Dynasty of Death

by Taylor Caldwell

  Then he put the pistol to his head, and still gazing at the face of Jesus, he pulled the trigger. There was a single barking roar, a fall, and then silence. The candle flickered on serenely, the agony on the face of the crucified man became more distinct as the light became stronger, a thin and acrid scarf of smoke twisted in the golden and diffused radiance. And on the floor lay Jacques Bouchard, face down, in a dark and widening pool, the pistol fallen from his hand. The light did not fall on him; he lay in shadow.

  CHAPTER XXXI

  Ernest and Gregory had also gone for a drive that night, but May, who had not been feeling very well lately, remained at home. She was languid these days, and preferred to rest and sew and read and drowse. She had never had more than a casual affection for the Sessions house, but since her marriage it had become infinitely dear to her, every room poignant with peace and contentment, every old wall beloved and cherished. Here was home, full and complete, impregnable and whole. She liked to be alone, as she was now, listening to the faint crackle of a newly lit fire, imagining the sound of Ernest’s voice, conjuring up from the silence the running beat of her children’s footsteps. She liked this soft and mellow candlelight, the shine and glimmer of the furniture, the dark faces of the portraits on the ivory walls. Through the open windows, thrust out to the night, she could hear the deep burbling of the frogs in the pool at the foot of the gardens and the taffeta murmur of the trees. Martin and Amy were still out in the gardens, though it was almost ten o’clock. May wondered drowsily if Amy had remembered to take her shawl, but even this could not occupy the delicious and sleepy peace of her mind. “I am a terrible chaperon,” she thought contentedly.

  Then Martin and Amy came in, laughing together, Amy wrapped in the depths of a soft blue shawl. May looked at them and smiled; she loved them, for their faces reflected the happiness she felt. “It is shamefully late,” she said fondly. She wished Martin liked her more, and was amused at the shy distrust he had for her. But nothing, she thought, could be nicer nor more elegant than his courtesy. She glanced at the serenity of Amy’s face, listened to her low laugh, and told herself, as she had done a hundred times, that it was purely her silly fancy that something vital and eager had gone from the face and the laugh.

  There was a sound of carriage wheels, and voices. May heard Ernest’s voice, and a flush seemed to rise about her heart as it always did when she heard him. Her drowsiness vanished, and she sat up. She did not see that Amy had turned her face in the direction of Ernest’s voice, and that a sort of white listening look came out upon it.

  Ernest and Gregory came into the room, talking loudly. But May, glancing at them, stopped smiling. They were very pale and seemed a little breathless, for all they greeted Martin and Amy and herself with great heartiness. Something has happened, she thought, coldness running over her. When Ernest bent over her and kissed her forehead, she stared at him sharply, but she could not read his expression. Gregory had rung the bell and ordered wine; he was talking inconsequentially to Martin. Then Ernest, still bending over May, whispered in her ear: “My love, please take Amy out of the room with you. We have something to tell Martin. Now, please don’t disturb yourself. It is nothing of consequence, except that Jacques Bouchard has been taken ill, and wants to see Martin. You know how fond Martin is of the poor devil, and we want to break the news to him easily.”

  “Oh, poor Jacques,” said May, who had seen him once, and had not cared for him. She gathered up her fine sewing, and lifted her heavy body reluctantly from her chair. “Amy, my pet,” she said, “I am feeling a little too tired. Will you come with me and help me undress? You know, Gladys has gone to her sick mother tonight, and I am all alone.”

  The two young women left the room together. When the door had closed behind them, Gregory stopped his rambling talk abruptly. Martin was surprised; he turned to Ernest. His brother, he noticed for the first time, looked pale and concerned, and not a little grim.

  “Martin,” he said, “have you quarrelled lately with Jacques Bouchard? About anything at all?”

  Martin’s expression became blank, then on an instant, it turned crimson, then paled again, “Why do you ask that?” he stammered. Then, as Ernest did not answer, but only regarded him with piercing steadiness, he cried out sharply: “What is the matter? Is something wrong with Jacques? I shall go to him at once!”

  But Ernest blocked his way. “No,” he said harshly. “There’s no use now. Eugene’s just been over at Pa’s, and we had stopped by. Jacques,” he added, watching Martin’s white face and starting eyes intently, “killed himself, about two hours ago.”

