Once, when she was sixteen, she had tried to express something of this to Christopher, but failed. However, she said timidly that she liked “cleanness.” This little confidence was one of his most satisfying memories of his sister. He, too, he thought, loved cleanness. He would look about his sterile home, and reflect complacently that there was nothing here where dirt could hide. Why, one could actually flush out his bare and polished palace with a hose! So little Celeste, whose only wistfulness was a desire for the pretty pink and blue fluffy rugs of her girl-friends’ chambers, and bed-flounces, and cascades of lace at dressing tables and windows, and bright jars spilling with brilliant flowers, and pastel coverlets filled with plump down, had to endure a huge bedroom all chromium and crystal glass, and black and white tiles, and enormous windows unshadowed by silken curtains. In the spring, the only landscape visible from these windows was acres upon acres of austerely empty green lawns, and a distant ring of tall thin poplars seemingly cut from tapering green wood. In the summer, she had only a view of sparkling white sand and clean blue ocean, or, from the living-room windows, of lawns as rigid and uncluttered as those of her winter home, Endur.
As she grew towards young womanhood, Celeste had the inarticulate feeling that she was beset on every hand by vague terrors too intangible to be expressed but none the less potent and imminent. There was no comfort for her anywhere. There was little comfort for her in her mother Adelaide, for all Adelaide’s brown-eyed gentleness and intelligent sweetness. In some way, Celeste felt that her mother was as bewildered and helplessly affrighted as herself, and as in need of protection. She also knew, strangely, that while she had Christopher, Adelaide did not even have Christopher. To run to Adelaide for protection, Adelaide with her gray smooth hair and slender bending body and ingenuous eyes and uncertain smile, was like one frightened child running for help to an even more frightened child. She, herself, could endure Christopher’s chromium and glass frigidity, but Adelaide was only repelled by it, and made unendingly apprehensive. The homes he selected and furnished were repugnant to Adelaide, but while they were also helplessly repugnant to Celeste, she kept silent about her aversion, partly because she was acquiescent of character and partly in consideration for Christopher. But Adelaide did not keep silent. Her few rare angers were always close to the surface; she expressed her opinion regularly, her thin colorless cheeks flushing, her voice trembling with indignation and dislike.
Adelaide, being older, had strengthened her original gentle character enough to insist that her own rooms in Christopher’s house be as she desired them. “Germ-filled nests of dust and decay and softness,” he called them. But here at least there were a few rich rugs, fine old paintings, laces and velvets and silks, and chairs into which one could sink as into clouds. He would never visit his mother in these rooms, not even when she was ill.
Adelaide did not mind this in the least. For between Christopher and herself, since Jules’ death, there had grown up a thin but steadfast hatred. Once, before Celeste’s birth, he had shown her affection. But now there was no affection, only coldness and silence, broken on infrequent occasions by his icily angry voice, which was like the tap of a steel hammer on brittle glass. He always defeated his mother, but she was never permanently defeated. The battle was endless. Finally, they could not speak without rancor and dislike. Adelaide was afraid of him. She distrusted him as she distrusted all the Bouchards. He was a pillar of salt to her, marking the place where her life had ended and sorrowful bitterness had begun.
Once she threatened to leave and set up a home of her own and take Celeste with her. But Christopher, after expressing his indifference and even desire that she leave, called to her attention the fact that he was Celeste’s guardian, not she, and that Celeste would remain.
So Adelaide remained. For Celeste’s sake. She could not forgive Celeste for loving Christopher, and so estrangement grew between mother and daughter. But she loved the child dearly, and felt that she must stay to protect her. She felt about Celeste the imminence of mortal danger and suffering; she did not know what she could do to avert these, but at least she could be at hand.
