He went towards the door. He had almost reached it when she cried out with involuntary alarm, not for herself, not for Francis, but only for Peter: “Where are you going? Peter, you tell me: where are you going?”
He turned slowly. And again, when she saw his face, the pang went through her, made bitter tears rise to her eyes.
“I’m going away, Mother. Tonight. Right now.”
“Peter!” Her voice was broken.
He shook his head. “Good-by, Mother.”
He closed the door softly behind him. She strained her ears. She heard him go away. And then, with a sob, she fell back onto her pillows.
Three hours later he was on the midnight plane to New York. He had left before Francis and Estelle had returned.
CHAPTER XXXVI
Leon Bouchard, even up to the time of his death some years ago, had always admired but distrusted his elder son, Georges. He was brilliant, opinionated, but erratic. However, there was nothing flippant or shallow about him. Neither was he idealistic, or inclined to any artistry or exoticism, or any of the other peculiarities of temperament which the Bouchards would have found objectionable. But he was restless and quarrelsome, not showing any particular aptitude for any particular work, until sometime in 1914, when he had decided, finally and irrevocably, that he wished to go into newspaper publishing. For some months, since his graduation from Princeton in 1913, he had been in the bank with his father. It was impossible for him to do anything shabbily or in a mediocre manner, but it was evident from the first that he found banking unimaginative. Frankly, he admitted it was probably his fault. He did not have, he said, the proper reverence for money, and when his father sardonically said he supposed it was because he had never known the lack of it, he agreed.
Leon was too intelligent to insist upon his own choice as a vocation for his son, and when Georges announced that he would like to work in the office of The Windsor Courier, Leon allowed him to leave the bank and begin work as a reporter. It was only a few weeks before Georges’ brilliant and powerful articles began attracting local attention, and thereafter national attention. Perhaps part of this attention was due to his name and family, but the greater part was due to his own ability. Nicholas, his younger brother, had just returned from a trip around the world, his father’s graduation present to him, and took Georges’ place in the bank. His natural aptitude, his sobriety and sullen tenacity, his remarkable insight into character, his native skepticism, his amazing judgment, gratified his father, who felt that he had made an excellent decision in allowing Georges to leave the bank.
Georges had not only been a splendid student, with an extraordinary memory, but he had that attribute which few students possess: a swift and glittering mind. He never for got anything; words and facts were to him the artist’s paints. He made phrases sparkle and compel, paragraphs glow, articles fascinate and stir. He had invented a certain style, terse and explosive, yet fiery, which, being a radical departure from tjje newspaper style of the past century (which had been involved, ceremonious and ponderous), attracted controversial notice. He used a word where the old writers had used a phrase, a phrase for a paragraph, a paragraph for an entire article. As a result, interest never became fatigued. His clear sentences never puzzled; he hated ambiguity, though he never dispensed with subtlety. He did not believe that subtlety need be ambiguous, as the old writers had believed; delicacy and irony, he declared, shone best through clarified words. He started the style of rapid but descriptive newspaper writing, which eventually found its way into novels, biography and scientific articles. When some of the world’s best newspaper writers declared his to be a “bastard style,” without polish and urbanity, he laughed and replied that it was better to be a bastard than a eunuch.
His uncle, Etienne, the aging but still potent matinee idol of a nation of sentimental women, had been distrusted by his relatives for his exotic appearance, rich organ voice and womanish temperament. He had aroused in his relatives a healthy and obstinate aversion for all that was “artistic,” as had François Bouchard and Godfrey Sessions. The family, therefore, was always prepared to distrust Georges, watching him suspiciously for any tendency to let his hair and cravat flow, his nails become rimmed and his linen dirty, his speech exotic and embarrassing, his temper odd. But he both gratified and disappointed them in this: he was lean and tall and nervous, very much like Jules, his uncle, in appearance, with jerking eyes, a prow-like nose, clipped sleek hair, a hard chin and mouth, and an arrogant, impatient manner. It was very evident that he was selfish and without any softness whatsoever.
