Skye Cameron

by Phyllis A. Whitney

  At least it was simple enough for me to arrange a visit to Aurore through Courtney. He seemed touchingly grateful that I wanted to call on her. Uncle Robert did not altogether approve. Justin had taken Aurore’s care out of his hands, and he considered that she had betrayed him over the house. He could hardly refuse to allow me to visit Courtney’s mother, yet his wrath against Justin was plainly smouldering. There would, I gathered, be no more entertaining or being entertained as far as Justin was concerned.

  It was decided that Delphine should accompany me on the visit and I accepted her presence as inevitable, and at least better than having Mama go along.

  The afternoon was steamy hot and sultry. Shade offered little relief, and even the passage of the carriage stirred only warm air. When we reached the Law house, Courtney, strangely enough, did not come to the door to greet me. The maid took me up to Tante Aurore, while Delphine remained downstairs. There was no sign of Justin. I could only hope that he was not staying in his quarters in town and that an opportunity to see him would arise.

  Tante Aurore lay stretched upon a chaise longue in her airy, high-ceilinged bedroom, wearing a negligee of thin muslin against the heat of the day. When I entered the room she was taking from a spoon some green medicine that had the odor of licorice about it. There seemed to be even more bottles and jars in the array on her dressing table than I had last seen in this room.

  She wrinkled her nose in distaste over the green stuff and dropped the spoon into a glass. Then she managed a tremulous welcome.

  “Chérie, it is good of you to come! How well you look, Skye. Ah, you young people—never appreciating your health while you have it! Would you believe it—when I was your age there was many a time that I danced all night at a different ball for four nights running, and never felt tired at all. But now I am old and ill, and life is over for me. I can live only for my children. Come, sit near me, Skye. We must have a good talk.”

  I brought a small quilted chair and sat beside her. She looked tired and ill and forlorn.

  “I do not like to tell you this, chérie,” she said, “but I am troubled about Courtney. What can you tell me of him? He is truly happy in his plans for this marriage?”

  I had to be evasive. “I know he wants to do as Uncle Robert wishes,” I said. “He has a great sense of indebtedness to my uncle.”

  “Yes, of course. That is natural. And once he is married to you, Skye, then I am sure all will be well. But now he feels that Robert blames him for the sale of this house to Justin. Though it was all taken out of my hands before Courtney knew. Many things are tearing at my son, and I do not know how to help him. Sometimes I fear that he will do something wild and impulsive.”

  Since I could not tell Tante Aurore the truth of Courtney’s hopeless infatuation for my mother, I nodded sympathetically and was silent. She liked to talk and I knew she would carry the burden of the conversation if I let her. After a while I would inquire about Justin, find out if I might see him.

  “I wonder sometimes,” she went on sadly, “whether I chose the wise course of action with Courtney after all. Of course I was guided by Robert at every point. How could a poor foolish woman exist without a wise man to guide her? Always I showed Justin’s letters to Robert and he took them away for safekeeping.”

  “There were letters from him then? And you never showed them to Courtney?”

  “Mais non. It did not seem wise to build in the boy any liking, or even curiosity about his brother. My elder son had revealed a wild strain that did not come from my side of the family. Robert warned me that Courtney must never come under his influence. After a time, as the years passed and on Robert’s advice I did not answer, there were no more letters. When I learned he had been imprisoned, I thought him safely gone from our lives.”

  For a moment I could think only of the boy Justin, writing home to his mother and never receiving an answer.

  “How do you account for the fact that Uncle Robert now receives him, entertains him?” I asked.

  “Robert has not confided in me. I see him so seldom. And now he is angry with me.” She covered her face with her hands. “I know I have become distasteful to him. He never lets me forget that I am no longer the girl whose portrait hangs on the wall of his study.”

  “Nor is he the young man who wooed that girl,” I said dryly. “What does Uncle Robert expect—that time will stand still?”

  But it was not in her to blame him. All that she had, her very life and her son’s future had depended for so long upon Robert Tourneau.

  “He is terribly angry over what I have done with the house,” she went on. “You do not blame me, Skye? My older son is so strong, so forceful. And truly, he has been far kinder than I expected since his return. And I thought Robert wanted me to welcome Justin. But there is bad blood between him and Robert. I do not know what the outcome will be. Often I am frightened, chérie.”

  At least she had softened a little in her attitude toward Justin. I was about to inquire for him, but she continued her wistful reminiscence.

  “If only you could have known Robert as a young man. Ah, he was handsome, that one! Such flashing eyes and tall, erect carriage. But with less harshness in his face in those days. Though he always frightened me a little. In some ways he did not seem a true Creole.”

  Such a statement surprised me, since, of all things, Uncle Robert prided himself most on being everything that was Creole.

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  She moved her hands despairingly. “It is difficult to explain. We Creoles are a thrifty people in many ways, though capable of spending lavishly for pleasure. Nevertheless, we do not as a rule set great store by wealth. We know that blood, a good family name, means more than money. But Robert was not like that. He liked money for itself and for the power it gave him. After the war he became even worse. In spite of great losses, he would not change his life in any way. He worked insanely hard to become wealthy again. And there were other things that were strange in him.”

