Norah fussed and fidgeted, creating chores where there were none. The service for the supper that was to be sent up confounded her, and she in turn confounded it with her re-arrangements. The old man was easy enough for, Peg thought, there was never a bottle he couldn’t get the cork out of, and to that task he set himself. Peg restrained the caterer who would have relieved him.
Valois arrived and with him a party of scribes and managers, and at his coat tail, Tom Foley. He had not believed in the worth of the venture, Peg realized, until the fall of the curtain, and now he was set to make amends to himself for his misjudgment. Failing to get the attention of any gentleman of importance, he gave himself up to the company of Michael Hickey and a bottle of brandy. He was soon regaling the old man with the lore of California, and the lure of it. “I’m a discoverer, man, not an explorer—a pioneer and not a purveyor. New York is full of purveyors…purloiners and purveyors and no place for an honest man.” Hickey nodded in admiration of the words, and Foley added to them: “I’ll be heading back soon across the long trail, for I’ve left a wife in the hills who’ll be wasting.” “Godspeed,” murmured Valois, overhearing, and Peg thought: poor wife, she must live in a bottle, for she never comes out save when he pops a cork.
Wonderful as was the talk, for men were present who had seen Kean and the Kembles and Macready in his youth, and Junius Brutus Booth in his and could thereby argue his merits against those of his son, Edwin, Peg escaped it to peruse the messages. She could feel the melancholy gather in upon her. Norah perched on the edge of a chair ready to leap to anyone’s bidding, and Mr. Finn beside her, the servant of a servant by his mien. Only the old man could skip at ease between the two worlds, she thought, and that because he felt a responsibility to neither and deserving of both. Honeyed words she read in the messages, and names some half-remembered, but none to conjure the face she longed to see. She opened another envelope, the paper scented with an essence at once familiar and distant, its recognition then sudden upon her—magnolia. The signature was Delia Farrell.
“Jeremiah,” Peg said, without realizing she called him. Both he and Norah came, and Peg read aloud: “‘My dear Mrs. Stuart, My husband consents that I write you this note to tell you of our pleasure in your performance tonight. It was so, so exciting. I do believe my heart is still palpitating. Stephen and I would be most honored if you will come to tea with us Thursday afternoon at five. Or if that fails of your convenience, won’t you set a date of your own choosing? Yours in admiration, Delia Farrell.’”
Peg shoved the note into Mr. Finn’s hand, who had no wish for it and yet no choice but to take it. She laughed aloud. “So the dead have spokesmen after all.” Norah relieved Mr. Finn of the note and studied it. “I wonder, Jeremiah,” Peg went on, “is Mrs. Farrell’s heart still palpitating? Oh, Lord God, that I should palpitate such a heart!” She went to the secretary, opened it, and sitting down began to write hastily, with far less care and delicacy she realized than Mrs. Farrell. “Norah, please pull the service bell for me.”
“Peg, ’Tis terrible late to be sendin’ a message.”
“It is rather late,” Mr. Finn added. “I was about to depart.”
“I quite agree,” Peg said, going to the bellcord herself, “but not as late as Thursday.”
“They’ll be in bed,” Norah pleaded. “’Tis time all respectable people were.”
“And they are the most respectable of all people, I’m sure,” Peg said, pacing to the secretary and back. “Palpitating!”
“Peg, you’re unstrung,” Norah tried again. “Put off your answer…”
“If I’m offending your respectability you needn’t wait to meet them,” Peg said.
“You’re askin’ them here now?”
“I am. She must be palpitating still, having written this.”
“Dear Peg,” she crooned, “is it to hurt yourself you’re askin’?” She turned to Mr. Finn. “She was ever one to begrudge herself a little happiness.”
“What could hurt me tonight?” Peg cried. “I want them to share in my happiness.”
Mr. Finn shook his head. He had told her all there was to tell of Stephen, even to Vinnie’s disillusionment in him, and his own grave doubts.
“They’ll think you bold,” said Norah.
“The bold she!” Peg mocked, but Norah had no recollection of the phrase.
