The Eagles Gather

by Taylor Caldwell

  He found an uninfested place in the hall and sat down, fuming with disgust and rage. It was some time before he could smile at his pettiness, and feel ashamed of himself. The telephone was near his hand, and he started violently when it rang. No one else heard it, for the uproar mounted as midnight passed.

  He picked up the receiver, and was greeted by a man’s voice. “Peter? Well, I’ve had the devil of a time finding you. I’ve been paging you over two continents. This is Christopher.”

  Peter felt his heart shaking. He almost dropped the receiver. But he said, coldly: “Yes?” The uproar in the other rooms became a dim chaotic background.

  Christopher laughed. “Don’t be so cordial! The point is, when are you coming home?”

  Peter was silent. His heart made a throbbing noise in his ears, like dynamos. He heard Christopher’s sharp voice: “Peter? Hello, hello?” It was some moments before he could answer. “Yes. Yes.”

  “When are you coming home? Can you make it today? Tomorrow? Celeste wants you to come back, you know.”

  “Why doesn’t she ask me herself, then?” He was amazed at the coldness of his own voice. Again Christopher laughed.

  “Don’t be stuffy. Come home. Perhaps she’s ashamed to ask you. Look, I’m asking you. What more do you want?”

  The voice was jovial, but Peter was suddenly swept with black hatred for the other man. He said quietly enough, however: “I’ll be there tomorrow.” And hung up.

  He sat in rigid silence for a long time after that his eyes staring sternly before him. Then all at once he was ablaze with joy, with incredulous excitement. Everything was forgotten but the fact that he was returning to Celeste. He got up, to tell Etienne, and his knees almost collapsed under him.

  When he tried to go to bed, after the invading hordes had gone, leaving behind them ashes and cigarette-holes and demolished trays and assorted smells and dirty glasses, he found he could not sleep. The blood seemed to be bubbling and sparkling in his body; his heart kept throbbing with a rushing sound in his ears. Never had he been so awake, so stirred, so excited and alive. He got up and turned on the lamp at his side. He took out his almost completed manuscript All at once he was filled with a sense of power and strength and potency. There was just the last chapter to do, and he would finish it now. Tomorrow, for many tomorrows thereafter, there would be no time, and there would be too much joy. Joy, like pain, had a certain anesthetic effect on the mind.

  He wrote feverishly, until the hot gray September dawn filtered through the Venetian blinds, and the city accelerated its sleepless mutter into a confused and steady ululation. The last chapter, the last paragraphs, were completed with no slackening of passion, no diminution of power and strength.

  “We know now that the world is in the hands of faithless, irresponsible and greedy men, who no longer pay even lip-service to honor and compassion and goodness. We know that they have dedicated themselves to the destruction of democracy and freedom, for they see in this destruction the final accomplishment of tyranny. They cannot use the juggernaut of religion again, for the people see the wheels and those who draw them. Therefore, with a brutality and cynicism never before witnessed in history, they will use force and cruelty.

  “Prophesies are made and unfulfilled, and another will probably go unnoticed. But those who can see and hear know that in ten, in fifteen years, the oppressors will make one last effort to overthrow civilization, and destroy liberty and peace. They will use wars, and hatred, and the natural ignorance of men, and the masses’ inability to think, and all the stupidity and lust-to-kill which afflicts the lower orders of society, all the beastlike prejudices and envy and madness of these lower orders, to overwhelm the enlightened peoples. An insanity is upon them, and a hatred for everything that is good and civilized, a loathing for everything which has urged man to stand on his hindlegs and liberate himself from his simian bondage. They cannot endure and flourish in a world of men. Therefore, they will try to overpower it and murder it, to roll it under, to flatten it out.

  “They will use force, but greater than force, they will use words. They will set the ignorant and the fools to slaughtering each other. They will use the inferior and the dumb-minded masses to kill for them. Where the conspiracy will start, no one knows. Perhaps in Germany, already plotted against by the haters of men, perhaps in England, already enslaved and confused by its cowardly and treacherous ruling classes. Perhaps in Russia, already chaotic in the hands of the stupid. Perhaps in America, where the plot is already operating in the markets of speculation, and where plans are already made to paralyze industry and reduce the people to starvation. The plotters are still hidden, but those who can hear have even now heard their whisperings.

