Never Victorious, Never Defeated

  Allan knew nothing much about music except the sacred variety which he had heard in his youth. Neither old Father Gallagher nor his present successor, Father Tobin, had been able to afford a good organ for their little church. The choir had been lamentable at all times. Only once had it been distinguished, and that had been during the one year when Tim Marshall had forced his older son to become a member. The only other songs Allan knew were Irish ballads picked up from his parents. He had never had the money to attend the very infrequent “concerts” held in Portersville, and concerts in Philadelphia had been out of the question. Yet, he had an instinctive ear for fine music, and the tenor had sung hardly five notes before Allan’s head jerked up.

  Though Monetti was a cynic, he had given an Italian’s courteous glance at the date, and was now singing his own arrangement from Gounod’s “Messe du Sacre Coeur.” He was certain that Gounod would not be annoyed, but rather flattered. (Had not the great composer congratulated him enthusiastically only a year ago?) As he sang, he looked directly into Allan’s eyes, and something about those eyes made him involuntarily add a greater depth to his voice, a pure and reverent and urgent splendor. Tears moistened his eyelids; his own heart palpitated mysteriously. He had not been wrong; Monetti was never wrong.

  Someone had touched Allan’s arm, and he pulled away with unconscious wrath. He did not know he was trembling; he did not know he was staring blindly at the singer. But all at once, and after what seemed to him a great passage of time, he was aware of silence followed by the discreet patter of hands—like the tinkling of icicles—and a blur of coughings, murmurs, creakings, rustles, and dainty chirpings. He looked about him, dazed. Several of the gentlemen were sliding along the wall to the door, and ladies were rising to accompany them. Now more and more of the audience were moving doorward, and the little platform where Monetti had stood was empty even of. the musicians. The chandeliers flooded into Allan’s eyes, and he blinked.

  “I believe you were sleeping, Mr. Marshall!” cried a husky voice beside him. He glanced down at the flaming head which was rising up to his shoulder, then passing it. Cornelia was laughing at him mockingly, but there was a curious expression, half hard, half affectionate, on her face. Suddenly he thought of a large and amateurish painting he had seen somewhere, too highly colored, too crude, too full, too polished and glazed. No, it had not been a painting; he had once wandered, in New York, into a wax museum where all the female figures had a hard bright glossiness over tints unnaturally brilliant, and had been clothed in gowns of a theatrical gaudiness. One of them had hair like this, and he had furtively touched it and had been repelled at its springing harshness.

  Cornelia was watching him, and something in his intense regard made her uneasily offended. Of course, he had drunk too much; champagne was too rich for his stomach. She touched him lightly, again. “Intermission,” she said.

  “Intermission,” he repeated automatically. It was ridiculous for him to feel that he had said something momentous. He followed her out of the room into the colorful turmoil of the one adjoining. No one was speaking of Monetti’s voice, but only of Rufus’s generosity in engaging the tenor for entertainment this evening. A few of the ladies hid yawns behind fans. Gentlemen wandered away into the library for a smoke with their host. The Christmas tree shimmered in unnoticed light in the corner; the fire blew up boisterously on the hearth. Suddenly Allan was conscious of exhaustion and emptiness. The laughing voices of men and women became unbearably clangorous to him, the scent of powder, perfume, and burning wood intolerable.

  “Can’t we go somewhere where it is quiet?” he muttered to Cornelia. She laughed at him, tilted her head, and scrutinized him mirthfully. “Somewhere cooler?” she suggested. “The hall, then.”

  The hall was unoccupied; the fire on the white hearth burned low, and the beautiful curving stairway was full of shadows. The candles guttered in the chandelier above. Allan stood there, looking about him at the elegance and delicacy of the furniture and the damask walls. His breath came slower now, and easier. “I think you are drunk,” Cornelia said, in a matter-of-fact and indulgent voice. She added, without a moment’s thought, “I think I am, too.”

