Captains and The Kings (8 page)

books and the feel of them in his hand and the rustle of paper. They were like food and drink to him. He put down the book of pious readings with a small gesture of scorn, and wrapped up the other three books in the newspaper. Then he hesitated. Finally, with real reluctance, he lifted the parcel of food also. He said, "Thank you, Sister." But his white cheekbones flushed with mortification. "I can afford my dinners, Sister, but I am hungry tonight, and so I thank you." He tucked the parcels under his arm and removed his cap from the table. "Joey," said Sister Elizabeth, "God go with you, my child." He was surprised at the emotion he saw on her face, for she was always so full of common sense and never uttered pious aphorisms and blessings. He was not sure that what he felt in response was contempt or embarrassment, but he ducked his head and passed her with a final "thank you." She watched him go, not moving for a few moments. As he went by her secluded "parlor" he heard Mrs. Smith's soft mourning and now the voice of a man comforting her. He left the convent-orphanage, and the fine coach was still waiting. Joseph hesitated. All at once he felt the power of wealth as he had never felt it before, and he was suddenly choked with alarm. A man who had money could take what he wanted and the devil take the rest. It was possible that that rich man and woman in Sister Elizabeth's parlor could seize, law or no law, the sister of Joseph Armagh and spirit her away, and there would be naught he could do. A thin cold sweat broke out on his forehead and between his shoulders. He walked slowly towards the carriage, smiling as pleasantly as he could, and the coachman watched him come with sharp alertness and clutched his whip. Joseph stopped near him -and stood back on his heels, and laughed. "A noble carriage for Winficld," he jeered. "Does the gentleman keep it for his lady-love, perhaps, but not to be seen on the streets in the day?" "It's a foul tongue you have in your head, boyeen!" shouted the coachman, and glared down at the haggard face below him and raised his whip. This is the carriage of himself, the Mayor of Winfield, and his lady, Mrs. Tom Hennessey, and it's not in Winfield they live," and he spat, "but in Green Hills where the likes of you would skulk at the back door begging for bread! And be kicked off, down the road!" Now Joseph's alarm reached icy terror, but he merely stood there and grinned up at the coachman. Then he finally shrugged, gave the carriage a last sneering glance and walked off. The Mayor of Winfield, and his lady, and they coveted Regina and would steal her if they could, like a pickaninny in the hands of a blackbirder! Joseph hurried through the streets, panting, clutching his parcels, senseless fright snapping at his heels. It was not until 'he was near his rooming house, in the darkest and most poverty-stricken part of Winfield, that he was able to control himself. So long as he could afford to pay for his brother and sister at the orphanage they could not "give them away," like puppies or kittens. It was true that Sister Elizabeth had never once hinted such a thing, but Joseph distrusted all people without exception, and the fear he had felt on the ship was with him always. No one knew now where his uncle, Jack Armagh, was, so he, Joseph, was Scan's and Regina's true guardian, but he was only sixteen. One never knew what horrors and perfidies and crimes could be invoked against the helpless, even from such as Father Barton and Sister Elizabeth. He needed more money. Money was the answer to all things. Had he not read that somewhere, probably in the Bible his father had cherished at home, and which had gone with all the other Armagh treasures? Sure, and there it was that he had read it: "A rich man's wealth is his strong city." He had been determined from the beginning to be rich some day, but now his determination was complete, confirmed. He thought of his mother, given to the sea after the ship had left New York, and his father in a pauper's grave, without stone or remembrance, and Joseph's mouth became a slit of pain in his stark face. He must have money. It was the only protection, the only God, the only fortress, a man had in this world. Before this, Joseph had believed that very soon he would find a way to earn a comfortable wage and give his brother and sister a home and shelter and warm fires and good food and clothing. After all, there still lingered in him the belief that this was a land of opportunity, and he knew there were rich men in Winfield even if they did conceal their riches. Now he no longer cared how he would obtain, not a comfortable wage, but money in profusion. It was a matter from this night on of discovering the secret, and he would find it. He would surely find it. He thought of Mr. Tom Hennessey, the Irishman who had made his fortune, it was said with truth and knowledge, in blackbirding, and so had his father before him, and he had many interests in the great Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and all of them, it was hinted, equally nefarious. It was his money which had made him mayor of this town, and which had given him a luxurious home in Green Hills, he the son of an Irish immigrant like Joseph Armagh, himself. The townsmen spoke in awe of him, while they sneered at his origins-but with a sort of indulgent fawning. Even an Irishman with money was to be respected and honored, and caps lifted at his passing. What was it his lady had said? They would be going to another city, far away. Joseph could not afford the penny for a newspaper but he had heard the men at the sawmill discussing that "Papist" who