  “Tyranny is old, cruelty is ancient, stupidity is immortal. Liberty, honor, self-control and dignity are all new in the history of men. They will be assaulted; many times they will be overcome; a thousand times all hope for them will be lost in the universal chaos of hatred and fear and blood and ruin and oppression.

  “But they cannot die, for men have seen and heard them for the first time, and know what they are. No man will completely abandon that which has once saved him and made him respect himself. The ruin will come, and the death and the despair, but out of it, out of the fury and darkness where the terrible struggle will take place, will come the final liberation, the final faith, the final democracy, the final peace of all men.”

  Surely, thought Peter, as he covered his typewriter, surely the spirit of Martin Barbour, assailed and wounded, thrown out and despised, ridiculed and forgotten, will be victor, at the last, over that of Ernest Barbour.

  CHAPTER LVIII

  One of the secret terrors of Peter’s life, since the war, and his injuries, were periods when he was suddenly seized with a complete sense of unreality, of disorientation. It was not that he became confused, or lost sharpness of perception. Rather, his perception became abnormally clear and vivid, almost transfixed, like fluid water instantaneously stilled to crystal. But in the stilling, he lost the awareness of time and space, and there was only this transfixed clarity of perception, which was without meaning, without relation to past or present. He was absorbed by its petrified glitter, its aching projection into his mind, which was so tired, and which began, again, so desperately, its groping for memory and reality.

  He never knew when this sense of unreality would come upon him, and he had learned to dread it, for through its petrified clarity values were lost, and the most important things lost significance. At one time he had suspected that he was losing his mind, and had consulted a psychiatrist, very cautiously. His discovery that disorientation was a symptom of dementia praecox did nothing to alleviate his sufferings. It had first come upon him when he had slowly recovered consciousness in a base hospital. His active consciousness was still dulled and floundering, but all at once the vivid perception of unreality had blown away consciousness, and he knew the horror of an unreality which was sharper and more tormenting than reality, and which left him, for days, with a sick wonder as to what was real, and what fantasy.

  He flew from New York to Windsor the next afternoon after receiving Christopher’s message. A storm had been rising all afternoon, and as Peter’s plane rose into the oppressed air the storm broke. He did not like flying, for he feared height, and only resorted to it when his patience outstripped slower methods of travel. But his natural fear of flying was lost, all at once, in the terrible beauty of this celestial fury. The earth below was obliterated by a rushing sea of purple vapors, a sea of chaos, rolling over and over on itself. Above this sea, and close to the uneasy plane, flew thin clouds of radiant, streaming mauve, like banners. In the near distance turretted cities, medieval towers, arches and colonnades, seemingly formed of dark marble, were outlined in golden fire, against a chaotic sky of shifting bronze and scarlet, broken at intervals by colossal flames. They were hardly formed before tumbling into ruin, and dissolving into smoke that assumed grotesque shapes, or exploding into enormous silent mu
shrooms of gold and heliotrope. There was no sound, and the silence that accompanied all this tremendous exploding of vapor and fire and color seemed more awful than any uproar.

  Then all at once the plane seemed boring into a universe composed only of blazing yellow smoke, enveloping and swirling. There was no earth, no sky, no reality. The dim bemusement which always preceded a period of disorientation suddenly fell over Peter, and he experienced the old sick dread. Celeste became a figure of glass, without body, without tint or meaning. There was only Christopher, and Peter was aware of this enemy, now disembodied, now a part of this horror of enormous furies, more potent, more universal, more imminent, than ever. He put his hands over his face; his senses were swirling like this yellow smoke that swirled about the plane. After a long period, full of torment and pain, he lifted his head and looked through the small window. A sky of unbelievable blue and brilliant rose dazzled his eyes. The earth was still lost in purple vapors, streaked with fire. But everywhere there was peace and majestic splendor, a pervading holiness of silence and unearthly beauty. The pain deepened in Peter’s heart, but it was a sweet pain, and he thought: It is possible there might be a God.

