Raoul, who never missed anything, glanced up mischievously from a hungry inspection of the savory pots. His handsome eyes twinkled, his face sparkled with mirthful malice. “What!” he exclaimed portentously. “Are there enemies here?”
Ernest shrugged. He could not meet Eugene’s surprised and reproachful eye. “It’s not much,” he said. “But, as it is a personal matter. I would like to talk to Armand alone.”
Jacques, who had not spoken a word, lifted his fair face from his book and regarded Ernest serenely. But Ernest did not look at him. For some obscure reason he feared Jacques, with whom he had not exchanged a hundred words in all the years they had known each other. Jacques annoyed him, but it was also something else.
Armand stood up diminutive, wry-shouldered and nut-brown of face, and led Ernest into the dank chill of the bedroom that Raoul and Eugene shared. Ernest seated himself on the broad high bed, but Armand sat restlessly on a stool. He waited, smoking. There was only a dim evening light in the room, and the smoke of the pipe circled in it like half-formed ghosts.
“Yes, yes?” said Armand softly.
“I’ve seen Mr. Gregory Sessions,” replied Ernestly abruptly. “It is as I hoped and planned. He is willing.”
“Ah,” murmured Armand. He made no gesture, but a thrilling alertness sprang from his small body toward Ernest.
“We will hear from him tomorrow. In the morning I am to take the patent papers to him, get his answer. Pa and you, of course, will go with me. I explained everything to him.”
“And he has most definitely consented?”
Ernest hesitated for only an instant, but Armand marked it. “Not definitely. But he cannot refuse. Only a madman or an idiot could refuse. He is a greedy man, I could tell that instantly. I could also see that he is dissatisfied, that he will grasp any chance to improve his fortunes. We offer him that chance. He will take it. Nothing could keep him from taking it. I suppose, of course, that he will consult his bank tomorrow. A very cautious man. We will all profit. We can consider it settled.”
“You are very sure, my young friend—of everything.”
“I never make a move unless I am sure,” replied Ernest quietly.
There was a silence, while the smoke rose and drifted. Neither of the men could see the other’s face, but they did not need this. Once Armand shook his head in the darkness, half in wonder and amusement, half in gravity. He slipped down from the stool.
“Yes, you are always sure,” he said thoughtfully. “It is somewhat bad, always being sure. There is no room for romance there, or enjoyment. Tiens! My remark was foolish. You can see how I trust you when I tell you that I told Martin to take his books home tonight, and be ready for a journey to his uncle’s. He looked troubled.”
“Martin is a feckless fool!” exclaimed Ernest irritably, making a gesture as though he were brushing aside a fly.
Armand shrugged, spread out his hands. He was standing so close to Ernest that the latter could catch, even in the twilight, the swift gleam of his astute eye.
“Perhaps, perhaps. Who knows? There is scruple there. Even for one such as George Barbour. But your father, our fine Joseph—there will be one to overcome. He must be managed adroitly. Your touch, my young friend, is not always adroit. You prefer the hammer method. Nevertheless, it has its points.”
He moved toward the door. “If one is about to guillotine a man, it is most merciful to do it at once, and swiftly. Let us eat our dinner. Afterwards we will proceed to the place of execution.”
CHAPTER XI
George Barbour had finally moved over to Oldtown. To be sure, he had been unable to purchase a very desirable spot near the “snobs.” His land was on the fringe of town, barely clinging to the end of one of the main streets. But it made up for lack of exclusiveness in the pretentiousness of the house, which was of bright red brick, tall and narrow, with two bay windows, one above another. Everything on the first floor on the outside was iron grillwork and fretwork; the door gleamed with polished brass. Long narrow lawns surrounded the house, well grassed; two iron deer and a faun stood in heroic attitudes near three flower beds. There was a commodious stable in the rear, with two horses and a pony for seventeen-year-old Martha, who liked her two-wheel cart. Daisy Barbour now had three servants, and there was also a gardener.
