The Eagles Gather

by Taylor Caldwell

  “Just an informal little dinner, dear. No one but the family. Just Emile and Agnes, and Hugo, who is in town for a day or two. Don’t dress, if you don’t want to. I’m not going to dress, and neither is Francis. Emile’s boy, Robert, is home from school, you know, because of that scarlet fever epidemic. Celeste hardly knows him, and he is such a clever boy! And he her nephew, too. Celeste doesn’t know enough young people. It is too bad that she finds Armand’s unfortunate little Annette sufficient company. She ought to have gone away to school. Why, I don’t believe she has four friends altogether!”

  Adelaide murmured: “Three of her friends have recently married. Christopher doesn’t want her to associate with them, now. He believes married women are corrupting.” She smiled drearily. Estelle shrugged and laughed impatiently. “So, that leaves just Annette, and the little Schofield girl.”

  “Both neurotics!” exclaimed Estelle with contemptuous vigor. “Why, I’m firmly convinced the Schofield child is a pervert! You know the story why she was dismissed from Rosemarie’s school?”

  Adelaide’s features expressed her distress and distaste, so Estelle merely raised her eyebrows and went on: “Well, anyway, I shouldn’t let Celeste associate with Josephine if I were you. I shall certainly speak to Christopher about it! And there’s Annette.”

  “Annette is a sweet child,” protested Adelaide, a dull spot of color coming into her faded cheeks. “She is just not strong. And such a beautiful musician. She looks like an angel when she plays her harp.”

  Estelle stood up, gathering her furs about her. “I prefer that young girls postpone the harp-playing,” she said with a smile. “Well, then, it is settled? Tomorrow night, at eight?”

  And she went away, driving her own open car. She had a low opinion of chauffeurs generally. Certainly, she was a competent, if rapid, motorist, herself.

  Before she went to bed Adelaide called her daughter into her rooms. It was a warm spring night, full of golden moon and slow heavy winds. Adelaide could hear that wind in the distant poplar trees. They were silhoueted like tapers against the moon, which was enormous. The shadowy grass rippled in light. The windows of Adelaide’s sitting room were open, and she could smell the dark night-quiet, the rising fresh incense of the earth.

  Celeste came in, her nightgown covered with a long cream-colored silk negligee. Her short curling masses of black hair rolled on her shoulders. She was a young Juliet, and her eyes were unawakened, for all their gaiety. The gown, trailing on the floor about her, gave her height and a new dignity. It had a silver belt, which showed the remarkable delicacy of her waist. Adelaide, gazing at her daughter earnestly, thought that she was an anachronism in these raw and gaudy days of the nineteen-twenties, in which rudeness posed as wit, and obscenity as sophistication. Christopher was wrong! One of these days she must understand rudeness and obscenity, and be well armed against it. Christopher refused to admit this. He refused to insulate her against the inevitable shocks to her innocence. Knowledge, thought Adelaide sadly, knowledge of the external ugliness of mankind will, paradoxically, preserve Celeste’s spiritual integrity and true innocence. She will learn to recognize this ugliness, and to avoid it. The only real danger that faces her is the loss of her belief in man’s innate capacity for God and beauty.

  Celeste had been out for a drive and a moving-picture show with Christopher. (He even picked the shows she attended!) Later, he had treated her to ice-cream. Adelaide thought: It is time she put away the things of childhood. She is a woman, my little daughter.

  She said: “Did you have a nice drive, dear?”

  Celeste laughed. “Oh, yes. Christopher says my driving is improving. But I still don’t understand those awful gears.” She sat down, like a child, on the footstool at Adelaide’s feet, and laughed again. Adelaide studied her. The little ivory face was intelligent and quick, both with gaiety and thought. The beautiful dark blue eyes shone like polished porcelain.

  Adelaide said quietly: “Did Christopher tell you that we are all going to dinner tomorrow night, at Francis’?”

  The laughter left the girl’s full red lips. A small pucker appeared between her eyes. “Yes. And just when Annette and I had made an appointment to listen to the New York Symphony Orchestra on her new radio.” She was suddenly excited. “Mama, it is the most wonderful radio! You don’t have to use batteries with it, as you do with ours. Christopher says he is going to get one like it immediately. Such a splendid tone, too. You would think the orchestra was in the next room. It is a direct broadcast from a concert, in New York. They’re going to play Beethoven’s Fifth.”

