Dynasty of Death

by Taylor Caldwell

  A week after the funeral Ernest Barbour called upon the priest. He informed him who he was, with great stiffness and disdainful courtesy. But his rigid Protestantism suspected all sorts of sinister intentions and furtive obscurities in “Popery.” Martin’s revelation of his new faith had alarmed and disgusted him; God knows, he thought, what will be the end of this—Romanism was dark and subtle, and had a strange hold on its adherents. He was apprehensive of this “hold” on any member of the family, and he had a vague suspicion that he must deliver Martin from its clutches. That infernal monastery business! Pah!

  Father Dominick received the stiff and impassive young man without revealing any surprise he might have felt. He knew instantly why Ernest had come, and he smiled a little to himself. So he talked artlessly and frankly, had coffee and thin French petits fours served, shook his head over Jacques, and asked candidly after Martin. Ernest was reassured; there was nothing crafty nor subtle about this pleasant, fat little man with the agreeable smile and gentle laugh. Moreover, he appeared to respect and admire his visitor, for he spoke with enthusiasm about the phenomenal growth of Barbour & Bouchard, and confessed that he was an excellent marksman and owned a B&B rifle, himself. Ernest was surprised; there was nothing of the Spanish Inquisition here, nothing sinister and devious. He found himself telling the priest of his recent discovery that Martin had become a Catholic, and then, cautiously and with an effect of carelessness, smilingly remarked that Martin had told him that at one time he had intended to enter a monastery.

  His cautiousness did not deceive the priest, who smiled inwardly again. So he said frankly: “Ah, yes. Martin once thought that he had a vocation. I hardly believed it, but he seemed so sincere about it that I considered that I might have been mistaken. I am afraid,” with a sigh and a covert eye on Ernest, “that our poor friend, Jacques Bouchard, might have persuaded him that he had a vocation. But that is over, now.”

  Ernest’s relief showed amusingly in his face. He knew a great deal about Martin’s temperament, knew how unstable and changeable it was, how unsure under strong argument, how simple and trustful and kind. He had been afraid of the grasp of “Popery” on his brother’s emotions, afraid that somehow it would seize him, spirit him into some unknown darkness, leaving Amy bereft and abandoned at the last moment.

  With apparent innocence, the priest went on to say that Martin had told him he intended to marry Miss Amy Drumhill, and that he had given him his blessing. Ernest’s relief increased, and he smiled upon Father Dominick almost brilliantly. Seizing his advantage. Father Dominick became serious, and told him that he had explained to Martin that, as a Catholic, he must follow any Protestant or civil ceremony with a Catholic one, and that all children resulting from the marriage must be Catholics. “I thought,” he said with a faint smile, “that I should tell you this, Mr. Barbour, in case you might, in ignorance, attempt to influence your brother against these laws of the Church.”

  Ernest, the Protestant, winced a little at “the Church,” but he was so blessedly reassured that he said with light indignation: “Whatever made you think sir [he could not say “father”], that I would at any time try to coerce or influence my brother against his private beliefs?”

  Father Dominick could not help smiling broadly, and Ernest, coloring, had to smile with him. “I see,” said the priest, “that I was quite mistaken, and have done you an injustice.” And then, suddenly, without preamble, they laughed together, almost uproariously.

  When Ernest was about to go, he drew out a cheque for a very respectable sum and laid it down on the rickety little table. “What is this? A bribe? And if so, for what?” asked the priest, taking it and noting the amount with intense pleasure.

  “It is not a bribe,” said Ernest, his lips twitching in amusement. He added with candor: “Perhaps it might have been. But it is not, now. Call it an expression of relief.” And again they laughed together, and parted with promises of continued acquaintance.

