American Dreams Trilogy

by Michael Phillips

  More laughter circulated around the group.

  “Some say he is turning a profit,” McClellan added, “even with his Negroes as hired laborers. That’s the local scuttlebutt at least—whether it is true or not, I cannot say. They insist the plantation has never been healthier.”

  “I don’t believe it for a minute,” growled Seehorn.

  “Nor do I,” agreed Beaumont.

  “Only time will tell, I suppose,” remarked Roberts.

  “He sounds like a madman, if you ask me,” Seehorn continued to grumble. “The only time I ever met the man he was carrying on with incomprehensible religious nonsense. This is no doubt the result. Whenever men take religion too far, fanaticism invariably results.”

  “You may not be so far wrong in your assessment,” Beaumont laughed. “A wolf in sheep’s clothing is how I would phrase it. Richmond Davidson will be the ruin of us all. Once you let the darkies start thinking of themselves as free, the whole economy of the South will unravel. What the man has done is dangerous. I am taking steps to have it looked into, discreetly of course,” he added quietly, “to see what might be done.”

  “Possibly a shrewd campaign move.”

  Beaumont nodded but did not reply to the comment directly. “After the Dred Scott decision last year,” he went on, “for which we have your brothers of the Supreme Court to thank, Upton, we may perhaps have some legal recourse against him.”

  “Hmm… a good point,” nodded the Alabama lawyer. “I will look into the legal precedent and see what I can uncover.”

  “Keep me informed, Harrison,” said Beaumont.

  “You say he is here?” asked Bayhurst, glancing about the lawn.

  “Unfortunately,” Beaumont answered, “I had no choice. My wife and daughter sent out the invitations. Who can refuse Veronica now that she is eighteen?”

  “And a very eye-catching eighteen at that!” added McClellan. “My own sons talk of nothing else. Your daughter is considered the prize catch of northern Virginia, Denton.”

  McClellan sent two or three knowing winks around the small group.

  “Would that she had the good sense to pay a little more attention to your boys, William!” lamented Beaumont. “For some reason that I cannot comprehend and have not been able to get to the bottom of, she has an absurd fancy for the Davidson boy. But…,” he added, lowering his voice and glancing around the group, “it would seem that here comes Davidson now. Be on your guard, gentlemen.”

  The man who had been the object of both discussion and derision now walked toward them from across the lawn. Broad shoulders and muscular arms, as well as in the rugged tan of his face even this early in the season, attested to the fact that he had worked hard most of his life in spite of being a landowner. Despite an early leaning toward books and law rather than tools and fields, his strong shape displayed none of the signs of sagging and widening that distinguished many of his contemporaries. Most of his personal features, however, escaped one’s notice at first meeting. It was the energetic pale blue eyes and bright smile that gave Richmond Davidson’s face its character and personality, and that drew one toward him. The smile, usually present, was subdued rather than radiant—a smile of peace if not always joy, an expression of contentment if not always exuberance.

  It was his confident gait, however, and the peaceful calm radiating from the face of his forty-eight-year-old neighbor that annoyed his boyhood friend most of all as he observed his approach. That a man could be an idiot, and at the same time so thoroughly satisfied with himself, Denton Beaumont found inexcusable, and irritating almost to distraction.

  The newcomer smiled and extended his hand as those surrounding their host parted slightly.

  “Hello, Denton,” said Richmond Davidson.

  “Richmond,” nodded Beaumont without expression. “I believe you know Ford Hayden—”

  “Yes… hello, Ford.”

  “Davidson.”

  “—and Abraham Seehorn.”

  “Of course. How are you, Abraham? It has been several years—you’re looking well.”

  “Thank you, Davidson,” said Seehorn stiffly. “So are you.”

  “And this is Harrison Roberts from Montgomery… and Judge Byford from the capital.”

  “Yes… Mr. Byford and I have met,” said Davidson. “Congratulations on your appointment to the bench.”

  “Thank you, Davidson.”

  “How are you, Richmond?” said William McClellan, turning to his near-neighbor.

