Feast of All Saints (59 page)

But these considerations barely entered Vincent’s mind. She was a human being and Vincent had been horrified by this brutality and his subsequent discovery that without benefit of ceremony her body and that of the infant had been hauled away in a filthy cart. This struck to the heart of the very thing that terrified him about the entire system of slavery, the utter callousness and inhumanity which it bred in the worst of those in command. And clearly this overseer, having spent his early years on the vast industrial sugar plantations of the state, had learned to work his chattels as if they were mules. He had to be taught what was expected here! These were Creole Negroes, and they were the “people”
of Bontemps
.

Yet none of this had been mentioned by Philippe to Vincent, not even in passing, and Vincent’s antipathy for Philippe, which had grown so strong in its early years of dormancy had been fanned to a flame.

And of course there was the vexing matter of Aglae who was beside herself with her maids. Someone (someone!) had senselessly stolen her little antique lap
secrétaire
, a treasure left her by Grandmère Antoinette. It seemed hardly worth pawning, yet it had broken her heart. That Vincent could say nothing about this infuriated him, he had seen it in the parlor of the house he had bought for Anna Bella, he had no doubt who had given it to Marie Ste. Marie.

And had he not grown up under his brother-in-law’s gentle authority, always the recipient of extraordinary kindness, he might have been less thoroughly confused. He respected Philippe, but had the long months in Europe given him a sharper perspective, a man’s perspective? Had he been blind? Now all this was too momentous for a mention; were he to drag it out between himself and his brother-in-law, he could not have gone on living under the same roof. And of course he had no intention of leaving
Bontemps
. It was his father’s house. And he was not to dream of leaving Aglae who wept softly over the stolen heirloom, “It’s always little things, your father’s gold watch, books that he treasured, and now that little
secrétaire
. Why don’t they steal my jewels for the love of heaven? And who is behind it?” In her desperation she ran off the names of the black girls she’d reared from childhood. Vincent glowered at the fire.

But there was the master of the house, night after night, presiding at the supper table, lavishing on Vincent a splendid allowance both for his private needs and that new “petit household” sensing not the slightest hostility from wife and brother-in-law, or if he did, giving no sign. He was now taking two fifths of red wine with his dinner, and brandy afterwards without fail.

No, Vincent could not have told Anna Bella any of it, he could not have told anyone. Duty bound him to silence even as he calculated,
becoming aware in himself of some vague but persistent ambition of which he was not entirely proud. He had long known he would not divide his inheritance from the rest of the plantation, so early marriage was quite far from his mind.
Bontemps
was a grand enterprise which must continue as Magloire had designed it, to provide income for his sisters, their children, a life for them all.
Bontemps
would always be
Bontemps
, and for now Vincent was just a part of it, content to instruct his young nieces and nephews, to groom young Leon, Philippe’s eldest, for the inevitable trip abroad. Yet he would continue to learn all that he could about the cultivation and management of this sprawling land. He would watch this new overseer, and break him if possible, he knew more of the workings of
Bontemps
than anyone now that old Langlois had died. And Philippe with a careless shrug tipped the neck of the bottle to the glass, murmuring
“eh bien.”

But yet another burden, bittersweet and baffling weighed on his soul. Much as he had been drawn to Anna Bella in the beginning, he was amazed to discover that he loved her now far more than he should. He had never really thought to find virtue in this alliance, nobility, or anything particularly fine. It was the satiation of passion that he wanted, and some companionship in its least sordid form. And finding Anna Bella so sweet and pure, he had made the mistake of thinking her a simpleton of sorts. Actually, he’d thought Anna Bella was a fool.

He believed all Negroes were fools.

