Captains and The Kings (77 page)

Chapter 47
Joseph Armagh built a magnificent mansion for his son, Rory, and Claudia and their children on a fine tract of land adjoining his own house in Green Hills. The property was known thereafter as the Armagh "Settlement." Claudia found it "dull." Though Bernadette was proud of her daughter-in-law, and boasted of her, the two women detested each other. Claudia considered herself far above the Armagh family, and resented Bernadette's "demands." Though she was not very intelligent Claudia was a good mimic, and she would imitate her mother-in-law for the amusement of her friends in Wasihington and in Philadelphia. She would lilt as Bernadette lilted, and exaggerate Bernadette's manners. Bernadette thought her daughter-in-law affected and pretentious, which she was, and was immune to the famous charm, which she never saw. When Claudia "put on airs" to her, Bernadette would utter a rude word, and laugh out loud, coarsely. She, and only she, was the grande dame of the Armagh family, and not this chit with the tiny bosom and the broad hips and big fat legs. Bernadette had discovered that Claudia had bowed legs, and this was always excellent for one of Bernadette's own mimicries. Who was Claudia Worthington, anyway? She boasted of her ancestry. But Bernadette was an acute woman, and intelligent, and she soon discovered that Claudia's grandfather on her mother's side had been a poor and impoverished carpenter, for all his boasting that he came of an aristocratic English family. The ambassador's father, in Bernadette's opinion, had not been much better. He had begun as a coal miner in Pennsylvania, at eight dollars a week, but had invented a certain machine which did away with the employment of women and children in the mines. (He had stolen the invention from a more intelligent but more gullible miner, a fact Bernadette's spies sedulously discovered.) So, he had become rich and had put his sons through Harvard and Yale, and had emerged as an aristocrat. As for the ladies of Claudia's family, they had been ignorant nincompoops. Let Claudia wear her famous long white gloves everywhere. They were to conceal the fact that she had a slavey's or a barmaid's hands, angular, knotted, badly colored, and enormous. The noted ancestor related to the British Royal Family? Why, for God's sake, he had been but a guard at Windsor Castle! "Never mind," Joseph had told his wife, with dark amusement. "Let the fiction prevail. Who does it harm? If Claudia wishes to be related to the British Royal Family--and they are vulgarians, themselves--let her be related. Coming down to it, as the Church teaches, aren't we all children of Adam and Eve?" "Oh, shut up," Bernadette would say, with a laugh. "But that bowlegged snip is not going to wave her gloves in my face and breathlessly chatter to me and think she is impressing me. I told her once and for all that I knew all about her. I detest her, but for the sake of peace in the family I don't tell anyone else. Besides, her people are rich. I suppose Rory could have done worse. But all her fool remarks about 'low politicians!' And my father was a senator, and governor, when her people were picking coal cinders or splinters out of their bottoms. What a silly thing she is, with her soft gaspings and her infantile voice! I've heard her roaring at her children--like a hog-caller. And at the servants, too, if they forget the rose petals in her fingerbowl. Her grandmothers washed in zinc tubs and were glad to have them. My mother was a lady." "Yes, I know," said Joseph. "And your family was at least decent, intelligent, and literate, in Ireland," said Bernadette, with a passionate look of love at him. "Yes, I know. I used to gibe at you, but I think I was a little envious. My grandfather was only a blackbirder." "But look at all the money we all have," said Joseph, and Bernadette could not understand his tone of voice, and why he turned away. Bernadette was fond of her grandchildren, who were usually in the "Settlement," Claudia and Rory finding them impediments in Washington. This fondness surprised Joseph. He did not know that the fondness was composed partly of idle affection and partly malice. Daniel resembled Bernadette's father, and she was particularly attached to him. Joseph, his namesake, was a vacant fat boy with his mother's petulance and pretensions of grander and his intolerance of servants. The twin girls were "lumps," in Joseph's estimation. He had little regard for them, and doubted their intelligence. "Blood will out," Bernadette would say. "Rosemary and Claudette are no brighter than their mother, and they have her legs. Peasants." But they were fond of her, for she was more indulgent to them than she had been with her own children, and had fewer theories regarding them. It was unfortunate that none of them resembled Rory, the colorful, the courtly, the man of style and presence, who could charm with a twinkle. True, the little girls had red-gold hair and