Jubilee Trail (82 page)

The Brute knocked on the kitchen door of the saloon. Mickey let him in. Mickey said Miss Golnet and Miss Flinda had gone up to their rooms. The Brute told him to go to bed, and said he would tiptoe upstairs and make sure they were not frightened any more.

Taking a candle, the Brute went into the little hallway and climbed the stairs softly. He had never been up here before, but he knew the girls’ rooms were on this side of the loft. Looking around, he saw two closed doors. Everything was silent, but under one door was a line of light.

The Brute went to the door of the dark room and gave a gentle knock. There was no answer. Setting his candle on the floor he opened the door silently. This room, as he had guessed, was Garnet’s. She was in bed asleep. In his crib Stephen was asleep too, covered up cozily against the sharp night air. The Brute closed the door as silently as he had opened it, and picking up his candle he knocked on the door of the lighted room.

From inside he heard a startled movement. Florinda’s voice called, “Who is it?”

“It is me,” he said. “Nikolai Grigorievitch Karakozof the Handsome Brute.”

“Oh, rats,” Florinda said ungraciously. She opened the door, but stood in the opening so he could not go past her. She had undressed and put on a woolen robe over her nightgown, but she had not gone to bed. Behind her he could see the bed, the blue gingham cover not yet turned down. She was regarding him with surprise and annoyance. In an undertone that would not disturb Garnet she demanded, “Now what do you want?”

“I want to see if you are all right.”

“I’m quite all right, thank you,” Florinda said tersely. “Go on home.”

“I do not think you are quite all right,” said the Brute. “So I think I will stay with you a while.”

Florinda’s blue eyes flickered up and down him. “My little daffodil,” she said shortly, “I don’t need a nurse. Why don’t you go away and let me sleep?”

“Because you are not sleeping,” the Brute answered. She said nothing, and he went on. “Garnet is asleep. She is easy in her mind. But you are not easy in your mind. When a person’s nerves get tight in a knot, it is not good to be all by yourself.”

“You bubble-witted ape,” said Florinda. But she gave him a faint, affectionate little smile.

“It is cold up here,” said the Brute. “So I think we will go down to the kitchen, and we will stay there till you get warm.”

Florinda hesitated. But the room
was
cold, and the Brute picked up her candle firmly and handed it to her. She yielded. They went down to the kitchen. Florinda sat on the wall-bench while the Brute stirred up the ashes in the fireplace and put on some wood. When the flame leaped up Florinda started and looked down, avoiding the sight of it. The Brute came over to her and put his big hand on her shoulder.

“Florinda,” he said gently.

She did not look up.

The Brute spoke to her earnestly. “Florinda, you do not have to tell me why you went into a panic tonight. But I think it will be better if you do. It is not good to keep something boxed up inside you and try to pretend it is not there.”

Florinda shivered like a paper in the wind. The Brute’s steady voice was almost ruthless.

“You will have to see your hands,” he said, “as long as you live.”

Florinda caught her breath.

“Your gloves will hide the scars from other people,” said the Brute, “but they will never hide the scars from you.”

“Oh, damn you,” she said. “Damn you.” She jerked her shoulder out from his grasp, and still looking down she said, “All right. I’ll tell you. It was my child. My little girl. Her name was Arabella.”

The Brute started. He had not known she had ever had a child.

“That’s why I went into a panic,” said Florinda. She spoke shortly, almost angrily. “When the fire caught my dress, just for a minute I saw it again. Like it was happening right there. That’s why I screamed. Is that what you wanted to know?”

The Brute did not answer at once. When he did, his voice was low and full of compassion.

“No wonder you screamed. No wonder you cannot bear to think of it. An accident like that.”

Florinda doubled her fists into knots on her lap. “It wasn’t an accident,” she said through her teeth. “Brute, it wasn’t an accident. She was murdered.”

The Brute took both her hands in his, and held them. After a moment Florinda looked up at him, and he thought her eyes had a pitiful bewilderment, like the eyes of a child who has suffered a great deal of pain. He sat down by her on the bench.