  She sighed, remembering, and I waited quietly until she was ready to go on.

  “He did not laugh as easily as a true Creole laughs. Our men may have hot tempers and are given to reckless acts at times, but they are gay, as the women are gay. We have great hearts and we know how to live. You know our families came from Santo Domingo in 1791 when there was an insurrection of Negroes against their masters. Many emigrés escaped to New Orleans at that time.”

  She was wandering from the subject, but I gave her time to come back to it. I had a desire to understand Uncle Robert, perhaps even to find a key to his behavior in what she could tell me.

  “What a difference the coming of those wealthy, gay, well-educated French people made to this city!” Tante Aurore said proudly. “They knew how to laugh and cry, how to be gay, how to feel. They were, as we say, all heart. And so are we who have descended from them. Perhaps that is all that is wrong with Courtney at the moment. Too much heart. It is natural that he should harbor certain resentments against Justin.”

  “But my uncle,” I prompted her. “You were telling me of him.”

  “Ah, yes. Robert, even as a child, was a glowering one. He would demand his own way, instead of winning it as his sister could always win what she wanted. I speak of your mother, chérie. Of course Loulou was always the favorite of her parents. Her mother could have no more children and she had lost all but those two. Loulou was the loving, winning one upon whom the parents doted. Their death must have been doubly dreadful for her.”

  Always before I had received only my mother’s views on her life in the Tourneau house. This interested me.

  “What do you mean?” I asked. “How was it doubly dreadful?”

  “Because she, who had been surrounded by love, so tenderly raised and given her every desire, had all love removed from her life. I was older than she, but still a child, yet I remember the blight that was put upon her. There was an elderly aunt, but she was a stick, wholly obedient to Robert. And of course he had
always been jealous of his sister and helpless to attract to himself the love his mother and father gave the little girl. When they died and he became head of the family, though still young, poor Loulou was cut off from all affection.”

  I listened gravely, asking no questions now. I had never seen my mother in this light before. Compassion stirred in me for the girl she had been, though it was hard to forgive the woman that girl had become.

  “I can remember,” Tante Aurore said, “how wild she was for affection. At home she was nothing after her parents died. Always at home her small gifts and talents were ridiculed, belittled. So at every party she must charm everyone to her. She had a compulsion to be loved, admired. Of course as she grew to marriageable age, that meant by men, more than by women. Perhaps she sought again the worshipping love her father had given her. She was a greater flirt than the rest of us, and more determined in her efforts. Yet somehow she was gay and innocent, strange as that may seem. Truly I do not know how she answered to herself for some of the things she did.”

  I knew exactly what Aurore meant, though hearing it from her lips did not comfort me.

  “Why didn’t you marry Uncle Robert?” I asked. “You must have admired him a great deal.”

  “Ah, if only I had! But I did what many another foolish girl has done—I lost my heart and married for love. And what has it ever given me but heartbreak?”

  I was tempted to remark that her heart might have remained intact if she had been willing to follow her husband into the West. If she had found the courage to make that choice, perhaps much tragedy might have been averted.

  The carpeting in the hallway hid the sound of Delphine’s approaching steps. We were not aware of her until she tapped and then opened the door without waiting for a response. Her face seemed as expressionless as ever, but I knew by her quick-moving manner that something was wrong.

  “Madame,” she said to Tante Aurore, “it is necessary to come at once. Your sons—they quarrel fiercely. It is to be feared they will come to blows.”

  Tante Aurore sat up with a cry. “Skye, go downstairs! I have not the strength to face those two. Hurry, chérie, before they kill each other. Ah, I have known this would come!”

  As I ran through the hall and down the stairs, I could hear the sound of angry voices from the library. Delphine followed me swiftly. Just as we reached the library door I heard the ringing sound of a slap, followed in an instant by a blow and a fall. I pushed open the door and stepped into the room.

  What had happened was clear. Courtney lay sprawled on the floor, while Justin’s left cheek bore a red, splotched mark. Courtney had slapped his brother, and Justin had knocked him down.

  Courtney stumbled to his feet rubbing his jaw, his eyes blazing with anger. For a moment I feared that he might hurl himself upon Justin again, and I rushed to him, put my hands upon his shoulders. He was furiously angry and I could feel his trembling beneath my fingers.

  “What they say about you is true!” he cried to Justin. “That you are a criminal and a barbarian. Only a gentleman would recognize the significance of an insulting slap.”

  Justin rubbed his cheek where the mark of the blow showed scarlet. “If you mean that I’m supposed to play the Creole gentleman and challenge you to a duel because you’re making a fool of yourself about Louise Cameron, you’re talking nonsense. She’s not worth your blood or mine.”

  My hands tightened on Courtney’s shoulders, but he put me aside. “You refuse to fight?” he asked his brother. “You are afraid—a coward?”

  Justin regarded him coolly. “I’m afraid of many things. This may be one of them.” He looked at me standing beside Courtney and his mouth tightened. “I’m sorry this happened, Skye. But it was necessary for Courtney to know the truth about your mother.”

  I did not think Justin knew the truth about my mother, but my concern was wholly for Courtney at that moment.

