Men of No Property

by Dorothy Salisbury Davis

  The customs man was studying his cigar and Dennis was about to turn away, having been included in the conversation only by a wink, when the man said to Wood: “Do you know John Mitchel or any of the people at The Citizen?”

  Wood’s eyes and Dennis’ met, and because Wood hesitated in answering the question, Dennis nodded his head. “My good friend Lavery knows them better than I do,” Wood said blandly as though it had often been discussed between them. “You gentlemen should know each other if you don’t.” The customs man and Dennis shook hands.

  Whatever it was, he was into it up to the throat, Dennis thought, and without the chance to smell it. But once again he had been prompted by an instinct which told him it was time to act. “I don’t know Mitchel,” he said, “except by reputation, but I came over on the boat with Farrell, their lawyer.” All said as though he’d been thick as butter with Farrell since, when he’d not laid eyes on him save at a public meeting.

  “Isn’t he George Robbins’ partner?” the customs man said to Wood. Wood nodded. Then to Dennis: “What’s their reputation you mention?”

  Oh God almighty, Dennis thought. If he had turned his back in the first place he would not be floundering now not knowing how his opinions would sit with the man. After all, The Citizen had been all out for the Nebraska bill. Where you weren’t sure of the present, he decided, the safest thing was to dig up the past. “We Irish have a way of forgettin’ over here the good or the bad a man did at home so long as the English turned on him. Back in the forties, and during the famine, mind you, these boys tried to stir up a revolution. The people couldn’t vomit much less revolt, but Young Ireland split the country up the middle…”

  “You’ve said it all, Lavery,” the customs man said when Dennis paused. “They haven’t changed, and Farrell at least should know better. As I recall it, he got his own tongue clipped by the Archbishop before he was long here.”

  “His tongue and his wings,” Dennis said. “He’s been solid since.”

  “Then he should not be hard to persuade,” the customs man went on. “The proposition is simple—The Citizen is doing more to divide the Irish vote in this city than the Irish American has done to bring it together in five years.”

  “They’re a testy lot up there,” Dennis said.

  “Lavery’s right,” said Wood, “there’s the chance if he goes at them the wrong way, they’ll use our own ammunition against us.”

  “I’m assuming he’ll go at them the right way,” the customs man said coldly. “They’re to scold Natives in the public press, not Irishmen. Let them leave that to the pulpit. And let them stay on the right side of the Archbishop, at least until after elections. Or else, and mind this, Fernandy, let them use our ammunition against us…now. Many a newspaper has vanished from the streets in less time than, say, now and October.”

  “That would be a great shame,” Wood said. “Really, it’s the only literate Irish paper I’ve ever seen.”

  The customs man permitted himself a smile. He would have begrudged it to anyone else, Dennis thought. “The town is overrun with literate newspapers, and not one of them willing to give the people plain facts.”

  And there ended the discussion of The Citizen. It was not long before the men of the national administration departed, saluting around, and Dennis sought a quiet corner in which to puzzle the chore ahead of him. It was all right to play by ear, he thought, as long as you weren’t tone deaf. If Farrell was the partner of Robbins, and Robbins high up in the party…a national committeeman, why in the name of God send Dennis Lavery on such an errand? Ah, but there it was: Robbins was a Hard and the administration had been getting Softer and Softer. They were taking a long step promising themselves to Fernando Wood. They were working at the top and the bottom, skipping them in between. They must be counting on Fernando Wood to take over the party leadership in New York. Dennis whistled softly. There were things you could get in through a keyhole which you couldn’t bring in the door.

  “Well, boys,” Wood said, returning from seeing the customs men to the door, “we’ve got our big boost early, but we can’t use it till late. Needless to say, the gentlemen who just departed were not here at all tonight.”

  “What men?” someone said.

  They all laughed.

  Dennis was to get yet another chore before the night was over: the proposal at the next meeting of the General Committee to appoint an executive committee to decide all ward cases of disputed elections. It made good sense, for many an election was undecided for weeks while the General Committee wrangled and finagled. It promised the efficiency characteristic of Wood. “We’ll need a sound man to head the committee,” Dennis said.

