The Final Hour

by Caldwell, Taylor;

  She did not even try to analyze the light delirium of her senses when she dressed to go to the family dinner. It was not exactly joy or delight, she knew. It was, rather, a release from unbearable black tension and cold close misery. She put on a white-and-silver gown, and put silver flowers in her hair. She had never worn this gown. She surveyed herself in her mirror with pleasure, her dark full mouth smiling and soft.

  It was Godfrey who put her cape of white fur over her bare shoulders. She was too bemused to notice how his hands lingered a moment or two, or how his fingers brushed her soft flesh. But when she turned her head and glanced up at him, her heart stopped strangely for a moment. For he was very pale, his mouth set, and his eyes were full of a peculiar light.

  She knew that Henri and Annette would be at Agnes’ dinner. But not once during the drive to Emile’s home did she think of Henri. It was as if her consciousness had enclosed the thought of him in a hard thick capsule that could not be penetrated. However, by the time her car turned in up the long avenue that led to the house she was conscious of a vague chilliness, and a dimness in her mind.

  CHAPTER LXVII

  Even the family’s cruel anticipation of watching the meeting between Henri and Celeste had taken second place to their curiosity with regard to Godfrey Barbour. It had been so long since there had been an active Barbour in the family. They speculated upon his penniless state, his reasons for coming to America, and his. appearance. Was he a musician like his grandfather, the first Godfrey? Perhaps he even wrote books, God forbid! Was he looking for charity from the family? If so, he had come to the wrong place. They were annoyed that Celeste had given so little information to Agnes, and Agnes was exasperated when they asked her the same questions repeatedly. ‘I tell you, I don’t know,’ she would say. ‘He arrived last night. That’s the full extent of my enlightenment. But Celeste did sound and excited and pleased. She and Peter were great friends of Godfrey’s, in France.’

  ‘Oh, he’s probably one of those damned refugees, then,’ said the vitriolic Rosemarie, to her dark and simpering sister. Phyllis. ‘Or looking for cash for a lot of vermin-stricken Free French or Poles, or God knows what.’

  ‘The country is overrun with the creatures,’ said Phyllis. ‘We’ll live to regret it. That’s the Communist influence, of course. They’re all Communists.’

  Celeste and Godfrey arrived somewhat late. When they were announced, a rustling murmur ran over the family, congregated around the fire in one of Emile’s great ornate drawing-rooms. They hardly saw Celeste in her radiant silver gown. For, when they saw Godfrey in his uniform, swinging along on his crutches, an amused and watchful smile on his mouth, the whole family drew one long breath, and held it. A strange and heavy silence fell over them, and they stood in awkward fixed attitudes of uneasy shock. The blazing firelight glimmered on the jewels and sequinned gowns of the women, but it was as if those gowns had been draped upon motionless dummies and the faces turned to Celeste and Godfrey were tinted plastic masks.

  Celeste had never possessed much social poise, but this sudden discomfiture of her relatives gave her the advantage. With high serenity, and smiling a little, she introduced her guest. She brought him, on his crutches, to one group after another, and he looked at them all with a fresh and intent interest, his eye flashing over each few shrewdly. As he progressed, those already introduced stared after him expressionlessly.

  He met the little, dark and dimpled Jean, ageless in his small plumpness and eager affability, and his great blonde and stupid wife, Alexa. He gathered that Jean was the brother of Peter, Celeste’s dead husband, and president of the Sessions Steel Company, subsidiary of Bouchard & Sons. He saw the real charm of this vivacious little man, which to him, for he was not naïve, compensated a great deal for the natural villainy which sparkled in his dancing bits of eyes. His children eyed Godfrey with that blank curiosity which displayed the modern fashion of lack of manners.

  Then there was the bachelor, Nicholas Bouchard, fifty-three years old son of Leon Bouchard, brother to Jules, president of the Windsor National Bank, and director of both the Manhattan Merchants Trust Company and the internationally potent Morse National Bank, controlled by Jay Regan. Godfrey was not prepossessed by Nicholas, ‘that dirty man,’ for Nicholas was short and uncouth, obstinate and avaricious even to the most casual glance, tenacious and truculent of expression, and cunningly astute. His complexion was greenish, and his rough short hair, once of a greenish cast also, was now composed of untidy patches of uncombed grey. He had successfully resisted the attempts of his sisters-in-law to marry him off, and now that they had failed, they contemplated him and said, openly: ‘Well, it was a blessing for some woman that he never married.’ He was not only ungroomed, but gave the impression of soiled linen and unpressed clothing. He grunted when Godfrey was introduced to him, did not extend his hand, and stared after the young man with narrowed green eyes both cruel and mean.

