Dynasty of Death

by Taylor Caldwell

  “I remember when this was just waste land,” he said aloud, and suddenly, to the silent young man beside him. Paul listened politely; he glanced without interest at the great new houses and the tamed river, smooth dim gray under the failing light. Waste land, he thought. Probably bought for a song. The old codgers had struck it rich, without much work. Luck, and a new land. But he, and the young men like him, had to sweat blood for every penny.

  “Your father,” went on Ernest, in an odd tone, “used to play down there, with your Aunt Dorcas. Your Uncle Eugene had a brother, a cripple. Jacques Bouchard. Your father and he were great friends. They lived in a little world of their own; Jacques died in it. Sometimes I think your father died in it.”

  Paul’s lip twisted. When did all this happen? A thousand years ago! It was an old, uninteresting story, dead and stale; he wished his uncle would stop his reminiscing. The issue about Gertrude was too near and hot and troubling. Ernest glanced sideways at him, and smiled wryly to himself, not without sympathy. (He thinks I’m becoming an old bore, talking about the past. He doesn’t know that there is really no past, that it keeps intruding into the present, with all its old pains and emotions. It’s more important than the present.) He had not thought about Martin intently for many years, but suddenly Martin was everywhere, more real, more vital, than his son sitting so stolidly in this carriage. Poor wretch! thought Ernest suddenly, with such intensity, such aroused feeling, that he was astonished and amused at himself. Poor wretch! he repeated. And as if this acknowledgment of his brother were a secret enchantment, his whole personality was suddenly assailed by the essence of the dead man, so that he felt unstrung through all his mind, and even his body. Then, this was followed by the most colossal sense of loss, of utter emptiness, as though he had been drained of everything, of integrity, of personality, of reality, of substance. It was the strangest feeling, and somehow terrible.

  I’m getting old, he thought. He turned to Paul. “We own half the mines in Pennsylvania,” he said. Paul answered something, something that was loud and strong and pleased. I don’t know, thought Ernest. I don’t know.

  The carriage had left the river, was rolling again through quiet streets toward Oldtown. They crossed the tracks. Night had closed down; the air was full of smoke and the chirp of crickets. He, Ernest, had stepped on a cricket once, on the hearth of the dingy old house in England. Martin’s face shone before him with the light of the fire on it; he had seen the crushing of the insect, and his face had been full of a wild terror. As though I had stepped on him, thought Ernest. Now that was very odd! I wonder why I never thought of that before?

  Paul was asking him something. “Godfrey? Oh, he’s not expected until next summer. He’s completing his symphony in Paris. He had hopes that it would be played in New York the following winter.” Ernest’s voice was noncommittal, smooth with polite conversation. “Reggie, of course, is doing very well at Harvard; I have fine reports of him. One of the youngest freshmen. I’m hoping that he will forget his religious nonsense there. It was all that damned Amish woman’s fault, the nurse he’d had. Missionary, by God!” Did Paul remember the nonsense about him not wanting buttons on his clothes? That was eight—ten years ago! It was still a family joke. “Where are your buttons?” Signifying, of course, that the one questioned had lost his wits. Guy? Ernest frowned. Not doing so well as one could wish at his school in Philadelphia; too much spirits; always wanted to play. At fourteen, he still played pranks. But “little” Joey—ah, there was a lad after a man’s heart. Ten years old and a profound business man, careful of every penny. (Damned sneaky little miser! thought Paul viciously.) Never happier than when in the shops, said the “little miser’s” father, grinning slightly.

  They rode up the drive. Through the trees the lamps of the house shone out at them brightly. They could see the new gaslights in the large drawing room; they had a bleak white light which Ernest did not particularly care for. They spoiled the house for him.

  Fires had been lighted in the house, and the warm quiet air was very grateful as they entered the hall. How quiet the house was these days, with only Gertrude and Joey home, the three other boys away. The rooms were full of a before-dinner hush. May was reading by the fire in the second drawing room. She wore glasses now, and when her husband and nephew entered the room, she removed them, laid them carefully between the pages of her book. She smiled at Ernest as he kissed her forehead. She smiled at Paul, as she gave him her hand. She did not like him at all, but she smiled at him.

