Jenny and Barnum (38 page)

“Jenny, that is the object of a fight.”

Joe Gallagher was getting his jacket off.

“Charlie, you come down when you're ready.”

He wanted to take his jacket off, too, Barnum noted gleefully. He had known Charlie for more than twenty years, and if Charlie had ever been in a fight, Barnum did not know it. Barnum planned to pull the combatants apart just as soon as a decisive blow was struck. Charlie was going to lose, surely, but he had left Barnum with no other way out that did not also strip Charlie of his dignity. Business was business, and a Charlie who was contented and working put food on Barnum's table.

Now Charlie started down the stairs. The noise of the spectators rose. Jenny moved toward the door, but it was locked now and one of Barnum's agents blocked the way. It was no time for Barnum to take his eyes off Charlie and Gallagher, who was watching Charlie slowly, deliberately, descend the stairs. Charlie did not want to show fear. Lavinia appeared behind him, at the top of the stairs.

“Don't fight him, honey! You're only going to get hurt!”

“Stay where you are! You didn't hear what he said about you!”

“Of course I heard, I was standing right there. I don't care about that—Barnum! Do something!”

“I am. It's going to be a good, clean fight.”

“And short,” Eng said, repeating his joke. “Who wants to put money on the General? I'll take Commodore Nutt.”

“No betting,” Barnum commanded.

Gallagher had been in fights before, for he was staying well back from the staircase, poised but not tense. He was a shrewd little customer, and Barnum would have difficulty replacing a dwarf so knowledgeable in the ways in the world. Charlie had told Barnum enough of what had gone on between Gallagher and Lavinia, whom Charlie had taken for granted too long and too often. She and Gallagher had exchanged their sad tales, Gallagher commiserating with her and then capitalizing on her feelings of neglect. In telling her his story, he stretched a fact here and invented a new anecdote there—a very shrewd customer, and charming too, apparently. But selfish, demanding, manipulative, and finally, a drunk. The world was full of men like him, large and small. By the time Lavinia could clearly see the future, she had already seen all the best of Gallagher's tricks, and they weren't worth the price of joining him in his long slide toward oblivion. Barnum's mother had taught him that there were only two kinds of women, those built for speed and those for comfort, and her wisdom seemed applicable to men—in this case, even men who had not grown up to her apron strings.

Charlie ran down the last few steps and leaped for Gallagher, who evaded him and pushed him down. People shouted encouragingly, enthusiastically. Gallagher backed away as Charlie got to his feet and stormed him again. Gallagher raised his arms to ward off Charlie's flailing blows. It was true, Charlie had never been in a fight before. The crowd cheered him on, or urged Gallagher to retaliate. Gallagher stood a head taller than Charlie and outweighed him by at least a dozen pounds. He was biding his time, and not incidentally, allowing all to see who was the aggressor.

Now he struck, stepping toward Charlie and to his own left, putting his weight behind his right arm, which lashed out with stunning swiftness. His fist caught Charlie flush on the nose—Charlie's arms were wide apart and it was possible to see his face, his pain, and his chagrin. His fight was over and he knew it. Gallagher banged the side of Charlie's head with a clanging left and Charlie went down as blood appeared from his nostrils. He looked like he was five years old again, and as Barnum rushed in and pushed Gallagher aside, Charlie, down on his backside, reached up for Barnum exactly the way a child reaches for a parent. Barnum scooped him up as the blood really began to flow, but he looked over to the door, where Jenny was taking advantage of the guard's distraction to unlock the door and let herself out to the street.

“It's broke, Barnum,” somebody said. “His nose is broke.”

A handkerchief came up and Barnum wiped some of the blood away. “You're a jerk, Charlie.”

“I had to do it, Barnum,” came the bubbly reply, “I ain't sorry.”

He still wanted to be tough. Barnum handed him to one of his men. “Get to a hospital. Pay any amount.”

