Bon Marche

by Chet Hagan

  The bitterness of her words shocked him. “Princess, don’t talk like that.” He tried to take her in his arms, but she edged away from him. “It’s just that we haven’t been fortunate, that’s all.”

  Alma May began to cry. “I can’t face Mother with this! I can’t!”

  “When the time comes, Princess, we’ll face it together.”

  “Why can’t you give me a baby?” she snapped at him.

  “Dear, it’s nothing like that at all.”

  “How can you be so damned sure?”

  Nathan sighed. The proof of his manly abilities was somewhere in Pittsburgh. But he couldn’t use it. He thought now of Charles Dewey and of George, and he was very uneasy.

  “Princess, baby,” he cooed to her. And he stroked her and fondled her and kissed her, using all the skills he had learned on the stage to win her as an audience again. Bringing her total attention to him.

  When he had, they tried once more.

  IV

  MARY Harrison Dewey had a son, a strapping boy whose arrival buoyed Charles Dewey’s flagging spirits.

  “This is what life is all about,” he said to George, as they stood by Mary’s bed admiring the baby. “To see your blood reproduced over and over again. To realize that there is continuity in this insane world.”

  Charles bent and kissed Mary as she held the infant in her arms. “Thank you, Mary,” he said softly.

  “Well, George,” he said brightly as he straightened up, “this is my seventh grandchild. A lucky number, some say. Have you decided on a name for this prodigy?”

  “Yes, sir,” his son answered quickly. “Charles Dewey the Second!”

  “Oh, my!” He embraced George. “Oh, my!”

  Mattie, watching the happy scene, brushed a tear from her cheek.

  “Charles Dewey the Second,” the grandfather said, addressing the baby, “may God favor you as he has the grateful man whose name you now carry.”

  He took Mattie’s hand and they left the room.

  “You might have consulted me about the name,” Mary snapped angrily.

  “Mary, there are times when the spontaneous decision is the only one to make.” George smiled. “Couldn’t you see how happy Father was?”

  “Yes. But what of my father? He might be happy, too, if the baby were named for him.”

  “Mary, stop it! This should be a joyful moment.”

  His wife sighed. “Yes, Georgie. And it is. It’s just that…”

  George kissed her. “Mary, darling, I’ve never denied you anything, but this … well, it just had to be. And if we ever have a daughter, dear, she’s going to be named Martha, for my mother.”

  Mary frowned.

  “Do you remember what I told you when I asked you to marry me?”

  “Georgie,” Mary giggled, “you said so many naughty things.”

  He laughed. “I did, didn’t I? But the most important thing I said was that the Dewey family would always come first.”

  V

  IT was stuffy in the small storage room, and dusty. Pieces of scenery were jammed in without any special order, making it difficult for them to move around. And there was no light.

  Alma May kissed him. Desperately.

  “Christ, I don’t know about this, Alma!”

  “You said you wanted me.”

  “I do,” the young man said, “but if Nat—”

  “Nathan’s not going to know.” She fondled him in the darkness, trying to arouse him. Trying to arouse herself.

  His name was Gerald Parker, an actor in Ludlum’s company. A pleasant enough fellow, but Alma May wouldn’t have given him a second look in ordinary circumstances. The circumstances, however, were not ordinary for the Princess. She needed to be pregnant.

  Groping with her hands, she found an open spot on the floor, pulling him down on top of her, loosening her clothing to make it easy for him. They came together, and he groaned slightly. Alma May put her fingers on his lips to silence him.

  “Princess!” The shout came from the hallway outside the storage room.

  “Oh, hell!”

  “Don’t stop.” Even though she said it in a whisper, it was clearly an order.

  “Princess!”

  Alma May dug her fingers into his back. “For God’s sake, Jerry, come! Come!”

  The door of the storage room flew open, freezing them. It let in only a little light from the hallway, and the couple was hidden behind a piece of scenery.

  “Is anyone in there?” Nathan shouted.

  There was not even the sound of breathing.

