Maybe it embarrassed him to be treated like an emperor, she thought, half-smiling at him. But she felt such pride in him that she knew she must be visibly glowing. Those evenings when he'd come to her sister's house returned to her, that shy tall awkward-looking man whose arms were too long for his sleeves. That bumpkin, Elizabeth had called him. You can't possibly be seriously thinking of marrying that hayseed?
I showed you, Mary thought, remembering Elizabeth's nearly successful efforts to discourage the match. I showed you all....
The Republican Queen, the newspapers had called her.
She hoped Elizabeth had read them, back in Springfield. Hoped everyone had read them who'd looked out their carriage-windows at her walking in the snow, that first poverty-stricken winter of their marriage. One reason she'd wanted to come tonight was her delight in reading about her own smallest movements in the papers the next day, like admiring herself in the mirror back in the days when she'd been the belle of Lexington.
Down on stage, the actor Harry Hawks ad-libbed, “This reminds me of a story, as Mr. Lincoln would say,” and the audience roared with laughter and applause. Just as if, thought Mary, half-angry and half-smug, they hadn't been calling her husband nigger-lover, fool, despot, coward, a thousand hateful things during the years of war....
As if every day hadn't brought mail telling him to say his prayers and threatening his life.
But all that was forgotten now. The theater was packed, and a mood of infectious jollity and goodwill rose out of parterre and stage with the usual hot chow-chow of theater smells: pomade and perfume and the stink of the gaslights. The play was delightfully preposterous, with the haughty English grande dame Mrs. Mountchessington conniving to try to wed her unprepossessing daughter Augusta to the homespun backwoodsman she mistakenly believed was a wealthy Yankee.
As sister Elizabeth might have done, thought Mary gleefully, if she'd ever believed that tall skinny lawyer Mr. Lincoln had had two nickels to rub together....
She slipped her hand into Lincoln's, leaned her head on his shoulder: “What will Miss Harris think of my hanging on to you so?”
There was a smile in his voice. “She won't think anything of it.”
Maybe he was remembering sister Elizabeth, too.
On stage, Mrs. Mountchessington reeled in horror as she learned the ghastly truth: Asa Trenchard was not rich! Outraged, she sent daughter Augusta from the room, and after a few well-chosen admonitions to the bemused backwoodsman, flounced off herself.
“Don't know the manner of good society, eh?” Trenchard retorted. “Wal, I guess I know enough to turn you inside out—you sockdologizing old mantrap!”
Lincoln was just starting to lean down, to make some wiseacre remark in Mary's ear—she never afterwards knew what it was. The crack of a gunshot was hideously loud in the enclosed space of the dark box, and his arm jerked convulsively, wrenching from her hand. Mary caught him as he slumped, smelled the gunpowder and the hot smell of blood....
There was a man in the box, springing out of the cloud of powder-smoke, shouting something. Mary screamed when she saw that he held a dagger, her mind stalled, refusing to understand, her husband's weight bearing down on her heavier and heavier, blood glistening darkly in his black hair.
HER SCREAM PLUNGED HER OUT OF SLEEP, DROPPED HER INTO waking—her scream, the smell of his blood, the weight of him on her shoulder and the knowledge that he was gone, he had left her alone....
And seeing the shadows of her cluttered, crowded room in the Grand Pacific, the looming shadow of Mary Gavin starting up from her chair, Mary screamed again, and again, and again.
She was alive.
It hadn't been laudanum or camphor in Mr. Squair's bottle at all—only one more trick.
And she was going to the madhouse in the morning.
CHAPTER FIVE
Lexington 1832
STRANGELY, WHAT KEPT GOING THROUGH MARY'S MIND ON THE TRAIN ride from Chicago across to Batavia, Illinois, was that this felt exactly like being sent away from home at the age of thirteen for putting spiders in her stepmother's bed.
She had detested her stepmother from the time that fair, thin, decisive woman had first entered her father's house when Mary was eight. Elizabeth, even then on the threshold of young-ladyhood, could smile at “Betsey” and call her “Ma,” as she and their father demanded. Frances, a pale, quiet-tempered nine-year-old, was exquisitely and impenetrably polite as she was to everyone. From the first, Mary loathed that fragile, steely woman who looked at her with so pointed an eye and said, “It takes seven generations to make a lady,” and from the first it was Mary who led Levi, Ann, and little Georgie in mischief, petty thefts, and finely-calculated never-quite-disobedience. “She's not our Ma and nobody can make me say she is!”
