Never Victorious, Never Defeated

  Tony said, under cover of the unlistening mirth of the others, “You know, don’t you? And the law will always prevail; it always has. Remember that.”

  Norman did not answer. His smile remained, musing and secret. He moved his glass a little, back and forth. Then suddenly he looked at Tony again, and Tony saw all his powerful detestation and contempt for him as a priest, as an antagonist, as an enemy. He almost whispered, “No. This time you shall not prevail.”

  Now Norman lifted his glass, bent his head courteously to his nephew, and said, “To doomsday.” Only Tony heard him.

  Tony went alone to the library after dinner. He closed the door behind him. He stood there with closed eyes, remembering. Here his father, on hot summer days, worked on his papers while the family was briefly in Portersville. Tony could smell the heat, and the immemorial odor of sealing wax, the mowed grass outside, the fragrance of the wind blowing from the gardens. He went to the desk his father had once used and opened it. A box of red wax, mostly used, remained, and Allan’s seal. Tony lit the wax, and his youth returned to him.

  He did not hear the door open and close, and he started when a man’s voice said, “Sir—well, I don’t know what I should call you. But I think I’m getting an idea.”

  Tony swung around and saw the fattish little figure of George Richberg near him. The newspaper magnate was smiling subtly. He held out his hand and Tony took it. “I think,” said Mr. Richberg, “that I know all about it. That uncle of yours, Norman deWitt. And your father wanting to buy some newspapers and other publications. We’ve got a terrible fight coming up—sir. But you know that. What can I say? Good luck, good luck.”

  “We’ll win, Mr. Richberg,” said Tony. “You know, we always have.”

  48

  “We’ve gone over this, and over this, until I could puke,” said Miles Peale rudely both to the president, DeWitt Marshall, and to the assembled board of directors. “I’m not going to apologize to you, Aunt Cornelia, for the verb. I see I don’t need to,” he added.

  “It’s one of my favorites,” said Cornelia. “But I don’t agree with anything you say, Miles, and neither does DeWitt. As for the other gentlemen present, I’m not sure they agree either.”

  The board of directors looked down at the papers on the long table and said nothing. Cornelia, usually so sharp, did not see them exchange glances. But Miles saw. The cloven lines about his lips relaxed a trifle. He ran his delicate hand through his mahogany curls, which were threaded with gray. He examined the papers before him again. Then he looked at DeWitt. My God, he thought, he’s only forty-four, two years younger than I am, and he’s as out of date as a victoria. What had he just said in that precise and flattened voice of his: “It may be 1934, but I believe that it is always possible to bend men and events to one’s will.” He had added this non sequitur: “I have the promise of Standard Oil to lend us tens of millions, if necessary, for the expansion of the freight business.”

  Miles said, “I don’t believe they’ll lend any money at all to the Interstate Railroad Company. They’re more interested in the New York Central and the Pennsylvania and the Union Pacific.”

  DeWitt smiled his cold and superior smile and said nothing. He should be wearing a wide black silk cravat and a pearl pin and a Prince Albert coat and striped trousers, thought Miles. He still thinks of the railroad industry as old kings thought of their kingdoms: a thing over which to reign absolutely and to drain absolutely, for the profit of the royal family. And no end to the possibilities of draining. “We owe the public nothing,” said DeWitt.

  “That attitude, these days, usually ends by the public saying they owe us nothing, either, and taking their business elsewhere,” said Miles. He looked sidelong at the board of. directors, and all, except Cornelia, nodded almost imperceptibly.

  DeWitt shrugged his small shoulders. His hand played with the head of his cane. “We are doing excellently with the freight business,” he said, “in spite of—everything. We’ve modernized the whole thing to the ultimate; we have ten classone line-hauls operating electrically, in addition, more than any other railroad. Our equipment is perfect.”

  He looked at Miles with icy hatred. “As for the passenger service, I must remind you that we’ve even introduced air conditioning on some of our trains.”

