The Eagles Gather

by Taylor Caldwell

  “Yes,” said Henri, in a loud harsh voice. “You see, my friends here will sell me a lot of theirs, and you will sell me some of yours, and then I’ll have forty-five per cent.” He smiled at Armand. “You, of course, will keep your fifty-one per cent. Also the presidency of Bouchard and Sons.”

  And then Christopher cried out, just once, and then was silent again. Henri turned to him swiftly, and spoke only to him.

  “Don’t think things, Christopher,” he said contemptuously. “I intended to do this, even if I had married Celeste. You see, I’ve always hated you very much. I hated your father, when I found out what he had done to us. You are the one most like him, so I suppose I came to dislike you the most. At any rate, I hated you from the start. From the very beginning, I came back to do this. I waited for someone to come to me; I knew he would come. You turned out to be the one who needed to use me. Instead, I used you.”

  No one moved or spoke. Everyone was transfixed. Only Henri had life, in this room of statues. And Henri and Christopher saw only each other. Lightning seemed to flash between them, the lightning of mortal hatred and understanding.

  “Seventy-five per cent of Duval-Bonnet,” said Henri, and now he smiled with the convulsive smile of Ernest Barbour. “It’s mine. And you’ll do as I say, Christopher. If you don’t, there’s no more Duval-Bonnet. Remember, I own a patent taken out before yours. You’ll be ruined, Christopher. No matter how you try to squirm out of it, you will be ruined. And all the other boys here, our friends, will lose a lot of money, too. They won’t like that.”

  Still no one moved or spoke. The faces of Christopher’s faction were white and drawn. But Jean and Nicholas had begun to smile.

  “My bonds,” said Henri,”will remain tucked away in their cosy little resting place in New York. And Armand is still president of Bouchard and Sons. I’m going to be part of it, too. I’m going to have the very biggest place in it, some day. For, you see,” he added with infinite slowness and emphasis, “I’m going to marry Annette.” And with a deep smile he turned slowly to Emile, and seemed to take pleasure in that man’s sudden pallor and his expression of sickness.

  But Armand was smiling. His eyes glistened, as though there were tears in them. With a slow movement, that yet had a quality of impulsiveness in it, he put his hand across his desk. Henri took it, and smiled back at him. “I made a mistake,” said Armand, and his voice was somewhat hoarse. “You’re just like your great-grandfather.” His voice stopped abruptly, as though he could not go on.

  Confusion broke out at last and excitement. Jean and Nicholas laughed aloud with delight and glee. They insisted upon shaking hands vociferously with Henri, who had become very genial. They mocked Christopher’s faction with ribald remarks and questions. But the spirit had gone out of Francis, Hugo and Emile. They sat, petrified, staring with rage and hatred at Christopher. Their faces were pale, their eyes evil and questioning. But he seemed unaware of them. For his life lay about him like a heap of scattered stones.

  He sat motionless, looking at the ruin. It seemed to him that he was dying, for everything but the ruin was swirling in darkness. A horrible sickness was churning in his middle. A horrible pain was hammering in his head, and then outside his head, in the darkness, until there was nothing but that pain and that sickness. A paralysis lay all over his body, and an icy coldness like death. His flesh was numb. He seemed to see his father’s face, satanic and smiling. You’ve won, he said helplessly to that face.

  He heard someone speaking in the darkness and the pain, but he could not respond to it. It spoke again and again, insistently, and he heard, now, that it was the voice of his enemy, who had done this thing to him. He lifted his head, and the effort caused him agony. He looked through the mists, and saw Henri’s eyes. He listened to what he was saying, though listening was an anguish in itself.

  “—and so, it was my original intention, even if I had married Celeste, to kick you completely out of Duval-Bonnet, too. I had decided that we’d all be better off without you. And then Edith told me that she wanted you, though God knows why. I’d rather have a wolf for a brother-in-law than you.”

  Edith. At that name Christopher felt a knife divide him. The mists cleared. He saw everything with merciless clarity. He saw the faces turned to him. Henri was regarding him with dark anger and contempt.

