Captains and the Kings

by Taylor Caldwell

  frightened-yet stirred up-Rory Armagh. It was indeed beyond good and evil, and had nothing to do with normal ambition, of which Rory possessed more than the average measure. Why, he thought, the bastards would destroy their own countries, their own families, their own sons, to get what they want! Rory could understand passion and vehemence and downright wickedness and human plotting and deviltry and treachery and lies and thefts, and even murders. But he could not understand the men he had met in America and abroad, and so they challenged the very blood in his body, his very humanity. Somberly and jerkily walking the tilting decks of the ship, he recalled some of the things he had heard in London: "We must now have prudently scheduled wars all over the world, for they will be more and more necessary to absorb the products of our growing industrial and technological society. Without them we will have a glut of products-and a glut of populations -leading to stagnation, poverty, and natural crises, which could well undermine our ultimate objectives. In short, wars and inflation can proceed only under planned auspices which uncontrolled disorders jeopardize. "The middle class, in all nations, as we know, must be eliminated, for they tend to stimulate and encourage and invent chaotic liberty. They stand in the way of our Plan." Rory knew what the Plan was: Wars, confiscatory taxes to destroy the middle class, inflation and national debt. When these became unbearable even the most docile populations had the propensity for rebellion. It was then that the anonymous plotters came into their own and seized ultimate power, in the name of law and order. "Without a Federal income tax in America our objectives remain uncertain there, and frustrated. We must, all over the world, have entire control over the people's money. Such taxes are necessary for wars and inflation and the mechanization of humanity, the dependence of humanity on what we shall decide to give it. Without war, we cannot have a planned society, anywhere in the world. We are succeeding, without war and only through, taxes, in the Scandinavian countries, but that is not possible in such immense countries like America and Russia, where revolutionary tactics, peaceful or violent, are absolutely necessary, and which need to be financed through taxation." Rory's only confidant now was his father, who was also his teacher, however wry and derisive in his remarks concerning his colleagues. Rory no longer asked Joseph why he belonged to the Committee for Foreign Studies, and the infamous Scardo Society in America, composed of intellectual radicals. For he knew that in a distorted way this was Joseph's revenge on a world which had so frightfully abused him as a child and youth, and, worst of all, had forced him to deny his very intrinsic identity. This had been an assault not only on his physical survival but on his spirit. Was this true also of the other men? Rory did not know. Sometimes Rory asked himself: Doesn't our own government know? If they do not, then they are fools. If they do know, they are traitors. Which is worse? His other confidant, besides his father, who had warned him not to speak to anyone of what he had superficially learned in London, was Courtney Hennessey, in whom he had usually confided more than in anyone else, even Marjorie. But Courtney was immured in Amalfi, damn him! and even if he were not he must never know what Rory already knew. However, he would have been a "comfort." His normality, his cool common sense, his lack of hysteria and impulsiveness, would have been soothing to Rory, might even have given him some assurance that the normal people far outnumbered the villains-which Rory frequently doubted anyway.

