A Passionate Girl (20 page)

“What if we don't take a stand? Let's be realistic. There are a great many people, Democrats and Republicans, who don't give a tinker's damn for Ireland or her freedom and don't like you Irish very much. In some quarters you're less popular than the Negroes, if that's possible.”

“You mean we must stand by you,” I said.

“Precisely, my dear,” Seward said, eyeing me in his quizzical way. He returned to Roberts. “I've heard from people in New York that you've been consorting with William Marcy Tweed. I doubt if he's interested in doing business with a Union Party or we with him. Can you separate the Irish vote from Tammany?”

“Why do we have to do that? Give them what they want in New York and Tammany will back you heart and soul.”

Seward shook his head. “An alliance with Tammany will cost us every moderate Republican vote in upstate New York,” he said.

“We can't break Tammany,” Roberts said. “I'd be a fool to say we could. But we can take enough votes away from them to make a difference in a close election.”

“Fair enough,” Seward said. “Now, you want guns, you want ammunition, supplies for an army. You must get those things from Mr. Stanton. What does he think of this scheme?”

“He worries about the kind of government we'll create in Canada—whether it will be loyal to Washington—and whether the British will start a war with America to regain Canada, once we accept the invitation to join the United States.”

“I think we need not fear a war,” Seward said, “if we could engineer a plebiscite showing a majority of Canadians in favor of joining us. You'd have a million Irish votes as a head start. Everything would depend on how swiftly you could crush armed resistance. Until that happens, we'd be unable to defend you against British retaliation from abroad.”

“Give us belligerent status, as the British and Canadians gave the Confederacy—let us buy guns and supplies on credit—and we can deal with anything the British throw at us,” Roberts said. “Our plan is to pin down thirty thousand of their troops in Ireland. We have agents in India who'll make trouble for them there. Our generals estimate we can conquer all of Canada that matters, from the Atlantic to the western border of Ontario, in sixty days.”

“Then you must rule a restless populace for perhaps another year and possibly fight off a British expeditionary force, while we get the legalities of bringing you into our government through Congress. You'll remember it took ten years of argument to annex Texas. I think we can do it faster, but there could be resistance from Radical Republicans and from Democrats, both of whom might see your votes in Congress as a threat to their parties' chances.”

This was said in a musing, speculative tone. It was fascinating to watch this man's cool mind at work, exploring the risks, the problems, the possibilities of our plan. He speculated on the advantage of bringing the various Canadian provinces into the American union as separate states. Their chief value would be their presumed loyalty to the National Union Party. It would give the new party enough strength to counter the Radical Republicans.

“I like this,” Seward said. “With all its risks, the more I think of it, the more I like it.

“I like this young lady, too,” he added. “There's a reception tonight at the Russian Embassy. Would she deign to let a doddering invalid escort her there?”

“I would be delighted,” I said.

“It will be amusing to introduce you to the British ambassador,” he said. “I'll call for you at your hotel—is it the Willard?—at seven.”

Looking back, I see this now as the first step in a long series of bitter deceptions. At the time, I was too inexperienced and Colonel Roberts too stupid to see it as anything but another triumph.

We rushed back to the Willard, and I bathed and put on my most splendid gown, a great hoop of pearl-gray silk, flounced and trimmed with silk of a darker hue and point lace.

The secretary arrived in a carriage driven by a black servant. He drove us through the humid twilight to the Russian legation, a handsome building on 12th Street. Inside, servants in blue and gold livery stood stiffly at attention. Baron de Stoeckl, the Russian ambassador, a bulky, gray-haired man with bristling mustaches, stepped forward to greet the American secretary of state.

“Good evening, Mr. Secretary,” he said with a heavy accent. “Who is this charming creature? I don't have the honor of knowing her.”

“Miss Elizabeth Fitzmaurice, an emissary from the Irish Republican Brotherhood, better known as the Fenians,” Mr. Seward said. “I've brought her along to show the British ambassador that the Irish are not uncivilized barbarians, as he claims.”

