Captains and The Kings (73 page)

wasn't in England. Rory, I may be only eighteen, but there's no milk on my chin. Pa never told me much, if anything, but I can almost read his mind. You just have to listen, not with your ears, but with another sense- Oh, hell, I can't explain it, can't prove it. It's just there." He drank some beer. "I read everything Mark Hanna says to the newspapers. And everything the President says. They hint. Maybe that's all they dare to do. Incidentally, I don't like our grinning Teddy Bear, Roosevelt, Assistant Navy Secretary. I just read that he ordered Commodore Dewey to get ready to attack Manila, eight thousand miles from here." "Hey, Irish, gonna sit there all night, and not drinking?" a bartender shouted at them. "Think we run this pub on talk?" "Shut up, Barney," said Kevin, waving his hand. "But send us more beer." His hand was massive, like a hod-carrier's, and his young face was suddenly massive too. " 'My country,'" he said, " 'may she always be right. But my country, right or wrong.'" He stared at Rory and now the dark iris of his eyes was surrounded by a glistening whiteness. "So long as she is my country, and not somebody else's." Rory's lips felt without muscle or strength. "Who else's could she be, Kevin?" Once again that heavy shrug. "Well, they are talking about a World Court in The Hague just now, aren't they? Or maybe Pa didn't mention it. Maybe you forgot to read the newspapers about it. Maybe the English newspapers didn't think it was important. Or something." Now he smiled widely and cynically at Rory and his big wolflike teeth, as white as snow, flashed in the gaslight. "I'm just Little Brother. I don't know a thing. Let's drink up this slop and get out of here. I've got an early class tomorrow." On the night of February 5th the battleship Maine was blown up in Havana Harbor. Over two hundred American officers and crew were killed. No one ever discovered who or what had caused this disaster, but it was enough for the enthusiastic warmongers throughout the country, and their bought press to demand war. No one was quite certain who was the "enemy," but after a little thought it was decided it was Spain. Later it was decided that a submarine mine, applied outside the ship, might be the cause, or again, it was argued, its munitions magazine had been exploded inside. Who was guilty? No one ever knew. Assistant Secretary of the Navy Theodore Roosevelt vehemently shouted that he was "convinced" that the disaster in Havana Harbor was not an accident, but the rescued captain of the ship, Mr. Charles D. Sigsbee, urged patience and calm until an investigation was concluded. Mr. Roosevelt almost lost his mind with rage. In the meantime the Spanish government expressed its horror, and went into mourning for the American dead. The government in Madrid made conciliation offers over and over, in despair, in an attempt to avoid a war, but Assistant Secretary of the Navy Roosevelt screamed for "vengeance." President McKinley was a prudent man, and not a warmonger. He begged the country to wait for the official investigation. "It is possible," he said, "that agents provocateurs are responsible for this, and not the Spanish government. I have heard whispers, and I have heard rumors-" By these words he signed his death warrant. Mr. Roosevelt was beside himself. He said of the President, "He has no more backbone than a chocolate eclair. Do you know what that white- livered cur up in the White House has done? He has prepared two messages, one for war and one for peace, and he doesn't know which one to send in!" So, they have moved, thought Rory Armagh, reading all this in the newspapers. It was not a nightmare after all. I was not frightening myself in the dark. What I heard in London was no gibberish of little plotters. It is the beginning of their Plan. In the meantime the President, despite Mr. Roosevelt and his friend, Captain Mahan, asked the American people to retain their senses and not be misled "by those who would lead us into a war which I have heard- though it may be only a rumor, a rumor-is the overture to a series of wars to entangle our country in foreign adventures. What the purpose is I do not entirely know; I can only surmise. Let us remember what George Washington implored us to do, to have peaceful relations with all countries but foreign entanglements with none." "White-livered cur!" shouted Mr. Roosevelt. The pressure on the President via the press and Mr. Roosevelt became insupportable. He pleaded over and over that as America was only just emerging into new prosperity she should mind her own business and be judicious and balanced. But it was hopeless. The hysterical and enthusiastic masses, led by vociferous editorials in the yellow press, demanded war against Spain, though none was quite certain why there should be such a war. So, despairing, faintly aware of the powerful forces against him from watching Europe and New York, he succumbed. On April 11, 1898, the ' President, broken-hearted, frightened, sent in his war message. On May 21 Commodore George Dewey steamed into Manila