Gallagher was pulling at Barnum's trouser leg. “He walked right into it. I didn't hit him that hard.”

“Yes, you did, but I can't blame you. You go about your business and you won't have any trouble from me.”

From Barnum's tone, Gallagher could understand that very little was being promised—one misstep, and he was through. Well, perhaps not, for Barnum was wondering if there was any money to be made with a dwarf who could throw a perfect punch. He decided to get Gallagher out of town until tempers cooled—he would attend to the details later.

Now Lavinia appeared before him. “Since you're not coming to the hospital with your number one star, maybe you ought to chase down the street after your latest flame.”

“Last Friday, Lavinia, you would have had trouble making the same decision yourself.”

“Well, just remember that she played a part in all this.”

Anna had told him: Jenny called the World's Most Beautiful Midget, as Barnum billed her, and which was probably true, “Little Miss Lascivious.” A bad pun, and now, even worse history. “We all did, and the only one who could be sorrier about it than me is you.”

She didn't like it; too bad, because he did not think he could have been more honest. “Barnum,” she said, “Charlie and I are going to be married.”

“In due time, my dear, in due time.”

“What do you mean by that?”

He patted her head. “Follow your man, Lavinia, he's more in love with you than he knows how to say. Tomorrow, when you have time, read your contract.”

He left her, and shouldered through the crowd. Either direction he took—he wasn't thinking of which way Jenny Lind had fled—he was making a mistake. Charlie
was
his biggest moneymaker over the long run; Jenny, for all he knew, had already decided that she had had enough of Barnum and his absurd enterprises. He needed her to get him out of the debt into which securing her services had put him. But there was so much more: she was—
magic!
Was it possible that she still misunderstood him? At this point, he was more willing to believe that she did not want to understand him.

He had to look up and down and up Broadway again before he saw her, on the other side of the street, at the next intersection, hurrying away.

“
Jenny!
”

She looked back, but kept going. He started after her. When he was half a block behind her, he called her again, and she stopped and waited for him. She was in tears.

“That was the worst thing I ever saw in my life,” she sobbed. “They wanted to gamble on who would win the fight.”

“Men always gamble on fights. Men gamble on everything.”

“They aren't men,” she said.

“Don't say that. You know better. What made them seem less than human tonight was the fact that they were behaving like everybody else, and that included Charlie—”

“You always have an answer!”

“
Including
Charlie! He was in a rage tonight. No one could have controlled him, except by force.”

“
Why didn't you use it?
”

“Because I wasn't going to strip him of his dignity. Even now, when his size inconveniences people, they pick him up and carry him—”

“He likes it! I've seen him!”

“Most of the time he can make his peace with it. But not tonight, not in the frame of mind he was in.”

“He could have been killed.”

“No, I don't think so. Gallagher is a selfish drunk, but he's not crazy.”

She started walking away again. He ran after her.

“I can't keep chasing after you,” he said.

“Then don't.” She stopped. “What did Gallagher say to Charlie?”

“I don't know and I don't care.”

“Surely it could not have been so bad.”

“Charlie's a midget, in perfect proportion. So is Lavinia. Joe Gallagher is a dwarf. Some parts of his body are small; some, like his head, are the size of a normal man's; and still others—I have this on good authority—are somewhat larger than normal—”

She sneered. “You
are
disgusting. You revel in knowing disgusting things. I cannot accept what you said about Hans Andersen.”

“You turned it away with a joke, but I knew you didn't like it. I haven't said anything about it since, have I?”

She started walking again. “Always an answer. What do you want of me, Barnum?”

“I'm not thinking like that.”

She stopped and glared at him. “Can you? Can you think about leaving your wife?”

“I am thinking about that. Before I met you, I didn't know if I was capable of what I feel for you now, this very minute. I'm in love with you, I know I am.”

“Then why can't you understand me? Why don't you even
try
to undertand me?”

