Beloved Scoundrel

by Clarissa Ross

  Cortez looked startled, then angrily said, “The lady in question is under my protection!”

  “You are wrong, sir,” John Wilkes Booth snapped back. “From this moment on she shall look to me as guide and protector!”

  Peter Cortez seemed thunderstruck. He was not used to being opposed and he had not any true rival for her favors. He turned to her and reproachfully said, “You are not even fully dressed, yet you consort in this stranger’s arms! Would you kindly explain?”

  “There is nothing to explain,” she said, thinking it was like a bad comedy. “Mr. Booth has just come to Washington and has not seen me for a long while. He came to visit me and since he is impulsive by nature he did not consider the awkwardness of the moment!”

  Peter looked even more angry. “Are you encouraging him?”

  She was beginning to be angry herself. She felt that Peter was behaving in a stupid male fashion and should show his confidence in her. She was the woman he had asked to marry. Surely he could trust her in such a simple situation.

  She said, “I’m neither encouraging or discouraging him. I’m merely telling you the facts!”

  “Bravo!” John Wilkes Booth clapped his hands and laughed at her anger. He told Peter, “Now, I suggest you be the gentleman and leave us to our privacy.”

  Peter was plainly aghast. “Very well,” he exclaimed. “I leave you both to good riddance!”

  He stomped out of the dressing room. A stricken Gloria stood by the door nervously watching after him.

  Fanny told the maid, “I will not need you any further tonight, Gloria. You may go!”

  Gloria came back and picked up her street dress and held it out for her to slip into. Fanny took the dress from her and in a curt tone said, “You will leave, Gloria!” The black woman did as she was told and closed the door after her.

  “Damn, I enjoyed that!” John Booth said and he took the dress from Fanny’s hands and held it up with a smile. “Let me for once be dresser to a true beauty!”

  She sighed and let him help her on with the dress and button it up the back. Then she turned to him with, “You know you have caused me great trouble tonight?”

  “I?” he said innocently.

  “Don’t pretend you’re not aware of it,” she went on with a hint of the anger she had offered Peter.

  The handsome actor smiled and stroked his mustache. “That is a churlish fellow! He ought to know better than burst in on your privacy! Also, he gave you very weak support in the play!”

  Her eyebrows lifted. “You saw the play?”

  “I was in the audience for all of it. I would not disturb you before the end came. I am a professional.”

  She stared at him. “Then it was you called out and caused the disturbance?”

  “I spoke for the South once during the evening, if that is what you mean,” he said airily.

  Fanny looked at the tall, cloaked man with disbelief. “You almost ruined the performance for us. The audience were hard to keep in hand from that moment on!”

  He made an easy gesture. “You are too sensitive! Feelings are bound to run high while this cursed war goes on! We have tricked and betrayed Jefferson Davis to lead his people into war in the hope of decimating them! But the South will rise triumphant!”

  She sank down on the bench by her make-up mirror and gazed up at him in consternation. “I hoped that the years might tame you a little. They haven’t!”

  He smiled at her. “Then who respects a tamed beast?”

  She shook her head. “Peter is very important to me. You have caused hard feelings between us.”

  “Only if he is a fool,” Booth said. “And it does not matter in any case. I told you years ago that I wanted to make you mine. I will look after you now that fate has ordained that you should be free!”

  She listened scarcely knowing what to say. Then she managed, “You forget that Peter Cortez is my leading man. Would you be willing to take his place if he deserts me in a rage?”

  “I’ll wire Barnum tonight that I’m ready to take on his roles,” the dramatic John announced.

  “You are truly larger than life,” she sighed. “I had forgotten. I shall have to get used to you again. Where have you been?”

  “In my beloved South and in the West and most recently in New York. Edwin is in England and Junius in California and the stage is mine in this part of the world. Already I’m being hailed as more suited to fill my later father’s shoes than Edwin!”

  “You are a fine actor,” she agreed. “But you spoil it all with your excesses.”

  “Excess is the key to my acting,” he ranted. “I have been touring in The Apostate. We opened in Montgomery, Alabama, and have moved Northward. The critics have universally hailed my acting as Pescara to be filled with fury and horror. And in Albany a group of spiritualists came out with a statement that my father’s troubled spirit must be hovering over me! What do you say to that?”

  “I say you should learn to control your temper off the stage however useful it may be to you when on,” she said.

  John Wilkes Booth strode back and forth in the gaslight dressing room, bubbling with anger. “This damned Lincoln! A rail-splitter pretending to be King! I was in Albany when he was on his way to Washington for his inauguration. The man is a monster!”

  “Many think him a Saint!”

  “The more fools they!” he said, swinging around on her angrily.

