Collis smiled. ‘I suppose one’s heart would rather be any place than Pennsylvania.’
Alice took hold of Collis’s arm. ‘Come on, Collis,’ she insisted. ‘I think we should see what good things Miss Lane has provided to eat. And then perhaps a dance.’
They retreated out of range of Harriet Lane’s displeasure with Alice Stride so flushed across the breastbone from heat and embarrassment that she clashed with her gown. ‘Really, Collis!’ she kept saying. ‘I can’t understand you! You seem determined to upset everybody!’
Collis held her arm and piloted her towards the buffet table, which was laid out under a long mirror on the east side of the room. There were great silver bowls of ice, misted with condensation, in which freshly-opened Potomac oysters lay glistening in the light of the chandeliers; there were joints of rare beef as pink as roses; and chicken and lobster salads so decorative that chefs must have twiddled and breathed over them for hours. Collis took a plate for Alice, and had one of the servers heap it with ham and oysters and jellied tongue before she could protest. He took a whole smoked grouse for himself, while Theodore less impetuously picked a lobster salad, and then they went to sit down at the tables that were set out in the corner.
‘I shall never know how to speak to Harriet again,’ said Alice. ‘This is a fine return for all those introductions I gave you.’
‘You asked me to escort you,’ said Collis, with his mouth full. ‘You didn’t say that I had to kow-tow to your doughface friends.’
‘How can you call Harriet a doughface? She’s a lovely woman! She’s sensitive, and beautiful, and she’s worth twenty-five of you!’
Collis sliced off another piece of grouse. ‘I shouldn’t worry about it, Alice. Old Buck will be out of office in two years, and then it won’t matter if you’re friendly with Harriet or not.’
‘I don’t know how you can say such things,’ said Alice.
Collis took a sip of chilled white wine. ‘I can say such things, my dear, because I’ve discovered at last what kind of a place Washington is, and what kind of people it harbours. This is the seat of government, yes; but it’s also the seat of corruption, greed, trickery, and every variety of swindle known to man.’
‘I didn’t know you were such an evangelist,’ Alice told him.
‘I’m not. I’ll tell you something, Alice. When I was gambling and whoring in New York, and spending my nights in Green Street brothels, I thought I was one hell of a terrible devil. But since I’ve come here, and seen Congress like a nest of cuckoos, with their beaks all stretched open for bribes and favours and everything they can get, I’ve realized what an amateur I am. I’m not evangelising about them, I’m simply expressing my admiration that they have managed to sink so low without actually penetrating the earth’s crust.’
‘I hope you’re not including my father,’ said Alice, putting down her fork.
Collis looked at her fork, and then at her. ‘Would it upset you if I were?’
She thought about that. Then she picked up her fork again. ‘No, I suppose it wouldn’t. I know what he has to do to survive.’
‘All right, then,’ said Collis. ‘We’ll grant him the right to survive, even when it means watering railroad stock, and selling off land that only exists on maps.’
‘That wasn’t his fault, that land sale in Oregon. He bought the land himself from somebody’s map.’
Collis raised his hands. ‘I’m not saying it was his fault. I’m simply saying that the games they play in this city are very dirty games, and that if I’m going to get what I want, I’m going to have to learn to play them, too.’
Theodore picked flesh out of a lobster claw. ‘What Collis is trying to tell you is that we’ve lost our political virginity on this trip,’ he remarked blandly.
Alice tugged at her necklace. ‘I see. Well, I suppose I should congratulate you, after a fashion.’
‘You think I’ve changed, don’t you?’ said Collis.
Alice looked at him. ‘Yes,’ she said, in a steady voice, ‘you have.’
‘Are you sorry you asked me to escort you?’
‘Not entirely. A little.’
‘Because of Harriet Lane?’ asked Collis. ‘Or for some other reason? Something personal, perhaps?’
She was silent. Her eyes clouded like breathed-on garnets.
‘The truth is always slightly painful, isn’t it?’ she asked him.
‘Yes.’
She smiled. A hurt smile. ‘Well, then,’ she said, ‘if the truth is painful, we shall tell each other lies.’
