Captains and The Kings (34 page)

"Now, let's be reasonable, Joe. It was all up in the air. I'm not in the oil business except for investments and such. Just one of my interests. You got the best man for yourself. But when it came down firm you told me. Well, go on. That's not all of it, is it?"
"No," said Joseph. "Mr. Handell told me to think about it. The one- third, he said, was ridiculous. Besides, I had put in for Harry, too. After all, Harry in a way gave me the original idea- It was a remark he made two years ago, out in the field. So, I thought about it. Then"-and Joseph colored-"I wrote to Mr. Rockefeller. He asked me to come to meet him. I had told him about Mr. Handell's offer and interest-" "Good," said Mr. Healey. "Play one rascal against another, but watch they don't cuddle up together against you. And then you wrote Mr. Handell that Mr. Rockefeller was interested." "Yes. So, on this trip I went to Mr. Handell again and told him to make up his mind at once." "You told Jason Handell that, right to his face, right in his own big offices?" Mr. Healey's face danced with enjoyment and pleasure. "Wonder he didn't kick you out! He's got a mean cold temper." "He didn't kick me out. He just told me I was an inexperienced, gullible, contemptible, ridiculous greenhorn." "And you stuck to your guns." That I did, Mr. Healey." Mr. Healey leaned back and laughed aloud. "Trouble with Handell, he ain't Irish. Don't understand how mad we are, I'm thinking. Crazy as loons. Now, he's a man with a mind that don't do anything but churn out dollars. And you just a spalpeen, a young Irisher. I'd like to have seen his face, that I would!" "It wasn't very pleasant," said Joseph. All his tensed muscles were relaxing. He felt dazed, feeble, but oddly exhilarated, as if delivered from devastating peril. "I bet it wasn't," said Mr. Healey. "So, how is it now?" "He will let you buy one-third of the shares at the inside price. And I will give Harry one quarter of my royalties." Mr. Healey shook his head over and over, as if marveling, as if incredulous. He gazed at Joseph as though at a miracle he did not accept, and could not accept. Joseph unrolled the blueprints and extracted a sheaf of papers from them. "Here is the agreement I have with Mr. Handell," he said. "We fought over every paragraph." Mr. Healey accepted the sheaf of papers and read them slowly. Then he put them down. He said, "Sometimes, Irish, I wonder if you got good sense. And then I read this, and I see the sly Irish hand in ever}' line. Tied him up, proper, as the Sassenagh would say. Must be something to that patent of yours. When's he going to pay you anything on it? Got to be a binder, you know." Joseph let out a long breath. "I said I wouldn't cash his cheque for five thousand dollars until you had looked over the contract and approved of it." "You've got the cheque?" "Right here, sir," and Joseph reached into the inside pocket of his coat and pulled out his pocketbook. He gave a slip of paper to Mr. Healey, who pretended to scrutinize it. The warm spring sunlight flowed into the study and Joseph watched Mr. Healey's face and could not read it. He was only conscious of relief, weakening and almost paralyzing relief. Mr. Healey returned the cheque. He studied Joseph. "What if I'd kicked you out, Joe, after what you told me?" "I'd have been sorry, sir. But I wouldn't have starved. Mr. Handell offered me a position with him, in Pittsburgh." "At twice your present salary, eh?" "Yes." "And you refused. Joe, you keep me off my feet. One minute I think you're bright and the next I think you're stupid. Can't make up my mind." "What would you have done, Mr. Healey?" and Joseph smiled for the first time. Mr. Healey put up two fat defensive palms. Then he dropped them slowly. "That ain't a question I'm going to answer, Irish," he said. He put a hand across his desk. "But let's shake on it, foe. And you cash that cheque and buy your options, and more. No, sir, I'm not going to answer that question of yours. No use thinking back in your life. You just got to go ahead."
