Crescent City

by Belva Plain

  Someone knocked.

  “Come in,” she called, expecting Fanny.

  It was Eulalie. Her skirts flounced through the door with such speed that the taffeta crackled. At once she began to speak, like a child who had run to deliver a message and dared not forget it.

  “I want you to know that I saw you! I saw you and him tonight. I heard every word you both said.”

  Miriam’s heart slowed. A heart was supposed to beat faster from shock; nevertheless, she felt hers beat slowly, felt its hard pulse pounding. She laid the brush down and waited.

  “I was sitting on the lawn when I heard your voices quite clearly on the path. I certainly didn’t stoop to eavesdropping, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

  “I’m not thinking anything.”

  Cool. Icy cool. Say as little as possible. Above all, don’t let her see that you’re terrified.

  “I think,” Eulalie said, clipping the words, “that you are a disgrace. A disgrace.” A spray of her saliva struck Miriam’s cheek. “Perhaps there isn’t enough decency in you to know that you are.”

  Miriam collected her thoughts. “If you choose to misunderstand—completely misunderstand—what you say you heard, then there’s nothing I can do about it, is there?”

  Eulalie’s laugh was the victor’s laugh, scornful and careless. “There’s nothing to misunderstand. The Pontalba! So that’s where you go on your afternoon walks, the fine lady with—with gold bracelets!”

  She will cry this through the house and over the city. My children will hear of it and hate me.

  “No wonder they moved the state capital away from New Orleans! A modern Sodom, they said. Not fit for legislators, they said, and it’s true when women like you from respectable homes …” For the moment Eulalie had no more words.

  There is a streak of madness in her, Miriam thought, as the red flush, like a burn or a disease, stained the woman’s neck. Perhaps it was that, before all else, that had kept the young men away: a streak of madness.

  “What do you think your father will say, your father who thinks the sun rises on you! And my mother, who has treated you like one of her own daughters! And this is how you repay them!”

  Now I have gone as far as I can go in this life of mine, they will do what they want with me.

  Still she held on. “Is that all, Eulalie? Really, there’s no point in continuing this, since you have made up your mind.”

  “Do you know what people will think of you? That you’re a—a whore! Yes, a whore!”

  Surely this is the first time such a word has left her tight mouth, Miriam thought. She stood up and slapped Eulalie with a light, humiliating sting.

  “Don’t use that word to me! What do you know of whores? Or of love? Or anything else? You hate the world! You’re a poisoned woman, you hate yourself. You’ve been my enemy from the day I came to your house. I was a child, but I knew it even then. So now you’ve got a weapon! Well, do what you want with it, I can’t stop you—”

  “I could hear you at the end of the hall,” Eugene said furiously. “What the devil is going on?”

  Suddenly the walls revolved and the floor tilted upward.

  “I need air,” Miriam said. She stumbled to the verandah; she could hardly speak. “Eulalie will be glad to tell you what’s going on.”

  From below came the sound of music and the voices of men still at cards. Among them André, unsuspecting, had no idea what the last few minutes had done. She thought again of her children. They were Eugene’s children; he could take their mother out of their lives; the law said so.

  Life has its way of surprising us, André had told her tonight. Float with its current, it’s easy, he had told her. But this current could dash her to pieces on the rocks.

  And that hard beat of her heart resumed. How long could a heart beat like that without failing?

  Later—how much later? Ten minutes, half an hour?—she became aware that Eugene was alone in the room.

  “You can come back in now,” he called. “Sit down.”

  She was thankful that he could not see, for she knew that terror was written on her face.

  “Well,” he began, “that was quite a story! Quite! The woman’s a poor, sneaky creature, but still I suppose she could hardly have invented it all. So it must be true.”

  She could not bear to look at him; instead, she looked down at her nails, the pink shells of her innocent nails. She sighed.

  “It’s true.” And she waited for his fury.

  Instead, the door to the hall, which had been ajar, was flung wide open and the children came in.

