On Secret Service (4 page)

When he walked into the Senate gallery on Monday, the twenty-first, he felt like a man lost on a stormy moor with no lantern and no signposts. The U.S. government had educated him, in return asking only that he give service, which he was glad to do. The military life with its order and predictability suited him. Further, there was this unspoken truth: West Point men from the South controlled the Army. Faced with the influence of this cadre, capable officers from the North resigned and looked to civilian life for advancement. Now Southern officers were resigning for a different reason.

Word of the speech had spread quickly. Lines formed before dawn. By nine o'clock the gallery was nearly full. Varina Davis came in quietly, to a place reserved for her. The notorious socialite Mrs. Greenhow made an ostentatious entrance, obstructing the view of those behind her with the yellow ostrich plumes on her hat. Though asked, she would not remove it.

He saw a seat in the last row, claimed it, and gave it up five minutes later when there were no more places for women. He stood at the head of the aisle, by the door, a look of brooding concentration on his face. It wasn't a handsome face in the conventional sense, but an arresting one: carrot-colored hair, pale red brows, gray-green eyes, a large nose. Men under his command never argued when he gave orders. Or if they did, they only did it once.

Second Lieutenant Frederick Scott Dasher, West Point '57, wore civilian clothes today. Part of his special duty, which he disliked. A bachelor and a Virginian, he'd grown up on a horse farm near Front Royal, in the Shenandoah. He owned the farm but no longer had family there. His father was gone, a casualty of alcohol. His younger brother had died of scarlet fever at age eight. His older sister, Marie, lived in Tennessee with her husband. His poor mother was cared for by Marie in Knoxville, though she might as well have been on the moon, given her lack of recognition of her surroundings. Fred had always assumed he would find the right young woman, marry, and rebuild the Dasher line. He no longer assumed it. He wondered if anyone in America had a dependable future.

Time dragged as the Senate disposed of its morning business. Every seat was taken, the aisles and outer stairways clogged with standees. The first of the cotton-state senators rose to speak his farewell. Others followed. The spectators were polite but restless. They'd come to hear the senator from Mississippi, who had left his sickbed for the occasion. When he rose, the huge hall and gallery collectively held its breath.

Jefferson Davis's voice was faint from illness. He was a few years past fifty, but stress had added a decade to his wasted, craggy face. A West Point graduate, he had fought in Mexico with Lee, Sam Grant, Tom Jackson, George Pickett. He'd served President Pierce as secretary of war, then represented his state honorably in the Senate. Now, he said, he was going. He felt it was the only course left.

“Mr. Calhoun, a great man who now reposes with his fathers, advocated the doctrine of nullification as a remedy, but a peaceful one. Secession belongs to a different class of remedies, but it is justified on the basis that the states are sovereign. There was a time when none denied it.” He paused, his tired, feverish eyes on the galleries. His wife, Varina, was like marble, whatever pain she felt suppressed, hidden.

“I feel no hostility to you, Senators from the North. I am sure there is not one of you, whatever sharp discussion there might have been between us, to whom I cannot now say, in the presence of God, I wish you well. That said, Mr. President and Senators, and having made the announcement which the occasion seemed to require, it only remains for me to bid you a fond farewell.”

Davis's colleagues sat silent out of respect, and sorrow. Sobs resounded in the gallery, some of the loudest those of the widow Greenhow. She covered her face and rocked in her seat. Fred Dasher's chest was tight with tension. He was deeply moved. He charged out the door, too upset to apologize to those he jostled.

Outside the Capitol the day was foggy, saturated with dampness. Like a man in a maze, he turned this way and that through the disgraceful litter of Corinthian columns, marble slabs, and lumber. Civilian gawkers—tourist families, single women—mingled with slovenly workmen, who seemed to be making only snail's progress on construction of the Capitol dome. The cast-iron base was complete but wrapped in ugly scaffolding. The statue of Armed Freedom that would surmount the dome lay on its side in the mud.

