“He’s frightfully small, isn’t he?” was the first question he asked. May, who had waited, beaming, for exclamations of pride and joy, was electrified with indignation. “Small!” she exclaimed, so loudly that the baby stirred, whimpered, and thrust his thumb in his mouth. “Small! I declare, Ernest! Dr. Winston said he was unusually large for a first baby. All of eight pounds at birth, and now he weighs fourteen, and only two months old!”
Ernest laughed. He felt somewhat flat. The baby lacked character, he thought, with that little yellow fuzz on his head, and the round flushed wet cheek. Then, aware that May was glaring at him and bridling, he poked the child tentatively, arousing May to a shriek of protest. But Ernest did not hear the suppressed shriek: his son’s hot damp fingers had curled about his own finger. He felt a sudden contraction in his chest.
“He’s hideous,” he whispered, glancing at May.
“He’s beautiful!” she answered, but she smiled, and laid her cheek against her husband’s arm.
They went downstairs, their arms about each other. The child had not yet been christened, May said, as they entered the drawing room where Gregory waited for them before the fire. She had thought of naming him Godfrey James, after her father, if Ernest approved. He stared at the fire thoughtfully for a long time, and gradually his face became pale and heavy. He turned to May, and took her hand gently.
“I would like to call him Joseph, after my father, love,” he said.
No one spoke. Gregory, uncomfortable, affected to be absorbed in cutting the end of a cigar. But May looked back into Ernest’s eyes, and her own eyes filled slowly with tears. She lifted his hand impulsively, and pressed it against her cheek.
“You may tell me now,” he went on. “How is my father?”
Gregory coughed gently, lighting his cigar. “I have called for the carriage,” he answered quietly. “I think it best we go to your father’s house, tonight. We hoped you would return—in time.”
“Then,” said Ernest, in a low voice, a muscle twitching in his cheek, “he is dying.”
May put her handkerchief to her eyes.
“If you had not returned for another month, Ernest, you would not have seen your father alive,” said Gregory, very gravely. “But come, here is the carriage.” In the stillness of the autumn evening they heard the crunching of wheels on the gravel.
Neither Gregory nor Ernest spoke much on the way to the Barbour house. To Ernest, huddled in his seat, the world had become echoing and desolate, a tormented place. Everything was empty, from the cold black sky to the distant iron gleam of the river under the lights on the shores, from the smell of dry and faded leaves crisping under their wheels to the mournful chirping of crickets, from the chill whisper of the wind to the distant bellow of a train.
Gregory coughed that gentle, preliminary cough. “You may find your father changed a little, Ernest,” he said.
“Changed?”
“Yes. It seems he has a grievance against you. Probably imaginary, but sick people are often imaginative. He has, I am sorry to say, the delusion that you are waiting to rob your brother and your sisters after his death, and he is fighting death, when he would be better dead, in order to fight you. Cancer,” he added thoughtfully, “is a frightful disease. Nothing can alleviate the pain very much. The doctor has expressed himself as amazed that your father lives from day to day, with a perforated stomach and frequent hemorrhages. He says he is living by sheer force of will. Each day he asks when you will return. Perhaps, now that you are here, he will let himself—go. That will be the best thing of all.”
Ernest did not speak. Gregory could not see his face in the darkness. He was disappointed a little. “I am certain,” he said tentatively, “that your father need have no fears of you. I wonder where he could have gotten that idea?”
“I don’t know,” said Ernest, after a long pause. He had pulled up the collar of his greatcoat, and not only was his face hidden but his voice was muffled.
“He has seen your baby once, I believe. He said he was the image of you at your age, and appeared to be quite affected. I believe he said something about leaving him his father’s watch, which his Company commander had presented to him after Waterloo, for distinguished conduct.” He turned his head alertly. “Did you say something, Ernest?”
“No, nothing.”