  My God, she thought, he has told them already! Or he will tell them. He will condemn me in front of them, and they will despise me. They will be disgraced. No man of family will want to marry Angelique. In the temple on the Sabbath people will turn to stare—Her mind raced, aching like a winded runner.

  “Mama!” cried Angelique. “Why haven’t you been downstairs? They’re playing the piano, and we’ve been dancing!” The child’s vigor illuminated her skin so that it glowed like ivory. “Mr. Perrin has been teaching me to waltz, he says I’m as light on my feet as any of the ladies in Paris!”

  “Does he indeed?” said Eugene.

  Tensed for his next words, Miriam expected storm. But he only summoned the child to himself.

  “Come here, Angelique.” He smoothed her shoulders. “Lace. What color is it?”

  “The lace is white, of course. My dress is blue.”

  “Very pretty, I’m sure. We must get you a velvet one for the holidays. And have you been dancing, too, Eugene?”

  The boy assumed a manly air. “No, that’s for girls. I don’t dance.”

  His father laughed. “That’s right. First learn to ride and shoot. I must remember to find a good gentle mare for you. You’re outgrowing the pony, Blaise tells me. Yes, you’ll have time enough for dancing. Now, both of you, go to bed. And close the door behind you, please. I suppose,” he said when the door was shut, “I suppose your children gave you quite a fright just now, didn’t they?”

  Miriam had sunk into a chair with her face in her hands.

  “You expected me to rage.” Eugene’s voice was light, almost amused.

  “Remarkable! You surprise me! I’d have sworn you didn’t have enough blood in you! André Perrin. A handsome fellow, or was when I could still see. But I should have thought Carvalho more to your taste. I believe I told you so once, didn’t I? No?”

  This mockery was worse than a righteous, angry assault. So lightly does a cat play with a fluttering, shrieking bird before he kills it.

  “On the other hand,” Eugene reflected, “Carvalho’s moral code would never allow him to tinker with another man’s wife, however tempting, Too bad! It would be so much less complicated. He’s a solid citizen, he stays in one place, whereas the other goes here, there, and everywhere, to say nothing of the fact that he has a wife, even though she is four thousand miles away.”

  “Oh, my God, tell me what you’re going to do and get this over with!”

  “What did you think I was going to do? Play the outraged husband? Make a dramatic scene before the children? Put you out of the house?”

  She could not answer.

  “So? I’ll tell you what I’m going to do. I’m not going to do anything.”

  Miriam looked up in disbelief.

  “Oh, of course, I could easily do any of those things. After all, the law’s on my side, the whole society’s on my side. But I don’t choose to. I’m not that much distressed, not that concerned. You see, I probably understand more about the world than many men do.”

  Yes, you ought to, you with that woman .…

  “My one concern is that this business not leak out. We have a name. Your son and daughter have a distinguished name, two centuries old, and nothing must soil it.”

  “Then they won’t ever know? Ever?”

  “Certainly not. They will grow up with dignity and standing. They are all I have. All I ever will have,
” he added bitterly.

  The breathless thudding of Miriam’s heart began to dwindle. Thank God, oh, thank God.

  Then she felt a queer and totally unexpected moment of compassion: The man gave care to velvet dresses and gentle mares .…

  But—Eulalie, she thought next. The fear came stabbing back.

  “Eulalie?” The name came out of her mouth with a quaver.

  “Eulalie is to keep still. Permanently still. Actually, I’ve nothing to threaten her with, but I’ve threatened her, all the same. She respects me, she’s maybe a little afraid of me. She will say nothing, you can be sure of that.”

  Eugene got up. Suddenly his power filled the room as it had used to do. “Perrin, of course, will leave here in the morning.”

  “In the morning?”

  “What did you expect? I don’t want him in my house ever again. A man has that much pride where his wife is concerned, even when he Uves the way we do. But the world doesn’t know how we live, and no man is going to make an ass of me before the world.”

