A servant entered the room, and Aaron said, “Ask Mrs. Rufus to bring in Mr. Steve’s baby. She’ll be in the nursery now.” He carried a large glass of whisky to Stephen and pushed it into his hand. “Come on, drink. No more tonics. Throw this down like a man.”
Joseph straightened, and said anxiously, “Do you think it’s best, Mr. deWitt? I’ve heard that whisky is very bad for men who are recovering from lung fever.”
Purcell, without turning, remarked to no one in particular, “When a man’s got to make a decision, he’d better take the edge off himself. Hell. He never had lung fever anyway. Go on, Steve; drink it.”
Stephen, finding a glass in his hand, automatically lifted it to his lips. Even in his anguish he was unable to offend anyone.
“That’s right, throw it down,” Aaron repeated. The fumes and the taste of the liquor revolted Stephen, and he made an instinctive gesture of repudiation. But when he looked up he saw, not the faces of Joseph and Tom, silently protesting, but the grinning face of his father and the doughy mass which was the face of Jim Purcell.
Lydia deWitt entered the room carrying Stephen’s child in a blue shawl. Her concerned eyes went to Stephen immediately, and she approached him at once. Joseph and Tom greeted her; Aaron ignored her, but Jim Purcell, leaning against the wall near the window, studied her with coarse openness. She saw this and smiled, and for a moment the protuberances and pits which formed the man’s face moved into the formation of a smile also.
“I think,” said Aaron, “that we’d better take our whisky downstairs and finish it. Rufe’s due home any minute now, and we can sit by the fire and have another drink with him.”
The three men followed him, Joseph and Tom keeping well together, Jim Purcell following. The door closed behind them, and Stephen, darkly flushed and sweating with weakness, sank back in his chair and closed his eyes. Lydia drew a small chair close to him and sat down, and then she waited. The child whimpered, and she began to sing to it softly, in her strong yet gentle voice, holding it close to her breast. The room filled with the sound of the fire, the crying of the wind, and Lydia’s soothing lullaby. The dusk made everything shadowy in the room while the conflagration darkened beyond the window.
Finally Stephen said faintly, “Lydia.” She raised her head and regarded him with grave attention. “Lydia,” he repeated.
“Yes, Stephen?” The child lay on her knees, and she did not move. Stephen lifted his hand as though it was an enormous weight and indicated the baby with it. “I haven’t seen—her, I don’t believe,” he whispered.
Lydia rose at once and went to him. She folded back the shawl, and he saw the face of his child for the first time. The baby lay in Lydia’s protecting arms, a very small creature with thin little hands and a pale and pointed face in which the eyes were questioning gray circles. The last crimson light of the sunset illuminated the child, and Stephen, pulling himself away from the back of the chair with an effort that brought moisture visibly to his forehead, leaned forward, and father and daughter stared at each other mutely, each somber and motionless.
Then Stephen’s hand, moving like the hand of a blind man, fumblingly stretched itself out, hovered over the child. The hand sank, rose, hovered again. Finally it took the little hand of the baby, and held it. The fingers were as cold and as lifeless as his, and as still.
“It—she—is cold,” said Stephen painfully.
“Yes,” said Lydia, with softness and compassion. “She always is. Babies need love. And I’m afraid there isn’t much love in this house for her. I do what I can. But children, even as young as this, seem to know.”
There was no color on the small cheeks or on the little mouth. There was a seeking and lost expression in the gray eyes which had fastened themselves unsmilingly on Stephen. He could not bear it; tears began to run down his cheeks, tears of grief and remorse and deathly illness. He said, his voice breaking, “Put her in my arms, Lydia.”
He held his child to him, and kissed her, and she moved in his arms with a nestling movement, so that her small head was on his breast. Then Stephen cried out, “Look, Lydia! She is smiling!”
10
Rufus was just entering the large and stately drawing room and a maid was just lighting the lamps, when Aaron, Joseph, Tom and Jim Purcell entered through another door. A huge fire rioted in the great white fireplace and threw its amber shadows on the white and blue panels of the walls and on the carved ceiling. Now the lamps began to glow, silver and gilt, in the heavy dusk, and all the fine rugs and furniture took on identity.
