Bon Marche (51 page)

Dewey, worried, could confide only in Schimmel. “If the damned gossips would be quiet,” he said, “this thing might die. But they keep after Andy, fueling his temper. He told me yesterday that he'd horsewhip Tom Benton the next time he saw him.”

Schimmel shrugged. “Well, the Bentons are safely off in Franklin right now. Maybe a friend of Andy's can keep them apart until it cools off.”

“Meaning me?”

“The others won't, will they?”

“No, I'm afraid not.”

Six weeks went by without incident. Dewey was in a good mood as he rode into town to have a meal with Jackson at the Nashville Inn.

He stopped off at the newspaper office when he reached town.

“The Bentons are in town,” his son-in-law said by way of greeting.

“Oh, good Lord! Where?”

“At the City Hotel.”

Charles hurried toward the Nashville Inn. He met Andy and John Coffee strolling toward the post office. Dewey fell in step with them, trying to devise a plan in his mind to keep them from knowing that the Bentons were there.

His worst fears were realized!

The Benton brothers were standing on the wooden walk outside Talbot's Tavern, next to the City Hotel. They glared at Andy; Andy glared back. But no words were spoken.

At the post office Jackson picked up his mail, and the three of them started back toward the Nashville Inn. Opposite the City Hotel, they saw Jesse Benton disappearing inside the hotel. Charles breathed a sigh of relief.

It was premature.

Suddenly, Jackson whirled and made for the door of the hotel, cracking his riding crop against his boot.

“Andy, don't,” Charles said, grasping his arm.

The general shook himself loose, striding like a man possessed into the hotel, Charles and Coffee in his wake.

In the hallway, just inside the hostelry, stood the massive form of Thomas Hart Benton.

His whip held menacingly, Jackson moved at the elder Benton. “Now defend yourself, you damned rascal!”

Benton's hand made a move toward his pistol, but Andy's was already drawn, pointed directly at Benton's face.

It became a stalking exercise, as Charles could only watch, fascinated by the drama. Jackson moved forward—one step, two, three. Benton retreated backward, keeping his eyes on the cocked pistol.

There was a shot!

Not from Jackson but from Jesse Benton, who had slipped through a doorway behind them and fired without warning. He had missed.

Two shots from Jackson at Tom Benton. Misses! It seemed impossible.

The elder Benton, pistols in both hands now, fired twice. One of the heavy balls smashed into Andy's shoulder, imbedding itself. He fell heavily.

Seconds only had passed.

As Dewey, on his knees, crawled to attend to Jackson, John Coffee rushed at Benton, firing at him and missing also. He continued his attack with the butt of his now spent pistol.

Sounds of the gunshots had brought Andy's other friends running from the nearby Nashville Inn.

Madness swirled around Charles as he tried to help the fallen Jackson.

Alexander Donelson, dagger in hand, joined Coffee in advancing on Tom Benton. The two men struck with their knives, wounding Benton several times. Benton continued to retreat. An unseen stairway, as he moved backward, became his undoing. He tumbled down the stairs, the walls bloodied from his wounds.

Another Jackson adherent, Stockley Hays, had cornered Jesse Benton, ramming a thin sword cane at his chest. It struck a large metal button on Jesse's coat and broke.

The young Benton had the advantage now. He put a pistol against Hays's heart and pulled the trigger. It misfired!

“For God's sake,” Charles screamed to be heard above the melee, “come and help me with Andy! He's badly hurt!”

His cries seemed to end the insanity. Coffee, Hays, and Donelson rushed to Jackson's side and, with Dewey, lifted the skinny figure of Andrew Jackson and carried him to a room in the Nashville Inn.

Blood soaked through two mattresses as every doctor in Nashville was called to the inn to attend to the general.

Shouting could be heard in the square outside the hotel, and Charles went to the window. Both Bentons were standing out there, surrounded by their friends, shouting defiance at the wounded Jackson.

Tom held high a small sword that Andy had dropped during the fight. Symbolically, Benton broke it over his knee as a cheer went up from the Benton followers.

In disgust, Dewey turned away from the window to watch the doctors in their efforts to stem the profuse bleeding.

