Never Victorious, Never Defeated

by Taylor Caldwell

  “So, it’s the archbishop you are now,” said Allan, when the three men had seated themselves on the stiff furniture. “I—I couldn’t go to your installation, Tony.” He dropped his head a moment. “I know,” said Tony. His father had been very ill again, at that time. He had been told that Allan had not recognized any member of his family for nearly six months. It was hard to believe that this man, so brown, so youthful, so strong and alert, was the sick and broken man he remembered. Tony sighed contentedly. He had been afraid on receiving the news of his father’s last, and almost fatal, “breakdown” of a year ago. His father, since Dolores’s death in 1915, had lived in a nightmare agony of unreality. There had been a vague rumor that he had attempted suicide late in 1916, and again in 1917, when America had entered the European war. And each time I could never go to him, thought Tony. I could never have let him know; I had to stay away for his own sake. The newspapers had been kind. Newspaper men were usually very discreet about rich and powerful men.

  The beer was so cold that moisture gathered on the outside of the big glasses. A stout, middle-aged woman had disapprovingly brought in a tray of fine old cheeses. She had stared with umbrage at Tony, and had waddled out, flouncing a little. “Bessie’s a good woman,” said Allan, smiling. His small black eyes twinkled at his son. “And her husband’s my right arm on the farm. We have two families living in their own houses, here; we need all the hands we can get. Had a hard time for a while, with the high wages in the cities. But during the past year help has been more plentiful; and now that the stock market has crashed, I suppose it’ll be still more easy to come by.” He spoke as if the disastrous debacle of a few weeks ago had occurred on the moon and had nothing to do with him.

  “Four years since I’ve seen you, Tony,” said Allan. “How many times have I seen you in the last twelve years or so? I could count them on the fingers of my hand. First you went to Philadelphia, then to Chicago, then to Seattle, then to San Francisco—” He shook his head. Tony said, “I know. I was all over the country, it seems.” His father had forgotten his son’s visits, apparently. There had been only one reality in his life, the tragic death of his daughter, and his mountainous hatred. After the war, Tony had spent much time in Rome; he had gone to the Riviera in 1926 only to find that the family had left hastily for America, because of another breakdown of his father’s. He had arrived once in Newport; Allan was again immured in a sanitarium. Tony had visited him there, had talked with him, had prayed for him, kneeling beside his father’s bed. Allan had not remembered.

  Yet, here he was now, bronzed and restlessly vital as in his youth, seeing everything, knowing everything. “You look so well, Dad,” said Tony. Allan laughed, and lit a cigarette for his son, and then for himself. “Why not, Tony? It was the damned railroad—my retiring four months ago was the best thing I ever did, for myself. And I’m not missed. Your mother, and DeWitt, send me reports occasionally, or papers for me to sign, and that’s all I want of it. I’ve come back to the land, and this is where I intend to live and die.” He looked about the ugly, pleasant room and settled deeper in the old rocking chair. “Yes, they’ll be leaving the cities, I hope, and the factories, for the land. Perhaps the Crash will be salutary for the whole nation.”

  Tony was not so sure. He swirled the last of the beer in his glass.

  “It was bound to come,” said Allan. “I sold out my own holdings, a great part of them, in August. They laughed at me in New York. But all the signs were there. The country was mad; it was stupid and trivial, excitable and greedy. I talked with Regan and the rest of them, and warned them. And they exchanged looks, and I knew they were thinking I was out of my mind.” He laughed with a ringing sound. “Now they write me and ask ‘how in God’s name’ I knew,”

  But Tony was very grave. “What you say about the American people having been stupid and trivial, excitable and greedy, since the war, is very true, Dad. It has caused us considerable concern. There is an excuse that they wished to ‘forget’ the war. That is nonsense. We suffered almost nothing in comparison with other nations. Yet we dare to talk of ourselves as being ‘disillusioned’! With the exception of our boys who died on the useless battlefields, and their relatives, the whole nation actually enjoyed the war, delighted in it. The antics of our prominent people and our politicians, and the nation as a whole, following them, has proved it. Criminal childishness. A new style in women’s clothing, the visit of a foreign prince, the junket of some obscure queen of some obscure nation, a new brand of automobile, and other trivialities, have been enough to throw the whole nation into a convulsion of ecstasy and excitement and delirium. Because,” said Tony, “I am afraid we have become a trumpery people, completely demoralized with our own trumpery.”