Every step spattered mud on Fred's fawn trousers. His head was clearing after the wrenching speech. If someone as brilliant and important as Davis could stand up to the government's assault on liberty, so could he.

He failed to see the strolling whore until she barred his way, cooing at him with her rouged mouth. “Buy my muffin, dearie. Nice warm muffin.”

Fred Dasher treated women politely, but not this time. He shoved her so hard she stumbled against a block of uncut marble. “Ow! Dirty bastard!” He settled his beaver hat more securely and strode into the miasmic fog lying on the Mall. He could already smell the canal where he was to rendezvous at twelve.

He walked rapidly over the rough ground, past the towers of the Smithsonian, poking up like strange red fingers, and onward, till he was south of President's Park, with the unfinished trunk of the monument to George Washington just visible in the distance. Subscriptions had dwindled; people said the monument would never be finished.

He threw a rock at some pigs rooting in the mud. The area was a disgrace and by night, dangerous. It was marsh and mudflat, with the old municipal canal cutting across. Once the canal had linked the Potomac and the East Branch. Now it was abandoned, clogged with garbage, night soil, the occasional horse or dog carcass rotting away. Though not a delicate person, Fred held a linen handkerchief over his nose and mouth as he approached an iron bridge spanning the canal. On the opposite side, among bare trees, a man in a dark gray, caped overcoat and unmarked forage cap lurked like a footpad. Fred was filled with disgust. Was this fit duty for a professional soldier?

“Colonel,” he said as he approached the other man. He had been ordered not to salute where he might be observed.

“Lieutenant,” the colonel said. “What have you discovered?”

“It's as you suspected, sir. The National Rifles are practically all secesh.”

Colonel Charles Stone, West Point '45, was in charge of the defenses of the District. He was given the responsibility by the bloated egomaniac at the head of the Army, old Fuss and Feathers Scott. Fred Dasher was Stone's aide, forced to operate as a glorified detective. Until companies of the regular Army could be pulled from Kansas, upstate New York, and two Southern arsenals from which they'd been driven, four militia units including the National Rifles were the city's only protection. Fred had used the name Frederick Danner, and his credentials as a Virginian, to join and drill with the Rifles.

“What's your assessment of the militia commander?” Stone asked.

“Captain Schaeffer's hard to read, sir. He's careful to say nothing partisan or controversial. On the other hand, the men he's recruited constitute evidence against him. He must have picked every one of them for their secesh sympathies. The unit is well armed. Sabers, revolvers, two mountain howitzers.”

“Good God.”

Fred delivered the coup de grâce. “Everything's straight from the Army arsenal, I confirmed that.”

“Fine work, Lieutenant. The weapons will be confiscated but we must keep watching. I suggest we meet again—”

“Sir.”

“—Friday. We might manage someplace warmer.”

“Sir, I can't make arrangements for Friday.”

“Why not?”

“Do I have permission to speak candidly?”

“You do,” Stone said, his tone less comradely than before.

“I don't care for this kind of work, sir. Skulking. Telling lies about my identity.”

“Lieutenant, this city is ringed by enemies who could rise up and attack at any time. Part of my duty is to ferret out weaknesses in our defense force. The work's necessary, and I have no one else to do it.”

Fred felt an enormous, buoyant relief even before he spoke the words he'd rehearsed. “It's nothing personal, Colonel, and I am sorry to abandon you—”

“Christ in heaven. Not you too.”

“Yes, sir. I will hand in my resignation from the Army effective today.”

“Then damn you, sir. God damn you for a traitor.”

Hurt and angry, Fred didn't know what to say. He had no animosity toward his commander. They shared a moment of helpless silence in the fog. Finally Stone said, “Where are you going, then?”

“South,” Fred Dasher said. “Wherever they will have me.”

“As a young girl I lived for a time at the Old Capitol,” Rose said to her captive, a pop-eyed young man new to the salon. Those nearby listened politely, though most had heard the story many times. Margaret had.

