Captains and The Kings (9 page)

She was so heartened at Joseph's sudden bleak smile that she tittered and applied her apron to one eye. "Oh, you know who he was, Mr. Armagh, and I am so relieved!" So, thought Joseph, old Squibbs is making sure of me, is he, and satisfying himself that I lived in this house and for some time, and am honest, and no thief who will skip with his swag of a fine Sunday. "He called you 'Scottie,'" said Mrs. Marhall, "which I think was disrespectful. Nicknames are always uncivil-unless they are used by friends." "Oh, he is an old friend," said Joseph, and smiled again without much humor. "Did he ask if I had a family, or something of that nature?" "Indeed, and I was a little surprised at that, if he was an old friend, he would know, would he not? And I told him no, you had no family, you were an orphan from a place in Scotland-?" "Edinburgh," said Joseph. Mrs. Marhall nodded. "Edinburgh. Yes, that I told him. You had no kin, I said, leastways you'd never mentioned anyone, and it is very sad. He agreed with me."
Joseph, taciturn by nature, had not spoken of his brother or sister to anyone in the town but the Sisters at the orphanage. The less anyone knows of you the better for you, was his complete conviction, and the fewer attempts they will make to be friendly and intrusive and later, perhaps, dangerous. He had learned, as a child, to be silent in the presence of the Sassenagh, or, if viciously questioned, to tell as little as possible. This lesson, fortified by his natural discretion concerning himself and his natural mistrust, was one never to be forgotten. Daniel Armagh had not been able to understand the reserve of his older son and his carefulness1 even in the presence of his family, for Daniel by temperament had accepted and trusted all men-and had, Joseph often thought, dearly paid for his folly. "You cannot suspect, Joey, like some unshriven miser or thieving vagabond, and have no confidence in any creature. What would the world be like, Joey, if everyone mistrusted everyone else, and had no love and no faith?" Safer, the child Joseph had thought. But he had only said, "It's sorry I am, Dada, and I meant no disrespect." There was none to connect Joseph Armagh of Philadelphia Terrace, the young Scotsman of Edinburgh who worked in a sawmill on the river and had no kin of his own, with St. Agnes's Orphanage, an obscure and stricken and hidden little building in the worst part of the town, and one not known except to Catholics. None knew of his brother and sister and that he was an Irishman and a "Papist," if only a nominal one. "So, he will see me Sunday," said Joseph to Mrs. Marhall. "I expected him then. Not today. And a good evening to you, Mistress Marhall." The word "mistress" instead of the American "missus" always made Mrs. Marhall preen as at a grand compliment. It had a gay and a vaguely forbidden but an exciting intimation. She folded her wounded hands under her apron and watched Joseph ascend the stairs with the foolish fondness of a mother. A very likely boy, and a proud clean one, and he would go far, for he was a gentleman in spite of his work and his poverty, and she prayed a little innocent but fervent prayer for him and was comforted. Joseph washed at his commode and neatly emptied the bowl into the slop pail and rolled down his blue sleeves. He looked at the bottle of "elixir." It would do no harm. The old ladies, including his grandmother, in Ireland, were fine ones for gathering herbs which they mixed in evil- tasting brews, but he remembered that they were often efficacious. At least, he had never heard that they had killed anyone. His cough was becoming more annoying and exhausting since his cold, and he thought of the "consumption" so rife among his people. So he uncorked the bottle and drank some of the contents, and to his surprise it was not vile and it soothed his raw throat. He would remember to take it to work tomorrow together with the lunch-newspaper wrapped-which Mrs. Marhall prepared for him. The name of John Tyler, the names of the seven seceding Southern states of the Union, the initial affair at Fort Sumter, the agony of President Lincoln, were all unimportant to Joseph Armagh while the winter deepened. The world of men except as it pertained to himself and his family was unimportant. He wasted no penny on a newspaper; he never stopped In the streets of the town to hear the shouts and angry words of new crowds; he did not listen to his fellow workers who talked excitedly of Buchanan and Cobb and Floyd and Major Anderson. They were aliens in an alien world, to him, which concerned him not at all. The language they spoke did not resound in him, their lives did not touch his nor did he permit them to touch his. When Mrs. Marhall said to him once, fearfully, "Oh, is it not terrible, Mr. Armagh, this threat of War between the States?" he had replied with impatience, "I am not interested, Mistress Marhall. I have too much to do." She had stared at him then, disbelieving, and then, incredulously, believing, and though she had always considered him enigmatic and beyond her simple comprehension, now she felt as if he were not of flesh or blood and did not possess any of the sentiments of men or any of their concerns, and she was almost as deeply frightened then as ever she had been in her suffering life. She silently retreated, and pondered and could come to no conclusion. Mr. Lincoln's train passed through Winfield on the route to Pittsburgh, and a holiday was given so that men could go to the depot for a brief glimpse of the melancholy man who was on his way to Washington for his inaugural as President. The majority wished him well, especially now that the threat of war was increasing, but the hint of assassination excited them and they would not have been too grieved had it