Men of No Property

by Dorothy Salisbury Davis

  Only having come so far could she see each face defined now beyond the wall of light and she was again reminded of the marching men the night Jeremiah Finn was shot. Their darling, she? Oh, the fools, the fools.

  “Gentlemen,” she said, for it was now both natural and imperative that she speak, “Gentlemen, I must tell you that you mistake me…” and Bridget’s brogue came and went from her tongue, as though it might prove itself close to home. “Hear me, for I shall say but a few words. If I were to say to you now that I despised Ireland, would that make me a better American? If I were to spit in the Pope’s eye—oh yes, such words have been spoken in Ireland—would that make me a Protestant? God help you for a wonder of a religion if all it takes to get in is a mouthful of hate. Now I shall play a part for you upon this stage—I am honoring a contract playing it, more honor than the contract does me asking me to play it—but do not again mistake the player for the play. I was born poor in Ireland. I might rather have been born in America and prosperous, but deny Ireland I will not, I cannot, and I would not if I could.” She rubbed her hands together, the cold sweat running in them, and then stiffened her arms at her sides as she backed away from the apron and saw again the merciful blue-white wall rise before her. She turned her back to the audience, and only then was there any sound from them—a thick Irish “Hear! Hear!” and with so murmurous an applause in its wake, the opposition best opposed it by its silence.

  The play went on and to an enduring stillness, as though, the first comedian said, they were playing on a tombstone. When the final curtain closed there was no applause at all. Only the shuffle of feet in the aisles, the hawkers’ voices at the doors betokened the presence and departure of living men.

  Valois waited Peg in her dressing room. He sat in her chair and did not rise. “I did not credit you with such cunning, Margaret, or I might add, such eloquence.”

  “Nor did I myself,” she said, throwing off the wig. “’Tis a hard world to live in and we do what we must. Please get up from my chair, Val. I’m very tired.” She shed Bridget’s shawl and sacking for her own silken gown.

  “Neither did I know you were so religious,” he said, sliding out of the chair and pushing his backside along the table until it found a place uncluttered.

  “You know the contrary to be true,” Peg said. “Let us have no more pretense between us, Val. You trapped me viciously and the more so for my ignorance of how to escape. Do you know what I felt like tonight when they started cheering? Like the whore who’d been had for a button.”

  “You’ve become the most vulgar, disgusting bitch, Margaret.”

  “I know,” she said, taking from beneath the table the naked brandy bottle and pouring herself a drink. “It is the way I best enjoy the company into which you have introduced me.” She lifted her glass. “To you, Val—to the Know-Nothings’ pimp.”

  He leaped at her screaming like a wild bird. Peg laughed, lifted her foot, stiffened it and met his frail force mid-on. But at that instant Dennis admitted himself. He caught Valois by the coat collar and lifted him so high the little man’s feet danced in space.

  “Will I blister him for you, Peg?”

  Peg looked at her brother-in-law, the empty glass poised in her hand for the drink had spilled. “Were you in the theatre tonight?”

  Dennis flung Valois from him. “I was and proud of it, God bless you.”

  Peg felt a chill come over her. She turned to the table and poured herself another drink. She downed it while Valois gathered himself to his feet and cursed darkly. “You came,” she said, meeting Dennis’ eyes in the mirror, “to hear my speech.”

  “I wouldn’t say that,” said Dennis.

  “And if I’d not made the speech, what sort of a blessing would you give me now?” Dennis did not answer. “As long as you’re bent on the truth, tell me, Dennis, how long is it since last you saw me on the stage?”

  “I’ve not much time for theatricals.”

  “Wasn’t it Gallus Mag?”

  “It might’ve been—it might.”

  Peg sunk her teeth into her lip in fury. “A plague on your soul!” she spat out then, and darting her head toward Valois at the door: “On both your filthy souls!” She caught up the first thing at hand to fling at Dennis, Bridget’s shaggy wig which tumbled the brandy bottle with its tatterends, and in the swing of her arm she trailed the wisping silk of her sleeve across the burning gas jet. The flame ran up her arm and a streak of it leaped to the brandy-soaked table, but Peg by then was a dervish of screaming fire. Dennis’ body was cruelly, harshly upon her, pressing, rolling, smothering, and all the while, the terrible, terrible pain, his long screams of alarm and the crackle of flame, the smell of singe and the searing pain… and then a long, long fall into nothingness.

