The Final Hour

by Caldwell, Taylor;

  This remark betrayed Hugo’s profound ignorance of his son. For Hilary, though possessing a remarkable resemblance to Antoine, and to Antoine’s grandfather, and showing all those apparent traits of character:keenness, wryness, cynicism and wit, which had been the outstanding characteristics of Jules, had a quite different form of spirit, which few ever discerned.

  For, amazingly, this young replica of Jules resembled his Uncle Peter in character. He was honourable, brave, steadfast and compassionate, and exquisitely perceptible. But, unlike Peter, who was inclined to be blunt, angry, aggressively honest, and sombrely quiet on occasion, Hilary was shrewd, sceptical, cynical and disillusioned, by nature. Moreover, he possessed an enormous and delicate tact, and a highly developed sense of humour, a balance of temperament which was incredible in one so young, and a keen awareness of the necessity of keeping his own counsel practically always. There was little of the dreamer in him, but, oddly, much of the mystic. His conversation was delightful; his air very ‘soigné,’ to quote the infatuated Christine. ‘He looks too much like Goebbels to suit me,’ was Hugo’s disparaging remark. ‘All the damned Latin Bouchards look like Goebbels.’ This remark, when quoted to Antoine, and others of the faintly ‘Jules line,’ did nothing to endear Hugo to his relatives.

  Hilary, very early, took an unremitting dislike to the Family, with very few exceptions. He had seen Peter only a few times, and though understanding this particular uncle, and feeling a great and sad compassion for him, he considered him, regretfully, something of a fool. In Hilary’s opinion, only fools disarmed themselves, made themselves vulnerable, by reason of their very integrity and honesty. Hilary believed that one’s character should be known only to oneself and to God, and, preferably, only to oneself. One should show the world only what one desired the world to see, and as virtue was always suspect, and integrity derided, these traits should be guarded like a golden treasure and unlocked only upon extreme occasions. As a result of this philosophy, very few of the Bouchards knew anything at all about Hilary, and he was unanimously declared to be Jules’ complete replica, even more so than Antoine.

  Hilary had a deep affection for Annette, a casual fondness for his three sisters, who worshipped him in spite of their beloved father’s aversion, a complete indifference for practically every other member of the family, and, very strangely, a mysterious attachment for Henri, whom he called ‘Uncle Henri,’ having disdained to disentangle the ramifications of relationship. He was too balanced and too cool to hate very strongly, but he truly hated his father, thought him a bumptious fool, a complete liar, a dangerous scoundrel, and a treacherous dog. As Hilary was too egotistic to conceal this fine opinion of Hugo, and too indifferent to him as a man, Hugo’s initial dislike could scarcely be expected to have diminished with the years.

  There was another deep and subterranean reason for the hatred between the two. Though Hugo adored all his daughters, who were fair, pretty and vivacious and very fond of him, his youngest daughter, Alice, was his darling. The two older girls were, like their comely mother, not very ‘bright,’ though amiable and charming. But Alice was witty and intelligent, full of laughter and sudden seriousness, and possessing a bright zest for living. She was scarcely more than a year older than Hilary; they had grown up together. Unlike

  Hilary, she was inclined to be tall. She had his gracefulness, his tact and perceptive keenness, his ingratiating mannerisms, his elegant gestures. Moreover, he very early learned that she had integrity and honour; the two older girls were too complacent, too amiable, too happy, to have any character at all, except delightful selfishness and charm. It was Hilary’s pressure on his mother, who in turn pressed determinedly upon Hugo, which resulted in Alice’s going to a fine university and studying law, instead of to the fashionable finishing-school which Hugo believed was more in keeping for Bouchard daughters.

