Somerset (35 page)

F
rom her upstairs window, Jessica could watch the comings and goings of Major Andrew Duncan. He clattered down the steps of his apartment at sunrise to join his men in the pasture, where they had pitched tents and built campfires. There she supposed he took his coffee and ate his breakfast. He merely slept in the carriage house. He had taken over a building in town as his company headquarters near where the Freedmen's Bureau was housed and close to the location he'd selected as the site of a school for the children of freed slaves.

Stories of the major's fairness, derring-do, and short shrift with lawlessness drifted back to Houston Avenue. By month's end, merchants and townspeople had grudgingly come to see the presence of his men as a deterrent to the roaming bands of outlaws, deserters, and ne'er-do-wells tempted to vandalize stores, plantations, and homesteads rendered defenseless because of the drain of manpower by the war. The citizens' patrol remained quiet after a military court found two of their number guilty of dragging a freed slave nearly to death and sentenced them to life in prison in Huntsville, Texas. Horse thieves were chased down and put in stocks under the broiling sun, and convicted poachers of livestock were confined to jail on a diet of bread and water. Meanwhile, the federal soldiers saw to one of their main duties of occupation: the construction of a school for the children of the freed slaves.

Jessica heartily approved of Major Duncan's dogged efforts to see the school erected and planned to volunteer as its first teacher when the building was completed. Voices would rise in objection—the idea of a white woman filling the heads of black children with learning!—but no one expected less of Jessica Wyndham Toliver.

It was not long before Andrew Duncan was a weekly guest at the Tolivers' dining room table. Evenings were the only time Thomas was home from the plantation and the Union major free of his duties to discuss public matters and concerns. Sometimes, Jeremy and Henri and their sons joined them for cigars and port after the meal. Their conversation and laughter often followed Jessica upstairs to bed, and she thought conviviality between men who were once enemies a very good thing. A man of culture himself, it was obvious the major found the Toliver mansion with its many objects of beauty a much appreciated retreat from the grime and tension of his days. Jessica also thought it obvious, though not to her son, that he counted Priscilla as one of the many objects of beauty in the house.

During one of these dining occasions, two months into the occupation, Priscilla dropped the surprise that she wished to volunteer as a teacher at the school when it soon opened.

“Why, Priscilla, how wonderful!” Jessica exclaimed. “We can go together. Major, I had planned to volunteer my services, too.”

Priscilla, her flawless brow creasing, turned to Jessica. “If that's so, who will be here to see after Vernon?”

Surprised at the irritation she heard in her daughter-in-law's tone, Jessica said, “Why, Petunia and Amy, of course.”

“I do not want my child reared in his early years without a member of his family present. His father is never around during the day. One of us must stay here, and I insist that I need the diversion. You have served your time in community service, Jessica.”

Everyone listened to this near tirade with thunderstruck expressions. It was the first time Priscilla had ever put her foot down on anything, and the set of her face and defiant tone brooked no argument. Thomas said, “She's right, Mother. You can serve the cause by helping Priscilla collect books and make lesson plans. Let this be her project. It will give her a chance to show the town what
she's
made of.”

He spoke as the head of the house and Priscilla its mistress, a change in status Jessica was only too willing to concede and recognize. She would have been pleased to hear Thomas take his wife's side and delighted in the rare glance of pride he tossed her had it not been for her suspicion that Priscilla's obstinate desire to teach in the school had little to do with instructing the children of the freed slaves how to read and write.

“Could we not leave Vernon with his other grandmother the hours we would be at the school?” Jessica suggested.

“It is my wish he stays here with you. It's clear he prefers your company to my mother's. She is…well, she doesn't have your way with him.”

“Then that settles it,” Thomas said. He turned to Jessica sitting at his right. Out of diplomacy she had yielded her spot at the head of the table to Priscilla when Thomas took Silas's place after his death. Her daughter-in-law had never seemed comfortable there until tonight. “Mother, you've earned the right to let others take up the torch for the Negro,” Thomas said, his tone softening. “Stay home and enjoy your grandchild.”

Across from Jessica, Major Duncan, glowing from a scrub in the bathhouse he'd had his men build behind the stables and never more handsome than in his dark blue dress uniform with its gold epaulettes, remained silent, seemingly choosing to stay out of a matter skirting close to a family dispute. Jessica wondered if the man had any idea what this was all about. Men were so dense when it came to the wiles of women.

“As you wish, Priscilla,” Jessica acquiesced, “but keep in mind you will be under the scrutiny of the townspeople.”

The veiled admonition sailed over Priscilla's blond head. “No more than you have always been, Jessica. I shall try to handle it with the grace you've shown.”

Thomas chortled, “You would warn Priscilla of the disfavor of the townspeople when you've never given a twitch about it, Mother?”

“I was not referring to disapproval, Thomas. I was cautioning your wife not to give cause for an undue wagging of tongues.”

