Men of No Property

by Dorothy Salisbury Davis

  “We’re closer now to my house,” Vinnie said. “Do you mind if we stop there first?” They were passing through the scene of the previous day’s rioting. All was quiet now, ominously quiet, with the sound of gunshot reverberating in the distance. The cars here were lined up unattended, the tracks twisted out of their beds.

  “Can’t you move the damned horse any faster?” Stephen cried. “If men can run why should beasts have leisure?”

  Vinnie cracked the whip, realizing the sudden terror that had come upon the man beside him. “Only a minute, Stephen,” he said as they turned into his block and he pulled up the horse. At the door he gave the reins over, but he had not stepped down when he saw Jem at the window. “They’re here, Stephen. All’s well.”

  “Thank God,” Farrell said, and jumped down.

  Vinnie needed to hitch the horse to the post and by the minute it took to do that, Jem had run out and into his father’s arms on the step, and Vinnie knew that all was not well.

  In the parlor, the boy sobbed out his story. They had come to the door, a gang of men with clubs and sticks, asking for the nigger. Delia had told them she was gone away, shipped back to South Carolina, gentlemen. And Nancy was all the while in the commode. The men had gone across the street and Delia got Nancy from the commode and pushed her down the cellar steps. She made Jem promise to lead the woman out the cellar door and to the police at the corner station. Nancy was so slow, being big and terribly scared, and the men had come back while she was still on the stairs. Mama got the sword from the wall, and Jem heard her screaming at them while he coaxed Nancy out the back way. They two went through Mrs. Oglethorpe’s yard and then Mr. Oglethorpe came out and took him and Nancy another way to the police and then brought Jem here.

  “You are a very brave lad,” Stephen said. “You stay here now and help Aunt Pris.”

  “Stephen,” Priscilla said then, “don’t go home.”

  “No?” he asked, somewhat bewildered, and very docile.

  “Don’t you understand?” Jem said. “They took the sword away from mama and they killed her. The police came and told us she was the bravest woman in New York.”

  PART IX

  1

  “I’M OBLIGED TO YOU, Judge, for dismissin’ the charges. I’ll vouchsafe he behaves from now on…” How many times during the weeks that followed the riots Dennis said those words, pushing them out with a smile though his gorge rose with them. There was not a man he let down for all that he felt himself let down by having to plead for their freedom. Still, they were a penitent lot he got off, only waiting the chance to get back in his favor. And some in high places had learned a good lesson: they knew now the strength of the people in temper.

  “Aye, she’ll be on the best of behavior hereafter, your honor.”

  There was the promise to stick a man with! Him needing to crave the court’s pardon for a woman giving her address his own house, and getting no thanks at home. “If I’d’ve been here,” said Norah, “it wouldn’t’ve happened in the first place.”

  Wouldn’t it now, Dennis thought, but he said not a word. Like the old fellow in the White House put it, you shouldn’t be sitting on one volcano and scratching the top of another. He was a queer lot, that old one. With his ugly mug and his easy gab, he was as common a man as there was on the street. They’d soon turn him back to where he belonged, the aristocrats, when they’d used him.

  Well, Douglas was in his grave. The truth be told, he prospered Lavery as well there as he would have in the White House, Democrat or no. This way Lavery had standing at least in the party. He’d been right three years ago saying Douglas couldn’t win, and he’d like to be right a year hence, saying who could. If he couldn’t be right, he’d rather be quiet, for he was a young man still, the war couldn’t last forever, and it was the war that blighted his prospects. Of all the friends he had made in Washington, no more than a handful were left, the rest of them out of the Union completely. It was a bad piece of luck sent him into high company so late…or maybe so early. Sure that was the way he must see it. All in all, it was a hard dilemma for a man to be in: here he was at the height of his power with the people, with the lower wards and them to the east willing and eager now to carry him anywhere, and him, you might say, with no place to go!