“It's a pity they've turned it into a jail, it has such a distinguished history. Congress met in the building after the British burned Washington in 1814. When Congress moved out, it became a fashionable boardinghouse. Mrs. H.V. Hill, the proprietor, was my aunt. Living there was an education for a young woman. I met Henry Clay, and Daniel Webster. I heard Chief Justice Marshall discourse on the law in the Supreme Court's room in the basement. Great men. Statesmen. Not the weasels infesting the town today. The greatest of them was John C. Calhoun. He loved my aunt's hospitality. I was privileged to sit at his bedside during his last days. Offer him sips of water or a cool cloth for his head. He had a profound influence on my thinking. Before he died, he predicted a fatal conflict with the North.”

Rose O'Neal Greenhow was a strikingly attractive woman, with dark eyes like Margaret's, and a complexion of a deeper olive hue. No one knew her exact age. Somewhere in the forties, Margaret guessed. Her raven-black hair, center parted, showed only a few hints of gray. Her attire was somber: a short jacket of black wool grenadine over a black silk dress, and a rope of pearls on her lush bosom.

A dozen guests were gathered in the parlor of her manse at No. 398 Sixteenth Street, left to her by her late husband, Dr. Greenhow. It was the last Monday of the month. Rose received on Mondays, Fridays, and Sunday afternoons.

“Ah, but here's the person you must meet,” she exclaimed to the pop-eyed visitor. Senator Seward, slender and rather stooped, entered arm in arm with the chairman of the Military Affairs Committee, Henry Wilson of Massachusetts. The plain and corpulent Wilson reminded Margaret of a farmer. He was a frequent guest. Infatuated with Rose, Margaret suspected. He never brought his wife.

“Governor,” Rose said, sailing over to Seward with her visitor in tow. “Hello, Henry.” The greeting made Wilson grin foolishly. Rose fixed her attention on the senator from New York. “This young man is the nephew of a dear friend of my late husband. Jarvis Tottle, the Honorable William Seward. Everyone calls him governor, Jarvis, in spite of his seat in the Senate.”

“Pleasure, sir,” Seward said in a voice grown hoarse from too many cigars. His clothes reeked of them.

Rose linked arms with the young man. “Jarvis is recently out of college in Kentucky. He wants to work in government. I told him you could open doors, perhaps find him a clerkship, since everyone says you'll head the new cabinet and be the de facto president.” Long ago, Seward had predicted the “irrepressible conflict” between advocates of free and slave labor. Rose despised his Republican politics but welcomed him personally, as she welcomed others of his party for what they could do for her.

“I must warn you, however. Jarvis is known to sympathize with the South.”

“There's a blue cockade on my hat, absolutely,” Jarvis said.

Seward adjusted the gentleman's traveling shawl draped over his frock coat. “You're certainly not alone in Washington. The
Star
claims we have twenty thousand secesh-minded citizens in the District. A third of our white population. Many work in government. Tell me about yourself, Mr. Tottle.”

Margaret had been listening. Now she turned away, disappointed that Hanna wasn't present this evening. She had made many acquaintances since dipping into the waters of Rose's social pond. Only one, Hanna Siegel, had become a friend.

Margaret and Hanna were the same age but were in other ways opposites. Hanna was European, fair, narrow-hipped, boyish. She dressed to conceal what little bosom she had. Where Margaret was vividly dark, Hanna was straw blonde, with blue eyes.

Margaret lived comfortably; Hanna was poor. Hanna's father was a former officer in the Austrian army. Asked about his reason for emigrating to America, he always replied with vague statements about “opportunity.” He was seeking preferment, a commission or a government job, like young Jarvis Tottle and hundreds of others.

