City of God

by Swerling, Beverly

  “My understanding is that you married this young China woman.” There were shelves built to the side of the large window looking toward the harbor. Numerous jade statues on the shelves. Strange Chinese deities he thought. Sam Devrey had been too damned long in those foreign parts. That should have warned Wilbur of what Carolina was getting herself into. Not that he’d ever been able to stop her doing what she wanted once she’d made up her mind. “Is that true? Were you married before you and Carolina met?”

  “I wish you would tell me who gave you all this information. I expected Carolina to go to you in the light of what she saw, but surely she did not—”

  “Carolina merely conveyed to me her great sadness at discovering her husband, the father of her son, in the company of a foreign woman of dubious reputation.”

  “There is no way on earth Carolina could have said anything of the sort. Who told you I had this other association?”

  “Then you’re admitting it?”

  “I am doing no such—Very well.” Sam realized he would have to tell his father-in-law some version of the truth. “I was party to a Chinese ceremony giving me possession of the Chinese girl about whom you’ve made these inquiries.”

  “What kind of ceremony? And what do you mean by possession of her? Are you saying she’s your slave? That’s against the law here in New York now.”

  “She is most certainly not my slave, and the ceremony is unknown here, though it means something among the Chinese. She’s my mistress, Randolf. I am hardly the first man in New York to have one. Mine is Chinese and lives on Cherry Street. What of it? Others can be found all over the town. Even on Bleecker Street I warrant.”

  “How dare you! Besides, my wife has been dead for twenty-two years.”

  “And mine—my only wife, my legal wife before God and man—is very much alive and the mother of my son. I assure you, Carolina will never see Zachary again if she is so foolish as to bring an action for divorce against me.”

  Randolf had already decided that was not a viable option. Carolina’s dirty linen spread all over the penny press? It was unthinkable. “Divorce is not a solution, Devrey.”

  “Very well, I’m glad we agree on that. May I ask what you do consider to be a solution?”

  “That’s simple. You must stop seeing this Chinawoman. Send her back where she came from. Put her on one of your ships bound for Canton. The servant and the child as well, of course.”

  “No.”

  The answer was not a surprise to Randolf. He had considered the possibility of a flat refusal to put things right. It had always struck him as being in Sam Devrey’s character. “You force me to take drastic steps. I shall go to Mr. Astor.”

  “There’s no point in your doing that, Father-in-law. I already have.”

  “Surely Astor doesn’t approve of such behavior by the man—”

  “…he relies on to operate a large and important business interest,” Sam finished for him. “He doesn’t give a damn about my personal life, Randolf. Why would you assume Astor to be so squeamish, considering the activities on the third tier of the Park Theater?” Sam saw with satisfaction the way the other man blanched. It was a lucky shot and it had hit home. “Astor doesn’t care about such things and neither should you.” Sam’s voice was silky now, smoothed by the satisfaction of knowing he had won and Randolf had lost. “Carolina has an entirely respectable position in the town and considerable personal comfort. The rest is none of your affair.”

  It was not the end of the conversation. But by the time Randolf left, there was no further talk of divorce or running to John Jacob Astor with the tale. Sam had promised to do his best to placate Carolina, buy her something nice, some new jewels, perhaps. Spend a bit more time at home. And in the matter of the foreign girl, he would be discreet. In return, for the sake of his daughter and his grandson, Wilbur Randolf would not make any sort of scandal.

  Mentioning the third tier of the Park had been a brilliant stroke, Sam told himself when his father-in-law left. And not a difficult guess. The man had to have done something in those years after his wife died. As for Carolina, it was entirely predictable she would run to her father once she saw Sam with Mei-hua. Also that Randolf would threaten him with revealing the entire business to Astor.

  Astor loathed public scandal. It didn’t matter how well Sam managed Devrey’s or how hard it would be to replace him. The old bastard would swat him as if he were a troublesome mosquito. When a man had that kind of money, there was nothing to stop him doing whatever he wanted and simply spending whatever it took to fix any unfortunate consequences. Astor could buy himself another shipping manager. Hell, he might buy another shipping company and merge Devrey’s out of existence.