big light blue eyes, but they did not have Rory's dash. Nor did any of them look like Kevin, or Ann Marie. "You mustn't go upstairs and tease your poor auntie," Bernadette would say to her grandchildren. "She is just a child, herself. She had an accident. You mustn't make her cry, or take her dolls, or push her or make faces at her. You frighten her." "She wets her drawers like a baby," Daniel, the eldest, would say. "It runs on the floor. Sonetimes she stinks." "Dirty girl, dirty girl," the little girls would sing. "She can't help it," Bernadette would say, thinking of that day when Ann Marie had been changed from a lovely young woman into an idiot. Bernadette had confessed to her confessor, who had assured her that she had been quite correct in informing Ann Marie of the truth. What else could she have done? It was sad that the girl had not been informed as a child. Her conscience was pacified. It was all Elizabeth's fault, that shameless hussy, who was growing old too. And her disgusting son, Courtney, who was now a monk in Amalfi. Elizabeth's only son: a monk! It served her right. Bernadette was queen of the "Settlement." She was the empress, the ruling mistress of the dynasty. She boasted that her grandchildren adored her. If Daniel, as some people said, had the teeth of a chipmunk, it did not matter. If Joseph whined perpetually and sulked, it was just his way. If the little girls were rude and not very bright, they were at least somewhat pretty. They trailed her contentedly as her own children had never trailed. For she was always indulgent, and always, especially before an audience, the doting grandmother. She would almost squat before them--before an audience--her enormous hams thrusting out behind her--and speak to them in a sugary rich fashion. Daniel, the most intelligent, was a born cynic, and he would smirk. But he would play this game also, for Grandma was always ready with an extra dollar, or a treat, if she were pleased. The children would cluster about Bernadette, before an audience, and everybody was deeply affected. Such a close family, such affection, such devotion and loyalty. In private Bernadette would admonish the boys: "We have a Name to live up to. We must do everything correctly. You have a future." To the girls she would say, "You must make good marriages. You owe that to your father and your grandparents." They hardly understood her, at their age, but they had some respect for her, which was more than they had for their parents. Bernadette still had a "hard hand on her ," as Joseph once said. There were many who wondered why the resplendent Rory Armagh, with his flair and style and color, his quick jesting ways, his twinkle and his general handsomeness, had married Claudia Worthington. (But these were those who were immune to her charm and who found her babyish voice annoying and her mannerisms a little ridiculous, and who thought her unattractive.) Had Rory been asked he would have answered: "I often wonder, myself." He would have smiled in his wryly jocular way, only half jesting. Already numbed by the death of his young brother, the inexplicable desertion of Marjorie-which he still found incredible-made him feel, for many months, that he was not living at all, but dreaming in a dazed dark nightmare from which he could not wake. His apathy was frequently startled into savage rebellion, disbelief, hate, rage, like flashes of scarlet lightning in a night which would not end. He had spent himself in months of siege, which came to nothing, and which was haunted by the impulse to suicide. Then the apathy had set in, the dullness, the lightlessness, in which his color was quenched and his volubility reduced, to a great extent, for the rest of his life. He still kept the little flat-he kept it for six months -and visited it almost daily, hoping, blasphemously praying, that he would find Marjorie there, waiting for him with a full explanation. He would lie on the dusty bed in a state of physical and emotional exhaustion, staring blankly at the moldy ceiling. When he would get up he would feel as old as death itself, and broken. She had left nothing of hers behind but the jewels, which he had sold at once. There was not even a hairpin or a handkerchief, though he searched. It was as if she had never sung or laughed in here, or lain in his arms, or dusted or cooked. The little flat became a tomb to him, and at last he knew that if he did not recover from this desolate horror, this terrible yearning, this dry weeping, this lethargy, he would die. One way or another, he would die. It was not until he began to hate Marjorie for what she had done to him, in cold blood and indifference and rejection, as he thought, that his young body and young mind could respond to outside stimuli again. Her conduct was still inexplicable, but as his friends often said, women were inexplicable in themselves. No doubt she had already forgotten him. To her it had been a light affair, of no lasting consequence, otherwise her