Dynasty of Death

by Taylor Caldwell

  He thought it was only part of the perfection of everything that Amy looked so glowing this morning, that she laughed so easily and with a faint suggestion of joy and excitement. He thought it was only natural, on such a morning, that Gregory was kinder, more considerate, listened with more seriousness to Ernest’s remarks. Even when Amy exchanged glances of extraordinary vividness and soft exaltation with her uncle, when she laughed catchily once or twice, when her eyes suddenly filled with tears, he still thought it was only part of this most delicious morning. Everyone was affected by it, he thought, even the collies, who had come out now and were deliriously romping in the deep white snow. From the stables came the virile neighing of the horses, sniffing the sharp and intoxicating air. May, too, looked excited, and just a little pale, though her eyes flashed almost feverishly, and she laughed even more than usual. But that was because she had a secret which she had not as yet told her husband, or any one, except her doctor. She was now almost four months pregnant. She did not particularly care for children, but her condition overjoyed her. She felt that it was the closing of the last door between Ernest and his old love, and that she was safe at last. If only it would be a boy!

  They were all drinking their last cups of coffee in a state of blissful repletion, when a little silence fell. Ernest, preoccupied with his pleasant thoughts, felt a sudden tenseness in the atmosphere. He glanced up. Amy was looking softly from him to May and back again. She was smiling, and her eyes were bright with tears.

  “What on earth is the matter with you, Amy?” asked May in a drowsy voice.

  Gregory cleared his throat, sat up. “I think,” he said, with a smile, “that Amy has something to tell you both. Go on, my love, tell them,” and he looked down at her with a moved expression.

  Ernest stared; May stared, diverted. Can it be she is engaged? she thought. But to whom? Can it possibly be—? No, that would be incredible.

  Amy tried to speak, could not, touched her eyes with a wisp of a handkerchief in her trembling hand, smiled, then burst into tears. She sprang up from her seat in a flutter of pale blue silk, flung herself on her knees beside May, and buried her flushed face in May’s plump little bosom. May was annoyed, but amused. She lifted Amy’s face gently, smiled down at it, then was moved in spite of herself by its wet radiance. “Why, I believe the child is in love!” she exclaimed, touched. Suddenly she was delighted, made almost dizzy by her delight. She pressed Amy’s cheek again to her breast, smiled over the girl’s head at her husband. Was it the reflection of the sun on the snow that made Ernest’s face so suddenly white and cold?

  “Well,” said Gregory, smiling, “if Amy cannot tell you, I will. Last night, Ernest, your brother, Martin, asked me for Amy. After consultation with Amy, and finding her of the same mind, I consented. So, in May we are to have another fine wedding, and I am to lose both of my girls to the same family.”

  Ernest’s first sensation was that the whole bright room tilted, table, silver, walls, blazing windows, smiling occupants, and the next, that he was going to be horribly sick, right there before them all. The intensity of his emotions appalled him. He felt that all his senses had become one swirling flood that struck him squarely, roared over him, smothered him, threw him down. Then, as this flood ebbed, he felt as if he had been bludgeoned over the head, stunned, deprived of all sensation. All this happened in the space of a few seconds; he was too concerned with his frightful fear that he was about to be horribly sick then and there to experience despair. He struggled with it, hearing a distant hubbub of laughter and voices; it passed; its place was taken by a veritable anguish of mind and body.

  He felt a movement on his face, and knew he was smiling. He even believed that he shook hands with someone—probably Gregory. His eyes were clearing, and the sun blazed pitilessly into them so that he blinked. Someone spoke, and he was dully astonished to hear his own voice saying: “This is a delightful surprise! What foxes you two were to steal such a march on us!” And all the while there was chaos in him, crashings down, wounds and tearings, bitterness and grief. Through it all, like an arrow tipped with poison and death, flew one thought: “I love her. O God, I love her. I never stopped loving her. Amy. Amy!”

  Everyone laughed and chattered, and Ernest smiled and answered. He was even able to control himself enough to accept another cup of coffee, to put in sugar, to stir it, to sip it, smiling benevolently all the while at his wife, at Gregory, at Amy. I cannot endure it, he thought. She is going to marry Martin, that feckless fool. Suddenly he indeed could not endure it; the most dreadful hate he had ever felt for any human being convulsed him when he thought of Martin. Martin! Had it been any one else he might have suffered it, but God! this was too much. Like a mad hunger he was seized with a desire to kill; only blood-letting would ease him. Scarlet clouds began to swim before his eyes, and his hands suddenly clenched themselves on the edge of the table. Shudders swept over him visibly, but Gregory and May were teasing and kissing Amy, and he was not seen.

