Dynasty of Death

by Taylor Caldwell

  “Gracious, did you ever see such a fiendish child!” cried Florabelle, wiping her eyes and shaking her head. “I can do nothing with him. No one can do anything with him except Philippe. The Major is such a coward; he always runs. But, you didn’t tell me if that is a new jacket? I can’t say that black becomes you so much, with your sallow skin, Trudie, and your hair. Why on earth doesn’t your Mama take you to Dr. Brewster? He’s doing wonders in building up young ladies who are too thin; iron and such. You look as if you are about to go into a decline. Will you have some coffee?”

  “No, thank you, Aunt Florrie,” replied Gertrude in a soft voice. “Where’s Philippe?” she asked.

  “Philippe? He’s out in the stables with the Major. The new mare isn’t doing so well. She’s about to foal,” added the forthright Florabelle, who called reticences in the presence of unmarried young ladies “stuff.”

  The bronze sunlight had disappeared, and had taken with it all the warm browns, the golds and the scarlets, of the land, leaving an earth robbed of color, and desolate. A hollow silence lay over everything; when a horse neighed, or a dog barked, the sounds had an unreal and dreamlike quality. The house and the stables seemed gray and unsubstantial, and the ground, when walked upon, showed a white and broken frost-glaze, crackling underfoot. Houses and trees in the distance were hung like darker shadows in a vague mist, and near at hand the trees showed naked and twisted boughs painted with the bright glisten of frost. The air was cold, yet damp, and one’s breath floated near at hand, like a small cloud.

  Gertrude ran over the frozen earth, her narrow small black boots leaving little white tracks behind. She picked up her dark red skirts as she ran; the seal jacket blew back under her arms, and her hair, loosened, was like soft smoke about her ardent young face. She peered in the carriage house; no one was there. She heard Philippe’s voice in friendly altercation with a groom, and went toward the stables. She found him there, demonstrating to a newly hired stable boy the proper way to curry a horse. He was coatless and hatless, his white shirt sleeves rolled up; he was currying the horse with vigor, and the boy stood idly by, watching with assumed interest.

  “Philippe,” said Gertrude, entering the stable. The youth swung about swiftly, and at the sight of Gertrude his dark lean face sprang into life and joy. “Trudie!” He dropped the currycomb, seized her hands, and looked at her with delight and amazement. The stable boy, interested now, gaped.

  They went outside, went behind the stables, where they could be alone with only the desolate autumn garden around them. They went instantly into each other’s arms. Philippe pressed his warm palms to Gertrude’s cheeks, looked down with passionate eyes into hers, tenderly kissed her parted lips. They could not speak for a few moments; they could only hold each other, smile, cling together. A great content and happiness gathered in them, a sense of completion. Philippe’s eyes, usually so intensely dark, had warmed to a deep and lustrous brown, shining with tenderness, and he held Gertrude against him almost fiercely.

  “My sweet, my sweet,” he said, tilting up her chin so that he could kiss her again and again, over and over.

  “Philippe, darling, I’ve got such good news,” Gertrude was able to say after a few more minutes. She began to cry, laughing and smiling through her tears. “Papa called me into the library last night, and do you know what he said? He said that if you and I still thought we loved each other after three more months, we could marry with his consent! Isn’t it marvellous? Oh, I’ve never been so happy!”

  Philippe was astonished, overwhelmed with joy. He held Gertrude off from him, so he could look unbelievingly at her. “Is it possible? He meant it? Gertrude—thank God! I—I can hardly believe it. Everything smoothing itself out so, after all our worries. It doesn’t seem quite right, to have things happen so easily. Why, Trudie, do you realize how happy we’ll be, planning openly, and waiting just a little while longer, after all these years—” He stopped abruptly, and in a strained voice added: “It seems too easy. All of a sudden, it seems—ominous. Things don’t happen like that. Not when they’re connected with your father. Forgive me, sweetheart,” as fear and apprehension flashed into her face, “but it doesn’t sound like your father. He was so set on your marrying Paul. He doesn’t give up that easily. Are you certain you understood him?”

