The Final Hour Read online

  He was enormously perplexed. It was not in the nature of things that Henri didn’t know, that his approval had not been obtained first in this frightful transaction. It had been Peter’s conviction, from the first, that the power of the Bouchard family had arranged this matter. Who would dare do anything in the family without Henri’s consent?

  But Henri was regarding Christopher with that cold and appalling steadfastness, even as he said: ‘I agree it is nonsense.’ He stirred in his chair, as if to rise.

  Christopher was silent. But under his hooded eyelids his eyes were like a serpent’s.

  Why should the implacable, the monstrous Henri care, so long as great profits were assured? thought Peter. Unless he had other plans?

  Then Henri turned to Edith, and said tranquilly: ‘How is Galloway coming along with that arm of yours? Is it definitely arthritis?’

  Edith started. She stared at her brother, bemused. Her thin lips were livid. It was a moment or two before she could answer, and then she said: ‘No. It isn’t arthritis, thank God. A strain. At tennis, a few months ago.’

  All at once the hard brown of her eyes was dim with tears. She rose, glanced at Celeste and Annette, who rose also. ‘Girls, let’s powder our noses,’ she said.

  Peter rose also. He was trembling so greatly that he felt extremely ill. ‘I will have to be excused,’ he murmured. And left the room.

  After the women had gone, Henri was silent while port was poured into glasses, and cigars lit.

  Then he looked at Christopher, and said: ‘You are an accomplished liar. I’ve always known that. I still don’t know if you are lying. You can deceive even me.’ His hand lifted a small salt-cellar, and closed about it. His pale eyes studied Christopher in the candlelight, and there was something frightful in their expressionlessness. ‘I hope you aren’t lying. It would be very bad for you, if you were. You know that.’ Christopher flushed, and his face became evil with his rage and impotence. And with fear, thought the deeply absorbed Antoine. But more than anything, his humiliation at Henri’s tone and manner poisoned him.

  ‘Duval-Bonnet is mine,’ he said in a neutral voice. ‘I want you to remember that, Henri. I made it; I built it; I have it.’ ‘That is interesting,’ said Henri, with a smile. ‘Have you forgotten I own thirty-five per cent of the stock?’ He puffed at the cigar a moment, removed it from his mouth, regarded it with profound distaste. ‘Outside of that, I can ruin you, you know. I can do a good job of ruining. Anybody. In a few months, it will be very dangerous should the Government know about the planes and the cracking process. Leavenworth is a very disagreeable place, I understand. Later, if we are in the war, I shouldn’t wonder if firing squads might not be employed.’

  Christopher’s impotent humiliation made every vein in his temples swell. ‘Good God, are you fool enough to listen to the drivelling of that imbecile? Do you take his word against mine?’ He thrust his chair away from the table. Now he was beside himself. ‘You know what he is. Yet, you have the audacity to listen to him, the stupidity! You know the tripe he writes. You know what he’s after. Everything is grist to his mill, lies and half-truths and other idiocies. He will say anything, do anything. Look here, send an investigator down to Duval-Bonnet. Have him check on Brouser and Schultzmann.’ He paused, almost choking in his restrained wrath. ‘I’m not without resources of my own. If that idiot should publish such a calumny, I’ll sue him. I’ll take every penny away from him.’

  Henri was silent. Behind that broad stony brow he was thinking rapidly. All at once he began to smile, easily. But Antoine saw his eyes, and grinned to himself.

  ‘Why all the excitement?’ asked Henri. He pushed his chair away from the table. ‘Let’s forget all this, shall we?’

  He rose. Christopher and Antoine rose also. They had forgotten Armand, who had been staring at them all as if fascinated and horrified. His swollen face was lard-like in colour. He could not rise. He could only sit in his chair, with his hands clutching his list.

  ‘Forget it?’ asked Christopher, coldly. ‘That is easy to say. Do you think I can forget your threats so easily? Your contemptible threats?’

  Henri was unperturbed. ‘I don’t threaten lightly. I’m not a bully, I hope. I only like to have things straight. I only like to know what is going on. And somehow, there are certain things I don’t like. I hope these “lies” aren’t one of them.’

