by Frank Yerby
“Mon Dieu!” she said at last. “You are mad!”
“Ye doubted it?” Stephen said.
“Yes. Aurore told me what you did for Minna Waguespack. Every one doubted that story. But I didn’t. Aurore doesn’t lie.”
“Yet no one believed her,” Stephen said, one corner of his mouth curving upward into a smile.
“They doubted her credulity, not her honesty. They said you duped her. After all, you do have a certain charm.”
“Thank ye,” Stephen said. “And now may I show ye my steamboat landing?”
They turned their horses toward the river. As they approached the road that paralleled it, Odalie stiffened suddenly, drawing her horse to a stop.
“What ails ye?” Stephen demanded.
“I hear a coach,” she said.
Stephen sat very still listening.
“Ye’re right,” he said. “Into that cypress grove, there. Quickly!” They moved forward at a trot, but just before they reached the shelter of the trees, the coach rounded the bend in the road so that to its occupants the horses were clearly visible. They both leaned forward at the same instant, urging the horses into a gallop. Then they were gone, into the thick tangle of the underbrush.
“Sacred Mother of God!” Odalie whispered.
“Think ye they saw us?” Stephen asked.
“I don’t know. But I know one thing. That was the Cloutier’s coach—and Aurore was in it!”
“Ye saw her?”
“No. But she’s visiting them. They’re probably taking her out to their place.”
“So now ye’re compromised,” Stephen grinned. “What say ye to that?”
“My father will probably kill you,” Odalie said. “Or worse still, he might insist upon your marrying me.”
“Is that so terrible?” Stephen demanded.
“To live in these wilds—in a shack—with a madman? I’d hang myself first!”
Stephen touched Prince Michael lightly so that he moved in very quickly with a dancing step. Odalie was very close beside him—so close he could smell the perfume in her hair. Then abruptly he leaned down and swept one arm around her shoulders holding her hard against him.
She looked up at him, her eyes very wide and very black, so that looking into them was like gazing into primordial night before light was. Stephen kissed her then, twisting his mouth cruelly against hers, bending her backward so that her little hat fell off and lay among the palmettoes unnoticed. He could feel the soft roundness of her breasts, lifted high by the whalebone stays, and through them, the quick fluttering of her pulse, like captive wings.
Her hands were against his chest, pushing hard. He released her quite suddenly, seeing the light dancing in her black eyes and the corners of her mouth trembling.
“You—you—” she began.
“Blackguard” Stephen suggested. “Executioner?”
“No,” she said, “I don’t know the word. But now I know I’d better be going.”
Stephen grinned, the scar standing out like a scarlet brand. “Ye will make a fine mistress for Harrow,” he said. “Ye have spirit. I like that in my horses—and my women. Au ‘voir.”
Odalie half rose from the side saddle, and struck out with her crop, swinging it sidewise with all her force. It caught Stephen high on the side of his face, crisscrossing the scar left by Hugo’s bullet.
“Ye little witch!” Stephen said very softly, as he watched the black mare swinging around the curve, out of sight. . . .
The coach of the Cloutier family was approaching the gates of Rosemont plantation.
“I still say that was a woman with that wild Stephen Fox,” Henriette Cloutier persisted. “A man wouldn’t ride side saddle!”
“But no decent woman would do a thing like that,” Clothilde Cloutier said. “And none of the other kind have horses—so there!”
“What do you think, Aurore?” Henriette demanded.
“I think,” Aurore said slowly, “that I have a terrible headache, and that we shouldn’t discuss things that don’t concern us.”
“You poor dear,” Clothilde said. “Why you’re as white as a sheet!”
“Tante Suzette will fix that as soon as we get there,” Henriette said short1y. “But it was a woman, wasn’t it, Aurore? You saw her first!”
“Yes,” Aurore said softly. “Yes, it was a woman.”
Tante Caleen was waiting for Stephen when he rode in, her wide nostrils lifted to the air.
“Maître shouldn’t ride through the brush,” she said severely. “You have now a mark on your face!”