  Intermission, thought Allan. Intermissions were all very well, but a man had his life to live. In this half-light of fading candles and dying fire, Cornelia was less strenuous in appearance, softer, and she was gazing at him strangely, gently, as if very moved and hesitantly eager. They stood and looked at each other, and moment by moment their eyes took on questioning intensity. I love her, he thought, and she loves me. He could see the faint glitter of the jewels about her throat, and now they appeared to be agitated. Her immense vitality, somewhat muted, flowed out to him as if to draw him into itself, and something resistive in him melted and surrendered. He lifted his hand and touched her throat in a tentative gesture, and she did not move away. He let his fingers remain on the smooth warm flesh, and then, not retreating, she covered his hand with her own and pressed it harder against her throat. Her tawny eyes became humid, and then she was trembling. “Yes, yes,” she said, and her voice was a whisper. He put his arm about her, bent his head, and kissed her lips. They were for an instant, firm and cool, then they softened and became warm as all youth and living. He pulled her roughly to him, and her white arms were about his neck, her full breast crushed against his stiff white shirt.

  She was murmuring against his mouth, and clinging to him, and he held her tighter. One by one the candles guttered out and the fire sank lower. “I love you, I love you,” Cornelia was saying, over and over, until he could not remember when she had begun speaking, and this moment was one with the moment of summer in the blaze of the sun.

  When Rufus came looking for his daughter, he found her alone before the fire. A manservant was lighting new candles, and as he did so the shadowy hall brightened and the walls gleamed out of dimness. “Where the devil have you been?” demanded Rufus. He stood beside his daughter, and she looked up from the golden velvet sofa where she was sitting. "Out here alone! That singer’s starting again. And where’s that Marshall feller?”

  Cornelia smiled at him. She took his hand fondly. “Mr. Marshall? Oh, he left about five minutes ago. I said good night to him.”

  Rufus frowned. “Why didn’t he speak to me, and Estelle, before leaving?”

  Cornelia studied a ring on Rufus’s hand reflectively, the ring her grandfather had given him many years ago. “He wanted to steal away, or something; not disturb anyone, I suppose.” Suddenly she flung her father’s hand away, laughed loudly, and jumped to her feet. “Didn’t you know, Papa? He’s the man in the portieres!”

  “No family, no breeding, no background!” moaned Estelle to her husband at three in the morning. She had refused to be undressed; she had refused to go to bed. She sat at her dressing table watching Rufus pacing up and down the room. “Who is he? Where does he come from? Who knows him?”

  This had gone on for long over an hour. Rufus stopped beside his wife. His face was drained and gray. “I can’t stand any more of this. You’ll have to shut up, Estelle. She is my daughter, and, by God, my daughter can marry any damned Will you be quiet? ‘Family’? ‘Background’? ‘Breeding’? Let’s look at this baldly. I haven’t any, either, and you were cursed glad to get me, weren’t you? An old maid, a Philadelphia old maid. I’m brutal, am I?”

  His features became gross, thickening under an unusual pallor. “No, no, you’ve talked enough; I am talking now, and when I have finished that’ll be the end of it.” Estelle got to her feet, assuming a half-swooning position, one hand supporting her body against the table’s edge. “None of your delicate ways with me now, my dear. I’m not even going to get your smelling salts for you. And you’re not so damned delicate! The great-granddaughter of a groom, and an indentured servant at that, has no business being so fragile.”

  His breath was hard and painful, and there was a heavy pain in his chest. Estelle’s head had fallen and he could see nothing of her face except her shaking
chin. Her careful curls had become scraggly, and for the first time he noticed that the hand which was supporting her whole weight was not the hand of a “lady.” Flesh was flesh, and it always revealed itself in its nakedness during moments of stress. Curiously, a kind of relief and triumph came to Rufus, a feeling of conquest.

  “I’m not going to repeat what this Marshall feller means to me and my business,” Rufus continued. “He’s not the man I’d have picked for Cornelia, but she could do worse! By God, she could do worse, such as your mincing marquis! And you’re going to behave yourself, and hold your tongue, and stop your sweet lies about my daughter. I’ve heard them for years, and I’ve heard you speaking them to others, too. She is my girl; she was always first and last with me.” Color was coming back into his face, and suddenly he struck his clenched hand against the table near his wife’s hand. “Sweet, malicious lies, Estelle, calculated to separate me from my daughter. But nothing ever shall. Nothing ever shall!”

