Silver Page 5

  ‘Good morning, Henry,’ Mr Paterson acknowledged him, trying to be gruff. ‘Off to the fair, as I understand it?’

  ‘All the girls enjoy the fair, sir. I never knew a girl who didn’t. Rides, candy, apple-bobbing.’

  ‘I suppose you can speak with some experience, then? Of girls?’ asked Mr Paterson.

  Henry smiled respectfully but said nothing. He had stood in too many parlours with too many fathers to let Mr Paterson’s needling put him off. Every father was the same, especially with his favourite daughter. Every father felt the need to score a point over whatever beaux she brought home; out of possessiveness, out of pride, or out of jealousy. A sensible young man kept his mouth closed and allowed himself to be bested. After a while, if he did that, the father might even grow to like him.

  ‘How’s your business, Mr Paterson?’ Henry asked. ‘I hear you’ve been doing exceptionally well this year.’

  ‘So-so,’ nodded Mr Paterson with satisfaction.

  ‘You won the Brooks case, I see?’

  ‘Indeed,’ Mr Paterson replied. ‘And quite a masterly piece of legal presentation that was; even if I do say so myself. The Carmington Recorder said we had no more chance of acquittal than a cow has of jumping the Hoosick; and so we didn’t; all the circumstantial evidence was against us; every witness claimed that it was Brooks; no chance at all; right up until my closing address; and then I tugged at their heartstrings until they openly wept.’

  ‘You’re a fine orator, sir. I saw the headlines. “Jurors Weep As Lawyer Pleads For Clemency.”’

  Mr Paterson glanced sideways at Henry, pleased. ‘You memorized it, then?’

  Henry tried to look bashful. ‘I couldn’t help it, really. It was a fine speech, very moving.’

  ‘Yes,’ Mr Paterson agreed. Then, ‘Yes, yes it was. Very moving indeed.’

  Henry said innocently, ‘I suppose that daguerreotype helped, too. That picture you produced of Mr Brooks in Schenectady, when all the witnesses had said he was here at home.’

  Mr Paterson’s expression underwent some complicated changes; from pleased to suspicious; and he scrutinized Henry hard and long, as if he couldn’t make out whether Henry was playing him for a fool or not.

  But Henry simply smiled, and made a show of admiring the parlour, and all the ostentatious trappings which Vermont’s most successful advocate obviously considered to be essential to his position and his place. The huge sofas, with their fringes and tassels and densely-embroidered antimacassars; the occasional tables, crowded like the rafts of a shipwrecked steamer with dozens of daguerreotypes of Doris and Cissy and Eleanor, in ball-dresses and sailor-suits and summer gowns, and of course of Mr Paterson himself, with his head cocked like President Buchanan, and his thumbs stuck rigidly into his waistcoat. Just as the timber-cutters of Montana used to say, ‘You can’t call yourself a logger until you own a dollar-watch and have your likeness took beside a tree,’ so Mr Paterson appeared to feel sure of his legal success only by arranging pictures of himself all around the house, in suitably bombastic poses.

  Mr Paterson owned more than a dollar-watch, however. The big granite-quarrying companies had paid him a $12,000 retention fee every year since 1835; and one of them, the Carmington Granite Dressing Coy., had even given him 13 percent of common stock, and a granite seat with cherubs on it for the garden, instead of a fee. He wasn’t as wealthy as the Huntingdons, who lived on the hill overlooking his home; but he was wealthy enough to have a strong say in local community business, and to be able to run his life as he ordered it, pretty much; and hang his walls with French paintings of fat white women in miraculously discreet draperies; and fill his drawers with shining silver cutlery, imported from England.

  That, to him, was quite sufficient reason to treat all of Doris’s suitors with extreme suspicion; apart from the fact that Doris was his dearest. Doris was as pretty as her mother, petite, curly-haired, with wide eyes like smashed sapphires, and a mouth that kissed at fifty feet; or so the local telegraph-boy described it. Like her mother she was full-breasted, straight-backed, and had skin that glowed as if God had already dusted it with angel-powder.

  ‘I hope you’ll take the very best care of my daughters,’ he told Henry.

  ‘Have no fear on that account, sir,’ Henry reassured him. ‘I’ll bring them all back safe and happy by five.’

  ‘No drinking, if you please.’

  ‘Me, sir?’