“Damn!” Stephen said without heat. “Ye’re a bossy old devil, Caleen. I sometimes wonder if I own ye, or ye own me.”
“We own each other,” Tante Caleen said calmly. She lifted her face skyward again and sniffed the air.
“I smells wind,” she said, “big wind. The grand tempest come from the islands.”
“Ye’re crazy,” Stephen laughed. “We don’t have tropical storms this time of year!”
“The grand tempest!” Tante Caleen repeated stubbornly, “the very great storm!”
Stephen eyed her narrowly. Tante Caleen was seldom wrong. Her knowledge of the weather was positively uncanny.
“How long?” he asked.
“Two, three day, but she come!”
Again Stephen stood up in the stirrups. “Achille!” he roared.
The big Negro came running through the cane, his eyes wide.
“Yes, Maître?” he said. “Yes?”
“Get the cane knives out. And the wagons! We’re harvesting now.”
“But maître—it is now too soon—the stalks they is not yet so high . . .”
“Do as I tell you, Achille!”
“Yes, maître!”
In half an hour all the Negroes were busy, working down the rows, the cane falling before them. The wagons moved in and out of the fields, hauling the cane to the sugar house, from whose tall chimney the black wood smoke was billowing. There the sweating Negroes placed the cane on racks, watching with awe as it was whirled up and crushed by the rollers. The juice ran down the pipes into the kettles, going first into le grand where it was boiled until it began to thicken. Then other Negroes, especially trained for the work, dipped it out with buckets swung on long poles set in rowlocks, into le prop, then into le flambeau, then into le sirop, and last of all into the small, fiercely hot la batterie.
Stephen watched them pushing la cuite, the thickened syrup already beginning to crystalize, into the cooling room or purgery. There the slaves diluted it with vinegar and lemon juice, pouring it into vats where the fat Negroes stirred it with the paddles until it crystalized. The hogsheads began to pile up in the cone drip line, where they were suspended to let the molasses drip out into the vats below.
Three days later, the cane was all in. And almost to the minute, just as the wagons were dumping the last of the crushed cane stalks, called bagasse, into the river, the black clouds came massing in from over the gulf and the first light gust of wind began to whip through the still uncut fields of the neighboring planters.
When the storm was done, the fields were flattened as if by the hand of a giant. Many planters were completely ruined. But when Stephen Fox walked out of the offices of the factors in New Orleans his eyes were dancing in a face deliberately kept grave and still.
He had sold his crop for a little short of one hundred thousand dollars.
VII
AURORE was sitting by one of the windows at the Arceneaux town house in Conti Street. Her fingers were moving rapidly, looping the fine thin strands of thread over a series of pins stuck into a piece of cork. Outside it was raining, the thin miserable drizzle so characteristic of winter in New Orleans. Across the room Odalie was putting fresh sachets of Vetiver in the armoire.
Aurore raised her head, looking out through the window past the gallery. But the iron scroll work interfered with her vision; she could see nothing.
“Expecting Andre?” Odalie asked.
&
nbsp; “Yes.”
“Why don’t you consent, Aurore? Andre is a prince. He’d make you a wonderful husband.”
“You’re right,” Aurore said slowly. “Andre is kind and generous and handsome. Only—”
“Only what, Aurore?”
“I don’t love him.”
Odalie’s fingers toyed with the fine linen she was scenting.
“I see. There is someone else, perhaps?”
“Yes.”
“Who?”
“That is my affair, my dear sister. I mean no offense, Odalie. I just can’t talk about it. It’s no good, and nothing will come of it . . . ever.”
Odalie crossed the room and put her arm around her sister’s shoulder.
“Poor little one,” she said.
“It’s nothing,” Aurore said brightly. “And you, my dear sister, have you tossed your stays on top of the armoire?”
Odalie threw back her head and laughed, a clear tinkling sound, like the breaking of small pieces of ice. Then she stopped suddenly and the laughter was all gone, as though it had never been.
“I am growing old,” she said as though talking to herself. “I’m twenty-two. All my friends—and most of yours—Aurore, have been married for ages.”
