by Frank Yerby
“I tell you,” he said strongly, “they are children of God, no less than we! And the blackness of their skins can not hide His image. They are our brothers whom we permit to be sold like cattle, driven to labor in the fields under the cruel lash, torn from the bosoms of their loved ones and carried miles away . . .”
Towards night he awoke again, but this time his eyes were clear.
“Light the candles, Julie,” he whispered; “it grows dark—very dark . . .”
“But they are lit, Dan—that’s your name, isn’t it? ‘Tis very bright in here.”
He looked at her, smiling.
“Yes, yes—’tis bright. Where you are ‘twill be always bright. But bring the—candles closer, Julie—I want to see—your face.”
Julie turned and ran across the room. A moment later she was back, holding the silver candelabra close to her cheek.
“See, Dan—see!” But there was no answer. Julie looked down at the boy. Then slowly, she bent down, placing the candelabra upon the floor and, pillowing her face upon her arms, she wept.
An hour later, her face still and composed, she went in search of her father. She found him in his study, his thin face lined and drawn, staring out upon vacancy.
“They all died,” he said; “and this lad of yours?” Julie nodded dumbly.
“A pity—” Stephen muttered. “He was too young to die.”
“Father . . .”
“Yes, Julie?”
“I want to go North to school.”
Stephen looked at her, his white brows climbing upward until one of them touched the scar.
“Why, my little Julie? We have good schools and good tutors . . .”
“May I, father?”
Stephen frowned a little. Then his face cleared.
“Yes, Julie,” he said. “Ye may go when ye’re sixteen.” He stood up, looking down upon his daughter.
“Come,” he said. “I think your mother needs us.” Then he opened the door and they went out together into the great hall.
XXV
FIRST in the morning, after the Cloutiers had gone, Etienne Fox rode up to Harrow. He sat bent over his horse, his face morose and sullen.
Plague take that quadroon wench! Not even the finished sophisticates of Old France had so devilish many ways of eluding a man. A look—a gesture—a laugh cutting through a serious moment like the blade of a knife—all these and more she used with casual ease while he fretted and fumed and got exactly nowhere—the worst was her constantly varied harping upon the difference in their ages: “You see, monsieur . . . I used to go there . . . do this . . . see that . . . but that was years ago before you were born . . .”
“Damnation!” he would roar. “You know well that there is but eight years between our ages!”
“So little?” she would murmur. “It seems more . . .”
There must be a way—some way—of bringing her to heel. He paused suddenly, sniffing at the air. That smell! Had something been burning here? Harrow? His heart contracted at the thought, and he dug his spurs cruelly into the palamino’s sides. But when the horse rounded the curve into the alley of oaks, the house was still there, gleaming in all its snowy beauty among the trees.
Yet the smell persisted. He turned toward the steamboat landing, his pale eyes dilating as he looked. It was a smouldering ruin. Beyond it, in the river, lay the blackened hulk of what had once been a fast river packet. He rode toward it and sat there very still looking at the wreck. Something about its lines seemed familiar to him, but it was too far demolished for him to be sure of its identity. Then he was leaning forward, peering at an object in the water. It was a long section of plank, painted green, bearing the letters Creole Be—the rest was missing, the ornate gold letters ending abruptly in splintered, charred wood.
“The Belle!” he whispered. “Sacred Mother of God!”
As he rode up the alley of oaks, he saw a large group of Negroes busy in the bare plot of ground next to the family burial grounds of Harrow. They were working with picks and spades, digging a huge trench more than six feet deep that curved away from the river for fifty feet or more. Beside them, laid out in orderly rows, were a line of oddly grotesque bundles, completely wrapped in cloths. Etienne studied the bundles for a long time before he realized what they were. Then, slowly, he began to count them. When he had counted more than a hundred, he stopped.
“Mon Dieu!” he whispered. “Did none of them escape?”
He turned his eyes toward the spot where his mother lay. There, not very far off, a cross of wood marked a fresh grave. Etienne caught his breath. Someone of the family! Had father attempted . . . ? He swung down from the horse and ran across the muddy earth. The words carved into the rude cross stopped him.
