Captains and the Kings

by Taylor Caldwell

  He was three years younger than I, thought Joseph, who attended the funeral. I trusted him more than I ever trusted anyone in all my life. Harry- was buried on a wet and windy autumn day, with the yellow rags of sodden leaves blowing about the headstones in the cemetery. The sky was the color of pewter, and poured pewter rain. "I am the Resurrection and the Life," intoned the priest. Liza stood beside Joseph, her sons behind her, and Joseph supported her with his arm and thought of the small girl in the house of Ed Healey and the young boy with the stormy curls who had saved his life, and who had laughed at him and had courage and gay fortitude. Joseph saw again the depot in Wheatfield, the night he had met little Harry, and suddenly he saw and smelled it all as if it had just happened. It was not possible that Harry was dead. He was too much a part of Joseph's life. If they did not see each other with too much regularity they always wrote or telegraphed or used the telephone, and when they met it was as if it were a holiday, to Harry's jubilation. Harry never lost that curious mixture of childish trust and mature knowledge which had been his as a child, and his face had never hardened or become tainted, in spite of the things he had had to do in serving Joseph Armagh. He was like a workman who needs to use tar in his work, but who, on returning home, cleansed himself of it and did not see or smell it. There were times when he seemed much older than Joseph, and times when he seemed only a youth. There were many who had said that he was the criminal agent of a powerful criminal, and Harry had heard this often, and it had not vexed him. "What is a criminal?" he had asked a reporter once, with unusual heat. "A man who never succeeded at criminality. He got caught." He angrily defended Joseph at other times. "Is it his fault that he has the intelligence to make a fortune?" he would ask. "You are just envious." He wasn't even fifty-five, thought Joseph, seeing the wet black clods dropped on Harry's coffin and hearing the weeping of Liza. (She, herself, was only fifty-three, but she had become an old woman, white of hair, covered with soft heavy flesh, the result of fat living over the years, and contentment, and simple uncomplicated and motherly thoughts.) The sons resembled her, having the rather blank and characterless features of the common people, but their eyes were Harry's eyes, dark and lustrous, though not with Harry's intelligence. They were shrewd enough, and competent enough, to be successful in their own right, and the elder-by five minutes-Jason, sometimes had a sharply shrewd expression. They regarded Joseph as an uncle, and addressed him so. Jason would infrequently study him with a speculative gleam in his eye. The young men were not welcome at Green Hills, as they had discovered long ago from their mother, once awesomely intimidated by Bernadette who had referred to Harry as "that Turk," in Liza's hearing. The young men were short, powerful, square in body, with big strong heads, and moved with purpose if with some clumsiness. He was a part of my life, thought Joseph, feeling the approach of the old pain again. He was the first I knew whom I could trust. Why, he was closer and certainly more loyal and faithful than any brother. He was my friend. I am just beginning to know that now. Charles was there, at the funeral, in the wind and rain and under the canopy which protected the mourners, and Charles, as always, was urbane and composed and his hair was still ginger-yellow and his figure lithe and young. But Joseph thought, Charles is my age, and I am nearing sixty, and where have the years gone, the years of our youth? Is it possible that Harry is really dead? Joseph stared down into the grave and thought of the graves he had stared at before, and he wanted to turn away. But there were the photographers battling with plates and black cloths and cameras at a little distance, for Harry Zeff had been the powerful henchman of the powerful Joseph Armagh, and his closest friend. Liza's sons took their mother to the carriage which waited for the family, and Joseph, usually adroit at avoiding reporters, found himself suddenly confronting three impudent young men with rain-wet faces and derbies and determination. "Mr. Armagh, sir," said one, "is it true that Mr. Zeff committed suicide, as it is rumored?" Charles pushed his way to Joseph's side, and made a menacing gesture at the photographers. But Joseph put his hand on Charles's arm. He looked at the somewhat frightened young men and his face was bleak. "Tell me that again," he said. "Suicide? Mr. Zeff? You must be out of your minds. His sons are physicians. One of them signed the death certificate." "Yes. We know," said the youngest and the brashest. This was the fearful Mr. Armagh, but a story was a story. "That's what seems funny about it. We heard-anonymously-that Mr. Zeff shot himself. And Mrs. Zeff called her sons. There was no other doctor."l "You're insane," said Charles. "Mr. Zeff died suddenly of a heart attack. See here, do I have to call those policemen yonder? Stop bothering Mr. Armagh." "So Mr. Armagh denies the rumor," said the young man, and danced expertly out of Charles's way. "Thank you, sir. Mr. Devereaux, isn't it?" The rain and wind suddenly seemed like the sound of a cataract and a hurricane to Joseph, and he walked beside Charles to the second carriage, and he heard the cold squeak and sucking of mud at his heels. He sat in the carriage, with Charles beside him, and the black wet horses pulled them away, down the curving