silent. But she supposed life near Nashville might not be much different from life in Coates, just as long as she did not have to spend overmuch time in the city.
�Will we have ponies?� Harriet and Jemma cut in, speaking almost in unison. They had discussed the future on the long train journey back from Baltimore, and had agreed that ponies must form part of it.
Ellen looked a little downcast. She knew she was rather too young to have a pony of her own, and it seemed most unfair.
�You shall both have ponies, and Ellen shall have a dog-cart, with a big Newfoundland to pull her.� David had also been discussing the future with Evelyn, at times when Iris was sleeping on the train.
�All to myself?� Ellen slipped off her chair and rushed to her father, to fling her arms around his neck. �Will I be allowed to feed him, and stroke him, and have him sleep by my bed?�
Harriet frowned, and then brightened again. A dog-cart sounded rather smart. But Ellen was such a young thing, and needed something safe.
�We-ell, I am not sure about him sleeping in the house.� David pretended to hesitate. �But I am sure I could consider the idea, if you always brushed him properly, and made sure that he has clean paws whenever he comes into the house.�
�I will, Papa, I will.� Ellen settled back on her chair with a sublime look. She would brush, and brush, and brush, and clean paws until they shone.
�We will also need more help.� David eyed Evelyn, and she nodded, for she had been making some practical plans. �I think we will need a stable boy, and a maid.� She had already agreed with David that he would keep a carriage, with three good chestnut geldings doubling as carriage horses and for David, herself and Iris, to ride. She thought she might also buy herself a wide skirt, for riding side-saddle. She had seen fashionable women riding side-saddle in Baltimore, and imagined it might create a very favorable impression in Nashville. She imagined an experienced groom, helped by boy of twelve or thirteen in the stable might suit the bill, with a colored girl perhaps the same age as Harriet. Then Eulalia would be able to train the girl up, and perhaps also teach the boy to serve at table. They would make nice table talk if they presented and behaved well. �But I think we should consult Eulalia.�
Eulalia came into the diningroom to clear the table as she was speaking. �Can you stop a moment, �Lalia?�
Eulalia looked at her in panic, shaking her head vigorously. �No, miz, I cain�t. I got sugar custards in the oven, for to cel�brate your home-comin�, and they sure as all tarnation gonna be cinders, an� I linger.�
With that she was gone. But she returned a moment later, bearing a steaming tray, and looking very contrite. �I�se sho� sorry, miz. But these looked so good, I�se sho yo�all fergive me.�
Evelyn laughed. The three children were already breaking their sugar crusts with their spoons, and Iris made a mental note to learn how to make sugar custards as soon as she could.
�Of course we forgive you.� Evelyn glanced at David.
�Sit down, Eulalia.�
Eulalia�s face dropped. She had never been told before to sit down in company, and she was sure it presaged no good.
�We�re moving to Nashville some time soon, and we�d like you to come with us.�
Eulalia�s eyes seemed to grow bigger and bigger. �Yo� want fer me to come with yo?�
�Who else will bake our sugar custards?�
�Well, sah�, thass sho� right.� She beamed, and her smile looked to divide her face in two. �I�ll go to the end of the earth fer yo�, an� Miz Evelyn, an� Miz Iris, and ma three lil� girls, sah.�
�We�ll have a bigger house, and I think you�ll need a maid to help you out.�
Eulalia turned the idea in her mind for a moment, and then held up a fat black forefinger. �I�se have jes� the right gal, sah. I got a lil� bitty niece, ma sister�s gal, over at Gallatin. She�s mebbe the same age as Miz Harriet, they call her Triphema. They ain�t living so good, an� Eugenie, ma sister, sed she sho� lak to find her a good home, some place where she�d eat well, and larn somepin� of purpose.�
�You think she�d be amenable?�
�I�se warrant it, sah.�
�We�re going to keep a stable, and we could also do with a man to tend to the horses, and drive the carriage, and a boy to help him.�
Eulalia beamed. �I�ll esk �bout thet too, sah.� She had numerous kinfolk around Gallatin, all of them with large broods, and all of them poorer than church mice. She would do three good deeds, and find three willing pairs of hands to help her.
So it was settled. David spent a day a week in Nashville as Thanksgiving approached, both on railroad business, and hunting for a new home, and one fine day he returned to Coates looking like a man who has found a grail.
�I think I have found just the right place.� They were seated at dinner again, but this time Eulalia had roasted a wild turkey donated by Turner Evered. �It is a fine house about seven miles north of Nashville, with plenty of room for us all, comfortable servants� quarters out at the back, and some fine stabling. It comes with about three hundred acres of good grassland and some timber, so the girls will have plenty of space for riding.�
�Will we all have our own rooms again?� Harriet spoke for both herself and her sisters. They had grown accustomed to having rooms of their own in Coates, and would not willingly forego their independence.
