Queen fanned herself with her hankie, and pretended she hadn't heard him.
"My," she said, "the evening is so warm. I wonder if we might find a cool
drink somewhere? I declare I am dying of thirst."
Digby laughed, and offered her his arm. "I cannot have you die, my dear,"
he said. "I have waited too long to find you."
They walked away toward the town, and talked of the weather. Digby didn't
ask about her family again that evening, but spoke of the war, and the
chaos of the reconstruction of the South. Queen sighed with relief,
thinking she had got out of a difficult situation rather well.
She saw him again the next day, and the next. Each evening they went for a
stroll along the river, and he was never less than a gentleman to Queen.
She loved his innate good manners and his poetic civility to her, and began
to believe that this was how her father must have been, as a young man.
Digby did not push the subject of her family further than Queen thought was
tolerable. She admitted she came from Alabama, and that her father was
Colonel Jackson, but she never referred to Florence, and spoke only of "the
plantation" when talking about her home. She elaborated on her own
childhood with stories of her half brothers and sisters as though they were
full siblings, and gradually she came to believe her own stories, because
they had so much of the truth in them. If Digby's questions became too
provocative, she would ask him about his own family, and especially his
mother.
"She died from grief, I think," Digby said. "My father was killed in the
war, but she accepted that. She believed it was our duty to fight and, if
necessary, die for our country. When we lost the war, she lost her cause,
and passed away grieving for our vanished world."
The romantic in Queen completely understood, but the survivor in her was
confused.
"But she could have lived," she said, thinking of Jass, and Miss Lizzie and
Miss Sally. "She could have gone on-"
"In the cesspool that the South has become?" Digby said bitterly. He paused
for a moment, as if looking for the words to express his deepest feelings.
QUEEN 603
"it is against God's law to pretend that the blacks are equal to us," he
said.
Queen did not dare turn away, but stared at him as if hypnotized. Her
mind was crying, screaming. He could not be so cruel.
"We offended God when we lost the war, and he is visiting a terrible
judgment on us. Look what is happening to the country now. Imagine what
it will be like when they start electing niggers to Congress. "
He looked at the twilight sky.
"I hope God is satisfied," he said.
Queen knew she should say nothing, but she had to say something. She had
to defend her indefensible position.
"Do you hate black people so much?" she whispered, and added an
outrageous variant on the truth. "I was always very fond of our nigras."
To her surprise, Digby laughed. "I don't hate them; they simply are not
our equals," he said. "But they are not to blame for what happened. The
Yankees are to blame. It's the Yankees I hate."
Queen breathed a small sigh of relief. She knew she was on the thinnest
of ice, but as long as he didn't actually hate nigras, and as long as he
never knew the truth about her, they could be happy together. For she
hoped that they would be together.
Alice was less sanguine.
"You be very careful," she said. "Sooner or later, he's going to have to
know the truth."
They were working in the soup kitchen, preparing food, whispering to each
other,
"I already told him the truth," Queen said defensively.
"That your mother was a slave?" Alice asked, in a taunting whisper, and
Queen had to admit the truth.
"No, not that part," she said. Why wouldn't Alice leave her alone? Why
did she have to spoil it? Digby was the most beautiful thing that had
ever happened to Queen. He had asked her out to the theater on the Fourth
of July, and Queen had never been to a theater. Everything Digby did was
new to Queen, and she loved him for it.
604 ALEX HALEY'S QUEEN
"Oh, I could spank you," Alice said angrily, who had asked George about
Digby. He knew very little about the man, but enough. "He's a white
Southern gentleman from a good family, and he was an officer in the
Confederate Army. How's he going to feel when he discovers he's paying
court to a nigra?"
Queen had no answer for her, except her usual, blind response. "if I
don't tell him, he won't know!"
Alice pressed her advantage. She wasn't worried that Queen was seeing
Digby, she was worried that Queen was becoming much too fond of him.
"Every moment you're with him, you're living a lie, and one day you'll
slip," she said. Queen looked at her angrily.
"He's good to me, he looks after me," she retorted. "I feel wonderful
when I'm with him. For the first time in my life I feel as if a man cares
about me."
She looked so lost and lonely and vulnerable, and yet so alive, that
Alice realized she had a hopeless case of infatuation on her hands. She
prayed it didn't develop into love, for she remembered her own first love
and the pain it had bought her, and she didn't want that same pain for
Queen. But alarm bells were clanging in her head, for Digby was an enigma
to her, and the unknown frightened Alice.
"Then let him take care of you, but don't care for him too much. Don't
let it become love," she said, knowing it was too late. "Love is
dangerous for women like us."
Queen, hopelessly, helplessly in love, bridled at the comparison. "I
ain't like you," she growled, and turned away to serve food to a woman
in the line. The woman, thin and hungry and rattily dressed, much like
Queen had been not so very long ago, took her soup and biscuits
gratefully. She looked around to make sure no one was listening, and
whispered her awful gratitude.
"Thank you," she said. "Sister."
