“You’ll see,” Mary had retorted, tossing her head and looking to Elizabeth for reassurance. Elizabeth, smiling, had acknowledged that anything was possible.
Even now, years later, knowing how it had all turned out, Ann wondered how a young girl could have acquired such a strange, preternaturally ambitious obsession.
In the years that had followed, whenever the sisters or Mary’s friends mused aloud about the sort of man they hoped to marry one day, Mary would state with all confidence that she intended to wed the president of the United States. “You wouldn’t settle for a governor?” Frances had replied archly on one such occasion.
“Or a mere senator?” Ann had chimed in, shaking with laughter.
“Perhaps he’ll start as one of those, but he’ll rise,” Mary had said, her tone nonchalant but her expression hurt. At that, Frances had ceased teasing her, but Ann had found it far too amusing to let go. Whenever a new suitor called on Mary—and there were many as she grew to be one of the prettiest and most admired belles in Lexington—after his departure Ann would inquire, with feigned solemnity, whether Mary considered him worthy of the presidential chair. Mary would give her a withering look and flounce off, often noting airily over her shoulder that at least she had suitors.
A childhood fancy was one matter, but as the Todd sisters—who all eventually enjoyed the attention of an abundance of beaux—put away girlish ideals and regarded prospective husbands more pragmatically, Mary clung to her astonishing ambition to marry a president. Even knowing her as they did, the sisters were surprised, and Elizabeth was quite dismayed, when Mary declined several marriage proposals because the gentleman in question had no potential for or interest in becoming president. She even discouraged Stephen Douglas, a wealthy, well-educated rising star in the Democratic Party whom she liked very much, only because she did not think the American people would elect him to the highest office in the land.
“He is more likely than any of your beaux to become president one day,” Elizabeth had protested when Mary confessed her feelings to her sisters. “No gentleman of your acquaintance since Mr. Clay has been so likely to rise so high.”
“But Mr. Douglas will not rise high enough,” Mary had replied, smiling to soften her words. None of them liked to disappoint Elizabeth, who had become a second mother to them all after Mama’s death. “He will make someone else a wonderful husband someday, but he is not for me.”
Not long thereafter, Ann and Frances had marveled that after so much calculation and with so strong a conviction, Mary had chosen a poor, self-educated, backwoods bumpkin of a lawyer who for all his reputed brilliance had no idea how to conduct himself in good society and surely would count himself very fortunate indeed if he managed to climb his way into the US House of Representatives. But fortune had favored Abraham Lincoln in those days, and off to Congress he went. Then, soon after losing a bid for the Senate, he had been elected president.
“Mary evidently saw something in him we did not,” Frances had told Ann a few days after the election. “She has had the last laugh after all.”
Ann had been too irritated to do more than press her lips together, force a smile, and nod. She liked Abe, and she and Clark had liked him even more after he became president, but she hated that Mary’s astonishing childhood ambitions had proven not so ludicrous after all. Only a few short years later, however, Mary’s glorious rise had ended in a devastating fall, and her old ambitions proved to be nothing more than hubris. All her life she had longed to be the wife of the president, but if her husband had not gone to the White House, he very likely would still be alive.
Perhaps that was enough to drive a woman mad, and yet Ann could not quite believe it of Mary. Surely this recent sound and fury was nothing more than another scheme gone terribly wrong, another ambitious plan that had collapsed all around her. And even if Mary had been knocked off her feet, she had certainly found a fine place to land. Ann had read up on Bellevue Place after the news had broken, and by all accounts it was a well-regarded private asylum on twenty secluded, picturesque acres on the banks of the Fox River thirty-five miles west of Chicago. The patients, no more than thirty-five at any one time, were ladies of quality, “nervous invalids” who were “not insane” or who occupied “a border-land between undoubted insanity and doubtful sanity.” They were provided with the modern, moral treatment of “rest, diet, baths, fresh air, occupation, diversion, change of scene, no more medicine than absolutely necessary, and the least restraint possible.” The three-story, ivy-covered, limestone main building was bright and spacious inside, with wide hallways, high ceilings, and large, well-lit rooms, each of which was decorated with elegant furnishings, vases of fresh flowers, and potted plants, all thoughtfully arranged to create a sense of restfulness, freedom, and seclusion. Surrounding the patients’ residences were acres of gardens boasting manicured lawns, stands of mature evergreens and elms, ornamental shrubs, rosebushes, and flower beds, with smooth walkways winding throughout and hammocks and chaises lounges set in restful spots. In inclement weather, patients could wander through the vast greenhouses, forty thousand square feet of them, or make use of the carriages and sleighs provided, upon request, for daily outings.
