Captains and The Kings (24 page)

Tom, making you take only one hundred thousand dollars, which is a sight of money anyway you look at it. I'll throw in Miss Emmy. You haven't seen her in two-three years, but she's a prettier trollop than ever, and you've wanted her for your very own. She's yours, to take back to Washington. Right in your own pocket." "Now," said the senator, affecting Mr. Healey's own Southern phraseology, "I take that right kindly, suh. But there's folks down there in that thar Washington who've out after my hide. They know I hate that damned Lincoln, for good and sufficient reason. And he hates me in return. Tried to be decent to him, but he looked me in the eye and said 'Humph,' and that was all there was to it. He don't even recognize me when we meet." Mr. Healey laughed. "He ain't no joy to me neither, Tom. But what's that got to do with Miss Emmy? Plenty of you fellas down there, wenching." "True. But Mr. Lincoln doesn't like it. Baptist, probably, or maybe Free Methodist. He'll overlook it a little in others. But not in Tom Hennessey. He's trying to find some way of getting rid of me. I think he heard something about me-and some others-cornering the wheat and meat market so we can make a little money out of his damned war, too. Now, Ed, you know I'd never connive to do such a thing, don't you?" Mr. Healey laughed again. "Especially not raising prices so that the widders and orphans would suffer, and the Boys in Blue. Not you, Tom. So, you can't take Miss Emmy." "I've a nice little colleen of my own in a discreet house, Ed. But I'm getting tired of her. How about sending Miss Emmy down to me in about four weeks? Are you tired of her, yourself?" "Miss Emmy? Love the ground she walks on. If I didn't I'd have packed her back to the house where I found her." The dinner gong sounded, and they stood up. "More than one wench at a time would right rile Mr. Lincoln, if he found out, and he has ears everywhere," said the senator. "But Miss Emmy was trained to be retiring, and he won't find out. Wish to God somebody would murder him." "Amen," said Mr. Healey without real rancor. As they went to the dining room they heard the faint thump and trumpeting of a martial tune, coming from a distance accompanied by a dim far cheering: "When Johnny comes marching home again, Hurrah! Hurrah!" The senator did not notice nor apparently hear. But Mr. Healey did. His jovial face, for an instant or two, became curiously melancholy. Joseph did not speak a dozen words at the table that night and avoided direct glances at the senator. But Miss Emmy preened coquettishly and smiled at the senator, for she knew he admired her.
She hoped Joseph was watching. Joseph was watching only the senator from the corner of his eye. So, the bastard hadn't remembered yet. It was possible he never would. In a few years it would not matter if he remembered. He, Joseph, would be safe, no longer vulnerable to idle malice, no longer vulnerable to Mr. Healey's anger at being deceived, if only by a name. At the end of the dinner Mr. Healey laid his hand in a fatherly fashion on Joseph's shoulder and said, "I'd like a minute of your time, Joe, in the lib'ry." For an instant Joseph stiffened, but there was nothing in Mr. Healey's face which was false or unkind, and he followed him into the study, or the library. Mr. Healey sat down at his table and faced Joseph, and smoked contemplatively on his cigar. "Joe," he said, as if asking the most innocent question, "who is Sister Elizabeth?" Again Joseph's heart jolted in his chest. He looked at Mr. Healey, and now all his caution returned to him. "Sister Elizabeth?" he repeated. What Mr. Healey said next would reveal what he really knew. "Come on, foe, you know very well who Sister Elizabeth is." "If you know that name, Mr. Healey, why do you ask me about it? Where did you hear it, and from whom?" Now Joseph understood that in some way Mr. Healey had learned of the name, but knew nothing else. Joseph's thought ran to Haroun, then dismissed it. He suddenly remembered burning the letter last night. It had never been out of his hands or his pockets since Haroun had delivered it to him, fully sealed. Joseph could see the fireplace. Had a scrap remained, a shred of paper? He kept his face still. He waited. "Now, Joe, don't you trust me?" So, he doesn't know anything but the name, and how did that come about? Then he recalled that Miss Emmy had told him weeks ago that Mrs. Murray searched his room every morning for some unknown reason. She could have found only a scrap of paper in the fireplace, and he cursed his carelessness in not making certain as he usually did. He said to Mr. Healey, "You remember our conversation last night, Mr. Healey. I told you of a nun I know, to whom my money will be delivered if I do not return from my-mission. She is Sister Elizabeth." "Where does she live? Where's her convent?" Joseph simulated profound surprise. "What does that matter to you, Mr. Healey? That is my own affair. But I will tell you a little. She was kind to me when I was a boy fresh from Ireland." Mr. Healey's face was no longer so pleasant. "All right, Joe, I'll believe that part. Never caught you in a lie yet. But you don't get no letters around here. I see all letters first." Joseph made his voice very quiet. "Let us say that I have a post office address in another city. It is my affair, Mr. Healey. It has nothing to do with you in the least. I know, from the papers I manage in the offices that you, also, have post office boxes in other cities. It is no affair of mine. I ask no questions. I have no curiosity." Mr. Healey's gaze was still narrowed on him. Joseph added, "If you feel you cannot trust me, Mr. Healey, I will