Long Distance Life Part 21

Marcel was relieved but wary. He didn't understand that this exhilaration in Christophe came from so many days of drunkenness that Christophe was in an unnatural state in which all things leapt out at him, beautiful or tragic, and seemed somehow sublime. But he could see some fear in Christophe's eyes, and he sensed that Christophe's pain had only just begun.

"How will I ever repay you, mon ami?" mon ami?" Christophe asked. "Pray the world never gives me the chance." Christophe asked. "Pray the world never gives me the chance."

"Just come back to us," Marcel said. "Just be all right again. That's more than enough."

He felt the embarra.s.sing urge to cry again. But Christophe was on his feet now and taking the empty coffee cup from him said, "You've got to get on home. Your mother...you must go on."

"But Christophe, you won't go out, will you? I mean you'll stay here...for a few days until this man...this Captain Hamilton..."

Christophe nodded with touch of resentful resignation. "Don't worry about that," he said, his voice a little raw. "The ill.u.s.trious Captain Hamilton has taught me a couple of lessons. One, that I don't invest enough in whiskey...his is incomparably better. And secondly, that I don't really wish to die."

Marcel rose. He looked Christophe straight in the eyes. "It was not your fault that Englishman died," he said.

"I know that," Christophe surprised him. "Believe me, that's quite far from my mind. I have a heavier burden to bear: and it is simply that, regardless of who or what is to blame, Michael is really dead."

Marcel shuddered. Christophe clasped his arm and led him to the stairs. And Marcel was already deep into some thought of what he was going to say to Cecile, when opening the front door, he found himself face to face with a tall white man in the street.

His body underwent a powerful shock. For an instant he was aware of only two sensations: fear that this was Captain Hamilton and the very unpleasant feeling that he had, somewhere, sometime or other, seen this white man before. But this white man was in no rage. He was standing quite still and composed as though he had been about to ring the bell. He had black hair and was remarkably fair-skinned with deepset and disturbing black eyes. Marcel felt positively weakened, almost unable to speak.

"It's all right," Christophe's voice came from the stairway along with the dull thud of his steps on the carpet. "Come in, Vincent," he said.

The white man stepped into the hall.

Marcel didn't trust this situation. Christophe was unsteady, his bloodshot eyes were all but maniacal in the harsh sunlight, and that he was volatile and could be rash seemed more than likely. He invited the man to step into the back parlor behind the school.

The white man said nothing for the moment, and when he did speak, his tone was decorous, his words dramatic for their pace.

"I cannot stay, Christophe," he said.

Christophe's face evinced no surprise at this and no change of the veiled expression.

"I wish to speak with you about a Captain Hamilton, are you familiar with the Captain Hamilton to whom I refer?"

He waited, but Christophe did not answer. Christophe's face had become fixed and somewhat cold. He folded his arms across his chest and adopted an att.i.tude of chilled patience, offering nothing to what the man was obviously struggling to convey.

The man appeared to take a deep breath. He was finely dressed in a green frock coat and cream-colored trousers and he carried a silver walking stick which he touched lightly now to the parquet floor. If he was conscious of Marcel behind him, he was equally conscious that Christophe had not told Marcel to go.

"Captain Hamilton is not a man with good sense," he remarked now in the same measured manner. "But then Dolly Rose is a woman quite given to causing a man to lose his good sense."

These last words were strongly emphasized, however, there was not the slightest change in Christophe's face.

"Captain Hamilton has been informed," the man went on, "by a number of his more pleasure-loving companions that Dolly Rose has played him for the fool. Your name was mentioned in this affair, and Captain Hamilton and I have discussed it at length."

There was a pause.

"I have explained to Captain Hamilton," the slow steady voice continued, "that you and I are acquainted, that certainly his quarrel must be entirely with Dolly Rose. I have explained to Captain Hamilton that he will come to understand this more clearly when he has been longer in these parts. I have explained that a man..." he hesitated, "a man of color cannot defend himself upon the field of honor, that, in fact, a man of color cannot defend himself against a white man at all. I have explained that in some circles it is judged an act of cowardice to quarrel with a man who cannot defend himself. That is, if allowances can be made at all."

Christophe's eyebrows rose. "And he believed that, Vincent?"

