Captains and the Kings

by Taylor Caldwell

  She seized Joseph again, looking up at him, frantic and distraught. "Don't leave me, Joe, don't leave me!" Where was that bastard of a father of hers, that he was not with her to comfort and help her? "I won't leave you," he said. "But your mother sent for me, an hour ago. Where is your father?" "In his room. I don't know-in his room. He can't stand it-he doesn't know what to do-" I bet, thought Joseph, and he felt again that powerful urge to kill. He took Bernadette to a sofa and forced her to sit upon it. She dropped her head to her knees and her arms swung helplessly beside her head. He looked at the avidly staring maid. "Stay with Miss Bernadette," he said. "Don't leave her for a moment." He paused. "Which is Mrs. Hennessey's bedroom upstairs?" With pity he looked down at Bernadette, so agonized, so broken, her arms swinging close to the floor, her long hair hanging about her, her face hidden, her voice keening lamentations and despair. "Second door to your left, on the floor above," said the maid, and she approached Bernadette cautiously, as if fearing the girl would leap at her throat. She sat down on the edge of the sofa beside the girl and folded her hands in her apron and looked up at Joseph with total emptiness. Her face assumed a hypocritical expression and she sighed. The gaslight glared down pitilessly, and there was still no sound. Yet here was a house which had begun to prepare for a party. Who had sent the guests away? How could there be such abandonment here? Bernadette's wailing sobs echoed through the vast hall. The rich have no friends, thought Joseph. But then, who does? Joseph went to the wide marble staircase with its gilded bannister and it wound above him. He reached another wide long hall, the white floor partially covered with an Oriental runner; landscapes, excellently painted, hung on the walls. Sofas lined one side. Heavy carved doors of polished wood stood shut before Joseph. At first he did not see Tom Hennessey sitting with his head in his hands on a love seat, the very portrait of despair, nor the priest beside him who looked only ahead as if the other man was not there at all. Here the light of the chandelier was not so vivid, and the hall wavered in half-shadow. When he finally saw the two men Joseph stopped and he looked at Tom Hennessey and a ball of fire and acid stuck in his throat and his vision jerked with the intensity of his hatred. The priest saw him and rose, a strong middle-aged man recently come to Winfield to the new St. Leo's Church. He held out his hand and said briefly, "Father Seanlon. And you are Mr. Armagh for whom Mrs. Hennessey is asking?"

  "Yes," said Joseph and shook hands with the priest. "How is Mrs. Hen- nessey?" The priest glanced at the senator who cowered lower on his seat, and he said, "She has received the Last Rites." His grave calm eyes studied Joseph. "It is not expected that she will-live." He went before Joseph and opened a door and then stood aside. He had seen Joseph's expression when he had looked at the senator and he had sighed inwardly. Joseph entered a dimly lit bedroom large and wide, with three arched windows draped in golden silk and with a white marble fireplace in which a small fire burned. It was a beautiful room, spacious and silent, with only one gaslight burning on one wall, and turned low, and Joseph was aware of muted colors, green and rose and gray. In the center of the room stood a richly canopied bed, and in that bed lay Katherine Hennessey gazing at nothing, and her doctor sat beside her and held his hand on her pulse. Her tawny hair was spread out on her white silken pillows like a glowing wave, and her white face was absolutely still, and she appeared already dead to Joseph as he slowly approached her. But she felt his presence. Her eyes, dulled now and empty, faintly brightened, and she whispered his name. He bent over her in silence and with a sick and ferocious sorrow, and she moved her free hand and he took it. It was as cold as death. He said, "I came, Katherine," and it was the first time he had ever used her name and he said it not with restraint now but with all the power of his love for her. The faint brightness in her eyes increased. She turned her head to the doctor and whispered, "Alone, please." The satin coverlet covered her to her throat, but she shivered in the warm air, her slight body hardly lifting the quilt. The doctor stood up, shaking his head dolefully at Joseph, and he murmured, "Only a minute or two." There was a smell in the room of flowers and spirits of ammonia and some other acrid odor of useless medicines. The doctor left and Joseph knelt beside the bed, and Katherine held his hand as if only he could keep her alive, and the iciness of her fingers recalled the touch of his dying mother. The little fire hissed and sparked and threw up reddish lights onto the hearth, and a summer wind hummed softly against the closed windows. Catherine's dying face was the face of a girl, a suffering and tortured girl, and her lips were gray and her nose was pinched and the nostrils moved in and out as she tried for her last breaths. She did not look away from Joseph, whose head was so near hers, but her eyes probed into his earnestly, hopefully, pleadingly. "Yes?" said Joseph. "Yes, dear. What is it?" "Bernadette," she whispered. "My little girl, my child. She loves you, Joseph, and I know you love her and that you have just been waiting to speak--" Her throat almost closed, and she panted and struggled, her chin jutting out. Joseph knelt very still beside the bed and looked at her and his hand tightened about hers to give her strength, to keep her for a while. Her words entered his mind slowly, and with only a dull astonishment. "Take her, keep her," said the expiring woman. "She will be-safe-with you, my dear. Take her away-so innocent-so young-Joseph? Promise me?" "Yes, Katherine," he said. The gaslight rose and fell in a slight draft of air. The pallor of Katherine's face shone in it like marble, itself. "I promise." She sighed deeply. Her eyes still held his in that pathetic hope and certitude, and she tried to smile. Then she sighed again, and closed her eyes. He knelt there, watching her, holding her hand, and he did not see the doctor return with the priest and did not hear the beginning of the Litany for the Dying. He did not see Tom Hennessey standing in the doorway, shrinking, not daring to enter. He saw only Katherine's face, becoming smaller and smaller, but quiet now and with growing peace. He did not see the great golden Crucifix that stood over the bed. Nothing existed, had being, but Katherine Hennessey. Only he heard her final faint breath. He still knelt, not moving. Her hand was flaccid in his. Then he dropped his head so it lay beside Katherine's and he closed his eyes and the awful ripping of grief tore him apart, and he felt that he, too, had died. His cheek touched hers and slowly he turned his head and touched her fallen flesh with his lips. "Go forth, Christian soul," the priest intoned, and Joseph was again on the ship beside his mother, and there was nothing at all anywhere but anguish and darkness and pain. Later, when he went slowly down the stairs to the hall, feeling his way with his feet like an old man, he found Tom Hennessey sitting beside his daughter and holding her in his arms and comforting her, and Bcrnadette had clenched her young arms about her father's neck and she was sobbing against his chest. "It isn't true, my darling," said the senator. "It was all lies. The woman tried to make me leave your mother-she was mad and infatuated-I tried to drive her away-I wrote her a foolish letter because I pitied her- I confess I was a little drunk- My darling, your blessed mother had always been delicate, her heart, but she understood- She understood. You mustn't grieve. It is for the best-an end to her suffering-" His voice had never been so deep and so resonant and so rich, and Bernadette's sobs lessened. Then the senator saw Joseph near him, silent and watching, and the eyes of the men met and neither spoke. For a long time their eyes held each other. At last Joseph, hardly making a sound, left the hall, opened the door and went out into the warm summer night and closed the', loot after him. But the senator stared at the door for a considerable space, for never had a man ever looked at him like that before.