“She must know…” Norah started again.
“”What must she know? As much as you? I doubt it. Stephen’s counsel with himself is cozier than mine.” And with the arrival of the porter she gave the message into his hand with instructions for its immediate delivery.
“I’m gettin’ Pa,” Norah said, taking her cape from the commode. “He’ll be disgracin’ you soon and you can do it well enough yourself.”
The old man was by then tapping his feet about the chair, a way he had when the liquor moved him, as though he would coax back the life into them which once was quick enough. Foley was nudging him on. When Norah reached them, Valois was at her side immediately to hold her cape. “You have a pair here to cope with,” he said. “Shall I go down to the hack stand with you?”
“There’s but one of them mine,” Norah said, “and him I can manage. Come, Pa, and pick out your hat.”
“Touché,” Valois murmured.
Mr. Hickey got to his feet without a murmur and lingered no longer than it took to shake Foley’s hand. Well he knew the conditions under which he lived in his son-in-law’s house. Also, as he told Norah, leaning on her arm: “The oul’ windbag. I couldn’t get a word in edgewise with him all night.”
Foley, for his part, gave a great yawn, and Valois encouraged him into a chair of a size to sleep him. He joined Mr. Finn then, and tried to draw him and Peg into the company of managers. Peg turned from them and went to her boudoir where she took the comb to her hair and the rouge puff to her cheeks. She waited there, marking her own heartbeat until the bell sounded. Two possibilities, she thought, at its summons, either of which must be met with courage.
“How nice of you to join me and on so little notice,” she said as she went forward to meet them. It was said to Stephen’s back and for the instant he blocked his wife from her view, having not seen Peg until she spoke.
He swung around, and she met first his eyes, full of…nothing. I could have tears in mine now, she thought, if I dared the luxury of embarrassing him. “How thoughtful of you to include us,” Stephen said, offering his hand. “Welcome home, Margaret.”
“Is it home for you?” she murmured, but not waiting for an answer nor taking his hand. Instead she gave hers to Delia.
“I’m just very pleased to meet you, Mrs. Stuart.” Delia bobbed a curtsey like a child, and she was not much more, Peg thought. “I never did meet a real actress before.”
Pretty blond curls and china blue eyes, Peg thought. Pouty lips to wheedle and beg and never, never command him. Master of himself he was now, and of his household. “Indeed,” she murmured to the distinction in which Delia had just set her.
“What I mean is we did all sorts of theatricals down home ourselves. Every Christmas we did a tableau and most everybody came from all around.”
“How exciting,” Peg said, and turned to Stephen.
“You were very affecting tonight, Margaret, but I expect you have been told it by people of better judgment than mine.”
“But none more willing with their judgment,” Peg said.
He had the grace to color a bit. Seeing Mr. Finn, he excused himself to speak to the little man.
“He has not changed,” Peg said in his wake, “except in the ways of prosperity perhaps.”
“He’s doin’ just beautiful in spite of everything,” Delia said.
“In spite of everything?”
“Abolitionists and seceders. I do believe they’re goin’ to drive us to doin’ exclusive business with England. You wouldn’t believe how things have changed in the last year, Mrs. Stuart. Why I came up here with Papa no more than a year ago, and I w
as welcome just everywhere. There wasn’t a cotillion or a masquerade we weren’t sought after for. We just couldn’t attend them all. And now Papa won’t even come, for Yankee guff, he says. Except in Newport where there’s still gentlefolk. I got to visit him in Washington to see him.”
Everybody knew who “Papa” was, Peg thought, and of course they did. “And can Stephen spare the time from his practice for such visits?” she asked.
“Better, he says, than he can spare it from me. Isn’t that sweet of him, Mrs. Stuart?”
Peg looked at her. It was said in earnestness. “Charming,” Peg said, fetching the word instead of the vulgarity which this dimpled ball of pink flesh provoked to mind. “I think you must meet Mr. Valois, Mrs. Farrell.” If she were malicious in proposing the introduction, knowing Val to be quite as violent in his politics as any Southern fire eater, her malice was to have no satisfaction. Not politics nor theatre did they talk, but French pastries! Pastries and pones, oh my God, thought Peg. She had quite forgot that Val was at his best in the company of ladies if the ladies were happily married. And Mrs. Farrell was sugared in happiness. Peg turned to Mr. Finn and Stephen.
