Captains and the Kings

by Taylor Caldwell

  But Courtney had known very few politicians. He did not guess Rory was a born politician for quite a considerable time. Rory was all placid youthfulness today when he and Courtney sat on the wall and swung their legs and smoked and idly contemplated their fellows walking in the Yard. There was nothing on Rory's vivid face which revealed his capacity for thought and reflection. He seemed a rather colorful and beefy young man with nothing on his mind but girls and whiskey and athletics and adventures, and spending unearned money. His thick thatch of red-gold hair shimmered in the frail sunlight. His handsome face was relaxed. His light blue eyes wandered with apparently no thought. Then Rory said, "I thought you and Ann Marie would be openly engaged by this time. Or, has she changed her mind?" "She's afraid to speak to her mother about it," said Courtney, and he frowned. "She knows how your mother hates my mother, and me. Ann Marie is a very timid girl, you know." "I never noticed it," said Rory, remembering the vigorous way Ann Marie would pull his hair when they were in the nursery. He smiled. "I thought it would be announced on our twenty-first birthday, but it wasn't. I've talked to her, as you suggested, but she actually quails at the idea of speaking to Ma." Then he scowled and looked down at the grass. He had never been unaware of the liaison between his father and "Aunt" Elizabeth. But he loved both, and approved of the affair which had gone on over the years. Ma was impossible. Rory did not blame his father. However, he understood his twin sister's fear of approaching their mother on the subject of an engagement to Courtney Hennessey. "I talked to my mother, about six months ago," said Courtney. Rory stared at him, surprised, raising his bronze eyebrows. "I thought she'd faint," Courtney continued. "She was very agitated. She said it was 'impossible,' and she wouldn't tell me why. Do you have an idea?" Rory considered this. "No, I don't. There is no impediment to the marriage that I can conceive of. You are the son of Everett Wickersham, your mother's first husband, and you were only adopted by my grandfather. No consanguinity to the last degree. So, that can't be it. Your mother-- likes--my father. There shouldn't be any objection there. And Ann Marie and I love your mother. So, why should Aunt Elizabeth be 'faint' at the very suggestion. "I don't know," said Courtney, feeling miserable in the fresh sunshine. "Suppose I speak to Pa?" said Rory. "He has no patience with foolishness. He likes you, too." "I should not like any disagreements in the family," said Courtney. "I am not exactly 'family' in the meaning of the word, though I was adopted by Tom Hennessey. I am not really your 'uncle,' or Bernadette's brother, except by courtesy of adoption, which means nothing. I do know, though, that my mother was very disturbed at the idea and turned very white and became upset. She told me I must put it out of my mind." Courtney grimaced. "I've wanted to marry Ann Marie since I was ten years old!" He thought again, despondently. "Since I spoke to Ma she seems to have failed in health. She is growing thin and nervous. She keeps looking at me, as if she is about to burst out crying. I just don't understand. She loves Ann Marie like a daughter--which is more than you can say for your own mother." He looked bitterly at Rory. Rory shrugged, tranquilly. "Oh, I know Ma. Maybe Aunt Elizabeth is afraid of my mother and doesn't want her to come down on Ann Marie too hard. Hatred is a very stupid thing, unless you can make it work for you," added Rory, the politician. "How can we make the hatred between your mother and mine 'work' for us?" asked Courtney. "Let me think about it," said Rory. "Maybe I can get Pa on your side. He doesn't give a hoot for Ma's feelings or opinions." He said it without rancor. "I only know this," said Courtney. "I love your sister, and I am going to marry her even if we have to dope. But she cries at the thought. But I think I've just about persuaded her. She talks of the 'family.' So long as we have you on our side, Rory, and eventually my mother, why should we care?" To his surprise Rory did not answer for a moment. Then Rory said, "There must be something. Anyway, as Napoleon said, the difficult we can do immediately. The impossible takes just a little longer. I'll find out." But Courtney, the controlled and usually