Reading the brochures and descriptions in the papers, Ann could not recall having ever spent a holiday in such a lovely place as poor, dear, fragile Mary was forced to endure now.
She knew it would be unwise to express such cynical observations to her sisters when they met, for they were naturally inclined to sympathy, even though Mary had wronged them too. If they suspected Ann of schadenfreude, they would dismiss every word she spoke and make their plans without her. And if there was anything Ann dreaded, it was being excluded from her sisters’ plans.
“Perhaps I should accompany you,” Clark mused the next morning as they went down to breakfast, he attired in one of his better suits for a day at his flagship store, she in a brass-colored walking suit with a snug jacket and long, bustled skirt of wool muslin and ecru silk. “Someone needs to be there to represent the best interests of our family.”
Ann regarded him from beneath raised brows as they entered the dining room. “I will be there for that.”
He pulled out her chair and helped her seat herself at the table as the maid bustled in with the coffee tray. “Indeed, but it may be difficult for you to be entirely objective, since you and Mary are so much alike.”
“What on earth do you mean?” protested Ann. “Perhaps we look more like each other than any of our sisters, taking into account the difference in our ages and the hardships Mary has suffered, but there the resemblance ends.”
“I meant no offense,” he said mildly, taking his place at the head of the table as the maid filled their cups and hastened back to the kitchen. “I rather thought that was why you two did not get along, because you’re so similar.”
“Nonsense. If Mary and I are not particularly close, it’s because she’s always resented me for usurping her place as the baby in the family.” Just as Ann’s own place had been promptly usurped by her brother George and the many half-siblings who had come after. “Mary was a moody girl, in temperament like our father but more capricious, a bundle of nervous activity. She was much like an April day, sunny all over with laughter one moment, then rainy the next as she cried as though her heart would break.”
“Indeed,” remarked Clark noncommittally. “Nothing like you at all.”
She gave him a sharp look, but as the cook and maid entered at that moment with their breakfast, she did not rebuke him. “You couldn’t come anyway. You’re needed at the store.”
“Edgar can manage quite well without me. He’s proven time and again that he’ll be a fine steward of my establishments when I entrust them to him for good—which I eventually shall do, sooner rather than later.”
“You should still ask Allen if he wants any part of the stores,” Ann reminded him. It was a familiar argument. “Edgar would not begrudge his younger brother a stake in the business.”
/> “Allen seems inclined to choose another trade. Why he would want to work for a stranger when he could manage an entire dry goods store with his own name above the door—” Her husband shook his head and picked up his fork. “He’s young. I’ll ask him again when the time comes, if it would please you.”
“It would,” Ann replied. How much more fortunate than Mary, Frances, and Emilie was she, to be mulling over simple domestic matters with a husband who contemplated retirement with every reasonable expectation of achieving it. She could afford to be generous of spirit, she chided herself. She must give Mary the benefit of the doubt and approach Elizabeth’s conference with an open mind.
