by John Jakes
At last he squeezed inside. He joined a stream of reporters rushing to a special press area marked off by velvet ropes. President Grant and the bearded Emperor of Brazil were already on the steam engine’s control platform. The platform was raised several steps above the floor of the hall. A man with a proud expression—the designer and engineer, Corliss, Gideon supposed—stood close to the presidential party.
Gideon tilted his head back. The top of the mammoth machine looked three stories high. As yet he had no statistics on the Corliss; he was supposed to gather those and bring them back to New York.
For a newsman, the faces of those present were almost a more interesting study than the engine itself. Gideon saw wonder on nearly every countenance. It was apparent that the Corliss would be the fair’s number one attraction. He had guessed wrong, then. He’d thought the most popular exhibit would be an astonishing new device called a telephone, which was to be demonstrated by its inventor, Alexander Bell.
He was busy making notes when he had a sensation of being watched. He glanced up. He was so surprised, he almost dropped the little block of paper. From the other side of the Corliss platform where he stood among a group of equally well-dressed visitors, a man was indeed watching him.
It was Thomas Courtleigh.
The auburn hair had grayed slightly. The face was a shade paler than he remembered. But even at a distance, Courtleigh’s hazel eyes had a compelling power. They almost refused Gideon permission to glance away.
Five years, he thought. It had been nearly that long since he’d stormed into Courtleigh’s mansion. And what had that act of bravado accomplished? Exactly nothing.
Gideon had yet to catch the railroad man committing any crime of which he could be convicted. Twice he’d dispatched a trio of reporters to Chicago to look into Courtleigh’s personal and public life. Both times they’d returned empty handed. There were rumors in plenty, but no facts. If Thomas Courtleigh broke the law—and most business tycoons did, one way or another—skilled attorneys and intermediaries covered the track very well.
Both times, Gideon had recalled Strelnik’s prediction that he’d become so frustrated attempting to curb a man like Courtleigh, he’d finally resort to violence. Both times, he did feel something close to that kind of frustration. But of course having the impulse wasn’t the same as doing the deed.
He hadn’t thought of Courtleigh’s threats for months. He’d assumed the railroad president had forgotten them. Yet now Courtleigh was staring at him with a fury as great as that which Gideon remembered from just after the fire. Odd.
“Are you both ready? Then, Your Majesty, will you be so kind as to turn that handle?”
Gideon wrenched his gaze back to the dignitaries. Dom Pedro, resplendent in his imperial uniform dripping with gold epaulettes and frogging, turned the indicated handle. Slowly, with a hiss of steam that grew increasingly louder, the first of the parallel walking beams began to move.
Down, then up. Down, up. The shaft sank into the ground far beneath the building, then rose from it again.
An ovation shook the hall. People whistled and stamped. Corliss’ great machine would provide the power for all the other, smaller machines on display.
“Now, Mr. President—will you turn your handle, sir?”
With a nervous smile, Grant complied. The second beam started its slow downward motion. Soon the rhythm quickened. With both walking beams in operation, the floor of the hall vibrated. Another, louder ovation burst forth. The opening ceremonies were over.
Gideon tried to jot a few descriptive phrases, but he kept thinking of Courtleigh. When he glanced back to the spot where the W & P president had been standing, the group had rearranged itself. Courtleigh was no longer visible.
Soon the crowd began to disperse to take in the exhibits.
Gideon headed for the rendezvous point he and Julia had agreed upon—the soda fountain located near the bandstand in the Main Hall.
As he walked along, he still had the uneasy sensation of being observed. And some key detail of Courtleigh’s expression or appearance troubled him. But the detail remained elusive no matter how hard he thought about it.
v
Late in the day they took a crowded horsecar back to their hotel on Walnut Street. Julia and Carter went to their room; Carter said he was tired. Gideon used a desk in his room to arrange his notes and begin writing his opening paragraphs. He had to take his dispatch to the telegraph office by ten-thirty. Theo Payne was holding space on tomorrow’s front page for an account of the opening day.
