A Passionate Girl

by Thomas Fleming

  Dan emerged from the house and stood there, a bulky blur in the darkness. I heard the gurgle of the bourbon bottle. “You bitch, Bess,” he said. “Whenever I reach for you, you’re always someplace else.”

  His voice was heavy with anger and another emotion—perhaps regret.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Can’t you see I done this for you? To give you somethin’ besides a life drudgin’ for them swells? What’s the difference between killin’ that sour-faced Yankee general and his little rich bastard in there and gunnin’ down Lord Gort with his daughter screamin’ in our faces?”

  I said nothing. I did not know what to say. He drank more bourbon.

  “You were fuckin’ him, weren’t you? I could tell from the way he looked at you.”

  I love him. The words were alive in my throat, but some deep instinct for survival stopped me from saying them. I sensed that he would kill me within seconds after I spoke them. They would be my last words. That knife would lay my throat open and I would writhe out my life here in this dark pine-scented grove like an ancient sacrifice to a devouring god.

  Instead I said their opposite. I played the prostitute he thought I had become. “I didn’t know what to do, Dan. I was all alone. He gave me money. I thought you’d forgotten me. I wasn’t even sure you were alive.”

  “Neither was I for a while,” he said bitterly. “I was on the run in England for two months. Finally got out as a seaman on a freighter from Glasgow.”

  “Don’t kill the boy. You can do what you want to the general. I really am fond of the boy.” I went through the dark and put my arms around him. “I’m still half mad from grief over Michael,” I said. “That’s why I refused you. But now that I see your regret—”

  “I had to do that, Bess,” he said.

  “He’s long dead now. Perhaps well dead,” I said. “Touching you now, thinking of what you want to do with me now, is making me melt—making me remember Ireland and the nights on the Manhattan—”

  He began kissing me with all his old wild hunger. I let him have me on the cold hard bed of dry pine needles, the earth pressing into my back, the way the ancient women of Ireland may have loved their warriors. But I cast off those banshees forever with that last meeting. Somehow the deception I was practicing broke open my mind to an inrush of reality, identity, of present time. I saw myself precisely for what I was, and I faced the past for what it was, a blind procession of false hopes and deceptions that somehow justified this deception because I was able to tell myself that if it succeeded it would be the last deception. I would live the rest of my days, whether they were short or long, without lies.

  “O my Donal Ogue,” I whispered when he was through. “You haven’t changed. You make me love you still.”

  He began to tell me his dream of what we could do, where we could go with the money. Peru, Mexico. Places where money could buy a kingdom and we could live like royalty. There were gold mines for sale in Peru; there were ranches in Mexico where a man could ride to the far horizon without leaving his property. Mexico, a country where a soldier could become anything—president, emperor.

  There was a pathetic, almost childish quality to his dream. It was heartbreaking because he saw me as a part of it. I thought of the lines from “Donal Ogue”:

  You said you’d give me—an airy giver!—

  A golden ship with masts of silver

  Twelve market towns to be my fortune

  And a fine white mansion beside the ocean.

  I embraced him as if I shared his greedy rapture. “Ah Dan, it sounds wonderful,” I said, “but you must change your plan if you hope to win that dream. Take my advice, go away with the money and me but let the general and the boy live. The more I think of it, the more sure I am that he won’t pursue us. I’m your insurance, don’t you see? He’d never want me in a courtroom, testifying to what we did nights. The money means nothing to him. He’s worth ten times that. But his reputation is everything. He talked of marrying me, you know, but he couldn’t bring himself to take an Irish wife.”

  That was so close to the truth as I saw it now that my breath grew short. Before I could continue he was answering me with a growling no. “I want the pleasure of killing the son of a bitch. Didn’t you say he was the sort of bastard that would never quit chasin’ us?”

  “That was before I thought this all through. Before I—I found my love for you again. He’s an important man, Dan. Killing him will arouse the whole nation. Think of the cry that could be raised against you. Southern officer kills a Union general.”

  “Maybe you’re right. But I’d still like to kill the son of a bitch.”

