She laughed. “I was just thinking of lizards when you came.”
“There you are then,” he said. “Great minds think alike. Or perhaps lizards do.”
She lay back. She was all alone, lying beside a man, but nobody could see.
So when he turned and gently kissed her, she didn’t resist. She let him do it. And when he said, “You are so beautiful, Mary,” she felt as if she was.
And soon he began to kiss her in a way she had never been kissed before, exploring her lips and her tongue, and she knew that this must be the beginning of what she should not do. But she let him all the same and soon she was responding, and she felt her heart beating faster and faster. “What if someone should see?” she gasped.
“There’s no one within miles,” he said. Then his kisses grew more passionate, and his hands began to rove, and she became so excited that although she knew she mustn’t, she didn’t want him to stop. And why not? she thought. For if not now, perhaps it would be never.
She could feel him, hard against her. He was beginning to loosen her dress. His breath was coming in little gasps.
Then Gretchen’s voice. Gretchen’s voice from the beach. Gretchen’s voice coming nearer.
“Mary?”
Theodore cursed, and pulled away from her. For a second she lay there, feeling abandoned. Then, with a sudden surge of panic, she scrambled behind Theodore, seized her sketch pad, found her hat and crammed it on her head. So that a moment or two later, as Gretchen came over the sand dune, she saw Mary, perhaps a little untidy, but quietly sketching, and her brother, sitting a few yards away, staring at her as she came toward them, with the stony gaze of a serpent that is ready to strike.
“Hello, Gretchen,” said Mary calmly. “Why don’t you take Theodore for a walk while I finish my sketch?”
It was late in the afternoon before they got back to the inn. Nobody had talked much. But as they entered one of the guests in the hall told them there’d been trouble on Manhattan that morning. News had come with the afternoon ferry.
“What happened?” asked Theodore.
“The Draft Office up at Forty-seventh was attacked. Set on fire, I believe.”
After supper, the landlord said that there had been some more trouble in the afternoon. He’d heard it from the hotel along the street. There had been several fires.
“The telegraph isn’t working,” he reported, “so we haven’t any details. It’s probably nothing much.”
The day had been hot and humid. Out here, with the sea breeze wafting in from the Atlantic, the humidity had been of no consequence, but over in the streets of New York, it must have been unpleasant. And even out on the porch after supper, it began to feel rather oppressive.
After a short while, Gretchen went inside for a few minutes.
“I’m going for a walk to look at the sea,” Theodore announced, taking out a cigar.
“I’ll come too,” said Mary.
It was quiet on the beach.
“I’m sorry Gretchen came,” said Mary.
Theodore nodded. “Yes.”
“Are you staying a few more days?”
“I’d like to,” he said. “Though I have work at the studio.”
“Oh,” said Mary.
They stared out over the water. Banks of clouds were gathering now, promising rain, and relief.
“We’ll see what tomorrow brings,” said Theodore.
That night, Gretchen and Mary went to bed as usual. Gretchen didn’t say anything about Theodore. Just after dark Mary thought she was going to cry. She was glad that, moments before, the rain had begun to fall outside the window, masking all sounds.
It was the middle of the night when she awoke, and realized that Gretchen wasn’t there. She waited a while. Not a sound. Then she got out of bed and went to the window. The rain had stopped, and the stars were visible again. Looking out, she saw nothing at first. Then she made out a pale shape, moving about on the little patch of grass. It was Gretchen, in her nightdress, pacing up and down in front of a bank of reeds.
Mary did not want to call to her in case it woke the household. She stole quietly out of the room, down the stairs and outside.
“What are you doing?” Mary whispered. “You’ll get soaked.”
“I can’t sleep,” Gretchen said. “I’m worried.”
“Why?”
“The children. Those fires in the city.”
“They said it wasn’t serious.”
“They don’t know. You can’t even see the city from here.”
Mary felt her heart sink, but she only paused a moment or two.
“Do you want to go back, just to make sure?”
“That’s what I was wondering.”
“We’ll take the ferry in the morning,” said Mary. “We can always come out again if everything’s all right.”
“Yes.”
“Come back to bed now, or you’ll catch a chill.”
The first ferry was not due until mid-morning, but they were all three at the Point waiting for it—Theodore had insisted on accompanying them. The ferry was late. They waited an hour. Then another. Then someone arrived and said the ferry wasn’t coming, so they went back to the inn, to see if anyone there had any news.
“The ferry’s been attacked, set on fire they think,” the owner of the inn told them. “We just had a man here who rode over with the papers from Brooklyn. There’s all kinds of trouble in the city. Fires everywhere. They’ve sent to President Lincoln for troops.”
“Can we send a wire to the city?” Theodore asked.
“’Fraid not. All the telegraph lines are down. Destroyed. You’re safer here.”
“I have to get to the city,” said Gretchen. “My children are there.”
“I can get a cart to take you to Brooklyn,” said the owner of the inn, “though it may not do you any good.”
He did a little better than that. Within half an hour they were in a swift two-wheeled pony trap. By mid-afternoon, they were crossing Brooklyn Heights, from where they saw the city, spread out before them.
