But maybe it wasn’t. Probably it wasn’t. You ran off with housemaids, but there was no need to marry them, was there? No need to make it all legal and proper and binding. In case you changed your mind. In case you met another girl, a suitable girl.
Olive made her way along the edge of the crowd, bearing her champagne. A few hands reached out to pluck the glasses from her tray, without thanks, without recognition, without a single exchange of glances. And maybe this unexpected wound was the one that hurt the most: her invisibility. Once you donned a servant’s uniform, you became invisible, not even quite human. This was necessary, of course, for the entire system of human servility to operate without friction, but still it rankled. She wanted to scream, I’m just as good as you are! I speak French and I dance, I play the piano beautifully and recite poetry from memory and enunciate every consonant without flaw. A year ago, I was almost one of you!
But that didn’t matter, did it? If you fell, you fell.
On the other side of the room, along the windows, the crowd was thinning. Olive, stepping carefully so the bubbling glasses wouldn’t tilt onto the polished parquet floor, approached a pair of men, identical in portly middle-aged formal dress. They stood next to one of the grand French windows, heads bent together, smoking forbidden cigars, which they tipped out the open bottom sash in furtive gestures.
“. . . magnificent, to be sure, but it will all go to the receivers quick enough if even one of his damned railroads fails . . .”
Olive slowed her steps.
“. . . which ones . . . invest . . . ?”
The other man was speaking, the nearest one, who faced away from Olive’s line of approach. She couldn’t make out the words very well, but the lift in his voice suggested a question.
She was at his elbow now. She held out the tray, and both men, without a glance, without missing a single beat of their conversation, reached out in unison to swipe away two sizzling glasses of champagne.
“. . . but the chiefest part is held in the damned P and R. He’s up to his silly neck in it.”
The other man laughed. “Fool.”
“And so I told him, but he’s got all this confounded faith in McLeod, thinks the expansion will pay off before they run out of money—”
“And the patience of creditors—”
“Well, that too, of course—”
Olive was forced to step away now, because even invisible serving maids might attract attention if they lingered too long. But she moved slowly, as if taking extreme care for the safety of the crystal, as a good servant should.
“Well, between you and me, I don’t think the P and R lasts more than a week after Cleveland takes office.”
“. . . repeal . . . silver act . . .”
“Don’t matter. Stretched too far, and I hear Morgan’s about to pull the plug—”
The voice became muffled as the owner turned toward the window to knock away a length of ash from his guilty cigar. Olive’s heart thumped into her ribs, making her dizzy. There was a little draft from under the sash, and it fluttered coldly against her long black skirt.
The P&R. That was the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad; even Olive knew that. Everybody knew the P&R; it was one of the largest companies in the world, transporting infinite tons of rich Pennsylvania anthracite coal from the rural mines to the mid-Atlantic ports, and now it wanted to extend its tentacles into New England. Its expensive tentacles, of course. You didn’t build out a hundred miles of track without mountains of money. Railroads ate capital like Gus Pratt ate his breakfast bacon, and they were always one ill wind away from collapsing under the weight of their own debts.
Yes, even Olive knew that.
And she also remembered the fat file in Mr. Pratt’s fat study, labeled PHILADELPHIA & READING.
The dancers blurred past, colorful and frenetic, whirling from prosperous and plentiful 1892 into the dazzling unknown riches of 1893. A handsome face winged before her and disappeared, and it was an instant or two before Olive realized that it was Harry. Harry, cradling his right arm around yet another beautiful girl, clasping her elegant gloved fingers with his left hand. He hadn’t noticed Olive at all.
Not until half past eleven o’clock did Olive find her opportunity to steal into the study upstairs. She had emptied another tray of champagne and made for the stairs to the kitchen, but instead of descending into the basement she had left the tray on the Chippendale lowboy and slipped upward and out of sight.