Sons of Fortune (57 page)

He was obviously disgusted, yet in the heavy, bitter calm of his words Caspar detected a variant of that same acceptance of violence he had noted in the other, earlier crowd. It was dreadful, his tone implied, but it happened every day.

And now Fox even smiled ruefully, as if his seriousness had been a small breach of etiquette. “I see you have a stout cane there, Mr. Stevenson. And so have I.” He firmly renewed his grip. “Back to back we should make a formidable pair. So, if it is your intention to return downtown…”

“Will it be so bad?”

“You never know. In this city you never know.”

In fact, if Caspar had confined his wanderings to the middle of the island, south of Twenty-fifth Street, he would have remained unaware that any disturbance was taking place at all. Omnibuses were plying as usual the length of Fifth Avenue. Nevertheless the two men elected to walk; it would be less torrid out in the street than inside the cars.

Fifth Avenue was obviously the place to build his mansion once he had made his fortune, Caspar thought. There were houses here as fine as any modern London houses. While the two men strolled, Fox enlarged upon his theme of the destruction of New York by its Democratic politicians.

“The perpetrators of that outrage upon the Asylum were apprehended by the police, but you may be sure that even now there are Democratic politicians at the station houses demanding their release, Democratic magistrates are announcing that this war is unconstitutional, the draft is unconstitutional, and the murderers of coloured children are merely exercising their legal right to resist an oppressive government. And that scoundrel Archbishop Hughes is already passing out thousand-year indulgences. Oh yes! Jefferson Davis is king of New York, sir.”

At Fifteenth Street he startled Caspar with a sudden, and obviously unpremeditated invitation to dinner. But of course Caspar was delighted to accept—he was learning so much about his new home city he would have been a fool not to, whatever his twenty years of drummed-in etiquette said to the contrary. He was doubly surprised that Fox intended them to dine in his own home. And trebly surprised to find that he quite liked this easy, affable intimacy on so short an acquaintance. In England you were taught to distrust any stranger until you had good cause to think better of him. Here, it seemed, the reverse was true. And why not? It was certainly working to his advantage.

The time drew on to eleven o’clock before he left his new friends, Mr. and Mrs. Fox, in their house in (no,
on—
he must remember that)
on
Irving Place. Funny to think of a house being on a Street! Sort of perched, would it be? On stilts, perhaps? He giggled. Still, the English wasn’t much better: in a street! On a river…in a river? When Americans heard English people saying their house is in such-and-such a street, they must have a picture of a house half buried among the cobblestones! He giggled even louder. Why was it so important anyway? Much more important to keep this bloody pavement still. Not “pavement.” They had another word. Sideway? No. Gone! Ask tomorrow.

The rain, which began to fall in lovely, cooling bucketsful before he was halfway back to his lodging, helped to sober him. He was quite steady—without needing to take elaborate care to be so—as he went up to his room, where he hung up his clothes, towelled himself dry, and lay naked on his bed listening to the sheets of rain falling on the rooftops, streets, and…and
sidewalks
!

His achievement of the word sent him almost at once into a deep, smiling slumber. Twice in the night he got up to drink greedily; it saved him from a thick head next day. It was still raining hard, both times, so he felt not too bad about pissing straight out into the street. Onto the street? He chuckled. He pissed into. The piss went onto—surely?

Back in bed he remembered he was supposed to have had a girl. Never mind, he thought with a yawn. Time enough. Time enough. It wasn’t so important.

Next morning at breakfast they all ate at the same table like one big family; indeed, the semi-permanent residents, who formed the majority,
were
one big family, and all highly tickled to be joined by an English aristocrat. There was no secret in how they came to discover him for what he was. Mrs. Axelschmidt, the German widow who owned and ran the house, had, she explained, unabashed, looked through his belongings and then gone up to the library to consult Debrett. Of course, the current edition did not mention the recently conferred earldom. And nor did Caspar.

When all the welcomes and introductions were through, they went back to their earlier topic—the riots of yesterday, which probably formed the only topic at every New York breakfast table that morning.

Caspar heard, but only half believed, that a great fire had destroyed Central Park and even the rain hadn’t fully extinguished it; that Croton Reservoir had been breached, sending a wall of water down as far as Madison Square; that two Negroes had been hanged and mutilated by women on Clarkson Street in the Third Ward; that the Armory on Twenty-second Street had taken fire and collapsed with several hundred looters self-barricaded inside it; that the Irish were intent on driving the Yankees out of Manhattan; that the rioters were sure to try to break into the banks on Wall Street today; and that the inmates of a house of prostitution on Water Street had been savagely beaten for concealing a Negro servant girl.

The last item surprised him in that no one appeared embarrassed or flustered that such a place was mentioned by its proper name in mixed company. The girls at the table, too, several of whom worked in shops and private houses nearby, all seemed a very forthcoming, independent lot. Anyway—Water Street. He stored away the name.

