Chapter Sixteen #2
And so, however desperate the circumstances of those poor wretches that watched them enviously now, they both knew—with a twinge of guilt—that they were safe because they were better fed and clearer minded than any would-be assailants.
Being the sort of men they were, this didn’t make them feel better.
But the neighborhood they soon entered did.
The streets they traveled now were increasingly gayer ones.
There was still poverty here, but it had not numbed or deadened anyone’s spirits.
The people here had nothing much, but it seemed they’d hope of more.
The houses were just as cramped, and as many children roved the streets.
But there was laughter and bright colors, and noise of trade, argument, and living.
Here mothers cared enough to scold their children, at the top of their lungs.
In fact, all conversation seemed to be carried out in a screech, as those upstairs shouted advice and comment to those below, who responded just as loudly.
The streets reeked, but the scents were of cooking: cabbages and chickens and garlic—the spices of a dozen different sorts of immigrant dinners in progress hung in the air.
They stopped the carriage, and Gray paid a youth to watch his team. The boy took the coin, grinned, and sang out a greeting to Peggy when she alit, and she ruffled his red hair as she hurried up the steps to the gray tenement.
There seemed to be a bewildering lot of Callahans in the little flat they entered.
Many of them looked like Peggy, most of them were delighted to meet her guests, and all of them talked at once.
In time, Hannah came to understand that they all worshiped Royal, thought Gray the most impressive male they’d ever clapped eyes on apart from Royal, and knew everything that Peggy did about Hannah, from all the letters Peggy had sent home.
It was as disconcerting as it was amusing—as Hannah whispered to Gray a little later when they walked through the teeming streets behind Peggy and Royal and a half dozen assorted Callahans.
Rather like meeting Peggy in disguise, a few dozen times, she said.
“They’ll make things lively back home,” Gray remarked, smiling.
He was as delighted at the notion of accompanying the newlyweds on a shopping tour at the popular Jewish outdoor market on Hester Street as Peggy had been embarrassed by her family’s insisting it was the best way to get bargains on staples they’d need for their coming trip.
Because Hannah had to cling to his arm to keep from being borne away by the burgeoning crowds.
And so however ill-at-ease they were with each other, they soon became informal allies as they struggled on among the currents of people buying, bargaining, and sight-seeing among the pushcarts and shops in the teeming streets.
“Say, have you ever had one of these?” Gray asked, stopping at a great open-mouthed barrel that stood in front of a store.
“Of course,” Hannah said with a superior smile, “I’m a New Yorker.”
But as she paused, a white-jacketed man with a fierce black beard thrust his hand into the gray-green liquid that filled the barrel and came up with a long green pickle in his red and chapped hand.
He presented it to Hannah with a flourish, as though it were a rose.
She accepted it as graciously, after removing her glove.
And then took a big bite of it before sighing, and saying with every evidence of rapture, “Superb. Just delicious.”
“Ah. You’ve a nose for pickles. It must be a vat of the ‘89, I hear the year was perfect. We’ll have a jar of them, my good man,” Gray said imperiously. As the man proceeded to stuff pickles into a jar. Gray studied Hannah’s pickle longingly and added, “At least that way I’ll get a taste.”
She grinned and held out the pickle, and he managed to take a bite without the juice running down his chin and onto his scarf, his woolen Chesterfield coat, or the cupped hand she held beneath his chin.
“Ah,’ he breathed, as he chewed. “You’re right.
An impudent little vintage, with just a hint of brine and enough garlic to give it body. ”
They took their jar of pickles and strolled the raucous market streets behind Peggy and Royal.
While the newlyweds bought linens and pots, Hannah and Gray delighted in daring each other to taste every sample of every food that was offered them.
And as they were offered bits and pieces of every edible thing being vended, they ate bites of potato and onion patties and pieces of herring; slices of salamis and bolognas and wedges of cheese; hunks of bread bearing coatings of fats or jellies, and mouthfuls of all sorts of pastries filled with indescribable compounds of meats and fish.
“That,” Hannah said smugly, as Gray swallowed a bite of something in baked parchment, “was liver. As I live and breathe, you’ve just ingested what you said you detested the most, as I recall.”
