Heaven and Hell (105 page)

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"Where do you want to go now?" the driver called down. He didn't hide his unhappiness about carrying a black man and a white woman, however much he made from it.

"To the Negro district," Virgilia replied. The driver made a face and drove away.

"Bison?"

"Bunk, by God!" Charles whooped and dashed forward to his friend just coming down the marble stairs. People in the lobby stared at the lanky man in frontier costume bear-hugging the proper little fellow in a business suit. Questions and answers tumbled one over another.

"You brought Brett and the youngsters?"

"Yes. They're upstairs. Where's your wife? I'm eager to meet her."

"Conferring with the head porter about train schedules. She wants to go to New York to see an old friend."

They went to the saloon bar. Each studied the other, noting many changes. And although they spoke with enthusiasm and warmth, each felt a little shy of the other; it had been a long time since their postwar reunion at Mont Royal.

Children seemed a bridge over the years. "I'm hoping for an Academy appointment for my oldest son if my brother Stanley can stay

in Congress three more terms. Isn't your boy about the same age as G. W.? They could start together, just the way we did."

Soberly, Charles said, "I'm not sure I want Gus to be a soldier."

"He wouldn't have to stay in forever. And it's always been the finest education offered in America."

Charles's eyes seemed to drift away, past the layered smoke and the gaslights, past the noisy regulars and the visitors at the long oak bar, to some distant time, some distant place beside a river in the Indian ., Territory.

I

"I'm still not sure," he said.

Willa found America's Ace of Players in a dirty Mulberry Street rooming house that was almost a tenement. She knocked twice, got no
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answer, opened the door and saw him seated in a rocker, staring out a grimy rain-washed window. The view was a wall. He didn't turn when she closed the door. He must be going deaf.

The sight of the small room crowded with old trunks, piles of wardrobe items and clipping books broke her heart. Above the door he'd hung a horseshoe. The chrysanthemum in his lapel was wilted and brown. A black cat in his lap arched and hissed at her. That made him turn.

"Willa, my child. I'd no idea you'd be here today." Her telegram had stated both the exact date and the probable hour of her arrival.

"Please, come in."

When he stood, she noticed his swollen, misshapen knuckles. The contrast between his wrinkled skin and ludicrous dyed hair was sad. She hugged him lovingly. "How are you, Sam?"

"Never better. Never better! For a man sixty years old, I am fit as a young bachelor." She knew he was seventy-five. "Come sit down and let me share my exciting news. Any day now, I have it on good authority, none other than Mr. Joe Jefferson is going to ask me to step in for two weeks and play Rip Van Winkle while he enjoys a seaside holiday. The part is around here somewhere. I've been studying."

Under the rocker, next to a glass of water and a bowl of cold oats, he found an old side, from which he blew dust. Willa swallowed, congratulated him and visited with him for the next two hours. He was dozing in the chair when she stole out. One of Trump's crippled hands rested motionless on the head of his purring cat.

Before she left the building, she located the woman who owned it and paid her fifty dollars, twice the amount she mailed from Texas every month, secretly, for Sam Trump's board and room.

On Monday, they all set out to visit the exhibition. George provided a carriage for each group, two for Billy and Brett's family, and the vehicles took them swiftly and elegantly past crowded horsecars and Pennsylvania short-line trains to the carriage park on the grounds.

They saw exhibits of Pratt and Whitney's metalworking tools, Western Electric's railway signal devices, Ebenezer Butterick's paper dress patterns, Gorham silver, Haviland and Doulton stoneware, La France fire engines, Seth Thomas clocks, McKesson and Robbins medicinal roots and barks, Pfizer chemicals, Stein way and Chickering and Knabe and Fenway pianos. They saw locomotives, underwater cable
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equipment, tall glass cylinders containing dirt from various counties in Iowa, giant bottles of Rhine River wine on pedestals, portable boilers, wallpaper printing presses, glass blowers, Gatling guns, Mr. Graham Bell's curious talking device called the "telephone" (George thought it 670 HEAVEN AND HELL

