Silver

by Graham Masterton

  Augusta said, ‘William Byers has been using our bank not to accumulate capital, Henry, but to disperse it. At no time in the past year has the Platte River Transportation account had more than $500 in it; except when a large deposit was made, and even then the funds were immediately transferred to other banks. I may be foolish, Henry, I may be ridiculous; and I may be a nagging wife. But I am not so foolish or ridiculous that I cannot recognize a blatant fraud when I see it; and I think that I am entitled to nag. In fact I think that I am entitled to report this whole affair to the sheriff.’

  Henry stood silent, and looked at Augusta through the soft, cold rain, and knew that this, at last, was the very end. He said, ‘You can go to the sheriff if you want to, my dear; if you think that it will make you feel better; if you need some kind of revenge.’

  ‘Henry,’ she said, quite loudly, gathering up her damp skirts and walking towards him as if she meant to hit him, or embrace him. ‘Henry, I don’t want to go to the sheriff at all. But what have you done? What have you done to our name, and our reputation? Henry, I’m not talking about revenge! I’m talking about justice, about Christian virtue! You can’t just let this matter go, as if it never happened! Henry, there were hundreds and thousands of dollars; and our bank was used to spirit it all away!’

  Henry said, ‘I’ll look into it. Will that satisfy you? I’ll investi-gate. Now, shall we go back to the store? It’s wet.’

  ‘Henry—’

  ‘I’m not going to discuss it any longer, damn it! Now, I’m going back to the store, and I want to know if you’re going to come with me.’

  She looked at him defiantly, her tiny oval spectacles beaded with rain. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I’m going to go see Harriet Henderson first, and have a talk, and some tea. I’ll see you later, if you’re back for the night. If not, well, I don’t really care when I see you; since you’re hardly ever here anyway, and when you are you seem to be far too tired even to talk.’

  Henry didn’t even try to persuade her to change her mind. He knew that it was no use. Augusta walked past him with her chin raised sternly, and made her way through the doorless entrance, and down the steps which led to East 9th Street. He followed her as far as the doorway; and when she reached the muddy street she turned and looked at him, her dark bonnet outlined against the silvery-grey puddles, her spectacles shining.

  He said, ‘Augusta,’ and it was then for the first time that she hesitated, her hems raised above the mud. Perhaps she knew intuitively what he was going to say, because she waited with unusual patience, silent, her face white and unfocused. The wind blew the rain across the street in thick, persistent curtains, ruffling the surface of the puddles, and causing Henry’s horse to whuffle, and toss its dripping head.

  ‘Augusta,’ he said, ‘I’m leaving you.’

  She received the news with unsurprised pain. She lowered her head, and then she lowered her umbrella. If you have just lost your husband, what difference does it make if your hat gets wet? She said something which he couldn’t hear; and so he called out, ‘What?’

  She raised her head again. ‘I said, I’ve been expecting this all winter. Is it the girl they call Baby Doe?’

  ‘You know about her?’

  ‘Henry, everybody knows about her. It’s in all the newspapers almost every week; even the Leadville Chronicle. I’ve just been closing my eyes and waiting for you to tell me.’

  ‘I see,’ he said. He felt rather disappointed that Baby Doe was not a surprise.

  ‘I did think that you had stopped seeing her,’ said Augusta. ‘After all, you brought me her ring.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said. He came down the steps, slowly, one at a time. ‘But, well, it’s easier said than done, isn’t it, breaking up with somebody you really love?’

  ‘You don’t have to tell me that,’ said Augusta, with agonized ferocity.

  Henry said, ‘I’m sorry. I was talking about myself, I meant me, not you; but I suppose it’s just as hard for you. Look, I’m sorry.’

  ‘If you were genuinely sorry, you wouldn’t leave me. But you will.’

  ‘Augusta, I’m sorry! But the fact is that I love her; that she makes me feel happy; and confident; and free.’

  ‘I see,’ said Augusta. ‘Then you’re more of a fool than I thought you were. I pity her. And I pity you, too.’

