Never Victorious, Never Defeated

  He clasped his thin hands between his narrow knees and studied the floor. “Were you worrying about Dolores? Don’t, please. She is very—competent, in a most wonderful way, and seems to enjoy herself very often. She likes England. But it’s as if she has grown a glass shell.”

  “She was always such a sweet little girl,” said Allan. He reached for the bottle and took another drink. “But from the time she was about fourteen she began to slip away. … I didn’t see her very often. Schools, and things. Somehow, she was always away from me. More than other girls are away from home, generally. And when she was at home, in Portersville, there were parties for her, and she was gone, and all our walks we used to have together—there was no time, or something. …”

  He stopped and looked at Richard, and his dark and pallid face paled even more. His mouth dropped open. Cornelia. It was always Cornelia, whisking the girl away from him, sending her to house parties, taking her with her, smuggling her off. But why? Allan stood up distractedly and clenched his fists. It was my fault, he thought with agony. I never took the time, or never had the time, to stop and think of my daughter. There was always something. If Cornelia did what she did, I could have stopped it. But why did she do it?

  Richard stood up and pushed his hands into his pockets. He still wore the evening clothes he had worn last night, and they had a bedraggled air. He went to the window. “I’ve been in the library, reading, and then I walked in the gardens. I like to see the dawn come up.” He turned to Allan. “But Dolores isn’t the only reason you couldn’t sleep, is it? You are worried by so many things.” He laughed apologetically. “Is there anything I could do to help you, besides offering you my sympathy?”

  “There’re a thousand things wrong. Most of my friends laugh at me when I tell them. They think I’m going out of my mind, or indulging a fantastic imagination. They won’t see; maybe I am obsessed, as Cornelia is always saying. I don’t think so. You’ve met Norman deWitt. He’s part of what I mean. Perhaps you think I am mad, too.”

  The younger man sank into his chair and gazed at Allan with intense seriousness. He said, after a long moment, “I’m a member of the House of Lords. No, sir, I don’t think you are ‘mad.’ I’ve been talking as you’ve been talking, for the past few years. No one listens. Except the ones who know only too well. I’ve watched their faces. They laugh at me, too, but it’s jeering laughter as much as to say: There is nothing you can do to stop us.’”

  Allan was astonished. “You know!” he exclaimed, and his voice shook. “How many of—you—know?”

  “Quite a number, sir. Only recently I was talking with Sir Edward Gray.” Richard stretched out his hand and turned the lamp down, and the room swam in gray light. Then the little flame died, and there was nothing. “That is what is about to happen to Europe, to the world. All the lights going out, and no color left anywhere, no men left, only shadows.” He regarded the unlighted lamp with deep sombemess. “The trouble, sir, is that the dawn won’t come for many decades, afterward. Perhaps not for centuries. The plan was laid a long time ago.”

  Allan was so excited that he moved to the edge of his chair and his voice rose: “I know! My God, it’s some comfort to realize that others know, too! Shouting, never getting an answer except grins and mockery, until now.” He added abruptly, “I think a war is coming.”

  In spite of what Richard had said, Allan watched him closely for the faintest smile of incredulity. But Richard did not smile. He nodded slowly, over and over. “Of course,” he said. ‘That is part of the plot. Induced wars to destroy a capitalistic world. And how can such wars be induced? By giving governments unlimited revenues. Our enemies are all for those revenues. I don’t know if you know how Parliament operates. Each year, the tax rates, as we call them, come up for repeal or extension. We have no such thing as you have—Amendments to the Constitution. I always vote against extensions. I voted against the Finance Act of 1907, which is a nefarious plot against England, well executed, well thought out. The graduated tax, as expounded and recommended by Karl Marx. ‘From each according to his ability. … ’”

  He drew his slight hands slowly and with a dragging motion over his tired face. “It began so many years ago. That day is accursed when we gave asylum to Karl Marx. But sometimes I’m a fatalist. When, in history, did the people of any nation ever listen when a few men ‘cried havoc’? The working class in England was very pleased by the Finance Act of 1907. It would help ‘put the nobs in their places,’ as they said, to be heavily taxed. What they did not realize was that the universal plot was directed against them, too. They will know it when it is too late.” Again he rubbed his face. “Even when the wars come—and there won’t be just one war—I’m afraid they won’t realize, not until the day they are enslaved by worse masters than we, and masters so inhuman that they’ll be without mercy.”

