A Passionate Girl (33 page)

“What happened to you in there?” Dan said, as we left Mike behind us on the road.

“It was the blood—and the children.”

Dan nodded. “I was afraid it was goin' to be messy. Shootin' a man in his own house.”

“I'll never get it out of my mind.”

“Yes you will. I remember the day I got my first Yank. Split his head with one swing of my saber. I was sick as a skunk for a while. Then they killed some of my friends and I killed a few more of them. It stopped botherin' me.”

“How? Why did it stop?”

“It just does. You stop thinkin' about it. You tell yourself to stop and you do.”

I wondered if I could ever learn to do that. Or would I hear for the rest of my life that girl's parting scream? “
You've killed my father
.” Desperately I searched within myself for my hatred. I all but prayed for it to return, to armor me once more against thought and feeling. There was nothing within me now but a hollow dread. I stared at Dan's grim warrior face beside me in the chaise. I had neither love nor hate to console me.

Lord Gort's murder caused a tremendous furor in Limerick. The British garrison was placed on full alert. Soldiers patrolled the streets with fixed bayonets. The crime dominated the conversation at our hotel. We listened, appropriately wide-eyed, while our American friends, Messrs. Balch and Havemeyer, told us the gory story at dinner. They had gotten it from an English officer. The next morning, we rode in a hack through the tense city to the railroad station and boarded a train to Dublin. No one gave the elderly American couple more than a passing glance. In Dublin, after two more days of leisurely sightseeing, we took a steamer to London. We had scarcely time to do more than goggle at the immensity of the imperial capital. At our hotel was an expected cable from Pittsburgh informing Mr. and Mrs. Stowecroft that one of their children was seriously ill.

We sailed immediately for New York. It was a lack-luster voyage. I let Dan have me when he wanted me, but I could muster neither enthusiasm nor passion. I was still numb from what I had seen and heard at Gort House. I could only wait and hope for my normal feelings to return. My mind seemed detached from the rest of me, circling my body like a moon around a planet. Again and again, it told me that I did not regret killing Lord Rodney Gort. He deserved to die for what he had done to my father, for what he and his class had done to Ireland's poor. But my body, my feelings, refused to cooperate with these assertions. The same was true of my feelings for Dan McCaffrey. I had lied to him and to myself about him in so many ways, I could no longer trick rapture from my flesh. I could only watch, in my moon-mind, while my earthly body went through the motions of love.

In New York we disembarked, a solemn, shuffling pair. One would almost think our elderly disguises had penetrated our very souls. A familiar face and voice temporarily lifted our doleful countenances. Red Mike Hanrahan came prancing toward us in a brand-new suit of violent green and white checks, singing a favorite Irish song, “The General Fox Chase.”

“Mike,” I cried, tears starting down my cheeks. “Thank God you're safe.”

“I've lit a candle or two at the side altar for you both,” he said. “Now come on with me and collect your money. I lost half mine last night bucking John Morrissey's tiger, but at least I got this new suit out of it. I've bought everything new, from the inside out, in the hope of getting the immigrant smell off me. So help me God, I don't think I've taken so many baths in me life as I have in the past two weeks. Steerage stink, they call it. Not a woman will come near me.”

He had us laughing halfway to Fenian headquarters. Then he turned serious and told us that our bloody deed had caused almost as much of a sensation in New York as it had in Ireland. “Roberts put out a statement that Gort had been executed by order of the Fenian Brotherhood. The newspapers have been battling over it ever since. The Anglos—the
Times
and
Harper's
and their ilk—have been damning us, and the
Herald
saying hurrah, though not very loudly.”

“The cowards,” I said.

“But it worked wonders among the Irish. O'Mahoney and your brother are thrown into the shade entirely. We've shown we can strike in Ireland while they're talkin' about it.”

“So the way is clear for Canada?”

“Yes and no.” Mike said as we entered the noise and traffic of Broadway.

The sight of the great buildings, the hurrying pedestrians, the tumult of cartmen and coachmen and omnibus drivers, worked magically on my spirits. I wondered if it was New York, its energy, its excitement that I needed.

“What in hell does that mean?” Dan snapped.

“We've got nothing to worry about from our own dear kind. Nine out of every ten Irish are with us now. But there seem to be signs of trouble in Washington, D.C. They introduced a bill in the House of Representatives authorizing the United States to annex any Canadian province that wanted to join up. Nothing's happened to it. Everyone goes deaf when it's mentioned.”

