Bold Sons of Erin

by Ralph Peters (as Owen Parry)

  The minister twisted his mouth into a satisfied little smile. “Doubtless, he felt a measure of chagrin. Stavrogin desired the pleasure of a confrontation, you see. After all those years of searching . . .” His wrinkled smile retreated into a look of bemusement. “But the count’s a man of the world, after all. Once he came to his senses, he was gratified that Stone was dead, finished. Through the good graces of your government, we even acquired the body as proof of the affair’s resolution for His Majesty and Prince Gortshakoff. Stavrogin’s on shipboard with the coffin as we speak—and I only hope he doesn’t do anything addled. His elder brother was killed in a certain bombing, you know. In an officers’ casino in St. Petersburg.”

  Baron de Stoekl scrutinized my face before proceeding. “Whatever stories you may have heard of Stone, good or bad . . . they are irrelevant to my cause. He is dead, and we Russians had no hand in his murder. I promise you that. His Majesty will regard the matter as closed, and it need not trouble us further on an official level. Or, I think, on any other level.”

  He canted his head, still judging me. “Perhaps you wonder why this man should have mattered so to us? The answer isn’t simple, I’m afraid. But I assure you that everyone wished him dead. Par example, Stavrogin hated Stone because of what Stone did, and because of who Stone was. A son of the tsar’s trusted German nobility. As I am myself. The Russian aristocrats are a backward assortiment. Resentful voluptuaries, almost to a man. Brutes. We Germans compose the modernizing force. And, at last, we have gained the upper hand. The Slavs hate us for it.”

  He poured himself another drink, swallowed a great gulp, then continued. “Tsar Alexander is much in the mold of your President Lincoln. Oh, certainly not in outward forms. Not at all. But His Majesty has taken a firm grip of our Russia, and he is shaking it. For once, the great Russian myth of the ‘good tsar’ has been realized. Tsar Alexander is a man of liberal temperament, of great humanity. We have inaugurated trials by jury. For the first time in our history. His Majesty is liberating the serfs, our peasants, just as you seek to liberate your slaves. He wishes to bring modern practices to our government, to turn Russia westward, to expand the railways, our industries . . .”

  The baron’s eyes had altered their tone from the cynic’s twinkle to the believer’s fiery glow. “And all the while these Russians . . . these chornie aristokrati . . . they resist him at every turn, complaining that His Majesty is betraying the soul of Russia, the noble spirit of the Slav, even the Orthodox Church. The army would prefer to wallow in its old abuses and drunkenness, while the landholding classes would smother the infant of change, if only they could. All of them, the fools, imagine that time can be made to stand still. Or even to run backward. But Russia must adapt to modern times! His Majesty’s our only hope, you see. We either change . . . or après nous, le déluge.”

  He tapped the table for emphasis and the silver and china chimed. “I meant what I said to you earlier: Russia and America, these are the two lands of the future, the hope of the world. Just as you have your great war, we face a great struggle between those who would turn Russia westward toward European civilization . . . and those who would cling to their Slavic fairy tales, to their ignorance and filth and crushing poverty.”

  He formed a determined smile. “Count Stavrogin wished revenge upon Stone because, to him, Stone represented revolution, the West, and the influence of us Germans upon His Majesty—oh, do not look for sense or logic with the Russian, Major Jones. You never shall find it. They crawl through the mud and call it a mystical experience.” He lowered his eyes, staring into a pool of bitter waters. “I wanted Stone brought to justice . . . as did all of the tsar’s loyal subjects of German lineage . . . because Stone had been one of us and he betrayed us, endangering our position and our cause. Stone was a fool, you see. An absolute fool. He thought of himself as a grand revolutionary, but he played into the hands of the most reactionary elements in Russia. We had to finish with him to prove we did not consider him one of us any longer. Anyway, the man’s methods were a nonsense. The future will not be hurried along with bombs and assassinations. Russia must be moved by reason, by science . . .”

  “But he had become an American, see. And—”

  The train whistle blew and the baron held up his hand. Rough houses hurried by, prelude to the prosperous glories of Baltimore.

