Never Victorious, Never Defeated

by Taylor Caldwell

  Miles patted his father’s shoulder. “When the time comes, we’ll eliminate Aunt Cornelia. She’s more formidable than DeWitt—but we’ll eliminate her. Have you forgotten? Since your retirement from the board I’ve been a director, too.”

  Miles went alone that night down to the yards. He often went there, at least twice a week, and usually at night, driving his own great black automobile to his own reserved spot. The men were accustomed to see that Dresden figure moving about over the rails, looking around thoughtfully, smoking his special cigarettes, one after another, wandering in and out of the roundhouses, rarely speaking, seeing everything. Sometimes he would just stand for a long time, in all weather, seeing the glittering of tracks in the moonlight, studying the switchmen thawing out switches in zero cold, seemingly fascinated by unburdened engines roaring up out of the darkness on the various lines, spewing out a wake of fire and sparks. The crash of engines automatically coupling with freight cars and passenger coaches sometimes made his face take on a sharpened look, as if he had heard an awakening sound out of an unremembered past. Often he stood by men impatiently attending to a hot-box. He stood by other men waving lanterns at huge and sprawling crossings; when monster trains clangored and pounded into the great station—where freight and passenger cars were sometimes switched to other engines for other destinations—he would stand and look and watch like some yokel come down to the depot for the daily local. Cool, remote, uncommunicative, he was everywhere, stepping like a cat over high rails, appearing suddenly out of nowhere, endlessly smoking, his hat on the back of his mahogany curls, his gloved hands holding his “dandy” cane. The brassy hosanna of bells, the shuddering of rails, the piercing hiss of steam, the lights against the night sky, the thunder of coming and departing trains, the hubbub of men and their shouts and curses, the glimmer of lanterns far down the tracks, the shunting of engines—all these seemed of interest to him.

  “Coming down to spy on us, the little dancin’ feller.” So a group of three engineers, two conductors, and a few switchmen and other workers in one of the roundhouses tonight, muttered among themselves. The June evening was very hot; there was much traffic lately, and an inexplicable prosperity, and the men were pleased. But in the immemorial way of railroaders they grumbled. “Comin ’ down to see if we’re doin’ all right, with all the work, and not scroungin’ on the job.”

  “You ain’t right,” said a very old man, a sweeper in the station. His eyes were bleared; he was like some ancient bird, leaning on his broom. He shook his head. But no one listened to him. Old Billie was daffy; everybody knew that, and usually the men were kind to him. He had been a railroader since very early youth, and he was always mixing up “Mister Aaron, Mister Rufus, Mister Stephen” with the mighty men now the owners of the Interstate Railroad Company.

  “He’s only general superintendent; you’d think he owned the damn road,” said one engineer churlishly, and spat into the cold black stove in the room.

  “Course he’ll own it,” said Old Billie, nodding so vigorously that he staggered. “Why shouldn’t he? He owned it in the first place, didn’t he? I could tell you what he did way back. …”

  One of the engineers, an older man, took a moment’s kindly notice of him. “How old are you, Pop? You must’a been born on the road!”

  “Pretty near,” chortled Old Billie, delighted by this crumb of recognition, and pecking at it eagerly. “You fellers don’t know what railroadin’ is. Sometimes you’d go out with a train in the winter and the snow high as mountains and you’d never know if you’d get into Philly or anywheres. But we sang like all hell in the cabs, and the firemen’d throw on more coal, and there you’d go a-pantin’ up the grade with all the bells shoutin’ and the passengers scared to death and freezin’, but laughin’, too, for you wouldn’t know if you’d be spendin’ the night in the hills, brewin’ coffee with coals from the engine, right out by the side of the road, and settin’ up fires, and the people comin’ out of the coaches to warm theirselves, and the engineers and the firemen and the conductors a-minglin’ with ’em, and soon everybody laughin’, and bottles passin’ and no talk about germs, and sharin’ sandwiches, and a big white moon comin’ over the white mountains, and waitin’ for the snow to melt or the plows come, screamin’ with bells like angels roarin’ up—”

