Love and Adventure Collection - Part 2

by Jennifer Blake

  Many sources were consulted for background, foremost among them being Running the Blockade, A Personal Narrative of Adventures, Risks, and Escapes During the American Civil War by Thomas E. Taylor, and also Blockade Runners of the Confederacy by Hamilton Cochran, The Blockade Runners by Dave Homer, Harper’s Pictorial History of the Civil War, and Louisiana, A Narrative History by Edwin Adams Davis, plus other general histories, social histories, fashion tomes, flora and fauna guides, and atlases too numerous to mention. For the section of the book set in Nassau, Historic Nassau by Gail Saunders and Donald Cartwright was invaluable in setting the scene, interpreting the history, and understanding the architectural make-up of the city. I am extremely grateful for further research by Gail Saunders, archivist for the Bahamas archives, to clear up several troublesome points; and to Donald Cartwright for taking the time from his busy architectural practice to give me his informed opinion on a number of questions. To him, too, I would like to express my appreciation for his part in saving the old Royal Victoria Hotel, without which it would not have been still standing for my inspection. Also, consulted for this section were The Story of the Bahamas by Paul Albury and the Bahamas Handbook edited by S. P. Dupuch and Benson McDermott. Among the many articles in periodicals that provided special knowledge and insight were “Cotton, Cotton, Everywhere: Running the Blockade Through Nassau” by John and Linda Pelzer, from Civil War Times Illustrated, and “The Royal Victoria of Long Ago” from Nassau Magazine, the issue of March 1939.

  Finally, a word of loving appreciation to my husband, Jerry, for bearing me company on my journeys, for holding my handbag, guidebooks, and packages while I took pictures and scribbled notes, for sitting protective and patient in the hot sun while I tried to summon old shades in the garden of a derelict hotel, for accepting scant meals and distracted conversation, for helping decipher the terminology of steamships and sailing, and unravel such “knotty” problems as whether one ship steaming a certain distance behind another would be able to overtake the first that was within a given distance of port — and most of all for the encouragement and understanding that marks him as that epitome of romance, a southern gentleman.

  Jennifer Blake

  Sweet Brier

  Quitman, Louisiana

  ~ ~ ~

  For Sue Lynn Anderson—

  and for all other women

  who have wished, even halfheartedly,

  that something would happen.

  ~ ~ ~

  1

  The noise echoing under the colonnade of the French Market was deafening. Vendors cried their wares, children chased by harried nurses ran up and down the long length, horses and carriages clattered past along the cobbled street outside, women followed by basket-carrying servants called and laughed and bargained, parrots squawked from bamboo-cane cages, monkeys chattered; trussed geese hissed, ducks quacked and chickens cackled nervously, not without reason. New Orleans was in fine form, preparing for one of its greatest pleasures, the evening meal.

  The chill wind of late November swirling through the arcade seemed not to bother the men and women who poked at the fishmonger’s and butcher’s stocks, smelled the pears for ripeness, or hefted pumpkins and potatoes for weight. But Eleanora Colette Villars shivered into her threadbare cloak, wishing for the warmth of the padding of a horsehair crinoline beneath her unfashionably narrow skirts. Standing was not warm work; still she could do nothing else. She could not afford to set her boardinghouse table with the best. It was necessary to wait until everything had been picked over and the merchants were tired of haggling. Then a piteous expression in her gold-flecked green eyes might bring her not only more value for her picayunes but an extra generous lagniappe.

  “Mademoiselle! Mademoiselle Eleanora!”

  At the sound of her name Eleanora turned to see a young man coming toward her. He held his silk top hat clapped firmly on his head, his black silk cravat was askew, and the full tails of his frockcoat flapped as he dodged around an Indian woman stolidly weaving baskets to sell. He kicked a pottery bowl, bowed, apologized, then came on, his face red.

  The delicately molded lines of Eleanora’s mouth tightened. Her chin lifted a fraction. The man was a friend of her younger brother’s, though she could not for the moment recall his name. Jean-Paul’s friends came and went on the way to cock fights, gaming halls, and bear-baitings. Embarrassed by her unmarried state, the condition to which she had lowered the once-proud name of Villars, and their inability to help her, they seldom lingered in her bedraggled salon. She had learned to avoid the furtive admiration and hurtful pity hidden behind their air of dashing nonchalance.

  As she realized how unusual it was for any of these young blades to allow themselves a show of agitation, pain closed around her heart. “What is it?” she called sharply. “Is anything wrong?”

  “Forgive me if I startled you, mademoiselle,” the dark-haired young blade said, snatching off his hat, thrusting his malacca under his arm, and inclining his upper body in a swift gesture of respect. “I’ve been looking for you everywhere. It is Jean-Paul — no, not hurt. He is at Bank’s Arcade talking to one of Walker’s agents. If someone doesn’t stop him the addle-pated halfwit — beg pardon — is going to commit himself as a filibuster!”

