Men of No Property

by Dorothy Salisbury Davis

YES, I’M PLAYING TONIGHT. Mrs. Stuart is playing tonight. Mrs. Stuart? That actress who made such a splash in Camille, remember? You know, she was caught in the fire the night The Valory burned. There was talk it was arson. Some said she was drunk. It was right at the height of the Know-Nothing troubles. Her brother was there, or brother-in-law, Lavery. He’s in the State Senate, a Wood Democrat. He carried her out and supposedly said, “Let it burn.” But whoever said what, the machines took up sides and put out each other instead of the fire. New York, New York, a fine city, New York. And what happened to her? Trouble she was, and who hires trouble? Oh a couple there were who’d have chanced it, but to tell you the truth, she’s a beauty no longer and not even the actress she once was. Wrapped up eight months in swathes and dressings, you don’t just come out the way you went in. Fire, they say, eats fire. My friend, to borrow a phrase from the Bard, poor Peg’s a-cold.

  “Fill your cup and join your friends, Mrs. Stuart. I’m leaving and they’re calling for you.”

  “Don’t leave, Jabe. And don’t be bitter with me. I’m sure you’ve had no more ‘no’s’ in your life than I have.”

  “I could match scars with you…and did,” Reed said.

  “A cruel way of making love,” Peg murmured.

  “Have you ever found a kind one?”

  “No.”

  “Nor I.” He sat down opposite her and put his elbows on the table. “Perhaps we should have started from that proposition, that making love is a cruel affair.”

  “Or never started at all. It was a passing weakness with me, Jabe.”

  “There’s this to be said for passing weaknesses, they frequently recur until they’re leeched.”

  Peg looked at the dregs in her empty cup. “I will not hurt you again, Jabez.”

  “Then you would accommodate your sensitivities to my affliction if I were to propose myself again your lover?” Peg said nothing. He put his hand to her chin and jerked it up, forcing her to look at his eyes, fierce and searching dark. “You would take me into your bed and pretend me as white as an Irishman.”

  Peg could feel her mouth quiver. “It has been a long time since I pretended anything to myself,” she said.

  “God damn your charity,” he said, rising and kicking the chair from beneath him.

  Pfaff came across the room waving his apron. “Out! Out! Wild man!”

  But others had taken hold of Reed, and it was Peg who fled the cellar. What a sorry end to the afternoon. But which of them ended happier? A chancy thing, her happiness—like a sunny shelter on a windy day. If you stayed in it too long, the sun itself moved off. People there were with less of it, like Jabez, and people with more, like Vinnie and his darling girl. There were not many women, Peg thought, to whom she was affectionately inclined. Well, as Norah would say, he deserved it. Whenever good fortune befell people Norah said they deserved it and whenever bad, she would say it was but the will of God trying the size of their souls.

  Peg stepped into a watchmaker’s shop and inquired the time of day. It was sufficient to a quick visit with Norah and maybe a share of the children’s supper. Now there was a little shelter—sitting down at the kitchen table with Emma and Kathleen, Johnny and Michael, and them putting on their best manners, craving a tale of the west. No questions of them but were easy to answer: what do the Indians wear at night and where do they go to sleep, and do the mothers lie on their stomachs so the babies can stay in their pouches?

  How easy it was with the flight of fame to ride in a public bus. If she was noticed at all and recognized, its only acknowledgment was made behind the back of the hand to a neighbor. Well, she might ride up Broadway and not stir a pulse, but the devil a step she could take on the Bowery without bringing out the neighborhood. “Ho, Peg! and what’ll you give us tonight?” “How are yer dyin’ and who ’ull you kill?” And God help the one who would harm her. “Name the man and I’ll muss him. I’ll hammer his head to the fit of a penny!”

  “Peg!” The surprise in Norah’s voice made her wish she had not come. “Dennis is home, but he’s goin’ off soon.”

  “Will I go and come back?” said Peg with a sarcasm lost on her sister.

  “No, but sit quiet in the kitchen and I’ll come by and by. Fix your own tea. The fire’s started.”

  She might sit quiet, Peg thought, but Dennis was threshing round like a mad bull up the stairs. She had but the choice of plugging her ears or listening to what he was saying.

