Men of No Property (24 page)

Peg dangled the slung-shot from her wrist as a lady might her parasol, put her chin in the air and made her entrance. Silence fell on the scene as had been directed while Gallus Mag strolled on. As relaxed as a kitten she came, her shoulders swaying a little, her hips a little, defiance in every step. The footlights made a curtain. Beyond them might lie a graveyard, and the only life in the world waited its start with her words when she reached the prone man on the stage. She stood a moment and looked down at him and then raised her eyes to Killer McVey. “I’m feelin’ mighty lovin’ toward that man,” she said, and with a twist of her wrist brought the slung-shot up and felled the Killer with it. They had worked for hours on the timing and the Killer went down as though he’d been caught on the chin with a rock.

There was no other word for the sound from the audience then but a roar. It started in the pit and echoed in the gallery. Wave after wave of cheering and stamping. The boys recognized their Mag and gave her welcome. Nothing she had ever known was like this, Peg thought. Her feet seemed clamped to the floor. The manager was waving from the wings. She could not guess his meaning. The Killer got to his feet then. “You’d better turn ’round to them, Mag,” he said, smiling. “It’s you they’re cheering, not me.” But she caught his hand and as she turned pulled him into the bow with her. Even the actors joined the applause, and the newsboys jumped up and down with glee. The house would not be quiet. Mr. Richards gave up his pantomime from the wings and came on the stage. “We’ll take it again from Mag’s entrance and play through,” he said, then herding the newsboys off the stage.

The play went on and oh, the challenge Peg met to convey the true Mag after so broad an introduction; but meet it she did, and even some men in the audience wept when Mag in the end, and according to the legend after which the scene was fashioned, goes a little mad upon the death of her lover and is carried to the door of the asylum van reciting: “The quality of mercy is not strained…” Gallus Mag, the story had it, was an actress who fell upon hard times in the wake of scandal, and set herself to scourge the city.

M
R. FINN MADE A
supper party that night to which were invited Peg’s family, friends and theatre acquaintances. Vinnie was charged to bring the guest of honor. It was a weeping Peg he found in the dressing-room when he was allowed to go down. Most of the cast had departed, yet the crowd outside was hanging on for a sight of her.

“Are you watering the flowers, Peg?” the boy said from the doorway. The drab little room was crowded with great vulgar clumps of them.

“Oh, Vinnie,” she wailed, throwing her arms around him. “I feel so lonesome.”

“You won’t when you see the crowd outside. I’ve got a carriage waiting you, and everybody’s at Mr. Finn’s.”

“Are they?” said Peg, changing from tears to smiles. She turned to the square of looking glass and from the table took a string of pearls out of a case. “Look, Vinnie.”

“They’re cracking,” he said in awe as she fastened them about her neck. They fell like a circle of snowdrops on the dark red velvet of her bodice. “Are they from Mr. Farrell?”

She nodded. “Just before curtain a messenger brought them. Will he be there, too?” She had hoped it might be Stephen when Vinnie came to her door.

“I don’t know,” the boy said. “He was invited, so was Mr. Valois, and Dennis and Norah and…”

Peg laughed. “A prince’s mixture! Poor Val, he’ll be swimming again in Irishmen. Vinnie…” She grew serious then. “Was I really good?”

“I thought you were wonderful.”

“Everybody says it. Wait till I tell you who all was in. Even some critics, Vinnie. ’Tis very unusual.” She caught his face between her hands and pulled it down, kissing him gently on the mouth. “Here,” she said, getting up and gathering one bouquet of flowers which she put in his arms to carry. “These are the only ones I’m keeping. Remember?” He nodded, for these were the flowers he had sent her. “I’ve left word for all the rest to be sent to the Cathedral.” She flung her cloak about her shoulders. “Oh, Vinnie, be proud and happy for me!”

“Peg,” he said, “I love you.”

She hugged him. “Then carry me off, for I love you, too.”

“Eleven o’clock call in the morning, Miss Margaret,” the doorman said. She had taken Valois’ advice and was billed under the one name.

“Thank you, Tom,” Peg sang out.
Streets
was to play every night until further notice and the play must be cut in the morning.

In the little alleyway to the stage door there were people waiting still. “Three cheers for Miss Margaret!” came the cry when she stepped through the door. She stood under the lantern a moment and smiled around. Then she plucked a few flowers out of Vinnie’s bouquet and threw them toward the ladies. The clapping of hands accompanied her to the carriage.

She sat back in its quiet darkness and held Vinnie’s hand.

