The Final Hour

by Caldwell, Taylor;

  Annette’s excitement grew momentarily. She could hardly keep still. She twittered and fluttered like an agitated bird. She was about thirty now, but she had never lost her childlikeness, her immaturity of body. Undersized, and underdeveloped, always with a shy and diffident soft manner, she walked so gently and with such a deprecating stoop to her small thin shoulders, that she gave an effect of deformity. But she was not in the least deformed, her body being all flatness and fragility. She could never wear sophisticated clothing, which would have looked absurd on her delicate angles and only vaguely formed breast. In consequence, she was compelled to wear childish styles, pretty, ribboned, bouffant, Which made her appear even more immature than she was. One guessed that even in old age she would be childish of figure. When she laughed, it was with apology and deprecation, and she would look at others with birdlike shyness and gentle fear, for she was a tender soul, all sweetness and chastity and kindness. She had a tiny triangular face, very white, worn with pain (she had been tubercular in her youth). The little mouth, the porcelain nose, the lines of chin and brow and cheek were negligible, but she had the most extraordinary large light-blue eyes, filled with light, and angelic in their purity. They had the inner radiance of those who are pure in heart, without guile or cruelty. Her father called her ‘Angel,’ as did her husband on those rare occasions when she touched him unbearably, and aroused his almost moribund compassion. Her ashen hair, full of bright ripples, had been cut, and framed her little face in tendrills like an infant’s.

  None of the Bouchards could hate this little soft creature, who believed no evil of them. They pitied her; some even loved her. Rosemarie merely despised her in an indolently affectionate fashion. She was her father’s darling, he who loved no one but her. She was even beloved of her malignant brother, Antoine, who was spoken of laughingly as the reincarnation of the lethal and elegant Jules, his grandfather.

  Beside the dark and fashionable Rosemarie, in her thin black linen suit, Annette was more childish than ever in her ruffled white dress and large white lace hat. Her head hardly came above her husband’s shoulder, and he was no giant in stature.

  If Antoine, brother of Annette, was the reincarnation of Jules, Henri Bouchard was the reincarnation of Ernest Barbour, his great-grandfather, the real founder, the real spirit, of the great armaments firm now called Bouchard & Sons. Stocky, broad, powerful of shoulders, calm and impressive of movement, he gave one the sense of inexorable strength. He had an unusually large head for a man of his height, and this, combined with his vital crest of light hair (one could not tell if it was grey, merely pale of colour, or faded), gave him a look of agelessness. He might have been in his early thirties, or fifty. In fact, he was about forty now. His face, also large, was broad, almost squarish, with thick folds about the heavy almost brutal lips. He had Ernest Barbour’s short broad nose, with the flaring coarse nostrils, and his square hard chin, with the deep dimple. It was his eyes, however, which were the dominant feature. Pale, staring, implacable, with bright black pinpoints of pupils, they fascinated the beholder, filled him with instinctive fear. When he smiled, it was a mere convulsion of his lips. His eyes never smiled. He had a compact and vital body, for all its stockiness, and there was a squareness about it, also. His clothing was invariably excellent, all angles, all neatness. His old friend, Jay Regan, the financial master of the world, declared that Henri looked incongruous in modern dress. He needed the long buff coat, the light pantaloons, the stock and the ruffles of his great-grandfather to be appropriately attired. His voice was quiet, firm, indomitable.

  He was the power of the Bouchards. His father-in-law, the fat, pursy, irresolute Armand, had retired. Henri was now president of Bouchard & Sons, master of its subsidiaries, plotter of its destiny, and, through it, plotter of America, and, with others, plotter of the world.

  He stood beside his wife and Rosemarie, and idly watched the travellers leave the liner. Annette was all gentle impatience to seek out her beloved Celeste, and Peter. But Henri restrained her. ‘Wait, love. There’s the Customs, you know. Do you want to meet them under the “B’s”? Or shall we wait a little?’

  ‘Under the “B’s,” please,’ she implored, looking at him with all the love of her pure heart standing in her pellucid eyes. She touched his arm timidly. He pressed his own hand over her gloved fingers. Rosemarie grimaced.

  ‘Why all the hurry?’ she asked, in her husky voice. ‘It’s only a matter of a few minutes.’ She added, indolently: ‘Are you really going back tomorrow morning? Why all the rush?’

