Long Distance Life Part 20

"Yes, love," Dolly smiled. "Live for love. I suppose you've heard of my white officer, Captain Hamilton from Charleston," she laughed, and throwing back her head said it again in English mocking the southern American drawl. "Oh, yes, he's going to take care of everything, 'my dear, you leave it all to me!'"

She stopped, frozen, as if distracted by some awesome thought. Suzette gazed patiently at her tortured face, the dancing eyes, the high forehead with its moist wisps of raven hair.

"Maman would have loved him," Dolly whispered, her eyes moving blindly over the a.s.semblage. It was as if she'd forgotten that Suzette was even there. "But I do not love him!" she whispered. "I do not love him!" she pleaded. "I do not love him at all."

"You need rest," Suzette said softly.

But Marcel had appeared. He had come up before Dolly and stood staring down at her, his small face clouded with a scowl.

"Have you seen him?" he whispered frantically. "Christophe!" he said, when she did not appear to understand.

"Of course I've seen him," she said, her voice suddenly guttural and alien. Her mouth was hard. "He's been at my house all the time."

Marcel was speechless. It was as if he had heard wrong.

"I left him there to entertain Captain Hamilton," she said now, with an immediate innocent smile. "I do hope they get on together. The Captain is due in this afternoon."

Marie had gone back the pa.s.sage to the rear gallery, and not pausing to see whether or not she was followed descended the curving iron stair. Her steps were rapid. She moved under the porch in the shadows where she could not be seen, but was not at all surprised to see a pair of boots descending and then Richard's large hand on the rail.

"Did you receive my note?" he whispered. He stood a pace away from her near the rear door of the dress shop which was shut. And it took a moment for him to realize that her face was flushed, that her eyes were red. "Why, what is it, Marie!"

Marie shook her head. She wiped her eyes with her handkerchief, turning ever so slightly away. "It's all right," she breathed softly. He could hardly hear her. "It's just...it's only...Dolly Rose."

"She shouldn't have come!" Richard said.

"No, no. I don't condemn her!" Marie whispered. She was suddenly quite frustrated and then, swallowing, said in the same soft voice, "It's only all the wretched things that people say. I feel...I feel so sorry for her!"

Richard dropped his eyes. He did not feel sorry for Dolly at all now. Or if he did, he did not expect that Marie could feel sorry for her. Dolly's presence here was unforgivable. That anything of Dolly should touch Marie-it was more than he could bear.

But he was immensely relieved now to see that Marie had turned to him and her face brightened with just a touch of a smile.

"You needn't have written that note," she said. "I wanted so to tell you, but...but..."

"Marcel was there..."

"And Maman was there..." she said.

"And then Marcel was there..." he smiled.

They both laughed.

"Why is no one here?" here?" she whispered with just a touch of the mischievous. she whispered with just a touch of the mischievous.

He experienced such a lovely pleasure then that he didn't realize it was the first time he had ever heard Marie laugh. Hers was a wintry beauty, he would have known, had he ever thought to anatomize it; but she was radiant at this moment and she was looking directly into his eyes.

But then her face became morbidly serious. It had a frightening coldness about it, and he felt the same spasm of fear he'd experienced only moments before when he had seen her red-rimmed eyes.

"You needn't have written it," she said gravely.

"If I ever lose your trust, Marie..." he said to her.

"But you haven't lost it. You couldn't lose it," she said, and she said this with such seriousness that it astonished him.

"Richard," she went on, "I am torn in half."

"But why?" he asked at once.

"Because I do not know how to behave with you!" she said. "I don't know how to behave with anyone! I never have. That room upstairs, I find it an agony to be there. And every Thursday now we are to receive friends here, my aunts and myself, every Thursday there are to be little fetes. Tante Louisa says she's getting old, she wants to see young people, it would be fun for her to make dresses for me, to receive my friends. I don't want this!" she looked at him miserably. The voice was her voice which he had known all his life, low, vibrant, and pure. But never had he heard such heat in it; never had he seen such heat in her face. "The truth is, it's your company I want and yours alone, and yet I'm a fool for telling you so. I should be cold to you and coy with you, I should give you smiles begrudgingly, look away when our eyes meet, hide my real feelings behind a feathered fan. I detest it! I don't know how to do it. And I cannot smile at Augustin, at Fantin, at those I despise. Why should I receive them? I don't understand."

