Chapter 33

One of his classmates said to Rory Armagh: “Your father is only an Irish whoremaster.”

Rory replied: “And your grandfather was a pious Puritan blackbirder, who baptised miserable savages and blessed them then spirited them into slavery, though it was against the law. Nothing like a few prayers on the way to the bank!”

“Hah!” said the other youth. “At least my father doesn’t sleep with his mother-in-law.”

Rory, the good-tempered and genial, had then almost beaten his opponent to death with a wild savagery he had never displayed before in all his vigorous life. He was immediately expelled, and returned to Green Hills, and his father, in Philadelphia, received a formal letter from the schoolmaster:

I regret to inform you, sir, that your son, Rory Daniel Armagh, has been expelled from this school because of a violent and unprovoked attack he made on young Mr. Anthony Masters during recess on April 12 inst., in the Yard. Mr. Masters has been confined to the infirmary with sundry lacerations and bruises and a broken arm and a Concussion, and his condition is serious. It is not believed he will be able to return to his classes for several weeks. Mr. Burney Masters, of Boston, who is a revered and distinguished member of Boston Society, is much incensed over this brutal punishment inflicted on his son and is considering legal action. It is only due to my importunities and beseechings that he is delaying such action and has it under advisement with his lawyers, of the notable concern of McDermott, Lindsay, Horace and Witherspoon. I have the good repute of Our School to consider, and this dastardly attack will hardly enhance the Reputation of our Institution, and there will be Discussions among Parents which will rebound upon the School. This is said because so many of our graduates have gone on to careers of distinction in Public Affairs and business, and never before has there been such an Incident.

It is unfortunate that young Mr. Armagh has been expelled only two months prior to his graduation from the School, but he invoked this disastrous contretemps and no one else. I regret that we cannot recommend him, as projected, to Harvard University, nor to Yale or Princeton, or any other Institution of repute and learning, despite Mr. Armagh’s scholastic record which heretofore led all others. No one deplores this Event more than do I, Your ob’ent Servant, Geoffrey L. D. Armstead.

Joseph returned at once to Green Hills with Charles Devereaux in a cold fury both against his son and Mr. Armstead, who was no favorite of his. Joseph said, on the train, “That damned supercilious old bastard! Prim-lipped Puritan and pecksniffer! I had to pay twice the fee to get that damned Rory enrolled at that school, among the Genteel Scions of Boston and New York and Philadelphia, to quote Armstead, and now see what he does! Ruins and disgraces himself, and humiliates me.”

Charles said, “Let us hear Rory’s story from himself. I know of Armstead. He would appear at Harvard when I was there, at teas and such, with his wife, who is a mean little brown hen of a woman, though of such Noble Ancestry, as she would confess, herself. They make a fine pair.”

“Of course, I know that Rory is a favorite of yours,” said Joseph, with an angry glance at his secretary. “If he had murdered young Masters you’d find some excuse for him.” He ran his lean fingers through his thick russet and white hair, and the implacable expression which everyone feared settled on his face. “What can we do to ruin Armstead?”

Charles gave this long consideration. “He is not a businessman. Inherited wealth, old family, sound investments, married into a rich family of the same calibre. No political background, and doesn’t mingle with politicians. Of course, there is always something, as we’ve found out in the past. But that would take time, and Rory is only seven weeks away from graduation, so we must get to work at once to have him reinstated. The only thing we can do—if it is at all possible—is to put pressure on Mr. Burney Masters, the father, to force his son to apologize publicly to Rory and withdraw his charges, and get Rory reinstated at once. Armstead could never refuse Mr. Masters. Masters is an alumnus of that school and has a large scholarship running.”

“Burney Masters,” said Joseph, frowning. “Didn’t he run against the Irish Mayor of Boston and lose?”

Charles smiled. He took out his notebook and pencil. “So he did. And isn’t the mayor a friend of yours? Didn’t you contribute to his campaign? It seems, if I remember correctly, that Mr. Masters ran on a Reform Platform and said some unkind things about the Boston Irish during the campaign. Not that that will do us any good, however. It was a miracle that the present mayor was elected under the circumstances. The mayor is hardly one who can put pressure on Mr. Armstead, who despises him. I believe the feeling is mutual.”

Charles leaned back in his comfortable chair in Joseph’s private coach and closed his clever gray eyes and thought for a considerable time. Joseph waited. Then Charles said “Ah!” in a deep and contented voice.

