by Frank Yerby
Stephen laughed aloud. Desiree’s green eyes sparkled, and the little golden flakes caught the light. Then she strolled over and sat on the arm of Stephen’s chair, and sang the song through to its mocking conclusion. Stephen roared at the picture of the ‘Neg ‘Mericain falling over the mounds of crayfish heads piled up around the Creole Negro’s bed. Desiree put down the instrument and sat down in Stephen’s lap, laughing and tousling his hair with her two hands. Then she kissed him lightly upon the mouth, the eyes, all over his face and neck.
Stephen caught at her arms, but she slipped away and ran, laughing, around the little house. Stephen got up and chased her, but she eluded him easily. Finally, weak with laughter, she allowed herself to be caught; but she kept turning her face away from his kisses. Then, growling in mock anger, Stephen seized her chin and turned her face upward to his. He bent down and kissed her gently; but her lips clung to his as lightly as a breath, and inch by slow inch her arms stole upward around his neck. Then her slim fingers were working in the fiery curls on the back of his head, and her lips moved beneath his.
For an instant it was so; then fiercely she swung herself up against him, until her whole body was one long caress: knee and thigh and breast, burning into his blood. She drew back her head a little; but her lips were still so close that they brushed his as they moved.
“Never let me go,” she whispered. “Never, never, never!”
It was late in the winter of 1889 when the time came for Odalie to be delivered of her child. Aurore came to stay at Harrow to be with her sister, and Caleen was on duty day and night. Doctor Lefevre had been summoned, and he too took up his residence at the great house. Stephen went no more to the city, but spent his nights in his study, sleepless and troubled.
For Odalie was pitifully weak from long starvation, and her thin form, at best but ill-suited for childbirth, was racked with unceasing anguish. Doctor Lefevre shook his head gravely.
“Frankly,” he said to Aurore, “ ‘tis to be doubted that she will survive. Her body is weak enough, the good God knows; but it is her mind that is a major cause of the trouble. There is no fight there—the will to survive. If only I knew what the trouble was . . .”
“I do,” Aurore said grimly. “And, by heaven, I’m going to mend it, now!” She strode away from the doctor and crossed the hall to Stephen’s study. Firmly she knocked upon the door. There was no answer.
She twisted the knob angrily. It gave and the door flew open. She stepped into the room and stopped suddenly. There at Stephen’s desk the candles were guttering in pools of wax, and his bright head was bent over the desk, pillowed upon his arms. She could see the empty cut-glass whiskey decanter, but the smell of the liquor was strong in the room.
Aurore snorted in disgust. Stephen lifted his head and looked at her, blinking at the light streaming in through the opened door. His face was chalky white, and his eyes were sunk far back in his head and ringed with great circles of blue. He sat there like that, frowning, with a look of so great hurt and trouble upon his face that all Aurore’s anger vanished as though it had never been.
Always I could forgive him anything, she thought; always I could—even this . . .
“Stephen,” she said gently.
“Yes?” he said. “Yes, Aurore?”
“Odalie is worse. There are—complications. You could help her—you are the only one who can now.”
Stephen smiled crookedly, the great scar crawling upward into his red hair.
“That I doubt,” he said. “God and Our Lady, how she hates me!”
“You deserve it,” Aurore declared. “But the fact is—she doesn’t. She loves you so much that it is chiefly of heartbreak that she is dying.”
Stephen came to his feet at once, his thin nostrils flaring.
“Dying!” he said. “Ye said she is dying?”
“Yes,” Aurore said simply. “Please come to her, Stephen.”
“Aye,” Stephen growled. “Many times now I have tried; but she would have none of me. But one more time, or one million more now, would not be amiss.” His fingers toyed briefly with his ruffled shirt front; then he was gone from the room, leaving Aurore staring after him.
In the bed chamber, Stephen bent over the twisting form of his wife. Aurore came and stood in the doorway, unnoticed.
“No, no,” Odalie whispered. “Go away! Let me have peace at last.”
“Odalie,” Stephen said slowly. “There is this much to be said: when that girl came to Harrow, she came without my knowledge or consent. I had broken with her long ago—that ye must believe.”
On the bed Odalie lay very still, looking up at her husband.
“You—you do not lie to me?” she whispered.
“I never lie,” Stephen said simply. “Ye know that.”
Something like a smile crept across Odalie’s stricken face; then abruptly it vanished.
“And now?” she whispered. “And now, Stephen?”
“And now I shall never consort with her again,” he said. “That I promise ye.”
Her lips widened pitifully into a smile, but her words were so low that Stephen had to bend down his head to hear them.
“Thank you, my husband,” she said. “Now no more will I fear it—this business of dying.”
“Ye aren’t going to die,” Stephen said. “Ye cannot—ye must not!”
“I’m afraid I must, my husband,” she said quite clearly. “Of that there is no longer any doubt.”
Stephen opened his mouth to refute her, but the look was there, visibly, in her face. He gave a short cry and sank down beside her, burying his face in the covers. She lifted her hand feebly and stroked his bright head.