  The only thing to do, Sam had realized from the first, was to brazen it out.

  Unless of course he chose to give up Mei-hua. He had considered that alternative well before it was mentioned by Wilbur Randolf.

  He could send her back to Di Short Neck. I am returning the goods, pirate. I no longer desire them.

  But he did. Oh Christ Jesus, he did. He could not imagine life without Mei-hua. She was the silken thread that tied him to the man he’d been, young, with hopes and ideas and boundless courage, and all of China waiting to be conquered. Mei-hua allowed him to keep sight of his dreams.

  Sam was quite certain he had succeeded in averting disaster, but he would have to make sure. Raise the stakes and give Wilbur Randolf still more to protect.

  “She’s in her bedroom, sir. Said she didn’t want any dinner.” Dorothy hadn’t prepared any either. Why would she, when Mrs. Devrey said she didn’t want none and Mr. Devrey hadn’t been home for a proper meal in so long she couldn’t remember the last thing she’d fed him? “I’ve a bit of cold meat pie downstairs, and I could boil some potatoes. Wouldn’t take too long.”

  “Never mind, Dorothy. I’m not hungry. I’ll go straight up and see my wife.”

  It was just past four o’clock, but the few times he’d seen her since the fire she’d looked weak and sickly. He thought he might find her undressed and in bed, make it quick at least. But when he let himself into Carolina’s bedroom, he found her fully clothed and standing at the window with her back to him. She turned at the sound of the opening and closing door. “Dorothy, I told you I didn’t wish to be—Oh. It’s you.”

  “Yes.” He slipped out of his jacket and began at once to untie his stock.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Getting undressed. I’d suggest you do the same.”

  “Get out of my room. You must be mad. I can’t imagine how you can—”

  “Imagining has nothing whatever to do with it. Reality is the order of the day, dear Carolina. The reality you and your actions have thrust upon us. Take off your clothes. You’re my wife. You cannot refuse me.”

  “I can and I will.” She reached for the bell.

  “Put the bell down, unless you wish to be put on display in front of the hired help. Perhaps even your child. I imagine Zachary is old enough to remember such a spectacle if you see fit to provide it.”

  She took her hand away from the bell. Sam had removed his shirt and sat down and began pulling off his boots. She could not look away, could not forget the months she’d longed for him. “What do you want with me? Why now?”

  “I want another child of you. I believe you once pointed out there was only one way to get one.” He stood in front of her wearing only his trousers.

  “You have another child,” she said. “With her.”

  “You are never to mention her again. Not her or her child. Never.” He slapped her, once either side of her face, so both cheeks were left imprinted with the mark of his hand. He knew she would resist, and he knew he would force her. Indeed, he suspected forcing her was the only thing that would make what he intended possible. Nothing else about her stiffened his cock. Looking at those red streaks on her white face did it. “Take off your clothes and turn down the bed.”

  In the end he waited only un
til she had removed her frock and stood before him in her chemise and corsets, all the things white women layered over their flesh. They disgusted him. She disgusted him. Even the small spark of desire was gone until he slapped her twice more, and she tried to get away. Then he was able to force her back onto the top of the silken quilt and push up her petticoats and get the job done. Afterwards, ignoring her sobs, he stated his intentions.

  “We shall have these encounters every day for a week, then wait and see if you are with child. If not, we shall have to repeat the performance until you are. Once you conceive, I will not trouble you unless you go running to your father with any more tales of woe. If you do, I will denounce you publicly as a trollop and a whore. I’ll say you’ve been carrying on with Nick Turner. And I’ll turn you out of this house. Needless to add, you will afterwards be forbidden to see your son.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  WHEN THE FINANCIAL heart of New York burned to the ground, it was not a local catastrophe. The city was the economic engine of the entire nation; help to rebuild must come from state and national government. That was the opinion of Cornelius Lawrence, the first mayor to have been directly elected rather than appointed by the council. He was a gentleman but not a Whig, though that was the newly formed gentlemen’s party—a coalition of groups which had in common principally that they opposed the populist excesses of President Andrew Jackson. Lawrence was a Democrat, supported by the political club known as Tammany Hall. Which, for all its Catholic Irish rank and file, was run by men of business who were both influential and Protestant.

