Men of No Property (39 page)

“So, Stephen, you’ve gone Southerner in politics since last we met,” she said.

“And are you Abolitionist?”

“I’m indifferent to both,” she said.

“So much the worse if you are—which I doubt. You were never likely to be indifferent in any controversy. I’d hoped your sister might be here. I saw her at the theatre. Quite lovely she looked.”

He had seen her leaving the hotel too, Peg thought. “She’s gone fat,” she said.

“And you’ve gone thin.”

“Which is not to your tastes, obviously.”

Mr. Finn cleared his throat.

Peg smiled. “You are right, Jeremiah. What nonsense to renew an old acquaintanceship this way. Mrs. Farrell seems very charming and I wish you happiness, Stephen. Did you know that I also married a Southerner?”

“So I had heard,” he said.

“We were not…as complimentary to each other as you and Mrs. Farrell, but I learned much of Southern ways from Matt…before he died…” She looked at the fan she was unconsciously twirling at her wrist. “I could not very well have learned them from him afterwards, could I?” She opened the fan and closed it again. “And the answer to that is ‘yes’. Though much is taken, much abides. Did you know, Stephen, you taught me to read poetry and I expect I read more now than you. Or do you read aloud to your wife also? I mean…I used to read to Matt. I read him clear around Cape Horn…and he slept blissfully all the way. Poor boy, I hope he sleeps as well tonight. This was a gift tossed onto the stage. Pretty?” She held up the fan and then flung it away. “I wonder from whom. Let us have some wine. We’ve many toasts to drink.”

“I must have but one,” Stephen said. “We were about to retire when your message came.”

“Thank you, Jeremiah,” she said, for Mr. Finn had gone to bring the wine. “I should have sent word earlier, if I had heard from you earlier.”

He looked at her and for a moment she thought that alone in each other’s hearing only they might touch spirits at least. “I could find no words for it, Margaret,” he said.

“Because you had no heart?” He did not answer. “You must not be sad about it, Stephen, for the love of God, not that. Whenever you’re so tempted, remember that like young Duval in the play tonight, you did once offer me honorable matrimony.”

“I wondered how much of me you saw in him.”

“And you saw me body and soul in Marguerite Gautier.” He cast his eyes down. Peg smiled. “Of course, you did. Ah, Stephen, we are not changed, only more of what we were when last we met. Come, since there is to be one toast, let it be in the happy company of your wife.” She led the way toward Delia, and glancing at her in profile, stopped and looked up at him. “Is she with child?”

Stephen nodded that she was.

Peg lifted her chin ever so slightly, and scarcely paused to draw the breath she felt so desperately in need of. “Will it be a boy or a girl, do you think? But what odds that?”

“None,” he said, “so long as it’s its mother’s child.”

Amen, Peg thought. Well, I’ve learned everything tonight I sought to know. I have made myself what I wanted to become…and Stephen will oblige his fate. Now cracks a noble heart. Good night, sweet prince.

Mr. Finn brought the frosted bottle and popped the cork. In one of those silences which sometimes fall simultaneously on many conversations in a room, the popping cork seemed a small explosion, and everyone turned for a moment. Friends and foes, Peg thought, all friendly now, but one of them wrote of her a long time ago, it seemed, and then again but yesterday: “Why for hast no slung-shot, Juliet?” They all had slings, these gentlemen, and shot enough to fire upon players. Not an actor present save herself, she realized. No wonder she was lonely. She lifted her glass, and with her lifting theirs, were the gentlemen of the press and of the theatre…of it, but not in it. Elegantly clothed and ample bellied, they fed upon it whether their mouths or their vanities. But thus had it been from the days of kings and likely would be beyond republics, and its little players would be at least as well remembered.

“To players everywhere,” she said and drank deeply.