  All at once clarity returned to his vision, and he could see Amy. She was sitting very close to May, who was holding her hand and occasionally kissing her cheek. Gregory had his arm about the back of her chair, and as he teased her, he played with her glossy ringlets. Her sweet face was shyly glowing; she looked from one to the other with wet eyes, smiled, murmured, laughed at Gregory’s teasing. May glanced at her husband; how cold he looks, she thought, forgetting her old jealousy of Amy and wishing Ernest would show some enthusiasm and real pleasure. She felt quite resentful; his indifference, she believed, had already affronted Gregory, who studiously avoided looking at him. After all, Martin was his brother, and it was a fine match all around. Perhaps, she thought, with a stronger access of resentment, Ernest was already thinking, as he had done for himself, that Amy was a penniless girl and could bring his brother nothing. Nothing, indeed! Nothing but a fine old name, breeding, dignity, gentleness, good blood and such sweet prettiness! All at once she said to herself, with a sort of grim satisfaction: She shall have my mother’s diamond necklace and her ruby ring! They will be my wedding present to her. And Nicholas and Gregory must give her some sort of a dowry, Uncle Aaron notwithstanding! Penniless, indeed!

  And all the time the apparently detached and indifferent Ernest was looking at Amy with such held passion that his eye-sockets ached with the straining, and there was a ripping agony in his chest, and he was saying over and over in himself: “My darling, my darling. Oh, my God, my darling, how I love you! How could I ever have forgotten you, or not wanted you, even for a day?” Only another horrible suspicion that he might burst into tears controlled him from an impulse to cry out, to scream, to beat his fists on the table, to say dreadful and unpardonable things. And Gregory, feeling a quite unaccustomed pity and understanding for what he had seen for just an instant in Ernest’s eyes, still avoided looking at him. Then as he chaffed Amy, and played with her curls, he thought: It serves him right. I am glad to see someone suffer as I did. It serves him right. Damn him, I hope he chokes on it! He had his chance. Men only have one chance. Nevertheless, his pity survived even his dislike and obscure desire to avenge himself.

  He told himself at last that the poor devil had suffered enough. He stood up, and Amy stood up also, laughing, half-crying, wiping her eyes hastily. Ernest found himself on his feet, and the muscles of his face ached with his smile. He had suddenly turned quite red, and his breath came fast.

  His will was gone, his control gone. He wanted only one thing, now. He stepped around the table, put his hands on Amy’s soft warm shoulders and turned her to him. She looked up at him in smiling surprise her pink lips parted, her small white teeth shining between them. In her bright brown eyes was the most innocent and trustful of lights.

  “You are going to be my sister,” said Ernest, with a slightly wild smile. “So, I think it is quite proper if I kiss you.” And he drew her closer to him, bent his head, and even as the girl made a faint sound of astonishment, perhaps even dissent, he kissed her full on her li
ps. He held that kiss, pressing his mouth so fiercely against hers that her teeth bruised his lips, and she strained backwards away from him, the muscles of her white throat leaping out plainly in the light. Her hand fluttered to his arm, to push it away, then, as if deprived of strength in an instant, it fell away, fell to her side and swayed there, and her ringlets dropped in a mass down her back. She seemed to swoon in his grasp.

  May was staring at them, slightly frowning, a forced smile on her lips. Really, after that indifference, Ernest was trying to repair matters too vulgarly. But men were frequently vulgar, seizing any occasion whatsoever to kiss a pretty girl. It is odd that May did not see the truth for several minutes.

  Gregory thought: I must keep on smiling, I must keep on laughing for a little while longer. If I do not, there will be no repairing the damage. So he laughed and said banteringly: “Amy, if you don’t stop kissing that gentleman this instant, I shall tell Martin, by God I shall!” And he, still laughing as if it were all a pleasant and exuberant joke, took Ernest by the shoulder. It looked a casual touch enough, but his strong lean fingers bit into Ernest’s shoulder, brought him back to sanity as nothing else could have done. He released Amy so suddenly that she stumbled a little. All the color had gone from her face; her white lips had patches of stung red about them, and her eyes were wide and strained. It was her face, more than anything else, that brought the sickening truth home to May, that made her feel as if her mouth had filled with acid. For several seconds she thought her pain was not to be endured, that she would die of it before them all.

