Feast of All Saints (42 page)

There were dinners in the upstairs dining room, now quite magnificently restored, even to the portrait of the Old Haitian, Christophe’s grandfather, who scowled from his refurbished frame. Augustin Dumanoir’s father and the other country planters were frequent guests, while Marcel, always included, listened to their endless drawling conversation with a combination of fascination and gloom. They would have had Christophe lodged on their paradisal arpents, privately educating their sons. He might visit anytime that he liked, stay for a month or a year. “I cannot see myself away from New Orleans,” he would answer politely. And beneath the Old Haitian’s furious gaze, they would speak of the problems of the weather, the sale and the care of slaves. Christophe showed no taste for this subject, and sometimes gave Marcel a bitterly amused glance.

Juliet served on such occasions, with Bubbles to assist her, but never sat at the table herself. And Bubbles had become a regular part of the household for which Christophe paid him a dollar a week, and bought all the slave’s clothes.

Marcel was fifteen on the fourth of October, and Christophe, invited to the birthday celebration, was received in the cottage for the first time. Aglow with wine he composed a poem on the spot for Tante Louisa, and astonished everyone by addressing a great many of his comments to Marie, who was, as always, rather stonily quiet.

A lavish amount of money had been deposited with Monsieur Jacquemine, the notary, so that Marcel, for this occasion, might buy himself a horse. Marcel had never ridden a horse. Marcel actually crossed the street to avoid them when he could. They were monsters to Marcel. He was terrified they might step on his foot or even bite him. He laughed at the whole idea, aloud.

But what if he were to take that same money, he mused, and purchase with it not some chomping treacherous beast but the magic box!

For the “magic box” invented by Monsieur Daguerre in Paris, the “magic box” which had taken the little black and white miniature of Christophe was all the rage. The French government had paid Monsieur Daguerre for his secrets and was now making them known to all the world. Christophe had ordered copies of Daguerre’s magnificently illustrated treatise and set them out for his students to read, while Jules Lion, a mulatto from France had been producing Daguerreotypes right here in New Orleans for some time. And
The New York Times
and the
New Orleans Daily Picayune
both indicated one could order the new Daguerre camera along with all the necessary equipment and chemicals
for the making of pictures on one’s own. Ah, an end to the world of crude sketches and men that looked like ducks, and pencil portraits so disappointing that Marcel burnt them in the secrecy of his own room.

How it tempted, dazzled, and there was the money in the notary’s hands. But what of the other costs, plates, frames, bottles of chemicals whose stench would inevitably waft from the
garçonnière
to the cottage, and the stove that had to be kept going all night, what if the
garçonnière
should burn down? No, this was hardly the time for Marcel to ask such allowances, and when would there be time for him to go mad with the new camera when his studies kept him up late into the night? Reluctantly, he let the matter drop, let the excitement subside in his veins.

“But don’t you think it’s a good sign?” he said afterward to Cecile. “I mean, Monsieur Philippe can’t be too angry, then, after all.” She was not so sure.

The clock ticked on the mantel. The rain beat on the panes.

On the Feast of All Saints when the Creoles crowded the cemeteries, bustling among the high peristyled tombs with their bouquets of flowers, tête-à-tête to speak of this departed uncle, that poor dear dead
cousine
, Cecile went alone to St. Louis, late, to tend with Zazu the graves of two infants who had died long years ago before Marcel was born.

Finding the cottage dark and cold in her absence, he lit the fire, and set a warm lamp in the window, sitting back to listen to the rain. Then came her tread on the path, and entering the parlor alone she covered her face with her hands.

Marcel by the shadows of the grate laid the poker by and took her in his arms.

He was the man again in her life as he had been before—never the lover, of course—but the man.

It was obvious to all that he had regained some old sense of proportion, the clouds were gone from his face, and added to that easy courtesy which had so beguiled them when he was a child was a new maturity, a quiet strength. He was not the wanderer and the truant any longer, and presiding at the head of the table each night he kept the conversation quick, sometimes delighting his aunts with teasing witticisms, giving them interesting bits of the daily news. Of course they themselves never read the papers, they did not consider it very nice for a lady to read the papers, so he had for them all that distinct aura of a man who knew the world.

It was surprising to Marcel, then, that when they began to talk of the opera season, of Marie’s presentation there, they did not expect him to go.

