Never Victorious, Never Defeated

  Allan refilled Mr. Boyle’s glass and his own. Mr. Boyle fell into silence and watched Allan drink, and he was grave again. At last he said, “So, ye’re takin’ to the bottle. A man does that when his soul is sick and there’s no hope in him. And ye’re not the lad for drink, Aloysius. Me, I’ve been drinkin’ hard all me life, but it did no hurt because even in the worst days I had no despair. And perhaps ye’ll be tellin’ me now why ye’re desperate.”

  “You make me sound like a drunkard,” said Allan contemptuously. “Again, don’t be sentimental, Dan. It’s the pressure on me. When it is over. …”

  “Never will it be,” interrupted Mr. Boyle. “It was in you as a lad. Now it is worse. Why?”

  Allan turned the glass in his fingers. “A man grows older,” he muttered.

  “Sometimes a man grows up,” said Mr. Boyle. He was watching Allan with keen sorrow. “What is it ye cannot stand, godson? What is it that eats at the soul?”

  “Did you come here to inquisition me?” asked Allan with increasing irritation.

  “Why, yes, that is what I did,” Mr. Boyle replied. “It’s angry I was with ye, but not for what you thought.” He waited, but Allan did not answer. “I promised, at your baptism, that I would guard you,” he continued. “Keep ye strong in the Faith. Could it be that ye are desperate because somewhere on your way ye lost God?”

  Allan shouted with laughter. But Mr. Boyle became more sorrowful. “So, that is it,” he said. “Ye lost God because ye came to hate men. It’s the feelin’ soul ye have, and such souls make men devils or angels. What hurt ye so, somewhere in your life, Aloysius?”

  Allan took out his watch and frowned at it. “Dan, you should have been a priest. And now, you must excuse me. I have to dress.”

  But Mr. Boyle continued to sit and watch him. “A confirmation it was to ye, of your opinion, when the Infant Jesus was smashed. Aloysius, ye cannot unterstand, but I am leavin’ lighter of heart than when I came.” He stood up, and went to Allan and put his hand on the young man’s shoulder. He could feel the broad thin bones under his fingers, and he sighed. “I’ll be rememberin’ you in my prayers.” He pressed Allan’s shoulder heavily.

  Allan shrugged off his hand, went to his desk, and wrote out a check, which he gave to Mr. Boyle. The old man tucked it away. Then Allan said maliciously, “Perhaps, Dan, I’ll be as rich as you someday. I hear it’s a fine house you have in County Mayo, in spite of the English landlords.”

  Dan struggled to keep from smiling, then he confessed: “A whole village, Aloysius. The damned Sassenach was bankrupt, though he squeezed the poor folk. And now we have a school for the little ones, and a chapel, and the roofs don’t leak, and they bless the name of Dan Boyle. For what else does a man live?”

  He walked slowly to the door, his mammoth head bent. Then he stopped, his hand on the latch, and turned to Allan. “It was in the newspapers that I read a little poem. On Monday. I cannot remember all of it, but only the first:

  ‘Now, was it Abel, was it Cain,

  Who suffered death, who suffered pain?

  Who dealt the blow that killed the other?

  Now, was it Cain? Was it his brother?’”

  34

  The early September day was very warm and very still. The trees appeared to be larger and greener, and more filled with light, and flowers seemed to be more profuse and vivid. Yet, there was such a silence. Allan Marshall, the town-bred, felt the silence uneasily. When the locusts suddenly and fiercely shrilled he heard them with relief. He had found his way to Stephen deWitt’s old beloved grotto, secret and hidden, and he was sitting on the marble bench. Clover heads studded the bright grass, and bees hummed from one to the other in the drowsing brilliance. Allan watched them abstractedly and thought: How long does it take for a woman to give birth? This has been going on since dawn. … I can’t stand much more of it.