"He accepted it," answered the white man. "As I said, he hasn't been long in these parts." But then, dropping his voice, he added gravely, "However, you have."

And turning, he said under his breath and without conviction, "Don't make the same mistake again."

Christophe's eyes narrowed, his mouth tensed. He glared at the back of the man's head and then suddenly he spoke, "Do you want a receipt from me, Vincent?"

The white man, reaching for the doork.n.o.b, stopped. Marcel saw the shock in his face, saw the sudden rise in his color as he looked back. He glared at Christophe.

"What did you say?" he whispered.

"I asked if you wanted a receipt. After all, you're paying me off, are you not?"

The man was stunned. He face flushed, and he stared at Christophe in disbelief.

"For all those suppers in Paris," Christophe's voice came low, inflectionless, "all those long walks by the river, those conversations at sea? What did you think I would do, Vincent, come to call on you at your plantation, set myself down at your table, ask your sisters to dance? What was it you said to me that night at Dolly's, ah, yes, 'I wish you well.' You should have known better, Vincent. I was born here the same as you were. You don't have to pay me off!"

The man was trembling. His eyes were moist and large with anger. "You take advantage of me, Christophe!" he declared, the voice vibrant with a suppressed rage. "If you were born here the same as I, you know then you take advantage of me! Because you have insulted me!" His lip quivered. "You have insulted me under your roof. And you know that I can't demand satisfaction for it, and that if I could, I would!" He spit these last words. And turning, wrenched the door back, letting it crack into the plaster of the wall.

Christophe's face was contorted, and he too was trembling as he squinted into the sunlight. "You go to h.e.l.l!" he said between clenched teeth. "You and your f.u.c.king Captain Hamilton, you go to h.e.l.l!"

The man froze. He turned, more outraged than angry, wildly frustrated and amazed. But something happened in his face. The struggle there gave way to some desperate consternation. "Why in the name of G.o.d did you come back here!" he said. His eyes widened as if he must somehow understand. "Why did you ever come back!"

"Because this is my home my home, you b.a.s.t.a.r.d!" Christophe's eyes were blinded by tears. "This is my home my home, the same as it is yours!"

The man was speechless and somehow defeated. He stared for a moment more. They stood staring at one another, Christophe's face working violently with his inner torment. And then the white man turned abruptly and withdrew, his crisp steps quickly dying away.

By the end of the week, Dolly Rose had broken with Captain Hamilton, pitching out of the windows of her flat in the Rue Dumaine a good deal of the furniture he'd bought for her before the shopkeepers could come to take it away. Celestina Roget had spoken harsh words to Dolly at Marie's birthday fete and would no longer receive Dolly in her home. No one would receive Dolly.

But two quadroon girls, newly from the country, were invited to share her flat and soon men were entertained there in the evenings, and Dolly commenced to refurnish the house on her own.

PART FIVE.

I.

THE AUTUMN CAME ON, chilly as always at first, with falling leaves. But then one morning ice appeared on the surfaces of the open ditches while the tender fronds of the banana trees were scarred brown with frost.

It was the kind of winter that no one really talks about who visits New Orleans, as if the steaming heat of summer obliterates all memory and all antic.i.p.ation of it from the mind. But it was bleak and damp as always and only a little more cold. Yellow fever had gone with the first brisk winds, never having reached the point of epidemic, and the city had about it now the air of new cleanliness, and those who had moved sluggishly through the s.h.i.+mmering August streets darted about with frozen hands in fists in their pockets and women rus.h.i.+ng into the warmth of crowded shops were radiant with rosy cheeks.

Even the Yanquis suffered, saying this cold penetrated, it was worse than New England, and huddling about their small coal grates, looked with despair at the tendrils of damp working their way beneath the flowered paper on the walls. The breath of horses steamed in the streets, and the rain seemed to freeze in the air.

Yet everywhere still were the full green-leafed oaks, often trailing with ivy, while in the corners of courtyards roses clung shuddering to the vine. And there were the lush sheltered ferns. Honeysuckle still struggled in the dense grove beneath Marcel's window. And the sky was often brilliantly blue with clean white clouds blowing fast from the river, letting through the weak sun to warm the spirit if not the frosty air.

