A Southern Gentleman
After returning from the Great War in Europe, Carlton Daynor found life in his small New England hometown too dull for his tastes. While his old job at The Daily Times was waiting for him, he had no interest in reporting local events for such a small community. Even had the newspaper job been more interesting, there was simply no keeping him down on the farm after he had seen Paree—to paraphrase a popular song of the era.
Thus, the returning warrior became part of Hemingway's Lost Generation. The former small-town journalist left New England and moved to New York where he hoped to become a novelist. While he worked on his manuscript, he supported himself by writing short stories and free-lance magazine articles. During his days of residence in Greenwich Village, he made friends with artists, entertainers and other writers. Looking back, he saw the 1920s as a never-ending party, fueled by free-spirited women, jazz music and illegal alcohol.
All this came to an end in October 1929 when the stock market crashed, and for most Americans the Twenties ceased to roar. With the arrival of the Great Depression, Carlton found no buyers for his short stories or news articles. He had made a good living from his writing during the Twenties, but he spent money lavishly and had not bothered to put anything away for a rainy day. Now that it was pouring, there were no cash reserves to fall back on. For the next few years, he worked at whatever odd jobs he could find. His novel sat unfinished—barely started, if truth be told—in a dresser drawer. Although he was able to make enough money to pay the rent on his studio apartment, his meals came mostly from soup kitchens and bread lines.
Then in 1935 President Franklin D. Roosevelt established the Federal Writers' Project, a New Deal program that provided work for more than six thousand out-of-work authors, journalists, editors and those in related professions. Thanks to FDR, Carlton could stop washing dishes, waiting tables and sweeping streets and return to what he liked doing most: writing. Under the auspices of the FWP, he travelled throughout the southern portion of the Appalachian Mountains, interviewing residents and compiling a collection of regional folklore. Most of the stories he heard dealt with events dating back to the Civil War. Some of the elderly people he interviewed were former slaves or Confederate soldiers. For them, it was as though the seven decades since Appomattox had never existed.
It was on one chilly autumn day, when the mountains were ablaze with the vivid colors of the fall foliage, that he walked up to a shack—it was the only word that accurately described the dilapidated dwelling—at the end of a dirt road near Ashville, North Carolina. Carlton had learned from another person he had interviewed that the owner of the home, Beatrice Durfee, a woman in her nineties, had many stories to tell about life in the Old South.
The writer stretched out his hand and gingerly knocked on the door, afraid that if he used too much force, he might cause the rotted wood to break free of its hinges.
"Who's there?" a wary voice called from the other side of the door.
"My name is Carlton Daynor. I'm from the Federal Writers' Project. I'd like to ask you some questions, if you don't mind."
The door opened a crack, and he held out his identification for her to see.
"A writer, are you? What do you want to talk to me about?"
"I understand you were alive during the Civil War. I'd like to hear some of your first-hand accounts."
Beatrice hesitated a moment, as if deciding whether she should trust the stranger.
"You best come on in," she finally declared. "I ain't about to stand here in the doorway and converse with you."
Despite its deplorable exterior, the house was surprisingly clean inside. The hardwood floors had recently been waxed, and the furniture showed no sign of dust.
"Why don't you sit in the parlor? I'll go fetch us some tea, and then we can talk."
While Carlton waited for the old woman to return from the kitchen, he examined the portrait above the fireplace, one of a young woman in an antebellum gown. When Beatrice appeared in the doorway, Carlton took the tray from her and placed it on the coffee table in front of the sofa.
"Thank you," the hostess said. "I normally have no trouble getting around this place, but I'm always a little nervous when I'm carrying hot tea."
"I was admiring the portrait above the mantel," he said as he put a lump of sugar in his cup.
"Ah, yes," the old woman said with a wistful look on her face. "That was Felice DeVere. Wasn't she beautiful?"
"Very beautiful. Was she a relative of yours?"
"Yes, but she's been dead for years." Beatrice fell silent for several moments and then continued, "What do you want to know about the war?"
"I'm not interested in learning about battles or politics. I want to know what life was like back then for the people who stayed at home."
"It was women mostly; women, children and men either too sick or too old to fight. Would you like me to tell you the tragic tale of Felice DeVere?"
Carlton nodded his head over his cup of tea.
"She wasn't originally from this area," the old woman began. "She was born in Charlotte. Her father was a successful doctor, and her mother was a cousin of the governor of North Carolina. As the only child of one of the wealthiest families in Mecklenburg County, Felice had her choice of the most eligible bachelors. And since she was beautiful as well, there was no shortage of young men eager to court her. But when she set eyes on Lucian DeVere, she forgot all about her other beaus."
"Who was Lucian DeVere?" the writer asked, taking notes in a small pad he extracted from his coat pocket.
"A fine Southern gentleman who'd just inherited Oak Haven, his family's tobacco plantation. Felice, a young girl of fourteen, fell hopelessly in love with the handsome planter. They were later married on her sixteenth birthday. After the wedding and honeymoon, she left Charlotte and moved into Oak Haven."
"So she was a city girl who went to live in the country?" Carlton asked.
