SO, THEY HAD acquitted him—absolved him of his crimes. And what was she to do with that now? What had she been left with in the wake of this verdict … a verdict that seemed designed to condemn her?
She placed the black thing on her head. Its ruffles boxed her in—like a picture frame.
“Ma’am,” Jenny said, “the carriage is around front.”
For the past three days Elizabeth had endured her own trial, though it had not been so sensationalized in the papers. There had been talk of sending Garrett’s body down to Washington, to lie in state in the Capitol, but she had ultimately ruled against that. There had been arguments, and there were those in the Cabinet who thought her unreasonable, but she was not going to travel there—not after all of this. Governor Claflin had sided with her, proclaiming Garrett “a son of Massachusetts first,” and so that had determined it. Garrett’s body would remain in Boston.
They came from Washington, from New York, from Philadelphia, from Richmond. They came from Delaware and Ohio and Rhode Island and from the South. The Senate’s Sergeant at Arms had taken charge of the body, attended by a committee of six of Garrett’s colleagues. On day two the president arrived with his Cabinet. On day three, the Supreme Court, and most of the Senate and the House.
The crowds of public mourners numbered in the thousands. Elizabeth could not stand them, and wished that they would all be gone. She had spent over twenty years playing a role for Garrett, and yet this last role, she felt she could not play.
But she played it.
They had festooned Doric Hall with the most elaborate mourning garlands … beautiful and delicate strands of black crepe that hung like woven ivy from the hall’s columns. An artisan had fashioned a chandelier of flowers, and from its center he had suspended a white dove carrying an olive branch. The chandelier and the dove were in the very middle of the hall, guiding the shapeless crowd toward the coffin that held the senator.
There were soldiers—colored soldiers—positioned around the catafalque. They competed with the wealth of flowers that every type of person in the country had sent along. In profusion—small bouquets from the freedmen and the poor, as well as large crosses made from hundreds of roses and carnations. At the foot of the coffin stood a magnificent design of tropical leaves and flowers—a gift from the Republic of Haiti.
“No other statesman,” one of the papers would later write, “has been mourned with such sorrow—Abraham Lincoln excepted.”
On the day of the burial, Governor Claflin said a few words before the funeral procession departed from the State House. Behind the governor hung two tattered flags, which Massachusetts soldiers had reclaimed from the battlefields. “These flags,” Claflin said, “represent what this great son of Massachusetts achieved. Union—never to be divided. A land that is free.”
The procession from the State House to King’s Chapel seemed without end. All of Boston was draped in mourning. The bells tolled. The city’s flags flew at half-mast. And Elizabeth followed the stream, like a dying fish caught in a current.
And then at last it came—the procession to Mount Auburn, where Senator Garrett would be interred, at the base of the little hill. A great mob of freedmen, headed by Frederick Douglass, followed the hearse past the Public Garden, and then over the bridge to Cambridge. The procession was mighty—a nation unto itself. An army of freedmen, and soldiers, and citizens … all passing through the college grounds where Garrett had found his voice.
At Mount Auburn, Longfellow stood by the grave, along with Whittier, and Emerson, and Holmes. The greatest literary men of the day had themselves looked upon Garrett as a kind of political prophet. Longfellow read a poem—an apostrophe addressed toward the river—as the sun disappeared behind the trees.
River that stealeth with such silent pace
Around the City of the Dead
Linger and fold him in thy soft embrace
And say good-night, for now the western skies
Are red with sunset, and gray mists arise
Like damps that gather on a dead man’s face.
Good-night! Good-night! as we so oft have said
Beneath this roof at midnight, in the days
That are no more and shall no more return.
Thou has but taken thy lamp and gone to bed;
I stay a little longer, as one stays
To cover up the embers that still burn.
“Ma’am,” Jenny said, “the carriage is around front.”
It was all over now—it had been over for days. And yet Elizabeth insisted on going back. She would have one final look at that grim, spare monument. He had prohibited any tributes—simply his name, and the two stark dates.
