Railroad

by Graham Masterton

  Collis shrugged. ‘I don’t know what to think.’

  ‘Well,’ said his father, rubbing his eyes, ‘I suppose it’s true that if you married Delphine, it would suit my business purposes well. It would certainly suit your mother. But whatever you believe, those weren’t our first considerations when we thought of her.’

  Collis went to the window and stood with his back to his father, looking out over the twilit width of East Twenty-first Street, and across towards Gramercy Park, where the gaslights twinkled behind the breeze-blown trees. It was a warm, sultry evening, with a feeling of more summer rain, and he was looking forward to a cold beer at the Gem, and then dinner at Delmonico’s with his friend Henry Browne. After that – who knew where lust and inebriation would take him? He had tried to suppress the memory of last night, and this morning, and Kathleen Mary’s fall from the parapet. The doctor had advised him not to mourn her, not to get involved, and to the best of his ability, he hadn’t. But he had decided that he would visit a regular whorehouse tonight. Iris’s or Madame Morris’s, on Greene Street, and that he would leave the ladies of the streets alone. Particularly the Irish ones, or the ones who called, “Come home with me, sir,” with too much anxiety in their eyes. He knew that Kathleen Mary had stirred his conscience, and altered his feelings about himself, although he wasn’t sure exactly how.

  His father said, ‘Your mother and I may not express our feelings exactly right at times, but we both feel concern for your future. We shall be dead some day, you know, and what will you do then?’

  ‘I expect I shall survive. I shall have to.’

  ‘The wretches of Gotham Court survive, Collis. The drunks and the sluts of the Five Points survive. But we wish you more than survival. We wish you to build upon the prosperity that I have created throughout my years of work, to work hard yourself, and to become wealthier still.’

  ‘Nobody makes his fortune through hard work these days,’ Collis answered. ‘Not the way that you did with your fishing fleets. A fellow has to gamble on the stock market these days, or on railroad bonds, or faro. It’s all risk, and has nothing to do with effort.’

  Makepeace shook his head. ‘You’re misguided, do you know that? You don’t understand how much wealth this nation still possesses, untapped and unexploited. I myself went for one particular resource – lobsters – and I made my first hundred thousand from lobsters. But there is still gold, and silver, and land itself, and all the plants that can be grown on the land and all the animals that can be fed off those plants. There’s money out there, Collis – it’s just waiting to be fished out of the sea, or dug up from the soil.’

  ‘Very philosophical,’ said Collis.

  ‘It’s not philosophy, it’s fact, and the only reason you’re sitting on your backside bemoaning your lot is that you’ve never had the gumption to go see for yourself. I’m a doughface, am I? Well, maybe I damn well am. Maybe I was fishing up thirty-pound lobsters off Maine before you were born, or even thought of, and maybe I’d like to see the Union stay together so that my Southern bills are paid and my Southern investments are safe. What I have, I worked for by my own sweat, and I’ll remind you that every morsel of food you eat in this house, and every stick of furniture you sit upon, was paid for by Southern money, and by my own efforts.’

  Collis set his cheroot on the edge of a silver ashtray and blew out a last funnel of blue smoke.

  ‘Father,’ he said, ‘your rhetoric is as overblown as your facts. The day I see a thirty-pound lobster, I shall drop to my knees and beg your forgiveness for doubting you, but until then, I think I shall feel entitled to reserve my judgement. Thirty pounds! A lobster like that could break your leg with one claw!’

  Makepeace pulled at his whiskers. ‘There are thirty-pound lobsters off Maine, and bigger. I’ve seen beasts with such claws as would each feed a family of five, and still leave meat enough for patties the following day!’

  ‘Thirty pounds? You’re not joking?’

  ‘As big as this,’ said Makepeace, stretching his arms out. ‘So big they had to be held down by two men, and boiled to death in my partner’s wash-house boiler, along with the shirt fronts!’

  Collis couldn’t resist laughing. ‘I wish I’d been there,’ he said. ‘The sight of you struggling with a thirty-pound lobster would have made my whole life worthwhile.’

