The truth was, he was beside himself. He had cursed himself until he was worn out, and the impotent frustration was almost more than he could bear. He just wanted to take action, fight somebody, anything.
Tom had been gone so long he’d thought something must have happened to him, too. But when he finally got back, he’d explained.
“The counting house was locked when I got there. The place was deserted. I criss-crossed every street I could think of on the way back, Pa. That’s why I took so long. But there isn’t a sign of her. Nothing.”
He’d only been back a few minutes when a great roar from the direction of the armory had caused Frank to go out into the street. The crowd had finally begun their assault. The building was catching fire. He could see figures appearing in the upper windows and on the roof of the building. It looked as if they’d be burned. Not that there was a damn thing he could do about it. The heat from the building combined with the suffocating heat of the day was awful. He hurried back to the house.
The assault on the armory had one effect: it seemed to be drawing all the mobs in the area to the scene. Gramercy Park was temporarily deserted. Cautiously, he opened one of the dining-room window shutters. Ten more minutes passed. The flames rising from the armory were sending flashes into the sky.
But now, suddenly, a boy came running up the steps to the front door, and was hammering on the door. The parlormaid appeared to ask what to do. He told her not to open.
“It may be a trap.” Some fellow with a brick or a firebrand might be lurking out there to hurl his missile in as soon as the door was open. He pulled the shutter closed and went into the hall.
“What if it’s a message from Mother?” said Tom.
“I thought of that.” Signaling Tom to stand behind him, he went to the door, picking up a walking stick with a head like a cudgel on the way, slipped the bolts, and opened the door an inch. “Well?”
“You Mr. Master?”
“What if I am?”
“Your wife’s up on Fifth by the orphanage in a heap of trouble.”
“Who are you?”
“Billie, mister. I work for Madame Restell. She brought me. She’s in her carriage over on Lexington. Says she ain’t coming any closer. You’d better come quick, mister.”
What the devil the infamous Madame Restell would want with Hetty he couldn’t imagine. But Frank didn’t hesitate.
“Guard the house, Tom,” he called, and with the stick in one hand, and the boy’s arm in a vice-like grip in the other, he let the boy lead him quickly to Lexington Avenue. “If you’re lying,” he told the boy quietly, “I will beat you to a pulp.”
Hetty hadn’t much experience of crowds. She did not know that, caught at the right moment, in the right mood, a crowd can be made to do anything, or will of its own accord.
The crowd wanted to kill the children, because they were colored black. It wanted to destroy the building, because it was a temple of the rich Protestant abolitionists. The rich white Protestants who were sending honest Catholic boys to die so that four million freed slaves could come north and steal their jobs. For the crowd was mostly Irish Catholic. Not all, but mostly.
And the crowd meant to loot the building because the black children in there had food, and beds, and blankets, and sheets that they themselves, often as not, did not possess in their crowded tenements.
They had started stoning the building, and now men were running forward to break down the door.
Hetty tried to push her way through the crowd.
“Stop this,” she cried. “They are children. How can you?”
The crowd wasn’t listening. She struggled forward, but the press of people was too great. She found herself wedged beside a huge red-headed Irishman, bellowing with rage like all the rest. She didn’t care. She beat with her fists upon his back. “Let me through.”
And at last he turned, and looked down at her.
“Tell them to stop,” she cried. “Will you let them kill innocent children? Are you a Christian?” His blue eyes continued to stare at her, like those of a giant looking down at its supper. Well, let him do what he liked. “Will you tell your priest you murdered children?” she challenged. “Have you no humanity? Let me through and I will tell them to stop.”
Then the big Irishman reached down and picked her up in his powerful arms, and she wondered if he was going to kill her there and then.
But to her astonishment, he started pushing his way through to the front of the crowd. And moments later, she found herself in open space.
In front of her was the orphanage. Behind her, as the giant put her down and she turned, was the crowd.
It was a terrifying sight. Its rage came at her like a roaring hot breath. It was staring, screaming, hurling missiles and breathing fire at the orphanage beside her. Now that she was here, how could she speak to this terrible monster? How would she even be heard?
Then, suddenly, some of its many eyes started to look in her direction. Arms were pointing past her. Something behind her was catching a part of the crowd’s attention. She turned to look.
A little way down the street, a side door of the orphanage had opened. A woman’s head was looking out. Hetty recognized her. The matron of the orphanage. The woman looked up the street with horror. But it seemed that she had decided there was no alternative, for now a small black child appeared beside her, then another, and another. The children of the orphanage were filing out. Not only that: to her astonishment, Hetty saw that they were obediently forming up into a line.
Dear God, they might have been going to church. A moment later, the superintendent came out as well. He was shepherding the children into a little column. And there was nobody there but the matron and the superintendent to help them. They just kept coming, as the matron urged them to hurry, and the superintendent made sure they lined up in good order.
They were going to take all two hundred and thirty-seven children out, into that furnace, because there was nothing else they could do. And they were keeping calm. For the children’s sake, they were keeping very calm. And the children kept coming out obediently, and the superintendent kept them facing away from the crowd so that they should not see.
And the crowd did not like it. The crowd did not like it at all.