The Barbour house came into sight abruptly through the thin trees. In spite of the lamps burning in the windows of the lower floors, the building was singularly desolate-looking tonight. The bleak wind eddied the dead leaves about the walks, and spoke in melancholy around the eaves. A dull smudge of crimson smoke wavered over a chimney. But for all the lamps and the smoke, the house looked abandoned, completely deserted. Had there been no answer to their knocking, Ernest would not have been greatly surprised.
A new maid, unknown to Ernest, led them into the living room. It struck him with dull surprise to discover that the room was crowded with people, some sitting before the fire, some standing in groups, and whispering. There was Amy, shawled and pale, her sweet face grave and sad under her bonnet, her gloved hands in her lap; beside her stood Martin, his hand on her shoulder, his head bent as he talked inaudibly to her. There was Florabelle, home from school, eyes red and swollen, curls in disorder, crouching at one side of the fireplace and weeping. There was Eugene, with a white-faced little Dorcas on his knee, and there was. Armand, slowly pacing the room, his head bent, his face and posture that of a man who had aged rapidly. Martin had sent for Father Dominick, and the priest was there, though he was not certain that he would be admitted to the presence of the dying man. John Baldwin was there, Gregory saw with surprise, and an old German, evidently a foreman from the shops, and a young man whom he called Carl; both were strangers to Gregory, but Ernest’s eye touched them with dull recognition, indifferent and haughty. There were several other clean but shabby men there, unmistakably workmen, with dark foreign faces and queer, unreadable eyes, men who must have loved Joseph to come where they must inevitably see Ernest. Ernest did not know any of these workmen, but he knew they had come from his shops, and he made no more acknowledgment of their presence than he would have noted work horses in a stable. Hilda was not in the room. The door stood open to the high narrow hall, and once or twice the thin wisp of a groan floated down it.
When Ernest and Gregory entered, everyone turned troubled and saddened faces to them. Martin, flushing, unable, as usual, to look Ernest directly in the eye, shook hands with his brother, turned his head aside when Ernest asked after their father. Armand shook hands, and Eugene, not rising from his chair, and John Baldwin came up, gravely, to express his sympathy. But Ernest found his way to Amy through the workmen, who parted as he came forward, and he took the trembling hand she offered him. She looked up at him, sadly and compassionately. But, as if they had parted only yesterday, she said: “How is the baby? Isn’t he beautiful?”
Ernest could not speak. He dropped her hand slowly, and turned to the fire. In a world become two-dimensioned, she was the only reality to him then, and he stayed near her for as long as he could. They did not speak to each other, but imperceptibly they drew together, involuntarily. Yet they did not look at each other, but only at the fire. Finally he broke the dim enchantment, and went back to Gregory and Martin, who were whispering near the door. Martin seemed quite composed, but he dabbed his eyes occasionally.
“When can I see Pa?” asked Ernest abruptly. “And where is Ma?”
“Ma’s upstairs, with him,” answered Martin. “The doctor’s there, too. He—he won’t live the night out, the doctor says. It is a good thing you came home in time. We can go up when the doctor comes down. That is what we are waiting for.”
“I didn’t know,” said Ernest in a tight voice. “I didn’t know!”
“No one knew,” said Martin gently, looking at him steadfastly with his blue eyes. Ernest gazed at him stonily for a long moment; then he said: “You don’t know what I mean,” and turned away from him.
The roo
m was hot, and the still air of it seemed to choke him. Yet he had nowhere to go. He must wait like these others. He walked about. The workmen, abashed and deathly frightened of him, formed and reformed in their huddling groups to avoid colliding with him. They wiped wet faces with red and blue kerchiefs, and exhaled odors of sweat and crude soap and tobacco. One or two had fortified himself with a generous amount of beer. Ernest sickened. Yet he controlled himself, so that he did not glare upon them. Finally, Armand joined his pacing. The older man put his hand on Ernest’s arm, and there was something in that touch that seemed to hold down a knotting and writhing in himself. He remembered that Armand had had his grief, too, in the loss of his wife and son, and he stopped, ashamed.
