Two Moons

by Thomas Mallon

  Before he could hear this last remark, Hugh was gone, into the night, on foot and sick with a vision.

  His mind went back seven years, to the spring of 1870, when Willie Dietrich, a glum little pansy who lived in the same Harvard house and was terribly sweet on him, asked if he might paint his portrait. He’d sat for him half a dozen times. The canvas that resulted was to say the least flattering, though less distinguished by the subject’s smoldering beauty than a kind of absurd serenity. To look at the painting, one might think young Mr. Allison knew all about the future and considered every one of its coming manifestations perfectly acceptable. Hugh had let Dietrich keep the portrait for himself and had never seen it since leaving Cambridge.

  Some weeks after the picture was finished, Hugh and another friend, on slightly drunken impulse, had dropped into a Brattle Street studio to be photographed. They sat motionless for several minutes, the backs of their heads in metal posing clamps, and thought no more of the adventure once they were back out on the street. After a week, they nearly forgot to claim their pictures—and to pay the bill. But once he did pick up his order, Hugh sat on the steps of Grays Hall, holding the photograph a foot in front of him, and realizing how different its subject was from Willie Dietrich’s Hugh Allison. The young man in the photograph was no less idealized—the art practiced on Brattle Street having its conventions, too—but this Hugh Allison seemed to know so much less about the future than his painted version. It had nothing to do with the expression, or with any intention on the part of photographer or subject. It had to do with the way the young man in the photograph had existed for only the few minutes of his exposure, not a half-dozen sittings over several weeks, each prolonged by whatever excuse Dietrich’s ardor could invent. The man in the photograph had existed only at two-thirty in the afternoon of June 2, 1870, and he owed his continuing visibility not to someone’s paint box but to his own reflected light—what had come off his face and burned its way through the photographer’s lens, finally settling on the glass plate. It was an act of total assertion, the perpetuation of himself by himself.

  Now, think, Hugh had told himself in 1870: if that light were to travel not a fraction of a fraction of a second to reach the glass eye that was looking for it, but a thousand years or more, a trillion times a trillion miles, then the face reflecting it would remain alive for the unimaginable length of the journey.

  The day he’d called for the photograph had been the first of a Commencement weekend, when the Yard was full of whatever boys remained from the Class of 1820, old men now, wisps of white hair flying over their stooped shoulders. As he held his own picture, their catastrophe struck him full in the face, in a way the Recent Glorious Dead’s never had. No amount of manly nostalgia, with which the weekend was replete, could mask the sheer cruelty and meaninglessness of the old men’s lives, or his own. As night snuffed the spring day, he had gone walking, the photograph in his pocket, through Mount Auburn cemetery, whose gravestones were awash in moonlight and the merry airs drifting over from the old men’s parties.

  The picture had been with him ever since, between the leaves of a notebook.

  “Oh, you!” cried Fanny Christian. She and Dan Farricker were having a tug of war with his new silver-tipped cane, while Louis Manley explained to Harry O’Toole how some dismissed employees from the Bureau of Engraving had gone directly to the Executive Mansion to plead their case.

  “You mean the ‘White House,’ don’t you?” asked Joan Park, mocking the name that had lately caught on. She’d been a clerk for ten years now, accumulating the useless pride of the old-timer against the latecomer, a capital she would pile up for another thirty years.

  Cynthia listened to them all and watched the clock and thought about how much more illuminating the conversation at Commodore Sands’s was bound to be.

  “Over at Interior,” said Louis Manley, “your former bailiwick, Mrs. May, one candidate for a clerkship submitted his application to Secretary Schurz in four different languages.” He waited vainly for some sign of astonishment or disgust from Cynthia. “That’s not ‘merit,’ ” he declared. “That’s showing-off.”

  Mr. Manley was more than usually worried these days. The Freedmen’s Bureau would soon close for good, sending out another rush of displaced employees to compete for his own post. When he mentioned this for the third time tonight, Mrs. O’Toole, who had entered the parlor with another pot of tea, just smiled. In recent days, Mr. Alexander Stephens, the Confederacy’s vice president, had argued a case before the Supreme Court, and the son of John Tyler—the one American President she revered, for his subsequent service to the South—had applied for a position with the Pension Bureau. Oh, there would be talk, the usual business about rewarding the sons of secession, but Mr. Tyler would get the job, and the complainers would go back to their whispers about what really alarmed them: the appointment of dusky Mr. Douglass as the District of Columbia’s marshal.