  “I am well, thank you, Bill. It’s been too long. You must stop by.”

  “That reminds me—my son and your youngest have been badgering me to take them hunting… any objections?”

  “None at all.”

  More handshakes followed and several more introductions around the group, accompanied by a few awkward coughs and glances at finding the man they had just been ridiculing suddenly in their midst and treating them so affably.

  “I want to wish you the best on your Senate run, Denton,” said Richmond, turning to their host. “I haven’t seen you since I read the announcement in the Register.”

  “Do you really mean that?” rejoined Beaumont, an imperceptible edge creeping into his tone.

  “Of course.”

  “Surely you would be more supportive of, shall we say, a more antislavery candidate, would you not, Davidson?” suggested Roberts significantly.

  “Not necessarily. My view on the matter is entirely apolitical.”

  “Ah… I see. I must say,” said Justice Byford, “after your recent… ah, your controversial actions, I find that surprising.”

  “What my wife and I did in the decision regarding our slaves,” Davidson went on, “was a matter of conscience, not politics.”

  “Your wife was part of the decision?” asked Bayhurst with raised eyebrow.

  “We make all decisions together. In any event, the politics of such disputes are not paramount in our considerations.”

  “What is, then?” asked Roberts.

  “Living as we have been told to live.”

  “An interesting point of view,” observed Hayden. “So you did not support John Fremont two years ago, or this upstart Midwesterner Lincoln in their antislavery positions?”

  “Let me say that I am in sympathy with certain of their views, though I still believe strongly in the right of states to determine their own courses. But I do not support such men politically. As I said, for us the politics are secondary to the deeper morality.”

  “Do you intend to support your friend here in his bid against Senator Hoyt?” asked Bayhurst, nodding his head in the direction of their host. “The conventional wisdom has it that Hoyt is in low repute right now and that our kind host is a shoe in. Where will your support lay, Mr. Davidson—with your friend and neighbor?”

  The question brought immediate silence to the lips of everyone within earshot. Only a few chinks of ice in their glasses could be heard as they waited, along with distant laughter and music in the background.

  “Certainly,” replied Davidson, “as far as my conscience will allow. He has not asked me to actually campaign for him, and if he did I would probably have to say no. But neither would I campaign for Senator Hoyt or any man. I do not believe politics to be the primary arena in which I am to be actively involved, and to that conviction I must be faithful. But of course Denton has my support and best wishes.”

  The words sunk in to varying levels. Most of those listening seemed satisfied with the statement, however vague.

  “Getting back to what you said a moment ago,” said Byford in a puzzled tone, “what do you mean, how we are told to live? Told by whom?”

  “He who has a claim upon us,” replied Davidson.

  “Speaking for myself,” said Seehorn, “I will always be a Virginian first and a citizen of the country second. No president in Washington will ever be worthy of the level of loyalty you speak of. Well,” he added, glancing around the group knowingly, “unless we should succeed in placing our
own Jeff Davis in the White House, of course! That would be different!”

  Nods of agreement indicated well enough that the others were of like mind.

  “My point is that I do not consider any Northerner to have a claim on me at all, as you say.”

  “So where are your primary loyalties, Davidson,” asked Bayhurst, “—with Virginia or Washington?”

  “Neither, I am afraid,” he replied with hint of a smile. “I always try to be loyal to our nation and to Virginia. But my highest allegiance belongs elsewhere.”

  Before Seehorn or Bayhurst could say anything further, the lawyer spoke up.

  “You mentioned morality a moment ago, Davidson,” said Roberts. “Do you consider slavery a moral issue or a political and economic one?”

  “A good question, Mr. Roberts,” smiled Davidson. “In answer I would say, all three.”

  “And is ownership of slaves, in your view, immoral then?”

  Again, Davidson smiled.

  “That is not a judgment for me to make,” he said. “The Bible neither condemns nor condones slavery—a fact I find intriguing. I would really not care to comment further, gentlemen. I must simply heed my own conscience, and walk in the light I have been given. If you will excuse me, I deserted my wife a moment ago. Again, Denton, best wishes with your candidacy.”