The other information—about the intended looting of the banks of Wall Street—worried him deeply. His first action today, he decided, must be to get down to the Bank of the Republic, draw out all his money, and then leave the island by the nearest ferry. There must be plenty of safe places nearby, on Long Island or Staten Island or in New Jersey, where he could stay until the authorities had brought the mob in Manhattan to heel. He went south on Broadway, hurrying despite the oppressive heat that had already built up. The rain had stopped but the sky was still overcast in one even gray of eye-hurting intensity from horizon to horizon.

Broadway was jammed solid by a mob several blocks before Wall Street. This was a mob that had tried (and almost succeeded in) firing the
Tribune
offices in Printing House Square. The police had driven them along Park Row and on down Broadway, planning, no doubt, to keep them penned on the southern tip of the island. Seeing no possibility of getting forward by this route, Caspar looked at his map and cut eastward along Maiden Lane, thinking he could then go down William Street and come into Wall Street halfway along.

But no sooner had he turned south than a vast mob, many thousand strong, men and women of the most ruffianly kind, came pouring down the road behind him, from the slums and tenements of the Bowery and the Five Points district. Now he was securely wedged between two mobs—this one behind him and the one at the foot of Broadway. He had no choice but to make for Wall Street as fast as he could.

The street was already crowded. The authorities must have heard of the rumoured attack on the banks, for the police were there in force, making repeated club attacks on the mob. Many of the people trapped in the crowd were, like himself, respectable men on lawful business—and there were even one or two respectable women there, as well. Caspar was relieved to discover that the police did not rain their clubs down indiscriminately. For the moment he was safe from that quarter.

But the sudden inrush of new rioters from the Five Points and the Bowery changed the whole picture. Within minutes the police withdrew to the shelter of banks and houses in the portion of the street they had so laboriously cleared. At first he thought this move was either out of cowardice or represented a sensible regrouping before they launched a new attack. He soon saw that their reason was far more sinister.

For there, broadside on between the piers at the end of the street, was a frigate. She towered over the street. Every gunport was open, and from the black mouth of each peered a cannon. Hundreds of times, in imagination and fact, he had peered at the business ends of cannons without ever realizing what it would feel like if they were loaded and primed. He was terrified. Those guns weren’t there as an empty threat. They were charged with canister and grape. At any moment, to judge by the speed of the police retreat, they would fill this street with whizzing balls of lead flying fast enough to cut right through a man. He had never felt so vulnerable. Every gun seemed to be aimed right between his eyes.

He did not panic. He could even, for half a second, appreciate the irony of it. All the things he had done in his life, all that he had learned, useless and useful, all his plans, his defiance of his father, and now he, Caspar, was here to make his fortune and show everyone, especially show his father and make him eat his words. All that was about to be cut to nothing by a cannonade fired indiscriminately to quell a mob whose quarrel was not even remotely connected with him! What a waste, he thought. What a waste of
me
!

Then he saw the girl and all thought of himself evaporated. He was not the only one to make the obvious connection between the sudden police withdrawal and the towering presence of that frigate with her guns pointing so as to rake the entire length of the street. All around him people were turning their backs to the ship and trying to flee up the street or out via the cross streets. The girl, afraid of getting caught up in the mob, was clinging to the brass knocker of one of the banks. Caspar knew he had to go to her rescue.

A respectably dressed man loomed out of the swirling crowd nearby. Caspar grabbed him by the arm and shouted: “That girl, sir! We must go to her assistance!”

The man looked incredulously at him, said “Shee-it!” (which Caspar was slow to interpret), wrenched free his arm, and vanished back into the mob.

Caspar began to feel desperate. The momentum of the crowd was carrying him farther and farther from the girl. He fought his way to the inner edge of the sidewalk and, curse by blow, struggled back upstream toward the girl. When he was still some yards from her he saw her hand torn free from the knocker. At once she was swept into the crowd and fell. He heard her scream.

Like a mad demon he fought and pummelled his way to where she was lying. She was being fearfully trodden and trampled. He bent to try to lift her, praying he would not be borne down, too. And at that moment there was a noise like thin ice breaking up along a river in thaw—a sort of skittering, clattering sound that seemed to come from the walls above and opposite. It passed, quicker than thought, up the street. The screams and the roar of the cannon were simultaneous. He realized then that the first sound had been the grapeshot scattering along the walls of the buildings. A man behind Caspar, a man who would have been shielded had Caspar not bent down at that moment, fell across him, bearing him down upon the unconscious girl. Caspar did not need to feel the hot blood pouring onto his neck and shoulder to know that the man was dead.

The mob had passed. Caspar risked looking up. Incredibly he saw that the shot had turned their panic into anger. They were looking at the fifteen or twenty dead who littered the street and they were actually turning and preparing to march on the ship!

With every ounce of strength he possessed, he hauled the girl out from beneath the dead man. It could only be moments before the sailors reloaded and fired a second salvo. He half-dragged, half-carried the girl down the street—the fifteen longest paces of his life—to the corner of Pearl Street. He just made it around the bend as the second cannonade rang out. Again it was preceded for a fraction of a second by that chilling, withering noise of shot skittering along the walls and pavement.

There were screams, of course, but something else—a great angry roar that curdled his blood and filled him with as much fear as had the sight of the frigate’s guns. He was no more safe here than he had been in Wall Street.

