The World of Tomorrow

by Brendan Mathews

  “Sir Angus would never wish bad fortune on his older brother,” Anisette said. “Just look at all he’s done for Sir Malcolm.”

  “I’m saying it’s a bad system that ties your fortune to an accident of birth and not your own efforts. Just look at their king. Two years ago he was a duke. Father on the throne and older brother ready to take over. And now he’s the one with his face on all the coins. But did he do anything—he, himself—to improve his lot in life?”

  “He didn’t have to,” Mrs. Bingham said. “It was all that Simpson woman’s doing.”

  “Don’t blame her,” Mr. Bingham said. “She saw what she wanted and she got it. That woman has gumption to burn.”

  “Is that why they burned witches?” Félicité said. “Because they were so full of gumption?”

  “You’d best steer clear of fires yourself,” Mr. Bingham said to his older daughter. “You’ve got at least as much gumption as that Simpson woman.”

  “If that’s what that dreadful woman has,” Mrs. Bingham said, folding her hands in her lap, “and what Félicité has, then I hope our daughter’s gumption comes from your side of the family.”

  Anisette had followed this latest turn in the conversation with a tight-lipped set to her mouth and a few nervous glances at Francis. “Oughtn’t we to refer to her as the Duchess of Windsor?” she said. “Wouldn’t that be proper, Sir Angus?”

  “You can call her what you will,” Francis said. “But, please, just call me Angus.”

  Mr. Bingham turned from Félicité to Mrs. B. “Don’t go playing the nun,” he said. “When my Sarah passed, you staked your claim and staked it quick.” The bristles of Mr. Bingham’s mustache hid a smile. “Yes sirree, you were on your guard for anyone with the claim jumper’s eye. I could tell stories—”

  “That’s quite enough, Emery.” She may have sounded shocked, but she could not forget the ferocity of her younger self—eighteen years old, a nurse to the first Mrs. Bingham in the final months of her decline, clearing the way of better-bred rivals.

  “This is my point,” Mr. Bingham said. “You can’t blame the one who’s willing to take what he—or she—wants. The world’s full of namby-pambies waiting for a handout, whether it’s from FDR or Joseph Stalin or Jesus Christ. But the joke’s on them. The winners aren’t the ones who get; they’re the ones who take.”

  “That’s an awfully cruel world you’re describing,” Francis said in his plummiest Angus accent.

  “It is a cruel world!” Mr. Bingham’s fist banged the table. His wine jumped in its crystal goblet. “Maybe you can’t see it from the walls of your castle, but I guarantee you this: somewhere in history, you had a great-great-grand-someone—the first in your line of dukes or earls or what have you—and he started with nothing in this world but a knife in his hand.” Mr. Bingham gripped his bread knife with a balled fist; no longer the family silver, it was a dagger, a shiv. “And one day he spied some fat lord sitting pretty in his own tip-top castle, and when that man turned his back, your ancestor—God bless him!—made him pay for his carelessness. You and yours have that man to thank for all that you have.”

  Francis knew that as Angus, he should speak up on behalf of divine right or noblesse oblige or the class system or some such nonsense. But Mr. Bingham was describing a universe that Francis knew, a universe whose rules Francis was desperately trying to turn to his advantage. Wasn’t this the FC Plan writ large? Francis had been dealt a bad hand but right when he could have called it quits, he had decided to make a go of it. To reach for the knife. To show a little gumption.

  “Now look, Emery. You’ve offended our guest.”

  The collective stare of the Bingham family was again on Francis.

  “Oh, not at all.” His voice nearly cracked, he was so giddy. “Not at all. Only I was wondering, Mr. Bingham, whom do you have to thank for all that you have?”

  Mr. Bingham’s eyes narrowed. His life had been built brick by brick, course by course, on a series of men slower, kinder, weaker, or less willing than Emery Bingham to do what was necessary. How many handshake deals had he broken? As many as there were men stupid enough to make them. How much had he taken without asking? All of it. You asked only for the things that you were too weak or too poor to get on your own. Bingham was the cardsharp who wins a big pot and then uses his stack of chips to bully the others—to bet more than they’re willing to call, to bluff past their ability to check. Bingham had never checked in his life. He raised every hand. But where had that first pot come from? Had it been luck? Had he been smarter than the other strivers? Had he simply outworked them? Had it been fate, or God’s will, that had set this life in motion?