  Cynthia glimpsed the landlady’s satisfied expression and imagined the sort of inner recital provoking it. She could keep quiet no longer. “Mr. Manley,” she said, “don’t forget the competition from the freedmen themselves. The Treasury Department’s just appointed a colored messenger.” Mrs. O’Toole shot her an annoyed glance. “And a colored clerk,” Cynthia concluded.

  “Oh, Mrs. May,” said the landlady. “I hadn’t noticed you. Forgive me, but these days we’re never quite sure when you’ll make it home. But here you are. And, oh, here’s a piece of mail I’ve been keeping safe for you.”

  Had the witch steamed it open? Cynthia took the envelope that Mrs. O’Toole withdrew from her pocket. A quick look revealed no return address, not even her last old aunt’s in New Hampshire. The half-dozen faces in the parlor waited for her to open the letter, but she had no intention of satisfying anyone’s curiosity but her own. She wished them all good night and walked upstairs to her room.

  Undoing her hair, she forced herself to look into the mirror. Would Mary Costello’s henna be such a bad idea? Yes, it would. She would feel even more like an old lady making a fool of herself over a boy. D’Arrest’s comet could make its whole round of the solar system in the space of years lying between herself and Hugh Allison. She had no wish to get a better look at the web of lines nature had begun spinning around her eyes, but Mrs. O’Toole kept the gas lamps stoppered so low that she had no choice but to light an extra candle if she wanted to read her letter. The candle would be on her bill with everything else at the end of the month.

  What if, through her own folly, she soon couldn’t pay it at all? The other morning Mr. Harrison had said something—humorous, she thought, though she couldn’t remember his exact words—and Professor Harkness had looked at her, oddly, she’d begun to believe. Once again, she tried to reassure herself: Admiral Rodgers could not possibly have seen her and Hugh. The superintendent had never stopped talking that night. And if Professor Hall had somehow glimpsed their shadows, he would never say a word. She had to be imagining things; but her lack of caution that night now made her wonder if she hadn’t been a fool in more ways than one.

  Utica, New York? Written last Friday, May 18th. Oh, dear God!

  My dear Mrs. May,

  Our mutual friend Madam Costello tells me that your fascinating work on the Transit of Venus threatens to remain incomplete due to a lack of sufficient appropriations. I should hate to see you straining your eyes for naught, so I have taken it upon myself to write to Secretary Thompson to see if we can’t come up with some additional monies for this most worthy project—and your most remarkable skills. I wouldn’t want them, or you, wasted behind the counter in a hat shop. I should so enjoy hearing from you before I set out on some travels. In hot haste,

  Roscoe Conkling

  There it was, her own prattle, right down to Fanny Christian, coming back to her in the wavering candlelight. This Irishwoman, who not two hours ago had cradled her head and dried her tears, was simply unbelievable—though not anything so absurd as the attentions of this lawmaki
ng satyr. That she could sustain his interest on the basis of a moment’s encounter, while losing Hugh Allison’s as soon as night turned back into day! There must be a half-dozen girls getting these purple-inked notes with every post. Yes, girls; but a stringy widow who had entered the second half of her biblical round?

  Where was his photograph? She had to look at it, to marvel that such a lack of discretion could proceed from such a powerful presence. Was it in the top drawer? No. She hadn’t even bothered to bring it home from Madam Costello’s after putting it on the table a month ago—when they were supposedly clearing the air! Well, it didn’t matter. She didn’t need the picture to figure out Conkling’s behavior. There was no risk to it at all, not when he could simply pulverize anyone who attempted to make trouble or scandal. What, after all, is this letter? she could imagine him thundering at some caster of aspersions. Nothing but the sort of attention one might pay a constituent. A bit of largesse across state lines!

  She blew out the candle, and the fine webs around her eyes disappeared, leaving her, in the dimmer light, what she knew she had once been, and what the purple letter allowed her to admit, silently and in the dark: beautiful. I was beautiful.

  As soon as she said it, she felt ashamed, and afraid. The letter had disturbed her already raw nerves. She rose and went to the window, knowing she would not be able to see Herr Winnecke’s comet, but also knowing, for certain now, that it was an omen. Of what she still could not guess.