Richard could never have found a name for the emotion he felt as he heard this. When she stopped speaking, he was looking at her as someone might perceive an apparition, as if its loveliness and perfection were quite apart from him and this time and this place, as if he had been granted some extraordinary revelation and to speak would tarnish it, dissipate it, cause it to leave him as before.

"You are pure of heart, Marie," he whispered. He couldn't know that his face appeared unspeakably sad, that it had the melancholy and the wonder of much older men whose faith has been bruised at times, if not almost lost. "You are pure of heart."

"Then why am I in such pain?" she answered softly.

"Because the world doesn't understand people who are pure of heart, it's made for people who cannot trust each other, and are not trustworthy themselves."

"Did you mean what you said to me...the last time we were alone?"

"Yes."

"Then say it now."

"I love you," he whispered.

"Then why can't you kiss me again?" she whispered. "Why is it wrong?" And as she said this she turned toward him a.s.suming that same near-indefinable att.i.tude that had brought him close to her that day in the grove. He reached out for her; as soon as his hand touched her flesh through the cloth of her dress, a fire pa.s.sed through his fingers so that that humming sound commenced in her ears. She felt his lips on her forehead but this produced no profound sensation. It was his hands, his body drawing closer against her. It was his cheek now pressed to her forehead, and the strength with which he held her, inclining her backward as he kissed her lips.

It built slowly, and somehow more strongly than it had the first time, so when they at last kissed, she felt an even more powerful sensation of weightlessness and exquisite drifting, along with a shuddering pleasure all through her form. "Marie, Marie," he was whispering to her, and then came that moment when he seemed to pa.s.s out of his gentlemanly guise, to lose control. He might have crushed her, he was so strong, and all at once, that shuddering pleasure consumed her. She could not affect the pulsing of her body and was limp in his arms. She felt the most extraordinary excitement and was powerless to stop its radiating from the center of her all through her limbs. It seemed she would die, shocked, delirious, and then violently it climaxed and subsided leaving her stunned. She had been moaning aloud. He was frenzied, kissing her limp neck, returning again and again to her lips, his fingers all but bruising her waist and her arms. And then with a loud catch in his throat, he stopped. He held her close, she couldn't see his face, and his breaths came heavy, anxious, so that he trembled as he slowly let her go. "I love you, Richard," she heard herself say from some dreamy place that had nothing to do with this secret spot at all. Collapsed against him, she felt him stroke her hair, felt his heaving grow less anxious and at last they were both of them perfectly still.

When she looked up at him, there came an exquisite shock. He was against the brick wall and looking down at her, his eyes slightly glazed, his lips drawn back in a serene smile. For a moment, it did not seem to be Richard at all. He stroked her hair, and then pressed her against his chest. The expression on his face had been utterly loving as if love itself were very near to pain. She could not know that he had not experienced the full climax of pa.s.sion that she had just experienced, and that he only dimly understood that she was capable of it, only dimly understood just how he had been swept up again by her fire. Only her subsiding pa.s.sion had enabled him to still himself, to command his own excitement to die down. "I love you," he whispered over and over now, soft to her ear. And then, growing agitated, he drew slowly, gently away.

There was a clatter above them on the porch. Tante Colette was calling Marie's name. At once Marie tried to smooth her mussed hair.

But before she could answer, Marcel clattered down with Rudolphe behind him and the two of them, deep in some agitated conversation, swept right past through the courtyard arch and out toward the street.

With an air of resignation Marie put her hand on the railing. But as she mounted the third step she looked across to Richard in the shade near the wall. He was leaning on the wall, and his face was rent with pain. It so shocked her, that she stopped.

"Marie!" Tante Colette was angry above.

But Marie did not move. Richard came forward as if he gave no thought at all to being seen. He slipped his hands around the iron railings as if they were bars. Then he faltered. And with the same look of pain and appalling fear, he reached out for her taking her by the waist.

"But what is it?" she whispered.

"I don't know," he answered. "I don't know."

Rudolphe was grim. He pounded along the sun-drenched street in silence, occasionally coughing from the dust that swirled in the air, his chest heaving with his pace, as Marcel struggled to keep up with his long legs.

"d.a.m.n that woman," he whispered finally. "I don't have to tell you what a mess this is, do I?" Marcel knew that Rudolphe was speaking to him man to man. Rudolphe would have never taken that tone with his own son. "That harlot," he went on. "White men quarreling over her year in and year out, and now she plays this lovely act with Christophe and this Captain Hamilton, I hope that woman burns in h.e.l.l."