Hanna was an actress. She ran with a crowd of theatricals who were struggling just as she was; the sort of people Calhoun Miller would dismiss as not respectable. Margaret had a picture of actresses as gregarious to the point of bawdiness, and often brashly ambitious. Hanna was quiet, though quietly determined. In the country less than three years, she retained only an echo of European speech. For eighteen months she'd hired out to the shrewish wife of an elocution teacher. She washed dishes, scrubbed floors, carried slops, and in return the teacher purged her accent.

They disagreed sharply on slavery. Margaret thought it a regrettable system, but necessary for the South's survival. The Calhoun Miller view. Hanna wished one of God's lightning bolts would destroy every white man who practiced it. Hanna wanted to convert her friend. Margaret avoided the subject if she could.

Despite the differences, Hanna and Margaret were drawn together by something stronger—a freedom of spirit they enjoyed in various ways. In good weather Margaret rented horses and they struck out north on the Seventh Street or Rockville roads, not sidesaddle, at a sedate walk, but astride, in full gallop. On occasion, feeling especially uninhibited, they wore trousers.

Margaret's feet in the stirrups showed a good amount of ankle under her trouser cuffs or flapping hems. She knew she had good legs and saw no reason to hide them. Men old and young admired the riders, and sometimes yelled propositions. Once an old woman tending a market garden on the Rockville pike pointed at them and cried, “Shame. Shame on girls like you!”

Which only made Margaret and Hanna laugh and gallop faster.

 

Rose's niece Adele arrived. Addie was the wife of Mr. Douglas, the Democrat whom Lincoln had defeated in November. They chatted amiably of inconsequential things. When would a new novel by George Eliot appear? What attraction would Grover's Theater show next? When would the Capitol dome be finished, the dreadful Washington swamps drained of their miasmic waters, the crumbling cobbles on shabby Pennsylvania Avenue replaced?

Everyone laughed when little Rose romped through the room in her short crinolines and full Turkish pantaloons. Rose Greenhow's daughter was seven or eight, a cheeky show-off whose behavior Margaret's father wouldn't have tolerated. Of course the Wild Rose herself was an exhibitionist, showing off her beauty, breeding, and influence at every opportunity.

Rose raised her arms in a theatrical way. “Ladies and gentlemen, refreshments are served. Tea, punch, and stronger libations for those who desire them.” Senator Wilson said something to her but Rose ignored him and swept away to the dining room. Wilson tagged after her like a loyal dog. For certain men, Rose possessed a sexual attraction that was overpowering.

Shortly, Margaret found herself in conversation with a handsome, full-bearded Army officer who introduced himself as Captain Thomas Jordan. He wore the familiar drab dress uniform: a dark blue coat with a stiff standing collar and matching trousers with no seam stripe, the whole lightened only by brass buttons, a burgundy sash, and two gold bars on each shoulder strap. Jordan had an aloof, almost wary air. He watched the room while discussing the crisis:

“Now Georgia's gone, and Louisiana. Texas must go soon. How do you feel about the upheaval, Miss Miller?”

“I try not to feel anything. I have my own life and interests, as I should imagine you do. We don't need or want Americans killing other Americans. Don't you agree?”

“Only somewhat. My oath binds me to the commander in chief, yet I feel a contrary pull. My heart lies with my native state of Virginia. I wonder if Colonel Lee out in Texas feels that way? Perhaps we'll know soon, I understand they've recalled him.” Robert E. Lee of Arlington was the nation's foremost soldier. He had led the Marine detachment that had captured John Brown at Harpers Ferry, bringing on a trial and execution that further divided the country.

“Well, I hope Mr. Lincoln has some skills or tricks that will bring about a resolution,” Margaret said. “Why does the government need that old fort in Charleston harbor anyway?”

“I suppose they could survive without it, and all the other arsenals and forts as well. But to give them up willingly would be a sign of weakness. I believe we'll fight over it.”

“I hope not. If it happens, I want no part of it.”

“But if war comes, how can anyone remain neutral?”

“Believe me, Captain, I shall make every effort.”

