Bon Marche (31 page)

If Mattie was happy about her mother's sudden change of attitude, James Jackson was ecstatic. With tears in his eyes, he said to his daughter: “Your mother is a fine woman. I knew that when you decided to marry, she'd come around.” He swallowed hard. “I've always loved her, Mattie, but now I can't express to you how deep that love has become.”

IV

E
VERYONE
in the Nashville environs was invited to the wedding: the merchants, the tavern owners, the buckskin-clad hunters, the Indian traders, the gamblers, the rough denizens of the cockpit, the frontier entrepreneurs. Not the blacks, of course.

And everyone came.

Guest of honor was the Honorable Andrew Jackson, Senator of the United States of America, properly dignified in breeches and a somber black coat with a velvet collar. Accompanied by his shy, quiet-spoken wife, Rachel, Mattie's “Cousin Andy” signed the marraige document as an “official witness.”

It was a gay scene in the Nashville Inn parlor, made more so after the dinner—Sarah deemed it adequate fare, still wishing she had been able to find a proper chef—by two frontiersmen who broke out fiddles, leading to impromptu dancing.

The champagne disappeared quickly, but other spirits provided lavishly by Mr. Parker kept the wedding party alive. More than a few were taken drunk.

Mattie and Charles stood in a corner of the room, accepting the congratulations of the guests.

Senator Jackson came up to them. “Are you two planning a honeymoon?”

“A few days alone,” Charles answered, “not a formal honeymoon. We're just going to ride out and lose ourselves for a time.”

Andy nodded soberly. “A wise move. Being alone with the one you love, you will find, is often difficult. I myself find that a great luxury, what with my many responsibilities.” He sighed. “Too many responsibilities, perhaps.”

“Do you have to accept them all?” Charles asked.

“Someone must, sir, someone must.”

Jackson drifted away to talk to others and, in a short time, left the inn. No one else seemed to. The revelry went on unabated.

Mattie nudged Dewey, inclining her head toward her mother, who could be seen in earnest conversation with the long-hunter, Abner Lower.

“That's an unlikely pairing,” she said.

“Hmmm. Perhaps your mother has decided to make her peace with this ungodly wilderness.” He laughed.

“For Father's sake,” his wife replied, “I hope so.”

V

J
AMES
Jackson awoke, squinting in the sunshine streaming through the window, his head aching mightily from the combination of too much champagne and too much bourbon. He groaned with the pain, but he was happy. Content. The wedding had been everything he had hoped for and more.

His wife wasn't in the bed, but he heard noises in the attic above him.

“Sarah!” he called out. “Is that you up there?”

“It is.”

“What in God's name are you doing in the attic?”

“I'm packing, James.”

Perplexed, he sat up in bed. “Packing what?”

“My clothing, my belongings.” She sounded perfectly calm.

James swung his feet out of the bed, wincing at the shooting pains in his head. Pulling on his boots, he made his way up the narrow stairway to the attic.

“Sarah, what the devil—”

She stopped in her work, turning toward him. She was smiling. “I'm packing to leave, James,” Sarah said calmly.

He just stared at her.

Only after she went back to stuffing her clothing in several large carpetbags did he find words.

“Leave? What does that mean?”

“It means what it has always meant. I'm going east, within the hour.”

“Are you mad?”

“No, I'm perfectly sane, James. I've done everything I can do here. I stayed by your side until you established your business. I married off your daughter. Now I'm going to do what I want to do.”

“But … where will you go?” he sputtered.

“To Philadelphia. To civilization. I plan to live with my sister.”

“Philadelphia! How do you expect to make that trip alone?”

“Charles's guide, Mr. Lower, is returning to Virginia, he's agreed to allow me to accompany him to Charlottesville, where I'll be able to find a coach to Philadelphia.”