  Without another word, Augusta began to walk away down Harrison Avenue, allowing her skirts to trail in the mud; while waggons and carriages struggled past her, and the shower started suddenly to fall much more heavily; so that gutterings gurgled, and water-barrels began to overflow, and the puddles in the streets were circled and circled with the dreary hoop-la rings of rain. Henry knew that it was a shower, that it wouldn’t last, but somehow that made it all the sadder; that Augusta would soon look out of her window and see that the rain had stopped; and yet she was still deserted.

  Henry remained where he was, with his hands in his pockets, staring at the half-finished ruins of his lavish mansion, ‘Versailles’ in Leadville. He was still there when a thin man with a dark drooping moustache and a black high-crowned hat came walking towards him from the direction of St Vincent’s Hospital; his coat-collar turned up, coughing.

  The man stopped, and coughed, and looked up at ‘Roberts Lodge’. ‘This your place?’ he asked.

  Henry nodded.

  ‘It’s going to be some house, when it’s finished.’

  ‘Yes.’

  The man coughed again, and sniffed, and coughed again. ‘This wet weather doesn’t do my lungs no good; and I only came up here for the dry mountain air.’

  Henry held out his hand. ‘Henry Roberts,’ he said.

  ‘Ah, so you’re Henry Roberts. Well, I’ve heard about you. I have a friend in Tombstone, Arizona, who knows a lady-friend of yours.’

  Henry frowned at him. ‘Mrs Doe?’ he asked, puzzled.

  The man shook his head. ‘Nina Somebody, used to be a circus dancer. Ring any bells? Well, maybe it wouldn’t. You’re a famous man these days, aren’t you? I was reading about that theatre you bought in Denver.’

  ‘Your friend knows Nina? Mademoiselle Carolista?’

  ‘That’s it (cough) that’s what she calls herself. Mademoiselle Carolista. Used to be a circus dancer. Not much use to anybody now. Fell off a wire in Helena, Montana, and broke her neck. Wyatt took her in for a while, don’t know why; but I met her a couple of times; and she’s a sweet lady.’

  ‘Is she still there now? In Tombstone?’

  The man shrugged. ‘Who knows? I haven’t seen Wyatt in a while; nor any of the Earps. But he was fond of that Nina, that Mademoiselle Carolista, and took good care of her, for some reason. She talked about you once in a while, that’s how I know you were friends.’

  Henry asked, ‘Do you want a drink? I was just about to go down to the Tasteful Saloon.’

  ‘That sounds like a gentlemanly suggestion,’ the man replied. He shook Henry’s hand again, and said, ‘John Holliday, dentist. Most people generally call me Doc.’

  Henry returned to the store later that evening, reasonably drunk. Augusta wasn’t there; and there was no sign that she had been there since the morning. The stove was cold, and her breakfast bowl was still beside the sink, washed, but not put away. Augusta had eaten a bowl of oats for breakfast for eighteen years; one bowl every morning. Henry stood in the darkened kitchen and looked at her bowl and felt immeasurably sorry for her; but also relieved. The guilt was over. He had faced her, and told her; and however hurt and lonely she might be, she was well provided for; and well-liked, and in time her hurt and loneliness would pass. At least, he hoped it would.

  It was a strange experience, to walk around the house and know that he would never come here again. He went upstairs, to the bedroom and looked at the neatly-made bed in which he and Augusta had slept for all those years; at the jug and the basin in which he had so often washed himself; at the lithograph of Jesus on the wall, at the cheap ornaments and the shabby furniture. He sat down on the edge of the
bed, and burped because of all the beer he had been drinking with his whiskey, and reached into the pocket of his coat for his white-gold cigar case.

  He was just lighting up when he heard the front door of the store open, and the bell jangle. After a while, the light of an oil-lamp came up the stairs and along the landing, and Augusta appeared, very pale-faced. Her eyes were swollen as if she had been crying, and for the first time since he had known her, her hair was untidy.

  She said, ‘I thought you would have left by now. Back to your Baby Doe.’

  ‘I, er, had a few drinks at the Tasteful Saloon. I met somebody, that’s all. I just came back to take a look.’

  ‘Yes,’ Augusta said busily, walking across the room, and setting the lamp down on the bureau. ‘I met your drinking companion outside. He was sitting on the boardwalk, coughing.’

  ‘He’s an interesting man. Plays a good game of cards, too.’

