A Passionate Girl

by Thomas Fleming

  He asked me to tell him about Ireland, why I loved it enough to die for it, what it meant to me. I told him of my discovery of the proud women of the old sagas, how they had struck a flame in my soul. I tried to make him see how much the land itself still shimmered with the aura of ancient glory. I described the fairy raths, the old kings’ tombs, the Bel fires on the mountains. He had heard none of it before. If the American Irish knew such things, they never bothered to share them with him.

  “To see such a people, with such a heritage, crushed, degraded. For the first time I understand,” he said.

  He raised his glass. “I salute your passion, from my American ignorance.

  “Where does that leave us?” he said, after a moment of silence. “I feel you’ve passed me like a pillar of fire, leaving me nothing but the ashes of ignorance and disillusion.”

  “I don’t,” I said.

  “I spoke of an exchange. I thought I could ask it coolly, calmly, as a connoisseur of beauty. Now I can only ask it as a gift.”

  “You shall have it,” I said. “I want to understand your kind of passion.”

  He led me into the bedroom and gestured to an open door. “There is a bath already drawn for you. If you want the water warmer, simply call.”

  I bathed in rose-scented water, rich with shimmering oil. A robe hung on the door. I wrapped it around me and returned to the bedroom. It occurred to me that I was about to do a sinful thing, but it was utterly lacking in the feeling of sin. I had felt a thousand times more guilty when I said to Dan McCaffrey, You can have me if you want me. This man toward whom I was walking seemed to exist in a world beyond ordinary right and wrong. He was offering me his wisdom in exchange for my beauty, and the terms seemed perfectly reasonable.

  The single gas lamp was turned low. It flickered like an orange eye within its globe. In the semidarkness, he seemed more handsome, more powerful, than any man I had ever imagined. If it was romance, it was of a different order. This was not a hero I was embracing, it was Merlin, a chief druid. “I want you to feel perfectly free,” he whispered. “You need have no fear of a child. I’ve taken the proper precautions.”

  I was not sure what he meant, but in my adventurer’s mood I did not really care. He kissed me softly, then deeply, and his hands roved from my breasts down my body. Slowly he slipped the robe from my shoulders and lifted me, his mouth still on my mouth, and carried me to the bed. His robe fell away and for a moment he stood beside me, naked, a whiteness glowing from his flesh in the wavering lamplight. He took my hand and placed his swelling manhood in it.

  “I think I may learn to die for Ireland,” he whispered as his hand moved up my thigh.

  Slowly, carefully, gently, like dancers to dream music, like swimmers in the depths, we began to make love. It was totally different from the wild taking I had known with Dan. That had been a kind of battle, with the triumph all on his side and the surrender all on mine. This man was teaching me a different kind of pleasure, how to use hands and lips and hair as delicately as a musician drawing deep dark music from a violin or pianoforte. I was discovering sensuality, the secret world that respectable women never entered, the night world through which powerful men roamed in search of pleasure.

  Perhaps the most amazing thing about it was the pleasure he took in giving me pleasure. The slow sure drawing out with which he aroused me, the dozen kisses on my neck, my breasts, my thighs, until there gathered within me a surging swirling mass of desire that made me cry out with the sweetness, the terrible tearing power of it, thundering from depths I never dreamt existed in me. I clung to him, laughing, sighing, with each stroke of his flesh, begging him at last for breath, release, until a trembling fire ran through his body and he gave a great delicious “ah” of satisfaction, which echoed like a last treasured note in my throat.

  We lay side by side in the shadowed bed for a long time. Then he took my robe and wrapped me in it and carried me back to the sitting room and placed me on the length of the couch like a Roman. He pushed the table, which was on wheels, close to me and drew his own chair to the other side of it. On our plates now were crepes filled with some fragrant fresh jam and small cups of black, bitter coffee of a kind he had discovered in Italy. We ate and drank in silence. The black servant cleared the table and presented us each with a great round globe with a dollop of French brandy in the bottom. Fernando showed me how to breathe as well as drink it.

