Dynasty of Death

by Taylor Caldwell

  The child had fallen into a drugged sleep, moaning and restless. Across her bed the two young men regarded each other steadily and sadly. Then Martin said, after a long time: “Doctor, you don’t know what you have done for me. But some day I might tell you. In the meantime, everything must be done to save this child. Food, comforts, care, nursing—everything. Nothing must be spared. Perhaps, after all, some of us can make this world a little better for her to live in than what it has been.”

  “It’s bad enough now, God knows,” sighed the young doctor. “But I’ll tell you what we can do: if we can get this child out of this—my sister, who keeps house for me, can nurse her in our own home. She hasn’t really much of a chance to live, but perhaps we can make her more comfortable. We could call Dr. Montrose, if you wish; he has done some operations on ear cases, and has had only a fifty per cent mortality. People in New York send for him. You’d like Dr. Montrose.

  At that moment Ernest was reading a note from Eugene, which had been sent by messenger. In it, Eugene informed him that his brother had visited the Kinsolving works, and he, Eugene, did not like the look of it.

  CHAPTER XXXIX

  That evening Ernest said to his wife: “My love, I am very sorry, but I am afraid that if you go to the Culverts’ dinner this evening, you must go alone. I will take you, of course, and call for you. But I am having a very important and unexpected visitor tonight. I didn’t know until this afternoon that he was coming, and it is necessary to receive him at once.”

  May was disappointed. She had finished nursing her child only a few months ago, and was already in her third month of pregnancy with another child. She coveted and cherished every moment of freedom she now had, so protested with some indignation. Gregory, who had previously declined the invitation, offered to escort her in Ernest’s place, and the offer was accepted after much head-tossing, pouting, recriminations and tears. When she had finally dressed and was about to leave, she tapped her husband on the shoulder with her fan. “I’m sorry for your visitor, my dearest,” she said, dimpling knowingly. “Ah, you’re no sphinx to me, Ernest, for all your smoothness!” And went out, laughing.

  Ernest sat before the bright fire in the library. He lit a cigar, smoked it meditatively, and stared at the coals on the hearth. The clock was chiming nine when the butler came in and announced Mr. Martin Barbour. Ernest nodded. When Martin came in, Ernest did not rise heartily as usual, but remained in his chair. From his seat he regarded his brother in silence with his light and inexorable eyes. And Martin looking down at him, felt a ripple of warning all through his body.

  “I see,” he said quietly, “that you know.”

  There was a pause. Then Ernest indicated with his cigar a chair on the opposite side of the fire. “Sit down,” he said. Martin sat down.

  “I suppose,” Ernest went on smoothly, “that this could not wait until tomorrow, at the office?”

  “No, it could not. In fact, I am sure that when I am finished, you will be glad I didn’t wait until we were in the office. But, now that you know I am going to tell you what I am going to do.

  “Some time ago, after the Crimean business, Ernest, it was my intention to withdraw from this business.” He paused; a dark gleam passed over Ernest’s features, but he showed no other sign of any emotion. He, himself, was studying his brother, observing his pallor, his worn and agitated expression, his nervousness and exhausted manner. Martin, regarded him, in turn, very earnestly. “I couldn’t stand the business any longer, this making of guns and explosives to kill other men. I couldn’t bear the thought of my children profiting from death.

  “I told Mr. Gregory about it; I told Amy; I told Ma; I told Father Dominick. Mr. Gregory objected violently, Amy was willing for me to do what I wish, Ma didn’t understand at all. But Father Dominick advised patience.” Again that dark and subtle gleam passed over Ernest’s face.

  “I thought, Ernest, that Father Dominick was wrong. After awhile I became confused. I didn’t know what to do. Everyone seemed against me. Sometimes I suspected I was a fool, and at other times the whole world seemed out of joint, or hungry, like a beast.” The memory of those months of indecision and torment upset him even now, and he stood up, restlessly. Ernest was intently engrossed with the end of his cigar; he might have been alone for any indication he gave of having heard Martin.

