Lincoln (29 page)

Before Kate could counter, Congressman Washburne paid his respects; then he greeted Hay with: “I’m just back from Illinois. We raised twenty thousand dollars in Chicago, contributions for the war.”

“In Cincinnati,” said Kate, “they have raised more than two hundred thousand dollars.”

“But that’s to be expected in your father’s state.” Washburne was polite. “It’s a personal tribute to him.” Washburne addressed Hay. “I hope the President will have a moment for me tomorrow.”

“Whenever you like, sir.” Washburne bowed to Kate; then he laid siege to a massive silver chafing dish in which simmered terrapin.

“As of last week, Father’s raised close to twenty million dollars, in contributions alone.” Kate was proud.

Hay was teasing. “You must admit that it was uncommonly wise of the President to make Mr. Chase Secretary of the Treasury.”

“Oh, I’ve never denied that! Who is the large man over there, by the fireplace, against the wall? I see him everywhere, including my own house. But he never speaks to anyone. He just stands, as if he were furniture.”

Hay recognized the powerfully built young man who, indeed, looked to be a piece of furniture placed next to the fireplace. “If he has a name, Mr. Sumner is the only one who knows it. He’s Mr. Sumner’s bodyguard. He goes with him everywhere. He’s paid for by one of the senator’s Boston admirers, who doesn’t like the idea of anyone as vague as Mr. Sumner wandering alone around a city filled with secessionists.”

“Well, at last I know who my guests are.” Kate turned to Hay; she smelled of lilac. “Is it true that Mrs. Lincoln’s half-sister and her husband are staying at the Mansion?”

“Where did you hear that?”

“My spies can resemble wallpaper, if need be.”

“Well, it is true. Your wallpaper is presently looking down upon Mr. and Mrs. Ben Hardin Helm of Lexington, Kentucky.

“Two secessionists.”

“Neither Mr. nor Mrs. Helm has seceded as yet; and Kentucky remains loyal to the Union.”

“Barely loyal. I hear—not from my wallpaper but from the newspapers—that Mrs. Lincoln’s full brother, her three half-brothers and her three half-brothers-in-law are all secessionists, and that they have all enlisted—the men, that is—in the Confederate army.”

“If Mr. Helm has turned rebel, it will be news to Mr. Lincoln. Actually,” said Hay, realizing that he was saying far too much but he wanted, most sincerely, to impress Kate—because … of Sprague? “Mr. Helm is a West Point graduate, who is about to be appointed U.S. Army Paymaster, with the rank of major.”

“Oh?” Then Kate took Hay’s arm and together they made a triumphal tour of the dining room and back parlor. As they greeted the French minister Mercier and the Prussian minister Gerold, Kate was able, between the compliments and flurries of French and German, to ask, with sweet malice, “What are Mrs. Lincoln’s true politics?”

Hay responded with what he took to be near truth. “She is the true abolitionist of the family, and embarrassed by her family.”

“A Southerner?” Kate put on a thick Southern accent: “Embarrassed by kin? Oh, never!”

“Oh, yes!” said Hay.

“
OH, YES
!” said Emilie Helm, eighteen years her half-sister Mary’s junior. They stood facing each other across a row of gardenia plants in the White House conservatory.

Mary had not expected such vehemence. “You would even go with him to Richmond?” Mary asked.

“I’m his wife, Sister Mary.”

“Oh, Little Sister, and I had thought that of all of you … that of all of
us
, you would stay loyal.”

Emilie took the scissors that she held in one hand and began to harvest the gardenias which were in full-forced, white-fleshed bloom. Mary found the scent both ravishing and overpowering. Neatly, Emilie arranged the gardenias in the straw basket that the head groundsman had given her. “I must go where my husband goes,” said Emilie, eyes on the flowers. “After all, that’s what
you
have done, and no one in Lexington criticizes you for it.”

“Then that must be the only thing that they do not criticize me for.” Mary still resented the response of the Todds to her marriage to a scrub, as they called a man not of their class. “Mr. Lincoln is going to offer Ben a commission in the army. Will he take it?”

“You will have to ask Ben.” Emilie turned from Mary, who had always looked upon the girl less as a half-sister than as the daughter that she had never borne. “The Hardins are so political. Ben’s father, the governor …”

“Oh, Emilie, we are all political! But Kentucky isn’t South Carolina. We are people of the border.”

