The Final Hour

by Caldwell, Taylor;

  ‘But that’s nonsense, sir. Idiots though the American people are, they won’t come to that conclusion. It isn’t true, and you know it. Why, the three most potent leaders of the American Freedom Association, our worst enemy, are Roman Catholics. Archbishop Mueller has denounced Halliday a hundred times, and has urged us not only to prepare to defend ourselves, but to declare war on Hitler. The Catholics are as much divided on this war as are the Protestants—’

  ‘Nevertheless,’ said Mr Morse, loudly and rudely, ‘that propaganda can be spread. What if we have religious riots in this country? In the confusion, the people will begin to think, in a rudimentary fashion. It won’t serve our advantage, I can tell you that. We’ve got to have a nation determined on peace, let hell break out anywhere else. A bad thing, getting mixed up with religion.’

  He added, with sudden explosive rage: ‘And there’s my son’s wife, that miserable, tightmouthed— Organizing the Catholic Mothers of America, which is printing anti-Semitic, anti-democratic, pro-German propaganda by the million. A fine bunch of relatives you have, in certain places! What d’you think the majority of Americans, the majority that is Protestant, is going to think about the Catholic Mothers of America and their tripe when it finally gets around to thinking?’

  ‘When it does get around, if it ever does, it will be too late,’ said Antoine.

  Mr Morse rocked violently in his chair, and glowered. ‘I tell you, I don’t like it. Catholic this, and Catholic that—all hating something. Getting too damned bold, they are, forgetting that they are still less than one-fifth of the American people. God damn it, I hate ’em, myself! Dragging my four grandchildren into the Church, in spite of what I said, and made clear. My son’s a—’ and he expressed his opinion of his weak and timorous son in such words that Antoine, despite his alarm, had to smile.

  ‘Phyllis means well,’ he said, demurely, for he detested that female relative, and despised her frightened husband.

  ‘She’s a damned danger to us!’ shouted Mr Morse, turning quite purple. ‘One of my ancestors fought with Cromwell, and did a good job, too, driving the Irish swine into the sea. God damn it, I wouldn’t mind a few thorough anti-Catholic riots in America, and if they don’t shut up soon, they’ll have ’em—!’

  He struggled for breath. ‘Look here, we’ve got to have a nation unified for peace, until Hitler is in a position to help us. No more damned Catholic societies messing things up. Have I made myself clear?’

  Antoine nodded soothingly. ‘Of course. But that isn’t in my province, exactly, Mr Morse.’

  Mr Morse pounded the desk with both fists. ‘She’s a cursed cousin of yours, isn’t she—that Phyllis? Tell her to shut up. My son’s wife is not going to mess things up for us. That’s my final word.’

  Antoine was amused. ‘You can’t blame the Catholic Church, or the Bouchards, either, for Phyllis.’

  Nevertheless, he was extremely uneasy, despite his debonair expression. It was the most damnable thing! He had always had the highest respect for the ruthless and venal Richard Morse, who could always be depended upon to be avaricious and expedient, without dangerous emotion or doubtfulness. Yet, he had given vent to the most primitive of hatreds, and had exploded into emotional villification of a Church which had, paradoxically, done much to promote his interests. In the final wild hour, then, it was not reason, it was not even self-interest, that made the decisions that shook the world. It was emotion, primordial passions, and the deep inexplicable pulse of the amorphous human heart.

  Jay Regan had murmured something which he had believed inaudible, but Antoine’s quick ear had caught it: ‘The imponderables of the peoples’ conscience.’ (In Morse’s case, it had been the imponderable of instinctive hatred for the stranger.) The imponderables of the peoples’ conscience! For the first time in his life, Antoine felt apprehension and doubt. What if, in the final wild hour, the conscience of the American people exploded into terrible being? What if they started from their beds, their desks, their machines, their tables, with, one loud and frightful cry of rage and indignation? What, then, would happen to their enemies, the men secretly sworn to betray and enslave and despoil them?

