Somerset (46 page)
Authors: Leila Meacham
H
e had meant to stay in Houston only for the weekend and depart Sunday to be home in time to ride out to Somerset for a look at how the first picking had gone, but Vernon remained in the city four days. When he returned to his home on Houston Avenue, Jacqueline met him with a small cry of relief. “Vernon, we've been so worried. We thought something had befallen you.”
“I should have sent a telegram. I'm sorry. Jacquelineâ¦may I speak with you?”
Vernon drew her aside into the library for a private word. He had been met with a ring of black, anxious facesâAmy's, BarÂnabas's, Sassie's, and those of several other servants. His grandmother was upstairs and his father at the plantation. When he and his stepmother were alone, Vernon said, “Jacqueline, Iâ¦âb
elieve
I've fallen in love.”
“Ah,” she said. “So that was the cause for the delay. Who is she? How did you meet?”
Jacqueline was one of the easiest people in the world to talk to. At first Vernon had bowed his neck not exactly against her, but certainly not for her. But within weeks of her coming to live in his childhood home, he understood what had drawn his father to her. Vernon had expected her to take over the house with wide-sweeping, arbitrary changes, impose her will, tastes, and authority, but she had not. She had simply blended in, won the hearts of the servants immediately, the approval of his grandmother, and, gradually, her stepson's admiration. She brought a calm and soothing presence into the home, and, despite the grief lines permanently engraved in his father's fifty-five-year-old face, Vernon had never seen him so happyâif he'd ever seen him happy at all.
“On the train to Houston,” he answered his stepmother's question. “Jacqueline, do you believe in love at first sight?”
Jacqueline pursed her lips. “At your age, I believe in physical attraction at first sight.”
“Why at my age? Why not yours when you and my father met?” Vernon had learned from his mother that she'd made “the mistake of her life” when she sent his father to Jacqueline Chastain's shop to pick up a headband for his sister's sixteenth birthday party. “Something flared between him and that woman that she made sure stayed lit,” his mother had accused.
Jacqueline answered, “Because at your father's and my age, we recognized something beyond the physical that we both longed for and could give to the other.”
“How do you know when it's more than the physical?”
“That knowledge comes only with knowledge of the other person.”
Vernon threaded his hands agitatedly through his hair. “I don't know that I can wait to get to know Darla Henley. I'm soâ¦so besotted by her now. Jacqueline, I could hardly leave her to get on the train. I wanted to put her in my satchel and bring her home with me. I never thought I could feel this way about any woman, but I cannot think, I cannot breathe when I think of her.”
His mother had warned that Darla could be a gold digger, but she wasn't, Vernon was certain. He decided to play down the impression of wealth he'd given her by the first-class compartment on the train, the French champagne, his fine clothes, and see what she made of it. He called upon her the second night he was in Houston and rather than taking her to the elegant restaurant atop the Townsmen, the elite gentleman's club to which he and his father belonged, he squired her to a more modest eating establishment. He wore an informal set of clothes he kept at his mother's for lounging about the house and transported her to and from her father's narrow, three-story “railroad house” in a hired cab. If Darla was surprised or disappointed in her expectations of the man who appeared at her door from the more affluent one with whom she'd shared a compartment on the train, she did not give a hint. She seemed only delighted that he'd honored his request to see her again. He'd skillfully avoided talking about himself on the train, and she'd been too polite to ask what he did for a living. Later in conversation he'd volunteered that he worked a cotton farm with his father in East Texas.
“Very difficult work,” Darla had said. “My aunt would attest to it.”
After relating these details to his stepmother, Vernon said, “Do you think she'll be offended when she finds out I'm a man of wealth?”
“You mean do you think she'll believe you dressed down and conveyed her about to places you thought suitable for a woman of her station?”
“You're so quick, Jacqueline,” Vernon said. “Yes, that's exactly what I mean.”
“Be honest with Darla, Vernon. Explain that it wasn't
her
station you were thinking of, but your own and the reason for your concern. Give her the choice to be displeased with you or understanding of your need to know the basis of her interest.”
