All these things Ernest Barbour chanced when he sued his wife for divorce, gambling on the possibility that she would not contest the suit, would not name Amy in a suit of her own. He knew his wife extremely well, and sometimes, during the weeks that followed the astounding news, he felt quite secure. But at other times, remembering May’s anger, which could be violent on occasion, remembering her integrity and courage, her contempt for scurvy subterfuge, her almost blatant lack of fear where honor and name were concerned, he was not so certain as he would have liked to be. Besides, after he had filed his suit for divorce, he was puzzled that he did not feel more relief. Instead, an uneasiness he could not name, a sort of heaviness, grew on him.
When May was served with the papers, living as she was on a remote and austere farm with her son Reginald and his young, stern Amish wife, her first reaction was incredulity. Next, she was stunned. And after that, prostrated. She took to bed, in the narrow, boarded comfortless but immaculate bedroom which she occupied, and stayed there for nearly two days. She did not cry nor complain, nor do anything except gaze at the pineboard walls and the candlewick bedspread which covered her. Then she got up, dressed, and went to Paul’s house. Reginald, dour and silent and dark as ever, with neat buttonless clothes and short black beard, drove her to the station, where she took the branch line. It was a ride of about two hours. She arrived at Paul’s house in the late evening, just after dinner. Paul and Elsa were surprised to see her, and with some embarrassment made her welcome. They had not yet heard of the divorce proceedings. Elsa forced her to eat a portion of dinner, then carried her off to see her little granddaughter, then triumphantly assigned to her the best guest-chamber. Both she and her brother were eaten up with curiosity regarding May’s visit, and were highly excited by her pale drawn face and red-rimmed eyes. But Elsa, alone with her aunt in the guest-chamber while May removed her wraps, could get nothing out of her except her usual kind well-bred remarks and praises for he care of the baby. They went down to the living room together, where Paul was waiting in a highly nervous condition.
May sat down and said, quietly: “Your Uncle Ernest is suing me for divorce, Paul, on the grounds of desertion—and cruelty,” she added with a faint twisted smile.
“A divorce?” Paul had turned a peculiar sickly yellow. “A divorce?”
“Yes.”
Paul and Elsa looked at each other, both thinking the same appalling and terrified thoughts.
“I am thinking of fighting it. Yes, I am certain I shall fight it,” went on May. “Unless, of course, he agrees to drop the suit.”
Shocked, full of fear, enormously upset, Paul got up and paced the hearth rug. He thought: Then, this is the end for me. For, of course, she will bring mother into it, and then—But, of course, she’ll bring another into it! How else could she fight it? Elsa, thinking the same thing, sat in miserable silence, watching her brother.
“Would you mind telling me how—how you will fight the suit, Aunt May?” asked Paul, standing in front of her and looking down as her wretchedly.
May smiled drearily to herself, and twisted her handkerchief about her fingers.
“Don’t be frightened, Paul,” she said kindly, “I’ll avoid a family scandal.”
Paul turned crimson, and Elsa colored also. “Look here, Aunt May,” began Paul, stammering, flooded with a weakening and profound relief. He stopped abruptly, for May had burst into tears. They comforted her, but over her bowed head they looked at each other in triumphant elation. Their pleasure increased when she said she would not stay more than the night, but would return to Sweetcold the next day. It was not until she had gone that they began to wonder why she had ever come to them.
Amy, alone in her house, read the news a, few days later in the newspapers. She could hardly believe it. Then, overcome, intensely moved, she sat down and wrote to Ernest, begging him to withdraw his suit. It never occurred to her that May might fight the case and bring her name into it. Remembering her cousin and her love for her husband, her devotion and kindness, Amy became ill with pity and indignation. She waited a long time for a reply from Ernest, but he did not send one.
Then, to everyone’s amazement, May set sail for France just two days before the suit was tried. Her attorney appeared in court and curtly announced that his client had decided not to appear and not to contest the suit. Within the hour Ernest Barbour was granted a divorce from his wife, May, and suitable property settlements were signed and sealed.
