Lawless

by John Jakes

  Reactions were quick and varied. Eleanor admired what Payne had written. But one of the other girls who’d been reading along with her exclaimed, “Why, he’s as much as standing up for them Communards.”

  Eleanor frowned. “Surely you don’t get that out of it, Martha.”

  “Indeed I do, ma’am.” Others nodded vigorously.

  “But Payne says Communism isn’t wanted in America. Look—it’s right there.”

  “I’m reading between the lines, ma’am. I won’t say any more.”

  “Yes! Explain what you mean.”

  “Well, ma’am—I beg your pardon, since your father is the publisher, and he’s just been hurt, but—the truth is, I trust other papers more than I trust the Union. Other papers are more patriotic. That one, for instance.”

  She pointed to another edition Cook had picked up from the stack Mills had brought in. One of the main headlines was clearly visible:

  COMMUNISTS LEAD PITTSBURGH RAMPAGE!

  Eleanor realized what the young girl was saying. The Union had been misread, misjudged, and found guilty of standing for something other than the best interests of the country—at least as most of the people in the kitchen perceived them. She was appalled that anyone with half a brain could be taken in by sweeping allegations and at the same time distort or actually ignore the exact words Payne had used to explain the Union’s position. She didn’t know who was right or wrong in the debate over the strike, but she was learning some unpleasant lessons about human fear and fallibility.

  The butler summed it up. “If this is an example of how trade unions work to improve the lot of their members, I say hang every man who belongs to one!”

  No one in the kitchen disagreed, not even Eleanor—she was too stunned by the ferocity of Samuel’s statement.

  iii

  Around dusk it began to drizzle. Margaret had stayed in her bedroom throughout most of the weekend. But she lurched to Eleanor’s room around nine o’clock.

  Eleanor hadn’t told her mother about Gideon’s injury. She doubted Margaret would have understood what she was trying to say, and she knew the mere mention of her father would probably send her mother into a spell of incoherent fury. It always did.

  She’d shared the news only with Will. His face showed barely a glimmer of reaction. When she told him Gideon would pull through, he murmured, “Good,” and walked off. It was typical of his listless behavior of late.

  A moment after Margaret entered their room, Eleanor thought her mother must have heard the bad news from one of the servants. She’d seldom seen the older woman so wild-eyed.

  “The men are in the Park again. I opened the window and I could hear their voices.”

  “Oh, Mama, please don’t start—” Eleanor bit her lip.

  There was no point in arguing with someone so disturbed.

  “Please don’t worry,” she resumed, as patiently as she could. “I’ll inspect the downstairs to make sure everything’s locked.”

  Margaret’s pale hand quivered near her chin. “You’ve seen them too?”

  “No, Mama. I’m just trying to set your mind at ease.”

  “I tell you they’re watching this house!”

  Gently, Eleanor patted her mother until she calmed a little. Then she took Margaret’s hand and led her back down the hall. “I’ll make certain we’re safe. Leave everything to me. Here’s your room—why don’t you lie down and rest if you can?”

  Margaret peered at her in a vacant way, as if she didn’t recognize her daughter. The whiskey stench was stronger than ever. For a moment Eleanor understood why her father had found living with Margaret impossible.

  It took the older woman almost a minute to fumble the bedroom key out of her pocket, then insert it in the lock. She seemed alarmed by Eleanor’s attempts to help, as though her daughter’s presence somehow threatened the sanctity of the room. Finally she got the door open and disappeared inside without a word.

  Eleanor heard her relock the door. Wearily, she turned and walked down the front stairs. Because the evening was sultry, the window on the landing was open. As Eleanor walked by, she glanced outside. She stopped, her heart suddenly beating fast.

  Was her mind playing tricks too? Against the darker background of the trees in Central Park, other shadows seemed to be stirring. Stirring and flowing across Fifth Avenue.

  Then, distinctly, she heard a man’s voice. He was calling something—an order, a question—to someone else. The shadow figures flowed on, not fully visible or even clearly defined as yet, but unmistakably there, a tide flooding toward the mansion.

