The Final Hour Page 18

  Henri glanced at his cigarette, threw it aside. ‘Sit down,’ he said.

  Under Christopher’s thin high cheekbones there ran a line of colour. In all these years he had never become accustomed, as almost all his relatives had, to Henri’s hard dictatorial commands. His venomous hatred became a metallic taste in his mouth. Nevertheless, he sat down. He could wait, endure, a little longer.

  Outside, the birds had begun their morning chorus of awakening song. The wind was rising. The sky, in the east, was slowly turning grey. Henri sat in his chair, his hands resting on the arms, and regarded his brother-in-law in a long and meditative silence.

  Was there amused contempt in his eyes, understanding? One could never tell, with this formidable bastard. Inwardly writhing with his impotence, Christopher could hardly restrain himself. There was a voluptuous quality in his helplessness, so that he felt suddenly weak and undone. But his hatred was more malignant than ever.

  He waited. Surely, the swine must say something, do something!

  But Henri said only, with a peculiar smile: ‘May I offer you my sympathy on the death of your mother?’

  Christopher was silent. It was Henri who waited. He studied Christopher’s mask of a face, now enigmatic and closed. He smiled again. He rose with his usual compact ease and went calmly from the room.

  CHAPTER XVI

  Jay Regan sat in the vast and sacred gloom of his cathedral office and watched Henri Bouchard walk firmly and evenly across the dim and polished floor towards him. The great mahogany desk was like a dusky mirror before the fat old man, so ponderous and so sombre, and it threw glimmering reflections on his immense tired face with its cropped, almost white, moustache. Behind that desk, in that dusk, he was almost invisible, but even Henri was impressed, as always, by the air of formless and shadowy power that he exuded. This mighty buccaneer of finance seemed, in his age, no bravo, no adventurer, but a power that by a lift of a hand might cause empires to crash, at the merest sound of whose deep quiet voice the heads of world parliaments must turn towards him in helpless hypnosis. Here was the real emperor of the world, the real dictator. Hitlers and Mussolinis, for all their trumpets and insane bombasts, must, in the end, listen to him, and cower before him.

  Yet, he was old now, and approaching the time of his death. During all the years that Henri had known him, he had never felt in him a lust for power, or exultation that he possessed it. He was a simple and natural force, without apparent enjoyment for the knowledge that terror and ruin could be invoked by him. Nor had he ever been a spectacular force, a dramatic and theatrical force, loving publicity and a train of attendants. Whenever he moved, he moved in abysmal silence and darkness, and only the long reverberations of the earthquake, moving away from the silent centre of him, gave evidence that the Titan had stirred or spoken. There would be flashes of significant lightnings in the press; there would be Congressional Committees, or meetings in offices, similar to this, on Wall Street, or a gathering of the thousand of members of the American Association of Industrialists, or presidents would confer and statesmen put their heads together. And, far off, in Europe, in Asia, in South America, the winds would stir uneasily in the breath of the earthquake, and white palaces of Government would hum like hives, and the bronze doors of the Bourse, the Reichsbank, the Bank of England, the banks of Italy, Roumania, Hungary, Scandinavia, would catch yellow sparks of sunlight as they opened and shut in feverish activity. But always, he moved behind a wall of shadows, in velvet silence, and not even the keenest ear heard the ponderous echo of his step through the colonades of the world.

  This was the man who had moved the marionette, Mussolini, and had breathed into his wooden breast the very breath of life. In 1927, this miserable posturer and impostor, this little mountebank, this wretched and third-rate actor, this paranoiac with delusions of grandeur, had been at the point of collapse, laughed down and derided by his own realistic countrymen, who, loving true art and adoring a true actor, had found his gestures and his voice absurd and ridiculous, and without artistry. Italians forgave anything, so long as it was art, and a murderer of grace and dexterity, of voice and manner, inspired their admiration and applause. They would cheer a Borgia, if he poisoned with an air, and had the proper drape to his sleeve as he lifted a dramatic hand to instil the venom in a jewelled cup, and displayed a certain heroic grandeur of profile. They loved the emphasis on grace, the resonance of a rounded period, in a world that they knew was dull and frequently without beauty. But this maker of legs, this graceless mountebank, had no splendour, no beauty. He could not even act. If a man had no true appreciation of the elegant gesture, no awareness that a phrase must be uttered with certain rich intonations, no subtlety of posture, then he was worthless, and most probably a fool.