A few hours later, when the carriage left her in the raked gravel drive before Elizabeth’s elegant home, she felt a faint echo of the awe and expectation she had felt thirty-three years ago to the month when, shortly after her eighteenth birthday, she had come to Springfield to live with Frances and William to seek a husband, although her stepmother and elder sisters would never have put it so indelicately. Mary had been living with Elizabeth and Ninian at the time, carrying the burden of the same unspoken but clearly understood mission. It was not considered ideal for younger sisters to marry before their elder sisters, but Mary was almost twenty-two, she had declined several proposals, and her understanding with Mr. Lincoln had fallen apart in January, much to the Edwardses’ relief, for they had never approved of the match. It had been decided that Ann should not have to wait for Mary to be comfortably settled before securing her own happiness, not with Mary’s prospects in decline and the family home in Lexington becoming uncomfortably overcrowded.
Then as now, the Edwards residence had been regarded as one of the finest in Springfield, well suited to the son of the former governor of Illinois, a successful lawyer who enjoyed great political expectations of his own, and his lovely bride. There the best society gathered for dinners, dances, and teas, politicians mingled with prosperous businessmen, and lovely young ladies and charming gentlemen discussed poetry, debated politics, and flirted with aplomb. Her elder sisters’ own particular circle of close friends called themselves “the Coterie,” and how thrilled and fortunate Ann had felt to find herself in the midst of such exalted company.
In the decades since, Elizabeth’s home had become as familiar and as dear to her as any she had ever called her own, so it was with a wistful pang that she knocked upon the front door and waited to be admitted. How much nicer life would be if this were her home, hers and Clark’s, and if her sisters were obliged to ride up the hill to visit her.
A maid showed her in and led her to Elizabeth’s graciously appointed parlor, the same room in which Clark had courted Ann under her eldest sister’s watchful gaze, the same room where Mary had wed Abraham after their fraught, intermittent romance had culminated in vows to love and honor until death parted them. Although the road Mary and Abe had traveled to matrimony had been rocky and winding, Ann had no doubt that they had truly loved each other. She had seen it in their eyes and had heard it in their voices. Anyone who made scurrilous claims to the contrary had not known Abe and did not know Mary.
She found Elizabeth seated with Frances on the sofa, the two of them clasping hands and murmuring earnestly to each other as if they were surrounded by eavesdroppers rather than alone in the house with only Elizabeth’s staunchly loyal servants to overhear them. They looked up when Ann entered and fell silent so abruptly that for a moment Ann feared they had been discussing her fate rather than Mary’s.
Frances rose to embrace her. “How are you, Ann?” she asked, taking her hand and leading her to an armchair by the window, the one she knew Ann favored.
“I’m well.” Ann looked from one sister to the other and amended, “As well as any of us can be, given the circumstances.”
Elizabeth sighed mournfully, while Frances nodded and regarded Ann knowingly through her spectacles, which lent her narrow face with its sharp features and distinctive nose the aspect of a wizened bird. “As heartbroken and anxious as we sisters feel, Robert is suffering far worse,” she said, reclaiming her place on the sofa beside Elizabeth. “He did not come to this decision easily, and he expects the public to condemn him for it.”
“From what I’ve read in the papers, public opinion seems to be in his favor,” Ann replied, surprised. Robert should not be blamed for responding to the problem Mary had created the only way any reasonable person could. That Mary disliked the outcome was not his fault. “Every editorial I’ve read portrays him as a dutiful son who bravely confronted an impossible situation. I haven’t read a single word of condemnation.”
“In his last letter, Robert told me that he expects condemnation to follow once word spreads that the judge appointed him conservator of his mother’s estate,” said Frances. “He is steeling himself for accusations that he had her committed under false pretenses so that he could gain control of her fortune.”
“He shared the same worries with me,” said Elizabeth. “As I told him, he had no choice. Mary’s irrational fear of poverty was so profound that she carried tens of thousands of dollars in bonds about her person. What if she had lost them? What if she had been robbed? She would have been rendered as destitute as she always wrongly feared she was.”
“Her attempt to take her own life proves that Robert was right to consult the doctors and that they were right to declare her insane,” Frances added. “He had to have her committed for her own safety.”
