Men of No Property (54 page)

Vinnie smiled. “And I do think you’re right.”

“You will have Priscilla home at five, Vincent, and you may stay for dinner.”

Always their first moments alone were raw with shyness, fraught with the agony of beginning again, and for Vinnie at least, of parting forever with something dear out of their last meeting so cherished and dwelt upon between times as to make its loss seem, however fleetingly, irreplaceable.

This sense of loss hung the more heavily upon him that day. It had been a bitter morning. When Mr. Finn died the Emporium had been put under the management of Barrons, the chief clerk, with the understanding that he should have a partnership when Vinnie took over. The times had been good; as Mr. Taylor said: dangerously good, but the Emporium had deteriorated. Vinnie had been shocked at the time of Mr. Taylor’s pronouncement that if in this country a man is still a clerk at the end of ten years it’s because he wants to be a clerk. But that was the very thing driven home to him this morning. Barrons, who had taken up responsibility as though it were his due laid it down with abuse and recrimination: it had not been fair to expect him, a mere clerk, to take on a master’s responsibility. It deprived him now of a livelihood, him and another clerk, a locksmith, a journeyman and a sweep. His sudden concern for the others Vinnie found ironic. When Barrons first came to power and foresaw himself a partner, he suggested the economy of dismissing the other clerk, who had also been a lifetime employee of Mr. Finn’s. Still, he was right: there was a large measure of unfairness in it.

“How cruel life is!” Vinnie exclaimed.

Priscilla never had enough of driving, of watching the passing scenes. “Yes,” she said, apparently commenting on an observation of her own, “you can see it in people’s faces.”

“After we’ve seen the exhibit,” Vinnie said, “we shall drive for a couple of hours.”

“Can you afford it?”

“No.”

Priscilla laughed. “That will be lovely.”

There were more than five hundred paintings exhibited at the Academy that year, representing the work of American artists at home and abroad, and more sculpture than ever before.

“A sure sign of prosperity,” Jabez Reed said. “When artists can afford to paint, mechanics can take mistresses.”

His tongue was as ribald as ever, his temper as acid, Vinnie thought, but he had prepared Priscilla for it and if she did not laugh, neither did she feign shock, as did some of the ladies within hearing. Indeed she among all of them, he thought, was interested in paintings.

“Look at those hands!” she cried in a sudden enthusiasm. The portrait was of an old fisherwoman, her gnarled fingers laced together crookedly in her lap. “I do admire that.”

“Chambreau,” Reed said. “Works nights in the New York Infirmary. I shouldn’t be surprised if he collects old hands.”

“I should have guessed he knew anatomy better than most,” Priscilla said. “I wish I did.”

Reed attended her then for the first time, Vinnie thought. He had acknowledged the introduction and then accompanied them through the gallery that he might have an audience. Next to painting, Vinnie suspected, he liked best to talk. Although it was a warm May day and the rooms were crowded, he wore still the scarf about his neck. But then, he might be missing a shirt. Suddenly the artist put his finger beneath Priscilla’s chin and lifted it. “Will you sit for me?”

“Certainly not,” said Vinnie.

“Why not?” said Reed, his eyes blinking in a mischievous pleasure.

“Because you do abominable portraiture.”

Reed jangled the skylight with his laughter. “Ah, my friend, the truth cannot always so oblige your humor. How’s the senator’s daughter and her poor lame husband?”

Vinnie and Priscilla exchanged glances. “I assume you mean Delia and Stephen Farrell?” said Vinnie.

“You may not see the limp,” Reed said, “but that boy’s hobbled for life. Now.” He rubbed his hands together. “I have nothing to sell. As you observed, my paintings have already been purchased. I have disposed of the fortune they brought me, and have now fulfilled my obligation to the trustees—an appearance without riot this afternoon. Where shall we go?”

Vinnie cast Priscilla a hopeless glance.

“Perhaps Mr. Reed will have tea with us,” she suggested, and Vinnie hoped she did not feel as amiable about it as she sounded.

“Coffee,” Reed said. “Pfaff’s then…if you’re as interested in artists as you are in art.”

“If they are civil,” Priscilla said.

“Civil but not servile,” Reed said, taking her arm to steer her out. “This is our day. We own New York, having bought it with guts and blood, and we sell it as cheap as Stuyvesant paid the Indians. We sell it and have it still, for next year at this time we’ll put it on the block again. There’s a riddle for you: what can you sell and not be shy of, what can you buy and not own?”