  “Will you—is there going to be trouble between you?”

  “I’m blind, remember? If I weren’t, there would be plenty.” Eugene gave a scornful whistle. “And if it weren’t pitch dark night, and if I weren’t a gentleman, I’d throw him out right now. But he’ll be gone before you come downstairs in the morning. You understand that?”

  “I understand.”

  “And that his name is not ever again to be mentioned in this house?”

  “Yes.”

  “Now go to bed, and don’t snivel and toss all night. I want to sleep.”

  She did not “snivel,” nor did she toss. Instead, she lay still with her hands folded between her breasts until, suddenly remembering that this was the position in which a corpse was laid, she brought her hands down to her sides. The midsummer air was thick and blue, hard to breathe, but she drew on it deeply, forcing it into her lungs, clenching her fists, forcing courage.

  She must try to separate her feelings, to put some order into a murky tangle of despair. There was the aftermath of fear. There was the frustration of being at the mercy of the despised and pitiable Eulalie. Yes, and loneliness, looming and towering ahead: never to see André again? Never? And shame: Would I want my daughter to do what I have done? No. I want her not to have to do it, not to need to do it.

  These thoughts of Angelique now brought her mind back to the most recent of her brother’s hortatory letters, each with its message meant to inspire, but which succeeded only in arousing a futile restlessness.

  He had a new cause: women’s rights. He had enclosed a sheet of clippings about Ernestine Rose, rabbi’s daughter, abolitionist, and vigorous champion of women’s rights. Indeed there had been fury in her speeches, searing, unforgettable phrases: “A slave from the cradle to the grave … Father and husband, master still … The right to her person, her property, and her children.”

  They had everything to do with Miriam, these searing phrases. And at the same time, as she lay there in the stifling dark, they had nothing to do with her. It would be better, she thought bitterly, if David would stop his bombardment of ideas. What did he expect her to do, leave home and go out preaching?

  Eugene stirred, mumbling in his sleep. And down the hall, ignorant of the coming day, André, too, slept.

  Long before first light Miriam got up and with soundless steps went out to the verandah. The chill that precedes dawn raised prickles on her arms and shook in the trees. A lone bird twittered and was still. Silent, mysterious, gloomy woods and fields lay in the muffling darkness. But for once they held no fear; no crawling things or swooping things or human enemies could threaten out there; fear and threat lay inside this house. And that old wish, the one she had felt on the first sight of this place, came surging back: to strike out across the fields, through the woods, over the hills, and go.

  Suddenly dawn broke. The sky exploded with light Cascades of amethyst and scarlet sprayed upward from the rim of the earth, scattering into shreds of lavender and tender pink. And now a choir of birds in fullest song gave proper praise to this magnificence.

  But one small wounded creature saw nothing in the face of all this grandeur, heard nothing but the breaking of its own small heart.

  Miriam was still standing there when the front door opened below and André came out. Without a backward look he stepped into the waiting carriage and was driven away.

  19

  Gabriel swept a little stack of documents into his stovepipe hat. Chinese silk had long replaced beaver for men’s hats, but he still wore his old beaver.

  “We’ve covered everything for the season. The sugar crop is paid for and the accounts are in good shape, as good a shape as anything can be in these times.”

  His gravity seemed uncalled for in the circumstances of this routine meeting. But then, he must be miserably uncomfortable in her presence, if what Rosa had said was accurate. Miriam herself was uncomfortable, as if it were somehow her fault that she did not return the man’s feelings. One would never suspect him, cool and cerebral as he was, of having that much inner passion! So different from André, with his bright exuberance!

  She had cried herself out. Now there was just a heaviness, a dullness, in her chest, as though her tears had frozen there. Nothing more had been said about the episode. Eugene had outlawed the subject. It was as though it had never happened, as though André had never existed.

