A Passionate Girl (35 page)

I was touched and a little guilty. It was sad to see how vulnerable this man was to genuine feeling. He was not vicious. He was merely a stranger to true affection. The inner life of President Johnson's family must have been a very strange affair. Robert talked about the trouble he had been causing his father, the worry and grief. Sober now, he regretted it. A kind of madness had come over him when he found he was only one among many presidential advisers. Now he thought he was ready to accept that condition. He would not forget who was responsible for bringing him back to sanity.

We discussed the Fenians, and he reiterated his support of them. He declared that he now saw them as the one hope of his father's embattled administration. The president was losing the struggle with Congress, step by inexorable step. Only some dramatic change of front, a counterassault from a new quarter, could break the momentum of events.

We paused beside the rushing waters of Rock Creek, with a field of deep blue hyacinths nearby. “I hope you'll stay in Washington and let me court you like you deserve,” he said. “Give me a month. I think you'll see a Robert Johnson you might consider for a husband.”

“Let me say only this,” I replied. “I'll never marry until my country's freedom is won. That accomplished, I would be ready to love you forever.”

Of the many lies I told in politics' name, this was the worst. But I thought I was close to a tremendous political victory. I could envision the gratitude of a president who saw his drunkard son miraculously reformed. I could imagine the energy with which this son's love could beseech his father's aid for a downtrodden people. For a week I saw Robert Johnson every day. He remained sober. The news of his reformation spread throughout Washington. Mike Hanrahan and Johnny Coyle reported the amazement of the White House watchers, the sense that something important was happening.

On the tenth day—which happened to be the last day of April—came a reaction from one of the most important of these White House watchers. A note was delivered to my room.
Mr. Seward hopes that the Fenian girl will give him the honor of escorting her to supper tonight. If agreeable, his carriage will await her at the hotel at 8:00
P.M.

I signified my acceptance to the black coachman. It was May Eve. Exactly a year ago I had mounted history's whirlwind and begun my ride. I was imbued with a sense of destiny. My pride was in the ascendance as I stepped into Mr. Seward's carriage and began my journey through Washington's dark streets.

After thirty minutes of circuitous driving, designed to confuse me, we arrived at the house I expected—the one to which the secretary of state had brought me and Robert Johnson last summer. William Seward was waiting alone among the red gauze draperies. He rose to greet me with a bow and a quizzical smile. He had recovered completely from his injuries and wounds. There were only faint traces of the gashes left by the assassin's knife on his face and neck. The wires were gone from his jaw. His helpless arm had been restored, as he demonstrated when he drew out a chair for me. Without such distractions, I was able to better study his smooth-shaven face. In spite of his smile, I did not like it. There was a calculating quality to the small, thin-lipped mouth. The high-crowned beaked nose gave him a bird-of-prey look.

“A beautiful dress, my dear,” he said as he poured me a glass of champagne. “The Fenians are obviously prosperous.”

I was wearing a faille silk gown with white taffeta drapery and pearl embroidery, the latest Paris fashion, bought just before I left New York.

I laughed and said he looked ten years younger without his wounds. We dined lightly on cold chicken and ham. He talked carelessly about the pleasure of seeing me again. It had to be done this way, in private, because the British ambassador had begun to take the Fenians seriously.

“But you don't?” I said.

He paused to sip his champagne. “We Americans know you Irish far better than the British, I think. We enjoy your love of words, your fondness for vast imaginary deeds. Your enthusiasm.”

I struggled to keep my temper in the face of such condescension. “Mr. Secretary,” I said. “Two months ago I went to Ireland on a forged passport from your State Department. I stood before a man at about the same distance I am now from you and shot him dead. Do you think that is serious?”

He sighed and shook his head. “Fanaticism. It does not go with—it should be forbidden—beauty. Beautiful women.”

He took me by the hand and led me through the red gauze curtains to the couch on the other side of the room. He sat me down on it and said, “Lean back, to the left. Drape your arm so.” He showed me. Then he slowly sat down in an easy chair and gazed at me with shining eyes.

“It is uncanny,” he said. “It's like returning through the mists of time. When you sit that way, you're Rose O'Neal. I told you about her. The woman I loved until fanaticism turned her mouth sour and drew the crow's-feet of hatred around her eyes.”

He went back and got us more champagne. “It's for her sake—your sake—I'm here, as much as affairs of state. I dread what will eventually happen to you. The thought of a rope around your lovely neck—or a bullet between those young breasts. It's too horrible.”

“I know the risks I'm taking,” I said, struggling to remain calm in spite of those awful images, trying at the same time to divine his purpose.

