“A visitation from heaven could not excite her more,” Mr. Finn said. He brushed off the urchins and runners and broke way for Vinnie through the crowd. A carriage was awaiting them on Chatham, and at its door Mr. Finn distributed a purseful of pennies to the beggars. Vinnie flung in his bags and stood aside for his elder, giving him a hand up the step.
“My boy, my boy,” Finn said, laying his hand on Vinnie’s arm when the door was closed on them.
He was going to weep now surely, Vinnie thought, and glad he was they were out of sight of his schoolmates. It was one thing to have a woman watering your breast, but quite another a man of Mr. Finn’s age.
“You must excuse me,” Mr. Finn said. “I am so happy.”
“You didn’t get a letter then?”
“Oh no,” said Finn in sudden alarm.
But Vinnie laid his head back on the cushion and laughed in relief. Many a lad at that moment was asking the same question in trepidation. “I might have flunked trigonometry,” he said. “Old Voss gave us one devil of an examination.”
“You shall have a tutor,” Mr. Finn said.
“No,” said Vinnie. “No tutors this term. The letters went out a week Thursday. You’re sure you didn’t get one?”
Mr. Finn shook his head.
It would have been like him to conceal such news until after Christmas all the same, Vinnie thought. He had done it Vinnie’s first term home in his freshman year. Then the day after Christmas he had introduced him to the tutor. A year ago, Vinnie thought. Ah, but what a difference that homecoming from this! He had come up from school then sick and empty. He had begged Mr. Finn to teach him the trade of locksmith. Yale was for gentlemen, Protestant gentlemen, not the likes of Vinnie Dunne. “I’m not going back. You can’t make me go back. You’re not my father.” “If I were your father, I could care no more about your welfare than I do.” It was Vinnie who had shed the tears then. He had gone to Dennis and Norah for comfort. Norah had soothed him and Dennis had cursed out the Know-Nothings, the Abolitionists, and himself for having sold Vinnie into a parcel of Natives. The Know-Nothings now were a bold lot. They might still have their secret lodges, but they made no secret of their activities—the proscription of all things Irish or Catholic, the glorification of the native born Americans. Dennis had ridiculed Vinnie’s clothes, his manner of speech, his hands with nary a callus and a foot too delicate to wear an honest brogue. He had done more for the boy by this tirade than he knew, forcing him to weigh two loyalties in the balance for the last time, and he had gone home to Mr. Finn. Waiting him there instead of the tutor had been Stephen Farrell.
Farrell had worked with him throughout the holiday and at the start of the next term he had gone up to New Haven with him and talked to the prex and Vinnie’s professors. A Trinity man from Dublin was near as impressive as Oxford or Cambridge to them, and he a footballer at that. Not long thereafter, Vinnie was pledged to a fraternity. He joined a good eating club, and somehow, before the summer was over he had lost the ugly blemishes on his face and the stutter which had made him the laughing stock of every debate. And once out of his freshman year, it didn’t matter so much that he was two years older than most of his classmates. How long ago, those miseries! Truly, he had not expected to flunk even Trig this term. A fizzle maybe, but not a flunk.
He scratched a clear spot on the frosty window with a thumbnail. “Everything looks so new,” he said.
“Fresh stock for Christmas. You will want to shop this afternoon, no doubt.”
“I will,” said Vinnie. “I’ve got a list. When did that happen?” He pointed to a railed-off ruin, the charred remains of a drygoods store.
“Last week. The week before it was Harpers’. A dreadful year for fires.”
“I read about it,” Vinnie said. It was strange, he thought, leaning back. So many things he wanted to ask, to say, and he could not quite get started on them. Always returning from school he felt a bit of a stranger to Mr. Finn, to say nothing of how he felt toward Norah and Dennis, and toward his own sister—as ugly a thing as ever he had seen knotted in pigtails. “I wish…” He started to say something better not said, and finished with something he had not intended at all… “it wasn’t so late.”
“Nancy will give us a quick tea and you can be off,” Finn said. “You’re to meet the Laverys at the eight o’clock Mass in the morning. I shall come along later. They’re in the new house, you know.”
