The Witching Hour

by Anne Rice

  The people who are willing to talk are those who most dislike her. Possibly if the others were not so afraid, we might hear something to balance the picture.

  Whatever the case, Carlotta was admired for her brilliance from the time she was a little girl. She was even called a genius by the nuns who taught her. She boarded at Sacred Heart through high school, and went on to Loyola law school when she was very young.

  Meantime, Lionel began attending day school when he was eight years old. He seems to have been a quiet, well-behaved boy who never gave anyone very much trouble, and to have been liked. He had a full-time tutor to assist him with his homework, and as time passed, he became something of an exceptional student. But he never made friends outside the family. His cousins were his only companions when he wasn't at school.

  The history of Stella was markedly different from the start. By all accounts Stella was a particularly beguiling and seductive child. She had soft black rippling hair and enormous black eyes. When one considers the numerous photographs of her from 1901 to her death in 1929, it seems impossible to imagine her living in any other era, so suited to the times was she with her slender boyish hips, pouty little red mouth, and bobbed hair.

  In her earliest pictures she is the image of the luscious child in the Pears Soap advertisements, a white-skinned little temptress, gazing soulfully yet playfully at the spectator. By the time she was eighteen, she was Clara Bow.

  On the night of her death, she was, according to numerous eyewitnesses, a femme fatale of unforgettable power, dancing the Charleston wildly in her short fringed skirt and glittering stockings, flashing her enormous jewellike eyes on everyone and no one as she commanded the attention of every man in the room.

  When Lionel was sent off to school, Stella begged to be allowed to go to school also, or so she told the nuns at Sacred Heart herself. But within three months of her admission as a day student she was privately and unofficially expelled. The talk was that she frightened the other students. She could read their minds, and she enjoyed demonstrating the power, and also she could fling people about without touching them, and she had an unpredictable sense of humor and would laugh at things the nuns said which she considered to be blatant lies. Her conduct was mortifying to Carlotta, who was powerless to control her, though by all accounts Carlotta also loved Stella, and did make every effort to persuade Stella to fit the mold.

  It may be surprising to learn in light of all this that the nuns and the children at Sacred Heart actually liked Stella. Numerous classmates remember her fondly, and even with delight.

  When she wasn't up to her tricks she was "charming," "sweet," absolutely "lovable," "a darling little girl." But nobody could stand being around her very long.

  Stella next attended the Ursuline Academy long enough to make her First Communion with the class, but was expelled immediately after in the same private and unofficial manner and more or less for the same complaints. This time, apparently, she was crushed at being sent home, because she regarded school as great fun, and she did not like to be about the house all day with her mother and Uncle Julien telling her they were busy. She wanted to play with other children. Her governesses annoyed her. She wanted to go out.

  Stella then attended four different private schools, spending no more than three or four months in each before ending up at the St. Alphonsus parochial school, where she was the only one, among an Irish-American proletarian student body, to be driven to school each day in a chauffeured Packard limousine.

  Sister Bridget Marie--an Irish-born nun who lived at Mercy Hospital in New Orleans until she was ninety--remembered Stella vividly, even fifty years afterwards, and told this investigator in 1969 that Stella Mayfair was undoubtedly some sort of witch.

  Once again, Stella was accused of reading minds, of laughing when people lied to her, of flinging things about by the power of the mind, and talking to an invisible friend, "a familiar" according to Sister Bridget Marie, who did Stella's bidding, which included finding lost objects and making things fly through the air.

  But Stella's manifestation of these powers was by no means continuous. She often tried to behave herself for long periods; she enjoyed reading and history and English; she liked to play with the other girls in the school yard on St. Andrew Street, and she liked the nuns very much.

  The nuns found themselves seduced by Stella. They let her into the convent garden to cut flowers with them; or took her into the parlor after school to teach her embroidery, for which she had a knack.

  "You know what she was up to? I'll tell you. Every sister in that convent felt that Stella was her special little friend. She led you to believe that. She told you little secrets about herself, just as if she'd never told them to another soul. And she knew all about you, she did. She knew things you'd never told anyone, and she'd talk to you about your secrets and your fears and the things you always wanted to tell someone, and she'd make you feel better about it. And later, hours later, or maybe even days later, you'd think about it, think about what it had been like to be sitting there in the garden whispering with her, and you'd know she was a witch! She was from the devil. And she was up to no good.

  "But she wasn't mean, I'll say this much for her. She wasn't mean. If she had been, she'd have been a monster, that one. God knows the evil she might have done. I don't think she really wanted to make trouble. But she took a secret pleasure in her powers, if you know what I mean. She liked knowing your secrets. She liked seeing the look of amazement when she told you what you dreamed the night before.

  "And oh, how she pitched herself into things. She would draw pictures all day long for weeks on end, then throw out the pencils and never draw another thing. Then it was embroidery with her, she had to learn it, and she'd make the most beautiful thing, fussing at herself for the least little mistake, then throw down the needles and be done with that forevermore. I never saw a child so changeable. It was as though she was looking for something, something to which she could give herself, and she never found it. Least ways not while she was a little girl.

