“Um,” she murmured, beaming at the ring, and twisting it on her finger.
Christopher laughed goodhumoredly. “Well, as you know, he didn’t. That’s because he had already met you, and had also heard that the Bouchard stock was due for a big rise.” Celeste glanced up. The color was still soft in her cheeks, but her expression was startled and dimly uneasy. “I don’t think that’s quite correct, Christopher. He told me he was keeping it because it made him curious why all of you just rushed at him and tried to buy it.”
“Is that so?” said Christopher, raising his eyebrows with humorous indifference, “But I don’t think you quite understand, sweet. In fact, I’m reliably informed that he bought considerably more Bouchard stock a little later. This might not be true, but my informant had no particular reason to tell me, if it weren’t. He sold this stock at a large profit a few weeks later.”
Celeste was silent. The color had gone from her cheeks, leaving them singularly pale, as though the blood had left her veins entirely. Her deep blue eyes fixed themselves upon her brother. The sunlight lay in them, so that they had a strong brilliance. Her young body was motionless, but it was the motionlessness of an animal who imminently expects a death blow.
Christopher could not look at her, for some odd reason. He lit a cigarette with immense but casual care. He snapped the lighter shut, replaced it in his pocket. He puffed tranquilly for a moment, squinting at the ceiling. Celeste still did not move.
“Well, anyway, that’s not important,” said Christopher. “Francis, however, seemed to think that Peter wanted you, and that you had an eye for him, too. Peter’s his brother, and naturally, he was pleased and interested in the idea of a marriage like this, though I must admit that I thought Henri the better man for you. So, he offered Peter a directorship in Kinsolving.”
A faint painful smile curved Celeste’s lips. “That was silly,” she said in a low voice. “Peter wouldn’t have anything to do with Kinsolving, or—”
Christopher stared at her, as though astounded at her silliness. “Why not, for God’s sake? Of course he would! He considered Francis’ offer, and they had quite a lot of correspondence and discussion about it.”
Celeste said nothing. She was completely white. She shivered; her body seemed to contract as though stricken with intolerable cold.
Christopher continued irately, assuming an air of impatience and affront: “You surely didn’t expect Peter to lead a useless life, did you, tagging after you wherever you went, helping you spend your money? Humiliating himself, and being laughed at by your ‘nice’ friends? Of course, he writes, but this thing he is writing is the first piece of work he’s done of that kind. And if you have any illusions that the average writer ever gets rich, you had better disillusion yourself at once, my young lady!”
He paused, as though overcome with indignation at her immature folly. He pretended to be engrossed in snuffing out his cigarette; he muttered under his breath. But Celeste was still silent; she hardly seemed to have heard what he was saying. The deep blue eyes were still rivetted on him in a face as white as milk.
“Well, anyway, Peter’s got some sense, if you haven’t, Celeste.” He got up, retrieved the brown envelope, and with a manner full of stern annoyance, he flung it on Celeste’s lap. “Francis gave me this. You’ll see that Peter didn’t think a directorship in Kinsolving would bring him enough, and that he turned it down for that reason. I’ve talked it over with Francis, but he can’t do any better than what he has already offered. Read it! Don’t sit there like a lump of stone. Read it. I tell you, these letters have done more to raise Peter in my estimation than anything else could have done! He’s a man of sense, though I admit I didn’t think so at first.”
With fingers cold and stiff as ice, Celeste slowly withdrew the little piles and notes of correspondence between Peter and Francis. With a sort of awful composure and calm she read them all. Christopher tried to watch her. But he could not. He walked to the window, pretended to fume. But a sudden horrible nausea made him grip the curtains. He smiled at himself derisively. But the nausea mounted.
He heard Celeste replacing the envelope. He turned back to her with a smile, and deftly took the envelope from her. The girl sat absolutely immobile, her hands on her lap, the palms turned upward as though she had been mortally stricken. Her head was bent.
“I’m surprised at you, Celeste,” he said tenderly. “But you ought to be glad that Peter’s got intelligence enough to realize the embarrassing position he would be in, if he just lounged around and played lapdog to you. Oh, you’ll have your honeymoon! Don’t be afraid of that. But when you come back, I’m going to see what I can do for Peter myself!” he added triumphantly.