  Christopher, but not Celeste, met Peter at the Windsor airport. “She doesn’t know you’re here yet,” said Christopher, with his smile, and extending his hand to the other man. Peter took his hand. He could feel its dry coolness, and his ancient aversion for Christopher Bouchard sharpened to loathing. He made himself smile, but could say nothing that would sound sensible or eager.

  Christopher was everything that was humorous and light But Peter saw the vindictiveness in his eyes, the endless hatred. He thought: There’ll never be any peace between us. No matter how long we both live, there’ll never be any peace. But something has happened. I’m not afraid of him. Something has defeated him. But I don’t think it was Celeste, or myself. He has given up, but he was not forced to give up.

  Peter sat beside his enemy as they were driven to Endur, and again he was conscious that the strongest reality of all was Christopher Bouchard, and that he would never be rid of this reality. He listened to the other man’s light remarks, which were at once indulgent and friendly, and he knew something had happened which he might never know about and which perhaps it was best for him not to know about I’ve always had the damnable habit of taking things apart he thought. I’ve always been a monkey, searching for fleas. I must stop it. I’ve got to stop it.

  It was not until they were in actual sight of Endur that Christopher mentioned Celeste again. “Frankly,” he said, pleasantly, “I didn’t believe that Celeste really cared for you as she seems to do. After all, she is only a young girl, and without experience. However, I believe she knows what she wants, now. You seem to be what she wants, and Celeste’s happiness has always been the most important thing in my life.” And he smiled at Peter, as though sharing with him some amusement at a most delicious but somewhat absurd situation.

  Peter’s pale lips contracted. He had always hated this man, but now his former hatred seemed puny and childish compared with this sudden surge of fury that semed to burst his heart. He wanted to say something, but he knew, with bitter wisdom, that when a man did not speak Christopher was impotent against him. Christopher, the silent, was powerless before the silence of other men. So, instead of speaking, he looked fully at Christopher, and smiled, and after a moment Christopher’s smile changed subtly, and they understood each other.

  They reached Endur, and Christopher thought: With that face, he won’t live long. The thought made his expression amiable, made his voice strong and gay as he called for his sister. Peter waited. He did not turn to the door through which Celeste would come, for now he knew that there were things greater than love, more significant and more terrible than desire. And he knew that Christopher Bouchard represented them, embodied them, and to the end, he, Peter, was dedicated to their destruction.

  Celeste came in, white-lipped, her young face thin and tired and almost haggard. Peter turned to her, and he forgot everything that he knew he must remember later on. He saw her stop; she looked at him, and her eyes grew radiant. She said: “Peter,” and came to him, and he held out his arms and took her. She leaned against him. Her body relaxed. She began to cry, and her hands tightened about his arms. She pressed her wet cheek against his neck. “Peter,” she said again, and her voice was full of exhaustion.

  “Yes, dear,” he said, very gently, kissing her. He told himself that this was a child that had been tormented. And he knew who had tormented her. He looked over her head at Christopher.

  But Christopher was looking only at Celeste, and for once Peter did not know what he was thinking.

  CHAPTER LIX

  Even in the “Jazz Era,” with its paradoxical guardian angel, Calvin Coolidge, the breaking of the engagement between Celeste Bouchard, and her cousin, Henri, was a sensation. Celeste’s face, six inches square, appeared on the front pages of every newspaper, accompanied by a smaller one of Henri. No one had been able to procure a photograph of Peter, and little information about him. But he was played up in some newspapers as a sort of Don Juan of irresistible fascination. His forthcoming exposé of the armaments industry, called The Terrible Swift Sword, was discussed. Editorial writers alternately condemned and praised the book, depending upon how much, or little, the owners had invested in Bouchard and Sons and its subsidiaries. Georges Bouchard’s publishing house was deluged with advance orders, a fact which caused him no small gratification and amusement.

