The Final Hour

by Taylor Caldwell

  Celeste, who had always known so much about her niece, felt a nameless pang. Did the poor little creature sense the cold and angry and protesting words which had been uttered just before her arrival? Did such words leave a ringing discord in the air? She forced herself to smile affectionately.

  ‘It has been hot,’ she said, her conscience aroused. ‘But we hardly feel it at Robin’s Nest.’

  ‘We didn’t go away this summer as usual,’ said Annette, pathetically grateful for Celeste’s smile and the pressure of her hand. ‘Henri thought we ought not to, with things as they are in Europe. He wanted to be at home, in case of “developments.” But I hardly think there will be “developments,” do you? It would be so stupid, so terrible— One doesn’t dare think of it.’

  Peter glanced swiftly at his wife. But she would not look at him. She was all attentiveness towards Annette.

  ‘Well, I’m sure we couldn’t find a pleasanter place than Robin’s Nest, darling,’ said Celeste. ‘It was so kind of you to invite us. We are so very grateful.’ She paused. Her lips tightened to a thin line. ‘But, it must be very tiresome for you, to have us underfoot all the time. That’s why I’ve just been arguing with Peter that we ought to look around and find a place of our own.’

  Annette was immediately alarmed and distressed. She held Celeste’s hand tightly with both her own, and leaned towards her. ‘Henri thought you might have that in mind,’ she said, her voice breaking. ‘I couldn’t really believe it. You don’t know how happy you’ve made me, dear, just being in the same house with me. It has been such a difference. I’ve been so lonely, at times. I—I’ve thought you might stay indefinitely It would break my heart if you should leave.’

  Celeste was silent. Her lips became grimmer than ever. She averted her eyes. But Peter lifted himself a little in his chair. He said: ‘That is what I’ve been saying to Celeste, Annette. We ought to stay a little longer.’ He appeared a little confused, and a faint colour rose to his gaunt cheekbones. ‘I’ve been outlining my work. I wouldn’t want an interruption just yet. But Celeste believes we’ve been inconveniencing you.’

  ‘I still believe it,’ said Celeste, in a hard tone. She looked at her husband directly. ‘It is too much for Annette. You ought to realize that, Peter.’ But her eyes continued their angry argument with him. He had declared, just before Annette had entered, that he must remain, that he needed to remain, that once out of that house he would learn nothing from Henri. He had learned so terribly much that morning. He had to know more. He, he had said, simply could not understand Celeste. She had become morbid, over-sensitive, even hysterical. Why on earth did she insist upon leaving? She had been silent at this question. But she had looked at him strangely, with a kind of speechless and desperate fear. One never said to one’s husband: ‘We must leave this man’s house, for our own sakes. Do you not understand that I’ve never forgotten him, that for all these years he has been in my mind, like a plague, or an obsession, or a disease? I have believed that I hate him; I’ve thought one never forgets the people one hates. I don’t know. Do I hate him? Does he repel me? Do I loathe him? I don’t know! I only know that I can’t stop thinking of him, that I hear his voice everywhere, that when I see him I can hardly breathe, and that I lie awake at night with his face before me in the dark. That when he touches me, even in passing, or by accident, I turn to fire. It was like that from the very beginning, when I first saw him. I still don’t understand. I only know I am in danger, perhaps more so from myself than from him. For your sake, my darling, we must leave here.’

  No, one never said this. One only got up at once and fled. She looked at Peter, and the danger seemed hovering around him, to destroy him, and all that danger came from herself, and not from Henri.

  In her desperation, she spoke again, loudly, to drown out Annette’s imploring voice: ‘We must leave, Annette. I can’t impose on you any longer. All these nurses, this inconvenience, this upsetting of your routine. You’ve had to consider us before making plans of your own. You’ve had to adjust your life to ours. It isn’t fair to you.’

  Could one say to one’s dear hostess, whom one loved: ‘I’ve got to go away, before I destroy you? Can’t you understand that it seems frightful to me to see you as Henri’s wife, that at times I hate you, my darling, and that I am afraid that some day I shall hope you will die? Can’t you help me to save myself from this awful thing? Each time that I see Henri—there are terrible thoughts in me. Help me to save you, and myself, also.’

