They parted at the crowding of dawn upon the shadowed stoop of Mrs. Riordon’s boarding house. The word between them was goodbye, but Peg knew in her heart they would soon find each other again. More than that she did not want to know.
PART III
1
NORAH, AWAKENING IN the night, lay a moment thinking perhaps to hear again the sound that roused her or to recall the dream out of which she had started. Nothing stirred in the building: neither the baby in her crib, nor Emma in the room across; nor was there a sound from the livery stable over which they lived. She put her hand to the pillow beside hers. Dennis had not laid his head upon it that night. She arose and groped her way to the door. There was a light in the kitchen. She followed it on tiptoe and watched Dennis at the table a moment before speaking. Many the time, waking thus or to take the baby to her breast, had she found him over a book or over a paper, his tongue nesting in his cheek, the quill poised in his hand, and the candle so low she would have to chip the tallow away from the handle.
“’Tis late by the candle, Dennis,” she said softly.
“By the glory,” he said, jerking his head up, “I have a marvelous power. Come here to me, love, and let me show you.”
When she reached his side he caught her about the legs and pulled her close, pushed his face into her stomach and burrowed a kiss there.
“Is there anything new in there, do you think?”
“Not yet, please God,” said Norah.
“Look,” Dennis said, indicating the top sheet of his papers, “at what brought you out of your sleep. Read that.”
She leaned over the paper. “I’m not much for readin’ in the middle of the night, Dennis.” Or at any other time for that matter, she thought, exploring the bold strokes of his quill.
“‘I love my wife,’” he read, pointing each word with his forefinger. “ “I love my wife and my darling Kathleen bawn.’ That’s what it says there. That’s what I was writin’—I love my wife.”
“’Tis a pity you wouldn’t be tellin’ it to her at this hour,” said Norah, “and not to the kitchen table.”
“Look at that ‘I’,” said Dennis. “Did you ever see one more elegant save on the priest’s robes?”
“You’ve a beautiful hand,” said Norah, “and I’m awful proud of it.”
“Aye,” said Dennis. “I am myself.” He gathered the papers. “Are you wakened enough to hear a scheme I’ve hatched tonight?”
“Wait’ll I get Kathleen. Maybe she’ll take her feedin’ now.”
“Aye, our first born should be in on it,” Dennis said. He got up and paced the room while he waited. There were plates on the wall and a cupboard of food. A rocker awaited Norah and the child and over its back hung a woolen shawl to which he put his hand in passing that he might feel the soft excellence of it. A scuttle of coal sat by the stove and a box of kindling should their comfort ask it. And a child that wasn’t their own was as well provided as any in the house.
Norah came with the baby, and Dennis held the shawl until they were settled and then wrapped it about his wife’s knees. The infant found her nipple and took nourishment without troubling to open her eyes.
“I envy herself snugglin’ like that,” said Dennis. “Nary a worry of the well runnin’ dry.” He rubbed his hands together, shrugged his shoulders and stretched his neck, a manner he had of preparing himself for a speech whether public or private. “I’ve been in the market now over a year,” he started. “It was never much of a job, policin’ you might say, but I’ve a good and careful wife and I’m not a drinkin’ man…”
Norah nodded and smiled. The child and herself might be his only audience, but he pitched his voice to carry over the neighborhood.
“I’ve a hundred dollars laid by. It isn’t much, but the very island we live on was bought for less. I’m goin’ into business for myself. For ourself. I don’t fancy business. I look to myself instead, if the truth be told, as a comin’ politician, and there’s them agrees with me, bless their powers of observation. But an aspirin’ politician, without a business of his own to recommend him, is like a donkey without a cart. You’re a damn fool if you put your money on him before seein’ him in harness.
“Well, I’m goin’ to put on the harness now. I’ve been observin’ a terrible waste in the market. There’s scraps of beef thrun to the dogs at closin’ time, and there’s people, God help us, ’ull fight the dogs for it. There’s farmers at the end of the day heap cabbages, carrots, potatoes, bags of stuff back into their carts to haul home to the pigs—produce, mind you…” he shook his finger at his audience… “which was handpicked in the mornin’ to be sure of the best. There’s meal dumped in the gutter and waifs scoopin’ it out with their fists and cartin’ it off in their hats. I don’t like to see mortal man grovelin’ for his food like that.”
