Bold Sons of Erin

by Ralph Peters (as Owen Parry)

  I cannot say in truth I understood. For I did not think Mr. Lincoln and Mr. Nicolay sought discord with the Tsar of all the Russias, either, although they faced political calculations. Of course, I knew enough of government to see that Mr. Seward was the fellow who bore the official responsibility for foreign matters. But there is more to government than official duties. It is, above all, a matter of personality, though not, unfortunately, of character. The man is more important than the office, and power ebbs and flows on personal credit.

  I feared that Mr. Seward would seek a promise of me, which I would need to decline. But the secretary was clever enough to know each fellow’s bounds. Behind his bluster, he judged men with a keenness. And he loved books, which speaks well of any man, although he did not reveal that taste to the public. He never read where his voters might see him enjoying it. Americans do not like learned leaders, see, but wish to think their politicans plain. Gruff to the world, Mr. Seward acted the common fellow. But he had a mind near rich as Mr. Lincoln’s.

  I was relieved when he drew out a fresh cigar, for his manner said our conversation was ended.

  “Well, now we know where we stand, goddamn it. Fred, make room for the major to get down. Get out of his way, for God’s sake! Go on in and get your supper, Abel, old friend. Sorry to sneak up on you so late in the evening. But, damn it, man, you should have come to see me, instead of making me hunt you down like a goddamned Indian.” He smiled to show old teeth and wrinkled skin. “Between the two of us—you and me—we’ll handle this. No need to worry Lincoln with trivialities.”

  I was dismissed and went gladly. With more to ponder than a fellow likes. I even wondered if Mr. Seward really had expected me to satisfy him, or had only made a display of his queries for another purpose entirely. That is how these diplomat fellows are, see. They say one thing, but really mean another, and calculate each passion they pretend. Worse, Mr. Seward’s career had been in politics. Although I liked the man, who had been fair to me, I knew enough of the world to fear that the wedding of a political mind with a diplomatic position was as risky as mating Beelzebub with Lucifer.

  I was out of sorts as I climbed the steps to my boarding house. Fortunately, Mrs. Schutzengel had set a lovely cutlet of pork in the pan for me, which lifted my spirits at once. She made fresh coffee, then she gave me pie.

  “JAYSUS, I’M HAPPY,” Jimmy Molloy declared. “I’m a horrible happy man, Sergeant Jones—beggin’ your pardon, it’s ‘Major Jones’ I’m meaning.” He had been waiting for me after breakfast, when I come back in from my business down the yard. Now he stood before me in the hallway, waving a cup of Mrs. Schutzengel’s coffee, as if he meant to splash the walls and the world. “She makes me so happy, that Annie does, that I’ve never been so miserable in me life.”

  He looked at me with the sorrowing face of a private soldier the morning after pay-day.

  “Now, Jimmy, I meant it when I told you that you are to call me ‘Abel.’ For we are in America now and friends, after all, and you have become a respectable married man. As for being misera—”

  He started up again, unable to listen for long. For he was Dublin Irish, see, and shed words as freely as storm clouds shed their raindrops.

  “It’s just that she’ll never leave off her making me happy, morning, noon, and night, then morning again. And when she’s not making me happy, she’s doing this and that for me own blessed good. Oh, it’s a wicked thing for a man to have to suffer! And her with them eyes that don’t even close to sleep, I swear it on the grave o’ me late, sainted mother, and on the graves of all o’ me lovely fathers in their dozens, and an’t it always done for me own good? She’s got an eagle eye, that one. Oh, she ought to have been a peeler, not a woman. Turn her loose, and she’d find a snake in Ireland.”

  He canted his head to the side, like a fellow playing a comedy. “ ‘Annie Fitzgerald,’ says I, ‘I’ll not be regulated constantly by a woman,’ and ‘Oh, won’t you?’ says she, ‘It’s only for your own good. And me name’s Annie Molloy these days, as if ye haven’t noticed the change.’ Oh, she’s the devil got up in a petticoat, the way she comes after a man to tell him which o’ his buttons to button up first. And all for his own good.” He shuddered at the intrusion of another intimate memory. “Jaysus, she’s a nasty one for the washing up, as well, with her baths and her scrubbings and her ‘Change your linens, or ye’ll have no dinner this evening.’ Sure, and it ought to be a crime to be made so happy as that woman wants to make me.”

