The Final Hour

by Taylor Caldwell

  Peter knew that Mr Hawkins was not overcome by the presence of a Bouchard in his office. He was seen as a man, as a passionate author, only. If Mr Hawkins believed his work had value, integrity and colour, then he could be certain of a hearing, and perhaps a publication. If Mr Hawkins believed him stupid, amateurish, worthless and emptily violent, no other considerations would have weight with him.

  Something tight and defenceless and fearful in Peter relaxed. He thought: I should like this man for a friend. He has no deviousness, no cruelty, no cunning. There is a mystical quality in him, a philosopher’s doubting and searching. I have never had a friend! If he only likes me, then I shall be free. If he considers my work, then I shall know it has value.

  Mr Hawkins, in his turn, simply and openly studied Peter, weighing him. Peter had sent him the first quarter of his manuscript a few days before. He had found time to read it, among other swarms of manuscripts. He had been impressed by Peter’s passion and sincerity. Now he laid his hand on the sheaf he had read, and thoughtfully ruffled the pages.

  ‘You say your cousin, Georges Bouchard, won’t consider publishing this?’ he asked.

  ‘No,’ replied Peter, shortly, colouring a little. ‘There are family considerations, you know.’

  Mr Hawkins smiled bleakly. ‘And libel, of course.’

  ‘But, I have the proofs, the documents!’ cried Peter, with new despair.

  ‘Nevertheless, truth is no guarantee against a suit for libel,’ said Mr Hawkins, wryly. ‘If Jesus were alive today, and making His remarks about certain Pharisees, He would be sued for half a million dollars. In those days, they could only crucify Him. Of course, libel suits are one form of crucifixion. We’ve got to be careful, you know.’

  He rubbed his wide thin lips with his hand, thoughtfully, and regarded Peter with the fixed cold blueness of his eyes.

  ‘You haven’t thought of publishing this, yourself, Mr Bouchard?’

  Peter’s colour heightened. He answered, stiffly: ‘No, I’ve thought that was cheap. There’s a stigma in publishing yourself. As if no one else found your work worthy of the risk. My relatives will be highly amused, and gratified, if I don’t find a publisher.’

  ‘But Georges Bouchard did publish your first book, The Terrible Swift Sword?’

  ‘Yes, anonymously,’ said Peter, with grimness. ‘Besides, the family wouldn’t have sued him. That would have brought the stink out into the open. Especially as my anonymity would have been exposed.’

  ‘And it is only family considerations which prevent him from publishing this? Why, then, did he publish your first?’ Peter was silent for some moments. He bit his lip. Then he said, hesitatingly, ‘Frankly, I don’t understand. I’ve thought that some pressure had been brought to bear on old Georges. Only that could explain it.’

  Mr Hawkins’ chair creaked as he gently rocked in it. He lit another cigarette, and puffed on it meditatively. Peter watched him with deep anxiety.

  ‘Look, you’ve got to tell me one thing, Mr Hawkins: has my book, outside of its revelations, anything to recommend it? Is it amateurish, badly written?’

  ‘No, it isn’t amateurish,’ said Mr Hawkins, slowly. ‘It has drama, and fire and colour. And those are rare in reportorial writing. I’m an old newspaper man, myself, and we were supposed to exercise restraint in our work. We had to acquire an aversion to adjectives.’ He spoke incisively, in his quiet if hesitating voice. Then he smiled. ‘However, I like adjectives. I don’t like modern stark writing, which substitutes exclamation points and obscenity for good craftsmanship. There’s no exuberance or passion among modern writers. They think it vulgar or something. Richness of phrase, and opulence of adjective, are “Victorian.” Too lush, they believe. Personally, I regret it. Starkness can be decadent, you know, especially the modern self-conscious starkness. Only when starkness is pure and sincere is it healthy, and possessed of beauty.’ Peter listened, his sense of ease and freedom growing. ‘Then, you might consider publishing this?’

  Mr Hawkins smiled wryly once more. ‘I’ll be frank with you, Mr Bouchard. Your name is a consideration, of course. In a book, your name will increase the chance of large sales. I want you to understand that, so you won’t feel we took your book—if we do—under false pretences. Publishers are merchandisers, too. We sell books. We must make a profit, or go out of business. That is what it is so hard for the average author to understand. He rosily believes a book should be published on its merits (and his own book, of course, always has a lot of merit, mostly “artistic”). He loftily disregards the fact that his book probably won’t sell. If you mention that, he favours you with a glance of superb contempt. What does that matter? he asks. The public needs books of merit crammed down its throat, for its own good. He believes publishers should be crusaders in a noble cause. Super-castor-oil-givers to a public that loves lollypops. Fortunately for their stockholders, publishers disagree with this opinion. We publish books we think, or hope, will sell; then everybody from the printer to the author is happy.’

  He paused. Peter’s emaciated cheeks flushed a dark crimson with mortification. Mr Hawkins watched him closely. He smiled a little, though he was touched by Peter’s expression.