  He shook his head sorrowfully. “You fellers never knew what railroadin’ was, in the old days. Excitin’. Everybody knowin’ everybody else on the road, and workin’ together, and bein’ proud of the road. … Old Aaron, now, he was a son of a bitch, but he was a railroader. Many’s the time he’d ride in the cab with us; no fancy private cars; and he’d have a bottle of whisky, and he could cuss better than any damn engineer I ever knowed. Screw the last penny out of you and the road, but he was a railroader. What you got now? Men in the big offices in Philly and New York and in town, here, and never comin’ down, and just sittin’ over their ledgers and talkin’ with the big feenanciers on Wall Street, and goin’ out with their yachts and spendin’ their time in Europe raisin’ hell with the whores I heerd all about—and not knowin’ a single damn thing about the road, ’cept their private cars and their stocks and bonds.” The old man sighed. “There’s Mr. Marshall. He hated the road. It was just money to him. And it’s just money to Mr. DeWitt, and Miss Cornelia, and the rest of ’em.” The old man’s eyes began to shine brilliantly as he stared at the men smiling at him indulgently. “But it ain’t just money to Mr. Aaron! No sir! And when I see him out there, steppin’ over the rails careful like he used to, and smokin’, and watchin’ everything, I tell you, it’s just like old times and I’m a fireman again, and I go up to speak to him, touchin’ my forehead, and I says, ‘Mr. Aaron, I’m glad you come back, and it’s good to see you,’ and he says, ‘Thanks, Billie, I’m glad to be back, too.’”

  “You’re daffy; old Aaron deWitt’s been dead a thousand years,” said one of the younger men good-humoredly. “That’s Mr. Miles Peale, general superintendent, out there tonight, checkin’ up on everythin’ and watchin’ to see if a damn piece of coal gets wasted. He ain’t Mr. Aaron.”

  “That’s all you know, Jim!” shrilled Old Billie, and he shook his broom at the speaker. “It’s Mr. Aaron, and I’ve knowed him for seventy years or more. And I know his voice … !”

  One of the men crossed himself furtively, and then was embarrassed. The men went to the window. There was Miles now, seriously walking along, studying a long freight train which had just come in, sometimes tapping on the high and secret sides with his cane. “What’s he doing that for?” asked a conductor. He snickered. “Looking for gold or something? Just a regular freight.”

  “No, it isn’t,” said another, with interest. “It’s a special; it’s being shunted on to New York. Dozens of those special freights coming in now, almost every day. Ever notice the guards on ’em? They ain’t our own fellers.”

  But the men were not interested. They looked at watches, caught up lunch pails, and went off sullenly to their work. Their wages were high these days; the union leaders were talking of still higher wages, and “benefits.” But the men were sullen. Just a job.

  Old Billie wistfully watched “Mr. Aaron” through the smoky window, then suddenly threw down his broom and crept out on creaking legs. He followed Miles far down the tracks, and finally caught up with him, gasping a little. “Mr. Aaron!” he screamed against the uproar. Miles turned at once, saw him, smiled. “Good evening, Billie,” he said. The old man sighed happily. It was wonderful, Mr. Aaron being so young again, and his hair just the way it always was, and his cane in his hand as usual, and the way he walked—small, sure steps. “Great big freight, ain’t it, Mr, Aaron?” he asked. “Three, four, five times bigger than the old days. Still call it old Forty-two, but it ain’t the same train. What you think they got in there, and what’re those fellers doin’ with guns on the platforms and glarin’ as if you don’t own the whole business?”

  Miles folded his gloved hands on the top of his cane, an old-remembe
red gesture which thrilled the ancient Billie, and stared at the freight. “Well,” said Miles, “it’s munitions, Billie.” He lifted his cane, pointed briefly at the name of a mighty munitions maker on the side of a car. “For the war. Explosives, guns, bombs, everything else. Going to England, France, and Germany with a wonderful, fine, impartial indifference. That’s what is known as neutrality, Billie. That is known as ‘being fair.’ Of course, booming profits have nothing to do with it. We’re very virtuous in this country, you see; all of us, everywhere, are very virtuous. It would be very unkind for anyone to insist that we say: ‘We don’t care who dies, or what comes after, or what governments are destroyed. There’s a profit to be made. We’ll deal with any tyrants later; we’ll buy them, if necessary.’” Miles leaned on his cane again. “Perhaps we won’t be able to buy them this time, Billie. Perhaps they want more than money. Perhaps they want the whole damned world.”

  The old man listened, fascinated. He had listened decades before to the soliloquies of Mr. Aaron. He had never understood; but he had always been happy at the sound of that wry and vigorous voice, and the odd implications in it. There, now Mr. Aaron was shrugging; always well-dressed and beautifully turned out—Mr. Aaron. He could shrug and there’d never be so much as a slipped cravat or shoulder.

