Silver

by Graham Masterton

  At last he hung up the mouthpiece, and sat back in his deep leather-buttoned chair, and smiled, and clasped his hands together, and smiled, and said, ‘Well, now. How is life in salubrious Leadville these days?’

  Henry finished pouring himself two fingers of rum, and stoppered the decanter and pushed it back. ‘Full of incident,’ he replied. ‘One of my partners in the Little Pittsburgh was killed yesterday; Mr Rische.’

  ‘Well! That’s very tragic!’

  ‘Yes,’ said Henry. ‘As far as I could discover, he was trying to pick out a charge of dynamite that had misfired. There was an explosion—and, well, he was blown in half. It was terrible.’

  ‘My dear fellow,’ said David. ‘Well, I’m sorry to hear that. It must have been an appalling shock.’

  He paused for a while, in order to show decent respect for August Rische, his hands still clasped together, his face exaggeratedly serious; but then he asked, ‘I suppose this means that Mr Rische’s share of the mine reverts to you? If I can be so hasty in discussing the financial implications of such a recent tragedy.’

  ‘Well, it has to be thought of,’ said Henry. ‘And, yes, his share does revert to me.’

  David’s eyebrows went up a little, and stayed there. ‘Every cloud has a silver lining, so to speak,’ he remarked. And then he smiled, and said, ‘The reason I wanted to see you was because I have just received the latest accounts of your personal profits from the Little Pittsburgh, and you are now exactly half a millionaire.’

  He handed over an open ledger, headed ‘H. Roberts, Silver Proceeds’, and there at the end of a long list of handwritten entries was the provisional total, ‘$532,106.23.’

  Henry read the rows of entries with a growing sensation of lightheadedness. His head was a hot-air balloon, sailing off into unreality. He read the total again and again. Then he said, ‘I can hardly believe it.’

  ‘Ah, but it’s true, my dear fellow! And, what’s more, if you now own two-thirds of the Little Pittsburgh, then without any question at all, you are a whole millionaire, not just a half! Congratulations! A millionaire! And just for that, you can take me out to lunch!’

  Henry closed the ledger and handed it back to David with a broad smile. ‘Do you know what I’m going to do,’ he said. ‘I’m going to drag an architect back to Leadville with me, and I’m going to build a house. That’s what I’m going to do! And not just any house, either. A mansion! A mansion with fifteen bedrooms and half a dozen drawing-rooms and a room for poker and a room for billiards and a room for dancing. And it’s going to have a lobby like the Fifth Avenue Hotel in New York, only bigger; and chandeliers; and Oriental rugs; and real animal skins on the furniture. And it’s going to have gardens, too, like a palace; you wait and see.’

  ‘You’re a rich man, Henry,’ grinned David. ‘You can do what you like, more or less. You want a house like that, you build one, that’ll please that poor hardworking wife of yours. You’ll be able to hire servants, dozens if you want to; and all she’ll have to do is sit back and enjoy herself. What is it she likes best of all? A little embroidery? Music, maybe?’

  ‘Oh, she’ll find something,’ said Henry. ‘She’s one of these ladies who always manage to keep themselves busy.’ But even while he was smiling; even in the middle of all of his exhilaration, he knew what Augusta would say. He could picture her disapproving face in his mind as clearly as if David were holding up a daguerreotype of her: eyes hard as creek-pebbles, mouth tight as vinegar. There has to be a penalty, Henry. There has to be a judgement. Money that comes as easily as this can’t be counted on, you know.

  ‘Let’s go find ourselves a bottle of champagne,’ David suggested. ‘We can’t celebrate an occasion like this with desktop rum. Have you tried Latham’s Restaurant yet? Dennis Sheedy reckons they’ve got the finest grub in town. What do you think of braised tenderloin of beef? Hm? With hashed potatoes?’

  They shrugged on their heavy fur coats; two big and affluent men; and walked across the street to Latham’s, under a sky as green as corroded lead.

  David said, ‘That was your friend William Byers talking on the telephone when you came in. He’s still trying to persuade me to invest in some gopher-brained scheme to send paddle-steamers up and down the Platte. I’ve told him no, more times than I can count on my hands and my feet and the hairs in my ears, but he still keeps on. Him and that fellow Henry Stanley; scalawags united.’

