Captains and The Kings (47 page)

He has not been the same since that Regina went away. A new thought came to Bernadette and she sat up quickly. Would Joseph have cared that much if it had been herself who had left, she, the mother of his children? She saw Joseph's face again. Her love tried to blind and dazzle her. But she rarely lied to herself as she lied to others. She said aloud, "No, he wouldn't have cared that much." Again she felt that bleak desolation which had wounded her before. When the maid came to take away the tray Bernadette slapped her smartly on the cheek then burst into tears. All the household knew Joseph's moods, though he invariably seemed restrained, silent, never raising his voice, never speaking roughly or too quickly, never complaining. But the strength of his personality was such that he projected his mental climate without a word or a glance. So the great house was unusually quiet this day. The children stayed with their governess, the aging Miss Faulk, and Timothy Dineen found it necessary to consult with someone on a certain matter and so left the house in a trap, and the servants moved softly and spoke in subdued voices. The white mansion stood in the crisp bright air of autumn under its fading trees and every window was bright, but it seemed to be abandoned. The red calla lilies, the chysanthemums in their beds, the very late roses, bent in the shining wind, but there was no other movement outside, and no sign of any groom or gardener's boy. The only sound was the dry crackling of dying leaves and then the sudden screech of a bluejay or the shattering sound of a delayed woodpecker against a trunk, or the distant stamping of a horse in its stall. Bernadette, looking dejected, had gone to her tea. Joseph waited in his rooms. Never had time crept so slowly on sluggish feet. He kept glancing at his watch. Twenty after five. Twenty-five after. Half-past five. He heard hoofs and wheels and he stood up and looked through the window and saw the glittering black family victoria moving through the gates, drawn by two absolutely white horses. Joseph opened a cabinet, then, and laid out whiskey and glasses and soda and rang the bell for the butler. "Governor Hennessey's luggage should be taken to his room but I should like to confer with him as soon as possible, in my study." He rearranged the neatness of his plain white cuffs, and then his cravat, and rubbed his hands over his thick hair. He looked tall and black and deadly in the quiet room. There was an ice-cold exultation in him. He had destroyed worthier men than Governor Hennessey in his surge to power and money, but he had done it with no animosity at all, no feeling of vengeance or triumph. It was only business. But this was vengeance indeed, a personal vendetta, a focusing of loathing and enmity and hate long in the gestation, long in the gathering. The arrogant and swaggering governor, seemingly invulnerable, had become vulnerable and had been destroyed. Joseph made himself sit down and open a book. He heard the butler greeting the governor, heard Tom Hennessey's mumbled reply-he who never mumbled-and then heard the quick but stumbling footsteps up the stairs and down the long hall to Joseph's rooms. The governor appeared on the threshold and Joseph rose, his face shut and without expression. Tom Hennessey, large, overfleshed, flamboyant and impressive, now appeared disheveled and soiled, hasty and sweaty. All his color was gone. His face was like cracked plaster, quivering, his sensual mouth hanging loose, his chin uncertain, his forehead glazed and wet. Always immaculate, "the glass of fashion," he seemed unbuttoned and roughened now. There was a wild agitation about him, a trembling uncertainty, a desperate upheaval. His light eyes, always cynical and domineering, now had a distraught and leaping shine. His longish brown and gray hair, usually carefully combed and cajoled into waves, hung over his cheeks and neck and forehead, tangled and ungroomed. Joseph said, "How are you, Tom? Was your train late?" The governor walked unsteadily into the room. He looked about him, as if he had never seen this room or this man before, and did not know where he was. He took an aimless step or two, towards the windows, back again, then to one side. He stood at last behind a chair and gripped its back and looked at Joseph, and his breath was grating and noisy in the sunlit room. "They have ruined me," he said, and his voice was thick and unsure. Joseph saw that his eyes were deeply bloodshot as if he had been drinking. His cheeks puffed out and in as he breathed. He did not look away from Joseph. He repeated, "They have ruined me." "Who?" said Joseph and came closer to his father-in-law. The governor raised one formidable forefinger, and then it wobbled and drooped and his hand fell to his side. "I will find out, and I will cut their throats," he said with the utmost malignancy. His eyes jumped. "They haven't finished with me yet." "Please sit