Only when I returned to my own bed did I permit my mind to think about tomorrow. Tomorrow when I would confront those thousands of New York faces, any one of whom might step out of the crowd and ask me if I was Bess Fitzmaurice, the Fenian girl. I planned to deny it smartly and dismiss the interrogater. There was a fair chance, if it happened at all, that I could silence anyone who asked. In the end it might give me the pretext I needed to end my deception when I had Jonathan alone.
How sad, how futile, those thoughts seem now. That night they burned with the purity, the passion, of truth and love. But I was about to discover the blind rapacious power of the past.
The next day we were up early for one of Mrs. Littlepage’s ample shore breakfasts. With Abner at the reins, we set out in the open carriage for Long Branch. It was a hot, clear day, good racing weather, and Jonathan, sharing an ancestral love of horse flesh that had come down to him from grandfather and father, spent the ride discussing with Rawdon the pedigrees and speeds of the steeds we were to watch. Knowing not a thing about New Jersey horses, I took his advice, except for the fifth race, in which an Irish horse named Curragh’s Choice was competing. I playfully insisted on backing my countryman, and we briskly settled on a private wager of five dollars when I refused to change my mind.
At the handsome new racecourse, Jonathan was one of a half dozen guests of honor, including the governor of the state and the two U.S. senators, who participated in cutting the ribbon. Thereafter we were left to our own devices. It took a half hour for us to walk across the inner grounds to the grandstand, so many people approached to shake Jonathan’s hand and tell him how much they admired his speech of yesterday. We had a box reserved in the grandstand, but Rawdon insisted on watching from the rail. I went with him to make sure he did not get lost. The crowd was immense. Jonathan was so busy talking with politicians and businessmen who kept coming into the box that I doubt he missed us.
We had placed our bets with a bookmaker as we approached the grandstand, so we had only to root our favorites home. The first four races proved Jonathan’s knowledge of New Jersey horse flesh. All his selections won, and at good odds. The fifth race, the last of the day, was even more sensational from our point of view. Curragh’s Choice romped home at 5–1. Rawdon had joined me in betting on him, and he raced ahead of me to collect from our bookmaker. As I followed him, a voice spoke from behind my right shoulder.
“If it ain’t the Fenian girl.”
I turned to face Dan McCaffrey. I could not believe it. I was sure he was dead. He was dead to me. He even looked dead, or changed in some total way that only death could explain. He was dressed in a flashy suit of white and black checks, with a large fake-looking diamond in his tie. He had grown a blond mustache, but it did not conceal the snide, sneering expression on his lips. His eyes were glass chips without a trace of charm or friendship in them.
“You must be mistaken,” I said. “My name is Elizabeth Stark.”
“I ain’t mistaken. You know I ain’t mistaken.”
“I have nothing to say to you.”
“Not much you don’t.”
Rawdon came rushing up to us, his hands full of greenbacks. He had collected for us and for his father. “Look at all this money!” he said.
“Who’s this?” Dan said.
“I’m Rawdon Stapleton,” he said. “Who are you?”
“Stapleton,” Dan said. “Is your father the general? Made a speech everyone’s talkin’ about? Claims he knows how to make politicians honest?”
“Yes,” Rawdon said. “Who are you?”
“Maybe you seen my name in the papers. I’m Dan McCaffrey. Chief of staff of the Fenian army.”
“Wow,” Rawdon said. “The dynamite brigade?”
“That’s right. You know a lot about the Fenians. She been tellin’ you?”
Rawdon shook his head. “I keep a scrapbook. Where did you meet him, Miss Stark?”
“On—on the boat, coming over,” I said, looking fearfully around me. The races were finished. The crowd was moving toward the gate. Jonathan was still in the grandstand box, talking earnestly with several men.
“Yeah,” Dan said, with a nasty laugh. “We met on the boat comin’ over. What you goin’ to do with all that money?”
“It’s our winnings. I have to give Miss Stark her share.”
He counted out almost a hundred dollars. “Now go pay your father like a good lad,” I said. “And remind him that he owes us each five dollars for Curragh’s Choice.”
