The Last Days of Night(27)

The Ideals, she explained, had traveled on their first tour of the Midwest. Indiana, Ohio, Illinois, Missouri. Of course, Agnes had never before sung in such places, Fannie was quick to note. But W. H. Foster, the owner of the Ideals, had been motivated by pecuniary gain to attempt a tour of places that did not have exposure to the higher arts. Tickets had been discounted for farmers and the like. What the Ideals might lose in the quality of their patrons they could make up for in quantity.

Single-night engagements were the standard for the tour. An evening in Gary, Indiana, for example, before two thousand theatergoers who were, as Fannie put it, “inexperienced attendees of a fine performance.” Then on to Dayton for another show the next night. Her daughter had begun to feel like she’d joined up with P. T. Barnum.

In Peoria, Illinois, this conflict came to a head: Mr. Foster told Agnes that to save money, she’d have to travel with the chorus. Naturally, such a thing wouldn’t do. Agnes complained politely. But Mr. Foster had not met Agnes’s arguments with reason. Instead, he’d met them with undeserved punishment.

First, he forbade Fannie from traveling with her daughter. Then he began to skim from Agnes’s salary. They had a contract, one that made very plain that Agnes was to receive two hundred dollars per week while on tour. First, ten dollars went missing from her weekly check. Mr. Foster said it was a mistake of his accountant’s and he’d see to fixing it. He did not. A few weeks later the deficit was fifty dollars. Then one hundred dollars. And soon enough Agnes was receiving less than half of her agreed-upon salary.

So, at the advice of her concerned mother, Agnes quit the Ideals. She packed her bags, got on a train in Chicago, and two days later was home in Boston. Within a few months’ time, the Met had happily moved Agnes and her mother to New York. Her career proceeded apace.

However, their wish to put this whole miserable ordeal behind them had gone unfulfilled. Mr. Foster had threatened suit against Agnes for her sudden departure. She told him that he could keep the money that he’d stolen, but that wasn’t enough for Mr. Foster. He was demanding that Agnes return to Boston, to sing again with the Ideals.

“And if Miss Huntington does not do as he asks?” asked Paul.

“Mr. Foster claims to have many friends among the newspapermen of Chicago. He says that with only a letter, he could cause quite a stir. He could tell horrid lies to the paper about the reasons for Agnes’s departure from the Midwest. He might even intimate…I cannot even say it.”

Paul waved his hand in the air, indicating that she need not continue. “A scandal. Something of that nature.”

He looked to Agnes, attempting to gauge her response to this unpleasant tale. There was none. Agnes maintained an expression of utter implacability. Her eyes simply shone their February gray. Her lips betrayed neither frown nor smile.

“We need this to go away,” said Fannie. “And we need it to go away quietly. Might you be able to assist us?”

What Paul was forced to say next was difficult. But it was unavoidable.

“I would be happy to introduce you to my partners. They are excellent attorneys, and you’d be in extremely capable hands.”

There was a moment of silence from the women. Neither appeared particularly accustomed to being turned down. It was as if they did not quite know how to respond to such a thing.

“I’m afraid it’s simply an issue of time,” continued Paul. “I don’t have any. George Westinghouse’s defense requires my full and unfettered attention.”

“It is some lawyer,” said Fannie, “who is uninterested in a new client.”

“Right now, I have one client. I have one case. I must win it.”

Agnes seemed faintly amused by Paul’s earnestness. If she was offended, she didn’t show it. She looked rather like she had already forgotten about Paul’s existence and was readying for her return to the great world of concerts and parties from which she had dropped in. Paul faced the unpleasant thought that she would go away so soon. When was the last time he had even spoken to a woman his age? But he knew what he had to do.

“Come along, darling,” said Fannie. “There are a hundred other attorneys on this block who would take your case with a moment’s notice.”

Paul’s further apologies were dismissed. No sooner had they arrived than they were gone, Agnes leaving in her wake the faintest scent of some exotic perfume he would never smell again.

He looked to the impossible stack of papers on his desk. This is what is required of the victorious, he reminded himself. He remained at the office late that night, till his writing hand was useless, and he didn’t sleep well.





A man, as a general rule, owes very little to what he is born with. A man is what he makes of himself.

—ALEXANDER GRAHAM BELL



ERASTUS CRAVATH WAS not impressed. Of this he made his son well aware over the course of his visit to New York at the end of August.

Erastus was not impressed with Paul’s client. Coal lamps were good enough for the family home in Nashville.

He was not bowled over by Paul’s Fiftieth Street apartment. Erastus didn’t much like New York in the first place. He couldn’t imagine why Paul would want to live there. Erastus found the summer in Manhattan to be stifling. He found the city noisy, filthy, unpleasant. He found the conditions of the Jews, confined as they were to their Lower East Side tenements, to be appalling. He found the treatment of the Negroes in the Tenderloin to be even worse. Wasn’t typhoid a concern?