  As the days passed on the ship Rory's usually easy and imperturbable mind was greatly disturbed, thrown into disorder, conjecture, and apprehension. On the one hand his natural cynicism made him shrug, for did not mindless men deserve any fate plotted for them? On the other hand was his natural rebellion, born of his Irish nature, against any group of men who would "guide," as they called it, the free human soul. That was the province of religion, and guidance there meant discipline and elevation of the spirit beyond its own mean instincts. But the "guidance" of the anonymous men meant serfdom, not for the advancement of men but for their human disintegration and reduction to animalism. Rory was not an idealist; he did not believe that man could be better than he already was, for the nature of man was immutable except through religion, and even there the mutability was precarious and unstable. But at least in a more or less free society a man had a choice-to a limited extent -and to Rory that freedom of choice was precious. To be a rascal or not to be a rascal, to be responsible or irresponsible, to be good or evil: That ability to choose made man more than a beast even if his choice was disastrous. His mind was his own. Admittedly, sometimes the choices of men made for an uneasy and changeful society, but that was preferable to the hell of monotony where men had no choices and were duly fed, bred, put to planned activity, deprived of decisions concerning their lives and their recreation, and fell to the status of domestic creatures. There had been little vexation, little change, little anxiety, in Rory's life so far, no alarms except for the catastrophe to his sister, little brooding or melancholy, little Weltschmerz or Weltanschauung. Now, to his mortification, he felt that he had lived in a silky nest, his only aspirations to be successful, to pursue pretty women, to dance and cavort and make himself generally agreeable-for he liked the world very much indeed. He had always disliked gloomy men, though, paradoxically, he had liked gloomy poetry. He disliked scholars, but was scholarly himself, in a very objective way. lie had a fine mind, analytical and cool and reasonable, but it had never been much engaged in subjectivities, which he had usually suspected. "I am no Jesuit," he would tell Courtney. Naturally without illusion, he had been tolerant of the world of men. But during these days at sea that equable nature, that laughing skeptical nature, came fully into its second duality, which had heretofore not been dominant. He discovered crevices, hidden caverns, deep rivers, dark and somber places, silences and ponderings, in himself, and was not happy over it. For they forced him to be aware, not only of Rory Armagh and his immediate concerns and ambitions, but of the world he lived in, and to be as responsible to that world as it was possible for him to be. lie knew, without any doubt at all, that he must keep this new and frightening awareness to himself, and from his father, who, he suspected, had his own dark places. He began to drink, not only at the table in the great dining room on the ship, but in his stateroom. He began to brood, and all the deep melancholy of the Irish mysticism invaded him. But when he appeared on the decks and in the public rooms there was none gayer, more voluble, more full of jokes and twinklings and laughter, than Rory Armagh. None of this was simulated, but was genuine as of the moment. Yet his character became more and more firmly knitted, and much of the amiable embroideryof it was slowly but steadily discarded from the fabric. He felt this change I in himself, and was not certain he liked it. He knew the potentialities for this change had always been in him, but he had kept them under control until now. He discovered a complaisant and fairly well-known young actress on board, accompanied by an enormous amount of trunks and a personal maid, and within four days he had found himself happily admitted to her bed. They drank champagne together, and laughed, and romped, and for hours, sometimes, Rory could forget the "deadly quiet men," as his father had called them, and what he was nebulously deciding to do about them in the future. Never once, as he lay entangled with the pretty young actress, did he feel that he was unfaithful to Marjorie. Marjorie lived on a different plateau in his life. In New York, he said a loving and joyful fare' well to the actress and proceeded to Boston and to Marjorie. His mind had been taken up with its unique glooms and dismays and horrors on the ship, with the exception of the hours of interlude with the actress, and so he had not given too much thought to his predicament concerning Marjorie. Indeed, the predicament was really his father. He never once considered giving up his young wife, whom he adored. Now, as he entered the miserable little flat in Cambridge this new problem asserted itself with black anxiety. Marjorie was waiting for him, for he had sent her a telegram from New York. She had lit fires and filled the dun rooms with hothouse flowers, from her father's own conservatory. She had arranged a fine dinner. When Rory saw her he felt a
