“No need to worry,” he answered pleasantly. “I’m staying here. They had one room left at the inn. It’s rather small, but it’ll do.”
“Oh,” said Gretchen. Mary was rather pleased.
So Theodore talked, and told them funny stories. Mary wished she could engage him in conversation about the things that interested him, but she wasn’t sure how, and in any case, he seemed quite content to make small talk. She laughed at his jokes, and he smiled at her, and she felt very comfortable in his presence.
“Aren’t you pleased I stayed?” he said playfully to his sister, toward the end of the meal.
“I’m surprised you’re not out with one of your lady friends,” she replied tartly. “He has a lot of lady friends,” she remarked to Mary.
“A gross exaggeration,” said Theodore, smiling at Mary. “I am an artist and I live like a monk.”
“I don’t think I believe you, Mr. Keller,” said Mary with a laugh. “But I hope you don’t imagine I’m shocked.” After all, when she remembered all the girls her brother Sean had been with, let alone what she might have seen any day of the week in Five Points, there was no need to be prim if young Theodore Keller was getting his share too.
“It’s not you that’s shocked at the idea, Mary,” he said. “It’s me.” And then they both laughed.
“So what is it you look for in your lady friends?” Mary asked him boldly.
He didn’t answer at once, but stared thoughtfully across the other tables.
“To tell you the truth,” he said, “I don’t run after women for the sake of it, as some men do. If I seek a woman’s friendship, it’s because I find her interesting.”
After the meal, the children were allowed to run about. Some of the grown-ups went to walk along the beach again, while others preferred the card tables set out on the porch. Theodore lit a cigar, and went down to the water. Gretchen and Mary played cards for a while with a pleasant man from Westchester and his wife, then went to sit on some long chairs to look at the sea, as the slow summer sunset began.
“It must be nice, being married and having children,” said Mary. “I suppose I envy you that.”
“It’s all right. Hard work,” said Gretchen.
“I’m sure. But having a husband …”
Gretchen was silent for a minute. “They take you for granted before long,” she said.
“But your husband is kind, isn’t he?”
“Oh yes.” Gretchen stared up at the sky. “I can’t complain.”
“And you love your children.”
“Of course.”
“I suppose I might have married Nolan, if I hadn’t discovered what a brute he was.”
“So you’re glad you didn’t.”
“Oh yes, of course I am.”
“Do you feel lonely?” Gretchen asked after a little while.
“Not much. Perhaps a little.”
They were silent for a minute or so after that.
“I suppose my brother will settle down one day,” Gretchen said with a sigh. Then she laughed. “When he’s about fifty.” She glanced across. “Stay away from my brother, Mary. He’s dangerous, you know.”
No doubt Gretchen was concerned for her welfare, but it seemed to Mary that her friend had no business telling her to stay away from her brother like that, and she couldn’t help a small flash of resentment and rebellion.
“I’m old enough to look after myself, thank you,” she said.
When Theodore came back, they all agreed that after all the fresh air and exercise of the day, they were ready to turn in.
The sky was still red as Mary and Gretchen undressed and got into their beds. Through the open window, Mary could hear the soft sound of the sea. She was just dozing off when she heard a rustle, and realized that Gretchen had got out of her bed. She raised her head to see what her friend was doing, and found that Gretchen was standing beside her. Her hair, undone, was hanging down to her shoulders. Then Gretchen leaned over so that her hair brushed her face, and kissed her on the forehead, before getting back into her bed. And Mary was glad to know that, even if she had been cross with Gretchen for a moment, she was still, always, her friend.
Sean O’Donnell got up at nine o’clock that morning. His wife and children were still at breakfast when he went downstairs into the saloon, and found Hudson already at work, cleaning up after the night before. He gave the black man a brief nod, went to the street door and looked out.
Sunday morning. The street was quiet, but he stayed there a little while, for he was a cautious man.
He turned. This time, he gave young Hudson a thoughtful look.
