Bold Sons of Erin

by Ralph Peters (as Owen Parry)

  Then she wept, and adjourned her temper, and fit herself to my arms.

  “Now, now,” I told her, petting her hair. Gathered back and shining it was, as black as a raven’s feather, though far lovelier. “I am a bad penny and will always turn up.”

  “Oh, bad penny or good,” she sobbed, “I want you here with me. And now I have you. If only for a time. I understand it, I do.” Oh, how the lass wept. “I know that you will go away again. I know the hard ways of the world well enough. But I cannot bear you sleeping under a stranger’s roof when your own bed is near and waiting.”

  She pulled away again, deciding between more tears or freshened anger. “Oh, why can’t they let us alone?” she demanded of the four walls, of the piled dresses and stacks of cut brown paper. “Why can’t they leave us to our lives and keep their war to themselves, if war they want?”

  “Soon it will be over, soon enough,” I told her, although I admit that bordered on a lie. How is it, then, that we are quick to dissemble to those we love, but not to strangers? “And then we will be happy, you will see.”

  She looked at me with a love-wrenched face that would have cracked a heart carved out of marble. “We are happy . . . when they leave us to ourselves.” She balled a tiny fist, and her eyes flamed green. “I hate them, I do. I hate them for the taking of you.”

  “Mary . . .” I reached for her, but my darling eluded my grasp. “Now . . . you do not hate them. You know that. For hatred is not Christian, and—”

  “Fiddlesticks!” she declared.

  And then she wheeled her mood about as sharply as a crack regiment turns on parade. Her voice switched to her tone for daily things. “I made you a German pot pie for your supper yesterday. Now it will not be fresh. And that is what you deserve.”

  “It is always better on the second night.”

  “And you put an awful fright into your Fanny. The little thing believes you walk on water, with angels in attendance. But the lass has a mortal terror of the Irish.”

  The Lord knows what the child saw or heard in the slums of Glasgow, where I found her. For Scotland though it was, the Irish were there in masses, living in daunting squalor. Or perhaps she had heard our local fears repeated. For the people of Pottsville like to give themselves a fright, with tales of Irish massacres and such.

  “She is a good girl, Mary. You will see.”

  My dearest picked at a bit of careless stitching that caught her eye. She pulled the threads right out, with a face gone sharp. One of the seamstresses was going to get a talking to, that much was clear. She will have no less than the finest work, my Mary.

  Twas queer how she was with Fanny, who was thirteen or fourteen. We did not know the lass’s age with certainty, see, for her childhood had been troubled and lacking in documents. Poor Fanny was so pleased to have a home and proper meals that I do not think she felt my Mary’s coldness. At least not at first. She slept in the kitchen and did not think it a slight, for the stove was lovely warm. I had thought she might sleep in the front bedroom with our John, who was not two, but Mary would not hear of it. The room was for our son, and that was that.

  I insisted that the child be sent to school, though, for every human being needs their letters. Fanny took it in good heart, sitting there with children half her size and repeating silly rhymes. Then, in the ripeness of the afternoon, she would go to our home to do the chores, where you might surprise her singing. When time was left her, she come down to my wife’s shop to learn a trade. Good fingers she had, my Mary admitted as much, and she worked as if a lash hovered at her shoulders. The lass sang in our chapel choir, and I do believe the heavens stopped work so the Lord might hear when Fanny gave us a hymn. She looked a pretty thing, especially after some months of proper meals, with her fresh-cream skin scrubbed up and her rust-colored hair less a tumult. I did not see how Mary could resist her, for I could not.

  “Oh,” my Mary said, dropping the ill-sewn garment, “Mr. Bannon stopped by the evening last.”

  “Bannon the Inks?” I asked. For there were Brothers Bannon in the multiple.

  “Himself. The newspaper man. Anxious he was for your company.”

  “Well, I will look in on him, then. And now you are the one with a face on you. What is it you want to say? For there is something, Mary.”

  Oh, didn’t she soften her tone at that, coming close as a cat wrapped round the hem of your trousers.

  “Now, I will have you keep your temper with me . . .” she began.