  Allan looked at Alex’s golden harp near the window and smiled. “All this no longer concerns me,” he said.

  He believes that, thought Tony with amusement, and dismay.

  “I visited Europe several times since 1919,” said the archbishop. “And the Near East, too. The Holy Father is very concerned these days, and alarmed.” He paused. “But before I tell you about that, I want to tell you that Europe is not joyous, idiotically excited, and in a state of euphoria, as is America. It is enormously, and honestly, and fearfully disillusioned. I remember what you once said to me: ‘Who are the men who are waiting behind the smoke of guns and the shattered cities, for their turn to come?’ Well, Dad, we have their names now. Mussolini, Stalin. That is why the Holy Father is so alarmed these days. For we know something else: we know these names are only symptoms.”

  Allan smiled, and it was his old dark and cynical smile. “Isn’t Mussolini the boy who is making the Italian trains run on time, and who dislikes Italian gaiety and civilization and maturity? Isn’t Stalin the expression of the medieval emotions of the Russian people? What have they to do with America?” He stood up and began to prowl restlessly up and down the room, shaking his head. “I told you I don’t care any longer. Let the whole world go to hell, as long as I am safe here on the land.” He pushed aside a lace curtain and stared fiercely out onto the cool November lawns and shade.

  “But you are not safe; none of us is safe, anywhere,” said Tony. He turned to look at his nephew. Young Alex had not spoken; he just sat in his old chair near his uncle. There was a silent quality about him which reminded Tony of his sister Dolores. Alex smiled shyly, and suddenly it was Dolores’s smile, sweet and comprehending. His mother lives in him, thought the archbishop with gratitude and an old pang of sorrow.

  Allan swung from the window, frowning. “You priests! You are always seeing the ‘abomination of desolation’ in everything. The hell with Europe. We’ll have nothing to do with the League of Nations. Why should we be embroiled in the ancient quarrels of Europe, anyway?”

  Tony sighed. He put his hand to his large cross. “Dad, I wouldn’t be talking like this to you now, in view of your past, and real, fears, which upset you for years and made you ill, if I didn’t believe you have the stamina and the courage to know, and to act.

  “Look at us, a strumpet nation which until a few weeks ago lived in a delirium of easy money and immorality and silly excitements, saved temporarily from the monstrous depression of a postwar period by the earnest efforts of a few men in Washington. They can no longer save us from that depression. It has begun. It will get immeasurably worse. And that will give the hordes of shadowy men the opportunity they have been waiting for for over two hundred years.”

  “Go get us some more beer, Alex,” said Allan to his grandson. He sat down and watched the young man leave the room. He had planted his sun-browned hands on his knees, and sat rigid, now staring at the floor. He shook his head. “I’ll have my peace if it is the last thing I’ll ever have.” He lifted his head and looked at Tony suddenly, and now his black eyes narrowed and sharpened. “What ‘shadowy men’?”

  “Over two hundred years ago,” said Tony with relief, “there was organized, both in Germany and France, and in England and Russia, too, a
society called The Silent Masters. There were not too many of them, perhaps a few thousands. But they saw that liberty for all men was a growing concept in the world, and they were outraged. So, the plot was created that they should some day take over the world, as the elite, to subdue mankind to slavery once more, to destroy the dignity of man, to subserviate mankind to ruthless masters, for the invincible power of these masters. They were content to wait, these men, for hatred has no birth and no death.”

  Again, Tony touched his cross. “The age they dreamed of has arrived. And millions of men like them have been born; there are so many of them now, waiting to serve, to murder, to instigate wars which will overthrow liberty and create depressions, which will eradicate democratic governments. Wars, crushing taxations, depressions: these are the three deaths which will eliminate Judeo-Christian civilization and deliver the whole world to the new, indoctrinated Silent Masters.

