The Final Hour

by Caldwell, Taylor;

  ‘The imponderables of the people’s conscience!’ said Antoine Bouchard.

  His faction, his friends and associates, were confident that their ‘man’ would be nominated as the Republican candidate for President of the United States. The Republican Convention was held in Philadelphia in June, 1940.

  Some members of Antoine’s faction had uneasily observed that there had been considerable talk of ‘Willkie for President’ since the latter part of 1939. Articles, apparently out of the blue, had appeared in prominent magazines for the past several months, in which Mr Willkie, his career, his courageous struggle against the strangling TVA, his intelligent defence of private ownership and private enterprise, and his brilliant and amazing record as president of Commonwealth & Southern, were all extolled and discussed. Though Mr Willkie conceded that the excesses of Big Business in the nineteen-twenties deserved no defence, he contended that only private industry had the inspiration, initiative and spontaneous invention to overcome periods of depression and assure the prosperity and soundness of the future. His arguments for the case of private enterprise appeared in many publications, especially in those magazines and other periodicals bought and read by the more intelligent and solvent segment of the public. More ‘homely’ portraits of him, not too sentimental, appeared in the periodicals bought by those nonchalantly designated by the unthinking as ‘labour.’

  Even all this would not have disturbed Antoine’s faction, or even aroused the slightest awareness in them, had it not been for a certain other thing, also.

  Mr Willkie had once been a Democrat, and a firm supporter of Mr Roosevelt. But, as he said wryly, ‘the party had left him.’ He was too honest a man, too intellectually honest, to abide blindly by the decisions of a group of men whom he considered had betrayed the very principles on which they had been elevated to power. He did not consider it virtuous, or loyal, to declare: ‘My party: may it always be right, but, right or wrong, my party.’ Such an attitude, he believed, was excessively dangerous, and inimical to the welfare of America. Its stupidity was beyond question.

  A pungent and vigorous writer, he refused a ‘ghost-writer,’ and wrote a series of articles, himself, for the leading magazines, in which he contented that a more minatory enemy than Big Business threatened America, and that enemy was Big Government. These articles attracted the attention of the thoughtful and the intelligent, those concerned with constitutional government and the maintenance of American integrity and sturdiness of character. He also wrote an article for a great and solid periodical, entitled ‘We, the People,’ which aroused a tremendous discussion of the possibilities of his nomination as a candidate for President of the United States.

  Mr Willkie, however, declared, with some bewilderment, that he seemed to be ‘in front of a trend.’ With considerable bemusement, he tried to trace the beginnings and the outline of the strange, obscure ‘trend’ that had sent him pushing before it. It was there, huge but amorphous, seemingly impelled by an irresistible force, invisible but inexorable. Mr Willkie had accepted the first flurry of the trend as merely the interest he excited in defending private enterprise. He went along, faintly incredulous, and dimly bemused, on the wave of what not even he or his supporters as yet saw as a gigantic and definite determination. The trend had grown into an enormous flood, fed by a thousand streamlets, before Republican politicians were aware of it, and then they became aware with amazement. The managing editor of an esteemed and brilliant magazine resigned to devote all his energies to the Willkie movement. Had anyone noticed it at the time, he would have observed that long and enthusiastic comments about Mr Willkie were appearing all over the country in increasing numbers and prominence, and that there seemed to be some predetermined plan behind all this, some pattern.

  Advertisements from non-political sources appeared in newspapers all over the country, and petitions were circulated urging his nomination, also from non-political sources.

  The majority of Antoine’s faction, though observing this mysterious phenomenon, merely laughed at it. ‘The barberless Hoosier,’ as they called him, had long ago bored them with his earnest and simple honesty and stubborn integrity. They had once thought him colourful and potent, in the days when he had been engaged in a David-and-Goliath struggle with the Government (without, however, the happy denouement of the Bible), but they had watched him with cynical detachment and fatalism, Also, they had admired him for his ability to wrest from the Government $30,000,000 more than the original price offered for the Commonwealth & Southern subsidiary, the Tennessee Electric Power Company. But as a candidate for the Presidency of the United States, in opposition to the ‘man’ already chosen as that candidate by the powerful Bouchards and their friends, Mr Willkie was not even taken seriously. Antoine declared him an ‘impudent bumpkin, a clodhopper Don Quixote, Diogenes looking for the White House with an oil lantern, the comic relief.’ He was annoyed, was Antoine, at the sudden and apparently sourceless burgeoning of Mr Willkie’s name in public newspapers and public discussions, and some instinct crept warningly along his nerves.

