“Best coach there is, eh, boss?” said Frenchy.
“Built by Abbott and Downing of Concord, New Hampshire. Sold all over America.”
“You invest in the company?”
“I invest in railroads … coaches … lumber. Investment is the way to build things.”
Frenchy laughed. “What you buildin’ for? You ain’t got no wife, no family.”
That question would have infuriated George if it had come from someone else. But Frenchy had a naïve way of saying things that always cut to the simple truth.
“I build for the future,” said George. “Like Hec used to say, it’s what we do.”
The coach went over a bridge where the Sawyer River dropped down from the mountains and met the Saco.
“Your land up there, boss.” Frenchy pointed at the wall of trees rising to the left. Then he blessed himself.
“Don’t be cursing it with your superstition,” said George.
“I’m prayin’ … prayin’ that you and Saunders be on the same side when Saunders try to run track up there.”
After a moment, George blessed himself, too, and Frenchy’s laugh echoed off the treetops.
From the road they could hear rail gangs, and sometimes they could see them, working on the roadbed or the trestles that teetered above the Notch. The tracks extended six miles from Bartlett, but it would be another year before trains got through the Gateway and into the high valley. So George had time to negotiate, because there would be no spurs until the main line was finished.
As the road steepened, the horses strained, and the passengers unconsciously leaned forward, willing the coach up the hill. They passed the Silver Cascade, the Flume Cascade. Then a wall of white seemed to rise beyond the Gateway: the Crawford House Hotel, a glorious confection of gables, pillars, and porches proclaiming to all who passed that they were entering a world of natural beauty and man-made wonder.
Five miles farther was the Fabyan House, and when George looked at it for the first time, he thought of a mill. It was as square and as big—three stories high, four hundred feet wide, with a tower and cupola in the middle, just like a mill, but the Fabyan House was grand and white, with a porch festooned in patriotic bunting and a view east toward mighty Mount Washington. What they manufactured here was summertime enjoyment for ladies and gentlemen.
As he went in, Frenchy tipped his hat to two young women in rocking chairs and whispered, “I think we gonna like it here, boss.”
“Business first,” said George.
BUSINESS FIRST: supper with the Saunderses, père et fils, as Frenchy called them.
George left Frenchy with the ladies and set out on foot for the White Mountain House, less than a mile up the road.
Old Colonel White was sitting in a rocker with a few guests. “Why, Mr. Amory … here to cut down the trees?”
George gave a theatrical bow. “I’ve come to live free or die, sir.”
“A noble sentiment,” said a guest, raising his libation.
White got up, shook George’s hand, and lowered his voice. “Truth is, some of my best customers cut trees nowadays. One of them is even tryin’ to buy a share of the business, so he’ll have a nice place to stay when the cuttin’ starts.”
“Saunders?” asked George.
“Nope. J. E. Henry. Sittin’ at the big table by the south window. Brung his whole brood up to see his new store at Fabyan’s.”
The same dead New Hampshire animals stared down from the walls of Colonel White’s dining room, but now the scene brimmed with summer life, with the din of conversation, with waitresses hustling trays of chicken and dumplings and creamed corn, with raucous families at some tables, chattering couples at others, even a table of nurses caring for half a dozen wartime amputees.
George located the Henry table; then he headed for Saunders and son. As always, the Saunders were gentlemen. Before business, there was friendly talk. They toasted Enos Turlock, who now managed George’s office in Portland. They talked about the cog railway, the mechanical wonder that twice a day carried tourists into the clouds on Mount Washington. They praised the beauty of the new Fabyan House. Finally, as plates of blueberry pie and ice cream appeared, they came round to J. E. Henry, who had been logging small tracts all over New Hampshire.
“Unlike Henry, we have a single large tract,” said Daniel. “The old Elkins Grant.”
“You mean the Elkins-Amory Grant?” said George.
“Your grandfather must have commanded great respect among the New Hampshire legislators,” said Charles, “that they would grant him the land on the Sawyer River.”
“The lumber barons of New Hampshire must have commanded more than respect,” said George, “considering that the state liquidated the logging rights to most of the White Mountains for … what? Twenty-six thousand dollars?”
“Twenty-seven.” Daniel Saunders swirled blueberries onto his fork. “Governor Harriman hoped to help the schools and fire the state economy after the war.”
“Hundreds of thousands of acres of public land sold off for a ‘school literary fund,’ “ said George. “A good deal for the big operators.”
“Not us,” said Charles. “We secured our grant before the war ended, just before we met you at this very table.”
“So,” said Daniel, “if you harbor resentment over the size of your own holdings, don’t blame us. Sell to us instead. You’ll get a fair price, just as I promised ten years ago, a better price than the state got.”
“Plain speaking,” said George. “I appreciate plain speaking.”
“Plain speaking is the New England way.” Daniel Saunders nodded as if receiving a compliment.
“Then you’ll appreciate plain speaking,” said George. “The land is not for sale.”
Daniel Saunders dabbed blueberry juice from his lips. “We can wait you out.”
“You’ve waited ten years,” George answered. “Might be better to join forces.”