resign-if you wish." Mr. Healey considered. That damned old whore, Miz Murray, and her whispered message to him tonight, and her triumphant showing to him of that little scrap of paper! Now he might lose Joe, that damned proud Irisher, and all at once, to his baffled amazement, Mr. Healey felt a bereavement so sharp that he was frightened. "Nothing to do with me, eh, Joe?" "None at all, Mr. Healey." "You never told me your real name." "Joseph Francis is my name. That is no lie." Mr. Healey smiled. He almost laughed. "Joe, you're always up on your high horse. Climb down. Never mind how I knew about Sister Elizabeth. It'll be our own secret, eh? And one of these days maybe you'll tell me all about it-confiding like." So, Joseph thought for the first time, the senator had not remembered. Had he remembered and told Mr. Healey the latter would not now be so paternal and kind, even wistful. It was the wistfulness that astonished Joseph. He had seen it before-on his father's face, in Ireland, and he had not understood it then, either.
Chapter 16
Mr. Healey had bought a private coach for himself, and for the use of the more important of his employees, and his friends, a year ago. Now that the Pennsylvania Railroad ran regularly between Titusville, Wheat- field, Pittsburgh, and Philadelphia, and then to New York, with adjacent stops depending on demand, Mr. Healey had decided to indulge himself, "at my age, and when will it be earlier?" It was a handsome coach, painted black with touches of crimson and gold on the outside, and contained two fine bedrooms, a room with a lavatory and flush toilet and a bath, an astonishingly large dining room, kitchen and parlor, not to mention a "conference room" containing businesslike chairs and table. AH these were on one side of the coach with a corridor running along them, and doors were installed for privacy and discretion. It \vas heated by steam from the engine, and all rooms were decorated and furnished lavishly so that the coach was, indeed, as Mr. Healey said with happy satisfaction, a hotel in itself. Walls were paneled with oak and mahogany, floors were covered with Oriental rugs, and fine pictures were installed on the walls and the kerosene lamps everywhere were of crystal and gilt and silver in intricate patterns. Windows were wide and curtained in expensive brocades. The furniture had been made in New York, to Mr. Healey's ostentatious order. It was, to use his own adjective, "grand." Mr. Vanderbilt and Mr. Astor may have had solid gold handles on doors and in the bathroom, but Mr. Healey had well-plated gold over silver. Joseph had heard of the coach but had not seen it. He was amazed at the luxury of it all, for he had not believed the colorful reports. Now it would be his habitation for fifteen hours or perhaps longer. He did not care for the ornate furnishings of the bedroom assigned to him and thought them absurd, but the bed was wide and comfortable. There was even a bookcase in the room but a glance at the contents did not arouse his interest. Mr. Montrose knocked on his door and entered and sat down on a brocade chair near the window, where Joseph also sat. The door had been carefully shut. The coach was still on a siding and would not be attached to the train, near the caboose, for an hour or more. "How do you like it?" asked Mr. Montrose, smiling. "I remember the night I first came to Titusville," said Joseph. "I have traveled since for Mr. Healey, but not in this coach, in the new Pullman cars. But I did not believe coaches like this existed." "I think they are ridiculous," said Mr. Montrose. "I am not one to deprecate luxury and ease and civilized amenities, but they should be discreet, especially in war time. Less-fortunate-people are inclined to become envious, not asking themselves, of course, why others had more than themselves and what industry, intelligence, and sleepless ambition produced such luxury and how it was earned by sweat and self-denial and superior intelligence, or what superb villainy. But every man who has to count his pennies feels that in some fashion those who surpass him in mind and will and ingenuity have 'exploited' him, and by their wealth have taken money from his own pocket. You feel this sentiment especially insistent in the North, though not in the South. It has been encouraged by Mr. Lincoln, and the 'new men' in the universities who are, themselves, envious of greater ability than their own, and more energy. There is nothing more dangerous than an inferior man who has been convinced that he has been deprived of what he feels is due to his humanness." Mr. Montrose laughed, and then said immediately, "It is no matter for laughter. Forty years ago a famous Frenchman said America is doomed because she draws no distinction between those who are naturally preeminent and those born to be obscure. That, sadly, is called 'democracy,' which is the common denominator of the barnyard." "I have lived in the country, for my father was a farmer," said Joseph, who was drawn into less reluctant speech by Mr. Montrose. "It was a matter of observation that animals established their own hierarchies of the superior and the inferior in character and in dominance. There was always a bell cow, the queen, who controlled the herd, and horses are very determined who shall lead, and chickens have their pecking order. Dogs soon decide who rules a given territory, and birds, in the spring, stake out their areas of food and fight off intruders. This is a world not only of men but other animals who are governed also by instinct, set down by nature, and I have come to terms with such a world." "You are no idealist," said Mr. Montrose, looking more closely at the young man.