  His ‘march on Rome’ had interested the vivacious and intelligent Italians, with their adoration of the proper artistry. It revived memories of Cæsar’s entrances, with pageants, trumpets, the blaze of red banners against the burning blue sky, the tramp of white horses and the flash of helmets in the sun, the fire caught on the tips of spears from the immortal clarity of Italian light, the thunder of victorious armoured feet. For a while, their interest remained. But, they soon recognized that this Cæsar was bogus, ridiculous, a syphilitic fool, and that even his pursuit of women lacked the grand air and was only the waddling of a middle-aged Pan at the heels of dressmakers’ dummies. He sickened them. Those behind him, the great industrialists and financiers of Italy, were dismayed. They displayed their Cæsar over and over to the jeering and ribald mob, affixing to his head an absurd fez with tassels, inventing flamboyant uniforms for him, rehearsing him in his speeches, finding for him more and more spectacular beauties with which to cohabit publicly, arraying his cohorts in purple and gold arming them with carved swords. ‘The Italians’ amusement increased. The Affaire Mussolini became, for the civilized Romans, the invasion of a countryman’s dream of grandeur, and they were insulted.

  ‘Bad opera,’ they would say, shaking their heads. To an Italian, ‘bad opera’ was the supreme crime, and nothing could be forgiven it.

  Jay Regan understood all this. Where art failed to beguile, he said, money could be used as a club. It was in that portentous March of 1927 that he lent $100,000,000 to the lurking fascists behind Mussolini, and the amazed Italians discovered that, ‘bad opera’ or not, this malignant third-rate actor stood over them with a poised dagger, and compelled them, not only to watch his disgusting performances, but to applaud them also. They watched him strut across the stage of history, and were nauseated by his raucous voice, his lack of technique, his ignorance of even the most elementary gestures of true art. They shrugged their shoulders fatalistically, and went about their business, hoping the universal contempt would soon quiet this spear-carrier forever.

  But the spear-carrier, who would have sunk into oblivion at the behest of the Italian people, had friends who were no such lovers of art as they. He had Mr Regan, in America. He had the Bank of England, and the silent movement of golden hands towards him. He had the bankers of France, who hated their country. But he did not have Germany. The German Republic watched him with alarm and gloom, and its confused protests were lost in his violent shoutings, the stamping of his flat feet. The Germans were not quite sure about what they were protesting, except that their instinct, always so elemental and primitive, smelled danger. Some there were who condescended to explain to them that Mussolini was really valuable. ‘He made the Italian trains run on time,’ they would say, with solemn nods of their heads.

  ‘But,’ inquired a great German liberal, whom Mussolini never forgave, and who was later tortured to death in a Nazi concentration camp at the mountebank’s behest, ‘what have prompt trains to do with the human spirit, with human enlightenment, with human liberty?’

  Such gross ignorance, such naïve stupidity, was properly ignored. The Germans continued to ask, and no one answered. In the meantime, the heroic background of history bore upon it the posturing and prancing shadow of a
lunatic created and sustained by a hundred secret hands that manipulated him. And that shadow grew larger and larger, and the swords that followed it were not spectral, but made of steel forged in America, in England, in France.

  At last, even those Germans who, under certain circumstances, had a proper regard for the promptness of trains soon had a problem of their own, and they temporarily forgot Mussolini. For another mountebank, who did not even wear a fez with tassels, and had not even the rank splendour of uniforms to commend him, had lifted his raucous voice in their own midst. There was, in the German, a love for the heroic in stature, for helmets, for the clanking of swords, for the Nibelungs, for winged and armoured feet, for Wagnerian voices. But this miserable little man, this clerk with the nasty face, this; jumping Toad of the Ages, had nothing to commend him, not even a knowledge of ‘bad opera.’ But, he had a Voice, and that Voice echoed in the cathedral silence of Jay Regan’s office, in the austere walls of the Bank of England, in the feverish Bourse. The German people listened, exhausted by the languor of wretched years, and turned aside with hesitant weariness. Only their enemies listened in their own country, the fools, the lunatics, the perverts, the greedy, the vicious, and the mad. But others listened, and bent attentive ears across oceans, across mountains, across the ragged edges of boundaries. And after they had listened a little while, they moved, and the vast machinery of doom began to murmur, to rise to a secret roar.