  Alice was very healthy, but not aggressively so. She did not have that sweaty, wholesome appearance, that repulsive exuberance of animal spirits, which so often distinguishes the robust American female. Like Hilary, she loathed sports. Her skin, all milky whiteness and softness, with an apricot bloom upon her firm young cheeks, needed no artifice. She had her father’s golden eyes, and long bronze lashes, and their expression was alive and eager, yet profound. Her mouth, overlarge, was yet sweet, firm and strong, and brightly coloured, so that the size was overlooked. Her hair, a lighter gold than her eyes, was heavy and straight, and hung in masses on her wide shoulders. Everything about her expressed exquisite strength and fineness; her figure was excellent. ‘Grecian classic,’ Hugo would say, proudly. Moreover, she had taste, and a natural simplicity in dress, which enhanced her beauty.

  Hugo, though never a subtle man, and sly, rather than perceptive, yet very early saw that there was some passionate bond between his darling and his hated son, Hilary. When they had been children, they desired only each other’s society. Hugo had attempted to send Hilary away to a military school. ‘Make a man of the little pipsqueak,’ he had said. But Christine had violently opposed this. Hugo waited. He waited until Hilary had gone to Harvard. But long letters passed between brother and sister. Alice did not mourn over her brother’s absence. But she became more serious. When she went away, herself, to the university, she saw to it that her choice was not far from Harvard. Hugo knew that his son and daughter spent many week-ends together in New York, in a state of complete happiness and gentle rapport. To counteract this, he often visited New York, himself, and met Alice, and took her with him, leaving Hilary alone in wryly smiling silence. Hugo did not even descend to the politeness of asking Hilary to join them.

  Hugo, like many men of his temperament, had a certain rugged obscenity of mind, and a crude vulgarity. On the infrequent occasions when he was aroused, he displayed a violent brutality, lasciviousness of tongue, and ugly ruthlessness. He was careful to hide these traits from his peers; his inferiors knew them only too well. He always suspected the worst of everybody. In his private opinion, no woman was virtuous. All women (except his wife and daughters) were trollops, complaisant rumps and filthy of mind and desire. (Of men he had a slightly higher opinion, though he cast upon them his own reflection.) Sincerely convinced of the vileness of womankind, and the venality of men, he suspected the foulest of implications in an exchange of smiles between the sexes, in the slightest gallantry or the most innocent coquetry. He had a fund of vicious stories. All of them emphasized sexuality in its crudest form, and the worst did more than hint at perversion.

  With such a mind, and with his bottomless hatred and aversion for his son, he pretended to be convinced that Hilary’s love for Alice was perverted, unclean and dangerous. (Alice, of course, was the pure damsel without the slightest suspicion of the hideous yearnings of her brother.) In the end, Hugo no longer pretended to be convinced. He believed he knew. Now his hatred took on a maniacal quality, born of his jealousy. It never occurred to him that he needed a psychiatrist to probe into the dark pits of his own mind.

  Hilary, of course, knew of all this. His disgust had been so intense that he had been physically, as well as mentally, nauseated. He had felt indifference for his father, and disdainful amusement, rather than hatred. But now he hated. He was extremely alarmed for his beloved sister. But he knew he would never dare to enlighten her. For his own part, he made his letters shorter and more infrequent, when he wrote to Alice. He was often very busy when she suggested meeting him in New York. On his holidays, he forced himself to strike up more intimate relationships with friends. This lad, hardly seventeen, found himself engrossed in a dreadful problem from which he could see no escape, either for himself or his sister, or his father. For he saw that by gently relinquishing Alice’s hold upon himself, he was clearing the way for his father’s obsession.

  Too, he saw that Alice’s best hope of escape from an embroilment in an appalling situation was through marriage. Therefore, on every occasion, he asked her if she had become interested in some young man or other. When he did meet her in New York, he of
ten brought mature classmates with him. None interested Alice, until her brother introduced her to a young man named Charles Miles.

  Charles, unfortunately, came of an obscure farming family from up-state New York. In his high-school years, he had displayed such brilliance in scientific research that he had won a scholarship at Harvard. However, he was so badly needed at home that he had been unable to avail himself of this opportunity, and it was not until he was twenty-four years old that he felt himself free enough to take advantage of it. At the time Hilary introduced him to Alice, Charles was twenty—seven years old, unusually mature, thoughtful, grave, clever and intellectual. He was also penniless.