“We are really Southern, Sister Mary. You know that.”

“Well,
your
mother was a Virginian, that’s true.” Any mention of Mary’s stepmother was apt as not to bring on if not the dreaded Headache an ordinary headache that was quite bad enough. “Let’s get out of here, Little Sister, I’m sweltering.”

Together they made their way through the heated, sweet-smelling air of the long, glassed-in conservatory where row after row of exotic flowers grew in earth-filled stone troughs. This was Mary’s refuge when life grew too hectic in the Mansion or when the wind was southerly and the foul air from the canal filled every room while mosquitoes and gnats and flies were wafted into the Mansion through the tall screenless windows. Because of the crisis, the President had decided not to move out to the relative coolness of the stone cottage at the Soldiers’ Home. Because of the crisis, Mary had refused to go North. But now that the city was secure
from attack, she had decided that a visit to New York City might soon be in order, to shop for the Mansion.

At the door of the conservatory, Mr. Watt, the head groundsman, respectfully bowed to the ladies. He was a courtly man; and Mary liked him. He had worked at the White House for years; he understood the ins-and-outs of hiring and firing the army of servants, gardeners and just plain hangers-on that had attached themselves over the years to the Mansion.

“Mrs. Lincoln, I talked to Mr. Wood about … our project. He thinks it will be all right.

“Good, sir.” Mary had seen to it that one William S. Wood whom the government had assigned to them as escort on the trip to Washington from Springfield would be Commissioner of Public Buildings, and so in charge of the President’s House. Although Mr. Wood was a friend of Mr. Seward—never a recommendation—Mary thought that she could trust him to help put into effect her secret plan to make the President’s House the most magnificent residence in the nation if not the world. Mary herself had not seen much of the world, but her teachers, the Mentelles, had been at the court of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, and Mary had grown up with tales of Versailles and the Tuileries that were now as much a part of her childhood memories as Harry of the West himself. Mary also delighted in the company of the Chevalier Wikoff, a man of perfect taste who had been presented at most of the courts of Europe; and remembered, in detail, every drapery, every ornament.

Although it was not yet five o’clock, Lincoln was in the upstairs sitting room, playing with Tad and Willie. As the children rushed to greet mother and aunt, Lincoln sat up in his chair. “I’m taking a holiday from that grinding mill down the corridor.”

“I wish you’d take more.” Mary indicated the basket of fresh-cut flowers. “Little Sister’s making us a floral arrangement.”

“I better begin before they wilt.” Emilie left the room, escorted by two nephews, with news of an attractive pet goat named Nanda. Mary sat in a sofa; she felt odd, unsteady, disoriented.

“What does she say?” asked Lincoln.

Mary let the back of her head rest on the cool horsehair. “She will go where he goes. What does
he
say?”

“Nothing. I gave him the commission this morning.”

“And Ben said nothing?”

Lincoln shook his head.

“I’d better speak to that boy …”

“Better not. Let him make up his own mind.” Lincoln smiled. “Anyway, we have good news.”

“Mr. Davis is dead!”

“Not that good—or bad, as the case may be. No, Ben Butler’s occupied the city of Baltimore, and the legislature doesn’t think that, all in all, secession is such a good idea, and so the governor now says he’ll send us the four regiments I asked him for.”

“Father!” Mary looked with delight at her husband; then with less delight at the frayed green curtain just back of him. “I would’ve sworn an oath, were it ladylike to swear—”

“
First
Lady-like,” he proposed.

“First Lady-like, that we would lose Maryland. Now you’ve held the state to us. You and you alone. Mr. Seward must be gnashing his teeth.” Mary frowned. “What about Kentucky?”

“We’ll hold the state, by a whisker.”

“That means that all those crazy brothers and brothers-in-law of mine will have to go South.” A group of gnats gathered about Mary’s head; she dismissed them, vigorously, with her fan. “I cannot think what demon possesses those men.”

“The same as possesses us, I suppose.” Lincoln slumped farther down on his spine. “They have convinced themselves that I will free all their slaves and make them poor, when all I want is …” He stopped; as if weary of the repetition of a theme that no one chose ever to hear. “North Carolina will go next week. It is now certain.”

“That makes … ten states?”

Lincoln nodded. “And Tennessee will go as well, if I don’t do something, though what I can do is not much.”