  He put his hand on Christopher’s shoulder. ‘Whenever you have a plan in mind, let me know, will you? Then we’ll all be satisfied. But the plans, I’m sure, don’t include letting the Nazis have plane designs, cracking processes, and synthetic rubber. That’s all. Shall we find the ladies and see if they have anything more interesting to talk about?’

  He walked away from them. Christopher and Antoine looked at each other. They did not even glance at the paralyzed Armand, sitting like a lump of putty in his chair. Antoine raised his eyebrows humorously at Christopher, who, balked and infuriated, stared back at him.

  Christopher did not speak. But slowly, he began to smile. He touched Antoine’s arm, and the two of them followed Henri out onto the terrace. Antoine began to hum musically under his breath.

  Christopher thought: I’ve got to get away immediately. I ought to be able to get them on long distance.

  CHAPTER XIV

  Celeste spent an unusually exhausting half-hour with Peter, before she could persuade him to go to bed. He was highly excited, confused and vehement.

  ‘I tell you, there’s something here I don’t understand!’ he cried. ‘There was this morning—and now tonight. They were fairly obvious, a few years ago. What is it all about? They said they didn’t want war. I believe that now. Things have fallen into a pattern. Hugo worked to invoke the Neutrality Act against Spain, when he first became Assistant Secretary of State. You’d have thought he would have opposed that—I know that by nature the Bouchards would be fascists. But they’d never overlook profits, and opportunities to stimulate wars. They’ve been very ardent about nationalism, for a purpose. But there’s something here.’ He paused, and a stark expression of horror stood in his eyes as he gazed at his wife. ‘I’m thinking of France,’ he muttered in a choked voice.

  Celeste gave him a strong dose of sedative. ‘You’ll be thinking of nothing, if you keep on injuring yourself with speculations like this,’ she said. ‘Wait until you’ve thoroughly recovered, dear.’

  ‘What is Henri up to?’ he continued, restlessly, not having heard her. ‘I can see they’re afraid of him. He rules them like a dictator. What is it they’re trying to hide from him?’

  ‘I’m sure you are imagining things,’ said Celeste, soothingly, fanning herself with her handkerchief. The evening was sultry, almost unbearable. She lifted her arms a little, as if to aid her breathing. All at once, she was stifled with her sadness, her imprisonment, her hopelessness. Peter threatened to have a bad night. She could go nowhere; she could not escape even for a few hours, and at a time when escape became the most exigent necessity of her life. If Peter would only sleep for an hour or two, it might be possible to wander through the grounds, sit quietly under some great tree, and be alone. She glanced at her watch. It was almost ten. She had been over an hour in an attempt to calm Peter, who insisted upon talking with gathering confusion and despair. Annette would have retired. Armand had left at half-past nine, Christopher and Edith had accepted an invitation for the evening, and Antoine had joined them. No doubt Henri had left, also. The great house was filled with warm and rustling quiet. It would be beautiful in the garden, with the silver curve of the moon over the cool trees.

  But Peter, with his terrible preoccupations, saw nothing of her weary face and the strained brightness of her eyes. He quarrelled with her when she insisted upon helping him to bed. Once or twice he even struck away her patient hands. But she pressed her lips grimly together and refused to be put aside, to listen. When he was once in bed, she would not bring him his writing pad and his pen. When her hands touched his flesh, she felt its thin heat. A
t last, she was forced to call Miss Tompkins, who came in with a sharp professional smile, and, after a quick glance at Celeste’s drained and sinking face, ordered her out of the room.

  ‘I’ll read to Mr Bouchard,’ she promised. ‘He’ll soon sleep. Invalids who are recovering are often fractious.’ She plumped up Peter’s pillows, and he glowered at her despairingly.

  ‘What shall I read to you?’ she asked him brightly

  ‘Nothing. Just go away,’ he answered her, with tired rudeness. ‘I’ve things to say to Mrs Bouchard.’

  The nurse shook her finger at him archly. ‘Now, we’re being very bad.’ He looked at her with disgust. ‘Mrs Bouchard is very tired. It’s a nasty hot night. We mustn’t over work the little lady, must we?’