  “It is too bad that we did not know you were coming to dinner, Paul,” she said, and her round merry eyes with the wrinkles spraying out from them had a clear brilliant spark. “Trudie is dining with your Aunt Dorcas tonight. It is Etienne’s birthday, and I believe there is a little party afterwards—”

  And she smiled again, as she laid her book aside, and looked at the fire.

  CHAPTER LXVI

  It was Etienne Bouchard’s birthday, and his parents were making a little party for him. He was fifteen today, and felt quite a man. He knew he was extremely handsome and graceful, very much like his Uncle Raoul, who had been killed in the War between the States. In the clear dark pallor of his right cheek there was an extraordinarily deep dimple, very fascinating, and he had clear, dark, beautiful eyes, like a girl’s. Everything seemed clear about him, from the brow that rose straightly to the line of his thick black curls, to the lines of his fine smiling mouth and sharply cut nose. Nothing was blurred or distorted in his face, or irregular. Nothing of his English mother lightened or made phlegmatic the quick lively play of expression on his features. He was all French; the warm gaiety of the southern Provinces ran frothing in his actor’s blood. For Etienne was a born actor, and a calculating rascal into the bargain, for all his charm. Slight though he was, and not very tall, his exuberance and vivid temperament made up for his lack of flesh and stature.

  He was given to bullying his fourteen-year-old sister, Renee, who adored him; he scolded her violently one moment, was lavishly affectionate the next, so that the poor young girl was in a constant state of apprehension or delight. But he did not bully Honore, the broad, rather short thirteen-year-old brother, with his irregular distinguished face and ponderous quietness and thoughtful glances. Etienne frankly admitted that Honore was the “bright” one of the family, and by this admission usually captivated his audience, as though in some way he had added lustre to himself and made Honore faintly ridiculous. And in some mysterious way, when the brothers were present together Honore looked like a distortion of Etienne’s good looks, the perfect nose pulled a trifle too long in his case, the smiling mouth made crooked, the clear brow heightened ludicrously until the hairline seemed to retreat precipitately, the beautiful dark eyes stretched up and out, giving them a decidedly Celestial appearance. Yet, in spite of this, after the ludicrousness faded, Honore seemed to gain in distinction and Etienne to become too obvious and too florid, a little too colorful; he reminded one of a male dancer with timed gestures and artful postures.

  Eugene and Dorcas had given their son a handsome gold watch on his birthday. Dorcas had added her English caution to Eugene’s French parsimony, and so a gold watch was an event in the family. They still lived in Armand’s ugly stone house in Newtown, using the same heavy, ugly old furniture, even to the old-fashioned stove and Dutch ovens in the flagged kitchen and the high deep French beds into which one crawled after using a stool to mount upon. Dorcas, who was growing niggardly as she grew older, might have carried her thrift into the kitchen and dining room, but here Eugene’s French love of good food and rich food held up an abrupt hand. Nothing would do him but the finest sauces, the best wines, the juiciest joints and hams, the heaviest silver, the handsomest plates, the choicest coffee and sweetest butter. “The cousin from Quebec” still presided over the kitchen, and in spite of Dorcas’ uneasy hints, she spared neither cream nor herbs, wine nor eggs, in her cooking. Nor would Eugene stand for sleazy linens on his bed, nor thin towels or shoddy blankets.
He was quite willing to do without elaborations and elegances, but he demanded the best in necessities. So the family of children, while never beautifully nor elegantly dressed, wore the most expensive of plain and comfortable clothing, ate richly, and slept under down beds. Nor was their learning skimped, Eugene employing a well recommended tutor for his two older sons, a governess and nurse for Renee and the twins. If there were no pictures on the dark drab walls, no ornaments on the mantelpieces, no lace curtains at the windows, or ruffled counterpanes on the beds and gold-and-crystal bottles on the dressers, there were bookcases crowded with books, the finest of pianos in the dark drawing room. Never was Eugene too tired or too busy to talk to his children, to instruct them, to listen to them, to answer their endless questions with the gravity he would give to any adult. They repaid him with serious devotion and bottomless love. He did not believe in idleness: the boys made most of their own toys; each had his own section of the garden for which he was responsible, his own horse to groom and tend. Etienne and Honore had accompanied their father frequently to the Kinsolving works (now five huge buildings brawling without ceasing) and at the respective ages of fifteen and thirteen had really formidable knowledge of the making of munitions, and an understanding of labor. Renee had her responsibilities, also, caring for her own room and helping with the twins, making her clothing and learning to cook, as, Eugene said, “all thrifty, well-bred French girls do.”