Joseph Barbour and his family still lived in Newtown, but in a better section. The “barbarians” of Newtown had decided to make an exclusive section of their own, they having come to the final decision that the Oldtowners were definitely not going to admit them to the inner circle even if they moved over to Oldtown. So they made their own society, and becoming richer than many of the Oldtowners, thumbed their noses at the Pharisees. Joseph’s house, of course, was neither as rich nor pretentious as his brother’s, being a low graystone building of some six rooms, but well built, with a tidy little lawn and a neat garden. Hilda had never dreamt of living in so grand a house, but now it gave her no pleasure. She saw, indeed, how pleasant and secure her life was becoming, how much easier; she saw her closets filling with good linen, her wardrobes with decent and well-made dresses from New York; she was fond of repeating to friends that her husband drove his own carriage. But none of these things were real to her; they were like dreams, without substance, over which she could feel no emotion. She sat at her own table, ordered her household and her one small maid, sewed, knitted, talked, breathed, but without feeling deeply. She lived mechanically, though to the observer’s eye she was a plump and handsome woman in her middle thirties, still agreeable to view, and very competent in her black silk dresses and keys. She wore a fine lace cap on her abundant dark hair, which still curled on the thickened nape of her neck; her teeth were white and perfect, and showed in frequent smiles. When she walked briskly through her house her crinolined skirts swayed and billowed and rustled, and her eye was firm and watchful. But inside her, there was still heavy bewilderment and a sluggish pain, which disappeared, and then only temporarily, at the table. All her love for life, her zest, her enjoyment and pleasure, was now centered in food, that solace of the middle-aged. She rarely sprang into angry life as she had done in England; a spoiled dinner caused her ten times the anguish that any crisis in her family could cause her. She had become a trifle bellicose and dogmatic, a petty domestic tyrant not above slapping her two young daughters and her younger son. Once in a great while a dark flame would light up her eyes when she looked at Joseph, but these whiles were becoming rarer and rarer. She consoled her homesickness with geese and dumplings, soups and puddings, jams and sweets.
There was no amity between Hilda and Daisy Barbour. Hilda had no malice, slyness, greed, suspicion nor viciousness. She had simple integrity and honesty, a steadfast attitude toward existence and circumstance. All this did not delude her as to the innate foxiness, stupidity, untrustworthiness and double-dealing of others. Nor was she ready with condemnation. She merely avoided human beings in whom these traits were too obvious, too intolerable. She was terrified of them, blushed uneasily in their presence, stammered, fled. Like her son Martin, they appalled and paralyzed her with an obscure but active fear. So it was that having been disillusioned with regard to George and Daisy Barbour, she avoided them with a sort of terror, shivered behind the curtains on watching them coming up the walk on infrequent visits, had an attack of acute indigestion after dining with them. To her, they smelt dangerous, as they so smelt to Martin. Had they been avowed rogues of majestic accomplishments and large crimes and public acknowledgment, it is doubtful if they would have affected her so. Their very vastness, in that case, would have obliterated terror. It was the small and secret rogue in them, their hidden but merciless greediness, their small sly eyes, that filled her with mental and physical nausea. She felt like a helpless woman caught in the dark with blood-sucking weasels sniffing invisibly at her heels. Their sniggers, their watchful suspicion, their tight malicious voices, their meaning looks left her staring at them in bewilderment, her heart thumping sickeningly, her throat dry.
It is significant that the George Barbour family made no overtures of great friendliness to any member of the Joseph Barbour family except Ernest. And there was more uneasiness than affection in these overtures. They felt no particular dislike for any other member, either, except Ernest. And him they hated. And abjectly respected. But Ernest was conscious neither of their hate nor friendliness, their uneasiness nor their respect. To him they barely existed, except for the irritation they caused him.
It is also more significant, and instinctive, that both George and Daisy Barbour had come to the decision that Martha must some day marry Ernest. In this way they felt that the future of the business would be made invulnerable, and, too, that they would have nothing more to fear. So it was that Ernest was almost daily besieged with sincere and earnest invitations, that Martha was thrown in his way, where she simpered girlishly, that George slapped him heartily on the back and consulted him, that Daisy beamed upon him and flattered him. Whether he saw and understood these maneuvers cannot be known. It was, however, without a thought or remembrance of them that he walked with his puzzled father to George’s house on this night.
He told Joseph so little that it was only Joseph’s belief in the young man’s integrity and common sense that made the father accompany his son. But this did not allay Joseph’s irritation.