Rufus was surprised that the weekly guests had not already departed, and for an instant his tired face changed. Then, very buoyantly, he greeted them. He could be unaffectedly friendly with Joseph and Tom, whom he good-temperedly despised as harmless failures and not likely to get into his way to any serious extent. Jim Purcell was another matter. Rufus was more effusively cordial with him, and was not concerned that Purcell merely grunted in reply to his greeting, and, without waiting for others to be seated, sat down on the rose and blue tapestry sofa near the fire. “How is poor Steve?” Rufus asked of Aaron, who seated himself next to Purcell. “I see you’ve all got whisky. Mind if I order some for myself?” He pulled the bell rope, beamed down at his father genially.
“Poor Steve,” replied Aaron, “has had a jolt. He’s coming out of things now. Thanks to Jim, here.”
Rufus raised his ruddy eyebrows quizzically. He, like Aaron, knew quite well why Jim “haunted” Stephen. It was a standing joke between them, a comprehending but not ridiculing one. “What did you do, Jim?” he asked, seating himself in his mother’s blue satin chair and giving himself over to be charming in spite of his fatigue. His intensely colored face was overlaid with weariness, like dust, and his red hair did not flare up from his head as usual in its customary lionlike strength.
Jim did not answer his question, but Aaron chuckled thinly. “Oh, he recalled to Steve’s mind what might happen to the baby in this den of wolves. That did it. Steve’s got a lot of imagination, though you don’t credit him with it, Rufe.”
“Now what in hell do you mean by that, Pa?” asked Rufus, laughing. But he was not particularly amused.
The whisky, having been brought, was placed before Aaron, who poured a glass for his son, and refilled Purcell’s glass and his own. Joseph and Tom refused, partly out of principle and partly because they wished to leave as soon as possible. However, like all good men, they were natural gossips, and they hoped to acquire a few scandalous little morsels to relate privately to their friends, morsels which would raise them in their friends’ esteem as being intimate with the deWitts in spite of their fear of the family.
“I hope Steve does come out of it,” Rufus remarked, after a long and grateful drink. “Frankly, I’m no man for details and papers; and my clerk, and Steve’s too, are much too rabbitty to make the smallest decisions for themselves. And though I can usually make friends with everybody, and can understand almost any man, I don’t understand these Irish fellows we put on a few months ago. Wild. The farmers along our right of way are complaining. The boys have a habit of stealing apples and chickens, and romping, and raising hell generally.”
“Steve, for some peculiar reason beyond my understanding, could always manage them,” remarked Aaron, wiping his beard with the back of his sallow hand. “You wouldn’t have thought it. He could reason with them.” He shook his head. “The most unlikely people take to Steve.”
“You could, of course, give the Cork boys as much money for equal work as you do our native Americans,” said Purcell in his rumbling voice. “But that wouldn’t be good business.”
There was no irony in his voice, and Rufus and Aaron understood this. “What they don’t get from us they make up in what they get from the farmers,” Rufus answered. “That doesn’t bother me; it never did. But we’re extending our line and we need some strips of land along the right of way. The farmers are rearing up; they were all for the extension, especially when they found ou
t it would open new markets for them. They’re willing to accept the benefits, but they’re demanding ungodly prices for those worthless strips, and they want guarantees that we won’t employ the Irish lads as gandy-dancers. We’ll have to do what we’ve always done: promise them the earth with the moon thrown in, and let them try to do anything about it after the rails are laid.”
Joseph Baynes, who had been listening intently, could not restrain his indignation: “It was all wrong, in the very beginning, to import those people. We have enough workmen of our own, but our workmen demand at least a semblance of livelihood.” He paused; they were all looking at him, and he was vaguely frightened in spite of the apparently friendly interest. “These Irish fellows are always fighting, too. Remember those brawls last month? One of them was killed, and over a dozen others were badly injured. Similar riots, I’ve heard, are occurring wherever the Irish are employed on other railroads. Very odd and barbaric people.”
