Long Distance Life Part 50

"Mon Dieu," Christophe smiled. Christophe smiled.

"I have a room just down the street, nothing fancy, just clean," the gambler pushed the gold coin at the barkeep, the sleeve of his green coat resting against Christophe's arm. "I want the bottle," he said. His lean smooth face wrinkled softly again in a smile.

"Kiss that boy for me," Madame Lelaud sang out as they moved toward the door.

"Most definitely, Madame," Christophe made her a quick bow as, laughing softly, the gambler stepped into the dirt street.

Christophe stood on the gunwale banquette, staring up at the sky. Wisps of dark cloud obliterated the stars and there was a ring around the moon now that the rain had stopped. The panic was gone again as if it had never come, and the street was a riot of lighted windows, racket, the scream of the whistle of the gendarmes. In this very spot he had stood with Marcel that first night, and from this very spot he had watched Marcel walk away, and then gazed up at this sky.

The gambler was walking up and down slowly, that feline form flowing beautifully under the gray vest, the taut pants, that smile a permanent fixture beneath the shadow of the hat.

"I just had the most rea.s.suring sensation," Christophe murmured. And here we stood in this very spot that first night and you were that tall. "The most revealing sensation," he whispered, "that this is all there will ever be." "that this is all there will ever be."

"Come on, Mister Schoolteacher," said the low American voice, as for the first time the gambler removed the wide-brimmed hat revealing his golden hair and the full invitation in his brilliant deepset hazel eyes.

VII.

IT WAS BARELY LIGHT, and the market was awakening with a clatter. The Lermontants had urged Marcel to come back with them for breakfast, but he had refused. Madame Suzette was crying bitterly, once the ship had moved far enough downstream so that she could no longer see the bride and the groom, and the bride and the groom could no longer see her. And Rudolphe, very quiet now that there was no more opportunity for giving Richard advice, stood stood still on the levee for a long moment, seemingly unaware that the ship was no longer in sight. Christophe was the first to leave. He had to be in the cla.s.sroom in an hour. And Marcel excused himself quickly saying that he wanted to be alone. He had tried then to catch up with Christophe, but Christophe was already gone. still on the levee for a long moment, seemingly unaware that the ship was no longer in sight. Christophe was the first to leave. He had to be in the cla.s.sroom in an hour. And Marcel excused himself quickly saying that he wanted to be alone. He had tried then to catch up with Christophe, but Christophe was already gone.

It had been a grueling week, filled with a scintillating excitement and recurrent pain. There had been the inevitable offer from Rudolphe to lend Marcel the money to join Richard and Marie on the trip. But Rudolphe had taken out a note on the stables and sold two lots in the Faubourg Marigny just to meet the immediate expenses of the couple's journey, and it was quite out of the question that Marcel would go traipsing about Europe, while at home Rudolphe worked night and day with Antoine and his nephew Pierre, as was usual, the family shorthanded now besides. The conversation had been humiliating for Marcel.

In fact, as the day of departure grew closer and closer, he found himself experiencing very intense pain, sometimes so intense that he could not hide it from others. He would shun the Lermontant house at such moments, and go on those long walks which had so often soothed him in the past, seeking any distraction from the desperation that was crippling his heart.

And over and over, he ached for Christophe, ached simply to sit with Chris by the fire, or more truly, to seek Chris's quiet guidance as he wandered through the broken gla.s.s of his old world. But he could not turn to Chris now. Marie was safe with Richard, the entire course of her life altered, and Marcel could not, would not, let Chris see the smallness, the weakness of his soul. He would rather die than disappoint Chris. He would struggle through this alone.

As for Anna Bella, he could neither think of her, nor put her out of his mind. He felt rage against Dazincourt, and this was a man who had faced death for him on the field of honor, it was insupportable, and yet it seemed a devastating cruelty that Marcel had ever possessed Anna Bella, ever tasted what life might have been with her day-to-day love. And in the days that followed their lone night together, he saw again and again that image of Dazincourt's barouche beside her cottage, and praying for some note from her, some sign as to how things stood with her, he was answered with silence which told him all.

Of course the wedding had lifted his spirits. Until the priest said the final words he did not, in fact, believe that it would happen. Some calamity must prevent it. But at last came that moment when his sister, a stranger to him now in light of all that had bruised and almost destroyed her, was lifted on tiptoe into her husband's arms. The world was shut out then, and it seemed the very air of the sacristy was suffused with love as they all left it afterwards, and he had hoped that he would not have to see Richard alone again.