“Armand,” he said, “I’m sorry I didn’t say something before. It was a shock to hear about your wife. Raoul took it hard.”
“That is what I wanted to ask,” answered Armand quietly, and again Ernest was ashamed. “Raoul, I believe, loved her best of all, though she loved Jacques above either of her other sons. Perhaps it is best that Raoul was not here.”
“Raoul is in Paris, now,” said Ernest, and made himself sketch, in a few words, the result of his journey. Armand listened; finally he smiled a little, as though wryly amused. “I had not expected any success at all,” he confessed, “but I might have remembered you.” He sighed. “My cousin, from Quebec, a newly-made widow, is keeping my home for me and Eugene.” He fumbled for his pipe in his pocket, and then, finding it, did not draw it out. “You remember what a good Catholic my little Renee was? Yet she requested, with her last words, that she be not buried in consecrated ground, but beside Jacques, just outside the wall of the cemetery. You Protestants,” and he shook his head with a twisted smile, “would not understand the pure love and sacrifice of that!”
The air became close and stuffy. The workmen found that their discomfort in the presence of Ernest overbalanced their concern for Joseph and they began to drift away. At midnight, only the family remained, with the exception of Gregory, John Baldwin and Father Dominick and Pierre. Amy had removed her bonnet and shawl, and her soft hair was combed back, showing her fair forehead; she had persuaded Florabelle and Dorcas to go to bed. When the two young girls were leaving the room, it seemed that Ernest became really aware of their presence, for he called after them: “Good night, my dears.” But they were too involved in their grief to answer, and they went out with bent heads.
It was Amy who went to the kitchen and persuaded the maids to make coffee for those who kept sick-hearted vigil in the living room. There was utter silence upstairs, though occasionally a faint footstep creaked overhead. No one spoke, merely sipping the hot coffee or adding lengths of wood to the fire. The lamps burned yellow, flickering slightly in the draft from a window. Amy sat near the fire beside her husband, and her profile was illuminated by it. Though it was sad, it was also serene and contemplative, the mouth steady and quiet, her eyes fixed on the fire, her hands in her lap. Ernest, watching her under the shadow of his hand, thought with a sense of shock: “This is not the Amy I first knew! She has grown much older.” He continued to watch her until at last all reality outside of her faded, even his father dying upstairs faded, and there was only Amy in an aura of light, swift-burning fire. Then after a long time he noted a slight distortion in her figure, and a queer thrilling numbness ran along his nerves. He could endure, now, the thought of her being Martin’s wife; but he could not endure it that she should be carrying Martin’s child. He dropped his hand from his face with a little gasp, as though he could not breathe.
There was a dim thin cry upstairs, the quicker sound of footsteps, low voices, a deep groan. Then the doctor and Hilda came down the stairs; the doctor’s arm was about Hilda, who was sobbing in tight anguish. Everyone stood up as they entered the room. Hilda’s graying hair (Ernest was shocked to see how gray it had become) was roughly twisted in a large knot on her neck and her comely face was blotched and wet with tears. She went to Ernest immediately, clung to him, kissed him, sobbed over and over: “O Ernest, Ernest, Ernest!”
“Mr. Barbour,” said the doctor, “is conscious now. He won’t be—for long. He has asked that everyone here come upstairs at once. I don’t approve of it,” he added primly, “though I don’t suppose it will do much harm.”
They went up the stairs in silence, Ernest and his mother leading the way, Martin tenderly helping his young wife up the stairway. Has he no sense? thought Ernest. She ought not to be coming up here, in that room! He glanced down at Amy, who was holding her skirt up with one hand, her other hand on her husband’s arm; she was looking up at him with grief and compassion. But Martin seemed oddly composed though grave.