  “He’s dead,” the minister said flatly. “And it is a benefit to every sensible person in my country. As well as to the relations between our two countries.” He fixed his eyes upon me with all the intensity he could muster. “As long as no one ‘bears false witness.’ We Russians did not kill your General Stone. We are as mystified as you are as to who did the deed, or why—indeed, I may have to discourage Prince Gortshakoff from rewarding the perpetrator, if ever he is identified.” He shook his head. “I wish I could help you further, but cannot. I only beg you to believe what I have told you.”

  “And the woman in the madhouse? The baroness? Would you kill her, if you had the chance? Because she betrayed your high society?”

  He smiled at my simplicity. “But my dear Major Jones! How should we ever find the opportunity to do her the least harm, when her own friends and comrades have determined that she shall never walk free again?” He shook his head. “That’s why I have no patience with men such as Count Stavrogin, you see. I speak of him as one of the devils, but, in truth, I see him more as an idiot.” He smiled his small, tormented smile again. “Crime doesn’t really interest him, you see. He’s enraptured by the punishment. They’re all like that, Stavrogin and his associates. Every one a gambler. With Russia’s future. And gamblers always lose, sooner or later. His bureau would go to any length to imprison revolutionaries, torture them, exile them, execute them. But that’s all so unnecessary, so unhelpful! Given time, revolutionaries always destroy themselves. After all, they’re gamblers, too.”

  The train began to brake and slide and screech. Clouds of steam passed the windows of our car. Between the billows, I saw soldiers in blue standing about. Guarding the yards. For Baltimore had begun the war with little sympathy for our Union’s preservation.

  The baron clapped his hands. In moments, the litter of our meal had disappeared. The instant the train stopped, the minister stood up.

  “I beg you to believe me,” he said. “Neither my government, nor any of its agents killed General Stone or played any role in the matter. You must look elsewhere for the guilty party.”

  He put on his proper manner again, all diplomacy and pleasantness and frills. “I still cannot believe my good fortune in our encounter.” He wrinkled his mouth, spreading his whiskers on one side of his face, but not the other. “Curious, I think, how a random meeting such as ours may change the course of history. For the better, one trusts.” He offered me that delicate little hand again, a thing unmatched to the manly corpulence of the rest of his person. “Adieu, Major Jones. Ah! But I should say, ‘Auf Wiedersehen!’ I do hope you will visit me in St. Petersburg one day!”

  And I will tell you how selfish and small the human heart can be: The fellow had come to talk of murders and great affairs of state, and my duty lay in diligence and sobriety of purpose. But as he left the carriage, followed by a flurry of uniforms and hampers, I caught myself hoping that he would keep his promise and send me a pound or two of those fish eggs.

  I BELIEVED HIM, SEE. And not only because he had given me a treat or two and saved me the price of a lunch at the Baltimore station. I will admit we Welsh are suspicious by nature. It comes from dealing with the English for centuries. But there are times when I judge I can trust a man. And I rarely have been wrong. I had an uncanny sense that all he had told me was true. Regarding the murder, I mean.

  Perhaps it was the sort of thing that works down deep in the mind. I had collected bits and pieces of the affair, which my conscious thoughts had not yet put together. But somewhere within me perhaps I already knew what had happened, how the general’s murder would be explained. I will only tell you this: It was
not fish eggs and curdled cream that made me decide from that morning on that the Russians were not the murderers. And I would be right. For the murder of General Stone had to do with a darker matter than vengeance. God knows, there was no hint of justice in it.

  I thought and thought as the train rolled on, over bridges repaired or new, through low forests and marshes and then along the Delaware, where smoke plumes from the factories and mills heralded our approach to Philadelphia. I marked the Cawber works, which I had visited in the course of the Fowler affair, and wished I had the time to pause and visit the fellow. I wanted his advice, see. About certain railroad matters and colliery affairs. Nor do I speak of my private interests, but of the peculiar situation in our county that had made such a delicate matter of the general’s murder. I had heard, of course, many a sorry rumor about Matt Cawber since his fair wife’s death, and doubtless some were true. But he remained a man whose judgement I would trust in business affairs. And I was inclined to trust him in other matters, as well.

