Men of No Property (61 page)

I started a long time ago in this to tell you about Delia. How I do ramble! Wait till you see the park now. The new reservoir. No. Not till I tell you about Delia. Not that there is anything to tell especially. But I cannot understand her. Except for calling Mr. Lincoln “that vulgar man” once in a while, she doesn’t say a word against the North—“I reckon it had to be”—she says, and you remember what she was like when she came home from Charleston. But she was supposed to go to Newport with us. Mother really put herself to an extreme test of charity to invite her. And it was all arranged. Then two days before we were to leave, Delia called on me and asked if we should mind taking Jem and Nancy. She felt she didn’t want to leave Stephen for the week, even. So she said. But Vinnie, Stephen was in Washington most of that week. Isn’t that strange? Mother will never invite her again of course.

Judge Grisholm called himself with your quarterly draft on the firm. A handsome sum which I duly deposited. He is such a dear old gentleman. He calls you his boy. “What word from my boy, Mrs. Dunne? Such a shame to interrupt a career like his. We’re waiting him. Tell him we’re waiting him. I’ve got to retire one of these days. Got to retire.”

Now, my darling, I must go up and see to our daughter. I like to attend to her supper myself although Nurse is very good. We sit down Maria and I and we pretend we have you between us. We lean across you to put bites into each other’s mouths. I must say your place is very untidy. Vinnie, dear Vinnie, I can scarcely bear to end this, but you will never have it if I don’t. I sometimes wonder if I write for you or for myself. There. Maria has ended it for me. Very unsentimental, your daughter. Or perhaps that cry means—“Give papa a kiss for me.” A kiss from her, a heart from me. I shall not need it until you bring it home with you. Adieu, beloved husband. I lie down at your side wherever you are tonight.

Pris

Headquarters Hospital

Washington

January 1, 1863

My dearest wife and little one:

I wonder if you received the few poor words I wrote you three days ago. If you did you will now know how rapid is my recovery. I am said to be Dr. Morgan’s work of art, and surely no one was ever required to make more of an exhibit of himself. I am thinking of charging admissions. I might contribute the sum to a fund for indigent generals. The worst you have read about Fredericksburg is true. Or as close to the truth as someone who had not lain upon the field amongst the dead could come to it.

Do not ever, ever allow to your presence, my darling, any calumniator of the Irish. We are a magnificent race and our courage is equal to that of any people upon earth. Our brigade lost 545 out of 1315 men at Marye’s Hill. Poor Jamie Lavery. Do you remember, I wrote you of having him in my outfit. He fell in the second charge. God was merciful. He died while his comrades were yet advancing. I must visit his mother. I have a few poor things of his to give her. I remember how very kind she was to me my first day in America. I seem to have lost my own treasures—your dear, dear letters. If they have fallen into enemy hands I must now be the most envied Federal alive.

I have thought a great deal about the Irish as I lie here. You must understand, dearest, that I have lived intimately with these brave lads for more than a year, and sometimes now I find myself telling their names, like the beads on a rosary. Gen. Meagher knows Stephen, of course, having been in the Young Ireland movement. Meagher has little patience with the American Irish. But I seem to remember Stephen’s saying he has little patience at all. And that is the truth. He is a brave man, but a rash one. In the end I think that men like Stephen and Thomas Davis and Fenton Lalor will have profited Ireland more. These names are strange to you, I know. Davis and Lalor were Young Irelanders and are long dead. But ask Stephen about them.

My own men would turn upon me for what I am about to say and knowing the fierceness of their loyalty to that in which they believe, I should honor them for it. But how much longer than it should will it take Ireland to gain her freedom when she must do it on terms satisfactory to a Universal church? A church which for its own propagation must content and contain its faithful in every country, and therefore must compromise the grievances of one to the ambitions of another?

But for that matter, Pris, why are most churches in this country so conservative of slavery? Not to estrange their Southern brethren must surely be the reason. Can you think what a blow they could strike for peace and justice if tomorrow in every pulpit of the land, North and South, our reverend gentlemen of all persuasions would rise and declare excommunicant all condoners of human—nay inhuman servitude? What in God’s name are the pulpits for if not this?