  Adelaide folded her hands quietly in her lap, and lifted her eyes to a point just above Celeste’s animated head.

  “I remember, dear, the first time I heard that Symphony. I was very sad, for I had just lost my mother. She had always protected me from—everything. Now, I was exposed. I—I learned so many things! I learned things about people that frightened me, and sickened me. I wanted to die, for I had never known that the world could be so ugly, and so wicked.” She paused. Celeste was listening earnestly,

  “And then, Celeste, I went to this concert. I was visiting relatives in Boston. Such nice people! They seemed to know at once what was troubling me. They took me to hear the concert. I’ll never forget it.

  “You see, darling, Beethoven told me, in his music, that though there is so much ugliness and wickedness and cruelty and treachery among men, there is something in them which is inherently beautiful and good, too. Beethoven told me that I must not deny the ugliness and the treachery, and refuse to believe them. I must accept them, and be sorry about them. But I must fix my attention and my belief on what man could be if he wanted to be. I must understand man’s inclination to evil, and his capacity for nobility.”

  “But what a paradox!” exclaimed Celeste.

  Adelaide smiled her tired smile. “Yes, dear. But the greatest lesson we must learn in living is that only the paradoxes are valid. Consistency is the fundamental of mechanics and mathematics. But we are more than machines, and certainly more than equations.”

  Celeste was silent; her head was bent. Adelaide desperately hoped, that though Celeste did not fully comprehend now, she would comprehend in some distant hour of danger, and be fortified.

  Adelaide began to speak again of Estelle’s invitation. Celeste nodded impatiently. “Of course, if Christopher insists! But I don’t like Rosemarie, even if it is rude to say it She is too precocious, but she is clever rather than intelligent I don’t like clever people, Mama. They frighten me. They remind me,” and she laughed apologetically, “of some of Christopher’s newest chromium gadgets. All bright hard plate, and no intrinsic value.” And then she became uneasy. Christopher was a rarely touched subject between herself and her mother, and in hasty loyalty, she spoke of something else.

  But Adelaide came back to the subject of the dinner. The details were settled. Celeste again expressed her regret at missing the broadcast. “But Estelle has a fine new radio,” said Adelaide. “You can hear the music there.”

  Celeste shook her head impatiently. “They never put it on except to hear popular music. And I can’t bear popular music; it makes me feel depressed and lonely, and restless. Idiotic love-jingles and braying!”

  Adelaide curled a lock of the glossy dark hair over her thin fingers. The ringlet wound itself against the palm of her hand like the ringlet of a child. The mother sighed, shook her head, tried to smile.

  “Don’t speak so contemptuously of—of love, dear, even if it is expressed in vulgar music and vulgar words. It is the greatest of all the validities. I—I loved your father-very much. I never really lived, until I knew him.” She released the ringlet, tried to make her voice amused. “Celeste, is it possible you are nineteen! Why, you are a woman! One of these days you, like Elizabeth Darrow, will be getting married and going off to a home of your own.”

  To her surprise Celeste’s lovely small face darkened; it seemed to withdraw. But Adelaide was not disturbed; a sudd
en lightening flooded her; her heart began to tremble against the walls of her chest. She leaned towards her daughter, her ‘ own lips parted.

  Celeste flung out her hands and her eyes flashed resentfully. “But how can that ever happen? I never meet any one. I never see any one alone. Besides, I don’t like the boys and the young men I know. I never went to a dance until I was seventeen. I—I don’t know how to act with men, I can’t speak to them. They think I am stupid.

  “Just tonight Christopher was asking me if I liked any particular one. I said, no. He said he was glad, for none of them was good enough for me.” She sighed with exasperation. “But suppose that is true, which it isn’t, really? What am I to do? Christopher says we’ll stay in New York next winter and then he’ll see that I meet the ‘right kind.’ But I don’t know how to act! I don’t know how to dress! I look like a frump; I act like a frump—”

  Adelaide drew in her breath. She was trembling all over. She clenched her hands, and was torn with fear and with excitement.

