A Passionate Girl

by Thomas Fleming

  I found myself backing away from him, shaking my head, weeping. “Do you really believe that? Or are you just trying to hurt me?”

  “I don’t know what the hell to believe about you. I don’t know what to believe about anything. You think it’s wrong to own a nigger, and I spent four years of my life fightin’ for the right to own a few. You want to blow the British to hell, but you think it’s wrong to try to make money doin’ it. You think a man’s goin’ to love you while you get into and out of bed with every nitwit son of a politician that comes along?”

  “Do you know something? That’s the first time you’ve ever said you loved me.”

  “What the hell do you mean?”

  “The only other time you used the word, you told me not to love you because you had no money, no future.”

  “I’ll tell you how much I love you,” he said. “Enough to beat hell out of you, right now.”

  “I deserve it,” I said. I pressed myself against him. “O Donal Ogue,” I said, “I swear to you that I will never never make this mistake again.”

  I was scarcely aware of it, but I really meant the mistake of telling him the truth. My private heart was on its way to becoming as inaccessible to me as it was to everyone else.

  Ireland’s Agony, Recapitulated

  “Oh,” sighed Annie with a sympathetic sniffle. “The poor devils. Condemned for life.”

  We were in her new apartment at the Fifth Avenue Hotel, reading the newspaper reports of the trials of the Fenians in Ireland. Outside, rain drizzled down from a gray November sky.

  “There’s little we can do for them. We must look to our own strength here in America, and do with it what we can by way of revenge,” I said.

  I was becoming very American in my blithe disregard for our suffering brethren in Ireland. So was Annie, in spite of her sentimental sniffles. Annie enjoyed nothing so much as a good cry. She loved songs about dying birds and faithful dogs who laid down their lives for their masters. She never failed to search out the daily diet of misfortunes in the newspapers—men crushed beneath the wheels of Broadway omnibuses, children trampled by runaway horses.

  From all reports in the newspapers and from our confidential agents in Ireland, the British had smashed the Irish Fenians in almost every county. The Dublin leaders were tried, and a dozen were sentenced to servitude for life in the penal colony on the island of Tasmania. Many of the convicted men gave magnificent speeches from the dock, condemning their accusers and calling on their brethren beyond the ocean to carry on the fight.

  So far as we could see—which was, alas, not very far—these Irish misfortunes strengthened us. The Irish in America were universally angry, and the sales of Irish Republic bonds boomed. So did recruiting for the Fenian army. On the political front all was going smoothly enough. Robert Johnson remained a supporter of our cause in spite of my personal rift with him, and so apparently did Secretary Seward. At the annual Fenian convention in Philadelphia in mid-October, we had heeded Seward’s advice to reassure America about our patriotism. By an overwhelming vote, the convention accepted a plan proposed by William Roberts and his followers to abandon the secret-society structure of the movement and transform it into an imitation of the American government. Elections were held for a president, a vice president, a senate, and a house of representatives. For unity’s sake, John O’Mahoney was elected president, but all the other positions of power went to Roberts and his adherents, among whom I continued to number myself.

  In New York, the Celts also prospered. Tammany put its man, John T. Hoffman, in the mayor’s office, and Dick Connolly in as city comptroller. They were busy naming their friends to dozens of other offices and laying plans to elect Hoffman governor next year, giving them control of New York state.

  The Fenians had contributed not a little to Tammany’s victory. We sent representatives to rallies in the Irish wards and made statements in the newspapers urging the Irish to back men who were prepared to oppose imperial England wherever they had influence in the American government. Now Tammany was returning the favor, passing the word to its ward leaders and district captains to urge young Irishmen to enlist in the Fenian army. The green flag flew as boldly from Tammany’s headquarters as it did from Moffat House.

  “Have you heard from Dan?” Annie asked.

  “I had a letter yesterday,” I said. “He’s well, was all I could gather from it, and affairs are fine in Chicago. He writes an awful scrawl.”

  Because of his military experience, Dan had been appointed to the staff of the Fenian army’s inspector general and was traveling about the country, arranging for our regiments to buy weapons from nearby federal arsenals and making sure that they were drilling in the most modern manner.