"She said he was drunk, Monsieur," Marcel said, out of breath. "She said he'd been drunk for days."

"I heard what she said," Rudolphe stammered. He darted across a crowded street forcing a carter to slow before him, pulling Marcel by the arm. "I heard every word. She's left him in that flat for that white man to find."

The few short blocks to the Rue Dumaine took forever. But at last they were rushing back Dolly's open carriageway and up the rear stairs. The door to the flat lay open, lending it a neglected look, but it was far from neglected inside. Evidence of young Captain Hamilton's affections were everywhere, new tables, mirrors, the smell of fresh enamel, and bright new wallpaper on the walls. Rudolphe tapped at one door after another, cautiously examining each room to find it empty until he paused at Dolly's bedroom door. He knocked once. And then turned the k.n.o.b.

It was a sumptuous room, with a wilderness of perfumes on the immense dresser and the gleam of new velvet over the blinds. Bottles crowded the bedside table, their dark liquid catching the bits of afternoon light that filtered through the shutters, and beyond them in the high poster with its red silk trappings lay Christophe, asleep, his face in the pillow, his slender brown body naked and uncovered on the white sheet.

"Get up," Rudolphe said to him at once, and commenced to shake his shoulder violently and then to tug on his arm. "Christophe!" he said, "Christophe, wake up."

"Go to h.e.l.l," Christophe answered, and slipped heavily and shapelessly from Rudolphe's hands.

"Listen to me, Christophe, and listen now. Captain Hamilton's coming here, do you know who that is..."

"...he's in Charleston," came the slurred voice from the pillow.

"...not according to your sweet friend. He's expected here today. Now. Get up!" And jerking Christophe's arm, he brought him to a sitting position where he fell forward and stared now not at Rudolphe but at Marcel. His brown eyes widened and then appeared very calm. He was looking at Marcel just as if he had seen him for the first time, as if there were no urgency, as if he were merely watching him in some timeless and safe place. Then very slowly he smiled. When Rudolphe slapped him now he was not prepared for it and awoke as if from a dream.

"Don't do that to me!" Christophe whispered. He looked about, his eyes reddened, squinting as if he did not know where he was. The flesh of his lips was so badly cracked that it was bleeding. It hurt Marcel to see it. It hurt him to see Rudolphe slap Christophe's face.

"Listen to me, you fool," Rudolphe was furious now. "You've got to get out of here. That Captain Hamilton is keeping Dolly! Do you understand. He is keeping Dolly!"

"And he wouldn't like to find a n.i.g.g.e.r in her bed," Christophe sneered. He was about to lie down again.

"If he finds one," Rudolphe said, leaning over him now with a grim, sardonic smile, "that n.i.g.g.e.r is just very likely going to be dead."

"Come on, Chris," Marcel said suddenly. He thrust Christophe's limp arm through the sleeve of his shirt. "Get up, Chris," he said. "If you don't, that man will find us all here, don't do this to us, Chris, come on."

The mere thought of some ugly confrontation with a white man sickened Marcel. It was not the violence he feared, that was theoretical to him, it was the humiliation that his mind found quite real. Christophe rose, shakily, letting Marcel b.u.t.ton his shirt. He commenced to dress himself now, shoving them belligerently away.

They gathered his watch, his tie, and his keys and put them into his pockets; and starting unsteadily for the door, their arms around him, they stopped at the shrill crying of a bell.

"d.a.m.n," Rudolphe murmured. Christophe attempted to straighten himself but his legs would not support him and he crashed heavily into the wall. Again there came the shrill sound of the bell.

Then with some preternatural effort, Rudolphe lifted him out of the bedroom and toward the rear door of the flat. They could hear the grinding of a key in the lock, a distinct metallic sound that echoed through the empty pa.s.sage from the front of the house. But they had reached the back gallery then, and within seconds were halfway down the stairs.

Marcel was trembling when they reached the carriageway, but he was not trembling with fear, he was trembling with some other awful and degrading emotion that he'd never known in his life. He had never really run from anything before, and in all his follies had never been accused of cowardice in the face of any challenge, discipline, or trial. Leaning against the wall, waiting as Rudolphe said to wait, with Christophe slumped against his shoulder, he felt a curious loathing, not for Dolly, not for Christophe, and not for this Captain Hamilton, but strangely, for himself.