  ‘There’s Peter,’ said Annette, with that breathless and apprehensive apology she always used to the exigent, the greedy and the selfish, as if she must appease their cruelty. ‘He’s been so ill, you know.’

  Ill, thought Henri. It is fourteen years. I had given him five, at the most. Fourteen years! I won’t wait any longer.

  They found Celeste, Peter and Adelaide, among their trunks, boxes and other luggage. Adelaide looked very old and dim. Celeste, in her brown and gold toilette, was calm and efficient, serene and assured, assisting the Customs officers, whom she had already charmed. Under the broad brim of her brown hat her face was cool and luminous, like white stone flecked with sunlight. Peter sat on a suitcase, emaciated and weak, his lips set grimly to restrain his fainting exhaustion of body. His eyes were sunken, shadowed with pain. He coughed hoarsely, held a handkerchief to his lips as he watched his wife.

  It was Peter, rather than Celeste, that Henri saw first, and What he saw made him smile internally, with brutal satisfaction.

  Annette, in a flutter of white lace, ran, crying, to her young aunt, her thin little arms extended, tears on her lashes, smiling radiantly. ‘Celeste! O my darling! It’s been so long!’ She flung her arms about Celeste, standing on tiptoe to reach her lips, hugging her with passion.

  Celeste, laughing lovingly, returned the kisses and embraces. She held off Annette a moment, to study, with secret earnestness, the small triangular face under the white lace hat. What she saw made her heart sink.

  ‘Granny, dear,’ said Annette, turning to Adelaide, and kissing her. ‘You don’t know how good it is to see you again.’ She kissed Peter’s damp cheek, with warm compassion. He had struggled to his feet, and he looked down at his distant cousin with a smile as gentle as her own.

  ‘It seems we’re forgotten,’ said Rosemarie, with amusement. But her sparkling black eyes, as she regarded Celeste, were pointed with hatred and ferocity. She had hoped that the long nursing of Peter, the long absence, might have destroyed that beauty which was so dangerous to her own peace of mind.

  Celeste, laughing, a faint colour now in her cheeks, apologized, extended her gloved hands to Rosemarie, and gave her a cool kiss. ‘Handsome as ever, I see,’ she smiled. ‘Not married yet, Rosy?’

  Henri came forward, and Celeste turned to him. She looked at him steadfastly as he approached. The smooth white sheath slipped over her features, and her smile was the smile of a statue. She gave him her hand. He held it strongly, and looked down into her eyes with gravity. Her heart began to beat with the strangest sensation, and she felt a heat in her flesh, a long thrill like a shiver passing up her arm from the hand he held. Her nostrils distended a little, as if she found it difficult to breathe.

  ‘Welcome home,’ he said quietly. ‘It’s been a long time. You haven’t changed in the least, Celeste.’

  How blue her eyes were in the shadow of the hat! Like violets, like lobelia, like amethysts. Yes, there was a jewellike brilliance and hardness in them, a coloured light without expression. She was a woman now, he thought. More beautiful than ever. She belongs to me; she has always belonged to me. She is afraid. She has always been afraid of me. Why? I think I know. She is really afraid of herself. Poor fool.

  He smiled slightly, pressed her hand, released it, turned to Adelaide. ‘How are you, Aunt Adelaide?’ His heavy lips, for all their smile, were sullen. He had not forgotten, then, that she had been his enemy, that she had helped defeat him, tha
t, in all the world, she alone had ever defeated him. But he was very courteous, and inclined his head, almost with a stiff bow, a remnant of his European training.

  She regarded him with fear. She remembered Ernest Barbour so well. This might have been the terrible man she remembered, inexorable, full of power, as dangerous as an army, as relentless as death. How could she have forgotten that resemblance of this man to his dead great-grandfather? Even the voice, silent now for nearly half a century, was the same. Her fear mounted.

  ‘It was so good of you all to meet us,’ she said, in a quavering tone. Her brown eyes were alive with her unreasoning terror. She glanced swiftly at Celeste, the glance of a mother whose child is threatened.

  She was not conscious of Rosemarie’s careful kiss, nor the fact that a streak of paint remained on her withered cheek from the salute. All her thoughts and sensations were centred on Celeste, who had turned away composedly to answer a question put to her by a Customs officer.

