Dawn of the Golden Promise (56 page)

The farther they ventured into the depths of the slum, the more unspeakable their surroundings became. But upon their return to the “Square,” one building in particular caught Morgan's attention—a singularly hideous monstrosity that resembled a distorted, overgrown crab. He was certain he had never seen anything so extraordinarily ugly.

They came to a halt in front of the structure, and he glanced up at Michael. “What is that, pray?” he said, making no attempt to conceal his disgust.

“The Old Brewery,” Michael said, his own voice laced with bitterness. “We will not go inside.”

Morgan studied him for a moment, then turned his attention back to the building.

“The place looks almost alive,” Sandemon commented. “Alive, and crawling with evil.”

“It is that,” Michael replied. “The sights inside that den would give you nightmares for months.”

“But it is finally coming down,” Jess Dalton said quietly.

“Coming down?” Michael's surprise at the pastor's announcement was evident.

Dalton nodded, the ghost of a smile touching his mouth. “I just learned for certain this week. The Ladies Home Missionary Society will finally see their prayers answered. Oh, it's a ways off yet; the actual demolition and rebuilding will have to wait until more money can be raised. But the Society has entered into an arrangement to purchase the building. They hope to see it leveled within two years.”

Dalton crossed his arms over his massive chest and stood staring at the building with a look of satisfaction. “It seems fitting somehow, don't you think, that a new blow for the Kingdom will be struck in the very spot where darkness has held title for so many years? A hostel of vice and degradation is to be razed, and a new mission building erected in its place.”

“Well, thanks be!” said Michael.

“Thanks be indeed,” Jess Dalton echoed, still smiling. He turned to Morgan and Sandemon. “Without knowing the background of the place, you can't be expected to understand what a victory this represents. But as much as anything else that's been accomplished here in the Five Points over the past several years—possibly
more
than anything else—this news reaffirms my faith that God is at work in New York City.”

Morgan gave a nod, but he could not still the anguish of his heart as he saw firsthand the conditions under which his people were existing. Thousands of them, fleeing their own country for the sole purpose of survival, had come to this “Promised Land” in hopes of finding a better life for themselves and their children. Instead, vast numbers of them had ended up here, in this pit of squalor and despair. Was Ireland's tragedy destined to continue unabated, even in the Land of Promise?

Worst of all, at least in Morgan's eyes, were the children. They broke his heart. Raggedy little beggars, obviously without provision of any kind for their very existence, scurried along the streets pleading for money, for food, or, in some cases, looking as if they had come in search of a touch that wasn't a blow. Morgan emptied his pockets in minutes, unable to resist their hollow eyes, their clawlike hands grasping at him.

Some, little more than babes themselves, carried infants on their backs. They had no doubt been tossed out, Jess Dalton explained, by abusive or indifferent parents. Many wore little more than tattered blankets to hide their nakedness; shoes were almost nonexistent.

And there were hundreds of them, scuttling through the streets like stray animals. For the first time Morgan caught a glimpse of just how sacred a work, how enormous a burden, Whittaker and Nora had taken upon themselves. And right there, in the midst of the gutters and garrets, he breathed a prayer for divine provision for their efforts.

“Now I understand what Whittaker meant,” he mused softly. “Once, on the docks of Killala, the man stood and issued a caution to me, which I later came to suspect was more from the Lord than from Whittaker himself. We were little more than strangers at that juncture, Whittaker and I, but even then the Englishman did have a way about him. ‘Fitzgerald,' he said to me, peering through those spectacles of his, ‘Fitzgerald, you are a very big man, a strong, powerful man. But even
you
are not man enough to bear the pain of a nation, to carry the burden of an entire people, unless you in turn allow Jesus Christ to hold
your
heart and carry
you.
'”

Morgan looked about him, at the hopeless souls, the drunken wretches, the lost children of the Five Points. Then he turned back to the leprous old building which, according to Jess Dalton, sheltered evil beyond all imagining.

“Whittaker was right,” he said quietly. “All this”—he made a sweeping motion with his hand—“this would surely crush even the mightiest of men, were they to undertake God's work on their own.”

He looked up at Michael and Jess Dalton, then at Daniel John, who had dropped to one knee and was adjusting a filthy sling on the arm of a dirty-faced little boy. The child called Daniel John “Doc.”

Morgan swallowed and raked a hand down his beard. “What I see here, in this place, makes me yearn even more to have the use of my legs again. It makes me want to walk through these alleys and pitiful dwellings and help somehow—as all of you are helping.”

Michael put a hand to his shoulder. “Would you forget your writings, Morgan? The truth you have placed in the hands of so many? Heaven bless you, man, you have virtually assured that untold thousands will know the truth about the famine—and England's part in it!”

Jess Dalton also spoke up. “Michael's right. Because of your efforts, the history, the very heritage, of an entire people will be preserved for other generations.”

