Captains and the Kings by Taylor Caldwell
I must go where there is peace and prayer and penance. It is all I want; there is nothing else. If you understood, even that little, you would say, 'Go, my sister. Everyone must find happiness, or at least peace, in his own way.'" "Happiness!" he exclaimed, with new and overpowering disgust. "What fool talks of happiness? There never was such a thing except for hypocrites and liars and the mad. There never was any peace, and never will there be in this world, and this world is all we know and all we'll ever know. We must make our own compromises with it, and accept it. But you want to run from it! If that isn't weakness and cowardice I'd like to know what it is." Again she shook her head hopelessly. She could not speak of the great love in her soul, her great and humble acceptance and joy in that acceptance, for it would only infuriate her brother more. She said at last, "I must go, dearest Joe. I have already made the arrangements. I leave tomorrow night. I did not tell you before, because I was afraid-afraid of my own vacillation-that you would persuade me- But nothing can turn me aside, now. Nothing. Not even you, Joe." She looked at him but he only stared at her with raw hate, a man betrayed and, he thought, betrayed with malice and smug satisfaction. He thought of Sean who had accused him with a cruelty surpassing his own, and had deserted him. So he said in so quiet a voice that Regina could hardly hear him, "Go, and go to hell, you slut. Go, the both of you. You weren't worth a year of my life. You weren't worth even one hour-either of you." "I know. Only I know, Joe," said Regina, and walked silently from the room. He watched her go. He had thought he had known all the desolation it was possible for a man to endure, but this was the worst of all. Now he would not put out his hand to stop his sister, even if he could have stopped her. She had become as dead to him as his brother, and as hateful. Regina went to her own room and knelt on her prie-dieu before the Crucifix on the wall, and she cried silently and tried to pray but there was only pain in her now and a last remembrance of her brother's face. Bernadette had been aroused in her room by the loud exclamations and shouts of her husband and had tiptoed into the long warm hall to listen. She had heard most of the conversation between Joseph and Regina, and she had felt a huge leap of exultation. Now she would be rid of that simpleton, Regina, and Joseph would finally realize that he had no one in the world but his wife, faithful, devoted, endlessly loving. Joseph did not appear the next day at all. When Regina, weeping, confided in Bernadette that she must go, and why, Bernadette made large dry eyes of sympathy and uttered the most tender words of encouragement and gave Regina the warmest embraces. "Of course I understand, love!" she cried. "I never knew anyone who had a vocation before, but I understand! You can't resist it. It would be a sin to resist. Don't worry about Joe. I will console him, and he'll come to accept it all, himself." So Regina was comforted and never knew she had been comforted by a young woman who despised her and was glad to see the last of her, and that her consolations had been false and hypocritical. The girl left in more peace than she had believed possible, clinging for a last moment to Bernadette, who accompanied her to the depot with her small luggage. She already looks like a nun, the dunce, thought Bernadette, as she murmured against Regina's cheek and uttered the most extravagant promises, with elation in her heart and the deepest relief. When Joseph finally appeared the day after Regina had left Bernadette was all indignation against Regina, and sympathy, but he looked at her and said, "We will not speak of her again, if you please."
Chapter 30
Joseph received an interesting letter from Mr. Spaulding one cool September day, addressed to the house in Green Hills. After its effusions of friendship and attachment, it said, with the utmost delicacy: Our friends accepted the contribution to the Party with grateful astonishment for your unequaled generosity, which, they declared, demonstrates your concern for the Commonwealth and her weal. They will at once attend to the other matters which 1 earnestly brought to their attention, and trust you will be gratified at the result. After loving inquiries concerning Joseph's family, Mr. Spaulding added the following: I should not be surprised if a mutual friend visited you almost immediately. If so, extend to him my obedient regard. Joseph immediately destroyed the letter. But he sat and considered the import with black and vengeful satisfaction. He needed that satisfaction for his life had become barely tolerable since Regina's "desertion," which was now but one piece with Sean's cruel accusations and flight. He felt alone as he had never felt alone in all his life before, and had some sentimentalist archly pointed out to him his wealth, his wife and his children, he would have burst out laughing and the sound would not have been pleasant. He had never before thought of using his family as a source of revenge, but in these days he thought of it constantly. Often, in the past, he had contemplated suicide, but only as a random if acute and very brief impulse. Now it intruded several times a day, and with it a passing but enticing sense of relief. He knew at last that a man should find his motivation for living in himself and not for others who could and would betray without any hesitation at all, and even with malevolence. Some men lived for their country, some for some incredible God, some for their families. But Joseph had come to realize that all these were externals, and had no identity with a man's own identity, except, possibly, he would think with wryness, that God who had-or the myth of Him- seduced his sister from her brother's house. That, to Joseph, was the utmost madness and the utmost secret betrayal of one's integrity. No abstract had verity in man's immediacy of needs and hungers and survival. Call this animalism, if you wish, Joseph would think. But what is there in man's history-except for a few demented saints who never knew the world anyway -but animalism? He had come to hate himself in that he had deprived his own youth of any joy or adventure or investigation into available pleasures, for his family. He wondered, sometimes, if he had not been a little mad, himself, in regarding his own existence as valuable only as it related to Regina and Sean, and that, in his personal individual self it was worthless. He would often think of Mr. Healey, who had lived only for himself and so had found life interesting, exciting, and rewarding, and had died in bliss. Mr. Healey had not died in sorrow, and not with black vengeance in his soul. Mr. Healey had never dedicated his life and his labor to others, had never considered others more meritorious than himself or more deserving, or that they should be served first before he was served. Consequently he had never been betrayed-he had never given others an advantage over him-and had never found a need to hate nor been provoked to hatred. So, by first thinking of himself and serving himself, he could be kind and often just and solicitous to others. In short, Mr. Healey had had self-esteem, which was an entirely different thing from pride, for which Joseph had never wanted. A man who lived for "others" killed the only thing which was valid in a man-his own consciousness of himself and his own identity. Self- obliteration was a crime against life. Joseph now held Sean and Regina as adversaries who had destroyed him, one with selfish cruelty, the other by finding Someone who needed her more than had her brother. "I do not understand you these days," Bernadette complained. "You were never a fatuous husband or father at any time, nor attentive to me as are other husbands to their wives. Do you not know that I love you dearly, and need you and your strength and comfort? You avoid me; you rarely speak, never smile. Who else do I have but you?" For an instant this shook Joseph out of his black thoughts and meditations. It was with harsh pity that he said to Bernadette: "Don't be a fool! Live for yourself, not for me or anyone else! You have-yourself. That is more important than your husband or your children. Never be dependent on anyone for anything. That is disastrous." Bernadette was taken aback, and she stared, her eyes filling with tears. "What does a woman have but her family-her husband?" Joseph had made a short but distracted gesture. "Think what that did to your mother," he said, and left his wife, who, for the first time in her young life felt the coldness of desolation, the terrible bleakness of it. Not even her father's "defection," as she called it, had stricken her like this. Her emotions, except for her passion for Joseph, were more or less superficial and explosive and short-lived