  The embers of the blaze still smoldered when Lawrence’s committee of one hundred twenty-five met, first to thank their neighbors in Brooklyn and Newark for fire-fighting help, then to do something about emergency relief. Both were worthy aims quickly achieved, but no one doubted that the committee’s chief responsibility was to find the money needed to rebuild. Neither President Jackson nor the Congress rose to the mayor’s expectations, but Albany quickly floated a loan of six million dollars, the largest sum ever allocated for disaster relief. It was then possible to offer destroyed businesses loans at a modest five percent rate of interest. Increased availability of credit meant as well that existing loans could be extended rather than called. Fewer bankruptcies were the result, and the Erie Canal Commission saw fit to shift another million into the city’s banks.

  The scent of opportunity replaced the stench of smoke.

  The town was awash in money. Moreover, it had gained a sudden supply of the scarcest of urban commodities, space. Taming the island the Indians had called Manahatta, the place of high hills, had never been easy, not when the project was begun by the Dutch in 1624 or when the English took it over in 1664. These modern times were no different. Turning Chelsea, an area hard by the Hudson River, from one gentleman’s estate into a district of fine homes for many gentlemen required digging down twelve feet for a distance of a mile in order to run Eighth Avenue at a reasonable level. Over on the east side of the city, where north of Corlear’s Hook dry land finished at Second Avenue and a series of jagged cliffs ended in a band of swamp edging the East River, the cost of draining and filling had put off even wealthy landlords until one of them, a descendent of old Peter Stuyvesant, committed the money required to develop a section known as Tompkins Square. Fine houses lined the streets there now as well.

  Still, before that fiery December of ’35 no one had imagined that the oldest parts of the town, the southernmost tip of the island, where crooked streets and cobbled alleys had been laid atop paths originally cut through the forest by red men in moccasins, would suddenly become a blank canvas upon which New York money could draw a picture more in keeping with its idea of itself. And while it wasn’t possible to impose the strict grid of the rest of the city on the old town, they could make streets wide enough for modern transportation and eliminate little alleys and byways going nowhere. It required only will and imagination. These were the sort of men who had both.

  With the Tontine gone, the Stock Exchange was homeless, but it resumed trading four days after the blaze. Meanwhile unemployed laborers were set to work clearing the still warm rubble, and the prosperous silk merchant Arthur Tappan told the employees he assembled the day after the fire, “We must rebuild immediately.” Then he sent one to find an architect and the rest to fit up interim quarters. By midday the Journal of Commerce announced the company open for business on the corner of Pearl and Hanover streets. Other merchants were almost equally quick off the mark. Hundreds of them set up shop in temporary accommodation, causing rents down the town to double and triple overnight. Money, more than ever before, was pumping through the city’s veins and arteries with a freedom that had been unimaginable only a few weeks earlier.

  In 1827 the Swiss brothers Delmonico had opened a six-table café and patisserie on William Street and developed it into the city’s first public dining room not connected to an inn, or a tavern, or even a hotel. Delmonico’s was a restaurant français, where chefs found from among the city’s French immigrants cooked food never before seen in America, and it was possible to order à la carte, to select from a menu that offered choices rather than set meals. The whole enterprise had burned to the ground.

  The brothers swiftly bought a triangular plot fitted into the junction of Mill, Beaver, and William streets and set about building a fairy-tale palace adorned with marble pillars, crystal chandeliers, and velvet banquettes. Their new Delmonico’s had two floors for dining in see-and-be-seen splendor, and a third for private parties where intimate rooms offered chaises longues as well as tables and chairs, available for whatever reason a lady might wish to recline before, during, or after dinner. Below ground level was a vault that could accommodate sixteen thousand bottles of wine, and between the building and the street, foot-thick brick walls that would act as a firebreak in case, God forbid, there was another fire.

