What would she do, with so much space to herself? What would she do with so much quiet?
A porter with a dolly wheeled Flora’s trunks out to Blackford’s automobile, a small, sedate Ford, and heaved them into it. The congressman tipped the fellow, who thanked him in Italian-accented English. Despite the chilly breeze, Flora’s face went hot. She should have tipped the man herself, but she hadn’t thought of it till too late. Till now, she hadn’t been in a lot of situations where she was supposed to tip.
Blackford cranked the engine into life. It started readily, which meant it hadn’t been sitting long. The headlamps had masking tape over most of their surface, so they cast only the faintest glow out ahead of the motorcar. Congressman Blackford drove slowly and carefully, so as not to run into anything before he knew it was there.
“Thank you for taking all this trouble over me,” Flora said above the Ford’s grunts and rattles and squeaks.
“Don’t make it out to be something bigger than it is,” Blackford answered. “I’m not just taking you home: I’m taking myself home, too. And believe me, the Socialist Party needs every representative and senator it can lay its hands on. If you have a strong voice, you will be able to make yourself heard, I promise you.”
“Yes, but how much good will it do?” Flora could not hide her bitterness. “The Democrats have such a majority, they can do as they please.”
Blackford shrugged. “We do what we can. Lincoln didn’t quote the Scripture that says, ‘As your Father in heaven is perfect, be ye also perfect,’ because he wanted people to truly be perfect. He wanted them to do their best.”
“Yes,” Flora said, and no more. Blackford’s comment went over less well than he’d no doubt intended. For one thing, the Scripture Lincoln had quoted was not Flora’s. And, for another, while Lincoln had made the Socialist Party in the USA strong by bringing in his wing of the Republicans after the fiasco of the Second Mexican War, Socialism in New York City stayed closer to its Marxist roots than was true in most of the country.
Blackford said, “I met Lincoln once-more than thirty-five years ago, it was.”
“Did you?” Now Flora put more interest in her voice. Whether or not she agreed with all of Lincoln’s positions, without him the Socialists likely would have remained a splinter group instead of overtaking the Republicans as the chief opposition to the Democratic Party.
He nodded. “It changed my life. I’d been mining in Montana, with no better luck than most. I was taking the train back to Dakota to farm with my kin, and I happened to have the seat next to his. We talked for hours, till I came to my stop and got off. He opened my eyes, Miss Hamburger. Without him, I never would have thought to read law or go into politics. I’d still be trying to coax wheat out of the ground out West.”
“He inspired a lot of people,” Flora said. After losing the War of Secession and having to yield independence to the Confederate States, he’d inspired a lot of people to hate him, too.
The Ford stuttered to a stop in front of a four-story brick building. Hosea Blackford pointed west. “Liberty Hall is just a couple of blocks over that way. It’s an easy walk, unless the weather is very bad. They’ll swear you in day after tomorrow, and the new Congress will get down to business.”
A doorman came over to the motorcar. He nodded to Blackford, then spoke to Flora: “You must be Congresswoman Hamburger. Very pleased to meet you, ma’am. I’m Hank. Whatever you need, you let me know. Right now, I expect you’ll want your bags taken up to your flat. Don’t you worry about a thing. I’ll handle it.”
And he did, with efficiency and dispatch. She remembered to tip him, and must have gauged the amount about right, for he touched a forefinger to the patent-leather brim of his cap in salute before he vanished. Flora was amazed she remembered anything. The flat was astonishing beyond her wildest flights of fancy. All for herself, she had twice the room her entire family enjoyed-or sometimes did not enjoy-on the Lower East Side.
Congressman Blackford stood in the doorway. Careful of convention, he did not go into her flat. He said, “I’m straight across the hall, in 3C. If Hank can’t help you with something, maybe I can. Good night.”
“Good night,” Flora said vaguely. She kept staring at all the space she was somehow supposed to occupy by herself. She had thought the Congressional salary of $7,500 a year-far, far more than her entire family made-the most luxurious part of the position. Now she wasn’t so sure.