Bay, in command of j America's Asiatic Squadron, and sank all the Spanish warships that were \' there-eight thousand miles away. The Spanish government in Cuba, and the insurrectos themselves, were dumb with astonishment and incredulity. They heard that Mr. Roosevelt had joyously declared that the war was "in behalf of American interests." What those interests were no one was quite sure-except for the men in Washington and New York, in London and Berlin and Paris and Rome and Vienna and St. Petersburg. They called a quiet and exultant meeting, and shook hands, and said little or nothing at all. In June the American forces, singing, though they knew not why they sang, landed at Daiquiri, Cuba, with a loss of two men who had drowned. In July the miserable Spanish forces at San Juan Hill, Santiago, and at El Caney, were overwhelmed. On July 3 Admiral Cervera's Spanish fleet, commanded by disbelieving officers, tried to escape from Santiago and were destroyed by American warships, ordered there days before. The invading Americans, on July 17, captured Santiago, and the Spaniards surrendered, On July 26 the Spanish government in Madrid asked for the terms of surrender, and an armistice was signed in Paris on August 12. It was no sooner signed than the news arrived that American forces had taken Manila, the Philippines, and Puerto Rico in the Caribbean Sea-there had been no resistance at all. "How do you like the Journal's War?" cried the New York Journal with exultant delight, and the American people roared happily in answer. From London the American Ambassador congratulated his friend, Theodore Roosevelt, in an exuberant letter. "It has been a splendid little war!" he declared. America had acquired many overseas bases now. President McKinley was not pleased. He thought of Theodore Roosevelt and his friend, Captain Mahan, and he had many other thoughts. It was unfortunate that he put some of them on paper and sent them to alleged friends he had considered sympathetic. They found thoughtful resting places on faraway desks in various cities in Europe. Rory Armagh had lost interest long before the signing of the peace treaty in Paris. For his brother, Kevin, had died in the "splendid little war," killed in Santiago on board the American battleship, Texas, on July 28.
Chapter 44
At the beginning of spring vacation Kevin had said to his brother, "I'm not going back to Green Hills this summer. I'm not going to do my usual stint in Philadelphia in Pa's offices, either. I've got a job for the Boston Gazette, doing feature articles on the war." "You?" said Rory, disbelieving. Kevin had smiled. "You may think I'm just a plodder, and I am. But I can write factually. I may not be inspired or hysterical, but I can write objectively. So, the paper hired me, and I'm off to the wars to report. I think it'll be over, soon." "You are looking for excitement," Rory had accused him, dismayed, thinking of their father. Kevin laughed. "Know anybody less excitable than me? No, I'm looking for something." "What?" But Kevin had shrugged his big heavy shoulders, which were so effective on the football field. Kevin was "deep," as Joseph would say. He never revealed anything he did not want to reveal, about himself or anyone else, so Rory knew there was no use in pressing him. But Rory thought of what the faceless men had said in London: "We cannot have nationalism and sovereign states, which divide and disperse our interests. We must work for a world Socialistic empire, which we will be able to control without tedious distractions of independent political entities and their internal and external quarrels." "In short," Joseph had ironically told his son, "they will plunder the people of the world through heavy taxation in every country, then 'benevolently' return to the subdued masses part of that revenue in 'gifts,' 'aids,' 'social justice,' 'sharing,' all the people's money anyway-for which the cowed populace will be humbly grateful and become obedient and conforming. No, I won't tell you anything more. But you will learn as we go along, and accept it all." He had stared a moment, thoughtfully, at Rory. "We will have to see if you are reliable." "Pa," Rory had said, "you are not really one of them." Joseph had looked away. "That may be your opinion, Rory. I am as interested as they are in power." He remembered what Mr. Montrose had told him so long ago, in his early youth, that Marxism was not a "movement" for the liberation and rule of the "proletariat," but a conspiracy of those who called themselves the "Elite," and whose aim was despotism. Rory was to wonder to the end of his life if young Kevin had had any insight about these things, and to remember his conversation with him in that cold February of 1898 When Joseph and Bernadette and Ann Marie returned in early April it was Rory's miserable and unwanted task-undertaken with some resentment-to inform his parents that Kevin had already left i» America as a correspondent for the Boston Gazette. Joseph was predictably angered, and Bernadette threw up her fat arms and cried, "How ungrateful, how stupid, how like