  She glanced over her shoulder. Where was Will? Reading in his room. The servants? Mills had the evening off. That left Samuel, plus one footman and the women.

  And she could think of no weapons in the house except for the antique sword hanging in the parlor.

  Picking up her skirts, she raced down the last flight just as the unlocked front door burst open. The first of the shabbily dressed men lumbered in, a billy in his fist.

  iv

  The man shouted to others crowding in behind him.

  “There’s one!” He peered at Eleanor. “You be Kent’s daughter, girl? You’re too finely dressed for one of the kitchen sculls.”

  She counted at least six in addition to the man with the billy. He was middle-aged, paunchy, and smelled of sweat and tobacco. A sore glistened on the stubble of his right cheek. Trembling but trying not to show it, she said to him, “Get out of this house.”

  The leader snickered. “What? You’re givin’ orders to us? We’re the ones doin’ the dishin’ out, missy. We don’t care for your dirty Comminist father, his Comminist paper nor his Comminist family, either.”

  He stuck the billy in his rope belt and reached behind him. One of the others handed him a bucket of red paint. He flung the contents over the wall to his left.

  At the side of the house, glass broke. A dining room window. Footsteps pounded along Sixty-first Street.

  Eleanor glanced anxiously at the staircase. The running footsteps faded, then they grew loud again. The men at the rear were inside the house. Cook screamed.

  “Will, lock your door!” Eleanor cried. She spun and raced for the parlor. Laughing, the thug with the billy came after her. So did two of his companions.

  Glancing over her shoulder, she saw a man with his pants open, and something white in his hand. The sight of it turned her cheeks scarlet. The man hummed and danced a clumsy jig as urine ran down the foyer wall.

  “I don’t think she liked the looks of Sharkey’s machine,” said one of the men crowding the parlor door. Deep in the lightless room, she dashed for the mantel. She wrenched the French infantry sword from its pegs. Yanked the scabbard off and cast it aside. Shrieks and the sounds of breaking furniture and glass grew steadily louder at the back of the house.

  Standing in darkness with her three pursuers silhouetted against the glow of gaslight in the foyer, Eleanor had a slight advantage. If only she had the nerve to use it.

  The man who’d spoken touched his crotch. “Maybe she’ll like mine a little bet—”

  Eleanor ran at him. The sword would have pierced his groin if he hadn’t pivoted to the left, taking the blade in his right thigh. His trousers tore. He yelled but he didn’t fall. He pulled a shot-loaded stocking from his rear pocket and whipped it against her temple.

  The blow drove her all the way back to the mantel. She struck her head, grew momentarily dizzy. A second man leaped at her.

  Hard, rough nails dug the inside of her wrist. Try as she would, she couldn’t hold on to the sword. The man grabbed it.

  “I got the sticker, Freddie.” The man’s labored breathing slowed as he spoke to the leader. “Hubble didn’t tell us the gal was a looker.”

  Hubble? Who was that?

  The man yanked her arm. “Let’s get them clothes off, gal. We’re going to give you what for—”

  “I’m first.” The leader shoved the other man aside. The wounded one had collapsed i
nto a chair, his stabbed leg stuck out in front of him. The foyer gaslight gleamed on the blood staining his pants.

  “First,” the leader repeated. “Come on, dear. Come on, you Comminist bitch. Don’t be shy. Show Freddie your tits an’ your other treasures—what d’you say?”

  And then two of them were all over her with strong hands she couldn’t turn aside.

  They pressed her against the mantel. Her bodice tore. She writhed, kicked, bit at the hands groping over her body. Her struggle only seemed to excite them further. They got through to her undergarments, ripped them and flung her down on the uncarpeted hearth.

  Her ruined dress bunched into a hard, hurtful knot beneath her. The hearthstone was unbearably cold on the backs of her thighs. Freddie knelt and worked a finger, then a thumb between her legs.

  Pushing.

  Twisting.

  Hurting—

  Her heart began to pound in her bare breast. She felt sick at her stomach as Freddie touched her—thrust at her—but not with his hand any longer. She bit down on her lower lip while he grunted.

