A Dream of Daring (2 page)

“Is this the sister you
told me about?” Tom asked softly.

“That’s Leanna.” She
nodded sadly. “I often wondered what it would’ve been like if she had lived. It
got frightfully lonely for me growing up here.” She glanced at the countryside,
where the plantations carved out of it were often a mile or more apart. Tom
looked sympathetically at Charlotte and Wiley’s only surviving child. “I had a
doll I called Sis, and I would laugh with her and whisper secrets in her ear.”
She smiled at the recollection. “Leanna was only two years younger. If she had
lived, I just know we would’ve been the best of friends.”

Rachel bowed her head
wistfully before the little angel. Tom put a comforting arm around her
shoulder.

* * * * *

The sun hung low amid the
gangly oaks when guests gathered outside the big house for refreshments after
the ceremony. The house stood high on a bluff outside the town of Greenbriar. A
few simple planks for the entrance steps, a cypress gallery wrapping around
paneled doors and windows, and a dormered roof displayed the home’s modest
beginnings as an English cottage. The train-like additions to the structure,
the lacy wrought-iron railings, and the marble statuary around a formal front
garden reflected the prosperity that the little cottage had realized through
the years.

The silverware and china
bore the flowery initials—
PB
—of the plantation’s deceased mistress. The
reception, with generous trays of food and fine spirits that were circulated
among well-dressed guests who spoke in subdued voices, was a study in elegance
and refinement. On the other side of the hill, out of view, were the slaves’
cabins.

As life has a way of indomitably
asserting itself, conversations turned from memories of the deceased to affairs
of the living. Sipping punch with Rachel, her mother, and a few powdery-faced
matrons with rosy cheeks, Tom looked distracted as they talked about their
gardens and households.

When he felt he had
conversed long enough to be courteous, he put down his punch cup and excused
himself. Rachel looked disappointed as he walked away. He was heading toward
the place dominating his thoughts, the old carriage house, when he heard his
name called.

“Say, Tom.” It was Wiley
Barnwell, leaning over the gallery. “Come here, my boy.”

Tom smiled, trying to
hide his impatience at having his departure delayed. In two strides, he climbed
the six steps to the veranda, where the senator stood with Nash Nottingham and
Ted Cooper under a cloud of cigar smoke. Tom nodded in greeting to the men.

“Have you heard about
Royal Cluster, the new seed that Millbank in Woodville is selling?” Barnwell
asked Tom.

“The one mentioned in the
Cotton Almanac
?”

“That one, indeed. Royal
Cluster’s supposed to come off the boll easier than Sugar Loaf or Brown’s
Prolific.”

“It’s worth trying,” said
Tom.

“Got myself ten bushels,
and while I was at it, ordered five for you.”

“That’s very nice of you,
Senator. How much do I owe you?”

“Nothing at all, my boy.
It’s a gift to the son of my best friend.” He put a hand over his heart. “May
he rest in peace.”

“Why, thank you. That’s
very kind of you, sir.”

“’Twasn’t easy for you,
coming back here after the colonel’s passing,” said Barnwell. “You did a mighty
fine job.”

Tom felt pleased too with
the job he had done in the past eighteen months since his father’s death.

Greenbriar’s scorching
summers made possible the heaven-white cotton that gave planters their
fortunes, but the torrid climate also brought hellish diseases that made death
a palpable presence in every household. With Tom’s mother and only sibling, a
brother, snatched from him years ago by yellow fever, and with his father the
more recent prey of typhoid, Tom became the sole heir to the two properties of
Colonel Peter Edmunton. One was Indigo Springs, the family’s cotton plantation
with more than one hundred slaves. The other was the Edmunton Bank, a private
concern in the seamy port town of Bayou Redbird, just down the bluff from
Greenbriar. Tom’s father had found a business opportunity in the place where
the sprawling bayou met the great Mississippi River. There crops were hauled in
steamboats to New Orleans for shipment to mills in New England and Europe. Ship
after ship stacked thirty feet high with cotton bales brought high finance to
the port town and its local bank, so Tom’s father had done well. But Tom’s
interests lay elsewhere.

