Legacy of Secrets (43 page)

Each week Rory grew gaunter and thinner, perpetually shivering despite the warm jacket Finn had given him. Desperately Finn offered half his own wages if only he would stay home and get better, but Rory proudly refused.

“I can’t take your money, and besides, I’m afraid to lose me job and never get it back again.”

The day finally came that Rory could not face the long walk to Louisburg Square. He lay on his straw pallet with his sisters and brothers grouped silently around him and his mother clinging to his hand, crying. Finn went worriedly off to work but he couldn’t forget him, and that night he hurried back up the stairs, afraid he might be too late. Rory’s eyes were as shiny as two bright stars as he smiled at Finn. “Don’t worry if Mr. James needs a new
stablelad, Finn,” he said. “I’ll just have to look for another job when I’m better. In the springtime.”

Finn sat with him through the night. Rory did not cough and he didn’t toss and turn the way he usually did and he thought hopefully it must be a good sign. Just before dawn Rory woke and reached out for him. “You’re a good friend,” he whispered. And those were his last words.

Finn wept for his friend, but he was at work promptly as usual because he was too afraid of losing his job. He had the carriage waiting when Mr. James came down the front steps precisely at eight o’clock, as he always did.

“Good morning, O’Keeffe,” Mr. James said, stepping into his carriage. He turned and looked sharply at him, noticing his reddened eyes and drawn face. “Is something the matter?” he asked.

Finn hung his head to hide his grief as he told him about Rory, and asked if he might have an hour or two off for the funeral. Mr. James nodded. “You can tell his family that I shall take care of the expenses,” he said. “And now drive on or I shall be late.”

Rory’s funeral was a cold affair, but thanks to Mr. James’s generosity at least he had a decent pine coffin and there was a wreath of evergreens to toss onto his grave. Finn and five other friends shouldered the coffin and carried it into St. Stephen’s for the service. Afterward he followed it on the cart through the mean, frozen streets to the cemetery, wondering bitterly why his friend had had to die. He said a prayer for him and he also said one for himself. “God,” he prayed silently, “I have to get out of the North End or it will destroy me too. I
have
to. There must be some way, please help me, God. Please. I’ll never ask you for anything else again.”

Cornelius James was an observant man. He had noticed in the last few months that Rory was rarely around and that Finn was working longer and longer hours, and now he knew the reason. He discussed him with his wife and they decided the boy was worthy of a chance of something better. “Call it a social experiment,” Cornelius had said to
his wife. “If he wins or loses is up to him, but either way it’s bound to be interesting.” He called Finn into his study and Finn stood before him, twisting his cap nervously in his hand, hoping he wasn’t going to be fired.

“I have been observing you, O’Keeffe,” Mr. James said calmly. “And I have seen you following the parable of the good neighbor. What you did for your friend was noble. It came from a good heart.” He paused and Finn met his gaze anxiously, wondering what was coming. “A man like that deserves a reward,” Mr. James added. Finn brightened up: he had promised Mrs. O’Donovan he would look after them and he could use a bit of extra money.

Mr. James paced the study, his hands behind his back. “You are an intelligent young man,” he said, staring thoughtfully at him, and Finn’s hopes rose as he saw the reward getting bigger. “But a man lacking in schooling,” he continued, and Finn’s hopes plummeted again. “Yet it seems to me you have an instinct, a shrewdness that could be turned into something better than merely looking after horses.

“I have analyzed your qualities, O’Keeffe, and I find you honorable, steadfast, a hard worker, and a man capable of true friendship. Mrs. James and I have discussed you at great length. I have decided to give you the opportunity to better yourself. If you wish to accept, I am offering you a job in my New York offices, and an opportunity to learn the money business.”

“The money business?” Finn said, his head still ringing with the magic words “New York.”

“The Lord told us to help our brothers,” Mr. James said, “and you have carried out his wishes. Now I am prepared to help you, Finn O’Keeffe, to become something better than a stablelad and a coachman. Do you accept?”

