Part Four
1880–1900
Chapter Seventy-Five
Jeremy glanced around the parlor-cum-ballroom at the group gathered to welcome home Philippe DuMont. The forty-two-year-old bachelor son of Henri and Bess DuMont had returned home for a brief period before reporting to his new job at the Pinkerton Detective Agency in New York after an eleven-year stint with the Texas Rangers, the state’s mounted fighting force organized during the Texas Revolution to guard its frontier. There were twenty-two of assorted ages assembled, all from the DuMont, Toliver, and Warwick families. The number and size of the grandchildren had grown too large to be seated at Bess’s dining room table, so for the homecoming meal earlier, to many cheeky comments, the youngsters had once again been assigned to the “children’s table.” The third generation of Toliver offspring consisted of Vernon, aged fifteen; Regina, thirteen; and David, twelve. Those of the DuMont clan were Armand’s sons, Abel, sixteen; and Jean, thirteen. The Warwicks’ number was composed of Jeremy Jr.’s namesake, Jeremy III, sixteen; and Brandon, thirteen, and Stephen’s boys, Richard, sixteen; and Joel, fifteen.
Bess had desired a larger party for her son’s homecoming, but Philippe had roundly rejected the idea, disarming his vehement refusal with a chuck of his mother’s chin that, as always, so she’d told Camellia with a laugh, had charmed away her disappointment.
They were all very fond of Philippe, but he’d never quite been one of them. Tall, rangy, rugged, totally lacking the elegance of his father’s and brother’s frames, Philippe had turned out to be if not the black sheep of the families, then the surprise mongrel in a litter of purebreds. From the growth of his first peach fuzz, they’d all observed in Henri’s second son a militant nature enigmatically softened by a tenderness toward the fragile and helpless. They’d been amused by his obsessive protection of his little sister, Nanette, and his assignment of himself as discreet guardian of Jeremy’s asthmatic son, Robert. Fool with Robert and the hapless malefactor had the fists of tall, strong, fearless Philippe to contend with. Jeremy had loved him for that. The death of Nanette had shadowed the last of Philippe’s boyhood years, and the senseless killing of Robert had added to a growing rage against any who would harm the weak. With his brother, Armand, Philippe had returned home after the war to help his father run the DuMont Department Store, the expectation being that the two would assume Henri’s position when he retired.
In less than a month, Philippe had left to join the Texas Rangers. He was not cut out to work behind a dry goods counter, he said, or to live in a fine home with servants to polish his boots and turn his bed. He was born to wear buckskin, eat his meals by a campfire, and live under the stars. Besides, Texas needed men like him to defend its frontier against the Comanche and Kiowa and Apache still attacking defenseless wagon trains and homesteads, scalping the men, raping the women, and carrying off children into captivity.
Much to the heartbreak of Bess and the chagrin of Henri, Philippe did not return home in 1870 when the Rangers were replaced by a union peace-keeping force called the Texas State Police. His organization disbanded, Philippe headed north to the Panhandle and sold his services as a gun arm for ranchers trying to defend their land from takeover by the cattle barons.
The election of Governor Richard Coke in 1873 saw the end of the abusive Texas State Police and the reinstatement of the Texas Rangers. Philippe immediately rejoined and added to the myths bred from the capture and killing of notorious criminals and the defeat and removal of the Indians from the plains of Texas.
This last was the cause of the hitch of Jessica’s eyebrow as Philippe recounted the Rangers’ part in the surrender of Comanche chief Quanah Parker that marked the end of the Texas Indian Wars. Jeremy had observed that Jessica’s brows spoke a language of their own. Their twitch, contraction, range of upward movement provided insight into her thoughts. This evening, the infinitesimal arch of one of them indicated disgust at the U.S. Army’s destruction of the Comanche villages and the shooting of 3,000 of the Indians’ horses, their most prized possessions. No matter the brutality against the settlers and buffalo hunters that Philippe thought justified the slaughter, by the perk of Jessica’s eyebrow Jeremy knew her heart was still on the side of the Indians and for all people displaced by the white man’s greed and would be to her final day.
