Captains and the Kings

  Her smile was still serene but her heart began to beat quickly. Joseph's austere face changed, darkened. "Scan Paul?" he said, lingering over the name. "I never heard of him." "He isn't young. Possibly near my own age. But he is quite celebrated in Boston, I hear. He sings Irish ballads, and operatic selections, and people are quite mad about him. He has always preferred quiet private recitals but has now been induced to give pleasure to wider audiences. I do believe I have the leaflet announcing his New York recital with me1" She rose with a rustle of green silk and disappeared into her bedroom and Joseph waited with a slowly gathering heavy anger. Nonsense, he said to himself. It couldn't be the--same. Scan had probably died of intoxication, in some nameless gutter, and good riddance to him. Then with the anger came pain and the old sense of loss and despair. Elizabeth returned with the leaflet which featured Sean's photograph, and she gave it to Joseph. He did not at first read the lyrical announcements, the quotations from music critics. He looked at the shy smiling photograph and knew that this was his brother. Feeling giddy and unreal, he then read the quotations. Again he stared at the photograph. Scan. It was truly Scan. He could not understand his emotions now, but there was a weak slackening in him, a faintness, and his eyes blurred. He put the leaflet on the table but he still stared at it and Elizabeth watched him with trepidation. He became aware that a long silence had come between him and Elizabeth. He looked at her now and saw her waiting and anticipatory smile. He said, "You never saw my brother, Scan?" "No." Now she assumed an expression of perplexity. "I only saw Regina once or twice, but not Scan." She put her hands suddenly over her mouth and pretended astonished delight and incredulousness. "Oh, Josephl Is this wonderful singer, this marvelous Irish tenor, your brother, Sean? Oh, I can't bear it! How proud you must be! How elated!" She leaned across the table and took his hand and her face shone with genuine pleasure. He made the preliminary motion of discarding her hand, so immeasurable was his enigmatic and complicated rage. But she clung to it, and he looked into her eyes and he knew he could not reject Elizabeth even with the slightest gesture. "Yes," he said. "He is my brother. But it is a long story." "Tell me about it," she said. But how could he tell her of the years she could not possibly understand? He looked again into those green eyes, and knew that he was wrong. She could understand. In short hard sentences he told her, and she never spoke nor moved, and only watched him, the light in her eyes quickening, misting, or growing tender as he talked. He had told her something of all this before, but not with such emotion, such detail. He had not spoken much, either, of his brother and sister, dismissing them only with contempt. When he had finished, Elizabeth said, "But, don't you see, Joseph? You have succeeded with Scan after all. Without the education he had received he wouldn't have known anything, really. Education, though often despised in youth, makes its importance emphatic in maturity. It makes for discrimination. Had Sean been uneducated, ignorant, he would never have understood more than saloon singing, or had any aspirations beyond that. But he knew there was something else: excellence. That you gave to him. That should be your pride and your comfort." He said nothing. He was staring at the fire now, gloomier than ever, and as unreadable. But she knew she had reached him, for she knew everything about him. She said, very softly, "You have told me many times that your father sang in the pubs in Ireland and wasted what little he had in beer and whiskey for others, and was concerned only with the pleasure and happiness he gave--to the neglect of his family. There is something in that story, dear Joseph, that is not entirely complete. He was a joy to his friends and your mother, who loved him. Sometimes I believe in fate. If it was fated for him to die as he did, and your mother, too, then it could not have been avoided, taking into consideration the circumstances of their lives." "Don't talk like a fool," said Joseph, with a roughness towards her she had never seen before. "Weren't we taught as children that there is such a thing as free will? Yes, and it is true, I am thinking. My father chose his life. Unfortunately he chose the lives of his wife and children, too." He saw that Elizabeth had become very white and that she was shrinking a little. He could not bear to hurt her in the slightest. He