Louisiana History Collection - Part 2

by Jennifer Blake

  One niece was plain and mousy, the other rather bold, with china blue eyes, white-blond curls, and a tendency to simper and flutter her lashes. They were neither of them immune to Gallic charm when administered with all the bows and complimentary flourishes that Emile could assume. They moved. Anya and Gaspard took their places. Anya spread her cape on one chair and placed her fan and opera glasses on the other. She was not sanguine about her ability to hold off a determined feminine invasion, even with Emile’s aid, but she intended to try.

  The siege was brief. Celestine and Madame Rosa arrived in short order. Emile and Gaspard remained talking and pointing out acquaintances until the ladies were settled, then prepared to take their leave, to go and repair their forces in the crush-room. Murray was inclined to remain behind, until Celestine told him frankly that he might as well go as stand over her, cutting off the air. The gentlemen were not out of sight before a girl Celestine’s age, with whom she had attended convent school, waved from the next box then pranced around to show them the ruby betrothal bracelet she had just received.

  Madame Rosa, taking advantage of Celestine’s lack of attention as she gossiped with her friend, turned her back on her daughter. To Anya she said, “Now you may tell me without the trouble of evasion what you and Gaspard were talking of earlier.”

  Anya searched her mind, saying in a vague, rather offhand manner, “We were speaking of Ravel, and the marvelous parade.”

  “Please do not dissemble, Anya. I may be approaching middle age, but my hearing is most acute. I distinctly heard some mention of my name and the question of marriage in the same breath.”

  Gaspard had not asked it, but Anya knew he expected her to keep his confidence. She would have liked to do so, but Madame Rosa had been her friend and confidante for many years, the repository of her childish secrets, sharer of her girlish wedding plans, and listener to her adult strategies for making Beau Refuge produce more handsomely. It was not easy to withstand her.

  “It wasn’t important,” she said.

  “I disagree. It disturbs me to think of you and Gaspard talking of me behind my back.”

  “It wasn’t like that. It was just — just idle conversation.”

  “If that’s so, why won’t you tell me what was said?”

  “Gaspard would not be pleased. Perhaps it would be best if you asked him,” Anya said, a shade desperately.

  “I shall, never doubt it, but I would also like to hear it from you.”

  Anya frowned. “Surely you don’t think there was anything clandestine between us — it’s too ridiculous!”

  “Then you will explain to me what makes it so,” Madame Rosa said with patient tenacity.

  An idea flickered across Anya’s mind. It seemed to present an avenue of escape, or at least a means to gain information she wanted in exchange for her betrayal of Gaspard. “There is something that has been troubling me. I asked you about it once, but you could not seem to clarify the problem. Perhaps now that you have had time to think about it, you can.”

  Madame Rosa pursed her lips, then said with caution, “It’s possible.”

  “It concerns Ravel and the words he said to you in connection with his proposal of marriage. Explain them to me, and I will tell you what Gaspard said.”

  If she had hoped that Madame Rosa would demur for the sake of protecting Ravel, allowing her to protect Gaspard in return, she underestimated her. Madame Rosa sacrificed Ravel at once. “Of course, if I can.”

  “It was when he was requesting my hand,” Anya said, slowly bringing the scene into focus in her mind. “He said to you that he trusted you would ‘remember recent obligations,’ as if you would know what they were, as if you were obliged to him in some way important enough to sway you against your will to hear his suit.”

  Madame Rosa’s features tightened, and almost in an involuntary movement, she looked over her shoulder at her daughter. “Yes. Yes, I remember.”

  Until she brought it to light again, Anya had not realized how disturbed she had been over that incident. Suddenly nothing was as important as learning the answer, not her future relationship with the man who might become Madame Rosa’s husband, nothing. Anya felt her stomach knot inside her as she waited for her stepmother to continue. When she did not, she said in strained tones, “Well?”

  “It is a matter of some delicacy, one that concerns other people.”

  “Of course.” Anya had expected nothing less; still she frowned as Madame Rosa glanced over her shoulder once more.

  “I think you know I have not been happy with my Celestine’s choice for a husband.”

  “I knew you had asked her and Murray to wait before making a formal announcement,” Anya answered with caution.

  “I hoped the attachment would fade, end of its own accord as do so many. So far it has not.”

  “Celestine has a tender heart.”

  “Yes, and Murray is a most attentive lover. She can hardly breathe without him there.”

  Anya lifted her brows. “Is that a fault?”

  “There may be few women who would call it one; still I cannot be happy with him for Celestine.”

  “But why? What is it about him you dislike?”

  Madame Rosa shrugged plump shoulders, her smile wry. “I don’t know. Perhaps it’s because he wants to take my daughter from me. Perhaps it’s because he’s an Américain, instead of a Creole, and lacks polish. Perhaps it’s because he reminds me of an ill-trained puppy, boundlessly fond, always underfoot, and prone to chewing the legs of the furniture when your back is turned.”

  Anya could not help laughing. “Come, Madame Rosa!”