“You’ve had hundreds of beaux,” Aurore said.
“They—they bother me. I don’t like being touched or kissed or fawned at. There’s something—well—private here,” she touched her breast, “something inviolable. And men are such beasts!”
“Odalie!”
“I shock you? I’m sorry. But it’s true.”
“I’m wondering,” Aurore said softly, “just when you discovered that bestiality. Was it in October perhaps?”
The black eyes were wide and dark.
“What do you mean, Aurore?” The contralto had a slight rasp to it, very slight—almost unnoticeable.
“Nothing.” She looked up at her sister, her hazel eyes clear. “Satine’s coat shines like ebony, doesn’t it, Odalie? Especially when she’s just been groomed. You can see it a long way off.”
“There is a connection between these riddles?” Odalie demanded.
“Is there?” Aurore asked.
Odalie opened her mouth to say something, but Zerline was coming into the room, her yellow face alight with pleasure.
“Monsieur Andre, Mademoiselle Aurore,” she said. Zerline liked Andre—all the Negroes did.
“Oh, bother!” Odalie said and turned to leave the room.
“Don’t go, Odalie!” Aurore said, springing up like a kitten. “I am sorry. I was being spiteful and mean. Forgive me, won’t you?”
The black eyes narrowed until there was no light in them, no light at all.
“There’s nothing to forgive, Aurore,” she said very coldly. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Andre came into the room, his young face beaming.
“Good day! Good day!” he exclaimed. “Ah, how happy I am to see you!”
“You seem in good spirits, Andre,” Odalie said.
“I am. I’ve just come back from visiting Stephen at Harrow The news there is good—very good.”
“You mean to say that he is there now—in midwinter?” Aurore demanded. “Everybody . . .”
“Comes into town for the winter,” Andre finished for her. “But not Stephen. He makes a point of not doing what everybody else does.”
“Why don’t you bring him along sometime,” Aurore suggested calmly.
“He thinks that he is in disfavor in this house,” Andre said. “I’ve tried to tell him . . .”
“He’s right,” Odalie said sharply. “You must not bring that mad man to this house!”
Andre gave her a long, slow look.
“You need not trouble yourself, Odalie,” he said. “He has no intention of coming.”
“Odalie is cross, Andre,” Aurore said sadly. “I’m afraid I angered her.”
“I’m sorry,” Andre said. “I didn’t know . . .”
“It’s nothing,” Odalie said. Then: “Why does he stay on the land in the wintertime?”
“He is clearing it. By spring every inch of it will be ready for cultivation. And he is building— ma foi, what a long tongue I have!”
Aurore leaned forward eagerly.
“What is he building, Andre? You can trust us.”
“I might as well tell you,” Andre said. “He’s building a house—the grandest mansion that Louisiana has ever seen. I rode out with Monsieur Pouilly today. The foundations are already laid. I’ve seen the plans. ‘Tis a wonderful house, Aurore—such a house as will shape generations of men.”
“But he has no wife,” Odalie said. “Where are these generations to come from, Andre? Are they all to be Minerva’s and spring full-armed from Monsieur Fox’s Olympian brow?”
“No, my precocious one,” Andre said softly, “Stephen will take a wife—and she’ll be the girl of his choice, I’ll wager you.”
“Perhaps,” Odalie murmured. “But if it happens that this girl thinks otherwise?”
“The good God help her. For she’ll be subjected to such a courtship as was never seen before on land or sea!”
“It seems to me,” Aurore said quietly, “that you know a great deal about the state of mind of this mysterious fiancée of Monsieur Fox’s.”
“Oh, bother!” Odalie said again, and walked away with great dignity through the doorway.
Andre looked after her.
“Your sister seems to be of a divided mind,” he said to Aurore.
“Yes. She loves him, I think. But she doesn’t know it yet. And she’s afraid—terribly afraid—”
“Of Stephen?”
