In the superintendent’s office, however, utopian prospects remained the order of the day. Mr. Harrison was writing one letter to Professor Ormond Stone in Cincinnati, thanking him for all he’d done to support the removal bill; and then, without so much as stopping to re-dip his pen, writing another to Dr. Porter, the president of Yale, begging that he weigh in on the matter at this crucial moment.
At a quarter to five, while the first evening shadows crossed the tops of Cynthia’s hands, Mr. Todd looked in on her. Having waited for Professor Harkness to step out, he asked, quite excitedly, if it were true that Mr. Allison was back. “Angelo Hall swears he saw him bundled up on a back porch on High Street. Oh, please tell me it’s so, Mrs. May.”
“Could we make it our secret?” she replied, after some hesitation. “Even if it means fibbing to little Angelo?”
“Yes,” Mr. Todd assured her.
“He has come back,” she said, “and he’s gaining strength daily.” She delighted in her own lie, stringing it out to delude herself as much as David Todd. “In fact, he’s told me more than once that he hopes you’re ‘still looking’—not just for the trans-Neptunian planet, but also for new sunspots.”
Mr. Todd clapped his hands. “You tell him that the other night I had a good look at this odd, elongated object I first spotted on the fifth. I suspect it’s a nebula—probably Herschel G.C. 2776—but I’m not discouraged. And neither should he be! We’ll find it yet.”
“I’m glad you stopped in,” said Cynthia. “I’ve made you more cheerful, I think—although you seemed rather lively to begin with.”
“I’m cheerful and perplexed, all at once, Mrs. May. I’m taking Miss Loomis to the opera tonight. The Bohemian Girl. That’s the source of my cheer. But Professor Newcomb has finally asked me to transfer to the Almanac Office, as general superintendent of computations. That’s the reason for my perplexity. He just dropped by to see the admiral and he made me the offer not ten minutes ago. I’m trying to make up my mind. You know,” he added, as if afraid to think out loud about himself, “there’s always a place for you there, Mrs. May.”
She smiled.
“You can’t stay here forever,” he teased.
“No,” she answered, glancing at the clock. “It’s time for me to think of getting home.”
“Will you be looking in on him?” asked Todd.
“Yes, David, and I’ll give him your message.”
On her way out, she passed Mr. Eastman and Mr. Hall, who these days was looking at Venus, not in transit across the Sun, but on her own bright rounds in the night sky. The two men nodded to Cynthia, and as she began her walk to Georgetown, she tried maintaining the false high spirits she had displayed to Mr. Todd. She returned to her old fantasy—less likely than Professor Harkness’s—of a new, salubrious Observatory to which she’d send Hugh off each night, for years and years.
At the same hour, two miles to the east, in the basement of the Capitol, Roscoe Conkling bore down on his gilt-edged note cards, composing a eulogy for Senator Morton, whose long fatal illness had preoccupied the upper body for much of the time since it reconvened last October. Mrs. Hayes was thought likely to attend tomorrow’s orations in the chamber, and much as that possibility pleased him, he found himself more inspired by a fantasy of Cynthia May looking down on him from the ladies’ gallery. “Death is nature’s supreme abhorrence,” he wrote, his violet ink beginning to flow. “The dark valley, with its weird and solemn shadows, illumined by the rays of Christianity, is still the ground which man shudders to approach.” Yes, if she heard this, she would reflect upon it and seek his protection once and for all. “The grim portals of the narrow house seem, in the lapse of centuries, to have gained rather than lost in impressive and foreboding horror.”
He looked up for a second, then reread what he had written. Morton, alas, was getting lost. So he turned to his bookshelf, as he had done composing so many other memorials, for the morocco-bound Bard. “Put out the light,” he sighed, resolved to work through the evening. “And then put out the light.”
At 9 P.M. on Wednesday, the 23rd, three senators stood near the front end of Wormley’s canopy, continuing a debate they’d had on the floor that afternoon.
