Dynasty of Death

by Taylor Caldwell

  They went back to the drawing room together. Each felt as though he were going to his own execution. To the enormous, soul-shaking relief of both of them, they found the room empty. The ladies had retired. The ormolu clock on the mantelpiece tinkled softly, eleven times, in the warm, candle-lit silence. Ernest looked about him, and it seemed that something exceedingly, unbearably, painful opened in his chest. He felt as an exile might feel.

  He and Gregory said good night very formally, but they did not shake hands. One of the grooms had brought Ernest’s horse from the Sessions Steel office when he had driven away with Gregory in his carriage. Now the horse was brought for Ernest. Gregory did not offer his carriage as usual.

  The sound of his going had not yet died away when Gregory thought to himself, with a sudden surge of hope: “He has not decided yet. It is too great even for him to decide immediately. My God, I would not be in his shoes tonight!”

  CHAPTER XXI

  Hilda Barbour was sleeping uneasily.

  She dreamt that she was suffering a great pain in her breast, and she thought, panting, in her dream: “I cannot endure this. Please, make it stop!”

  But the pain did not stop, and now she discerned that it came rhythmically, in beats, dully yet ponderously. Like a heavy pulse. And she thought: “The pain is like footsteps.” And somehow, realizing this, her pain seemed to increase, to leave her body and flood her mind, so that there was no release or end to it. She found herself sobbing, pleading with the owner of those footsteps to stop his endless, his eternal, marching back and forth through her brain and her thoughts. But he kept on marching, and finally she thought again: “It is because I know him and can’t help him that it hurts so.”

  At this point she woke up, as if the pain had become intolerable, and found herself crying into her pillow. It was still dark, but as her windows faced east she could see a faint grayness in the eastern skies. In this half-darkness the heavy chairs in the bedroom, the posts of the bed, the mahogany wardrobe, took on nebulous and sinister shapes. Beside her, Joseph slept lightly and restlessly, and mechanically turning, she put her hand gently on his forehead. It was hot. Her heart sank. It was almost always hot in the morning, now. In the sick surge of her anxiety she momentarily forgot her dream, and then it came back to her most vividly. Her hand paused on her husband’s head as she listened. Faintly, very faintly, yet dully, came the sound of footsteps marching back and forth over a carpeted floor; they never stopped: Hilda counted them, ten steps forward, ten steps back. She sat up in bed, concentrating. They came from Ernest’s room.

  She slipped cautiously from the bed, pulled her woolen wrapper over her ruffled cambric nightgown, stepped into carpet slippers, threw back her braids. She crept into the hall and listened. The footsteps sounded louder now. She moved down the hall to Ernest’s door and knocked softly. The footsteps stopped. There was a long and humming silence. Downstairs the grandfather’s clock boomed somberly, four prolonged strokes. In the room she had left Joseph moaned uneasily. But there was nothing but silence from Ernest’s room. Hilda bent down and looked through the keyhole. A candle was burning on the table; it was sunken deep in serried rings of pallid wax, showing that it had been burning many hours. She could see nothing of Ernest but a hanging hand; however, from its position—turned toward the door—she knew that he was standing up and that he was facing her. The hand was not clenched, but because of something in the position of the fingers, the tensity of the knuckles, she knew it was the hand of someone who was in terrible distress. It fascinated her, that eloquent and suffering hand; it disarmed her also, in its utter helplessness, and yet she felt a little ashamed, as though she had come on her grown son quite naked. She knocked at the door again, shivering, for the hall was drafty and cold. After a long moment she heard steps approaching the door, and it opened just a crack.

  “Well, Ma?” Ernest whispered, somewhat impatiently.

  The sight of his hand, however, had given Hilda courage. She was no longer afraid of Ernest; he was just her lad, needing comfort. She tossed her head, pushed open the door pettishly, and bounced into the room. “Nonsense!” she said. “You wake me up, with your trampin’, and now you want to know what I want!”