He met Julia in the lobby at half past six. She looked refreshed. She said Carter wouldn’t be joining them for dinner. He’d worn himself out tramping through the exhibits and was still asleep.
In the dining room, over grilled sole and the liebfraumilch she’d taught him to enjoy, he asked her whether she’d seen Courtleigh in Machinery Hall. She hadn’t. News of his presence clearly upset her.
“Why would he be here, Gideon? His line has no official connection with the Exhibition, does it?”
“No, but it is opening day. Anyone’s free to come.”
“I suppose you’re right.”
“He also has contacts to maintain in the railroad community. The industry’s in a turmoil these days. Mullins, one of our men who covers business news, keeps bringing in rumors that some of the trunk lines intend to meet secretly to form a pool.”
“Form what?”
“A pool. A group composed of several cooperating lines. Usually a pool’s organized to fix freight rates and otherwise squeeze out any competition the pool members don’t want. Sometimes those in the pool fund a war chest any of them can dip into if they have trouble with a strike. The fund usually pays for blacklegs. Strikebreakers. For months, Mullins has been hearing that a new pool’s to be started. And wages cut on every line involved.”
“When is it supposed to happen?”
He shrugged. “No one knows. This year. Next. Courtleigh might be involved, though most of the rumors have originated here in Pennsylvania.” He took a bite of fish. “In any case, Courtleigh hasn’t made good on his earlier threats, so it’s pointless to worry about him. I just wish I could remember what struck me wrong this morning.”
“How do you mean, wrong?”
“Something was out of place when I saw him. Something in the way he looked. I haven’t been able to—” Abruptly, he drew in a breath. “Now I remember. He was with a party of well-dressed men and women. But his wife was missing. It wasn’t the presence of something that threw me off—it was the absence.”
“Oh dear,” Julia murmured. “I meant to tell you and in all the excitement, I quite forgot.”
“Tell me what?”
“Courtleigh’s wife died six weeks ago.”
Gideon’s palms turned cold. “Are you positive?”
She nodded. “It was in all the Chicago papers. The Tribune got hold of it first, and evidently Courtleigh didn’t act in time to quash the story.”
She was confusing him. “Julia, people don’t conceal the death of a spouse.”
“No, certainly not the death itself. I’m referring to the circumstances. At the time Gwen Courtleigh passed away, she was a patient in a private asylum in Lake County. The same one to which her parents sent her after you visited the ball in her honor. She’d been locked up there for more than a year, hopelessly insane, and apparently showed no signs of ever recovering—Gideon.” Her hand closed over his. “You mustn’t look that way. I know Courtleigh made foolish accusations about your responsibility for her condition five years ago, but they were just that. Foolish. Don’t start believing them now.”
Gideon’s blue eye was grim. “It doesn’t matter a damn whether I believe them. It only matters whether he does.”
Stricken silent, Julia waited for him to continue.
“In the past, I did a lot of thinking about Tom Courtleigh’s motives, and how his mind must work to permit him to behave as he does. I believe I understand him. Look at li
fe from his point of view. He has money, and power, and those two things will give him almost anything he wants—with little or no opposition. They also provide virtually complete protection against the buffetings of everyday life. The Courtleighs of this world live a sequestered, unreal existence. Ordinary people are more accustomed to bad luck. To blind chance interfering with their affairs. Courtleigh avoids that sort of thing year after year after year. Then comes something like his wife’s insanity. He can’t order it to heal itself. He can’t write a draft and pay some flunky to make it vanish. I’m not trying to be clever when I say he probably found her condition maddening. Trying to undo it, he might come close to going mad himself. And when he discovered he couldn’t undo it, I’m sure his anger would demand something on which to place the blame.”
She whispered, “Don’t you mean someone?”
Slowly, he nodded. “I think that’s what I saw in his eyes this morning. He remembers he’s never carried out his promise to punish me. And now he has greater reason than ever to do it.”
