She dropped her gaze. Instead of looking at his face, she looked at the white flower in his buttonhole. ‘Collis. Is it really you?’ she said, in a haunted voice.
‘Yes,’ he told her. ‘It’s really me.’
‘I thought you’d gone to California,’ she said. ‘I didn’t think –’
‘No,’ said Collis, ‘neither did I. But I’ve gotten involved in a plan to build a railroad, and I had to come back to lobby Congress.’
‘A railroad?’ she asked, with an uncomprehending frown.
The older boy said, ‘Oh, Spooner, you know what a railroad is. Even you. Now, can we get back? Cook said there’s fried chicken for lunch, and I’m starving.’
‘Ernest,’ said Delphine, abstractedly. ‘Your manners.’
‘I beg your pardon,’ Ernest retorted. ‘I’m “ready for lunch”, not “starving”.’
‘That’s better,’ said Delphine.
‘Can I see you?’ asked Collis. ‘I’ll be here for at least a month.’
‘That’s really impossible. I’m sorry, it’s quite impossible.’
‘Do they train you staff to say that around at Senator Carslake’s? “I’m sorry, but it’s quite impossible”?’
‘Collis, I can’t, that’s all. I’m not a lady any more. I’m a working woman. I’m a governess.’
Collis reached out and held her arm. She didn’t make any attempt to push him away. ‘You’re being ridiculous,’ he said gently. ‘You’re not a working woman now and you never will be. Look at you. You’re beautiful.’
‘Staff are not allowed to be beautiful,’ she said, turning away. Her eyes suddenly filled with tears. ‘It’s no good, Collis. I thought you’d be gone for ever.’
‘Alice told me you wouldn’t stay with the Strides, even though they begged you,’ said Collis.
‘My father never took charity. I didn’t want to let his memory down.’
‘He’s not dead yet, is he?’
She took out her handkerchief and dabbed at her eyes. ‘No. But nearly. The doctors don’t expect him to live out the year.’
‘And Winifred? Your mother?’
‘She won’t talk to anyone. When father goes, she’ll probably go too. She’s so thin now, you’d never recognise her. Remember how well she used to be?’
‘Yes.’
They stood for a while without talking. A Conestoga wagon ground past them, and Ernest fidgeted from one foot to the other. Amelia complained, ‘I’m cold.’
‘Do you have some free time?’ Collis asked. ‘Do they give you an afternoon off?’
‘Tuesdays, between two and six.’
Collis cleared his throat. ‘Can I see you then? We could go take some lunch. Or walk in the park, if you haven’t had too much of it lately.’
‘No.’ She looked so pretty and sad that Collis could hardly bear it.
‘Delphine,’ he insisted, ‘it doesn’t matter to me that you’ve lost your money and your family. I don’t think any the less of you. In fact, I admire your courage and your pride. I think you’re wonderful. Don’t you understand how much we have in common? We’ve both lost everything, and now we’re both fighting back. Couldn’t we do that together?’
She shook her head. The tears were running freely down her cheeks, and she couldn’t speak for unhappiness.
‘Couldn’t we just talk?’ asked Collis. ‘Couldn’t we just sip over a cup of coffee and a plateful of cookies and talk about old times?’
‘Spooner,’ Ernest said nasally, ‘this is absurd. It’s time we went back for lunch. Come along, now, or I shall tell Father you’ve been courting a man.’
Collis turned on the boy and snapped, ‘If you don’t stop whining, I’ll pull down your britches and tan the skin off your –’
‘That’s enough, Collis. I really have to go.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Collis told her. ‘I didn’t mean to be rude.’
‘It’s not that, my darling,’ she replied. ‘It’s not that at all. You can swear in five languages, and I’ll still love you. I loved you the moment I first met you.’
‘Then what are we doing, arguing about going out for tea? If you love me, then go back and tell Mrs Carslake she can go look for someone else. Come back with me to California.’
Delphine touched a stray dark curl that had come free from her bonnet. ‘It’s too late now, Collis,’ she said softly. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘I don’t understand what you’re trying to tell me. Why is it too late?’
‘You didn’t write,’ she said. ‘I thought I’d lost you for good.’