  ‘Yes, sir; you, sir. I know that you spend quite enough time at the Gristmill Saloon; with the Davies boys, and that odd fellow who can’t get his hair to stick to his head.’

  ‘An occasional beer, sir, no more,’ said Henry.

  ‘Well, I wish I could believe you,’ Mr Paterson pouted.

  ‘You can, sir. You couldn’t be a drunkard in my line of business; not when you need such a steady hand.’

  Henry, like his own father, was a monumental mason, of Roberts & Son Tombs & Memorials; fine granite headstones carved to requirements and shipped almost anywhere. He could carve any number of sobbing seraphim and laid-open Bibles. He could even sculpt a vase of lilies.

  But his greatest talent was for lettering: cutting into dark granite and white marble in Roman characters the names of the dead, and whatever permanent farewells might be required. The current favourite inscription was, ‘Fell Asleep’. Second favourite, ‘Sorely Missed By Those Left Behind’.

  Mr Paterson said, ‘She’s a precious girl, our Doris. That’s all I’m saying. We have to take account of whoever it is she walks out with.’

  ‘I hope you don’t find me wanting in any way, sir,’ said Henry, with a slight questioning tilt of his head.

  ‘Of course not,’ sniffed Mr Paterson. ‘Maybe you dress too well; but I suppose that can’t be counted as a fault. And I’m afraid we can’t count you among Bennington’s plutocrats, can we? Nor ever will.’

  ‘Business is good enough, thank you, sir,’ said Henry. ‘I make enough to keep myself, and spend a little, and save a little, too. I could keep a wife quite well. That is, if I had a mind to take one; and if she had a mind to take me.’

  ‘How much do you make, per commission?’ asked Mr Paterson, beginning to grow challenging. ‘Come on now, your most expensive tomb.’

  ‘Your full-size sarcophagus in dark Barre granite complete with sentimental inscription works out at $73.58.’

  ‘And how long does such a sarcophagus take to cut?’

  ‘Cut, polished, and lettered from scratch, two and a half weeks’ work.’

  ‘Well, then,’ said Mr Paterson, ‘even if you were to undertake such an order every two weeks, it has to follow mathematically that you could never earn more than $1,678 per annum less the cost of stone and tools and that is scarcely enough to keep a Paterson girl in the manner which I would expect.’ He beamed, and cocked up his coat-tails again.

  Henry could see himself in the large engraved mirror over the fireplace. He thought he looked unduly serious, but he couldn’t bring himself to smile. He knew very well what Mr Paterson was saying to him; that he would be wasting his time if he were to court Doris seriously, with a view to marriage. And even though he hadn’t yet considered the possibility of asking Doris to be his bride, he found her disturbingly attractive, more attractive than he really cared to think about, and he resented being told that he didn’t even have the option of asking her. He twisted the end of his waxed moustache, and said, ‘There must have been a time, sir, when you were not as well off as you are today.’

  ‘Ah, well, you’re right,’ said Mr Paterson. He went across to the window, parted the lace curtains with two fat fingers, and peered out into the street. Henry’s carriage was tethered up there: the black varnished barouche in which his father attended funerals, when he was asked. The two black horses between the shafts had been kept occupied with black hessian nosebags with black fringes. ‘A little sombre, for a fair, don’t you think?’ Mr Paterson asked, rhetorically. Then he turned around and said, ‘Yes, of course I was poorer, when I w
as a clerk. I struggled for years for what you see here. But there is one important difference between the legal profession, Henry, and the craft of monumental mason, no matter how skilful a craft that may be. A lawyer may always ask his clients for higher fees, as his ability and his experience increase. But how can you ask for more money? Who are your clients? The dead, who cannot pay; and the bereaved, who wish to pay as little as possible. Not much prospect there of making a fortune, I’d say.’

  Henry said stiffly, ‘I may surprise you, sir.’

  Mr Paterson grasped his arm. ‘I’m sure you may. You like to think of yourself as someone surprising, don’t you? We do have these vanities, when we’re young. But all I can say to you is, enjoy yourself at the fair. Don’t dwell too much on things that you may not have; in that lies discontent; and there is nothing more bitter than discontent. Discontent is anti-social.’

  Henry managed to smile now. ‘It is also the spur for great achievements, sir.’

