A Passionate Girl

by Thomas Fleming

  I handed him the letter.

  “I’ll—be—damned,” he said as he finished reading it.

  Carefully, deliberately, he ripped it into little pieces. “We don’t want no one to read that,” he said.

  “You killed him, didn’t you?”

  He turned away from me, emitting a great sigh. He walked up the room to the door, as if he wanted to get out, then returned to glower down at me. “It had to be done, Bess.”

  “Oh, God,” I cried.

  He seized me by the arm. “It had to be done,” he snarled. “He was ruinin’ us. Someone’d given him a copy of our books. He knew exactly how much money we’d been spendin’. And how. He was goin’ to blab it all down there in St. Peter’s Hall.”

  “How do you know?”

  “He had his speech written out. Grogan read it.”

  “Tammany. Grogan’s Tammany.”

  “Sure. They’re dependin’ on us—on O’Neil—to deliver the votes that can make their guy governor. Then maybe the presidency. You think Bill Tweed’s gonna let some pipsqueak like your brother ruin a move like that?”

  I could not look at him. All I could see was Michael’s face with the drowned look, the film of water on it. “So there’ll be no justice,” I said. “No one will ever know how he died or why. Tomorrow the Tammany reporters will tell how he got drunk and missed his speech and went off to McGlory’s and got killed by a prostitute’s pimp.”

  “Yeah. It’s dirty, but it had to be done. The witnesses are all lined up. So’s the district attorney for the inquest.”

  I got up and began to dress. I put on my office outfit, the plain coat and skirt, without hoop or any other trace of fashion.

  “Where you goin’?” he said.

  “Away.”

  “Where?”

  “Anywhere.”

  He caught my arm again. “No, you ain’t.”

  “I am,” I said. “Don’t try and stop me. If you do, I’ll go straight to the New York Times or Harper’s Weekly and tell the whole story.”

  “England,” he said. “I need you in England. We’re gonna use the same disguise—”

  I shook my head. “It’s over, Dan. The Fenians are finished. Get away from them now. Soon only the crazy ones, like Gallaher, will be left.”

  “You don’t know what you’re talkin’ about!” he shouted after me down the hall. “You can’t get away from me. You know that. You’ll come crawlin’ back. Or I’ll find you—”

  All night I walked and walked through New York’s hot August darkness. At least a dozen men thought I was a prostitute and asked me what I charged. I ignored them. Most of the time I did not know where I was. Several times I came to water; whether it was the East River or the Hudson I have no idea. I stood there, hypnotized by the swift current, thinking of the blond girl without a mark on her. What had driven her into the dark filthy flow? A lover’s quarrel, a betrayal? Or the loneliness of this huge impersonal city? Another time I found myself on 25th Street staring dully at the curtained windows of Annie’s house of pleasure. Why not volunteer? I thought. Why not sell myself for the best price, now that I was done with giving myself to anyone, anything? Toward morning I found myself back on the docks again, looking at one of the big transatlantic steamers getting ready to sail. Her portholes glowed dully, and white steam belched from her stack. Not for me, the return journey. I was an outlaw in Ireland. My mother and father lay in unmarked graves. My sister Mary was meditating on life’s vanity in her convent.

  I was irremediably in America, whether I liked it or not. I wandered down the river to the Battery and watched the flag rise over the round fort on Governor’s Island, while a band played “The Star-Spangled Banner.” I had no love for that starry banner now, no loyalty toward it, no faith in it. I was a woman without a country, a soul without moorings.

  Around noon, I found myself back on 25th Street again. A plan was taking shape in my petrified brain. I would rescue Annie from this place, and together we would turn our backs on power, glory, profits. We would think no more of history’s whirlwind. We would live out our days as quiet, modest working women.

  I rang the bell and asked for Annie. I was told by the black maid that she was no longer “in residence.” I asked where she had gone. “You have to ask Mrs. Foster,” she said.

  I was ushered into the garish living room. I sat there in a daze until I heard a husky voice say, “Well, another Fitzmaurice.”

