Roses (10 page)

“Was there anything else?” Miles asked, sounding weary of her.

The tender moment of a while ago was now history, ashes in a cold grate. Mary felt nothing but a chilling dislike for her
brother. Clutching the book to her chest, she jerked open the door without answering. “Happy reading, little sister, ” Miles
called as she slammed it. “I hope you won’t find the book disturbing.”

She stuck her head back in. “I’m sure I won’t, because I don’t believe in curses. I intend to have many children.”

“We’ll see,” Miles said.

Mary carried the volume to her room and sat in a window seat to examine it. The aged leather binding was held together by
a leather cord running through two eyes and tied in a fast knot. She straightened against an odd feeling of dread and opened
the book to the first page.

Some of the genealogical facts she knew. Others, she did not. Silas Toliver, Mary’s great-grandfather and patriarch of the
Texas clan, was born in 1806. He was thirty years old when he came to Texas with his wife and son Joshua. A year later, in
1837, a second son was born, Thomas Toliver, Mary’s beloved grandfather. Joshua died from a fall off a horse at twelve. His
surviving brother took possession of Somerset in 1865 after the death of Silas. That same year, Thomas became the proud father
of a baby boy, Vernon, Mary’s father. In the following years, he fathered another son and one daughter. Neither child was
living at the time Vernon inherited Somerset. His brother had died of a water moccasin bite at fifteen, and his sister had
succumbed at twenty to complications from the delivery of her only child, a stillbirth, leaving Vernon the single Toliver
heir.

Faded photographs of all the Toliver offspring accompanied the chronicle. Mary studied them. Each of the children looked high-spirited
and healthy. Their deaths had been sudden and unexpected. Here today and gone tomorrow. With a wrench of sympathy for their
parents and surviving offspring, she snapped the book closed and shut it away in a drawer of the window seat. Then, to raise
her low spirits, she stripped off her pinafore and dress and stood before her full-length mirror. She was pleased with what
she saw. She might not be petite and cute and “round in all the right spots,” but she knew she was alluring, and her long,
supple body was made for childbirth. Her periods were as regular as clockwork. She would have many children—Miles needn’t
doubt that. Her father—God rest his soul—should not have worried that he had threatened her prolificacy or shortened her children’s
longevity by entrusting her with Somerset. No matter what he’d believed or the book implied, there was no Toliver curse. The
fatalities befalling the heirs were normal to the times in which they lived. Percy and Ollie were the only living heirs to
their families’ enterprises. Were they under a curse, too? Of course not. She ran her hands over the firm flesh between her
full breasts and slender hips. And Percy Warwick, too, could spare himself the trouble of thinking she might fall in love
with someone unwilling to share her with a plantation. She wouldn’t look at a man who had such a failing. She would marry
no one who would separate her from her destiny. The man she married would support her in procreating the Toliver line and
in carrying Somerset into the next century. The idea of a curse was absurd.

A
TLANTA
, J
UNE
1917

H
er packing completed, Mary latched the last of her suitcases, relishing the finality of the sound. It signaled an end to her
incarceration at Bellington Hall, thank God. The year was finally over, and she was going home. In three days’ time she’d
step foot onto hometown soil, never to leave it again if she so desired. And she so desired, she thought savagely, yanking
the suitcase off the bed. If she’d gained nothing else from this wasted year at Bellington, it had reaffirmed what she’d arrived
knowing—that there was nowhere else she wanted to be but Howbutker, nothing else she wanted to be but a planter of cotton.

Where in the world was Lucy? She’d be damned if she’d let that girl delay her departure. The headmistress had probably sent
her off on some errand to prevent her from showing up on time. Well, if Miss Peabody thought she’d miss her train in order
to say good-bye to her roommate, she was as mistaken about her now as she’d been the day they met.

She lugged the suitcase outside her door and placed it with the others to be picked up by the porter. She was the last in
her dormitory to leave. Miss Peabody had seen to that, too—a final thrust to the armor Mary had built up against Bellington
Hall and the headmistress in particular.