  Her hands were smoothing her skirt. Recently she had acquired this nervous habit, and she wondered what other habits she might have acquired without being aware of them, some dreadful twitching of the eye perhaps, or licking of the lips. Emma had a friend who always wet her lips, and it was disgusting. She brought her hands to rest on her lap and held them there, looking down at them. They looked forlorn in contrast to the sprigged white lawn of her dress; the dress was new, as were the paperweight green slippers. The world saw a fashionable woman.

  “Will you have another drink?” Gabriel asked.

  Rosa’s cook had made iced orange-flower water. Miriam had barely touched the glass. Surely he could see that.

  “Thank you, I still have this. Really, I should leave. It’s almost four.”

  “Oh, finish your drink,” he said.

  She understood that he wanted her to linger, yet he seemed to have nothing to say.

  The silence grew too difficult, so that she had somehow to break it. “Eugene has freed his son. Did you see the public notice yesterday about the boy Eugene freed?”

  “I did.”

  There was a tone of finality in the two syllables of this reply, as if to shut off the subject. She did not know why the subject had come to her mind in the first place or why, now, she felt compelled to pursue it. Perhaps it was only that ineradicable picture of the boy surrounded by pigeons, of the pale brown hand on Eugene’s black broadcloth shoulder, of the long lashes closing over eyes filled with questions .… Lost, denied, out of place, she thought again, while at the same time rancor mingled with her pity. Having begun, she continued.

  “You may have heard that he’s my husband’s son.”

  Gabriel inclined his head. The motion said plainly: One has heard, certainly, but one makes no comment about these things.

  “He will send him to Paris to study sculpture. He has talent. Of course, it is only right of Eugene.”

  Now Gabriel answered. “Of course it is. But I take no credit from Eugene when I say that the boy would have been free in a few years anyway, the way things are going.”

  The war, again. Always the war. But my son is only twelve, Miriam thought. And the comfort of this fact soothed like warm milk.

  “When will the war come?” she asked. People had been asking that for the last year or more; always not whether it would come, but when it would.

  “It depends on the election. If Lincoln wins, it will be soon.”

  “David writes that New York is a hotbed of southern sentiment. It’s because of trade. Southern planters owe two hundred million
dollars to the banks and merchants—”

  Gabriel interrupted. “Do you hear often from David?”

  “I do, but not Papa! Papa has not forgiven him and I don’t suppose he ever will.”

  With an uncharacteristic gesture Gabriel drove his fist into his hand. “Fanatics! The newspapers—North and South—encourage this! A lot of warmongers, all of them. I should like to let them fight it out with bullets instead of in newsprint for a change.”

  Miriam heard her voice go prim with disapproval. “Then you agree with Rabbi Gutheim?”

  “I agree in principle. But even their best efforts won’t work. The South will not live under a Republican president, the secessionists will prevail, the North will not permit secession, and—there you have it.” Again the fist struck into the hand.

  She watched him intently. “What will you do?” she asked then.

  “I shall go to war.”

  The portentous words were simply spoken, with neither dread nor enthusiasm. I shall go to war. He might just as well have said: I shall take a ride upriver.

  She was curious. “You were so against the Mexican War.”

  “That was different. This is different. The homeland is threatened. If South Carolina especially should leave the Union, what choice would I have? My people helped build the state. Six generations of them are buried there.”

  These words, which in another’s mouth could well have been bombastic, were in Gabriel’s mouth entirely natural, so that she saw at once how true and essential they were for him.

  “And as for Louisiana, am I to turn my back on her, on my friends and the life I have here?”

  “So, like Lincoln, you will stand on principle.” She glanced toward the window, where, not ten feet away, people were passing on the street, darkening the translucent curtains as they passed. And lowering her voice, she said, “You know, of course, that I should do otherwise. If I were a man, I would fight on the other side.”

  He bowed slightly. Then, turning his back, he went to stand in front of the fireplace to stare at the empty grate. Miriam stood up, gathering her purse and shawl. Hearing her movement, he turned around to detain her once more.