Morgan lifted a hand to acknowledge their words, but they did not understand. He was not ungrateful for the agreements that had come to him this week: first from Greeley, who had promised to serialize Joseph's famine diary in his newspaper; and from S. W. Benedict, Dalton's own publisher, who was drawing up a contract for the book rights to the diary, with the promise to go to press just as quickly as possible.

But none of it seemed enough, somehow. He wanted…ached…for the mobility to go among his people, here, in the place of their exile, as well as back in Ireland, where thousands upon thousands still faced possible extinction.

He wanted…he needed…to
walk
again.

Ah, well…tomorrow, he reminded himself with no small amount of trepidation, he would take the “first step” to accomplishing just that.

40

Forget not that no fellow being yet
May fall so low but love may lift his head…

JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY (1849–1916)

T
hat evening, as she started toward the park, Quinn O'Shea wondered why Daniel Kavanagh wasn't going to the concert with the rest of his family. The Whittakers and the Burkes were escorting their Irish visitors to Castle Garden tonight, joining vast numbers of others in New York City for an evening of music with Jenny Lind.

According to the papers, it was to be only one of many concerts performed by the famous soprano, and it promised to be a grand affair entirely. Quinn would have thought Daniel would want to be in attendance, to hear the one the newspapers called “the Swedish Nightingale.” But she had seen nothing of him throughout the afternoon or early evening, and the family had left without him.

Earlier in the day, Quinn had thought she might be asked to stay with Teddy. She had hoped for an excuse to postpone this evening.

But Johanna and the Fitzgerald daughter had volunteered to keep the two babes, giving the grown-ups an evening to themselves. Under the watchful supervision of the big black man called Sandemon, they would keep an eye on the boys at Whittaker House.

Apparently, there was no way out. She had to do this—and she had to do it tonight.

As he sat in Castle Garden, surrounded by the largest crowd he had ever seen, Morgan marveled at the contrast between these surroundings and what he had encountered earlier in the day.

Apparently this island at the southern tip of the city, where the vast circular concert hall stood, had once been the site of a famous fort. Now it was the largest place of entertainment in New York.

They had been here since a little past five, even though the concert was not to begin until eight. The place was mobbed. Morgan estimated an audience of at least six or seven thousand inside, with hundreds of others bobbing about in small boats on the water surrounding the island.

Their own party was a large one; besides Morgan and Finola, it included Lewis Farmington and his wife, Winifred, a delight of an English lady who also happened to be Evan Whittaker's aunt; Nora and Whittaker; Sara Burke; and her grandmother. Daniel John should be joining them any time now. Michael would not be sitting with the rest of them, being one of the many police captains who, along with their men, were attempting to keep order within and outside the premises. As for Sandemon, he had opted to remain at home. Although he had not said as much, Morgan suspected the black man preferred the company of the children to the noisy throng of concert-goers.

He looked up, studying the tiers of seats that rose to a ceiling of remarkable height, then scanned the crowds throughout the building. As he sat there, waiting for the concert to begin, he contemplated the extremes of the day, from the squalor and misery of the Five Points slum, to the grandeur and gaiety of this packed, glittering concert hall. Yet from one place to the other, and all along the random sites he had seen in between, he thought he could detect the pulse of the city, indeed the very heart of the nation.

Someone had said that the key to America's strength lay in her diversity. Perhaps, he thought, but only if that diversity were respected.

It had been his experience that too often oppression was employed as the only workable approach to dealing with differences or divisions. In his own country, the English, in their attempts to conquer and colonize the land, had from the beginning adopted a policy of tyranny and virtual enslavement of the Irish people, rather than one of tolerance and respect. What might have been the consequences to both Ireland and Britain, he wondered, if the English had chosen to encourage Ireland's rich and ancient culture, rather than to pillage her lands and attempt to destroy her language, her history, and her economy?

If England had even guaranteed the most basic freedom to the Irish people, there might have been a chance for something more than conflict and hatred, and, eventually, war.

Morgan wondered whether America's future would turn out to be so very different. From what he had gleaned from the newspapers and his talks with Michael and others, the issue of racial and ethnic division was a gathering storm upon the country's horizon.

Jess Dalton, for one, firmly believed that a divided nation might emerge from the burgeoning controversy surrounding the slavery issue. The abolitionist preacher, with what might well be prophetic sight, feared a great battle looming in the near future, a war between North and South. Such a war—one which turned the nation against itself—would surely prove to be nothing less than cataclysmic.

Before he could descend deeper into his brooding, Morgan was jarred back to his surroundings by the orchestra striking up. After the overture, a baritone named Belletti came on stage and sang a brief solo. Afterward there was more stirring among the crowd, then a salvo of thunderous applause as the Swedish Nightingale—Jenny Lind—finally appeared on stage. The audience rose to its feet, quieting only when the conductor rapped his baton.