The Final Hour

by Caldwell, Taylor;

  Christopher smiled, and inclined his head. ‘Yes. Always. But you knew, didn’t you?’

  Antoine actually laughed softly. He seemed delighted. ‘Yes, I believe I did. Congratulations.’

  Then Antoine rose, without hurry, all his movements elegant and languid. He looked at his faction, his tilted black eyes sparkling, his smile brilliant. He commanded their attention, though he said no word, nor made any gesture. They stopped in the very act of their disordered pacing, and stared at him.

  ‘Boys,’ he said, gently, ‘I think we’re done. Yes, I really think we’re done.’

  Complete demoralization took hold on them now. They stared at him, pale, haggard, blinking and swallowing visibly. Then slowly, one by one, they returned to their chairs and fell into them. They dropped their heads. They stared before them, dully.

  Antoine turned graciously to Henri, standing there like a stone, smiling grimly. ‘I may ask you a question?’ he said, with a light bow that infuriated the other man. But Henri only inclined his head.

  ‘It is true that I am not very bright,’ said Antoine. ‘And my mind seems a little confused. In all humility, I want to know this: If we co-operate, as you have so tactfully suggested, producing material of war at a reasonable profit, what guarantee have we that the Government will relax its control after the war, and permit us to build up our resources to withstand a readjustment afterwards?’

  Henri said, watching him closely: ‘This will depend upon your co-operation now, and above all, upon the confidence and respect we inspire in the people. If we assume our rightful position and show loyalty and comparative distinterestedness, we may even win a place at the peace-table. And this will be very valuable in the allotment of spheres of industrial reconstruction in the devastated countries of Europe. I am sure you are imaginative enough to know this holds practically unlimited possibilities.’

  He looked at Antoine doggedly. His face became congested and thick. It cost him a profound effort, but he said, sullenly: ‘I hope also that you will continue with Bouchard & Sons. I have something very interesting in mind.’

  Antoine gazed at him with the utmost thoughtful gentleness. He appeared to muse, as if some sweet thought had come to him. His eyes glittered, but whether it was with intense amusement, Henri could not know. Then Antoine bowed deeply from the waist, like a dancer. ‘You interest me very strangely,’ he said. ‘Shall we have a talk, tomorrow, alone?’

  Henri was nonplussed for a few moments. He stared sombrely at the younger man. He even moved a little on his strong spread feet. He could not understand this civilized and graceful surrender, this admiration for a successful foe that sparkled so amusedly in Antoine’s eyes. So, he merely nodded, and when Antoine turned away from him, he rubbed his ear in uncertain speculation. Somehow, his triumph was a little dimmed. In his defeat. Antoine was still unruffled, still completely contained.

  Henri waited until all were seated again in their chairs, Antoine’s faction still staring dully before them, Henri’s faction sharing with quite vulgar satisfaction in his own triumph. And then he spoke again, louder, clearer, and with really ringing emphasis:

  ‘Unless, finally, we come to the point where we all realize, not only the Bouchards, but all the powerful of America, that we are no longer a dynasty ruling from the top, but must depend upon the goodwill, not only of our own people but of all the other peoples with whom we must eventually come into contact in a constantly widening sphere of activity, we shall perish. And other men, wiser than we, will take our places. This is inevitable. This is the stark reality we must face.

  ‘This is our final hour.’

  And now, as if impelled by an irresistible compulsion, he turned his head and looked up at the face of Ernest Barbour. The portrait looked down at him, intently, as immovable, as inexorable as himself.

  And then Henri turned to his silent kinsmen, each of whom was sunk in profound and private thoughts of his own. He said, with deceptive lightness:

  ‘There is just one other little thing, and it embarrasses me to bring it up. I’m going to be right on the job, all the time. I’m going to know everything. You are going to tell me everything. Because, if any of you should prove refractory at any time, and continue with some of your—shall we say extracurricular activities, such as you have been engaged in, and of which I am very completely aware, with records and so on, then I shall turn these exhaustive records over to certain Government investigate agencies, who can make things very uncomfortable for you. I have given that certain gentleman in Washington some hint of what I have garnered, here and there. It would hurt me very much to give him these records. But he made me promise to do it. In that event, I can guarantee that you will rue the nasty day you didn’t take my advice.

  ‘I’ve told you I shouldn’t like to do it. After all, it would involve the family. But, I’d have no other choice. For, you see, that would be the only way I could save myself from positive Government vengeance, punitive measures, and complete annihilation.’

  He added, after he had let Antoine’s faction brood upon this with impotent and silent fear and fury:

  ‘I know that you will also inform your associates of this. It might save them a lot of unpleasant things, in the long run. And, as for some of you in the family: if the worst comes to the worst, I have ways of smashing all of you. I have been planning these ways for months.’

