Captains and The Kings (28 page)

Besides, the colonel is the military authority of the port of New York. What would you do if you were in charge of this, Mr. Francis?" "I would let the Isabel be cleared by the colonel, and then I would not sail. I would wait a few days-after he believed we had already sailed, and then I would sail." "But he has informers. Come, come. Why should he deprive himself of future profits, Mr. Francis? One betrayal, and he would have cut off his nose to spite his face. I am sure we are not the only ones who use him. One word, and he would get no more money from anyone. The news would spread." "I don't know," said Joseph. "It is just a feeling I have." Mr. Montrose studied him again in silence. Then he went to his room and brought out an extra pistol and another box of ammunition. He put them on the table and pushed them towards Joseph. "Load the pistol," he said. "This is for you. As I said, I do not deprecate intuition though I confess I do not feel it now. I have my own and it has never betrayed me. Nonetheless, I believe you will feel safer with the extra protection." "I will," said Joseph. He loaded the pistol expertly. "A detestable man," he said. "And a hypocrite. I never trusted a hypocrite." He smiled thinly at Mr. Montrose. "Mr. Healey is often a hypocrite, Mr. Montrose, but he never pretends that you must take him seriously." "Yes," said Mr. Montrose. "Endearing. It is a joke with him. Remarkable that you should know that." It was not the compliment that made Joseph again experience an impulse of liking for Mr. Montrose, and even an impulse of trust. This so startled him that he stood with his hand on the ammunition and pondered. He looked up suddenly to see Mr. Montrose gazing at him with that inexplicable affection he had seen before. But Mr. Montrose said, "You have never seen Virginia. It is a beautiful state." He lifted his wine glass and considered it. "It is lovely at this time of the year. The locust trees and the honeysuckle are blooming. The hedges and the fields are full of flowers. The lanes are infinitely inviting. The horses stand in the fields and are aquiver with joy, and the young colts race with each other." His voice was tranquil and detached. "Unfortunately, we shall not see all that." "But, you have seen it?" Mr. Montrose did not answer. He had a look on his face as if he were not present. At last he said with indifference, "I should like to show you Virginia." Again Joseph was startled. Of what interest could it be to Mr. Montrose to want to show his associate anything at all? Joseph's long fingers began to beat a tattoo on the gleaming table. He stared at the immaculate narcissi and suddenly thought of his sister. He reached out and touched one shimmering petal.
Joseph heard himself saying, and not without a quick dismay and horror, "I know we do not tell each other our names. But I should like you to know mine." "It is not necessary," said Mr. Montrose. He stood up and took his case into his bedroom. On the threshold he looked back at Joseph and smiled as an older brother, or a very young father, would smile at him, and between them darted a dizzying sympathy and fellowship. But even then Joseph knew that if he should be unpardonably stupid Mr. Montrose would be ruthless in dealing with him, and without regret. "Tonight," said Mr. Montrose, "we are serene gentlemen in New York, whose business has been satisfactorily concluded. Therefore, we shall dine in state in the dining room of this hotel, and we shall then repair to the Academy of Music which will present Chopin, a most delectable composer, and young, and newly celebrated. I trust you favor Chopin?" "I have never heard any music in my life but Irish ballads," said Joseph. He hesitated. "And the singing of the choir at Mass. And the rowdy music in Mr. Healey's brothels, though I should not call that music." Mr. Montrose nodded with approval. "Then you have a great pleasure to experience. Chopin appeals to youth as well as to age. I favor him, myself." He looked at Joseph. "Of course, you know of Chopin." "I have read of him," said Joseph. "He died in 1849 at the age of thirty- nine." His tone was stiff. "Yes. Alas, that the beautiful and the indispensable die young." "And the rascals live to a hearty old age." Mr. Montrose looked indulgently offended. "My dear Mr. Francis, rascals are just as indispensable to this world as good men. They bring vitality and enterprise to what would otherwise be a very dull existence. They bring inventiveness, where there would be only stultification. They bring color. They enliven cities. They have imagination, which most men do not. I have never known a man of distinction and virility and zest who was not, at heart, a sound rascal. They are the true romanticists, the adventurers, the poets. Heaven, I believe, is a duller place for the absence of Lucifer. I am sure he sang the gayest and the naughtiest songs for the edification of the angels. They say he is somber and sullen. I, myself, believe he laughs. After all, contemplating the world with any insight must convince one that it is absurd, and the rascals know it." This was a new thought for Joseph. But, he said to himself, I cannot laugh. I can't find the world absurd. I find it terrible. He said, "I've had experiences which I do not consider absurd." His voice was again stiff and defensive. Mr. Montrose looked absently preoccupied. Then he said, "Who has not? It is a great error to believe our experiences are unique and have never been known by others.
