He looked me up and down and I could almost hear him thinking, My God, what am I to do with him?
“Can you read and write?” he said doubtfully at last.
You Saxon son of a bitch, I thought, it’s easy to see you can trace your ancestry back to Cromwell.
“I went to the best school west of the Shannon,” I said, “and I completed my education at the Royal Agricultural College in Dublin.”
He gave a small cynical smile and said he could find me a clerical position at his house of business on Wall Street.
“Good,” I said. “I’ll take a month’s salary in advance, and maybe I’ll change my mind about the charity. How about two hundred dollars as a reward for my letter-carrying services?”
He stood up. “Look here, Drummond—”
“I’m thinking you’d better not be less than generous with me,” I said. “Sarah wouldn’t like it at all if she thought I was being treated as less than a friend of the family.”
I watched him turn a deep dull red. When he could speak again he said with far more nasal twang than usual, “I don’t know what your relationship is with my sister. I can hardly believe she has ever given you permission to call her by her first name—”
I laughed. He went redder than ever.
“—but you have no relationship with me and I’m under no obligation to give you any help whatsoever. Is that clear? I could kick you into the gutter if I chose, and let me tell you that there’s no gutter so filthy as the gutter of New York City. So you’ll take a month’s salary in advance from me and no more, and by God, if you don’t want to be a beggar by the time my sister arrives, you’ll accept what you’re given and be grateful for it.”
I admit I never thought he’d have the guts to speak to me like that, so I was taken aback. But I tried not to show it. I shrugged and said very well, if that was the way he chose to treat a visitor to his country and his sister’s friend, it was for God to pass judgment on him, not I. “So I’ll say thank you and we’ll speak no more about it,” I added. “I’m not a man that bears a grudge.”
That was twisting the truth, but instinct told me to smooth him over before he went so far as to withdraw his offer of work and money.
The next two weeks were very miserable for me. Charles Marriott played his part; he wrote to Lord de Salis, asked to see Sarah and the children and reminded his brother-in-law that he was a rich man with a childless wife. I’ve no doubt this was wrapped up in the fanciest language, but that wouldn’t have stopped MacGowan picking up the message about money. Money had been scarce at Cashelmara since the famine of ’79, Sarah had told me, and MacGowan wasn’t the man to take a drop in profits lying down.
So with Charles Marriott playing his part, I had to play mine and work in his countinghouse, or his office, as he called it, but I hated that and quit after a week. I was used to being my own master and spending each day in the open air, so what would I be wanting with days spent sitting on a high stool and copying out rows of figures? I didn’t know how any man could live like that, and I told Charles Marriott so when I quit.
“And how are you going to earn your living now?” says he, very sarcastic.
“Why, Mr. Marriott,” I said, “don’t you be bothering yourself about that, for sure it’s none of your bloody business.”
“Well, don’t come to me when you’re starving” he said, and I didn’t for I didn’t starve.
I’d met other Irishmen by this time. There were Irish in my lodging-house, and soon I knew the Irish bars and Irish eating places and the Irish factions and I found the job I wanted. There was this man Jim O’Malley—he must have been a kinsman of mine and both of us descended from Queen Grace herself—and he had a chophouse south of Canal Street with gambling in the back room and girls upstairs and he needed someone to keep order from time to time when the place got too lively. I picked up a gun and all there was to know about turning a fast card at poker, and soon I was doing very nicely for myself, with two new suits and better lodgings and a steak for dinner every night on the house. I was doing well, there was no denying that, but Sarah was still at Cashelmara.
Lord de Salis—writing at MacGowan’s dictation, I’ve no doubt—said he couldn’t let four little children take that long cruel voyage to America and his wife couldn’t bear to leave them behind. However, if Charles Marriott himself wanted to cross the Atlantic …
Charles Marriott said he couldn’t possibly leave his business at present, and besides the children weren’t so little and would probably enjoy a sea voyage very much. He hoped to welcome them and Sarah to New York before the end of the fall.