blaze of emotion in himself, delight, joy, peace, and wholeness. Her neat little figure, so trim and without a sign of fussiness, was clad in a white silk shirtwaist, very severe, even with cufflinks, and buttoned down the front with little pearls, and a black silk skirt. Her dark pompadour kept breaking out into trendrils about her saucy little face, with the smooth olive cheeks just touched with apricot, and her black eyes were huge and dancing. She threw herself into his arms and he caught the scent of lemon verbena, and the fragrance of her young body. He swung her up in his arms and danced about the rooms with her and she kissed him and laughed and protested, and clung to him. Immediately he forgot everything, or at least all he feared stood at a somber distance in his mind, not permitted to invade this beatitude of being with Marjorie. He must tell her all about his journey, whom he met, what he said and did-and, after a pause-how was his father? He evaded the answers for a while during which he triumphantly waved a long blue velvet box under Marjorie's little nose. While she jumped and struggled for it, and her mass of curls fell down her back, and she shouted, he laughed and settled the answers to her questions in his mind. It seemed that Joseph, to give his son an idea of the comforting feeling of wealth, had presented him with a cheque for two thousand pounds. Stunned by all these riches, Rory had gone shopping for a trinket for Marjorie on Bond Street. His first impulse was to spend it all on the trinket, but his natural prudence, hidden under all that generous outpouring of humor and laissez-faire, advised him that he might need some of that money in Boston, too. So he had spent one thousand juicy pounds on a beautiful opal and diamond necklace for Marjorie, with a pair of earrings to match. Capturing the box at last Marjorie opened it eagerly and screamed with delighted shock at the magnificence, and her little fingers trembled and her eyes glowed as she fastened the jewelry at neck and ears. Rory watched her with such an inner bulging of his heart that his eyes filled with moisture. "Where on earth, did you get the money?" cried Marjorie. "You must have stolen it!" "Hard though it may be to believe, Papa gave it to me," said Rory. Marjorie's face went blank. She looked at him slowly. "Oh, Rory, you told him then?" Her own eyes became moist with relief. "Yes, I told him-in a way," said Rory. "I had to break it easy to the old boy. I told him that I was practically engaged to a chit of a Bostonian girl, of fairly good family, and of some mediocre intelligence, and sometimes pretty." "Rory, behave yourself. You must tell me. What did he say?" "Well, my love, he reminded me I have to finish law school. I didn't tell him we were already married." Rory paused. "That would have been a little too much at that time for him to digest. So, I let it rest there." Marjorie's black eyes sharpened on him. "Just what does that mean, rascal?" "It means that we get him used to the idea that we have-plans." "Fiddlesticks! I know you, Rory. You are hiding something." Rory spread out his hands disarmingly and nothing could have been more candid and boyish than those light blue eyes. "You wrong me, sweetheart, you really do. I have told you all there is. I did tell Pa that your father was a distinguished lawyer in Boston, and he asked if he knew him and I said I didn't know. I didn't mention names. I thought it best; let him mull over what I'd already told him." Marjorie stood on tiptoe to kiss his mouth warmly. "Rory, you never exactly lie, but often you don't exactly not lie, either. You are a very wily Irishman. You tell people only what you want them to know, and not a word more or less, and let them make of it what they will. Even me." "You don't trust me," said Rory, with an air of injury. "Of course I don't! Do you think I am a fool? Never mind, my pet. Do let me see what I look like in the crown jewels." She ran to a dusty mirror and preened in the low lamplight and firelight, and the gems glistened and sparkled in a very satisfactory fashion. "But how shall I explain them to Papa?" she asked. "Hide them. Wear them just for me," said Rory, and took her hand and led her into the tiny bedroom, while she protested very mildly and mentioned roasting beef. Marjorie completely forgot to ask Rory what the business had entailed in London, which was just as well because Rory could never have told her. When he returned to his rooms at Harvard he found a telegram waiting for him, which had been delivered just that day. He read it over and over, disbelievingly, aghast. He actually trembled. Then he sent his father a cable: uncle Sean died this morning. cable funeral arrangements.

