The Railroad War Read Online Free PDF Page A

man whom
     she’d once loved.
    It was quite clear to all present that Fanny Shaw was enormously energized now, for the mighty engines of her emotions had
     already been worked up to full throttle by the force of the compassion she’d just expended on her daughter. It was only a
     short step for the era’s greatest lady of the stage to turn from compassion to hostility.
    But first she had to greet Ashbel, whom she liked, and who liked her.
    “Hello, Ash Kemble,” she said with a wide smile, extending her hand for him, “and how is my children’s favorite uncle?”
    “Hello, Fanny. I’m doing passably well. And you?” He took her hand and squeezed it with genuine warmth.
    “Profoundly chagrined,” Fanny said, “if the truth can be told, to learn of the accident my darling girl has suffered.” On
     the “chagrined,” Fanny’s eyes began a slide away from Ashbel that ended upon Ashbel’s brother, who was now dawdling as near
     the edge of the little group as he could manage.
    “Ahh…” she said after a deeply dramatic—and deeply satisfying—pause to take Pierce in with her ravaging eyes. “So there you
     are.” She laughed a chill laugh. “The seller of souls.” Her voice had dropped to a whisper now, a whisper that could be heard
     easily by anyone on the hotel veranda who cared to listen. Which is to say all who were there. No one at West Point on this
     lovely June afternoon was unaware of the imminent collision between these two one-time lovers. And not a few had contrived
     to be on hand for the spectacle of their first encounter.
    “The seller,” she repeated, a little louder, “of souls. The
ven-doi
of men’s and women’s and children’s”—she looked toward her audience, her face a mask of horror and revulsion—“bo-o-o-dies.”
     It came out a long, agonized gasp. “How splendid you are, Pierce Kemble!”
    “Don’t you think we might avoid parading our differences before this crowd,” Pierce said with a jaunty, cavalier tone that
     was far from his true attitude. Fanny frightened him when she was like this, but it would never do for him, a man, to betray
     his fear. “These people have no interest in our disagreements,” he continued. “Nor do I have any interest in reigniting the
     hostility that you find so easy to bring to combustion.”
    “I was not speaking of the mere trivial differences between a man and a woman,” Fanny announced. “I was speaking of the brands,
     the moral stigmata, the chains of guilt and shame that you have placed upon your own corrupted soul.”
    “Really, Fanny,” he went on lightly, still trying to avoid being drawn into her dramatic web. “Could you, for once, come down
     from your marble horse. Your self-righteousness does not become you, my dear. Can’t you instead think of the children and
     of the import of the moment? Can’t you remember that we’re here for the sake of a joyful time? For the commencement exercises,
     for God’s sake, of our son?”
    He had a point, she knew, and besides, she didn’t want to make a fool of herself. On the other hand, she refused even to appear
     to be persuaded by anything Pierce Kemble said to her. And besides, she had one more point to make, in case the audience on
     the veranda happened to have missed the true force of her words.
    So Fanny started her next speech slowly, gently, as though she had banked the fire in her soul. “I’ve been reading in the
     newspapers, Pierce,” she said, “that you have come into considerable money during the past week or so. Is that true?”
    “Very true,” he said with a pleased smile. He was proud of his recent good fortune.
    “I read that it was in the neighborhood of three hundred fifty thousand dollars that you have obtained.”
    “That’s right.”
    “Would you like to tell the people here how you obtained it? Or, shall I say, can you hold your head up and without shame
     admit where your three hundred and fifty thousands came