Ann felt heat rise in her cheeks as she observed the back-and-forth conversation, and she fervently hoped her sisters would mistake her hurt and disappointment for some other emotion. Robert had not bothered to write to her. Why not? She was no less Mary’s sister and Robert’s aunt than Elizabeth and Frances were.
“What’s done is done,” she said, keeping her voice steady, betraying none of her hurt feelings. “The question remains, what do we do now?”
“To help Mary?” asked Elizabeth.
“Yes, of course,” Ann quickly replied, although that was not what she had meant. “But also, how do we keep this quiet?”
Frances shook her head bleakly. “Any hope of keeping this quiet was lost the moment the press was allowed into the courtroom.”
“How do we manage the scandal, then, before it ruins the rest of us?”
“I don’t care about scandal,” said Elizabeth, brow furrowing. “We’ve weathered scandals before. I care about Mary.”
“We all care about Mary,” said Frances, glancing at Ann, “but Ann makes a fair point. Mary is safe and is being well looked after. Now that we know she’s receiving the care she needs, perhaps we should turn our thoughts to Robert and his family and consider how we can best console and hearten them.”
Once again Ann found herself not quite understood by her sisters, but before she could explain, Elizabeth spoke. “But do we know that?” she asked pensively, knotting her fingers together in her lap. “I don’t mean to suggest that Bellevue is unsuitable or that Dr. Patterson is not eminently qualified, but is that the best place for Mary?”
“What do you mean?” asked Ann. Could it be that Elizabeth too suspected Mary of feigning her affliction?
Frances peered at their elder sister. “Surely you wouldn’t rather see her committed to the State Hospital for the Insane, as the judge originally ruled?”
“Absolutely not! I simply wonder if it is truly necessary for her to be committed at all. Perhaps she would be better off in a familiar place where she could be attended to by devoted family.”
Ann and Frances exchanged a look of alarm. “You mean here,” said Frances carefully, “attended by you.”
Elizabeth nodded, a flush rising in her cheeks.
“Oh, Elizabeth,” said Frances, in a tender but exasperated tone. “You take too much upon yourself. How long has it been since Mary last spoke to you or wrote you a letter? Months? Years?”
Ann knew it was the latter, and Elizabeth’s wince confirmed it. “Our reconciliation is long overdue,” she said, her voice qu
ietly insistent. “The time has come to forgive past injuries and come together as sisters.”
“You’ve done nothing requiring her forgiveness,” said Ann, a trifle sharply. “It is she who has wronged you. If you forgive her, that’s all well and good, but you cannot seek her forgiveness for something you haven’t done.”
“I sided with my daughter after Julia offended her.”
“As any of us would have done in your place,” said Frances. “Julia’s insult was nothing, a trifle. She apologized, and that should have been the end of the matter.”
“Instead, it was the end of any sisterly feeling Mary once felt for me. However, I have not lost my love for her, nor my sense of my duty as a sister. I feel that I should offer to take her in—” Abruptly Elizabeth fell silent as she winced and pressed a hand to her abdomen.
“Are you still in pain?” asked Frances. “You said you were going to see your doctor again.”
“I did see him. He confirmed his original diagnosis that it’s all in my head.”
“What nonsense. If he can’t find the source of the problem, you must consult someone else more capable.”
As Elizabeth nodded and promised that she would, Ann observed the scene, unsettled, and more than a little lost. “Have you been unwell, Elizabeth?”
“Yes, a bit,” said Elizabeth, exchanging a cautious look with Frances, “but not so bad that I thought it necessary to worry everyone.”
But it was bad enough to tell Frances. “I’m not ‘everyone.’ I’m your sister.”
“Of course. I should have told you. I’m sorry.”
“You should see another doctor.”
Elizabeth held up her hands and managed a smile. “I will. I promise. Between the pair of you, I am duly scolded and convinced.”
“Good, but in the meantime, you are in no condition to take on nursing Mary,” said Frances emphatically.
“She might not accept your hospitality even if you offered,” Ann pointed out. “For all you know, she might burn your letters unread.”
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