“Mr. Armagh, I do believe there is something. You will remember that all odds were with Mr. Masters for his election over the present mayor. Mr. Masters conducted a strong and determined campaign, and is an eloquent speaker, and put a lot of money of his own into that campaign, and had the backing of all the Beacon Street élégantes and gentry. The present mayor was too florid—and too Irish—to be very effective, except among his own, and his way of dancing a little jig and singing an Irish ballad or two on the platform did not enhance his repute among the Proper Bostonians, though his own enthusiastically applauded him. Mr. Masters not only led, according to the Boston newspapers, but his dignity and presence, as they called it, ‘boded well for an administration which would not be soiled and corrupt as the previous one was, but one of which Bostonians could be proud and vindicated as citizens of an honorable city.’

“Then,” concluded Charles, “something happened during the last three weeks of the campaign. Mr. Masters made fewer and fewer public appearances. His speeches were weaker and more restrained, and less pejorative. He seemed to have lost steam. He made no appearance at all during the last week, and refused newspaper interviews except for one mild plea for his election. His posters disappeared. His people made no more house-to-house calls. There were no more bulletins on Major Issues. Now, that is very interesting. I wonder what happened to Mr. Masters?”

“I wondered at the time, myself,” said Joseph, sitting up and looking at Charles with interest. “I asked Old Syrup, as we called him, and he only smiled that peculiar Sphinx-like smile the Irish can assume when they have ‘something under their nose’ which they prefer not to make public. So, he had something on Masters, something lethal. It must have been very good. Charles, send him a telegram in my name tonight and take a letter from me to him tomorrow.”

“He’s a wily character,” said Charles. “He wants to be governor, and he won’t do anything, even for you, which will jeopardize that.”

“But I know something very lethal, myself, about Old Syrup,” said Joseph, with great satisfaction. “If he wants to be governor he had better not antagonize me. I think we have concluded the problem. In the meantime I will deal with Rory.”

“With fairness and restraint, I hope,” said Charles. This time Joseph smiled a little.

The two men were met by a wailing Bernadette who exclaimed at once, “Your son! He has disgraced us forever! And I was such friends with Emma Masters, who leads Boston society, and we were received almost everywhere in Boston! The Armsteads were gracious to us, too, on more than one occasion, and were most civil. Now, we will be outcasts in Boston, humiliated and ignored and snubbed, all due to your son’s extravagant temper and viciousness and violence—attacking a refined young gentleman like young Masters!”

Only Charles saw that she felt considerable secret elation over this episode, for she believed that Rory would no longer be so loved by his father, and therefore would no longer be her rival. Joseph glared at her and said. “Refined young gentlemen do not provoke attacks. I will be in my study. Send Rory to me at once.”

“If you do not punish him severely you will be lacking in your Duty, Joe,” said Bernadette, a little dismayed at Joseph’s reception of her complaint. “To think he would have been graduated from that distinguished school in June, with honors, and now he will not graduate, he will be accepted only in the lowest establishments and will not be admitted to Harvard, and he has ruined his future!”

“Send Rory to me,” said Joseph, and left her abruptly. Charles accompanied him. By the time they had reached Joseph’s rooms Joseph was again in an icy rage against his son, for he had had to leave important business in Philadelphia. Joseph did not like intrigues for intrigue’s sake, and only indulged in them when absolutely necessary.

Rory, immaculately dressed as always, and resplendently handsome in spite of an impressive black eye, came at once to the study. His high color was a little subdued. He wore a curious expression of reserve and tightness, like his father’s, but Charles had never seen this before on the lad’s face, usually so open and twinkling and mirthful.

Joseph let him stand before him like a penitent. “So,” he said, “my son is a boisterous and murderous hooligan, is he? Without any thought at all he tries to destroy his own future, which has already cost his father a pretty penny, sir. What have you to say for yourself?”

Rory said, and his cynical blue eyes were averted, “He insulted—you—Pa.”

Charles stood behind Joseph’s chair, and he tried to catch the seventeen-year-old youth’s eye, but failed. There was a heavy sullenness on Rory’s usually merry mouth, and a secretiveness.

“Now,” said Joseph, “that’s a very fine sentiment, I am thinking, protecting your father’s honor. Look here, Rory, I have never concealed my activities from you. I have told you many times that businessmen are not concerned with legal or illegal activities, so long as they don’t engage the attention—too keenly—of the law, and even then that can be surmounted. Business is business, as it has been said over and over. It has no particular ethics. It has only one standard: Will something succeed or not? We are not the Salvation Army or Morality Troops. We deal with a hard and exigent world, and so have to be hard and exigent too, if we are not to be bankrupts. I’ve told you this often, and I thought you understood.”