  “You see, Billie,” said Miles, “I don’t ‘love’ humanity so much that I believe I know what’s ‘best’ for it, and so try to impose my will on it. And I don’t hate it enough to want to subjugate and rule it absolutely. I don’t think there is a great deal of difference, after all, between the love’ of the Socialistidealists and the hate of the murderers. I think any honesty in the whole business lies with the murderers; the naked steel and lash are open and immediate, and you can see the faces behind them and know what they are. It’s the ‘lovers of humanity’ who do their work behind a fog of fine and noble words, and keep the steel and the lash hidden until they dare come out with them.”

  “You’re certainly right, Mr. Aaron,” said the old man emphatically. He peered vaguely at the monster cars, which were now rolling smoothly down the tracks. “What war, sir?” He was bewildered.

  “It’s always the same war,” said Miles kindly. “The name doesn’t matter.”

  Red lights changed to green far down the rails; the freight moved faster and faster. Faster and faster, thought Miles. But perhaps, at the end, there’ll be a few of us left to derail you forever. We’ll kill you because you’re wolves and boars and insane monsters out of some primeval jungle, nightmares still roaming around in the light of the day.

  He turned to the old man standing so devotedly at his side; he saw the blinking, unknowing, and curiously innocent eyes. He smiled at the old man. “You see, Billie, men like me will have to fight for men like you. Some of us won’t like to fight; too much trouble. But we shall; you’ll see. It’ll be a case of survival, for all of us.”

  “Sure, Mr. Aaron, you was always a fighter,” said Old Billie with pride. He began to walk down toward the station with Miles.

  “I wonder,” Miles mused, swinging his cane in the little circles Old Billie remembered so well, “what perverted men are coming to maturity behind the guns and the shattered cities and the trenches of Europe? What are their names? Sure as the devil they are there, waiting, as they’ve always been waiting. English names, French names, German names, Russian names? And who are the Americans who are watching and waiting, too, until the European nightmares emerge from the smoke and the ruins and show themselves? Yes, we’ll have to fight them, just to live, we millionaires and plumbers, we physicians and bricklayers, we railroaders and industrialists and businessmen and factory hands and farmers.”

  He touched Old Billie, stumbling along beside him, with the gold head of his fine cane. “I’ve got a very odd feeling, Billie, that it’ll be your kind, at the end, who will kill off the tyrants. Because, you see, you won’t be able to compromise. You haven’t the money.”

  “You can always count on me, Mr. Aaron,” said Old Billie with passionate vigor.

  Miles smiled a little. “Yes, I think we can. Not something to be proud of, perhaps—but I think we can.”

  He gave the old man ten dollars. Billie protested a little. Miles said, “You’ve given me a lot tonight, old fellow.”

  Billie watched him go, swelling with joy in himself at the small straight back of “Mr. Aaron.” He’d been gone a long time, Mr. Aaron. But now he was here again, and the road was safe. Some fellers said he was a hard man. They didn’t know what a fighter was, the young boys.

  When Miles reached home he was met by his tearful wife Ruth, who informed him that his father had died an hour before, very suddenly.

  47

  Archbishop Rufus Anthony Marshall of St. Louis alighted from his long black limousine in the golden haze of the early November afternoon. He had not been in Pennsylvania for over four years; he told himself that he had almost forgotten how lovely the countryside was here, how scarlet the mountains in the autumn, how cobalt the autumnal skies, how bronze the reaped fields, how turquoise the river reflecting all this pure color in sheets and shafts, how sweet and cool the air, and in what lofty silence the land lay. The lightest wind sent crumpled russet leaves scuttling over the empty road; they scrabbled like the feet of little mice. The white farmhouse stood in a nest of red maples; the unclouded sun poured down on the red barns and the red roofs of the silos. How had he forgotten? He smiled at his chauffeur, standing respectfully near him. “I think you’d better go back to Portersville and call for me about seven,” he said. The man touched his cap, entered the car, and drove off in a spume of yellow dust. The archbishop, tall and stately in his black garments, watched him go. He gently touched the cross on his breast, and wished, for a nostalgic moment, that he had remained a parish priest. But God had chosen for him.

