by John Jakes
“How is the vote?” she asked, pouring him hot herb tea. His veined, age-spotted hands shook as he tried to lift the cup. He gave up.
“Thirty-five certain. It hinges upon one man.”
“Who?”
“Senator Ross.”
“Edmund Ross of Kansas? He’s a strong abolitionist.”
“Was,” Stevens corrected, with distaste. “Ross insists he’ll vote his conscience, even though people in Kansas are deluging him with telegrams saying he’s finished if he votes acquittal. Senator Pomeroy’s hammering him. So is the Union Congressional Committee.” That body of Radical senators and representatives had been organized to send messages to local party organizations urging them to pressure undecided senators. “Ross has even received threats against his life,” Stevens added. “He isn’t alone.”
With exhausted eyes, he stared at Virgilia. “We must sway Ross. We must, or it’s all been for nothing, and the Bourbons will recapture the South.”
“You mustn’t take the verdict quite so seriously, Thad. Your life doesn’t depend on it.”
“But it does, Virgilia. If we fail, I’m through. I don’t have the heart or the strength to fight such a battle again.”
On Saturday, the sixteenth of May, four days before the Republican convention, Virgilia awoke well before dawn, unable to sleep. She dressed and left the cottage in which Stout had once kept her; she’d thought of moving, to rid herself of memories the place aroused. But it was hers, it was comfortable, and she was able to afford it on her orphanage wage.
She walked through a silent section where the homes grew smaller and poorer. Soon she reached the orphanage. Surprisingly, she found the front door unlocked. She smelled coffee as she walked to the kitchen. He was seated at the table.
“Scipio. Why are you up?”
“Couldn’t sleep. I’m glad you’re here. We must talk. I’m supposed to deliver Lewis to his new foster parents in Hagerstown this morning.”
“I remember.” She accepted a mug of coffee from the enameled pot. His amber hand brushed hers. He reacted as if burned.
“I’d feel better if you didn’t go to the Capitol,” he said.
“I must. I want to hear the verdict.”
“It could be dangerous. Huge crowds. Possibly a riot.”
“It’s good of you to be concerned, but I’ll be fine. You mustn’t worry.”
He walked around the table and stood gazing down at her. The words seemed to tear from him. “But I do. Far more than you know.”
Their eyes held. Shaken, feeling a torrent of response, she slammed the coffee mug on the wooden table and dashed out. She was unable to deal with the emotions revealed so unexpectedly in him, and in her own heart.
“That’s thirty-four,” whispered the stranger on Virgilia’s left. “I mark Waitman Willey of West Virginia probable. So it’s up to Ross.”
Hisses from those nearby silenced the man, who went on scribbling and rechecking his tally on a scrap of paper. Before the roll call, George Williams of Oregon had moved that the first vote be taken on the final article, the omnibus, because if that passed, so would the others. The change in order was approved.
Chief Justice Chase spoke. “Mr. Senator Ross, how say you? Is the respondent, Andrew Johnson, President of the United States, guilty or not guilty of a high misdemeanor as charged in this article?”
He stood there a moment, the unprepossessing man from Kansas. Union veteran and old-line abolitionist, he was currently campaigning for removal of the Indian tribes by force. Virgilia watched Thad Stevens sit forward at the managers’ table, white with strain.
Ross cleared his throat.
“How say you?” Chase repeated.
“Not guilty.”
A roar in the gallery. Then wild applause, loud booing, handkerchiefs waved, a sea of whipping white. Stevens slumped back, eyes shut. One arm lolled limply over the arm of his chair.
Virgilia knew the vote was a watershed. The Congress had tried to exert its primacy over the executive and, a moment ago, the effort failed. No matter what else transpired, Radical Reconstruction was over. Thad Stevens had predicted it would be so if the vote went against impeachment. Stevens’s body, slumped in his chair, said it again, unequivocally.
On the Capitol steps, people screamed, danced, hugged one another. A beefy man in a derby caught Virgilia’s arm. “Old Andy twisted their tail. That’s worth a kiss to celebrate.”
His mouth swooped toward her while a hand stole to her breast. Those capering around them paid no attention. Virgilia twisted aside, but she was trapped. “Ain’t you for Andy?” the man growled, pulling her.
“You drunken sot, leave her alone.”
Virgilia recognized his voice before she saw him. The beefy man shouted, “No damn nigger can tell me—” Then Scipio’s hand caught him by the throat, holding him until he gagged.
The revelers kept yelling, pushing, tilting bottles, dancing on the steps. Scipio released the beefy man. He fled as fast as the crowd would allow.
“What about Hagerstown?” Virgilia exclaimed above the noise.
“I postponed it. I couldn’t let you risk this mob alone. Thinking about it kept me from sleeping, or eating anything—”
Behind him, people staggered and pushed. He was thrown against her. She raised her hands to arrest his forward motion and found herself holding him. A white woman, a mulatto man. In the tumult, no one cared.
He put his mouth close to her ear. “This is an easy place to tell you I’ve come to admire you. I’ve watched you and watched you with the children. You’re a gentle, loving woman. Intelligent, principled—”
She wanted to tell him of all the evil things in her past. Something stronger, something live-giving, crushed the impulse. People can change.