But Richard wanted it otherwise. And this morning he had come down to the cottage and caught Marcel unawares. Of course Marcel knew what Richard had to say, but he had never expected the simple and direct expression of it which followed.

"I never wanted this trip," Richard had begun at once, "I never planned for it, prepared for it as you did. As a matter of fact, were the truth to be known, I wish that Marie and I could stay right here. But I know what this means to you, the irony of it is not lost for me. I know the disappointment you are feeling. I am going and you are not going. I will be on the deck of that ship waving good-bye and you will be the one on the sh.o.r.e. Now, I don't want you to come to the dock. I want for you to say good-bye here; then you come to the house and be alone for a moment with Marie."

It was strange the effect of those words. They tested Marcel to the limit, he wasn't even sure at one point whether or not he could hear Richard out. But this was unthinkable really. He knew what he must say to put Richard at ease and he said it at once, "Do you think I'm not happy for you and Marie! Do you think my heart's not with both of you? I've a lifetime to think of myself, and nothing could keep me from coming with you to the dock. I want you to write to me, to describe everything you see from Notre Dame to the Grand Ca.n.a.l, I want to hear about Florence, about Rome...every place that you go."

But then, as they walked through the early morning together toward the Lermontant house, that pain had welled up in Marcel again, and just before the front door, he had stopped Richard and drawn him aside at the carriageway, and for a tense moment been quite unable to speak.

"Look," he said finally, "it's not over for me. It will just take time. I'm going to do things in my life, important things, it will just take time. It will be harder, and...and...it will just take time." Then he realized that his lips were moving but the words were not coming out. He drew himself up, swallowing slowly, and then shook his head as if to clear it, as if to see sharply and distinctly what it was he was trying to say. "Look at Monsieur Philippe," he whispered, "all that money and what did he ever do? I think he would have been happy in the cottage all his life with some good bourbon and my mother, and a deck of cards. And Christophe, he turned his back on Paris and came home to start a school. People make their own lives, Richard, and I'll make mine."

Richard had nodded. His large drowsy brown eyes watered slowly and he started as if he wanted to say something, but then he merely nodded emphatically again.

That had been the end of it.

And that was going to be the end of it.

But as he wound his way back from the dock toward the Rue Ste. Anne, the sun just breaking through the gray clouds, the last of an earlier rain still shining on the banquettes, he realized he could not endure the cottage just now. He did not wish to see the bare shelves, the latched doors of the kitchen, and frankly, the small pile of bills acc.u.mulating on the table by his chair. not endure the cottage just now. He did not wish to see the bare shelves, the latched doors of the kitchen, and frankly, the small pile of bills acc.u.mulating on the table by his chair.

Of course Dazincourt had wiped the slate clean of Monsieur Philippe's debts with the notary Jacquemine, and had even left instructions that if Marcel required a.s.sistance in finding some means of livelihood, he was to be contacted at once. But Marcel could not endure the thought of further "a.s.sistance" from this man. And neither Jacquemine or Dazincourt would ever know of these bills. They were from tradesmen who had known nothing of the notary, people whom over the years Marcel had always paid on the first of every month himself. And in the time Marcel had spent on the Cane River they had not been paid at all. Now their bills were trickling in, $150 from the tailor, $75 from the seamstress who had made Marcel's shirts, $85 owing the shoemaker, and then there was the coal man, the fish man and the poultry man who had always been paid at the back door. Let it wait, and let the whole dusty unkempt atmosphere of the cottage wait until later, perhaps, when this warm sun that had just come out as he walked through the streets, was gone again.

So as he approached the corner of the Rue Dauphine and found himself within sight of home, he dragged his feet, and went out of his way as a child might to kick a lump of coal that had just fallen from a cart.

A score of voices startled him. It was the children gathered on the corner, and for a rare moment, he stared at these children, all of them boys, and wondered what they were doing here now in this place. It was almost with a laugh that he realized they were Christophe's students, some twenty or more, many of them only eleven or twelve, clamoring for Christophe to open the school. There were the older boys that he knew, of course, but many of them were strange faces, and as usual, there was a wild a.s.sortment of color from the very fair to the very dark. Christophe didn't see Marcel as he unlocked the door. He was dressed as always in one of his old but serviceable Parisian coats, quite clean and well-cared-for, but much worn. And there was in his face the usual brightness as he clasped the shoulders of the boys who pa.s.sed into the house. His keen brown eyes warmed as he exchanged a few words here, there, and then without seeing Marcel even yet, he disappeared inside.