“I know,” Vinnie said. “You wrote me.” The wish he had been about to make was that they might have Christmas to themselves, perhaps with Stephen. Except that that relationship was out of joint now, too. Stephen was married. Vinnie sighed like an old man. “I had a letter from Stephen. From Charleston, South Carolina.”
“They’ll be back for New Year’s,” Mr. Finn said.
“Have you met her?”
“Mmmm. Very nice. You know who she is?”
“Senator Osborn’s daughter,” Vinnie said. “You wrote me. I don’t expect I shall like her very much.”
Mr. Finn laid his hand on the boy’s knee. “Just don’t expect to dislike her.”
Neither of them mentioned Peg. Yet, Vinnie thought, Mr. Finn must have remembered her, too, when they talked of Stephen’s marriage.
Nancy lumbered down the stairs at Chambers Street to meet them, out to the carriage without cloak or shawl and hugged Vinnie into her great bosom in front of all the Christmas Eve shoppers on the street. Passersby turned to gape at them when she cried out: “Masta’ Vincent, you growed as tall as a flagpole!”
She, too, had grown, Vinnie thought, but not up and down. He had to open both doors for her when she went in ahead of him with his bags in her arms. On the stair she paused to speak to Mr. Finn, frowning. “You got a caller upstairs, Mr. Finn. I told him not to wait on Christmas Eve, but he waitin’.”
“Who is it, Nancy?”
“Mr. Valla.” She could never manage the last syllable of Valois, and by her tone whenever she spoke of him, she would have preferred not to have to manage any part of it. Vinnie felt the same way about the sleek and acid gentleman. He was a Native and never missed a chance to show his contempt for the Irish.
“I’ll stop at the office,” Mr. Finn said. “Send him down.”
Vinnie looked at Mr. Finn but said nothing. The older man caught his glance, however. Valois was no longer his own choice of company, but he was not the sort to cut old friends even when he disapproved them. “Never mind, Nancy,” he said. “He may as well have tea with us if you don’t mind, Vincent.”
“Perhaps he has word of Peg,” Vinnie said.
He had reason enough to suspect Valois might carry such news. He had come prancing up the stairs well over a year ago carrying the Tribune correspondent’s account of Tom Foley’s The Taming of the Shrew in San Francisco. “Here she is!” he had cried. “I’ll lay you any odds their Kate’s our Mag! Margaret Stuart indeed!”
Valois had not forgiven Peg for doing Gallus Mag, and in her own fashion. And when she had tried and failed as Juliet (Vinnie thought her wonderful) Valois let his bitterness run over: her own fault it was, he said—her stupid Irish romanticism fancying a guttersnipe for a lady in disguise, a harlot for a pining virgin. It was a night, that, when Peg sat stunned at her reception and took Valois’ abuse on top of it. His final remark had been too much for Vinnie: “Well, I’m not the first fool to have started a silk purse from a sow’s ear.” Vinnie had flailed into him, fists flying, but Peg herself plucked him off, and seemed to take Valois’ side in the matter and even to cherish his abuse. Why? Why? She had said the strangest thing when the man was gone: “It all reminded me of Stephen.”
Not long after that and Peg was gone without a word to anyone. “Touring,” her landlady said: “not even telling her sister. Isn’t it a shame, Mrs. Lavery says.”
Not a word from her or of her until Valois brought the notice of Margaret Stuart as the Shrew. “And where would you say she got the name Stuart?” Mr. Finn had asked. “History, man,” Valois had said. �
��The Battle of the Boyne. What better name for an Irish romantic to assume?” “I think you exaggerate Margaret’s romanticism,” Mr. Finn had said. “Why not from a husband?” The question had cast Mr. Valois into a pet. He much preferred his own explanation.
“Vincent,” Mr. Finn said now, “stop here a moment with me. We shall come along presently, Nancy.” When the big woman had closed the apartment door on herself and Vinnie’s luggage, he said: “I’m afraid there is already word on Margaret. I’d hoped to keep it to myself for a few days. Mrs. Stuart is rather famous now, and quite aside from her playing on the stage. There was a husband named Stuart, Matthew Stuart. He was killed in an attempted bank robbery at Sacramento a few months ago.”
“He was robbing a bank?” Vinnie said foolishly.
