‘Very well,’ Collis said, under his breath. ‘At nine tomorrow, well after the sun has set.’ And then he said loudly, ‘I hope that answers your questions on our dear President’s death, Miss Spooner,’ and stepped away from her with a courteous bow. Delphine dropped him a sarcastic curtsey in return.
She was late. It was almost ten before he heard her carriage drawing up outside, and the jingling of the bridle as she tied the horse to the rail by the side door. He had been drinking whisky and smoking cigars with a kind of steady fury, and he sprang to the door and opened it even before she could raise her hand to the bell.
‘Well,’ he said, quite breathlessly, ‘you came.’
She stepped inside. She wore a maroon gown sewn with small seed pearls, and a black shoulder cape with maroon piping. Her hair was tightly curled with tongs, and she smelled of some flowery French perfume that Collis couldn’t place. It reminded him of something, or of someone … but he wasn’t sure what, or who.
He followed her into the drawing-room. It had hardly been used since Hannah had died, and it seemed cold. Delphine walked in a circle around the room, touching books and ornaments and vases with her fingertips, and arriving at last by the gilded mirror over the fireplace, where she stopped and smiled at her own reflection.
‘Would you like a drink?’ Collis asked her.
She nodded. ‘A glass of sweet white wine if you have it.’
Collis went to the side table, where four bottles of wine and a bottle of champagne were cooling in a bucket of crushed ice. He poured Delphine a drink, then returned to her, holding it up in his hand.
‘I suppose I owe you a very deep apology,’ he said.
She took her drink. ‘Why? Because you’re lonely?’
‘Lonely?’ he asked her.
She took off her bonnet and sat down on the sofa uninvited. ‘I can’t think of any other reason why you might be interested in renewing our friendship, can you?’ She smiled.
Collis looked at her cautiously. ‘I owe you an apology because of what I did to you, and that’s all. The reason I asked you to come here – the reason I wanted to talk to you – well, this is simply for old times’ sake. We loved each other once. Why should we be hostile to each other now – especially after everything that’s happened?’
Delphine stared back at him and then let out a high, loud laugh. ‘For old times’ sake? Collis, you must be going soft in the head! Do you still believe that I’m that coy and passionate little innocent you knew in New York? Is that the fantasy you have of me still? After all the parlours and cathouses I’ve entertained in? After Virginia City, and Denver, and Kansas? After all those sweating sodbusters and land agents and half-drunk deputies have climbed on top of me and –’
‘Stop it!’ shouted Collis. ‘What the hell are you trying to say?’
Delphine shrugged and sipped at her wine. ‘I’m simply trying to spare you the embarrassment of courting a whore in the way that you would a fruity but virginal young girl.’
Collis took a deep breath. ‘Well …’ he said. ‘What I’m trying to say is that I’m willing to forget all those men.’
Delphine was open-mouthed. ‘You’re willing to forget all those men? You’re willing? What in a hog’s ass does it have to do with you? I’m willing to forget all those men, too! More than willing. But my problem is that I can’t. Don’t you think that’s a pity? Somehow my stubborn little memory won’t bring itself to erase all those squeaking mattresses and all those stinking pricks and all that tobacco juice and whisky and strange men’s seed.’
‘For Christ’s sake, Delphine,’ snapped Collis. ‘This is Easter Monday, and you’re talking like a –’
‘A whore?’ challenged Delphine, in a strong, clear voice.
Collis lifted his hand helplessly. He hadn’t expected it to be like this. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry for everything. There isn’t anything else I can say.’
Delphine put down her glass and stood up. She came over to him and laid her small hands on his hips. When she looked up at him, her eyes were soft and concerned and blurred with tears.
‘I’m sorry, too,’ she said. ‘I would have done anything to be able to turn back the clock, and come to you tonight the way I was in New York. But I can’t. I’ve seen too much, Collis, and experienced too much; and what I told you before – that’s true, too. I’m only living the kind of life I was always destined to lead, the way you are.’