  “Darling, Estelle said today that she would like to have you go to Southampton with her and the girls this summer. Then they are taking a cruise on the new yacht. Would you like that? First of all, you would have to get the proper clothes, in New York. You and I could go, next wee—”

  Celeste looked excited and eager. Then her expression darkened again. “But Christopher just told me tonight that we would be going to Long Island again for the summer. Oh, I just hate it there! I know that sounds contemptible, for he does everything for me. But I do hate it. I never see anyone but a lot of stupid girls. The boys avoid me, and those who do come around are only fortune-hunters, Christopher says. Or horsy men, who smell of the stables. Or golf-players and tennis-players, and yachters. They make me ill.”

  Adelaide moistened her dry lips. She could hardly speak for her agitation. “Most men, today, are like that, Celeste. What would you like, yourself?”

  The girl blushed faintly. “I—I don’t know, Mama. I suppose I sound like a romantic, but I’d like a real man. He could like horses and dogs and games, if he wanted to. I’d overlook that. But he’d have to be interested in the things I like. He’d have to like music, and reading, and walks. Oh, I don’t know. I’ve never met any one I could like. Maybe he doesn’t exist, and I’ll have to marry a man in tweeds after all.” She added, with new bitterness: “Just so long as he meets Christopher’s requirements.”

  Adelaide held her breath. Tears of joy filled her eyes. Celeste got up restlessly and went to her mother’s dressing table. She picked up the gold-backed brush. Adelaide could see her face in the mirror. It was the face of a woman, hungry for the natural destiny of a woman, and disturbed. She came back to her mother, sat down on the stool again, and began to brush her hair with resentful pulling strokes.

  “Let me have the brush, darling,” said Adelaide gently. She brushed the strands back from the white, blue-veined temples. With the hair drawn back so, Celeste’s face had purity and a curious strength. The bones were small, the skin like polished ivory. The jaw-line was firm and well modeled, the cheekbones rather prominent, yet delicate. As her mother brushed her hair, the girl studied her mother with somber gravity. “What am I going to do?” she asked at last. “Isn’t there any other yardstick for a prospective husband except money?”

  Adelaide paused for just a moment in the brushing, then making her voice casual, she said: “Did Christopher tell you that money was the only yardstick?”

  Celeste shook her head impatiently. “Not exactly as crudely as that. But he did say that a competent man invariably had money. Lack of money meant incompetence, either on the part of the man, or his ancestors. I can’t believe it,” she added somberly. “Surely there are other competences besides the one of knowing how to manipulate the Stock Market, or expand a business. I’ve met a few of Christopher’s friends! And I can’t bear them.”

  “Why not?” whispered Adelaide.

  The girl shook her head despairingly. “I don’t know. That’s the worst of it. But I’d never marry one of them.”

  When the girl had finally left, Adelaide went to bed feeling more at peace, and happier, than she had done since Jules’ death.

  She was not deceived that Celeste was safe, or that she could resist pressure. But she had indicated to her mother that she had the desire to resist. She had indicated that, in spite of Christopher, she was a woman.

  Before she fell asleep, Adelaide decided to write to the wife of her husband’s nephew in New York, Marion Bouchard. She did not like Marion particularly, but Marion was a lady. And Christopher seemed to dislike her less than he disliked his other female relatives.

  CHAPTER XII

  Adelaide liked nothing about the grotesquely huge estate of Francis Bouchard except the incredibly beautiful gardens. She almost invariably accepted dinner invitations just for the joy of wandering in the grounds. Celeste, too, loved them. They were such a relief to her, after Christopher’s austere acres.