  “Now,” he said, “tell me what happened at the White House.”

  I told him almost word for word. He paused to savor his brandy. “Let me warn you first that you’re listening to a disappointed politician. You’ve offered him the most memorable consolation for his disappointment that he’s yet received. But disappointment nevertheless distorts the vision as much as it sharpens it.”

  He sipped his brandy. “My treasure,” he called it. “Laid by monks before the Revolution.”

  Then he got to the business. “The first thing you must remember is the true nature of the man you’re dealing with. He’s a backwoods idiot, hopelessly out of his depth, a man whose mind changes every time he talks to someone with a new idea.”

  “I wonder what my friends Dan McCaffrey and John O’Neil, both from Tennessee, would think of that?” I asked.

  “They’d probably shoot me, in the style of most Tennesseans, who prefer that way of settling almost all their arguments. I admit it sounds like New York arrogance. Remember I promised to tell you the truth as I see it. I’m not surprised that you’ve gotten the president on your side. Your problem will be to keep him there.”

  “Why?”

  “If Johnson told his cabinet what he told you tonight, they would march in a body to Congress and urge his impeachment for insanity. The last thing this country can afford now is a war with England. If the war with the South had lasted another six months, the North would have gone bankrupt. Then there’s the problem of Mexico. Are you aware that there’s a French army in Mexico?”

  “I read it in the paper,” I said, “but I haven’t had time to comprehend the politics of it.”

  “Napoleon the Third has put an Austrian archduke named Ferdinand Maximilian on the Mexican throne as part of his dreams of imperial glory. We’re determined to kick them out of there, by force if necessary. There’s an army of forty-five thousand men on the Mexican border at this very moment. There’s another fifty-thousand-man army moving into Indian territory to teach our redskinned brethren a lesson for murdering ten or twenty thousand Americans in the last few years, while we were occupied with killing each other down south. These two projects will cost the government at least seventy million dollars. No sane man would start a war with the British in Canada while facing these expenses.”

  “You mean President Johnson lied to us?”

  “By no means. He made a promise. Which he thoroughly intends to keep, if he can. If he can’t, he’ll simply throw up his hands and say he was sincere in his good intentions.”

  “What should we do?”

  “Go straight ahead. Act as if the promise is going to be kept. Build up your army. Buy your guns and ammunition. But take steps, very serious steps, to win the backing of the men who count in the cabinet.”

  “Who are they?”

  “Secretary of State William Seward and Secretary of War Edwin Stanton.”

  “Tell me about them.”

  “Stanton is Democrat, but that’s irrelevant. Basically he’s a lawyer. He’s never run for office, never dared to live without a client to serve. He looks strong, but he’s really an executor of other men’s designs, a defender of their acts and policies. He’ll go where the power goes almost in spite of himself.”

  “And Seward?”

  “He’s a different character. A politician. An honorable term in my lexicon. When he was governor of New York, he tried to work with the Irish, to tempt them out of their slavish allegiance to the Democratic Party. He tried to force through the legislature a bill giving public funds to Catholic schools. It almost cost him hi
s career, but it showed his daring. He knew that prizes are only won by taking risks. But he has a fatal flaw. Instead of consulting his own instincts, and following them to their conclusion in action, he’s always trying to hedge his bets.”

  “You’re not filling me with confidence.”

  “Remember what I said about a disappointed politician. They have a tendency to see the worst. Unless they assiduously seek consolations, they’re prey to melancholy.”

  “Strange, they don’t disappoint their women.”

  “In the end they do, if the women seek affection from them. They no longer have it to give. Only a comradeship in pleasure. That’s all they can offer—for a while. Soon they’re too old even for that.”

  I heard the toll of genuine melancholy in his voice. I sensed—and soon confirmed from others—that Fernando Wood had dreamt of sitting in the White House itself, the Democratic mediator between North and South, before the Civil War destroyed the possibility.