The pendulum of the clock on the mantelpiece reflected the lamplight into Collis’s eyes like a monotonous message from an unremembered time. He bent forward and kissed Delphine gently on the lips. When he raised his head again, her eyes were still closed and her lips were still parted, and so he kissed her again.
She touched his face with her fingertips. ‘Collis …’ she said, in a dreamy whisper. ‘Do you really believe that it’s possible for people to forget?’
‘I don’t know,’ he said. His chest felt tight. ‘I just don’t know.’
‘I don’t think it is,’ she told him. ‘We can forgive, perhaps, but we can never really forget.’
Collis leaned forward to kiss her again, but somehow she averted her face, and scratched him instead with the plumes on her bonnet. He frowned at her and tried to hold her hands, but she turned away from him and swept across to the other side of the room. She stood there, straight-backed, self-assured, and raised one hand. Then, stiffly, she tugged on her glove, pushing each finger well down.
‘I believe one day that I will find it in my heart to forgive you, Collis,’ she said, ‘but you can be assured that I will never forget what you did to me, and what you must have done to so many people who stood in your way. Your mind was set on a famous achievement, wasn’t it? To cross the High Sierra by rail, and to make your fortune. Well, you and the Sierra deserve each other. You’re both cold, both haughty, and you both have hearts of flawless granite.’
‘Delphine …’ said Collis.
‘No, Collis,’ she said. ‘I have something to say … something I think you ought to know. Perhaps I’m saying it for the sake of my own revenge on you; but perhaps you’ll learn something about yourself, too.’
‘I can’t believe that anything you can tell me can possibly teach me anything about myself,’ retorted Collis. He was feeling frustrated now, and he was growing angry. This wasn’t just Collis Edmonds the gambler and rake that this cheap young whore was talking to. This was Collis Edmonds the railroad millionaire. Or potential millionaire, at least.
‘Just listen,’ said Delphine. ‘I talked to Mrs Pangborn about you last week, quite by chance, and Mrs Pangborn told me something which shocked me more than anything I have ever heard in my whole life. Mrs Pangborn told me that soon after you were married to your widow woman, Hannah, you gave her a child.’
‘A child?’ said Collis. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘She became pregnant, that’s what I’m talking about. She became pregnant, but she didn’t tell you. Instead, she took herself to Mrs Pangborn, and Mrs Pangborn was obliging enough to end her pregnancy for her, before you could even find out.’
Collis stared at Delphine in horror. ‘A child?’ he repeated. ‘But that was later … that was what killed her –’
‘No,’ said Delphine. ‘It wasn’t later at all. What you don’t seem to understand is that there were two children. The first, which Mrs Pangborn successfully aborted … and then the second.’
‘Hannah was pregnant with two children of mine and she didn’t even tell me? I don’t believe it! You’re talking nonsense! Vicious, incredible nonsense!’
‘Maybe I am. You can easily find out for yourself. Ask Mrs Pangborn. She’ll tell you, as long as you pay her enough, and don’t threaten to take her to the law. Your first child ended up in a paper parcel, floating down the Sacramento River to the sea; your second child presented complications. Mrs Pangborn accidentally pierced the womb with her instruments, and killed both your wife and your baby-to-be. She covered up her little acc
ident by taking Hannah out of town in her buggy and leaving her there, so that her death would look like a natural miscarriage. But she killed her right enough; or rather your child did; or rather you did.’
Collis was white. He could feel the blood shrinking away from his face and his hands, and he could hardly find the co-ordination to speak.
‘I did?’ he grated. ‘What do you mean? I didn’t even know. My God, Delphine, she didn’t even tell me.’
Delphine slowly moved around the drawing-room. ‘She didn’t tell you because she was afraid for any baby of yours – afraid that it might be rated second-best to your precious railroad.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘Neither do I, quite. But that’s what Mrs Pangborn told me. Your wife didn’t want to have any children until the railroad was completed. Mrs Pangborn said she’d promised you that on your wedding day.’
Collis suddenly sat down. ‘My God,’ he said. ‘My God, I can’t believe it. Hannah, and two unborn babies, just for the sake of forty miles of railroad track. Oh, my God.’