  Etienne, the elegant, was already, at fifteen, ashamed of his ugly, unpretentious home. It did not matter to him that his father was a millionaire; he wanted evidences of this happy state in beauty and indolence, pleasure and money in the pocket. His allowance of one dollar a week infuriated him; boys with less affluent fathers received anywhere from five to fifteen dollars. On his birthday, he had gloomily expected a dollar. The advent of the gold watch, elaborately engraved, sounding the hours, the quarters and the half-hours with a fairy chiming, with his name etched inside the thick yellow case, and further garnished with a ponderous chain and a garnet charm, stunned him. He could not believe it; his first thought was that “the old man must’ve gone soft all of a sudden.” His next was emotional gratitude. He had it in and out of his pocket a dozen times during the course of the little party in his honor. He dangled it before the envious but noncommittal Honore, whose hands itched for it. He opened the case and let Renee and his little brother, Andre, and his little sister, Antoinette, put their ear closely to it to hear the sweet far tinkling of the quarters and the half hours. (The twins were handsome ten-year-olds, blond and plump and good-tempered and dimpled—Dorcas’ “angels.”)

  Etienne sat among his presents, his lighted birthday cake before him. He blew it out, very earnestly trying to extinguish all fifteen candles at the same time. He succeeded, and looked about him proudly, awaiting applause. A mighty fire roared on the immense, old-fashioned hearth; candelabra on the mantel and on tables near the walls filled the great crowded room, with its stone floor, with a warm and golden light. Etienne, his cousins, Gertrude Barbour, Philippe, Jules and Leon Bouchard, his brothers, Honore and Andre, his sisters, Renee and Antoinette, his two especial friends, David Benshaw and Harold Lansbury, and his parents, all sat about the enormous round dining room table set with its thick white linen cloth and heavy silver and steaming birthday dinner. None of his other cousins were invited, for François was ill, and Etienne had no liking for Paul and Elsa, Lucy and John Charles Barbour, nor even for Gertrude’s brother, Joey.

  Etienne loved to be the center of admiration and importance. He had an actor’s passion for excitement and drama. His parents, and Philippe, Leon and Gertrude, were highly edified at the mystery with which he invested his unopened presents, the slow, calculated gestures with which he opened them, while the younger children wriggled on their chairs with impatience and implored him to hurry.

  Jules, who, at sixteen, was like a prematurely old gnome, had given his cousin a fine new saddle for his horse, brave in light-brown leather and heavy silver harness. Leon, fourteen, “the deep one,” had long ago guessed Etienne’s wistful love of elegance, and had brought him half a dozen gorgeous cravats, very theatrical in a sober decade that leaned heavily toward simple black. Philippe gave him a signet ring, heavy gold and garnet, engraved with his initials; Gertrude presented a travelling case fitted with silver, for Etienne was going to a preparatory school in Boston in a few months. Honore gave a set of Shakespeare and Milton and a prayer book, all bound in old vellum and stamped in gold. The twins had combined on a pair of ebony military brushes, and the two especial friends had facetiously collaborated on the best of Swedish razors against the day he would begin to shave. Etienne was quite overcome by all this magnificence. He had never received such lavish gifts before. But best of all he loved his gold watch, and after that, Philippe’s signet ring, and then the cravats. However, he had sufficient imagination (the actor’s imagination), and natural sweetness of disposition, to be the most touched at the present from “the cousin from Quebec,” which was a rosary of ebony and old silver. It was not new; it had been in her family for generations, had belonged to her mother, and her mother’s grandmother, and the gift was a personal sacrifice. Etienne kissed her tenderly and lingeringly for this, though she was an old woman and her skin was flaccid and dry to young lips that already liked the feel of warm firm flesh. And, despite all his artifices and unconscious strivings for effect, there was no hypocrisy in his kiss.

