Crescent City Part 26

"Do you know, you probably won't believe me, but it's true, I always saw my life touching hers one day?"

"Do you often 'see' things?" Andre teased.

"Not often," she said soberly. "But sometimes. For us I see only a blank, a dark blank."

"You've listened too long to the servants. Superst.i.tions. Listen to me." He held her closely. "Always listen to me. Think of yourself going on a long, wonderful, dangerous journey. I'm the guide, I'll keep you safe, I'll keep danger away."

She sighed. "You do comfort me. Even your voice comforts me."

"That's what I want to do." He kissed her. "You'll come again? I shall have to be away a great deal-my family's place, and business in the North-but never for very long. You'll come again?"

"Oh, yes, oh, yes I will. I will."

So it began.

18.

Now in the last year of peace there were some who saw what was coming and others who denied it, even though it was scrawled across the sky.

John Brown had seized the federal a.r.s.enal at Harpers Ferry. Hailed in the North as a defender of human liberty, he was daily condemned as a vicious agitator when merchants and planters met over lunch at Maspero's Exchange. There they spoke, too, of men like David Raphael, wondering that he, for instance, could have come from so decent a family. And they were sorry for his relatives. They quoted politicians who were saying that secession was inevitable unless some "reasonable compromise" could be effected and soon. In lowered voices and somber tones they spoke of Englishmen murdered in the Indian Mutiny at Lucknow only a few years before.

The Mistick Krew of Comus organized a Mardi Gras parade that year as splendid as any; the French Opera House opened with a spectacular season of Donizetti, Ma.s.senet and Bellini; Adelina Patti sang; the new gaslights were installed in the grandest houses; and women, parting their hair in the center, madonna-style, had themselves photographed.

Yet perhaps it was not ignorance but the fear of war which engendered this gaiety and roused Eugene from his indifference.

"It's too long since we had guests at Beau Jardin," he said one day. He frowned. "Why have we not done it before?"

"We were conserving," Miriam reminded him with some resentment. Not once had he given her any credit for what she had been doing.

"We'll invite people in time for the grinding season."

That meant a week of lavish entertainment, of escorting visitors through the sugar mill, drinking hot cane juice and rum, while the slaves toiled twenty-four hours a day until the cane had all been ground.

"We'll bring everyone upriver on the Edward J. Gay, do it in fine style while we're about it," Eugene said. He became enthusiastic. "I shall want a fine menu, chowders and turtle soup, pigeons, whatever you can think of. And very likely we're low on Madeira. It's so long since I've checked. Will you take care of that? And the guest list, too, since-since I can't write?"

She fetched pencil and paper.

"We'll begin with Gabriel and the sister."

"Rosa will be in Saratoga," she reminded him.

"Well, Gabriel, then. He's a cool sort, but he grows on you. Emma's people, of course, Eulalie, Pelagie, and any of her children who want to come. Oh, yes, put Perrin down, Andre Perrin. I haven't seen him since he's been back in town. He never comes to call; you'd think he'd be more friendly."

Miriam's pencil rested; she controlled her trembling hand. "If he's not that friendly, why invite him?"

"Oh, well, I've no grudge. I do know he travels a good deal, so maybe that's why he hasn't come round. I always liked him, he's clever, goes all over the world, which I wish Fd done when I was still able."

"So he's very likely away somewhere. I'll find out for you."

"Don't bother. I can find out myself. Put his name down."

Andre Perrin. The letters shaped themselves into s.p.a.ces on the paper. They looked up quizzically, startled and alarmed as the pounding of her frightened heart.

On the piazza after dinner the men smoked and talked. The drone of their voices coming through the long open windows was in compet.i.tion with the harp, which Pelagie's daughter, Felicite, was playing in the parlor.

Miriam's thoughts moved like troubled wanderers looking for a place to rest. They moved from Angelique, who, pretending to be attentive to the music, was probably wishing she were as old as Felicite and could wear her hair up, back to Andre on the piazza. She strained to hear his voice among the others', but it did not come.