  “Yes, Philippe! He did say that. Oh, now you’ve frightened me,” and the agitated girl, already overwrought, burst into stark tears. Her thin shoulders became convulsed, and she regarded him piteously and with terror.

  He was instantly upset and remorseful. “Trudie, dearest, forgive me. How could I say anything like that? It was actually—vicious. But it was so sudden. Why, only last Monday night, when he and your Mama called on us, he gave me a look that curdled my blood, and every remark that he said that night seemed directed at me, and sharp as hatred. He can be the nastiest of any man I ever saw. He sat there and talked constantly of Paul’s superiority in every way to every young fellow in Windsor, and hinted what he was going to do for him, and sneered at me obliquely until even poor Mama uneasily guessed there was an undercurrent. And I got colder and colder and sicker and sicker, because of you, Trudie, and seeing the way he hated me, and I remembered what a simple old nun had told me when I was a little shaver—about hate being a real poison that could injure the person you hated, or a sort of lightning that could burn up his blood. I really became quite afraid, and felt dead with hopelessness. I saw he thought I was standing in Paul’s way, and he was so set on Paul. And then all of a sudden you tell me he has relented, and is quite willing for us to marry—”

  “But Philippe, he is!” Gertrude’s vehement cry was as much to reassure herself as to reassure Philippe, for a cold ring had begun to tighten about her heart, strangling it. “He said so. You can’t mistake what Papa says. He’s never ambiguous. He means what he says. Besides, he wouldn’t hurt me with a lie. He—he was gentle when he told me, and kissed me, and looked a little sad, when I cried and laughed together. And then, I was so excited, and felt so loving toward him, that I kissed his hand—it was around my neck—and he jumped when I kissed it. And then he kissed me, and said, over and over: ‘Remember, I always want your real happiness, Trudie, my darling. Always remember that, whatever happens. No matter what you might think, your happiness is first with me.’”

  “It doesn’t seem possible,” marvelled Philippe. He looked down into her pale pinched face and eager mouth, and was full of remorse and tenderness. “I’m always saying the wrong thing, sweetheart, aren’t I? I’m always so careful about accepting things too quickly; that’s the French in me. But I believe now; I believe it is all right.” He lifted her hands (such little cold hands! he thought) and kissed them. She pressed them to his lips as if to draw his warmth into her shivering body, and smiled so tremulously.

  “It is all right, Philippe. Please believe it.” Her eyes widened, became intense and strained. “Why, if it wasn’t all right, I’d die. I’d die!”

  In the library in the Sessions house, Ernest paced restlessly and gloomily to and fro. He could not rest. He stopped, started again, paced endlessly. The great door opened noiselessly, and May entered. He regarded her somberly, without speaking. And she stood there quietly, watching him for a long moment before she spoke. When she did it was in a quiet yet penetrating voice.

  “Ernest, I’ve been married to you for twenty-three years, and I don’t know anything about you. I’ve never known what you were thinking, not one single solitary thought. Trudie came to me last night, and told me what you had said to her. She was almost crazed with joy, poor child.”

  Ernest turned his back to his wife, and stared through the window. She advanced a step; her hands were clenched together before her and there was a strange expression on her middle-aged face, which still retained its girlhood dimple.

  “Ernest, I thought I’d done all I could do when I locked my door against you. But I realize now that I can do more.” Her voice rose, become loud and portentous. “Ernest, if you hurt G
ertrude, if you break her heart, I’ll leave you. One roof will never cover us again. Either you will leave this house, my house, or I will.”

  When he finally turned around, she was gone.

  Ernest picked up a newspaper he had been reading. There was an important little announcement bracketed on the front page: “We are glad to inform our readers that Bishop Aloysius Dominick of the Philadelphia diocese of the Roman Catholic Church, is to visit our city within the next few days. He is well remembered and loved by our Catholic readers, and even our Protestant readers will recall him as Father Dominick, pastor of the Church of the Annunciation, this city.”

