Chapter Sixty-Five
April twelfth, 1865, would always be remembered in the family annals of the Tolivers, DuMonts, and Warwicks as the day “the boys” came home. The War Between the States was practically over. On April ninth, General Robert E. Lee, commander of Confederate Forces, recognizing its inevitable outcome, had surrendered his 28,000 troops to the union commander, General Ulysses S. Grant, at Appomattox in Virginia to avoid further casualties and destruction of property in the Southland. Both were staggering. Sam Houston’s words of warning that in case of war, the state would lose “the flower of Texas manhood” applied in devastating numbers to the Texas Confederates who had defended the South. Jake Davis was among them. Late in the war he had split off from Captain Burleson’s unit to join the Texas Brigade that fought in the Eastern Theater under General Lee. It was Jake who sent back word to the Tolivers that Willowshire had been burned to the ground by one of the regiments under the command of U.S. Army general William T. Sherman during his flaming march through South Carolina. Jessica could easily picture the scene of its destruction from the description her brother Michael gave to Jake.
February in Plantation Alley was always a bleak time of year, the color of dusk, and one afternoon, Michael had been startled when one of the servants burst into the library and shouted that the bluecoats were coming. Her brother had stared out his window at a union colonel on horseback leading a column of blue-coated soldiers at an unhurried gait down the leafless lane of Willowshire to the front of the mansion. Jessica was thankful their parents were not alive to see what happened next. According to Michael’s report to Jake, her brother had gone out to meet the intruders and stood on the verandah while the officer in command dismounted and his men remained in the saddle and fanned out around him.
“Good afternoon,” the officer said to Michael, removing his gloves as he climbed the steps. “Allow me to introduce myself. I am Colonel Paul Conklin. Perhaps you remember my aunt.”
Michael admitted he must have blanched white as a cotton boll, for of course he remembered Sarah Conklin.
The colonel allowed him to remove his family, servants, and hunting dogs from the house before the fires were lit, but he ordered everything else to be left behind. Jessica believed that it was for the sake of her friendship with his beloved aunt the soldiers were not permitted to loot the home of her childhood, and for that, she was grateful.
The boys came home on the eve Silas took to his bed, never able to rise from it again. Before then, he had managed to ride out to the plantation every day, see to his business affairs, and attend meetings of the city council, to which he’d been re-elected. Suspecting Silas’s disease from his symptoms, Dr. Woodward had sent him to Houston to a doctor with special knowledge of cancer of the blood. The specialist concurred with Dr. Woodward’s diagnosis: Silas was suffering from a condition known as leukemia. There was no treatment or cure.
Thomas was devastated. No grief he’d experienced in the war could compare to the sorrow of the coming demise of his father. He had returned home for Robert’s funeral in September, and he had noticed how greatly his father had aged. Something had been amiss, but he attributed it to his father’s years of worry that his only child would be counted among the war’s casualties, and the death of Robert had left its mark. His parents, more dear to him than ever, his wife a stranger, suffered deeply for the Warwicks. On that visit to his home, he said to Priscilla, “I want a child, Priscilla, and now. Do you understand?”
She’d nodded, fearful, as usual, but Thomas did not care. For God’s sake, what had the girl expected when she became a wife! That she would simply be set on a shelf and looked at? What use was she if she was no lover, companion, or helpmate and could not bear him children?
She submitted, and Thomas left her wondering where her tender, considerate, understanding husband had gone, but when he returned for good in April, he found her eight months pregnant. He prayed nightly for the safe delivery of his child and that his father might live to see a Toliver of the third generation who would someday become heir to the plantation of Somerset.
“I do not know how I can live without Silas,” Jessica said to Jeremy. They still met around ten o’clock some mornings for a cup of Bess DuMont’s bitter acorn coffee in the gazebo when the laudanum had eased Silas’s pain and allowed him to sleep.
“It isn’t a matter of living,” Jeremy said, his voice throaty with grief. “It’s a matter of staying alive for those left behind.”