“You've made a notable conquest in the last two weeks. The president is tremendously relieved and grateful. For some time I've been advising him to get Robert out of Washington. I had arranged with the secretary of the navy to send him on a cruise aboard a warship, but now his miraculous reformation makes us think he might be better off in California. Providing that you went with him, as his wife. A private friend of the president is ready to contribute fifty thousand dollars to purchase a cattle ranch near Sonoma.”

“Who is the private friend? Sir Frederick Bruce?”

“How clever you are, my dear,” he said, with a fleeting smile. “In fact he's an American, a railroad magnate.”

“Who hopes to borrow fifty or a hundred million from the British.”

“My dear, we politicians are only sailors who must trim our sails to shifting winds and waves. Winds that blow millions are difficult to resist. Why should we resist them? America needs the money. It will create thousands of jobs for Irish laborers. Let me advise you, from pure affection, from nostalgia for the love of the woman I tried in vain to save. Be a little stubborn, and another fifty thousand will be placed in a private account in a New York bank in your name. So if life in California with Robert becomes unpleasant, you have a refuge.”

“I will not be bribed—”

“My dear, we go through life bribing and being bribed. Sometimes the medium of exchange is money, sometimes it's power, sometimes it's love. Think for a moment, think seriously. Who are you now? A somewhat notorious Irish adventuress. I'm putting it in the light in which respectable folks see you. In one stroke you're the wife of the son of a president of the United States. Let us hope for the best and assume that Robert conquers his weakness, with your help. There's nothing to which he could not aspire, in California, in the nation. With you at his side.”

I thought of my sister Annie, drinking gin in her dingy room in Greenwich Village. Of my sister Mary, selling milk and whiskey to tourists in Killarney. It was true. I was nothing. William Seward was offering me—telling me—that I had in my grasp all that a woman supposedly wanted in life. But to take it was to betray those homely servant girls who spent a year's savings on Irish bonds, to turn my back on those defeated, starving beggars who tottered beside the carriage on the road to Limerick; it was to abandon the men on the quay at Cork to endless years of sneers from the likes of Quackey; above all, it was to deny I ever loved or hoped to love a man named Dan McCaffrey, to let him and John O'Neil and the others march blindly to their deaths in Canada.

“I'm sorry,” I said. “I can't do it.”

The secretary of state shook his head. “Is there something in the Irish blood that loves defeat? I sat in this chair ten years ago and told your double why the South couldn't win the war. Her answer was ‘You make me love them all the more.'”

“Perhaps our hearts are not for sale.”

He made a mocking sound. “Some of your hearts, perhaps. The true ones. But a lot of others are for sale. You're honeycombed with informers. The British know your plans. They've spent at least a million to make sure you have no friends in Congress. The only friend you have left is in the White House.”

“Perhaps that's the only one we need to have,” I said.

Slowly, without taking his eyes from my face, he shook his head. There was such certainty, such knowledge, in the motion, my breath caught in spite of all I could do to prevent it. “Mr. Secretary,” I said, “if we had a friend in the Department of State—”

“The secretary of state is only a servant of the people. Which means he's the servant of the representatives of the people, assembled in Congress.”

“So we must all take our chances,” I said.

“It will cause everyone needless pain. You, Robert, the president. He's a decent man but utterly out of his depth.”

“I'm touched by your humanity, but I also wonder if you would expend this much time and attention on me if there were not some advantage in it for you. Perhaps a chance to try once more to become president?”

He shook his head again a bit curtly. “Good night, my dear,” he said. “The coach will call for you in half an hour.”

I waited, wondering what he meant by needless pain. I found out soon enough. The coach did not return in a half hour. Or in an hour. I grew more and more apprehensive, but I hesitated to plunge into Washington's unlighted, unknown streets in the middle of the night. At last I heard the clop of horse's hoofs. A key turned in the lock. Robert Johnson stared stonily at me.

“So it's true,” he said. “You're in cahoots with them. Stanton and Seward. A friend told me that yesterday. I laughed at him. Tonight he sent me a note, telling me I'd find you here.”

“No, Robert,” I said, hearing the feebleness of my denial even as I spoke it. “Seward asked me here to try to bribe me away, but I refused. I said my love for you was not for sale.”

“He could have offered you that—and you could have refused him—in the dining room of the National Hotel. Or in his office at the State Department. Why here? There's only one explanation. What you sell can only be delivered here.”

He whirled away and started for the door. Passing the table, he saw a half-empty champagne bottle. He put it to his lips and drained it. He wiped his mouth and looked at me one more time. “Whore,” he said, and strode into the night.

