Chapter Eleven
In the library at Queenscrown, Silas Toliver threw down his pencil on the pages of columned items and figures spread on his late father’s massive desk, now belonging to his brother, Morris, and held his head in his hands. The numbers refused to lie, as did his own inner voice. He had been a fool to speculate in the Conestogas, as Carson Wyndham had unequivocally pointed out when he’d refused him a loan.
“I’m sorry, Silas, but I’m not about to throw good money after bad. What were you thinking to invest your money in an enterprise with so many potential pitfalls? Your mistake was basing your business venture on the trustworthiness of other people to get those vehicles to Texas, take care of them, and abide by the agreement they signed, which, as you’ve sadly learned, is about as binding as a lady’s hair ribbon. You never place your expectations for financial success in the hands of other people. They’ll disappoint you every damn time. You need to stick to farming, which you’re very good at. Leave investing to businessmen like me who know what we’re doing.”
Silas could have torn out his hair. What in God’s name had he been thinking? No one had replied to the for-sale ads he’d placed far and wide, and now eight proud, seven-hundred-dollar Conestoga wagons went begging in a field by one of Queenscrown’s barns, a humiliating reminder of his failure to turn a profit outside the realm of cotton farming. An armada of them, their high, white canvas tops like unfurled sails, was weathering next to his own wagon and the two awaiting the families who’d agreed to rent them, but what was the guarantee they’d still want them come their delivery date the first of February?
Silas had been counting on that loan from Carson Wyndham to pay for provisions, supplies, and expenses incurred along the way. He was already leaving South Carolina in debt to the man, not an easy creditor to owe. Even if the Conestogas sold at less than what he paid, he and Lettie and Joshua would have to live on practically nothing for the five to six years he would be in hock to the richest man in South Carolina, and Silas hated that for his family. While other settlers, the prosperous among them, would be building their manor houses, increasing their holdings, adding slaves to their workforce, he, in comparison, would still be living in a log cabin minding the few acres of his original land grant with the help of his meager number of blacks. Lettie would have to make her own clothes of the most economical materials while the wife of Jeremy, should he marry, and the wives of his debtless neighbors could afford seamstresses and silk.
But now, without the money he’d hoped from Carson, even that scant existence was beyond his financial reach.
He had no choice but to go to Morris.
In the other room, he could hear Joshua’s excited voice as he pointed to the pictures in a storybook Lettie had borrowed from Sarah’s classroom. Silas had left his son sitting in Lettie’s lap, his favorite place to be, under the fond eyes of Reverend Sedgewick, who sat smoking his pipe next to Elizabeth knitting before the fire. Their peaceful, happy scene jarred with the black mood overtaking him as he pushed away from the desk. He stared up at an oil painting Benjamin Toliver had commissioned of himself when he was young and felt consumed by a bitterness so intense his finger trembled when he shook it at him. “You could have spared me this, Father, if you’d only loved me enough to remember me fairly. I was your son, too—”
“You wronged our father, Silas.”
Silas swung around. Morris had quietly entered the room. He was a large man of the bearish build and cloddish movements that made hostesses fear for their fragile whatnots, but on occasion, his brother’s eyes were the gentlest Silas had ever seen. They were such now, and Silas thought he saw tear shine in them. He bit back the retort on his tongue and gathered up the sheets of paper. Morris had deeply loved their father. It was another offense Silas laid at the feet of the man who had sired them. He had made it impossible to comfort his brother in his grief.
“I’m glad you’re here, Morris. I have something to discuss with you.”
Silas moved to another chair, vacating the one behind the desk for its owner, but Morris ponderously lowered himself into the wingback across from him. “I’m glad you’re here, too,” his brother said, “for where you are, Joshua and Lettie are also.”
