Feast of All Saints (48 page)

“Tell her I’m coming, go on…I’ll be right down.” he said to Lisette as he hurried back into the room.

“Down! Where am I going to put her if you go down!” Lisette demanded. “Get your clothes on so she can come up here! What’s she doing here, anyway, at this hour? Michie Philippe’s asleep down there! What’s your mother going to think if she sees her out there!”

“All right, all right,” he stammered as he dressed hurriedly and Lisette bent to make the fire.

Anna Bella slipped off her cape as soon as she entered, not waiting for anyone to help her, and laid it neatly over the back of the chair. She sat down, in front of the desk, though he offered her the more comfortable armchair by the grate, and when he asked her to have coffee she merely shook her head.

Lisette, returning with a full pot and hot milk, urged it on her anyway, and set the cup by her side.

“Would you leave me alone with him, please?” Anna Bella asked. Lisette studied her for a moment, obviously surprised, and then went away.

The room was warming. Anna Bella, removing her gloves carefully as though they were a peeling, stretched her small dimpled hand toward the hearth.

“What is it, what’s happened?” Marcel said.

Her face had relaxed only slightly.

“I thought you were my friend, Marcel,” she said. Her voice was calm, devoid of drama. “I thought we would be friends all of our lives.”

He felt an odd catch in his throat, had the sensation that if he tried to speak nothing would come out. “We are friends,” the voice was weak. “We will always be friends,” he said.

“That’s foolishness and you know it!” she said.

“Anna Bella, have you forgotten what happened last night when I stepped into the box?”

“Don’t you give me that foolishness, Marcel!” She glared at him, her teeth biting into her lip. “This has got nothing to do with Madame Elsie, you aren’t scared of Madame Elsie, there’re a hundred times you could have come to see me, when she’s at supper, when she’s asleep…”

“Asleep, asleep!” he could feel his face growing hot, his voice still maddeningly unsteady. “And have what happened that night in Christophe’s house happen again…”

She meant to answer, but it seemed her voice broke. She turned away from him struggling violently, her chin quivering, her hand shielding her eyes.

“Anna Bella, I can’t see you anymore,” he said desperately. “It’s past between us, don’t you understand? It’s just the way it happened, Anna Bella!” he said. If she began to cry, he was afraid that he would cry too. “What do you want of me, Anna Bella!” he demanded. “What can I do!”

“Talk to me, Marcel!” she burst out, the tears clinging to her lashes. “You can care about me, what happens to me, I’m your friend!”

“I do care,” he said. “But what can I do? You don’t know what you’re asking of me…You’re a young woman now, you shouldn’t
even be here with me alone in this room! You’re to be chaperoned, guarded…”

“No!” she shook her head. Her lashes were matted with the tears that were coursing down her cheeks. “Don’t you tell me all that, I don’t believe it, I won’t believe that what we had, you and me, what we had between us is just gone like that! Marcel, look at me. We cared about each other, it was like we were kin. And now you’re trying to tell…tell me…” she stammered, her hands out, her eyes glancing helplessly at her own breasts, her skirts…“You’re trying to tell me that because we’re grown-up, all that’s gone? I don’t believe that! If that’s what growing up is, I don’t ever want to grow up, I just want to be a child all my life!” Again her hand went to shield her eyes. Her head rested in her hand, and she shook with her choked sobs. Her voice came again, weak, pleading, “Don’t you remember how it was between you and me?” She looked up at him, her head bent, limp on her neck. “You were with me the night Jean Jacques died, don’t you remember? We were always together…” the voice just died away.

He was looking at her through a film of tears. It was terrible to watch her cry, to hear it, to see it, the way that she gave herself to it so completely, so defenselessly. He had seen it before, but never had it been so important, and never had it been over something that they could not share. She exaggerated nothing in what she’d said. If anything, she had not touched the heart of it, that they had understood each other, known each other as very few people in this world ever did. There was no way he could tell her how he had missed all of it, how he had missed not only her but the person he had been when he was with her.

“Don’t you tell me that growing up can destroy that!” she whispered now through her tears. “It’s just not true, it’s just not fair.” She was dabbing at the flow from her eyes. “What happened that night in Michie Christophe’s house…that was my fault…” she whimpered. “I did it!”