He walked out of the courthouse through a thick cluster of questioning newspapermen, and went home, to the Sessions house. But for some reason, he could not bear it there. He saw Gertrude’s face in the hallway at the foot of the stairs; he saw his son Guy leaping like a faun down the hallway; he saw Godfrey at the silent closed piano; he heard Reginald’s low doleful humming behind the door of the room he used to occupy. And in the drawing room, sitting before the fire with her embroidery, he saw his wife, not as she was now, but a young gay May, with dark-red curls tossing coquettishly and a huge hoop-skirted dress all lace and satin. He went upstairs again to May’s old room and sat in her chair, his head on his chest. The whole house was empty, full of faint and hollow echoes. The early winter ivy, robbed of leaves, tapped the window. It was very cold, for there was no fire in the room and he had not lit a lamp. The window-glass rattled, and he heard the rush of the dry leaves on the dead grass below. The dry and ashen desolation of the evening seemed to permeate him and disintegrate him.
He thought: I have driven all the Sessionses out of their house. I’m a stranger here, but I’m in possession. Then, without reason, he remembered May the night he had returned from England, when Godfrey lay in his cradle in the now empty nursery. He remembered her laughter, her kisses, the smell of her warm young flesh, the feel of her cheek against his, the touch of her curls. He got up quite suddenly and went downstairs again.
Three months later he brought Amy into the Sessions house as his bride.
CHAPTER XCVII
Honore Bouchard secured his patent on his prismatic powder and the machine he had invented to compress it. He turned it over to Ernest Barbour for fifteen thousand shares of stock in the firm of Barbour-Bouchard and ten thousand shares in the Kinsolving Arms Company. Jules Bouchard sold his steel patent to the Sessions Steel Company for eighteen thousand shares of stock, and was made general manager of the Company. Soon thereafter Honore was sent abroad by his uncle to compare the American powder with the new prismatic brown and smokeless powders which the Belgians and the Germans were manufacturing. Honore learned the methods of manufacture, changed the formulæ only slightly, and returning to America patented his new explosive. England heard of the new powder and bought one hundred thousand barrels of it.
Honore suddenly had a brilliant idea. Why not manufacture revolvers and other arms so accurately and uniformly that the parts were interchangeable? Within three months the Kinsolving Arms Company was sending sights, barrels, mainsprings, triggers, to all arms-users in the country who wished to repair their weapons. For this idea he acquired five thousand more shares of the stock. When he perfected new machinery which increased output three times, he was made assistant to his father, Eugene Bouchard.
Only a few months later the Sessions Steel Company sent Jules to Europe to observe armor-plate factories, for America was now considering armor-plated battleships. He returned with such revolutionary, such magnificent ideas, that his uncle was tremendously excited. Not only this, but Robsons & Strong) and Schultz-Poiret, had granted the Sessions Steel Company licenses for the use of their processes in making the plate. Ernest, accompanied by Jules, visited the Gonegan Steel Company in Pittsburgh and the Middleton Ordnance Company, and these companies joined the Sessions Steel Company in the manufacture of armor-plate. The Sessions Steel Company secured the government orders for this. Hardly a year later Jules invented a new steel, based on a new German patent.
Jules was not devoid of even more brilliant ideas than those of his cousin, Honore. Why not issue
catalogs in various languages, advertising powder, plate and munitions? Within a short time Compagnie des Aciéries de Windsor and Compañia de Acero de Windsor were doing miraculous business. The Russians placed tremendous orders, alone, and Schultz-Poiret reported sales exceeding imagination.
Honore proved to his uncle’s and father’s satisfaction that the handmade rifles and pistols made by the best artisans were vastly inferior to the weapons turned out by his newest invention, an amazing machine. Heretofore hand-made weapons had been considered superior to machine-made weapons. Ernest pointed out they were still cheaper to make than the machine-made type. Honore set to work on improvements, and soon the machine was cheaper than the hand. He also suggested to Ernest that the latter advise wealthy governments to sell their obsolete arms to poorer nations, and buy the newer types as they were invented. Honore visited Turkey and sold the army six hundred thousand rifles. He had a very hard time, for there was a certain etiquette to be gone through, a certain smoothing of officials who were hot averse to accepting a little gift or two. Honore used bribery to good effect, and the orders were placed.
