Captains and The Kings (60 page)

brown suit and replaced it with a light gray one, smoothed his hair, and ran downstairs again. He had just reached the foot of the stairs when a sick premonition, without a name, struck him. He stopped, his hand on the newel post, in the sunlit silence of the hall. He remembered that Ann Marie was "soon" going to "speak" to her mother. He had made her promise, in his last letter--which announced his arrival in Green Hills very shortly--that she would not "speak" until he was beside her to give her courage. He had also asked her, in his letter, to meet him on horseback "at our usual place." That would be in about three hours. The thought of seeing Ann Marie very soon gave him courage, too, and he went back to the breakfast room. His mother sat as if in a dazed trance, a cup of untouched coffee in her hand, her eyes fixed on the table on which steamed covered dishes of silver. With the clarity of new fear Courtney could see every detail about his mother, and even the tiny rose pattern on the white china plates and the glitter of the silverware. He sat down, and his mother started, for she had not heard him enter. "News of any kind," she said, "can always wait for a contented digestion, can't it?"
"It depends," said Courtney. "If it is bad news, yes. Good news, no." He watched her intently from under his yellow lashes. "I don't know," said Elizabeth, in a subdued voice, "whether or not the news is 'bad,' or not. It may be-for you, my dear. I don't know. You are young, and the young can rebound." She helped him to creamed eggs and hot toast and poured coffee for him, and he saw how translucent her fine hands were. He also noticed, for the first time, that she was not wearing her wedding ring. There was no line indicating that it had ever been there. When had she removed it? Then he breathed deeply, with passionate relief. She was going to be married! He smiled. Dear Mama. He was happy for her, knowing her loneliness. He only hoped the man was worthy, and not some mountebank or blackguard looking for her money. He ate a hearty breakfast, and urged his mother to eat also. She attempted to, and failed. She kept watching her son, and he saw this, and smiled to himself again. She was hesitating to speak. She said, "I miss you so much this summer, dear, since you decided to rush through law school with Rory." Ah, thought Courtney, she is delicately leading up to the revelation, and paving the way. "I can't leave him there alone in Boston," said Courtney. "God knows what he'd be up to without my supervision. The girls are mad for him, and Boston is full of unmarried girls, and he would most likely get into mischief." "Rory may seem impulsive," said Elizabeth, "but he really isn't. He's a very calculating young man. I don't mean that unkindly, for I am very fond of Rory, and he amuses me. I mean that whatever he does is well thought out beforehand. He studies all the advantages, all the risks, before he makes a move, and never speaks of it first. That is what makes people think he is impetuous-it just seems sudden to them, though it is not." Courtney thought of Marjorie Chisholm. Rory rarely spoke of her lately, and then only casually: "Who? Oh, Maggie. I think I'm going to see her this afternoon, if I can get this tort out of the way first. Yes, she's very well." That was all. Courtney knew a great deal about Rory, but there was also much he did not know. He was beginning to wonder if Rory was losing interest in Marjorie, and abandoning the thought of marrying her. He often went off for hours two or three times a week and blandly never mentioned where he had been, and Courtney suspected another girl had taken his interest. Poor Maggie Chisholm. "You make him sound cold-blooded," said Courtney to his mother. "Or mistrustful." "I think Rory is two persons, all in one," said Elizabeth, trying to smile. "Yes, he is cold-blooded, but he is also warm and generous. Yes, he is mistrustful, but he is also as confiding as a puppy. Rory keeps his own counsel. He will show the face he wants to show, but not the others. Yes, others. I have the feeling, and always did, that he has both rectitude and ruthlessness, that he will stop at nothing to gain his ends, and yet at times something will make him stop. He always courteously listens, rarely disagrees, though I suspect that at times he is full of disagreement. He is a very complex young man, full of paradoxes. A rascal, if you will, one hour, and an upright and immovable man the next." Courtney was surprised at his mother's subtlety and perceptiveness. He said, "Yes, Rory is all that. Argus-eyed, and every eye watching, aware. He sometimes looks like a candid English schoolboy, years younger than he is, and all naivet6 and innocence, and that isn't really put on. It is one of his ways. He is feeling like that--at the moment. There is no resemblance between him and his twin sister, Ann Marie. In fact, I feel Rory is twins, all in himself" They both thought of Ann Marie. Courtney drank a little coffee. His heart had begun to beat fast. It was time that he should again speak to his mother, and when Elizabeth saw his face she became weak and frightened. But, at least he would be the one to open the subject and not herself, and perhaps she could avert the final revelation. "Mother," he said, putting down his cup and turning his face resolutely to her, "I talked