  There was a short sick silence. Then Martin exclaimed in anguish: “I don’t believe it! It’s just one of your lies, Ernest! I don’t believe it! Why should he kill himself?”

  “You might answer that,” said Ernest contemptuously. But he appeared breathless and not a little frightened. “Here. Here is a letter he wrote you. Eugene found two letters, one to you and one to his mother. He had the sense to pick yours up and conceal it, and to bring it to me.” He tossed the letter onto the chair by Martin’s side. Gregory, slowly sipping a glass of wine, watched them both absorbedly. There was something here he did not quite understand, but nothing in the world would have removed him from that spot short of an earthquake. “Why don’t you read the letter?” asked Ernest, raising his voice, for Martin stood in the attitude of a sleep-walker. Finally Ernest took him by the arm and shook him violently. “Read the letter!” he shouted.

  Like a hypnotized man obeying the commands of the mesmerizer, Martin picked up the letter. He turned it over, dully, in his hands. Then he lifted his glazed eyes to Ernest. “You opened it,” he said tonelessly.

  “Yes, I opened it,” said Ernest in a flat tone.

  Martin blinked; the letter shook in his hands. He bent down so that the candlelight could fall upon it. He read:

  “Dear Martin: Please forgive me. Please do not blame your kindest and dearest of selves. It is not your fault that I can’t live any longer. But I could not bear to think of sharing you with any one else, or having you love any one else. I am selfish and wicked, and in doing what I shall do I have put myself beyond the reach of God’s mercy. But even that is not as bad as having you leave me. I have only one more thing to say, and that is that I wish you to have my silver crucifix from France, and my garnet rosary. Forgive me. Pray for me, if you can. Your friend, Jacques.”

  The letter was like a thunderbolt passing through Martin. He fell into the chair. The letter dropped through his fingers onto the carpet. In the silence that followed, the faint sweet chime of the ormolu clock rang out, ironically, and the candles flickered in the slight wind that came through the windows. Suddenly Martin put his hands over his face and began to sob dryly.

  Ernest bent down, picked up the letter, and threw it, with a grimace into the fire. “What a foul mess!” he said grimly, and for an instant nausea stood out on his features. He glanced at Gregory, who lifted his eyebrows and shoulders expressively. “Come on, Martin, be a man. This has got to be faced. What do you know about all this? You’ve got to tell me. God knows what the mad fool wrote in his letter to his mother. He might have accused you of anything. And there’s always the police. My God!” he added with suppressed vehemence and passionate disgust. He spat in the direction of the fire as though there was a vile taste in his mouth.

  Martin dropped his hands; his face was white and haggard, his mouth bitten. He began to speak almost in a whisper. “It’s all my fault. I killed him.” He twisted in his seat and faced Ernest. “It’s all my fault!” he cried shrilly, his eyes a blue and terrible blaze. “I killed him! I was all he ever had, and I was going to leave him.” He stood up, disordered and trembling. “I’m going to his father and his mother, and I’m going to tell them that I killed Jacques!” He stared about him, blindly.

  “Christ!” said Ernest between his clenched teeth. He grasped his brother by the front of his coat, and literally flung him back in his chair. “You god-damn
fool!” he went on, standing over him and panting. “Have you no sense at all!” He paused, stood up, tried to regain normal breathing, but his broad harsh face was suffused with an almost apoplectic color. He looked at Gregory as if for help, as if calling upon him to denounce, with him, this infernal and atrocious fool. But Gregory looked back at him, without expression. Go on, you devil, thought Gregory. Go on, thinking about the danger to your precious shops, and your ambitions. You’ll find some way, trust you! to save everything, and wriggle things through, but in the meantime you can sweat, and be damned to you! And he waited, gleefully, to see in what manner Ernest would “wriggle through.”

  Martin, dazed and broken, huddled in his chair. He had been thrown into it so violently that a thick lock of his pale yellow hair had fallen over his face; his chin was sunken on his chest. He did not move.

  Ernest drew a deep breath, and the purplish color faded from his cheeks, very slowly. He seemed to brace himself, to straighten his wide shoulders, to draw back into himself all his tremendous will and strength. He put his hand on Martin’s shoulder, pressing it as though to command his attention through the haze of grief and despair, and began to speak, very slowly and distinctly.