  “‘Look, my boy,’ says his honor,” Dennis started as soon as Norah went up to him. “‘I put you in Albany and I can bring you down,’ as though, mind you, he’d ever’ve been mayor at all if it wasn’t for the likes of me. And didn’t he know what I was thinkin’?”

  “You’ll miss your train,” said Norah.

  “‘When the people pin their faith in a man,’ he says to me, ‘they’re not goin’ to be parted with it till he loses faith in himself. And Lavery,’ he says, smilin’ like a cat, ‘I was never more confident.’ And this, mind you, in the teeth of the state legislature and the courts.”

  “He’s a remarkable man,” said Norah.

  “Oh, God help you. He’s no more remarkable than them who put him where he is. Where’s my razor?”

  “It’s packed. Everything’s packed.”

  “’Tis indeed,” said Dennis. “Judge and jury.”

  “If you go now you’ll have a few minutes to stop and see the childer’.”

  “It’s a wonder you couldn’t’ve kept them home today.”

  “’Tis Thursday and I didn’t know you were leavin’.”

  Thursday, Peg thought, and remembered vaguely that once a week Mary Lavery had the four oldest there to their suppers. She heard the trudge of Dennis into the nursery. There would only be herself and Norah and the little one, and the old man when he came home groaning with the ache in his back. She filled the kettle with water and took it to the stove. The flames leaped up when she lifted the lid and she shied from it, spilling the water. It hissed and spat and Peg bit her lip for courage. “God have mercy on the souls in purgatory,” she whispered.

  “Where is he off to this time?” she asked when Norah came back.

  “Washington, Godspeed him.”

  “No less,” said Peg.

  “’Tis a delicate mission.”

  “Then he’d better take off his boots,” said Peg. “The way he was thumping up there I thought he would come through the ceiling.”

  “You’ve no idea the change comes on him in company,” Norah said. “You wouldn’t know him for the same man, his tongue soothin’ as butter. Have you time for supper?”

  “A bite. I wish the children were here.”

  “You know it’s Thursday.”

  “I scarcely know one day from the next,” Peg said.

  Norah scalded the pot and put in a fistful of tea. “They’re abolishin’ the Municipals,” she said.

  “What?”

  “The police. The State Legislature has ordered them disbanded. The tool of the mayor, they called them, as though it wasn’t one of their own they were lookin’ for in the city.”

  “Well,” said Peg, “it was a thieves’ holiday one way or the other. From the ones I know of them we’ll be as well off without any.”

  “Maybe better,” said Norah. “Dennis says the mayor won’t obey the order. There’ll be two forces and maybe fightin’ each other. They’ll rue the day they did this at Albany.”

  “And not the day in New York they elected Fernando Wood?”

  “Why should they rue that? The choice was an Orangeman, and he’s done good things for the people whatever he is. Look at the Park and the men workin’ at it. The trouble with them in Albany, they can’t abide the Democrats holdin’ New York. They’ve the Republican majority now and they’re spoilin’ to grab the city. ’Tis a terrible thing they’re doin’ to the people. What they couldn’t get by the vote, they’re makin’ laws to take from us anyway.”

  “I had no idea you were so well versed in p
olitics,” Peg said, smiling at the gentle dig she intended.

  “It’s not politics I’m talkin’. It’s the truth.” Norah sawed at a loaf of fresh bread with a dull knife.

  Peg laughed. Norah had not seen the irony in either remark, dear simple woman. “Do you know who I had coffee with this afternoon? Vinnie. Vinnie Dunne, and if I’m not mistaken, the girl he’ll marry.”

  “Oh, Lord,” said Norah, looking off, “is he of that age already?”

  Something in her remark and the tone of her voice gave Peg a queer feeling. It seemed to imply that Norah had accommodated herself to Vinnie’s absence from this house as though its circumstance were casual, a trip abroad, residence in a distant city.

  “I asked him if he wouldn’t like to visit you,” Peg said, probing, “but he said no.”

  “I dare say he’s come up in the world,” Norah said. “He always had it in him, even on the boat.”

  “He said to tell you there was nothing in the world he wouldn’t do for you—except come into Dennis’ house.”

  Norah frowned a bit and then sighed. “Ah, the pity of it. What’s the girl like?”