He stood up. "Best you get to work." He looked at his watch. "Got to call on Jim Spaulding. All right, Irish. I don't say you're very smart, but sometimes there's better things than being smart. I reckon." As Joseph went to the door Mr. Healey said, "What do you mean, you'd have been sorry if I'd kicked you out?" Joseph put his hand on the door, then looked over his shoulder. "I don't know, sir," he answered, and left. Mr. Healey smiled as the door closed and began to hum under his breath. Mr. James Spaulding sat back in his office chair and regarded Mr. Healey with a plastic face, full of emotional expression-for effect-combining consternation, stupefaction, and absolute stunned amazement. Not all of it was hypocritical. "Ed," he said, in a low and musical and shaking voice, "you must have lost your wits. I refuse to execute this document until you have had time to consider, to reflect, to judge whether or not you have been under evil coercion and influence-" "The only evil coercion and influence, Jim, that ever bothers me comes from politicians-and lawyers. Now, don't look as though I stuck a knife in you. You know we know each other too well for foolishness." "Forgive me!" sang Mr. Spaulding, on the verge of tears. "But, his youth! His inexperience, his-his-I am not impressed!" He glanced down at the document with loathing, as if it held smelly filth. He let his hands visibly tremble. Mr. Healey was highly amused. "Come on, Jim," he said. "This ain't the op'ry house or a minstrel show. Save the theatrics for the judges and the juries. I know you up and down, as you think you know me. Read that there paper over again, and see what's in it for you, too." Mr. Spaulding reread a portion. He seemed about to cry. Mr. Healey chuckled. The two men looked at each other, cynical, without illusion, yet with sardonic affection. Mr. Spaulding then put on an expression of solemn and almost religious dedication, and Mr. Healey kindly refrained from laughing. "Very well, Ed, if this is what you want I can only respect your wishes." Mr. Spaulding put his hand on the document as if about to swear an oath, and as if the document were the Bible. In truth, he respected it far more.
Chapter 23
Miss Emmy had not been shipped to Senator Hennessey after all. The senator had discreetly refused her, for he had in some subtle way engaged the regard of Mr. Lincoln for his support of the war. He had gone to the President, all candor and concern, and had offered all his wealth and his devotion, and the beset Mr. Lincoln, surrounded by subversion and disaffection, forgot his usual skepticism concerning politicians and had pathetically accepted the powerful senator's offer of friendship and service. It was not his first error, nor was it to be his last. He had regarded the senator's overtures as the mark of a reluctantly persuaded man, for the senator was not of his party but of the conservative Democratic coalition. "I know," he said to the senator, "that you regard us Whigs, or Republicans, as wild radicals and dangerous innovators, and your confession that we are not touches my heart." "I have my reservations concerning your social radicalism, your Excellency," Tom had confessed with magnanimous splendor, "but in these Dangerous Days are we not all Americans, and must we not all trust our government?" "My social radicalism, as you call it, Senator," said Mr. Lincoln with wryness, "is only an attempt to overcome certain inequities in the social order, and is also founded on the hope that this war will result not only in our progress and recognition as a Nation, but in national amity, justice, compassion and peace among brothers." What a damned fool, thought the senator, as he soberly nodded. If such an idiot as he can become President who can not? "We have no reason to fear each other, North or South," said the President sadly. "We have only to fear our enemies abroad, who wish us to be destroyed. Yet, I believe that no alien will ever drink of our free waters nor tread on our free land. If we are betrayed, we shall be betrayed from within-at the seduction of our foreign enemies." So Miss Emmy remained at home in Titusville and Mr. Healey was not displeased. His fondness for the young woman had increased for as the years had advanced so had his desire for variety in women decreased. Miss Emmy, to him, was simultaneously his wife and his daughter. She was a fond habit. He was weary of changes. He had had enough in his youth and early manhood. Now Miss Emmy was to him the favorite cushion for his head, the silent custodian for his shy secret thoughts, the breast of his comfort. He had mentioned her in his will. Miss Emmy was shrewd and knowing. But her urgent desire for Joseph Armagh had not abated at all. His continued refusal to see her as a delectable and complaisant young woman enraged her. It also insulted her. Did that Irish nobody regard her as beneath him, he with all his pretensions? She would waylay him in the upper and lower halls, languishing, swinging her satin and embroidered hoops, letting him glimpse the expanse of her white breast, beguiling him with her tossed curls and ringlets, coming close to him so he could smell her perfumes-she wafted scented kerchiefs in his face-and dropping her long-lashed eyes at him and then opening them suddenly so he could see their brilliance fixed upon him. She smiled; she sighed; she pined and grieved eloquently when they were alone. She fluttered fans at him and looked archly over their tops. Joseph treated her with cold courtesy, slipped by her, and left her. He would not engage in conversation with her except at the table and in the company of Mr. Healey. While all this was not entirely loyalty it was truly