Dynasty of Death

by Taylor Caldwell

  As she lay in her bed slowly recovering, May’s tears washed out the acid outlines of her resentment and grief and hatred, and eventually she could feel sorry for Amy, who had also lost a son. May very well knew that Amy’s children were alien to her, and this seemed a grief greater even than death. I have never understood my own children, she thought, but I have always loved them and they have loved me, even poor Joey, at the last. He really missed me when I went away, and Ernest would be surprised at his letters. But Amy’s children have never loved her.

  What is her life with Ernest? May thought, not without the old pain. What can she give him that I didn’t? Some day he will learn that all devotion and love are the same, and it doesn’t matter in the long run who gives them, so long as they are given. He is getting old; he will learn all this before very long. Even the memory of passion can become a weariness and a bore, and such a sentimental word as “affinity” can be something to remember with an embarrassed giggle.

  May knew she could never be really happy again, that both her age and her losses and her experiences had made pure happiness impossible. But she was feeling something very like peace and contentment these days. It was obvious to her after awhile that Renee and Godfrey were in love.

  Renee really knew a great deal about music, and her few gaps were filled in by a passion for it. She gave Godfrey and his music all of her fierce dark devotion. May’s interest had been like a face determinedly smiling, until the facial muscles had ached, but Renee needed no pretense. She flowed around Godfrey’s tortuous personality like water, content to follow the channels and the rushing cataracts. She made herself more quiet, more quiescent, following, yet retaining, her own identity. Never at any time did she irritate or annoy him or get in his way, but when the occasion seemed necessary he could not turn her back nor make her flow another way. She told May, quite seriously, that Godfrey reminded her of her father, which convulsed May internally, for surely no two men were less alike.

  Just at this time the armaments industry was being investigated with grim thoroughness by the French Government, and the papers were full of the news. Ernest Barbour’s name was frequently mentioned, and once an old photograph of his, taken more than twenty years ago, appeared among other photographs of munitions manufacturers in the papers. May cut out the dimmed print and put it away among her things. She was not much interested in the investigation, but whenever she read Ernest’s name a thrill ran along her tired nerves and the old ache came back. It never occurred to her that anything serious might happen to him, for to her he seemed invincible. After awhile the investigations began to dwindle, and his name no longer appeared.

  In March, Godfrey and Renee were married at the American Embassy, very quietly. Only a few friends were there, and Renee, in vivid blue velvet, with a white lace collar, and a blue hat wreathed in white plumes, looked almost beautiful, so vivid and flaming were her dark face and brilliant eyes. She had gained weight, and needed no artificial padding to fill out her figure. The papers carried the news to America, and two days later a cable arrived from Ernest expressing his pleasure at the marriage, intimating he would like the young couple to come home for a visit, on their honeymoon, and informing them that he had ordered Cartier’s to deliver a diamond tiara to Renee, and his Paris bank to deliver an enormous check to Godfrey, as his gifts to them. May read the cable, but her son and his young wife were already on the Riviera. Ernest wastes no time on old animosities and old failures, she thought, and perhaps that is the secret of his power. He always goes on from where he is.

  Now that she was alone again, the ancient sickness of mind, the old longing and loneliness and sorrow, came back. It was spring in Paris, but there was no pleasure in it for this woman getting old in a strange country. She had lived here nearly four years but was still a stranger without peace and without roots. She thought of America with poignancy and nostalgia, and even its faults seemed endearing to her. How did any one find it possible to forget the place where he had been born, to find any real sustaining comfort under alien skies, to learn all the nuances of alien tongues, to discover friends among alien faces? It was not possible, and the complete cosmopolitan was the complete alien. A man who found a home wherever he was never really had a home anywhere. He was like one of those Japanese plants without roots, that needed only air and a little water to grow in any land, but had no substance in itself, no strength, no roots to weld the soil and make it firm and a foundation on which to build an enduring home.

  All May’s roots were in the Sessions house, and in Windsor, where she had married and given birth, and had laid away her dead. All her substance, her flesh, was there. This ornate, carved, red-carpeted, gilded apartment on the Champs-Élysées was not home. These streets were not home. And as the days went on the nostalgia became an increasing throb and ache, like a growing abscess.