“Don’t say that!” he burst out. “Don’t ever say that!” He put his hands out, wanting to take her by the arms, but then he let his hands drop.

“But how can that count for so much?” she pleaded, her head inclining to the right as she looked up at him. “So much that it can just destroy everything else?”

“It’s not that,” he whispered. “You didn’t do it, don’t you understand? It would have happened sooner or later, sometime, anytime that we were alone. I did it! I could do it again. I can’t be alone with you without wanting to do it! I want to kiss you, take you in my arms now!” he said.

She was amazed. She was staring at him, the fingers of her right hand just touching her lips. “But why…” she started.

“Anna Bella, don’t you see? It can’t
be
between us!” he said. The tears were flowing for him now, too, he couldn’t stop them, but as he swallowed thickly, he began to speak to her in a man’s voice. “All this has happened too soon, it’s happened at the wrong time. I haven’t come into my own! I can’t court you, I can’t even tell you how I feel. And yet I am a man, a man with nothing, nothing but his dreams. You know what those dreams are, you’ve always known. Anna Bella, that is all I have.”

She did not understand, he could see that. She did not really see the point of this, but sensed only that he cared for her, he could see the warmth, the passion in her eyes.

“I’d wait for you,” she whispered, her voice heartbreaking, “if only, if only you would…”

“You don’t know what you’re saying!” he stepped back, his hands forming into fists. “Wait for me how long, ten years? Twenty? Anna Bella, it may be three years before I even leave for France, and God only knows when and if I’ll come back!” He shook his head. “What would you wait
for!”

A calm settled over her when he spoke these words. She was crying, but quietly, her face unspeakably sad. It was the old truth, she couldn’t claim surprise. But no real relief had come to her, she was merely defeated, and turning in the chair it was as if she were turning her crying inward, her sobs silent, her hands limp in her lap.

He was desperate watching her, and the solitary figure that she made amid her blue skirts, her shoulders heaving softly and those silent sobs. And then a wild thought came to him, that nothing mattered as long as they were alone in this room. To hell with everyone and everything outside of it, even the passage of time. He moved toward her, knowing that he would not hurt her, never hurt her, he wouldn’t leave her “ruined merchandise” for the fine white men of Madame Elsie’s or the husband she might ultimately love. But he would have her, somehow have her, at least just to kiss her, to abandon himself just for this little while to her arms. Improper, reckless, he did not care. Last night, perhaps it would have been impossible when maddened and aching he had broken Juliet’s door. But this was the quiet of the morning, she was here in the room with him, the gray mist nudging on the windows beyond. He would hold her close to his chest. They were entitled to this, were they not? Why in hell had he ever let anyone take it away?

But she did not see him move. She didn’t see him coming silently across the floor. And just as he reached for her, she said, alone in her thoughts and in a heavy voice, “There is this man.”

He stopped. The fingers that had almost touched her settled instead on the back of the chair.

“…he’s already spoken to Madame Elsie,” came the small,
weakened voice, “and with Old Captain dying upstate, well Old Captain’s not coming down here anymore. It’s just Madame Elsie now, so it’s all arranged. That is, if I say yes to him,” and then plaintively she looked up to Marcel.

She saw nothing but the blue eyes staring at her, saw the smooth tan face with its pale shadowing of gold, the mouth still, as if in wonder.

“…that is, if I say yes to him today. He’s from your father’s people, Vincent Dazincourt’s his name.”

Vincent, Vincent, it was like something grating, a scratching that persisted like some animal scraping at a door. Vincent, Vincent, the hawk-eyed white man who had risen that day in Madame Elsie’s parlor just as Marcel had touched the knob, oh, yes, he had to be, because he was the same “Vincent” with those black eyes who had come to Christophe’s with the silver walking stick:
Don’t make the same mistake again
.

“…a fine gentleman like your father,” she was saying, her eyes down, her forehead furrowed, her hand rubbing anxiously at her hair, “from his wife’s people…Dazincourt…his wife’s brother, actually…from
Bontemps.”

“Bontemps?”
he whispered.