  I could not linger in Philadelphia, but only took the time to hurry from one terminal to another to catch the Pottsville train. Philadelphia, too, was burgeoning with the wealth of war and I was astonished at the price asked me by a vendor for a pair of boiled eggs. I gave him a proper tongue-lashing for his greed, but paid. And I will tell you: Although they kept my belly in line until I reached my hearth, those eggs of the hen could not approach the splendor of those fish eggs.

  What kind of fellow would think of eating fish eggs?

  My moods were not dependable that autumn. The nearer the locomotive come to our dear Pottsville, the gloomier my deliberations grew. Even duty could not hold my thoughts. Oh, I was determined to set matters straight and intended to find Mrs. Boland, to learn whether her madness was real or feigned. And I would have answers of that priest, Father Wilde, about his bloody linens. If necessary, I would confront the Irish, the lot of them, and this time I would not be put off with riddles and tricks of speech. But all of that fled my thoughts as steam and speed devoured the afternoon.

  Usually, I like a railway journey. No matter how often I find myself on the cars, the ease with which the landscape flees the eye fills me with a pleasant melancholy, a sense of time’s passage as sweet as it is bitter. But that day my thoughts only darkened with the miles.

  I wished to think on duty, to plot and plan, but could not wrench my thoughts from my wife and son. I did not even dwell on the matter of the will, which would be read out soon enough. No, it was the seed of evil that concerned me, the wages of sin. Twas as if I had held it all in until my fears swelled to a bursting.

  Why is the world made so? Why should my Mary Myfanwy have suffered because her uncle was in fact her father and did a thing so evil I rage to think on it? Her back is not bent, not really. There is only a mild curving, though it gives her discomfort. But what has she done to deserve even that, and why would the Good Lord make a child pay for the sins of its parents? I know that God’s ways are ineffable, but I wish with all my heart I could see the justice in things. What if an even greater weakness had been implanted in my Mary? What if the years would tell on her unfairly? What if her faculties should fail her? What if I should be left alone? Healthy and hearty she always seemed, and clever as could be. But what if she hid weaknesses within her? I could not bear the thought of my darling’s loss.

  Damn him, why had Mr. Evans chosen me to suffer his confession? Why not tell his whore? Or shut his mouth until he could tell the Devil? Why tell me?

  Oh, I remembered the attentiveness with which he always had played with our young John. All the while he had been watching for a sign of inherited weakness, either of the body or the mind. Think as hard as I might, I could see no such mark upon the boy, although he sometimes did seem awfully afraid of me. But then I was an absent father, little more than a rumor, taken by war to distant fields, returning briefly, with terrifying scars. I thought our John a normal boy, happy and robust. But well I know the fragility of our lives and our happiness.

  What if the new child, sleeping under my dear wife’s heart, should carry a monstrous taint from its moment of birth? Could we hope to escape a family curse with so few consequences?

  I even remembered the kindness of my darling’s late mother in a different light. The Reverend Mr. Griffiths had hated and despised me until he died. But his widow had done me the charity of forwarding one crucial letter to my beloved, whom I had thought forever lost to me. Now I wondered if the woman had thought her daughter would find no better hope than Abel Jones, if she secretly had viewed her only child as despicable, casting her toward me to be rid of her. Had she believed I would be well served to wed the daughter of incest?

  Is there a crueler word upon this earth?

  I know I am a selfish man and that my thoughts veer to blasphemy. But when I thought of the effect of Mr. Evans’s dying words upon me, I felt like Job. No matter what he had written in his will, for good or evil, generous or cruel, that sinner’s legacy to me was doubt and fear.

  All I wanted of this earth was the goodness and health of my family about me. I wished the war away and I hated the thought that I must soon return to my part in it, although I could not say such a disheartening thing to Mary. She needed to believe that I believe. Oh, she is right that I am sometimes blind to the meanness of the world. But she believes I am better than I am, and stronger, too.