"Yes. It took some getting used to, but she never regretted her decision. Although she missed her parents, she adored her husband. They were so happy, the happiest couple I'd ever seen."
"When was this?"
"They were married in 1859. Even at that time there was talk of succession, but the newlyweds tried to ignore it. Then, in December 1860, South Carolina became the first state to leave the Union. Eight more states quickly followed South Carolina's example. In May 1861 North Carolina became the tenth state in the newly formed Confederate States of America."
"So they married about two years before the war started?"
"Yes. And they were the best two years of Felice's life!"
"I take it her husband joined the Confederate Army."
"Naturally. He was a man of honor, from an old and respected Southern family. It was his duty to fight for the cause."
The cause, Carlton thought with disgust. There is always a cause, a reason for idealistic young men to go off to battle and get killed.
"While Lucian DeVere was off fighting the war, Felice did her best to keep the plantation running, but then the workers began to leave."
"Workers? You mean slaves, don't you?" Carlton asked.
"She preferred to think of them as workers, but, yes, slaves. Mr. Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation freed them. At first, most of them stayed on. Nearly all of them were born on the plantation, and it was the only life they'd ever known. Gradually, however, as conditions in the South grew more dire, they left, making their way north. Some even joined the Union Army."
"What happened to Felice DeVere then?"
"Without slaves she couldn't work the land," Beatrice replied. "So she closed Oak Haven and came here to live with a widowed aunt."
"What about her parents in Charlotte?"
"Her mother had passed away just before North Carolina seceded, and her father was serving as a doctor with Lee's army."
Carlton finished his tea and scribbled some notes on his pad.
"Let me make sure I have my facts straight. Lucian DeVere was off fighting for the Confederacy, and Felice couldn't keep the plantation going after the slaves were freed. With her mother dead and her father serving in the army, she came here to stay in the mountains."
"That's right. She stayed here until April of 1865. That was when she learned Lee surrendered to Grant at Appomattox. Knowing her husband would return to the family plantation, Felice packed her things and headed there to meet him."
The old woman's eyes drifted toward the window as though seeing the past through its panes.
"Was he there?" Carlton asked.
"No. He had been killed at Morrisville Station. You know, most people think Appomattox was the end of the war. But General Joseph Johnston's army continued to fight after Lee surrendered. So, even though the men of the Army of Northern Virginia started returning to their families on April 9, Lucian DeVere was killed in battle on April 14."
"What happened to Felice then?"
"She died of a broken heart."
Carlton did not believe extreme grief actually caused death, but he supposed the facts surrounding the woman's passing were not crucial to the appeal of the folktale. Readers—especially women—would no doubt prefer the romantic tale of a young woman pining away for a fallen war hero to a more mundane account of a woman who dies of scarlet fever, cancer or tuberculosis.
After a second cup of tea, Carlton thanked his hostess for her time, left the shack near Ashville and headed east toward Knoxville, Tennessee.
* * *
Seven months later, after visiting a Confederate veteran in Chattanooga, Carlton returned to North Carolina. While in Winston-Salem, he happened upon an old black man who claimed to be a former slave at the DeVere family plantation.
"I met a woman who told me a story about a man named Lucian DeVere and his wife, Felice," the writer said. "Is that the same family?"
"Yessir," the man confirmed. "Young Mr. Lucian was the last of the DeVere line. After the war, a carpetbagger bought Oak Haven, but he couldn't make any money out from the place, so he went back north and let the tobacco fields and house go to ruin."
"What's on the land now?" the writer inquired.
"Nothin' but the remains of the big house and what's left of the slaves' quarters—which isn't much. After a dead body was found on the land back around thirty years ago, ain't nobody wanted to go near the place."
"A body?"
Carlton was intrigued.
"It was the corpse of some man from up near Ashville who heard the story of the DeVere buried treasure and went to the plantation to search for it. He was found a week later, scared to death."
"What's this about buried treasure?"
"When her husband left to go to war, Felice DeVere went to live with an aunt in some little town near Ashville. She couldn't carry all the DeVere family's valuables with her, so she buried them somewhere on the grounds of the plantation. Folks have heard about the treasure and tried to find it, but legend has it that Felice's ghost keeps careful watch over it."
"And the dead treasure hunter was supposedly frightened to death by Felice's spirit?"
"That's what people say."
Carlton thought the idea of an avenging ghost guarding her husband's inheritance would provide a good ending to the tragic tale of Felice and Lucian DeVere. As though reliving his days as a newspaper reporter, he took his pencil and notebook out of his pocket and pressed the former slave for more details.
* * *
With little difficulty, thanks to the former slave's directions, Daynor was able to find the former DeVere plantation. The tobacco fields were overrun with weeds, and only a roofless skeleton of the house remained. As he wandered through the once-impressive formal garden—its statues smashed, its fountains dry and its flowers and ornamental shrubs long dead—he thought about the fabled treasure. Both Beatrice Durfee and the elderly black man had told him the DeVeres were a wealthy family before the war broke out. Could Felice really have buried the family's valuables before leaving for the mountains?