  “We will,” said the man who proposed it.

  “Because,” said Dennis, “in a doubtful situation we can use the balance.”

  “My very thought.”

  “Do you have a name in mind?” said Dennis, “for I’ll need to have it quick nominated.”

  “Fernandy himself,” the man said. “What better way to conceal till the last minute his intentions?”

  Dennis smiled to disguise his surprise at that turn. He was learning, he thought, but not fast enough.

  12

  THE DAYS THAT FOLLOWED found Dennis doing things that he himself would have been hard put to explain. He bought a great book of Blackstone on the law and a book on parliamentary practice, and if the latter was gray to his understanding, the Blackstone was black indeed, but he forced himself to pore over them night after night. He went to a custom tailor for the first time and set the date for his call on Farrell by the delivery of his outfit. Passing the display rooms of Boardman and Gray, he ordered home a pianoforte, and with not a word to Norah until its arrival.

  “I’m delighted for the girls,” Norah said, “if I can bring myself to let them touch it at all. But Dennis, I’m worried as well. It was my head and not yours I thought would turn in success, and that in my pride of you.”

  “Oh, blast your pride!” he said. “There’s nothin’ to nourish it.”

  “I see,” she said then, for the words came out like a cry of pain. “Can you tell me what is it that’s hurtin’ you?”

  He stopped a moment in his pacing. “You’d laugh out loud if I told you.”

  “That I wouldn’t, seein’ you suffer.”

  He looked at her. “I’ve the need to pay a call on Stephen Farrell for the party, and every time I step out of the door thinkin’ myself on the way to it, somethin’ rises up in my way like a wall and I can’t get round it.”

  “Because of the boat,” said Norah, “or is it Peg?”

  “Peg has nothin’ to do with it.”

  “I was only askin’,” she said.

  Dennis shook his head. “I never knew a man could so humiliate me.”

  “Dear one, he didn’t mean to humiliate you.”

  “Didn’t he, sprawlin’ me on the deck.”

  “Dennis, ’Tis over five years.”

  “If it was over twenty I’d not forget it.”

  Norah sighed. “Is there no other man they could send out of the whole party?”

  “I volunteered because I had to. There’s times in your life, Norah, when you’re standin’ eye to eye with opportunity, and if you can’t act on it, you’re better not seein’ it. If you pass up your big chance, you’ll scurry your life for the little ones.”

  “And yet,” she said, “’Tis a little thing botherin’ you. Mr. Farrell hurt your pride and pride is a little thing altogether.”

  Dennis sat down at the table and thought about that. If there were two things in the world that didn’t mix they were pride and politics.

  “And as far,” Norah said, standing over him, “as goin’ back to the boat for your hurt, it was Peg hurt you more and you know it. And if it’s any help to you to know it now, she got as much and more hurt back, and from him, Dennis, for she did love him.”

  Dennis looked up at her. “What are you sayin’?”

  “I’m sayin’ m
ore than I know, but I can put things together. When she went off to the wilds it was to get over it.”

  “Did she tell you all this or are you makin’ it up?”

  “She told me once she was seein’ him,” Norah said carefully. “And how else did Vinnie and him and Mr. Finn get so close? Remember it was him went up to the school when Vinnie was in trouble.”

  “I remember,” Dennis said, and he remembered now the day the first strain had come between him and Vinnie. He remembered it all, trying to tell the lad to promote a marriage between Peg and Finn, for he had rightly calculated that at least: a man was providing her. He tilted the chair back and laughed aloud. “Holy mother of God, Norah, and me thinkin’ in them days it was Mr. Finn she was ticklin’!”

  “You’ve the sense of a duck,” said Norah.

  “What need I of more, when you have enough for us both?” He hugged her about the waist in sudden good humor. “So Farrell got his from her too, did he?” He slapped his hand on the table. “With his learnin’ and preachin’ and shrivin’, he knew no more of women than me!”