father could not have influenced her to abandon him and arrange for that execrable annulment. Or, she was weaker and less intelligent and more frivolous than he had guessed. She had made a fool of Rory Daniel Armagh, and Rory's pride finally rescued him and made him look about him again. A damned wench-making a fool of him, lying to him, laughing at him behind his back, feeling herself superior to him, mocking him, even when she lay with him! Self-preservation made him hate her eventually, so that he could begin again. But never again was his laugh so loud, his smiles so wide and skeptically generous, his feet so always eager for dancing, his ear always so ready for gay music, his warmth so spontaneous. "Rory's growing up at last," said some of his many friends at Harvard. They noted, with approval, that he had suddenly become more mature, more attentive to argument and less happily belligerent, more thoughtful, and more restrained. If his face were tighter and his light blue eyes less gay than formerly, this too was noted with approval. He was a man at last, and no longer a boy. There was one who watched him, and that was his father, Joseph, who knew exactly what his son was suffering. He will get over it, thought, Joseph, but he himself was surprised at the tenacity of his son's love for that pretty young creature who could not have advanced the Armagh fortunes. Young and full-blooded men like Rory, amorous and with a wandering eye, did not stay attached very long to any one female, and Joseph knew how amorous Rory was, and knew of his little exploits even during his marriage to Marjorie. But Rory, apparently, had deeper emotions than i Joseph knew, for all his perceptiveness, and Joseph, who dared not offer I any sympathy but must remain apparently unaware of that unfortunate marriage, was concerned. Rory often had fits of gloomy silence when he came home on holidays, and had a way, very disturbing, of taking long f and lonely walks through Green Hills, his red-gold head bent, his hands in his pockets, his feet listlessly kicking aside small stones. Joseph watched him. Then, to Joseph's relief, after many long months, Rory seemed to "come"out of it." He no longer shone like the sun nor did his voice and shouts i and laughter echo all over the house-but perhaps it was better that hewas more subdued. When Rory was graduated from law school Joseph gave him the gift of the Grand Tour abroad, and Rory went to Europe ' for several months. Joseph's associates and friends abroad kept him in formed secretly of Rory's wanderings and actions. When it was reported to Joseph that Rory had become very much enamored of a beautiful young . Italian matron, in Rome, and was conducting a wild affair with her, Joseph was profoundly relieved. Then there was a demimondaine in Paris, a lively interlude in Berlin, a vivid one in Budapest, and something resembling ' an orgy in Vienna with a number of other rich young men and a bevy of young ladies of a better stratum of the unvirtuous class. Rory had then gone to London and had called on the ambassador and; his family, and Claudia was still there. The ambassador gave a lavish round of parties for the young man. Claudia was in full and beguiling enchantment, for she was in love with Rory and feverishly wanted him. It was soothing to him to be pursued by so endearing a girl, of such enormous charm, who was in turn pursued by hordes of eligible young men including several of the high nobility of England. It was also flattering. He forced himself to be conscious of Claudia's allure, and not critical. She was devoted to him. Her eyes would become luminous and very beautiful when she stared at him silently. To Rory, whose pride had been so lacerated, this was like a warmth on a bitter black night. The engagement was announced. The marriage took place quite soon thereafter. Even Bernadette was abashed and impressed by the splendor of the occasion and the notable and famous guests, though she sneered to Joseph that her son could surely have done better than this dull and breathless piece with the ugly hands. But only Rory knew that while he was waiting near the altar for his bride he felt a sudden desperate and insane desire to run, to return to America, to force Marjorie to see him, to take her away forcibly, if necessary, or even to beat her half to death. Anything but this strange girl in her white satin Worth gown and long lacy train and shrouds of white veiling, and that sickening stench of jasmine that hung about her like a cloud, on the arm of her stately father. The music and the singing of the choir seemed to him like the discordant noises of hell, and the whole chapel became one bizarre and jerking phantasmagoria to him, tilted and hot and icy and suffocating. He controlled himself, but he was covered with sweat and his color had left him, and his body trembled and he said in himself: Marjorie. But, in self-preservation he had already taught himself not to think too deeply about himself or