Chapter Fifty-Six
From her high seat in the gazebo, Jessica gazed beyond the rear wrought-iron fence across the service road to the pasture where the inhabitants of Houston Avenue grazed their horses. The lone horse in the field this late January afternoon in 1861 was Flight O’ Fancy, a sight Jessica never beheld without a swell of bereavement over the death of Nanette DuMont. Like clockwork at this hour of dusk, Robert Warwick appeared to collect the filly-turned-mare, halter in hand, his affectionate greeting carrying to Jessica on her swing in the gazebo. The mare perked her ears at the sound of Robert’s voice and sauntered toward him to nuzzle his neck in her usual fashion. Her caretaker slipped the halter over her head, and the mare followed him docilely to the DuMont stable.
Jessica swallowed at a prick of tears. She was so weepy these days. The “mid-life plague” was upon her, and moisture could spring to her eyes over just about anything, but Robert’s dogged faithfulness to Flight O’ Fancy these five years after Nanette’s death was enough to set most anybody’s tear ducts flowing. Robert had asked to become the Thoroughbred’s keeper upon his childhood playmate’s loss, and now, even though he had turned twenty, Robert looked after the horse as his connection to the girl he’d vowed to marry when they were grown.
Jessica wiped her eyes with the edge of her shawl. She should not be ashamed of her emotion. There was much to be emotional about these days, and there was nothing on the horizon to relieve the steady stream of heartbreaking news begun just before Christmas when South Carolina seceded from the union . Ten days later, its troops seized the United States arsenal at Charleston, and in early January, that incendiary action was followed by Governor Francis Pickens, a frequent visitor to Willowshire, giving the order to fire on an unarmed federal supply ship dispatched to reinforce the union garrison at Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor.
“It has begun,” Silas had said, his voice hoarse with disappointment as he read aloud to Jessica and Thomas his brother’s telegraphed message of the assault. The same day the ship was fired upon, the state of Mississippi seceded. A day later, Florida dropped out of the union and changed “the United States” to “Confederate States” in its constitution. Alabama promptly followed suit. Louisiana was expected to join the pack in a matter of days, and in Texas the political process was under way to take the issue of separation from the United States to the polls. The wind was blowing overwhelmingly in favor of a vote for secession.
“Who is going to defend Texas if all our able-bodied men leave to fight for the South?” Thomas worried aloud to family and friends. “Who will protect their wives and children and property from the Comanche and Kiowa and the Mexicans who are only waiting for Texas to be unprotected before they invade our borders? You know good and well the Federals will try to blockade our rivers and the coast to prevent us from getting food supplies. They’ll try to starve us out. I’m for forming a brigade to stay and fight right here in the homeland.”
His parents listened in agreement with his rational concerns but could only shrug their shoulders helplessly. Thomas’s push to form a home force to guard the rivers and coast and protect the community from Indian attacks struck many of their slave-owner friends, whose sons were already spoiling to take the fight into the Southland, as cowardly. It was just another example of the differences that set the Tolivers apart from the rest of their kind, they said. First, Silas Toliver marries an abolitionist, then he sets a precedent insulting to their culture by coddling his slaves like no other planter would dare run a plantation and expect a profit. Silas’s was the lone planter’s voice in the county opposed to secession, and he had even carried it to the state legislature in support of Governor Houston’s pleas for Texas to remain in the union . Was it any wonder, then, that his son would prefer to stay home than to join his Texas brothers to protect the folks and property of the lower South against the Northern invaders?
Jessica sighed. The feeling of being an outcast was nothing new to her, but it added to her sadness, making her inclined to cry at the fall of a leaf. Tippy had left Howbutker. One morning last October, on Jessica’s birthday, a man dressed like the prime minister of England had wandered into the DuMont Department Store and presented his calling card to Henri. He had come to see Tippy. He was owner of a ladies’ clothing design and manufacturing firm in New York and had seen examples of Henri’s assistant’s amazing artistry in gowns worn by his customers visiting the city.
“I knew it was coming,” Henri told their weekly supper group, composed of the Tolivers, the Warwicks, and the DuMonts. “In good conscience I had to encourage Tippy to go. The opportunity the man offered her, the salary…” He shrugged in his Gallic way, but there was tear shine in his eyes. “How could I not?”
“I will escort her to New York City,” Jeremy offered. “I have business to attend there.”
