A Passionate Girl

by Thomas Fleming

  “What are the imperial powers conniving at now, in peaceful North America?” Seward said.

  Sir Frederick Bruce, the British minister, replied with a smile as warm as the sort one sees on a dead fish sprawled on the ice in a market. His hard blue eyes fastened on me for a moment, and I saw recognition as well as disbelief flare. “I have no idea what you mean, Mr. Secretary,” he said.

  “Mr. Johnson,” he added suavely. “I trust the president is well.”

  “He’s in fine fettle,” Robert Johnson said. “As we say in Tennessee, he’s ready to skin a live mountain lion with one hand and shoe a jackass with the other.”

  “Delightful news,” murmured Bruce, not quite able to conceal his astonishment at this American hyperbole.

  “We connived at nothing more dangerous than an agreement that the summer in Washington is beastly,” said the other man, in an accent that made one think his tongue was too wide for his mouth. He was as dark complexioned as Bruce was ruddy. With studied purpose, Mr. Seward introduced me to M. de Berthemy, the French ambassador. “And this,” he said, gesturing to Bruce, “is Your Majesty’s representative here in Washington.”

  “She is not my Majesty, nor ever has been but by the use of violence,” I said.

  “It seems to me, Mr. Secretary, that one could turn the question of connivance back upon you,” Bruce said.

  “How so?” Seward said with mocking innocence. “I consider this young woman a refugee. I’m merely doing my duty by her. As George Washington said, America is always ready to open its bosom to refugees from every country.”

  “If my observations in New York are any guide, many of this young woman’s sort feel compelled to return the favor.”

  “You see the kind of repartee to which diplomacy exposes you?” Seward said to me.

  “If what Sir Frederick says is true, I can tell him where Irish women learned their debauchery,” I said. “Wasn’t it William Blake who wrote: ‘The harlot’s cry from street to street / Shall weave old England’s winding sheet’?”

  “Bull’s-eye,” roared Robert Johnson.

  Sir Frederick’s eyes glistened with cold fury. I saw the face of the enemy. “I’m having papers prepared for your attention, sir,” Bruce said to Seward, “asking you to surrender this girl and her companions as criminals, guilty of barbarous murders.”

  “You mean you’d put a noose around that lovely neck?” Seward said. “What do you think the president would say to such a demand, Robert?”

  “I think it would require the entire Army of the Tennessee to make him comply.”

  “I would be in substantial agreement,” Seward said. “According to our latest dispatches, Judah Benjamin, the secretary of state of the Confederate government, has arrived in England, to be received with cheers and toasts and sympathy by your aristocracy. There’s no mention of returning him for the atrocious crimes his government committed against the people of the United States. He is the refugee of a belligerent power who had the misfortune to lose its war. Perhaps this young woman should be accorded the same status.”

  “She resembles Mrs. Greenhow. Almost enough to be her daughter,” Berthemy said.

  “That,” Seward replied with sudden sharpness, “is what we in America call a low blow. In western New York we have an even more vivid phrase to describe it.”

  “It was intended as a compliment, Mr. Secretary,” Berthemy said.

  “Tell Louis Napoleon that misplaced compliments can be as dangerous as misplaced confidence,” Seward snapped. “Have you informed Paris of the movement of our army of observation to the Mexican border?”

  “Most assuredly.”

  “Has there been a reply?”

  “If there had been, you would have learned of it immediately, Mr. Secretary.”

  “If you think we’re going to pay several dozen millions to feed an army on the Rio Grande for very long, you’re dreaming,” Seward said.

  “I have tried in my dispatches to make clear America’s strong interest in economy,” Berthemy said.

  “Good.”

  I could feel the electric force of Seward’s power striking the Frenchman, all but making him buckle in front of our eyes.

  “Sir Frederick,” Seward said, turning to the Englishman, “did you enjoy that copy of my speech?”

  “Very much, except for the passage about the magic circle of the American union. That had a somewhat druidical flavor to it.”

