Henry and Clara (19 page)

In comic imitation of Henry’s sarcastic baritone, Clara read out the following: “I’ll be a captain before Christmas, I’m assured, and that should keep me the kind of clubable man General Franklin always said he wanted for this regiment. He’s been heard to quote Caesar, about how fops make the best soldiers, something your textbook-trained brother wouldn’t want to hear.’ ” The family smiled nervously, and Mary Hall looked at the carpet, even though she had resigned herself to losing the noble Will, ever since he’d begun talking, in his own letters, of a girl named Emma Witt.

“ ‘As it is,’ ” Clara continued, “ ‘here inside the not terribly defensible walls of Fort Hamilton (our guns couldn’t repel an assault by Lina and her schoolmates), we listen to more dull instruction that I ever heard at Union. The rest is drilling and what Major Clitz still likes to call recruiting. He ought to call it kidnapping. I’ve already snatched willing fourteen-year-olds off the thoroughfares of Manhattan island, but as most of them have at one time or another already resided in government facilities — those of the police — the change in life is less abrupt than it might be. “The highest bounties will be paid, and good quarters, rations and uniforms furnished”: this is what we promise, in handbills and in speech, over the shouts of hecklers. But the first batches of uniforms sent by the Brooks Brothers were in truth somewhat less than durable. The pockets could be so easily ripped from the rest of the cloth that it was all the easier for the recruits to rob one another. It is a strange life here, for certain. Old Colonel Martin Burke, who entered the army forty years ago, parades around in dressing gown and slippers, chatting up all the dissenters who’ve been imprisoned within our walls (with no heed paid, by the way, to their real degree of dangerousness, not to mention their constitutional rights).’ ”

Clara looked up when she realized how quiet everyone was. Mary was kneading her handkerchief, Emeline fussing with some crumbs on her silk sleeve. Joel Rathbone looked scandalized, and young Sarah was on her way upstairs. Clara turned to Uncle Hamilton. “Go on, dear,” he said. “Henry’s unorthodox point of view is good for us all, I’m sure.”

“Senator Harris depends on it,” Pauline said. “As you can imagine, we’re surrounded by flatterers in Washington.”

“Of course,” sighed Emeline.

“Henry is always good for a dose of reality,” said Hamilton Harris.

“At least his own sort of reality,” said Joel.

“I’ll read just a bit more,” said Clara. “ ‘I’ve still no idea when we’ll be permitted to travel south and join the Army of the Potomac. At the present rate of things, I fear it won’t be until the war is over. There are all sorts of ways to define readiness, and I am ready in all the important ones.’ ”

“Hear, hear,” said Hamilton Harris.

Clara decided to stop there. As it was, she had never intended to read them the letter’s last page, though she could have done so from memory: “You remember the crannies of the
Vanderbilt
, don’t you, darling? Well, on one recent voyage its non-paying carriage consisted of the boys of Billy Wilson’s Sixth Regiment, on their way down toward the war, throughout which they will have to suspend their dog fights and rat-baiting. If you knew what a filthy business all this really is — even hundreds of miles from the lines! Your innocent friend Mary should see what we send to fight for precious freedom. A recent night spent camped at the Palace Garden on Sixth Avenue, after a day of dragooning Paddies into the Rail Splitter’s service, left me yearning for the rough linen inside the walls of Fort Hamilton — let alone the ironed masterpieces brought up every third morning by our maid on Eagle Street. I long for their smell, and yours — the clean secret message of your unperfumed skin as I used to pass it in the hall, after breakfast, as we observed the enforced decorum of our familial mornings. I also long for killing, with an ardor that frightens me. But that is what we were assembled to do. Perhaps I’ll have the chance to do it soon, and exhaust the
worst that’s in me on what others call the national purpose. But my real goal, darling, is to come home to you.”

