by John Jakes
“Please don’t, Samuel. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate this.” She could barely keep from touching him.
His gaze lifted from her blouse to her face. “I wanted to see you again. And your note said it was an emergency.”
“You didn’t show that to—?”
“I read the envelope. No one saw it but me.”
He sat down, crossing his thin legs. He smiled at her. She had forgotten how crooked his teeth were. Yet she found him beautiful. Power was never homely.
“I’m late because committee work is so heavy these days. But let me hear about this emergency. Is it something that happened at Aquia Creek?”
“Falmouth. I—” She took a breath; the linen stretched even tighter. He played with the fob of his pocket watch. “There’s no way to tell you but straightforwardly. I’ve left the service. At the field hospital at Falmouth, they brought in a young Confederate officer, badly wounded.” She plunged. “I let him die. Deliberately.”
He drew out his watch. Opened and glanced at it. Shut it with a snap. Pocketed it again. Even when it was out of sight, she heard, or thought she heard, the maddening tock-tock of the movement; that and nothing else. The silence grew unendurable.
“I thought I was doing a good service! He’d only have gone back to kill more of our boys—” She faltered.
“Are you waiting for me to condemn you?” He shook his head. “I commend you, Virgilia. You did the right thing.”
She broke then, rushed forward and dropped on her knees beside his chair. “But they’re going to punish me.” Unconsciously fondling his leg, she poured out the story of Mrs. Neal and her threats. He listened so placidly she was terrified. He wasn’t interested.
Just the opposite was true. “Is that all you’re worried about, some damned Copperhead widow? There’ll be no investigation started by anyone like that. I’ll speak to a couple of people I know.” His hand crept into her hair. “Put the whole matter out of your mind.”
“Oh, Sam, thank you.” She rested her cheek on his thigh. “I’d be so grateful if you could prevent trouble.” Despite that moment of fright, the scene was playing out exactly as she had hoped. She had felt sad planning it, because circumstances forced her to accept less than what she wanted. But perhaps she could one day turn the compromise to greater advantage.
He cupped her chin and raised it, teasing with his smile but not his eyes. “I’m happy to help, Virgilia. But in politics, as I’m sure you know, the rule is quid pro quo. I’m still a family man. Much as I personally might like to alter that, it’s impossible if I’m to stay in Congress. I want to stay—I plan to be Speaker of the House before I quit. So if you want my assistance, it must be on my terms, not yours.”
What she had once hoped to bargain with, she was now trapped into surrendering. Well, why not? She was confident Sam Stout would rise and wield power and help trample out the weaknesses of Lincoln and his kind. Having part of such a man, like having half of the proverbial loaf, was better than having nothing.
He patted her hand. “Well? What’s your answer?”
“It’s yes, my darling,” she said, rising and reaching to loosen the tie of her blouse.
108
THE DAY AFTER STANLEY’S philandering was discovered, he wrote a letter to Jeannie Canary saying that urgent business called him out of town. He enclosed a one-hundred-dollar bank draft to soften her grief and fled to Newport.
To his amazement, Isabel showed hardly any surprise when he alighted from an island hackney at the door of Fairlawn. She asked how he managed to get away. He said he had trumped up a story about one of the twins being injured. It might come true; out on the lawn they were attempting to brain each other with horseshoes. How he despised those obnoxious boys.
During the night, he wakened grumpily to see Isabel passing the open door of his bedroom on the way to hers. “Was that someone at the downstairs door?”
“Yes. They mistook this house for another.” Her voice had a peculiar, strained quality. The lamp chimney rattled in her hand as she said good night and disappeared.
Early next morning, before breakfast, she handed him his coat. “Please take a walk with me on the beach, Stanley.” Though the request was phrased politely, her tone left him no option. Soon they were alone on the seashore. The air was cool, the water calm, the tide running out. A few spotted sandpipers pecked about, hunting tidbits. Sunlight turned the Atlantic into a carpet of silver beads.
