Dynasty of Death Page 10

  Jacques told Martin of Jean Jacques Rousseau. To Martin, bruised and raw and hurt by associations with those who were immediate, exigent and driven by what seemed like an external power the philosophies of this gentle, half-mad and ideal-tortured Frenchman were as simple as cool fresh water, and as life-giving. Here was the sweet fruit of a simple mind, unexotic and pure, growing on a strong and harmless tree with its roots clinging deeply to the earth. He could understand this simply noble thought, which was, however, without heroism, utterly non-combatant, utterly removed, paradoxically, by very reason of its uncomplicated naturalness and harmless animalism, from the very stuff of strong and vigorous and vital life. He did not know that it was an Arcadian philosophy, so divided from reality, so timid and unreal, that it was faintly flavored with preposterousness and absurdity. It was like a group of self-conscious artist-poseurs dressing themselves in flowing garments and dancing chillily under a white moon in a cultivated forest. He was too young to realize this. He, too, was a pilgrim in flight from reality into unreality, and Rousseau was a pillar of gentle fire in the desert.

  All he knew was this philosophy comforted and sustained him; it was a voice that spoke in familiar accents in a strange land. It consoled him that there lived people in this terrifying world that were not ambitious and ruthless, cold of eye and dominant, driven and driving, greedy and rapacious. It was a voice like Jacques’ hand: kind and steadfast, innocent and quiet.

  Martin’s religious education had been indifferent. Therefore, he listened avidly to Jacques’ stories of the Catholic saints. Here, too, were people removed from reality by mysticism and devotion, people he could understand. They moved through his mind like the gentle plaster figures of Madam Bouchard’s mantelpiece come to life, clothed in pink lustre and gilt, beaming at him with their large and mistily brilliant eyes, loving him with celestial smiles, touching him with cool and undemanding hands. He loved them. He listened eagerly to the stories of their lives, tears in his eyes, his heart beating rapidly. He seemed to swell inside with intense and mysterious emotion, so that he wished to immolate himself on some heroic altar in an ecstasy of faith. The wish had in it something of voluptuousness, something of the rapture of copulation. He was not concerned with the center of the Saints’ faith; he hardly thought of God at all except as the focus toward which the tide of this delightful catalepsy turned.

  Thus it was that Jacques Bouchard and Martin Barbour were as removed from this new world of heat and drive, expansion and power, noise and glory and vulgarity and splendor as if they dwelt in some silver-misted valley of the moon. This was the age of the McGuffey Readers, expanding railroads, widening frontiers, wealth and growth, gold and industry: the age of a new world stretching young strong arms, and if speaking coarsely and without much refinement, at least speaking cogently.

  Up and down the Allegheny River new steamboats puffed, flatboats loaded with wheat and machinery and iron and steel floated stolidly by; Windsor’s population was increasing gigantically, and the railroad was now promising a branch line by spring. There was talk that a Pittsburgh steel firm was to establish a factory in Windsor, because of the proximity of coal; ten new coal mines had just recently been opened. Already dark-skinned aliens were appearing in the mills and the mines, men with long faces and averted eyes and strange speech. They did not mingle with the townsfolk, but held themselves apart, as if they were either naturally aloof and unfriendly or frightened. It was noticed that they lived adjacent to the mills and the mines, and rarely ventured beyond them; it was also noticed that the mills and the mines had new stores of their own where the aliens seemed to trade exclusively, much to the loud annoyance of the shopkeepers. The ominous significance of this had not yet penetrated the public consciousness, and was not to do so for some time.

  In Oldtown, society waxed more and more self-conscious and snobbish and luxurious. More and more carriages appeared on the streets. More and more farm girls, and even girls recruited from Newtown, entered “service” in aristocratic homes in the section of town that was soon to be designated as “across the tracks.”

  The very air was charged with growth and excitement and exuberance. But Jacques and Martin seemed unconscious of it all. The bright river, the sun-warmed rocks, the baby girl, the fireplaces, Rousseau, days sleepy and heavy with dreams, smiles, hand-touches, sighs: these were their life, and they knew or cared about nothing else.

  Less than all things did they care for the gunpowder firm of Barbour & Bouchard, though it held their destiny and the destiny of Martin’s children in grim keeping.

