Dynasty of Death

by Taylor Caldwell

  A thaw had set in, and the mounds of snow outside were gray in the pale moonlight. But they were no grayer than Ernest’s shrunken face, which seemed hardly larger than a young child’s. His great broad forehead and thick shock of whitened hair looked grotesquely large, out of proportion, in contrast with that face. It was a mummy countenance, surmounted by the skull of a giant. From the ruin of his flesh his nose stood out, short and strong and distended, like the upturned prow of a ship that was swiftly sinking under water. His eyes were shut. May could see how he struggled for breath, for the cords twisted in his withered throat. His whole being was absorbed in one terrible fight for life-giving air; nothing else mattered to him except those short painful gulps; his hands were clenched on the counterpane, and upon his features was an intense concentration, as though he counted his breaths. Now all of the power of him, all the strength, the resistless force, was focussed on this small yet all-important point.

  “Ernest!” cried May, overcome by her realization. She bent over him, speaking loudly: “Ernest, Ernest, darling! Look at me!”

  A faint scowl of impatience touched that most awful concentration, as though she had inexcusably disturbed him in the midst of something portentous. But he did not open his eyes. The breathing went on. The nurse lifted his head a little, felt his pulse, fixing her eyes intently upon his face.

  “The doctor will be here in a moment,” she whispered. The pale wan moonlight striped the shadowy curtains, and there was silence outside and in the Sessions house.

  May had put her hand over the icy bony fingers on the sheet. There was a sound of confusion in her brain, but she could feel nothing. She bent over Ernest again, and called him, urgently, out from the darkness and chaos where he fought in his colossal struggle to live. Perhaps she reached him, for his eyes slowly opened, bleared, tortured eyes, and he looked at her. His breathing became easier.

  “Ernest, dearest,” whispered May. “Dearest, don’t you know me?”

  He smiled at her, seemed, behind the webby curtain of his eyes, to recognize her.

  “Amy,” he said, and his voice was strong and quick again.

  May still held his hand, but her face seemed to fall into ruin, to disintegrate.

  “He knows you, Mrs. Barbour,” said the nurse, pleased.

  But May looked only at Ernest. His expression had become ineffably gentle, full of love and old passion. She had never seen this expression of his in all her married life with him. Only Amy had seen it. It was as if a scythe went slowly through all her body, laying it open, exposing it to agony and helplessness.

  The icy fingers moved under hers, took possession of her hand. He held it strongly, with young possessiveness and power, as he had held Amy’s hand. He was smiling, an indulgent but ironical smile. “I knew you had never really gone away, Amy,” he said.

  An iron spasm jerked May’s face. She kissed his forehead, put her lips in his hair. “You know I could never have left you, really,” she murmured. “You know I must always come back to you. It doesn’t matter who else would leave you, Amy will always come back.”

  “Yes,” he said, and smiled.

  He seemed to sleep. His hand became colder and colder. Downstairs there was a subdued opening and shutting of the outside door, and quick heavy steps on the stairs. The doctor had arrived. He bent over Ernest, ignoring the old woman who half lay on the bed beside him, her lips in his hair. He glanced at the nurse, shook his head.

  Ernest stirred feebly. He turned his head in the direction of the door.

  “I want to see the children,” he said. “I want to see Trudie.”

  “Yes,” said May, holding him. “Yes, dearest, they are coming.”

  His face brightened to a look of pleased expectancy.

  He continued to stare at the door, waiting, watching, with pathetic impatience. Occasionally he would blink slowly, as he watched.

  And then, finally, his eyes did not blink again, but stared, emptily, at the door.

  On the other side of the world, in the sunlight, the Japanese at that moment, were firing a salute to their emperor. The great guns bellowed and vomited across sea-green water, shaking ocean and earth and heaven with thunder.

  Barbour-Bouchard guns.

