Armand was silent. His emotions struggled among themselves. He felt elation, a smothering sense of power, a terrible joy and exultation. He had never been sure of what he could expect; he knew how capricious, how malignant, how merciless his father was, knew that he loved a joke, however monstrous. Now, he was sure. But there was also the matter of Celeste; his pride and self-love and egotism smarted. The blood rushed to his head. For a moment or two he looked beset. He stood up, pushed to his feet by his own chaotic thoughts. Jules watched him intently, still smiling.
“You had no right to tell me this just now!” cried Armand, with involuntary and unaccustomed passion.
“But Armand, I’ve given you something to think about! Besides, you are not really annoyed, are you? It is just that it overcomes you, and you are afraid that you’ll be impatient for my death?”
Armand was silent; the blood slowly seeped from his face. Sweat had come out over it. He was visibly trembling. For an instant pity glimmered in Jules’ dying eyes.
“Don’t be sentimental, Armand. Be honest, always, in your own thoughts. I’ve always admired a man who could do that. It saves a lot of wear and tear and time, and the necessity of repairing the results of self-deception. Don’t be ashamed that you’ll be impatient. In your place, I’d be the same.” Armand wiped his face with the back of his hand. (He had never been known for fastidiousness.) He kept blinking; his expressions alternated as though he were being besieged. Finally, through his uncertain passions, he began to see Jules again, there on the bed, panting, smiling, tortured, with the life and brilliance still full in his eyes.
Armand cried out suddenly, sharply, bluntly: “But I don’t want you to die!” He made a curiously pathetic and clumsy gesture; his short hair bristled on his head, and a boyish emotion made his lips tremble. “Damn it, I don’t want you to die!”
Jules gazed at him; all his distrust, intense cynicism and amusement glistened in his eyes. He looked at his son with gathering concentration, and slowly the smile went from his mouth. An expression of utmost surprise flashed across his face.
Two hours before he died he suddenly realized that death was on him. All the power that had ever been in him seemed to return with his terrific effort of will to conceal the fact from his family. His doctors, as usual, came, and they knew instantly. He saw it in their faces; hardly able even to whisper, he said: “I know I’m done for. But for God’s sake, don’t tell my wife, or my sons. Give me the last thing I’m asking for: I want to be alone. It’s a little thing—”
The doctors withdrew to the opposite end of the great luxurious room and stood in silence near the fire. The rosy light glimmered on their grave faces; once in a while they whispered together. There was no sound in the room but the hissing and crackling of the coals and the frightful sound of his breathing as his body struggled for the last time. He knew that Adelaide, that other members of his family, were waiting in the hall outside, and his one terror was that one of them might enter, might ruin his last few moments alive.
Just before the end, a darkness fell over his eyes and a distant numbness over his body. He felt intensely alive, more alive inside than he had ever felt. Through it he could feel a vague, far-off and bitter cold, a vague distress somewhere off in the eons of space; in some way, some impatient way, he was aware of his connection with that cold and distress. But he, himself, was so alive that all his energies were absorbed in wondering about it. He did not know, of course, that when this happened the doctors admitted his wife and his sons and his brother; they stood about his bed and watched him die, but he did not know they were there.
He was buried on November 11th, 1918. While the funeral services were being read for him, the world was going mad in a frenzy of joy for a peace that would be no peace, that would never be a peace.
CHAPTER III
There was an important conference on the second of January, 1919, over which Armand Bouchard presided. President of Bouchard & Sons, he had acquired a greater dignity, a deeper poise and sureness. When he spoke, even Leon, his uncle, listened with respect.
He looked at them all, his relatives, all of whom had large shares in the Company and its subsidiaries. There was Emile, and Christopher, Etienne Bouchard the aged actor, Andre Bouchard, Georges and Nicholas, Francis, Jean and Hugo, Peter, Leon, Alexander Bouchard, and the very young Henri Bouchard, who looked so appallingly like his greatgrandfather, Ernest Barbour, and who listened grimly to what was going on. All were here, all the chief members of the formidable Bouchard family, the war-makers, the Dynasty of Death.
