O'hara's Choice - Leon Uris [46]
“Every day?”
“Every day.”
“Laveda as well?”
“Yes.”
“You must be doing this for your own purposes.”
“You’re damned right,” Horace agreed.
“What do you want?” Matthew asked.
“I’ll give you the help you need. Learn what there is to learn. Only one thing I’d ask is when I call all the folks together, I’d like you and Laveda standing at our side so they’ll know this isn’t a trick.”
“I won’t do that.”
“Why the fuck not?”
“What you are giving us may not exactly be slavery, but it won’t exactly be freedom, either. You may be exchanging systems because slavery is bound to die. What you’re giving us may only be slavery by another name and four dollars a month.”
No use railing, Horace told himself. He knew he’d only touched the tip of their suffering. He’d better not lose Mr. Fancy.
“I agree,” Horace capitulated. “How old are you, Matthew?”
“Twenty-five.”
“Huh,” Horace mumbled. “Would you care for a drink?”
“I sure wouldn’t mind.”
Horace did not spare his finest Napoleon brandy. Something wild and incredible, something monumental, was unfolding, and he thanked God Matthew Fancy was with him.
“Anything you need or want, right off?”
“Yes.”
Horace nodded for him to continue.
“When we are in private, you and Mrs. Kerr can address Laveda and me by our first names, provided we may address you by your first names. When we are in the company of others, we wish to be addressed as Mrs. Fancy and Mr. Fancy.”
Gulp!
Horace arose and very slowly extended his hand. “Mr. Fancy,” he said.
Matthew took his hand. Both of them stared at the handshake.
“Thank you, Horace,” Matthew said.
• 15 •
WILLOW
Matthew Fancy bolted off the starting line and never looked back. Horace Kerr was entirely pleased by his own keen judgment. Matthew’s capacities broadened on a daily basis and brought about a painless transition.
By the time of the Emancipation Proclamation, the Kerrs had gained a reputation for being compassionate and farsighted in freeing their slaves early, though they personally had ended up as the true beneficiaries of their decision.
A decent executive from the shipyard, Mr. Compton, had been brought in to assist Fancy, but in truth, Fancy needed no assistant. By the end of the war, Matthew all but managed Inverness.
He became the “man,” the buyer who filtered all bids, read all household contracts, and ordered everything from French wines to grass seed, and did so without corruption. When he had deflated the Leamington budget by a third, he pressed Kerr into a salary raise for the entire staff until they became the best-paid domestic help in Baltimore. No day’s end ever found Matthew Fancy away from his studies.
One night nine years into the relationship, Kerr brought home a contract that had been drawn up between his shipyard and an insurance company and asked Matthew to scrutinize it. It was a jigsaw puzzle. Fancy’s legal mind proved far beyond the ordinary.
Kerr offered him a closet-sized office at Dutchman’s Hook with its own sink and toilet so he could be kept on hand as an adviser, but Matthew refused and did the work at his own desk at Inverness.
This was fine with Horace. If Fancy had come to the yard, it would have been under the subterfuge of being a personal butler or such. As it was, Horace had painted a nice anonymous background so no adversary saw or heard Fancy—but surely they felt him.
Never with a title, never at board or banking meetings, and never in a courtroom, Matthew was shifted, as if by sleight of hand, from slavery to Jim Crow, almost unnoticed until . . .
. . . the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad came to Matthew Fancy to retain him as a consultant on a major right-of-way controversy.
This shook Kerr, immeasurably. Unless Mr. Fancy were given a title and a contract, Horace could not forbid him from taking outside work. To do so would be to lose him. The B&O retainer was soon followed by a Who’s Who of Maryland industries—importers, distillers, insurance companies.
It was all done without public note.
Matthew Fancy’s lifelong agenda