  Thinking these things, filled with terror, she looked from Peter to Annette. For the first time she saw the mysterious resemblance between them. They were both pure of heart, both tender and vulnerable, both gentle and chaste and too honourable to understand the fierce and shameful things that could invade the hearts of others. She felt dark and violent of spirit, twisted and atavistic of mind before their purity of heart, their truth and faith. She felt unclean, degraded, corrupt, all heat and humid darkness, all tempest. She was not prostrated at this. Rather, she felt strong and most aware, vital and warm of breast and trembling of thigh. The danger in herself was all voluptuousness, full of hot languor and a desire to which she dared not give a name. And they could only look at her with their pellucid light-blue eyes, and be disturbed and distressed, as a wilful and selfish child.

  Then Annette rose, bent over her young aunt, and kissed her tenderly. There was a soft catch in her voice: ‘O darling, how can you say such things? How can you be so cruel? I love you so, Celeste. If you go, I can’t tell you how terribly I’ll miss you.’

  The burning tears were heavy in Celeste’s eyes, though she averted them. She said: ‘But, we won’t.go far. We’ll stay in Windsor.’

  ‘But where, dear?’ urged Annette. ‘You’d have to build. I thought it was understood that you were to remain here until you had built a house of your own.’

  Celeste was silent.

  ‘We’ve already been looking at plans, and blueprints,’ said Peter, coldly. ‘We’ve almost decided on the kind of house we want. And now Celeste wants to leave, before anything is settled. It will only be a little while.’

  Annette looked down at her aunt, at that hard white profile. She could hardly keep back her tears. She bent her head so that she could see Celeste’s face clearly, and her mass of bright fluffy hair fell over her cheek in a most touching manner.

  ‘Darling, look at me. Don’t you love me any more? Are you tired of me? Do you really want to leave me? Have I bored you so much?’

  Celeste lifted her head swiftly, her lips parting. But when her eyes met the swimming blue purity of Annette’s, and she saw their pleading, their hurt, their pathetic guiltlessness, she could only be silent again. She kissed the frail cheek so near her own, and tried to smile. Finally she said:

  ‘How—how can you be so silly, Annette! It is only that I thought we were all too much for you. There’s Christopher here, and Edith. I’ve thought of your health—’

  ‘Oh, I’m really very wiry, very vigorous!’ cried Annette, very quickly as always when her physical state was mentioned. ‘I’m very deceptive. The doctor says that people like me live forever. “Runts have so much vitality,” he told me. I may be a runt,’ she added, with a little catching laugh, ‘but I’m as strong as steel wire. You’ve no idea. Henri often tells me I quite exhaust him. He says he wouldn’t be surprised if I buried him a half-century before I died, myself, and ended my days as an ancient little old woman in a chimney corner. Sometimes I quite believe him, though he is so extravagant. Every year I get more strength. Really.’ She smiled radiantly, and put her little thin arm about Celeste’s shoulders, and invited Peter to laugh with her.

  But, thought Celeste, your heart would break, and then you’d die. And surely, we’ll break your heart, and Peter’s too, Henri and I, unless you let me go. I haven’t your strength, my darlings. I haven’t your goodness and faithfulness. You don’t know what I am! I didn’t know, myself, until lately.

  Then she thought: Can’t I trust
myself a little longer, for their sakes? Haven’t I the decency and the self-control? Surely, I’m not so weak, so depraved, as all that!

  She said: ‘I see you’ve both overruled me, so I suppose there’s nothing more I can say. Peter,’ and she turned to her husband with her old gentleness, ‘you’ll really make up your mind tomorrow about the plans? You’ve been so indecisive.’

  Now that he had conquered, Peter was all eagerness to appease her. ‘Of course. And we’ll consult Annette, too. There’s got to be a room or two for Annette, when she visits us.’ He smiled at Annette, and she returned his smile joyously. She clapped her hands and almost danced with her delight.

  ‘How lovely I And, oh yes, I’m to give a dinner party for you two! Henri spoke of it. He is always so considerate. Won’t that be just perfect?’

  CHAPTER XII

  While Annette was engaged in her loving persuasion of Celeste to remain at Robin’s Nest, Armand Bouchard, father of Annette, brother of Celeste, arrived for dinner with his son, Antoine, ‘the reincarnation of Jules Bouchard.’

