On Secret Service by John Jakes Read Free Book Online Page A

Committee, Henry Wilson of Massachusetts. The plain and corpulent Wilson reminded Margaret of a farmer. He was a frequent guest. Infatuated with Rose, Margaret suspected. He never brought his wife.
    â€œGovernor,” Rose said, sailing over to Seward with her visitor in tow. “Hello, Henry.” The greeting made Wilson grin foolishly. Rose fixed her attention on the senator from New York. “This young man is the nephew of a dear friend of my late husband. Jarvis Tottle, the Honorable William Seward. Everyone calls him governor, Jarvis, in spite of his seat in the Senate.”
    â€œPleasure, sir,” Seward said in a voice grown hoarse from too many cigars. His clothes reeked of them.
    Rose linked arms with the young man. “Jarvis is recently out of college in Kentucky. He wants to work in government. I told him you could open doors, perhaps find him a clerkship, since everyone says you’ll head the new cabinet and be the de facto president.” Long ago, Seward had predicted the “irrepressible conflict” between advocates of free and slave labor. Rose despised his Republican politics but welcomed him personally, as she welcomed others of his party for what they could do for her.
    â€œI must warn you, however. Jarvis is known to sympathize with the South.”
    â€œThere’s a blue cockade on my hat, absolutely,” Jarvis said.
    Seward adjusted the gentleman’s traveling shawl draped over his frock coat. “You’re certainly not alone in Washington. The Star claims we have twenty thousand secesh-minded citizens in the District. A third of our white population. Many work in government. Tell me about yourself, Mr. Tottle.”
    Margaret had been listening. Now she turned away, disappointed that Hanna wasn’t present this evening. She had made many acquaintances since dipping into the waters of Rose’s social pond. Only one, Hanna Siegel, had become a friend.
    Margaret and Hanna were the same age but were in other ways opposites. Hanna was European, fair, narrow-hipped, boyish. She dressed to conceal what little bosom she had. Where Margaret was vividly dark, Hanna was straw blonde, with blue eyes.
    Margaret lived comfortably; Hanna was poor. Hanna’s father was a former officer in the Austrian army. Asked about his reason for emigrating to America, he always replied with vague statements about “opportunity.” He was seeking preferment, a commission or a government job, like young Jarvis Tottle and hundreds of others.
    Hanna was an actress. She ran with a crowd of theatricals who were struggling just as she was; the sort of people Calhoun Miller would dismiss as not respectable. Margaret had a picture of actresses as gregarious to the point of bawdiness, and often brashly ambitious. Hanna was quiet, though quietly determined. In the country less than three years, she retained only an echo of European speech. For eighteen months she’d hired out to the shrewish wife of an elocution teacher. She washed dishes, scrubbed floors, carried slops, and in return the teacher purged her accent.
    They disagreed sharply on slavery. Margaret thought it a regrettable system, but necessary for the South’s survival. The Calhoun Miller view. Hanna wished one of God’s lightning bolts would destroy every white man who practiced it. Hanna wanted to convert her friend. Margaret avoided the subject if she could.
    Despite the differences, Hanna and Margaret were drawn together by something stronger—a freedom of spirit they enjoyed in various ways. In good weather Margaret rented horses and they struck out north on the Seventh Street or Rockville roads, not sidesaddle, at a sedate walk, but astride, in full gallop. On occasion, feeling especially uninhibited, they wore trousers.
    Margaret’s feet in the stirrups showed a good amount of ankle under her trouser cuffs or flapping hems. She knew she had good legs and saw no reason to hide them. Men old and