  I confronted the ugliest woman I have ever seen. She was about four feet nothing and almost black. I first thought she was an African, but from her talk and some contemplation of her wrinkled visage, I realized she was an Indian. She had a wide flat nose and a mouth full of misshapen teeth. She looked for all the world like something straight out of the devil’s furnace room.

  “I had to let your sister go,” she said. “She was drunk all the time. Men don’t like it. The kind of men we have here. A little bit drunk—all right. But not stupid drunk. Nasty drunk.”

  “Where is she?”

  “I got her a place in a downtown house. I told her she could come back here anytime. If she gets off the booze.”

  While she talked, she was looking me over. “You don’t have her complexion, but you’re not bad looking. Interested in taking her place?”

  “No,” I said.

  “It’s the only way you’re going to make any real money before you die. Got a job now?”

  “No,” I said.

  “Wait’ll you start looking for one. Maybe you’ll change your mind.”

  I asked her for Annie’s address. “James Street. Della Varley’s house. You won’t have any trouble finding it.”

  I wended my way downtown aboard a horse car and walked east into the twisting web of streets where New York sought its pleasure by night. In hot summer daylight it was a welter of repulsive sights and sickening odors. Bloated women and ragged men, most of them Irish, sat dully in doorways or stared from windows. I got some curious stares when I asked for Della Varley’s place, but there was no hesitation about directing me to it. The building’s ugly peeling wood had not seen paint these ten years past. There was no bell or knocker on the door. I rapped with my knuckles until they were sore, then turned the knob and found myself in a dark, narrow hall. An immensely fat woman in a dirty calico gown came out of a room in the front, yawning and scratching herself.

  “What the hell do you want?” she said.

  “Is Annie Fitzmaurice here?”

  “Never heard of her. What’s the beef?”

  “The what?”

  “The charge. Are you a private detective?”

  “No. I’m her sister.”

  “Last door on the right, on the second floor,” she said and slammed her door, leaving me in darkness. I groped my way upstairs, where a front window cast enough light to see another long hall, a repetition of the one below. I knocked on the last door on the right. Again it was a long process. Finally a thick voice said, “Who in hell’s that?”

  “It’s Bess.”

  “Come in. Door’s open.”

  The room was not much different from the one in the Greenwich Village boarding house. There was a thin curtain drawn on the single window, but it permitted enough light to see a bureau, a bed, a straight chair, and a night table with a bottle on it. Annie lay on the bed in her nightgown. The bed was covered with a dirty quilt. There were no sheets, no case for the brown pillow.

  I started to draw the curtains. “No, no,” Annie all but snarled. “The light hurts my eyes.” She struggled to a sitting position on the edge of the bed. “Jesus, do I need a drink,” she said. She took a long swallow direct from the bottle.

  Even in the half-light I could see she was a wreck. Her hair was a tangled streeling mess, her face sagged. She was naked beneath her nightgown.

  “Annie,” I said, “you must stop this.”

  “Stop what?” she said, and took another drink. “Earnin’ a livin’? You wan’ me to starve?”

  “Annie, I�
��ve left the Fenians. Come away with me to some other city. We’ll find work and start anew.”

  “Fin’ work?” she mocked. “Wha’ n’hell you talkin’ about? I got work. Here. You think this isn’t work? Last night”—she paused as if to count—“at leas’ twenny.” She laughed and took another drink. “Twenny. Tell it to Dick. Twenny a night for his Annie now.”

  “To hell with Dick. To hell with all of them. Annie, we’re our own selves. We must live our own lives.”

  She laughed briefly, harshly. “How? How, li’l sister? With a scrub brush? Ever scrub a swell’s hall—a goddamn hall two hundred feet long? Or a stairs—a hundred and fifty steps? Ever feel how y’back aches after doin’ that? Not for me.”

  Another long pull from the bottle, which had no label on it. The smell of cheap gin crept across the room to me. “I’ll be okay. Soon’s I get a li’l money together I’ll blow this crummy joint. I’ll be back inna big time. Y’watch.” She giggled. “Twenny last night,” she said. “Twenny a night. Maybe thirty. Tell Dick.”

  Suddenly her face convulsed with rage. She glared at me like a gorgon. “You hear me? Tell Dick. Tell the son of a bitch.”

  “I’ll tell him,” I said.