to you about Ann Marie quite a long time ago, but you became so agitated and repeated so often that it was 'impossible,' that 1 let the matter drop temporarily. After all, I was still in school. And I was afraid that I would make you ill, you were so disturbed. Mother, what have you against Ann Marie?" Elizabeth clenched her hands together in her lap and her green eyes fixed themselves bravely on her son. "Courtney, I do have a reason--to object. I told you it was a most important reason. My dear, you are the only child I have. I would not have you make a mistake. There is bad blood in the Hennesseys." "You married one," said Courtney. "He wasn't so bad. In fact, he was a kind old codger, treated me like a son. Couldn't have been a better father, and I only adopted. I think he cared more about me than he did about his real child, Bernadette. If you felt that way about the Hennesseys--and you once told me you had known the senator for a long time before you married him in Washington--why did you marry him. "I loved him," said Elizabeth and bent her head. "Did I hear past tense? Don't you still care about him, even if he is dead?" "No. I see now it was only infatuation. Courtney, he was indeed kind and loving to you, better than most--real--fathers. But he was a bad man, Courtney, and I must confess that to you. A very bad man. In fact, he was really---criminal. It is too long a story to tell you. Bernadette is no better than her father was. She is even an evil woman, in many respects. Yes, the Hennesseys have bad blood. I don't want you even to think-" O God, would this be enough, please? "In short," said Courtney, after a moment or two, "you are telling me that it would be too much for you if I married Ann Marie." "Yes," she whispered. She looked up at him and saw the determined pallor on his face. "There is also the impediment." "Mother," he said, holding to patience, "there is no consanguinity, and that you know. I have discussed this matter with priests. One was doubtful. The other was sure it would be perfectly all right. Bernadette and I have no blood relationship. I am not really Ann Marie's 'uncle.' I am the son of Everett Wickersham, and though I am grateful that the senator thought enough of me to adopt me and give me his name I now wish to God that you had let it be, and let me retain my real name." Elizabeth squeezed her white, paper-thin eyelids together in extreme pain. "Even if there is a technical impediment, and the Church objected, I should still marry Ann Marie," said Courtney, with firm gentleness. "But would Ann Marie?" asked his mother, opening her exhausted eyes again. "I've discussed it with her. Mother, we are very much in love. She says she will marry me. And nothing is going to stop us. I don't care if her parents throw her out. I doubt Uncle Joseph would, though. Still, it doesn't matter. You can throw me out, too, if you want to. I have money of my own, which the senator was kind enough to leave me. But, I am going to marry that girl and as soon as possible, even if the sky falls in." "Have you thought of the legal side of it?" asked Elizabeth, feeling that it was no use at all, and there would be no last minute mercy for her. "Of course, Mother! I am studying law, you know, and am taught by lawyers, and I asked about it, and they thought even the question was absurd. There is no legal impediment to our marriage." Elizabeth pushed herself to her feet and moved feebly to one of the windows and looked out. She said, "You can't marry Ann Marie, Courtney. I can't bear- The very thought-" "I thought you loved her," said Courtney, with bitterness. "I do," said Elizabeth, so faintly that he hardly could hear her. She put her hand against the side of the window to support her, for she felt she would fall. "But; there is her mother-the Hennesseys." "She also has another inheritance," said Courtney. "You once told me that her grandmother was a lady, a beautiful person, though you only saw her once." Elizabeth remembered that disastrous day, twenty-three years ago. "So she was, Katherine," she said. "A very wronged woman, who was destroyed by her husband. But all the Hennessey blood has come out in Bernadette, and it is in her children, too. Rory has much of it. Would you care for children like Bernadette, Courtney?" "No. But there is the Wickersham side, too, have you forgotten? And your side, Mother. I think we will be too much for the 'Hennessey blood.' " His mother was silent. Was she really so thin and he had not noticed before, and so delicate in appearance? She still had not turned to him. She was clutching the side of the window. Then she was speaking again. "Joseph Armagh would not permit it. I know." Courtney stood up. "You are mistaken, Mother. Rory and I have discussed all this. He knows his father has some affection for me. He believes there will be no objection from that quarter. And even if there is, it doesn't matter. Mother, I am soon leaving to meet Ann Marie, and we are going at once to her mother and tell her." Elizabeth turned so swiftly from the window that she tottered, and had to catch a curtain to support her, and her face and eyes were so filled with horror and fear that Gourtney was shocked. She cried, "You must stop her! She mustn't tell Bernadette! I know Bernadette! I know what she will say to that poor girl, and it will kill her!" She pressed her hands to her breast