serene, felt something ominous in the air, something not to be grasped, something hidden. He was not a young man of moods, like Rory, and not given to premonitions. However, there it was: something threatening and terrible, beyond his comprehension. He tried to fix his attention on Ann Marie, her gentle pale face, her large light brown eyes like sherry, her smooth brown hair, her abashed little mannerisms, her quiet timidity, her radiant and sudden smile. He felt a sharp powerful emotion which shook him. He loved Ann Marie. Nothing, not family or anything else, would keep him from his love. There was nothing beyond it. "What's the matter?" asked Rory. "You look like death." "It's getting chilly," said Courtney, as the warmth heightened. He tried to divert himself. "How are you and Maggie Chisholm getting along?" "Her Dad won't have her marry a Catholic," said Rory, smiling with humor. "Nor an Irisher. I'm beyond the pale. Her Dad has a nose like a fox, and sniffs. When I go to see her he acts as if she had dragged something smelly from the gutter into the house. Old Boston. But, we're going to be married." Rory never confided in anyone, not even in Courtney. He smiled, Courtney thought, like a Cheshire cat, secret and knowing. And contented. I wish, thought Courtney, that I was as sure of everything as he is. "You can't be married in the Church," said Courtney, "unless Maggie agrees to it and brings up your children as Catholics." "Who says anything about the Church?" said Rory, with a magnificent gesture. "I'd marry Maggie before a Muslim priest, if it came to that. Or a justice of the peace." "Heretic," said Courtney. They heard the bells ring for dinner and slid from the wall and made their way towards Memorial Hall in the last warm rays of the sun. They locked their arms together, both aware of the deep affection between them and the trust. Courtney's premonitions receded. He acquired something of Rory's confidence in life: After all, what force was strong enough to divide those who loved each other? After dinner, and whistling happily, Rory went to call on Miss Marjorie Chisholm on Beacon Hill. Her mother was dead and the female head of the small family was a romantic and loving aunt who favored Rory and would be discreet about his forbidden visits. Marjorie's father dined at this time every week with his grim mother some distance away. The Chisholms were fairly rich and very much in social power in Boston, claiming some lateral descent from Paul Revere. Rory found their old rose- brick house narrow and dark and somewhat poor," for he was accustomed to the grandeur of his mother's house and the immense drawing rooms and domed painted ceilings and gilt and marble and fountains and statues and expensive paintings and silk walls. Here, in the Chisholm house, the windows were tall slits prim and recessed, like a spinster's mouth, the doors thick but narrow with a stained-glass fanlike window over the front entrance, the roofs of steeply pitched slate, and the shutters painted brown. It rose abruptly from the bricked street, was close to its neighbors, with a dank garden in the rear. The furniture, to Rory, was gloomy and dull, with brass pulls and dark velvet seats and glimmering tops to the tables. There were no enormous and glittering chandeliers as there were in the Hennessey house, but muted lamps of brass and china, filled with kerosene, for Mr. Chisholm did not "believe" in gas and certainly not in the new electricity which some of the more "advanced and thriftless" houses were already boasting. Once Rory had shown, with pride, some photographs of his mother's house to young Marjorie, who had studied them with an inscrutable face. She finally said, "It looks very grand --but a little formidable. What in Heaven's name do you and your family do in that gigantic place?" Rory said, "When Ma's there it doesn't seem so 'gigantic.' She's everywhere." "It seems bigger than the 'cottages' in Newport," said Marjorie. "And I always thought they were--vast." She did not add, "And somewhat tasteless." Maggie was tiny. Her head scarcely reached to Rory's shoulder, and she had a dainty little figure, delightfully doll-like. She was dark and vivacious and gay, with great black eyes almost constantly full of laughter, long black lashes and thick black brows, and black hair from which glistening ringlets were always escaping and framing her olive-tinted small and pointed face. She dressed exquisitely but demurely, and she could dance as expertly as Rory and played tennis almost as competen