Morris read his Bible faithfully, and he often expressed himself in the syntax of the King James Version. Lettie thought his tendency poignantly appealing and that it allowed a surprised glimpse into the Morris few rarely saw. Silas understood that his brother was already feeling the absence to come. Without Joshua and Lettie, his house would be barren. It did not occur to Silas that his son and future wife would be the reason Morris would turn him down.
“No, brother. I will not help you,” Morris said when Silas had presented his request. “Your place is here at Queenscrown with Mother and me. I would give you the money if it meant that you alone would go to Texas, but I will not pave the way for you to take Joshua and Lettie.”
“I will not leave them here, Morris.”
“Then you can’t go, not on my dollar.”
“And you would dispute that our father wronged me?”
“I would dispute that he knew what was best for you. In my opinion, he didn’t.”
“If that is so, give me the half of Queenscrown that should rightfully have gone to me, and I will—if not gladly—at least, willingly, stay.”
“And go against our father’s final wishes for what he thought best for you? I’m afraid I can’t do that, Silas.”
“You speak in riddles, Morris.”
“I speak plainly what you are too blind to see, my brother.”
Morris could not be persuaded. Silas promised him that if he would give him the money, the Conestogas were his. He could sell them to the federal army, who would probably pay top dollar.
“Why don’t you sell them to the army?” Morris suggested.
Because negotiations with the army would probably take months, Silas explained, and he hadn’t months, not if he left this spring. He needed money now for outfitting his rig to be ready the first of March.
But it was no use. Morris remained adamant in his refusal. Texas was no place for a woman and child right now. Silas could stay another year, save his money, sell his Conestogas, and hook up with another wagon train next spring. Jeremy and his group would have paved the way. Meanwhile, their mother would be spared the agony of another loss, at least temporarily, and Joshua would have more time to be with his grandmother and uncle. Perhaps the memories would stick, and the boy would someday wish to return for a visit. The discussion ended with Silas marching from the study and slamming the door. Startled, the happy group gathered around the fire looked up to see son, father, fiancé, and future son-in-law stomp up the stairs to his room, his handsome face dark with rage.
“Don’t run after him, Lettie,” Morris advised from the door of the library. “He’s inconsolable.”
“What happened?” she asked, having been on the verge of setting Joshua from her lap to do exactly what he cautioned against.
“His dream for the moment has been shattered,” Morris said.
“What do you mean?”
“Silas will not be singing the Lord’s song in a strange land,” he parodied from the Psalms in the Old Testament. “In other words, he won’t be going to Texas, at least not this spring. It looks as if Mother and I will have the delight of your company a year longer.”
Morris strode forward and, to his nephew’s exhilarated laughter, lifted him high above his head. “Let’s go see the new puppies, shall we, my fine boy?”
In his room, Silas braced his arm against the cold fireplace and bowed his head. What was he to do now? Where could he turn for money? Other lenders might be willing to bankroll him, but once word got out that Carson Wyndham thought him a poor loan risk, he stood no chance of convincing them otherwise. He must tell Lettie of the pickle he’d gotten them into. She would understand, forgive him, try to get him to make the best of it for another year. Easy for her. She loved his mother and liked his brother—“a loving man, Silas, if only you could appreciate that side of him”—and certainly Queenscrown, with its gardens and acres of lawn, servants and horses and dogs, far different from the cramped manse she’d known all her life. But what she didn’t understand—wouldn’t love—was the man she married if they had to live another year at Queenscrown. That man would not be able to endure his brother’s orders—so often wrong for the plantation. Didn’t Morris know that land must lie fallow for several growing seasons to replenish itself? He could not bear to be paid a paltry salary while the profits of his labor poured into Morris’s coffers. How could he stand to be regarded as no better than an overseer while his brother sat astride his black stallion as the master of the house where he, too, had been born and bred?
He must find a way out, no matter what it cost, what he had to agree to. He would sell his soul to pull out with Jeremy Warwick March first, 1836, as a leader of the wagon train headed for the black waxy region of Texas. He simply had to find someone willing to buy it.