Lincoln (53 page)

MARY HAD CEASED
to think of Wikoff. She trusted Watt’s ingenuity. More to the point, the whole world had now been concentrated into
a single pier glass, in which she was at last able to see the result of her two hours’ labor with Keckley. The mirror reflected a white satin gown, trimmed with black Chantilly lace. There was a yard-long train. Shoulders and arms were bare, in imitation of the French empress; and, wonder of wonders, she did not for once look to herself to possess any more than a mere sufficiency of flesh. A white-and-black wreath of crepe myrtle crowned her head. She was unmistakably the Republican Queen.

“It is beautiful,” said Keckley, a shadow in the mirror behind her that was now joined by a taller, thinner shadow.

“Well, our cat has a long tail tonight.” Mary turned, smiling, to greet her husband, still in his shirt-sleeves. Lincoln picked up the long train; and whistled.

“Father, it is the latest style.”

Lincoln stared at her low-cut dress and shook his head. “I’d be happier if more of the tail was up there at the neck, and less on the floor.”

“I don’t advise you about generals.”

“Every day you do …”

“Well, then, if I do, you never listen to me; so I’ll not listen to you.”

“I suppose that is a fair trade.” Lincoln let the train drop. “I told the musicians there’d be no dancing.”

Mary nodded. “I think Willie is better. I was just with him. Tad is cold, he says.”

“What does the doctor say?” Lincoln proceeded to pull on his coat, with Keckley’s aid.

“All is well, he says. But this ague is a new one, he says, not like the others. I wish,” said Mary, staring at her reflection as if it were that of someone else, “there was some way of cancelling all of this, so that I can look after the boys.”

“
I
’m here, Mrs. Lincoln.” Keckley held open the door. “I’ll be with them the whole night. So you go down there, and show those secesh ladies the flag, which is just what you are—and Mr. Lincoln, too.”

“No, Mrs. Lincoln is the flag. I’m just the flagpole.” Lincoln indicated Mary’s dress. “By the way, why is the flag black and white tonight?”

“Mr. Seward says we should be in half mourning for Prince Albert. That’s how it’s done, among us sovereigns.”

Lincoln laughed. “Well, I reckon we
are
sort of temporary ramshackle sovereigns at that.”

“Speak for yourself, Father. Ramshackle!” Keckley fastened Mary’s pearl necklace at the back. Then Mary turned, sweeping her train with her left hand while with her right she took her husband’s arm. “I think it’s time, Father.”

There was a fanfare from the Marine Band as they appeared at the head of the stairs. Then they descended to the strains of “Hail to the Chief.”

The East Room was as splendid as Mary had dreamed that it would be. Beneath the gaslit crystal chandeliers, the diplomatic corps were lined up to the right of the entrance, gold and silver braid glittering, while, to the left, were the military and the politicians and the crinolined ladies in all their jewels. Mary’s sharp eye noticed that Mrs. Crittenden was laden with diamonds like an Eastern idol, while Miss Chase wore mode-colored silk and no jewels at all.

As the President and Mrs. Lincoln made their stately circuit of the room, many of the ladies curtseyed at their appearance; and all the diplomats bowed low. We
are
sovereigns, thought Mary contentedly; and not so ramshackle as all that.

In the center of the room, they stopped. To the President’s left stood a military aide and the chief of protocol from the State Department, ready to announce each of the guests. For once, Mary knew them all; or at least their names. The French princes were the first to pay their respects; then the diplomatic corps, according to seniority, filed past.

Suddenly, a slender young man with a moustache shook the President’s hand and said, “Mr. President, I wonder if you remember me? I’m your son, Robert.”

Lincoln blinked his eyes; gave a slow smile; lifted his left gloved hand and gave the boy a slight cuff on the cheek. “That’s enough of that,” he said. From the next room, the Marine Band played a polka, to which no one could dance that night.

Robert bowed to Mary, who gave him a low curtsey. She noted how he had entirely grown up in the year that he had been at Harvard. He was self-contained, strong-willed and somewhat shy; more Todd than Lincoln. He wanted to join the army. Although she had, thus far, successfully forbidden it, she lived in terror that one day Lincoln would let the boy do what he wanted. Lately, the newspapers had begun to speculate on the eventual military status of the Prince of Rails. It was Mary’s prayer that the war would end before Robert had graduated from Harvard.