Marcel experienced a sinking feeling. He stood for a while, his back to the lamp post merely looking at the facade of the house. Suddenly a wild impulse gripped him to go in. To sit in the back reading room for a while with the papers, perhaps drink some very strong coffee, talk with Juliet. But he did not do this, he did not move.

"And why are you moping about?" he asked himself frankly. With all of New Orleans before you, mud streaming in the streets, the slops reeking in the alleys, and a thousand billiard parlors and confectioners and restaurants and cabarets that you cannot enter unless you want to be pitched on your face in the street.

He began to laugh suddenly at the irony of his thoughts, the little games of bitterness he had been playing with himself. It wasn't very much like him, after all. To be walking casually past the shops as they opened their doors, calculating that at best he might make a dollar and a half a day as a clerk somewhere, and that he had never bought a coat in his life that didn't cost fifty dollars, or a pair of pants that was less than twenty, or a shirt that was less than three. And he was growing still, which meant that he would be naked by summer when it was too late to use the old clothes to burn for warmth. Maybe he should burn all those outstanding bills now. But pa.s.sing one small shop with very dark dormer windows, he positively laughed aloud. For there he was reflected in the gla.s.s in all his gentlemanly splendor, the perfect picture of a young man of means.

The laughter was exhilarating though people were staring at him. And he realized that in a way, all this ironical foolishness was a good sign. It was lighter. It was not so bad. And a small plan leapt into his mind as amusing as everything else. Why not go on down toward the Rue Ca.n.a.l and see Picard and Duval, and have one last Daguerreotype made, one final relic, a memento of the gentleman he had been, a memento of this peculiar day? After all, he had a spare ten dollars, did he not, he had fifteen times that amount to be exact, and none of it likely to make or break his fortune since it const.i.tuted less than one-fourth of his debts, and was the sum total that he possessed. And he wanted this little picture, it would be the last for his collection, he would take it home at once and hang it on the wall.

It was eight thirty when he arrived and Picard was just opening the door. "Ah, Marcel," said the old man, adjusting his spectacles, "haven't seen you in months, thought you'd left these parts."

"Oh, no, Monsieur," Marcel followed him up the dusty stairway, the old man's steps slow, his hand hoisting his weight as it clutched the rail. "Only in the country for a little while. And Monsieur Duval?" he asked quickly. "Is Monsieur Duval here?"

"Aaaah, Duval!" the old man said over his shoulder as he entered the studio. The typical exasperation made Marcel smile. He did not realize until that moment how much he wanted to talk to Duval, how much he wanted to tell him of his discoveries on the Cane River, of the adventurous Daguerrean who had taken pictures of Niagara Falls, and the talk among the itinerants of a new buffing wheel.

As a matter of fact, all of Marcel's old enthusiasm for the invention was kindled again as he smelt the familiar chemicals, and saw Picard throw back the flap of his shabby little tent.

"Don't you mention that name to me," the old man had been murmuring, and now some low invective escaped under his breath. "What would you like today, Marcel, as a matter of fact I'll make you an offer, whole plate, whole plate for half price, five dollars, just for you."

"Monsieur Duval is not here?" Marcel asked, attempting to sound casual. The little platform creaked dangerously as ever, there was dust on the velvet prop behind it, dust on the ornately carved chair. But the sun, the sun was a miracle.

"No, Duval's not here! And I wouldn't make that offer for just anyone, whole plate, five dollars, what do you say?"

"Aah...yes, of course," Marcel shrugged. He had always preferred the smaller quarter plates, actually, because it was easier for him to see patterns in them, appealing ma.s.ses of black and white, but a whole plate for half price-And what did it matter now, if he had missed Duval, Duval who could have taken a perfect picture. "But do you expect him, Monsieur?" he asked.

"Expect him, I expect him to fall on his face, that's what I expect," came the angry voice from beneath the muslin. "Set up his own studio, that's what he's gone and done, with everything I taught him, the years of patience, training, and he ups and goes into business for himself!"

