by Anna Maclean
Said building, located in Court Square, was a four-square granite structure of formidable size and austere presence that contained the marshal’s office, much of the city administrative offices, and the courtroom itself. It was guarded by an assortment of soldiery and police, and much of legalistic Boston gathered in that place. The dashing young lawyer Richard Henry Dana kept his offices across the way, and Judge Edward Greely Loring spent more time there than teaching in his Harvard law class. Wendell Phillips could be seen pacing the halls with papers in hand to file or present; Ralph Waldo Emerson, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, and my father, of course . . . the names of the people who could be seen scuffling down those halls at the time of this story read like a history lesson, the law students boasted.
And so three days following the birth of Queenie’s daughter, after my own schoolchildren had left and the parlor had been swept clean of marbles and crumbs, I returned to that courthouse to pay a second visit to Preston Wortham. I had some very specific questions for him.
It was about three o’clock in the afternoon when I arrived, and Constable Cobban was just finishing an early workday at the courthouse; we passed each other in the hall.
“Afternoon,” he said, grinning and making a little bow vaguely in my direction. He blushed. He seemed to always blush when he saw me, I reflected, and reminded myself I must give him no encouragement.
“Good afternoon to you, Constable,” I replied somewhat coolly. He seemed to wish to converse, but I continued on my way.
“I approve,” he called after me.
“Approve?”
“Your manners, Miss Alcott. You are right. You should not stop to talk to a man in public. I wonder, though, that you came here by yourself. Perhaps something of Mrs. Wortham rubbed off on you.”
I wondered what he meant by that, but decided the conversation would have to wait. There were other matters to look into before I quizzed him on his somewhat harsh attitude toward my friend. It seemed far too soon to trust him with all my reflections on the business of Dorothy, and if I stopped to exchange small talk, he might interpret that as encouragement.
No, there would be time enough for chatting later, and I was in a bit of a rush, fitting, as I was, this chore between my school day and the domestic tasks waiting for me at home. So I did not stop and give that young man a chance to converse. What would he have said if I had? I felt his eyes on my back, and kept walking.
And, of course, because I was both preoccupied and rushed and in no mood for small talk or other unnecessary conversation, just as I rounded the corner, Mayor Van Crowninshield Smith appeared before me, his top hat reaching to the low ceiling of the third floor, the carved ivory handle of his walking cane shining through the shadowed interior darkness.
“Ah!” Boston’s mayor exclaimed brightly. “Miss Alcott. Yes, it is Miss Alcott? Miss Alcott, how are you and your excellent father?”
It is not politic to snub a mayor, much as one is tempted, so I sighed and squared my shoulders and prepared to listen to his chatter for a few moments. I did not particularly like Mayor Van Crowninshield Smith. He was the kind of person who seeks to be admired by all and so ends up admired by none. He had the morals of a kite, Father said, turning in every breeze that came along and sometimes spiraling in nonsensical circles. When he met with the pro-slavery Irish of Boston, he advocated the slavery system. When he met with the free-soilers, he preached against slavery.
Mayor Van Crowninshield Smith also had literary aspirations, and had been an editor of the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal. He fancied himself to be a man of letters and was always desirous of conversation with other men of letters, so much so that those more stately men of the town, Mr. Thoreau, Mr. Richard Dana, and even Mr. Emerson when he was in from Concord, took to ducking down hallways and behind shrubs when they saw the mayor approaching. One of the great delights of my girlhood had been to spy the top hat and bushy eyebrows of the very serious Ralph Emerson sticking up from behind a rhododendron as the mayor strolled by.
I had no such recourse at that moment. Shrubs are difficult to find in interior hallways of courthouses.
“Father is well, Mayor. I will tell him you asked about him.” I made the tiniest of curtsies, as women are expected to do before high personages, and made to continue on my way.
He took my elbow and turned to walk with me. Such men usually do. It is one of their irritating habits to believe that no woman could possibly wish to be alone with her thoughts when he was available to them.
