Silver

by Graham Masterton

  Henry painfully tugged out his handkerchief, and dabbed the blood from his forehead. Then he picked up his wallet, opening it wide in the hope that his attackers might have missed at least one last dollar; but they had left him with nothing. God damn Alby Monihan, and his God-damned mine. God damn all Rubes and’ hayseeds too, especially himself. He left the doorway and made his way back on to Fifth Avenue, and asked the doorman of the hotel how he could find the Collamore, on Broadway at Spring Street.

  It took him twenty minutes to walk back to the Collamore, through the busy gas-lit streets. As he neared Spring Street, he was propositioned several times by pretty young prostitutes; one of them even linked arms with him and walked beside him along the block, a girl of no more than sixteen or seventeen, with dark eyes, and a sapphire-blue dress that rustled provocatively with every step. ‘You’re a fine fellow,’ she cooed, ‘I could have my pleasure with a fellow like you.’

  Henry raised his hat at her at the corner of the street, and left her disappointed. As he dejectedly crossed over to the next block, he reflected that he might have taken her up on her offer, if he had had the time, and the money. But now he was flat-busted, and already late for his train, and without even the price of a night’s accommodation at the Collamore.

  He was hot and dusty by the time he reached the hotel foyer. He went up to the reception desk; and the smooth-faced clerk came gliding over and said, ‘Ah, Mr Roberts.’

  ‘I need to send a telegraph,’ said Henry. ‘Can you do that? To Bennington, Vermont?’

  ‘No trouble, sir. Just write your message on the pad here, and we’ll make sure that it’s sent off for you instanter. And by the way, sir, your wife’s here. She’s waiting for you in the café.’

  Henry stared at him. ‘My wife? I think you must be mistaking me for somebody else. Another Roberts.’

  ‘We only have one Mr Roberts staying here, Mr Roberts; and that’s yourself. We have Mr Robins, and Mr Reuben, and Mr Robozsuzsi. But you are the only Mr Roberts, Mr Roberts. And this lady did present herself as Mrs Roberts.’

  Henry frowned. Who on earth could it be? It must be a mistake. He didn’t know anyone at all in New York, except for one of his old schoolfriends, Warren Peabody, and not even Warren Peabody could have successfully passed himself off as Mrs Roberts. Perhaps one of the whores who frequented the Collamore’s lobby had seen his name on his trunks when he had left them with the bellman, and was trying to arrange a commercial tryst with him. Well, he thought, whoever it is, she won’t have any more luck than the girl who linked arms with me in the street; not until my father can send me some more money.

  He walked through the wide archway to the Collamore’s small side lobby, and then through the polished glass and mahogany doors to the Spring Street café. The café was busy serving early suppers to those guests who were going across to the Bowery: to the Tivoli, or to the Odeon, or to the Thiers Concert Hall, for an evening at the play. A string quartet was playing ‘Silken Ribbons’ amongst the palms and trailing flowers, and waiters in yellow jackets and black trousers hurried in and out of the kitchen doors like bees flying in and out of a hive.

  Henry approached the upright desk, where the café’s seating arrangements were supervised by a tiny man in a tall white collar and an evening suit that would probably have fitted a nine-year-old boy. ‘I’m looking for Mrs Roberts,’ Henry said, cautiously.

  ‘Aha! Then you must be Mr Roberts! The lady told me to expect you! Thissa way, if you please!’

  Bustling ahead of Henry, his elbows propped neatly outwards as if they were necessary for steering, the tiny man led the way right around the podium where the quartet were playing, until at last he reached a small group of private tables clustered beneath an enormous gilt-framed mirror. At one of these tables, an elderly gentleman was being tickled under the chin by a blonde girl who was young enough to have been his granddaughter; at another, two businessmen with straining bellies and voluminous white napkins were eating stuffed squab and discussing the sorry state of the cotton business; while at the very back, right under the mirror, hopeful, tired, apprehensive, in an unexpectedly showy hat of ribbons and feathers, her spectacles gleaming like dimes thrown into a municipal fountain, sat Augusta.