There were fires everywhere. Smoke was rising from a dozen areas. Only the Financial District appeared to be unscathed, for a gunboat was lying in the East River exactly opposite the end of Wall Street. The rest of the city might enter the fires of Hell, but the men of Wall Street would make sure that the money houses were safe. When they got down to the ferry, the news was even worse.
“Half the black neighborhoods are burned down,” the man in charge of the ferry told them. “God knows how many niggers are getting killed. There are barricades all over the East Side. They’re after the rich folks too. None of the merchants dare walk in the street—even Brooks Brothers has been sacked.”
“I want to go across,” said Gretchen.
“If anyone’s going, I’d better,” said Theodore. “You two should stay here.”
“I’m going to my children,” Gretchen answered firmly.
“And I’m going with you,” echoed Mary.
“Well, nobody’s going to take you,” the ferryman told them. “They’ve half destroyed the ferry ships already, and they’re cutting off the railroads too. The rioters are armed. It’s war over there.”
They went up and down the waterfront. Nobody would take them. As evening approached, Mary said: “We’d better find a place to stay the night.”
But Gretchen didn’t seem to hear her.
They saw a great flare of fire arise from the direction of the Bowery, where Gretchen’s children were. Gretchen gasped, and Theodore looked grave. Mary thought it best to say nothing.
The sun was coming grimly down over the harbor when an old man walked up to them.
“I got a boat. Wife’s over there.” He indicated the area by South Street. “Soon as it’s dark, I’ll be going over. I can take you if you want.”
It was strange, being rowed across the East River in the dark. Ahead, the houses of the city were mostly shuttered, therefore dark. Many of the gas lamps in the street wer
e also out—though leaking dangerous gas, no doubt. All over the city, the glow of fires could be seen, and the faint crackling sounds and the smell of their smoke drifted over the water.
But the South Street waterfront was quiet now, and they were able to tie up the boat and clamber out. Theodore gave the old man several dollars for his kindness. Though Gretchen protested, Theodore and Mary persuaded her to let him go to her house near the Bowery, while Mary took her to Sean’s saloon, which was not far off. “If there’s one place that will be safe down there, it’ll be Sean’s,” Mary pointed out.
Sean was just locking up when they reached him, and he ushered them quickly inside, not best pleased to see them.
“I thought you were safe on Coney Island,” he said. But he understood. “A mother goes to her children,” he said to Gretchen with a shrug. “What can you do?”
Half an hour later, Theodore arrived. The children were at their grandparents’ house. “I can get you there safely,” he told his sister.
As they left, he turned to Mary.
“We’ll be speaking again, Mary, when this is all over,” he said softly.
“Perhaps,” she said.
Not that he wouldn’t go through with it. If she went round to his studio, she was sure he would. But things had been different, out on Coney Island, and she was back in the city now. Back in her usual world. Well, she’d see.
The immediate question was, where should she go now?
“You’d better stay here,” Sean told her. When she said she wanted to go to Gramercy Park, he reiterated: “I don’t know what’s going on up there, but you’re definitely safer with your own family here.”
But the Masters were her family now really, though she didn’t say it, and she told him she wanted to go uptown all the same. So with no good grace, Sean escorted her. The approach to Gramercy Park had to be cautious, and as they came to Irving Place it was obvious that there had been trouble there. Broken glass and debris littered the whole area. Sean had heard that Twenty-first Street, on the north side of the square, was barricaded. When they reached the quiet square from its western side, they found their way barred by a patrol, not of rioters, but of residents of Gramercy Park, well armed with pistols and muskets. These men didn’t know Sean, but one of them did recognize Mary. And after insisting that she part from her brother at the patrol point, he personally took her to the door of the Masters’ house and roused them. Sean waited until he knew she was safely in.
Mrs. Master herself came from her room at once. In the kitchen she made her drink some hot chocolate.
“Now you must go straight to bed, Mary,” she insisted, “and you can tell me all about your adventures in the morning.”
But Mary didn’t tell her adventures in the morning. Whether it was the heat, the shock of what she’d just seen, or some other cause, during that night she began to feel feverish. The next morning, she was shivering and burning up. Mrs. Master herself nursed her, making her drink liquids and placing cool compresses on her head. “Don’t talk now, Mary,” she said, when Mary tried to thank her. “We’re just glad you’re safely home.”
So Mary was not aware of the burnings and killings that continued all over the city that day. She did not know that Brooklyn, too, had erupted into violence on the waterfront where she’d been, or that there had been killings down most of the East River. Only after her fever had broken, and she awoke feeling hungry on Thursday morning, did she learn that the troops had arrived at last, that they were scattering the rioters with fusillades, and that Gramercy Park itself was now being protected with howitzers.
The terrible Draft Riots of 1863 were ending.
It was noon when the parlormaid came into her room with a bowl of soup, and sat beside her bed and began to talk. Did she know what had taken place in her absence, the girl wanted to know, how Mr. Master had gone missing, and then Mrs. Master too, and how she’d tried to save the orphanage and nearly been killed, and been rescued by Mr. Master and Madame Restell the abortionist. This astonishing news, at least, made Mary sit up in bed.