“Yes—and of love itself.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. Perhaps it’s because she’s so beautiful. It’s given her a kind of mastery—that beauty. Odalie likes mastery. She doesn’t want to surrender. And love, for a woman, is surrender. Or perhaps she is really cold—frozen all the way through. I don’t know, Andre. I simply don’t know.”
“When I was in Switzerland,” Andre said slowly, “on my Grand Tour, I saw glaciers frozen over volcanoes. But you, my sweet, are you also afraid of love?”
“No, Andre, I’m not afraid.”
“Then—Aurore—oh Aurore!”
“No, Andre, no. I wish I did love you. God knows I should. You’ve been generous and patient and kind . . . but. . .”
“But what, Aurore?”
“I can’t. I just can’t.”
“I see,” Andre said slowly. “There is someone else. My felicitations, Aurore, to this very fortunate man, whoever he may be. Is the date set, perhaps?”
“No, Andre, the date is not set. The date never will be set.” Aurore laughed suddenly. “I shall be Godmother to all your children, and they’ll call me Tante Aurore and laugh at the little, dried-up old spinster whenever they hear her say: ‘Once I was in love . . .’ ”
Andre’s brown eyes were very dark in his handsome face.
“You too!” he whispered, half to himself. “I think sometimes he is a devil—so easily he does things like this—without lifting a hand. Without caring—without even knowing. By the good Cod, he’d be better dead!”
“Andre, no! You mustn’t!”
Andre’s eyes came back from vast distances.
“You’re right,” he said. “I couldn’t. ‘Twould be like killing another part of myself. Your forgiveness, Aurore, for this and all my past intrusions. Good night, Adieu, Mademoiselle Arceneaux!”
“But, Andre, you’ll call again. You’re welcome any evening
“To come and sit and look at you and torture myself? No, Aurore. This is the end. Good night, Mademoiselle the Godmother of the children I shall never have!” Then he was gone, striding through the doorway, his back very stiff and proud.
VIII
THROUGHOUT the long winter the work went forward. The tall sailing vessels came riding into the harbor below the city, their holds bulging with goods. An
d always there were consignments for Stephen Fox, gentleman planter. Lumber—teak from the tropics for balustrades that would resist the eternal damp of the bayou country, hardwoods for flooring, rich darker woods for inlay patterns. Furniture, turned out in the ancient shops of England and France, patterns shaped by the hands of the finest craftsmen of the continent. Days, weeks, months of loving care had gone into their making, until now they stood in satiny beauty under their protective tarpaulins, waiting in the dark warehouses of New Orleans until Harrow should be finished. From Ghent, and Antwerp, and Brussels came gigantic crystal chandeliers, their myriad diamondlike facets carefully packed away in layer upon layer of straw. Red flagstone from Spain. Tile from Morocco. Vases, urns. Brass and copper knockers and doorknobs that gleamed like gold in their boxes. Carpets from the looms of Holland, rugs from far off Persia. Candelabra of silver. Solid silver services with tracings of leaves and vines in gold. All this waited in the warehouses, while the walls of Harrow grew.
Now, at last, Stephen was too busy for his fields. So the planter Wilson, he who had married a Prudhomme, was summoned from his failing swampy lands and set over the slaves. A house was built for the Wilsons, finer than most of the manor houses of the region, and Stephen and Pouilly shared rooms in one wing of it. Madame Wilson was a gracious hostess, whose admiration for the employer of her husband caused that thin, stooped little man no end of worry.
Day and night the work went on, under the hands of skilled slave labor bought in the West Indies by Stephen’s agents and brought into Louisiana by special permission. Pouilly became accustomed to being aroused at any hour of the night to discuss some new idea of Stephen’s. Most of them he put down gently but firmly as impractical, for Pouilly came of a long line of distinguished architects, but some he adopted, not a little pleased at Stephen’s flair for graceful detail.
Andre practically lived at Harrow, quarreling busily with Stephen over points in the design.
“Classic Greek,” he cried. “But of course, of course! But still that is no reason why you could not introduce a little iron work on the galleries! Just a touch of Louisiana, a slight touch.”