  The sensation was no less profound, shattering, and delirious among the Bouchards themselves. Ann Richmond, Peter’s mother, was taken violently ill, but not before she gave an interview to the ladies and gentlemen of the avid press in which she hysterically denounced her youngest son in extravagant language. She would refuse to see him at any time, she cried. Francis, Hugo, Emile, swarmed upon Christopher, who seemed very calm and unconcerned. They were locked up with him for several hours, while the servants crept about and whispered. When they emerged, they were still pale and nervous, but considerably soothed. Armand’s faction was jubilant. They went about, openly exulting. When they met the enemies of their faction they winked and grinned, and commiserated with them with a total lack of delicacy. Nicholas grunted with delight, and was so overpowered with gratification that he immediately decided to ask Edith to marry him, for was it not rumored that it was she who had so catastrophically upset the apple-cart? But Edith was not to be seen, and neither was her brother. The grounds swarmed with reporters and relatives. But still they were not to be found. Distant relatives from all over the country came, wailing, condemning, sniffing with curiosity. The telephones in Christopher’s house and at Robin’s Nest rang insistently with long-distance calls. But neither Celeste, nor Peter, who had returned, were to be found anywhere. Christopher gave out brief, composed statements, then shut all doors. Windsor seethed. Every inhabitant, down to the lowest wheelbarrow trundler in the mills, was wildly excited, and swollen with importance. To them it was an affair concerning them all. Intimate friends complained that they were kept out, and vented their sense of affront by freely giving their opinions to any reporter who happened to be cruising about Christopher, often going in to console Peter and Celeste, hidden in rooms under the roof, took his last and final revenge on them. He did not spare them observing the throngs that had invaded the grounds. He let them hear the constant clamor of bells and telephones. He did not minimiy.e the annoyance. Peter knew what he was doing, and hated Christopher the more for Celeste’s pale face and sleepless eyes and frightened expression. He hated him to the last point of endurance when Christopher comforted the girl with a solicitude and affection which Peter himself had to admit were sincere. But this was his revenge for what they had done to him, and what he had allowed them to do.

  One time he knocked discreetly on the door of the tiny servants’ living-room where they sat together, and told Celeste that Henri wished to see her for a moment. He had fought his way through reporters outside
and inside the grounds. Celeste, crying out faintly, said: “No! No!” and clung to Peter’s hand. Christopher was very grave. Of course, he said, he agreed with Celeste that it was an awkward situation, and Henri had no right to come just at this time, but didn’t she think she owed him this last little courtesy by returning his ring in person? To send it back by someone else would be an insult which no man could forgive. Besides, Henri had never done her any harm beyond that of asking her to marry him. At this, Christopher smiled, and regarded both his sister and Peter with a pale and venomous expression.

  Peter stood up before Celeste, and said: “I’ll take the ring to him.” And the two men looked into each other’s eyes with an eternal hatred and enmity. Then Christopher smiled indulgently, and said: “Well, now, isn’t that just a trifle precious, Peter?” His manner implied that Peter had suggested something rather vulgar, something exceedingly improper, for which he, Christopher, was a little regretful.

  Then Celeste, recovering from her first fright, and very resolute, said that her brother was right, and she would immediately return the ring to Henri herself. She owed him this, she said, her eyes pleading with Peter to understand, her lips trembling. He was touched, in spite of his perturbation and hatred for Christopher, and very gently he said: “Of course, dear, you must do what you think is best.”

  So Celeste, with her exhausted face and shaking lips, and her expression of delicate strength and resolution, went downstairs alone through the locked house, whose blinds, for the first time in history, were drawn. She went into the cool large living-room, with its bare furniture and glistening floors. Henri was waiting for her, and when he turned to her slowly as she entered she colored violently, and felt her heart heave. She had memorized a quiet little speech for him, expressing her regret and distress for him, a dignified little speech which would soothe him and explain everything. But when he turned to her, and she saw his large harsh face in the bright dimness of the room, and his eyes, she could not speak, and could not move. She could just stand in complete silence, staring at him with dilated blue eyes and parted lips, like a terrified child, her hands hanging by her sides, her whole body visibly trembling.