by Ann Moore
He stirred now, and she kissed the top of his sweaty head, closed her eyes, and breathed in the particular smell of him. She loved him almost more than she could bear, especially when he threw back his head and laughed, when she saw in him the essence of his father. Imprisoned for insurrection, Morgan had never seen his son, though he’d known a child was on the way and had managed to get a letter to Grace before he’d died. That letter, and the knowledge that he was lost to her forever, had brought on an early labor. With no hope of a life in Ireland and wanted by the guards, Grace had been forced to leave behind the tiny infant at a convent in Cork with Morgan’s sister and Grace’s father; she’d hoped her da would come with the baby in the spring, but instead she’d learned that all in the convent had perished of fever. She bit her lip hard, knowing that the breakdown she’d suffered then had been yet another bane for Mary Kate to endure. Thank God for the Ogues; she owed Dugan her life in more ways than one and had been loath to leave him and Tara. The last time she’d seen them had been in Boston when they came to celebrate Jack’s arrival. Dugan had taken her aside and asked her to consider Peter Reinders’ proposal, for wasn’t he a fine man and wouldn’t young Jack need a father’s hand in the years to come?
Peter was a fine man, a good man—she’d known it the day she set sail from Liverpool on his ship; he’d watched out for her, making sure that Liam would disembark as part of her family rather than ending up in the orphans’ asylum. He’d proved himself over and over again during the years in New York, and she had very nearly married him. Her excuse for not doing so had been her brother, whom she’d wanted so much to find; her excuse had been the children and the treacherous voyage around the Horn; her excuse had been time—she’d needed more of it—but here she always stopped, because the truth was that she loved the memory of a dead man more than the presence of one who lived and breathed and loved her as no dead man ever could.
“Your mam’s a great eejit,” she murmured against Jack’s damp head. “Only you look more like him every day.”
Grace had wed her second husband in secret, in the wee hours of a misty Irish morning, only to watch him disappear moments after. He’d told her to go to America, that he would follow, but instead he’d died and she had come alone. Grace kissed her boy again and accepted that in coming here to San Francisco, in asking Peter for help, she was resuming their courtship; she was agreeing to the consideration of marriage should he still want it. And she did love him, perhaps not with the passion of her youth, but she was twenty-five now, and wiser. With two children to raise, she could not afford to cling to memories; Morgan was dead and Peter was not. There could be no more excuses.
“Ah, Missus Donnelly. Awake and on guard, as usual, I see.”
Grace hadn’t heard the doctor approach and looked up, startled but pleased. “Are you still here, then?” she whispered over the top of Jack’s head.
“Apparently so.” Wakefield stifled a yawn. “How’s Miss Mary Kate this evening?”
“Sleeping well enough. She took some broth earlier and spoke to us a bit.”
“Color’s better, too.” The doctor felt Mary Kate’s forehead. “You can be thankful it wasn’t worse,” he said soberly. “A year ago, we wouldn’t have had a bed available. Four thousand immigrant men arriving each month, and I swear, most of them sick as dogs.” He regarded the woman before him. “One person in five dies before their first year here is over—you are quite determined to stay, are you, Missus Donnelly?”
Grace nodded; she’d known far worse odds than that in her lifetime.
“I understand your friend has not yet returned and in fact isn’t due back for quite some time.” Wakefield tipped his head in the direction of the nurse bent over a patient at the end of the row. “Courtesy of Sister Joseph,” he revealed. “She who sees all and knows all.”
“He wasn’t expecting us, nor had I any way of knowing he’d be away. Where is Panama City, Doctor? Can you tell me?”
“South, madam,” Wakefield said wryly. “Plenty of ships are still coming around Cape Horn, but the advent of the steamship has meant an ever-increasing number are dropped at Chagres, on the Gulf side, and they then travel by canoe and mule across the isthmus to Panama City on the Pacific side, in order to hitch a ride up the coast to San Francisco. It’s been a lucrative business for ship owners,” he continued, “though I hear the steamer trade is cutting them out now. The weather down there is unpredictable this time of year—hence the question of when your friend the captain will actually arrive.”
