Regan’s eyes narrowed to pinpoints, but his voice was casual when he said: “It must be pretty dull for two young people who’re used to Paris and London, and all the rest.”
“I,” said Henri, “don’t expect it to be dull.”
There was a long and pregnant pause, while their eyes met and held. Then, under Regan’s white clipped mustache a peculiar glinting smile formed.
“Ah,” he said richly.
There was still another silence. Finally, Regan said: “Have you been down the Street? Will you go with me? I would like to introduce you to a number of old-timers who remember your great-grandfather.”
“Thank you.”
Regan brushed ashes from his vest, poured himself another drink. Henri waited, smoking tranquilly. Regan smiled almost impishly.
“You know, my dear Henri, few transactions take place without the knowledge of old buzzards like me. For instance, we know that there must be great understanding between you and Christopher Bouchard for you to lend him all that money. Considering,” and he cleared his throat delicately, “considering the fact that Jules Bouchard did a neat trick of making your branch of the family pretty helpless, when it comes to active participation in the affairs of Bouchard & Sons.”
Henri’s heavy lips twitched. “The understanding,” he replied, “is all on Christopher’s part.”
Again, the peculiar glint occurred under Regan’s mustache.
“You,” he said thoughtfully, after a moment, “have been underestimated.” He-waited. Henri said nothing. Regan continued: “But all that money! Henri, I’m going to enjoy life for the next few years! Things have been pretty dull in the world lately.”
“By all means, enjoy yourself, Mr. Regan.”
Regan leaned back in his chair, which creaked faintly with his weight. He regarded the ceiling with a pleasant expression.
“There were giants in those days,” he said meditatively, as though indulging in a soliloquy. “They did things. They touched things with their hands and moved them with their strength. There was excitement—the personal touch. Now everything is glittering chromium and the click of shiny machinery. No blood. Men don’t hit each other over the head with clubs any more and make things exciting for the spectators. They just slip around each other in the dark and use a razor with the utmost courtesy. I don’t like it. America wasn’t built by dancers on a chromium stage. Have you met old Mellen? Do. He’s what I mean. He would never have gotten anywhere eighty years ago. Too bloodless.
“Finance and manipulation and industry aren’t roaring in America as they once were. They call their present machinations high finance. I call it decadence. That’s why we’re soon due for the worst economic and moral collapse we’ve ever known. That’s why capitalism in America is practically doomed. You see, we’ve left the raw earth, and now we’re in the clouds, piling up equations, pyramids of figures which have nothing to do with actualities and with the flesh and blood of America. Wheels turning in a vacuum.”
He sat upright abruptly. “Are you following me?”
Henri raised his eyebrows slightly. “I think I am. Go on, please.”
Regan stared at him intently for some moments. Then he put his thumbs in his vest and went on, still musingly:
“Even rascality, these days, is oiled and geared. Nothing picturesque; nothing human. There were feuds in those days. Now there are no feuds. It’s all done in a financier’s office, like this. And then they all go out to lunch. Now, I’ve no objection to faithlessness. Like your old revered relative’s. It’s a robust faithlessness, which had, for its result, the industrial rise of America. But I don’t like this modern faithlessness. It’s poisonous. No one gains by it but the faithless, themselves. The result is toxemia of the body of America. Do I sound metaphysical, young man?” he added abruptly.
“No. Not at all. I understand.”
“I believe you do,” replied Regan, staring as if in astonishment.
He went on. “I’ve not talked like this for years. I might say I don’t know why I’m talking like this now. But there’s something about you that isn’t bloodless. You’ve got flesh; you’ve got arteries. Like Ernest Barbour. I’m going to enjoy all this! I’m going to enjoy seeing Ernest Barbour operate in these shiny clicking days of high finance and toxic courteous industry. Young man, do you know Wall Street is going to blow up very soon?”
“Yes. I think I do know.”
“And do you know the government is going to be blown up with it?”
“Yes. It is inevitable.”
Regan leaned back in his chair. “Ah,” he said softly. Then, his voice becoming loud and brutal, he asked: “What do you want?”
