Captains and the Kings

by Taylor Caldwell

  It was dark when he reached his boardinghouse and again he read what he had first read last November on a black and sleeting night in the midst of his suffering, and he thought and said to himself, It will be next Sunday.

  Chapter 8

  On Saturday night, after work, Joseph counted up the money he had saved. It amounted to seventy-two dollars, after nearly six months of Sunday work, and sacrifice and the payment of three dollars a week to the orphanage. It seemed an enormous sum to Joseph, but he knew it was not enough. He carefully wrote a letter, bought a stamp at the post office, near the depot, and mailed it. It was the first posted letter he had ever written in America. Absently, he noted the large poster in brilliant red, white, and blue on the post-office walls, urgently calling for volunteers for the Army and the Cavalry and the Navy, but it meant nothing to him though he was surrounded by men who excitedly discussed it. He went out, unseen and himself indifferent. He stopped on the street, standing on the brick sidewalk, and the barrenness of the town struck him again, the absence of vital color, the few isolated and drooping trees leafing listlessly in the late May twilight. Men passed him, reading newspapers with large black print, and there was a sense of hurry in the air and elation. For an instant Joseph felt it, for it was almost palpable, and he reflected with his usual dark irony that death and war and disaster had their own impelling excitement which stirred and lifted the dull mind. He suddenly thought of his great-grandfather's wake, before the full Famine-Moira's grandfather. He, himself, had been but five and his parents had taken him with them, for Moira was a realist and believed children should early know about death for, was it not as natural as life and birth, and was it not the soul's introduction into life everlasting? Daniel had demurred, for he was softer of nature than Moira, and Joseph had felt his first wild impatience with his father, his first repudiation of sentimentality. The wake had begun somberly among a large crowd in the snug small house, and even the walls were lined with mourners, for the old man had been cherished. Then the poteen was passed about, and a table of cold funereal meats was discovered, and shortly thereafter the drama of death had become melodrama, not only a solemn occasion but a theatrical one in which the corpse was the leading character. Poteen flowed, tears flowed, cries and exclamations rose, loud keenings were like flutes and trumpets.

  The mourners mourned with exaltation. Daniel Armagh had been present at many wakes but they had never failed to shock him and convince him of their impropriety, but Joseph, cynical from birth, and understanding, knew that men can find piquant stimulation even in calamity. Later he was to know that were it not for these men would go mad, for life would be totally unbearable. Unlike the bewildered Daniel, Joseph could understand why Moira and her mother could push Daniel away with a quick wrath when he tried to comfort them and hush their wailings. In their doleful way they were enjoying themselves and resented interference, and their tears washed away their pain and made them important. Even the two priests present looked at Daniel with annoyance, as if at an uncomprehending stranger, and eventually one had led him away and had gently put a large mug in his hand. In his long reading Joseph had read somewhere, "Life is a comedy for the man who thinks, a tragedy for the man who feels." To Joseph life was a black comedy, if a tragic one in its overtones, and he accepted it. He kept himself apart from it for it would sap his strength. He remembered another aphorism: "That man is strongest who is alone." He had long ago refused to feel the immanence of tragedy as it concerned others, and he turned from the fatal involvements of mankind and felt only contempt. He went to the orphanage, though this was but Saturday night, and Sister Elizabeth was surprised to sec him. "The children are in bed," she said. "But, I will ask Sister to bring them to you if you cannot see them tomorrow, Joey." "No," he said. If he saw his brother and sister now it would be a weakness he could not afford, and might hold him back. He said, "Sister, I am going away for a little while, a few months, perhaps a year. I have another job, in Pittsburgh, which will pay me better." "Capital, Joey!" she said, and looked at him scarchingly. "Oh, Joey, you are going to join the Army?" "No." The idea amused him, and he gave the nun his dark unmirthful smile. "But it is connected in some fashion, Sister. It will pay me very well-in Pittsburgh." "You must write as soon as you are settled," said Sister Elizabeth. A peculiar uneasiness came to her, which she dismissed at once, being a sensible woman. "I will." He looked down into her shrewd eyes, and hesitated a moment. "I hope, in the near future, to send for Scan and Regina." "I see," said the nun. "You will send your address?" Joseph paused. "I will not be staying, Sister, at one place, but I will send money now and then." He put a roll of bills into her hand. "There is fifty dollars here, Sister, for Scan and Regina, for their board. When that is gone there will be more from me."

