To Miss Isabelle Richmond Harrod House, Sefton Lane Little Crosby, Lancs England My dear Isabelle, You must be surprised to hear from me after all this time, and especially after the harsh words I spoke to you at the time of our mother's funeral. Dear sister, I was a narrow-minded hard-hearted old fool, and I have come to profoundly regret the things I said to you and Miss Harrod. I write this letter with my deepest apologies, and the prayer that you will tell me what I must do to make amends for the breach between you and the family, of which I was the cause. If you have not already flung this missive away, permit me to tell you something of my journey back from bigot to brother ('brother,' I say, with longing that you will restore me to that honored place). I met a young man quite a long time ago. In fact, I have known him almost as long as I have known you, for I met him at college when you were still an infant. He had a 'certain reputation,' which I did not understand at first, partly due to my own naivete and partly owing to the fact that he was a handsome man quite popular with the young ladies of the town. When I did begin to make sense of the rumors about him, I was horrified, and told him I wished to have no further intercourse with him. I did not see him again after that, and I learned that he had been asked to withdraw from the school because of his alleged corruption of another student. From that day until the commencement of the War, I heard nothing of him, but in my employment with Mr. Lincoln's War Department (I know you are aware that I was involved in that dubious activity we liked to call 'intelligence'), I began to hear his name. At first, I was not certain this could be the same person. He was a Southern gentleman, it was claimed, though my recollection was that he had told me his native city was New York. But he was so talented a spy that he could throw off the accent of his supposed birth and become a Boston dandy, or a western farmer, or anyone of Union affiliation, and deceive his associates into revealing information useful to the other side. He was never caught, which was a good thing for him, because he would certainly have been hanged on the spot, or at least without much legal effort on his behalf. Those who had tried to entrap him said he was a devil, or perhaps a ghost. It was also said that he assisted the South by helping to develop new kinds of munitions, though if he were the same person I had known much earlier, I thought that unlikely. His primary interest had been the English dramatists, not the sciences-he could recite whole passages of Shakespeare and Spencer at the least urging. After the War, when I was asked to join the newly organized Secret Service, one of my first assignments was to recruit men to serve as agents in our more distant states and territories, there being much uncertainty about the currency, and some attempted frauds against the now-restored Union. A name was suggested to me, a man of the theatre. I didn't know him, but I went to see the play in which he was appearing, in order to gather an impression of his usefulness to us. To my astonishment, though he was using a different name on the stage, he was the same man I had met at Yale, and who was said to have been an agent for the South during the War. He remembered me when I introduced myself, and somewhat to my surprise, he said he would think about my proposal. He was cordial in spite of my youthful coldness to him, and I began to wonder whether I had in fact been mistaken about him. His name was linked with that of more than one actress, and though he appeared to be in every way a rake and perhaps a scoundrel as well, I could find no evidence, either in his manner nor in the gossip about him, of the 'abominations' of which he had been accused. To make this tiresomely long recital just a bit shorter, he did agree to come into the Secret Service, and was teamed with a younger man who had been an aide to General Grant during the War, and who was a favorite of President Grant. I do not wish to use their true names, though of course there is no reason to conceal them from you, but if this letter should fall into other hands, it would be folly on my part to reveal the names of two of our best agents. So I shall just call them G and W. W was in every way the opposite of my old acquaintance, and we thought they would work well together. W was impetuous, but extremely resourceful and quick-witted, while G was more deliberate and a more mature personality. And they did indeed become our best team of agents. I wish I could tell you some of the feats they performed, but most of these must still remain behind the oath of secrecy that I am of course obliged to honor. And now I come to the event which has precipitated this letter to you, dearest Izzy (if I may again call you that). This young man W became rather a favorite of mine as well as of the President. He was engaging and personable, like the son I had wanted, though he was more of your age than any offspring I might have had. In fact, I had planned to introduce him to you. Your indifference to the notion of marriage was causing some comment within the family, as you know, and in the gross ignorance to which I now freely admit, it seemed to me that what you lacked was not interest, but a truly appropriate suitor, someone whose intelligence was equal to your own and whose manner and appearance could not help but endear him to you. That fantasy of mine was crushed entirely when you brought Miss Harrod with you to our mother's bedside and introduced her as your 'dearest' with a significant look that we could not mistake. And so I ordered you away with words that I would almost give my soul now to be able to take back unsaid, and abandoned any notion of bringing you and W together. To return to my narrative, earlier this year I went out to carry some papers to G and W, documents that we did not wish to entrust to the mails. I would normally have alerted them to my intended visit, but some quirk of playfulness had seized me at the opportunity to leave Washington for a few weeks, and I decided to surprise them with my unexpected appearance. I can only say that I was the one surprised. No, so wholly taken aback that I controlled my reaction no better than when you presented Miss Harrod to the family. I arrived at the station where the private railroad car we had assigned to them was at that time located, and knocked at the door. There was no reply, though I could see that a lamp was lit within. I supposed that they had gone out for a time, and I went into the carriage and sat down to wait for their return. After a moment, I began to be aware of an odd sound, a rustling murmuring sort of noise from one of the staterooms that convinced me some thief or worse must have come into the car in their absence and was searching their belongings. I strode to the door and flung it open, meaning to confront the rascal and arrest him, or at least heave him out. What I saw is still imprinted on my mind. I will not give details. I am so uncertain of my ground here, dear sister, that I do not know what you would find offensive, and so I must fall back on those restrictions which govern any communication between a gentleman and a lady. I will only say that they were engaged in such intimate activity that