by John Jakes
Margaret screamed at him and he slammed the door in Gideon’s face.
The warning left Gideon frustrated and frightened. Were Eleanor and Will in danger because of his wife’s deteriorating mental state? No, he doubted that. Whatever else he was willing to believe about Margaret, he couldn’t believe she’d physically hurt her children. He feared Samuel was referring to some subtler but no less terrible form of injury.
What could he do? Abduct the children? Nonsense. This was the nineteenth century, not the Middle Ages. He felt unbelievably frustrated, though. He was powerless if Eleanor refused to answer his letters or speak to him when he called.
Gideon had yet to solve that particular problem. But he couldn’t burden Matt with it. In the hack, he raised a pleasanter subject.
“I’ve gotten you a guest card at Salmagundi. That’s a very fine private club for artists and art patrons. It’s on lower Fifth Avenue. Has very commodious rooms, and I think you’ll like the crowd. I’ve also been searching for a studio.”
“Wait a minute. Wait!” Matt held up a hand. “That’s rushing things a bit.”
“You’ll need a place to do the sketches for the book, won’t you?”
Matt opened his mouth to speak, having decided it would be far better to tell his brother right now that he wasn’t interested in the project. Somehow, though, he just couldn’t utter the words. Gideon’s haggard face, slumped posture—and most especially his announcement that he’d left Margaret—made Matt reconsider.
If there was anything he loathed, it was responsibility for someone else. But here was a case that absolutely demanded he take responsibility. Damn if he liked the idea. But Gid had been the older brother all his life, and now he obviously needed someone to assume that role with him. Matt finally shrugged.
“Oh, I suppose—”
“That’s wonderful!”
The instant Matt accepted the responsibility, he began his retreat from it. “I’m not sure how long I can stay here, though. And I’m certainly not sure this book you’re proposing is my cup of tea.”
Gideon was already growing more animated.
“Of course it is. There’s no one who could do it half as well. It’s also the one thing in my life that hasn’t gone to pieces. Excepting my relationship with Julia.”
Another shock. “Who’s Julia?”
“You’ll meet her.”
“Gid, are your children all right?”
“Yes.” He frowned. “They’re with Margaret.” That said a good deal.
A little more briskly, Gideon went on. “As soon as you’re settled, I want to show you a list of proposed plates for 100 Years. I also want to hear about your work. And about Dolly, and your son.”
With a rueful grin, Matt said, “We seem to be a couple of homeless wanderers, don’t we? Men without their women, hanging around some hotel with nothing better to do than plan a picture book—” The smile faded. “I’ll tell you this. It isn’t the splendid, footloose life I once thought it would be.”
“You mean your career?”
Matt nodded.
Quietly: “I feel the same way about the paper. The book and Julia are damn near all I have left.”
Again Matt looked into his brother’s ashen face and saw the need visible there. Yet something within him bawled like an infant, and fought the yoke.
“I won’t promise to do more than try a few sketches. You’ve got to remember this isn’t my country anymore.”
“Yes, it is. Only now you’ll see it with the eyes of someone who’s been away for a while. You’ll see it with fresh vision. You’ll see what I miss because I’m too accustomed to it.”
The enthusiasm in his brother’s voice bothered Matt. “Look, Gid, don’t get your hopes up. I didn’t like the idea when I first read about it and I still don’t. If the first half dozen sketches are no good, I want to be free to quit. You’ve got to give me that much.”
“Happily, happily!” Gideon exclaimed. “Once you get started, I know everything will work out.”
In a cynical voice, Matt asked, “Have you gotten religion while I was gone? You certainly have an unwarranted amount of faith.”
But it was obvious nothing would convince Gideon the project was foredoomed. Perhaps his was a confidence born of desperation.
“All right,” Matt sighed. “Let’s take a turn through the lower part of the island before we head for the hotel. I’d like to see some of the changes. I’d like to see whether I can rediscover even”—he held his right thumb and index finger a quarter inch apart—“that much interest in this damn country.”