“I had a letter to the editor published on Wednesday last. Did you see it, Miss Alcott? Did your father comment upon it?” the mayor asked eagerly.
“Wednesday last. Let me remember.” I pretended to search my memory, frowning a little with the feigned effort. “Yes, Wednesday. That was the day the neighbor’s spaniel reached the paper before Father could. How sad! We missed your letter! What was it about, Mayor?”
This was a fabrication. We had read the letter and laughed heartily before using the paper to light the evening fire in the hearth, for the mayor had proposed that the history and geography of Turkey be made a compulsory subject at Harvard. Not that we had anything against that esteemed Oriental country; rather it was transparent that Mayor Van Crowninshield Smith merely wished to sell more copies of his travel book, Turkey and the Turks, by requiring the Harvard students to buy it. The book’s unimaginative title was indicative of its unimaginative contents. I had read the tome and torn my hair over it. “Has he no eyes? Has he no ears?” I had moaned. “To visit such a place, and record only street names!”
“Ah. A spaniel. I see. Well. I shall send your father a copy.” The mayor stroked his beard thoughtfully. “I believe I have saved a few,” he added, as if his entire front parlor were not crammed with copies of the paper. “Then perhaps we might discuss it.”
“Certainly,” I agreed cheerfully. “Though Father is just a little busy these days. He still gives conversations, as you know.”
Now the friendly mayor grew quite serious. “And it is just that I wish to speak with him about,” he said. “Perhaps he could put my name forward. Not that I would wish to be remunerated . . . no such thing. But I believe I could provide some philosophical and literary content to a room of intellectuals and philosophers such as those who gather to hear your father speak. Don’t you think?”
He paused and smiled at his own disingenuousness. I was thankful he did not allow time for me to answer, certain as he was that my only possible response could be an affirmation. Then his expression changed, as if it had suddenly occurred to him that he was having this delightful conversation not on the avenue or in the park, but in a dark hallway lined with rooms in which criminals were detained, probably plotting even more dreadful deeds as we spoke.
“Miss Alcott, may I ask your business at the courthouse? You are not in any difficulty? Your father’s activities have not caught up with him?” He referred, of course, to Father’s work with the Boston Vigilance Committee and the abolitionists. Should we ever be discovered harboring a fugitive slave in our home, we would be fined five hundred dollars (a fortune!) and Father would go to jail. Mostly, the mayor simply looked the other way. Even abolitionist votes were important to him.
“No,” I said. “There is no difficulty at home. I have only come to visit an old friend, Mr. Wortham.”
“Wortham? The wife murderer? An old friend? You must reconsider your friendships, Miss Alcott. I am against this murdering of wives, most against it.”
I smiled. I must remember to tell my father that the mayor had finally expressed a definite opinion.
“It is not conclusively proven that he is a wife murderer,” I answered calmly.
“No. But it will be. And I believe you were also in conversation with that young Cobban.”
“We exchanged greetings,” I admitted.
“Beware of him,” the mayor warned darkly. “Between you and me, he is not a great admirer of the fair sex, not since the day his certain young woman
decided to marry another. Bitter. That’s what I say. And with a penchant to use force when not required. We’ve had to warn him.”
I studied the ceiling, no longer listening and only eager to end this unwanted conversation. “Yes, well, I’m sure that is none of my business. Good afternoon, Mayor. I will give Father your regards.” We were then standing before the barred and grilled door where Mr. Wortham was incarcerated. I knocked on the door myself.
The startled guard looked up from his slumber and fetched the stool for me to sit on. I accepted the stool with a polite if stiff thank-you, feeling Mayor Van Crowninshield Smith’s eyes boring into my back.