  “No, please let me finish,” said Tony, lifting his hand. His fair face had darkened, become full of stern prophecy. “The secret movement, everywhere, goes under the names of fascism, socialism, communism. They did not ‘create’ Mussolini and Stalin. These creatures are just their weapons, as their philosophies are just their weapons. The Silent Masters know each other very well; they recognize each other. And we have them in America, too, in such well-organized platoons of hatred and treachery that it is almost incredible. Have you forgotten my uncle, Norman deWitt, so soon? Have you forgotten the Socialist Clubs which were organized as long ago as 1905, or even earlier? Have you forgotten that Norman owns four newspapers, five magazines, and an organization which constantly litters the country with sly propaganda?”

  Alex returned with more beer and some sandwiches. He put them down before his uncle on a small table. He moved dreamily, but his large and intelligent eyes fixed themselves with intense seriousness on the archbishop. “I know,” he said in his gentle English voice. “I know all about it. One hears it at Oxford all the time, among the young men.”

  But Allan clenched his fists on his knees. “Norman deWitt,” he said. “I’ve tried to put the whole family out of my mind. I had almost forgotten him.”

  He looked at Tony, and he became grim. “Is that why you came to see me today?”

  Tony hesitated. “I came to see you because you are my father, whom I love, and I was anxious about you. No one would give me any news at all, of any importance, except Ruth and Aunt Laura. Not even DeWitt would tell me much.” He regarded his father straightly. “Yes, I came to see you today because there is no time to be lost. You are a tremendously rich man. You knew, long ago, that what is happening now would happen. The world of free men needs powerful and rich men like yourself, for, you see, the evil men have all the money they need in Europe. And in America. Even through these prosperous American years, the evil men have been working, calling themselves Communists and Socialists, in secret and constant communication with their European counterparts.”

  Allan’s brown forehead was glistening with sweat. He had turned quite gray under his tan. “But what in hell can I do?” he shouted. Alex glanced at him apprehensively. “What can I do? Who will listen?”

  “You can buy a few newspapers, yourself,” said Tony. “You can staff them with men who are as much afraid as you used to be afraid. Through these newspapers you can tell the American people the truth. You can ‘cry havoc’ without stopping. Your editors can denounce war, destroying taxation, hatred, communism, socialism, fascism. Your papers can support politicians and statesmen of intelligence and integrity, who are already suspecting the ancient plot. You can, with your money, set up a foundation or something, to keep the people informed with pamphlets and publications and books. You can use the same means of public communication as the enemy is already using.

  “It is late, very late. Perhaps it is already too late,” said Tony. “But perhaps, with the Grace of God, we still might win, we free men everywhere in the world, we men who love freedom and dignity and God more than we love our very lives.”

  “If the people of the world succumb to these terrible things, it will be their own fault,” said Allan.

  “They will succumb, if they do, out of ignorance,” said Tony. “It is your duty to lift their ignorance. You could speak with your friends in all the industries. If ignorant, inform them. If not ignorant, but part of the plot, themselves, you will soon detect them. And you can expose them.”

  Allan said in a stifled voice, “I am seventy-one years old, almost seventy-two.”

  Tony stretched out his hand and laid it on his nephew’s shoulder. “And Alex is only seventeen.” There was suddenly a desperate silence in the room.

  Allan said dully, “He should be back in England, at Oxford. But he wanted to stay with me this year. I’m one of his guardians, and I had to fight the English ones. …” He looked at the young man, and his graying eyebrows drew together. “You mean, I should use these last few years of mine to fight again, for Alex?”

  “Yes,” said Tony. “And for all the endless millions of Alexes all over the world, the young men in their schools, tens of thousands of them already being poisoned by their enemies—all the Alexes who will die in the plotted wars of the future, who will be enslaved, if we do not work fast and surely, by the men who hate them.”