He paused and Norah nodded, smiling, and made the gesture of applause with her free hand on her knee.
“Now I propose to save the farmers and merchants from total loss,” Dennis recommenced. “I’ll buy what they’ve left at the end of the day, and for more than they’ll get from their pigs for it. Mind you not much more, for I’ve a long association with pigs and know what they can pay—but enough to save men and horses wearyin’ themselves cartin’ the two ways. After closin’ time—and by then I’ll have bought what I’m buyin’—I’ll sort and freshen up my produce and sell it at half the market price and twice my own purchasin’ price. Lavery’s Eight O’clock Market. How do you like it?”
Norah thought for a moment. “At eight o’clock I won’t be over-fond of it and you gone since six in the mornin’.”
Dennis took a chair to her side, straddled it, and caught her hand in his. “Darlin’ one, it won’t be for a lifetime. Maybe if it prospers, until I get my citizen affidavit.”
“In a way you’ll be deprivin’ the poor of their pickin’s,” she said.
“If I didn’t know you put up things in my way to see me jump over them,” Dennis said with an edge, “I’d be in danger now of losin’ my temper. I’ll be puttin’ food at a price they can pay—unless it’s your opinion that poor men prefer to eat from the gutter.”
Norah pulled her breast gently from the mouth of the sleeping child. “Dennis, I wish you wouldn’t try the sting of your tongue on me. I’ll love you whatever you do. I think it’s a grand scheme though I fear you drivin’ yourself too hard.”
Dennis rose from the chair grinning, stretched and flexed the muscles in his arms and back. “I’ve the power no man can drive out of me, myself included. All I needed to bless the venture was your consent.”
“You’ve more than consent, dear man. You’ve my heart’s blessin’.”
And more even than that, she thought, carrying the child to her cradle as he took the candle before them: her heart’s thankfulness, for with such responsibility surely he must give up running with the engines.
Dennis had no trouble persuading the farmers and merchants to his scheme. Kevin built him a shelter and stalls and by way of Godspeed on the venture paid down the first quarter’s rent to the market commissioner’s office. He still had the need of Norah’s help and all the help he could get in establishing himself, because as Mr. Finn cautioned when Dennis took the plan to him for approval, he had need to draw a straight line between the hours he owed the city as market roundsman and the time he devoted to his own interests. So it was arranged Norah should sit watch in the stalls from four until six each day, and Jamie Lavery, Kevin’s son, was hired at a dollar a week after school to gather the day’s remains from the closing merchants. He would do no bargaining, no weighing; Dennis proclaimed his intentions to every man he solicited: he would pay at the rate of a quarter of that day’s price and settle each day’s account as rendered by the merchant himself on the following morning before the market opened. He calculated that for one man who overcharged him another would throw something into the barrel for nothing, and Jamie, fine lad, had a winsome smile.
The plans were
glorious and the date set for the opening, September third. A half dozen boys were dispatched with placards in the morning to hawk the streets of the lower wards. “A poor man’s market,” they proclaimed, “the victuals of the rich at a price the poor can afford.” All through the feverish day as Dennis angled his rounds from his own establishment, the pride and the fear and the wonder clamored up and down inside him. His stomach felt as though a parcel of children were bouncing on and off it. He had never known such a sense of family; a clan it was, by the glory. Kevin was touching up here and fortifying there. Mary, his wife, was on hand, her red head like a beacon attracting relations Dennis had no notion he could call his own.
“Shake hands with your cousin Eamon,” Mary stopped him once. A great, dark man was Eamon with a jeweled pin shining from his cravat. “On which side is he my cousin?” Dennis whispered when the man turned away. “On the buttered side,” Mary confided into his ear.
Dennis grinned and skipped off to his watch, observing from a distance that cousin Eamon was supervising the arrangement of something, and making notes on it, by the glory. Oh, the wonder of cooperation a man could stir up by a little gumption!
