Heaven and Hell (99 page)

Fenway. I don't know any Mrs. Fenway."

"Why, my dear, you most certainly do," said the woman in the barouche. She wore mauve gloves, and the little finger of each was elevated slightly. Her hands were graceful as floating birds as she lifted the veil.

II

"I never expected to lay eyes on you, Cousin Charles." Ashton stood on the coarse grass near the whitewashed house. Spite bubbled in her dark eyes. "Wherever have you been all these years? You look ever so much older."

He could say the same about her. Still, her beauty remained undimmed, almost perfect. Not much of a surprise in that. He could remember her long ago, avoiding the sunshine, fussing for hours, alone, before she appeared in a new party dress. Her looks had always counted for a lot. Evidently they still did. It was her eyes that gave away the changes wrought by time. The haughty, hard eyes. Where had she been?

What had she seen and done?

"What do you want here?" Madeline asked, still recovering from the moment the rising veil had revealed the visitor's face.

"Mont Royal is all," Ashton said with a vicious flirt of her eyes.

"It's my family's land. Main land. It isn't yours. Your husband, my Crossing Jordan 631

brother, drove me off the property. I always swore I'd come back and do the same. Or worse."

"Ashton, for God's sake--Orry's been dead over four years."

"So I was informed. Pity." She stepped up on the worn pine stoop, peered inside the house. "How primitive. One of the first things I must do is install a Fenway piano in the new house. You find them in all the best parlors."

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Willa caught her breath. "That's what I was trying to remember.

Fenway pianos. Sam bought a Fenway for the theater last Christmas."

"Yes, that's my husband's company. And it's expanding ever so fast. Success breeds success, don't you agree?"

Madeline looked dazed. As Charles took the blue-covered document from her, she said, "God, what is happening?"

"Why, it couldn't be simpler, dear," Ashton trilled. "I have bought this entire place."

"From Cooper?" Madeline asked, disbelieving.

"Yes indeed, and you needn't sound so surprised, either. It's true that I made the purchase anonymously. I mean, I didn't appear for the closing, or at any other time, so my dear brother doesn't know that Mrs.

Willard Fenway is also his not-so-loving sister. I suppose he'll be a mite exercised about the deception when he finds out. But I don't imagine he'll regret the sale. He got a fine price, and besides, I understand he's been very unhappy about your stewardship here--and your politics. You refused to behave like a respectable white woman. Instead, you flaunted your nigger school. Well, the only way Cooper could get out of his bargain with you was to sell. I'm told he also had another good reason for doing it. You helped his daughter run away and marry some carpetbagger.

But then you and Orry always were a crazy, self-righteous pair. Mr. Dawkins says Charleston can't wait to see you gone. Neither can I."

In the silence, the hatred was almost palpable. Ashton swept her eyes across the exposed beams of the new house. "Willard and I have discus'sed a winter residence in a climate gentler than Chicago's. This should be ideal."

Willa unthinkingly dug her fingers into Charles's arm. She didn't understand all the circumstances behind the confrontation but she recognized its dire nature. There was noise from the foot of the slope leading down to the Ashley: Gus, chasing half a dozen geese kept by a freedman's wife.

Madeline took a long breath. "Ashton, I don't have any home but this one. I beg you--"

"Beg? How charming. How very quaint. It must be a new experience for you."

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Rage colored Madeline's face suddenly. "You don't know what you've taken on, buying this plantation. Mont Royal isn't what it was when you lived here--a lazy, sheltered domain. It's a complex business.

Part of a hard, complex world. We don't grow any more rice than we can eat. We're entirely dependent on the sawmill, and on the developers of the phosphate fields. Almost forty men live here. Free men, with families. They work so they can have homes, and schooling for their children. You don't want the responsibility for them--"

"Madeline, sweet, I've already bought Mont Royal. So all of this is just chatter."

"No. You've got to take care of those people."

"A bunch of niggers? Oh, fie," Ashton said, shrugging. "The black Republicans just stirred them up so they want what they aren't fit to have. My poor first husband James wasn't much, but he was right about the worthlessness of niggers. They'll get no special favors from me. They'll work all day for a cup and a crust or they can hike down the road and take their trashy litters of young with them."

