The Master Of Monterey: A Novel

Chapter the First

Chapter the First Young Tommy Jones returned home to Boston from his first cruise as a midshipman, determined to ask the beautiful Louisa Darling to marry him as soon as he had been elevated to lieutenant . He had been at sea for three years, hoping for a war to make him worthy of her love, a hope that made the officers praise him and the common seamen despise him. He had promised her that he would do great things in her name, that he would make history. A long and vexing peace had spoiled his chances of returning wreathed with glory, but as he took a carriage from the landing to the mossy family manse, he hoped to find Louisa as pure and devoted as when he had left her. Tommy had been sent to sea by his father, a wheelchairbound banker who had read Filson's biography of Daniel Boone and who constantly praised the country's relentless movement westward. Old Mister Jones had brought his eldest son into business with him, but he desired that his younger son take up the noble exercise of arms and further the country's expansion. - You cannot limit this realm of freedom and democracy, he said, any more than you can say to a young boy that he is big enough, and must not grow any further. Tommy, however, thought more about the virginal Louisa than the virginal Mississippi River basin. Louisa Darling was the favored daughter of a prominent shipping family, which had made its fortune transporting live cargoes chained hand and foot. She and Tommy had exchanged letters while he was at sea, and though she had never written that she loved him, she always ended her letters with a request that in whatever he do, he think of her. So he thought of her while he scrambled up the masts with the ordinary seamen, and while he exercised the guns and sent broadsides booming into the inoffensive ocean, and while he watched the sea glow green at night about the ship's bow wave. And in his thoughts, she grew impossibly lovely. Louisa Darling came to have white arms strong enough to fold in all the world's restlessness and quiet it with her embrace, her hair was gold to make men despise the base gold of avarice, her purplish eyes, set a little close together, could answer any question simply with a deep look of love. Even her teeth, which always stuck out a bit despite Tommy's most sweaty and fevered imaginings, were incomparable to anything except the most flawless pearls. He thought her the very incarnation of the love that would bring endless joy and contentment , and he knew that ifhe joined with her he would want for nothing more throughout his life. She was the only virgin territory he truly dreamed of settling in. He alighted from his carriage by the old manse and walked up the steps in his blue uniform with a sword at his side, and he felt himself taller and stronger than he had been when he left at the age of fourteen, weathered and tested by years on a manof -war. He opened the front door for himself, before a servant could open it for him, and strode down the marble hallway. Little had changed - the same silver candlesticks on top of the same Chippendale tables, the same portraits along the walls. But, in his mind, he had changed, and he walked the hall as though he were coming into his own. He turned into the parlor, and he saw his brother embracing a woman draped with a long white dress. Young Tommy smiled. - Let me wish you joy, he said. Brother, are you to be married ? - Tommy! his brother shouted. Yes, you know my fiancee. The woman, still in his brother's arms, turned her face toward Jones and gave him a sweet and pitying smile. It was Louisa Darling. Tommy's brother had made a number of shrewd ventures over the years, especially investing in ships flying the Darling flag after the invention of Whitney's cotton gin. And her father had pointed out that glory is fleeting and uncertain, but there was nothing uncertain about a diamond. When Tommy's brother proposed marriage to her, it wasn't difficult for her to weigh things up between the brothers and favor what the older brother offered...