“New employment, actually,” said Cynthia. “Though a gentleman figures into it. If I knew his birthdate, I’d ask you something astrological. But I don’t.”
“Now, didn’t I tell you, seems like just the other day, you’d soon be in a new position!”
“You mentioned nothing of the kind,” said Cynthia.
“Well, I should have,” replied Madam Costello. “You looked as if you were needin’ one. You was nothing like the blooming creature before me.” She glanced over at the clock, only to see the scarf that covered it. “Now, I’m about to enter a new situation, too, missy. So you’ll have to be off.”
“A new client?”
Mary Costello laughed. “A new patron, let’s say.”
“Someone important.”
“Well, yes, but I mustn’t say more.”
Of course, she did say more, and started to say it within ten seconds, because she had never really had a patron before, certainly not on the order of this one. Her excitement and her sympathy for this peculiar woman got the better of her resolve, kept these past four days, not to jinx the senator’s business by discussing him with anyone but Ra. She and Mrs. May were soon sitting at the consulting table, drinking the tea she’d planned on offering the man himself. As the clock ticked away under its veil, Mary Costello tried to drown the sound, along with her gathering doubts, by pouring out her whole life’s story. She chattered through her past at the same speed with which she took clients through their futures. Before Mrs. May was halfway through her cup, she knew the whole tale of Mary Costello’s departure from Cobh at the height of the famine. How, her first husband already dead, she’d arrived in the New World half starved and too ugly for the gamahucher that became the lot of half the girls with the strength to walk off the ship. How she’d cooked and sold papers at three different railway stations, until she arrived at the great western terminus of Chicago, where she found herself a second husband, a pork seller who made a pile, or at least a half of one, purveying meats to the soldiers at Camp Douglas. How he died of his own new wealth, carried off by the flux that entered his fat body with the drinking water from the river, dark as gravy some days, running with all the unsalable bits beaten out of the poor animals you could hear and smell dying every hour.
From then on she’d worked in saloons, the best of them the Hankinses’ gambling house, and never complained about her shack near Hair Trigger, tar and felt being a grand sight better than the thatch in Galway she could still recall. Of course, even tar and felt couldn’t survive the Fire; but she did, spending the nights in Lincoln Park and getting her first good laugh since the flames started when the Tribune’s editorial—“CHEER UP”—blew past her feet. That she could read it at all was thanks to her first husband, bless his soul, who had taught her, letter by letter and word by word, before the blight took their whole green world.
He had a sister who’d ended up in Washington, and Mary had, by some miracle, through every disaster and displacement on the twenty years’ journey, stayed in touch with her. It was she who got Mary here and on her feet, explaining that this city was every bit as much about the making of money as Chicago. And so, six years later, Mary sat in this parlor with her little business that did tolerably well but could surely use the munificence of a grand fellow like the senator, and—oh, why ever was she telling the girl all this?
“You left out Mlle. Lenormand,” said Cynthia.
“So I did,” said Madam Costello. “And much else besides.” She read Mrs. May’s quick expression, and could see that she understood there never was a Mlle. Lenormand; and then the two women laughed together.
“May I offer you this?” asked Cynthia. It was the Life of Franklin Pierce, which she extracted from her pocket and slid across the table. “It’s worth ten dollars, I guarantee.”
“And why would you be offerin’ it?”
“Because I want you to read the planets for me. All spring and summer, whenever I want to come, though I’ll take care not to arrive when your important customer is on the premises.”
“Now, miss,” said Mary Costello, her face falling from fear that the man was never coming around again. “Since you know there was no Mlle. Lenormand for me to be a disciple of, why would you still be wanting me to look into the stars for you?”
“Who is to say that what you know, however you know it, isn’t so? Maybe whoever did teach you truly knew a thing or two.”