  ‘He’s been pointed out to me before,’ said Augusta. ‘I understand that he’s killed people.’ She unpinned her hair, and turned around. ‘Just the right sort of company for you, I would have thought.’

  Henry blew out smoke, and then stood up, shuffling with one foot to get his balance. ‘Augusta—’ he said, spreading his arms as if an innocent gesture alone was sufficient proof of his innocence. ‘Augusta, this had to happen, sooner or later. We couldn’t go on.’

  ‘You, apparently, couldn’t go on. Don’t speak for me.’

  ‘Augusta, I never made you happy.’

  ‘You don’t know anything about happiness, Henry, especially mine.’

  ‘But Augusta—’

  ‘You fool!’ she snapped at him. ‘Don’t you see that our life together wasn’t concerned with happiness at all? If it had have been, I would have walked out on you; and years ago, too.’

  Henry stood staring at her with his cigar twiddling smoke into the darkness of the room. ‘Then what?’ he asked her, in bewilderment. ‘Then why?’

  Augusta let down her hair. It was kinky and wavy from having been plaited when it was wet, and in the lamplight it shone with streaks of silver.

  She said, in a flat, toneless whisper, ‘God visits a certain destiny on all of us. Mine was to serve, and to suffer. That was all I asked of you, ever, that you should allow me to serve you. But it seems that even that was too much for you to give me.’

  There was a long, painful silence. Henry felt as if he had an iron hook in his heart. He tried to think of something to say, but couldn’t. The burden of Augusta’s martyrdom was too great; a burden which he had never asked to shoulder, yet which now seemed almost impossible to put down.

  ‘I suppose you have to go now,’ she said.

  ‘About the Platts River Transportation account—’ he told her. ‘Believe me, you don’t have to do anything about that. I’m sure it’s all above board. I’ll go back to William and Henry Stanley and look into it personally.’

  Augusta folded her arms, said nothing.

  ‘Believe me,’ he insisted.

  ‘It’s a fraud,’ she said. ‘Anybody can see that it’s a fraud. You’ve allowed them to use you as a stooge and a dummy. And you were either too simple or too careless or too vain to take any notice.’

  ‘Augusta, I warn you, if you try to take this matter any further—these are influential people.’

  ‘And what will they do to me? What will they take away from me that you haven’t taken away from me already? You’ve taken my pride, my dignity, my very soul. What does my life matter?’

  Henry said with almost hysterical firmness, ‘You must not mention anything about these matters to anyone. I’m serious, Augusta. Listen—you can have the house, as soon as it’s completed. You can have as much money as you need. But you will never, ever, disclose anything about the Platte River Transportation account to anyone. And especially not to the law.’

  Augusta stared at him with pain and contempt. ‘I’ve never seen you frightened before. It almost makes me glad that you’re going.’

  Henry clasped both hands behind his neck, and pressed with a grimace at his tension-tightened muscles. Slowly, without taking her eyes off him, Augusta moved around the end of the bed, until she was standing very close.

  ‘This would ruin you, wouldn’t it, if it ever came out?’

  He didn’t answer. She kept on watching him, plain and short-sighted, her silver hairs shining, her face bruised with grief.

  ‘I will only say this,’ she told him. ‘I will keep these matters confidential, if that is what you want; but only for as long as you remain my husband. You cannot expect any allegiance beyond that.’

  Henry stared at her. ‘Why did you come back?’ he asked her, and his voice was shaking. ‘Why didn’t you stay on that train and go all the way on to Bennington, and marry somebody else?’

  Augusta smiled, a strange smile that made Henry feel as if someone with cold hands was cupping his testicles. ‘Because I was always meant to be Mrs Henry Roberts,’ she said. ‘And I always will be, until the day I die.’

  Henry spent the night at Nat Starkey’s house on James Street. Frederick Maynard was there, and so was Thos Rogers, and from time to time other wealthy and robust members of Leadville’s Republican party would call by and take a glass of whiskey or two; and some of Mrs Starkey’s chicken-wings and hush puppies, dipped in green-pepper sauce. Henry enjoyed the Starkey house: it was warm and noisy and ostentatiously furnished, with palms and bookcases and pianos and sofas, and gilded oil-paintings of the Rocky Mountains in spring, and prairie fires, and the Starkey family looking florid and proud. It always seemed to be open house here, especially to Leadville’s several millionaires; and they would bring in their extravagant moustaches and their gleaming shirt-fronts and their pretty wives and prettier mistresses, and slap their overfed thighs and tell off-colour stories which Mrs Starkey was lady enough to disregard.