  She stood up, very pale. Her dimpled vivacity had left her, and she stood there, so dignified, so composed, that she seemed taller than she was. Gregory, turning to her, was struck with admiration and surprise. But she looked directly at Ernest, at his gray face, his twitching mouth, and he looked back at her.

  “Martin,” she said, “is coming for dinner today, as usual. And as the engagement will have to be announced soon, the wedding taking place in such a short time, we might as well invite our best friends, just a few of them, to call this evening. Amy, my dear,” she continued, turning with that new poise and dignity to her cousin, “will you please make out a little list immediately? I shall then write a few short notes, and send them by messenger at once. Of course, most of them will probably drop in later anyway, but I prefer to have them all together. Tomorrow we can make plans for a very formal announcement, but tonight I am sure that you will like a few of your friends to be here, to tell them intimately.”

  There, thought Gregory, is a woman! Without another word or glance toward any one, May literally swept from the room, her lace cap bobbing on her curls. But before she quite reached the door, Ernest was there before her, opening it, and when she passed through, without lifting her eyes to his, he followed her.

  He followed her up the great dim twisting rise of the stairway, past the grandfather’s clock striking in the warm and silent gloom of the hallway, past the stained glass window on the first landing. Her voluminous petticoats and skirt swayed and flowed behind her on the stairs; her hand was steady on the banisters, and she did not look back nor speak. The swish of silk was the only sound in the stillness. When she reached her bedroom door, Ernest opened it for her, and let her enter. She walked to the middle of the floor, expecting him to follow, but she saw that he had stopped on the threshold. His color was that of a very sick man’s.

  “Ernest,” she said in a steady and tranquil voice, “please come in, my love. I have something to tell you.”

  He came in. Her heart misgave her, and she smiled forlornly. He looked so like a small boy who had committed some enormous sin. She took his arm with a faint resumption of her old coaxing air. “Do sit down,” she said. But he walked away from her and went to the window, and stood staring out of it. Then she saw that he was indeed a man, and that she could not use the arts she would use with that small boy. She saw that he was desperate and overwrought, that he had reached a state of madness in which he might do anything. She had never suspected that he possessed this sort of violence; she must save him from it. Her heart lifted on a wave of tenderness. She did not go to him, not one step, but stood in the center of her large and pretty apartment, with the fire burning so low and cosily on the marble hearth, and she said simply and quietly: “Ernest, I am going to have a baby.”

  What she expected she did not quite know, but she did not expect that he would remain unmoving at the window. His hand was on the drapery; it tightened a little, but that was all. She seized the back of a chair, to keep herself from falling, to help her to recover from the sensation that she had received a blow in the stomach.

  “Ernest,” she said again, raising her voice a little, but keeping it gentle, “did you hear me, love? I said, I am going to have a baby.” She swallowed convulsively. “I hope it will be a boy,” she added.

  Then he turned. He came toward her slowly, very gray, almost like stone. But his eyes were quite steady and calm.

  “I hope so, too,” he said. And took her hand.

  CHAPTER XXVII

  Martin went to see old Father Dominick. He was much disturbed in mind. Being a new convert, he was not quite sure as to what penalties, if any, might be inflicted upon him for the “sin” of changing his mind and turning to worldly things. But he was resolute about one thing: sin or no sin, excommunication or no excommunication, he loved Amy and he intended to marry her.

  He did not believe that any one had ever been so happy before. It was not a wild and clamorous happiness, full of anxieties, doubts, fears and disturbances, like a stormy day that was slashed at intervals by brilliant and fateful sunlight. His happiness was as still and clear as a summer dawn, and as quiet. It seemed to run all through him like bright water. His timid, haughty and gentle nature, so resolute and kind and simple, so strong when stirred by his idealism, so suspicious of the exigent and the commanding, was like a soft-colored, faintly melancholy landscape touched all at once by a pure and unshaking light. He had the innocent passion of the very young and untouched man for Amy, but more than this, he had tenderness and protectiveness, a feeling that with her he was safe from the ugly laughter of those he did not understand, their gibes and their satire, their cunning and their cruelty. The love he had for her was a coat that covered his nakedness, kept out fear. She was so much weaker than he, so dependent and trusting and loving and tender, so just and wise in her innocence, that he became strong by protecting her, grew mental muscles that heretofore had been flaccid, developed a backbone that had had the bad habit of becoming fluid at crucial moments. Besides this, she had been a surgeon’s hand that had removed cataracts from his eyes, given him sight to see the loveliness and desirability of life. He did not as yet have courage to admit to himself that his old vision had been false and distorted, morbid and full of death. But he did feel delivered and released.