Preston had been lying on his cot, the newspaper over his face. He sat up when I knocked. He had altered considerably. Jail does that to a man, I suspected. Proof of that alteration was that he did not rise to greet me, as a gentleman would have, even in that place. Perhaps Preston had not altered, but merely become more of what he already was, and a gentleman is not a noun one uses for such a person. I had not fully considered the question of Wortham’s nature; it seemed a dark topic, but one I could no longer afford to ignore.
“What did you quarrel about with Dorothy?” I asked.
Preston looked at the crumpled afternoon-edition newspaper he had been reading. “Digby used to iron these for me,” he said.
A sinister aspect had overtaken his former good looks. His mustache had been allowed to grow wild and now weedily covered his top lip; his thick black hair was in a state of similar unrestrained naturality and stood wildly about his head. He wore a rumpled shirt lacking collar or cuffs, and his suspenders dangled over his legs rather than his shoulders. He no longer looked like a gentleman who had been brought in for a night of rowdy carousing. He looked what he was: a man with a bad conscience who had given up hope; a man who had been discovered for what he really was, which was the kind of husband all young women are warned against acquiring.
“She thought I had broken a promise. That I had renewed an . . . old connection,” he muttered.i
I looked up at the barred window behind him, high on the wall. Thin, cold sunlight seeped through, but not enough to cast shadows of the bars on the floor.
“Had you?” I asked quietly, lowering my eyes to his and gazing steadily, as if I would read him. “Is it true, Mr. Wortham, that upon your return from Europe you took Katya Mendosa as your mistress?”
Preston rose from his chair with a sudden, angry movement. “She is not my mistress!” he shouted. “Who is repeating this evil rumor?” But at that moment his exertions and quick gestures caused his leg irons to clank. Chastised by the metal reminders of guilt, he sat back down, ran his hands through his already bristling hair, and picked up the paper he had been reading, as if he would ignore further questions.
“It seems to be rather common knowledge,” I said. “Dorothy’s sisters knew. One could reasonably suspect Dorothy also knew.”
From behind his paper, Preston groaned.
“Did Dorothy know, and did you quarrel about that, Mr. Wortham?”
Preston sighed heavily and put down the paper. He looked wild-eyed. “Once. Just once I had dinner with her. Katya seemed so . . . so warm. Like an old friend. But it was just once, I swear. But I was seen. And Dorothy found out,” he admitted. “Someone told her. Oh, what a scene there was. Poor Dorothy. I’ve never seen her weep so. She said she would leave me, that I had never really loved her. She said . . . she said what her family had accused me of all along, of marrying her for her money.”
I rose and began to pace in the hall, as I always did when moved by strong emotion that could not be expressed. “Poor Dorothy,” I repeated. “Poor Dorothy. Oh, Mr. Wortham, the pain you caused.”
“I know,” he muttered, wiping at his eyes, though those eyes were dry. “I have not lived a single day since without doing penance of some kind. Can a man never be forgiven? I am no worse than most.”
“Certainly no better than most.” I sighed. “But answer me this question: When did you have your one-evening affair with Katya Mendosa?”
“A month ago. The day after the paper carried the notice in the society column that Dorothy and I had returned from Europe. How Dorothy hated that, having our names in the paper. I tried to tell her that times had changed, that society columns were quite acceptable, but . . .”
His train of thought had begun to wander, so I steered him back to our course.
“How did you first meet Katya Mendosa?”
“At the theater, of course. She was dancing in the production of Hiawatha. Her costume was nothing but feathers, as I recall.”
I cleared my throat.
“Yes. Well,” he continued, somewhat abashed, for his memories had wandered down shameful paths. “She saw me in the front row with some friends, and sent a note asking if I would like to have a glass of punch with her, after. I was most flattered.”
“Was the note addressed to the gentleman in the front row, or did it have your name on it?” If Preston heard the irony in my voice, he did not respond to it.
“My name was on it.”
“And you had not met before that?”
“Not that I can remember. And I’m certain I would remember.”
“You spoke of a promise to Dorothy. Did she require you to promise that you would never see Katya Mendosa again?”