“Thinking of going out today?” he asked.
“I got to be at the church later this morning,” said the black man.
The Shiloh Presbyterian Church. It wasn’t far away.
“Tell me,” said Sean, “before you go.”
It was three years now since he’d encountered Hudson. Like most of the Negroes in the city, he’d arrived after a long and dangerous journey up the underground railway, whose terminus had been the Shiloh Church. A journalist, a friend of the Negro minister at Shiloh, had asked Sean if he could find a place for Hudson. To oblige a regular customer, Sean had agreed to see the young fellow.
Personally, Sean wasn’t too keen on helping runaway slaves. Like most Irish Catholics in the city, he disliked the privileged Protestant evangelical ministers who preached abolition, and had no wish to antagonize the South. But there were quite a few Negroes doing the menial jobs in New York saloons, and nobody paid them much heed.
“New York ain’t a very friendly place for a black man,” he’d warned Hudson.
“My grandaddy told me we came from here,” Hudson had replied. “I was figuring to stay.”
So Sean had given him a try, and Hudson had proved to be a good worker.
“Is Hudson your family name?” Sean had asked.
“My father was Hudson, sir. And I’m Hudson Junior. But I don’t have no other name.”
“Well, you need a family name,” said Sean. “And ‘Hudson Hudson’ sounds foolish, in my opinion.” He’d considered. “Why don’t you take the name of River? Then you’d be Hudson River. That sure as hell sounds like a New York name to me.”
And soon the young man was registered as Hudson River, and before long this curious name had made him something of a mascot in the saloon.
“Hudson,” said Sean O’Donnell now, “step over and help me close these shutters, will you?”
Together they closed the big green shutters that covered the two windows that gave onto the street. Then Sean went outside and began to push and pull on the shutters, which rattled quite a bit. Then he went back in, and asked Hudson if the latch for the shutters had seemed firm, and Hudson said no, not very.
“Do you reckon you could fix a bar across the shutters that’ll hold them firm?” Sean asked, for Hudson was good at those things. And Hudson said yes. “I want you to do it today,” said Sean.
“We expecting trouble?”
Sean O’Donnell could smell trouble. You didn’t survive thirty-eight years in the streets around Five Points without developing an instinct for danger. From his youth, he could tell from the way a man walked whether he was carrying a knife. Sometimes he could sense trouble before it came round a corner—though he couldn’t say how he knew.
Now that he was older, and had become a man of property, that same instinct had been transferred to his business affairs. His attitude to the financial community was characteristic.
“The way I see it,” he’d told his sister, “since most of the men in Five Points will rob you if they get the chance, and since I know there isn’t a single alderman in the city that can’t be bought, why would the merchants on South Street or the bankers on Wall Street be any different? They’re all criminals, I reckon.” Part of the reason why nobody knew how much money he had was that he refused to entrust it to any financial institution. He lent money, certainly, to men he knew personally and
reckoned a fair risk. He invested in numerous enterprises, which he could watch over himself. And he held government bonds. “The government’s as crooked as anyone else, but they can print money.” His hoard of cash, however, was kept in locked boxes, which he hid in safe places.
This expedient, primitive though it might be, had at least saved him worry. Half a dozen years ago, when the head of the great Ohio Insurance Company, having made all kinds of shaky loans, closed the company’s doors and tried to abscond with the remaining funds, half the banks in New York, who’d lent to Ohio themselves, were unable to meet their obligations. Since all the financial institutions had lent to each other, without the least idea of what backed the loans, the panic of 1857 had soon spread halfway round the globe, and though it was brief, innumerable men on Wall Street had been wiped out before it was over. One clever fellow called Jerome, who came into the saloons quite often, had seen the crash coming just in time, and had bet heavily on the falling market. A few months later, he’d quietly informed Sean: “I made better’n a million dollars in that crash.”
As for Sean, he’d just gone to his chest of dollar bills, bought up some property that was going cheap, and continued to serve drinks to anyone who still had the money to pay.