took her hand again and pressed it strongly in his palms and tried to smile. "Forgive me," he said, and that was the first time in his life that he had ever said those words, and he paused to recall them with astonishment. "I wouldn't hurt you for the world, Elizabeth." Elizabeth thought, "He is wounded, and almost slain," and I wonder if he ever did "rise and fight again." Yes, perhaps. But not with the same profound intensity, not with the same dedication. She moved her hand in his, and her fingers clung to his hand. "We were talking of Sean, dear Joseph, and no one else. He succeeded, thanks to you, and only because of you, where your father failed. You gave him character, persistence, determination. How proud you must be, should be, my dearest." "Why the hell hasn't he written to me?" asked Joseph, and Elizabeth knew she was succeeding and closed her eyes for a moment. "Perhaps he was ashamed, remembering all you had done for him. Perhaps he knew you would remember your father, and his singing, and he didn't want to anger you more than you were already angered. You are quite an inexorable character, you know, my dear, and I have a feeling you always frightened your family." "Hah," said Joseph. He took up the leaflet again and studied it. He turned it over: "My dear benefactor, one whom I shall call Mr. Harry, came to my assistance when I most needed it. To him, then, and to a relative I do not care to name at this time, I owe my success and the adulations I have received. I dedicate my New York recital to them, as I do all .my prayers." Joseph rose suddenly, and his face was one Elizabeth had never seen before and she was aghast. He said in a terrible voice, "Harry Zeff. He did this behind my back. He never came to me and said, 'Your brother has been found and needs your help.' No. He preferred to wait to mortify me with my brother's--success. Gloating. Throwing it into my face that he could do more for Scan than I could! Laughing at me--behind my back. Why? Why? I made his fortune for him. But, what could I ever expect but ingratitude and slyness and treachery? And a murderous envy?" Elizabeth stood up also, trembling. She put her hand on his arm and for the first time he pushed that hand aside. He was aglow with rage and humiliation. "This is the end--for Harry," he said in that frightening voice. Elizabeth said, "Will you listen to me for one moment, Joseph? If you do not, then we must not meet again, even if I die of it. I could not bear to see you." Even in his monstrous rage he heard her, and knew that she meant it, and he stood still and waited, his hands clenched. "Do you honestly believe," said Elizabeth, in a marveling voice, "that Harry Zeff would ever do anything to mortify or injure you, or gloat over you? Gloat over you! My God, Joseph! I don't believe it, that you should think so. Why, you must be out of your mind! But Harry knows you, and fears you. He knows what you had planned for Sean. He knows how Sean --deserted--you. He knows what you must have suffered. Please try to understand, though I doubt you ever understood anyone in your life, even me, who loves you. "Yes, he helped Sean. He believed in Sean. He encouraged Sean to make the most of his voice, and paid for it, himself. Did you ever ask yourself why? It is because Harry loves you, Joseph. He didn't want that part of your life to be defeated, to have come to nothing. Sean has made a wonderful success. He owes that mostly to you. Harry only helped him to achieve it and enhance what you had already given." Joseph heard her. Then, when she had finished he glowered so that his eyes disappeared. "Now, then," he said, "how do you know all this, Elizabeth, about Harry and my brother? Have I been led up the garden path?" Elizabeth put her hands tightly over her face for a moment. When she dropped her hands she looked thinner and more exhausted than before and Joseph saw it and the awful alarm returned to him. "Please sit down, Joseph," she said, and her tone was so quiet he could hardly hear her. He sat down, rigidly, perched on his chair and Elizabeth sat down also. She knew that Joseph could bear only the truth, and that even if the truth destroyed him he must have it. There was nothing else to do and so she told him the complete story, with candor and in that newly exhausted voice full of pleading and l
