Peter sat down and said abruptly: “Adelaide, I want you to tell me something, if you can. You’ve already told me that you don’t want Celeste to marry Henri. You’ve said that this marriage will make her miserable forever. I—I agree with you. I couldn’t help but agree, because it means so much to me, personally.”
Thomas Van Eyck regarded him sadly and affectionately. The old man sat quietly, his thin old fingers at his cheek. He listened, almost without breathing.
Peter’s pale face tightened; his jaw sprang out. He looked at Adelaide and went on: “Tonight, Nicholas told me that Christopher is pushing Celeste into this marriage, without her knowledge. That he planned it and promoted it, for reasons of his own, the least of which is Celeste’s own happiness. Is this true?”
A look of intense fright and fear stood on Adelaide’s face. She bit her trembling lips. Her eyes fell.
She almost whispered: “I don’t know. Even when I say that, I may be wronging Christopher. Armand would know, I think. I have a feeling that Armand would do almost anything to prevent this marriage. I don’t just know why; he’s never shown Celeste much affection—”
Peter listened less to her words than to the tone of her voice; he also saw how terrified she was, and how, with every gesture and glance, she was imploring him to believe the things she instinctively knew. He frowned.
“But why? Why should Christopher care so much?”
Adelaide was silent. Finally Peter stood up and began to walk up and down the room, thinking deeply. Some way, he believed, Christopher’s attempts to get him to sell his Bouchard stock was tied up in the matter. But then, it was common knowledge that Henri had no actual Bouchard holdings except his bonds. The bonds would do Christopher no particular good—But would they?
He turned back to Adelaide. “Celeste hasn’t said anything to you yet, has she, Adelaide?”
“Nothing since that first night. The poor child is struggling. But she won’t let me come near her! She won’t let me talk to her. I’ve tried. But she looks at me with such a face! It’s no use. She must fight this out herself. Not even you can help her, Peter.”
His mouth closed grimly. “I don’t know about that,” he replied. “I don’t know about that! Now.”
Thomas Van Eyck stood up and took Peter gently by the arm. He looked into the young man’s face.
“I’ve never been very clever, Peter,” he said deprecatingly, with a smile. “No one has ever accused me of being clever, and you know, I’m glad about that. I wouldn’t want to be. All the bad people are clever. You’re not; you’re just good. Peter, we’re hoping you’ll help Celeste. But you’ve got clever men against you. It’s just the old story: which will win, cleverness or goodness?
“The clever people seem to have everything their own way. That’s because the rest of us, most of us, just stand by and let them do it. They also are guilty, who only stand and watch. Peter, you’re going to help Celeste, aren’t you? You know she loves you?”
“Yes,” said Peter in a low voice. “I know. And she knows, too.”
When he reached home, the great chateau near the river was silent. Here, too, there was an air of leave-taking and closing. Francis and Estelle were out to dinner with their young daughters. Here and there a dim light glowed through the immense corridors and in distant rooms. A servant brought Peter a message from Francis, which, for some inexplicable reason, annoyed him. Francis requested that Peter go up to his mother’s apartments. It seemed that she wished to see him before he went to bed.
Why should Francis leave this message? he thought, as he went up in the automatic elevator. Why didn’t Mother ask me to come, herself?
He felt an inner shrinking as he approached his mother’s door. His had always been a nature more inclined to love than hatred, and this nature had been continually violated all his life, not by himself, but by those he had attempted to love. He remembered his mother when she had been youngish, a handsome, vain, sprightly woman, whose egotistic selflove and self-importance had made Honore’s life one of wretchedness and frustration. There had never been any peace for his father, thought Peter bitterly. He had been assailed in his work, and assailed in his home. He had died, full of wounds. But the impulse, thought Peter, which had prevented Honore from making any effort to save himself from death, had been the same impulse which had made his son enlist in the wartime army. Peter never approached his mother without the ghost of his dead father standing before him. And he never saw this ghost without the most passionate hatred for Ann flooding into all the cells of his body and rising in a dark tide to his brain. He had tried a thousand times to overcome this hatred, himself feeling violated by it; he had tried to remember that most of the villainy and cruelty and wickedness of men was due in much part to weakness and blindness and fear. But it was no use. He tried again, tonight, his hand on the doorknob, all his will struggling to beat down the dark tides. And again, it was no use. He knew he would despise himself when he saw her, for he would smile and say affectionately: “How are you, Mother?”
