Confusion swept his eyes. Then his features cleared again and he grew a smile I did not like.
“McClellan… that’s rich. Haven’t heard from the man since a railroad case in fifty-nine.”
“I was told… that you recommended me.”
“Yes, yes. But that was to old man Trenchard. A Philadelphia acquaintance of mine. He was looking for somebody who would do as he was told, as I recall. Someone who knew his place. Somebody already in Washington. I couldn’t think of anybody, but my clerk recommended you.”
I put it out of my mind. I had not an hour and a half at home once I got back, and I refused to waste my thoughts on anything but my wife and son. My Mary Myfanwy had raised fine ham cutlets from a neighbor, and we had farm eggs like the molten gold of myth, and biscuits, and salted butter from the crock, and her plum preserves. She was sick with the poverty of it, for a cook and keeper of a good house she was, and didn’t she want to please me? It hurt to see her so, ashamed when she should have been proud as a duchess.
Twas our Thanksgiving dinner, we both said, four days short of that finest American holiday. And so much we had to be thankful for. When I spoke the blessing, there come a vibrato to my voice that had nothing to do with the singer’s art. In the middle of the meal, over a pink bite of ham, I broke into tears, unmanly.
I wished to be alone with my beloved again, but there was the child. And I wanted to be with him, too. He grew restless with my holding of him after the meal, willful as a cat, and my wife scolded him for it. “He needs you by,” she sighed, for she could be cruel when she had a mind to be.
The boy tottered off. Faced with a wooden train, he let his legs go out from under him. Then he sat looking at the toy, for it was more interesting than a strange father.
I knew my wife had something to say. Something that she needed to say, but did not want to. “Go on, girl,” I said. “Speak your piece.”
She looked down at the rose swirl of the carpet. “Sometimes…” she said, “… I wish you were a coward.” Her green eyes come up to me wet. I made to rise and hold her, but she shook her head. “After. First, I’ll get the talk out. I wish you had never gone with them, Abel. I wish you were little and selfish and mean like the rest of them, and mine to hold each night. I wish you had been a man of sense and that you had come home from that hospital. ‘He’s done his share,’ I hear the voice inside me. ‘Is it away from you he wants?’ And it tears me to bits and pieces. For I know you love me, but Satan gets inside these walls, and I doubt everything then.” Fair weeping she was now. “I worry you won’t come back. That something will happen. I thought I had you all safe to myself at last. And this war came.” She beat her fists down on her knees. “I hate it. I hate it. I hate that you are gone from me. I don’t care about freeing the Negro or their damned Union or anything but you. But us. The three of us. That’s all I care about in the world, God help me. And all I care about in Heaven, too.”
She let me hold her then. I lifted her to her feet and wrapped my arms around her slightness.
“There is silly,” I said. “That I would not love such a treasure.”
“I love you so much… I know I’ll be damned for it.”
I stroked her hair. “Then burn together, we will,” I said, and meant it. Though I am not one to talk so on a Sunday.
“But not John,” she said seriously. “He won’t burn.”
“Not little John. For he is an angel come among us. A fine son you have given me, Mary Jones.”
“Come back to him, Abel. Come back to me.”
“Always, my love.”
We kissed while the child ignored us.
When it was time to go and a little past, she ran up to our bedroom and come down with a small package wrapped fine.
“Twas for your Christmas that I had it done,” she said. “But you will have it now. To remind you.”
“Reminding, is it? I’ll give you reminding.”
This time she blushed at the way I touched her.
For we were in the parlor, after all. And children have eyes in the back of their heads.
“Go on with you,” she said, suddenly brusque. “There’s pots to clean, and I’ll thank you to be out of my way.”
I ran to the station, and a sight I must have been on my leg. Running with my carpet bag and the package from my beloved and the church bells going three before I had even reached Centre Street, let alone the yards. The first snowflakes of the year teased down.
