The Emancipator's Wife (31 page)

“What happened?”

The older woman shook her head, unwilling to speak. She'd taken off her apron and the day-cap that kept kitchen-soot and grease out of her hair, but the heavy folds of her skirt still bore the stains of boiled huckleberries. Looking through the open back door into the kitchen, Mary could see that she still hadn't found a girl to hire.

Then Bessie sighed. “Jimmy came flouncing over to the office last week, demanding to know who'd written the Rebecca letters. Simeon asked for twenty-four hours and went to Lincoln, and told him that Shields was ready to have blood for them. Lincoln said he'd written the four of them. I gather Jimmy went away and thought about it for a few days. Then he followed Lincoln down to Tremont with a second and demanded satisfaction.”

“Dear God.” Mary pressed her gloved hands to her face. For an instant she was thirteen again, standing at the foot of the stairway at Elizabeth's second-day party, caught in wrongdoing and aghast at what she had done. “Dear God, he will never speak to me again!”

I've lost him,
she thought.
After we had just found one another. How could I have been so stupid. . . ?

And then,
Dear God, what if he's killed?
Shields, for all his vanity, was an accomplished shot. Lincoln had told Mary of a youth spent in country wrestling-matches, but the only time he'd fought another man with weapons in his hands had been when his flatboat had been attacked by river-pirates on the way to New Orleans. He'd been twenty-two, and still carried the scar of that skirmish on his forehead.

Shakily, she asked, “When do they meet?” How could she get through the time, not knowing, hating herself, fearing that he would hate her for getting him into this mess...?

“Wednesday,” said Bessie. “Day after tomorrow. Lincoln came back from Tremont last night and left again for Jacksonville early this morning, with Dr. Merriman for his second, and Shields's second going along. He didn't want you to know.”

“Does he . . . does he hate me?”

The older woman regarded her sharply for a moment, as if debating whether to tell a comforting lie. Then she poked her graying hair back into its knot at her nape, and said, “Molly, I could as easily read what a wooden post feels about things, as I can that man. You'll have to ask him yourself, when he comes back.”

If he comes back.

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY-TWO

T
HERE WAS A THUNDERSTORM THAT NIGHT, CRASHING OVER THE
huddled town like the wrath of a God who knew exactly the mess Mary Todd had gotten her beloved into. After a night of covering, screaming, and sobbing in her bed, Mary had a headache all of the following day, and the next—Wednesday—as well. She crept sick and shaken about the house, avoiding Elizabeth, avoiding Julia—whose wild excitement at the drama of the whole affair caused Mary to lash out at her in screaming fury—and wishing there was some way she could avoid herself. She dreamed she stood on the dueling ground on the river's bank, with Jimmy Shields beside her, and pools of blood soaking the ground. Dreamed she saw Lincoln walking away from her toward a small boat on the river where a solitary gray boatman waited, to carry him to the far, dark shore. Lincoln's face, and stiff wild Indian-black hair, were covered with blood. He neither looked back at her nor spoke, and she knew he was dead.

Friday a note reached her from Dr. Henry:
The duel was called off; Mr. Lincoln has gone on to the Woodford and McLean Circuit Courts.

She burned the note in her bedroom fireplace, lest Elizabeth guess she had more than a passing concern about whether Shields shot Lincoln or not. It wasn't until over a week later that she was able to stroll, unnoticed, over to Bessie's house.

Lincoln was there, warming his big hands by the parlor fire. The leaves that strewed the mud of the streets were brilliant reds and brilliant gold, and one of them, adhering to the heel of Lincoln's boot, made a bright splash on that spare dark figure, like a tiny wound. Mary stood in the parlor doorway feeling as if her heart had stopped.

Then he looked up at her, and held out his hand. “Molly, you are just more blame trouble....”

She caught his hand in both of hers, sank down onto the sofa beside him, certain her knees would no longer hold her up. He looked tired, his hair a wild tangle as usual, but he put his other hand on her shoulder and pulled her to him, kissed her hard.

“Oh, Mr. Lincoln, I am so
sorry
!” she sobbed, and began to cry. “I never,
ever
thought . . .”

He sighed. “Now, what am I going to do with you?” And dug in his pocket for a clean handkerchief—he was getting better about carrying spares. “Now, don't cry, Puss. It all came to nothing, like the raccoon that tried to wash a lump of sugar....”

“What
happened
?”