“A soul,” Priscilla said.

And that silenced Reed for the moment, Vinnie observed with delight.

The smell of coffee and the sound of high good fellowship came up the cellar steps to meet them. Whatever else they owned or lacked, Pfaff’s was the artists’ domain. Vinnie was reminded of Peg’s Bohemia by the sea, and he wished that he had not brought Priscilla here, not yet. There was so much that he must tell her first. But her eyes were dancing and she nodded ever so slightly when Reed hailed his friends and they returned a hearty greeting. Neither snob nor boldling was she, and his own heart sang at the inviolate dignity she carried by her nature.

They sat apart and ordered coffee. Reed cursed Buchanan for the worst president the country ever had: a Southern lackey, more their slave than any black man in their bondage. While his governor made peace in Kansas his cabinet made war upon the governor. For his part Vinnie swore he had last autumn made his first and last political sortie. “So swear we all the morning after battle,” Reed said, “and by nightfall count the price of peace too dear.” “Then it will take a greater man than Fremont next time to blow the horn on me,” said Vinnie. “Desperate times make desperate men reluctant heroes. What is greatness?” “I don’t know,” Vinnie said, “unless it is the lonely warrior.” “Who must inevitably be beaten. Would you say then the only great men champion lost causes?” “No. Nor would I say a cause is great because it’s lost or won. I would say that a great man is proud and steadfast even in defeat. And equally great I’d call the man who’s humble and yielding in victory.” “Say compassionate instead of yielding,” said Reed, “and I’ll sugar your coffee.” “Compassionate,” said Vinnie, “but no sugar.”

On they talked, Priscilla half-attending while she filled her mind with faces, the tense yet often mobile faces, some beautiful, some grotesque. Vinnie had glimpsed them as he entered and purposely seated Priscilla where she might watch…the man with the whitening beard, the woman with red hair, the lean Winters, the handsome O’Brien, those he had recognized. He was aware suddenly of Priscilla’s eyes following someone who was approaching them, of her inclination to speak and then holding back. He was about to turn around when the woman behind him spoke, the voice husky and yet so familiar, once so dearly familiar.

“Hello, Vinnie.”

He rose and turned and spoke her name at once. “Peg! Dear Peg!”

How changed that face. So many lines. The dark hair was threaded with gray. How hollow her cheek when he brushed it with his lips, and alas! the grog-tainted breath. Ah, but the eyes, warm and merry still.

“Mrs. Stuart, may I present Miss Priscilla Taylor?”

“I thought I was about to meet Miss Priscilla Taylor,” Peg said.

“However did you know?” Priscilla said, having arisen and making now a little curtsy.

“It may seem less than flattery to you,” Peg said, “but once Vinnie told me you reminded him of me.” Vinnie noticed that some of the brogue had returned to her speech.

“More than flattery, Mrs. Stuart. I’m honored,” Priscilla said.

Bless her, bless her, Vinnie thought, giving his chair to Peg, for the resemblance now was remote, and he noticed as Peg leaned forward to sit down, the scars beneath the veil at her throat and breast. Reed sat where he was, his chair tilted back, an amused expression on his face—a face it seemed then to Vinnie which was changing with the years from childlike to a weird agelessness, like something preserved at Barnum’s. Damn his lack of manners. When the world was Peg’s he had been welcome to it. “I assume you remember Mrs. Stuart,” Vinnie said to him coldly.

Reed righted himself and his chair. “Better than you know, my young friend.” He rose and thrust back his heavy head, and put a shilling on the table. He addressed himself to Priscilla. “Have you ever heard of El Greco?”

“Oh yes. I’ve seen his paintings at the Louvre.”

“When God was done with creation He handed over the molds to The Greek.” So saying, he rolled off to where his friends made room for him at their table beneath the cellar steps.

“Did you know he’s a mulatto, Vinnie?” Peg said.

“Yes.” Vinnie made an unpleasant surmise then, of which he was half ashamed, but it persisted. Jabez Reed was purposely rude to those who had hurt him. Peg wore a wry smile. She shivered and Vinnie asked if he might bring her coffee.

“Tell him who it’s for,” Peg said, and then to Priscilla: “How much like spring you look!”

With but a nod to Vinnie’s order, Pfaff poured a dram of whiskey into the cup and filled it then with coffee. Priscilla would surely smell the fumes. One more thing for which he had not prepared her. And it was already past three. His quick joy at having met Peg was running out.