  Peg managed a small description and a small supper for which her appetite had faded. They were one, husband and wife, Peg thought, and like the old judge said, that one was the husband.

  “When will you come again?” Norah said when she rose to leave. “I don’t like to think of you sittin’ alone in a rented room.”

  “One day next week when it isn’t Thursday,” Peg said, though she felt now it would not be again so soon.

  “And I don’t like to think of you playin’ so near The Points these days.”

  “Do you think I like it, Norah? Do you think I’ve forgot what it’s like to step upon a proper stage and leave behind this poor thing, Margaret Hickey? To be all Kate, all Beatrice? I saw Mr. Richards the other day, the manager of the Broadway, and do you know what he said? ‘Mrs. Stuart, one of the greatest moments I have ever known in theatre was in your Camille—when you turned your back on the audience.’ And I asked him, is that why you turn your back on me now?”

  “You shouldn’t’ve said that to him,” Norah said.

  “Why not?”

  “Because it’s no way to talk to a man, that’s all.”

  “He said, ‘Perhaps it is, Mrs. Stuart.’”

  “And what else could he say, you puttin’ the words in his mouth?”

  “Would you have had me beg him? Go down on my knees?”

  “When you want somethin’ bad enough you get on your knees for it,” Norah said tightly. “Like the song says, ‘Root, hog, or die.’ Isn’t Dennis crawlin’ to Washington now to beg favors of men not half his own worth?”

  “For what, Norah?”

  “For his childer’ and me, for his place in this world. And if he didn’t another man would, and have it soon, let me tell you.”

  “I shall steal before I beg,” Peg said. “Oh, may I have the loan of a dollar till the next time I see you?”

  Norah went to the cupboard. “Did you pay back pa the two you borrowed from him?”

  “What business is that of yours?”

  “None, save you’re makin’ more than your da.”

  “Pa doesn’t need to look prosperous,” Peg said.

  “’Tis the queer thing in America,” said Norah, “the things needin’ to look what they aren’t so they can get to be what they look.”

  “It’s water that primes the pump,” said Peg, taking the money.

  “I wish it was water you were spendin’ that on. Oh, I lived in the house with the disease long enough to know the signs of it.”

  “’Tis a wonder,” Peg said, “Dennis doesn’t run on the Temperance ticket.”

  “Peg, why don’t you come home? Dennis was sayin’ again there’s the room upstairs and you’ve the learnin’ of a governess. The childer’ need…”

  “Oh my God,” Peg cried over her words. “What a turn you give me, saying that. Do you remember sending me to the priest on the boat? I proposed myself to Stephen Farrell to be recommended as a governess to his fine friends in New York. And here I am—offered the position in the home of Dennis Lavery.” She laughed.

  “There are times I think your accident undid your reason,” Norah said, “and I forgive you more than I would others.”

  “If God is just,” Peg said, “I have no need of your forgiveness. Goodbye, Norah.”

  “Save your actin’ for the stage, Miss High and Mighty.”

  Peg was but a few steps down the walk when Norah called after her. She looked back and Norah waved. “Don’t stay away too long, Peg. I’ve worries enough without you.”

  “Ha! And who hasn’t?” Peg said over her shoulder.

  She saw the old man getting down from the tail of a van when she reached Broadway and hastened to board the omnibus before they should meet.

  6

  “TWO YEARS AT LEAST,” Vinnie said in his first moment alone with Priscilla. Her mother and father had gone from the room, Mrs. Taylor deliberately closing the door as though confiding in them a sacred trust. “It’s not tomorrow nor the day after, Pris. Do they think we’ll change our minds?”

  “I shall never change mine, Vinnie, no matter what they think.”

  “‘What’s two years at your age, Vincent? Time to prove yourself and you will do it the sooner, trust me, without the encumbrance of a family,’” Vinnie went over Mr. Taylor’s words. “As though my dearest could be an encumbrance.”

  “Tell me the truth, Vinnie: you think they’re right just the same, don’t you?”

  “Only a little, Pris,” he said, wishing she were not always so zealous of the truth. “My need for you is very great and they know that. The need for a home recommends an early marriage, and they cannot be blamed for asking that I, too, grow up a little more.”

  “Did papa say that?”

  “In other words he said it. I’m very fond of your father. I made something of a fool of myself, proposing to demonstrate my solvency to him.”

