A Friend of Mr. Lincoln (26 page)

“I'm thinking of moving back to Kentucky.”

“Why would you move back to Kentucky?”

“My father's dead.”

“Oh. I'm sorry.”

Speed blinked in an exaggerated manner, trying to blame the tears on the irritating effects of the smoke hovering in the dark room. He generally carried himself with insouciance, but there were Byronic moods in his temperament as well. He was as susceptible as Lincoln to the hypo—perhaps that was why they got along so well. Likewise his loyalties—to friends, to family, to place—were dramatically deep. His father's death, which he was only now bothering to disclose, must have hit him hard.

“It happened a few weeks ago. My mother is overwhelmed,” he explained. “You can imagine how much there is to deal with on a hemp plantation like ours. We've hired a temporary manager. He's a good man and can keep us on course for a while, but not for the long term. I'll have to move back. There are just too many things—estate issues, bills, crops, and then of course the slaves. We have a responsibility to the slaves—some of them I've known my whole life.”

“Well, of course you have to go where your responsibilities take you, though I can hardly imagine this place without you. When will you leave?”

“Not until the spring, probably. Don't tell anyone yet, particularly not Lincoln. He has enough on his mind right now without having to think about finding a new place to live.”

“He'll regret the absence of a friend more than the inconvenience.”

“I don't think he's quite himself. Well, it's not a matter of just me thinking that. We saw it confirmed today. He's overworked. Campaigning for Harrison all over the state, as well as campaigning for his own reelection, then running his legal practice. At least the assembly's not in session, or he'd be dealing with that on top of everything else. He's exceptional, but it's so easy to imagine him coming to harm. He has to learn to govern himself. He wants things too hard.”

Cage nodded, thinking as he did so how Speed's observation applied not just to Lincoln but to himself as well. The manuscript pages covering his desk, his anxiety that Gray and Bowen would find his collection acceptable, his hope that it would be exceptional; the image of Ellie, now at work in her shop, overseeing Cordelia and the other girl that she (and he) now employed, and the anticipation he felt that this was to be one of their nights together. If Judge Thomas or anyone else threatened to take all that away from him, wouldn't he attack just as hard, even as cruelly, as Lincoln had? How would Speed react if someone threatened to take away his hemp plantation and his slaves?

“If I leave,” Speed said, “that makes one less person around to talk sense to him. He has a great capacity for errors in judgment. For instance, I'm afraid he might end up marrying the Todd girl.”

“He might.”

“Please don't try to tell me it wouldn't be a disaster. I like her, of course, but she's not for him. She's mercurial and dramatic and demanding. She'd come at him like a tornado. You should marry her instead.”

“No thank you. And she's not interested in me.”

“No, I suppose not. You're going to make a name for yourself, but you won't be scaling the particular heights she has in mind. If you ask me, she wants to be the wife of a president. Living down the road from Henry Clay would give you ideas of that sort, if you were an ambitious woman like she is.”

“She and Lincoln might make a formidable team that way.”

“Or she and Douglas, if she could stand to marry a tiny little Democrat. I bet she'd do it, but I think our friend interests her more.”

Speed seemed to ponder this thought privately for a moment, then leaned back in his chair until it was tilted on its back legs and regarded Cage from across the table.

“And how is our other friend? I hear she's made quite a success in the millinery line. Don't stare at me like that. Are you worried I want to reclaim her somehow? Nothing could be further from my thoughts. She's a delightful girl and I'm glad she's making well. Are you and she still—”

“Yes,” Cage said.

“I wonder. Can something like that—what you have with her—be enough to fill out a life?”

“I don't know.”

“I suppose I'll find somebody to marry in Kentucky,” Speed said. “And that will be that.”

He said this in a gravely musing tone. He had turned sideways and was looking through the opened curtain of the booth at the window on the other side of the room. The great statehouse now rose commandingly in the center of the square, most of the scaffolding taken away so that its grandeur was plainly visible. It was not ready for occupancy yet, and the ground around it was still raw and dug up and filled with construction detritus, but it stood out cleanly in the heat of this July afternoon—a great prairie temple consecrated to the principles of human striving and conniving.

“By the way,” Speed said after a moment, “do you want to buy me out? I'll make you a fair price. You can keep it running as a store or use the property for something else, I don't care.”

“My money's tied up. I'm buying land in the Military Tract.”

“That's a sound investment. The Military Tract will pay off once this state gets going at full speed. Well, I'd hoped you'd buy the place so Lincoln would still have a place to live, but I suppose he can get a room at Butler's. He already takes his meals there. In any case, it probably won't be long before he comes to rest in the arms of Miss Todd.”