‘All right,’ said Collis. ‘You’ve bargained well for this evening out. Let’s lie, if we must, but let’s enjoy it, for all of our lies.’
Alice looked close to tears. But Collis pushed back his chair, and stood up, and offered his hand. ‘Would you care to dance, Miss Stride?’ he asked her. ‘I would consider it an honour.’
‘Thank you,’ Alice whispered with a catch in her throat, and stood up too. Theodore was left to finish off his wine and his lobster salad in earnest solitude, with flecks of shellfish in his beard, while Collis and Alice joined the dancing. He raised his head from time to time to see where they were, and he couldn’t help noticing how calm Collis looked, how self-contained, as if he had emptied himself of any regret for Hannah, or any pain for Delphine. He couldn’t help noticing, either, how Alice danced as if she were dreaming and how the glittering White House chandeliers found reflections in her eyes.
It was a few minutes after midnight when Senator Stride’s carriage rolled up to the door of the house on Eighteenth Street, and Collis and Theodore and Alice alighted. A kerosene lamp was flickering above the porch, but there were no lights along the street. The carriage rolled around the block to the stables, while Collis escorted Alice up the steps to the door, and knocked. Theodore had drunk half a bottle of wine too many, and stood on the sidewalk trying to fasten his evening cape with careful and incapable dignity.
Hubert, the manservant, opened the door. But as Alice stepped inside, and Collis took off his hat to bid her good night, a tall figure appeared in the hall-way behind him. It was Senator Stride, in a dressing-gown and fez, and he looked as if he was just about to retire to bed.
‘Is that Mr Edmonds I see there?’ the Senator asked loudly.
‘Yes, Father,’ said Alice. ‘We’ve had a very pleasant evening.’
‘Well, now, Mr Edmonds,’ said the Senator, crossing the hall and coming up to the front door. ‘The last time I heard anyone talk of you, you’d gone to California with your washbowl on your knee. Didn’t you care for it there, or wouldn’t they have you?’
He gave a deep, genial laugh. He hadn’t changed. He was as saturnine and craggy as ever, and his eyes were still shadowed and dark.
‘I went to California to rebuild the fortune that my father had unhappily lost in New York,’ Collis said coldly. ‘No thanks to you, I might say.’
‘Oh, you shouldn’t take it so personal,’ said Senator Stride. ‘Politics and finance, well, they’re both battles of a kind, running battles, and folks tend to get hurt in battles. It’s the way of the world.’
‘Getting hurt is one thing,’ said Collis. ‘Getting killed is another. My father died when I. P. Woolmer’s went down, and you could have saved him. Worse than that, I. P. Woolmer’s brought down Ohio Mutual, too, and that drove poor George Spooner to madness, which is worse than death, in its way.’
‘Well, you are in a grave mood,’ said Senator Stride. ‘But won’t you come in and take a drink? A brandy, to warm you up? I don’t drink myself, as you know, but I’ll sip a fruit cup with you.’
Collis hesitated, but Alice took his arm and smiled. ‘Of course you’ll have a drink, won’t you? It would be so nice if you and father could make everything up.’
‘Very well,’ said Collis. ‘I have a friend with me, too, Mr Theodore Jones.’
Senator Stride gave a warm smile. ‘I know.’
‘You know?’
‘I don’t stay ali
ve and well in Washington by going around with my eyes closed and my fingers in my ears,’ said the Senator. ‘I know what you’ve been up to, and why you’re here, and I’ve been waiting for this opportunity to chew the fat with you.’
‘Theodore?’ Collis called.
Theodore blinked up at him from the street. ‘Damned cape won’t work,’ he said. ‘Tried to fix it every damned way.’
Collis went down and took Theodore’s arm, and led him up to the porch. ‘The Senator wants to talk about railroads,’ Collis explained. ‘Do you think you’re sober enough to remember your finance, and your engineering, and your topographical surveys?’
‘Off by heart,’ assented Theodore. ‘Every nitpicking detail. Off by heart.’
‘All right, then,’ said Senator Stride. ‘You’d better come in.’