Marcel's lips pressed together into a bitter but patient smile. And if I had only known that five minutes ago, he thought wearily. But how could he leave now with the old man already at work on the plate, and the old man would guess the reason for his departure, the old man would be hurt.

"And two dollars a day I was paying him at the end," Picard's voice continued, high-pitched with habitual outrage, "and he ups and sets up on his own. d.a.m.n fool if you ask me, but there's always a d.a.m.n fool ready to set up in this business, thinks he can make a fortune with the camera, well let's just see how Duval can manage on his own! What with an endless procession of women who want to look ten years younger, and children who won't sit still. What with the chemicals twelve hours a day, and no one to lend him a helping hand, advance him a little salary, or send him on home early when business is slow. Monsieur Duval, the artist! Well, we shall see what we shall see."

And where, Marcel was wondering, where was Duval's studio, and if only he were there instead of here. It was more than a blight on his spirits, the room about him appeared intolerably shabby, and his thoughts were wandering slowly, away from this entire venture, to times when he had been here before. The afternoon when he had first brought Marie, or that Sat.u.r.day morning when he'd stolen Lisette out of the kitchen in her new calico dress. Lisette had refused to sit in this chair, rather she stood behind it, her tignon tignon tied like a gypsy's scarf at the nape of her neck. "I always thought Monsieur Duval would set up on his own," he murmured. "He has such a talent, such an eye." And he would do marvelously no matter what the old man said. tied like a gypsy's scarf at the nape of her neck. "I always thought Monsieur Duval would set up on his own," he murmured. "He has such a talent, such an eye." And he would do marvelously no matter what the old man said.

"Well, a talent for conniving and ingrat.i.tude if you ask me," Picard threw back the flap as he slid the plate into the camera case. "And that last one, a perfect idiot, demanding two days wages in advance and me fool enough to give it to him, never saw him again!" He threw up his hand, turned as if on an axis to consult his thermometer, the sun glinting on the pink flesh of his bald head. "And without another pair of hands in this business a man can't even leave his establishment long enough to go to the...to go to the...bank!" He gazed at the freshly washed windows, he waved his hand before the hot stove.

A curious rigidity had invaded Marcel. He was staring at the old man dimly, watching him adjust the camera's height. The warm air was unpleasant, the chemicals noxious, so that he wondered why he had ever come. The days were past for this extravagance and he was wasting time here as well. "What do you pay your a.s.sistants?" he asked, but the voice was low, spiritless as was the light in his eyes. Duval had always been the rarity in this business, and Picard was run of the mill. Why had he risked encountering Picard here alone?

"One dollar a day!" the old man trumpeted. "And that's one dollar too much! The one after Duval, he couldn't take a picture with me standing over his shoulder, that one, and the next was a thief!" His heavy florid brow puckered, the white eyebrows closing on the fine gold frame of the spectacles. "And with all I have to teach," he muttered, "why the excellent training and..."

"And the chemicals twelve hours a day," Marcel murmured, "the endless procession of women who want to look ten years younger, and the children who won't sit still."

"Oh, now it's not that bad!" the old man put his knuckles on his hip. "You're the one who used to tell me it was an art, young man! One dollar a day for the privilege of learning an art? What do you think they pay a clerk in a shop!" The old man's gray eyes widened. He drew his handkerchief out and wiped the sweat from his upper lip. "Starvation wages, that's what they pay. As a matter of fact, you wouldn't know anyone who wanted such an opportunity, would you? Oh, not you, of course, not you, I can see you're well fixed. But your people do quite well in this business, look at Jules Lion. No, I wouldn't be opposed to hiring some honest, hardworking man of color, no, indeed."

"For a dollar a day?" Marcel uttered a slight, dry laugh. He had lost all appet.i.te for this venture, he wished flatly that he had not come.

"All right, young man," Picard drew himself up. "Forty seconds when you are quite ready..."

"No!" Marcel roused himself as if from some unpleasant dream. "Thirty, Monsieur," he insisted gently. It was the final irritation that the old man had never really understood the importance of the time of day, the light, the dampness, conditions subject moment by moment to change. Enough times Marcel had calculated, watched, he knew. "Thirty seconds, Monsieur, and not a moment longer and I a.s.sure you I'll pay for the result."