“Michael Farrel,” they read. “Born—” then a blank space, “Died: June 3rd, 1854. Rest in peace.”
“Old Mike,” Etienne murmured. “What a man he was! So he died with his ship. He would have wanted that . . . still to die thus . . . By the good God, how they must have suffered!”
He walked slowly back to where the horse stood. Slowly he remounted and rode silently up to the house.
In the hallway, Stephen met him. Father looks tired, Etienne thought. His years begin to tell . . .
“ ‘Tienne,” Stephen began.
“Yes, Father?”
“Is it asking too much to request that ye favor us with your presence once in a while? Yesterday we had great need of ye. The Creole Belle . . .”
“I saw,” Etienne said harshly.
“And the Cloutiers were here. Phillippe granted ye his permission to call upon his daughter.”
“He did!”
“Yes, but I don’t see . . .”
“That’s grand, Father! No more conversations on horseback to the accompaniment of icy trickles pouring down my back. I’ll see her at once!”
“ ‘Tis time, I should think.”
Etienne turned to his father, his black brows forming thunder. heads that half hid his pale eyes.
“What do you mean by that, Father?”
“Ye’re so devoted to your little prairie flower, and yet ye let three weeks elapse before ye see her at all. ‘Twas not so with the youth of my day. We were more persistent wooers.”
“My absence was my own affair, Father. I’m twenty-four. I don’t have to explain my coming and going to a girl, and by heaven—”
“Softly, ‘Tienne. Ye need explain nothing. What’s between ye and Ceclie is of concern only to the two of ye. But ‘tis thinking I am that when a lad stays away from his own home for days and nights upon end, common decency demands that he say a word to his parents! Twenty-four or an hundred, ye have no right to cause your mother anxiety.”
Etienne looked at Stephen, and one corner of his mouth crawled upward into a wicked smile.
“Please tender my dear Aunt-Mother my humblest apologies,” he murmured, “and say to her that I was kept from home by the so far unsuccessful pursuit of a quadroon wench called Desiree who is more beautiful than any Negress has any right to be.”
“ ‘Tienne!” Stephen roared.
“You would have me lie, Father?”
“No. But this is a thing not to be tolerated! Ye must cease this folly at once!”
“Folly? Perhaps—but such an enchanting folly, Father. Surely I’m permitted to sow a few tares to the wind.”
“Etienne Fox!”
“Now really, Father, I’m disappointed in you. After all, I am your son. You can’t expect me not to have inherited some of your . . . more interesting characteristics?”
Stephen’s snowy brows eased away from the bridge of his thin nose, and his blue eyes took on an icy calm.
“All right, ‘Tienne,” he said. “Ye learned your lessons well in Paris, I see. I’m too old to quarrel with ye. But this I must say: this dalliance with a Negress must stop or else ye must seek a home elsewhere and that is final.”
He turned on his heel and strode toward the great curving stairs.
&
nbsp; Etienne studied his back as he went. Then something like a light gleamed in the youth’s eyes; on his face was an expression of sudden realization.
“Father!”
Stephen turned.
“Yes, ‘Tienne?” he said softly.
Etienne spoke slowly, watching his father’s face.
“This Desiree is no child. She is now thirty-two years old.”
“So?”
“Sixteen years ago, when I was eight, she was already sixteen years of age. She was very beautiful then, wasn’t she, Father?”
“What do you mean, ‘Tienne?”
“So beautiful, in fact, that you wrecked Harrow and broke my mother’s heart because of her! Of course it is the same! Desiree Hippolyte. Desiree of the tawny hair and haunting voice. Desiree of the seagreen eyes with the gold of an enchantress in them! You recognize the portrait, Father?”
“Yes,’ Stephen said harshly, “I recognize it.”
Etienne threw back his head and hurled his laughter upward toward the high, vaulted ceiling.