  Mr Paterson stared at Henry again. Too smart by half for a stonemason, he reckoned; although he knew that Henry’s father, Fenchurch Roberts, was very widely educated, and that Henry had stayed on two years longer at Carmington College than most of his classmates; and then taken a business course with old man Protheroe, although what good that could have done him, the Lord could only guess. Old man Protheroe had lost all the money he ever had made on some crackbrained scheme for selling fruit syrup formula to druggists all over the Union; so that they could reconstitute it with seltzer and sell it as ‘Protheroe’s Elixir’, 2 cents the bottle.

  Mr Paterson said, ‘Each man to his allotted place, that’s what the Bible teaches us. Now, that’s Doris, isn’t it? It’s time you went. Have the best time you can, and see if you can persuade Doris to bring me back some gingerbread.’

  He clasped ‘Henry’s hand, and for a moment his expression was surprisingly friendly. ‘Always had a weakness for gingerbread; my mother used to bake it, God bless her. “Butter, eggs, molasses, and flour; mix it with ginger and bake half an hour.” That’s what she used to sing.’

  His eyes gazed reflectively inward, and he held Henry’s hand much longer than he had meant to. Then Doris came flustering in, with her bonnet and parasol, and cried, ‘Come on, Henry, do! We’re all waiting!’ and Mr Paterson looked at Henry with an expression which clearly meant, ‘Don’t think that you can take advantage of me; or of Doris; just because you caught me in one sentimental moment.’

  Cissy and Eleanor were already out on the porch; Cissy in blue and Eleanor in pink. Cissy, who was two years younger than Doris, had curly bunches of fair hair, and a pert cheeky face. Eleanor, the youngest, was darker and quieter, almost Italian-looking, but promised when she grew up to be by far the most beautiful. Mr Paterson called her ‘my Mona Lisa’.

  Giggling and chattering, the girls danced down the long brick path to the front gate. It was a warm mid-July day, and the sky was so blue it was almost purple, like bellflowers. Behind the maples and the dark stands of Green Mountain pines, thick and creamy cumulus clouds lazed away the morning; waiting for the cooler winds of the evening before they rose up to bring southern Vermont a summer thunderstorm, and rain.

  Henry helped the girls up into the barouche. Its leather straps squeaked and protested as they climbed in, still giggling and spinning their parasols. Henry closed the door, and then went around to take the nosebags off his horses.

  With Henry up on the box, they trotted briskly along Carmington’s main street, past the Carmington Recorder and the Hoosick Hotel and Maine & Pearson’s Dry Goods. The street was busy this morning with farm waggons and carriages and running children. Several passers-by waved at Henry and whistled; and one young type called out, ‘Lucky dog, you, Henry Roberts! Three to yourself!’

  They rattled around the graceful green with its white-spired church; where a cannon still stood as a reminder of the Battle of Carmington during the War of Independence; and where children in straw bonnets were bowling hoops down a crayon-green slope. It was then that Henry saw Augusta Pierce walking along by the side of the road with her red-faced cousin Frank, and reined his horses down to a slow walk, which they were used to, being funeral horses.

  ‘Oh, you’re not stopping for Augusta, are you?’ Doris complained.

  ‘Disgusting Augusta,’ giggled Cissy.

  ‘Quiet, will you, Cissy,’ Henry told her. ‘Augusta was all kinds of help when my mother was sick last spring; cooking and cleaning up and buying the groceries for us. She has a kind heart, Augusta; and don’t you go taunting her.’

  He drew the black barouche up beside Augusta and Frank, and raised his hat. Augusta smiled, although she made an obvious point of ignoring the three Paterson sisters. Cissy pulled a long face, and bugged her eyes, and giggled so much that she almost had a coughing fit.

  ‘You two off to the fair?’ Henry asked Augusta.

  ‘We’ll be coming along later,’ Augusta replied. ‘Frank has to take these hymnbooks back to the Reverend Jones; and Mrs Jones promised to show me that fancy French embroidery stitch of hers.’

  ‘Pity she can’t embroider her face a little,’ whispered Cissy; and she and Doris clutched each other in spiteful glee, and drummed their button-up boots.