“Peg, I lied to you,” the boy burst out when they had traveled a few blocks. “Mr. Farrell won’t be there tonight. He asked me to give you his regrets.”

“Just that,” said Peg, after a moment. “Not a note? Nothing?”

“That’s all,” Vinnie said.

“When did you see him?”

“When I was waiting for you.”

“Vinnie, tell the driver to turn around. I want to go first to Bleecker Street.”

“Peg, they’re waiting at home.”

“Let them wait. Tell him, Vinnie, or I shall.”

Vinnie tapped on the panel and instructed the driver.

“He didn’t like me,” Peg said. “I suppose I knew from the beginning he wouldn’t like it. That’s why I never told him what the part was.” She gave a cold little laugh, her anger mounting. “He and Val, a pair! What fools! I degraded myself, I suppose. I should have minced upon the stage, a true Miss Trueheart…”

“Please, Peg,” Vinnie pleaded. “Let’s not go all the way up there. I haven’t enough money for the carriage.”

“I have,” she said, “and I shall have hereafter.”

“But he mayn’t even be there!”

“Ah, but he will. I know him. He’ll have gone home to brood upon his opinion.”

And he was home. He came to the door at Peg’s ring.

“May I come in?” she said. She went into the drawing-room where, by the signs, he had set himself up for contemplation before the fire. A glass of sherry had been poured and his pipe sat by the crock of tobacco. “Whatever your weaknesses, Stephen, I never thought you a coward.”

“I should have written you tonight,” he said.

“Why? To give me a letter—something to keep in remembrance along with tonight’s bill, my call sheet, a flower I should press in a prayer book, and maybe with these?” She took the pearls from about her neck.

“Those were for you, Margaret. Not for Gallus Mag.”

“Tonight I was Gallus Mag, and will be tomorrow night and as many nights as she is welcome on the stage. I’ve forgot the box they came in. I’ll send it round.” She laid the jewels upon the mantel.

“You needn’t, for I’ll not be here to receive it,” he said in a sudden wrath of his own. “God in heaven, Margaret, why did you do it?”

“Because I am an actress.”

“Oh, you are, and a fine one. The part should never have been played.”

“I did not write it.”

“You gave it life as no playwriter could have given it.”

“And well I might,” she cried. “I’ve had a lifetime to study her likes!”

“And you’d have the world study it with you. There is not a magazine in the country, not a newspaper that doesn’t show the Irishman half-man, half-ape. Not a part can he play on the stage except to be their clown. When he wins the day it’s by chance as a child might and at the curtain’s fall he’s left scratching his head in wonder as to how he did it. That’s the legend they want of us: sluts, drunkards and braggarts, court fools at our best. That’s what you gave them tonight, a drunken slut who might have been a woman. She would not have been tolerated on the stage were she any race but Irish, and I say God damn you, Margaret, for playing it.”

His words fell upon her like a lash and she lifted her head a little the better to endure them. When he was done she stood quite still for a moment for she could say nothing.

“Oh, Margaret, Margaret,” he said finally, “you look like a queen standing there. And queens we have had in our history, Maeve and Deirdre, as proud as any reigned the earth. When will come the poets to remind us of them, to lead us out of this degradation?”

Peg lifted her hand to the mantel and touched her finger to the pearls. “I think Gallus Mag is a queen,” she said quietly and turned to him. “Goodbye, Stephen.”

“Take the pearls, Margaret. Please take them.”

She smiled. “I think not.” She shrugged a little, pulling her cloak tighter about her. “Truly, I don’t like souvenirs.”

“I
F IFS AND ANDS
were pots and pans there’d be no use for tinkers’ hands.”

When Peg awoke that morning to the chambermaid’s tap upon her door she lay quite still for a few seconds and cast her eyes about the room to find some object by which to distinguish it from all other hotel rooms. She listened to hear some sound without her window to distinguish the city from other cities. Churchbells, peal after peal of them, in tune and out. But one city in America rejoiced in such clamor, New Orleans.

The chambermaid came in and set her breakfast tray on the bedside table. She was a dark handsome girl with the high cheekbones of the Indian and the skin of an African. “Wake up, Missee. This is ’appy day.”

“If I marry him,” Peg said, remembering suddenly the day it was. “Or perchance if I don’t…”

The Creole showed her strong white teeth in a knowing smile. Such doubts did not beset her, Peg thought. Likely she was oft married and should know. “If,” the girl said reproachfully, and shook her head as though there was no possibility of an “if” at all. Then ran the Irish saying through Peg’s mind: If ifs and ands were pots and pans, there’d be no use for tinkers’ hands. She must confess herself in the afternoon—if, and pack this morning—if. That at least must be done, no ifs and ands about it.

