America's First Daughter: A Novel(161)
“You’re adept at influencing people, Martha,” he said, staring out the window at the mountain’s turning leaves, as if contemplating the bleak winter to come. “You’re clever at social discourse. You’d be an asset to me in the Governor’s Mansion.”
By that point, we’d lived apart for nearly two years, during which I’d learned to prefer loneliness to my husband’s hostility. I’d assumed he was happier without me. That’s what gave me pause. But Tom took my hesitation for something else, and snapped, “Martha, without you, I’ll lose this upcoming election and the salary that goes with it. You ought to do at least one of your duties by me, since I’m not holding you to the others.”
Our marriage bed, he meant, which irritated me enough to resist. “My father needs me here—”
“Are you his wife or mine? Sometimes, I wonder!”
I didn’t dignify the question with an answer. Instead, I fumed, no longer able to soothe my temper by reminding myself that ladies were never angry. “Are you so very unpopular a governor, Tom?”
He crossed his arms. “If I’m not now, I soon will be. Because I intend to introduce a bill for the emancipation and deportation of slaves in Virginia once they reach the age of puberty. I want to abolish slavery in Virginia.” The import of these words crashed down upon me like a house in collapse. Congress had just wrangled its way through an unhappy compromise to admit the new state of Missouri to the union while prohibiting slavery north of it. There was no cause of greater controversy, and now my husband wanted to take up the antislavery banner. “Martha, I decry the new morality which tolerates slavery in perpetuity.”
“As do I,” I said, swiftly, because I felt accused. “Of course.”
“Your father says the same, but he won’t lend his support to my proposition. His voice would carry enormous weight, but he says he must leave the accomplishment of ending slavery to the work of another generation.”
That startled me, though it oughtn’t have. For years, Papa had been asked to advocate more actively against slavery. William Short had all but begged him. Friends like the Coles who had sheltered us in our flight from the British all those years ago had tried to shame him into it. And now my father was old, tired, and often in ill health. Sometimes I believed the love of Virginians—the love of the nation—was all that sustained him. To throw his weight against the slaveholders of the South would surely be a struggle for him beyond his strength.
But as his daughter . . . I might serve as a symbol of his authority. And I realized with some astonishment that Tom was asking me to be just that. He was looking to me to help him tackle the moral problem of our time. And if he deserved my obedience in anything, it was in this.
But it would be more than obedience. For Tom’s request rekindled in me an old flame of Parisian idealism that I thought long snuffed out. I wanted to play a part in dismantling the system of pain and degradation that undermined our union. My father said that the work of ending slavery belonged to another generation. Maybe he was right.
Maybe it belonged to me and mine.
THE GOVERNOR’S MANSION WAS A MESS. My husband had been living like a lonely bachelor. Everything was in disorder, windows unwashed, carpets unshaken. I couldn’t find a square inch of the place not coated in a layer of dust. That was the first thing I set right that Christmas season. Then, of course, was the matter of sociability.
Tom was thought to be an irascible hermit by Virginia legislators, so I determined we’d make the rounds of parties and dinners and holidays balls. I acquired for these functions a beautiful white crepe robe, a lace turban and ruff, and looked fashionable for the first time in more than a decade.
I’d played the part of first lady for my father. Now I played that role for Tom. I went with him to academic lectures, to see an exhibit of jaguars and elephants, and together we strolled the cobblestone streets where we might be noticed by newspapermen. On his arm, I smiled so persuasively I almost convinced myself that we were happy.
But that illusion came unraveled after a supper at the Governor’s Mansion one evening in early December. “Your turban is very becoming,” said a courtly gentleman, David Campbell, a dashing man of great political future, who knew my husband from their service during the war. “It’s as though you mean to become the incarnation of Dolley Madison.”
I smiled, flattered. “I can think of no better lady to emulate.”
“Can’t you? I suppose you hope to be as popular.”
I sensed in him some hostility, and wondered at his angle. “I hope to be anything that will do honor to my husband.”
Mr. Campbell sipped coolly from his glass. “You’re going to get him reelected.”
I smiled more brightly. “Oh, Governor Randolph’s own conduct will secure his reelection for him, not mine. His ideas are right-thinking, courageous, and worthy of the greatest consideration.”
Mr. Campbell raised a brow. “You’re going to stand loyally beside him? I suppose you owe him that much.”
My head tilted as I tried to form a genial reply. “As do all his friends.”
“It wasn’t his friends who destroyed his military career.”
My smile froze upon my face, so shocked was I to be confronted on such a matter. “I beg your pardon, sir.”