  Little Annette, solitary and silent, looked through the small windows of the transcontinental plane, and her pale triangular face was quite calm. She did not feel abandoned, or lost, or even heart-broken. Her sorrow was a quiet thing, part of her life, and now at last she realized that it always had been a part, and probably always would be.

  But there was no weakness in her, no hopelessness. She looked at the huge masses of white and rolling cloud, so like an ocean, with dark and jagged towers of mist thrusting through them, like enormous ruins. And then, as she watched, the sun suddenly struck them, and every tower, every rampart, was awash with gold.

  She smiled. She said aloud, softly: ‘Yes, there is. a place for me. Somewhere, surely there is a place,’

  EPILOGUE

  Mr Cornell Hawkins stood by his dusty window and gazed down unseeingly at Fifth Avenue, swirling darkly in a wet thick snow.

  Perhaps it was his imagination, but it seemed to him that there was a quicker and more hurried tempo in those who swarmed the street below, that a dusky urgency was upon them, a certain universal grimness. The dark and lowering sky hung threateningly overhead, a sky that looked down now on a world completely at war, completely engulfed in tragedy, completely face to face with its final hour.

  He had often wondered how America would react to its inevitable destiny of long agony and suffering and death and sorrow. He remembered the last war, when there had been a certain jubilation, a sense of adventure, among the people. There had been bands, and songs, and marching, and the gay flutter of flags. There had been the joyful release from monotony, a burgeoning belief in mighty and glorious things to come after this war, which was only a turbulent and crashing threshold that opened on the shining land of the future.

  He did not believe that the American people were now so naïve, so childlike. He believed there was no joy or exhilaration among them. He believed there was only sadness and anger, and full knowledge of what was to come. America had come of age; in blood and bitterness and righteous hatred she raised her sword in the red light of war.

  He had lived too long, he was too wise, to believe that any great and dazzling hope and rapture awaited the world after its anguished struggle with the forces of evil that lived in itself, and its conquest of those forces. Pain and loss, exhaustion and despair, would most probably come to it. It would feel that it could not go on. It would rest, panting, among its ruins, and would look about it with dull eyes in which there was not even a frantic horror. It would not even be hopeless. It would only be very tired, and very cold, and it would shudder.

  How long would it be before it could rise again,
and with bleeding hands begin to build once more? How much of its bitterness and hatred and memory could it obliterate from itself? How much of its deep death, and its darkness?

  The shock of remembered conflict would be in all its flesh. For many years it would see again the ruined cities, and the multitudes of dead or weeping faces. The graves would not sink soon; the saturated and surfeited earth would not soon be pleasant and tranquil again. Where the plough struck, it would strike bones.

  Long after the white walls of the world were again intact, and commerce again streamed across unthreatened oceans, the winds would still carry the cries of those who had so innocently died, of those who had been betrayed, of those who had been tormented. For this had not been a war of governments. It had been a war of peoples. It had been a war of the spirits of men. Every blade of grass would remember that it had been dyed red; every root of every tree would feel the dead entwined with it.

  Evil had come, and man had risen to face it—afraid, yes, desperate most certainly. He would conquer it, as he had conquered, it before. One must believe that, thought Mr Hawkins. One must not dare not to believe it.

  He sighed. He saw Peter’s face. He heard Peter’s voice once more, stronger and clearer now, and triumphant:

  ‘No matter what comes, no matter what men die and suffer, the earth will remain. The earth will abide, forever. And with it, will abide men’s hope, now and always, living again in their children, reaffrming their faith that there is a destiny for them among themselves, and with God.’

  ACKNOWLEDGMENT

  The author here makes grateful acknowledgment to Marcus Reback, for his constant encouragement, sympathy and assistance.

  A Biography of Taylor Caldwell

  Taylor Caldwell was one of the most prolific and widely read American authors of the twentieth century. In a career that spanned five decades, she wrote forty novels, many of which were New York Times bestsellers.

  Caldwell captivated readers with emotionally charged historical novels and family sagas such as Captains and the Kings, which sold 4.5 million copies and was made into a television miniseries in 1976. Her novels based on the lives of religious figures, Dear and Glorious Physician, a portrayal of the life of St. Luke, and Great Lion of God, a panoramic novel about the life and times of St. Paul, are among the bestselling religious novels of all time.

  Born Janet Miriam Holland Taylor Caldwell in 1900 in Manchester, England, into a family of Scotch-Irish descent, she began attending an academically rigorous school at the age of four, studying Latin, French, history, and geography. At six, she won a national gold medal for her essay on novelist Charles Dickens. On weekends, she performed a long list of household chores and attended Sunday school and church twice a day. Caldwell often credited her Spartan childhood with making her a rugged individualist.

