Men of No Property

by Dorothy Salisbury Davis

  “I’ll watch and bring it,” Peg said. “How is he?”

  The woman gave no answer.

  Peg, carrying the water into the bedroom a few minutes later, saw Mr. Finn herself. It was a shock to see the man so pale and small in the large bed, and with the doctors standing tall above him, and their shadows taller still crowding the wall into the ceiling. Nancy put a finger to her lips. Mr. Finn’s eyes were closed, but watching closely Peg could see the counterpane rise and fall ever so slightly in his breathing. Suddenly the little man opened his eyes, and seeing Peg, they filled with tears. She knelt down by the bed, by the bucket full of bloody towels, and no one stopped her. She put her lips to the cold, limp hand where it lay at his side.

  “Vincent,” was the only word the stricken man said.

  “He’ll come soon, Jeremiah,” Peg said. “Save your strength.”

  Peg held back her own tears until she left the room, but beyond that she could not. The dear man, the dear little man. In all the world she had never known a brighter, gentler soul.

  Stephen Farrell arrived and went into the room without seeing her. They were of a kind in a way, the two of them, and Vinnie the third. Truly, she cared for no others, and there should have been a place for her in their midst. Yet the one not dead to her amongst them was dying now to all of them. She put the kettle on the kitchen stove and wondered if somewhere in the house aside from the doctors’ satchels there was a drop of brandy. She was searching the shelves for it when Stephen found her. They looked at each other a moment when she turned at his step. She set the lamp on the table.

  “’Tis the evilest of nights that brings us together, isn’t it, Stephen?”

  He nodded, holding his hand to her and smiling a little.

  She caught his hand and lifted it to her cheek while he drew her against him and held her lightly in loveless comforting. She kept her face away and not to strain the blessed moment of his touch, she made the least of it and inquired after Delia.

  “Her time is near,” he said.

  Oh, God in heaven, would that my time had come with him! “I have always thought it a marvelous wonder,” she said, “to be waiting a death and a birth at the same time. Has Vinnie been sent word?”

  “I telegraphed,” Stephen said. “We must pray he gets it in time to catch the morning steamer.”

  “There’s no hope?”

  “No. His insides are splintered with shot. I wonder if your brother-in-law is as comfortable.”

  “He wailed like a lost soul when word came. I was there.”

  “Well he might. Oh, none of us are blameless in it, Margaret, even Jeremiah himself. He was tolerant of intolerance, finding excuses for Valois. Let us have no doubt of it: if Valois and his kind come to power, it will not be because of the failure of demagogues like Lavery, but because of the tolerance of men like Finn.”

  “And if he doesn’t come to power?” said Peg.

  Stephen smiled. “A good question. It may very well be for the same reason.”

  Peg waited the night, sitting before the kitchen stove, sometimes nodding with sleep, sometimes starting up at footsteps, at whispering voices. Of whomever she asked the question, doctor or Nancy, the answer was the same: “no change.” She woke once to discover that Nancy had wrapped a blanket about her, and again she awoke to discover that Stephen had returned, that he was standing above her looking at her, and with such compassion in his eyes that she felt like a child again stirring out of an illness. She stretched her hand to him and let it and her eyes beg the touch of him. He bent down and kissed her gently on the mouth.

  “It’s coming dawn,” he said, going to the window and opening the shutters.

  “Stephen, do you remember…”

  He shook his head and she let the question go. “I have forgotten, Margaret… and for all time.”

  Peg tried to rub some warmth into her hands. “How I loathe the woman you married,” she said.

  “You shouldn’t. It is me you should loathe.”

  “God knows,” Peg said fervently, “I would if it were in my power.”

  “Shall we try to make some breakfast, Margaret? Doctor Burns has watched the night and poor old Nancy is near as prostrate as her master.”