He waited. Celeste said nothing. “What’s the matter with you, Celeste?” he asked, outraged. “Aren’t you going to thank me?”
She lifted her head. She regarded him with a strange white smile. “Thank you, Christopher,” she almost whispered.
“Well, then,” he said in a mollified tone. “I don’t know just how it can be arranged. But Armand’s taken a liking to Peter. He suggested to me only last week that Peter come in with us. But Armand’s as cautious as the devil, and a skinflint. I’ll have to do some work on him. But I think I’ll be successful in getting a better offer for Peter than Francis gave.”
“Peter will like that,” murmured Celeste. She suddenly drew a loud sharp breath, then held it.
Christopher pretended to be amused at his own thoughts. “Of course, there’s the book. But it won’t do any harm. I understand Peter has consented to let it be published under a pen-name. I’ve never seen his writing, but I’d like to place a bet that after he’s got what he wants, there’ll be no more booksl I wouldn’t go so far as to say it’s a form of blackmail, but Peter’s a shrewd fellow, and I wouldn’t put it past him,” he concluded in admiration.
He paused. He gazed at his sister in deep silence. A spasm ran over his face. He thought: She’ll get over it. After a year she wouldn’t be able to stand him. There’s no one better for her than Henri. But the intense nausea and pain which had assailed him remained.
He moved over to her. He rumpled her hair playfully. She did not seem aware of him. There was a muted blank look on her face which frightened him; the lovely firm mouth was carved in suffering.
“So now,” he said, “all you have to do is to write Peter at once and tell him to come home. Or get him on the telephone, if he can be reached. And tell him I have something to say to him when he arrives. I have an idea,” he added with slow amused significance, “that he’ll understand.”
She forced her mouth to move in the lines of a smile. But she did not glance up at him. She hardly seemed to breathe. Her body took on the aspect of hopeless mourning.
He patted her head again, bent down and kissed her forehead. It was cold and damp. “Well, go on and get dressed, lazy wretch. Shall I meet you on the beach? And don’t forget that golf tournament.”
He went out of the room. He closed the door softly behind him. He stood outside, listening intently, for a long time. But there was no sound from behind the door, no sob, no movement, no sigh, no exclamation of unbearable pain.
He went away. He passed his mother’s door. He stopped. The long corridor was luminous with seeping sunlight. There was no sound behind this door, either.
When he went downstairs, he discovered that the house was deserted, for all the guests had gone to the beach. Only Edith was there, waiting for him. He descended the staircase; she was at the foot. Their eyes met in silence as he approached her. When he stood beside her, their eyes were still fixed on each other. Then, with a curious smile, she took his hands and turned them palms upward, as though she were looking for something on them.
Peter waited in bitterness and hopeless suffering to the very end of the month. He waited for an extra week, and then two. And then at last he knew that Celeste would not call him, that she would never call him.
CHAPTER LIII
Peter wrote
Adelaide from Montreal: “Georges has sent me your letter,—What can I say to you in answer? It seems to me that everything was said when Celeste did not write me and ask me to come to her. She asked for a month, which I had to give her. She said it was only ‘fair’ to ‘everyone.’ It appeared that the question of ‘fairness’ did not relate to me at all. I was the one who was demanding outrageous things, and I was to be dealt with severely, and held in check, in order that an investigation could be conducted as to whether I was invading someone else’s rights. It’s no use, Adelaide. If Celeste had wanted me, she would have called me back. Her silence is her answer. That’s all.
“Besides, her almost psychopathic attitude towards Christopher’s infallibility would make a decent married life impossible between us. I would be the half-witted husband, who couldn’t be depended upon to make an intelligent decision. She would always be consulting him; such a situation would be intolerable. I detest him. I think he’s a vicious influence on Celeste. But I can’t help her to throw off that influence. She must do it, herself, or he must let her go voluntarily, for her own good. You ask me to come back and ‘help her.’ If she really cared about me, she would send for me, experience or no experience. It’s as simple as that. She has a lot of character, and can make up her mind for herself. Unless she does, I can’t, and won’t, make any move.”