tly as did Rory, himself. She had a dark crimson mouth, with very white little teeth, and she also had a most endearing if a tenderly mocking smile. She was quite the belle of Boston, and she was nineteen years old, and intelligent and sprightly and extremely witty as well as kind. She had fallen in love with Rory Armagh the moment she had met him, and as she had an iron will under all that gay and effervescent exterior she had decided, within five minutes, that she would marry him. It took Rory a month to decide that for himself. Mr. Albert Chisholm had felt contempt for Rory on the very first meeting, for he knew all about Joseph Armagh. He was an upright man because he had never been tempted to be anything else, and had never known poverty or anxiety. To Mr. Chisholm, Rory was not only an undesirable suitor for his only daughter because of his, Rory's, father and his "nefarious enterprises and engagements in Despicable Politics," but because of Rory, himself. He thought Rory too "light-minded," too "undependable," too careless, too brash. But then, he would say to his daughter with disdain, he was Irish and everyone knew what the Irish "were." No man of propriety or position had anything to do with them, or admitted them to his house. They were born without conscience or compunction or morals or firmness of character. They "pushed" themselves, even worse than did the Jews, and tried to invade decent society which had a Duty to morality and to the country. "Yet, Daddy, your trusted secretary is a Jew," said Marjorie. "My dear girl, Bernard is entirely different from the average Jew! Surely you must have seen that for yourself. But this young Armagh--he is typical of the Irish. No, he must never enter this house again. I forbid you to see him." Naturally, Marjorie saw Rory at least twice and sometimes even three times a week. They were now at the stage where they were seriously discussing an elopement. "You think your Pa is against us," said Rory. "But it would be nothing compared to what my own Pa would say, my sweetheart. He'd look once at your Pa, with his white sideburns and mustache and his air of smelling something foul all the time, and he'd laugh at him. Now, Pa has no religion, but let someone say anything about the 'Papists' and he'll have that man's lights and livers. And Pa mistrusts men like your father. He calls them hypocrites and names I wouldn't repeat to your darling innocent ears--he's met too many of them in his lifetime. And demolished too many of them. Not out of resentment for the superior way they've acted towards him, but just because he knew what they were and despised them." Marjorie had a temper, and loyalty. She flared up and bridled and her pretty dark face flushed. "Sir, just what is my Daddy?" "Oh, come on, Maggie. I'm not trying to offend you. I'm just saying what my Pa would think of yours. Pa eats men like your progenitor alive, for breakfast. Pa's no easy boy. He's got a back stiffer than your father's. In fact, your Pa is a willow branch compared to Pa. Besides, Pa wants me to marry an heiress, rich in her own right, someone whose father is powerful internationally, like himself, who is known, to quote him." "Somebody flamboyant and vulgarl" cried young Marjorie. "Well, not exactly," said Rory, admiring the fire in the big black eyes. "A lady, too. Not a Back Bay girl of a family that doesn't have much influence in Washington, for instance. And my Pa would think your father's money mere wooden nickels." "Indeed!" exclaimed Marjorie, her little rounded breast heaving. "Perhaps you had better, sir, start searching for that American princess of yours and leave this insignificant Bostonian chit alone!" "I happen to love 'this insignificant Bostonian chit,'" said Rory, and took her in his long strong arms and kissed her soundly, and she became weak and trembling. "Ah, love," said Rory, "what does it matter what they think?" She nestled her head against his shoulder, and clung to him, her ringlets brushing his mouth. But she was also practical. "You have your law school to go through," she said, in a shaking voice. "Years! I'll be old, old, and so will you." "We'll elope, quietly; to some other state, and no one will know, and when I've been graduated we'll tell them all to go to hell." "But we wouldn't be able to--to--" and Marjorie blushed