  CHAPTER LXXII

  Florabelle Norwood was exceedingly indignant when Ernest attempted to impress upon her most forcibly that there was really no official engagement between his daughter and her son. There was to be a three-month trial period, in which the young people were to consider all phases of the situation, to look at other girls and youths of their acquaintance, to judge each other deliberately, not to monopolize each other exclusively, but to attend all parties to which they were invited where they would meet their contemporaries, and to retain, in public at least, a merely cousinly relationship.

  Florabelle professed to be insulted, and it was only after prolonged kindly and tolerant reasoning on the part of the Major that she finally acknowledged that Ernest might be showing common sense. “After all,” she admitted, “Ernest was quite right in saying that perhaps Philippe was a little young to know his own mind; boys are always younger than girls. Though I have come to love Trudie like a daughter, and just couldn’t think of any one else for Philippe. She is getting to be quite passable; a little more flesh here and there, and brighter clothes (her mother does dress her so spinsterish) and she would be rather distinguée. Never pretty, of course, with that skin and that perfectly lustreless hair, and sharp shoulders, and those funny, sort of bewildered gestures of hers, but in time she would be rather fascinating, as so many plain women are.”

  Ernest held his daughter strictly to her part of the bargain. He would have felt less uneasy had she shown a little disinclination, but she obeyed him with such radiance, such joyful alacrity, that he began to avoid her, and a bluish pinched expression appeared about his nose. She was amiable and gay to Paul, who had been taken into the secret by Ernest, and went with him to many of the early winter parties of their friends. Paul had been warned by his uncle not to speak of marriage, or even affection, to Gertrude, but at all times to exert himself to be charming and gentle, unexigent yet unobtrusively always at hand. “In other words, old-fashioned words, woo the child,” said Ernest. Paul, who had the wiliness of a real love, followed instructions, and Gertrude found, to her conscience-stricken astonishment, that Paul was not at all bad, and at times a pleasant and interesting companion. He was always sympathetic, never demanding, yet maintaining a virile independence which prevented him from being servile, and caused her to respect him. Heretofore he had imposed, or tried to impose, all his demands and opinions and beliefs upon her; now he listened, and discovered how delightful, how enlightening it was, to listen when a beloved woman talked freely to one without reticence or fear. His assumed gentleness became sincere; he cultivated to its full extent his very slight sense of humor, and even made a few witty remarks, which Gertrude found entertaining. As Ernest had restricted her days and evenings with Philippe to two or three a week, she would have been lonely, and would have spent the empty hours in thinking about Philippe and brooding, if it had not been for the adroit and quite casual visits of Paul. After a lonely and dissatisfied day, Gertrude was quite surprised at the pleasure and relief she felt when Paul “unexpectedly” called in the evening, with various exciting suggestions about theatres and rides and visits to informal parties. His suggestions were always offhand; he had abandoned his old possessive and stringent attitude. When they attended dances together at the homes of friends, he was careful not to ask for more than one or two, leaving Gertrude to fill her program as she wished. Sometimes she would not see more of him than a distant glimpse, flirting with other girls, for the entire evening.

  Once or twice, half apologetically, half archly, she hinted of her “understanding” with Philippe. Paul seemed quite sympathetic, said something light and easy, and changed the subject. He appeared entirely disinterested. “Paul,” Gertrude told her parents, “is evidently taken by Belinda Lansbury; he does nothing but dance attendance on her at every party.”

  “He could do worse than Miss Belinda,” said Ernest. But May said nothing. She only watched. And as she watched, some cold and deadly suspicion began to grow in her that her husband was playing a game, and Paul with him. What the game was she did not know, but she was alert, fearful and militant. But, she told herself, it was like watching in a dark forest, not knowing what tree hid the enemy.