  In 1907, Caldwell, her parents, and her younger brother immigrated to the United States, settling in Buffalo, New York, where she would live for most of her life. She started writing stories when she was eight years old and completed her first novel, The Romance of Atlantis, when she was twelve, although it was not published until 1975. Marriage at the age of eighteen to William Combs and the birth of her first child, Mary Margaret—Peggy—did not deter her from pursuing an education. While working as a stenographer and a court reporter to help support her family, she took college courses at night.

  Upon receiving a bachelor of arts degree from the University of Buffalo in 1931, she divorced her husband and married Marcus Reback, her boss at the US Immigration Department office in Buffalo. Caldwell then dedicated herself to writing full time. Even as her family grew with the arrival of her second daughter, Judith, Caldwell’s unpublished manuscripts continued to pile up.

  At the age of thirty-eight, she finally sold a novel, Dynasty of Death, to a major New York publisher. Convinced that a pre–World War I saga of two dynasties of munitions manufacturers would be better received if people thought it was written by a man, Maxwell Perkins, her editor at Scribner—who also discovered F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway—advised her to use only part of her name—Taylor Caldwell—as her pen name. Dynasty of Death became a bestseller in 1938 and the saga continued with The Eagles Gather in 1940 and The Final Hour in 1944. Inevitably, a public stir ensued when people discovered Taylor Caldwell was a woman.

  Over the next forty years, Caldwell often worked from midnight to early morning at her electric typewriter in her book-crammed study, producing a wide array of sagas (This Side of Innocence, Answer as a Man) and historical novels (Testimony of Two Men, Ceremony of the Innocent) that celebrated American values and passions.

  She also produced novels set in the ancient world (A Pillar of Iron, Glory and the Lightning), dystopian fiction (The Devil’s Advocate, Your Sins and Mine), and spiritually themed novels (The Listener, No One Hears But Him, Dialogues with the Devil).

  Apart from their across-the-board popularity with readers and their commercial success, which made Caldwell a wealthy woman, her long list of bestselling novels possessed common themes that were close to her heart: self-reliance and individualism, man’s struggle for justice, the government’s encroachment on personal freedoms, and the conflict between man’s desire for wealth and power and his need for love and family bonding.

  The long hours spent at her typewriter did not keep Caldwell from enjoying life. She gave elegant parties at her grand house in Buffalo. One of her grandchildren recalls watching her hold the crowd in awe with her observations about life and politics. She embarked on annual worldwide cruises and was fond of a glass of good bourbon. Drina Fried recalls her grandmother confiding in her: “I vehemently believe that we should have as much fun as is possible in our dolorous life, if it does not injure ourselves or anyone else. The only thing is—be discreet. The world will forgive you anything but getting caught.”

  Caldwell didn’t stop writing until she suffered a debilitating stroke at the age of eighty. Her last novel, Answer as a Man, was published in 1981 and hit the New York Times bestseller list before its official publication date. She died at her home in Greenwich, Connecticut, in 1985.

  William Combs, Taylor Caldwell’s first husband and father to Peggy, aboard a naval ship, circa 1926.

  A portrait of Caldwell at the start of her career in the late 1930s.

  A portrait of Caldwell taken before Scribner’s publication of Melissa on June 21, 1948.

  Caldwell at her desk in Palm Beach, Florida, in 1949. She spent many winter months at Whitehall, a resort hotel on the property of Henry Flagler’s former estate, which is now the Flagler Museum.

  Caldwell’s second daughter, Judith Ann Reback, during time with her mother at Whitehall in the 1940s.

  Caldwell receiving an award in Los Angeles, California, for A Pillar of Iron after its publication in 1965.

  Caldwell with her daughters, Peggy Fried and Judith Ann Reback (Goodman), and Ted Goodman in 1969 on the MS Bergensfjord.

  Caldwell at a cocktail party with her daughter, Peggy, and the hostess of a research world cruise on the SS President Wilson in 1970.

  Caldwell with her granddaughter, Drina Fried, at her home in Buffalo, New York, winter 1975. Soula Angelou, her personal assistant, insisted on taking this rare family picture.

  An invitation from 1975 to one of Caldwell’s many cocktail parties. She hosted at least two parties a year in Buffalo, New York, before she moved to Connecticut.

  Caldwell with her fourth husband, Robert Prestie, who cared for her in the last six years of her life in Connecticut.

  All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, compani
es, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 1944 by Taylor Caldwell

  Cover design by Connie Gabbert

  ISBN: 978-1-5040-5319-8

  This edition published in 2018 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

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  New York, NY 10038

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