Roses

by Leila Meacham

  There was no greater joy or glory, and now there was the horrifying possibility that soon it could all be gone. A paralyzing thought had struck her before morning. Suppose her mother sold the plantation! As the new mistress of Somerset, she would be free to dispose of it as she wished, and there would be nobody to stop her.

  The door to an adjoining office opened. Emmitt Waithe, the Tolivers’ longtime attorney, entered full of apologies for having made them wait, but at once Mary sensed something strange in his manner that had little to do with the delay. Whether out of commiseration for their grief or something else, he seemed unable to meet their eyes. He bustled about, unusual for a man of his taciturnity and economy of movements, and appeared unduly concerned about their comforts. Did they need tea or perhaps coffee? He could have his secretary run down to the drugstore and get Mary a soda—

  “Emmitt, if you please,” Darla interrupted in an attempt to settle him down, “we have need of nothing except your brevity. We’re all about at the end of our emotional tethers and would ask that you… well, get on with it, if you’ll excuse my turn of phrase.”

  Emmitt cleared his throat, regarded Darla oddly for a few seconds, then got on with it. First he withdrew a letter from an envelope on top of a formal-looking document he’d brought in. “This is, uh, a letter from Vernon that he composed shortly before he died. He wanted me to read it to you first before disclosing the contents of his will.”

  Behind the veil, Darla’s eyes dampened. “Of course,” she said, reaching over to clasp her son’s hand. Emmitt began:

  Dearest wife and children,

  I have never thought of myself as a cowardly man, but I find that I do not have the courage to apprise you of my will’s contents while I am still alive. Let me assure you, before its reading, that I love each of you with all my heart and wish, as deeply, that circumstances could have afforded a more fair and generous distribution of my property. Darla, my beloved wife, I ask you to understand why I have done what I’ve done. Miles, my son, I cannot expect you to understand, but someday, perhaps, your heir will be grateful for the legacy I leave you and entrust you to retain for the fruit of your loin.

  Mary, I wonder that in remembering you as I have, I have not prolonged the curse that has plagued the Tolivers since the first pine tree was cleared from Somerset. I am leaving you many and great responsibilities, which I hope will not force you into a position unfavorable to your happiness.

  Your loving husband and father,

  Vernon Toliver

  “How very odd,” Darla said slowly in the silence of Emmitt refolding the letter and slipping it back into its envelope. “What do you suppose Vernon meant by ‘a more fair and generous distribution’ of his property?”

  “We’re about to find out,” Miles commented, his thin face hardening.

  Mary had grown very still. What did her father mean by “many and great responsibilities”? Did they have anything to do with his last words to her, which she’d taken as the incoherent mumblings of a dying man reliving a terrible nightmare? Whatever you do, whatever it takes, get the land back, Mary.

  “I was instructed to apprise you of one other matter before I read the will,” Emmitt said, picking up another document. He handed it across the desk to Miles and explained, “It’s a mortgage contract. Before Vernon learned that he was terminally ill, he borrowed money from the Bank of Boston, offering Somerset as collateral. The borrowed money went to pay off a series of plantation-related debts as well as to purchase additional land to put under cotton.”

  After skimming the document, Miles raised his head. “Am I reading this correctly? Ten percent interest for ten years? That’s nothing less than robbery!”

  “Where have you been, Miles?” Emmitt threw up his hands. “Farmers around here have paid twice that amount for the privilege of going into debt to these big eastern mortgage brokers and commercial banks. If he’d borrowed against the crop, he’d have paid a considerably higher rate, but by mortgaging the land, he could get the money more cheaply, if you want to call it that.”

  Mary sat motionless, appalled. The land mortgaged… no longer in Toliver hands? Now she understood the meaning of her father’s dying plea… the desperation of it. But why had he directed it to her?

  “What if the crop doesn’t make?” Miles asked, his tone brusque. “Sure, cotton is bringing high prices now, but what if we have a bad harvest? Does that mean we lose the plantation?”

  Emmitt shrugged. Mary, glancing from the lawyer’s grim face to her brother’s flushed one, spoke up for the first time. “The crops will make!” she declared, close to hysteria. “And we’re not going to lose the plantation. Don’t even think that, Miles!”

  Miles brought his palm down hard on the chair arm. “God almighty! What could Papa have been thinking, buying more land when it would put the land we have in jeopardy? Why in hell did he stick us further in debt by buying machinery he felt we had to have right now? I thought he was such a shrewd businessman.”

  “If you’d taken a little more interest in his affairs, you’d have known more about what he was doing, Miles,” Mary said in defense of their father. “It’s not fair to blame Papa now for decisions you never once offered to help him make.”

  Miles looked taken aback at her outburst. They rarely argued, though their differences were many. Miles was an idealist, already gravitating toward Marxism, which advocated removing property and profit from the master class and distributing it more equally to the masses. He loathed the tenancy system as it flourished in the Cotton Belt, believing it was devised to keep the impoverished tenant farmer in bondage to the planter. His father had vehemently disagreed with his view, arguing that the planter system, fairly managed, freed the tenant farmer to be his own master. Mary stood squarely on the side of her father.