“An admirable project, Mr. Secretary,” said the baron with a smile. “I am always interested in ways to instruct the British ambassador. Would that we could instruct his country to adhere to a civilized code of conduct. I fear John Bull understands nothing but the kind of lesson we taught him in the Crimea. Perhaps you will have to teach him a similar lesson.”

“You see how many allies you have in your desire to thrash the Sassenach?” Seward said to me.

“The Irish people cheered on Russia's defiance,” I said, though I scarcely remembered the Crimean War myself, having been only eight years old when it began.

“A pity so many Irish soldiers saw fit to serve in the British regiments,” the baron said.

“That is the result of desperate hunger and want, Your Excellency,” I said. “A man who sees his wife and children starving before his eyes will take the king's shilling, though his heart breaks within himself to think of serving his country's enemy.”

“Yes, yes,” the baron said, “but it discourages those who think of helping your countrymen with guns and ammunition. Your leader, O'Mahoney, came to see me a few months ago. He claimed to have fifty thousand troops in Ireland. Yes, I said, but half of them are in the British army.”

“What better place for them to be, when the call to action comes?” I said.

“What do you think, Mr. Seward?” the baron asked.

Seward smiled in his inward, secretly amused way. “The American consul at Dublin assures me that the British are in control of the situation in Ireland. The lord lieutenant told him the secret service has an informer in every Fenian center in the country—and almost as many in America.”

“They're the grandest liars in the world,” I said, but my heart sank with the possible, even probable, truth of those words. I thought of my sudden sickness last night, and my stomach curled ominously.

“Well, we are not here to settle such matters tonight,” de Stoeckl said. “Let me get you some good Russian vodka. Or would you prefer champagne?”

“Vodka,” said Seward. I accepted a glass of champagne but was wary about drinking it. The secretary of state tossed off his vodka in a flash and asked me if my abstemiousness was the reason for my triumph over Mr. Colby earlier in the day.

“On the contrary,” said Robert Johnson, who we discovered was standing behind us. “She can drink champagne all night and shoot all day. She has the habits of a cavalryman, Mr. Seward.”

“But not the looks, thank God,” Seward said.

“No, sir,” Robert Johnson said, eyeing me approvingly. “Not the looks.”

Diplomats from various South American countries, many of them dressed in uniforms dripping with gold braid, came forward to be introduced and to congratulate Secretary Seward on his remarkable recovery from his wounds. He nodded and introduced me and Robert Johnson, then let Robert talk about his father's reconstruction plans while the secretary's eyes circled the room like a hunting animal on the prowl. At length he seized my arm and drew me away from the ambassador from Argentina while he was in midsentence. Trailing me in his wake, he bore down on two men in close conversation. Robert Johnson hastily excused himself and followed us.

“What are the imperial powers conniving at now, in peaceful North America?” Seward said.

Sir Frederick Bruce, the British minister, replied with a smile as warm as the sort one sees on a dead fish sprawled on the ice in a market. His hard blue eyes fastened on me for a moment, and I saw recognition as well as disbelief flare. “I have no idea what you mean, Mr. Secretary,” he said.

“Mr. Johnson,” he added suavely. “I trust the president is well.”

“He's in fine fettle,” Robert Johnson said. “As we say in Tennessee, he's ready to skin a live mountain lion with one hand and shoe a jackass with the other.”

“Delightful news,” murmured Bruce, not quite able to conceal his astonishment at this American hyperbole.

“We connived at nothing more dangerous than an agreement that the summer in Washington is beastly,” said the other man, in an accent that made one think his tongue was too wide for his mouth. He was as dark complexioned as Bruce was ruddy. With studied purpose, Mr. Seward introduced me to M. de Berthemy, the French ambassador. “And this,” he said, gesturing to Bruce, “is Your Majesty's representative here in Washington.”

“She is not my Majesty, nor ever has been but by the use of violence,” I said.

“It seems to me, Mr. Secretary, that one could turn the question of connivance back upon you,” Bruce said.