Adelaide laid aside the letter with a new feeling of utter despair. Pride! Even in a man like Peter, self-love and self-pride could do this disgusting thing, and abandon a foolish child who was being manipulated to her endless suffering. She, Adelaide, thought that when she wrote him in her frantic efforts to save her daughter he would come back. Surely love was beyond pride, greater than self-love, more profound than any hurt, however deep. She was bitterly disappointed, and more despairing than ever. She realized that even at her age she could still believe that selflessness did live, that men might, at rare moments, be nobler than themselves.
She tore the letter to bits, for she could not bear to know that it existed. It was too wounding, to herself. Destroyed, she could imagine that it had never been written or received. The written evidence would preserve, always remain a symbol of, the fact that she was a fool.
There was nowhere to turn. But she made a last desperate appeal to Armand, begging him to come to see her on a night when she was alone. It was now the early part of September, and the wedding between Celeste and Henri was to take place on October second. Armand came. She had not seen him for a month. She was shocked, in spite of her preoccupation, by his visible aging, his gloomy and despondent air. His clothing seemed neglected, in spite of his valet. He had a distracted manner of rubbing his temples and chin, and his eyes were haggard. Yet his voice and attitude were gentler towards his mother than they had ever been before. She sensed that he was defeated, and that somehow his defeat had lost sharpness in the face of a greater agony.
She could say, in spite of the reason she had called him to her: “Armand, my dear, you are ill. Why don’t you go away? Why don’t you leave all this?”
“Go away,” he repeated mechanically. He smiled drearily. “Maybe I will, one of these days. I’m sick of practically everything.” He paused, then added: “But what is it? What can I do for you now?”
She began to cry. “It’s Celeste, Armand.” Armand’s face darkened. “I don’t know what to do. You saw her the other night, at that dinner. Did you see how hard and thin her face is? She’s always been reserved, but there’s something stony about the child now. Something is dying in her. She pushed me away! She avoids me. I haven’t seen her for two days. I hear her footsteps, and then when I look for her she isn’t there. She clings to Christopher.” She stood up and cried passionately: “Christopher, who’s killing her!”
Armand said nothing. He sat heavily, chewing his under lip, his eyes directed at the floor. His mother caught his arm, tried to shake him from his apathy: “Armand! You must do something! I have a feeling, and I know it’s true, that he is making her marry Henri for his own ends. And Armand, I know that his ends are directed against you, that he is trying to ruin you!”
She expected him to start, to exclaim, to express incredulity or anger, or demand an explanation. But he did none of these. The arm she shook was attached to his body like a heavy lifeless sack, which hardly stirred in her grasp. His face did not change expression, except to become more somber, more abstracted. She let go his arm and cried out, a sound of pure anguish which pierced through his exhausted emotions and touched his heart. He lifted his head, and regarded her with gloomy gentleness.
“Yes, I know, Mother. I don’t know just what he’s doing, but he’s doing it. I can feel danger for me in the very air around him. He’s after me.” He raised one of his big hands, and let it drop lifelessly again. “But it doesn’t matter. I don’t care. Well, maybe not a great deal. Maybe I’ll care later. Just now, I don’t.” He sighed, and that sound, in turn, reached her own heart. “I can’t think of anything but Annette,” he added simply. And now his eyes were fixed on her with the simple suffering of a child.
She looked at him steadfastly, piercingly, and then with a cry from the depths of her maternity she caught his head in her arms and pressed it against her old breast. She uttered soothing murmurs, stroking his gray hair. Her tears fell on it. He was her child again, tortured, turning to her for consolation. But this quiescence was not the soothed attitude of that child, but the lethargy of despair. He let her do what she wanted to do, but she knew that he found no consolation at all, and that it was easier to sit like this, with his big gray head on her breast, than to resist her.