Kevin, to do this to his father! In the middle of term, too." To Rory's surprise Joseph had suddenly smiled his saturnine smile. "Well, he may learn something. I always thought he was 'deep.'" He had looked sharply at Rory. "I hope you didn't-shall we say-gossip with him about London?" Rory was offended. He said, "Pa, I'd like to talk to you in private," and they had gone upstairs to Joseph's rooms and Rory had told his father of his last real conversation with Kevin. Joseph had listened with that intensity of his, and then had nodded his head, even pridefully. "We have a good one, there," he had remarked. "I always thought it. Did you suspect that there was a touch of the knight errant in Kevin?" "No. There never was. He is absolutely practical and disillusioned, Pa." "Good," Joseph had said. "But to think the spalpeen used my name with that damned paper to get that job! Well, at least it shows he has enterprise and impudence. We won't need to worry, then. No harm will come to him. It's not as if he had enlisted." Kevin's articles began to appear in the newspaper almost weekly. To his family's surprise there was a kind of surly jocularity in them, a cold underlying cynicism, as well as practical reporting. They contained no ebullient patriotism, no hero-singing, no excitement or jubilation about "our war of liberation." They were totally dispassionate, which did not entirely please the sponsor. Then the articles stopped the latter part of June. Joseph, frowning, put enquiries in motion. He discovered that Kevin was no longer in the vicinity of Cuba. The newspaper asserted that, at his own desire, he had gone to the Philippines, "somewhere," and had written that he wished to be an "observer" on a battleship. The Gazette believed that the battleship's name was Texas, and expressed its hope that it would soon be in possession of "dispatches." The next dispatch was a telegram from the Admiral of the American Fleet at Santiago that Mr. Kevin Armagh had died as the result of a "random wild shot, coming from the enemy," which had reached Kevin "by a freak or ordinance of God," for it had not been directed at anyone or anything in particular. Standing in the great marble hall of his house, with the telegram in his hand, Joseph felt the atavistic Celt stirring in himself, a Celt who did not believe in the random or coincidental, but who believed in Fate. He stood in that hall, silent, motionless, for a long time before he went upstairs to inform his wife of the death of their son. He held himself stiff and climbed slowly, like an old haughty man who knew he was dying. If Bernadette had a favorite, in spite of her "sharp Irish tongue like knives," it had been Kevin, who had protected her from the supreme disaster only a year ago, and who, though always looking at her with his dark eyes devoid of any illusions or deep affection, had often appeared to understand her. Her raw humor of girlhood had become harsh and full of raillery, but Kevin had laughed in appreciation as no one else seemed to do these days. He had often, in the past three or four years, even joined her in joking extravagance and had actually teased her out of bad tempers. When she would become roughly hysterical in the presence of Joseph- who had a sardonic way of baiting her, knowing her love for him-it was Kevin who had given her warning winks and slight shakes of the head, and had quieted her. As much as it was possible for her to love any of her children she loved Kevin. It was late on a very hot thirtieth of July, and Bernadette, whose corpulence was a heavy burden in the heat, had been napping before her lonely interlude with a bottle and a glass, and then dinner. She sat up in her bed in her darkened room as Joseph came in, sweating in her pink silk and lace nightgown, her graying brown hair wet about her face and straggling on her mountainous shoulders. Her face, round and puffed with fat, was crimson and steamy, her once-fine eyes sunken in flesh and dazed with sleep, her nose and chins oily. Her huge breasts pushed against the fragile silk like udders, and she smelled of expensive perfume and perspiration and talcum powder, and hot obesity. "What, what?" she mumbled. Joseph knew where she kept her secret bottles, for a vengeful maid, discharged by Bernadette, had told him of her mistress' generous tipples in the evening. Joseph knew that his wife was now frequently drunk before dinner, but he cared no more for that than he did for anything else concerning the desperate Bernadette. Still without speaking and while Bernadette stared after him, slowly coming to full consciousness and blinking rapidly, he went to the little French cabinet near a far wall, lifted the lid and took out a bottle of Irish whiskey and a sticky glass. She watched, and the crimson on her cheeks deepened and a fresh burst of sweat poured out upon her and stained the nightgown darkly. She watched him, numbly, as he poured a good measure of the whiskey into the glass. Only her eyes moved when he came to the bed and put the glass in her hand. "Drink it," he said. "I think you are going to need it."