indifference. He thought Miss Emmy a vulgar trollop, and her airs ridiculous, considering who and what she was. He also could not forget Katherine Hennessey. Never deliberately did he remember her; never did he try to remember her. But he could not forget her tender and beautiful face, her entrancing eyes, her devotion and self-sacrifice, and her exhausted collapse at the concert after probably weeks of attending the wounded and dying. There had been something about her which remained stubbornly in his mind, resisting all his efforts to reject. Perhaps it had been her simplicity, her ardor, her shining-eyed courage, which had reminded him of his mother. He hated himself for remembering. He forced himself to work harder so as to forget. He hated Senator Hennessey for a number of reasons beyond his brutal sensuality, his cruel hypocrisy, his politician's shameless exigency, his greed and grossness. He hated him because he was Katherine Hennessey's husband, and because as a husband he had betrayed her over and over, and had contempt for her. Mr. Healey had laughingly informed Joseph of the senator's tireless exploits with women, and his reputation as a womanizer. He had used his wife's money, as well as his father's, to advance himself, yet, said Mr. Healey with regret, he treated Katherine as if she were a slut and not truly worthy of his respect and consideration. However, he always called her to his side to be photographed with her, the very image of the adoring husband, the family man, the loving father. She always obeyed. She loved him. For that, sometimes, Joseph despised her. Such a woman surely knew what her husband was. That she permitted him to display himself to her in all his arrogant viciousness was something Joseph could not understand. Was she one of those who enjoyed humiliation, cruelty, assaults on self- respect, brutality? If so, then she was mad and not worthy of anyone's concern or affection. Love, surely, must be turned to hatred by neglect and abuse. That is what Joseph thought, in his youth. He was yet to learn that love endures all things, blindly, helplessly, and cannot help itself. He did not understand even when his most desperate efforts to forget Katherine were always defeated. The sick passion of his love for her tainted everything in his life, and he could not rid himself of it. He saw her face in every carriage, though she was in Washington. He had heard her voice years ago, but he heard it now in every other woman's voice. It had become a shadowy nightmare to him, and he was appalled that he no longer had entire control over his own will and thoughts. Miss Emmy, the trollop and the drab, held no interest for him. To Joseph, she was a parody of Katherine Hennessey, even if he frequently visited the brothels from which she had come. Her airs and her graces made him loathe her, though they grimly amused him. Sometimes her fine eyes reminded him of Katherine, and he wanted to strike her for this blasphemy. Miss Emmy would see, then, his fierce concentrated look, and thought that it was only, after all, his shyness and his regard for his employer which restrained him. She watched for an opportunity to help him overcome such delicacies. Haroun Zieff had become Mr. Henley's overseer in the oil fields which he owned, and so Harry no longer slept over the stables but occupied the room he had originally occupied years ago as a waif. But his occupation was not regular. His work often compelled him to remain in or near the fields at night, when a well was ready for "blowing." For the danger and responsibility Mr. Healey paid him thirty-five dollars a week, and a jocular bonus when a well "came in." ("Maybe the old boy thinks I can pray them in," Harry once remarked to Joseph, laughing.) Joseph had to wait several impatient days before Harry returned from his tours to tell him that all was well, that their employer had not thrown him, Joseph, out, and that everything had been arranged amicably. The two young men sat in Harry's room-the green room-and congratulated each other. Harry had taken up cheroots, which Joseph found annoying, and he had become strong and stocky with a man's muscular and active body, though his dark face was still boyishly impish and his black eyes still glittered with mischief and good nature. Joseph suddenly said, "Now, I know why I thought Captain Oglethorpe looked a little familiar. You and he resemble each other. You're both brigands." Harry had listened to Joseph's account of the attack on the wharf- though he had not disclosed exactly why he had been there at all with Mr. Montrose. It had been vaguely referred to as a "shipment," but Harry's eyes had sparkled with mirth though the rest of his face remained serious. "You should have killed the bastard," he said. "Would you have killed the-man, Harry?" "Of course," said the younger man, as if the question was absurd. "He was going to kill all of you, wasn't he? Isn't your life as good as his own? Or did you think his was more valuable?" "I'll remember that, the next time." "Remember that, now," said Harry and now his eyes no longer smiled. "I've found out something: man is a violent animal, no matter what the pure-in-heart say, and nothing will ever change him. I hope not. I've been reading your Darwin. A species that can't fight and protect itself is killed off fast by nature. The old boys in the Bible did a lot of killing in their 'holy' wars, and didn't God once admit to being the God of Battles? Remember that song we're all singing: 'Battle Hymn of the Republic'? Damn me, if it isn't the goriest hymn I ever heard! And all 'to make men free,' it says piously. But all the time it means killing. A man's got to kill when he has