Priscilla said, “She means like teaching the black children things they shouldn't learn as she would do, right, Jessica? Not to worry. No one will fault me on that score. I shall teach a simple curriculum of reading, writing, and arithmetic.”

Thomas chuckled. “I believe, Priscilla, that Mother is saying to be careful not to give others the impression you're becoming like her.”

“I hardly think that's likely,” Priscilla responded tartly. Her blue eyes flashed with what Jessica now clearly saw as jealousy of her mother-in-law. Consciously or not, Thomas had given his wife the feeling he compared her to his mother and found her wanting. “It's impossible to copy an original,” Priscilla added.

“Well stated, Mrs. Toliver!” the major said, lifting his wineglass to Priscilla. Thomas, with another proud look at his wife, did the same.

“Yes, indeed,” he said.

Inwardly, Jessica sighed. Oh, for the love of heaven!

How she would like to throttle Thomas for denying Priscilla what every wife needs and desires—notice and appreciation from her husband. Did he not see how lovely she was? Priscilla was somewhat empty-headed, sure enough, and too impressed with family name and position, but she had a good heart and caring disposition. Could he not appreciate those qualities beyond her expression of them to his satisfaction in the bedroom? Was he so indifferent to her feelings that he was blind to the human fact that he'd left her vulnerable to the attentions of other men?

Did he not know that, subjected to enough indifference, a woman's heart could turn cold?

These were times like no other; Jessica wished desperately for Silas. Thomas had moved beyond her counsel simply for the reason he didn't feel he needed it. Silas would have talked to him man to man, husband to husband. Thomas would have taken no offense, but for his mother to wade into those risky waters.…She could hear her son now:
Mother, what are you talking about?

Two weeks later, Priscilla approached Jessica about “a delicate matter.” When she heard it, Jessica's heart sank. Her gaze raked her daughter-in-law's face to find some clue the girl was aware of the dangerous course she was pursuing. For the past week, Priscilla had been supervising the finishing touches on the school. The Freedmen's Bureau had been registering students, and the first day of classes would begin next week. Priscilla had left to Jessica the tasks of preparing lesson plans, collecting books from neighbors and friends, and securing school supplies, since her daughter-in-law felt her services were needed at the construction site.

“We need more space,” Priscilla said in explaining the reason for asking Jessica to give up the bed and sitting room she'd shared with Silas. Jessica would be given the suite she and Thomas had occupied in another wing. “We'd like to turn the sitting room into a nursery for Vernon where he'll have more privacy.”

“Privacy? Vernon is only five months old,” Jessica said.

“He'll grow.”

Jessica was powerless to say no. The house belonged to her, and she was in a position to exercise full authority over it, but for the sake of family harmony, she wouldn't. She was glad Thomas and Priscilla had scrapped the idea of building a manor house on Somerset. Jessica wanted Vernon to grow up in the family home, away from the plantation. Perhaps the child would escape the dominance it had over his father.

Priscilla had strolled to the window overlooking the carriage house when making her request to Jessica, a look of anticipation on her face. Did the girl think her mother-in-law was blind?

“When do you wish to make the move, Priscilla?” she asked.

Priscilla turned to her with obvious relief at Jessica's acquiescence. “As soon as I can get the servants to see to it,” she said.

I
t was early October 1866 before Jessica could resume the thirtieth year of recording the affairs affecting the Tolivers, Warwicks, and DuMonts. One morning, her heart full, she opened the stiff paper cover of her new notebook in her suite where she had begun tending to her correspondence after she turned the full management of the household over to Priscilla. With the passing of the diadem had come her surrender of the morning room to her daughter-in-law, the only caveat being the removal of her secretary upstairs to her suite. Autumn had arrived with a vengeance, and a cold rain slashed at the windows but a fire blazed in the grate. Petunia had brought her up a pot of steaming tea.

Jessica stared at the blank, white page. Where to begin to record for posterity—and for her own memory when it began to fade—the end of an era she had known for forty-nine years? Today was her birthday. She poured a cup of tea and reflected. Was there any other place to start but the place where she was born?

The “homeland,” as many from the Willowshire wagon train continued to refer to South Carolina, had been the most severely punished of all in General Sherman's march through the South. Its infrastructure lay in ruins. Railroads, bridges, roads, wharfs, gins, and warehouses had been demolished. Plantations had been plundered, homes and buildings and fields burned to the ground, livestock stolen or slaughtered, and farming equipment destroyed. None of the three planter families of the Wyndhams, Warwicks, and Tolivers remaining behind had escaped the devastation. Michael now lived with his family in a two-room cabin on what was once Willowshire. One of Jeremy's brothers had been killed futilely defending the family property, and the other had pulled up stakes and taken his family to South America to begin again. Morris died of a heart attack shortly after Sherman's army reached Columbia, the capital of South Carolina, and his two sons did not survive the Battle of Shiloh. Lettie and her daughter had gone to live with her sister in Savannah.