ove. When she had finished she lay back in her chair with closed eyes as if she were asleep or had fainted. Joseph looked at her face and it was for her that he felt compassion. He knelt down beside her and took her in his arms and kissed her forehead and her cheek, and then she was clinging to him, crying. "Why is it," she wept, "that you reject love and tenderness so? Oh, I know, my dearest. Your life has been so dreadful, so barren, and you have known betrayal and misery. You are wary now, and who can blame you? Harry would have told you, but he was afraid, for you are no gentle character, my darling. You struck fear in your brother, too, and in Regina, though you perhaps never knew it. Do you know how frightful it is to have others fear you?" He said, "Elizabeth, are you afraid of me?" She put her wet cheek against his, and her arms about his neck. "No, my love. I do not have any fear of you. You see, I know all about you and with love and understanding everything else is nothing. Isn't that what St. Paul said? Yes." A few days later Joseph walked into Harry Zeff's offices and said with what for him passed as a genial smile, "By the way, my brother, Sean, is singing in New York on Friday and Saturday. I know you don't like music very much, you heathen, but I should like to have you and Liza join me in New York, at the Fifth Avenue Hotel, as my guests. I have a box at the Academy of Music, and I insist you be there. After all, it isn't every day that a man has a famous Irish tenor as a brother, is it? After the recital we'll have a gala." Harry slowly stood up, his black eyes fixed on Joseph. He could not speak. He could only extend his hand and Joseph took it. Joseph said, in a very soft voice, "You son of a bitch. You sentimental son of a bitch, Harry."

  Chapter 36

  Rory and Courtney walked in Harvard Yard together in the gold and gilt of the April sun and the flowering of forsythia. Rory said, "I always thought Pa was joking when he told me he'd make me President of the United States some day. I joked with him. I told him that, of course, he would probably do that. You know Pa. He climbs mountains where other men climb anthills. But a man has to face facts. There is no more possibility of a Catholic becoming President in this country than a Negro. "Well, anyway, we're going to law school, and Pa isn't young any longer, and if we make a success in The Armagh Enterprises that will be enough for Pa. I hope," added Rory. Courtney said, with that neutral serenity so like his mother's, "Don't be too sure, Rory. What your father wants, your father gets, one way or another. Isn't he talking even now of you starting your political career as a congressman? Or do you think he just jabbers? Incidentally, men like your father never grow old. Titian, I believe, painted his most famous painting, The Assumation, when he was ninety-one years old, and Da Vinci was full steam ahead in his middle-age. It's only the young who babble, 'sound and fury--signifying nothing.'" "All right, old man," said Rory. He pondered, frowning, as he kicked a small stone from his path. You know what I'd like to do? Teach." "You're out of your mind," said Courtney, awed. He stopped. "Anyone less likely to be a teacher, or want to be, than yours" "Well," said Rory, "there's a lot of farce and lies and hypocrisy in this world, and real absurdity, and nonsense, and I suppose there always has been. We need an Aristophanes every generation to show it all up. A real farce. Of course, it's tragic, too. But people can't realize the tragedy: the hilarity of human existence. I've thought about enlightening the younger generation about that. How to laugh--Hogarthian laughter. If possible." "It isn't," said Courtney. "People--everybody--take themselves too seriously. Each generation thinks it will save the world, make a new Utopia, a new order. It ends up in the same Dismal Swamp." "It shouldn't." "But it does. Because human nature never changes. It's the one immutable in the world. It's a mess. When a full human being appears he gets crucified or laughed out of public life, or damned or ridiculed, and then everybody forgets him and goes on in the same happy stupid way. You haven't forgot your history, have you?" "A people who forget their history are doomed to repeat it, as Aristotle said. Why isn't it possible for a people to remember their history and then avoid future mistakes, Courtney?" "They are too stupid," said Courtney. "And they listen to politicians." "Then you don't believe that each generation is more intelligent than the last?" "Of course it isn't. Where are our great men, Rory? This generation has no Michelangelos, no Ciceros, no da Vincis, no Socrateses, no Platos. We're a dull drab industrial civilization, without inspiration or real joy or creativeness. It's all machines, and worship of machines. Like Karl Marx. He loves machines. He thinks they are the new Dispensation. He