Dynasty of Death Page 6

  Forestalled about Bouchard, George sat glowering at his feet, puffing violently at his pipe. He hated Bouchard; he might have known that dirty little Frenchman would betray him some way. If the time ever came … He lifted his suffused eyes, glaring and repudiating, to his brother. How did he know that the gunpowder was any good? He might take Joseph into a partnership, a very small partnership, mind you, and then after it was all signed and sealed, might discover that the gunpowder was not practicable, not worth making. At this, Joseph grinned a little bitterly. If George had such doubts of the gunpowder, why had he sent for his brother and his brother’s family? He knew George too well, he said quietly and gently, to believe that it was brotherly love and kindness. No, George had sent for him because he knew he had something worth while, worth its weight in gold. Joseph’s eyes were now cold and bright as ice, and as implacable.

  George uncrossed his knee, his face suddenly crimson and swollen. He stamped his foot on the floor. He began to bluster again, this time with real, impotent rage. This was a fine how-do-you-do; no gratitude. This is what a man got for doing his brother a good turn. He should have listened to Daisy; there was a woman with a brain. Now Joseph, to show his gratitude, was proposing to enjoy the profits of something he had not earned as yet. It was a bloody fine business, this. You take a man into your home, give him the best of everything, put up with the noise and the expense and the inconvenience, give him a job at ten dollars a week, for practically no return, and what do you get? This—this blow in the back.

  Joseph said nothing at all. He just watched his brother, half smiling, very pale and composed, leaning forward a little with his elbows on his slim thighs, his delicate hands tightly clasped together on his knees. There was something fine-drawn and handsome about his slight body and well-shaped lean head and dark face. Though his clothing was shabby and frayed, he made his brother look a boor. He looked as though he might burst into laughter, bitter and acid.

  Suddenly George changed his tactics. He would be generous after all, wasn’t Joe his only brother? He would do the right thing. Look here, suppose he were to give Joe fifteen dollars a week and build him a nice little cottage down the street? There, that was a proposition fit for a prince! And even if the gunpowder turned out to be nothing at all, Joe would still get fifteen dollars a week, perhaps more in time. Now then! He beamed at Joseph, sweating visibly with admiration at his own generosity. His eyes, pale bulbous eyes, glistened as though with tender tears.

  Joseph gently shook his head. A partnership, or nothing. Now, he had something to offer. If the gunpowder was no good, then Joseph would allow the partnership to be dissolved. He would then continue to work for ten dollars a week. George knew he was worth ten dollars a week, at least. Look at the work he was already getting from the three men in the shop. He was a good foreman of men.

  George’s broad red face became cold and hating as he listened. It was the face of a man who would always be Joseph’s enemy to the day of his death. But it was a defeated face, and, conscious of its defeat, would never soften to friendliness for Joseph again. Sweat glistened on his forehead, on the upper, shaved lip. George twisted his jaw from side to side, his brutal eyes fixed with hate on the younger man. His broad chest heaved rapidly. He tried one last thing. Suppose he refused entirely, suppose he discharged Joseph. What then? He watched Joseph, but if he expected to see him disconcerted he was disappointed.

  Joseph shrugged carelessly. Well, then, in that case, he was sorry, but he had heard of a man who had a large factory in Philadelphia, much larger than George’s little place. He would write to him, if George did not wish the idea. He, Joseph, had saved his money for four weeks, and he now had forty dollars. It would more than take him to Philadelphia. And in the meantime, of course, he was certain that Madam Bouchard would house his family for a little while.

  The veins started out savagely on George’s forehead as he listened to this. His face swelled, turned dusky. He sprang to his feet with an oath, his fists clenched. In a low and violent voice, more frightful than a loud voice, he cursed the little Bouchard, blasphemed, foamed at the corners of his mouth. The dirty little bastard! The Frenchy! The unprintable, the unspeakable! He raised his fists, he shook them in the air, he threatened, vomiting his words into Joseph’s face. His teeth glittered, and the neck, above the white cravat, swelled into purple. So! Joseph had done this to him, betrayed him, discussed this betrayal with Bouchard, that—! They had plotted thus against him, he to whom they both owed everything, their bread, the roof over their heads, their work, their hope of success! They had done this to him!