Not that God had made them inferior so much as they had somehow developed into a childlike race foolish enough to submit to the yoke of slavery. Born to the regimen of the immense plantation, he had judged them by their chains. He knew nothing of the horrors of the Middle Passage from Africa, the utter dehumanizing brutality of the coffles and the auction blocks, and he did not even fully appreciate the extent of the tyrannical efficiency developed by his own father on his own land. And he had never guessed that those slaves closest to him, having long ago come to terms with their condition—that is, choosing to accept it rather than run the miseries of a fugitive’s existence—knew that he believed them to be fools, and shrewdly chose not to disillusion him in the slightest. After all, he was benevolent when not challenged: they could do a lot worse.

Of course the
gens de couleur
posed a special problem and always had. Well bred and educated, they often invited optimism. Vincent, in fact, had only just installed on his plantation a refining process invented by a brilliant young man of color, Norbert Rillieux. But how could one account for their living here generation after generation in a country and a region that did not want them, that would never permit them equality, and sought ultimately to crush their heads? How could anyone as clever as Christophe come back to this place declaring
sentimentally that it was his home? And still smarting from that humiliating encounter with him of the summer before, Vincent could not think of him without anger, embarrassment, and scorn.

But the women of color, they were more pathetic really as women are always more pathetic, not the movers or the changers but merely the victims. Better that they be sweet, accepting, and unobtrusively pragmatic as women always are.

But quick-witted? Profound? Possessed of any real substance of mind or character? He had never expected it.

And Anna Bella had disillusioned him at once.

He had perceived in no time that her sweet passivity was not indicative of a lack of intellect or a lack of character at all. And far from being some sow’s ear fashioned into a Creole belle, she was a lady to the tips of her fingers, having imbibed the principles of gentility for the very best and most profound of reasons: that gentility makes life graceful and good. That gentility depends in its truest sense upon respect for others, love of others, it is the daily practice of charity refracted into manners with the most profound moral principle at its core.

She was admirable, this simple and pretty girl who did not comprehend the scope of her own passionate appeal; and day in and day out she impressed him more and more with her candor, clear intelligence, and the very gracefulness of mind and manner that he might have wanted in his wife.

Yes, that was the worst of it, it was all that he might have wanted in a wife. In fact she was all that he could
ever
have wanted in a wife, and his happiness, despite himself and the gloomy exterior he often offered to her, knew no bounds.

When she had told him in the parlor that she was with child, he had one tormenting thought. Had she been white and all else been equal, he would have flaunted the old tradition and brought her, orphan that she was, to
Bontemps
. But she was not white. And this was unthinkable. So that the very extent of his love for her, its peculiar profound composition, seeming as it did far more appropriate to the state of matrimony, weighed on his soul.
What had he done?
He could barely endure being away from her, he needed her, how would he ever give her up?

Eh bien
, what had it been, half a year? He could pray that it would pass. But he knew theirs was a perfect match, it would not.

So pounding out the front gate to find Marcel Ste. Marie on this morning in May, he had only one desire, to obtain for her something that she wanted, some companionship to which he felt she was entitled. He shuddered at all thoughts of a lover’s possessiveness and a colored mistress’s subservience. He wanted this woman whom he
loved to receive her friends with dignity, to have some measure of the full life he possessed. If someone had told him then that he had another idea in mind, he would have denied it. He did not understand the full character of his own fears.

It was only when he reached the Rue Ste. Anne, that he became aware that he had no immediate or practical plan. Certainly he would not enter the gate of that little cottage. He moved on. But a shock visited him as he headed towards the Hotel St. Louis. He and Philippe had long honored an understanding that they would not leave
Bontemps
at the same time. Yet there was his brother-in-law walking slowly toward the corner of the Rue Ste. Anne and the Rue Dauphine with Felix, the coachman, who carried bottles of wine, and gaily wrapped parcels in his arms.

“Bonsoir, Monsieur,” Vincent gave Philippe a slight, courteous bow.

“Eh bien
,
mon fils,”
said Philippe wearily. “I couldn’t wait on you forever, besides I lost at cards to your cousin, and he’s told his wife, and she’s told your sister, and these days I never have any peace at all.” But then he drew him close, affectionately, “You’ll hurry back, won’t you? I knew you would be back today or tomorrow, hmmmm?”