  Martin never knew of this visit of Ernest’s. Had he learnt of it, he would have gone into a passion of shamed indignation and resentment. He had gone to the priest in anguish, accusing himself of causing Jacques’ death, and even after Ernest’s arguments, had pleaded to be reassured by Father Dominick that he would not need to do penance by renunciation of Amy. He could not endure going to the Bouchard house, where everything reminded him of Jacques. The last two years were becoming dim in his memory, and he recalled only the very young Jacques and the contentment and affection he had always felt when with him. But Madam Bouchard sent for him frequently; looking at Martin, whom Jacques had loved, seemed to bring her son closer to her, and she would sit, unspeaking, merely staring at Martin as she rocked, her flabby huge hands on her mountainous knees, and tears streaming down her immense flat face. Several times she embraced him, sobbed incoherently in his ear, wet him with the flood of her weeping. She wanted him to accompany her to the cemetery, refusing the offers of her husband and Eugene; it gave her release and comfort to see him kneeling on the lonely grave and saying a brief prayer. So this was Martin’s humble penance for the part he had had in Jacques’ death.

  CHAPTER XXXIII

  Ernest put Eugene Bouchard in charge of the Kinsolving works, provided him with an astute assistant who had been the former treasurer of the concern. Raoul returned with an avalanche of Magyars and Germans, Slavs and Czechs. Tremendous activity went on in and about the factory, and flatboats and freight cars arrived with the newest and most formidable of machinery. And Ernest paid off his first note ruefully but with undiminished trust in himself.

  He had always been stocky and well built, his long torso set solidly on well-shaped legs, but now he became almost lean, and a certain hawklike look came out on his large features. He began to look driven and exhausted, and gave the impression that something would not let him rest. Gregory suspected, with pleasure, what it was, and knew that though Ernest might come to the very edge of breaking he would never break.

  Then, three days before the marriage of Martin and Amy, Ernest abruptly announced that though it would cause him untold regret not to be at the wedding, the outbreak of the Crimean War presented an opportunity he could not overlook. He must go to England, interview Strong and Robsons, persuade them of the superiority of his steel-bore cannon and other patents.

  “You mean,” said Martin slowly, with a strange expression, “that we are now to sell our munitions to be used in a war?”

  “Why, of course,” answered Ernest impatiently. “Did you believe that the beginning and end of armaments was squirrel-shooting?” And he walked away. Martin did not argue; he said not another word. But the strange expression came out on his face whenever the subject was mentioned.

  “So,” thought Gregory, “he’s running away.” He was disappointed, for he had promised himself some really exquisite enjoyment. However, he did not try to dissuade Ernest from his plan: there was too much profit at stake. Ernest was in a ferment, however, quite distinct from the misery he was experiencing in his private thoughts. He needed to take some competent person with him to England, for, if his offers were accepted, he would need someone to oversee the manufacturing of Barbour and Bouchard munitions in a new shop there. He could not take Eugene, now deep in the Kinsolving works, and struggling to grasp the business; he could not take his father, growing more pettish and irritable and feverish as the weeks passed; he could not take Armand, for many reasons. “If I only had the right kind of a brother,” he thought bitterly. “He and Amy could come with me, on their honeymoon, and he could be left there when I returned to America.” But Martin was out of the question. The only one left was Raoul, Raoul the handsome and the indolent, the smiling and careless. But he knew so damned little! Then Ernest took him in hand, and reinforced by the threats and promises Armand made his son, beat, in the space of five days and nights, a vast store of knowledge and information and technical matters into Raoul’s perplexed and anxious brain. Raoul, excited, now, and feeling tremendously important, sweated an
d struggled, went into the shops, smeared himself with black grease, tore his clothes, blistered his hands, forced his indolence to become concentration, and emerged, after those thundering five days, exhausted but triumphant. He then slept twenty-four hours without awakening. Ernest was none too sure of the results, but consoled himself that he would also have three or four weeks to continue the finer points of this education aboard ship. Raoul; who had always detested and hated Ernest in his smiling, lazy fashion, had conceived an immense respect and admiration for him. The fellow knew so damned much, and had such a monstrous will-power and drive! Partly to tease his unflagging driver, and partly to see his real reaction, Raoul, after the terrible five days, said: “If I do everything so very correctly, mon cher, and you are proud of me, you will not look too frowningly upon me as the future husband of your little Florabelle.” And watched Ernest with narrowed eyes, smiling but alert.