Jules had been fond of his nephew Georges. He understood Georges, was indulgent towards him, and liked his company. Georges’ appreciation of Goya and Velasquez and Corot excited and pleased him; when Georges confessed to disliking Rubens, Jules was entirely won. Jules often said that he could “talk” to no one but Georges, who was a devil after his own heart. On Georges’ birthday, he showed his affection adequately in making him a present of The Windsor Courier, the stock of which he owned almost entirely. So Georges became editor.
When Leon sent for Jules one night, urgently, in September, 1914, Jules was surprised. He was afraid that Georges had finally betrayed some exoticism, some tendency to peculiarity, or something disgustingly idealistic. As he was driven to Leon’s house in his great Pierce-Arrow, he was apprehensive.
Leon lived upon an ornate estate about two miles from Robin’s Nest, all terraces and soft rolling lawns and high walls with iron gates, gatekeepers and stables and garages and artful landscaping. Jules preferred his more austere and gloomy house and estate, but he enjoyed the clever vistas of his brother’s property, the studied artistries, the false quaintnesses of stone hall and flagged paths, the very precious turrets and towers, and the French tongue of the imported servants. He enjoyed them all, for they amused him intensely. He was always edified by pretentiousness and affectation, never irritated by them. So few things, he would say, are really funny in life, and when a funniness occurred he was grateful for it.
Antoinette Bouchard, his cousin and sister-in-law, was, at fifty, a tiny but potent grande dame, with silvery blonde hair, passionate and knowing blue eyes, a dimple, a round birdlike bosom, and a very stylish well-preserved figure. She was quick and lively and arrogant, and flirtatious, especially with Jules, whom she not so secretly admired and loved. When he was about she became young and coy and sparkling, and, in turn, he liked her, for her knowledge of wines and her vivacity pleased him. But he found her ancestor-worship extremely hilarious.
Leon was waiting for Jules in the stone library with its stained-glass windows and mighty red velvet draperies. His powerful stocky figure, the way his big head set almost squarely on his shoulders, his slightly bowed legs, were Napoleonic, as were his truculent, violent face and eyes. Jules, in 1914, slim and elegant as ever, with smooth dark face and still black, white-touched hair, seemed supple and youthful compared with his brother.
Leon grunted when Jules entered the library. Jules had hardly sat down when Antoinette, in tears, entered with Georges, who was evidently enraged. Antoinette ran up to Jules immediately, and exclaimed with hysteria: “Jules! You may be able to do something! Georges will listen only to youl I have told him over and over, that in a dynasty like ours, in a family like ours, marriages are so important, and can be so disastrous, just like royal marriages, or something—! Heavens knows how hard I worked to marry Irene and Bertha off satisfactorily—and Bertha with the squint in her eye—but no one can say that I didn’t do my duty by my girls. And now, Georges—!”
“Sit down, Antoinette, or get out!” shouted Leon, turning a deep mauve. “Damn women, anyay!”
Antoinette, the tiny and plump, turned upon her husband, stamped her foot with a violence of her own. “It’s all your fault, Leon, and I will speak, and you can’t stop me! You encouraged him to associate with such dreadful people, and never tried to stop him from going to New York to see them, and let him have that horrible newspaper!”
/> Jules glanced swiftly at his nephew, who had begun to grin unpleasantly. “I take it,” he said gently, “that Georges is about to commit a mesalliance.”
“Not at all,” said Georges, “it’s Marion who is going to commit that, in marrying me. Wasn’t Great-grandfather Barbour a servant or stable-boy or something like that?”
Antoinette shrieked, and burst into fresh tears. Jules led her to a chair, where she sat down and continued to cling to his hand. Jules disengaged it as gently as possible.
“Impudent young dog!” said Leon, lighting a cigar with fingers that shook. “I thought you had better sense. But you can listen to me: marry that—that girl, and I’ll kick you so far you’ll never dare come back.”
Georges turned to his uncle. “Dad forgets the day of the heavy father has gone out,” he said. “But, by the way, what the hell is it your business whom I marry, Uncle Jules?”
Jules smiled in a puzzled way. “I’m sure I don’t know, Georges. If you’d rather not tell me, you are perfectly within your rights. After all, you’re not a child. But at any rate, I’m interested, naturally. We’ve been friends, you and I, and I’d be offended if I were not to know.”
