Bon Marche (68 page)

Except for the blacks with whom Dewey had to deal in the training regimen, he had become reclusive, no longer taking his meals with the rest of the family, but ordering the servants that he was to have his food in his bedroom suite. And that suite Mattie found in incredible disorder. Clothes scattered everywhere, the bed unmade for weeks, plates of half-eaten food allowed to mold where he had abandoned them—on dresser tops, on chairs, even on the floor. Tearful housemaids told Mattie: “Mistah Charles says we ain't to go in there no more.”

And the mistress of Bon Marché found Carrie and Alvin Mussmer married and living in Franklin's house. The marriage didn't please her, but she put on a brave face about it, joking with Carrie about the prospect of becoming a great-grandmother.

“I'm much too young for that, you know,” Mattie said, laughing.

Carrie simply nodded.

“Are you well, dear?”

“Yes.” A pause. “But Grandfather hates me now.”

“No, he doesn't. He may be a bit disappointed, but—”

“I
love
Alvin, Grandmother.”

“Yes, I'm sure you do.” She embraced the young girl. “And we all love you.”

But those words did little to reassure Carrie. She saw before her the daily harassment of her husband by Charles: bitter denunciations of Alvin for everything he did, orders to the blacks not to work with the young man, constant cursing by her grandfather whenever he was within earshot of Mussmer. Alvin tried to stay away from him, but his efforts were useless. It was clear that Dewey meant to destroy him.

All that Mattie found. And more. A strange fruit of Charles's aberrant behavior was his sudden concern for Thomas Jefferson Dewey, his youngest son. As if to show Franklin wrong about how he had treated Thomas, Charles now took Thomas under his wing, drawing him into the racehorse training, tutoring him on the fine points. Indeed, Thomas became the only member of the family with whom Dewey communicated with any regularity. The others were likely to be met with mere grunts or terse curses.

Thomas obeyed his father, but he was uncomfortable with his new role. “I just feel that I want to get away from all this,” he told his half brother, Franklin.

“No, don't. Stick with it. With all of his idiosyncracies, Father is a superb horseman. You'll learn much from him. God knows, he owes you at least that.”

It was in her initial talk with Franklin and George that Mattie Dewey learned of the depth of the damage Charles had done.

“I'm going mad, Mother,” Franklin said. “Creditors have been coming to my door at all hours, and I can tell them only that Father is just … well, just a little behind in the paperwork. But the truth is that he has ignored the bills. Several of our suppliers—Moses Till, for example, from whom we buy oats—won't deliver here anymore.”

George was just as distraught. “Our saddler, too, has written us off—refusing to do any more business with Bon Marché. When I offered to help Father with the recordkeeping, he shouted at me, telling me to mind my own business. And he forbade Franklin and me to enter the drawing room when we offered to try to make sense of the papers.”

“I'll pay the bills immediately,” Mattie told them.

George shrugged. “That's only part of it, Mother. Now that Father is training the horses, I'm left with nothing to do here. Nothing at all. Mary is very discontented, and honestly, so am I. We've been discussing the possibility of moving on—”

“No, no!” Mattie pleaded. “I need you now more than ever. Give me a chance to set things right.”

But setting things right wasn't easy. Even the matter of simply cleaning up the bedroom suite became a matter of contention between Mattie and Charles.

“Just leave things the way they are,” Dewey said in an offhand manner. “Sometimes I think we place too much store in neatness.”

“It isn't a question of just neatness, Charles. This place is
filthy.
” She was trying to be calm. “I can't live in this kind of—”

“Then maybe you ought to find someplace else to live.”

“Charles!”

He laughed at her. “Or perhaps I should!”

The next morning he moved out, taking a room at the Nashville Inn, riding to Bon Marché every day to continue with the training of the horses.

Mattie was distraught, but his action forced her to order her priorities.

First, Bon Marché.

Then the family.

And only then could she consider her continuing relationship with Charles Dewey.

47

A
DAUGHTER
was born to Alvin and Carrie Mussmer early in November of 1829. They named her Honey.

