Captains and The Kings (50 page)

So, that's what it is, thought the senator with a great inner bound of understanding and compassion. He will take revenge on the world that did that to him. "This world killed my parents," said Joseph. "They were murdered just as surely as if they had been shot. Well, it is not important, is it? The fact remains that alien contract labor, brought here on free passage--as we were not--has the same opportunities, or lack of them, which I had. Most of them are men, but I was a child. You will say they have families with them. So did I. Let them do as I did. Let them work as I did. They are not feebler than I was. Eventually, if they are determined, they will break free--as I did." The senator said, in the gentlest voice, "In other words, you want them to suffer as you did. Knowing the bitterness of hunger and exploitation-- you would have them endure that, too?" Joseph said, "Are they better than I?" He made an abrupt gesture. "But I am afraid that we are digressing. Foreign labor is necessary for the expansion of America, so we must have it. "I agree," said the senator. "But let us pay them decent wages and give them a decent opportunity. Let us help the unions to succeed in demanding adequate money for our American labor, too. The whole point is that foreign labor, willing to work for almost nothing, is depriving American labor of work and starving it to death. Do I need to remind you of the railroad strikes and the murder of the strikers, and even of their wives? If that is necessary for 'the expansion of America' that I say--let us not expana. "It is said," Joseph remarked, "that you cannot bake bread without killing the yeast." The senator pushed his chair from the table with a gesture of despair. "I love epigrams. The trouble is that they are seldom generous or pitiful. We are talking of men, Mr. Armagh, not of yeast. Until more labor is needed we must not have foreign labor brought here in cattle boats. When it is needed, they must be paid a decent wage." He added, "You speak of prejudice, Mr. Armagh, against the Irish. There is prejudice against these poor people also. Because they are what they are they are treated as less than human by our own citizens. That, too, must be rectified. There is no room among honorable men for prejudice against other men for the fault--if you want to call it that--of their birth. Prejudice would be laughable if it were not so heinous, so evil. You, above all, should understand that." But Joseph said, "We are not men who ask without rewarding. I suppose you know that?" The senator had become pale, and now all the kind humor had left his face. He said, "Yes, Mr. Armagh. I know. Do I not know! If my colleagues showed any signs of shame they could be forgiven, perhaps, for human failings and human greed. But they are not ashamed. They will vote against the best interests of their country--for money--and smugly swagger over it, and look for more. They are hired whores, Mr. Armagh. They are worse than whores." Joseph could not help smiling. "But, like whores, they receive their pay. Come now, Senator. We are not offering bribes or anything so vulgar as that. We should be just grateful to buy what you could offer, for an excellent price." "To withdraw my support from the Mien Contract Labor bill--which I instigated--and take my colleagues with me?" "Exactly. It is a small matter." "The answer, of course, is no, sir." "There is no argument that can persuade you even to consider the matter?" "No. I have heard all the arguments. I have rejected them all for months. I am truly astonished that your friends should try again, for they have approached me before." He stared intensely at Joseph. "I3o you not know that what you have said, what you have offered, is a criminal offense against the dignity of the Senate, that you have attempted to bribe me and so have opened yourself to prosecution?" "I know that, Senator. But you have no proof." "And besides," said the senator with immense bitterness, "it would only amuse some number of my colleagues, honorable men all!" He added, "But I have hope that this bill will pass. The President is with me. We have a seemingly quiet and amiable Chief Executive, but he is a man of principle and has plans which he has confided but to a few, and I am proud that I am one of them. "I have heard of President Garfield s convictions," said Joseph. "I think he is ill-advised." The rooms had become hotter. The brown walls radiated the raw and burning sunlight. Dust swirled on the windowsills in little dust devils. The sound of the traffic was louder in this room as the two men regarded each other in a pregnant silence. Then the senator said, "What do your people want?" Joseph smiled his tight and bitter smile. "What does any man, in his heart, really want? Power. Hypocrites scream ideologies and slogans to gain it over the gullible and what I like to call the 'pure-in-hearts.' But my--friends--have no ideologies though they will solemnly use those of others if it serves them. They are men of many interests, politicians, merchant chiefs, mineowners, industrialists, bankers, railroaders, oilmen, shipbuilders and owners, munitions makers, men of inherited wealth, men of illustrious family both here and abroad, princes, if you will. Landowners. They have several things in common: None is devoted to his particular country. None cares about the people's welfare in any nation. All are avaricious beyond the avarice of the general public to comprehend. All are sublime egotists. All are enemies of what you would call freedom, Senator. They want to rule, each in his own sphere, cooperating with the others. They want to be