  “Miles could hardly have been privy to your father’s decisions, Mary Lamb, since he’s been away to school for the past four years.” Darla’s veil fluttered from the mild reproof. “What’s done is done. If we need money, we’ll simply sell off some of Somerset. If your father had known he was dying, he would never have purchased additional acreage. From his place in heaven, he will surely understand why I have to undo the damage he never intended to inflict. Isn’t that so, Emmitt? Now if you will please read the will so that we can get this over with. Mary looks ill. We need to get her home.”

  With another one of those peculiar glances at Darla, Emmitt picked up the document with a slow hand and read aloud. When he had finished, his listeners sat mute, too dumbfounded to utter a word.

  “I… don’t believe it,” Darla whispered at last. Behind the veil, her eyes were glassy with shock. “You mean that Vernon left the entire plantation to… to Mary, except for that narrow strip along the Sabine? That’s all our son is to receive from his father? And Mary’s to have the house, too? I am to have nothing but whatever money is in the bank? But… there can’t be much, since Vernon was using every last cent to pay off the mortgage.”

  “That appears to be so,” the lawyer concurred, consulting a page in a bank book in his possession. “However, you do understand, Darla, that you are legally entitled to live in the house and to receive twenty percent of the profits from the land until your remarriage or demise. Vernon specified that in the will.”

  “How… very generous of him,” she said, tight-lipped.

  Mary still sat stiffly, her hands tightly clasped, willing her expression to give nothing away of the relief—the utter joy—flooding the bleakness of her heart. The plantation was hers! Her father—foreseeing that her mother would sell it—had left it in the hands of the one Toliver who would never let it go. It didn’t matter that the will had given Miles power of attorney over Somerset until she could legally assume control at twenty-one. For the sake of their mother’s 20 percent, he would take care not to interfere with its prosperous operation and the priority of paying off the mortgage.

  Her brother had risen and was pacing about with the hard strides customary to hi
m when he was agitated. “Are you telling me”—he turned to the lawyer in exasperation—“that my mother’s livelihood for the rest of her life is dependent on the success of the plantation, and that she’s even to be deprived of ownership of her own home?”

  Emmitt shuffled some papers and avoided meeting his gaze. “Entrusting the house to Mary will ensure that your mother always has a home, Miles. Often it is the case, in situations like this, that houses are imprudently sold and money from the sale soon gone. And let me remind you that twenty percent of the profits is not a pittance. With cotton selling so high now, especially if war comes to the United States, Somerset should enjoy enormous revenues. Your mother will be able to live quite comfortably indeed.”

  “Less expenses and if the crop does not fail,” Darla whispered.

  Emmitt flushed and peered at Miles over the rim of his spectacles. “For your sake, it would behoove your son to see that it doesn’t.” The lawyer pondered a moment, as if debating whether he should speak his next words. Apparently deciding to do so, he dropped his pen on the desk and leaned back in his chair. “Actually, Vernon believed he had no choice but to set up his will the way he did.”

  Still standing, his contempt plain, Miles asked, “Oh? And why is that?”

  Emmitt gazed directly at Darla. “He feared that you might sell the plantation, my dear—as you proposed to do only a few minutes ago. This way, you will still be able to enjoy whatever Somerset produces, which would have been the case anyway had Vernon lived, and the plantation and house stay in the Toliver family.”

  “Except that, as before when I was supported by my husband, I will now be dependent upon my daughter for my bread and roof.” Darla spoke in a voice so drained of power that the veil barely moved.

  “Not to mention that he’s disrupted my plans for the next five years,” Miles said, his upper lip quivering with anger.

  Darla loosened her tight hold of the chair arms and composed her hands in her lap. “So I’m to understand, then, that the circumstances to which my husband referred in his letter had to do with his fear that I might sell the plantation or, in the event that I did not, would certainly mismanage it. Are these the reasons which precluded—how did he express it?—‘a more fair and generous distribution of my property’?”

  “I believe you, ah, have understood your husband’s reasons perfectly, Darla.” Emmitt’s countenance softened in an obvious hope to soothe. “Vernon believed that Mary is the best Toliver suited to eventually run the plantation. She seems to have inherited an ability for land management as well as a devotion and loyalty to Somerset and the way of life it affords. He thought it was she who could make the plantation pay, benefiting all of you and preserving it for the next generation, which will include your children, Miles.”

  Miles grimaced in patent disgust and came to stand behind his mother’s chair, laying a sympathetic hand on her shoulder.

  “I see…” Darla’s voice carried no emotion. Very deliberately, she lifted the veil and calmly tucked it among the black feathers of her oversize mourning hat. She was an extremely pretty woman, with cool, alabaster skin and large, lustrous eyes. Her son had inherited their amber shade, her auburn hair, and the shape of her small, saucy nose. Mary, on the other hand, had been favored with the striking combination of features that had characterized the Tolivers since the days of the first English Lancasters. Everybody said she could be none other than Vernon Toliver’s daughter.

  Mary watched in trepidation as her mother rose from the chair, a cool, distant figure, almost a stranger in her somber black attire. The lifting of the veil worried her, as did the unfamiliar gleam in her eyes. All vestiges of grief were gone. The whites were starkly clear. She and Emmitt stood as well.