  In the meantime she herself had other worries. Godfrey’s letters from Paris were becoming fewer, and those few sounded constrained, incoherent. Once or twice he would fill pages with wild assurances of his love for his mother, his promises, vehement and passionate, that she would not be disappointed in him, and that he was sure she would always “understand.” The next letter would be short and cold, merely acknowledging checks, or commenting on the weather, or repeating that he would try to be home for Christmas. Again, May felt that she was surrounded by dark trees and jungles, utterly confused, yet conscious of menace. Reginald, fortunately, was having good, if reserved, reports sent home; his letters were always ceremonious and correct, yet lifeless. He never mentioned friends; it was evident that he had none even in that gay and social University. He never forgot to send his love to each member of the family in turn. “Copybook sentiments,” sneered Ernest. Guy wrote home, gay, effervescent letters, mostly “dunning” his mother for small extra sums of money; he was witty and sprightly, and seemed to May, who still had a high regard for laughter and the bright virtues attendant on it, to be the most intelligent of her children. She was of the firm opinion, and perhaps rightly, that no one with a sense of humor is a fool, and that while many excellent people did not possess this endowment, the majority without it were dolts, and dangerous to society. However, she would have liked to have had a few good reports from Guy’s school, instead of the reserved notes from the headmaster, if only to placate Ernest, who was certain that Guy was a “wastrel.” Too, she was worried about Joey, who was a secretive, though not sly, boy. It was painfully evident that his love for his mother was more than indifferent, and that he worshipped his father. He would look at May, when she spoke on even the most casual subjects, with a sidelong knowing expression and the slightest and most faintly contemptuous of smiles. He had nothing to say to her; he avoided her. Big and heavy-bodied, small and sharp of light eye, obstinate and ponderous, tenacious and dogged, bad-tempered and sullen, he caused his mother many heavy-hearted hours. It was so evident that he thought her trivial and unimportant, and found her gentle lectures, to the effect that while money was very good it was not the supremest good, rather puerile. He moved among the members of his family, deliberately unaware of them, never asking about the absent ones nor making himself agreeable to his sister, and becoming alive only when his father was with him. It was becoming more and more obvious that he really hated Gertrude, because of Ernest’s attachment for her, and he sometimes would not speak to her for days, though passing her in halls and meeting her at the table.

  Sometimes May, sighing, would think: “If I had only had Godfrey! How happy I would have been. Or Godfrey and Guy. But how much happier I would have been if I had never had any children at all! Not one of us, Amy, Florabelle, Dorcas or myself, has had any real joy from our children. In spite of the sentimentalists, children are no comfort in grief, no companions in loneliness, no consolers in illness, no hope for the future. Flesh of our flesh, they are often stranger to us than any real stranger, and become our enemies.”

  But knowing this, she could not free herself from her anxieties, her exhausted alertness, her love and worry a
nd great fear for all her children.

  CHAPTER LXXIII

  It was two days before Thanksgiving. The weather had been very inclement, snowing one day, sleeting the next, raining the next. It seemed that the sun had not shone for weeks. Everyone was affected by the atmospheric depression, and went about gloomily and lifelessly.

  May, who was expecting a visit from Florabelle, had dressed herself in a fine new gown of black wool trimmed with black velvet, and elaborately draped. Her gray curling hair, with dark bright stains of red shading into it, was piled high and frizzed over her forehead in the latest fashion. She wore her grandmother’s old garnets set in ancient gold, and the deep dim fire sparkled against her ears and at her throat. She fixed an expression of good temper and serene amiability upon her plump dimpled face, which sagged at the chin and the lower areas of her cheeks. Dressed in her best, jewelled and faintly perfumed, she had considered this a duty she owed to her family because of the dreariness of the weather. “You all have such bad manners,” she complained to her gloomy husband and lifeless daughter and sulky young son. “You leave it to me to keep this house from being a morgue.”

  Joe was tinkering with something in a remote attic. “Probably counting his miserly savings,” said Gertrude, somewhat spitefully. Gertrude, in dark green velvet, which did not enliven her colorless face in the least, sat near the window where she could command a view of the rain-drenched, dead-leaf-cluttered, drive. Everything seemed to weep, the skies, the brown soaked earth, the empty trees.

  “Dear me, Trudie, you are very disagreeable today,” said May, who was busily crocheting lace. “Do come away from that chilly window and sit near this delightful fire. You look so wan and tragic.”