Delphine watched him for a while. He was plainly too stunned even to cry. ‘I had to tell you, Collis. It wasn’t the kind of intelligence I could have kept to myself, even if I hadn’t wanted to hurt you.’
‘Well, you’ve hurt me,’ he said, in a choked voice.
She came across and stood beside him for a moment. Then she kissed him, very lightly, on the forehead.
He looked up at her, his eyes unfocused. ‘Are you going now?’ he asked her.
‘Do you want me to?’
‘I’d prefer it if you stayed.’
‘What for? So that I can hurt you some more? Haven’t you had enough, thinking of your baby floating its way down to San Francisco, and your wife bleeding to death in her carriage – all because of you and your obsession?’
Collis was silent for a long time, but eventually he whispered, ‘Stay.’
Delphine shook her head. ‘I’d have to charge you, and you wouldn’t like that. You’re costing me money as it is.’
‘Stay,’ he repeated.
‘No,’ she told him. ‘You deserve to be on your own. You deserve to realise just for one evening where your grand scheme has finally got you. No place at all, but alone.’
‘You whore,’ he said, with pain and disgust.
‘Yes,’ she said, with dignified pleasure.
For more than a year after Easter Monday, 1865, Collis worked on the railroad with an intensity that frightened even Leland. Although Charles was officially in charge of construction, Collis would visit the railhead two or three times a week, pale-faced, dark-eyed, in his tall black silk hat and his black tailcoat. He was so sharp and emaciated these days that the Irish labourers called him the Raven, and the Chinese called him Yama, after the thin and elegant oriental demon who presided over Pitris, or hell.
The first challenge to Collis’s freshly-fired obsession with completing the railroad came fifty-seven miles out of Sacramento, where the graders were confronted with a huge bulk of shale, protruding out of the slope of the Sierras nearly two thousand feet above the foaming cleft of the American River. It was here that Collis and Theodore and Wang-Pu had stopped with Doc Kates to share a picnic lunch; but to the railroad engineers, the outcropping looked so forbidding and impassable that they quickly christened it Cape Horn. It fell at an angle of seventy-five degrees straight down to the river gorge, and yet somehow they were supposed to cut a ledge into it to carry a railroad.
Collis went to inspect it on a windy afternoon, with Charles plodding silently beside him. Kwang Lee came too, a few steps behind Collis, dressed in a very long brown tweed overcoat.
‘This is typical of Theodore,’ said Charles, pointing out Cape Horn on the survey map. ‘He was always seeing soft digging dirt where there was nothing but solid rock.’
Collis lifted his eyes towards the summit of the outcropping. It was grey, and rugged, and sparsely scattered with trees. From close up, it looked like one of the shoulders of the world.
‘You need to blast, right?’ Collis asked Charles.
Charles nodded. ‘The trouble is, how are we going to get a blasting crew to perch on a seventy-five-degree slope while they bore the holes for the charges?’
Collis thought for a while, and then beckoned Kwang Lee forward. ‘This is just an idea,’ he said. ‘Supposing the Chinese climbed to the top of the rocks and built winches up there. Then supposing they were lowered in baskets down the face of the shale, so that they could drill anywhere they liked. Do you think they’d do it?’
Charles raised an eybrow. But Kwang Lee took a careful look at Cape Horn and then said, ‘I think they would find great pride in blasting that rock, Mr Edmonds. Do you want me to pass the instructions on?’
‘I’d be grateful,’ said Collis.
Charles watched the Chinaman go and then said, ‘Well, I’ll be damned.’
During the following weeks, Chinese workers were winched down the rocky spur until they were dangling fourteen hundred feet above the American River. With hand drills, sledgehammers, and barrels of black gunpowder, they gradually blasted a ledge across the uncompromising spur, until they reached the far side.
The Chinese took huge delight in cutting the fuses of their gunpowder charges to different lengths, so that when they signalled that they were ready to blast, and their colleagues hauled them up the face of Cape Horn to be safely out of the way, all their explosives went off at once, with a massive echoing bang. Collis brought several bankers and their families up from San Francisco to see the blasting of Cape Horn. It was a spectacular sight, and good for investment.