  With his diamond rings and his handmade shoes and his emerald necktie pin, Henry felt at home here, in the company of rich self-made men who didn’t mind showing off their money. He drank more whiskey, laughed too loudly, and sweated into his tight white evening waistcoat.

  ‘Mr Roberts has offered us an opera house, and a fire house, and electrified lighting for the streets,’ said Frederick Maynard, standing with his large bottom to the fire, and a glass of brandy in his hand. There was general applause. ‘I believe the least we can do for him in return is make sure that he’s elected mayor.’

  There was more applause, and everybody raised their glasses. ‘By the way,’ Thos Rogers shouted out. ‘Henry will no doubt be satisfied to hear that he can afford to donate all these generous gifts and services. The Matchless Mine announced this afternoon that its shares have risen to $56; and that they believe they’ve struck another bed of carbonate, which could prove even richer than the first.’

  ‘Well, now, I’ll drink to that,’ shouted Henry, far too loudly, and got up on to his feet. ‘I’ll drink to that, $56 the share; well, considering I bought them at $10.’ He laughed, and then he raised his glass again, and said to the pink blurry faces all around him; all those smiling expectant faces as bright as jelly-babies, ‘I also want to drink—to—’

  He paused. He lowered his glass again. Somebody said, ‘What is it, Henry?’ but Henry knew what it was. It was a brief, sharp, briny-tasting image of this afternoon, when he had been drinking at the bar of the Tasteful Saloon with John Holliday; and Holliday had leaned close to him, and coughed, and then said, ‘There’s only one thing worth drinking to, my friend, and that’s your own mortality. I know it, you know it. We’re all going to die. I’ve been living my life in a constant flight from death. That’s why I’m here, now; and I can only tell you this, that you must never let your life pass you by. If something’s wrong in your life, then change it, and change it quick, because you haven’t got long to go. You’ve found yourself a woman you love; then you go get her; and you forget about guilt, and you forget about morality, and conscience, because that Grim Reaper isn’t going t
o worry about it when he carries you away, he’s not going to care if you’ve been happy or sad, or guilty or frightened, or anything at all. How old are you friend? And this is the first woman you’ve ever loved? By all that’s powerful, my friend, you go get her; you marry her; you keep her close; and let’s drink to mortality, because there ain’t anything ever that’s worth drinking to more.’

  In Nat Starkey’s suddenly-silenced drawing-room, Henry lifted his glass, and said, ‘Mortality.’

  Thos Rogers frowned, and hiccuped, and said, ‘Mortality? Mortality? What the blue blazes is that?’

  ‘More tality?’ said Frederick Maynard, befuddled. ‘I’d rather drink to less tality.’

  Nat Starkey came up to Henry and put an arm around his shoulder. ‘Let’s drink to the mayor-to-be,’ he declared. ‘His health, and his money, and his happiness.’

  He lifted his glass to Henry; and very quietly, so that nobody else in the room could distinctly hear what he was saying, murmured, ‘You’re a politician now, Henry. All millionaires have to be, in their way. So forget the past. Politicians and millionaires never have pasts. Not pasts that they should be seen to care about, anyway.’

  ‘The mayor!’ cried Thos Rogers; and then everybody stood, and clinked their glasses together, and laughed, and clapped, and shouted out, ‘The mayor!’

  Sixteen

  She said, ‘I want to be married.’

  Henry had been standing by the window, looking out over the mountains. He said, abstractedly, ‘Yes, my dear; I guess that you do.’

  ‘No, really,’ she told him, and came up behind him across the Persian carpet, her pink silk dress rustling, and put her arms around his waist. ‘I love you, Henry. I want to be your wife.’

  He patted her hands, and sipped his whiskey. ‘You know something,’ he said, ‘I love Denver at this time of the afternoon, just when the sun’s getting low. It has a kind of golden shine about it that you never see anywhere else. Bright and golden, and clear as creek-water.’