come to pass. Their lives were so dingy, so obscure and so lacking in gaiety or any joy or notable event, that a national calamity would have titillated them. But Joseph Armagh, as indifferent to Mr. Lincoln as he was to the existence of the farthest star, did not go to the depot. He had no interest in events except as they threatened him and Scan and Regina, for too deeply and at too young an age had he experienced anguish and frenzy and grief, and if he thought of his relationship to the world at all it was as its enemy. There was not even any active love in him for Ireland any longer, only memory like a dream. If he had been forcibly questioned he would have said, "I have no country, no allegiances, no loyalties, no kinsmen among others. The world rejected me when I was defenseless, and so I reject it now with all my heart and with any passion I still retain, and I ask of it only to remain apart from me as I do what I must do. Do not try to stir up in me any commitment to any man or any nation or any faith or any cause; do not try to draw me among you, or speak to me as one of you. Let me alone, and I will let you alone, because if I should become any part of you or engage myself among you I could not bear to live any longer. So, let us live in a truce." He read the books which Sister Elizabeth had managed to procure for him, but he would not read of current affairs and the growing fear and distress in the country. He read philosophy and essays and poetry and literature-all of the past-for now only they had eternal verity to him and could interest him. As for the future, it belonged to him alone and nothing must move him from his course, not war or blood nor the convulsions of men. "I thought him a lad of intelligence and mind," Father Barton said to Sister Elizabeth. She cocked her head at him and said, "Yes, Father? And is he not?" "I tried to speak to him of the threatening war and what it portends, Sister." "Father," said the nun, as if speaking to a child, "Joseph left the affairs of the world long ago. He is like a sextant pointed to one star only. Let him be." When the priest still could not understand, she said to him gently, "He dares let nothing approach him, for his soul is like worn thin crystal which could shatter at a touch." "He is not the only one who has suffered in this world!" the priest replied with unusual asperity. "We each respond to events," said Sister Elizabeth, "according to our nature-some of us with fortitude and faith, and some disastrously. Can any man understand another? No, only God, and what is between Joseph and God is theirs alone." "I fear for his soul," said Father Barton. "I also fear for his soul," said Sister Elizabeth, but the priest suspected she feared for a different reason than his which he could never comprehend. He could only complain, "I doubt he has a soul like crystal. Stone, Sister, is more like it. You are fanciful." This conversation would not have interested Joseph in the least had he even heard of it. He paid the convent an extra dollar a week for his family now, as the long torture of the winter drew towards spring. For fear of falling ill he spent fifty cents extra a week on food for himself, and bought a stout pair of boots to protect his feet from the snow. He grew two inches that winter and appeared years older than his actual age of seventeen. Each Sunday, armed with a truncheon that never left the seat beside him, he drove a van or a wagon of ostensible feed and grain to the various saloons in the town. Each Sunday he collected the forty or fifty or sixty or even the one hundred dollars in payment for the true illicit load he carried under the burlap bags. The money was given him in brown paper, which he kept in his pockets-tight rolls tied with thick string. He delivered the money to Mr. Squibbs, who was highly satisfied with his latest employee, and to such an extent that after the first few months he did not even count the money in Joseph's presence. He allowed his "Sunday lads" fifty cents extra for a lunch, but Joseph did not spend it. He saved it, along with two of the four dollars he made on Sunday, and he had contrived a money belt of sorts to tie about his waist, for he would not leave the bills in his boardinghouse. Nor did he consider the bank, and for a reason pertinent to him. The police never stopped or questioned him, and he was too indifferent to wonder why, though the ten dollars promised by Mr. Squibbs would have been welcome even at the cost of a night in jail. But for some reason he was not halted. "He looks stupid, like a dummy," said Mr. Squibbs's brother. "That's why the po-leese don't even see him. If they did they'd think we'd have more sense than to hire him to carry likker." Mr. Squibbs chuckled. "All the better. But he don't look stupid. Looks kind of like he don't even live here. Got a mean look in his eye, though, if you just try to be pleasant or make a joke, and he looks at you like you're pizen or somebody from the moon." The thoughts of Joseph Armagh were long thoughts, which would have appalled Sister Elizabeth. The money increased in his money belt. He counted it every day or two, greasy bills of a great size which were more precious to him than his own life. They were the passports which guaranteed entry into living for his brother and sister. Without them, they would be barred forever from the world in which they must live-which would never be his world. And as the months passed that which was within him became more taut and rigid, and more dangerous. The Confederacy was making active plans for war. Not long after Mr. Lincoln's inauguration three members of a Southern commission went to Washington to discuss with the President a more or less amiable, agreement concerning public debts and public property, agreements which would go into