furiously and dropped her eyes. "Sleep together?" said Rory kindly, kissing her again. "Of course we will! I have it all figured out. I will get a small apartment in Cambridge and we can meet there without anyone knowing. And you needn't worry about any--consequences. I know how to protect you." His mouth parted hers and sought, and she thought she would faint. She pulled her lips from his. Marjorie was very red now. But she pressed her head against the region where she imagined his heart to be and murmured, "Ah, Rory, Rory." Her little body was wincing with inexplicable thrills, and she was at once ashamed and hungry. Tonight they had decided to take Aunt Emma into their confidence. If she refused to be an accomplice she would at least not mention anything to her brother. She adored young Maggie, and was very fond of Rory, and she was always reminding them to be "prudent." She thought this clandestine romance very exciting, for she had had none in her own life, and she was by nature romantic. She was always reading "French" novels, which her brother found reprehensible, and which she was always trying to hide from him. She was as small as Marjorie, but very fat and rosy and sweet of face, and somewhat untidy and over elaborate in dress, and she could never seem to arrange her brown-gray hair neatly. It was always spilling down her neck and about her ears, and she was always thrusting hairpins into it, and laughing. There had never been any suitor in her years as a girl and a young woman-she was now fifty-but she frequently hinted at some tragic love affair, and would sigh over it with moist eyes, and murmur something about "Papa," and Marjorie would hug and kiss and console her. She feared her brother, Albert, and could not understand why Marjorie did not fear him, too. Marjorie feared nobody and nothing, except at times she feared losing Rory. She found his duality of nature infinitely fascinating, but she also mistrusted it, for a new Rory was always being presented to her and she had her family's firmness of disposition and constancy, except when she was angry, which was quite often. Once she had roundly shouted at her father, "We need new blood in this effete family!" "But not Irish blood," her father had replied. He never let her know it but Marjorie could daunt him, as could her dearly loved dead mother, and when Marjorie's eyes flashed like this and her face was fiery, he became weak with longing and grief. Marjorie did not guess, until much later, that her father would forgive her anything. After kissing Rory with enthusiasm Marjorie led him into the "back room," as Aunt Emma called it, though it was a small sitting room for the family. No one, of course, ever used the dark chill double parlors except when guests were present. Marjorie's aunt was knitting placidly, an endless pile of gray wool which was never completed. She looked at Rory and her face became rosy and pretty and she accepted his kiss like a loving mother and told him, as always, that he was "the handsomest young spark I have ever seen." He had brought her a bouquet of daffodils and narcissi -none of which would grow in Albert's wet dank garden-and had delicately refrained from bringing Marjorie the same. This was a politician's deft gesture, and Marjorie grinned wickedly. "Oh, my dear," said Aunt Emma, sniffing the bouquet and then lifting damp eyes to Rory. "How did you know they are my favorites, the bright blossoms of spring?" If Rory winced at her old-fashioned and melodramatic expression he did not show it. He said, with gallantry, "Why, dear Aunt Emma, they remind me of you." She looked at him coquettishly, and almost cried, and gave them to Marjorie to put into a vase for her. The girl returned with them and put them on a round table covered with a dark red velvet cloth and immediately the rich but drab room took on radiance and Miss Chisholm stared at them, overcome with sentimentality. "Ah me," she sighed. "They remind me of--" She touched her eyes with her handkerchief. She always wore black silk, summer and winter, as if in constant mourning. Marjorie squeezed her hand and winked at Rory. He leaned towards the lady, all earnestness, gravity and boyish sincerity. The light blue eyes were the eyes of a very young boy and his somewhat fleshy and highly colored face was very serious. This caught Aunt Emma's attention immediately. She had never seen him look so beguiling, so trustful, so pleading.