"Eh bien," Picard shook his head. "Pity you don't want to make your fortune with the Daguerreotype, Marcel." Picard shook his head. "Pity you don't want to make your fortune with the Daguerreotype, Marcel."

It was noon when Anna Bella left her house, entrusting little Martin to Idabel so that she had to carry the small kettle of soup herself. But she had sealed its lid with a bit of moist dough and nothing would spill as she carried the iron handle easily at her side.

There was no answer when she knocked at the cottage in the Rue Ste. Anne and this produced in her neither disappointment nor surprise. She entered quietly and surveyed with an impa.s.sive face the dirty plates here and there, boots in the middle of the rug, a shirt dangling from the back of a chair. And as there was only enough coal to last a few more nights at best, she lit a very small fire, setting the kettle over it in the little parlor grate, and went to work slowly but steadily with a dust rag and a broom.

And as she moved about the small rooms, she made little discoveries that stopped her, so that she would stand for long periods transfixed, the dust swirling about her in the pale rays of the winter sun. A stack of bills lay on a chair-side table which at a reserved glance indicated an enormous debt. And Cecile had taken her mahogany bed with her to the Cane River along with the carpet from the back room. But in the middle bedroom, where Marcel was now sleeping, little had changed. Marie's clothes were still in the armoire, and on the dresser lay her hairbrush and mirror as if the girl she had been had died as surely as Lisette.

But it was another aspect of the cottage which caused Anna Bella finally to give up her small tasks and to sit oddly stranded at Marie's dresser staring at the reflection of the unmade bed. For everywhere-in the handkerchiefs strewn about, the bra.s.s ashtrays, the cluttered desk moved down from the garconniere garconniere-everywhere she felt the presence of Marcel. And for a protracted moment she looked at a black silk tie that lay on the floor, then gathered it up, and catching a breath of the masculine cologne that permeated the cloth, she felt the chills rise on her neck. What would it be like to live in this little house, to see through these windows the sky and the trees? To hear the sounds of the block on which she'd grown up, to be at home with these frock coats bulging from the armoire door, this particular white washbasin, pitcher, marble stand? But a numbness overcame her when there might have been a longing, and she pondered that Michie Vince had never left his imprint on her own house. He had come and gone repeatedly without a trace. No matter, her thoughts now had nothing to do with him, and she felt powerless to move, powerless even to raise her eyes when she heard a step at the front door.

A moment later, Marcel was standing on the threshold of the room. And again she felt that chill on her neck. She didn't rise to greet him, she said nothing, she merely watched him come near.

His arms were full of bundles, one hand clasping a bottle of wine, and he had a large Daguerreotype in its pressed paper case which he laid on the dresser in front of her. Her head was bowed. "It isn't often that I find a beautiful woman in my boudoir," he whispered. "And what of 'Michie Vince,' Madame, how is it he let you slip away?"

She didn't answer for a moment. She was deep in thought. It was almost as if his words didn't make any particular difference. And chilled again, she rubbed the backs of her arms. She saw him very distinctly as she raised her eyes.

"There isn't any more Michie Vince," she whispered. "Had you come an hour after, you would have known." But this was not a recrimination, it was merely a fact.

She studied him, thinking how his face had changed. How the roundness of the cherub was quite entirely gone, he was a tall, lean young man, and in some particular way his expression was softer for all its sobriety, its reflectiveness, as if suffering could soften, not just twist and destroy.

"But you love that man, don't you?" he whispered, the lips barely moving, the flesh as smooth as wax. And the eyes alone radiated feeling, brilliant as blue eyes so often are, brilliant as two lights.

"I've never in my life stopped loving anyone once I started," she answered. She lowered her lids and raised them again slowly, oddly aware of their effect. "I don't guess I ever will stop loving...once I've started...whether it was yesterday or a long time ago." And she felt keenly the house around her, the unmade bed with its velvet curtains, the peculiar stillness of noon, the secluded and sunny little room. It seemed he had stepped closer to her, that his shadow fell over her face. She felt such an overwhelming desire to touch his hand then that she shut her eyes as she rose and feeling him enfold her, she listened to the beat of his heart. It was suddenly just as it had been so long ago in Christophe's house when the Englishman lay dead, and just as it had been only a short while before after they had taken Lisette away, that they were alive and in one another's arms, and though some sorrow threatened them, surrounded them, they were touching each other, and the hunger, the waiting so terrible for so long, made it less pleasure than pain.