He opened the door. The smile was already on his face, strained and unreal. But old Ann was not in her quiet living room. The door of her bedroom stood open, and he saw the rosy shadows of her bedside lamps. The smile had relaxed on his face; now, with a conscious effort, he forced its return. He walked briskly to the door. “Hello, Mother! How are you!”
Old Ann was sitting up in her bed, which was upholstered in dark rose satin tufts. It was an immense bed, the wood all gilt and dead-white. Though it was a warm evening, a pink silk puff was thrown across the foot. The chamber was luxuriously furnished with rose-and-blue striped satin damask chairs, ivory silk hangings, and pale rose rugs. The lamps were gilt and rose and soft old blue, and the delicate odors of powders and scents filled the air.
Ann’s personal maid was brushing her white hair with deft strokes of a gold-backed brush. The old woman leaned back against her gleaming pillows, smoking. Her rings were still on her withered fingers, and they glittered and sparkled in the soft light, as though all her youth and vitality had gone into their hardness and had left nothing behind but this decayed and straining body. Her rouge had been removed, and her skin, ash-colored and shrunken, testified to her age. But her eyes, restless and still vividly bright, revealed what a determinedly selfish and avaricious soul there stood behind this shriveled flesh. Her elaborate silken nightgown foaming with lace, could not, however, conceal the lack of firm contour beneath it.
Peter’s entry had been too abrupt for her to slip on an expression of maternal affection, and as he stood in the doorway he saw clearly what his mother’s feeling for him truly was. He saw, in one glance, the browned and withered throat rising from the lace, the ruin of her face in which the eyes leapt and burned and flashed malevolently upon him. He was appalled, though he must always have known. But even so, that look, that hating expression, that hidden contemptuous rage, struck on his naked heart.
An instant later she was simpering affectionately: “Hello, dear. Do sit down. Collins won’t be more than a minute, will you, Collins? Collins, you hurt me then! How many times must I tell you not to twist the brush on the under hair?” and she snatched the brush pettishly from the maid and flung it in the direction of the dressing table. “There. Do go away. You can bring my hot milk later. No, don’t fuss. The bed is all right. I’ll ring if I want you.”
The girl shrugged almost imperceptibly, picked up the brush, replaced it, and went out softly. After the door had closed behind her, Ann burst out petulantly: “Such a stupid thing! Did you ever see such clumsiness? And she came to me well-recommended, really. But that is the trouble with servants these days. So inefficient, so impudent, so careless, so disrespectful. I don’t know what things are coming to. They are treated so excellently these days; they have their own rooms with baths, and good food, and reasonable hours and fine wages, and don’t appreciate them in the least. I really don’t know! When I was a girl a servant felt she was fortunate to share a bed with only one other se
rvant, and was thankful if there were enough quilts on it to keep her warm in an absolutely unheated bedroom. She was glad to get one good meal a day, and one-half day off every two weeks, and three dollars a week. But now, they think they are as good as anybody else. I really don’t know! It’s just bolshevism.”
She was working herself up. She kept threshing about pettishly in the bed, and withered color had come into her sunken cheeks; her eyes were flashing dangerously, with a sort of fixed malignance. She was breathing quite audibly; her wrinkled, unrouged lips twitched. She doesn’t know how to begin, thought Peter, bitterly. She’s looking for an opening, and it maddens her.
He was so tired of people who looked constantly for openings to attack one. Like serpents seeking for chinks in armor through which to strike their deadly fangs. And their rage and hatred increasing during the delay and the seeking. Dreadful people. And the world was full of them. A sudden monstrous sickness clutched at Peter’s heart, a loathing for consciousness which permitted one to see what was to be seen.
