The Final Hour

by Taylor Caldwell

  He lifted the telephone again, and now the sharp metallic voice was shrill and breathless with excitement. ‘There is a rumour that Russia and Germany will soon reach some form of accord, after which Russia will not oppose any territorial ambitions on the part of Hitler, so long as Russia, herself, is not attacked!’

  Russia! This was not impossible, of course. Henri remembered Munich, when Russia’s offer of assistance had been ignored, when she had been shut out from the shameful conference at Berchtesgaden. Was this her revenge, then, born of her bitterness against those hypocrites who had mouthed of peace, those cowards who had sold the treasures of ages to a murderer and a liar, those plotters who hated their own struggling peoples? Henri smiled suddenly. He felt a harsh sympathy for Russia. When the attack against the hypocrites, the cowards and the plotters began, it would be a just judgment upon them. Then their people would shriek that they had been betrayed, blaming ‘the industrialists and capitalists’ or ‘the politicians,’ not understanding that before death can overwhelm them the disease must first destroy them internally. When the final hour arrived, the people, of course, would not be aware that the rottenness had first been in themselves, whether they lived in mansions or in the gutter, that their own brutish hatred, ignorance and lack of values had betrayed them to their enemies.

  Even the Bouchards, and all their friends, could not destroy America if America was not ripe for destruction. Diseased seeds could grow only in diseased soil. The soil of America was diseased.

  Henri rose and walked heavily up and down the room. He was not subject to any malaise of the spirit, to any uneasiness. All his life he had known what he wanted, and had seized it. His mind had been single and integrated. Now he could not understand his own heavy and sombre thoughts. He listened to the loud words in his own spirit as to the voice of a stranger which he could not shut out. He was impatient and disturbed, as he had never been impatient or disturbed before.

  Was this fear for himself, or revulsion against relatives who conspired against him? He believed it was both.

  There was a soft tap on his door, and angrily he called: ‘Come in.’ His secretary entered apologetically, and cringed at his glare.

  ‘I am sorry, Mr Bouchard, but Mr Armand Bouchard is here and wishes to see you. He says it is very urgent.’

  Henri scowled. ‘Please tell Mr Bouchard that Mr Antoine is not in at present.’ Then he paused, abruptly. What the hell did the old sot and fool want with him, Henri? He had not been in these offices since he had made his appeal for his son. All at once, a curious excitement struck at him. His instinct was awakened.

  He sat down at his desk. ‘Please send Mr Bouchard in at once.’ While he waited for Armand, he tapped on the top of the desk with his blunt fingers. What the devil possessed the miserable old cringer? What had he heard?

  He despised Armand, rarely thought of him, and then only with contempt. Armand was done, old, destroyed by some chronic inner disease which Henri had already suspected was not of his big-bellied body. But he was still latently potent. He, Henri, knew enough of Armand to believe that there must be moments when his father-in-law would remember this.

  Now all his uneasiness of the last hour or two, all his smouldering rage and disgust, concentrated themselves upon the vision of Armand, and his intrusion. He was annoyed at himself for this childishness, but the cold emotion remained. He held the greater part of Bouchard bonds but his dominant role in Bouchard & Sons was only by consent of Armand and his precious fifty-one per cent. It was a situation which had long enraged Henri, and which had impelled much of his caution. The situation had sometimes become almost untenable for him.

  So it was that when Armand, already disorganized, already shaken to the very frightened depths of him, already confused and terrified and sick of soul and flesh, encountered Henri’s cold and formidable look he winced as if Henri had struck at him with his clenched fist. His first impulse was flight. He stood far from the desk, and actually trembled, moistening his dry and swollen lips, staring at Henri in utter silence and disintegration, his hat in his hand like a beggar.

  Henri rose slowly and reluctantly. He placed a chair for his father-in-law. What was wrong with the old fool? He looked as if he had heard the most frightful news, and was on the verge of collapse. Now Henri forgot his anger and frustration. He was suddenly alert, and he could even smile.

