Two Moons (9 page)

Harry O’Toole, the landlady’s gaunt son, sat under the engraving of a mournful dog that dominated the boarders’ parlor on F Street.

“Four hundred and seventy-six thousand, two hundred and six dollars and six cents from Internal Revenue,” he said, “and four hundred and eighty-six thousand, four hundred and ninety-one dollars and eighty-one cents from Customs.”

Joan Park, the Treasury clerk who had asked him to read the daily balances from the front page of the newspaper, nodded seriously, as if the figures were her personal responsibility. Certain that her Pitman squiggles required as much brain power as Mrs. May’s logarithms, she sped up her embroidery needle to contrast with Cynthia’s idle grip on a teacup.

Cynthia was sure that her absence from the supper table had been the boarders’ postprandial topic of conversation until a few moments ago, when she finally arrived to join them for the tea and cookies Mrs. O’Toole made Harry set out nightly—“a little lagniappe” was how she liked to put it, her conversation having reclaimed another of its Southernisms. Like many of the old secesh landladies in the District, she’d lately thrown off an obsolete caution before her Yankee transients.

“Anything else of interest, Mr. O’Toole?” asked Joan Park.

Harry scanned the
Star.
“More about the new ‘merit system’ over at Interior.” He looked over the newspaper at Cynthia to say, with admiration or sarcasm she couldn’t tell, “I’m sure Mrs. May would be distinguishing herself if she hadn’t changed places.”

“Veterans will still get preference, ‘merit’ or no merit,” said Louis Manley, who had bought his way out of the war and was, at thirty-six, unhappy with his position in the Bureau of Engraving.

Fanny Christian and Dan Farricker, the two lodgers who worked outside the government, ignored the federal talk and concentrated on the checkerboard between them. Dan, who sold pianos at Decker Bros., was the closest thing Mrs. O’Toole’s house had to a blade, though at thirty-one and with thinning hair, he was, even viewed objectively, beneath the twenty-two-year-old Fanny’s marital ambitions.
Good company is all he was, after she came home from her work at Palmer’s hat shop. Cynthia regarded the two of them over by the tea wagon, knowing they were waiting for Harry O’Toole to go to bed so that Dan might break out a deck of cards and Fanny take off the shoes that had pinched her feet all day in Palmer’s showroom.

Cynthia’s eyes were sharp enough to read the fine print of Harry’s paper three feet away, and she found herself wondering what stories Mary Costello would be clipping tonight. How honest
was
the woman? The astrologer had been square enough to start that chart in exchange for the book, but Cynthia now suspected she’d passed on the volume to Conkling as a sort of
bona fides,
evidence that he’d gone to a politically minded necromancer, without telling him she’d acquired it ten minutes before.

The sound of the 9:00 bell came through the parlor window. It was still, after all these years, calling the slaves home. Cynthia pictured Professor Harkness pouring himself a glass of warm milk over in Lafayette Square, where all would be even more placid than in this parlor. She glanced at the legs of the table near Harry, their wooden claws clenched, as if in anticipation—but of what? The sight annoyed her, made her wish the carvings would relax and send the table with its lamp crashing to the carpet. Her mind went back to the Observatory, wanting to know how far the mist was rising against the dome, whether it was high enough to stop the night’s work or just rustling around the building’s base like the dry ice she had seen once or twice on the stage at the National. If the sky was clear, the place would soon be springing to life, with Hugh Allison going about his business.

Otherwise, he’d be home in Georgetown. She had spied his address in Mr. Harrison’s card file, right beside his birthday, and had copied it onto the back of Conkling’s gallery pass. Looking at the parlor’s clock, a minute behind the slaves’ bell, she tried willing Harry and Mr. Manley and Joan to retire. Once they were gone, she could sneak back out, past Fanny and Dan, who would be just enough absorbed in each other not to notice.

The Irishwoman had helped make her bold. She was still embarrassed to have called on the planet reader, but wondered whether the first sight of Mr. Allison would have excited her like destiny itself had she not already begun thinking of what prophecy, as well as consolation, might lie in the stars. She did not want to lose her new resolve; she did not want to resume her retreat. Tonight she would split off from this latest bedraggled parlor regiment, and with the stars’ light to guide her, she would double back toward the battle of life.

“Here to join your gang?” asked Captain Piggonan.

“Surely no one’s come out besides myself,” replied Hugh Allison, who had seen how high the mist was two blocks before reaching the gate. “Well, aside from Asaph Hall,” he drawled. “But he’s a Puritan. I’m just an optimist.”

The captain’s muttonchops drooped. Hugh began to sense there was something he didn’t know.

“Actually, you’ll find quite a crowd,” Piggonan confessed awkwardly. “They’re all in the library.”

Hugh gave him a puzzled look and set off. As soon as he entered the room, the half-dozen astronomers he found amidst the books and desks ceased what appeared to have been general conversation. They nodded their greetings and split up into murmuring clusters, the dispersal revealing a table set with cakes and whiskey and a coffee urn.

Hugh wondered whether he should seek an explanation from Mr. Hall, who had lately been observing a giant white spot on Saturn, as well as the satellites of Uranus and Neptune, objects too indistinct and far away to be of much interest to astronomers lately concentrating on the two inner planets in their transits across the Sun. A moon circling Mars would be another matter, of course. With the exception of Hugh Allison, no scientist here was indifferent to the planet’s proximity and myth, or to the way it traveled alone, like a bursting shell that never quite landed.