  Molloy looked at me with eyes that aped the saints in those oiled-cloth portraits that Irish women buy of nuns come peddling. He might have been that fellow pierced by arrows, for all the agony he put on. He ever has been one for exaggeration and even something of a trickster in his time, although his comportment has shown a marked improvement.

  But I was firmly on the side of Mrs. Molloy in this struggle. Twas handsome to see her husband so clean and clear of eye, with not the least taint of alcohol upon him. I hoped the day might even come when he would join me in the Temperance Pledge.

  “Oh, can’t ye think o’ some terrible task ye could set me to? In your high capacity of a major, to which ye’ve climbed up so grandiose? Haven’t I done ye the devil’s own good in the past, from the mouth o’ the Kabul River, where the blue waters meet the brown, to those queer parts in New York, where the cold was bitter as Derry boys locked out o’ Heaven? Help me, man! Save me from the blight o’ me married joys! Can’t ye think on a way to help me escape the cruelty o’ such great and endless happiness? A fine bit o’ work for which Jimmy Molloy’d be the very man and the only one who could serve ye? For I’m cravin’ a day-sunt holiday from all me terrible pleasures, and I’m needin’ to go soon, afore that Annie nails me to a cross with all her charities.” He looked at me morosely, as a chastised hound might do. “She’s made me so happy I’m wishing I was back in jail.”

  I thought the fellow would fall to his knees and weep. “Could ye not take me with ye, wherever ye have to go? For I’m beggin’ and I’m pleadin’ with ye. And wouldn’t I folly ye to the very ends of the earth and back again!”

  “Now, look you,” I began.

  “Oh, don’t go takin’ that terrible tone with me, I’m beggin’ ye, Abel Jones! For it’s well I know what comes after, when I hear that awful voice in me innocent ear.” He turned to an invisible audience, whose approval he meant to win. “And didn’t I know him when he was a sergeant as light on his mercies as a herring’s hopes o’ making it through a Friday in Kilkenny? I’m down on me knees to ye, Abel, me darlin’ man. “Won’t ye spend your Christian affections on a poor sinner and rescue an old friend from the lion’s den o’ his joys? It’s fair killing me to be looked after so, all fed up and scrubbed till I’m bleedin’ to death in the washtub.”

  He come closer still, treating me to the smile that landed him in the Delhi jail and somehow managed to get him out again. Although the cholera helped. “Now, don’t go askin’ where or why, but I’ve got me own resources, and what honest publican don’t have, then, and I’ve heard it’s the Irish are botherin’ ye oncet again. And who, I ask ye, is the man for sortin’ out the Irish, if not your old and devoted and loving friend Jimmy Molloy, who’s dyin’ o’ horrible happiness at present?”

  He shook his head as only an Irishman can, as if the world were ending for want of your farthing. “I’m beggin’ ye, for the sake of old times and our comradeship, and while I’m a humble man and not one to go drudgin’ up the past for his own selfish benefit, who was it but Jimmy Molloy what follied ye into the very jaws o’ death, when everyone else in the company was fearsome and frightened? Who was it but me that come when ye stood all alone and surrounded by bloodthirsty Afghanees, and our little Sergeant Jones shouting for all he’s worth, ‘Rally, the Old Combustibles! Rally to me, you bastards!’ Oh, don’t I remember it like it was Saturday morning? And who was it carried ye back to the surgeon and safety, and you all screamin’ and streamin’ with blood, and ragin’ that I was t
o put ye down and save meself, and haven’t I got me own dear little Sergeant Jones over one shoulder and a great turbaned nigger comes on with a sword as big as—”

  “Jimmy!” I grasped him by the wrist to calm him down. “Listen to me! You’re a married man now, see. With responsibilities. And a good wife who loves you dearly. You have to settle down and try to lead a proper life. Annie Fitzgerald—I mean ‘Mrs. Molloy’—has been a very savior to you.”