  I might have pointed out that she had lost her temper with me but minutes before, but the observation was better left unreported. Tactics matter as much in a marriage as ever they did on a battlefield.

  “ . . . but I wish a favor of you.”

  “Anything for you, Mary fach,” I told her. Which I expected her to understand meant anything that was reasonable.

  She took a deep breath, almost as a man does before plunging into trouble. “I want you to pay a call upon Mrs. Walker, for there is a matter troubling her.”

  I must have gone white as fresh milk. “Surely, not that Mrs.—”

  “Now, Abel, will you listen? I will tell you the why of it, if only—”

  “Mary, the woman runs a house of shame, she isn’t fit for—”

  “Will you not listen to your wife for a moment, you hard-headed man? I know what Dolly Walker is and what she isn’t.”

  I was flummoxed. What does a fellow do when his own dear wife—and a proper Methodist wife, at that—asks that he visit the lair of a common procuress? It is not done, and that is that. And I wished to hear no more of it.

  “Mary,” I said, in a voice I fear was colder and more imperious than intended, “I will not hear that woman’s name mentioned between us. From this day forth, I forbid you to have any commerce with her. Why, she should no more be in this shop than . . . than . . .”

  “Oh, forbid me, will he? And the great, growling lion of Merthyr has not even heard what I have to say to him!” I fear her gorge was rising. I will admit her anger disconcerts me.

  I thought it best to take my leave and go see Mr. Bannon, before we had told the town of our disagreement. Or of my Mary’s mutiny, to put the proper term to the matter between us.

  Mary was aglow. And not with joy.

  “I did not mean it as it sounded,” I explained, hoping to calm her until we could speak at home, where the walls are thick and Widow Forester, next door, hard of hearing. “I would not be harsh with you, my darling . . .”

  “‘Forbid,’ he says.” Her eyes were narrow as a perturbed cat’s. “He forbids me to run my business, that I have built up with no help from him and—”

  “I will be home for dinner, my sweetheart,” I assured her, as I slipped out the back door.

  I heard her growling behind me, which was an alarming thing. For she really is a delicate creature at heart.

  “And he did not even hear what I have to say, the proud, little, prancing peacock . . .”

  THE WAR HAS MADE the whole world topsy-turvy. Next, we will have women going for soldiers, or claiming possession of public office, or arguing the law before the bench. I know we all must favor social progress, which is a common good, but we do not want Mr. Carlyle’s French Revolution. A man needs order, if he is to thrive, and so does a country.

  My Mary Myfanwy and I would speak, indeed. That we would do, and she would understand who was head of the household, once and for all. I would not have rebellion at my own hearth, nor could I show forbearance with tainted persons.

  Now, you will say: “Abel Jones, you claim to be a Christian! Christ pitied Mary Magdalene, and even Mrs. Walker might be saved!” But I will tell you: I am not Jesus Christ, and Dolly Walker was not Mary Magdalene, and that was long ago, anyway, and Mary Magdalene did not come to my Mary for her glad rags. Nor had the gay Mrs. Walker turned to penitence, as far as I knew.

  Twas my duty to bring my darling to her senses.

  I cannot say I looked forward to the interview.

&nbs
p; She had waited for me all those bare years, with a true heart, though I had believed that she had long forgotten me. Now, we were wed and happy at last, with a very marvel of a son, another blessing on the way, and no debts beyond the paying of the rent. I had endured travails beyond description in my time, and I know the ways of the world and the dangers it poses. I only wished to protect my precious family. And my Mary was treating me like a recruit who could not tell his right foot from his left.

  It is a thing of gross ignominy, when a man is not the master of his household.

  True it is that I must share the blame. For I had been indulgent with her. Now, she had grown stubborn and rebellious. That is what comes of letting a wife start a business. She begins to think she has become a man.

  But let that bide.

  If Bannon the Inks wished to see me, I wanted to see him, too. For I was not content with his answer that no girl had disappeared these past few months. I hoped that he might find me a better response, in one of his many pockets. For he liked to claim he knew all the county’s doings.