  Henry thought of his conversation with William and Henry Stanley, the night he had visited Denver on his way to Council Bluffs; and of how expansively both of them had talked about the plans they had for Riverfront Park, and for starting up a side-wheeler service on the South Platte; and for the life of him he couldn’t remember what arrangements they had made with him about banking. It was something to do with using the name of his bank at Leadville, but he couldn’t quite recall what, or why; he had forgotten about it completely after going back to Council Bluffs, and encountering Annabel and then returning to Leadville to find that August Rische and George Hook had struck silver.

  He decided it would probably be more prudent not to mention his involvement in William’s scheme to David Moffat; particularly since he remembered that William had been moderately insulting about David’s banking methods, and about David’s baldness, too.

  ‘You know William’s trouble?’ said David, as they reached the mahogany-framed entrance of Latham’s Restaurant. ‘William always wanted to be God. That’s why he chose to be a newspaper proprietor, rather than a politician. A politician has to be careful whom he insults; a newspaper proprietor has to make sure that he insults everybody, and as often as possible.’

  The snow twisted between them like a bridal veil. Then David took Henry’s arm, and said, ‘Come on inside. No, after you. Multi-millionaires after millionaires, that’s the usual rule.’

  Latham’s was warm and busy and noisy; a large wood-panelled room clad all around with large engraved mirrors, and decorated with crimson plush wallpapers and hothouse ferns and bronze statues of ladies with flowing hair and suggestively slipping drapery, an art-form that was highly popular west of the Missouri. David Moffat was greeted by Stephen Latham himself, a glossy bean-shaped man with a pinprick moustache and a face the colour of pink candlewax; and Stephen Latham twirled around them as he guided them across to one of the best tables, overlooking the entire floor of the restaurant, and tugged out their chairs for them, and snapped fresh napkins into their laps, and asked them what they would care to drink.

  ‘Champagne is the order of the day,’ said David, ‘and we’ll both have the braised tenderloin, with browned potatoes; and the creamed spinach, too.’

  Stephen Latham brought them a magnum of French champagne, and a plateful of raw oysters, and said, ‘Nice crowd we’ve got in today, Mr Moffat; and all the nicer for having you here.’

  ‘This man’s a flatterer,’ joked David Moffat. ‘But don’t I adore being flattered; even by him.’

  ‘Mr Moffat, a man of your distinction, it is almost impossible not to flatter you,’ smiled Stephen Latham.

  Henry’s attention, however, had been caught by a jostling and a sudden commotion at the restaurant’s doorway; and a dithering amongst some of the recently-arrived customers; as if something interesting and disturbing had happened. Someone cried, ‘This way! This way! Come on, now, make some way there!’ and Stephen Latham turned around at last, and then said quickly, ‘Excuse me, there is somebody I have to greet. I do apologize. But, you know, with such a busy restaurant to run…’

  ‘What the blazes is going on?’ asked David; but his question was answered almost immediately by the appearance through the crowds of customers of a very tall hawk-nosed man with his hair combed up into a high gingery cock’s-comb; and on his arm, black-eyed, white-skinned, shy but smiling, a young woman whose appearance made Henry’s stomach tighten as if somebody had actually squeezed it tight in their fist.

  He watched her unswervingly as she was escorted across the room; and when she stopp
ed behind Stephen Latham, in a position in which he was unable to see her, he threw down his napkin, and pushed back his chair, and unashamedly stood up to stare at her.

  She was in her mid-20s, at least half his age. But she had a riveting composure about her, a way of carrying herself that told Henry that what he had originally taken for shyness was in fact a high degree of self-confidence. She was obviously used to being stared at, and used to being surrounded by admiring men, and so instead of acting skittishly, she stood quiet and assured, her head slightly lowered, her lips slightly parted, her liquid-dreamy eyes fixed on Stephen Latham as if she knew both nothing and everything: that devastating combination of innocence and seductiveness that could unbalance even the most sophisticated of men.

  ‘Henry, for God’s sake,’ David Moffat chided him, and grasped his sleeve. ‘You don’t want to make an exhibition of yourself.’

  But Henry brushed his hand away, and continued to stare at the woman like a man who has seen a ghost, not of anyone he has known in the past; but of someone out of a secret and unrealized dream; with a face and a bearing that was all the more disturbing because he had never believed that there actually could exist a woman who looked like this.