  32

  Allan left his carriage some three streets away from his father’s house, and went the rest of the way on foot. He had done this in consideration of his parents, but as his polished boots slipped on the black ice over the plank footwalks he cursed. The champagne of the night before had done him no good, he reflected. It was responsible for the cold pain in him, for the sense of desolation. It made the squalor of this neighborhood meaner, closer, more stifling. It caused the stench hanging over the houses to sicken him. He concentrated on the champagne he had drunk and would permit no other explanation.

  The ghostly moon stared at him blankly; the mounds of snow along the walks were leprous and pitted with black grit. A bitter wind stung his face, and he pulled the fur collar of his fine great-coat closer about his neck. Suddenly he was angered against his family; it was ridiculous that a man like himself, dressed as he was, should be picking his way through this foulness. But when he came to his father’s house, so neat, so small, so painted, so different from the squalid shacks about it, he felt a pride. He paused to examine the red door with something like affection, and then he knocked. It immediately opened and Michael stood there, the yellow lamplight behind him. He touched Allan’s arm and whispered hastily, “I think it is all right. Dad will behave himself, until at least after dinner. He promised Ma.”

  Tim was sitting before the great black stove, absorbing its heat, and Mrs. Marshall hovered over the lids, stirring and tasting critically. There was a splendid odor of roasting goose in the clean, poor room, and a fragrance of boiling onions. Mrs. Marshall, her worn face more lined than ever, looked up eagerly as Allan entered, and she came to him and kissed him. Tim glanced at his son and muttered. Then he said sarcastically, “Merry Christmas.” In spite of himself, however, he boyishly eyed the packages Allan was carrying. “And what did my gentleman do with himself last night, when he should have been with his family? Praying, I’m thinking.”

  “Now, Dad,” said Michael. He pressed Allan’s arm, and Allan remained silent.

  Tim turned fully, and elaborately examined his older son. “And it’s the fine clothes he’s wearin’, with the gold watch chain and the boots like the mirrors. It’s forgettin’, he is, where he came from.”

  Allan drew a deep breath and smiled. “No,” he said. “It’s because of where I came from that I have the watch chain and the boots and the clothes. It is because of my parents that I had the brains and the ambition to do what I have done.”

  “It’s the Blarney Stone he’s been kissin’,” said Tim.

  “Now, Dada,” said Mrs. Marshall. She patted Allan’s shoulder. “It’s proud of him we are.”

  Tim turned a purplish crimson, and he half-rose from his chair. “Proud!” he shouted. “Desertin’ his people, turnin’ from his people … !”

  “Don’t be a damn fool, Dad,” said Allan, placing his parcels on a corner of the table. He was determined to keep his temper in the presence of this old idiot. “I’m not going to argue with you, and I’m only going to say this: I can do more for those you call ‘our people’ than I can from the outside. I believe it’s called ‘infiltrating the ranks of the enemy.’”

  “It’s the liar you are,” said Tim. His bushy brows drew over his furious eyes and the purplish blush rose higher. Allan shrugged. “Believe what you want.”

  Tim subsided, but Allan had instilled a doubt in his mind. He continued to glare at his son and rumble under his breath. Michael and Mrs. Marshall gathered about the packages. The poor woman’s hands were trembling and her thin body was rigid. “Look, Dada,” she wheedled. “A package for you, from our Allan.” She laid the package on Tim’s knotted and resistive knees, and turned away. “I want nothin’ from the scalpeen,” he said. “Not to go to Midnight Mass, with his family, and not today either, I’m thinkin’. Holy Day of Obligation, and all. He’ll be ponderin’ on it all when he’s in hell.”

  Allan ignored him. “Open your package, Ma,” he said. “Let me help you; it’s heavy.” He lifted the lid of the bulky box, and Mrs. Marshall cried out joyfully. “A coat, a wonderful coat!” she cried. “A warm and lovely coat, with fur! A beautiful black coat.”

  “Broadcloth, with mink,” said Allan, and helped his mother to put it on. He was still young; he could feel the lurch of his heart as his mother stood before him, lovingly touching the cloth, reverently feeling of the fur. Over the splendor of it her ravaged face became young and tender and full of eagerness. Tim watched her, and began to blink suspiciously. “Ah, Mary,” he murmured. “Ah, my colleen. It is a girl ye are, and it’s a failure I am, that ye did not have it sooner.”