had just been appointed by the State Legislature as one of the two senators to go to Washington. They pretended to despise him, but they were proud that a senator-something like a member of the House of Lords, Joseph had thought-would be from their town and so add polish and pride to it. Besides, he had been born here, and he had been a less venal mayor than most, and had often expressed his "fraternal interest" in the poor workingman "and the conditions of his work." The fact that he had done nothing to help either was not held against him, and in spite of the general loathing and fear of "Popery" Tom Hennessey was not suspected of secret unspeakable crimes except the ones less appalling, which were at least understandable and even to be admired as "cuteness," and obsequiously envied. To deal in flesh and blood, even if it were "black," had always seemed to Joseph to be the vilest and most unpardonable of crimes. Oppressed, himself, from birth, his rare cold sympathies had been with the fleeing slaves, who could now be captured and returned to their owners in the South. There had been times when he had sickened over the thought, and had hoped that at some near time he would be able to help a desperate slave to reach Canada, and safety from the viciousness which was universal man. But tonight he envied Tom Hennessey whose fortune, and his father's, had begun in blackbirding. The mayor was far cleverer than Joseph Armagh, and his father certainly more intelligent than Daniel Armagh, who would have been stunned to learn that in the world there lived men so detestable and degraded. "An honorable man, lifted above sin and meanness, who had never raised his hand against the helpless but had given them all he could, was greater in the sight of God and man than a lord of Norman blood, and the Royal Family, itself," Daniel had said once, long ago. Joseph had not really believed that nonsense. But it was Daniel Armagh, thought Joseph on this ashen and raining night, who had innocently betrayed his family with his silliness of thought and word and deed and had never told them the truth. In these tormented minutes Joseph felt his first hatred for his father-and was not ashamed and was not aghast. He crossed the mean town square with its slipper)' cobbles and its black storefronts. A statue of William Penn, badly executed in bronze, stood in the center, the latrine of birds. No one was abroad on such a gloomy night of drizzle and chill, and Joseph's pounding footsteps echoed throughout the square. A street, among others, led off it, named Philadelphia Terrace, and here was the gritty and forlorn rooming house in which Joseph Armagh lived, and where he had had his determined and hopeful dreams for nearly three years. It was a little woeful house, more decayed than its neighbors, and sagging and dilapidated, its clapboards pulling from the walls, its door splintered. One streetlamp, belching the odor of gas, lighted it feebly, which was an advantage for there was not a light in the house. It was past eight o'clock and all decent folk were in bed for the work tomorrow. Joseph pushed open the unlocked door and by the light of the streetlamp he made his way to the table on which his own lamp stood, filled and cleaned and ready to be carried up the creaking stairs which reeked of mold and dust and rodents and cabbage. He fumbled for the lucifers which were deposited in an open-nailed-tin box on the table, and lighted his lamp, and the yellow light smoked for a moment or two. He closed the door and lifted the lamp and made his way upstairs, every step snapping under his feet. The still cold inside the house was more penetrating even than that outside, and Joseph's shivering returned. His room was hardly more than a closet and smelled of sifting dust and damp. He put the lamp on the commode. He looked about the hopeless dreariness of his "home," and at the pile of books neatly stacked in one corner. Sudden heavy sleet began to hiss and rattle against the little window. Joseph took off his coat and covered the one blanket on his sagging bed with it, for extra warmth. Autumnal thunder, one loud and explosive clap, followed on a brilliant flare of lightning, and the wind rose and the glass in the window shook and one loose shutter banged somewhere. Joseph was conscious of a nauseating ravenousness, and he sat on the edge of his bed and unwrapped the parcel of food. He stuffed the stale bread and sour cheese and cold pork into his mouth rapidly, hardly chewing, so great was his hunger. It had been a generous parcel, and it had been a sacrifice from the kind nuns, but it was not quite enough to satisfy him. However, it was more filling than the dinners he ate in this house seven nights a week, for seventy-five cents a week, and he had not spent his fifty cents. He licked the crumbs of bread and cheese and fat from his fingers, voraciously, and was immediately strengthened. The oily newspaper lay on his bed. An item caught his quick attention. He read it over and over. Then he lay back with his arms under his head, and he thought and thought and continued to think for at least an hour more. He thought only of money, and he had found the first step towards it. It was a matter, now, only of a little more patience, a little more knowledge, and much planning. Even when he blew out his lamp he continued to think, for once unaware of the sick smell of his flat pillow and the hammock-sag of his bed and the thinness of the blanket and coat which covered him. Out of terror and despair and hatred-he had found the way. If it was not the one extolled in theology, it held, for Joseph Francis Xavier Armagh, far more truth and practicality.