“Mmmm,” Finn said. “A gold prospector who could not find gold. And by his dying statement, it was the only thing with which he could win back his, ah, alienated wife.”
“But,” Vinnie said after a moment, “but Mr. Finn, that’s not Peg. She wouldn’t care about gold. That’s not our Peg at all. It’s someone else.”
“I hope you’re right, my boy,” Finn said, “much as I should have wished her the success of Margaret Stuart on the stage. But if it is our Peg, she’s not only famous, she’s notorious.”
Mr. Valois sat some moments over tea paying Vinnie compliments on his improvements which the boy did not wish, and with his sharp eye and clever tongue probing this distaste as well: “Even your manner of disdaining my observations speaks eloquently of the American college. Well! When we have no choice but to be provident, we provide well, eh, Finn?”
“I have always believed character to be quite as important as providence in the making of a man. Pray, let the boy alone, Valois. He’s had a long journey. You may withdraw if you wish, Vincent.”
“I should like to stay, Mr. Finn.”
“A gentleman amongst gentlemen,” Valois chaffed. “You would not raise your hand to me now as you once did, would you, Vincent?”
“Not, sir, if my foot were idle,” Vinnie said.
Mr. Finn said: “Vincent!”
But Valois leaned back and laughed. “Well said,” he exclaimed.
As perverse a man, Vinnie thought, as ever a woman was so characterized. Mercurial, and Vinnie decided, not to be trusted.
“I’m in receipt of a letter,” he said at last, “which I thought might interest this house.”
“From Peg?” Vinnie said out.
“No, but concerning her. She is indeed the Mrs. Stuart if there were any doubt of it in your mind. And she intends to be known only as Margaret Stuart. She has at last, it seems, laid the ghost of Gallus Mag. Alas! but to raise another—Matt Stuart, the husband. You’ve heard of that misfortune?”
Both Vinnie and Finn nodded. Valois took the letter from his pocket and laid it open before him on the tea table. Vinnie could see no more of it than heavy, blotched writing.
“This is from Mr. Foley, her manager. I entered into correspondence with him some months ago to the purpose of bringing her back to the New York stage—as Margaret Stuart. So you see, Vincent, I am not as recriminatory as you would like to think me.”
Vinnie leaned forward. The devil take him and his self esteem. “Is she coming, sir?”
Valois wagged his forefinger under Vinnie’s nose. “Let me continue. Mr. Foley was not well disposed to the idea despite my offering him a partnership…”
“In what?” Vinnie interrupted.
“Well, in a manner of speaking, in Margaret. I must provide the theatre here, the brass band, as it were…There. You’ve broken my train of thought.”
“Mr. Foley didn’t like the idea,” Mr. Finn prompted.
“And why should he?” said Valois, “having built his own theatre there, and filling it every night of the week. Now by this post, however, matters have changed. The unfortunate husband let it abroad before he died that she was ah… well, here’s how Foley puts it: ‘cuckolding him with the leading man, John Redmond.’”
“I don’t believe it,” Vinnie said.
“That matters not at all,” said Valois, meeting the boy’s eyes with something like malice in his own as he went on to say sweetly the bitterest thing of all: “We all know her to be incapable of an affair outside the bonds of matrimony, don’t we? Foley himself believes there is nothing between her and Redmond, but nowhere on earth is morality more demanded of public figures than amongst people who are without morals in their private lives. Certain groups of the righteous out there are now attempting to close the theatre. When it is attended, there is danger of a riot.”
“Oh dear, oh dear,” Finn said.
“It may work crossly to our fortune,” Valois went on. “Mr. Foley writes me here that he has signed Margaret Stuart to another year’s contract, and that he is now in a position to consider my offer.”
Vinnie frowned, thinking about it.
“To bring his company to New York?” Mr. Finn questioned.
“Two members of it at least. He has Redmond under contract also.”
“How does Peg feel about it?” Vinnie said, for there was something in the issue not to his liking.
“Mr. Foley does not say. He does stipulate, however, that under no circumstances are we to breach her wish to be known only as Margaret Stuart. If we attempt in any way to exploit her success as Gallus Mag it is in violation of contract. God knows, I shall not breach that!”
Mr. Finn shook his head. “By which we are to understand, Val, that you and this Foley will exploit her—scandal?”
