on when war raced around the world? She knew to the penny what the show had cost to set up and publicize. She'd made that back-she couldn't remember the last investment where she'd failed to turn a profit-and the artists had sold a good many works, but much of the fame that should have come to both the Marshlands mansion and to herself was gone forever now, lost in the cannon's roar. One more reason to hate the United States.
But, even if not quite so notorious as she'd hoped (in this modern age, what difference between notoriety and fame?), she was still free, and still reveling in that freedom. As she sometimes had before, she wondered how best to enjoy it.
Work for the vote for women? That thought had crossed her mind before, too. As she had when it last did, she shook her head. For one thing, advocates of suffrage were earnest to the point of boredom, and she did not want to be bored: life was too short for that. The cause, while worthy, reeked of bourgeois respectability. And, for another, South Carolina had only recently come to grant the vote to all white men, and its districts were so arranged that half of those white men or more might as well not have had it. Making headway against such resolute conservatism struck her as a long, slow job.
What then? She didn't know. She had time to find something. She was only twenty-eight, with the whole world stretched out before her.
That thought had hardly passed her mind when some sort of commotion broke out at the front of the mansion. She hurried forward to see what was going on. Looking out the window, she spied a new automobile near the mansion: a dusty Manassas, probably hired in St. Matthews. But getting out of it was…
She threw open the door and hurried forward, stopping to curtsy as her grandmother might have done before the War of Secession. 'Mr. President!' she exclaimed. 'I had no idea you would honor me with a visit here.' Part of that was, Why didn't you telegraph ahead, dammit? But another part, a gloating part, said, Now people will remember this exhibition, by God!
Woodrow Wilson tipped his hat to her. 'This is entirely impromptu, Miss Colleton. I'm due in Charleston tomorrow to christen a new submersible as she goes off the shipway there. When I remembered your showing was on the way down from Richmond, or at least not too far out of the way, I decided to stop and see the paintings that have the world so intrigued.' His smile soured. 'Frankly, this is more congenial to me than blessing another instrument of war.'
'You are very welcome,' Anne told him.
'I am glad to hear you say it,' Wilson replied. 'Your support for the Whig Party has been generous, and I certainly hope it may continue.'
'I don't think you need to worry on that score,' Anne said with a slow, thoughtful nod. She wondered just how impromptu the president's visit really was. Maybe Wilson himself didn't know. Politicians, in her experience, inevitably and inextricably mixed politics with every other facet of their lives- and her support for the Whigs had always been anything but ungenerous. She went on, 'Please come in, Your Excellency. Don't stand there in the sun. If you had a heatstroke, they'd probably shoot me for treason.'
Wilson smiled back. From everything she'd heard, he'd never been averse to smiling at a pretty woman. Anne knew her own good looks were about as useful to her as her money. Fanning himself with his straw hat, Wilson said, 'I'm delighted to accept that invitation. Your climate here makes Richmond feel temperate by comparison, something many people would reckon impossible.'
Servants-all save Scipio, who remained gravely impassive-gaped as the president of the Confederate States came into the Marshlands mansion, Anne Colleton on his arm. He let her guide him through the exhibition. He also let her shield him from people who might have pestered him. This time, she smiled inside, where it didn't show. Wilson knew who was important and who wasn't-and she was.
After gravely studying several of the paintings, the president turned to her and said, 'This is why we fight, you know. To me, it is even more important than ties of blood and sentiment. Nothing so… so progressive as these works could possibly come into being in the United States or the German Empire. We truly are preserving civilization.'
'Not just preserving it,' Anne said. 'Helping it grow.'
'Of course.' He accepted the correction with good grace, accepted it and took it as his own. But then the creases in his long, thin face got deeper. 'The price, though, the price is dreadfully high. You have a brother in the service, don't you?'
'Two brothers,' she answered proudly. The worry she couldn't help feeling she kept to herself.
'I hope, I pray, they will come through safely,' Wilson said. 'I do the same for every man in the Army and Navy. Too often-far too often already- my prayers have gone unanswered.'
Before Anne could decide how to answer that, Scipio came back with his silver tray. 'Would you like a glass of champagne, Your Excellency?' she asked the president.
'Thank you,' Wilson said, and took one. So did Anne. He lifted his crystal flute to her. 'To civilization, to victory, and to the safe return of your brothers.'
'I'll gladly drink to that,' Anne said, and did. She turned to Scipio. 'You may go.'
'Yes, madam.' He bowed and went on his way, back straight, wide shoulders braced almost as if he were on parade.
'A fine-looking fellow,' Wilson remarked. 'Well-mannered, too.'
'Yes, I'm lucky to have him here.' Anne watched Scipio go. He did make an impressive servant, no two ways about it.
As butler, Scipio was of course a house servant, with quarters within Marsh lands for himself. But, not least because he'd been chief cook before becoming butler, he kept up a closer relation with the outside Negroes than most servants of similar station would have done. He knew how much the larder depended on their ingenuity and goodwill: if they said hunting and fishing weren't going well, how could he prove they were lying? But the outside food bill would go up, and he'd catch the devil for that from the mistress.
Lightning bugs flashed on and off as he made his way out to the rows of Negro cottages behind Marshlands. He had every right to make the trip, but glanced back over his shoulder anyhow. It wasn't the mistress he thought was staring at him: it was Marshlands itself. The three-story Georgian mansion had been sitting here for more than a hundred years, and seemed to have a life of its own, an awareness of what went on inside and around it. The mistress would have called that superstitious nonsense. Scipio didn't care what she called it. He knew what he knew.
Perhaps, today, he also still felt the presence of Woodrow Wilson, though the president had gone back to St. Matthews to reboard his train and continue on down to Charleston. His mistress associated with any number of prominent people-which meant he did, too, not that they paid him much attention. He was, after all, only a Negro.
A groom coming out of the barn stared at him through deepening twilight. 'Evenin',' he said, nodding. 'Almos' didn't rec'nize you-gettin' dark earlier nowadays.'
'I is still me,' Scipio answered. Wherever white folks could hear him, he talked like an educated white man. That was what the mistress wanted, and what she wanted, she got. Among his own people, he spoke as he had since the day he first began forming words. He hadn't made a mistake switching back and forth between his two dialects in more than ten years.
Candles and kerosene lamps lighted the Negro cottages. Marshlands had had electric lights for a long time now. The mistress had plenty of money for paintings, but for wires for the help? Scipio shook his head. If he held his breath waiting, he'd be blue under his black.
Some of the little brick cottages were already dark. If you worked in the fields sunup to sundown, you needed all the rest you could get sundown to sunup. But you needed a little time to live, too. From out of open windows and doors flung wide against the muggy heat came snatches of song, cries of joy or dismay as dice went one way or the other, and the racket of children. More children made more racket outside, running after one another and pretending to be soldiers. None of them ever admitted he'd been killed. Scipio shook his head again. Too bad the real war didn't work out that way.
Here and there, a mother or a father taught children to read, mostly from books and magazines and newspapers the white folks had thrown away. Scipio, who'd been in his teens when manumission came, remembered the days when teaching a Negro to read had been against the law. He'd managed to pick up the knowledge anyway, as had a good many of his friends-too many things were being printed to keep them all out of