  Henry stood still, his arms by his sides, his mouth half-open. He had never been so surprised by anyone in his life. He said, ‘Augusta!’ and walked towards her with slow, mechanical steps, while she flustered and bobbed and couldn’t make up her mind whether she ought to stand up or remain seated. The tiny maitre d’ hovered around for a gratuity, but Henry ignored him, for no other reason except that he had nothing to give him.

  ‘Your wife, sir,’ said the maitre d’, just to remind him of the service that he had performed. He dodged around behind Henry, and pulled out one of the chairs for him, and then held out his hand. There was always the occasional out-of-town customer who needed a really blatant reminder of what was expected in a big-city hotel.

  Henry nodded to the maitre d’, then caught sight of his outstretched hand. ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry. How much do you want?’

  ‘Whatever you consider to be appropriate, sir,’ replied the maitre d’, smugly.

  Henry hesitated for a moment, and then twisted one of the gilt buttons off his cuff, and dropped it into the maitre d’s palm. ‘Thank you,’ he smiled.

  ‘This is a button, sir,’ said the maitre d’.

  ‘You asked for whatever was appropriate,’ Henry replied. ‘You brought us together, as a button brings two sides of a cuff together, so what could be more appropriate than that?’

  The maitre d’ paused for a second or two, with a face as sour as a jarful of icicle pickles. Then he bustled off again, elbows cocked, and Henry could see him talking to one of the waiters, presumably to instruct him that Henry and Augusta should be kept waiting as long as possible for any kind of service. Henry didn’t mind; with no money, he preferred not to order anything anyway.

  Augusta said nervously, ‘You must think me very forward.’

  ‘Mrs Roberts, hmh?’ Henry asked her, with a slowly-spreading grin.

  ‘I only did it for the sake of propriety,’ Augusta retorted. ‘I thought it would sound rather indelicate if a strange girl came into the hotel asking for you; especially since there are so many unfortunate girls about.’

  ‘Well, it depends what you mean by unfortunate,’ said Henry. ‘I don’t think they think they’re unfortunate. The girls, I mean.’

  And as for the idea that you, Augusta, in your fussy country hat and your sensible brown cape and your spectacles, could ever be mistaken for one of those painted provocative harlots outside...well. You couldn’t damage a fellow’s reputation if you danced in the lobby in nothing but your unutterables, shouting ‘sin for the asking!’

  ‘When did you get here?’ Henry asked. ‘And why? Why did you come? I was just about to leave for Iowa.’

  ‘I arrived at six,’ said Augusta. ‘The train was delayed at Poughkeepsie. I think there was a cow on the track. Or perhaps it was a pig. I was so worried that I would miss you; but, all the same, if you’d gone, I could always have caught the next train to Iowa and come on after you, couldn’t I?’

  Henry leaned forward. ‘You came because of me? I mean, you didn’t just come here to visit?’

  ‘No, no,’ Augusta flustered. ‘I’ve got everything packed. My trunks are in the luggage-store, alongside yours! That was when I knew that everything was going to be all right, of course, when they told me that your trunks were still here.’

  ‘Augusta, I’m not sure that I understand.’ Although I do, he thought, God help me, I do. She’s taken my friendship for something more. She’s had so few kind words in her life from men that she likes that she’s sure now that I really love her. Oh God almighty, what am I going to do now? She’s got her bags packed, and she’s bought herself a hat, and she’s come all the way from Bennington down to New York, in the eager expectation that I’m going to take her with me all the way to California.


  And what then? An affectionate brother-and-sister relation-ship? Or marriage?

  Augusta swallowed, and traced a pattern on the tablecloth with her white-gloved index finger. ‘I know it’s very forward of me, but you always said that people should be forward; if they were ever to achieve what they wanted, and have all those things that their hearts desire. Well, my heart’s desire was always you, Henry, and I know for certain that you’re fond of me, too, for haven’t you said so? And I know that you were very upset by what happened to Doris, and that you were very preoccupied, and so perhaps you didn’t think of me when you left. Well, I can understand that, I truly can; but then I thought what’s going to happen when Henry finally gets to California, and starts to think about me again, and suddenly realizes that he shouldn’t have left me behind. Oh, Henry, my poor poor Henry, I know how much you loved and wanted Doris, but Doris is gone now, and all the weeping in the world will never bring her back.’