  I left Annie there. I left my sister to the death that awaited her as surely as it had awaited Michael in some foul alley on these same streets. America, history, life, call it what you will, was too strong for us; we came into it wounded and went out of it the same way. I walked down the hall past rooms containing other women on Annie’s ruinous journey. I counted the doors. Twenty on this floor and as many on the floor below. This was only one house among hundreds.

  I stood in the odorous street blinking into the fierce sunlight. A hackney coach came down the street at a clip. A familiar face leaned from it. “Bess,” a voice said.

  It was Red Mike Hanrahan. “Thank Jesus I found you,” he said when the driver obeyed his shout to stop. “I feared the worst. Get in.”

  “Where are we going?” I said, not stirring an inch.

  “No place you don’t want to go,” he said.

  “Who sent you?”

  “Dan. He’s wild.”

  “You know what he did?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you still come to fetch me, like his bailiff? Get on, before I fling some filth in your face.”

  “I was afraid you’d hurt yourself. That’s why I went after you. No other reason. Now get in.”

  I got into the cab’s dark interior. We rode back toward Broadway. “How did you trace me here?” I asked.

  “From the other place. I figured you’d go to Annie.”

  I began to weep. “Oh, Mike,” I said, “I walked the streets all night trying to think of what to do. Now I want to close my eyes and die, that’s all.”

  “You’ll do no such thing. You’ll get the hell out of this town. You’ll start a new life. A new life, hear? In some other city.”

  I was amazed to hear Mike speaking with such strength and authority, but it did not impress me.

  “What can a woman alone do, an Irish woman, but be a slavey? It’s not that I fear hard work, but I dread the loneliness of it. Toiling among strangers.”

  “You haven’t the face or the brain of a slavey. There’s no reason for you to be one. Now listen to me. I’ve got a brother who’s as different from me as the ace of hearts from the two of clubs. I usually refer to him, when I mention him at all, as Simon Legree. The name is not misplaced. He runs an agency that puts people to work in the houses of the rich. He’s got a very good reputation in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut. He’s goin’ to certify your references as an experienced governess, trained in London in the best English manner.”

  “Why will he do such a thing?”

  “Because I’ll threaten to blow his miserable miser’s brains out if he doesn’t.”

  I could never have thought of such a scheme. In my state of mind, I was not sure I could carry it off. “I don’t know, Mike. It may only lead to more grief. Maybe it’s better to let me go down into the mass, scrubbrush in hand, and forget me.”

  He seized my arm, not with anger but with a kind of desperation. “Listen to me,” he said. “I’ve wasted a lot of time and talent in this life. I’ve never finished anything I’ve started. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s me brother, Peter, with his smug sure way of creepin’ along, penny by penny, tellin’ me I’ll die in the gutter. He may be right. But I want to know I’ve done one thing. I’ve saved somethin’ I love. Love, do you hear me? From the general disaster.”

  In my confusion and misery, I accepted his affection. I saw no other hope on my horizon. To know that one human being still cared about me was enough to make me acquiesce in his scheme. If it failed I was resigned to the scrub brush. There was no pride left in me to drive me to a higher station. Only the wish to please this sad little man.

  So we drove to a building on Broadway near 22nd Street. The name of the business was lettered in glass on the door. CUNNINGHAM AND CLAYPOOLE, DOMESTIC SERVANTS. “Claypoole’s dead,” Mike said, “and Cunningham took to drink years ago. But the English name is good for the business.” He led me into an anteroom filled with Irish girls just off the boat. They clutched their straw bonnets and shawls, gasping for breath in the New York heat, and gazed in awe at my modern outfit. I looked at their innocent faces and was tempted to cry, “Go back.” Then I remembered the stinking alleys of Cork and Limerick and told myself to let history take its course. Drift passively with the dark stream. Our fate was written out in advance.

  From the inner office, whence Mike had disappeared, came the sound of angry voices. For five minutes they raged through the closed door, with only scraps of words reaching me. At last Mike emerged and beckoned me inside. His brother, Peter, sat behind a desk, looking like a mummified version of Mike, propped up to simulate life. He had blankpenny eyes and a mouth like a sore, and his red hair had faded toward gray.