  “I haven’t heard from Dick in a good week,” Annie said. “I had to write him a letter today. Isn’t that the silliest thing? He’s overwhelmed with politics day and night.”

  She spoke lightly, as if it were nothing more than an oddity. Immediately after the election, she had gotten her way and moved to the Fifth Avenue Hotel. Dick had given her an emerald brooch set in diamonds that must have been worth five thousand dollars. Dan and I had been with them the night he gave it to her at the Blossom Club. It had made Dan morose for a week, to think of a man with that much money to spare.

  “I hope Dick writes a better hand than Dan,” I said. “Otherwise you’ll never know what’s going on.”

  Annie burst into tears. “What will become of me, Bess, if he gives me the gate? It’s not that I couldn’t find another man. I still have my looks. But—I haven’t the heart for it. I love him.”

  “And he loves you. Isn’t the proof of it where we are at this moment? You must bear with his new importance without nagging at him, Annie.”

  “You’re right, surely,” she said. “But I live in dread of him dropping me. You can take them or leave them, Bess, but I don’t have your spirit. I never did.”

  “Mother always said you’re a MacNamara and I’m a Fitzmaurice.”

  Annie nodded, her good humor returning. “I wrote to her, you know, telling her that we were all together here and doing beautifully.”

  “Good,” I said. “I haven’t written a line. I was afraid to bring trouble on their heads by saying anything endearing in a letter the British would be likely to open. Michael felt the same way.”

  “I heard not a word back from her. I hope they’re all right.”

  “I’m sure no harm will come to them, as long as old Lord Gort lives,” I said. “He thinks Father is the best farmer in County Limerick.”

  “But he died. Didn’t you know that?” Annie said.

  “When? You never mentioned it to me.”

  “It must have happened while you were on your bond-selling tour. By the time you came back I forgot it.”

  There was a knock on the door. “Who is it?” Annie called.

  “Michael,” said a somber voice.

  I jumped up and opened it. “I thought you’d be here,” he said. Behind him was another man, whom at first I did not recognize, so haggard and thin did he look. Also, my brain refused to admit the possibility of him being there in the hall of the Fifth Avenue Hotel.

  “Patrick Dolan,” I said. “Is it really you?”

  “Yes,” he said. “It’s me, to be sure.”

  “Well, come in,” Annie said, from behind me. “What a nice surprise to see a face from home. You must be bursting with news, and we’re as eager to hear it. I’ll bite my tongue and say not a single hard word to my sainted brother even if it kills me.”

  “I’m afraid he has news aplenty, Annie,” Michael said. “But not the sort we’d like to hear.”

  My heart sank. I saw that Michael’s eyes were swimming with tears. Even fearing the worst brought me an infinity short of what I soon heard from Patrick Dolan’s lips. He sat down in Annie’s chair and pointed to the headlines about the Fenians in the paper. “You know what’s been happening in Ireland,” he said.

  “Yes,” I sai
d.

  “There was no rising or anything like one in Limerick. They didn’t even arrest anyone. They had pretty much broken the circle when they sent Michael here on the run, and you with him, Bess.”

  “Curse the day,” Michael said.

  “But that didn’t stop young Lord Gort. He’d been preparin’ for harsh measures ever since he came down to us for his father’s funeral. No sooner was the old lord buried when I was summoned to the mansion and told that henceforth I was to deal only with certain merchants in Dublin, who were trusted as loyal men. Nor would there be any lending of money in the district by anyone but him. I soon found his men in Dublin charged double prices. I saw that he was determined to put me out of business and get what little power and influence I had into his own hands.”

  “But you never spoke or thought a rebellious word,” I said.

  “That meant little to his lordship,” Patrick said. “He called himself ‘the new breed’ and said he and his friends had determined to rip rebellion out of Ireland’s heart before it took root. The mere fact that there had been a Fenian circle in the district was enough to convict every influential man.”

  “And he turned on Father next,” I said.

