Treason, page 10
“You look beautiful,” she said.
“Now, now,” he said, “you had your chance with me.”
“And thank God I didn’t take it.”
He laughed, and then, something warm and kindly in his tone, said, “You’ve come a long way, dear girl, and you radiate happiness. Jimmy has done well by you and I congratulate you both. He and I have our differences, but what are they, after all, in the face of true love and happiness?”
She smiled. “Gracefully said, sir.”
Then, spoiling it, he added, “Though you might have gone further with me.” In fact, all he’d offered her was the opportunity to go to bed with him.
“I’ve gone far enough to suit me, Aaron.”
“Sorry,” he said. “That just slipped out. But I was thinking, Jimmy won’t follow his good friend into this house.”
“We’ll have to wait and see, won’t we?”
“Oh, I suppose, but the point is, I’m going back to New York. I’ll have a hand to play, and then—well, may the best man win.”
She smiled. “Then Jimmy should have no trouble.”
He laughed out loud. “Touché, dear girl. I should know better than to joust with you. Anyway, you’re as beautiful as ever and I congratulate you on a happy marriage.”
Oh, my, she did like Aaron! For Jimmy honor stood unmovable as a mountain; for Aaron it slipped and slid, but there was no denying his charm. She watched him go striding about the room bowing and shaking hands as if he were the guest of honor. The president and Jimmy too, if truth be told, had shown something vengeful and not to their credit in humiliating Aaron, transgressor though he was. Perhaps they had increased the danger, too. Their courtship of Governor Clinton was another humiliation made public. But Aaron might yet have a real voice in 1808. She remembered the old political maxim: you never know who may come back to haunt you.
General Wilkinson strode into the room. She didn’t like Wilkinson, who would be leaving shortly for New Orleans to receive the vast province for the United States. He was gross and obsequious, his round and smiling face at first cheery and boyish but on closer expression dissipated, the expression in his eyes sly. And that uniform! Fancy to a fault, it hardly suggested the democratic air Tom sought to project. There were rumors of his being too close to the Spanish—indeed, that he was in their pay. Jimmy told her not to listen to gossip, but she rather liked gossip—it added such interesting dimensions.
Just then in an odd intuitive flash she had a strong impression that Wilkinson and Aaron purposely avoided each other. Aaron had been in an opposite room and entered from that side as Wilkinson appeared. They might have collided but each turned sharply away. Strange and, she supposed, meaningless. Then, interesting again, she saw that the general’s turn had brought him directly before Danny. He bowed, she nodded, they passed on and again, her expression of distaste so marked that Dolley thought she could not have mistaken it. New Orleans currents must run deep.
Etienne Lemaire appeared beside her. “The Champagne is almost exhausted, Madame. Shall I—”
“Let’s let it run out, Etienne. They’ll have to go home sometime and maybe that will start them.” She followed him into the state dining room to make sure the whiskey punch was in good supply, knowing that that was what most men in Washington wanted to drink, with plenty of corn liquor on the side to intensify its impact. When she returned to the oval room she saw Aaron deep in conversation with Danny Mobry. Danny’s strained look seemed to have passed. Ah, me; Aaron did have that effect on women. She hoped Danny knew what she was doing in encouraging Aaron, and then decided that was foolish. Danny was a widow in her thirties and if she chose to dally with one of the most charming men in America, so be it.
But the next time she was close to Danny she whispered, “On guard, dear; he’ll break your heart if you give him a chance.”
Danny laughed. “He is a charmer, isn’t he? I might just get carried away and give him that chance.”
“Don’t say you weren’t warned.”
There was Mr. Wagner in his shabby suit with an untouched Champagne flute in hand. He was alone and looked somehow forlorn and her impulse was to go speak to him. But he was always cool to her as if the very presence of the secretary’s lady was an imposition, so he could be lonely alone.
She saw the new clerk, Jaycee Barlow, looking at General Wilkinson with an expression that was somehow frightening, so bleak and hostile and full of a raw urgent force did it seem. Then she remembered that he was a soldier, and she had heard that the rank and file hated Wilkinson for his cruelties and his posturing. She understood that but it also struck her that she wouldn’t want Barlow for an enemy.