  CHAPTER VIII

  The gunpowder shop was a ramshackle wooden building, unpainted, poorly built, hardly weather-proof, standing precariously, as if perched, on a steep slope of muddy land near the river. The boards that composed it, bare and gray-white and splintering, seemed merely tacked together. It consisted of a large assembling and polishing and grinding room for the pistols and the shotguns, a smaller room full of bottles, glasses and crocks and barrels, where Joseph Barbour experimented, made and prepared his gunpowder for shipment, where Ernest crudely lettered in India ink on white paper the legend that this was Gunpowder Par Excellence, made by Barbour & Bouchard, Manufacturers of Explosives & Firearms, Windsor, U. S. A. (Gunpowder guaranteed to withstand a reasonable amount of wetting—almost smokeless—non-injurious to firer—the World’s Best Gunpowder without a Rival.) Another room contained the steam engine that pumped water and operated a small lathe in the assembling room. The steel and iron mill of The Sessions Company in Windsor supplied Barbour & Bouchard with the crude moulds of their firearms. Previous to Joseph’s arrival George Barbour had been buying his moulds from a cheaper rival concern of Sessions, Moffatt’s, but Joseph, after scornfully examining the product, noting its pitted and brittle quality, its unevenness and careless workmanship, insisted on doing business with Sessions. George had protested bitterly, for Joseph had admitted that he intended charging no more for firearms, made of better steel for some time, until they had steady markets. It did a man no good, he had said, to get a reputation for making pistols and shotguns that were apt to explode in the operator’s hands, thus endangering his fingers and even his life, due to brittle air-chambers in the steel, and paper-thin spots. Who cared for reputation? shouted George, who wanted only ten thousand pounds. They couldn’t supply guns fast enough, with half the country going west, and the Indians, and the demand for game shotguns from the Southern States. Joseph was an onion-skinned fool to stay up nights worrying whether their guns were about to blow some damned Yankee or Indian or nigger into hell and back; all that concerned him was the money.

  But Joseph, with his far inward eye already fixed on a steadfast and dazzling future in this newly beloved land, was passionately firm. He saw that George was not at all interested in permanent markets and expanding business, and hated him for it. He had had many talks with Ernest, and not a few of his arguments and his resolutions stemmed from the boy. It was Ernest who gave him the final and cunning argument that won over George, after many reluctant oaths and protests. Better guns, as well as better gunpowder, Joseph said, while not showing immediate profits, built up a monopoly, so that poorer manufacturers would be forced out of business. Once having all the business, one could charge any price one wished. Give him two years, said Joseph, and their fortunes would be made. And when he said this, Joseph stared at his brother with a startled, almost frightened and curious look, as though he remembered something said by another which he had once repudiated but found that he had been unconsciously influenced by it in everything he did and said.

  George had smiled a reluctant, gloating smile at the idea of controlling business and charging enormous prices. So he had consented. He found that Armand Bouchard was entirely with Joseph, and his hate for both of them increased venomously. But, he promised himself, with grim and gleeful joy, there would come A Day. In the meantime, he would use their brains and their sweat; fools like these were born to be victimized by clever men such as himself
.

  Within two years firearms bearing the insignia B&B had won nationwide fame. To own a B&B stamped one as a gentleman of discernment and wealth, a connoisseur, an officer, or a competent frontier leader. Orders were coming in from every general store in the country, even from large New York, Chicago, New Orleans, Pittsburgh and Richmond stores. George gloated, grew restless. But Joseph and Ernest, and now Armand with them, had their eyes fixed on Army contracts, though they felt as yet unprepared to angle for them against formidable and old-established firms in New York State. The firm of Barbour & Bouchard, though flourishing, was still too young, its bank balance still too precarious, its pretensions too insecure, to risk any threat of determined annihilation from mightier concerns. Not yet, not yet, they said to each other, their eyes sparkling with wild excitement. But soon, added Ernest. Joseph and Armand thought it wise to purse their lips with judicious indulgence at the boy’s quietly spoken prophecy; but oddly, this indulgence seemed immature and childish in the face of this seventeen-year-old’s stern lips and fanatic eyes, and bitter driven power. As time went on Joseph respected his son’s opinion and intelligence and maturity more and more, and Armand, who had the French respect for intellect under whatever guise or age it appeared, had long ago come to the conclusion that it would not be long before Ernest would dominate the entire firm. It would be folly, he had concluded resignedly and with almost incredulous admiration, to oppose such shrewdness, such insight, such dominance and strength. He guessed, as no one else did, that the subtle and clever and imaginative Joseph was becoming a veritable marionette operated by the invisible strings of the silent Ernest. Ernest employed his father as one would employ a complex and versatile tool, or a brilliant slave. Only Armand knew that almost all Joseph’s shrewd and invincible suggestions and ideas emanated from Ernest, who, however, was as yet wily enough to remain in the background and play the devoted son.

