Dynasty of Death Page 3

  In the midst of all this the outer door opened, letting in a flood of cool night air, and admitting Joseph Barbour. As he closed the door slowly after him he glowered at his wife and children.

  “What’s all the blasted row about?” he demanded irritably. “Heard it comin’ cross the Common. Never any peace in the bloody house. What’s it about? Eh? What’s it all about?”

  Hilda swung upon him dramatically. “Mr. Barbour!” she cried with passion, “your son Ernest just called me a liar, me, his Ma! And if you don’t flog him within an inch of his life you’re no true father! That’s all I’ve got to say!”

  Joseph looked from his wife, standing like a queen of tragedy with the ladle in her hand and lightnings quivering about her, and then he looked at Ernest. His glowering looks deepened. He shouldered toward the fire, and as he was thus brought closer to the quiet Ernest he glanced at him furtively, and there was in that glance familiar sympathy and apology. Arriving at the fire, Joseph threw an indifferent look at his two little daughters, and another look at Martin. He was a slight man who seemed shorter than his wife, though in reality they were the same height. He had what the neighbors called a “foreign” look, and in truth there was something Latin about his dark and sultry face, his glowering gray eyes, prominent nose, pointed chin and shock of thick, wavy hair, black and vital. He had a sullen and secretive expression which was not English, and at times his mannerisms, his tendency to violence and furies, his vengefulness and jealousies, his passions and his lustfulness, seemed to bear out his story that his great-grandfather on his father’s side had been an adventurous Frenchman who had fled France for political reasons. He had a nervously quick walk, a wiry frame, extraordinarily delicate and mobile hands, and tremendous impatience. He was decidedly no fool.

  He took his time before speaking, and rubbed his hands in the glow of the fire. His eye touched Martin who was gently rocking the cradle; a curious expression gleamed on Joseph’s face, thoughtful, respectful, impatient. Then he turned to Hilda, who was gathering breath for another storm. His glance stopped her at the explosive point.

  “Come now, lass,” he said indulgently, “are you certain Ernest called you a liar? I never heard him be disrespectful to you. He’d better not,” he added, with a sudden scowl, turning to Ernest.

  “I didn’t call Ma a liar,” said Ernest quietly and reasonably. “I only asked her if everything was really settled about us going to America.”

  “Oh, so you couldn’t keep your mouth shut until I told you to speak could you, Hilda?” Joseph’s voice flogged his wife. Hilda paled; her angry eyes dropped. She put the ladle down, and appeared overcome with apprehension.

  “I didn’t think it would hurt to tell the lads,” she muttered uneasily.

  “You never think, lass,” said Joseph. Ernest smiled slightly.

  “Ma didn’t say for certain that we were to go,” he said, turning a face so bland toward his mother that she burned white with rage. He quickened, forgetting her. “But Pa, are we going? Is it settled? Did Uncle George send for us?”

  “Wait a minute,” grumbled Joseph, but he was not ill-pleased. He wanted to discuss this all with Ernest, whom he understood, and who was his favorite, but it was necessary to his dignity to feign reluctance. “Can’t a man sit down before being mithered? Where’s my chair?” He sat down precisely, for he was neat as well as slight, and there was something delicate about him which repudiated the peasant vitality of his wife. He did not wear the clogs of the average lower class Englishman, for he was a sort of upper servant in Squire Broderick’s household, and his clothing, though poor and shabby, draped itself about his body with an air of elegance. Hilda was secretly very proud of him and stood in considerable awe of him. “He’s every inch the gentleman,” she was fond of saying to her friends.