Ann’s petulance had subsided into sullenness. She tried to smile at her youngest son.
“I thought you had gone to the Bests’ dinner with Francis and Estelle,” he said. He reached out and helped himself to one of his mother’s pet cigarettes with the gilt tips. He lit it, grimaced, coughed.
“No, I didn’t go,” she said shrilly. “I hate the Bests. Such dull people. They pretend to be so musical, and they don’t know anything at all about music. Really. And that hideous picture of Paderewski, always glaring and making faces, on the piano, which is actually out of tune all the time!”
Peter was silent. He was remembering that young Mrs. Best was an accomplished pianist, and that Paderewski had, unasked, sent her an autographed photograph after he had heard her play at the home of a London friend. But what could one do before malignance which had never, in all its life, been moved to true kindness or compassion or understanding or generosity?
“I have no patience with people who pretend to be what they’re not,” went on the cracked malicious voice, which expressed the dartings-about of the mind behind it. “Peter, do you have to cough so? It’s very annoying. You smoke incessantly, so it’s no wonder. Why don’t you go to Doctor Forstdyke? I’ve asked you a thousand times. You look half-dead.”
She began to complain, in his silence. She simply would not go on that awful yacht this summer. EsteUe and her stupid friends! No life, no gaiety to them. Always talking seriously, because they were really so empty-minded. She, Ann, had observed that empty-minded people were invariably the most solemn and portentous. Here Peter smiled in involuntary agreement. It surprised him that his mother could be so astute. The complaining voice, always maneuvering for an opening, went on. No, she would not go on the yacht this summer, even if she stayed here and died of the heat, rather than be with people prematurely old and three quarters dead.
“I thought it was all settled that you were going to France, Mother?”
Old Ann twitched her body restlessly under the silken sheets. Her face wrinkled discontentedly, but now her eyes were watchful. “I don’t like to go alone, some way. Peter,” she added quickly, “won’t you come with me?”
He glanced up alertly, his eyes growing intent. “But, Mother, I just came from France. I’m—I’m tired. I’ve been running around all over Europe—“
She became excited. Her voice rose to shrill piercing heights. She had the most ungrateful and selfish children! Her own wishes and preferences were never considered. Children never thought, these days, that they owed their parents any gratitude or consideration. Her own children, for instance, were quite willing for her to go abroad, alone, unprotected, helpless, not caring if she were ill on board, or suffering, or lonely. It was quite terrible—
Peter listened, trying to hear something behind the rush of hysterical accusing words. He heard a purpose behind them; he knew at once that Ann was acting, and that she was quite cool and calculating behind the external manifestations of hurt and emotion. He remembered that it had always been Ann’s boast that she preferred to travel alone; why, only last week, when the trip to France had been mentioned, she had exulted, archly, that now there would be no one supervising her! She was like a debutante, eager to escape a watchful chaperon, she had exclaimed, girlishly.
So, why did she want Peter to go with her? He did not know. But he felt that he would soon find out. In the meantime, he felt his pulses begin to hammer with a sickening premonition.
She was regarding him with vicious excitement. “Well, you can just imagine that I gave Francis a good dressing-down tonight! I told him what I thought of his selfishness, and Estelle’s, too—”
That is a lie, thought Peter. You did talk to Francis, and probably in this very room. But what did you talk about?
He said: “Why go to France? Why not stay at home? I’ll go with you, to Southampton, or anywhere else. But I can’t spare all summer. I—I’ve got work to do. My writing. And other things. In New York.”
She was silent for a long time. But in that silence she fixed her eyes upon him, and they sparkled with malice, cunning, and dislike. The meanest of smiles slowly began to curve her sunken lips. There was something cruel and gloating in that old face between the masses of silken white hair.
“But why New York? In the summer? Such an inferno, Peter.” Her voice had suddenly lost its hysteria, and was sly and soft.
Peter began to see. He felt cold. His muscles tensed, as though preparing him for escape. But he answered equably: “I’ve got an invitation from Georges and Marion, to stay at their country home in Dutchess County. I’m going there, to do my writing. I’m all prepared for it.”