But last night, listening to the talk at the bar, it wasn’t financial trouble he’d sensed. It was something much more visceral, belonging to Five Points rather than Wall Street. The crowd in the saloon on Saturday nights was different from the rest of the week. Hardly any journalists. Mostly local Irishmen.
And that’s what he’d sensed as he’d listened to them: danger. Irish danger.
The Irish community respected Sean. If there were people in Five Points who still remembered his knife with fear, there were many more among the countless immigrants who had come in following the Famine who had reason to be grateful to him for finding them a place to live, or a job, and generally easing their transition into this dangerous new society.
He was still close to Mayor Fernando Wood. Wood’s brother Benjamin, who’d owned a newspaper and written a book, would come into the saloon from time to time. And though Mayor Wood had fallen out with the other Tammany Hall men recently, Sean maintained good relations. One of them, known as Boss Tweed, had quietly told him: “You’re loyal to Wood. We respect that. But you’re still one of us, O’Donnell. Come to me when Wood’s gone …” At elections, Sean could deliver a thousand votes on his own authority.
In his saloon, he was king. Young Hudson had witnessed this soon after he’d started working there. In the fall of 1860, no less a person than Queen Victoria’s son, the Prince of Wales, had made a goodwill visit to Canada and the United States. After watching Blondin cross over Niagara Falls on a tightrope—and politely declining the funambulist’s offer to take him across the same tightrope in a wheelbarrow—the nineteen-year-old prince had arrived in Manhattan. The city had given him a royal welcome, for the most part. But to Irish immigrants, who blamed England for the Famine, his visit could not be welcome. The 69th Irish Regiment, to a man, had refused to parade for him. And to be sure, nobody was planning to take him round Five Points.
Why some well-meaning people, conducting him round the newspaper quarter, had suddenly decided to show him a New York saloon, nobody ever discovered. No doubt they reckoned that, with its regular daily clientele of journalists, O’Donnell’s would be a pretty safe bet. But whatever the reason, at one o’clock that day, a party of gentlemen, among whom the incognito prince was instantly recognizable, entered the saloon and politely asked for drinks at the bar.
Naturally, there were a score of writers and fellows from the print trade in the place at the time. But there must have been twenty Irishmen too.
And the saloon fell silent. The newspapermen looked curious, but the Irishmen were giving the young man a terrible, cold stare. Even a pair of Irish policemen in one corner had a look on their faces that suggested they might, at any moment, fail to see or hear anything. The royal party got the message. They were glancing around anxiously, wondering what to do, when, cutting through the awful silence, came Sean’s calm voice.
“Welcome to O’Donnell’s saloon, gentlemen,” and now his eyes moved round every man in the room, “where we show Irish hospitality to travelers who have lost their way.”
That was it. A quiet hum resumed. The royal party were served and, soon afterward, gratefully made their escape.
But the talk last night had been of a very different nature. This had not been about the Famine, or Irish resentment of England. It had been about the Union and New York. If his instincts were right, it meant trouble. Big trouble. And neither his nor anyone else’s moral authority would be of any help at all.
Every politician knows how the public mood can change. Sometimes the change is gradual. Sometimes, like water held back by a barrier, it will suddenly break through and rush down like a flood, sweeping all before it.
When Fernando Wood had suggested the city should secede from the Union, his words might have been intemperate, but they caught the mood of many New York Irish at that time. Yet only a few weeks later, when the Civil War began, both the mayor and his Irish supporters had changed their tune entirely. Why was that?
Well, the South had made the running—cutting out New York shippers, refusing to pay their debts, and firing on Fort Sumter. But even so, New York’s show of loyalty had been astounding. In the first year, it had fielded more than sixty regiments of volunteers. Every immigrant community had taken part: Kleindeutschland’s Germans, the Polish legion, the Italians’ Garibaldi Guards. And none more so than the mighty Irish Brigades. God knows how many regiments of brave boys, blessed by Cardinal Hughes, had marched out proudly under their Irish banners. Their mothers and sweethearts and other family had lovingly sewn those banners—Mary O’Donnell had eagerly sewn one of them herself.