Grace bit her lip, pondering the situation. “Well,” she decided at last. “I can take care of my own.”
The doctor laughed despite himself. “That goes without saying, Missus Donnelly. Goes without saying.”
Wakefield liked this woman; despite the gravity of her situation—quite desperate when she’d arrived with the child—she had maintained her dignity, never succumbing to hysteria, which he admired. Grace Donnelly was more than likely an attractive woman beneath the sun-reddened skin and flyaway hair, the battered hat she never removed, the mud-crusted cloak and—shocking, though he appreciated the practicality—those trousers, but it was the sound of her voice that drew him into conversation time after time; it was like speaking with his mother all over again. Granted, the Sisters of Mercy were all from an Irish order but were also more than a little intimidating with their no-nonsense air of duty and unblinking focus on the will of God. Certainly, they did not remind Wakefield of his witty, flirtatious Irish mother, who had been the epitome of Southern womanhood even though she rode the estate as boldly as any man and jumped her beloved horses at the drop of a hat, much to the mortification of the doctor’s father, older brothers, and younger sister.
Missus Donnelly seemed to have the same confident disposition and, like Wakefield’s mother, did not back away from lively discourse with a man, no matter how heated it became. When engaged, the young widow had answered his various questions with succinct tutorials on Ireland’s fight for freedom and the plight of the reluctant immigrant, the sin of slavery and the brewing warfare in Kansas Territory. Lingering at the end of a day, Wakefield had heard about the overland walk to Oregon, the valley camp, and the illness that brought the Donnellys sailing down the coast to San Francisco, where it appeared the one person they knew was at present in absentia. Wakefield’s comfortable life—even the eternal voyage from his family’s plantation to the harbor of Yerba Buena with a distraught and, at times, hysterical sister—paled in comparison to the life this woman had led.
“Would you like to sit down, then, Doctor?” Grace broke into his reverie. “Or will you keep on sleeping where you stand?”
Wakefield grinned sheepishly. “Can’t let Sister Joseph catch me napping, now, you hear?” He winked. “In point of fact, I was caught up in a reflection of your remarkable travels, and I was thinking how much you remind me of my dear departed mother. She was Irish, you know.”
“So you’ve said,” Grace reminded him. “Came away from Dublin with her family as a wee girl, grew up to charm your stodgy old da ’til he would go mad or be wed.”
The doctor laughed, delighted with her summary. He crossed his arms and leaned against the post, settling in.
“I’m flattered you remembered. However, my point is that my mother was a truly self-reliant, independent-minded, tough-as-nails kind of woman, but I don’t imagine even she could have survived half of what you all did.”
“Not on her own, of course,” Grace allowed. “But if she’d friends as good as mine, she could’ve. I’d’ve never made it this far without Captain Reinders, the Ogues and the Livingstons, my friend Lily, and all her family.”
“Ah, yes, the magnificent Free family.” Wakefield peered over the top of his spectacles. “Runaways, I believe you said?”
Grace bristled. “I’d never call them that. Running away sounds cowardly, and the Frees are the bravest people I know.”
“I’ve known many Negroes, myself, Missus Donnelly. We have all kinds
where I come from—slaves, bonded servants, freemen—and, yes, some can give the appearance of bravery. But no matter what their status, they are not like us. They may pretend to be—and, indeed, the Negro is an expert mimic—but beneath their civilized dress runs the hot blood of the savage, and eventually, like it or not, blood will out.”
Grace thought of Lily’s husband, January; his silent brooding and rage seemed to come out of nowhere. Lily had been overjoyed at their reunion, but even she had confessed once that Jan was not the man she’d married. The heart had been beaten out of him, she’d said; the beating had cost him his arm and hobbled him, but the worst was the loss of joy that had seeped into the ground with his blood. Solomon, their son, was an angry one, as well, Grace remembered; he was as wary of the white settlers as they of him, and he fought at the drop of a hat.