  ‘Well, this is pleasant,’ he said, in his heavy and toneless voice which denied the pleasantness of his visit. ‘Sit down, Father. You perhaps didn’t know that Antoine isn’t here? I wish you had called up first, and saved yourself this trouble.’

  Armand sat on the edge of the chair. Now the visible trembling invaded his knees, which shook in their untidy trousers. Henri, seating himself again, saw the soiled collar which was hardly more than a stained cloth about Armand’s fat neck. The lapels of his coat were sprinkled with white flakes. His vest was badly buttoned, and a tuft of shirt protruded through it. The big round head, with its crop of grey tendrils, shook faintly, as if the old man had been seized with a palsy. But it was his face, the colour of tallow, the staring little black eyes, the uncontrollable twitching of his facial muscles, which focused Henri’s attention. It was evident that Armand was sick with despair and fear. He kept touching his mouth with a tremulous hand. He could not speak for a few moments, and then he said, almost inaudibly: ‘I didn’t want to see Antoine. I came because I knew he wasn’t here.’

  ‘Yes?’ said Henri, in a smooth and quiet tone. ‘Well, then, is there anything I can do for you, Father? Are you ill?’

  Armand gazed at him mutely for long minutes. Then his lips moved again in a whisper: ‘Yes. Yes, I am very ill.’

  He looked down at his hat as if he had never seen it before; then, with odd timidity, he placed it on the desk which had once been his. Henri watched all his fumbling and uncertain movements. Then, as his eyes met Armand’s, he was shocked and startled at the brilliant terror in them, the sudden overwhelming despair. He half rose from his chair, then sank down again, in silence.

  Something was up. Of that, he was very sure. He saw no accusation on Armand’s face, no querulous protest. Could it be that there was actually a plea in those tormented eyes, in those aimless fat hands, overgrown with auburn hair, which kept lifting and dropping themselves?

  ‘What’s wrong?’ asked Henri. ‘You seem disturbed. You know, if I can help you, I’ll be only too glad to do so.’

  He thought: He’s had a shock.

  He saw that Armand did not know what to say, that the chaotic and terrified thoughts in his mind were too huge for speech, for orderly beginning. It was a mortally-stricken old animal that sat across from him trying to stop the shaking of his lips with his stained and yellow teeth. And Henri saw that this was no new thing, but a manifestation af a life of fear, of cringing, of nameless anguish. He was surprised. He had never given sufficient thought to Armand in the past to conjecture about him, yet the cumulative evidence that had been stored in his subconscious now neatly fitted together and revealed itself as a visible pattern to him.

  His surprise grew, and with it, a cynical compassion for Armand, so bedevilled, so undone, so confused and tormented. He studied him with an alert and rising curiosity. He saw that Armand, in his turn, had fixed his eyes upon him with sudden penetration and passionate eagerness, and that he had straightened in his chair as if his business was so urgent that he could hardly force it into the orderly confine of mere words.

  His words broke from him, in stammering and discordant confusion, and he leaned towards Henri, putting both his hands upon the desk and pressing upon it so that the cords sprang up visibly through the hairy flesh:

  ‘There are so many things I remember lately!’ And now he spoke in French, which his father had insisted upon, though it had been laughed at as an affectation by the other

  Bouchards. Henri had to listen acutely to understand. What frantic stress must the miserable old fool be enduring that impelled him, in his distraught frenzy, unco
nsciously to use the language of his childhood?

  Armand’s hands were moving with strong jerks in the air, as if to ensure full comprehension for his own incoherent words and make them understood. His eyes were bright and feverish, and as he uttered each word he mouthed it as a stammerer mulls over the painful sounds he cannot control: ‘All the things—over the years, that I remember, Henri! My father. Jules. He was a terrible man. I always knew the terribleness. It frightened me very much.’ Henri, even as he listened with strong interest, remarked to himself that this language, pouring from Armand’s shaking lips, was not rusty, as might have been expected from one who had not used it for years, but was strong and naturally accented, though hoarse with peasant inflections as if Armand’s very flesh remembered its ancient blood. These, too, were ancient peasant gesticulations, and even over his face there came a subtle mask, coarse and vital and earthy.