  “Damn it, where is she!” Nathan said aloud.

  Without warning, the dust in the room made Parker sneeze.

  “Who’s in here?” Nathan called.

  He stepped into the room, searching. And then he saw the dim outline of two figures on the floor. “Who in the hell is it?”

  Nathan moved closer. The figures became recognizable. “You bastard!” Reaching down, he grabbed Parker by the collar, smashing a fist into his face, sending him sprawling into a piece of scenery that gave away under the impact, breaking and tearing.

  Alma May cried out in fright.

  Her husband, cursing, yanked her to her feet, propelling her out into the hallway, throwing her against the opposite wall. She collapsed in a terrified heap.

  “Why?” he screamed at her. “Why?”

  Parker, seeing his chance to escape, ran off down the hallway and out of the building.

  “You bitch!”

  “Nathan, please!” Alma May was weeping. “It’s just that you weren’t able—”

  He kicked her. Viciously. In the stomach.

  She shrieked in pain, gasping. “No, Nathan, no!” She tried to crawl away, and he kicked her again. She stopped moving and lost consciousness.

  Nathan dropped to the floor, cradling her head in his lap. “Damn you,” he said, “all this to cover a lie.”

  He thought then of her father and of his brother-in-law, and he shuddered.

  VI

  IN truth, Nathan Ludlum was a consummate actor.

  He had to be to carry off what had been decided after the incident in the theater storage room.

  He carried the Princess to a doctor in Nashville, where it was discovered she had three broken ribs.

  “If you had seen the height from which she fell off that ladder, Doctor,” Nathan said, “I think you’d say that she was fortunate it’s not more than a few broken ribs.”

  “How high would you say?”

  “Twelve, maybe fourteen feet.”

  “Hmmm. She must have fallen on something to make such pronounced bruises on her abdomen.” He pointed to the ugly purple marks made by Nathan’s boot.

  Alma May groaned as the doctor pulled the bandaging tight around her ribs.

  “Well, the stage was littered with scenery,” Nathan explained calmly. “She could have struck any number of objects.”

  He watched intently as the doctor finished his work.

  “Sir,” the actor began hesitantly, “my wife is pregnant.”

  The doctor frowned. “How long?”

  “A month. No more than two, certainly.”

  “Well, this kind of trauma could cause her to miscarry, of course. But the fetus at that stage of development is very small. If she does abort now, it shouldn’t be too dangerous for a healthy young woman. But you’ll have to watch her, of course.”

  “I certainly will, Doctor.” Nathan was showing the proper amount of loving concern.

  “Now, I don’t think you ought to try to get her back to Bon Marché in a carriage right now,” the physician went on. “Perhaps you could make her comfortable for a couple of days at one of the inns.”

  “Of course. We’ll go to Mr. Parker’s establishment.”

  “Fine! I’ll look in on her tomorrow morning.”

  At the Nashville Inn, Nathan made Alma May as comfortable as possible, then sat by the bed looking at her. She had said virtually nothing since the incident at
the theater.

  “May I ask, Princess,” Nathan said quietly, “what is the next scene you plan for your little drama?”

  “There’s no need to be sarcastic.”

  Her husband shrugged. “I’m left with little else.”

  “You frightened me, Nathan,” she said. “I thought you meant to kill me.”

  “I did.”

  “What stopped you, then?”

  “What do you want me to say? Because I love you? Because I was concerned about our baby-to-be?”

  “You’re horrid!”

  “What stopped me, Princess, was my own well-being. My selfishness, to put the correct face on it. I want that theater, Alma May. God help me, but I want it enough to put up with you.”

  “You never loved me!” Tears began.

  “Don’t play the tragedienne with me, Alma. Remember that I’ve seen the best in that role. We’re stuck with each other. You because you’re trapped with your silly little lie about being pregnant. And me because … well, because I haven’t enough integrity to turn my back on the largess of the fine Deweys.”

  The Princess was quiet for a moment. “So what do we do?”