He and Henri came every day to cajole with Silas, gossip, bring the latest war news, to assist in his baths, to sit with him when Jessica needed a break. Jeremy read to him as his sight weakened. Henri brought special treats from his store. Their pain behind their jocularity broke Jessica’s heart.
Silas lived three weeks after Priscilla delivered a healthy, nine-pound boy. She asked that her son be named Vernon after an obscure member in the genealogy she’d resurrected to the status of hero on the basis of his participation in the War of the Roses.
“Vernon,” Silas repeated, his voice hoarse from pain and medication as he propped up in bed to hold the baby for the first time. “I like the name. How clever of you, Priscilla. I see the little trooper has your fine ears. Do you mind that the rest of him has your husband’s side of the family to blame?”
“I am thrilled about it,” Priscilla gushed, glancing at Thomas, who stood close to his father on the other side of the bed. Jessica caught the look. It was full of hopeless yearning: I have performed. Now love me. But her husband’s attention was on Silas, obviously impressing on memory his father’s joy as he looked into the face of his grandson.
During his lucid periods, Silas called Thomas to his bedside, and they spent every minute in a huddle over accounting books and business papers and plans for the survival of Somerset. Silas warned that Texas and the South were in for a long period of turmoil. “Our state will be slow to bend its knee to Northern dominance and Texas may not be reinstated into the union for a long time,” he predicted between moments of losing and regaining his voice. “Lawlessness will be rampant, and the old order of our social structure will be in ruins. Our money will be worthless and land values will drop drastically, but you must not despair, son. Hold on to the land. Better times will come, and Somerset will thrive.”
Unable to bear being beyond the sound of Silas’s voice for as long as it was heard, Jessica sat in the sitting room next to the wall by their bed during these sessions and could hear the exchange of every word. She was torn between telling Silas of her bank account in Boston to ease his worry over money and the risk of his disfavor toward Jeremy when he learned of their pact to keep the money a secret from him.
“Don’t take the risk, Jess,” Jeremy advised during one of their morning interludes in the gazebo. “For my sake, don’t tell him.”
“You believe it would matter at this point that we were in cahoots together?”
“I’m sure it would.”
Jessica heard a strange note in his voice. “Why?”
Jeremy had discovered a loose nail in the swing. He diverted his attention to pushing it back into position with his thumb. “Just trust me, Jess. In some ways I know your husband better than you. He would mind that you took me into your confidence over him and that I acted upon it without his knowledge.”
“As you wish, Jeremy,” Jessica said. “I would do nothing to damage your lifelong friendship, not here at its end.”
Before his death, Silas had been cognizant of President Abraham Lincoln’s assassination in April, the capture of Confederate president Jefferson Davis in Georgia in May, news that the possibility of natural gas might replace candles for lighting and wood for cooking, and Jessica’s proud announcement that Maria Mitchell, an advocate in the women’s rights movement, had become the first woman professor of astronomy in the United States when she was appointed to a teaching position at Vassar College in New York. Silas had grinned and said, “What in the world is the world coming to?” and earned an affectionate swipe at his arm from his wife.
The last day of his life, Jessica heard Silas gasp to Thomas, “Son, I’m aware…that your marriage is…not all you’d like it to be, but will you take…a word of advice from your father?”
“I always have, Papa.”
“You may…never grow to…love Priscilla, but you must…respect her love for you. It is not a…trifling thing. It is to be honored. Give her the grace of your…acceptance of it, if…nothing else.…”
Jessica rose to her feet, her hand pressed to her lips. It had been a struggle for Silas to get the words out of his mouth, among the last she believed she would ever hear from her husband. Her fear proved justified. Just as day broke the next morning, she woke from an exhausted sleep to feel Silas press her hand. “Jessica…” he gasped.
She was instantly awake and by his side. “Yes, my love?”
“It…was…” His lips formed a word beginning with w, but it was never uttered.
“Wonderful,” Jessica said. Gently she drew his lids closed and kissed his lips. “Yes, it was, my dearest love.”
Silas died at dawn on June 19, 1865, the day the union commander of U.S. troops in the state issued the order that the Emancipation Proclamation abolishing slavery was in effect in Texas.