  Henry rubbed his forehead with his fingertips, quite hard, as if he were trying to massage Dr Kleinwort’s famous eyebrow-restorer into his skin. ‘Augusta,’ he said, ‘the fact is that I am fond of you; but I have a new life to make for myself, too. When I go out to California, there won’t be any comforts; or luxuries either. It’ll be hard work for a very long time, and really those are not the sort of circumstances into which I could plunge you with a happy heart.’

  ‘But Henry, I’m not expecting luxury! I despise luxury! I like nothing better than honest hard work, and making a home from nothing at all! Oh, Henry, my dear, it’s just what I’m best at! I can sew and I can bake, you know that already, but I know how to paint, too, and hammer a nail, and I can make myself useful in so many ways.’

  She clutched his wrist, and stared at him with such anguished intensity that he had to look away, embarrassed.

  ‘Henry,’ she said. There were tiny beads of perspiration on her upper lip. ‘Henry, I can japan a cabinet.’

  Henry looked around for the waiter. At last he caught the fellow’s eye; but after having made quite sure that Henry knew that he had seen him, the waiter turned away, and instead made a show of serving a woman in a florid green dress.

  ‘Henry, I love you; and I always have; and I always will,’ Augusta whispered. ‘Do you hear me, Henry? I love you. I’ll do anything at all. I’ll be your slave, Henry. I promise.’

  Henry held her hand, and looked at her for a long time without saying anything. She seemed almost pretty in the early-evening lamplight, and there was a radiance about her which both attracted him and reassured him. She was kind, kindness itself, he knew that already. And to have somebody with him in California, a woman who could cook and sew and keep house for him without complaint, what a boon that would be. There was nothing to say that he would have to marry her; and even when they did part, which they inevitably would, she would probably find it far easier to catch herself a husband in California than she ever would have done in south Vermont. On the other hand, did he really want the responsibility of taking her there?

  ‘I can’t go to California straight away,’ he said.

  ‘Why not? I thought you were all ready.’

  ‘Well, I was. But only an hour ago, I lost all of my money. It’s all rather a long story. But I shall have to telegraph my father to send me some more. Even then, I don’t know whether he’ll have enough to set up the both of us.’

  ‘But, Henry, that’s no trouble. I’ve got money. I brought all my savings with me!’

  ‘You brought all your savings?’

  ‘Oh, yes, and you’re welcome to have them. Please, Henry!’

  ‘How much?’ he asked. And thought: why am I asking? What am I getting myself into? Can I really imagine travelling west with Augusta Pierce, of all people? What would Jack Davies say, if he knew? He’d probably laugh himself sick. Henry, with Augusta? Self-inflicted punishment, that’s what he’d call it. Jack had always said that Augusta had a face like a roadscraper, and a figure like a bag of white beans. And you want to go to California with her?

  Augusta had opened her red leather purse and was counting out her money. ‘There,’ she said, ‘that’s all of it, and you may have it. One hundred and sixty-eight dollars, and some cents.’

  Henry took out his watch. ‘The train leaves at nine. That means we have only sixteen minutes to call a waggon and get to the station.’

  ‘You’ll take me?’ asked Augusta, breathlessly. It was the first time that she had betrayed any fear that he might refuse her.

  Henry hesitated for seconds on end; and then took her hand; and nodded; and said, ‘I’ll take you.’ For after all, he thought, here is the money to replace my lost capital, without having to ask my father for more; and here is a friend who is more than willing to help me set up my business; and keep my house; and there is no obligation to love her, is there? No obligation at all.

  The waiter came across at last and said, ‘Are you eating, sir?’ his pencil poised.

  ‘What does it look like?’ Henry challenged him. Then he turned to Augusta, and said, with exaggerated formality, ‘Shall we go, my dear?’ and offered her his arm.

  They left the café with the poise of Fifth Avenue socialites. But as they passed the maitre d’s desk, Henry stopped, and approached the little man, and said, ‘You said that you would leave the service charge to me. Well, there has been no service, not to speak of; and therefore I think I will have my button back.’