  Seward smiled thinly and explained to me and Robert Johnson. “I’m referring to a speech I’m planning to give in Albany next month. In it I express the belief that this whole continent, must sooner or later come within the magic circle of the American union. Does that sound druidical to you?”

  “It sounds practical,” I said.

  “I’m inclined to think the Fenians believe more in rifles and pistols than in druids, wouldn’t you say, Miss Fitzmaurice?” Robert Johnson said.

  “Yes. We’re very American,” I said.

  Seward nodded and made a small chuckling sound in the back of his throat—the nearest to a laugh I ever heard from him. “She does so well, you’d almost think I rehearsed her. But I’m not that clever. Good night, gentlemen.”

  We paid our respects to Baron de Stoeckl and departed. Robert Johnson climbed into the carriage and placed me between him and Seward. He was laughing very hard and followed it with a Tennessee whoop.

  “I told you, Mr. Seward. This girl is something, ain’t she?”

  I felt Seward’s hand on my knee. “You performed excellently, my dear. Bruce was utterly stunned by that quote from Blake.”

  “I didn’t think of it as performing,” I said.

  “Forgive me. That’s how you think of everything after a lifetime in politics.”

  “Who is this Mrs. Greenhow that I so much resemble?”

  “A woman I fancied almost as much as this young gallant fancies you,” Seward said. “She sympathized with the Confederacy. The Secret service arrested her as a spy and sent her south. She went to England and returned with a shipment of gold. Her blockade runner hit a sandbar. She tried to get ashore in a small boat. It overturned in the surf and she drowned.”

  He was silent for several moments. “Her maiden name was Rose O’Neal. When she first came to Washington she was the most beautiful woman I ever saw. People called her ‘the Wild Rose.’ That was when I loved her. By the time the war began it was nostalgia. I knew she was selling herself to a certain senator for military secrets.”

  He pointed to a small house on the corner of 16th Street. “There’s where she lived.”

  “Goddamn,” Robert Johnson said. “You can’t trust nobody in this miserable town, can you.”

  “I wouldn’t trust Mr. Stanton very much, if I were you,” Seward said. “I hope your chin whiskers are not a compliment to him.”

  “I admire the old buzzard,” Robert Johnson said. “He won the war for us.”

  “But now we must win the peace. Your father’s peace. I’m not sure Stanton really wants peace. It would mean the end of his power.”

  He looked over his shoulder. “You see that carriage light back there?” We could see it bobbing in the darkness. “I wouldn’t be surprised if it belonged to one of Mr. Stanton’s National Policemen, watching me, or you, or this girl.”

  “Let’s try him,” Robert Johnson said. He gave our driver orders to proceed into the country beyond the settled part of Washington. Within minutes we were in a pitch-black wilderness without a house in sight. The carriage light continued to pursue us. Robert Johnson extinguished our own lamp and told the driver to turn off the road into the first open field. It was a moonless night. We were invisible from the road. The other carriage passed us at a brisk pace, then stopped a few hundred yards up the road, turned, and approached us again.

  “Goddamn,” snarled Robert Johnson. He sprang from the carriage, raced into the road, and leaped into the other vehicle. In a moment he returned dragging a very frightened-looking man by the scruff of the nec
k. “Take a good look,” he said. “Miss Fitzmaurice and Mr. Seward and Mr. Johnson out for a drive. Now get out of here before I kick your ass in.”

  More and more, I had the feeling that I had wandered into a play in which the actors spoke a foreign language and drew on passions I did not understand. There was a tremendous struggle for power raging through America, part of the same convulsive tragedy that had created the war that left a half million dead, and millions more scarred and bitter. Was it Ireland’s opportunity or another in her long history of misfortunes?

  We ordered our driver to return us to Washington. We rode warily up and down various side streets while Mr. Seward and Robert Johnson studied the road behind us. Finally we ventured down a dark street with one or two small houses on it.