  “Well, she can have you. God knows the poor girl’s been kicked around enough, and never had anything she wanted. I suppose she’ll regret it, but just now she thinks you have a sentimental yearning for her. She thinks you’re not after her money! And so I’ve finally decided that though Windsor is no place for you, and there’s no place in Bouchard and Sons for you any more, you can have Duval-Bonnet You can come out in the open, now, and be Duval-Bonnet. You’re president I’m going to give Edith 40 per cent of my Duval stock, as a wedding present to you both. When you pay back half the loan, I’ll return the other 35 per cent to you. I don’t want any part of it.”

  He sighed with somber humor. “I don’t know how Edith will like living in Florida. I’ll miss her. But I think Florida will do your own health a lot of good.”

  CHAPTER LXI

  Edith sat on her heels as she packed one of her trunks with the assistance of her maid. The room was dark, and full of the sound of the wind and rain. The maid moved to and fro, her arms loaded with soft silks. In the midst of the heaps on the bed old Thomas Van Eyck sat in speechless and compassionate misery.

  “We’ll like it after a while, Father,” said Edith, throwing him a kind and affectionate glance from her heavy-lidded dark eyes. “One can get used to not having a permanent home. Remember how you liked Torquay? We’ll stay there for a while, and then we’ll go down again to that little place in France. It’s so warm and pleasant there. We’ll be so happy, you and I. You’ll see.”

  The old man’s lip quivered, not with pity for himself, but only for Edith. “Oh, my darling,” he murmured, wringing his hands together. “I won’t mind where we live, if it’ll make you happy.”

  Edith bent her head so that it was hidden by the streams of garments hanging over the side of the trunk. Her face was drawn and haggard, her lips pale. Tears ran down her cheeks. But her voice was cheerful and clear when she spoke. “Of course we’ll be happy. You did like that place in France. I’ve got such ideas for improvements, too. Then we’ll go to Paris, every Christmas. That ought to be very gay, don’t you think?”

  The old man nodded like a grief-stricken child who was resolutely trying to be good. “And then we’ll come back sometimes, and visit here at Robin’s Nest, with Henri and Annette,” he said. He sighed. “She is such a lovely little thing, so good, too. They’ll be happy together, I know.”

  “Yes,” said Edith cheerily, “we’ll come back often. And we’ll make them name the first baby Thomas, too.”

  The old man wept silently to himself, though he smiled. He wiped his eyes with his handkerchief. His heart ached with a dull breaking pain.

  They heard footsteps in the hall outside. “It’s Henri,” said Edith. She felt sick and old and tired, for she knew a great deal of what was taking place in Armand’s office that day. Henri had told her about it. She could not bear to see her brother just now, she thought, after what he had done to Christopher. But she stood up, shaking, dry-lipped, suffering. There was no use in anything any more, not even in anger. And she could not afford to be too angry with Henri, for he was still all she had, and all she would ever have.

  The door opened. But it was not Henri who stood there in the dim doorway. It was Christopher, with a face suddenly wizened and shrunken and terribly exhausted. She gazed at him, mutely, not breathing, the garments slipping slowly out of her hand, her heart bounding in her breast.

  He was smiling. He held out his hands to her, and she thought wildly: He’s come back. He loves me.

  “Come here,” he was saying. “I ought to break your neck. But come here, anyway.”

  She went to him, moving slowly across the floor, her eyes on his face
. She felt his arms about her. Then suddenly she clung to him. “Christopher!” she cried, over and over, and all the pain went out of her heart with her tears.

  EPILOGUE

  The Long Island home of Mr. Tom Butler, President of the Stock Exchange, was usually an extremely festive mansion. As a wag paraphrased it, illumination never set in it. Artificial light merged into daylight, and daylight into artificial light. Mr. Butler’s wife, considerably younger than himself, was a gay piece, who forgot her husband’s inadequacies in huge and illustrious, but by no means stodgy, parties.

  There was an unusually brilliant party going on this particular mild May evening of 1928. It was warm enough for the big gardens to be included in the festivities. The French doors stood open, gushing forth blazing light onto the new green lawns, and touching the young leaves on the trees with restless gold. The music of a select Broadway band swelled over the sweeter and gentler noises of the night in a brassy flood. People strolled in and out through the windows, laughing, calling, murmuring.