Do I accept?
Amazed, Finn thought of his fervent prayer at Rory’s funeral. He thought of Christmastime, singing carols in the hall and his vow that one day he would have a
mansion just like this. He thought of his revenge on the Molyneuxes, imagining Lily’s face if she ever saw the grand person he was about to become. “I accept,” he said, beaming.

F
INN HAD NEVER OWNED ANYTHING
new and he had certainly never owned a suit of clothes in his life. With Mr. James’s fifty-dollar advance burning a hole in his pocket, he went to the local haberdasher and told the sales assistant he needed everything “from new drawers to new boots.”

He chose what he imagined a well set-up young man about New York would wear: two white cambric shirts with four celluloid collars that the sales clerk assured him would save on washing; a stiff black serge suit and a cravat of sober gray. He bought big sturdy black boots, polished to a mirror gloss, and—a touch of extravagance he could not resist—a pair of mother-of-pearl cuff links and a matching stickpin. All he needed was a hat—in fact he would have two! A roll-brimmed derby for winter and a straw boater for summer.

He stared with satisfaction at the new Finn O’Keeffe in the mirror. The whole outfit had cost the grand sum of twenty-five dollars and the amount he had just spent dazzled him. It was a fortune, but the promised salary of twenty dollars a week made it seem like small change and he threw the money in lordly style onto the counter. The clerk wrapped his other things in a parcel and Finn strode confidently from the store to Hanover Street and Mick Corrigan’s.

The only problem was that Dan had not yet returned from his travels. He had promised to be back within a
couple of months. “With my profits in my pocket,” he had said. But six months had passed and Finn was worried.

As he strode through the North End’s teaming alleys, every head turned to look at the darkly handsome young Irish fella who looked as though he had come into a million. A crowd of small boys ran giggling at his heels, making rude comments, but he just grinned and good-naturedly flung them a handful of coins, remembering how he, too, would have scrabbled in the gutter for them not so long ago.

Mick Corrigan eyed him up and down in amazement. “Can it be yerself, Finn O’Keeffe?” he demanded, peering closely at him. “Sure and I can see now that it is.
And
dressed like a politician. Has your brother made his money then, the way he said he would?”

Finn shook his head, explaining his own good fortune. “I’ll be writing you with my address so that when Dan comes back he’ll know where to find me.”

“When Dan comes back!” Corrigan shook his head and heaved a lugubrious sigh. “ ’Evas the wrong time to be throwin’ in his job and becoming a peddler,” he said, shaking his head. “I doubt you’ll be hearing from him for a long time.”

Even more worried about Dan, Finn went to say goodbye to Rory’s mother. He gave her some money and told her he would always look after her. She wished him luck and he headed for the station to board the train to New York.

T
HE WEATHER IN
N
EW
Y
ORK
was unseasonably hot, the sky was a cloudless blue, and the sun blazed down. Finn emerged onto East Forty-third Street outside Grand Central Station, clutching the parcel with his underwear and socks, his extra collars and his other shirt. He felt stifled in his heavy suit but his step was jaunty as he set off in search of a room to rent. The very idea of a proper room of his own was heady stuff and he grinned as he inspected house after house with
VACANCY
signs in their windows. He chose
a modest-looking place and rang the bell. The woman who answered the door glared at him as he said confidently, “Good day to you, ma’am. Sure and I’m after renting a room.”

She stepped back a pace and pointed an accusing finger at the sign in the window. “Can’t you read, you ignorant fellow,” she cried angrily, and she slammed the door in his face.

Finn stared at the sign. It said
VACANCIES
and underneath,
NO ACTORS. NO DOGS. NO IRISH.

He walked on down the street, and the next and the next, but everywhere he went he saw the same sign. With their reputation for drinking and fighting, no one wanted the Irish, and they rated even lower billing than the dogs. He sought solace in a saloon on Lower Broadway with the comforting name of Murphy’s.

