River Queen

by Gilbert, Morris

Tyla sighed deeply. “There’s a world of difference between being charitable to those less fortunate than you, and partying and carrying on with riffraff.”

  She went over to retrieve curling tongs from the grill over the roaring fire, licked her finger and snapped it on the red-hot rod, and nodded with satisfaction when it sizzled. Then she carefully wound a long gold strand of Julienne’s hair around it and held it for a few seconds, to make a perfect ringlet. Julienne sat very still, she didn’t even speak, as Tyla made four ringlets. Once Carley had jostled Tyla’s arm while she was doing this, and the hot iron had badly burned Julienne’s neck.

  When she finished Julienne picked up the conversation. “Again, we’re not partying and carrying on. There’s going to be a late supper in the Grand Salon, then fireworks and dancing. It’s going to be so much fun. I don’t understand you any more, Tyla. You’ve gotten so religious, so disapproving, that you never have any fun.”

  “Miss Julienne, didn’t we have fun this afternoon, picking out your jewelry to wear? I’m not all sour, it’s just that I know that you really are a virtuous, kind lady, but not everyone knows you like I do. People can be mean gossips, and if you keep ignoring the rules of polite society you’re going to get a reputation as a loose woman. It would grieve the Lord for that to happen.”

  “I’m not grieving anyone but you, dear Tyla. Let it go, will you? I’m tired of arguing about it. You’re harder on me than even my mother and father. I want to look pretty, I want to have fun, I want to dance. I might even meet some new exciting people!”

  Picking up the thick gold headband with pearl droplets adorning it, Tyla placed it just so at the crown of Tyla’s head. She wore gold earrings with teardrop pearls that matched the tiara, and a three-strand pearl bracelet. “You may meet some new people, all right,” Tyla grumbled. “When they cut off your head to get this gold.”

  FINALLY JULIENNE WAS READY and went downstairs to the parlor, a formal room with heavy velvet draperies, sofas, loveseats, and recamiers in the elaborate French rococo style, urns full of aspidistra, vases of peacock feathers, and gilt-framed paintings of seventeenth-century shepherdesses and maidens and princesses frolicking in dreamy woodland settings filled with golden light. Julienne was surprised to see only her mother, seated in a wingback chair by the fire, and Archibald Leggett sitting across from her. When Julienne entered he bounded to his feet.

  “Miss Ashby! You look beautiful, just beautiful,” he said, beaming at her. He was an average-sized man, with a compact figure, two inches shorter than Julienne (or four, as she was wearing two-inch heeled ball slippers). His hair was a nondescript brown, but it was always groomed perfectly in the style of the day, parted on the side with waves and brilliantine tendrils framing his face. Though his hair was thick, and he had bushy sideburns, he was somehow unable to grow adequate facial hair, as was all the rage. Once he had tried a mustache, but it was as faint and silky as a newborn baby’s hair, and Julienne had teased him so unmercifully about it that he had shaved it off.

  “Archie” had a small nose, large round brown eyes, and short full lips. They were almost like a cupid’s bow. In fact he was a nice-looking man, but to Julienne he looked too boyish and a little feminine. She preferred lantern-jawed masculine men with a commanding presence. Archie was formal and very proper, unassuming, and she thought that he was not very intelligent.

  To his enthusiastic greeting she replied, “You’re too kind, Archie. Thank you very much.” Julienne had long called him Archie even though they had never gone through the convention of agreeing to call each other by their given names. To her it seemed silly to call this nondescript young man “Mr. Leggett.” He, of course, had always called her “Miss Ashby.”

  “Not at all, you do look stunning this evening,” he replied, leading her to sit on the sofa. “And you come by it honestly, as you so closely resemble your lovely mother.”

  Although Roseann Ashby was close to fifty years old, and she had been married for more than thirty years with three children, she still had an air of innocence and naiveté. “You’re very kind, Mr. Leggett,” she said with pleasure.

  With some impatience Julienne asked, “Where is Papa? I know I’m running a little late but I did think he’d wait for me.”

  Archie Leggett cleared his throat. “Er, I persuaded him to go ahead, Miss Ashby. I’ve got my carriage, and I thought you wouldn’t object to going down to the Columbia Lady with me.”