“Indeed?” Gray said with admirable calm, successfully stifling a grimace, for the onions, garlic, and chicken fat had disguised the horrible fact brilliantly, until she’d spoken.
“That,” he informed her in turn, three pushcarts down the street later, as she daintily nibbled a tidbit, “is a mixture of sweetbreads and crumbs, as well as onion and garlic. I thought you shared my detestation of any internal organs but your own at dinner.”
“Oh,” she said, and forced herself to continue chewing as she said brightly, “but it is very good. Exceptions can be made.”
“And,” he added sweetly, “it is all rolled up and cooked in a length of the unfortunate cow’s intestine. That’s the crackly coating,” he said helpfully, adding, “it’s quite true,” as he saw her stop chewing.
“Beast,” she said, coughing, because she’d swallowed it in her dismay. And then saw his eyes and began laughing so loudly several onlookers joined in because it was such a lovely sound to hear.
They ate their way down the street, buying samples of what they’d liked the best, and then of what they’d seen each other dislike the most, and all for the sheer fun of it.
“Now,” Royal said at last, as they turned to make their way back to the Callahan house, “home again. Miz Callahan is waiting on us for dinner.”
Peggy and Royal had expected every sort of argument from their friends, but not absolute silence, and then after a glance at each other, absolute and unrestrained mirth.
There was champagne with hothouse fruits floating in it, and patés and oysters, canapés and lobster patties, sliced and garnished tongues and hams, sides of beef and galantines of veal, dishes of cut-up fowl, meat rolls, and lobster salad.
All of it was presented in golden bowls or on silver trays, and that was only on the side of the supper table where Gray was standing.
The other end, somewhere down the room, beyond the vases of fresh flowers, had the blancmanges, jellies, creams and custards, fruits and jams, and the biscuits, cakes, and pastries to accompany them.
But Gray didn’t take a sip or bite of any of it.
He held his champagne glass in his hand and watched the other supper guests at the Fifth Avenue mansion as they filled their plates.
Or rather, his brother thought as he made his way through the crowd to get to him, he didn’t watch them, because he seemed to be paying attention to some interior scene that interested him more.
By the time Josh Dylan got to his brother’s side, someone else had jolted him from his reverie, but not to ask why he wasn’t eating.
“I say,” the stout, bewhiskered gentleman was complaining as Josh came up to them, “I’m at sea. Are you telling me silver is a good investment, or a bad one? You seem to be talking out of both sides of your mouth, my boy.”
The quickly shuttered look that sprang to Gray’s eyes told his brother that the only reason the old gentleman didn’t have a fist in his mouth was because of his age, notwithstanding the fact that he was an old family friend, but Gray replied calmly enough.
“I said that silver’s very big now, sir.
As you know. Because if I’m not mistaken, you’ve got controlling interest in two good mines and a minor interest in one with Horace Tabor himself.
All I’m saying aside from that, and that only because you’ve been fair with us Dylans for a long spell,” Gray went on, his drawl becoming more pronounced, which should have alerted the old fellow.
Josh thought, to pay close heed to the next seemingly careless words, “is that it looks to me like too many folks is riding the silver train to glory. That always means trouble. Money’s not misery, it don’t like company.
And there’s a whole lot of silver pouring into a whole lot of pockets.
Now, there’s some talk of devaluing it in the future, and sticking to pure gold.
Which would bring silver stocks tumbling, which may be why they’re talking about it.
But, hell, what do I know? It’s only trash talk, and I’m only a boy from the West. You own half the East, or so m’ brother says…
why, hello. Josh. I was just speculating on things with William here, but I guess I should stick to things I know, like cattle. ”
“The things you know,” the old gentleman said, putting a finger to the side of his nose, “are things a clever man should listen to. Point taken, young Gray. That’s why Josh steered me to you earlier this evening.
I’ll be thinking about it. Thank you. Or rather, ‘thank you kindly,’ as you would say—when you’re trying to devil me,” he said on a guffaw, and bowing, left the two men.
But not alone, because they were in a press of people eyeing the supper table, even though their plates were full to overflowing.
“Come on, let’s find someplace as empty as your dinner plate,” Josh said. “Since you’re not going to eat, we have to talk.”