  CHAPTER CXII

  The guns that had roared at the coming and the going of emperors were mere whispers compared to the thunder that followed Ernest Barbour’s death. The British newspapers devoted pages to pictures and stories about him, boasting that he had been born in England, that descendants of his uncle, George Barbour, still lived there in Lancashire, on local farms or in Manchester itself. There were photographs of these descendants, and special correspondents were sent to interview them. With no exception at all, the relatives expressed their pious hopes for Ernest’s situation among the dead, and eulogized him.

  Great men in Europe and America were interviewed concerning him. Those connected with munitions were reserved and cautious, but politicians and financiers, senators and presidents, kings and emperors, were lavish in their expressions of grief, reverence and praise. Ernest’s photographs, from young manhood to old age, appeared in hundreds of newspapers, his life story was printed in a dozen different languages. Wires hummed with the news of his death. Jay Regan, “the younger,” was among the illustrious who thronged Windsor to attend his funeral. Condolences signed with famous names were delivered in yellow telegram sheafs to the widow, who never even glanced at them. In fact, very few looked at them, except reporters and inquisitive visitors. But Paul looked at them, with mingled gloom and pride. And strange to say, grief. As with most ruthless and sentimental people, death covered for him a multitude of sins, temporarily. However, beyond his uncle’s death, he was not allowing himself to think much, or he would have become distracted.

  But there was one man who raised a strong angry voice in the universal pæan of praise and sorrow, and this man was one Lord Kilby, a peer who had never bought an armaments share, and held a responsible Civil Service post:

  “The world resounds with sentimental sorrow for the passing of this man whose tardy philanthropies cannot overweigh the universal agony and misery which he and his kind have inflicted on their fellow men. On every hand one hears expressions of regret and sees grave faces. Why?

  “If Ernest Barbour had contributed a serum or a treatment for the cure of cancer, diabetes, syphilis or tuberculosis, which would have saved a million lives from premature death or living torture, his name would be known only to a few, and those he had benefited would have remained in ignorance even of his identity. Had he saved a life, the papers would have vouchsafed him a small paragraph on a back page. Had he lived in honor and kindness and integrity, there would have been only a small knot at his grave, and a half-foot headstone to mark where he lies.

  “But this man manufactured death and ruin, built up an immense fortune on the bones of battlefields, suborned honor and the integrity of Governments, bought generals and politicians and journalists and kings with a cynicism that is inhuman, frightful to contemplate. All war widows and orphans, deprived old parents and crippled soldiers, owe their wretchedness to him and his kind. Every war that is brewing, and will be brewed in the ominous future, was born in his brain, for the sole purpose of increasing his wealth and his power. The civilizations that will die, the multitudes who will starve, the children who will perish in gutters and wallow in their blood, the homeless, the famine-stricken, the fleeing and the lost, the oppressed and the maimed, the wanderers who will fly in terror from land to land, seeking shelter, the ruined walls of cities and the blasted earth, the pestilences that will destroy and ravish, will all be, in that dark future, because he lived.

  “If the foolish world has a prayer to be said on the passing of this man, it will be: ‘Deliver us from this Evil.’”

  Lord Kilby was known as an honorable and capable gentleman, and his words carried weight. They resulted in the forming of a Committee in London to “investigate” the armaments industry. But these innocent gentleme
n soon collided with a most formidable array of their colleagues who owned large blocks of shares in this nefarious industry; they came suddenly face to face with the most relentless of countenances; at one time they brushed royalty and retreated in the utmost of decorous dismay. They arrived precipitately in a silent forest of mute and terrible enemies, all glaring at them with deadly eyes, all armed, all ferocious and watchful. The investigating Committee, in rather tremulous voices, announced that they had “found nothing of importance.” And mopped their brows.

  Ernest Barbour lay in state in the magnificent little church he had built in Windsor. All but his face was covered with a blanket of violets and lilies, roses and carnations. Burning crimson and deep blue light fell through the high narrow windows upon his features, so quiet and shrunken now. Old and dead though he was, never had he looked so implacable and relentless, for all the waxen folded hands and the closed eyes. All day long, for the three days he remained there, a long line of people from Windsor streamed by his coffin, whispering or awed, curious or sentimental. More than they came to see the dead man did they come to catch glimpses of men whose names were familiar in the newspapers they read. When the funeral services were held, on a clear pale March day, the church was packed to its doors, and a multitude gathered outside.