“You can strike at Richmond!” Mary sat up very straight. “If you can take Richmond, Virginia is ours again and that will be the end of the rebellion, once and for all.”

Lincoln laughed. “I agree, Mother. Only I’m not ready for such a large undertaking. But I do have something smaller in view.”

“What?”

“If I tell you, you’ll repeat it.”

“If you tell me,
you’ve
repeated it.”

“That’s true. So, if I can’t keep a secret, why should you? Anyway, we’ve hung on to Missouri, thanks to Frank Blair and a few others, though the fighting in St. Louis was fierce …”

Emilie returned with her husband, Ben Helm, a tall, lanky young man whose resemblance to Henry Clay had been remarked upon all his life.
Emilie’s vase of flowers was duly admired by Mary, while Lincoln turned to Helm and said, “Did you talk to General Scott?”

“Well, no. I didn’t. I just went looking at the sights instead.” The soft Southern voice did not go at all with the cold, gray hunter’s eyes that seemed a Kentucky characteristic, shared by Lincoln, too, though his hunter’s eyes were often masked—smoky-looking was how Mary thought of them on those occasions when he was present in the flesh but, in spirit, withdrawn from the company.

Mary rose to help Emilie place the flowers on a console of the Oval Room, at whose center, in a straight chair, Ben Helm sat just opposite Lincoln, who said, “Well, I’m sure that once you’ve seen all the sights, you’ll go and look at Winfield Scott, who’s just about the largest sight we have in the town.”

“He actually knew Thomas Jefferson,” said Mary, returning to her sofa, “but did not think him sound. He preferred Mr. Madison, and then Mr. Jackson and now—Mr. Lincoln!”

“I suspect, Mother, he’s just being polite in my case. But it’s true he has a partiality for war presidents. Fortunately, I’m not really one, just yet.” The gray eyes that now searched out Helm’s eyes were those of a hunter, too. Mary gave an involuntary shudder: When two hunters stare at each other, it is the women who will weep at the end.

“I have thought about this, Brother Lincoln.” Helm’s voice was soft. “I thought and thought about it before we came. But I must tell you that I only really came up here for Emilie’s sake because she wanted me to, and because she wanted to see Sister Mary one more time …”

“One more time!” Mary’s cry sounded in the room. Yet she was not aware that she had even spoken; she was aware only that she had been harshly struck.

Emilie put her arm about Mary’s shoulders. “Oh, Sister, I know it is hard.”

Mary stared up at Emilie; but saw her not at all through the tears that now filled her eyes.

Lincoln rose and paced the room. “I had hoped, Ben,” he said, “that you and I could reason together. Because the matter is now sorting itself out back home, and that Kentucky will stay in the Union is now about as certain as anything on this earth.”

“I guess you have seen to that, Brother Lincoln.” In the gentle voice there was an edge of menace that made Mary recoil; made Emilie hold her all the tighter.

“
I
see to nothing. Events see to me. I am acted upon, no more. You have a great career ahead of you. You’ll be governor of Kentucky like your
grandfather; and maybe more. Who knows? Who would’ve dreamt that I’d be here, for all my sins, as it is now proving?”

“Oh, Ben!” said Mary. “We are so isolated in this place. Father needs you. I need Little Sister. We are without friends; and we are possessed of altogether too many enemies in this rebel city …” Mary stopped; she had said the forbidden word; she could not recall it.

“They are not rebels to us, Sister Mary,” said Emilie. “They only want to be let go in peace, like us.”

“We cannot let go that which has no place to go because it is where it is and it is what it is, a part forever of this Union.” Lincoln appealed directly to Emilie. “As for peace, we only defend what is ours.”

“Brother Lincoln, our lives are not your lives and our property is not your property and if we wish to have a new country, who can stop us?”

Lincoln turned up the palms of both hands; to show that he had no more to say. Mary could no longer see the room for the tears that had begun to flow. But she could still feel Emilie’s arm about her shoulders. Blindly, she looked up at the girl. “You will not stay here with me?”

“I must go with my husband.”

“I have been offered a commission in the Confederate Army, Brother Lincoln.” The voice was soft and inexorable as the south wind that always brought the rains to Lexington.

“You will accept that commission.” There was now no real question in Lincoln’s voice.

“Yes, Brother. That is my intention.”

“You will break my heart,” said Mary; and so her youth came to an end, once and for all.