The sick room was hot with firelight and candlelight; there was an air of confusion in it. Joseph was lying high on a mass of ruffled pillows, and his breath had a snoring quality. He lay with his eyes closed; he was horribly emaciated, and his flesh was the color of wet clay. Ernest, seeing him like this, seeing the lax skeleton-like hands on the coverlet, listening to that breathing, became sick with shock. This dwindled man, whose still vital hair made a black-gray and untidy blotch on the white pillows, this dying man, could not be the ironical and irascible Joseph whose accumulated wealth had confused and troubled him, who had found no peace anywhere. In that lightning-flash of thought, it was suddenly clear to Ernest that his father had possessed a singleness of thought, a simplicity of living, such as Martin had; it was suddenly clear to him that all the family, except himself, was of that singleness and simplicity.
He knew, even before his father opened his tortured eyes and looked at them with the terrible listlessness of the dying, that this death was not going to be easy, and that in some way he was involved in it. He looked at Hilda, who had gone to the high white bed and was kneeling beside it, sobbing; he looked at the dark faces lit by the firelight, the crowding faces, the sad and troubled faces, and something made his heart beat intolerably fast as though confronted by danger. He wanted to slip away to the fire, but he had hardly reached it when Joseph opened his eyes and looked at the group at the foot of his bed. His gaze slipped over them, exhaustedly, without desire or recognition; he was looking for someone. He caught Ernest’s shadow near the fire, and his head moved slowly in that direction. Ernest stood before the fire, silhouetted against it, so that its dull crimson enlarged his figure, lay in planes upon it, gave his large face and head a sinister air. He knew his father was awake and looking at him, but he could not move. It was as if his flesh had become a prison of ice in which he was helpless.
“So, you’re back?” Joseph’s voice was hoarse and broken, almost whispering.
“Yes,” replied Ernest at last, quietly and steadily. His own voice broke the appalling enchantment on him, and he came to the bed and stood by its side, looking down at his father. “Yes, I’m back, Pa.” He tried to smile.
The dying man peered up at him; there was a strange gleam lying over his distended eyes. Ernest thought: he hates me. And it seemed to him all at once that that hate was a piteous thing from which his father must be saved, if he were to have peace. If he could only have died before Ernest’s return! If Ernest had not had to see this clay-colored ruin with the eyes so terribly alive, the picking and restless hands! “Yes, Pa,” he repeated, and forced his stiff lips to spread into a smile. A cold wetness ran between his shoulder blades.
A strange gloating smile came out on the ruin that was Joseph’s face. He turned his eyes upon Martin. “Bring me those papers on that table yonder, lad,” he said. Martin brought them, a thin sheaf of papers closely covered with Joseph’s handwriting; he slipped them under the claw-like fingers. The fingers closed on them fiercely. Joseph looked at those at the foot of his bed. The gleam came out again in his eyes, hating and triumphant. He moved his head in Ernest’s direction, without looking at him. His voice came stronger.
“Look at him! That’s my son, Ernest! My son! Do you know what he has been doing? He has been waiting for just this minute. For years and years he
has been waiting.” He tried to sit up, fell back. Hilda had stopped her low sobbing. “Joe!” she cried. “Joe!” She struggled to her feet. In the dim dancing light she looked at Amy, who was crying, at Martin, at Armand, at Gregory. “He doesn’t know what he’s talking about—Joe!” she cried wildly. Fear sprang out over her blotched face; she implored the others with one upturned and shaking hand, and with the other hand she grasped Joseph’s cold fingers. Martin left his wife and stood by his mother. She leaned against his shoulder and sobbed. But Ernest merely waited, watching his father impassively.
The gloating look had gone from Joseph’s face, but it had become sombre and grim. “Aye, I mind what I’m doing, lass,” he said in a hoarse and dwindling voice. “That’s why I wanted you all here: to see that I knew, and be my witnesses. And there’s Mr. Gregory here, who’s a notary, and can sign and witness things, and say that I was in my right mind. So there’d be no conniving and cheating, no double-dealing and foxy lawyers.” His voice fell; he panted, twisted on his pillows, and at the edge of his livid lips there bubbled a line of tiny red beads.
Dynasty of Death Page 39