  The ‘man’ chosen by the Antoine faction, and confidently expected to secure the nomination, was a smallish fat man with a dull cherubic face, a duller smile and fixed light eyes. He had had a wide political career, and in every office he had distinguished himself by his unremitting antagonism to any liberal idea, his dogged conversatism, his endless hatred for ‘the alien element,’ and especially those progressive doctrines to which he believed only that element was attached, his aversion for labour, his adoration of the powerful, his servile worship of tradition, and his really remarkable record for economy in public expenditures. This alone would have endeared him to the Bouchards and their friends. But when to all this was added the attraction of an old and established American ancestry, an obstinate and unimaginative and blatant honesty, a rough and truculent manner (so beloved of the people), a connection with the American Legion, who adored him, a loud hatred for ‘foreign ideas as opposed to one-hundred-percent Americanism,’ a loathing for ‘New Deal extravagance, boondoggling and spending,’ and an avowed passion for ‘the American way of life, with every American a two-fisted fighter,’ the Bouchards felt that heaven was indeed doing very excellently by them. The man had the affection of the people; he was already a puppet in the hands of his masters. Nothing could have been more satisfactory.

  They had carefully built him up over a period of months. He had had a third-class reputation in the country, but he was suddenly brought to first-class position in the public attention. The Bouchards and their friends were clever enough not to have him mouth any isolationism or anti-British sentiment, for they had already discerned an uneasy stirring in the American people. They allowed him to speak with gravity in reproof of Naziism, in a voice that expressed more sorrow and lofty scorn than anger. His favourite phrase was: ‘Between brown bolshevism and red bolshevism we in America can discover no difference.’ That disposed very neatly of the fears of those timid souls who hated either ‘bolshevism.’ But on one thing was this candidate for the nomination very firm: No American boy would ever die on foreign soil!

  When some obstreperous heckler demanded what the esteemed gentleman would advise in the event of an attack on America, the candidate laughed coldly. ‘Do you actually believe that any nation, anywhere in the world, would have the audacity or madness to attack us! You forget, my dear sir, the three thousand miles of water on one hand, and the six thousand miles of water on the other! No matter what happens to the rest of the world, no one would dare attack us, for they would know it would mean certain death and defeat. Therefore, there is no necessity for military peacetime training of our young men, as urged by the more excitable elements in our country. There is no necessity to build up a large reserve of armaments, as our warmongers and munitions manufacturers would like us to do. We have more than enough battleships and aeroplanes. However, I do urge an attitude of watchful waiting and careful preparedness.’ This, then, disposed of those who were firmly paci
fistic in tendency, and those who desired ‘adequate means of defence.’ The candidate received the passionate support of the America Only Committee. His speeches about ‘American boys’ caused American mothers to writhe in ecstasy. They were convinced he stood between their sons and war like a rampart of iron.

  In the meantime, as Mr Wilkie was observing with considerable bewilderment the huge and resistless trend that was pushing him forward to that June in Philadelphia, Henri Bouchard and his faction watched with grim sleeplessness ‘Wendell will be nominated,’ Mr Regan had assured Henri. ‘Stop your nail-chewing. That stuffed flabby fish of theirs hasn’t a chance.’

  But ‘the flabby fish,’ now represented as the sturdiest example of America’s sons, was doing very well. If his resounding phrases were empty and without substance, the people did not know it. The petty bourgeoisie, the little shopkeeper, the small tax-payer, regarded him with delight, through their myopic glasses. ‘American traditions of individualism, American hatred for imperialism, American soundness of politics, American economy in government, American dislike for bureaucracy, American belief in the principles of personal independence and sturdiness of character,’ fell from his lips like golden pellets. That they signified nothing tangible was discerned only by a few. Had the gentleman been asked to define a single term, he would have been at a loss, and would have retired to greater vaguenesses.