  After the ceremony of the presents, Etienne beamed about the table, his handsome face glowing and shining with pleasure and affection. He sat like a sultan among offerings. Dorcas, smiling at him from her place, thought him as beautiful as a dark angel, even more beautiful than the twins, her darlings. Eugene, touched, pressed his son’s hand swiftly, with an unusual display of Gallic affection. Under the shelter of the heavy tablecloth Gertrude’s hand lay in Philippe’s, and the burning of her eyes was due to something more than the wine and Etienne’s joy. She looked about her vaguely, suffused with a sort of dreaming ecstasy. She had never thought this great lopsided room very pleasant, after her own lovely old home, but tonight it had a patina of soft radiance that bewitched her. She loved every one. Her heart was beating with deep hot strokes like cymbals, and a shiver of slow delight quivered along her nerves. In a little while she would walk home with Philippe, disdaining carriages, and he would tell her again that he loved her, and they would plan for the day when they could be married. (Philippe, though only just nineteen, had already been graduated from the University in Philadelphia, and was working with his Uncle Eugene in the Kinsolving works.)

  Renee’s allowance was only fifty cents a week, and she had nothing of her father’s French thrift in her. Each Friday she discovered that she not only had not one cent, but was usually in debt to the shrewd and placid Andre. (Andre’s favorite cousin was John Charles Barbour, and the two ten-year-olds ran a mutual bank between them for the benefit of their acquaintances and less foresighted young cousins.) So, when the time arrived to buy Etienne a birthday present, Renee had no money, and her agony was very great. But Dorcas believed in making a child suffer for irresponsibility, and was adamant to her daughter’s frantic and tearful pleas. She also warned her other children not to lend the helter-skelter, rough-haired Renee any money. So, Renee, in despair, was reduced to giving her brother her treasure, a gold holy medal, which had come from Rome and was guaranteed to have been blessed by the Pope. No one, except Etienne, realized what this sacrifice had cost the girl, and he had the delicacy to accept it in private from her trembling and soiled little hands, and to kiss her feelingly for it. It meant nothing to him, for Etienne was anything but religious, though he loved the ceremony and the beautiful ritual of his Church; his secret admiration was for Voltaire, not that he understood much of that great man’s subtlety and fiery lightness of wit, but because he adored his dramatic boldness, his gay courage.

  Warm with the memory of Etienne’s kiss, Renee sat and glowed at her brother. Then she looked at Dorcas. She never ti
red looking at her mother, whom she thought the most beautiful, the wisest woman in the world. She respected Dorcas more than she respected any one else on earth, even the priest, and her mother’s lightest command, her least stern glance, was enough to whip the girl to instant action. But she did not love her, though she would have died for her. All her love was for Eugene, all her idolatry; after Eugene, came Etienne. Honore was too much like his mother to awaken much affection in his older sister. For once, Renee was too overcome to chatter loudly as usual.

  The dinner over, they all surged in a body toward the fire. The younger children sat on the hearth. There were nuts and tiny, rich little French pastries, glacé fruits and sweets, and black hot coffee. Preserved ginger, clear as amber, and frosted with sugar, was passed around in old Madam Bouchard’s hammered silver compote. Eugene sat with his plump, fair little daughter Antoinette on his knee; Renee had twisted herself upon the arm of his chair, and was laying her dark thin cheek on his graying hair at intervals. Andre hammered steadily at the nuts; they flew all over, and there was much scrambling for them, and much laughter. Jules was straining, in the firelight, to read one of Etienne’s new books. Philippe and Gertrude sat on the ancient settle in the chimney corner, and whispered together. Dorcas, sitting smiling and erect, like a quiet golden goddess in her dark blue draped dress, watched her niece and nephew uneasily. She was well aware of Ernest’s plans for his daughter, and she wondered what he would say to this. But she was too indifferent, too self-centered, to disturb herself overmuch. She pulled her gaze away from the young lovers in the corner, and serenely concentrated upon her family. Eugene, more in love with his beautiful wife than ever, could not keep his eyes from her. How elegant she was! What a lady she was! And how like that pauvre Martin, except for that slight hardness (he called it resolution), about the jaw, the slightly pinched nostrils, which his infatuation could not call selfishness, and the faint coldness of her eyes. But she had her brother’s natural dignity, his gentle manner, his sweet and luminous smile. She was delicately strong, Eugene decided for the hundredth time, where Martin had been weak. He wondered, sighing a little, if it were really true that Dorcas had grown just a trifle cold the slightest bit unfeeling, since her brother’s death. He missed a certain responsiveness in her, a shy yielding. It was as if, since the tragedy, something had been stunned in her, some soft distant core had petrified.