At eleven-thirty, as the party moved into the entrance hall, two stewards came forward to fling open the doors of the state dining room in order to reveal Maillard’s masterpieces of the confectionary art. Unfortunately, the doors were locked; and the key was missing.

Mary found herself standing at the locked doors between the President and General McClellan. “Madam President, we seem delayed,” said McClellan, plainly enjoying the mismanagement.

“Oh, but
we
shall advance, sir, soon enough.” Mary smiled at the Young Napoleon. “We always like to set the example,” she added.

From behind them, a voice cried out the words of a recent newspaper editorial, “ ‘An advance to the front is only retarded by the imbecility of commanders!’ ” There was a good deal of laughter, and the Young Napoleon carefully joined in. Lincoln looked down at McClellan and said, “I hope, General, they don’t mean the Commander-in-Chief.”

“They don’t know what they mean, Your Excellency.”

A key was found and the doors were opened. At the center of the state dining room, Maillard had created a fountain, supported by water nymphs of nougat and surrounded by marzipan beehives filled with marzipan bees, producing charlotte russe. Elsewhere, venison, pheasant, duck and wild turkey were displayed, while an enormous Japanese bowl contained ten gallons of champagne punch.

Just back of the punch bowl, Seward and his diplomatic cronies Schleiden and Stoeckl stationed themselves and conspicuously made up for the abstinence of so many of the principal figures of the still essentially rural and pious republic. Then Dan Sickles approached; and Seward drew him to one side, to inquire of Wikoff.

“He’s very uncomfortable. So he’s apt to say anything, just to get out of the Old Capitol.” Sickles twirled his moustaches. “He asked for my old cell. But he was refused.”

“Have you seen Hickman?”

Sickles grimaced. “Not very likely. He’s threatening to hold me—
me
—in contempt of Congress. Do you know John Watt?”

Seward looked surprised. “The head groundsman?”

Sickles nodded. “I’ve been talking to Major French about him. It seems that he’s been robbing the White House ever since the days of President Pierce. Years ago, French tried to get rid of him but Watt always covers his tracks. Now he’s working pretty close with Madam.”

“I see.” Seward began to see a great many things all at once; and the vista was ominous indeed. “Major French has some sort of … evidence?”

“Yes.” Sickles dipped his crystal cup straight into the punch bowl to the horror of Mrs. Gideon Welles—a New England virago, in Seward’s prejudiced view. “He has enough evidence to send John Watt to prison for larceny, both petty and grand.”

“Well, I like them both, Dan. Particularly together. This is
solid
evidence?”

“Solid, Governor.”

“Now, then, is she …?” Seward looked across the room. Mrs. Lincoln was holding court to Sumner and Trumbull and the French princes.

“No, she’s not involved. At least not in what Major French showed me. On the other hand, when she took Watt to New York with her, it is said he helped her raise money for herself from …”

“That’s only ‘said,’ Dan.” Seward was peremptory. He had his own sources of information in New York. Mrs. Lincoln had more than once begged money from businessmen. She had also promised political favors to at least one known enemy of the Administration. In Seward’s privileged position as the unofficial chief censor of the United States, he had read a good deal of Mrs. Lincoln’s correspondence. But since Seward regarded information as the source of all political power, he was not about to discuss any of this with Sickles. “Do you think we can put Mr. Watt in jail?”

“For a long time. And best of all, Governor,
legally
.” Sickles added with a grin.

“I don’t like your tone, Dan. I get the impression that you may possibly, in unpatriotic moments, suspect that due to the present danger to the Union, I sequester the innocent out of malice or even mad caprice.”

“Governor, I’d never hint such a thing.”

“Even so, I feel it, Dan. It’s in the air. Something unspoken. But then I am an uncommonly sensitive man, as you know. I writhe under the lash of criticism …”

“… as do the editors you lock up for lashing you …”

“
… pro bono publico
.” Seward was enjoying himself. He was also beginning to see a way out of the dilemma. “It was Mr. Watt who gave the Chevalier Wikoff the President’s message.”

“Why?” Sickles began the cross-examination.

“Because Mr. Watt was on a retainer from the
Herald …
”

“That would be criminal.”

“True. I shall modify the evidence. Out of
friendship
, he gave the Chevalier …”

“He can’t
give
anyone the President’s property. That’s theft.”