That is the most dangerous delusion of youth." I do not always accept what he says, thought Joseph, but he is the only person in my whole life who has ever talked to me, and I to him. Then Joseph understood the reason for the strange liking he felt for Mr. Mont- rose, and the reluctant sympathy, and the odd if cautious confidence. He also knew that he had omitted his real name not only from the first fear of Mr. Squibbs and his men, but because he had wanted to hide from everyone else also. The fear of Mr. Squibbs had not been realistic for a long time, he realized now, but the mistrust for others had been with him from early childhood. He felt no mistrust for Mr. Montrose and he considered that, too, though he had no illusions about the older man. "Still," said Mr. Montrose, as if Joseph had been speaking, "it is always discreet to keep one's experiences to one's self. No man has ever been hanged, or laughed at, for discretion." The dining room was at least as flamboyant as the lobby, and appeared even larger in its blaze of crystal, its glimmer of gilt, its rococo carpet and upholstery. Even the stiff white tablecloths blazed, and the heavy silver and glass sparkled. Here, as it was evening, the gaiety had increased to louder and more feverish laughter and a constant rustle, ululation, tripping and shrillness of eager and excited babble. Here, too, was the same lighthearted music from behind a screen, emphasizing without intrusion the happiness of the diners and their joy in war. The waiters were clad as English footmen, with powdered wigs, scarlet coats and breeches adorned with twinkling brass buttons, ruffled shirts and white silk stockings. The headwaiter, recognizing Mr. Montrose, led him and Joseph to a secluded table near the rose-damask wall where they could see and yet be somewhat secluded. The ladies at the tables were sumptuously clad in colorful velvet, lace, silk and satin, their beautiful half-naked shoulders and breasts rising like Dresden porcelain from their billowing hoops, their hair of many hues and shades elaborately dressed and falling in long ringlets and curls far down their delicate backs, their coiffures glittering with diamonds or daintily entwined with fresh flowers. Flowers, too, stood in vases and bowls on all the tables and the hot scent of them, and the breeze of perfume which constantly swept through the room, and the sweetness of rice powder and cosmetics and the inciting odor of young flesh, almost overpowered the austere Joseph, but Mr. Montrose leaned back negligently in his red plush chair and surveyed and savored it all with a smile of ostensible pleasure. His eyes wandered from one pretty face to another, considering, rejecting, approving, admiring. Below the music and the vocal confusion and the clatter of fine dinnerware and silver Joseph could hear a rhythmic pounding and faint but insistent music, and then, as the music briefly stopped, the distant clapping of hands. Mr. Montrose said, "There is an officers' ball tonight, and they are dancing with their ladies in the ballroom just above us. Illustrious soldiers and other personages have joined them, from Washington. It is a gala." "Nothing like a war to inspire a gala," said Joseph. "Now, now," said Mr. Montrose. "What would you have them do? Be hypocrites and crouch in a dark room, pretending to wail and grieve, and deprive themselves, when they have made, and are making, such a lot of money?" His face was pleasant but ambiguous. "After all, was this war not planned in London, in 1857, by bankers, and they are all honorable men, as I believe Marcus Antonius said of the murderers of Julius Caesar. Mr. Lincoln said only last week to Congress: 'I have two great enemies, the Southern Army in front of me, and the financial institution in the rear. Of the two, the one in my rear is my greatest foe.'" He idly lit a cheroot and Joseph watched him with his usual intensity. Mr. Montrose continued, as if he were commenting on the most casually amusing thing: "It is expected that the European bankers, and our own banking gentry, will make four billion dollars out of this war, not a sum to be lightly dismissed." "If Mr. Lincoln said what he did, and if he knows that this war was planned and finally executed by men who want money and power, why did he war on the Confederacy?" Mr. Montrose looked at him quizzically. "My dear Mr. Francis, who do you honestly believe rules any nation? The apparent rulers, or the real ones behind the scenes who manipulate a nation's finances for their own benefit? Mr. Lincoln is as helpless as you and I. He can only, unfortunate man, give his people slogans, and slogans, it would appear, are what the people want. I have yet to hear of a nation that ever rejected a war." He added: "Tomorrow, you will meet some of the gentry I have spoken of, most congenial and tolerant men, who have no nationalistic prejudices at all, and no allegiances even to their own countries, but only to each other and their banking interests. They are the only true cosmopolitans, and they rule us and decide whether we shall live or die. Some are friends of Mr. Healey, but he shyly does not speak of them and what they are doing for him. He is not quite in the modest circumstances you may believe. And all human activity which produces money interests Mr. Healey. Why are you frowning? Do you find this all reprehensible?" Joseph said, and his voice was somewhat surly, "I have no objection to any man making a lot of money, or any group of men." Mr. Montrose laughed affectionately. "Then, why do you frown?" But Joseph could not answer, for he had no answer except a deep and formless uneasiness. "Money," said Mr. Montrose, "as the Bible has