  In the meantime, Peter and Henri were shaking hands. Henri’s voice had become hearty, full of friendliness. ‘Well! You are looking much better than you did the last time you were home!’

  Peter was smiling. There was a glisten of dampness on his livid face. He regarded Henri with a penetrating look, his light-blue eyes, with their square corners of the heroic martyr, more intense than ever.

  ‘Thanks,’ he said, trying to make his tone as strong as Henri’s, and, as a result, having to suppress a cough. ‘Good of you to meet us, to invite us. I hope we aren’t imposing on you, Henri.’

  ‘Not at all. We’re delighted to have you. You ought to know that.’ Nothing could have been heartier than Henri’s manner and smile. But the pale basilisk eyes did not warm in the least. Peter felt his personality, with coldness and dread. The man of power. The most terrible man of power. The old hatred, the old fear, the old loathing, overcame him. Afraid that Henri might sense his thoughts, he forced himself to be overly cordial.

  ‘Very good, just the same. I’m afraid you’ll find us tiresome. But it’ll be just for a little while.’

  His thin hand was stinging from Henri’s grasp when he turned to Rosemarie, who had been watching the two men with a cynical and hating smile. She kissed him heartily. He was her uncle, brother to her father, Francis Bouchard, and related to her also through other ramifications of the clan.

  ‘Well, Pete, home again. Contemplating any new wanderings?’

  People like Rosemarie invariably caused him to shrink. They were so compact, so ruthless, so polished of contour and so inhuman. His voice stammered as he tried to reply to her airily.

  ‘We’ve engaged a suite for the night for you at the Ritz,’ said Henri. ‘Better to rest before starting for home.’

  Celeste was having some difficulty with the Customs. Henri immediately went to her assistance. In an incredibly short space of time he had adjusted matters. Celeste watched him, a little apart, saw the almost grovelling respect of the officers. She smiled, somewhat sombrely. Everyone watched him. He impelled eyes, and was completely unaware of them, as if he disdained the very existence of others.

  Henri’s limousine was waiting. The heat of New York was intense this last day of May. Yellow dust whirled with chaff against the windows of the car. The light on the great towers was too intense, the noise aching. Celeste sat back on the cushions and closed her eyes. But she could feel Henri’s look upon her face, the pressure of his arm against hers. His manner had been indifferent, his attitude casual. He was talking now to Peter, asking him amiable questions. But she felt his thoughts engrossed with her, like exigent and resistless hands upon her very body, and her body responded with heat and terror. Weakness flowed over her; her heart beat so loudly in her ears that she could not hear the conversation that went on about her. It came to her, muffled and disjointed. Her knees were like water; her fingers trembled in her gloves.

  We should never have accepted, she thought, her spirit struggling with the invisible but terrible hands that gripped her, subdued her, just as her body would have struggled with fleshy hands. She panted with a desire to escape, and when she was conscious of the desire, the will left her, voluptuously. Chill tendrills ran over her face and neck and breasts. She hated him; feared him; could not resist him. She felt the moving of his shoulders against hers, as he breathed, and knew, without glancing at him, when he looked at her out of the corner of his eye.

  We’ll have to make some excuse, she thought. Tomorrow, we’ll make some excuse. Emile is still in Windsor. We can change our minds. Yes, that is it. I can’t endure him. Once, I could. Once, I even thought I loved him. Now, I hate him. How dare he think of me, how dare he look at me! Tomorrow we’ve got to make other plans. I can’t remember, now, why I accepted. Other plans—

  She made no other plans. The next evening she and Peter occupied a fine apartment in Robin’s Nest, in Roseville, suburb of Windsor, Pennsylvania.

  CHAPTER VII

  Celeste had vaguely hoped that the breathless and ominously shining peace that had lain over Europe this summer of 1939 would be absent from America, from her old home in Windsor. But it was not absent. It had invaded America, too, like a sea of glittering chromium, which might part momentarily to reveal the points of blinding bayonets. The Depression, ‘that man in the White House,’ labour, unemployment, the ‘New Deal,’ were still important in discussion, in newspapers, in books, and on the radio. But the main topic was Hitler, the Polish Corridor, the prospect of war.