�Of course you will, and a fine schoolroom, and I will have a library, to use as an office when I am home, and Iris and Evelyn will both have dressingrooms in addition to their bedrooms, and we will all share a comfortable breakfast room and sittingroom when we are on our own, with a large diningroom and drawingroom when we have company.� David paused in his cataloging. �I am also going to put in coal-fired steam heating, like Evelyn has in Baltimore, so that we can keep ourselves warm in winter, and I will arrange to have four of the smaller upstairs rooms converted into bathrooms, each with its own flush toilet, so that none of us squabble in the mornings.�
The three children sat open-mouthed. They were accustomed to having some rather fierce little confrontations in their Coates home, where there was only one bathroom, particularly as Harriet believed that she held the privilege of age when it came to performing her morning toilet rites, however desperate her younger sisters might be.
�Oh, Papa.� Jemma, who was usually the quietest of the three children, looked thrilled at the prospect of not having to wait on her elder sister. �We�ll be ever so grand.�
�Oh, and I forgot a very special room.�
The three girls stared at their father expectantly, and Iris and Evelyn held their breath, because their new home sounded rather more like a palace.
David pretended to run his fingers across a set of imaginary keys. �We shall also have a music room, with a grand piano.�
He smiled at Evelyn as he spoke, because he knew that she had something of a talent for the piano, and had wondered at times, during Franny�s illness, whether she missed her music.
Evelyn was already thinking of the music books she would need to pass on her skills. �I will teach Iris and the girls to play.�
�We will be able to sing together in the evenings.� Harriet looked at Iris, because she had been most impressed by the way Iris had sung her hymn, back in Baltimore, without any accompaniment at all.
Jemma thought of how she might like to try her hand at playing a harp. She had seen a harpist once, back in Baltimore, and had been very taken at the way she conjured music from her instrument with wide sweeping and very elegant gestures. Ellen just smiled. She could think of little but polishing paws.
They traveled to Nashville the following Saturday, and a hired carriage took them up to see their new home. The house was built in white-painted brick, in something of an ante-bellum style, with a wide verandah across the front reached by three stone steps, and large windows that made the interior seem very light and spacious. It was furnished inside elegantly, but in rather an old-fashioned manner, for it had belonged to the elderly widow of a Confederate general who had moved to a smaller house in Nashville, taking only her more treasured possessions.
An elderly black man with white grizzled hair greeted them. He had served the general as butler, and the general�s widow had left him to look after the house � she suspected him of entertaining liberal tendencies. He walked with a stick, and appeared to be losing his sight, and the house was exceedingly dusty as he showed them around.
Evelyn�s lips tightened a little, and she made a mental note to ask Eulalia to come up with two maids, rather than one. The house would keep both girls well and truly busy.
David glanced at the elderly man as they inspected a kitchen that Iris judged big enough to swallow up the cabin she had left, and still have room to spare. �Where do you live?�
�I hev a cabin out back, suh.� The old man trembled. He feared being turned out more than anything in the world. His wife was dead, and he had no kin that he knew of.
�You can eat with the other servants.�
�It semed to take a few moments for David�s words to sink in. Then the old butler reached out to touch his hand. �The Good Lord bless yo�, suh.� It was a much as he could say.
They explored the house, and the stables and outbuildings, which Evelyn judged to need a good deal more cleaning, not to mention a few good licks of fresh paint, and then rode out a little way on land stretching down towards a distant Cumberland River, and the house and estate seemed, in the soft fall light, to possess all the attributes of a small heaven on earth. But David still eyed Iris anxiously as they rode back towards Nashville, for it is one thing to offer a precious gift with love, but something rather different to count on it being as well received.
�What did you think?�
Iris smiled slowly. �Can I have a flock of Arucanas?� She had heard tell of chickens with an ability to lay pink, green and blue eggs, and she was sure she would not believe such a tale until she saw their eggs for herself.
David beamed, for he had heard of Arucanas as well, and was partial to a boiled egg or two for his breakfast. �Will you serve me with three eggs, each in a different colour, soft in their shells?�
�An� toast?�
�Buttered thick.�
Iris reached over to kiss him quickly, right in front of Evelyn and the three girls, and it was the first time in her life that she had kissed a man of her own free will. �Maybe you�ll also build me a lil� ol� cabin on the land somewhere, so I can be a country girl from time to time.�
Evelyn and the three girls smiled fondly, and Harriet thought to herself how much she would like one day to be in love, because it seemed such a nice way to be. David smiled as well, because he was nursing a secret, and his secret was progressing well. But he would only reveal it when the time was right.
