Shadows 7 (12 page)

She had made me skittish too. I said, no doubt rudely, "This is not the same sister."

Charles nodded vigorously. "It can't be, can it? Isn't she a jewel?" He was proud of her. "If she keeps this up, we'll get her married to a rich potentate in half a year. You've seen Semery and know the cause, I understand?"

"Yes."

He gazed at me and said mock-seriously, "Of course, it's a form of madness. If she killed someone, I could get her off on a plea of this. My client reckons she is actually a lady who is dead."

"Surely she reckons she has
been,
not is, Lucie Belmains."

"Hairsplitting worthy of the bar. But it's a miracle. If she's gone a little mad, so nicely, why not?"

And thus the third culpable party added his careless
why not?
to Semery's and mine.

"But does she," I said, "know that you—"

"She knows Semery and I—though not you,
cher ami—
are in on it. But she doesn't review the matter with us, nor we with her. Then again, considering the extravagance of the idea, not to mention results, she's very serene about it all. I don't think she's even read anything, no history of this woman. Save the smallest outline in some encyclopedia. On the other hand, I suspect her of writing about her feelings. I gather a diary has been started. But she only revealed that to me because I caught sight of the article on her vanite. She's said nothing else. After all, she knows we're a bunch of vile skeptics. As for father—well, no whisper must reach
his
ears. And you can guess, all this of hers has thrown him off balance. She eats more and grows more slight, she cuts off her hair and buys earrings. But you should see her with him. Stay and lunch with us and you will."

The prospect of encountering Monsieur Laurent again brought me to with a jolt.

"Unfortunately, I must be elsewhere."

"And anywhere but here? Well, you'll be missing a treat. And by the way, have you seen what this devil in the
Journal
has the wretched audacity to say about my book . . .?"

Half an hour later, just as I got out into the hall, the limping servant hobbled by me and flung open the street door. And there stood Monsieur Laurent, his horrible puce face thrust forward, seeing me at once, before Charles and all things else. I felt like a seven-year-old boy caught stealing fruit in someone's orchard. I had been so determined to avoid the monster. Nor had I heard any summons to warn me of this collision; the sinister limper seemed to have known of his master's arrival by telepathic means alone.

"Good day," said the
maître
to me, advancing into his domain. "Hoping for lunch?"

I writhed to utter as I wanted, but did not.

"No, monsieur. I am lunching with friends."

"I thought my plagiarist son was your friend. Or have you grown wise to him, seen through him? I note," he added, directing his attention now to Charles, "one critic at least has had the wit to penetrate your sham nonsense. I must send him my congratulations."

Charles, touchy over the review (for which his father must truly have scoured the journals) was plainly for once caught on the raw spot. Without looking at him, I saw his anger reflected in the momentary pleasure of Monsieur Laurent's little eyes.

"And where's your beauteous sister? I've some news for her."

"Here I am," said a voice from the stairs.

Monsieur Laurent gave vent to that toneless, noisy amusement generally called a guffaw. "Yes, there you are. What plenteous abundance of hair! Where is it? Have I gone blind? Do you still go out on the street like that and make yourself a laughingstock?"

Turned to stone, my eyes only on the shut front door, I waited. And I heard her gentle voice say casually, light as down, "Yes, Papa, I'm afraid I do."

"You silly sheep. Look at you. Well, I suppose it's generous of you to give everyone, complete strangers, such a good laugh. But do I permit you to draw money to buy earrings and make yourself resemble a circus monkey?"

"No, Papa, the earrings were purchased from the small allowance Mother left me. But if they worry you, I'll take them off."

"Worry me?
You
worry me. You brainless thing, flapping about the house, scribbling, mooning. What's wrong with you?"

"I am very well, thank you, Papa."

"That damnable fool, your female parent, what a curse she left me. A sniveling, profligate dunce and a literary jackal for sons. An idiot daughter."

She was down the stairs now; I heard the rustle of her gown. She seemed to bring a coolness with her, a freshness, like open air, escape from the trap.