  “You’re puttin’ words in my mouth I didn’t say, Dennis.”

  “How could you say it and you her sister?” He went to the window and looked out. Knowing Norah to be watching him, he wished she would leave him and not be examining his turn of humor.

  “Now is it her you won’t forgive? Why, Dennis, why is it you always have to have someone to hate?”

  “Will you go out of here, Norah, and see to the childer’? They’re wreckin’ the house up there.”

  He sat down again at the table when she was gone and permitted himself for the first time since his marriage the vision of Peg as his memory conjured her on the deck of The Valiant, her mouth smiling red to him. So must she have smiled on Farrell in turn, and sought him out. Likely he was not hard to find. Nor would Dennis have near as much trouble finding him now himself, he decided. A woman was even more an equalizer of men than was money.

  The next morning after his tour of the docks he walked up to Wall Street. Locating the number he stood a moment looking up at the sign: Robbins and Farrell, Attorneys-at-Law. An elegant hand had painted that sign, he thought. As trickish as the law itself. He squared his shoulders and climbed to the second story office. The steps and the floor were scrubbed white. Whatever their clientele, it didn’t come in off the streets. Two clerks were standing at their desks, one very old and one very young, and both, by the sign, very deaf, for neither attended him till he called out: “Is Mr. Farrell in?” The young clerk jumped at his voice, but the old man’s pen did not even quaver on its journey across the page.

  “I shall see, sir,” the young man said. “May I have your card?”

  “The name is Lavery, tell him. Dennis Lavery. He may recall it—if he’s in.”

  At the sarcasm in Dennis’ voice the old man squinted at him over his spectacles. I shall see, sir, Dennis thought, as though Farrell came in and out the window in there.

  It was but a moment, however, until Farrell came from the inner office, smiling and his hand extended. “Lavery! I wondered how long it would take until we met again. Come in, man.” He swung open the railing gate.

  Dennis, despite the world he thought himself equal to, wiped his hand on his trousers before shaking Farrell’s. “’Tis a warm day,” he said, cursing the humble gesture in himself. The office was equipped with chairs and table, but to Dennis’ surprise, he saw that Farrell stood up to his work the same as his clerks, for the tall desk was littered with papers.

  “Are you in need of a lawyer?” said Farrell.

  “If I am I don’t know it, thank God,” said Dennis. “’Tis another matter.”

  Farrell motioned him into a chair and sat opposite him. He offered the cigar box, and Dennis resisted the temptation to take one and put it in his pocket.

  “A family issue?” said Farrell, but lightly.

  “More delicate than that,” Dennis said.

  Farrell laughed. “Then it must be politics. Tell me first, how is the gentle Norah?”

  A politician in his own right, Dennis thought, and yet it was asked in real affection, and for that he needed to honor the man. “Thrivin’ and the mother of three with one in the oven as the sayin’ goes. She bade me give you kindest regards—and congratulations on your own marriage.”

  “Thank you,” Farrell said, “and I’ll accept them on another count also. We too have something in the oven.”

  “There’s nothin’ in the world to settle a man like childer’,” Dennis said.

  “Well,” Stephen said, “I was some time in settling. You’re a Democrat committeeman, aren’t you?”

  “Aye, and that’s what brings me. We’re looking to The Citizen for help in the fall elections.”

  Farrell nodded. “I’m not sure you’ve come to the right man,” he said after a moment. “I’m doing my best to keep the paper nonpartisan. Or at least out of the camps of the extremists. But I’ll be glad to take you to see Mitchel.”

  “I don’t want to see Mitchel till I’ve talked to you,” Dennis said, “and make sure we’re thinkin’ of the same things. I can’t believe you’d call opposin’ the Natives extreme for an Irishman.”

  “On that issue we’re with you, heart and soul,” Farrell said.

  “It’ll be the only issue in November, Mr. Farrell.”

  “You intend to make it that?”

  “It’s not of our makin’ at all. They’ll have the city if we don’t stand solid.”

  “It’s difficult to stand solid,” Farrell said, “with one foot on a Hard shell and one on a Soft.”

