Silver

by Graham Masterton

‘Mr Wilde, I very much enjoyed your lecture,’ said Henry.

  ‘I am most gratified,’ said Wilde. He took out a handkerchief and dabbed at his forehead. ‘I was warned that Leadville was the toughest as well as the richest city in the world, and I have to admit that I was looking forward to this evening with some trepidation.’

  ‘Not all of us carry revolvers, Mr Wilde,’ Henry assured him.

  ‘I’m relieved to hear it,’ Wilde replied. ‘They said that if I didn’t give a good account of myself, they would shoot myself or my travelling manager or both of us. Fortunately—’ he added, and here his voice rose a little, in case anybody should miss what he was going to say, ‘—fortunately, nothing they could do to my travelling manager would intimidate me.’

  Henry said, ‘I understand that Mr Starkey and Mr Rogers have something of a reception arranged for you. A tour of the dance-halls, and the gambling saloons.’

  ‘So I believe,’ said Wilde, not altogether enthusiastically. Henry thought he looked tired.

  ‘Well, when they’ve finished with you; if you’re still on your feet; why don’t you let me take you down one of my mines? Let’s make it one o’clock, you should have seen the sights by then. I’ll take you down the No. 3 shaft at the Matchless, and you can see where all these riches come from.’ Henry smiled, and added, as a joke against Leadville’s miners, ‘Maybe you can go back to Europe and tell Mr Cellini’s widow all about it.’

  Henry went back to the Clarendon and ate a light supper of cured ham and eggs. He called the barber up, and sat in silence while he was shaved. There was no sound but the clink of the barber’s razor in the basin, and the steady scratching of his blade against Henry’s chin. Afterwards, Henry changed into a fresh evening suit, and sat by the window, drinking a large glass of undiluted whiskey.

  At a quarter to two, Oscar Wilde and his reception party finally arrived at the head of the Matchless Mine; where Henry was waiting in his carriage with a thick rug around his knees. The night was very cold, and Henry had been taking regular nips from a flask of whiskey, and smoked two cigars. Young Price stood beside his carriage, clapping his hands from time to time, and looking as if he would much rather be back in bed.

  Wilde was in tremendous spirits. ‘Aha!’ he cried, when he caught sight of Henry. ‘We have had an evening to remember! Brass bands, piano players, an act in which a woman disappeared and failed to reappear, to the relief of all watching; a little faro; a little poker; a very great quantity of whiskey; some terpsichorean antics by some ladies who were unfortunate enough not to be able to afford very many clothes; followed by more whiskey; and some sporadic singing.’

  Henry climbed down from his carriage. ‘Well, then,’ he said, ‘let’s finish the evening by having some supper down the mine. Price, did you bring that whiskey?’

  ‘More whiskey!’ Wilde exclaimed, polishing the palms of his hands in enthusiasm. ‘That sounds like a capital idea!’

  The Matchless was far larger and far more impressive than the Little Pittsburgh had been. Inside the cavernous winding-shed there were three banks of hoists, and the winding-engines were enormous; huge steam-breathing contraptions of green enamel and gleaming brass. Henry and Oscar Wilde were led towards the first of the cages; and accompanied. by Nat Starkey and the night foreman, they were quickly lowered into the darkness of the mine.

  ‘Deep into the heart of the mountain, my word,’ remarked Wilde, as at last they were brought to a jarring halt, and allowed out on to the dimly-lit fifth level. Three or four car pushers turned around to stare at them.

  Henry said, ‘The foreman will show you around, Mr Wilde. Then come back here and have a drink.’

  ‘Excellent,’ replied Wilde. ‘I must say that your whiskey appeals to me. What it lacks in refinement, it certainly makes up for in strength.’

  Wilde, still chattering and posturing, was led away along the tunnel. Henry waited for him beside the shaft, and talked for a while to Nat Starkey. Nat said, ‘Quite a character, isn’t he? And not at all pious, like I’d expected.’

  Henry shrugged. ‘It seems to me that he’s either a genius, or an out-and-out rogue; or maybe a little of both.’

  It was almost twenty minutes before they heard Wilde’s distinctive voice returning along the gallery. He was accompanied now not only by the foreman but by six or seven delighted miners, who hung on to everything he said, and toasted him repeatedly in whiskey, which they drank out of their tinplate coffee-mugs. Wilde himself was carrying a glass tumbler in one hand as delicately as if it were the sick primrose with which he had once stayed up all night; but a full bottle of rye in the other, to replenish the tumbler as often as required, which was quite often.