  He moved off and disappeared through the crowd.

  The gray-suited observer, who had been listening carefully to every word, watched him go. He weighed his options, whether to follow the man who held such obvious interest or whether to remain with the Beaumont group and see what might come of it.

  He thought about it but a moment or two. From the little he had seen and heard, especially from gazing unseen into the man’s pale blue eyes, he could tell that the Davidson fellow was an honest man with out an ounce of guile in his bones. What he needed to learn from him he could get anytime, simply by walking up and asking him. The comments made by the others in his absence, however, would not be so easily recaptured—a chance remark, a stray observation, a glance, a flash of the eyes….

  He would remain where he was.

  By now the dancing was in full swing. Veronica Beaumont was enjoying a second waltz with the young man, as she supposed, of her dreams, unaware that they were being watched from behind the trees in the distance by Scully Riggs. A few of the other girls, following her example, had succeeded in enticing a handful of brave young men in the direction of the music. Gradually the dance area filled with couples of all ages, though most still preferred to watch from the safety of little cliques spread about the lawn.

  “A waltz, my dear,” said Richmond as he returned to his wife, extending his hand and giving a slight bow.

  “Thank you,” replied Carolyn, taking his hand. “I wondered what happened to you.”

  “Merely paying my respects to our host,” he replied, leading her toward the orchestra.

  “And…?” said Carolyn as they fell into step with the music.

  “From the looks around the group,” replied her husband, laughing, “I suspect I interrupted a discussion in which I had myself been playing a key role. Those poor men,” he added, “they don’t know what to do with me! Have you spoken with Lady Daphne?”

  “I haven’t seen her yet. Someone said she was still inside.”

  As dancing and discussions continued, black waiters moved silently among the guests carrying trays laden with tall glasses of lemonade, iced tea, brandy, Irish coffee, mint julep, and, for the most special of guests, samples from Beaumont’s private reserve of thirty-year-old whiskey imported from the Scottish highlands.

  Around the grounds, most of the men in their light-colored suits stood sipping drinks in small clusters, speaking earnestly about politics and crops and the status of slavery throughout the Union. It was the chief topic of interest whenever and wherever Southerners gathered.

  Their wives of all ages from eighteen to fifty were likewise bunched about the lawn, some standing, some seated in circles of benches and chairs. Fanning themselves and shading their white faces with lacy parasols of diverse colors, they chatted about husbands and children and everything else wives and mothers talk about. These included several newly married young ladies not yet twenty years of age, suddenly transformed from belles to matrons and thus the recipients of constant advice from their experienced elders concerning everything from childbirth and sickness to the canning of peaches. One or two of these cast about an occasional distracted glance, accompanied by an inward twinge of envy, to think that they had married too young, and would never more know the gaiety and freedom that Veronica Beaumont and other of their former friends still enjoyed.

  Inside the drawing room of the mansion, through open French doors, the grandmothers and great-grandmothers in long dark silks and satins flapped their palmetto fans yet more diligently in the heat. They sat on soft sofas and chairs and talked even more earnestly about the things that old women in black dresses had talked about from time immemorial.

  Children ran excitedly about everywhere, rambunctious and frolicsome.

  But the sentient vortex of such gatherings in the South was always reserved for the unmarried belles and beaux who had been fortunate enough to receive invitations. Among them stirred budding affections to pluck a thousand invisible heartstrings, passions that would result in a hundred individual dramas of hope and heartbreak, triumph and disappointment, being played out before day’s end.

  Swirling and twirling and moving with flourish in their wide-hooped crinolines of pink and orange and blue and yellow and every other color imaginable, topped with wide bright hats and encircled with ribbons and sashes and bows, a dozen and a half young women between fifteen and eighteen were engaged in the not-so-subtle art practiced since time began, of attracting the eye of every young man on the premises between sixteen and twenty-five. Some of their flirtations were modest, others bold, others outright brazen, but all had the same end in view—to be noticed… then to draw a second, and perhaps even a third glance. To draw a fourth such diversion of the eyes, and with it a lingering shy smile, from some handsome and eligible boy—to be followed, whether in ten minutes or two hours, it mattered not just so long as the moment came eventually, by the bashful invitation to the dance floor—was the most sought after prize the day could bring.