impractical and silly), huge polished reflectors from the Light House Board, fifteen-inch ears of corn and seven-foot stalks of wheat, bent wood furniture, sculptures in butter, Swedish ornamental iron, Russian furs, Japanese lacquered screens, Army, Navy, and Marine uniforms of the last seventy-five years, the innovative new European school for young children called the "Kindergarten," thriving orange, palm and lemon trees in Horticultural Hall, Tiffany's twenty-seven-diamond necklace worth more than eighty thousand dollars in gold, exhibit cases containing crackers, stuffed birds, blank books, mineral samples, carriage wheels, bolts and nuts, corsets and false teeth, a seventeen-foot-high crystal fountain hung with cut glass prisms and gas-lit for added brilliance, a plaster sculpture of George Washington, legless, perched on a life-size eagle (Madeline covered her mouth and rolled her eyes), and five thousand models of inventions from the Patent Office.

They drank soda water from stands on the avenue and coffee at the Brazilian Coffee House. Stanley liked the French food at Aux Trois Freres Provenc,aux because it was so expensive. Brett liked the new way all the furniture was exhibited in realistic arrangements called "room settings." Virgilia liked the Women's Pavilion, and especially the newspaper office in the center, where women at desks wrote articles and other women set type and still others printed a newspaper called the New Century for Women; she took two copies. The young boys liked

Old Abe, the pet bald eagle of a Wisconsin Civil War regiment; Abe was a veteran of more than thirty battles, and for long periods he sat so still on his perch he looked stuffed, but once, after a lengthy wait, he spread his great wings and turned his fierce eye on the boys, who were thrilled. George liked the round four-inch bronze medal with a female figure holding a laurel wreath which Hazard's had received for its ornamental iron; the Centennial judges awarded twelve thousand such medals for outstanding exhibits. Madeline liked the Mississippi state cabin because it was decorated with Spanish moss. Billy liked the 4-4-0 Baldwin locomotive Jupiter from the Santa Cruz Railroad and the mammoth grapevine shipped all the way from California and erected on a great overhead trellis; visitors strolled beneath the living vine. Charles didn't like the display of Indian tipis, pipes, pots, costumes and other artifacts assembled by the Smithsonian Institution, but he said nothing about his feelings, merely passed quickly through the exhibit with a grave expression.

George frequently said things like, "It's the beginning of a new age," or, "And the skeptics say we have nothing worth showing to foreign powers," but everyone was so interested in what they saw, they
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didn't comment or even hear him most of the time.

Brett's daughters Maude and Luci could hardly be pried away from the Nevins's tiny Constance Anne. Everyone kept mixing up G. W.

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Hazard and George Hazard Nevin, whom his parents called G. H. Willa, who always spoiled Gus, bought him too much popcorn and he got a bellyache and had to rest an hour at a comfort station. Fremont Junior got lost for ten minutes near the Otis Brothers steam elevator exhibit in Machinery Hall. Brett's youngest girl, Melody, just three and a half, pulled tulips from a bed outside Horticultural Hall before her mother stopped her and spanked her. A couple of oafish white men accosted Virgilia and Scipio, and he started swinging. Centennial Guards swooped in and broke up the clumsy flight. They gave the mixed couple no sympathy.

Stanley and Laban, though still in Philadelphia, were nowhere to be seen. Nearly every exhibit that Billy passed inspired some comment about California. Everything was better there, more healthful there, more modern there. To Virgilia, her brother sounded like an abolitionist whose new cause was mammon. Scipio quietly suggested she curb her criticism for the sake of family harmony. George offered his arm to Madeline and with great interest listened to her describe the new house at Mont Royal. He promised everyone that there would be spectacular fireworks the next evening, the fourth.

That same evening, Charles and Willa left Gus with the Billy Hazards.

Virgilia and Scipio came to the hotel at half past six--no one was quite sure where they were staying, but no one pressed them--and the two couples took a cab to Maison de Paris, a well-recommended restaurant where Charles had reserved a table. He was the evening's host.

Ever since 1869, he'd explained to his wife, he had felt a special indebtedness to Virgilia.

At the restaurant, the suave maitre d' drew Charles aside and spoke to him. Charles explained that Scipio Brown was Virgilia's husband.

"I do not care if he is the emperor of Ethiopia," the maitre d' whispered in poor English. "We do not seat persons of his color."

