Free Grant: A Novel by Max Byrd

Palace. Thereafter I declined to meet him.”
    Trist pictured the taciturn Grant confronted with such a little engine of patrician self-amusement, and he turned to hide his smile. When he looked at Elizabeth Cameron, however, her gaze was fixed, steadily, uncritically, on Henry Adams.
    “It was about somebody’s hair,” Clover said.
    “My friend Motley”—Adams had begun by speaking to Trist, but in the course of things turned naturally to Elizabeth Cameron, so that he seemed now to be addressing her alone—“Motley was made ambassador to England, but Grant disliked him. He recalled Motley because he parted his hair in the middle.”
    The two women laughed. Adams began a longer story. Trist listened with only half a mind. His malaria had entered a new phase, recurring just every four or five days now and much less severely than before; but as always, drink or excess heat seemed to stir it up. He put down his glass again and moved away from the fireplace, where cut logs had been stacked by a prodigal hand. Elizabeth Cameron, still laughing, rested her fingers for a moment on Adams’s arm. In the flickering light of the room her skin was soft, radiant, her eyes as pale as agates. On the other side of the fireplace poor Clover Adams looked like a small black crow.
    “In fact,” Adams was now saying, and as he spoke the idea suddenly occurred to Trist, in a simple, neutral, and unshakable way, that he had never met someone he disliked so much so soon—“in fact, I’m not even registered to vote, so I ought not to have
any
opinion.” He made a quick, high-pitched sniffing sound that was the opposite of Don Cameron’s habitual snort. “I’m merely an observer of the Great Democratic Experiment. I
will
say that, whatever he was before the war, when he became President, Grantutterly lost the distinction between right and wrong. This is, of course, the first step to success in politics.”
    “You were in the war, Mr. Trist,” Clover Adams said. “General Beale said you wrote a book of sketches about it. He said you had a most interesting story—you resigned from Yale College in your second year to become a volunteer. Then, of course …” She looked sympathetically at his arm. “Did you serve under Grant?”
    “I suppose everybody did,” Trist replied. He was conscious of trying to appear as boorish and inarticulate as possible, to distinguish himself from Adams. “But Chicago was only the second or third time I ever saw him.”
    “Mr. Trist,” Elizabeth Cameron interjected, surprising Trist again, “unlike most soldiers, evidently doesn’t care to speak of the war.”
    Before Trist could say a word, the hallway door had swung open and Don Cameron walked in.
    “Telegram’s gone,” he announced. “I’ve told McVeagh what to do, straight.” As he passed with his small quick tread he left a sharp scent of whiskey in the air. “Dinner’s almost ready,” he added, and frowned over his shoulder at Trist. “Senate meets tomorrow at ten for a short session, then a Republican caucus you might want to watch.”
    Trist nodded and turned to go.
    At that moment the black maid appeared at the double doors leading to the dining room, and half a second later the governess, with little Maudie Cameron at her side, appeared behind her.
    “She
insists
on saying good night to Papa,” the governess said, and Maudie skipped free with a yell and ran to her father, who stooped to kiss her.
    “Our revels now are ended,” murmured Clover Adams, just loud enough for Trist to hear. The maid stepped aside to reveal the dinner table, and Clover looked automatically at Henry. But her husband had already extended his arm to Elizabeth Cameron with a little sniff and a bow. From the hallway Trist heard his thin, penetrating voice. “My dear Senator, may I borrow your wife?”

CHAPTER EIGHT

    T HE BEST THING IN HIS INTERVIEW WITH MARK TWAIN, TRIST thought, had nothing to do with Grant.
    They had met as arranged the morning