Lawless (50 page)

Halfway across the street, Gideon broke into a run. The policeman kicked his horse harder. Its hoofs raised white sparks from the paving stones. On the street’s west side, the heads of Gompers and Theo Payne were visible above the sidewalk. Payne yelled. Gideon flung himself sideways.

The policeman’s revolver thundered twice. Gideon landed on his shoulder, skidding in a pile of horse droppings. The policeman turned back, his horse looming like some gigantic beast from a nightmare. The horse reared. Slashing forehoofs dropped. Gideon rolled frantically toward the sidewalk. He could feel the air stir as the great weight of horse and rider came down. More sparks shot from the paving.

By firing his pistol the policeman had attracted attention. He saw that, flung the gun away and galloped south across East Seventh before anyone moved to stop him. Gideon gave chase but the man soon swung his horse into an alley and disappeared.

It had all happened with great speed. The shock of it finally struck Gideon. Trembling—and stinking like a stable hand—he walked toward the two men coming up from the stairwell. The young cigarmaker was aghast.

“That was the first policeman I’ve seen with a gun.”

“If he was a policeman,” Gideon responded.

“What?” Payne was momentarily confused. Then, in a whisper, he asked, “Is someone after you?”

Gideon managed a smile he didn’t feel. “Very possibly, Theo. Very possibly.”

“Who, for God’s sake?”

“Never mind that right now. Let’s get out of here and find a doctor for you.”

“Balderdash. I’m perfectly fit. Just a little quivery. It’s nothing a few bracers won’t cure. I’m going back and write an editorial for tomorrow morning.”

“What about?”

“The behavior of the police.”

“But they were only clubbing trade unionists. Maybe a few Communards—”

Payne bent down and picked up a piece of red cotton flannel lying beside Sam Gompers’ left shoe. Perhaps the scrap had been torn from some marcher’s shoulder. A darker patch of red discolored one end.

The editor gazed at the bit of cloth for a moment. Then he tucked it in his waistcoat pocket and looked across a square all but empty of demonstrators. Near the wreckage of the platform, the mounted police troop was forming up again.

“Yes, the victims may have been that,” he said in a voice touched by hoarseness. “But they do seem to bleed like anyone else who is beaten without provocation. They do seem to bleed, don’t they?”

Hoofs rang on stone. Half a dozen policemen spotted the three men and came cantering along a footpath. Gompers called a hasty goodbye and ran the other way as Gideon quickly shepherded Payne around the corner into Seventh Street.

He exchanged his soiled coat for a spare one he kept at the
Union,
then spent an hour at police headquarters. What he’d suspected proved true. From the sketchy description he provided, no one could identify the policeman who had shot at him. A bulbous nose and missing teeth? There were dozens of men on the force who drank too much and whose teeth had rotted out.

The officer to whom Gideon spoke was adamant about one thing. The use of guns had not been authorized for the men sent to clear Tompkins Square. When Gideon asked who had authorized clubs—and why—the officer refused to answer, except to say the socialists were a menace to the maintenance of law and order.

“And are the eight- and nine-year-old children who were beaten also a menace to law and order?”

The other man bit his lip. “I have no comment to make on that, sir.”

“You may not, but I do. What I saw in Tompkins Square wasn’t a labor riot. It was a police riot.”

“I have nothing to say.”

“But you’ll investigate my charges—”

“Most definitely.” The officer’s eye was already roving elsewhere. The headquarters building was in turmoil. Flying squads of mounted men were being dispatched to sweep the lower East Side streets of any demonstrators displaying red sashes—or hostility to the authorities.

“Yes, yes, most definitely,” the officer said. “We will investigate—”

“As soon as hell freezes.” Gideon walked away.

On his way out, he stopped a policeman leaving with one of the flying squads. He asked what law was being broken by the demonstrators the police were going after. All he got for a reply was a hostile scowl. He left the station in low spirits.

The man who’d shot at him would never be found. He suspected the man wasn’t even a member of the police department. It was unnerving to realize the hand of Thomas Courtleigh had almost touched him again—and could reach all the way to New York City, could even plant a man in a policeman’s tunic right in the midst of bona fide officers.

Who had located him for the assassin? He’d probably never learn that either.