  We went back into the house and found that Rawdon had vomited again. He was a sobbing, almost hysterical mess. I persuaded Dan to undo his ropes and brought up water from the river to clean him.

  “Did he hurt you?” he asked as I fussed over him.

  “No,” I said.

  “I’ll never forget what you did for me,” he said with tears in his eyes.

  I kissed him. “Hush now and try to sleep,” I said.

  Dan insisted on tying him up again. He turned off the light and propped himself against the only door, where he planned to doze. No one could pass without waking him. It was not exactly a statement of confidence in me. I spent most of the night staring into the darkness, listening to him snore.

  Morning dawned hot and clear. Dan flung open the windows and ordered me to make coffee. He ate some more of the nauseating food, which Rawdon and I declined. “It’s a lot better’n I ate the last six months of the war,” Dan said.

  I drank some coffee and gave a little to Rawdon. The hours dribbled slowly away. Dan grew more and more tense. He swigged the bourbon to calm himself. A half dozen times he went down to the dock to look downriver for Pakenham’s sloop. Dan had found this fellow in a tavern in Shrewsbury. He lived farther south on the shore and made his living by smuggling and preying on wrecks along the coast. He would do anything for money, but he thought small. I was cautioned to say nothing about the size of the ransom. Dan was paying him only five thousand dollars.

  Blackflies swarmed through the open windows after the bits of food in the discarded tins. They assaulted Rawdon, too, and I spent most of my time brushing them from his face and hands. Sitting there, I caught a different rhythm in Dan’s stride as he returned from the dock for the sixth time. He burst in the door and said; “He’s comin’. And the old boy’s on the boat. On the prow, money in hand.”

  He drew his pistol and checked the cylinder, a sight that made me grow faint. Five minutes later, we heard the rattle of the sail coming down, the creaking thud of the sloop against the old dock. We waited again in the heat and humming flies until the stamp of Jonathan Stapleton’s footsteps sounded dully on the pine needles, more sharply on the steps. Then he was at the door, hatless, wearing a black silk suit and white shirt and black tie. He had a small carpetbag in his hand. He glared at me with concentrated hatred.

  Dan pointed the pistol at him, the hammer cocked. “Hello, General,” he said. “Have a nice trip?”

  “I’m not here as a general any more than you’re here as a Southern officer,” Jonathan said. “I’m here as a father, and you and your whore are here as pieces of scum.”

  “General,” Dan said, “I would love to put a bullet in you. I sort of agreed with this girl last night that it might be better to let you live. You’re startin’ to change my mind.”

  For a split second, Jonathan glared at me. I saw that he did not care whether or not Dan pulled the trigger. He was back in the dungeon of his bitter self. But there was a subtle difference. Where before there had been defeat, confusion, there was now strength, rage. Where death had been a tempting friend, he was now an indifferent companion. He wanted to kill Dan, and possibly me, and was ready to risk anything to do it.

  “Don’t you want your money first?” Jonathan said, and pulled open the carpetbag. It was crammed to the top with greenbacks. For a split second, Dan�
��s eyes went hungrily to that hoard of power and pleasure. It was the moment for which Jonathan was waiting. He flung the contents of the bag across the room into Dan’s face and charged through the shower of money with an infantry roar.

  Time stopped, froze. We were like figures in a waxworks or a painting. The blizzard of greenbacks engulfed us. Down they fluttered, absurd symbolic pieces of paper for which so many sacrificed their happiness, their honor, their pride. The prize for which men betrayed nations and peoples, for which so much blood was spilled, so many hearts broken. Now the two men I had loved met in the middle of this green storm in a grapple that could only end in death.

  Dan’s gun crashed once, but the whirling money distracted his deadly aim by a fraction. The bullet smashed out a window. Then Jonathan slammed into him, his strong hands lunging for the gun arm, smashing it back against the wall, knocking the pistol loose from Dan’s hand. The weapon bounded across the floor like a living creature. I crawled to it and seized it as the two men thrashed wildly in the carpet of money. Jonathan had his fingers on Dan’s throat. Dan’s breath was coming in hoarse gasps. But Jonathan had no hope of subduing a Tennessee brawler with such a simple hold.