“Beautiful, too,” Scipio Brown said with his lips at her ear. She denied it with a nervous laugh. He was amused. “Does all this really come as such a great surprise?”
“I had some hint.” She kept fighting against the buffeting of her back. “I saw the looks you gave me. But there are too many things against it, Scipio, not the least of them color. There’s my age.” A hand strayed to her graying hair. “I’m ten years older.”
“Why should that bother you? It doesn’t bother me. I love you, Virgilia. I have the buggy waiting. Come with me.”
“Where?”
For a moment he seemed less than his assured adult self. He seemed shy, hesitant. But he managed to say, “I thought—if you weren’t unwilling—could we be alone at your house?”
Her eyes grew damp. It was overwhelming, the idea of someone caring for her that much. Yet she knew a similar emotion had been stirring in her, beneath the level of thought, for a long time. She hadn’t dared recognize it, or name it, till now.
“Virgilia?”
“Yes. I would love that,” she said softly. Because of the tumult he couldn’t hear the words, but he understood. She took his arm. “I’ll fix breakfast for us afterward.”
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43
THREE WEEKS AFTER THE parents’ program at Mrs. Allwick’s Academy, the term ended. For the last time until fall, the girls trooped noisily out the front door at 4:30 on a sparkling June afternoon. Several beaux waited on the
broad, cool porch, including Sara Jane Oberdorf’s apprentice undertaker.
Marie-Louise remained unforgiven for the tableau tragedy. Sweeping past, Sara Jane said sweetly, “Still no one waiting? Well, perhaps when you grow up in a few years.” She clutched her young man. “Lyle. How darling of you to be here.”
Desolate, Marie-Louise pulled her books against her bosom and walked down the steep wrought-iron steps. Her head was lowered; she saw the shadow fall on her skirt. “Excuse me.” She sidestepped, glanced up, and dropped the books.
“Miss Main.” Theo German bowed and swept off his straw planter’s hat, which had a peacock-feather band. He was again out of uniform. “Allow me.” He knelt to pick up the books.
“I thought—” Get hold of yourself, ninny. “I imagined you’d never speak to me after that dreadful evening. You must have thought I cut you.”
“Of course not. I saw it was your father’s doing.” He straightened and offered his arm. “Do you have time for a stroll on the Battery?”
If I’m late, Mama will quiz me. And what if Papa should find out?
But Cooper’s behavior at the program had lighted the fires of revolt in his daughter, and heightened her attraction to the young officer. “Oh, yes,” she said.
Her bosom accidentally touched his coat sleeve. She felt as though a lightning bolt had struck her. Theo smiled, taking note of the sudden pink in her cheeks. There was some in his as well.
Bedazzling needles of reflected sunlight bobbed on the surface of the harbor. Gulls followed a fish trawler chugging in from the Atlantic. Out at Sumter, above the ruins, the Union flag stood straight in the breeze.
“Do you often go about town without your uniform?” Marie-Louise asked, desperately trying to remember Mrs. Allwick’s lessons on social conversation. Her mind was a mass of glue.
“I do,” he said. “General Canby doesn’t object, and it’s easier for me to get people to talk. I get helpful insights about local feelings that way. Of course, there are a few people who refuse to say anything at all after they hear me speak.”
“Because of your accent.”
He laughed. “I don’t have an accent. You do. I find it charming, though.”
“Oh, Mr. German—Captain German—”
“How about Theo?” he said, warming her with the friendly innocence of his blue eyes. Marie-Louise was suddenly so in love she could have perished of ecstasy and sunk through the ground to China.
“All right, but you must call me Marie-Louise.”
“With pleasure.”
The gulls squawked and swooped. The young couple strolled under stately old trees near the water. Theo told her that he was twenty-four—she’d known he was a worldly older man the moment she saw him—and attached to Canby’s staff. “That day on the railroad, I was sightseeing. The loveliest sight I saw was in that passenger car.”
“Papa was in a perfect fury when you gave the colored woman your seat.” She sighed. “He’s still fighting the war.”
“Your father and half of Charleston. Still, the other half’s enchanting. I’ve never encountered Southerners before, except for great lots of prisoners who naturally weren’t in a good mood. I find Southerners are warm, charming people. And Carolina has a grand climate except in the summer.”
“What did you mean about prisoners?”
He explained that he’d been commissioned in the last year of the war and posted to Camp Douglas, the huge prison compound south of Chicago. “We had thousands of inmates, but I heard shots fired only once, when a half-dozen attempted an escape. Only once did we feel any real danger. There was a Sunday in November of ’64 when Chicago was seething with rumors that Confederate secret agents were going to torch the city and liberate our captives. Nothing came of it. When the prison was closed a year later, I decided to stay in the Army and see some of the country. I had never been out of Illinois until I came here.” He smiled again, lightly touching her mittened hand on his arm. “I was lucky to be posted to South Carolina. I’d like to settle here and escape the snow and cold weather forever.”
“Will you always be in the Army?”