  “Of course not,” Julienne said, rising. “Shall we go, then?”

  Magically Tyla appeared with Julienne’s shawl. Her new ensemble was indeed stunning. Her blue satin dress shimmered richly, her over-the-elbow white gloves were spotless (as Tyla had been able to completely remove Carley’s licorice smudge), her hair was dressed perfectly, complimented by the gold tiara and gold-and-pearl earrings, and she had ordered a lavish cashmere shawl, dyed the same azure blue as the dress, with a twenty-two-inch-long silk fringe. The blue brought out the golden highlights of her hair, and made her eyes dark and mysterious. Archie Leggett’s compliments had been both right and wrong; she was an extraordinarily beautiful woman, but her slender height, her erect carriage, and her athletic grace was much more mindful of Charles Ashby than Roseann’s fragile prettiness.

  Archie offered her his arm and escorted her to the waiting five-glassed landau. The day had been cold and clear, and the previous day’s blanket of radiant snow had remained. The night sky seemed to mirror the frost-spangled earth, with millions of stars twinkling cheerfully. Julienne inhaled deeply. Though the air was freezing, she loved the exhilaration of cold weather when there was such a spectacular snowfall. It was unusual for a city in the Deep South. “Oh, don’t you just love snow?” she asked as Archie handed her into the carriage.

  “It makes such a mess in the streets, it’s quite an inconvenience,” he replied.

  Wryly Julienne thought that his answer was so typical of the man. Then again, she had been extremely surprised that Archie had apparently asked her father if he could escort Julienne alone. It was a measure of impropriety that she never would have expected from Archie. In fact, he had objected to Julienne going to the Moak’s revelry, but when he found out that she had persuaded her father to allow her to attend, he agreed to go with them.

  Archie went to the other side of the carriage and started to climb in, but he hesitated halfway inside. “I wouldn’t want to muss your dress, Miss Ashby,” he said.

  Reflecting that Archie was so timid that he wouldn’t even dare to gently push aside the folds of her skirt, she pulled the wide hoop skirt closer around her. “Get in, Archie, you couldn’t ruin this wonderful dress if you were trying to.”

  He climbed in, timidly stepping to avoid the hem of the skirt, seated himself across from her, then knocked on the window behind him, a signal for them to go. The carriage started down the long drive.

  Delighted, Julienne stared out the wide window at the snowbound landscape outside. The Ashbys had two carriages but both were sturdy barouches, with shutters to keep out the weather. A glassed carriage was a luxury indeed. The Leggett family was very wealthy. “Just beautiful,” she murmured quietly.

  “Yes, you are,” Archie said, staring at her. Then, to Julienne’s shock, he jumped up, trod on her dress, threw himself on the seat beside her, and grabbed her right hand. Clutching it with both of his, he said with an uncharacteristic warmth, “Miss Ashby, I mean, Julienne. You must know how I feel about you. I’ve been calling on you for a year now, you must know how much I esteem you. Will you allow me to speak to your father?”

  “What? Speak to my father?” Julienne repeated in a slight daze. “Archie, you are the only man I know that can take every hint of romance out of a marriage proposal!”

  “What? What do you mean?” he asked blankly.

  Julienne took a long deep breath and gently drew her hand out of his grasp. “Archie, you are a very nice man. But
this is not at all how I envisioned that a man who is deeply in love with me would ask me to marry him.”

  His eyebrows went up in surprise, but then his face settled into a look that Julienne knew very well. It was an expression of condescension, of conscious superiority, that he always assumed when he talked of business matters and Julienne didn’t respond enthusiastically. Julienne had always been secretly amused at this pretension, but just at this moment she realized how very much she disliked it. With a hint of disdain he said, “Yes, I’m aware that genteel young ladies sometimes have foolish and silly daydreams about romance. But, Julienne, you know very well that my family is not only wealthy, but we move in the highest circles of society and the Leggetts are one of the first families of Mississippi. I believe I am regarded as what is somewhat vulgarly termed as a ‘fine catch.’ And if I may take the liberty, I will remind you that you are twenty-three years old. I’m aware that you have turned away at least two eligible young men, but surely you realize that such things change as a woman grows older.”