  It was a possibility they must all consider. The new Merchants’ Exchange was to be erected on the site of the old, but this time it would cover a full city block and, be constructed almost entirely of Massachusetts granite with not a splinter of wood. There would be an eighty-foot glass dome above a vast central hall and accommodations for insurance companies, bankers, brokers, the Chamber of Commerce, and the Stock Exchange, as well as a reading room where newspapers and periodicals from around the world could be found. A very New York sort of place, just as John Jacob Astor, for all that he still had a thick German accent, had become a New York sort of man.

  A peculiar kind of caution had built Astor’s fortune; he had a talent for taking over other men’s failed dreams and using money to make them succeed. Now he conceived a different sort of venture. The area around City Hall was no longer on the periphery of the town, instead it was the new center, a place where theaters, churches, and businesses—especially newspapers—were clustered around what had been known as the common, but was now called City Hall Park. The almshouse was gone, and the bridewell scheduled for destruction if ever the new prison on Centre Street was finished. The area was attracting the best sort of people these days, not just from all over the country but the world.

  Trust John Jacob Astor to know that a city which had been entertaining upwards of seventy thousand visitors each of the last few years would see still more after this frenzy of growth. Time, Astor decided, for New York’s first luxury hotel. Something far grander than his own workaday inn, City Hotel, near Trinity Church. Something to surpass Boston’s classically opulent Tremont House.

  He already owned the ideal piece of land. The once remote site on Broadway between Barclay and Vesey streets where his private residence had been before he built a new one up the town became Astor House: five stories built around a central courtyard, with three hundred and nine rooms that could house eight hundred guests. There was the unheard-of convenience of bathing and toilet facilities on each floor, and gas lighting throughout was supplied by the hotel’s own plant. There was as well a table d’hôte restaurant that didn’t aspire to
the excess of choice of Delmonico’s extravagant carte but offered American merchants and their guests hearty fixed meals based on oyster pie, joints of beef, and roast wild duck.

  As long as you were not a workingman on a set income, and able to survive the spiraling inflation brought on by so much cheap money, ’36 was a very good year. By the end of it six hundred new buildings had replaced those that had burned, and according to the papers they were all devoted to doing business.

  Making money. Making New York. There was now scarcely a private residence or a boardinghouse south of Wall Street. A very good year.

  A year when Carolina Devrey also discovered it was possible for good to come of evil. Contrary to what she expected, the child born of the most hateful behavior was from the first moment the babe was put in her arms as precious to her as the one she’d imagined to be born of tenderness. Samuel insisted on naming the infant Celinda after his wretched mother, but even so Carolina adored her baby daughter. She thought of her not as the child of her shaming but of her release, because once it became obvious she was truly expecting, Sam had left her strictly alone. After their daughter’s birth he asked nothing of her in the bedroom and little in terms of the household. Sam spent the barest minimum of time at three East Fourteenth Street and had apparently given her liberty to live her own life. Best of all, Carolina no longer pined for Samuel or thought herself in love with him. Tiny little Celinda Lucy Devrey, born in October of 1836, had set her free.

  Sam had gotten away with lying to his father-in-law about what Jacob Astor knew and didn’t know, but he did not fool himself that would always be the case. Only if he could take back what should have been his birthright, control of Devrey Shipping, would he be free of Astor’s fearful shadow. If Danny Parker, the shipwright who had most of Devrey’s business, knew of that ambition, he never mentioned it. He and Sam Devrey met frequently, but always they talked about ships, the how and the why of them, not who owned them. When the conversations concerned Devrey ships Danny was servicing, they usually took place down the town at the biggest and oldest Parker shipyard at the foot of Montgomery Street. When Sam asked Danny to meet him at the smaller Thirty-fourth Street yard, they had conversations of a different sort.