  “Ha! That makes you mother’s fool. It’s her favorite folly.”

  “That’s an unkind thing to say and not half-true.”

  Priscilla looked at him most peculiarly.

  “Now what are you discovering?” Vinnie said.

  “That maybe they’re right after all,” she said slowly. “In some ways I’m ever so much older than you, Vinnie.”

  “I’ve never claimed to be Methuselah,” he said.

  “But you are!” she cried, and suddenly leaped from her chair and nested in her gown at his feet. She caught his hands, kissed them, and then looked up into his face exploringly.

  “Now what?” he said.

  “I don’t know exactly. I’m wonderfully happy. I don’t know how to tell you what happened just then inside me. Like a lifetime in a minute.”

  “Was it something I said?”

  She set her chin upon his hand where it rested on the chair, and thought about it. “What you said about mother, it sounded so—so patriarchal! I could just see you an old, old man, gathering us all around you!”

  “Stow such visions!” Vinnie cried, rising and lifting her to her feet. “I’ll not play the grandfather until I’ve spent my life your lover.”

  “Oh, Vinnie,” she whispered, “when you say that I do mind waiting terribly.”

  “I love you, Priscilla, with all my heart and all my soul and all my body.”

  Her arms tightened about his neck. “Beloved.”

  “Betrothed.”

  And those two words became their parting sigil whether for the summer months or a winter’s night.

  The city was blighted with riot that summer, ironically cursed by a prevalence of the police; and in the autumn Vinnie sat in court at Grisholm’s side while he presented part of the State’s case against Fernando Wood. Vinnie was no longer confined to the copying of Grisholm’s briefs; he assisted in their preparation and was sometimes allowed to follow their argument at the counsel’s table. On
e of the virtues on which his mentor commended him was his quickness to anticipate a legal reference, and be ready with page and volume. It was a pity, Grisholm said dryly, that he insisted on becoming a trial lawyer when he would be of so much more use an attorney. Climbing the courthouse steps, his arms loaded with statute books and books of statutes, he came face to face one morning with Dennis Lavery. It was their first meeting since Mr. Finn’s death and caught them both unprepared. Dennis stared for an instant and something in his eyes moved Vinnie to compassion, but before he found a word to voice it, Dennis pulled himself up and drew his lips against his teeth contemptuously. “You’ll need to cart in more than that if you’re thinkin’ of cartin’ us out, my lad,” he said and showed Vinnie the tail of his coat.

  And his words, it turned out, were prophecy. The courts found against Wood once more and irrevocably. His Honor paid damages and promptly disbanded the Municipals. But then with the grace of a Hallowe’en cat he climbed onto the governing board of the Metropolitans, the new state ordained police force. No wonder men called it misfortune that he was a scoundrel.

  Then came a circumstance, however, that even the mayor could not turn to advantage—the panic on Wall Street. No plague could spread faster. By snowfall more men than His Honor were out in the cold. The banks were cursed first for suspending specie payment and thereafter for not suspending it sooner. Railroads went under, manufactories closed. Mechanics and laborers were both unemployed, and the frames of abandoned construction trembled perilously in the wind. Brokers met on the street each on his way to beg a loan of the other. Soon a baker’s van wasn’t safe on the streets, butchers rode on their carts with their cleavers in hand, and carriage trade merchants put their wares on the street till Broadway and Chatham looked one.

  Vinnie’s small fortune proved safe, based as it was in real property. The worst that befell him was halving his income pro tem, and the best that for twenty-four hours, his bond stood between Mr. Taylor and bankruptcy.

  Fernando Wood was defeated by a Reform Democrat whose name appeared also on Republican and People’s ballots, and by way of reprisal the Buchanan regime—Wood’s friend by Wood’s wooing—cut Reform Democrats from Federal employ in the city. Some said Old Buck had a place waiting Wood on his cabinet—Crown Prince of Spoils, he might name him, or Chief Demagogue of Nigocracy. But Buck had his own fight before him. Determined to foist a pro-slave constitution on unwilling Kansas, he met Stephen Douglas head on, the Little Giant standing fast by Popular Sovereignty, the people within a territory’s right to determine by ballot their own institutions, and once more the Democracy split down the middle.