“Do you not think ’tis slavery itself makes a man savage?” Grace asked then. “Are we not all the less for turning a blind eye to the buying and selling of people?”
“What you’re implying, Missus Donnelly—and I grant that it’s a debatable point—is that we free the slaves. But you’re forgetting that these people are in no way prepared to feed or clothe themselves. And, frankly, if every worker had to be paid, the plantations would fail. Everyone would go under—white man and colored alike. And then where would we all be?”
“Equal,” Grace answered without hesitation.
Wakefield shook his head. “Not equal. The white man, with his greater civility and ability to reason, would be able to prosper once again, while the Negro would sink further into vice and degradation.”
“Man’s character lies in the state of his soul, Doctor, not in the color of his skin.”
The doctor frowned. “Believe it or not, Missus Donnelly, most slaves do not wish to be free. They are housed, they are clothed and fed, they are given work until they are too old, and then they are cared for until the end of their lives. They have their own families, their own private communities, and most masters are not the ogres portrayed by Northern abolitionists, most of whom have no real interest in the advancement of the Negro, by the way, only political aspirations.”
Grace thought of Florence Livingston and her friends, who worked tirelessly in New York to raise money, who lectured and educated the masses about slavery, who had brought hundreds of men, women, and children up from the South and provided the means for them to live a life of freedom and dignity.
“I can’t agree with you there, Doctor, though I’ve no doubt there are slaveholders who are well-meaning people. Only they can do nothing about those who aren’t, those who maim and murder, who assault the weak and vulnerable, simply because they have the power to do so.”
“You are of the ‘power corrupts’ school of thought, are you, Missus Donnelly? Let me tell you that power in the hands of good Christian men is exactly what God intended.”
“I think the word you’re looking for there, Doctor, is compassion. ’Tis the other fellow doles out power, knowing men will become drunk on it and use it to hurt the very people they’re meant to look upon as brothers.”
Wakefield shook his head. “Assault and murder are not exclusive to the white man, madam. Plenty have suffered at the hands of those we’ve spent a lifetime caring for, who have betrayed our caring and kindness toward them in the most terrible manner known.”
“And so, Doctor”—Grace finished carefully, hearing the personal note of anger in his voice—“have we not come back round to the beginning of our discussion? Slavery brings out the worst in man. Every man.”
Wakefield nodded, though his acceptance of what she said was grudging at best. “Well, Missus Donnelly, I know many men—educated, professional men, by the way—who don’t argue a point half as well as you do. But I want you to know that I am not an advocate of slavery and do not wish to argue for its continuation. I hope to see in my lifetime a resolve that will not destroy an entire way of life—for the white man and the Negro alike.”
“But one has already been destroyed,” she said quietly, Solomon’s face floating before her. “And now the whites have become slaves themselves—to money. As you’ve said before, good and decent people own slaves because without them they would lose everything and they cannot bear it, even though it will be their children who pay for it in the end.”
Wakefield squinted at the floor as if he’d felt a twinge of pain. “You may be right, madam. Certainly my own family has built its fortune on slave labor and could not survive if forced to pay wages—our plantation is one of the largest in our state.” He looked up at her. “I confess it was not a life I could pursue with any kind of heart, and I was grateful to be released from family obligations so that I might come out here to practice medicine.”
“I’m grateful, as well. You’re a fine doctor, and I don’t know what we would’ve done without you.”
“Ah.” Wakefield smiled ruefully. “There you have it. I would not be a doctor and could not have traveled here to help build this hospital were it not for the allowance I receive annually. Theoretically, slavery is the price for the life of your daughter. What say you to that?”
Grace put a hand on Mary Kate’s arm, her heart suddenly heavy. “This child means everything to me, but if you’re saying that all must sacrifice if all are to be free”—she looked up at him—“then so be it.”
