Captains and the Kings

by Taylor Caldwell

  Chapter 17

  Something sick and nagging lingered in Joseph's mind, and would linger for the rest of his life. Remembering what Mr. Montrose had said to the end of his days, Joseph became more merciless without understanding the reason: That other men also make their choices, and should not accuse him, Joseph Francis Xavier Armagh. "No man corrupts another. He corrupts only himself, and therefore he should not plead for compassion." In one day Joseph became much older and much more relentless. They stopped briefly, near midnight, at Philadelphia, not leaving the coach, which was shifted to another train, and looking only at the vast grayness of the gaslighted station filled with moving troops and smoke and flags and banners and martial music and the uproar of voices and the howl of other leaving or entering trains. They waited, in semidarkness, the lamps of their coach wavering and flickering. They waited, in quiet luxury, not part of the turmoil outside, the crowds of weeping girls and women, the crowds of young men in blue uniforms. Mr. Montrose watched it all tranquilly, smoking and reading, apart and only vaguely interested. Joseph watched it without tranquillity and with another turmoil in himself. He thought, for the first time vividly, of the contraband munitions in the port of New York. He said to himself-though not without a dim inner protest: We are our own destiny. If we are victims at all, or conquerors, we have done it in our minds and our will, or with our faulty judgments or our illusions. If we permit others to exploit us, in private life or in government, we chose it. Or we made the fatal error of acquiescence, and for that we should be condemned. The world forgives everything but weakness and submission. It forgives everyone but a victim. For there is always battle, even if you die in it. In any event death came to all men. How you died was your own choice, fighting or submitting. Joseph thought of the woman he had seen in the coach opposite him, and he clenched down on the memory and refused to think of her, and thought he had banished her for all time, for she was irrelevant to him and there was no place for her in his life. It was not his fault or of his choosing that lie dreamt of her that night, beseeching, gentle, full of pity and sorrow, not only for those she tended but for him. They arrived in New York in the early morning. Joseph had watched the red morning light on the peaceful Hudson River and on the green Palisades with their white and gray mansions and great gardens overhung by enormous glistening trees. The river was full of steamboats and small sailing vessels and flatboats, their reflections gliding with them on the water, so still was it. It is a beautiful world, thought Joseph, with that mystic deep melancholy of his which had no name. He sat by his window and waited until he heard Mr. Montrose go into the dining room, and then he followed him. They had an early breakfast, for they would soon be arriving. "I do not like New York," said Mr. Montrose. "It has become a polyglot city, far worse than Pittsburgh or Philadelphia. As it is on an island one feels crowded, and so do the inhabitants, and crowds are always hysterical and womanish. They are happy, the New Yorkers, when there is an opportunity for uproar, and if that opportunity does not come often enough they will create it. You have never been there?" , Joseph said, "No," and thought of the harbor those years ago and the wet black wharfs and the multitude of rocking ships and rain and snow and despair. "As so many of them have come-brought in by cattleboat and steerage- from the oppressed and semi-enslaved countries of Europe, they carry with them both a hatred and a fawning towards all government, even American. They will occasionally riot, as they did in their old countries, but it is an instinctive rioting and not based on an awareness of where they really are now. The next day they will cringe before the most contemptible politician for his favors, remembering the headman of their village and his whip, or the ruler of their province, or their vicious mayor. They came to what they knew was a free country, but their impulses still govern them and they respond to their new freedom with the old cunning subservience, fear, suspicion, and truckling." "The Irish have been persecuted and beaten and killed, too," said Joseph, and the red stain was on his cheekbones again. "But though they do, still, band together in America, I have heard, they are not fawners nor trucklers nor arc they suspicious and cowering." "Ah, yes, you were born in Ireland, were you not?" said Mr. Montrose. "My grandfather came from there, from County Galway, I believe. He settled-" He stopped and frowned through the window. "Ah, I see we are arriving." He looked at Joseph. "Some men are born free even in ghettos, even, under persecution, even in slaverj'. I should think it is a matter of split." The station in New York at 26th Street and Fourth Avenue was even more tumultuous than the stations in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, and far larger. The noise of bells, whistles, voices, and trundling carts and leaving and departing trains was overpowering. Joseph saw a vast welter of confusion, of running men, of lanterns, of gaslight, and the sides of coaches sliding past his window, rumbling and squealing. And, as usual these days, troops were climbing into standing trains, and hordes of young girls and women and older men, smiling, cheering, reaching up hands to windows, clasping young hands they