‘But I’m back now. I’m asking you to come away with me. What further proof of my feelings do you want?’
She looked at him, misty-eyed, and then she reached out and touched his cheek with great gentleness. ‘It’s just too late,’ she whispered. ‘When the New Year came, and I still hadn’t heard from you, I …’
She lowered her head. The ribbons of her bonnet were stirred by the wind. F Street was grey and chilly, and a red-faced man with a wicker basket on his head walked slowly past, tolling a handbell and calling, ‘Rockfish! Rockfish! Thirty-six cents the bunch!’
‘When the New Year came – what? Tell me!’
She didn’t raise her head. ‘I gave in to a gentleman who had been persistent in his attentions.’
‘Gentleman? What gentleman? What are you saying?’
She raised her face to him, as she had raised it that first day in Taylor’s restaurant on Broadway. Her eyelashes were wet with tears. ‘I cannot say it loud in front of the children,’ she said, so quiet that he could scarcely hear her. ‘It was their father.’
‘Senator Carslake?’
She nodded.
‘But, for God’s sake, you’re living and working in the same house as his wife!’
‘Yes, and she knows what’s happening.’
Collis bit his lip. He couldn’t think of anything to say. He felt as if he’d just awoken with an unbelievable hangover, to find that he’d been robbed of everything he’d ever owned. It had been lazy and thoughtless of him not to write to Delphine, and ridiculously conceited to think that she might have kept herself for him in case he ever returned. He felt he could be excused that omission, though, and that sin, because he’d never thought he would return, especially so soon. What really hurt was that his freshly revived dream of courting Delphine had been besmirched so abruptly, and in such an ugly way. He had seen Senator Carslake once, in New York, and from what he remembered he was paunchy, irritable, and coarse as a bear.
Delphine went on, ‘I cannot tell you much. But after Michael was born, Mrs Carslake was unable to be a wife to the Senator any longer. There was some infection, I don’t know what. So she tolerates the arrangement in order to keep him content, and to maintain her place in Washington society.’
‘What are you whispering about, Spooner?’ Ernest said sharply. ‘We have to go!’
Collis ignored him. ‘But you,’ he asked Delphine. ‘What about you? Surely you can’t love him?’
‘I don’t.’
‘Then why do you go through with it? Delphine – it’s hair-raising!’
‘I go through with it because I do. There isn’t anything else.’ Delphine’s eyes welled with tears again. ‘If I could have come to you as I was when I met you in Taylor’s, with my father and mother beside me and my dowry untouched – if I could have stood before the minister as a virgin, on your arm – then I would have. But it’s too late now. Those days are gone. I cannot come to you penniless, without a family, and I cannot come to you spoiled by a man upon whom you would not even deign to waste your spittle. I cannot.’
‘I’ll come by the house on Tuesday afternoon,’ Collis said.
‘No, Collis. Not on Tuesday, nor ever.’
‘Delphine –’
‘I have to go. The children will be late for their luncheon.’
Without another word, Delphine took Michael’s hand, and then ushered Amelia and Ernest across the street in front of
her. Collis followed close behind, but she wouldn’t turn around, wouldn’t slacken her step, and when they reached the north corner of F Street, he stopped and let her walk on towards Pennsylvania Avenue without him. Ernest turned around half-way up the block and stuck his tongue out.
Collis stood there watching her, feeling breathless, helpless, with his arms by his sides, his back slightly bent, his fists clenched. She and the children became smaller in the perspective of Nineteenth Street. A governess in a blue bonnet, with three charges in their winter coats, under a sky that was almost white with cold. A puff of vapour came out of Collis’s mouth as he breathed. Another puff. Delphine went up the steps of Senator Carslake’s house, and disappeared.
Harriet Lane was President Buchanan’s niece; but because Old Buck had lost the only love of his life in a ridiculous lovers’ tiff when he was young, she did duty as his official hostess, and in that role she was much admired, particularly by Washington’s Southern elite. She did everything she could to nurture the spirit of Southern gentility in her soirées and dinners, and her closest friends were the political families from Georgia, Alabama, and the Carolinas. The Strides, of course, were closer than most.