  Incredible, thought Antoine. However, his apprenhension became deep uneasiness. This mongrel race of men called Americans, this spawn of the gutters of Europe, this bewildered, stupid, ignorant horde, bedevilled by Church and by hatred and by lies, could never have one unified voice, could never compel its diverse pulses to beat in unison. Their masters, their betrayers, were too strong, too cold, too ruthless, too clever, for them.

  The news machine began to tick furiously. Muttering profanity, Mr Morse pulled himself from his chair, reached the machine, lifted the long thin white ribbon spewing out in frantic haste. He read swiftly. And then his red face turned the colour of old dough, and his mouth fell open. He stood with the ribbon in his hand, and did not move.

  Antoine rose swiftly, and went to him. Mr Morse could not speak. Antoine took the ribbon of paper from his paralyzed hand.

  ‘The Honourable James Gordon, of the British banking firm of Logan Hollister, has just been arrested on a warrant charging him with treason against the Empire—’

  The two men looked at each other in an enormous silence. The machine increased the tempo of its clicking. Numbed, Mr Morse lifted the ribbon again, and read:

  ‘Information in connection with Mr Gordon has been furnished Washington, in the belief that American associates of Mr Gordon—’

  Antoine said: ‘Yes? Well, we’re still neutral. It’s bad about Gordon, but they can’t do anything to us.’

  Mr Morse spoke thickly through stiff lips: “Except that matériel and oil will be curtailed in South America, for Hitler.’ He began to swear in a low steady voice, numbed and incoherent.

  The machine clicked on. Stupefied, they read: ‘Mr Gordon’s brother, George, Lord Ramsdall, the London newspaper publisher, has also been taken into custody for investigation in connection with certain subversive articles which appeared in his publication, which, it is charged, have for their purpose the hampering of the British war effort. More serious charges, it is expected, will be preferred by Scotland Yard against Lord Ramsdall.’

  ‘Curse them!’ cried Mr Morse. ‘Don’t they know they’re done? Don’t they know the Empire’s finished? Don’t they know Hitler will invade them in a matter of months, and smash them? God-damn fools!’

  Antoine said nothing. He stood near Mr Morse, his dark and puckered face very pale. He said at last: ‘I don’t know. Are they finished? I don’t know!’ He heard again, with sudden sharp fear: ‘The imponderables of the peoples’ conscience.

  Mr Regan was chuckling as he sat at his desk and telephoned Henri Bouchard in Windsor. ‘Well, they got Gordon, and Ramsdall. Our little manœuvre was a great success. Hah! HahP

  CHAPTER XXXIX

  From all over America, immediately after the invasion of Norway, Holland and Denmark, came a curious sound, like a gigantic breath sucked in, and held. It was as if a man sat at his peaceful table, idly watching the light of sun and shadow lying on unthreatened fields outside his window, and then became aware of a far-off but terrible sound, doomful and sinister. It was not thunder, for the sky was still serene, the aerial blue still soft and shining, the shadows and the light sftill held motionless in the tranquil peace. The full plates still steamed fragrantly on the white cloth of the table, the silver still shone brightly, and the birds in the trees outside still twittered and brushed the leaves. Not a thing had changed, after that terrible sound had gone, except that the silence was somewhat deeper, somewhat more intense, somewhat more waiting. The man could hear that waiting; it reminded him, with sudden horrid unease, of an animal crouching, burrowing into the ground soundlessly, drawing himself together, after the shadow of an eagle’s circling wing had passed restlessly and seekingly over him. The wing had gone, but the terror and waiting of the animal remained, and its heart continued to pulse in swift horror and dread.

  That was the waiti
ng and the fear that made America draw in her breath in one universal convulsion, and hold it. She strained her ears. The sound did not come again. Her heart still pulsed; she felt its unease, its rapidity, through her whole body. From the space from which the sound had come there was only silence now. But it was no longer a serene and sunlit silence. The peaceful light on her fields had a brazen look in the sunset; the blue spaces of heaven seemed less tranquil than foreboding. When the birds sang their last song to the evening there was a strange shrill sound in the notes, sharp with nameless fear. And the very trees, standing so motionless on the grass, seemed less dreaming in the evening glow than hushed in the gaunt and hollow silence that lies at the heart of a hurricane.