After heading to
Philadelphia for school at the age of fourteen, then remaining to live and work
there, Tom remembered how reluctant he had been to return home when his father
died. Now, after eighteen months, two demanding cotton harvests, untold
sleepless nights spent learning the intricacies of banking and farming, much
faltering, and constant exhausting work, he felt pleased with the results. The
plantation and bank were doing well, and he was able to resume work on an
endeavor that consumed him, a project he had begun in Philadelphia and taken
home with him and whose outcome now stood in a small building behind the big
house. He looked out at the lush landscape of his childhood with the pride of
someone who had found a challenge beyond the countryside and met it.

He smiled at the seasoned
planter who had mentored him like a son. “You’ve been very helpful, Senator.
I’m much obliged. I’ll try the new seed on ten acres of my richest soil.”

“Wiley, I do believe you
rescued this boy from the Yankees,” said Cooper.

Barnwell laughed, puffing
a fresh smoke ring into the air. “I reckon he’s now a fine planter.” Barnwell
slapped Tom on the back. “A hard worker. And smart too!”

Tom inclined his head in
gratitude.

“Yup, Tom’s gonna do well
here, growin’ cotton and runnin’ our bank. He’ll make a good
family
man
too.”

Tom wondered how many
more ways the senator could show encouragement of his courtship of Rachel.

His rival apparently got
the same impression, because Nash Nottingham frowned, his cigar pausing in
midmotion toward his mouth. “Maybe one day Tom’ll even stop soundin’ like a
Yankee and talk like us again,” he drawled.

After a dozen years in
the North, Tom had lost all trace of his Southern accent.

“And what about
you
?”
Barnwell turned to Nash as if just noticing him. “Are you fixing to try the new
seed too? And maybe plowing and composting this year with some vigor? Your
father, rest his soul, would be shocked to see you depletin’ his soil almost as
fast as you’re depletin’ his money.”

Nash bristled at the
upbraid; then, like a cunning salesman responding to a skeptic, he raised his
head higher and spoke louder. “I like to leave the particulars to the overseer,
Senator. And with all due respect, sir, I’m fixing to raise a mighty good crop
this year, as I believe you will see.”

Cooper pointed to one of
the fields partly visible through the oaks. “I could try the new seed on that
fresh-tilled land out there.” He looked at Barnwell. “That is, if we come to an
agreement.”

“Tom,” said Barnwell,
“Ted here is interested in expanding his holdings.”

“The Crossroads could be
a fine addition to the land I have now,” said Cooper. “I say a man can never
have too many fields to sow or too much money to reap. And I intend to reap a
harvest fit for the good Lord himself.”

“Fit for the devil, I’d
say!” quipped Barnwell. “The Crossroads, added to your other holdings, would
give you enough cotton-growin’ land to clothe a small country!”

“Unlike virtue, an excess
of money never reaches the point of pain. The more you have, the better it
feels.” Cooper grinned. He had the swagger of many men who had acquired heady
fortunes from the fertile banks of the Mississippi at the peak of cotton’s
reign.

“Cooper would sell his
own mother for a sack of gold,” said Barnwell.

“Not just gold. Silver’d
do too,” replied Cooper.

Barnwell laughed
heartily, then turned to Tom.

“Ted will need a little
cash to make improvements. You know, get the Crossroads running just like he
wants. I suggested we talk to you.”

Although the New Orleans
cotton factors—the brokers who sold the planters’ crops to the manufacturing
markets in the Northeast and Europe—often advanced money or supplies to their
clients during the growing season, the Edmunton Bank also made loans to
planters, as well as to shopkeepers, yeoman farmers, and other enterprising
townspeople. Through the years, Colonel Edmunton had nurtured the local
planters’ business, developing a solid relationship with them.

“Your daddy and I did
business many times,” said Cooper. “He gave me good terms, and I must say, he
always bet on a winner in me.”

Tom considered the
matter. “I’m sure we can discuss that. The land here would make excellent
collateral for a loan.”

“Why no,” said Cooper,
“this land, like all my properties, would be mortgaged to the hilt. How do you
think I expand, boy?”

“Oh? Well, then you can
certainly feel free to use your securities to cover the loan, Mr. Cooper.”

