This room was higher than it was wide, with widow’s cloth blacking the lone window and two gas fixtures, set to each side of a second door, illuminating a secret world. Red silks worked in gold covered the walls, and a bronze urn as tall as myself supported a coiling dragon. The carpet, too, was red, with golden dragons chasing each other’s tails around a great medallion. Filigreed lanterns hung unlit, their brass reflecting the gas flames. I had not seen the like in color and riches since my old regiment fought its way into the Ranee’s palace.
“Please to wait,” the servant said through his constant smile. Politeness soaked his voice, but he made it clear that I was to stand exactly where I was until given permission to step further.
He disappeared behind the door between the gas jets and whispered in a devilish tongue.
A woman’s voice answered in the same incomprehensible sounds.
The old fellow reappeared, bowing yet again. Bobbing like a hanged man just dropped through the trap, he pointed into the darkness behind the door. “Missa Fowluh wait you,” he told me.
The room was colder than the November day without, and vast, and it smelled of ashes. It might once have been a ballroom, but the single gaslight would not let me survey it with accuracy. The walls seemed to recede as I looked at them. It took me a moment to locate Mrs. Fowler in the jumble and gloom, her face a pale blur amid deep browns and grays. It was only the interior dimensions and her slightness, but she looked to be very far away.
A white hand pointed to a chair.
“I am Letitia Fowler, Captain Jones. Do sit down.”
My chair was of bare wood, high with a straight back. It was a wicked foreign business. My feet hardly touched the floor. As I settled myself, my cane slipped from my hand and struck the parquet like a thunderclap. I retrieved it without grace.
It took me a good minute to decipher the lines of her mourning dress. Until then, my eyes found only a spectral face and a band of white hair above her forehead. The rest was darkness. She sat rigidly, a queen before her public, ungiving. Only her hands admitted the distress of her loss. They moved along the arms of her chair in unpredictable rushes, like little white mice.
“George McClellan sent you.”
I did not know if it was a statement or a question.
“Yes, mum.”
“A respectable family, the McClellans. Connecticut stock originally,” she said, “but sound. Young George sent me a telegraphic communication about you, Captain.” Perhaps it was the faintness of the light, but her features showed not a wrinkle. Certainly, there was an agedness to her, almost an antiquity, but it did not reside in her face. You could see that she had been a crusher of hearts in her April.
“I thought the communication was from my son when it arrived,” she continued. “A last message.” A smile spooked over her lips, fading as soon as it appeared. “My son was fond of the telegraph, you see. He used to send me communications daily from his lecture tours. He was a great believer in progress and the perfectability of man.”
“If I may say, mum, I’m sorry for your loss. And I know you have my wife’s sympathy, as well. She thought the world of your son.”
Mrs. Fowler sighed, but her back remained as rigid as a corporal of the guard’s. “I shall miss him, my Anthony. The world will miss him. His was too noble a spirit for this blighted sphere.”
“Yes, mum.”
She looked to the side. There was a great deal to look at in the room, once your eyes got a fix. High jumbles of furnishings, and tables piled with inlaid boxes and jugs and devil masks propped against China pots. When the gas flared a little, silver and gold flashed out of the shadows.
“The telegraph is a convenience,” she said, “but an irrelevance. I have not left this house for fourteen years.” She turned her face toward me again. “An indisposition left me immobile. But I did not feel incommoded. I have not missed the world. I saw it, Captain Jones, through my son’s eyes. He described it all to me, all that he did, all that he saw. We shared the great world… as we shared his incorruptible ideals.” The tiny smile came and went again, and a hand darted along an arm of her chair. “I suspect it was the best possible way to see our sinful world. Through the eyes of a youth pure in heart.” Her eyes focused hard on me. “Has the world changed a great deal, do you think?”
“Well, mum… I suppose many an object is changed. But I expect men are the same as always.”
She lowered her chin and her eyes disappeared under the shadow of her brows. “Yes,” she said, her voice a whisper. “I, too, would expect little change in men. Still, we may hope. As my son hoped.”