Lincoln succeeded in making his apology to Thomas and shaking hands with him in the middle of the square in full view of the citizens of Springfield. He went out campaigning again and came home a few weeks later. Cage saw him only briefly at Speed's store. He looked exhausted and depleted, interested only in huddling with Baker to try to come up with some strategy or other to keep the Democrats from packing the polling places with Irish railroad and canal workers they had brought in from St. Louis. The great national contest for president was still several months off, but the state and local elections were immediate, and on the day of voting there was scuffling in the streets between the Whigs and the imported Democrats, who had been drinking their patrons' free whiskey and apparently had been told that the polls needed to be defended from members of the opposite party who might be so brazen as to cast a vote.

Lincoln won reelection but by too thin a margin to justify rejoicing, and his victory over Thomas only served to remind voters of his relentlessness in turning his opponent into a blubbering heap. Overall, the Whigs suffered badly, losing to the Democrats in both houses of the assembly. Before Cage could even console him, Lincoln was gone again, back to Egypt for more campaigning to deliver Illinois for Harrison in the November election, back on the judicial circuit to manage more cases for his and Stuart's over-stretched law firm.

There was another party at the Edwards house when Mary returned from Missouri in September, but Lincoln was out of town for that too.

“Good God,” Ash Merritt whispered to Cage when he saw Mary enter the room. “Is that the same person?”

She was a small-statured woman and even a few pounds would have made a difference in her appearance, but she must have put on fifteen or twenty during the months she had been away, months no doubt of endless nighttime parties and buffets and afternoons of exquisite Southern idleness. The sufficiency of weight suited her, in a way; it certainly didn't seem to bother her and it made her even more of a presence. She moved through the room tearfully hugging Julia Jayne and Mercy Levering and all the other young ladies of Springfield she had so sorely missed. When she made her way to Cage she asked about him eagerly, about his writing, about his business, then grabbed him by the elbow and dragged him a few feet away from the vortex of the party, next to a little table bearing a stern-looking statuette of Dante.

“He's been writing me,” she whispered. The added volume in her face enhanced her smile and seemed to take some of the acerbity out of her manner. “Did you tell him to?”

“Of course I didn't. If he's writing to you it's because he wants to.”

“The poor man is having a rough time. On horseback all day, wearing the same hickory shirt from one stop to the next. He seems very tired, and his accommodations are wretched. But I think he revives himself somewhat when he has to debate or give a speech.”

“Yes, that's a reliable remedy for Lincoln. Does he say when he's coming back?”

“Not until after the election in November. He says he wants to see me as soon as he gets home. What do you think that can mean?”

“I don't know. I'm unschooled in such matters.”

“Such matters as what? Please be specific.”

“I can't be specific. I don't know anything.” He lowered his voice, though they were alone in their little corner and could probably not be overheard. “I don't know if he's making love to you or not.”

But he was afraid that was what was happening. Weary horseback miles, bad food, crowded flea-infested beds in substandard rooming houses, dirty clothes, anger at the lies told by political opponents in debates, submerged concern about the falsehoods he was telling in return, chronic anxiety about whether he could deliver Illinois for Harrison; and along with all of that the stress of the many cases to be acquainted with and argued for or against on the legal circuit, leading inevitably to overwork, confusion, loneliness: it was enough to make any man start writing letters to a woman, particularly a woman like Mary, whose letters in return would be so sharp and witty and full of bracing political understanding. The kind of letters that could convince a man he had fallen in love.

L
INCOLN'S VOICE WAS STRAINED
from months of speaking and debating all around Illinois. His spirits were strained as well. “The last thing I want to do right now,” he confessed to Cage in a rasp as he tried to make himself heard above the conversational noise in the crowded space of the Presbyterian church, “is give another speech.”

All those days and nights of bad food and long horseback miles and dirty inns filled with snoring men showed in his appearance. He had lost weight again, of course, which had the effect of exaggerating his verticality, turning him into a lonely, shriveled human tree. He was wearing a once-good suit that had been much abused in his travels and had lost its drape and now hung on his thin body like a funereal sack.

The church had become a de facto public space ever since the assembly started meeting there until the final touches could be put on the statehouse. The gathering on this November night was a Whig victory celebration. Harrison had just decisively won the presidency over Van Buren. But for Lincoln the triumph was muted, since he had been determined not just to elect a president but to make sure the Whigs carried Illinois, and in the end the Whigs did not carry Illinois.

“So is
she
here?” he asked. His neck looked as long as a snapping turtle's as it swayed back and forth over the crowd.

“I haven't seen her.”