“So did anything happen to you?” asked the parlormaid.
“Me?” said Mary. “Oh, no. Nothing much, I suppose.”
Moonlight Sonata
1871
IF THE CAREER of Theodore Keller advanced considerably in the eight years after his visit to Coney Island, it was due mainly to two circumstances. The first was that, at the end of the summer of the terrible riots, he had decided to go down to cover the later stages of the Civil War. The second had been the patronage of Frank Master.
And yet now, on a warm afternoon in October, on the very brink of the most important exhibition of his life, in the splendid gallery near Astor Place that Master had hired for the occasion, he was about to lose his temper with his patron.
“You’ll ruin everything!” he cried to Master in exasperation.
“I’m telling you,” said Master firmly, “it’s what you need to do.”
They’d already had one disagreement. Theodore had made no objection when Master suggested that one of the portrait photographs he’d taken of Lily de Chantal be included. But when his patron had warned him not to include the picture of Madame Restell, Theodore had been furious.
“It’s one of the best pictures I ever took,” he’d protested.
The portrait of Madame Restell had been a masterpiece. He’d gone to her house, found a huge, ornate armchair, and placed her in it, like Cleopatra on her throne. With her great bull-like face, she’d stared belligerently at the camera, as terrifying as a minotaur. Placed beside even General Grant, her portrait would have knocked his off the wall.
“Theo,” Frank Master had told him, “that woman is now so notorious, they can’t even sell the plot next to her house—on Fifth Avenue, if you please! No one will live there. If you put her portrait up, you’ll never get another commission.” Even Hetty Master had reluctantly agreed. When Madame Restell discovered she wouldn’t be in the show, she had been furious.
And there were other aspects of the exhibition that had worried Master: the political pieces.
“Be careful, Theo,” he’d said. “I don’t want you to do yourself harm.” His counsel was possibly wise, but Theodore didn’t give a damn, and he’d refused to budge.
“I’m telling the truth,” he’d said. “That’s what artists do.”
In this he’d had one unexpected ally. Hetty Master. “He’s quite right,” she’d told her husband. “He should include any photographs he likes. Except Madame Restell, perhaps,” she’d added, a little reluctantly.
But the sudden message from Master that day, when the whole exhibition had already been hung, had driven Theodore into a fury. Nor had the arrival of his patron at the gallery to argue his case made matters any better. Quite the contrary.
“Think of it,” Frank cried enthusiastically. “Put the three together on one wall. Boss Tweed on the left, Thomas Nast on the right, and that shot you took of the city courthouse just below them. Or above, if you prefer,” he added obligingly.
“But the work isn’t interesting,” Theodore expostulated. The three photographs, from the thousands in his collection, were perfectly adequate, but nothing more.
“Theodore,” said Frank Master as patiently as if he were addressing a child, “Boss Tweed was arrested today.”
If Tammany Hall knew how to make money out of New York City, it had to be said that Boss Tweed had taken the gentle art of the padded contract to heights never dreamed of before. It wasn’t that he did anything complicated. Together with Sweeny the Park Commissioner, Connolly the Controller and Mayor Oakey Hall, he formed a ring for the awarding of city contracts. But where in the past a contract worth ten thousand dollars might have had a thousand or two added, the ring, since they controlled everything, felt free to do much better. For more than a decade now, the amount on a contract might be multiplied five, ten, even a hundred times. The contractor was then paid, with a large bonus on top, and the huge remaining amount split betwe
en the ring.
His noblest enterprise had been the courthouse, behind City Hall. It had been under construction for ten years now, with no end in sight. When eventually it was completed, there was no doubt that it would be one of the noblest buildings in the city—a regular palace, in the best neoclassical style. But the ring was in no hurry to finish it, since this splendid architectural receptacle was also a trough of liquid gold. Everyone benefited—at least, all the ring’s many friends. Modest craftsmen with contracts for work there had already emerged from it as rich men. No one knew how many millions had flowed into this one building, but this was certain: the courthouse had already cost more than the recent purchase of Alaska.
Yet it hadn’t been until two years ago that the press had attacked the ring in any serious way. But when it did come, the attack was two-pronged: from the New York Times, in words; and from the brilliant cartoons of Thomas Nast, in Harper’s Weekly.
It was Thomas Nast’s cartoons that Boss Tweed feared the more. His constituents mightn’t be able to read, he said, but they could understand the cartoons. He even tried to buy Nast off with half a million dollars. But it hadn’t worked. And now, finally, Boss Tweed had been arrested.
Theodore hadn’t been particularly pleased with the portrait he’d done of Tweed a couple of years back. With his high domed forehead and beard, he might have passed for any corpulent politician, although the light falling aslant the studio had brought out some lines of aggression and greed in his face. He’d enjoyed the session with Nast far more. They were about the same age, and both from German families. The clever cartoonist had a surprisingly smooth, round face, upon which he sported a bushy mustache and a jaunty goatee beard. But Theodore thought he’d captured the young man’s lively, quizzical character quite well.
As for the photograph of the courthouse, it showed the growing building well enough, but it wasn’t interesting.
“This is just to attract publicity,” he complained to Master.
New York Page 58