She laughed incredulously. “George and Marion! Why, he’s the biggest fox in the publishing business! I should have thought he would be the last one in the world you’d care to see, Peter! You, with your idealism!”
Peter flushed. But he merely looked at her steadfastly without replying.
“And Marion! That concentrated essence of the Daughters of the American Revolution! Oh, she’s an absolute fool, and you know it, Peter. How can you bear her? How can you bear either of them?”
Peter spoke with painful difficulty: “I think you are unfair to them, Mother. There is much I like about them. They are cordial and hospitable, and sometimes a man likes that. I think they like me, too. In a way. Look, let me call them tonight. I’ll tell them you’d like to come.”
Ann threw up her arms and raised her eyes to the ceiling. “O my God, Peter! Can you imagine me there, on their glorified farm, gurgling about the cows and the chickens! Why, I’d rather be dead! Dead! You just might as well be dead, anyway, as down there. Peter! I’m surprised at you. With those two old fools.”
“They aren’t old. Marion’s only in her forties. You know that, Mother—”
“Well, they’re old and dried-up and sapless, no matter what their actual years are. I’d rather be dead. I’m amazed that you should suggest such an incongruous thing. I want life and fun and gaiety. I’ll be dead a long time, you know.”
As Peter did not speak, she pulled herself closer to him, and smiled at him wheedlingly. “Peter, dear, please come to France with me. You’ll enjoy it so much. I can’t understand you, Peter. Paris is so wonderful. You needn’t stay down south with me all the time. Go to Paris, if you want to.” While she had been speaking, he had come to the correct conclusion as to what lay behind this, and his face slowly hardened and paled. At the last, she saw his face fully, and was vaguely startled.
“No, Mother,” he said clearly and firmly, “I won’t go to France with you. You may come to Georges and Marion’s with me, if you want. I’ll do all I can to make you comfortable and keep you entertained. But I won’t go to France with you. That’s final.”
He stood up. He looked down at her. The eyes of mother and son clashed, assailed each other. The smile had disappeared from Ann’s lips, and had left, instead, a contortion of the utmost virulence. She spoke very softly:
/> “It isn’t because of Celeste, is it, Peter?”
She had expected him to start, to change color, to look guilty, to stammer, to deny, to pretend indignation and innocence. But she had not expected that he would just stand there, quietly, looking down at her, with no expression but one of calmness and composure and dignity. She had not expected him to say: “Don’t you think that’s my own business, Mother?”
She gasped. She fell back against her pillows. She regarded him, now, with open hatred and rage.
“You don’t deny it? You haven’t anything else to say? It’s true, then, all the gossip? Haven’t you any shame? She’s engaged to Henri Bouchard, who’s twice the man you are, a real man, not a whining, psalm-singing fool, like you! Why can’t you leave her alone? Or can’t you find a girl, yourself? Aren’t you man enough to find a girl, instead of creeping in the footsteps of another man, to lick up the leavings?”
In spite of his knowledge of his mother’s character, he was appalled at this red and open vulgarity, this vicious lunging, this lack of the slightest maternal and natural affection. With all his knowledge of the lowest in human character, despite all the things he had seen, he could still feel the nauseous plunging of his senses, his first horror. A horrible darkness seemed to grow before him; all his spirit turned away, revolted and torn, from his mother. Something seemed to burst behind his eyes, so that he could see nothing for some moments.
She was raging on incoherently, beside herself. But finally she became aware of Peter’s face. The foam of words bubbled to her lips, then died away. She paled. She shrank back on her pillows. A low whimper began in her throat, and for the first time she experienced a shamed pang, a sudden selfdetestation and remorse. A ringing silence filled the room.
Peter began to speak, very gently, almost compassionately. She heard with incredulity.
“Francis put you up to this, didn’t he, Mother? I thought so. Why did he? What is it to him? I think I’m beginning to see. I’m beginning to see a lot of things, Mother.”
The Eagles Gather Page 35