  “Yes. He had it in for him worst of all because of you and Michael. He called for his books and swore he’d been cheating his father, for twenty years past. He went to court and asked a summary judgment to cancel your father’s lease though it had ten more years to run.”

  “And he won?” Annie said.

  “There was no way he could lose,” Patrick said. “Wasn’t the judge his brother-in-law? But your father spent a fortune fighting him. He said he wanted to prove an honest man could resist injustice in Ireland by peaceful, lawful means. He couldn’t bear the thought of leaving the farm, that was all. It altered his mind, I think.”

  Sean ait aboo, I thought, remembering our family cry. Hurrah for the old place.

  “Lord Gort evicted them? Put Mary and Mother and Da out on the road like peasants?” I said.

  “He came with his bailiff McCarthy and ten constables. He said he’d heard talk of your father’s tenants mobbing him. ’T wasn’t a word of truth to it; he wanted to make a show of menace to justify what he was doin’.”

  I noticed that Patrick Dolan had stopped looking at me. He spoke those last words into his derby hat, which he still held in his hands.

  “And where are they now? Mother and Da and Mary?” I asked.

  “Well—” Patrick looked to my brother. “God in heaven, Michael, it was hard enough to tell you.”

  “Tell them,” Michael said. “Exactly as you told me.”

  “The constables stood in the road with nothin’ to do. The servant girls and the farmhands were loadin’ the furniture on the wagon. The girls were cryin’, and so were your mother and sister. Your father left them to go round to the barn to get the horses, we thought. But when he didn’t come back Mute Mick, the son of Conn the plowman, went for him. There’s a great cry, and Mick came racin’ toward us as if he’d just seen the devil. ‘Uh, uh, uh,’ he goes. ’Twas all he could say, and pointin’ to the barn. We went runnin’ there and found your father. He’d—he’d cut his throat.”

  I stood up, shaking my head, and walked slowly around the room. Annie began to sob. From the window I looked down at the horse cars coming up Broadway, the New Yorkers in dark coats, umbrellas raised, hurrying across Madison Square. They neither knew nor cared about the news we had just heard. It had happened three thousand miles away in a bothersome country that meant little to most of them. It was not worth a line in a newspaper, except perhaps the Irish-American, and even there it could hardly be reported with enthusiasm. The father of their bold Fenian girl had cut his throat by way of resisting eviction.

  “Cut—his—throat,” I said. “Da. Father.” I pressed my forehead against the cold windowpane.

  “I hope you won’t think of me only as the bearer of this news, Bess,” Patrick said. “I went to Michael because I thought it would be better if—”

  “I wanted them to hear it as I heard it,” Michael said. “So they’d know my feelings as well as their own.”

  I didn’t know what he was talking about. I was barely listening. I was remembering what I saw on Father’s face that last night. His fear of the Ireland beyond our little village world. We had brought it home to him, in all its cruelty and force.

  “He must not have died in vain,” Michael was saying. “We must make sure of that. We must use all our influence to make sure of that. Annie must help as well.”

  “What the devil are you saying?” I snapped. “Annie had nothing to do with this. Leave her out of it.”

  “She must get Connolly to throw his influence against the Canada scheme. Now if ever we must be true to Ireland. Every man, every dollar we raise, must be used in Ireland.”

  “You’re dreaming,” I said. “There’s no way you can change the direction of that policy now. Nor should you. This is a private quarrel. Between us and that bastard Gort.”

  “It’s not. It’s Ireland’s agony, summed up, recapitulated,” Michael said. “I should have been there to fight for him instead of sitting in restaurants over here, eating the best beef.”

  “If you were over there you’d be on your way to Tasmania in a prison ship,” I said. “You would have been in the dock in Dublin with your friends.”

  “Goddamn you, Bess,” Michael cried. “Don’t you feel the shame of it?”

  “I feel nothing but hate,” I said. “Such hate I never thought it possible for my soul to bear. I won’t sleep a whole night through until Lord Rodney Gort is under the ground.”