Jules had often playfully called his wife “an innocent.” She had received this name with affectionate complacence. But a few months as his wife showed her only too clearly how true the epithet had been, and how true it still was. She remained innocent to the end of her life, for her soul was too transparent and simple to harbour the murkiness of the disingenuous. Violence and duplicity, for all these long years of close association with them in her husband’s family, never failed to give her the full charge of the initial shock of her first introduction. Each time she encountered them she felt as naked and cold and bewildered and frightened as she had originally done. They were the smallpox of the spirit, the black plague of the heart, against which she never developed any immunity.
Each time a child had been born to her she had sworn pathetically to herself that this one would remain pure of heart. She would not have him a fool, for she was no fool, herself. But she would teach him that innocence was not necessarily stupidity and blindness. Rather, it was a quality that despised ugliness and lies and cruelty, and refused to believe in a “reality” that accepted all these things as inevitable. But it was no use. Armand had a little integrity, but he was also a realist. There were things he would not do, but they were very few. Then Emile came, and now, when Adelaide thought of Emile, her face turned aside as though she were shrinking from an old wearying pain. Even when he had been a baby, and had lain in her arms, she knew he was no real part of her. Then had come Christopher, a little white baby with brown hair. He had been so small and sickly and slight, he had seemed so innocent. Before he was two years old his mother knew that she had failed again, and she had given him over to the care of others.
Then had come Celeste, a daughter. Adelaide knew instantly that here was one who would always be vulnerable like herself, always unprotected. She would have the singleness of the innocent, but Adelaide, as yet, did not know that Celeste had the strength and power and courage without which innocence is impotent, and a liability rather than an asset to itself and the world. To this little daughter, then, Adelaide, despairingly, turned. She had hoped for a strong innocence which would protect her weak innocence. But now, she still believed that she had one even weaker than herself to guard.
When she discovered that Christopher had developed a passion for his little sister, she was as frantic as though he had threatened the child’s life. All the affection she had had for him was shriveled like a green leaf in a fire. Jules had always pretended to misunderstand her when she had gone to him with her “foolish” problems, as he fondly called them. But she knew, at once, when she went to him this time, fumbling agonizingly among words, that he understood immediately, and was, in fact, far ahead of her.
She had said, timidly: “Jules, sometimes I don’t think Christopher is such a good influence on the baby—,” and had flushed at this pathetic disloyalty to her youngest son.
She had expected Jules to laugh, as usual, and to chaff her. But instead, she was amazed at his sudden tightening, the sudden hard pointing of his eyes. He had said nothing, however. But all at once Christopher found himself doing some pre-arranged task when he returned from school in the afternoon. He had usually spent this time playing with the baby. Now, there was no time. If he hurried, he discovered that the child was out for a walk, or asleep, or “not feeling very well today.”
He was a boy in his early teens then, but he was too astute, too mentally precocious, not to understand. And thereafter had ensued the long venomous battle between himself and his father, for Celeste. Jules always won. Then, Jules had died. Now, Christopher thought, he could have his sister. To his outrage and contempt and anger, he suddenly was confronted with his mother. The battle was renewed. But it was a battle between a ruthless and well-armed attacker and an adversary with frail soft hands and no viciousness. Christopher, now, always won. But it was a victory that must be renewed ever
y day; the war never ended, though he won each skirmish. It took very little to defeat the despairing if tenacious Adelaide, but he had to expend that little, and sometimes, he thought, that little was too much. It was like the slow constant dropping of single drops of water on the shaved skull of a Chinese criminal.
There was only one way to end this subtle and invisible psychological war for Celeste. That was to drive Adelaide from his house.
His sisters-in-law liked him, though never trusting him for a moment. Mrs. Emile, especially, coquetted with him, for she liked elegance and fine-strung grace. Christopher, like his father, despised women, but, also like Jules, he knew how to use them.
He went to his sisters-in-law, therefore, and with great frankness and in a humorous voice, laid his problem before them. Adelaide, like all aging women, was becoming pettily despotic in his house. Perhaps she needed a change, a wider outlook. She needed closer association with younger women, who could teach her modern manners and tolerance. Would the dear girls take her for a few months each? After all, she was their husbands’ mother. Say, four months in each household? This was only fair.