  God, it was painful. She squeezed her eyes shut. She couldn’t move beneath Freddie’s heaving body. The second man was behind her, holding her wrists up over her head. There was no appeal. No reprieve. And nothing but her will to prevent them from knowing how much they were hurting and humiliating her.

  I will not scream.

  She said it over and over, in silence, her eyes closed, her cheeks wet with tears, as Freddie jerked and gasped.

  I will not let such animals hear me scream.

  Animals.

  Men.

  The same thing.

  All the same thing.

  Leo Goldman might never have existed.

  v

  When the sounds of the destruction reached the second floor, Margaret Kent dropped the bottle from which she’d been sipping, unbolted her door and stumbled out of her room.

  She brushed away the loose hair that blurred her vision like a veil. Two men—two strangers—appeared at the head of the stairs. One of them emptied a bucket of red paint on a wall. Then they saw her.

  There was danger here. Danger. All at once she was lucid, and in charge of herself. She calmly locked her door from the outside. Then she glanced across the hall, to where she thought she’d heard a whisper.

  Sure enough, she saw part of Will’s white face—half a nose, a frightened eye—beyond the narrow opening of his door. Behind her, she heard the men advancing. She knew who they were, of course. She wanted to howl with fright. But she fought the impulse long enough to say, “Will, bolt your door and pile furniture in front of it. Don’t open the door unless you’re told to do so by Eleanor or cook or Samuel or someone else whose voice you recognize.”

  She heard one of the men say, “Must be old lady Kent.”

  “Will, do it!”

  He obeyed, shutting the door. Then she turned to confront them.

  Her mind gave way.

  They’ve come for me. Come to punish me, just as I knew they would.

  Eleanor had secretly laughed at her fears. Margaret had sensed the disbelief a dozen times. But the men were real. They’d been biding their time in the Park. Waiting all through the autumn. The winter. The spring.

  Now they’d come. Now Eleanor would believe.

  Screaming in a wild way that made the two roughly clad men exchange hesitant looks, Margaret ran from them. She couldn’t flee past them, so it was logical to flee in the other direction. Punish, the pumping of her heart seemed to murmur in her ear. Punish for hurting Gideon. Punish for deceiving Gideon. Punish for alienating Gideon’s children.

  Too late, she remembered there was no exit at the end of the corridor toward which she was running. She tried to check her forward momentum. Making a kind of mewing noise, she extended her hands toward the nearest wall. Then she stumbled. She saw a looming reflection of her own gaping mouth, immense eyes, unkempt hair in the glass of the tall window.

  She fell against the window, and through it, and down. It was only a fall of a single story, but the lawn was hard despite its mat of trimmed grass. Had she fallen at a slightly different angle, she might have sustained only a broken bone or a few bruises. But she was howling and flailing, and her head rolled under her body just before the impact. Her neck broke and she died.

  vi

  Within fifteen minutes the house was quiet again. Only the weeping of one of the servant girls broke the silence. She staggered half-naked through the downstairs, repeatedly wiping parts of her body with a piece of towel. One of the men had assaulted her in an unspeakable way, and her voice was like some battered wind instrument wailing a distorted tune.

  On the floor of the darkened parlor, Eleanor roused from the half-conscious state into which she’d let herself escape after the men had used her. She lifted her head. Pushed with her hands. Retched when she grew aware of the wetness between her legs.

  Finally she gained her feet and stayed upright by seizing the mantel and holding on. Her left hand accidentally knocked against the tea bottle. As it started to tip over the edge, she gasped and caught it. She was shaking as she set it back in place.

  “Miss Eleanor? Where are you?”

  It was Samuel. Frantically she tugged her skirt down over the tatters of underclothing. She covered her bare breasts with her forearms and turned sideways to the door as his shadow filled it.

  “I’m”—speak louder or he’ll suspect—“I’m in here, Samuel.”

  She edged toward the periphery of the gaslight. “Would you find a blanket for me, please? They tore my dress.”

  Blood shone in the hair above his left ear. “Is that all they did, Miss Eleanor?”