Up and down the corridor, the doors to all the dormitory rooms stood open, their occupants gone, the silent echoes of their
voices lingering in the quiet. Mary stood in the doorway and listened, already recalling with difficulty the faces of the
girls who’d shared her wing. Although they were her age, they had seemed intolerably young, their heads filled with the fluff
the teaching staff had tried to stuff into hers. Mary had sensed their pleasure in knowing she’d be the last student permitted
to leave the premises.

All except Lucy.

She felt a pang of contrition. She should be ashamed for hoping that Lucy wouldn’t make it to her room before she left for
the station. It was simply that Lucy would turn their farewell into an awful, sloppy scene, and she’d had enough of those
from her roommate.

Besides, she was going back to enough emotional turmoil. Everything had fallen apart at Somerset. As she’d feared, Miles had
relaxed the landowner image he’d disputed so long with their father, and with predictable results. In March, sick for news
of the plantation because Miles had included precious little about Somerset in his infrequent correspondence, she’d written
to Len. The overseer had replied by return mail and, in a laborious script written with a lead pencil she pictured often touched
to his tongue, related as respectfully as his chagrin would allow the sorry state of affairs at Somerset.

Horror-stricken, Mary had visualized the situation. To prove that a laissez-faire treatment of the tenants would result in
greater benefits for all, Miles had ordered Len to put away his quota book, frown, and imaginary whip and go fishing. The
tenants did not need overseeing, he was informed. Each man would work according to his own dictates. They had families to
feed, land to look after, cotton to grow. They would do it and more besides. Len would see the results at settlement time.
Give a man his dignity and a freer hand to govern himself and his energies would know no bounds.

Consequently, Len reported, the tenants who didn’t mind less for themselves and their families had slacked off. They’d bale
fewer acres this year, taking in mind what they’d lose to the boll weevil. Mister Miles’s handling of matters didn’t seem
to be working, and maybe Miss Mary needed to come home and have a talk with her brother.

Mary was all but weeping by the time she’d finished Len’s letter. “Damn Miles!” she’d cried, pacing about her room. She had
known this would happen. Without Len brandishing his “imaginary whip,” which was nothing more than the constant supervision
of the tenants, production was bound to drop. With money needed for seeds, fertilizer, equipment, maintenance, and repair,
there would hardly be enough to meet the mortgage. “Damn him! Damn him! Damn him!” she wailed, of a mind to pack right then
to have it out with her brother. He had no right to indulge his socialistic leanings at the expense of the plantation!

She had decided to pack her bags, when a letter arrived from Beatrice Warwick.

In her blunt style, Beatrice wrote that she had learned from Miles that Mary was not fitting in well at Bellington Hall. In
that case, if she knew anything about their spirited Mary Lamb, she suspected that Mary would be planning to come home before
the term ended. Beatrice was writing to advise her against it. Her mother’s situation had not improved. She saw only Miles
and Sassie and Toby Turner, their handyman. She had shut out everyone else, including her. The house was dark and shuttered,
and no one went calling there anymore. In her opinion, Houston Avenue was no place for Mary at this time. Her presence would
add to Miles’s burdens and hinder her mother’s recovery. Time to adjust to the terms of the will, which were now widely known
and discussed, was all that Mary could give Darla for the present.

Mary read the letter in despair and anger. It was unheard of for a member of one of the families to interfere in the personal
business of the other two unless asked. Miles must have asked. He had painted a terrible picture of her rebellion at Bellington,
and out of concern for her best friend, Beatrice had agreed to write the letter.

Heavy of heart, Mary had folded the letter and decided that she had no choice but to wait out the year at Bellington and pray
for the best concerning her mother and Somerset. Cotton prices were soaring right now owing to the demands of the war in Europe.
Their profits would offset Miles’s idiocy for the time being, and she would be home before the next planting season.

Then several other blows fell. In April, the United States declared war against Germany. Congress passed the Selective Service
Act mandating that all able-bodied men from eighteen to forty-five register for compulsory military service. Mary, fearing
the worst, held her breath. Sure enough, Len Deeter was among the first in town to receive a draft notice. Who would be left
in the county to replace him?

