by Anne Rice
He was quietly stunned. He looked down at her, the level brown eyes, the large silken mouth that was quite still.
“But don’t you worry, Michie Vince,” she said. “He’ll know his father was a fine white gentleman who provided for him always, but he won’t know your name.”
It stung him those words. He was incredulous. He studied her as if he could not believe that she had meant to hurt him and then he perceived that, indeed, she had not. And a peculiar thought struck him for which he was not prepared. He didn’t turn his head to the sleeping child in the bassinet but he thought of him, saw him, and it penetrated to him for the very first time that this was, indeed, his own child! And it penetrated for one simple reason. She had just told him, reasonably enough, that she would do with that child what she, and she alone, thought best.
He rose slowly, letting her hand go with deliberate gentleness and found himself stranded in the center of the room. All around was the dull roar of the sunny rain, and she was sitting quite collected there before him, her pretty silk peignoir tied modestly at the throat, her ivory-white hands clasped over her knee.
“That’s what you want,” he said softly.
And as she spoke now she reminded him of another raw and painful moment which had occurred for him not so very long ago. In fact the feel of that moment, its undefined confusion descended upon him as she said, “Michie, I don’t expect you to understand this, but this place, right here and now, is that baby’s home.”
He did not leave abruptly. He was aware that that would have been entirely wrong. It would have left an edge on things that he himself could not have borne. She followed him into the parlor, she smoothed his cape for him as he slung it over his shoulders, she put his boots before him and waited, her arms folded, and then accompanied him to the door.
He had thought this would be a painful moment. Wrenching, terrible, the inevitable price of seeing her again. And he wondered if she had thought so, too. But he could not reach the great swell of love he felt for her, or rather it could not reach him. But then looking to her bravely, expecting nothing more than that dispassionate face, he saw instead those tears welling again in her eyes. He saw her bite her lip, and he saw her head incline helplessly to the side.
“I love you, Michie Vince,” she whispered.
And he felt that tidal wave rising in him, and he knew it was really, really the end. “Ma belle Anna Bella,” he whispered, holding her, and then kissing her once more and forever he moved blindly and doggedly out the door.
A sleepy little Idabel came in from the kitchen, her flat and lanky twelve-year-old body done up prettily in a maid’s blue serge with white apron. She was sable in color, her tightly kinked hair drawn back to a little bun with two pins. She set the coffee down on the table, looking at her mistress’s bowed head, face hidden by her arms.
“Shush that baby, will you, honey, hold him for a little while?” Anna Bella said in English.
“Why you crying, Missie?” the child asked.
“Never mind, honey, but if you were to hush that baby, I’d feel a lot better, would you do that now?”
Idabel picked him up easily, “What are you crying about?” she said with a scowl, bouncing him as she made a small circle in the room. “Missie, that colored man was here,” she said. “I mean that colored gentleman, you know the one.”
Anna Bella lifted her head, eyes squinting at the wet and glaring light from the windows. “What are you talking about, Idabel?”
“That colored gentleman, Missie, with the blue eyes. He come riding in while Michie Vince was here, he was soaked to the bone. He come to the back door and he ask, was that white man here? I told him I didn’t know anything about any white man, and he says, ‘Well, you tiptoe to the door and see.’ Then he just went away, Missie, got on his horse, soaked through and rode off.”
The little girl stopped, the baby shushed and playing with the buttons of her dress.
“Now, don’t cry Missie, don’t cry!” she said with a fearful rise in her voice. But then she just stood there, her lips pressed together, watching her mistress’s shoulders shake as Anna Bella buried her sobs in her arms.
III
IT WAS ALMOST DARK. And the steamboats blazed along the levee, passengers scurrying toward these lights in a thin gray rain. Marcel stood on the high deck outside the stateroom, the rain cutting his face, his eyelids, cutting his hand on the rail. He was about to turn toward the open door when Tante Louisa emerged, turning her back to the icy wind off the water so that she might catch her cape around her with both hands. She drew near to him, head inclining toward him, and to avoid this moment, he attempted to break away. But she caught his hand.
“You’re not going to leave your Maman like this. Not after all the things you said to her, Marcel, when will you see her again?”
His face was tense. It had been an awful battle, and in some dreadful way it had been the worst of his life. He could remember little of what really passed between them now, only that Tante Louisa and Tante Colette had tried to prevent him from seeing her and that he had threatened to break down the door of her room. She had run from him, hidden her face from him, denied his accusations, refused to answer his questions, and at last she’d begun to scream. “I did it for you, I did it for you,” she had roared over and over, and at last, forced to the far corner of the room and cowering, she had weakened so that he had taken her arms and looked into her eyes. He would never forget that moment, never forget the moment of turning from her and seeing the two of them, his aunts, with that same terrified expression. And he had known then that all his words were wasted words, all his anger lost. They simply could not understand what had happened, they simply could not understand what they had done. They were staring at him as if he were a madman, and with the same maddening practicality with which Colette had first told him “the whole story,” she had commenced again to talk to him plainly, idiotically, then. He ought to leave his mother alone now if he had any decency in him, and he ought never, never to mention his sister’s name to her again. All the outrage had drained out of him at that moment. He had turned to the shivering little woman who seeing him towering over her raised her arms to shelter her head. He had thought clearly, calmly, this is my mother, this is the woman who bore me. And silently he had walked out of the room.