  The most eligible of the young men, on their parts, carried out to perfection their own vital function in the timeless ritual, which was to pretend not to notice. All the while they spoke of hunting and horses and guns and sundry boasts of manhood and strength, seemingly oblivious to the bashful looks and giggles and fluttering eyelashes directed toward them.

  Yet the older and more handsome among them knew well enough that every smile and laugh and gesture was capable of causing one or another of the girls to swoon. Thus they chose exactly when to allow a grin, and how much of the teeth to reveal, occasionally accompanying one or the other with a brief dart of the eye in the direction of some vulnerable heart. The young men knew how to flirt, too, after their fashion, and the launching of such subtle arrows were the prized rewards the young ladies sought from the day’s outing. This was the Southern variation of the timeless English “coming out” rite, practiced on the yearly foundation of London’s social “season.”

  It was precisely this undercurrent of coquetry on the part of the young ladies, and roguery on the part of the young men, that kept Richmond and Carolyn Davidson away from such gatherings as often as it could be avoided. It made their skin crawl to watch the shallow and self-preoccupied interplay among a youthful generation that had been pampered all its life in wealth.

  Both knew that many of today’s charms on the part of the one who swirled at the center of the activity had been specifically designed in this case to lure, fascinate, and attract one of their own sons, and it broke their hearts. It was part of youth, they tried—without success—to tell themselves. The fact that their own romance had begun in a church, and that they had prayed together long before they had s
o much as touched one another, was a fact they tried not to add as an invisible expectation upon their own sons. Seth and Thomas were growing up in different circumstances and a different era. They knew they must allow their sons to find God and to find love, each in his own way. They were also well enough aware that to some degree, God had to “find” them. They mustn’t interfere—by their own orchestration or with burdensome expectations—with that process.

  Seth was now eighteen. His own faith was developing rapidly. They had every confidence in him. Yet they knew that he must grow in character and move toward his own future, in gradually increasing ways, on his own.

  It was a painful process to watch, seeing him involved with such young people as Veronica and her crowd. They only hoped that the roots of his own spiritual fiber would prove deep enough to enable him to discern with clarity the character of those around him.

  Meanwhile, Thomas’s time to fly was approaching more rapidly than either realized, and in ways neither was aware of. Even the most sensitive and thoughtful of parents can remain oblivious to undercurrents of dissatisfaction brewing beneath the surface. For the direction in which roots grow has as much to do with the soil of individuality in which they are planted as the nourishment those tender roots receive in their early years. Already Seth and Thomas, in ways neither the parents saw nor the young men realized, were directing their roots and wings toward vastly different life-courses.

  At present, Seth’s sixteen-year-old brother was off with Jeremy McClellan and some of their friends, followed like a puppy dog by fifteen-year-old Cameron Beaumont, with other things on their minds than girls.

  Why the guest of honor was so enamored with Seth was still a puzzle to Richmond and Carolyn. His dashing good looks could hardly be denied. Perhaps the fact that he was polite and intelligent and did not try to make himself noticed set him apart from other young men in the region with whom he seemed to have fewer and fewer close friendships the older he got. Strange to say, mischief is a more magnetic bond between the young than is virtue, which perhaps explains why the former is in such ample supply, while the latter is so scarce. A corollary of this principle may also have explained why Richmond and Carolyn Davidson did not find themselves blessed with many close friendships or an active social life. In any event, despite his looks, intelligence, respectfulness, and, in his parents’ eyes, winsome personality, Seth Davidson was no longer as close to Wyatt Beaumont and Brad McClellan as he once had been, and was even viewed by some as a loner. At the same time, as Thomas advanced through his teen years, his comrades and acquaintances from around Dove’s Landing seemed to multiply.