  “And then,” Martin continued, “I saw what Father Dominick had meant when he advised patience. There were so many things—But today, I discovered what I wanted to do, what I must do. I went to the Kinsolving works, as Eugene, I see, has already told you. I went because I had been told of the conditions there.” A sort of horror went through him at the memory of that hour in the mud and darkness and rain, and the anguish of the dying child. “But they were much worse than I had expected. But you know that, too.”

  He sat down again, leaned toward his brother, as though he were about to make a last and despairing plea. “Ernest, you know all about conditions there. And yet, you can sit here, before your fire, in comfort, with the rain shut out and a good dinner eaten, and money in the bank, and not feel ashamed. You can even enjoy these things that the misery and enslavement of others have brought you. You can sit there like a stone!” And his voice rose almost to a cry. “Like a stone! You haven’t any heart. You never had one. Why, I can remember you stepping on crickets, absentmindedly, as if it were part of your nature to crush helpless things, and you couldn’t help it. Sometimes you looked at me, as you did at others, and I had to think of those crickets running around on the hearth at home! And these people out there, dying, imprisoned, cold, sick and helpless, are just crickets to you. Yet, I can’t believe it! I don’t want to believe it! I want to believe that somewhere in you there is something mortal, something that can bleed. I want to believe that you will do something about all this—”

  “And what,” asked Ernest softly, regarding the fire placidly, “would you like me to do?”

  Martin felt sick and hopeless, but he went on: “Release these men and their families. Don’t enslave them. Give them money, not scraps of paper. Don’t let them die like chained dogs out there in the cold and the rain. Give them enough to live on. Let them go.”

  Ernest laughed a little, very softly, as if in gentle amusement. Now he looked at Martin directly, and in his pale eyes the pupil seemed pointed and extraordinarily bright. “You’ll never grow up, Martin. You’ll never grow out of the little Eva rôle, will you? Do you forget we are men, and that we are engaged in a great industry? Fortunes are not built on brotherly love and charity. They’re not even built on fairness. Nothing is ever created except by labor and blood and iron. Races aren’t won by keeping horses fat in stalls; fields aren’t plowed by letting the plowman sit with his boots on the fender and his chin on his chest. Roads aren’t built and mountains tunnelled and frontiers pushed back by people who drowse in rocking chairs; all these things have been done and are being done through suffering.

  “But I’ve told you these things so many hundreds of times! I’m sick of it, now. We’re building up an Industry, and other men are building up Industries, and this whole country is going to be made to grow, and grow strong and powerful, by Industry. Somebody’s got to suffer for it. Even die for it, if necessary. But Industry has one great virtue, which you have overlooked: it destroys only the worthless and the superfluous. It doesn’t eat up the best, as other things do. It is a big cow that doesn’t need hay and fresh grass and good corn; it can get along very well on sawdust and chaff. And that,” he added with cold contempt, “is what those laborers of ours are: sawdust and chaff. They’ll never be anything else; their fathers were never anything else. Wars and famines and plagues used to destroy them. But we’ve found something better for them than these—Industry. They at least live, and eat. But I’ve told you all this before.

  “The main thing that I can see, of course,” and he laughed again, “is the ‘imprisonment’ idea. I am afraid you don’t understand. Don’t you know that any man of them, by just sa
ying the word, can leave any time he wishes to?”

  While he had been speaking, Martin had grown paler and more hopeless. He sighed, half covered his face with his hand. “I suppose there is nothing I can say to persuade you,” he said, half to himself. He dropped his hand. “Yes, you’ve told me all this before. You can make it sound so plausible. But lies and cruelty can be made to sound so, and that confused me at first. But they don’t confuse me now.

  “Yes, I suppose if any of those poor men really wanted to go you would let them go. But where would they go? They have not a cent. You’ve taken care of that with your scrip and your company stores. They would starve. I can see that you’ve built a higher wall about them than the wooden one out there.