“And did you see Rachel?” Peg asked Priscilla, smiling her thanks to Vinnie for the coffee which she sipped eagerly.

“Oh, no,” Priscilla said. “The nuns would never have allowed it. But she was in this country while I was abroad anyway.”

“The nuns,” Peg mused. “I should have consulted you before my last…before one of my last plays. An escaped nun I was in it. Well. They say I was fortunate to escape at all. I wonder. When I was your age, Priscilla—or maybe it was closer to Vinnie’s, I used to dream about Rachel. Not that I’d ever seen her, you understand. But she was a child from the streets of Paris and rose like the morning star above them. Ah, what is a star that one should envy it so? ’Tis but a little fire that must go out. I’m talking a great deal, amn’t I, Vinnie?”

“Do, please,” Priscilla said.

“I once made the acquaintance of your brother,” Peg said, and drained the cup. Whatever her signal, Vinnie did not see it, but shortly Pfaff brought her another to which she murmured, “God love you.”

“That was the summer we were at Rockaway,” Priscilla said.

“And where will you go this summer?” said Peg.

“I expect to Newport again.”

Peg thought about that. “And do you know Stephen Farrell?”

Oh, God almighty, Vinnie thought.

“Yes. I’m tremendously fond of him and Delia.”

“Him and Delia,” Peg repeated. “They came to see me, Vinnie, when I played the runaway nun. He was never kinder. But you know all that. Or don’t you ever speak of me?”

“Vinnie speaks of you very often, Mrs. Stuart,” Priscilla said. “As often almost as of Mr. Finn.”

“I was never in better company surely. What have you done with the old place, Vinnie?”

“It will be torn down soon. There are all new buildings in the block. Manufactory and no one lives there any more.”

“Ah, yes,” Peg said, “’Tis much better that it be torn down when no one lives there. Happy times…and sad. There’s none of them I’ll forget, though some I would, God knows. I remember the first time I came to tea. You wanted to show me a picture—and your eyes popping out like eggs from a cup…‘a man all in his bones, Peg!’” She mimicked his speech of the time. Then to Priscilla: “Mr. Finn would not allow him to show it to me. Very proper was Mr. Finn…as proper as your Mr. Dunne today.” Priscilla looked at Vinnie with shy affection and Peg must have seen it. “You must have so little time together,” she said then, “and me cluttering it up. Well, I’ll be off in a minute.”

“Are you playing, Mrs. Stuart?” Priscilla asked.

“Yes, I’m playing.” She pulled herself up erect and almost prim, fingering the scarf about her neck to know that it was high enough. She must know it only by tracing the scars beneath it with her fingertips, Vinnie thought. “I’ve never thanked you, Vinnie, for all your kind inquiries in my trouble.”

“Nor would you allow me to visit you,” he said.

“Vanity,” Peg said. “You must always forgive a lady for seeing you only when she wishes it. Now tell me a bit about yourself, for Norah will want to know.”

“Let me tell you about him, Mrs. Stuart. He won’t tell you half.”

“I’m sure he won’t,” said Peg.

Vinnie laid his hand upon Priscilla’s for a moment. “How are Norah and the children?”

“Norah is well enough and all the children are thriving.”

“How many now?” said Vinnie.

“None after Fernando.”

“And Emma—does she ever inquire who she is?”

“Why should she, knowing who she is to her satisfaction?”

Vinnie looked at his hands. “You may greet Norah for me.”

“Is that all you have to say to her? Vinnie, Dennis is in Albany as much as he’s home now, and she would love to see you.”

He shook his head. “I’ll not go into his house ever. But tell Norah there’s nothing in the world I wouldn’t do for her except that.”

“She made him the first pair of trousers he wore in America,” Peg said to Priscilla.

“And you might say I’ve been scratching since,” said Vinnie.

Peg laughed. “Irish talk. Tell me quick of him and I’ll release you.”

“There’s nothing to tell except that I finished school last year and I’m clerking and reading law now.”

“Well,” said Peg with a sigh, “if there were less to tell it might have taken longer. Be off now, the two of you, and let me see you skip.”

“We have but an hour left,” Vinnie said, rising.

“Then run, run!” cried Peg. And after them: “God bless you both. May your feet never falter and the road never end!”

“What a lovely woman,” Priscilla said in the carriage. “What a beautiful, lovely woman. Do I truly remind you of her?”