  “We owe you naught a thing,” said Joseph, his cool low voice breaking into the savage storm. “Armand put twice as much money into your shop as you did, Georgie, and I know it. He’s putting his wits into it, now, too. You’d be naught without him, and you know that. As for me—well, you sent for me because you knew I had something valuable. Now I know you are a born cheat. I’ll never believe you an honest man again. I know all about you, and I’ll know when to watch you. You are a liar and a thief. Hear me, a liar and a thief. Choke that in your dirty throat. And now, if you want me and my gunpowder, you’ll make it a full partnership, and I’ll pick the notary so that there’ll be no cheating, no holes for you to slip out of.” He paused, and then repeated, heavily, tiredly: “A liar and a thief. Come, where is your paper and your pen?”

  George knew he was beaten. He was not at all a fool, and though he was never to forgive his brother, was always to be his enemy, he knew the silliness of sustained wrath and outward resentment. As he brought out writing equipment and set it on the white-veined black marble table-top, he became cautiously friendly again. That lad, Ernest! There was a lively un, for a fact! A lad to be proud of. Good blood in him. A man could make something of him. It was hard that young Martin was such a milksop, like a lass. And two girls were a hard load for a man to carry these days. How would Joe like to go over to Garnerstown some night soon? Joseph, who had been sharpening the pen absently, looked up in surprise. He was more surprised to see George, whose smiling pink face was beaming, winking his eye knowingly. Garnerstown, repeated Joseph, a little puzzled. There was a nice lass or two there, explained George, still smiling fixedly, but obviously annoyed at his brother’s stupidity. Two or three nice houses, where a man could get good whiskey and good entertainment. Joseph stared at him. A faint distaste and disgust twisted his insides. Suddenly he loathed George, not for the suggestion he had just made, but for the sliminess of his proffered offer that bygones be bygones. “Shakin’ hands over a whore,” he thought with revulsion. He made himself smile, but there was no smile in his eyes. “Later on,” he said carelessly. He continued to sharpen his pen. Hilda. Poor little Hilda, in there with that bitch of a Daisy looking down her nose at her! Hilda, whom he loved more than himself. He had to restrain a sudden desire to thrust the sharp point of the quill into George’s pink soft flesh at this insult to Hilda. But, God, please God, there would be a day! A day!

  The partnership paper was soon written, in plain, short and simple words. Joseph signed it, after George’s careful signature. There it was, partnership in the shop. No holes for George to wiggle through in his sleek sliminess. Tomorrow the notary would attest it. And then they would make the new gunpowder.

  George wiped his forehead with a large silk kerchief, jingled his gold chains, rocked back on his heels. He was not too dissatisfied. What was done was done. All at once he was overwhelmingly confident and jubilant; it were as though something psychic had whispered to him of the future. He almost trembled with a strange exultation. “We haven’t shaken hands on it!” he cried.

  Reluctantly, slowly, Joseph put his cold hand in his brother’s large hot palm. They shook hands.

  And, at the precise moment that they shook hands across the paper of their contract, there came such a flare of lightning, such a bellow of thunder, that the very earth shuddered, seemed to heave, seemed to silence, for a ghastly space, all small earthly sounds into
appalled nothingness. And there was another, and still another crash, splintering the air, filling it with an odor like that of brimstone, rocking the houses, blasting distant trees, rolling like great wheels across the hills. It was like a terrible prophecy of doom.

  It was for all the world like the uproar of enormous artillery, such as men had not yet dreamed of, or known.