  ‘Well, Mr Wilde, what do you say to the Matchless?’ said Henry, stepping forward.

  Wilde turned around on his slippered heel. ‘A most vivacious mine, as mines go,’ he replied. ‘But very noisy. America is really a very noisy place; in fact I think it must be the noisiest country that ever existed. And noise, you know, is never conducive to poetry or to romance.’

  He must have drunk a great deal by now; but he seemed to be refreshed more than stupefied; and he spoke more brightly, and his pale blue eyes were glittering with amusement.

  Henry took a drink; and while the foreman chivvied the miners back to the face; and Nat Starkey talked to Thos Rogers; Henry sat with Wilde on the side of an ore-cart (over which Wilde had fastidiously spread a handkerchief, in case his silk knee-britches should be stained).

  ‘Has this trip been a success for you?’ asked Henry. ‘Financially, I mean?’

  ‘Only sporadically,’ said Wilde, and drank, and unexpectedly sniffed. ‘But then if one could afford to come to America, one would not come at all.’

  ‘You don’t think we’re very, what is it, aesthetic?’

  ‘My dear Mr Roberts, the best-dressed men that I have seen in the West are your miners. I adore their red flannel shirts, and their corduroy trousers, and their high leather boots. I shall make absolutely certain that I purchase a miner’s ensemble myself, to wear in the drawing-rooms of Bloomsbury. But as for the rest of the country...well, it would be charitable to say that it is barbarous.’

  Henry said, ‘Let me ask you something, Mr Wilde. You seem like a man who might have an opinion on a matter like this. If you were ever torn between beauty and duty, which would you choose?’

  For all of his affectations, Wilde was a sensitive man, and instead of answering Henry with a witty remark, or an epigram, or teasing him for his rhyme of ‘beauty and duty’, Wilde looked at him seriously, and brushed back his long brown hair, and when one of the miners approached them to ask for his autograph, waved the man away.

  ‘There can’t be any question about it,’ he replied. ‘At least, not as far as I’m concerned. I would have to choose beauty. The mark of civilization is the love of beauty.’

  Henry said, ‘This whole damned thing is tearing me apart.’

  Wilde looked at him with care. Henry was very rich, and that may have made him more interesting to the poet than anyone else down at the bottom of the Matchless Mine; but he appeared to sense that Henry’s struggle was a tragedy of classic qualities; and he said, in the gentlest of tones, ‘Explain what you mean, Mr Roberts. What “damned thing”?’

  They filled their glasses again, and drank more whiskey; and in his usual blunt but discursive way, Henry told Wilde about Augusta, and Baby Doe, and what had happened to August Rische and George Hook. Wilde was particularly interested in Henry’s description of Baby Doe; and the way in which she drove about Denver in her carriage. He saw an exact parallel with Lily Langtry in London, for whom he had developed a mad passion from the very beginning. Lily Langtry, he had said, ‘owes it to herself and us’ to drive through Hyde Park in a black victoria, drawn by black horses, in a black bonnet emblazoned with sapphires.

  At last, Henry told Wilde about Doc Holliday, and his views on death, and Wilde commented, ‘Hm. Coarse, but sensible; especially from a dying man.
All I can say is that when the Last Trumpet sounds, I shall turn over in my porphyry tomb and pretend that I haven’t heard it.’

  Henry said, ‘I’ve bored you.’

  Wilde put his arm around Henry’s shoulder, and replied ‘On the contrary, my dear sir, you have fascinated me. You have frightened me rather, too: because it seems to me that you cannot make your choice until you have confronted your own mortality. You are a man cursed by good fortune, Mr Roberts. You must go to your Baby Doe, and marry her, of course. But before that, you must stare your own existence unflinchingly in the face. You have never been tested by life, Mr Roberts. Now must be the time.’

  Henry said, ‘I don’t think I understand what you mean. What kind of test?’

  Wilde laughed, no longer serious. ‘You must devise your own, Mr Roberts. What is it that you fear most? Rush out and embrace it, and see if you survive.’