  Then one dim green evening, two years later, when the sky was like pale polished silver, May opened her American newspaper to read that Amy Barbour, wife of Ernest Barbour, “the Armaments King,” had died of typhoid fever, an epidemic which had raged, with intermissions, for years in the city of Windsor, Pennsylvania.

  CHAPTER CIII

  The old butler did not open the white panelled door with the delicate fanlight above it. He had been replaced by a youngish man in new livery, who did not recognize this smartly dressed, plump but obviously foreign lady who was just paying off the driver of a station cab. The butler did not approve of strangers, and especially not of female strangers, and as the lady, white-haired and bright-eyed, with deep clefts in her cheeks where young dimples once had been, came into the hall, his courtesy did not decrease but his coldness grew.

  “Good evening, Madam,” he said frigidly, and inquiringly.

  “Good evening,” she replied, smiling a little. He was a trifle relieved. In spite of the foreign cut of the fashionable coat, the extra plume in the stylish hat, the scent of distinctly un-American perfume, the lady was obviously not a foreigner. Possibly a lady who travelled a great deal—“Mr. Barbour, Madam, is not—er—in the best of health lately, and after he returns home he invariably rests in his room until dinner time. He—er—has left standing orders that under no circumstances is he to be disturbed by any one or anything—except, perhaps, a fire. His own words, Madam.”

  “Well, I certainly am not a fire, am I?” responded the lady, with her kind and charming smile. “So, if you don’t mind, I’ll wait for him in the library,” and without hesitation, as though she well knew her way about in that house, she walked across the hall toward the library. Amazed and apprehensive, the butler somehow got to the door before her and opened it with ceremony and anxiety. A low fire burned in the grate this early spring evening, but there was no other light. “Please don’t light the lamps,” said the lady. “I—I’d like to sit here awhile, in the darkness. You see, I—I know this house—quite well. I’ll wait. Don’t bother Mr. Barbour.”

  “But, Madam, you have not given me the name!” exclaimed the man, wild thoughts of female thieves, adventuresses and God knows what rioting through his mind. But she obviously knew her away about here; she spoke like a relative. He became suspicious: perhaps a relative that was not on the best of terms with the family, a poor relative. But those clothes!

  “When Mr. Barbour comes downstairs, you might just send him in here, to me,” said the lady. “He knows me very well. I want to—surprise him. Just tell him a lady wishes to see him. I’m certain he won’t blame you a bit!” and she smiled at him again, such a kind humorous smile, not the sort of cold convulsion of the lips with which other ladies spoke to him. All his apprehensions disappeared; she sat there by the fire, taking off her fine French gloves and loosening her furs. Her white hair glistened; the diamonds sparkled on her withered white fingers. An engraved watch was pinned by a jewelled butterfly to the shimmering black silk of her bodice. There was no doubt at all that she was a lady, and a great one, at that. The butler, feeling himself in some way drawn into a delightful conspiracy, b
owed and retired. Whoever this lady was, Mr. Barbour could be only pleased to see her. Perhaps a sister, from England—Ladies were always up to these arch surprises, disturbing though they were to steadier male minds.

  Left alone, the lady ceased smiling. She held out her hands to the fire in a distinctly automatic gesture. Over her shoulder, she looked slowly about the dark library. The fire evoked an arm of a chair here, the edge of a bookcase there, gilding the black and polished wood, picking out the scroll of a picture frame, glimmering on a glass door, displaying an ornament one moment only to let it fall back into shadow the next, advancing and receding over the thick dark crimson rug near the hearth. A clock, invisible in a black and distant corner, chimed with a deep softly sonorous note, and the fire crackled. The room was pervaded with a warm smell of old leather and bindings, sandlewood and furniture polish. Everything, except for the clock and the fire, was silent, not with an empty somber silence, but with the waiting, friendly, rich silence of home just before the dinner hour.

