The Foxes of Harrow

by Frank Yerby

  “No,” Stephen declared. “Nothing of Louisiana. ‘Tis for myself I am building, Andre. Iron work! What kind of bastardy that would make. Look ye, lad. Here a great gallery across the front, and around the two wings. And above it, another. The columns going straight through, supporting the roof. Corinthian columns, Andre, with leaves and grapes and vines at their tops. And at the wing ends of the upper gallery two great curving stairs of teak, so that one can alight from one’s coach and go at once to the high porch, from whence ye can see the river.”

  “Good,” Andre said. “It’s good, I have to admit. Painted white, of course?”

  “Yes. And with a roof of green tile. Forty rooms, Andre, ye can see the sweep of it!”

  “I see you’ve cut down some of the oaks.”

  “Enough to make a drive. A long straight drive to the river road, with the branches of the other trees making a canopy. And here, at the gate, it branches off into two forks, and swings in great curves up to the patio from two directions. The works go fast, Andre.”

  “So I see. Isn’t that a coach on the river road, Stephen?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s odd. There’s nothing out here—that road is rarely used. I don’t recall seeing a coach on it in years. Except the Cloutiers, of course, going out to Rosemont. I don’t see why. . . .”

  “The road was rarely used,” Stephen observed drily, stressing the “was” so slightly that Andre had to turn and look at him before he got the meaning.

  “You mean that it is used now?”

  “Yes.”

  “I still don’t see . . .”

  “Harrow,” Stephen said simply. “There is nothing like it in all the South, Andre. Even unfinished as it is, there is nothing like it. And so the coaches pass and pass again, and the horsemen. Some of the latter even turn up my alley of oaks and ride up to my courtyard. Then they sit there and watch the work going forward. And if I should happen to pass, how friendly they are, all of a sudden.”

  “You’re not bitter, Stephen? That Waguespack affair is almost forgotten.”

  “No. I hold no rancor. Ye know, Andre, Aurore has ridden past here at least once to my knowledge. But Odalie apparently still holds her ancient grudge. Come. I want to show ye my bachelor quarters and my dovecote.”

  Andre brushed away the grimace of pain from his handsome face and followed his friend.

  “But really, Stephen,” he said. “This is too much! Dovecotes and bachelor quarters. I have seen one or the other flanking a manor house; but both—this is an extravagance!”

  “I can afford extravagances, now,” Stephen said. “This is the kitchen house. I took your advice, ye see.”

  “Good. Stephen—”

  “Yes, Andre?”

  “I have had no wine, I swear it. But my imbecilic ears persist in hearing music!”

  “Ye are not mad—yet,” Stephen grinned. “ ‘Tis music, all right. Come.”

  He walked ahead of Andre, his long legs devouring the distance until he stood before what appeared to be a rude slave cabin. Only it was larger than the other cabins, Andre saw; and it was so crudely constructed that it was evident that it was a temporary structure, designed to be torn down when it had served its purpose. From it came the strains of music; limping, halting, often off key, but music nevertheless, being played with a certain verve despite its inaccuracies.

  Stephen pushed open the door. Entering, Andre saw a dozen slaves seated at musical instruments, while before them a lean, old Frenchman was tearing his hair.

  “Dolts!” he shrieked. “Imbeciles! Name of a name of a diseased pig! Thus it goes, thus!” He seized a violin from the nearest Negro and began to play a measure, very cleanly, with perfect phrasing, and a clear bell-like tone.

  Stephen closed the door very quietly, and they walked back toward the house.

  “What on earth—” Andre began.

  “There will be dancing in the great hall, Andre, come this harvest. And my men must be ready. Some of them are surprisingly talented. Du Castri is a musician of violent temper, but he is a good teacher.”

  “Tell me, Stephen, is it true that when the blacks are done you work all night alone upon the walls?”

  “No,” Stephen smiled. “ ‘Tis true I often walk over the grounds and the scaffolding of a night. But I do nothing—in this I have no skill.”

  “Dine with me tonight in New Orleans,” Andre said. “You are in need of divertissement. Harrow will come to naught if you kill yourself building it.”

  “No,” Stephen said softly. “There is so much to be done and so little time, Andre. Ye’ll forgive me if I don’t divert myself for a while yet.”