  chapter 42

  Sean Armagh, who had continued his "professional name" of Sean Paul during his concerts and recitals, kept a suite of rooms in a Boston hotel for when he was present there, which was often. "For here it was, in this Athens of the West, where I was discovered," he would say, with a soft theatrical gesture of his thin white hand. It was not hard for him to fill his eyes with tears at will, for he was by nature emotional, and people in Boston were always touched. It was a large suite of several rooms in an old but grand hotel full of gilt and rose damask and marble stairways, and he occupied it with his business manager, Mr. Herbert Hayes, a large portly man of much presence and much brown hair and much jewelry, about forty-four years old, also a bachelor. Though considerably younger than Scan he treated Scan as if he were a child, and a not very intelligent child, and bullied him, was proud of him, and loved him. He arranged everything for his client, and Scan had nothing to do but practice and sing and enrapture audiences, and read billets-doux from ladies. (Scan, however, knew to the penny how much he had in the banks, and grew pettish over any offer that did not meet with his approval.) Joseph, not having had the advantage of an academic education, nor having ever resided in a college dormitory, nor having ever been a member of a fraternity, did not know what was "wrong" with Scan. Rory and Kevin, his sons, did and without any doubt and with such sly chucklings and lewd winks. "It was being brought up by all those nuns," said Kevin, "and never seeing any other men but priests who were cowed by the Sisters anyway." "I think," Rory had once remarked, "that Pa's character was such that a character like Sean's sort of got crushed in any encounter. Not that Uncle Scan had a character of much strength, anyway, or much resolution or manliness. Rice pudding with custard could describe Uncle Scan's spirit, to be charitable. Pa once did remark that our sweet singing uncle was 'womanish and it upset him, but he made excuses that his brother was an 'artist.' Uncle's petulant little ways were excused under the same copybook heading. 'At least,' Pa would say, 'he made something of himself with his singing and talent, which is more than could have been said about our father, whom he much resembles.' Pa must have loved his Dada once; he wouldn't have been so bitter about him if he hadn't. When Uncle Scan succeeded that made Pa forgive both his Dada and our nightingale uncle. But he has never found out about him, which is just as well. I doubt that Pa would have known what it meant, anyway." Joseph would have known. He had read too widely and too largely not to have understood if it had been put before him in plain words. But his natural Irish prudity in part insulated him from recognizing what was "wrong" with his brother. Moreover, he thought such activities not only unmentionable even when among men, but esoteric and inexplicable, and probably engaged in "only by foreigners." He never once suspected homosexualism among any of his colleagues or acquaintances, not even when it was blatant, and he certainly would not have believed it existed in his own family. He might tell Sean to "be a man," as he did whenever he encountered him, and did not know that it was impossible for Sean to "be a man." Had lie understood, Rory would sometimes think, he would probably have murdered Uncle Sean had tried to attach himself to Harry Zeff, out of both gratitude and love, but Harry had soon suspected and had abruptly removed himself as benefactor and friend. Thereafter had followed several "love affairs" between Sean and the new friends he made among the camp followers of the arts. He had finally settled on one love, his manager for a number of years, Herbert Hayes, who was also of his persuasion. It was Herbert who had taught Sean to be discreet, and not to throw his arms affectionately about other men in public-even when the gesture was comparatively innocent -and not to mention his aversion to the ladies but, on the contrary, to pretend to be a gallant and a womanizer, "like your brother." Herbert, too, had taught him to hint of an unrequited o