A few minutes later she found herself at the clerk’s side and he seemed a different man. He bowed deeply and asked immediately if he could get her Champagne. She shook her head and asked how he found Washington.
He hesitated, looking about the room, then gave a brilliant smile, and said, “Exciting. Vivid. Very different from Fort Massac, certainly, very different.”
She remembered Jimmy saying that Barlow wanted to enter Congress from Virginia. “How does politics strike you now?”
“Very well, thank you, ma’am. I think I might fit right in. Seems rather like the army. The maneuvering, I mean. This, though, this is spectacular—” He threw out his hands, palms up, widened his eyes theatrically and laughed, and immediately she saw a charm that had nothing to do with looks.
She set off on her rounds but caught occasional glimpses of Barlow talking to another woman—he seemed to have met everyone or at least every woman there. Presently she saw him deep in conversation with Danny Mobry. Both of them looked surprisingly serious and then Danny exploded in laughter and Barlow stood with his arms crossed, watching her and smiling.
She saw young Mr. Adams, the new Federalist senator from Massachusetts, slender, handsome, features sculpted as if from clay. She wondered how such a face would weather the years; certainly his father, the former president, fine man though he was, offered no beauty of countenance. Perhaps his mother, visage sharp as a blade today with a temper that seemed to match, had been a youthful beauty. Dolley’s heart warmed to Mr. Adams—he had arrived too late to vote on the Louisiana Purchase but announced that he supported it and would have voted for it. Since every other Federalist had voted nay, John Quincy’s statement brought much pleasure to Democrats and strident outrage to his fellow Federalists. Timothy Pickering, former secretary of state and now the other Massachusetts senator—he’d been instrumental along with Alexander Hamilton in destroying Mr. Adams’s presidency—was saying everywhere that John Quincy Adams’s would be tarred and feathered in Boston for his apostasy.
Then with some consternation she saw Mr. Pickering himself in the state dining room lading corn liquor into his whiskey punch. He was a tall, angular man, no longer young, with a long pendant nose and what appeared to be a habitual scowl. He took a pull on his glass, pursed his lips, and then ladled in more. And turned in her direction, Mr. Adams’s direction. Collision became inevitable and she saw that pride would let neither avoid it. She saw Adams’s back stiffen. Pickering’s face contorted and his lips moved in what she was sure was a snarl.
Quickly she stepped close and in a low and intense voice said, “Not here, gentlemen, not here.”
Adams, instantly abashed, bowed, and said, “Oh, madam, we do apologize.”
“Speak for yourself, young man,” Pickering snapped. “I apologize to no one in this house or of this persuasion.” He spun on Dolley, his cheeks gone startlingly red. “Mr. Adams has destroyed himself in supporting Mr. Jefferson’s insane purchase.”
“That is enough, sir!” she said sharply.
“And you, madam,” his voice rising, “doubtless you imagine you and your husband will reside in this house, but I assure you it will not happen. Louisiana will be the destruction of the Democrats and it will be up to the great Federalist party to right the ship of state and bail it out and set it on course.”
Pickering’s tall frame went well with his striking face; he had the gleam of a fanatic about him and headed a Federalist division that dreamed of splitting off New England into a new country under British protection— secession. She forced a smile that she knew was strained, and said, “On the basis of courtesy rather than power, I demand not another quarreling word. This is a party, gentlemen!”
Pickering wore one of the old wigs now going out of fashion. He bowed. “Very well, madam,” he said. “I believe your comments are well taken.”
Democrats had their own extremists of whom John Randolph was the leader, that strange man with his dogs. She spied him in the oval room, the dogs beside him. He made constant trouble with his demands that the most extreme Democratic rhetoric be carried out to the letter. But Tom and Jimmy hadn’t been elected as extremists— they held policy toward the middle, which suited most Americans, keeping Federalist institutions that proved useful but bending them toward opening that included everyone—good God!