“Yes, mum.”
“He was so like his father,” she said. “Like unto the Christian martyrs.” Her left hand scurried back into a billow of sleeve. “Perhaps you find it curious, Captain Jones, that I do not weep?”
“Yes, mum. I mean, no. I do not presume—”
“I have experience of tragedy, you see. I have grown accustomed to it, and expect nothing else of the flesh.” She lifted a hand and indicated the dark treasures all around her. “This house is my memorial to my husband. I do not receive. You are an exception, made under exceptional circumstances. Society… is a loathsome snare. My time is occupied in the preservation of my husband’s legacy, in writing down the history of his extraordinary deeds.” She closed her eyes. “And now I must write of my son.”
“I take it your husband was a visitor to the East, mum?” I had my questions for her, as directed by General McClellan, but I dreaded the asking and wished to delay.
“My husband,” she said, sinking deeper into her throne, “carried Christ’s word to the benighted. I went with him, to help him bear his cross. At our marriage, we pledged ourselves to Christ’s work. He was a man of immense gifts, but of still greater generosity of spirit.” She raised her chin like the proud girl she once had been. “We were both of us born to privilege, Captain Jones, but we made it our greatest privilege to serve God, to share His Word with those less fortunate. We went into heathen China.”
Her face lowered again and her eyes found hard remembrance. “It was a terrible place, an inferno… wicked… diseased with the worship of idols. You cannot imagine the degradation of mankind unless you have witnessed it in Old Cathay, Captain Jones. God’s creatures… wallowing in the devil’s employments. Yet, my husband’s heart knew only mercy, he saw only the good. He lifted the Chinese Heavenward, yet did not condescend to judge the least of them.” She gestured toward her treasures again. “Look around you. Examine these manifestations of the love my husband bore toward their culture. He always said… he said that it would ‘take unto a hundred years’… but that China was destined to become the greatest of Christian nations.”
“Were you there a long time then, mum?”
“Seventeen years. Anthony was born there, you know. In the mission residence. He was… the cause of my return. Anthony was… not a well child. A late gift from our Redeemer. Such children are often unwell. I feared the Lord would take him from me. The filth of the place surely would have killed him. And I loved him… immoderately. I had to bring him home.”
“Yes, mum.”
“I saved my child.”
“Yes, mum.”
“And killed my husband.”
Now there are times when a man encounters a shortage of appropriate words. But Mrs. Fowler did not leave me long in distress.
“My husband remained behind,” she told me, “to conclude our affairs and to await the arrival of a gentleman from the Society of Friends who was to assume the mission. But that gentleman, too, was martyred. He died of sickness on the river, before he even reached our station. Thus circumstances required my husband to remain in that slough of idolatry. But mortal love can be as strong as bands of iron, Captain Jones. After a year, he could not bear the separation and took ship, abandoning his duties. He could not live without me, you see.” Her eyes sunk deep into her head and her spirit slouched, though her back remained erect. “His vessel was lo
st.”
She lowered her chin until the shadows wrapped her in a veil. Had she not spoken, I would have thought her asleep. “Perhaps it was God’s judgement. On my husband’s preference for his worldly love over his duty, on his choice of the profane over the sacred. A judgement upon,both of us.”
“A terrible story, mum.” It moved me. For I understood loss.
She lifted her face again, as if her skin had grown a sudden craving for the gaslight, for the least warmth. “I do not tell this to you to gain sympathy, Captain. I only wish you to understand the tradition of sacrifice abundant in this family. My husband dedicated himself to the enlightenment of the heathen, and perished. Now my son has given his life to eliminate the hellish scourge of slavery.” A hand darted from the folds of her sleeve to perch at the end of a chair arm. “My duty is to mourn them.”
“Yes, mum.” I was having a bit of a problem with my leg, for the high, hard edge of the chair was stopping up the blood behind my knee. I wished to make myself more comfortable, but dared not. We must preserve our dignity under such circumstances.