  It started with that first big strike, copper where no one was looking for it in the Montana Territory. He had been living in a hole in the ground for months—an actual, literal hole, with a piece of canvas stretched over the top that couldn’t keep out the rain, much less the cold or the rodents that gnawed at the rotten grub that passed for food. He was nothing but a brash troublemaker who had dug more dry holes than any other starry-eyed prospector for a hundred miles. When he hit the jackpot, he was digging on land he didn’t own without a dime to pay the claim fee. He knew that as soon as he brought the first lump of ore into the assay office, the hills would be crawling with miners with more money and better connections. Instead he brought a sample to a man in town—a small-time pimp—and promised him a 50 percent stake in exchange for seed money to get the operation up and running and on the books. For six months he fended off his partner, arguing that start-up costs—men, mules, equipment—had consumed every penny he’d harvested from the ground. Starting a mine ain’t cheap, he said. Then, before his partner could beat him to it, Bingham signed up a lawyer and paid off a judge who declared the agreement null and void and then prosecuted the man for pandering, the first time in the history of the territory that anyone involved in an industry as vital as prostitution had been jailed. By the time that man was released, Roundtop Mining, Bingham’s new outfit, owned half the town, including the two biggest brothels—one for workaday miners, the other for pit bosses, business owners, and other professionals flocking to the nascent boomtown. Had that man—Dawkins, yes, that was his name—had Dawkins been a victim of Bingham’s quick, sharp knife? No, he’d been a fool with more money than sense. All Bingham had done was correct the imbalance.

  “Enough of your men talk,” Mrs. Bingham said. “Maybe the world is a horrid place, but not here and not now. We have a lovely visitor who has come to us from far away, and just in time to celebrate a great event for our two countries. Did we tell you, Sir Angus, that we’re going to be presented to the king and queen?”

  “Not me,” Bingham said. “I’m not going to stand around in a monkey suit so that I can bow—”

  “Daddy, it’s not just his king,” Anisette said. “It’s his family.”

  “Inbreds, all. That’s what I was—”

  “Emery, please!” Mrs. Bingham’s eyes flared. “The queen is his cousin.”

  A knot formed in Francis’s stomach. When had he said that? Had he gotten too drunk, too carried away, during dinner on the Britannic? He sputtered, tried to form a thought that wasn’t pure gibberish.

  “Don’t be so modest, Angus,” Anisette said, flushed with pride at her offhand use of his first name. “You’re among friends.”

  “Yes, Angus.” Félicité perched her chin on the same fist that had caught Francis in the mouth. “Do tell us all about your cousin the queen.”

  Mrs. Bingham had leaned toward her husband and was talking to him in a rasping whisper.

  “Speak up!” he said. “I can only follow one conversation at a time.”

  “Earl. Of. Glamis,” Mrs. Bingham said, loud enough for all to hear. “His father is the Earl of Glamis. That’s where the queen grew up—Anisette saw it in Life magazine. There was a picture of her there with her girls. Reminded me of my own little lambs.”

  “Yes, Glamis,” Francis said. Had Martin been right, the
n, about Macbeth being a history play? It was another failing of his father’s classics-heavy curriculum, which offered no preparation for life in the twentieth century. “Of course, it’s a large family, as you can imagine, and none of us ever expected that she would be the queen.”

  “How wonderful,” Anisette said. “You simply must tell us all about her.”

  “Yes, you simply must.” Félicité’s eyes raked across Francis. She toyed with a necklace freighted with diamonds.

  “We don’t know each other terribly well,” Francis said. He cast about for something to say. This was not one of the anecdotes he had prepared. “There is a story about her dressing me up in doll’s clothes when I was a wee babe. But the truth is, you’ve forced me into something of a confession. You see, the queen has always been known for being very good, but I must confess that for a brief period, in my misspent youth, I went out of my way to be quite bad. And so it was to the family’s advantage to keep me as far from Her Majesty as possible.”