  It was a dignified short service, for, as the minister said sorrowfully: “In his life he was simple and unpretentious. In his death let him remain so. In his life, he avoided all acclaim and notoriety, clung to the quiet ways and the gentle, unassuming manner of living. He believed that his memory would be his Monument, that the world would judge him for all the mighty things he had done, and think of him, in his private life, as a mere country gentleman. And that is how we remember him, less for his vast accomplishments, than for his tender interest in his fellow citizens in Windsor and his old-fashioned and steadfast faith in the Good, the True, and the Beautiful.

  “And so, my dear sorrowing friends, let us remember, not the great man the world knew, but the Good Neighbor, the Friend, the simple local Citizen.”

  Jules Bouchard, sitting among his family, kept his head bowed. But a faint smile lay bleakly on his lips while the minister spoke.

  Alice was there, terrified and pale and red-eyed, with her husband and her mother-in-law, and the old Major, who shuffled with his cane. Across the pews, across the dusty beams of light, she looked at her father, who would not look at her. Dear, poor Papa, how sad he seemed, how harassed, how pale! Aunt Elsa looked over once or twice, with great severity and bitterness, but the last look of all was soft and grieved. Alice could not bear that; she wept aloud.

  The widow was there, swathed in black veils. She leaned her head on her hand, and never turned or moved during the entire service.

  They carried him to the desolate cemetery, where the ground was still yellow with mud and the trees empty. They put him in the earth, and left him there. The cemetery had grown as the city had grown, and its outer edges were not far from the Sessions house. Now, through the leafless branches, the upper windows of the house looked across and down on the heaped grave. The house endured, but the man who had given everything for it, and destroyed everything for it, was nothing.

  In another and lowlier section of the cemetery the teamster was already lying, his grave deserted except for a few sheaves of dead and blackened flowers.

  CHAPTER CXIII

  To the surprise of everyone, Ernest Barbour had left a considerable fortune to his son Godfrey, ten thousand dollars apiece to each of his granddaughters, Reginald’s children, one hundred thousand dollars to Paul Barbour, the same to Elsa, ten thousand to Lucy Van Eyck, the same to his sister, Florabelle, and to May the income from a huge trust fund, which was to be returned to the bulk of the estate upon her death.

  But his real heir, after various philanthropies were taken care of, was his granddaughter, Alice Bouchard. The size of the fortune was incredible; Alice was now one of the richest young women in America. The joint executors of the estate were Paul Barbour and Jules Bouchard.

  Paul had hoped, to the last bitter moment, that his legacy would be materially larger than it was. He had expected at least five hundred thousand dollars. He had hoped that Ernest had indicated, at least in a suggestion, that he might be named as president of Barbour-Bouchard. But all he had now, was his hundred thousand dollars and his own private savings and fortune, which were very considerable—and the ominous realization that the Bouchards could now oust him entirely from Barbour-Bouchard and would probably do so.

  When he heard that François had been named to the directorate of the Kinsolving Arms Company, he saw the plot in its entirety, and wondered incredulously why he had not seen it before Ernest’s death. He became physically ill with anxiety, despair, bitterness and hatred and loss. Robin’s Nest seemed unendurably desolate without Alice’s high prattle and tapping heels and eager, breathless laugh. To come home, night after night, after a day of apprehension and hopelessness, to find Elsa, in mourning, waiting for him with red-rimmed eyes, was more than he could stand. In the four weeks following Ernest’s death, he grayed perceptibly, and heavy lines dug themselves deeply on each side of his mouth.

  He expected, each day, to receive a letter from the Bouchards, asking for his resignation. When it did not come, when he was not even invited to attend a business conference, his dismay and fear grew in proportion. It was the eve of the Spanish-American War, and, so far, all his conferences with Jules and Leon had been cold and formal conferences concerning the legacies. For three weeks Jules wore a scar on his cheek from Paul’s cane, yet he never mentioned it nor explained it.