  There was something of Doris in her; some heavy-lidded sleepiness about the eyes. But where Doris had been blonde, and fair-skinned, this woman was dark, with long caramel-coloured ringlets heaped up high on her head, under a plumed hat; and a dark complexion. She was more beautiful than Doris, too. She had a finely-formed chin, and a mouth that looked as if it would taste of strawberry wine (should you be allowed to taste it), and a small straight nose that was very slightly tipped. She was small: only an inch or two taller than five feet, but her green velvet day-gown revealed a deep, full bosom, and a tiny corseted waist.

  The gingery man waited until Stephen Latham had seated this sleepy-eyed angel, and then sat down himself; and it was only then that Henry groped behind him for his own chair, and sat down again. The young woman had glanced once around the room, and Henry had attempted to smile at her, but if she had noticed him, she had given no indication of it. The sleepy eyes had turned away.

  ‘Do you know that woman?’ Henry asked David, in a breathless whisper.

  ‘I know the man. That’s Murray Holman, who owns the Majestic Theatre on 16th Street. But I can’t say that I’ve ever seen her before. Quite a treat for sore eyes, wouldn’t you say?’

  ‘She’s devastating. That’s the only word for it.’

  ‘Don’t look so smitten; even if you are smitten. It always spoils my luncheon when people start looking smitten, even when they’re smitten by me. Not that I get too much of that these days. These days, those other people are usually the smiters, and I’m nothing more than a very elderly smitee.’

  ‘David, she’s the kind of woman who can kill my appetite stone dead, just looking at her. I’m serious.’

  ‘She’s probably an actress, if she’s having luncheon with Murray Holman.’

  ‘What does that matter?’

  ‘Come on, Henry, you know what reputations actresses can have. Anything in pants that hasn’t forgotten to take a bath for less than three months, and actresses are after it like a turkey-vulture going for raw meat. No, you take my advice, Henry, old man, you’re best off the way you are. Cosily married, comfortably off, and nothing to look forward to but more money. You would never survive the scandal that would break out if you had a love affair with a girl like that. They’re undiluted arsenic: so keep away.’

  ‘Is that the voice of experience talking?’ Henry asked, with a sly smile.

  ‘Is there any reason why it shouldn’t be?’ countered David. He took out his crumpled white handkerchief, and wiped it around the top of his bald head as if he were drying the lid of a large kitchen casserole. ‘Even bankers are permitted a few hours out of the dog-kennel, once in a while.’ He paused, and then he said, with unexpected frankness, ‘Her name was Audrey. I knew her for years. We were very close. Friends, as well as lovers. But in the end I suppose we loved each other rather too much.’

  ‘Well, you know what it says in Ecclesiasticus,’ Henry replied. ‘How agree the kettle and the earthen pot together? For if the one be smitten against the other, it shall be broken.’

  ‘That’s it,’ David agreed. ‘That’s what I mean by being smitten, and the consequences of it.’

  ‘Still,’ said Henry, with a surge of sudden decision, ‘I have to go introduce myself. I can’t sit here, four tables away from such a captivating woman, and me a millionaire, or at least half of one, and pretend that I don’t want to get to know her.’

  ‘You’re making a mistake,’ David told him, quite pragmatically.

  ‘Yes,’ said Henry. ‘I expect I am.’

  He threw down his napkin again, stood up, tugged down his waistcoat, and walked across to Murray Holman’s table. Murray Holman had drawn his dining-chair very close to the young woman, and was inclining his gingery quiff towards her, and reciting something in a dry, croaky whisper, pausing and smiling from time to time to see what she thought of it, and then continuing, but apparently eliciting no response from the young woman whatsoever, since her face was as calm and as beautiful as ever, a face that needed no expression at all.

  Henry looked down at Murray Holman’s red hand resting on top of the young woman’s white glove. Then he cleared his throat, and inclined his head, and said, ‘My compliments, madam. Henry Roberts, of Leadville.’

  Murray Holman frowned, and glared up at Henry through eyebrows that were like thickets of bright red thistly bee-balm. ‘I’m sorry, sir, this lady is with me, and we’re not welcoming any intrusions this afternoon.’

  Henry smiled. ‘My compliments nonetheless.’

  To Murray Holman’s obvious annoyance, the young woman lifted her hand up to Henry, so that he could take it and brush the back of her white net glove with his lips.