“My dear man,” said Mr. Beck to Mr. Sargent, “the Treasury cannot write these men a check for three hundred thousand dollars before they’ve even found the spot they want to buy. With your bill, they will inevitably spend that much, even if some cheaper parcel were available. Money appropriated becomes money spent, as surely as night follows day.”
Outside Wormley’s, guests arriving for the Spanish minister’s party would have been hard put to say which of its daily phases the world was passing through. Across the road, on the corner of Saint Matthew’s, a calcium light had been set up to shine straight at the hotel’s awning. Those coming to celebrate King Alfonso’s marriage stepped out of their carriages into a bath of whiteness that was certainly not night, but not quite day, either, unless it were a sort of celestial day found in the afterlife. The glow was so pure that one expected to hear a seraphim choir instead of the mere stringed instruments whose sound floated out from the four hotel parlors that Wormley had combined into a huge single ballroom.
Senator Sargent, whose bill had been held over until tomorrow, used the opulence surrounding his colleagues as a retort to Senator Beck: “How much money do you think has been spent here tonight?”
“You stray from the point, my friend. I care nothing for the squanderings of the Spanish government. It’s our own depleted Treasury—”
“Surely,” said Senator Sargent, “a new temple of science—a permanent working display of the national genius—is better value for money than the fripperies of a single eve—”
“Beck is right,” said Senator Edmunds, who had to squeeze left so that Mrs. Yoshida, wife of the Japanese ambassador, might gain entrance to the hotel. “This is going too fast. Have a commission select the site and report to Congress. Then we can appropriate the money.”
“Consider the reports you’ve already seen,” countered Sargent, now decidedly worried about his bill’s fate. “Thurman was quoting from them this afternoon. We need to get those men out of there now. Do you want Admiral Rodgers to die the way his predecessors did?”
The wife of Senator Jones floated by, audibly, festooned with so much jangling silver she seemed a part of the orchestra.
“You should amend the bill,” suggested Edmunds. “Make it say—”
“Come,” said Senator Beck, tired of being jostled. “Let’s get ourselves inside and settle things tomorrow.”
“Easy, dearie, easy,” said Madam Costello, less than a mile away at that same hour. Having left the farrier’s, she and Cynthia were crossing B Street into the Mall, the latter pushing the wagon with such insistence she might soon lose her footing.
Hugh Allison, whose strength continued to ebb and whose kidneys remained ablaze night and day, was to meet them at the base of the Monument. As the two women trundled the projector across the hard ground toward the engineer’s shack, Cynthia vainly tried to catch sight of him. The wind ripped through her plain coat, and she wondered how this obelisk, if it ever reached full height, would withstand such gusts—let alone how she and Hugh, if they succeeded in reaching its current summit, would keep themselves from falling off and sailing to the ground.
Perhaps they would have the strength, she decided all of a sudden, quite astonished, having discovered Hugh’s silhouette in the distance. He was moving quickly, dragging a large plank to the stone steps of the Monument—a ramp for the projector.
“Hello!” he shouted into the night, actually running up to her and Mary Costello. He made a low bow to the astrologer, and took Cynthia in his arms. “No sign of Shea!” he cried. “I’ve already swiped his key from the hook and opened the place up.”
“What if he yet comes?” asked Cynthia. She had no trouble counterfeiting worry over this point; her face showed real fear of all the work and risks they had ahead of
them.
“An excellent choice,” said Hugh, pointing to Madam Costello, who was already pushing the wagon toward the steps. “We can’t keep up with you, Mary!”
“I can’t speak for youse two, but I’m eager to get this boiler going. I’m freezing, children!”
Conkling did not see two waiters scrambling to extinguish the branch of evergreen that had just caught fire from a bronze candelabrum. Nor did he see the calcium light outside Wormley’s, since he was coming down to the party, with Mrs. Sprague on his arm, from his own apartment in the hotel. Kate’s vert d’eau gown, trimmed with roses and lily of the valley, was perfectly draped, and so were her pearshaped pearls and diamonds, but she could not resist asking Roscoe to wait while she went to survey the enormous dressing room, where each lady had been promised the attentions of her own maid.