  Armand did not envy Joseph Barbour his son. He was too clear-sighted for that. Despite the smiling, indolent mediocrity of Raoul, the humorless obstinacy and pettier drive of Eugene, he thanked his God that Ernest was not his son. It would be like having stored thunder and flood in his house, he told his wife.

  He was satisfied: Raoul and Eugene worked in the little factory, Raoul indulgently and carelessly, as though he considered the whole concern somewhat amusing, Eugene with slow but religiously tenacious industry, following his worshipped model, Ernest. It was true that Jacques would never be able so much as to polish a bore, but that was insignificant compared to his beautiful face at the table and the fireside. It was like having a saint in the house, before whom healthy family turmoil subsided into peace and harmony. Even careless Raoul was gentle with Jacques, and Eugene, forgetting his arrogance that tried to emulate Ernest’s silent strength, became eager and humble before his younger brother.

  The American Railroad Company put a branch line through to Windsor, connecting the town with Pittsburgh, and incidentally with New York. In the same month the firm of Barbour & Bouchard moved into a tidy small red brick building recently built, about five hundred yards from its original location, the firm having purchased, for a very satisfying sum of money, all the land from the river bank backwards to Shipton Road, an area conservatively estimated as about two hundred acres, and along the river bank for another two hundred acres. This put the young firm of Barbour & Bouchard into an imposing debt of fifteen thousand five hundred dollars, which knowledge made hundreds of eyebrows to rise in Windsor, and hundreds of dour and complacent prophecies of swift ruin to be made. For by now the town was becoming acutely aware of the Barbours and the Bouchards, and regarding them with amazed and speculative eyes. It was as if a respectably large mushroom had become a gigantic tree overnight. The townsfolk had been too busy with their own schemes and exciting affairs to have devoted much attention before to this young Company, but now they became noisily aware of it.

  For two years Ernest Barbour had had a silent plan growing in his mind, a daring and brilliant plan. Or, rather, two plans. And now he proceeded to execute them, boldly, irresistibly, as he always did everything.

  CHAPTER IX

  The Sessions Steel Company considered itself an old and historical concern, for it had been established soon after the Revolution. It was originally known as The Sessions Ironworks. The Sessions family had never been members of the proletariat, and had retained a healthy and justifiable hatred of the anonymous horde that came like grasshoppers to devour the crops planted by the competent. The family, originally prolific, had dwindled to two brothers, Nicholas Sessions, the Senator, and Gregory Sessions, president of the Steel Company. Their dead sister, Amy, had married a fool and a wastrel, and had been cut out of her father’s will. She had left a daughter, penniless, who presided over the Sessions home in Windsor.

  The Sessions Steel Company had lost much of its old popularity among large manufacturers who went in for quantity rather than quality, but those few concerns who had inherited a respect for integrity and workmanship and quality, and who prided themselves in turning out only the best, remained the best and faithful customers of Sessions. America was already thinking in vast numbers, and, as usual, fineness fell, defeated, before the febrile god of Production. However, Gregory Sessions had persuaded himself that he had no yearnings for great wealth, no imperial ambitions, and that the steady and respectable income he and his brother derived from the Company was quite consistent with the estate of a gentleman. It was, he said, enough for him that the mark of Sessions Steel was the insignia of integrity and honor, and that the best manufacturers, though buying in small quantities, bought from no one else. Gregory Sessions, elegant, cynical, lean, smiling and indolent, was the least to suspect his own angry bitterness, his own savage lust for power and wealth. Even to himself he posed as a man slightly bored with business, suffering it only because of the necessary income, and longing to return to his grandfather’s England of gentlemen and leisure, quiet, fires and books. Unknown to himself, he had a passionate love for America, and because he resented those who came in hate and greed to this new land, he frequently expressed himself in scorn, amusement and tired boredom when speaking of his country. He detested this thing of figures and heat and furnaces and iron and sweat and dirty arms and naked backs, he said, yet he was secretly and inordinately proud of it, would not allow a piece of steel that did not come up to specifications to leave his factory. He told everyone that it was a matter of personal pride with him, not that he cared a fig for the Sessions Steel Company. Not he! He wished he could be done with it. He was only looking out for a purchaser with a good price, then he would sell and go to England where gentlemen were not engaged in trade. Yet the shipment of one small item of steel that was not of the usual quality was enough to cause him real anguish and rage for weeks on end. It was an agony, he frequently told his niece, to leave his warm, comfortable, spacious home of a morning for the gritty mustiness of his little office, yet he could honestly not conceive of a life without it; he knew every figure in its books, knew every engine, every piece of machinery, every furnace as none of his workmen did. He despised his employees and paid them remarkably well.