  CHAPTER V

  “Why shouldn’t he love the bloody country, that Frenchy?” George demanded contemptuously of his brother as they walked home together from the little shop. “He had to leave France or lose his head—what a blasted country it must be! He’s got to like this hole, or choke on it. Much good it’ll do him, the little runt, to hate America. He ain’t got a home to go back to, like us.”

  “Like us,” repeated Joseph mechanically. He looked about him. Beyond the river, with its increasing traffic, were flat green fields, vaster than the fields of England, shimmering under evening light that was still brilliant. Beyond the fields, so fertile and waiting and rich, were the hills, fold on fold of bronze velvet, with here and there the living bonfire of some tree touched by early frost. And above these hills spread the tremendous skies, so uncluttered, so majestic, seeming to surrender themselves up to a glory of golden sunset that palpitated from horizon to horizon. Not a niggardly, watery little sunset, this, but a lake of welling light that seemed to rise from some awesome and celestial source. Everything was so large, so open, so vast, and yet in its very immensity so serene and pellucid that Joseph felt an inability to speak for a few moments. Here was something that, though it dwarfed man and his little heats, yet made him feel significant and holy, made him part of the Godhead that had created this and now appreciated it. It made man conscious of his consciousness, made him grateful that he lived so he could know it. This moment of realization was worth more than anything else on earth. For one solemn moment Joseph believed, without putting it into words, that nothing in his past life and nothing in his future life, could be as important, so full of significance, as this moment.

  He did not want to speak, hated his brother for speaking. George’s voice was like a cock’s crowing in a cathedral at the moment the host is raised.

  “When I’ve got two thousand pounds, I’m out of this blasted country,” said George. “Not that I’m going back to Lancashire and the rain. The South. Or London, fog or no fog. Where a man can live and enjoy himself. Perhaps, though,” he added thoughtfully, “I’d best make it four thousand pounds.”

  Joseph was silent. He was sick of his brother, sick of his slyness and cunning and brutishness. He knew that George was in some manner afraid of him, and recognized that he often tried to placate him, as if uneasily conscious of Joseph’s opinion of him. But Joseph also knew that there was no real regret in George for the loss of his brother’s esteem and affection; there was only an uneasiness that Joseph might find out more about him, more that might be dangerous. Like most petty scoundrels, he wanted the respect of honest men, for this respect meant that the honest men were still deluded, still open to exploitation.

  “That lad Ernest, of yours,” said George, panting a little from their climb up the bare slope that led from their shop. “That lad Ernest. A lively un. Fourteen, isn’t he? And, by God, worth twice as much as most men, three times as much as Tom Wilkins! He’s got a head on him. Understands. And no whining, though he’s there from sunup to sundown.” He paused, moistened his lips furtively as he gave Joseph a sidelong look. “He was telling me today about a new idea you and he had, Joe, about pistols. About triggers.”

  “Ah,” said Joseph.

  George rolled his lower lip outwards. “Well?” he said with asperity. “We’re partners, ain’t we?”

  “In the gunpowder,” reminded Joseph, savoring the situation. “The pistol’s not ready, yet. Perhaps I’ll tell you about it. And perhaps not.” He smiled full at his brother. “One thing at a time, Georgie. There’s nothing to show the gunpowder’s any good yet. We’ve got to wait.”

  They had stopped at a division in the road that led to the two separate sections of Newtown. There was the upper road with many of the holes filled in going toward the houses on higher ground, where George lived, and the rutty, rock-filled, muddy road that led toward the poorer section of shacks, cabins and lean-tos, where Joseph lived, as also did Armand Bouchard.

  Joseph wanted to go on, but George uneasily lingered, so his brother began to whistle tunelessly, and stared at the sky.

  “Look here,” said George, “you and Hilda ain’t dropped in to see us for a long time. Daisy was just speaking of it last night.”

  “Liar,” thought Joseph. But he said nothing, merely continuing to whistle; however, he watched George thoughtfully.

  “Come to tea, Sunday,” George suggested, his voice friendly but a low crimson beginning to creep through the folds of his broad face.

