Mrs. Lincoln's Rival (20 page)

Kate’s heart welled up with pride as she thought of Colonel Ellsworth, how determined he had been to select the ablest, bravest men in New York City for the defense of the capital. Now they had saved an important part of it, and just as Colonel Ellsworth had believed, they had been ready and willing to plunge into the thickest of the fight.

“Can we go see it?” Nettie begged.

“The fire is out,” said Father. “There will be nothing left to see but smoking ruins.”

“That’s fine. I don’t mind. I still want to see it.”

“I’ll take her,” Kate offered. “I confess I’m curious too.”

Father agreed that they could go after morning scriptures and breakfast. Before long they were dressed and strolling down Fourteenth Street, where the smell of scorched wood and ash drifted on the air. A memory suddenly illuminated Kate’s thoughts—Election Day the previous November, when the Neil House in Columbus had burned to the ground. But the Willard Hotel had not suffered such a calamitous fate, she observed from a few blocks away. As best as she could see through the crowd that had gathered all around the block, although the adjacent building was a total ruin, the Willard Hotel had sustained relatively minor damage to its rear. As a small token of their immense gratitude, Kate overheard, after the fire had been extinguished, the proprietors had invited all of the New York firemen, as well as members of the Massachusetts Fifth Regiment and the New Jersey First who had also rendered service, into the hotel for a well-deserved breakfast. At that moment, the Zouaves, looking remarkably cheerful and energetic though streaked with soot and sweat, were busily engaged in tearing down the burned walls of the ruined structure, basking in the admiration of the gathered throng.

When the sisters returned to the Rugby House, Kate wrote Colonel Ellsworth a letter of congratulations, and when she saw him a few days later at a review of the district militia on the White House grounds, she said, “Back in New York, I told you that it would greatly reassure me to know that such courageous men were defending our city, and now you have justified every bit of my faith in them, and in you.”

He accepted the praise with a gallant bow. “Thank you, Miss Chase. I’m exceedingly proud of my men. They performed with exemplary courage and skill last night.”

“They did indeed, and it is a testament to your leadership.” She gave him a teasing smile. “I know of someone else who will be exceedingly proud. Since I know you are too modest to do so, I’m going to collect every newspaper report I can find about your Zouaves’ adventure and send them to Miss Carrie Spafford of Rockford, Illinois. She should know what a brave, ingenious man she is going to marry.”

Colonel Ellsworth smiled broadly, but not without a small measure of pleased embarrassment. “If you insist, Miss Chase, I won’t object.”

• • •

With the threat to the Willard Hotel and the narrow escape of its occupants fresh in their minds, the Chase family was relieved and thankful to move at long last into the mansion on the corner of Sixth and E streets. Kate, Nettie, Vina, and their new housekeeper, Mrs. Vaudry, took charge of moving in, unpacking, and arranging Kate’s lovely purchases from New York and Philadelphia in place among the cherished items shipped from their home in Columbus, which Father’s agent still had been unable to sell. Father had been counting on the funds from that sale to pay for the furnishings for their Washington home, but the real estate market in Ohio lingered in its slump, and Father found himself deeper in worrisome debt. Reluctantly, he resorted to asking Mr. Barney for a loan of ten thousand dollars.

As soon as they were settled in their new residence, Father held a reception in the splendidly furnished rooms to mark the occasion, but it was Kate who planned every detail from the invitations to the refreshments to the musical entertainment and the flowers. Kate had invited Mrs. Lincoln as a matter of form, knowing that she would not come, for by custom the First Lady could not accept any invitations to private homes. The Lincolns were absent, but all of the members of the cabinet attended with their wives, if they were in the city, as did Major Anderson, who had not yet returned to New York.

Their most reluctant guest was unquestionably Mr. Nathaniel Hawthorne, who Kate surmised attended out of a sense of duty rather than any expectation of pleasure. Upon his arrival, he spoke haltingly as he offered Kate the perfunctory compliments on her new home, and he seemed thoroughly wretched in the crowd. He brightened considerably when he spied Nettie across the room, and he made his way to her, speaking as little as possible to those who addressed him. As Kate watched, he sat and spoke with Nettie for a few minutes but departed soon thereafter, his expression conveying a devout thankfulness that the ordeal was over.