  Stephen went to his home again after having coffee, and he was so long gone Peg feared Vinnie might come before his return. Not for her sake, but for the boy’s she wanted Stephen there when he arrived. Vinnie did not approve of her, she thought wryly, and he should not have his only comfort from her. Outdoors the police kept the curious moving. Chambers Street was a business thoroughway. Move on. Move on. Find a park, or find a church. The newsboys cried their wares: Peg was a long time listening before she made out what they were hawking: ASSASSIN UNDER GUARD AT TOMBS. She had not even given a thought to the man who had fired the shot. Some drunken slob of an Irishman, likely, boasting the only gun ever trusted to him to hold.

  And there as though he had prompted the thought came Valois prancing up the street. He walked always as though he would climb the back of anyone in his way, and this morning he carried a stick. Peg watched him whack it against the legs of a persistent newsboy. The cruel asp. She moved quickly to find Nancy. Confound Stephen and his confined wife! He should have been here now to cope with such wrath as Valois carried. One thing must be secured: he should not be allowed to see Jeremiah. Nancy agreed as did Dr. Burns, and the big woman took up her station outside the bedroom door. Peg waited in the drawing room, there to receive him when he was turned from the door of the stricken man.

  “I wondered in which house you were to be found this morning, Margaret,” were the words with which he greeted her.

  “I have been here the night,” she said.

  “Without its occurring to you to summon the friend for whom he is giving his life.” His voice quivered with emotion, sincere or feigned.

  “I don’t think Jeremiah is giving his life for anyone or anything,” she said. “He was robbed of it.”

  “So that is the story!” Valois cried. “The cruelty of it—the coldblooded cruelty of the Irish. Let me tell you something, Margaret Hickey—you are wrong. He will die for his country as surely as if on the field of battle.”

  “Val, would it destroy you entirely if the poor man were to live?”

  He turned his back on her. “I want to see Jeremiah,” he said. “I shall wait until I am summoned, and I depend on you, Margaret, to see that I am admitted to his presence.”

  “Not until Vinnie has come,” Peg said quietly. “He’s the only one Jeremiah has asked for.”

  21

  IT WAS A MOST remarkable thing, Vinnie thought, as the steamer throbbed into sight of the Battery: all autumn he had felt responsibility hovering over him like a bird and now it had lit upon him. Stephen’s message had said only that Mr. Finn was seriously wounded, but the papers put aboard at The Narrows gave some details of the incident and in his imagination Vinnie followed Mr. Finn on his not uncommon wanderings of the night. “Pugs” Reilly, according to the Herald, had fired the shot, claiming self defense. The Tribune blamed Dennis Lavery…Reading that account Vinnie felt his heart thump terribly. All the accounts together did not make a story, but in them all it was implicit that Finn would die, and for just a flashing instant, Vinnie saw the empty house, the empty world without him.

  He leaped from the side of the steamer before it was secure in the slip and crashed his way through the crowd, alerting the foremost cab before he reached it. When the cab bogged down in traffic, Vinnie abandoned it and his carpetbag in it, and ran with all his might, pausing only when his lungs seemed collapsed. God wait, wait, let him wait. His vision was true, Vinnie knew, the dear man hanging onto life until he come. The cursed crowd outside. Was he living or dead to have gathered them?

  Stephen caught him in his arms at the top of the stairs. “He’s very weak, Vinnie. Quiet yourself, lad.”

  Vinnie nodded and sucked the breath into his lungs. Peg came and took the muffler from about his neck, and with
her own handkerchief wiped the sweat from his face.

  The doctor came from the room and Vinnie got his first panic over him in glimpsing his guardian before meeting the full image of him. “You can both go in now,” the doctor said to Peg and Stephen.

  “The boy’s here,” Stephen said.

  “Thank God. Go in, son.”

  Nancy was kneeling at the foot of the bed, her head bowed upon the counterpane, her back to the door. Vinnie, passing, put his hand upon her shoulder an instant.

  So bright and almost merry were the eyes of Mr. Finn when they opened upon him, and his voice was quite clear. “Oh my, you have come quickly, Vincent.”

  “I ran part way, sir,” Vinnie said. Someone put a chair where he could sit close without disturbing the bed. The odor of blood was stifling, blood and what he could only surmise was the foresmell of death. Someone was burning incense in the room to overcome the stench.

