Beloved Scoundrel

by Clarissa Ross

  ‘Tom knows that and that is why it means so much to him,” Nancy went on happily.

  Fanny smiled. “I’m pleased that my short visit did some good.”

  “He is clever. I think he can write a play,” the girl said.

  “So do I,” Fanny agreed.

  The visit to the hospital ward had been a revelation to her. It had also wearied her. As soon as she reached her room she rested for a little. She could not get the hospital out of her mmd. Then John Wilkes Booth came to get her and have her go to the theatre with him in his carriage.

  She put on her shawl and prepared to leave with him. “I was resting,” she said. “Tonight is an important one.”

  “It is,” the actor said, flamboyant as usual in his brown suit and black cloak. “Half of the big-wigs of Washington are coming to see us. I have heard that even that confounded Abe Lincoln is attending.”

  Fanny gave him a reproving look as they started down the stairs. “You mustn’t speak ill of our president.”

  “And who says so?”

  “I do for one,” she said as they reached the ground floor and went out to take the carriage.

  The handsome John Wilkes Booth eyed her with some surprise as he stepped up into the carriage beside her and the carriage started for the theatre. He said, “What has put you in this patriotic mood?”

  She told him about her visit to the hospital, ending with, “I promised Major Furlong we would do some sort of benefit for those poor men in his care.”

  “You promised too much,” Booth told her. “It would suit you better to consult with Barnum and me first!”

  She smiled at him. “I don’t think that important. I’m sure I can persuade you both to join me in the effort.”

  John Wilkes Booth made no reply. As they reached the theatre she saw there were a long line of people waiting to purchase the cheap balcony seats which would go on sale when the doors were opened. She had rarely seen such a line.

  She tugged at his arm. “Do you see that crowd?”

  Booth looked pleased. “It would seem we are the main attraction in Washington tonight.”

  They got out of the carriage and as he was paying the driver she studied the street in front of the theatre again. And it was then she noticed standing away from the ticket line a familiar figure. And he was watching them. It was the hunchback.

  She turned anxiously to John as he joined her and in a low voice told him, “That man! The hunchback! He’s standing there near the front of the theatre. Watching our every move!”

  John Wilkes Booth gave a haughty glance in the direction of the bizarre figure and said, “He has a right to stand on the street there if he likes. What does it matter?”

  “There’s more to it than that!” she protested. “He is watching us for something!”

  They had gone down the alley and were now at the stage door. Booth gave her a knowing look and said, “It would be best if you forgot all about that fellow. You need to concentrate on the work ahead tonight.”

  She gave him a reproving look. “You know more than you are telling me.”

  “I cannot help what you think,” he said as they entered the stage door and made their way up the iron stairway to their dressing rooms.

  She entered her dressing room and Booth followed her. This was not his usual practice and she felt he did it because he feared she was still badly upset. She turned to him .and said, “I feel helpless! Like a target for some evil! Do you ever think of carrying a pistol?”

  “No,” the handsome actor said with a lean smile. A pistol makes a noise. It is not the ideal weapon.”

  “You should be armed,” she said. “So should I!”

  “I am armed,” he told her, “so you need not worry.”

  “Armed?” she questioned this.

  “If I must convince you,” he said with some annoyance. He held up the silver-topped walking stick. “Look!” And as he spoke he twisted the top off the walking stick and drew a dagger about a foot and a half long from the stick.

  She stared at it. “So that is why you always carry that walking stick!”

  “One of the reasons,” he said, returning it to its hiding place. “So you need not feel defenseless when you are with me. ’

  “I know what it means,” she told him. “That fellow is a Confederate spy and you are helping him as much as you dare. “

  “I will not deny such a novel theory,” he said in his mocking fashion. “I’m now going to dress. And you will do well to concentrate on Phelia and forget all this other nonsense.”

  He left before she could make any further argument. But she was now more convinced than ever that John Wilkes Booth and the ugly hunchback were members of a Rebel spy ring. Perhaps word that Lincoln was attending the evening’s performance had drawn the hunchback to the theatre.

  The call boy came with five minutes’ warning. She did some last minute touches on her make-up in the mirror and allowed Gloria to fuss over her dress a little before going down to the stage. When she reached the dimly-lit backstage she was aware of an unusual tension there.

  The stage manager came and in a hushed voice informed her, “The President and his party have just seated in the lower left box!”

  “Then he did come!”

  “Yes,” the stage manager said. “You can take a look at him before the curtain goes up if you like. Mr. Booth is out on stage now taking a peek.”

  “I must do that,” she agreed. And lifting her long skirt so that it would not trip her she hurried out onto the stage proper. John Wilkes Booth, in his Hamlet costume, was standing at the peephole in the curtain intently watching the box in which the President and his party were sitting.