down, Tom," said Joseph and hoped that he was conveying solicitude. He took his father-in-law's shivering big arm and forced him into the chair he had been clutching. "Let me get you a drink. Then you must tell me about it." "A drink," said the governor, and he croaked as if choking. "That's all I have been doing for two days and two nights. But give me a drink, and a large one," and he coughed, strangling. He tried to drop his exhausted head against the back of the chair but he was so distracted that it immediately bounced forward and he clenched his fists on the arms of the chair and his breathing was very loud and audible. "God damn them," he said. "Oh, my God, curse them! But I'm not finished with them yet! No one ever got the better of Tom Hennessey!" Joseph put a glass half full of whiskey into the large white hand with its rings and its polished nails. Tom drank deeply, gluttonously, as if the glass held the elixir of life and strength. He inhaled raucously. His heavy shoulders visibly shook. He looked at the glass. Then he glanced up at Joseph with his reddened eyes, like the eyes of a tormented bull, and he said, "You haven't heard?" "No," said Joseph. "I haven't even seen any newspapers this past week. I've had too much work here in Green Hills. But, what is wrong? Who has ruined you?" The governor became still. He looked up at Joseph and those eyes fixed themselves on the younger man as if he had suddenly sensed something direful, something not quite in focus or apparent. He watched Joseph as he said, "You must know that though the Party gave out the idea that they were going to nominate me after all, they didn't. Day before yesterday they told me finally it was going to be Hancock." Joseph frowned. He sat on the edge of his desk and considered his boots. He compressed his lips, slightly shook his head. He said, "They did not tell me." "Not you? Not the biggest contributor to the Party? Not you who named the five state senators last year, and got them elected? They never told you, wrote you, telegraphed you?" The governor sat upright in his chair, and panted, but did not look away. "No," said Joseph, "they never told me." Now he turned his face to Tom and Tom saw his fierce concentrated eyes, his implacable face, the blade of his mouth and the white tension of his nose, and he misinterpreted them. He said, "I don't understand it. You, of all people." His voice was broken and rusty. "My son-in-law." He drank again, took the glass from his thick mouth and groaned. "But, you can do something, even now." "What do you suggest, Tom?" "Threaten them. It isn't too late." Then his face sagged. "Yes, it is too late." He put down his glass with a crash on the desk and rubbed his hands over and over his shaken face as if he were washing it. "It's too late. I forgot. There's worse." His shoulders heaved under his creased fawn coat. He bent his face in his rubbing hands and Joseph thought he was weeping. All the strong muscles and the fat of the great body visibly shrank, as though disintegrating. Now he was no longer the buoyant and commanding governor of the Commonwealth, the former colorful senator of the United States of America, the owner of enormous wealth and power. He was a shattered old man, wrecked, thrown down, dismantled, full of bewilderment and despair and an agony he had never known before in his life, and a sense of demented incredulity. He felt another glass being pressed against the back of one of the massaging and aimless hands. He started. Then he reached for the glass and fumbled it to his lips and the liquid went partly into his mouth and partly down his chin, dribbling. Joseph watched him and the quiet ferocity of his face deepened. He said, "You haven't told me. What is 'worse'?" The awful eyes, robbed of all humanity by anguish, disbelief, and torture, glared at Joseph. The large features were convulsed, misshapen. "Worse!" he said. "They-know everything. It isn't just Washington, though that's bad enough in their hypocritical eyes. Oh, God help me, God help me! Since I was governor-Joe, you know yourself. You profited. The state contracts, roads, bridges, right of ways, government buildings. All of it. Yes, I profited, too. But they did, more than I. More than even you. I did what they told me to. I obeyed every suggestion. I never objected. I was their man, wasn't I?" His eyes enlarged on Joseph, blood flecked, mad. "Do you know what they told me yesterday? That I was, in my way, the head of a Tweed Ring, here in this Commonwealth! They dared to tell me that! Who profited most? They did! Do you hear me, they did!" "Yes," said Joseph. "But, can you prove it?" "Prove it!" shouted the governor in a roaring voice. "Of course I can-" He stared at Joseph. "Can you? How?" "The contractors-" "The contractors are men making a living, and they can be intimidated by politicians as you know only too well, Tom. Do you think they will confess to the influence and the threats and the promises that were brought to bear