One of those dogs had just urinated on a chair! Lifted his leg and sent a golden stream onto the cushion and puddling down to the carpet. It was just too much!
“Mr. Randolph,” she said, closing on him, “please remove these animals immediately.”
Startled, he goggled at her. “Eh?” He towered over her, his body thin as a sapling, his once handsome face so emaciated as to seem a skull. He was said to be ill in body and head and was famous for his vituperation though she knew he was too much a Virginia gentleman to use it on her.
“That dog just wet the chair,” she said.
“Oh, no. He wouldn’t do such a thing.”
“I saw him! Here—” She seized his hand, pressed it to the wet chair. He snatched it away as if burned.
“Well, dogs will be dogs.”
“Let them be dogs elsewhere. Now!”
He stiffened. “Where my dogs are not welcome, I am not welcome.”
“Remove them or I’ll have them removed.”
He glared at her. “Very well, madam,” he said at last. “But I see you consider yourself a significant figure in this house. I advise you not to let it go to your head—I can assure you your husband will never occupy these halls. His policies are obscenities, blasphemies, worse than the droppings of my dogs. You’ll see—with this magnificent purchase the Democrats will be so strong that the people will cry out for purity of party. Trimmers, Federalists-in-disguise, men fearful of their own shadows will be out in favor of a real Democrat! And you, madam, will be out with them!”
“Remove your dogs, Mr. Randolph,” she said.
Arms clenched across her chest, she stood looking from a window at cows moving slowly up toward the barn, trying to control her anger and her breathing. At last, with a deep breath and a sigh and a fresh smile, she turned back to the mob and to her great pleasure saw Benjamin Latrobe across the room rubbing his fingers along the inside of a window frame, his expression thoughtful. A somewhat round man about her age with artist’s eyes, he was an architect from London with a flare for interior design; he was central to her plans for the house and she had grown fond of him. But before she could join him she saw Sam Smith, the burly Marylander, glaring at a fellow senator of the Federalist persuasion whose name she’d forgotten. Then, tilting forward, he jabbed the other in the chest, and boomed, “Well, by God, I say Florida and doubtless Texas too are part of the Louisiana Purchase and by every right, we should have them! That’s what the Mobile Act means, sir—we assert our dominance over Florida at least as far as from the Mississippi to Mobile.”
It was unfortunate party talk, and sure enough, here came the natty little Spanish ambassador, the Marquis de Yrujo, who had married Sally McKean, daughter of Pennsylvania’s governor and one of Dolley’s oldest friends. Sally seemed much in love with him, which surprised Dolley because he seemed a blustering little popinjay to her. As luck would have it he was close enough to hear Sam bray and rushed to assure him in ringing tones that Florida belonged to Spain now and forever, as did Texas. “The Mobile Act amounts to a declaration of war on Spain,” Mr. Yrujo shouted. “I assure you it will be so regarded!”
Oh, my. Of course the purchase included Florida, as the Mobile Act proclaimed, but Jimmy said there was no chance we would push it—we were too busy for war with Spain. But naturally Sam blew up and in the exchange of pleasantries it began to seem it would be pistols on the lawn. Eventually Sam steadied and Sally led the popinjay away.
Breath slowing, Dolley turned back to Mr. Latrobe. He smiled when he saw her; he shared her passion for this great house and could see its potential for magnificence.
“You see, madam,” he said, hand on the window frame, “this must be reworked entirely, stripped and repainted, with new cabinetry work, too, insets and so forth. And then, delicate offset colors, cream or the palest gray-green to soften the sharp white, which itself could profit from a touch of cream ....” She loved such talk, and my goodness, if she and Jimmy ever lived in this house, what they could do. She and Mr. Latrobe.
Madison had retreated to a corner where he stood watching the crowd, the Champagne in the glass in his hand scarcely touched. There was Dolley circulating, checking, charming, always smiling, a quip or a greeting for everyone. He liked to watch her, that free, easy, fresh spirit. She did, in fact, seem to know everyone and surmounted the political differences that unhorsed so many alliances, let alone friendships. Apparently she’d had some trouble with John Randolph and he had been about to intervene when he saw John leaving with those damned dogs. He rather hoped she had thrown the troublesome Randolph out—what he deserved for bringing those animals.