  He paid no attention to her so she touched his arm and said, “Don’t be selfish! Let me have a look!”

  He turned away from the peephole with a strange expression on his handsome, mustached face. He ran a hand through his curly hair.

  He said, “I’ve been thinking! Remove that man and the war would end almost at once!”

  She stared at him. “You can’t believe that?”

  “It’s true,” Booth said, his eyes bright with a mad look. “He is the one most responsible for the bloodshed. A single shot directed properly could end his tyranny!”

  “You’re frightening me!” she gasped. “Don’t let the others hear you talking in this mad way!”

  Booth ranted on, “Or perhaps it would be better to kidnap him and hold him hostage until the Union agreed to make peace on fair terms with the Confederacy!”

  The stage manager appeared at this moment looking anxious. “Please clear the stage. It is time to begin!”

  “And we mustn’t keep the Emperor waiting!” Booth said in disdain and stalked off.

  The stage manager looked at her. “What has happened to him?”

  “He’s tense and filled with concern about how the play will go tonight.”

  “We all feel that,” the stage manager said.

  She took a fleeting moment to place her eye at the peephole and get a view of the President. She fixed her eye on the box just as he stood to welcome someone. A tall thin man with a short beard and a weary smile. He looked remarkably frail to carry the weight of a civil war upon his shoulders.

  She quickly left the peephole and told the stage manager. “Thank you. I had a good look at him.”

  The curtain rose on a house crowded from front row orchestra to the standees at the rear of the upper balcony. In certain theatres this top section had become known by the colloquial term “nigger heaven” since this was where any black people sat. A hush fell over the house as the play began. By the time Fanny made her entrance she had no fears about the success of the evening.

  All the company were doing their best work. Fanny had never thrilled to the talents of an actor before as she did in the case of John Wilkes Booth. His Hamlet was all that she had expected. His monologues were electrifying and when he exchanged his lines with her it seemed that the play flowed like a piece of
fine music!

  It was a long, arduous evening and not until the final curtain could any of them relax. The heavy applause at their curtain calls, ending in a standing ovation, left no doubt in any mind that this evening Washington had been treated to a very special Hamlet.

  A perspiring John Wilkes Booth came and took her in his arms as the curtain came down for the final time. He kissed her tenderly and said. “It was a triumph!”

  “You were magnificent!” she told him.

  “And you, and all of them,” Booth said in good humor. “We climbed the mountain together.”

  He was leading her offstage when the stage manager made an excited appearance. He came up to them and in a breathless fashion said, “I’ve just come from speaking with President Lincoln. He has asked me to tell you that he has always preferred to read Shakespeare in the quiet of his study rather than seeing him acted. But tonight you made the theatrical treatment both acceptable and outstanding. He sends you both his personal congratulations.”

  John Wilkes Booth received the news coldly. “So the great one has chosen to acknowledge us!”

  She took his arm and said, “I’m flattered and very proud.”

  “You are as much taken in by this charlatan in the White House as everyone else,” Booth said angrily.

  “I think he is a good man and a better President than you will admit,” she said. “And I hope no harm comes to him from that hunchback friend of yours.”

  Strangely this changed the actor’s mood. He looked less angry and said, “I would not worry about that.”

  But worry she did. She waited anxiously to hear that the President and his party had departed safely. She had visions of the ugly hunchback confronting Abraham Lincoln and murdering him in some fashion. But nothing of this sort was to happen. Her dresser, Gloria, came up from the stage area to inform her proudly, “President Lincoln has left in his carriage. They cheered him all the way from the theatre door until he entered the carriage.”

  “No one threatened him?”

  The big woman looked puzzled. “Why would anyone do that? Everyone loves Mr. Lincoln.”

  “Not everyone, Gloria,” she said quietly and began to remove her makeup with visions of the ugly hunchback still troubling her.

  John Wilkes Booth insisted she join him at Casper’s for a midnight supper and champagne. He was in a wildly, celebrating mood and it was hard to resist him. He seemed to grow in charm and wit as the night gave way to early morning. When they left the restaurant she was too lightheaded to even think to look and see if the hunchback were still following them.

  No sooner was the carriage under way than he gathered her in his arms in the darkness. His lips found hers and he held her for a long while. When be released her a little, he whispered, “You are so lovely!”

  “Please, John! You’re talking with a champagne tongue!” she protested.

  “Damn it, no!” he said aloud in an angry tone. “I told you the first time I met you that I loved you. And that has never changed for me.”

  “Don’t spoil our wonderful evening,” she pleaded.

  Still holding her in his arms, he said, “You are not only the loveliest woman I have ever known, you are also the most talented. I have vowed never to marry. But I turn my back on my vow and ask you to be my wife!”