The spider incident had its roots two days before Elizabeth's wedding, in the icy February of 1832.
It was a Wednesday, and Nelson, the Todd family coachman, had driven Betsey and the elder girls of the household downtown, for a final fitting of the girls' new dresses with Madame Deauville, and to pick up the creamer and sugar-boat Betsey had ordered for a wedding-gift. Under ordinary circumstances this would have filled Mary with unalloyed delight: there were few things in the world she enjoyed more than new dresses. It was not quite a mile from the brick house on Short Street to the paved streets and stylish shops of Cheapside downtown, and the girls could walk it easily, but taking the carriage imparted a sense of style and importance to the expedition, and Mary loved to wave to her friends from Mr. Ward's school when they passed them on the streets.
She loved, too, the hurry and importance of downtown. Lexington wasn't a great city, like Philadelphia or New York, but around the Court-house square, and along Main Street and Broadway, brick buildings reared two and three stories tall, and it was possible to buy almost anything: breeze-soft silks from France that came upriver from New Orleans, fine wines and cigars, pearl necklaces, and canes with ivory handles shaped like parrots or dogs'-heads or (in the case of Mary's older friend Cash Clay) scantily dressed ladies (but Cash was careful not to carry that one in company). Downtown, every sort of person could be seen walking along the wide flagways that bordered the streets, from her father's friends—planters and bankers in well-fitting fiddleback coats of brown or blue and high-crowned beaver hats—to the young belles of the town, Elizabeth's cronies, in their bright dresses that rustled with petticoats and dangled with a thousand extravagancies of ribbon and lace. Backwoods farmers in homespun shirts brushed shoulders with young gentlemen from the University, studious Yankees who never seemed to have any fun, the swaggering sons of the local planters in their ruffled shirts and varnished boots, and slaves doing the marketing or sweeping the sidewalks in front of their masters' shops, drab dark notes in the colorful scene.
Madame Deauville had the dresses finished—exquisite white silk festooned with blond lace for Mary, Frances, and Mary's cousin Eliza Humphreys, twelve years old and Betsey's cousin, who was living at the Todd house because the schools were better in Lexington than in Frankfort. They would do, her father had said, for the “second day” party as well. This would be given for those who couldn't make the twenty-mile drive out to Walnut Hill, where Elizabeth had gone to live with their Aunt Liza Carr: It was from Aunt Liza's house, and not their father's, that she would be wed. It was almost a day's drive by carriage—the “second day” party would in fact take place on the third day of Elizabeth's married life—and even the acquisition of a new frock did not erase the anger in Mary's heart, that she had lost the sister who had been like a mother to her a month earlier than she had to, because of her stepmother Betsey.
Elizabeth—unlike Mary—had never breathed a word one way or the other about her feelings toward the woman who'd come to take over the household and Robert Todd's six motherless children, five years ago. But about the time Betsey's first baby, Margaret, was born, Elizabeth had started going to Aunt Liza's for “visits” of a week at a time. After Betsey produced little Sam,
and tensions in the now-crowded house on Short Street grew, these visits had lengthened. From the final one, a few weeks after Christmas, Elizabeth had simply neglected to come back.
She still called Betsey “Ma,” and kissed the older woman's thin cheek whenever they met. But Mary knew that Elizabeth had left rather than let her father's new wife run her life.
And this thought was in her heart as she, Frances, and Cousin Eliza waited in the carriage for Betsey to pick up the wedding-gift from Blanchard the silversmith.
Betsey was taking her time in the shop—“I'll bet she's going over every square inch of it, as if she thought Mr. Blanchard would give her silver-painted tin,” she whispered to Frances—and across the street Mary saw a group of her school friends from Ward's. “Will you look at that beautiful mantle Mary Jane's wearing?” gasped Mary. “Is that velvet?” Without waiting to hear Frances's speculation on the garment, Mary pulled her own mantle around her and sprang from the carriage in a froufrou of petticoats.