“What the devil!” he exclaimed. “This is a rum business, Ernest. You drag me out of the house on a raw night like this on some cock-and-bull story about something important going on at Georgie’s.” He shivered ostentatiously in his huge warm greatcoat and pulled his high hat down about his ears. He looked younger than Ernest as he walked lightly and swiftly beside him for he was still slim and agile, still elegant of movement, and graceful. Ernest walked with a certain upright rigidity that was deceivingly mature, and the broadness of his shoulders gave his figure a stockiness that detracted from his height. He walked heavily and quickly, like a man who knows where he is going, and what he is going to do. As he so walked, he kept glancing down at his father, and at these moments the stony harshness of his large features softened ever so little.
“Trust me just a little longer, Pa,” he said quietly.
“Damn it, I do trust you, lad!” said Joseph irritably. “But you might give me a hint. What’s it all about? Eh? Why don’t you tell me?”
Ernest was silent. He knew very well that Joseph would balk violently had he the slightest suspicion, balk sentimentally against his reason. So he said patiently: “I have told you, Pa. Armand and I want to talk over a matter of policy with you and Uncle George. It’s in the nature of a surprise. Please wait just a little while. I promised Armand I wouldn’t say anything about it until we were all together.” Ernest did not wince at all at the lie. Lies, to him, were strong weapons to be used on the necessary occasions.
Joseph snorted, itching with mingled jealousy at his son’s implied confidence in Bouchard, and impatience.
“Mystery!” he ejaculated. “Children! I’ll bet a sovereign it’s some damn foolishness. Why couldn’t it wait until tomorrow? And why’ve you sent young Martin down there with the infernal books?”
Without a pause, Ernest replied smoothly: “It’s all about the policy, Pa. We’ve got to have meetings. We’ve tried meeting and discussing at the works, but there’re so many interruptions and noise, and comings and goings. So Armand and I thought that it would be a fine idea to institute regular meetings between all of us away from the shop. Dignified, and everything. Like other concerns do. Of course, later on, we will have a regular conference room, when we can clean out the trash from another room.” (The “other room” was George’s present office.)
“Bah!” Joseph was itching worse than ever in his jealousy of Armand. “‘Armand and I thought!’ I don’t suppose I’ve got the brains to think with you. You and your Armand. I suppose it’ll get to the point where you’ll retire me, and you and your damned Armand will go on plotting and thinking together. It’s been done before by sons,” he added darkly.
In the darkness Ernest smiled slightly, and quite involuntarily he took his father’s arm in his hand and squeezed it. Joseph was both embarrassed and pleased. To cover this, he grunted, affected to draw away. For some moments they walked side by side, sheepishly. Then Ernest dropped his father’s arm and began to talk easily again.
“Perhaps it is all damned foolishness, as you say, Pa. But it’s a good idea to begin getting together for discussion. This new policy probably won’t meet with your ideas. I’m sure it won’t.” And again he smiled slightly, and now the smile was grim in the darkness. “That’s why I didn’t tell you. I wanted you to hear Armand’s side, too, before you decide against it.”
Joseph felt soothed. He bridled a little. Nothing to worry about. Ernest apparently still felt filial respect, and uncertainty about his youthful ideas. He wanted to bolster them with Armand’s arguments. Joseph was flattered, felt paternal and judicious and serious.
“Um,” he grunted. “But mind you, lad, if I don’t agree it won’t do you any good to set Armand onto me, as you seem bent on doing. You might have told me, though.”
An actor would have admired the naïve frankness in Ernest’s voice as he responded eagerly: “But Pa, I think it’s a good idea, and I would have been disappointed had you set your foot down on it without hearing what Armand has to say. If you had set your foot down I wouldn’t have gone any further, as you know, and I wouldn’t have gotten over it for some time. So, please, when we talk there, be patient, and listen.”
Joseph laughed indulgently. He patted Ernest’s arm, as he had done when the young man had been a child. “You’re still a kid, lad, in spite of your airs. Still afraid of your Pa. God knows why, though,” he added, pleased.
And again Ernest smiled palely to himself in the darkness.
A thought struck Joseph. “Say, look here, though. What about Georgie? He’s got something to say, y’know. If he don’t agree, I’m not sure I will, even if it looks good. He started the thing, and he’s got the right to the final word.”
“We’ll give him,” said Ernest softly, “the final word.”