  It was hot tonight, unseasonably hot, for it was only the middle of May. The immense dining-room was a glitter of crystal and silver and white-satin linen. Estelle had looted a French castle of its chandeliers, and one of them hung over the refectory table like an illuminated mass of stalactites. It was blinding in its brilliance; it threw a hard and dazzling light on the expensive litter of gold-rimmed plates and glasses and heavy silver below. The ceiling above was frescoed; fat nymphs and cupids, decorously veiled with pink at strategic spots, disported themselves in obese attitudes on banks of flowers. (It was a copy of Raphael, Estelle asserted with pride.) Adelaide, who privately thought the Renaissance painters a regrettable mistake, and sentimentally over-rated, never looked at these frescoes without being revolted. The murals along the wall suggested Michelangelo. There was a vague suggestion about them of pregnant infants and goiterous virgins, with here and there a robed man obviously a eunuch. It was all completely without taste, but Estelle was inordinately proud of it. She was proud, too, of her seventeenth-century furniture with its serpentine legs and gilded commodes and sideboards, and of the elaborate crusted silver services and water jugs and handled trays. All was authentic, and all was hideous. Estelle was envious of Agnes Bouchard’s Gothic dining-hall, which she openly declared gave her the “glooms.” So, though she secretly liked the bare polished dark tiles of that dining-hall, she covered her own dining-room floor with Oriental rugs, thick and mossy.

  The whole house belied her “horsy” character, for there was a plebeian core in her which loved display and richness. Daughter of Irish peasants, who had appeased starvation with potatoes, the price-tag was her yardstick. She seemed determined to convince the world that the rumored gross revenues of the Bouchard clan for 1925 of $500,000,000 was a fact.

  She adored flunkies. She had more servants than any of the other members of the family. Adelaide, who liked simplicity and dignity and sparseness in service, was perpetually confused by the number of maids and men-servants. She could hardly eat for them. Her father had always said that a lady was proved by her table, and that one or two excellent dishes were all that were required. Estelle did not believe it. She did not believe, either, that three kinds of wine, and a digestive, were quite enough. The cellars were equipped with enough casks and bottles for a hotel, in spite of Prohibition.

  In short, there was, in this palace, a lavishness and a fear of too little, which betrayed almost pathetically the daughter of peasants who had dreaded nothing more than not having enough to eat.

  There were comparatively few at dinner tonight. There was old Ann Richmond Bouchard, mother of Francis, all black satin, bare shoulders, jewels and carefully waved hair. She was the same age as Adelaide, whom she privately patronized as “an old dowd, without personal pride.” But in spite of the rouge and the corsets and the dyed hair and the jewels and the sprightly nervous manner, she appeared older than Adelaide in her quiet semi-formal silk with the covered shoulders. Ann had been a great beauty in her youth, fashionable, vain and nervous, but the
beauty was now painted wreckage, the nervousness had become malice, and only the vanity had remained, stronger than ever. She was reputed to possess “a social conscience,” and was deeply interested in a number of charities, on whose boards she was invariably Chairwoman. Estelle, her daughter-in-law, who had frankly no social conscience at all, she despised as a woman unaware of “modern trends and responsibilities.” Ann greatly prided herself on her modern outlook. She boasted that her granddaughters were her friends, and that they regarded her, not as “grandma” but as a comrade. It was well for her that she did not know of the intense amusement she gave them. She professed to be unshockable, and had a collection of nasty stories which she had gleaned from Rosemarie.

  Then there was Emile, and his wife, Agnes, the former Miss Fortune. Agnes, niece of the Governor, Elliott Graves, was a thin and avid woman of thirty-five, with a narrow white face and violently red painted lips, and black straight hair cut closely on her long narrow head. She had a long bony nose, which she thought patrician, but which at times gave her a slightly harpy appearance. The straps of her dark red gown accentuated the boniness of her shoulders. She had no breasts, for breasts were out-of-date in nineteen-twenty-five; her whole body was lathe-like, very fashionable. She had a manner of constantly twisting her scarlet thread-like lips, and this, combined with her bold black eyes, made her appear predatory, which she was in truth. She had a febrile laugh, and a penchant for Christopher, which he affected to duplicate. He had given her the gold-and-ivory cigarette-holder which she perpetually waved all during dinner; it had been a secret gift, and it unendingly amused him to watch her use it, and to catch her significant glances at him. He usually sought her out, for he liked to look at her and to compare Celeste with her.

  Hugo, who had “just run up from New York for a breath of clean air,” was there. He had not brought his wife. There he sat, buff-colored and genial and white-toothed and smiling, with his loving manners and politician’s false joviality. Armand had once said, gloomily, that whenever Hugo appeared one had only to start looking for the carrion. Just at present he was in an excessively expansive mood, and kept glancing at Christopher with the most intimate and jocose expression.