  “I must ask you one further question, Emmitt, being so unfamiliar with these matters….”

  “Of course, my dear. Anything.” Emmitt bowed slightly.

  “The will’s dispensations… will they be made public?”

  Emmitt pursed his lips. “A will is a public document,” he explained with evident reluctance. “Once it is probated, it becomes a court record which anyone, especially creditors, can peruse. Also…” The lawyer cleared his throat, looking uncomfortable. “Wills which have been filed for probate are listed in the paper. This is for the benefit of those who may have a claim against the estate.”

  “Family members excluded,” Miles commented, clench-jawed.

  “Then anyone curious about the details of the will can learn them?” Darla asked.

  Emmitt simply nodded. The strength seemed to drain from Darla’s stiff carriage. “Damn Papa!” Miles said, jerking his mother’s chair out of the way for their departure.

  “Uh… there is one other thing that I promised Vernon I’d do, Darla,” Emmitt said. He opened a cabinet behind him and withdrew a bud vase containing a single red rose. “Your husband requested that I give this to you after reading the will. By all means, keep the vase.”

  Slowly, Darla took the slender-necked vessel in her gloved hand, her children watching. After a long study, she set it on Emmitt’s desk and extracted the rose. “Keep the vase,” she said with a smile so foreign that all of them drew back slightly. “Come, children.”

  Sweeping from the room, Darla Toliver dropped the red rose into a trash receptacle by the door.

  Chapter Six

  On the way home in the Tolivers’ Arabian-drawn buggy, the family sat in silence, Mary as far in her corner as possible. They all stared out the isinglass windows in much the same somber way they had ridden to Vernon Toliver’s funeral four days before. On that day, Mary had felt a palpable void in the carriage, but today it was filled with a frightening, invisible force that seemed capable of separating her from her mother and brother, and they from the memory of the husband and father they both had loved.

  She glanced at her mother. She knew about the legend of the roses and understood the meaning of the red rose her father had arranged to be given to her and the terrible significance of her mother dropping it into the wastebasket by Mr. Waithe’s door. Mary, worriedly observing her mother’s pale, stark profile, believed with a desolate certainty that her father would never be forgiven for what he had done.

  And what had he done? Her father had only ensured that the plantation and family home would stay in Toliver hands. In a financial pinch or in the event of her remarriage—which may have forced her to live elsewhere—her mother would have sold them. And bequeathing the land to Miles would have guaranteed the loss of their birthright. By leaving it to her, he would preserve it for his children’s offspring.

  Since this was clearly the case, why was her mother so upset? And Miles, too, for that matter? In time, he could pursue a teaching career. Five years was not long. During that time, she would not waste a minute in learning everything possible related to running the plantation. She had Len Deeter to help her. He was an excellent overseer, honest and hardworking, loyal to the Tolivers, highly thought of by the tenants. What she hadn’t learned from her grandfather and father, she would learn from him. Miles probably wouldn’t need to hang around until she was twenty-one. Two years should do it, then she’d send him on his way, mailing him papers that needed his signature. By then, she would have established herself in charge of Somerset.

  In the late afternoon, Mary took these arguments to her mother to defend her father’s action. She found Darla lying on a chaise longue in the room she’d shared with her husband, her rich auburn hair brushed out of its elaborate pompadour and spread around her shoulders. The late afternoon sun cast a sickly glow through the sheer yellow draperies. Mary wondered disconsolately if there was some significance in the bright lavender housecoat she wore—a kind of repudiation. The black dress and hat were out of sight, as were the many flowers of condolence her mother had ordered sent up from the parlor after her husband’s body was removed for burial. Earlier, meeting Sassie coming downstairs with an armload of the still fresh arrangements, she had asked with a feeling of dread, “What is t
his all about?”

  “What does it look like?” Gloom darkened their housekeeper’s voice. “I declare, I got a feelin’ nothin’ ain’t never gonna be the same round here again.”

  Mary had the same feeling as she stood anxiously studying her mother lying on the chaise longue. There was a terrifying remoteness about her white-set features, the rigid length of her body. All warmth and spirit seemed to have been struck out of her. A cold, unapproachable stranger lay in the lavender satin housecoat.

  “You ask me what else he could have done?” Darla repeated Mary’s question. “I will tell you, my dear daughter. He could have loved me more than he loved his land. That’s what he could have done.”

  “But, Mama, you would have sold it!”

  “Or, that failing,” Darla continued with her eyes closed, as if Mary had not spoken, “he could at least have divided his holdings equally between our son and daughter. That strip Miles inherited is all but worthless. It floods every spring. Nothing planted there can mature before or after the rains.”

  “It’s still a part of Somerset, Mama, and you know Miles has never cared a whit for the plantation.”

  “At the very least,” Darla went on in the same dead tone, “he could have considered my feelings and known how it will look to all of our friends for him to have left his wife’s welfare in the hands of his daughter.”

  “Mama…”

  Her eyes still closed, Darla said, “Your father’s love was my greatest treasure, Mary. What an honor it was to be his wife, to have been picked from all the women he could have married, some prettier than I….”