Captains and The Kings by Taylor Caldwell Page B

abroad on such a gloomy night of drizzle and chill, and Joseph's pounding footsteps echoed throughout the square. A street, among others, led off it, named Philadelphia Terrace, and here was the gritty and forlorn rooming house in which Joseph Armagh lived, and where he had had his determined and hopeful dreams for nearly three years. It was a little woeful house, more decayed than its neighbors, and sagging and dilapidated, its clapboards pulling from the walls, its door splintered. One streetlamp, belching the odor of gas, lighted it feebly, which was an advantage for there was not a light in the house. It was past eight o'clock and all decent folk were in bed for the work tomorrow. Joseph pushed open the unlocked door and by the light of the streetlamp he made his way to the table on which his own lamp stood, filled and cleaned and ready to be carried up the creaking stairs which reeked of mold and dust and rodents and cabbage. He fumbled for the lucifers which were deposited in an open-nailed-tin box on the table, and lighted his lamp, and the yellow light smoked for a moment or two. He closed the door and lifted the lamp and made his way upstairs, every step snapping under his feet. The still cold inside the house was more penetrating even than that outside, and Joseph's shivering returned. His room was hardly more than a closet and smelled of sifting dust and damp. He put the lamp on the commode. He looked about the hopeless dreariness of his "home," and at the pile of books neatly stacked in one corner. Sudden heavy sleet began to hiss and rattle against the little window. Joseph took off his coat and covered the one blanket on his sagging bed with it, for extra warmth. Autumnal thunder, one loud and explosive clap, followed on a brilliant flare of lightning, and the wind rose and the glass in the window shook and one loose shutter banged somewhere. Joseph was conscious of a nauseating ravenousness, and he sat on the edge of his bed and unwrapped the parcel of food. He stuffed the stale bread and sour cheese and cold pork into his mouth rapidly, hardly chewing, so great was his hunger. It had been a generous parcel, and it had been a sacrifice from the kind nuns, but it was not quite enough to satisfy him. However, it was more filling than the dinners he ate in this house seven nights a week, for seventy-five cents a week, and he had not spent his fifty cents. He licked the crumbs of bread and cheese and fat from his fingers, voraciously, and was immediately strengthened. The oily newspaper lay on his bed. An item caught his quick attention. He read it over and over. Then he lay back with his arms under his head, and he thought and thought and continued to think for at least an hour more. He thought only of money, and he had found the first step towards it. It was a matter, now, only of a little more patience, a little more knowledge, and much planning. Even when he blew out his lamp he continued to think, for once unaware of the sick smell of his flat pillow and the hammock-sag of his bed and the thinness of the blanket and coat which covered him. Out of terror and despair and hatred-he had found the way. If it was not the one extolled in theology, it held, for Joseph Francis Xavier Armagh, far more truth and practicality.

Chapter 6

The next night on returning to his boardinghouse Joseph was met at the door by his little landlady, an elderly widow with an innocent, pure, and chronically apprehensive face, for life had been no gentler to her than to Joseph, himself. However, it had had the reverse effect on Mrs. Alice Marhall: It had made her so compassionate of others that she wept when accepting the money her boarders paid her weekly, knowing their endless hard labor and their desperate plight-these young and old men without kin or comfort. As she had neither herself-though she never knew a paroxysm of self-pity-she mourned over them. No bitterness had settled in her timid soul, no hatred of God and man, no