  The gay Mrs. Butler had been feeling slightly pettish tonight, however. Having been a Benson of Boston, socially secure for generations, she felt no particular. need for surrounding herself with those of burnished names. She invited gay people like herself, some of them not socially acceptable at all, but guaranteed to be amusing, flippant, high-spirited and interesting. She invited curious fauna like authors, prizefighters, dancers, movie stars and other buffoons, not to mention gaudy criminals and radicals. Her taste was enchantingly catholic.

  On this particular night she had invited the very cream of her miscellaneous and slightly reprehensible court, only to discover, with dismay, that her elderly husband had invited quite a few of his very uninspiring friends also. She was not impressed by the fact that one of them was Wilbert Ford, the great newspaper owner, whom she disarmingly called an “old bull,” with naughty implications. Neither did she like Mr. Schultz, of the Pennsylvania Steel Company, or Mr. Burns, who was also vaguely connected with Steel. As for a Mr. Mitchell, of Milwaukee, she loathed him. (Mr. Mitchell was editor of a newspaper owned, body and soul, by a manufacturer noted for his meanness, egotism, piety and greed.) Mr. Mitchell, Mrs. Butler said of him candidly, was a witch-burner without any personal feelings against the witch being burned, or any true belief in her sorcery. He burned witches, she said, just for the fun of it, or the political expediency of it. Old Senator Ulster was there, and he was a creature whose opinions were invariably colored by the money of those who bought him. But he was a power in Washington, for he could orate, and he had a dry and humorous way of talking, all of which convinced the people that he was an honest man. Then there was Mr. Jay Regan, whose presence began to mollify young Mrs. Butler. She loved genial old men with paunches and twinkling eyes; she liked to tease them. And too, Mr. Regan exuded power. There were others who bored her: financiers, industrialists of various kinds, and politicians. She liked a few of them, such as Hugo Bouchard, the politician, who could tell such amusing stories, and Christopher Bouchard, who thrilled a woman with his indifference, and Francis Bouchard, who looked like a Connecticut Yankee. But she detested Emile, with his red-faced violence and tight black curling hair. There was a new Bouchard tonight, who greatly interested her, however. Young Henri Bouchard. She found herself excited by him. There was still another man, whom she disliked at first sight, a pale, silent Teutonic man, a Doctor Adolph Schacht, who seemed not to be connected with anything in particular.

  After the dinner Mr. Butler carried all of his friends away with him to his own apartments upstairs, which threw Mrs. Butler into a pet.

  For some time no one seemed disposed to open the subject uppermost in their minds. They all drank and smoked, shouted with laughter, talked at random. But each man was watching everyone else very closely. No one, except Mr. Butler, seemed to know why Doctor Schacht was there. Several of the politicians knew him slightly, but they had apparently forgotten their acquaintanceship. There was something elaborate in their innocence of his identity.

  Mr. Butler asked in his kind lazy voice: “Well, there is no doubt that Hoover will defeat Smith, is there? We’re all agreed on that?”

  “Oh, perfectly,” said Francis Bouchard. “The whispering campaign against Smith was excellent ‘First a Catholic in the White House, then a Jew.’“

  “There was a time,” said Christopher Bouchard, “when I thought Hoover was going to make himself fatally disliked. That was when he tried to be a ‘good fellow.’ But he soon got over it. He confined himself to sensible, grave, high-sounding principles. There was a difficulty there, too. He lacked punch. What we’ve needed right along is a good slogan. Two chickens in every pot.’ Very good. When it’s a contest between a good slogan and economics, the slogan will usually win, with our dear public, but when a good slogan is combined with economics, the thing is irresistible.” “We’ve done a good job on Hoover,” said Mr. Burns, chuckling. “‘American standards and American ideals.’ Beautifully vague, and beautifully effective. That appeals to the middle class, as well as to the proletariat, for each man will believe that it covers all his pet phobias and prejudices and avarices. Gentlemen, the vaguer yet more dogmatic and bigoted an idea, the more it appeals to the people. In fact, I’ve recommended vagueness throughout our platform, and it has been successful.”