  He put his hand on his father’s knee. “Dad. You are very tired. You became ill because what you had was not what you wanted. You became ill because you suspected the truth, and knew the first battle against man opened with the war. You did not know where to start the fight; your energies were being drained away in channels which no longer interested you. Now you know where to begin the struggle for which you were really born.”

  Again, Allan looked about the room which his parents had furnished, and loved. “Is it too much to ask that a man of my age have a little peace?”

  “But such peace is alien to you,” said Tony, smiling. His blue eyes were very tired now, but they also sparkled. “How much longer would you have been able to stand this withdrawal from life? Oh, you can talk to me until doomsday of your passionate addiction to crops, your absorption in the land! And I’d know you were lying to yourself. You were not born to the land. You are a fighter.”

  Allan glared at him, then slowly began to smile. He rubbed his sunburned cheek. “Well, I suppose I must confess that I was getting a little bored. … A man can’t read all the time. I have good men on this farm. It’s always a retreat, waiting for me. It can always grow food. …” He looked at Tony and exclaimed, "All right, then, you devil in holy clothing!” He stood up, and rested his arms on Tony’s shoulders. “You’ll be the death of me, you understand. You’ll be saying the Mass for me one of these days, and there’ll be the guilt on your soul.”

  Tony turned his stately head, and as simply as a child, he kissed the back of his father’s hand. “You’ve come a long way, Dad,” he said, and smiled up into Allan’s moved face. “A long way around, back to the day when you decided you wanted to be a priest.”

  No, Tony said, he could not stay for supper. Cornelia was giving a dinner for him. No, he had not seen her yet; he had telephoned her, and had given his promise.

  Allan said, “Your mother is indestructible. At sixty-four she still has her old flair for living, and verve and robustness. When DeWitt became president, after my retirement, there she was, right behind him, like an eager girl blazing with ambition. She manipulates him, as she wanted to manipulate me. She probably did, quite a number of times, I suppose, without my being aware of it, especially when I was—ill. She didn’t like Miles Peale becoming executive vice-president, but there was nothing she could do about it. After all, Miles’s wife is Cornelia’s half-sister. And there was all that stock in Miles’s hands. Perhaps there’s some truth in her suspicions that Miles wants to be president; I don’t know. But the family has its fifty-one per cent of the stock, and I suppose we’re safe, even from such a one as Miles—whom I don’t dislike, incidentally.”

  Tony was alarmed. “I never liked
Miles, I’m afraid; and I don’t trust him. And there’s Fielding, who’s general superintendent now.”

  Allan laughed. “I thought you weren’t supposed to be interested in worldly things. Have some of this fine Camembert.”

  Tony waved away the proffered dish. “How can you be so uninterested, Dad?”

  Allan, who seemed to have acquired fresh life, said, “Why should I be interested, particularly? I was not merely babbling when I said I was finished with the road. And DeWitt hardly seems my son. We have nothing to say to each other. But you’ve forgotten your mother; she’s always there.”

  Twilight was drifting down in blue and purple shadows over the mountains and the valley. “Yes,” said Allan thoughtfully, “your mother is always there. She writes me; we see each other very seldom, perhaps not more than two or three times a year. It’s best that way. She despises me, and I don’t like being openly despised, having my normal share of vanity. I’m not the man she married. In fact, I don’t think I ever was. I served my purpose; I’m no more use to her. Once we loved each other; that wasn’t an illusion. But I finally bored her, and Cornelia can stand anything but boredom. She never felt intensely about anything except the road.”

  They talked of many things, as the twilight deepened. Allan showed disinterest in his grandson, son of DeWitt, young Rufus deWitt Marshall. “Fourteen years old, and with old Rufus’s eyes and hair and general appearance,” said Allan. “He’s Cornelia’s pet aversion, strange to say.” Allan was not concerned with his granddaughter Shelley, daughter of DeWitt. “A nice girl, almost sixteen,” he said. “A little colorless, however. Cornelia is fond of her. When Cornelia last drove down here, with a sheaf of papers for me to sign, relinquishing my last hold on the road, she mentioned she thought it would be ‘nice’ if Alex, here, married Shelley later.”