Armand had just concluded the conference, which had lasted for hours.
He regarded them solemnly, but now his solemnity, usually so amusing to many of them, did not seem funny.
“Peace has come,” he said. He paused. “I am sure we are all grateful for this peace. I am sure we all hope most sincerely that it will endure.”
Again he paused. He looked at all-their faces.
A curious expression affixed itself to his big pursy face. He bent his head and gazed at the papers on the table before him.
“We hope it is the end,” he concluded. “The end of wars. But, if it is not the end, we must always be prepared to serve our country as faithfully, as efficiently, as enthusiastically, as we have ever done.”
There was one face he had not looked at too closely, and that was the face of his young second cousin, Peter Bouchard, in his uniform of a private in the United States Army. But he had known all along that Peter had been gazing at him steadfastly, not speaking all the time he had been in that room.
He had known all along that in Peter was his mortal enemy, that in Peter was the mortal enemy of all the Bouchards.
But Peter went away. No one seemed to know, or care, just where he went. Even his mother was indifferent. Three, four, five, six years went by. There were rumors that he was dead, that he was here, or there, or nowhere. He had been a stranger in the family, and strangers are always distrusted, or, if gentle, despised. Peter was gentle. No one had ever really cared about him but his father, Honore. His enlistment in the United States Army during the War had been a source of amusement, derision, amazement, contempt and ridicule among the Family. But even this was eventually forgotten in the press of more virile things. Jules was dead. But Leon was alive until 1923, and he never forgot his cousin’s son, Peter Bouchard, and never forgot a certain evening after America had declared war against Germany.
It was a Christmas evening, and the usual family dinner had been held at the home of the Leon Bouchards. After the dinner, Leon had asked his brother, Jules, to come into his private apartments with him. They left the drawing rooms, filled with firelight and candlelight and gleaming white shoulders and jewels and children and laughter and noise, and went up the stairway. Some thirty of the Bouchards had come for the family dinner, not as many as usual., In one of the bay windows stood a mighty balsam tree, blazing with lights and tinsel and cotton snow, and heaped about with mountains of tissue-wrapped boxes and ribbons. Holly wreaths hung at the other windows. Outside, huge slow flakes of whiteness fell through the still black night.
A small quiet fire chuckled to itself in the warm dimness of Leon’s suite. The brothers sat down before it and lit cigars. Jules leaned his head back against the cushions and closed his eyes. The gray wrinkled mask of exhaustion, so familiar now since Honore’s tragic death, slipped over his dark face. He said: “Do you think Antoinette would care if I gathered up my family and went home?” He added: “Or have you something important to tell me about?”
“It’s important, all right! Yesterday, Hugo was in the bank and told my Nick that Peter was going to enlist.”
Jules sat upright, gripping the arms of his chair. The veins rose on the back of his thin hands. “Peter? Preposterous! Peter!”
“Well, he’s not a child, you know. And you know how he’s always been. As you’ve said yourself, he’s ridiculously like our sainted Uncle Martin. Anyway, Honore’s Joseph is off to the wars.”
“I don’t believe it! No son of Honore’s could be that damned silly. Enlist! I never heard anything so stupid. What for?” He threw his cigar into the fire. “What officers’ training camp is the young idiot considering going to?”
Leon smiled grimly. “None. He’s going to enlist as a private. Put that in your pipe and smoke it!”
Jules regarded him incredulously.
“And he’s going to France, too, he says, right in the front line trenches. No soft berths for Peter, and young captain’s boots. Heroism and mud and steel helmets. And bullets.”
“He’s crazy,” said Jules, in an almost hushed voice. “I always thought him negligible, but not feeble-minded. However, a telegram to interested parties, and not a recruiting station in the country would accept him.”
Leon’s face tightened, and he regarded his brother with an odd flash in his eye. “If I were you, Jules, I wouldn’t interfere that way. He’d find it out. Peter’s not negligible at all; that’s where you’re wrong. Do something back-handed, and you’ll set his back up. Stubborn as hell. The only chance is for you to use some of your well-known eloquence on him.”