  It was some days before a hundred voices, shocked into speechlessness for a while, began their wild screaming, their hysterical shrieking, again. They cried again that even this was not America’s business, that what America had heard was only the echo of a storm that had passed harmlessly far from her.

  But millions of Americans, now, once dulled, once too greedily frightened, once too indifferent, too cruel, too stupid, too ignorant, impatiently and absently brushed aside those dangerous and inimical voices as one brushes aside clouds of gnats with a wave of his arm. And these Americans looked toward that shining space in the heavens from which the terrible and ominous sound had come, and their faces were pale, their eyes staring, in the too bright light of the brassy sunset. For, they were listening.

  The green gauze of April’s fragile garments was caught in a thousand trees on Placid Heights, near Windsor. In the valley the river was fresh clear silver, running free and swiftly through new fields. The slopes of the hills brightened. The sky had a faint but pellucid clarity that touched the heart with mysterious hope, and from the ground rose the strong breath of the young earth.

  Workmen were busy about the house which Peter and Celeste Bouchard had built. They had stripped away the undergrowth down to the rich brown soil, and upon this soil they were sowing grass seed. New young saplings had already been planted. Low mounds of various shapes would soon be flower-beds. Evergreens were suddenly massed together where only straggling timber and weeds had grown. Paths were gravelled; there was a smell of pungent tar in the clear cold air, for the driveways were being laid. In the air, also, was the odour of clean sawdust, the sound of many voices. The conservatory was being built, behind the house. The voices echoed back from the brightening hills. The winds of spring bent the trees, moaned gently in the pines on the slopes that fell away from the house.

  Peter, from his window, watched the activity. He had been very ill again. He sat in a wheelchair now, for he had only been allowed to get up from his bed a few days ago. It would be several weeks, he had been warned, before he would be permitted to walk outside. To himself, he said: It will be never.

  How many days have I left? he would ask himself, anxiously. He had been ordered not to work, at least not for long. But his desk had been pushed between the windows, paper had been placed upon it, and his writing utensils. His doctors no longer objected. Enforced idleness, they saw, would kill him quicker than work. For some reason they could not discern, he must work.

  He wrote broadcasts. Under an assumed name, he wrote articles, embodying the information received from Henri, which ‘radical’ and painfully obscure magazines published without recompense. A few times, the pressure of an unseen hand forced more prominent magazines to publish his articles. His book was finished, was soon to be published. He knew he could not begin another. He had no more time. What he must do now must be swift, pungent, telling, like a warning cry lifted in darkness. It must be sharp and loud, so that the sleepers might be awakened.

  He was writing an article now, called ‘What Is Our Hour on the Timetable?’

  But he felt that he was pushing blindly against a wall that had no gate in it, though behind the wall lay a threatened and slumbering city. His voice was so feeble. Could it carry beyond that wall?

  He was one of the first voices that cried out that Japan, like a great carrion bird, was already circling over the city. His articles, upon pressure from that unseen hand, had been published reluctantly in two or three prominent magazines. As a result, ‘William Conrad’ was now being vigorously attacked not only in enemy newspapers and by public speakers, but on the very floor of Congress, itself. His identity was demanded. He was denounced as a war-monger, a liar, a trouble-maker, probably in the pay of armaments-makers and the ‘international bankers.’ He was accused of endeavouring to create strained relations between America and Japan, ‘our good friend and excellent customer.’

  Nevertheless, an embargo on oil and scrap was placed on shipments to Japan.

  He worked on. He counted every hour of the life that remained to him. He felt death in every part of his body. He thought of nothing but his work. That was all that mattered. Celeste, himself, his life, were nothing now. The last straw of self was blazing in the bonfire of his terror for America.