“She was murdered by a drunken beast,” said Florinda. “I had married him because he said he would help me take care of her. I wanted somebody to help me take care of her. I was making lots of money at the Jewel Box, but I got worried for fear of what might become of Arabella if I should die, or if I should have a fall like my mother. I couldn’t bear to think of her living in tenements with broken windows like I did, or having to go to work when she was eight years old. Her father didn’t take any interest in her, he’d never even seen her. I didn’t expect him to. He was a gent, very rich. He knew I’d had the baby and he was quite generous about it, he gave me money to take me through the time when I’d have to be out of the show. But his family was very high-toned and his mother would have raised Cain if she’d found out he’d been carrying on with an actress. I knew if anything happened to me I couldn’t count on him.

“So I got married, to a man named William Cadwallader Mallory. He pretended to be so nice and so fond of Arabella. But he married me because he was mad for liquor and gambling, and his family had disowned him and he was desperate for money. And I had money in the bank and I was blazing with jewels, and he knew if he could get me down in front of a judge and marry me it would all belong to him. I didn’t know that, I never thought of it, that’s the kind of fool I was.”

Florinda was talking fast and jerkily, getting her hidden hurt into words after years of not being able to do so. The Brute did not interrupt her. She went on.

“I couldn’t get a divorce and I couldn’t get away from him. I quit the show and tried to hide, but no matter where I went he found me, and he was always drunk and wanting money. Then at last he was arrested with some other fellows for street fighting and the judge put them in jail. I thought I could leave town while he was in jail and he’d never find me again. I got ready to take a boat. One afternoon I was ironing clothes. I had made up a big fire to heat the irons. Arabella was scampering around, she was nearly two years old then and meddling with everything. I put her in a chair with her dolls, and I tied her to the chair with a belt so she couldn’t climb out and handle the hot irons: My things were all over the room, half packed, and my jewelry was in a box on the table. I was singing while I ironed, and Arabella tried to sing too, and I looked around and laughed at her and she laughed back, and she was so beautiful, and then the door opened and there stood William Mallory.”

Florinda pulled in her breath with a sound like a rattle.

“The governor had let him out of jail. He had been drinking but he was not blind drunk. He tried to get the box of jewelry and I grabbed it and cried out that he was not going to have it because it belonged to my child. He said, To hell with your bastard,’ and he kicked over her chair and sprang at me to get the box. I heard Arabella scream but he had me pinned to the wall and he was in front of me so for a minute I couldn’t see her. I dropped the box on the floor and struck at him with both fists, and then I saw over his shoulder what he had done. He had knocked her into the fire. I had tied her into that chair and she couldn’t get out. He had knocked the chair into the fire and there in front of me was my child roasting alive.”

Florinda’s voice choked in her throat again. Otherwise she did not move.

“I turned into a tiger. I knocked that man flat on the floor and ran to get my baby. The chair was burning like firewood. I got her free of it. She was blazing all over. I threw her on the floor and rolled her over in the rug to crush out the fire. I don’t know whether I screamed or not. All I know is how I kept trying to beat the fire out of her pitiful little body, and how the room was full of the smell of burning flesh. And then all of a sudden I realized everything was quiet. She was dead. The jewelry was there, scattered on the floor, and Mallory was gone.”

The Brute had listened to her in silence. But now he said, “Mallory saw what he had done. He got out before you had a chance to kill him.”

“Yes. But I knew I was going to kill him. At first I couldn’t, because I couldn’t use my hands. But that was all I thought of, to be able to use my hands again so I could kill Mallory. I got a doctor and I did everything he told me. I moved my fingers no matter how much it hurt to do it. I worked and worked on my hands so I could kill Mallory. As soon as the burns had healed enough, I bought a gun and learned to use it. I went about with the gun under my shawl, looking for him. I found him in a gambling palace. I walked up to the roulette table and I didn’t care who saw me. He saw me, and he tried to run, but I didn’t give him time. I whipped out my gun and blew the top of his head off.

“I got out and they didn’t catch me, because it was night and pouring rain and you couldn’t see a yard ahead of you. But I had trouble anyway. At that same roulette table there were two rich gents named Reese and Selkirk, and they had been having an awful quarrel because Reese had been having an affair with Selkirk’s wife, and they both had guns. When I shot Mallory, Reese did some split-second thinking and put a bullet into Selkirk before the smoke from my shot had cleared into the air. Then he told the police I had shot both men. And nobody cared about a drunken bum like Mallory, but Selkirk was murder at the top of town. I had to get away. My friends from the show came through like a ton of bricks, and they got me on a boat.”