  “John!” she said, in mild protest.

  He studied her with gentle eyes. “I do not want to live any longer without you. I find life meaningless when I’m not with you!”

  He kept on in this vein until they reached their hotel. He saw her to her room and instead of leaving, closed the door and came to her. Taking her in his arms again, he said, “There is only one fitting way for us to celebrate tonight!”

  “Let us remain as we are,” she begged.

  “It won’t do,” he said, shaking his head. “Do you not care for me at all?”

  “I care for you far too much,” she said in a soft voice. She was about to add that she could not give in to her feelings because of her concern about his violent political views and his generally temperamental behavior.

  But she had no opportunity to explain this. John Wilkes Booth swept her up in his arms and carried her over to the bed. And she knew that any further protests or reasoning would be useless now. She looked up at him as he removed his cape and then his jacket. She knew that in a moment he would be passionately assisting her to disrobe and next their naked bodies would be pressed together in a frenzy of love-making!

  Chapter 7

  So Fanny found herself partner in another love affair which she had not planned. She knew that John Wilkes Booth was genuine enough in his caring for her and would marry her if she would accept him. For her part, she was fond of him, but she did not know that she was truly in love with him. She had great respect for him as an actor but as a man it was his instability which worried her!

  Attentive as a lover, he was still a man divided. There was that other side of him dedicated to an almost naive belief that he could remove all compromise and hypocrisy from politics. He believed firmly in the nobility of the Southern cause, closing his eyes to the weaknesses of the Confederacy. The Union remained all dark in his eyes. Lincoln and all he stood for was wrong! There was no arguing sensibly with him about these things.

  Fanny hoped at first, that as her lover, she would have more influence over him in this other sphere. But it was not to be this way. He would spend long hours with her and then vanish without warning. She sometimes found it difficult to locate him for rehearsals and once he almost missed a performance.

  She was standing on the landing outside his dressing room door with Nancy discussing the seriousness of his not appearing when he came running up the iron stairway to join them. He looked weary and his trousers and shoes were spattered with mud.

  She challenged him, “Where have you been?”

  “Out riding,” the handsome, dark-haired actor said calmly.

  “Riding?” she echoed. “It is a miserable, rainy evening! That makes no sense! You’re almost late for the curtain!”

  His reaction was to smile and take her roughly in his arms and kiss her. Then pushing her aside, he hurried into his dressing room, calling after him, “I’ll be down there in time!”

  Fanny exchanged a resigned glance with Nancy and sighed, “You see how it is!”

  “Don’t worry!” the other girl said. “He’ll be all right.”

  They were playing a new melodrama based on the opera Rigoletto. The play was titled A Fool’s Revenge and the leading role in it had been a starring vehicle for Edwin Booth on many occasions.

  John Wilkes had pleaded with Fanny to include it in their itinerary and she’d finally let him persuade her. She played a fairly minor role of the betrayed daughter while John Wilkes reveled in the part of “Bertuccio,” the court jester who unknowingly helps kidnap his daughter and hand her over to a libertine!

  John Wilkes had been excellent in the part in rehearsal and there seemed every chance of it being a hit. But on this important night his playing was uneven. He appeared weary and without vitality for most of the play and then, as if sensing, he was not living up to the part, he began to exaggerate it and act too melodramatically. Even at that the crowd liked the play and it was applauded as a hit.

  When the final curtain call was taken and the curtain lowered John Wilkes moved away from her, quickly unwilling to accept her look of reproach. It was only later when they were in bed together that she was able to directly discuss it with him.

  Leaning on an elbow she gently traced a pattern on his handsome, mustached face with her forefinger. And with a rueful smile said, “You know you gave a bad performance tonight?”

  His eyes twinkled as he gazed up at her from the pillow and said, “You seemed perfectly satisfied!”

  Fanny blushed, and said, “You know what I mean! On stage.”

  He reached up and caressed her bare breast and in a low voice begged her, “Must we talk of this now?”

  She removed his han
d and her eyes meeting his, said, “Yes. You were not nearly as good tonight as you were at rehearsals: Is this the way you plan to win your brother Edwin’s crown?”

  He frowned slightly. “It won’t happen again!”

  “You have given poor performances several times lately,” she reminded him. “And almost always because you’ve arrived at the theatre late and weary.”

  He sighed. “It is a bad time! Meade’s cursed army defeated Lee at Gettysburg. And Lincoln makes that mincing speech of his at the Gettysburg cemetery! Little he cares how the South bleeds!”

  She studied him worriedly. “When I convinced Mr. Barnum he could safely use you, you promised me you would not take such an active interest in the war!”