the Elite, with absolute authority over the lives and deaths and destinies of the world. At heart, they are all Robespierres, Dantons, Mirabeaus. Jacobins." The senator stared at him fixedly, for he had heard the irony and contempt under Joseph's words. He thought for a few moments and then said, "Jacobins. Yes. Revolutions never rise from the working people, the farmers, the shopkeepers. They rise from the bored and overfed bourgeoisie, the men who already rule, the so-called intellectuals, the affluent restless whose souls are empty of any spiritual value but lust for cold violence. In all history no despot ever rose from what is called 'the people.' Despots rise from the depraved radicals, who hate their fellowman though they soothe him with soft words and flatteries and pretend to be his friend. You see, Mr. Armagh, I know my history, too." "Then," said ]oseph, "you also know, as the Renaissance Italians knew, that politics and moral ethics never mix. Politics and ethics are a contradiction in terms. An honest politician is either a hypocrite--or he is doomed." The senator stood up. He reached to a chair and picked up his tall silk black hat. He held it in his hands and studied it, and his expression was both grave and suffering. He said, almost inaudibly, "I still have hope that my countrymen will elect good men and not thieves and liars and exigent rascals and soft flatterers and potential looters." He looked at Joseph. "I think I have said all that needs to be said. I will not abandon my position. I cannot, in conscience." Joseph stood up also. Now he held a sheaf of papers in his hand. "Then, Senator, I trust you will have a conscience concerning several people in these notations. Please read them." The senator took the papers. He began to read them, still standing. His face slowly grayed, became ghastly, though no feature moved. But drops of sweat appeared on his forehead and rolled down his cheeks like tears. Joseph watched him. Finally he could watch him no longer and he went to a window with a taste like dead dust in his mouth. He clenched his hands on the gritty sills and stared down sightlessly at the traffic. The silence behind him became weighted, as if inhabited by a corpse. He at last heard a rustling and knew that the papers had been replaced on the table. Still, he could not turn. The senator said in a dry whisper, "Who knows of this besides you?" "Only one other, Senator. In full. The information was gathered separately by a dozen trained men who have no interest in you, and do not know the whole story. I have not shown these papers to my--friends. I preferred to show them only to you." "What do you intend to do with that information, Mr. Armagh?" Joseph slowly turned from the windows. His eyes felt scorched. He saw that the senator appeared to have dwindled, shrunk, and that he had the aspect of a man already dead. "Senator," said Joseph, "if you do not withdraw your influence from the Alien Contract Labor bill I intend to give that information to the newspapers--and to several of your colleagues. I am sorry. You know there is no libel involved. You know the facts in these papers are true." The senator fumbled for the chair he had left and now he fell in it. His head drooped. He said, hardly above a whisper, "We are in new days. It is no longer heinous--or repulsive--to have had a mulatto grandmother, who was a slave in South Carolina. She was a gracious lady, and was educated by her mistress, and tutors. In turn, she educated the children of her mistress, who had freed her. At last her mistress gave her a large sum of money and helped her to come North, to Canada. But, you know all that. She married a Canadian farmer of some substance--it is related here, why do I repeat it? They moved to Massachusetts. I knew her well. She was until her death the dearest thing in my life." He looked up at Joseph now with eyes wide and haggard. "She taught me that nothing is so important as liberty, and that even liberty is not valuable unless it is accompanied by honor and responsibility. She taught me that no man worthy of the name can call himself a man unless he has integrity." Joseph looked aside. "Then it does not matter if the news comes out that you had a grandmother of so many virtues, does it?" The senator said, "We have quite a number of Negro congressmen in Washington these days, Mr. Armagh. No one despises them, or insults them--" ]oseph then knew that the senator had not heard his remark. He said, "But your wife, the lovely Southern belle from Georgia--she does not know, does she? And your daughter, who is to marry the Boston scion of a fine family--Mr. Gray Arbuthnot, isn't it?--he does not know? Perhaps they will not be so broad-minded as your senatorial colleagues, Senator, and I am afraid that they, too, will suddenly lose their tolerance, and not support you. I have noticed that 'tolerance' has a way of vanishing when a man's own future is at stake if he pursues it. There is something else, also. Your enemies will conclude that your passion for the welfare of the American workingman, and your opposition to the importation of foreign labor, rises from the fact that you are the descendant of a slave, and so have a slave's sensitivity to the 'enslavement' of others. Do not think men are kind, Senator. They are devils." The senator was still staring at ]oseph and his lustrous black eyes shimmered as if with tears. "My colleagues, in the Senate, are conservative Democrats and the more moderate of Republicans. They will not turn from me." "They will. When did a man ever support anyone held up to public aversion or ridicule, no matter how innocent or good? None, to my knowledge. Each