  For the first time Peter looked at Celeste and saw her.

  She hesitated, and approached the bed again. ‘Perhaps it would be better if I read to Mr Bouchard,’ she said. ‘I’ve nothing else to do, and he prefers me to read to him.’

  Peter was silent. He saw how strained she was. He saw that she had become quite thin, and that her luminous pallor had been reduced to white exhaustion. There were dark indentations about her eyes. He was filled with fear for her, and remorse. He made himself smile.

  ‘No, darling. Do go away, and rest. I’ll be perfectly all right.’

  He held out his hot and tremulous hand to her, and she took it. He kissed her lingeringly. I’m killing her, he thought. I’m obstinate and selfish. I expect tpo much of her. I’ve made her my servant, my audience, my slave, my confidante. It’s too much. But, who else have I?

  He was overwhelmed by his loneliness, and his desolation. He felt quite ill again, and lay back on his pillows and closed his eyes.

  Celeste slipped through the lamp-lit silence of the house, emerged upon the terrace. It was strange how her heart was beating, with such stifling pain and despondency. She stood on the terrace a moment, looking over the dark and murmurous grounds. A wind was blowing through the tops of the shadowy trees, but no breeze move across the earth, which flowed with a pale and spectral light that could not come from the thin edge of the moon. The sky had a curious hot pallor about it, against which the pointed tops of distant poplars moved in sharp black outline. The stars were dim, though no clouds touched the brilliant curve of the moon, and the scent of disturbed grass, roses and leaves, rolling in advancing and receding tides towards Celeste and away from her, presaged a coming storm. Sometimes, against the dark and ghostly sky the plumes of a willow tossed, and then subsided, like the giant skirts of a ballet dancer, and sometimes there was a silent flash of lightning illuminating some restless backdrop of foliage.

  Celeste knew that in the rose-gardens there were white iron benches on which to sit under the bordering trees. She began to walk over the grass. Suddenly the crickets began a vociferous chorus, and from the lily pond far to her left came the baritone answer of bullfrogs. Fireflies darted at her feet, in the close air all about her, and there were the spectral brushings of tiny wings near her. The wind was coming closer to the earth; she felt its hot breath on her damp cheeks. It lifted tendrils of hair from her neck, moulded her thin skirts about her thighs. But it did not cool or refresh.

  The roses were in full lush bloom, and she saw the confused blur of their whiteness in the dark dusk of the night, and smelled their overpowering fragrance. She found a seat under a tree, and leaned back, overcome with her weariness. But it was beautiful to hear no voices, and to know that there was no one here but herself. The night, the silence, the chorus of crickets, the deep mysterious murmur of the trees, the sudden flash of the voiceless lightning, the isolation and uneasy peace, the air of the solemn and mystical night, gave her quietness and sanctuary.

  It was so seldom that she dared think. She kept her thoughts grimly at bay, fending them off as one fends off raging dogs with a whip. Almost always, she was afraid to be alone, because of those fang-toothed thoughts. Even when she did think, she would allow her mental wanderings to become mere shadows of emotion, refused to face them.

  As she sat there in the darkness, she said to herself: I’m old. And, somehow, I don’t care. It doesn’t matter to me whether I live or die. There is nothing for me, nothing in all the world. I must understand at last that Peter will not live long. I must face it. How shall I face it? What will there be for me then? An empty and useless life. I’m drained. There’s nothing in me. Nothing to console and fill up the endless hours and days and nights. Nothing matters, or promises to matter.

  She saw everything so clearly now. She had lost the capacity to feel keenly. A vast dull inertia pervaded her. She lifted her hands and looked at them in the wandering pallor of the flowing sky-light. They were empty and useless. She had no desire to fill them. All at once their emptiness seemed part of her very soul. Her undesire was deathlike. She could feel nothing in her heart or her mind that could inspire life or joy or pleasure or usefulness. She was formed of substanceless mist. And in that mist was a core of pain and sorrow. She turned away from herself as one turns away from a heavy weariness, with sickness and aversion.