Alice said good night in the gloomy hallway. She kissed Collis’s cheek like a little beaky bird, and ran upstairs. Senator Stride led Collis and Theodore through to his library, where the sullen remains of a log fire burned in a marble fireplace as impersonal and impressive as the Parthenon, and where bald-eyed busts of Socrates and Tertullian stood on shelves lined with books on politics, history, horse breeding, and music. There was a worn leather settee by the fire, and an unruly collection of armchairs, and a ginger tomcat lay on the rug with an expression of disgruntled hedonism, as it tried to bask in the dying warmth of the logs. A piano stood in the far corner, scattered with sheet music. Senator Stride went across, raised the lid, and played a few bars of music that Collis didn’t recognize.
‘The opening of Anton Eberl’s symphony in E-flat,’ said the Senator, with a dry smile. ‘Eberl was a close pal of Mozart, and if you ask me he could have been a damned sight better. But that’s the way things go, isn’t it, Mr Edmonds? The people with the real talent are always overshadowed by the people with the style.’
Theodore sat down in one of the armchairs and tried to focus his eyes by stretching them sideways with his fingertips, like a Chinese.
‘You mean the good people always get themselves trodden under,’ said Collis.
‘Not at all,’ replied the Senator. He closed the piano. ‘Socrates said that nothing can harm a good man, either in life or in death, and if you apply that thought to your dear father, you have to admit that it holds true. Your father was lost way before you ever came to ask for money. He was lost because he tried to play a straight game in a crooked way, whereas if he’d played a crooked game a straight way, nobody could have touched him, not even me.’
Hubert came in with a tray of glasses. He poured a large Napoleon brandy for Collis, and a freshly-squeezed orange juice for the Senator. Theodore declined a drink with a weak wave of his hand.
When the servant had gone, Collis said, ‘I hadn’t heard you were any straighter than most, Senator, if you’ll pardon my candour. There was the Oregon land swindle, for example, and then the Milwaukee railroad fraud. Your name was hanging around both of those like rotten shad.’
The Senator kept on smiling. ‘You’re missing my point, Mr Edmonds. I know that both of those episodes were shameful, and that a great many innocent investors lost their money. I regret that. But in the same breath, I have to say that if you look at my personal involvement, it was entirely straightforward, entirely honest, and at no time was I ever aware that non-existent land was being sold, nor that railroad stock was being watered.’
He sat down on the settee, and set his half-finished glass of juice in the hearth. ‘What do you want me to do, Mr Edmonds? Give up business altogether? Because that’s what I’d have to do, to keep out of swindles and double-dealing altogether. I don’t have any doubt that there’ll be hundreds of more swindles in American business as time goes by, and I don’t have any doubt that my name will be hanging around any number of them. But if I washed my hands of anything that looked slightly shady, like Pontius Pilate, my place would simply be taken by characters twice as disreputable as me, twice as greedy, and twice as ready to cut the throats of people like your father and George Spooner. I have to admit that I’m motivated by profit – both in business and in Congress. But I like to think that my particular brand of greed is honest, and above-board, and that while I may cram my mouth with as much of my fellow diner’s food as I can get, I won’t bite his ankle under the tablecloth.’
Collis sat down too, and slowly swirled the brandy around in his glass. ‘I’m not sure why you’ve invited me in,’ he said. ‘I thought you were heavily involved with the Hannibal & St Joseph, and with Jeff Davis, and all the southern-route lobby.’
‘That’s right,’ said Senator Stride. ‘The first Pacific railroad has to be built south of the Thirty-eighth Parallel, in my view, unless this nation wants to see itself politically and economically torn apart.’
‘So you want to stop me?’
Senator Stride frowned. ‘Stop you? Why should I want to stop you? From what I’ve been hearing, you’re determined, and raring to go, and you’ve got the best engineer for the job.’ He glanced at Theodore. ‘When he’s sober, at least.’
‘He only got drunk because he was disappointed,’ said Collis. ‘It didn’t seem there was anybody in Washington willing to listen.’
‘That doesn’t surprise me. But I’m willing to listen. In fact, I’m willing to go further than that. I’m willing to put up money to help you form a railroad company.’
Collis peered at the Senator narrowly. ‘I’m not sure that I can believe what I’m hearing.’