James found comprehension difficult. “I don't … understand this sudden desire to—”

“Sudden?” Her calmness evaporated. “Sudden, you say! I've been pleading with you for years to take me out of this hellhole! Years! You never have. You never
will.
And now that Mattie has also made her decision to stay—”

“I won't allow it!”

Her face grew hard. “And I won't allow you to keep me here another minute longer!”

“But you're my wife.”

“I'll remedy that when I get to Philadelphia.” She grinned at him wickedly. “I'm sure you'll be able to find an accommodating woman—”

“But I love you!” he protested.

Her sarcastic laughter cut through him like a knife, bringing new pain to his head. James Jackson sank to the floor, defeated.

As she hefted the two large carpetbags, moving toward the door with them, he asked: “If you have no love for me, think of your daughter. What of Mattie?”

“What of Mattie?” she repeated, pondering the question. Sarah struggled through the door with the bags.

“Like you, James,” she said over her shoulder, “Mattie can go to hell!”

23

I
T
was a hot evening, as only a late summer evening can be when the moon seems to reflect the heat of the departed sun. They lay contentedly on their backs under a canopy of red cedar. Alone, even though they were less than fifteen miles removed from Bon Marché.

“Charles?” Mattie whispered.

“Hmmm.”

“How long will this last?”

“As long as that moon persists.” He pointed upward.

“No, be serious,” she said with mild annoyance. “This is all new to me, but you've been married before. Do the pleasures of being together … well, do they last?”

“If we permit them to last.”

“It's as simple as that?”

“Yes, it is.”

“Lord, I hope so.” Mattie giggled. “I do enjoy it so—making love to you!”

Charles laughed.

“That's humorous to you?”

“No, no.” He turned on his side, leaning on an elbow, looking down into her face. “When I was being tutored by Andrew MacCallum, one of the things he insisted on was the memorization of passages from certain classical writings. Shakespeare was a particular favorite of his. And, I just remembered one of those passages—“

“Are you going to tell me what it is?”

“Perhaps I shouldn't.”

“Charles!”

“Oh, very well. Mr. Shakespeare, in writing about love, said, ‘Love is merely madness; and I tell you, deserves as well a dark horse and a whip, as madmen do; and the reason why they are not so punished and cured, is that the lunacy is so ordinary, that the whippers are in love too.'”

Mattie joined in his laughter. “Well, if I'm to be thought mad,” she said, “I might as well prove it.” She kissed him passionately, leading to them making love once more.

That's the way it had been in their four days alone in the wilderness. And, as before, the act of love led to quiet words about what they visualized for Bon Marché. In that sense, it had been a strange honeymoon: periods of intense passion followed by serious businesslike talk.

“Your mention of Mr. MacCallum,” Mattie said, “brings to mind, Charles, that the children need a tutor.”

“I'll write to Andrew and see if he has a young student he might recommend.”

“Perhaps there's someone closer. Father has a friend in Charleston, a young man who's trained in architecture. It occurs to me that he might be willing to come here to design our home and at the same time tutor the children.”

“I'll leave it to you.”

“You'd be willing to do that?”

“Isn't that what you want?”

She laughed again. “Yes.”

“And perhaps he'll stay around to also tutor the children we're going to have.”

She was silent.

“You don't want children of your own?”

It was a long time before she answered. “I have five now. Six, if we count Marshall.”

“Marshall is adequately cared for,” he snapped. “He has his own parents in Angelica and Horace.”

“But he's your child.”

“Am I to be constantly reminded of that?” His anger was real.

She kissed him lightly, but made no apologies for having brought up the subject of Charles's half-breed baby. There were no more words. They just clung to each other in their need to be together. And they fell asleep that way on their last night in the wilderness.

II

B
ON
Marché was a demanding mistress.

It was just as well that she was. On their return to the plantation, they were greeted with the report that Mattie's mother had left. James Jackson told the story exactly as it had unfolded.

“She really said that?” Mattie asked incredulously. “She said I could go to hell?”

“Yes,” her father answered sadly.