“Steve understood them,” said Aaron mildly. “He managed to keep apart what he called the ‘Far-downers’ and the ‘Corkonians.’ Whatever they mean. And if, by any chance, these mysterious mobs got into fights Steve would go right down to them, even if it was in the middle of the night, and with a little abracadabra, which I never comprehended, would settle the whole matter.”
“Why do they come here? Why don’t they stay where they belong?” asked Tom in a tone of dissatisfaction. His round full face, so jejune and so fresh, was profiled by the fire, and it fully revealed his pudgy, uptilted nose. It was an artless face, even a naive one, and Rufus studied it smilingly, but with inner irritation.
Purcell was answering Tom: “For the same reason your ancestors came here, Orville. Why didn’t they stay ‘where they belonged’?” His dull voice, so without emphasis, was like a thud in the room.
Tom was affronted. “My ancestors, Jim, were English gentlemen. …”
“Funny,” ruminated Purcell. “All ancestors were. Not a word about the bond servants, and the sweepin’s of the gutters of London, and the deported criminals, and the fellers who couldn’t get along with their neighbors and had to be kicked out. Oh, those poor fellers called it ‘freedom of religion,’ but they were just cantankerous Puritans who wanted lots of space where they could hang their religious opponents and burn those they called ‘heretics’ and ‘witches.’” He slumped deeper into his chair.
Aaron and Rufus burst out laughing, but Tom Orville was angered. “My grandfather often told me that his ancestors left England because of Bloody Mary. Their property was confiscated, their lives threatened, and they had to flee on the first clipper out of Liverpool.”
“Wonderful how our ancestors always had manor houses,” rumbled Purcell. “Mine lived in English slums, and when they got here they did good work.”
“My ancestors went to Maryland, under a special grant from the king,” said Joseph Baynes.
Purcell gave him one of his long and muddy and contemptuous stares. “Well, all I can say, Baynes, is that the Romans, who really got that grant, were mighty tolerant. Mighty tolerant. And it seems to me that I heard you once say that you didn’t like Romans. That,” he added, looking at Aaron, “sounds to me like ingratitude.”
“More whisky, gentlemen!” cried Aaron with glee, and this time the angered Tom and Joseph forgot their principles in their agitation, and allowed their glasses to be refilled. The night had definitely settled down outside, and the lamps were reflected in the black windows.
Tom and Joseph exchanged one of their mutually comforting glances. Then Joseph said, “You employ Germans, too, Mr. deWitt. The Irishmen hate them worse than they hate each other. There’s something about the Germans which maddens them, possibly because the Germans are so industrious and reliable, and will work for almost anything. You never hear a dependable German workman singing on the job, or making jokes. Work is a serious matter to a German.”
“Then why don’t you employ some Dutch on your damned local wrecks?” asked Purcell. “Failin’ apart, every man jack of them. Need some new capital and such, and new enterprise. Or, perhaps, new management. I’ve watched them stagger along, and expected every minute to see them collapse.”
A sick sinking came to Joseph, and now he vaguely understood why he had been pressed to stay longer tonight, an invitation never extended before. He was a subtle man, and Tom, his friend, sensed his fear.
Joseph tried to ward off what he felt was coming. “Mr. deWitt,” he said, and his voice was tight with apprehension, “one of these days there’s going to be grave trouble between the Irish and the Germans most of the railroads hereabouts are now employing. I’ve already heard of massacres, elsewhere, and murders. …”
“Massacre and murder entered very largely into the building of America, and I seriously doubt if they won’t enter again,” interposed Rufus. He, too, knew what was coming, and a large part of his weariness went away and all his senses became alerted. He folded his fingers lovingly about his whisky glass and, leaning his elbows on his knees, bent forward, his handsome and massive legs spread, his boots glimmering richly in the firelight. “Despite what Steve is always pleading, it still happens, and happens regularly, that wherever the wilderness is hacked down, man hacks down his neighbors, too, in a general blood-letting of trees and men.”
“Are you advocating murder, Rufe, as the price of advancing civilization?” asked Joseph, aghast.
“I’m advocating nothing,” said Rufus with good-natured impatience. “I’m just stating a fact. I suppose facts must sustain individual prejudices, to be accepted by a lot of people.”