“I was on my way back now,” Vincent said with his usual formality. He would have liked to point out that his brother-in-law had been absent only last week for several days, and the week before, and the week before. Indeed, it seemed Philippe had spent the better part of spring in New Orleans, it seemed they were never together at
Bontemps
at all.

“No, truly, listen to me,” Philippe said confidentially as if they were the best of friends. “It’s Zazu, the black woman I gave them years ago,” he gestured vaguely toward the distant cottage with its banana trees pressing on the white picket fence. “She’s failing, badly. I don’t want to be gone too long until we see if the hot weather will bring some improvement, she was born on my father’s land.”

Vincent nodded when Philippe uttered a short laugh. He pointed with a quick unobtrusive gesture toward a bright blond-haired quadroon boy who was coming down the opposite side of the street. “Can you believe that is Ti Marcel? He’s grown an inch a month for the past year.”

Vincent’s face flamed with a sudden and jarring humiliation. He saw that the boy, having averted his brilliant blue eyes, was walking on as if he had not seen the two men. A loathing came over Vincent, not for the immaculate young quadroon who passed them as if he did not know them, but for all of this, his brother-in-law smiling covertly at his bastard son, Felix with that cache of presents, Felix who would be driving Aglae to Mass next Sunday, and the proximity of that little
cottage, and his own position here, dallying with all of this around him in this street. A revulsion gripped him so that he was hardly conscious of his perfunctory farewells, and walking fast for the hotel he did not look back.

It was only when the steamboat was at last churning upriver that, standing on the deck he resolved not to keep his promise to Anna Bella, that he realized he could not bring himself to speak with Philippe’s bastard, Marcel. He did not want the Ste. Marie family to touch his Anna Bella, and he would have liked to believe that she was not of their world. But she
was
of their world! He had only to think of that little
secrétaire
, Aglae’s
secrétaire
, which sat so proudly on Anna Bella’s bedside table to realize that of course it was Anna Bella’s world, too. And as dusk obscured the banks of the river, and the waters beneath him turned the color of the darkening sky, he realized more keenly the source of his pain.
He
did not wish to be connected with that world.

With Dolly Rose he had had no sense of it, knew nothing really of those who surrounded her, and his pale and lovely daughter had been for him a creature fixed in some complex and ornate frame, painfully separated from him, but untouched by anyone else. And even so, her death had been a reprieve.

But this was over, Anna Bella was pregnant, he had surrounded her with a house which was his home. And in so many months she would bear a child who might very well be a boy-child, a child who would become a young man. And that young man would be half-caste, just as the blond-haired son of Philippe’s was a half-caste, and that young man would be Vincent’s son!

His youthful adventure with Dolly had never struck him with this curious intensity, he had never seen its implications, he had never understood. The thought of the boy-child made him positively shudder, and he wrapped his cape about him vainly, turning his back to the river wind. Pray it were a girl. But what did this really matter! He had made the same tragic mistake again. He had forged a chain for himself linking him inextricably to that dark society which was all too real to him now, and which for all the distinction and appealing rhythm of those words,
gens de couleur libre
, was the Negro world.

By the time the plank dropped at
Bontemps
, he had resolved to give Anna Bella only a simple explanation. He did not wish to speak to her friend, Marcel Ste. Marie. Sensitive and clever as she had always been, she would not question him, and might quite likely even understand. Surely she knew of the connection. And it was the only promise to her he’d ever broken. She would forget in time.

And as soon as he set foot on his own land he put it out of his mind.

Old Nonc Pierre was waiting with two young black boys to take his bags, and the old slave led the way with a lantern, saying the usual, that he was glad to welcome the young master home.

“Things are well, then?” Vincent murmured, more out of courtesy than anything else. A sense of security slowly thawed his depression as they moved toward the warm lights of the big house.