“Now, Miss Molly,” called Nelson from the box. “Miss Betsey told you girls to stay in the carriage.”
Eliza and Frances drew back at once. “Don't be a baby, Eliza, come on!” called Mary, halfway across the street already. “I'll only be a minute!” she added, turning to wave at Nelson. She knew perfectly well the gray-haired coachman could not abandon either the horses or the other girls. Then she darted across the ice-slick pavement, to Mr. Sotheby's tall brick store.
“Mary Jane, how gorgeous!” she cried, swirling into the lamplit gloom on the heels of the group of girls. “Where did you get the velvet? Who made it up? Will you wear it to the second-day party Sunday?”
The girls surrounded her, exclaiming in their turn over Mary's description of her own new dress, which lay snug in its cardboard box on the seat of the carriage: “Is it true her sweetheart Ninian is the son of the governor of Illinois?” asked Mary Jane Warfield, the doctor's daughter, and Meg Wickliffe chimed in, “What luck, to get a dress from Madame Deauville! Papa simply won't hear of my going to anyone but old Miss Barney!”
The other girls giggled and exclaimed—Miss Barney was in fact every bit as stylish and expensive as her French counterpart—and Arabella Richardson turned from Mr. Sotheby's small case of jewelry and purred, “You couldn't have done better than Deauville, Mary. She can cut a dress so that even fat girls look lovely. My aunts absolutely swear by her.”
Mary felt the heat of rage scorch her face, since this wasn't the first time the sylphlike Arabella had publicly remarked on Mary's plumpness. But before Mary could make a retort about the provenance of Arabella's dress, the blonde girl turned back to the jewel-case and inquired sweetly, “Mr. Sotheby, could I just have a look at that sapphire pendant? Papa's getting me a new blue silk and it would be just the thing to go with it.”
Searing with anger one moment, Mary felt her face grow cold. The chatter of her friends around her seemed to fade into nothingness, as her consciousness focused on Arabella, Mr. Sotheby, and the pendant now in Arabella's pink-gloved hands. Mary had coveted that pendant for weeks, since it had first come into the store, trying to figure out some way of talking her father into getting it for her. It was a beautiful piece, sapphire and tourmaline flowers clustering on golden leaves, more beautiful than anything Mary had seen in her life. But it was a woman's jewel, not a schoolgirl's, and Mary was only thirteen. Arabella—whom Mary had airily referred to as “that blockhead who can't even spell ‘cat'” in the hearing of half their class at the Reverend Mr. Ward's school—held it up to her throat as Mr. Sotheby angled the lamp to make it sparkle: “What do you think, Molly dear?” she asked archly. “Does it go with my eyes?”
Nearly strangling with fury, Mary replied evenly, “It does make them look less squinty.” The other girls laughed.
“You know,” crooned Arabella to Meg Wickliffe, with deliberate thoughtfulness as the girls rustled out of the shop like an ambulatory flower garden, “it's so pretty, I'll just bet I can get Papa to buy it for me. My birthday's next week.”
Following them out, Mary was almost too upset to breathe. Her father wasn't due back from the Legislature in Frankfort until tonight, and then he'd be taken up with preparations for tomorrow's day-long drive to Walnut Hill, and Mary had begged a new pair of party-gloves only last week from her other source of fashionable necessities, Granny Parker. What's more, she knew that Mr. Richardson would buy anything for his lovely and stuck-up daughter. Though in Mary's class, Bella was fifteen, and ready for her come-out. On impulse Mary doubled back into the shop, heart hammering with fear that Betsey would come out of Blanchard's and cross the street looking for her. She would not—could not—permit Arabella of all people to take that pendant away from her.
Anyone but her, thought Mary, as her small feet thumped hollowly on the plank floor....
But in her heart she knew, that what she really meant was, No one but me.
In the instant that she turned back she'd thought, Maybe I can get him to hold it for me until I can coax Granny Parker. But she knew already that Mr. Sotheby dealt cash-in-hand. The thought that flashed through her mind shocked her, but her anger at Arabella—and her sense of grievance that Arabella didn't have to share her things with sisters or a stepmother's niece—burned stronger in her, and as she walked up to the counter and looked up into Mr. Sotheby's horsey face she opened her mouth and said the first words that came to her.