  Ernest closed the door after her, and turned to her slowly. He was still fully dressed; his greatcoat and hat were thrown carelessly over a chair, with his gloves and his cane, and he was still in his coat. But his cravat was untied, his collar loosened. Over his chin spread a dark stubble, and his hair was disordered. His expression, even at that hour, was as impassive and calm as ever, but Hilda saw beyond the expression, saw the purple circles about his eyes, the strained brilliance of them, the white dents about his nose and mouth, the pinched nostrils. Her heart flowed out to him. Why, he’s still just my lad, in petticoats! she thought, almost bursting into tears. Because of this, she was not cowed, as usual, by his formidable and impatient manner.

  “What is it, Ernest? Can’t you tell your Ma? I’m still your mother, lad.”

  He smiled, or rather, his mouth jerked convulsively.

  “I’ve got a toothache, Ma,” he answered in an indulgent voice. He regarded her almost fondly. Short and plump, wrapped in dark wool, her round face rosy and unwrinkled, and the black braids hanging over her shoulders, she looked young again.

  He was palpably waiting for her to go. But she tossed her head again, said “pish!” and sat down deliberately. She studied him shrewdly.

  “Toothache! You don’t look it! If you had toothache you would have been yelpin’ for help long ago. I know my men-folks. And you’re not even undressed. Toothache doesn’t hit one until one is in bed, almost asleep. And this candle: look at it, been burnin’ for hours.” She paused, leaned toward him in tender pleading. “Son, you ain’t a man to me; you’ll never be that. I can see in your face it’s somethin’ else. Let me help you.”

  Something chillily hostile crept into his expression; he stared at her steadily. Then he smiled again, almost with affectionate contempt. Even before he spoke she felt hopeless, as if a door had been shut inexorably in her face.

  “You can help me, Ma, by going back to bed. The—the toothache’s stopped now, and I’m going to undress and try to sleep. If you’ll let me,” he added.

  She bounced angrily to her feet. “You are the most stiff-necked young devil I ever saw! Well, I’m not goin’ back until I know you’re goin’ to bed!” She scurried to the bed, threw back its satin cover, folded over its blankets and quilts, and as she did this she muttered to herself. Ernest watched her helplessly. She swung upon him. “And I’m goin’ to get you a cup of hot milk and a hot brick. It’ll help you, if you have a toothache.”

  All the muscles tightened and hardened in his face. She went to the door, and he followed. After she had gone over the threshold, he said in a low voice: “Ma, don’t come back. I don’t want milk. I don’t want a brick. All I want is to be alone.” She started to speak, but he cut in deftly and brutally: “I’ve got to be alone. Otherwise, I’ll leave this house. I insist on my privacy.” And he closed the door firmly and silently even as she stared at him.

  Hilda crept back to her warm bed and uneasily sleeping husband. She was very desolate. She felt that she had lost a son, that the man in the room she had left was a stranger. She huddled close to Joseph, pressed her cheek against his thin hot shoulder, holding his nightshirt in her hands, as though seeking protection. And she thought suddenly, painfully: There’s no comfort for women in men!

  Left alone, Ernest blew out his candle. The guttering light, since his mother’s invasion, seemed obtrusive. He was given a specious sense of solitude and privacy in the darkness. He went to the window and looked out. This particular window faced large flat meadows and fields, but these fields and meadows were merely formless darkness meeting the formless darkness of the sky. The gray light had vanished, and the night itself was not so black as this coming dawn. But as Ernest watched dully, a long low line of fire ran between earth and sky, dividing them, and the ragged edge
s of it shot upward into the rosy fringes of the morning.

  A heavy sense of amazement possessed him. Was it possible that the endless night had passed? It had seemed to him that everything in the universe had stopped, halted, ceased to be, during that night, that time itself had been suspended, and there was only himself in the cloudy chaos. But he saw before him now the evidence that nothing had stopped but himself, that all things had gone on implacably, heedless of him. He thought abstractedly: it is morning, and they’ll be calling me for breakfast, and I’ve not even been to bed.