“…well-to-do…” she was saying, “and young. Well, he has the front rooms up yonder, the upstairs suite. He and Madame Elsie they talked about it for hours already, and he wants my answer today.” Her eyes narrowed for a second as her teeth touched her lip. “It’s the old-fashioned way, she saw to that, I’d have my own house, and with Old Captain dying upstate, and Madame Elsie as old as she is…” Teardrops hung in her lashes as she lifted her eyes. The eyes were imploring and slowly she rose from the chair. “I have to tell him today…” she whispered, and then faltering, she burst out, “I don’t care anything about him!” She sobbed. “I don’t care anything about that man!”

“Then say no to him!” Marcel gasped furiously. “Tell him to leave you alone! My God, Anna Bella stand up to him, I can’t do this for you!” he declared.

“But why!” she was crying. “Why stand up to him? For what! Why!”

He turned his back on her, the fists he’d made striking one another painfully until finally he turned on the wall. He smashed his fist into the plaster. And smashed it again.

“Marcel,” she cried behind him. “Marcel.”

“No!” he said, turning. “No!” He was staring at her with wide eyes. “Anna Bella when I am eighteen years old I am leaving this place! I am going to France or so help me I will die. And nothing, nothing is
going to stop that, not you, not the devil in hell, not God. I will not tie that millstone around my neck, I will not do it!” he cried.

He could no longer see her, he was utterly blinded by his own tears. But he knew she was moving away from him, that she had turned like someone brutally wounded and she was reaching for the door. His tongue thickened and failed him when he tried to say her name, but he had hold of her, just in time, and with his arm slammed the door shut again.

And now he had buried his face in her neck and it was he who was crying uncontrollably while she caressed him, her timid hands stroking ever so slowly, her firm breasts crushed against him as he was wracked with his own sobs. And it was she who comforted him, let him lean upon her, she whose lips touched his cheek as her fingers touched the back of his neck.

“Listen to me…” he was whispering now as he caught his breath. “If he’s a gentleman, if you are sure…” he was stammering…“If it is what you want to do, if it is what’s best…but you musn’t do it foolishly, you musn’t do it in haste.” A slow sigh came out of him, shuddering, it was just what Richard had wanted, what Marie had told him to do,
be a brother to her
, preside over it, help in it, give his consent. “Are you listening to me?” he asked her. Resentfully and roughly he wiped away his own tears. “You don’t have to do it unless it’s arranged as you want it, do you understand!”

She was just crying, and she laid her head to one side against his shoulder so that he could feel the silken resilience of her bouffant hair.

“If only I were older, wiser…” he said. “Then I could…I could…”

“I know,” she whispered, “I know…”

“But you musn’t let that man force you, don’t you understand me, Anna Bella, swear to me, if he tries to force you, I’ll go to Monsieur Philippe, I’ll go to my mother, I swear to you…”

She let out a soft sound against him. Calming, slow. And then he felt her drawing back. He was dazed, and curiously tired. She had taken his face in both her hands and then she kissed him on the forehead.

“You know how it would have been,” he whispered, not looking at her but looking off to some distant and fabled boulevard where he saw carriages rolling over the Pont St.-Michel, where he saw the rose window of Notre Dame. “It would have been just a little house somewhere right in these streets…” He was alighting from one of those carriages, in his dream he wore a top hat, a sweeping cape. And in his dream he went into the foyer of Notre Dame. The bells sounded above, the people moved like ghosts beneath the immense arches, “and we would have had children, so many children, and I would have
…I would have been so bitter! Bitter that I had never gone, never seen…” In top hat and cape he turned again to the open church doors. Sun streamed on the square before him, streamed on the winding walled river Seine, streamed on the high roofs. The entire city of Paris gleamed in that sunlight as he stepped into the open air. “I just couldn’t give that up, Anna Bella, I just couldn’t. But if that man hurts you, I swear to God…!”

And again she was holding him, almost rocking him in her arms.

When he drew up, he felt sickened and still.

“I’ll never see you again, will I?” Anna Bella asked. “I mean, not really, not like this.”

He shook his head.

“You know I told him once that I would think on it, think on it, living with him, but only if after I could still see ‘my friend.’ He asked me who that friend was. I told him it was you. I told him all about you, ‘course, I never said who your father was. I wouldn’t say anything like that, him being well…he’s your father’s brother-in-law, I would never make that mistake. But I told him how it was with you and me, at least, at least the way that it used to be.”