"Idealism is for those who cannot come to terms with reality," said Joseph, "nor the world as it is." Mr. Montrose nodded. "Such men are mad. But madness is spreading, ever since Karl Marx promulgated his Communist Manifesto fifteen years ago. I am no prophet, but I can say this: Since the French Commune in 1795 the world has begun to lose its reason. "Would you say," asked Mr. Montrose, lighting one of his perfumed cheroots, "that Christ was an idealist?" He saw that Joseph's face, never open, had closed tightly. Then Joseph said, "I do remember that He said to a young man, 'Why do you call Me good? None save God is good.' That is hardly the remark of an idealist." "It is the remark of a sensible Man," said Mr. Montrose. "If there are angels I believe they denounce fools more than any other sort of criminal." He puffed thoughtfully at his cheroot. "I think, in the future and beginning now, that America will be ruled-and ultimately destroyed-by fools. Do not denigrate Mr. Lincoln too much, though I confess to despising him. He said that America will never be conquered from without but by the Vandals within. I fear he is only too right." Mr. Montrose had brought a thick portmanteau into Joseph's room. He opened it now and showed Joseph the contents: gold bills of denominations not less than one hundred dollars each, and some of a thousand dollars. Joseph saw this wealth and said nothing. In the words of his father, it was a king's ransom, and this did not include the money he also carried. Mr. Montrose said, "If I should not-survive-guard this with your life and return it to Mr. Healey." He leaned back in his chair. "You will be taught much on this journey. You have only to refrain from asking questions. You have only to listen. And to act." Joseph nodded. Mr. Montrose locked the portmanteau and stood up. The train was moving out of the yards. Joseph saw the hills and the town as they slid by his window. It was late afternoon and everything shimmered in a golden dust. It was unusually warm for April. He saw a long line of recruits marching raggedly down a narrow street and faintly heard martial music. He saw the flags. He shrugged. They had nothing to do with him. Joseph and Mr. Montrose met for supper in the dining room. The train was gathering speed and roared through the countryside, howling and pounding. Two tall young Negroes served the supper, dignified men with watchful eyes, and silent and swift. There was whiskey, and wine, both of which Joseph refused, to Mr. Montrose's silent amusement. Mr. Mont- rose saw that Joseph was not aware of the rich meat, the hot breads, the vegetables swimming in butter, the delicate pastries. He ate as a necessity, not as a pleasure. A man who is not discerning about food, thought Mr. Montrose, is not necessarily a dolt. He may have grimmer objectives. He was slightly curious concerning Joseph, but he did not deprecate him. Such commanded respect, though never admiration, for they were beyond pleasure, beyond gratification, beyond the usual joys of the world. This man is young, thought Mr. Montrose, but there are empty chasms in his soul, and so he is, perhaps, more dangerous than all the rest of us. He has not yet been tested. We shall see. They went together into the small but luxurious parlor of the train, and Mr. Montrose busied himself with certain records and Joseph watched the early evening landscape beyond the polished windows. The sky had the poignant shine of deep aquamarine, flushed with rose in the west, and the trees of the spring were bright gold against it, and the earth had turned brilliantly green. Cattle roamed the pastures and stopped beside the reflected blue of streams and ponds, and farmhouses stood at a distance, white and placid, their huge red barns towering over them. Hedges were touched with yellow or soft green; here and there lay pools of tiny purple wild flowers or freshly minted dandelions. Beyond all this lifted hills of lavender and heliotrope, and woods as dense as dark-green jungles. Wide peace lay over all, as tranquil as still water, and shining. In this coach no sound from outside could enter and so there was the illusion of radiant silence about the countryside. Watching, Joseph was taken by the old dark melancholy he knew, and hated, so well. Were Daniel Armagh here he would break into poetry, his musical voice both moving and hushed. He would speak of the perfection of nature, which reflected the perfection of God. But Joseph knew that beneath all that bright tranquility, that green and gold and purple beatitude, writhed a savage struggle for life, for prey, for food. There was not a root, however frail or red or brown or timidly green, on which some death battle was not taking place, minute perhaps but as surely lethal as any battle engaged in by man. There was not a leaf which was not being attacked, not a drop of water but in which a Waterloo was taking place. In that aquamarine vault so benignly beaming above hawks were