  The maitre d’ said contemptuously, ‘I have thrown your button away, sir.’ And with that, he turned to greet a party of large red-faced people who looked as if they were more than eager to get themselves stuck in to broiled buffalofish and puffed potatoes. Augusta said, ‘Come on, Henry, it doesn’t matter. I’ll find you another one to match.’ But Henry took hold of one of the black silk buttons on the maitre d’s tailcoat, and wrenched it off before Augusta could stop him or the maitre d’ realized what was happening.

  Henry held up the button and smiled to the maitre d’ and said, ‘Thank you,’ and felt that at least he had got a small revenge on the unprincipled city of New York.

  Four

  It was Thursday morning before they arrived in Chicago. They had missed the train on Saturday evening by only three or four minutes; and so they had spent two more nights at the Collamore Hotel before leaving for the west on the New York Central Railroad. They came in through the Chicago stockyards as the day broke, grey and overcast, and all around them, this sprawling 200-acre ‘city of the beasts’, with its miles of stock-pens and warehouses and railroad sidings looked to Henry like a gigantic and complicated puzzle, slats and fences and boarded avenues. The fetid smell of thousands of cattle and sheep penetrated the railroad car’s ventilators and even seemed to taint the coffee which Henry was drinking.

  He buttoned up his collar. Beside him, with his mouth open, the young piano salesman with whom he had shared his sleeping accommodation still snored, his spectacles and his reservoir-pen resting neatly on a copy of the Beckwith piano catalogue; dreaming no doubt of perfect middle As, produced by strings humming at 435 vibrations per second, and of mouse-proof pedals, and of veneered back-frames, and of sounding-boards.

  Henry was at last beginning to feel discouraged. When they had arrived pell-mell at the New York Central terminus on Saturday night, their waggon bouncing and rattling with all of their trunks and cases, he had been in a high state of hilarity, and he had hardly minded that they had missed the train. He had taken Augusta to dinner (on Augusta’s money) to Taylor’s Restaurant at 365 Broadway, where they had admired the sparkling chandeliers in the ladies’ dining room, and the crystal fountain in the stairwell, splashing so high that the bubbling top of its jet could be seen from the floor above; and they had eaten bluefish and melon, and drunk sweet white wine. Then they had gone back to the Collamore, and Henry had extended his room reservation until Monday morning, this time signing the register as ‘Mr & Mrs Henry Roberts’ and trying not to speak too artificially to the smooth-faced clerk. They
had agreed, he and Augusta, that to ask for separate rooms would not only be wastefully expensive, but would arouse suspicion about their ‘married status’; and Henry had volunteered to sleep on the couch while Augusta slept in the bed. ‘We will no doubt be forced together in all sorts of circumstances as we travel out west,’ Augusta had asserted. ‘We may as well get used to the idea from the very beginning.’

  Augusta had locked herself in the bathroom for almost a half-hour; and then returned hot and rosy in her floral cotton robe, without her spectacles, and wearing a poplin mob-cap so low over her forehead that she reminded Henry of a gentle imbecile woman who had lived at the back of Mrs McSkillett’s place on the Arlington road; and who had nodded and smiled bashfully at everyone who looked curiously into her doorway, just as Augusta had been smiling bashfully then.

  She had smelled of ashes of roses; and it had been plain that without her spectacles she could see Henry only blurrily. She had walked towards him with that distinctive diagonal gait of the very shortsighted, afraid of colliding with unseen furniture head-on, and she had grasped his arm as if she were drowning, and then let out a little smiling gasp of relief.

  ‘I’ve never done anything like this before,’ she had told him, still smiling, still trying to focus with swimming eyes.

  He had bent forward to kiss her on the forehead, but only succeeded in kissing the shirred band of her mob-cap. ‘Well,’ he had reassured her, there’s always a first time.’

  The couch had been lumpy and uncomfortable, and Henry had woken up several times during the night, feeling stiff and impossibly cramped. Each time he had listened for Augusta’s breathing, and scarcely heard it; and that was because Augusta had still been awake, tense with fear and fantasies that Henry could only guess at. In his mind, he had turned over again and again the thought that it had been wrong of him to ask her to come to California with him. He would probably end up hurting her, or hating her, or both. Yet the idea had such practical attractions that it was difficult to dismiss it; and he felt somehow responsible for her following him; almost as if he had invited her.