  Nevertheless, he won 310 votes on the second ballot during the Republican Convention. Mr Willkie had few delegates; none of the seasoned politicians believed for an instant that he had a chance for the nomination.

  Mr Willkie was a fighter. He might have only a confused idea as to how all this began, and no idea at all of the powerful forces that were really behind him, but now that he incredulously saw he had a fighter’s chance to win he threw himself into the struggle with gusto and hearty joy. He went everywhere; engaged in debates in hotel lobbies; shook hands with thousands. Once, speaking to the Convention, he cried: ‘Democracy and our way of life is facing the most crucial test it has ever faced in all its long history. I expect to conduct a crusading, aggressive, fighting campaign to bring unity to America, to bring the unity of labour and capital, agriculture and industry, farmer and worker and all classes to this great cause of the preservation of freedom.’

  His square passionate face, his disordered hair, his vivid fighting eyes, appeared hugely in national newspapers.

  Antoine’s faction was apprehensively annoyed at this sud den and impudent intrusion into their plans. This gone beyond a joke,’ said Jean Bouchard. ‘Someone’s behind all this. Let’s smoke him out. I don’t like it, I tell you.’

  But look where they would, they found no footprint behind Mr Willkie, no echo of a portentous voice, no shadow.

  There was none to suspect. On the subject of their ‘man’ all the Bouchards, of both factions, were apparently in the heartiest of agreement. Christopher had reported to Antoine that Henri was to contribute an enormous sum towards the nomination of the preferred candidate. Henri and his faction were financing the advertising in every newspaper in the country in behalf of this man. If, in the same newspaper, appeared even larger photographs and better-written and more intelligent articles about Mr Willkie, the fact was regrettable but not likely to arouse suspicion. If radio commentators in behalf of Mr Willkie seemed to have more time to speak of him, their sponsors could not be detected. If a noisy crowd in the gallery at the Convention suddenly rose as one man with shouts of: ‘We want Willkie!’ not even the subtle Antoine could have suspected for an instant the power behind all this. If magazines and periodicals were filled with stories, photographs and eulogies of Mr Willkie, no one seemed to have an explanation.

  Mr Willkie gained steadily at each ballot. Now Antoine and his faction became alarmed. At the fifth ballot, they were desperate, dumb with enraged bewilderment. When the results of the sixth ballot were known, they were speechless. Mr Willkie had been nominated as the Republican candidate.

  When Antoine and the other Bouchards gathered together in Windsor, it was to sit for grim black hours, facing each other, talking, pacing the floor, cursing, plotting, suspecting, hating. But there was nothing they could do. Something stronger than themselves, or more subtle, or more determined, had won.

  All they could do now was to attempt to salvage what they could from the ruins.

  ‘At least,’ said Antoine, with bitter sarcasm, ‘we’ll be backing an honest man for once. See what you can do with him.’

  ‘He has some colour and vitality, which is more than you can say about that grey bladder of ours,’ commented Jean. ‘God! He always seemed to me to smell of wet stiff leather.’

  It was then that the full and incredible enormity of the thing staggered Antoine. How had this thing come about, while he and his friends had waited so smugly in Windsor for the final returns of the balloting? Never for a moment had they doubted the final result. Nothing had been overlooked, ill-planned or neglected.

  It was useless to call in the managers and upbraid or threaten them or to demand from them an explanation. For the explanation evaded them all. The delegates had had their instructions. They had listened for hours to the speeches of the various candidates for nomination. Yet, at the last, a kind of frenzy had fallen on them, a frenzy half of madness, half of exhaustion. And in a whirlwind of delirium, Wendell Willkie had received the nomination.