  He pulled off his boots, and deftly Ernest took them, laying them carefully on their sides on the hearth so that their dampness could dry. Ernest’s hands were large as well as intelligent, and the boots looked like the boots of a child in them. His every gesture was tender; he loved his father profoundly. Joseph watched him, and his dark expression softened. He glanced idly at last at the baby, clucked half-heartedly to her, threw Florabelle in the chimney corner an affectionate glance. After Ernest, he loved her best. He held out his hand to her, and she bounced from her corner with a shout of glee. He took her upon his knee and began to play with one of her flaxen braids; she occupied herself with playing with the neat plain ruffle of his white shirt. Hilda, subdued, went about the final setting of her table in the background, but once she stared at her family and something deep and satisfied crept into her expression. There was Martin, crouching on the settle and rocking the cradle, the firelight making his hair a flow of fine silver-gilt and outlining the gentle beauty of his profile, and there was Joe, her lord and master and lover, with his slight, well-shaped back to her, his black and wavy hair gleaming beneath the candles, his daughter upon his knee and there was the powerful though stocky Ernest squatting on the hearth beside his father and looking worshipfully at him. Hard tears burned against her lids.

  “Yes, we’re going to America,” said Joseph quietly. He paused a moment, impressively. Martin, still not speaking, turned his face to his father, and waited, but Ernest eagerly put his hand on his knee. His heavy young face quivered with a little spasm, and watching him, Joseph smiled in deep sympathy, something of Ernest’s excitement passing into him. “Yes,” he repeated, louder, “we are going to America. Some time in May, whenever your Uncle George sends us the tickets. You know where he is, I’ve told you often enough. Windsor, Pennsylvania State. So this morning I got a letter from him, and he tells me that he has things going nice. Three men working now, in his little firearms and gunpowder factory, and that Frenchy I told you about, Ernest, that Bouchard fellow, just got his money from France, two hundred pounds, and bought a partnership with your Uncle George. And now George has a place for me, too. A real place. No more of this scraping to gentry, and working your fingers off for a few pennies and a ‘thank’ee, sir, please-kick-me-in-the-backside-sir!’ No more of that, for me and my kids!” He stared from one to the other of the children, his dark gray eyes brilliant. “No more of that! And money! The damn place is full of money! In a few years we’ll have more than we ever thought of, and can come back home and lord it over everybody. Gentry, ourselves.” He chuckled, a little hoarsely.

  “But, Joe,” began Hilda timidly. Her husband flashed a fierce glance at her, and discerning that she was still in disfavor, she relapsed into silence.

  Then Martin spoke for the first time. “We’ll never come back,” he said in a soft and thrilling voice. “We’ll never come back, never again.” It were as though he were repeating a litany of grief.

  Joseph glared at him savagely. “What’s this, you fool? ‘Never come back?’ We’ll be back in ten years! Think I want to be buried alive out there among the heathen Indians and the bush and the forests and the Yankees? England’s my home; I’m an Englishman, ain’t I? But I want money. I’m sick of this, here. We’ll be back before you’ve got a beard, you little donkey.” He turned his back upon Martin, contemptuously dismissing him.

  “I’ll be glad to see Daisy again,” said Hilda, forgetting her disfavor, and approaching the fire. “It’s been more than four years—”

  “Will you get on with the tea?” cried Joseph irately. And again Hilda retreated. Martin, unnoticed, put a thin finger to his cheek and furtively removed a tear. Joseph turned to him again. “Do you want to be a servant, like your Pa?” he demanded, exasperated. Martin, unable to speak, meekly shook his head. But Ernest was impatient that his father’s attention should be called to anyone so insignificant as Martin. He jogged his father’s knee.

  “I can’t believe it,” he gloated, his face glowing, his lips dry. “Oh, I’ll never come back home, I’ll never want to! I want to get somewhere; there’s no chance at home. I don’t want to wear clogs. It’s a new world, America. A man can do something.”<
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  He stood up. They all looked at him. He was only thirteen, but there was something tremendous about his powerful young body, something implacable and invincible in his attitude, something of bitter splendor in the rugged planes of his large face. He was so little given to external excitements and effervescences that now they were doubly striking, and somehow frightening. At least, Martin felt a cold thrill of fear, and Hilda was taken aback. But Joseph smiled, very darkly, somewhat grimly.

  “Eh, my lad,” he said, nodding his small head. “That’s the way to talk. And God willing, you’ll get what you want. Oh, there’s no doubt you’ll get it!”