“Yes.”
A man in Preston’s precarious predicament might well be grateful for all assistance shown. Preston, however, seemed unwilling to be quizzed further about this affair, and now resumed his perusal of the front page, which contained a rather lurid account of his seduction of the young maid in Newport some years before. Accused of wificide, he now was fair game for the reading public.
“Mr. Wortham, I must tell you that I saw your calling card in Miss Mendosa’s dressing room. You asked for an appointment with her.”
Preston sighed and again put down his unironed paper. “To . . . to be certain that Katya understood our friendship was at an end.”
“Let’s see. You wanted to see her to tell her you wouldn’t be coming to see her anymore.”
Wortham blushed. “That’s right,” he said. “I told her I couldn’t afford the expense. She expected me to buy her things.”
I sighed. Wortham was one of the new men who associated money with morality, perhaps even saw money in its place.
Accept people as they are, Louy, my mother often instructed. We each have our own nature, and while we can be improved, we can’t be what it is not our nature to be. All right. I would accept Wortham on his own terms. “Mr. Wortham, your marriage made you wealthy. Surely you had the means to keep . . .” I could not complete the sentence; even the words were another betrayal of Dorothy. To keep a mistress.
“A good wardrobe is so very expensive these days,” he muttered. “I’m a lost cause, Miss Alcott. Perhaps you should give up on me. Besides, I’m not sure I want to live. I miss her so damn much. I hadn’t realized . . .”
“How much you loved Dottie?” I finished. Or how impoverished you would be upon her death? I wondered, but did not say.
“Ah, so many regrets.” He sighed.
I began to pace again, then turned to confront him.
“And that was the sum of the quarrel with Dorothy?” I asked. “She suspected—discovered, I would say—that you had visited a woman?”
“There were other words and accusations. To be frank, I suspected Dorothy herself was keeping a secret of some nature from me.”
This brought me up short opposite Wortham’s cot, our eyes meeting through the bars on the door. “Keeping a secret? Dorothy? What did you suspect was the nature of her secret?”
Preston grew pale. “I think there was . . . someone else.” “You suspected Dorothy of being disloyal?” I asked finally, having remembered what Mrs. Brownly said, that Dorothy had loved—and lost—another before her marriage to Wortham.
“I did. Yes, Miss Alcott, I did. There. I’ve said it. Even during our honeymoon I would come across her writ
ing a letter, and she would hide the letter and pretend it was nothing, just a scrap of paper. And as soon as we were home in Boston, she disappeared for the entire afternoon, and came back red-eyed.”
“So that afternoon of the first tea party, when she arrived late . . .”
“I thought she had been with him.”
“Mr. Wortham, I don’t know what to say. Except, perhaps, this. I knew Dorothy longer than you did, and perhaps even more closely, at least for a few years, as we were growing. Fidelity was her essence.”
“People change. Women change. What, then, was her secret? A wife owes her husband complete honesty.”
“And what does a husband owe a wife?” I couldn’t resist. He did not answer. There was a long, ominous silence, filled only with the intrusive noises of guards coming on duty downstairs, their heavy, echoing footsteps, the mumbled exchange of greetings, a rattling of keys. Outside in the street a water seller called out his wares of cool sips of good well water, children sang and laughed, horses and carriages rumbled past. Life.
“I am beginning to understand,” I said softly. “If . . . when . . . you are released, perhaps Dot’s family will allow you a proper period of mourning in the Newport house.” This was a ruse. At that moment his guilt seemed almost palpable, and I wasn’t at all convinced he would be released, but I needed to direct this distressing conversation to other topics.
Preston looked up from his distracted study of his prison floor with a small glimmer of, if not actual hope, then a recognition that such a word as future did exist, after all. “If I’m not hanged, that would be a fine idea,” he admitted with some longing in his voice. “It will be summer by then. Dot always loved Newport in the summer. So did I.”