  Alexander, ‘the Deacon,’ magenta of complexion, enormous of swollen belly, with big legs, big smooth-skinned face, and grey curling hair, inspired Godfrey with distaste, as did his smirking, mean little wife with her simper. He was vice-president of Sessions. He greeted Godfrey in a booming voice, and interjected a platitude about blood being thicker than water, after all, and Godfrey had the feeling that little was needed to provoke him into giving a sonorous short sermon. It was evident that he believed himself to be the virtuous pillar of the family.

  There was tawny Hugo, and his amiable and handsome Christine, and one of his daughters. Hugo, the politician, never forgot that every man was a potential voter, and though he knew that Godfrey was a British subject, he could not refrain from the politician’s beaming address. He shook hands with heartiness.

  There was Christopher, suave and parched, with his silvery ‘Egyptian’ eyes, who acknowledged the introduction with polished cordiality. ‘Danger,’ thought Godfrey. He liked the plain, smart dark Edith, who looked at him with such direct and appraising nut-brown eyes, and he wondered how she could endure her husband. Francis was there, with his comely and horsy Estelle, and though Godfrey recognized the rascal, he also admitted to himself that in many ways Francis might be considered a ‘good’ man. He passed over the short, dark, fat Robert with indifference, repelled by his surly and stupid face, and smiled engagingly at his pretty little wife.

  Emile, his host, big, dark, bloated and very affable, had disgusted him instantly, and he had been conscious of a shrinking repulsion for him, but a great understanding. Agnes, he admired, as a ‘shrewd baggage,’ but an honest woman.

  He looked at Rosemarie, Francis’ daughter, and admired her smart and ugly perfection, and instantly thought to himself that here was a natural wanton and a deadly woman. He was not annoyed at her satirical survey of him and the quirk of her painted lips. He was only interested by the evidences of her heartlessness and greed and opportunism. Phyllis Morse, her sister, he considered a fool, with her fussy manners and her mean narrowed dark eyes. She was a vulgarian, he decided. Her husband, son of the powerful Richard Morse of the Morse National Bank, he dismissed as a robot, fearful, intolerant and dull. The eldest of her little girls was there, Bernadette, and he was startled at the clear blonde beauty of this sixteen-year-old girl with her radiant blue eyes. His sensibilities were not readily touched by anyone, but he lingered with the child, conscious of a feeling of strange sadness in himself. Later, when he learned that Phyllis destined her for a nunnery, he was as incredulously outraged as if he had been informed that she was to be sacrificed to Moloch on a smoking altar. Someway, he decided, this child must be saved from her monstrous mother’s plannings, and he wondered if her very beauty had not inspired the unattractive Phyllis in her determination to immure her.

  By this time, Godfrey was a little dizzy with the number of his relatives, and their relationship to each other and to himself. Celeste, gayly amused, tried to enlighten him upon each introduction, but after a while he began to shake his head muzzily, and greeted each new stran
ger with a laugh.

  Some of the big, blond and silent Norwoods were there, whom he vaguely understood to be a collateral branch of the family by reason of the marriage of Jules’ mother, Florabelle, to one Major Norwood far back in ante-bellum days. He did not try to memorize their names. He saw that, despite their wealth and position, they were nonenties. He gathered that a certain beefy young man was named Ernest Barbour Norwood, and when he looked at the large florid face and the empty blue eyes, he could hardly restrain some ribald laughter. This young man was a little less silent than his immediate relatives, and inquired at once if Godfrey was deeply interested in the coming game between Notre Dame and Yale.

