Child of the River Read online

  The Good Lord willing, I shall arrive on the morning of the 23rd. Tell Lazarus to meet my train.”

  Yours very truly,

  Benjamin A. Farrington

  After the class some of Luke and Mandy’s children taunted the others with a chant, “We’re gonna move to the big house! We’re gonna move to the big house!”

  “You children hesh up!” Mandy commanded shapely. “I hear you singing that one more time, I’ll smack you up beside the head! Just ‘cause we’re moving up to the mansion ain’t no call fo’ ya’ll showin’ off.” The woman was as thrilled as her family about the move, just not as vocal. She was already planning Rosie’s wedding in the great room.

  Rachel tried to comfort Cassie. “You ought to be glad Mandy’s takin’ over for you, huh? Won’t be expected to do nothin’, and Mr. Ben’s just flat givin’ ya’ll enough for your keep. Why, Cassie, you can loll in the shade and rock, rock, rock just tending to your own knittin’.”

  “Hurrumph,” Cassie snorted. “Ain’t ready fo’ no rockin’ chair. They’s for old folks with the miseries. Ain’t hankerin’ to move back down to them slummy qwarters, neither.”

  Logan placed a warm arm around Cassie’s shoulders. “Let’s try to enjoy it, honey. We can take our fishin’ poles when we wants and head fo’ Big Black. We can go to town any day o’ the week, whenever the notion strikes. We can go to the circus when it comes to town and ride down the Mississippi on one o’ them riverboats. Might even go to Ioway an’ see li’l old Elly an’ Tom. Now, honey, wouldn’t you just love to get a hold o’ them grandbabies? Don’t worry, Cassie. We ain’t gonna have no time for no rockin’.”

  Cassie turned to meet his soft glance and saw the love and truth in his kind eyes. She smiled wistfully and wiped a tear away with her apron. “You mean that? You’ll take me to see…” A sob caught in her throat. “Elly?”

  Logan nodded decisively. “Soon’s Mista Ben’s holiday is over and we get our stuff moved. Might stay a month.”

  The next day, Cassie realized this was her last Christmas as head housekeeper, and she wasn’t anxious to give up the job in spite of Logan’s plans. With an air of grandeur, she directed the house servants in preparation for Christmas. The silver was polished, walls were washed, furniture was polished and rugs were beaten. The marble foyer and hardwood floors sparkled.

  Cassie took over the dessert cooking, insisting the other cook couldn’t please Benjamin like she could. She outdid any previous holiday baking in the history of Larkspur with an array of cakes, pies, candies and cookies. She planned every item on the Christmas menu, allowing the other cook to prepare all the main meals with the exception of the beef Wellington and the turkey stuffing which she would prepare herself.

  Logan brought the tall Christmas tree and set it up in the great room for the plantation children to decorate. A perfectionist to the nth degree, Cassie wouldn’t leave them alone with it. Every now and then, she dusted the flour from her hands and came in to offer her critique. “No…no…no, chil’ren. You got that cranberry ropin’ too close together. Spread it out a little. Be careful with Miss Bess’s ornaments. Don’t you dare break nothin’.”

  “Sam!” She reprimanded her nine-year old grandson. “You’s eatin’ more o’ that popcorn than you’s stringin’. Stop eatin’ it! It’ll spoil your appetite. Besides, I’ve popped all I’m gonna pop. Logan! For mercy sakes! Go get the ladder an’ put that star up there ‘fore them damn kids knock the whole damn tree down.” Cassie shook her finger at the youngsters. “St. Nick’s gonna bring ya’ll a bunch o’ sticks if you don’t slow down an’ fix that tree right. Mista Ben’s expectin’ that Christmas tree to look pretty.” The old woman’s gruff voice changed abruptly to compassion. “What you cryin’ about, baby?” She cradled weeping five year old Rebecca in her arms.

  “Stuck my finger with a needle,” the child whimpered between snubs.

  “Come with me, darlin’,” Cassie whispered in the child’s ear. “You can lick one o’ granny’s cake bowls.”

  Later that afternoon, Mandy slipped quietly into the kitchen while Cassie was making apple pies. She watched as Cassie flopped the bottom crust dough over six pie tins. Then, she hunked irregular sized chunks of apple into high peaks on the raw dough. Reaching into the sugar bin, she brought out several pink coffee cups full of sugar and some small fistfuls of flour that she mixed into a bowl before sifting it over the apples. She dusted each pie generously with cinnamon and dotted them with butter lumps. The last ingredient before adding the upper crust was vanilla. Cassie sprinkled it haphazardly all over the high peaks. She hummed contentedly as she worked.