  “Stop here,” Seward called to the coachman. We got down and Seward led us to the first house. He took a key from his pocket and opened the door. Inside, the parlor was done in warm shades of dark blue and gold, with a piece of red gauze dividing the room in half. On one side a table was set with a cold supper of chicken and duck and side dishes of green salad. Wine cooled in a silver bucket. Gas jets flickered a tremulous light, not visible through the thick draperies on the windows.

  “Now this envious old invalid must leave you charming youngsters to your pleasure,” Seward said. He kissed my hand. “Good night, my dear. You have brought back painful but precious memories.”

  Robert Johnson grinned and untied his tie. He took off his coat and shirt and offered me some champagne. I shook my head. My stomach was still uneasy from my ordeal of the previous night. “Come on,” he said, swallowing his glass at one gulp. “It’s more fun when you’re a little drunk.”

  I swallowed enough champagne to be polite. “Now let’s get you out of that goddamn iron fortress,” he said. He began fumbling with the buttons on my dress. With little help from him—his fingers were incredibly clumsy—I took it off and lifted the iron hoop over my head and stood before him in my chemise.

  “That’s more like it,” he said.

  He kissed me, thrusting his tongue deep into my mouth. “How do you like this place?” he said. “Old Seward’s hideaway. He’s been lettin’ me use it. Private, you got to keep things private. The only way to succeed in Washington politics.”

  “A wise man, no doubt,” I said.

  I sat down in a chair. He hovered over me and slipped his hand beneath my chemise to squeeze my breast while kissing me again.

  “Don’t know whether I rightly should fool around with a woman who can shoot so good.” he said. “It’s damn near unnatural. But I like Irish girls. Always have. When I’d go to a house in Nashville, I’d always ask the madam if she had any Irish girls. Passionate. I could see you were one when I looked at you. A real passionate girl.”

  He finished the bottle of champagne and put another one in the ice bucket. “Old Andy, m’father, he didn’t think much of me until he got to the White House. My older brother, Charlie, was his boy. He was so goddamn perfect, Charlie was. Son-of-a-bitch wasn’t smart enough to stay off his horse when there was ice a foot thick on the roads. Horse fell on him and killed him. Busted his head like an egg. Then old Andy grabs me and starts in. ‘Bob, you’re all I got left now, you got to stand by me.’ Now he’s in that White House and can’t see nobody but what comes to him. Who’s his eyes and ears, who gets around this town and finds out what they’re sayin’ at the Willard and the National? Old Robert. Old why-can’t-you-be-as-smart-as-Charlie Robert.”

  He opened the second bottle of champagne and drank off a glass and a half. “Jesus,” he said. “This stuff ain’t hittin’ me. How ’bout you?” He went into the next room and came back with a bottle of bourbon. He poured it into a water glass and drank off two fingers. “That’s better,” he gasped. “Good old bourbon.

  “Gives you ideas, whiskey,” he said. “I like a woman with ideas. Makes it more—interestin’, don’t you think? A man with ideas, too? You gonna find me a friend at court, Bess. A friend of Ireland. Now you just take off the rest of them clothes and lie down on the sofa. I got to spill a little water.”

  I sat there, numb. He rose and passed through a door into the next room. Through the red gauze I could see a large dark blue sofa on the other side of the room. I stepped through the blaze of color and a sudden vision of damnation flickered in my mind. Not the hell of the Catholic catechism but the living hell of the degraded woman. Was that where I was going?

  How could I stop, now? I had permitted Fernando Wood to tell this man about me, as if I were a piece of merchandise on the open market. I had naively imagined another rapturous forbidden evening with the dividend of winning a man of power to Ireland’s cause. It was hard to expect rapture from this drunken, garrulous man.

  But I had come too far to flee, even if I had the means. I took off my chemise and lay down on the couch. In a minute or two Robert Johnson stepped through the curtain. He was wearing only his shirt. He drew a chair to the edge of the sofa and ran his hand slowly up my thigh. “Fernando was right,” he said. “You are some piece.”