Isabel spoke suddenly and with unexpected ferocity. “I would like to discuss your new friend.”
A witless smile. “Which friend?”
She bared her teeth. “Your doxy. The performer at the Varieties. The person who came to the house last night had the correct address.” She pulled a crumpled flimsy from a pocket of her skirt. “And this telegraph message.”
So quickly? “My God, who—who informed—?”
“It isn’t important. I’ve known about the woman for weeks, and I’ll give you no explanations there, either. I understand she’s hardly talented enough to be called an actress, though I suppose she has other, less public, talents.” Except for the moment when she brandished the flimsy, Isabel maintained perfect control, which somehow made her assault all the more threatening.
Stanley bit his knuckle and wandered in an agitated circle, like one of the shore birds. “Isabel, if you know, others must. How many?” She didn’t answer. “I’m ruined.”
“Nonsense. As usual, you misunderstand the way the world operates. You’re dithering over nothing. No one cares if you philander, provided you’re discreet and sufficiently well off.” She took several steps away from him while, with vacant eyes, he watched the wind ripple sand ribbons along the beach. “It doesn’t matter to others, and it doesn’t matter to me. You know I loathe that part of marriage anyway. Now I want you to pay particular attention to what I’m going to say next. Stanley?”
She raised a fist, then forced it down to her side before continuing. “You may do whatever you wish in private. But if you ever again show yourself in public with that trollop—an hour after you paraded at the Patent Office, it was all over town—I will enlist a regiment of lawyers to strip you of your last penny. I will do it even though every property law in the land favors husbands over wives. Do you understand?”
A fine spray from her mouth struck him. He scrubbed his left cheek with the back of his hand. She had made him angry.
“Yes. I see how it is. You don’t care a damn for me. It’s only my money that holds you. My money, my position—”
The morning wind became a chorus of eerie voices, whispering. Isabel seemed touched with sadness, although, after a shrug, her reply was firm. “Yes. The war’s changed many things. That is all I have to say.”
He was too upset to notice the unsteadiness of her step as she left. In a moment she paused to look back, and the sunlight struck her eyes, lending them the brightness of the reflecting sea.
“I did rather like you when we were courting, though.”
She turned and walked away through the sand ribbons and scurrying shore birds.
Stanley wandered up and down the beach for a while. With a blink, he realized he was wearing his royal blue frock coat. He groped in the large inner pocket—ah! Shuddering with relief, he pulled out the flask and uncorked it. He swallowed half the remaining bourbon, then staggered to a large rock and sat down.
A fishing smack hove into view, coming around from Narragansett Bay. Scavenging gulls swooped close to the stern. Stanley felt very close to being ill, with a monumental sickness no doctor could name or cure.
A word Isabel had hurled surfaced in his churning thoughts. The changes had done it. There had been too many, too rapidly. Boss Cameron’s patronage, unexpected financial opportunity, great personal profit achieved without his brother’s help or interference.
Change bestrode the country like a fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse. A mob of free niggers had been loosed in the land to frighten God-fearing white people with the
ir strange dark faces and, worse, to upset the economic order. Just last month a freedman had brazenly applied for a job as floor sweeper at Lashbrook’s. Dick Pennyford hired him. After his first day, the Negro was waylaid at the gate and beaten by six white workers. That grieved and angered Pennyford, but he wrote Stanley that it also taught him a lesson. He wouldn’t repeat the mistake.
Stanley knew who was responsible for such incidents and for the new assertiveness of Negroes. His friends. It was their program he was forced to pretend to admire if he wanted to preserve and expand his influence in Washington. That pulled him two ways, left his nerves shredded. There were so many changes he could hardly count them all. He was independently wealthy. He was a confidant of politicians who would control the nation within a very few years. He was in love, or thought so. He was a known philanderer. And he was far along the road to becoming a drunkard and didn’t give a damn. He finished the bourbon and threw the flask at the tide line, a futile gesture of rage. No hiding from the truth any longer. He was incompetent to deal with so much change. On the other hand, his status was such that few, if any, of the problems created by the changes would affect him adversely, provided he conserved his capital and observed a certain hypocritical standard of behavior. That was the most staggering change of all. One so vast and bewildering that he leaned over, elbows on his knees, palms on his eyes, and cried.