“I'm dismayed to hear you express such sentiments,” said a familiar voice. Rose swept into view, no longer the smiling hostess. “You're an intelligent young woman, you come from Maryland—how can you possibly declare yourself unwilling to take part?”

Little Rose slipped up behind her mother and stamped her foot. “I'll go fight in her place. I'm the damnedest little rebel you ever saw.”

Jordan laughed. Rose tweaked her ear. “We don't use that sort of language in polite company, dear.” Little Rose marched away in a petulant imitation of a soldier.

Margaret didn't like being put down. “Isn't it rather silly to debate the question?” she said. “Captain Jordan may have to take a stand, join the quarrel, but what can a woman do, regardless of which side she's on?”

Jordan said, “I assure you that young women who are above suspicion will be needed.”

Margaret frowned. “Why above suspicion? Needed for what? I don't understand.”

Rose shot a look at the officer. His odd statement had annoyed her somehow. A faint redness sprang into his cheeks. Rose spied a new arrival.

“Margaret, I believe your gentleman's here.”

“Donal?”

“Yes. Were you expecting him?”

“For some time. He's been traveling.”

Rose waved. “Here she is, Mr. McKee.”

Margaret rushed to him. “Donal, thank you for rescuing me. I had no idea when you'd return.”

“The steamer docked in Baltimore yesterday. Your father said to try the town house and if you weren't there, to come here. How are you, my dearest?” Donal's black eyes shifted briefly downward to the curve of her breasts. “I'd give you a kiss and a crushing hug if we weren't in public. Is there any champagne in the house?”

“This way.” She led him toward the dining room buffet. Sometimes Donal was a bother, but this evening she was grateful for his presence. The exchange with Rose still stung.

Donal McKee was a slim, graceful man, severely grayed by the cares of business though he was not yet thirty-five. He was shorter than Margaret by an inch or two. He had delicate hands, curly hair, a receding chin that spoiled his otherwise strong face. She had met him at Newport two years ago, when she and her father and Cicero were vacationing. A couple of jealous acquaintances, female, gratuitously informed her that Donal was a womanizer. If so, he was circumspect. In all the time she'd known him, Margaret had seen no evidence. She wondered if he'd dallied with anyone while he traveled.

“How was your trip?”

“I don't enjoy poking through the books at the branches, though it's necessary if we're not to be robbed blind. New Orleans was interesting because of this secession business. Ah, thank you,” he said to the white servant who handed him champagne. Margaret declined the offer of a glass.

Donal slipped his arm around her waist. “I seemed to be considered an expert on England because father came from Leeds. I was repeatedly asked whether England would recognize the Confederacy. I said I wasn't privy to the policies of Her Majesty's government, but I supposed so. British mills need Southern cotton.” He'd drawn her to a secluded corner, away from the clusters of guests. He finished his champagne, set the glass aside, and put both hands on her waist.

“Damn, Margaret, the sight of you always distracts me. I can hardly wait to claim you as my wife. Have you settled on a date?”

“Not yet. But I'm thinking seriously on it.”

“Not seriously enough. I'm an impatient man. I must have another drink.”

He strolled away, and in a moment fell into conversation with Rose. She laughed and caressed his cheek a little too fondly. Again Margaret felt the confusion of her relationship with Donal.

When they'd first met, she was charmed by his worldliness. He was older, widely traveled, far more intelligent and urbane than all of the beaux of her own age who had drifted into her life and been discarded. What confused and upset her was her lack of romantic attraction to Donal. He excited nothing in her except feelings of admiration and security—hardly a good basis for marriage. This was the reason she continually delayed choosing a wedding date. Watching Donal touch Rose's arm in a possessive, even intimate way raised familiar questions. Should she break the engagement? How could she face her father, who was eager to see her married and settled, and admit that she didn't love her fiancé?

All at once she was tossing in a sea of doubt and self-recrimination. It made all the blather about secession and war pale to insignificance.