I pleaded for a chance to explain. He mounted his horse and rode away as if I did not exist. I followed him to the end of the block and then wandered aimlessly for the better part of an hour until I found a main street. Another half hour of trudging with my high-heeled shoes in hand finally led me to a cabstand before a second-rate hotel. It was 2:00
A.M
. by the time I reached the National Hotel.

Red Mike Hanrahan was not in his room. I went to John Chamberlain's and dragged him away from the faro table. “Just in time,” he said. “I was about to go a thousand in the hole.”

I told him what had happened. “Wurra, wurra,” he said. “Let's go look for the crown prince.”

As we hurried to the door, the sound of angry voices carried over the usual hubbub. Robert Johnson swayed in the entrance hall, arguing loudly with the burly Irishman in evening clothes who guarded the door. “I'm sorry, Mr. Johnson,” he said. “Mr. Chamberlain left strict orders not to let you in when you're drunk.”

For a reply he got a stream of obscenities and insults. “I ain't drunk. It takes two days to get a man from Tennessee drunk. I only just started.”

“Robert,” I said, stepping forward. “Will you listen to me?”

He squinted at me. “Jesus,” he said. “I didn't know they let Irish whores in here.”

Beside me Red Mike muttered, “Let me hit him. Let me hit him just once.”

I shook my head and hurried him into the night. “There's only one recourse now,” I said. “We must convince Roberts to give up Canada for a year.”

“Not a chance,” Red Mike said.

Three weeks later, obeying orders with a heart that scarcely beat, it was so heavy in my breast, I sent a coded telegram to John O'Neil in Nashville:
YOU ARE HEREWITH ORDERED TO HAVE YOUR REGIMENT IN BUFFALO N.Y. NO LATER THAN 6:00 A.M. JUNE
1. I sent similar telegrams to colonels in Indiana and Ohio, Maryland and Pennsylvania. A final telegram went to the commander of the Fenian regiment raised in Buffalo itself. In spite of my prophecies of doom and pleas of dissuasion, the Fenian Brotherhood was invading Canada.

I had not been ignored. Our president, William Roberts, and his cabinet had listened politely to my report from Washington. In their minds they had disqualified me in advance. I was a woman, hence emotionally unstable in their masculine eyes. Worse, I was the sister of the hated Michael Fitzmaurice, their most savage critic. No matter that Red Mike Hanrahan confirmed everything I said about our lack of support in Congress, the opposition of Stanton and Seward. They suspected Mike, too, because of his connection with me. Some of them may have half-wondered if I had not seduced him. Others hinted that I had become Michael's secret ally and was trying to subvert the men of action.

The decisive vote belonged to William Roberts. If he had suspicions he did not voice them. He seized instead on the undeniable fact that we still had President Johnson's support. “That's all we need,” he said. “That will give us the week we need to reach Toronto.” We could not be stopped, he said, without an order from the president, embodied in a proclamation of neutrality. This the president would not issue until we secured Toronto, the capital of the province of Ontario, which guaranteed us mastery of the rest of British America.

It was Roberts's optimism that carried the day. The cabinet voted unanimously to proceed with our plan. So the telegrams went out, and a few days later Red Mike Hanrahan and I took a ferry to Jersey City, where we boarded an Erie train for Buffalo. We carried with us a proclamation to the people of Canada, which we were to issue when our troops crossed the border. The two of us were to preside over a Fenian press office to procure, as far as possible, kind words in the newspapers.

All day the train rattled and clanked along the Pennsylvania border and then swung west through Oneonta and Binghamton, into the vast distances of upstate New York. Previously, in traveling across Ohio and Indiana to Chicago, I had found American vistas exhilarating. Now the very size of this vast country—three Irelands could be tucked into this single state of New York—intimidated and discouraged me. I continued to fear the worst.

Red Mike had changed his mind. Roberts had convinced him we might succeed in spite of our enemies in Washington. “There aren't five thousand British regulars in all Canada,” he pointed out, “while we've got thirty thousand veteran troops. A good third of the regulars are Irishmen, which would scare the bejesus out of me if I was the British commander.” The British had raised some four thousand Canadian volunteers, but these could be discounted almost entirely. They only had one squadron of cavalry and no engineers or supply or signal units. They were “show soldiers,” fit only for parades.

Mike told me more about our battle plan. Our main army would gather in Buffalo and launch the invasion by seizing the village of Fort Erie, just across the Niagara River. Fort Erie was the terminus of several railroad lines, which would enable us to move swiftly into the heart of Ontario. Meanwhile, detachments would make demonstrations at a half dozen other points along the border in Vermont and in eastern New York, opposite the province of Quebec. They would force the enemy to further divide his small force of British regulars and Canadian volunteers.