The War God told her to go satisfy her curiosity, but he frowned as soon as she was out of sight. Her boldness had begun to exasperate him. Coming up to his rooms just so they could make this entrance from the stairway! Half her attire was out of fashion, the other half a display of debt. He had succeeded in putting through tax relief for Edgewood—the late Chief Justice’s mansion deserved no less, he had argued one day in the Senate, after persuading her not to sit in the ladies’ gallery—but he hardly had the means Sprague had always had to dress her. Nor, in truth, did he any longer have the inclination. He would rather cloak Mrs. May’s honest poverty, ornamenting the simple frocks she earned with her nimble brain.
He greeted Madame Mantilla, complimenting the evening’s hostess on the roses that crowned her black hair. She tapped him with her fan—teasing this man whose eye for women the diplomatic corps knew as well as the Congress did. She suggested he turn around to admire the light streaming through the door.
“My!” said Conkling, startled by his first notice of the calcium display. The marvel immediately made him think of Cynthia’s experiment, which she had damned well better complete this week. Once she had secured her triumph, he would fasten her to his life and the apartments upstairs, where dear Kate would henceforth be visiting no more.
“Will you excuse me?” he asked Madame Mantilla. “Senator Sargent seems to want my attention.”
“Conkling,” said his California colleague, “I should like to introduce Professor Simon Newcomb, one of the Observatory’s chief eminences. We’re talking about the bill for removal.”
“Well,” said Newcomb, delighted to add Conkling to his web of influential acquaintance, “I’m rather removed from the Observatory myself. These days I’m at—directing, I should say—the Nautical Almanac Office.”
Conkling looked at him, unimpressed.
Newcomb went confidently on: “But I shall say this. Once the Observatory is up on safer ground, it will be time to think about reorganizing the whole place. We’ve been lucky with our naval commanders—lucky with them individually—but scientists need credit where credit is due, and there’s no making sure the next superintendent will have the liberality of his predecessors. Having a scientific administer the place would—”
“Surely,” said Conkling, “there’s more danger of credit being grabbed by any fellow scientist put in there to run the show?”
“On the contrary,” said Newcomb, in his best ladies’-club manner, unaware that Roscoe Conkling did not enjoy being disabused of ideas. “A navy man can know so little of astronomy that he’ll keep men around the place who have no business being there. And that’s the worst dispensing of credit there is—wasting equipment on someone who can’t pull his weight. Why, they’ve got one young fellow over there now—I’m sure he looks, on paper, just like the rest of us to Admiral Rodgers—and he hasn’t got any sort of investigation going. I couldn’t tell you what he’s been doing. And yet he’s been allowed to remain on the staff for more than a year. He’s sickly, and I thought that would take care of things—a shame, of course—but now I learn that he’s back, still drawing his wages and still doing nothing that anyone can—”
“How do you know that he’s back?” asked Conkling.
The question struck Newcomb as peculiar, but he answered it, untruthfully. “I heard one of the astronomers mention it.” He couldn’t very well say he’d overheard Asaph Hall’s little boy jabbering to Mr. Todd.
Senator Sargent fidgeted, hoping they would get back to the important subject of his bill. Conkling said nothing more to Newcomb, didn’t even nod. He just looked directly into the white light beyond the entrance. She had lied to him. That idiot rebel boy was still part of things. This experiment was still theirs.
He saw a guard cross in front of the doors. The uniformed figure cut into the light, and Conkling wondered if this might be the fellow she’d made him reassign from the Monument.
“Excuse me, gentlemen,” he said.
“But—” pleaded Senator Sargent, to no avail. His colleague was already charging up the stairs to his apartments.