Eulalia came bustling into the drawingroom at Coates just after lunchtime on a Sunday a couple of days later. It was just two days short of Thanksgiving, and David and Evelyn and Iris were discussing plans for celebrating the day in a restrained kind of way, and also sharing further ideas for refurbishing their new home, with a view to moving in some time early into the New Year. The three girls were playing quietly with their dolls in a corner of the room. Eulalia wiped her hands on her apron.
�I�se sorry to disturb yo� folks, but I got ma people heah fer yo� to look at.�
David made a beckoning gesture. �Bring them in.�
Eulalia frowned. She had taken one look at Abner, Triphema and Rosanna when they had arrived at the back door of the house, and while she allowed they might come into the kitchen, where she had left them standing in a row looking pleadingly at the remnants of luncheon, she was not sure they were fit to be admitted into a drawingroom.
�They�se purty po� lookin� critters.�
David pulled himself reluctantly out of his chair. �We�ll come and have a look.�
Iris and Evelyn followed him into the kitchen, and stared at the man and two girls waiting for them. Iris was sure they were just about the scrawniest and most underfed humans she had ever seen, coloured or white, and the Hulton family that had taken over the Bethpage farm had been pretty much like bare sticks.
The man bowed, and the two girls with him bobbed an attempt at curtseys. But they only stopped staring at the food on the kitchen table for an instant, and then stared again, as though willing nourishment into themselves.
Eulalia took command. �They�se able an� willin�. Ain�t yo?�
Three heads bobbed acknowledgement.
�An� yo� gwine work hard fer yo�re bed �n board an� what Mass� David sees fit to pay yo?�
More bobs.
�Yo�re gwine to be good Christian souls �n no holdin� back?� Eulalia believed in extracting a maximum commitment in front of witnesses.
Yet more bobs.
Evelyn could stand it no longer. �For heavens sake, �Lalia. Sit them down and put some food into them.�
�Yo� heared thet?� Eulalia could not resist a final flourish. �Miz Evelyn�s taken pity on yo� po� folk, �n yo better be grateful.�
She waved them to the table and began to fill three plates with meat stew and potatoes, for she always cooked a fair bit more than she expected David and his family to eat, just in case.
The three barely waited for her to cease ladling before they were at their food, and she smiled at David triumphantly. �Yo kin depend on them, sah. They gwine� work hard fer yo� now.�
She could have added that they would be working hard more under her jurisdiction than any other, but she was too polite to think such a thought out loud. She reckoned life might run a lot smoother, when she no longer had to peel potatoes and clean vegetables. Maybe she could try her hand at a fish soufflee or two, because she had tasted one in Baltimore, and it had been mighty good.
Thanksgiving brought a few flurries of snow. Eulalia prepared a generous dinner, with fried catfish cut into bite sized pieces and then dipped in buttermilk and dredged in cornmeal to start, followed by pumpkin soup, and roast turkey, with roast potatoes and baked yams arranged around it, and a solid plum pudding. Harriet, Jemma and Ellen decorated the table with stars laboriously cut from coloured paper, and Eulalia placed a great hollowed out pumpkin in the middle of the table with a candle burning inside. David opened a bottle of good Californian wine, though Iris would only sip at her glass, and they enjoyed a real family dinner, even though they were all dressed in black. It was as though Franny was watching over them, and smiling at them, and blessing them.
Eulalia held a small parallel party in the kitchen. Abner, Triphema and Rosanna were now all housed in the cottage that Iris and Uriah had used, with Eulalia sharing, to make sure they slept soundly, and roused up bright and early. She blessed the Lord for their coming, because it meant now that she could stay abed for an extra hour or so, and then come into her kitchen to find the stove blazing, and coffee all ready. Triphema had become adept at mixing up biscuit makings, and Eulalia made sure she fed the three before any of the family came down. They were also growing stronger, and she had Abner chopping wood, whilst Rosanna scoured pots and dishes, and Triphema washed and ironed. Extra hands now made light work of living.
They all ate, and then Eulalia and her three underlings, for that was how she saw them and treated them, joined the family for prayers and hymns. Iris felt as she prayed and sang that she had never been so comfortable in all her life, even in the dim, distant days of her childhood, when her mother had held her in her arms. She had begun to grow quite accustomed to the idea of moving from Coates into a big new home, though she also pined at moments for some of the better days of her youth, when she had just been a young girl, before Woodrow had grown troublesome. For there is a corner in the heart of every woman that yearns to be young, and carefree, and never to have to grow old. But then she looked at David, and he smiled at her, and she knew that her way lay forward, and not back.