Seward nodded. “I haven’t done a cross-examination in years, as you can see. Well, then, Mr. Watt happened to see a copy of the message lying on a table, as who did not? Since he has a perfect memory, can visualize page after page of Holy Writ at a single glance, he memorized certain passages from the message and then, out of friendship to the Chevalier and mistaken devotion to the President, he recited the passages to Wikoff, who wrote them down and sent them to the
Herald.
”

Sickles finished the punch in one long swallow. “I think, Governor, that I’ve restored you to your old brilliance as a trial lawyer, who is never surprised by what his client says.”

“Yes,” said Seward, thoughtfully. “But Mr. Watt is not yet our client.”

“He will be if he knows that Major French means to bring charges against him and that I can get those charges dropped
if
he confesses to having told Wikoff about the message.”

“What is to stop Major French from charging him anyway?” asked Seward.

“Mrs. Lincoln. The President. I don’t think that Major French is so zealous to see justice done as he is anxious to see Mr. Watt gone from this place.”

Seward patted Sickles’s shoulder. “You have threaded the eye of the needle.”

“Like a rich man? Or a camel?”

“It is the camel that passes through each time, But so boundless is the Lord’s mercy, even the rich man may find salvation.”

Twice, during the dinner, Mary visited the boys. She found Keckley seated beside Willie, who was asleep; he was breathing heavily but normally. Mary touched his face: the fever lingered.

“The crisis should have come,” she said.

Keckley was soothing. “It is never the same, particularly with this kind of fever, which the doctor says is new to him.” Lincoln joined them.

“There is no difference,” said Mary.

Lincoln’s huge hand rested, gently, on Willie’s face, quite covering it. “He is no worse,” he said. “That is something.”

“Call the doctor …” Mary began, but Keckley shook her head. “Let them be for the night. Let them sleep. You two go back to your business.”

Lincoln smiled. “Well, at least you know what it is we do down there. In spite of the music and all, there is no party or pleasure in this house, ever. Only business.”

Mary wondered whether or not her husband knew that eighty of those that she had invited had refused to come because they thought it frivolous in time of war to celebrate, or as the truly evil Ben Wade had scribbled on his card of invitation, which he had sent back to the White House: “Are the President and Mrs. Lincoln aware that there is a civil war? If they are not, Mr. and Mrs. Wade are, and for that reason decline to participate in feasting and dancing.”

Despite the feasting, the Civil War continued; and, twelve days later, John Hay sat with the President in Secretary Stanton’s office at the War Department, and waited anxiously for dispatches. Apparently, McClellan had taken to heart Lincoln’s insistence on the importance of East Tennessee. Buell’s army had won an engagement at Mill Springs in Kentucky, while elements of Halleck’s army, which had been permanently settled in
Missouri, as Lincoln had despairingly put it, were now on the move. An Illinois brigadier-general, Ulysses S. Grant, had then captured Fort Henry on the Tennessee River. He was now at the Cumberland River, twelve miles away, laying siege to Fort Donelson. If Donelson were to fall, Nashville and eastern Tennessee would once more be a part of the Union.

On February 14, Grant’s first attack on Donelson was repulsed. On February 16, as Lincoln and Stanton and Hay had been studying the map of Tennessee, a telegram from Halleck at St. Louis was brought them: Grant had refused to come to terms with the Confederate General Buckner. “No terms except unconditional, immediate surrender can be accepted,” Grant had told the rebels. “I propose to move immediately upon your works.”

When this message had been read aloud by the wheezing Stanton, Lincoln had said, with wonder, “Can this be one of
our
generals?”

“Yes, sir. And he’s crazy to be where he is.” Stanton had held his chest as if to push all the air out—or hold it in. Hay was never sure which. “Buell can’t come to his aid. The roads are impassable, all mud. Now he faces Fort Donaldson …”

“Don
el
son,” Lincoln had said, peering at the spot on the map.

But the next day in the same room, Hay witnessed what was, in effect, the Union’s first true victory of the war. General Grant’s message to General Halleck was read aloud by Stanton, whose wheezing had abruptly ceased. “ ‘We have taken Fort Donelson, and from twelve to fifteen thousand prisoners.’ ” Stanton turned to Lincoln, “Will you announce this, sir, to the people in the reception room?”