A Passionate Girl (30 page)

It was a ruinous melee, but it did serve one good purpose—or so we thought at the time. Beyond question, our plan to conquer British Canada in Ireland's name became as public as the knowledge that Andrew Johnson sat in the White House and Victoria on the throne of England. The relative lack of public opposition, beyond snipes from pro-English publications like the
New York Times
and
Harper's Weekly
, and the studied silence from the American government encouraged us to think that we had support in both these vital quarters. In fact, powerful newspapers such as the
New York Herald
and the
New York Tribune
repeatedly cheered us on and helped us belabor O'Mahoney and Michael and their friends into relative insignificance.

My part in the quarrel was as exhausting as it was heartsickening. It was not easy to heap scorn and opprobrium and even a little slander on the head of a brother whom I once worshipped and in my heart still loved. I could never have done it without my hatred. It was easy to include Michael within its icy circle, to sacrifice him to its inexorable necessity. His stupid idealism was interfering with my consummation, and he had to be destroyed.

Mike Hanrahan, who traveled with me to many of my performances, was amazed and puzzled by my transformation when I stepped upon a stage or speaker's platform. “You're not the same person, so help me God,” he said. “'Tis like an avenging angel possessed you.”

“He has, Mike,” I'd say. “I hope one soon possesses you, so there'll be an end to bucking the tiger.”

“Ah, Bess, a man needs a bit of pleasure in this life,” Mike would say with his crooked grin.

There were times when I lost hold of my avenging angel, or he lost me. One snowy December night, I was in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, speaking to a hall full of Irish coal miners and their wives. Michael had been there the previous day to ask for their money and their sons to invade Ireland in the Fenian fleet. I began by ridiculing my brother the admiral, telling how seasick he was when we crossed the Atlantic. Then I discussed my brother the coward, telling how Dan McCaffrey and I had had to carry him like a whimpering baby across half of Ireland with the police after us. “Sure he wet his pants so often,” I said, “I put diapers on him.”

Then I told them of the marching men in the other cities, the American government's sure support of our conquest of Canada, the great chance it represented to carve off one of the main limbs of the British hydra. I held up to them the hope of a home on the St. Lawrence or the western prairie instead of a hovel beside a mineshaft. Finally I reminded them of the fate of the convicted Fenians, in the prison camps of Tasmania. I ended with a poem that Mike had written for me. Someone, I think it was the
New York Herald
, called it the “Fenian Marseillaise.”

As the applause thundered to the roof, I glimpsed Michael's face in the back of the hall. Defeat and humiliation were written upon it in such scarifying terms, my hating heart faltered. I was destroying him, my own brother, the one who taught me to love Ireland with passion and pride. For a moment I almost cried out begging words of contrition and forgiveness. But long before I could get off the stage, he had turned away and vanished into the night.

Through all this turmoil, I seldom saw Dan McCaffrey: When he was in New York, I was usually en route to some distant town like Wilkes-Barre, and when I stumbled off a train in Jersey City and trudged to the ferry with Mike, it was to discover that Dan had just departed for Boston or Pittsburgh. When I did encounter him I had to struggle to produce a loving smile. But I managed it, just as I managed to write him words of passionate endearment in my letters. Not because I loved him. Except for stray moments, like that episode on the stage, I loved nothing but my hatred—and my Donal Ogue remained an important part of my dream of murderous revenge.

With the cruel humor that fate seems to prefer, Michael's going berserk and plunging us into an Ireland-first versus Canada-first quarrel played neatly into my hand. Toward the end of January in the new year 1866, when we had him and O'Mahoney well on the run, I went to William Roberts with my plan.

“It's not enough to go about making speeches about rifle guns,” I said. “We must show we can use them.”

“We will, as soon as the snow melts in Canada,” he said.

I shook my head. “We must also show we can use them in Ireland.”

He glanced up in alarm from the latest bond-sale reports, wondering if I was about to change sides on him. Like most men, he saw a female as fickle, swayed by every contrary wind.

“We must concentrate our strength, not scatter it,” he said, giving one of the standard military answers we had devised to counter the Ireland-firsters.

“Of course,” I said, “but surely we can spare three people, two men and a woman, to strike a blow that will reverberate through Ireland and America. A blow that will prove no one can abuse Ireland and live in safety.”

Roberts stopped reading and started listening.