  Somehow, even the shops ceased to bother him as they had done. Everything but his happiness had become unimportant. He promised himself, however, that he would not always be so heedless of his duty, that Amy would help him find out what he must do. Because she had not seemed to find much that was repulsive in the making of armaments, his antagonism modified itself. Because she had found admirable qualities in the inexorable Ernest, he searched for them also, and was quite humbly contrite to discover that Ernest was not a fabulous monster after all, though he still had serious doubts about him and could not bring himself to trust him. Because Amy found pleasure in dancing, in little gaieties and laughter, in songs and flowers and the company of others, his austerity relaxed, and he enjoyed them also, not with full acceptance, to be sure, and not without self-consciousness, but with some symptoms of pleasure. The world, he discovered, was really very agreeable as well as grim. He and Amy had veritable orgies of talking; not shy with each other as they were with others, their voices stumbled eagerly over each other’s; they interrupted, exclaimed, cried out, gesticulated, laughed with an exquisite sense of complete harmony. They found themselves in ea
ch other, and were inexpressibly enchanted by the finding. At other times they did not speak for hours, merely holding hands and walking silently, or just glancing at each other at intervals. He had given himself to Amy in an ardent surrender of all that he was. Sometimes he was faintly disturbed when he thought he detected something in her that was a little sad and uneasy, a little wistful and unsatisfied. It was as if she thought of something, then, that had nothing to do with him, but was like the memory of pain.

  Ernest had made a kind and generous gesture. He announced, as though impulsively, that his wedding present to the bride and groom would be George Barbour’s house. Hilda and Joseph, who had fallen abjectly in love with Amy, announced that they would furnish the house as the young couple desired. Before he had made his decision, Ernest had visited the closed and shuttered house and had walked through the empty rooms. On that tormented night a year or more ago he had furnished this house in his mind, after he had told himself that Amy was worth the sacrifice of the Sessions house and the Sessions fortune. And now, the day he decided to give the house to Amy, he walked through it, very slowly. He stood by the windows she would stand by, and imagined what she would think of the various views. The western windows, because of the height of the land, overlooked the crowded basin, looked at the river. Here Amy would see the red sun of winter setting in a crown of fire; here she would watch the wan and timeless light of the stars. These windows would be gray and streaming in autumn rains, while she sat at this black marble fireplace and knitted, her small feet on a hassock, her children playing on the hearth. She would see the river, fiery blue or white with cold; she would see it flame into crimson, run like hot gilt, become mysterious under the moon. These windows would be a permanent frame, in which the changing pictures of the seasons would be presented, one by one, for her pleasure. And each picture, wild with storm, green and quiet with summer, radiant and fresh with spring, black and white with winter, would be seen through the glass of her moods. What would she feel, when she looked at this present picture, at twilight? The sun had gone, but the western skies were a cold peacock-blue, a frozen and motionless lake, on which sailed bright golden little ships, winged with fire. Above this lake and its ships was a dark and bitter strip of cobalt blue, merging into a paler tint as the sky rose to the zenith. The river ran like liquid iron, dim and strong, under the heavens; the basin on this side was adrift with a spectral fog, so that the buildings on it were mere blurs. The grounds about the house were steep though not long; they were bounded by a circle of really fine elms, still naked and brown, and thrusting distorted branches upward in the pale light, so that they appeared to have been caught in a writhing posture of torment. The whole scene was so lifeless, so cold, so infinitely melancholy, that Ernest, the exigent, the realistic, could not move from the window. His sick and desperate grief was an enchantment that had temporarily opened his eyes; he felt that the scene was part of him and he was part of it. His consciousness flowed out and mingled with it, drawing back its sad and fateful and hopeless essence into him. This sensation that his personality was disintegrating, flowing out mystically, returning with a burden of mystery, like a tide bringing in strange flotsam and jetsam to the shores, was so unique to him that he was appalled. He found places in himself, abysses and currents, thoughts and longings, yearnings and bitternesses, that he had never suspected could have been found in any one, much less himself. Consequently, he was completely absorbed in these new sensations, fascinated by his ability to feel so intensely that it seemed to him that his heart was shaking from the impact of it.