During the summer of 1866, Collis saw Delphine only once, and then she ignored him. A week later he heard that she had left Sacramento and had gone to San Francisco to work in a parlour house on Dupont Street. He often heard about her after that, from Maria-Mamuska in particular, but he never saw her again, ever.
By the winter of 1866, the Chinese railroad gangs had started work on the last and the longest of the six tunnels which took the Sierra Pacific up to the very summit of the mountains. Once they were over the top, there were still nine more tunnels to be bored before the railroad could reach the flatlands of Nevada, and Charles had already assigned digging to be started on these tunnels, night and day. But the Summit Tunnel was what he always called ‘the pig’, and both he and Collis took personal charge of the excavations.
To complete the Summit Tunnel, they had to bore a hole 20 feet high through 1659 feet of totally solid granite, over 7000 feet above sea level. It would have been a pig in the summer, but in the harsh winter of 1866–7, it was a struggle that drove Collis to the limits of his physical and emotional endurance. There were over forty blizzards that winter, and drifts so deep that the Chinese had to tunnel their way through the snow just to reach the face of the rock.
Three times during January, Charles asked Collis to let up; to wait until the thaw. But each time Collis refused. If he could stay up in the High Sierras in the bitter cold, then so could the Chinese, and so could Charles, for that matter. Every day Collis would visit each tunnel heading – the crew that was gradually blasting its way uphill and the crew that was equally gradually blasting its way downhill. Every day he watched drill bits breaking on the impossibly hard granite, as the workers sweated to bore holes that were deep enough to take an effective charge. Every day he restlessly paced his timber hut by the western heading of the tunnel, with his maps and his charts spread out on the table, and the windows blind with snow.
In March, Leland made the journey up to Summit Tunnel and brought with him a large smoked ham, a pound of good Virginia tobacco, and a bottle of nitroglycerin. Nitroglycerin had recently been invented in Europe, he had heard, and was an admirable explosive. In fact, European engineers called it ‘blasting oil’. Collis ignored the ham and the tobacco and immediately called on his Chinese powder monkeys to make some tests with the explosive. For the next three weeks, to Collis’s increasing excitement, t
he Chinese blew out foot after foot of granite with the new oil, and by 15 April, Charles was predicting that they could be through the mountain by the end of July.
The day after, they heard by telegraph from San Francisco that a consignment of nitroglycerin which had been stored in the back of the Wells Fargo office in San Francisco had exploded for no apparent reason, killing twelve passers-by and tossing a gory arm into the street. And by the end of the week, in spite of hours of argument and wheeling and dealing in the state capital by Leland and his friends, all shipments of nitroglycerin into California were indefinitely suspended. Collis was furious.
Alone, he took out a buggy and drove back along the roadbed as far as Dutch Flat. It was a sunny afternoon, and for the first time in months he wore a beige linen coat and a flat white hat. He reined in his horse outside of Doc Kate’s pharmacy and drugstore and stepped inside.
The place hadn’t changed at all. There was still the smell of coughdrops and soap that he remembered from the first time he had walked in with Theodore. And there behind the counter, measuring out bath salts, was Doc Kates himself.
‘Doc?’ Collis said.
Doc Kates peered at him hard through his spectacles, then smiled in recognition. ‘Collis Edmonds. Well, I’ll be. I thought you’d be sitting in a fancy office in San Francisco by now, not out here in the wilds.’
He finished serving the bath salts, and then he beckoned Collis through into his back room. ‘What would you like? Coffee, tea, or a belt?’
‘Coffee will do fine. I’ve got a hard day ahead of me.’
‘The way that railroad’s cutting its way through the mountains, I’m not surprised,’ said Doc Kates. ‘I went out to the tracks a week ago, and I could hardly believe that those rails were lying along the same old path that you and Theodore Jones penciled down on your maps.’
‘The path that you found, Doc,’ Collis reminded him.
Doc Kates put the coffee-pot on the stove, sniffed, and wiped his hands on his apron. ‘I sure was sorry to read about Theodore in the Union. He was a fine young man. Inspired.’
Railroad Page 78