Stanley would have been surprised to know that his wife, whom he considered glacial and a shrew, also wept that morning. Safely locked in her rooms at Fairlawn, Isabel cried much longer and harder than he did. Finally, when she had exhausted her tears, she settled down to think and to wait for the redness to leave her eyes, so she could again show herself to the servants.
Her husband was lost to her except in name. Well, so be it. She had used him as an instrument for accumulating new wealth, and with it she could now finance a rise to unprecedented social eminence in Washington, her home state, and the nation. By no stretch of the imagination did Stanley have the ability to become a national political figure. But he already had the money to buy and sell such men. Since she would always guide his choices, that made her the true possessor of the power.
Putting aside her brief and regrettable descent into sentimentality here and on the beach, Isabel contemplated all the days of glory still ahead. She was sure she would experience them if she could only keep Stanley in favor with the Republicans and sober. Success had ruined him, for reasons she could neither understand nor identify.
It didn’t matter. Many a strong queen had ruled through a weak king.
109
AT THE END OF the day on which Billy rejoined the Battalion of Engineers, he wrote:
June 16—Petersburg (4 mis. distant). Steamer journey to City Point uneventful but very hot. Saw the great pontoon bridge at Broadway Landing, 1 mi. above the piers where I disembarked. How I wish I’d come back in time to help create such a marvel. Maj. Duane, cordially greeting me upon my arrival at this encampment, said no longer pontoon bridge had ever been built by any army, anywhere. It stretches nearly half a mile, shore to shore, & where the tidal channel runs, a drawbridge section permits the passage of gunboats. Gen. Benham & the 15th & 50th N. Y. Engineers (Vols.) built the bridge in a record 8 hrs. The sight of it renewed my pride in my branch of service.
The battalion crossed the bridge not long before I saw it. Our encampment is at Bryant House, the temporary Second Div. hospital, but we are to move on. Received a warm welcome from many old comrades; all wanted to hear of my escape from Libby, which I said unknown Union sympathizers arranged. Even belatedly, C. might in some way be harmed by the truth; he is such a fine friend & risked himself so greatly for me, I will not permit it to happen through any act of mine.
Thoughts of C. sadden me. My brotherly affection remains unflagging; & I am now twice in debt to him for saving my life. But he is not the laughing fellow I first met in Carolina & came to know at W.P. The war has hurt him somehow. I felt it powerfully. If I were of a literary turn, I might seek metaphors. Some spell has changed the bear cub to a wolf.
Hungry; will continue later.***
Receiving assurances of my fitness for duty—leg is still painful but am walking with less difficulty—M?j. D. said that when we move nearer the enemy works, I shall be doing survey work, practically on top of the rebs. He then went on to enlighten me about the essence of the siege plan:
Through Petersb., a town of less than 18,000, pass all but one of the major Confed. RR’s from the S & SW. Thus the P’burg junction is the south end of Richmond’s last supply line. Take P.—which U.S.G. has already tried once—& Rich, withers and dies. It cannot happen too soon for me. I have already remarked in these pages about the distressing—***
Interruption. Rushed outside in response to a shattering roar. Was told it is “Dictator,” also nicknamed “the Petersburg Express,” a great 13” seacoast mortar of 17,000 lbs. From a specially reinforced flatcar, the mortar fires explosive shells into the city from a location on the P’burg-City Pt. RR line. I must note a new & startling change I observed in the Army of the Potomac, viz.—large numbers of negro soldiers, where none were seen before. I hear their bravery & intelligence praised lavishly; just yesterday, the CT (Col. Troops) Div. of E. W. Hinks mounted a successful attack on a sector of the enemy defense line.
