It was something more dangerous.
Frank didn’t see her at first. But then there were so many other things to catch the eye. The tallest was the Latting Observatory, a conical latticework of wood and iron that rose three hundred and fifty feet to a viewing platform high over Forty-second Street. You could go up the first two stages of the tower in a wonderful new machine they were calling an elevator. Master was eager to try that. But the Observatory was still a sideshow to the main event—which lay just behind the reservoir, its upper parts clearly visible as Frank approached.
The Crystal Palace.
Two years ago, when the British had staged their Great Exhibition in a huge crystal palace of glass and iron in the middle of London, six million people had come to see this world’s fair of culture and industrial design. The palace in Hyde Park, like a vast greenhouse, was over six hundred yards long, and covered nearly seven acres. So New York had decided to have one of their own. And though the Crystal Palace at Fortieth Street might not match the vast scale to be found in the capital of the British Empire, it was still a mighty handsome building, with a splendid dome, a hundred and twenty-three feet high. It had just opened the day before, and Frank Master couldn’t wait to see what was inside it.
Then he saw his wife. And inwardly groaned. She was reading that damn book again.
“Put the book aside now,” he said gently, as he took her arm, “and let’s see the exhibition.”
The main entrance on Sixth was splendid. With its ornate classical portico and dome, it looked like a Venetian cathedral, made of glass. The French and British flags flew to left and right, and a huge Stars and Stripes over the center.
Frank knew most of the organizers, especially William Cullen Bryant and August Belmont. They had promised an exhibition of the industry of all nations, and it seemed to Frank they had done a pretty good job. As he conducted Hetty round, they saw scientific instruments and guns, water pumps and ice-cream makers, equipment for taking photographs and for sending telegrams—not to mention the huge statue of George Washington riding a horse. It was the machinery of the new industrial age, and he loved it.
“Look at this clock,” he’d prompt Hetty. “We should have one of these.” And she’d smile and nod. “Or what about this sewing machine?” he’d try. “Yes dear,” she’d say.
But though they went round together for an hour, and she dutifully inspected everything, he knew that she wasn’t really paying attention. “Let’s go to the observation tower,” he said.
The view from the top of the Observatory was very fine. Eastward, one could see over Queens, westward, across the Hudson to New Jersey, and northward, over the miles of rural Manhattan into which, like columns of infantry, the grid lines of avenues were gradually making their way. They both enjoyed the elevator which served the tower’s lower platforms. But when they emerged, another exhibit nearby caught Frank’s eye. Hetty wanted to sit down for a while, so he went in alone.
“It’s the damnedest thing,” he reported back. “Fellow by the name of Otis. He’s designed an elevator like the one we just rode in, but he’s added a system of safety catches so that if the cable breaks, it won’t fall. I reckon you could install something like that in a big store, or even a house.” He nodded. “He’s setting up in business. Might make an interesting investment, I’d say.”
“Yes, dear,” said Hetty.
“Let’s go home,” he said at last, with a sigh.
He knew what she was going to talk about. She didn’t start at once, but waited a whole block, then began at Thirty-ninth Street.
“Frank,” she said, “something’s got to be done. I want you to read this book.”
“Goddammit, Hetty,” he said, “I’m not going to.” And then, to hide his irritation, he smiled. “No need to, when you’ve already told me all that’s in it.”
The author, Harriet Beecher Stowe, was no doubt a good and honest woman, but he wished to hell she might have found some other way to occupy her time than writing. For her Uncle Tom’s Cabin had been like a plague in his house for nearly a week now. A plague to the whole country, as far as he could see.
A curse to the slave owners of the South, that was for sure.