Harriet was blonde, and more than moderately handsome, with eyes that were violet by legend but muddy blue when you looked at her near. She carried herself with an hauteur that was a little too haut to be taken seriously, but Alice had always found her loyal, and witty, and devoted to her Uncle Jem. The President may have been a doughface, and a soft-shelled compromiser, but he was charming in company, and the most considerate of hosts. Harriet’s ‘drawing-rooms’ reflected that charm and consideration with merry conversation, elegant music, and tables of fussy food.
‘You won’t be fierce tonight, or sarcastic?’ asked Alice, as they drew up in Senator Stride’s carriage at the South Front of the White House. It was nearly a week later, the first Friday in March, and the weather had begun to soften. A warm south wind, freshened by the Potomac, was blowing gently in through their open carriage window.
‘We struck a bargain, didn’t we?’ Collis said. ‘You provided the introductions, and now we’re providing the escort.’
‘You needn’t make it sound as if you’re escorting me under duress.’
‘I’m sorry. That wasn’t my intention. I value your company just as much as I value your help.’
Alice lifted her large nose and fanned herself a little with her pierced-ivory fan. ‘Sometimes, Collis Edmonds, I’m not at all sure how to take you.’
Theodore sat opposite, in the darkness of the leather seating, and said nothing. He was saving his own talk for later, for any Senator or Congressman who might be persuaded to give them support for the Sierra Pacific railroad. Over the weekend, and during the early days of the week, he and Collis had already cut their lobbying teeth on ten members of the House of Representatives, both Democrats and Free-Soil Republicans, and on six members of the Senate. Both of them had been frustrated and depressed by their experience, and they saw tonight as their last effort to rouse some support. For all the money they had spent on dinners at Balzer’s Restaurant on I Street, and for all the hours they had sat and watched Congressmen devouring huge platefuls of veal, roast beef, and smoked ham, washing everything down with French wine and brandy, they had succeeded in arousing only the sketchiest interest in a Pacific railroad, and they had learned only one important thing about influencing Congress. Senator Salmon Chase of Ohio had put it best, when they dined with him at their own hotel. He had sat for an hour eating their food, and all they had seen of him until eight o’clock was the top of his bald, liver-spotted scalp, and his bushy eyebrows. Then, as he wiped his mouth with his napkin, he had looked up and told them, ‘An excellent dinner. And a very interesting discourse on trains. However, it won’t be enough.’
‘Not enough?’ Collis had asked him.
The Senator had smiled and shaken his head. ‘To navigate your way through the cloakrooms, and to net the support you want, you have to be furnished with the best of baits.’
‘What did he mean by “the best of baits”?’ Theodore had said later. ‘What more can we give them, apart from meals, and wines, and promises of shares in the railroad?’
Collis, sitting back in his hotel armchair with his shoes off, had answered, ‘The best of baits is money. These Congressmen are the hungriest group of men who ever got together, and we’re going to have to bribe them until they burst.’
Theodore had sat down too, defeated. ‘What with? We won’t have any money until we have their support, and we won’t have their support until we can buy it. It’s a vicious circle.’
‘It’s a circle we’ll have to break.’
As the Stride carriage waited its turn among the clutter of broughams and barouches outside the White House, Collis was thinking about something else which had made the week unhappy, apart from the avaricious Congressmen and Senators who were prepared to eat but not to listen. He was thinking about his three afternoon visits to Senator Carslake’s house, in an attempt to see Delphine. On Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, he had waited around the corner from Nineteenth Street on Pennsylvania Avenue, his face wrapped in a scarf in case she recognized him and tried to avoid him, and he had paced the boardwalk until it was dusk. Even on Tuesday, her afternoon off, she hadn’t appeared; and it was only on Wednesday evening, when he had finally called at the house to ask for her, that he learned what had happened.
The coffee-coloured Negro had told him, ‘Miss Spooner? She took the children down to Richmond for a while. Mrs Carslake’s instructions.’