Before Georges, who had begun to smile at his uncle’s words, could reply, Leon said roughly: “I’ll tell you. It’s Arthur Fitts’ daughter, Marion. Arthur Fitts, Professor of Economics in Columbia.”
“Ah.” Jules raised his eyebrows, and his face became smooth and bland. “A very clever man, Fitts. The only man who can make economics sound like something else besides a hasty pudding of figures. A novelist gone wrong in a jungle of commodities, and met up with a nihilist.”
“It’s all Aunt Lucy’s fault!” exclaimed Antoinette, squirming in her chair in her agitation. “And that awful old bachdor cousin of ours, Thomas. They fill their house in New York with such—such obscene rabble, artists and bohemians and singers and writers and such trash, and it was Thomas himself who introduced Georges to that terrible girl “
Georges was grinning broadly; his pince-nez glittered as he glanced at his mother. “Manon isn’t terrible, Mother,” he said. “She’s a very fine girl, with a mind of her own. Lots of intelligence, even if she’s a suffragette. She was to teach at Vassar next term,” he added, turning to his uncle, “but her papa made the old ladies and the old gentlemen mad, so they’ve torn up her contract. She majored in English. If she’ll have me, and I’m not certain she will, with our history and so on, it should be an occasion for family rejoicing that someone decent was becoming part of it.”
“Ah,” said Jules again, in a murmur. He smoothed his lip with his finger, and looked at his brother.
“Fitts!” shouted Leon. “Did you read his last attack on us in the current issue of American Economics? We’ve got a suit for libel pending against him, as you know, Jules. Of all the filthy, lying, scurrilous harangues, this is the worst! And it’s that old fool’s daughter that my son, my son! wants to marry. There’s no loyalty nor pride in him, no self-respect, no decency—”
“Why?” Georges cut in quietly. “Is it loyalty to deny the truth? Everything that old Fitts has said about us is true, and you know it is. You haven’t a leg to stand on, and no one knows that better than you. You can’t do a thing to him, libel suit or no libel suit.”
Jules sighed. “I never had any objection to Fitts,” he said regretfully. “There is such a multitude of fools in the world that a wise man, even if he is your enemy, should be appreciated. There is one error he made, however: he presumed to believe the Constitution of the United States.
“It is a strange thing,” he went on meditatively, while Georges, watching him with sudden sharpness, paled, “that wise men are frequently naïve. They believe that truth has sufficient vitality to protect its worshippers. It hasn’t Paradoxically, to serve truth is to serve death, even if truth itself is immortal. Of course, I am not speaking of death by auto da fe or hanging or a knife in the back. No, we are too refined, or too barbarous, for that, these days. We do the job more neatly; we, like the Roman Church, don’t believe in bloodletting. We kill a man economically—”
“What do you mean?” demanded Georges, his voice shaking.
Jules sighed again. “It was only this morning that I was informed that Professor Fitts has been compelled to resign from Columbia University I am very sorry for that. As I said before, we have few wise men. Professor Fitts was too naive, unfortunately. I imagine he will find it a little difficult to secure another chair in any American university.” And now he looked fully at his nephew with his hooded eyes.
There was a prolonged and intense silence. Slowly, Antoinette turned in her chair and stared at her husband, who was beginning to smile grimly. But Georges, white and still, regarded his uncle, hardly breathing.
Then he said, almost inaudibly: “You did that to him. You cut his throat. You. He’s an old man, and he never saved any money; he gave it all away. His work is his life. He—he never harmed anyone in his life. I didn’t often agree with him, because he’s a dear damned old idealist, but he was so damned good! And now you’ve killed him.”
Jules lifted his elegant hand with a pained gesture. “Georges! Not so much melodrama, please! Not at my age. Besides, you are unjust. We are not the only ones poor old Fitts attacked and I assure you that his attacks on us meant nothing at all. Had we attacked him in return, we would just have centered attention on a—on a matter we’d father not have noticed yet. But evidently others have not been so discreet.”
Georges wet his lips. He said dully: “You’re a liar. I know you’re a liar “
Jules shrugged, spread out his hands in a resigned gesture.