Jules was silent; he gnawed his lip, rubbed it. Then he said: “If he’s still downstairs, will you have him come up?”
Leon rang the bell, sent a servant after their young second cousin. Jules was again silent: Leon studied him thoughtfully; he pressed his lower lip between his thumb and finger, as though he were trying to prevent a sudden smile.
The door opened and young Peter Bouchard came in. When he saw Jules sitting by the fire, and Leon standing on the other side, his questioning smile became cautious and reserved. His handsome and youthful face changed as he approached his father’s cousins.
“Come in!” said Leon cordially. “Jules and I were just talking about you, Peter.”
“Yes, I thought that,” replied the young man, a trifle ironically. His reply was to Leon, but his glance was for Jules, whom he distrusted and disliked. Jules surveyed him blandly, over his shoulder.
“Leon’s been telling me an asinine story about you, Peter. I’m ashamed to repeat it to you—”
“About my enlisting?” The young man’s voice was abrupt and blunt, and his face darkened and hardened. “Well, what of it? What business can it possibly be of yours, Jules?”
“My dear Peter, none at all, of course! Except that your father was my cousin, and my best friend, and I didn’t want to hear any idiocy spoken of his sons. Or watch them doing anything idiotic. However, I told Leon I didn’t believe it, anyway.”
The young man gazed at him steadily for a few moments in silence. All the lines of his face were naturally amiable and gentle and kind, even when he was angered, as he was now.
“You can believe it, Jules. Call it idiotic, if you want to. But I’m going to enlist within the next few days.”
Jules, rubbing his lip thoughtfully, fixed his hooded eyes on the other’s.
“Peter, you were your father’s favorite son. Do you think he’d want you to do this? You see, I’m not asking you your reason; that is your business. But what about your father’s wishes?” He lifted his hands helplessly, let them drop after a humorous gesture. “Peter! My God, Peter!”
The young man’s expression changed again, became infuriated.
“My father would want me to do as I wanted!”
Jules’ smile became gentle and deprecating. “He would want you to follow your conscience?”
Peter’s fist clenched at the tone and the words. But his voice was quiet. “Go on, Jules. Try to make a fool of me. You’re an adept at that, making fools of people. But what you’re afraid of is my making fools of all of you, of all the Bouchards! Don’t worry: I’m enlisting under an assumed name.”
“Don’t be a child, Peter. Let us talk this out sensibly. You can refuse to tell me, of course, but I would really like to know why you want to do this.” He pointed to a chair. “Sit down.”
Peter hesitated, then he sat down. Jules smiled at him indulgently. Honore’s favorite son. Since Honore’s death he had tried to make friends with Peter, for Honore’s sake, but Peter had met his advances with reserve and open suspicion.
“Won’t you tell me, Peter?”
The young man looked suddenly tired. “Jules, you don’t need to put on that fatherly manner. I know you. You always want others to be frank, just so you can snap the trap on them. But I’m not afraid of your traps; I can smell the cheese on them a mile away. (Leon smiled involuntarily.) I suppose part of it is curiosity, and part apprehension, for me (I’d like to hope); but mostly, I am afraid, for adverse publicity, or ridicule. A Bouchard a fourth class private in the rear ranks!” His mouth and eyes became bitter. “But have you thought of the other side? You know very damned well, Jules, that after the war there’s going to be an unholy stink about armaments manufacturers; there’s a stink already. Senate Committees investigating behind the drums and the guns. Think what an asset it will be for you to point to a relative who enlisted ‘humbly and patriotically,’ to fight for his country, without ostentatious publicity, and so democratically, too! Asking no favors, and getting none. And think what it would mean to the Bouchards if I get my head blown off! Why, you’ll need no better argument than that. The Bouchard blood flowed, too; the Bouchards fought, as well as bought tax-free Liberty Bonds!” He regarded Jules with increasing bitterness. “The American people are the most sentimental and most easily influenced in the world. When they’re hottest after you, shrieking for your blood, you can throw them a bone in the shape of me.”