Abruptly the British envoy, young Mr. Thornton, appeared beside him. They chatted a moment on his posting home and his replacement, who sounded a bit of a mixed bag. Then, subtly shifting position so that his back was to the room, his moving lips not visible, he said with an oddly tentative note, “I—well, I’ve enjoyed America. I know you feel I’m too much with Federalists—”
“Find them comfortable, I don’t doubt, their aristocratic tendencies and all.”
Thornton chuckled. “Yes, sir, more or less. I—well, would you forgive the impertinence of a bit of advice?”
What in the world? “Of course,” Madison said.
“Off the record?”
Madison nodded and the envoy’s voice dropped lower still as he said, “Then, sir, I urge you to take the war now resuming in Europe utterly seriously. It will be a fight to the death and Britain will never give in. If the French cross the Channel we will fight from house to house, hedgerow to hedgerow, we will never yield. So, you see, we will do whatever we must to whomever we must— whomever!—and it would be very wise not to step in our way at this moment when civilization hangs in the balance before the barbarian’s war machine.”
The bluntness of this outburst was startling. Madison knew the war in Europe was proceeding on a whole new scale. Past wars had stumbled on for decades, but this had a new ferocity. It had started with terrified monarchs in neighboring countries moving to squelch the French Revolution just as enthusiastic revolutionaries decided to carry their vision of equality to the masses in Europe by force, set them all free and give them the French manner.
Out of fighting that raged across Europe the Corsican military genius Bonaparte had risen to seize power in France. He had introduced numerous and commendable social reforms in the midst of police-state rule—none of which was any of America’s business—but now he did seem to hunger to rule the world. Already he was preparing to name himself emperor of most of Europe. Yes, both sides had paused in 1801 in a makeshift peace, but that had proved to be mere breathing space as war ignited again, coals tossed on dry tinder. Abandoning his Louisiana dreams had, among other things, left Napoleon free to pursue the conquest of Europe.
“Everything depends on our navy,” Ned said. “So it will never accept desertion and will never give up the right to stop ships and search them for its deserters. Never.”
“But you take our citizens too. Ten to one, our people against actual proven deserters.”
“Yes, but we return them when shown they are bona fide Americans.”
“After they’ve given years of service under the most brutal conditions.”
A long pause. “This is unofficial, remember,” Thornton said.
When Madison nodded, the Briton said, “You’re right. It is a hard policy. But it is essential to our survival. So my point is that like it or not, it will get harder. Much harder. My guess is that soon you will see increasing restrictions on trade, more seizures of cargoes that we deem contraband, and the definition of contraband will grow steadily wider .... In other words, Mr. Madison, be ready for dangerous times.”
There was a long moment of silence. Then with a slight bow, Madison said, “Thank you, Mr. Thornton.”
Such a conversation demanded an immediate report to the president. By chance, Dolley joined them as he finished.
“Well,” Jefferson said, “they’re putting relations on a whole new footing. So short-sighted—they can’t win their war without our trade.”
Yes! Madison had lived with this conviction for twenty years. It was all so clear to him, and equally so that the British were simply too arrogant to grasp the reality. Blinded by arrogance—and little America must suffer on that account. Someday ...
“Suppose we send Jim Monroe over to London to make these realities clear to them?” the president said. “He’s doing little enough in Paris, I must say.” A late arrival on the Louisiana matter, he’d been there ever since squabbling with Robert Livingston, the regular ambassador, over who deserved credit for the purchase. At least sending him to London might ease a tiff that was becoming embarrassingly public.
“I’ll write him,” the president said. “Let him try to make them see, they simply must end the impressment outrage. Stealing our men—criminal kidnapping, no lesser word will do. You’d think they were Barbary pirates!” He looked across the room, shaking his head. “They’re so contemptuous—we’re still just errant colonials to them.”