“Oh, what a piece of work is man!” he said. “And almost I was beginning to think that you had developed a moral sense in your old age! What is it, Father? The dog in the manger attitude—or have you really broken with her over all these years? Answer me! No—don’t answer. ‘Tis no longer important what you would say. You know, Father, you looked most important standing there cloaked in righteous indignation. But pretense is such a shabby garment and reality can be so damnably hideous—” His laughter broke upon a high, edged note, strangely like a sob.
Stephen’s pale eyes were looking past Etienne out over the oak grove which stretched down the gentle slope to the river.
“There are many kinds of hell,” he said, half to himself. “I have created mine in mine own image. I had hoped that ye would be wiser than your father, ‘Tienne—that ye would avoid his mistakes. ‘Twas too much to be hoped or expected. Go as ye will, lad, and shape your own perdition.”
He turned with great dignity and went up the stairs. He went very slowly, like a man very tired, and very old.
Etienne watched him, frowning. Then he ran to his room, calling out to Inch to bring fresh linen, and draw water for his bath. There was no answer.
“Inch!” Etienne roared, “Inch!”
But it was old Jean-Jacques who came at last, trembling before Etienne’s fury.
“Inch ain’t here, him,” he quavered. “He tell me to give you this, yes!”
Etienne took the letter and broke open the seals. His eyes danced over the elegant, flowing script; then his face was purpling with rage.
“My good master,” he read aloud, “when you receive this I shall be already many, many miles away—on the road to freedom. I shall never be brought back alive, so if you cherish, as I do, any pleasant memories of our childhood, do not send pursuers after me. To explain why I have done this thing is difficult, especially since I know how and what you will think. You will say that you have treated me kindly: and so you have, apart from a few cuffs and kicks, which were more the results of overindulgence in wine than any real cruelty on your part, and a fairly frequent use of invective in speaking to me, arising, no doubt, from my insistence upon deserting the station in life to which, in your opinion, I was born.
“The trouble is, I think, that I have not the mentality or character of a servant, and certainly not of a slave. I don’t want to be treated kindly like a valuable animal: I want to be treated like a man. Almighty God when he granted me the boon of life gave unto me something which he did not bestow upon the palamino which you ride, namely, a soul. It is therefore something of an affront to Him that you attempt to own me in precisely the same sense that you own your horse. God gave me Freedom of Will. You, my dear master, are for all your wealth and power, a mere man. You cannot take away what God has already given me. Since, in the sight of the Eternal, I must bear the final responsibility for what I do and say and think, it follows that I can no longer permit my thoughts, words, and deeds to be shaped by the whims of another.
“Forgive me this letter and my flight. But it was becoming impossible for me to breathe at Harrow. Remembering my mother, who died rather than submit to servitude, and my grandmother, who longed all her life for freedom, I can do no more than to take the risks. For man does not live by bread alone, nor is he clothed by the castoff garments which a master gives him. There is a world of the spirit in which such a man as I can eat out his heart in longing, enwrapped in the terrible cloak of his wounded dignity. I do not want your protection, nor the easy life at Harrow; I want nothing done for me, but many things done by me. In short, I want freedom, and I shall achieve it, with the help of God.”
It was signed, very simply: “Inch.”
Etienne’s eyes danced like arctic fire; but his voice was perfectly controlled when he turned to Jean-Jacques.
“Draw water for my bath,” he said, “and bring pen and paper. You write, don’t you?”
Dumbly the old butler nodded.
“My father was a fool to allow his blacks to learn so much. Hurry now!”
Twenty minutes later, Etienne sat comfortably in his bath. “Write thus,” he said to Jean-Jacques. “An advertisement:
Run away from me at my plantation, Harrow, my manservant, Inch. He is coal black in color, dresses extremely well after the fashion of a white. Possibly traveling under forged credentials, as he can read and writes an excellent hand. Will probably attempt to pass himself off as a freeman. Speaks English with a slight accent, and French with great fluency. Anyone notifying me of his whereabouts, or capturing and returning him to me at my plantation near New Orleans, will receive a liberal reward. Signed, Etienne Fox.”