  The trees outside were still leafless, but birds had returned and their awakening calls and whistles were shrill and achingly close. He heard a faint groaning in the attic above; the maids were beginning to rouse themselves. There was a dim quivering thunder in the air, and a train whistled long and thinly as it rushed away from the dawn.

  The conflict in his mind had dulled it, as lashing whips will eventually anesthetize the flesh they sear. Now his thoughts, orderly and marshalled, could parade over this calloused area without torturing it.

  His first sensation when Gregory had informed him, not too delicately, of Amy’s position, had been one of profound and bitter disappointment. It had disrupted his thoughts, thrown him into disorder. He had felt routed, utterly dispersed, confronted by something he could not yet face and overcome. He was not quick to readjust his ambitions, the trend of his thoughts; he lacked facility of emotion. As he never had alternate plans, and built all his hopes and determinations on one premise, he lacked the flexibility of mind of those who wisely provide themselves with alternatives. This cast of mind of his was well suited to the attainment of success, but badly tuned to those inevitable defeats that even the strongest natures must sometimes acknowledge. His disappointment had been so catastrophic that he was submerged in it; he could experience only one emotion at a time, so felt no immediate grief at the probable loss of Amy Drumhill. He had gone back to the drawing room with Gregory, and had looked about the lovely, ivory-tinted, crystal-brightness of the room with a feeling of frightful loss. It is safe to say that he did not think of Amy actively until he arrived at his own home, went upstairs to his room.

  The disappointment was lifting slightly by this time, and his emotions could concern themselves with Amy. He had begun to pace his room with a slow frenzy.

  Once he stopped, stupefied with amazement. Going over the scene in his mind with Gregory, he recalled that the older man had been hinting broadly that he would not be averse to Ernest’s suing for Amy’s hand. Remembering this, his amazement grew. He had been concerned all evening with ingratiating himself with Gregory, adroitly getting the latter into a position where he would have found it impossible to refuse. And Gregory, in the end, had tried to force the issue, to thrust Amy into his arms! Glaring about his room, Ernest had rubbed his head, in stupefaction. For a few moments a fire of gratification ran through him.

  Then he thought: A penniless, girl who would bring him nothing! That, house, the land, the mills, the foundries, the mines—they were not hers, and if he married her, they would not be his. A penniless girl, with only the gloves on her hands and the clothes (bought with the coin of charity) on her back. For a little while it did not occur to Ernest, tenacious-minded that he was, to give up Amy. His desires had fastened on her, and though he looked at her with bitterness, something of anger and disillusion, he did not at first intend to relinquish her. Had Gregory known this, he would have been astounded.

  No, he did not at first intend to give her up. The thought did not occur to him, for he loved her. Even in his desperate disappointment, he loved her as much as ever, and even as he thought of her in the new light of her poverty, something warm and soft and tender glowed in him Brine burnt his eyes.

  He sat down, overcome and weak. He covered his face with his hand, shielding it from the candlelight. But—a penniless girl! He had worked so hard, so passionately, so strenuously, so mightily. It was wrong, very wrong, to have fallen in love with a girl who could bring him nothing at all, no dowry, not even a carriage or jewels. He would open his home and his arms to a woman for whom he would have to provide in cold coin. Inevitably, there would be children, but they would not run through the wide cool halls of the Sessions house, would not play on the lawns and in the gardens. He tried to visualize himself in a strange house, with Amy and her children, but his vision had so crystallized itself in another environment that he could not make this alternate true. It remained tasteless and unreal, and he regarded it heavily, without appetite. Even Amy, while he still loved her, did not stir that appetite. But still, he did not yet think of relinquishing her.

  He began to pace again, a heavy nausea dragging at his vitals, He stood by the window, staring out. Due to his own orders for steel, the Sessions plant was working the past few nights. Against the black curtain of the night he could see the dull scarlet glow hovering over the chimneys of the mills. The glow taunted him, sickened him, filled him with an irreparable loss. Had Amy died when he was about to take her, he could have felt no greater grief. He struck his fists together in desperate anguish. He had lost everything—a stranger would inherit all he had built on, all he had confidently seized beforehand.

