Bold Sons of Erin (7 page)

Even more than the reminder of old evils, twas his remarks about his readers writing in with reports from all over the county that seized my attention. Instead of running off, I paused a moment, leaning on my cane and steeling my senses.

“Now, Mr. Bannon, fair is fair, and you have asked a muchness of questions of me. Now I have one for you. Important it is not, but I must ask you a little thing: Have any of your readers—has anyone at all—mentioned a missing girl these past few months? A young woman, I mean. Let us say, between fifteen and twenty-five? Very like toward the lesser of those ages?”

I saw suspicion in his eyes, and, perhaps, something else. But that soon passed, replaced by a quizzicality. His shoulders leapt and he ran the flat of his hand back through his hair. Defying Mr. Newton’s laws, the current drop clung massively to Mr. Bannon’s nose.

A passerby greeted us both, and the great drop fell as Mr. Bannon responded.

“No, no. Nothing of the kind,” he said, turning back to me. “Last July . . . July, I believe it was . . . serving girl ran off with a
silver tea service . . . Irish, of course . . . Irish . . . caught her in Port Clinton, sorry business . . . seems the heir had gambling debts and put the poor thing up to it, promising marriage . . . promising marriage, Jones . . . embarrassing . . . I believe she’s still in the county jail, and let that be an example . . .”

“And the lad? This heir who corrupted her?”

“Oh, he was punished severely. His father forced the boy to go to Harvard . . . afraid he might run off to join the army, afraid he might join up . . .”

“Because he despaired of the girl?”

“Nothing of the kind,” Mr. Bannon insisted, “nothing of the kind, Jones. Plain, black-Irish baggage with bad teeth. Saw her at the magistrate’s. No, the boy had just run through his credit with his gambling friends. He was terribly embarrassed.”

I bid Mr. Bannon adoo, with neither of us the wiser for our encounter. He mumbled about deadlines, presses and presidents, striding off with his shoulders all a-twitch. I made my way around the back of Market Street, to the lane behind my Mary Myfanwy’s establishment. For a gentleman must not be seen going in at a dressmaker’s shop.

THE ALLEY WAS RICH with wastes discarded by storekeeps more concerned with convenience than cleanliness, and I fear it had been used frequently by souls more impatient than modest. Twas all guarded by cats and a drunkard who snored to frighten the rats away. Our Pottsville lacked some civic discipline, and the dust put me in mind of the Lahore slums. Of course, our town was not so dirty as London. To say nothing of poor Washington, where the measles was raging again.

I found the back door to my darling’s establishment and let myself in with the key she had presented me.

All unsuspecting I was.

That was when my troubles really started.

I stepped in to find not my Mary, but a woman in a profound state of undress. She wore the richest smells of femininity, and precious little else, I must report. She had thick, golden
hair. Upon her head, I mean. And a profound abundance of pinkness about her person. Her face was painted to set off jolly blue eyes.

She let out what I took for modesty’s cry and chastity’s complaint. But no sooner had I covered my eyes, than I realized that the brazen creature was laughing. As freely as toughs at a coon show. I stumbled backward, grasping for the doorknob and apologizing with Christian desperation.

She laughed to beat the band, while I beat my retreat.

Not only had I seen too much, I had seen far more than I realized in my confusion. Twas only when I was back in the alley, with my eyes full open again, that I put a name and person to the lady’s face.

The drunkard had wakened to sing of County Antrim.

A lady she was
not.

Nor had she any business to do in my dear Mary’s shop, annoying dresses meant for proper customers. I wondered if she had sneaked in by the back door, intent upon making off with stolen goods—although I must be fair: Theft was not among the vices assigned to her reputation. But I nearly felt it my duty to burst in through that door again to demand an explanation. I hesitated only because I feared my gesture might be misunderstood.

Dolly Walker it was in that room, a woman of disorderly vocation. Mrs. Walker kept a crib along Minersville Street, which was not Pottsville’s most esteemed address. I had not been able to avoid the report that her house was the very best such establishment in our little city, but I hardly considered that a mark of quality.

I will admit my own youth was imperfect. But now I am a Methodist and married.

I rushed around to the front of the building, violating every social convention. I had to alert my darling to her intruder.

