Bold Sons of Erin (24 page)

I roused myself, resolutely, from my moment of despond. For I had larger matters to attend to, and a man who neglects his duty has little worth. “Look you, Mrs. Schutzengel . . . I have need of your counsel, perhaps of your help. But it must remain
a quiet matter, between ourselves, see. It may be terribly important. Perhaps we might speak after dinner?”

Her face turned purple. I do not exaggerate. And sweat come up afresh on her forehead, as if her boiler had been restoked, until the woman fair glistened.

“Nach dem Abendessen? Nein!”
She looked about her in wounded fury, although we two remained alone in the hall. “After the dinner, he wants to talk to Hilda Schutzengel! To his friend, the Schutzengel? When he has the problem now?”

She slashed the air with her rag and I felt the spray on my cheek. It smelled of chicken broth.

“No!”
She shook her massive head and stamped her foot. I do believe the china shook behind the parlor wall. “Her dear friend, who does the duty in the war against those Rebel
Aristokraten und gegen die Sklaverei, und
he thinks the Schutzengel makes him wait until after the dinner!” She brought down her imposing foot again. More shook than merely the china this time. “It is now that we are talking!
Gleich jetzt.”
She pointed to the parlor.
“Marsch, marsch.
I tell the girls not to ruin the dinner
und
I come to you
gerade!
”

I went docilely, for Mrs. Schutzengel’s friendship was commanding. Lovely it was to have such a friend, when a fellow needed help. But I will confess I would have waited, willingly, until our meal was behind us. For I feared the girls she had taken on in Annie Fitzgerald’s wake would not do justice to Mrs. Schutzengel’s standards. And I like to find proper cooking on the table.

One of the new girls was a Lutheran, from Sweden, where the people think all flavor is a sin. She was large and pale, and prone to unsightly blemishes. The other creature, small and dark, claimed to come from a place called the Kasubai. At night, I heard her weeping in the attic. In the morning, she fetched our night pots and sang her country’s songs off-pitch in the yard. Between the two of them, they could damage a dinner.

Mrs. Schutzengel swept into the parlor, muttering about the lack of pride and diligence among the members of her beloved
working class. Still vivid with sweat she was, and she glowed in the day’s first lamplight. Sitting herself down in her high-backed chair with a great exhalation of breath, she intertwined her fingers and asked,
“Oooch ja, was denn?”

I sat down myself, closer to her than usual. Listening for the tread of other boarders upon the porch. My questions did not want a larger audience.

“Mrs. Schutzengel,” I began, “have you ever heard of a German immigrant fellow named Carl Stone?”

Her expression did not change, but for a pruning of the chin that pled ignorance.

“He lived,” I added, “in St. Louis before the war. He became a colonel, then a general, of volunteers.” Still nothing.

“Now, you must keep a secret, if you please,” I continued, “but perhaps this will help you remember. This General Stone seems to have been a political radical of sorts. He was wanted by the Russians. By the tsar himself, I am told. For revolutionary doings.”

Mrs. Schutzengel grunted. “In Russia, to cross the street without permission is to make a revolution, I think.” She leaned toward me, to the degree her bulk would permit, puffing a little. “Maybe ‘Stone’ is ‘Stein.’ But this is a common name,
ganz gemein.
It tells nothing.”

Abruptly, she looked down at my uniform. With suspicion. Twas the first time she ever had done so.
“Und
why are you, Major Jones, interested in a man who wishes to make a revolution against the tsar? This is America
und
we do not have the
Geheimpolizei
in the government, I think.
Es gibt hier kein Russentum und kein Preussentum.
Why is this man interesting to you, please?”

“Look you, Mrs. Schutzengel. The fellow’s been murdered. And our government simply wants to know why.” I considered my words, then lowered my voice near a whisper. “There is a . . . a suspicion of Russian involvement, see. Nothing definite, but—”

“Die Russen!
Here? In Washington?
Was fuer eine verdammte Schweinerei!”
She stamped her foot so hard it nearly forced her
to her feet. “No Russians!” She proclaimed.
“Keine Kosaken, hierher, nein!
No to the
Tataren-Barbarei!
No Russian
Czarismus-Schwindel
in America!

I fear that, had she been a locomotive, she would have burst her boiler on the spot. We had little discussed the Russians in the past, but she always made it clear she did not like them. Now I found her enthusiasm alarming. I do believe the temperature climbed higher in the room, although the stove would not be lit until dinnertime.

“No Russians!” she declared, bobbing up and down in her martyred chair.
“Freiheit fuer die Polen!
‘
Runter mit dem Czarismus!
Down with the Tsar!”

“Yes, Mrs. Schutzengel, yes,” I tried to calm her. “But it may not be the Russians at all, you see. That is what we must find out. I didn’t mean to excite—”

“Scheisskerle sind die alle! Tausende haben die Schweine in Ungarn erschossen!”
She waved her kitchen rag as if lofting a banner above a defiant barricade. I understood but little of her German, which come too fast for my apprentice knowledge, yet I fear she was unkind to the Russian race.

“Please, Mrs. Schutzengel . . . will you help me . . . perhaps your friends could . . .”

“Carl Stone is his name? Who makes the revolution for the peoples?
Ein echter Revoluzzer, meinen Sie? Und
a general? Murdered?
Die Kosaken haben den armen General kaltblutig ermordet?”

