Silver

by Graham Masterton

  On Sunday, they had gone to St Bartholomew’s Church at Lafayette Place and Great Jones Street, although the steady movement of New York’s fashionable development uptown had meant that St Bartholomew’s was no longer a fashionable place to worship. They had prayed for Doris, and for each other, and for all the folks they had left behind in Bennington. Especially, they had prayed for themselves.

  In the small hours of Monday morning, Augusta had suddenly said, ‘Henry?’

  Henry had opened his eyes. He had been dozing, and he hadn’t been sure if he had heard his name called or not. But Augusta had repeated, ‘Henry? Are you sleeping?’

  ‘What is it?’ Henry had asked her.

  ‘Henry, I feel so lonely.’

  Henry had stared up at the darkness of the ceiling. After a while, he had said, ‘You don’t have to feel lonely.’

  ‘But I do. I feel that we’re together; but somehow I feel all alone. Henry, do you like me, Henry?’

  ‘Of course I like you. I wouldn’t have asked you to come along to California with me if I didn’t like you.’

  ‘But could you love me?’

  Another pause. Henry had bitten his lip in the darkness. What could he tell her? Something that wouldn’t put her off; something that wouldn’t upset her; and yet something that wouldn’t commit him too deeply. He might be an opportunist; and a practical joker; but he wasn’t a liar.

  ‘Augusta,’ he had said, ‘I’m still grieving for Doris. You’ll have to allow me that much.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she had told him. Then again, ‘I’m sorry. That was very insensitive of me. I shouldn’t have asked you.’

  ‘Don’t blame yourself,’ he had told her. ‘I’m sorry that you’re feeling lonely. There isn’t any need for you to feel that way. You’ve got me here, after all.’

  ‘Yes,’ she had said, in an unconvinced voice.

  They had lain there in wakeful silence for another five minutes or so. Outside the window, the dawn had been breaking, and the rattling. of drays on the straw-strewn streets had been joined after a while by the pattering sound of footsteps along the sidewalk, as early shift-workers had hurried to the stores and warehouses of Broadway to stack up the shelves and mark up the goods and prepare the counters for opening at half-past eight. A hoarse steam-whistle had sounded from the Battery, and someone had walked across Spring Street tolling a handbell. New York was never silent. As Walt Whitman had once remarked, ‘What can New York—noisy, roaring, rumbling, tumbling, bustling, stormy, turbulent New York—have to do with silence?’

  But there had been silence of a special kind within Augusta’s heart. And she had broken it herself by saying in an offkey, tremulous voice, ‘I would care for it very much, Henry, if you could at least lie with me, and hold me. For I do feel so very lonely.’

  Henry had said, ‘Augusta?’ but Augusta had replied only, ‘Please, Henry. I ask no more of you.’

  With great uncertainty, Henry had climbed off the couch and walked across to the bed. Augusta had been lying on her back staring at him myopically through the granulated light of dawn. She had reached out her hand, and Henry had taken it, such a different hand from Doris’, rounder, plumper, with shorter fingers and close-cut nails. Then he had lifted up the covers of the bed and eased himself in next to her, and curled his arm around her waist. Her stomach had felt plump beneath her cotton nightdress, girdled with fat, and the smell of ashes of roses had been cloying. But he had remained dutifully next to her, comforting her as best he could; and it had been almost seven o’clock before it had been light enough for him to see that her eyes were glistening with tears.

  ‘Augusta,’ he had told her, quietly. ‘I cannot give you any more of my affection; not yet.’ Or ever? he had asked himself, silently; guiltily.

  ‘My dear Henry, I know that,’ Augusta had sniffed. ‘And I ask no more. Please, do not think badly of me for loving you so. I cannot help my heart. And do not think badly of me, either, for asking you to lie with me. It was just that I felt so very much alone.’

  She had wrestled herself into a sitting position, and looked down at him, stroking his forehead; an attention which for some reason he had found excruciatingly irritating, like being tickled when he had absolutely no inclination to laugh. She had said, flatly, ‘I was brought up to believe that every girl should go to the altar without knowing a man. It is ingrained in me, Henry, I’m sorry. I must be married before we have any knowledge. I didn’t mean to disturb you; it was selfish of me to arouse your feelings purely for my own purposes; but believe me you have made me feel so much calmer, so much more wanted. To be wanted, Henry, that is everything, and to know that you feel want for me, well, that is the acme.’