He paused and looked at Rory. But Rory, with rare stubbornness, was staring at his feet. He did not look defiant in an immature way, or rebellious as many youths appear when castigated by a father. He had the appearance of someone who is protecting something, or someone. However, only Charles noticed this, and not Joseph, who was growing coldly angry again.

Rory said, “He called you—names.”

Joseph’s thin mouth tightened even more. “Rory, I have been called every name you can imagine, and many more. Some I have deserved; some I have not. It is of no importance to me and should not be of importance to you. I thought you understood that. You will be called names, too, in the future. If you are sensitive to name-calling then you had better settle for a clerkship in one of my offices, or teach in some obscure little school, or open a shop. Now, Rory let us put this nonsense aside. I will do what I can to get you reinstated. I think it is possible.”

“My marks,” said Rory, without looking at his father, “are high enough so that I don’t need to return to that school. I excelled in all the curriculum. I didn’t even have to take the last examination; my record stood for itself. Old Armstead knows that. He is only being malicious because he hates you. Pa, and me—because we are Irish. He’d do anything to frustrate you. You will remember how he opposed my entry into his damned stupid school.” Now the boy flushed and he looked at his father with an anger equaling Joseph’s own. “I resent it that you had to pay double to get me enrolled there!”

“Who told you that?” asked Joseph sharply.

“Old Armstead, himself, with that spittle-satisfaction of his, four days ago.”

Joseph and Charles exchanged a glance.

“If I can’t make my way with my own endowments in any damned school or college I don’t want it!” exclaimed Rory, his face deepening in color. “I won’t be mortified any longer!”

Joseph’s tone was gentler when he spoke. “You have to face the facts of life. Rory, and I don’t like it that you are beginning to sound Noble. Endure humiliations, but bide your time for your revenge, and never forget. The day will always come when you can repay. I know. But once a man begins to feel Noble he is already defeated. If he won’t fight, then he’d better tuck his tail between his legs and slink away. That’s the law of life, and who are you to defy it?”

Charles said, “Every man has to endure belittlement for one thing or another, Rory. He has to make his compromises, though without weakness. If he can conceal something about himself which is injurious, then he should do so. If he has nothing really deadly to be ashamed of, but it is said that he has, then he should fight.”

Rory was extremely fond of Charles, but now he said to him with bitterness, “That is all very well for you, Charles, but you are a Devereaux of Virginia and no one could ever unjustly point a finger at your parents, or yourself.”

There was a sudden long silence. Charles looked again at Joseph who shook his head peremptorily. But Charles drew a deep breath and said, “You are wrong, Rory. I am a Negro.”

Rory flung up his head and gaped at Charles, his mouth opening. “What!” he cried incredulously.

Charles nodded, with a beautiful and amiable smile. “My mother was also a Devereaux, by blood, but she was born a slave, and she bore me, an illegitimate darkie, to my father.”

Rory stared wide-eyed at Charles’s yellow hair, sharp features and gray eyes. He looked stunned.

“Rory,” said Charles, “if someone asked me if I were a Negro I would say yes. I feel no disgrace, no inferiority. But it is my affair, my secret if you will have it so. It is no business of anyone else’s. Before, say—Divinity—there is no color, no race. There are only Men. But the world doesn’t know that, and so a man often has to protect himself from undeserved malice and cruelty. He keeps any harmful secret to himself.”

Joseph was moved as he had rarely been moved before. That the proud Charles Devereaux should risk telling a seventeen-year-old youth such a dangerous secret told Joseph more than anything else of Charles’s loyalty to him and his attachment to his family. Joseph was not a man for gestures, but he put his hand briefly on Charles’s arm.

Rory was still staring at Charles, and now the stony hardness of his young and vital face softened. “By golly,” he said, almost in a whisper. He thought. Then he said, “I guess I’m not the man you are, Charles.” However, the secretiveness had returned to his eyes, and Charles saw it.

“I reckon,” Charles said, “that young Masters didn’t only call your father an Irish something-or-other, but said something else about him.”

“Yes,” said Rory, after a long pause.

“It can’t be very important,” said Joseph, still touched. “What was it, Rory?”

Rory was silent. He was staring at his boots again and the heavy flush had come back to his face.

“Well?” demanded Joseph with impatience.

“I can’t tell you, Pa.”

“Is it that disgraceful?” Joseph was smiling again.

“To me, it is,” said Rory.

“My God, lad, don’t be a fool. You know what I am. I’ve never pretended to be anything different from what I am. I never hide anything, though I don’t shout it to the skies. I’m not concerned with people’s opinion of me, nor should you be.”

“Suppose, Mr. Armagh,” Charles intervened, “that we let Rory have his own little secret. Later, he’ll laugh at it. Every man is entitled to one little secret of his own, isn’t that so, Rory?”