Jessica made a note to herself:
Begin where it all began.

The fortunes of the Texas Warwicks and DuMonts would make for happier recording. Jeremy and Henri had fared well economically, Henri reasonably; Jeremy especially. Everything Jeremy touched seemed to turn to gold, his insisted form of payment. In April, the U.S. Telegraph Company, in which he held many shares, was absorbed by Western Union, making it the largest telegram company in the country and Jeremy a very wealthy man. He would bat away expressions of admiration for his successful enterprises with the back of his hand. His heart lay in the lumber industry and his optimism had never waned. “The real wealth in Texas, my friends, is in timber,” he would say. “You just wait and see.”

His surviving sons had married and presented their parents with numerous grandchildren. The oldest, a boy a year older than Vernon, was named Jeremy III. Camellia laughingly referred to the bearers of her husband's name by “Jeremy the father, Jeremy the son, and Jeremy the holy terror.”

The blockade had interfered with the importation of Henri's European inventory, but his connections with the French, who were a presence in Mexico and had been sympathetic to the Confederate cause, partially took up the slack. Through diplomatic immunity, French couriers could bring goods across the Texas border, and stock that could not be transported was smuggled. Henri, following Jeremy's advice, had also deposited prewar profits in a northern bank. He shared his friend's enthusiasm for the growth that was bound to come to Texas because of the exodus of people from the South seeking new beginnings in a state not ravaged by war. With that conviction in mind, he had purchased lots in Howbutker to lease as residential and commercial property.

Of the two DuMont sons, Armand alone had married and sired a robust son his parents chose to name Abel. He was the same age as Jeremy III, and expectations were that Vernon and the boys would grow up to enjoy friendships as close as the ones shared by their grandfathers and fathers.

The page still blank, Jessica reflected on what—and how much—she should include of her own family's affairs the past seventeen months. Regardless of jealousies and personal resentments against the Tolivers, community sentiment held they must be given their just due, and the family name had emerged from the war more influential than ever. The outcome of events had exonerated Silas's views. There were many who wished they'd listened to his wise words of counsel and followed his example. Thomas, criticized for not shouldering his gun to fight in the Southland, was recognized as having been among the bravest in defending his native state, and Jessica had been assigned a legendary status in the annals of Howbutker history for…well, being Jessica.

Somerset had been among the few plantations in East Texas to rise from the ashes with a sound foothold on survival. Silas had managed to transport a large shipment of cotton to England before the Union blockade, and thousands of dollars in payment waited to be collected after the war. Combined with the money Thomas had been astonished to learn his mother had stashed away in a Boston bank, her son had the income to replace aged equipment and draft animals, make repairs, and pay his former slaves so well that few had left his workforce. This year the harvest had been good and cotton trade with northern and European markets had commenced with renewed vigor.

Vernon was nearly a year and a half old and the joy of their lives. For all of them, he bridged the abyss of Silas's loss. There were times, watching her grandson, when Jessica thought she would explode from the yearning that Silas could have known him. She had worried that as the child grew he would be affected by the tension between his parents, but by the time he was old enough to become aware of it, their marriage had been coated with a patina of courtesy and mutual acceptance of the other that passed for the appearance of love. For a while, Priscilla had seemed like a new woman, freer, livelier, happier. Jessica had no proof that Major Duncan was the man responsible for the change, but it began the week of the opening of the new school. Priscilla bloomed. Jessica was sure the blooming had nothing to do with teaching numbers, the alphabet, and script to a group of wriggling, tittering, unwashed black children confined in a hot and humid schoolroom. She recognized the nature of Priscilla's giddy laughter, sparkling eyes, and bouncy step from nights she'd enjoyed with Silas.

Jessica kept a tight lid on her speculations. She could only hope for her daughter-in-law's discretion and Thomas's blind unawareness of the reason for the new Priscilla. Gradually the girl shed her timidity, indecisiveness, and apprehension that had increased after she married Thomas—
because
she'd married Thomas, in Jessica's opinion. But her son did notice.

“Teaching becomes you,” he said to his wife, and Jessica observed his heightened interest in her. He began coming home earlier, and at first Jessica feared he suspected something, but he had only wanted to be home with his wife and son. Jessica came to excuse herself after supper on some pretext to allow him and Priscilla and the baby time alone in the parlor to enjoy a private evening together.

Their love life appeared to improve. One morning, Jessica came down to find herself the only one at breakfast.

“Where are my son and daughter-in-law?” she asked Petunia.

“They're not out of bed yet,” Petunia answered with a sheepish smile. “I've taken care of the baby.”

Two months after the school opened, three events occurred almost simultaneously that were to make Jessica forever wonder if they were related. The school burned to the ground, an act of arson surprising to no one since there were factions in the community outraged at its temerity to exist, but it ended Priscilla's teaching career. Shortly after, Major Duncan asked for and received a transfer, and Priscilla announced she was pregnant.