  “Don’t mind what he says—don’t listen to him,” I pleaded.

  Courtney looked at me blindly and I saw in his face all the anguish he must feel because a trap had closed about him. He believed Robert was angry with him because he had fallen in love with my fickle mother who only played at love-making, he hated his new dependency upon his brother in this house, and he was going to marry me, whom he did not love. Circumstances were pushing him too far and he looked as if a breaking point had been reached.

  He turned away from us and went out of the room, though I called to him again in pleading. He did not stop and I heard him running up the stairs. The sound had in it the ring of desperation. I hesitated only a moment before I went after him, without so much as a glance at Justin.

  Courtney had disappeared by the time I reached the second floor. A door stood ajar at the rear of the wide hall and I ran toward it, pushed it open quickly. Courtney was withdrawing a pistol from a bureau drawer.

  For a shocked instant I thought he meant to kill his brother. Then he faced the mirror on the tall bureau and I realized what he intended. I flung myself across the room as he raised the gun and pulled down his arm with all my strength.

  The crash of the shot deafened me, and for a shocked instant I did not know whether Courtney had shot himself or me. Then I saw the shattered window and the smoking gun still in Courtney’s hand. He stared at the window, stunned, and let the gun drop from his fingers.

  The unhappiness and shame in his eyes broke my heart and I went close to him, put my arms about his neck, pressed my cheek against his, as one might comfort a child. Far away I heard someone screaming and knew it was his mother. There was a sound of running on the stairs, but I could think only of this shamed and shattered young man.

  “You must never, never attempt such a thing again,” I whispered gently. “You’re not alone, you know.”

  His arms came about me and he held me to him, but it was as if he clung to me for safety, for reassurance. Justin and Delphine rushed into the room and saw us thus. I raised my head from Courtney’s shoulder and looked coolly into Justin’s eyes.

  “Please go away. It’s all right now. And you’ve done enough harm for today.”

  He must have taken the scene in quickly enough—the window broken by the shot, the pistol on the floor, and me in his brother’s arms. For once he had the grace to say nothing, but wheeled and went out of the room.

  Courtney put me gently from him, but his eyes did not meet mine. “Forgive me, Skye. Madness seized me for a moment.”

  Delphine spoke briskly. “Mam’zelle, if you will attend Madame Aurore, all will be well. I will get warm water to bathe the bruise on M’sieu Courtney’s cheek. It is best if you leave him now.”

  Courtney nodded. “Yes, Skye. Please go to my mother.”

  When I returned to Aurore’s room, I found that Justin was already with her, administering smelling salts and calming words, while she lay stretched on the bed. She saw me and held out her hands.

  “Skye! Tell me at once what has happened. Did my son—”

  I took her fluttering hands in mine and held them quietly. “It is nothing, Tante Aurore. An accident. Everything is quite all right now. But Courtney is upset from the quarrel with his brother. He will come to you later.”

  She looked uncertainly from Justin to me and then pushed away his hands and got up from the bed. “I will go to my son now. No, do not try to stop me. If he is in trouble he will need me.”

  Her strength had returned. I went with her to Courtney’s room. She leaned over the bed on which he lay and took her son into her arms. When I turned quietly away, I found Justin waiting in the hall outside the room. And now I remembered tardily the plan that had brought me here today.

  “I would like to speak with you,” I said.

  Justin rubbed the knuckles of his right hand—the hand with which he had struck his brother. For a moment I thought he might leave me there in the hall, without an answer. But he reconsidered and gestured toward the stairs.

  “I am at your service,” he said formally. “Shall we go down?�
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  He led me to the parlor where I had danced so gaily the night of Justin’s party. Its shutters were closed today against the sultry heat. He seated me in a little gilt and satin chair, then went to stand with an arm against the nearby marble mantelpiece and waited to hear what I had to say. I pulled at the handkerchief I held in my fingers, not knowing how to begin, now that my opportunity was at hand.

  What had happened between Justin and Courtney had changed the mood in which I’d come to this house. Now the fact of Justin’s brutal act was uppermost in my mind and it made the words I was about to speak seem doubly futile. How could I ask aid for Courtney from this man who had just knocked down his own brother?

  While I sought for words, Justin spoke curtly into the silence. “What about this marriage to my brother? Do you love him?”

  I remembered the words Aurore had spoken to me once and I repeated them. “Of what practical use is love? It will be a good marriage. It is what I want.”

  “I see. With Robert Tourneau’s blessing, you will of course have everything. Is that what you mean?”

  I folded my hands together fiercely so they would not tremble. I must not lose my temper.

  “Not with my uncle’s blessing,” I said. “With yours. That’s what I’ve come to ask you, today.”

  This time I had startled him. “What are you talking about?”

  “You’ve seen the state your brother is in,” I said. “He cannot be forced into life in the Tourneau house where Uncle Robert wants him to live. Something terrible will happen if he is. He must get away where he can stand on his own feet. The only hope is for us to leave New Orleans. You spoke once of helping your brother into business. That’s what I’ve come to ask of you now. Loan him the money to start in for himself, but away from New Orleans. He will pay you back every cent. I promise you that.”