Of course, the boys were getting paid. Ninety days of fighting service, and a return home with cash in your pocket—it wasn’t such a bad deal for a brave young fellow out of work. If you hated England, you reckoned that hurting the South would damage the English cotton trade, which couldn’t be bad. And for those who dreamed of returning one day to avenge Ireland and drive the English out, this was useful military training, too.
Above all, though, it was Irish pride.
You might blame the English for the Famine, but once you arrived in the New World, there was no one to blame for anything. And even here, in the land of boundless opportunity, you might have to crowd your family into a tenement hovel; and when you went to look for work, find a sign on the door that said: “Irish Need Not Apply.” Humiliation, for the proud princes of Ireland.
No wonder they loved Cardinal Hughes for building them a magnificent cathedral, and for championing Catholic schools. No wonder they flooded into the police and the fire brigade, which gave them authority and honor. No wonder they sought and gave protection in Tammany Hall. And now they had a chance to prove their American loyalty and valour in battle. No wonder they marched out proudly, under their Irish banners.
But that was two years ago.
They’d thought the war would be over soon. It wasn’t. Nor had anyone foreseen the horror of it. Perhaps they should have done. The increasing mechanization of war, the introduction of the rifle with its terrible range and penetration, not to mention the incompetence of some of the commanders, had taken a terrible toll. It was butchery. Not only that, the butchery was being photographed. Images were there in the newspapers for all to see. Soon Bellevue hospital was full of maimed and wounded. So was the Sisters of Charity hospital on Central Park. You saw the disfigured hobbling in the streets. And those were the lucky ones.
For so many had not returned. The Garibaldi Guards were no more. The brave Irish Brigades had ceased to exist.
And for those families with husbands or sons still at the front, where was the promised soldiers’ pay? Lincoln’s government had not paid some of them in almost a year. In other cases, their own officers had stolen the pay. The
recruiting tent by City Hall had long since been folded. These days, you couldn’t get a single volunteer.
So Lincoln had started the draft.
That’s what the Irish had been talking about in the saloon, on Saturday night.
It took Sean an hour to check all the inventory. By that time, Hudson was ready to leave. The day barman would be arriving shortly, so Sean went upstairs to ask his wife to let the barman in. Then he set out with Hudson.
It was only a mile or so up to Prince Street, where the Shiloh Presbyterian Church was to be found. As they walked up Broadway, past City Hall, Sean glanced across to the spot where the recruiting tent had stood. He didn’t say it to Hudson, of course, but it did strike him as ironic. Here were his fellow Irishmen in the saloon, complaining about the draft. Yet when the free black men in the city had started drilling, so they could volunteer to fight, Police Commissioner Kennedy had told them: “For your own safety, stop at once, or the working men of this city are going to stop you.” Not that Sean had been surprised. If he’d heard it once in his saloon, he’d heard it a hundred times: “Never give a nigger a gun.” Later, when no less than three black regiments had volunteered, the Governor of New York had refused to take them.
What did Hudson make of it all? Sean wondered. The men in the saloon treated him well enough. To them, Hudson was part of the furniture. He seemed to know his place, and gave no trouble. But he couldn’t have failed to hear the things they said. Did he secretly seethe with rage and humiliation, just as Irishmen had done when they were treated with contempt? Maybe. Sean wasn’t going to ask. No doubt Hudson found strength and comfort among the black congregation of the Shiloh Church.
“You know what the preachers tell them in those black churches?” an indignant longshoreman had told him once. “They don’t teach them Christian humility and obedience at all. They tell ’em that in the afterlife, God is going to punish us, the white men, for our cruelty and wickedness.” Who knows, O’Donnell thought wryly, the black preachers might turn out to be right.
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