Captains and the Kings

  Chapter 44

  At the beginning of spring vacation Kevin had said to his brother, "I'm not going back to Green Hills this summer. I'm not going to do my usual stint in Philadelphia in Pa's offices, either. I've got a job for the Boston Gazette, doing feature articles on the war." "You?" said Rory, disbelieving. Kevin had smiled. "You may think I'm just a plodder, and I am. But I can write factually. I may not be inspired or hysterical, but I can write objectively. So, the paper hired me, and I'm off to the wars to report. I think it'll be over, soon." "You are looking for excitement," Rory had accused him, dismayed, thinking of their father. Kevin laughed. "Know anybody less excitable than me? No, I'm looking for something." "What?" But Kevin had shrugged his big heavy shoulders, which were so effective on the football field. Kevin was "deep," as Joseph would say. He never revealed anything he did not want to reveal, about himself or anyone else, so Rory knew there was no use in pressing him. But Rory thought of what the faceless men had said in London: "We cannot have nationalism and sovereign states, which divide and disperse our interests. We must work for a world Socialistic empire, which we will be able to control without tedious distractions of independent political entities and their internal and external quarrels." "In short," Joseph had ironically told his son, "they will plunder the people of the world through heavy taxation in every country, then 'benevolently' return to the subdued masses part of that revenue in 'gifts,' 'aids,' 'social justice,' 'sharing,' all the people's money anyway-for which the cowed populace will be humbly grateful and become obedient and conforming. No, I won't tell you anything more. But you will learn as we go along, and accept it all." He had stared a moment, thoughtfully, at Rory. "We will have to see if you are reliable." "Pa," Rory had said, "you are not really one of them." Joseph had looked away. "That may be your opinion, Rory. I am as interested as they are in power." He remembered what Mr. Montrose had told him so long ago, in his early youth, that Marxism was not a "movement" for the liberation and rule of the "proletariat," but a conspiracy of those who called themselves the "Elite," and whose aim was despotism. Rory was to wonder to the end of his life if young Kevin had had any insight about these things, and to remember his conversation with him in that cold February of 1898 When Joseph and Bernadette and Ann Marie returned in early April it was Rory's miserable and unwanted task-undertaken with some resentment-to inform his parents that Kevin had already left i» America as a correspondent for the Boston Gazette. Joseph was predictably angered, and Bernadette threw up her fat arms and cried, "How ungrateful, how stupid, how like Kevin, to do this to his father! In the middle of term, too." To Rory's surprise Joseph had suddenly smiled his saturnine smile. "Well, he may learn something. I always thought he was 'deep.'" He had looked sharply at Rory. "I hope you didn't-shall we say-gossip with him about London?" Rory was offended. He said, "Pa, I'd like to talk to you in private," and they had gone upstairs to Joseph's rooms and Rory had told his father of his last real conversation with Kevin. Joseph had listened with that intensity of his, and then had nodded his head, even pridefully. "We have a good one, there," he had remarked. "I always thought it. Did you suspect that there was a touch of the knight errant in Kevin?" "No. There never was. He is absolutely practical and disillusioned, Pa." "Good," Joseph had said. "But to think the spalpeen used my name with that damned paper to get that job! Well, at least it shows he has enterprise and impudence. We won't need to worry, then. No harm will come to him. It's not as if he had enlisted." Kevin's articles began to appear in the newspaper almost weekly. To his family's surprise there was a kind of surly jocularity in them, a cold underlying cynicism, as well as practical reporting. They contained no ebullient patriotism, no hero-singing, no excitement or jubilation about "our war of liberation." They were totally dispassionate, which did not entirely please the sponsor. Then the articles stopped the latter part of June. Joseph, frowning, put enquiries in motion. He discovered that Kevin was no longer in the vicinity of Cuba. The newspaper asserted that, at his own desire, he had gone to the Philippines, "somewhere," and had written that he wished to be an "observer" on a battleship. The Gazette believed that the battleship's name was Texas, and expressed its hope that it would soon be in possession of "dispatches." The next dispatch was a telegram from the Admiral of the American Fleet at Santiago that Mr. Kevin Armagh had died as the result of a "random wild shot, coming from the enemy," which had reached Kevin "by a freak or ordinance of God," for it had not been directed at anyone or anything in particular. Standing in the great marble hall of his house, with the telegram in his hand, Joseph felt the atavistic Celt stirring in himself, a Celt who did not believe in the random or coincidental, but who believed in Fate. He stood in that hall, silent, motionless, for a long time before he went upstairs to inform his wife of the death of their son. He held himself stiff and climbed slowly, like an old haughty man who knew he was dying. If Bernadette had a favorite, in spite of her "sharp Irish tongue like knives," it had been Kevin, who had protected her from the supreme disaster only a year ago, and who, though always looking at her with his dark eyes devoid of any illusions or deep affection, had often appeared to understand her. Her raw humor of girlhood had become harsh and full of raillery, but Kevin had laughed in appreciation as no one else seemed to do these days. He had often, in the past three or four years, even joined her in joking extravagance and had actually teased her out of bad tempers. When she would become roughly hysterical in the presence of Joseph- who had a sardonic way of baiting her, knowing her love for him-it was Kevin who had given her warning winks and slight shakes of the head, and had quieted her. As much as it was possible for her to love any of her children she loved Kevin. It was late on a very hot thirtieth of July, and Bernadette, whose corpulence was a heavy burden in the heat, had been napping before her lonely interlude with a bottle and a glass, and then dinner. She sat up in her bed in her darkened room as Joseph came in, sweating in her pink silk and lace nightgown, her graying brown hair wet about her face and straggling on her mountainous shoulders. Her face, round and puffed with fat, was crimson and steamy, her once-fine eyes sunken in flesh and dazed with sleep, her nose and chins oily. Her huge breasts pushed against the fragile silk like udders, and she smelled of expensive perfume and perspiration and talcum powder, and hot obesity. "What, what?" she mumbled. Joseph knew where she kept her secret bottles, for a vengeful maid, discharged by Bernadette, had told him of her mistress' generous tipples in the evening. Joseph knew that his wife was now frequently drunk before dinner, but he cared no more for that than he did for anything else concerning the desperate Bernadette. Still without speaking and while Bernadette stared after him, slowly coming to full consciousness and blinking rapidly, he went to the little French cabinet near a far wall, lifted the lid and took out a bottle of Irish whiskey and a sticky glass. She watched, and the crimson on her cheeks deepened and a fresh burst of sweat poured out upon her and stained the nightgown darkly. She watched him, numbly, as he poured a good measure of the whiskey into the glass. Only her eyes moved when he came to the bed and put the glass in her hand. "Drink it," he said. "I think you are going to need it."