Men of No Property (20 page)

“Thank you, Mist’ Farrell. Miss Margaret, she did all the fussin’. I just did the fixin’.”

Peg smiled as though it were the compliment the colored woman intended to pay her.

“Peg could do the fixing, too,” Vinnie blurted out as soon as Nancy left.

“Indeed,” said Mr. Finn hastily, “I think you had better do some fixing now yourself, Vincent. Prepare your books and lay out your clothes. Tomorrow begins a week.”

Begins a week, Peg thought, begins a fortnight which will end…what is not already ended. “I must take my leave soon myself,” she said. “At whatever hour the best society retire, they rise early to have the first choice of pastries.”

“Mayn’t I take you home?” Stephen asked.

“If you’re passing that way still,” Peg said, and the color flamed up in her face. Old words did not suit the new occasion. But so had they taken their departure of Mr. Finn on the happy nights of the summer past, intending to part each other’s company directly and upon the steps of Mrs. Riordon’s boarding house, and abandoning such intentions in their first moment alone in the shadowed entrance below. It trapped them always into each other’s arms. She never came that way but that the recollection staggered her. How could they pass through tonight untouched, untouching? Better she had refused his courtesy and kept a memory.

Mr. Finn glanced from one to another of them. “Don’t hurry from here tonight,” he said, rising. “But you must excuse me for a time. I have preparations of my own to make for the morrow. You are welcome…oh my, you know how welcome you both are!” He shook hands with Stephen and scurried off to his study with better intentions than grace.

Both he and Vinnie knew too much of her, Peg thought, and Stephen through them, if he had not known. She laughed aloud on Mr. Finn’s retreat.

“Don’t laugh at his embarrassment,” Stephen said.

“I’m laughing at myself. Oh, isn’t it fortunate that I never wanted to play the coy one, Stephen?”

“I’ve missed you,” he said. “I’ve found no company as happy as yours.”

“I’m giddy with the happiness,” said Peg. “So you missed me?” He nodded. “So much that you’re returning to Washington.”

“I must do that.”

“Of course you must. And it’s not because of me at all. ’Tis flattery I’m paying myself in thinking it.” She waited but he said nothing. “If it’s on my account, then make no account of me, Stephen. I shall soon be going off out of here myself.”

“To where?”

“I don’t know yet,” she said, having but flirted with the notion until this moment’s need of it. “I shall no doubt travel with a theatrical company. I’m to have a chance in New York soon. It’s all arranged, you know.”

“Margaret!” he cried, coming to her as though it were the greatest news in the world.

“It won’t be much of a part,” she went on airily, “but then I’m not much of an actress yet and I shall need the training of…many parts.” She stopped, sick of the pretense before it was well begun. “Oh, Stephen, sit down. Do. Be glad for me, but not that glad. I don’t think I meant to tell you of it at all. I don’t want anything of you—I never have—that you can’t give. I told you that long ago. Was it me made you run away?”

“In part, I suppose.”

“’Twas very ungenerous of you. It’s a selfish man who won’t take something he can’t give back in full measure.”

“It would be selfish of me otherwise,” he said, “and so very unfair to you, Margaret.”

“For the love of God, don’t be sorry for me.”

“If I were sorry for you, Margaret, I should ask you to marry me.

She got up then herself and walked the length of the room and back. It was the first time the word had ever been spoken between them. The very thought of it was too painful. “What a world of mischief you got into, off by yourself and thinking…Tell me about your lawyers and politicians. You’ve made a connection, haven’t you?”

Stephen nodded. “A hard, hard Democrat who would trust me with his reputation, but as yet not his briefs.”

“Does he have a daughter he would trust you with?” said Peg, trying heavily for lightness.

“Alas! and married.” He smiled and held his hand up to her. When she gave hers he pulled her down beside him on the sofa. There he seemed content to sit, hand in hand, to talk of the differences in the law here and at home, of music which he loved as no woman, of old friends re-met in Washington whom she had never known, nor likely would, of railway cars and a mouse he swore to seeing leap from a lady’s bonnet. His white cuffs shone above the long sensitive hands which showed no sensing of the terrible strain composing hers. She drew away from him and pulled her stole about her shoulders.

“I’ve missed you too much for this, Stephen,” she said quietly, getting up. “I’m going home now. A cab will come from the corner at the sound of the bell and Mr. Finn will come out and talk with you when I am gone, and laugh at your lady’s bonnet with its nesting mice…as I cannot do.”

