Chapter Sixty-Eight
From her upstairs window, Jessica could watch the comings and goings of Major Andrew Duncan. He clattered down the steps of his apartment at sunrise to join his men in the pasture, where they had pitched tents and built campfires. There she supposed he took his coffee and ate his breakfast. He merely slept in the carriage house. He had taken over a building in town as his company headquarters near where the Freedmen’s Bureau was housed and close to the location he’d selected as the site of a school for the children of freed slaves.
Stories of the major’s fairness, derring-do, and short shrift with lawlessness drifted back to Houston Avenue. By month’s end, merchants and townspeople had grudgingly come to see the presence of his men as a deterrent to the roaming bands of outlaws, deserters, and ne’er-do-wells tempted to vandalize stores, plantations, and homesteads rendered defenseless because of the drain of manpower by the war. The citizens’ patrol remained quiet after a military court found two of their number guilty of dragging a freed slave nearly to death and sentenced them to life in prison in Huntsville, Texas. Horse thieves were chased down and put in stocks under the broiling sun, and convicted poachers of livestock were confined to jail on a diet of bread and water. Meanwhile, the federal soldiers saw to one of their main duties of occupation: the construction of a school for the children of the freed slaves.
Jessica heartily approved of Major Duncan’s dogged efforts to see the school erected and planned to volunteer as its first teacher when the building was completed. Voices would rise in objection—the idea of a white woman filling the heads of black children with learning!—but no one expected less of Jessica Wyndham Toliver.
It was not long before Andrew Duncan was a weekly guest at the Tolivers’ dining room table. Evenings were the only time Thomas was home from the plantation and the union major free of his duties to discuss public matters and concerns. Sometimes, Jeremy and Henri and their sons joined them for cigars and port after the meal. Their conversation and laughter often followed Jessica upstairs to bed, and she thought conviviality between men who were once enemies a very good thing. A man of culture himself, it was obvious the major found the Toliver mansion with its many objects of beauty a much appreciated retreat from the grime and tension of his days. Jessica also thought it obvious, though not to her son, that he counted Priscilla as one of the many objects of beauty in the house.
During one of these dining occasions, two months into the occupation, Priscilla dropped the surprise that she wished to volunteer as a teacher at the school when it soon opened.
“Why, Priscilla, how wonderful!” Jessica exclaimed. “We can go together. Major, I had planned to volunteer my services, too.”
Priscilla, her flawless brow creasing, turned to Jessica. “If that’s so, who will be here to see after Vernon?”
Surprised at the irritation she heard in her daughter-in-law’s tone, Jessica said, “Why, Petunia and Amy, of course.”
“I do not want my child reared in his early years without a member of his family present. His father is never around during the day. One of us must stay here, and I insist that I need the diversion. You have served your time in community service, Jessica.”
Everyone listened to this near tirade with thunderstruck expressions. It was the first time Priscilla had ever put her foot down on anything, and the set of her face and defiant tone brooked no argument. Thomas said, “She’s right, Mother. You can serve the cause by helping Priscilla collect books and make lesson plans. Let this be her project. It will give her a chance to show the town what she’s made of.”
He spoke as the head of the house and Priscilla its mistress, a change in status Jessica was only too willing to concede and recognize. She would have been pleased to hear Thomas take his wife’s side and delighted in the rare glance of pride he tossed her had it not been for her suspicion that Priscilla’s obstinate desire to teach in the school had little to do with instructing the children of the freed slaves how to read and write.
“Could we not leave Vernon with his other grandmother the hours we would be at the school?” Jessica suggested.
“It is my wish he stays here with you. It’s clear he prefers your company to my mother’s. She is…well, she doesn’t have your way with him.”
“Then that settles it,” Thomas said. He turned to Jessica sitting at his right. Out of diplomacy she had yielded her spot at the head of the table to Priscilla when Thomas took Silas’s place after his death. Her daughter-in-law had never seemed comfortable there until tonight. “Mother, you’ve earned the right to let others take up the torch for the Negro,” Thomas said, his tone softening. “Stay home and enjoy your grandchild.”