After three days they had still not been alone together. Men and women bathed separately in tibe bayou. In groups they went driving through the countryside; in groups they dined and played cards. Occasionally her eyes had met his; then, remembering how Pelagie's adoration of Sylvain had been so naked on her face, she had turned away.

She thought curiously: Gabriel's face is covered up. Nothing is revealed in it. Could Rosa have been mistaken? No, of course not. Then it must be very hard for Gabriel tonight .... How strange that two men who loved her should be sitting there together!

How strange to be having these thoughts at all! She, Miriam, the proper-seeming wife of a respected gentleman; the mistress of this family home, gleaming and orderly in its traditions; the mother of that manly boy, already old enough to take his place with the men after dinner; the mother to be an example for her daughter ...

What would the world-the world in which she had to live-say of her if they knew? Her children ... she would stand shattered before them. How they would suffer! And she pa.s.sed her hand over her perspiring forehead.

"I'm thinking," Pelagie remarked, "of how Marie Claire used to play for us. It's so strange that she stays abroad. It must be very hard on a young husband."

"I suppose it must be," Miriam agreed.

"Yet he seems content! He looks very well, don't you think so?"

"Very well."

"And you do, too, Miriam. I don't know when I've seen you so blooming, so healthy and pink."

Miriam moved closer to the window, giving as excuse the heat, but needing really to remove herself from Pelagie's remarks.

"I have enormous respect for Rabbi Wise," Gabriel was saying. "He feels religion and politics ought to be separate and I agree."

"Well, Wise," Eugene replied, "Wise is against slavery, and of course I don't agree with him there. But when he says he'd rather break up the Union than go to war, there I do agree."

"There's no question that if war comes, it will be the abolitionist Protestant preachers who brought it about."

Miriam recalled a time when she had thought constantly about those questions; yet at this moment they meant nothing; she was thinking of Andre. She had become a woman with a fixed idea.

"I'm told that at the State House they predict crisis," Eugene was saying. "They say if a Republican is elected President we shall secede."

Another voice was heard. "Then there will be war."

Other voices joined.

"We are short of everything: wagon factories, ammunition, tents, everything."

"Can you imagine abolition here? It's enough to make your flesh crawl! Hordes of them taking to the roads with no place to go, nothing to eat, except what they can steal."

She felt a touch on her shoulder.

"It's a perfect night," Andre said. "Too beautiful for such depressing conversation. Would you like a walk or a row in the skiff?"

She raised her eyebrows, as if to say, We can't do this.

But Andre countered lightly. "Any lady who wants to come is welcome. The boat holds two. Shall we take turns? You first, Pelagie?"

Pelagie declined. Miriam's chair sc.r.a.ped abruptly as she stood up, reminding her how he had drawn her away from the talk on that very first night.

"We started out so cheerfully," Andre said. "But they always turn to politics. Let's look at the stars. They've been here long before there was a North or a South and will be here long after."

The moon, faintly red, bled pink into the white sky. In the middle of the lawn where the decorous sound of the harp almost faded out of hearing, it was met by the poignant thrum and tw.a.n.g of a guitar. Over in the cabins a man was singing of ancient longings and transient delights; one needed no words to recognize both longing and delights.

On and on Andre and Miriam moved with identical steps. She felt the motion of his legs in unison with her own. The path to the bayou was thick with a hundred years' worth of fallen pine needles, on which feet made no more noise than a breeze in the treetops. Live oaks spilled streamers of gray moss like old women's hair.

"The moss is sorrowful," Miriam said.

Andre was not to be drawn into her mood. "To begin with, it isn't moss at all. It's related to the pineapple family, and that's the symbol of welcome."

He helped her into the boat. So still was the surface that the trees along the sh.o.r.e made a motionless reflection, scalloping a deeper black against the opaque bayou water. Andre dropped the oars to let the boat drift and took her hand. For a long time they sat without speaking, joined by the tightening contact of their hands.

"I wish there were someplace for us to go tonight," Andre said.

She dared then to say what she had been holding back. A woman should never take the initiative; a woman should wait to receive.

"I wish for more than tonight. To see ahead." And when he did not answer, she cried, "What's to happen? Where are we going?"