Marcel loved these days, and buying himself a gentleman's greatcoat, walked for hours after school along the s.h.i.+ning wet banquettes excited by the spectacle of gaslight and plate gla.s.s windows, the smell of chimneys and the bustle of commerce in the early dark. At home coal burned in all the small grates, and approaching with his books under his arm, he saw in the windows the inviting glimmer of blue flames. He drank too much cocoa, slept soundly after hours of study, and only now and then with a start would think of that inevitable meeting with Monsieur Philippe.

It seemed it hung over him as it did over Cecile, and then again it did not. Monsieur Philippe had always come at times of his own choosing and six months might pa.s.s before he was seen again. But the harvest was over at Bontemps Bontemps, thousands of hogsheads of sugar had already come down the river to crowd the levee, and soon all the grinding and refining would be done. Cecile's drumming fingers reminded everyone that it might be anytime now, and all the cottage around her seemed to wait, mirrors reflecting empty mirrors, silence taut as the string of a violin.

Christophe's cla.s.s, meanwhile, had swelled to twenty-five students against his better judgment, and the reading room in back was always full. He had not returned to teaching for two weeks after the Englishman was buried, but when he again appeared at the head of the cla.s.sroom it was with a new fervor, and just a little impatience which his students appeared to understand. He shook Marcel once, violently, for daydreaming and Marcel could not meet his glance for two days.

He was still suffering, however, everyone knew it. And made no remark on it when they chanced to see him sometimes after hours weaving alone through the streets, drunk.

Meanwhile he had called on the ferocious Madame Elsie and soothed her burnt pride with a thousand thanks for Anna Bella's kindness in nursing his English friend. And having heard of Anna Bella's pa.s.sion for reading offered her the newest novel of the famed Mr. Charles d.i.c.kens, begging her gently to accept. Madame Elsie pondered the propriety of this but clearly confused by his exquisite manners and remarkable confidence, murmured finally, "Eh bien bien, she may read it." The whole affair was the fault of that miserable Marcel Ste. Marie, she was to tell her maid, Zurlina, afterward, never was that boy to be allowed in this house. How was she to know "a gentleman" was lodged with the schoolteacher at the end of the block? And as for Christophe, well at least these men of color who had been to Paris conducted themselves as if they were men.

At the same time Rudolphe Lermontant brought old newspapers for Christophe's reading room, stopping now and then to read there himself with the older boys, and Augustin Dumanoir's father visited whenever he was in town, perusing the Paris journals as he smoked his pipe. Christophe had two published poems in a recently received issue, full of obscure imagery and veiled references to demons which he absolutely refused to explain. No one understood a word of it, but it was greatly admired. Other men began to drop in, fathers of the students, friends. So that it was soon a regular sight to see them moving quietly back the hallway past the cla.s.sroom doors, or later ranged about the round table or in the leather wing chairs beside the little fire.

There were dinners in the upstairs dining room, now quite magnificently restored, even to the portrait of the Old Haitian, Christophe's grandfather, who scowled from his refurbished frame. Augustin Dumanoir's father and the other country planters were frequent guests, while Marcel, always included, listened to their endless drawling conversation with a combination of fascination and gloom. They would have had Christophe lodged on their paradisal arpents, privately educating their sons. He might visit anytime that he liked, stay for a month or a year. "I cannot see myself away from New Orleans," he would answer politely. And beneath the Old Haitian's furious gaze, they would speak of the problems of the weather, the sale and the care of slaves. Christophe showed no taste for this subject, and sometimes gave Marcel a bitterly amused glance.

Juliet served on such occasions, with Bubbles to a.s.sist her, but never sat at the table herself. And Bubbles had become a regular part of the household for which Christophe paid him a dollar a week, and bought all the slave's clothes.

Marcel was fifteen on the fourth of October, and Christophe, invited to the birthday celebration, was received in the cottage for the first time. Aglow with wine he composed a poem on the spot for Tante Louisa, and astonished everyone by addressing a great many of his comments to Marie, who was, as always, rather stonily quiet.