Across from Jessica, Major Duncan, glowing from a scrub in the bathhouse he’d had his men build behind the stables and never more handsome than in his dark blue dress uniform with its gold epaulettes, remained silent, seemingly choosing to stay out of a matter skirting close to a family dispute. Jessica wondered if the man had any idea what this was all about. Men were so dense when it came to the wiles of women.
“As you wish, Priscilla,” Jessica acquiesced, “but keep in mind you will be under the scrutiny of the townspeople.”
The veiled admonition sailed over Priscilla’s blond head. “No more than you have always been, Jessica. I shall try to handle it with the grace you’ve shown.”
Thomas chortled, “You would warn Priscilla of the disfavor of the townspeople when you’ve never given a twitch about it, Mother?”
“I was not referring to disapproval, Thomas. I was cautioning your wife not to give cause for an undue wagging of tongues.”
Priscilla said, “She means like teaching the black children things they shouldn’t learn as she would do, right, Jessica? Not to worry. No one will fault me on that score. I shall teach a simple curriculum of reading, writing, and arithmetic.”
Thomas chuckled. “I believe, Priscilla, that Mother is saying to be careful not to give others the impression you’re becoming like her.”
“I hardly think that’s likely,” Priscilla responded tartly. Her blue eyes flashed with what Jessica now clearly saw as jealousy of her mother-in-law. Consciously or not, Thomas had given his wife the feeling he compared her to his mother and found her wanting. “It’s impossible to copy an original,” Priscilla added.
“Well stated, Mrs. Toliver!” the major said, lifting his wineglass to Priscilla. Thomas, with another proud look at his wife, did the same.
“Yes, indeed,” he said.
Inwardly, Jessica sighed. Oh, for the love of heaven!
How she would like to throttle Thomas for denying Priscilla what every wife needs and desires—notice and appreciation from her husband. Did he not see how lovely she was? Priscilla was somewhat empty-headed, sure enough, and too impressed with family name and position, but she had a good heart and caring disposition. Could he not appreciate those qualities beyond her expression of them to his satisfaction in the bedroom? Was he so indifferent to her feelings that he was blind to the human fact that he’d left her vulnerable to the attentions of other men?
Did he not know that, subjected to enough indifference, a woman’s heart could turn cold?
These were times like no other; Jessica wished desperately for Silas. Thomas had moved beyond her counsel simply for the reason he didn’t feel he needed it. Silas would have talked to him man to man, husband to husband. Thomas would have taken no offense, but for his mother to wade into those risky waters.…She could hear her son now: Mother, what are you talking about?
Two weeks later, Priscilla approached Jessica about “a delicate matter.” When she heard it, Jessica’s heart sank. Her gaze raked her daughter-in-law’s face to find some clue the girl was aware of the dangerous course she was pursuing. For the past week, Priscilla had been supervising the finishing touches on the school. The Freedmen’s Bureau had been registering students, and the first day of classes would begin next week. Priscilla had left to Jessica the tasks of preparing lesson plans, collecting books from neighbors and friends, and securing school supplies, since her daughter-in-law felt her services were needed at the construction site.
“We need more space,” Priscilla said in explaining the reason for asking Jessica to give up the bed and sitting room she’d shared with Silas. Jessica would be given the suite she and Thomas had occupied in another wing. “We’d like to turn the sitting room into a nursery for Vernon where he’ll have more privacy.”
“Privacy? Vernon is only five months old,” Jessica said.
“He’ll grow.”
Jessica was powerless to say no. The house belonged to her, and she was in a position to exercise full authority over it, but for the sake of family harmony, she wouldn’t. She was glad Thomas and Priscilla had scrapped the idea of building a manor house on Somerset. Jessica wanted Vernon to grow up in the family home, away from the plantation. Perhaps the child would escape the dominance it had over his father.
Priscilla had strolled to the window overlooking the carriage house when making her request to Jessica, a look of anticipation on her face. Did the girl think her mother-in-law was blind?
“When do you wish to make the move, Priscilla?” she asked.
Priscilla turned to her with obvious relief at Jessica’s acquiescence. “As soon as I can get the servants to see to it,” she said.