And so they had parted, Jessica and her lifelong friend, now addressed by her proper name, Isabel, so her new employer insisted. Tippy had balked strenuously and tearfully at going, but Jessica saw something at the back of her eyes—the imagined chance of a dream come true—that would not permit her to listen to her friend’s arguments against the opportunity to come into her own.
“You must go, Tippy.”
“How can I leave you, Jessica?”
“By the front door, my dearest friend. That’s what this opportunity will mean for you.”
“I have ruined your birthday.”
“There will be others.”
Tippy stuck up her thumb in the old way, and Jessica hooked hers around it. “What are we promising to?” she asked.
“The promise to reunite on our fiftieth birthdays,” Tippy answered.
Jessica studied the first yellow crocuses and hyacinths showing their heads in the iron planters arranged around the gazebo. The bulbs never broke ground but that Jessica was not reminded of Tippy and the vases of crocuses and hyacinths intertwined with streamers of white satin ribbons she had arranged in honor of an event many Januaries ago. This morning, as Silas had kissed her good-bye, she’d not called his attention to the memory. His face was gray with worry and the effect of many sleepless nights.
“Don’t look for Thomas and me this evening until you see us coming,” he’d said. “We’re needed to help our manager and overseers settle unrest among the slaves and keep them at their tasks.”
Jessica had understood. Rumors of the political situation were beginning to reach slave compounds and cotton fields, and planters were on the alert for the slightest sign of rebellion. She’d seen her husband off without reminding him that today was their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary.
“Miss Jessica,” Petunia called, appearing waving a letter Jeremiah had collected from the post office. “Somethin’ for you that looks important. I wouldn’a bothered you otherwise.”
Jessica pulled her shawl closer and took the folded sheet of heavy cream-colored paper fastened with an authoritative wax seal. The return address listed the sender as a law firm in Boston. “Thank you, Petunia.”
“Will you be in shortly, Miss Jessica?” Petunia asked worriedly. “It gettin’ cold out here.”
“I’m enjoying the temperature. It’s such a welcome break from the heat of last summer,” Jessica said absently, studying the face of the letter.
“It supper time,” Petunia reminded her. “Don’t you want to come in for a bite? Mister Silas and Master Thomas won’t be in for only the Lord knows how long. They is used to cold suppers, but don’t you want somethin’ while it hot?”
“No, just a pot of tea will do,” Jessica said. “Bring it out, if you please, while I see what this letter is all about.”
“It ought to be champagne and cake, Miss Jessica. You be forgettin’ today is your weddin’ anniversary.”
Jessica regarded her young housekeeper in surprise. “How in the world do you know that?”
“How could I ever in this world forget? In January 1856, I fell sick with pneumonia and you insisted I be brought to your house in town so a doctor be close to look after me. I remember you leavin’ your party downstairs and comin’ into my room in your pretty party gown to feel my head for fever. When I asked you why you so dressed up, you say it be your weddin’ anniversary. That was January fifteenth. I remember ’cause you say the date.”
“That’s right, January fifteenth,” Jessica said, remembering the party. A milestone, Silas had called their twentieth anniversary. We must host one every five years to celebrate our married bliss.
“But let’s keep it our secret, Petunia,” Jessica said. “Mister Silas will feel bad that he forgot. He’s had so much on his mind lately. Tell little Amy when you go in that I’ll read to her before her bedtime.”
“I sure will, Miss Jessica. She’ll love that. I’ll get that tea now.”
Jessica broke the seal of the letter. Its message shattered her resolve to keep her tears at bay. Aunt Elfie had died. Her tender-hearted widowed aunt she’d not seen since her disgrace on the eve of Christmas in her native state had passed away on the day of South Carolina’s secession. The letter from her lawyer expressed condolences, details of her aunt’s death, and the startling notification that Elfie Summerfield had left her entire estate to her niece, Jessica Wyndham Toliver. The lawyer implored Jessica to travel to Boston to sign papers and deal with the residence “of substantial standing” bequeathed to her in her aunt’s will.
Jessica remembered the stately mansion well. During her years in boarding school, she had spent many happy times visiting her aunt in its Victorian parlor, taking meals with her in her sunny morning room, sleeping weekends in a bedroom wallpapered in flowers and designated “Jessica’s room.” The house and its opulent furnishings now belonged to her.
What was she to do with them? How could she travel north by herself—enemy territory now—to deal with the terms of the will?