screams against 'business' but he's the real patron saint of business." They reached a low gray wall of stone and sat on it, smoking. Banks of bright gold forsythia rose behind them. The sky was like pale blue porcelain against which trees--filled with a tawny haze of buds stretcthed their newly flexible branches. The old gray facades of the distant buildings were showing the fresh green of young ivy. The air was warm but nimble, the grass shyly lush and fragrant and dotted with dandelions and buttercups and tiny white daisies. There was a sea wind, nostalgic and exciting. The young men on the wall smoked peacefully and looked about them and were young with the young world. Courtney glanced idly up at the sky to see the delicately shining crescent of a new moon just rising in the east. He was really wondering about Rory and his dual nature, which had always intrigued him. Rory could change from a rascal, with the rascal's joyously incredulous smile and arched eyebrows, to glum sobriety. He was at once a cynic, immune to sentimentality, and then, in an instant, he was almost naive. He could laugh heartlessly at the predicament of a classmate, and then the next moment he would lend him money, give him advice and help him. He could be ruthless and exploitative with a prostitute, and then, without warning, he would give the woman twice as much as she had asked and show her solicitude. He could lie amiably and readily, without shame or compunction, and then endanger himself with the absolute truth and show disgust with liars. He could be cruel and indifferent and shortly afterwards full of pity and kindness to the one and the same person. Was all this caprice, Courtney would think, the capriciousness of a very volatile and alert man, or was neither manifestation sincere? He finally came to the conclusion--though not always without doubts--that Rory was truly dual. For that somewhat thick red lower lip, sensual like his grandfather's, could tighten into austerity with the ascetic's rejection of sensuality. But whether he was the dedicated scholar or the thoroughgoing scoundrel, the protector of the weak or the derider of weakness, he was honest as of the moment. This very startling versatility, this changefulness, created a fascinating individual which, combined with his splendor of appearance and obvious potency, made him irresistible to both men and women. Though he seemed never to be the same--like a flashing dragonfly in the sun--there was a basic immutability in his character over which his attitudes and emotions merely scintillated. That stable quality, Courtney thought, is something men would reckon with in the future, to their bewilderment, and possibly to their discomfiture. Rory might be Gemini, but he was also himself, mysterious and unknowable, like his father. Courtney and Rory might be closer than brothers, trusting each other beyond the trust they gave anyone else, but even the subtle Courtney never fully guessed the personality of the other. However, Courtney had the wry conviction that Rory understood him, completely, and that Rory was never deceived as to the nature of anyone else. To those whom Rory cared little about--or those he had decided to hoodwink--he was apparently light-hearted, gay, generous, good-natured, humorous, witty, broadly tolerant and careless. To those closer to him he sometimes showed his intrepid character, his adamant ruthlessness, his staunch strange rectitude, his powerful determination, and his exigency. Once Courtney said to him, "You wear many masks," to which Rory replied, "But they are all me." "It must be tiring," said Courtney. Rory had laughed. "No, it is always interesting. I never know what I am going to do next." Courtney doubted that. There was a certain deliberation in what Rory always did, a certain calculation. However, one could always rely upon his loyalty, once given. He might say to a friend, "You've been a damned fool and deserve your punishment," but he would always help the friend to evade t
hat punishment, cursing him meanwhile and publicly excoriating him. To the discriminating Courtney, Rory's hearty good-fellowship with the most improbable people--low mountebanks, sly reprobates, villains, rogues, unkempt and noisy ne'er-do-wells, drunkards, failures, ragtag and bobtail, and the stupidly insistent--seemed incredible and unworthy of him. For, within an hour or so Rory could be found disputing with professors in the most learned fashion and obtuseness and in the most elegant and impeccable phrases, and showing a fastidiousness in thought and argument beyond the range of most young men of his age.