Jules was silent; he stared at Peter, still half smiling. Finally he said: “That’s a point, Peter, I overlooked. A very good point, too. Frankly, I didn’t think you were that bright. Your brothers are such damned villains that they rather overshadowed you. But adding to the Bouchard prestige, and—ah —protecting the name, isn’t your reason for enlisting, is it?”
Again the young man regarded him steadfastly. He had become pale. “No, it isn’t. But I don’t mind telling you. It ought to be good for a laugh, your laugh, anyway, so I’ll tell you.” He stopped abruptly, then stood up as if his thoughts propelled him. His eyes darkened passionately. “Well, laugh, damn you, laugh! But here it is:
“You, all of you, and what you do, have made me sick! There are some businesses that build up a country and civilize it. Ours doesn’t. It pulls it down, makes it barbarous, destroys and mangles it. Because we can live only on death we make death. I’ve always hated it, and you, and all that you are. Enemies of men. Killers. International gangsters. Why, you’re a disease!
“I’m not patriotic, nor sentimental, though you’d like to think so. I don’t want to die for anything, or any flag, or anybody. But you, and your friends in Europe, have sent millions out to be torn to shreds and blinded and made idiots, and to die. Just to make money, to run your ‘business.’ And that’s why I’m going: to be torn to shreds, or blinded, or made an idiot, or to die. I’m going to share in what you’ve brought on the rest of the world. It’s the least I can do, to go voluntarily into the thing you’ve made, and into which you’ve sent other men involuntarily. In a way, I’m guilty, too, and I haven’t any illusions. That’s what’ll make it so hard: when the others are singing and ‘dying for their country,’ I won’t be singing, and I won’t be dying for anything else but to make money for the armaments manufacturers.”
“Of all the imbeciles—!” exclaimed Leon. But Peter did not look at him; he was looking at Jules, with contempt and loathing.
Jules laughed gently. “But my dear Peter, you are sentimental! I never heard such rot. You really can’t be serious!”
Peter flushed.
“Yes, I’m serious.”
Jules shook his head with an air of humorous bewilderment “I suppose you’d call this ‘expiation’?”
Peter bit his lip. But he answered quietly: “Yes, call it expiation.”
Then he turned and went out of the room.
Leon shrugged “So, that’s all the
n. The young fool will get blown up, and that’ll be the end. But I can’t help thinking of Honore—”
Jules lifted his hand and smiled. “Don’t be tragic, Leon. You know, I’ve been thinking. It wouldn’t be a bad idea to have that card up our sleeve after all, about a Bouchard enlisting, as a private. The young devil’s got a head on him; I wouldn’t be surprised if he had the brains of the family, in spite of the showiness of that brute brother of his, Francis. And we can’t afford to lose brains, particularly not Bouchard brains. Do you know, this has been the best news in some time, the discovering that Honore’s little Peter was worthy of his father’s affection. Now, don’t worry: I’ll have him shadowed immediately, and we’ll soon find out under what name he enlists. Perhaps, with careful handling, we can persuade him to enlist under his own name. But no matter. And it will be seen to, that, private or not, he’ll never get into a position where he’ll be blown up. It’ll all be managed discreetly; he’ll never know. But I guarantee that he’ll come back without a scratch.”
He stood up, still smiling, but Leon noticed that he had to hold onto his chair, and then the side of the fireplace, to help himself to his feet Sweat appeared on his face from the effort.
But in some way Peter had circumvented Jules, and he had gone only as a private into the Army, and had disappeared. There was a vague rumor that he had been wounded or gassed, but for some reason no one was able to verify this.
He disappeared, and was forgotten. Leon was dead now. No one was alive who remembered that Christmas night, except Peter.
CHAPTER IV
The Barbours had been close-fisted. The Bouchards had been frugal and thrifty. Wealth had piled up behind them like the waters of a dam or behind the narrow outlet of a bottle neck. Both families had been of good lower middle-class or peasant stock, hardy, strong, disillusioned and toughbodied. Power is not confined to good, but includes destruction also. The Barbours and the Bouchards had had this power in tremendous quantity.
The Eagles Gather Page 2