  Horatio Seymour made it known that he would like Lavery on his ticket when he ran for re-election as governor that fall. It wasn’t Lavery he wanted, Dennis thought, near so much as the Lavery votes. And it wasn’t governor he wanted to be near so much as president, and nary the chance of that if he wasn’t sitting in the governor’s chair when the time came round.

  “Once I can smell the ambition on a man’s breath,” Dennis said, talking it over with the big man at Tammany, “I turn my back on him quick.”

  Tweed smiled, for he was not ambitious of office himself. “What do you do for your own breath, Lavery?”

  “I eat the first thing I can get my hands on,” Dennis said bluntly. “’Tis only stale ambition offends me.”

  It was decided to run Lavery at the county level for Recorder on the ticket headed by Seymour. Dennis was well pleased in it. He would be going before the people on his own behalf and, not needing to worry about the upstate vote, he was sure of winning whatever happened to Seymour, aye, and a snug office in which to ride out the national storm in politic safety.

  2

  NEVER WAS THERE A time it so little honored a New York man to boast his Irish origins as in the autumn of 1863. Even the mention of Marye’s Hill brought scoffing. “Sure,” Vinnie heard said in a mock Irish accent, “the trouble there was they confused the tune, mistaking a charge for retreat. What a bloody surprise when they got the grape in their faces instead of their backsides.” Bloody enough, Vinnie thought, and for the first time looked over his medals. He was of half a mind to wear them and a shamrock, to appeal to the President himself if necessary for some new military privilege. “But don’t you see,” Priscilla said, “such violent attrition only gains more notice to something best forgotten.” “What would you have me do?” “Only your work as Vincent Dunne, Counselor-at-Law.”

  Priscilla was right as she usually was, and Vinnie worked as he had never worked before, and now against odds of an appalling increase: of all the forms corrupted in the decade, the most frightening was the New York bench. Then came the announced candidacy of Dennis Lavery for Recorder by which office he would sit as judge in Special Sessions Court.

  “By what right?” Vinnie cried.

  “Rather, by what privilege,” Stephen said. “The privilege of office bestowed by the rights of the people.”

  “You must oppose him, Stephen.”

  “No. I’ve given up The Democracy and its conventions.”

  “You cannot. I don’t believe you have at all.”

  “Shall we talk about Lavery?” Stephen said. “You asked by what right, presumably by what right he deems himself worthy of such office. I doubt he has given a moment’s thought to his qualifications. The fact that there was rioting justified him to himself, and by the peculiar reasoning of a demagogue, the fact that it got out of hand has put the people in his debt. It is now their duty to exercise their rights on his behalf. He has no doubt whatsoever of his ability to sit in judgment of them individually or collectively.”

  “To whom does he think he’s responsible?”

  “To God, Tweed and Lavery, but not necessarily in that order of importance.”

  “After what happened to you, Stephen, won’t you do something about it?”

  “Vinnie, Delia’s death was a consummate irony. Whatever I do cannot be predicated on it.”

  Vinnie looked at him for a moment, wondering at all the things to which Stephen had maintained an apparent blindness which he could now believe was no blindness at all, but a silent calculation of his own power to change them. This was what Mr. Finn had meant the night he said Stephen would believe what he must believe. “There is a part of you I shall never understand, Stephen,” he said.

/>   “The part that should have been an Englishman, no doubt,” Stephen said wryly, and Vinnie remembered the day he had made the remark: after his graduation. What a long, long time ago!

  “Stephen…suppose, mind now just suppose the Union party were to nominate you…”

  The man was shaking his head. “I could not defeat him, Vinnie.”

  “Would that really matter—if it were true?”

  “Very much if they put up a man who can defeat him.”

  “And would you work for that candidate?”

  “As hard as I have worked for any cause.” Stephen rose from his chair and went to the window, outside which Jem was playing in the garden with Maria. Now that she was of a toddling, chattering age and still of the inclination to adore him, Jem was highly tolerant of her. “When this war is over, Vinnie, I want to take Jem West. I want to open a law office, perhaps in a town like Springfield, Illinois. I might marry again—for Jem’s sake as well as my own, though I’ve no one in mind.”