To her final day. Jeremy hoped that was a long time in coming. He was losing Camellia. The pulmonary disease that would have eventually claimed the life of his second son was taking his little flower’s.
“Quanah Parker…” Bess murmured. “Isn’t he the son of Cynthia Ann Parker captured by the Comanche when she was a little girl?”
“Yes,” Henri said. “She was kidnapped in 1836 at nine years of age and recaptured in 1860—”
“By the Rangers under Captain Sul Ross,” Philippe cut in on a note of pride.
Jeremy, Jessica, and Henri looked at one another, their gazes reflecting the memory of a time only they had shared. “Mon dieu,” Henri said softly, “has it been forty-four years since the John Parker massacre and that little girl went missing?”
“And we were headed right into the teeth of it,” Jeremy said.
“Oh, tell us about it, Grandpa,” Brandon, the younger son of Jeremy Jr., begged.
“Some other time,” Jeremy said. “You’ve had enough of a history lesson for one night, and I have to go check on your grandmother.” He got up from his chair to the sound of a creak in a leg joint. Jessica had risen also, her quiet demeanor suggesting that her mind was still occupied with Philippe’s description of the last battle in the campaign against the Indians six years ago. Jeremy wished Philippe had not been so graphic. The children would relive his account of the massacre in their nightmares.
“Shall I see you home, Jess? It’s such a dark night,” Jeremy said in the lofty hall of the DuMont chateau as servants helped them into their warm outerwear. It was February of 1880.
“That would be lovely, Jeremy. I’ll let Thomas know. He and Priscilla will want to stay a while longer to visit with Philippe.”
They said little on the stroll down the avenue to the Toliver mansion, each weighed by the years of memories Philippe’s mention of Quanah Parker had evoked, the sadness of Camellia’s illness. Finally, Jeremy said, “I feel every one of my seventy-four years, Jess.”
Jessica linked her arm through his. “They don’t get any lighter, do they?”
“Or easier, for all our comforts. The only defense against the effects of time is to stay busy.”
“And you are certainly that,” Jessica said. It had taken forty years, but with the coming of the railroads, Jeremy was beginning to see his faith in timber as a major industry in Texas justified and the Warwick Lumber Company its standard-bearer. By 1878, when more track had been laid in Texas than in the whole country combined, the company’s vast acreage of prime virgin pine and mighty stands of hardwoods had stood ready for harvesting and shipment by rail to markets throughout the state. To meet the demands of the railroads for cross ties, boxcars, and depots and the surge of orders from commercial builders and real estate developers in the new towns being founded and counties organized, the company had begun building additional sawmills and facilities for their workers, all overseen by Jeremy and his two sons, Jeremy Jr. and Stephen.
“I sometimes think about slowing down, spending more time with Camellia,” Jeremy had said to Jessica a year ago during one of their gazebo visits. “She wants me to take her to Europe, you know. I could step aside, leave the lumber business to the boys to run, and concentrate on my other companies, but we’re on the eve of a great dawn, and I want to feel its sun on my face when it breaks.”
Jessica wondered if Jeremy remembered those words and regretted putting his business interests before the desires of his wife now that time was running out for her to feel the sun on her face.
Jeremy must have read her thoughts. “She’s been a wonderful wife, Jess.”
Jessica heard a sob deep in his throat. “Yes, she has, Jeremy.” Their breaths wreathed out before them, frosty puffs of vapor swallowed by the dark night. The temperature warranted her wearing the warm seal cape her family had given her for Christmas and Jeremy his camel hair coat with its rich lapels of sheared lamb. The crystal air carried the promise of snow by morning.
“Better than I’ve been a husband.”
“Camellia wouldn’t agree.”
“No, she wouldn’t, but I know.”
Jessica placed a hand on his lapel. They had reached the front steps of her verandah. “Then let her die without knowing, Jeremy.”
A sliver of moonlight caught the flash of surprise in his eyes. “You know?” he said.
“I know.”
“But that doesn’t mean we can’t always be the best of friends.”
“We’ll always be the best of friends, Jeremy.”
He bent his head and kissed the cold contour of her cheek. “Good night, Jess.”
“Good night, Jeremy.”