By the time we reached Buffalo at midnight, I was half hopeful. I slept away the weariness of the long ride and emerged to bright sunshine and a grand welcome from the Fenians of that thriving city. I was taken to lunch by a half dozen women who were leaders of the local Fenian Sisterhood. I was especially charmed by Ellen Bailey, the pretty red-haired wife of Michael Bailey, the lieutenant colonel of the Buffalo regiment. She and her friends told me that they had raised over a hundred thousand dollars for the cause and showed me a flag they were about to present to their local regiment. It was a beautiful green silk banner, with a gold harp and sunburst in its center, and beneath it the words “7th Regiment, Irish Army of Liberation.” Their fresh faces, their sweet brogues, the high expectation with which they regarded me, were in painful contrast to my fears and doubts. I masked my dark thoughts behind smiles and was soon talking as enthusiastically as William Roberts himself.

As we emerged from the Continental Hotel, I was aghast to see a newsboy waving a paper and shouting, “Hey, read about d'Fenian army in Buffalo.” Beneath a black headline the paper, the
Buffalo Express
, gave an alarmingly accurate account of our plans. “Oh, don't worry about it,” smiled Ellen Bailey. “The paper is owned by an Englishman. He's been writing that kind of tale every other week for months. It's the old story of wolf, wolf. No one will listen to him.”

“Anyway,” said another woman, “we have friends on this paper.” She handed me a copy of the
Commercial Advertiser
, which had a story ridiculing the very idea of the Irish invading Canada. From the hotel we rode to the Pearl Street auction rooms of Patrick O'Day, a leading Fenian. Along the way Ellen Bailey pointed out to me the opulent houses and business offices of Buffalo's numerous wealthy Irish. At the auction rooms, Patrick O'Day, handsome and gray-haired, walked me through rooms filled with unopened chests. He raised the lid of one, and I gazed at a nest of gleaming U.S. Army rifles.

“How many have you got here?” I asked.

“Twenty thousand,” said O'Day with a grin. “We've been advertising a tremendous sale of military stores on the first of June. The federal district attorney was down here pokin' about. But what could he say? He'll find out too late that the sale's goin' to be in Toronto.”

Everyone was so confident, it was agony to remember the slow, certain shake of William Seward's head. Could so much hope, effort, and expense end in failure? Did we not have some credit with the fates, for our seven centuries of suffering?

Patrick O'Day began gleefully rubbing his hands and talking about the fortune he expected to make in Canada. There were bound to be some die-hard Canadians who resisted our conquest. Their property would be confiscated, as the North had done with the rebels in the South. He expected to have and enjoy the business of selling the goods and chattels of these “royalty lovers.” There would be a really tremendous sale! I thought of Michael's maledictions on Irish-American greed and grew anxious again.

I spent the latter part of the afternoon going down to see the chief attraction of the region, Niagara Falls. It was worth the trip, although my mind was hardly relaxed enough to play the carefree tourist. I pondered the great cataract while Mrs. Bailey, with typically American enthusiasm, recited to me the staggering statistics of the number of gallons that went over the precipice hourly, daily, weekly. My anxiety found it a somehow menacing symbol, a fit companion to the image of history as a whirlwind that Fernando Wood had fastened on my mind. Was I, were all of us, likely to be swept away by this American torrent we were trying to leap? Would we end here, shattered flotsam, at the bottom of this cataract?

That night there was a Fenian rally in St. James Hall. The place was packed. At least six thousand men and women cheered wildly when I was introduced and roared their enthusiasm when Patrick O'Day, the chief speaker of the evening, boldly predicted that Canada would be ours in a week's time. Behind him, assistants drew back a curtain displaying a large map of the British provinces. “You may come up here while refreshments are being served,” O'Day said, “and pick out your farms now.”

“Mr. Chairman,” called a voice from the rear. “Mr. Chairman.”

I knew who it was, even before he stood up. My brother, Michael.

“Mr. Chairman,” he said. “I, too, am a member of the Fenian Brotherhood. I have in my pocket telegrams from ten Fenian circles in Canada, begging you to abandon this criminal scheme to invade their country. They testify, with an ardor which anyone must respect, that Canada is their adopted homeland, just as yours is the United States. They fear that you will bring ruin and shame on themselves and their children.”

I had no doubt that Michael had the telegrams. Among his many faults, lying was never claimed against him by anyone.