“Oh, my darling,” she murmured bitterly, “why couldn’t you have been what you were? You were so good, when you were a little boy. So honorable. You never lied. You never twisted around. You were never cruel, or foxy, or deceiving. I don’t know what’s happened to you! You’ve done such terrible things to yourself, my dear. And you could have been so happy, if you had only been yourself. You could have made Annette happy, and your poor wife, and your boy—” She stopped, choked with tears, remembering the sick girl, remembering the headstrong, idle, worthless boy, with his extravagance and greediness. “What we do to ourselves, we do to our children. A man who destroys himself, destroys them, too.”
He made a motion as though he would push her away, and then his hand dropped, impotently. He thought: It is true. And the thing is that I never really wanted all this, anyway.
He said at last: “Do you think circumstances would have changed me? I don’t think so. We really make circumstances, you know. There are as many villains among the poor as among the rich.” And then he smiled at her as though she were very young and foolish. “We become what we are, no matter what conditions surround us.”
She released him. She sat down. She gazed at him with such passionate gravity that he was touched again. He tried to speak more lightly: “Perhaps I worry about Annette too much. She was never strong. She seems weaker, lately. But perhaps she’ll get over it, as she’s gotten over other things.” “She’s such a sweet little thing,” said Adelaide, weeping again. “I think, that of all the Bouchards, she is the only one who is good.”
Armand smiled at her with sad gratitude. “Yes, she is good, isn’t she? I’m going to take her away for a while, after the wedding,” he added with difficulty. “Maybe before.”
His words brought back to Adelaide her own misery. She asked in a despairing voice: “Can’t you help me, Armand? Can’t you help your little sister?”
He stared at her helplessly. “What can I do? I tried to say something once to Celeste, and she looked at me as though I were an impudent stableboy. You know Celeste; proud and obstinate as the devil.” He felt his own impotence as he spoke, his will-to-impotence. He thought to himself: If I really cared about Celeste, I could fight for her. But because I don’t care, I can’t lift my hand. Something of his old integrity had risen up to torment him these days. At every turn it was met with self-interest, secretiveness, selfishness, greed and a
nxiety.
Adelaide thought intensely, her hands clasping and unclasping each other. She began to speak, as though she were unravelling a complicated thought: “If you could find out what Christopher is doing, and defeat him at it before Celeste marries Henri, he would have no more reason to force her into this marriage. Then he would see how unhappy she is. Yes, yes!” she exclaimed excitedly, “that’s it! You must find out what he is doing, and circumvent him, Armand!”
He smiled wryly. “And how am I going to find out? I’ve tried, for the last two years. He’s cunning as hell. He’s covered all his tracks. Even the things we know mean nothing, unless we know the connecting links. He, and Emile, and Hugo, and Francis! We know they’re in it up to their necks, but what it is that they are in is something we can’t find out. We do know that all of them, including Henri, had a conference in July in Jay Regan’s office. But why, we don’t know.”
Adelaide got to her feet. She walked up and down with disordered and feeble steps. She kept putting her hand to her head in a frenzied and feverish gesture. Her white hair streaked across her forehead, her temples. “There must be something to do!” she cried.
Agnes gave a dinner for her young sister-in-law Celeste, and Henri. It was a family dinner, including only a few close friends. It was a warm September evening, smelling of pungent dust, sunwarmed grass, leaves and smoke. The pretentious chateau on its terraces had, as usual, a false and disoriented air. Adelaide often thought that it reminded her of an ancient grande dame in diamonds and ermine, attempting to hide with her skirts the boots of a groom, which she had inadvertently put on. The faces of the Bouchards, sharp and predatory, watchful and fat, amiable and alert, were out of place in this immense gloomy dining-hall with its enormous candelabra ablaze with tall thin tapers. In that wavering and unearthly light, and surrounded by these dim cold walls shadowed with tapestries and banners, the tinted faces of the modern women, the modern dress of the men, were grotesque. The servants materialized out of the stony dusk, and faded again, bearing silver dishes past draped lanccs and armor, their feet mutely striking on the polished dark stone floor. The tremendous refectory table, lace-covered, glittered with silver and crystal in the moving candlelight. Here and there this light, leaping palely and with a phantom glimmer, picked up a high banner, tattered and motionless, which hung from the distant ceiling or the walls. The faded crimsons and blues were visible for a moment, and then lost again in the fathomless gloom. The effect was somber and melancholy.
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