Feast of All Saints (39 page)

“Well!” Louisa laughed suddenly.

“What is it!” Suzette experienced an uncomfortable start. Nanette LeMond was such a lovely girl, and from such fine parents, why couldn’t Richard—

“Why, you’re staring at that cake as if it were poison, that’s what. Eat, eat, eat!” Louisa said.

“And you keep your figure following that advice yourself!” Suzette cut into the cake with her spoon. Augustin Dumanoir was not going to let Marie’s attention go. He was darker than Richard, but not very much darker. His long thin nose flared at the nostrils elegantly, his lips were small. Yet his father with heavier, flatter features was the more distinguished, smiling almost haughtily as he nodded to Celestina Roget as if he were perfectly proud of his broad African mouth. Both men had tight rippling hair, shining with pomade, and she caught, through the tinkle and hum, the father’s sonorous tones, “Oh, yes, indeed, everything for the table grown right on my own land.”

Suzette felt weary suddenly. She wanted to get rid of this cake. Her calculations struck her as inhuman and ugly, she wanted her son to be happy, and imagining him wounded, she felt at once an unbearable pain. She had made it a fixed rule with herself never to envision her older boys, and yet the memory of them descended upon her as surely as if they had come into the room. Boys! They had married white women in Bordeaux, they might as well have gone to China, or been lost at sea. Listing ever so slightly with her thoughts, she was suddenly startled to realize that Richard had been watching her and their eyes had met. A little smile played on his lips. He seemed not to
have the slightest fear. If half the world thought her son as handsome as she thought him…her thoughts stopped. “Beauty, beauty everywhere,” she whispered, “and not a drop to drink.”

“Why, what on earth are you saying?” Louisa asked her.

“I don’t know,” she said. And staring at the door in amazement, she said. “Why, there’s Dolly Rose.”

No one had expected her. That she could cast aside her mourning often enough for the “quadroon balls” everyone knew, but to come here? Yet there she stood, two white camellias in her jet-black hair, her creamy bosom swelling above a taut border of lavender watered silk.

“Good lord!” Louisa whispered.

And had not Dolly moved swiftly to fill the silence that followed, it would have been a scene. But she kissed her godmother, Celestina, immediately, embraced Gabriella, and murmured a festive greeting to the two aunts. Only for an instant did a desperate light disfigure her composure and then she saw Suzette. She put her arms out.

“Why, come here, Dolly,” Suzette said. “How good you look,
ma chère.”
Her voice dropped as Dolly bent to kiss her. “How good it is to see you well.”

Louisa stared in horror. She rose quickly, leaving the chair for Dolly who settled beside Suzette at once. It seemed young Augustin, who knew nothing of all this, commenced his chatter with Marie again, Colette had begun to laugh, the party rippled on.

“Do you think me a monster!” Dolly’s eyes blazed. Again she kissed Suzette on the cheek. “I should stay home, should I not, I should wither on the vine. That would bring her back, wouldn’t it, she would breathe, she would have life again.”

“Dolly,” Suzette whispered taking her hand, “believe me, if anyone knows the loss of a child I know it. Time is the healer. This is God’s will.”

“God’s will, do you believe that, Madame Suzette?” Dolly would not lower her voice. Drops of moisture glistened on her high forehead, the pupils of her eyes danced. “Or is that just our way of saying it is out of our hands?” There was wine on her breath, a ruddy color to her lips. “I don’t believe in anything except myself. Yet everything is out of my hands.”

“Dolly, Dolly…” Suzette patted her arm.

“Is Giselle happy?” Dolly asked now, her eyes moving across the ceiling. They settled fiercely on Suzette. “Oh, you don’t know how I cried that year…when we were no longer friends.”

“I cried, too, Dolly,” Suzette whispered, drawing near to her, hoping that that shrill clarion voice could be stilled. “You are not well…”

“Oh, I am very well!” she said. “I am free!”

Out of the corner of her eye, Suzette could see that Celestina was glowering at Dolly from across the room.

“No more children,” Dolly mused, “no more children, who would have ever guessed? And now it doesn’t matter all that rot Maman used to talk. If there can’t be children…”

“Dolly, there are other things to live for!”