  Home. The lady looked about the room, as one drinks after prolonged thirst. Home. It would always be home. Everything was the same. Not a thing had been moved or touched. The old elegance and security, the old polished beauty and dignity, were here as she remembered them. Surely nothing could be so cruel as to drive her out of this house again, her house, her home, from which she had been exiled but to which she had returned. She began to touch her eyes with the edge of her lace handkerchief. And now there was another sound in her ears, the quick painful beating of her heart, the pounding of her pulses.

  She stood up and walked about the room, touching the mirror-like surface of the mahogany table with its brass feet, the back of a black leather chair with the imprint of bodies sunken into it, the crusted side of a vase, the rich heaviness of a curtain. The spring garden outside was filled with a dim white light, in which the new trees were blurred. A window stood a little ajar, and the lady could smell the pungent odor of newly thawed earth and new grass. She could see how the garden path turned toward the rear of the house: the sundial still stood there, and the arbor, and already there were frogs throbbing in the pool in the back.

  All the sights and scents and touches and sounds of home! She leaned her wet cheek against the windowsill, the drawn curtain in her hand. If she just waited a minute or two, like this, she would hear Gertrude’s high fluting voice above, the scrambling of Guy and Reginald in their bedroom and their affectionate quarrelsome voices; she would hear Joey’s young surly rumble and the slam of his door; she would hear the faint tinkling of Godfrey’s piano in the drawing room. She would hear Ernest’s footsteps on the stairs, quiet, firm, slowly descending as though his foot ground on and then pushed away each stair. But surely a little quicker than that, a little firmer, than she could make this memory! A little surer, a little more determined. But she could not make the memory hurry or become firmer. Faster, faster, she thought with a sort of pain. Quicker, quicker. But the step was slow, almost as though it were a trifle uncertain.

  Then, in reality, the door did open, and she saw a shadow in the dim doorway. Still at the window, still holding the curtain, she turned very slowly, almost as if her whole body had become numb. She was hidden by that curtain, hidden in the growing darkness. The shadow stood on the threshold, hesitatingly, then came into the room. “Is there someone here, waiting for me?” asked Ernest’s voice, a little lower, a little slower and heavier than her memory of it.

  “It is I, Ernest,” she said in a faint voice. She dropped the curtain and advanced toward him. Waves of faintness rolled over her. The fire, aroused by the draft from the open door, burst into orange flame, illuminated the long dark room. It glimmered on Ernest’s face, revealing it, and she saw that it was the face of an old man, now—old and hard and seamed and gray, and tired to death. But the chin was still firm as stone, and the sunken eyes, as they stared at her unbelievingly, were pale and glistening and implacable as ever.

  As he stood there, gazing at her, his face wrinkling, his eyes blinking, she saw that he was almost gaunt, that his throat was withered and corded above the stiff winged collar and black cravat, that his shoulders were bony and lifted in the old man’s posture under his black coat, that his hands, hanging at his sides, were clenched a little. But, even as she looked, the whole scene seemed to shift, and he was the young Ernest again, who had stood there in his youth, a stranger in the Sessions house, and behind him stood Gregory Sessions, with his Voltairean smile and his wicked eyes.

  It was all a dream, all the years that had gone since the day she had first seen him, and they were back here together, young again, with children and grief and hatred and fear and pain all in the future, perhaps to be avoided. Yes, it was all a dream, even this.

  “May,” he said. His lips moved, and the name was hardly a sound on them.

  “Yes, Ernest.” She stood before him, and held out her hand. He took it. She could feel its cold dryness, and her fingers closed about it, warm firm fingers, leading him into the room.

  “I’ve come home, Ernest. Your wife. I’ll never go away again.” And then, “Ernest! I’ve come home! Tell me you love me, just a little, a very little! Just a little will do, all the rest of my life!”