  Miles said, “It still remains that our passenger service, as is the case with other roads too, is terrible. Old, obsolete Pullmans, rattling along like freight cars. Oh, some of them are not bad, but they’re in the minority. In the majority, the passengers are still subjected to smoke and cinders in the Pullmans. As for the day-coaches, they belong to the nineties or even the eighties. Speed? Oh, yes, we’ve done wonders on speed. You keep reminding me of that. Ten per cent of our passenger runs average more than seventy miles an hour; and shake hell out of the people in the process. Speed, you said. Haven’t you heard? The airlines. They’re already beginning to prophesy great things in the very immediate future: speed without dirt; cheapness; air-freight, too.”

  “Do you seriously believe that the airlines will ever be a serious competitor?” asked DeWitt, and he laughed his contemptuous little laugh. “Passenger or freight?”

  ‘Trucking is already a serious threat to us,” said Miles. "So much for the freight business. How many times do I have to go over this with you? We’ve got to concentrate on passenger service, if we are to survive. We’ve got to put on light, fast aluminum or stainless-steel cars as quickly as we can, to compete with the airlines. Other railroaders know this; only we don’t.”

  DeWitt looked at his mother, who was smiling sardonically. He said, “And where, Miles, are we going to get the money? Let us go over these figures again? Before the Crash, in 1929, our stock was selling for $110, and now it is 28⅛. Dividends? What dividends?”

  “Look,” said Miles wryly, “I have stock in this company, too. I know all about dividends. But we have our own private fortunes, aside from the company. We should use a large part of them to modernize passenger service.”

  “That’s nice,” said Cornelia. “As for myself, I wouldn’t put a cent of my private cash into the thing. Call me unprogressive, if you will, Miles, but there I stand. DeWitt?”

  “That goes without saying,” replied her son.

  The directors said nothing. Miles sighed. “I tell you, within a very few short years, the airlines will be our serious competitor for passenger service. Our freight is doing well now, in spite of the Depression; but the motor-trucking industry is steadily eating away at it, and the airlines will take their share, too. We not only need to begin to modernize our passenger service; we should begin, at once, to launch a vast program of public education about the advantages of traveling by rail.” He continued, when no one commented: “The days of the autocrats have gone, and with their going there will be real progress. You can’t treat the public any longer as just a source of immediate revenue. There is the long-range program to consider. The people are reading more; they understand more things. They demand service, and they have a right to it, and we can survive only if we cater to this right.”

  “You talk like one of Roosevelt’s brain-trusters,” said Cornelia, with a loud burst of laughter in which, curiously, only DeWitt joined. She stuck a cigarette in her mouth and her neighbor lit it. She puffed a cloud of smoke at Miles. “Have you become a New Dealer, child?”

  Miles kept his temper. “No,” he said evenly. “But I do know that if we go on as we are now going, we’ll be run into the ground. Not by the New Dealers; not by anyone but ourselves. We modernize, prepare to meet the threat of the airlines, or we’re finished, freight or not.” He pointed at DeWitt. “In spite of the freight, we’re in frightful difficulties, you know that. Do you think anybody, including Standard Oil, will lend us money on equipment which is growing more and more obsolete all the time? Do you think anyone will be interested in just increasing our private fortunes, so that at the end we’ll be stuffed with cash and the road will be a pile of junk? Organizations which lend mone
y look to the future, not to the past.”

  He put those almost-dainty hands of his on the table and they were the hands of power; most of the directors stared at them, fascinated. “We’ve got to do as other railroads are already beginning to do: plan, at least. And carry out the plans. Once we have a program we can borrow, even if we don’t use our own money. There it stands. We go on, or we go back.”

  “You still talk like a New Dealer,” said Cornelia. “When we throw out Roosevelt in 1936, business will go on as usual.”

  “It never has,” said Miles,

  DeWitt stood up. “I am opposed to all this, and so is my mother. Gentlemen, please excuse us.” Cornelia rose, superb in her white silk suit and her “Eugénie” hat sweeping with plumes. She turned the full force of her magnetism on the silent directors, ignoring Miles. “I still think we have a lot of common sense around here. I’m relying on you boys.” They stood about her, admiring her; only Miles saw the stiff fixity of their eyes, in spite of the admiration. She swept out with DeWitt, towering over her son like a female colossus. The door banged behind her.