  Up and down the room he had marched, while the candle dwindled more and more, and the drops of it hissed. The fire had long since died, and an ashen chill stole through the air. He glanced at the bed, and thought, sadly, that he would never be able to rest in it in peace again. He thought: If I could only cry, like a woman! But he was conscious, all the time, of the restless prowling of his obstinacy and his ambitions: they still would not let go—they still looked for a way in which he could have what he had desired.

  He fell into his chair once more, exhausted. He put his hand abstractedly into his pocket, and his fingers closed about a little filmy kerchief he had carried about for a long time. Withdrawing it, he regarded it with a worn and twisted smile. He held it to his nose, and a faint odor of jasmine floated up his nostrils. The odor brought Amy vividly before him, her soft bright eyes, her parted eager mouth, her white throat and soft little bosom. His hands clenched on the kerchief, and in the candlelight his harsh large face was suddenly transfigured, softened into a touching tenderness. His lips moved as if they were tasting the sweetness of her innocent mouth; involuntarily his arms lifted, stretched out to embrace the vision. “Amy,” he said, aloud.

  As if his voice had been an evil shout to break a lovely spell, the vision was shattered. But the hunger remained. He jumped to his feet, paced feverishly. He could not endure the girl’s absence; he could not endure his and longing. What did it matter, after all, if she were penniless? He had a thousand times enough! With Amy, all things were possible. Why, damn it, he would have a dozen mills such as the Sessions; he would have mines that dwarfed the Sessions mines! He would have the world! All that he wanted now was Amy. The devil with anything else—these puny things could be had by dint of his strength and his planning. Strange thoughts for a young man like this, and in later years remembering, he could hardly credit that he had had them.

  All his exhaustion fell away from him; he was uplifted, exalted. His heart began to beat very fast; he paced rapidly, in a delicious disorder. Everything was solved, everything was settled. There was only Amy. And the sooner he had Amy the sooner this delight would come to stay. Feeling confident and strong, and suddenly refreshed, he went to his huge mahogany desk, pulled out paper, whittled his pen, plunged it into the brass inkwell. He wrote:

  “I have the honor, sir, to sue for the hand of your niece, Miss Amy Drumhill, and ask your permission to press my suit with her.” With flourishes, he signed his name: Ernest Louis Barbour. He folded the letter, addressed it to Gregory Sessions, Esquire.

  So inflexible and ponderous was his mind that had he gone to bed then, with the letter written, his resolution made, nothing would have upset his will again. In later years he was to look back on those few minutes following the writing of the letter, and wonder. How different his life
would have been! How different, his children! Posterity had hung on those minutes, a whole dynasty balanced on them. Perhaps a world had been different if he had gone to bed then. Just the mere act of taking off his boots, blowing out his candle, lying down under the quilts, would have changed scores, perhaps multitudes, of lives.

  But he did not want to go to bed just yet. He had never felt so wakeful, so intense and feverish. A light sweat had come out on his body, and he was conscious that he was trembling a little. He seemed to feel Amy’s very flesh in the room, virginal and soft; at any moment he expected to turn and see her, waiting and smiling. All at once, he needed air, floods and currents of cool fresh air, and he ran to the window.

  He flung out the window, breathed deeply. The night was very still, and now he was conscious of a faint throbbing against it, like beating wings. The Sessions mills. Pouring out steel—for him. Making wealth—for him. He saw the flare of its fires. Slowly, very slowly, his hands dropped to the sill; his eyes could not leave the flare, could not turn from it. A coldness ran over his body, and a taste of salt spread over his tongue. Only last night he had stood like this, and had looked at those flares, exultantly. Only last night, he had stretched out his hand greedily, had clenched it as though it grasped. Only last night his heart had beat with impatience and anticipatory joy. Only last night, he had been on the very edge of all his ambitions.