“Oh, Iris Cummings knew a thing or two, that’s for sure!” said Mary Costello. “All you had to see was the look on Big Jim Gunn just after he’d been with her!” Her loud laughter made Ra turn his head. “Ah, miss, I don’t know,” she sighed, opening up Mrs. May’s book to see the signatures of subject and author. “Well, Jaysus Mary. This would be the one that was President?” She pointed to the black ink, thinking how much this might have impressed the senator if only he’d kept his word and come. In any case, ten dollars was nothing to be sneezed—
“Almighty!” cried Mary Costello, as the doorbell rang. She and Cynthia jumped from their seats. “All right, missy, readings through the summer whenever you like, though right now you’re to be off with yourself. Immediately!”
Cynthia had gone to lean out the open window and see just who was on the steps. He must be six foot three, she thought, resisting Madam Costello’s tug at her waist. The single curl that fell halfway down his brow, the beard that jutted to a sharp point: both had as much gray in them as gold, enough to make her suppose that this fine-looking man—growing impatient, she could see—might be closer to fifty than forty. But for all that—“Oh, no!” she cried at her sudden realization. “It’s Conkling!” She took care to whisper the identification as she spun around and looked at Madam Costello. “You slyboots.”
There was no amusement, no female conspiracy, in the astrologer’s expression. She wanted Mrs. May out now, and Mrs. May knew it. So Cynthia gathered her skirts and headed for the door, one step ahead of the lady of the house. But when she got her hand on the doorknob, she turned around to say: “He’s just as one of the other boarders described him. Joan Park sat in the ladies’ gallery for half his speech, the one that finally settled the election. She nearly drooled the details of his appearance to all of us at supper.”
Cynthia opened the door. Roscoe Conkling—who had spent an active amatory life hoping never to be surprised by a second woman in any room where he had arranged to meet but one—drew back, though only for a moment.
He stared at her, then tipped his hat.
“I was just leaving,” said Cynthia.
His entrance into the parlor prevented that. He crossed the threshold and came forward like a wave, forcing her to step backward. Madam Costello rushed to take his hat and gloves.
“What a shame,” said Conkling, ignoring the astrologer to look straight at her previous client. “Are you off to meet your fortune?”
“I met it earlier this afternoon. At least that’s what I hope,” said Cynthia, who began moving toward the door. “I think you’ll hear the spheres playing a wonderful tune today.”
“Then I can trust her to set them in the proper motion?” he asked, pointing to the planet reader.
Cynthia just smiled and took a step forward.
“Here we go, sir,” said Mary Costello, urging the senator into the parlor with a sweep of her hand.
Conkling continued to stare at Cynthia. He yielded no ground, forcing the younger woman to walk around him in order to exit.
She descended the steps to the street, not daring to look back, and only after what seemed a long time did she hear the door shut.
Out on the sidewalk, just a few paces away from the house, stood a young man with thick spectacles and a waistcoat shiny from wear. “Excuse me,” he asked her, with as much abruptness as apology, as if he had long since learned to be unembarrassed when accosting strangers. “The gentleman you were speaking to: that was Conkling, wasn’t it?”
Alarmed by the sheer need and avidity in the man’s gaunt face, Cynthia
replied: “He never gave me his name.”
“I know it’s him,” said the young man, starting a great rush of words. “I’ve been following him for two blocks. I need a job, you see. I’ve knocked on every undersecretary’s door and come up with nothing. I’ve been waiting for some help from fate. I know that’s what it takes, and I’ll bet this is it. Do you know how long he’ll be inside there? Do you think he’ll speak to me when he comes out?”
“I’ve no idea,” said Cynthia, in response to both questions. She wanted to calm the man, to ask him who he was and how he’d come to the District, but she couldn’t make herself do it. He was too desperate a version of herself; their very kinship made her want to get away. He was the sort of person she was ceasing to be, and he felt like bad luck. How fortunate she felt to have her own hopes depending on the lovely Mr. Hugh Allison instead of the great “Lord Roscoe.”