  “No harder than it is to unite a people that has two papers speakin’ for them—one encouragin’ them and the other scoldin’ them.”

  “I see,” Farrell said, rubbing a groove in his chin with his thumbnail.

  “I can put it another way still for you,” Dennis said. “Do you scold a child while it’s drownin’ for playin’ near the river?”

  Farrell smiled. “Do you read The Citizen, Lavery?”

  “Now and then. The God’s truth is it’s a bit aristocratic for my tastes.”

  “You’d better not say that to Mitchel. I ask for this reason: for my own part, I don’t like John’s attitude toward Irishmen here as though they were all exiles, waiting to be recruited into a liberation army, and sailed for Ireland, and I wondered how men like yourself felt about it.”

  “There’s nothin’ the Natives’d like better than to ship us all back. They’d raise as much money for that as to free the niggers.”

  “I should think you well equipped to talk to John Mitchel,” Farrell said. He went to his desk and got his watch where he had laid it out of his pocket. “Have a six-penny plate with me and we’ll go up and see him.”

  He gathered the papers on his desk, took his hat, and gave instructions to the younger clerk. The older one looked, Dennis thought, as though he took orders only from God.

  “I’ve to be in Appellate Court at two,” Farrell said on the stairs. “I’m trying a case myself. I don’t often have the opportunity, so I’m a bit nervy.”

  “Who’s the judge?” said Dennis.

  Farrell smiled. “I can see you’re in politics.”

  The street when they reached it was boiling and bubbling in the midday traffic. It was alive with sweating, scurrying men, clerks of every size and flavor, from banks and brokerages, law desks, The Exchange and the offices of insurance underwriters from over the world. You could polish your boots, buy your lunch, place a bet on an English race course, subscribe to the next volume of Dickens or Thackeray, never moving a step from the corner bookstand. Above the clatter of cartwheels and the howling of oyster vendors, came the wheedling plaint of the beggars. The smallest of them traveled in droves, swooping down on a man if they saw him put his hand to his pocket.

  “’Tis worse than Dublin,” Dennis said.

  “And no need for it here, which makes the matter more sinful.” Farrell caught an arab up by the ra
gs on his back. “What’s your name, lad?”

  The mite’s eyes darted from one of them to the other, blue eyes in a face near as dark as Africa’s own. “Oy done noight, merster!”

  Farrell looked at Dennis. “What does he say?”

  “As near as I can tell he don’t know it.”

  “Ha!” Farrell said, “I can understand him better than you. He says he’s done naught. Give us a penny, Lavery, for I can’t reach my purse. You shall have that, lad, if you tell us your name. We didn’t say you did anything.”

  “Moike Touhey,” said the boy, his hand out to Dennis.

  Dennis put the penny into it and Farrell let the boy go. His heels and face were of a complexion.

  “Mike Touhey,” Farrell said, striding on. “Young Ireland’s share of American prosperity.” He stopped short. “Do you know, Lavery, whenever I throw them a penny, I can feel the hole in my hand where the coin burned into it?”

  Fire or ice, the spot felt like in his own hand at the suggestion. He clenched his fist over it. “God damn charity,” he said, “may the Lord forgive me.”

  Farrell shook his head, walking on. “Let’s damn the poverty instead. But charity should be a blessing, not a weapon.”

  “Eye to eye, we see on that,” Dennis said, and he marveled, as they went into the Hogshead Tavern and ordered their six-penny plates of roast beef, at the number of things on which he was in agreement with Farrell. A peculiar thing happened to him and he admitted it. For the first time he felt warmth in his heart for Young Ireland—all the proud young men splitting their hearts and their heads over the poverty and famine, which by the prompting of their own stomachs they needn’t have noticed at all—and charity England’s weapon. “Is it any wonder you cried revolution?” Dennis swore.

  “That’s what you and I must understand about John Mitchel,” Farrell said. “Our concern now may be more with the Mike Touheys, but his is still with Ireland. I’ve tried to convince him of the difference. Maybe you can.”