Chapter Eighty-Five
In the years immediately following Henri’s death, the circle of Howbutker’s founders’ sons grew even more tightly knit. Thomas, Jeremy Jr., and Armand had turned fifty, Stephen not far behind. Their sons, in their early twenties, were deeply involved in their families’ businesses, allowing time for the fathers to spend more time with one another. Members of the clans broke into social groups based on ages. Jessica, Bess, and Jeremy occupied one. Thomas, Armand, Jeremy Jr., and Stephen formed another, and their sons—Vernon and Jeremy III, Brandon, Richard, and Joel Warwick, and Abel and Jean DuMont—comprised the youngest.
Thomas relished his association with his three friends. Without them, he would have been a lonely man. His daughter had married—happily, he was elated to observe—and was expecting her first child next year, in 1887. Accompanied by Jeremy and Bess, his mother was on a round-the-world cruise that would take the better part of a year, and afterwards, the three were to visit Tippy in New York and Sarah Conklin in Boston. She would not be home until the week of Thanksgiving.
Vernon had taken up residence during the week in Jasper’s old house, outfitting it with louvered windows and other amenities suitable for the heir apparent to Somerset. He had never been quite the same after David’s death and seemed to prefer solitude, throwing all his energies into the cultivation of cotton. It was an exciting and lucrative time to be growing the largest revenue crop in Texas. Even with improvements in the ginning process and the invention of a compress that could reduce 500-pound bales into units half their size for easier shipping by the ever-increasing rail system, planters could hardly satisfy world demand for the fluffy white bolls. Thomas was still engaged in the day-to-day management of his life’s work, but not engrossed as he once had been. Thomas envied his friends their continued interest in their vocations even though they had slacked off to enjoy the benefits of their success.
Thomas recognized that a happy home life had a lot to do with a man’s enthusiasm for other pursuits, a blessing his friends enjoyed that he did not. As when they were first married, he and Priscilla were strained in the other’s presence. They treated each other with painful respect that Thomas believed barely hid the malice his wife felt for him. He’d found her out and now she hated him for discovering her capable of vile acts. She would never regain a high opinion of herself in his eyes, and so she consoled herself by thinking the worst of him. Once his children were no longer at home and his mother had left on her trip, Amy had asked if Thomas wished to take his meals with Priscilla at the small table in the breakfast room, but he declined. The intimacy would have been unbearable. They continued to eat in the dining room, one at each end of the long table. At night they slept as far away from the other as possible in the bed they shared. Thomas longed to sleep apart, but he could not bring himself to suggest an arrangement that would be the final repudiation of his wife.
The four friends formed the habit of lunching together every Wednesday at the Fairfax. Thomas would ride in from the plantation and hitch his horse before the DuMont Department Store. He could have ridden farther on to the hotel’s dining room, but he enjoyed collecting Armand and walking with him the one block to its entrance. At least that was the excuse he gave himself when he knew full well the occasion provided him the only opportunity to see Jacqueline Chastain.
In the two years of her employment in the store, she’d become a mainstay. “I don’t know what we’d do without her,” Armand said. “Her creativity reminds me of Tippy’s.” It had not taken long for Jacqueline’s dignity, sincerity, and decorum to cause customers to doubt the inflammatory content of the poisonous letters. At a party in the DuMont home, Thomas heard a matron extolling the expertise of “that fine clerk you hired, Armand,” and finished by declaring that “whoever the villain was that sent those nasty letters maligning Mrs. Chastain ought to be horse whipped.” Thomas had carefully avoided looking in Priscilla’s direction.
It was Wednesday again. Thomas stepped inside the chandelier-lit retail edifice with eyes trained to look first at the women’s accessory counter. Jacqueline Chastain saw him and smiled. She had been expecting him. Usually he said something like “Good afternoon, Mrs. Chastain,” and lifted his hat slightly. “How goes your day?”
“Perfectly, Mr. Toliver, and yours?”
“Enhanced now, Mrs. Chastain. So nice to see you again.”
“And you as well.”
That was all. Observers looking on would see Thomas barely break stride as he passed the counter over which Jacqueline Chastain presided. They had never exchanged more than a few words. Sometimes she would be assisting customers, and he would merely lift his hat on the way to the staircase.