  Her peculiar uneasiness sharpened. "I wish I could know that all will be well for you, Joey." "Sister, your meaning of 'well' may not be mine, I am thinking." She looked at the height of him, the breadth of his thin shoulders, his hungry slenderness, and then she saw, as always, the power in his set face, the cold blue glimmer of his sunken eyes. But for the first time she felt that Joseph Armagh was dangerous. Instantly she chided herself for her absurdity: A young man, only seventeen! A hard-working and sober young man-dangerous! But she had known danger many times in her life and however she laughed at herself she remained apprehensive. He went out into the early night, unaware that Sister Elizabeth was watching him from the doorway, and he looked back at the fagacle of the convent-orphanage for the last time. He knew he would never see it again, and he was thankful. He thought of his brother and sister asleep behind those frail wooden walls, and he pressed his lips together against a wince of pain that he was leaving them without a goodbye. He returned to his boardinghouse and looked at his few belongings. He would have to leave his beloved books. He laid out his one change of clothing beyond what he already wore. He packed these tightly in a cardboard box, pitifully small, even though it included another pair of mended boots. He was glad that it was still cool enough, at night, to wear his patched greatcoat. He lay down on his bed and went to sleep at once, for long ago he had taught himself to sleep immediately and on demand. The violet twilight deepened outside and the swallows blew against a purpling sky, and the town murmured with the excitement of threatened war. But Joseph Armagh slept with resolution for it had nothing to do with him. "Go with God, Joey," Sister Elizabeth had murmured as his tall emaciated body had swung down the street, but Joseph had not heard her and he would not even have smiled had he heard. She no longer existed for him. It was only faintly light, faintly gray, when Joseph awoke in the morning. The silence was total, for it was too early even for church bells. The air, he was pleased to feel, was a little chilly and so his greatcoat would excite no attention. He wrote a note on a piece of brown paper to Mrs. Marhall: I am sorry to leave you, Mistress Marhall, but I have been offered an excellent post in Pittsburgh and will leave for it today. I could not give you notice, but kindly accept, with my compliments, this ten- dollar gold certificate. I will not be returning. I am grateful for your kindness to me in the past. Your obedient Servant, Joseph Armagh.