r deceased love, whom he could never forget and to whose memory he was still devoted and loyal. This was not hard for Sean to do, for he was an actor as well as a singer by birth. Herbert let him wear exotic clothing, for that was more or less expected of an artist, but he never let it get effeminate. Herbert was masculine in appearance, in manner, in dress, in voice and gesture. He loved Sean Armagh with a jealous and devastating love, and served him like a lover. Sean's interests were his interests. He had no others. He was a very competent pianist, himself, and so worked with Scan at his practice. He picked every accompanist. He arranged all tours and was so shrewd that Sean never accepted a fee lower than the most recent one, and usually it was higher. Herbert, it was, who gave newspaper interviews, or sat vigilantly near Sean when Sean gave them. Herbert arranged the repertoire. Herbert wrote the brochures. Herbert bullied concert hall managers and accompanists. Herbert arranged the lighting, and coached Sean in the most effective postures. Not being a fool, in spite of his love for Sean, he had demanded, and had got, a very sizable salary and occasional lavish gifts, and traveled always with his client. They both loved luxury, though Sean did not care much for paying for it, being under the impression that all hotel suites should be donated by "the management." Herbert arranged for the constant singing teachers and listened to them with the acuteness of a bird listening for a worm in the ground. He also arranged that those teachers would not have his and Sean's propensities. Rory and Kevin often idly sought "reasons for Unkie's conduct," and all of them were, of course, fallacious: Too much feminine company in youth; a too strong and dominant brother; the lack of a father in his childhood and youth; his early orphaned condition and his early dependence on women. A too gentle character, too soft, too weak, too bending, too unable to resist perversions. Too unworldly. Too easily influenced by evil men whom he encountered, who intimidated him. The fact that his "condition" was intrinsic to him, had been his from birth, would have been disbelieved by his young nephews, who alternately pitied or despised him. They might laugh at him between themselves but they were scrupulous in pretending, when with Sean, to believe him entirely average or what the}' considered average. That, to Sean, his propensity for his own sex seemed quite normal, would have inspired the utmost incredulity in Rory and Kevin, in spite of their academic sophistication. Sometimes Sean was repulsive to them and they kept a wary distance from him. As a person, he was liked by them, with his gentle manners, his high musical voice, his air of eternal youthfulness, his hatred for the violent word or gesture, and, curiously, his bland innocence. They preferred to blame Herbert Hayes, and they loathed him, which was eminently unfair. The general public did not know about Sean's "conduct for Herbert was sedulous about this, knowing the calamitous consequences, legal and public, if it should become generally known. It disturbed him that Sean's nephews appeared to know, but they would certainly not betray their own uncle. His one terror was that Joseph Armagh might learn of his brother's aberration. He had met Joseph on many occasions, in dressing rooms and in hotel suites, and Joseph affrighted him, for he knew that here was a man of no compromises, no deviations, and of an absolutely rigid character, and that to him a man like Sean would have appeared totally criminal, worthy of exposure and exile, if not death. Joseph's powerful personality overwhelmed Herbert Hayes, the direct fierceness of his eye made him quail. He mentioned this once to Sean, and Sean had sighed gently, assumed a pathetic expression, bowed his head and had murmured, "True. True. You have no true conception, dear Herbert, of the agonies of my young childhood, which Joe inflicted upon me, the abandonment, the heartless indifference, while he pursued money for his own aggrandizement and importance. He detested everyone, and was not happy unless all those about him flinched when he entered a room. Ah, if my poor sister were only here! She could tell you a sorry tale of Joseph's abuse of us when we were mere babes." He had persuaded himself that all this was true, long before he had fallen with tears and cries of emotion upon Joseph's chest when Joseph had first visited him to offer congratulations on his success. The girlish malice he had felt for Joseph, the deep envy and resentment of his potency, his quality of manhood, had inspired in Sean a hidden hatred he disguised in the form of contempt. "It is my sensitivity," he would say to Herbert, "the sensibilities of a born artist, which were so affronted by my brother's very person and temperament. I know it is wrong, but how can I change my nature?" He would look at his friend, pleading for absolution, his light eyes swimming in liquid. "Joe is so coarse, so unfeeling, not unable to experience true human attachment and the spirit of sacrifice. A gross man, I am afraid." Had Sean heard anyone call him a liar he would have been-almost- genuinely horrified. For he had pushed from his remembrance all that he knew of his brother and that brother's desperate struggle for the younger members of his family. To acknowledge that struggle, to express gratitude, to feel any pity or understanding at all, would have lowered Sean in his own estimation. Maligning Joseph, he could acquire self-esteem and elevate himself above his feared brother. Rory had guessed this a few years ago, and for his uncle he felt