“You know that’s not our way,” said Charles, who had grown taller than his father and, if anything, skinnier, though he had consumed his meal and dessert in half the time of the others. “We prefer to command our own destiny.”
“If it’s your destiny to get the logs out,” said George, “your destiny is joined to mine, because you must run your tracks over my land.”
“We can claim right of way,” said Charles.
“A claim must go to court,” said George. “It would cost time and money. I might be forced to find a new partner.” George had expected it would come to this. He had planned a dramatic pause before he said, “The man in the corner, perhaps.”
The elder Saunders’s face, which usually expressed a sort of natural benevolence, lost all warmth. “J. E. Henry? You’re joking.”
“Henry is a pirate,” said Charles. “He strips the land and moves on.”
“That’s the nature of logging,” said George.
“Not for us,” said Charles.
“Selective cutting,” said his father. “It will take longer each time we go into the woods. We’ll only take the largest third of the trees the first time. Leave the rest to grow. In time, we’ll make three cuts over our thirty thousand acres, so they’ll be like ninety.”
“Waste not, want not.” Charles cast a look at George’s untouched dessert. “There’s a lesson in that.”
George picked up his spoon and took a mouthful of ice cream. Then he slid the dish to Charles. “I only need a small portion. There’s a lesson in that, too.”
Charles picked up his fork. “Share and share alike?”
Daniel Saunders watched his son go to work on the second dessert. Then he said to George, “And so … what’s your opinion of the Grant administration?”
George knew that their negotiations were at an end for the evening. They spent the rest of the meal chatting about politics and trout pools on the Amonoosuc. There would be more time for business.
But George had one more point to make. He bade good evening to the Saunderses,
then walked over to the big table in the corner.
“Mr. Henry,” he said. “Excuse me, I’m George Amory. I—”
“I know who you are.” J. E. Henry had a face shaped like a spade, a face for making a point and getting on with business, an effect heightened by the fringe of beard that trimmed his jawline from ear to ear.
“I wanted to say hello to you and your family.” George bowed to the sons, who looked like the father, and to the wife. “Since we’re in the same line of work.”
“A pleasure to meet you,” said Mrs. Henry.
“Yes,” said Henry, tucking into his dessert, “but not so pleasurable as pie.”
George backed away, glanced over his shoulder, and saw that the Saunderses were watching. It was what he had hoped.
THE NEXT DAY, George had lunch with Cordelia, who listened in rapt fascination as he described—sentence by sentence—the evening before.
And he realized that no one had listened to him in this way in years … certainly not the women he bedded in Paris or London … not Frenchy or Turlock…. His duplicitous cousin had listened for duplicitous reasons…. Big Jack Caldwell had listened like a father, but the river had taken him in ‘69…. George’s mother had listened, of course….
When George took a breath, Cordelia asked, “Are you really in a position to hold up the Saunders family?”
He laughed. “I’m a mouse under an elephant. If the elephant rolls over, I’ll be crushed. If I’m smart, I can live a long time in his shadow.”
Her expression lost something of its brightness then, and she said, “I live in shadows…. First my husband, who never forgot the blast that took his lower half … now my father, who doesn’t remember what he did in a life that touched so many young men.”
George left his opinion on that matter unspoken.
Then, as if to shake off her emotion, she said, “I should love to see your land.”
“I’d love to show you.”
So they rented mounts at the hotel stable and down the Turnpike they went, past railroad surveyors shooting lines in the Gateway, past the cascades, past a crew hammering the high trestle across the Frankenstein Cliffs, past Notchland and the old Mount Crawford House, now a barracks for railroad workers … all the way back to the confluence of the Sawyer and Saco Rivers.
The winter snows had been heavy, the spring rains plentiful, so even in late summer the rivers ran high, spreading a silver sheen over the rocks and swirling into the black pools where the trout stayed cool.
The distant thump of an explosion startled the horses and Cordelia, too. Somewhere above, railroad workers were blasting rock.
George looked up as if he might see the echo reverberating from one side of the Notch to the other. “Progress,” he said.
He nudged his horse ahead, leading Cordelia across the new tracks and under the canopy of leaves. The foliage was dark, embracing, all but impenetrable. It crowded the sides of the trail more like a tropical jungle than an eastern forest.
They rode for about two miles, to a place where the narrow trail split. One fork led up; the other dropped down toward the flatland beside the river.
“There’s a pond,” said George, “up on Saunders land. My cabin’s down on the bank.”
It was a small place, and rude—logs notched and fitted, chinks daubed with mud, roof covered in tar paper. George dismounted and said, “I built it myself.”
She slid off the sidesaddle as if she had learned that at finishing school, too. She looked around at the river and the pine-covered hillsides. “It’s beautiful.”
“Built for rough living. I spent the winter of sixty-five here, after I found the—”
“You called it your grail.”
“That’s what it became, but finding it didn’t change my life.” George looked at the little cabin. “I came here to feel something permanent.”
“Permanent,” she said, “until you start cutting it down.”
“One things dies to make room for another,” he answered. “It’s nature.”