  "You know, Aunt Emma," he said, "that Maggie and I love each other, don't you?" "Indeed, my dear, I do know." Miss Chisholm sighed again, deeply, re- verberatingly. I
t was the sort of romantic tragedy on which she doted. She thought her niece and Rory another Juliet and Romeo. "But," she added, her kind voice trembling, "Albert will never permit you to marry." "However," said Rory, watching her, and now taking her short fat hand, "we do intend to marry. Almost immediately. We are going to elope." "Oh, oh!" cried Miss Chisholm, seeing Romeo and Juliet marrying surreptitiously in some dark, candlelighted cave with only monks for witnesses, "Albert will simply never countenance that!" Rory gave Marjorie a look and she bit her lip. "Countenance that or not, that is what we are going to do, Aunt Emma." He patted her hand. Reluctantly, she removed it. Her eyes were full of tears. "But Rory, I have heard from Marjorie, herself, that your own father would be so opposed, too!" "There comes a time when children must think for themselves--if they love each other," said Rory. 'For what is more than love?" As this was Miss Chisholm's own sentiment, she hesitated and for an instant girlish delight shone on her face. But she was not a New Englander for nothing. She said, "But Marjorie will have no money until she is twenty-one, and even then she will not get it if she insists on marrying someone to whom her father objects. Then she will have to wait until she is thirty." "I know," said Rory. As he had never known poverty he said, "We don't mind being poor, Aunt Emma, for a little while, until I am graduated from law school--" "Three years," said Miss Chisholm, the New Englander dominant in her now. "And Rory, do you have anything but your allowance from your father?" Rory had always thought his father unduly penurious and suspicious of students' profligacy, and so his allowance was only fifty dollars a month. "It's enough for skylarking," Joseph had said. "I have an allowance of thirty dollars a month, just for pin money," said Marjorie. She looked at Rory with a look he could not fully interpret. "Aunt Emma, we don't intend to tell anyone, but you. I will go on living here at home, and Rory--" Miss Chisholm was excessively shocked. She looked from Mariorie to Rory, and then back to Rory again. Her face was quite white. "But, my dears! You intend to deceive your poor parents, not tell them--" "What else can we do?" asked Marjorie now, blinking her eyes at her aunt. "We don't like it, but we have no choice." Her aunt had fallen back in her chair, horrified. "So--so deceiving, my dear children! So disrespectful! So disobedient! It would be best to tell them, keep your consciences in good order, live together openly in the sight of God and man--" "On eighty dollars a month?" asked Rosy. "We might not even have that, if we tell the old gentlemen. We might be cut off with nothing, and I wouldn't put it past my Pa to haul me out of law school, either, and set me to work at slave labor, for nothing, in one of his damned offices. As a lesson. Then Maggie and I would be parted"--he paused and looked at Miss Chisholm, weighing her--"for eternity." Miss Chisholm quivered inwardly, shuddered deliciously, dosed her eyes and let her head fall back in grief. "Like myself," she whispered. "0 God," Marjorie's naughty mouth formed the words soundlessly. "So," said Rory, "we can only necessarily--deceive our Pas until I am graduated from law school. Then we can be bold, and tell all the world." Miss Chisholm recovered and became Bostonian again. "Still," she said, opening her eyes and they were a little sharp now, "your father, Rory, might never forgive you, and then you'd have to wait until Marjorie is thirty for her money. Your father is a very rich man, Rory. A prudent young man thinks of--inheritances. He does not lightly reject them." Romeo and Juliet wistfully faded into limbo. "I do love you, Rory, but I'd feel very sad if Mariorie married a penniless--" "I'd inherit from my mother," said Rory, speaking with outward assurance but with no assurance within. He knew how besotted his mother was. She would do as Joseph told her, not out of fear for him but only to please him. "She is very rich, Rory, in her own right?" "Rolling in it," said Rory. "She inherited gobs from her mother, and her father. She owns our--mansion--in Green Hills, in Pennsylvania. You must have seen photographs of it. It frequently appears in the newspapers when Mama gives a soiree or something, for Personages. Presidents have been our guests. My grandfather was