"Let's go now," Rudolphe said. And together, arms locked around Christophe, they went out to the right, away from the house, walking fast until Rudolphe could signal a hack.

VII.

THAT EVENING was the longest of Marcel's life. He did not dare take Christophe into his own room where the Englishman had died, but Rudolphe insisted that he do this, and laid Christophe right down on the same bed. Of course it had been thoroughly cleaned, and the room was immaculately straight. It resembled more a room in the Lermontant house than Christophe's cluttered study now, but Christophe did not seem to notice any of this, or to care. When he tried to get hold of his bottle of whiskey, Rudolphe stopped him and sent Marcel for a keg of beer. was the longest of Marcel's life. He did not dare take Christophe into his own room where the Englishman had died, but Rudolphe insisted that he do this, and laid Christophe right down on the same bed. Of course it had been thoroughly cleaned, and the room was immaculately straight. It resembled more a room in the Lermontant house than Christophe's cluttered study now, but Christophe did not seem to notice any of this, or to care. When he tried to get hold of his bottle of whiskey, Rudolphe stopped him and sent Marcel for a keg of beer.

When he returned, Christophe was propped against the head-board of his narrow bed beside the desk and he was staring glaze-eyed and still at Rudolphe who strode back and forth, back and forth, across the room. "Give him the beer," Rudolphe said. Juliet, terrified of her son, hovered with a tear-streaked face just outside the door. She had all the look of madness and neglect of the years before Christophe came home.

"Now you listen to me," Rudolphe boomed, "and you," he said, pointing to Marcel, "I want you to hear this too. Now," he turned to Christophe, "you know it's not going to do you any good getting drunk like this. Sooner or later you've got to sober up and face it, your English friend is dead."

Marcel drew in his breath. But Christophe remained motionless, his eyes like pieces of gla.s.s.

"Now your mother needs you," Rudolphe went on. "She's out of her mind. So if you blunder out that front door again, if you wander back to Madame Dolly Rose and her hotheaded young 'protector' and get yourself killed, well, then, you've killed your mother too. Not to mention this boy here who thinks you hang the moon, and two dozen other boys like him whom you've abandoned for this little escapade as if there weren't a school downstairs and as if you weren't the schoolmaster whom they all adore! Now, just keep this up! Just see how many people you can drag down with you, we'll keep count."

"Please, Monsieur," Marcel said. He couldn't bear this, and the gradual alteration of Christophe's expression, as Rudolphe went on.

"Did you bury Michael?" Christophe whispered. He raised his eyebrows ever so slightly, but otherwise he did not move.

"Of course we buried him, but with no help from you. And I'll tell you something else, Monsieur, you get yourself in another fix with Dolly Rose and you're on your own." He stopped. His temper was getting the best of him, and again he strode back and forth across the room. Rudolphe was a ma.s.sive man, not as tall as Richard, but strong of build and larger than anyone else there. He was ominous in this temper; his voice, though deep, had absolutely no African timbre to it, but a clear almost sharp Caucasian tone. Now he drew himself up, as if he found it difficult to say what he must.

"I have never been in such a position," he declared, "as I was in...with you...this afternoon! I have never never...cowered before any white man in my life! And never have I had to! And never, never will I endure that again!" He turned, unable to go on. Marcel could not look at him. He could not look at Christophe. Much as his heart was rent and much as he was afraid, he knew these sentiments were his own. But he was a boy, Rudolphe was a man. Rudolphe was a man of substance and one of the strongest men that Marcel knew.

Christophe's lips, whitened and cracked, barely parted and softly, very softly, he chanted. "DOLLY Dolly, DOLLY Dolly, DOLLY DOLLY ROOOOSE." His voice trailed off. Rudolphe staring through the open door, his back to Christophe, had not moved. Then he sighed.

"Come lock the doors after me, Marcel, and don't let anyone in."

Christophe was sick. For hours he lay in fitful sleep awakening only to give up the bile in his stomach and to drink the heavy draughts of beer. But he did not ask for whiskey, he did not move to try to find it, and Marcel, sitting patiently beside the grate, watched the windows darken around them as night came on. The twilight terrified him, it seemed an immense resonance with the darkness in his soul. He put his face in his hands.

