but all the same he was disposed to flirt. 'Ladies!' he said. 'How could two such goddesses have need of the services of Messrs. Goldman and Jay? What could I possibly do for you?'
April rose to the occasion. 'You could take off that waistcoat, it's hurting my eyes,' she said.
Maisie had no patience with gallantry today. 'My name is Maisie Robinson,' she said.
'Aha! The advertisement. By a happy chance, the gentleman in question is with Mr. Jay at this very minute.'
Maisie felt faint with trepidation. 'Tell me something,' she said hesitantly. 'The gentleman in question ... Is he by any chance Mr. Hugh Pilaster?' She looked pleadingly at the clerk.
He failed to notice her look and replied in his ebullient tone: 'Good Lord, no!'
Maisie's hopes collapsed again. She sat down on a hard wooden bench by the door, fighting back tears. 'Not him,' she said.
'No,' said the clerk. 'As a matter of fact, I know Hugh Pilaster--we were at school together in Folkestone. He's gone to America.'
Maisie rocked back as if she had been punched. 'America?' she whispered.
'Boston, Massachusetts. Took ship a couple of weeks ago. You know him, then?'
Maisie ignored the question. Her heart felt like a stone, heavy and cold. Gone to America. And she had his child inside her. She was too horrified to cry.
April said aggressively: 'Who is it, then?'
The clerk began to feel out of his depth. He lost his superior air and said nervously: 'I'd better let him tell you himself. Excuse me for a moment.' He disappeared through an inner door.
Maisie stared blankly at the boxes of papers stacked against the wall, reading the titles marked on the sides: Blenkinsop Estate, Regina versus Wiltshire Flour Millers, Great Southern Railway, Mrs. Stanley Evans (deceased). Everything that happened in this office was a tragedy for someone, she reflected: death, bankruptcy, divorce, prosecution.
When the door opened again, a different man came out, a man of striking appearance. Not much older than Maisie, he had the face of a biblical prophet, with dark eyes staring out from under black eyebrows, a big nose with flaring nostrils, and a bushy beard. He looked familiar, and after a moment she decided he reminded her a little of her father, although Papa had never looked so fierce.
'Maisie?' he said. 'Maisie Robinson?'
His clothes were a little odd, as if they had been bought in a foreign country, and his accent was American. 'Yes, I'm Maisie Robinson,' she said. 'Who the devil are you?'
'Don't you recognize me?'
Suddenly she remembered a wire-thin boy, ragged and barefoot, with the first shadow of a moustache on his lip and a do-or-die look in his eye. 'Oh, my God!' she yelped. 'Danny!' For a moment she forgot her troubles as she ran to his arms. 'Danny, is it really you?'
He hugged her so hard it hurt. 'Sure it's me,' he said.
'Who?' April was saying. 'Who is he?'
'My brother!' Maisie said. 'The one that ran away to America! He came back!'
Danny broke their embrace to stare at her. 'How did you get to be beautiful?' he said. 'You used to be a skinny little runt!'
She touched his beard. 'I might have known you without all this fur round your gob.'
There was a discreet cough from behind Danny, and Maisie looked up to see an elderly man standing in the doorway looking faintly disdainful. 'Apparently we have been successful,' he said.
Danny said: 'Mr. Jay, may I present my sister, Miss Robinson.'
'Your servant, Miss Robinson. If I may make a suggestion ... ?'
'Why not?' said Danny.
'There is a coffeehouse in Theobald's Road, just a few steps away. You must have a lot to talk about.'
He obviously wanted them out of his office, but Danny did not seem to care what Mr. Jay wanted. Whatever else might have happened he had not learned to be deferential. 'What do you say, girls? Would you like to talk here, or shall we go and drink coffee?'
'Let's go,' Maisie said.
Mr. Jay added: 'And perhaps you might come back to settle your account a little later, Mr. Robinson?'
'I won't forget. Come on, girls.'
They left the office and went down the stairs. Maisie was bursting with questions, but controlled her curiosity with an effort while they found the coffeehouse and settled themselves at a table. At last she said: 'What have you been doing for the last seven years?'
'Building railways,' he said. 'It so happened that I arrived at a good time. The war between the states had just ended and the railway boom was beginning. They were so desperate for workers that they were shipping them over from Europe. Even a skinny thirteen-year-old could get a job. I worked on the first- ever steel bridge, over the Mississippi at St Louis; then I got a job building the Union Pacific Railroad in Utah. I was a ganger by the time I was nineteen--it's young men's work. And I joined the trade union and led a strike.'
'Why did you come back?'
'There's been a stock market crash. The railroads have run out of money, and the banks that were financing them have gone bust. There are thousands of men, hundreds of thousands, looking for work. I decided to come home and make a new start.'
'What will you do--build railroads here?'
He shook his head. 'I've got a new idea. You see, it's happened to me twice, that my life has been wrecked by a financial crash. The men who own banks are the stupidest people in the world. They never learn, so they make the same mistakes again and again. And it's the workingmen who suffer. Nobody ever helps them--nobody ever will. They have to help each other.'
April said: 'People never help each other. It's everyone for himself in this world. You've got to be selfish.'
April often said that, Maisie recalled, even though in practice she was a generous person and would do anything for a friend.
Danny said: 'I'm going to start a kind of club for workingmen. They'll pay sixpence a week, and if they're thrown out of work through no fault of their own the club will pay them a pound a week while they look for a new job.'
Maisie stared at her brother in admiration. The plan was formidably ambitious--but she had thought the same when at the age of thirteen he had said There's a ship in the harbor that's bound for Boston on the morning tide--I'll shin up a rope tonight and hide on deck in one of the boats. He had done what he said then and he probably would now. He said he had led a strike. He seemed to have grown into the kind of person other men would follow.
'But what about Papa and Mama?' he said. 'Have you been in touch with them?'