  He thought of Sophia deWitt, “the great gray hag.” She had died only two months ago, very suddenly. He had come to have a kind of love for the furious old woman, who had shown him an almost vehement and pathetic affection since his marriage to Cornelia two years ago. He had finally realized her loneliness and misery, and he had been able to comfort her. The fact that he had developed a malicious affection for Rufus, and had somehow revealed his increasing love for Cornelia and his devotion to the business of the family, had disarmed the mistrust she had felt for almost everyone. Sometimes she had addressed him as “my son.” And she had confided in him, telling him of Stephen with a strange lostness in her voice and a distant look in her eyes. “He believed in mankind,” she had said once, wonderingly, and she had turned to Allan as if expecting him to explain this incredible thing. “Except at the last. And that killed him, my poor Stephen.” She had added faintly, “Now, how did I know that?”

  Only he and Cornelia had been at home when Sophia had died. The rest of the family had been in Newport, as usual, but Cornelia had refused to accompany them. “I want the baby to be born here,” she had said, “where I was born, and in the same room.” Allan was only too glad to please her in this. Newport bored him, except when he was alone and was standing on the wild rocks bordering Narragansett Bay and observing the blue and savage sea roaring in. Then, watching the arching breakers at full tide, something was assuaged in him. He would turn from them at sunset, and, with regret and a sense of desolation, go back to the great reddish stucco house on its bluff overlooking the waters.

  Sophia had died shortly after luncheon on a late July day, all heat and humidity. She had gone to her rooms to rest, and then her maid had come down screaming, and Allan had run upstairs alone. Cornelia was napping, as prescribed by her doctor. When Allan reached the bedroom, Sophia was already dead. The family had returned at once from Newport, and there had been an enormous funeral. Cornelia had been utterly disconsolate. She had clung to her husband desperately, and only he could console her. It was during those days that Allan had acquired a deep tenderness for his young wife, and he spent hours stroking her coarse red hair and wiping away her tears. He had been enormously touched to discover that Sophia had divided her huge fortune between him and Cornelia.

  Allan glanced at his watch. Only fifteen minutes had gone by. In another ten minutes or so the family would arrive from Newport in response to his telegram. Jim Purcell had called him an hour ago and had told him that he and Lydia and Laura and Patrick would be with him and Cornelia after dinner. Lydia, too, had spoken gently to her son-in-law, assuring him that all would be well, and that he must not expect matters to hurry with a first child. She had left a loving message with Allan for her daughter.

  Allan lit another cigarette from his last one and smoked restlessly. The doctor had returned to his rooms, leaving Cornelia with her two nurses. He, too, had reassured Allan; the child would not be born until about midnight. He pointed out to Allan that Cornelia was doing excellently; why, she would not remain in her bed, the dear girl! And Cornelia, who only winced occasionally, and only scowled and swore a few times, had indulgently ordered her husband to go for a walk in the garden or do something, damn it. She had kissed him, her eyes twinkling, and had literally pushed him from her rooms with her strong young arms. “Come back, just before dinner, and we’ll have a toast together,” she had said, and her voice had boomed.

  They treat me as if I were an idiot, thought Allan. He looked at the great house above him; the upper windows were one sheet of flame in the sunset. No one had drawn the curtains on Cornelia’s windows. The house and gardens slept under the golden sky. I was wrong, thought Allan, in his tiredness. She is not the zestful lion cub I thought. She is the very fiery heart of the family; there is a kind of terribleness about her, for she is like a force. She cannot be blamed for that any more than the sun can be blamed for burning, or the sea for rolling. She is elemental and full of natural power.

  He thought of his first startled shock and realization when he had accidentally overheard Cornelia and Rufus talking together one evening. Rufus and his daughter were discus
sing business matters, and Cornelia’s voice was firm and hard; her husband had hardly recognized it. Allan incredulously listened to Cornelia’s suggestions, and the respect Rufus accorded them. Stocks, bonds, investments, subsidiaries, policies—Cornelia discussed them all. It was impossible that so young a woman should know so much, and so surely. Never had she discussed these things with her husband, and Allan had been mortified at his own puerility and at the implicit slight to him. And then he had become frightened. The lovely young wife who was so gay with him, so full of verve and laughter and teasing, so ardent and occasionally so tender, stood on an almost equal footing with her father.