Dan took the hundred dollars out of my hand and put it in his pocket. “A kind of down payment on what you owe me,” he said.
“I owe you nothing. Get out of my sight before I call for a policeman,” I said.
“You ain’t gonna call for nobody. If you do, the general’s gonna want to know why. I don’t think you want to tell him, do you, Miss Stark?”
“You are truly despicable,” I said.
“Yeah. And you’re such a wonderful girl. If I know you, the general’s gettin’ a lot more than governessin’. After the kid goes to bed, you really start earnin’ your money. Ain’t I right?”
I turned away from him, too full of loathing even to look him in the face. A moment later, I saw Jonathan and young Rawdon approaching us through the crowd. Jonathan had a perplexed expression on his face. He was obviously in good humor but was puzzled by what Rawdon had just told him about Dan McCaffrey. He spoke from his good humor first.
“I can’t believe the way that Irish horse ran. It wasn’t even a contest.”
“Don’t think much of Irish horses, General?” Dan said.
“I take it you’re Mr. McCaffrey of the Fenian dynamite brigade?”
“Formerly of, General. And formerly of Jeb Stuart’s cavalry. Had a bad habit of pickin’ the wrong side, I’m lookin’ for work, General. Any chance of a job on your railroad?”
“I’m afraid not. What jobs we have, and they are few in these slow times, will go to Union veterans.”
A mindless fury convulsed Dan’s face. “Do you think that’s fair, General?”
“Yes, I do,” Jonathan said. “I think the war was a fair gamble. You lost, and you should take the consequences without whining—or dynamiting innocent people for pay.”
“Come, Miss Stark,” he said, turning to me. “We have a long ride home.”
In the carriage, Jonathan cheerfully settled his bet with me and Rawdon. “Where in the world did you meet that fellow McCaffrey?” he asked.
“On the boat,” I said. “I disliked him then and—and detest him now.”
“Did you give him money? As Rawdon was pointing him out to me, I thought I saw him take some money from your hand.”
“Yes,” I said. “I—I felt sorry for him, in spite of all. He told such a pathetic story. He lost his last cent at the races.”
“You’re too charitable by far,” Jonathan said. “The man’s a lowlife if I ever saw one. He was an officer in the Fenian army? No wonder the Canadians trounced them.” He shook his head. “He makes you think the English may be right about the Irish.”
My world was reeling toward collapse. I was dazed with shock and grief. It was almost unbearable to hear him saying such things. By now we were on the coast road, which ran along the magnificent bluffs known as the Atlantic Highlands. I gazed numbly out at the sea glistening in the late afternoon sunlight. How could nature be so at peace while I was at war in my mind and heart?
Behind us we heard the hoofbeats of a lone horseman. I paid no attention to him—my back was to the road—nor did Jonathan, sitting beside me. But Rawdon, facing in the opposite direction, suddenly looked past us and said, “It’s McCaffrey! The Fenian!”
Before we could turn he was upon us, glaring down at us from the saddle. His suit was caked with dust. “General,” he shouted. “I’ve been thinkin’ about what you said. You’re right. No point in whinin’, and dynamitin’ is no good either, it don’t pay. So from now on, me and my girl Bess here are goin’ to change our way
s. We’re goin’ to make a lot of people pay—startin’ with you.”
“What the devil are you talking about?” Jonathan said.
“I’m talking about this,” Dan said, and produced his pistol.
Abner Littlepage had been looking over his shoulder at this performance. “Stop them horses,” Dan said, “if you don’t want to lose your other arm.”
Abner promptly obeyed. Jonathan sat there, his arms contemptuously folded. “Mr. McCaffrey,” he said. “You’re in a desperate state of mind. I’ll give you a chance to reconsider this act of folly. All of us combined don’t have more than three hundred dollars on our persons. Don’t ruin your life for three hundred dollars.”
“I’m not thinkin’ about three hundred dollars, General. I’m thinkin’ about three hundred thousand dollars. That’s what you’re goin’ to pay, if you want to get young Rawdon here back alive.”