F
ERNANDO WOOD WAS A
gentleman who knew how to conduct himself in all company: he was pious amongst the religious, ribald in sporting circles, debonair in the presence of ladies, and his enemies said, a thief amongst thieves. But no man in politics escaped such charges and Wood had been in and out of politics for many years, having, he said, to repair his private fortunes after every turn in public service. In this he claimed peculiarity, most men turning to public office by way of improving their private fortunes. In his early forties, he was graceful and quick, with an easy smile and eyes as sharp as his memory. Upon Dennis’ presentation, he said: “But I know Lavery. We met last summer at Jones Woods—the Mechanics’ picnic.” And so they had, but Dennis thought himself the only one to remember it. Wood’s house was as well appointed as himself, Dennis thought, and certain of the men caucusing there looked as unnatural as warts. He might well seem wartish himself, he decided then, for it was the first meeting of a political nature he had attended outside Tammany or the back room of a ward pub. They were a peculiar mixture of trades, the men present, one a printer, another a builder, a man he often met on the docks but after much larger salvage there than himself, a wagoner with a fleet of wagons…he knew them all by politics at least: they were Softs from the loftiest to the least of them. The only chairs vacant by the time he arrived looked too delicate for a thoughtful man, so Dennis sat on the floor and folded his legs beneath him and his arms across his chest. “I’ve learned this from my childer’,” he said to the man who settled beside him. “’Tis the only position for smokin’ a peace pipe—so I’m told by my son, John.”

“We should all sit on the floor then,” Fernando Wood said, taking off his coat as he prepared to start the meeting.

It was early July and the city was already foul with heat.

All the men followed Wood’s example and removed their coats. There was something eerie and familiar in the incident to Dennis, but he could not recall the association.

“It’s been suggested,” Wood said, half-sitting on a mahogany table and looking from one face to another, “that I get us started tonight by repeating a few thoughts of my own on government. Contrary to my enemies, I’m for it. I’m for what I may call strong government locally and loose government nationally. I suppose that may offend some of my friends here…” He smiled toward two gentlemen, and in answer to a whispered question, Dennis’ neighbor said: “Customhouse men,” into his ear. “But they will know me even if I don’t reveal myself,” Wood proceeded. “I am beyond states’ rights, for cities’ rights. I believe that the strongest unit of government in the world should be a man’s rule over his own household: if the children are without discipline, the wife without guidance, in no time at all the house becomes no more orderly than a pigpen…”

True, true, thought Dennis, for he had often said Norah was too lax with the children, and the house was a shambles for it.

“And now, gentlemen,” Wood continued softly, “I must refer you to City Hall…” So obvious an association between there and the pigpen brought laughter. Wood detailed the ills of the city, and suggested then the reason: “The usurpation of power by the state legislature that by right belongs in the hands of the people of the city, to be exercised by them through the man they elect mayor.”

Most of the men present agreed. There were few things said by Mr. Wood that night with which they did not agree, and when he was done it was obvious that the real purpose of the meeting was not to settle upon Mr. Wood as their candidate but to determine the best way to elect him. To the veterans of such meetings, Dennis learned presently, the best news of the evening came from the Customhouse men, appointees of the federal government, who confided that President Pierce’s administration favored the election of Fernando Wood as Mayor of New York.

“You will forgive me again, my friends,” Wood said, and with a wink to Dennis who chanced to be standing by, “but I wonder at this date whether that’s an asset or a liability.”

“It’s whichever you make of it,” the customs man said, “which is why it is offered.”

“I see,” said Wood, which was more than Dennis did until Wood added: “I assume the administration is aware of my labors last winter?”

“If they weren’t we wouldn’t be here,” the customs man said.

Dennis surmised them to be talking of Wood’s labors toward the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska bill. The bill had carried that spring and had been signed into law by President Pierce, and a new phrase was in style much as “Manifest Destiny” had been in the previous decade. The phrase was “Popular Sovereignty,” implying the rights of settlers to determine whether or not they would abide slavery in their territory. Wood was a strong slavery man. “I am grateful to the administration—and to you gentlemen,” he said.

The customs man was studying his cigar and Dennis was about to turn away, having been included in the conversation only by a wink, when the man said to Wood: “Do you know John Mitchel or any of the people at
The Citizen
?”

Wood’s eyes and Dennis’ met, and because Wood hesitated in answering the question, Dennis nodded his head. “My good friend Lavery knows them better than I do,” Wood said blandly as though it had often been discussed between them. “You gentlemen should know each other if you don’t.” The customs man and Dennis shook hands.