  With no more than that for preparation he fell upon me and thrust his sex into me. The smell of him was noxious. He must not have bathed for days. The stiff beard gouged my neck, and the harsh linen of his shirt and its buttons hurt my breasts. He drew out and plunged in once, twice, and then gasped, “Ohh goddam.” I felt his seed gushing within me, and the thought flashed down my flesh like flame: If I get pregnant by this man I will kill myself.

  He slid off me and fell with a thud onto the floor. “Goddamn,” he said. He cupped my breast with his hand, then fastened his mouth on it and sucked the nipple for a moment. “Jesus, Bessie. You are some girl,” he said.

  He left me, lurching through the red gauze and vanishing into the room beyond the door. I lay there, trying to resist the inrushing word that stormed against the desperate barricade my mind was trying to erect. WHORE, howled a voice out there in the darkness. WHORE. It was no use trying to resist it, Like a mob that has become one huge maddened beast, it stormed over my denial and rampaged through my ruined heart. For Ireland, I whispered. I have become a whore for Ireland. What else can I do in this strange land? America began by making me a liar, and now she has made me a whore.

  Then I remembered my haughty words this morning to hesitant Colonel Roberts, that stupid, honest, but not level man. That was Bess Fitzmaurice speaking at the acme of her pride. If there was to be blame apportioned for this horror, she must accept her share in it.

  Robert Johnson emerged, fully dressed. “Goddamn,” he said. “Was it that good? You feel like another round?”

  “It was wonderful,” I said, rushing to my chemise. “But I need your help in getting into my dress.”

  “Better’n old Fernando, I’m sure,” Robert said as he struggled with the buttons at the back of the dress. “How do old coots like him get girls like you into bed? Money?”

  “Sympathy,” I said. “But men like you don’t need it.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Let’s go have ourselves a time.”

  He had paid not the slightest attention to the food on the table—a sure sign, I was soon to learn, of a drunkard. Our carriage had been returned by Seward and was waiting at the door. With Robert Johnson urging on the driver, we galloped to John Chamberlain’s gambling casino on Pennsylvania Avenue.

  We stood at the long bar, and men swarmed around Robert Johnson, asking him about pardons, railroad contracts, army supply contracts, the news from the Mexican border, stock speculations based on the government’s plans for the conquered Southern states, rumors of a new transcontinental railroad. He drank hard and talked freely—much too freely, I thought. He was drunk not only with whiskey but with power. The scorned second son had become the crown prince of Washington, D.C.

  Several of those who approached him were women, who regarded me with unconcealed hostility. He introduced me to them, obviously savoring their envy. One of the prettiest was Mrs. Cobb, a brunette who pleaded piteously w
ith “dear Robert” for a pardon for a Southern friend. President Johnson had pardoned some Southerners, but there was a large number of so-called leaders of the rebellion—officers of the army, officials of the rebel government—who were not included.

  Telling Mrs. Cobb to come to the White House tomorrow, Robert seized a bottle of bourbon from the bar and said, “Let’s go buck the ole tiger.” He led me into the next room, where faro was being played with grim intensity by several hundred politicians and generals. The men in blue seemed to arouse Robert Johnson’s ire.

  “Look at them,” he said. “Our volunteer Napoleons, bettin’ their loot.”

  A man rushed up to Johnson and said, “Ben Butler just lost ten thousand on a single draw.”

  “Penny ante play,” Robert said. He pushed his way to a place at one of the tables, and began to bet recklessly on a half dozen cards at once, drinking the while. He lost disastrously and failed to call the turn as well. I had gotten the gist of the game from watching Red Mike play the previous night. I had seen him “hedge” by placing his chips between two or three cards, the first to show determining the outcome. Sometimes he had “heeled” his bet by leaning one chip against the other, so that the single bet played one card to win, the other to lose. I began urging similar tactics on Robert, and his luck changed—magically, so he thought. Soon he was ahead by two thousand dollars, then by five thousand. He started calling me his good luck charm. He wanted to bet everything on the call of a single turn, but I stopped him. By the end of the next round we were ten thousand dollars ahead.