“Maybe Pa doesn’t want this to be known, or talked about,” said Rory and he looked at his father with such poignant love that Charles was shaken. But Joseph was curious and did not notice the emotion in his son’s eyes.

“If young Masters knew it, then everybody knows it,” said Joseph.

“But, it is a lie!” Rory cried out. “A dirty lie! I couldn’t let a lie like that pass, before the whole school!”

Something dangerous flickered between Joseph’s eyelashes. He considered his son. The truth did not occur to him. He had been most careful, most discreet, in one single area of his life, more completely secretive than ever before, and he did not think of that one area now for he believed that only he and one other knew about it.

He said, “I hope you aren’t turning into a dainty milksop, Rory. Lies are told by the thousands about me. It doesn’t matter; I don’t care. But what was this particular lie that so inflames you? We can settle it between ourselves.”

A look of complete despair, but of increased stubbornness, fell over Rory’s face. He shook his head. “I can’t, I won’t, tell you, Pa.”

Joseph stood up so suddenly, and with so ferocious a face, that even Charles fell back. Joseph said in a quiet but terrible voice, “Don’t defy me, you young jackanapes. Don’t tell me you ‘can’t’ or ‘won’t.’ I’ll not have that impudence from you, that lack of respect, that insult. Out with it!”

Charles had recovered himself. He said, “Mr. Armagh, suppose you let Rory tell me what it is, between us two, and let me be the judge? Would that satisfy you, Rory?”

But Rory was shaking his head. “I’d never repeat it to anyone!”

Joseph hit his son fiercely across the face, the way he had hit his brother, Sean. But, unlike Sean, Rory did not collapse, did not burst into tears, did not turn away. He rocked on his heels for a moment, then straightened himself, and looked at his father steadily, almost expressionless. The mark of Joseph’s hand flared out on his cheek.

Regret was not a common emotion for Joseph, but all at once, as he stared at his son he felt regret and a kind of deep shame. The boy was fearlessly confronting him in silence. He would endure any punishment to protect his father, and Joseph suddenly understood that and his regret deepened to remorse. Charles stood in silence, a little aghast.

But Joseph said, in his grudging tone, “All, right, then, you wretched young spalpeen, you can keep your damned silly secret, and be damned to you, if your secret is so precious. Who cares about it? I thought you had more sense, and more manhood, than to be affected by lies. I never was. I have accepted humiliations you haven’t heard of yet—and bided my time. There was only one thing I could never have accepted, and that would have been a filthiness against my parents, my father or my mother.”

Rory looked aside. He did not speak. Charles saw that his cheek was quivering. Joseph tried to smile. “There is very little, my son, that would be a real calumny against me. So, take it with more ease than you did this time. Very well. You may go.”

Rory bowed shortly to his father and then to Charles. It was at Charles that he looked directly, and it was with great respect and a glint of admiration. Then he left the room, walking stiffly, his head held high, his shoulders squared. When he had gone Joseph shook his head and laughed his grating laugh.

“It seems that no matter what I’ve told him, and let him know, about myself, he still is squeamish. I don’t like that, Charles.”

“He has courage, and that is a rare virtue,” said Charles. “He is like a rock. He won’t give way; he won’t crumble. It’s not so much a matter of rectitude, but of honor.”

Joseph was pleased. But he shrugged. “There’s no place for honor in this world,” he said. “My father never understood that, and so he perished. Well, then. Let us get on with the matter of the Honorable Mr. Masters.” He looked at Charles. “Yes, the lad has courage, hasn’t he? I hope it is the right kind. What do you think young Masters said about me, Charles?”

But Charles did not know. However, he wondered how Anthony Masters had come by his knowledge. Someone had been indiscreet. Charles did not know that it was Bernadette who had babbled to her “dear friend, Emma Masters,” in a moment of wine-induced lachrymose confidence, and the meek pious Emma, always avid for tidbits which could injure others, had told her husband, and her son had overheard. Like all well-kept secrets, it had been simple to discover. Bernadette did not even remember that hazy evening and the false sympathy of which she had been the victim. Had she remembered she would have been terrified of Joseph’s knowing, but that was the only thing that was important about the matter. Besides, she would have thought, Joseph’s infidelities were well known. One more was insignificant, though this was the most unbearable of all. She had discovered it when she was the least aware of discovering anything.

The affair of Mr. Burney Masters was absurdly easy for Charles to conclude, far easier than many others he had concluded. He did it with almost immediate dispatch.