“Yes, love,” Dolly smiled. “Live for love. I suppose you’ve heard of my white officer, Captain Hamilton from Charleston,” she laughed, and throwing back her head said it again in English mocking the southern American drawl. “Oh, yes, he’s going to take care of everything, ‘my dear, you leave it all to me!’ ”

She stopped, frozen, as if distracted by some awesome thought. Suzette gazed patiently at her tortured face, the dancing eyes, the high forehead with its moist wisps of raven hair.

“Maman would have loved him,” Dolly whispered, her eyes moving blindly over the assemblage. It was as if she’d forgotten that Suzette was even there. “But I do not love him!” she whispered. “I do not love him!” she pleaded. “I do not love him at all.”

“You need rest,” Suzette said softly.

But Marcel had appeared. He had come up before Dolly and stood staring down at her, his small face clouded with a scowl.

“Have you seen him?” he whispered frantically. “Christophe!” he said, when she did not appear to understand.

“Of course I’ve seen him,” she said, her voice suddenly guttural and alien. Her mouth was hard. “He’s been at my house all the time.”

Marcel was speechless. It was as if he had heard wrong.

“I left him there to entertain Captain Hamilton,” she said now, with an immediate innocent smile. “I do hope they get on together. The Captain is due in this afternoon.”

Marie had gone back the passage to the rear gallery, and not pausing to see whether or not she was followed descended the curving iron stair. Her steps were rapid. She moved under the porch in the shadows where she could not be seen, but was not at all surprised to see a pair of boots descending and then Richard’s large hand on the rail.

“Did you receive my note?” he whispered. He stood a pace away from her near the rear door of the dress shop which was shut. And it took a moment for him to realize that her face was flushed, that her eyes were red. “Why, what is it, Marie!”

Marie shook her head. She wiped her eyes with her handkerchief, turning ever so slightly away. “It’s all right,” she breathed softly. He could hardly hear her. “It’s just…it’s only…Dolly Rose.”

“She shouldn’t have come!” Richard said.

“No, no. I don’t condemn her!” Marie whispered. She was suddenly quite frustrated and then, swallowing, said in the same soft voice, “It’s only all the wretched things that people say. I feel…I feel so sorry for her!”

Richard dropped his eyes. He did not feel sorry for Dolly at all now. Or if he did, he did not expect that Marie could feel sorry for her. Dolly’s presence here was unforgivable. That anything of Dolly should touch Marie—it was more than he could bear.

But he was immensely relieved now to see that Marie had turned to him and her face brightened with just a touch of a smile.

“You needn’t have written that note,” she said. “I wanted so to tell you, but…but…”

“Marcel was there…”

“And Maman was there…” she said.

“And then Marcel was there…” he smiled.

They both laughed.

“Why is no one
here?”
she whispered with just a touch of the mischievous.

He experienced such a lovely pleasure then that he didn’t realize it was the first time he had ever heard Marie laugh. Hers was a wintry beauty, he would have known, had he ever thought to anatomize it; but she was radiant at this moment and she was looking directly into his eyes.

But then her face became morbidly serious. It had a frightening coldness about it, and he felt the same spasm of fear he’d experienced only moments before when he had seen her red-rimmed eyes.

“You needn’t have written it,” she said gravely.

“If I ever lose your trust, Marie…” he said to her.

“But you haven’t lost it. You couldn’t lose it,” she said, and she said this with such seriousness that it astonished him.

“Richard,” she went on, “I am torn in half.”

“But why?” he asked at once.

“Because I do not know how to behave with you!” she said. “I don’t know how to behave with anyone! I never have. That room upstairs, I find it an agony to be there. And every Thursday now we are to receive friends here, my aunts and myself, every Thursday there are to be little fêtes. Tante Louisa says she’s getting old, she wants to see young people, it would be fun for her to make dresses for me, to receive my friends. I don’t want this!” she looked at him miserably. The voice was her voice which he had known all his life, low, vibrant, and pure. But never had he heard such heat in it; never had he seen such heat in her face. “The truth is, it’s your company I want and yours alone, and yet I’m a fool for telling you so. I should be cold to you and coy with you, I should give you smiles begrudgingly, look away
when our eyes meet, hide my real feelings behind a feathered fan. I detest it! I don’t know how to do it. And I cannot smile at Augustin, at Fantin, at those I despise. Why should I receive them? I don’t understand.”