  Eleanora’s relief that Jean-Paul was not lying dead in the sawdust of a barroom floor or on the dueling field beneath the moss-hung oaks outside the city, was short-lived. A filibuster. At eighteen, two years her junior, her brother was too young to be a soldier. It was the enthusiasm in the city for the exploits of William Walker in Central America, the fervent sympathy for the oppressed people of those countries, and the blazing advertisements in the news sheets for soldier-colonists that had turned him in that direction. How she despised these men who played on the emotions of sensitive boys, promising them fortune and adventure for their own gain.

  “I’ve got to stop him,” she said, almost to herself.

  “My thought exactly. He’ll listen to you. But we’ll have to hurry before he puts his name to anything.” The young man reached to take her shopping basket from her unresisting fingers. “Where is your maid?”

  Despite herself Eleanora felt a faint flush rise to her cheekbones. “She is laid down upon her bed with a rheum. I had to slip out of the house without her. This wind would have given her pneumonia.”

  He looked nonplussed, then with a movement of his shoulders, he set the basket down among the shallots in a nearby bin. “Never mind. Let us go.”

  Zébe, that was his given name, though she could not call him by that, of course. “It is good of you to be concerned, m’sieur.”

  He waited until a carriage rattled past before taking her elbow to help her across the street. “Must help old Jean-Paul. Mon père says the men who flock to Nicaragua just because Walker took a city like Granada are most likely to wind up before a firing squad. Jean-Paul don’t have a father to set him straight.”

  No, nor a mother. Until two years before there had been their grand-mère Villars. Pampering Jean-Paul, indulging him as the perfect embodiment of a Creole gentleman such as her son had been, she had not been the best person to tell him how to go on. Still, they had been comfortable, she and Jean-Paul, entertaining all the usual expectations of young people of their class and family distinction in New Orleans. Then Grand-mère had died. It was discovered that they had been living for years on the rents brought in by a small property adjoining their house on Royal Street. Other relatives, in particular an uncle by marriage and his son, had demanded their rightful share of the succession, and the property had to be sold. The portion of the sale which fell to Eleanora and her brother was hardly enough to keep them six months.

  Eleanora, with a marriage arranged by her grandmother before her, had thought a home for Jean-Paul securely in her grasp. Then, discovering there would be no dot, her fiancé had found it convenient to remember the mésalliance of her father with the daughter of a Scotch-Irish laborer. He made disparaging remarks about her family and her pers
on, in particular the, to him, embarrassingly fiery brilliance of her red hair. He deplored her grandmother’s lack of business acumen on every occasion, and hinted there was something unbalanced in her father, a gentleman, becoming a doctor and working among the degenerate and diseased immigrants from Erie living in shacks on the outskirts of the city. From somewhere he conceived the idea that her father’s and mother’s early demise from cholera, contracted during their work, was a judgment upon them for deserting their class. Long before the period of mourning for her grandmother was over, Eleanora had broken the engagement.

  She had had reason to regret her temper since. It was not easy seeing boarders in the salon and the halls where once only family and invited guests entered. A brother-in-law might have been able to point out the error of his thinking to Jean-Paul. Now there was only herself to do so, and how could he be expected to listen to a sister who had become a drudge and an ill-tempered shrew?

  Eleanora and Zébe passed a vendeuse in white apron and tignon crying hot, parched peanuts. Their rich smell lingered in the air, mingling with the smells of coffee coming from the open doors of the coffeehouses, and horse dung and sewage from open gutters that lined the streets. This sewage stench was more pervasive this afternoon since the gutters were being cleaned by a crew of convicts. Moving around the detail of men, chained wrist to ankle, and their armed guards, Eleanora averted her eyes. It was a gesture made not to avoid their degradation but to avoid adding to it by her recognition of their plight.

  Bank’s Arcade was located on Magazine Street near Gravier. A meeting place for business and professional men as well as filibusters, it boasted three stories, one of the longest bars in the city in its barroom, the most popular auction mart, and the only glass-roofed courtyard. Much of the plotting for the War for Texas Independence, the Mexican War, and Lopez’s abortive filibuster expeditions into Cuba was done in its upstairs rooms. Mass meetings held in the auction room usually spilled over into the patio. Many a bargain had been struck and secret passed over the beer and whiskey-soaked tables in the barroom. Now, with this new revolutionary spirit in the city, there was a constant stream of men in and out.

  Eleanora could not enter. Only a certain class of woman could do so with impunity and they were not welcome in this establishment devoted primarily to business.

  “I won’t be long.” The young man known to his friends by the nickname Zébe frowned, pausing with one hand on the barroom door. “It’s awkward for you without a maid, but you should be all right. If I might make a suggestion — your hair, it would be better to cover it.”

  In their hasty progress the hood of Eleanora’s cloak had fallen back. The wind had disturbed the smoothness of her severe, center-parted style. Gold-red wisps had escaped from the plaited chignon low on her nape to curl about her temples. With a nod she accepted the advice, drawing her hood up and stepping back against the plastered brick wall.