A lavish amount of money had been deposited with Monsieur Jacquemine, the notary, so that Marcel, for this occasion, might buy himself a horse. Marcel had never ridden a horse. Marcel actually crossed the street to avoid them when he could. They were monsters to Marcel. He was terrified they might step on his foot or even bite him. He laughed at the whole idea, aloud.

But what if he were to take that same money, he mused, and purchase with it not some chomping treacherous beast but the magic box!

For the "magic box" invented by Monsieur Daguerre in Paris, the "magic box" which had taken the little black and white miniature of Christophe was all the rage. The French government had paid Monsieur Daguerre for his secrets and was now making them known to all the world. Christophe had ordered copies of Daguerre's magnificently ill.u.s.trated treatise and set them out for his students to read, while Jules Lion, a mulatto from France had been producing Daguerreotypes right here in New Orleans for some time. And The New York Times The New York Times and the and the New Orleans Daily Picayune New Orleans Daily Picayune both indicated one could order the new Daguerre camera along with all the necessary equipment and chemicals for the making of pictures on one's own. Ah, an end to the world of crude sketches and men that looked like ducks, and pencil portraits so disappointing that Marcel burnt them in the secrecy of his own room. both indicated one could order the new Daguerre camera along with all the necessary equipment and chemicals for the making of pictures on one's own. Ah, an end to the world of crude sketches and men that looked like ducks, and pencil portraits so disappointing that Marcel burnt them in the secrecy of his own room.

How it tempted, dazzled, and there was the money in the notary's hands. But what of the other costs, plates, frames, bottles of chemicals whose stench would inevitably waft from the garconniere garconniere to the cottage, and the stove that had to be kept going all night, what if the to the cottage, and the stove that had to be kept going all night, what if the garconniere garconniere should burn down? No, this was hardly the time for Marcel to ask such allowances, and when would there be time for him to go mad with the new camera when his studies kept him up late into the night? Reluctantly, he let the matter drop, let the excitement subside in his veins. should burn down? No, this was hardly the time for Marcel to ask such allowances, and when would there be time for him to go mad with the new camera when his studies kept him up late into the night? Reluctantly, he let the matter drop, let the excitement subside in his veins.

"But don't you think it's a good sign?" he said afterward to Cecile. "I mean, Monsieur Philippe can't be too angry, then, after all." She was not so sure.

The clock ticked on the mantel. The rain beat on the panes.

On the Feast of All Saints when the Creoles crowded the cemeteries, bustling among the high peristyled tombs with their bouquets of flowers, tete-a-tete to speak of this departed uncle, that poor dear dead cousine cousine, Cecile went alone to St. Louis, late, to tend with Zazu the graves of two infants who had died long years ago before Marcel was born.

Finding the cottage dark and cold in her absence, he lit the fire, and set a warm lamp in the window, sitting back to listen to the rain. Then came her tread on the path, and entering the parlor alone she covered her face with her hands.

Marcel by the shadows of the grate laid the poker by and took her in his arms.

He was the man again in her life as he had been before-never the lover, of course-but the man.

It was obvious to all that he had regained some old sense of proportion, the clouds were gone from his face, and added to that easy courtesy which had so beguiled them when he was a child was a new maturity, a quiet strength. He was not the wanderer and the truant any longer, and presiding at the head of the table each night he kept the conversation quick, sometimes delighting his aunts with teasing witticisms, giving them interesting bits of the daily news. Of course they themselves never read the papers, they did not consider it very nice for a lady to read the papers, so he had for them all that distinct aura of a man who knew the world.

It was surprising to Marcel, then, that when they began to talk of the opera season, of Marie's presentation there, they did not expect him to go.

He had not forgotten that dazzling experience of the season before, and when they began to laugh at him, he felt a sudden sharp pain.

"You're just a baby," said Tante Louisa playfully, "what do you know about the opera? Why, young men go to sleep in the opera, women have to pinch their husbands to keep them awake."

"But no, I want to go..." he insisted.

"This is foolishness, really," Cecile interjected. They had finished supper, and she gestured for Lisette to take the plates. "Marcel loves music, what does Marie know about music?"

Tante Colette laughed lightly, "Cecile, she's to be seen, chere," chere," she explained. she explained. "Mon Dieu "Mon Dieu, you know perfectly well she's to be seen!"