An hour later, it was Marcel who, throwing back the cover gently, rose first.

He put on his clothes quickly and then bending over her as she lay still in a torpor, whispered, "Come into the parlor, there is something I must say to you, and it can't wait."

For a long time she didn't move. She lay staring at the tester, that same quietness which had been in her all day, all the days since Michie Vince had left, in fact, that wordless wondering, holding her there. Then she dressed without the slightest indication of anxiety and for want of anything else drew Marie's silver-handled brush through her hair.

He was standing by the fire, having built it up and he had put the Daguerreotype on the mantel, and had set out the food he had brought home with him, and the wine. The gla.s.ses had been filled, and he himself was dressed again even to his silk tie. A ruthless and irrelevant thought came to her as she seated herself and lifted the gla.s.s. Had it been a pleasure to him, with the women he had known, that beautiful Juliet Mercier? For her it had been a surrender of the body and the heart. She had devoured him utterly, his honey-brown skin, his clumsy pa.s.sion, his feline grace, and it had cast into dim light forever those many nights with Michie Vince when, so eager to please, she had never once thought of herself. It wasn't her custom to drink wine in the day, in fact, it wasn't her custom to drink it at all, but she drank this wine now.

Marcel was staring at her with that remarkably intense expression that so often came over him, and she thought, either he is going to kill me or say that he loves me. She filled the empty gla.s.s again.

"I'm going to say something to you right now," he began. "I am going to ask you a certain question. And I'm afraid that you won't believe how much I want you to say yes. You'll only remember the way I let you go before, you'll think of the boy I was then and not the one who loves you now. Loves you and wants you." He stopped. "The fact that I've got nothing to offer you, nothing but faith in myself and some indistinct future which has never done anything but disappoint me, well, that makes it harder, because I am keenly aware that you just may be better off by yourself."

"Don't ask it," she said.

He was stunned. His eyebrows came together, the blue eyes firing slowly as the mouth went slack.

"Because," she said looking up at him, "the answer is no."

The pain in his face was more than she could bear. It was as if she'd slapped him, hard, and he was nothing but a child and he stared at her, uncomprehending, wounded to the soul.

"Well," he whispered, "no one can blame you for that." But he was brutally hurt, and his posture, his expression, everything about him belied the resignation in his voice. "I suppose I deserve it."

She watched him retreat to the mantel. His back was to her and he put his foot on the bra.s.s fender, and she could see the flicker of the fire on the edges of his yellow hair. He didn't know that she was trembling, he couldn't see it, he couldn't see the breaking of that numbness which had gripped her since Michie Vince had left.

"What you don't deserve," she said, "is to reach out blindly right now and take that millstone you once told me about and put it around your neck. What you don't deserve is a wife and a child to worry about-a pa.s.sel of screaming children, matter of fact-and a stack of bills three times the size of that one over there, and problems you can't even imagine becoming so regular that they're like supper on the table every night and the wrinkles in your brow. That's what you don't deserve, and that's what you're asking for, along with the love and the comfort you need right now."

He didn't answer her.

"Don't think it wouldn't be easy to say yes to you, don't think I haven't been thinking of it night and day for six months. G.o.d, I can remember times when if you had only said those words to me...but best not to think of that now, best not to think about how if we were married I could help you, I could give you what income I've got and..."

"Never!" he whispered. He turned to her, the smooth face convulsed with rage.

"Shush, I know all about pride," she shook her head. "Just because I don't have much of it doesn't mean I don't know about it, I've lived around it all my life. And I'm not talking about your intentions, or your honor, I'm talking about what would be so easy for me to do! But the fact is, I don't want to talk about that either, I don't want to talk about me at all, I want to talk about you. You've got to make something of yourself, by yourself, and while you're still young and still free. You take this step now and you'll despise me in the years to come. I'll be all mixed up with your broken dreams and the terrible things that happened to you and your sister at this time. You'll wonder, as the years pa.s.s, how come you ever got entangled with me, with the children we'll have, with us! No. I won't have it happen. Not for your sake, and frankly not for mine. And you know why? Because I love you, and I know if you don't use the talent G.o.d gave you, if you don't do something with that talent then I'll never have you. But when you have done that, well, then, I'll be here."