Hughes the Trains had held the locomotive for me. Now there is goodness. He put me aboard the back wagon with mutterings about the tardiness of Merthyr men and a cloth of pasties he pressed on me for the journey, and Mrs. Hughes a famous cook and his lunch it was, but he would give a gift to see me off. A cause for astonishment it is, how one man can be so good and kind and another so bad. We are a funny lot, mankind.
Two railway men—and not the cleanest—shared the wagon with me. They got up the stove, and asked the questions strangers will, then they dozed, for their turn at work would come. As they lay on their dirty blankets, I opened my package.
Twas a photograph in a silver frame. Of my Mary Myfanwy. Not of the child. There was only her. She knew me hot and cold, the woman.
Beautiful she was. Sitting there stiff in her one good silk, she looked more beautiful than Eve in a gown of stars. Perhaps the hard preachers are right, when they say we cannot escape our fates. For she seemed a fate to me, though a blessed one.
I forced myself to wrap the image again, for the train was sooty. But the picture was there behind my eyelids when I closed them.
The snow let by, only a flirt. I noticed without caring. And soon it was dark. The train clipped the joints in the rails, one after another. Oh, the power of our thoughts to cast us down. I was glad the railway men were not awake to see me. For a man must keep a certain bearing, and an officer must be more stoic still.
My heart broke a thousand times before we reached Philadelphia.
The first hack driver I approached laughed when I asked if he knew where Mr. Matthew Cawber lived. “No secret where that fella lays his head,” he told me.
Indeed, it was no secret. Cawber had built himself a palace in the heart of the city, just beyond Rittenhouse Square, on the far side from Mrs. Fowler’s home. He had bought himself a block and built halfway to heaven.
I was daunted. There was no telling if he would talk to me, and certainly he had every right to put the dogs on me, so shameful had I been toward him. But there are things which must be done, and every man must eat his humble pie.
If Mrs. Fowler’s home appeared severe from the street, Cawber’s had all the ornament of a painted gypsy wagon. Spires, there were, and the gables of an English manor, and even a level of false battlements that put me in mind of the great Mughal fort of Lahore. What money could buy, the man had bought.
I marched up to the front doors. Twice my height they were. My cane gave them a tap.
A manservant opened the door, and strike me blind if he hadn’t a powdered wig on his head.
“I would like to see Mr. Cawber,” I said. “Tell him it’s Captain Jones, if you please.”
“I regret to say, sir, that Mr. Cawber’s secretary is unavailable.”
Mr. Cawber had hired himself an Englishman to mind his door, and one of the low, beady sort who trade on false manners and copied speech. It is hard to like the English as a race, except for Mr. Shakespeare and a poet or two, and their conquest of the world speaks ill of mankind. Perhaps they have more Welsh blood than they let on. That would explain the poetry, at least.
“Well, it’s not his secretary I want to see, man. It’s Mr. Cawber himself.”
“I’m sorry, sir.” He made to shut the door, but I thrust my cane into the gap.
“Just tell him,” I said. “Tell him it’s Captain Abel Jones.”
I heard the unmistakable rustle of a woman, and light steps, and a voice the angels might have envied.
“What is it, Cedric?”
Mrs. Cawber she was. You just know such a thing. And lucky the man. If twice in a lifetime a fellow sets eyes on such beauty, it is a muchness of luck. She stood there before me with features no sculptor would rival, her hair the blond of new hay. Her cheeks were unmarred by paint and soft as the inner petals of a flower, and her eyes were impossibly blue. As if she had risen from the depths of the sea. She wore a gown of lilac silk with purple trim and a pattern of shells, and her long neck was bare but for a sapphire that would have sent the Queen into fits of jealousy. I saw her all at once, as you see things only rarely, and my jaw must have been hanging like that of a boy at his first circus. “The gentleman,” the doorkeeper said, “insists on seeing Mr. Cawber.”
She looked straight at me then, with the expressionless face a goddess turns on a mortal. Twas not a matter of infatuation to admire her so, mind. Nor was there disloyalty to my beloved in it. She was a painting in the gallery of Heaven. No man of flesh and blood could aspire to such, but only look on in wonder. “May I help you, sir?” she asked. If it did not take me a year to find the words, I know nothing of time. But she waited. No one as slight as me could discomfit her.