  CHAPTER CIV

  Quotation from The Windsor Herald, owned, controlled and managed by Barbour-Bouchard:

  “On Tuesday evening, February 14, 1898, a reception will be held at the home of Mr. and Mrs. Ernest Barbour in honor of Mr. Barbour’s seventy-first birthday. Among the illustrious guests who will be present are Mr. Jay Regan, whose late father was an intimate friend of Mr. Barbour, Mr. James Bellowes ‘the Kerosene King,’ Senators Geoffrey Walters and Burnsey Seaton, Mr. William Howard Taft, Governor Tom Rankin, former Governor William Trowbridge, Commodore George Vanderlip of New York, Mr. John Jacob Astor, Sir Oswald Temple-Temple, attached to the British Embassy, Count Ludwig Von Holsen, of the German Embassy, M. Etienne Beaugard, of the French Embassy, Prince Nicholas Kuropotkin, of the Russian Embassy, and Count Antony Romandi, of the Italian Embassy, Supreme Court Justice James Hilton, Secretary of War Burnside, Secretary of State Barnett.

  “This is a momentous occasion for the city of Windsor, and a momentous occasion for Mr. Ernest Barbour, he having reached the age of seventy-one. It is needless to state the obvious fact that Windsor today might well be proud of Mr. Barbour, through whose genius, industry, sacrifices and true American spirit, it has become famous, and the cynosure of the eyes of the world. The story of Mr. Barbour’s life is the story of America, colossal, courageous, bold, daring, determined, strong, unswerving, scornful of obstacles. Mr. Barbour stands among the industrial giants of this mighty age, individually unique, a figure for all posterity to admire.

  “Ernest Barbour was only a young immigrant boy when in the year 1837 he arrived with his parents on these shores. The Barbour family came to Windsor because of the presence here of an uncle, Mr. George Barbour, who, with one Armand Bouchard, had started the embryo firm of Barbour-Bouchard. Mr. Joseph Barbour, father of Ernest, was admitted as a partner in the little gunpowder business, which at that time occupied a small wooden two-room building near the river. From this humble beginning, Mr. Ernest Barbour has built up the great Barbour-Bouchard Company, and its subsidiaries, among which are the Sessions Steel Company, the Kinsolving Arms Company and the Amalgamated Chemical Company. Mr. Barbour is also a director of four major railroads, three coal companies, and three banks.

  “There will also be a ‘gathering of the clans’ on this felicitous occasion. There will be present: Mr. Paul Barbour, Vice-President of Barbour-Bouchard, son-in-law of Mr. Ernest Barbour; Miss Alice Barbour, daughter of Mr. Paul Barbour and granddaughter of Mr. Ernest Barbour; Miss Elsa Barbour and Mrs. Percival Van Eyck, niece of Mr. Barbour; Mr. Percival Van Eyck of New York; Mr. Thomas Van Eyck, his son; Mr. Jules Bouchard, President of the Sessions Steel Company, and his wife, the former Adelaide Burgeon of this city, and their three sons, Pierre, Emile and Christopher; Mr. François Bouchard, the
famous poet; Mr. Leon Bouchard, President of the Windsor Savings Bank, and his wife, the former Miss Antoinette Bouchard, niece of Mr. Ernest Barbour, and their children, Irene, Bertha, Georges, and Nicholas; Mr. Andre Bouchard, Vice-President of the Windsor Savings Bank, and his wife, the former Miss Beatrice Coley of this city, and their two children, Alexander and Alexa, who are twins; Major Norwood and Mrs. Norwood, and their two children, Chandler Norwood, General Manager of the Barbour-Bouchard Company, and Mrs. Henrik Van Ryn of New York; Mr. Henrik Van Ryn; Mrs. Chandler Norwood and daughter, Miss Ethel Norwood; Mr. Etienne Bouchard, the famous actor; Mr. Honore Bouchard, President of the Kinsolving Arms Company, and his wife, the former Miss Ann Richmond of New York, daughter of Mr. Bertram Richmond of the American Utilities Company, and their four sons, Francis, Jean, Henri and Peter.

  “There is a possibility that General Edward Gordon will be present also, though the General is at the present time in Washington, discussing the Spanish situation with the President.

  “Unfortunately, Mr. Godfrey Sessions, the famous composer, will be unable to attend the reception in honor of his father, Mr. Ernest Barbour. Mr. Sessions, it will be recalled, took his mother’s maiden name for artistic reasons. He is at present in Vienna, where he is conducting a series of his symphonies and concertos before the Emperor Franz-Josef. Mr. Reginald Barbour, it is said, will also be unable to attend because of grave personal matters.