“You’re in the way, Archie,” she says mildly, and he moves, giving her—at most—an extra six inches of space.
Sally is relieved to see that Margaret’s more alert than she’s been in some time. “You’re looking well,” she says as she bends down to kiss her friend’s forehead.
“Isn’t she?” says Archie, and it’s all Sally can do not to ask him to leave the room. That he should be allowed to comment on Margaret’s well-being is galling, but when Sally studies Margaret’s face for signs of perturbation, she sees none.She doesn’t know he abandoned her, she reminds herself as she snatches the paper from Archie.
“What is this?”
“TheEnquirer,” says Archie. “All the news of the fire is on page three.”
“They couldn’t have spared the front page?”
Archie shrugs. “I assume it was already typeset.”
The first page of the paper is full of nothing but advertisements for imported wine, gunpowder, and cigars. Next comes the want ads for tutors and coopers and slaves for hire. Then a lengthy dispatch on the fighting in Spain, which has reached an impasse now that Napoleon is directing all his attention toward Russia. Congress is considering the request to fund thebuilding of a canal between the Great Lakes and the Hudson River. And in mid-December, there was an earthquake in Savannah, which was felt as far away as Tennessee.
Finally, Sally finds the account of the fire under a headline that readsOVERWHELMING CALAMITY. She reads the first few sentences aloud, at a clipped pace:
In the whole course of our existence, we have never taken our pen under a deeper gloom than we feel at this moment. It falls to our lot to record one of the most distressing scenes which can happen in the whole circle of human affairs. The reader must excuse the incoherence of the narrative: there is scarce a dry eye in this distracted city. Weep, my fellow-citizens; for we have seen a night of woe, which scarce any eye had seen or ear hath heard, and no tongue can adequately tell.
Something about Thomas Ritchie’s prose grates on Sally’s nerves. She knows he considers himself to be part of Richmond’s literary elite, but “deep gloom”? “The circle of human affairs”? “Night of woe”? It is all so excessive. Like he was torn between writing a newspaper article and a novella, and settled on something in between.
“Why’d you stop reading?” asks the woman who’s been stretched out on Mrs. Cowley’s settee all day.
“I don’t believe we’ve met,” says Archie, and introduces himself.
Sally is ready to roll her eyes at the gesture, but the woman on the settee seems to appreciate it. “Mrs. Edwina Kimball.”
“Yes, Sally,” says Margaret in a quiet voice, “why did you stop?”
“I suppose I just want the facts,” she says as she skims several more paragraphs, which all come up short—in Sally’s opinion.
Again and again, Ritchie tries and fails to describe the scene inside the theater. He has some details right—the blocked stairway, the crowded lobbies, the governor’s decision to rush back inside in search of his son. But Ritchie gets so much wrong that Sally would have known he wasn’t in the building—even if his father-in-law hadn’t already given him away.
“Is it true, Sally?” Margaret asks. “The governor is dead?”
She nods. “The boy is all right, though.”
Margaret’s eyes grow wet, and Sally wonders if she, too, is thinkingabout the conversation they had in the box before the lights went out. It was so easy to pull at the threads of Governor Smith’s life—his wife, his children, even his hairline. She feels guilty about it now, and also a little heartsick, because it’s hard to believe that Margaret and she will ever again be able to laugh about something so trivial.
She reads the rest of the article in silence.
“I thought it was a balanced account,” says Archie.
“Hmmm,” says Sally with a faint shake of her head. It’s no wonder Archie appreciated the article. Ritchie makes no mention of his failings, or the failings of any other man in attendance. In fact, he does quite the opposite: he turns many of the men at the theater into heroes.
In a few days, the survivors’ testimonials will begin to pour into the paper, and Sally feels sure they’ll tell the same story.
“I take it Ritchie still refuses to publish any women?” asks Sally.
“That hardly makes him an outlier,” says Archie defensively.
At the end of the article, Ritchie has reprinted an ordinance the Common Council passed, and a series of resolutions the mayor has put forth. Sally reads the most asinine of them aloud. #8220;?‘Be it resolved that the citizens of Richmond wear crepe for one month.’?”
Mrs. Kimball sighs. “My mourning clothes are at our country home. I shall have to send someone to fetch them.”
It is hard not to appreciate Mrs. Kimball’s optimism. Not only does she believe her burns—which are substantial—will heal, but she assumes she will soon be going places where she will need black gowns and a satin-lined pelisse.
“If you were a little bigger, I’d suggest you borrow mine,” says Margaret. “I suspect I will have little use for them.”