  “So, now I come to what I want to do, what I must do. I’m not going to withdraw from this business. I’ve an equal amount of stock with you. But you can outvote me, for Armand and Eugene and Raoul and Mr. Gregory are always with you. Either you hypnotize them, or they are like you. I don’t know. So, it is my intention to stay with the Company, to return to those poor men a part of what they have earned. I shall deposit two-thirds or one-half of all my dividends in the bank for these men, so that when they wish to leave they can withdraw a certain part of this money in proportion to the time they have worked for us. That will be considered their savings. When each man wants to leave, he can, with money in his pockets.

  “I shall also provide sufficient doctors for them, and have a small hospital built right on the grounds. Father Dominick will help me. These people are Catholics, most of them, and it shall be a Catholic hospital, endowed by myself and others whom I can interest. We can get brothers to nurse the men, nuns to nurse the women and children. Oh, I know it will take every cent of my dividends and profits. Every cent. But I don’t care! I don’t want a penny for myself or my children. For every man you knock down I’ll raise up a man. I’ll save every child you leave to die. I’ll feed every wretch you make hungry. I’ll free every laborer you put behind your walls.” He stood up again, and a sort of splendor came out over him that struck even Ernest. His face glowed and his eyes were again a blue and passionate blaze. He looked invincible even triumphant, unafraid, co-ordinated and of a powerful oneness. He was no longer the irresolute, silent, withdrawn dreamer that had had Ernest’s contempt, for it was only when he was concerned with himself that he was such a dreamer. In the midst of the black boil of hatred that seethed and bubbled in Ernest there stood a sudden and reluctant admiration for such heroic folly, for such sublime imbecility. It seemed incredible to him; in another, he would have doubted sincerity. But he did not doubt Martin’s sincerity. It was just such a thing that Martin would do; his whole life and nature pointed to sacrifice and heroism, idealism and superb idiocy. To fantasies such as justice and love, straightness and simplicity, honor and gentleness, compassion and peace. People like this, thought Ernest in one clear and luminous flash over that black boil of hatred, are dangerous. They must be destroyed, if the world is to survive.

  But nothing of what he thought showed in Ernest’s continued and casual placidity, in his languid smoking of his cigar. He continued to smoke, while Martin stood there, and he still went on smoking until the glow went out of Martin’s face and became pale resolution. Then he stood also, putting his hands under his coat-tails and staring at the fire. He might have been about to discuss the most insignificant of matters. Even his voice was quiet and indifferent. But he did not look at his brother while he was speaking.

  “Today,” he said, “our stock, common, closed two points higher than it did yesterday. I’ll buy your stock from you, all of it, at today’s market price, though it may open lower tomorrow. I’ll buy your bonds from you at today’s price. I’ll pay you these amounts over a period of three years, twice yearly. And I’ll expect that you will immediately give me your resignation as Secretary of Barbour & Bouchard.”

  And after this, there was a long and, to Martin, a terrible silence.

  His mind, incredulous, refused to believe what his ears had heard. He felt within himself a great dark tumbling and crashing, a falling, a sensation that he had been violently thrust from solid ground into treacherous space. His eyes, staring at Ernest, became protuberant and glazed, and his mouth fell open. But he was more astounded and horrified than frightened. There was a whirling in his head. Scraps of what he had heard his father say, what he himself had thought of his brother, dashed incoherently in his mind like sparks in darkness: “—try to get control”; “—and rob”; “—cheat your mother and sisters”; “—be the whole blooming show, and not leave even a scrap for the rest of you.” But still he could not believe; still he was incredulous. He could only stare, speechless, at Ernest, and now Ernest looked back at him, blandly, relentlessly.

  Martin struggled to speak, and when he finally succeeded, he could only whisper: “So that’s what you’ve been waiting for, and planning for, all this time! To force me out, just as Pa said you would try. I’m in your way, and now you’ll force me out.” He made his voice stronger, and it was hoarse and shaking. “But you can’t force me out! I’m staying. I’ll try to undo all you do, and you can’t stop me! I’ve got to stay for the sake of Ma and the girls, too. You can’t force me out! I’ve got as much interest in this business as you have.” For the first time in his life he was gloating triumphantly; he laughed in his brother’s face. Something of Ernest’s own expression, fierce and exultant, sprang into his eyes. Their mutual hate, so long concealed, now stood between them, and they saw it and recognized it openly.