“You’ll be all right around here, fella,” Murphy told him when he explained his predicament over a glass of stout. “They’ll take anything, Irish, Italian, Jewish, German, or plain old American—as long as they can pay the rent in advance. Try Eileen Malone’s on West Fortieth, near Bryant Park.”

Eileen Malone looked at the handsome young Irishman standing on her steps, neat and perspiring in his old-fashioned heavy black suit and derby hat. She looked him slowly up and then slowly down again. And then she began to laugh.

Finn shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot. “Will you be tellin’ me what’s so amusing?” he demanded, red-faced with heat and embarrassment. He was boiling but he didn’t want to remove his jacket and spoil his smart new image as a
professional
man.

“Will you be only looking at that suit,” Eileen hooted. “You’ll not be tellin’ me you’re an actor, looking like that? Unless you’re dressed for the role of an Irishman.”

Finn glared furiously at her. He turned and strode back down the steps.

“You’ll get nowhere in this city if you can’t take a joke,”
she called after him. “Besides, I’m the only Irish landlady on this street.”

Grudgingly, he walked back again and followed her into the hallway and up the brown oilcloth-covered stairs to the third floor. “I keep a clean house,” Eileen pointed out, “and I expect the same of my tenants. Though I’ve no complaint with you on that score,” she added quickly as Finn glared at her again.

He looked at the room. It had a window with a view of the treetops in the park. “The bed has a horsehair mattress,” Eileen said proudly. “There’s no straw here, young man. You only get the best at Eileen Malone’s.”

He felt the bed cautiously with his fingertips; he tested the dresser drawers and stared at his own amazed face in the cheap mirror. He noted the brass pegs along the wall and the upright wooden chair with the plush seat and tasseled edges. It was hard as a rock but it was a proper chair and it was his to sit on.

“There’s a gas lamp,” Eileen said. “And there’s a water closet and a bathroom down the hall, shared with six other boarders.” She eyed him thoughtfully. He had not uttered a word since he came in and from the look on his face, he might have found paradise.

“I’ll take it,” Finn said eagerly, and she sighed. She had known he was a greenhorn as soon as she saw the suit.

Taking pity on him she said sarcastically, “Spoken like a true Irishman. Only you’re supposed to ask me the price first.”

He took twenty dollars from his pocket. “How much?” he asked, shuffling the money through his eager fingers.

“You’re lucky I’m an honorable woman,” she told him severely. “Any other landlady on Broadway would have just doubled the price. It’s five dollars a week. In advance paid prompt every Friday.”

Finn counted the money into her outstretched hand and she said, “For an extra two dollars a week I provide an evening meal.
And
I’m a good cook,” she added, patting her own ample hips as evidence. He quickly gave her the
extra two dollars and she pocketed it and walked to the door. “Supper’s at six-thirty sharp,” she called. “Most of my tenants are actors and they have to be at the theater by seven-thirty. Those that’s working, that is.”

She closed the door behind her and Finn looked proudly around his room. He took off his jacket and hung it over the back of his chair, pausing proprietorially to admire it. He pulled back the net curtain and stared at his view of the park. Taking off his boots he placed them next to his bed, then hung up his hat on the brass peg. He unpacked his brown paper parcel and put his new things away in a dresser drawer. Down the hall in the bathroom, he washed his hands and face in water that flowed from a faucet, and he dried himself on clean white linen. He observed the shower and the big white tub and the watercloset. He padded back to his room, undressed, turned up his magic gas lamp, and then lay carefully down on the bed. The soft pillow cushioned his head and the clean white cotton sheets were cool against his body. He lay very still for a few moments savoring it all, and then he began to laugh.

He was like an ignorant child in a toy store. He had never had a room of his own before; he had never had a window, let alone a view; he had never had a real bed or a dresser, not even a brass peg on the wall And he had certainly never had a bathroom before and a fresh clean towel to dry himself on. He had finally left behind the old world of straw pallets on bare earthen floors with a wooden crate for a table and a single candle to see by, and he felt like a king.