  “You’re lucky, Stephen,” Andre declared. “Everything you want you get. And some things you don’t want you could have for the snap of a finger. I sometimes wonder if there isn’t truth in some of the stories they tell about you.”

  Stephen’s left eyebrow rose mockingly, and the scar glowed along his temple.

  “And how do they explain my luck?” he said.

  “Tante Caleen. Everyone knows she’s a Mamalol . . .”

  “A what?”

  “A Mamalol—a sort of high priestess of Voudou. Through her you’re said to have a direct connection with the devil.”

  Stephen leaned against a piece of the scaffolding and laughed until his face was wet with tears.

  “Divertissement!” he choked. “Ye’re all the divertissement a man could need! No doubt Tante Caleen and I circle the Cabildo’s roof in the dark of the moon on the same broomstick. Beware, Andre! ‘Tis thinking I am of changing ye into a fine he goat and sending ye out to eat the mayor’s winter underwear!”

  Andre joined in the laughter.

  “It is ridiculous,” he said. “But you are lucky, Stephen. By the way, where is your old witch now?”

  “In the fields, I’d say, talking to Achille.”

  “She seems fond of your Number One man—odd, isn’t it?”

  “Not at all. Achille is her son.”

  “No! You mean to say that some man, even a black, Stephen, slept with that old horror?”

  “She wasn’t always old, Andre. In fact, she may have even been attractive in an African sort of way. Her life hasn’t been exactly pleasant. It seems she came to New Orleans while she was yet a girl—many years before the insurrections that Tom Warren credited her with having a hand in fomenting.”

  “He is a queer one, your Tom Warren,” Andre observed.

  “So I am beginning to learn. There’s no question of his fidelity to my interests, but some of his methods—but we were talking about Tante Caleen, were we not?”

  “Yes. You were saying that her life was hard.”

  “It was. Achille’s father was a black from Kentucky or Tennessee. She isn’t sure which. Anyway, he was one of the leaders of the revolt of ‘95, and was the last of the twenty-three blacks to be hanged. They honored him by performing the execution before the parish church at New Orleans.”

  “So Tom Warren wasn’t entirely wrong!”

  “Only in his geography. And Tante Caleen is unusual. I sometimes think that she only tolerates all whites as mere children in the eyes of her ancient wisdom.”

  “Then she is a witch?”

  “Rot. Come—Georges has our supper ready by now, and there is still much to do.”

  By the Spring of 1827, the great mansion of Harrow was substantially finished. Throughout the Summer, the work on its interior continued. The river road was crowded with wagons bearing from the warehouses of New Orleans the treasures that Stephen had accumulated for his manor. Steamboat after steamboat put in at his landing, bringing furniture, draperies, fixtures, machinery. Then for many days the slaves were busy with the painting, until the great house gleamed white among the somber oaks. From the first it had a majesty about it—a regal air of pride and lofty disdain. Try as they would, neither the Creoles nor the Americans could disregard it, and even their contemptuous title, “Fox’s Lair,” bestowed upon it whil
e it was in the early stages of construction, died when they saw the completed house standing in all the austere purity of the classic Grecian line.

  Stephen bought their gardener Jupiter from the Prudhommes for the amazing sum of three thousand dollars. The old black had magic in his fingers; whatever he touched grew and flourished.

  “I got planters’ hands, me,” he was fond of saying. “What I plants she grows, yes!”

  So in the courtyard, the pink, lavender and white crepe myrtles glowed softly; the red and white oleanders blazed. The yellowish pink mimosa hung low over the crystal ball on the pedestal, and the feathery green and gold acacia shredded the light of the afternoon sun. There was the cape jasmine, and the heavy waxen blossoms of the magnolia fuscata; there were the cruel spines of the yucca with its crown of creamy flowers. There were rambling roses and bush roses with buds like blood drops, lilies whiter than mountain snow and, over everything, the lush creeping fragrance of honeysuckle, heavy above the red flagstone walks. What Jupiter touched grew.

  When it was all done, and the sugar-making season had begun, Madame Wilson was summoned to the manor and put to work penning, with her graceful flourishes and much-envied curlicues, the invitations to the grand ball that was to mark the official opening of Harrow.

