Beloved Scoundrel

by Clarissa Ross

  “You are right!” the blind Tom exclaimed. “If you are not to appear, dear Fanny, the one I would next suggest is Nancy.”

  “Will you?” Barnum asked her .

  “All right,” she said. “But remember, I’m only filling in until Fanny can return.”

  Barnum took Fanny back to her hotel in his carriage.

  He said, “It is too bad. John has cost you all this heartbreak and your career.”

  She gazed out at the store fronts as they drove past. “It does not matter. I’m in no mood to work now. I need to do something to cleanse myself of my guilt feelings.”

  “You should have no guilt.”

  “If I’d gone to him I might have somehow dissuaded him from his awful act,” she worried.

  Barnum said, “I doubt it. And you mustn’t closet yourself up and pine away from blaming yourself.”

  She glanced at him with a rueful smile. “I have something quite different in mind.”

  “What?”

  “I’m going to Washington to offer my services to a major in the Medical Corps. The War is over but the hospitals are filled with the maimed. Help is badly needed and I have been accepted by the major. He also knew John and liked him.”

  “You will not find such nursing easy,” Barnum warned her.”

  “I do not want anything easy,” was her reply. “This is what I need. I’m sure of it.”

  She planned to take the train to Washington on a Friday. On Wednesday afternoon she received a message from Edwin Booth, giving her the name of his hotel and asking her to come there in the late afternoon. She donned her black dress and veil and secured a carriage to take her to the quiet, old hotel.

  Edwin Booth was waiting for her. When she knocked on the door of his room he opened it and showed her in. He looked even more pale than when she’d last seen him and terribly weary. He motioned her to an easy chair with a delicate motion of his slim hand.

  She removed her veil and said, “I dare not openly show myself in New York. There is still much hatred of me.”

  “I ask forgiveness on John’s part,” the actor said.

  “No need,” she told him. “I cared for John and I’m not ashamed that we loved each other.”

  Edwin nodded. “When you were last with me I told you I was sure that he cared for you more than any other woman. He later wrote to our mother in that same vein. She quoted from his letter without

  really knowing who the lady, Fanny, might be. I felt you should know.”

  In a small voice, she said, “I never doubted his caring. It was only his obsession that upset me.”

  Edwin Booth said, “And in the end he brought shame on us all. Not only on the immediate family but on our profession.”

  “It will not last,” she said. “Barnum says in a year it will be over.”

  The handsome actor sighed. “I hope he is right and I may say he usually is. The people of our profession suffer enough hardship under ordinary circumstances. They should at least be allowed to work.”

  “What about you?”

  “I felt for a time I must desert the stage,” Edwin Booth said. He halted and turned to her. “But I know now I cannot. It is too much in my blood. I have no choice but to return. And fairly soon. What about you?”

  She told him her plan, ending with, “I somehow feel this is a way of doing penance for John. I want it to count in his favor.”

  Edwin Booth came to her and touched his hand on her shoulder and in a voice filled with emotion said, “Your loyalty and love in the face of what he did, is more than he could ever ask for.”

  She stood up. “So we will all go on.”

  Booth said, “Yes.” Then he studied her with sad eyes and continued, “May I make one more request of you?”

  “If you like.”

  “Go to Washington and do your nursing for a while. I think it may bring you peace in spite of the hardship. But sooner or later return to the stage. I do not care whether it be here or in England. Remember, that is where you belong!”

  “I shall remember,” she said in a voice choked with emotion.

  The famous actor kissed her gently on the forehead and then saw her to the door. Afterwards, remembering him on that afternoon, she thought he was the saddest person she had ever met. Only the passing years would bring him back to a kind of normalcy and his rightful acclaim.

  Her friends were at the railway station to bid her goodbye. She had visited rehearsals of the new play and was delighted by the excellent comedy playing of Nancy. She was sure that the petite blonde would be a new star once the theatre got properly under way.

  Eric Mason was daily expecting his wife and daughter from England and so was also in a buoyant mood, especially since his own part in the new play was excellent.

  Tom Miller held her hand a long while before she stepped aboard the waiting railway car. He said, “I admire you for what you are doing. And what you did for me!”

  “I did very little,” she laughed. “And you brought me a wonderful play.”

  “My writing plays was your ideas,” he reminded her. “And you gave it to me in hospital. I hope you can do half as much for some of the others you meet there.”

  “I shall surely try,” she said.

  The train whistle blew. There was a round of frantic kisses and goodbyes and then she hurried aboard. As she made her way along the aisle to take a seat she almost bumped into an elderly, pleasant looking man.