The wretched thing had started quietly enough, as a serial in a little magazine that was only read by the abolitionist crowd anyway. But then, last year, some fool of a publisher had put it out as a book, and it had broken all records. Three hundred thousand copies sold in America already, and still going strong. He’d heard they’d sold another two hundred thousand in England as well. Though a friend just back from London had told him: “The English are delighting in it, not so much for the slavery issue, but because they say it shows what a bunch of savages we uppity Americans really are.” There was no end to its run in America in sight, either. The publisher was putting out a deluxe edition now, with nearly a hundred and twenty illustrations, and the lady herself was publishing another work about how she came to write the book in the first place, called A Key to Uncle Tom’s Cabin. No doubt that’d be a best-seller too.
And what was the thing about anyway? The story of a slave family and their trials and tribulations. Nothing new there. But it was written in the sentimental style, with a black mammy, and sweet pickaninny children, and a slave family broken up, and dear old Uncle Tom, the faithful, fatherly, suffering slave, dying at the end. No wonder all the women liked it.
“Our family had a slave like Uncle Tom,” he remarked. “By name of Hudson. My grandfather knew him. He was happy enough, I believe. I certainly never heard he complained.”
“He wasn’t a slave, he was free,” Hetty corrected him. “And he lost his only son, who was captured and probably sold into slavery in the South. Your family tried to find the boy for years, but never could. Your father told me all about it.”
“That may be,” he allowed. “But the book’s just a sentimental tale about an old slave who loves everybody. There are no Uncle Toms in real life.”
“That just shows you haven’t read it, dear,” she said. “Uncle Tom’s as real as you or me, and not at all sentimental. When it’s necessary, he encourages slaves to run away. As for the rest, slaves are separated from their children, flogged and sold down the river. Are you saying these things don’t happen?”
“I guess I’m not,” said Frank.
“Everyone agrees it’s a wonderful book.”
“Not in the South, they don’t. I heard that a man in Arkansas was run out of town for selling it. The South says the book’s a criminal slander. They’re furious.”
“Well, they should be repentant.”
“It’s not surprising really,” he continued mildly. “After all, the villain of the book is a typical Southern slave holder.”
“Actually,” said Hetty, “if you’d read the book you’d know he’s a Yankee who moved south. The Southern gentleman in the book is a kindly man.”
“Well, people in the South don’t like it, anyhow.”
“The point is not about any individual, Frank. It’s about a system.”
They had walked as far as Thirty-sixth Street. Seeing a cab, Master hailed it, hoping the business of getting in would break his wife’s concentration. It didn’t.
“The system, Frank,” she continued, as soon as they were seated, “whereby one human being can own another as a chattel. This book”—she took it out, and clearly meant to give it to him—“is a Christian book, Frank. A challenge to all Christians. How can we countenance such an evil in our land?”
“And what,” he asked wearily, “do you expect me to do about it?”
She paused. Evidently she had been thinking about it.
“I think, Frank,” she said quietly, “that we ought to consider whether we do business with slave owners.”
He almost cried, “Are you out of your mind?” But fortunately, he caught himself, and waited a few moments before he replied.
“Hard to be a New York merchant and have nothing to do with the cotton trade.”
> That was quite an understatement. Generations of New York men had assiduously courted the cotton planters—at first, buying the Southerners’ raw cotton and shipping it to England (when, had they been a bit sharper, the Southern planters could have shipped direct and saved themselves New York’s commissions), and thereafter making their grand, all-purpose trade so indispensable, and their finances so entangled with the South, that it was hard to imagine the one without the other. Frank Master shipped cotton; and he sold goods, and debt, to the South. It was a good percentage of his business.
She put her arm on his. “I know, Frank. I understand that it wouldn’t be easy. But you are also a good Christian. I didn’t marry you just for your money,” she added with a smile.
And I didn’t marry you, he thought to himself, to have you interfere with my making it. As the cab took them home, he said nothing more, but he sensed that his wife was determined about this business. In more than ten years of marriage, he and Hetty had never had a serious quarrel, and he wasn’t sure what it would be like if they did.
At about the time when Frank and Hetty Master had ascended the Observatory, Mary O’Donnell had prepared to leave her friends. They had spent such a pleasant afternoon, the four of them: Mary and Gretchen, and Gretchen’s little brother Theodore and cousin Hans.