  While these introductions were taking place, Antoine, and his little wife, Mary, arrived. (Henri and Annette were still absent.) Immediately upon seeing Antoine, Godfrey’s flagging interest was revived and stimulated. He recognized a fellow dilettante, a European of taste and polish and intellect, a man of wit and grace and accomplishment. ‘Decadent as hell, like all of us,’ thought Godfrey, shaking hands with Antoine with real warmth and pleasure. And Antoine, looking keenly at the other, felt the same instantaneous magnesism of recognition, and though he had planned on being amused he was, rather, inspired by liking and fellowship. ‘I saw you once, in Paris!’ exclaimed Godfrey, with enthusiasm, ‘though we never met. It was at the Marquise de Durand’s salon. You were going it strong with her little protegee, Eloise, and though I suspected we were relatives in a way, I didn’t think it delicate to interrupt.’

  ‘Ah, the Marquise!’ said Antoine, in French, with his dark sparkling smile, and adding something highly improper, but very witty.

  ‘Ah, Eloise!’ said Godfrey, also adding a remark in the same language. They laughed together. If Antoine had been curious at the sight of this young man with his stump and his uniform, and prepared to be humorous about him, he forgot it instantly. ‘Let us find an opportunity to get into a corner later, and converse,’ he said.

  Little Mary stared emptily from one to the other, her pretty brows drawn together as she ruminated over these mutual remarks and tried to understand them with her limited French. She thought their sprightliness very odd, indeed. It had been a long time since she had seen Antoine so gay.

  It was just then that Henri and Annette were announced, and though Godfrey was delightedly absorbed in his pleasure with Antoine, he could not but be aware, with his acuteness, that an odd silence had ensued, as at the coming of some feared and hated high personage. He thought: Why, it’s as if a warning fanfare had been sounded, and the ranks had separated to admit his passage!

  Celeste was standing near him, fluid and beautiful in her silver gown, and again that acute sensibility of Godfrey’s became aware of a sudden rigidity in her, a paleness and coldness. He faced towards the archway, with the most intense curiosity.

  When Henri entered, with Annette, he understood immediately. This was the image of Ernest Barbour, to the last pale short eyelash and curve of thick light brow. This was Ernest Barbour of the pale disc-like eye, and heavy stony lips. Godfrey looked at his relative, and knew him for the antithesis of everything which he and Antoine represented, everything which was gay and warm and vital and suave, and everything which was decadent. Antoine was murmuring in his ear: ‘Here is the Power of the Bouchards. Old Stone Face. The Iron Man. And, it isn’t a pose. He really is as repulsive as he appears. The lady with him is my sister.’ And Antoine’s voice became softer. Godfrey glanced at him in surprise. Antoine was staring at Annette with brooding gentleness, and the most peculiar sadness.

  Celeste, for some reason, did not appear to be able to move. Godfrey gave her a surprised glance, and then allowed himself to be piloted by Antoine to the new arrivals. Antoine did not attempt to assist Godfrey, swinging awkwardly on his crutches, but he slowed his step, and once, as he looked swiftly at the other man, his dry brown face tightened and drew together as if in discomfort and sympathy.

  Godfrey was touched by Annette, and felt an immediate affection for this little fair creature with the large and beautiful blue eyes. He saw only goodness and sweetness in her, and understanding. He saw also, as she watched him approach, that those eyes filled with quick and painful tears. Somehow, this did not annoy him, as it had annoyed him in Celeste. With his subtlety, he discerned that it was not pity that inspired her, so much as sorrow and regret. He took her little hand, and kissed it.

  And, as he did so, he felt in all his flesh the stolid strength and power of the man who waited beside her. He shook hands with Henri. Henri’s hand was dry and hard and broad, and without the slightest pressure in the palm, Godfrey’s natural sprightliness and swift gaiety were momentarily quelled. But he looked at Henri, and their eyes locked in instant and devastating dislike and repulsion.

  ‘I believe,’ said Godfrey, with reserve, ‘that we have the same great-grandfather. My grandfather and your grandmother were brother and sister. What does that make us?’

  ‘Some sort of intangible cousins, I believe,’ said Henri, with complete indifference. He added: ‘It’s odd that I never heard of you.’

  ‘Oh, I heard of you,’ replied Godfrey. Now the twinkle returned to his brown eyes. He shifted a little on his crutches.

  Henri’s broad shoulders moved in a parody of a shrug. He looked with brutal frankness at Godfrey’s stump and his uniform. ‘Where,’ he said, ‘did you get that?’