For the first time in months, Mattie and Charles were together as they waited in the living room of Franklin's home for news of the birth. Mattie had asked her husband to be there, and he had surprised her by agreeing, without the rancor he had always shown when matters involving Alvin Mussmer were raised.

“I told Carrie some time back,” Mattie said, “that I'm much too young to be a great-grandmother.”

“And so you are.” Charles smiled, patting her affectionately on the arm. He sighed deeply. “Charles Dewey, though, is easily old enough to be a great-grandfather. And he can look down the road to his final days.”

“That's nonsense, Charles.”

“No, Mattie, it's not. It's reality. And there are nights when I think I might welcome the final day, seeing the havoc my dotage has brought.”

“Charles, please stop that! You frighten me with such talk.”

Once more he patted her arm. “I'm sorry, dear.”

When they received the report of Honey's birth, and after they had both viewed the tiny pink child held in Carrie's arms, they walked together toward the mansion.

“Doesn't this merit a sherry?” Mattie asked.

“Yes, I suppose it does.”

Alone in the drawing room, the sherry poured, they sat like strangers, uneasy, not talking.

Finally, Mattie said: “Isn't there an entry to be made in the Bible, Charles?”

“You do it. My writing has become too shaky.”

She didn't want to argue with him. Taking the big Bible down from a shelf, she laid it open on the desk and entered the notation of the birth. It was the first time that anyone but Charles Dewey had written in the book.

That accomplished, she was determined to go further. “I wish you'd move back here, Charles.”

“Why?”

“Because this is your home.”

“No,” he said quietly, “it's where I do my work as a horse trainer. It's not—”

“Charles, don't talk like that!”

“See? I've angered you again.”

“You haven't. It's just that I want you back here.”

“You do?” He seemed surprised.

“Of course.”

He hesitated.

“Please, Charles. We
all
need you.”

Dewey laughed then. “You were never a very convincing liar, Mattie. But I am tiring of the Nashville Inn.”

“All the more reason to come home. It'll be like old times again.”

They both knew that wasn't true.

II

N
EW
Orleans seemed to be what Mary Harrison Dewey had been seeking ever since she left London. The gay, cosmopolitan city on the crescent-shaped bend of the Mississippi fascinated her. “Society” here was a compelling mixture of French and Spanish cultures, seasoned with Acadian refugees, Dalmatian oystermen, gorgeous mulatto women—and the naughty gossip associated with them—
gens de couleur,
a rapidly growing population of
les Americains,
and even a smattering of the rough descendants of pirates.

Everything about the city excited her: the numerous
bal masques,
the quaint restaurants offering foods that mirrored the international complexity of the port, the busy cockpits, the gamblers, the riverboat captains, the stolid Choctaw squaws selling homeopathic roots and herbs in the French market, the Italian fruit peddlers, the turbaned mulatto women offering
gris-gris
and love potions, the
Theatre d'Orleans,
the saloons, and—although she was properly critical of them—the ubiquitous bordellos boasting
filles de joie
of every color and nationality.

To Mary, the major city in Louisiana—indeed, the fourth largest city in the nation—was alive and vivid in hue, while Nashville was perceived as being dull and uninspiring.

And then there was the racing in New Orleans.

George Washington Dewey and his wife had made the trip to take in the racing at the Eclipse course in the spring of 1831. But that had been just an excuse, really. George had felt that he had to get away from Bon Marché. It had become a dead end for him. When his stepmother had persuaded his father to return to the plantation, Charles had come back with a firm determination to retain his right to train the Bon Marché horses, thus making George little more than an assistant whose aid was never sought. On the rare occasions when he volunteered advice, the master of Bon Marché chose to ignore it.

If only for a month or two, New Orleans was an escape for him, an effort, perhaps his final effort—he was forty-two—to revive his self-esteem. He was pleased to find that he was warmly welcomed in the racetrack circles of the city, and to learn that he
did
have a reputation as a fine horse trainer, something he had been almost ready to forfeit at Bon Marché.