  “God bless my soul!” the big man exclaimed. “If it is not my old shipboard friend, Mrs. Cornish!”

  She stared at him a moment, noting the white hair and lined face before she recognized him as Adam Burns. The friendly hardware merchant who had been the first to help them in New York. He had sent them to Mrs. Larkins’ lodging house and been in a way responsible for their being hired by Barnum.

  “Mr. Burns!” she said, her face lighting up. “It has been so long. I’ve often wondered about you.”

  “We sort of lost track of each other,” the elderly man said. “Are you on your way to Washington?”

  “Yes.”

  “So am I,” he said, glancing around. “Would it not be pleasant for us to share a seat?”

  “I’d much enjoy it,” she said.

  Adam Burns went down the fairly well-filled car until he came to a vacant seat. He took her hand bag and stored it on the rack above along with his own small valise. Then he sat by her.

  “I saw you not long ago,” he told her. “In the play The Maid and the Miser.”

  “Did you enjoy it?”

  “Very much. I had a hard time securing tickets. I was going around to speak with you. But I hesitated, it has been such a long while since our first meeting.”

  “I would have been pleased to have seen you,” Fanny assured him.

  He smiled. “Thank you. Another time.”

  She asked him, “How have things gone for you?”

  His kindly face clouded a little. “The war touched me as it did us all. I lost my grandson at Gettysburg.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Yes. A tragic affair,” he said. “My business prospered since I dealt in war supplies. In fact I’m now on my way to see some Washington officials about an expansion of my services.”

  Fanny said, “So much has happened in so few years.”

  He gave her a sympathetic glance. “I was so shocked when I heard of your husband’s death. What a fine fellow he was.”

  “I have never forgotten him.”

  “Nor are you likely to,” the old man said.

  “Then there was that unfortunate business of John Wilkes Booth. And you were his co-star.”

  Her cheeks warmed. “I’m sure you must have read many lurid details of our relationship in the yellow press.”

  “I believe in my friends before I believe newspapers,” the elderly man assured her. “I can imagine you as nothing but a good influence on that madman who murdered our President.”

  Fanny said, “I hoped for a little he might gi
ve his full interest to the theatre and remain away from politics. I tried to make him realize he should. Unhappily I was wrong.”

  “The Booths are a strange family,” Adam Burns said. “I know some people who believed the father to be a madman.”

  “The unhappy thing is that all theatre people have suffered for the crime of one actor,” she said. “Edwin Booth and the others in the family are virtually in hiding. Many theatres remain closed. And I have had to leave the stage temporarily because my name is associated with John Wilkes Booth.”

  “Have you thought of returning to England?”

  She sighed. “Many times. But I have certain reasons for not returning there.”

  “So what are your plans in Washington?” Fanny said, “Major Furlong of the Medical Corps has very kindly offered to accept me as a volunteer worker in the hospital which he heads. I look forward to doing worthwhile things there.”

  “Commendable!” The old man said. “And what I might have expected of you. I know you are one not to waste your time.”

  The friendly exchange between them continued throughout the train journey. They had dinner together in the elegant dining car and Fanny felt much less lonely than she had expected. They parted when the train reached the Washington Railway Station and she was met by Major Furlong.

  The major was as friendly as ever. He and Adam Burns exchanged pleasantries and then the hardware merchant went his way while Major Furlong sought out her trunk and had it taken to his waiting carriage.

  “I have found you quarters on the outskirts of the city near the hospital,” the major told her as they rode through the dark night in his carriage. “I trust this is agreeable to you.”

  “Yes. I do not wish to live in the city. I want no social life.”

  “Much different from the old days,” the major mused.

  “These are different times.”

  “So they are,” he agreed. “But it may surprise you how quickly Washington has returned to normal every day routine. The War and Lincoln’s assassination seem already to be far in the past. The city is humming with activity. The nation moving on! Only in our hospitals is the War still being fought.”

  “Are the wounded being forgotten and neglected?” she worried.

  “I cannot say that,” the bearded Furlong spoke with caution. “But with the battles ended it is far harder to get proper money and supplies for our hospital work.”

  Fanny said with some bitterness, “One might expect that.”

  “However, we manage,” the surgeon said. “But we are desperately in need of volunteers. I’m pleased to have you with us.”

  “I’m happy to have this opportunity to serve.”

  “You shall be under my wing,” he said. “And I think it might be wise not to make mention of your close friendship with poor John.”

  She said, “I wondered about that.”

  “Feelings still run high against him, even though he paid for his crime by dying miserably. And these bad feelings are all too easily transferred to his former friends .”

