'Do his goddamned drivin' his goddamned self,' says the other cheerfully. 'I guess I'll worry about him, won't I, all the way to the diggin's. I'm off to see the elephant! Yeh-hoo! It's Californey or bust!' And he waved his hat and thundered away, leaving the storeman scratching his head in wonder.
I didn't inquire at the store; the less said the better. But I met a nigger up the road, found where Mandeville's place was, and after a four-mile walk came to his imposing front gates. They were made of granite, no less, and the place was called Greystones, an impressive spread of cotton plantation with a fine white colonial house at the head of a tree-lined drive. It looked a likely spot for me, so I strode up and presented myself as a driver in need of work.
Mandeville was a broad, bull-necked man of about fifty with heavy whiskers on a coarse red face.
'Who told you I needin' a driver?' says he, standing foursquare on his verandah and squinting down at me suspiciously. I said I had met his former employee on the road.
'Hub! That fool Jim Bakewell! Ups an' off in the middle o' pickin', cool as you please, to go to Californey. Ifn he ain't any better at diggin' than at drivin' he'll finish up cleanin' out privies, which is all he good for anyways. Triflin' useless bastard.' He cocked his head at me. 'Reckon you kin drive?'
'Anything that moves,' says I.
'Oh, my niggers
'Tom Arnold,' says I. 'From Texas, a while back.'
'Uh-huh, the Texies. Well, no denyin', gotta have a driver. Dunno where I get one, this season, ifn I don't take ye. Ain't no slouch of a job, min' — you be th' only white driver on the place. Thirty dolla's a month, an' yo' keep. Satisfy ye, Tom?'
I said it would, and at that moment a nigger came round the house leading a fine white mare, and a lady came through the pillared front door, dressed for riding. Mandeville hailed her eagerly.
'Why, Annie dahlin', there you are! Fine, fine — jus' off a-ridin', I see. That's fine, fine.' And then, seeing her eyes on me, he hurried to explain. 'This here's Tom Arnold, honey; jus' hired him as a new driver, in room o' that no-good Bakewell. Right piece o' luck, I reckon, him turnin' up. Yes, sub.'
'Is it?' said the lady, and you could see she doubted it. She was one of the tiniest women I've ever seen, somewhere under five feet, although well-shaped in a dainty doll-like way. But there was nothing doll-like about the sharp little face, with its pointed elfin chin, tight lips, and cold grey eyes that played over me with a look of bleak disdain. I became conscious of my bedraggled appearance and unshaven face; three days in the woods make a poor toilet.
'We may hope he is a better driver than Bakewell,' says the lady coldly. 'At the moment he looks as though he was more accustomed to being driven.'
And without another word or glance at me she mounted her mare, Mandeville fussing to help her, and cantered off along the drive with the nigger groom trotting at her heels. Mandeville waved after her, his red face beaming, and then turned back to me.
'That Mrs Mandeville,' says he, proudly. 'She the lady o' my plantation. Yessuh, Mrs Mandeville.' Then his eyes slid away and he said he would show me my quarters and instruct me in my duties.
As it turned out, these were easy enough; slave-driving is as pleasant an occupation as any, if you must work. You ride round the cotton rows on horse-back, seeing that the niggers don't let up in filling their baskets, and laying on the leather when they slack. Greystones was a fair-sized place, with about a hundred niggers working the great snowy fields that stretched away from behind the house to the river, and they were a well-drilled pack by the time I'd done with 'em, I can tell you. I vented the discontent I felt at America on them, and enjoyed myself more than I'd done Since my Rugby days, when lacing fags was the prime sport.
Although I had a couple of black drivers to help me, I became quite expert with my hide — you could make a sleepy nigger jump his own height with a well-placed welt across his backside, squealing his head off, and if any of them were short-weighted at the end of the day you gave them half a dozen cuts for luck. Mandeville was delighted with the tally of cotton picked, and told me I was the best overseer he'd ever had, which didn't surprise me. It was work I could take a hearty interest in.