  Down Centre Street I went, with the day still blue and the dust down from the rains. The shop fronts shone bright and their windows promised wonders. Oh, ever a joy it is to stroll the prosperous streets of our dear Pottsville. As soon as the ways are paved, our city will be fit to rival any.

  I took me upstairs from Mr. Bannon’s bookstore and stationers to the offices of the Miners’ Journal. The rooms smelled of tobacco smoke and worse, for journalists are never moral paragons. Scribbling the lot of them were. Now, I like a nice newspaper in the evening. But I would forbid my son to go a journalist. Their habits are irregular, and what virtue lies in a pen put up for purchase? There is no honest life without honest work.

  Bannon himself come marching out, waving sheets of paper like signal flags.

  “No, no, no!” he cried. “It’s John Greenleaf Whittier, not Henry Ward Beecher. Beecher’s no more a poet than I’m the Queen of the May.” Then he spied me out. “Oh, Jones! Just the man!” He thrust the still-wet papers upon the sleeves of his subordinate, closing their discussion with, “And tell the type-setter I want to see him. When all this has been repaired.”

  He greeted me with an ink-sleek hand and fair pulled me into his office, which, to my dismay, held a certain accumulation of personal odors.

  “Shut the door, shut the door!” he cried. “Lovely poem. Don’t suppose you’ve seen it? Course not. How could you? Hasn’t been printed. Lovely, lovely, lovely. All guns and sacrifice and martial glory!” He shook his head wistfully. “How I envy you young men your fields of battle! A war must be a glorious affair.”

  I sat me down, stretching out my bothered leg, and propped my cane beside me.

  “What is it, what is it that I wanted, Jones?” Then he seemed to remember. “Oh, yes. Now I have it. You’re Washington’s man—do you know anything about this Russian fellow?”

  “Russian fellow?” I asked.

  “Yes, yes. The Russian fellow. One’s been strolling around town. Gone now, I’m told. Missed him, there’s bad luck. Can’t find out anything about him.” He looked at me, expectant of an answer. “Now, what’s some sort of Russian aristocrat doing here in Pottsville? You tell me that. What’s some mysterious Russian doing here?”

  I had been dealing with low-born Irish, and not with the aristocracy of any nation. Not since I left Glasgow, anyway. And certainly not with Russians.

  “Can’t think for the life of me,” Mr. Bannon went on. “You really haven’t heard anything? Not simply holding it back from the press? Wait a minute . . . I’ll bet the fellow was here on behalf of the Tsar of all the Russias himself, to buy up coal leases and—”

  Then I had him, I did. I remembered the high-smelling gent who come out of young Mr. Gowen’s law office. The one with the narrow blade of a face and the accent that did not fit any place in my memory. Who mixed his French and English without shame.

  “—it’s all going to contribute to the growth of our native industry.” Mr. Bannon sat back, as if a specter had popped up over my shoulder. “But that’s no good. Is it, Jones? That’s no good at all! What if the tsar does buy up all the leases? It’ll be the end of the small operator, the independent businessman. And the small businessman is America’s future! I’ll have to write Washington, Harrisburg . . . put a stop to this right now. Russians coming here and thinking they have a right to just buy up everything our own honest work has earned us.” He slapped his soft hand down upon his desk. “Why, I’ll be damned if I’m going to let the Russians take over this county!”

  I suspected that Mr. Bannon had got a bit ahead of himself. But I wanted to know more about this Russian myself. Why would such a fellow trouble to visit our district attorney? In the company of Mr. Heckscher, the great coal fellow?

  I kept that slight encounter to myself.

  “Now, Mr. Bannon,” I said, “I must ask you a question. About that dead girl I spoke of.”

  I thought I saw a bit of the odd pass over his face, but it was not enough of a change to make me certain.

  “What’s that? What? What dead girl, Jones? Is there a dead girl? That would be news, you know.”

  “When we spoke in the street, Mr. Bannon, I asked if a girl had been killed or reported missing some months ago. You told me . . . that you did not seem to remember any such. But you are a busy man, with much upon your mind. So I thought that I should ask a second time, see. If a young woman has been reported as missing? Or anything of the like?”