In the past there had been growing a formidable rival to Barbour-Bouchard, Robsons & Strong, and Schultz-Poiret (those three good friends), in Essen, Germany. This was a firm known simply as Kronk. Germany, whom Ernest called the “surly hog of Europe,” had grown arrogant since the Franco-Prussian War, and was excessively proud of Kronk, who was reported to be making the best cannon in the world. The Russians bought in prodigious quantities, as did other nations, and Barbour-Bouchard and its friends felt consternation. Kronk was even more unscrupulous than they; its agents swarmed everywhere, bribing ambassadors and other officials. It was all-powerful in European courts, gathering together representatives from every nation to secure orders for cannon which they would use to murder each other. Kronk, all-sufficient, refused even to receive Ernest Barbour to discuss negotiations, until Jules’ latest steel patent was dangled before it. Thereafter the greatest accord ensued. The three good friends were now four, and the peace of the world was delivered into their ruthless hands. With great insouciance and speed they sold their products to both sides of any international argument, the wealthier side securing the best and the latest and turning over its older and obsolete arms to the munitions manufacturers, who in turn delivered them to the poorer antagonist for neat sums. “We are,” said Ernest, through a dozen foreign newspapers, “not concerned with controversies. We are businessmen only, meeting a demand adequately.”
When a great English newspaper pioneered in denunciations of “these dealers in damnation,” Ernest issued a statement to the effect that “we are neutral; we cannot take sides. Private emotions and principles, nationalism and patriotism, greeds and injustices, in any nation, are none of our affair. The abolition of armaments dealers will not abolish war, which is older than cannon and rooted in greed. If men cannot have cannon, they will use rifles; if they cannot have rifles, they will use the bow and arrow. If they cannot have the bow and arrow, they will use their fists. The first step in the abolition of the armaments dealer is the abolition of war, which all my patriotic enemies will agree is preposterous.” And again: “Peace is an absurd dream. While one man has one thing more than his neighbor there will be hatred and war. It all resolves to cupidity, and all the fine phrases, the noble ideology, the patriotic fervors, the holy indignations and righteousnesses, will not change this basic fact. To blame the armaments dealer for war is to put the cart before the horse.” And he, who was a private and enormous contributor to two of the most militant patriotic societies in America, said for publication: “The foolish patriot is the clown of the greedy statesman. He is usually very articulate, and has all the clichés and the platitudes on the end of his tongue. The people love noble phrases, which relieve them of the necessity for thinking. If you are really looking for enemies, look at your patriots, and, beyond the mouthings and gesturings of these innocent mountebanks, look for the statesman who adds up accounts behind the beating of the drums.”
The great English newspaper conceded much of this, with honest reluctance. “But,” it said, “it does not relieve the armaments dealer of guilt, in that he supplies the weapons for stupidity to do murder.” To which Ernest replied contemptuously: “We have no reply to sentimentality.” And again: “Profits have nothing to do with emotions, which are the luxury of the incompetent.” On a certain occasion he said: “Hatred is not to be despised. Nothing grows in the marshes of peace. Strife is, and always has been, the promoter of civilizations and the destroyer of barbarisms.” He regretted this later, when it was extensively used by his enemies as proof that he instigated wars with “the noble phrases he despises, for his own private gain.”