The young man went on talking. “I’m going to wait at the bottom of those steps.” For the moment, though, he allowed himself to lean against the lamppost. Cynthia could tell he’d not had much to eat of late. “I’ve been here for a month and a half,” he explained. “And never imagined it would be so confusing—nobody knowing which party was about to take over, nobody listening to anyone else. But everyone listens to him,” he said, pointing to the house containing Conkling. “Isn’t that so? Isn’t that what they all say? If he could only steer me in the right direction, I know I’d be able to do the rest. All I need—”
The young man fell suddenly silent, dumbstruck by what he’d just noticed at the parlor window. Cynthia looked over her shoulder to see what it might be.
Framed between the musty swags of curtain, Roscoe Conkling calmly glared at the sidewalk; behind him and to the side stood the astrologer, still helplessly holding his gloves and hat.
After a few seconds, the senator raised his hand, pointed to the young man, and with a slash of his index finger indicated that he was to be off, immediately. The threadbare fellow raced across the street and out of sight, as if he’d been hit with a stick. Cynthia, sickened with inert sympathy, watched his terrified dash before looking back toward the window, where Roscoe Conkling stared at her for a few long last seconds, and then nodded twice, as if saying yes to something, for both of them.
“Tell him that I want him. Now.”
Roscoe Conkling hit the punching bag with his bare fist. The stunned leather rattled its metal stanchion, and the Arlington Hotel’s bellboy cried “Yes, sir!” before taking off in search of the fellow who ran errands for the residents.
Stripped to the waist, Conkling resumed his workout, refusing to take a bite of his boiled fish and spinach, or even a sip of soda water, until he had given the bag two hundred jabs. His colleagues might be over at Wormley’s, bloating themselves on venison and hock, but at forty-seven, he remained as lean as when he’d entered the Senate ten years ago, and he was determined not to put on a pound or an inch in the ten years to come.
If he could stand it here that long. Ten years already, and no higher? It wasn’t Hayes’s going to the White House that bothered him so much. Better that the stolid old Buckeye, still full of holes from the war, had gotten the nomination than James G. Blaine, Conkling’s chief rival for mastery of rhetoric and the Republican party, who for years had mocked his looks and strut. No, he thought, breaking the first bit of skin on his knuckles tonight, the problem wasn’t even Blaine. It was Evarts, the New York lawyer just named Secretary of State. What a brazen reward it appeared! Nominating the man who’d argued and won the President’s case before the Electoral Commission! A commission that Roscoe Conkling had created, to decide the disputed election and keep the Republic—already by December bristling with Democratic and Republican militias—from yet again rending itself in two.
Hayes now claimed to have intended naming Evarts all along, and he was so dully honest he was probably telling the truth. But, Conkling thought, the sweat running down him now, the scandal wasn’t even in how it looked; the scandal was in what it would mean, to him, Roscoe Conkling, and the Republican party in the state of New York, which was only to say Roscoe Conkling twice, for he and the state party were one and the same.
Evarts and the President were over-mindful of the Democrats’ anger; too sensitive to whispers about “His Fraudulency” having been set up in the Executive Mansion without truly having won the election; too embarrassed by what they were finding in (or missing from) Grant’s cupboards. They had caught the nervous malady of reform and were looking for remedies: palliatives for their foes, smelling salts for themselves. They were readying bills to raise an army of “Civil Service” clerks, each full of “merit,” a procession of worker ants loyal to no one but themselves. If Evarts had his way, they would soon be infesting the New York Custom House—Roscoe Conkling’s Custom House, the great turbine of patronage through which foreign goods passed so that money and grateful labor might pour forth upon Republican candidates, all over the city and state of New York. Evarts had never cooperated, never understood; he was blind to the beauty of the machine, as gleaming and efficient as the Corliss engine, whose towers and platforms and unimaginable horsepower had sent shudders through last year’s centennial crowds in Philadelphia.