  I rode toward Pottsville, lonely and forlorn. The railway followed the river through the hills. Towns flashed by in the early dark, with lamplit windows hinting of other lives. I wondered how much sorrow those people knew. I should have pondered that murdered girl and the murder of our general. But I sat in the dusk of the car with murdered hope.

  “SHALL I BEGIN?” Mr. Hemmings asked. His office was lovely with books of law and wood polished up like brass, although the air was tainted with cigar smoke. I sat between my Mary and, at a decent remove, Mrs. Walker. The latter figure had possessed the sense of decorum to enter the offices of Mr. Hemmings’s firm through a rear door. And veiled. But now she sat there, got up in a widow’s weeds and straight-backed as a lady at her tea, with no more expression upon her face than a statue made of marble. She was a fair one, Dolly Walker, almost beauteous. I will give her that. Well fitted she was to lead honest men astray.

  Myself, I was all awry that day. One moment, I found myself feeling sorry for the creature in her mourning. For what must life be like when all of our entrances are made through back doors and no one treats us with the least open respect? Then I would berate myself for my folly. The woman had made her life, such as it was, and now she sat positioned to rob my Mary of her rightful inheritance.

  Mr. Hemmings made a sound deep in his throat, more a growl than a purr, and repeated, “Shall I begin, then?”

  He was looking at me, although I was the party least concerned. But then I was the only man present, excepting himself. And men of Mr. Hemmings’s generation did not look to the ladies for authority.

  I remembered my resolutions and turned my face to my darling. She nodded. And gave my hand a squeeze. As if to encourage me. As if the will had more to do with me than it did with her.

  To answer the demands of common courtesy, I aimed an inquiring look at Mrs. Walker.

  She nodded in her turn. She had lifted her veil and it angered me unreasonably. For though my Mary is a great, unblemished beauty to me, the untutored eye would favor Mrs. Walker. With her haughty carriage. And her back as straight as the barrel of a musket.

  “You may begin, Mr. Hemmings,” I told the fellow. Black as a crow he was, and somber. As a barrister or solicitor always should be. A fellow who has read the law must encompass the gravity of an undertaker and the character of a gentleman of the cloth. Where would we be, if such folk made a spectacle?

  Standing behind his desk, Mr. Hemmings settled his spectacles on his nose and broke the document’s seal. Unfolding the papers, he turned—just so—to let the window light the testament’s contents.

  The
re was a great muchness of “know all ye present” and “soundness of mind,” of “the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania” and “the County of Schuylkill,” all read out in a voice that might have been reading verses from the Bible. I noted that the last revision of the will had been concluded but a month before, and I worried that Mrs. Walker’s charms had gotten to the old man. I am ashamed to think on it now, but the sin of greed was upon me as I perched in that leather-backed chair. I could tell you that I was only on the look-out for my Mary’s proper share, and that would be the truth, to a degree. But the selfishness within me had a purpose of its own, and not a noble one.

  I sneaked a glance at Mrs. Walker, who sat there imperturbable. As if she hadn’t the least care in the world.

  My dear wife looked at me, not at Mr. Hemmings. She took my hand again.

  Mr. Hemmings read out the minor bequests, which were alarmingly numerous. An elderly maidservant was pensioned generously, while the other members of Mr. Evans’s household staff were remembered with nice amounts. No doubt, I told myself, to buy their continued discretion. But I could find no fault with his remembrances of miners crippled in his service, or of pit widows and their children. In each case, the size of the award was excessive by our Pottsville standards and I knew the other colliery lords would dislike the business. Nor could I stop myself from tallying the sums as Mr. Hemmings read on, for I am, first and foremost, a good clerk.

  He left a smaller amount to his church than was customary for a man of his social station, but devoted one thousand dollars to the care of the county’s indigent. And then there were bequests to distant relations in Wales, of whom I had not heard a whisper spoken.

  I fear I was inching forward on my chair. For I heard his fortune whittled away, and still the giving went on.

  Then, with a pallbearer’s look drawn over his face, Mr. Hemmings paused, breathed deeply, and raised his eyes above his glasses to inspect the three of us. I think I must have squeezed my angel’s hand unto a hurting. But her grasp did not desert me.