After the first few days he left me alone to the job, for he frequently had business in Helena, about fifty miles away on the other side of the Mississippi river, or in Memphis, over the Tennessee border, and would stay away for nights at a time. He always went alone, leaving his wife in the house, which seemed damned indiscreet to me. I didn't realise, fortunately for my self-esteem, that while a Southern planter wouldn't have dreamed of leaving his wife unchaperoned in a house while there was a white man there, he'd never think twice if that man was a hired servant living in a cottage fifty yards away. However, she kept out of my way in those early days, and I out of hers.
Knowing me, you may think that strange. But all my thoughts at this stage were on my own plight; Greystones seemed to be just the kind of out.of-the-way spot I required; it was isolated in the woodland and marsh, and was seldom visited, but even so I had my heart in my mouth every time hoofbeats sounded on the drive, and I kept well out of sight when one of Mandeville's neighbours called. It didn't seem likely that if there was a search going on for me, it would reach this far from the river, and there was nothing to connect the steamboat fugitive with Mandeville's new driver, but even so I kept a sharp eye open at first for any hint of danger. As the days passed, and none appeared, I began to feel easier.
Another reason why I kept out of Annette Mandeville's way was that I disliked her, and she me, apparently. I had guessed twO things from our first brief meeting: one was that she was an unpleasant, arrogant little piece, and the other that she had her big, powerful husband on a string. He was more than twice her age, of course (she couldn't have been above two-and-twenty), and I've noticed that there are few things that a middle-aged man will go in such awe of as an imperious young wife; he'll face a wounded buffalo, or go headlong into a sabre charge, but he'll turn pale and stutter at the thought of saying, 'I'd rather not, dearest.' Well, I can understand it, when the wife holds the purse, or is bigger than he, or can get the law on him. But even without these things Mandeville went in awe of her.
And she knew it, and enjoyed using her power to torment him. She wasn't just spoiled and petulant — she was cruel, in a subtle ways and I say it who am a recognised authority. I saw enough of them together to judge the pleasure she took in fretting and hurting him with her ready sneers and icy disdain; the more eager be was to please her, this man who was so coarse and masterful in other things, the more she seemed to delight in making him uneasy and bewildered.
Much of this I learned from Mandeville himself — not that he dreamed he was instructing me. But he loved to talk, and there not being another white man on the place, he took to inviting me up to the house at night, after his wife had retired, for a booze and prose; he was a decent enough fellow, I suppose, in his rough way, and greatly given to foxing himself on corn toddy, and nothing pleased him more than to yarn away about his niggers and his horses, and — when he was well maudlin — about his wife. And this most often after she had set him down, which she did most days.
'Yes, suh,' this infatuated idiot would say, smiling blearily at his glass, 'I'm a lucky man, an' she a won'erful li'l lady. Yes suh, 'deed she is. Well, you kin see that, Tom; you a travelled man, I guess, you kin see she is. Course, she git a li'l short, time to time — like today, now — but it ain't nuthin' at all. My own fault, I guess. Y'see, the truth is, although this here's a pretty fair spread at Greystones, tain't altogether what she bin used to. No-suh. She come from one o' the best French families in N'Awlins — the Delaney's, likely you heard o' them, gotta tre-mendous big estate out to Lake Pontchartrain. Trouble is, ol' man Delaney, he a bit stretched, an' I helped him out over a couple o' deals. Five years ago, that was, when I married Annie. Here, Jonah, light a see-gar for Mist' Arnold; fill your glass, suh.'
By now he would be well launched, convincing himself for the thousandth time, against all reason.
'Ye-es, five years ago. Happiest day o' my life, suh. But I'll admit — you take a gel who's bin brought up a real lady, who's got real blood, bin to convent, had a half-dozen yaller maids waitin' on her, an' who's used to livin' in the top so-ciety in N'Awlins — well, I do her pretty good here, I reckon, but it ain't the same. Not much society, even in Memphis, an' the local folks ain't 'xactly the kin' o' bucks an' belles she used to meet at home. So it's natural she gits these fits an' starts now an' then. But you 'ppreciate that, Tom. An' no denyin', either, me bein' older'n she is, a little, she get kinda bored. I don't talk quite her way, you see, an' I ain't got her — tastes, so to speak. So she get a mite res'less, like I say. An' boy, don' she dress me down then!' And he would giggle drunkenly,