“I hope so,” growled Joseph. An intelligent man, something in Ernest’s voice gave him a quick twinge of apprehension. “I hope so,” he repeated more loudly, and there was a sharp question in the words. He tried to see Ernest’s face, and for one moment it seemed to him that the young man’s profile gleamed in the dusk, white and immovable.
“We’ll have some argument with him,” admitted Ernest in a candid voice utterly incompatible with that profile. “But, I’m sure he will see reason when we’re all against—I mean, we are all in agreement. But, here we are.” No one would have guessed from that level tone his relief and the rising of his strength to meet this ominous emergency.
The October night was dark blue velvet against which the huge gold
en lamp of the moon hung, soft and steady. The air smelled of wood smoke and apples and spicy brown leaves. In the clear and frosty silence the river could be heard, gathering power for the winter, and a wind muttered disturbedly in half-naked trees. It was still very rural and woody around George’s house, though distant house lights could be seen through tree trunks. Ernest and his father walked between a row of young populars to the fretted porches of the high and inhospitable-looking brick house. The parlor lamps were lit, white and a little bleak, as though repudiating the visitors already there, and the curtains were an elaborate frost against the polished windows, the curlicues, touched here and there with a furtive cold glow of a newly lighted fire. Ernest lifted the knocker the resultant sound, though George Barbour did not yet know it, was the sound of fate.
A trim parlor maid opened the door, neat in her mob cap, white apron and black crinolined skirts. Joseph experienced again the old half-angry, half-subdued squelching he always felt when entering his brother’s house. He removed his hat reluctantly, was churlish with the maid when she minced that the gentlemen expected them in the parlor. Joseph followed his son into the vault-like room with its fire snarling grudgingly behind the polish fender, its stiff black furniture with the horsehair seats, its elaborate tables with the India shawls hanging in an attempt of negligence upon them, its globes of glass-enclosed flowers, its sprawling wallpaper of red and immense roses, its hugely flowered thick carpet, its crayon portraits on the walls, its elaborate white curtains which looked as if cut from thick paper, and the polished black glare of a rigid piano between the two high windows. As the room was used only when visitors arrived, the air was chill and repelling, bitterly clean Daisy did not usually open the carved sliding doors for her relatives, and did so tonight only because she was annoyed by their coming and wished to squelch them, remove them from a plane of friendliness. She sat stiffly at one side of the marble fireplace with her daughter, her fat face high-colored and bellicose, her lower lip protruding, her nose lifted, and her eyes pointed. She was short and stout and graying; on her hair she wore a lace cap, and her voluminous gown was a rich dark-red silk. In her ears was a subdued twinkle of diamonds; there were diamonds on her fat red fingers, and a fine chain of gold on her high thick bosom. Martha, mealy-mouthed and slender beside her, kept her pale eyes down, a faint smile on her lips; the wooden yellow curls half hid her cheeks in a very maidenly fashion. Her gown, of pale green silk distended by crinoline, foamed over her white satin skirt; she gazed fixedly at her ankles in their white stockings crossed by the black ribbons of her slippers. George, florid, bluff and aggressive, stood spread-legged with his back to the fire, smoking a rich cigar, his black broadcloth sleek and glossy. He was holding forth loftily and noisily to Martin and Armand. Martin sat in what shadow he could find, a tall and slender youth with his childhood silver-gilt longish hair, his beautiful white-lidded blue eyes fixed on the carpet, his face wearing its usual unhappy expression. On the knees of his light brown pantaloons lay the slim black office books To all appearances he was a painted statue, as removed from this room and its inhabitants as though he were in a trance. Armand, nut-brown and furrowed, sat in his dark brown homespun, smoking, a wry-mouthed gnome who listened, nodded, grimaced a little to himself. His pipe was odorous, the smoke like clouds. Daisy looked at him pointedly, almost viciously, then glanced at her curtains; he appeared to notice nothing. Martha sneezed delicately: Armand listened imperturbably to George. Martha waved her wisp of cambric handkerchief and a vapor of scent rose from it. As Ernest entered the room her thin cheeks flushed and she became visibly tremulous. Daisy smiled, thawed, rose and bustled forward. Ernest bowed stiffly, turned his shoulder to her and addressed Armand:
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