“Still,” Vernon said, feeling contrite, “it was a rotten thing to do.”
“Yes, it was,” Jacqueline agreed. “There are other ways besides watering down one's credentials to determine a person's genuine feelings.”
“I will keep that in mind, Jacqueline. Thank you,” he said and hugged her.
Vernon was back on Darla's doorstep the next Saturday, having dispatched a letter notifying her of his return. He'd decided to wait a little longer before making a clean breast of his status for fear of how the chips would fall.
Status.
How he loathed the word. It reminded him of his mother. To avoid having to share his limited time with his mother, guiltily, he booked a room in a hotel within short walking distance to the Henley residence. In the early afternoon, he tugged the rope of its front doorbell.
“Am I too early?” he asked, when she opened the door and immediately set his pulse to racing.
“Not quite early enough,” she said, smiling. “I've been looking for you since morning.”
She had packed a picnic lunch and knew of a delightful little park not far away. The fall weather was perfect for walking. They didn't need to spend money on a cab, she said. They found a grassy spot in the shade of a tree and spread a blanket. After the sandwiches and cake, Vernon lay with his head in her lap while she read to him. “I'm a poetry reader myself. Do you mind?” she said, waving a slim collection of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's poems before him.
“I'm a poetry listener myself,” Vernon lied. “Read to me.”
She stroked his hair, massaged his temples, smoothed his brow while she read the passages aloud, the sound of her sultry voice floating over him like music from some heavenly body beyond time and space. He melted into the bliss of her thighs beneath his head, only the fabric of her skirt and petticoat separating him from her warm flesh. He had never known a more perfect afternoon.
“Do you attend church on Sunday?” he asked, hoping she did not and he could spend the brief hours of the next morning with her before he had to catch his train to Howbutker.
“Sometimes,” she answered. “My father is not a churchgoer.”
They stood before her front door. The porch lantern was burning. They had been to supper at a café in the neighborhood. “Will youâ¦attend tomorrow?” he asked.
“No, I was hoping you'd agree to have breakfast with Papa and me.”
“I'd like that very much,” Vernon said, relieved, and reached above her head to turn the lantern down low, casting them into semidarkness undiluted by light from the harvest moon. “I would also like to kiss you,” he said.
She answered with a demure bat of her tawny lashes. “Wellâ¦âif you insist.”
“I most assuredly do insist.”
He lowered his head, drowning in the amber eyes before they closed and she submitted to his lips with a passion that would have made him think her easy if he didn't believe she felt as he didâthat they were made for each other. Vernon remembered his father saying, “My son, there is no desert drier than a loveless marriage. Marry for love, or not at all.”
“Even for Somerset?” he'd asked.
“Even for Somerset.”
Vernon also recalled gazing over Somerset's fields after a particularly parched season. The rain had come in the night, succoring the dry earth, filling the troughs between the cotton rows with life-sustaining water that would reach their roots, and he'd tasted the sweet quench of their thirst. Vernon felt that sensation now.
But he would follow Jacqueline's advice. Knowledge of a woman came only with knowing her. He would not make the mistake of his father. Their lips separating, her body still molded to his, Vernon looked into the amber eyes and said the words he hoped to say to her every night the rest of his life, “I'll see you in the morning.”
“I'll be waiting.”
The next morning as Darla waved Vernon off in a hired cab, her father stole up behind her. “When are you going to let him know you know who he is?” he asked.
“When he tells me,” Darla said. “That will be soon enough.”
She thought he had looked familiar on the train. That thatch of coal-black hair, startling green eyes, the cleft chin, his sheer handsomeness were too memorable not to rouse the feeling she'd seen his picture in an article that had come across her copy-âe
ditor
's desk. Her publishing firm also lent its services to newspaper offices. She had deliberately excluded that information when explaining her duties to Vernon. After their meeting, she'd asked about Vernon Toliver from her boss, who knew the family name well. The Tolivers were “old Texas,” he told herâmoneyed and prominent in their corner of the stateâand directed Darla to back issues of newspapers containing coverage of the family from the days of the Republic to the present time. By the end of the week and her second outing with Vernon Toliver, she was well versed in the history of the cotton-growing Tolivers from Howbutker, Texas.