“I think not. I was a law apprentice when I joined up. I’d like to finish my studies and practice.” Marie-Louise feared she’d topple off the esplanade and drown if he kept turning those blue eyes on her.
Other beaux strolling with their sweethearts drifted in and out of the dappled shade cast by the trees. Along one of the oyster-shell paths came an old black man waving a fly whisk and pushing a creaky two-wheeled cart. He advertised his wares with a musical chant. “Buy melon. Sweet winter melon here.”
“Would you like a slice of musk melon?” Theo asked. She was too nervous to do more than laugh and nod, but he didn’t seem to mind. He bought slices from the vendor, bringing them back to the iron bench where he’d laid her books. Marie-Louise grasped the melon by means of a bit of paper wrapped around the rind. Careful as she was, the juicy melon leaked all over her chin. She was mortified.
Theo whipped out a handkerchief. “Allow me.” With gentlemanly dabs, he dried her chin. Her body throbbed at every touch.
“I hope you don’t think me too forward, Miss Main.”
“Oh, no. But you must think me silly, nattering and giggling all the time. It’s just that—” Did she dare? Yes, better to risk an explanation than lose him. “I’m not experienced with beaux. I’ve never really had one.”
The melon dripped in his fingers. He bent toward her in the cool and breezy shade. “May I say it’s my fervent hope that you’ll never need another?”
That declaration brought her near the point of collapse. Then, astonishing her again, he leaned forward quickly and brushed his lips across the corner of hers.
A great silence enveloped her. The chant of the melon man was gone, and the gull cries, the whistle of a packet putting out to sea, even the frantic tubbing of her heart. Her nervousness dropped away as she stood near him, gazing at him, irrevocably changed. Girlhood was over.
In their hands, the melon slices dripped, pattering the oyster-shell path. Neither of them noticed.
Gradually she forced herself back to reality. She saw the slant of the light falling on the great gabled houses of South Battery. It was late.
“I must be going back to Tradd Street.”
“May I escort you?”
“Certainly.” This time there was no fumbling as she slipped her arm around his. She felt at ease, womanly. No one paid them any heed as they strolled up Church in the mellow spring light.
“I’d love for you to meet my family,” Theo said.
“I’d like that, too.”
“I have eleven brothers and sisters.”
“Good heavens,” she cried.
He grinned. “I love them, but it did make for a crowded household, and skimpy portions at the table. Father’s wage wasn’t big enough to handle so many mouths. He’s a Lutheran minister.”
“Oh, dear. Not an abolitionist, too?”
“Yes, he was.”
“And a Republican?”
“I’m afraid so. I’m the second youngest child, so I always had to sleep on the floor. We didn’t have enough beds. It’s the reason I joined the Army. To have a bed of my own and regular meals. Soldiers grouse about the poor food and bad mattresses. For me, it’s the life of a prince.”
Seeing the Tradd Street intersection but one square away, she said, “Like you, I’m very glad the Army brought you here, Theo.” She was shocked by her own boldness.
As they walked on, she told him about the loss of her brother off the North Carolina coast, and the harrowing moments in the sea when she feared they’d all drown. “Papa was much less severe before Judah died. It did something to him, and he’s never recovered.”
“That’s tragic. It does explain the way he reacted to me. I hope it isn’t an impossible obstacle.” In the shadow of a high brick wall, he faced her and clasped her hand. “I want to pay court to you in the proper way—You’re frowning.”
&n
bsp; “Well, it would be much easier if you were—not what you are.”
“As in Mr. Shakespeare’s play?”
“What?”
“Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo? In other words, why am I Romeo, a Montague? An enemy? Will it truly make a difference?”
Marie-Louise went swirling down into the blue whirlpools of his eyes, abandoning herself to emotions so fierce, she wondered if she could endure them. “No,” she declared, all at once very certain of what she wanted. “No, it shall not.”
“Your father—”
“No,” she repeated confidently.
He left her at the gate of the Tradd Street house, promising to call formally the next afternoon. With a parting clasp of her hand, he was gone, leaving her floating there, several feet above the mundane earth.
“No!” Cooper clattered his spoon against the bowl of lamb stew. “I won’t have some Yankee freebooter calling on my daughter.”
Marie-Louise started to cry.
Judith reached out to squeeze her daughter’s hand. To her husband she said, “It’s a perfectly reasonable request.”
“If he were a Southerner. One of us.”
“Aunt Brett married a Yankee officer—” Marie-Louise began.
“Without causing the collapse of civilization as we know it,” Judith remarked.
The irony was lost. “I refuse to have some yellow dog from Canby’s staff sniffing around my family.”
“You make it sound so crude and nasty,” Marie-Louise cried. “It isn’t like that.”
“Please reconsider, Cooper,” Judith began.
He shot his chair back and rose. “Allow my daughter to be courted by a shoulder-straps whose father is a Bible-thumping Republican? I’d sooner have that fellow LaMotte in my house. The decision is made. I am going to the garden to work while the light lasts.”
With quick strides that rapped hard on the polished floor, he left the room. Judith braced for a new flood of tears. Instead, she was surprised by what she saw in her daughter’s eyes. A silent rage not at all typical of a girl so young.