His sisters-in-law were not enthusiastic. They thought Adelaide a fool; they had no wish to introduce a petty despot into their own households. But they wanted to oblige Christopher, who looked at them so seriously and openly, and talked of fair-play. They consulted their husbands. When Christopher next communicated with the ladies, they had a proposition:
Armand and Emile would be delighted to receive their mother for four months a year apiece. But they knew how fond she was of their little sister, Celeste. They would not hear of separating the two. (Especially not when Celeste was heiress to a monster fortune, thought Christopher with amused bitterness.) So, they would generously receive Celeste, also, for the months of their mother’s visit. Armand’s young daughter, Annette, was so devoted to her little aunt, Celeste, too. (Annette was not actually deformed, poor child, but there was a bend in her back, between her shoulders, which suggested deformity. There was also something very striking in her appearance, which would have profoundly affected any one ancient enough to remember having seen one Jacques Bouchard, brother to her great-grandfather, Raoul Bouchard.)
The wives thought all this exceedingly fraternal. They knew that their husbands were fond of Celeste, they said. They could not understand it when Christopher expressed his regrets, saying that as he was a bachelor, with no incumbrances, he had thought better of the whole matter, and believed it was his duty to keep his mother and sister with him.
When next he saw Armand, the latter flushed somewhat uncomfortably. But Emile had looked full into his brother’s face, and had grinned. Christopher had smiled back. However, he did not possess Jules’ delighted amusement in defeat. He stored up his defeats in the locked box of his future vengeances.
But he had unfortunately given impetus to an idea which had been growing in Armand’s and Emile’s minds since the death of their father. The brothers went to their mother, in Christopher’s absence, and suggested that she and Celeste visit them for portions of the year. The poor woman was overjoyed. She would escape Christopher for eight months of every twelve; Celeste would escape him!
She knew that Christopher possessed a cold and passionless sort of violence, when fully aroused. But never had she seen him so enraged as she saw him on that night when she timidly told him of her sons’ visits. She listened to him speaking to her, so quietly, but with such deadly hatred and fury, and could not believe her ears. For once, she forgot to be frightened, in her appalled horror that he dared speak so to his mother. She merely sat in her chair, looking at him, her face white and disbelieving.
She, herself, could go and be damned to her, Christopher said, without exclamation points. She could go at once, and his house would smell the cleaner for her going. He had always wanted her to go. She was a fool and an imbecile, a drab and snivelling old woman, a burden on him. No wonder his father had amused himself with other women.
Adelaide uttered a cry of pain. Christopher regarded her expressionlessly. He went on, not lifting his voice, that voice so without resonance or emotion, but speaking as though in soliloquy:
But he, since his father had died, had appointed her mistress of his establishments. He had treated her with respect, had interfered in nothing, though her constant complaints and petty oppositions had insulted his patience. He had trusted her, at least, to accord him a little loyalty. But that had been too much for her character. He had only to turn his back for her to attack him to his brothers.
“No!” cried Adelaide, starting to her feet, more appalled by her son’s manner, his ability to speak to her like this, and his hatred, than she was by his actual words. “No!”
“Yes,” he said, very quietly, almost indifferently. She shivered, and was silent.
He went on for a few minutes more, but she did not hear him. She sat in her chair, her body and head drooping like those of a sick woman. But her eyes looked about the great glassy shining living-room with its indirect lighting and its white rugs and pale polished furniture. A shiver seemed to run over all her soul.
She heard him say: “But whatever you decide to do, Celeste remains here with me. Remember that, always.”
She moistened her pale dry lips and said in a trembling voice: “I am her mother. I am her mother, and she is still under age—”
Christopher smiled slightly. “But my father thought so much of your executive ability, and your qualifications as guardian, that he made me the executor of Celeste’s estate, and appointed me her guardian.”