There was a moment of silence; then Mattie just shrugged. “Father, what's the name of that young architect in Charleston? You've mentioned him several times.”

“That would be Wilbur Hopkins.”

“Do you think he'd be willing to come here to design our home and to act as a tutor for the children?”

“I imagine he might welcome such an opportunity.”

No more was said of Sarah Jackson, as Mattie plunged into the work of building Bon Marché, sometimes consulting Charles on projects, and sometimes not. And sometimes raising minor conflicts.

She put six of the strongest Negro men to work building a stone wall around the original clearing. Half of them had been working with Charles, clearing an area for a mile-long training track.

Gently, he chided her: “Dear, you've taken three of my best men to work on that wall. I want to finish the track before the winter sets in.”

She laughed, kissing him. “Your horses, of course, have first priority.”

Within the week, however, she acquired ten more male slaves, again without consulting her husband. It bothered him that they were adding slaves, but there was so much work to be done …

In the first week of November, the architect-tutor Wilbur Hopkins arrived from Charleston. He was a handsome young man with sandy hair, hazel eyes, and slightly built. A man of perhaps thirty, and a dandy in his dress. The children liked him immediately—except for Franklin.

At ten, Franklin was becoming a problem. He was sullen and uncooperative in Hopkins's classes, and Mattie finally spoke to Charles, asking that he intercede.

“Franklin,” Charles had said to him, “I must insist that you be diligent in your studies. It's very important to your future.”

“Did your wife complain about me?” the youngster asked in a surly manner.

“My wife? Young man, she's also your mother!”

“No, sir, she's not! My mother's dead.”

“And she'd be most distressed at the way you're behaving.”

Franklin glared at him. “I mean to be a horseman, not a … a prig like that fellow Wilbur.”

Charles slapped him hard across the cheek.

“That fellow is
Mister
Hopkins, young man! If you continue in this attitude, I'll be forced to find further punishment for you.”

The boy didn't cry, nor did he put a hand to his stinging cheek. He just glared defiantly.

His father wanted to smile—the lad was tough—but he resisted the temptation.

Franklin wasn't Dewey's only problem, however. He was becoming concerned with the inordinate amount of time Mattie was spending on planning the Bon Marché mansion.

In bed one night, he asked her, “How go the plans for the house?”

“It's going to be just grand, Charles!”

“I would hope so. I see you only at bedtime anymore.”

“I have a lot of work to do,” she answered defensively.

“Must you do it all with that Hopkins fellow?” He was sounding just like his son, but he didn't care.

Mattie let a moment go by before she answered. “Are you accusing me of something?”

“It does seem that Hopkins holds a great deal of charm for you.”

“Charles Dewey, you're a damned fool! And insulting, too!”

He sighed. “I guess I am, and I apologize for that. It's just that I love you so.”

She made no comment.

“I do love you, you know?”

“Yes, I know.”

He waited for something more, wanting desperately to hear her say she loved him, too.

“Well,” he said when she remained silent, “I hope you can forgive my boorishness.”

“You're forgiven, of course.”

She kissed him lightly, then turned away from him, feigning sleep.

III

I
N
the last week in February 1798, Abner Lower returned from Virginia with the rest of the Fortunata slaves.

Dewey immediately drew the long-hunter aside. “Tell me the circumstances of Mrs. Jackson accompanying you to Virginia.”

“At the wedding,” Lower replied, “Mrs. Jackson said she wanted to go to Philadelphia to visit her sister. I agreed to take her. I left her in Charlottesville to catch the stage.” He shrugged. “That's all there was to it. She was a good traveler.”

“It wasn't a visit she planned, Abner. She was leaving Mr. Jackson for good.”

“Oh, Christ! I never would have taken her if I'd known that.”

“I know,” Charles said, “so don't concern yourself about it. One word of caution, though. Please don't say anything about Mrs. Jackson to my wife. It's a sore subject.”