remarked, is the answer to all things. Let it be the answer to your conscience, Mr. Francis, for I fear you have one." Joseph said, and with unusual emotion, "It is not agreeable to me to see these people, in this room, happy that men are dying and the earth destroyed so that they can be prosperous!" "But," said Mr. Montrose, "you have no objection to keeping Mr. Healey's accounts in the matter of brothels-and other affairs." "I provoke none of those brothels, nor do I engage in those-other affairs! Mr. Healey's activities are no personal concern of mine." "So say these people here-that war is not their concern, so long as it is profitable to them." Joseph was silent, staring down at the table. Then he looked up suddenly and saw Mr. Montrose's expression and could not read it. Yet, he .colored. "Suppose," said Mr. Montrose with a gentle relentlessness, "that some of those brothels came into your own keeping. Would you refuse them?" Joseph's pale mouth tightened to a slash, but he looked at Mr. Montrose and said without hesitation, "No." Mr. Montrose shrugged. "There, then. You must not criticise others. We are all men and sinners, are we not? I don't think you truly like sin, Mr. Francis, and would prefer to make a fortune without it. As for myself, I prefer it for what it is, and have freely chosen it. For, after all, what is sin? It is common sense. It is reality. In truth, it is the only reality in the world, and everything else is confusion, lies, hypocrisy, sentimentality, pietistic falsehood and delusion. I suggest that you once came to this conclusion, yourself." "Yes," said Joseph, and Mr. Montrose detected in him the strange prohity that lay under his character. "And I still believe it. But I don't like the means we have to use to get money. I'd prefer to get it in-in- other ways."' ' "And I enjoy the way it is got, for the way, itself. Ah, I see our green turtle soup is approaching. I will choose the wine." Then he laughed indulgently at Joseph. "There is something Calvinistic in your nature, something Cromwellian: Riches are not to be despised, and if scruples are strangled in the manner of getting them "it should be denounced openly and publicly mourned. Ah, now, do not look so murderous. Let us enjoy our soup and listen to the music and ogle the pretty ladies and remember that the worst crime of humanity is hypocrisy. It is the mother of all sins. There is not a man alive, I am certain, who does not wallow in it, knowingly or unknowingly. We must accept ourselves for what we are. That is the secret of a healthy mind and body." He added, as he picked up a heavy and shining spoon, "Hypocrisy should not be wholly detested. Without it we should have no civilization, nor could men live together for a single hour without killing each other. Other words for it are gentility and tolerance and regard for neighbor, and self- restraint and self-discipline. I might even go so far as to say that without it we should have no churches and no religions." The great and amorphous uneasiness swelled in Joseph, for he recognized a sophistry here if a sardonic one, but he did not know how to combat it without appearing a puerile fool. He also had a suspicion that Mr. Montrose, without malice, was enjoying himself at his, Joseph's, expense. Joseph tasted his soup, a greenish-brown liquid with bits of turtle meat in it, and decided he did not like it and that he was faintly nauseated. He watched a lively and vivacious swirl of ladies and dashing gentlemen and officers pass the table, and pretended to be interested in them, and Mr. Montrose smilingly and slightly shook his head as if in denial. Joseph saw this gesture through the corner of his eye and he was mortified at himself. Why was this war of sudden and disturbing interest to him, he who had long ago removed himself from the affairs of other men and the interests of the general world? The war had been in progress, he remembered, for several years, and it had not concerned him in the least nor had he given a single thought to it or conjecture, for he was not involved with mankind except when it was to his personal advantage. Only in that way could he keep himself from being fragmented and dispersed, as other men were, and only in that way could he prevent hurt and injuries, and the absurd frenzies of emotionalism, and the humiliations and defeats such emotionalism precipitated. His indifference to all external things concerning mankind had been his impregnable armor. He angrily puzzled over his new concern. Then he knew, with such a powerful onslaught of emotion that it shook him. He had seen a young, bloodstained and exhausted young woman, nameless to him, in the window of an Army train, tending the wounded, and he had loved her not only for her beauty but for her devotion and selfless attention to others, and something he had never suspected in himself had been poignantly touched and stricken. I had put her out of my mind, he thought, but I can't forget her, and I can't understand this nor why what she was doing should concern me in the least. She has forced me to be aware of a world I despise and reject, and I should hate her. He put down his spoon. It touched the merest scrap of folded white paper which had not been there before, and it was close to Mr. Montrose's plate, and Joseph wondered how it had arrived and who had placed it there. Mr. Montrose saw Joseph's eyes directed on the paper and he took it at once, unfolded and read it. He passed it to Joseph and said calmly, "It would seem our plans are changed. We must, unfortunately, leave the concert a little earlier, and this is awkward, for one of my precepts, very valuable, is that one should never attract attention."