Charles smiled and stared at him. "Would you like to review that policy With me out on the curb?"

"Out--"

"You heard me."

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"Charles, there's no need--" Virgilia began.

"Yes, there is. Well?"

Red with fury, the maitre d' said, "This way."

He gave them a bad table and a surly waiter. It took them forty minutes to get their first bottle of wine, an hour and a half to get their dinner; all the plates were served cold. Their laughter soon grew forced, and Virgilia looked sad and miserable under the hostile eyes of other diners in the restaurant.

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HEAVEN AND HELL

I776

1876.

BETWEEN THE CENTURIES.

Farewells to the Old.

Greetings to the New.

Monster Celebration

In Philadelphia.

stirring ceremonies in

independence square.

reading the original declaration.

Eloquent Oration

by W. M. Evarts.

The Pyrotechnic Display in the Park

was. . .

Philadelphia Inquirer

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White and red star bursts exploded over the exhibition grounds, each display producing louder cheers than the one before. The dazzling colors played over Bartholdi's huge copper forearm and hand upholding a torch. Appearing to rise from the ground, the section of the Statue of Independence, as it was called, seemed to suggest that a buried giantess was about to break through the earth's crust. A few lucky spectators watched the fireworks display from the observation platform at the base of the upraised torch.

Standing near the statue with Jane, tired from a second day of touring the halls and foreign cottages, Madeline suddenly felt someone's eyes on her. She looked up and saw it was George.

Little Alfred Hazard from California had fallen asleep in George's arms. With disarming friendliness, George gazed at Madeline over his nephew's head. There was nothing improper in his glance, and in a moment he shifted his attention to the sky. A great silvery flower of light bloomed there.

Madeline's throat was curiously dry, however. George had been looking at her differently. She was guilty, pleased, flustered, and a little frightened.

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The Carolina Club occupied a large lot in undeveloped land beyond the northern limits of the city. The Chicago fire had not reached that far, but neither had the suburbs as yet. Still, there was always a lot of horse and vehicle traffic on the otherwise deserted road that ran the past the rambling four-story house. The Carolina Club was the city's largest and most fashionable brothel.

The owner called herself Mrs. Brett. On the Fourth of July she awoke at her usual hour, 4:00 p.m. Her black maid was just emptying the last spouted pitcher of gently heated goat's milk into a zinc tub in the next room. She stretched, bathed in the milk for five minutes, then rubbed herself until she was pink. She had no proof that the milk baths promoted youth. Dr. Cosmopoulos, her very prosperous customer who was a phrenologist, professor of electromagnetism and merchant of healthful tonics, insisted they did, so the baths had become a habit.

She put on a Chinese silk robe and breakfasted on a pint of fresh oysters and coffee. To finish, she lit a small cheroot from the lacquered Oriental box. Her button collection no longer fit in the box. She kept the buttons visible in a large clear-glass apothecary's jar with a heavy
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stopper. She had over three hundred buttons now.

She dabbed expensive Algerian perfume on her breasts, her throat and under her arms. Next, with the maid's help, she put on a dress of apple-red silk with a huge bustle. She slipped on ornate finger rings with red, green and white stones, put on a heavy necklace and bracelets of paste diamonds and a huge tiara as well. At half past six she went down from her third floor suite to relieve the energetic young Scandinavian who came on duty at 10:00 a.m. to regulate the day trade.

There was already a large crowd of gentlemen mingling with the smartly gowned girls in the four parlors. In addition to the white girls employed in the brothel, there were also a Chinese, three black wenches and a full-blooded Cherokee Indian who was an accomplished piano player. Princess Lou was at this moment playing "The Yellow Rose of Texas" on the upright in the main parlor. It was a Fenway; she still felt a certain, illogical loyalty.

She relieved Knudson, the day man, and was in her office studying his tally of receipts when a customer staggered past the half-open door.

The man lurched back and goggled at her.

"Ashton?"

"Good evening, LeGrand," she said, hiding her surprise. "Come in, won't you? Close the door."

He did; the noise level in the office dropped considerably. Villers gazed at the paintings and marbles decorating the opulent room. With an amazed shake of his head, he lurched to Ashton's private bar and 674