“I believe we may have to amputate the arm,” one of them whispered.

Andy's eyes opened. His voice was weak.

“I'll keep my arm,” he ordered.

III

I
T
was difficult for Charles to be rational about what he had witnessed. Nevertheless, on his return to Bon Marché, he gave a deliberately unemotional report on the brawl, with as little detail as possible.

In bed that night, Mattie said quietly: “It was madness, wasn't it?”

“Yes.”

“I'm deeply grateful that you weren't hurt.”

Dewey was startled by her words. It was the first time he had thought about being in danger himself. He didn't comment.

She sighed. “We had a conversation like this once before—it seems to have been in another life—when you returned from that duel in Kentucky. You said then that this family would not involve itself with Andy Jackson again.”

“I remember.”

“But I persisted,” Mattie went on. “I thought our association with Andy was important.”

“Hmmm.”

“Now I know that it isn't. Can you forgive me for putting the Jackson name above that of Dewey?”

“I never imagined that that was what you were doing.”

His wife smiled. “I hate you, Charles, when you take that rational tone.”

“Oh? I thought the rational, unemotional, levelheaded Charles Dewey was what you wanted.”

“Stop that, Charles! You know perfectly well what I'm trying to say.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I'm trying to say that I love you, Charles Dewey, because you
are
Charles Dewey—and not what I may try to make of you. And I certainly don't want you to be a handmaiden to Andy Jackson.”

“Very well,” he said flippantly, “I won't be.”

“Or a handmaiden to anyone else, for that matter.”

“Not even you?” he teased.

“Not even me.”

BOOK THREE

A man is the creator of his own life. It's like clay: you mold it and shape it, trying to make it into something beautiful. And when it's finished a man ought to fight like hell to preserve his creation.

—Charles Dewey, 1845

36

L
ITTLE
Carrie, nestled in her grandfather's lap, warmed by the fire in the drawing room and by Charles's love, clapped her hands in delight, giggling as he read from the book, acting out the story.

“And guess what happened next?”

“What? What?” the child demanded.

“Well, ‘At midday they saw a beautiful snow-white bird sitting on a tree. It sang so beautifully that they stood still to listen to it. When it stopped, it fluttered its wings and flew around them.'” He pantomimed the flight of the bird with a hand. “‘They followed it till they came to a little cottage, on the roof of which it settled itself. When they got quite near, they saw the little house was made of bread.' Imagine that! ‘And it was roofed with cake.'”

“I love cake, Grandfather,” Carrie said quite seriously.

He hugged the little girl, laughing. “So I've noticed.… ‘The windows were of transparent sugar.' ‘This will be something for us,' said Hänsel.'… Do you remember who Hänsel is?”

“He's the little boy.”

“Right! And he's saying: ‘We will have a good meal. I will have a piece of the roof, Gretel.'”

“That's the little girl,” Carrie cried.

“It is, indeed. And Hänsel says to her, ‘You can have a bit of the window, it will be nice and sweet.'”

“Can you really eat a window, Grandfather?”

“Of course you can, if it's made of sugar, as this one was. ‘Hänsel stretched up and broke off a piece of the roof to try what it was like. Gretel went to the window and nibbled at that. And then—A gentle voice called out from within: “‘Nibbling, nibbling like a mouse, Who's nibbling at my little house?'”

“I know, I know! It's Hänsel and Gretel!”

Dewey laughed at the enchantment of his granddaughter.

Mattie, who had been standing watching them for a few minutes, said, “While all that nibbling is going on seems a good place to end it for tonight. It's time for bed, young lady.”

“Oh, Grandmother!”

“Your mother is never going to let you stay with us again if we don't see that you get your rest.”

“Grandmother is right, Carrie. Off to bed!” He lifted her high, and Mattie took the child in her arms.

“You seem to be as delighted as the baby with those stories.”

Charles laughed. “I guess I am. George couldn't have picked a better gift to send. He says that the tales by the Brothers Grimm are the sensation of the Continent.”

“And of Bon Marché, too, it appears.”

Dewey got to his feet, kissed his granddaughter good night, and watched, smiling, as Mattie carried her off toward their bedroom.