Since he did not believe in ghosts, Carlton thought there was no harm in looking around the place. The following day he returned to the plantation with a shovel he purchased at a local hardware store. After unsuccessfully digging holes in the garden, under the limbs of a massive magnolia tree and in a clearing near the back door, Carlton was about to give up hope.
"The treasure—if it exists—could be anywhere," he concluded. "I could dig for years and not find anything."
Exhausted and perspiring from his labors, he wiped the sweat off his brow with the sleeve of his shirt, slung the shovel over his shoulder and began walking back toward his car. Then his eyes fell on what, at first glance, looked like scattered piles of wood. He walked closer to get a better look, and realized the wood piles were actually what remained of the slave quarters.
"If I were going to hide a treasure," he thought, "what better place than the abandoned shacks?"
Willing to spend a few more hours on his quest, Carlton removed his sweat-dampened shirt, pushed aside the fallen boards nearest the great house and began to dig.
"You stay away from there!" a familiar-sounding voice shouted.
Carlton turned and saw Beatrice Durfee standing beside a pile of discarded wood.
"What are you doing here?" the writer asked.
"Protecting what's rightfully mine."
"Yours? I don't understand. Did Felice DeVere tell you about the treasure?"
"I am Felice DeVere, and the treasure buried here at Oak Haven is rightfully mine."
"So there really is a treasure?" Carlton asked.
"Yes, and I'll not let you or anyone else have it."
Carlton, who had long grown tired of wandering through the South, listening to the ravings of old men and women who were still bitter that the Confederacy had fallen, thought about what he might do if he found the treasure.
I can move to Paris or London and finally write my novel. I can enjoy my life again!
He was certain that once he was away from the Depression in America, the jazz would play, the champagne would flow and the women would fall under his spell. All that stood between him and his Utopia was an elderly woman trying desperately to hold on to her past.
"What good will that treasure do anyone in the ground?" he asked.
"I'm not going to argue with you," Felice firmly insisted. "What's buried in the slave quarters is mine."
"Not anymore," Carlton said and began digging.
Like a cat pouncing on a mouse, the old woman jumped on the writer, trying to dig her nails into the naked flesh of his back and chest.
"Get off me, you old bag!" he screamed, trying to throw off her frail body.
"It's mine! You can't have it!" she shrieked.
Carlton managed to dislodge the old lady, but she came after him again. He swung the shovel in self-defense, hitting her on the side of the head. After the forceful impact, Felice fell to the ground and lay motionless at his feet.
With only a passing thought for the old woman's well-being, he began digging again. In less than half an hour, his shovel struck a solid surface. It then took Daynor an hour to unearth the large storage chest that Felice DeVere had buried back in 1865.
"I'm rich!" he cried triumphantly.
The writer struck the rusted lock with his shovel until it broke. Then, expecting to find the DeVere family fortune inside, he threw open the top of the chest.
When he saw the bones of the two bodies inside, he drew back in horror.
"What the ...?"
Felice stirred. She was not dead, after all.
"That chest is mine," she called in a raspy voice as she rose to her feet.
"Who were these people?" Carlton asked.
"That was Lucian DeVere, my husband, and Clementine ... a ... a slave."
The disgust conveyed by that one word made it immediately clear to Carlton what had happened at Oak Haven after the close of the war.
"Your husband didn't die at Morrisville Station; he wasn't killed in battle at all. He came home to Oak Haven after the war ended, and you found him here."
"He was a fine Southern gentlemen, my Lucian was."
"And when you got here, you discovered that he, like many other fine Southern gentlemen, bedded one of his slaves."
"He wasn't a returning war hero," she explained, wiping the blood that dripped down her face with the back of her hand. "He deserted when it was clear that the Confederacy was doomed. He'd been hiding out here in the quarters with ... with her for several months."
"And the treasure?" he asked, turning his back on the old woman, as he closed the lid of the chest over the rotted corpses. "Was there ever anything of value buried here?"
Despite her head injury and advanced years, the old woman moved swiftly and quietly. Carlton never heard or saw her grab hold of the shovel. After a sharp, intense pain in the back of his head, the writer collapsed across the top of the chest.
"Yes, Mr. Daynor," Felice replied before striking the defenseless man a second and third time. "There is something extremely valuable buried here. It is my husband's reputation. And as long as I am able to, I will keep alive the myth that he was an honorable man."
The old woman's fourth blow crushed Daynor's skull.
After returning the bones of her husband and his mistress to their hidden grave beneath the former slave quarters, Felice DeVere dragged the writer's body to the front of the house and left it at the foot of the veranda steps as a warning to others who came looking for the treasure.
Its work done—for the time being—the spirit of the old woman vanished and reappeared in the mountain shack near Ashville. There it sat in the rocking chair, staring up at the portrait of a beautiful, idealistic young belle while its inner eye kept watch on the chest of bones buried at Oak Haven.
The photo in the upper left corner is from a portrait of Confederate General P.G.T. Beauregard.
Salem has a treasure chest buried on my property. It contains not jewels and precious metals, but gold-foil-wrapped boxes of Godiva chocolate.
