"No. I'm allowed Sundays to myself." A melancholy smile. "I usually have nothing to do."
"Can you be ready at two? Good. My driver and I will call for you in Georgetown."
At the end of a rutted lane off Tenth Street in the ramshackle Negro Hill section, Stevens and Virgilia came to a white house that showed good care. Two or three large rooms at one side looked like a recent addition; not all of the siding was painted as yet.
When the carriage stopped, Stevens didn't immediately open the door. "What you're looking at is an orphanage for homeless Negro children. The children are sheltered and given basic education until they can be placed with foster parents. A man named Scipio Brown founded the orphanage. He ran it personally until he joined a colored regiment. After his discharge he came back and found more waifs than ever before, chiefly the children of contrabands who fled north and somehow got separated from their youngsters. Last month Brown's assistant, a white girl responsible for teaching the children, left him to marry and move to the West —" He broke off. She wanted to speak.
"Thad, I know Scipio Brown."
"Indeed! I thought it a possibility —"
She nodded. "I met him at Belvedere during the war. My brother George and his wife were operating a branch of Brown's orphanage there. They took in all the children he couldn't handle here in Washington."
"Then you're quite familiar with his work. Good. Are you interested in the vacancy?"
"Perhaps."
"Hardly an enthusiastic answer."
"I'm sorry. It's an honest one." How could she explain that because Stout had abandoned her and she was estranged from her family, she felt little enthusiasm for anything?
He opened the carriage door. "Well, a brief visit will do no harm."
Walking slowly with the aid of his cane, he led her inside. He introduced her to the Dentons, a middle-aged black couple who lived at the orphanage, cooking and cleaning for the twenty-two children presently in residence.
Seven of the youngsters, a clamorous, cheerful lot, were adolescents. The others ranged all the way down to four. Stevens knew each name. "Hello, Micah. Hello, Mary Todd — Liberty — Jenny — Joseph." He clucked and fussed among them, touching hands, kissing cheeks, embracing them as if they were his grandchildren. Again Virgilia realized that Thad Stevens was not one of those Radicals who promoted equality for political reasons.
"Here's a handsome friend of mine." Stevens's clubfoot turned awkwardly as he picked up a laughing light brown boy of six. The boy wore a clean, patched shirt and overalls.
"Tad for tadpole. Or Tad Lincoln. Or a tad of trouble. He's a little of each." Stevens hugged and kissed the boy. "Tad, this is my friend Miss Hazard. Can you shake hands?"
Solemn, wary of her, Tad thrust his hand out. Virgilia felt unexpected tears.
"How do you do, Miss Hazard?" Tad said, very properly.
"I —" Dear God, she was stricken silent. The resemblance wasn't exact, yet close enough to bring exquisite pain. He could have been a child of her slain lover, Grady. It took a huge effort to master her shock and say, "I'm very fine, thank you. I hope you are too."
The boy grinned and nodded. Stevens patted him again and put him down. He scurried off. With a sniff, the congressman took note of the pleasing odor drifting from the kitchen. "What's that on the stove, Mrs. Denton?"
"Okra gumbo for supper. Congressman."
They turned at the sound of the front door. A tall, amber-colored man came in, shaking rain off his hat. His shoulders were broad as a stevedore's, his waist small as a girl's. Virgilia guessed him to be around thirty-five now. He immediately gave her his hand.
"How do you do, Miss Hazard? It's very good to see you again."
"Mr. Brown." She smiled, remembering that she'd been attracted by his lean good looks before. He was still handsome, but he'd matured; he charmed her with an easy cordiality:
"I regret we met but once in Lehigh Station. I heard of you often afterward."
"Not in a complimentary way, I imagine:"
"Why, I wouldn't say that." He smiled at her. "The congressman told me you might be interested in helping to teach these children."
"Well —"
"Is that gumbo, Mrs. Denton? I missed my noon meal. Will you join me, Miss Hazard? Thad?"
"It's damp outside, and okra gumbo always warms me up," Stevens said. "I'll have a spoonful or two. You, Virgilia?"
She didn't know how to refuse, and she found she didn't want to. They sat down with bowls of the savory soup. While she chatted with Brown and Stevens, her eyes strayed often to the small, merry boy who reminded her so much of Grady. The sight of his innocent face, untouched as yet by the cruelties his color would inspire, pushed her near to tears again. And then to a sudden, startling thought. Sam was gone. Even at the start of their affair, she had known she probably couldn't hold him forever. Perhaps it was time to put the rancor and grief behind her. Time to care for someone who could benefit from love, as old Miss Tiverton could not.
She saw, like an apparition, the dead Southern soldier in the field hospital. She stared at her hands. Others could not see blood on them, but she could. The blood would never wash away. But she might begin to atone for it.
Finishing his soup, Stevens said he had a late afternoon meeting with members of the Committee of Fifteen. Scipio Brown didn't press Virgilia for an answer, but he expressed his interest in having her at the orphanage and shook her hand strongly to say goodbye. He had a direct way about him, and no small amount of pride in his eyes and his bearing. She liked him. In the carriage lurching south toward the center of the city, Stevens rested his hands on the knob of his cane. She thought of a lion. An old lion, but one still driven by blood instinct.
"I fall in love anew whenever I visit those waifs, Virgilia." "I can understand. They're very appealing." "How do you look on the opportunity there?" She gazed at passing hovels built of scrap lumber and canvas. From muddy lanes and windows without windowpanes or shutters, dark brown faces turned toward the fine carriage. A woman of seventy or more squatted in the drizzle, smoking a corncob pipe and trying to cook bits of food on the top of a tin can set in smoldering wood chips. Rain dripped from the woman's nose and chin. The smoke from her pipe was thin as thread. She was motionless on her haunches; only her eyes moved with the carriage. Eyes that had probably seen shackles, sun-scorched fields, filthy cabins, loved ones torn away and sold — "Virgilia? How —"
"Favorably, Thad. Quite favorably." The old man squeezed her hand. "You would be good for them. I think they would be good for you. I know you cared for Sam. But he belongs to the past, I think."
Weeping at last, Virgilia could only nod and turn away. The old haunted eyes of the squatting woman were lost in the gray murk.
In Georgetown that evening, she gave Miss Tiverton's nephew polite but final notice.
31
Ashton stepped into the June sunshine like a queen emerging from her palace. The building she quitted was not that, but a frame boardinghouse on Jackson Street, right on the edge of one of Chicago's roughest areas, a warren of hovels called Conley's Patch. For months, Ashton had been caged there in a single large, grimy room, together with Will Fenway and his mountains of construction drawings, cost estimates, supplier bids, loan papers. She hated it.
Even more than that, she hated the anonymity Will had imposed on her since leaving Santa Fe. She wanted a photograph of them together; he refused. There must be no pictures of her, ever, he said. What if the senora in Santa Fe still had the authorities hunting for the killer of her brother-in-law? Whenever Will mentioned that, a strange glint came into his watery blue eyes; a look Ashton didn't understand.