If ifs and ands were pots and pans…If Mr. Finn had not had a friend named Valois…If Mr. Richards had not had a mistress, or if his mistress had fancied herself as Gallus Mag and not Miss Trueheart. A pale Mag she might have been and soon have faded altogether, to reappear perchance a Juliet and never queried “Why for hast no slung-shot, Juliet?” Ah, Mag, thy name is legend, more famous far than Tam-o-Shanter’s mare, for all that the better part of each of you has proved a horse’s ass. New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Charleston, New Orleans…St. Louis, Cincinnati and New Orleans again: give us a scene from
The Streets of New York,
one scene’s enough—The Gallus Mag scene to fill our bill! A tasty piece to garnish
Richard II,
or if you like to soberize a minstrel show, to split a ballet program, or to liven up a patriotic tableau. A good mixer, Mag, half-gal, half-gamin. And Miss Margaret. Who? Miss Margaret. Margaret Hickey. Who? Oh, Mag, the one plays Mag! Of course! She’s gallus, as they say up New York way. For God’s sake, let us sit upon the ground and tell sad stories of an actress’ fame.

Her trunk locked and strapped at last, she went to the hotel window, parted the netting and stepped out on the iron-railed balcony. New Orleans in June: the torpid heat already hung upon the city, fouling the air with a sick-sweet smell, making the starched linens of morning the rags of the afternoon, muffling the garbled patois of Creoles and Negroes into a common tongue to her ear at last. Even the church bells seemed muted. The fear of death, fear of the Yellow Jack hung in the air like the blasphemies of a pious man. Was it here Evangeline found her lover? She could not remember, nor could she remember where she had heard the poem, or read it, in what magazine, in what hotel, in what city. Only the sweet sadness of it lingered with her: love enduring, love pursued, not fled. And I say God damn you, Margaret…Goodbye, Stephen. You cursed me better than you knew.

Down the narrow street then, almost skipping in his haste, looked after like a madman to so speed his health away in the midday heat, came the man she waited. Scarcely a man; scarcely more than a downy youth; her own age, over twenty-one, but younger by far. Yet old enough to vote and coming from a great family of voters. “Why, Miss Margaret, us Stuarts cast enough votes among us to have a representative in Washington to our exclusive interests.” “And what, pray, are your interests, Mr. Stuart?” “You, Miss Margaret, if you’ll excuse my boldness. I got no interests in heaven or earth since meetin’ you, exceptin’ you.”

He had shown no other certainly, proclaiming business in St. Louis when she was programmed there, accounting his devotion up and down the river, and his fortune: enough to take them both to California to find gold. Cotton was his family’s business, and a brother raised sugar cane. But he himself was disinherited until he made good on his own. A kind of gentleman he was, making up in manners what he lacked in education. And ignorant he was, even by his own reckoning: “You’ll teach me, Peg, for I need learnin’. My brothers went abroad, and one went up to Yale. Damn near turned Yankee, Josh did. Pa said that was enough. He wasn’t spendin’ no more money to turn his family Abolitionist. I didn’t care much till now, to tell the truth. I never saw a book I liked as well as a pine wood in the fall. But pine woods get lonesome to a man in love.” Books get lonesome, too, Peg thought, to one in or out of love.

She waved him a welcome now, Matt Stuart, for he had seen her watching and doffed his hat to bow with it at first and then to flourish it above his head as though to hail a queen. Queen Mag…I think Gallus Mag is a queen…She closed her eyes as though it were the sun’s fault she could not keep the daylight from that corner of her mind. When she opened them she needed to lean over the railing to look down upon the man, the boy she had consented to marry.

He stood, his hat in one hand and a yellow paper in the other, the sweat glistening on his face. “Look,” he cried, waving the paper. “I got a telegraph from Mobile. I got Pa’s blessin’.”

Whose blessing did she have? No one’s, having sought none. She nodded and smiled, playing the beloved like so many of the New Orleans women she had watched. With fans and jewels, they pretended no life save coquetry, no interest in themselves save their lovability. They would acquiesce to a dance at the squeak of a jews-harp, at the beck of a cock or a cuckold, and smile in content at their own grace if they had no more of it than a duck’s waddle. To be loved was the thing—more important by far than to love.