In mid-afternoon Dennis marked Jamie starting his rounds of the stalls with the cart. The farmers were closing early, as was their custom, to be home for evening chores. One trip and another made Jamie, and Lavery’s Eight O’clock Market was filling with produce. Dennis was turning away that pride might not blind him to his duty when he saw Vinnie Dunne. The lad had come in his work clothes, but he was hanging back at a distance he must have thought kept him from the eyes of the family. He was watching with narrow-eyed longing every chore young Jamie went upon. Had Dennis known this day was coming, he might have kept the lad with him from the beginning. But what was coming? What did he know of the future? Only a fool prospered others on his own dream. There had never been reason to regret putting Vinnie with Finn, and if the lad was becoming something different from what he started—well, there were still less gentlemen in the world than beggars. And here he was in his work-clothes.
“Vinnie,” he called out as though he were first spying the lad.
The boy pretended as much surprise on discovering Dennis.
“Walk my rounds with me a bit,” Dennis said. “What do you think of Lavery’s Market?”
“I’m smut with it,” Vinnie said, grinning.
“You’re what?”
“Smut. It’s a word we use. Like smitten, only smut.”
“I see,” said Dennis. The “we” he supposed were lads at the grammar school where Vinnie had just started. “You’re not cribbin’ time on your studies, comin’ here?”
“I’ll make it up,” the boy said. He stopped and looked back and then up into Dennis’ face. “Dennis, I wish I could help. Could I?”
“’Tis scarce the place for a gentleman like yourself,” Dennis said slyly.
“Shit,” said Vinnie.
Dennis was at a loss to know how to react to the vulgarity. Vinnie was a boy one minute and a man the next. “Well,” he said finally, “I guess I asked for that, but ’tis strange language to be comin’ out of a grammar school. Of course, you can help. I’m countin’ on you to go over the accounts with me.”
“Right now I mean,” said Vinnie. He jerked his head at Jamie who was hurrying by with the empty cart. “He’s no more to you than me, is he?”
“Bless you,” said Dennis, “my own child is no more to me than you and your sister. Hop to it and welcome. Thrupence an hour and supper when all is done.”
He called out the last words to Vinnie for the boy already had a hand on the cart, and when Dennis came round to them again, wherever and whichever of them got it, they had a cart apiece, and both loaded.
Even Peg who had all but vanished from their midst through the summer appeared at the day’s end, stepping out of a hack if you please, and beckoning for someone to come to her aid. Dennis, on his own time at last, looked up from a barrel and lost his count of the pickles. There, he thought, was a girl living within somebody’s means but not her own. Kevin skipped like a goat to her aid and Vinnie beside him. Vinnie got a kiss before the eyes of all, and Dennis thought, behind the eyes of all Kevin might have done as well. He caught a drop of sweat from his nose before it fell into the brine. He saw then that Peg had come with more than her elegance. She was loading the arms of Kevin and Vinnie and cousin Eamon with trays out of the hack. God forgive my ungrateful mind, he thought, wiping his hands and going to her aid himself.
“What are they at all?” he cried, looking down to a tray after accepting a kiss on his own cheek without conscience.
“They’re French confection,” said Peg, “direct from Broadway, and for all that they’re a day old, you’ll make an excellent penny on them.”
“Aye,” said Dennis, testing the cream off one with his finger. “If they can’t stomach them they can wear them. What’ll they cost me?”
“Nothing for this batch,” said Peg. “If they go, we’ll make an arrangement.”
To Dennis’ amazement and Norah’s delight, Peg took from the bag dangling at her side a fancy tea apron which she shook out and tied about her waist. She folded back her frilled cuffs and set about clearing a counter space for herself. When she was set she looked up at the gaping family. “Madame?” she said to Mary Lavery, sending the woman into a great “Oh-h-h” that resounded over the whole marketplace. Then showing her pretty teeth in a smile, she turned to cousin Eamon: “Monsieur?” He bowed and pulled out a fat purse.
“By the glory,” said Dennis, “I’d be leery of an arrangement like that!”