  "I'll tell you one thing she loved to do, and she never tired of it, and that was to tell stories to the other girls. They'd gather around her at big recess, and she'd keep them hanging on her every word until the bell rang. And such stories they were that she told them--ghost stories of old plantation houses full of horrible secrets, and people foully murdered, and of voodoo in the islands long years ago. She knew stories of pirates, oh, they were the worst, the things she would tell about the pirates. It was positively shocking. And all this had the ring of truth to it, to hear her tell it. But you knew she had to be making it up. What did she know of the thoughts and feelings of some group of poor souls on a captured galleon in the hours before a brute of a pirate made them walk the plank?

  "But I'll tell you, some of the things she said were most interesting, and I always wanted to ask someone else about them, you know, someone who read the history books and really knew.

  "But the girls had nightmares from the things she told them and wouldn't you know it, the parents were coming and asking us, 'Now, Sister, where did my little girl ever hear such a thing!'

  "We were always calling Miss Mary Beth. 'Keep her home for a few days,' we'd ask. For that was the thing about Stella. You couldn't take it day in and day out. Nobody could take it.

  "And thank the Lord she'd get tired of school and disappear on her own for months at a time.

  "Sometimes it went on so long we thought she was never coming back. We heard she was running wild over there on First and Chestnut, playing with the servants' children and making a voodoo altar with the cook's son, him black as coal, you can be sure of it, and we'd think, well, somebody ought to go round and talk to Miss Mary Beth about it.

  "Then lo and behold, one morning, perhaps ten o'clock it would be--the child never did care what time she came to school--the limousine would appear on the corner of Constance and Saint Andrew and out would step Stella in her little uniform, a perfect doll, if you can imag
ine, but with a great big ribbon in her hair. And what would she have with her, but a sack of gaily wrapped presents for each of the sisters she knew by name, and hugs for all of us, too, you can be sure of it. 'Sister Bridget Marie,' she'd whisper in my ear, 'I missed you.' And sure enough, I'd open the box, and I can tell you this happened more than once, and there'd be some little thing I so wanted with all my heart. Why, one time it was a tiny Infant Jesus of Prague she gave me, all dressed in silk and satin, and another time, the most beautiful rosary of crystal and silver. Ah, what a child. What a strange child.

  "But it was God's will, she stopped coming as the years went on. She had a governess all the time teaching her, and I think she was bored with St. Alphonsus, and they said she could get the chauffeur to drive her anywhere that she pleased. Lionel didn't go to high school either as I recollect. He started just running around with Stella, and seems it was about that time or maybe a little after that old Mr. Julien died.

  "Oh, how that child cried at his funeral. We didn't go to the cemetery of course, none of the sisters did in those days, but we went to the Mass, and there was Stella, slumped over in the pew, just sobbing, and Carlotta holding her. You know, after Stella died, they said Carlotta never liked her. But Carlotta was never mean to that child. Never. And I remember at Julien's Mass, the way Carlotta held her sister, and Stella just cried and cried and cried.

  "Miss Mary Beth, she was in a trance of sorts. It was deep grief I saw in her eyes as she came down the aisle after the coffin. She had the children with her, but it was a faraway look I saw in her eye. 'Course her husband wasn't with her, no, not him. Judge McIntyre never was with her when she needed him, or at least that's how I heard it. He was dead drunk when old Mr. Julien passed, they couldn't even wake him up, though they shook him and threw cold water on him and stood him up out of the bed. And on the day of the funeral, the man was nowhere to be seen at all. Heard later they'd carried him home from a tavern on Magazine Street. It's a wonder that man lived as long as he did."

  Sister Bridget Marie's view of Carlotta's affection for her sister has been corroborated by many witnesses, though of course Richard Llewellyn would not have agreed. There are several accounts of Julien's funeral, and in all of them, Carlotta is mentioned as holding on to her sister, and even wiping her tears.

  In the months following Julien's death, Lionel left school altogether and he and Stella went to Europe, with Cortland and Barclay, making the Atlantic crossing on a great luxury liner only months before the outbreak of the Great War.

  As travel in continental Europe was all but impossible, the party spent several weeks in Scotland, visiting Donnelaith Castle, and then set out for more exotic climes. At considerable risk, they made their way to Africa, spent some time in Cairo and Alexandria, and then went on to India, sending home countless crates of carpets, statuary, and other relics as they went along.

  In 1915, Barclay, sorely missing his family, and very weary of traveling, left the party and made the dangerous crossing back to New York. The Lusitania had only just been sunk by a German U-boat, and the family held its breath for Barclay's safety, but he soon turned up at the house on First Street with fabulous stories to tell.

  Conditions were no better six months later when Cortland, Stella, and Lionel decided to come home. However, luxury liners were making the crossing in spite of all dangers, and the trio managed to make the journey without mishap, arriving in New Orleans just before Christmas of 1916.

  Stella was then fifteen years old.

  In a photograph taken that year, Stella is wearing the Mayfair emerald. It was common knowledge that she was the designee of the legacy. Mary Beth seems to have been exceptionally proud of her, called her "the intrepid" on account of her wanderings, and though she was disappointed that Lionel did not want to go back to school with a view to going on to Harvard, she seemed to have been accepting of all her children. Carlotta had her own apartment in one of the outbuildings, and went to Loyola University every day in a chauffeur-driven car.