  “Bah! She is still just a chit,” said Ernest. But he smiled with great good humor, struck Raoul on the shoulder, and talked of something else. “I think I am beginning to see that he so intended this from the beginning,” thought Raoul, astonished and delighted. And redoubled the tired beating of his brain. When Florabelle returned from her school for the wedding, he told her of that conversation, and Florabelle, coquettish and blushing, but frank, announced herself as very willing to take Raoul for a husband. “You’re quite the handsomest thing in the world,” she added, with schoolgirlish candor.

  Gregory Sessions, deprived of his main enjoyment, for Ernest and Raoul were leaving barely two days before the wedding, still would not be entirely deprived. Ernest was eating his last supper with his wife and her cousin, and was very preoccupied (Amy was dining with the Barbours). May, pale and despondent, her dimples entirely absent, could hardly touch her food. Ernest had reassured her a hundred times that he would be back the middle of July at the latest, two weeks at least before the baby was expected. But she was not comforted.

  “I cannot see,” she said querulously, “why you cannot delay your going for three days longer, considering that it is your brother who is marrying my cousin.”

  “I have told you, my dear, that I cannot,” replied Ernest, forcing a strained patience into his tired voice. “The Mayflower is the swiftest packet between New York and Liverpool, and if I miss it I will be delayed more than two weeks. And if I lose that two weeks, I cannot be back in time. Every moment counts over there.” He patted her cold hand as it lay flaccidly on the table near him. “Lift up your chin, love. It won’t be long.”

  “If I could only go with you,” mourned his wife, laying her cheek for an instant on the back of his hand.

  “Ah, but you are too precious now, to risk such a journey,” he answered lightly, looking at her broodingly with his exhausted eyes.

  Then Gregory, who had been waiting impatiently for his enjoyment, said: “Yes, it is really too bad. But it can’t be helped.

  “Ernest, I want to tell you something. Once,” and his face did not flicker as he regarded the younger man, “I told you that Amy was penniless, that not one cent of my father’s money could go to her. The mills, the shops, this house, the stock: these all belonged to May. However, there was no stipulation that any private funds of mine and Nicholas’ could not go to Amy.” He smiled with an affectation of generosity and delight. “You have made no objection to your brother marrying a girl without a dowry, whatever you might have thought about it. So, I know it will give you tremendous satisfaction to know that Amy will not be without a dowry.” He paused, and looked full at Ernest with a bland and open smile, as though inviting his surprise and happy anticipation.

  He knew Ernest too well to fear an open demonstration that would overthrow the dish that held all their fruit, or would strike mortally at May. But he had expected, perhaps, a flicker, a sudden pallor, a dilation of the eye. However, none of these came. Ernest looked merely interested, pleasantly so. If his fingers tightened on his fork, or his throat thickened, Gregory did not know it.

  The older man was disappointed. But wait, he thought, you don’t know everything yet! He continued to beam archly. “No, indeed, she shall not be without a dowry! On her wedding day,” and he paused portentously, “I shall present her with a sheaf of railroad bonds which will, in ten years, be redeemable for thirty thousand dollars. And that is not all: with our own money, left to me by my mother, we bought, ten years ago, 40 per cent of the Galby Lumber Mills, and 5 per cent of the stock of the Pittsburgh Steel Company, which, at that time, was merely a minor concern. The mills, and the stock, are worth, I should judge,” and he cast his eyes meditatively to the ceiling, “at least one hundred thousand dollars. Pittsburgh Steel is one of our foremost mills, now. Of course, we shall leave May a small portion of this, as a token of our regard,” and he bowed to her affectionately, “but on our death Amy will inherit the major part. So, in fact, Amy is not a portionless girl, but an heiress.”