It was not the answer Wakefield had expected, and his surprise showed on his face. “How can you say that?”
“Because I know where my treasure lies. And I’m no stranger to sacrifice.”
“No,” the doctor agreed. “That you are not.” Fatigued now, as much from the draining conversation as from the long day, Wakefield drew his watch from his vest pocket and checked the time. “Midnight.” He showed the face of it to her. “Guess I’d better finish up here and get home to my sister. I’ll say good night, Missus Donnelly. As always, it has been stimulating.”
“Good night, Doctor,” Grace replied. “Thank you for everything you’ve done. I meant what I said about being grateful.”
Wakefield gave her a weary smile, then retreated, moving slowly down the narrow aisles between the cots, pausing to speak to Sister Joseph, who, like him, seemed always to be on the ward.
Grace watched him anxiously, this good-natured man who had been so kind to her and the children. Often during the past long week, he’d stopped for a little visit, talking to Grace and letting Jack play with his pocket watch, complimenting the little boy’s inquisitiveness; there weren’t many who appreciated that about Jack, she acknowledged. Aye, he’d done a lot for them, and she chided herself for speaking so familiarly to him about his life. She’d not intended their conversation to become personal, and she regretted letting her emotions get the best of her, entering into a heated debate when perhaps she should have been more discreet. She was not good at biting her tongue anyway, and the subject of slavery always made her blood boil. His comment about sacrifice had given her pause, however, and she considered that—for all her talk—she did not really know how much sacrifice she’d truly be able to make in order to free another human being.
Jack was heavy in her arms now, and she eased him onto the floor, where she’d fashioned a kind of nest out of the extra blankets Sister Joseph had loaned her; he stirred and opened his eyes, stared at her for a moment, then closed them again and curled onto his side. Such a handsome boy, she thought again, pulling a blanket up over his shoulders.
Without him on her lap, she was more comfortable and decided to try to sleep herself, though her thoughts still raced. She leaned back in the chair and put her feet up on the edge of Mary Kate’s cot, willing herself to let go of worries about past, present, future; fatigue washed through her, but still her mind whirred. Although it felt as if life had always been these days in the hospital, Mary Kate would eventually be well enough to leave here, and Grace needed to have a home ready. She’d spent a part of each day going out with Jack to look for rooms but had been appalled at what was available. This was immigrant
slum living all over again, unwashed bodies crowded into tiny, dark rooms; worse, San Francisco was notorious for fire—last year, the entire city center had nearly burned down twice, with four fires in the year leading up to that. Grace was terrified of the windowless rooms in the back of these wooden houses, the only ones available for the money she had. Sister Joseph had pointed her toward better districts, but the price was much higher and Grace was less likely to find work nearby, necessary as she was loath to leave Mary Kate and Jack alone for too long a time during the day. Still, she was determined to find something—there were many churches in San Francisco, and she would throw herself on their mercy, imploring a Christian family to rent her decent rooms until she was properly settled.
Can you hear me, Father? Grace prayed silently. I’m way over on the other side of the world now, but it seems I’ve got the same problems as always and I’m hoping maybe You can—
“Missus Donnelly?”
Grace opened her eyes, dropped her feet to the floor, and sat up straight.
“Doctor Wakefield.” She smiled tentatively, afraid he might be about to wash his hands of her.
He sat down gingerly on the end of Mary Kate’s cot. “Missus Donnelly, our conversation took a rather different turn than I’d intended, and I had something else entirely that I wished to say to you.”
“Ah, Doctor, you must forgive me.” Grace shook her head. “I’m always speaking out of turn and I—”
“Please.” He stopped her. “Don’t apologize. The hour is very late in a week that has been very long. For both of us. What I had intended to say to you earlier, is that—contrary to what you might think—I have enjoyed our conversations very much. It won’t be half as interesting around here after you’ve left us.”