swooping on defenseless birds, and buzzards were wheeling, gazing for carrion. Some of the cattle munching there were themselves battlefields and were themselves dying. The bark of the new trees was being riddled by insects who were drinking of the sappy lifeblood, and many of the trees would die before autumn. The flowering hedges were the flowers of a graveyard. Daniel Armagh had spoken of nature's celebration of life. Joseph thought of it as the celebration of eternal death, forever triumphant. We have this moment's breath, he said to himself. It may be stopped the next instant. We, too, are celebrants at an endless funeral. Mr. Montrose put aside his books and said quietly, "And now we must have a talk before we go to bed, for this is a long journey and so far the coaches ahead are not yet filled with listening ears or curious ones." He began to speak and Joseph listened with that focused intensity of his. He said nothing. His face did not change; it was not possible to read his thoughts nor conjecture on them. He sat as still as stone beside the window in his dark and newly rich clothing-which Mr. Healey had bought -and never did one of his black and polished boots twitch nor did his hands stir nervously. The last light died in his russet hair and his face was hidden. "You see, now, that there is much for us to do, besides this personal mission. Mr. Healey wished you to know. He places great trust in you." He smiled faintly at Joseph. "You are permitted two questions." "No," said Joseph. "You understand?" "I understand that I am to learn and watch and show no curiosity." "Good," said Mr. Montrose. The landscape had turned gray and black and dim beyond the windows. At a knock on the door one of the young Negroes entered and lit the crystal lamp which hung from the polished ceiling. Mr. Montrose gathered up his books. "I think I shall retire," he said and looked at Joseph with his yellowish eyes. "I suggest you do so also, for we shall be very busy when we arrive in New York." Joseph sat for some time alone in the parlor and saw his own somber reflection in the black mirror of the window. Even alone as he was his face showed no emotion. But a peculiar weariness, not of the body but of the mind, began to burden him. He stood up and felt old and tired. He went to his bedroom, undressed and went to bed. The rails sang under him; the joints clicked like castanets. The bedroom swayed like a ship. It was very warm in the room. Joseph lay on the top of the soft blankets and stared emptily at nothing. A long time passed and he still did not sleep. His nightshirt felt cold against his body for all of the warmth in the room. He was not what the Irish called a "sleeper" under the best of circumstances, and tonight he could not even feel drowsy. lie heard the soft step of the young Negroes in the corridor outside as they patrolled the rich coach and inspected the dimmed lamps that flickered in the ceiling. Once or twice Joseph heard their muted voices, melodious and light, and once they laughed lightheartedly, and he briefly wondered at them and why they should laugh at all. The train moaned through the night and there was no answer. Now the train was slowing and Joseph half-sat up to look through the window over which he had not drawn the curtains. He saw the glisten of many rails in the moonlight and beyond them the feeble light of some little unknown depot. Then between his train and the depot clattered another train, lighted from every window, and nearly every window was open to the warm and suddenly oppressive night. Joseph could see clearly into the many slowly moving coaches. They were filled with young soldiers, all bandaged, all wounded, lying asprawl on makeshift beds, and on wicker seats. He saw staring and sightless boys' faces under reddened cloth, faces as pale as linen and as bereft of life; he saw trussed arms and legs. He could not hear groans or cries of anguish, but he could sense them. Through the bloody clutter of the suffering and the dying moved young women in caps and white aprons and among them were the black habits of young nuns and their white wimples. They carried basins and jugs of water and towels and sponges. They bent over the boys, stroking cheeks, holding wet hands, talking soundlessly, smiling, sometimes weeping, opening or closing windows, holding water to fevered mouths, cheering, grimacing with amusement to hide their pain, consoling, sponging away blood. Both trains had halted uneasily, side by side, for a moment or two. Joseph knew this was a troop train going into the nearby and anonymous town, a hospital train. A young woman in cap and apron straightened up from a youth she was attending, and there were tears on her cheeks. She, for some reason, looked directly through the window at Joseph's darkened coach, and he moved a little from the window though he knew she could not see him. I have seen her before, thought Joseph, but he could not remember. The coach opposite was aglare