She tapped the riding crop against her palm, as if the remark brought a spasm of grief. “We spend our lives denying nature, both the good and the bad, but it is insistent.”
He wondered what she would say if she knew how he had answered nature’s insistence—his visits to foreign prostitutes, his dabblings with married women. Better to say only this: “I’m thirty-four now.”
She laughed. “We’re both getting old.”
He kicked open the cabin door, took off his hat, and used it to wipe away a cobweb. Then, with a flourish of the hat and a deep bow that masked the tightness in his chest, he stepped aside so that she could enter.
It was a single room, with a table and two chairs, a stove, a rocking chair, a bed. Sunlight poured through the front windows and baked into the tar paper roof.
“I come here for the solitude,” he said.
“I’ve had quite the opposite,” she said. “The constant company of two men who couldn’t care for themselves. My father now, my husband for nine years.”
“Solitude helped me,” he said. “Living helped, too. Perhaps you should live.”
“I’m trying.” She laughed nervously. “I’m here with you.”
He threw his hat on the bed.
She took off her hat and threw it next to his.
The sound of the river filled the sudden silence between them.
Their eyes played the ancient pas de deux—meeting and flickering, like hands touching and feet spinning, from lips to eyes to lips to eyes and then … she laughed.
“What?” he asked.
“You have gray hairs in your Vandyke.”
He brought a hand to his face, as if to cover evidence of time’s advance, but time gave them reason to be there and reason to go further, because there was less time now than there had been, and there would be even less tomorrow.
She must have understood this, for she said, “I am glad you never married.”
He put an arm around her, and in the warmth of the cabin, they kissed.
She molded herself against him. He could feel her breasts pressing softly and her lower half, unprotected by crinoline or hoop, yearning as if she had not felt a man in many years. In truth it had been a decade since her husband was unmanned.
So he grew bolder. He slid his hands between her buttons and felt a silk chemise beneath her blouse. He popped one of the buttons, then another.
And she stepped back.
Had he gone too far?
She reached behind her neck and popped the top two buttons, then extended her arms so that he could help her slip off the blouse. Then she let her hands drop to her sides, so that the outline of her breasts was clear through her chemise.
“If we have little time,” she said, “we must make the best of it, before we become our parents. It’s something these ageless mountains tell us.”
“The mountains are eloquent.” He pulled her to him again and unbuttoned her skirt. It dropped to the floor, so that she was in his arms now, wearing only a chemise and cotton pantaloons and riding boots.
Should he proceed slowly, as he would with a Boston virgin in her father’s parlor? Or forge ahead, as he would with another man’s wife in a New York hotel? Or act as directly as he would with a Parisian courtesan? Part of him urged the last, but a grown man had to show wisdom with a woman.
Cordelia had known the joys of conjugality and sought them again. She would let him know what to do. He kissed her, and she made no protest when he untied the drawstring of her pantaloons, so that they slipped to her hips and gave him room to slide a hand down the front.
He brushed his fingertips across the bare flesh of her stomach.
He told himself that if she withdrew from his touch, he would go no farther. Instead, she made a sweet sound and swept her tongue across his lips and pressed against his hand as if she had not known a lover’s touch in … well … a decade….
She whispered, “This is very improper.” But she made no su
ggestion that he stop, so he moistened his finger against her, then slipped it gently down and slowly in.
She arched her hips to help him and pressed her head against his shoulder.
Her hair smelled of mountain air. Her sighs mingled with the sound of the river.
THE NEXT FEW days for George were as wonderful as any he had ever spent in any European capital, and better than any month he had ever passed in those mountains.
Though they did not travel again to his cabin, he and Cordelia rode out each afternoon to search for quiet bowers in the woods and cool rocks along the streams. Up on the Zealand River, they found a pool and swam in it, as naked together as if they had found Eden. And neither her stern Congregationalist God nor the more forgiving spirit of his Unitarianism cast them from the garden.
But they made sure to be back at the hotel by four o’clock, so that they could take tea with Professor Edwards. Cordelia, as always, was true to her name.
Sometimes the old man engaged them; sometimes he stared off at the mountains. It did not matter.
“It just makes me feel better,” said Cordelia, “to know that he feels me near him.”
GEORGE AMORY SAW the Saunderses, père et fils, twice more, and each time they edged closer to a partnership. But they were hard bargainers, and so was George.
At their second meeting, which was conducted on the veranda of the Fabyan House, he raised the specter of turning instead to J. E. Henry.
“We think you’re bluffing,” Daniel told him.
“Think what you will,” he said. “I’ll be cruising Zealand Notch. I hear Henry’s interested in it. If I collect a bit of knowledge about it, maybe I’ll do business with him.”
This caused father and son to stand as one.
“Do business with Henry,” said Charles, “and you’ll never do business with us.”
George stood and offered his hand. “If so, I trust we’ll part friends. As my cousin Bartlett is fond of saying, business is business.”
“Your cousin Bartlett,” said Daniel Saunders, “may not have much more business to do according to Arthur Perkins.”
“A pity,” said Charles. “He showed true ambition at the mill. But his taste for—”
The Lost Constitution Page 36