He leaped to his feet and pulled her back to him as she was turning away, saying her name over and over. Her own strength ebbed as she knew the quickening of his and her body seemed to run molten against him, her mouth waiting and receiving his, taking succor from it, breathing his breath, tasting his taste. She pushed herself gently from him and examined his face. He grimaced in the effort to smile, to make a mask for his desire.

Without a word she got her cloak and muff and his gloves and they went down together, saying only a brief adieu to Nancy at the scullery door.

“I cannot play a game of ticktack-toe with love, Stephen,” she whispered when he drew her close to him in the cab. She put her hand beneath his coat and found his heartbeat. “When my heart runs off as yours is now, I can’t stay behind and chatter for all that it is the fashion of proper folk. I am not a proper folk.”

“I was trained in nonsense,” he said, trapping her hand against his heart.

“The horse’s hoofs beat almost as fast,” she said.

“And yet not fast enough,” he said. “If I were holding the reins I should lash the beast.”

“You could not,” she said. “I know that of you, Stephen. Were you to bear his burden instead, you could not lay the whip on him.”

“Do you honor me in that—or pity me, I wonder.”

“I pity the horse—when he shall have a new master,” she said, thinking not of the horse at all, but of herself, perhaps at the end of a fortnight.

Stephen pulled her close and kissed her hair, her eyes.

The little French clock on the mantel struck ten as Stephen lighted their way into his rooms. “I wound that this morning,” he said, “and it runs as though it had never unwound.”

She did not speak. Nothing seemed changed from when she had last been here, things grown familiar through the summer, and yet not friendly as was most every piece in Mr. Finn’s house. She would no more straighten a scarf askew here on the table, nor tilt a chair to smooth the rug beneath its leg than she would pluck a hair from off a stranger’s shoulder.

“Let me build up the fire,” he said. He flung his coat upon a cushioned chair and only then did she venture to sit down—beside the coat and with her hand upon it. He glanced back at her suddenly from the grate. “My dear, you look like a little girl sitting there. Lost and hoping to be called for.”

She threw back her head. “I’m disapproving the work of your sweep. She has no taste, except in employers.”

He threw off the wide-cuffed work gloves as the fire flared up and opened his arms to her. “What need have we of a fire, truly? I’m aflame with my love of you, Margaret.”

“Then draw me into it quick, Stephen, and turn down the lights. This room is full of ghosts.”

He held her a moment first, his hands strong upon her back. “Puritans all,” he whispered. “What do they know of Irish love? I’ll bring us an eiderdown plucked from the goslings of Wicklow and we’ll vanish ourselves from their prying eyes.”

Afterwards, they lay upon the quilt with another over them and watched the fire until the French clock struck eleven. Again she put her hand to his heart, this time with the clock’s striking. “It’s quieter now. It can even keep time.”

“Pluck it out, Margaret. It knows no other master.”

She sat up and pulled the quilt about her shoulders. “And would you like it to know another? Is that it, Stephen?”

He took her hand and lifted it, palm to his lips. “I would sometimes master it myself, that’s all.”

“And I’m interfering with that, is that what you’re saying, Stephen? Speak it out plain for I’ve a simple mind but I want the truth.” He said nothing. “You came tonight thinking yourself done with me—cured, like I was a disease.”

“I was a fool,” he said at last, “and I knew it all the while I played it out. But at least I played it out…a little way.” He spoke the words as though in desperate pride of the achievement. “I am weak with the love of you, Margaret. I am crumbled with it in your presence.”

“The ways of people are strange,” she said, easing her hand away. “You’re weak with it and I am strong with it. The marvels I’ve been able to do…” Little marvels, she thought, miracles within herself of improvement and courage that some people likely did without so much as a thought much less wonder at their doing it. Nothing to do with love had any of them and yet all done in the singing glory of having known him and been known by him.

“I’m very glad, Margaret,” he said as though following her thoughts.

“Stephen, are you ashamed for us?”

“Yes,” he said. “I am ashamed to take love as I have taken it, and not offer marriage.”

“Suppose I tell you that you are not—the first?”

“I should know that you were lying,” he said, “and be the more ashamed for having prompted such a lie.”

“Stephen, I wish you would ask me to marry you.”

“Dear, dear girl, I do ask it then.” He made a shelter of his body and pulled her into it. “With a heartful of promise, I do ask it, Margaret. I am afraid—you must know this and help me overcome it. How I don’t know but it must be done.”