The good citizens along Market Street must have thought I had joined a fire brigade, such was my haste as I hurried along the planks. My dear wife’s shop was a narrow affair, with a narrow
door between two narrow windows, and lettered glass that read:

Fine Apparel for Ladies
Made to Order
Finishings and Alterations
Accouterments and Sundries
Mrs. A. Jones, Proprietress

I rushed through the door as if storming the Kashmir Gate a second time.

“Mary,” I cried, “a dreadful thing has happened!”

My darling looked up from hemming a skirt and the pins in her mouth fell away. Rising, she grew pale as fresh, blue milk.

Looking back, I believe she feared an accident to our son, who spent his days in a neighbor’s charge until Fanny returned from her lessons.

“Abel?” She raised the white flame of a hand to cover her mouth.

The shop assistants clustered nigh, as women are given to do, faces bright with the expectation of tragedy. I wondered if one were a party to the monstrous crime underway in that back room. Two of them were Irish, see, and thus disposed to schemes and misbehaviors.

“Mary, you won’t believe what—”

I caught myself. I dared not blurt out a thing that might bring scandal upon us. I grasped my angel by her arm—I fear a touch too roughly—and hastened her toward the hallway whose brevity led to that scene of wanton intrusion.

“Mary, Mrs.
Walker’s
in your back room. Mrs.
Dolly
Walker.” I fear I blushed, for husbands do not discuss such persons with their wives. “The one who has an establishment on—”

My dearest darling laughed.

Out loud she laughed, as plainly as Mrs. Walker had done herself. Then, as swiftly as she could subdue her levity, my darling disciplined her expression to one more prim and fitting.

“Abel . . . there are certain matters that need not be discussed between the two of us. And certainly not here. I must ask you to let me run my business without any of your fussing. Mrs. Walker is a very good customer, and she—”

“Good Lord, Mary! You don’t mean you
know
she’s here?”

Just then the creature herself come feathering out of the back room. She was dressed to the nines and pleased with herself, like a cat in a rich man’s dust-bin. When she spotted me, she could not restrain her mirth.

“Oh, now, Mrs. Jones!” the scarlet woman said, as if she and my wife were most familiar. “I gave your ’usband a nasty fright, I did. I didn’t know as the gentleman was expected.”

I was nonplussed.

“I just wanted to settle me bill before I went off,” Mrs. Walker continued. “I couldn’t be no ’appier with the gown.”

Returned to her proper decorum, my wife told her, “Settle next time we will, Mrs. Walker. Your credit is good and there is no need of hurry.”

Mrs. Walker looked at my wife, and then at me, and then at my darling again. With a smile as learned as a professor’s lecture. “And those little costumes you’re making up for the girls?” Mrs. Walker said. “Not too dear, for they ain’t to last forever.”

My Mary nodded.

Mrs. Walker’s smile cut even more deeply into her painted cheeks. She directed her merry blue gaze toward me again.

“I’d keep me eyes on that one, I was you,” she told my darling. “Come in upon me like a raging beast, the gentleman did. ’E’s a wild one, ducks, and you’ve got your two ’ands full.”

She disappeared back into the depths of the building. In the fresh silence, I heard a gathering up of parcels. The back door clacked shut. And still I saw her unseemly and insolent smile.

“Come along, you,” my Mary Myfanwy told me, leading me toward that same back room.

“Mary, I—”

“Now you will hush until you have heard me, Abel. For I will have none of your moralizing where honest business is concerned.”

She closed the door behind us. To me, that little room full of cloth and half-sewn dresses seemed unbearably squalid of a sudden. It still smelled of the scent of Mrs. Walker.

“Mary, I cannot believe you—”

She set a finger firmly to my lips. “Hush you. And listen. I live in this town and you do not. You have gone off to your war, and that is fine. But you do not know the half about your dear Pottsville, and do not think you do. So keep your sermons to yourself this once.” She did not put her hands upon her hips, but she might as well have done so. “Mrs. Walker is the very soul of discretion. She comes and goes by that back door, and by that door alone.” Mary pointed. “And she pays her bills most promptly and don’t complain. Which is a thing I cannot say of the high and mighty ladies of Mahantango Street.” She closed upon me as if we were condemned to fight with knives. I believe I feared her in that instant. “And would you have even that sort of woman go naked through the streets, Abel Jones? Would you have her go about uncovered, for all the world to see?”