  She rose and told him firmly, “l do not wish to become involved in your American politics or the war. I am an English woman.”

  “You are here and you will be involved,” he said, melodramatically pointing a finger at her.

  “If you are so loyal to the South why do you not remain there and join the Confederate army?”

  Booth looked startled for a moment and had no reply. Then he spoke in a less intense tone, saying, “For two reasons, I stay in the North chiefly because it is where I must earn my reputation as an actor to become the Booth! It is the only way I can wrest my father’s fame from Edwin. And my other purpose is by remaining here I may be able to help the Southern cause.”

  “Not by making wild statements in theatres!” she told him scornfully.

  “Do not be deceived,” he said. “That also has its place. But more importantly as an actor I’m allowed to move between North and South. That gives me the opportunity of doing important services for the cause I do admire.”

  She did not stop to analyze this then but later she was to think much about it. Instead she wearily reached for her cloak with its hood attached and flung it over her shoulders. She said, “I’m tired. I must go back to my hotel.”

  “Forgive me for going on so and asking you nothing about yourself and your own affairs,” he apologized.

  Fanny’s smile was thin. “You are obviously so wrapped up in John Wilkes Booth you have little thought for anything or anyone else.”

  “Not true!” he protested. “I want to know more about you.” He halted before her as if to take her in his arms again. And in a softer tone he said, “You cannot doubt I adore you?”

  She sighed. “Incorrigible! I have a dreadful headache. You may escort me to my hotel if you like or let me find my own way.”

  “I shall get you a carriage,” he insisted, following her out of the dressing room.

  “It is only a short walk,” she said. “I do not need a carriage.”

  “I will be at your side,” he said.

  She made her way down the iron steps and stood for a moment watching the stage crew changing the set for the next afternoon’s performance. Then she said goodnight to the elderly stage door man and stepped outside. John was at her side as he’d promised.

  The night had turned cool and a land fog had fallen over the great city as a result of the clash of daylight heat and this marked change of temperature.

  They strolled slowly along the murky street of the war torn capitol. Occasionally they passed a gas lamp which gave an eerie yellow glow for a short distance showing the minute
particles of moisture flowing by. Every so often a carriage would come clattering along the cobble-stoned street, its driver outlined against the fog by the lantern at his side. And stray figures of the night suddenly materialized out of the dark shadows and passed them by.

  Fanny was enjoying the company of the temporarily silent and subdued John Booth to his usual gregarious self. And she realized that she and the actor had much in common, both were dedicated to the stage and ambitious. Peter Cortez had no such dedication as a rich, young man. He pretended great interest to please her. But she was not deceived into thinking he would ever be as serious about his acting as she was about hers.

  One of the reasons she had held back from marrying him was because she feared that once she was his wife he might ask her to give up the stage. There was no reason why either of them would have to work if she married him. He was wealthy enough, by his own account, to look after them for the balance of their lives.

  She regarded this is a danger. She knew she could not live without the theatre. So in a way this man strolling at her side was more like her than Peter. Yet she had given herself to Peter. She had known she would live to regret it and daily she was more concerned about their relationship. His jealousy was growing and had reached a climax tonight.

  John broke his silence to say, “I have heard that David died instantly in the wreck.”

  “Yes.”

  “At least he did not suffer nor live to be crippled. That would have been tragic for him. He was a handsome man and a fine actor.”

  “Thank you.”

  “I know it must have been painful for you,” he went on.

  “I shall never be quite the same,” she admitted. “He played a great role in my life.”

  “Of course. But death must be accepted.”

  “I have accepted it,” she said.

  “You bill yourself as Fanny Cornish,” he said. “You did not return to your own name of Hastings.”

  “That is my way of paying back my great debt to him.”

  “Alive and dead, I envy him,” the man at her side said. “To have had such a faithful love.”

  “I do not think myself an exception,” she said. “Many wives must care for their husbands equally.”

  “True,” he agreed. “I have no real fear of death nor do I think I am a coward. I have told you why I’m not a soldier in the war. I’m more useful out of it. But when my end comes I hope it may be as swift as David’s. I do not wish to decay with age, or linger in pain. Let it be clean and quick!”

  “I suppose we all wish for that.”

  He glanced at her. “Your beauty will never fade. It will last beyond any of us.”

  “That is sheer nonsense,” she said. “All humans fade and die.”

  They had reached the ornate entrance of the fashionable Washington Hotel in which she was staying. The cloaked John Booth gazed at the doorman and the splendor of the lobby and observed, “Phineas T. Barnum must be paying you well. I am living in much meaner quarters.”