  Forgetting his ill-humor, he twisted in his seat, and smiling, held out his hand to Hilda. “Come here, lass, and give me a kiss.” Overjoyed, Hilda, like a child, bounced over to him, seized his head in her warm white arms, and kissed him passionately on the mouth, over and over, until, laughing, he had to struggle with her to release himself. He almost fell into the fire in his struggles, and only Hilda’s strong arms, grasping him again, saved him. She was beautiful, hot and flushed, beaming, as frolicsome as a young she-dog. The little girls shrieked, Martin smiled woefully and unwillingly, but Ernest frowned intently into the fire. He heard nothing, saw nothing, of the commotion. His thoughts, his life went winding implacably through the rosy caverns of the coals, through the golden pathways, by the black and toppling heights. There was nothing else for him, there would never be anything else. A cricket moved jerkily across the hearth, terrified and scuttling. Mechanically, without thinking of it at all, Ernest crushed the creature beneath his foot. Martin saw the gesture, but he also saw more than the gesture. He saw that Ernest had no conscious animosity against the cricket, that his killing of it was mechanical and instinctive. And this lack of conscious animosity seemed to Martin to be a most terrible thing.

  CHAPTER III

  Joseph Barbour was a sort of upper servant in the home of Squire Henry Broderick. He directed and managed the grooms in the stable, the boys who cared for the dogs. Also, as the Squire was a great hunter, he had charge of all the guns, which were many, as the Squire had many friends and this was not bad shooting country. Joseph, who had been one of the grooms, had stepped into his brother’s place when George Barbour had gone to America four years ago. Surly, independent and eccentric, Joseph was no great favorite with Squire Broderick, but his superior intelligence and high integrity soon became very valuable to him. Moreover, he was an expert with firearms, even better than his brother, Squire Broderick said. The Squire had the best private collection of pistols and shotguns in the country, and they were always in perfect order. Joseph, after considerable mysterious dabblings, and after the Squire had fearfully prophesied that he and his household would be blown to bits during the experiments, had produced an amazingly wet-resistant gunpowder, which caused firearms to discharge cleanly, with less smoke and less danger to the firer. He refused to give up his secret, though enticed financially. It was his hope and his hard ambition. George could use this new and better gunpowder in his little firearms and powder factory in America, in the small town of Windsor, on the Allegheny River, in Pennsylvania State. It was after Joseph’s letter about this new gunpowder that George suggested that his brother join him in America. Joseph had not thought of America seriously until George’s letter arrived, and then suddenly, as in a vision, he saw vast and dazzling things. He would go.

  Joseph was disappointed and irritated by Martin’s silence about the coming exodus to America. Every evening he would harangue him, extolling the new country, of which he had very little knowledge, becoming artificially enthusiastic, until he observed Martin’s eyes full of tearful pity, and with a volubility entirely out of proportion trying to convince a silent and stubborn audience of the tremendous advantages of the coming journey. His gestures would become extraordinarily large, his language eloquent, his manner buoyant. Ernest became angrily impatient after the first two nights; he wanted hard and definite facts, not eulogies. He liked to hear his father say prophetically: “Time is coming, my lad, when wars won’t be fought and won by nations with better men and braver hearts and superior courage. They’ll be won by the country with better gunpowder and firearms, even if the men are fewer. Bigger guns, large, swifter bullets. Not men and blood. Wars’ll be won in factories.” Then Ernest would listen, his glowing eyes turned inwards, his mouth open and smiling. Joseph, watching him, then, would feel a faint uneasiness and jealousy, as if he realized that Ernest saw things beyond his own vision, and went forward into places where he, himself, could not go. It was during these times that he turned instinctively to Martin, who was younger and simpler, yet, paradoxically, more subtle than his brother.

  But Martin remained silent. He seemed to retreat behind his flesh, so that it appeared that his outward self was but a deserted and vulnerable outpost a long way ahead of an invincible fortress. Joseph, shouting, could beat down the frail and outer walls with a barrage of words, but he could not even approach the fortress, for it was surrounded by impassable silence. Finally, in exasperation, Joseph furiously gave up, and for several weeks totally abandoned the child. “Ungrateful young dog!” he shouted.

