In the note, she had asked him to come at seven. At half past nine she was seated by a small table near the gas mantle, slowly rubbing her forehead with her left hand. Despair had eaten away her hope and her energy. She had been an idiot to suppose that —
"What?" she said, her head jerking up. Her heart started racing. She rose, hastily pushed her wrinkled blouse into her waistband, tightening the linen over her breast. She ran to the door, patting her hair.
"Yes?"
"Hurry and let me in. I don't want to be seen."
Weakened by the sound of the rich, deep voice, she fumbled with the door. She finally got it open.
He hadn't changed. His brows were still black hooks on his white face. His wavy hair, dressed carefully with fragrant oil, glistened as he made that unnecessary stooping movement that always accompanied his passage through a doorway; he liked to emphasize his height.
"I do apologize for my tardiness," he said as she closed the door.
"Please don't, Samuel. I can't tell you how much I appreciate this." She could barely keep from touching him.
His gaze lifted from her blouse to her face. "I wanted to see you again. And your note said it was an emergency."
"You didn't show that to —?"
"I read the envelope. No one saw it but me."
He sat down, crossing his thin legs. He smiled at her. She had forgotten how crooked his teeth were. Yet she found him beautiful. Power was never homely.
"I'm late because committee work is so heavy these days. But let me hear about this emergency. Is it something that happened at Aquia Creek?"
"Falmouth. I —" She took a breath; the linen stretched even tighter. He played with the fob of his pocket watch. "There's no way to tell you but straightforwardly. I've left the service. At the field hospital at Falmouth, they brought in a young Confederate officer, badly wounded." She plunged. "I let him die. Deliberately."
He drew out his watch. Opened and glanced at it. Shut it with a snap. Pocketed it again. Even when it was out of sight, she heard, or thought she heard, the maddening tock-tock of the movement; that and nothing else. The silence grew unendurable.
"I thought I was doing a good service! He'd only have gone back to kill more of our boys —" She faltered.
"Are you waiting for me to condemn you?" He shook his head. "I commend you, Virgilia. You did the right thing."
She broke then, rushed forward and dropped on her knees beside his chair. "But they're going to punish me." Unconsciously fondling his leg, she poured out the story of Mrs. Neal and her threats. He listened so placidly she was terrified. He wasn't interested.
Just the opposite was true. "Is that all you're worried about, some damned Copperhead widow? There'll be no investigation started by anyone like that. I'll speak to a couple of people I know." His hand crept into her hair. "Put the whole matter out of your mind."
"Oh, Sam, thank you." She rested her cheek on his thigh. "I'd be so grateful if you could prevent trouble." Despite that moment of fright, the scene was playing out exactly as she had hoped. She had felt sad planning it, because circumstances forced her to accept less than what she wanted. But perhaps she could one day turn the compromise to greater advantage.
He cupped her chin and raised it, teasing with his smile but not his eyes. "I'm happy to help, Virgilia. But in politics, as I'm sure you know, the rule is quid pro quo. I'm still a family man. Much as I personally might like to alter that, it's impossible if I'm to stay in Congress. I want to stay — I plan to be Speaker of the House before I quit. So if you want my assistance, it must be on my terms, not yours."
What she had once hoped to bargain with, she was now trapped into surrendering. Well, why not? She was confident Sam Stout would rise and wield power and help trample out the weaknesses of Lincoln and his kind. Having part of such a man, like having half of the proverbial loaf, was better than having nothing.
He patted her hand. "Well? What's your answer?"
"It's yes, my darling," she said, rising and reaching to loosen the tie of her blouse.
108
The day after Stanley's philandering was discovered, he wrote a letter to Jeannie Canary saying that urgent business called him out of town.. He enclosed a one-hundred-dollar bank draft to soften her grief and fled to Newport.
To his amazement, Isabel showed hardly any surprise when he alighted from an island hackney at the door of Fairlawn. She asked how he managed to get away. He said he had trumped up a story about one of the twins being injured. It might come true; out on the lawn they were attempting to brain each other with horseshoes. How he despised those obnoxious boys.
During the night, he wakened grumpily to see Isabel passing the open door of his bedroom on the way to hers. "Was that someone at the downstairs door?"
"Yes. They mistook this house for another." Her voice had a peculiar, strained quality. The lamp chimney rattled in her hand as she said good night and disappeared.
Early next morning, before breakfast, she handed him his coat. "Please take a walk with me on the beach, Stanley." Though the request was phrased politely, her tone left him no option. Soon they were alone on the seashore. The air was cool, the water calm, the tide running out. A few spotted sandpipers pecked about, hunting tidbits. Sunlight turned the Atlantic into a carpet of silver beads.
Isabel spoke suddenly and with unexpected ferocity. "I would like to discuss your new friend."
A witless smile. "Which friend?"
She bared her teeth. "Your doxy. The performer at the Varieties. The person who came to the house last night had the correct address." She pulled a crumpled flimsy from a pocket of her skirt. "And this telegraph message."
So quickly? "My God, who — who informed —?"
"It isn't important. I've known about the woman for weeks, and I'll give you no explanations there, either. I understand she's hardly talented enough to be called an actress, though I suppose she has other, less public, talents." Except for the moment when she brandished the flimsy, Isabel maintained perfect control, which somehow made her assault all the more threatening.
Stanley bit his knuckle and wandered in an agitated circle, like one of the shore birds. "Isabel, if you know, others must. How many?" She didn't answer. "I'm ruined."
"Nonsense. As usual, you misunderstand the way the world operates. You're dithering over nothing. No one cares if you philander, provided you're discreet and sufficiently well off." She took several steps away from him while, with vacant eyes, he watched the wind ripple sand ribbons along the beach. "It doesn't matter to others, and it doesn't matter to me. You know I loathe that part of marriage anyway. Now I want you to pay particular attention to what I'm going to say next. Stanley?"
She raised a fist, then forced it down to her side before continuing. "You may do whatever you wish in private. But if you ever again show yourself in public with that trollop — an hour after you paraded at the Patent Office, it was all over town — I will enlist a regiment of lawyers to strip you of your last penny. I will do it even though every property law in the land favors husbands over wives. Do you understand?"
A fine spray from her mouth struck him. He scrubbed his left cheek with the back of his hand. She had made him angry.
"Yes. I see how it is. You don't care a damn for me. It's only my money that holds you. My money, my position —"
The morning wind became a chorus of eerie voices, whispering. Isabel seemed touched with sadness, although, after a shrug, her reply was firm. "Yes. The war's changed many things. That is all I have to say."