  She bent and kissed him shyly. “Not a failure. We have our sons, Dada.”

  Tim immediately became wrathful. “It’s no heart in him that he brings this. It’s mockery at us.”

  Michael regarded him with serious reproof. “You are wrong, Dad. Allan is not the man to waste his time mocking unimportant people. If he had not wished to give us pleasure, he would have abandoned us completely, and forgotten us.”

  As Michael, about to become a Franciscan Missionary Brother of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, had taken on almost a supernatural quality in Tim’s mind and so was almost infallible in his judgment, Tim fell silent. His face remained stubborn, but his fierce blue eyes began to soften. He fumbled with his own package, and Michael gently helped him. The father muttered, “No doubt velvet britches to wear in my cab.” But the small package produced a large gold watch, a repeater, and a gold chain. Tim stared at it, dumfounded. He jerked his hands away; he dared not touch this wonderful thing. Mrs. Marshall exclaimed with awe, “It’s gold, it is. To wear on Sundays.” The watch glittered on its satin bed, and all at once it sweetly tinkled the hour of six. Tim drew in his breath. Mrs. Marshall turned it over reverently. On the back was inscribed: “For my father, Timothy Marshall, from his loving son, Aloysius.” Mrs. Marshall read it aloud and began to cry.

  “Aloysius,” repeated Michael, smiling at his father, whose features had begun to twitch. “It’s ashamed of yourself you should be, Dad.”

  “I’m ashamed of nothin’!” shouted Tim. But he took up the watch and held it as a priest holds the Host. “And where would I be a-wearin’ of it? On my runs?”

  They ignored him. For Michael, Allan had bought a Missal and a Bible, bound in the most silken leather, and stamped with gold, with his name upon them. Michael gave Allan a silent look of gratitude; and it came to Allan, for the first time, that this formerly despised younger brother of his had acquired stature, dignity, and authority in this household. Tim leaned from his chair and scowled at the books. “And what’ll we be givin’ him, after all these fine things?” he growled. “He’ll be throwin’ it in the gutter, I’m thinkin’, on the way to his elegant hotel.”

  Mrs. Marshall timidly produced the family’s gifts for Allan: a coarse black scarf she had knitted herself, a cheap silver rosary with imitation pearl beads from Michael, a thick and modest pocket purse from Tim. Allan studied them in silence, while they watched him anxiousl
y, and with embarrassment. Then Allan said gravely, “Thank you. I’ll always keep them.” He put the scarf about his neck, the rosary in his pocket, and some silver in the purse. All his actions were careful and sincere. Even Tim could find no fault

  “And this reminds me,” said Allan, after a proper interval had elapsed. He withdrew a slip of paper from his wallet. “A check for five hundred dollars for Father Tobin. Saint Joseph, in the church, has been peeling badly for years. It’s a disgrace.”

  “He’ll want no money from you,” said Tim, but his growl was weak. “And what’s the matter with the statue? From Italy. It’s many a prayer we made at that altar. …”

  “A new statue, a good one, will cost only about three hundred dollars. Father Tobin could use the rest of it to buy himself a chicken once a week, or some good pork chops or a rib of beef,” said Allan good-naturedly. He pushed the check closer to his father. “I’m sure Father Tobin won’t refuse this righteously. The money was earned, not stolen.”

  “Wasn’t it, now?” demanded Tim with exaggerated irony.

  At that moment there came a great crash, and a tinkle of glass, and Mrs. Marshall screamed and her hands flew to her mouth. Tim started to his feet. A cold blast of air gushed into the room, followed by a shout: “Dirty Irishers! Goddamn Irishers! Git out of our country!” There was another crash, and a tinkle, and a second heavy stone fell on the floor. Mrs. Marshall moaned, fell into a chair, and covered her face with her hands. Michael stood frozen and aghast.

  Tim started for the door, but Allan thrust him violently aside. He opened the door and ran out. Two large young men, shabbily dressed, stood on the walk laughing loudly. One of them had another stone in his hand, ready to hurl. The wan street lamp glimmered on their uncouth faces. Allan recognized them at once.

  Then they saw Allan on the doorstep, and the laughter choked in their throats and their faces paled. They had not reckoned on Allan’s presence here today. “The rich gentleman” was not likely to be with his poor family.