might never touch again, trying to laugh, to joke, to send sons and husbands and lovers and brothers away with the lighthearted feeling that they were on an adventure but would soon be home. The women smiled widely under April bonnets of velvet and silk and lace, trimmed with curling plumes and bright flowers. They wore brilliant shawls over their shoulders or small velvet capelets or jackets, and their many-colored swinging hoops collided with each other and revealed pantalettes and little black slippers. Their gloved hands held up wrapped gifts to the young men teeming at the opened windows, and though the women smiled or flirted or cooed, their eyes were filled with tears. Beside them stood fathers and husbands in tall silk hats, and in respectable city clothing of black broadcloth or fine brown wool, with watch chains decorously spread over decorous brocaded waistcoasts of black or brown or gray. Their bearded faces were fixed in determined smiles, like the smiles on the faces of corpses, and they blew their noses as they tilted their heads to the youthful ones above them and spoke in slow, full and reassuring voices as if they were only bidding goodbye to sons on the way to visit beloved relatives or to enter a university. They swung ebony or Malacca canes with gold or silver handles, and sometimes slapped their calves with them, or held them out quickly to guard a lady against a new surge of people hurrying along the platforms. The station platforms were heaped with wooden boxes and cartons and luggage, and men in crude workmen's clothing sweated them onto flat wagons and struggled with larger pieces. Steam gushed from the wheels of trains, screaming thinly. Smoke from stacks billowed in black gushes through the station. Somewhere a bugle sounded, then a rattle of drums, and somewhere a whole group of people laughed, or there was a sharp uncontrollable cry, or a called message. Everywhere hung the red, blue, and white bunting, and the limp lengths of flags, sluggishly stirring in the wind created by movement of trains and people. Now, through far distant doors the morning brightened and with it entered unseasonable heat on an almost visible wave of soot-speckled air. And always the hurrying groups, entering or leaving, the thrusting heads, the portmanteaus, the wicker suitcases, the scurrying carts filled with anonymous objects, the shouting of porters, and the sudden splitting howl of a train on the move. As detached as inhabitants of another earth Joseph and Mr. Montrose left the train to be met at once by a uniformed coachman who touched his hat and took their luggage. His face was heavily pocked and swollen by old smallpox. Mr. Montrose seemed to have expected him. He led them outside on Fourth Avenue to a hot and pounding and blazing welter of sun, blasts of heat from brick walks and cobbled streets, multitudes of glittering carriages, vans, wagons, hacks, cabs, victorias, drays, buggies, and surreys, and endless surging crowds of people who appeared to trot and half-run rather than walk. The side streets, filled with tall chocolate- colored attached houses, three stories tall, were hardly less quiet, and every flight of brown steps was vivacious with ladies in fashionable clothing and children and bustling men, and the curbs were littered with vehicles. The roar of wagons and the voices of people and the rattle of wheels on cobblestone
s made a heated confusion in the air. Though every street was lined with newly blooming trees and though little lawns were greening before the brownstone houses and on Fourth Avenue, the swirling air was choked with yellow dust and a pervading stench of sewers and manure and simmering stone. Horses clopped or trotted, hoofs striking fire on brick and cobbles, and drivers yelled from vans and wagons and drays and whips cracked. Joseph had seen other cities but not such an intense and blinding and noisy and driven city as this..* Everywhere hung flags and banners and again there was a burst of martial music from a little distance. A fine closed carriage awaited the two men from Titusville. The coachman disposed of their luggage and they climbed into the carriage. The windows were dusty even this early in the day and the fastidious Mr. Montrose rolled them up. "Better to suffocate in quiet and clean air than to be smothered to death," he said. Joseph was already sweating but Mr. Montrose was as serene aid cool and scented as a white gardenia in some hidden and shadowed garden. Heat, apparently, was familiar to him. The coachman fought his way to Fifth Avenue with lashings of a whip and the strong menace of his two huge black horses. Mr. Montrose lit a cheroot and leaned back on crimson leather cushions. The harness of the horses was so polished and so brilliant in the sun that it shot back lances of light into the carriage and Joseph's eyes smarted. Then they turned into Fifth Avenue, "as famous, in its way, as the Strand in London," said Mr. Montrose. Though the windows were closed Joseph could hear the unresting bellow of the city and its traffic. Then he could see up the length of Fifth Avenue, cobblestoned and with endless marches of trees and small lawns enclosed in bronze railings, and the ranks of elegant white and graystone mansions with scintillating polished windows and grilled doors and whitened steps and the pouring traffic between curbs and the flagged walks filled with seething crowds. Above them all leapt the many steeples of many churches, the tallest structures in the city, their crosses and their pointed towers catching the almost tropic sun and intruding into