  He had looked forward to this punishing of the man who had almost ruined Amy’s life, and he had anticipated the torment all the more because he knew that Ernest dared not make a sound nor show openly what he was feeling. But he knew with great accuracy that Ernest’s heart had taken a sick plunge, that his hands and feet had turned cold. He knew all this, though Ernest remained impassive except for two pale, blue lines that sprang out like brackets about his lips, and the deep wrinkle that suddenly appeared on his forehead.

  There was a long stunned pause. Then from May’s throat came a faint flutter that might have been a choked cry, or a low laugh. She had put her handkerchief to her lips, and was looking over it at Ernest. She drew away the handkerchief, and there was a faint stain of blood on it as though she had bitten her lip.

  “I am sure,” she said faintly, “that this is very splendid for Amy, and more than any one could expect, Gregory.” But she looked at Ernest.

  For a long moment Ernest regarded Gregory fixedly, not a muscle moving in his face. Then he slowly turned his face to his wife. He saw the ghastly tint of her complexion, the anguish in her bright dark eyes, the stain on her handkerchief. His expression changed very slightly, and he took her hand, held it warmly and tightly. And again turned to Gregory.

  “Your generosity, sir,” he said in an even and disciplined voice, “is too much. I can only thank you for my brother.”

  And they looked at each other as over the flash of daggers. I shall never forget this, thought Ernest; I shall never get over his bringing out that look in May’s eyes. His real affection for his wife was sharpened by his pity and rage almost to the keenness of love, and could he have struck Gregory dead by a touch he would have done so.

  Gregory was silent. He had not bargained on hurting May so brutally, for he was fond of her; in some obscure fashion he thought she might have felt a little irony, also, for he knew she loved wrynesses. He saw, now, that love has no conception of irony, and is no enjoyer of wryness. He had struck a sick woman who could not defend herself, and he quaked a little with self-disgust and angry remorse. His anger rose from the fact that he had been deprived of his enjoyment by his regret, and that he had not waited until he was alone with Ernest.

  Ernest stood up and offered his arm to his wife, and in silence they went to her room. Once there, he held her tightly to him, kissing her hair, her forehead and her pale mouth. He said nothing, but she was comforted, and put her head on his shoulder like a tired child.

  CHAPTER XXXIV

  The wedding was simple but lovely, and after it, in secrecy and happiness, Martin and Amy went to Father Dominick’s study and were remarried there in accordance with the rites of the Roman Catholic Church, with only a dim lamp to add gaiety, and the old housekeeper and sexton as witnesses. Martin had pleaded secrecy for the sake of his parents, especially for his father, who had suddenly taken a turn for the worse, and had not appeared at the shop for two weeks. Then they went back to the house so prettily furnished and ready for them, and walked into it, at midnight, hand in hand like children. “I am so happy,” sa
id Amy, in her young husband’s arms. I am so happy, she repeated to herself, at dawn, laying her cheek against his shoulder as he slept. And she felt an utter peace and contentment, as though life had fulfilled itself. If there was no ecstasy in all this, she realized it only subconsciously, and just as the sky brightened she fell asleep, holding Martin’s hand.

  Ernest prowled about the deck of the packet that wedding night, alone and in silence, watching the bright, broken chaos of the moon’s path on the tilting and rushing water. When the moon stood at midnight, it became very cold. A ship’s officer passed and repassed him, at first curiously, and then with pointed glances. “First night out, and I can’t sleep,” said Ernest to him. The man stayed for a moment’s inconsequential remarks, then went on.

  Ernest was feeling absolutely nothing, he discovered with some dull surprise. Not an emotion stirred the vagueness that lay over all his senses like a fog. It was not long after midnight, when he found that he was shivering with cold and dampness, and that the ocean was particularly lonely and uninviting. I’m a damn fool, he thought, smiling sheepishly to himself, and went below to his room that he shared with Raoul. Raoul had gotten well drunk that first night out, and was fast asleep in his own bed. Ernest went to bed, and was instantly asleep. His last conscious thoughts had been that his bed was deliciously warm and soft, and that he wished May were lying beside him.