Chapter 3

When we returned to the main house I dressed straight away even still with the dirt of a day’s work on my body. Madame was resting in her chambers while Abigail tended her and moaning to fetch a doctor.

The only one I knew who could tend an injury might be Professor Slade. He ran the Clinton Female Seminary not too far from the plantation. We did not have horses and even though I volunteered to go, Abigail made a show of pretending she may go in my stead.

“No child, attend me” Madame insisted that I make the journey on my own.

“I could hitch Cornelia to the carriage,” Abigail made a sour joke at my expense and her grandmother said that at the rate at which I plow the carriage would not arrive until well after she passed of natural causes.

I allowed them to have their joke without comment and feeling an obligation for the injury made my way to the seminary. On the way, I kept to the back roads to avoid the movement of soldiers from either side. There was still fighting and the worst of it would be the deserters who had become separated from their units as they were hungry and without morals.

I briefly wondered if perhaps I could seek asylum at the seminary. I was after all rather devout and if they would make accommodation for Charles then it would be no better living conditions than serving in the manner I had been tilling the fields.

However, upon arrival I saw that the seminary was overcrowded with the sick and dying. Professor Slade was not a professional physician but he and the women of the seminary were doing what they could. It was only his long standing relationship with Madame Parrish that convinced him to leave his work and attend her injury.

He drove me back in a carriage. I was fortunate because it was the way I had walked to the seminary and we were set upon by two hungry deserters. I could not even recognize whether they wore the uniform of the Union or the confederacy and it did not matter for their meant to rob us no matter where our allegiance lay.

Professor Slade produced an old pistol and shot one before the other ran off. He lay dead in the ditch as we rode towards the plantation.

When we arrived Professor Slade attended her injury and set it. He said that he would not need to amputate but that unless Madame Parrish stayed off the leg it could become much worse. She had a Wheelchair that was probably over a hundred years old that belonged to Captain Parrish’s mother when she lived with them for a time. The Captain even built his mother a special house off the main house with a ramp that she could easily enter and move around without encumbrance.

The Professor was invited to remain for dinner and spend the evening since it had become late and the roads were unsafe. He was hesitant saying that he had to return to the seminary but Madame Parrish could be insistent. He and other prominent men had once attended her grand gala events in this very house and now it seemed like a sad, lonely, quiet and darkened shell of its former glory I am sure.

The Madame insisted I cook something special for him and when I tried to stretch what little we had she chastised me in front of the Professor. He asked during dinner what had happened to cause the fall and at first we became silent.

“Her son was peeping on my daughter’s bath and when she cried out I came running and fell,” Madame left out a few of the details but unfortunately it wouldn’t have mattered. The Professor’s opinion of me fell even lower and he concluded I must be guilty and somewhat unrepetent about it as well since I had not sought forgiveness at the seminary.

I felt inclined to say nothing in my defense. I had been naked during the fall and that detail was left out of the story. That would have made it all the more scandalous if it were revealed to the Professor that I was stark naked at the time of the incident.

“I see,” the Professor calmly wiped his mouth of gravy and without looking at me or my son offered to take us to the Seminary. “We don’t have much room but I can see how with Abigail blossoming that it may be safest If they were to find other accommodations,” he said. He had a very aristocratic bearing about him and the confident swagger of a man who was used to being right about his opinions at all times.

“No, that would not do at all,” Madame said. At first, I thought she meant to offer us the charity of her forgiveness. “Your seminary is no doubt swollen with those seeking your aid and I’ll not send two lazy, open mouths for you to fill to your doors,” she assured the Doctor. “There is a debt to be paid in any case for the injury caused by this young man. I’ll see that Cornelia pays the debt before I would permit her to leave this plantation in any case,” she said.

“That is sensible,” Professor Slade explained that there were some young women that were sent to his seminary who would have made proper army camp followers. Charles asked what that was and I ignored the question.

“He means they were hussies and prostitutes,” Madame Parrish explained with a scornful gaze towards my son.

“They are calling them hookers now after a General who enlisted them to fight for the Yankees!” the Professor quipped. “Hookers Brigade is so thick with them that they are issued rifles and march along side the troops!”

I could hardly believe such a boastful claim.

“Shameful! Hookers Brigade! The Yankees truly have no morality or sense of decency” Madame agreed.

“Are any of them dressed like ponies or donkeys?” Charles asked with the wonderment of an imaginative but innocent child.