  For the Toad of the Ages had promised that he would kill the Man with the Red Beard who lay like a supine giant beyond the Ural Mountains, ever watching the world of men and stroking his beard in silence. No one knew what the giant was thinking, or what he was contemplating. The world of men can endure anything but silence, and is maddened by it. They only felt the fiery blue eyes turning slowly from nation to nation in profound meditation, and they became hysterical at the threat that they believed lived in him. Let him once rise from his contemplative motionlessness behind his mountains, they said, let him stand erect like a colossus, and ramparts would fall at the shout of his voice, and governments would crash into dusty ruins at the very echo of his feet. Let him walk, and at the very shadow of him against the sun the enslaved peoples of the world would rise up like a black tide and inundate their masters.

  The Toad of the Ages had as yet only a voice. But he soon had money. With the golden swords there came an army of murderers, liars and thieves, there came long and deadly whispers from every corner of the world. And the Toad of the Ages soon eclipsed a bad actor, though possessing not even bad art of his own. The Toad, with his croaking voice, the Italian posturer who could only awkwardly manage his cloak, stood before amazed multitudes, armed with swords forged in secret in other countries. They looked at the Man with the Red Beard, squeaked their defiance of him, and rattled their swords at him. And now the Church listened, the Church that hated the new liberation of men. In the cool purple dusk of cathedrals, in the musty darkness of little wooden tabernacles, a storm of voices rose, squealing, screaming, filled with venom and fear and hatred, and resounded and echoed in every nation in the world. The Man with the Red Beard was the Supreme Enemy of orderly government, of orderly law, of morality, of marriage, of established authority, of God, the Bible, woman’s virtue, children’s obedience, commerce, the little red schoolhouse, and the corner grocery store. The Toad and the Bad Actor were twin Messiahs that protected the beds of good women, small bank accounts, labour, government, the dollar Bible, and the little church with the clapboard steeple.

  The seduction of the Common Man had begun.

  The seduction, as the Masters had very well known, was not very hard. One had only to enlist the Church. Year by year, the Common Man himself had gathered in the sticks and the straws of prejudice, stupidity, ignorance and fear and hatred, and was sitting on this wretched tinder waiting for the spark that would set the rubbish aflame. The Church had this spark, already tended and guarded for the hour. Always, through the centuries, it had this spark, sheltered by its sinister hands. The bonfires were set ablaze. By their frantic light, every man was convinced that he saw the crouching shadow of the Man with the Red Beard, poised to spring over the boundaries of the world.

  The work was done. The fire was spreading. The world entered a universe of crimson clouds.

  In the meantime, the Man with the Red Beard maintained his silence. But, he knew. He began to move behind his mountains.

  The Common People, enamoured of legend and fairy tale, always believed that the man of destiny burst like an exploding comet against the skies of the world. They jeered, always, at the implication that men of destiny sat behind acres of polished desks in vast quiet offices and talked together in words of the vernacular. Who, among the distant Italians, the distant and frightened Germans, knew that their Cæsars were controlled by men in rumpled tweeds, in creased and untidy trousers, in New York, in Berlin, in London, in Rome, in Paris? Who knew that the fires of destruction smoked at the ends of good cigars about mahogany boards heaped with neat papers? Who knew that the voice of destruction did not bellow from the echoing spaces of time, but whispered quietly in Wall Street, in the Bourse, in the Reichsbank, and that often that voice had an English or French or American accent? The day of the hero was gone.

  The terror wore a vest and pampered a swollen belly, and used tonic on a balding head.