Whatever it was, he was into it up to the throat, Dennis thought, and without the chance to smell it. But once again he had been prompted by an instinct which told him it was time to act. “I don’t know Mitchel,” he said, “except by reputation, but I came over on the boat with Farrell, their lawyer.” All said as though he’d been thick as butter with Farrell since, when he’d not laid eyes on him save at a public meeting.

“Isn’t he George Robbins’ partner?” the customs man said to Wood. Wood nodded. Then to Dennis: “What’s their reputation you mention?”

Oh God almighty, Dennis thought. If he had turned his back in the first place he would not be floundering now not knowing how his opinions would sit with the man. After all,
The Citizen
had been all out for the Nebraska bill. Where you weren’t sure of the present, he decided, the safest thing was to dig up the past. “We Irish have a way of forgettin’ over here the good or the bad a man did at home so long as the English turned on him. Back in the forties, and during the famine, mind you, these boys tried to stir up a revolution. The people couldn’t vomit much less revolt, but Young Ireland split the country up the middle…”

“You’ve said it all, Lavery,” the customs man said when Dennis paused. “They haven’t changed, and Farrell at least should know better. As I recall it, he got his own tongue clipped by the Archbishop before he was long here.”

“His tongue and his wings,” Dennis said. “He’s been solid since.”

“Then he should not be hard to persuade,” the customs man went on. “The proposition is simple—
The Citizen
is doing more to divide the Irish vote in this city than the
Irish American
has done to bring it together in five years.”

“They’re a testy lot up there,” Dennis said.

“Lavery’s right,” said Wood, “there’s the chance if he goes at them the wrong way, they’ll use our own ammunition against us.”

“I’m assuming he’ll go at them the right way,” the customs man said coldly. “They’re to scold Natives in the public press, not Irishmen. Let them leave that to the pulpit. And let them stay on the right side of the Archbishop, at least until after elections. Or else, and mind this, Fernandy, let them use our ammunition against us…now. Many a newspaper has vanished from the streets in less time than, say, now and October.”

“That would be a great shame,” Wood said. “Really, it’s the only literate Irish paper I’ve ever seen.”

The customs man permitted himself a smile. He would have begrudged it to anyone else, Dennis thought. “The town is overrun with literate newspapers, and not one of them willing to give the people plain facts.”

And there ended the discussion of
The Citizen.
It was not long before the men of the national administration departed, saluting around, and Dennis sought a quiet corner in which to puzzle the chore ahead of him. It was all right to play by ear, he thought, as long as you weren’t tone deaf. If Farrell was the partner of Robbins, and Robbins high up in the party…a national committeeman, why in the name of God send Dennis Lavery on such an errand? Ah, but there it was: Robbins was a Hard and the administration had been getting Softer and Softer. They were taking a long step promising themselves to Fernando Wood. They were working at the top and the bottom, skipping them in between. They must be counting on Fernando Wood to take over the party leadership in New York. Dennis whistled softly. There were things you could get in through a keyhole which you couldn’t bring in the door.

“Well, boys,” Wood said, returning from seeing the customs men to the door, “we’ve got our big boost early, but we can’t use it till late. Needless to say, the gentlemen who just departed were not here at all tonight.”

“What men?” someone said.

They all laughed.

Dennis was to get yet another chore before the night was over: the proposal at the next meeting of the General Committee to appoint an executive committee to decide all ward cases of disputed elections. It made good sense, for many an election was undecided for weeks while the General Committee wrangled and finagled. It promised the efficiency characteristic of Wood. “We’ll need a sound man to head the committee,” Dennis said.

“We will,” said the man who proposed it.

“Because,” said Dennis, “in a doubtful situation we can use the balance.”

“My very thought.”

“Do you have a name in mind?” said Dennis, “for I’ll need to have it quick nominated.”

“Fernandy himself,” the man said. “What better way to conceal till the last minute his intentions?”

Dennis smiled to disguise his surprise at that turn. He was learning, he thought, but not fast enough.