  The queen talk had rattled him. (Curse that Shakespeare—but wasn’t it his own fault for trusting an Englishman?) He hoped that by confessing to being a reprobate of unspecified depravities, he could align himself with Mr. Bingham and the elder Bingham daughter, and that by claiming to be a reformed soul, he could further ingratiate himself with Mrs. Bingham and the younger Bingham daughter—though it seemed Anisette needed little else to deepen her swoon.

  The smiles on the faces of each of the four Binghams showed the success of the plan: approving, conspiratorial, sympathetic, enraptured.

  “I imagine,” Mrs. Bingham said, “that you will be among the party at the British Pavilion?”

  British Pavilion? They kept lobbing haymakers at him. It was all he could do to ward off each blow. “That hasn’t been decided,” Francis said. “As I said on board the Britannic, my brother’s medical care must be my chief priority. I wish this were an entirely social visit, but unfortunately…”

  At the mention of his brother, smiles melted into furrowed brows. While Anisette asked questions—And how is Sir Malcolm? And what have the doctors said?—Mrs. Bingham briefed Mr. Bingham and Félicité on poor, deaf, mute Malcolm (so brave, so young, so tragic, so et cetera).

  When Mrs. Bingham learned that his brother had not yet seen a doctor, she insisted that Sir Angus take him to her husband’s personal physician. “I will call Dr. Van Hooten myself,” she said. “You will see him tomorrow—just name the time and it is done.”

  Francis was going to dodge this latest jab just as he had the others. Who knew what the doctor would uncover and how quickly his suspicions would be reported to the Binghams? But the truth was that Michael did need to see a doctor—and why not a rich man’s private physician? Wasn’t it exactly what he had told Martin he was planning to do? Michael’s well-being had to be more important than any ruse Francis was perpetrating on these most genial hosts. If this doctor could help Michael, could get him back to where he once was, then it was worth the risk of being exposed to a family of oddball millionaires. Francis had enough from the strongbox to reinvent himself again, if necessary. Now that he and Michael were in America, they could go anywhere, become anyone.

  With the question of the appointment with Dr. Van Hooten settled, Mrs. Bingham again steered the conversation to their impending presentation to the royal couple. It was the first item on the monarchs’ agenda after their arrival at the Trylon and Perisphere: they were to be seated on a dais while members of New York’s elite were introduced. The Binghams had secured four spots—“Humbug to that!” Mr. Bingham reminded her—and in the absence of a male escort, which seemed quite, well, indecorous, Mrs. Bingham wondered if there would be any way that Sir Angus would do them the very great honor of accompanying them—that is Mrs. B, Anisette, and Félicité—through the receiving line?

  Once he had unwound Mrs. Bingham’s syntax and saw plainly the question within, Francis smiled more broadly than any of the Binghams. What a lark this was! Dinner at a mansion, a besotted heiress, a millionaire’s private doctor, and now a meeting with the king and queen of England. They’d never believe a word of this at Mountjoy. He raised his glass to mark the occasion—to solemnize this contract he was making with the Binghams. “I would be delighted,” he said. “Absolutely delighted.”

  Francis had his FC Plan, but Mrs. Bingham had her own plan in mind. Earlier in the day, she had thought it enough to be escorted to the royal visit by a cousin of the queen, a cousin the queen might even recognize and ask to come closer for a chat, after which she would ask, “And who are these lovely women accompanying you?” That would be enough, she believed, to burnish the social luster of the Bingham name. But now, to be the woman who effected a reconciliation between the Rose of Scotland—that’s what they’d called her in Life magazine—and her cousin, once the black sheep but now the protector of his wounded brother (also a cousin of the queen), why, this would be a triumph that would echo through the generations. It would rankle those society matrons—hags, every one of them—who still, after decades, talked about the cheap Canadian tart who had snared the Copper King, and who spoke coldly to her, if at all, and spread wicked gossip about her daughters. And if all went well—if it went extremely well—then these same ladies would soon beg for the chance to sit in her parlor and ask, “Will Anisette’s wedding be in New York, or will you go to Scotland?” She was getting ahead of herself, she knew, but she could sense something building between Anisette and Sir Angus, and the night hadn’t yet reached its final act.