  Then the strain overcame Paul, and in his desperate bitterness at what he thought was a cat-and-mouse game of Jules’ he sent in his resignation as vice-president of Barbour-Bouchard. In this way, he thought wretchedly, he saved what little pride he had remaining to him: he could resign before being asked to resign. But he did not do this until he was convinced that his resignation would inevitably be demanded. He catered to self-pride only when it was absolutely necessary, when there was no escape into profit.

  His resignation was sent in by messenger. It was all hopeless now; Jules could not be expected to forgive nor forget both the insult to his family and the assault upon his own person. It is a significant comment on Paul’s character that he regretted both. He had been too “cocky” with regard to his own position, had had too much Anglo-American contempt for an alien race. He cursed himself a thousand times for not being wily and circumspect. Ernest, too, had been bold, but he had either had better luck or been surer of his position and what he might dare. He had been too much of an Englishman to be really audacious; his audacity had been an illusion.

  Elsa was overwhelmed with the precariousness of her brother’s position. Helplessly, she offered him her own legacy, and was hurt at Paul’s short and violent laugh. “If it were a million dollars, it could not help me now,” he replied.

  Elsa drearily told him, that miserable evening after the resignation had been sent in, that May had finally declined their invitation to leave the Sessions house and live at Robin’s Nest. “Imagine!” said Elsa, with lifeless scorn, “living in that great shabby old house all alone, with that antiquated furniture and the inconveniences, and the neighborhood what it has become, when she might be here with us, who would be only too glad to have her. Perhaps, too, she might help us. After all, Alice is her granddaughter, and she might have some influence with that terrible Jules. But Aunt May, for all her pleasant ways and tact, was always selfish. No wonder Uncle Ernest divorced her—”

  The mention of Ernest’s name threw Paul into a savage and hysterical frenzy. “Don’t mention that devil’s name to me again!” he shouted, clenching his fists and turning purple, to Elsa’s stupefaction. “I forbid you to mention him! He ruined me, threw me down, made me a laughing stock, after all his fine promises and his hints and pretenses of affection. God! he led me to believe that he would leave me at least a million dollars, that I would be president
of Barbour-Bouchard—” His voice almost became a sob; he panted hoarsely, and Elsa, to her horror and grief, saw that his eyes were wet. He went to the mantelpiece, leaned his arm upon it, and rested his forehead on his arm. She gazed at him, at his big broken body, his gray head, the gasps that heaved his broad shoulders. “Christ!” he went on in a high strained voice, as though he were on the verge of weeping, “I’ve given all my life to it, I’ve lived it, thought it, dreamed it, worked so damned hard at it! I’ve sacrificed everything to it, all my youth, my days and my nights. And for it all, I get a pittance—and the street!” His voice dwindled. “Curse him.”

  Elsa began to cry silently. “Don’t talk like that, about the dead,” she whimpered. “After all, Paul, dear, he did do a lot for us. We’d have much less if it had not been for him. Papa had squandered a great part of Mama’s fortune on his silly charities and such, and Uncle Ernest redeemed a lot of it, paid you a large salary for years and years, made you a present of the mortgage on this house and estate, and left us two hundred thousand dollars. And though you are getting no comfort from it, he did leave your daughter millions of dollars. He was always so fond of her. I believe he cared even more for her than he cared for Trudie.”

  Paul did not answer. He stood there with his head bowed on his arm. A strange and unfamiliar slackness seemed suddenly to collapse his body, making it sag. That frightened Elsa more than anything else.

  “I don’t know what I’ll do now,” muttered Paul despairingly. “Where shall I go? What shall I do? I can’t be idle. My life was in it. Without it, I’m cut in half; my life’s amputated.”

  The library door opened, and Jules Bouchard entered with his swift soft step. He was hatless and coatless, and had evidently told the butler not to announce him. Paul, engrossed in his misery and grief, did not hear his almost soundless entry, but at Elsa’s startled and astonished cry, he looked up heavily, his eyelids salt-bitten, his face blotched.