"Ah, don't! I can't bear it when you're unhappy! Listen to me. Remember that every day brings something new. When we first saw each other you were choked with tears. You couldn't have foreseen, that night, what's happened between us since then, could you?"

"That's true," she admitted.

"I'm not a superst.i.tious man, but I've seen so many curious and wonderful turns and twists that I never give up hoping."

He stroked her hair. More than his words, his fingers calmed her. His compa.s.sion made her want to believe that in some miraculous turn of affairs all impediments between them might be swept away.

Presently he took the oars and turned the boat back to the landing, soothing all the while in his bright vigorous voice with talk of New York and Washington, of theater and amusing personalities.

They walked back up the path toward the house. In deepest shadow, just before the path emerged onto open lawn, they stopped and he pulled her to him. She trembled and, leaning against him, gave him all her weight, so that, half lifted, her feet barely grazed the ground and she was held to him by arms and lips.

At last he said, "I haven't told you, I have to go north again next week."

"Again? Must you?" she cried, thinking, I sound like a wife. I cling like a wife.

"I have to. I have business that has to be taken care of quickly. The war is coming, you know. I couldn't stand any more talk of it inside there tonight, but they're right, it's coming."

"And who will win?"

"Who can say? The North has more men and more money. The South will have help from Europe because of cotton. But who can say?"

All thought of issues and principles, all private secret allegiances, washed away. What would war do to Andre and Miriam?

She controlled her voice. "How long will you be gone this time?"

"It depends how things work out. A couple of months maybe, but I'll be back, you may be sure of that. Meanwhile, when you pa.s.s the Pontalba, think of me, remember that the place is waiting for us. Do you promise?"

She understood that he was aware of her fear and that he would admire her for covering it up with gallantry.

"I promise," she said.

"Good! Then, let's go inside."

The brush raked her hair, snapping sparks. Through the mirror she saw the bed waiting and thought with relief that she would be asleep when Eugene came in after a late night at cards, so that she would not even be aware of his entry. How many thousands of hours they had lain together in the dark intimacy of that bed without touching! And she thought that, but for the constraint of law and custom, it would be-ought to be-so natural and simple for Andre instead of Eugene to walk through that door and lie down in that bed.

Someone knocked.

"Come in," she called, expecting f.a.n.n.y.

It was Eulalie. Her skirts flounced through the door with such speed that the taffeta crackled. At once she began to speak, like a child who had run to deliver a message and dared not forget it.

"I want you to know that I saw you! I saw you and him tonight. I heard every word you both said."

Miriam's heart slowed. A heart was supposed to beat faster from shock; nevertheless, she felt hers beat slowly, felt its hard pulse pounding. She laid the brush down and waited.

"I was sitting on the lawn when I heard your voices quite clearly on the path. I certainly didn't stoop to eavesdropping, if that's what you're thinking."

"I'm not thinking anything."

Cool. Icy cool. Say as little as possible. Above all, don't let her see that you're terrified.

"I think," Eulalie said, clipping the words, "that you are a disgrace. A disgrace." A spray of her saliva struck Miriam's cheek. "Perhaps there isn't enough decency in you to know that you are."

Miriam collected her thoughts. "If you choose to misunderstand-completely misunderstand-what you say you heard, then there's nothing I can do about it, is there?"

Eulalie's laugh was the victor's laugh, scornful and careless. "There's nothing to misunderstand. The Pontalba! So that's where you go on your afternoon walks, the fine lady with-with gold bracelets!"

She will cry this through the house and over the city. My children will hear of it and hate me.

"No wonder they moved the state capital away from New Orleans! A modern Sodom, they said. Not fit for legislators, they said, and it's true when women like you from respectable homes ..." For the moment Eulalie had no more words.

There is a streak of madness in her, Miriam thought, as the red flush, like a burn or a disease, stained the woman's neck. Perhaps it was that, before all else, that had kept the young men away: a streak of madness.

"What do you think your father will say, your father who thinks the sun rises on you! And my mother, who has treated you like one of her own daughters! And this is how you repay them!"

Now I have gone as far as I can go in this life of mine, they will do what they want with me.