  Then Cornelia had seriously spoken of her husband, and her voice had become gentler and more thoughtful. “He does what he does because something drives him, and that something is nothing we can understand, Papa,” she had said. “If ever that ‘something’ leaves him, he won’t be the man either of us knows. Yes, he does drink a little too much, and that is part of the strange thing we’ll never know.”

  Nor will I, Allan had thought with angry humiliation as he had turned away. He felt exposed, and it was all the worse that his exposure had come from a young girl whom he loved as a husband, and whom he had believed to be inferior to him. Intelligent, yes, but a female intelligence. From that day on he began, very cautiously and tentatively, to discuss legal and business matters with his wife. She had listened at first, as a mother listens, with sweet tolerance, to a story she has already heard. It was not so now, Allan thought, as he viciously ground his cigarette in the grass. He was satisfied that Cornelia had finally admitted him to the congregation of the inner family, and that he was no longer an intellect and a force to be manipulated and used, and a man only to be loved.

  He decided he could not endure the silent and golden peace of the gardens any longer. He went back to the house. Muted noises from the servants, as they came and went through the rooms, annoyed him. There was a faint clatter of silver and dishes in the dining room. He would eat alone tonight. He went into the library, opened a cabinet, and took out a bottle of whisky and a glass. Then he looked at them with distaste. At last he took out another glass, and carrying the bottle under his arm, he went upstairs. Cornelia’s door was open so that the cooling evening air could wash away the warmth of the earlier day. Cornelia was laughing, and her laughter was followed by the titter of the nurses. Downstairs the telephone rang stridently in the dimming stillness. Those damned reporters again, thought Allan, and he went into Cornelia’s room. Now church bells began to ring faintly and sweetly from the valley below, for it was Sunday, and Allan thought of the Italian campanile singing across the hot blue waters of the Bay of Naples.

  Cornelia was sitting at her dressing table and her maid was brushing her long and vivid hair. Her turquoise dressing gown flowed lightly from her shoulders to her feet and billowed on the soft tints of the Aubusson rug. She turned her head and grinned in welcome at her husband. “Back again? Why, you’ve been gone only half an hour or so. Tell me, who is having this kid? You or I?” She kissed him heartily as he bent over her. There was no pallor in her face, no sign of pain, though there was the slightest crease between her eyes, coming and going every few moments. “I’ve decided something,” she said, as her maid braided her hair deftly and the fatuous nurses looked on from their chairs. “I’m going to have twins. I always said so.”

  “Where is Dr. Schwartz? Why isn’t he with you?” demanded Allan angrily. Cornelia shrugged and laughed. “He’s all worn out, poor old man. He said he’ll have a tray in his rooms. Anyone would think,” she added, “that I was giving royal birth or something. I see you have your bottle, and two glasses.” Her smile remained, broad and good-tempered, but all at once she winced and cringed a little. “A large drink for me, please.” Her voice, for an instant, was a trifle faint.

  One of the nurses, the young and stout one, came forward and spoke timidly: “Do you think it best, Mrs. Marshall? Don’t you think we should consult Dr. Schwartz?”

  Cornelia had recovered, and she waved her hand. “Nonsense. I know what is ‘best’ for me. Go on, Allan,” she said, as Allan hesitated. She tipped the bottle in his hand as he poured, and took the filled glass even though he protested. Then she turned to her nurses and maid and suggested they leave her alone “for a few damned minutes at least.” They left, not offended, but only anxious. Cornelia’s spurious democracy, so like her father’s, commanded their utter adoration.

  She put her glass to her lips and her eyes shone with merriment at her husband. “To the twins,” she said and tossed down the whisky smoothly. Allan frowned. He had never known a woman who drank anything stronger than wine, except the poor drabs in the slums who were addicted to gin. But Cornelia drank like a man, easily and naturally. He supposed it was all right—for Cornelia. She said, raising her thick red eyebrows, “You aren’t drinking, my pet.”

  “I think your drinking is disgusting,” he said sullenly, but he refilled her glass. She laughed at him. “I’ve been drinking with Papa since I was eighteen, or younger.” She put down her glass and stretched her arms, and the folds of the blue and gauzy material fell away; her arms were large and had the perfection of heroic marble. She yawned contentedly.