That he would eat nothing, drink nothing, say nothing in their flat after that, that he would not touch them, or allow himself to be touched did not come to him as a decision at all. He had gone through the motions of taking Louisa and his mother to the steamboat dock in silence, and now he wondered as he stood there on the deck that Louisa meant to provoke his tenuous control.
The whistle sounded above, mercifully, and he removed his hand from hers without a word. His mother was standing in the stateroom door. He watched her dully as she came toward him and put her hands on his lapels. He did not draw back though he wanted to draw back, and his eyes felt to him as if they were made of lead.
“Remember,” she said, “the cottage is yours now. But don’t sell the cottage unless you have to. And if you have to, go ahead.” She was not looking at him as she repeated this refrain. “And what you gain from it, you keep,” her head moved emphatically. “I will be quite all right where I am.”
He nodded. You will be quite all right, he thought coldly, and I will never see Tante Josette again. I will never set eyes upon her, or Sans Souci as long as you are there. And you will die there, the money you possess—the pittance left in Monsieur Philippe’s pockets—will be a fortune for you in the country and provide for all those little expenses, gifts for birthdays or weddings, store-bought fabric, pins for your hair, all you will ever need among that infinite procession of aunts and cousins and nieces and nephews until the end of your days. And of course you will grow old with your whatnots, your jewelry, all that fine jewelry, and all those lovely clothes. You’ll grow old with these things rapidly, hands forever busy with the sewing you have always so detested, making an endless round
of First Communion lace, collars, scarves, doilies for the backs of chairs. And all around you, every time you turn your head, you will be confronted with men of color married to women of color, which you have always abhorred to the marrow of your bones. But no one will ask your view of these matters, no one will even care. You will simply be old Tante Cecile, proud old Tante Cecile, bent over her needle, with her graying hair.
She was old even now as she stood beneath the cabin door, the rain drenching the rim of her bonnet with its persistent thin torrent, and putting her hands to her ears to shield herself from the deafening whistle, she had a slowness about her, a vagueness that he had never before seen. “You will come to Sans Souci?” she whispered, blinking at the wet boards of the deck before her, her head listing slightly as if she felt some nagging pain.
“Marcel!” Louisa’s voice pleaded. “Marcel! Tell your mother you’ll come to see her, tell her farewell.”
“And what shall I tell my sister for both of you?” he gasped suddenly, his eyes wide. “Tell me. What am I to say to my sister for both of you?”
His mother lifted her head. The dark eyes were suddenly brilliant in the deep brown face, and the lips drew back slowly from her white teeth. “You tell her for me,” came the guttural voice, “I wish to hell she was dead!”
“God help you,” he whispered. “God help you both.”
Tante Louisa’s shrill voice sang out over the deck, over the crowded stairway, over the mounting passengers and the rushing wind. But within seconds he could no longer hear her, he was rushing across the lower deck and down the gangplank to the shore.
Quickly, he had crossed the Rue Canal and one blast after another sounded from the great steamboats so that it was not possible to distinguish one from another, and he was in his own streets on the way home.
Home. It was Christophe’s house he entered, and it was Juliet who took his coat and his cravat. She offered her soft cheek to him, innocently, and left him quite alone as she had all week long. He had thought it self-sacrificing of her at first, for surely she had burned for him in his absence as he had burned for her. But in the last few days it was apparent that she was not so aware of him as, at some other time, he might have wished.
Then roses had come for her yesterday, and he had seen boxes of sweets about, fancily wrapped. But when Christophe told him Augustin Dumanoir père, the colored planter, was now visiting her, Marcel had merely smiled. So that, too, is over, he had thought dryly.
Well, perhaps it’s time. And he felt no guilt then for the violent and beautiful night with Anna Bella, when at last possessing that young and resilient flesh he had possessed her, Anna Bella, bittersweet in his grief. It had been as barbarous and tender as anything he might ever have dreamed. She smelt of flowers and springtime while death lay all around.
And what had happened afterwards? He had come back those long wet miles from the Metairie Oaks, having watched those tiny figures from the concealing dark, to find Dazincourt there! He pushed it down, unexamined, to the deepest dungeon of his conscious thoughts.
But now as he watched his former mistress mount the stairs, as he saw her smile, one eye closing in a languid wink, he had a strange sweet feeling that unlike so many things in this world she was not quite gone forever, not lost with all the other exquisite and pure things of childhood, beyond his reach. However, he had the distinct impression, tinged with foreboding actually, that he would not of his own will reach out for her again.
He waited until he could no longer see the hem of her dress or her tiny ankle, and then he walked back the hall.
A blast of comfortable warmth greeted him as he opened the reading-room door.