of your friends will think of his own political future. He will not jeopardize it for you, my dear sir. Certainly, we all palpitate in the North now about 'the rise of the Negro.' It is fashionable. But it is abstract. Coming down to facts is quite another thing, as the liberals well know, and the Whigs. Many of your conservative Democratic friends are from the South, you will recall, and so are your 'more moderate' Republicans. Publicly, they will utter soft words, but in reality they will run from you." He added, "And what will your wife think? How will she endure the humiliation? Do you think Mr. Arbuthnot will marry a girl descended from a Negro slave? Think on it, Senator. For, it is stated here, your wife does not know your history, nor your daughter." The senator's head fell on his chest. He said in a broken voice, "You have said it. Men are devils." "True, Senator. You have only to tell your colleagues that on further reflection you are not supporting the Alien Contract Labor bill any longer, and all this information will be destroyed. No one will ever know. I give you my word of honor." The senator gave a groan of anguished laughter. "I have only to abandon my principles, desert my convictions, give up all that makes life endurable to a man!" "Think of it as protecting your wife and your daughter, Senator." The senator, a very sensitive and subtle man, heard something strange in Joseph's voice and he looked up quickly. "Ah, so you gave up much, perhaps, to protect others, Mr. Armagh? Others you loved?" For an instant--so fleeting that the senator thought he had not seen correctly--Joseph's face was formidable. But Joseph's voice was reasonable and easy when he spoke. "Perhaps, Senator. I can tell you this: No one is worth a man's life, a man's sacrifice." The senator stood up. He looked down at the papers. He wet his gray lips with the tip of his tongue. After several long moments he said, "It is possible that you are right, sir. I am coming to the conclusion that this world is really hell." He put his hat above a face that had shriveled and become old and sunken. "I will think on all this," he said. "You have to six o'clock tomorrow night, Senator. Send me word. If I do not hear from you--" The senator nodded. An unfathomable look of resolution filled his eyes. "I have until tomorrow night, to six, o'clock, to tell you that I withdraw-- or do not withdraw. Yes. You will hear from me." He turned towards the door, and his step was slow and feeble. Joseph went quickly to the door and opened it. The senator stood on the threshold. He turned his head with what appeared to be a heavy effort and looked Joseph in the face. "Mr. Armagh," he said, "may God have mercy on you, for you are not a bad man. No, you are not a bad man. So, it is all the worse for you." Joseph's eyelids almost covered his small blue eyes. "I am what this world made of me, Senator. But is that not true of everyone?" "No," said the senator. "No. That is not tree. We have our choices." Joseph watched him walk uncertainly, as if drunk, down the long, hot and narrow hall with its shut doors and smells. Then the senator, reaching blindly for a handrail, crept down the stairs. Joseph shut the door. He stood for a long time in the middle of his dusty blowing room. He looked at the fragments of the dinner he had eaten with the senator, at the dirty dishes and the soiled glasses. His eye touched the empty hearth. Suddenly he shivered, as if cold. He took the sheaf of papers and dropped them into the fireplace. He knelt and struck a lucifer. He set fire to the papers. They were thick and
resistant. He lit more lucifers. The room filled with a smell of smoke and sulphur. The papers caught more freely. Now they burned as if with iubilation, and pieces of black paper flew up the chimney. Those in the fireplace curled into long black worms, then disintegrated. Joseph took a poker and demolished what was left. As always, he had not been able to resist innocence. He sat on his narrow heels and said to himself, You are a fool, of course. You don't even know why you did the thing you have just done. What is that man to me? One politician more or less. I acted in my own worst interests. How am I going to explain this thing to my associates? I dare not tell them what I've done. They'd laugh me out of existence, and then move to destroy me. This is a fine situation He looked at the black ashes and all at once something tight in him loosened. No one knew he had had this information except Timothy Dineen, who had gathered the reports of other investigators and had drawn them into one concise report. Joseph had only told his colleagues that he had "some information which might persuade Senator Bassett. "I can try, at the very least. I think he will listen to reason." He would have to tell them that the senator, at the last, had not listened to reason at all. Joseph shrugged. The rest lay with their new plots, which he doubted would be efficacious with a man like the senator. He already knew what the senator's decision would be. He would not withdraw, for then he could not live with himself. Joseph stood up, restlessly. There was no train out of Washington tonight, or he would have left. He would have to stay in this abominable white and corrupt city, full of stenches and evil, until tomorrow. Joseph went to a Brahms concert that night but the music could not distract him as usual. He saw Senator Bassett's face everywhere in the orchestra seats and in the boxes. Once he thought, If I knew where he lived I'd go to see him tonight and tell him. Tell him what? Of the destruction of the "information"? Would that console a man so wounded now?