Georges drew in his breath sharply, and his pale face flushed. “But you can’t shut his mouth! I’ll help him! You can’t hurt me with your sliminess and schemes! How you got your money doesn’t bother me, and never would; that’s not the point. But you deserve exposure for all this, and I tell you—”
Jules lifted his hand again, and smiled indulgently. “Georges, wait a minute, or I’ll be disappointed in you. I wouldn’t like that, you know. Now, I’ll make you a proposition: I’ll use my influence to have old Fitts re-appointed at Columbia immediately, if you give me your solemn promise that you’ll marry his daughter as soon as possible.”
There was a stupefied silence after his words. Leon’s face became almost idiotic in its expression; Antoinette blinked, shook her head slightly, blinked and stared and swallowed. As for Georges, he was so astounded that his face wrinkled and contorted itself into a dozen different grimaces.
Leon finally struggled to speak, and his voice was so strangled, so thin, that it did not sound like his. “What—what do you mean? What is all this? Are you insane, Jules?”
Jules turned to his nephew, who had stopped grimacing, and who was now looking at him intently, and beginning to smile a little, with unpleasantness.
“If I had known yesterday that you wished to marry Professor Fitts’ daughter, Georges, I am certain I might have prevented his dismissal. But the harm is only temporary. But remember: marriage very soon or the Professor starves.”
“But what is this?” roared Leon, purpling.
Jules regarded him patiently. “It is so very simple, Leon. Professor Fitts loose, writing inflammatory and disagreeable things about us and our friends, getting them published, as no doubt he would, is a dangerous thing. But Professor Fitts restored to his lost chair, his daughter married to Georges, is a Professor Fitts tamed and made innocuous.”
“If you think having a Bouchard as a son-in-law would muzzle the old man, you’re mistaken,” said Georges. But he was smiling with enjoyment, and he winked at his uncle.
Jules smiled back, stood up. “But, Georges, that’ll be your job, you see.” He tapped his nephew on the shoulder. “Within a few weeks the wisest men in the country, in the world, will be drooling patriotic imbecilities. We’d like to present Professor Fitts with a bib, too.”
When he had gone, there seemed nothing to say. But
Georges sat on the edge of the library table and gnawed restlessly at a hangnail. All at once, he looked at his father, and burst into a shout of laughter.
CHAPTER XXXVII
Upon his marriage in 1915 to Marion Fitts, daughter of Professor Fitts, Georges Bouchard had abandoned his former nonchalant and Bohemian manner of living and had leased a mangificent fourteen-room apartment overlooking Central Park. Marion had been reared in austere and dusty shabbiness, and in the years of her young womanhood she had been proud of this, proud of her father, proud of her inherent aristocracy which needed, so she said, no luxuries to prove it. She had desultorily kept house for her father with the help of an indifferent maid in some obscure and gritty section of old Brooklyn, where the ratty and neglected back gardens no longer put up a brave fight against the prevailing codfish smell of the near-by Bay. She had affected, in the manner of the “new generation,” to find something humorous in the large, frame, dilapidated house where she had lived with her father, and spoke of their neighbors, mostly poor Jewish and Italian families, as “amusing.” The living room, as she said, was “simply a wild hodge-podge of mountainous books, and old family antiques (Grandma Burnridge cherished this piece of Staffordshire ware, as it belonged to her great-grandmother).” In short, threadbare faded rugs, books, scarred mahogany tables, glass-shaded lamps, dingy curtains, dark oil portraits, hideous Chinese vases, “mission oak furniture,” and dirty tapestries, were mingled indiscriminately with dust, cobwebs, paper litter and manuscripts. Professor Fitts apparently was unaware of the state of his house, and in a state of complete and dusty absentmindedness ate the atrocious meals prepared for him by the indifferent maid. Marion, for a time, was secretary to the head of a local Settlement House, donating her services, and finding those who patronized the House more “amusing” than ever. She had a light, gay, brave way of talking, and her stories, only faintly colored and exaggerated, provided endless entertainment for her friends and admirers. She had “jotted” down some of the stories, which, after retailing, seemed quite interesting, and often spoke carelessly and humorously of combining them some day into a book, “which probably won’t sell at all, dears, people not being interested in the slightest in segments of Real Life.”