nd,
John Alexander Fleming, who had inherited wealth, tastes, privileges,
and vices from a long line of slave-holding, tobacco-growing Flemings,
was a charming man of the Kentucky-Virginia society type. He had been
trained in the law with a view to entering the diplomatic service, but,
being an idler by nature, had never done so. Instead, horse-raising,
horse-racing, philandering, dancing, hunting, and the like, had taken
up his time. When their wedding took place the Kentucky-Virginia
society world considered it a great match. There was wealth on both
sides. Then came much more of that idle social whirl which had
produced the marriage. Even philanderings of a very vital character
were not barred, though deception, in some degree at least, would be
necessary. As a natural result there followed the appearance in the
mountains of North Carolina during a charming autumn outing of a gay
young spark by the name of Tucker Tanner, and the bestowal on him by
the beautiful Nannie Fleming--as she was then called--of her temporary
affections. Kind friends were quick to report what Fleming himself did
not see, and Fleming, roue that he was, encountering young Mr. Tanner
on a high mountain road one evening, said to him, "You get out of this
party by night, or I will let daylight through you in the morning."
Tucker Tanner, realizing that however senseless and unfair the
exaggerated chivalry of the South might be, the end would be bullets
just the same, departed. Mrs. Fleming, disturbed but unrepentant,
considered herself greatly abused. There was much scandal. Then came
quarrels, drinking on both sides, finally a divorce. Mr. Tucker Tanner
did not appear to claim his damaged love, but the aforementioned Ira
George Carter, a penniless never-do-well of the same generation and
social standing, offered himself and was accepted. By the first
marriage there had been one child, a girl. By the second there was
another child, a boy. Ira George Carter, before the children were old
enough to impress Mrs. Carter with the importance of their needs or her
own affection for them, had squandered, in one ridiculous venture after
another, the bulk of the property willed to her by her father, Major
Wickham Hedden. Ultimately, after drunkenness and dissipation on the
husband's side, and finally his death, came the approach of poverty.
Mrs. Carter was not practical, and still passionate and inclined to
dissipation. However, the aimless, fa