She said, "Come and see the new sherry, Papa. I took your advice on the business of wines and have been trying to improve my knowledge. I'd like you to taste this latest bottle and see what you think."

"If you chose the stuff, it must be worthless muck," said this charming father.

"Not necessarily," replied Honorine, for all the world as if she were talking to a sane and rational human being instead of to a thing from the Pit. "I've tried, in my choice, to apply all you told me the other day. But if you think the sherry is poor and I'm mistaken again, of course I shall want you to correct me. How can I benefit from your superior understanding in these matters if you're lenient?"

What could he say, the beast? She had him, as seldom have I heard any so had. What had gone on? I can only conclude she had begun to take an interest in the ordering of the cellar, as la Belmains would certainly have done, and Monsieur, true to himself as always, had insulted her and attempted to belittle her over it, as over all else. Whereupon she must have assumed the attitude that she was being given an altruistic lesson for her own benefit, which notion she here continued. I have done just as you said, she informed him now. But if I am wrong—for naturally, I do not for a moment deny you are more clever than I am—you must let me know. And
do
be as harsh, as discourteous as you can be. I shall regard it as a mark of your concern and patronage. My God! I nearly laughed aloud. Whatever revolting abuse he threw at her now came with her awarded license. She would sit meekly before him, nodding as he ranted, presently thanking him for the tutorial. I was, despite everything, after all tempted to stay for lunch.

I compromised then, and indicated to Charles I would remain long enough to try the new sherry. And when the monster eyed me and made some remark about there being no luckier club for a minor writer than the free one of somebody else's house, I snatched a leaf from her book, grinned wildly at him, and cried, "And such an entertaining club, too."

It goes without saying he hated the sherry, which was a discerning one. But he said not much about it, save it was ditchwater. Honorine promised to bear this in mind. It was at this point that he recollected the news he wanted to tell her.

"Your hags of the tarot have gone," he said. "Did you know? An end to clandestine sorties to the bookshop and table tappings at my expense. Perhaps an end to the silliness you've been parading these last months, eh?"

"Ever since you showed such displeasure," said Honorine placidly, "I've not visited the shop."

"No. But things have come here from there. From your faker parasites. Bits of paper brought by your ugly maid. Or by dear Semery when I'm out—you thought I wasn't aware? There's not much I miss. I've read some of these secret notes,
billets doux.
Let me see. What did they say?"

We had all turned very silent. Honorine was pale and she put down her glass. From the erratic glitter of those delightful earrings of hers I could learn the quick, erratic motion of her pulse.

Monsieur Laurent made a great drama over recalling. He, like the soulless evil he was, had sound instincts for a victim's shrinking and fear. Yet, if he had got hold of any communications from Honorine's three witches, it seemed to me they would probably mean nothing to him. His was a sly mind, but not an intellectual slyness. He pulled the wings from insects to agonize them and prevent their flight, not to study the complexity of their pain and flightlessness. But the information of the Ouija board, ridiculous as it might be, was also intensely personal. He had, no doubt, always been in the habit of opening his children's private correspondence and taunting them with its closest passages.

Eventually, his head tilted back in a sort of cold, dry ecstasy, he announced: " 'Lucie Belmains. Born at Troy-la-Dianne in April 1729. Hanged dead on April 8, 1760.' Now do I quote that as it should be? Hah? And do I have
this
right—that you, my dollop of dough, unlovely, loveless, hopeless wreck that you are, are the reborn Lucie, so beautiful, kings paid ransoms for her company, and duels were fought to the death?"

There was a long terrible pause, with no noises in it save a patter of leafy rain on the road outside.

I did not look at her. I do not know how she seemed, but I can conjure it. Who needs to be told? This was her sacrament, holy, and hidden. And now he had it in his fangs, mauling and maiming it before us all. He had only been waiting, only
seeming
muzzled. But how could he be? AH the servants were in his thrall. And her diary, maybe he had even got a grip on that, this savage, rabid dog. Yes, so he must have done, to come at the roots of her dream, the beautiful, abnormal structure that had made bearable her life. But it was not to be bearable.
He
could not bear that. She should not spring up from the crushing. He would pile on another weight.