Well, I myself have been a long time signing in with the Abolitionists. But then, so has Father Abraham. The Emancipation Proclamation—what will history say of it, what of this day, January 1, 1863? Perhaps it will make us all free, to soon go about the proper business of New Year’s Day. I wonder who is calling upon you at this moment, who is paying appropriate if inadequate tribute to Her Grace. I cannot find you, Pris. I look and look and I try to remember, but too much that is too terrible has happened for me to conjure a serene image of my beloved family. I tell myself that you will find me, and I believe it, but I cannot feel it. And nothing frightens me quite as much as their promise here that I shall soon be able to come home again. Sometimes, God help me, I feel that I should have more courage if they told me I was about to die. I know that it is cowardly and unmanly of me to write these things to you, for I know they will make you suffer. But I think in my not altogether logical way, that this is how you wish it, and that this is how we shall find each other again. Oh Pris, come to me. I don’t mean to Washington. That would be more than I could bear just now. But send me some little part of you, of your soul—I almost had it then. I am alive. There is fire yet in my heart. Oh darling girl breathe quick upon it, for I do feel something now when I say I love you, Priscilla.

Vinnie

“W
ELL,” SAID DENNIS, “THANK
God I put Kevin in the boy’s place when he went.”

“How can you think of business at a time like this?” said Norah.

“I’m not thinkin’ of the business at all, woman. I’m thinkin’ of how it’s kept his mind off his troubles.”

“And what’s to keep Mary’s off hers? Oh, what has any woman bearin’ sons but trouble? Peace or war, men are killin’ creatures.”

“Aye,” said Dennis. “The world should be made up of women only. Gentle and lovin’ they are, and forever keepin’ the peace like your sister.”

Norah began to weep.

“Will you stop your greetin’ till Mary gets here and you have somethin’ decent to cry over.”

“Peg was ever decent, Dennis. You’ll not tell me she’s not.”

“Do you know where she’d be right now if it wasn’t for me? The Island. Aye, Blackwell’s Island, and maybe the workhouse ’ud be better for her than some of the houses she’s workin’ in.”

“I do wish she’d come home,” Norah said. “Did you ask her, Dennis?”

“She knows the number. She’ll come when she’s ready.”

Norah wiped her eyes with her apron. “Do you know, Dennis, I’d love to take the childer’ and maybe Peg and go over home for a year.”

“I can’t leave the county much less the country, Norah. By the bloody law now the niggers are free to roam the nation but if a white man crosses the county line, he’s arrested for evadin’ the service.”

“I was thinkin’ you’d stay yourself,” Norah said quietly, “and we’d go till the war’s over.”

Dennis looked at her and felt a sudden lump in his throat. “So it’s come to that, is it. You could go without me and never a pang?”

“I couldn’t count the pangs I’ve had for you, husband of mine. I may as well say it out. I had no name for them till you came back from Charleston. There was always a good reason for the things you did till then, or so I told myself.”

“And what am I doin’ now offends you?”

“You are not the man I married, Dennis. Him I will love forever.”

“You haven’t told me what I’m doin’ offends you. Do I mistreat the childer’? Did I begrudge a livin’ to your father? Do I lock the door of my house on your sister as many a decent man would, himself in the public eye? Or is it you’ve turned political and my record for peace offends you?”

“None of that,” Norah said, “though I’d rather you didn’t spout it in front of Mary and Kevin.”

“It ought to be spouted in front of them. If every Irishman in this city and every workin’ man stood up and said, ‘This is not my war, boys. I’ll neither fight nor starve for it while the rest of you are makin’ fortunes’, it ’ud be over in the mornin’.” Norah gave a great sigh. “Am I wearyin’ you with such talk? You haven’t answered my question. What’ve I done wrong?”

“Vinnie Dunne studied years to become a lawyer,” Norah burst out, “and you had yourself made one overnight by one of them judges.”

Dennis laughed. “All you’re sayin’ is he’s a better lawyer than I am, and I’d be the first to admit that. I’ve no intention of practicin’, if that’s what’s troublin’ you, and I know a mite more of the law than you credit, more than a few of them practicin’ it today with all their degrees and their pedigrees.”

“If you’ve no intention of practicin’ what’d you do it for?”

“There was a day, Norah, when I’d’ve confided it to you afore takin’ the step. But I amn’t the only one changed in this house. I’ll tell you this and no more: there might be an office I’d run for next fall and I want to be ready. Now you know more than most.”

