Fiction: From Chapter 6: New Orleans (Part 7)

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“But back to Peggy. You’ve given the facts, but what’s the real story? I don’t see the woman. Did she sleep with the new president?”
    “She must have. I don’t know. She had his ear, and what secrets did he reveal? Secrets of state.”
    “She took advantage of his fatherly affection and offered herself, to console him. Is she still alive?”
    “Oh, yes. She’s not all that old.”
    “Hahaha! It’s like she trained herself her whole life to sleep with the most powerful man in the world!”
    “Could be. And then afterward he had to assume a more fierce protectorship, to mask his weakness. Because I couldn’t get at the whole truth, tell the story I wanted to tell, I could never furnish what Eaton had commissioned, and I would never imply anything illicit. I never finish anything, and I make sure I have the worthiest reasons not to. But at any rate, Rachel died just at the moment Jackson took the helm. He succumbed to the profoundest melancholy. But he used his grief to stand against the foe. Because she died. She died!”
    “Rachel? Who?”
    “Virginia!”
    “Your state?”
    “My wife!”
    “Your wife?”

“My child bride. My angel”

    “My child bride. My angel.”
    “She died? You were married? When did she die?”
    “Just a few months ago. She was consumptive.”
    “Poor thing! And she was just a child?”
    “When we married, yes.”
    “When did you get married?”
    “Well, it was before you and I went to Europe. I wanted to tell you. I just didn’t know how. I was waiting for the right time. So now you know why I could never finish anything. You and her. Women. Real life. I blame you. I understand Andy.”
    “You finished that Marie Roget story. I read it.”
    “I published something, but I didn’t finish it. It’s a sham, merely clever. I mocked journalists instead of pursuing the truth. I made straw men just to show how clever was my demolition of them. I erred in the most egregious ways. This clever, charming, intelligent and wise beautiful girl: I gave no hint of her personality, of why it matters to us or to anyone outside of Hoboken why she died, was killed ten years ago. I was given leads no one else had, which I could have pursued, and I did not. In fact, I obscured the truth. The girl was dead; why should I stir up trouble or make difficulties for myself when I had so much else troubling me? I wrote a story I’m ashamed of now, yet I remain in possession of information I can and shall pursue, for only by righting the wrong I did can I alleviate the guilt that has hounded me these last few years, on top of others. I know now what I did not before, and which I wish I’d never learned.”

Malinda didn’t wish to discuss this

    Malinda didn’t wish to discuss this. She was at first enraged that he had never told her about Virginia; she left without indicating her fury. But not long afterwards, she told him, “I mean, the whole time we were in Europe that last time, you were married. Seems like you could have told me that, at least. But then I laughed about it. We weren’t married or lovers or anything, so I guess it doesn’t matter whether you told me or not. But I just thought we told each other everything. So I asked myself, ‘Is everything he said a lie?’ Hahaha. I got awfully melodramatic. But not for long.”
    “Hahaha. You had overboard fun. But thank God you came back. I think you will understand that I couldn’t have explained it to you. I married her, but we were never husband and wife, truly, never lovers. It was just an agreement, something she wanted to do, the poignant wish of a child who knew her days to be numbered to pack into them all the events and rites to which young ladies are entitled. She had not the leisure to await a more appropriate season or suitable gentleman, and it was the melodrama and doom and pain of the whole thing that impelled me to obey her wish with eagerness. I thought her dream to be a grown-up bride draped in white Swiss muslin trimmed with satin ineffably beautiful and easy to fulfill.”
    “I guess it was a beautiful thing you did. Noble. But still, so weird!”
    “Quite!”

“How old was she?”