  ‘Don’t be so damned impertinent,’ said his father, but almost benignly. ‘Those were hard days, and hard times, and there were none of the conveniences you expect today, like gaslight, and lead plumbing. You should be grateful, you young beggar, because if it weren’t for those lobsters, and if it weren’t for my training in them, you’d be the poorest soul in New York, and you wouldn’t have a pair of shoes to take you up Third Avenue, let alone a horse.’

  Collis sat down and looked across at his father seriously, his hands clasped on his lap and his legs crossed. The trouble was, he knew that his father was often right, and that it was time for him to learn how to support himself. These days, in spite of the speculative boom in gold and railroads and real estate, the price of keeping a good house was increasing almost monthly, and the time was going to come when he was going to have to support himself, his wife if he took one, and children if he had any, as well as servants, and horses, and carriages, at a respectable address.

  ‘Father, let me ask you a question.’

  ‘About lobsters?’

  ‘About Delphine.’

  ‘Well, of course. She’s a fine girl, you know. A girl of excellent education. And she has a sense of humour, too, which is rare enough in women.’

  ‘You can spare me the eulogies,’ Collis said. ‘What I want to know is, has she been told that I fancy her?’

  ‘Of course not. I have some sense of propriety.’

  ‘In that case, would it interfere too gravely with your carefully prepared schemes if I were to meet her, and have the opportunity of making her acquaintance more thoroughly? All I happen to know about her at the moment is that she is decidedly ample, though short, and that her family paid fifteen hundred dollars for a pew at Grace Church, which strikes me as needless extravagance.’

  His father sniffed and looked across. ‘You can see her, of course. But you don’t have to make it sound as if you’re doing us a favour,’ he said.

  ‘Why not?’ asked Collis. ‘I am. I would far rather not meet her at all. But I am trying to be sensible, by your lights at least, and to be accommodating. One eye on the future, don’t you know? So why don’t you talk to your friend George Spooner and ask if Delphine and I might accidentally on purpose encounter each other at a dance, or a lunch, or something of the sort.’

  ‘You mean it?’ asked Makepeace. ‘You’re at least prepared to try?’

  Collis shrugged. ‘Why not? I have nothing to lose, even if I don’t have very much to gain.’

  ‘You have your mother’s approbation to gain.’

  ‘That’s exactly what I mean.’

  Before Makepeace had the chance to make a retort, there was another rap at the door, and Maude appeared, Collis’s sister. She was a tall girl for the times, at least five feet five, with a round pudgy face and unnaturally high colouring in her cheeks. This evening she wore a plain gown of unpleasant buff, with a citrine brooch and sleeves that were too tight for her, and an expression to match.

  ‘Father and I were discussing lobsters,’ said Collis, leaning back on the settee to look up at her. ‘He says that off Maine there are monsters of thirty pounds or more, and we were trying to decide whether one of them could take your head off with one pinch.’

  ‘Don’t be repulsive,’ said Maude. ‘Father, the checker board is ready, and Mother has asked Angus to pour you a glass of sherry wine.’

  ‘Thank you, Maude,’ answered Makepeace, a little heavily.

  Collis got to his feet. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘since you two have decided on an evening of debauchery, with checkers and the demon drink, I suppose I’d better get me gone to my chapel meeting, so that I can p
ray for your souls.’

  He took a cab downtown, sitting back on the leather-upholstered seat as it rolled noisily over the ruts of Broadway. The cabby was of the fat, greasy-vested, uncommunicative sort, and sat with his shoulders hunched, twitching his whip at his horse’s ears as if it irritated him somehow to see a horse with ears, but as if he couldn’t stir himself to do very much about it. These days, many of the cabbies were Armenian or Irish, and didn’t know the streets of New York any better than the day they had first stepped off the boat, let alone enough English to be able to understand where one wanted to go. But the jam of traffic jostling its way downtown carried the hansom along with it, whether the cabby wanted to go in that direction or not, and that suited Collis, as far as it went.

  It was a warm, overcast night, and the rain had held off, so Broadway was thicketed with cabs and stagecoaches and carriages, and the sidewalks were teeming with people. Outside the marble portico of the St Nicholas Hotel, along the gas-lit frontage, from a confusion of coaches with silk-hatted coachmen and well-brushed horses, the fashionable and the well-to-do were alighting for a charity dinner, and then parading two by two into the glittering marble hallway, between settees of tiger and leopard and zebra skins, as if they were the most graceful of creatures admitted to the most elegant of arks.