  Suddenly, fantastically, Antoine saw again old Jay Regan’s huge and saturnine face. ‘The imponderables of the people’s conscience!’ Absurd, insane. It had not been the donkey people who had thrown out the candidate-choice of the Bouchards. It had been some monstrous accident, some wild accidental joke, some hypnotism, something not to be explained in the reasonable words of reasonable men.

  He said, with cold and venomous rage: ‘I tell you, we can’t do anything with this Willkie! The best we can hope for is that he’ll defeat Roosevelt. After that, God knows.’ He glared at his faction, and the others, his black eyes virulent. ‘I don’t know! I don’t know! But there’s something strange about all this!’

  ‘If he defeats Roosevelt, there’ll really be something very strange about it,’ said Nicholas Bouchard sourly. ‘Start your worry then. Any — — — that gets to run for a third term in spite of hell and high water and the Daughters of the American Revolution can’t be beaten by the Archangel Michael himself.’

  All the Bouchards were at this conference in the dark gloomy library of Armand’s house. All but Armand, semiconscious in his dusty room upstairs. Antoine looked slowly from one face to the other, his dark face tightening, narrowing. He finally looked at Henri, bland of expression, harsh of feature. And Henri returned his regard with those pale implacable eyes of his that betrayed nothing at all.

  Then it was that a cold and foreboding thrill of fear raced down Antoine’s spine. There it is; there is the answer, he thought, against all reason, against all known logic.

  ‘Willkie will win,’ said Henri, ‘unless you boys, and your friends, openly give him ‘the kiss of death’; in other words, if you don’t let labour catch on that you hope Willkie will be your heavy club to knock it down.’

  CHAPTER XLVIII

  Christopher was leaving Endur for one of his frequent business trips to Detroit, when his nephew, Antoine, was announced.

  It was a hot Sunday morning in July, and as Christopher selected the clothing he needed in order that it might be packed by his man, Edith kept him company amusing him, as always, with her dry witticisms and slightly malicious sallies.

  ‘When do you expect to be home, this time?’ she asked, fanning herself with a magazine, and sluggishly glancing through the tall bare windows at the blaze of grass and sky beyond them.

  ‘Oh, in a week or two. Eagle’s getting under way fast, now. The British, as you know, are financing the building of the new plant. They’re financing munitions and aircraft plants all over the country, which is an excellent thing. When the war breaks over us, if it does, we’ll be in sound position to manu
facture armaments, tanks and aircraft of our own at a moment’s notice.’

  ‘My God, this is a horrible thing to think about!’ exclaimed Edith, bitterly. ‘It’s a madness, a nightmare!’ She paused. ‘By the way, I hear Peter’s book is now in its third hundred thousand, and going better every day.’

  Christopher laughed shortly. ‘Your two remarks wouldn’t have some occult connection, would they, pet?’

  ‘They might,’ said Edith, grimly. She turned the nut-brown intensity of her eyes upon her husband. ‘You know, I think I don’t like this family.’ She rose and put her arms about Christopher, and buried her face in his neck, tightening her arms convulsively. ‘I don’t like you, either,’ she added, in a muffled voice.

  He stood without motion for a moment, then hugged her strongly. ‘Frankly, I hate all the Bouchards,’ he said, kissing her smooth dark hair. He gently released himself, and hesitated. ‘You’ll take care of Celeste?’

  Her pale thin lips were suddenly compressed. ‘Can’t I kiss you just once without your immediately mentioning your sister?’ she demanded. Then she shrugged. ‘Oh, hell. It doesn’t matter. Of course I’ll take care of your precious lamb. She’s doing very well, thank you, however. Quite calm and composed. Assembling a nice layette. You’re all wrong about Celeste. She isn’t porcelain. She’s iron.’

  She smiled tightly. ‘I’ve got to be with her, not for her sake, but for Henri’s. I expect him to appear any day soon, when least expected. And he must not see her alone.’

  It was then that Antoine was announced. Christopher was silent for an instant or two, his dry, pale face wrinkling. Then, with a gesture of his head, he dismissed Edith, who immediately slipped away into an adjoining room. Antoine, as urbane, darkly sparkling, and gay as always, appeared, saluting debonairly.