“How so?” Seward said with mocking innocence. “I consider this young woman a refugee. I'm merely doing my duty by her. As George Washington said, America is always ready to open its bosom to refugees from every country.”

“If my observations in New York are any guide, many of this young woman's sort feel compelled to return the favor.”

“You see the kind of repartee to which diplomacy exposes you?” Seward said to me.

“If what Sir Frederick says is true, I can tell him where Irish women learned their debauchery,” I said. “Wasn't it William Blake who wrote: ‘The harlot's cry from street to street / Shall weave old England's winding sheet'?”

“Bull's-eye,” roared Robert Johnson.

Sir Frederick's eyes glistened with cold fury. I saw the face of the enemy. “I'm having papers prepared for your attention, sir,” Bruce said to Seward, “asking you to surrender this girl and her companions as criminals, guilty of barbarous murders.”

“You mean you'd put a noose around that lovely neck?” Seward said. “What do you think the president would say to such a demand, Robert?”

“I think it would require the entire Army of the Tennessee to make him comply.”

“I would be in substantial agreement,” Seward said. “According to our latest dispatches, Judah Benjamin, the secretary of state of the Confederate government, has arrived in England, to be received with cheers and toasts and sympathy by your aristocracy. There's no mention of returning him for the atrocious crimes his government committed against the people of the United States. He is the refugee of a
belligerent
power who had the misfortune to lose its war. Perhaps this young woman should be accorded the same status.”

“She resembles Mrs. Greenhow. Almost enough to be her daughter,” Berthemy said.

“That,” Seward replied with sudden sharpness, “is what we in America call a low blow. In western New York we have an even more vivid phrase to describe it.”

“It was intended as a compliment, Mr. Secretary,” Berthemy said.

“Tell Louis Napoleon that misplaced compliments can be as dangerous as misplaced confidence,” Seward snapped. “Have you informed Paris of the movement of our army of observation to the Mexican border?”

“Most assuredly.”

“Has there been a reply?”

“If there had been, you would have learned of it immediately, Mr. Secretary.”

“If you think we're going to pay several dozen millions to feed an army on the Rio Grande for very long, you're dreaming,” Seward said.

“I have tried in my dispatches to make clear America's strong interest in economy,” Berthemy said.

“Good.”

I could feel the electric force of Seward's power striking the Frenchman, all but making him buckle in front of our eyes.

“Sir Frederick,” Seward said, turning to the Englishman, “did you enjoy that copy of my speech?”

“Very much, except for the passage about the magic circle of the American union. That had a somewhat druidical flavor to it.”

Seward smiled thinly and explained to me and Robert Johnson. “I'm referring to a speech I'm planning to give in Albany next month. In it I express the belief that this whole continent, must sooner or later come within the magic circle of the American union. Does that sound druidical to you?”

“It sounds practical,” I said.

“I'm inclined to think the Fenians believe more in rifles and pistols than in druids, wouldn't you say, Miss Fitzmaurice?” Robert Johnson said.

“Yes. We're very American,” I said.

Seward nodded and made a small chuckling sound in the back of his throat—the nearest to a laugh I ever heard from him. “She does so well, you'd almost think I rehearsed her. But I'm not that clever. Good night, gentlemen.”

We paid our respects to Baron de Stoeckl and departed. Robert Johnson climbed into the carriage and placed me between him and Seward. He was laughing very hard and followed it with a Tennessee whoop.

“I told you, Mr. Seward. This girl is something, ain't she?”

I felt Seward's hand on my knee. “You performed excellently, my dear. Bruce was utterly stunned by that quote from Blake.”

“I didn't think of it as performing,” I said.

“Forgive me. That's how you think of everything after a lifetime in politics.”

“Who is this Mrs. Greenhow that I so much resemble?”

“A woman I fancied almost as much as this young gallant fancies you,” Seward said. “She sympathized with the Confederacy. The Secret service arrested her as a spy and sent her south. She went to England and returned with a shipment of gold. Her blockade runner hit a sandbar. She tried to get ashore in a small boat. It overturned in the surf and she drowned.”