Letters and Love

Chapter Twenty-Four: Noah

How I wished I could read her face! What was she thinking? Had my background, what little of it I had told, disgusted her already?

"So your family was wealthy."

"I suppose you could say that," I said slowly, not understanding her comment. "We weren't the wealthiest family in the county by any means, but we never wanted for anything."

The same could not be said for the slaves my father had owned. My father had always claimed he was a good master and that he provided everything a slave could ever want. Lies to assuage his conscience or to keep me from questioning him?

Elizabeth nodded as though she understood. Did this detail change anything? I'd understand if it did. After all, my family's wealth had been earned on the backs of slaves.

"What made you decide to leave all of that behind?"

Did she mean why I had left behind my family's wealth or just the Southern way of life in general?

"I couldn't stay in Georgia," I said honestly. "At first, I thought I could wait it out. Once I inherited from my father, I could do as I wished, right? I could legally free the slaves and change the direction of the plantation. But my father caught me looking into how I could do that. We argued and he swore he would write up his will in a way that would keep me from freeing everyone."

Rubbing the back of my neck, I heaved a sigh. "I don't think my father ever forgave me for betraying his trust like that. He refused to look at me and my mother blamed me for being a rebel."

Wasn't that ironic?

"Why?" Elizabeth asked, tilting her head. "I mean, why did you believe your father was in the wrong? It isn't often that someone just thinks differently from the rest of their family."

"I didn't always believe it was wrong," I admitted. "It was just a part of life and everyone around me lived like that. Even those who were poor aspired to be in a position of owning at least one slave. But when I went to school, I met several people who persuaded me to see how wrong it was to own another person."

The woman across from me blinked. "Where did you attend college?"

"The President and Fellows of Yale College, in New Haven," I answered promptly. "Even though we were well off, my father was ambitious. All the best families educated their sons there, or at Harvard, and he would do no less. If he'd known what I would learn there, I doubt he would have sent me."

And honestly, a classical education had been useless. I mean, it had been interesting studying ancient languages, but what practical purpose did they serve? It wasn't as though I learned medicine to help people or even the law to enforce right and wrong.

"You never mentioned it."

I shrugged my shoulders, feeling the back of my neck heat up. "I don't talk about it much. A lot of people assume I'm holding it over their heads or trying to prove that I'm better than them."

"So what happened after your father found out about your plans?"

"Not much. He cut off my allowance, and completely disinherited me." I shrugged my shoulders. "Maybe he thought I would come back and beg to be forgiven. I decided to just leave."

"So you let your father drive you away?" she asked, her tone becoming gentle. "You didn't try to persuade him like you were persuaded? Maybe you could have made a change."

I shook my head. The last few conversations I had with my father had been more like arguments and shouting matches. "It would have been a waste of my breath. There had been no reasoning with him."