He decided he mustn’t say a word to Julia. It would worry her. Nor did he dare tell Margaret. Doing so would only send her into another fit of hysterical anger.

He heard the lamentation long before he reached the pitch-black sixth floor. It was a woman’s voice, wailing.

He stood for perhaps five minutes on the landing of the Bottle Alley tenement. The smells of old cooking and urine and dirt all but choked him. Finally he summoned the courage to knock. The wailing went on.

He knocked again. It was Strelnik’s five-year-old son who answered.

The glow of candles in the flat—the only illumination—put flecks of light in the boy’s damp eyes. But Strelnik’s son made an effort to speak without crying.

“Hello, Mr. Kent.”

“Hello, Anton. I saw your father get hurt in Tompkins Square this afternoon—” He couldn’t go on. There was a heaviness in his belly, a numbness in his fingers. Somehow, he already knew.

But Anton had to confirm it.

“Yes, sir. Papa was hit.” He patted the top of his head. “It made him sleepy. After he came home he lay down and he isn’t getting up.”

Nor would he ever, Gideon thought as he gazed past Anton and saw the body lying on the floor amid candles set in small dishes. A great shadow loomed on one rotting wall. The shadow of a woman swaying back and forth, hands clasped.

Tompkins Square put a new partisan of labor on Charles Dana’s
Sun.
John Swinton, the editorialist who had never gotten to deliver his speech. It added a similar partisan to the staff of the
Union.
Long after Gideon had arranged to have Sime Strelnik decently buried, and had borne all the expenses of the funeral and given the widow ten thousand dollars besides, he wondered whether Theo Payne’s conversion was worth the little Russian’s life. When he remembered Anton’s eyes and Leah’s grief, he thought it was not.

He wrote a long letter to London, describing Strelnik’s death and once again asking Matt to come home for a visit. Once again Matt refused.

T
HE OLD SCOLLAY
Oyster House did not cheerfully welcome unescorted ladies during the evening. But when Mrs. Henry Blackwell brought a member of her own sex there to dine on chowder and scrod, the proprietors knew better than to complain. In repose Mrs. Blackwell might resemble an angel, but certain restaurant owners who had attempted to bar her from their premises had been known to call her an adder—or worse.

Mrs. Blackwell was in her middle fifties, a tiny woman no taller than the friend accompanying her. Mrs. Blackwell’s gray eyes matched her hair. Her dress was a plain black bombazine. She and her companion had come to the Oyster House on an evening in February, about a month after the Tompkins Square riot.

The older woman’s eyes sparkled with a youthful enthusiasm as she said, “In spite of the reverses you’ve apparently suffered, I’ve never seen you looking happier.”

How soothing and melodic that voice was, Julia thought. In a lecture hall it had an almost hypnotic effect. Julia smiled and spooned up some of the delicious chowder. The waiter, a pink-faced young man with thick side whiskers, approached the table.

“Everything all right so far, Mrs. Blackwell?”

The little lady laid her soup spoon aside. “You are new here, are you not, young man?”

“I suppose you’d say that, ma’am. Been in Boston three years, but only in this fine establishment two and a half weeks. I come off the immigrant boat in seventy-one. I learned the hotel an’ restaurant trades in Dublin.”

“I’m afraid you still have many other things to learn.”

He enjoyed the banter. “That so? Pray tell me what.”

“It’s true that I’m married to Henry Blackwell. But I don’t use his name, and that gentleman over there knows it. I imagine he told you to call me Mrs. Blackwell so you’d get in hot water.” A glance at the smirking headwaiter confirmed it. “It’s not your fault, but I go by the name Lucy Stone.”

“And I go by the name Dennis Sheeley,” he said with a grin. “Lucy. Now that’s one of my very fav—” Suddenly it registered. “Oh. You’re
that
one. The one who thinks womenfolk should vote.”

“In one U.S. territory, they already do.”

“Well,” Dennis declared, “it surely won’t happen anywhere else—not until the Holy See turns into a musselman an’ the Boston summer brings forty inches of snow.”

Julia spoke up. “Are you married, Dennis?”

“No, indeed, miss. Would you care to make a proposal?”

“I asked you a serious question.”