a senator, you know, and then Governor of Pennsylvania for several terms." He knew his Miss Chisholms. "Yes, yes, dear, I know. And you are your Mama's favorite child?" "Absolutely," said Rory, with never a droop of his eyelids. "Denies me nothing." "Then," said Miss Chisholm, "you must tell your Mama at once. No doubt she will come to your rescue." She spoke briskly and smiled with happiness. The sharpness of the remark caught Rory without an immediate response. Then he sighed, dropped his head, looked mournful. "Mama," he said, "is absolutely terrified of my father. She is in very poor health. An annoyed word from him would crush her, perhaps destroy her." He saw his mother's short obese body and engorged complexion and snapping eyes, and visualized her as a drooping flower. It almost made him laugh out loud. "But she has told me secretly of her will. I--I receive--though I pray that her health will improve and that God will spare her for many years to her devoted family--three-quarters of her fortune. Some"--and now Rory let his wide blue eyes wander to a musing distance--"fifteen million dollars." "Fifteen million dollars," whispered Miss Chisholm. She calculated interest. "It is invested, secure?" "Good as gold," said Rory. He resolutely would not look at Marjorie and the black mischief in her eyes. "Mama doesn't believe in using even the interest on interest, not to speak of capital, which is sacred." "She is in poor health, you say?" said Miss Chisholm in a sad voice. "Very poor. Heart, I believe." "You damned liar," mouthed Marjorie at Rory, for she had finally cornered his eye. "But if she discovers you deceived her--three years from now?" Rory gave a sigh that was almost a dry sob. "I doubt she will ever know," he said in the politician's rich and unctuous voice. He partly covered his eyes with his hand. "The doctors give us little hope. For her long survival." Miss Chisholm moistened her lips and considered, though her face was full of maternal sympathy for the rascally young man. Fifteen million dollars, at four percent, in a short time-- Possibly more, with the investments. Mr. Chisholm's fortune was much less than that, much less. And dear Rory was so intelligent. Any law firm would be overjoyed to have him grace its staff. One had only to be discreet-- How unfortunate that he was Irish, and a Papist! Were he not dear Albert would approve the match instantly. He would strut like a peacock, and boast in his genteel way. Rory's face was still partly hidden by his hand and Miss Chisholm wanted to comfort him. She did touch his strong broad knee with the tips of her fingers, gently. How sad to know one's dear Mama was on the edge of her grave and none could save her! Fifteen million dollars. The lamplight made the scoundrel's head glow in red-gold. Marjorie sat primly in her chair, her eyes downcast, but the dimples rioting in her cheeks. "What can I do for you dear children?" asked Miss Chisholm. (Albert, later, would "come" around." Fifteen million dollars, with interest at four percent, was not to be despised.) Marjorie said, "We are going to elope, perhaps day after tomorrow, dearest Aunt Emma. Then we are going--" She paused. It would be indelicate to mention that Rory had already rented three furnished rooms in Cambridge. "We will be--away, for perhaps three days. It is Rory's spring vacation. Then he must visit his parents, of course. I should like you, dearest Aunt, to tell Papa that I am visiting Annabelle Towers, in Philadelphia." "Can't you tell him yourself, my cherub?" "I intend to. But you could mention to Papa that I received an invitation this morning, and then later I will speak to him." "But Marjorie, that would be a fibI" Miss Chisholm was shocked, she who was always equivocating, in fear, before her redoubtable brother. Marjorie sighed, as if dejected. "What else can we do?" she murmured. "We love each other." "I see," said Miss Chisholm, already formulating the "fib" in her mind. "And then you will return home, Marjorie, and Rory will go to his parents. You will live apart--oh my dear children!--for three long years! How will you bear it, married in the sight of God but not in the sight of men!" Then she thought again of the fifteen million dollars and the poor Mama in a dying condition, poor sweet lady. It might be only a few short months. "We will bear it," said Rory, with a very noble expression, which constituents would later learn to trust and admire. "After all, everything can be borne for Love. Didn't St. Paul say it was the greatest of all, more than fai
th and hope?"