My time in Libby did teach me how men long enslaved must feel. I yearned to murder Clyde Vesey and was unashamedly glad when C. shot him during the escape. I now accept emancipation as the only course this country can, in conscience, pursue.
Yet on some things, I hold back. I am thus far unable to look upon negroes in army uniform as the equal of white men in the same uniform. I am ashamed of that reservation—weakness?—but it is there. The day closed out with an unpleasant incident bearing upon this general subject.
The battalion marched 18 mis. today, in merciless heat, with water in short supply. Despite the cheery reception given me, I could tell the men were cranky. Two negro soldiers, sgt’s in some reg’t of Gen. Ferrero’s 4th (Col.) Div., chanced to pass through with pouches of official papers for City Pt. It was not unusual for them to ask for a drink of water in this hot weather. But they were not allowed it. Three of our worst-tempered led the sgt’s to the casks, which two proceeded to block with their bodies while the third danced around dangling the dipper just out of reach of the two colored sgt’s, all the while chanting the old tune “Zip Coon “ in a derisive manner. The sgt’s, who outranked our three, again politely asked for water, were refused, and ordered that it be given—which caused side arms to be drawn by the tormentors and (stupidly) a request to be made that the negroes perform what one of the trio termed “a shuffle step.” He fired 2 rounds at the ground to stimulate obedience, at which point the unfortunate sgt’s wisely ran away. What stings most is this. A doz. or more of the battalion stood around enjoying the discomfiture of the sgt’s, and the few who did not laugh openly condoned the callous actions by saying & doing nothing to stop them. To my shame, I must here confess that I was among the silent.
I could plead tiredness or some other excuse, but in this jrnl. I try to hew to the truth. On this occasion the truth is painful. I looked at those 2 black men as something less than what I am—therefore of no consequence.
I have suffered stinging attacks of conscience ever since. I was wrong today—as thousands in this army who think and behave the same way are wrong. Libby is still working its change upon me. New thoughts and impulses stir—so unsettling, I cannot help wishing they would go away. But they won’t, any more than the negro question will go away. Though countless millions might like to do so, we can no longer push the black man through some door & lock him out of sight, content to believe his color renders him unworthy of our concern & relieves us of responsibility to treat him as a fellow human being.
It is a shameful thing I did—rather, did not do this afternoon. Writing it down helps somewhat. It is a first step, albeit not one which will induce a relaxation of my con
science.
I do have a conviction there will be other steps, however; where they will lead I cannot say, except in a most general way. I think I am starting down a road I have never walked, nor even seen, before.
110
ALONG THE ASHLEY, THOSE old enough to remember the Mexican War and how Orry Main came home from it thought history had repeated itself with Orry’s older brother. Orry had lost an arm, Cooper a son. Hardly the same thing, yet the results were oddly similar. Each man was changed, withdrawn. The less charitable gossiped about severe mental disorder.
Cooper no longer insulted the occasional Mont Royal visitor by forcing him or her to listen to radical opinions. It was presumed that he still held such opinions, though one couldn’t be positive. He limited his conversation with outsiders to pleasantries and generalities. And although Sherman’s huge army was rumbling down on Atlanta, he refused to discuss the war.
But it remained very much on his mind. That was the case one hot June evening when he sequestered himself in the library after supper.
Cooper loved the library with its aroma of fine leather mingled with inevitable low-country mustiness. There in the corner stood the form holding Orry’s old army uniform. Above the mantel spread the realistic mural of Roman ruins, which Cooper had delighted in studying when he sat on his father’s knee as a boy.
Although the orange of sunset still painted the wall opposite the half-closed shutters, he lit a lamp and was soon in a chair, using a lap desk to write. The metal nib scratched so loudly he didn’t hear the door open. Judith walked in with a newspaper.
“You must look at this Mercury, dear. It contains an overseas dispatch that came through Wilmington day before yesterday.”
“Yes?” he said, glancing up from the memorial he was drafting to send to the state legislature. It argued for preventing further loss of life any means of a cease-fire and immediate peace negotiations.
