Two Moons (26 page)

“This will be the first time you’ve ever held my hand beneath the light of
two
moons,” said one young lady to her swain, repeating an already overused piece of popular wit. Cynthia wondered if the girl might be Miss Ellen Gray and, more alarmingly, whether Conkling might now be inspired to some amorous talk of his own.

In fact, he frowned, as if suddenly recalled to his serious involvement with the public purse strings. “Tell me exactly what I shall be seeing, Mrs. May.”

“With what’s left of the clouds, probably nothing but a splotch in the southeast sky. I’m afraid we’ve led you ‘this way to the egress.’ ”

When they reached the instrument, he insisted she look first, and kept his hand on her back while she bent to the eyepiece. For all the rumors coming from Europe—tales of Italian astronomers seeing great channels, possibly even canals, on the nearer-than-ever planet—Cynthia saw no sign of either stripes or moons.

She straightened up until her gaze was level with the senator’s. “The War God without his attendants, I fear. I’m sorry.”

“I assure you, Mrs. May, I have all my troops in place.” He flashed her his wild, white smile, unstained by tobacco, before leaning down
to take a three-second look at Mars, which might have been an assembly district not worth carrying.

“Let me take you to
my
world,” he said, coming back up.

Tonight that world was armed and roaring. Before leaving on a trip to Ohio and the South, the President had finally demanded the resignations of Arthur, Sharpe, and Cornell—and all three had refused to tender them. Still, in his carriage on their way to the Arlington Hotel, Conkling insisted on hearing more of Cynthia’s own story, what she’d begun telling him on the ride out to Foggy Bottom. Passing the empty pedestal of Washington’s Monument—and trying not to think of whatever strange illumination Hugh Allison imagined putting atop it—she recalled to Roscoe Conkling how, as an eleven-year-old girl in ’53, she had seen a few of the last stones set into the base of the obelisk, before the money and national unity required for the work ran out.

“You precede me,” said Conkling, his teeth still visible in the shuttered cab. “I did see them hoist some of the marble to the Capitol dome, but I can’t claim an acquaintance with our history as long as yours.”

“But I’ve been only an observer of history, not one of its makers.” Good God, she was better at this—which was to say, worse—than she’d been writing that first note to him. She ought to be blushing with shame, but here in the dark what would be the point? There was nothing to do but laugh, which is what he began to do as well. They were on to each other, or so at least it would seem. But how could they be, when she wasn’t on to herself, wasn’t half certain of her plan, let alone whether this barrel-chested warrior with his glistening forelock could really, somehow, save Hugh from the admiral. But here she was, playing with fire, after six months of grasping at quicksilver.

“Now, Mrs. May, you
will
be a maker of history one day. You doubtless know it was I who presented the women’s suffrage petition to the Senate before the end of its last session.”

“Thank you,” she said, laughing. “But no, thank you.”

“You’re indifferent to the franchise? To equality?”

“I’m indifferent to democracy, Senator Conkling. I’ve
seen
the mad shuffle of administrations—six different ones I can now recall myself. All the scrambling for someone else’s place as soon as the election-night music stops. What good does it do anybody?”

“Ah,” said Conkling, shimmering at the prospect of friction. “A reformer.” What could be more exciting than to subdue this laughing, strong-minded woman? She was better than he’d let himself hope.

“No, sir,” she replied. “I’m afraid I’m your ally, at least in opposition to what people call reform. But I should really prefer a king: no spoils
or
‘merit,’ just one long, steady reign giving way to another, the clerks peacefully dying at their desks, the monarch doing the same on his throne.”

“You’re medieval, Mrs. May. Where would you put yourself in such a world? Inside a cloister?”

“No,” she answered. “I too much prefer the company of men. And I don’t generally like Papists. I suppose that’s undemocratic of me, too. As a girl, I remember clapping with glee when they told us someone had stolen the Pope’s gift of a stone from the monument back there and thrown it into the Potomac.”