Henri did not seem surprised at this change of tone. He said quietly: “You’ve told me a lot of what I wanted to know. But now I want you to tell me your own opinion of Bouchard and Sons. I mean, beyond what you have already told me.”
Regan grinned. “I’m a heavy investor in Bouchard, and its subsidiaries. I’d like to be a heavier one. I’d like to get bigger dividends. I like you, Henri Bouchard. I was much interested, for instance, in hearing that you are going to marry Christopher Bouchard’s sister, Celeste.”
“You seem to know a great deal, Mr. Regan,” said Henri courteously. “Nothing has been settled yet. The engagement isn’t announced.”
Regin’s grin broadened. “She’s a pretty child. She and Christopher and their mother were visiting us last winter. A very pretty child; very innocent, too.”
Henri said nothing. He merely waited.
Regan put his fingers together and regarded them with a pleasant expression. “I don’t know why I should want more money. Power? I’m an old man. Why do We seem to want more power as we grow older? Is it to make up for our physical powerlessness? I don’t know. At any rate, I can say now, which you probably know, that Bouchard is marking time. There are too many plotters there. Too many plotters stalemate the plot. It needs one supreme plotter. But not ?a razor-plotter, without blood and flesh.” He added brutally: “I like you more and more, Henri Bouchard.”
Henri smiled. He continued to wait ‘‘Armand,” said Regan, “is an executive. That’s all. And the others! They’re bright boys. They know everything that’s in the wind of America and Europe. But they’re like eunuchs that know all the motions but can’t consummate them. You see? I’ve heard Christopher called a Trappist. Trappists are usual these days. Wall Street’s full of ’em. That’s why we’re going to have the worst damn collapse and confusion and ruin we’ve ever seen, not only in America, but in Europe, too. We need new blood, the kind of blood that ruthlessly built up this country. The Bouchards don’t have it, any more than other industries have it. We’ve got to have the same kind of faithless and powerful men that paradoxically made the nation powerful and virile, too.”
He stopped speaking. Henri said nothing at all.
“Thieves,” said Regan softly, after some time had elapsed. “But castrated thieves. The Bouchards.”
Henri Bouchard stood up. “Thank you,” he said quietly. Regan regarded him quizzically. He did not speak for a moment. He leaned back again, and put his thumbs in his vest.
“You’ve got to show me,” he said thoughtfully. “You see? You’ve got to show me. And when you’ve shown me, I’ll help you. But not before. I’m too heavy an investor in Bouchard, and its subsidiaries.”
Henri picked up his hat. ‘‘This,” he said, “has been the most profitable morning of my life. Mr. Regan, I want to thank you again. I will be seeing you again, very soon.”
Regan smiled. His smile broadened. “I believe you will,” he said. “I believe you will!”
CHAPTER XXI
Edith was at her desk this dark early March morning, adding up accounts, and checking off items with sharp decisive motions of her pencil. When her Aunt Adelaide was announced, she raised her eyebrows in surprise and glanced through the French windows of her study. Steel-gray rain, semi-transparent, was a moving curtain between her and the black and tw
isting trees outside. Edith put down her pencil, and then went quietly downstairs where her aunt waited in txhe fire-lit morning room.
Adelaide sat on the edge of her chair, her hands in her muff. She looked more Victorian than ever, with her fur tippet about her neck, and her plain dowdy hat set agitatedly on top of her gray soft hair. Yet the sweetness of her expression, the tilt of her head and the set of her body were the hallmarks of her real breeding.
“Good morning, my dear,” she said gently, as Edith entered. The young woman hesitated a moment, then came up to her aunt and kissed her coolly on the cheek. “What a beastly morning for you to be out, Auntie,” she said. “Won’t you take off your things?” She noticed that Adelaide’s face was thinner and grayer than it was even a week ago. “You will have luncheon with me?”
Adelaide murmured a gentle refusal. “No, dear, I must go home almost immediately. Well, then, if you insist. But you are busy?”
“Not so very. Just accounts.” Edith smiled her dark and chilly smile. Adelaide regarded her earnestly. She accused herself of hardness of heart in that she could not like this reserved plain young woman with her air of competence and hard efficiency and colorless breeding. The thin angular face had a sallow cast, and was entirely untinted. The smooth black hair was rolled in an efficient knot at the nape of her neck. All the coloring, all the smartness of plain black dress and slim silk-shod ankles, were Latin, but the coldness, reserve and severity did not come from that warm and human strain.