"Ashton--please. Show a little humanity."

"Humanity?" she shrilled, no longer smiling. "Oh, I'm afraid not. My humanity went flying away the day your damn husband banished me from my birthplace. I swore I'd come back, and I have. Now it's you who's banished--and damned good riddance, too."

Silence again. Madeline stared at Charles, who raised the blue covered eviction order, which he'd examined for the proper signatures of court officials. They were all there.

"There's no date on this," he said. "How long have we got?"

Sweet-eyed, Ashton purred, "Why, let's see. I do want to take possession before I return to Chicago, which I must do soon. My husband Willard's an older gentleman, you see. He counts on me for companionship.

Of course I don't want to be uncharitable. I do consider myself a sensitive Christian person. Today is--" She sighed. "Mr.

Herrington?"

"It's Friday, Mrs. Fenway. All day. Yes, ma'am."

"Then shall we say this same hour next Friday? I'll expect you and all your, ah, boarders to be packed for departure at that time, Madeline.

'Less, of course, you choose to stay and work for me like any other nigger."

Madeline's head tilted down fiercely. Charles stepped over to restrain her. Ashton's flawless smile stunned him again. He wondered why evil left some of its best disciples so unmarked.

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"Friday," Ashton said.

In the act of returning to the barouche, she noticed Gus, who had Crossing Jordan 633

come loping up the lawn, curious about the visitors. The boy stood beside a great live oak whose shadow darkened his scarred cheek.

"My, what an ugly little boy. Yours, Cousin Charles?"

She didn't wait for an answer.

Madeline gazed at the unfinished house. Tears of defeat welled and glistened in her eyes. "Orry, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry that I've destroyed everything."

She stood there quite a long time, lost in pain and self-recrimination.

Charles spoke her name. She didn't seem to hear. He spoke again.

Again there was no response. He raised his voice, and that way managed to penetrate her tearful state of shock.

When she heard what he proposed, she asked why. "We don't even know where he is. If we did, how could he help us? The documents look completely legal. The sale can't be undone."

Harshly, he said, "Madeline, I don't think you understand. You are going to be turned out one week from today. How much money do you have in your bank account?"

"Only a few dollars. I've had to pay the builders and Mr. Lee, the architect, a sizable monthly draw. It's taken almost all my income--"

"And there'll be no more now that Ashton holds title to the plantation.

I'm going to send the message. To ask for a place where you can stay till you recover from this. I've no place to offer you. Cooper's house is closed to you--"

"My God, do you think I'd ask him for anything, after what he's done to us?"

"Granted, granted. All I'm saying is, at a time like this you've no choice but to call on friends."

"Charles, I won't beg!"

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"Yes, that's exactly what we must do. I have a feeling that if you'd done it long ago, things might be different. Now there's no other choice."

She thought his idea was too humiliating to be borne. But she was emotionally drained, and she didn't argue any further. An hour later Grant rode out on a mule, leaving a dust trail. In his ragged pants he carried money and the draft of a telegraph message addressed to George Hazard in Lehigh Station, Pennsylvania.

67

There came a day when everything was different. He knew it the moment he woke.

The enormous bedroom was no different. The nymphs and cherubs frolicking on the ceiling were no different. The villa was no different, nor the morning fragrances of hot coffee, a pan of brioches baked before dawn, the fresh-cut flowers in the hallway vases. What was different was George himself. He didn't feel good, exactly. Physically, he was about the same: the usual touch of morning stomach from the red wine he loved and refused to give up. No, it was a subtler thing, but nevertheless quite real. He felt healed.

Lying there, he remembered a time of annoying discomfort before the war. Six or seven months of aggravation he thought would last forever.