It hit Queen like a thunderbolt. The woman scuttled away to eat, and
Queen stood staring after her. How had she guessed? More important, why
hadn't Queen known? Was it true? Did you become so secure you got
careless? All her selfassurance flooded out of her. She turned away, and
saw the flames in the small stove where the soup was kept hot. The flames
danced in her mind, jolting her back to a nightmare
QUEEN 605
chase through a dark forest, and a memory of two black men sitting round
a campfire who had rejected her when she was in such distress. She felt
the hunger she felt then, the need to eat, the need for comfort, the need
for protection and reassurance.
She did an odd thing. She snatched a biscuit from the pile and stuffed
it into her pocket.
She turned away, feeling guilty and afraid, and saw Alice staring at her.
"What are you doing?" Al
ice asked in amazement, for Queen had no need to
filch food.
"Nuttin'," Queen whispered miserably, slipping into dialect. "Ain't doin'
nuttin'."
70
Digby had guessed that Queen bad colored blood almost from the moment he
saw her, for he was a consummate liar himself and lived a fantasy
existence, of his own fabrication. Almost nothing that he told her was
true, although some of it had a basis in fact. His father, still living,
had not fought in the war, but was a moderately successful lawyer in Baton
Rouge, Louisiana, too often distracted by business to pay much attention
to his family. His mother, also still living, doted on her only surviving
son, and spoiled him as a boy, indulging his every whim. Strong, arrogant,
and handy with his fists, Digby had been a bully at school, who delighted
in beating up younger, smaller boys, and seemed to get some perverse
pleasure from it. His preferred victims were the younger sons of the
landed gentry. Digby resented his lowlier station, and despised his father
for not having made more of a fortune.
Expelled from two schools, he was sent to a military academy, where,
having,survived the violent initiation ceremonies himself, he became an
expert at inflicting corporal punishment
606 ALEX HALEY'S QUEEN
on those who came after him. He was not unpopular with certain of his
like-minded peers, for he could present a pleasant face to the world. He
learned to cultivate that poetic melancholy that so entranced Queen,
ingratiated himself with his tutors, and persuaded them that he could not
possibly be guilty of the injuries he was sometimes accused of inflicting.
He did not lose his virginity at the military academy; he inflicted it,
forcefully, on an unwilling slave girl, in the company of two of his
friends. When the girl protested, Digby beat her until she bled, and when it
was his turn to have her, the taste of her blood on his lips, the sound of
her screams in his ears, were precious to him, and infinitely exciting.
He was asked to leave college after a nasty incident involving another
slave girl, whom he had beaten nearly to death. Her Massa had protested to
the dean, and Digby was sent home in disgrace. His father despaired of him,
but at his mother's urging gave him a job in his own office, as a law
clerk. It bored Digby, who preferred to spend his time and his salary
cultivating an image of himself as a gentleman during the day, and in
taverns and houses of ill repute at night. He was discreet about his
nocturnal pleasures, put some rein on his propensity for violence, and was
favorably regarded as a scoundrel boy who had sown his wild oats and had
rehabilitated himself into an eligible man. Although not welcome in the
better country houses, he was popular among the small middle class, the
city folk, and especially those parents seeking a good match for a
less-attractive daughter.
He told Queen about the first love of his life, but a romantic version of
that ill-fated liaison. The young woman in question had fallen hopelessly in
love with Digby, and they had become engaged. Then the war came.
"I don't know how or why," Digby said sadly to Queen, "but she changed. Or
I changed. Who can tell? I knew she wasn't happy with me anymore, so I even
persuaded her-"
He broke off. Queen was sure she saw a tear in his eye.
"Forgive me, my sweet love; I shouldn't tell you this," he said in a tone
of infinite regret. "I even let us become lovers, before marriage, thinking
that might keep us together, butthere was a captain in the army. She ran
away with him."
QUEEN 607
For a moment it appeared that he could not go on, and Queen touched his
hand gently.
"Perhaps she thought him more of a man than I,- Digby said ruefully. He
indicated his leg.
"I lost the full use of my leg in the battle of Wilson's Creek. I am not
a complete man anymore."
The truth was rather different. Digby and the young woman had become
engaged, and had become lovers, but against her will. Unable to control
his lust, obsessed with finding out what female blood looked like on
white skin rather than black, Digby had raped his fianc6e, and beaten her
violently. She told no one of her disgrace until she became pregnant and
tried to kill herself. In the ensuing scandal, her brothers broke Digby's
leg with an iron bar. They would have killed him but for their sister's
hysterical intervention, and they contented themselves with twisting the
fractured leg, to make it difficult to mend. Laudanum became his only
comfort. Digby's father gave him a sum of money and promised a weekly
allowance if he would never come within a hundred miles of Baton Rouge
again. It broke his mother's heart.
Digby volunteered for the army, but although they would not have him at
first, as a cripple, they took him later as a quartermaster, and his was
a pleasant war, far removed from the front lines. After the surrender,
he wandered the South looking for somewhere to live, and had settled in
Decatur, a small town far enough away to make rumors of his scandalous
past unlikely.