    “How old was she?”
    “When we wed, thirteen. You will recall that King Richard the Second married Isabella when she was just seven years old.”
    “I don’t recall that, in fact. But you needn’t justify it to me, what you did.”
    “Canon law, however, decreed that such marriages should not be consummated until both parties were of age: at least twelve for a girl and fourteen for a boy. Our own was never consummated.”
    “Never? Now I don’t believe you. You were married for years!”
    “Yes. Never consummated. Believe me or don’t. I am a gentleman.”
    “But you kissed?”
    “Oh, yes! My happiest memories. And my greatest fear is of the day the softness, the angelic sweetness of those kisses fades from memory, all too soon. Yet ‘twas she who grieved at not being wife enough to me. She offered much of herself, begged me to take more, and indeed, became vexed with me when I resisted, and so, whenever I attempted, at once I drew back in horror, repulsed by the baseness of my impulses and as much by how much more intensely the pain would torment me once she was no more. She longed to give me a baby. I had to absent myself, you see? To place miles between us by the thousand. For long periods. And she never complained. Indeed, she apparently required these separations as much as I, for reasons of her own. She never complained. Angel!”

He searched through his trunk

    He searched through his trunk and handed her a letter. “I wrote this to you, but, having no idea how to direct it to you.”
    She read: “Two months ago, a wife, whom I loved as no man ever loved before, ruptured a blood-vessel in singing. Her life was despaired of. I took leave of her forever and underwent all the agonies of her death. She recovered partially and I again hoped. At the end of a year the vessel broke again. I went through precisely the same tumultuous cogitation. And again about a year afterward. Then again—again—again and even once again at varying intervals. Each time I felt all the agonies of her death, and at each accession of the disorder I loved her more dearly and clung to her life with more desperate pertinacity. But I am constitutionally sensitive—nervous, in a very unusual degree. I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity. During these fits of absolute unconsciousness I drank, God only knows how often or how much. As a matter of course, my enemies referred the insanity to the drink rather than the drink to the insanity. I had indeed, nearly abandoned all hope of a permanent cure when I found one in the leash of my wife. This I can and do endure as becomes a man—it was the horrible never-ending oscillation between hope and despair which I could not longer have endured without the total loss of reason. In the death of what was my life, then, I receive a new but—oh God! how melancholy an existence.”

“I don’t know what to say”

    “I don’t know what to say.”
    “You need say nothing. In truth, I married her because I was bereft of any hope I’d ever marry or find love.”
    “When was the last time you saw Jackson?”
    “It was on January 30, in the year of ’35. He was 68 years old. I witnessed the attempt on Hickory’s life by a man named Richard Lawrence. Took place at the Capitol. Lawrence tried twice to shoot him, once with each pistol, but both misfired, miraculously. So Andy, casting quickly off his astonished amazement, beat the devil out of him with his walking stick.”
    “Hahahaha! What happened?”
    “Lawrence claimed he had the protection of powerful people in Europe. He was, not surprisingly, found not guilty by reason of insanity. I need to find out what happened to him. He was sent forever into the hospital, but whether he lives still, I don’t know. Oh, well. And how have you been?”

She told Edgar  about her vision  of Abe’s death

    She told Edgar about her vision of Abe’s death, and he said he’d seen the same thing.
    “We have to do something.”
    “All right, my love. How much time do we have?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “All right, then. I’ll think of something. I’ll try. You try, too.”
    Why had he mentioned his child bride, his little girl, when he’d meant to declare himself a seeker after truth, a revealer of corruption and evil and a savior of the nation, which would bind her to him, finally? The moment had passed; she was now transferring hastily from her valise to the shelves in the closet next to the washroom handfuls of tiny glass bottles, creams, perfumes, powders, dyes, combs and brushes.
    She had returned at last, and he felt more dread than happiness.

Copyright © 2022 by Pat Hamilton Pat Hamilton has written three novels, hundreds of songs, and a handful of book reviews for the papers. He taught College English for 30 years, which helps him blend popular and classic literature in his writing. As an Army brat, he traveled the USA and Europe before settling into the beauty of Tennessee, but the rock star he used to be still lives on inside him.