  His handwriting, so meticulously taught to him by an old priest he no longer remembered, was copperplate and careful, as well as bold and strong and clear. He looked thoughtfully at the gold certificate he had placed on his note. He could not understand this rank mawkishness of his, for he owed the woman nothing. He took it in his hand and debated. It was precious; he had earned it. He despised himself as he put it back on the paper, and then he shrugged. It was the utmost folly to see that poor frightened face so sharply now, and the wavering and placating hands. But, she was an innocent and to the end of his life Joseph was moved by innocence and only by innocence. She too had owed him nothing, but she had prepared an "elixir" for him, and had placed a ragged afghan on his bed during the coldest nights this winter, and he suspected that it had come from her own bed. More than anything else, however, she had never threatened him with sentimentality or intr
usion, except on those two occasions, and had granted him the dignity of letting him alone. Maudlin she might be, but insistent never. He looked at his books. He lifted the thin volume of Shakespeare's sonnets and pushed it under his blue cotton shirt. He picked up his cardboard box and stole silently from the house, never looking back. Like Sister Elizabeth, it no longer existed for him. The street lost its familiarity. He was done with it. Again, he was an absolute alien in an alien land. He had always carried his lunch in the cardboard box which now held his few possessions, so no one at Squibbs Bros. Grain and Feed, Harness, noted it as he arrived at the stables and office. His wagon and the horses were waiting for him in the new light. The first pale sun was touching high chimneys and the tops of trees, but the earth was still in morning twilight. There was a hint of the coming hot summer in the air, for the smell of dust and dryness was pervasive. "Good load, today, Scottie," said the foreman. "People are thirsty, thinking of the war," and he chuckled. He gave Joseph the customary few cents for his lunch and Joseph nodded, tucked the coins in his pocket and lifted the reins. "Big load," said the foreman. "Could be you'll be getting back late." "It doesn't matter," said Joseph. "But do not forget the extra fifty cents if I am." The town was still silent though here and there flutters of gray smoke were rising from chimneys. Not even the horsecars were running as yet. Joseph tied up the horses six streets from the depot, then ran swiftly. The depot was just opening, for the 7:10 was expected in an hour from Philadelphia. He hurried to the counter and asked for a ticket to Pittsburgh on the late afternoon train, and paid for it: two dollars from his store. He put the ticket in his pocket. The old stationmaster would remember, if asked, that a young man he had never seen before had that morning bought a ticket to Pittsburgh for two dollars. But it was very improbable that he would be asked. Moreover, Joseph had carefully tucked the last thread of his russet hair under his workman's cap and he appeared insignificant enough, and the stationmaster had seen no wagon and no horses. Ah, thought Joseph, poverty is marvelously anonymous. He raced back to his tethered horses and found them peacefully cropping some blades of grass that had forced themselves through the bricks of the road. He looked about cautiously. The gray-faced little houses were quiet; a door banged somewhere but no one was about. He climbed onto his seat and set about his deliveries. By ten o'clock he had collected sixty dollars. At this time the people were going to church in the quiet and sunlit town, most on foot, a number in buggies or carryalls or shabby surreys, and all dressed respectably and all with pious downcast eyes. They did not notice the heavy wagon lumbering slowly along the curb or if they did they ignored it. They did not speak of the approaching conflict or even of the beset President for such was "unseemly" on the Sabbath. Church bells began to ring, competing stridently from steeple to steeple, and Joseph could hear the solemn murmurings of organs through doors open to the warming air. Children walked decorously with parents. Feet shuffled on brick. Carriages rattled by importantly. Sunshine lay on the trunks of trees or like bowers of light in the branches. There was a warm smell of manure in the streets and the ever-present dust and heated brick. Birds darted from bough to bough and an occasional squirrel was pursued by a stray dog or cat. To Joseph Armagh it was a street scene that might have been but a mural for all it had life to him and he did not hear the loud fervency of the singing which burst from door and opened window in the churches. By three o'clock he had collected over one hundred and fifty dollars and had watered his horses at a street trough and had fed them their oats in the bags. He had also eaten his dry lunch. At four he admitted to a furtive saloonkeeper that he was thirsty and hungry and accepted, for thirty cents, two large mugs of foaming yellow beer and a package of hard- boiled eggs, four ham sandwiches, a German sausage in a long bun, and two pickles and one salt herring and two slices of seed cake, including a package of potato salad, a German delicacy he had never eaten before. He complained about the price, and so the saloonkeeper returned five cents and magnanimously included another mug of beer. He gave Joseph forty dollars. At the next saloon, at five, Joseph collected another fifty dollars. It had been a very successful day, and the load had been twice as much as usual as Mr. Squibbs had learned to trust his newest "Sunday lad." Two hundred and forty dollars. With the twelve dollars in his money belt it reached the enormous sum of two hundred and fifty-two dollars. At half-past five he turned his wagon about, reached a street of warehouses completely barren on this Sunday of any passers-by or vehicles, abandoned the horses after patting them, and ran for the depot. He reached it just as a train in the station, with its gigantic funnel and blinking headlight, was shrilly sounding its bell and letting off painful shrieks of steam. Its wheels were already grinding as Joseph leaped aboard the last coach. The conductor, about to shut the door, growled at him, "Almost got kilt, you did, and where's your ticket?" He suspiciously examined it front and back and glared at Joseph who muttered something in what he hoped would pass as a foreign language. The conductor sniffed, said, "Foreigners! Cain't even speak a word of English!" Joseph humbly touched his cap, gabbled again pleadingly. The conductor roughly pushed him inside the coach and forgot him. Joseph, whose breath was short from his long run, found the coach partly empty and so he chose a seat in the rear and huddled down, pulling his cap as far over his eyes as he could. He did not sit up until he was certain that he was beyond the confines of the town, and then he looked through the filthy window at the countryside. He listened to the howl of the whistle as the train gained speed and rocked on its roadbed. The coach was hot and airless. He tried to open the window but a gush of black soot and steam blew by it. He did not take off his cap but he loosened his greatcoat. He discovered that he had not only taken his cardboard box with his belongings, but had accidentally included the truncheon as well. This amused him. Cautiously, watching his fellow passengers all the while, he pushed the weapon into the long side pocket of his coat. It seemed, to his Irish soul, that this was some sort of an omen, though he usually despised superstition. He hoped that the horses, intelligent beasts, would eventually grow tired of waiting for him-for he had not tethered them-and would find their way back to their stables. By now it was past time when he should be arriving at the stables, himself, with that great sum of money. He knew that the other men would be looking up the street for him. By eight o'clock they would be searching and would be making the rounds of the saloons. By ten they would be convinced that he had departed with the collections. By eight tomorrow Mr. Squibbs would receive his letter: I have not stolen your money, sir, but have only borrowed it, on my honor. I have been offered a fine post in Pittsburgh and needed some money to tide me over until I have become settled. You may find this very reprehensible, sir, but I beg of you to trust me for a few months, when I will return your money with six percent interest. I am no thief, sir, but only a poor Scotsman in desperate circumstances. Resp'y your Servant, Joseph Armagh. Mr. Squibbs would not dare to go to the police for a variety of reasons, and his thugs would not find a Joseph Armagh in the big city of Pittsburgh, for the simple reason that Joseph's destination was not Pittsburgh at all. He felt in his pocket for the worn newspaper clipping he had kept these long months and reread it: