The Final Hour

by Taylor Caldwell

  ‘Yes, I can see,’ said Celeste. ‘Nothing matters.’

  She smiled, darkly and mournfully, lifted her hand, and pushed away her hair.

  ‘The family will be very surprised.’ said Annette, in a rallying and affectionate tone. ‘And probably as hurt as I was because they weren’t told. Do you mind if I tell them, darling?’

  Celeste was silent for a little. She regarded Annette long and sombrely. ‘Please do, Annette. I’d be glad if you did.’

  Some thought struck her, and over her pale face ran a sudden inflamed colour, and she turned away. ‘I’m tired,’ she murmured. ‘I think I’ll go and lie down, if you don’t mind.’

  She walked away, moving slowly and hesitatingly as if she were blind. Annette and Edith watched her go, in silence.

  ‘It’s frightful, isn’t it?’ murmured Edith, after Celeste had disappeared. She motioned Annette to her chair, and sat down near her. She drew a deep breath. ‘I think, though, it’s done her good to see you. In a few days I’ll invite Agnes and Estelle to come in for tea, and you, too, dear. Celeste simply must go about again. She broods horribly, you know.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Annette. Edith rang for tea. She was deeply relieved. But still, she could not look directly at Annette, sitting so resolutely yet calmly in her chair, and smiling so gently.

  When Annette had gone, Edith went up to Celeste. She found her sitting by the window, staring unseeingly out upon the gardens and the trees.

  ‘Celeste,’ she said, abruptly, ‘this isn’t going to do at all, you know, brooding and sulking about here, like a damned recluse. I’ve invited Agnes and Estelle, and Annette, for tea on Tuesday. You need company. You need some diversion. I’m taking you to New York next Friday, to see some plays, and to buy what you need.’

  Celeste turned her blind face to her, and cried out, violently: ‘No! I won’t have it! Why don’t you leave me alone, all of you?’

  But Edith, unmoved, pulled a chair close to her sister-in-law. ‘You are such a fool, Celeste. You heard what Annette said: you’ve got to think of the child. Peter’s gone. You knew for a long time that he couldn’t live. Do you think it would make him happy if he knew that you were deliberately trying to kill yourself?’

  Celeste put her hands over her face.

  Edith continued, inexorably: ‘I don’t know what you have on your mind, if anything, Celeste. But it doesn’t have any significance now. Life does go on. It didn’t end for you, in Peter’s grave. Celeste, I thought you had some courage, some resistance, and pride. But you haven’t. You’re behaving like a hysterical Victorian woman. You’re committing a refined kind of suttee.’ She waited. Celeste did not speak. Her thin and transparent fingers shut out her face.

  Edith went on, in a lowering tone: ‘I wonder what the family is going to think, with you hiding away like this, like a criminal, or something.’

  Celeste dropped her hands abruptly, and stared at Edith with a distraught look. ‘What do you mean?’ she asked, hoarsely.

  Edith shrugged. She looked away at the window. ‘I’m wondering if they won’t think you’ve gone insane. And, they’ll wonder—’

  It was not for some time that she turned to Celeste again. Celeste was sitting quietly, her hands in her lap. But she was quite composed. ‘You’re right, Edith. Invite anyone you want. I’m sorry. This has been hard for you, hasn’t it!’

  Edith, with inner thankfulness, said briskly: ‘Damned hard.

  I don’t like being a recluse. I’ve had the feeling I was a private nurse caring for a mental patient. It hasn’t been delightful for Christopher, either. He ought to be in Detroit now, instead of relieving me of my nursing duties.’

  She could hardly believe it when she heard Celeste laugh. It was only a small laugh, but it was not without mirth. And now her dark-blue eyes were shining with the first tears she had shed since Peter’s death. Very moved, Edith rose and put her arms about the younger woman’s shoulders.

  ‘There now, why don’t you have a good cry? It’ll do you worlds of good, I know. And I know that you haven’t gotten over not being here when Peter died. He sent you away; he knew it was coming. He wanted to spare you. There, now, cry. Cry harder, darling. Harder.’

  Later, when Celeste slept peacefully, as she had not done since Peter died, Edith went to the telephone and called Christopher, who she knew was in conference with Henri.

  ‘Look, my pet,’ she said. ‘Annette’s been here. She knows. And, I think it would be a good idea to tell Henri, before he goes home. No, everything’s all right. Celeste is sleeping like the proverbial babe. See here, I resent that ultra-concerned tone. Remember, I’m your wife.’

  CHAPTER XLV

  Christopher returned to Henri. They had been discussing, with grave concern and understanding, the collapse of France. Books were open on Henri’s desk, to which they had been referring. As Christopher sat down, Henri said: ‘It’s gone according to schedule, and order, though a little earlier than Hitler expected. Everything is going fast, now. What is the latest?’

  Christopher said: ‘I just looked at the report. The British are retreating towards the coast. Everything is in disorder. Frankly, I don’t know what the hell we are going to do. Are you going to Washington tomorrow?’

  ‘Yes. I talked to Hugo this morning. He’s quivering like a damned leaf. Sometimes I think he’ll burst with the pressure we’re putting on him. He can’t seem to settle down to anything since Alice ran off with her Charlie, and married him. Not that it’s a bad thing, for us.’ And he smiled, grimly. ‘I’ve harped enough on Hilary’s resemblance to our little darling, Antoine. And it was Hilary, as you know, who engineered the elopement.’

  ‘We keep getting our women mixed up in our concerns,’ said Christopher, restlessly. He began to tap on the desk with his fleshless fingers.

  Henri uttered a short harsh laugh. ‘Yes, I know. You were a past master at that yourself, Chris. Only, it didn’t work, did it?’

  Christopher smiled bleakly. ‘It wasn’t my fault.’ He seemed abstracted. Now there was a rough flush on his cheekbones. ‘You’re right. It’s a mean thing, mixing up our women with ourselves. And a humiliating one. Why do we need women? Like a rotten cheap movie. I wish we could keep them out of things.’

  Henri watched him. Then he said, abruptly: ‘What’s up, Chris?’

  Christopher shrugged, turned back to his brother-in-law. ‘That was Edith calling me. About Celeste.’

  Henri said nothing. He leaned back in his chair. His pale eye was inscrutable. Finally, he said: ‘Well, what’s the matter with Celeste? Still brooding about Peter?’

  Christopher lit a cigarette, then stared at it gravely. ‘It isn’t only that. She’s physically sick, too. Some women are like that, when they’re pregnant.’

  He continued to stare at the cigarette. Then, casually, he looked up. Henri had not made the slightest gesture. He was leaning back in his chair, his eye fixed immovably upon Christopher. There was no expression on his broad pale face, except for a curious tightness about his mouth.

  ‘Pregnant?’ he asked, without the faintest inflection in his voice. ‘I didn’t know that. How long?’

  ‘Six months,’ said Christopher, indifferently. ‘You didn’t know? I thought everyone did. A posthumous child usually excites some interest, and sympathy.’

  They looked at each other in an intense silence. Henri’s hand lifted an object on his desk, dropped it softly.

  Then Henri said: ‘Pete, of course, didn’t know?’

  ‘No. I think Celeste hardly knew, herself. There were more important things. He was very ill, as you remember. Expected to die almost daily. She nursed him all the time. Otherwise, she might have done something about it. It isn’t the most pleasant thing for a woman, I suppose, to have a posthumous child. Not,’ he continued, looking calmly at Henri, ‘that we won’t all be there, to help her, and give her what consolation we can.’

  Henri shifted to another spot the object he had lifted. He regarded it with absorptio
n.

  ‘Annette visited Celeste today,’ said Christopher, with a sympathetic air. ‘She was very upset because Celeste hadn’t told her. One can rely upon Annette.’

  Henri swung his chair about to face the windows. ‘Yes,’ he said, in a neutral tone, ‘one can always rely upon Annette.’ He continued, without the slightest change in his voice: ‘I didn’t know. I haven’t seen Celeste for some time. Alone.’

  ‘Yes, I knew that.’

  ‘It explains a lot of things,’ said Henri, musingly.

  Christopher was about to speak, then said nothing.

  Then Henri said: ‘I wonder how long it will be before that damned old Armand dies?’

  Christopher laughed unpleasantly: ‘He’s gone reckless, I hear. Stuffing himself. It ought not to be long.’

  But Henri said, absently: ‘The family. How many know about Celeste?’

  ‘You, now, and Annette. Frankly, even Edith and I didn’t know until just lately. It’s about time, though. Of course; one can understand. Celeste was too concerned with Pete to care about any thing else.’

  Henri turned back to him. The old implacable look was heavy on his features. ‘Yes, I understand a lot of things, now. Celeste is quite a fool, you know. I think we’ve always agreed on that.’

  Christopher answered, with an evil glinting in his eye: ‘I’m not sure she’s been a fool. Just think of it a little, for a minute.’

  Henri thought of it, grimly. He sat like stone in his chair.

  Then he said: ‘Yes, I see.’ His expression changed slightly.

  ‘And it wouldn’t be very safe, let us say, for you to see her alone at any time,’ Christopher remarked. ‘Not yet, anyway.’

  Henri got up, abruptly, and walked up and down. Christopher watched him with a malignant satisfaction he could not control. Then Henri said: ‘How long is Edith going to stay with her?’

  ‘I’ve got to return to Detroit. You know that. Edith will stay as long as necessary. But she’s my wife. She just reminded me of that,’ and Christopher smiled.

  ‘She’s also my sister. If I ask her to stay, she will.’

  Christopher’s narrow face flushed. ‘I think I need to remind you, too, that she’s my wife.’

  ‘And Celeste is your sister.’ Henri suddenly smiled. ‘Come on, now. We’re bickering. You won’t mind if Edith stays?’

  ‘I’d damn well mind if she didn’t,’ said Christopher.

  Henri sat down again. He clasped his hands together on the desk, and the two men stared at each other intently in silence.

  CHAPTER XLVI

  Antoine watched his father, Armand, as he surreptitiously wiped up the thick brown gravy on his plate with large gobs of bread. Armand, bent clumsily over his plate, his grey, auburn-streaked thin curls glimmering in the candlelight, thought himself unobserved. All his motions were greedy. He ate, as always, with avid haste, almost gobbling. The peasant strain, so deep and strong in him, assured him with its unreasoning instinct that a man must eat, and eat fast, if he was to nourish himself and fill his belly adequately. Three generations of family wealth and power had not extinguished that animal instinct, so avaricious, so bestial, so enormously hungry for constant sustenance against a time of famine. Armand was not aware of the instinctive urge which had made him a glutton, a voracious devourer of provender. He had always had, he would say, a hearty appetite. In later years that instinct had been his only comfort, his only defence, against a world grown horrible, threatening and full of spiritual pain.

  He had early discovered that his more fastidious relatives thought his stuffing offensive and disgusting. He had tried to learn nicer manners. He had warned himself, over and over, that he must not fall upon food like a famine-stricken Chinese, or a wolf. But he had only learned to be furtive, to eat a little more slowly, while inwardly he trembled with primordial panic at his enforced restraint.

  During the past few months, when each day brought new terror and new despair to him, he had frenziedly abandoned The List. The impact of events had forced him to desert that List, and he had fled to the table once more in unreasoning fright and passionate desire for consolation. The warnings of his physicians were nothing to him now. Nothing was left but his hunger, at once physical and spiritual, and he ate as a dying man on a desert gulps water which he knows is poisoned, but which offers him a momentary surcease from his torment before death seizes upon him.

  In his need, in his despair, he had served an ultimatum upon little Mary, Antoine’s wife, that he would eat no more spinach, no more liver, no more unseasoned vegetables and glutenous bread. If he could not have the ‘right’ food in his own house, he would go elsewhere, he had declared, even in the face of Mary’s tears. Mary, herself, then approaching the end of her term of pregnancy, felt too enervated to struggle with her father-in-law, and finally surrendered. The rich and luscious dishes again appeared on the table, and Armand fell upon them with such avidity, such delight and mad hurry, his brow glistening with sweat, that Antoine, the delicate, was revolted. Nevertheless, with his usual subtlety, he understood.

  So, this night, as always, Antoine watched his father. Mary was not at the table. She was still at the Doctors Hospital in New York, where she had given birth, a week ago, to a fine boy, who was to be christened Stuart. (‘No more damned French names in the family, as far as I am concerned,’ Antoine had declared.) Antoine had observed his father closely and curiously throughout the elaborate meal, none of the items of which were calculated to contribute to Armand’s health. Armand had gained much weight; he was bloated now, covered with soft doughlike flesh. His ruddy colour had gone permanently. Suety dull folds of flesh had distorted and minimized his features, so that he had the expression of a diabetic old boar, filled with chronic fear. Three thick chins bulged below his normal one, and had an oily bristling look. As his health and life declined, as his girth and weight increased, he lost the last vestige of personal pride. He often did not shave for two or three days at a time, so that there was always a grey-red shadow over his chins and cheeks. His clothes were deplorable, stained and crumpled. His disintegration was almost complete. Because he could not force his swollen feet into shoes, he wore bedroom slippers, constantly, and shuffled about in them through the house like an enormous and uneasy ghost, searching with dull desperation for something he could never find. Never a fluent conversationalist, he would sometimes not speak for days, not even to his son.

  As Antoine observed him closely, his tilted black eyes glinted, and a faint smile touched his satiric mouth. Not very long now, he thought, with satisfaction. As he thought this, his father suddenly dropped his silverware with a clatter upon his plate, gasped, turned a sudden bright purple, and struggled to rise. Antoine, with every indication of alarm, got to his feet and went to Armand, who was flapping his fat shapeless hands in the air, and fighting for breath. His eyes, so sunken now in folds of flesh, fixed themselves in agony upon his son.

  It took Antoine and two male servants to drag Armand to his bed. Armand’s physician arrived very promptly, and administered a hypodermic to the sick man, his lips tight and grim.

  ‘You know, of course, Mr Bouchard, that your father is killing himself?’

  ‘Yes, doctor, I am aware of that. But he prefers to die in his own way, it seems. I think he would rather die after a gorging meal than “starve to death on cow-food,” as he puts it. We’ve found it is useless to try to do anything with him.’

  ‘Then, he must go to a hospital for some time,’ said the doctor. ‘Where his diet will be closely watched and planned. Otherwise, he cannot live. I can say freely that he may die at any time, this way.’

  Antoine considered. ‘I will talk to my sister,’ he said, finally. ‘She is the only one who has any influence on him at all.’

  Antoine called Annette, and asked her to come to her father’s house at once, if she could. In the meantime, the doctor appointed three nurses to care for the sick and desperate old man panting so stertorously on his bed, struggling for each b
reath of life.

  Annette arrived shortly, alone, breathless and distracted. A thunderstorm was crashing violently outside, the lightning invading the great dusky rooms with ominous flashes. Little beads of perspiration shone on Annette’s pale face, and there were tears in her pretty and poignant eyes.

  When Antoine took her up to her father’s room, they found Armand asleep at last, a mountain of flesh heaped up on billowing pillows. The nurse whispered to them that he was ‘much better,’ and ought not to be disturbed. Annette went down again with her brother to one of the drawingrooms, where she sat down and wept quietly.

  Antoine thoughtfully and slowly lit a cigarette. Then he sat down near his sister and took her hand. ‘Don’t, darling,’ he said, gently. ‘You know how Papa is. There’s no use. We’re hoping you might persuade him to go to a private hospital for treatment and care. While he is at home there’s no hope for him, you know.’

  ‘But why should he want to die?’ implored Annette, looking at her brother with wet and mournful eyes. ‘He does want to die, Antoine. He is committing suicide.’

  Antoine was silent. He narrowed his eyelids and watched the smoke he expelled from his pursed lips creep towards the moulded ceiling.

  ‘Perhaps things are too much for him,’ he murmured, reflectively.

  ‘Yes, I know,’ cried Annette. ‘I know so much about Papa that no else seems to know.’

  ‘One of the things that are too much is you and Henri,’ said Antoine, as if he had not heard his sister.

  Annette removed her handkerchief from her eyes, dropped her hands to her lap and clenched them rigidly on the little lace-edged square of linen.

  ‘What do you mean, Antoine?’ she asked, in a shaking voice. ‘What is wrong with Henri, and me?’

  He turned to her. She was very pale. But her eyes met his with high and valiant courage, and steady calm.

  He hesitated. Then he put his hand over her cold taut fingers, and pressed them gently. ‘Darling, I know this is terrible for you. But have you really swallowed the fiction about “Peter’s baby”?’