I suppose seconds went by, no more, while I thought this, and suffered for her, and yearned again to kill him.

Then she spoke, and my head cleared of the black cloud, because her voice was steady, self-possessed. She had made a virtue of passivity. She gave no resistance now, since it would only lead the torturer on. She said, "Yes, Papa. Isn't it absurd? For me to imagine, even for an instant, I might have been such a person. But you seem to have discovered that I do imagine it. And I do. While, truly, thinking it every bit as unlikely and preposterous as you do yourself."

The cold ecstasy left him at that. Temper came instead. For a moment I thought he would strike her, but physical blows were not what he enjoyed.

"And what gives you to think such errant twaddle? This salivatory drivel from what? A
Ouija board?
Fakers and schemers—they take your money—
my
money—and tell you anything you like to hear."

"No, Father. They never asked a sou from me."

"So you say. You
say.
But no doubt you make donations? Eh? And you've done their dubious reputation good. I expect, babbling to those you know of the
accomplishments
of this hocus-pocus. Lucie Belmains.
Lucie Belmains.
Does she even exist? Tell me that, you dunce. You'd swallow anything to make you out not the clod you are."

I could hold myself no longer. I regret it, but I think in the long term it made no difference. He was on the trail, this bloody dog. He would have found it all at length, whatever was done or said or omitted.

"Monsieur. Lucie Belmains most decidedly did exist. I'm surprised, sir, with your exceptional bent for knowing everything and missing nothing, that you've never heard of her."

"Ah,"
he said, turning his gaze on me. "So we're to be paid for our sherry with information. This is not," he said, "your concern. You may leave my house." And he smiled.

"I can think of nowhere, offhand, I could leave with greater pleasure."

"Brave words for a sponger," he said. "Or did you steal something while my back was turned?"

"In the sight of God!" shouted Charles.

But I, at the reckless, heedless spur of immaturity, answered, "Steal from you, monsieur? I'd be more fastidious."

"Would you?" he said. "From Anette Dupleys then, that fine, plump dowry of hers and her property in the south that goes with it. Indeed, a much juicier theft than anything the poor Laurents could offer you."

It seems he had done me the honor of finding out something about my circumstances also. And what he had found out, of course, was the thing set to cut me to the bone. I forget what I said or anything at all, until I got out, burning as if in flames and in an icy sweat, onto the street. Unfortunately, whatever I did in my passion, I did not seize a fire iron and murder him.

Charles came flying after me and grabbed my shoulder as I reached the Bois.

"In God's name—what can I say? Oh my God—forgive me."

I had chilled in the fire-following ice by then and said stiffly, "There's nothing to forgive you. I stayed when I was aware I should not. As for Anette's money, who doesn't know? That is all the argument between her father and myself. I am a fortune hunter. Naturally."

We quarreled about all this for a while, aimless and appalled. Finally, I accused him of leaving Honorine to face horror alone. "No, no," he said, "it was she sent me after you. She was quite calm still. He hasn't broken her. I thought he had. But she's talking to him so delicately, saying yes, she agrees with everything he says, but there it is."

I thought of her grey face, "Now he has the name of her hopes in front of him, he'll go on until he has destroyed them all."

"How? She believes exactly what her witch ladies told her. He can't touch that."

"He'll find some way," I said.

As I walked alone back along the leaf-lit paths I had traveled with Honorine, through the somber dusk of a coming storm, I knew my premonition was a true one.

The week before Semery's wedding to Miou, the two brothers and I dined in a good restaurant on the Boulevard du Pays. Charles seemed vaguely troubled at the outset, but he neither explained nor made a burden of it, the wine flowed, and soon enough there were no troubles in the world.

I judge it was about midnight when a written message was brought to Charles at the table. He read it and went very white.

"What?" said Semery. But a sense of dread and dismay had passed unsounded between them, not by any mystical means, but from old habit, a boyhood terror that came back whenever some dark shadow proceeded from their father.

I put down my glass and sat in silence.