  THE FOOD AND the talk and the effort of being Angus MacFarquhar had left Francis both exhilarated and drained. And so when Mrs. Bingham escorted him from the dining room, he hoped that she was leading him out. Instead, she guided him toward a wide arcade that drew him deeper into the house. Anisette had preceded them through the door by a few steps but had disappeared. Félicité had loudly announced that she was retiring for the night, claiming a headache that was simply annihilating her. Mr. Bingham had remained at the table, waiting for some phantom final course that only he could see. Francis and Mrs. B passed through a vaulted gallery packed with milky, vacant-eyed statues. Amid the tangle, Francis caught sight of a huntress, a limbless Athena, a dying Gaul. Down another corridor, he spotted a billiard table as wide and green as a football pitch, while another door opened onto a cavernous ballroom with a floor like a mirror of black glass.

  “We have a little treat for you,” Mrs. B said as she turned the knob on a final door, this one into a conservatory populated by a large wire-strung harp, a spinet, a cello, and a grand piano cut from the same brilliant stuff as the ballroom floor. A viola leaned skeptically in one corner, and he knew without being told that it belonged to Félicité. All around the room, music stands sprouted like thick, fat flowers and in front of one of them, arranged in a row, were three wingback chairs, one of which was already occupied by Mr. Bingham. Apparently there was a more direct route to the conservatory, one that didn’t include a winding tour of the treasures of Bingham Castle. Francis saw that he was being courted, enticed to say yes to questions as yet unasked. And if a bargain was in the offing, then one more jeweled coffer was about to be opened before him: Anisette reappeared, a violin in one hand and a bow in the other.

  Francis now saw why Félicité had been so quick to call it a night. Here again was Anisette in the spotlight, though the spot being lit was beginning to look less like a stage and more like a sales floor. If the marble walls and pencil-point turrets and the gold leaf and the polished mahogany and everyone-gets-their-own-meat and right-this-way-Your-Lordship weren’t enough, then this latest exhibition would prove that the Binghams’ prize canary could sing and not just look pretty on her gilded perch. Somewhere deep inside his meat-stuffed and wine-glazed heart, Francis couldn’t help feeling sorry for Anisette. So much effort expended to catch the eye of a prince who was in fact a lowly pauper. Or was he? Francis had a bankroll; seed money, really, but it could be enough to get started. He had watched the way Mr. Bingham gri
pped his knife while he spoke of fat lords and their castles, and he surmised that Mr. Bingham himself had gone from nothing to this vast pile of something. And now Francis had only to endure the scratching of horsehair on catgut to move a step closer to—what?

  He again considered that this game of make-believe was in truth another in the string of risks that had carried him from iron handcuffs to silver cuff links. The wheel of fortune kept calling him a winner, and every time his number came up, he risked it all on the next spin: the escape, the accident, the Britannic. Big gambles paid off even bigger. So maybe it wasn’t just the Binghams’ good graces that he needed to win. They had taken a shine to him, and now here they were, practically begging him to carry off their daughter. Saying yes was a preposterous gamble, but saying no was pure idiocy.

  As soon as Francis and the elder Binghams were settled, Anisette propped the violin beneath her chin and without a word or a glance at her audience she launched the bow at the strings. Francis had braced himself for an onslaught but he was immediately enraptured. The first note was a starter’s pistol in a musical steeplechase that cleared every high note without pause and let out on long runs that would have been called daring if Anisette weren’t so obviously and firmly in control of the tempo and the timbre. While her hands worked their expert magic along the body of the instrument, her face remained calm, even placid, but it was her eyes; oh, those eyes! It wasn’t just that they burned hot—though the look on her could have melted steel—it was that they were active and searching in a way that Francis had never seen before. Not from Anisette. Not from anyone else he could recall. Her eyes narrowed and then bloomed. The pupils were pinpricks and then vast pools of inky black. She was pushing herself through a journey—racing through sunlight, clouds, another sunrise, then nightfall—and bringing them all along with her. Mrs. Bingham inclined her head to one side, a slight smile on her lips; Mr. Bingham’s eyes were shut, either in sleep or in reverie. Perhaps they had grown accustomed to Anisette’s abilities, the way that people who live by the sea can forget that the sunset over a blue-and-foam bay can rend your heart with its raw beauty. But Francis was transfixed. When Anisette finished the piece with a sudden thrusting flourish, his hands broke unbidden into applause.