  With a tremendous heave Dan broke the grip and flung Jonathan back on his haunches. In the same instant Dan was on his feet to deliver a kick that sent Jonathan hurtling out the door onto the pine needles outside. With a wild rebel yell Dan lunged after him. I stumbled to the door dreading what I knew would ensue. As Jonathan staggered to his feet, Dan feinted a punch and gave him another terrific kick that hurled him back ten feet, crashing off the pine trees. He sprang up and rushed Dan again, trying to close with him. He got another kick in the belly this time and two terrific punches in the face. As he rose dazedly to one knee, another kick all but tore off his head. Barely conscious now, Jonathan still struggled to his feet again and again. But flesh and blood can only bear so much. At last another terrible combination of kicks and punches stretched him moaning on the ground.

  Gasping for breath, Dan looked down on him, then slowly drew his knife. Suddenly I knew what I had to do. I raised the big gun and aimed it with both hands.

  “Don’t, Dan, don’t,” I said.

  He was about ten feet away facing me. Sweat and blood-lust mingled on his glaring face. And contempt. He didn’t think I would pull the trigger. He thought that after last night he had me again. He reached down to seize Jonathan Stapleton by the shirt and lift him to cut his throat.

  I pulled the trigger. The gun roared and the bullet smashed into Dan’s chest just above the heart, flinging him back against the nearest tree. “You—” he cried.

  I pulled the trigger again and this bullet spun him around and sent him staggering to another tree. He clung to it for a second in his death agony. Slowly he turned. “Didn’t you—hear—what he called—you?” he choked.

  He fell. The gun dropped from my numbed hands. Jonathan Stapleton raised his battered body from the ground and struggled to one knee. I walked past him into the shadowed grove. Dan lay with his face to the summer sky. I thought of the soldier in my father’s doorway, saying, Dan McCaffrey. I remembered the gunman crouched in the road to Bantry fighting it out with a half dozen policemen. I saw the weary soldier in Buffalo, saying, We’ve got a good little army.

  Out of me swirled a huge sorrow, black as the Irish night, dark as our thousand years of bloody history, blind as our hopes, ruinous as our defeats. I was Emer keening over Cuchulain, Dierdre lamenting the Red Branch heroes. The tumbling words came out in Irish. What other language could express my grief? I flung myself on him, wailing.

  “Black as a sloe is the heart inside me

  Black as a coal with the griefs that drove me

  Black as a boot print on shining hallways

  And ’twas you that blackened it ever and always.”

  I don’t know how long I lay there, keening the Irish words over and over again. How utterly strange, how weirdly foreign, it must have sounded to Jonathan and Rawdon. God knows how long I might have continued it. Jonathan’s hand on my shoulder drew me back to the real world.

  “We’ve found a boat in the bushes,” he said. “There’s a railroad bridge about a mile up the river. We’ll go up there and wait for a train.”

  Pakenham had fled with his sloop. The river was empty. None of us had the strength to row. Luckily the tide was with us, and we drifted to the bridge. An hour later, a train approached. Jonathan flagged it down with his shirt. When the engineer saw his beaten face and torn clothes, he abandoned his regular stops and highballed to our station in Middletown. By six o’clock we were at Kemble Manor again. A doctor, summoned by the station agent, examined Jonathan and taped sticking plaster on two broken ribs. The sheriff was also summoned and told the story. He set out immediately for the Manasquan River to remove Dan McCaffrey’s body. He assured Jonathan that they would capture Pakenham in short order. He also promised that the inquest into Dan’s death would be conducted with an absolute minimum of publicity.

  After a decent meal and a bath, Rawdon pronounced himself healthy. I was also healthy enough in body. After hours of walking the beach alone, I knew what I had to do to bring similar health to my soul.

  The next morning after breakfast, I went to Jonathan’s room. He was wearing his nightclothes and a light robe, sitting in the chair by the window where I had once come to him with so much love in my heart.

  “It’s clear that we must part,” I said.

  “Yes,” he said heavily.

  “Believe me when I say I never meant to deceive you—except about my name. I would never have married you without telling you the truth.”