There was a silence. At length Florinda stirred and pushed back her loose pale hair.

The Brute said, “This is the first time you have told that story since you left New York, isn’t it?”

She nodded. “It was like you said, all boxed up inside of me. I couldn’t tell it. But somehow it got easier while I was talking.”

“I thought it would.” There was another pause, then the Brute said, “Your little girl’s father never knew what had happened to her?”

“Why yes,” said Florinda, “he did. A girl in the show went to him and told him. After I got on the boat he came to see me.

“It was all very surprising. I never heard anybody talk the way he talked. He had never paid any attention to Arabella, had never even laid eyes on her, but now that she had died like that his conscience blew up inside him. He walked up and down, he called himself names, he said he was no good and never would be. I had to comfort him just as if he was the one in trouble instead of me.

“Brute, he told me all sorts of strange things that night. He said I was the only girl he’d ever cared for, he never would have let me go except that his mother had found out about me and had threatened to cut him off without a dollar if he ever saw me again, and he had never earned a dollar and didn’t know how. He was scared to death of his mother. He said there was a girl she had picked out for him to marry. He supposed he would marry her. Maybe she’d be the making of him. And I tell you, Brute, I sat there listening to him and I never felt so sorry for anybody in my life. Heaven knows I was never in love with him, he was just another rich boy to me and if it hadn’t been for Arabella I’d have forgotten about him. But I pitied him so much you might call it a kind of affection.”

Florinda shook her head in wonder at the strange way things went in the world. She lifted her hands and looked at them. The Brute had never seen her look at her hands so candidly, turning them over and over as if she was no longer trying to hide them from herself as well as from other people. After a while she said,

“Brute, you asked me once why I never took wine. Remember?”

“Why yes. Do you want to tell me?”

She nodded. “You see, it was a long way from New York to New Orleans and I had plenty of time to think. I wondered why all this had happened to me. I wondered why I didn’t see through Mallory before I married him. And then I figured it out. I had met him at a party, and always when we were together he was very sociable and he would order champagne, or something elegant to drink. And a couple of drinks always sets me floating through a wonderful world. I see everybody the way I want to see them, good and amusing and kind. And then I haven’t got any self-defense. Even a tiny little bit of liquor does things to my head. There are some people like that. I’d heard of them but I hadn’t known I was one of them. But there on the boat to New Orleans I realized I
was
one of them, and it all worked back to where if I’d never had a drink I would never have married Mallory and Arabella would not have died like that. I don’t know why I didn’t jump off the boat. I quit liquor, but it wasn’t easy. That’s why I’m so sorry for people like Texas. I know they can’t help it.” She smiled compassionately. “Well, I guess that’s all.”

There was a long silence between them. Florinda moved back and leaned against the wall, stretching her arms above her head. She turned to the Brute, smiling at him gratefully, and he saw her rub her eyes and smother a yawn. “Now you’re sleepy, aren’t you?” he asked.

“Yes. And oh, Brute, I feel better. Thank you.”

He got up from the bench. “You go upstairs now and go to bed. I’ll slip out and see how things are, then I’ll come back and see how you are, then I’ll go to sleep here in the kitchen.”

“All right. Bless you.”

“Will you throw me down some blankets?” he asked.

“Yes, come on.”

She went upstairs, and the Brute waited at the foot of the staircase till she came out of her room with the blankets. She tossed them down to him. The Brute went back through the kitchen and outdoors. In the sky was a faint streak of dawn. The town was silent. The Brute came back inside, bolted the door, and tiptoed up the stairs again.

He tapped on Florinda’s door, but got no answer, and he opened the door silently. In the faint light he could see that she had gone to sleep. He went in and looked at her. She had pushed her hair up from the back of her head, and it was spread out under her like a fan. She was breathing deeply, and her face had a look of peace. The Brute bent over and touched her hair, and then, very softly, he kissed her on the forehead.