  Alice immediately fell in love with him. This dark, lean young man, who, she thought fondly, resembled her dear brother, dazzled her, won her. His gentleness, his humorous thoughtfulness, his kindness and interest, at once inspired her respect and affection. After six meetings, three of them alone after the discreet withdrawal of Hilary, they became engaged.

  The uproar that ensued on Massachusetts Avenue could be heard three houses away. It took no great astuteness on the part of Hugo to discern the fine Italian hand of young Hilary. Hugo’s hatred became murderous, insane. He threatened Alice for the first time in her life. But the girl, appalled, white of face, stood her ground resolutely. She had been forewarned by her brother. She would marry Charles Miles, she said, no matter what happened. Christine, though not very intelligent, was a shrewd woman. Her vague suspicions became strong in her. She stood by her daughter. If Hugo cut her off, she, Christine, would see to it that the young couple did not starve.

  No one had ever opposed Hugo Bouchard before. He was like a wild incensed bull. He raved, shrieked, threatened the most obscure and frightful things. His family, with pale faces, withdrew from him. Christine shuddered over and over in her pleasant apartments. Her two older daughters crept about the magnificent house, hiding from the sight of their father. Alice went to New York to stay with her relative, Mrs Phyllis Morse, who was fond of her.

  Hugo was demoralized and full of terror, as well as full of rage and hatred and jealousy. Now he felt his impotence. He wanted to kill. He stayed away from the State Department, even in these momentous days. He was sick to death, torn with agony, frustrated, anguished and mauled by the most nameless of passions. He had rationalized them, of course. Charles Miles was a servile and contemptible nobody, a beggar, a starveling, a fortune-hunter, a cur and a swine. It was horrible that such as he should dare to lift his eyes to a Bouchard daughter, this penniless scoundrel, this farming lout, this creeping snail. He would not permit Charles to come to the house. He threatened to kill him, to have him thrown out of Harvard, to expose a probable police record. He went so far as to write the president of Harvard, demanding the expulsion of Charles. If this was not done, he threatened, there would be no more Bouchard money pouring into the coffers. He notified the university that Hilary would be immediately withdrawn.

  But Christine again stepped in. Hilary would remain. She, Christine, would pay his tuition. Quite quietly, she wrote to the president and in her own turn demanded that Charles be allowed to remain, explaining that ‘Mr Bouchard was only temporarily excited and would get over it shortly.’

  Into this disordered and furious household, Henri appeared one late December day. He had heard rumours of the uproar, but in his characteristic fashion he hardly believed that a sensible man could be truly distraught over any affair which involved a woman. Hugo knew this opinion of his relative’s, and composed himself long enough to shut himself up with Henri just two days before Christmas. He had the greatest fear and, respect for Henri, and wished nothing more than his good opinion.

  BOOK TWO: THE BEGINNING OF SORROWS

  ‘For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places. … All these are the beginning of sorrows.’

  —Matthew xxiv: 7, 8.

  CHAPTER XXXIII

  Henri did not underestimate his relative, Hugo, nor was he persuaded that that hearty bluff smile, that genial affability, that loud rollicking laugh and goodfellowship, were the attributes of a fool. He knew that Hugo, as a man, a politician, and a Bouchard, was one of the most powerful men in the

  State Department. Hugo, it was, who had brought the most intransigent into the camp that supported, condoned and apologized for Franco, who had prevented the shipment of food, medical supplies and materials of war to the desperate Loyalist cities. Hugo, it was, who had distorted American public opinion into the belief that the Loyalists were ‘Reds, dangerous Communists and radicals, priest-murderers and atheists.’ Later, after the fall of the Spanish Republic, it had been Hugo’s influence which had speeded shipments of oil and scrap, food and munitions, into Franco’s enslaved and anguished Spain. If much of all this found its way to Hitler, that was palpably none of Hugo’s business, nor the business of the State Department, which had acted in good and virtuous American faith.