Then, to add horror to horror, she received a letter from Miles on the first of June informing her that he and Percy and Ollie
had enlisted in the army and would be reporting to officers’ training camp in Georgia in July. Her first thought was the question
of how Miles could serve as trustee of Somerset when he was an ocean removed from Howbutker. Her second was to realize that
Miles could be killed or maimed and the same might be true for Percy and Ollie. In shock, devastated, and furious, she had
wept. How could Abel DuMont and the Warwicks permit such stupidity? As only sons, the boys could have argued for deferments
based on their indispensable duties at home, Miles especially since his family was dependent on him. How could he go off and
leave their mother? How could he do this to his little sister? She had to get home and talk him out of this insanity.

“You’re all packed, I see.”

The crisp observation came from Elizabeth Peabody, headmistress of the school. She stood in the open doorway, pince-nez in
place, clipboard affixed to her arm.

“Yes, I am,” Mary said, surprised. She had not expected to be cleared for departure by Miss Peabody herself. The housemother
or her student assistants, of which her roommate, Lucy Gentry, was one, had seen to the discharging of the other girls on
the floor, and now that Mary was the last in the dormitory to leave, there was no lack of personnel available for the task.
It was typical of Miss Peabody’s mean-spiritedness not to send Lucy. She has come for one last shot at me, Mary thought, deliberately
turning from the woman to pull on the jacket of her traveling suit.

“How many pieces of luggage?”

“Four.”

Elizabeth Peabody marked something on the clipboard with quick, precise strokes. After entering the room, she darted a critical
eye about the stripped beds and walls, the open, emptied drawers and cupboards.

“Have you checked thoroughly to make sure you’ve not forgotten anything? The school is not responsible for items left behind
once a student has officially departed the campus.”

“I’ve left nothing behind, Miss Peabody.”

Miss Peabody’s focus swung to Mary, and the agate eyes behind the pince-nez flashed. There was dislike in the gaze, which
Mary met with the cool indifference that had set her apart from the other students from the beginning. “You can be sure of
that,” the headmistress said. “I don’t think we’ve ever graduated a student who contributed and gained so little from the
school.”

Mary thought over the statement and said with her composed smile, “Well, now, that’s not true, Miss Peabody. I learned that
the sentence you just spoke contains perfect parallel structure.”

“You are impossible.” The headmistress’s hand tightened perceptibly on the pencil. “An impossible, willful, selfish girl.”

“In your eyes, perhaps.”

“I’ve learned to trust my eyes, miss, and they see in you a young woman who will live to regret the decision she has made.”

“I doubt it, Miss Peabody.”

The headmistress was referring to her refusal to become one-half of the famous pairs Bellington Hall was noted for matching.
Early on, Mary had discovered that many parents sent their daughters to the school to seek suitable husbands among the rich
brothers, cousins, youngish uncles, and even widower fathers of classmates. The man Mary had refused was Richard Bentwood,
a wealthy textile manufacturer from Charleston and the brother of one of the few girls of whom Mary had grown fond. “Since
Amanda will have one more year here,” she offered, “perhaps you’ll have greater success in introducing her brother to someone
far more suitable for him than I.”

“Mr. Bentwood does not need my services in introducing him to suitable women, Miss Toliver. You can be assured that they abound
in
his
social circles, whereas you are not likely to meet another Richard Bentwood in
yours
.”

Mary turned away to pin on a floppy-brimmed hat before Miss Peabody could see that her shot had hit home. The headmistress
was right in a way, though Percy and Ollie and Emmitt Waithe’s son, Charles, could measure up to any man, including Richard
Bentwood. The problem was, none of those boys were for her, and she had wondered, when she turned down Richard’s marriage
proposal, where and when she would ever meet his like again. He had been correct for her in every way but the one that mattered.
He would have expected her to turn Somerset over to a land manager when they married, in order to live with him in Charleston.
That was unthinkable, of course, but the night they had parted forever, she’d experienced an unfamiliar panic. What if no
one came along who could stir her blood like Richard? What if there was no one in her future whom she would want to marry
and have father her children?