to, Joe." Joseph stood up. "I suppose you're right," he said, and thought of the desperate struggle between the men of his blood and the English, and he thought of his father who would not have killed even to protect his wife and children. He heard a faint rustling outside the door and smiled a little. Mrs. Murray, the massive troll, was listening again outside the door for any morsel she could gather to be relayed, if important, to Mr. Healey. Her malignance against Joseph had not decreased in these years, but had grown, and was as unrelenting and as sleepless as all evil. Joseph never once had wondered why, for he knew that hatred and enmity and malice are often founded on nothing at all but rise of themselves like sharp stones in a field. He had brought himself to the point where he sometimes teased the woman, suddenly stealing to doors, and throwing them open in her fat and fishlike face. It gave him pleasure to see her furtiveness and hear her flustered mutter that she was "just passing." But she was more wary now. When he flung open the door he could see just the hurrying shadow of her down the hall. It was an early summer evening and the lights had not been lit as yet upstairs, though they fluttered below. Mr. Healey was in his study. Dinner was over. The new warmth of the year, and his growing burden of work, was tiring Joseph. He hesitated after he had closed Harry's door. Mr. Healey, these days, liked him to visit him briefly in the evenings before bedtime, in the study. They talked business, but most of the time they merely sat in genial silence while Mr. Healey studied Joseph and Joseph made a few notes for the next day. He had brought himself, lately, to endure brandy, and even a little whiskey, remembering Mr. Healey's observation. But he was never to like them and always mistrusted them. He decided to visit the man who had made so much possible for him, and had given him the only lasting kindness of his life. Joseph disliked the gratitude he felt for what Mr. Healey had done, reminding himself that he had given due service in kind. Gratitude involved a man with another man, and that weakened him. But lately it had come to him that Mr. Healey was lonely, as all men are lonely. So he went towards the staircase, yawning a little. Mr. Healey's bedroom door opened and Miss Emmy appeared on the ; threshold. The two young people looked at each other. Joseph stepped back, instinctively, and Miss Emmy was obviously startled to see him so I dose to the door. She stared at him in the warm dusky light, which flowed upwards from below, and suddenly her face flushed and an overpowering emotion ran over it. Never had Joseph appeared to her so desirable, so strong, so virile, so young as she was young, and so full of health and vitality. She stepped impulsively across the threshold, her pale laces and ribbons and satin robe flowing about her, her mass of bright hair curiously agitated, and she flung her arms about his neck, and before he could even lift his hand she had kissed his lips and had then pressed her head against his chest, murmuring deeply and wantonly in her smooth throat. She had not planned her seduction like this, with not only Mrs. Murray the house, but Bill Strickland in the kitchen, Harry in his room, and Ir. Healey in his study. She had not given danger a single thought, augh she was naturally cautious. Joseph's unexpected appearance, the light of his face so suddenly close to her, the sleek russet gleaming of thick hair, and his lean figure, had overcome her prudence. She had no plan of drawing him into a room. But her hunger for him, and her desire, and even what love she could feel for anyone, had made her move without a thought, without an inner warning. She clung to him. He had stiffened. He raised his hands to her round arms and grasped them and tried to push her from him, but she clung tighter, and with a kind of uncontrolled passion, rolling her head on his chest. Her heavy perfume sickened him. He said nothing, though she continued to murmur, her breath sometimes hot on his throat, her eyes glimmering up at him like the eyes of a loving and devoted dog. He felt nothing but disgust and contempt. The heat of her young body, the smoothness of her flesh, her urgent lips, her scent, the brush of her loosened hair against his hands, revolted him. He did not want to hurt her and so stopped himself from hurling her backwards into the room, but more than anything else he was angered that she should want to betray the man who doted on her and had protected her for many years. But at last he knew that he had to do something. He dared not speak for fear of arousing Mr. Healey below and having him open the study door to see what could clearly be seen at the head of the staircase. He could only thrust. He was amazed at her feverish strength, at the power of her desire, at the avidity of her clutching. He caught her wrists which were crossed behind his neck, and as he did so he felt an iron grasp on his shoulder. Miss Emmy uttered a faint cry and fell back from Joseph, throwing a hand against her mouth. For Bill Strickland, who had come up from the kitchen by way of the back staircase, had seized Joseph in a hating and gloating grasp, and was now whirling him about to face him, one gigantic fist raised to smash into his face. His own face, never completely human, was distorted with rage and satisfaction and his intention to kill or at least terribly maim. It was the face of a wild animal. The eyes glowed in the semidarkness. A monstrous joy made them flicker, for now this young man, this usurper, this enemy of Master Healey, this contemptuous evader of glances, was in his hands and he meant to destroy him once and for all.