Opening the trunk in which she’d packed her nightgowns, she put on a long wool flannel one and went to bed. Tomorrow, she told herself, she would explore Philadelphia. The day after tomorrow, she would go to work. For all her good intentions, she was a long time falling asleep. Not long after she did, she woke up to the distant pounding of antiaircraft guns and the roar of aeroplane engines right overhead. No bombs fell nearby, so those engines probably belonged to U.S. pursuit aeroplanes, not Confederate raiders.
When morning came, she discovered the kitchen was stocked with everything she might want. After coffee and eggs, she found a shirtwaist and black wool skirt that weren’t impossibly wrinkled, put them on along with a floral hat, threw on the coat she’d worn the night before, and went downstairs. Hank was already on duty. “I’ll see that everything is pressed for you, ma’am,” he promised when she inquired. “Don’t you worry about a thing. I’ll take care of it. You look like you’re going out. Enjoy yourself. I vote Socialist, too, you know. I hope you keep coming back to Philadelphia for years and years.”
She nodded her thanks, more than a little dazed. She’d never had so much attention lavished on her. No one in her family had ever had time to lavish so much attention on her. Out she went, to see what Philadelphia was like.
It struck her as being a more serious, more disciplined place than New York City. Big, forthright, foursquare government buildings-some of them showing bomb damage, others being repaired-dominated downtown. They were all fairly new, having gone up since the Second Mexican War. Not only had the government grown greatly since then, but Philadelphia had taken on more and more of the role of capital. Washington, though remaining in law the center of government, was hideously vulnerable to Confederate guns-and had, in fact, been occupied by the CSA since the earliest days of the fighting.
Liberty Hall was another pile of brick and granite, rather less impressive than the Broad Street station. It looked more like the home of an insurance firm than that of a great democracy. Down in Washington, the Capitol was splendid…or had been, till Confederate cannon damaged it.
Liberty Hall stood near one of the many buildings through which the War Department sprawled. Men in uniform were everywhere on the street, far more common than in New York. New York at most accepted the war- reluctantly, sometimes angrily. Philadelphia embraced it. Seeing that sobered Flora. She wondered how parochial her opposition would seem.
She stayed out all day. When she got back, she found her clothes unpacked, pressed as promised, and set neatly in closets and drawers. Nothing was missing-she checked. Seven cents in change lay on the nightstand. It must have been in one of her trunks.
She dressed in her best tailored suit, a black and white plaid, for her first trip to the House. Despite her businesslike appearance, a functionary in semimilitary uniform tried to keep her out of the House chamber, saying, “The stairs to the visitors’ gallery are on your right, ma’am.”
“I am Congresswoman Flora Hamburger,” she said in a wintry voice, and had the satisfaction of seeing him turn pale. Another uniformed aide took her down to her desk.
She looked around the immense chamber, which was filling rapidly. The only other woman in the House was a Democrat, an elderly widow from outside of Pittsburgh whose husband had held the district for decades till he died a few days before the war broke out. Flora didn’t expect to have much in common with her. She didn’t expect to have much in common with the plump, prosperous men who were the majority here, either, though she did wave back when Hosea Blackford waved to her.
Then she was on her feet with her right hand raised in a different fashion. “I, Flora Hamburger, do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the office of Representative of the United States, and will to the best of my ability preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”
When she sat down again, her face bore an enormous smile. She belonged here. It was official. “Now to set this place to rights,” she muttered under her breath.
Winter nights up in southern Manitoba were long. Arthur McGregor wished they were longer still. If he lay in bed asleep, he would not have to think of his son Alexander, executed by the U.S. occupiers for sabotage-sabotage he had not committed, sabotage McGregor was convinced he had not even planned.
He stirred in bed, wishing he could sleep: a big, strong, hard-faced Scots farmer in his early forties, his dark hair grayer than it had been before the war started, grayer than it would have been had the Yankees stayed on their own side of the border.