Madame looked scornfully at him as did I in the hopes he would withdraw his question. The Professor asked him to clarify his meaning.

“You know? When a woman dons the leather straps of a plow horse and a donkey tail to till the soil?” he asked. I was mortified.

“That is a very fanciful idea and one that we should not speak of in the company of proper ladies,” Professor Slade joked but commented wryly that he would have to consider it for some of the more stubborn women of the seminary.

“Their parents could not control them and they sent them to me to discipline. I am all day and night trying to come up with frightful ways to set them on the proper pass and perhaps I should consider your rather extreme idea if I fail to see results with those girls who refuse to accept our teachings,” he laughed.

“What sort of discipline do you use instead?” Madame asked him.

The Professor smiled and said that he could not speak such things in front of proper ladies. “The manner in which we provide discipline might offend your sensibilities. Suffice to say, that we turn their feminine charms and wiles into tools to more properly align them with the proper path when there is no other alternative,” he said.

“Your discretion is appreciated but quite frankly the woman who made this awful meal and whose son caused this injury could benefit from some proper discipline and my own attempts have proven somewhat futile. If you would speak plainly on your recommendations I would consider it a tremendous favor,” she said.

“Let us retire after dinner to the parlor then after Abigail and Charles have gone to bed and discuss the matter,” he said kindly.

Abigail grew insolent and asked to join us. “After all I am of marrying age and if there is to be discipline with Grandmother in her current state then it would fall upon me to see that it is carried out,” She was barely in her teens but in Georgia this did make her technically a woman.

Thus we ate our soup in silence for the remainder of dinner and waited for Charles to go to bed. He kissed me on the cheek and said that he was sorry for any harm that he had caused and I told him never to mind and go to bed straight away. It was difficult to wait to hear what discipline would be recommended and I was thankful not have as furtive an imagination as my son to think of all the possible constraints that may await me. However, as was the custom – these kinds of discussions would wait until after dinner and be had in the parlor.

I poured brandy and sat in a comfortable chair after I served everyone.

“Speak plainly now, Professor,” Madame insisted once my son had left us. “I’ve no patience for mild deterrents and this one is both lazy and talkative,” she asked.

“Is she of low morals?” Professor Slade asked her without looking at me – as if discussing a prized cow or a slave he intended to purchase.

“Does she steal? Only precious time with endless prattle. Where would she pawn any ill begotten goods anyway?” Madame said.

“I am looking for the right way to say this in front of your granddaughter,” the Professor was still uncomfortable. He had watched Abigail grow up from a baby and was reluctant to have this discussion at all.

“Speak plainly,” Madame repeated her earlier request and Abigail frowned her quirky frown when she wants to say something insolent but can’t.

“There are some girls at the seminary precisely because they have a madness about them. They masturbate with a frequency, exhibit shameless and deviant behavior, cavort with other women, these are things that proper ladies would never hear in normal conversation I understand,” Professor Slade was uncomfortable discussing this.

Madame held up a hand to assure him this was not my case and I was thankful at least she regarded me highly enough on that matter.

“When you fell was Cornelia not standing in the field plowing as naked as the day is long?” Abigail suggested that I was of low moral character after all.

The Professor raised his eyebrows at the shocking imagery that Abigail painted and I found myself at a loss of words for explanation. He asked “IS that why your son asked if some women play at being ponies? Do you wear a tail when you prance and cavort about?”

“No, but I pulled the plow as we have no proper horse or donkey, Sir” I admitted.

“In front of your son and Abigail?” the Professor was shocked by the mere suggestion even though earlier he had seemed to think it was a funny idea.

I looked to Madame and Abigail for help but had no choice but to answer yes that they had seen me.

“I have had some success with two women such as you that were camp followers and only by constant discipline was I able to teach them the error of their ways. I don’t believe you are equipped here for what I would prescribe to address that behavior,” Professor Slade spoke to Madame and not me.

She insisted I remain until the debt is paid which by her reckoning would be at least a year.

“At the seminary, she could receive a daily beating in the privacy of the church basement, and around only other women she could have her hair shorn short so as not to distract her as she goes about her duties in just a chemise. She would be fed bread and water and on Sunday’s receive prayer after confession and she would be worked hard every day. I could return her to you when your leg has healed and she could begin her repayment of the debt then,” he offered. “She would be taught in the seminary and in prayer when not in honest labor or asleep but under no circumstance would she be permitted to fornicate or pleasure herself,” he assured her.