  PART VII

  1

  “DO NOT SAY THAT Cicero wants courage. Say only that Cicero is afraid…” Vinnie repeated the words to himself in time with the slow processional step while he looked at the heels of the man before him. Thus would begin his dissertation if he could yet remember it when his turn came in the Commencement program. He threw his head back, his shoulders erect, and looked to the sky. The elms, the proud colonnade of elms seemed to hold up a cloudful of rain. Oops. They were leaking. The pebbles shuffled beneath the quickening feet upon the graveled walk. Demosthenes wore a pebble in his mouth.

  “Do not say that Cicero wants courage…” Wants courage? Lacks courage? If wants is poetic, lacks is specific. And how many times over this question? Compose yourself, Vincent, as your speech is composed. Why can’t the Sinfonie pipe us in any faster? Ah, look at the wiggle on Matheson’s hips! You should wear a hoopskirt, my lad. Now at last the church doors swing open to us for whom the day was made, the orchestra blowing itself to a fury, and needing its strength to combat the Yale choir. Lucky chaps they, sharing the gallery with the ladies, and nothing to do between sieges but chase a maid’s eyes like butterflies across the campaign grounds.

  “Say only that Cicero…” Say only that it would have been better to have drunk a half as many, a third as many, a quarter as many toasts last night, Linonians or no Linonians. All the old grads need to do with their heads this day is to keep them from tumbling into the aisles. All their speeches last night, who remembered a word of them now? And their songs…

  Oh, see the rosy tint of morning

  Bid us hence away.

  There’s where my heart is turning ever…

  Oops. Sorry.

  Dum, dum de dum de dum dum de dum

  The sterner cares of day.

  Well, here’s Vincent Dunne facing up to them by the grace of God, a cold plunge and black coffee. Vincent Dunne at your service, mademoiselle. May I have this dance? I do love a waltz and weren’t you captain of the Tarantelle I never saw a race so thrilling oh I do love racing I do love Gala Week I do love I do love one two three one two three… And who were you named for, Mr. Dunne? Likely a saint, Miss. Vincent de Paul (or perhaps for the charity ward in Dublin which in turn took its name from him). Oh! Vincent de Paul Dunne! I do love names with des or vons or vans, it’s so distinguished-sounding. Oh, aye! like dese and dems and dose, Miss!

  Keep your back up there, Taylor! You’ve made it this far. Be as furiously proud as you were furious in despair a month past. You’ve but one thing more to answer to—your own name. As your father said in his beer last night: “You may not be a scholar, son, but I’ll lay a dollar on you with a boat in any waters.” And so will I, dear friend, and another on you with any girl you favor.

  Crash, boom, the thunder rolls down like a cannonade and at the moment the prexy says “Let us pray.” Hypocrite! “Let ME pray!” If ever a one of us opened our mouths to peep upon that sonorous peal, long ago should we have been muted. Roar, heavens! that an erstwhile Catholic lad shall hear no more heresy! So roars the prexy that he hear none, that none Transcend from Boston. No Over-souls need apply. Ah, Mr. Finn, how much wiser, you, to welcome heresy as though it were the truth, because such it w
ell might be. Suppose Vinnie Dunne had taken that for his theme instead of courage, say, The Benefits of Heresy. Ha! Hie thee hence to Harvard, churl!

  Would Stephen know from where his theme had come? From a New Year’s morning, and by God, into the same sort of groggish haze where it shone like a gem in the brow of a toad? Two and a half long years ago…in a kingdom by the sea where a maiden there lived…Out, blasphemy! Who opened the door to Mr. Poe, who in common with all his aristocratic brethren of the South, gives off the odor of over-ripe fruit. Like Verdi’s music. South of Italy, no doubt, Senor Verdi! Ow-w-w-w. Sic transit Dunne. Dunderhead. Oh, to be Dunne and out.