Yes, he would ask Hall. But the dour Yankee had just put his nose into a book, making use of whatever time remained until this unexplained little party got under way.

“What’s going on?” Hugh instead asked Simon Newcomb, who was brushing past him.

“No waistcoat?” was the only reply he got.

Old Professor Yarnall then? He’d been here for a quarter century and was said to be finishing the great star catalogue he had been working on all those years. But Lieutenant Sturdy, recently assigned the task of helping him complete it, was leading the old gentleman to the coffee urn. Would he have to ask Professor Eastman, the man to whom he had reported since being ordered to chase the comet? Eastman was in charge of the 9.6-inch and the Meteorology Department—the Observatory’s dullest realm, to which Hugh dreaded being someday assigned. If they ended up wanting weather from him, he might as well be outside with the watchmen, who even tonight would be checking the dry and wet solar thermometers and reading the barometric pressure.

“Henry,” asked Hugh, finally approaching Eastman’s assistant. “What the devil is afloat?”

Henry Martyn Paul was just four years out of Dartmouth. A big, genial fellow, at least six-two, he was engaged to a minister’s daughter and sang in a choral society. A few inches below his deep-set eyes, the bars of a mustache hung like the tassels on Hugh’s Arabian draperies, and looked almost too heavy for even his big face to support.

“Admiral Rodgers,” he explained.

“Ah,” said Hugh, finally realizing what the social commotion was about. “The new, if unyoung, broom. But he wasn’t expected until next week.”

“I know,” said Mr. Paul. “But he’s on the scene. I think they’ve got him over at the Willard now having dinner. Mr. Harrison was told this afternoon to assemble a greeting party.” Embarrassed that this should all be news to Hugh Allison, he added: “They really just scared up whoever was on hand.”

“Yes, I suppose I’m
not
handy,” said Hugh, giving the room a bemused scan.

Henry Paul declared, “I can’t say it’s a job I’d want to be starting at sixty-four years of age.”

“I heard that,” said Simon Newcomb, who had stopped at a nearby desk to inscribe one of his monographs for the incoming superintendent. Young David Todd, who boarded with the Newcombs, often minding the children and reading to the astronomer’s wife, held the book open to its front flyleaf and blotted his mentor’s signature while Newcomb held forth. “Do you really think this place will faze a man who’s surveyed the North Pacific and the Sandwich Islands, fought the Seminoles and raised the first Stars and Stripes on the recaptured soil of South Carolina?”

He didn’t wait for Hugh Allison to answer this custom-made jibe. He was off to another shelf, searching for more inscribable tokens of his accomplishment.

“I thought Rodgers was coming from the Boston Navy Yard,” Hugh said to Henry Paul.

“That’s a while back. Mare Island out in California was his last post. They say he ran the place honestly, too. Under Robeson!”

“Well,” said Hugh. “We’ll see how he likes working for Thompson.”

“ ‘The damned thing’s hollow!’ ” said Mr. Paul, repeating the by-now famous words of the new Navy secretary, and blushing with the realization that he’d just sworn. “Maybe the admiral will come up with some more money for
our
part of the service, too. You know, there’s talk of a couple of new ships, what with the Turks and Russians going to war.”

“All I want from Rodgers,” said Hugh, “is to get away from the 9.6-inch and this damned comet.”

Eastman shot him a glance.

“God, I’m hot,” Hugh complained, a bit less vocally, to Henry Paul. “Do you think Headmistress Newcomb will let me pour some soda water?”

As soon as he reached the tray of bottles, Mr. Harrison came rushing
into the library with Professor Harkness and Commodore Sands, who had evidently been the new superintendent’s dining partners at the Willard.

“Gentlemen!” the clerk called out, as he attempted to peel off his gray gloves. “I have the honor to present—”

Captain Piggonan and Lieutenant Sturdy, the two Navy men amidst the civilian astronomers, snapped off salutes.

“Rear Admiral John Rodg—”

The new chief officer waved off the clerk. “You all know who I am, and I’m pleased to see you.” With white tufts of hair and a puffy, clean-shaven face, Rodgers looked more like an old Federalist than a modern man, thought Hugh. The admiral’s dress belt girdled a large circumference of waistline, and his wattles shook when he talked. Still, he moved toward the center of the room with a quick step.

“I didn’t expect such a company of welcomers. But I didn’t expect such an approach, either.” Rodgers’s facial expression showed severe disapproval of the muck he’d met with outside the Observatory grounds. “At my last post, the roads washed out each spring. In the summer, a single mulecart raised a tornado of dust above them. We were given half the money we required to improve them.
But we improved them.
” Unsure whether this was a scolding or a pledge or a mere report, the company of scientists remained silent, until Newcomb, attended by David Todd, strode over to the admiral, shook his hand and began piloting him through the half dozen introductions that would lead to the refreshments.

Hugh watched as Rodgers made each astronomer’s acquaintance. He had something clipped but, it seemed, particular to say to every one of them, and he got the last word of each exchange.

“Now you, young man,” he finally said to Hugh himself. “You can’t afford a coat?”

“I hadn’t anticipated a chill. Or such distinguished company.”

“Discover another comet,” said Rodgers. “
Then
you can come in without a coat.”

With that he was off to a spot under the portrait of Captain James
Gilliss, the Observatory’s wartime superintendent. He motioned for Professor Harkness.

“What happened to him?” asked Rodgers, pointing up at the portrait.

“Captain Gilliss served here from 18—”

“How did he end up?”

Harkness appeared to hesitate, as if struggling to avoid some indelicacy.