“I love whisky, and I love facts,” said Aaron happily. Now his shrunken face was no longer wizened and drawn; vitality temporarily replaced the brownish-gray of his complexion. He turned on the sofa, looked past Purcell, and addressed Joseph in the frankest manner and with the friendliest and most reasonable of smiles:
“How are your Locals doing, Joe? Getting enough business to make them profitable?”
Joseph was not deceived. He thought bitterly: As if you don’t know all about it, you vicious little rascal! “I’m getting enough,” he answered, with tightness and reserve. “I don’t believe in gouging. I took Steve’s advice, and raised the passenger and freight rates. …”
Aaron arched his pointed eyebrows diabolically. “Steve told you that? Well, well. Unlike him, isn’t it? But good advice. You were undercutting us, in a way, and our customers were pointing you out to us as an excellent example of selfless business. What the hell do they want? Business run for the benefit of their own greed and interests? But, go on. You took Steve’s advice and you raised the rates. So you have a profit, and aren’t worried any longer.”
Joseph’s delicate face sharpened. Who told you I was worried? he asked inwardly. He said, “I’m not worried, sir. I treat my customers fairly.” His eyes retreated, and darkened, and he bit his lip.
“Fair from your standpoint, or fair from theirs?” asked Rufus with his affectionate display of interest.
Joseph did not answer, but Purcell lifted himself from his Gargantuan slump. “I often wondered how you squeezed out from under the Capital, Joe. You didn’t have no money, but you raised the interest, and you kept old Alex Peale from pullin’ you in. Miracle, eh, Joe?”
Joseph, who had forgotten Stephen’s part in his salvation, moved suddenly in his chair, pricked by the discomfort of his memory and a dim resentment of it, and by a sense of danger. “Miracle,” he answered, looking into those lightless slits of eyes, and hating the man who possessed them. He glanced openly at his watch, looked at Tom, who nodded. Aaron lifted his hand. “Now, don’t hurry, Joe. I wanted to talk business with you. Tell me, are you getting enough new ties at a reasonable price? Jim, here, said you weren’t doing business with any of the lumber companies in which he is invested.”
“I get my ties, when I need them, from Tom, who gives me a reasonable quotation.”
“I treat all my customers reasonably,” said Tom with tense defiance. He drew
a deep breath, and his fresh color brightened almost to a blush. “And if anyone wants to know, I am doing well, myself.”
“As Tom and I are ethical men, and believe there is a place in America for both large and small business, we are always at a loss to explain the unethical practices of expedient and avaricious men,” Joseph interposed, and his anger made him somewhat breathless. “They haven’t hurt us so far, for which we thank God.”
“It never is out of place to thank God,” said Aaron seriously, but his eyes danced. “Now I’m going to tell you boys something we intend to do, ourselves, as part of the program of an expanding America. We are looking over plans to run our road to Baltimore and Washington. Jim is interested in investing in this venture.” He paused.
Rufus played his part well. “Do you think it wise to discuss these plans as yet, with those not directly involved, Pa?” he asked gravely.
Aaron waved him away, with smiling indulgence. “Shut up, Rufe. Why shouldn’t Joe know, who is a railroader himself? Just a friendly discussion.”
Is it possible that he is suggesting that I invest in this big venture? Joseph asked himself incredulously, and with excitement. Visions rushed before him of such magnitude that he could hardly breathe comfortably. Where could he borrow the money? Old Steve, of course. He never failed a friend. Then the disquieting thought came to him that Stephen had already lent him five thousand dollars, none of which he had as yet repaid, for the simple reason that he could not repay it. His resentment quickened; it was unfair that such an astounding opportunity should be offered him when he had no money at all. Now Steve was a rich man, wasn’t he, or how could he have given five thousand dollars in cash so casually?
Purcell, who always knew so much, was watching Joseph narrowly, and now he muttered “humph” and spat into the fire.
“I’m being candid with you, Joe, as a friend of Steve’s,” said Aaron, smiling at the younger man so that his feline teeth were widely displayed through his bearded lips. “Got any money you can invest with us? A wonderful opportunity. You’ll never have such an opportunity again.”
Never Victorious, Never Defeated Page 12