If he had guessed it would be Evarts (and he should have), he would have built, he now swore to himself, an electoral commission that would have thrown the disputed prize to Tilden—yes, by God, to the Democrats who’d made the rebellion and soaked the country in blood. Now, three days after Hayes’s almost furtive inauguration, there was little he could do to stop Evarts’s nomination. He had tied it up in committee, but within a day or two he would have to let it out, and see whether Hayes and his new Secretary destroyed the Custom House before Roscoe Conkling could make himself—or, once more, Grant—President in 1880.
He sat down at his desk, a towel draped over his shoulders. The day was cooling off. A breeze blew into these rooms where, no matter how many politicians came calling, no cigar had ever been lit. He looked down at the neat stacks on the three sides of his blotter: his thick, gilt-edged notepaper; the pamphlet in which his commission speech had been reprinted; the encomiums from the foreign press (clipped and sent by Custom House agents who guided the papers through the port of New York). Beyond these accolades, what was his reward for all this statesmanship? Evarts.
Perhaps he had been wrong, four years ago, to refuse Grant’s offer of the Chief Justiceship. He’d thought: he already had the Chief Justice’s daughter; did he need the late Salmon P. Chase’s job, too? Kate herself had argued against his filling her papa’s robes. She had seen bigger things, the biggest of all, ahead for him. And back then she’d believed, so long as she possessed her children and the favors of Roscoe Conkling, that she could endure her marriage to the drunken whelp Sprague. By now, though, Sprague’s sodden tyranny had sapped her cheeks and spirit. Even when absent from it, traipsing through Europe alone in the old Chief Justice’s Washington house, she was no longer the girl whose looks and temperament, during the war, had enraged Mrs. Lincoln and enchanted every man left in the District of Columbia. She had grown, if not timid, then tired, and if weariness were all that Roscoe Conkling required, he might as well bring his own wallflower, Julia, down from Utica, where all these years, for both their sakes, he’d kept her stored. Julia meant recess—not just the congressional kind, during which he saw her and their daughter, Bessie, but a recess of the spirit, too, the dullness and retraction that always came upon him when he was out of Washington and in her presence.
That Kate might be fading into a copy of Julia; that his own political fortunes might be leading him back to Oneida County instead of the Executive Mansion just blocks from here: these terrible forebodings had drawn him, twice now, to the Irishwoman’s parlor at Third and D. A sense that destiny might be slipping from the War God of the Norsemen (a sobriquet he liked, though he feared it was a coinage of Blaine’s) had sent him looking for some destiny he might have overlooked, a better sort than the faltering one that
now loomed; something hidden in the sky behind a bank of clouds that his own keen eyesight had not managed to pierce. He had been looking at the stars for years, gazing blankly at them from a hundred porches and lawns onto which he’d gone to escape the smoke of his colleagues. The other night, unwilling to watch those men cough bits of tobacco and turtle soup into the spittoons at Wormley’s, he’d stayed here, opening up the window and his Shakespeare.
He read the Bard straight through each year, not just so he might quote him, but to find himself in the pages. And on Sunday night he had found himself in Edmund, ranting with self-satisfaction in the first act of Lear:
This is the excellent foppery of the world, that when we are sick in fortune, often the surfeits of our own behavior, we make guilty of our disasters the sun, the moon, and stars; as if we were villains on necessity; fools by heavenly compulsion; knaves, thieves, and treachers by heavenly predominance; drunkards, liars, and adulterers by an enforced obedience of planetary influence; and all that we are evil in, by a divine thrusting on. An admirable evasion of whoremaster man, to lay his goatish disposition on the charge of a star.
It was Roscoe Conkling he’d heard in the cut and thrust of those lines. This was the voice he sent up to the galleries, to Kate Chase Sprague and the women he didn’t even know; the voice with which he beat back every fool on the floor who lacked his head for figures and for consequences and for the long historical view. But it was a voice whose sudden hollowness, in all of a moment on Sunday night, he’d begun to fear. He’d felt an overpowering urge to seek its opposite, to turn its empty certainties inside out, to reverse the tide of its cheap scorn.
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