“Well, as the challenged party, I had choice of weapons,” said Lincoln. “Now, back when I was in New Orleans, I heard tell how this feisty little Creole once challenged an American blacksmith to a duel. The American bein' about my size, he stipulated that the duel was to be fought with sledge-hammers in six feet of water, which would have put the surface about six inches over the Creole's head. I figured this sounded like a good idea, so since Jimmy Shields stands about two inches taller than Steve Douglas, I said we would fight with cavalry broadswords, each of us to remain on the far side of two lines drawn six feet apart....”

Mary's sobs dissolved abruptly into a hiccup of laughter. “Six feet apart? He wouldn't have been able to touch you!”

“And I'd barely have been able to touch him,” added Lincoln. “It was the best I could do. I've had a little practice with the broadsword, with that fellow that teaches it over in the Delaney Building across from the State House, but I'd just as soon not have it on my record that I'd carved up a state auditor, even if he was a Democrat. That kind of thing gets around.”

He shook his head, and gazed down into the fire. “And if that wasn't bad enough, it's like when two boys get into a fight behind the schoolhouse—boys run for miles to get their licks in. Now Shields has challenged Bill Butler to a duel....”

“Your landlord? For what?”

“For laughing when he heard the conditions read off, I think, though Shields has it that it's something else—and
his
second is talking about challenging
my
second....And of course all of this is all over the newspapers. I just wish everyone would forget the whole thing.”

Mary looked down at his hand, still clasped in both of hers. Softly, she said, “Thank you. Thank you for saying you'd written all the letters. That was . . . very gallant of you. It was foolish of me, stupid beyond all measure....” She looked up, and met his eyes, her own brimming with the tears of contrition that had always appeased her father.

He shook his head. “Molly, what
am
I going to do with you?”

There was a long silence. Then, hesitantly, she said, “I . . . I've been wondering that myself.”

Bessie and Simeon, as usual, had disappeared to the back of the house. In the grate a log broke, sending down a whisper of glowing coals. Beyond the windows, the wind moaned softly in the trees.

Lincoln sighed, and put his hands gently on either side of her face. “Molly, I love you.” It was the first time he had spoken the words in cold blood. “God help us both. But I would be the greatest scoundrel unhanged if I asked any woman to marry a bankrupt and a debtor, particularly a girl of your breeding, who's had ease and comfort all her life.”

“You know money means nothing where love is true.” Mary's hands came up to grasp his wrists. “I would love you if you were a beggar on the streets.”

He smiled. “I don't doubt you would, Molly. But you'd also get darn tired of livin' on the few pennies I'd bring in. I love you,” he repeated, as Mary opened her mouth to protest. “And one day, God help me, I shall be proud to look your brother-in-law in the eye and ask for your hand.”

It was the most he had said on the subject, and so much did Mary burn with joy at the words that she said nothing more. But even as she threw her arms around him, even as they clasped one another tight by the sinking embers of the fire, she thought,
When?

And what happens if you meet another slender young thing of sixteen before that time?

The mere thought of going through another eighteen months—or two years—or how much more?—like those she had just passed through made her breath come short.
And what if he died?
she asked herself, as Simeon drove her home through the cold darkness of the streets that night.
What if the glowing green rivers of cholera rose, even from this dry Western prairie? What if he fell sick, as my mother fell sick . . . ? What if some other lunatic Democrat calls him out and refuses to be put off with broadswords at six feet?

What if, what if, what if?

October wind rolled handfuls of leaves through the small glow of the buggy lamps, like skittering goblins. Ahead of her she saw the glow of windows, the house where she had a single room, on sufferance.

We cannot remain forever in our fathers' houses. . . .

How old would she then be?

She was nearly twenty-four already. The belle of Lexington, the girl who'd collected beaux like they were buttons . . . would she really end as an old maid? With Bella Richardson Bodley saying sweetly, “Well, she let herself get so fat . . . and she never
could
learn to keep her temper....” and her friends pushing their brothers and husbands to dance with her out of pity?

Her body flooded with sickened rage and terror at the picture of that future.

She loved Lincoln as she'd never loved anyone else, as she couldn't imagine loving another man. The dread of losing him, of the twin terrors of desolation and humiliation, kept her staring at the ceiling in darkness until she heard the soft clatter of Eppy in the kitchen at dawn.

Lincoln left on Thursday, for the DeWitt County Circuit. He was gone for a month. Winter was coming, and the prairies around Springfield wore their drabbest robes, the grass bleached a ghostly gray by the summer sun, the riot of flowers killed by the autumn frosts. Lincoln came home on a rainy Sunday night; rain was still falling on Monday afternoon, when Mary got a note from Bessie inviting her to dinner. She told Jerry as she got into the carriage, “Simeon will bring me home.” She knew that in fact Simeon would be down at the newspaper until past midnight—Bessie had told her this earlier in the week—and that Bessie never emerged from her kitchen once she'd finished clearing up the dishes and usually simply retired to bed.