“And I care more than most, if you don’t mind my sayin’ it.”

“Norah, Norah, let us count our blessin’s,” Dennis said, standing at the window. “Look at the two of them comin’ up the street now. That’s my brother Kevin and his wife bowed down. I never heard a laugh like hers. Like the peal of a church bell it was, and never a sound these months. Why the hell did he have to come tellin’ her all of it now, and her gettin’ over it?”

“She wasn’t gettin’ over it at all, Dennis, not believin’ him dead. Maybe she’ll have some peace now.”

“Peace!” he cried. “Look at them, Norah.” He caught her wrist and pulled her close to the window. “Look at them and say ‘I’m for the war’ if you can. Tell me a nation of niggers is worth it. Tell me it’s right to march an army of them through the lines of workers stayin’ off for a livin’ wage so they can work for half a livin’ and say ‘thank you, Massa Ab’ram’. Aye, and the police clubbin’ down the white men to let them through. Whatever Fernandy was he wouldn’t’ve had that when he was mayor, I’ll tell you. God’s curse on the ape in the White House! I’ll say it if I hang for it, and then you can take the childer’ and go back to Ireland where the tyrant at least is a white man.”

Before night fell, Kevin was persuaded into a tour of the markets and the promise to be on the job in the morning. What children are to women in time of trouble, Dennis thought, work is to a man. He was by no means sure that Kevin had the brains of his son, Jamie, having lost his own business, but he was determined to carry him now till he proved it. And oh, what a blessing it was to get out of the house. If they weren’t crying over Jamie they were maudlin over Vinnie Dunne. There was never a lad like him come out of Ireland, or anywhere else for that matter, and his poor leg shot up so’s he hobbled with a cane, and never a thought between them, the women, that if the captain came home with a ball in his leg, the corporal lay where he fell. They didn’t have to carry him back from ole Virginny.

When the men reached home again a message had come for Dennis. “Tell him,” Norah repeated it, “there’s a fine buy on the goose tonight.” Dennis swallowed down his tea.

“Let me go,” said Kevin.

Dennis laughed. “You wouldn’t know a goose from a goblin,” he said. “The women have need of your company.” He took his hat then and a fresh handkerchief. “Don’t wait up if I’m late, Norah, and you don’t need to leave the lights.”

He walked the few blocks to the house off Washington Square, and there in the window was the porcelain goose. He took his handkerchief from his pocket, shook it out and blew his nose as he went up the stoop. The door opened without his knocking.

“How very nice to see you again,” Delia Farrell said.

Dennis watched at the parlor door while she took the goose from the window and set it upon the mantel, returning then to the vestibule. “How’s your husband?” he asked.

“He’s just fine—unless the Yankees are evacuatin’ Washington. That’s where he is just now.” She lowered a bell from the ceiling to where it would clang if the outer door opened.

“’Tis obligin’ of him to go so often,” Dennis said.

Delia smiled, taking up the lamp. “Patriotic, Mr. Lavery. He’s very patriotic. The other gentlemen are waitin’ for you.”

Dennis marveled at her coolness as he followed her down the narrow steps. He shook hands with the Southern courier and a gentleman of the New York pacifist press, but he could scarcely take his eyes from Delia where she seated herself at a great hand loom and began to weave. If the alarm sounded she would rise and go up with a ball of yarn in her hand—or maybe just sit, to be discovered alone and weaving in the dreary hours of the night while he and the others vanished out the cellar door. And he could believe she would not so much as lift her eyes at their departure.

T
HE FARRELLS AND THE
Dunnes met at St. Paul’s that Sunday morning in July. It was Maria’s first appearance in church since her christening, and except for the sermon, she took to it very politely. Vinnie was glad enough to take her outside through that, and as he was going he winked at the pleading-eyed Jem, and the boy accompanied him. There was talk on the steps of nothing but Gettysburg, and the victory it was told had been won there. Lee was said to be withdrawing South. Everyone said it would make the draft more palatable, even in New York City. Hadn’t the first day’s drawing gone off without incident? And this despite the Copperhead orators. A swarm of newsboys came screaming “extries” and more men came out of the church. Vinnie had Jem get two pence from his pocket and buy the paper. He was able to manage his cane and Maria, but a fly on his nose, he thought, could enjoy the sun there.