on them? And so hang themselves, or at least be forced into bankruptcy and litigation and prosecution? And, perhaps, even be murdered? ji We all know what politicians are, don't we, Tom?" He regarded the governor with gravity. "But I'm sure our friends told you that, yesterday, didn't they?" Tom's big fingers smoothed themselves over and over the empty glass. :. He licked the drops of whiskey on his mouth. He was shaking as if struck by a powerful wind. "Yes," he whispered, "they did, that. But I thought "you would help me." Joseph sighed. "I'm no Samson, Tom, and neither are you. We can I make an effort to show who really profited. I have a battery of lawyers ;*in Philadelphia and they are ferrets. They could find out-though they'd put themselves into physical peril, as they'd know. We can appeal to the Attorney General, himself. We can appeal to muckrakers and zealous reformers in the Commonwealth. I can print accusations in my newspapers, and screaming editorials. And, what will it amount to? If your-friends- are indicted, so will you be, Tom. So will I. We're all in it together, robbing the people. That's what they'd call it, wouldn't they? And it would be the truth." He smiled a little. "The other Party would be out of its mind with delight -if we told them. We could testify under promised immunity. State's evidence. Corruption, malfeasance, theft, graft, spoils, intimidation of contractors to the state, looting, exploitation of labor, inferior materials at the highest prices, subornation, perjury. Everything. Of course, we could plead, ourselves, that we were intimidated, threatened. Do you think the people would believe it? You, the rich governor, I, the financier and what not? Come, Tom." "I don't care-" whispered the desperate governor. "I see. Something like from Macbeth: 'I am one, my liege,' who am so incensed-or something-concerning the world that 'I am reckless what I do to spite the world.' Tom, do you want to go to jail? Or, at the very least, to be dishonored and outcast, forever? Do you think the other Party will take you to its bosom in gratitude? We all know the worth of politicians' gratitude, don't we?" The blood-hazed eyes did not leave him. But a maddened speculation had begun to gleam in them. Tom said in a clearer voice, "You do not know it all, Joe. They have told me I have to make 'recompense.' That I must return 'the money' to the Commonwealth. With interest, with 'judicial and righteous penalties.' They told me. It will take almost all the money I have, all my investments. Everything. They have even shown me documents from Washington- They have even-forged-documents showing the source of the Hennessey money. Blackbirding. Things like that. Only part of the money, they told me, will be returned to the Commonwealth. The rest-" "Is for them?" "Yes." "They were that bold?" But Tom Hennessey did not reply. He was studying Joseph as he had never studied friend nor enemy before, with all the concentration and power of his intellect, which was not small, and all his intuition, all his Irish subtlety. Still watching with the complete focusing of his mind he said, "Yes, Joe. That bold. Something, somebody, is behind it. They wouldn't be that bold without orders." Joseph looked deeply into the eyes below him. He said, "They can't take everything. They won't take everything. You still have Katherine's money. You still have your wife's money. It is enough to keep you in modest circumstances, in your house in Philadelphia. Anything is preferable to Scandal, exposure, indictment, prosecution, jail. Isn't it? Anything is preferable to living in fear, isn't it? In the end you'd be better off financially by not fighting these-atrocious-demands. Do you realize how much lawyers would demand? They'd reduce you to poverty, Tom. I know lawyers." "You are asking me to do nothing at all?" Tom was slowly rising from his chair, clutching the arms and back. "You are asking me to do that?" "I am advising you," said Joseph. "And-you will do nothing-to help me?" Neither of the two men saw Bernadette, all black velvet and lace and bangles and veiled hat and gloves, on the threshold. She had just appeared. She had run happily up the stairs to greet her father, and her face still held the fading remnants of a smile, the mouth half-open and upturned, the eyes flashing, the hand outheld. But she had come upon her husband and her father, confronting each other, and the sharp Bernadette had suddenly known that here was not a friendly family discussion but two adversaries. She felt the hatred in the room, the feral smell of deadly enmity. She had known instantly that one of these men was maddened beyond endurance, and the other was the maddener, ruthless and terrible. She had heard their last words. Her hand slowly fell to her side and she had a sensation of giddiness and terror. She could hardly recognize her father in this broken man, whose potency was dwindling before her eyes, whose hair was disheveled, whose clothes were