  Andre took up his residence in rooms that Stephen had ordered perpetually reserved for him, and the two of them worked out to the last detail this formal assault upon the ancient society of New Orleans.

  “But suppose they refuse you, Stephen,” he worried. “Suppose they don’t come.”

  “Don’t worry,” Stephen declared drily. “They’ll come. I’ll wager ye a thousand dollars they’ll come.”

  So the invitations went out to the Marignys, the Cloutiers, the Lambres, the Prudhommes, the Metoyers, the Sompaynacs, the Robieus, the Greneaux, the Lascals, the de Mandervilles, the Dreaux, the de Pontablas, the Rouen de Villerays, the d’Arensbourgs, the de la Chaises, the Lafrentières, the Labedoyères, the Beauregards—and the Arceneaux.

  They went, too, to the Wilsons, the Claibornes, the Roberts, the Smiths, the Thompsons, and the Walters.

  Andre and Stephen stood watching the messengers start out, Georges and Ti Demon and Achile, mounted on sleek horses, in new, well-cut liveries, their black faces bursting with pride. Then Andre and Stephen went back to Harrow—where Lagoaster, the great quadroon tailor, waited—to be fitted with new evening clothes made from materials brought from Scotland by fast clipper.

  In the mornings, Stephen and Andre and sometimes Tom Warren, accompanied by their Negroes, rose before dawn and rode into the bayou country to shoot waterfowl. At night, they came back laden, and the birds were turned over to Tante Caleen to be hung in preparation for cooking.

  For the messengers had returned triumphant.

  “They coming, yes!” Georges crowed. “All the true gentlemen!”

  “And the grand dames, too,” Ti Demon echoed. “We see ‘em all, us!”

  Now, for a whole week, Harrow was a gigantic madhouse. Tante Caleen was over everything, regally ordering Stephen and Andre out of her way as curtly almost as she did Georges and Achulle. Suzette, the mulatto girl who had shared the lean-to with Stephen and Tante Caleen on that first day at Harrow, was put in charge of the marketing. First of all she had to purchase fresh calves’ feet with which Tante Caleen made gelatin. These were stripped of the tough outer layer then cut into sections and pounded and ground into a powder. Then Tante Caleen added hot water and sugar and a drop or two of cochineal for the pink jelly, thickened lemon juice for the yellow, and the strained juice of scalded spinach for the green.

  Weeks before, a steamboat had left the northern reaches of the Mississippi, its hold filled with a rare and expensive luxury—ice. Packed in straw to slow its melting, much of it arrived at Harrow to be placed in a zinc-lined box built to hold it—and nothing else—in the pantry. The surplus was buried in a cool, strawlined cellar, dug near the brook that ran through Stephen’s land. The gelatin was placed upon ice and left to solidify; then Tante Caleen turned to more important things.

  From the city Suzette had brought refined sugar, which, unlike the crude, open-kettle sugar made and used on the plantations, was white instead of brown. It came in coneshaped loaves of stonelike hardness and for days Harrow resounded to the pounding of Caleen’s mallet, hammering it into chips, then into powder fine enough to be used in the cakes and delicate pastries she was baking.

  The smoke stood up straight from the great chimney of the kitchen house on the last day, only a few hours before the guests were due. Caleen supervised the cooks as they pushed the ovens with their hollowed-out tops filled with live coals into the great fireplace. In the smaller pots on the trivets the roux and gravies and soups and gumbos simmered. Across the front of the fourteen-foot-wide fireplace, the game—venison, wild hog and wild fowl—turned on the spits, the rich juices dropping into pots set on the hearth below.

  Under the watchful eye of the older women the candies had been made, petals of orange blossoms and of violets dropped into boiling syrup, then allowed to harden upon waxed paper. Outside the big house, the strongest slaves on the plantation were taking turns whirling huge cylinders in tubs of ice. These contained the ice cream which had been made by boiling whole vanilla beans in sweetened milk, and since the tubs had no handles or inside fixtures of any kind, the making of ice cream was the hardest kind of work. Ruefully the men blew on their freezing palms, but Tante Caleen was everywhere, her tongue keener than any lash.

  Georges was sharpening the carving knives by rubbing them on a hardwood board covered with powdered brickdust. Girls and women were carrying the sherbets and gelatins and charlotte russes down into the ice cellar, so that they would remain firm until needed. The cooking went on. In the pantry the mountainous layer cakes were being iced with much licking of fingers.