Adelaide glanced away, vaguely distressed. She drew in her faded lips and moistened them. A maid came in to take her coat and hat and furs. She shivered, drew closer to the fire. Edith competently stirred it up into a vivid golden blaze. “Horrible weather,” she commented, as she did so.
She wondered why Adelaide had come. The older woman’s air of tense eagerness to please, of pathetic supplication, of distress, of abstraction and weariness and hopelessness, intrigued her curiosity, and made her feel a faint compunction.
Whatever it was, Adelaide apparently did not know how to proceed to the object of her call. She asked falteringly about Henri, and a pale shadow of relief passed over her face when Edith informed her that her brother was visiting Georges and Marion Bouchard in New York. Adelaide murmured gently. She liked Georges very much, she said. And Marion, too, she added hastily. They had promised her to visit Crissons during the summer, and then there had been Marion’s operation. However, she and Celeste intended to visit them both at Easter. When she mentioned Celeste’s name the poor woman’s lips trembled, and she bent her fingers against each other in furtive agitation.
Edith had been watching her with sharp attention. So, she thought, it is about that soft little puss of a Celeste that she has come to see me. The young woman’s curiosity mounted. Why should she be consulted about Celeste, of whom she was’ not particularly fond?
Luncheon was served in the warm morning-room, and it was over before Adelaide could again force herself to face the object of her visit. And again, she shrank away. Her eyes had an imploring quality in them when she looked at Edith. Edith also detected fear. She had long ago guessed that her aunt feared her, and was uncomfortable in her presence. But Edith was used to having soft weaklings and the irresolute fear her. She regarded her aunt with a slight expression of pity, mingled with contempt.
Edith had politely asked about all the members of the family she had not seen during the past week. She was becoming bored, and impatient. It was getting along to two o’clock, and this foolish old woman was no nearer the object of her visit than she had been over two hours ago. So she decided to force the matter herself.
“Celeste is almost twenty, isn’t she, Aunt Adelaide? You’ll miss her when she marries, won’t you?”
Adelaide’s lips parted in an almost inaudible gasp. Then desperate determination caused her nostrils to distend and her upper lip to quiver rigidly.
“Yes, dear, I’ll miss her. But that won’t matter. Only Celeste’s happiness matters. That is what is so important— Celeste’s happiness. She’s been so sheltered. She—she doesn’t understand people at all.” She stopped, unable to continue.
Edith raised her eyebrows politely. “Young girls aren’t so sheltered any more, these days, Aunt Adelaide. That is unfortunate for Celeste. Little Rosemarie, for instance, is a woman compared to her.”
Adelaide leaned forward in her intense desire to make Edith understand. “Yes, it is unfortunate. It wasn’t my wish, Edith. It—it is a little confusing, when I try to explain. I—I wanted Celeste to go away to school. I wanted her to realize that there is so—so much wickedness, and evil, and cruelty in the world, but I also wanted her to understand that while she must accept the existence of these things she must not accept their universality, and their inevitability— Do you understand what I mean, dear?”
Edith was silent a moment. Her expression was a little odd. Then she said: “I think I do, Aunt Adelaide.”
Adelaide made a despairing gesture. “I’m not at all clear. Sometimes I am confused myself. The line between hopelessness and hope is so thin that it is almost impossible— But you see, it is that little line that enables men to live at all in the world, and not go mad.
“I know Celeste so well. She—she is somewhat as I was, when I was a young girl. I don’t want her to suffer as I did, Edith. You see, for a long time I did not know that there was goodness and kindness and honor in the world, after I saw what wickedness and cruelty there was. I want her to know all of it, right at the beginning, and so save herself years of misery—“
“Aren’t you afraid that all this is just a little sentimental, Aunt Adelaide?” asked Edith. “After all, we all have to learn a few fundamental lessons. It won’t hurt Celeste to learn them, as well as the rest of us.”