  Henry had at last been obliged to hold her wrist, to stop her from stroking him. ‘Augusta,’ he had begun, ‘the very last thing I wish to do is disillusion you, but—’

  ‘Hush, now, say no more,’ she had said, and kissed him on the cheek. ‘I know the practicalities of life; my mother told me them all. I am not a prude, Henry; even if I am determined to keep myself for my wedding-day, in purity. And there are ways of expressing physical attachment which do not involve, well, knowledge in the complete sense.’

  She had been blushing very pink, and her voice had been breathy and wavering. To save her any more embarrassment, Henry had climbed out of the bed; but then he had felt churlish for not kissing her; bent forward to kiss her; and painfully knocked his mouth against her forehead. They had looked at each other: Augusta holding her head and Henry clasping his mouth; and then they both had burst out laughing.

  ‘Well, this is not very auspicious,’ Henry had smiled.

  ‘Perhaps not,’ Augusta had replied, and reached out her hand to him. ‘But wonderfully romantic. Really, Henry, it’s like a story; and I adore you. Thank you for being so understanding. Thank you, Henry, for everything.’

  They had caught the Chicago train at nine o’clock on Monday evening, in a terminus billowing with smoke and golden sunlight, and they had been travelling ever since; through shadowy forests, along by the banks of glittering rivers, and for miles and miles across windy plains, where birds were blown. There had been no opportunity for Henry to find out while he was on board the train what Augusta had meant by ‘ways of expressing physical attachment which do not involve knowledge in the complete sense’, because they were unable to afford a private sleeping-compartment for two. On the other hand, Henry wasn’t at all sure that he wanted such an opportunity, ever. He had dreamed about Augusta as he had slept in his narrow upper berth in the Pullman car; he had dreamed about her glutinously smiling, like a spoon drawn slowly through molasses; he had dreamed about her stroking his forehead; and he had dreamed again and again that she was turning towards him with her spectacle lenses catching the light, and saying, ‘It’s wonderfully romantic, Henry. It’s like a story.’ And then he had woken up and lain in the joggling darkness feeling the wheels bang incessantly over the track, and he had felt that his life had become nothing more than a series of theatrical incidents in which he was obliged to act whether he wanted to or not; an endless progression of pointless playlets which were taking him nowhere at all.

  He did not understand yet how much Doris’ death had changed him. Nor was he ready to see that it was not really Mr Paterson who had exiled him from Carmington; any more than it was Alby Monihan who had lost him his money; or Augusta who had persuaded him to take her to California. It was his own sense of destiny. It was his own newly-disturbed awareness that life could be very much better or very much worse than he had ever expected; and the urgent but still unrealized need to find out just how much better; just how much worse.

  The train at last drew into Chicago, its brakes squealing like four dozen slaughtered pigs. Henry and Augusta stepped down from their car, and then pushed their way through a jostling crowd of passengers and porters and stockmen to find their trunks. Henry had been told in New York that there was a connection that morning on the Chicago and Rock Island Railroad f
or Council Bluffs; or on the Chicago and Northwestern later in the day. They waited by the baggage car while the trunks were unloaded, feeling the first spots of an early-morning shower.

  Henry said, ‘You look a little tired. Didn’t you sleep well?’

  ‘Not a wink all night,’ Augusta admitted. ‘I don’t know why. My mind kept racing and racing and wouldn’t be still.’

  ‘Maybe we ought to stay here in Chicago for a night, and go on to Omaha in the morning,’ Henry suggested. ‘We could leave our trunks here at the depot.’

  Augusta was quite white; and her appearance was very little improved by the beige suit she had decided to wear, all hung around with floppy beige ribbons.

  ‘Would you mind terribly if we did?’ she asked Henry; and then suddenly she burst into tears.

  ‘Augusta, what’s wrong?’ he asked her, taking her wrists in his hands. ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘It’s nothing,’ she said. ‘Please, it’s silly of me. I’ve just suddenly wondered if I’m doing the right thing. Not just for me, but for you. Oh dear Henry, I haven’t forced myself on you, have I? I haven’t made a fool of myself? I couldn’t bear it if you felt I was a nuisance.’

  ‘Augusta,’ he soothed her, ‘I asked you to come along with me because I wanted you to come. Now, here, dry those tears. How can you possibly think that you’re a nuisance?’