  It was true that Augusta was very plain. She had a big, bovine face, topped with a tight plait of thin brown hair; and the tiny wire-rimmed spectacles she wore did nothing to enhance her fleshy nose. She was dressed in an unbecoming shade of brown, with a plain percale collar, and she carried a bright green parasol. Henry had always felt desperately sorry for her; because he had known from the age of ten what a considerate nature she had, in spite of all the teasing and all the taunts. He had ripped his pants once on the way to school; and while he had hidden in a roadside ditch, Augusta had neatly stitched them for him, and never laughed at him once.

  Her helpfulness had never been more appreciated by the Roberts family than during Mrs Roberts’ long-drawn-out illness last spring. In April, on the brightest of days, with the air full of blossom, Mrs Roberts had died, in terrible pain, of a malignancy of the womb. Neither Henry nor his father could have coped then if it hadn’t been for Augusta; who had wept as they did; but had then gone about the business of preparing the funeral breakfast, and packing away his mother’s clothes. Henry’s father had said of Augusta that whatever she looked like, she always possessed ‘the beauty of devotion’.

  Henry had agreed with him. Henry and his father agreed on most things; more like brothers now than father and son. But nonetheless he had been surprised on the evening before Augusta was due to leave the Roberts’ house when she had unexpectedly appeared at his bedroom door in her long billowing nightdress, without her spectacles, a scarlet mark at each side of her nose, and asked him shortsightedly, ‘Is there anything you need from me, Henry? You have only to ask.’

  Henry had been sitting up in bed eating an apple and reading The Count of Monte Cristo; the oil-lamp had been hissing on the bedside table. He had looked at Augusta for a long time, and then folded his book, and said, ‘Augusta, you have already given me your friendship; and I value it more than I will ever be able to tell you.’

  She had stood in the doorway, one hand raised against the frame, and then she turned away, whispering, ‘Very well,’ and returned to her room. Henry had remained where he was, his apple uneaten, his book unread; feeling a tangle of emotion in his throat because he was grateful for everything that she had done for him and his father, and yet could not love her, not in the way that she wanted.

  Henry said, ‘Meet us up at the fair, Augusta, and I’ll stand you a lemonade and a poke of popcorn; you too, Frank.’

  Frank gave a nod over the top of his stack of hymnbooks, and Augusta smiled; pleased to have got one over on the giggling Paterson girls; and then Henry geed up the horses, and they trotted on, with their wheels rattling on the dry-rutted roadway, the outskirts of Carmington turning around them like a slowly-revolving carousel, past white saltbox houses with leaf-shaded yards, past D
utch barns and fenced paddocks, driving their way at last through a cool avenue of mockernuts, until the fairground came into view, on a wide tufted pasture bordered with elms.

  Doris clapped her hands. ‘Henry, it’s so exciting! Last year I had to go with Emily Vane and all those pimply brothers of hers, and that was just dreadful!’

  ‘I thought you had quite a crush on Oswald Vane,’ Henry teased her. Oswald was the gawkiest of all the Vane boys, all Adam’s apple and wrists, with a dark downy moustache, and he had followed Doris around for weeks, begging to buy her sodas and sending her posies of flowers.

  Doris prodded Henry sharply in the small of the back with her parasol. ‘I’ll have my father sue you for being defamatory, if you mention that booby’s name again, in connection with mine!’

  Henry laughed, and steered the jingling barouche around to the side of the pasture, towards the waggon-park, where there was already a motley assemblage of farm-waggons, top buggies, family-waggons and cabriolets. A boy ran forward to hold the horses and tie up the barouche; and Henry climbed down to open the door and put down the step and help Doris and Cissy and Eleanor down to the grass.

  Although it was early yet, the Carmington Annual Fair was already crowded, and they could hear the Brattleboro Silver Ensemble up on the pennant-decorated bandstand playing ‘Bunch of Blackberries’, and the whistling and piping of the steam-calliope. Arm-in-arm, Henry and the Paterson sisters walked up the sloping pasture towards the entrance tent, and paid their 5 cents admission, and took their lucky numbers.

  The fair was even bigger than last year. There were sideshows, coconut shies and hoop-las and try-your-strength machines. Under an open-sided awning, there were tables spread with chequered cloths, where families sat with beer and sodas and heaped-up plates of bratwurst. There was a fortune-telling tent; a travelling menagerie, featuring genuine Lords of the Jungle; a sword-swallower; and a candy stall glistening with barley-sugar and opera fudge and pecan penuche, molasses taffy and fruit-leather.