In the meantime Jules and Honore Bouchard were threatening the peace of mind and happiness of Paul Barbour. He, himself, by the exercise of innate force and inability to see obstacles, had accomplished as much in his way as had Jules or Honore, but it was less spectacular. It never occurred to him that Ernest might appreciate his efforts and successes as much as the more flamboyant accomplishments of his cousins, and he was tormented by his anxiety. He desperately wanted glamour to attend what he accomplished, but he was naturally too laborious and painstaking of character to add this color. He naïvely believed that because his work lacked drama and excitement and color it was not seen by his uncle, and he literally bit his nails in a very fever of apprehension. His hatred for and envy of Jules, especially, caused him sleepless nights in which even his vehement grief for Gertrude was forgotten. (Being of the turn of mind that can think intensely only of one thing at a time, the pressure of his sorrow was relieved by the profound and active irritation of his fear and worry.) Jules had by far a more sinister and subtle appearance than did his more stolid-appearing and slower-mannered cousin Honore, and lacked Honore’s effect of impervious integrity. His eyes were quicker and darting, “like the tongue of a snake,” thought Paul with loathing, and his whole body seemed swift and agile and supple, like a snake’s body. His silent attitude, his ever-watchful face, his faint secret smile, alarmed and infuriated Paul. He appeared always to be engrossed in some subtle and treacherous plotting, and when he spoke, his words, innocent and courteous enough, gave his audience a slight sense of shock, so incongruous were they with that dark countenance and those “licking” eyes. Paul’s old distrust of “the Jesuit” grew to a sort of mania of hatred, an insanity of suspicion and detestation, an almost uncontrollable desire to do murder. Before all this, it would never have occurred to him to humiliate himself in an attempt to placate Honore; he had always scorned the Bouchards, and the very idea that he might one day try to win the friendship of a lesser member of that family would have made him shout with contemptuous laughter.
But he did try to placate and win the friendship of Honore Bouchard. Though his imagination was not intense, his instincts were very strong, and he smelt a very vivid but hidden danger. Jules, he felt, was the dangerous one, the greater menace to his ambitions and desires; but he also felt that strength and protection lay in Honore. So, for the first time in years, he visited the home of his Uncle Eugene, put on his frankest and friendliest manner, assumed a geniality he had unconsciously picked up from Ernest, and wooed Honore. Honore was not too surprised; he had been warned by Jules that this might happen. Jules had laughed cuttingly about it, as he had made his prophecy, and as Paul sat opposite him with such a naïvely ingratiating face, Honore felt pity for him, remembering Jules’ laughter and cruel expression. He was also embarrassed for Paul, as well as sorry for him, and his conscience, which he had inherited from his father, stirred uneasily. Jules, he thought, smiling stiffly at some pleasant remark of Paul’s, was really a vicious devil, cold and corrosive as some deadly acid; if he had been here tonight he would have gloated behind the thin dark mask he wore over his real face. How he would laugh tomorrow when Honore told him of Paul’s attempts at placating. And then, of a sudden, Honore, though burning with shame for Paul because of the latter’
s humble words and manner, decided not to tell Jules. His resolution was not seriously disturbed, his determination not at all moved, but he was genuinely sorry for Paul and was sad that he must some day hurt him mortally. Sitting there, with his fixed smile beginning to hurt his facial muscles, he suddenly thought that he was being treacherous to Jules, and between his alarm at this and his pity for Paul, he was very uncomfortable indeed. When he found himself promising to have dinner with Paul at his home some night the following week, he was aghast. Now he must tell Jules, and hear his merciless laughter at Paul, and after that he would spend a frightful evening with Paul, wondering to whom he was being treacherous, and all in all succeeding in being actively miserable. Before Paul went he was violently cursing his “softness,” and accordingly his manner at parting was so suddenly abrupt and brusque that Paul left in perturbation, which, when seen by Honore, disturbed him more than ever. A dozen times or more that restless night he told himself that Paul had wooed him because he was afraid of Jules, because he knew that Honore was one of the heirs of Eugene Bouchard, the partner of Ernest, and because he childishly hoped that he might succeed in splitting the combine of Jules and Honore and Leon, and that in the end, should he succeed, his old patronizing manner toward Honore would return. But all this realization had little effect at the present time upon Honore’s uneasiness and wincing compassion for him.
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