"Talent? What talent?" he whispered softly, incredulously. But he was not asking her. He wondered did she know the deep wound that she touched. Talent! There had never been any talent, any talent to draw or paint or to make music or to write or to make any of the wonderful and beautiful things he'd loved. There was only the keen eye to appreciate it, the heartbreaking capacity to perceive talent in others all around. No, she couldn't know because he'd never told her, never told anyone, not even Christophe. And only a gentleman's prerogatives, only a gentleman's means could have kept him close to the talents of others, kept him close to all that was fine and enduring and filled life with daily grace. What do you pay your a.s.sistants, he had asked that irascible old Picard, the Daguerreotypist, the answer had been a dollar a day, and his mind worked with the precision of a clock measuring that against the common expenses of ordinary life, not the luxuries but the commodities, coal, food, clothing, and then the cost of a seat at the opera, the philharmonic, an afternoon of Shakespeare, the cost of books. The cost of some small statue or engraving glimpsed day after day in a shopwindow until it became a beacon in a dreary regimen and was then suddenly s.n.a.t.c.hed from view by those who could afford to purchase it, to have it forever. He turned away from her. He couldn't answer her. He couldn't even shake his head.

"Do you remember," she asked quietly, "what you said to me the night that Jean Jacques died?"

"G.o.d knows and you know," he whispered, "but I do not."

"Well, I'll tell you what you said. You said, 'Anna Bella, if I hadn't been born rich I could have learned the cabinetmaker's trade from that man and been happy making fine things till the end of my days.'"

It was a torture to him to hear this, it was a torture to remember the fervor and waste of that time. "Well, ma chere," ma chere," he said softly, "Jean Jacques is dead, and I never learned the cabinetmaker's trade." he said softly, "Jean Jacques is dead, and I never learned the cabinetmaker's trade."

"But don't you understand, Marcel," she went on, "you had an eye to see the greatness in that old man, when others just saw a workman on his knees. You had an eye to see the difference between an ordinary task and something beautiful, something fine."

"An eye to see, yes!" he whispered. "I've always seen!" The proper little gentleman on that stool in Jean Jacques' shop, the young man who had hovered over the country painters in Tante Josette's house watching the colors form the life on the canvas, the young man who had pestered the Daguerreotypists relentlessly, arguing the time of the exposure, the importance of the preparations, the optimum light. Hadn't he argued with Picard this very day, and hadn't he seen as soon as the picture was in his hands that Picard had not...

She was watching him. She saw the subtle change in his posture, saw him turn slowly, saw the change in his face. It was struggle she witnessed, struggle and a slow, violent awakening which he appeared bitterly, obdurately to resist.

"Remember the first night you came to me at my house," she went on gently, not sure of her timing now, the expression on his face so fierce. "The first time, when you knew Lisette was your sister and all, and we sat talking about Michie Vince. I told you Michie Vince reminded me of my Daddy, remember that, I told you how those two men were alike. They were men who worked, they loved their work, it took everything out of them, and there was one of them a fine gentleman with twenty thousand arpents of sugar cane, and the other a country barber in a dirt-road town..."

He was not looking at her. She wasn't sure that he had heard. He was battling something deep in himself, the pupils of his eyes moving back and forth, his mouth frozen on the verge of speech. As a matter of fact, you wouldn't know anyone who wanted such an opportunity, would you? Oh, not you, of course, I can see you're well fixed As a matter of fact, you wouldn't know anyone who wanted such an opportunity, would you? Oh, not you, of course, I can see you're well fixed. His eyes clouded suddenly, misted over, and it was almost with an anguished expression that he shook his head. What had stopped him then, what, Anna Bella was talking to him and he couldn't hear. Why had he stiffened when Picard had asked him, why had he felt the stamina drain from his body while his hand clutched the back of that carved chair? He turned to the picture on the mantel, the perfect little gentleman staring back at him, against that flowered paper, that velvet drape. It was pride that had stopped him, pride as he stood on that ornate little stage.

Pride bred into him by that bleary-eyed drunken planter who had ended his life under this very roof turning over one shiny playing card after another, and a mother who said to him all his life you must leave here to be a man, you must leave here, because she herself had loathed every man of color on whom she had ever set eyes. A groan escaped his lips. Endless procession of women who want to look ten years younger, children who will not sit still Endless procession of women who want to look ten years younger, children who will not sit still, and the stench of the chemicals twelve hours a day, the heat, the dampness, the haggling over prices, his head literally swam.