  Lieutenant Sturdy and Professor Eastman were sick. The officer’s temperature had passed 105 degrees, and his teeth were chattering like a steam-driven loom. Before day’s end, he would likely be up, if not around, complaining only of headache to the ensign bringing him quinine, and waiting for the moment, three days or so later, when he would collapse into the disease’s second phase—the one Professor Eastman now suffered through.

  Out on the Potomac this Saturday morning, nothing hinted of the miasma. Here at the edge of the Observatory grounds, only a distant shimmer of late spring heat interfered with the sight of some single sculls and four-oared shells practicing for Monday’s regatta, when local crews would fight for a cup against the Nassau Club of New York.

  Henry Paul and Hugh Allison, on their way to the riverbank, discussed “the sister-in-law,” Miss Gray.

  “She calls you Hugh Callous-Man,” said Henry.

  “On the basis of that one evening?”

  “Well, no. I’m afraid I’ve told her you’re accustomed to disappointing the sex. That there have been lots of crushed ladies, and so she shouldn’t take it to heart. According to our brethren who remember you from Cambridge, I’m even telling her the truth.”

  “Is that what they say?” asked Hugh, scanning the bank for the single female they’d come to fetch. “I suppose they’re right. Nothing stirred the young ladies of Brattle Street like the chance to gaze into my sad eyes, moist with what they were sure was my homeland’s defeat. You can imagine, Henry, how shattering the war must have been for a fifteen-year-old it never deprived of so much as his dessert.” He laughed. “I tried to tell them, but they wouldn’t listen.”

  “My Augusta has another girl in mind for you.”

  “Thank her all the same, but no. I’m so bored with bouncing curls at the pianoforte, I may become a Miss Nancy. Ah, look, there she is.”

  “Mrs. May!” called Henry Paul. Cynthia, who had taken a respite from her desk to watch the practice, turned around. “We’ve come to find you. Or at least Mr. Allison has. I just tagged along.”

  “We’ve been talking about young ladies,” said Hugh. “I suppose the banks will be crowded with them a couple of days from now.”

  “A disagreeable thought,” said Cynthia.

  “But a lovely sight,” said Mr. Paul. “What do you suppose they’ll be wearing?”

  “Lace mitts,” said Cynthia. “A little marabou near the buttons. I pick up a great deal of useless information from one of my fellow lodgers.”

  “And what shall you have on?” asked Henry Paul.

  “I shan’t be out here. But I’m wearing darker colors these days.”

  “Why is that?” asked Hugh.

  “I worry that I’ve been too conspicuous for my own good.”

  Neither man said anything. A few moments later all three of them had their attention seized by a rower who’d caught a crab with his oar and was shouting his disgust.

  “Don’t worry,” said Hugh. “He may capsize, but he can’t sink. The river’s got more salt in it than the Dead Sea.” He pointed to a deforested stretch on the Virginia side, but Cynthia missed whatever point he was making. Her eyes had returned to the sight that had distracted her from the oarsmen even before Hugh and Mr. Paul came along: the wharf, down past Long Bridge, from which both John May and her brother had left Washington, never to return.

  “I hate to break up our riparian party,” said Hugh, “but I did come to retrieve you, Mrs. May.”

  As they walked back to the Observatory, it was Mr. Paul who offered her his arm. While she walked between them, both men managed to talk right past her. They were chewing on the latest pieces of gossip to come over from Annapolis: a measles outbreak at the academy; two new practice ships that had been commissioned; some experiments a Mr. Michelson—who’d piqued the interest of Simon Newcomb—was beginning to do with the speed of light.

  “The exact velocity isn’t important,” said Hugh. “The implications of great speed are what count.”

  “Not important?” asked Mr. Paul. “What use can imprecision be?”

  She could tell that Mr. Allison didn’t wish to engage his colleague too particularly on this subject. He let her presence shelter him from such conversation. “Well, Mrs. May would object to any lack of exactness, I’m sure.”

  For the past two weeks Mrs. May had been toiling over the numbers for somebody’s monograph on the nebula of Orion. She’d been feeling worried and more than a little ignored, and she wasn’t going to serve Hugh Allison as some comic totem of fastidiousness.

  “How is Mr. Eastman?” she asked.

  “Not terribly well,” said Mr. Paul.