She ordered the driver to take a different route. She did not want to retrace his procession.
The cemetery was empty and now she was alone. The trees were green with leaves. The late morning light found its way through the trees and dotted the stone monument with moving and carefree shapes. JAMES BLAINE GARRETT. There were two columns on either side of his name. The whole thing looked like some sort of altar, too strong ever to fall.
“Why did you do this?” she asked.
Though she did not speak the words aloud.
She was trying … even now in the quiet and the solitude, she was trying. But try as she did, she could not remember a time when she did not hate him.
“Hello, my dear,” he said.
She turned around. It was Dovehouse.
“I startled you … I am sorry,” he said.
She was wrong, for it had not ended.
Dovehouse stepped closer … toward her, and the grave. A bird whistled from somewhere in the trees.
“It was so good of the vice president to escort you through these days,” he said. “And the colored soldiers. I would have offered my own arm many times, if I had thought—”
“Thank you, Mr. Dovehouse.”
“There are no thanks due here,” he said. “It is you who deserves to be thanked.”
“I?” she said.
“Yes, you—for carrying James as far as you carried him.”
“Now,” Dovehouse said, “we both know that’s not entirely true.”
At the funeral, she had avoided him, and she was sure that he had felt it. And now he had followed her back to the cemetery, because Dovehouse was pernicious, and never gave up.
Together they stared at the embossed letters of Garrett’s name.
“People will remember him with admiration,” she said.
Dovehouse was silent for a moment, and then breathed.
“People will remember what they want to remember,” he said.
He wasn’t finished with her, and here was proof. He was baiting her. How heartless—to still be playing his games at a time like this.
“He didn’t know when to stop,” Dovehouse said. “It’s one thing to give the negroes their own land and things like that, but moving them into their former masters’ houses was a bit much, don’t you think?”
She despised him.
“You benefitted—and you know it,” Dovehouse said.
Elizabeth felt the searing eyes of his judgment, even though she could not look at him. She could not look at him or she would break. And he could not see her break.
“Yes,” Dovehouse said, “that’s right—”
Elizabeth put her hand to her mouth.
“He betrayed us all,” Dovehouse said.
Elizabeth turned to him.
“He is gone,” she said. “Just go away now and let him be.”
“Let him be?” Dovehouse said. “Now isn’t that a pretty sentiment. You confound me, woman. Your husband might still be alive today if you hadn’t been such a fool.”
The words stabbed into her. Dovehouse was right. It was her sentiment—the one sentiment she had retained at the expense of all others—that had resurrected everything, and set the whole hideous play in motion.
“He is gone now,” she repeated.
Her weakness was amusing him.
“On the contrary, my dear,” Dovehouse said. “The old boy lives on—”
And he smiled at her.
“—in others.”
The man was despicable. He knew. But most of all, he wanted her to know that he knew … wanted her to know that he held the entirety of Garrett’s legacy, as well as her future, in his hands. But it was silly to worry about it, because he had already played his cards. The looks from some of the wives at the funeral told her that some of it—if not all of it—had already gotten out.
“My condolences, Mrs. Garrett,” Dovehouse said.
And he tipped his hat, and left her.
It would not take long—everyone would soon know—and the gossip about Garrett would spread through Boston like the smell of fire. That quickly, a forty-year career would be dismantled, and any righteousness he had maintained would be undone.
“You mean he—?” they would whisper.
“Garrett? Senator Garrett?”
“Did she know?” they would ask.
“Of course she did,” they’d say.
And what’s more, once people decided to start remembering, the girl’s disappearance would become a thing of significance. They would speculate and conjecture as to what happened during that time, and some of them might even give nods to foul play. They would say horrible things, and they would say that Elizabeth had deserved it. There were so many women who had never liked her to begin with.
And so this was not the last time she would find herself alone, for loneliness would become her practice now, enforced by the fate she had created. Some people would call, and an invitation or two might follow, but eventually that would all come to an end. For Elizabeth Garrett, something beyond life had ended, while for everyone else, it was nothing more than the end of another August.