He took out his platinum cigarette case. She watched him, fascinated as always by his precise and delicate gestures, so full, even in this prosaic ritual, of a refined and sadistic cruelty. Her sick eyes could not help following the gestures of lighting the cigarette, of blowing out the match, of neatly disposing of it in a silver tray. Her lids smarted with tears; a sensation of utter grief and sadness struck at her heart. She stood up, and regarded him for a moment.
He always won the skirmishes and the major battles. But when he looked down into the gentle brown eyes in that small pale face with its aging skin and colorless lips, he saw again that he had not really won, and that so long as Adelaide lived he would never really win. Only death could settle this conflict. He turned away from her. He walked away to a white bookcase and affected to examine some new books. He had a small sleek skull like his father’s, but his hair was light brown. His earlobes were bloodless. He held a book in his hand and his mother could see the blue veins on that hand and the bloodless ear.
She sighed. She walked out of the room. But her step was not that of a woman who has been defeated, but of a woman heavy with sorrow.
Christopher heard her leave. When she had gone he replaced the book, took the cigarette out of his mouth. Then he bent his left index finger and bit it delicately and thoughtfully.
CHAPTER VI
Ever since Jules’ death, this struggle had continued. The Bouchards, watching maliciously and with open amusement called it the struggle for Celeste’s soul.
They asked themselves facetiously who would win in the end, the powers of light, as personified by Adelaide, or the powers of darkness, as personified by Christopher. They derived considerable merriment from these discussions. When one of them returned, for instance, from Geneva, he would ask the others: “Is Celeste corrupted yet?”
But Adelaide knew there was no danger at any time of Celeste’s corruption. The danger lay in a mortal injury to Celeste’s heart. Nothing could have destroyed that innocence, but much that Christopher, and all the Bouchards, represented could wound and agonize it. Adelaide, who would always be innocent, remembered her own endless suffering throughout her life at the hands of the disingenuous and the corrupt and the “realists.” Her father had been one of these; she could not remember him without a sick turning-aside of her whole mind. Jules had been one of these, and she had loved him, but had always suffered because of him. Her spirit had been incapable of
growing scales, like a reptile, to protect itself. It remained soft and naked to the end, as the spirit of Celeste would remain.
Adelaide accepted this vulnerability of her daughter’s, but she was determined that she would protect it from the assaults which had unendingly wounded and assailed her own. But she knew that she must give Celeste a species of fortitude; she must make her realize her own innocence, and how precious and beautiful it was, and how true it was, and how it must be cherished and guarded. She knew only too wretchedly that the corrupt and the disingenuous and the “realists” could make the innocent feel inferior and stupid and laughable, until they believed it themselves. Once believing it, confusion and bewilderment and impotence faced them all the rest of their lives. Celeste must be made to realize it was the others who were fools, for all their laughter and their success and their compactness of spirit.
“If we acknowledge the lie that man is only a beast like the other beasts,” she told her daughter on one occasion, “then we must know that the things we call law and civilization and progress are illusions. We must follow the argument, then, that law and civilization and progress, which restrain man, and prevent him from enjoying the fullness of his beast-hood, are bad, and must be destroyed.” She smiled painfully, “Now, not even our relatives acknowledge that they should be destroyed. In the chaotic society which their brand of ‘realism’ would bring about, there would be no need for armaments, for there would soon be no men.” (Perhaps, she thought to herself, the Destroyers encouraged civilization for the profit there was in periodically attempting to destroy it.)
“There is nothing so realistic, my darling, as a jungle monkey. He has no illusions that he is destined to be an angel, or has a mission to save the other monkeys. He does not believe in the dignity of the monkey, or that he is valuable in the sight of some metaphysical heaven. He has never heard of prayer or beauty or gentleness or mercy, for all these exist only in the minds of the innocent and the idealists, the kind of men who furnish our relatives with much of their amusement, but who make life tolerable, and even lovely, for all the rest of us.