His father's regular remittances averted a need to work, and he spent his
days in idleness and his nights at the inn. So it was that he saw a
beautiful young mulatta working in a flower shop, and wanted her at that
moment, and set his heart upon having her. Queen's denial of her blood
and her fabrications about her past amused him, and he played along with
them. The more complex the chase, the more intense would be his eventual
pleasure, and the more satisfying her pain.
Alone at night, he would laugh at Queen's innocent faith in the success
of her deception. Did she really think he didn't know? He could smell a
nigra bitch a mile away.
On the Fourth of July, he dressed in formal evening wear, hired a hansom
cab, and called for Queen at her lodgings. She
608 ALEX HALEY'S QUEEN
was wearing an elegant pink dress that left her lovely shoulders bare, and
Digby could hardly restrain himself. He kissed her hand and her arm, and
then her creamy shoulders, and the desire to sink his teeth into that
exquisite flesh, to hear her gasp in pain, and to see a drop of her nigra
blood spring forth was almost irresistible to him. Soon, he told himself. It
must be soon, for the old, familiar urges were upon him.
Queen and Alice had taken considerable care with her toilette. Alice had
made the gown herself, and gave Queen a string of white beads that looked
like pearls as her only jewelry. Before Queen left, Alice repeated her
warning, and Queen smiled, and assured her that everything was going to be
all right.
Digby's ardent greeting, romantic yet with a hint of something dark and
unsettling, awoke curious feelings in Queen. When she felt his teeth bite
hard into her shoulder, it disturbed her, and she
gasped in pain. Digby
looked at her, and his smile was not reassuring. As she rode to the theater
beside her handsome beau, Alice's warnings rang in her ears, and she began
to worry, for the look in Digby's eyes was one she had seen before, in
other men, at other, frightening times.
Independence Day was an ambivalent festival in the defeated South, but
occasions for a celebration of any kind were rare, and society made the
most of them. Women brought their loveliest gowns, hardly worn since before
the war, and the evening clothes of many of the men gave off a vague smell
of camphor, used in storage to repel moths. The street was brightly
lighted, and the theater patriotically decorated in red, white, and blue
bunting, although there was little evidence of the Union flag. A crowd had
gathered outside to enjoy the spectacle of the arrivals, and cheered their
favorite local politicians and city fathers, especially those who had been
vociferous against the Yankees. Poor women sighed with envy at the silks
and satins, the feathers and fans, and the sight of a rare piece of jewelry
made them gasp in appreciation. There were beggars and buskers, and food
vendors and balloon sellers, and musicians, and a few disabled veterans,
staring with envying eyes.
Digby's carriage pulled up, and a footman helped Queen alight. Her simple
beauty brought audible response from the
QUEEN 609
excited crowd. A shabbily dressed black man ran to the horse and grabbed the
bridle.
"Look after the horses, suh?" he begged, for sometimes he earned a few
cents that way, but the coachman told him to get out of the way, and the
beggar turned to Digby.
11 Please, suh, just a few pennies," he pleaded. The coachman, who was also
black, flicked his whip at the beggar.
"You heard the Massa," he shouted. "Out of the way."
The beggar, who had been lashed too often when he was a slave, angrily
grabbed the whip, and pulled the coachman from his box.
"Yo' don't whip me," he cried. "I ain't a slave no mo'."
A scuffle developed and a crowd gathered round, cheering or hissing or just
enjoying the sport. Lashing out at anyone, the beggar knocked a bystander
against the horrified Queen.
Queen screamed, and Digby struck the beggar hard, viciously hard, with his
cane. The beggar roared in anger and launched himself at Digby, who raised
his cane again, quite ready to defend himself. His eyes were sparkling at
the prospect of the violence, while a little part of his mind wondered what
Queen was feeling.
Others, street-rough whites, rushed to Digby's aid and quickly subdued the
furious beggar.
"He cain't do that," the beggar yelled. "He cain't hit a rugger no mo'!"
A burly white man disagreed with him. "We can do what we damn well like,
coon," he said, slamming his fist into the beggar's face, knocking him
senseless. Digby was enjoying himself, the evening was off to a splendid
start, but considerations of etiquette were demanded now. He put his arm
around Queen and shepherded her toward the theater. There were cheers of
approval from some of the white bystanders, and the mayor, who had seen it
all, greeted them in the foyer.
"Well done, old man," he congratulated Digby, shaking his hand. "I don't
know what the world's coming to."
Digby smiled. "Damn monkeys should be shot," he said. And looked at Queen.
She was miserable. The evening had been so full of promise, but the ugly
fight, and the statements of hatred toward blacks, which she had heard
often but had not expected on
610 ALEX HALEY'S QUEEN
this night of nights, depressed her. She worried that perhaps Alice was
right, and she wanted to flee the theater, run home to where she was
loved, and have nothing more to do with Digby. She had persuaded herself
that his racial intolerance was no threat to her, since he would never
know her true blood, but now she was not so sure. She had seen a
frightening look of lusty joy in his eyes when he hit the beggar, as when