  “We’ve made Hoover the pure American fighting the alien hordes, the Jews, the Catholics, the gangsters, the rum-runners, the atheists, the radicals, and all the other riffraff,” remarked Mr. Ford. “I tried a feeler, thinking to bring the Ku Klux Klan in, but that wasn’t so good. Most of the people don’t like the Klan, in spite of the nightshirts, the horsewhippings, and the torches. And when a people won’t have anything to do with an organization, even with nightshirts, horsewhippings, and torches, then it’s hopeless.” Mr. Mitchell said: “My good friend in Milwaukee asked me to suggest to you all that we ought to use a little more anti-Semitism. Mind you, I’m not personally advocating it, but I promised to put it before you.”

  “Quite impossible,” said Christopher, with cod disdain. “Remember, the people have had it impressed upon them for at least twenty-five years that anti-Semitism is an immorality. Your friend, Mr. Mitchell, discovered that only a year or two ago, when millions of good Americans boycotted his —wares. However, I’m sure none of us will have any objection if it is very lightly done. I rely upon our clergy to do that, though. Nothing official.”

  Mr. Mitchell smiled at the others. “Christopher,” he said, “isn’t particularly interested in anything except wars and profits. Of course, we sympathize with him, very much. Wars are our business, too, directly or indirectly. But one must sometimes be interested in other things.” He glanced at young Henri Bouchard, who had been listening intentiy, without smiling, without speaking. Mr. Mitchell’s eyes became tentative. He wondered just where this young man entered the scheme of things. Of course, he had married Annette Bouchard, daughter of the President of Bouchard and Sons— And it was understood that he was closely connected with the Company now.

  “Christopher must be patient,” said Senator Ulster. “We’re doing all we can. He knows that. Patriotic organizations are receiving all the support necessary.”

  ‘Too much politics,” said Christopher coolly. He glanced at Hugo, and grinned. “My father used to say that politics were the last refuge of the incompetent No offense, Hugo. But politicians, thank God, go where we drive them. But there are so damned many of them! That’s the trouble with democracies—too many politicians.”

  “Perhaps,” said Mr. Butler softly, “we shall be able to dispense with all that, too.” In a sudden silence, he turned to Doctor Schacht “Perhaps Doctor Schacht can talk to us about this, in brief?”

  In a silence that continued, the pale German rose and looked piercingly from one man to the other with his milk-blue eyes. Each man felt those eyes stabbing down to his heart and soul, and when they had passed on, he felt exposed and understood. Schacht smiled. He bent his head with Teutonic co
urtesy. His manner was compounded of arrogance, servility, respect, egotism and ruthlessness. The typical German manner, thought Christopher, who detested Germans.

  “I,” said Schacht, in his light, accented voice, “am founder and leader of the new Deutsch-Amerikaner Gemeinschaft, gentlemen. Perhaps you have heard of us?” No one answered him. Everyone stared at him intently. He lifted a delicate deprecating hand and let it drop. “It is a nationwide organization of Germans of American citizenship, either acquired or born. Its object is the preservation of ‘American ideals. “ He smiled. Now everyone else in the room smiled, with the exception of Henri Bouchard, who seemed to see and understand everything. “Officially, our known members are less than fifty thousand. Unofficially, they number millions. In fact, he added with great and charming frankness, “I might include all of you.”

  The smiles became broader, more knowing. Schacht went on: “I have been accused of being a sentimentalist But I am really a realist. It is as a realist that I am going to talk to you. I am sure that I have never had so sympathetic an audience. So, at the risk of being called a prophet I shall speak to you openly.

  ‘All of us know, in spite of America’s present prosperity, that our system of government is really inoperable. Democracy is inoperable. It was staggering to its death in 1914, in every nation foolish enough to have tried. it The war was really a struggle between democracy and sensible autocratic government Unfortunately, democracy won. Temporarily. Now, it is again staggering to its death. It was tried in post-war Italy. You saw the result. Communism and chaos. Mussolini stepped in, and saved Italy from the calamity of democracy and the final ruin of a people. And, very soon, a leader shall arise in Germany, and save her, too, from democracy. Just as America will need to be saved.”