“I would not have her in the streets at all. Her shame should be hid—”

“Oh, wouldn’t you now?” She made a spitting face, which I fear was unladylike, “Men! It’s fine and good to have her there, when the likes of her are wanted, but hide her away you will for your guilty pleasures . . .”

“Mary . . . darling . . . it’s only . . . I mean, don’t you see, Mary dear?”

“Don’t you ‘Mary dear’ me until we have each spoken through our business and you have agreed that you should mind your own.”

Now, this was most unlike my tender sweetheart. Becoming a woman of business had addled her nature.

“But it’s only that I don’t feel my wife should be associated in any manner with—”

“Oh, don’t you now? Aren’t you the king of the castle, gone for months then coming home to give commands to all your humble servants?”

“You mustn’t compromise yourself, my dearest. Don’t you understand—”

“I understand that many’s the husband from high up the hill who does not think himself above visiting Mrs. Walker’s boarding house. Many a man to whom you bow and scrape.”

“‘Bow and scrape’ I do not, Mary. And is it a ‘boarding house’ now, that sink of evil Mrs. Walker runs?”

“Call it what you will. She pays her bills.”

“But Mary . . . were the ladies of this town to learn that she patronized your—”

“Oh, the lot you know, Abel. As long as they can have credit, they’d have their dresses made by Satan himself and give him a kiss for the asking. Nasty little sneaks they are, nine out of ten, and they make me ashamed of the female race itself. Stealing from their husband’s pockets to pay for their scrap of lace! They’re worse tarts, the half of them, than any girl who works for Dolly Walker.”

“Mary!”

I must have looked a fright to freeze the esquimaux, for she softened in an instant. Then she reached out and took me by the hand. Women with child are changeable, and husbands must be forbearing.

“Oh, Abel, I’m sorry. It’s just that . . . sometimes you live in a fairyland in the clouds, where everyone tells the truth and reads the Bible. Life isn’t
like
that.”

She almost called a tear into my eye. I know life is not like that, see. I know it all too well. It is only that I yearn to believe in goodness. After all that I have seen of the world. I long to believe in rectitude and kindness. Even if it means I play pretend. Perhaps it comes from growing up an orphan—although my Mary’s father, the Reverend Mr. Griffiths, took me in and fed me for a time. A hard man he was, with the sternness of St. John the Baptist, but none of the gentle love of Jesus Christ. Thereafter, I learned much of life in India.

I did not weep, but my wife did, all unexpected. She took me in her arms, almost as if I were her child as well as her husband.

“Oh, my dear,” she whispered. “I’ve never known a man so strong and so fragile.”

“I did not know you had known so many men.”

“You know what I am saying. Do not pretend with me.”

“Well, I am not made of glass, that I will tell you.”

“Nor am I,” my Mary said. “Look you, Abel. We have made a start in life, although we started late. And life with you is all I ask of Heaven. But we have a son, and another child coming”—she placed my hand upon her swelling person—“and they must be provided for. If . . . if anything should happen to you . . .” Another jewel escaped my darling’s eye. “You wouldn’t want me to be one of those poor women lining up outside Mr. Potts’s office in the mornings, would you? Begging for him to help them apply for a pension? With their husbands dead and buried far from home, and the widows left bare of a penny for a loaf?”

Twas I who did the holding now. She was frail as a crystal glass on a ledge.

“Do not worry,” I told her. “For I am a bad penny and will always turn up.”

She wept.

“I will always come back to you, my darling,” I assured her.

“That’s what every one of them tells his wife. Don’t you know that?”

“But we are different, see. And you will not be rid of me so easily. A war is not enough to keep me from you.”

“Don’t laugh at me.”

“Laughing I am not.” Oh, I loved the smell of her. Wherever she might be would be my home.

“I’m so afraid, Abel. Afraid you’ll be gone forever. That you’ll leave John and the baby and me alone. I don’t know what I’d do, after waiting so long.”

“And there is Fanny. She is our daughter now.”

Mary stiffened, putting an inch between us. “She is welcome to stay in the kitchen, for your sake. But she is not my daughter.”