Chapter XII
Vision of America
i
AFTER A NIGHT’S sleep, Gideon felt he’d been an alarmist. He and Julia returned to the Exhibition next day, turned Carter loose, met him again at sunset and had an altogether marvelous time. Gideon saw no sign of Thomas Courtleigh.
He’d sent only a relatively short dispatch to the Union the preceding evening. Out of the day’s notes he prepared a longer piece, and started for the telegraph office just after ten o’clock. Julia was tired, but she’d promised to meet him in his room when he returned.
He was only a few steps from the hotel on still-busy Walnut Street when someone called his name.
He paused and looked across the street. A man waved. “Over here, Mr. Kent!” He was a small, nondescript fellow. Gideon didn’t recognize him. “I’ve a message for you.”
Suspicious, Gideon hesitated at the edge of the plank sidewalk. He didn’t dare waste too much time before sending his dispatch. And he absolutely didn’t know the man, who was hanging back near one of the darkened shops as if to avoid the gaslights of a restaurant entrance close by.
A carriage clattered past at a fast clip, momentarily concealing tne man as he shouted, “Please, Mr. Kent, it’s most urgent.”
Curiosity overcame Gideon’s wariness. He glanced at the hotel doorman who’d been watching the exchange, shrugged and stepped down into the street. He was a third of the way across when a hack drawn by two lathered horses came plunging onto Walnut from the cross street to his left. The horses and the hack rushed at him like a juggernaut.
The hotel doorman cried, “Watch yourself, sir!” Gideon flung up his left arm and hurled himself backward. As he fell, he had a distorted view of the bobbing, wild-eyed heads of the horses, and of the slouch-hatted driver whipping them. The street shook.
He landed on his side, his arm outflung. He jerked his arm back just in time to keep it from being trampled by sharp hoofs and crushed by heavy iron tires.
The doorman ran into the street, shaking his fist at the hack. “Slow down! No furious driving allowed in this district!”
The hack careened out of sight around a corner. The doorman rushed to help Gideon to his feet.
“Any serious damage, sir? Doesn’t appear to be—just some dirt on your clothes. Damn cabmen. No respect for the law.”
The two moved slowly toward the sidewalk. Gideon had twisted his left ankle, and limped slightly. But he’d already decided he mustn’t upset Julia by telling her of the incident.
A few onlookers resumed their strolls. The doorman was still fuming. “Don’t know why that idiot was traveling so fast. He had no fare.”
Gideon stopped. “You’re positive?”
“Yes, sir, the cab was empty. No passengers that I could see.” Suddenly the ruddy face puckered into a frown. “And where’s that bucko who was hollering at you?”
“Gone,” Gideon said, well before he turned to scan the far side of the street. He was right. There was no trace of the stranger.
The doorman shrugged. “Well, it’s the cabman I’m exercised about. Driving much too fast, without so much as a reprimand. Where are the police when you need them? Always somewhere else. You could have been badly injured—killed, even. Nobody cares about the law any longer. He whipped around that corner on two wheels and never saw you. Didn’t care who was in the street.”
“No, I’m sure he didn’t,” Gideon lied, thinking of Courtleigh’s eyes in Machinery Hall, and of his wife dying in an asylum. Did Courtleigh still see the bloodstained shirt landing at her feet? Did he still hear her terrified shrieking?
Gideon felt incredibly tired as he limped away toward the telegraph office. The armistice was over. The war was resuming.
ii
Most newsmen agreed that they got some of their best ideas at unexpected moments. Julia had said much the same thing, and Gideon could verify it. Sometimes he solved a problem he was having with an editorial, or with a department of the paper, at the end of an uncomfortably sleepless night, or while he was stropping his razor, or even while he was sitting on the jakes with a bellyache. So it happened that night. He was on his way back from the telegraph office, still shaken, when he passed a book shop in whose window various souvenir and commemorative volumes were displayed against red, white and blue bunting.