good- tempered derision and amused tolerance. He also thought Sean pitiable, as well as revolting. But Joseph had appeared to believe that it was Rory's "duty" to be loyal to his family, and so had repeatedly asked both his sons to visit their uncle when he was in Boston. But Sean was not asked to Green Hills more than once, for Bernadette had made it plain that she thought him detestable, and had resented him. She was not aware of his propensities, and had never heard of such things, but some uneasy revulsion stirred in her when she saw Sean. She thought him very ladylike and pretentious and affected, though she kept this opinion from Joseph. Sean, in his turn, had hated her anew, remembering his earlier impression of her as a "loud, bouncing woman." It had been Herbert Hayes who, from prison, had sent Rory the telegram announcing Sean's death. For Herbert had murdered him. Sean had fallen wildly in love with a new young accompanist, and had told Herbert of his passion, and had asked Herbert to remain as his business manager but to cut "all ties of affection with me." Herbert, betrayed, desperate, crushed and then made nearly insane, had simply strangled the man to whom he had given so much and with such devotion and dedication, and then had called the police. All this Rory discovered from the police, themselves, when he went to his uncle's suite. They were callously locking up all the dainty treasures with which Sean traveled, and they were not deferential to the stunned young man but cynically, and half-laughing, gave him full information. "Yes, yes, I know what my uncle was," said Rory, looking about him dazedly. "Poor Herbert. I suppose he will be hanged. I wonder what the hell I am going to tell my father." The newspapers solved his problem in large black headlines, in Boston and New York and Philadelphia and Washington, and other large cities. They were most discreet, and coyly so, but a knowledgeable person could guess at once the import of their insinuations. Rory kept the newspapers for his father, who had cabled he would return to America at once to take charge of matters, and the funeral. In the meantime, out of pity, Rory visited Herbert in prison where he was awaiting indictment, and he found him whitely calm and despairing. He was piteously grateful for Rory's visit. "After all, I went out of my mind and killed your uncle, such a genius, such a spirit, such a voice. I can't tell you why. I prefer to bury the secret with me." Rory mentioned that he knew many fine lawyers in Boston, but Herbert shook his head and looked like death. "I want to die, too," he said. "Your uncle was my whole life, and now I have nothing left." But Rory got a good lawyer for him. He read the newspapers with dismay and thought of Albert Chisholm and what he would say to his daughter about "that Armagh family." Mr. Chisholm would have no illusions though he would delicately refrain from enlightening Marjorie, of course. Joseph took the fastest liner out of Southampton for New York almost immediately. He was alone and isolated, for neither Harry Zeff nor Charles Devereaux had accompanied him to Europe this time on the dismal hegira in behalf of Ann Marie, and they were needed by The Armagh Enterprises. The journey was like a more ghastly repetition of his first journey to
America, to Joseph, with the boiling and livid seas, the harsh winds, the sleet, the snowstorms, and the wailing of the horns in the fogs. He shivered in his warm and luxurious stateroom. He tried to keep from thinking. Rory's cable had not informed him of the manner of Sean's death, and he assumed it was "a weakness of the lungs," from which Sean had always suffered. It was, he thought, one of the plagues that harassed the Irish. He tried to read. It was hopeless. He had left misery behind him, and misery waited for him, and fresh sorrow and loss. But he would not let himself think. Ron met him in New York, alone. The young man thought this best. When Joseph immediately demanded of him the cause of Sean's death Rory replied, "Let us get out of this hack and into the hotel. I have the newspapers for you." Snow and wind lashed the windows of the cab, and Joseph, with a sense of calamity, could only stare at Rory's set face and could only think how much older the young man seemed. Rory did say that all funeral arrangements had been left in abeyance awaiting Joseph's return. "Good," said Joseph. He thought of Sean, not as the middle-aged singer of much acclaim and success, but as little Sean with the light and petulant eyes and the lovely childish voice, and his eyes felt dry and parched. "It is as it was only yesterday, himself singing in the steerage to lighten our mother's pain and wretchedness," he said to Rory, who was surprised at this sentimentality on the part of his father. His voice had actually taken on a lilting brogue, as if he were a child again. He shook his head, somberly, and kept wetting his