Dan laughed exultantly. “You think you’re so goddamn smart, General. Hell, we’ve been plannin’ this for a long time. You know who’s sittin’ beside you there, lookin’ like a schoolteacher? That’s Bess Fitzmaurice, the Fenian girl. She’s the coolest, slickest operator in the Fenian army. She shot that landlord Rodney Gort dead in Ireland. She bedded half the politicians in Washington—Fernando Wood, Bobby Johnson, Bill Seward—to get us across the Canadian border.”
Jonathan was looking at me, first astonishment, then hatred suffusing his face. “It’s not true,” I said. “He’s lying. The whole thing is a lie except for the truth about my name.”
I was wasting my words, wasting my breath, my tears.
“You—you—Irish scum,” Jonathan said.
“Come on, Bess,” Dan said. “I told you there was no point in tryin’ to soften him up. His kind don’t soften. They only understand one thing—this.”
He cocked his pistol. “Now get out of that carriage, General. You, One-arm, get down and turn them horses around.”
Glaring defiance, Jonathan and Abner Littlepage obeyed. Dan tied his horse to the rear of the carriage and took the reins of the two-horse team. “Don’t follow us, General. If you do, the kid gets killed. We’ll send you a message about where and when to deliver the money.”
He gave a rebel yell, and the team sprang forward. Within minutes Jonathan and Abner Littlepage were small, impotent figures in the distance. Not until we reached a crossroads north of Long Branch did Dan pause to study a map and turn to warn us against calling for help or trying to jump out and escape. I was too demoralized to do or think anything. My ruin was too total for any state of mind but disbelief, numbness.
You Irish scum, Jonathan had said. Irish scum. The words came to his lips as naturally as a curse. They were like a nitroglycerin bomb, blasting away all pretensions, facades, the fake stage scenery that I had been building in my naive mind to enhance my self-created drama of love and devotion. My winter world of theatrical make-believe was a heap of sticks, a hole in the ground, in the face of the truth that the summer had brought. I saw the gulf between us, as wide as the ocean. What a fool I was to think my arms could bridge it. What a fool I was to think that I could escape my fate, which was written out for me the moment that Dan McCaffrey strode through my father’s door.
Black as a Sloe Is the Heart Inside Me
“Where are we going?” Rawdon asked.
His baffled, frightened young face drew me back to reality. “I don’t know,” I said.
“Is he going to kill me?”
“No. No hurt will come to you, my darling. I promise you.”
“But you really are the Fenian girl?”
“Yes.”
A terrible hopelessness overwhelmed me. I saw myself doomed. What judge, what jury, what newspaper, would believe anything but the story Dan had told Jonathan, the story that had drawn those terrible words from his lips? What choice had I now but to join Dan McCaffrey, this man whom I saw as nothing less than a monster, to flee with him as a fugitive and wander the world like Cain’s wife? He had come with all the power of the past around him and claimed me. There was a crude justice in it. That was the most terrible part of it. I had betrayed the love I once felt for him, out of pride, out of anger. The reasons all seemed trivial now. In return he had betrayed me. Crude justice. Crude, blind justice.
The crossroads enabled Dan to circle Long Branch to the west and bring us down upon the bank of some tidal river. There, tied at a dock, a small sloop waited, manned by a dirty, swarthy fellow about as talkative as a clam. We cast off and caught the tide, which swiftly carried us onto the ocean. We stood south before a hard breeze, and as night fell we bore up off a shore on which white waves were breaking. The pilot put the helm over and aimed for a dark mouth in the wave line. In a few minutes we were gliding up another tidal river. We eased to a stop beside a sagging dock, and Dan ordered us out of the boat. We followed him up a steep bank into the deeper darkness of a stand of pine trees. Within the trees there was a one-room shack into which our boatman led us. It stank of fish and was devoid of furniture, except for two small woodstoves. Roaches and mice scampered for cover as Dan lit an oil lamp. In one corner was a box of tinned food.
By now I was beginning, however dimly, to think about what was happening. It was more and more clear that Dan had not acted on impulse. Asking for a job, his anger, had all been sham. He had been waiting for the moment to execute this plan.