  “You are certain you are well?” Allan asked, going to her again. He drew her head to his chest in a need to give her tenderness. She looked up at him mischievously. “Perfectly wonderful, except for these twinges. I am supposed to count them. Am I disappointing you, darling? Should I be howling my lungs out and fainting?” He left her and returned to his chair. “If you hadn’t kept prowling into my rooms this morning, you’d never have known I was even awake.” Her mocking face changed, and now it was suddenly warm with affection, and the ebullient eyes softened into seriousness.

  “How hard you take things, Allan,” she said. “I doubt I’ll ever take things hard for very long.”

  Childbirth, Allan reflected apprehensively, sometimes brought death to the mother. However, it was impossible to think that this glowing young woman, all health and strength and bounce, could be in any danger. He saw that she flinched and bent over with a grunt, and he started to go to her. “For heaven’s sake,” she said, when she could recover her breath, “do relax, Allan. No child is born without a little bother.” “We should have had the best doctor in New York,” said Allan. But Cornelia only smiled indulgently. “I could get along with a midwife, I think, or nobody.” She glanced at her jeweled clock. “That was over a five-minute interval. The whisky did me a lot of good.” Recovered from her spasm, she yawned again and displayed all of her glistening white teeth. “Tell me, Allan, what do you think of this baby, or babies?”

  “I want them, or it, of course. What man doesn’t? And your father is practically incoherent all the time with joy.” Allan smiled wryly. “He keeps forgetting he has two sons of his own.”

  Now the expression he was becoming accustomed to, and which at first had startled him, came over Cornelia’s face. It had derision in it, hardness, and a kind of amused cruelty. “It’s not their fault they are miserable wretches. It’s Estelle’s. And I think Papa thinks of them as Estelle’s children rather than his. If you are worrying about them, my angel”—and the expression changed to one gently jeering—“Estelle has a lot of money of her own, and Papa won’t forget them in his will.”

  But an incredible thought had come to Allan. He stared at his wife. “Do you mean, Cornelia, that it isn’t taken for granted that Jon and Norman will be named by your father, in his will, as president and vice-president, with the voting stock. …”

  She stared at him in her turn, disbelieving. Then she burst into a roar of laughter, and slapped her thighs. When she could get her breath she shouted, “Oh, my God! And you didn’t know! You didn’t know that you are his heir, and I. The company is ours when Papa dies, with the fifty-one per cent of the stock.” She stopped laughing suddenly, and gazed at him in astonishment. “What else did you expect, may I ask? I am my father’s daughter. I have been in c
onsultation with him since I was fifteen years old, or even younger. I know all about the business. I thought you understood that.” Again her face changed, became charged with power and implacability, and from her sprang an aura of indomitable force.

  Allan, fascinated, could not look away from her. His heart was thumping heavily. He had thought that very shortly he would be named as a director of the board. He had come to see himself as chairman, eventually. He stood up, swept to his feet by a wave of dizzy exultation. President of the Interstate Railroad Company! The prize was only a heartbeat away. He could not hide his exultation from Cornelia, and she saw it with cynical contentment. “But, in your heart, my darling, weren’t you aiming for it?” she asked.

  Yes, thought Allan, I see now that I was. Nevertheless, to escape the smile in Cornelia’s disingenuous eyes, he went to the window and looked out.

  The western skies had become a bright lake of green, changing to sharp scarlet over the tops of the hills. Early frost had already struck at the mountains: here and there the crimson glow of a maple burst forth from the emerald background. As the slopes fell to the valleys they floated tenuously in misty heliotrope. The river was a vein of fire winding through the narrow purple land. Allan had never been able to accustom himself to this stern and silent grandeur, for it inevitably aroused in him a deep melancholy and pervading desolation. He started when Cornelia came to his side and looked out with him. He saw her profile, and he was taken aback, for she was grave as she was rarely grave, and even pensive. She leaned against his shoulder, and some of the greenish light from the sky lay on the predatory nose, in the sockets of her eyes, and on the roundness of her chin. She said abstractedly, “And what shall their names be?”