Darla was not at all hurt that Vernon had kept his prominence and wealth a secret from her. She considered the omission smart. He didn't know her from Adam's ox, but he needn't worry. She was not after his money. She merely wished to become his wife and care for him the rest of his life. He needed her, and she would fill him to the brim. She would have many childrenâboys, she hoped. She didn't believe she was cut out to be the mother of girls. They were too devious, and she knew she would not be happy sharing her husband's love with another woman, even a daughter. When Vernon became assured of her love, he would reveal himself to her. Until then, Darla would allow time and nature and her own instincts to guide their course.
D
ECEMBER
, 1893
'T
is been a year of the ringing of the bellsâthe set of three in the belfry of the First Methodist Church of Howbutker. The church claims them, but they really belong to the community as a means of alerting the citizenry to the hour of the day, outbreak of fire, flood, and criminal mischief. Bank thieves were caught this year when a teller slipped out during the robbery and rang the bells, drawing people out onto the street, including the sheriff, and the felons ran right into the arms of his deputies.
In the spring the bells announced the tying of the marital knots of three couples before the altar of the church. Three of the sons of the third generation of the founders of Howbutker exchanged wedding vows with their brides: Jeremy III in April, Abel in May, and Vernon in June. I would have worn the same dress to all three occasions if Tippy hadn't sent frocks for each.
“Now, Jessica,” she'd remonstrated in a letter included in the parcel mailed from her spacious offices on Broadway in New York City, “I want to see pictures of you wearing one of these dresses for each wedding. Knowing you, you'll drag some old thing out of the closet and make it do for all three nuptials. You must do the boys proud.”
As if anyone would notice what an old broken-down grandmother on the grooms' side of the aisle was wearing. But I was most honored when Abel and Jeremy III asked me to sit with their families for the ceremonies since I am the last of the clans' matriarchs. Bess DuMont is gone. It was I who found her body in her garden when I had gone to meet her and Jeremy for coffee. The three of us had taken to meeting on Tuesday mornings in one of our backyards, a habit we'd fallen into after we returned from our world cruise. I arrived a bit early and was told that Bess was still gathering flowers for the coffee tray, the little touch she loved adding to the French pastries that Jeremy devoured. I found my beloved friend lying beside her dropped basket of peonies and snapdragons. She lay with her face turned and her eyes open as though suddenly struck by a desire to press her ear to the ground. A butterfly flapped its wings frantically on her shoulder, a bereaved beneficiary of the philanthropist who had provided the beautiful garden.
And so the bells tolled for Bess, too.
Not long after, Armand went to collect the body of his brother, Philippe, who was killed in a shoot-out with members of a notorious group calling themselves The Wild Bunch, a gang of violent outlaws led by a fellow named Bill Doolin. Philippe was still with the Pinkerton Detective Agency and had been called to Oklahoma to help law enforcement agencies deal with the group terrorizing the state. I quote what Armand said at Philippe's funeral: “I'm glad the angels came for Mama before she had to bury the son she always believed would die by the gun with which he lived.”
And this year claimed the life of my old nemesis, Stephanie Davis. Lorimer succumbed years agoâ“of a broken heart once he was forced to share-crop his own land sold to a carpetbagger”âso Stephanie said, and we all agreed, those of us remaining from the Willowgrove Wagon Train. Stephanie died in the Old Folks Home, established for the growing number of aging widows left impoverished by the war, of whom Stephanie most certainly was one. The Sisters of Charity run it, and I volunteer there once a week to offer what little comfort I can to the residents. For a long while, I was a reminder to Stephanie of all she had lost, and she would turn away when she saw me, but gradually, her bitterness faded before the realization that I was among the few who remembered her son Jake and “the way it was.” So we spent long hours remembering Jake and Joshua and our time together in New Orleans and the years of struggle in Texas afterwards.