SPECIAL CENTENNIAL EDITIONS read a small hand-lettered placard. He wished Kent and Son were represented in that window even in a small way. But the family firm had produced no book in honor of the hundred years of—
Instantly, the whole idea was there.
A book called 100 Years—an expensive book produced with the finest typography, paper, and binding. There’d be a minimum of text. He’d attempt to write it himself, but if he found he couldn’t do an adequate job, he’d hire someone better qualified. The real focus of the volume wouldn’t be the words anyway. It would be—he searched the window and saw nothing exactly like it—one hundred plates. One hundred wood engravings telling the story of the republic’s achievement since its founding in this very city a century ago.
The illustrations in the book wouldn’t be the hackwork people were accustomed to seeing in newspapers or magazines. They’d tell as story, right enough, but they’d be fine art. They’d be cut by the best wood engravers Kent and Son could find.
But they’d be based on a hundred sketches by his brother Matt.
If Matt could possibly be persuaded to undertake the project, he would easily complete a hundred of his quick freehand drawings in just a few months. Then a staff of craftsmen would transfer them to blocks of boxwood as faithfully as the medium allowed.
A further thought struck him. Perhaps from the best twenty or twenty-five sketches, Matt would prepare a limited edition of etchings. The whole thing was unbelievably exciting.
Now what about the book’s content? Historical subjects would be included, certainly. A battle or two. Breed’s Hill where his ancestor Philip had fought. The Alamo mission where Amanda Kent had nearly lost her life during the struggle for the independence of Texas. And there had to be a depiction of at least one engagement from the late war, so Americans would never forget the horror of fighting against their own. Perhaps the subject should be Gettysburg, when the South’s high tide had crested against a seawall of steel and fallen back.
But Gideon wanted more than war to be represented in 100 Years. Much more. He wanted to create a panorama of the nation’s territorial expansion, and of its agriculture and industry. He wanted the sweep of a corn field dark with the shoulders of a sunburned harvesting crew. He wanted the crowded aisles of a textile factory; the contrast of white fiber and black men in a Carolina gin house; the bottom of an anthracite mine lit only by miners’ candles; the inside of a retail store with its wondrous array of goods and products; the crowded patterns of city telegraph wires crisscrossing an Eastern sky; and the isolation of a sod house jutting against a sky in the West—he wanted one great book that would capture the p
anoply of American life as it had developed in astounding variety since Philip Kent’s time.
And he’d make sure not only the famous were portrayed, but the people who were the land’s real backbone: the common people. 100 Years. It was the project for which he’d been searching—and the very thing he needed to take his mind off Courtleigh.
He could hardly wait to tell Julia. She was as excited as he, so excited she never noticed he was limping a little.
“It’s a magnificent idea, Gideon—especially having your brother create the illustrations. But a hundred of them?”
“Sketches, remember. He can do it. Before he was twenty, he used to turn out eight or ten a day. They were some of his best work. Brilliant art created around a kernel of realism. Of course there’ll be more to this than merely making the drawings. He’ll need to research the subjects. He’ll have to travel the whole country—the Pacific, the Canadian border, Texas—we’ll underwrite his expenses. He should jump at the challenge.”
Provided I can present it the right way.
Delighted to see him so happy and enthusiastic for a change, Julia hugged him.
“Darling, I think you’ve just turned into a book publisher without realizing it.”
iii
A day after his return to New York, Gideon took the train to Boston. Dana Hughes of Kent and Son was enthusiastic about the idea. He promised to have a preliminary list of one hundred subjects ready within two weeks.
Down at the Jersey Shore, Molly was equally enthusiastic—although she recognized that thousands of dollars of capital might be ventured in financing Matt’s research, and none of it recouped if the book failed.
“After all, Gideon, by the time it’s on the market, the centennial will be over.”
“Have you looked at some of the souvenir books being sold right now? Junk. They’ll be forgotten by New Year’s Day. We’ll make 100 Years such a fine book, the delay won’t make any difference. Why, with Matt doing the pictures, the damn thing will wind up in museums.”