Captains and the Kings by Taylor Caldwell

  He I could not be moved. His life depended on it. Bernadette, pale and quiet, said, "This is my father's house. He will stay in it £s long as he lives, and I will never leave him. Send for his wife- and her child." { So Tom Hennessey had returned to his house and would remain there until he died. Joseph found a profound irony in this. He could even laugh quietly to himself at the irony. He was all courtesy to the grief-stricken Elizabeth, whom Bernadette hated. Elizabeth's little boy, Courtney, joined Rory and Ann Marie in the nursery. ; Bernadette wanted to say to Elizabeth, to wound her, "My husband : killed your husband," but her helpless and now devastated love for Joseph I prevented her. No matter what Joseph did, to her, to anyone else, her besottedness was not shaken though she now feared him. Her mother: Had Joseph really loved her mother? Yes, it was so. She, Bernadette, must § live with that all her life. Joseph's newspaper in Philadelphia expressed its sorrow for "the stricken governor," and prayed for his recovery. When Tom Hennessey died two years later-after an existence which had held no awareness of love or hatred or money or influence or power or even living-he was eulogized in the press as "the greatest and most humane Governor this Commonwealth has ever known. The defender of the weak, the upholder of the workingman, the staunch fighter for the Right, for Progress, the hater of corruption and exploitation, the patriot, the farsighted politician who had Dreams of a nobler America-this was Governor Thomas Hennessey, who was stricken down at the height of his struggle for the Nation. We grieve with his family. We pray for his soul." Tom was buried beside his wife, who had loved him.

  Chapter 31

  While in New York Joseph's friends said to him during a discreet meeting: "It would be impolitic for any of us, except you, Mr. Armagh, to approach Senator Enfield Bassett personally. The cartoonists are too favorable to him and he has only to lift a finger for them to lampoon anyone who tries-er-to talk reasonably to him. He did it with the more obstreperous of the Greenbackers, though they had to be careful there, considering that both the conservative Democrats and the more moderate Republicans opposed them." "I remember," said Joseph. "The radical Republicans joined with the Greenbackers, but we soon eliminated them from politics." "We didn't," said a gentleman from Austria-Hungary, smiling. "We were entirely against the gold standard for America, and helped your innocent President Lincoln to issue greenbacks to pay for his war, though there was no solid currency behind them. We had our hopes, then, that your government would continue to issue flat money instead of gold currency-for that is the sure way to-reorganize-a country." "Make it available for loot," said Joseph, who was not always deferential to his colleagues. "Money by government flat, not backed by gold and silver, inevitably bankrupts a country, doesn't it? But I thought you gentlemen were in accord that America was not yet ripe for total looting and for the introduction of Marxist Socialistic principles." He smiled at them with what they had long ago called his "tiger smile." "I am afraid," he said, "that you will have to wait a considerable time before America goes off the gold standard again, becomes Socialistic, and therefore ripe not only for looting but for conquest if not by arms then by bankers. Yes -a considerable time before America becomes the slave of the Elite. Perhaps, however, your sons-" "We have no time limits," said another gentleman. "We are patient." Another gentleman said, "Republics never survive, for their people do not like freedom but prefer to be led and guided and flattered and seduced into slavery by a benevolent, or not so benevolent, despot. They want to worship Caesar. So, American republicanism will inevitably die and become a democracy, and then decline, as Aristotle said, into a despotism. We can only work quietly and diligently for that day, for it is our nature," and he laughed a little. "No sensible man can endure to see fools voting in a free election, and deciding a nation's destiny for themselves. It goes against reason and right government. It is the highest and most distorted absurdity." "Still," said Joseph, "the people became militant against President Grant who was considering a third term, and called him 'Caesar.'" "We have said," said a gentleman from Russia, "that America is not ripe at this time either for democracy and her child, despotism. But the time will come. We will succeed in persuading your government to go off the gold standard and issue greenbacks by flat One way is through wars, but we have other methods, as you know, Mr. Armagh. Revolution, for instance, persuading the people that they are oppressed, and inciting incendiarism." "Catilina did that," said Joseph. "It seems to me that he was slaughtered." "He was before his time," said a gentleman from England. "Forty years later he would have succeeded. Now, in your country, we have only to turn your conservative Democrats into radicals, a hard task, but we may succeed. In defense, your radical Republican Party will have to become more conservative. This will confuse the people. But we have spoken many times of this before.