  Girls were weaving strips of orange peel into dainty little baskets, which were then dipped into boiling syrup and set aside to harden. Afterwards they were filled with bonbons and nougats and pralines.

  Stephen himself supervised the placing of the wines and liquors on the side table. Madame Wilson was in charge of the decorations, but even here Tante Caleen made abrupt and pointed suggestions. Jupiter filled the costly urns and vases with flowers, and garlanded the magnificent curving staircase with pink ramblers and blood-colored garden roses for a full three flights of stairs.

  The house servants were instructed and instructed again. Their livery was new from the skin out. Two little beturbaned negrillons took their places on each side of the great tables, with their hands on the golden cords which moved the huge swinging fans. And the butler, who could read, stood at the doorway to take the cards and call out the names of each entering guest. Now, at last, everything was still, waiting. . . .

  But it was not alone at Harrow that preparations were being made for the grand ball. At Rosemont, the Cloutier’s plantation, Cloutier, himself, had taken the invitation from the basket of Georges.

  “What is it, dear?” Madame Cloutier demanded.

  “The infernal impudence of the man!” Cloutier spluttered, “this Fox inviting us to a ball at his place. You tell your master . . .”

  “That we accept with pleasure,” Madame Cloutier said.

  “What!” Cloutier roared.

  “Don’t be unnecessarily stupid, Louis,” Madame Cloutier said calmly. “We have two unmarried girls, and you yourself said that Monsieur Fox was on his way to becoming the richest man in the state.”

  “You’d sanction a connection with that . . .”

  “I find him quite a charming gentleman. I didn’t mention it before, Louis, but some weeks ago the girls and I took occasion to drive by Harrow. I tell you, Louis, a finer house does not exist! Girls! Come down! I have a surprise for you!”

  Henriette and Clothilde came bounding down the stairs. They were both big strapping girls whose lack of grace was a sore trial to their parents.

  “Monsieur Fox,” Madame Cloutie
r announced, “has invited us to Harrow!”

  Thereupon the Mademoiselles Cloutier let out such a piercing squeal that Georges backed hastily toward the door.

  “No, no,” Henriette cried. “We must see the other invitations. I’m dying to know who else will be there!”

  The three women then proceeded to go through the entire basket, murmuring over each name.

  “Odalie Arcenaux,” Madame Cloutier said grimly. “That is not too good. Clothilde, you have a tan. Starting tonight, you’re sleeping every night with sour buttermilk on your face.”

  And that same night, she pounded her beef marrow until it was fluid and poured in the thick, ropy castor oil. Henriette gagged at the odor, but Clothilde stood by while her mother scented the snowy concoction with patchouli and oil of bergamot. Then she rubbed it into the thick black hair of her daughters, and screwed each lock up into curl papers so tightly that the girls howled with pain. Afterwards she smeared lip salve made of white wax and sweet oil on their mouths and marched them off to bed, equipped with a bowl of thick, vile-smelling sour buttermilk to lighten their naturally dark Creole complexions.

  At the home of the Arceneaux, Aurore passed the invitation wordlessly to her sister. Odalie read it and her black eyes met Aurore’s clear hazel ones.

  “You’re going?” Aurore asked softly. Odalie didn’t answer.

  Instead she walked to the window and looked up river toward Harrow, miles away and out of sight around many a river bend.

  Then very slowly she turned back to her sister.

  “Yes,” she said; “yes—I’m going . . .”

  As the night of the ball approached the air of the bayou country seemed electrified. Calls were being exchanged for no other reason than to discuss the mysterious Monsieur Fox, who was so patently English and yet spoke French better than the Louisianians themselves. All the old stories were brought out and passed from mouth to mouth, gaining force and brilliance with each retelling. Stephen was a bastard son of nobility exiled to the New World. Stephen was a notorious gambler, blackguard and confidence man who had seduced the wife of the poor, simple, but in retrospect, exceedingly noble, German planter, stolen his lands, and climaxed his villainy by slaying the much-abused man in a duel. “Why ‘tis said he regularly sends money to Madame Waguespack in far-off Philadelphia. And why not, my dear, since no less than two of the youngest children have red hair!”