“Yes, I do believe that sums it up. Now, if you could—”

She leapt from her chair. Which was a sight to see.
“Die Russen-Schweine
will not kill generals here in America!
Schlechter als die Rebellen sind die!
Worse they are than the Rebels!”

Had mine own visage betrayed the slightest Russian quality, I fear the dear woman might have slain me on the spot.

“But perhaps it wasn’t the Russians, see. That is what we must find—”

“Jawohl!
It is the Russians. I know it.”

“Well, there is the matter of proof, of course. We cannot—”

“Komm doch!
Come! We go now to see
die Verrückte Maria!”

“I beg your pardon?”

“We go to see Crazy Maria. She will know your Carl Stone, I think. Or she will know who will know him.” Mrs. Schutzengel paused for a moment, gripping my forearm with a strength born of wielding skillets. “But I must trust you,
Herr Major.”
Her face was as earnest as any I ever have seen, and the sweat seemed to freeze in its tracks. “You must not say where you have seen this Crazy Maria. You must not say to any persons that you have seen her at all. You must promise me this, because—”

“Yes, yes. I promise.”

“—they are wishing to hang her.”

That gave me pause, I will admit. Things did seem to be happening with despatch. Already half the way to the front door she was, nearly forgetting the need of a coat and scarf.

“But . . . who wishes to hang her?” I begged of my landlady’s retreating, but hardly diminishing, form.

She turned to me with a face of such anger I lack the words to tell you of it.

“Everybody,” she said.

MRS. SCHUTZENGEL’S BOARDING HOUSE STOOD ON A quiet lane, so we had to turn down Seventh Street for a cab. Hardly a lamp still burned in the Patent Office, but the General Post Office glowed. The lanterns were lit on the corners and shops were closing, with each proprietor’s son or daughter latching the shutters then giving the doorway a sweep. The street was dense with Germans, who are a conscientious folk, and they never forget a title. As we hastened along, we were honored by greetings of
“Guten Abend, Herr Major”
and
“Guten Abend, Gnädige Frau,”
with a nod that was almost a bow to Mrs. Schutzengel. For Communist though she was, she owned a good deal of property in Washington, as I had come to learn across the months, and your German respects a deed as much as the Hindoo reveres his idols.

Nor did our passage excite a smile, except from the half-witted Negro who haunted the street and sang colored songs for pennies. Twas strange that no one laughed, I must admit, since I fear the two of us made a curious pair. I am not great of stature, although I do show strong in the chest and shoulders, and my bothered leg goes along as best it can. Mrs. Schutzengel topped my own height by seven or eight inches and, had she served along with me in India, I might have enjoyed a generous shade at her side. The good woman was big. Yet, she moved with an alacrity that astonished. Children and dogs got out of her way as she plunged along the boards that
fronted the shops. And I do believe draught horses shied in the street, although it may have been but the mud giving under their hooves.

Now, I will tell you the queerest thing: War is a sin and a Christian must doubt its morality. But war produces wealth in heaps and piles. Not only were the shops ever bigger and brighter, but the dusky city was building itself higher and broader and finer with every month. The year before, our cannon had blocked the avenues. Now lumber carts and wagonloads of brick encumbered movement. Much was shoddy work and speculation, I will grant you. But all was rewarded by War and its boundless appetites.

Strange it is that God allows such things. But his ways are ineffable.

Nor was I guiltless myself, I will admit, for my railroad shares had earned a tidy profit.

Yes, the railroad, that paragon of speed and modern times. As we approached the vivacity of Pennsylvania Avenue, where the decent women kept to the northern walk, while those bereft of honor patrolled the southern side, I heard a locomotive’s shriek from the yards just by the Capitol, a trumpet of progress that pierced the city’s evening. I could not see the great vehicle, for blocks of buildings interposed between us, but I imagined it bringing new troops, with their shining, young faces, or delivering the fruits of our Northern industry to nurture the army across the Potomac River.

Now, I will tell you a thing, though you call me untruthful: I already had decided we could not lose the war, but for the Lord’s ill temper. I saw our triumph as certain, if only our will did not fail us. Twas but a matter of how long our victory would take and how much misery our nation need endure. My conclusion arose from all I saw, still more from what I felt. Our Northern states bloomed with commerce and great energies, with ever new additions to our mills, more miles of track laid down, and improved methods of molding iron or even forging steel. We had been in a bit of a bust before the war, but now it seemed
that a dollar invested sprouted up gold pieces in no time at all. We were the future, see.

Only the April before, I had seen our Southland, all pomp and dust, carelessness and valor, as much a place of the past as sullen India. I did not know half a million more would die. But I knew that we would win. The South could swagger and fight, but we could work. And you and I know which the Lord rewards.

My journey from Pottsville back to Washington had taken me through a landscape of smoking chimneys and piled freight, past laden canals and railways overcrowded. The antique superstitions of Irish miners and rumors of fairies and witches seemed but a dream to me, as the cars raced past a world new-engineered. A journey through Southeastern Pennsylvania gave a man the sense that nothing was impossible for our America. God willing, of course.

I had paid such matters even more attention than was my habit, for I like to read on the railway, but had been disappointed by the book I brought along. I did give Mr. Chaucer a fair try, for I have been told he fathered our English language, but the fellow could not spell and I set him aside. Nor could my German grammar hold me an hour. Certainly, we must not indulge ourselves with excuses and must strive diligently for our personal improvement. But the German tongue is a feast I can only nibble.