  The directors, with the exception of old Mr. Hill, who was almost eighty, were all vigorous men in their fifties and early sixties. Mr. Hill sat and blinked his rheumy eyes, and said, “Cornelia’s a railroader; always was. She was her father’s right-hand man; she never made a mistake. I think I’m coming around to her way of thinking; sorry, Miles.”

  “All right,” said Miles courteously. “I wouldn’t quarrel with you for all the world, Mr. Hill.” The old man blinked at him with fondness. “You’re just a boy still, Miles, only forty-six, forty-seven? I’m afraid you’ll have to continue to learn from us old-timers for a while longer. Airlines? Fantastic. But there is such a jumpiness in the air these days; no stability, no reason, no planning, no sound caution.”

  “All right, sir,” repeated Miles. He lit a cigarette, and behind the smoke his intensely blue eyes gleamed. Mr. Hill coughed, glanced about, and rose. “I’ve got to get back to Philadelphia. My train leaves in less than forty-five minutes.” He croaked affectionately. “My good train, with all those fine ‘obsolete’ Pullmans. We’ve come a long way.”

  When he had gone, a whole quickening came over the remaining directors. Fielding Peale said, “Well, Miles, what now?”

  Miles said, “Very simple. DeWitt will have to go. And the sooner the better. I’m working on the last details now.”

  The directors sighed with relief. “Old Cornelia might once have had some excellent ideas; at least, that is the history of the company. But now she thinks only of her own money; it’s become a fetish to her. That, and her hatred for Roosevelt—in spite of her brother Norman. She mentioned at a dinner recently that the State Department and the Commerce Department can ‘handle’ Roosevelt all right. I have a feeling that is true, to Roosevelt’s undoing, and ours, unless the people wake up in time.” The director added: “Too bad, about Cornelia. She was always a symbol to us, of the road. But DeWitt ought to be embalmed along with his ancestors.”

  “Give me a little time longer,” said Miles. He stared at each man in turn, slowly and carefully. “With your help, the embalming can proceed.”

  Cornelia and DeWitt drove from Philadelphia to Portersville. Cornelia said, “I think we’ve spiked little Miles’s guns for a while. Permanently, I should say. When it comes down to a serious vote, we’ll win.”

  “Of course,” said DeWitt. He firmly believed it. “But I’d give several years of my life to get him out.”

  “We can’t,” said his practical mother. “So let’s not dream. But we can make him impotent. Impotent. A nice old-fashioned word.” She laughed raucously. “More ways than one, DeWitt. Even though Ruth was in her middle thirties when they married, she could have given him a child or two.”

  DeWitt said indifferently, “I understand two other women did. One in New York, one in Paris.” His mother was incredulous. DeWitt went on: “We could use that against him, if necessary.”

  Cornelia laughed again. “DeWitt, you’re precious! You sound like an old melodrama. Do you actually think the revelation of Miles’s ‘inconstancy,’ as the dear old word is, would be dangerous to him? Do you think our directors would give a damn? DeWitt, you aren’t serious!”

  The heat of the summer day was not so evident in Portersville. A cool wind blew from the mountains and river. Another car met the large black limousine in which Cornelia and DeWitt had traveled. “Are you sure you want to go to see the old man?” asked DeWitt as the chauffeur assisted him to the other car. “And what for?”

  “Some trifles,” said Cornelia airily. “Run on home; I’ll be back for dinner. Remember, we leave for Newport tomorrow.” She added, leaning from the window of her car: “Tell Rufus not to go out tonight. I want to see him. He’s almost twenty, and he’d better begin thinking about the road.”

  She was driven rapidly along the countryside. She smoked and hummed to herself, but there was a crease in the rough skin between her eyes. Progress, the fool of a Miles had said. Who knew more about progress than herself? “Cornelia is always in the day after tomorrow,” her father had declared fondly. She thought of young Rufus now, her grandson, who looked so much like his great-grandfather. He might be a sullen rascal, but he was no fool. He might not have his greatgrandfather’s charm and power, but he was dogged and intelligent. One day he would be president of the Interstate Railroad Company. He would be graduated from Harvard soon. Then he would enter the company and the whole satisfying cycle would begin again. She, Cornelia, was only sixty-eight. She sat up in the car, not stiffly, but as easily and as buoyantly as a very young woman. She had a long way to go.