“I think I may have gotten myself a little bit embriggled with her.”

“Yes, that's my impression.”

“It is? When did you talk to her? What did she say?”

But there was no time to answer him because Ned Baker had just taken the pulpit and was asking the crowd to welcome that great Whig stalwart and towering state legislative leader Abraham Lincoln.

The weariness and doubt that had been in Lincoln's demeanor an instant before vanished as he turned from Cage and headed to the front of the church, where he shook Ned Baker's hand and led the victorious Whig faithful in a hurrah for Harrison. He promptly began to paint a vivid picture of the national paradise that was to come under President Harrison's leadership, with good sound currency in good sound banks, with men rewarded fairly for their labor and the farmers and pork packers and manufacturers of Sangamon County and the rest of Illinois blessed with a system of internal improvements untainted by speculation and graft.

He had been speaking for ten minutes when the door of the church opened and Ninian Edwards and his wife entered, followed by Mary Todd arm in arm with the most beautiful young woman Cage had ever seen. This must be, he realized, the Edwards niece Mary had told him about last summer. Matilda. She was three or four inches taller than Mary, who—still carrying the extra weight she had accumulated during her time away—looked almost squat beside her. Cage had seen Matilda walk only a few steps, from the door to the side of the church, where the crowd was thinner and the view better, but her gracile gait was mesmerizing, the skirt of her dress ebbing and flowing in a way that revealed to the imagination the long and perfectly formed legs that were hidden under it. She was blond
,
judging by the glimpse of parted hair visible beneath the crown of her bonnet with its discreet flowery trim. Her brilliant blue eyes surveyed the church with interest and curiosity, unaware or choosing to be unaware that everyone was trying not to stare at her.

Lincoln was still speaking, finishing his remarks as fluently as if this beguiling distraction had not entered the room. But he had seen her too, and Cage knew Lincoln well enough to detect that even as he continued speaking—about Harrison and Tyler and the duty of all Whigs to stand solidly beside them for the good of the country—he was not in full command of his own attention. He roused the audience to cheers even as his own expression betrayed a sudden and bewildered yearning.

“Of course,” Ellie said to Cage that night in the back of her shop. She was sitting in a chair in her chemise, her hair down, catching up on backed-up work orders as she sewed lace onto the collar of a client's pekin dress. “I know all about Miss Edwards. Everybody's been talking about her for weeks. They say somebody—a Mr. Strong, I think—believes she loves him and has asked her to marry him but she's not eager just yet to tie herself down. I suppose she wants to have a look at what's available in Springfield.”

She looked up at him from her sewing.

“Did you see her?”

“I saw her. I didn't have a chance to talk to her.”

“Well, you will. And anyway, I understand that it's not necessary to talk to her to fall in love with her. Is she as beautiful as everyone says?”

“Yes.”

“So will you?”

“Will I what?”

“Fall in love with her?”

“Would you like me to?”

“Yes. I think you ought.”

She spoke lightly, banteringly, but Cage could feel the steel of truth in her voice as well.

“And what would become of you if that should happen?” he asked.

“Nothing would become of me. We'd still be friends. We'd still be business associates. As long as the shop continues to make money.”

“If it didn't, I would cut you off. Is that what you think?”

“If I didn't make money for you, you should very well cut me off.”

“I'm not that inconstant.”

“Constancy's a term of love, not a term of business. You should understand which is which.”

She had him off-balance, as usual. She enjoyed seeing him uncertain about whether she was speaking with ruthless honesty or with teasing domesticity. He wanted to kiss her but that was over with for the evening. She liked to talk after they had been to bed but now that she had so much work to do she seemed to regard lovemaking itself as a session with a defined beginning and end.

“Anyway,” she went on, “you'll finish your book and publish it, and the world will hail you as a genius, and I'll no longer be enough for you. You'll need a wife, a proper wife like Matilda Edwards.”

“You and Mary Todd both seem to think I should marry her, but for different reasons. In your case, it's because you want to get rid of me. In hers, I'm pretty sure, it's so she can make sure she's off-limits to Lincoln.”

“I don't want to get rid of you,” Ellie said. “You make me sound much colder than I am. I like this—” With the hand that held her sewing needle she gestured around the room, a gesture that included her in her chemise, Cage in his shirtsleeves and unbuttoned waistcoat creaking back and forth in a rocking chair, two people who had fallen into an undefined, unsettled, unyielding dependency. “I want it to go on and on until we tire of it.”

“Good,” he replied. “So do I.”