  Now the words came faster, so that Henri lost many:

  ‘You see, Henri, it was always very dreadful to me. I never realized it until just recently. Yet I must have known. There was something in me, rebelling.’ He struck his chest firmly, though his eyes never left Henri’s. ‘I had no words for it. I was dumb. Speechless. But it grew, like something in my heart. They only laughed. They saw it in my face, perhaps. It was very ridiculous to them. Do you understand? Well, there was nothing I could do, not even for myself. I could not understand it. It was so excessively absurd. You find it absurd, my son?’

  Something made Henri say quickly: ‘No, I do not find it absurd.’ He spoke in English, and a curious restlessness passed over Armand’s face for an instant.

  He continued: ‘I do not understand even yet. I only know I am ill. The needle—it does not help me. How can I tell the doctor this? He cannot understand. No one knows. But it is there. And now I know it will kill me.’

  He was silent. But the hands pressing on the polished desk spread an aura of dullness about them, as of sweat. He leaned even closer to Henri and searched his face with those starting and pathetic eyes.

  Henri regarded him thoughtfully, leaned back in his chair, and said nothing. To what a pass this tortured soul had come in this gross and unwieldy body that it must cry out even to a man such as himself, thought Henri. There had never been much friendliness between Armand and the man who had married his daughter, never any confidence or sympathy, or kindliness. In fact, Henri could not remember that there had ever been any of these between Armand and another human being, except Annette. Armand’s mean and peevish little wife, his brutal brothers, his subtle and vicious father, his inadequate and sorrowful mother: among all these he had never had a friend or a confidant. He had lived alone in his body, which had been awkward and lumbering even in his youth, and if he had ever wished for communication with another man he had never indicated it.

  This is a hell of a day! thought Henri, uneasily, remembering the thoughts which had preceded Armand’s coming. And now this old tragic fool sat before him, increasing his incomprehensible uneasiness!

  Out of his irritation and rusty pity, he said, slowly picking his way through his stony French: ‘There is something troubling you. If I can help, I will. What is it? You have said that you have “rebelled.” I will not pretend that I fully understand you. You have told me enough to indicate to me that your conscience is making you suffer.’ He pressed his lips strongly together to keep from smiling at the ridiculous word.

  Armand stared at him, then slowly lifted his hand and rubbed his mouth heavily. He whispered: ‘My conscience. Did I ever have a conscience?’

  He drew a deep breath, and spoke with long spaces between his words, as if it had become a matter of terrible importance to him that Henri should understand:

  ‘You see, it is all so confused. Once or twice, I thought: I cannot go on, doing these things, plotting. But I went on. Why? Because I was greedy. I was weak. I was afraid of appearing ridiculous. Sometimes Christopher suspected. He would look at me with the most wicked and cunning eyes. I could not endure his suspecting.’

  He paused, and asked: ‘Will there be war, Henri?’

  Henri was silent a moment, then replied judiciously: ‘I am no prophet, Father. How can I tell? But I am firmly against war. For the first time, the Bouchards want no war.’

  Armand nodded, and smiled wretchedly. ‘Yes, I know. That is what is so terrible to me. You understand?’

  Henri stared, frowning. Then he understood. The old fool, then, was not entirely a fool. He smiled. ‘Yes, I understand.’ They looked at each other in a long silence, and then a strange sympathy wove itself between them. Henri was aware of a growing excitement in himself.

  Armand looked down at his trembling fingers. He spoke hesitatingly: ‘Long ago, I hoped you would be my son. You see, I have no son.’

  ‘No son—’ repeated Henri. And then he said nothing else. He looked into Armand’s eyes, so bright and tragic and haggard.

  ‘Antoine is really like my father. No man could be father to a Jules, Henri. I am so terribly afraid. Antoine is to marry the daughter of Andrew Boland.’

  Now Henri forgot every thing in his dismay and apprehension. ‘The devil! You mean Mary Boland?’ So, Antoine had done well for himself to pick out the daughter of that pious old serpent, Boland, ‘Aluminium Emperor,’ and owner of one of the most powerful oil combines in the world.