But always the sight of her and the sound of her voice lifted his heart for those brief seconds before it fell. After a few months working in the store, Jacqueline had moved from the apartment above her former shop to the one Tippy had occupied that was located nearby. It boasted a white fence and small cottage garden beside the front walk. Thomas knew Jacqueline did not possess a conveyance and was glad she had not far to walk after store hours. Today, there were not as many in the store as usual and no customer in the women’s accessory department, and Jacqueline stood behind the gleaming glass counter looking like a queen devoid of subjects.
“Mrs. Chastain—” Thomas began, but his voice caught. He was feeling especially melancholic today. Earlier at the plantation he’d had a talk with his son. Lately, Vernon had been squiring a pretty girl about, the daughter of a dairy farmer the Toliver family had known for years.
“Do you love her?” Thomas had asked.
“I…don’t know, Daddy. What does love for a woman feel like?”
Thomas could not answer him. He had not had the experience. Thomas said instead, “I can tell you what love doesn’t feel like.”
And so, man to man, Thomas had shared his story of how he’d married his mother to produce an heir to Somerset. “I believed we’d grow to love each other, but I was wrong,” he’d concluded.
“Do you regret it?” Vernon asked. He had expressed no surprise at his father’s confession. As hard as his parents had tried to hide it, their children had been aware of the disaffection between them. “I mean, was your sacrifice for Somerset worth it?”
“Yes, the plantation was worth it, son. The times dictated what I had to do. Certainly I wonder how my marriage—and your mother’s—would have turned out if I hadn’t jumped the gun when I did and married for the reason I did. But my solace is that if I hadn’t married Priscilla, I would never have fathered my three wonderful children. You will never know how much I love you until you have children of your own, Vernon. And…another comfort, son. I can die knowing my sacrifice for the land of my fathers and my struggle and labor were not in vain.”
Thomas had looked out across the picked fields, the wind stirring the white residue between the stripped plants that resembled drifts of snow, and felt a resurgence of the old pride. “I have but one regret,” he admitted.
“What is that, Daddy?”
“That I will die without ever having been with a woman I love.”
That was Jacqueline Chastain, Thomas thought, taking the rare opportunity to gaze fully into her face. She must be over forty by now, he guessed. Time had not dulled her beauty. Her loveliness had been strengthened by a womanly wisdom detectable in her poise and manner, her smile and eyes and incomparably warm voice.
“Mr. Toliver,” Jacqueline returned, the slight contraction of her eyebrows telling him she wondered what had affected him.
“It will be Thanksgiving soon,” he said, appalled at the inane observation.
“Yes, I hear it’s around the corner.”
“My mother will be home from her world cruise.”
“I’m sure you’re anticipating her return with great excitement. She’ll have worlds”—she smiled at the pun—“to tell you.”
“And I’m to be a grandfather. My daughter is expecting her first child in April next year.”
“How wonderful for you.”
Armand would be waiting for him. He must go, but still he lingered. How was her cat? Thomas asked. Lazy and fat, she said. Her garden? She was seeing a bounty of stocks and sweet Williams this year. Their fragrance was delightful. Had she been keeping up with the scandal brewing in Paris over John Singer Sargent’s painting of Madame X? Fascinating what riled people up so, didn’t she think? Yes, she agreed. She thought the painting lovely, and the black dress the critics were making such a fuss over very appropriate to the woman’s beauty. The French were usually so…embracing of the unorthodox.
Thomas wondered what her life was like when she went home after the store closed. How did she keep busy in her little house? Was she lonely? Had she made many friends? Was she being courted? Armand described her as “fiercely independent,” preferring to do the “man jobs” around the house herself rather than accept the assistance of his maintenance crew.
Thomas perused the display case. “I’d like to buy something to welcome my mother home. What would you suggest?”
“We just got in a collection of beautiful fans, lightweight but quite effective for our summers. Would you like to see them?”
“Most certainly.”
Thomas bought a fan, and then he saw Armand come down the stairs, his gaze lighting instantly on the aisle where he suspected his friend would be. “It’s been a pleasure, Mrs. Chastain—Jacqueline,” he said.
“Mine as well, Mr. Toliver—Thomas,” she said.
When he arrived home late in the afternoon, Priscilla was waiting for him.