“Afraid of what?”

“I don’t know exactly. Of you, I suppose. Of myself for loving you, wanting you at all costs. When I have the right to call you mine, I shall be more than a jealous lover, Margaret, and I know it of myself. I shall weigh my strength in the balance of your affections and if you fail me I shall fail you and myself and all the heritage by which I’ve claimed the right to help turn a people’s destiny.”

She laughed a little and moved a bit apart from him. “Ghosts should come out of the past, Stephen, not out of the future.” She sighed. “What’s a puritan?”

He thought about it a moment as though he knew he was going to have to put into words something she already had the gist of in her own mind. “I suppose it’s someone whose world is never strict enough to suit him.”

She nodded satisfaction with his words. “Help me gather my things. The hour is late.”

“You haven’t answered my offer,” he said. “I’ve hurt you with my confession, and it was to shrive myself I told it, that you might understand and help me.”

“Will you light the lamp?” She watched him. His fingers trembled as he brought the taper and held it to the wick. “You confessed yourself and you confessed me,” she said slowly. “I cannot answer an offer that was not really made. I had planned the answer of ‘no’ however you caged it, but I didn’t know how willing I could give it.”

“Please, Margaret.”

“Please, what? Not say the truth as I see it? For all the fancy-way you put it, Stephen, it comes to this: I gave myself to you without marriage, so how could you ever be sure I’d be faithful to you in it.”

“No, no, no. I swear before God that was not my meaning.”

“I suppose it wasn’t. You’ve judged yourself in it, and I’m depriving you of your guilt.” She managed a smile. “I wonder can puritans live in the world they make themselves.”

“Not for long,” he said harshly. “They grow suspicious and destroy one another.”

“Just as you prophesied for us,” she said.

“My true meaning,” he said, “and I do believe it. Not because you loved me without marriage, but because you could love me without it, and I could abandon all else for love of you. Such ecstasy cannot endure, Margaret…”

She quieted him with her hand upon his arm. “You are telling me what I knew in the beginning, and I was happier not hearing the words for it. I knew from the first if I waited for you to come courting, to come searching for the maiden virtues a man looks for in a good wife, I knew I never should have you at all. I made my choice the night of the riot and suited my conscience to it. I’ve tried to tell you that in as many ways as I can. You could not force the disaster of marriage upon me now if you wanted to, Stephen. It would kill our love as surely as a lamb must die in a lion’s mouth. If you can suit your conscience to that and have no shame for it, as I have none—I will come to you again if you need me and want me, until some other fate puts a stop to it.”

“And if I cannot without conscience, Margaret?”

“I never again want to lie down with it like a sword between us. It cuts me to the quick. I am more than flesh and bones, Stephen. I’ve feelings you can’t put your finger to, or even your lips, and I’ve a pride as deep as yours for all your heritage.”

“I begin to see,” he said, “what I did not see before.”

“I wish,” said Peg, “I had not seen it.”

He put his arm about her and drew her gently against him. “I’ll not further hurt you by asking forgiveness,” he said, his lips to her forehead. After a moment he lifted her chin with his finger. “You have seen me weep, Margaret. Have you no tears?”

“Only in anger. Hurt dries them up.” “And love?”

“Love will prime them for its leaving,” she said. “Dearest, dearest, dearest.” He cradled her in his arms and rocked her to and fro before the fire.

T
HE FIRST STOP DENNIS
made with Mr. Finn’s forecast of trouble was at the engine house of Number Eight. He ran with the engines still, and whatever danger he chanced in the running weighed light against the power of friends it made him. John Gilley, a printer by trade and with a small hand press of his own which saw heavy service during elections, went with him to see Alderman Hodge. Hodge, on the standing committee of markets, was a man of influence, and in Gilley’s presence at least, of sympathy with Dennis. Such was his sympathy, in fact, he permitted Dennis to stand him a drink at the Crystal Bar where they were sure to meet other men of influence. Dennis quailed and quipped in their presence, as he afterwards told Norah, hoping the quips would cover the quails, and for the first time in his life wrote his name on a piece of paper in lieu of having enough money on his person. I’ll remember the day, he thought, when I first tried my credit at the Crystal Bar and found it solvent. By Monday night he could report to Mr. Finn that one way or another, he had reached seventeen out of eighteen aldermen, and he thought it as well to skip Mulrooney!