  “It was only a fancy. Still, I thought that if Celestine saw her young man in a situation of some delicacy, one where the need for courage and the mien of a true gentlemen were paramount, she would discover he was not what she wanted, either.”

  Anya’s mind leaped ahead to the obvious conclusion. “The challenge at the St. Charles Theater ball.”

  Madame Rosa gave a heavy nod.

  “But how was it arranged? How did you persuade Ravel to act?”

  “That part was simplicity itself. I sent him a note, asking him to call. When he came, I told him what I wanted, that I wished him to force a quarrel upon Murray. At first he refused; it was against his principles. Then he learned that I knew of the meetings he and Gaspard were attending.”

  “You know?” Anya leaned quickly to catch the older woman’s arm.

  “Chère, you are hurting! Of course I know.”

  “What are they for, what is the purpose?”

  “Gaspard told me it was for the Vigilance Committee. I see no reason to doubt him”

  “Vigilance—” Of course. The group of men opposed to the corrupt Know-Nothing party. Anya was flooded by a relief so immense that tears sprang into her eyes. A moment later, they died away. “I can’t believe Ravel would allow himself to be blackmailed.”

  “Nonetheless, he did just that. It was his idea to approach Murray through you. Celestine seemed the obvious choice, but he thought that while a man will rise to fight for his fiancée as a natural thing, he will be more likely to back off from a challenge over his fiancée’s sister, particularly a half-sister. And yet Celestine’s affection for you is such that she would be deeply offended by such a failure.”

  Anya nodded, so now she knew what the obligation was, knew also why Ravel had broken the unspoken pact that had existed between them all those years, the pact not to see or speak to one another. Why was she not happier?

  “You were wrong,” she said. “Murray rose wonderfully to the challenge. He was every inch the protector.”

  “Yes,” Madame Rosa said with a sigh.

  “How could you do it? One of them might have been killed, and at your instigation. How could you have lived with yourself?”‘

  “I never thought Murray would screw his courage up to it, never intended it to actually come to a duel. Once the thing was put in motion, there seemed no way of stopping it. Except
that you found a way. You intervened. You injured Ravel and destroyed his reputation, leaving me under even more of an obligation to the man. How could I refuse my permission for him to address you then? It was impossible.”

  “He made it so.”

  “You abetted him”

  “I can’t think how you came to see Murray as a coward. Only remember how he shot the man that night when those thugs attacked our carriage.”

  “Apparently I was wrong,” Madame Rosa said, her voice carrying an unusual snap. “And now you must tell me what it was that Gaspard was saying to you.”

  Anya hesitated only a moment. She had agreed, and she could not deny that it would be interesting to see her stepmother’s reaction. “In the main, he was telling me all the reasons why he had never asked you to marry him.”

  “He likes matters just as they stand, with his social and private lives neatly separated, with me in one and his quadroon in the other.”

  “You know about her?”

  “I am not a fool.”

  “Perhaps not, but you are wrong about Gaspard, also.” A qualm assailed Anya for what she was about to do. To meddle in other people’s lives was never wise.

  “Am I?”

  “He would ask you to be his wife if he thought you would accept. His quadroon is no more than a screen to protect your good name. He loves you.”

  What Anya expected Madame Rosa to say or do, she could not have said. To blush and stammer was not in the older woman’s character, any more than violent rage and fulsome threats would be. Still she had somehow anticipated something more than she received.

  “Does he? Does he indeed?” Madame Rosa said. With that she turned away, unfurling her fan to wave it languidly before her face as she listened to the chatter of her daughter and her friend.

  Anya was left to her own thoughts. Ravel and Gaspard, members of the clandestine Committee of Vigilance. Could it be true, or had it been only a tale concocted to pacify Madame Rosa? Would the present administration, with its stranglehold on the city, be so bothered by the activities of a small group of men such as she had seen at the house of the quadroon that the police would be sent to break it up?

  Vigilance. The word implied watchfulness, unceasing care. No doubt the motives of some of the committee were of the highest, and yet, it might be nothing more than an excuse to wrest the law from the public appointed officials and administer it themselves. What, in such a case, was to prevent them from bending it to suit their own purposes? Could they be trusted not to use it to enforce their personal prejudices, to pursue their personal vendettas, to accomplish their personal gain?

  It could not be denied, however, that it was time something was done. There was such chaos in the government that those elected to administer it were using it to do precisely all those things she feared the Vigilance Committee might do, except on a larger scale. The officials were for the most part Americans, men who had come to make their fortunes in the richest seaport in the world, men who had used the rough-and-tumble tactics of Northern politics to push aside the Creoles who ran for public office as a duty, not a career; to take over the slow-moving, laissez-faire system of hotheaded arguments followed by genial agreements over coffee and wine and to whip it into something more nearly resembling a bull-and-bear fight, noisy, bloody, and without finesse. And of late they had taken to hamstringing the bull to be certain the call went in favor of the bear.

  But if Ravel was indeed a member of this secret committee, how did that explain the men who had tried to kill him? Or her? Was there any connection between the thugs at Beau Refuge and those who had held up the carriage in which she had been riding on the night they had seen Charlotte Cushman as Queen Katherine? Could that possibly have been an attempt on her life, just as the attack of the Arabs had been later?

