The irony was not lost on Paul that he felt most himself here, on the train, at play under a false name. Agnes seemed to feel the same way. Agnes Gouge was pretending to be Agnes Huntington pretending to be Alice Boone. Paul was pretending to be someone who was permitted to love her. They were the king and queen of the first-class dining car.
But a proper honeymoon this was not. Each night they returned to their separate sleeping cars. Paul was not an adulterer, he assured himself. They shared not one stolen kiss as their train skirted the snowy Gulf of Maine. Not even their fingertips touched over six days. The only occasion on which Paul felt the soft warmth of her skin took place within the safety of his dreams.
These were vivid.
Westinghouse had made the introduction to Bell via telegram, having known him casually from years of engineering conferences. Bell had replied that he did not often receive visitors, remote as his home was. He would thus be delighted to receive some intelligent company for lunch. Paul guessed that this was easily the longest distance he would ever travel for salmon sandwiches and a pot of tea.
Bell and his wife, Mabel, lived on a six-hundred-acre estate on the island of Cape Breton, in Nova Scotia. Nestled within the indigo rim of Bras d’Or Lake, the estate occupied its own private peninsula. Mr. Bell and Mabel had named the place Beinn Bhreagh. It was Gaelic for “beautiful mountain,” in reference to the rising slopes just across the harbor, in the shadow of which rested their secluded kingdom. Paul and Agnes’s carriage climbed a lush hill, leaving the sky-blue lake and the red-rock formations of the bay behind them. The shape of Bell’s home suddenly came into view. To describe the structure as “palatial” would have been not understatement but misidentification. It resembled a small city more than any sort of house.
The Bell compound was a series of interlocking buildings, stretching out from a three-story mansion in the center to nearby sheds, cabins, boathouses, warehouses, laboratories, and servants’ cottages. Through the thick woods, paths had been carved to connect most of these structures to one another. Some buildings were even linked by covered passageways for pedestrian travel in the snowy winter. The style of the estate stood in some contrast to its size, for its dark-wood rustic design gave the impression that the whole thing had blossomed from the great forest around it. Alexander and Mabel Bell waited outside to greet their arriving guests. A row of servants claimed the travelers’ valises, scurrying their bags into the house as Paul and Agnes shook the hands of their hosts.
“Good Lord,” said Mr. Bell. “George said you were young, but he did not say you were still in your swaddling clothes.”
Bell was large, almost as tall as Paul. While only forty-two years of age, Bell was possessed of a face that made him look much older. His white muttonchop beard, four inches in length, completed the effect. Yet the man—easily richer than any of the other inventors Paul had met—wore loose work pants tucked into his faded boots. His vest did not match his coat, and instead of a proper tie he wore a simple kerchief around his neck. Mabel wore her gray hair tied back into a schoolgirl’s bun. Her beige coat had been designed for warmth, not for fashion, and her plain linen dress did not appear to have been sewn within the past decade.
“You must be the famed Miss Huntington,” said Bell, kissing her outstretched hand. “I regret never having seen you on the stage, but now we must make an effort to get to New York more often.”
“I’m flattered,” replied Agnes. “But if you can dig up a piano, I’ll spare you the train fare.”
There followed an hour of pleasant introductions as Paul and Agnes sipped tea in one of the mansion’s many sitting rooms. Mabel talked about their time on the lake, how their children had learned to sail and how lovely it was for the family to take picnics in the wooded hills. Every Christmas Day the children were allowed to toboggan down the cape and across the solid ice. Mabel watched them each year with her heart pounding. Mr. Bell described the laboratory he’d built just yards down the dirt path, eagerly promising to give his guests a tour after lunch. He’d been working on hydrofoils, gasoline-powered ships that glided just above the surface of the water. He’d begun work on a flying machine as well, a winged device that threatened to carry its occupant as far as a few hundred feet through the air. He’d exchanged a few encouraging letters with a pair of bicycle designers from Ohio at work on something similar. Bell’s own work wasn’t as far along, but early tests were promising.
Sure enough, an old rosewood piano made its appearance. Agnes sang “You’ll Miss Lots of Fun When You’re Married.” Mabel accompanied her on the piano. The older woman lost her fingerings a few times, the chords shifting into accidental minors. Agnes covered the mistakes with a smile and a higher harmony, her musicianship skilled enough to make up for her partner’s lack thereof. There was much laughter in the sun-dappled drawing room.
Paul waited until everyone’s cup had been drained of its tea before broaching the subject of their visit.
“The elegance of your home, Mr. Bell, certainly befits the only man alive who can claim to have bested Thomas Edison.”
“I will take my cue to check on the salmon,” said Mabel as she stood.
“No, no,” said Paul. “Please. You needn’t leave. It’s only that we’ve found ourselves in dire straits, and we’ve come to you for guidance.”
“Well then, I hope you find what you’ve come for,” replied Mabel. “But for my part, I did not move to Canada so that I could spend another minute of my life talking about Thomas Edison.”
Bell watched her go, a loving smile on his face as his wife shut the wooden door behind her.
“She exaggerates,” said Bell as he was left alone with Paul and Agnes. “She unfortunately still has to spend more than a few minutes of her life talking about Edison, though I try to leave her out of it.”
“How do you mean?” asked Agnes.
“How many times do you two think I’ve been sued by the Wizard of Menlo Park?” he asked.
“Mr. Westinghouse has been sued three hundred twelve times by Edison,” answered Paul. “I cannot imagine you faced a lesser onslaught.”
“My lawyers summarized it for me in a letter,” said Bell. “In the past decade and a half, between Edison, Elisha Gray, and their friends at Western Union, I’ve been sued more than six hundred times over that silly telephone business.”
Paul and Agnes were dutifully impressed by the insanity of this figure.
“Have you ever tried one?” asked Bell.
“One what?” said Paul.
“A telephone, of course.”
“I haven’t yet.”
“I have,” said Agnes. “It was thrilling.”
“It wears off quickly,” said Bell. “Horrid things. Infernally loud. As soon as you wire one up, the damned bell never stops ringing. That’s why I won’t keep one around. All that fuss over something so annoying. Do you know I keep a place in Washington, just for the lawsuits? The Supreme Court sits in the fall, so the lawyers like me to spend a few months down there every year, to testify in person as Edison and his cronies rake my name through the mud.”
“Washington is lovely in the autumn,” suggested Agnes.
“I practically never leave the courthouse when I’m there. I make my yearly pilgrimage, raise my right hand, tell everyone the same boring story of that first telephone call. ‘Mr. Watson, come here.’ Like many future telephone conversations, it was rather less interesting than one might hope. I tell my story, and the court rules again and again that my patent is valid. Edison and his boys go back to New York to skulk around until they find another reason to sue me.”
“You’ve won every single one of those six hundred suits,” said Paul. “It’s remarkable.”
“It helps that I did actually invent the thing,” said Bell. “Not that that always makes a difference. But this is what inventing has become in America, thanks to you lawyers. Courtrooms are the new laboratories.”
“And you prefer the older kind.”