“Why?” I asked, half-knowing the answer.

“The Negro. It's all they talk about in Congress from morning till night. The Negro and the unrepentant rebels, like this bucko. I'll tell you what. Let's teach this one the act of contrition and have him stand on the Capitol steps in his Confederate uniform and recite it ten days running. It might work.”

Mike gave us a crooked grin. I knew he was upset. He always blathered when he feared the worst.

“What's to be done?” I asked.

“I don't know. Roberts thinks—if that is the correct word—that there's nothin' to worry about, but I say it's time for another delegation to Washington. The British are spendin' money by the ton down there and everywhere. They've speakers goin' around the country tellin' people the newspapers got it all wrong, they didn't back the Confederates in the last war, it's all a dreadful misunderstandin'. And people are listenin' to them. Even Irish people. I went to a talk by that fellow who wrote
Tom Brown's Schooldays
. Half the people were Irish. Not a one but me stood up to call him a liar when he started on about the misunderstandin' of Her Majesty's policy toward America. Our love of English literature will ruin us yet.”

At Fenian Headquarters in the Moffat mansion, President Roberts greeted us warmly. “I wish I could give you a banquet and write your name large across every newspaper in the land,” he said in his oratorical style. “But it's better for your sake and the sake of the cause if your identities remain secret. The mystery will strike added terror into our enemies.”

“Suits me,” Dan said. “When can I get back to work with the troops?”

“Colonel O'Neil wired only yesterday, requesting your assistance in Nashville.”

“I'll take a train out tonight.”

“Now, now. You and your lovely partner here deserve a few days' vacation.”

“I had my vacation on the boat.”

The coldness in Dan's voice saddened me, but I deserved it. I thought mournfully of how I had imagined our trip home, one long orgy of love and triumph. I began to wonder if I was a failure as a revolutionary or as a woman. I neither understood nor foresaw the spiritual crisis I was approaching.

“I told Bess about our troubles in Washington,” Red Mike said. “She agrees we ought to go down there in force.”

Roberts shook his head. He began spouting about his “position.” As president of the Fenian Brotherhood, he was a head of state, but Washington would not accord him that recognition. He would be subjecting Ireland to needless humiliation if he accepted this refusal, or involving us in needless quarrels if he insisted on recognition.

This attitude struck me as plain silly. It was like the ostrich who tried to hide from his foes by sticking his head in the sand. William Roberts was not qualified to lead a daring political enterprise. How I longed for someone with the coolness, the realism, of Fernando Wood.

I asked after Robert Johnson, from whom I'd heard nothing since our unfortunate meeting in New York. Had Roberts heard from Seward? From anyone in Congress? What was Tammany saying about it all? Roberts gazed at the ceiling. “I've been keeping Tammany at arm's length. Everything I hear about the conduct of Connolly and Tweed since they took over the city fills me with disgust. When we raise our banners high, we want no Tammany mud on them. As for Seward, he equivocates so much it's pointless to see him. Robert Johnson was never an important part of our plans. He was an insurance policy. The important thing is the proof of American backing that we have in the hands of our men—thirty thousand rifles bought from American arsenals, with enough ammunition for a ninety-day campaign, thirteen batteries of artillery of various calibers, with ammunition, a thousand miles of telegraph wire, ten thousand tents—”

He reeled off an array of statistics for a good five minutes—all the “sinews of war” that we had purchased from U.S. government arsenals, with the silent blessing of the president, the secretary of state, and the secretary of war. “How can they deny such cooperation?” Roberts asked in a tone that implied there was only one answer to the question.

“All true, all true,” Red Mike said. “But could there be any harm in me and Bess going to Washington, in an unofficial way? Not to represent the Fenian Brotherhood but to make a full report on what we see and hear?”

Roberts could hardly say no without convicting himself of inexcusable ignorance. He agreed with the plan and advanced the money we needed. Dan McCaffrey watched all this manuvering with sour eyes. He was a soldier. The politics of our enterprise did not interest him. The answer Roberts gave to our worries satisfied Dan. It was proof that a real army, fighting men with guns in their hands, had been brought into being by the Fenians. This was his reality, his profession. Beyond that, he did not at all like the idea of my going to Washington, D.C.