Adelaide shook her head. “Edith, you don’t know, my dear. The world is full of men and women like Celeste. Evil strikes them down mortally; that is because they were born without scales. They suffer all their lives. Sometimes they commit suicide. I’m afraid I’m not making myself clear,” she faltered. Edith’s dark face was as smooth as opaque glass, but she said nothing.
Adelaide’s face was growing a little wild. “Edith, I’m not very good at expositions. But you remember the stories about one of your great-grandfathers? Martin Barbour? Well, my dear, he was such a one as Celeste. His whole life was a tragedy. His death was a tragedy. I’ve had the strangest feeling, ever since I heard about him, that even when he died in the Civil War, he believed he was dying for nothing. The conflicts in the soul, Edith, are the most frightful ones.”
“Yes, so I’ve heard. Freud speaks of them quite extensively.” Edith could not prevent her lip from curling. “As for myself, I think it is all nonsense. Unhealthy. Celeste is not a child. If she isn’t capable of learning things, and adjusting herself sensibly to them, then she has no right to live in the world of today. Forgive me if I sound brutal, but Henri and I have discussed this rather fully. I am afraid we both rather condemned you, Aunt Adelaide. Celeste ought not to have been so sheltered.”
Adelaide had turned paler than ever. She uttered a little cry. “But Edith, I’ve been trying to tell you! I didn’t want Celeste to be so sheltered. I just wanted to arm her against —living. But Christopher wanted her to be sheltered from what he calls—dirtiness. And that isn’t the thing I mean at all! His sheltering of her has made her more vulnerable than ever.”
Edith’s fine dark brows lifted. She shrugged whimsically, and smiled with helpless mockery. “Now, Aunt Adelaide, I must admit I’m losing you. This is all so—so metaphysical. Why don’t you take Celeste to a psychoanalyst?” She could not help this final cruelty, though she immediately regretted it.
Adelaide did not answer. She sank back in her chair, and averted her face. Edith saw her hands drop on the arms of the chair in a gesture of the utmost exhaustion and hopelessness. A twinge of compunction made Edith’s features twitch impatiently. ,
“I’m sorry, Auntie. I didn’t mean to be so ru
de. But I’m afraid you are splitting hairs. It’s been my experience that human beings aren’t so delicate and frail as you seem to think Celeste is. They’re pretty tough, it seems to me. Celeste looks a robust girl, with lots of fight in her if she gets aroused. You can see that in her face. But you want me to help you, don’t you? How can I help you?”
Adelaide’s attitude did not change. She did not even look at Edith. She merely said in a dull voice: “By telling your brother that he mustn’t marry my daughter.”
Edith was astounded. She frowned coldly. Her lips seemed carved out of stone in her affronted face. “But why not? I’m not sure he wants to, really. I’ve thought he was attracted to Celeste, but young men are always attracted to pretty girls. Heavens knows, Henri is no different from other men. He lived in London and Paris for some years, you know.” Now a contemptuous smile stood on her mouth. “But if he and Celeste should decide they want to marry, why shouldn’t they?”
Adelaide still did not look at her. She spoke as though from a great and exhausted distance: “Because, if she does, she’ll be defenseless. She’ll be mortally unhappy. She’ll find out what all the Bouchards are. Including Christopher. She mustn’t find out. She’ll never get over it.”
Edith opened her mouth to utter an angry ejaculation, (hen closed it again. But her whole face ‘was alive with anger and affront and disdain. Adelaide slowly lifted her head, turned to regard her niece fully. “But you won’t help me, will you, Edith?”
Edith exclaimed in a rather loud voice: “Aunt Adelaide! How can I help you? I don’t know what you’ve been talking about It seems so foolish, to me. There, I’m afraid I’m being rude, but I can’t help it, really. After all, you’ve insulted my brother. Strange as it may seem, I’m fond of him! I don’t think there is a girl in all the world good enough for him. I had a friend in England, Lady Verity Post-Brian, whom I hoped he would marry. Her fortune is much larger than Celeste’s, and I must say, frankly, that her family is far superior to ours. She is the only one I believe is nearly worthy of him. Perhaps he’ll marry her, after all; I know he writes to her regularly.