effect after total separation of the Confederacy from the Union. They informed Mr. Lincoln that "we are the representatives of an independent nation, de facto and de jure, and we possess our own government perfect in all its parts and endowed with all the means of self-support, and we desire only a speedy adjustment of all questions in dispute on terms of amity, good-will and mutual interest." To which Mr. Lincoln sorrowfully replied that his new Secretary of State, William H. Seward of New York, would answer in due time. The President understood the pride and the deep anger and affront which the South cherished, and he knew that according to the Constitution it had even' right to secede from the Union. To object, to use force against the South, was un-Constitutional, and none knew this better than the President. But as he loved his country, both North and South, he was as terrified as any man of his character could be. Beyond the Atlantic lay the old lustful nations, the imperialistic nations, who craved this new and burgeoning country, and desired nothing more than to have her sundered and weakened or fighting a bloody fraternal war, so that they could fall upon her and divide up her members among themselves. It was at this point that Imperial Russia casually mentioned to the British Empire-through the tactful offices of ambassadors-that should Britain overtly and covertly take an active part in the approaching conflict, and seize before others also had an opportunity to seize-Russia's sentiments would not be lukewarm. Britain, never impulsive, sat back to consider, though she openly declared her sympathy with the South, a declaration which made the Czar smile in his magnificent beard. This episode, vaguely mentioned in American newspapers, ought to have interested Joseph Armagh. It did not. He was as removed from and as dispassionate about this world as a shadow. He lived his internal and secret life, and had his deadly concentration of will which had been trained on the world like a great weapon ready for attack. On the warm April day when Captain George James fired on Fort Sumter, Joseph Armagh, after his day's work, set out on the three-mile walk to Green Hills, where the Mayor of Winfield lived. The roaring excitement in the town was, to him, like the far barking of dogs, and just as significant.
Chapter 7
Though Joseph had rejected the world of men as no part of his own being, except to accede to his secret ambitions, he could not be insensible to the beauty of the land. His innately poetic Irish nature could not detach itself, however he consciously tried, telling himself that nothing mattered or really had any existence beyond what he must accomplish. All else was trivial and a waste of time and strength. He was going today for a look at the mansion of Mayor Tom Hennessey, for he had heard it was the most lavish in Green Hills and he needed another emphatic sword of desire in his growing arsenal. He wished to see how rich men lived and in what surroundings, and to study the environment in which he was determined that his family must live. As for himself, he had no yearning for luxury or beauty or ease. He wanted them only for Scan and Regina, whose lives depended on their brother. He had never been in this particular territory before, beyond the confines of the flat monotony and grit of Winfield and its ugly little houses and unkempt square. He was soon in the countryside, brilliantly green in the spring, lush, leaping with life and urgent wild flowers and patches of wild violets and random pools of daffodils and trees golden with unfurling leaves, and little rills and brooks wandering through copses and even spilling over onto the uneven road of mingled stone and drying mud. It was still shiningly bright and the sun was just beginning to lower in a glitter of radiant orange behind the western trees, and the air was lively and murmurous and piercingly sweet with excited bird calls. In the distance stood the misty softness of green hills, and the ground and road rose towards them. Joseph passed a large pond as purely blue as an Irish lake, and the young yellow leaves of willows bent over it and were reflected in its stillness, and from its proximity now began to rise the chorus and hosannah to life of the peepers. From nearby fields came the nostalgic music of cowbells as cattle prepared to go to their paddocks, and wind stirred the tall new grass at the borders of the road and above it all was a sky faintly green and luminous. Joseph had long forgotten the feeling and meaning of peace. But now he suddenly knew it, and it was accompanied by a pang of such sorrow that it was like a fresh agony. He stood and looked about him, and listened for several minutes, alone in a fresh new world. Then the peace and even the sorrow left him as he thought: This is only for the rich and not for the poor. They live in silent green contentment, but we live in dust and murk and ugliness-for they are the fortified and we are the helpless. For a brief moment or two he had made contact with the world, and it had wounded him once more, so he set his face and stared only at the road as he went on. But he could not shut his ears to the jubilation of young life, nor his Irish soul to the scent of innocent carnal earth and the fecundity of that which lived. Yet he felt that this all mocked him, the destitute and the homeless. The poetry of sound which he heard, the fragrance of the earth, the very poignancy of tree trunks and blue shadows on the grass and the quiet dim hollows of silence in the woods, seemed to cry out to him, "These are not for you, for you have no money. You have no money!" But I will have it! he thought with familiar savagery. I will have it, no matter how! And he lifted his face and his hand to the sky in hatred and determination.