like one pleading for her own life. "Courtney, in God's Name, just tell Ann Marie that for several reasons--reasons--you cannot marry her. Tell her as gently as possible, and then leave her and never see her again. You are both young. You will both forget." Her eyes were stretched and full of agonized tears. He stood and looked at her in silence, and now the dread premonition he had felt months ago returned to him, confusing and torturing him. But he also saw his mother's frantic despair, her overwhelming suffering, her fear. He said, "Is that what you wanted to tell me, Mother, that I can't marry Ann Marie? Is that why you called me home?" She nodded, unable to speak, but her eyes were imploring, begging him to agree and not ask anything else. Finally she could say in a broken voice, "I--I felt--that you hadn't given up, that you were still determined to marry that child. So, I sent for you. I knew it had to be stopped at once--" "Give me one sound reason why I should not marry her, and what I should tell her. That is all I ask, Mother. A sound reason, and not an emotional or superstitious one. If I consider it sound, then I promise you I will give it full consideration, and perhaps act on it. But if it is not sound, then--" He spread out his hands eloquently. "Believe me, dear Courtney, it is sound." "Then, tell me!" he cried, overcome with wild impatience. "I am not a child! I am a manl" "I can't tell you," she said, and her lips twisted in suffering. "If I could, I would. But you must believe me." He shook his head in an equal despair. "Mother, you aren't making sense. There is no 'sound' reason. The only one would be if I were really Ann Marie's uncle."**» Elizabeth fumbled for her chair, blindly, and fell into it. She leaned her elbows on the table and covered her face with her hands. Courtney stood and looked down at her. He felt suddenly paralyzed. The paralysis was making his lips thick and without feeling, his throat dry and parched. He could hardly breathe. He tried to move his head, to throw off this choking, this vomitous feeling in his stomach, this melting of his body. He could not look away from his mother. He heard her weeping. It seemed the most desolate sound he had ever heard, and yet he was filled with a madness of anger and torment. Gardeners were mowing the lawn outside and the breeze brought in the fragrance of fresh-cut grass, and a boy was whistling, and the trees were rustling, and a distant dog barked and someone called, laughing, outside. But in this room was a deadly silence, the silence that follows a murder, an ugly pent silence, and it was enhanced by the light and the scent from beyond the windows. "You should have told me, long ago," he said, and thought he would vomit right there. "You shouldn't have let it go so long. You should have told me, before it reached this point." His mother groaned from behind her sheltering hands, "How was I to know it would come to this? I hoped you would forget, after I spoke to you before." "So the senator was really my father?" "Yes." He could hardly hear her. "And I was born before he married you?" She could only bow her head. He hated her now, yet he both loved and pitied her as he had never done before. He wanted to denounce her, and he wanted to comfort her. He strangled a little and coughed, and the black desolation rose to his face, his lips and his eyes like deathly water, and he was drowning. "And Bernadette is really my sister? God, if that isn't a frightful joke! Odious Bernadette! Mother, she knows, too?" "Yes," Elizabeth murmured. "She does." "Who else?" "Joseph Armagh." "They are the only ones?" She nodded again, her face still covered. She could speak a little more clearly, though her voice was still muffled and faint. "Bernadette was told- what everyone else believes-but she knew right from the first that you are the son of her father. She has denied this to me, repeatedly, trying to humiliate me. But, she knows the truth. And she would like to throw it into Ann Marie's face, that poor child, to hurt her, and us." "You should have told me, years ago." Elizabeth dropped her hands and he saw the red marks on her wet white face and her deepening agony. She said, "Why should I have? To brand you, to make you feel ashamed, as a child? To make you despise your mother? What purpose would that have served? If you had not wanted to marry Ann Marie you should never have known, Courtney. Can you tell me one reason why I should have told you 'years ago'?" A dim astonishment stood in her eyes. "No," he said after a moment, "there was no reason to tell me, until now." He looked at his watch. "I must go soon to meet Ann Marie. Somehow, I must tell her-something. I can't tell her the truth." He now looked as broken and exhausted as his mother. Elizabeth came to distraught life. "You must tell Ann Marie not to speak to her mother-about any of this! For the girl's sake. I know Bernadette!" "Yes," he said. He began to turn away, but compassion took him, and he went to his mother and bent and kissed her wet cheek. She clung to him and groaned. "I wish I had never been born," she said. "I wish I were dead. I would have died to save you from this, my son." Ann Marie had been blissful when she received Courtney's letter that he would arrive on a certain day and that he would speak to his mother, but that he would accompany her when Ann Marie "spoke" to