Lord de Salis wrote back with more excuses, and I realized with a great rage that this letter-writing was going to go on for some time. But Charles Marriott was not only patient but crafty, and he didn’t give up easily or else go rushing across the Atlantic waving a big stick.
“It’s just a question of time, Drummond,” he said as I paid my weekly call on him to find out if there was any news. “He’ll run out of excuses—or money—eventually.”
Time ticked on. Jim O’Malley bought an oyster saloon off Broadway, very fashionable, and invested in a fancy brothel, and the O’Flahertys, another Irish faction, started to muscle in on him, so I was kept pretty busy. Those O’Flahertys were always a wild crowd, as anyone who’s ever been to Galway City knows, and they were wilder than ever in New York, where everyone ran in factions and there was a lot of money to be made if you were in the right line of business. The only time we got any cooperation from the O’Flahertys was when the Germans began to crowd us both, but it was a funny world we lived in, at the O’Flahertys’ throats all week and then trooping to Mass with them on Sunday. It made me think of home with the Joyces and the O’Malleys beating one another to pulp in a faction fight and then all mingling peacefully in church together the next morning. I thought of home a great deal, usually when I was in church or when it was raining. It rained in a hard foreign way in New York. There was no soft Irish mist, and instead of walking through wet green fields I would have to trudge through dirty, dark city streets. I hated the city. I always hated it even when I was doing well for myself, and day after day I longed for Sarah and home.
Lord de Salis said how good it was of Charles Marriott to be so interested in his estate, and if he had twenty thousand dollars to spare he might like to consider an investment. Charles Marriott said yes, he might, and he would discuss it with Sarah when she brought the children to New York in the spring.
You’d think I would have missed Sarah less as the days passed, but I missed her more. I even stopped telling the priest about the wicked dreams I had because after a while I became tired of shocking him to pieces in the confessional.
“You’re a married man lusting after a married woman,” ran the familiar words, “so your thoughts are doubly adulterous.”
“But you’ll give me absolution, Father?” I pleaded, for to tell the truth I lived a dangerous life in some ways and my one dread was of dying violently before I could receive absolution for my sins. I always did my best to keep in a state of grace, but after a while the priest became angry with my adulterous thoughts and I stopped going to confession.
That upset me, for I was as religious as any other decent Irishman, and I fully expected retribution, but nothing happened except that Jim O’Malley gave me a raise and offered me the pick of the whores in his new brothel.
“Well, thank you, Jim,” I said. “You’re a generous man and no mistake.” But of course it was the same old story. I couldn’t look at another woman for more than two seconds before thinking how inferior she was to Sarah, and besides, I was terrified of the diseases you can get from city women. The sights I saw in New York and the tales I heard were enough to make anyone’s hair stand on end. I’ve never been a man to rate celibacy more than a passing sneer, but for once in my life I was as celibate as a Benedictine monk.
That didn’t make life in New York any easier for me either.
Lord
de Salis wrote and said he really couldn’t consent to his children going to America; it was too far. But if Sarah wanted to go without them he wouldn’t stand in her way.
One Sunday morning in February I awoke and all the heat was off and it was so bloody cold that I’d have sold my soul to be sitting by a peat fire. I stayed in bed and thought of Ireland, and I don’t believe I’ve ever been so miserable in all my life. In fact I was in such a low state that I didn’t go to Mass.
Now, I thought, surely God’ll reach down from Heaven and punish me. First I stop going to confession and then I turn my back on the Holy Sacrament itself. God help me, for surely something terrible’s going to happen.
But nothing did. That week I won two hundred dollars at faro, and Charles Marriott said Sarah had decided to visit New York in April—without the children.
I never went to Mass after that. I wanted to, but I could no longer pretend to care about the adultery, and if I couldn’t lie to myself any more I didn’t see how I could hope to lie to God. All I cared about was Sarah. I didn’t give a tinker’s curse that we were married to other people, because our partnership was going to be greater than any marriage, and she was going to mean far more to me than even the best wife in the world meant to her loving husband.