  “You must learn to think as Seward thinks, anticipate his fears, reassure his hesitations. Does the United States want a Canada ruled by Irishmen on its northern border? I doubt it—any more than they enjoy dealing with the Mexicans to the south. You must realize how strange you are to us, with your Catholic religion and your brogues and your supersititions. You must reorganize your movement, give it a more democratic, American look. No one is going to trust a secret society run by centers and circles. You’ll have to make extraordinary efforts to persuade people here in Washington to support you.”

  “I have little influence in such matters.”

  “You estimate yourself much too low. You proved to me tonight that you could have more influence than anyone in the Fenian movement, if you choose the right man to persuade here in Washington.”

  “Who would that be? Mr. Seward?”

  “In other circumstances, I would say yes. He likes beautiful women. But he’s getting old and he’s had a series of physical disasters recently—a fall from a carriage and an attack by one of John Wilkes Booth’s friends that have left him rather feeble. I think it would be wiser to outmaneuver him by penetrating the White House itself. Old Andy’s son Robert.”

  “He paid me a good bit of attention tonight.”

  “I can arrange for him to pay you a lot more.”

  “How?”

  “By telling him you’re the best thing I’ve had in a year.”

  Now I was deep in it, that world of power and sensuality that I had exulted in penetrating a short half hour ago. I was down where its realities wounded. I think I might have recoiled, fled, except for Fernando Wood’s ability to sense my hurt.

  “Those who attempt to ride the whirlwind of history must expect some hard falls, some painful moments.”

  “I understand.”

  “The trick is not to end as I’ve seen so many—crucified between two thieves, regret for the past and fear of the future.”

  I sensed he was one of those men, and he was wishing me, out of the affection and pleasure we had just shared, a better fate.

  “Shall I arrange it with Robert Johnson?”

  “Yes.”

  I had come too far to turn back now, even though a voice within me whispered warnings.

  “One more thing. I don’t trust your friend Roberts. He doesn’t keep his word. He regards it as lightly as a Wall Street sharper. That won’t do in politics, especially in New York. Promises are a politican’s only stock-in-trade. Once he starts to water them, he’s for sale to all comers. In New York, we would say that he’s honest, but he isn’t level. Tweed and I—we’re not honest, but we’re level. Or try to be.”

  “What might Roberts do?”

  “I’m not sure, but he seems to think that by waving your green Fenian flag he can deliver the Irish vote to the man of his choice. It doesn’t work that way. The Irish will stick to the people who’ve stuck with them and taken their lumps for it. People like me and Tweed.”

  The clock struck one. My political lesson was over. I said I must go. I rose and kissed him gently on the mouth. “I’ll never forget you,” I said. “You taught me the truth of an old poem.

  “In language beyond learning’s touch

  Passion can teach.

  Speak in that speech beyond reproach

  The body’s speech.”

  “Who wrote that?” he asked.

  “Donal MacCarthy, the first earl of Clancarty.”

  “I would have liked to be an earl.”

  I kissed him once more. “You are one.”

  In Defense of Ireland’s Honor

  There was no hackney coach. I walked from the National along Pennsylvania Avenue to the Willard Hotel. The tropic temperature had fallen a little. An occasional breeze stirred the night air. I felt strange, more than human. Was it because I had been loved like a woman or spoken to like a man? Both, I decided. One made me feel free, the other powerful. My pride was in total ascendance. I saw myself as a shaper of nations.

  For all its dismal daytime appearance, Washington was as much a city of the night as New York. Coaches crowded with laughing parties of pleasure seekers dashed through the dark at a reckless pace. Drunken men staggered past, baying Negro songs. From a dozen buildings swelled the sounds of reveling voices and music. I found myself longing to join them. I was ready to dance and sing and drink until dawn.