  Vinnie saw the little frown as he hesitated—in memory of someone he might once have married before ever he met Delia? He always built upon his mistakes, but without ever trying to mend them.

  “And yet,” Stephen went on, “this city has been my home. It seems now that it chose me rather than my choosing it, and it deserves more of me than I could wish to give.” He turned and looked at his friend. “All my life, Vinnie, more loyalty has been needed of me than I have found it in my power to give. Where is the flaw?”

  “Perhaps in your stars after all.”

  Stephen smiled. “How easily you give absolution, Father Dunne. I must come oftener to confession.”

  Vinnie talked first with Judge Grisholm, and with him went to the Union League Club, where the opinion and advice of other gentlemen were sought. He went also to Mr. Taylor and his friends. Time and again he heard it said there was no doubt that the reluctance of honest men to risk the opprobrium of public office accounted for the situation of the day. His record as Poor Commissioner and in the Immigration office recommended Stephen Farrell to them. “Oh, yes, a fine fellow,” they all agreed, and some remembered him as a good lawyer…“but.” The “but” was never accounted in Vinnie’s presence, yet he knew very well what it was. That Stephen was Irish made the respectability hesitant to act on his behalf.

  “Why, sir,” Vinnie said to Judge Grisholm, “it has come now to this: they prefer their prejudice. One good Irishman would destroy it, and that would never do.”

  “No,” the judge said, “that is true in part only. All these gentlemen foresee that in the fullness of its corruption the Tammany nest will crumble, and with a minimum of effort on their parts, and less chance of their getting dirty. Also, there is the war, my boy. What is it Lincoln says of the riots: one rebellion at a time is about all we can handle? There is relevancy.”

  “Am I mistaken, sir, in believing that there is something corrupt in their attitude?”

  The judge brought his brows together. “Feeling the way you do and doing nothing about it might signify the beginning of corruption. Now all these gentlemen will sustain you and Mr. Farrell. Do not mistake them: they are not cynics. They are merely tired old men like myself.”

  “Then where do I go?” said Vinnie.

  “You go to the politicians. You should know by now that there is no such thing as a tired politician. Reformers weary and go to bed, but along toward morning the politician goes to work. And let me tell you, Dunne, in such company Farrell’s Irish origins will not hamper him a ballot’s worth.”

  And once again Vinnie thought of Mr. Finn. To the end of his life, however disinclined he might have felt toward exerting himself, he had risen to meet every challenge to his faith. How rare a man, Vinnie thought, he was only now realizing.

  Vinnie did go to the politicians. He sought them out amongst the Republicans and the War Democrats whose coalition made up the Union party. They were calling in speakers from all over the country, including Vice President Hamlin, and with the tide of the war turning finally in the Union’s favor, they believed they could bring down the governor despite the city vote for peace, Lavery and Seymour. How welcome then a candidate who could carry the upper wards against Lavery and at least splinter the lower. Stephen Farrell for Recorder! It was soon forgot who first proposed his name, and that was fine with Vinnie. Like Mr. Finn before him, he was content with a quiet vigil. He tallied the crowds, bought a drink for a thinking man to make him think aloud, and listened at Lavery’s tar barrels: the rant against the rich man’s war, the poor man’s wage; his own glorious defense of the rights of men of no property.

  “Mr. Lavery will tell you,” Farrell addressed the lower wards, “that he has only your interests at heart, the defense of your rights as poor men. God knows, your rights need defending, but I doubt if the right to be poor is one of them, though Lavery defend it to the death. Dennis Lavery needs the slums and tenements, but you who dwell in them do not need him. You need help out of them, not contentment in them, someone who will work toward their destruction, but not toward yours. In these days of enlightenment wherever there are kings upon the earth and their people are abused, we say shame upon the kings…but in this blessed democracy when the people are abused, the shame is upon the people.”

  3

  “GODALMIGHTY,” DENNIS SAID AT the breakfast table, “they’re standin’ with their mouths hangin’ open listenin’ to him. If he was talkin’ Arabic they could make as much sense out of what he’s sayin’.”