  Armand was now a widower. He lived with his unmarried son in his enormous and almost ludicrously palatial chateau on the Allegheny River. It contained nearly two hundred rooms, and, as some wry wit declared, it housed enough servants to form the nucleus of a flourishing village. Mrs Armand had attempted to overwhelm the chateaux and palaces of the other Bouchards by sheer weight and size and majesty of proportion, and had succeeded in producing a vast pseudo-mediæval monstrosity of ostentation. She had had no real taste. Armand, though allowing her to have her way in the matter of the château and the furnishings, had had the prudence to call in the best landscape gardeners in America for his grounds. As a result, the ridiculousness of the château was in great measure modified by the beauty, magnificence and luxurious splendour of the surroundings. To minimize the tremendous proportions of the building, the gardeners had installed terraces that slowly descended to the river, had transplanted giant elms and oaks to shade those terraces, had made long grades that swept, park-like, to grey stone walls, where a ‘lodge’ guarded the high iron gates.

  In the midst of all this lived the diabetic and obese Armand. Henri had appointed him Chairman of the Board of Bouchard & Sons, which demanded little of Armand except an occasional pompous appearance and an earnest and judicious manner during meetings. There he would sit, in his great plush chair, thrusting out his fat underlip, looking sharply from face to face with his tiny beady eyes, uttering deep growls under his breath, and, in the meantime, jingling a collection of small silver coins in his untidy pocket. Whenever he heard that jingling, he would smile with pathetic pleasure, and would hum deeply in his throat. Sometimes he would pass his hand over his large round head with its cropped grey hair, or rub the back of that hand vigorously over his pudgy nose. And again, sometimes he would relieve himself of a weighty opinion of no importance at all. Everyone treated him with the utmost profound courtesy, inclining respectful heads whenever he spoke, and something dimly resembling a smile would gleam coldly in Henri’s pale eyes. Thus Armand would be allowed to believe that he was still a power among the terrible Bouchards. He was an old man now. It was little enough that Henri had granted him, though the Bouchards often expressed slight surprise that he did even this, Henri not being conspicuous for charitable actions. Few ever noticed that the fat old man’s hands, in repose, had a chronic and tremulous motion, impotent and tragic, like the hands of the blind. They were more engrossed in contemplating the ruin of one who was once all-powerful, and had been so completely undone by his son-in-law. They wondered what his thoughts were, if ever he had nights of frantic and futile rage, or great sadness.

  Sometimes they even pitied him, contemptuously. He had never been a favourite, had been derided even in the days of his power. For he was untidy, gross, none too clean of habit and person, despite a battery of valets. Freshly pressed trousers had a way of wrinkling across his fat thighs; vests puckered, immediately became stained; shirts became mussed and soiled.

  Only his brother, the vitriolic ‘Rabelaisian Trappist,’ Christopher, had the shrewd insight sufficient to enable him to guess at the thoughts that might occasionally come to the old man. Christopher knew that Armand had, all his life, been tormented by an obscure integrity, that he had a stunted conscience of sorts, that, at the final moment, there were things he would not do. They were not many, these things, but they were enough to arouse the risibility of the Bouchards, and their amused scorn. In consequence, Armand, even when most weighty, had had an air of bewilderment, fear and hesitation about him.

  Therefore, Christopher had the penetrating idea that

  Armand was enjoying some measure of peace since his removal as a power. At times, when discussions became very secret and full of intrigue, a vague look of fright and uneasiness would come over that florid and puffy countenance, and after a few moments, preceded by much throat-clearing, jerking of head, rubbing of nose, sniffling, and blinking of eyes, Armand would rise with dignity and plead indisposition, or an appointment. Then he would waddle from the Board room on his short swollen legs, his pace quickening as he reached the door. He had every aspect of flight, and they would watch him go, grinning covertly. Sometimes it was a trick of theirs, to get him to leave prior to really serious discussions. They did not wish a witness to these proceedings, especially not such a witness as Armand.