avenues of the dead under the dying trees, and through the bronze gates. Joseph said, "It is a lie, of course. Harry died of a heart attack." When Charles did not reply Joseph turned to him quickly and said in a harsh voice, "Well? He did, didn't he?" Charles said, "We hoped to keep it from you, and then those damned reporters-they must have heard something, and not just rumor. No. Harry didn't die of a heart attack. He shot himself, as they said. We worked hard to keep it quiet, the news suppressed. But someone blabbed. Perhaps a servant, who overheard." Joseph was appalled. The grayish light poured through the rivulets of water on the carriage windows, and it lay on Joseph's face making it stark and livid. "Why? Why should he do a thing like that? Was he ill, dying of some incurable disease?" Charles hesitated, then sighed. He took off his wet hat and smoothed his hair with his hand. "No. There was nothing wrong. His sons told me so. It was just that the other night-lie went to his wife in their double bed, and kissed her good night, and told her-oh, some soft rambling story that he would always love her and be near her-and then he went down to his library and put a bullet through his heart. Not his head- where it could be plainly seen. He must have aimed carefully. Liza heard the shot and called the servants, and she wouldn't let them in the library, stood like a tigress, the sons told me, and they came." Charles shrugged. "There wasn't any note. There wasn't, isn't, any explanation. Harry was in excellent health. He was a multimillionaire. He hadn't been depressed, everybody said. It was just as usual, they said. I'm sorry, Joe. That's all I can tell you. As it was told to me." "Burglars. Thieves," said Joseph, and his voice was thin and far away. "I saw Harry myself, less than two weeks ago." Then he stopped and his face changed subtly and became wizened, and Charles saw this. Joseph continued. "I was feeling, well, depressed, and I happened to ask Harry what a man lives for. The average man. Even us. We work all our lives, struggle, plot, contrive, plan, aim, direct our activities. That is our major occupation. Sometimes we like what we do, and it absorbs us. But in the main the average man does not. So, I asked Harry, what in the hell do we live for. For our daily bread, and endless work, and fighting, and marrying and having children, and disappointment, or worse? What are our pleasures? A few hours of liberty a week, whether we live in a mansion or a hovel, a few opportunities for adultery and a few humdrum pleasures, which most of us are too tired to enjoy anyway. Then we die, and that is all there is. Even those born to great riches and luxury and idleness-for what do they live? Endless galas, parties, envies, traveling, dressing-and the same dreary recreations of a coal miner or a shopkeeper or a clerk or a factory hand. Is that all there is to a man's life? If so, I said to Harry, then it is not worth living." Charles saw his dry and somber face and said nothing. "And Harry said," Joseph went on, "that there are little pleasures along the way, little satisfactions, and I asked him were they worth living for. He thought about it. Then he said, 'My grandmother was an old illiterate Lebanese woman, and she once told me that we lived for love.' We both laughed then. That was all of the conversation. My God,
you don't think Harry was influenced by that conversation, do you, Charles? Charles shook his head. "No. Harry was too intelligent. He knew that we all lived because dying is infinitely harder to face-for most people. There may not be any satisfaction in living-I haven't found much-but an eternity of non-being is worse than that, even life at its meanest. Not to be. Not to exist. No wonder the very sick hold on to their last breath." "But Harry didn't," said Joseph. "He preferred to die. Why?" "Perhaps he was tired of living. Millions of us reach that stage."' "But Harry was a full-blooded, healthy man, not capricious, not complex." : "How do you know?" asked Charles. "Who knows any damned thing: about any of us, including ourselves?" He looked through the window. The air was the color of sadness. The wind made the carriage rock. "Do you think Harry might have been murdered, by thieves, perhaps, Charles? "Not in the least. The house was guarded like a fortress." Joseph pounced. "Why?"' "Why? Aren't your doors well-bolted at night, and your windows?" "In town, yes. In Green Hills, no. You are putting me off, Charles, evading me. You know, as I know, that Harry killed himself deliberately, ac- : cording to what you have told me. The unanswered question is why?" Charles sighed again. "Look here, Joe, I asked Jason and Simeon myself, on the quiet, when they asked me not to tell you. They knew how attachedj you were to Harry. They didn't want you-disturbed, or being just as you ;' are this very minute, probing, questioning, causing yourself misery. They told me they cannot think of a single reason why their father killed himself. There had been no hinting. Harry had been his jolly laughing self the night before, at dinner, to which they and their wives had been invited. He had even talked of buying a new yacht next year. He asked his sons opinion. Just a family reunion." He stared through the window again. "I remember what St. Paul talked about-the dark night of the soul. I suppose it comes to all of us, some- times many times in our lives, sometimes only once. Perhaps it came to . Harry just that once, and he hadn't any previous experience like it before I to use as a frame of reference. Maybe he was-overwhelmed. After all, men of our age do