New York_ The Novel - Edward Rutherfurd [213]
“What’ve you done to Nolan?” he asked. “You’ve embarrassed me.”
“I can’t bear to be with the man any more,” she said. And she told him plainly what she’d seen.
“All right, Mary,” said Sean. And he hadn’t mentioned Nolan since.
Today, however, she’d been able to put Nolan completely out of her mind. She’d met Gretchen at the shop, and they’d walked arm in arm with Theodore along the street.
“Where are we going?” she’d asked.
“Oh, just to pick up Hans,” Gretchen had answered cheerfully.
Her heart had missed a beat, but she didn’t think it showed.
“I haven’t seen him for ages,” she’d said.
So they’d picked him up at the piano store, and they’d walked along the East River all the way down to Battery Park. They had eaten ice cream beside the big entertainment hall, and stared out across the harbor to Staten Island. Someone had laid out a little bowling alley, so they’d played ninepins for a while, Hans being best at it. And she’d watched him all the time without his seeing it. After that they’d walked round the point and gazed up the Hudson. Once, when he’d taken her arm to point out a boat to her, she had almost lost her breath, but she’d kept quite still so he shouldn’t notice.
On the way back, he’d mentioned that the next time they got together, there was a young lady that he’d like them all to meet. And Gretchen had whispered to her that she already knew that Hans and the girl were likely to get married. So after Mary had smiled and said she looked forward to it, and overcome the sudden cold sensation in her stomach, she’d told herself that she was glad, and happy for him.
She was just approaching the house in Gramercy Park when she noticed the man entering the front door. She only had time to get a glimpse of him, but she could have sworn it was her brother Sean.
But why in the world, she wondered anxiously, would Sean be seeing Mr. Master?
After the distressing conversation with his wife about slavery, Frank Master had been glad to retire to the library. He sat down in a leather armchair with the latest copy of the New York Tribune, found a dispatch from the paper’s new correspondent in London, a fellow called Karl Marx, and started to read it.
He was rather surprised when the butler brought in a card bearing the name Fernando Wood. And even more surprised when he heard that the gentleman was not Mr. Wood himself, of Tammany Hall, but his representative.
A visit from the enemy. He frowned. After a moment’s hesitation, however, he judged it wise to discover the reason for the visit, so he told the butler to bring the stranger in. And shortly thereafter found himself gazing at Sean.
The Irishman was expensively dressed, his suit a little too snugly fitting for Master’s taste, and his side whiskers just a bit too assertive; but at least his boots were polished to a shine that Master could approve of. He gestured the young man to a chair.
“You come from the chief sachem of Tammany Hall, I understand.”
“From Mr. Fernando Wood, sir,” Sean answered smoothly. “Indeed I do.”
If Frank Master had been asked to name the biggest rogue in New York—and it was a competitive field—he wouldn’t have paused a second before naming Fernando Wood. Born in Philadelphia, that place had been far too genteel for his talents. He’d come to New York, made a modest fortune, by one means or another, before he was thirty, and got himself in with Tammany Hall. Then he’d turned politician.
You couldn’t deny the genius of Tammany Hall. Fifty years ago, that wretch Aaron Burr had built up Tammany as a political power to get himself elected vice president. And after Tammany had successfully backed Andrew Jackson for the presidency, its Democratic Party machine had become awesomely efficient.
Tammany had got Wood elected as a Democrat to Congress. Then they’d run him for mayor of New York and nearly pulled that off too. Soon the damn fellow was going to run again. In the meantime, with the help of his Tammany Hall friends, Wood had his finger in every pie in the city.
“Might I ask your own name, sir?”
“O’Donnell is