Stephanie left me with a giftâa box of memories I may never have opened but for her. It inspired me to begin putting into order the material for the history of the founding families of Howbutker. At seventy-six, I cannot afford to delay. I'd anticipated Priscilla's compilation of family history to sort through as well, but to Thomas's and my surprise, she took the collection with her after the divorce. Thomas believes his former wife will make a ceremony of burning them.
So the bells rang for marriages and funerals, births and deaths this year of 1893. It closes on good notes and bad, like years do. On the good notes, my son and grandson are happily married. Their wives appear a perfect fit for them. Jacqueline Chastain is a walking blessing to us all; Darla, only to Vernon. If Darla had her way, she would isolate her husband from his family, keep him all to herself as possessive women in need of the undivided attention of their spouses tend to do. She knows Vernon would never allow it and so is careful of her attentions to his father and Jacqueline and me, as well as to the Warwick and DuMont clans my grandson regards as family.
She's a crafty woman, is Darla Henley. Vernon was beside himself when she agreed to live apart from us on Houston Avenue. He was sure that Darla, coming from modest surroundings, would want to reside in the mansion, but she assured him that as long as they were together, it didn't matter where they lived. Jacqueline kept her counsel, but I am convinced she saw, as I did, that Darla's amenable acquiescence was a means to avoid sharing Vernon with the other members of the household, especially the women.
Well, who can blame her? Three women in a house, one deviously controlling, would make for an uncomfortable home life for the men folk. Frankly, Jacqueline and I were both relieved at the newly-marrieds' decision to rent a townhouse in Howbutker, one owned by Armand DuMont, until they decided when and where to build a home of their own.
On a bad note, the year ends with the country in a financial panic. The lessons of history are wasted on the white man. His greed will not allow him to learn from history's mistakes so as not to repeat them. The causes of the Panic of 1893 are the same ones responsible for the economic crisis in 1873. Over-building of the railroads, over expansion of buildings, factories, and docks, over-mining and over-planting of cropsâbought on credit backed only by the promise of staggering revenuesâhave led to the collapse of the financial markets here and abroad. Naturally, Somerset is affected.
Thank God for the financial savvy of Jeremy Warwick, who at eighty-seven, still has the sharpest mind in the business world and an understanding of the greed of man. He warned Thomas of the abnormal growth and over speculation going on in every industry and advised him to sell his stocks and bonds before the inevitable crash. Thanks to Jeremy, Thomas did, and there is money to continue operating Somerset and paying expenses.
But that is not to say there is much wiggle room for unwarranted spending. Somerset faces many challenges. The national and international cotton markets are now flooded because of the too rapid expansion of production owing to the convenience of railroad shipping, mechanization of equipment, improvement of crops and farming techniques. Egypt and India have emerged as competitive sources for cotton, and the boll weevil will be a demoralizing worry for years to come.
I have joined those in taking up the new craze of the bicycle as a mode of transportation. I had only to mention my interest to Tippy before she immediately mailed me two costumes designed for cycling. The skirt is cut to resemble a pair of bloomers, and I feel as if my legs have been thrust through pumpkins, but the design is practical for managing the pedals.
At any rate, on my bicycle, I pedaled out to Somerset one day last fall, and the sight of the snow-white fields flowing to eternity nearly stopped my heart. The wind rustled through the tree tops of the bordering pines, and I could almost feel Silas's hand caressing my face. I felt a surge of pride as I looked upon the fruits of my husband's and son's and grandson's labor, and I, who never pray, asked God to sustain this land of the Tolivers for generations to come. Regardless of the curse that haunts it, the sacrifices made to preserve it, Somerset deserves to be.
And so, with that, I conclude this, my last journal. In the interest of time, my pen in the future will be devoted to the writing of
Roses
.