  “Jaysus, Mary, and Joseph, that she has!” Molloy agreed with a glum exuberance native to the Gael. “It’s worse than the plague and the cholera, how awful I been saved by that woman.” He did not try to escape my grasp, but surrendered to the touch, as if he were a hound that needed petting. “But what if a man an’t born to live good and proper?”

  He tried to smile, but come up with no more than a ghost of his lifelong humor. “Sure, and ye know me for the man I am, Abel, and I don’t know why you’re pretendin’. I’m not the sort for parlors and lace curtains. Ye said it yourself, a thousand times, how I’m worthless and no good. And only think o’ the shame in which ye found me, and the wicked degry-dation, when I made off with the regimental silver and took me lusts to the ’oories, and I didn’t even have the daysuntcy about meself to go over the wall to the next cantonment and steal from the blackhearted Highlanders, instead o’ from me very own poor officers. Although they were a cruel pack and the buggers deserved it.”

  “That is all in the past,” I assured him. “We are in America now, where every man may have a second chance. And you are all reformed and prosperous—why, Mrs. Schutzengel has given me to understand that you’ve added a small hotel to your public house, and purchased another outlet for libations, besides. I also hear that your dear wife keeps everything nice and orderly.”

  “Oh, that she does and she do. Don’t ye know, she’s got us lookin’ to buy yet another public house to come after, for there’s terrible fortunes to be made o’ the war in Washington.” I do believe a real tear graced his eye. “But an’t it in the Bible itself, God bless us, how wealth is a wicked sin and not to be wished for? She’s out to make me rich, that Annie is. And then where would I be, I’m askin’ ye that? As it is, me life’s a shameful happiness.” He shuddered still more fiercely than before. “Why, it’s in the Gospels, an’t it? If I was to come up rich, I’d be damned for all eternity, and wouldn’t that spoil everything I’ve got planned?”

  He come up closer and closer, with those winning young looks that should long since have deserted him, for all his sinful ways and dissipation. I mean in the past, of course. “Tell me the truth, now, Abel, on the honor that lies in our many years’ acquaintance: Ye don’t believe we’re all married forever in Heaven, do ye? We don’t have to set up housekeeping on a cloud? Won’t it be more like the army was, where oncet ye fall dead they strike your name from the rolls?”

  Pitiful it was. But how could I help him? It is the queerest thing, how some men cannot settle down to the fortune the Good Lord grants them. I told myself that time would set Jimmy right, that he only needed to accustom himself to the quiet joys of domesticity. I knew his wife to be the best of young women and no shrew, and she loved him after so many had passed him by as irredeemable. In India, harlots welcomed him for his gay teasing and his antics, but they always took his payment in advance.

  And I do believe that Molloy meant well when he married, and wished to make Annie happy and to behave. But, behind all his blarney and bluster, twas clear that morning that marriage had broken his heart. For there was not that quality in him that loves a regular life and a pleasant hearth. He was a wanderer. And though I could not say it to him outright, for it was my Christian duty to remind him of his vows and responsibilities, I knew him to be a good-hearted man, as kind as any on earth, and a better soul than many that inhabit the forms that fill the front pews of church and chapel. What are we to do with our brothers who cannot bear the love that good hearts offer them?

  I sent him on his way, with false assurances that he need only accustom himself to his new manner of life, after which all would be well. How proud the lass had been, his Annie, when, upon my return from England the summer past, she had asked me to dinner at their modest home. She loved Molloy. And she loved the thought of the life she had planned for the two of them. Twas her and his misfortune.

  But let that bide.

  I assured my crestfallen friend that, should events in Pottsville require his assistance, I would telegraph for him without delay. But I could not invent a task out of thin air. That would have been dishonest. Nor, if I am to be truthful, did I wish any of my Washington acquaintances by me in Pottsville until I had found my way through certain personal embarrassments. And until that will had been read. I had my work for our government before me, and I would see it done. Murder had first call on my attention. But my private matters wanted watching, too.

  I could not spare Jimmy any more of my morning, since I had to meet my train to go back north. Indeed, I had lacked the little time to say hello to any other friend, either Evans the Telegraph, who was dear to me as Wales itself, or Fine Jim, the newspaper lad, whose thoughts of becoming a drummer-boy alarmed me. For pretty young boys are not well-placed among grown men who lack all wifely companionship, and I will say no more on that sorry subject.