  Anger had risen in Julienne as he spoke, but the sting of truth of the last two sentences deflated her. Though Julienne was careless and her life was somewhat shallow, when forced to she could face facts squarely. Most of her friends married between the age of sixteen and twenty, and after that a woman was considered to be “older.” She was well aware that because of her unusual beauty, and the Ashby’s place in Natchez society, she was still much sought-after. But surely Archie-bald isn’t my last chance! she thought rebelliously.

  Her thoughts were tumbling one after another, and Archie was watching her with that same supercilious expression. Finally she said with a diplomacy unusual for her, “Archie, I do appreciate your attentions and it is an honor for you to pay your addresses to me in such a respectful manner. But even though we’ve been seeing each other for a year, to be honest I hadn’t come to the point of considering marriage. Would you please give me some time to think about it?”

  He frowned. “How much time?”

  “I’m not sure, Archie, but I do need some time to consider. It is a big decision, you know.”

  “I don’t understand your hesitation, but then again I suppose women are the weaker gender, and you’re not really capable of being strong and decisive,” he said with an air of generosity. “You may have time to consider, Julienne. That is, I assume that now I may call you ‘Julienne.’”

  For a moment the somewhat devilish side of Julienne wanted to say, No, you may not assume that. But then the more commonsense, and even cautious, side of Julienne took over and she replied, “Of course you may. I would like that, dear Archie.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  Sighting the lights of the grand steamboat ahead, towering over the other boats at the dock, Julienne’s eyes glowed. “You know, I heard that Mr. Moak was spending entirely too much time going back and forth to New Orleans on the Columbia Lady, and that’s why Winnie Moak is forcing him to sell her.”

  The Moak family had been the Ashby’s neighbors for years. Elijah and Winnie Moak were close friends of Charles and Roseann Ashby. Their son Stephen was one of Darcy Ashby’s best friends, and their two daughters, Felicia and Susanna, were long-time friends of Julienne’s.

  Elijah Moak had built the Columbia Lady, one of the biggest and most luxurious steamers on the river. Its home port was in New Orleans, where Stephen Moak lived and managed the Columbia Lady and two other mail packets the Moaks owned.

  But Elijah Moak had to sell the Columbia Lady, and he had decided to have a grand party on board the steamer to show her off to possible buyers. The businessmen that were considering buying the riverboat wanted their captains and pilots to have a look at her, and the captains and pilots wanted their engineers and first mates to have a look at her, and so the guest list included a strata of society from the highest to the lowest. This is what so scandalized Tyla, that Julienne would be mingling with roustabouts. And there had been rumors for weeks that because of the unusual nature of the guest list, there would be saloon girls, card room hostesses, and prostitutes attending.

  “I hadn’t heard such,” Archie replied to her observation with interest, “but I’m not at all surprised. All of their money was from Winifred Tannehill’s family. When the Married Women’s Property Act passed, old Ambrose Tannehill made Mr. Moak put everything in his daughter’s name. And Winnie Moak rules that money with an iron hand.”

  Archie Leggett’s father, in addition to having one of the biggest and most profitable cotton plantations in the South, was on the Board of Directors of Planter’s Bank, so Archie often had inside information about people’s finances, which he gleefully shared with all and sundry.

  “I can’t believe this line of carriages,” Julienne said impatiently. “It looks like everyone in Natchez is going to the Columbia Lady tonight.”

  They were crawling down the crazily crooked old path, now named Silver Street, that went from the high bluffs of Natchez proper down to the docks, and Natchez-Under-the-Hill. Ahead of the long lines of carriages Julienne could see the steamer, a grand mountain lined with red and green lanterns. It took several minutes for them to reach the Columbia Lady, but at last Archie was handing her out as she stared, her dark eyes wide and glowing.