  Whom should I see strutting toward me, in one of his wildest checked suits, but Red Mike Hanrahan. “Oho,” he said. “Where have you been, you young devil? You’ve had us turning the Willard upside down looking for you.”

  “Can you keep a secret?”

  “Of course not. It’s against me religion. I’m a newspaperman,” Mike said.

  I told him anyway. It was a confession of sorts, to a combination priest and father, who I knew would forgive me. I told him everything except the part about Robert Johnson. “Wurra wurra,” Mike said. “You are a wild one. Anyone with that much nerve has got to have luck. Come in here to Chamberlain’s and help me break the bank.”

  Chamberlain’s, only a few doors away, was the premier gambling house of the capital. It was furnished in the ornate style of the Blossom Club and the Louvre concert saloon. At the bar, Mike bought me champagne and listened to my summary of Fernando Wood’s advice.

  “It sounds good to me, but you’ll have to convince Roberts. He’s got a very high opinion of himself, like most self-made men. He seldom takes advice from anyone. Which is too bad, because between you and me, he’s a bit of a fool.”

  “Dear God, why can’t we get better men to lead us?” I said.

  “That’s what Lincoln kept asking for the first three years of the war. Why can’t I find a decent general? If your luck runs bad, you’ve just got to keep drawing from the box. It’s all luck, you know. I think some evil spirit back there in the prehistoric mist stacked the deck against us Irish. Which reminds me. The tiger calls.”

  The tiger was painted on the box from which the dealer drew the winning and losing cards in America’s favorite game, faro. There were 164 faro banks flourishing in Washington at that moment, Mike told me. At Chamberlain’s the elite played. Around the table were Union generals in their blue uniforms and congressmen and senators by the dozen, plus numbers of beautiful women.

  Each table was covered by a green cloth on which were painted the thirteen cards of the spade suit. Everyone bet against the house, placing money on a certain card, or on several cards, either to win or lose. The dealer drew the cards from the tiger-headed box, with winning and losing cards alternating. The great betting came at the close of a hand, when only three cards were left in the box. The dealer’s assistant, called the casekeeper, kept a record of the cards drawn, and the dealer would announce in a dramatic voice the names of the three remaining cards. The man who predicted the order in which they appeared won his bet at odds of four to one. This was known as “calling the turn.”

  Mike insisted on me selecting the cards and calling each turn. With the instinct of a born gambler, he sens
ed my luck and exploited it. I hardly missed a card and called four turns in a row. At the end of an hour, Mike was two thousand dollars ahead, whereupon he quit, because he did not want to use up such splendid luck at the faro table.

  “Let’s reserve a bit of it for Ireland,” he said.

  We had another glass of champagne and strolled back to the Willard, singing an old song, whose words were not entirely irrelevant.

  “I know where I’m going,

  And I know who’s going with me.

  I know who I love—

  But the dear knows who I’ll marry.”

  In my room at the Willard waited an unpleasant surprise. Dan McCaffrey rose from the darkness in the corner by the window as I turned on the gas jet. I cried out with fright at first. “What the devil are you doing in here?” I said, anger quickly following my first reaction.

  “Waitin’ for you. To find out where the hell you went.”

  “None of your business.”

  “I can make it my business,” he said, seizing my arm. “I’ll knock that pretty face of yours out of shape.”

  “Oh, do that,” I said. “You’ll be sure to get a medal from the commander-in-chief of the Fenian army for that.”

  “I got a right to know,” he said.

  “You forfeited what little right you had when you went wandering the streets of New York to bring that creature back to your bed. Now get out of here.”

  “If you think about it, that was your fault as much as mine. I’m sorry I did it.”

  “So was I, for a while. But it doesn’t change my mind now. Please go. I’m tired out.”

  He barred my path to the cabinet where my nightdress was hanging. “I want to know where you went,” he said.

  “I’m under no obligation to tell you anything. Go or I’ll start to scream. You’ll end up in jail,” I said.