  “I’ve thought all night, Vincent, what I should say to you. There is something you must see to for me. I don’t want any flags, do you understand? Stephen will know what I mean. No flags. All night I’ve kept my lips sealed. Oh, my boy, if you had not come soon…”

  “But I am here,” Vinnie said.

  “I am a Jew. Have I ever denied it? I have almost wished you were…”

  “Isn’t it bad enough that I’m an Irishman?” Vinnie said.

  Mr. Finn smiled and the blood mingled with the spittle on his lips. Peg put a cloth in Vinnie’s hand and he wiped the man’s mouth.

  “Such a long time ago,” Mr. Finn said, and he had begun to breathe heavily and with a hissing noise, “it came to me that no man could find truth so long as he made common faith with a congregation, a party…dogma is the enemy of truth, even if it is itself truth. I had it all so clear in my mind to tell you. But you must find it out yourself. If you believed it because I said it, we two would be a congregation…” He gave a cough that wracked him and then whispered, “Do not let them say I am a martyr. I do not want to die, but all men must. And I would thank Dennis for one thing—a barefoot apprentice he brought me when his heart was pure.”

  The last words were very faint and after them Mr. Finn closed his eyes. He opened them again in a moment, but not to look at Vinnie or anyone. “Doctor,” he said very clearly, “ask everyone to leave. I want to be alone for a while.”

  A few minutes later the doctor came out to where they waited and said that Mr. Finn was dead.

  PART VI

  1

  THE NIGHT WAS BITTER when last we met, sister of mine, with the cry of winter in it, and men without souls were upon the streets. We were drawn together by a power as strange as the moon’s upon the tide, and for a little moment gave one another succor. Then came Dennis home. And which of us dared live till spring?

  Yet the tulips are in bloom around the Battery.

  “And so, after all, all’s well, sister of mine?”

  “Ach, God help us, what is well? And when in the world’s turnin’ ever was all well? All’s well enough.”

  “It must be. You named the child Fernando.”

  “’Tis a saint’s name—Ferdinand or Fernando.”

  “I’ve heard it said the church would canonize the mayor if that would flatter him.”

  “The spoutin’ of bigots, that, though I dare say there’s worse in heaven than His Honor.”

  “And some say better in hell. Is it true he will hire none but Irish?”

  “A thousand Irishmen got work this winter who’d of died without it, true enough.”

  “And is it true they’re paying a little off their wage into the mayor’s fund?”

  “When the rich are buyin’ power, would you begrudge the poor a hap’orth of privilege?”

  “Ah, Norah, when you give back a question to a question, your heart’s not in the answer. Did you know that Stephen named his son Jeremiah?”

  “Vinnie must’ve lost his faith to stand up at a Protestant christenin’.”

  “Do you wonder at that, Norah, after what happened?”

  “What happened happened. If there was no bad in the world there’d be no virtue in good, and no need of penance for sorrowin’ men. Now will you leave me alone on it?”

  I will. But I wonder if you remember how often I begged that of you—long ago when you thought bad and good such a clear and simple matter, sister of mine.

  “And with you, Stephen, all is well?”

  “Quite well, thank you.”

  Is that a darn in the finger of your glove? A fray at the pocket of your coat? “I understand you’re leaving the St. Nicholas.”

  “Not quite the place to rear a child.”

  Nor the place to live when a man’s fortune is falling below his honor. How I love you, Stephen, for that choice which I cannot mention when you do not yourself. But surely you must prosper even without so prosperous and politic a partner. “Your son is very beautiful.”

  “Thank you. I’m glad Delia brought him to call.”

  “Delia did not call. I sometimes sit a moment with Nancy in the park and I pretend…”

  “Ah, yes, you and Nancy are old friends.”

  “I pretend that Mr. Finn is not dead, that the apartment is not boarded up with all my happy ghosts inside. Then both Nancy and I weep and borrow handkerchiefs from one another.”

  “You must forget, Margaret.”

  “Why? I like remembering. So does Nancy and she does not deny me the company of her grief.”

  “Will you come to tea one day before we move?”

  “I expect not, Stephen. I shall be much engaged from now until the season’s end. I’m to have a new play for a smashing finish.”