Chapter 6
The next night on returning to his boardinghouse Joseph was met at the door by his little landlady, an elderly widow with an innocent, pure, and chronically apprehensive face, for life had been no gentler to her than to Joseph, himself. However, it had had the reverse effect on Mrs. Alice Marhall: It had made her so compassionate of others that she wept when accepting the money her boarders paid her weekly, knowing their endless hard labor and their desperate plight-these young and old men without kin or comfort. As she had neither herself-though she never knew a paroxysm of self-pity-she mourned over them. No bitterness had settled in her timid soul, no hatred of God and man, no vengefulness. Part of this was due to the fact that she had very little intelligence and part to her faith which never questioned. To Mrs. Marhall "God knew best, our Consolation and our Help," and she prayed fervently not only for "the heathen" and the black slaves but everyone whom her small mothlike mind brushed for an instant. She would have incurred Joseph's immediate contempt-for her conversations were always full of pieties and biblical aphorisms-had she not reminded him of his mother's mother who had died in the Famine of starvation. There was the same unshakable simplicity, the same patience and sincerity, the same far distant look of one who had known and had seen unspeakable pain and suffering and had accepted it with heartbreaking endurance. But the apprehensive expression of the brutalized innocent remained on her small pallid face, in the anxious look of her dwindled gray eyes, in the nervous placating smile, in the aimless little movements of her hands. Her black crinoline was greenish in its ancient folds and threadbare, but her mobcap was always white and tied with old-fashioned ribbons, and her apron glistened with starch and was never stained. She seemed like a starved old bird to Joseph, and her hands were scorched with homemade soap and labor, for no one helped her in her dying house and she did all things connected with it-including emptying the slops-without aid. She sometimes irritated Joseph with her homilies and her concern for him and the other boarders-when she could waylay him-but he never dismissed her with a sharp word or overtly showed her impatience. He had lost his own innocence long ago but the innocence of such as Mrs. Mar- hall always touched him. Moreover, he had been brought up to respect age, even if senile, and to honor the old if only because of the evil life had inflicted on them through long and monstrous years. For, had they not mastered the secret of endurance, and were they not brave? She accosted Joseph tonight as he entered the house-wet and chilled -with her outstretched gnarled hand which, however, did not touch him. She had early learned that he flinched at contact with others, so the hand, meant to reach in sympathy and maternal consolation, did not even approach his streaming sleeve. She held a corked bottle in her other hand, and she smiled tentatively. "Mr. Armagh," she said, in her voice which was barely more than a whisper, "I heard you coughing all night, as you have coughed for weeks, but it was terrible, last night, truly it was. And I-I mixed an old elixir for you, my father's remedy for all ills, but mostly for the lungs and the throat, and I hope you will take it kindly and not think I am interfering-" (In spite of her lack of keen intelligence she had the elemental perceptiveness of a young child, and she knew Joseph for a proud young man and one as remote and as indifferent to others as a tower on a hill.) Joseph's lips tightened, and then he saw her pleading eyes, always so watery and shrinking, and he thought again of his grandmother who had given her last loaf of bread to a pregnant girl. So he took the bottle. She said, "It's very good, truly. Thyme and horehound and honey with a little sorrel. So harmless, but so very effective." "Thank you," he said. She liked his "foreign" voice, deep and resonant and polite, with its undertone of lilting music. "I should like to pay you for it, Mrs. Marhall." She was about to refuse, hurt, when she remembered his pride. She averted her eyes. "It was nothing, truly. I grow the herbs in my garden, and I had a little honey left over from the summer, a kind friend who keeps bees-" She looked at Joseph then, and blurted, "Three cents will be more than enough, Mr. Armagh!" She added, "On your payday." He put the bottle in his pocket, gravely inclining his head as he prepared to mount the steps to his room to wash and then to join the other boarders in what Mrs. Marhall somewhat grandly called her "dining room." But Mrs. Marhall, deprecatingly clearing her throat, said, "You had a caller, Mr. Armagh, but it seems to me a very peculiar caller-" Joseph thought immediately of Mayor Hennessey. "A policeman?" he asked, and he left the first step of the stairway and returned to Mrs. Mar- hall and she saw his face and was frightened, and retreated. "Peculiar?" he demanded in a loud voice. "What do you mean by that? What was his name, his appearance?" She put up her hands to him, palms outward, as if she would fend off a blow, and again when Joseph saw this he felt a poignant twinge. He tried to smile. "I am a stranger," he said, "and I know no one, so how could I have a caller? I was just surprised." But Mrs. Marhall was from childhood acquainted with fear, and she saw the acute fear in Joseph's eyes and trembled, herself. She said in a quick and stammering tone, "Oh, I am sure it wasn't anyone alarming, Mr. Armagh, not a policeman for what would a policeman want with you? It was just a-gentleman-a rather rough gentleman, not really a gentleman - Oh, dear, I'm afraid I am muddled! Just a big-man-nicely spoken but a little crude in manner, and he held his hat in his hands and bowed to me, and said he was a friend of yours. He asked if you lived here." Joseph controlled his quickened breathing. Mayor Hennessey need not have sent a man for that information. Sister Elizabeth could have given it to him, and now the absurdity of the mayor sending a messenger to him struck him and his rigid body relaxed. "What was his name?" "A Mr. Adams. That's what he said. An old friend. He seemed to know you, Mr. Armagh. He described you to me, and it was just so, eighteen or thereabouts, and tall and thin with thick auburn hair-that is the color, isn't it?-and you worked in a sawmill. Dear me, I hope I did no wrong admitting you lived here, Mr. Armagh! And I told him you had lived here for nearly three years and was very respectable, and minded your manners and paid promptly and I had no complaints and he said he was glad to hear it, and it was truly you. I asked him if he wished to leave a message, and he said no, but that he would see you on Sunday."