  “We play this scene out to the end. It’s terribly unfortunate, of course, but your accident, darling, is going to bring on a miscarriage. I suggest that it happen when you have your next period; with all that blood, who’s to know the difference.”

  “The doctor will.”

  “It will be too late to call the doctor.” A wry smile. “Nature will have taken over.”

  She looked at him as if seeing him for the first time. “You’re really quite cold-blooded, aren’t you?”

  “Yes, when necessary,” he admitted. “We’re a matched pair, you know. It took a cold-blooded woman to carry off that assignation with Gerald. I only hope, after all this, that he hasn’t impregnated you.”

  “He didn’t.”

  Nathan Ludlum guffawed. “I was Nathan-to-the-rescue, then, intruding before the moment of ecstasy.”

  She tried not to at first, but she also laughed, seeing the black humor in their situation. “Yes, damn it, you did!”

  “Poor Gerald! He’s probably been ruined for life. He’ll never be able to be with a woman again without remembering that door being opened.”

  The laugh died in his throat.

  “And neither, Princess, will I.”

  39

  EVERYWHERE the eye could see there were crowds along the banks of the Cumberland River. It was a chilly early March morning, a Thursday, in 1819.

  For weeks the chief topic of conversation in Nashville had been the inauguration of steamboat service by the General Jackson, a luxury vessel built at the astounding cost of sixteen thousand dollars. And now the great day had arrived!

  Several days before, Charles Dewey had staked out a vantage point near the principal dock at Nashville, at almost the exact spot where he had landed with his log rafts nearly twenty-one years earlier. He stood there, with five of his grandchildren, contemplating those years. Not dissatisfied, certainly, with what they had brought. But apprehensive.

  His entire life had become his grandchildren, and while that pleased him, it left him feeling somehow unfulfilled. He had discussed that the night before with his son-in-law, August Schimmel.

  “I have a feeling,” he had said to the publisher, “that life is passing me by. I’ve been put out to pasture, and I don’t like it.”

  Stoically German, Schimmel merely nodded. He had grown used to Dewey’s monologues in their late-evening sessions in the drawing room. A ritual of sorts those meetings had become—an hour or two of conversation, always with sherry, or no conversation at all. Charles had laughingly dubbed the nightly chats “the Dewey-Schimmel confabs to solve the ills of the world.”

  “Franklin and George are doing things with the horse business,” he had said with a complaining tone, “that I never dreamed possible. They like to maintain that I’m still in charge, but I’m not. And Lee? Well, he’s off in the world, working for your newspaper, being a part of the history this country is making.”

  Charles tapped his copy of the Nashville Monitor. “This dispatch he wrote from Pittsburgh, for example.” He started to read: “On the National Road in Pennsylvania these days a traveler is never out of sight of family groups, before and behind, in every imaginable conveyance, even some on bare feet, pressing toward the Ohio. The old America of the East seems to be breaking up and moving westward.’”

  “Your son is a very perceptive observer,” Schimmel commented.

  “That’s just it! He’s out there, with a role to play, while I”—he shrugged—“I just sit here and vegetate.”

  “Nonsense. You’re the mortar that holds this family together.”

  “Hmmm. Perhaps.” Wryly: “There are days when the mortar shows a few cracks.”

  “Lee’s drawing of the General Jackson,” the publisher said, trying to make the conversation less somber, “has certainly excited the people of this community.”

  “It has. I suspect it was worth the money it cost you to send him to Pittsburgh, where the vessel was being built.”

  “Absolutely. And I expect the trip to pay other dividends, too. Lee will be bringing with him on the steamboat information he gathered in Ohio on several newspaper properties that have become available. I hope we’ll be able to acquire newspapers in Cincinnati, Columbia, and Marietta.”

  “That’s rather ambitious, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, but I see it as only the beginning. Just as soon as I can, I’ll send Lee to St. Louis to investigate the possibilities there. And I hope to visit Chicago for the same reason.”

  “A lot of money will be involved, August.”

  “Yes.”

  Dewey went to the sideboard to pour them another sherry.