  He shook his head. “Haven’t heard a word said. Not a word. And I expect I’d hear something, you know.” He hooked his thumbs into his waistcoat pockets. “Of course, who knows what goes on up in those coal patches? Barbaric, the way they live. No desire to better themselves, the Irish.” He picked up a pencil and a bit of paper. “But what about you? Have you discovered anything? Anything new about General Stone’s murder? Anything you can share with the reading public?”

  The truth is I had naught but questions myself. And no answers to fit to them. I seemed little closer to the truth of the general’s murder than I had been on the day I arrived from Washington.

  Mr. Bannon must have read my face, for he did not press the matter.

  “Terrible business,” he commiserated. “Irish are nothing but trouble. Every one of them a born assassin. Drunken. And Democrats to a man. Utterly lacking in ambition, want the world handed to them. All they do is breed and burden us all with children they can’t feed or clothe. Why, they’d make the Pope king over all of us, if they could, and turn this place into another Ireland! Never should have let them into this country. We’re going to rue the day. They don’t appreciate a thing they’re given, not one thing.”

  He stood up with a wheeze. His nose had dried since last I had seen him, although his beard was colored with ancient stains. “Well, work to do, work to do! Be sure to let me know, won’t you, when you find the general’s murderer? Come to me first, Jones. After all, this is the Republican paper.”

  “If I should come to any newspaperman, Mr. Bannon, I will come to you.”

  “There’s the spirit, that’s the thing!” He pressed me toward the door. And as I took my leave, he added, “Don’t you go trusting Frank Gowen, either. He’ll lead you down the garden path and laugh about it.”

  I WAS GLUM. I did not know where to turn me next. Even my home had become a dreaded thing to me. For the matter between my dear wife and myself was yet unfinished. And I was wary of the sort of finishing it might take. My wife is a gentle creature, all in all. But when she takes a notion, she is determined.

  The confidence I had felt but an hour before had vanished from me. Leaving a sorrow and unexpected loneliness.

  I think in that low moment I might have given in on Mrs. Walker. So long as she continued to use the back door of the shop. I did not want a breach in the wall of the fortress that was our family. I did not wish my Mary to think me a tyrant, after all. But I feared Mrs. Walker would bring shame down upon us. And
I knew enough of shame to want no more.

  We had built ourselves a lovely little life, and when the war was done we would have it back. We wanted nothing time might not provide. But a man does not wish to hear whispers behind his back, or to have the honor of his dear wife questioned. I feared a scandal, more than I feared war.

  We had a home now. And I did not wish it spoiled.

  I borrowed the rest of the afternoon from my duties and walked down to Tumbling Run, which is as lovely as any glen in Wales. The trees come down to the water and quiet reigns. I have always liked to walk a turn or two, as Mr. Shakespeare has that fellow Prospero put it. It calms the mind, indeed. My marching days are done, but that is different. My leg is fine, when I may set the pace.

  I found myself alone in the mellowing light, and I whacked at the dunes of leaves with my cane as a child would. We must preserve our dignity with others, but it’s pleasant to be jolly by ourselves. The leaves were brittle as crackers, with the color of copper upon them, stretching through the trees along the valley. Queer it is how so much death surrounds us. Autumn brings nature a death list in the millions. And yet it seems so beautiful to us.

  The air was like cold water, fresh from the well.

  I forced myself to think again of duty, of a murdered general and a nameless girl laid down in another’s grave. Of an old madwoman and a young priest fraught with books. And of the Irish. I had the sense that all of the answers were there, lying upon the ground before me, obscured not by piled leaves but by the limitations of my faculties. I will admit I like to be of service, and to win the approbation of those placed above me. But I am, finally, a small man. And now I do not speak about my stature. I know there is no greatness in me, but do not find the lack to be a trouble. I only want my life to be undisturbed. But ever again I am sent to look at death, to prod it until it answers me by name. I wished that I were still a clerk in Mr. Evans’s counting house, where profit and loss was measured in dollars, not souls.