  I did not listen to Michael, nor Michael to me. He was tormented by guilt for having begun our involvement with the Fenians—which struck me as foolish. It was like feeling guilty over being born in Ireland, the way I saw it. To be a rebel had come as naturally to me as breathing. For Michael, much more under Father’s influence, it had been an intellectual and spiritual struggle. Now he began to dread the thought that he had made the wrong choice.

  I was moving in an opposite direction. Before I had only been playing at hatred. My antagonism to the British had been more poetic than real. Even my dramatic thoughts about the price I paid to ride history’s whirlwind seemed trivial now, mere posturings of an adolescent in love with adventure. No more would there be such egotistic self-pitying views. History’s whirlwind was a fact of my life, and the only thought worth thinking now was how to make my enemies pay the highest possible price. There was nothing I would not do now. I would go to bed with Robert Johnson again, I would even try to delight decrepit old Seward himself if it served the cause. There was no disgust I would not swallow, no crime I would not commit to feed my revenge.

  Michael continued to rant about the necessity of throwing the strength of the American Fenians into Ireland, somehow. He vapored on about the loss of our “high purpose” here in America. There was nothing so different in what he said, except for the passion—but that was a very important difference, to which no one paid any attention, until it was too late.

  “Mother and Mary,” Annie said, demonstrating that a nonrevolutionary had more practical common sense than Michael and me together. “What’s become of them?”

  “They went to Limerick, to her sister’s house,” Patrick Dolan said, “but they didn’t get along. So the last I heard, just before I left, they removed to a cottage in Killarney, where they’re in hopes Mary can find work in the hotels.”

  “Killarney,” I said. “They don’t know a soul down there.”

  “That was Mary’s idea, I think,” Patrick said. “She wanted to go someplace where she wasn’t known. There wasn’t a hope of her gettin’ married in the old district. There’s such a terror of losin’ Lord Gort’s favor.”

  “I’ll lay that man in his grave if it’s the last thing I do on this earth,” I said.

  “How—how can you hope to do it, Bess?” Annie sobbed. She was still weeping terribly. I had a sudden
premonition that she might find it harder to live with this news than either Michael or I would, but I brushed it aside. Hatred was already beginning to obliterate sympathy and every other human feeling from my mind.

  “I know the man who will do it for me,” I said.

  I meant Dan McCaffrey. I know I could depend on my Donal Ogue when it came to murder.

  Reach Me Down That Rifle Gun

  Riding downtown in a hackney cab, I discovered that Patrick Dolan was staying at Sweeney’s Hotel. Michael debarked at Union Square and headed for Moffat House. Patrick continued down Broadway with me. I managed to avoid personal conversation by pointing out City Hall, Stewart’s department store, and every other sight worth mentioning. Patrick was stunned by New York’s size and bustle. He was amazed by the pace of the crowd rushing along Broadway and shrewd enough to observe the contradiction between the rushers on the sidewalk and the clogged traffic in the street.

  “If everyone’s in such a hurry, why does it take so long to get someplace by horse, no less?”

  “New York doesn’t claim to make sense. It just exists,” I said. “You have to take it or leave it.”

  “I think I’ll leave it,” he said.

  He asked me to join him for a bite to eat. Instead I invited him up to our suite, where I brewed some tea for him on a little gas stove we had installed in a corner of the room. “You’re looking worn out,” I said. “Was it a hard voyage?”

  “Oh, no,” he said. “I came on the Bristol steamship. It scarcely took ten days. It’s for you that I’m worn down, Bess. I’m afraid I took your leaving harder than anyone, even your poor mother. I couldn’t sleep and barely ate for a good month, thinkin’ of you. I knew you were runnin’ away from me as much as anything.”

  “No, you’re wrong,” I lied. If I had heard him say this the previous day, without the terrible news about my father on his lips, I would have felt sorry for him. Now I merely observed him as a phenomenon who might teach me something that would help me consummate my hatred. There was some pleasure and possible profit in being reminded that Bess Fitzmaurice had this much power over a man. The hold I had on Dan, which I had demonstrated perilously but undeniably on the night I had spent with Robert Johnson, was a tenuous thing compared to the thrall in which I held Patrick Dolan. Not even my flight of three thousand miles had shaken it.