the white-hot sky. So tall were they that the buildings about them were diminished. "The street of the new millionaires, the glorious entrepreneurs, the gilded and revered thieves, the true rulers of America, the commanders of governors and Presidents and government," said Mr. Montrose. "The Vanderbilts, the Astors, the Goulds-the new aristocracy of wealth, the new patricians from old gutters. In Europe, because of their enterprises, they would be hanged, but in America they are adored. Look at the opulence of their mansions, fit for princes, filled with servants of far better ancestry-honest, at least. Yet, when they visit the capitals of their forebears in Europe they are received by kings and emperors. Has this war sobered their greed, quieted their avidity, darkened their vast and gold rooms and polished floors? Not in the least. It is only an occasion for importance and profit and excitement. Their sons buy substitutes for the battlefield, though I admit their ladies are engaged in lively bazaars and dances and theatricals to make money for those they call 'our boys.'" Mr. Montrose spoke without bitterness and even mirthfully. "I heard," said Joseph, "that the cities are filled with gloom and shortages of food and clothing." "Not in New York, Mr. Francis. At least, not on these streets. There are possibly regions of the slums here and the dwellings of the poor and the perpetually indigent, who find it almost impossible to buy bread or meat or vegetables even with the little they earn. The clergy insist it is no crime to be poor but no one believes that. Wars do not devastate the fortunate. Devastation is for those who have no money, either in the cities or in battle." He puffed contentedly, and his excellent profile, so delicately drawn and attenuated, showed no rancor. "It was always so," he said, and thought: Luane. Luane. The respectful and watching police were everywhere with their long blue coats, belts, helmets, and mustaches, carrying their clubs openly, for none knew when, even here, the draft riots might break out and ragged rascals attack these great houses. Joseph could see their wet and heat- reddened faces and recognized them as Irish, a well-fed if not respected Irish. In Ireland they fought arrogance and power. In America, they guarded it. Am I to quarrel with them? thought Joseph. Do I not wish that I lived behind those bronze carved doors and those silk-hung windows? As Joseph had made no remark Mr. Montrose glanced sideways and he thought, I have a sapling his age. Did my father sell him-and Luane? Or did my mother-incredible!-for once open her foolish mouth and defy my father? Where are they now, my son, and my Luane, my darling? He smiled as if his thoughts were peaceful and not grinding. When they arrived at the ostentatious pile of the Fifth Avenue Hotel at 2jrd Street, Mr. Montrose left the carriage with the agility of a youth and Joseph followed, bending his angular body from his lean waist. Grandeur had a fascination for him, even the grandeur made by men. He looked up at the whitish grayness of the building, and at the steps swarming with yellow-coated servants busy with the unloading of many carriages drawing up and with the assisting of gentlemen and ladies to alight. The ladies laughed and fanned themselves with dainty little fans or perfumed kerchiefs, and the gentlemen also laughed and pushed their silk hats back on their wet ridged foreheads. The high twitterings and dainty laughter were totally alien to Joseph and though he hated himself he felt like a ploughboy among these elegants, these insouciant young men with canes and jewelry, these assured creatures who had never known want or despair. The women's bright faces were even brighter than their silks and their satins and their fluttering colorful mantles. Among them were graceful military officers in exquisitely tailored uniforms, and full of courtliness and gallantry, chattering like actors, their gilt buttons sparkling. They wore swords, and their legs were perfect in their tapered pantaloons and their pointed boots dazzled the eye, and their epaulets were brave on wide shoulders. They looked suddenly irritated when Mr. Montrose, with murmured apologies, glided through their ranks, but a glance at his face impelled them instinctively to allow him a passage. Joseph followed him deftly and he thought, That is authority. Yet, it was something else, also. It was intangible breeding; it was an absent hauteur as if those men and officers were inferiors. Many looked after him in curiosity, wonder, or resentment, and the ladies gazed on him with interest and whispered among themselves, "So distinguished! Who is he?" Some straightened bonnets or adjusted ribbons under soft round chins. "At least a diplomat, a person of consequence," one said. Joseph and Mr. Montrose heard and Mr. Montrose glanced at him with a silent laugh, as if at a ludicrous joke, and then he turned and bowed elaborately to the young lady, who blushed with pleasure and tittered, while her gallant scowled. For the first time, to his dismayed surprise, Joseph found himself liking Mr. Montrose, the man from nowhere, the chivalrous blackguard and gambler, the man without family or home or kindred, the man whom many would consider a criminal. They entered the lobby and Joseph felt himself immediately inundated by an enormous redness and at once the air, to his senses at least, was far hotter and more overwhelming than on the avenue. The walls were of dark mahogany and red satin damask under a domed ceiling of gilded wood. The carpet was scarlet, the great chairs of