  The light was growing dimmer. Across the street the uppermost fronds of a banana tree, just visible over a courtyard wall, thrashed in the increasing wind. Dirt blew along the wooden banquette, or sidewalk, on which she stood, stinging her ankles as her skirts billowed about her. It looked like rain might set in, in which case more of her boarders would stay in to dinner. She would have to add to the rice pot.

  Through the door as it opened and closed she caught snatches of conversation. Slavery, states’ rights, secession. Men talked of little else these days. There seemed to be something in the air that encouraged strife. She did not understand the undercurrent of anger she heard everywhere, possibly because she had no time to concern herself with it. If slavery were abolished she would suffer no great loss. The Villars slaves had been sold to satisfy the succession laws and reimburse their other relatives so that she and Jean-Paul could keep the house on Royal Street. Their sole remaining slave was the woman who had nursed both their father and themselves. They loved her dearly, but her only value was as a dueña for Eleanora. She was too ancient, too weak to do more. In truth, she was an added responsibility on Eleanora’s shoulders, another person to look after, another mouth to feed.

  She straightened as Zébe left the barroom and strode toward her.

  “I’m sorry, mademoiselle. I seem to have disturbed you for nothing. Jean-Paul refuses to see you.”

  “Refuses?”

  “It touches on his pride, I think. There was no way I could speak privately to him, and he would not have those around him think he is at your beck and call.”

  “Tell him — tell him the matter is urgent. I need his advice.”

  “Your pardon, mademoiselle. It’s more than my life’s worth. Jean-Paul — he is not himself.”

  “You mean he is in his cups?”

  “No, no. Only a trifle piqué.”

  Her dark, winged brows drew together in a frown, then she gave a nod. “I see. He threatened you.”

  “Jean-Paul has a good eye. I’d have no desire to face him on a dueling field even if he wasn’t my friend.”

  “A churlish return for your efforts to help him, was it not?” She pushed her arms through the slits in her cloak and clasped her hands together. “I doubt he will offer me a challenge.”

  “You can’t mean to go in there?”

  “Can’t I?” she asked, stepping past him.

  “It might be best if you went home, as Jean-Paul said.”

  “Oh? You seem to have lost your zeal for saving my brother from himself very quickly.”

  “You don’t understand—”

  “Nor do you,” Eleanora said, anger coloring her tone. “My brother may not be at my beck and call, but neither am I at his!”

  The blue smoke of fine cigars draped the ceiling beams. It swirled and eddied about her as she made her way through the tables to a long trestle in the corner. Papers were spread out upon the mahogany surface. Scattered among them was an assortment of pewter steins, and shot glasses with a single drunken fly buzzing their contents.

  Five men were at the table. One had been pointed out to her before as Walker’s agent in New Orleans, Thomas Fisher. One was her brother. The others wore uniforms, blood-red jackets trimmed in gold, white doeskin breeches, and black cavalry boots.

  Eleanora expected them to rise at her approach. The lack of this token of respect, coupled with their cool appraisal, was disconcerting.

  Jean-Paul made a movement, then was still as no one followed suit. His wavy brown hair was ruffled into soft curls, as if he had been running his hands through it. Annoyance increased the naturally high color on his cheeks and darkened his brown eyes to black. Under Eleanora’s accusing stare defiance compressed his mouth into a thin line.

  Fisher was a nondescript man made noticeable only by the fanatic light burning in the depths of his eyes. Beside him lounged one of Walker’s men, a battle-scarred veteran with his left arm in a sling. In his right he held a glass of beer, which he used to push his campaign hat to the back of his head, the better to see. On his left, at the end, sat a sandy-haired, broad-shouldered man, his chair tipped back on two legs against the wall and a panatela glowing red-tipped between his fingers. The third soldier stood at the opposite end of the table with the flat of one hand resting upon it. Like the others, he was tall and wide of shoulder, but there was a different stamp to his features. With his copper-bronzed skin and straight black hair, Eleanora put him down as a mercenary of some foreign nationality. Her summation was hasty, but it seemed they were young to be carrying the epaulettes of such high rank on their shoulders.

  “Forgive this intrusion — gentlemen,” Eleanora said tightly, “but I crave a word with my brother outside.”

  “I have nothing to say,” Jean-Paul muttered.

  “I have a great deal, and I do not intend to go away until I have been heard, Jean-Paul.”

  When her brother looked away without answering, Fisher cleared his throat. “We were discussing a matter of business—”

  “I know what business you were discussing.” It was warm in the room. S
he threw back the hood of her cloak with an impatient movement of her head. The lamp, lit against the gathering gloom, slid over her hair with the glint of bright flame as unexpected as a sulfur match struck in the darkness.

  “Then it looks as though you must hold your brother excused until it is completed.”

  “I think not,” she replied evenly, though her eyes flashed emerald green at the attempt to dismiss her. “Jean-Paul,” she said, turning to her brother. “This is no way to repair our fortunes. You are not a soldier.”

  “I have faced the muzzles of guns on the field of honor!”

  “Yes, boys of your own age and station who know the rules, who know there is to be a little pain, a little blood, but not much chance of killing or being killed. This will be different.”