He'd broken a tooth, later extracted. Before the extraction, the tooth sat in his lower jaw like a forbidden love, one particular edge constantly tempting his tongue. He couldn't keep his tongue from that edge, so his tongue always hurt, and occasionally bled. Constance repeatedly urged him to have the tooth taken out. He was busy, or simply bull-headed, and didn't. His tongue hurt on the Fourth of July, and it still hurt on Christmas Day. That day, his disgust got the better of habit.

He paid attention to keeping his tongue away from the tooth until he had it taken out in the first week of the new year. Then one morning in the winter--it was around the time Lincoln was attempting to reprovision Fort Sumter, where Billy was besieged as part of Bob Anderson's small engineer garrison--he woke up and everything was different. A healing lump remained on his tongue, but it didn't hurt any longer.

He tugged the bell rope and remained in bed until his valet knocked and entered with the silver coffee service and a brioche. He felt relaxed, comfortable, and full of memories of his two children, whom he hadn't 634

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seen since the preceding summer. Painted on the canvas of his imagination there appeared a great sweep of mountains above Lehigh Station, where the laurel bloomed. He longed to walk those green heights again.

To survey the town, Belvedere, and Hazard's: the proud sum of what he had made of his life.

A pang of guilt troubled him. He didn't want to be too carefree, and thereby disloyal to the memory of Constance, and the ghastly death she'd suffered because of him. The telegraph message about Bent's execution, forwarded in a pouch by Wotherspoon, didn't relieve him of his obligation to mourn her. Still, this morning there was--well, a shifted emphasis. He didn't want to live in isolation in Switzerland forever.

That was a clear, new thought.

His valet said in elegant French, "Mr. Hazard, I remind you that the gentleman who sent his card last week arrives this morning. Ten o'clock."

"Thank you," George said. The black coffee in the bone china cup tasted fine; the cook made it strong. He was curious about the man who'd sent his card, a journalist from Paris whom he'd never met. What did the man want? He found himself looking forward to finding out.

He climbed from bed and padded barefoot to the small writing desk. He let down the front. There, pigeonholed, lay the flimsy yellow sheet carrying Charles's message sent from Leaven worth. He knew the text by heart. It had gratified him when he first read it; even inspired a certain vicious thrill as he imagined Bent's last hours. He was past that now. He walked to the small hearth of green marble where his valet always laid a fire on cool mornings like this. He dropped the yellow flimsy into the flames.

Everything was different.

His visitor, a man of about sixty, made a poor first impression because of his untidiness. Dried mud covered his cavalry boots. He wore a military overcoat with a high collar from which the identifying insignia had been torn off. He'd cut the fingers out of both his mittens.

His hair was long, hiding his ears and tangling into a chest-length beard.

He had a portmanteau full of books and sheets of paper covered with notes written horizontally, vertically, obliquely, and continuously along
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the edges. The man's card had previously introduced him as M. Marcel Levie, Paris, political correspondent for La Liberte.

George quickly saw that his guest was neither crazy nor as careless as he looked. His appearance was a pose, probably to give him an aura of liberated intelligence. He was quick to respond when George asked about refreshment. Although it was only five past ten, Levie said he would have a cognac.

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They sat on the sunny terrace above the lake in the blue softness of the morning. George sipped his second and last coffee. M. Levie said, "It came to the attention of our group in Paris that the wealthy American steelmaker Georges Hazard was on holiday in Switzerland."

"Not exactly a holiday," George said, explaining no further.

"I was delegated to approach you and, if possible, develop your enthusiasm for a scheme."

"Monsieur Levie, I am not actively managing my company right now. Therefore I'm not in a position to make business investments. I'm sorry you made the trip for nothing."

"Oh, but I didn't. This has nothing to do with business except in the broadest sense. I am here at the behest of our chairman, Professor Edouard-Rene Lefebvre de Laboulaye." George frowned, prompting the journalist to repeat the name. It teased George with a sense of familiarity, but he didn't know where he'd heard it before.

"Among his many accomplishments, the professor chaired the French Anti-Slave Society for many years. He is a great admirer of American liberty. On the night a few years ago when he conceived the scheme at his home in Glatingy, I recall his zestful conversation, his enthusiasm, because we had just been informed that Lee was defeated."