She had deceived him. Denying him was one thing—an obstacle, an incitement—but deception enraged him. Being laughed at was the only assault that could trump it in the host of life’s assaults to which he was subject. He listened to the noise of the party come up the stairs. The fat, fleshy guests; the awful clinging of Kate: it all repelled his senses. He shut the door against it and struck the punching bag several times, until his hands, pleasantly stimulated, reached for his gloves and his pistol. He didn’t arm himself as often as his critics claimed, but self-protection was only prudent when walking the District at this hour. He would find out just what was going on at the Monument this week, and he would give this overgrown girl—who had asked for favors, who had come halfway to heel, and who had now deceived him—the surprise of her unhappy life.
She feared each step up the wooden struts would be her last. Between them they carried the projector, dismounted from its wagon, like a giant loving cup. The attached cable rose from below like a snake being charmed. A fleet-footed person could make the whole corkscrew climb to the top of the Monument in two or three minutes, but she and Hugh had been at it for nearly twenty by the time they reached the last half-rotted steps. They finally sat down, putting the projector on the plank between them. Cynthia, breathing hard, at last dared to look down the hollow shaft. At the bottom she saw Mary Costello warming her hands over the little fire she’d got going in the boiler box.
Fearing the cable would soon be too taut, Cynthia shouted down for the astrologer to uncoil the rest of it.
“Right away, dearie!” came the response, flying upward through the granite-lined shell.
“Are you ready, darling?” asked Hugh, eerily less out of breath than she.
“Yes, I think so.”
“Good,” he said, rising from the top step. “Make sure your skirts are gathered up and tied.”
She nodded, checking the knot she had made before leaving the farrier’s.
He took a hammer from his waistcoat pocket and tapped on one of the wooden flats covering the obelisk’s unfinished top. To their relief, it lifted easily—too easily, they soon realized, as the wind took it up and out like a kite. “Jaysus!” came Mary Costello’s cry a moment later, when she heard it crash on the steps outside the Monument’s open door. “Are you two all right up there?”
They were too occupied with the sight just revealed—a satin sky spattered with shining dimes—to answer. For a moment Cynthia wished they could stop now, right here, in this unexpected moment of perfection, but Hugh was already hoisting himself onto the stone edge. He sat down and held out his arms, reaching for the projector, urging her to lift it to the wooden step he had just vacated. She strained to raise it by herself, and for a moment, afraid she would fail, she frantically tried thinking of an alternative way. But then a surge of vitality allowed her to lift it in a single jerk. The lamp came down hard upon the already cracked step, threatening to fall clear through it, but the boards held, and once the projector ceased wobbling, she took Hugh’s hand and joined him on the rim of stone. Seated with her legs dang
ling into the Monument, and her eyes on the stars, she felt as if they had climbed into the world’s attic.
“It occurs to me,” said Hugh, “that I’ve never asked if you’re afraid of heights.”
“I’m in love with them,” she answered, truthfully, her words flying on the cold, rejuvenating wind. “I’ve climbed up from that swamp at last.” She stopped herself from saying anything else, bitter or triumphant, lest it hurt the moment’s majesty. Then she noticed he was shivering, and she began vigorously to rub his arms and back.
“You’re shaking too, you know,” he pointed out.
“But I’m shaking from excitement.”
“Darling,” he asked, “do you suppose I’m bored?”
Even now, in weather almost suited to a January night in New Hampshire, his brow looked damp. She went to mop it, but he shook his head, eager to get on with what he had come here to do. “Without any clouds to stop it,” he explained, “the light will easily go three kilometers. You do understand that the beam breaks up after that? Even so, we’ll travel out as spangles, like the top of a fountain’s spray.”
He took a length of string from his pocket, knotting one end of it to his left index finger and the other to the Mangin’s metal blind. While he did this, she allowed herself a single look over her shoulder, down to the plainly visible river and Observatory. Farther north and west she could make out High Street and the Oak Hill cemetery, but she felt no desire to be on the opposite edge, able to gaze toward the Capitol and pick out Mrs. O’Toole’s house from the little man-made stitchery below.
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