"And what you loved about that old man," Anna Bella ventured softly, "was that he got his hands dirty with what he loved, he got down in the dirt with his chisels, his hammer and his nails..."

He put his hands to the side of his head. He stared still at the little picture, could see all the flaws in it, the fading at the edges, the face that had not been turned properly to the light. "But it could be more than that," he whispered. "Much, much more!" Good Lord, what awaited him if he did not not take this step, some abyss of meaningless labor separating him inevitably from all that made life bearable, when this, this, the making of these pictures had always been what he loved, loved it as much as he loved to draw, to read, to walk about Christophe's yard at twilight listening to Bubbles's haunting and exquisite songs. His mind was on fire suddenly, all the mundane details which a moment ago had struck him as mean and debilitating were yielded up to him slowly in a new light. Work for Picard, he didn't have to work for Picard, sell the cottage, no, he didn't have to sell the cottage, the t.i.tle to his property was his collateral, and there was money in his clip, that small fortune right here in his hands. take this step, some abyss of meaningless labor separating him inevitably from all that made life bearable, when this, this, the making of these pictures had always been what he loved, loved it as much as he loved to draw, to read, to walk about Christophe's yard at twilight listening to Bubbles's haunting and exquisite songs. His mind was on fire suddenly, all the mundane details which a moment ago had struck him as mean and debilitating were yielded up to him slowly in a new light. Work for Picard, he didn't have to work for Picard, sell the cottage, no, he didn't have to sell the cottage, the t.i.tle to his property was his collateral, and there was money in his clip, that small fortune right here in his hands.

But fear gripped him, slowly, overtaking him it seemed even as he stood there on the verge of this decision, his hand out for that little picture which in a shift of the sun had become a mirror so that he wanted to set it right. It was that same fear which had overcome him in Picard's studio, and it was working its way again stealthily to his heart. He reached for his winter cape, he stared numbly at Anna Bella, he bent to kiss her warmly on the cheek. And he did not know that her heart was breaking for him as she watched him, so mournful was his expression; or that after he left her, the door shutting behind him as he stepped into the sun, she put her head down to cry against her folded arms.

All the long afternoon he walked. Through the rain and the sun, and the rain and sun together, and the occasional thunder rumbling over the low wet roofs and the golden windows, round and back and through all the familiar and favorite streets he walked. He pa.s.sed the studios of the Daguerreotypists with their little oval specimens shining silver in the dormers, and discovering Duval in the Rue Chartres stood for an hour before his small display, entranced with the perfection of a family portrait, each face molded magnificently by the light, figures exquisitely grouped even to the turn of each head. But he did not go up the stairs. And pa.s.sing the hock shops with their old cameras, battered flotsam and jetsam of others' dreams which he had often handled in the past, he did not open the doors. And his feet even carried him across the Rue Ca.n.a.l into the American city to view the plate gla.s.s show windows of the dealers in chemicals, cases, and plates for the Daguerreotype, but again, he did not turn the k.n.o.b, he did not go in. And at twilight, though he stood for some quarter of an hour in his beloved waterfront street watching Christophe at billiards under the warm lamps of Madame Lelaud's, he did not approach the open door.

It was midnight as he roamed the Place d'Armes, early morning when he prowled the deserted market, and dawn at last when he stood over the river where he could glance back at the twin towers of the Cathedral shining wet under the lightening sky or out over the immense swell of brown water which ran on to darkness as though it were the open sea. He was not tired. He was no longer restless, rather his mind had that razor clarity with which he could best perceive. The masts of the ships made a forest under the fading stars, the glitter of a drifting steamboat played like candles on the faceted current, while on the wind there came in s.n.a.t.c.hes the last melancholy and discordant music of a late night Negro band.

The fear was melting in him. Melting gradually as he weighed all about him, saw the world in which he lived, not the world he would some day escape, but the world to which he'd been born. And the desperation of his early years was mellowing into something somber and no longer important as he considered the choice at hand.

He knew the camera, knew the alchemy of vision, patience and precision it had always required. And though the years stretched before him in a heavy sentence of trial and error, he knew without doubt that he could use it well! He would risk all for it, and it would yield to him a treasure of those stunning and complex icons he had always cherished, just as the wood under Jean Jacques' chisel had yielded to him again and again the perfect line.