More than one merchant stopped by after his own closing to wish well to the Eight O’clock Market and as many as stopped took home a French confection. Any who lingered an hour more saw a great venture launched. Half the population of the ward turned out, it seemed, men along with their women and prodding them not to be squeezing their pennies. A gang of newsboys cleaned Peg out of her sweets tout de suite as she said, devouring them as fast as they dredged their pockets for twopence. The cream frothed from their lips, and some that melted trickled down their wrists until caught by their tongues. “My eyes!” cried one, pointing to the groove of white flesh his tongue had licked clean, “I’m white an’ nut black as they tuld me!” “Aw,” said his chum, “yer muther was a striped bass an’ yer futher a minnow.” “An’ you wuz hatched by a rooster! Hey, Muss, ain’t you gut some yer hidin’ fur yer fella? I’ll be yer fella fur anuther o’ them!” “Puddinhead!” cried another, leaping up on Puddinhead’s back. “Take me, Missie, I’m prettier!” Peg looked into their pert and impish faces. Pinched by necessity they were, but not trapped by it. Free-swinging, free-betting, free-spending, urchins of democracy, its petty merchants, the youngest of Young America, its plague and its promise, for these were the b’hoys of tomorrow, not one of them doubting his rights as a man and claiming them now to be certain; they owned what they paid for if it was no more than a dozen copies of the penny Sun, and there was not a craven peasant heart among them.
Pushing in and through the boys and scattering those at anchor were the beggars turned shoppers. Women bundled cabbages, tomatoes and slabs of cheese into their shawls, men nestled eggs in their caps; meat was weighed into the pot it would cook in and butter slapped into jars greased by nothing sweeter before than salt pork drippings. Corn sold at three ears for a penny; potatoes were high, sixpence a bushel, but that quartered if you had but a penny and a half. No prices were haggled the night of the opening, and no wares were unsold by lantern time. As Dennis remarked on the way home with his money-box loaded, a mouse couldn’t find a crumb, not even if he came with a gold nugget to lay in its place. All nights were not as good as the first, but none of them were bad, and even the perishing storms of November could not destroy Dennis’ daily profit. Before long peddlers were bringing their hand carts from Chatham Street into the shadow of Lavery’s and hawking their second-hand clothes, trinkets, coffee-sacks, old shoes and pots men
ded-to-new. Let them come, Dennis said, so long as they don’t bring produce. Well he knew that the stomachs of the poor made the first and loudest demands upon their scrabbled pennies, and he often remarked of himself that he was not a greedy man. By the end of the year he resigned his job as city roundsman, and began to look to the opening of another Eight O’clock Market.
2
OF ALL THE TIMES that Dennis had been to see Jeremiah Finn, he had always been received in the office. He had been in the household apartment but once, that when Finn was away and when invited by Vinnie to see his room. So much out of place had he felt then that he scarcely observed the house at all, except to wonder if it was safe to live under the same roof with as black a woman as Nancy. Climbing into the omnibus after Vinnie on a Sunday afternoon in January, he felt a spark of pride that Mr. Finn had sent for him to tea. He was glad now that Finn’s patronage had not extended to friendship until he felt himself almost the equal of the little man. He shuffled his feet through the straw in the bottom of the bus and thought he would have been even more equal to the invitation if they had taken a hack. Vinnie was huddled in his greatcoat, his breath shooting out of the collar like steam.
“Is it business or social?” Dennis asked, leaning near the boy’s ear.
“I didn’t ask,” Vinnie muttered without lifting his chin.
He was beginning to take on airs, the boy, Dennis thought. When he came round now, he kissed the cheek of Norah and of his sister where before you had to corner him to give him a bit of affection. But more loving then was he than now with his courtly kisses. A few months to a boy this age made a great difference. Whether it was shyness he was overcoming or the snob bubbling out of him like the pimples, Dennis could not tell. When they got out of the bus at the corner of Chambers and Broadway, he made the boy wait while he brushed the chaff from his own trousers. Vinnie said nothing, but when they reached the lower hall of Mr. Finn’s, Vinnie took off his coat and hung it on a peg, and there took a bristle brush to his own suit.
Men of No Property Page 14