“Begging your pardon, mum. Sorry I am for disturbing you. And of a Sunday night. It’s only… I must speak with your husband. It is a great matter, see. A terrible great matter…”
“And your name, sir?” When they call the final roll may such a voice call me.
“Jones, mum. Begging your pardon. Captain Abel Jones.”
She never looked over my uniform or shoes, as lesser sorts will do.
“Please come inside,” she said, glancing at the doorman. And didn’t he open the door quickly then. “I shall speak to my husband.”
I watched her go. Now you will think wickedness. But there was not a ghost of it in me. I watched her as you might the fading of the last sunset. A second servant opened a great carved door for her, and her trailing hem disappeared. I never saw her again, but remember her to this day.
Cawber come out with an expression black as the hair running all over him. A very Vulcan he was.
“Damn me, man,” he called from across a mile of marble foyer. “Are you chasing bad judgment with bad manners, or what the Hell?”
“Sir… I’m sorry,” I said as he closed on me. “I have come to say I am sorry.”
He growled and only slowly turned the sound into words. “Apologies are worthless.” He stood grand before me and crossed his arms. Mighty as a blacksmith. He wore a velvet smoking jacket, perfectly cut, yet it looked odd draped over his chest and shoulders. The man was meant to run naked as an ape, excuse me, and I mean that as praise. I have never felt such energy in a man standing still.
“It is right you were, Mr. Cawber. I have been made a fool.”
“You were born a damned fool, Jones, not made one. Georgie McClellan just knows how to pick horseflesh.” But he gave the eye to the doorkeeper, who promptly disappeared. “What is it you really want?”
“The apology is meant,” I said. “Be it worthless or no. But I have come to ask a favor.”
Those nettle eyebrows rose. “Well, you’ve got gall.”
“It may be in your interest, sir. Though I cannot say with certainty.”
The corner of his mouth made a hook. “Know what my wife said to me, Jones? She said the saddest-looking man in the world was at the door, asking for me.”
“Mrs. Cawber… was gracious to me.”
“Well, she’s gracious to everybody. Doesn’t mean a damned thing. What’s your favor, man?”
“Sir… it seems to me that… if I can find out who really did kill young Fowler… that it might also tell you why somebody went to the trouble of setting men after you.”
He smirked. “You want me to help you solve that self-righteous snot’s murder?”
“Perhaps… those who wanted to hurt him… are the same people who want to hurt you. Or to scare you. Or annoy you. Or whatever it is they want.”
He thought about it. Then said, “Unlikely.”
“Well, then… isn’t it revenge you want? On the high families of Philadelphia?”
His mouth changed just enough to bristle the whiskers on his cheek. “That’s putting it raw.”
“I think there is something wrong there,” I continued. “I do not know what it is. But young Livingston, at least, was hot to set me after you. And there’s something wrong with the boy. Frightened, he is. And given to bad habits. There is an odd business with his friends, as well.”
“Young whoremasters. And half of them inbred. Fowler probably came to a shabby end and those buggers just wanted to hide it, so they set you off on a wild-goose chase after me. That’s all. No shame on old Philadelphia, if they can help it.”
“That’s it, sir. I think the same, see. I cannot yet say how, but there is a tying together somewhere.”
“Well, just suppose, Jones. Just suppose I wanted to waste my time on this. Which I don’t. What is it you want from me? Precisely?”
I tried to square my shoulders and meet him man to man. But he was a beast.
“I can study the Washington end of things myself,” I told him. “But not the Philadelphia matters. The place reminds me of India, see. Where the outsider never knows the truth of the goings-on. Not even the half of it.” And for a moment I did dwell on India in my heart. “I need to know the fit of things, Mr. Cawber. Young Trenchard. Bates. And Livingston. The girl he’s promised to marry, Miss Cathcart. Anything more about the Fowlers. And the elder Mr. Trenchard’s relationship to General McClellan, for there seems to be one. Such like, that’s what I need.”