V
We couldn’t wait. She went home with her brother and I went with her, but as soon as she dared she told him she wanted to step out with me and take a little walk along Fifth Avenue. He let her go although he was very angry, but neither of us cared about that.
We went to my lodgings. I had two nicely furnished rooms off Fourth Avenue by this time—in a tenement, it was true, but there are two classes of tenements, as anyone knows who’s ever lived in New York, the upper-class which is inhabited by honest respectable working people and the lower-class which is no better than a cesspool and which has given the word tenement a bad name. My tenement building was clean and well kept, and when Sarah stepped into my apartments they seemed as good as royal to me. I couldn’t believe how beautiful she was. I was struck dumb and could only watch her fingers trembling as she tried to undo the buttons of her dress. Then I tried to undo the buttons, but I was in such a state they kept slipping through my fingers. Jesus, we were both so clumsy there was nothing to do but laugh, and after that we were ourselves again, and the torture of that long separation was at last at an end.
I was so out of practice that I swear if I’d been an onlooker I would have booed and hissed, but she was so passionate I was soon having another try, and after that I don’t know what happened to the time except that outside it got dark.
Later, when I was lighting a candle, she asked if I’d been faithful to her, and when I said yes she said she didn’t believe it and I said no, I didn’t believe it either but it was true. We laughed again, but afterward she cried and begged me never to leave her, and I said I should be the one to do the begging, not her. But still she couldn’t believe I loved her. I had to repeat it to her many times and prove it yet again until finally I had persuaded her to believe.
It was midnight when I brought her back to the Marriott home, and her brother was waiting up for her. It was plain to see he was furious, but Sarah embraced him and pleaded his forgiveness so fervently that he had little choice but to smother his ill-temper. Yet after she had gone upstairs he said to me, “I want no scandal about this, Drummond, for Sarah’s sake. I refuse to tolerate my sister becoming the laughingstock of New York society. She can see you whenever she pleases, but don’t expect to dine at this house or to attend any functions to which Sarah may be invited. Also she must spend every night beneath this roof, if you please, and next time I’ll be obliged if you would kindly bring her home no later than ten o’clock. I speak not out of personal animosity, you understand, but out of concern for Sarah, and if you care a straw for her I think you’ll realize that I’m talking sense.”
“Oh, is it sense you call it?” I said. “I thought it was prejudice.” Him and his “personal animosity”! But neither Sarah nor I had any wish to quarrel with him after all he had done to help us, so I did my best to keep a civil tongue in my head, and Sarah did her best not to embarrass him in the eyes of New York society.
Lord de Salis began to write to his wife, saying what had happened to Charles Marriott’s offer to invest in the estate and when was she coming home?
Sarah left the letters unanswered for a while, but when she did write she gave evasive answers.
“My plans are plain,” I said to her. “I have to stay in America until I can win a pardon from the Queen. I can’t go back to Ireland till I’m pardoned or I’ll be flung back into jail.”
“But how can you get your pardon?” she asked in despair.
This was a question I had asked myself so often that I had a smooth answer ready. “The Clan-na-Gael will help me,” I said confidently. “That’s the Fenians, you know, and New York and Boston are packed with them. If I contribute enough money to their funds they’ll take up my case with the hero Parnell and Parnell will take it to the Queen herself, I shouldn’t wonder.” I had no idea how much truth there was in this, but I had convinced myself that there was every likelihood of it coming true. I couldn’t have endured New York if I had allowed myself to believe for one moment that I’d never get back to Ireland. “And when I’m pardoned,” I said, sinking still deeper into my dreams, “I’ll cross the Atlantic Ocean again and make Hugh MacGowan wish he’d never been born.”