  Anyone passing on Chestnut Street in the evening could see the family, through the windows, seated at dinner, an enormous gathering, waited on by numerous servants, and always lasting until quite late.

  Family loyalty always has made it very difficult for us to determine what the cousins actually thought of Stella, or what they actually knew of her troubles at school.

  But by this time, there are numerous mentions on record of Mary Beth telling the servants almost casually that Stella was the heiress, or that "Stella was the one who would inherit everything," and even the remarkable comment--one of the most remarkable in our entire record--quoted twice and without context: "Stella has seen the man."

  We have no record of Mary Beth's ever explaining this strange statement. We are told only that she made it to a laundress named Mildred Collins, and to an Irish maid named Patricia Devlin, and we received the stories thirdhand. We were further given to understand that there was no agreement among the descendants of these two women as to what the famous Miss Mary Beth meant by this comment. One person believed "the man" to be the devil, and another that he was "a ghost" who had haunted the family for hundreds of years.

  Whatever the case, it seems clear that Mary Beth made remarks like this offhandedly at intimate moments with her servants, and we get the impression that she was confiding something to them, in a moment perhaps of understanding with them, which she could not or would not confide in people of her own rank.

  And it is very possible that Mary Beth made similar remarks to other people, for by the 1920s old people in the Irish Channel knew about "the man." They talked about "the man." Two sources are simply not enough to explain the extent of this supposed "superstition" about the Mayfair women--that they had a mysterious "male spirit or ally" who helped them work their voodoo or witchcraft or tricks.

  Certainly, we see this as an unmistakable reference to Lasher, and its implications are troubling, and it reminds us of how little we really understand about the Mayfair Witches and what went on among them, so to speak.

  Is it possible, for instance, that the heiress in each generation has to manifest her power by independently seeing "the man"? That is, did she have to see "the man" when she was alone, and away from the older witch who could act as a channel, and was it required of her that of her own free will she mention what she had seen?

  Once more, we must confess that we cannot know.

  What we do know is that people who knew of "the man" and spoke of him did not apparently connect him with any dark-haired anthropomorphic figure which they had personally seen. They did not even connect "the man" with the mysterious being once seen with Mary Beth in her taxi, for the stories come from entirely different sources and were never put together by anyone, so far as we know, except us.

  And so it is with so much of the Mayfair material. The references which come later to the mysterious dark-haired man at First Street are not connected with this earlier talk of "the man." Indeed even people who knew of "the man" and who later saw an anonymous dark-haired man about the place did not make the connection, believing that the man they'd seen was simply some stranger or relative they did not know.

  Witness Sister Bridget Marie's statement in 1969 when I asked her specifically about "the man."

  "Ah, that. That was the invisible companion who hovered near that child night and day. The selfsame demon, I might add, who later hovered about her daughter Antha, ever ready to do the child's bidding. And later around poor little Deirdre, the sweetest and most innocent of them all. Don't ask me if I ever actually saw the creature. For as God is my witness, I don't know if I ever saw him, but I tell you, and I've told the priest myself many a time, I knew when he was there!"

  But it is very likely that at this time Lasher was not eager to be seen by people outside the family. And certainly we have not a single account of his ever showing himself deliberately to anyone, and as I have already mentioned, we get quite a few later on.

  To return to the chronology.
After Julien's death, Mary Beth was at the very height of her financial influence and accomplishments. It was as if the loss of Julien left her a driven woman, and for a time gossip and rumor speak of her as "unhappy." But this did not last. Her characteristic calm seems to have returned to her well before the children came home from abroad.

  We know that she had a brief and bitter fight with Carlotta before Carlotta entered the law firm of Byrnes, Brown and Blake, in which she works to this very day. But Mary Beth finally accepted Carlotta's decision to work "outside the family," and Carlotta's small apartment over the stables was completely renovated for her, and she lived there for many years, coming and going without having to enter the house.

  We also know that Carlotta took her meals every day with her mother--breakfast in the morning on the back terrace when the weather allowed it, and supper in the dining room at seven o'clock.

  When asked why she did not go into the firm of Mayfair and Mayfair with Julien's sons, her reply was usually stiff and brief and to the effect that she wanted to be on her own.

  From the beginning of her career, she was known as a brilliant lawyer, but she had no desire ever to enter a courtroom, and to this day, she works in the shadow of the men of the firm.

  Her detractors have described her as no more than a glorified legal clerk. But kinder evidence seems to indicate she became "the backbone" of Byrnes, Brown and Blake; she is the one who knows everything; and that with her demise, the firm will be hard put to find anyone to take her place.

  Many lawyers in New Orleans have credited Carlotta with teaching them more than they ever learned in law school. In sum one might say that she started out and has continued to be an efficient and brilliant civil lawyer, with a tremendous and completely reliable knowledge of business law.

  Other than the skirmish with Carlotta, Mary Beth's life continued upon a predictable course almost to the very end. Even Daniel McIntyre's drinking does not seem to have weighed heavily on her.