A sound rose in his throat and he raised his jaw. “I’m not going to waste a lot of effort on this,” he said. “Frankly, I don’t care who killed the Fowler pup. Good riddance. But neither do I like their dirty business of trying to drag me into this sewer of theirs. So no promises, Jones. But… if anything turns up… I just might pass it on to you. I’ll think about it. Now, is that all?”
Twas almost all.
“Mr. Cawber,” I fair stammered, “if you would not think it impertinent of me… I feel compelled to say…”
“That my wife is the most beautiful creature on God’s green earth. Well, at least you’ve got eyes in your head, Jones.”
“I’m sorry, sir, if I have been improper.” He laughed. That smoky laugh of his. “Know who she was all set to marry? Before I picked her up in my arms and carried her off?” I did not know.
“Anthony Fowler,” he said. “The little ninny. Olympia would’ve eaten him alive.”
“But… his pledge…”
Cawber rolled his eyes. “Never to marry. Until the Negro stands free and tall. Well, all that came after I saved Olympia from the rot of the Fowler dynasty.” There was a different light in his eyes when he spoke of her, even when the words were tinged with anger. “And now look what they’ve got rubbed in their noses, the aristocrats of fair Philadelphia. A happy marriage between one of their own and a docker’s son.” His smile filled the hall. “Is it any wonder they hate my guts?”
Twas late. And cold. Smoke drooped from the chimneys and the night smelled of coal fires. A brown fog roamed the streets. I heard the whistle of a constable—for only a policeman whistles so—and I listened to his footfalls. But I did not see him. The streets of Philadelphia were empty, and the big houses shut. I might have been the discoverer of a lost city, like those fellows who wander the Holy Land or Egypt.
I am good at finding my way, and I found Mrs. Fowler’s house in short order. I stood on the corner away from it, watching the fog drift across its front. Still as a mausoleum it was. With no light or life. But that house was the same even by day. With its windows eternally veiled.
My leg hurt. The season was teaching me more of the new strangeness of my body. The cold was right there inside the bone where it had broken.
Footsteps tapped along the brick sidewalk, their rhythm broken and
hesitant. Slowly, a man shaped himself from the fog, limbs, then a torso, and last of all the head. Twas a fellow with bottle shoulders and a plug hat. Carrying a squeezebox. The instrument hung silent on him, but when he paused before me it gave a sigh.
“Is it a sweetie you’re looking for, boyo? I can take you to the lap of the very innocents, I can. Young and dewy-clean from the Old Country. Riley knows them all.”
He smiled at me with a blackness where teeth should have been. By the smell of him, he must have had whisky for blood and bile.
“Go on with you,” I told him. “Away from here now.”
But his smile did not leave him. “If you don’t want them tonight, sure you’ll want them tomorrow, laddy-buck. Old Adam’s in all of us.”
“Go on now.”
“Little ones,” he said. Then he sang in a ravaged tenor, “Mother change the sheets for shame, our Molly’s a maiden no more…”
I put the tip of my cane to his chest. Just above his concertina. “Off with you.”
He gagged out a laugh and went along singing of Galway. Once I heard him stumble. His instrument groaned.
The house was like a fortress, and nothing to be had from it. I headed for the alley to its rear. With the fog thickening until the gaslamps were but a gauzy paleness.
In the alley, there was no light at all. Fine the neighborhood might have been, but the back lane was as broken as a ploughed field, and the air smelled of decay.
I sensed my way as much as I saw it. The ugly sound of horses come to me from both sides, for there were stables here. Only now and then a muffled voice sounded inside the lesser walls of servants’ quarters. The horses took pride of place for their stalls, and the help got the leavings. The rich are so.
God forgive me, I prowled about the windows. The doing of it made me shiver. For I remembered the man they had caught doing such back in Merthyr, when I was still at the tannery. Justice was rough, and did not wait on English law. A patrol of men got up like Rebeccas took the peeper to the high hills and put out his eyes for him.
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