America's First Daughter: A Novel(165)

“WHY WON’T ANYONE let us do something to support ourselves?” Cornelia sniped, sighing over the figures in my account book. “I suppose not until we sink entirely will it do for the granddaughters of Thomas Jefferson to take work in or keep a school!”

Ellen stared gloomily out the window from a stealthy place behind the curtains. It was Sunday—the day of the week I distributed rations and heard the concerns of the slaves, but it wasn’t our people that made my daughter frown. “There’s a carriage. I suppose it’s another visitor trying to avoid paying an innkeeper at our grandpapa’s expense.”

I shared Ellen’s hostility toward the leeches and hangers, so I didn’t scold her even when, overhearing the visitor’s Bostonian accent, she rolled her eyes. “It wasn’t enough that we had to wine and dine that strange wandering dullard who walked the length of the country with nothing but one change of clothes to his name? In the face of so many other indignities, must we receive Yankees, too?”

Our visitor was Joseph Coolidge, a Harvard graduate who had just returned from a recent tour of Europe. “I’ve now come to see the greatest wonder in our own country,” he said. “The sage of Monticello.”

We’d heard it all before, albeit perhaps not from such a well-formed mouth. Mr. Coolidge was a handsome man, and it seemed to me that rather than charming my Ellen, the man’s beauty irritated her beyond reason. Snorting at him indelicately, she said, “You do realize, of course, that my grandfather isn’t a monument, but a man. One who cannot be prevailed upon by every stranger to—”

“You’re welcome here, Mr. Coolidge,” I broke in. “And while I can’t say my father is well enough today to receive you, I’ll be sure to give him your warmest regards.”

I’d become something of a palace chamberlain, a keeper of the gate. My father couldn’t possibly pass time with every stranger who came to the mountain, so I made excuses. To my surprise, however, Papa was eager to meet this stranger because he was from Boston. “Maybe he’ll have some news of Adams!”

In spite of the damage politics had done to their friendship, the two survivors of the Revolution reminisced and lived on each other’s memories. In truth, I sometimes feared that when John Adams died, my father would not be long in following.

At supper, which we took at several drop-leaf tables, arranged to accommodate everyone in a style half-French, half-Virginian, the conversation turned to poetry. And while my daughters engaged in every subject upon which their grandfather opined, Ellen was subdued.

“I fear my knowledge of poetry isn’t expansive enough to impress Miss Ellen,” Mr. Coolidge teased.

“Forgive me, sir,” my daughter said. “But you seem impressed enough with yourself for the both of us.”

“Ellen!” I cried. Her capacity to drive away suitors was now legendary but seemed hardly sufficient excuse for rude manners.

“It’s quite all right, Mrs. Randolph,” our visitor said. “I’ve done too much speaking tonight and not enough learning. Perhaps Miss Ellen would allow me to make up for this lack of gallantry by taking me on a tour through the gardens? If so, I promise to hold my tongue.”

“I’m a poor tour guide for the garden,” Ellen replied indifferently, and I remembered how I tried to put off her father in much the same way. “The garden was my sister Ann’s domain.”

She said her sister’s name with such sadness that Mr. Coolidge sobered. “Oh, dear. I’m afraid I didn’t know of her loss—”

“Oh, Ann isn’t dead,” Ellen replied. “Though she might as well be.”

A sharp look from me silenced her. The tensions in our family weren’t to be shared with outsiders. Not ever. And she knew it.

Mr. Coolidge cleared his throat. “Perhaps some music?”

Ellen frowned. “Music is my sister Ginny’s domain. Art is Cornelia’s—”

“And your domain, Miss Ellen?” He surprised us both, I think, with his persistence.

“My grandpapa’s book room,” she finally said.

“I’d very much like to see it,” he replied with a triumphant smile.

“I’m afraid you can’t,” Ellen said, with a triumphant smile of her own. “It’s part of my grandfather’s private suite of rooms. Strangers aren’t allowed beyond a peek through the glass panes, but if you’d like to borrow a book during your stay, I’m sure it can be arranged.”

It seemed that the crueler Ellen was, the better he liked her. Days later, at the end of his visit, he declared himself smitten. “That’s wonderful to hear,” I told the lovelorn young man. “But certainly yours has been a very short acquaintance for such a depth of feeling.”

With a smile, Mr. Coolidge replied, “Long enough to know my heart. Now I need merely win hers . . . then Ellen and I shall live our lives together, happily ever after.”

How simple he made it seem. The winning of hearts. Living together. Eternal happiness.

But after thirty-four years of marriage, I now saw union between man and woman was the same as union among the states—as a series of debates and compromises that might hold it all together for a few more years, or end in a painful separation.

My husband, you see, had gone mad.