“If it’s a question of money,” said Sarah, worried, “perhaps Charles—”
“Your brother wouldn’t lend me a plugged nickel,” I said bitterly, “and even if he did I’d turn him down. I’ll make my money my own way, and at the rate I’m going I’ll have it all in the twinkling of an eye.”
“But how long—”
“A year.”
“Promise?”
This was tricky. It was one thing to talk big to cheer her up and quite another to deceive her deliberately. “No,” I said at last. “I can’t promise. Something might go wrong. But I’ll be trying my hardest, I can promise you that.”
“It’s the children,” she said, twisting her hands together. “I can’t bear to think how long I may have to be away from the children.”
“Well, to be sure it’s terrible for you,” I said. I always became uneasy whenever the conversation turned—as it so often did—to her children. “But don’t lose heart. Maybe we can tempt your husband to part with them after all.”
But I somehow couldn’t see this coming true, especially when Lord de Salis persisted to nag her. When was she coming back? Had Charles changed his mind about the money? The children asked every day when she would be coming home.
“Every day!” said Sarah, weeping. Scarcely a day passed when she didn’t burst into tears at the thought of the children. “Oh, Maxwell, what am I to do? I can’t bear to be apart from them indefinitely. I’m not strong enough, but I can’t go back. I’m not strong enough for that either.”
“You’ll get those children,” I said, but I was so worried that she might be on the brink of a nervous collapse that I swallowed my pride and begged for a secret audience with Charles Marriott.
“If you could go to Ireland,” I said humbly to him, “if you could ask Lord de Salis to let you bring the children on a visit to America …”
“I could do no such thing,” he said at once. “It’s obvious de Salis isn’t going to let those children go. They’re his insurance his wife will return to him.”
“And I suppose you think it would be a good thing if she did return!” I exploded, unable to be humble a second longer. “You think it would be better for her to be at Cashelmara with a pervert than in New York with me!”
“I didn’t say that,” he said coolly. “Obviously she can’t return to Cashelmara. But I think she should return to London—or to Dublin, if the marriage falls within the jurisdiction of the Irish courts—and seek legal advice with a view to obtaining a divorce. Whichever way one looks at the situation the inesc
apable fact remains that she’ll never see those children again until she obtains custody of them in a court of law.”
“But I can’t go to Ireland or England until I have my pardon.”
“Quite,” said Charles Marriott. “Forgive me for saying so, but I can’t help but feel that’s a good thing. Your presence at Sarah’s side could only jeopardize her chances of obtaining the children’s custody. In fact, it might even jeopardize her chances of obtaining the divorce itself.”
“She won’t leave me.”
“Are you sure of that?” he said coldly, and I wasn’t. I had reached the point where I woke every morning in a cold sweat for fear she’d gone back. I knew all too well how much those children meant to her.
“We’ve got to get the children out here!” I said in despair. “You must go back to letter-writing again—dangle some more money in front of MacGowan’s nose.”
“Don’t try and tell me what to do!” he interrupted furiously. “I’ve had enough of you giving me orders!”
So Sarah had to give him the orders instead.
“I realize now he’ll never part with all four children,” she said. Poor Sarah, it would have melted a heart of stone to see her saying that so calmly and trying so hard to be brave. “But perhaps we could tempt him to part with one … or two …”
Charles Marriott started to say something about going back for a divorce, but she wouldn’t listen to him. “Not without Maxwell,” she said, and my heart nearly burst with pride and relief. “I’m never going to be parted from him again.”
Charles Marriott looked sick when she said this, but what could he say? Sarah was his sister, and no matter how much he disapproved of me he still wanted to do all he could for her. So he said, “I’ll write again to Patrick and say I’m thinking of making Ned my heir. Perhaps that’ll tempt him to send at least Ned across the Atlantic to see me,” and so it came about that on the fourteenth of December 1885 I first met the Honorable Patrick Edward de Salis, son and heir of the eleventh Baron de Salis of Cashelmara.
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