  He hesitated. “When the first blow against mankind will come I don’t know. I think it will be soon. There is such a stir in all the capitals of Europe. Who will be the ‘enemy,’ who will fire the first gun? It is my guess that it will be Germany. I think that was decided upon even as long ago as 1906. There is another thing: when war comes, I will be called up, you know. I will have to join my regiment. And there is Dolores, and our child.”

  “My God, no!” exclaimed Allan.

  “I’m afraid so, sir.” He lifted his head, and his smile was extremely sad. “Listen to the birds. They would “wake the dead,’ as our cook says. But they won’t be able to ‘wake the dead’ in the evil days which are almost upon us. The millions of dead, everywhere, in their untimely graves. The millions of dead in a universal gaol. And perhaps, in the future, there won’t be a single human ear to hear or a single human soul to love the songs of the birds. Not in the prison house.”

  Allan beat his fist on the arm of his chair. “What can we do, before it is too late?”

  Richard stood up and shook his head. “It’s already too late, sir. But there is just one thing we can do: shout, warn, cry havoc. Protest if we die for it. Perhaps someone will hear us, eventually. Perhaps a few. We can only pray.”

  The first beams of gauzy sunlight suddenly struck into the room. Richard stood in the light, and spare as he was, he seemed to acquire stature and a quiet dignity which could never be overthrown. “The sun will always come up,” he said. “There will always be the mornings. Who knows but that, generations in the future, there will be a new morning for our grandchildren, if not for us? After all, there is always God.”

  Allan was so moved that he could not speak. But he got up and put his hands on Richard’s shoulders and bent his head to kiss him on the cheek, as he had kissed his son Tony.

  45

  “So stupid of your father,” said Cornelia to her son, the Reverend Rufus Anthony Marshall. “The Germans would never dare to sink any British ships carrying Americans, and really, hundreds of Americans are still going to Paris and the Riviera. Exciting, in a way. Knowing that not too far off there are trenches and things, and fighting. But no, your father obstinately refused to leave America even for a moment after war was declared last summer. It isn’t that he’s afraid, either. He’s just enraged.”

  “Everyone of sense,” she continued, annoyed, fanning herself in the unseasonable May heat, “knows that Wilson’s ‘New Freedom,’ as he calls it, is just politics, and no one takes the man seriously. But your father, God help us! He yammers day and night about this being ‘the first open blow against liberty.’ He’s been talking about ‘blows’ for years, and now he feels his prophecy is coming true. Norman just doesn’t dare visit us any more, and though it’s all your father’s fault and Estelle is hysterical about it, I feel it is a blessing. I can’t stand the man, even if he is my half-brother. Please don’t laugh, Tony, but do you know what your father has recently done? Sold his millions of investments in armaments stocks, just when they’re booming! Said he couldn’t have it on his conscience, for God’s sake! What if we are supplying England and France and Germany with a fine ne
utral hand? But he thinks it’s immoral, or something. He’s gone out into the garden, and for that, I suppose, I should offer praise, for he becomes intolerable when he drinks, and I’m tired of him infuriating guests. By the way, how do you like Mr. Regan? You haven’t seen him since you were a child.”

  Tony, in the black habit of the priesthood, stood straight and tall in the cool drawing room of the Portersville house. Guests surged through the rooms and out into the gardens with glasses in their hands. The house and the land tinkled and clamored with their talk and laughter. Tony sipped at his sherry and glanced anxiously about for his sister Dolores. But she was nowhere in sight. Probably, he thought, upstairs with the child. How pale and cold and distant she is, thought Tony. Is it possible she is worrying about her husband, the colonel, who was with his regiment “somewhere in France”?

  “Tony, you aren’t listening,” said Cornelia, more annoyed than ever. Her white linen dress was draped tightly about her splendid figure, and there was a slit in it almost to the knee. Her red hair was dressed in the latest fashion, bunched thickly about her head and over her ears. Delicate white lace cascaded over her full breast, sprinkled with glittering diamonds.