He had not forgotten that dazzling experience of the season before,
and when they began to laugh at him, he felt a sudden sharp pain.

“You’re just a baby,” said Tante Louisa playfully, “what do you know about the opera? Why, young men go to sleep in the opera, women have to pinch their husbands to keep them awake.”

“But no, I want to go…” he insisted.

“This is foolishness, really,” Cecile interjected. They had finished supper, and she gestured for Lisette to take the plates. “Marcel loves music, what does Marie know about music?”

Tante Colette laughed lightly, “Cecile, she’s to be seen,
chère,”
she explained.
“Mon Dieu
, you know perfectly well she’s to be seen!”

“She’s too young for all that,” Cecile said flatly. “Marcel if you wish to go, I am sure that it can be arranged. Monsieur Rudolphe can arrange it…”

“Cecile,” Louisa said gently, “we were talking about Marie. She’ll have to have a dress made and…”

“Oh, talk, talk, talk about Marie. You’re turning her head with all your ribbons and taffetas and pearls. I never heard such foolishness in my life.” And then, bending forward, her eyes narrow, she demanded of Marie:

“Do you
want
to attend this opera! Is this what you want, all this nonsense? Well?”

Marie’s face tensed. Then the color rose in her cheeks as she looked at her mother. Marcel could see that she was unable to speak, yet she did not look away as she did so often. And as she at last moved her lips to form some words, Louisa spoke.

“Don’t leave it up to her, Cecile, why it’s all arranged.” And then lowering her voice to project an utter seriousness, she confided, “Cecile, the best families wouldn’t consider not presenting their girls. You should have seen Giselle Lermontant the year she was fourteen, and Gabriella Roget last year.”

“You don’t have to talk to me as if I were a fool,” Cecile said coldly. “We do not do everything that other people do. It’s time and money wasted, if you ask me.”

“Well, it seems to me that time and money are two commodities which you have,” Louisa answered.

Colette who had been watching all this as closely as Marcel was watching it, leaned over to Marie and asked her to look in the bedroom for a dress that had to be mended. “Go on,” she whispered, “I want to talk to your mother.”

“You make too much fuss over that girl,” Cecile was saying as Marie quietly left, “you turn her head.”

“Maman,” Marcel said gently. “I doubt that anyone could turn Marie’s head.”

“You keep an eye on your friends, Monsieur,” Cecile said sharply.
“Imagine that Augustin Dumanoir coming here, asking if he might call! And Suzette Lermontant asking if Richard might walk with Marie to church…”

“They are all asking, and I told them at the birthday party that after the opera…” Louisa said.

“You had no right to tell them!” Cecile said. Her voice had become shrill. A silence fell over the little group. At some point this had passed from the usual suppertime argument to something unpleasant. Colette’s face was darkly angry as she studied Cecile. Louisa, however, in a patient manner, went on.

“I had to tell them something,
chère
, because you were not there!” she said. “She is the belle of this season,
chère
, don’t you realize that? And Richard and all those boys…”

“Of all the foolishness, that boy doesn’t come to this house to see her, he comes to see Marcel, he’s Marcel’s closest friend, why they’ve been friends for years, he doesn’t pay any mind to her, he’s seen her since she was that high.”

“Maman,” Marcel said, “perhaps Marie is old enough, perhaps she would like…”

“Marie, Marie, Marie!” Cecile wrung her hands. “I should think you’d be sick of hearing it, Monsieur, so much talk of your sister as if she were a queen! I detest all this talk at supper.”

“Seems to me you detest it anytime,” Colette said in a low voice. “Seems to me you never want to talk about that girl, whether it’s her birthday or the opera, or First Communion…seems to me…”

Cecile’s face was changing. “You think you can arrange these matters without my consent, do you?” she said, her voice savage, and low.

“Somebody has to arrange them,” said Colette.

“You think you can coif and drape that girl as if she were a princess, parading her back and forth for your own vanity, that’s what it is, your own vanity, you think you can treat her like royalty with her brother in the shadow! Well, I tell you I won’t have it, I won’t listen to this anymore, I won’t see her preened and strutting like a peacock, her brother goes with her to that opera, he has a seat in the front row of that box, or by God your little marionette doesn’t go.”

Both the aunts were silent.