Back at the hotel, with exclamations of relief we stripped away our disguises. The crow's-feet and the withered folds of flesh were scraped away. A bath restored the luster of my hair. Dan's gray wig and mustache hurtled into the wastebasket. I confronted my Donal Ogue, young and handsome once more. I thought of how he looked that first night in our doorway, his blond hair wild with the rain and wind, the glow of battle in his eyes. Now I saw only puzzlement and hurt. With a gasp of pain I flung my arms around him and pressed my head against his chest.

“Forgive me for not loving you more,” I said. “Tell me you forgive me.”

“What the hell are you talkin' about?”

“You know,” I said.

“You're a crazy woman, you know that?”

“I wish I was blind so I saw nothing, felt nothing, but your hands and lips.”

It was the first genuine thing I had said to him or to anyone since my hatred possessed me. He left on the five o'clock train for Nashville feeling a little better about his wild Irish girl, even if she did not feel much better about herself. Still, that hour of honesty was enough to steady my shaken nerves and restore my sense of purpose, my commitment to the Fenian Brotherhood, no matter how many doubts I had about its leaders and its goals. I told myself I would somehow find my purpose in my wounded love for Dan, in my continuing wish to strike a blow at British arrogance and greed.

I had others close to my heart to think about as well. I took my thousand-dollar payment for our murderous mission in Ireland and bought a postal money order with it. I mailed it to my sister Mary in Killarney, urging her to emigrate and bring Mother with her. I felt uneasy about using blood money this way, but I had no choice. I said nothing about seeing her in Killarney or knowing of Michael's letter. I simply said Michael and I had parted company and he was telling a great many lies about me and Annie.

Next I boarded a horse car and rode uptown in the evening traffic to the Fifth Avenue Hotel. The room clerk looked owlish when I asked for Anne Fitzmaurice. “No one here by that name,” he said after a hasty scan of his register.

“Has she left a forwarding address?”

“Eighteen Christopher Street.”

I knew something was very wrong. The address was far west of Broadway in a section of New York called Greenwich Village. I hurried there in a hack. As I suspected, it was a rooming house. The landlady was a round-faced, button-nosed biddy named Mrs. Lynch. I asked for Annie, and she sniffed, “Miss Fancy? You'll find her in her room. Well soused by now, no doubt.”

I hurried to the room at the end of the third-floor hall. There was no answer to my knock. At length I pounded and called, “Annie, Annie. It's me, Bess.”

A thick voice answered, “Jus' a minute.”

A minute turned out to be five. At last the door opened. Annie stood there looking more dead than alive. She clutched a robe about her. She had tried to pin up her hair and touch up her face for my benefit. “Where in the world you been?” she said with a forced smile. “I went to Fenian headquarters, and they said you were on some secret assignment.”

“I went to Ireland with Dan McCaffrey and killed Lord Gort,” I said. “Surely you read about him being shot? I thought you'd see in a flash it was I who did it.”

“Haven't been reading the papers,” Annie said, turning away. “Come into my lovely apartment. Like it?”

The room was about six feet square with a window that looked out on a narrow alley. The furniture consisted of a dresser, a bed, and a single straight chair. “Annie,” I said, “tell me what happened.”

Annie tossed her head in an attempt to be flip. She went to the dresser and took a bottle of gin from the top drawer. “Want some?” she said.

I shook my head.

“Best thing for the glooms,” she said. “That's what I got. A bad case of the glooms.”

“What happened between you and Dick?”

She took a hefty swallow of the gin. “He dumped me. Not famous enough for Dick Connolly. He can get anybody now. He's number two man in the city. Actresses, socialites, everybody wants to play around with Dick. Why should he stay with tired old Annie Fitzmaurice? Used to me, Bess. Like a wife. No novelty. I made a mistake, Bess. Did I make a mistake with him.”

The gin was taking effect before my very eyes. Half her words were slurred. It was horrible to watch her mouth droop, her eyes close to slits, destroying her beauty.

“Did he give you anything?”

“No. Said I'd gotten plenty. I did, but I spent it. That's why I'm down here in this—pigsty. Till I get over the glooms. Mistake, Bess. Stickin' with one man too long. Forgot what Miz Ronalds said. Keep heart—cold and private.”