  “I’m sorry, Mama,” said Tony. “I was listening, though. Mr. Regan? The son of the man Grandpa used to talk about? He looks like a deceptively friendly monster in ambush. Isn’t he one of those who are helping to finance the armaments trade?”

  “How unrealistic you are!” said Cornelia impatiently. “Just like your father. By the way, our guests will be leaving soon, and will you oblige me by going to look for him? I can’t see him from the terraces, and it wouldn’t surprise me if he’s hidden himself far down in that grotto with a private bottle. By the way, when are you going to be a monsignor or a bishop or something?”

  Tony smiled sadly. “I don’t want to be anything but a parish priest, and now that Father Dugan is dead, and I have taken his place, I’m quite content with the Church of the Holy Family and hope I’ll be allowed to remain there. Yes, I’ll go and look for my father.”

  He regarded his mother gravely. He loved her, and knew that he knew nothing at all about her. She’s like a conflagration, he thought, growing stronger as it devours. There was an unsatiable hunger in her eyes, and her coarse face was seamed, here and there, about the painted lips and the lavender eyelids, with the deep lines of avarice. How hard and sure she is, thought Tony with sorrow.

  “It’s a nice party, isn’t it?” she said, as her son began to move off.

  “But my father hasn’t been around very much,” he answered, with more anxiety.

  Cornelia laughed boisterously. “That’s what made it a nice party!” she exclaimed. Her fan fluttered before her face, and now he saw that her eyes were full of contemptuous malice. “Oh, I love your father, but there are many times, and they come more often now, when I can’t stand him and am glad when he’s out of my sight.” She waved him away and returned to her guests and to have her glass refilled.

  Tony, smiling uncertainly and vaguely as he encountered the curious eyes of the swarming guests, moved toward the tall French windows which led into the gardens. He had almost reached them when he heard the gentle voice of his aunt, Ruth Peale, calling him. She was with her husband Miles, and she limped toward Tony eagerly, her delicate face flushed with the heat, her golden head like a flake of sunlight in the shadowed room. At thirty-seven, she appeared much younger, for there was such a look of innocence on her shy face, such an unspotted tenderness. She gave Tony her almost boneless hand and smiled up at him. “I didn’t have an opportunity to talk to you before, dear,” she said. She sighed, and the thin blue silk which covered her meager breast fluttered with her embarrassed breath. “How are you, Tony? I haven’t seen you for a long time.”

  “No one ever sees Tony much; we’re heretics or something,” said Miles. His mahogany curls came just to his wife’s eyebrows, but in spite of his stature there was in Miles what Tony had seen in his own mother: indomitable strength, surety, and command. There was no coarseness about him, however, but only elegance and poise. He gave Tony the benefit of an absolutely blue stare. “How’s the priest business these days?”

  “Oh,” said Ruth, distressed and flushing, “I’m sure Tony doesn’t think we are heretics or heathens, do you, Tony?”

  “I’m certain you are one of God’s angels, Aunt Ruth,” said Tony affectionately.

  Ruth was fumbling with the pearls at her thin white throat. She stammered, “I—I went to—your church—last Sunday, dear. High Mass. It was very beautiful. I didn’t understand—but so holy—so full of grandeur. And what a wonderful sermon! The ministers all talk about the war in Europe, or ‘social conditions’ in America, these days. But you talked of God, and God’s mercy and love. I was very comforted.”

  Do you need mercy and comfort? wondered Tony with compassion. But then, who does not? He hoped that Ruth was happy. He believed she was, and was relieved when he saw her glance at her husband timidly, but with a whole shining of her pretty eyes. Miles did not return the glance. He was studying Tony, and his amusement was brighter on his face. Someone came sauntering up loosely, his tall “tan colored” brother Fielding, his assistant. “Hello, Tony,” said Fielding negligently, his light brown hair falling in a straight lock over his yellowish forehead. “Still a holy Joe, I see. Not tired of it, eh?”

  “Fielding!” protested Ruth, and touched her husband’s arm as if urging him to rebuke his gangling brother, who was grinning in quite a loathsome fashion at Tony.