Cries of rage erupted from all quarters of the hall.

“Throw him out.”

“Shove his head up his ass where it belongs.”

“He's a British spy.”

Bruisers from the Buffalo 7th Regiment came racing down the aisles and climbed over shrieking women to get at Michael, who was already struggling with two or three men near him in the seats. They dragged him out, still shouting, “Irish men and women, listen to me, Ireland's honor is the question here—”

I rushed from the stage and up a side aisle, remembering the black soldier in Vicksburg. Would I step into the night and find my brother sprawled dead beneath the gas lamps? I doubt if Michael would have met such a fate then, but I undoubtedly saved him from a very bad beating. I reached the street just as a fellow twice his size stretched him on the ground with a terrific punch in his face.

“Stop,” I said. “He's my brother. I give you my word, he'll leave Buffalo on the first train out tonight.”

They dragged Michael to his feet and all but threw him at me. “He's yours,” growled the fellow that struck him. “If he's still here in the morning, it's over the falls with him.”

Michael teetered away from me. Blood streamed from his nose over his chin onto his white shirt. “I don't want any help from
you,
” he snarled. “You billingsgate harridan. Underneath your painted face I see the whore houses of New York and Washington.”

“You must accept my help or take something much worse,” I said in a low voice. I hailed a cab and ordered the driver to take us to the railroad station. All the way there, Michael ranted against me and the attack on Canada. He said he had just spent a month there. The Irish were happy and contented. They were more respected and prosperous than in the United States. There were no Sixth Ward slums in Toronto or Montreal.

At the station, I learned there was a train leaving in an hour. I sat with him, letting him talk. He spouted his defiance of the men who had beaten him up. He was not afraid of them. He was half inclined to stay in Buffalo in spite of them.

“Those men are going over the river tomorrow or the next day to risk their lives for Ireland,” I said. “Only a fool would ignore their threats.”

As we blazed at each other, a familiar voice with the accents of Tennessee interrupted us. “What the hell is goin' on here?”

Boldly, with a mind to deliberately insulting Michael, Dan McCaffrey drew me to my feet and kissed me. “What's he doin' here?” he growled, his arm still around me.

Dan looked tired and gaunt. It was clear that he was tense with worry and the expectation of battle. I tried to describe Michael's intrusion in neutral tones. Dan grabbed him by his blood-spattered shirt. “You son of a bitch,” he said. “I've been wantin' to put a bullet between your eyes for a good six months. Don't give me another excuse.”

The stationmaster began calling the New York train. We escorted Michael to it and saw him aboard without further argument. Watching the red lantern on the rear car sway into the night, Dan growled, “You should've let them send him over the falls.”

“Are the regiments coming in?”

“They got off the train at the Union Iron Works, about a mile down the line,” he said. “They're comin' into town in groups of forty or fifty so as not to attract too much attention.”

“How many are with you?”

“About two thousand. There'll be another four thousand tomorrow night, and four more the night after. The railroads can't handle more'n that at a time.”

We got in a hack. I told the driver to take us to my hotel. “No,” Dan said. “I got to spend the night with the men.”

“You look like you could use a little rest and supper,” I said.

I felt a wish, probably more a need, to love him with our old emotion.

He looked without interest at Buffalo's wide, dark streets. “They're good men,” he said. “We got a good little army.”

“Not too little, I hope,” I said.

“Little by General Lee's standards. Thirty thousand men. Probably twenty thousand will show up here. Can't expect more than that. A man has to quit his job, maybe sell his business.” He was silent for a while. “A lot of people are doin' things like that, Bess. We're askin' a lot of people to tear up their lives for this thing. It's got to work.”

“Yes,” I said. “It's got to.”

My hopes, borne on my wounded wishing love for him, temporarily banished my doubts and fears. I decided not to mention these to him.

At the hotel, he bathed while I had a cold supper sent up to the room. He asked for whiskey with it and drank a glass, with no visible effect. As he drew back his chair from the table, I sat down in his lap and kissed him. “As I said once before,” I whispered, “if you want me you can have me.”

He smiled and shook his head. “Too tired, Bess,” he said. “I've been goin' eighteen hours a day. Drillin', recruitin', travelin' all over Tennessee, Kentucky, Indiana, Ohio, Illinois.”

He kissed me briefly on the neck. “We'll make a date. The best room in the biggest hotel in Toronto or Montreal.”

I suddenly wanted him, not with the vague blind romance of the virgin but with the explicit desire of the mature woman. “I didn't know war did such things to men,” I said.

“What the hell does that mean?” he said.