After silently playing Henry’s latest Byronic song, Clara became alert to the room’s still uncomfortable feeling and declared, “Perhaps I should find Sarah.” Emeline quickly said, “No, Clara, that’s not necessary.” But Clara, rising from her chair, insisted: “No, I ought to. I should have remembered that the sound of Henry always scares her.” To more awkward laughter in the room, she went up the stairs, and became aware of Sarah’s soft voice, talking, Clara imagined, to one of her white cats.

“Sarah?” she called, moving down the hall to Howard’s room, where the cat was probably playing inside one of his old valises. But there was no cat in the room, only Sarah and Howard himself, whose presence so startled Clara that the younger girl quickly exited into the hall, as if she had spilled a secret.

“Yes, it’s only me,” said Howard jauntily, patting the bedclothes and urging Clara to take the spot Sarah had occupied. “Another bout of lungs and stomach, I’m afraid. So I’m home once more. I seem to have a pattern. I alternate four months on the high seas with two atop soaked sheets. I’ve just about sweated this one out, I think.”

“Howard, don’t joke,” said Clara, touching his thin face, which remained handsome and merry at all its sharp angles. “Why didn’t your parents tell us you were up here?”

“They would rather keep these recurrences quiet. As would I. If they continue, I shall be one of the few men forced to exercise family influence to stay
in
the service.”

Clara shook her head, angry at Emeline and furious at the thought Pauline may have known about this.

“Now, Clara,” said Howard, reaching for her hand, “you’re not to worry. I shall soon be good as new, and permanently this time. By Christmas I’ll be blasting through the Confederacy’s coastline, just you wait and see. So let’s change the subject. Sarah tells me you’ve been downstairs spreading sedition.”

She laughed. “Not sedition, just Henry.”

“Yes,” said Howard. “Henry.” They were silent for a moment. Clara rose to straighten the bottles of powder and ointment
on Howard’s dresser. “Tell me something,” she heard him say from behind. “What exactly is it?”

“It?”

“What is it that still attracts you to him?”

“Howard,” she said flatly.

“No, I must know. I’ve thought and thought, but I only come up with explanations for the long ago. There you were, a girl of thirteen in a house full of other little girls and one overly responsible brother. In blew this dark strong boy with his temper and tongue. How could your little girl’s eyes not have widened?”

“Howard, stop. Right now. Please.”

“But that was thirteen years ago. How has it lasted? You’re no longer a girl, and the novelty is long since gone.”

“I love Henry,” she said, turning around. “I can’t say why.”

“Can’t or won’t?” he asked.

“Won’t. Can’t. I don’t know. How does one explain love? How do you explain what you felt for Annie Martin and all the rest of them?”

“That wasn’t love.”

“Well, this is, and I can’t say any more about it. Why must you be so wary of Henry? He’s your cousin and your friend. Life isn’t finished with him, Howard,” she said, sitting down on the bed once more, as if prepared to point out some delightful fact he’d overlooked. “The war will change him, I know it. He hints at that himself in his letters. It will purge him of all that aggression he has inside.”

“Then he’ll be the first man war ever changed for the better.” Howard took her hand. “As for me, I am as I am. Why not love me instead?”

She looked in his eyes and knew he meant it. “Howard.”

“I am healthy, Clara,” he said, sitting up straighter against the headboard. “In all the ways that count. And I soon shall be in all the others, too. We can be rich and idle and happy once this war is over. We’ll raise a beautiful tribe of children down at Kenwood. I’ll buy you every book ever printed. I’ll buy you Tennyson himself. I’ll pay him to recite his poems every night at the dinner table.”

“It’s a lovely vision, Howard, for some other girl. But I’m going to marry Henry when the war is over. You’re the only one I’ve told, but it’s going to happen. Papa and my stepmother have agreed.”

“Reluctantly, no doubt.”

“That’s being generous,” she admitted.

“All right,” said Howard, suddenly approximating his old gaiety. “We’ll never speak of this again. Tell me about the opera instead. I should have gone. I would probably have gotten more sleep there than I did here.”