  “So all Valois’ fury was so much froth?”

  “Thank God for that. I don’t like to think how dependent I am upon him.”

  “Surely he is as dependent upon you? What manager would not throw open his doors to you?”

  “You would be surprised at how few would, Stephen, if any at all. They say I am ahead of my times, whatever that means. I think it means that I am unreliable in drawing custom, that they fear my alienation of their gentler patrons. And they are right. I’ve marked myself the scarcity of true ladies in our audience.”

  “Nonsense.”

  “Nonsense indeed, and I am sure Delia has been often to see me upon the stage since that first palpitating Camille?” Ah, Stephen, I have no tact yet, and you were ever its master. “You must come, both of you, when my new play is announced.”

  And with you, Val? But of course all’s well. And how should I know otherwise, daring not to ask. You smile in anger as in mirth and sometimes grind your teeth when you are as near to loving as your nature will allow. You denounced me because you did not see your friend alive, and I have thought you blamed me when against your pleading he was buried without flags or pomp or deadmarch. I thought you might be avenged of Irishmen on this poor bit of Irish flesh. Instead you have held your tongue in my presence and promised a new play this springtime. What more could I ask?

  “But when, Val, when?”

  “Soon enough, you will say, when you must learn it.”

  “Have I complained? What actress has carried a heavier season? Six roles I’ve added to my repertoire.”

  “And now can’t wait to add a seventh.”

  “I’m bored with things once chewed and now eschewed. I don’t want Cushman’s hand-me-downs. A new play suited to my talents: that was your promise, Val, and I hold you to it.”

  “Pray, peace, Margaret. You will have the play, and by my soul, you’ll play it!”

  It was the softest of June days when the messenger delivered into Peg’s hands The Benefactor. She gave the boy a shilling, at which he looked twice and forbore testing by a surer method only as long as it took him to escape her sight. She took the envelope to the open window and stood a moment looking out. Ah ha, she said aloud, seeing the lad run down the steps, swing wildly between horses, carts and carriages. Across Broadway he bumped noses with a waiting
ginghamed maid, as though it were an accident of course, and then skipped up the street with her to some ice cream haunt of their choosing. I remember springtime, oh, very well I remember.

  She drew a chair to the window and opened the folder. If fame were less than love, it had some little power of making up for it…if what she had was fame. It was no common thing certainly to have a play written for you. The Benefactor. Its dedication page made her heart flutter a bit: “To the memory of Jeremiah Finn.” She turned the page without further self-preparation. The Benefactor, a play in five scenes by An American. “Oh, mother of God,” she murmured, and put her hand to where it might ease her quickened, thumping heartbeat.

  Eight out of ten characters were Irish, not very Irish to an Irishman, but wanting only the actors’ brogue, the birdnests of hair, and raggle-taggle shirt tails to be all Ireland to an audience who thought one Irishman quite the same as another.

  It was clever and horrid, and it would play like leaves in the wind. If Valois had not written it, he had sat on the shoulder of the author. Peg wondered if it was pride or shame that hurt her most. If only an Irishman had written it! What a strange thought, that. An Irishman having written it would need by now to be halfway across the world and in the opposite direction to Ireland.

  “Well, Jeremiah,” she said, getting up at last, and addressing herself to the empty, darkening room, “it’s dedicated to your memory. There’ll be more love in the playing than’s in the writing. But who ever would have known that better than yourself, God rest you?”

  2

  “BRIDGET, YOU ARE CALLED.”

  Called and must make answer. Peg rose and flung the tattered shawl about her shoulders. And why not, truth be told? Yes! Tell the truth and shame a people. There was never a boat to Blackwell’s Island wasn’t crowded with cursing, weeping Bridgets, and never a boat back didn’t bring them with hopes as pale as their faces, and both faces and hopes to be soon changing colors; black was never the color of hope, nor was rouge the beckon of virtue. But a pious start’s to be given you, Bridget, and ye’ll fight yer fall though ’tis not in the script. Oh, Bridget is called, but when she answers there’s no one left in Mrs. Stuart’s dressing room.