Gideon laughed. “Anything you say. I feel better just seeing you. When everything else seems to totter, at least we have family to hold on to—oh, Matt, I’m glad you’re home.”
The carriage bounced on through the traffic of Tenth Avenue. In the sunless light of the summer day, Matt thought he detected a touch of moisture in the corner of Gideon’s good eye. He poked his own with the tip of his little finger. A speck of dust or perhaps a bit of cinder thrown up from the noisy West Side streets had gotten in his eye and started it watering.
“Damn if I don’t feel the same way,” he laughed. And then the humor took on a hard edge that reality demanded. “Just don’t get your hopes up, hear?”
Interlude
Summer Lightning
i
ONE YEAR LATER, on a Wednesday evening in July of 1877, Thomas Courtleigh entertained at his home in Lake Forest, Illinois.
Courtleigh had built the mansion in 1874. After his wife’s death, he’d stayed there because he preferred the suburbs over State Street or any of the other fashionable addresses in Chicago. On Prairie Avenue, for example, one could be a neighbor of the Armours, and the Palmers, and other leading families. But one paid a price, and was forced to live close to a swelling population of immigrants and niggers.
That didn’t suit the president of the Wisconsin and Prairie. He’d chosen to stay twenty-five miles to the north, in the exclusive little village platted on 1,300 wooded acres beside Lake Michigan. An architect obtained through Frederick Olmstead’s company in New York had laid out the winding streets. Courtleigh had chosen to situate his forty-room residence on, appropriately enough, Wisconsin Avenue.
This Wednesday evening he was entertaining two dozen couples. An elegant buffet had been served at twilight on the terrace of the great limestone house. Now, as the summer darkness deepened, some guests sat or stood on that terrace, chatting quietly. Others had retired to the sweeping green lawn where the host had provided croquet equipment imported from Europe. Croquet had become a national craze after the war. As Courtleigh moved from group to group on the terrace, excited cries and applause came drifting through the warm air. Soon small torches set in special brackets atop the wickets began to flicker out on the lawn. Servants were lighting the torches to permit night play.
“—still undersubscribed for the new stained glass,” Courtleigh heard one of the men say as he joined two husbands and their wives. All the male guests were members of the vestry of St. Margaret’s Protestant Episcopal Church, as was he. Courtleigh’s long, patrician face remained composed as he moved close enough to make his presence known.
“Undersubscribed by how much, Dillard?”
“Why, hello, Tom.” The man chuckled. “By twenty thousand dollars, that’s all.”
One of the women said, “Twenty thousand? A bagatelle.”
Unsmiling, Courtleigh nodded. “Quite right. In the morning I’ll prepare a draft for that amount.”
There were gasps, and then Dillard’s wife exclaimed, “Oh, Tom! That’s so generous. Sometimes I think you’re the finest Christian in the whole congregation.”
“No,” said the second man, “merely the richest.” They all laughed, Courtleigh included.
Then Mrs. Dillard put in a final word. “Dear Gwen would be so proud of your devotion to the church.”
Courtleigh’s bland face concealed sudden rage. There were so many things she coul
d have enjoyed if it hadn’t been for that damned Kent. Now the wretch was attracting national attention with some illustrated book that was soon to be published.
The book had something to do with American history—as if a Marxian socialist knew anything about that, or even had a right to trifle with it. Kent had written the text for the volume. The illustrations were wood engravings based on sketches by his brother, an artist who evidently belonged to a crowd of crazy European daubers.
In addition to the book itself, a limited edition portfolio of twenty etchings based on the pictures was being sold by private letter of subscription. Each of the two hundred fifty portfolios cost $500. Courtleigh knew all about the project because one of his church friends had shown him the elaborate solicitation materials. They included a reproduction of a section of one of the etchings. It depicted Kansas wheat farmers stringing the new barbed wire which, at long last, was making farmland safe from trampling by cattle herds. But no one on God’s earth had ever seen farmers of the kind Kent’s mad brother drew—spineless, curving figures half finished and completely repulsive. If that was art, Courtleigh was John the Baptist. But of course one might expect such obscene insults to the intelligence from a clan like the Kents.