Clara laughed, but she longed to get away. “I can hear them downstairs, Howard. They’re getting ready to go.”

“Yes, you’d better return to them. As it is, they’ll be annoyed that you’ve discovered the invalid in the attic.”

She kissed him and started for the door.

“Clara,” she heard him call. She turned around and saw that his smile was gone.

“I love you,” he said.

She went quickly down the stairs, trying to think of anything but these words and why they couldn’t move her. Was there something wrong with her heart? Did she even
want
the war to change Henry? Didn’t she really just want the war to make him miss her?

The Rathbones’ butler helped her with her coat as Emeline tried to think of an explanation to offer about Howard. “We thought it best …” she murmured.

“It’s all right,” said Clara, whose distress was taken by everyone as a sign of worry about the young man upstairs.

“Give our love to the judge,” said Emeline, kissing Clara and speaking loudly enough for Pauline to hear her and understand that Albany remained the real world, and that its titles mattered more than such remote and temporary ones as Senator.

My dearest Henry,

They buried Willie Lincoln today, amidst howling winds and rain. He had been sick with the bilious fever for days, and I spent the greater part of them with his mother, who from the beginning of his ordeal seemed more abstracted from reality than he. He was such a brave boy, religious and poetic (do you remember? he wrote a lovely verse when Colonel Baker was killed), and yet for all that a
boy
, still just eleven years old, romping with his younger brother up and down the stairs all this winter. I cannot imagine Mrs. L’s recovering: she is
mad
with grief, transformed utterly from the woman Mrs. Keckley and I wrapped in white satin three weeks ago and sent down to her 800 guests, guests who shouted their admiration (and whispered their contempt). It was the Lincolns’ first ball in the Mansion, and I should not be surprised, even if the war ended tomorrow, if it were their last.

As the weekend began, I gave up my attempts at consolation, let her push me away, and turned my attentions to soothing the distress of little Bud Taft, Willie’s favorite playmate. He has put his head upon my bosom and cried his eyes out. During the vigil, when it appeared Willie might survive, I promised Bud that I would take him to see the illuminations; all the public buildings had been ordered lit to celebrate the capture of Fort Henry. Then, on Thursday, Willie was gone, and the lights were cancelled.

All has been darkness since. This afternoon, at 2:00, I ran back across Lafayette Square, through thunder and lightning, to fetch Papa and your mother to the East Room, to join the mourners. Among them one could find much of the Congress, along with McClellan, Bob Lincoln and the President. He was so tired from watching at the bedside; his lined face looks scarcely like the one that smiled at us in Albany a year ago. He took my hand for a moment, and managed a weak smile, addressing me as “Aunt Clara,” which Willie had called me once or twice. “You must soon have some children of your own,” Mr. Lincoln said. Then they began the procession to Oak Hill. Willie will be in a mausoleum there until the day comes when the whole family return to Illinois, carrying his tiny body with them.

What will become of young Tad, with a mother laid waste by her feelings, and a father whose every hour is consumed with the prosecution of this war? Robert will have to be as much father as brother to him; and yet Robert must soon go back at Harvard. Somehow the President manages to find moments for the child — such a strange one — who clings to him like a small, fretful animal, completely without the dignified little-manly comportment of Willie. What a contrast they made: another fairy-tale pair like you and Will, one dark and one light — and now one gone!

Oh, Henry, I miss you so tonight. Not a candle burns in any window of the Mansion, and the rain brought by the storm has puddled into ice all over Lafayette Park. Andy Jackson stands frozen — a statue of a statue — and suddenly no one dares hope for the victory needed to end everybody’s woe. We hear rumors that at last — but too soon! — the Twelfth will be moving to Virginia. That your being nearer to me depends upon the commencement of your danger is just one more cruel method this war has devised for breaking hearts.

Take my love and let it keep you safe. And tell us where you are —