get, I hear, storms of the spirit, to be a little fanciful, when we begin to weigh our lives and try to find out what they mean, who we are, and for what we have lived. I'll bet very few of us come up with a soothing and satisfying answer. Very few." "Did you, Charles?" "No," said Charles, almost cheerfully. "But, what the hell. I am here and I may as well enjoy the sights, as we say down South. It's like traveling. You look, you observe, you compare, you are interested and amused, it is enlightening or boring or exciting-briefly. And then, you come home." "To that, back there," said Joseph. "A tombstone in a forgotten cemetery?" Then Charles said, "Have you found out for what you have lived, Joe?" Joseph thought, then answered in a heavy and gloomy voice. "I thought I knew. Once. But in some way I have forgotten. That is perhaps true of all of us. We forget our destination. Probably just as well. Just a grave." "When you are young you believe the world is all yours, glorious and exhilarating and fascinating and full of promise and trumpets and drums and marches and new worlds," said Charles. "We don't ask ourselves what we are living for then. We know. But we forget, later, or it all seems a foolish dream. Well, here we are at the Zeffs'. Shall I let Jason and Simeon know that I told you, after all?" "I have a feeling," said Joseph, as the coachman opened the door for them, "that this is a very banal conversation, and one that has taken place ten thousand million times before, between other men. In fact, I hear universal echoes, poor damned sods that we are." Charles gave a subdued laugh. "That old Persian is very popular these days, Omar Khayyam. I like one of his verses in particular: "Ah, make the most of what we yet may spend, Before we too into the dust descend- Dust into dust, and under dust to lie, Sans song, sans wine, sans singer and sans end." Just as he was about to step out he said, "Candidly, I think vagabondage is the best life to live. If there is anything to reincarnation, I am going to be a tramp in my next existence. Now, that is living, Joe. Tramps end up in the same place we do, but they have a hell of a lot of fun and freedom on the way." Joseph was asked by the family to be present when Harry's will was read. The day was cold and the color and the shine of steel. The house was opulent and even Oriental in its richness and furnishings, and it had always oppressed Joseph. The family sat in the library, with the weeping Liza and the crying sons, for they were emotional people. There was a large trust fund for Liza, larger ones for the sons, and the house for Liza and the money to maintain it. But the residuary estate was left, to Joseph's amazement, to charity, to be administered by the Archdiocese of Philadelphia. A package was placed in Joseph's hands, the paper brown and old and sifting. He opened it. He could not believe what he saw. It was a worn Missal. Liza stopped her sobbing to look and wonder. "I never saw it before," she said in a broken voice. "Was it Harry's? Why, he never even went to Church!" Joseph thought he had felt devastated before, but it was nothing to what he felt now. The Missal opened in his hands and he saw that it had been opened here many times before, and the passage was marked: "Lamb of God, Who taketh away the sins of the world, Have mercy-" Joseph had a terrible insight as he sat there with the opened passagej before him. He said to himself: He hated what he did for me, but because j it was for me he did it. And that made him finally die. Harry had never once spoken of religion to him, or to anyone else in sofar as Joseph knew. His sons had been given as secular an education as 7 Joseph had given his own sons. He had never revealed any religious interest, any speculative doubts or thoughts. Yet, this was his Missal, wrapped years ago for Joseph. Was it a warning? If so, why? He was suddenly desperately tired. The years do tell, he thought, as the lawyers consoled the bereaved. Charles was to remain for several days in Philadelphia and consult with Harry's possible successor. Joseph was to go to New York. Then, suddenly, he thought of Elizabeth, and longed for her with a starved longing. He returned to Green Hills alone, on the fastest train which roared majestically through the night. Then he felt the pain of his loss, the crouching, waiting pain. Even Kevin's death had not seared him like this, nor the loss of Sean and Regina, nor the destruction of his daughter. For Harry had been more than children, brother and sister. He had been the major part of Joseph's life, and possibly the most eager and full-bodied ;» part, and the youngest. Joseph, through all those years, had doubted everyone else, all he had loved. But he had never doubted Harry. Now Harry had died for his loyalty, and a love Joseph had never suspected. Exhausted by his pain he leaned his head against the window and he dreamed he was in that hot and dusty Washington room of so long ago, burning the papers which concerned Senator Bassett. He heard the senator speaking, but did not see him. "Too late," said the senator. "Too late." A week later, when Charles was on the way home from Philadelphia his train was derailed and partially wrecked. Three men died in it. Charles was one of them. "Christ, Christ," said Joseph, when he received the telegram from Philadelphia. He went upstairs to his study and stayed there three days and nights and did not come out. He never answered the door. lie never touched the trays which were left at it. Whether he slept or not, no one knew. No one ever knew that for the second time in his life he got drunk.