Mary was fond of little Theodore. He was five years younger than Gretchen, and his blue eyes were darker than hers, and set very wide apart. If his sister was blonde, he’d inherited his father’s curly brown hair. And from an early age, he’d possessed a remarkable sense of his own identity. When he was five, a lady in the shop, meaning only kindness, had asked him: “Do people call you Teddy?” Theodore had shaken his head. “Why not, dear?” she’d asked. “Because,” he had answered solemnly, “I do not wish it.” By the age of ten, he’d also announced that he wouldn’t be following his father in the chocolate business. “What will you do, Theodore?” the family had asked him. “Something with no chocolate in it,” he’d said. This had displeased his mother considerably, but his father had been more understanding. “Leave him be,” he had said. “Anyway, this isn’t such a good business.” Gretchen and Mary usually took Theodore with them, even though he was so much younger.
But Hans was another matter. He’d been a distant figure when Mary was young, though Gretchen would speak of him, so Mary knew that he was serious and worked long hours for the piano-maker. Once or twice she’d caught sight of him, but there wasn’t much reason for them to meet, and Gretchen certainly wasn’t going to bring him to the O’Donnell household.
Mary had been out walking with Gretchen one day, after she’d been working for the Masters a couple of months, when her friend had said she wanted to call in at her cousin’s place of work. They hadn’t stayed long, but Mary had had a good chance to observe him. Hans was still in his early twenties, a tall, slim young man whose sandy hair was already receding, and who wore small, gold-rimmed spectacles. He was obviously busy, but friendly enough. Gretchen asked him to play something for them on one of the pianos. “He’s very good,” she said. “They ask him to show off the pianos for the customers.” But Hans told them he couldn’t just then, so they left. He was obviously very serious about his work. Mary liked that.
A week later, Mary just happened to be passing the piano store and decided to look in. At first Hans didn’t remember who she was, but when she told him, he smiled, and showed her the piano he was working on. She asked a few questions, and he explained what wood was used, how it was molded and put together. Then, taking her to another piano that was finished, he showed her how it was tuned.
He talked very quietly, looking at her gravely from time to time through his gold-rimmed glasses. And maybe it was just to get rid of her politely, but at the end, he went over to the best piano in the store and, sitting down at it, began to play.
Mary didn’t know much about music, though she liked to sing. She’d heard people play the piano in the theater, and in a saloon of course, but she’d never heard anything like this. He played a Beethoven sonata, and she listened entranced, by the beauty of the music and by its power. And she watched Hans with fascination, too. His skill was remarkable, and his hands beautiful, but even more intriguing was the transformation that came over his face. She saw concentration, absolute concentration, intelligence—and a sort of remove. For when he played, she realized, he entered another world. It wasn’t a world she knew anything about, but she could see that Hans had just gone there, right in front of her, and she was enchanted. She hadn’t realized how fine he was.
And suddenly a thought came into her mind. All her childhood, she’d heard the priests speak of angels, and she’d always thought of them like the ones she’d seen in paintings, with placid faces and unlikely wings. But seeing his face now, she thought, no—this must be what an angel is like, full of beauty, and spirit, intelligence and power.
“You should play for a living,” she said to him, when he had finished and returned to earth.
“Oh no,” he said, with a touch of sadness, “you should hear the real pianists.” He smiled kindly. “I have to get back to work now, Mary.”
Ten days later, she and Gretchen had taken a pleasure-boat trip into the harbor, and he had joined them. Whether it was his idea, or Gretchen’s, she didn’t know, but he’d been very easy and friendly, and they’d had a good time.
Some time after that, when Gretchen had casually asked her what she thought of her cousin, Mary had laughed and said, “I’d like to marry him.” But she wished she hadn’t, for Gretchen had frowned and looked at the ground, and Mary had realized the truth. What a fool I am, she’d thought, to be dreaming of such a thing, when I haven’t a cent to my name. A clever young man like that needed a wife with some money.