“Lord Gort of Limerick has become head of the landlords' association in Ireland. You know what he did to my father,” I said. “He's bent on terrorizing and humiliating everyone within his reach—and if the association gains strength, it will reach everywhere in Ireland. I want to go there and kill him. On the orders of the Irish Republic. As an act of war.”

And revenge,
I added silently, my true love, dear sweet savage revenge.

“Can it be done?” he asked.

I had him hooked. He saw it would be the perfect answer to the Ireland-firsters. Tell us what
you
have done in Ireland, we could sneer, and point to Gort's corpse.

“It can,” I said. “With the help of Dan McCaffrey and Mike Hanrahan.” I told him of my plan.

“It's dangerous,” he said. “Can we ask the men to do it?”

“Make it worth their while,” I said. “Pay them for it. A thousand dollars each.”

This was the most painful part. Admitting my Donal Ogue had the soul of a mercenary. Letting go, perhaps for good, that dream I had in Ireland of teaching him the nobility of sacrifice. But my hatred consoled me. It was a small price to pay.

I did not know what a liar hatred was.

A telegram summoned Dan from his training duties. Red Mike Hanrahan, busy with staging Fenian rallies, was similarly recalled. We met in President Roberts's office. “Gentlemen,” he said, “we have an assignment for you. A very dangerous assignment, but one that will bring you imperishable glory in the history of Ireland.”

Dear God,
I thought, watching frowns grow on the foreheads of both these veteran soldiers. They had seen too many bullets fired at them to put much stock in glory. Roberts went on to describe the proposal “he and the cabinet” had devised to strike a blow in Ireland and solidify the movement. I had persuaded him without much difficulty to take credit for the idea. I knew Dan and Mike would look askance at a plan drawn by a woman.

“Because of the danger of the assignment, I'm authorized to offer you a thousand dollars each to undertake it.”

That was more like it. Dan accepted on the spot. Red Mike was less enthused. He said he had spent most of his courage in the charge up Marye's Heights at Fredericksburg. “But I'll do it if we can buck the tiger for a few nights in London on the way back.”

“It can't be done without you, Mike. You must be the stage director of the whole business,” I said.

“I wouldn't be surprised,” Mike said, “if I'm lookin' at the real director.”

Dan glowered at me. “Is that true?”

“Of course not,” I said.

“Henceforth,” William Roberts continued in his oratorical style, “you shall consider yourselves under the orders of the government of the Republic of Ireland. You, Major Daniel McCaffrey, and you, Captain Michael Hanrahan, are to choose one other volunteer and proceed to Ireland. We will obtain the necessary false identities and provide you with the money and weapons for the expedition. In Ireland you are to make your way by the safest route to Limerick, and thence to the village of Ballinaclash, where you are to execute Lord Rodney Gort, landlord, for atrocious crimes against the Irish people. I wish you well.”

He handed us our orders. I was, of course, the other volunteer. We immediately set to work on our plan. Mike obtained the services of one of the best actors in New York, Charles Everett, and he spent the next two weeks teaching me and Dan how to impersonate old age. Next, he showed us how to apply the makeup that made our speech and our mannerisms supremely realistic. With powdered hair, a gray mustache, crow's-feet around the eyes, and a raddled neck, Dan grew old before my eyes. I did the same, with the aid of the same powder, a pair of eyeglasses, and expertly added wrinkles. I cut my hair short, the way older women wore it in America. Under Everett's tutelage, Mike Hanrahan became our makeup man. Again and again, while Everett timed us with his watch, Mike took us from youth to age in fifteen minutes. Furious effort and concentration finally enabled him to do it in ten—five minutes for each. We were ready.

Meanwhile, Secretary of State Seward was asked to prepare two passports for Mr. and Mrs. Clayton Stowecroft, aged sixty-five and sixty-six, who were leaving on an extended tour of Ireland, England, and Scotland. The secretary had been providing us with false passports for almost a year now, so there was no difficulty about obtaining them. Mr. and Mrs. Stowecroft, who were supposedly from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, booked their passage on the Cunard line steamer
Servia
. Their tour was arranged by the New York office of Thomas Cook, and their meeting with the agent, Mr. Soames, was (unknown to him) a dress rehearsal that was thoroughly successful. Mr. Soames, a balding little bulldog of a man, said he was delighted to discover two Americans in the evening of their lives with such a penchant for visiting the mother country, if he might call it that. Mrs. Stowecroft (me) assured him in her tremulous old voice that she thought of England as the mother of our arts and sciences, our very speech. Mr. Stowecroft (aka Dan), who was a “railroad man,” said he was looking forward to riding every mile of track in the United Kingdom. Mrs. Stowecroft fluttered and said he could do what he pleased, she was sick of railroads and was going to enjoy herself in London, Dublin, and Edinburgh. Mr. Soames assured them that they would enjoy themselves immensely no matter what they did.