  “And yet I hear,” said Peg, “he has an excellent chance of tumbling you.”

  “Where are you listenin’, sister?” said Dennis. “You know, don’t you, that if ever you take a step out of this house without Norah, you’ll never come into it again?”

  “I am well aware of your hospitality,” Peg said, and left him to Norah.

  When he was gone from the house, Norah came up to her room with a jug of hot water. Peg had the dye pot and a brush waiting, and sat with a towel about her shoulders before the looking glass.

  “Be lenient with it,” Peg said as Norah took a strand of her hair in one hand and the brush in the other. “I don’t want to get up from here looking like an Indian.”

  “I’m tryin’ my best not to paint your scalp, but you better not take off your hat where you’re goin’.”

  “Neither hat nor shoes,” Peg said, watching her sister’s face in the glass. Her bawdish intent was wasted.

  “I’ve put new buckles on your slippers,” Norah said, “and I’ve a nice plume for your hat.”

  The words brought Peg a sudden vision of herself on the threshold. A cold shiver ran through her.

  “Are you catchin’ a cold?” said Norah. “Maybe you’d better put it off a bit longer.”

  “No,” Peg cried. “Do what you’re doing, but for the love of God, neither push nor pull me, Norah. Let me take one step at a time, today.”

  “Alannah, alannah,” Norah said, looking down on her with great love, “I’ll take your hand.”

  Peg smiled remembering how as children Norah was always reaching for her hand, and she hiding it to be able the quicker to run off from her sister.

  “There,” said Norah at last, “I’ve done no more to you than the sun to God’s green grass.”

  Peg dried her hair before the grate, and then bathed her body, and remembered Miss Parts-and-Parcel. She was sitting in her chemise, breathing deeply, when Norah brought a pot of tea and a slice of bread. “Sure, the bath’s weakened you,” Norah said.

  “Where are the children?” Peg asked. “I don’t want them watching.”

  “They’re all in school,” said Norah, “and this is Emma’s day to help Mary Lavery. Did you know her and Kevin are goin’ back to Ireland? They’ll never get over losin’ the boy, and Dennis says Kevin’s no hand at the business.”

  “I keep forgetting,” Peg said. It seemed like yesterday was summer and the children were on holiday.

  “Drink the tea and nibble the bread f
or strength.”

  The one mouthful she took of the bread wadded in her stomach, but the tea gave her life and she dressed herself with great care. She had done it every day for a month now, if to go no further than the park with Norah.

  “Oh, look at herself,” Norah cried. “The picture of fashion as ever she was!”

  Peg did not have the strength now to spend on words; she needed it all, every breath and thought, to accomplish one step at a time on her determined journey. She sat very erect and composed in the vestibule while Norah ran out to summon a cab. “Will I go with you, love?” said Norah, holding the front door for her. “I’ll sit in the cab if you like.”

  Peg shook her head and looked to the sky, the street, the houses. “How big it is,” she said of the outdoors.

  Norah, thinking she meant the cab, said: “If they make them any bigger two of them won’t be able to pass on the street. Mind now, go in for a cup of tea if you feel anythin’ naggin’ you. You’ve the price of it and your cab, and you’ve the powder the doctor gave you. Don’t be ashamed to take it.”

  “The Broadway Theatre, driver,” Peg said, and climbed into the cab. She waved her hand to Norah without looking at her, and the vehicle began to move. She could stop him at the end of the block and be off with his fare in her hand, his fare and the price of a cup of tea, ha! She was not even trusted with the money to bring her home. Norah would come out with that when she came. But the purse in her lap itself was worth a couple of shillings, and the buckles, the lovely new buckles on her toes. She dug the nails of her hands through the gloves into her palms. “Hail Mary, full of grace,” she said aloud each word clearly, “the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou amongst women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus…”

  “How nice it is of you to see me, Mr. Richards.”

  “Well, Mrs. Stuart, for old time’s sake…”