  He found consolation, however, in the satisfactory reactions of Hilda, who was delighted at the prospect of seeing her second cousin, Daisy, again. She did not particularly admire George Barbour, a surly man without what Hilda called “family feeling.” (He had sent neither of Hilda’s little girls a christening present, though Dorcas had been named for his and Joseph’s mother.) But the buoyancy of Hilda’s character was such that she could find all kinds of excellencies in George Barbour, now that he had offered to send his brother tickets to bring them all to America. Then Ernest’s rigid ecstasy contributed to Joseph’s complacency, and for the first time he took serious interest in little Florabelle who, without comprehension, took part in the family rejoicing. Only Martin was silent, and helplessly observing the disfavor into which he had fallen, remained as unobtrusive as possible. He avoided Joseph, whom he secretly worshipped. He crept into chimney corners, hurried through wretched meals, stayed outside until twilight drove him home, loitered about his school. Why he despaired and grieved so he did not know, but it seemed to him that he was oppressed by a heavy agony and grief too vast for words, even for tears or thought. He was like a childish Atlas, carrying on his delicate shoulders the tremendous weight of his own unformed emotions. He grew paler, thinner, a big-eyed shadow of himself.

  In the meantime preparations for departure went on with elation. Squire Broderick was indignantly disturbed at the idea of losing his best servant, and after persuasion and promises had failed, prophesied dire things for the family in America. Joseph was not moved. He allowed all his secret rancor and contempt for the Squire to manifest themselves, with the result that he was discharged with rage four weeks before the date of sailing. This was very inconvenient and alarming, and might have, had disastrous results for the impoverished family had not the Squire, discovering that he could not do without Joseph, sent his eldest son to the Barbour home with offers of forgiveness. This, among other excitements, prevented his parents, from discovering Martin’s progressive sufferings and emaciation.

  Then Squire Broderick magnanimously offered to send Ernest and Martin to school, paying all expenses, if Joseph would remain in his service. For a long time Joseph had had his disgruntled eye on a tenant cottage in the village which Squire Broderick had heretofore seemed unable to rent him; this cottage was now offered to him rent free. Joseph, unusually grave, came home and told his wife of this. They were both shaken, and dazzled. Schools for their children, a tidy little home for themselves. They stared at each other, pale and doubtful. Neither of the two boys had as yet spoken, but Martin’s face was brilliant and white. Then suddenly Ernest stood up, ghastly, his features rigid and tormented. He looked from his father to his mother, then cried out, once, very sharply. Then he sat down again, clenched his large hands upon his knees, stared stonily into the fire. Joseph regarded him with
vast amazement, as did Hilda. They waited. Ernest did not speak, though Martin had begun to sob softly in his corner.

  Nothing more was said of the house and the schools. Nothing more was said of remaining in England. Ernest made no remarks, discussed nothing. He merely prepared for the journey.

  Joseph’s only living relative was an old great-aunt who lived at the end of Sandy Lane in a tiny house secured by a pension, as she had lost father, husband and sons in the Napoleonic wars. It stood far back from the Lane, hidden under the great shadow of trees. It was all of a hundred years old, with thick walls, tiny sunken latticed windows, squat stone chimneys and square oaken doors. The back windows opened outwards upon a sunken garden full of ancient trees, twisting paths, sun dials, arbors, round flower beds and tangled bushes. It was an enchanted house and garden, where the shade was the thickest, the grass the greenest, the birds more numerous as they thrilled through a silence that seemed palpable. Once the gate, which opened upon the pleasant traffic of Sandy Lane, was opened, one plunged immediately into a profound stillness, where the very sound of sparrows spluttering in their stone birdbaths become loud and obtrusive. The house was swamped in mingled shrubbery, trees and shadow, its west windows opening directly into pale lilacs and ivy, and the very sunshine, trapped here in tiny distorted pools and triangles and misty, shifting blurs, was gauzy and soft with unreality. On the tilted warmth of the stone flags of the garden a great black cat arched and purred and slept, his topaz eyes glinting lazily after the multitudinous birds, and in a sort of tangled arbor old Mrs. Barbour sat through the long summer days and the long twilights, knitting.