  “What you puttin’ vanilla in a apple pie for?” Mandy inquired.

  Mandy’s sudden voice caused Cassie to jump, for she thought she was alone. Her brows knitted. “You scared me half out o’ my wits, Mandy.” She shook a rolling pin at the woman. “What do you mean,” she said between gritted teeth, “slippin’ in my kitchen an’ stealin’ my cookin’ secrets?” Cassie threw the rolling pin down hard on the cook table and put her floured hands on her hips. She drew up like a cobra about to strike. “This here kitchen is mine, lady! Mine! Mine ‘til January. So quit your lollygaggin’ around in my way. I’s cookin’ for my Benjamin. I’s the one that wet-nursed him when Miss Bess didn’t have enough milk. He’s wettin’ his lips fo’ old Cassie’s cookin’, not Mandy’s. I’s the one that knows what he likes.”

  “I just thought you might need some help, you ungrateful old biddy!” Mandy retorted. “There’s so much cooking to do, and you look so give out. You pore old thing…look plumb tuckered out.”

  “I ain’t tired, I ain’t tired,” Cassie insisted. “Cooking’ Christmas fo’ Mista Ben is a labor of love. You’ll take over my kitchen soon enough, Miss Priss. Too damn soon in my opinion.” Cassie stressed her words with a wooden spoon. “But until you do, this here kitchen is mine! Get your butt out o’ here. Don’t need no help.”

  “Well, ex-cuse me!” Mandy fired back. “I don’t care if you fall on yo’ black and white face! Don’t come cryin’ to me fo’ help when them old, very close veins in yo’ legs start achin’! I won’t help you now if you fall face down in one o’ them pies.”

  Mandy slammed the kitchen door behind her as Cassie muttered to herself. “That black hussy! Now she knows about the vanilla. She stole my recipe.” She fluted the crusts and cut five slits in the tops, brushing them with thick sweet cream, and sprinkled a little sugar on top, then slammed the first two into the oven. When they were done, they’d be flat and beautiful.

  It was good for Benjamin to get away from Harvard and the cold of Massachusetts and to spend the holidays at the old plantation. At least it seemed so when he first arrived. He visited Holly at Tom Macy’s Saloon while Lazarus picked up a few things at the mercantile store and waited at the buggy. Once he was home with only the servant staff to greet him, the loneliness set in. He missed Dayme, the companionship they once knew. The straight-laced spinster teacher he hired had asked for time off to spend the holidays with her family. Actually, he was glad. They had nothing in common to talk about. Even though Cassie outdid herself preparing his favorite desserts, he ate very little sitting alone at the long mahogany dining table. He was engulfed in loneliness.

  Coming home, he mused, is not like it used to be. It was lonely enough without Mum, but Dayme’s cheerful countenance, her singing and laughter made holidays more pleasant. The Christmas tree looks so forlorn in the empty great room. I think that I shall never spend another holiday at Larkspur.

  Thoughts of Dayme invaded his sleep on Christmas Eve night. He wished they hadn’t agreed not to write until summer. He fretted about Morgan. He could picture the two in each other’s arms and his jealousy mounted. I’ve been told, he thought, that once the doors of love are opened, there’s no way of keeping them closed. He wondered if she slept with men aboard the riverboat…with Morgan. His sleep was erratic until the morning light.

  The memory of Molly was rapidly f
ading each day. He’d just about given up of ever finding her. She is the one I really want so why, he mused, does Dayme take up so much of my thoughts? Perhaps I should have told her about the fortune Mum left. If she knew that, she would have stayed. “No! Hell, no,” he muttered. “My money would have been the wrong reason. The idea of women at the polls! A wife should be soft and genteel, poised and elegant like Mums, like Molly. Molly. Dear, wonderful, beautiful Molly…wherever did you go? The Pinkerton detectives have found no trace past Oberon, Ohio. She and her Mother lived there during and after the war, but they had moved away. All the women I have ever loved are gone…Mums, Molly, and now Dayme. I’m going back to Cambridge the 26th. This terrible loneliness is getting me down.”