Jean-Jacques’ pen scratched busily over the paper.
“Put it there on the table when you have finished,” Etienne said. “I’ll have the Picayune run it with the note that other papers please copy. Now bring me my clothes and some coffee. I have much to do. And have a fresh horse saddled for me; I must ride back to the city within the hour.”
Three quarters of an hour later, Etienne swung around the sweeping curves of the drive leading to the oak alley. He was mounted upon another of the justly celebrated palamino horses that were known throughout the bayou country as the hallmark of Harrow. Many another planter looked upon the sleek, beautiful animals with envy but, despite many requests, Stephen Fox never sold one of them, nor put any stallion out to stud upon his neighbors’ lands. So it was that at Harrow alone of all the state of Louisiana were the rich silver-buff horses with the snowy manes and tails to be found.
Etienne’s mind was busy with diverse thoughts as he rode. First, he decided, the newspaper office, then a brief call at Paul’s studio. After that—once more, the last time, perhaps—the little white house upon Rampart Street where he had been tormented past human bearing. This time he would win the hand. He held all the cards; and, by Heaven, that lovely yellow wench must be humbled! Thinking upon the precise method of this chastisement made him reel in the saddle, so quickly he forced his thoughts into other channels.
Ceclie . . . dear little Ceclie. A prairie flower, Stephen had called her. Father was often wonderfully apt with words. Once she had been tamed—not too much—and taught civilized manners and a little grammar . . . what a wife she’d make a man! No need for Desiree then; no need for anyone; Ceclie would combine in herself the best features of wife and mistress. Of a straightlaced convent-trained Creole wife, one expected submissiveness, but no ardor . . . but Ceclie . . . Ceclie . . .
His eyes turned to the burial plot which he was even at that moment passing. Julie was kneeling upon a fresh-made grave a little apart from the common grave where nearly all of the victims of the disaster lay. Odd that this one should be honored by separate burial; odder that Julie should single him out for her prayers. On the other side of the road, Stephen stood with bowed head beside the grave of Mike Farrel. Poor father, Etienne thought briefly . . . he has had his share of grief. ‘Twas beastly unkind of me
to taunt him so. Oh, well, there is time and to spare to make amends . . .
In his studio on Dauphine Street, Paul Dumaine was putting the finishing touches upon the painting for which Desiree had posed. He labored under the handicap of having to paint from pencil sketches and memory, for Desiree was not present.
Plague take ‘Tienne, anyhow! Paul thought. She was most punctual until he came. Sighing, he laid aside his brush, and walking a few feet away, studied the painting. Desiree had posed upon a low couch covered with a panther’s skin, and the effect of the painting was splendidly barbaric. Yet Paul was vaguely dissatisfied with it. He studied it patiently, trying to discover his errors. The long, clean body upon the canvas glowed softly, the curve of waist and thigh and breast so perfectly reproduced that Paul was conscious of slow, voluptuous tingles at the base of his spine. That was it! He had made her appear sensual. Desiree was sensuous, to be sure, but not sensual. Always he had the impression of fire under perfect control, of dark, smouldering passions held in check, so that only in the green eyes did now and then a flicker appear. Well . . . he’d have to have her in for one more sitting, and that would be the end.
He walked closer to the painting and picked up his brush. But before he could touch it to the canvas, he was interrupted by a firm knock upon the door.
“Come in!” he called, but did not leave his place. I’ll have to get that lock fixed someday soon, he thought, though there seems to be no risk. They aren’t enough interested in paintings in New Orleans to steal one.
Then the inner door creaked open. Paul turned. Ceclie Cloutier stood in the doorway, smiling a little breathlessly.
“Come in, come in!” Paul said; “I’m more than honored!”
“Thank you,” the girl said. “I want you to do me a favor, Mister Dumaine . . .”
“Anything within my power . . .”
“I want you to paint a miniature of me . . . for Etienne. I’ll buy a case to fit it so that he can carry it with him always. Will you do it?”