He lifted the girl, fireman fashion, across his shoulders and stumbled up Pearl Street. He got no farther than Platt Street before his knees gave way under him. He took the skin off his cheek and left hand but managed to save the girl from a nasty crack. He struggled to his feet again and looked around for shelter. The first house in Platt Street, on the northern side, was open; later he was to learn that a Negro family had abandoned it in terror an hour earlier; at that moment it seemed as if Fate had decided to leave the horseshoes out of her fists for just one round. Too weak to lift the girl again, he dragged and rolled her up the five steps, through the front door, and into the passage.

A room opened to their right. He went in alone. It was empty but for a bed and some infested clothing and blankets. He pulled the mattress to the window with the half-formed idea that if they were surprised, they could at least have the slight hope of escape by it. When he went back to the passage she was beginning to stir.

He had only got her halfway to the mattress when she came around fully. She saw him. He smiled to reassure her, not knowing how ghastly the blood and the dirt from the street made him look. Her eyes went wide in horror; she drew breath to scream and then winced at the pain in her ribs. It allowed Caspar time to say: “You’re safe. You’ve been hurt, but you’re safe now.”

He thought she fainted again, but it was just the pain. When it passed, she opened her eyes. Caspar meanwhile had found a can of water, which smelled fresh, behind the door. He dipped a clean handkerchief in it and came back and laid it on her brow. His words had only partly reassured her but this completed the job.

“Who are you?” she asked.

“Name of Caspar Stevenson, miss. From England. I came through Castle Garden yesterday.”

She grinned. “My!”

“Yes. The guidebook says nothing about all this, you know. I shall have a very sharp word or two to say to the publisher—a Mr. Miller, I believe?”

She bit her lip rather than laugh.

“Sorry!” He hit his forehead with his clenched fist. “Look—can you struggle up onto the mattress if I bring it here?”

He pulled the mattress over from the window, arranging it to touch her so that all she had to do was a single roll. Seeing the contortion of her face in performing that one simple manoeuvre, he was glad she had been unconscious while he carried her.

“I’m going to pull it near the window,” he said. “I must be able to watch the rioters.”

“They’re not rioters,” she said with difficulty.

He could not understand why she said it but he didn’t want to make her talk. He smiled down. “Of course not. It’s the church picnic, just got a little out of hand.”

“Wash your face,” she whispered. It seemed a lot easier to whisper.

As slowly and gently as he could he dragged the mattress to the window and then went to dip his handkerchief in the water again to wash the blood and grime from his face.

“Better,” she whispered. She sounded Irish, but then a lot of the Yankee accent sounded Irish to him.

All the same, when she said “better” it could almost have been Mary Coen. He smiled at her. What could he say that wouldn’t start a conversation? Perhaps “yes” and “no” wouldn’t tax her too much.

“Hungry?” he asked.

“No, thank you.”

“Don’t bother about please and thank you. Just say yes or no—or shake your head. Thirsty?”

“A bit.”

He looked out into the street. It was full of rioters in angry groups; working up courage, perhaps, to return to Wall Street. He saw several muskets and revolvers plus one carbine, and almost everyone not so armed had a club or butcher’s knife. Across the street was a fruiterer’s; next to it, a wine and liquor shop. He described the scene to her. “Shall I risk going across for an orange or something?”

She winced with pain as she raised her hand to clutch his. “No!” she said urgently. “Not for me.” Her hand was cold—on such a day as this, too; it must be the hottest day of the year.

He took off his jacket and draped it over her feet. She had nice, trim little ankles. He looked at her face then, just as a face, rather than as something to clean or to worry at because of the pain it registered. It was a very pleasant face, too. Strong. Good, clear features, generous mouth, deep-blue, vivacious eyes—not afraid—curly auburn hair, what he could see of it under her bonnet.

“Is it all still there?” she whispered, grinning. She was learning a way of talking that was not too painful.

“Was it so obvious? I’m sorry.”

“It was quite an audit.”

He told her what had happened back there in Wall Street. Then, having nothing else to say, he told her—or began to tell her—what had happened to him yesterday, until he saw it distressed her. So instead he told her about the voyage over. She liked that much better.

“What’s happening outside?” she asked.

“They seem to have given up the idea of fighting for the moment. Except one another. They’re just getting more drunk.”

“Wouldn’t you know it,” she said bitterly. Then she smiled again. “Tell me about England, where you live and that.”

“I’ve left all that behind,” he said.

A police officer rode into the street and dismounted, tying his horse to a lamppost right outside the window. Caspar thought the man was either brave or amazingly foolhardy. The officer walked across the street and into the saloon. The rioters were too astonished to molest him, though several shouted at him and brandished their weapons. Caspar decided not to tell her about it. Tell her what, instead? What had she asked? England.

“My family has several houses, actually. There’s Thorpe Old Manor up in Yorkshire…”

“Where’s Yorkshire?”

“It’s part of the north of England. It’s bigger than Canada.”

“But it can’t be. All of England isn’t bigger than New York State.”