  He stood on the graveled path leading to the long white farmhouse for some moments. At forty-two, he had not lost his youthful expression of wise, grave innocence, though his fair skin was lined and his face had taken on the austere and spare boniness of a dedicated man. His pale blue eyes were still crystalline, but very tired, and there was a slight amount of gray in his very blond hair. He permitted the profound peace of the countryside to flow over him like refreshing water. He saw the cattle in the distant field, he heard a horse neigh. Far up in the abyss of the deep blue sky he saw the last of the migrant birds flying southward; they cast a broken shadow over the earth, like the shadow of leaves. The graveled path was bordered with marigolds and zinnias in one last blaze of bloom. Two rabbits bounced timidly past him, on lawns still green and thick. A blue jay screamed, flashing like a piece of the sky itself into the burning maples.

  No one was about. Tony slowly walked toward the farmhouse. And then, on that still and perfumed air, he, unbelieving, heard the fairylike singing of a harp. He stopped, bewildered. The music, fey and wild and unbearably poignant, seemed part of the earth itself.

  Where had he heard that song before? And who was playing it? Faint memories returned to him. He began to hum, still incredulous: “By Killarney’s lakes and fells. …” A voice joined the harp, as strong and sure as the instrument was tender, a hearty baritone. My father, thought Tony, and he was not ashamed of the tears in his eyes. My father, singing again, as he sang to us when we were children.

  The song of the harp and the song of the man died away on the golden air. Tony went quickly to the farmhouse. He stopped in the cool blue shade of the deep veranda and peered through the screen door. He was a boy again, coming to visit his grandparents, dead all these years. He could see the long hall, and the screened door at the end of it, leading to the gardens. He could see the soft dusk of the rooms on either side. He heard his father talking: “I’ll make an Irishman of you yet, Alex. Now, if you’ll go into the kitchen, you’ll be finding some cold beer in the ice box; take it out while Bessie isn’t looking; she thinks I shouldn’t drink it, the Baptist!”

  A young man of about seventeen emerged from the parlor, l
aughing. A light-skinned, slender, tall young man, moving with the grace of youth, his smooth brown head resting delicately on a thin neck, his brown eyes smiling. Tony pulled the bell, and the young man stopped, startled, and looked at the door. The archbiship could see his narrow face and elegant features. “Alex?” said Tony, through the screen. “Alex!” He had not seen his nephew, Alexander, Lord Gibson-Hamilton, for over twelve years. His voice was uncertain and eager. Was it possible that this young man, in his rough British tweeds, was actually the child he remembered? Alex, smiling courteously, came to the door, trying to see against the brighter light in which Tony stood. “Yes?” he murmured. Then he saw Tony clearly, the shining cross on his breast. “Uncle Tony?” he exclaimed. “Uncle Tony!” He stood there on the other side of the screen door, and his gentle face beamed with disbelief and pleasure.

  “Now, who in hell are you talking to?” asked Allan, and came into the hall. Then he stood there, petrified, a thin, dark-faced man with rough white hair, a cigarette in his lean fingers. Suddenly he shouted incoherently. He ran to the door, thrust aside his grandson with the strong gestures of a young man, opened the door, and threw his arms about his son. “Tony!” he cried brokenly. ‘Tony, you spalpeen, you rascal! Sure, and you’ve dropped from heaven. … Tony!”

  The brogue was thick on his tongue, but Tony could not detect any odor of whisky. He hugged his father close to him and laughed. “Well, aren’t you going to ask me in? I’ve come all the way from St. Louis, on my way to New York, and Rome.” He held out his hand to his nephew, who grasped it strongly. Allan, his arm still about his son’s shoulders, said severely, “Where’re your manners, boy? You kiss the archbishop’s ring. You bend the knee. Don’t they teach you that in England? That’s the way to do it.” He released Tony, hesitated, then dropped to his knee and kissed the ring, himself. All his movements were quick and supple, Tony noticed. “I never thought,” said Allan in a grumbling voice, “that I’d be kissing the hand, or ring, of my own son.” But he was full of pride. “Come in, come in.” He took Tony’s arm and pulled him into the cool shade of the parlor, where all was as Tony remembered, from the wax flowers under a glass bell on the old marble table before the fireplace to the stiffly starched lace curtains at the wide windows, from the old red carpet on the floor to the horsehair furniture which had pricked his bare calves as a child. A small crimson fire burned on the brick hearth, and a scent of apple wood rose from it. The wooden walls and ceiling glimmered with the light reflected from outside.