Collis had stood for a while on the corner, where years ago children had gathered to watch Dolley Madison at her window, feeding her pet parrot. So this was how it ended. The romantic arrangement that his mother had made with Winifred Spooner, the flirtatious conversation in Taylor’s Restaurant, the ride in Central Park. He remembered Delphine saying, ‘I suppose it’s a punishment for both of us. Most of these terrible things are. I’ve been too forward and you’ve been too reckless, and the Lord has seen fit to separate us.’
The Lord’s punishment, he thought. Exact, painful, and just to the point of cruelty.
‘I wish the footmen would hurry,’ said Alice. ‘This is quite ridiculous.’
Collis leaned out of the carriage window. The curving stairs that led up to the south porch of the White House were twinkling with hand-held links as Harriet Lane’s guests were taken inside. There was a bustle of conversation and laughter. He could see young ladies in silk and velvet dresses, and men in red and green tailcoats, with showy neckties and fancy vests. A tall young man who walked past their carriage even had his whiskers and his eyebrows dyed pale blue to match his coat. The evening wind was fragrant with perfume.
At last their carriage shifted forward, and the door was hastily opened by a black footman in a frogged coat and a white-powdered wig. Collis and Theodore both stepped down, looking very New York in their black tailcoats and starched shirts, and helped Alice to alight. Alice was far more Washington, in a scarlet velvet gown trimmed with long white silk ribbons, and a scarlet cape with an overlay of Nottingham lace. The footman guided them towards the stone staircase, while another black boy led their carriage away. The footman’s torch made a flaring sound in the wind.
The tall South Front windows glittered with light, and the entrance was crowded with chattering guests. Collis patiently ushered Alice through the throng, feeling uncomfortable and out of place, and wishing very much that he hadn’t been obliged to come. Theodore, right behind them, looked hot and miserable, and before they managed to push their way through to the drawing-room, he had to take out his large white handkerchief and wipe the perspiration from his face. All around them, the hall-way and ante-rooms were jostling with dandified young Southern men, all curled hair and contrived poses, and by young Southern women, as pretty and white as porcelain shepherdesses, with bare shoulders and daringly low dresses, their laughter so high and precious that it sounded like the resonan
ce of fine crystal. These were the sons and daughters of some of the wealthiest and most influential slave-owners of Virginia, Georgia, Louisiana, and Mississippi. They represented huge wealth in cotton, fruit, livestock, and Negroes. They represented the South, in all her pride, her courtesy, her culture, and her disdain. None of them had heard of Antietam.
They came at last into the East Room, where Harriet Lane was receiving her guests. The chandeliers were dazzling, and the heat of the candles and the press of perfumed human bodies was almost enough, as Collis said afterwards, to roast a grouse before it could run across the room. The walls were pale egg-shell blue, and hung with gilt-framed pictures of George and Martha Washington, and Thomas Jefferson, and serene views of Harper’s Ferry and the Great Potomac Falls. There was a small orchestra playing cotillion music on the far side of the room, by the windows, but the noise of the guests almost swallowed them up.
Alice introduced Collis to Harriet Lane, who was sitting in a rococo chair fanning herself furiously and offering her hand to anyone who cared to come and kiss it. She was wearing a silvery silk dress, and a necklace of rubies and diamonds, and her auburn hair was decorated with silver and diamond combs. She could have been pretty, but she was pink and bothered, and Alice whispered later that she was not looking her best. She had probably argued with the caterers, or with the orchestra, or with her dressmaker. In any case, she looked Collis up and down and spoke quite sharply to him, as if he had done something wrong by simply walking into the room.
‘You’re very sombre, Mr Edmonds,’ she said, looking away from him. ‘I trust nobody close to you has passed on.’
‘It’s my usual evening dress, Miss Lane,’ said Collis, bowing. ‘I’m sorry if you find it funereal.’
‘I find it snobbish, as a matter of fact,’ retorted Harriet Lane. ‘Only a Yankee could arrive at a Washington party dressed so plain, and looking so superior about it.’
‘My apologies,’ said Collis. ‘But only another Yankee could be so sensitive about it.’
Harriet Lane turned back towards him and stared. ‘I may have been raised in Pennsylvania, Mr Edmonds, but my heart is here.’
Railroad Page 51