Mary reveled in the opulence of the Eclipse Course, loving the way ladies were catered to there. And George greatly admired the racing surface; it was like none he had ever seen before.

“This is the fastest track in the country,” builder Yelverton Oliver told him. “We've made it so by hauling in tons of sand to mix with the natural soil, forming a cushion of sorts on which to run. The horses seem to take to it admirably.”

“And with fewer sore legs, I'd imagine.”

“Oh, definitely!” Oliver grinned at him. “I'm a bit disappointed, Mr. Dewey, that you haven't brought some of those Bon Marché horses we've been hearing about to compete here.”

“I, too,” George admitted. “Perhaps at a later meeting.” But he knew that if he recommended it to his father it would never happen.

Oliver introduced George and Mary to a horseman named Pierre Pujol, and Pujol, in turn, insisted that they have dinner at his table in the dining room, which featured cut-crystal chandeliers, fine imported table linen, and a menu to match the quality of the furnishings. There was a constant flow of visitors to Pujol's table with names like Oubre, Capdeville, Lapeyrouse, Sabatier, and even a few of
les Americains
not unlike themselves: Barrow and Garrison and Adams and Wells and Chinn.

As the dessert was being served by stiffly formal black waiters who spoke proper French, Pujol got to his feet and gestured to George. “Come Dewey, let's take a look at the next field of runners.”

Once out of earshot of the table, Pujol said, “I had a reason, Monsieur Dewey, for dragging you away from the others. Some of my friends become annoyed with me at times because I insist on exhibiting my sixth sense—my voodoo, no? But I sense things in people, sometimes more accurately than other times. And in you, Monsieur, I sense a feeling of frustration, of having reached a turn in the road—how do you say it?—a crossroads. I am right, yes?”

George was sober-faced. “Yes.”

“Ah, I am pleased that I haven't lost my powers.” He clapped George on the back. “Don't fear, Monsieur, I'm not a mind reader. Now that I've come this far, I have to admit to you that I don't know what frustrates you. But, if I am permitted a guess, it has to do with horses.” He smiled. “That's not too perceptive, I imagine, in that you are a noted trainer.”

The son of Charles Dewey also smiled. “You, sir, are disarming.”

“And I find that a great tool.”

They had reached the walking ring where they studied the horses being paraded for the bettors.

Without really knowing why, George decided to confide in this virtual stranger. “What you perceive, Mr. Pujol, is correct. I came to New Orleans to determine whether I might have a future here. For reasons I don't care to discuss right now, I've been thinking of making a change in my life…”

“Ah!”

“… because I find that I have gone as far as I can in Tennessee.”

“Will you establish a racing stable here, Monsieur?”

“I was thinking more along the lines of trying to associate myself with an already established stable.”

Pujol raised his eyes to the heavens, as if giving thanks. “Wonderful! Wonderful! It just so happens, Monsieur Dewey, that I, too, have been thinking of making a change. Something of a convenient miracle, no? I have a string of forty horses stabled here at Eclipse—and a Cajun trainer who is an idiot! If only I could obtain the services of a trainer of your reputation…”

George Dewey pondered the Frenchman's words. “You're serious, aren't you?”

“
Absolument!
” Pujol launched into a detailed offer of employment, with liberal terms that astounded the visitor.

At the end of the day of racing, and alone in their hotel room, the Deweys talked of the idea of moving to New Orleans and training the racing string of Pierre Pujol.

“Oh, Georgie, could we?” Mary asked enthusiastically.

“Father will probably cut off my inheritance if we make this move.”

“We're not exactly destitute, Georgie. And there's my money—”

Ordinarily, George would have been offended by such a remark. Now he wasn't. But he continued to be the devil's advocate. “And how will the children react?”

“They'll love it, Georgie! They're at an age now where they need new experiences. And Charles Two—imagine how he's going to prosper in this atmosphere. He's only fourteen, I know, but he's ready to blossom. New Orleans will make a gentleman of him.”