So we embarked from Jersey City in Cunard's big, dowdy steamer, which was brand-new but looked, with typical English bad taste, as though it had been built twenty years ago. A decade later, I read a paean of praise to the
Servia
by that hopeless Anglophile Henry James. He canted on about how she was “spacious and comfortable, and there was a kind of motherly decency in her long nursing rock and her rustling old-fashioned gait.” Almost certainly, Mr. James sailed in the spring or summer. On the North Atlantic in February, the long nursing rock was closer to the careen of a hopeless drunkard. The decks were awash morning and night; the ship resounded with the crash of crockery, the clang of falling ornaments, and the screams of nervous passengers. The stench of seasickness drifted from every corridor into the ornate grand salon. The food, normally poor in the great tradition of British cooking, was atrocious. But the ordeal suited us well. It enabled us to remain in our cabin most of the time. When we did emerge, everyone was much too frightened and disconsolate to pay much attention to us. On every hand we heard “Cunard has never lost a life,” repeated like a pleading litany. We recited it along with everyone else, but never for a moment did I doubt that the good ship
Servia
would carry me safely to Ireland and my revenge.

To guarantee my moment of consummation, I made sure Dan McCaffrey thought of little else. Day after day, I gave myself to him until he was all but drunk with the love of me. He thought it was my worship of his daring, his cunning, his deadly aim with a gun. He did not know he held a woman of ice in his arms, a woman who lied her love to him, who worshipped nothing but her hatred. I began to think I did not know what I thought or felt about him, or anyone.

It was necessary to mesmerize him, narcotize him with my body, because when he thought of our plan he was afraid. He tried to hide it from me, but my hatred gave me a preternatural ability to scent his fear. He lacked my fierce faith in my hatred's predestined consummation. As a veteran soldier who had seen the best of plans go wrong and men die in writhing agony, he weighed our chances and knew they teetered on a knife edge. If even one thing went wrong, we were doomed. Every so often he would look at me as if he were seeing his death. That was when I crooned my lying love to him, opened myself with a high exultant lust that I imagined Emer offered her warrior hero on the eve of battle, and promised him unimagined delights if he fulfilled my wish. Simultaneously I was proving my passion to myself. I took no precautions against pregnancy nor asked Dan to take any. I was ready to sacrifice my reputation, even my life, on the altar of my dark god.

Below us, in a narrow third-class compartment, Mike Hanrahan no doubt sweated the same fear. I could do nothing for him. Mike's risks were slight compared to ours. He carried a passport that identified him as one Peter Kinkaid, going home to Limerick to visit his aged mother. He, too, had a patter, well rehearsed, which he talked night and day about his career as a brakeman on the Erie Railroad.

At last, toward dusk on the fifteenth day, the
Servia
lumbered into the calm waters of Cork's great harbor. We stayed aboard until the next morning, listening to the bells of Shandon drift out to us on the chill evening air. The nearness of Ireland tempted me to drop my disguise a little. “There's a lovely poem that goes with those bells,” I said. I began to whisper it to Dan.

He cut me short with an impatient wave of his hand. “Remember what Red Mike told you? Even when we're alone, we should think and talk like old, rich Americans. You go Irish on me and I'll take the first boat home.”

We strolled to the stern and watched the third class passengers emerging like moles into the fresh air. A fiddle began to play. Someone started singing a Come All Ye.

Perhaps he was coming home to claim his Nell, with American dollars in his pocket. I entertained myself with these sentimental thoughts until the singer pranced out of the crowd and tipped his hat to us. It was Red Mike Hanrahan.

The next day we went ashore in smaller vessels that carried us to quays on the River Lee. The approach to Cork in the morning sunlight was grand. Superb gardens, parks, and villas covered the shore on each bank. The city closed the view, rising with its roofs and church steeples on two hills on either side of the Lee.

The illusion of splendor and beauty ended abruptly at the dock. We were set upon by the most ragged, noisy swarm of beggars, hackmen, and baggage boys I have ever encountered. The boys fought and cursed over our luggage, and the losers beseeched pennies of us for consolation. The hackmen were ready to commit murder, until Dan sternly chose one suppliant and banished the others. We could not resist the female beggars, who ranged in age from tots of five and six to girls as old and as large as I. We were sprinkling coins into their hands when a stern voice interrupted us. “Here now. If you take my advice you'll stop that.”