“You make me wish I were a Catholic
and
a reformer,” whispered Conkling, leaning forward as if he might begin wrestling with her right here in the carriage.

The two of them laughed so heartily that a small bottle in her dress pocket banged against the armrest. She pulled it out to satisfy Conkling’s curiosity. “Schenck’s Pulmonic Syrup,” she explained, since it was too dark for him to read the label. “For a friend.”

“A queenly act of kindness,” he said, warming back up to the medieval theme.

She just smiled, with teeth not so bright as his. She would let him assume that her errand of mercy was for someone at the boardinghouse. In fact, she’d been carrying the bottle around all day, so nervous about tonight she’d forgotten to leave it in Hugh’s mail slot inside Mr. Harrison’s office. His paroxysms had stopped nine days after Dr. Kelly
commenced treatment, and the great question now was how severe the recurrences, sure to take place every two or three weeks, would turn out to be.

“Malaria?” asked Conkling, to her surprise.

“Yes,” she answered, evenly.

“Dreadful business. I had a touch of it myself last year.”

She could feel his fears (Mary Costello had told her about the climacteric) and how immediately he wanted to be rid of the subject. Once the carriage reached the Arlington, he banished the topic with a practical gesture, ordering the driver to have someone in the hotel dispatch a large case of quinine to Mrs. May’s address. “I don’t care if it requires their getting Milburn’s to open up at this hour. Tell them I want it done.”

She gratefully tapped the back of his hand as he led her into the hotel dining room, where he was immediately approached by two partisans: a member of the Pennsylvania delegation and an undersecretary of state from Grant’s last Cabinet. Cynthia withdrew a few steps to a point where only the War God’s voice could be heard: “Meanwhile, we’ve succeeded in removing
him.
” The hearty laughter of Conkling’s auditors made her understand that they were speaking of Hayes and his trip.

The senator settled for broiled shad and seltzer, but delighted in Mrs. May’s order of oyster soup, venison, and a blancmange dessert. She was happy to let him perceive her appetite as a kind of prestidigitation, instead of the poverty-instinct it actually was.

“Now add up the tariff.” Conkling pointed her attention to the prices on the stiff cardboard bill. He knew of her numerical skills from Madam Costello, and her speed in performing this second stunt pleased him as much as her eating had.

“It isn’t anything special,” she said. “A bit like being double-jointed.”

He reached across the plates and linen and took her fingers. “Are you double-jointed, too, Mrs. May?”

“No,” she said, surprised at her ability to leave her hand in his. “Just slightly arthritic.”

The remark pleased him more than her acquiescence would have. A scratch or slap, she realized, would have delighted him.

“Our special session doesn’t begin until the fifteenth of next month,” he explained briskly. “I shall be back a week or so beforehand. I usually stay here, but I’ll be at Wormley’s this year instead.” Everything about the Arlington—its worn furniture, slow messengers, and clumsy bootblacks—had begun to irritate him. On the train down for this quick trip he had decided to have all his things, including the pulleys and punching bag, transferred to new quarters.

“How will you occupy yourself for the next five weeks?” she asked. “Can you obstruct the Administration from so great a distance?”

Charmed once more, he let his laughter peal. “Oh, there’s much that can and will be done, Mrs. May. Our state convention begins in Rochester on the twenty-sixth—and how I wish you could be there! That would give you a taste for politics!”

“Will our friend be helping to tailor your rhetoric?”

At this reference to Mary Costello, Conkling’s smile disappeared entirely. “Why do you consult her?” he asked, as if ordering Mrs. May to take on his own embarrassment over such a weakness.

“She amuses me,” said Cynthia, who all at once despised herself for not saying, simply, that Mary was her friend. “I like to ponder the correspondences between her heavens and mine.”

“Typology?” asked Conkling. “The Old Testament prefiguring the New?”

“Yes,” said Cynthia. “Something like that.”