  Chapter 17

  BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS, February, 1867

  Molly was petulant and short with Eloise. “I do wish you’d found out more about my blind date…his name, for example. Honestly, Eloise, if you were not absolutely my very best friend in the whole wide world, I don’t think I’d go to the ball at all. Harvey Attaberry asked me. So did Charles Leinburger, for that matter. I had to turn them both down because I promised you. My date will probably be about five feet tall with fat little jaws and big buck teeth like a chipmunk.”

  Eloise laughed. “Andrew said in the letter that his friend was tall and had dark hair. Sounds handsome to me. Don’t even think of backing out at this late hour. It’s too late to ask someone else.”

  “Piffle!” Molly retorted as she primped at the dressing table. “Abraham Lincoln was tall but nobody accused him of being handsome. Negroes have dark hair. So do wild Indians, for that matter.” She turned on the stool, dropping the hairbrush to the floor. “Please, can’t I beg off? I’m getting cold feet. Can’t I double up with cramps? Develop a hot burning fever?”

  Eloise shook her head. “No.”

  “I will never, never…not if I live to be 106 years old…I’ll never forget that effeminate bird you pawned off on me at Oberon. I swore then, never again. Now I’m in another pickle.”

  Eloise giggled mischievously, remembering Molly’s dilemma. “As I recall, you got your revenge when I had to go to the symphony with Ellsworth Atkins. He was pasty-faced…looked like a sick katydid…so pale and gaunt. He had absolutely no personality. I couldn’t enjoy the music for wanting to crawl under the seat. So, my dear Molly, if this date does turn out to be a dud, it’s your turn. You know that Andrew wouldn’t bring someone dreadful. Besides, you promised. It’s too late to back out.” Eloise grinned knowingly. “Stop teasing, Molly. Thomas Warner will be there. You know you wouldn’t miss an opportunity of being in his company for the world. Stop trying to make me nervous. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to catch the old boy and wallow in all that wealth?”

  Molly peeked out the window into the dark, fog-draped sky. “I do wish it would stop snowing. My new bonnet will be ruined.”

  “We have umbrellas.”

  “But the snow is coming down horizontal with that wind.”

  MEANWHILE

  Benjamin and Andrew chatted on the train to Boston. “I plan to run for Congress one day.” Benjamin told his colleague. “That’s why I want to launch my law career soon with you. It’s a stepping stone in the right direction.” He didn’t explain his reason for tossing his hat into the political arena. It was, in his opinion, the only possible way to remove the North’s stranglehold on the South. The broken South couldn’t muster the funds for another army. Help, if it came, had to come from legislation.

  Andrew chuckled. “Don’t ask me to manage your campaign. I’m a born Republican. My friendship goes as far as the polls. I’ll be rooting for the other side.”

  “That figures. I suppose we’re lucky our friendship survived the Civil War. While the war was going on, we wouldn’t have dreamed of forming a law partnership.”

  “No,” Andrew replied quietly. “But that is past. We must look to the future.”

  The brunt of the storm passed by the time the two men stepped off the train. Windless snowflakes floated gently like feathers to the ground. The muffled horse’s hooves on the pillow-like snow trotted almost soundlessly over the brick streets. The black carriage stopped in the driveway of the Moorwell mansion.

  An English butler answered the bell and took their hats, overcoats, umbrellas and overshoes. “Master Andrew” Jarvis greeted. “It’s nice to have you home, sir. I’ll tell Mrs. Moorwell you’re here.”

  It was a good ten minutes before Andrew’s mother came down the curved stairway to be kissed on the cheek by her son. The tall, stately, slender woman had an elegant beauty softened by the years. Her shining silver hair was swept in a smooth, single wave near her right temple, and the thick fold of hair across the back of her head was secured by a diamond studded curved comb.

  “Mother, dear,” Andrew said, beaming. “I want you to meet my colleague and future law partner… Benjamin Atwood Farrington.”

  The lady extended a slender, long-fingered hand to be kissed. “It’s a pleasure having Andrew’s friends visit our home. May your stay be both pleasant and enjoyable.”

  “The pleasure is mine. Thank you for your gracious hospitality. You’re even lovelier than I had imagined.”

  “Oh tish!” Mrs. Moorwell said smiling. She was flattered and obviously pleased. “That’s what the last friend Andrew brought here said. It’s always nice to hear it again. There was a time, young man. There was a time. In my youth, I was one of the most sought after debutantes in Boston.”