  “A splendid composition, young man. Well reasoned.”

  “Well spoken, Dunne. Befits a laws degree.”

  “So that’s what they’ve been cooking over Lockwood’s, ha!” (The Law School was over Lockwood’s café.)

  “And where will you practice, Mr. Dunne?”

  Yes, sir, and thank you, sir, and New York City if the Bar admits me, sir.

  “Ha! You’ll be welcome tomorrow to the lower courts, my boy. And let me tell you there are few places lower these days. Even the courts have been sold out to mammon. Democracy! Pah!” It was an old man speaking, his jowl and his hand both a-tremble. His eye however was steady and fierce as an eagle’s. “Or are you a Democrat?”

  “Not a New York Democrat, sir.”

  The old man winked at Stephen who was standing by and then frowned as though trying to remember him.

  “Dunne’s retiring president of our Fremont for President Club, Granduncle,” one of Vinnie’s classmates said.

  “Retiring? Does he despair of Fremont or of the Republican Party?”

  “Of neither, sir. I retired in favor of a younger man,” Vinnie said slyly.

  The old gentleman laughed.

  “An undergrad, Granduncle,” the boy explained unnecessarily.

  “Come and see me in my chambers, Dunne,” the old man said, and turned to Stephen. “Don’t I know you, sir?”

  Vinnie was then introduced to the family, and to more families after that than it seemed he had classmates. It was not until the afternoon was all but spent and the guests departing that he learned from Stephen the old gentleman’s position: a justice in the appellate division of the Supreme Court, and indeed a distinguished jurist.

  “He reminded me of old Gaunt in Richard Second,” Vinnie said.

  “He’d enjoy the role,” said Stephen. “All lawyers are actors.”

  Vinnie watched the loading of a hack for a moment. “Have you ever seen Peg?”

  “No, but I know that she is recovered.”

  “How do you know it?”

  Stephen hesitated as though he preferred that the question had not been asked. “I saw her name on a theatre bill.”

  Her name, Vinnie thought, but not her performance. “What theatre?”

  “The Bowery.”

  So now it was the B’hoys who bade her welcome.

  Vinnie took a deep breath that ended in a sigh. Stephen laid his arm across the boy’s shoulders. “Better pack the bag I’m taking, lad.”

  Vinnie nodded and led the way to his room. “I saw an ad in the Tribune last winter—Valois’ French pastries.”

  Stephen merely made a noise in his throat acknowledging that he had heard.

  Vinnie folded his dress clothes and several changes of linen into the portmanteau Stephen was taking on to Newport for him. They were both to spend a few days there, guests in different houses. Delia’s father was up that summer so that she and Jem were having the entire season by the sea and in a fashion Stephen certainly could not afford. The Taylors also were there, and according to Alex, renting from friends gone abroad a cottage they could not afford either. To them Vinnie was going. He closed the case and drew the strap on it. “Isn’t it strange, Stephen, that no one has ever taken Peg for her true worth? She has either been worshiped or abused, admitted to be all fault or praised for having none.”

  “That’s a canny observation for one so young,” Stephen said.

  Vinnie parted the curtains to look out the window. “I’m not so young,” he said.

  Below, all the guests were gone or going and the gardeners already at work repairing the ravages of Gala Week. It was all over: his dissertation was a tattered paper at the bottom of a trunk; his name was engraved on a silver cup—stroke and captain of the scull Tarantelle—and the dust already gathering on the cup. The birds could be heard again in the absence of women’s laughter, and the churn of steam from the distant trains as they stoked for departure.

  “I wish we were clearing out tonight, too,” Vinnie said. “I could forego another feast.”

  “It might have been as well,” Stephen said.

  “Aren’t you going up with Mr. Taylor?” Vinnie said, remembering Taylor’s suggestion to that effect.

  “No. I’m dining with the editor of the Register while I’m here.”

  “Beware he don’t poison you,” said Vinnie. “He considers Yale the devil’s proving grounds.” He looked at Stephen. “Is he a friend of yours?”

  “I’ve never met him but he runs a Democrat paper.”