"She's too young for all that," Cecile said flatly. "Marcel if you wish to go, I am sure that it can be arranged. Monsieur Rudolphe can arrange it..."

"Cecile," Louisa said gently, "we were talking about Marie. She'll have to have a dress made and..."

"Oh, talk, talk, talk about Marie. You're turning her head with all your ribbons and taffetas and pearls. I never heard such foolishness in my life." And then, bending forward, her eyes narrow, she demanded of Marie: "Do you want want to attend this opera! Is this what you want, all this nonsense? Well?" to attend this opera! Is this what you want, all this nonsense? Well?"

Marie's face tensed. Then the color rose in her cheeks as she looked at her mother. Marcel could see that she was unable to speak, yet she did not look away as she did so often. And as she at last moved her lips to form some words, Louisa spoke.

"Don't leave it up to her, Cecile, why it's all arranged." And then lowering her voice to project an utter seriousness, she confided, "Cecile, the best families wouldn't consider not presenting their girls. You should have seen Giselle Lermontant the year she was fourteen, and Gabriella Roget last year."

"You don't have to talk to me as if I were a fool," Cecile said coldly. "We do not do everything that other people do. It's time and money wasted, if you ask me."

"Well, it seems to me that time and money are two commodities which you have," Louisa answered.

Colette who had been watching all this as closely as Marcel was watching it, leaned over to Marie and asked her to look in the bedroom for a dress that had to be mended. "Go on," she whispered, "I want to talk to your mother."

"You make too much fuss over that girl," Cecile was saying as Marie quietly left, "you turn her head."

"Maman," Marcel said gently. "I doubt that anyone could turn Marie's head."

"You keep an eye on your friends, Monsieur," Cecile said sharply. "Imagine that Augustin Dumanoir coming here, asking if he might call! And Suzette Lermontant asking if Richard might walk with Marie to church..."

"They are all asking, and I told them at the birthday party that after the opera..." Louisa said.

"You had no right to tell them!" Cecile said. Her voice had become shrill. A silence fell over the little group. At some point this had pa.s.sed from the usual suppertime argument to something unpleasant. Colette's face was darkly angry as she studied Cecile. Louisa, however, in a patient manner, went on.

"I had to tell them something, chere chere, because you were not there!" she said. "She is the belle of this season, chere chere, don't you realize that? And Richard and all those boys..."

"Of all the foolishness, that boy doesn't come to this house to see her, he comes to see Marcel, he's Marcel's closest friend, why they've been friends for years, he doesn't pay any mind to her, he's seen her since she was that high."

"Maman," Marcel said, "perhaps Marie is old enough, perhaps she would like..."

"Marie, Marie, Marie!" Cecile wrung her hands. "I should think you'd be sick of hearing it, Monsieur, so much talk of your sister as if she were a queen! I detest all this talk at supper."

"Seems to me you detest it anytime," Colette said in a low voice. "Seems to me you never want to talk about that girl, whether it's her birthday or the opera, or First Communion...seems to me..."

Cecile's face was changing. "You think you can arrange these matters without my consent, do you?" she said, her voice savage, and low.

"Somebody has to arrange them," said Colette.

"You think you can coif and drape that girl as if she were a princess, parading her back and forth for your own vanity, that's what it is, your own vanity, you think you can treat her like royalty with her brother in the shadow! Well, I tell you I won't have it, I won't listen to this anymore, I won't see her preened and strutting like a peac.o.c.k, her brother goes with her to that opera, he has a seat in the front row of that box, or by G.o.d your little marionette doesn't go."

Both the aunts were silent.

Colette was the first to rise, gathering her shawl up quickly, and putting on her gloves. Louisa murmured some brief words about the time, and the likelihood of rain, they ought to be going.

"Maman, I didn't mean for there to be a quarrel," Marcel whispered. "I can go to the opera with Richard, perhaps...I'll see."

"You can go with us, baby," Louisa said, "Of course, you can, why we've arranged for an entire box, you can sit with us." She slipped her cape over her shoulders adjusting the hood. Colette had paused at the door. She was looking back at Cecile with that same dark expression that had marked her face throughout the conversation when she had been quiet.

"You're jealous of your daughter," she said suddenly. All heads turned to her. Marcel was stunned.