  “The miasma,” she said impatiently. “You talk of imprecision? I’m amazed by the vagueness with which all you scientifics discuss whatever keeps laying waste to you.”

  “It’s bacteria,” said Hugh, with a clipped confidence that should settle the point. “An airborne bacillus, the cause of most every disease you can name. This one lives in the mists.”

  And that stopped any more discussion until the three of them arrived at Mr. Harrison’s office, where nine-year-old Angelo Hall, already out of school for the summer, was being handed the North American Review and a bag of lemons, with instructions to bring these items and everyone’s good wishes to Professor Eastman, the Hall family’s neighbor on Gay Street.

  “There’s Asaph, Sam, Angelo, and Percival,” Hugh whispered to Cynthia, hitting the first letter of each name. “If Mrs. Hall weren’t past delivering him, you can bet they’d still be praying for a Herbert.”

  “Run along, then,” said Mr. Harrison to the boy, before turning to Hugh and Henry Paul. “Now, I hope you two also want to make yourselves useful.”

  “We three, actually,” said Hugh.

  “My apologies, Mrs. May,” said the clerk. “It’s been a troublesome two days.”

  “I’m to have Mrs. May, starting Tuesday, for five mornings,” said Hugh.

  “Yes,” said Harrison. “Professors Harkness and Eastman have already told me.”

  “Oh,” said Hugh. “Then it’s all taken care of.”

  “Except, of course,” said Cynthia, “for the small matter of telling me what I shall be doing.”

  “She is wonderfully precise,” said Hugh. “Didn’t I tell you, Mr. Paul?”

  Cynthia made a stern face, and Henry Paul thought it best to go sharpen a pencil over Mr. Harrison’s wastebasket.

  Hugh explained: “It’s D’Arrest’s comet, Mrs. May. She’s arrived, all too punctually, like
a maiden aunt. And now she’s got to be entertained. I’ll sit up with her nights, if you’ll speed the calculations along each morning. Once we’ve discerned her current curve, I’ll treat you to a supper to celebrate what will be, by then, her predictable departure.”

  Too surprised to give him the insult he deserved, she only nodded and said, “Then even you must admit that this one is an omen. Of grilled swordfish and Madeira. I won’t forget.” She walked over to Mr. Harrison’s desk to complete her time sheet for the week that was ending, and lost her pleased feeling when out of the corner of her eye she noticed Henry Paul giving Hugh what appeared to be solemn advice. She strained to catch the last words of it—“especially now, with the gases”—and understood that Hugh had just been warned not to dare think of again bringing her here at night.

  Three hours later, on another river, Roscoe Conkling crossed the deck of the chartered steam ferry John H. Starin and entered its dining room. The ship would soon embark from West Twenty-fourth Street for the short trip across the Hudson to Hoboken, New Jersey, where the senator would transfer to the vessel taking him to England. Out of deference to Conkling’s famous self-discipline in food and drink—and because the dozen passengers had already taken a very ample luncheon at the Custom House—the ferry’s table groaned under the barest minimum of champagne and hock and sweets.

  Those making this brief bon voyage voyage included the Collector, Mr. Arthur, whose kid gloves and velvet collar befitted the nation’s highest-paid federal employee, and Alonzo Cornell, the Custom House’s stone-faced second-in-command, who also found time to serve as chairman of the New York State Republican committee. George Sharpe, the Surveyor, popped a champagne cork as the whistle blew and the Starin pulled out from the dock.

  The senator was expected to make a toast, and he did not disappoint: “Had your purpose been to add to my regret at leaving these shores, and to the pangs of this parting, you could hardly have chosen a more effective method. Your unexpected presence and exceeding kindness make it harder to say good-bye even for a brief season.” In fact, the only thing making him sorry to go was the chance that another week at home might yet bring a reply from Mrs. May. “Nevertheless your farewell gives me immense gratification, and will be treasured with grateful remembrance wherever I may wander and whatever skies bend above.” With a gentle motion of his hands Conkling stifled the cries of “Hear, hear!” and promised he would not allow his remarks to lengthen into something they “might expect from Mr. Evarts,” whose grandiloquence was as well established as his enmity toward all of them. “But, gentlemen, I do wish to say something else.” Here he lowered his voice to stop their laughter and excite the surge of fear he always could. “One of the most pleasant among the incidents which I anticipate in my journey abroad will be to thank the English people for England’s reception of General Grant.”