  Celeste, understanding all this, did not urge him any longer to conserve his last strength. She only comforted him when his pain was too great, and only nursed him. She saw how terrible was his agony. She could do nothing to minimize it. When Henri came, she brought him to Peter, and left the two men alone together.

  She hardly saw Henri these days, though he came very often, sometimes alone, sometimes with Annette. Her consciousness was removed from him. And from herself. She dared not think of herself, for, if she did, she feared she would go mad. For a most frightful contingency was upon her, which she did not think of, even when she was alone. Peter, she knew, must die soon. In his death was her only safety. Yet she did not think even of that very often. All her life and her efforts were centred on her husband.

  When Henri came, and she met him, she looked at him as from a far and empty distance, not seeing him. He was always courteous and cold, and indifferent, passing her on the threshold of Peter’s room, as if she had been a servant. Sometimes, but only very rarely, there was a faint far twisting in her, like the dulled memory of a pain stifled under a narcotic. But even he did not matter now. As for himself, if he saw that there was a thin white line running from her brown back over her black hair, which had not been there a few months ago, he did not even glance at it directly. If he saw how haggard and gaunt her face was now, how pallid her lips, and how deep the bluish shadow about them, he gave no sign at all.

  It was Christopher who saw, of course, and who suffered, for all his malignancy. All the other relatives had been asked, tactfully, not to call upon Peter and Celeste during these last days of Peter’s life. They called on the telephone, they invited Celeste for dinner, but that was all. Christopher and Edith came, and Henri and Annette.

  It was Christopher who knew before even his wife knew, or Annette. And certainly, before Henri. Despite all that Christopher was, his love for Celeste had always been a great and pure thing in his life. So, it happened, that on a particularly bright soft April day he came to see her, and her alone.

  CHAPTER XL

  Celeste was resting in her room, after a morning of ministering to Peter. She had almost fallen asleep, out of deep exhaustion, when a maid, softly entering, told her that Christopher had arrived, and that he wanted to speak to her upstairs, alone.

  Celeste stirred sluggishly, out of the depths of her anæsthesia of suffering and weariness. She was lying on a yellow velvet chaise-longue, and she drew the silk coverlet a little higher over her body before Christopher entered. He shut the door behind him, and then came to her. She looked up at him, and smiled wanly, stretching out her hand. He looked down at her hand as if it were some curious object, then, with the strangest and most convulsive of sighs, he caught and held it so tightly that she felt pain. But she forgot the pain immediately, for her heart began to pound with a sick premonition.

  He had not said a word as yet. He sat down on die edge of the chaise-longue near her knees, and looked at her. He still held her hand. He could feel its frail chill, its thinness. He l
ooked down at it, and automatically began to rub it in his dry cool palms, which yet were warmer than her fingers.

  She had always loved him so much, she thought, dimly. He was always her brother, her father, even when she had feared him the most, and hated him the most. That narrow razor-like profile, those cold and enigmatic eyes, those tight and colourless lips, at once so crafty and so subtle, were ageless to her. He was still her young brother and protector, and her friend. If his thin sleek hair was grey now, with only a few faint streaks left of its once smooth brown, that had no meaning for her.

  There was something in his quiet attitude, in his stillness and silence, now, that seemed to loosen the anguished tenseness in her, and she whispered: ‘Christopher.’ And she sighed, over and over, as if something stirred in her heart with unbearable relief, but also with unbearable suffering.

  He was very grave. Slowly, then, he bent towards her, and kissed her cheek. ‘Poor Celeste,’ he said, gently. ‘Poor child.’

  She flushed when he said this, as though she had said something embarrassingly indecent, or tactless or absurd. She drew her hand away, dropped her eyes, and answered: ‘Why?’

  When he did not speak, she glanced up quickly, and saw that he was smiling just a little. But the silvery eyes were not smiling; they were very gentle, and unusually soft. She had not seen this softness since she had been a child, and she was poignantly touched. Her indrawn breath was almost a dry sob. Again, she coloured.