  Not even anguished Spain could awaken the Common Man, nor could her cries enter the mean little walls of his house, nor the light of her burning cities strike on his dull eyelids.

  So, as Henri Bouchard approached his old and potent friend, he saw in him all the great and subterranean power that now heaved with increasing strength through the world. Yet, it was only an aging sick man who sat there, with ambushed eyes, a cropped white moustache, and quiet hands, and a peculiarly charming smile.

  He had a great fondness for the younger man, and an indulgent admiration. Before him, on the desk, was spread an enormous sheet of paper upon which appeared something like a spreading family tree. Mr Regan had been studying this paper for hours, moving its crackling width from time to time. It was indeed a sort of family tree. At the top was Bouchard & Sons, and from it extended the multitudinous subsidiaries controlled by that company, the names of the presidents and other officers.

  He gave Henri his hand, and shook it warmly. ‘I was sorry to hear of the death of your aunt,’ he said. ‘I intended to attend the funeral, but something came up. You received my telegram?’

  ‘She was an old woman,’ answered Henri, sitting down. ‘Quite unimportant. Besides, her death prevented me from coming to you, at your suggestion.’

  They smiled at each other. Mr Regan rubbed his chin. He said, as he invariably said when seeing Henri: ‘I can’t help but be amazed at the resemblance to your great-grandfather. I can see him now, sitting just where you’re sitting. The last time he came to this office was when he was seventy-five years old. But still potent. You’ve got his eyes.’

  ‘And his other virtues, I hope,’ said Henri. He was always amused at this preliminary. He knew that Mr Regan was subtly impressing on him that he must act as his great-grandfather had acted, that he must consider what Ernest Barbour would have done in the face of certain imminent circumstances.

  Mr Regan swung about in his chair, and opened a drawer, from which he drew a silver carafe and two goblets. This was the usual ceremony. They drank together from these little goblets. Mr Regan lit a cigar for Henri, who did not enjoy cigars. Beyond the heavy carved doors there was a constant activity, but no sound of it came here. The windows were so heavily draped that little light came through. It therefore surprised Henri when the great old man ponderously lifted himself from his chair and went to one of the cathedral windows and looked absently through it. He would peer, bend his head, seem very interested, then disinterested. His vast and pudgy profile loomed against the new brightness that invaded the office.

  ‘Yesterday,’ he said at last, ‘an honest man walked down the Street.’

  ‘And that’
s unusual,’ said Henri.

  ‘Very unusual,’ agreed Mr Regan, with a smile. Again, he rubbed his chin, and continued to peer.

  ‘Do you expect him now?’ asked Henri.

  ‘Unfortunately, no. But I hope to see him often. In the White House.’

  Henri lifted his eyebrows in surprise. ‘I didn’t know he [mentioning the name of a certain gentleman who, it had been agreed, was to be the next President] was in New York. Is he? I’d like to have a little talk with him on this trip.’

  ‘He isn’t here,’ said Mr Regan, calmly. He came back to his desk, seated himself once more in his mighty chair of carved wood and velvet. ‘Besides, he isn’t the one I mean. You know him slightly. Wendell Willkie.’

  Henri stared, genuinely astounded. ‘Commonwealth & Southern!’ he exclaimed. ‘You’re joking, Mr Regan.’ He burst out laughing.

  Mr Regan smiled. The light from the window was behind him, but Henri had the odd impression that something strange was on that gigantic face.

  CHAPTER XVII

  ‘I’m not joking,’ said Mr Regan.

  ‘But, good God! The man hasn’t the slightest notion of politics! No one has ever heard of him, except the Street. You can’t be serious!’

  ‘I am,’ said Mr Regan, quietly. He folded his hands on his enormous belly and leaned back in his chair. ‘You see, Henri, I’m sick at the stomach. Ulcers in the spiritual belly. That’s why I called you in.’

  Henri hardly heard him. He stared again, his pale eyes gleaming in the half light. His face was grim. ‘Not Willkie,’ he said, softly. ‘A nobody, so far as the people are concerned. Who would want him? He isn’t a man for us. He never was our man.’