  Christopher also guessed that Armand had really only two interests in his life now: his beloved daughter, Annette, and his diabetes. For one of his self-indulgence in the matter of food, the disease was a catastrophe. He had always been a gourmand, rather than a gourmet. For years, when confronted by the necessity for a nefarious decision, which he must make for the fortunes of the Company, or repudiate for the sake of his conscience, he would suddenly and temporarily abandon the imminence of the decision for a session at the table. His chefs would be commanded to labour to produce the most exquisite and the richest of dishes, and Armand would sit before them in desperate concentration and eat, literally for hours. There was something orgiastic about these occasions. Armand would not speak; often, he would be alone in the vast cathedral spaces of his diningroom. He would tuck his ‘bed-sheet’ of a napkin under his chins, lift his shoulders, grasp knife, fork, spoon, and fill the echoing silence of the room with the sound of loud and frantic munchings, swallowings, gluttonous chewings. His great puffy face would become more florid by the moment, congested, filmed over with a greasy sweat, and his ears would turn purple around the rims. Later, he would subside in his apartments in a semi-coma of tortured digestion, and, involved in physical miseries, would forget his mental agonies. A valet would bring him various sedatives for his gut, would apply hot packs to his swollen belly, and later call a physician. When he would finally sleep, a look of deathlike peace would rest on his mauve features.

  Now he had his diabetes, which threatened his life if neglected or ignored. He had his insulin needle, which had become of engrossing interest to him. In these days, he had little to disturb him, and only occasionally resorted to the pleasures of the table to soothe his psychic conflicts. He never sat down to a meal without his dietary list before him, a document which was now more important to him than any paper formerly connected with the Company. He carried his list with him to every home where he was invited to dinner with his relatives, and when the conversation threatened to turn upon the affairs of the Company and its various subsidiaries, he would loudly break into the midst of it with earnest admonitions about certain dishes which had been placed upon the lace cloths. ‘Now that,’ he would say, pointing with his knife or fork, ‘is practically poison. Full of sugar. Full of albumen. Too much protein. You haven’t the slightest idea, I see, what that can do to your pancreas. My doctor was saying, only the other day—’

  As a result, Armand was very seldom called by his name among his gay relatives. He was designated as ‘The List.’ He occasioned great mirth among them because of his learned discussions about the necessity of ‘simple me
als, wholesome, full of minerals, plain and sustaining, well fortified with vitamins.’ Sometimes he would gravely call upon the chefs of his family in their very kitchens, and exhort them upon the matter of too much butter, too much sauce, too much wine, too much seasoning. He would fill his plate with mounds of tasteless salads, a slice of lean meat, a raw sliced vegetable, and assure the others (whose gold-rimmed plates were full of ‘poison’) that they were digging their graves with their teeth. He would then watch them devour the ‘poison’ with gusto, his own face expressing his wistfulness. Once, with pathetic ingenuousness, he had even invited some of his relatives to watch the administration of his insulin needle, but this had been declined.

  Beyond his health and his needle, he had only one other passion, his daughter. For his son, Antoine, now Secretary of Bouchard & Sons, he had only fear and secret hatred and frightened detestation. At times, Antoine fascinated him, by his resemblance to his own father, Jules. On occasion, he had dreams when he saw the old Jules, subtle, smiling, sardonic, full of the old Machiavellian laughter. And then he would see it was not Jules at all, but Antoine, and would awake in a trembling sweat, and would avoid Antoine for days.

  Yet, Antoine was all respect for his father, listened to him with courteous gravity by the hour whenever Armand would discourse upon diet, asked his advice upon minor matters connected with the Company, and would even amuse him by pungent comments on other members of the family. For Antoine was witty, a maker of epigrams, an accomplished conversationalist, personally elegant and debonair—the perfect portrait of the French gentleman of the old regime. There was a portrait of Jules in Armand’s panelled library with the gaunt echoes, and sometimes Armand would stand before it, gazing at it with the sadness, the instinctive dread, the uneasiness and disquiet and aversion that he had felt for his father in the latter’s lifetime. Then, with growing if obscure terror, he would mark out all Antoine’s features in that dark narrow countenance with the subtle black eyes, the sleek small skull with its black hair, the mobile satirical mouth with its lifted left corner, the long slender nose with the sharp nostrils. All the intellectual qualities, the refined ruthlessness, the cruel delicacy, the living deviltry, the vital alertness of that face had been reproduced in Antoine, even to the slanting eyebrows with their quizzical look. It was Mephisto’s face, fascinating, sparkling with sadistic amusement, perceptive and lethal.