“A hollow threat,” said Edward. “Maine juries are utterly corrupt. They find for the criminals — their relatives and associates — every time.”
James said, “Who are these lawless men who cut your — our — timber?”
“Every man!” Edward said angrily, spit flying. “They are mostly small, mean men seeking to make some money. But there are so many of them. They are often savage hungry fellows who stop at nothing. They fight the owners until blood flows and heads are cracked. Even when we catch and prosecute them, they and their friends slip back at night and continue cutting. Settlers, failed businessmen, shingle makers and clapboard sawyers, those are the thieves. And moonlight nights see many good pines fall.”
“It is more than just the stealage,” said Edward. “Their campfires do great harm and burn much timber. Some of these men will deliberately set fires on the edge of good timber, then connive to purchase the entire valuable woods as burned wasteland for a meager cost. And in any case the damned poxy settlers clear their wretched plots with fire when they will, and in the dry season the fire escapes and devours our wood.”
Cyrus pulled at his cravat and tried to sum up the situation. “The truth is, gentlemen, that Maine — and New Brunswick — forests are swarming with lawless men. What we long for is virgin woodland without these human locusts. As Maine used to be.”
James asked if the Ohio lands his father had visited were not just such a virgin Eden.
“No, it is good timber, but there is not that much. A few years’ worth. We must think far ahead into the future. We hear of great forests farther west, and this may be the time to investigate the reports. I have several times proposed we meet with Armenius Breitsprecher and ask him to make the journey westward. Would he not be eager to reclaim his honor after the mishap on the north branch of the White Moose?”
“Sensible if one of us went with him,” said Lennart Vogel. “For an unbiased report. It could be a valuable expedition.”
“Easy for you to say, Lennart — you are a world traveler, but most of us prefer to stay put in Boston and deal with the accounts and contracts. Perhaps you should go.” Vogel shook his head.
“Might we not look closer to home? I have heard that there is a vast kingdom of white pine along the Susquehanna and Allegheny Rivers in Pennsylvania. Some say that this is the finest white pine that ever grew,” said Cyrus.
“Ah, they said the same about Maine pine, the same of New Brunswick pine. We should start buying with an eye to fifty years hence,” said Freegrace.
“God knows why. Take what we can get as soon as we can get it is what I say. I am not interested in fifty years hence as there is no need for concern. The forests are infinite and permanent,” said Edward.
• • •
The dinner, at an inn on Rowes Wharf, was simple — baked golden plovers, salmon and succotash, fresh pease. They talked freely, loosened from the fetters of the formal meeting. Cyrus explained boomage and lockage at length to James, then moved on to fire.
“You know, talk of fire could well have included our own depredations. One of our contractors, on Edward’s orders, set fire to several haystacks the thieves had brought to one of our pineries to feed their oxen. The fire got away and burned not only the haystacks but the pines they were trying to steal. So you see, we can give as good as we get.” James found the logic of this summation impaired, but said nothing. He began to wonder if Cyrus Hempstead was not a dunce.
“James,” said Lennart Vogel, “by now you know that timber profits are almost entirely based on transportation costs. Steamboats can change the way we move our logs.”
Edward spoke up as soon as he had swallowed his mouthful of pandowdy. “We know the English are using steam locomotives in collieries. Why shouldn’t steam engines succeed? In a few years, Freegrace, we might be building a railway into our dryland pineries, where no rivers flow. Right now every penny we gain still depends on the rivers. The steam engine could have a profound effect on our business.”
“Edward, you are right,” said Lennart. “There is certainly a mood of great things in the air, days of glorious prosperity ahead.”
The rum went around the table and around until the Board members were speaking so loudly at one another that a florid man at a distant table asked the proprietor if they might be put out in the street.
“That’s Saltonstall,” said Cyrus, “the old barnacle. He believes himself the most important man in Boston. If he wants quiet let him stay home in his mausoleum.”
• • •
At midnight James lurched out to his coach, where Will Thing sat waiting in the darkness. In half an hour he was in his library, where the embers still glowed. Here he had a final glass of brandy. And so, his head spinning, James Duke went to bed.
• • •
It seemed only minutes before the maid Lily woke him.
“Sir, sir, Mistress Brandon is downstairs and wishes to breakfast with you.”
“Oh my heart and soul,” said James, “tell her I will be down in a few minutes. Do give her some tea or coffee or—”
“Yessir.”
It was close to forty minutes before he came into the breakfast room, bathed, freshly shaven, in clean linen and a black cashmere suit, for the day was chilly.
“My dear,” he said. “What brings you here so very early?”
“Why, James, I am eager to hear every detail of the business meeting. You know my great interest in your business affairs. You must tell me all about your cousins, who said what, the problems, the decisions, the plans for the future.”
He buttered a hot biscuit and dipped it in a dish of honey, leaned over his plate, bit it and avoided dripping on his waistcoat. He began to talk. It was exhilarating to have someone pay such close attention to his descriptions. She asked intelligent questions and quizzed him on the Board members’ mannerisms.
• • •
Mrs. Brandon, back at her house, went to a little walnut escritoire James had had made for her, withdrew a brown leather-bound book half-filled with misspelled notes in her sprawling hand. She began to set down the salient points of the business meeting. She made special note of Lennart Vogel’s recommendations that Duke & Sons make investments outside the timber industry, especially in the booming textile mills, or cane sugar production.
47. needles and pins, needles and pins
James Duke’s oft-postponed wedding day — he feared his cousins’ reaction to his connection with a New Brunswick lumberman — began with a shock like a snapped fiddle string. His future father-in-law arrived in midmorning astride a limping, rolling-gaited woods horse of indifferent color. And who had ever seen such a physiognomy as that possessed by Phineas Breeley? His head looked as though it had been lopped off with a broadax just above the eyebrows and then squeezed back together leaving a great horizontal scar. Below the scar sat two anthracite-black eyes, a much-broken nose (a sure sign of coarseness) and a lipless mouth opening. His left ear was missing, only a hairy hole remained. The man let himself carefully down to the ground and advanced on Posey. He gripped her in a mighty hug, plastered her face with kisses that sounded like popping corn and turned to James.
“Well,” he said. “Here I be. Ready for the shivaree and our Grand Trip.” Posey had invited her father to accompany them on their honeymoon to New York. She had wanted James to invite Freegrace and Edward Duke and their wives to the ceremony and the celebratory dinner, but he found excuses — Edward was traveling, Freegrace’s wife was abed with pleurisy — and he presented very excellent reasons for not asking the others. Indeed, he had not told them of his impending marriage. Not yet, not yet, he temporized.