mahogany were cushioned in the same color. Those monster tables were surely created for giants and not men, and they overflowed with spring flowers and masses of ferns and vases; they were intricately carved with bowed legs and gilded clawed feet. All the huge portraits on the walls showed men or women dressed in various shades of red, with glowing backgrounds which suggested fire. Between them were sconces of polished and gilded bronze holding tall white candles. Here and there stood sofas fit for Goliath, covered in crimson silk. The eight mighty chandeliers, dripping crystals and faceted balls of glimmering light, dropped from the ceiling and each could have lighted a ballroom alone. Here they appeared of only ordinary size. At the end of the lobby moved three caged elevators of gilded bronze, and five men in ruffled shirts and the finest of black broadcloth and the most discreet of jewelry waited behind a desk with a dignified subservience to receive guests. Their mustaches were waxed to a glitter; their eyes saw everything and missed nothing. The lobby was one movement of men and women coming and going, laughing and talking, greeting and sayin
g farewell. There was such an air of festival here that Joseph wondered if there was a holiday in progress peculiar to New York alone. Then he remembered that this was the joyful air of war prosperity, despite the shortages of goods and food, and the new income tax which Washington had desperately imposed to pay for the conflict. From behind some gilded screens came the soft singing of violins and a piano, unobtrusive but adding their own sweet comment to the happiness and gaiety here, the air of well-being and riches and importance and excitement. All the ladies were beautifully and expensively dressed, their silk hoops draped with contrasting colors, and beaded and embroidered, their mantles bordered with gold or silver ornamentations, their ears and necks jeweled, their parasols of many bright colors, and all were scented so that the lobby seemed to be one hot flower garden blowing in full sun. Young or not so young, every face was beautiful and ever)' woman, apparently, tried to resemble a soubrette. Their gestures were pretty and animated, their voices like birds. Their fans fluttered; embroidered reticules swayed on their gloved wrists. There was not a sad or anxious countenance among them. Their gentlemen were equally splendid and as marvelously arrayed and dashing, and when they were not speaking they were laughing or bowing to some lady or displaying a handsome leg in tight pantaloons. Joseph had never seen such vivacity and joyousness, and though he had read of these in connection with lavish balls he decided that the reality was far more vivid than any written word or painting. The florid hue of everything and the colors on the ladies made him feel dizzy and overheated, and the babble was too close and intrusive. As if the lobby were empty Mr. Montrose moved smoothly to the desk inhere at least two of the gentlemen recognized him at once, and bowed. 'fje said, "Mr. Francis, my associate, is with me, gentlemen, and I will Have the customary suite." One man produced a thick book and wrote in ft swiftly, nodding his head with respect at Joseph. Behind them stood two men in the yellow uniforms which Joseph had seen outside, holding their faggage. They entered one of the gilded caged and grilled elevators, and the operator pulled on his rope easily and they ascended. "How do you like jilt; Mr. Francis?" asked Mr. Montrose. Joseph considered. He looked down Ithrough the grill at the red falling lobby and its many-colored and milling I inhabitants. "I don't think I do," he said. "Mr. Healey holds it in high regard," said Mr. Montrose, and smiled a Uittle. "War time is no longer grim," said Joseph. "It never was and never is, except for those who fight the wars, pay for jithem, die in them, and lose all in them," Mr. Montrose remarked. "But they, certainly, are of no importance." General Grant's Army was entering Mississippi for the siege of Vicksturg, and every step was being bloodily contested. Thousands were being slaughtered in the scarlet lightning of cannon and in the deathly fog, and Ififles were obliterating young life and towns were burning and fields, jgreening and burgeoning just hours before, were black and trampled, and Irich forests were smoking under the smiling sky. But those below in the ^disappearing lobby, all red and crystal and carved wood and gilt, cared othing for this. In spite of himself Joseph felt cold bitterness and even hatred for those who joyfully profited from wars, and then he was derisive nth himself. These, at least, were sensible and pragmatic. The two men and their two escorts with the luggage left the elevator at the fourth floor, and they walked down a corridor paved with red Itarpeting and bounded by walls of polished mahogany. One carved door [was unlocked and flung open. Mr. Montrose was about to enter when an I Army officer, apparently in haste, suddenly left the room opposite and 1 Collided with the small caravan in his way. He was a short youngish man I with a full clean-shaven and pugnacious face and eyes of a darting and [ttstless intelligence, and of a peculiar sharp and piercing blue. He halted and bowed to Mr. Montrose. "My abject apologies, sir," he IlBid. "Accepted, sir," said Mr. Montrose with a responding bow. The officer looked swiftly at Joseph, inclined his head, then raced down corridor in the direction of the elevators. "These soldiers," said Mr. lontrose. "They move as though there is a battlefield around the corner."