  “Being here is not my idea,” she said, somewhat embarrassed. “Peter Cortez is a very wealthy man. He is staying here and wanted me to be here as well.”

  The sharp black eyes fixed on hers. He said, “None of the rest of the company are living here?”

  “No.” She could tell by his carefully phrased question that he was not finished with her.

  “So it is one of those arrangements,” he said quietly. Then he shrugged. “I had not thought you so careless. But even knowing about this I cannot think his behavior tonight was what one would expect of a gentleman.”

  She was stunned. In a small voice she said,

  “Good night, John Booth!” And she turned and went quickly inside leaving him standing out there alone, a ghostly figure in the murky night.

  Peter Cortez did not present himself at her door until the next morning. She had breakfasted and was seated writing a letter to Adam Burns, who had continued to be her friend all this time. She got up and went to the door and opened it.

  The handsome Californian was as perfectly groomed and dressed as usual. His modish blue jacket and brown trousers were from the shop of an expensive tailor and the silver-topped walking stick which he casually held was also distinctive.

  He came strolling in and looked about him. “You surprise me,” he said, with a forced smile.

  She closed the door and asked, “What do you mean?”

  “I’d rather expected you would be entertaining John Wilkes Booth. I couldn’t see such ardor parting from you for the night.”

  Her face crimsoned and she clenched her tiny hands at her side. She forced herself to say calmly, “I’m not as loose as you would appear to think me.”

  He arched his eyebrow. “Perhaps you did not take him to your bed because you had reservations, due to the fact I help pay for the room.”

  “If this is to be your line of conversation you will please leave,” she said, pointing to the door.

  Peter took a step towards her, his face suddenly having a change of expression. He said, “Fanny, my darling, I can’t help being jealous.”

  “That is evident,” she said angrily, moving away from him.

  He followed her, pleading, “You must forgive me for what I said last night and just now. My pride was badly hurt!”

  “Your pride!” she said.

  “Yes. You know me well enough to know I am a sensitive man.”

  “What about my pride?” she asked.

  “I said I was sorry,” he fumbled, his handsome face flushing.

  “And you think that will make it all right?”

  He tried to grasp her by the arm and she eluded him. He said, “After all you are in the wrong!”

  “I was wrong to ever listen to you!” she flashed back. “To surrender myself to you!”

  He looked ugly again. “You were anxious enough for my arms and my bed!”

  She shook her head. “And you call yourself a gentleman? Surely the standards in California cannot be all that high?”

  “You are no stranger to men! What about the titled lover you left behind in London? And who knows how many others before David Cornish came along,” he sneered. “Do not play the llone weeping widow wronged’ with me!”

  She studied him a moment in contemptuous silence and then she turned her back on him. In a barely controlled tone she said, “l can only charge your cruel and ignorant behavior to a madness brought on by your jealousy. In all the past I have never known you to be like this. Nor did I think you could behave so disgustingly!”

  She could hear him turn and start for the door and then halt and come back again. At her elbow, he pleaded, “Tell me you won’t see this man or speak to him ever again and I will forgive you.”

  “How generous,” she said, without turning to him.

  “Your word will be enough,” he urged. “I know I can trust you.”

  “Until the next time you come up with more groundless suspicions,” she said turning to him.

  He looked down. “I cannot help my nature.”

  Fanny gave a deep sigh. And then she said, “For the good of the company I will overlook this. But I will be leaving this room and moving to more modest accommodations for the balance of the engagement.”

  Peter looked stunned. “You mean you are leaving me?”

  “I will no longer be your mistress, to speak frankly,” she said. “And it would seem I should since you have been so honest in your comments.”

  “I did not mean it!”

  “I know you did,” she said, gazing at him coldly. “And perhaps I deserve it for behaving as I did. I knew it was a poor arrangement from the start!”

  His anger now began returning. The blonde man cried, “So that is why you slept with me! To keep your precious company together! To build your own career, using me as a stepping stone!”

  “If you want to think that!”

  “Then you will use me no longer,” he said. “I am leaving you and the company.”

  It wa
s her turn to plead, “Do what you like about me. But do not desert the company. You will close the theatre and put many innocent people out of work.”

  “I don’t give a damn about the theatre, or the precious company! I never have!” he told her.

  “Now you are being truthful!”

  “I’m taking the train to New York,” he said. “You can explain to your beloved company! “ And He hurried out of the room and slammed the door after him.

  As soon as he was out of the room she dropped into the nearest chair and began to sob aloud. Not only because he had chosen to destroy the company but because of the dreadful things which he’d said to her. He had exposed himself as a shallow, wealthy man used to buying what he wanted and enraged if anything were taken from him. She had feared her liaison with him from the start. Now she had all too truly been proven right.