  Joseph shrugged. “I’ll ask Hilda.” He touched his hat with a careless gesture, almost with mockery. “Good night. I’d best be getting along.”

  He thrust his hands in his pockets and started down the lane, still whistling. As he walked his broken boots kicked up pale clouds of dust, that turned gold in the sunset. His narrow shoulders were hunched up a little, and his thick black hair sprayed out between the lifted collar and the brim of the shabby tall hat. His coat was shabby and frayed, but every button was on the broad sleeves, and the white shirt was immaculate. His tight pantaloons showed legs slim and graceful as a girl’s for all their patches. He moved quickly, almost jauntily; almost, he swaggered. A few trees, ragged with yellow leaves, bent over the road, and each time that Joseph emerged from their infrequent shadow into the last hot beams of the sun he seemed consciously to increase his jauntiness, as if he had an audience. The fact was that he was disgusted and lonely, and depressed.

  George watched him go. He closed and unclosed hands held rigidly at his side. He despised his brother. His broad face grimaced as if the taste on his tongue were repellent.

  “I wonder if he’s told Bouchard?” he thought. “The dogs had their heads together all day. They’re as thick as thieves, always in each other’s house. Their kids falling on top of each other. All except Ernest. I might be able to get around the lad, for all he’s as sly as a fox.”

  As he walked along Joseph’s depression lifted a trifle. He began to smile. Trust Ernest to torment Georgie. A clever lad. He could do with this bit of cheer tonight, with Hilda everlastingly crying from homesickness, and little Martin getting thinner and paler all the day, and the little girls whining with the heat. No one could see this country, and all these things, as he saw them. Why, by god, a man could live here! He could grow big, like it. He was sick of this talk of “going home”; that’s all he heard. There had been a time when he, too, had talked of “going home,” but no longer. There was something here, something he could not as yet define, but it was here, waiting to be taken. None of his family knew it as yet, but he had applied for citizenship.

  Citizen. Not a subject. A Citizen. Oh, perhaps it was a lot of bloody nonsense: Englishmen were as free as Americans, even if they were “subjects.” But, by God, there was power in a word. The wrong word could make a chap’s shoulders sag, the right one could straighten them. Only children and women enjoyed being subjects, for it meant being taken care of, protected. But a man didn’t need protection, damned if he did. “Citizen” might make him feel out in the cold, without a ragtag of protection to cling to; it might make him feel that he could win gloriously or fail most miserably, without any great stir on the part of Government or even of neighbors. But it did put his back up; it did set him down hard on his own two feet. And after the first hard jolt, a man liked that. Just as he liked these vast calm skies, the wide cold rivers, the great green hills. These were all indifferent to him, but only in a setting like this could a man enjoy his success, realize that in his own way he was as mighty. A big and terrible land, but the land for a man. The men who made England were not the men who huddled for protection on her little plo
ts of land or dreamt their lives away in small rose-covered cottages. They were the men who left England for large places, places they conquered—tremendous gems that adorned a crown that otherwise would be small and mean.

  Oh, this was a mighty land! One probably could never love it as one loved that “tight little isle,” but such insular love was only for failures who concealed their failures, like the dead, under flowery mounds of prejudices, habits of mind, country philosophies, protection. One could love only a small place that was familiar and safe and without alarms. No, one could not love this mighty land like that. It was too full of wind for timid lungs, and its mountains were too high for gentle eyes, and its plains too terrifying. But one could reverence it, worship it, die for it as one died for a heroic ideal. And when one succeeded in it how mountain-like was that success, and how as impersonal!

  Joseph thought these things, and though he thought without articulate words he felt the lofty impulse of them, felt within himself an icy power and vitality he had never known before. His step lost its jauntiness, but it took on firmness. His slight, delicately knit body became erect. What did Newtown matter, or George, or anxiety, or uncertainty? All that mattered was this heroic Land.