  All these years she had helped and nursed Peter, and wandered with him. Until recently, she had been one with him in his terror and indignation and despair. She had been his echo. Now, she was not even an echo. She simply did not care. She wanted to lie down, to press herself into the earth, to die, to forget. For she knew that she still dared not think, but if she really allowed herself to think she would be destroyed, and others with her. The core of pain and sorrow in her began to glow, to become incandescent like a threat of blazing and destroying fire.

  She felt her involuntary tears on her cheeks, but did not wipe them away. Years ago, she had sat like this, alone in the night, and all about her had been the distant thunder of promise, the promise of her life. She had been so young then, so ardent, so passionate. And so innocent, and stupid. So stupidly eager and lustful of living. She could remember how she felt, like the memory of a dream. This wind, this dark richness of night, ominous though it was, this tide of rosescent and fragrance of warm grass, were memories, rather than present events. ‘I see, but do not feel, how beautiful it is,’ she quoted to herself. She sat, not in the present, but in a memory of the past. In herself, there was only windless chaos, formless nothingness.

  How could one endure the endless coming years of one’s life, feeling only the memory of emotion, smelling nothing but the memories of a dead hope, experiencing nothing but recollections of vanished events? Whatever was to happen in the world of tomorrow held no significance for her, not even pain, not even terror. She would be a ghost in that world, desiring nothing but death, unmoved by any shape of catastrophe. She was already dead.

  The pain in her became huge. But, I am not old! she cried to herself, soundlessly, in the last frantic movements of despair at the threat of dissolution. There ought to be a promise of joy in the future, or at least, a promise of active life, of passionate insecurity. But even as she thought this, she did not care.

  The wind in the trees increased like a multitude of hoarse and sinister voices. She listened. She had heard those voices with Peter, once, in such a dark garden and dark night, and they had solemnly excited her. She had clung to him, and had turned her face with courage to the voices, defying them, lifting her breast against them. Now, they only vaguely frightened her. The lightning was becoming stronger, and mingled with the wind was the hollow echo of approaching thunder. But the brilliance of the moon did not lessen. Now the scent of grass and flowers was smothering, as blade and petal stirred with increasing uneasiness.

  She looked towards the house. It was hidden in trees, except for one far-distant window, gleaming with pale yellow light. Was that Peter’s window? She half rose from the bench, with the old accustomed habit of going to him when he could not sleep. But even as she stood up, the light went out. The great mansion was now not even a shadow in the night.

  She stood there, under the trees, her hands fallen to her sides, her face as sti
ll as stone. She did not move. She had no desire even to take a single step.

  There was a sharper rustling near her. She turned her head listlessly in its direction. A sleepless squirrel perhaps, or a snake, or a hopping toad. The rustling came nearer, and she had the sudden and inexplicable sense that someone was approaching her, though she could see nothing. Some instinct out of the primordial wells of instinct made her stand perfectly still, her ears suddenly preternaturally sharp, her eyes probing the darkness. The rustling stopped. Yet the sense that someone was near her was keener than ever.

  She knew, too, that whoever it was had felt her own presence, and was as warily silent, feeling for her in the atmosphere. She felt her heart begin a quickened thumping, as of fear. But, this was absurd. Some servant, perhaps, unable to sleep in the hot night. Or, perhaps a marauder. But Robin’s Nest was surrounded by high walls, patrolled by two watchmen, with dogs.

  Celeste started violently as a low voice said: ‘Is someone there?’

  It was Henri’s voice, calm and slow as ever, though alertly interested.

  Celeste did not move. But all at once a sheath of fire enwrapped her, so that she felt incandescent, burning in the darkness, as visible as a pillar of flame. She felt that her face had become an oval of light. Her heart began a tumultuous beating. Suddenly the lifeless confusion of the night, all meaningless sound, all heavy inertia and appalling formlessness, took on a wild and universal significance, became as close and roaring as stormy breakers, and was all imminence. She had become the core of the vortex, and her hearing, all her senses, were assailed by tumult. She experienced an awareness of herself such as she had never experienced before, and a consciousness of everything about her.

  She could not have spoken even if she had wished to. She could only stand there, blown upon by strong winds. A flash of lightning lit up the sky, and revealed her there, in the cave under the tree, motionless, as still as the trunk of the tree behind her.