  “I learned something about that in New York,” she agreed. Then she asked . “Did you see anything of him in the final days before the assassination?”

  “I met him once or twice,” the major said. “And on each occasion he seemed anxious to get away from me. Something was troubling him.”

  “Now we all know what it was,” Fanny said.

  “Well, that is in the past,” Major Furlong said. “Let us leave it there.”

  She wished that she could. But she was beginning to think this would never be. Memories of John Wilkes Booth haunted her by both day and night. It seemed that something was always bound to bring them up again.

  The carriage halted before a plain, frame house and the major helped her out and escorted her to the front door of the modest building. The door was opened by a gaunt woman with graying hair pulled straight back on her head and tied in a coil at the nape of her neck. She wore a black dress and white apron.

  Major Furlong introduced them, telling Fanny, “This is Edna Burchill, who is renting you her spare room.”

  The room was a good-sized one on the second floor and the major told her she could see the hospital from it in daylight. He remained to see her trunk installed in the room and then prepared to leave. He halted at the door of her room to advise her, “I would like you to report to me in the morning and I will have you assigned to the area in which help seems the most needed.”

  “Fine,” she said. “I shall be there at eight.”

  After the surgeon had gone Mrs. Burchill came to bring her fresh towels and a pitcher of warm water. The gaunt woman offered her a tired look and said, “Would you like a cup of tea after your long journey?”

  She smiled. “It would be most pleasant.”

  “I’ll make it fresh now,” the woman said wearily. “You can come down and have it in the sitting room.”

  “Thank you,” Fanny told her. The woman’s grim, resigned manner interested her. She wondered why Edna Burchill appeared so apathetic. After spending a few minutes washing and putting out some of her clothes she decided it was time to go down and have the offered cup of tea.

  The gaunt woman was waiting for her and poured out the tea and stood watching as she sat to drink it. “So you’re to work in the hospital,” Edna Burchill said harshly.

  She looked up in surprise. “Yes.”

  “I call it the charnel house!”

  “Why?”

  “They kill people there,” the woman said, rubbing her thin hands together uneasily.

  Now Fanny was truly startled. “That is a strange thing to say. I thought you and Major Furlong were friends.”

  The woman shrugged. “He’s good enough. But he’s only one!”

  “I’m sure they do as well as they can,” Fanny said. “So many men are brought in badly wounded that some are bound to die.”

  “Aye! Some are!” the gaunt woman said angrily. “My son died over there! Within walking distance of his home!”

  Fanny now understood. She said, “I’m sorry.”

  The woman swallowed hard and raised her chin a little. “I’m not complaining. Few people didn’t have a loss. But it was hard to see him die slowly over there. I would have been better able to bear it if he could have come back to his own bed!”

  “I feel deeply for you,” Fanny said. “Believe me!”

  The woman looked at her with cold eyes. “You are one of those stage people, aren’t you?”

  “Yes. I’m sure Major Furlong must have mentioned that. I have given up my stage work to come and volunteer as a helper at the hospital.”

  “The theatre is the Devil’s house,” Edna Burchill rasped. “It was that drug fiend John Wilkes Booth who murdered our President.”

  Fanny put aside her tea cup and looking up at the woman said, “I knew John Wilkes Booth and he was not a drug fiend.”

  “You knew him?” The woman’s eyes widened.

  “Very well,” she said firmly. “You spoke of us all being hurt by the war. You would do well to think of him as a victim of the conflict. The horror of war turned his head and made him become a madman. He needed to blame someone for the chaos he couldn’t understand and so he turned his hatred towards Lincoln.”

  “He was an evil man!”

  “An unhappy man,” Fanny said, amending the woman’s words. “I shall be down for breakfast at seven. I must be at the hospital at eight.”

  “Very well,” Edna Burchill said stiffly.

  Fanny went back up to her room with the feeling that she had not made too good an impression on the grieving woman. But by the same token Edna Burchill had not been all that considerate of her. It was something she would have to put up with.

  She slept well in the comfortable bed and ate a hearty breakfast in the morning. Edna Burchill served her and was grudgingly polite but no more. Then Fanny left the house and walked briskly to the sprawling hospital building.

  Major Furlong was in his neat, white-
walled office near the front of the building. He eyed her plain straw bonnet and severely styled dark gray dress and nodded his approval.

  “I’m glad you’ve chosen to wear practical clothes. A great change from your elegant stage costumes.”

  She smiled thinly. “I usually dress for the part. I felt this suited the role of handy woman.”

  “You will do very well,” the bearded major said. “Before you start out I want you to know you can resign at any time.”