He poked the fire to a new flame, then went to the sideboard to pour himself a sherry. As he settled into the big chair again, he thought of what the passing years had brought to him. The big family Bible he had carried from Virginia and Mattie's meticulously kept farm journals documented the growth and successes of Bon Marché. Charles didn't have to refer to them to know what they contained.

October 1813 had seen a son born to Corrine, named William Holder, Junior. Dewey sighed, wishing Billy would let him see the baby more often. Only a few weeks later, little Carrie was presented with a baby brother, Richard, by Franklin and Amantha Dewey. And a second brother, Albert, the following year. Then, too, there were the twin daughters born to Louise and August Schimmel in 1814, christened Joy and Hope. Charles thought their names mirrored all that was Bon Marché.

Of course, it hadn't gone unnoticed on the plantation that Mattie's second cousin was called to war again. Given a Regular Army commission finally, Andrew Jackson was sent to avenge the massacre of four hundred Americans by the Creek Indians at Fort Mims, Alabama. Old Hickory, still nursing the shoulder wound given him in the brawl with the Bentons, destroyed the Creeks at Horseshoe Bend on Alabama's Tallapoosa River. Andy, on his own authority, then invaded Spanish Florida, routing a small British force at Pensacola, where the remnants of the Creek Indians and “maroons”—Negro slaves who had escaped from the United States—had been recruited to the English cause.

Ultimately, it was Jackson's destiny to go to New Orleans. There, early in January of 1815, he annihilated a numerically superior English army under the command of Major General Sir Edward Pakenham, inflicting more than two thousand casualties on the redcoats, while suffering only seventy-one himself.

Andy Jackson of Tennessee, frontier lawyer and duelist, plantation owner and slaveholder, gambler and horse racer, had become a national hero. It made little difference that the Battle of New Orleans was fought two weeks after a peace treaty had been signed in Europe. Jackson had restored America's pride.

At Bon Marché, Mattie Dewey quietly reflected that pride. But the talk of General Jackson was minimal. There was much more discussion of a plan to further extend the influence of the purple racing silks of the Dewey family. Charles was to take a racing string to Charleston, still the most prestigious track in the South.

II

“D
O
you mean to tell me, Mr. Dewey,” the handsome matron was saying, smiling sweetly, “that you've come all this way just to go racing?”

“I would have come the six hundred miles, and more, to know the charming hospitality I've received here in Charleston.”

The matron cocked her head, studying him. “You'll pardon me, Mr. Dewey, but you're not at all the crude—I hope you'll excuse that word—frontiersman I would have expected to come from western Tennessee.”

Annoyed, Charles smiled nevertheless. “It's true, ma'am, that some frontiersmen are crude. But I imagine the same percentages might apply in this area as well.”

Her face darkened. “Not among the whites,” she sniffed.

Dewey bowed to her. “My pardon, ma'am.”

He was attending a reception in his honor at the magnificent Steepbrook, ancestral home of the Manigault family of Charleston, one of the “old families” of South Carolina, dating back to 1680 when the French Huguenots, denied the right to be Protestants in their native land, had come to the New World. It was a formal society of fine ladies and gentlemen, schooled in the arts, proper in their speech, both English and French, and confident of their wealth.

Nothing in Tennessee, not even Bon Marché, could match the vast Steep-brook estate. Or the Elms, the plantation of the influential Izard family, which he had also visited. These people were rice planters, owners of thousands of slaves. Charles was astonished by the number of house servants they used; the ladies, he deduced, were left with nothing to do but to be beautiful.

And on that night, as he looked around the ballroom of the Manigault mansion, he was impressed with the collective elegance of the women. Mrs. Julius Pringle (he hadn't learned what it was her husband did) particularly impressed him. Dark, wide eyes that looked at him coolly out of a flawless face, her lustrous black hair done up in flattering ringlet curls. And a somewhat shy Mrs. Henry Broughton Mazyck, always on her husband's arm, protectively it seemed, her young beauty so perfect as to defy adequate description, her brunette hair piled high on her head and fastened with a large Spanish comb studded with diamonds.