  She almost told the truth. It would have been comforting to share the anguish. She couldn’t.

  Don’t let anyone see what’s been done to you. The filthy, humiliating thing that’s fouled your body forever.

  “Miss Eleanor?”

  Bascom said you were an actress. ACT!

  “Yes, Mills, that’s all. I used the old Lafayette sword and frightened them off.”

  “Oh, that’s a blessing. I’ll fetch a blanket. Be right back.”

  His angular shadow followed him. Eleanor leaned her forehead against the mantel. Now she knew what men and women did together. It was hurtful, horrible, and it only strengthened her convictions about the pain love could cause.

  Somewhere in the downstairs, the weeping of the serving girl went on and on. So did the silent screaming in Eleanor’s head.

  Chapter VI

  Hatred

  i

  THE SANCTUARY WAS an airless oven. Gideon’s tightly bandaged wound throbbed under the hot layers of his singlet, shirt, waistcoat and suit of mourning broadcloth. It was Monday afternoon, a full week after the invasion of the house.

  The pastor was the one who’d taken over the pulpit of St. Mark’s Methodist Episcopal Church following Jephtha’s death. He moved down to the closed coffin. Elaborately scrolled and finished with an imitation silver patina, the coffin lay on trestles hidden by huge arrangements of roses and lilies. The heat had already wilted most of the flowers.

  The pastor clasped his hands and began to pray for the soul of the departed, Margaret Marble Kent.

  Gideon bowed his head. He closed his eye and used his right hand to conceal the upper part of his face. The grief grew steadily stronger.

  The devastating news had reached him in the hospital in Pittsburgh. Since then, the strike violence had flickered out in the East, only to erupt elsewhere. The worst outbreaks had occurred in Chicago and St. Louis. Others on the Union would report what had happened. He’d put most of it out of his mind.

  Most, but not all. He could never forget the men in the yellow bandannas. Or the words growled just before the gun blew a red hole in his left side.

  He’d been wounded late on Saturday, over a week ago. He’d finally come back to his senses the following Monday afternoon. A doctor was waiting to say the bullet had been removed
with no difficulty—and to hand him a telegraph message. Twenty minutes after he’d read the unbelievable words sent by Theo Payne, he was dressed and on his way out of the hospital.

  He was pale and weak. Three doctors tried to stop him, using everything short of physical force. They said he was risking collapse if he left without at least a week’s rest.

  He left anyway. He telegraphed the grim news to Julia—she was lecturing in Macon, Georgia—then went to the burned-out shell of the Union Depot to catch a passenger train east.

  In New York he’d gone neither to the Union nor to the hotel where he’d been living for the past year. He’d caught a hack directly to the house. When he arrived, he was astonished to see Eleanor out in front, shooing a carriage-load of gawkers away from the curb. Mills was hammering boards over broken windows.

  Eleanor turned toward him just as he stepped unsteadily from the hack. It was early Wednesday morning, a cool, crisp day. Unusual weather for July. His daughter wore a black armband. Except for a small bruise on the left side of her jaw, she showed no aftereffects of the terror that had swept through the house the preceding Sunday night.

  No, that wasn’t quite correct, he realized a moment later. In her dark, oval eyes he detected a terrible anguish.

  “Hello, Father.”

  That was all she said. She turned and preceded him into the house. There was no inquiry about his wound; nothing except that lifeless greeting. But contempt animated her face when Will ran across the paint-smeared foyer and threw himself into Gideon’s arms.

  Despite the pain Will inadvertently caused, Gideon hugged his son and was hugged in return. Dry-eyed, Eleanor marched up the staircase and disappeared.

  Since that homecoming, Gideon’s conversations with his daughter had been few and brief. On her part they were terse to the point of rudeness. But one exchange yielded a tantalizing fact pertaining to the invasion of the house.

  Gideon’s first theory about the invasion was that it was simply a spontaneous reaction to Payne’s front-page statement in the Sunday extra. A second suspicion presented itself when Eleanor said one of the thugs had spoken a name: Hubble. No indication of how you spelled it.