  ‘I’m not speaking personally, of course. Money is no consideration in your case. You are a crusader. But you have written interestingly, and with power. What you have to say is grave and momentous; better still, it is well-written. I think it might be popular. I can’t guarantee that. But I think it might. Again, your name will arouse preliminary interest among critics, and the public. I think the day has come when the public will be more interested in non-fiction than in fiction. My competitors don’t agree with me, there. They think the love story is the most important thing in writing. They call it “human interest.” As if there were no human interest in anything but a pair of adolescents and their feeling for each other.’

  He was silent a moment, then continued more strongly: ‘I believe there is human interest in what you have written. The most terrible and foreboding human interest. I also believe American readers are growing up. I believe that Americans must now be told who are their enemies, and why they must defend themselves. You see, I am an American.’

  He smiled again, a little sadly. But the frost of his eyes melted into kindness. He stood up. ‘Let’s have lunch. We’ll talk more about this. I’ve got to discuss your book with Mr Ingham, first, of course. I’ll let you know in a few days.’

  As Peter accompanied the editor down the creaking elevator, he felt once more that sense of liberation, of comfort, of peace, which so many had experienced in the presence of this great and simple man who had only kindness for the sincere, and sympathy for the earnest, but the utmost contempt for the poseur and the fool.

  CHAPTER XXIII

  Armand was alone in his great and echoing house. He was always so much alone. He would wander through the immense rooms, which were dimly lit, the corners thick with shadows like cobwebs, his fumbling feet making no sound on the rich rugs. He was a man undone by an integrity which had never been enough. Somewhere, in the vague sick recesses of him, he knew this, but was only bewildered. He had gone far, and done much that was evil. He had cavilled petulantly only at the little things, and then with a shrill vehemence. He had felt a soothing of his conscience then, a slackening of the tight tension in him. So, he had deceived himself for many years, that he was better than his family, that he was intrinsically a good man. At heart, he would say to himself, I am really a good man.

  But now the incantation was no good at all. He repeated it over and over, now that he was old, but it brought him no comfort. He was face to face with himself, but still he could not look at the remorseless mirror held before him.

  Once he had cried to himself: If only I had been complete! But he meant only that he desired he might never have had even that small integrity which had so tormented him all his life and had brought him nothing, not even the smallest peace.

  No one comes to see me now, he would think, as he
would go restlessly from room to room. Even though I still own fifty-one per cent of Bouchard stock. He had not yet come to the place where he could smile at this, or burst into bitter laughter. It was still a matter of querulous and lonely wonder to him. He would repeat over and over to himself, the whisper coming from between his fat and pouting lips: ‘Fifty-one per cent.’ And then he would jingle the coins in his pocket and listen with childish eagerness to their tinkle.

  ‘Fifty-one per cent,’ he would whisper, after the jingling of his coins had soothed him a little. And he would smile. He would square his fat bent shoulders and look about him challengingly, though nothing but cold and silent walls met his eye. He was still potent, then. The fifty-one per cent stood between him and a horrifying reality. In these more sanguine moments he could deceive himself that it was jealousy and envy that kept him so solitary in his vast and empty house. His relatives hated him for his golden power. They vented their resentment by avoiding him.

  Sometimes he peered through the dark windows, which reflected the scattered lamps, and he would stare down the silent lighted road that wound away through his park. Sometimes he would strain his ears for the sound of a car, the whisper of tyres on the asphalt. But there would be no sound but the wind. He would wander on again to another room, look through other windows which revealed the black and glimmering river and the distant twinkling of lights on the opposite bank. A steamer would whistle; the trees near the window would rattle drily. Often he would hear the hooting of a desolate train, the hollow echo of its passage if the wind was in his direction. The loneliest of white cold moons would lie on the window-sills or touch his fat and despondent jowls with a silver light. It was a spectre’s face that peered hopefully through the polished panes.

  The servants, moving on cat’s feet through the great carpeted halls, caught glimpses of this fat old man sidling from room to room. He would glance at them without seeing them, would purse his lips, scowl a little, and move on. They would watch him go, see how he would start as he thought he heard the tinkling of a telephone, or footsteps on the walks outside. But no one but his daughter called him, and then usually earlier in the day. Sometimes he would open the door of his room and come into the hallway, persuaded he heard a voice. And then the door would close again, and silence would surround him.

  He had no friends. In earlier years, he had often been invited to dinner at the homes of his relatives, or of acquaintances. But that was when he was president of Bouchard & Sons. His conversation had never been brilliant. He was a shy and suspicious man, dull and unimaginative. Like most men of his temperament, he gave the impression of fearfulness, even of cowardice. No one had ever cared enough to discover why he was afraid, or what so terrified him. He did not know himself. When asked for an opinion, he would search the questioner’s courteous face with his little beetling black eyes, as if conjecturing what sly villainy, what desire to trap him, what double motive, had inspired even the most innocent and polite of queries. And then he would reply cautiously, minutely watching every expression on the other’s face which might reveal to him that he had made himself vulnerable or ridiculous. In consequence, his words were always meatless, dull, without colour or vitality. If he sometimes forgot himself, and replied spontaneously, in the surge of some rusty emotion, he would spend later lonely hours anxiously going over his answer to see whether he had said anything which might be used against him. Even in earlier days he had rarely discussed politics, believing, in his pathetic and dingy egotism, that his words were weighed and gravely noted, and later quoted at conferences as a key to ‘a trend.’ There was no solace for him in books, for his sole absorption in his youth had been his Company. He understood no music, had never cared for it. It was effeminate stuff, fit only for those decadent Europeans who had no ‘Company’ to engross them. Nor had he liked even golf, that last resort of the ignorant American businessman, the ‘corporation fool.’