“I didn't want to say so while the others were here, sir, but Papa wrote me from Frankfort, that if I truly wanted that pendant—and I truly do—to tell you to put it on his account.”
Her stomach gave a jar of dread as she heard herself—How could I SAY that?—but even as the storekeeper's eyebrows went up in pleasure and surprise she knew she couldn't take it back. Then excitement flashed through her like fire on a powder-trail, erasing her first horror at herself. It was hers now! That beautiful, beautiful thing was hers....
And she'd taken it right out from under Arabella's nose.
I'll talk to Papa tonight, she promised herself frantically, watching with huge eyes as Mr. Sotheby wrapped the pendant up for her (beautiful exquisite gems, coyly hiding in rustling white paper!). I'll beg him...I'll cry. (Tears usually worked). And I'll keep it hidden until after he's said I can get it, and then pretend I got it a few days later, and there's no difference, really.
Then I'll wear it to the Washington's Birthday Dance at Giron's Ballroom and just see that stuck-up Bella's face....
She suspected, as she crossed the street again—Betsey, as she'd hoped, was still searching for minute nicks and imperfections on the wedding-present—that God probably wouldn't think much of this line of reasoning. But I can't back out now! And what's the difference, if Papa says it's all right...?
“I thought I told you to stay in the carriage.” Betsey emerged from Blanchard's with the silversmith carrying her parcels at her heels. She was increasing again, Mary noticed resentfully, and her thin face looked sallow against the old gold plush of the pelerine around her shoulders.
“I'm sorry, ma'am, but I just needed some air, and I thought it would be all right.”
Betsey clicked her tongue and allowed Nelson to hand her in, then took the parcels from Mr. Blanchard. The old coachman cocked an eye at Mary as he helped her up the carriage's high step, but didn't comment on the fact that that purported breath of air had involved a trip to Sotheby's and had occupied a good twenty-five minutes.
Mary's father returned to Lexington well after dinner that night, for the roads down to the state capital at Frankfort were icy in this season. Through dinner—always a tumultuous meal, with Ann sulking because she wouldn't be allowed to stand up with Elizabeth at the wedding Friday (and wouldn't get a new dress on the strength of it, as Mary and Frances had) and George and Levi plaguing their tutor, the stiff-backed and bespectacled young Mr. Presby of New England—Mary had almost to shout to make herself heard when she talked to Cousin Eliza. And throughout the meal she was listening, listening for her father'
s knock at the door.
But when he finally came in he was mud-slathered and cold. “Horse threw a shoe, poor fellow,” he said, as his children crowded clamoring around him. “Thank you, Pendleton—” He handed the butler his gloves, riding-cloak, and hat. “Has Nelson got the carriage packed for tomorrow?” Six feet tall, powerfully built, dark-haired and blue-eyed, Robert Todd was in Mary's eyes the handsomest man in all of Kentucky and she would have died for him.
The others were all shouting at once to be heard (“Did you bring me something, Papa?” demanded Ann), and Mary saw at once that he was too tired to listen properly to tear-stained cajoleries about jewelry. She ducked into the dining-room while Betsey clapped her hands and ordered the others up to bed, then found her father's slippers and brought them to him in the small parlor where Pendleton had stirred up the fire.
Betsey glanced impatiently up as Mary came in, but said, “Thank you, Mary,” as Mary sat on the footstool to place them on his feet.
As the butler knelt to pull off Robert Todd's boots, Betsey asked, “Are those fools in Washington still talking of letting the National Bank's charter lapse?”
“They're talking of it. Though what they think is going to happen to the country's credit abroad if they do, I can't even begin to guess.”
“Aren't they going to shift the country's specie to state banks, at least?” asked Mary. “That's what it said in the Kentucky Gazette.”
“That's my clever girl.” Her father reached out a hand to stroke the bronze-gold curls that fell forward over her shoulder. “State banks and private banks, which means more power for Jackson's friends, when they've got control of the money to do favors.”
“But you run the Bank of Kentucky,” pointed out Mary, her concerns about the pendant currently hidden in her jewelry-box vanishing in the double joy of talking politics and having her father's attention. “Won't that give you power?”
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