  I watched Molloy go, with his shoulders slumped halfway to China. Herr Schwinghammer—a new boarder who worked nights in a printing establishment and could not get enough of Jimmy Molloy—accosted him as they passed along the street, asking where he’d been keeping himself all the while. But Jimmy only passed him by, dejected and unseeing, as if they were gliding ghosts from different centuries.

  I WAS PUTTING THE LAST of my things in my kit for my departure, when a messenger boy brought a letter from Mr. Nicolay. The lad took my penny and ran off, so I realized the sender did not expect a reply. Still, I opened the missive immediately.

  Twas a reminder. And a warning. Not to tell Secretary Seward anything I might learn about Russian involvement in the murder of General Stone.

  I marched back into the kitchen to bid farewell to Mrs. Schutzengel, but found her uncommon glum amid her pots. Nor was she merely saddened by my leaving. Twas clear she was mulling old and future sorrows. Our journey of the evening before had conjured spirits she had not yet put down.

  I gave the dear woman my best and took me off out the front door, for I barely had time to walk to the railway terminus. And I did not intend to squander my funds on a cab, even should one appear for my convenience. There was no threat of rain, and bodily exercise aids the soul and the digestion.

  Halfway down the block my conscience stabbed me.

  How often now had I turned to Jimmy Molloy for help when I needed it? And in his litany of remembrance and complaint, he had not mentioned a fraction of what he had done for me. Now, you will protest and say: “You did the Christian thing and what was right, returning him to the holy bonds of his marriage and his honest wife.” But I will tell you, though you disagree: At times I fear I am too narrow a man, too quick in judgement and even a touch self-righteous. Only sometimes, of course, and not severely. But had I not just washed my hands of my old friend? Pilate, at least, could claim no standing acquaintance with Our Savior.

  And I thought I saw a way that I might bring the illusion of our old adventures to Jimmy, while doing his Annie no harm, and possibly even help myself for my trouble.

  I scrambled off toward Swampoodle, as fast as my leg would go. Twas not so far out of my way.

  Now, I have told you of Swampoodle in the past, a slum that would shame the lowest Hindoo beggar. It is populated by the Irish, of course. Yet, the wealth of war was even telling in those intemperate streets. A year before I would have paused at entering the place by day, and had nearly received a beating there one night. Now, at least in the daylight hours, the place was mostly passable. Irish soldiers in Union blue brought Yankee dollars to those lanes of indignity, even as other Irishmen cursed the war. They were a people divided
and, although the place was filthy and full of measles, even a Welshman could go there to see to his business nowadays. At least until dusk.

  I found proper buildings under construction, and fewer morning drunkards sprawled in the alleys, with less of the leavings of night pots dumped in the walks.

  When I come upon them, Jimmy and his Annie were hard at work in their little saloon, with her on her knees with a bucket and rags and Jimmy polishing up a new bar of mahogany and brass. Months before, there had been only planks and stools.

  Jimmy looked over and Annie looked up, and their faces told a story. Jimmy was all cock-a-hoop with delight at seeing me prancing in, for he understood it meant I had been thinking on matters. Annie smiled at first, as she always did, but then her face took on a guarded look that was new to me. Once, she had pressed her Jimmy to serve my needs, but other needs had passed mine in importance.

  Annie rose up slowly from the floor, drying her hands on her apron. She was no beauty, but honest and decent and kind. She presented a welcoming smile.

  “Major Jones,” she said carefully. “Isn’t this the happiest of surprises? Himself was just telling me how you went off on the cars, and here you are! Will you take a cup of tea, for the chill of the morning?”

  I waved off the invitation. “Thank you, Mrs. Molloy. It is a gracious one you are. But I must hurry along. There is a train I must be on, see.”

  That reinforced her smile a bit.

  I really lacked all time, so I plunged straight into things. Still, I spoke to her, though my words touched Jimmy. “It has occurred to me that your husband might be a help to my present efforts.” Oh, her poor face fell at that. While Jimmy could hardly contain his child’s delight. I continued, “And he may assist me in a manner that will return him to the warmth of his own home each and every night, if you will give your leave, Mrs. Molloy.”