She trembled with the thought of what she intended—hoped—to do, but the recollection of the previous twenty-two months of waiting, of wishing, stabbed her like a goad.
It isn't as if he didn't love me, or I him. . . .

Helena's words from
All's Well That Ends Well
circled in her mind:

Why then, tonight

Let us assay our plot; which, if it speed,

Is wicked meaning in a lawful deed. . . .

As Ninian's carriage jolted along Sixth Street through the gray world of falling rain, she closed her eyes. She wondered if she should pray, but knew not to whom or for what. She only knew she could not go on as she was.

Her heart felt very clear, knowing exactly what she had to do.

Lincoln was exhausted, and quiet during dinner. “It's nothing,” he said, when Mary asked what troubled him. “I don't like to think of the rain fallin' on the grave of—” He hesitated
. . . over a name?
“—of those I've loved.”

For a long time, after Bessie left them alone together, they sat on the couch before the fire, silent, in the circle of each other's arms. When Mary drew closer to him, and drew his head down to hers, he responded with a wordless gratitude, his big hands tangling in the thick coils of her hair. This they had done, many times before, this dance of passion, of kisses and touch, flirting with the heart-shaking borderlands of delight and need. She loved his strength, and he, she guessed, the fire of her response, holding him to her, gasping as he pressed her back against the arm of the couch.

It was nothing any true lady should do—no true lady should permit a beau more than a single chaste salute: Betsey, and Granny Humphreys, and Elizabeth had emphasized this, over and over.

Did they really, she wondered, believe it was possible to draw back from the seductive ambrosia of this? Sometimes it seemed to her that this was truly what she and this man sought: to see how deep they could sink into darkness and fire and still have the strength to draw back.

Always it was he who drew away, as if he could trust himself only so far and no further. When she felt him move to do so, instead of letting him go she clung tighter. He whispered her name, and she pulled him to her: “I want you. I want all of you.”

“You don't know what you're asking....” His voice was hoarse and she could feel his body trembling as it bent over hers.

“Do you think I'm a child?” she breathed. “Do you think I don't know? I know that you're the man that I love.” All those conversations with Frances, with Mary Jane Warfield, and Merce—all those came back to her, about those things that girls only whispered about at night. The things that Elizabeth, and Betsey, never guessed that she had learned. Her hands tightened hard behind his neck and she slid her body down beneath his in a crushed sigh of petticoats, so that through them her legs pressed against his thighs. “I know that you're the man that I will marry, the only man I've ever loved or ever will love. Ever
can
love. Don't turn my love away.”

He looked down into her face, his eyes hidden by the shadows of the dying fire, with his tangled hair hanging down over them. But he breathed like a man who had been running.

“Life is short,” said Mary softly. “We don't know what the future will bring. I don't want never to have done this.”

When they lay together later on the couch, locked in each other's arms in a tangle of disordered clothing, she touched his hair gently, wonderingly. Wondering how anyone could have thought him ugly. In repose the bony, mobile face recalled to her some vision of a prophet sleeping in the wilderness, at one with the silence and the stones.

At her touch his eyes opened, relaxed and infinitely at peace.

“Molly.” He brought up his hand to cup her cheek. Seven years as a clerk, and a lawyer, and a legislator had not eradicated the frontiersman's hardness from his leathery palm. “I swear to you that I will be your husband. That I will not forsake you.”

“I had no fear of that.” So strongly she felt his love, and saw the tenderness in his eyes, that she honestly did not know whether what she said, at that moment, was a lie or not.

Lying in her own bed later, after Simeon had returned from the newspaper, and driven her home through the lessening rain, Mary turned the matter over in her heart and in her mind. Her body ached—Mary Jane had warned her about that—and she knew she'd have to inspect her petticoats closely and wash out the telltale spots of blood. Would have to do it early, before Lina was finished with the breakfast chores. Wet and muddy as last night had been, it would be easy to drop wet stockings or wet shoes on them, to cover dampness where dampness would not ordinarily be.

Mary Jane had told her about the blood, too.

What Mary Jane hadn't told her—or Merce, or Frances, when hushed questions and answers had been exchanged on darkened front porches during summer nights—was how profoundly the passage from girl to woman would alter her perceptions. How differently a woman looked at a man, once he became a lover instead of a beau.