“I shall exploit only her ability as an actress,” Valois said sharply. “Only because of my faith in that did I write to Foley in the first place. I have spent a good many hideous years in the accumulation of money by which to become a theatrical manager. Three years ago I should have risked a great part of it except for that chance and stubborn misjudgment of our Margaret’s. I had hoped to make a star of her myself after her apprenticeship to Richards. But she took to Mag as a cat to milk and won such fame she could not escape it. Was her Juliet so terrible?” He ran his fingers through his mane of hair as though he would tear it from the scalp. “It was not! But it was not an actress her critics saw: it was a wanton in from the streets for a lucid hour, a freak. Well. That’s past. Not Mag, but Margaret Stuart is coming home to us, gentlemen.”
“When?” said Vinnie, and he would, for that last speech, forgive Valois anything.
Valois shrugged. “Not directly. Unless I misjudge Thomas Foley, he will try to recoup his losses on the way. He intimates as much here: our partnership will not take effect until they reach New York. I cannot assume that is because he wishes to spare me his current losses in San Francisco. They will work their way home.”
Mr. Finn folded his hands. “I suppose we must console ourselves with the future. It was good of you to bring us word today, Val.”
Valois rose from the table, taking Finn’s thanks as a wish for his departure. “Tell me,” he said, “what does her sister know of her?”
“No more than we do,” Finn said. “I have told her we suspected Peg and Margaret Stuart were the same.”
“And of the husband’s death?”
“Nothing to my knowledge yet. I doubt Vincent and I will burden them with that intelligence over Christmas.”
“I think they should be burdened with it,” Valois said. “Quickly and with the full scandal of it.”
“Why?”
“Frankly, I should prefer them scandalized. I fervently hope they shun and disown her. In today’s temper, their association will not prosper her. It’s the truth, gentlemen. Face it. Good day. Thank you for an excellent tea.”
“Not even a Merry Christmas,” Vinnie said when he was gone.
“Oh, my boy, rather than share a holiday with the Catholics he would deny the birth of Christ.”
2
AT SIX-THIRTY IN THE morning, Nancy tapped on the bedroom door. “Merry Christmas, Masta’ Vincent,” she called.
> The first thing he saw when she brought the light into his room was his own breath. He could shoot steam like a geyser. He ducked his head under the coverlet.
“Ain’t you even gonna say Merry Christmas when it Christmas mornin’?
He poked his head out. “Merry Christmas, Nancy.”
“Thank you and the same to you.” She lit the fire in his grate and set the wash-stand close to it, opening then the shutters. “It comin’ on daylight now and them churchbells ringin’ fit to crack. I never knowed there was so many Catholics in this town. I goin’ to service at eleven, myself, like civilized folk. We got the nicest preacher up by my brother’s. He holds by Christmas like some don’t. Are you listenin’ to me, Masta’ Vincent?”
“No,” Vinnie said.
“That what I thought,” Nancy said. “I wanted to fetch you in a cup of coffee, but Mr. Finn, he say you goin’ to church and can’t have nothin’ new in your stomach. I bringin’ your hot water now, and you better get ready t’ use it or it goin’ to freeze right in the pitcher.” She shook the top quilt in passing. “Get up now, get up! It the Lord’s birthday an’ you don’ want to be late to the celebration!” Down the hall she went, humming “God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen.”
Vinnie was wide awake by the time she returned. “Did you find something outside your door, Nancy?”
“Did I find somethin’,” she repeated. “I near broke my neck findin’ somethin’ in the dark. I don’t lie abed till daylight like you.” She looked around at him over her shoulder. “If you don’ mind, Masta’ Vincent, I ain’t going to look at it till I gets to my brother’s. I wants to surprise him, too.”
“I hope you like it,” Vinnie said.
“Bless you, if it was a pan of roasted snow I’d love it.” She came to the side of the bed and looked down at him, her hands on her hips. “Stretch your feet out there.”
“It’s cold down there,” he said, but pushed his feet to the bottom.
“Lord above us,” she cried. “I can remember when you first come to us. Them feet didn’t reach the middle, and scrawny! You was like a just-hatched bird. Your water’s in the jug.”
Men of No Property Page 23