  “Listen to me, Martin. You are not responsible for Jacques’ death. He was a cripple, and cripples are never quite right in their minds. He was bound to do this sooner or later. It is not your fault. You had a right to your own life, and it was selfish and stupid of him to think that you did not. It’s too late to do anything for him. Damn it, I’m sorry for the poor wretch! But it’s too late. You’ve got to think of the living. You’ve got to think of Armand and Madam Bouchard. You can’t hurt them more than they’ve been hurt. It would be cruel for you to do so.”

  He paused; his quiet and insistent voice, however, had had its effect. Martin was listening; he had raised his head, and his piteous eyes were fixed on Ernest’s face as though he found salvation there.

  “If Jacques knows anything now, he is sorry,” went on Ernest, holding Martin’s eyes with his. “Sorry that he caused you all this grief and worry. And he would want you, more than anything else, not to add to his parents’ misery. You’ve got to think of them. Think how they would feel to have you bursting in upon them, like a maniac, like someone escaped from Bedlam, accusing yourself of having killed their son, and raving like a fool! Would that help them? Would a lie bring Jacques back to them? If you were so stupid as all that, how do you think Pa and Ma would feel? No, you’ve got to think of others, Martin.”

  Gregory regarded him with satanic admiration. Bravo! he thought.

  Ernest waited for what Martin would say. Tiny drops of moisture stood out upon his forehead under the crest of his light and vital hair. He wet his lips. Martin was gazing fixedly, now, at the floor, at the ashes of Jacques’ letter. Then he said, hoarsely and dully: “You are quite right, Ernest. I can’t hurt them any more. Jacques wouldn’t want it.”

  “That’s the way to talk!” said Ernest. There was about him a great and weary relaxing, as if after intolerable strain. He pulled out his large linen handkerchief and mopped his forehead. Gregory saw that the back of his strong hand was wet. Again, Ernest put his hand on Martin’s shoulder. “Spoken like a man,” he said.

  “But,” said Martin, as though he had not heard his brother’s remark, “there’s one thing I can do. I can do what Jacques would want me to do: keep my promise to him. I can’t marry Amy now. I’ll do what Jacques would wish; I’ll go alone to the monastery.”

  “What!” shouted Ernest, his face wrinkling, his eyebrows jerking as if he had not heard aright, had thought he had heard something incredible.

  “What!” exclaimed Gregory, aroused now, and advancing.

  Martin nodded his head heavily. “I should have told you all before, Ernest, and this is the price I must pay because I didn’t. Amy knows. I told her. A long time ago I became a convert to the Roman Catholic Church. Jacques and I intended, a year ago, to go to Quebec, to enter a monastery there. It was all arranged. And then—,” he stopped, his voice dwindling in anguish.

  Ernest and Gregory regarded each other in stupefaction. “God!” whispered Ernest at last, and his mouth fell open. Suddenly Gregory was convulsed with his silent, red-faced and crumpled mirth, and his suffused eyes stared at Ernest with an unspeakable comment. Then he began to cough thickly, as though choking.

  “A Papist?” said Ernest at last, turning to Martin, and speaking dazedly. “You became a Papist? What the hell for? This is quite beyond me. Am I dreaming?” He rubbed his forehead.

  “You’re not dreaming,” said Martin miserably. He made a despairing gesture. “It’s all over now. I can only do this one thing for Jacques. I can’t marry Amy. You—you’ve got to tell her, Ernest. I just couldn’t. Tell her good-by for me. I’m going, tomorrow. To Quebec.”

  He stood a good two inches taller than Ernest, but there was something so pathetic and bewildered and broken about him that he appeared to have become a boy again, overcome with the miseries of an adult world.

  “You can’t do this thing to Amy!” exclaimed Gregory, sober and alarmed enough now. “By God, I’ll kill you first! You can’t do this thing to Amy! Martin, for God’s sake, don’t be such a fool!”

