Virgilia meditated on all this as she stirred the juice of a pot roast on the cast-iron stove in her little cottage. A light, cold rain had begun to fall at dusk, when her mantel clock chimed half after five. Now it rang half past six. Still no sign.
Wait. Above the pattering rain she heard wheels creak and a horse plopping through mud. She ran to the back door, pushed aside the curtain and watched Sam's covered buggy pull into the little shed at the rear, safe from discovery by anyone passing on Thirteenth Street. A moment later, the congressman appeared, striding toward the house. Virgilia's smile faded. He hadn't unhitched the horse.
She opened the door while he was fishing for his key. "Come in, darling. Here, give me your hat. What a wretched night."
He walked in without looking at her. She closed the door and brushed water from the brim of his tall stovepipe hat. "Take off your cape. I'll have supper ready in —"
"Never mind," he said, still avoiding her eyes. He moved through the small dining room to the front of the cottage. Water oozed from his high-topped shoes and glistened on the polished floor. "I have an urgent meeting with Ben Butler."
"Tonight? What can possibly be so pressing?"
His annoyance showed as he warmed his hands at the fire in the parlor hearth. "My new responsibilities." He turned as she approached, and she was caught short by what she saw in his dark eyes. More exactly, by what she didn't see. She might have been merely another constituent, and not a very familiar one.
"Since Senator Ivey can't serve out his term because of ill health," Stout said, "Governor Morton has announced my appointment as Ivey's replacement. In two years I'll ask the state organization to nominate me for a full term. In the meantime, I'll be able to push our program through and bring that damned Tennessee tailor to heel."
She took hold of his shoulders, exclaiming, "Senator Stout! Thad said it might happen. Oh, Sam, I'm so proud of you."
"It's a very great honor. And a great responsibility."
Virgilia pressed against him, relishing the feel of his hard body squeezing her breasts. When she slipped her arms around his waist, she felt him stiffen.
The magnificent voice dropped lower. "It will call for certain adjustments in my life."
She withdrew her hands slowly. "What kind of adjustments?" He cleared his throat and watched the fire. "At least have the courage to look me in the eye, Sam."
He did, and in the fire-flecked irises she saw rising anger. "An end to these meetings, for one. People have gotten wind of them, don't ask me how. It was probably inevitable. Gossip is the grist of this town. You can't even keep a toothache private. In any case, looking beyond the Senate to higher office — an ambition, I remind you, that I have never concealed —"
In the silence, Virgilia whispered, "Go on, Sam. Finish."
"For the sake of that future, I must shore up the public side of my life. Be seen more often with Emily, distasteful as that —"
"Is it Emily?" Virgilia broke in. "Or someone else? I've heard gossip, too."
"That remark's unworthy of you."
"Perhaps. I can't help how I feel."
Emotion hardened his voice. "I am not required to explain myself or any of my actions to you. That was part of our agreement. It still is. Therefore I don't choose to reply to your question."
From the iron stove she heard the hiss of the pot roast boiling dry. She smelled the burning meat and paid no attention. Stout laid down the curt, cold syllables one after another:
"I almost expected this kind of reaction from you. That's why I decided to make short work of parting. I will deposit the equivalent of six months of support in your bank account. After that it will be necessary for you to take care of yourself."
He walked away. A moment later she shook herself out of stunned immobility. "And that's how it ends? With a few sentences, and dismissal?"
He kept walking, through the smoke clouding off the stove where the scorching smell thickened. Virgilia's fingers raked her dark hair, loosening pins. The hair spilled over her left shoulder. She didn't notice.
"Is this how you treat someone who's helped and advised you, Sam? Someone who's cared for you?"
At the back door, hat in hand, he turned again. She saw open hostility.
"I am a United States senator now. Other people have a greater claim on me."
"Who? That variety hall slut people talk about? Is that who you're off to see, that Miss Canary? Tell me, Sam." Screaming it, she ran at him. Her fist flew up. Stout caught her wrist and forced her arm down.
"You're shouting loud enough for them to hear you at Willard's. I don't know this person you're talking about —" She sneered at him; the lie showed in his eyes. "And although it's none of your affair, I am spending the evening, as I told you, with Butler and several other gentlemen. The topic is how to thwart Mr. Johnson."
He pulled the door open. The rain, falling harder, almost hid the shed at the back of the yard. "And now, Virgilia, if I have offered you sufficient explanation, perhaps you'll grant me leave to go. I didn't want to part on these terms. Unfortunately you forced it."
He thumped his hat on his head and stalked down the steps.
"Sam," she cried, and again, "Sam!" when he raced the buggy down the lane beside the house. The flying hooves of the horse flung up mud. Specks of it struck her cheek as she clung to the post supporting the porch canopy.
The buggy swerved to the right and disappeared.
"Sam ..." The word dissolved into sobbing. She flung both arms around the post, trying to hold it as if it were a living creature. The slanting rain soaked her hair and streaked her face, dissolving the mud so that it ran like dark tears.
Early the next afternoon, at her bank, Virgilia inquired about the balance in her account. She found it increased by the exact amount of six months' support.
Numb, stumbling once, she returned to the chilly winter sunshine and walked all the way home, carrying the burden of her certainty. She had seen the last of Senator Samuel G. Stout, Republican of Indiana. Unless, of course, she joined crowd when he spoke and listened like any other commoner.
MADELINE'S JOURNAL
February, 1866. Another packet of old Couriers today. This is Judith's kindness — and my sole link to the world I am not sure but that I prefer it broken, the news is so bad — nothing but quarreling and vindictiveness, even in the highest office in the land. A crowd serenaded the White House a few nights ago. Mr. Johnson went out to thank them and on impulse spoke extempore, a dangerous habit for him. He called Stevens, Sumner, and the abolitionist Wendell Phillips his sworn enemies. Can such rashness do anything but inspire more enmity? ...