  The hoisting-gear rattled and sang, and another car-load of guests and miners came down, brandishing fresh bottles of whiskey. There was singing and laughing, and now Nat Starkey joined them and said to Henry, ‘Come on now, Henry; you mustn’t monopolize our guest here. How about some more whiskey, Mr Wilde? And some of the men would like to hear a poem or two.’

  ‘More whiskey? What a good idea!’ smiled Wilde. He squeezed Henry’s shoulder just once, and said, ‘Remember, Mr Roberts: it is better to be beautiful than to be good.’

  Henry returned to the Clarendon Hotel an hour later and went straight to bed. He told young Price not to disturb him, for any reason, until two o’clock in the afternoon. He lay on his bed in his nightshirt and felt that he was sweating whiskey. The bed dipped and rolled beneath him, but when he sat up, the room tilted. He went to the bathroom and drank a large glass of water, but even that tasted like whiskey. After five or ten minutes, he was wretchedly sick; sicker than he had ever been on alcohol for years. He sat on the lavatory seat with tears in his eyes and reckoned that he must have drunk nearly a bottle and a half of straight whiskey since yesterday evening.

  Wiping his face with a towel, he walked slowly back into his bedroom. What had Wilde said to him? ‘You must go to your Baby Doe, and marry her, of course. But before that, you must stare your own existence unflinchingly in the face.’

  He hadn’t understood at the time what it was that Wilde had been trying to tell him; but he knew now. He had always kept himself away from confrontation; he had always taken the easy way out. He had married Augusta because it had been easier to say yes to her than no. He had allowed August Rische to be blown up with an easy, casual nod. And he had killed George Hook himself because it was easier to kill him than to persuade him to come up.

  He had no courage. He had been floating through life because he had never attempted to swim against the current. All he had was his money; and that had come to him by accident. Without his money, what was he? That was what Oscar Wilde had been telling him. Confront your own terrors; stare them in the face. Unless at some time in your life you have risked everything you care about, then your whole existence has no meaning.

  At nine o’clock, he ordered breakfast. Two boiled eggs, and a glass of beer. Then he shaved himself, and dressed himself; and looked at himself in the mirror. Tired, white, but smart. He brushed the sleeve of his brown checked day suit, and remembered with a smile what Oscar Wilde had said about the miners, and the way they dressed.

  He found John Holliday in the Tasteful Saloon, in the back room, still finishing a game which had started the previous night. The Tasteful Saloon was dense with flat-smelling cigar-smoke, and a scrub-woman was mopping up the wooden floor with wet, wide strokes of her mop. Henry nodded a salute to the barkeep, Ted Johnson, whom he had known since the days when he ran the Leadville store and post office. Ted Johnson asked, ‘Fix you a drink, Mr Roberts?’

  ‘Just a beer, please, Ted,’ said Henry.

  John Holliday’s game was on the point of breaking up. As Henry approached, one of the other players stood up, scratched himself, hooked up his coat from the back of his chair with his finger, and said, ‘That’s it for me, Doc. I’m turning in before you clean me out completely.’

  Holliday coughed and shrugged. ‘Nice to play with you, Samuel. Always nice to play with a gent.’

  He looked up, and saw Henry standing in the morning sunlight. ‘Well, if it isn’t Mr Roberts. Good day to you, Mr Roberts. Don’t tell me you came by for another drink. I don’t think my liver could take any more; not until somebody’s fed me.

  Henry drew out a chair and sat down. ‘As a matter of fact,’ he said, ‘I came by for a game.’

  Doc Holliday collected up the cards and shuffled them; no fancy shuffling but very quick. ‘You want a game, hunh?’ he asked, closing one eye against his cigar smoke. ‘At ten o’clock in the morning, you came looking for a game?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Any of you mugs want to play?’ Holliday asked his departing acquaintances. The three of them looked at each other. The one called Samuel shook his head, and said, ‘My wife’s going to cut my lights out if’n I don’t get home, and fry ’em up for breakfast.’ But the other two, a tall thin man with a pencil moustache, and a broad, ruddy-faced man who looked like a farmer, both came back to the table.

  ‘Be a privilege to take some money off Henry Roberts,’ smiled the ruddy-faced man. He held out his hand. ‘Name’s Bill Potter, from Soda Springs.’

  ‘Rugby,’ said the tall thin man. ‘Hayward Rugby. Used to work for the Hibschle Mine, sampling. Struck it reasonable rich out at Stray Horse Gulch.’