  There was a silent seething in America, a restlessness, a looking to the east with hatred or fear or hope. Across those blue seas, so calm and sweet this summer, so filled with gay traffic, there came sinister murmurs, the breath of cold winds, the sounds of invisible armies. And with them came the cries of those in torment, the shadow of a multitude of lifted arms appealing for help, the long foggy shapes of duplicity and treachery, greed and murder, terror and doom, casting their reflections on the chromium ocean like spectral portents of destiny.

  Celeste forced herself to believe in peace, against what she really knew, against the tired voice of Peter. She refused to discuss anything with him. ‘Let us just rest a little, darling,’ she pleaded. ‘Just a little.’

  She knew now that she had been homesick for very long. Even her multitudinous relatives, the Bouchards, whom she had once so feared and disliked, seemed lovable to her. She accepted their surface cordiality and affection. Her two brothers, Armand and Emile, still at Windsor, and their families, were always in and out of Robin’s Nest. Her other relatives, Francis, Hugo, and Jean, and their wives and children, were frequent visitors, and even Nicholas, that ‘dirty man.’ André Bouchard, his wife and children, came also. Only Christopher, her beloved brother, and his wife Edith, sister of Henri, had not yet arrived from Florida, but were expected daily.

  Celeste felt the warmness of family. It was entirely in her mind, as Adelaide might drearily have told her. But Adelaide was with her son, Emile, and his family. She had always had a faint liking for Agnes, Emile’s wife, who, besides being cynical, cruel, dissipated and greedy, was also honest. For some reason Agnes did not ‘feel up to’ visiting Robin’s Nest very often, though Emile often dropped in on his way home from the office. Therefore Adelaide saw her daughter and Peter not more than once a week, or even less. She felt something resistless in the atmosphere, and however she tried to reason it away, it remained. She knew she had only to demand a car, that she had only to call a cab, and she could go to Robin’s Nest alone. But that strange wall erected against her, which she felt, which she could not credit even in her strongest imagination, prevented her from doing this. However, she telephoned Celeste at least once a day, to listen achingly to the tone of Celeste’s voice rather than to her affectionate words.

  There were many other relatives, too, of other than the Bouchard name, and many friends, who called upon Celeste. She was quite touched. She had not forgotten that they had not cared for her before, more especially since her marriage to Peter. She was hardly ever
at home. Peter, recuperating from the voyage from France, rarely accompanied her to the numerous houses where she was entertained. She had at first refused, because Peter was unable to go, but seeing that she had suddenly and inexplicably manifested a desire for gaiety, for the presence of her people, he had urgently implored her not to think of him for a time, but to enjoy herself. ‘You deserve it, dear,’ he had said, gently, kissing her hand. ‘I’m quite comfortable. I only need a rest. In a week or two, I’ll be able to go with you anywhere.’

  He noticed that she was often out to dinner. He and Henri and Annette dined alone almost every night. Henri made no comment. Annette beamed with pleasure. ‘I’ve never seen anyone so popular,’ she would say. ‘It is so good for the darling, too.’

  Henri, at this, would incline his head, and smile a little to himself. He had a fairly good idea why he so infrequently encountered Celeste in his own house. He could wait a little longer. He understood this flight. Had Celeste not fled so often, so persistently, he might not have been satisfied. Her absence told him much, to his savage satisfaction.

  Peter’s strength was not returning. This, then, prevented him and Celeste from settling down to discuss their future plans. He was in no condition to be disturbed, to be moved, to be agitated, his doctors had informed his wife. They profoundly agreed with Henri, who had had a private discussion with them. He had warned them not to give Peter the slightest hint of this discussion.

  A competent trio of nurses had appeared at Robin’s Nest. Celeste, had protested; Peter had protested. ‘You wish to recover your health as quickly as possible, do you not?’ Henri had asked impatiently, while Annette lovingly pleaded. ‘Besides,’ Henri had said privately to his guest, ‘If you refuse. Celeste will be imprisoned here. Don’t you think she deserves a little freedom, after all these years?’

  So, miserable though he was, and strangely apprehensive, Peter agreed to the nurses, bore down Celeste’s protests. He felt rewarded by the new youth and happiness and gaiety which became evident in Celeste’s face. She had acquired her girlhood vivacity again. Sometimes, this vivacity appeared feverish to her husband. Certainly, though she laughed so often, and had acquired quite a wit, she seemed tired in repose. She was more loving than ever; sometimes she clung to Peter with a kind of despair. During these times, she slept in his room on the nurse’s cot, and obstinately refused to be ousted.