A ruddy-faced little Englishman in a bowler hat and long tan raincoat confronted us, his brush mustache quivering. “Noticed you on the boat. The captain told me you were Americans. Beastly weather made sociability impossible. Name's Quackey, as in the duck. Feel I should tell you there's no point whatsoever in dispensing charity to these lazy curs. All for helping the worthy poor, but if you can find one of these in Ireland, I'll give you a fiver. These are the laziest people God ever made. Drain you dry if you give them half a chance. Professional beggars, every one of them.”

“Why, thankee, friend Quackey,” said Dan, tipping his hat. “You've saved us a power of money. Wouldn't you say so, dear?”

“My stars, yes,” I trilled.

I looked around me, staggered and ashamed by the way the beggars, the baggage boys, and even the hackmen, most of them twice the Englishman's size, shrank back and accepted this abuse. If an Englishman said such things to Irish-Americans, he would have been beaten black and blue on the spot. I realized my disguise was going to be much more difficult to maintain than I had thought it would be. No wonder Red Mike, no slouch at judging human nature, had urged me to think and act like an American as much as possible.

Friend Quackey was delighted that we were staying at the Royal Hotel. So was he. Would we have dinner with him? We could hardly say no. At the hotel, he laid about him with his lash of a tongue and quickly scattered another swarm of beggars and baggage boys. The cabman asked for a shilling. Quackey advised us to give him twopence and tell him he was lucky to get it. While John Bull was snorting at the beggars I took a shilling from my purse and slipped it into the fellow's hand. He was wasted to a skeleton. “God bless you, ma'am,” he murmured.

We endured Quackey for dinner. Here was a good chance to test our performances as aged but still sturdy Americans from Pittsburgh. Quackey was so interested in dispensing his own opinions, he gave us little time to talk. He discoursed on the hopelessness of civilizing the Irish. They were incurably lazy, dishonest, dirty. He could not understand how God, whom he sometimes called “the Great Engineer,” could have permitted such awful people to inhabit such a beautiful country. “Ireland would be the jewel of the empire, if we could just get rid of the Irish,” he said. “But they breed like rabbits, if you'll excuse me, Mrs. Stowecroft. Like rabbits.”

Quackey was a railroad engineer. He had been to America making a survey of the nation's railroads, with a view to advising some British capitalists who were thinking of investing huge sums there. He thought the prospects were good. America was ready for a great burst of railroad building, now that they had settled the Civil War. “But I intend to advise my clients not to invest a red cent,” he said, “until the American government does something about the Fenians in America. The beggars are forming regiments and talking of invading Canada. The Americans had damn well better smash them, as we did here, if they want to see any British capital in their railroads.”

“Oh, it's all talk,” I said. “You know how the Irish are. I have an Irish servant girl at home in Pittsburgh. You should hear the moonshine she serves up about the Irish conquering England someday.”

“Damndest people I've ever seen,” Dan (as Mr. Stowecroft) said.

“Lower on the evolutionary scale, that's the only answer,” Quackey said. “Study the faces as you go. You'll see amazing numbers that belong in a zoo.”

“Yes,” I said, thinking how pleasant it would be to shoot him between the eyes.

The next day we began our stint as tourists. We had at least a week to wait, while Red Mike Hanrahan journeyed to Dublin and bought a closed touring coach and returned with it to Limerick. We jogged about Cork on our first day, taking in the sights of the town. It was an unnerving experience. Everything looked so shabby, so dismal, to my eyes. I could not believe it was the same city I had visited more than once with my mother and father, admiring it as if it were imperial Rome in its glory. Compared to New York and other American cities, the shops were drab and empty of attractive goods. In several places, the merchants did not have change on hand for a one-pound note. Patrick Street, the chief thoroughfare, had less bustle than the main street of battered Vicksburg. The greatest shock was the market on the outskirts of the poor section of the town. I winced at the ragged women and boys gazing hungrily at dirty apple pie stalls; at fish frying and fish raw and stinking; at clothes booths, where you might buy a wardrobe for scarecrows; at battered old furniture that had been sold against starvation. In the streets roundabout, in the thin March sunshine, squatted women with bare breasts nursing babies. Idle men, as dirty and desperate looking as any in New York's Sixth Ward, lounged in the mouldy doorways or stared from the black, gaping windows.