  Then Ernest smiled, as if deeply amused. He nodded his head. “I think you’ll get out,” he said softly. “For, if you don’t, Hans and Carl Heckl go to prison for helping slaves to escape to Canada. They seem very fond of you. They won’t tell your part in the affair. But, if I do not have your resignation at once, and your promise to sell me your stock, they go to prison for very long terms. I shall see that the terms are long.”

  Martin, suddenly ghastly, sat down abruptly. Ernest, still smiling, sat down also.

  “They’re good, simple men,” he said. “They don’t know how to lie. In fact they were so proud of themselves that they confessed everything. Carl was defiant, but the old man was quite crushed, when it was all over. I talked to them privately before the constables came, and they refused to speak of you or say anything of you—”

  Martin’s eyes were suffused, and he was breathing loudly. He remembered, with self-hatred and despair, what he had confided to Ernest a couple of years before, in his innocence and impulsive trust. He might have known he would be treacherous! Oh, what folly to have trusted him! Better to have trusted a water-mocassin, the devil himself. To have betrayed himself was bad enough, but to have betrayed the Heckls who had trusted him was immeasurably worse. Sweat glistened on his white face, and his lips were livid. God forgive me for a fool! he thought in this despair.

  He looked at Ernest. There was no relenting there, nothing that a man could appeal to, or touch. Any idea he had had of appealing for mercy, for consideration, died at birth. Martin felt as if he had come to the edge of an abyss. He saw Hans’ face, old and terrified and shrinking, his trembling hands; he saw Carl, young and defiant; he saw old Mrs. Heckl, and winced. He had brought these to the mercy of a hyena, a lion. God forgive me! he said again, and did not know that he spoke aloud. He was overcome. Everything he had ever done was in ruins; at every step he, and only he, had committed irreparable follies. And he had dragged other into his follies with him. He became sick with his self-loathing.

  Then after a long time he said slowly and haltingly: “You are trying to blackmail me to get out. You think that I will give up all I have planned to do if you threaten me with the imprisonment of those two poor men. But you can’t get me out; you can’t threaten me. I won’t give up what I have planned to do. I’ll talk to Hans and Carl as soon as I can, and I know that they will agree with me that it is better that two men go to jail than hundreds be in prison and hopeless.”

 
Ernest was still smiling, and his amusement seemed to increase. “I am afraid that if you insist this way, there’ll be three men in prison, not two. It wouldn’t he just for those two to accept the penalty alone, would it? Their associate, you see, must go to prison with them. And I’ll send him there too.”

  “You would send me to prison?”

  “Of course. My dear Martin, you’re always mouthing about justice. Yet you would have me do something very unjust. And sending two men to prison, and allowing their associate to go free, would be very, very unjust. You must agree with that.”

  But to his surprise, Martin had begun to smile. It was a pale smile, and grim, and the lines about his mouth were blue.

  “If I asked you, Ernest, to think of Ma and our sisters, you would laugh at me. If I asked you to remember I am your brother, that we had the same father and mother, you would laugh louder. But still, I don’t think you will send me to prison. You can’t be reached by common human appeals such as reach other men. But you can be reached another way. I don’t think you’ll send your wife’s cousin’s husband to jail. I don’t think Mr. Gregory will stand for your sending his niece’s husband to jail. May and Mr. Gregory are arguments you can’t get around, though, of course, you wouldn’t think of poor Amy.”

  A most extraordinary change had come over Ernest’s face at the mention of Amy’s name. At first, there was stupefaction following the shock of something remembered; it was almost as though he were saying to himself, in incredulity and amazement at his own singleminded relentlessness: I had forgotten that! In my determination to do this thing, in my inability to see anything but the object to be attained, I had forgotten that! I had forgotten Amy. My mother, my sisters, my wife and my children, Gregory Sessions—everybody: I would not step down for all of these. But I had forgotten Amy!