British ambassador Lord Lyons was the most illustrious of the foreign dignitaries who attended, and Kate took special care to welcome him warmly and provide all the attention and flattery that he seemed to desire, for relations between their two countries were in a fragile state. With the possibility that Great Britain might recognize the Confederacy as a sovereign nation in order to ensure a steady supply of Southern cotton for British mills, no amount of goodwill cultivated for the Union would be wasted.

Colonel Ellsworth was among the many military officers who visited, and he was justly praised for the courageous actions of his Fire Zouaves, who had become quite the favorites of the people of Washington despite their reputation for occasional raucous behavior. Another notable guest—arriving late, unaccompanied, and not entirely expected—was Governor William Sprague.

He came to Kate first, even before shaking hands with her father, perhaps because Father was engrossed in conversation with Secretary Cameron in another room. “Miss Chase,” Governor Sprague greeted her, taking the hand she offered him. “What a pleasure it is to see you again. Washington City is at its most beautiful in springtime, and it is all the lovelier for your presence.”

“Why, thank you, Governor.” She did not know quite what to think. “I understand the city is all the safer for yours.”

He smiled, pleased, but offered a self-deprecating shrug. “Well, we don’t fight fires as efficiently as Ellsworth’s Zouaves, but if the enemy should approach, we will not fail to rebuff them.”

He spoke for a while, proudly and earnestly, about the organizing of his regiment, the men’s training at arms, and their fierce loyalty to their country. Kate felt her wariness ebbing away, and gradually a sensation of warmth and admiration filled her. He spoke so well of his men, as if he were their devoted elder brother as well as their military leader, that she could almost forget the doubts John Hay had sown.

Her duties as hostess left her less time to chat with the governor than she wished, but later, when he bade her good-bye, he asked if he might visit again soon. She agreed, and when he called two days later, Father asked him to come for supper the following night, and the evening passed so pleasantly that Governor Sprague invited her to go riding the following afternoon. They were seeing too much of each other, Kate thought, and people were sure to gossip. But she had come to enjoy his company and conversation more than she had imagined she would, so she banished her concerns and accepted.

Governor Sprague’s white stallion was a creature of magnificent grace, power, and beauty, and he rode with a natural confidence and masterful skill that Kate, an accomplished horsewoman, found impressive and appealing. And yet, as they followed the same shaded path along the Potomac she had last traveled with John Hay, she could not help mulling over his warnings that the Boy Governor was less than what he seemed.

Delicately, weaving her questions into the conversation so deftly that the governor would not feel subjected to an inquisition, Kate tested his responses against John Hay’s incriminations. The question of whether he had won the gubernatorial election by bribing voters was too ridiculous to address, but when she inquired in a circumspect fashion about his opinions regarding electioneering and ethics, his responses were morally sound. When she mentioned her father’s devotion to the abolitionist cause, the governor himself admitted, without any prompting, that it aggrieved him that the cotton for his mills relied upon slave labor. In fact, it was a trip to the South to consult with plantation owners that had made him fully aware of the horrors of slavery and had compelled him to become an abolitionist and to give generously to abolitionist causes.

It was more difficult to broach the subject of education. When she mentioned her favorite books and authors, he remarked approvingly of her choices but acknowledged that he had little time for reading other than government documents and pending legislation. When she shared amusing anecdotes from her years at boarding school, he laughed but told no stories of his own. Finally, thwarted at every turn, she abandoned subtlety and said, “I suppose, Governor, you were too eager to make your mark in the business world to idle away the years in school.”

“Though I’m not much of a scholar myself, I’ve never equated hours spent in study with idleness,” he replied easily. “Do you, Miss Chase?”

“No,” she said. “No, I do not.”

His stallion had cantered a few paces ahead, eager to run, but the governor settled him with a firm word and a pat on the neck. Waiting for Kate to catch up, he fixed her with an evaluative look over his shoulder, the long yellow plume in his hat waving in the breeze. “Would you care to hear a very sad story, Miss Chase?”