“All right, here’s a serious answer. I am not presently married. But I plan to be when I find the right girl. An’ this I guarantee you, ladies. My wife shall know and keep her proper place—which is one step behind me at all times, with an attentive eye upon me so as to detect and accommodate my slightest wish. That’s the role women were born to play, an’ all this hullaballoo about voting only stirs them up for nothing. I can’t speak for present company, but it’s generally true that females don’t have the head to understand a subject such as politics.”

A storm was brewing in Lucy’s gray eyes. “Dennis,” she purred, “I do believe you had better see to the rest of our order before I bash you with that vinegar cruet. If I don’t, Miss Sedgwick will.”

Dennis left, rather irked and clearly wondering what he’d done wrong other than address the infamous lady by her married name.

Lucy sighed. “Sometimes it seems to be such a long, wearying struggle. Americans will rush to embrace any crazy fad from grahamism to phrenology. But when it comes to votes for women—an idea that couldn’t be more sensible or fair—you’d think it had been proposed by Satan himself.”

“We’ll carry the day eventually,” Julia replied. “I’m sure of it.”

Lucy studied her. “You say that with great conviction. I’m glad. Sometimes I fear women will never help elect a president until long after my life’s over. At other times I’m convinced we’re close to a complete victory. Perhaps the truth’s somewhere between. At any rate, Julia, I’m delighted you could arrange to spend a few days at headquarters. It’s a pleasure to see you—especially since you’re obviously so happy.”

A moment later, she added, “It’s a man, isn’t it?”

With a warm feeling in her face, Julia nodded.

“I can tell. Frankly, I’ve been fretting about you lately. I noted your new address in Chicago and decided you must have undergone a financial setback last fall. Was it a serious one?”

“I lost almost everything. Surprisingly, it’s been no great hardship.”

Because of Gideon—whom she intended to see in New York as soon as her four-day visit to Boston was over.

She was constantly astonished at the secure foundation love gave to one’s life. A decade earlier, she couldn’t have coped with the changes she’d gone through since the collapse of Cooke’s. Now, with barely a qualm, she’d exchanged meals prepared by a chef for stew bowls passed up and down a boarding-house table. She’d exchanged the finest dresses for bargain merchandise two or three seasons out of date. She’d exchanged a relatively carefree attitude about money for a watchful stewardship of every penny in her small bank account. The State Street mansion had brought her asking price, and at Gideon’s suggestion she’d let the Rothman Bank here in Boston invest the principal. It appeared that the interest from those investments might cover what little she and Carter spent.

Carter. She hoped he was doing well at the public school in Chicago. Would he obey the landlady, who was caring for him? He’d promised he would, but he was becoming an exuberant, independent young man. Julia not only loved her son—she admired him.

“That certainly reassures me,” Lucy declared as they finished their chowder. “Since the panic, the Association has been forced to operate on a much tighter budget. One of our best girls in the office, Flo Pernell, quit and moved to Colorado when her husband lost his job. We didn’t have the money to hire a replacement. Fortunately, we’ve been able to preserve the travel fund to pay expenses for our lecturers.”

Dennis approached to clear away the silver tureens. While he did so, he studied Lucy Stone obliquely as if she were some demon risen from the pit. He shook his head all the way to the kitchen.

Julia decided to raise the subject that had been troubling her conscience for weeks. “Lucy, I’ve been thinking it might be better if I resigned from the lecture staff.”

To her surprise, Lucy didn’t act shocked. Her gray eyes met Julia’s calmly. “A moment ago, you said the change in your style of life was no great hardship.”

“That’s right. It isn’t money that’s prompting me.”

“Then what is it? You’ve never struck me as a quitter, Julia.”

“Lately almost every one of my lectures has been disrupted. In Cleveland—my last engagement before I came here—three roughnecks threw some kind of chemical bomb that spread a dreadful odor in the hall, and created so much smoke, the audience went into a panic. A woman broke her leg running for the exit.”

Lucy startled her again by nodding. “I’ve read about some of your difficulties in the newspapers to which the Association subscribes. I hadn’t realized we were confronting a new wave of hostility in your part of the country. I thought middle western people were generally open to new ideas—”

“It isn’t the fault of the message, Lucy. It’s me.”

“I don’t understand.”