  “Where is Father?”

  “In the study. He will be delighted.”

  “How is he?”

  “About the same, dear. I don’t expect he’ll ever get out of that wheelchair. He still reads and enjoys the greenhouse and his orchids and, of course, his first love, politics. Sometimes, his valet wheels him down to the brokerage firm, but it’s my opinion that he’s more in the way.” She smiled wanly. “I’m told your father is still quite vocal at the board meetings.” She pulled the rope for the butler. “Mervin, please see this gentleman to one of the guest rooms.”

  “Yes, Madam.” The butler carried the luggage up the winding stairs and down a long hallway, with Benjamin following close behind. “Anything you need, sir, just ring. Dinner is at six.”

  From the onset, the evening meal promised to be stiff and formal. Mrs. Moorwell was seated at one end of the long mahogany dining table, and her husband was seated at the other. Andrew’s older sister, Elizabeth, and her husband, Sir Elliot Tones, were seated on one side along with their twelve-year-old daughter, Angeline. On the other side sat Margaret, the homely younger sister, known affectionately as ‘Meg’. Oliver Parks, her husband, sat beside to her. He was plump and balding. Benjamin was seated next to them. Andrew was seated nearest his mother.

  Andrew dreaded the questions that were certain to come from his father and wondered how to cope with them. The two men were colleagues at Harvard before the Civil War when both went to fight on opposite sides. After the war, their friendship was renewed when both returned to Harvard. However, the Civil War would be a delicate subject in the Moorwell household because Andrew’s brother died at Gettysburg. Andrew worried what they would think when they found out Benjamin was on the other side.

  The questions began just as Andrew started to put a spoonful of soup in his mouth. It was his mother, not his father, who inquired. “Were you a soldier in the war, Benjamin?”

  “Yes, Madam, I was.” His deep blue eyes met Mrs. Moorwell’s evenly. He volunteered nothing.

  “Where is your home? You are a Republican, of course.” Mr. Moorwell’s last question was more in the form of a statement. Andrew coughed, strangling on the soup.

  “No, sir. A Democrat,” Benjamin replied. “My home is in Vicksburg, Mississippi. I am a planter.”

  Andrew’s father grunted, cleared his throat and looked displeased but said nothing more.

  Mrs. Moorwell looked startled. “You…you weren’t on the Confederate side?”

  Benjamin�
�s tone was not apologetic. It was polite and honest. “As a matter of fact, yes, Mrs. Moorwell. A captain under General Braxton Bragg’s command.”

  “Were you at Gettysburg?” Mr. Moorwell growled.

  “No, sir.”

  With the exception of Andrew’s coughing there was only icy silence. “Andrew didn’t tell me,” Mrs. Moorwell muttered coolly. She arose abruptly from her chair. “Excuse me. I have a headache.”

  Once he recovered from strangling, Andrew tried to ease the tense discomfort at the table. His face was flushed, embarrassed that his friend was so obviously unwelcome in his home. “Benjamin is at the top of our class. He’s certain to be named valedictorian.”

  “Oh really?” Sir Elliott was coolly polite. His undertone indicated he couldn’t care less.

  “Now nice,” Meg murmured. She always said that. It was her contribution to dinner conversation regardless of who the guests were. The aristocratic family was too well bred and cultured to create a scene by pursuing the matter, but the remainder of the meal was cold and quite miserable. Both young men barely touched the main course and refused dessert, feeling relieved when the ordeal was over. Mr. Moorwell wheeled sulkily to the study. Benjamin and Andrew retired to the parlor to smoke.

  A few minutes later, the butler appeared at the parlor door. “Excuse me, Master Andrew. Your father wants you in the study.”

  Andrew dumped the pipe tobacco into an ashtray and sighed deeply. “Make yourself comfortable. The sooner I get this little talk over with, the better.”

  Under the circumstances, Benjamin decided the only thing to do was move his bags to an inn. He overheard Andrew’s father admonishing him for bringing the ‘enemy’ into their home when he passed the library on the way to the guest room.

  “How dare you bring an enemy soldier into this house and hurt your Mother this way!” Mr. Moorwell stormed with indignation.

  “Father,” Andrew replied wearily, “the war is over. Benjamin is my best friend. It’s time to forget the past.”