“David!” she said. “I haven’t seen you in such a while.” This was Frances Holson, his grandfather’s longtime attorney, who, along with Norris, was privy to almost every detail of the Binghams’ lives. She, too, was a constant, but her place in the family firmament was both more important and better acknowledged—she had arranged both John’s and Eden’s marriages, and she was determined, it would seem, to arrange David’s as well.
“David,” she continued, “I am very pleased to present to you Mister Charles Griffith, of Nantucket and Falmouth. Mister Griffith, here is the young man about whom you have heard so much, Mister David Bingham.”
He was not as old-looking as David had feared, and despite his fair complexion, he was not ruddy, either: Charles Griffith was tall, and large, but self-assuredly so, broad through the shoulders and wide in the torso and neck. His jacket was tailored precisely, the wool soft and fine, and beneath his mustache his lips were well-defined and still pink, and now turned upward in a smile. He was not handsome, not exactly, but he gave the impression of deftness, and vigor, and health, which combined to create an aspect of something almost pleasing.
His voice, when he spoke, was appealing too, deep and somehow furred at the edges: There was a softness, a gentleness to it that contrasted with his size and its suggestion of strength. “Mister Bingham,” he said, as they shook hands. “It is a pleasure to meet you. I’ve heard so much about you.”
“As I have about you,” he said, though he’d not learned a significant amount more since first hearing Charles Griffith’s name almost six weeks prior. “Thank you so much for coming down—I trust you had a good journey?”
“Yes, quite,” Griffith replied. “And please—you must call me Charles.”
“And you must call me David.”
“Well!” said Frances. “I’ll leave you two gentlemen to talk, then. When you’re done, David, ring, and Norris will escort Mister Griffith out.”
They waited until she had left, the door shutting behind her, and then they both sat. Between them was a small table with a plate of shortbread cookies and a pot of what David knew, simply by scent, was Lapsang souchong, wildly expensive and difficult to obtain and his grandfather’s favorite tea, reserved for only the most special occasions. He knew this was his grandfather’s way of wishing him good luck, and the gesture moved him and made him sad, both. Charles already had tea, but David poured himself some, and as he lifted his cup to his lips, Charles did as well, and they sipped in unison.
“It’s rather strong,” he said, because he knew the taste of the tea was overpowering to many; Peter, who detested it, had once described it as “an oversmoked wood fire in liquid form.”
But “I’m very fond of it,” Charles said. “It reminds me of my time in San Francisco—you used to be able to find it quite easily there. Expensive, of course. But not as rare as it is here in the Free States.”
This surprised him. “You’ve spent time in the West?”
“Yes. This was, oh, twenty years ago. My father had recently renewed our partnership up North with our fur trappers, and San Francisco had, of course, become rich by that time. He had the idea that I should go out there and establish an office and make some sales. So I did. It was a wonderful experience, actually; I was young, and the city was growing, and it was a marvelous era to be there.”
He was impressed by this—he had never known anyone who had actually lived in the West. “Are all the stories true?”
“Many of them. There’s an air there of—of unhealthiness, I suppose. Certainly licentiousness. It felt dangerous, at times—so many people trying to make a new life for themselves; so many people yearning for wealth; so many people bound to be disappointed—but also liberating. Though it was unreliable, as well. Fortunes came and went so fast there, and so too did people: The man who owed you money might vanish the next day, and there’d be no way to find him again. We were able to maintain the office for three years, but then, of course, we had to leave in seventy-six, after the laws were passed.”
“Still,” he said, “I envy you. Do you know, I’ve never even been out West?”
“But you’ve traveled extensively through Europe, Miss Holson tells me.”
“I took my Grand Tour, yes. But there was nothing licentious about that—unless you consider heaps of Canalettos, and Tintorettos, and Caravaggios licentious.”
Charles laughed then, and after that, the conversation came naturally. They spoke further of their respective wanderings—Charles was remarkably well traveled, his business taking him not only to the West and Europe but to Brazil and Argentina, too—and of New York, where Charles had once lived and where he still maintained a residence, which he visited often. As they talked, David listened for the Massachusetts accent many of his school classmates had had, with its broad, flat vowels and particular galloping cadence, but in vain. Charles’s was a pleasant voice but featureless, revealing little of his origins.
“I hope you won’t think this too forward to mention,” Charles said, “but we are all of us in Massachusetts intrigued by this tradition of arranged marriage, and long have been.”
“Yes,” he laughed, unoffended. “All of the other states are. And I understand why—it’s a local practice, limited to New York and Connecticut.” Arranged marriages had begun around a century ago as a way for the first families who settled the Free States to create strategic alliances and consolidate their wealth.
“I understand why it originated here—these were always the richest provinces—but why do you suppose it has so endured?”
“I can’t say, quite. My grandfather’s theory is that, because significant dynasties soon arose from those marriages, it became essential for the financial integrity of the States for them to continue. He speaks of them as one might the cultivation of trees”—here Charles laughed, a pleasing noise—“the maintaining of a web of roots upon which the nation thrives and flowers.”
“Quite poetic for a banker. And patriotic.”
“Yes—he’s both, my grandfather.”
“Well, I suppose the rest of us Free Staters have your proclivity for arranged marriages to thank for our ongoing well-being.” He was teasing, David knew, but his voice was kind, and he returned Charles’s smile.
“Yes, I suppose. I shall thank my grandfather on your and your fellow Massachusettans’ behalf. Do you not practice them at all in New England? I had heard you do.”
“Yes, but with far less regularity: When we do, the reasons are similar—to unite like-minded families—but the consequences are never as meaningful as they are here. My younger sister recently facilitated a marriage between her maid and one of our sailors, for instance, but that was because her maid’s family has a small timber concern and the sailor’s a rope workshop, and the two wanted to consolidate their resources—not to mention that the young people were rather fond of each other but were both too shy to begin the process of courtship themselves.