The subscription materials had exerted a kind of fascination, though. One sheet had listed twenty-three organizations and charitable institutions to which the profits from the portfolios would be donated. On that list Courtleigh saw the benefit funds of several enfeebled unions such as the printer’s and the typographer’s. That was enough to put him in a wretched mood for two days. At least Kent hadn’t had the audacity to mail him one of the damned solicitations.
The press of business, as well as the ineptness of underlings, had kept Thomas Courtleigh from dealing with Gideon Kent as he deserved. But Kent’s punishment had never been rescinded, only postponed. The subscription materials, and the list of charities, had so enraged Courtleigh, he’d decided to make a new effort to finally administer that punishment. Preferably before Kent had a chance to see the disgusting, overblown book published by his company in Boston.
Of course, if Lorenzo Hubble had done his job a year ago, Courtleigh wouldn’t have been forced to suffer such feelings of frustration now.
Standing among his guests, he cocked his head suddenly. The others hadn’t caught the sound, but he had been anticipating it, and heard it easily. In the drive on the far side of the mansion, a carriage was arriving.
He excused himself. A footman came onto the terrace and intercepted him, saying quietly, “He’s here, sir.”
Courtleigh started for the house, murmuring about an urgent business matter. A vestryman’s wife broke away from a group and rushed to catch him.
“Tom dear, do set my mind at ease before you go. This urgent business has nothing to do with that railroad strike in the East, does it?”
He lied. “No, Lilly. That’s a small, isolated affair in West Virginia. Of no consequence.”
Actually West Virginia was the lightning heralding an almost certain storm—a storm that could conceivably spread over several states and buffet certain sectors of their economy quite severely. But he didn’t let on. He continued to parrot the official line of the secret consortium to which he belonged.
“It’s only the work of a very small number of Marxians desperate to disrupt the status quo.”
She fanned her bosom with a kerchief. “Oh, thank heaven. Several of my friends have been saying those anarchists would cause riots out here.”
“I sincerely hope not, Lilly. And I really doubt it. As I said, there are just a few radicals involved.”
“Thank you, Tom. You’ve reassured me. I told my friends that if anyone knew, it would be you.”
Courtleigh nodded and moved on. Actually, he believed there was a fifty-fifty chance of the strike reaching Illinois. He was preparing for the worst, and wished he could have given Lilly reassurances based on those secret plans.
If it does spread here—or anywhere—decent people needn’t worry. The strike, and the strikers, are going to be crushed without mercy.
ii
Lorenzo Hubble was waiting in the library.
Hubble was a slovenly young man who weighed nearly two hundred and fifty pounds. He had a wispy goatee, a mustache, and a round head already devoid of hair. He wheezed when he spoke, and his clothes always fit badly; he was forced to buy for size rather than style.
Self-educated, Hubble had come out of Conley’s Patch. He was one of nine attorneys in the Wisconsin and Prairie’s legal department, and not even a senior member of the staff. But in some ways he was closer to the president than any other person in the organization. It wasn’t entirely accidental.
Hubble had joined the line several years earlier. At that time, Courtleigh had been confronting a crisis. One of his vice presidents, an important man on the W & P, had been on the griddle because of charges brought privately by the father of a fourteen-year-old girl from one of the poor sections. The girl was expecting a child, the vice president was married, and the father wanted fifty thousand dollars—the first year.
Courtleigh called a meeting of the legal staff. He stated his position. The vice president had to be protected, but the payment was a precedent he didn’t care to set. Were there suggestions?