  ‘If you’ll forgive me for saying so,’ he told her, ‘I vow that you’re by far the prettiest lady I’ve ever seen in Colorado; and Colorado is known for her pretty ladies.’

  Henry didn’t know if he was overtired, or overwrought, or slightly drunk. He could hear what he was saying, but he could scarcely believe that it was him. Could this really be Henry Roberts, the taciturn storekeeper and mine-owner, who spent most of his time drinking whiskey and playing poker with his old cronies in Leadville, or supervising his silver-mine, speaking to a strange young woman in a Denver restaurant with all the courteous smarm of a Southern gigolo?

  But the young woman’s response was warm and immediate. She blushed very slightly, and nodded her head, and said, ‘You’re most flattering, Mr Roberts.’

  Murray Holman now had no alternative but to introduce her. ‘Allow me to present Mrs Elizabeth McCourt Doe,’ he snapped.

  Mrs Doe put in, ‘You may call me “Baby Doe” if you wish, Mr Roberts. Almost everybody else does.’

  ‘Well, that’s a very striking name,’ said Henry. ‘A striking name for a striking lady.’

  Murray Holman pulled a grotesque face. ‘Now, if you’ll excuse us, Mr Roberts,’ he said, testily, drumming the table sharply with his fingertips. ‘It’s really been a pleasure to, unh.’

  ‘Are you here for long, Mrs Doe?’ Henry asked Baby Doe, ignoring Murray Holman’s elaborate display of impatience.

  ‘She’s appearing in my new play,’ said Murray Holman. ‘Her day-boo as an actress. Hamlet, complete with real lake for Ophelia to drown in. Mrs Doe here will be playing Ophelia.’

  ‘I don’t mind the water,’ put in Baby Doe, helpfully.

  Henry frowned at her, and then said, ‘You don’t?’

  ‘Well, it’s a wonderful opportunity. Mr Holman says that he can make me famous. The toast of the Rockies.’

  She reached across the table and laid her hand on Murray Holman’s wrist, and that to Henry was an unmistakable signal that however charming he might be; however attractive and however courteous; Baby Doe was interested above all in fame and fortune, and
Murray Holman was going to remain her escort for just as long as he could promise her attention, and applause, and money. For all her sleepy-eyed look of girlish naiveté, Baby Doe was clearly ambitious, and proud, and acutely aware of her own allure.

  ‘You like Shakespeare?’ Henry asked Baby Doe.

  Baby Doe blinked.

  ‘You know,’ Murray Holman prompted her. ‘The fellow who wrote Hamlet.’

  ‘Oh—oh, yes,’ smiled Baby Doe. ‘I think he’s extraordinary. Did you know he wrote in poetry all the time? I’ve learned most of my lines.

  ‘Do not, as some ungracious pastors do,

  Show me the steep and thorny way to heaven,

  Whil’st, like a puff’d and reckless libertine,

  Himself the primrose path of dalliance treads

  And recks not his own rede.’

  She hesitated, and then turned to Murray Holman, and said, ‘Do you know, I never understood that. What’s a rede, and how do you reck it?’

  ‘Search me,’ replied Murray Holman. ‘Now, Mr Roberts, you really must leave us be. I have some important business to discuss with Mrs Doe.’

  ‘Well, now that I’m an actress of some note…’ said Baby Doe, with a teasing and only half-apologetic smile.

  Henry bowed his head, and then returned to his table. David Moffat was drinking turtle soup, his bald head bent forward, his napkin tucked into his collar; and there was a plate of San Francisco Bay shrimps waiting for Henry, brought from California on the Central Pacific Railroad, in chunks of ice. Henry sat down and said to the waiter, ‘Bring me some sauce diable.’

  ‘Well?’ asked David, tearing sourdough bread. ‘Did madam give you the brush-off?’

  ‘Not at all,’ said Henry. ‘But Mr Holman is going to cast her in the part of Ophelia in his new production of Hamlet. Complete with real lake for Ophelia to drown in, he says. And just at the moment, that’s all she’s interested in. Fame, and money.’

  ‘Show me a woman who isn’t.’

  The waiter brought Henry his devilled sauce, and he began to eat his shrimps, chewing slowly without tasting either the shellfish or the pepper. A trio began to play on piano and violin and double bass, ‘The Song of the West’, and the restaurant was noisy with laughter and clouded with tobacco smoke and busy with waiters and customers and revolving fans.