  Godfrey looked down at his stump, and carefully and slowly let his eye travel over his uniform. He assumed an expression of great surprise. Seeing this, Antoine smiled delightedly, stood back on his heels at ease, and waited.

  ‘Oh, these!’ exclaimed Godfrey, in a fresh, naïve voice. ‘I never really noticed them before. Funny, isn’t it? Things can happen to one, and one never notices. Haven’t you found that out yourself, Henri?’

  Henri’s pale harsh face changed; a stain of rough colour appeared on his broad cheekbones. He stared inimically at the other. Some of the relatives close by, sensing something interesting, moved slowly towards them. Annette, uncertain and confused, looked humbly from one man to the other.

  Godfrey settled himself on his crutches. His dark and mobile face was glowing with boyish enthusiasm. ‘Well, you see, I got myself a commission in the Royal Air Force. Quite accidental, you know. In fact, I was surprised, myself, when I found myself in uniform. A quite Alice-in-Wonderland reaction. Dreamlike, and all that. And then, it was that a funny thing happened: it didn’t seem grotesque at all, but quite natural.’

  ‘Natural?’ repeated Henri. His voice was dull, but Antoine knew he was enraged at this baiting. Smiles appeared on the faces of the gathering relatives.

  ‘Well, yes,’ said Godfrey, lowering his voice confidentially. ‘Not at first. Sort of as if I’d gone down the rabbit hole, like Alice, and come upon all sorts of queer places. I’m a British subject, you know, but like quite a few of my class, I didn’t particularly care for England. You’d be really surprised to discover how many like me really didn’t care for old England. Boring, y’know. Stolid, and plum-puddingish. All that sort of thing. And then, there I was in uniform. Must have been the working of my subconscious mind. “Subconscious mind,” said I, when I discovered myself in this predicament, “what the hell have you been up to?” And then it came to me, very neat. I just hated Germans. All Germans. Every last man jack of’em. Every boar, and sow, and piglet. So, says I, it’s very simple. I’d gotten into this pantomime suit so that I’d have a chance to kill human pork. Lots of pork. Very simple.’

  Henri was silent, Godfrey regarded him with his laughing eyes. And then, with an inclination of his head, he turned to Antoine, who moved away. Godfrey moved with him. Antoine tucked his hand in Godfrey’s arm, not for assistance, but in fellowship.

  ‘You know,’ said Antoine, ‘I love you. I really love you.’

  Godfrey saw Celeste at a distance, isolated. In her shining silver gown she was like a slender pillar of ice.

  Godfrey, his eyes meditatively upon Celeste, said absentl
y to Antoine: ‘You all hate each other thoroughly, don’t you? Why?’

  ‘It’s a family tradition,’ said Antoine, grinning. ‘We’ve built it up carefully, through the ages. If we started to love each other, it would knock hell out of the legend. And where would we be?’

  CHAPTER LXVIII

  They went into the immense dining-hall. Gallery of horrors, thought Godfrey. He had long been accustomed to the gloom and decay of European dining-rooms, but there had been no pretence tbout them, no artificiality. But here was pretence, affectation self-conscious and determined to be natural.

  Emile’s pretentious chateau, high on its groomed terraces, had a false and disoriented air at the best of times. The dining-hall emphasized this air. It was filled with an uncertain and shifting light, that drifted down from the gigantic candelabra which, though blazing with a multitude of tall thin tapers, were unable to lighten the spectral and clammy atmosphere. The walls were far and dim and cold, shrouded in tapestries and banners ragged and subdued with time. Everywhere, Godfrey was conscious of the stony dusk, and of distant draped lances and scarred armour. The family took their places about the huge refectory table, dripping with lace, and burdened with crystal and silver glimmering faintly under the pale taper-light. This medieval room was grotesque, in robust and blazing America, and Godfrey glanced about him with cynicism politely concealed. His covert glance absorbed the grave dim portraits among the banners, and he wondered where Emile had got them. He smiled at the smug suggestion that these far and remote painted faces were those of illustrious ancestors. It was an insult to these faces, and their old tradition. He came to a rather cruel conclusion about his relatives. ‘Vulgar bastards with delusions of grandeur,’ he thought to himself. One could never entirely erase the mark of the peasant—the mark of the beast, Godfrey called it, happily remarking to himself that he, also, probably bore this mark.