“Slavery… is a sin of ineffable darkness,” she said, “a sin against God and man. I mourn my son. Yet… if his death can further the cause of African freedom… if the redemption of those poor innocents can be credited to his sacrifice… then let it be.” For the first time, she leaned forward. It was only the slightest inclination of the neck, but seemed mighty in the stillness and gloom. “General McClellan informs me that you will head the inquiry into my son’s death.”
“I will, mum.”
“You must discover his assassins. I will forgive them, Captain Jones, but the law demands that they hang.”
The change in her tone startled me, for her voice grew as strong as a drillmaster’s.
“Your pardon, mum, but in the confusions of wartime, it may prove difficult—”
“I rely upon you,” she said, “to bring justice to my son.”
“Mum… on that very account… though it is a painful question… I am put to ask if your son had any enemies, if—”
A window slammed shut elsewhere in the house. The noise struck me like the discharge of a cannon.
“Of course, Anthony had enemies,” she said in an arctic voice. “There are always demons who would pull down the brightest stars in the firmament, devils grasping at the hem of angels.” She turned her head just to the side, but her eyes remained fixed upon me. “Even in this city… this ‘City of Brotherly Love’…” She laughed. It sounded as if an ancient machine had come back into use, creaking and unfamiliar with its own workings. “Do not trust this city, Captain Jones. For the people’s hearts are with the South, and their thoughts are drenched in evil. Our Anti-Slavery Society never gathered the commitment of the least theater subscription. They shouted my son down. They spurned him, calling for Barabbas. They are black slavers in their hearts, all of them. Their name is Legion. We must annihilate them.”
“Would there be any specific names, mum? Of those who wished your son ill?”
“Names? There are too many to name. Men… with their lusts for savage flesh. And the women… what poor boy understands the baseness in their hearts? They would have corrupted my son, destroyed him, but for the purity in which God armored his soul. He was born a soldier, Captain Jones, a soldier in the army of the Lord. His every day was a battlefield of temptations. But he remained pure…” She waved her head slowly from side to side, and her small hands raced. “I longed to stand there beside him, to support him in his efforts, to rise from this chair and walk beside him along the Lord’s exalted path, to lend him my strength. But all I could offer was money and a mother’s love.”
Her eyes settled on me again, and now they burned the air. “Find his murderers, Captain Jones. Find his assassins, so that my son may rest in peace in his martyr’s grave. For my part, I have undertaken to publicize his martyrdom. I am in correspondence with Mr. Greeley and Mr. Garrison, and with the crusaders of Brook Farm, with Mr. Emerson. Our family is known, Captain Jones, and not without power. I shall use all of that power to destroy the vile institution of slavery, and no general, not even a president, will delay me. I will say unto them, ‘Get thee behind me, Satan.’ Tell General McClellan that I shall not pause… I will not pause… my murdered angel…”
She was distraught, as well a poor crippled widow might be who lost her only son. But I had my duty as charged, and could not let the opportunity pass.
“You believe he was murdered, mum? That it wasn’t an accident of war?”
“He was murdered,” she said. “There is no doubt.”
I could feel her desire to rise from that chair. Her hands scoured its arms for purchase. But her body would not obey her.
“I know he was murdered,” she repeated. “I have been informed.”
“And… who told you such a thing, mum?”
“My son. He came to me yesterday.” She lifted a shrunken hand and pointed a finger toward me. “He sat in the chair where you sit now.”
I am not a man given to superstitions, but when she said those words it scared the dickens out of me. The room went as cold as a January night.
“You’ll think me mad,” she said, smiling. “But there is more to this world than we see. The love my son bore me transcended the decay of the flesh. He could not part from me without a last farewell. So he came to me yesterday afternoon. He sat there and we communed in silence. He was as beautiful as ever, my dear Anthony, but immeasurably sad. Sad, and pale, and cold. At last he said to me, ‘Mother, I am murdered. Avenge me.’ Then he rose and left me. He walked through that door.” She pointed into the darkness. “May I offer you tea, Captain Jones?”