  It was Hugo, who had a profound regard for conservative British politics, who had induced the State Department to proceed with caution in European affairs, and who had inspired admiration for the Men of Munich. When American public opinion cried out indignantly at the shipments of scrap iron and oil to Japan, it was Hugo who inspired the newspaper releases apologizing for the little yellow men, and hinting that China was hardly the virtuous and noble democracy so sweetly imagined by Americans. Most of the men of the Department were much like Hugo, cautious, expedient, conservative, fascistic in thought if not in intent, career men of family and polish and craftiness and greed. One thing they possessed in common: a profound and aristocratic loathing of the ‘common people,’ ‘the cattle without brains or guts.’ (Though ‘guts’ were implied rather than said, the gentlemen being so excessively refined.) Hugo was more robust than many of the milky patricians of the State Department, but he was much more dangerous. They at least believed they were protecting their ‘class.’ Hugo, and others like him in the Department, cared only for the status quo, their wealth and their power, which they were grimly determined should remain intact. A still closer circle believed that it might be necessary, some near day, to enlist the aid of Hitler in subduing the American masses, which were showing alarming symptoms of beginning to think for themselves.

  It was Hugo who helped vigorously in the formation of a policy of distrust and hatred toward ‘Red Russia,’ who had been behind the demand that Russia pay for her shipments in gold. Out from the discreet and fastidious purlieus of the

  State Department came the releases which minimized Russian strength, which ‘scorned’ the pact between Russia and Germany, which hinted at the dire designs of Russia upon the peace and safety of the world. Most of the gentlemen of the Department had the highest regard for Mussolini; two had medals bestowed upon them by that very clever mountebank. When General ‘Billy’ Mitchell had warned the American people of the necessity of a powerful air-arm, it was the State Department, led by Hugo, who had besmirched and destroyed and broken the heart of that valiant and tragic soldier. The milky patricians fearfully believed that for America to be safe it was necessary only that she remain unarmed and refrain from provoking hostile gestures from Hitler and Mussolini. But there was an inner circle, composed of Hugo and the more ruthless and savage realists, who wished America to remain unarmed for their own monstrous reasons.

  And it was the State Department who catered timorously and with maudlin respect to a certain religious organization which was the most terrible enemy of democracy and liberalism in all the world, stronger and more terrible than Hitler, himself. Because of this organization, the State Department was adamant in its pressure on the Government to refuse visas and passports to a tortured and dying German Jewry. The gentlemen of the Department, who had a dainty dislike of all those who were not Harvard graduates and who could not boast an early-American ancestry (even though that ancestry might have been composed of London whores and jail-birds swept up from the
gutters of English cities for transportation to America), had a terrified aversion to people who could not speak English without an accent, or Whose features were not correctly in line with the prevailing type of features extant in the State Department.

  It was Hugo, in short, who was most powerfully behind the timorous, class-conscious, fascistic, crafty, liberal-hating, Red-baiting and witch-hunting elements of the Department. Never were they vulgar, even in their contempt and hatred and suspicion of Mr Roosevelt. Everything that was released by the Department was shining with gentlemanly restraint and polished phrases and bloodless elegance. The more earthy statements of Hugo were cleaned and deodorized before being made public. But the conspiracy was there, nevertheless.

  The State Department, on occasion, protested in plaintive tones to France, to Russia, to China. But never, never, did it protest to England, to Italy or to Mussolini. On occasion it reproved some more honest and valiant English statesman on his indignant remarks anent the feebleness of America’s timidly annoyed sentiments towards Hitler. These statesmen, who were young, honourable and realistic, were anathema to the royal circle within the State Department, and were disdainfully stigmatized as ‘war-mongers, who are desirous of embroiling America in European conflicts.’ The royal circle could not, in truth, scorn these Englishmen as not being ‘pukka sahibs,’ for the majority of them were scions of old and noble British families. But they inferred, with regret, that they were not upholding their ‘class,’ the arch-crime of all.