“So, Stephen, you’ve gone Southerner in politics since last we met,” she said.
“And are you Abolitionist?”
“I’m indifferent to both,” she said.
“So much the worse if you are—which I doubt. You were never likely to be indifferent in any controversy. I’d hoped your sister might be here. I saw her at the theatre. Quite lovely she looked.”
He had seen her leaving the hotel too, Peg thought. “She’s gone fat,” she said.
“And you’ve gone thin.”
“Which is not to your tastes, obviously.”
Mr. Finn cleared his throat.
Peg smiled. “You are right, Jeremiah. What nonsense to renew an old acquaintanceship this way. Mrs. Farrell seems very charming and I wish you happiness, Stephen. Did you know that I also married a Southerner?”
“So I had heard,” he said.
“We were not…as complimentary to each other as you and Mrs. Farrell, but I learned much of Southern ways from Matt…before he died…” She looked at the fan she was unconsciously twirling at her wrist. “I could not very well have learned them from him afterwards, could I?” She opened the fan and closed it again. “And the answer to that is ‘yes’. Though much is taken, much abides. Did you know, Stephen, you taught me to read poetry and I expect I read more now than you. Or do you read aloud to your wife also? I mean…I used to read to Matt. I read him clear around Cape Horn…and he slept blissfully all the way. Poor boy, I hope he sleeps as well tonight. This was a gift tossed onto the stage. Pretty?” She held up the fan and then flung it away. “I wonder from whom. Let us have some wine. We’ve many toasts to drink.”
“I must have but one,” Stephen said. “We were about to retire when your message came.”
“Thank you, Jeremiah,” she said, for Mr. Finn had gone to bring the wine. “I should have sent word earlier, if I had heard from you earlier.”
He looked at her and for a moment she thought that alone in each other’s hearing only they might touch spirits at least. “I could find no words for it, Margaret,” he said.
“Because you had no heart?” He did not answer. “You must not be sad about it, Stephen, for the love of God, not that. Whenever you’re so tempted, remember that like young Duval in the play tonight, you did once offer me honorable matrimony.”
“I wondered how much of me you saw in him.”
“And you saw me body and soul in Marguerite Gautier.” He cast his eyes down. Peg smiled. “Of course, you did. Ah, Stephen, we are not changed, only more of what we were when last we met. Come, since there is to be one toast, let it be in the happy company of your wife.” She led the way toward Delia, and glancing at her in profile, stopped and looked up at him. “Is she with child?”
Stephen nodded that she was.
Peg lifted her chin ever so slightly, and scarcely paused to draw the breath she felt so desperately in need of. “Will it be a boy or a girl, do you think? But what odds that?”
“None,” he said, “so long as it’s its mother’s child.”
Amen, Peg thought. Well, I’ve learned everything tonight I sought to know. I have made myself what I wanted to become…and Stephen will oblige his fate. Now cracks a noble heart. Good night, sweet prince.
Mr. Finn brought the frosted bottle and popped the cork. In one of those silences which sometimes fall simultaneously on many conversations in a room, the popping cork seemed a small explosion, and everyone turned for a moment. Friends and foes, Peg thought, all friendly now, but one of them wrote of her a long time ago, it seemed, and then again but yesterday: “Why for hast no slung-shot, Juliet?” They all had slings, these gentlemen, and shot enough to fire upon players. Not an actor present save herself, she realized. No wonder she was lonely. She lifted her glass, and with her lifting theirs, were the gentlemen of the press and of the theatre…of it, but not in it. Elegantly clothed and ample bellied, they fed upon it whether their mouths or their vanities. But thus had it been from the days of kings and likely would be beyond republics, and its little players would be at least as well remembered.
“To players everywhere,” she said and drank deeply.