From time to time Juliet appeared at the door, and he would gesture to her that all was well. But all was far from well, and he was afraid. He lit the lamp by the bed finally, and drew himself a gla.s.s of the beer. It was still cool, and tasted good to him, and he felt he was going to cry. He had just settled in the chair again beyond the circle of the lamp's light when he realized that Christophe was sitting up, against the carved headboard of the bed, and that he was staring at him with those same unnatural glazed eyes.

Marcel began to talk. He could never have remembered how he began. He simply tried to tell Christophe how much he needed him, how much all the boys needed him, and how Juliet was again going out of her mind. She had roamed the city night and day while he was gone. She'd boarded the ships convinced that he had booked pa.s.sage to leave her forever, she had worn out the leather of her shoes, and her feet bled. "She loves you, she loves..." Marcel said, his voice breaking and he realized that he wanted to say "I love you" but felt he could not.

"My life here is over if you don't come back, I mean come back to us, to the boys. I tell you I'll run away. I won't wait for my chance to go to Paris, I'll run away. Remember what you planned when you were in Paris when you were a boy, that's what I'll do now." He ran on through long descriptions of how he would become a cabin boy or a common seaman just to escape "this place," how he would be abused on the ships that took him, beaten probably, maybe he would starve. No doubt he would fall from the mast, and there would be rats in the hold, and they would all get scurvy, but he didn't care. Sometime during all of this, he drew another gla.s.s of beer for Christophe, but Christophe sitting propped against his pillow did not move. His beard was thick and rough, darkening his face, and the eyes glittered in the gloomy light of the lamp.

It seemed the Cathedral bell clanged the hour over and over again, and still Christophe sat there, and after long pauses, Marcel would resume again, running through the old refrains to a slightly different tune.

Finally in a very soft voice, Christophe asked: "Where did they bury him?"

And Marcel explained. It was the Protestant Cemetery uptown because from all his papers they had discerned he was Episcopalian and he had left some money for Christophe, too, in a packet marked "Property of Christophe Mercier, return to him in the event of my death." It was a clever ruse, the lawyer had remarked, as the man had a good income but no capital which he might will on his own. Marcel could read no response to this in Christophe's face. And only when the eyes closed again, did Marcel allow himself to drift into sleep.

When he woke the first impression he received was that of the sun flowing in through the open windows. "He's escaped!" he thought, and jumped to his feet. But then he saw Christophe, freshly dressed, smooth-shaven, sitting with his legs crossed on the length of the bed. A pot of fresh coffee steamed on the desk beside him. And he drank from a heavy mug, a cheroot in his other hand which he lifted now and then to his lips. He appeared perfectly calm.

"Go on home now, mon ami," mon ami," he said. he said.

"No!" Marcel protested. Christophe's eyes were bloodshot, the lip was still bleeding slightly where it had cracked.

"I'm all right," his voice was, as before, very soft. "And by the way, mon ami mon ami, you'd be quite the sensation on the Paris stage, you could move the most jaded audience to tears with those speeches of yours, all that about the roaches crawling over you in the hold of the ship."

He turned then to fix a cup of the coffee for Marcel. But his hands were shaking so badly that he couldn't quite manage to pour the warm milk, and Marcel took it over at once. Christophe's eyes had an unusual fire in them. He seemed elated as he watched Marcel, and then he reached out and clasped Marcel's arm tight. Marcel was looking down at him, and Christophe still holding him, bowed his head. And then Marcel yielded to an overwhelming impulse and put his arm around Christophe's shoulder in a quick but firm embrace.

When he drew back, Christophe began to speak. He was exhilarated and his words came too rapidly, with too much feeling as Marcel settled into his chair.

"A long time ago in Greece," Christophe said, "I saw a funeral for a peasant in the hills. This was near Sounion, the very tip of Greece. It was where we'd come to see the temple of Neptune where the poet Byron had carved his name. We were living almost in the shadow of the temple in a peasant hut. And I saw this funeral. With the women dressed all in black and crying wildly, wildly, as they tore their hair.

"It had a ritual sound, that crying. But something of blind anguish in it too. They wanted their cries to reach heaven, they wailed in outrage, they gave full vent to their grief. Well..." he stopped as though considering, and carefully lifted his coffee to his lips. A bit of it spilt but he did not seem to notice this. His hand shook even more violently as he set it down.

"Well, I had to mourn that way for Michael," he said. "I had to cry out, I had to let out the pain. Well, it's done. I don't even know what day this is. I don't know how long I was with Dolly, but it's over now, it's done."