  The Columbia Lady was indeed a grande dame. She had four decks instead of the more prosaic three, and all four decks were brightly lit with lanterns every three or so feet. Her black smokestacks were sky-high, and topped with elaborate floral wrought-iron crowns. As Julienne and Archie walked across the landing stages to board the boat, they saw that the main doors of the main deck were wide open, and the cargo hold had been emptied and cleaned and turned into a ballroom, though it more properly might be called a dance hall. The only instruments were a loud piano and a shrill trumpet. Obviously this deck was for the lower classes, for tough-looking men in rough clothing were dancing with underdressed women with garish makeup and wild hair.

  Meanwhile, a steady stream of people were mounting the mahogany and brass stairwell up to the second deck, in river parlance called the boiler deck because it was above the boilers, but when the steamers had started carrying well-to-do passengers, the owners changed the name of this somewhat superfluous deck to the Ballroom Deck. The people mounting the stairs were dressed in evening dress, the women in every shade of silks and satins, the men in tailed coats with starched white shirts, neat white bow ties, slender-cut black breeches, white gloves, and tall black satin hats. Archie and Julienne followed them, greeting acquaintances and admiring the boat. “It’s so luxurious,” Julienne said. “Like a home of royalty.”

  “I’ve heard it said that the best steamers are sometimes called floating palaces,” Archie told her. “Personally, this is the first one I’ve seen that would qualify.”

  They reached the double doors of the enormous room that was alternately a dining room or a ballroom. Two tall sturdy Negroes stood on both sides of the door. The Columbia Lady’s colors were red, blue, and gold, and they were dressed in a sort of matching livery, with blue coats and trousers and red waistcoats. One of the men took all of the gentlemen’s hats and gloves, and placed them precisely in lines on a long table with a white tablecloth. The other Negro man bowed and offered each lady a fan, a lovely cream-colored silk with a design worked in it in gold thread with a gold tassel. Along one edge was printed in gold thread Columbia Lady.

  “Come on, Archie, let’s go find our seats,” Julienne urged him. He was already starting to head off toward a group of men standing at one wide window, all of them dressed in evening clothes and talking with animation. Julienne never had to worry about Archie being over-attentive at parties; he always found a group of men to talk about his favorite topic, business, whether it was banking or the price of slaves or the crops or the Cotton Exchange.

  “Hm? Oh, all right, Julienne,” he said absently and allowed her to pull him by the arm toward the front tables of the dining room. S
he saw her father standing behind the head table, talking to Elijah Moak and several other men. Many women had already been seated and deserted. They admired their fans and drank red punch. The head table sat across the top of the room, but all of the other tables were round, each with blinding white ruffled tablecloths and four candlesticks in a circular silver holder. The place settings were of china with a blue morning-glory pattern, gold napkins, and gleaming silverware.

  “Julienne!” she heard a sweet voice call. “Here, Julienne, you’re seated with us.” At a table located in the center-front of the head table were Julienne’s friends, the Moak sisters, motioning to her. She hurried to the table, pulling Archie mercilessly by the hand. “Felicia, Susanna, how glad I am to see you! From the talk around town I thought I might be the only lady here, surrounded by persons of doubtful morals and low reputation!”

  Archie held her chair and she sat down by Felicia Moak, who laughed and said, “Leave it to Julienne to come right out with it. Mr. Leggett, after so long it’s plain that you haven’t succeeded in taming Julienne.”

  “But I will,” he said with his customary seriousness. “Good evening, Miss Moak, Miss Susanna.”

  “Good evening, Mr. Leggett,” Susanna said with particular emphasis, staring up at him in what might only be termed longingly.

  Julienne was amused, for she had known for a while that Susanna Moak had a crush on Archie Leggett. It seemed that Nature had played a rather unkind trick on Susanna Moak, for her older sister Felicia had inherited their mother’s beauty. She was a dark-haired, velvety-eyed, curvaceous woman of a lively and delightful charm. Susanna, on the other hand, didn’t really resemble anyone in the Moak family. She was nondescript, with medium-brown hair, brown eyes, unremarkable features, and a frame so thin that she had virtually no figure at all. Her eyes were weak, and she required eyeglasses to read even large print, but she refused to wear them in public. Unfortunately this gave her a tendency to squint. Tonight Felicia wore a dark green that made her look like a woodland goddess, and Susanna wore a deep coral shade that was lovely in itself, but unfortunately it made her complexion look sallow.