  “This thing he wants me to do will ruin me if you’re found out,” he said.

  “I know.”

  “It can’t be done in New York. You’ll have to go elsewhere.”

  “I told him you were prepared to make that sacrifice,” Mike said, giving me the wink.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “I’ve an offer here from New Jersey. Bit of an emergency, it seems. They won’t ask too many questions. Their governess just quit. I put her in. She come through here yesterday. Told me the lad is a heller. Needed a week’s rest at least before even thinkin’ about work. I could put you in fast enough, I think. You parlez French, don’t you?”

  “Yes,” I said, wryly amused by the way Peter Hanrahan affected an English accent. “I haven’t spoken a word of it for a good year. But I know it well.”

  “You know your English literature—Dickens, Shakespeare, Lamb?”

  “Yes,” I said, sadly remembering Mother reading away the winter evenings to us.

  “I’ll cook some references for you. As for yourself, you’ve got to turn Orange, you realize that? Protestant as old Calvin himself?”

  “Yes,” I said. “My father was one.”

  “That should make it easier. Americans like the Orangemen, you know. They call them Scotch-Irish, whatever the hell that means.”

  “Who are these people?”

  “Stapleton’s the name. Live in North Jersey. Hamilton. I’ll telegraph’m tonight. Can you leave tomorrow morning?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. Read this on your way. I’ll have your references ready in the morning.”

  He handed me a book entitled The Duties of a Governess. I had the feeling that Peter Hanrahan had “cooked” a few previous references. There was money in it for him, and perhaps a bit of satisfaction, to put an Irish girl into a job usually reserved for English and Scots. He could not be Mike Hanrahan’s brother without having a bit of that sort of devil in him.

  All settled, Mike took me to the ferry and aboard it to Taylor’s Hotel in Jersey City. He was afraid that when he
returned to Dan and told him that he could not find me, Dan would call the police, and with his influence he could soon have them checking every hotel in New York for me.

  “Why are you sticking with him, Mike?” I asked. “Why not go west, south, anywhere? Do you really believe in nitroglycerin?”

  “You remember what I said about never finishin’ things?” Mike said. “When I got in this fight, I told myself it was to the finish, one way or another. Besides, Dan’s promisin’ the moon this trip. Five thousand dollars each for Gallaher and me. Think how long that will last me at Morrissey’s faro palace. A night and a half, at least.”

  I wept a little and kissed him. “God bless you,” I said, “no matter what you do.”

  An Irish prayer, if there ever was one.

  I fell into bed, forgetting supper, and slept the sleep of exhaustion. At nine in the morning, a bellboy knocked on my door. He handed me a thick packet, in which I found my references, a letter of introduction to Mrs. Stapleton, and a railroad ticket to Hamilton, New Jersey.

  I did not know it, but my Irish life was almost over. I was about to begin my American life.

  The Power of Sympathy

  My train did not leave until noon. I spent the morning reading The Duties of a Governess and found little that intimidated me. With money Mike had loaned me, I went out and bought a half dozen outfits similar to the business suit I was wearing. To explain my scant wardrobe, I planned to invent to a story about a lost trunk, and buy what else I needed in Hamilton. I dressed my hair as plainly as possible and omitted all trace of makeup from my face. I had never worn much anyway. I studied my letter of introduction to remind myself that I had acquired a new name.

  Dear Mrs. Stapleton:

  This will introduce Miss Elizabeth Stark, daughter of a good but impoverished Scotch-Irish family. Miss Stark is twenty-five years of age. She attended the convent school of the French Sisters of the Sacred Heart in Limerick where she acquired a perfect knowledge of the French language and other liberal arts. (The sisters teach both Protestant and Catholic young women. I need hardly add that Miss Stark is Protestant, a member of the Church of Ireland.) She was trained in London in the most approved English manner and served three years as sub-governess in the family of Lord Fingall of Killeen. I append references from Lady Fingall. Miss Stark has agreed to the same terms as Miss Hardy, the lady who has left you so abruptly. I trust you will remit Miss Stark’s first month’s salary of fifty dollars to me as my commission, in the usual manner. Hoping to be of further service, I remain,