To the distaste of less aggressive colleagues, Lorenzo Hubble immediately volunteered to assume the burden of handling the entire problem. He promised that Mr. Courtleigh would not be unhappy with the results of his action. Several days later, the Chicago newspapers published accounts of a curious and coincidental double death. On her way home from the office of a physician who had examined her and found her pregnant, a young girl had drowned in the Chicago River. Not an hour later, her father had been shot during an attempted holdup.
The police couldn’t connect the crimes, nor locate the man who’d made the girl pregnant. The victims had no other living relatives, and the gentleman, who’d brought the girl to the doctor and paid spot cash for the examination to which she cheerfully submitted, had insisted the doctor turn down the gas in his waiting room. In that way the man’s face was never seen. All the physician could say was that the man had a huge belly, and breathed with difficulty because of his weight—and heaven knew there were hundreds like that in Chicago.
Courtleigh’s trust hadn’t been misplaced. Hubble was not only ruthless beneath the bovine exterior; he was discreet. After that conference of the legal staff, he never again spoke to his employer about the girl. Courtleigh and the vice president had learned that the matter was settled only by reading the papers.
A few months later, all of Hubble’s work was rendered worthless when a heart seizure killed the vice president. But at least Courtleigh had found a valuable aide. The railroad’s general counsel and staff still handled all legal matters. The president and Lorenzo Hubble handled the illegal ones.
Hubble had come with a sheaf of papers. He began to sort various items while Courtleigh closed and locked the library’s black walnut doors, then its leaded windows. Perspiration shone on Hubble’s cheeks and upper lip as he squeezed himself into a chair. He pulled a large Havana from the inner pocket of his linen jacket. The jacket had sweat rings under the arms.
“Don’t smoke in here,” Courtleigh snapped. “You know I can’t stand the fumes in hot weather.”
Without a complaint or even a flicker of disappointment, Hubble broke the cigar and tossed it into the dark fireplace.
“What’s happened in Martinsburg?”
In reply, the lawyer chose a handwritten sheet from the material he’d spread on a small table at his elbow. Courtleigh’s eyes moved across the array of items. When he saw a folded copy of the New York Union with the tea bottle device on the masthead, he felt rage of the kind that had nearly overpowered him on the terrace.
Part of that rage was directed at Lorenzo Hubble. The attorney had botched only one major assignment since entering into his private relationship with the president of the W & P. After Courtleigh had seen
Gideon Kent at the Philadelphia exhibition, Hubble had arranged the attempted murder on Walnut Street. Later Hubble claimed he’d hired the best men he could find. The bungler who’d driven the hack had vanished afterward without attempting to claim the second half of his fee. As a result of the fiasco, Hubble was still not fully back in Courtleigh’s good graces. It was time he tried to get there.
“—I’m sorry,” Courtleigh interrupted, aware that Hubble had been answering his question about events in Martinsburg. Firelight from the croquet court shimmered on the windowpanes. Full dark had fallen.
“This”—Hubble waved the handwritten sheet—“is the text of a telegraph message being sent tonight by Governor Mathews of West Virginia.”
“Sent to whom?”
“To President Hayes. The men I’ve posted to Martinsburg spread a lot of money around just to obtain this copy.” He extended the paper. Courtleigh gestured in an impatient way. Hubble understood that his employer wanted the message summarized. He said, “Mathews is requesting Federal troops to put down what he terms unlawful combinations and domestic violence along the Baltimore and Ohio. To quote him—it is impossible with any force at my command to execute the laws of the state.”
“Is it really that bad?”
“No, not yet. He’s a calamity howler. The violence has been sporadic, and of a minor nature. However, large crowds are out supporting the strikers.”
Sharply, Courtleigh said, “Let’s begin to refer to them properly, Lorenzo. Not strikers. Revolutionaries. Communists.”
“Yes, of course.” The fat man smiled nervously in response to Courtleigh’s cynical smirk.
“Is any freight moving around Martinsburg?”
“Not a car.”
Courtleigh smacked his fist lightly on the mantel. “None of us wanted it to get this far. We feared it might but we hoped it wouldn’t.”