“Old Syrup,” the Mayor of Boston, was happy to receive a communication from his dear friend, Joseph Armagh—“We got to stick together, us Irish, for damn me if anyone else will ever stick with us”—which implied that if it was his Honor’s desire to be governor Mr. Armagh would oblige him with, a breath-taking campaign contribution, or, better still, if he desired to be a senator Mr. Armagh was on the most amiable terms with many of the Massachusetts members of the legislature. In fact, Mr. Armagh’s influence in Washington, itself, was stupendous.

“Old Syrup” enthusiastically hated the Brahmins of Boston who had tried to defeat him, had humiliated him and despised him during his struggling and desperate political career, and had exploited him and starved him in their manufactories and mills in his earliest youth. He gave Charles Devereaux a quick and friendly vignette of those days, as they sat together drinking brandy and smoking cigars in the mayor’s lavish offices in City Hall. His first young wife had died of “the consumption” for lack of food and warmth and adequate shelter. During her funeral Mass the church had been invaded by street vandals—inflamed by their masters—and her very poor wooden coffin had been befouled, as well as the Host. The priest had been beaten unconscious, and the mourners scattered with blows. “Even the little colleens.”

“I tell you, sir,” said the mayor to Charles Devereaux, “not even the darkies in the South was ever treated the way us Irish was treated in this country, I am thinking. You’re a Southerner, sir? I heard it in your voice. Slaveowners, eh? But you took care of them. You’ve got to be oppressed, Mr. Devereaux sir, or your people oppressed, to know what it’s like.” He looked at Charles’s patrician face and fine clothing with a sort of belligerence. “But, you don’t know, do you?”

“I have some imagination, your Honor,” said Charles, with a smile.

“Well, your Dad and your Mum was probably rich plantation owners. Don’t matter. I don’t hold grudges. Well, not many, anyway. We Irish got long memories. We don’t forget easy. Well. So Joe wants to put a hard hand on Burney Masters, does he?”

Charles had laid a thick sheaf of gold banknotes on the desk at the very beginning, and in some admirable fashion they had disappeared as if into blank air. Nothing was said about them, out of respect, not even a word of thanks.

Mr. Burney Masters, about four years ago, had been caught in flagrante delicto with a pretty young shoeshine lad only twelve years old. “Right there, in his own garden, on Beacon Hill,” said the fat mayor, with glowing satisfaction and many chuckles. “I’d bin havin’ him watched for a long time. He had that sweet pursy look that men like him have, that lovin’ look. I’d met his kind before. You wouldn’t think it now, sir, but I was a good-lookin’ lad, me-self, and was approached by the Masters, many the time. Right in the mills. They got the certain look: Anxious. Tender. Lookin’ out for your interests. Always talkin’ concern, and the like, and helpin’ a lad out, advance himself. Soft gentle hands. Writin’ letters to the newspapers, deplorin’-like ‘exploited labor.’ Gettin’ themselves a reputation for Good Deeds. Sufferin’ for The People. Good causes. Whigs. Busy like bees, protestin’. Now, I don’t say every man like that is what Masters is, but a hell of a lot of them are. They don’t care much for the wimmin, and the girls. Just lads.” The mayor shook his huge head deploringly. “Scholars, a lot of them. Some of them write books, exposin’ one thing or another. Gives me pleasure, sometimes, to expose ’em, too.”

It seems that the shoeshine lad was not the only one. There was also a very young handyman in the Masters’ household who, with a little urging, revealed considerable data concerning himself and other boys and Mr. Burney Masters. “So,” said the mayor, leaning back in his chair, “we had him. A word or two. And that’s how he lost the election. Well, glad to mention it to Mr. Masters, in Joe’s behalf, and that Rory of his. Consider it settled.”

It was. Within a few days Rory was back at his school. Young Anthony Masters, from his infirmary bed, confessed he had “unbearably provoked” Rory by “defaming his father.” “Something,” Mr. Armstead said virtuously, “no manly youth could endure, and certainly no gentleman. We are sad that it led to bad temper and violence, but One can Understand. The Age of Chivalry and Honor has not yet departed.”

Rory, resentful inwardly but smiling outwardly, was graduated with honors in June. He did not know how it had all come about but he knew his father was potent. He would have preferred to have beaten young Anthony Masters all over again, but, because of Joseph, Rory restrained himself and kept his eyes fixed ahead, though Anthony stood beside him.

Rory was valedictorian of his class, something he had earned himself, and something he did not owe his father. He and Joseph were both proud, and even Bernadette shed a few public tears and almost forgave Rory for his father’s love. In September Rory entered Harvard. He was to graduate four years later summa cum laude.