  Gently, he lifted off her spectacles, and dabbed her eyes with his handkerchief. She smiled at him as bravely as she could, and then lowered her head, and blushed. ‘I’m not really very pretty, am I? And worse without my spectacles. I always look so starey when I take them off.’

  He kissed her on the forehead. ‘Don’t think so meanly of yourself. I like the way you look.’ He gave her back her spectacles, and she wound them around her ears again. ‘You’re a fine girl, Augusta; I’ve always thought so, and I’ve always said so. Now haven’t I?’

  They left their trunks at the maroon-painted offices of the Chicago and Rock Island Railroad; and then hailed a cab to take them into Chicago itself. The cabbie was a thin-backed dreary man with moustaches like two skeins of wet grey wool, and he kept up an interminable complaint all the way from the railroad station until they were rattling alongside Lake Michigan. It had begun to shower more heavily now, and so Henry’s first impression of Chicago was of the inside of the hansom’s leathery black hood, the drumming of rain, and the droning commentary of their driver; with an occasional glimpse of crowded, water-slicked streets, and intermittent views of the lake, grey and vast and flecked with foam.

  ‘This town is all going to the dogs,’ said the cabbie. ‘Stinks in the summer, freezes in the winter; drains all clogged and water not fit for a rat to wash out his stockings. You should have seen it in May; that’s when you should have seen it, when Abram Lincoln was balloted for Presidential candidate; city was packed tight to bursting, not an hotel room to be had nowhere; and the Wide Awakes marching up and down the streets with torches and all. That building there, you see it? That’s the Wigwam, that’s where they held the convention, full to bursting that building was, and you can see the size of it, and the streets outside was full to bursting too; and you couldn’t drive a cab downtown if you was urgently required to or not; and a dratted bad time it was too, with drunks and harlots and malcontents of all possible kinds, you can believe me. And when they said that Abram Lincoln was nominated, and Hannibal Hamlin on the ticket with him, the whole darn town shook with cheering.’

  ‘You’re not a Republican, then?’ Henry asked him.

  The cabbie turned around in his seat, the rain dripping from his wide-brimmed hat. ‘Mister, I don’t take no interest in politicking whatso-never and all I care about is making my living; as a few more of them politicians ought to. Less wind, more work, that’s my flavour.’

  Henry had asked him for a reasonable hotel; and he drew up outside a small but comfortable-looking timber-framed building on Portage Street, the Union Hotel, red-painted with wet red awnings, and a sign which announced ‘Clean Sheets & Hot Water’. The sun was beginning to break through the clouds as Henry paid off the cabbie, and the sidewalk was glistening gold as they carried their bags up the steps to the hotel’s swing doors, and into the gloomy lobby. An old man in an eyeshade was sitting behind the counter with his high-polished shoes up, reading the Chicago Tribune. He looked up as Henry and Augusta came in, and said conversationally, ‘Know what it says here? They found a baby at Stickney, with its stomach full of pounded window-glass, enough to front up a middling-sized dry-goods store.’

  ‘Well, I’m very sorry for it,’ replied Augusta. ‘What agony it must have suffered.’

  ‘Less agony than living, some might say,’ the old man replied, in a cheerful tone. He folded up his paper, and stood up. ‘I guess you good people are looking for someplace to stay.’

  Henry said, ‘Mr and Mrs Henry Roberts. Just for one night.’

  A black bellboy carried their cases upstairs for them, and along a narrow corridor between rows of cream-painted doors. Their room, number 5, was at the very end, and beside the door was a small window overlooking the backs of Portage Street, and part of the Wigwam, and a large hoarding which said, Oakland Dining Room Good Steaks 50 cents. Henry could see the rain clouds moving away towards the southwest, and the surface of the lake suddenly transformed into dazzling silver.

  The bellboy unlocked their door for them, and said, ‘This is it, folks.’ It was a small room with a dark varnished wardrobe, brown floral wallpaper, two heavy armchairs, a washstand, and a massive sawn-oak bed, covered with a rose-patterned comforter. Over the bed was a sampler, with peonies on it, and the legend, ‘The Lord Is My Shepherd.’ Out of the window, with its dusty brown curtains, there was a view of Chicago’s rooftops, still glistening, and the Chicago River; and in the distance a hazy line of hills and forest.