Colette was the first to rise, gathering her shawl up quickly, and putting on her gloves. Louisa murmured some brief words about the time, and the likelihood of rain, they ought to be going.

“Maman, I didn’t mean for there to be a quarrel,” Marcel whispered. “I can go to the opera with Richard, perhaps…I’ll see.”

“You can go with us, baby,” Louisa said, “Of course, you can, why we’ve arranged for an entire box, you can sit with us.” She slipped her
cape over her shoulders adjusting the hood. Colette had paused at the door. She was looking back at Cecile with that same dark expression that had marked her face throughout the conversation when she had been quiet.

“You’re jealous of your daughter,” she said suddenly. All heads turned to her. Marcel was stunned.

“You’re jealous of her,” Colette said again, “you’ve been jealous of her since the day she was born.”

Cecile rose, upsetting the coffee cups. “You dare say this to me, in my own house!”

“You’re unnatural,” Colette said, and turning went out the door.

Cecile, in a paroxysm of rage turned her back as Louisa followed, and Marcel took his mother gently in his arms.

“Maman,” he said, “sit down, this is just an argument, sit down.”

She was trembling, and struggling to get out her handkerchief pressed it to her nose. As she settled again in the chair, she reached out for his lapels and pulled him down opposite her.

“I’m going to make things right with Monsieur Philippe,” she said in a low, choking voice, “I’ll explain to him I was distraught when I wrote the note, that I missed him. He’ll understand. There’s so much that passes between that man and myself, you don’t know,” she forced a strange glittering smile, her hand stroking his lapel. “No one knows, only the woman knows who is alone with the man. It will be all right.” Her voice became rapid, a little feverish, and with both hands now she held the lapels of his coat. “You know, once Monsieur Philippe told me that he’d write letters for you, letters to gentlemen in Paris that he knew, why letters of introduction so you could be received. You know when I saw you in the crib, when they first brought you to me, I made a vow, I told Monsieur Philippe that vow, he promised me, I swear to you, no one is going to break that promise…”

“Maman,” he took her hands and clasping them tightly laid them on the table. “You mustn’t worry,” he said. “I’m not in Marie’s shadow.”

She let out a sharp sigh, and running her hand up through the tight hair over her temple seemed to be scratching at a deep pain.

“Maman, I never even think of her, I’m ashamed to say it,” he went on. “Why, I neglect her. We all neglect her. Why, I’ve never even thought of boys wanting to call on Marie, until Richard…Why, it’s only Tante Louisa and Tante Colette who make a fuss over her, and even then it’s not so much, not really. Why, when I think of Ma’ame Celestina with that lovely idiot, Gabriella,” he uttered a low laugh. “And Dolly Rose, the way her mother used to parade her, never the same dress twice…”

Cecile drew him close, her hand clasped to the back of his neck.
She smoothed his cheek, his hair. “It’s vanity, all of it,” she said. “They’ve never had children, either of them, and now they want to pretend she’s their daughter, that gives them pleasure to show her off in that box…” She kissed him.

“Well, why not, Maman, is it such a bad thing? I feel sorry for Marie, sometimes. I have the strangest feeling that none of this makes Marie happy, I have an awful feeling at times, that Marie has never been happy at all.”

This had stopped her. She was looking into his eyes as if straining to find something there, and then with a little shake of her head, she drew back. But then she took his hands in hers and held them together. That strange glittering smile came back to her, her mouth twisting down at the ends and when she spoke, her voice was low and acidic and very unlike her.

“Don’t you understand that your sister is beautiful!” she whispered. Her lips went back into a grimace, and her face appeared malignant, losing all semblance to that of the woman he knew. “Your sister turns every head when she passes, can’t you see that?” she hissed. “Your sister is the kind of woman who drives men mad.” She was frightening him. There was venom in her eyes and in her voice. “Your sister has always…and everywhere…and at all times…passed for white!”

He was conscious of lowering his eyes, and of a peculiar blurring of his vision, her words reverberating in his ears, as if he had been daydreaming and had only heard her when the words at last penetrated his dreams. Yet he had not been daydreaming at all. “Well,” he murmured softly. He was looking at his hand. Her nails were cutting into his hand but she didn’t know it, and he was feeling a slight sharp pain. “That’s the way it turned out, Maman,” he said. He meant to shrug his shoulders. “It just turned out that way.”