  “As sure as Buchanan’s their man,” said Vinnie.

  “I’m editing a paper now myself, Vinnie. The Popular Sovereign.”

  “What?”

  “It’s sponsored by Douglas men.”

  “Not by Republicans, surely,” Vinnie said.

  “Nor by the slave interests.”

  “And yet,” Vinnie said, “they too support Buchanan. Which raises an interesting point: which of you will Buck buck up to?” He lit a pipe the stem of which was the length of his forearm, the bowl the size of an acorn. “Or will he buckle down?”

  Stephen raised his eyebrows. “I’m glad to see you put such a distance between you and tobacco.”

  Vinnie grinned.

  “It is a bitter thing,” Stephen said then, “for Douglas to need to support him, however much grace he tries to show in it.”

  Vinnie wondered if that were the bitterest thing in Stephen’s mind at the moment. It had been a hard year for him. He and Delia had lost a second child at birth. “Oh, I could write an ode to melancholy at this minute,” Vinnie said.

  “Why?”

  “Have you given up your law practice?”

  “It gave me up when I gave up my partnership with Robbins. Old Gaunt is right, Vinnie. We are sold out. But…the law stands a newspaper editor in good stead. I am content.”

  “Are you?”

  Stephen smiled. “In my discontent. When you are older still and appraise me as you have Margaret, you will discover that the fault was not altogether in my stars.”

  Vinnie watched his friends coming for him through the garden. “Do you know what I think, Stephen? I think you should have been born an Englishman.”

  A yodeled greeting came up from the trio beneath the window. “Yo, ho, Dunne! Is your seabag ready?”

  Vinnie leaned out and saluted Taylor, Matheson and Phipps. They four would sail Alex’s sharpie to Newport in the morning. “Aye, aye, mister.” He flung his bag down to them. “I’ll be with you right off.” He closed the window. “Did I offend you saying that, Stephen? I’m very free with opinions today, it seems.”

  “No offense…and no defense.” He got up and took the portmanteau which was to go with him by train. “Take care tonight, Vinnie. Enjoy yourself, but take care.”

  The four boys hoisted their seabags on their backs and marched across the Green unattended save by an occasional scurrying tutor more eager than themselves to be quit of the college grounds. But at the end of the Common a group of sullen “townies”, sleek-haired, dapper boys of their own age, but long of men’s employment, were lounging on the courthouse steps. They blackened the Yale men’s wake with a spray of tobacco juice and fouled the air with a chorus of rude remarks. A bad week they had had, poor lads, thumped by the college crews on Regatta Day and snubbed by their girls if a Yale man tipped his hat. And the
ir backs were arched over politics, too, for the likes of Vinnie had gone out in their shirt sleeves to stump for Fremont on the ticket of the new Republican Party while Old Buck and the Democracy were good enough for the townies any day.

  It was a season of sudden and open hatreds, the summer of 1856. Sumner of Massachusetts had loosed a vitriolic tongue upon the South that spring, making a florid and intemperate speech, poor in taste and lacking in logic, upon the Senate floor. And there he was answered a few days hence by Representative Brooks of South Carolina, not with his tongue but with his cane, whipping the old man senseless and the North to fury. The House failed the two-thirds majority necessary to expel him, but managed a vote of censure. But home a hero’s welcome waited him. And at that afternoon’s exercises Yale College bestowed upon the stricken Sumner an honorary Doctorate of Laws. Only the Southern boys failed to applaud it.

  It would be a great shame, Vinnie thought, to have finished the term without incident between the factions and spoil it now by answering the taunts of a few local sports. He could feel the roil of his temper, nonetheless, at their insults, and the rise of his pride in his own strength and that of his chums. The ripple of muscle in Matheson’s arm stirred him as they linked arms and marched on. There was something both terrible and wonderful in this knowledge of one’s power to excite hate. It was a matter for philosophic discussion at dinner.

  The boys stowed their bags aboard while Taylor checked the rigging and sniffed the wind, making his favorite boast: that his beak was the only true barometer. To which Vinnie retorted that it was a chancy instrument that could be knocked a-kilter by a cold in the head.