But in the shadows near the window beyond the illumination of the fire, there stood a tall figure that Marcel knew for certain was Richard, could be none other than Richard, though the figure had its back to the door. He was unprepared for the sudden anxiety Richard’s presence aroused in him, the bitter and destructive emotion not unlike that which had prompted him to break the Lermontant window in plain view of an uncomprehending crowd. He threw one desperate and weary glance at Christophe as he moved on into the room.
“He wants to see your sister,” Christophe said.
Richard turned slowly, the high collar of his cape half concealing his face.
“Why?” Marcel asked.
“I’ve explained to him that she won’t see anyone, that she will not even see you,” Christophe said. And then with a pointed glance at Marcel, he produced a letter from his breast pocket. And seeing the expression on Christophe’s face, Marcel’s lips pressed into an involuntary and bitter smile.
That morning Marcel had outlined a brief but detailed plan to Christophe of how he might take Marie away. He proposed to sell the cottage and its furnishings, taking her abroad were the funds sufficient, or at least to Boston or New York. Christophe had immediately added his small fortune to this, two hundred dollars remaining of the money left him by the Englishman, and a small amount received for the right to adapt Nuits de Charlotte for the Paris stage. It would be a difficult life, steerage, scant meals, rented rooms. And then subsistence on a clerk’s wages when Marcel secured a position in time. But it was the only hope Marcel had. And Christophe had gone to Dolly’s this afternoon with the proposal, and to assure Marie that her mother was on her way upriver, Marie need never see her mother again.
But now Christophe’s face gave Marcel the answer, and here it was written in Marie’s own hand:
I shall always love you, however, nothing is required of you except that you forget your sister so that she may cease to worry about her brother. I am content where I am.
Marie
Marcel reflected for a moment, absorbing what he had sensed to be inevitable and then he passed this note to the tall figure in the corner of the room. Richard merely stared at it, and then appeared to take it with reluctance, eyes averted slightly, as if afraid. In fact, his face was rigid with fear. The paper quavered slightly, and then he returned the note to Marcel.
“I want to see her,” he said.
“Why!” Marcel demanded again.
“She won’t see you, mon fils,” Christophe said. “And if you were to see her, you would find her much changed.” He glanced at Marcel, his face mildly agitated with concern.
“Then you have seen her yourself,” Marcel whispered.
“She’s much recovered,” Christophe sighed. “Last night she appeared in the parlor of Dolly’s house for the first time. Only for a short while, however, and she returned alone to Dolly’s room. But she did appear there, causing a mild sensation as one might imagine, and she was very much admired.”
Marcel couldn’t conceal his reaction. He swallowed with effort and sitting at the round table, ran his hands back slowly through his hair.
“She means to stay with Dolly from now on,” Christophe said. “I’ve heard this from her myself.”
“I want to hear it from her!” Richard whispered.
“You do?” Marcel threw him a venomous glance. “And suppose she didn’t want to stay there, suppose you didn’t hear it from her yourself? What would you do? Take her out of there and announce the banns? Marry her at High Mass at the Cathedral and have all the Charleston cousins, and the Villier cousins and the Vacquerie cousins and all the Famille Lermontant!”
“Marcel!” Christophe whispered with an emphatic shake of his head.
“I’m sorry,” Marcel sighed. “If there is anyone who is blameless in this affair, it’s you…But we cannot help each other now, you must spare me your presence, and I shall spare you mine.”
Richard’s only answer was silence. For a long moment he stood at the window, his eyes on the steamy panes. The rain had stopped, and the night and the room were perfectly still. And then slowly he crossed the room, his heavy boots making the faintest sound, and without a word he left.
Christophe was watching the fire.
“I was cruel to him, wasn’t I?” Marcel said.
Christophe
made a small gesture, Let it be.
“But did she…did she go into the parlor of Dolly’s house?…” Marcel’s voice faltered. He was going to cry again like a child if he went on, and seeing Christophe’s nod, he turned away.
“Marcel, I don’t expect you to understand this,” Christophe murmured, “but this is not the worst fate that could have been visited on Marie. I think you remember the bitter and destructive human being that Dolly was before she chose her path. And in some very real way, that path for Dolly was a choice of life over death. Now she is offering that to your sister, and she will care for your sister, and again it just may be a choice of life over death.”
It was more than Marcel could bear. He rose to go.
“But sooner or later, Marcel,” Christophe said gently, “you must begin to think of yourself.”
“Christophe, I cannot think of anything now, I cannot breathe.”
“I understand that,” Christophe answered, “but this situation with Marie is not likely to change. I don’t know what could save Marie at this point, I don’t know that anything will. But I do know that you must go on living, you cannot spend your life mourning her as if she were buried alive.”
He urged Marcel to be seated at the table again and he commenced to speak to him steadily, calmly, in a low voice.
“Now you planned to sell the cottage,” he said, “you planned to sell the furnishings, get what you could. And as you know, I have some two hundred dollars here of my own.…”
“If Marie would have gone with me!” Marcel said, “I would have accepted then for her.”