  The night smelled of perfume and gas; of brick dust and horse manure and decaying garbage; a sweetish, sourish, distinctive odour which was at its strongest at this time of year, when food rotted quickly and the sewers were full. Collis barely noticed it, but he did take out his handkerchief to cover his nose and mouth as the cab was halted by a jam of coaches on the corner of Walker Street, where Broadway was obstructed by uprooted flagstones and builder’s rubble, because two dead dogs lay in the gutter, awaiting collection by the dead-animal man, and the warmth of the evening made them stunningly high.

  They arrived at last outside the Broadway Theatre, and Collis climbed down from the hansom and paid the driver thirty cents. Then, tugging his grey silk vest straight and setting his black silk top hat slightly back on his head, which these days was considered the rakish way of wearing it, he walked through brass-and-mahogany doors to the Gem Saloon. It wasn’t crowded yet, as it would become later in the evening, but already one or two of his cronies were there, leaning up against the far end of the bar, next to the elaborately decorated and curtained dining booths. The smoke was thick and the conversation was loud and cheerful.

  The Gem Saloon was high-ceilinged, with a polished floor of checkered marble, and a fine long bar, carved with satyrs and cupids in bas-relief. Behind the white-jacketed backs of the barkeepers, reflecting the gas standards and the jugs and the bottles, and the clientele themselves, was the largest mirror in the whole of New York City, framed in convoluted gilt and crested by a mean-looking eagle. The Gem was still one of the most fashionable bars for young gentlemen and for aspiring New York politicians, although the Tammany hierarchy didn’t frequent it as often as they once used to, now that prohibition was becoming an increasingly sensitive issue.

  Henry Browne was drinking old-fashioneds and telling a long story about a talking dog. ‘Collis!’ he called. ‘Come and join us! What a fortuitous arrival!’

  Jack De Veeart of the coffee-importing De Veearts was there, a ruddy young man whose neckties looked as if they were going to strangle him; and Lewis Dunlop, who had big ears and was often dull-witted, but who was rich, through the grace of his commodity-dealing father, beyond almost all comparison. Henry Browne was older than all of them, twenty-six, and far more self-assured. He had joined the army as a lieutenant, but there had been a marginally scandalous affair involving a colonel and his wife, and he had discreetly left the service, with official approval, after only three years. Subsequently, he had studied for two years, at New York University, though quite what he had studied he claimed he could never recall. He was tall and broad-shouldered, with a head of curly light-brown hair, and Collis always felt about him that he would be a good friend to have around in a fight.

  Jimmy the barkeeper asked, ‘Mr Edmonds? What will you take, sir?’

  ‘A draught beer, please, and the sooner the better,’ said Collis. ‘It’s as warm as a street sweeper’s armpit out there.’

  Jimmy took a porter glass out of its bed of ice and poured Collis a beer. Collis drank it gratefully, wiped his mouth, and then set the glass on the bar. Jack De Veeart inquired, ‘Better? Back in the land of the living and breathing?’

  Collis nodded. ‘Good,’ said Jack. ‘Now Henry can carry on with his story.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Henry. ‘That was what was so fortuitous about Collis’s arrival. I’ve forgotten the end of the story. I know it was something to do with the dog saying, “You’d walk like this too, if you had four legs,” but that’s all I can remember.’

  ‘The man’s incorrigible,’ complained Lewis Dunlop. ‘He can never, ever, recall how his stories wind up. It’s too damned frustrating for words.’

  ‘Well, it’s interesting that you should mention frustrating,’ said Henry, ‘because an acquaintance of mine mentioned today that a new whorehouse has opened its doors on Leonard Street, and apparently it puts on a very piquant exhibition. I thought after Delmonico’s we might wander that way, and see what we can see.’

  ‘That sounds fair,’ agreed Lewis. ‘By the way, Collis, how did you get on with your latest Gorgon last night? There was a red-headed horror, and no mistake!’

  Jack laughed. ‘He’s quite right, Coll. You do have the most appalling taste in ladies, when you’re tiddly. Was she good, being so ugly, or were you too drunk to mind?’