The Senator looked amused. ‘What you’re hearing is good sense. I can’t pretend that I wouldn’t prefer to see the first transcontinental railroad run westwards out of St Joseph, or Memphis, or even Vicksburg. But there’s heavy industrial money in the North, and they’re going to need a Pacific railroad some day, even if it’s not the first. I’d rather have a share of that railroad than not.’
Collis stared at the Senator for a long, silent moment. Then he turned to Theodore. ‘Did you hear that? The Senator wants to back us.’
Theodore lifted his head.
‘That’s right,’ said Collis, ‘you heard me correctly. The Senator wants to back us.’
‘What does he want in return?’ asked Theodore slurrily.
Senator Stride reached out and tickled his ginger tomcat under the chin. ‘A share,’ he said. ‘That’s all.’
There was silence. The logs stirred and suddenly collapsed in the grate, sending a shower of sparks up the chimney.
‘I’ll lay out ten thousand dollars to start with,’ the Senator went on. ‘That should cover the expense of this trip, and give you enough to go back to California and form a company.’
‘What about a survey?’ Theodore wanted to know. He was very much the worse for drink, but he hadn’t lost his engineer’s sense of priorities. ‘It’s going to cost us thirty-five thousand dollars just to map our trace through the Sierra Nevada.’
‘You should raise that yourselves,’ said Senator Stride. ‘It would be far too blatant if I financed that for you. But your company stockholders should be able to lay out most of it.’
He stood up and walked slowly back to the piano. He raised the lid once more and began to play with one hand, a lyrical, mellifluous melody. ‘Once you’ve surveyed the route through the Sierra Nevada,’ he continued, ‘I can put the squeeze on quite a number of Congressmen and Senators to support you. Democrats and Republicans, both. You’d be surprised how many of them owe me favours, of one sort or another.’
He played, and Collis listened. Theodore was beginning to sober up, and he kept looking at Collis anxiously. Collis lifted a finger as a warning to Theodore to hold his peace. This was bear country, where a man who made the wrong move too quickly could get himself nastily gnawed.
‘Of course, you’ll need money of your own,’ Senator Stride explained. ‘There are one or two less scrupulous Representatives who will only cast a vote for gold. But once you’ve established with surveys that you can lay down a railroad where you claim you can lay down a railroad,
then I can start to get things moving. I can get you Congressional letters of support, and you can take the letters back to California and raise more money on the strength of them, and then you can bring the money back here to Washington and buy more support, and so on. Congress is like a fountain of money. The more money you pour into it, the more pours out.’
‘It could take years to survey the route properly,’ said Theodore.
‘That doesn’t matter to me. In fact, as far as I’m concerned, the longer you take, the better. I want to see the Southern route laid first, because I’ve already invested a sizable amount of money in it, and I believe that it’s going to keep the South strong. Jeff Davis tells me they should have the first topographical reports ready in two years. So take three or four years, if you need them. Take five.’
Theodore bit his lip. ‘Two years isn’t long,’ he said worriedly.
‘No, it isn’t, as these things go,’ said Senator Stride. ‘And that’s partly why I’ve made you the offer I have. I know the southern railroad will be laid down first, because it’s way ahead already; but unlike some of my colleagues in the Senate, I recognise that a northern route will eventually have to come.’
He played a trickly little coda, and then looked up at them, his eyes dark. ‘There are some who say this country will go to war. Well, I think that’s bull. I hate the way the damned Yankees have milked the South as much as anyone. But business is business, and this country has to learn to get along with itself. I think that building a southern-route railroad first and then a northern-route railroad about five or six years later – well, that should help to even up the political balance.’
‘And your personal bank balance, of course,’ said Collis.
The Senator paused. Then he said, ‘Yes,’ and chuckled.
Theodore beckoned Collis to bend his head nearer as the Senator began to play more of Eberl’s symphony in E-flat. ‘Two years,’ he whispered. ‘How can we get our surveys together in two years? We don’t even know if we can find a suitable pass!’
Collis sat up straight again. ‘We’ll find it,’ he said, under his breath. ‘You’ve always believed it’s there, and so it must be.’
Railroad Page 52