  “Do you think this is easy for me?” cried Martin passionately. “Do you know what it means to me to give up Amy? The only peace and happiness I have ever had have come from her! Do you know what it means to have had others all your life jeer at you, think you a dolt, laugh at everything you say, turn away from you in contempt? That’s what I have had—from everyone but Amy.” He turned fiercely upon his brother. “I’ve never said anything, wanted anything, suggested anything, but you have made me feel like an idiot, or worse! You’ve actually made me believe I was an idiot, too. You seemed to have the strength to overcome me, to close my mouth. And all the time you were wrong—you were stupid and vicious and blind. People like you can always silence those who are gentle enough, or cowardly enough, or courteous enough not to fight you. To give you the consideration you never give others.” He waved his hands in a distraught gesture. “We can’t fight you. We can only retreat, back away from you. You have weapons we haven’t got, because we have some pity and kindness. We—we believe in some things. But you believe in nothing, except yourself. You laugh at everything; nothing is sacred to you. And to you, we who do believe in something are ridiculous.” He stopped, unable to speak for his anguish. Then he went on, more quietly, but more heavily. “Only Amy understood what I feel. I was happy with Amy. But, I’ve got to give her up. I owe that to Jacques.”

  Gregory, in violence, turned to Ernest demandingly. Ernest had been listening, inscrutably eyeing his brother. He had been thinking only one thing: he dare not do this to Amy, my darling! He dare not. I’ll see him dead first, the impossible imbecile. He shall not do this to Amy!

  He took Martin by the arm, held him tightly, commanded his attention again. He said, very earnestly: “Martin, listen to me. Please. I’m not going to say, now, that I’m sorry. For a lot of things. I’ll tell you that some other time. I suppose we just didn’t understand each other. But now we’ve got to talk about Amy.”

  He paused; he gathered strength again, invincible strength, fighting strength, for Amy. He was desperate; he could be wily now, coaxing, placating, wheedling, grovelling, humbling himself, for Amy. He could see her stricken face, bewildered, agonized, not understanding. It was like a white flag to his will and dogged obstinacy. He was full of a quite intolerable pain.

  “Martin, don’t you see? Don’t you see that is just what Jacques wanted you to do, to give up Amy? That is why he killed himself before you married her, instead of afterward. He wanted to ruin your life, and break Amy’s heart. He wanted you to be unhappy. He hated Amy, killed himself so that she would lose you.

  “At the last, he hated you, too. Poor devil, his mind was as twisted as his body. He couldn’t really have had any affection for you, or he wouldn’t have done this, to make you miserable, an
d keep you from Amy. But he timed it exactly, so that you would do as he wanted you to do, without thinking, giving yourself no time, breaking off everything so that it would be too late if you ever came back to your senses. Martin, don’t let a dead man’s hand kill you, too. Don’t let someone’s selfishness and hate spoil yours and Amy’s life. You’ve got to think of Amy. She’d never get over it. And that’s what he wanted, too. That was his revenge on the poor girl for taking you from him.”

  He paused again. Dare he fling the truth into Martin’s face, the truth that leered behind that monstrous letter? He knew his brother’s austere innocence, and something unknown in him held him back from speaking. But he told himself that he would speak, if his present argument failed.

  However, Martin’s dazed and listening face gave him hope. Martin was looking at him with pathetic intensity, as if trying to pierce behind the words to find if he were sincere. Perhaps he was half convinced, for he turned to Gregory with touching bewilderment. “Mr. Gregory, do you believe him? Is he telling the truth?”

  “Yes, Martin,” replied Gregory gravely. “It is quite true. You can believe him. Jacques Bouchard evidently hated you at the last. But at any rate, even if he did not, I am sure that he would not want you to hurt poor Amy.”

  CHAPTER XXXII

  To Ernest’s unspeakable relief it was discovered that Jacques Bouchard had left nothing in his letter to his mother that might lead any one to blame Martin for his death. He merely begged forgiveness, said his pain had become more than he could bear any longer, and left a few instructions as to his meagre possessions. However, for some years, Armand had been depositing large sums of money for him in the local bank, and Jacques stated that he wished one-half to be given to the Church of the Annunciation, and the rest to the Fund for the Abolition of Slavery.

  Madam Bouchard was like a wild beast deprived of her young. She, said Armand sadly, “howled like a wolf,” day and night. Nothing could comfort nor soothe her; when the priest attempted this, she spat in his face and cursed God, then, in an access of grief and remorse, she grovelled at his feet, begged his pardon, implored him to pray for her and for her dead son. Her agony was all the greater because Jacques could not be buried in consecrated ground and had not received the Last Sacrament. But Father Dominick was priest of a Church that knew how to temper the wind to the shorn lamb, and was all things to all men, and he was able to give her a measure of peace.