lips. "The priest bought him an apple on the docks of New York, where no one wanted us, and he'd never eaten an apple, they all rotting in Ireland along with the potatoes. I shall never forget how he ate it, poor little spalpeen, licking every morsel and every drop of juice." He sighed shortly. "He was too long without the apples of existence, too long, I am thinking. He was always frail." Rory considerately looked through the snow-lashed window, and now his regret was for his father and not for his murdered uncle. Harry Zeff had had many quiet conversations with Rory on the subject of Joseph, for Harry had been determined that Rory would not be another Sean to blacken his father's life with ingratitude and girlish cruelty. "I knew your Dad when we were boys together," he would keep repeating. "I know what Joe suffered for his family. I know what Sean's running away meant to him, and I know what it meant to him when Sean finally accomplished something by himself. He was as proud as a peacock." He had looked at Rory then. "I read something once, a Turkish poet or something, your father was always giving me books to read though I never wanted them. Omar Something. How can I remember? It was about man forgiving God, and not the other way around." Rory had quoted: "O Thou Who man of baser earth didst make, And even with Paradise devised the snake, For all the sin wherewith the face of man Is blackened, Man's forgiveness give-and take." "Yes, yes," Harry had said, nodding with contentment. "That is it. The old Turks understood, didn't they? Joe's got a lot to forgive God for, and don't you be forgetting it, as Joe himself would say." When Rory and Joseph reached Delmonico's, Rory said, "It's very cold, and you are tired, Pa. You need a drink." Joseph scowled at him. "I seem t < to remember that on every gloomy occasion you reach for the bottle, Rory. Well, then, let's have it." The steam pipes clanked desolately but Rory had ordered a fire, remembering how cold affected his father. He mixed a hot toddy for Joseph and Joseph said, "Where do they get lemons here this time of the year," and Rory said, "Why, from Florida, by fast train. These are new days, Pa, very modern and fast."' f j Joseph drank gingerly, and then with a sudden thirst Rory had never seen him exhibit before. When he appeared to be relaxing, and warming, Rory said, "I won't beat about the bush. I thought you ought to see some of the newspapers from Boston, and some from the yellow press in New York, before you go to Boston to arrange for the funeral and bring Uncle Sean to the family plot in Green Hills." "Why should I see the newspapers?" demanded Joseph. "What is all this mystery? Well, let me have the damned things."'. j So Rory gave his father a sheaf of headlines and shouting print, and made himself another drink and prudently absented himself for a while in the next room. He heard no sound but the turning of pages, except for one exclamation, "Oh, my God!" Rory winced, and wished he had brought the whiskey bottle with him into this room. The hell with you, Uncle Jenny Find, he addressed the dead man, grimly. It wasn't enough that you once kicked him in the teeth, but you had to do this thing to him, too. Rory saw the sudden welling of the fire as Joseph savagely thrust the papers into it. But Joseph did not call him immediately. For Joseph was thinking again of Senator Bassett. He was not thinking of the explicit scandal which had fallen upon his family. He could only see the face of the man he had destroyed, and he saw that face in the bright coals on the hearth, and he heard, again, the dead voice and reread the last letter the unfortunate man had ever written. After a long time Joseph called his son and Rory went back into the darkening room. "I think," said Joseph, "I need another of your infernal drinks." But when the silent Rory gave it to him he only held it in his hand and stared at the fire, and his face had become stark and pallid, and occasionally he shivered. Scan was buried in the family plot with its huge obelisk, and he was buried quietly, and the innocent priest said, "-this sad and famous victim of an insensate act on the part of a madman. We can only mourn the loss of so magnificent a treasure- We can only condole with those who grieve, and remind them-" The snow fell on the bronze casket and into the black and waiting grave, and those who had been invited to accompany the father and the two sons exchanged looks which were meekly malicious, except for Harry Zeff and Charles Devereaux and Timothy Dineen, who stood with Joseph like a bodyguard and let the snow fall on their uncovered heads. The handful of earth and the holy water also fell, and Joseph did not turn away but looked at his brother's coffin and nothing at all showed on his ravaged face. Two days later, without even seeing Elizabeth, he returned to Europe. Before his trial, Herbert Hayes hanged himself in his cell.