“I
am
trying. In fact, I think I understand you better than you understand me—”

“You only think so! You frighten mel Don't you understand
that? You frighten me!
” Now she ran off, and he had to puff after her.

“Please don't do this!”

She turned again, and saw the torment on his face. “I love you, Barnum. I never loved anybody the way I love you!”

“I love you, too, Jenny.”

They kissed, and then she said, “At least there will be one wedding. When will Charlie and Lavinia be married?”

“Next year.”

“Why do they want to wait so long?”

“I don't know if they want to or not, but they're going to. I can't give their wedding proper attention while we're on tour, and then it would have to compete for the public's attention with the election. Better to wait until after the first of the year. It will be a better draw.”

“You mean it's just another
attraction
to you?”

He shrugged. “They're under contract.”

“Barnum, marriage is one of God's holy sacraments! You don't try to make money from it!”

“Everybody will want to see the ceremony. As for the sacramental business, Charlie and Lavinia have been enjoying that part of it for a long time now.”

“You make a mockery of everything!” And she was running again—and he was chasing her.

And the next morning, because he had not been around to deal with the press, the newspapers had the story of Charlie's fistfight and the juicy cause of it all right up there on page one—where the scandal would drive Jenny Lind right out of the public's imagination.

15.

Receipts for the fourth New York concert were better than those for the third, more than fourteen thousand dollars against twelve thousand dollars. The fifth concert drew twelve thousand dollars, and the sixth, the last of the first New York series, grossed more than sixteen thousand dollars. Wisely Barnum had determined to leave New York and return after Jenny's national celebrity was assured. After four performances in Boston, one in Providence, three more in Boston, and three in Philadelphia, she would be back in New York for fifteen dates—more than five weeks—after which she would return to Philadelphia for four dates, move on to Baltimore for four, and then continue south to Washington, Richmond, Charleston, and finally Havana, Cuba.

After a brief rest, Jenny, Barnum, Miss Holobaugh, Hannelore, Otto, Minelli, twelve musicians, and four roustabouts and gaffers would travel by steamer to New Orleans for a dozen performances, and thence north on the Mississippi and Ohio rivers. After New York, Barnum said, New Orleans was this country's most sophisticated city, and the schedule seemed to refleet that. In Europe she had always been told that New Orleans was a substantially French city, and even at this point in her life, she was not looking forward to another exposure to French civilization and culture—or the lack of it.

The truth was that she was not really all that pleased with the notion of leaving New York. She was more comfortable in the city now. It
was
a city, too, not all that different from those in Europe. Crowds still gathered outside the hotel and any place it was rumored she would visit; but the people knew her, cared for her, as Europeans did, if somewhat more boisterously. This had been Barnum's achievement—from his hospital bed Charlie had made it clear to her at last.

Charlie had told her the story that Barnum would not have dared breathe, of the train conductor whose ignorance of her at the start of the year had shown that most people in America had no idea who Jenny Lind was, and the few who did, had it wrong.

By the Wednesday after the fight Charlie was sitting up and accepting callers—even though a bandage across his nose and two lovely shiners made him resemble a raccoon peering over a snowbank. He said he was feeling better, but the condition of his nose and the bandage over it made him sound like he was speaking from the bottom of a well full of feathers.

“You have to understand us,” came his muffled squeak when he and Jenny were alone briefly in the room crammed with floral tributes and baskets of fruit. “You have to understand Barnum and what this country was like when he came down to New York as a young man. There were only three theaters in the whole city, and women weren't allowed at all. The theater was dirty and full of sin. Now if we're being honest with each other, we know there's a lot of funny business that goes on with theater people, but it's nowhere near what the public thinks. The public is still suspicious, but at least we can work now—we're more accepted. I'm talking about theater people, not just Barnum's curiosities. You ought to understand what he's done for people like me, too. He's taken the curse off us. Literally. Barnum performed that miracle. We want to be treated like everybody else. He was right the other night. He could have stopped the fight, but I didn't want him to.”