they were wholly unaware at first of my appearance. I staggered back, and made some exclamation-I cannot now recall what I said-and they parted from each other with what must have been a great shock to them. But not with dismay nor embarrassment. It was evident to me immediately that they had no sense of wrongdoing. This, of course, only served to make my outrage all the greater. I denounced G for having sullied the trust we placed in him, and spoke more harshly to W than I ever did to you. I told him he had allowed an older man of no virtue or morals to take advantage of him, and that I was grievously disappointed in his lack of character. I harangued them both until I ran out of words, but nothing that I said drew any evidence of remorse from them. I knew then that I could not allow them to continue working together, and when I was able to speak to G privately, I ordered him to return to Washington immediately, using the pretext of finding some other work for him. In fact, I meant to dismiss him from the Service, but I didn't wish to do it in front of W, fearing that W might have some romantic notion of following G out of our employ. I told W only that G had departed, and that I would assign another man to work with him, It appeared to me that G was perfectly willing to give up their connection (as he departed without leaving even a note for W), and I thought he would soon find some other weak young man to take W's place. But the pain in W's face when I told him G had left reminded me unbearably of Miss Harrod's expression when she thought your family might take legal action to separate the two of you. That was the first time I wondered whether I had done the right thing to speak so harshly to you. I put it out of my mind, assuring myself that I could have taken no other honorable action in either case. Yet it pained me deeply to think of W as so easily corruptible. He had the highest recommendation from President Grant, and nothing in any of his activities for us had shown anything but the greatest integrity and honesty. In my distress at having so misread his character, I could not help but remember again the accusations I made to you, that you were not a decent woman, or even that you were not a woman at all. And though I was not yet ready to retract those words, it began to shame me that I had uttered them. I even began to think you were fortunate to have Miss Harrod, because she didn't abandon you as it appeared that G had abandoned W. In spite of those doubts, I gathered my own self-righteousness around me, and sent another man out to work with W. My superiors decided that G could be used in the somewhat shady endeavors we occasionally have to undertake, and so he remained in the employ of the government after all, though he was transferred to another department of the Service where I was not obliged to have any contact with him. But I did hear of him sometimes, and it appeared that he had not taken another paramour, after all, or that if he had, he had been so discreet that we were unable to discover it. W continued with his new partner, but his work was no longer of the quality it had been. It was good enough that had we not seen earlier examples of what he could do, we might have kept him on solely because we had no one else to assign to that region. But his reports were mere sketches compared to the detail and fluency of earlier ones, and P, the agent we had assigned to work with him, told us that W took unacceptable risks for no particular gain, and that he drank far too much. It became evident that he was merely going through the motions of the job, and we recalled him to Washington for a disciplinary interview, though of course we couched the order in other terms. As it happened, G was in the building when W came through the door. I don't think he had any idea W was in Washington, and W could have had no expectation of meeting him here. P had told him-though this was done on his own-I would not have asked him to lie-that G was assigned to a case in Texas. I was standing in the open door of my office ready to invite W inside when I saw his face change from an expression of deep melancholy to one of astonished joy, and heard him cry out "A---!" I glanced down the corridor, and there was G, but such a radiant G as I could not have imagined. His countenance was lit as though by one of those new Edison lamps, and the face that I had thought aging and dissipated might have been that of a twenty-year-younger man. His eyes sparkled, and then brimmed over, and in an instant they were embracing like any pair of lovers, murmuring endearments and weeping for joy. Dear Isabelle, I could not find any more rancor in my heart against them. They had been separated for months, and each must have had many opportunities to form attachments to other people-I know from P's reports and from my own involvement in one of their cases that W was perfectly capable of using his attractiveness to women to accomplish his own ends, and I admit, though with some embarrassment, that I had used the resources of my department from time to time to learn what liaisons G had (which turned out to be none at all), and now, after all this time, they were so joyous at being reunited that they were oblivious to all else, indeed to some very curious stares from other staff members in the building. I at last got their attention and called them into the privacy of my office, where they made it clear to me that they would return to working together, or they would not work for us any more at all. Once they had completed their current cases, my recommendation was enough to put them together again (since it was at my insistence that they had been separated), and I am happy to say that their work and their reports have returned to the same high standards as before. I do suspect that given the apparent depth of their feelings for each other, they will not wish to continue risking each other's lives much longer, and I must admit that in their position I would feel the same. So here I am, sister, a much chastened man. I don't know the right and wrong of all this. Society would have us believe that your love for Miss Harrod, and W's and G's love for each other is a perversion. I have come to the conclusion that I cannot judge what forms love chooses to take. You probably know that I have never remarried, and I will tell you that the lonely state is very lonely indeed. If I were to find true companionship and solace in another man, I would not be pleased to hear it called an abomination, and I have no right to use such words toward anyone else. I pray that this letter finds you and Miss Harrod well, and that you will forgive your brother for the pain he caused and the division he brought about in the family. We are the only ones left now, Izzy. Mr. Pratchett told me that he notified your solicitor when Tom passed away last year. I don't know whether Tom made his peace with you or not-I never had the courage to ask him if he had. I hope that he did. Will you take pity on me and reply with absolution, if not with renewed affection? I very much desire to see you again, and if it is ever possible for you and Miss Harrod to come to America, I want to introduce you to the two men who opened my eyes and made me realize how badly I treated you. Your loving brother, Walter Richmond