The maitre d’, having only now been made aware of Conkling’s presence, scurried over to the table and interrupted: “Sir, how fine it is to see you! And Madame, a pleasure.” So excited was he by Conkling’s return—and on such a day of political swordsmanship—that he quite forgot himself and burbled over: “And shall we soon have the pleasure of seeing Mrs. Sprague again, too?”

Conkling looked at the man as if he might horsewhip him. “Mrs. Sprague will soon be home from Europe and in Rhode Island for a time. With the governor. Her husband.”

On every occasion the maitre d’ could recall, Conkling had gloried in inquiries like the one just made. Mortified to realize that this was not to be such an instance, the dining room manager beat the humblest of retreats.

Conkling turned back to his guest: “Are you ready for your carriage, Mrs. May?”

“Yes,” said Cynthia, knowing that this time she was supposed to be; and that next time, when no carriage would be called, she would have to be prepared to stay.

A week and a half later, on Sunday, September 16, Hugh and Cynthia arrived in Annapolis an hour early for an appointment he’d made at the naval academy. He had hardly stopped talking on the train from Washington, and now, while they killed time strolling through the graveyard of Saint Anne’s Church, he was still barely pausing to take a breath.

“Do you think I need spectacles from Alexander’s? Of course, if this haziness is just some temporary effect of the fever, I don’t want to be stuck with them. I couldn’t count the number of pairs my father’s gone through—never manages to hang on to them. Mother used to say he’s lost as much at the optician’s as at the gaming tables. Now,
your
eyes seem to me to be absolutely extraord—”

“We’ll see about the glasses when we’re back,” she said as patiently as she could. She didn’t know about his eyesight, but this nattering certainly
was
part of the disease, an aspect of the febrile excitement that rose from the sufferer in the interval between the clustered paroxysms. Hugh’s gaze was darting and inattentive, and he couldn’t keep his hands still. Otherwise, he seemed to feel fine. His spirits were high,
and for the moment he was experiencing less physical discomfort than she. Four days after Conkling’s visit, having saved up the money since June, she had had a wisdom tooth pulled by Dr. McFarlan.

Still, the throbbing in her jaw counted for nothing compared to a sudden upturn in their fortunes. For the third time today, as Hugh chattered on, she reminded herself of this, and tried truly to believe it. Deimos and Phobos, despite their names, had proved celestial boons. On Friday afternoon, everyone at the Observatory had gathered in the library for the admiral’s announcement that Professor Newcomb, effective tomorrow, the 15th, would be leaving to assume the directorship of the Nautical Almanac Office. “It is an unequaled opportunity for carrying on the work in mathematical astronomy I have most at heart,” Newcomb himself told his astonished, and not altogether unhappy, audience. Later on, he came in to see Professor Harkness and put things a bit differently: “Over there they’ll give my recommendations the respect that only comes with clear authority. Finally, Harkness, my hands will be untied. I’ve insisted, by the way, on a new office over in the Corcoran Building.”

The real reason for his departure, Cynthia felt sure, was the unbearably bright light now shining upon Asaph Hall. In churning out the various publications of the Almanac Office, Newcomb might get the chance to conduct whatever research he chose; but nothing had ever much prevented him from doing that right where he was. The “annoyances” he complained about to Harkness were more truly the lustful itchings of his own pride, which suffered a fresh wound when the admiral, just a minute after announcing his departure, appeared pleased to get on to more momentous news, reading out a letter that would cover the report he was finally ready to send Secretary Thompson, a compendium of memoranda and death certificates “advocating the removal of the Observatory to a more healthful location, in which the services of the officers on duty at night will meet with no interruptions from malarial influences, and where the fogs arising from the river will not obscure the heavens.” After a dramatic pause, Rodgers had
declared, “Toward this end, I am requesting a congressional appropriation of $100,000.” While the astronomers marveled in silence at the vastness of the sum, the admiral informed them that a copy of the “removal report,” as it would henceforth become known, was in Mr. Harrison’s office for their individual perusal.