Chapter Forty-Eight
I was reminded of Thomas Jefferson’s words in 1782 in his Notes on Virginia when I read that abominable tripe,” Jessica said, speaking to Tippy of the Compromise of 1850 when her friend finished reading its articles reprinted in the Democratic Telegraph and Register of Houston.
Tippy reached to take a sandwich from the plate Jessica offered. “And they were?”
“Jefferson said, ‘Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just.’”
“Amen to that,” Tippy said. “It’s only a matter of a few years before the South feels the whip of that justice for enslaving the black man. All this compromise does is to buy time until war is declared between the North and the South. It’s inevitable. The North will never abide by the Fugitive Slave Act, and the South will never tolerate its disobedience to it.”
“God help us,” Jessica said, attacked by the icy fear that knotted her stomach when she thought of the conflict in relation to her son and only child. Thomas was thirteen. In a few years he would be of conscription age.
“Oh, forgive me for blabbing so, Jessica,” Tippy said, her look of distress reflecting the one on Jessica’s face. “I forget what war would mean to you and Silas personally.”
“Whether spoken or not, the truth is what it is, and I must live with it,” Jessica said, pouring them another cup of Assam Gold from the rosewood Regency tea table. The tea, like the table and most of the furniture chosen for the elegant rooms of the Toliver mansion, were imported from England.
“We must have in our home those things that reflect our roots,” Silas had said when the subject of furniture was discussed with Henry Howard, the renowned architect Carson had sent from Louisiana to design the Tolivers’ manor home. Silas had not asked Tippy to be involved in its selection, but she mightily approved the choices the architect had made, especially for the morning room where she and Jessica often sat for afternoon tea.
“Perhaps by a miracle, my apprehensions will never be realized,” Jessica said. “Silas maintains there will be no war. Our industry is too important to the North, he says. Their factories are too dependent on southern cotton to spin into cloth for their profitable foreign markets.”
“What does Sarah say in her letters?”
Jessica sipped her tea, warm to her cold lips. “That the Abolitionist Movement cannot be stopped. In her view, war is coming. Her nephew Paul will be in the thick of it. He’s graduated West Point and has been commissioned a second lieutenant in the United States Army.”
Tippy stirred the sugar in her cup. “Lorimer Davis and his men came to my house looking for his escaped slave,” she said. “He was sure the poor man would head to my place.”
Jessica set down her teacup in horror. “How dare he! Did he abuse you?”
“Wrecked my house. Henri was out at Somerset with your husband and Mister Jeremy, or he’d have put a stop to it.”
“I will certainly report this to Silas—”
“No, Jessica…please.” Tippy put up a beseeching hand. “Let it lie. I didn’t even tell Henri. I’ve restored order to my home, and all is well.”
Furious, Jessica declared, “Oh, if I were only a man, I’d—”
Footsteps—boot heels on the polished walnut floors of the entrance hall—alerted them to Silas’s arrival, and Tippy immediately changed the subject. “Henry Howard did a splendid job designing this house,” she said. “When I went with Henri to New Orleans to help him dismantle his father’s emporium—God rest the man’s soul—I saw your architect’s work in Baroness Pontalba’s town houses in the French Quarter. Mr. Howard designed cast-iron railings for each verandah with the baroness’s initials forged in the centers of them.”
Jessica bit her lip. It saddened her to no end that Tippy did not feel at liberty to speak freely in her best friend’s house before her husband. Tippy had never won Silas’s heart, though he tolerated with great politeness her coming and going from his house—and by the front door. He’d never expressed it, but Silas’s reserve toward Tippy suggested he could not accept the place his wife had accorded her in their home.
As usual, Jessica cooperated with Tippy’s diplomacy. “How interesting,” she said, as Silas entered the morning room.
“What’s interesting?” he said.
Jessica turned to greet him and felt the leap of sensual pleasure still surprising after fifteen years of marriage and the differences they’d tolerated but never overcome. At forty-four, Silas was handsomer and more virile than ever. His lord-of-the-manor clothes suited his striking Toliver looks and tall, commanding figure. Along with Jeremy and Henri, he had spent the afternoon with other city council members in a meeting to apprise the owner of a proposed bank about Howbutker’s architectural requirements for commercial buildings. There were numerous such meetings now that Howbutker was one of the largest and most prosperous towns in the state. At the urging of Silas, the first city-planning commission had pushed through a proposition in 1839 stating that public and commercial buildings be built in the Greek Revivalist style traditional to the South.
“I’ll leave it to Jessica to explain,” Tippy said, rising, as she always did in Silas’s presence, a prelude to her immediate departure.
“Tippy came by to bring me a new invention called a safety pin,” Jessica said, opening a box on a side table to show Silas its contents. “Henri managed to get a shipment, and naturally, Tippy had to share a few with me.” She held up a fastening device made of wire, twisted in a circle at one end to form a spring and capped on the other with a metal hood to provide a clasp and protection from the sharp point.
“Very clever,” Silas said when Jessica demonstrated its use. “Must you go so soon, Tippy?”
“I fear so, Mr. Toliver,” Tippy said, the polite exchange an accustomed hail-and-farewell between them. They rarely exchanged more than a few words.
Jessica saw her to the door, and when she returned to the morning room, Silas had picked up the newspaper, left open at the page she and Tippy had been sharing. “You don’t need to explain,” he said. “This tells the gist of your conversation.”
“May I pour you a cup?” Jessica said, ignoring the pointed observation, and spread the skirt of her watered-silk day dress to sit again at the tea table. The stiffly starched petticoats of former years had been replaced with lighter-weight crinolines that Jessica found easier to manage.
Silas took her hand and drew her back to her feet. “You may take me upstairs,” he said, his meaning clear.
“What? In the middle of the afternoon?”
“Thomas won’t be home until late evening. He and Jeremy Jr. and Armand are out at Somerset helping Jasper and his men gather up the pigs for penning. Jasper will see they don’t get into trouble. Besides”—Silas drew her closer—“I read the look in your eyes when I came into the room.”
“What look?” Jessica said innocently, her breath lost in the racing of her heart. “I’ve no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Yes, you do, but I’ll be happy to translate it through demonstration,” he said, playing the sexual game they’d begun long ago at the Winthorp Hotel.
Before he led her toward the stairway, Jessica’s glance fell on COMPROMISE in the blazing headlines of the newspaper. Compromise had preserved their marriage. Mutual tempering of their convictions allowed them to make love in the afternoon, and Silas could still take her to mountaintops beyond the clouds. But he and she were basically a country divided. Would war come between them when war finally came?