Richard could never have found a name for the emotion he felt as he heard this. When she stopped speaking, he was looking at her as someone might perceive an apparition, as if its loveliness and perfection were quite apart from him and this time and this place, as if he had been granted some extraordinary revelation and to speak would tarnish it, dissipate it, cause it to leave him as before.

“You are pure of heart, Marie,” he whispered. He couldn’t know that his face appeared unspeakably sad, that it had the melancholy and the wonder of much older men whose faith has been bruised at times, if not almost lost. “You are pure of heart.”

“Then why am I in such pain?” she answered softly.

“Because the world doesn’t understand people who are pure of heart, it’s made for people who cannot trust each other, and are not trustworthy themselves.”

“Did you mean what you said to me…the last time we were alone?”

“Yes.”

“Then say it now.”

“I love you,” he whispered.

“Then why can’t you kiss me again?” she whispered. “Why is it wrong?” And as she said this she turned toward him assuming that same near-indefinable attitude that had brought him close to her that day in the grove. He reached out for her; as soon as his hand touched her flesh through the cloth of her dress, a fire passed through his fingers so that that humming sound commenced in her ears. She felt his lips on her forehead but this produced no profound sensation. It was his hands, his body drawing closer against her. It was his cheek now pressed to her forehead, and the strength with which he held her, inclining her backward as he kissed her lips.

It built slowly, and somehow more strongly than it had the first time, so when they at last kissed, she felt an even more powerful sensation of weightlessness and exquisite drifting, along with a shuddering pleasure all through her form. “Marie, Marie,” he was whispering to her, and then came that moment when he seemed to pass out of his gentlemanly guise, to lose control. He might have crushed her, he was so strong, and all at once, that shuddering pleasure consumed her. She could not affect the pulsing of her body and was limp in his arms. She felt the most extraordinary excitement and was powerless to stop its radiating from the center of her all through her limbs. It seemed she would die, shocked, delirious, and then violently it climaxed
and subsided leaving her stunned. She had been moaning aloud. He was frenzied, kissing her limp neck, returning again and again to her lips, his fingers all but bruising her waist and her arms. And then with a loud catch in his throat, he stopped. He held her close, she couldn’t see his face, and his breaths came heavy, anxious, so that he trembled as he slowly let her go. “I love you, Richard,” she heard herself say from some dreamy place that had nothing to do with this secret spot at all. Collapsed against him, she felt him stroke her hair, felt his heaving grow less anxious and at last they were both of them perfectly still.

When she looked up at him, there came an exquisite shock. He was against the brick wall and looking down at her, his eyes slightly glazed, his lips drawn back in a serene smile. For a moment, it did not seem to be Richard at all. He stroked her hair, and then pressed her against his chest. The expression on his face had been utterly loving as if love itself were very near to pain. She could not know that he had not experienced the full climax of passion that she had just experienced, and that he only dimly understood that she was capable of it, only dimly understood just how he had been swept up again by her fire. Only her subsiding passion had enabled him to still himself, to command his own excitement to die down. “I love you,” he whispered over and over now, soft to her ear. And then, growing agitated, he drew slowly, gently away.

There was a clatter above them on the porch. Tante Colette was calling Marie’s name. At once Marie tried to smooth her mussed hair.

But before she could answer, Marcel clattered down with Rudolphe behind him and the two of them, deep in some agitated conversation, swept right past through the courtyard arch and out toward the street.

With an air of resignation Marie put her hand on the railing. But as she mounted the third step she looked across to Richard in the shade near the wall. He was leaning on the wall, and his face was rent with pain. It so shocked her, that she stopped.

“Marie!” Tante Colette was angry above.

But Marie did not move. Richard came forward as if he gave no thought at all to being seen. He slipped his hands around the iron railings as if they were bars. Then he faltered. And with the same look of pain and appalling fear, he reached out for her taking her by the waist.

“But what is it?” she whispered.

“I don’t know,” he answered. “I don’t know.”