  Henry tipped the bellboy, and then closed the door and sat down on the bed. Augusta came up to him and rested her hands on his shoulders. ‘I feel somehow that I have grown so close to you,’ she said. ‘I hope with all my heart that you feel the same for me.’

  ‘You must get some rest,’ he said. ‘Have a sleep on the bed for an hour or two, and then we’ll go find ourselves some lunch.’

  While Augusta slept, Henry went downstairs to the hotel’s parlour, and read the newspaper. The day was waxing warm now, and the window was open so that the breeze from the lake could blow gently in to stir the curtains and the magazines on the table. Several people came and went; an agitated woman who kept twisting her gloves around and around as she waited for somebody who didn’t show up; a fat Italian couple who were supposed to be going to a wedding; a travelling salesman in a creased linen suit, with a portmanteau crowded with clothes-line reels and stove brushes. Henry dozed himself for a while, and woke up only when the clock in the lobby struck noon, his mouth feeling dry and coppery.

  ‘Do you know of anywhere good to eat?’ he asked the old man behind the counter.

  ‘There’s the Wabash Chop House, two blocks down; or the St Vincent Restaurant just across the street. Personally, I don’t eat meat. My grandfather always used to say that it poisons the blood. He was a great man, my grandfather. Listen, I’m seventy-one; my grandfather was there at Cambridge in 1771, when Washington took command. And my father was introduced to John Adams once, when he was a young man.’

  Augusta was still asleep when Henry went upstairs, covered by the comforter. Henry gently shook her shoulder, and said, ‘Augusta,’ and she opened her eyes and blinked at him. ‘Oh, Henry,’ she said, with a smile. ‘I couldn’t think where I was for a moment.’

  ‘If you want to change, we’ll go and have something to eat,’ Henry told her. He went to the looking-glass and brushed his hair back, and tweaked up his moustaches. He thought he looked rather drawn; but it was nothing that a sound night’s sleep wouldn’t be able to remedy. The hardest part of their journey to California was still ahead of them: the rail trip to Omaha, and then the long Emigrant Trail out t
owards the west. He just hoped that Augusta would have the stamina for it.

  The St Vincent Restaurant was noisy and friendly, with polished circular tables and potted palms and waiters in floor-length aprons and extravagant whiskers. Henry ordered a glass of raisin wine for Augusta, and a foaming glass of German beer for himself; then out of a plain menu they chose roast ribs of beef and Swiss chard, with melted cheese on it. Augusta ate with nibbling precision: cutting up each piece of meat neatly and tinily, and eating it with hurried little bites.

  Henry said, ‘We could take a walk by the lake later.’

  Augusta simply smiled.

  ‘We still have two thousand miles to travel, you know,’ said Henry. ‘I hope you feel that you can manage it.’

  ‘With you, dear Henry, I can manage anything.’

  ‘Well, you mustn’t become too dependent on me.’

  ‘Henry,’ said Augusta, setting down her knife and fork, ‘I have always been a dependent person, you must know that of me. I depend very heavily on those closest to me, both morally and emotionally, and I can’t make any pretence of it. But in return I can be dependable; and reliable; and I have never shied away from good hard work.’

  Henry said, with a mouthful of beef, ‘Augusta, you mustn’t worry yourself so. I can give you all the looking-after you need. Now please, enjoy your meal, and think of this as nothing more than a great adventure.’

  Augusta looked at him fondly, and tears began to cluster in her eyes again. ‘I shall,’ she said. ‘Dear Henry.’

  They walked that afternoon beside Lake Michigan, saying very little to each other, but closer with every moment that they were far away from Carmington; and with every second that brought them nearer to the west. A warm but persistent wind blew off the water; and Augusta’s beige scarf flapped like a signal. Henry walked with his hands in his pockets, his mind jumbled with half-formulated decisions about what he was going to do when he reached San Francisco; and how he was going to set up house with Augusta. He watched her as she stepped along the gritty shoreline in her brown buttoned-up boots, how the slack waves rippled on to the mud; and then he looked northwards up Michigan Avenue, at the smug and wealthy cream-coloured terraces, at the privately-financed Illinois Railroad trestle crossing the lake, at the factories and railroad sheds, at the smoking factory chimneys. Something is happening here in this country, he thought to himself; there is money here, and influence, and manifest destiny.