with the yellow light of numerous lanterns and seemed to steam with heat. Joseph forgot the misery and suffering he had seen and stared at the tall young woman, who seemed to be exhausted beyond endurance. She stood in a drooping attitude, a bloody bandage in her hand, her head lifted, her eyes holding the expression, far and distant, of one who has looked on too much pain. She gazed at Joseph's sleek coach with the indifference of despair, her eyes hollowed, her nose pinched, her pretty mouth as dry and white as cotton. But her tiredness, her drooping posture, her manifest depletion of young vitality, and her coarse apron and cap, could not hide the slender loveliness of her body, the beauty of her face. Her loosened hair rolled in tawny ringlets and damp curls to her shoulders, and her eyes shimmered like dark opals above her finely boned cheeks, now sparkling with fire, now dimming, now taking on the amber of her hair, now expressing intense sweetness and hidden glowings. Her neck was long and graceful, and as soft as silk, and her hands, as she held the bandages, were narrow and finely tapered. She seemed to look directly at Joseph with those remarkable eyes of hers, those unmurky and innocent and tender eyes, so alive, so brilliant. They expressed strength as well as delicacy, courage as well as sadness, and a frailly indomitable spirit. There was one gemmed ring on her left hand, a dazzle of diamonds and emeralds. Joseph sat up straighter, and looked deeply into the girl's face. She was not much older than himself, perhaps two or three or four years, yet to him she appeared as young as his sister, Regina. She would not submit to exhaustion. She would go on after a moment. The coaches, though not moving, rocked a little. A soldier spoke to her, a man out of sight and Joseph saw her bend her slight body and he saw the outline of a perfect young breast under a dark blue cotton dress. The lantern light lay in a little pool, shivering, in the hollow of her throat. Her face was full of pity; it trembled with mercy and quickened concern. Then the troop train moved on to the depot. Joseph still half-sat, stiffly. The girl was lost in the glare of following coaches. He lay down, very slowly. He knew that he knew her; he could almost hear her voice, soft and low, beseeching. Then all at once he was taken by something he had never experienced before, and did not know. It was a wild and passionate surge in him, at once desirous and lost and aching, fiercely devouring, making him alive as he had never been alive before and conscious of his own body and his shouting mind. He pushed open his window. He saw the diminishing lights of the other train as it neared the depot, and suddenly he wanted to jump from his own train and race after the other. So hot, so demanding, so turbulent were his feelings, so hungry and emphatic, that he lost his reason, his cold aplomb and disciplined self-control. Even in his turmoil he could dazedly ask himself what had struck him like this, and with wonder, and to marvel at his emotions. It had not been the girl's beauty alone which had bludgeoned him, for he had seen prettier and younger and certainly more blooming in Mr. Healey's brothels. He had seen gayer-this girl was not gay in the least. He had known her, but where he could not remember. Her name would not come to him. In the streets of Boston, New York, Philadelphia, in a carriage? She was obviously a lady of breeding and gentility. Had she passed him somewhere? For an instant he could smell violets, and see a cheek rosier than the pearly one he had just glimpsed. Yes, he had seen prettier and more girlish. But they were nothing to this young woman who had such gentle pride, such selfless compassion, such determined desire to serve and console. Then Joseph was outraged at the thought that she was attending sweating, bleeding, and stinking men straight from the battlefields, was touching them with her soft hands, was wiping away their grime and was carrying odorous vessels away from them. Where was her father, her guardians, that they permitted this disgusting labor in the abattoirs? He hated them. Again he longed to leap from this train and go after the girl and take her- I have lost my mind, he thought, and forced himself to lie still. What is she to me, a woman I'll never see again? Then, at that thought he felt bereft, torn with grief, savaged by longing, and, to his immediate horror, by desire. He told himself it was shameful, then the next moment he buried his face in his pillow. He said, aloud, "I have seen her. I have heard her name. Sometime I will remember. Then I will find her again, I will find her-" And what will you do then? asked the cold voice in his brain which was always ready to admonish and to mock him and to control and advise him. The train moved on into the night, clattering with gained speed. It had been sidetracked briefly to permit the troop train to pass. Joseph's eyes strained after the other train, now