“If you wish to tell one.”

“I was a good student as a youth. Not brilliant like your father, but diligent and quick to learn, when I wasn’t distracted by the usual preoccupations of an active boy.” His gaze turned inward for a moment, but then he smiled at her, rueful. “My father’s ambition was that I would attend college, probably Brown, and become a lawyer or a man of business like himself, but my dream was to attend West Point and become a valiant general.”

Kate smiled sympathetically, knowing that neither ambition had been achieved.

“On New Year’s Eve of 1843—which was my mother’s birthday, as well as my parents’ wedding anniversary—my father completed his usual Sunday-night ritual of a hearty family dinner followed by a vigorous walk of several miles out to our farm.” His eyes were on the road ahead, but he brought his stallion close alongside Kate’s mare. “On the way home, someone attacked him, shooting him first in the arm and then cracking his head open with the stock of the gun.”

Kate gasped. “How dreadful!”

“The assailant flung the weapon in a ditch, where it was later found and identified as the murder weapon.”

“Murder,” Kate breathed. Until that moment, she had hoped Mr. Sprague had survived the terrible attack.

“My father was a good man, generous to his workers, and his mill was the largest employer in the region.” The governor’s voice was steady, as if the events had lost their power to pain him. “And yet even such a man makes enemies. He had prevailed upon the city council to deny a liquor license to a group of brothers who ran a nearby gin mill, where too many of my father’s employees spent too much of their time, rendering them too often unfit for work. One brother had been spotted skulking about one of my father’s mills, and another was proved to be the owner of the murder weapon. That brother was eventually convicted of the crime and executed.”

“Oh, Governor Sprague.” He was close enough that she could reach out and touch his arm. “I am so terribly sorry.”

“I was thirteen.” He fell silent for a moment. “I was permitted to remain in school for another two years, but then my uncle, who had taken over my father’s mills, pulled me out of school and put me to work in the family business.” When he turned to her and held her gaze, she was suddenly conscious of her hand lingering on his arm and quickly withdrew it. “At the time, my uncle was a United States senator, and before that he had served as the governor of Rhode Island. Did you know that?”

“I had heard that you came from a political family,” Kate acknowledged, “but I assumed that your father was the politician.”

“No.” He seemed amused by the thought. “So, at fifteen, I began learning the business of cotton milling and calico printing from the lowest drudgeries upward. When I wasn’t toiling in the counting rooms, I drilled with the Providence Marine Artillery Company. It wasn’t West Point, but joining the militia satisfied my martial ardor, and eventually I was promoted to colonel.”

They had come to a secluded spot on the path, where a stand of willows trailed their long branches into the river. “Shall we walk for a while?”

Kate nodded, unwilling to interrupt his story. He halted his horse, climbed down, and tied the reins to a tree before assisting Kate to the ground. He offered her his arm, and they strolled in the shade of the trees. “I passed thirteen years in this fashion, advancing in the business and in the militia. And then, in 1856, my uncle died of typhoid fever. With our patriarch gone, the company passed to the next generation—my elder brother, my cousin, and myself. We formed a new business called the A. & W. Sprague Company, but my brother preferred horse raising and racing to calico, and my cousin was weak-willed when it came to liquor, and so almost every responsibility fell to me.”

“I imagine you were well prepared for the role.”

“Indeed, yes. My uncle’s insistence that I begin at the very lowest place and work my way up made sure of that.” He turned to her and took both of her hands in his. “And that, Miss Chase, is the story of my curtailed education and thwarted ambitions.”

“Thwarted ambitions,” Kate echoed, incredulous. “I strongly disagree. You are governor of Rhode Island, and the commander of the First Rhode Island Regiment. You didn’t attend Brown or West Point, but your achievements are all the more impressive for that, and for the other hardships you have overcome.”

He held her gaze again, and she felt a strange, warm trembling in the pit of her stomach. “Are they, Miss Chase?” he asked, in a voice that was quiet and gently mocking. “Are you impressed?”

“Perhaps,” she said, her voice faint. “A little. Not very much at all, now that I reconsider.”