“How long have you been hanging about, watching for a chance to do this?” I said.
He laughed. “A good month,” he said.
“How did you find me?”
“I got Red Mike drunk in England before he blew himself to hell. He told me. It was pretty easy to get his brother to tell the rest.”
“There’s no hope for us, do you know that? You’re dealing with a man who will hunt you down, and me, too, no matter where we run.”
“Dead men don’t hunt nobody,” Dan said.
The words sent a chill of dread through me in spite of the summer heat. I saw what he planned to do. I did not want to believe it.
“I’m hungry,” Rawdon said.
“Me, too, kid,” Dan said. “Open some of them tins, Bess, and get us some grub.”
The box contained tins of meat that tasted vaguely like ham, some salted fish, some pale consommé soup with a chicken flavor, some stale bread, and a bottle of bourbon. I heated the soup in the house’s single pot, and we ate a silent nauseating supper. We washed it down with bitter coffee and condensed milk, equally sickening. After letting Rawdon answer a call of nature, Dan bound him hand and foot. Then he sat down with his sinister boatman beside him and composed a letter for Jonathan Stapleton.
The boatman—whose name, I eventually learned, was Pakenham—nodded as Dan explained his part in the plan. At dawn tomorrow he would be off to Kemble Manor. He would by then have placed the letter in a bottle. He was to halloo until he got someone’s attention, then fling the letter toward the shore and let the tide carry it to the beach. The letter directed Jonathan Stapleton to board the sloop with three hundred thousand dollars in a bag and return with Pakenham to our hideaway. There, Rawdon would be handed over to him. If Pakenham did not return in thirty-six hours, Rawdon would be killed.
Pakenham departed on his errand. Dan and I faced each other in the yellow lamplight. “So it’s come to this,” I said. “All the grand hopes and glorious words.”
“They were your specialty,” he said.
“Let the boy go now. I’ll go away with you. I’ll do anything you ask.”
“Why the hell should I do that?” Dan said. “You got to go away with me anyhow. And you’re goin’ to do anything I ask, startin’ tonight.”
“Never,” I said. “You’ll never touch me again. I’ll die first.”
“I feel sick,” Rawdon said. He began to retch and abruptly vomited. Tied as he was, he could not prevent the mess from spilling on himself as well as the floor. With a curse, Dan strode across the room and kicked the lad in the side.
“Stupid little shit,” he sn
arled. “We gotta sleep in here tonight.”
Rawdon writhed in agony. With a scream of pure rage I sprang at Dan and raked my nails across his face. I sank my teeth into his neck, I kicked and smashed at him. I was a mother defending her young. He stopped me with a terrific slap in the face that sent me crashing against the far wall. “You—goddamn—bitch,” he said, striding after me.
He whipped a long, gleaming knife from his belt. His other hand rubbed blood from his gashed cheek. “I could kill you now,” he said. “And Sonny Boy, too. I don’t have to keep you alive. I got a foolproof plan. Twelve hours after I get that money, Pakenham’ll have me in Philadelphia. I’ll be on a train to Chicago.”
“As long as there’s life in me, I won’t let you hurt that lad. I love him as my own son.”
The word “love” was a mistake. It aroused the darkest, vilest rage in Dan’s soul. “Love him,” he said. “Ain’t that sweet. Let’s see how much you love him.”
He strode back to Rawdon, picked him up by the back of his coat, and held the knife at his throat. “You gonna do what I want tonight?”
“Yes,” I said, my head bowed, avoiding Rawdon’s eyes.
He flung Rawdon back to the floor. “Okay,” he said. “Get outside and take off your clothes.”
I obeyed. I was now certain that he was ready to kill me as well as Rawdon and Jonathan. In a way I almost welcomed it. It was a bitter consolation, to imagine Jonathan seeing my dead body, knowing that I, too, was a victim, that I had not deceived him in our winter months of midnight love. I swayed on the edge of abandoning all hope, of welcoming oblivion.
A Passionate Girl Page 51