  “Yes,” he said heavily again.

  “In spite of everything—I’ll treasure the memory of our love.”

  “Yes,” he said dully. I saw with sadness that he would be unable to do this.

  He stared out the window at the sea for a long time. “Where will you go?” he said.

  “Far from here. To a place where the Fenian girl is as unknown as Dierdre of the Sorrows. Or as much of a fable.”

  He nodded, barely listening now. I was gone from him, that was all he knew. The pain of what he was losing seemed hardly equal to the strength he had regained, the gulf I had helped him cross.

  I went back to my room and began packing. I was in the midst of it when Rawdon looked in. “Where are you going?” he said.

  “Away, Rawdie,” I said.

  “No,” he said, and ran to me. “Is he sending you away? He can’t do that.”

  Before I could answer him, he raced across the hall to Jonathan’s room. “Father, you can’t do it,” he cried. “You have to marry her. I know what you did to her. I saw her go into your room at night—”

  There was the sound of a blow and a cry of pain. I rushed after Rawdon to find Jonathan standing over him, his arm raised in rage, the boy sprawled on the floor, clutching his face. “Don’t you ever say that to another living soul. If you do, I’ll ruin you. I’ll throw you out of the family,” Jonathan roared.

  The man I had glimpsed so often was dominant on his face now. I saw him and Rawdon forever opposed, with me as one of the chief causes of their enmity. When Jonathan noticed me in the door he whirled and snarled, “Did you send him in here?”

  “Come, Rawdie,” I said, drawing him to his feet. We sat and talked in my room. I reiterated my love for him and tried to explain what had been wrong with my dream of loving his father. He would not listen. At last he tore loose and turned on me to cry one last terrible word, “liar!”

  I left without trying to say good-bye to him or Jonathan again. At the station I boarded the train and rode through the peaceful fields and prosperous towns to Jersey City. There I took a ferry across the river, then a hack to Archbishop McCloskey’s residence on Mulberry Street. I gave my name to a stern-looking monsignor who ordered me to wait in a bare sitting room. I was prepared to sit there for hours, but the archbishop appeared in five minutes. I did not kiss his ring or make a
ny other sign of obedience.

  “You remember me?” I asked.

  “Of course,” he said.

  “You told me if I ever needed a friend—”

  “Yes.”

  “I need to confess many sins. But I wonder what good it will do.”

  “Do you believe that God forgives you?”

  “I would like to believe it, but I don’t.”

  “Why do you want to believe it?”

  “Because I want to go away and begin again in a place far away from here—and this is a way of saying good bye to the Fenian girl forever.”

  He smiled sadly. “You’re becoming an American. You want to give your faith to the future, to mingle it with tomorrow rather than yesterday. Perhaps eventually we’ll learn to do both things.”

  From his desk he took a stole, a long ribbon of red silk trimmed with blue, and crossed it on his chest. Priests wore these while hearing confessions. For a half hour I told him everything I had done, from Dan McCaffrey to the murder of Lord Gort to my ruinous love for Jonathan Stapleton. He listened impassively, with no expression on his face or in his eyes. I might have been talking to a statue—or to the God I had ignored for so long.

  When I finished, he said in the gentlest imaginable voice, “Kneel down.”

  I knelt. He drew a cross in the air above my head and recited Latin words of forgiveness. Raising me to my feet, he held my hands for a long moment, gazing at me with a marvelous mixture of sadness and affection.

  “Wild Irish,” he murmured. “Wild Irish.”

  He stepped back and became the archbishop again. “Where will you go?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I suggest San Francisco.” He scribbled a name on a piece of paper. “Here’s a man who’s running a newspaper out there. They’re starting to hire women. You must make your way alone for a while.”

  I nodded. The man understood so much.

  “Do you need money?”

  “General Stapleton gave me a thousand dollars.”

  The archbishop opened a drawer and pulled out a sheaf of greenbacks. “Here’s another five hundred. I refused to give a cent to the Fenians. It almost broke my heart—but I couldn’t let them use my name to suck more money from the pockets of our poor. This is my own money—my belated contribution to the cause.”