  Armand saw Henri’s perturbation, and nodded sombrely. ‘You see how it is. We must move very fast, must we not?’ Henri said nothing. But as he looked at Armand, his excitement grew, and he felt a quicker beating of his heart.

  Armand gave the impression of drawing closer to the younger man. Now his words came in a tumbling rush:

  ‘I remember many things about you, too, Henri? You are not a good man, are you? You are rapacious and ruthless—like all the other Bouchards. You would do anything for power and profits. But, I am not condemning you. How could I? You, at least, never had a conscience, so nothing could be expected of you.’

  ‘I remember the legends of old Ernest Barbour, your great-grandfather. He was never really cruel, or subtle or vicious. That was because he never had the slightest conscience. He was a force. A natural force. One does not blame the glacier or volcano. It cannot help itself. Sometimes, it can be admired. You are like that, Henri.

  ‘I did not quite understand that until I heard your conversation with my brother, Christopher, when you warned him of his plottings with the Germans. Then I recalled other things, also. They made a whole. Tell me, Henri, what you wish, what you intend to do, in America.’

  Henri did not speak for several moments, though he studied

  Armand intently with his pale and inexorable eyes. He knew he must move cautiously.

  He began to speak with heavy slowness: ‘I thought you knew. It is not that I have had a change of heart,’ and he smiled. ‘I am thinking of what is best for America—because what is best for America is really best for us. Things have changed. The world, after all, belongs to the people who inhabit it, and not to a chosen few, not even to the Bouchards. When strong men devour everything, they starve the weaker who prepare the food for them.

  ‘The war that is coming was brought on by the greed of industrialists and bankers to perpetuate the status quo. And this war might be the very weapon that will destroy the system which they have laboriously built by the manipulation of everything that could be exploited. Now, I believe that every man, even a Bouchard, can operate best in a system such as ours—capitalistic democracy. It can only be saved in the future by evolving methods to give the people as much as possible, stopping short of destroying working capital. After the war, we’ll undoubtedly have newly created markets in the world. “Production for use!” We must inaugurate a higher standard of living all over the world, not only in America. This will steadily increase markets for peace-time products, and will be the greatest force against future wars.

  ‘Our relatives do not agree with me. They are complete fools. They see themselves as a family of potent Hitlers, operati
ng in America. They do not realise that tyranny devours itself, in the end. They do not understand the people at all. They will fight to the death for the status quo, with their European allies. It is their greatest dream to reduce the world to mediævalism again, supported by a supine State and a rampant Church. They do not see how ridiculous they are. The world is filled with a different breed of men now.’

  Armand had listened with the most painful attention. He had nodded eagerly once or twice. He had relaxed sufficiently to be able to sit back in his chair.

  ‘And Antoine?’ he said, now in English, as if some unbearable strain had been removed. ‘He doesn’t agree with you? He is plotting against you?’

  Henri was surprised. He frowned, and said nothing. How the hell could this old fool have known this, absorbed as he had been in his infernal List?

  ‘I know all about it, though nobody has told me anything,’ continued Armand. ‘Yes, he is really my father. I can see that.’

  His face was a better colour, and firmer and more resolute. ‘I knew what you believed, and wanted, Henri. That’s why I came here this morning. You see, yesterday I was in New York, with my lawyers.’ He took out a crumpled paper from one of his untidy pockets. His hands were no longer trembling. He was, for this hour, the old Armand again, fumbling but compact, awkward but practical. He looked down at the paper, and said:

  ‘I’ve made a new will. But no one shall know of it but you, myself and my lawyers. I have created a trust fund with my fifty-one per cent of Bouchard stock, for you and my little Annette. I shall collect the income during my lifetime, but I am giving you now power of attorney to vote the stock as you see fit on any occasion. After my death, the stock and income will belong to you jointly. They will eventually pass to the survivor, of course.’

  He looked at Henri, with a deep smile. Henri had turned singularly pale. He sat as motionless as granite in his chair.

  ‘As for Antoine, my son, I am leaving him only my minority shares in other corporations. He will have nothing to do with Bouchard. That is the danger I’ve eliminated.’