  “I’ve been thinking for some time that I ought to have another interest,” he said. “Now, I know that you probably don’t need my money, but … hell, August, you could halve your risk if you’d let me come in with you.”

  The publisher was surprised. “You’d really want to do that?”

  “More than anything. Maybe slowly at first … Let me help you finance the St. Louis project, if there is to be one. Or Chicago.”

  “I can’t think of anyone I’d rather have as a partner, Charles.”

  “Great!” He paused. “Until we get this thing under way it might be best to keep Mattie … uh … uninformed, shall we say? She seems to think that I gamble too much, anyway.”

  Schimmel smiled for the first time. “Whatever you wish, Charles.”

  “Well…” Charles clapped his hands together. “I think I ought to get to bed so that I can be up bright and early to take those youngsters to see the steamboat tomorrow.”

  From the distance came the full-throated bass call of the steamboat whistle, bringing Dewey’s thoughts to the moment at hand. Everyone on the landing was cheering, although the General Jackson couldn’t be seen as yet.

  “Look down that way,” Charles shouted over the noise to his grandchildren, pointing his finger. “It’ll be coming around that bend, so keep your eyes glued there!”

  Franklin’s three children were with him: Carrie, Richard, and Albert. And the Schimmels’ twin daughters, Joy and Hope. Charles held eight-year-old Carrie and six-year-old Richard by the hand. The others, all close to five years old, were being shepherded by two of the Negro housemaids. Horace was there, too, with baskets of food and hot drinks.

  Once again the steamboat whistle sounded, closer this time. A band on the dock struck up the popular tune, “The Eighth of January,” commemorating Jackson’s victory at New Orleans. Managers of the welcome celebration for Nashville’s first steamboat had hoped that Old Hickory would be there personally to see the General Jackson arrive at Nashville, but the soldier was in Washington defending his unauthorized military invasion of Florida in pursuit of the Seminoles. A successful defense, as it turned out. Just two weeks earlier the public had learned that a treaty had bee
n concluded with Spain, ceding the vast Florida Territory to the United States for a payment of five million dollars. Thus, Andy Jackson was an even bigger hero than had been anticipated when plans were made for the building of a steamboat in his honor.

  “Grandfather, look!” little Carrie shrieked. “There it is! There it is!”

  The splendid new boat came into view, the cord on its whistle held down so that its greeting was constant. It seemed that the band tried to play louder, and there was no question that the human roar increased in volume.

  Carrie and Richard danced excitedly, tugging hard at Dewey’s firm grasp. The five-year-olds, less impressed, were playing their own game of tag around the full skirts of the black housemaids.

  “Look, Grandfather!” Richard shouted. “There’s Uncle Lee! There’s Uncle Lee!”

  In his excitement he broke away from Dewey’s grip and ran toward the edge of the bank, waving wildly to his uncle aboard the steamboat.

  A foot caught on a rock. He was in the icy waters!

  Charles pushed Carrie toward the housemaids, leaping into the water. One-armed Horace, after hesitating just an instant, followed him.

  They couldn’t find the boy! They couldn’t find him!

  Dewey plunged beneath the surface, but the sediment stirred up by the giant paddle wheels of the steamboat had made the waters opaque. He was as ineffective as a blind man!

  He came up, gasping for air. So did Horace, thrashing wildly with one arm.

  Their eyes met, companions in terror.

  Several other men were in the water now, joining the search. Charles dove again, sweeping his arms in wide circles, hoping that his hands would touch something. They didn’t.

  With his lungs seeming ready to burst, he surfaced again.

  And Horace was there, his strong arm holding little Richard by the collar, the tiny head lolling to the side, the eyes open. Glassy.

  Dewey grabbed the boy, thrusting him upward to waiting hands on the riverbank, then scrambling ashore himself.

  Someone had already summoned a doctor, and he was working on the youngster, trying to force air into him. Feverishly. Trying. Trying.

  The doctor sighed. His head was raised from his task and he shook it sadly.