“That’s Yankee talk,”
said Cooper, sweeping his hand to dismiss the notion. “Here we keep our money
in slaves. I’ve got plenty of them to put up.”

Tom studied him for a
long moment. “I’m afraid I don’t accept people as collateral.”

His words stunned the
other men into an awkward silence.

Finally Cooper replied.
“I didn’t say
people
; I said
slaves
.”

“And I said what I said.”

“And you’re fixing to do
business here?” pressed Cooper.

“I
am
doing
business here.”

Cooper glared at Tom,
pointing two cigar-holding fingers in the younger man’s face. “Listen, boy,
your daddy made loans like I’m proposing many times. Many,
many
times.”

“But my father isn’t
here, Mr. Cooper. I am.”

Barnwell broke the sudden
tension in the air with a friendly laugh. “You might allow me to teach you
something about the banking business too, Tom,” he said with fatherly
affection. “You’ve been gone so long that those Yankees got to you. But you
learn quick. We’ll discuss the matter when you get back from your travels.”

“I declare, it seems you
just got here. Going away already?” Nash looked hopeful.

“Only for a few weeks,”
Tom replied pointedly, as if to dash any romantic designs his rival might
entertain in his absence.

“Tom’s headed to the North,”
added Barnwell.

“It escapes me how anyone
would want to go where the weather’s cold, the folks are nasty, and the
factories are smelly.” Nash turned to Tom. “Can’t stay away, can you?”

“Tom’s got something he’s
bringing to Philadelphia,” said Barnwell. “To a contest. That so, boy?”

“Yes.”

“In fact, the thing
happens to be right here at the Crossroads,” Barnwell explained. “Tom was
fixing to take his trip today, but when he told us he wouldn’t be able to
attend the funeral, and Rachel looked so gloomy, I suggested we bring it here,
so he could attend the service, then board a steamer with it first thing
tomorrow and get to Philadelphia in time for his engagement.”

Tom was grateful to the
senator for his suggestion. To please Rachel, he had arranged to postpone his
departure until after the funeral. Since the Crossroads was only three miles
from the steamboat docks, whereas his plantation was an additional four miles
away, he had agreed to bring his cargo here, then continue down to Bayou
Redbird with it in the morning.

“What exactly
is
this thing?” asked Cooper.

Tom hesitated.

“I hauled it here with me
so Tom could spend some time patching things up with Rachel in the carriage,
but I don’t know much about it. I’m mighty curious,” Barnwell said, hinting.

“Actually, I hadn’t
planned to say much about it yet, Senator.”

“Oh, come now, Tom,”
Barnwell continued jovially, “if things go as you’re hoping, you’ll need
customers, won’t you?”

Tom considered the
matter.

“You might be looking at
your first prospects right here. And if we like it, why, we’ll tell everybody
else up and down the Mississippi and bring you a whole mess o’ business.”

Tom smiled, grateful that
the senator wanted to help him. He told himself that such assistance from a
prominent man should be encouraged.

“Okay, gentlemen, I’ll
show it to you, if you’re interested.”

“It’s in the old carriage
house.” Barnwell extinguished his cigar in an ashtray. “Let’s go.”

The men walked the dirt
path toward the back of the house. While Barnwell and Cooper moved ahead,
discussing the sale of the Crossroads, Nash took Tom aside.

“Say, old boy.” Nash
laughed nervously. “I’ve been meaning to talk to you about
the . . . uh . . . note that’s due.”

“You mean
past
due.”

“Well . . . all
right. It’s a tad late. With you going away, I hope you won’t have that nasty
George Jones press me on it.” Jones was Tom’s bank manager.

Nash waited, but the
young banker didn’t reply.

“Look, Tom, I can’t quite
pay the loan back now. Nothing serious. I had a bad
year . . . couple of bad years. That’s all.”

“When the rest of us had
good years?” Tom asked curiously, without reproach, trying to understand the
man before him who seemed so different from himself.

“I was hoping you could
give me more time. And perhaps,” he added tentatively, “you could extend just a
little more.”

Tom offered two raised
eyebrows in response. He surveyed the sartorial splendor that was Nash
Nottingham, from the beaver top hat to the shirt with the gemstone buttons to
the shiny leather boots, all looking new and costly.