He saw Matilda again a few days later when Ninian and Elizabeth Edwards once again hosted a party, this one to mark the start of the legislative session. Edwards himself was in a sour and formal mood, still simmering over the fact that he had been dropped from the ticket in the last election, a casualty of the rest of the Whigs in Illinois believing that too much power was concentrated in Springfield. But he had swallowed his outrage and was now doing his part, standing with Mrs. Edwards to receive his guests as they came out of the early winter cold into the mansion.

Billy Herndon and his new wife Mary Ann were among them. One day last March he had announced that he was moving out of Speed's store and getting married to the daughter of the town marshal. Billy was younger than all of them and on the surface his unbendable political passions and his abiding anger at his father would have appeared to make him the least inclined to domestic happiness, but here he was, with his calm and affectionate new wife. He was studying law now too, talking to anyone who would listen about Blackstone and Chitty and all the other weighty tomes he was working his way through. The Herndons drifted over to the edge of the small cluster of dazzled young men—Cage among them—who had gathered around Matilda Edwards.

“Oh, I love it here!” she was saying. “It's so dull in Alton. Springfield seems like the center of the world.”

“Springfield's having a hard time just now being the center of Illinois,” Joshua Speed said. Poor Speed. He could not hide the radiant want that lit up his face, the tremor in his voice when he spoke to her.

“Oh? Why is that?”

“Well, there are all these internal improvement projects that are unfinished, debt is piling up, and the rest of the state thinks all the problems originate in the capital, which of course they do.”

“Well, the rest of the state should understand that big things like railroads take time,” she said. “I certainly do. I can wait.”

“That's because you're young,” Speed said.

“Oh, are you old, Mr. Speed? You don't look old to me.”

She touched his arm and laughed when she said this, showing her gloriously even teeth. She was comfortable with being adored; it made her generous and eager to put other people at ease. Cage saw in Speed's expression that the feel of Matilda's hand on his broadcloth sleeve registered with the force of a burning iron. Bat Webb, an assembly member from White County, who really was old—close to forty—stared at Matilda with dumb admiration, as did Billy Herndon, despite the fact that his new wife was standing next to him. Cage didn't know if the hunger showed in his own eyes as vividly as it did in those of the others. Her physical perfection drew him in, of course, but it made him uncomfortable as well, because there was no escaping it, no way to stop gauging whether there might be a reciprocal interest on her part. For that reason it was exhausting to be in her presence. And she had the kind of beauty that seemed like it ought to be the outward manifestation of deep intelligence and wisdom, but so far she had said nothing beyond expected pleasantries.

She had asked him about himself and when he told her he was at work on a book of poetry there was a mild look of alarm in her eyes, as if she didn't know what to say next. It was easier to have a conversation with her if you just asked her questions about herself. How long would she stay in Springfield? Was she looking forward to the cotillion season? Did she have sisters and brothers back home in Alton?

While they were all quizzing Matilda, Cage swept his eyes from time to time to a corner of the big parlor, where Lincoln and Mary Todd stood by themselves, deep in conversation. Or at least Mary was deep in conversation. Lincoln stood with his hands hanging at his side, bending down from his great height to meet her eyes, to nod at whatever she was saying, but now and then his attention would pivot in a way he thought subtle to Matilda Edwards and the admirers surrounding her. After keeping him to herself as long as she could, stranding him on the other side of the room, Mary brought him over to introduce him to her dear friend Matilda.

“Oh, I'm glad to meet you!” Matilda said with a beaming smile. “I know all about you, of course. Everyone does. I read about you in the newspapers all the time.”

“I hope you're doing all your reading about me in the Whig papers,” Lincoln said. “They tend to be more charitable about my defects.”

“Your defects are never mentioned, Mr. Lincoln, and I doubt that they even exist.”

She regarded him with radiant eyes and a lingering smile that left Lincoln incoherent. After a moment Ninian Edwards came and captured his cousin and drew her away to another group of legislators who had demanded to meet her. With Matilda no longer there to hold them in thrall, Cage and the others dispersed, accepting drinks from the liveried and indentured Negro waiters or helping themselves from a platter of glistening oysters.

Mary had Lincoln to herself again, chattering away to him, rising up on tiptoe to whisper in his ear, laughing, evoking distracted laughter from him in return. Her face, with its healthy new bounty of flesh, seemed lit from within like the globe of a lamp.

The conversation in the room died off as a group of bell ringers that Ninian Edwards had hired for the occasion trailed in playing “Jim Along Josie.” Mary broke into a delighted smile and clapped her hands in time to the lively song, and turned to Lincoln and bid him to do the same. He obeyed, but his clapping was mechanical and off the beat and he looked like a man who was struggling to wake from a perplexing dream.