  ‘She was good-natured, in her way,’ Collis told them, with unexpected seriousness. ‘I don’t suppose she ever had the chance in her life to do anything grand, or even anything worthwhile. But she was a thoughtful girl, and I believe that if anyone said that of me, I wouldn’t half object.’

  Henry lifted one of his shaggy light-brown eyebrows. ‘That sounds like an epitaph, my dear boy. You really shouldn’t be so sad about a lady of the streets, particularly a lady of the streets who could have gone twenty rounds with the best middleweight in the nation, and won.’

  Lewis and Jack laughed, and Jack slapped Collis on the back. Collis sipped a little more beer and tried to look amused.

  Henry noticed his expression. ‘There’s definitely something wrong,’ he said. ‘You’re not yourself.’

  ‘He’s all right,’ said Lewis. ‘If this whorehouse show is anything you say it is, and if Delmonico’s is putting on its peppered steak, then we’ll soon have him back to normal.’

  ‘No, no,’ remarked Henry. ‘It’s more than that. I detect a thoughtfulness, a silent introspection. What’s amiss, Collis? I know it’s something.’

  Collis shrugged. ‘There was an accident this morning. I took the girl to the Monument, you see, because it was nearest, and because they know me there; but in the morning, when I woke up, there were two pugilists at the door, as well as the manager from the Madison Saloon.’

  ‘Oh my God,’ said Jack. ‘I suppose he wanted paying for the glasses we broke.’

  Collis nodded. ‘I tried to do my usual, and duck out of the window, but this silly girl didn’t manage it, and slipped. She fell three floors.’

  ‘Was she killed?’ asked Lewis, with a frown.

  ‘I don’t think so. They brought a doctor, and he said her hips were crushed. He told me to forget about it. He said it wasn’t my fault, and even if it was, I shouldn’t admit any guilt. He said that girls like that are bound to die anyway before their time, and that the worst I’d done was hasten her finish.’

  ‘A sensible man,’ commented Jack. ‘Most people would have screwed you for ten dollars to keep quiet about it.’

  ‘Most of them did. The manager of the Madison, and the manager of the Monument, and the local officer.’

  ‘So it cost you a pretty penny, last night, as well as your good humour?’ asked Henry.

  Collis finished his beer and aske
d Jimmy for a stone fence. ‘It’s made me think about myself, if that’s what you mean, and what I am, and where my money comes from.’

  ‘Money comes from parents,’ said Jack. ‘It’s a known biological fact.’

  Collis watched absent-mindedly as Jimmy poured two ounces of bourbon into a tall, frosted glass, clattered in a spoonful of ice cubes, and then topped it up with cider. He said, without looking up at his friends, ‘This was almost the first time I’ve ever thought of a whore as a real person, I guess. When she was lying on the sidewalk, all broken and bruised like that, she wasn’t trying to do anything but survive, as all people must.’

  ‘I hope you’re not going to be morbid all evening,’ said Lewis. ‘If you are, then I suggest we cancel the restaurant, and forget about Leonard Street, and go to the cemetery and read the inscriptions on the gravestones until we all feel better.’

  ‘No, I don’t think I’m morbid,’ Collis told him with a faint smile. ‘I just think I’m taking stock of myself. I suppose my father prompted me, too, when we talked this afternoon.’

  ‘Does your father know about the girl?’ asked Henry.

  ‘No. You’re the first people I’ve mentioned it to.’

  ‘Then I should make sure it stays that way. To frequent the brothels is one thing, but to let it be known that you do is quite another. I quite expect that one half of the Union Club has the clap and that the other half is doing its best to contract it, but in the best society these things are always better left unsaid. And as for letting whores fall out of hotel windows … well, that does smack of uncaring libertinism, don’t you think?’

  ‘Henry,’ said Collis, raising his glass, ‘I drink to your sense of social delicacy. But there is one thing more.’

  ‘You let another whore fall out of another window?’ inquired Jack.

  ‘It’s bad enough dodging the slates and the bricks from the demolition work,’ put in Lewis.

  ‘No, no,’ Collis told them. ‘It’s what my father broached with me this afternoon. He said he had found me a young lady. Arranged a betrothal, as it were. He is desperately keen to see me married and respectable – or, at the very least, married and apparently respectable.’