“Will you visit the district headquarters, sir?” Lee asked me. “Or perhaps the Volunteer Refreshment Saloon? The Washington train is awaiting the arrival of a regimental contingent.”
I gobbled fresh air. Twas a gray afternoon, but it seemed hurtfully bright to my eyes.
“Thank you, Mr. Lee. It is my intention to visit the arsenal.”
“That would be along Cray’s Ferry Road, sir.”
“I believe that is correct, Mr. Lee.”
“It is a long way, sir.”
“If it’s an inconvenience, Mr. Lee…”
He held up his hands. Twas an extravagant gesture in a man of such restrained manner. “Oh, no, sir. Of course not. Mrs. Fowler instructs me you are to enjoy the kindest attentions.”
Two promenading ladies spent odd looks on us.
“Shall we go then, Mr. Lee?”
“Of course, sir.”
I got into the coach, wishing its glass windows away, for I longed to drink down all the fresh air in the Union. The incense and ash smell of Havisham House would not quit me.
We passed a bounty of dwellings that would not have disgraced London itself, then, with the turn of a corner, arrived among sheds of two stories pretending to be houses, each a warehouse of humanity. I tapped at the front of the carriage with my cane, and Mr. Lee pulled up. We had reached a place where curious behavior might seem at home.
I got out and, shy of those hideous horses, climbed up on the coachmen’s bench.
“I would see something of the city on our way,” I told Mr. Lee, and it was true enough, though it took more than that to get me to perch over those barely harnessed beasts.
We had entered an Irish settlement of the sort that every city in the Union had acquired by 1861. Gutter saloons and a few ramshackle shops squeezed between shanties that would have shamed the backstreets of Delhi. Ragged women shielded infants with their shawls and men bleak of eye sat in the doorways, rising now and again to observe a country habit in an alley. A recruiting banner called for FENIAN volunteers, promising a bounty for service and giving the street its only color. Two dogs wrestled down in the slops till an old man pulled the bone from between them and shoved it into his pocket. Still, a sweet voice sang of Killarney as we passed.
I was patient of the Irish, having served among them, and knew t
hey could be put to honest work with supervision. They could be sweet as children, the sons and daughters of Erin, and great in their imaginings. Yet there lay a despair in such folk that would not be quenched by all the liquor in the world. I hoped that America might make something of the Irish, for the Lord knows Britannia never did.
Mr. Lee soon took us out of that slough, and we trotted fair by the river. Our route followed a bluff and I looked down at the water to keep my eyes away from the horses. Despite the season, men in a startling level of undress rowed along in boats that were hardly more than splinters. I had never seen the like.
“And what would they be, those boats?” I pointed.
“They are called ‘sculls,’ sir. Sculling is quite the fashion among the young gentlemen.”
I nodded. “And what is their purpose, Mr. Lee?” They were too slight for cargo or the ferrying of passengers.
“They are for racing,” the coachman said.
“And gambling?” I had little love for wagering, and saw it ruin nearly as many a man as drink.
He teased the horses with his whip. “I do not know if the young gentlemen bet, sir. Only that they race.”
I sensed that we were not to grow more intimate, so I went ahead and asked what I ached to ask.
“Mr. Lee, you’ll pardon me for finding it a curiosity that Mrs. Fowler keeps a carriage… and such a fine team… when she does not go out.”
The coachman responded with equanimity. “A carriage belongs to Mrs. Fowler’s position, sir. A lady cannot rely on hire.”
“Yes, Mr. Lee. But if the lady doesn’t go anywhere?”
The coachman steered us clear of a brewer’s wagon. The teamster gave him a disbelieving look, as if the man had just spotted an ape at his alphabet.
“It is not a matter of what the lady does, sir,” Mr. Lee told me, “but of who the lady is. We Philadelphians are people of tradition.”
The Schuylkill Arsenal was the nub of my trouser problems. I thought a surprise visit might effect some good—certainly this was a fine opportunity—and I did not wish to waste the cost of my journey. I was not certain my interview with Mrs. Fowler had justified the expense to the government.
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