  Tony tried to hold back his temper; he said coldly, “How can I tire of it? I am doing the work God created me to do.” Fielding shrugged his broad and bony shoulders. He raised his glass and studied the amber champagne. “So am I,” he said, and turned his grin on Miles. “We all are. That’s predestination, isn’t it? Heard about it in Sunday school. Pa’s always talking about it. Predestination. It doesn’t matter what you do—God makes you do it. No choice.”

  Tony felt his ridicule. He knew he should bow and move off, but he was still young, and his temper was rising. “You never heard of free will, did you, Field?”

  “Oh, you holy Joes,” said Fielding. “I’m no match for your dogma. I just help to run the road—which brings you in a nice penny, too.”

  Charity or not, Tony decided that he hated that long, spade-chinned, ocher-colored face with its malignant, pale brown eyes. Miles was looking at his brother forbiddingly now, and Fielding, under the weight of his eyes, shrugged again and said, “Hell, I didn’t mean to offend you, Tony. Excuse me; someone’s waving. My wife, of course.” He moved on gawkily toward the former Cynthia Brownell, the banker’s granddaughter, a little sallow girl with a petulant face. Tony watched him go, and then a curious sensation came to him. Danger. There was danger in this house, danger in Miles and Fielding. Miles was watching, half-smiling. “What’s the matter, Tony?” he asked. “Don’t mind old Field. He must always have his joke. Where are you going?”

  “I’m going home,” said Tony.

  He suddenly remembered that he must say good-by to his brother DeWitt. He had not seen DeWitt for a considerable time until today. He found the younger man in a chair near the French windows, his cane beside him, his neat black skull outlined against the red satin, his small dark face wearing its usual cryptic smile. Mary was beside him in rosy linen, looking like a graceful young cat, with a cat’s agelessness. Her dusky curls had been bobbed, and she kept tossing them so that they danced about her cheeks and over her forehead. Her black eyes gleamed and glittered as she saw Tony approaching. It was a pointed feline face which she turned up to him, with a mischievous mouth. She had almost recovered from the disappointment of bearing a daughter less than two years ago, for there was another child three months on the way. With dainty teeth, she was eating a tiny sandwich.

  “Well, Tony, are you going?” she asked, and there was a purr in her laughing voice, a purr of derision.

  But DeWitt turned to his brother alertly. “We never
have time to talk together,” he said. Tony put his hand lovingly on that narrow and twisted shoulder, and DeWitt became very still. “No, but I pray for you always, youngster,” he said, and pressed the shoulder. “I wanted to thank you, in person, for that French rose window, instead of writing.”

  “It came from France,” said DeWitt, unnecessarily. “Some old church they were tearing down. I thought you’d like it, in your church.”

  Tony laughed. “The church is in one of the ‘worst’ sections of Portersville, but it’s one of the sights of the city. Thanks to—everybody. Why don’t you come in sometime and see the window in place?”

  “How do you know,” said DeWitt in his flat tones, “that I don’t come?” Tony, startled, looked down into those slanted eyes. “Do you?” he asked in astonishment.

  Mary giggled. “Not too often,” she said. “He wanted to see that Italian altar Father Marshall gave you a year ago. He was afraid it would be too grand in your church. Too over-powering. And it was, really.”

  “I don’t think so,” said Tony shortly. “And the Sisters made a beautiful lace cloth for it. They’re very proud of the altar. And the marble statue of Our Lady is one of the finest I have seen anywhere in the world. Some experts think it is an authentic Michelangelo.”

  “Well, it cost nearly fifty thousand dollars,” said Mary jeeringly. “It ought to be something.”

  “Shut up,” said her husband, without raising his voice. But Mary went on: “Anyway, it’s too good for a church in the slums. DeWitt told me you could hear the trains all the time, roaring away in the back. Almost drowned out the bells Dolores sent you from Spain.”

  DeWitt did not move. It was as if he were afraid Tony would remove his hand. “You shouldn’t have become a priest,” he said. “We need you … in the business.”

  DeWitt was looking at his cane, and there was a crease between his eyes. He said, “Dad’s become a sot. I suppose you know that.” He added, “Oh, he keeps up, in the offices. But he drinks himself blind when he isn’t there. It’s bound to affect him adversely, one of these days, and I’m not yet even twenty-five. Too young for president, I suppose they’d say.”