  It must not be thought that he was a fool and a poseur. He was, in fact, an astute, shrewd, wary, incredulous gentleman of real elegance and intellect. He had been to school in England, France and Germany. He had no affectations; he was merely self-deceived, self-defensive, for he believed that he and his brother were in a fair way, because of ignorance or indolence, to destroy something that had value and worth and dignity. So he told himself that he was no businessman, though in fact he was a startlingly fine one, and it was through his efforts, subconscious and powerful, that The Sessions Steel Company retained its reputation in a growing murk and confusion of hastily and cheaply made products in quantity. His only lack was a knowledge of advertising; he could not make a noise. He believed that good products were their own advertisement, and though this is true in a society that is homogeneous and stable, building up reputations graven
in the rock of memory and passed from father to son, it is not true in a society that is in flux, restless, moving, leaving one point for another, and forgetting. He did not know that America was entering a new order, where even gold must be advertised, and the circus “barker” was about to be sublimated in the advertising writer. He heard the swelling tempo of the new and gigantic America, and pretended to despise and belittle it; he was in reality very much frightened over it. It seemed a threat to him against everything that he honored and respected: integrity, the dignity of fine living, peace, leisure, music, good company, solid houses and honorable statesmen, and ease of mind, and even luxury. He hated intensity, and suspected that this intensity led to shoddiness and speed, corruption and rapacity, politicians that were mountebanks and malefactors. The new blood that was pouring into America contained a virus that would change her very features, would transform her soul. And so he stood against it, thinly smiling, indolent, apparently indifferent, and full of hate. Yet something in him, something primitively lustful and eager and ambitious, longed to get into this achingly uproarious fray and be part of it, subjugate it. He hated to see fools seize the prizes, hated his own inertia.

  He had more than a suspicion that his brother, Nicholas, was one of those politicians who were part of the new intensity and carelessness and greed, one of the despisers of tradition, one of the hurriers panting at the old machinery. He suspected, with more than a little foundation, that Nicholas was a mountebank and a malefactor, not above bribery, not above corruption and dirtiness. Nicholas was tall, as were all the Sessions males, but where Gregory was lean and elegant Nicholas was stout and impressive. He had the true later politician’s personality: bluff, shrewd, friendly, boisterous and democratic, a handshaker, an “agree-er,” an element in which the most alien elements could dissolve without explosion, and with the ease of fine oils, blending. He was crafty rather than intelligent, greedy and insatiable, cruel and sometimes vicious, opportunistic and alert. He was making his own fortune without the aid of The Sessions Steel Company, which he privately thought a “fuddling piece of business,” not likely to amount to much. Nevertheless, he used it as a good speaking point, for he could call attention to the fine wages paid his workmen (always a good point when talking to workmen), and the aristocratic tradition of the firm, never giving way to shoddiness and cheapness, when talking to uneasy aristocrats who feared for the future. He thought Gregory a fusty, incomprehensible ass, yet used him adroitly in Washington, for he was well aware that his brother “cut a figure” with his elegance and grace and learning and ease in a drawing room. There were die-hard Tories in Washington who still retained great power, and these could be relied upon to succumb to Gregory’s charm and breeding and aristocratic traditions: He, Nicholas, had inherited from some obscure ancestor a certain uncouthness of person and speech and manner, a certain brutal forthrightness (which, however, had nothing of honesty in it), and these things were very offensive to the delicate Tories. He used Gregory to placate these Tories, and gloated over his success. Gregory opened doors for him which otherwise would have remained obdurately closed.