11
FERNANDO WOOD WAS A gentleman who knew how to conduct himself in all company: he was pious amongst the religious, ribald in sporting circles, debonair in the presence of ladies, and his enemies said, a thief amongst thieves. But no man in politics escaped such charges and Wood had been in and out of politics for many years, having, he said, to repair his private fortunes after every turn in public service. In this he claimed peculiarity, most men turning to public office by way of improving their private fortunes. In his early forties, he was graceful and quick, with an easy smile and eyes as sharp as his memory. Upon Dennis’ presentation, he said: “But I know Lavery. We met last summer at Jones Woods—the Mechanics’ picnic.” And so they had, but Dennis thought himself the only one to remember it. Wood’s house was as well appointed as himself, Dennis thought, and certain of the men caucusing there looked as unnatural as warts. He might well seem wartish himself, he decided then, for it was the first meeting of a political nature he had attended outside Tammany or the back room of a ward pub. They were a peculiar mixture of trades, the men present, one a printer, another a builder, a man he often met on the docks but after much larger salvage there than himself, a wagoner with a fleet of wagons…he knew them all by politics at least: they were Softs from the loftiest to the least of them. The only chairs vacant by the time he arrived looked too delicate for a thoughtful man, so Dennis sat on the floor and folded his legs beneath him and his arms across his chest. “I’ve learned this from my childer’,” he said to the man who settled beside him. “’Tis the only position for smokin’ a peace pipe—so I’m told by my son, John.”
“We should all sit on the floor then,” Fernando Wood said, taking off his coat as he prepared to start the meeting.
It was early July and the city was already foul with heat.
All the men followed Wood’s example and removed their coats. There was something eerie and familiar in the incident to Dennis, but he could not recall the association.
“It’s been suggested,” Wood said, half-sitting on a mahogany table and looking from one face to another, “that I get us started tonight by repeating a few thoughts of my own on government. Contrary to my enemies, I’m for it. I’m for what I may call strong government locally and loose government nationally. I suppose that may offend some of my friends here…” He smiled toward two gentlemen, and in answer to a whispered question, Dennis’ neighbor said: “Customhouse men,” into his ear. “But they will know me even if I don’t reveal myself,” Wood proceeded. “I am beyond states’ rights, for cities’ rights. I believe that the strongest unit of government in the world should be a man’s rule over his own household: if the children are without discipline, th
e wife without guidance, in no time at all the house becomes no more orderly than a pigpen…”
True, true, thought Dennis, for he had often said Norah was too lax with the children, and the house was a shambles for it.
“And now, gentlemen,” Wood continued softly, “I must refer you to City Hall…” So obvious an association between there and the pigpen brought laughter. Wood detailed the ills of the city, and suggested then the reason: “The usurpation of power by the state legislature that by right belongs in the hands of the people of the city, to be exercised by them through the man they elect mayor.”
Most of the men present agreed. There were few things said by Mr. Wood that night with which they did not agree, and when he was done it was obvious that the real purpose of the meeting was not to settle upon Mr. Wood as their candidate but to determine the best way to elect him. To the veterans of such meetings, Dennis learned presently, the best news of the evening came from the Customhouse men, appointees of the federal government, who confided that President Pierce’s administration favored the election of Fernando Wood as Mayor of New York.
“You will forgive me again, my friends,” Wood said, and with a wink to Dennis who chanced to be standing by, “but I wonder at this date whether that’s an asset or a liability.”
“It’s whichever you make of it,” the customs man said, “which is why it is offered.”
“I see,” said Wood, which was more than Dennis did until Wood added: “I assume the administration is aware of my labors last winter?”
“If they weren’t we wouldn’t be here,” the customs man said.
Dennis surmised them to be talking of Wood’s labors toward the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska bill. The bill had carried that spring and had been signed into law by President Pierce, and a new phrase was in style much as “Manifest Destiny” had been in the previous decade. The phrase was “Popular Sovereignty,” implying the rights of settlers to determine whether or not they would abide slavery in their territory. Wood was a strong slavery man. “I am grateful to the administration—and to you gentlemen,” he said.
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