For now, as by some awful magic, the part of the crowd that could not see down the street seemed to understand from the eyes that could that the children were there. And the crowd began to tremble with rage at the thought that its prey was daring to escape. And the crowd nearest to her started inching forward, a foot at a time, like a snake testing the way with its tongue. And somebody shouted out again, “Kill the nigger children!” while others took up the cry.
And the children heard, and flinched.
Then Hetty realized that there was no one except herself and the big Irishman between the crowd and the children.
Strangely, she understood, the crowd did not really see her. She was in its field of vision, but its focus was on the children. They were nearly all out now. She glanced back. The matron was telling the children to start walking. Quickly, but not too fast. The crowd saw too. A woman’s voice called out: “The niggers is gettin’ away.” At any instant, she could feel it, people would start to break ranks and spill past her.
“Stop!” she cried out. “Would you harm little children?” She raised her arms and held them wide, as if that could stop them. “They are little children.”
The crowd saw her now and fixed its stare upon her. It saw her for what she was, a rich Republican Protestant, their enemy. The huge Irishman beside her was silent, and it suddenly crossed her mind that perhaps he had brought her there so that the crowd would kill her.
Yet just for a moment, the crowd seemed to hesitate. Then the woman’s voice rang out again.
“They’re nigger children, lady. It don’t matter killing them.”
There was a roar of approval. The crowd was edging forward.
“You cannot! You cannot!” Hetty cried despe
rately.
And then, to her surprise, the Irish giant beside her let out a mighty cry.
“What are you thinking of? Have you no humanity? Has none of you any humanity?”
Hetty did not understand crowds. The crowd, despite the fact they hated her, had hesitated to attack her for one reason only: she was a lady. But the giant beside her was a man. One of their own. And now a traitor, siding with their enemy to rebuke them. With a scream of rage, two women rushed at him. The men were close behind. If they might not have the children, then they’d have him. He was fair game.
His size did him no good at all. A giant is nothing to a crowd. It had him down in no time.
Hetty had never seen a mob attack a man. She did not know its violence and its power. They started with his face, punching, and kicking with their heavy boots. She saw blood, heard splintering bone, then could see nothing at all, as they threw her across the street, and his body disappeared under a rabble of men, stamping with all their strength and weight, again and again and again.
When they broke off, the Irish giant had almost disappeared.
The crowd had entered the orphanage now. There was plenty there for everyone. Food, blankets, beds: the home was stripped bare. But the children, thanks be to God, had been left to walk quickly away.
So Hetty slowly got up, and looked down at the pulped mess that had once been a mighty body with a face, and dragged herself into Fifth Avenue. And there, scarcely knowing what was happening to her, she suddenly felt a pair of strong arms around her and saw her husband’s face. Then she clung to him, as he helped her stagger down to the reservoir and eastward along Fortieth until, at the next avenue, he lifted her into the big carriage that had brought him.
“Thank God you came,” she murmured, “I was looking for you all day.”
“I was looking for you, too.”
“Never leave me again, Frank. Please never leave me.”
“Never again,” he said, with tears in his eyes. “Never, as long as I live.”
When Sean O’Donnell looked around his saloon in the early evening, he knew he was right to make Hudson stay in the cellar. All over the West Side, the crowds had been attacking the black people, burning their houses, beating them up. There were rumors of lynchings. Over at St. Nicholas Hotel, the mayor had been joined by the military. Troops were being summoned. President Lincoln had been telegraphed. With the Confederates in retreat after Gettysburg, he must spare them some regiments before New York went up in flames. A body of gentlemen had armed themselves with muskets and gone to defend Gramercy Park. Sean was glad of that. Meanwhile, he’d seen fires coming from Five Points.
“It can’t be long now,” he warned his family. “We’ll be next.”
It was a quarter of an hour later that a vigorous figure with the face of an adventurer and long, drooping mustaches strode into the saloon. Sean smiled.
“Mr. Jerome. What’ll you have?”
Sean liked Leonard Jerome. The daring financier might not have been born at Five Points, but he had the instincts and the courage of the street fighter. He mostly ran with the rich sporting crowd like August Belmont and William K. Vanderbilt. But Jerome liked newspapers and newspapermen too. The rumor was that he was invested in newspapers. And he’d come into the saloon once in a while.
Once Sean had asked him where his family came from.
“My father’s name was Isaac Jerome, so Belmont says I must be Jewish.” Jerome had laughed. “Of course, you have to remember that Belmont’s name was Schoenberg, before he changed it. But the truth’s less interesting. The Jeromes were French Protestants. Huguenots. Came over in the 1700s. Farmers and provincial lawyers mostly, ever since.” He’d grinned. “My wife’s family swears they’ve got Iroquois blood, though.”
“You believe it?”
“A man should always believe his wife, sir.”
In answer to Sean’s question now, he answered: “Whiskey, Mr. O’Donnell. A large one. I’ve a busy night ahead.”
“You expecting trouble?”
“I thought they’d burn my house—they haven’t yet, but they’re coming down here. On the way already. You’d better hide your nigger.”
“I already did. Think they’ll go for the saloon?”