  ‘How about some beers here, Ted?’ called Doc Holliday. ‘And maybe some hash, too, if anybody’s hungry.’

  They played a few hands for the fun of it, only bidding a few dollars. Then, when the saloon clock struck eleven, and the first of the day’s regulars started drifting in, Holliday cracked his knuckles like pistol-shots, and said, ‘All right then, gentlemen. What do you say that we really get to it? Mr Roberts here came looking for a game; let’s give him one.’

  They played for another hour; and this time the bidding went up in hundreds of dollars. Bill Potter and Hayward Rugby began to grow tense and hesitant; and threw in their hands more frequently and a great deal earlier as the pot grew larger.

  Henry was badly off form. Maybe it was his hangover; maybe it was his nerves. But he misjudged the cards in game after game, and by the time the clock struck one, he was nearly ten thousand dollars down. Doc Holliday coughed, and smiled, and sat behind his mounting heap of IOUs with obvious pleasure.

  Holliday dealt another round. One card face down to each of them, the hole card; one card face up. Henry’s face-up card was the eight of spades. He eased up his hole card. The eight of hearts. He said nothing, but asked Ted to bring him another beer. Bill Potter, with the ace of diamonds, started the bidding. One thousand dollars. Henry raised the stake to two thousand dollars. Hayward Rugby bet two thousand dollars, too; and so did Doc Holliday.

  A third card was dealt. Henry felt his stomach tighten up. The eight of diamonds. He raised the stake to five thousand dollars. Holliday glanced up at him, and coughed. Hayward Rugby said, ‘I’m out,’ and put down his cards, face down.

  Doc Holliday examined his hand for a moment, and then said, quite calmly, without taking his cigar out of his mouth, ‘I’ll raise you. Ten thousand dollars.’

  A fourth card was dealt. Henry wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. The ten of hearts. Bill Potter said, ‘That’s it for me, gentlemen,’ and threw in his cards. Henry looked at Doc Holliday and said, ‘Twenty-five thousand dollars.’

  Holliday nodded his acceptance. Henry was concerned now. Twenty-five thousand dollars was a great deal of money to Holliday; five thousand more than he had won so far. He must have the makings of a very good hand, or else he wouldn’t have risked going on so long. Henry had learned three things about Holliday already this morning: that he wasn’t a rash card-player, that he didn’t bluff, and that he would throw in a poor hand straight away.

/>   Holliday dealt a fifth card. Henry, reaching for his fresh glass of beer, looked down at it and tried not to flinch, or even flicker his eyes. The king of hearts. That meant he was holding a handful of fours, the second highest hand in poker. All that could beat him now was a straight flush.

  He drank his beer, picked up his card, arranged it in his hand. This was the moment that Oscar Wilde had told him about. This was the time to see whether his luck was genuinely God-given or not; whether he really deserved his destiny. The regulars in the saloon somehow sensed that the game was nearing its climax, because they began to gather around the table; shuffling and pushing; curious faces with heavy moustaches, fascinated by the prospect of easy money and desperate failure. Someone called over to the piano-player to stop your goddamned tinkling, will you, this is serious.

  Henry said, ‘I came here for a game today, John; a game that would raise really raise the prickles on the back of my neck.’

  Holliday said nothing; but watched him with eyes like pale glazed marbles.

  ‘I’m a very wealthy man these days,’ Henry went on. ‘All of these fellows know me; I struck it lucky and now I’m rich. Well, I want to test that luck. Do you understand me?’

  ‘Your voice is shaking,’ said Holliday, with supreme calmness. He coughed.

  ‘I want to test that luck,’ Henry repeated, ignoring him. ‘And that’s why I want to make a special bet with you now, if you’ll take it; a bet on this hand.’

  ‘You must be pretty sure of what you’ve got there,’ Holliday remarked.

  Henry said, ‘This is the bet. Everything I’ve got, against everything you’ve got.’

  Holliday frowned at him; the first betrayal of expression since the game had begun. Somebody in the assembled crush of miners called out, ‘Yaahooo!’ and tossed up his hat. There were shouts, and screeches, and then a burst of applause and a stamping of boot-heels.

  Holliday said, ‘I never heard of such a bet.’

  ‘You did now,’ said Henry. ‘You win this hand, you get it all. The mining stock, the horses, the property, the money. Nine million dollars, or thereabouts. These gentlemen here are all witnesses.’