The trouble was that whenever she met young men after this, they always seemed so crude and coarse by comparison.
And then there’d been the man that Sean proposed.
All in all, she had to say, Sean had behaved well since she joined the Masters. He’d found out all about them in no time—you could be sure of that. “But I’m very impressed, Mary,” he told her. “You landed on your feet there.” And he’d stayed away from their house. “Just so long as I know you’re all right,” he told her. “Of course,” he’d added, with a reassuring smile, “I’ll cut his throat if he harms you.”
He’d been good about her father too. John O’Donnell had gone downhill pretty fast after she left. Sean had stepped in to help, but it wasn’t much use. She’d felt so guilty that she’d wondered whether to give up her job, to try and save him. But Sean had been adamant.
“I’ve seen a dozen like him, Mary,” he told her. “He’ll go the same road, whether you’re there or not.”
He’d sent a boy to her with a note when her father had died six months ago.
The funeral had been conducted with all due ceremony. There was a dusting of snow on the ground, but a surprising number of people turned up. At the burial, Sean had arrived with a small black box which, after a brief consultation with Father Declan the priest, he’d reverently placed on the coffin as it was lowered. Then they all went back to the lodgings, which she’d vigorously cleaned.
“What was the box you placed in the grave?” she’d asked him on the way back.
“The remains of the dog.”
“Of Brian Boru?”
“I dug him up last night.”
“Jaysus, Sean, have you no respect for the dead?” she cried. “It’s probably sacrilege.”
“It’s what our father would have wished,” he said blandly. “I asked Father Declan, and he quite agreed.”
He’d seen to it that there was food, and a fiddler, and plenty to drink. They gave John O’Donnell a rousing old wake.
And that was where he’d introduced her to Paddy Nolan.
Surprisingly, she’d liked him. Surprising because she was naturally suspicious of anyone connected with her brother. Nolan was a quiet man, about thirty, with dark hair and a neatly clip
ped beard. He was very polite, almost formal toward her, calling her Miss Mary. He seemed to treat her with great respect, and she rather liked that. He evidently considered her brother a fellow of some importance. After a time, he asked if he might have the honor of calling upon her some day, and, not wishing to be rude, she said that he might.
“He’s quite respectable, you know,” Sean told her afterward. “And he has money. He owns a saloon, though he never drinks a drop himself.”
“And you’ve known him a while?”
“We’ve done business together.” He smiled. “He likes you, Mary. I could see that. And God knows, he could have his pick of women, with the establishment he has.”
She went out with Nolan ten days later. He treated her to a meal, then they looked in at his saloon, which was down on Beekman Street.
A saloon wasn’t a place where a woman would normally go. But seeing her in the company of the owner, the men in there gave her a polite nod. It was certainly a cut above the usual establishments of its kind, patronized by gentlemen who worked or wrote for the nearby newspapers and magazines, like the New York Tribune and The Knickerbocker.
“I get all kinds of literary gentlemen in here,” Nolan told her with quiet pride. “Mr. Lewis Gaylord Clark, Mr. William Cullen Bryant, Mr. Herman Melville.” Over in one corner he showed her a table stacked with recent publications. “The newspaper gentlemen leave them here for others to read,” he told her. Clearly he meant the place to have something of the tone of a club, and she had to admit she was impressed.
Afterward they took the train up Fourth Avenue, and he escorted her politely back to the door of the Masters’ house.
She normally had Sundays off, and they went out several times. After a month, she let him kiss her. Once, they met some of his friends, who were very nice to her. The only moment when she felt awkward was when, discussing an acquaintance’s marriage, he remarked: “Treat a woman right, I always say, and she’ll do whatever you want.” The men had laughed, and the women had glanced at her, but Nolan had given her a friendly smile and added: “A man should never take a woman for granted, Mary, don’t you agree?”
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