  Allan was surprised to see her car draw up before his farmhouse. He had not seen his wife for nearly two years, for he did much traveling, and they had lost what little touch had remained between them long ago. He went to the door, and then began to walk down the path to greet her. Sixty-eight, Cornelia, with the face of a vital harridan: painted, rude, and full of quenchless strength. Her white plumes blew in the breeze; her stride was not the stride of an old woman. It was graceful and powerful. When she walked toward Allan, lifting a gloved hand in greeting, the hot sun struck into her eyes and they were the wicked and hungry eyes of a young lioness.

  She gave Allan her hand, grinned at him, and said, “Surprised? I’m only staying a few minutes. Well, how fine you look! And you seventy-six. You could be taken for sixty at the most, Allan. Your work must agree with you.” She tilted her head and her eyes crinkled mockingly. “Lochinvar. Whoever would have thought it, in the old days?”

  She linked her arm confidingly in his, as she had done so many decades ago, and they walked together into the ancient house. “Cool in here, thank God,” said Cornelia. “It was a furnace in Philadelphia. What? Oh, we just had one of those tiresome board meetings. Nothing important. Not that you are interested any more. Damn these horsehair chairs! This has given me a run in my stocking.”

  Her ankles were neat and still beautifully turned. She crossed her legs, relaxing, and they were the legs of some glamorous actress. She took a gold cigarette case from her white bag, and before Allan could move she had lit her cigarette briskly with a gold lighter. “How you can live in such a damned old ruin I don’t know,” she said. “You, who loved our house almost more than anything else. Do you remember the first day we met? We talked; I don’t remember about what. But all at once you looked up at the house, and there was something in your eyes, and I knew you felt about it as I did, and it was then that I fell in love with you. Ah, me,” she said, and smiled at him. “You don’t think about the house now, do you?”

  “No,” said Allan. “I never lived there, I think.”

  “For God’s sake, let’s not get cryptic,” said Cornelia, waving her cigarette and frowning. “I always hated subtleties. Have you anything to drink in that den you call a kitchen?”

  Allan brought her a highball, which she regarded with satisfaction. He himself had a bottle of beer. Corne
lia sipped. “Good Scotch,” she commented. She looked about her. “How do you stand this monstrous old place, with only one servant?”

  “I’m not here much of the time, Cornelia.” His voice was as vibrant as in his youth. “I go everywhere. At a moment’s notice. But I’m giving myself a holiday in August. I’m going to visit Alex in England, and meet the nice girl he is to marry. Lady Elizabeth Scott-Hardley.”

  “I know,” said Cornelia. “We met her family last spring. ‘Nice girl’ is right. A frump. Like most English girls. But her Catholic family has money, and that’s a rarity in England since the war. Now, don’t begin to tell me that Alex isn’t marrying her for her money; he’s a sensible boy, and so of course he is. His father married Dolores for hers, didn’t he?” Allan did not reply. He drank his beer slowly. He was in his shirt sleeves and his fingers were stained with ink. His thick white hair glimmered in the cool dusk of the parlor. He was wondering why Cornelia had come to see him. She never did anything without shrewd thought. She was grinning at him again. “How’s Laura?” she asked.

  “I haven’t seen her this time,” he answered unsmilingly.

  Cornelia drank deeply. “You know,” she said after a moment or two, “you would never have married Laura. You didn’t really love her at all. She was just the ‘cool marble unattainability,’ to you. You liked to have her for a point of reference in that poor hot mind of yours, something holy, like a saint. Some little shrine where you could retire when I got too much for you at times. Isn’t that so?”

  Cornelia nodded. “But Laura really loved you, poor old wreck. She must have given Pat some bad moments. I’ve heard that she was a lot like her father, my Uncle Steve. I remember him a little. I liked him, though one could never remember just what he looked like ten minutes after seeing him. No character. Laura’s just like him. Yes, she really loved you. That’s why you find her comforting now. No doubt she thinks you never loved me. But you did.”