  No. She must not give way to such uncontrolled fantasies. Robbery had been the sole purpose of that first attack. It had come because they had strayed into the back streets while avoiding the jam of carriages near the theater. There was no need to look for deeper explanations; it had been merest happenstance.

  Her attention was distracted by the appearance of a man on the wide theater stage below. For some time there had been discreet bumps and scraping sounds behind the velvet curtains that closed it off. Now all was quiet.

  As the audience noticed the tall man in evening clothes on the stage, the sound of voices and whispering, the rustling noise made by a large, anxious gathering died away to a few quiet coughs.

  The man lifted a gold flutelike whistle to his lips and blew a long and melodious note. At the top of his voice he cried, “When you next hear that sound, it will be the signal for the midnight repast. Now it heralds the opening of the Second Annual Tableaux Ball of the Mistick Krewe of Comus. As captain of the Krewe I bid you welcome and wish you joy of the Mardi Gras season. Let the revels begin! Behold, the gods and goddesses in their appointed places!”

  With one arm outflung, the captain backed away from the center of the stage. The curtain swished opened. Drawn-out cries of pleasure sounded everywhere as a scene of glorious light, brilliant color, and beauty appeared before them. In this first tableau, entitled Minerva’s Victory, perhaps a quarter of the deities seen that day were presented in reverse order of the parade, all with their mythological background scenery and other symbols of their divinity around them. Gilded and burnished, heaped with flowers and surrounded by fearsome and beautiful beasts, they stood in poses of grandeur or hauteur. Above each one was the beautiful painted transparency lighted from behind that identified him.

  So it went as the tableaux, one after the other — Flight of Time, Bacchanalian Revel, Comus Krewe and Procession — till the total of four, were unveiled. It was like seeing life-sized works of art, each magnificently staged for the maximum effect to be gained by color and proportion and the mix of the good and the evil, the sublime and ludicrous.

  What prodigies of effort had been expended, what sums of money had been squandered to present this illusion. There were those who shook their heads and muttered under their breaths, “What a waste, what a waste.” But there were others who watched with bright, glowing eyes and full hearts, accepting the joy of the moment and the sheer wonder of the creative flight, celebrating the glory of being alive and a part of the magic.

  Slowly the voices of the audience rose again.

  “See, there is a bat, such a monster he is!”

  “Look at the swans!”

  “Poor Atlas, carrying such a heavy weight.”

  “Pegasus does look just as if he could fly!”

  “How did they do it? How did they do it?”

  Ravel was in the next to last tableau. Anya sat and watched him in his costume of the goat-god Pan that should have been ridiculous but was not, and a smile that she could not seem to banish played around her mouth. What a fine god of love he made, as handsome as such a god should be, and yet unsettling in his darkness as love itself was unsettling. The pose he had assumed was perfect, both beseeching and threatening, tender and lascivious. He moved not a muscle; still the fluttering lantern light of his transparency shone gold on the vine leaves twined in his blue-black hair, and polished to the sheen of brass the planes of his chest, glinting among the fine dark whorls of hair that grew there.

  He did not see her, could not look anywhere but straight ahead as he held his stance, and she was grateful. Why did she have to love him? Why did the mere sight of him make her burn with the kind of yearning she had hardly dreamed of less than two weeks ago? She felt drawn to him, as if to be apart were wrong, as if she had never been quite free of him for seven long years. It was almost as if they were caught, both of them, in something beyond their control, perhaps one of those old myths of love and hate, jealousy and destruction, played out for the amusement of a vain god, and from which the only escape was death.

  At last the curtains closed. The music, softly playing all this time, swelled. Next would come the march of the maskers. Excitement suddenly crackled like
lightning around the room. The ladies, both young and old, in the tiers of boxes straightened, patting their hair and smoothing their flounces. Some of them would be chosen as partners for the costumed members of the Krewe in their parade around the room. Afterward they would break from the march to dance. There were rules, however. No gentleman in evening wear could descend to the floor; no gentleman in costume could ascend to the boxes. The way that ladies were chosen was by having their names called out by the captain so that they might descend to meet the man hidden behind his mask who had chosen them.

  The grand march led by Comus began, the maskers making a circuit of the floor to provide one last full look at their grandeur. There was a brief pause; then the first lady’s name was called.

  There were shy smiles of embarrassment, cries of delight, and squeals of triumph as one by one the ladies took their places. Some were wives, some daughters and nieces, some, since the Krewe was young, were mothers. Most were sweethearts, each giving the man who met her at the edge of the parquet a close, questioning look, as if to be certain he was who she expected. It was entertaining to watch them, and to laugh at the confusion as the club members assigned to the task of finding the ladies called by the captain scurried here and there, repeating the call again and again, until they were red in the face and wore identical looks of harassment to the point of near apoplexy. It was difficult not to smile at the expressions of anxiety of pique or assumed indifference on the faces of the ladies as they waited to see if they would be chosen or left to sit alone and deserted when the music began.