A Passionate Girl (18 page)

“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 his 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.

“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.”

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 sensed 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.

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.

Dan retreated, cursing. The clash spoiled much of the pleasure still throbbing in my body, the way a crude hand flung across a harp's strings creates a ruinous jangle. I slept poorly, my dreams full of a wild Ireland through which I ran like a hunted felon.

In the morning, I was visited by Colonel Roberts and Mike Hanrahan before we descended for breakfast. They had the day's newspapers with them. The
Star
, the
National Intelligencer
, and the
Republican
had lively accounts of the exploits of the Fenian girl, but the
Chronicle
's reporter, Colby, told a different story. It was my first encounter with the malice of the press in opposition.

The fellow began by describing me as a blowsy slattern, with my hair askew and my dress in dirty disarray. He narrated my story with a dozen sarcastic interspersions of his own. Finally he wrote: “As for her claim to have shot up a company of dragoons, the British ambassador has assured me it's ridiculous. The idea of a woman wielding a pistol with such accuracy is on the face of it absurd. It would not surprise me if the Fenian girl has never seen a pistol in her life, except on the stage. She may well never have seen Ireland, either. Rumor says she is an actress coached for the part by the Fenian leadership to help them swindle money from their gullible countrymen.”

“Challenge him,” I said.

“To what?” Colonel Roberts said.

“To a contest of marksmanship.”

“That may not be wise. Dan McCaffrey tells me that you have trouble handling a gun.”

“Dan McCaffrey doesn't know what he's talking about. I've bought my own gun and I know how to use it.” I opened my portmanteau and took my National Revolver from a pouch I had sewn for it.

“It would be a singular triumph if—”

I was scribbling a letter while he hesitated.

To the reporter named Colby from the
Chronicle.

The Fenian girl would be happy to challenge him to a duel to defend her own and Ireland's honor. But he would no doubt use the excuse of her sex to disguise his own cowardice. She therefore invites him to a contest of marksmanship at targets of his own choice, as soon as possible. The prize will be the amount the British ambassador bribed him to write his story.

“Take that to the
Star
and have them print it tomorrow.”

“If Bess says she can do it, I believe her,” Red Mike said.

Roberts yielded to our collective recklessness. He was not so ready to be talked out of the next worry on his mind.

“Last night I gather you left the hotel for some unknown purpose. This town lives on scandal. I must ask you where you went.”

“To Fernando Wood.”

“My dear. His reputation is the worst in Washington.”

“So I understand. But I deemed it worth the risk.”

Red Mike rolled his eyes and pretended surprise. “I'm as shocked as you are Bill. But after all, the girl's of age. And didn't you say yourself when you were facin' down O'Mahoney that we couldn't run a war on Sunday school principles?”

“True enough, but—”

I distracted Roberts by plunging into what Fernando Wood had told me about President Johnson, and about Stanton and Seward. Roberts seemed staggered, then angry. “Wood is playing his own game. He'd like to capture us. He hasn't given up his dreams of glory. Everything about him is pretense. Pretense and—and seduction.”

“There was no seduction,” I said. “I may be young, but I'm not stupid.”

“I know, I know,” Roberts said. He paced for a moment, deep in thought. “I know your intentions were of the best, my dear. And you may have brought us valuable intelligence. We may yet have a need to do business with Wood.”

I saw what Fernando Wood meant by the difference between an honest and a level man. Colonel Roberts was honest; he saw himself as living by a strict moral code. But he was not level.

Roberts decided he disagreed with Fernando's assessment of the situation. “Stanton is the strong man in the government,” he said. “Seward is timid. He can be frightened by anything.” Roberts discoursed on the halfhearted way Seward had dealt with England during the war. “If we keep Stanton on our side he'll bear Seward down, no matter what he thinks,” Roberts said.

I gave up trying to persuade him, and we joined the others for breakfast. It was not a cheerful meal. We quarreled first over my proposal to challenge the
Chronicle
reporter. Dan scoffed and said I couldn't hit any target smaller than the front of the Capitol. I said I was delighted to discover that I was going to surprise him as well as the rest of Washington. Meanwhile Mrs. O'Neil was looking daggers at me.

“Did you find out where she went last night?” she asked.

“It's not important,” Colonel Roberts said.

“I heard Fernando Wood inviting you, in the Senate gallery,” she said.

“How clever of you,” I said.

“You'll disgrace us,” Mrs. O'Neil said.

“Only if you spread the word far and wide, as I fear you will,” I said. “Mr. Wood is a man of honor, who would not do such a thing to a lady.”

From that moment, Margaret O'Neil became my enemy. She may have left the convent, but she was a nun at heart. She regarded me as a desperate sinner, unworthy of trust and hopeless of redemption. Dan was of a similar opinion, but it troubled his soul in a very different way. He glared at me as if his greatest pleasure would be to clamp his hands around my throat.

A troubled Colonel Roberts told Red Mike to take my challenge to the papers. The rest of us, except Margaret O'Neil, boarded a rented carriage and drove to the War Department building on 17th Street, where the president had arranged an interview with Secretary of War Stanton. Going in we passed a room that brought Dan McCaffrey to a full stop. It was full of tattered, blood-stained Confederate battle flags, captured in the course of the war. He stared at them for a long moment, then said, “They never captured Jeb Stuart's flag.”

We waited in an outer office for the better part of an hour. Clerks hurried past us with sheets of paper in their hands. Somewhere nearby we could hear telegraph keys clicking. Colonel Roberts remarked that the place seemed almost as busy as it had been during the war. Suddenly he sprang to his feet, his hand out. “General Grant. Colonel Bill Roberts from the Commissary Department, now with the Irish Republican Army.”

“Oh yes,” said General Grant. The victorious commander looked unprepossessing at close range. His uniform was rumpled, his shoes unshined, and he had an unlit cigar stuck in the corner of his mouth. Roberts introduced us, and Grant smiled at me. “This is your female marksman. I read about her.”

“We're here to see Secretary Stanton,” Roberts said. “We saw the president last night, and he's given us full backing for our proposal to conquer Canada. You'll remember I mentioned it to you on the reviewing stand in New York two days ago. I would hope, General, that we might submit our plan of campaign to you for your approval—or criticism.”

“I'd be happy to look at it—if the president desires me to,” Grant said. “But I have no doubt you can whip the Brits out of their boots, without my help.”

A clerk from Stanton's office interrupted us. We said good-bye to General Grant and were ushered into a room that brought us a step closer to the secretary of war's inner sanctum. It was the room in which Mr. Stanton received the public. He was already at work behind a high writing desk, which reached to his shoulders. He had the look of a powerful gnome—a round body and short legs. His complexion was dark and mottled, and his face was screwed into impatience and irascibility above his profuse chin whiskers, which seemed to have been tied like a false beard to his large ears. A motley group formed a line in front of him. There were soldiers on crutches, gaudily dressed women whom I guessed to be prostitutes, mournful women in black, well-dressed older men with the look of politicians. Each came before the secretary and stated his request in a low voice, which was nonetheless audible in the silent room.

Stanton rarely listened for more than a minute, then replied with a harsh, abrupt voice.

“No!”

“Write me a letter.”

“See the pension clerk.”

“Get out of here or I'll put you in jail.”

“No.”

It was like a scene in the old court of Versailles, when the absolute monarch held an audience. There was never a word spoken to challenge the secretary's decisions. “You see what I mean?” Roberts whispered to me. “There's the man who rules Washington.”