  He read only the newspaper owned by his family, the Windsor News, and the New York Times. Out of the latter newspaper he might have derived some knowledge of the world; out of its tremendous library of news he might have gleaned some awareness of the world of men, of politics, of history. But he never read anything but the Stock Market reports, the financial news, the obituaries, and one or two of the dullest and most conservative editorials which the more enlightened avoided. Now that he was removed from his own active Company, he read hardly anything but the financial and business sections, and then only to watch the Stock Market and to gloat over the rising prices of Bouchard stock, or to despair over their decline.

  For a while he had been quite excited over Europe, prior to the Munich fiasco. He had gone, uninvited, to his relatives’ homes, and there had seized upon the male members and exhorted and argued and fumed by the hour. But they soon discovered that his knowledge was meagre, his prejudices ignorant if vehement, his excitabilities childish. Even the younger and female members found themselves unable to keep from laughing in his face. Since then, he knew practically nothing. He sealed himself up in his loneliness and misery, and watched through windows. He had nothing to give anyone now. He had no power with which to bribe or coerce. He had no gifts of person or conversation which might make him desired for his own sake. He had no love or warmth of temperament, no concern with other men, which might endear him. He had only his jingling coins, his ‘fifty-one per cent,’ his diabetes, to keep him company in the long days and the endless nights.

  His ‘court physician,’ despite his enormous retainer, found him insupportable these days. For Armand had been driven to the last extremity: he called his physician on the telephone at least four nights a week, to discuss with him gravely some suspected new development in his malady. The conversations lasted at least half an hour each time. At these times that flabby and bloated old face would come alive and alight, his eyes would glow. He would sit on the edge of his chair, gripping the telephone, his voice trembling with absorbed eagerness, and even fanaticism, What of that new concentrated insulin of which he had read in the last issue of the American Medical Association’s magazine? Was there anything to it? The magazine said it was predicted that only one shot a week would be necessary. What’s wrong with you fellows? What’s wrong with research? Were they letting the whole thing die?

  The physician, a really brilliant man interested in research, had actually been able to coax many thousands of dollars out of Armand’s tight pocket for a certain research laboratory in which talented and devoted young physicians, undistinguished for private means, laboured night and day to discover new cures and new drugs to alleviate the agonies of such men as Armand Bouchard. The money, however, had not been quite enough, for the physician had informed Armand, in the first months of hope, that the laboratory needed millions. Armand could not understand this. He would complain querulously about the ‘greediness’ of these young researchers. Why were they not contented to labour selflessly for the sake of humanity? Why did they not understand that they were really ‘dedicated’? Why should they care for ‘fat’ salaries? Was it not enough to serve mankind? When the physician explained that the young men had families, or obligations, Armand was outraged. Families and obligations indeed! How dared the gifted priests of medical science have such things? They were traitors, exploiters. Medical science should be a monkish fraternity, where heaven-endowed men ought to spend their lives in devotion, thinking of nothing but service. Service, Armand would repeat, grudgingly writing another small cheque and hurling it at his physician. When the latter mentioned the Rockefeller Foundation, Armand would smile sourly and say, thank God he had nothing on his conscience. At this, the physician would eye him sombrely, and ask silently: No?

  The physician was a venal and luxurious man, and no selfless saint. But sometimes he would stare at Armand for a long time and wonder if the lives of such men were worth the labour of the brilliant-eyed young researchers in that hot and meagre laboratory. He thought of their exhaustion, their thin and eager hands, their passion for analysis, their j
oy in discovery. Was all this primarily designed to extend the useless and miserable existence of fat old men with diseases induced by fatally stricken psyches? ‘Who can minister to a mind diseased?’ he would quote to himself. For he was coming to believe, reluctantly, with many angry repudiations, that the diseases of the flesh were only the outward and visible manifestations of diseases of the soul. He had discovered, only too often for his own peace of mind, that the sufferer from heart disease, from diabetes, from cancer, was sick of the world, sick of life, sick of self. Were these diseases only a subconscious desire for death, for the obliteration of a mind that endlessly accused itself, for the eternal stilling of a sleepless despair? The flesh struggled to survive. But in the eyes of the sufferer the physician would often detect the agony of a soul that wished nothing but darkness and nirvana, and escape from consciousness. The crippling diseases, too: were these not the index of a soul that dumbly prayed to be relieved from active participation in a world that feverishly laboured for nothing?