“Probably not. It’s the abolitionist newspapers they’re after: the Times, and others.” He downed his whiskey and gave Sean a puckish grin. “So wish me luck, Mr. O’Donnell. I’m off to defend the freedom of the press.”
“How will you do that?” Sean asked, as Jerome began to stride out of the saloon.
Jerome turned. “I got me a Gatling gun,” he answered. Then he was gone.
A Gatling gun. God knows how he’d got it. The newly patented gun was hardly even used by the army yet. With its swiftly rotating barrels, however, it could deliver a devastating, continuous fire that would mow down any crowd. You didn’t want to mess with Jerome, thought Sean. He knows how to fight dirty.
Once again, now, he checked all the shutters, but he didn’t close the saloon. If the rioters wanted a drink and couldn’t get served, that would really annoy them.
He was glad his sister Mary was safely out at Coney Island.
Monday had started well for Mary. She’d come down to breakfast to find Gretchen already at table, in conversation with another mother. As Mary sat down with them, Gretchen was just remarking that the woman’s son seemed rather like her own boy, and in no time this led to a discussion of motherhood in general. The lady asked Mary if she had children, to which she replied: “Not until I’m married.”
“Quite right,” the lady said with a laugh.
Theodore appeared after that.
They bathed in the morning. This time, holding the rope, Mary worked her way out until the water was right up over her chest, and then she swam out almost to the barrier ropes at the end. And while she was swimming there, Theodore came past and dived down under the rope and went on swimming with strong strokes out into the sea. He was out there quite some time. She and Gretchen were sitting together on the beach when he came back and emerged dripping from the water.
“Most invigorating,” he said with a laugh, and started drying himself with a towel.
At lunch, Theodore asked her if she was going to sketch that day, and she said she thought she might. So after the meal, she went to get her sketch pad. When she came down again, Gretchen and Theodore were talking together, and Gretchen said, “You go on, Mary, and I’ll catch you up.”
She’d only walked a short way along the sand, however, when reaching into her bag, she realized that she’d left her pencils up in the room, so she had to go back. Arriving at the inn, she didn’t see Gretchen and Theodore, so she supposed Gretchen might have gone up to their room. But the room was empty, so she collected her pencils and went out again.
She was just setting off along the path when she saw them. They were a little way off, standing together at the end of the inn’s white picket fence, under the shade of a small tree. They didn’t see her, because they were too deep in their conversation, nor could she hear what they were saying, but you could see at once that they were having a quarrel. Gretchen’s normally placid face was screwed up in fury. Mary had never seen her looking like that before. Theodore was looking irritated and impatient.
The only thing to do was hurry away and pretend she had not seen.
The sight of her friends quarreling had made an unwelcome interruption into the idyllic day, like a dark cloud suddenly appearing in a blue sky. Mary walked swiftly along the beach, therefore, to put a distance between herself and the two Kellers. She did not want anything to spoil that afternoon. And by the time she’d gone a mile or so, and encountered nothing except the unbroken line of the ocean and the warm sand, she felt restored. She realized that she was approaching the place where she had sketched the day before, and crossing over a little dune, she started to look out in case the deer might be there again. She didn’t see it though.
However, she did notice a little wooden shelte
r some way off, which had obviously been abandoned, for its roof was off, and the small posts that had supported it were pointing jaggedly into the sky. Taken with a couple of trees nearby, it made a strange, rather haunting composition, not too difficult to draw, and so she sat down and began to sketch. After a while, when she had caught some of it to her satisfaction, she put the sketch pad down and got up to stretch her legs. She went over to the dune and looked back along the beach to see if Gretchen was coming, but it was quite deserted.
Returning to her sketch, she drew a little more, and then took off her straw hat and leaned back for a moment to enjoy the sun. Her face and arms were bare, and the warmth of the sun upon them gave her a delightful sensation. It was very quiet. She could hear the faint, gentle sound of the spreading surf on the sand. It felt so peaceful, as if out here she were in a separate world, a timeless place which had almost nothing to do with the city life she’d left behind. Perhaps, she thought dreamily, if she stayed there long enough, she’d turn into a different person. She remained like that for several minutes, as the hot sun beat down. This, she supposed, must be how lizards feel as they drink in the sun’s rays on a rock.
When she heard the faint rustle in the seagrass to her right, she raised her head a little, and was just opening her mouth to say, “Hello, Gretchen,” when another head appeared.
“Ah,” said Theodore, “I thought I’d find you here.”
“Where’s Gretchen?” said Mary.
“Back at the inn. She wanted to rest.”
“Oh.”
“Mind if I sit down?”
She didn’t answer, but he sat down beside her anyway. He picked up the sketchbook and looked at her drawing.
“It’s not finished,” she said.
“Looks promising,” he remarked, glancing toward the little ruined shelter. He put the sketchbook down on the other side of him, so she couldn’t reach it, and then lay down full-length. She felt a little awkward sitting up, and wondered if she should put her hat back on. “You should lie down,” he said. “The sun’s good for you. At least, a little sun. When I’m in the sun like this,” he said contentedly, “I pretend I’m a lizard.”