In the doorway, Aurore wept.
Four nights later, Odalie gave birth to a stillborn child—a daughter. She herself never regained consciousness, but died very quietly in her sleep, with Father DuGois kneeling beside her, intoning the prayers.
Looking at Stephen, Aurore forgot to cry. Quietly she left the bedchamber and summoned Georges and Caleen.
“You know where the master keeps his weapons?” she said to the manservant, and her voice was very tight and dry.
“Yes, Mamzelle,” Georges said, “I knows, me.”
“Get them,” Aurore commanded, “all of them, and bring them to me, Caleen . . .”
“Yes, Mamzelle, I watch him—never I let him out of my sight. The maître a strange man, him. He do bad things, yes; but his heart good like saint. That Negre gal bewitch him, her—I tell you . . .”
“Hush, Caleen,” Aurore said. “Please hush!”
She went into the study and sat down. Her head ached abominably. There was so much to be done . . . The invitations to the funeral must be engraved and sent; a mausoleum must be built, even a cemetery plot selected here at Harrow. There was no doubt that Odalie would want to lie here. She would need help. As she rose, she met Doctor Lefevre coming into the study.
“I gave him a sleeping draught,” he said. “I thought it best. He is resting very quietly now.”
Aurore nodded dumbly and slipped out into the hall. Moved by a sudden impulse, she climbed the stairs to Stephen’s chamber. He lay abed, still fully clothed. Aurore bent over him. In sleep all the lines were softened, and even the patches of white that were spreading above his temples did not detract from the strangely youthful cast of his face.
He turned suddenly, so that the great flaming scar appeared and that side of his face was drawn and tortured. A little cry came from his ups and his lean body threshed briefly. Aurore drew back step by step to the door, then she was running down the stairs. As she ran she whispered to herself, over and over again:
“God forgive me for my thoughts! God forgive me—the Good Blessed God forgive me!”
Amelia and Andre came before daybreak and took complete charge of everything. Etienne and Little Inch were sent to La Place to be cared for until the day of the funeral. Mike Farrel came and dogged Stephen’s steps like a gigantic shadow.
“I
like it not, that look, yez ken,” he whispered to Andre. “Me heart bleeds to see Stevie suffer so. She were a cold high-strung wench that one but, angels above, how Stevie loved her! I’m gonna keep me eye upon him.”
And in the cypress grove near Harrow, stone masons were at work building the mausoleum. Because so much of the bayou country is swampy, the custom had grown, since the plague of ‘thirty-two, to inter bodies above ground. The resting place Stephen had ordered for Odalie was a magnificent one, with twin stone angels guarding the door and a bench of iron scroll work facing it, on which he could sit and look upon the place wherein she lay. Inside, there was a niche already reserved for him, with his name and date and place of birth engraved upon the headstone. This fact was a source of great trouble to all his friends.
Andre came out of Harrow late in the evening to find Stephen standing there, watching the almost finished work.
“Stephen,” he said. “My old one—you must not—’tis a thing that happens to us all . . .”
Stephen’s blue eyes were very clear, gazing upon his friend.
“I shall do myself no violence,” he said softly. “She would not wish it, and there is still the boy. But God and Our Lady knows ‘twould be easier, Andre . . . than to live with my thoughts . . .”
“Nonsense—” Andre began with great relief. But Stephen stopped him.
“I drove her to her death,” he declared. “There is a kind of black madness in me . . .” He fell silent, shaking his head. Andre, too, was still; he knew, at least, when a man should hold his tongue.
After the funeral, Harrow was a great, echoing tomb of silence. The servants tiptoed about their work. And Stephen Fox sat for endless hours in his study gazing upon vacancy. Even when he rode out into his fields, he saw nothing. Still, Harrow went on as prosperously as before; for it had long since reached the stage where it ran itself. But throughout the entire bayou country the stories ran from tongue to whispering tongue about the greatness of Stephen Fox’s grief.
“He is like a madman,” the whispers went. “He sits and stares and does not even hear you when you talk.”
“And he goes no more to that place of his in Rampart Street. Ma foi! A man must be grieved to give up such a one as she!”
But at last, upon an evening, Stephen dressed himself with the aid of Georges, and rode in toward the city. He stopped for a moment at the sepulcher, then rode on past the rude graveyard at the foot of the levee where the slaves were buried. Achille rested there now and Stephen understood why.
“ ‘Twas easier to follow, was it not, my old fellow?” he whispered as he paused by the grave of the big slave. “To ye, your Sauvage must have been as much a goddess as my Odalie was to me. There is too much of sadness in life-is there not?—far, far too much!”
He rode on slowly, down the bayou road.
On Rampart Street, in the little white house with the high walled courtyard, Desiree awaited him. As the big almost white horse rounded the corner, she swayed dizzily, her hands tight upon the window sills.
I must tell him, she thought. He cannot leave me now—he cannot!
Then Stephen’s knock was sounding from the door, twice repeated clearly. Desiree fought back the feeling of nausea rising in her throat, and smiling invitingly, ran forward to meet him. But when she opened the door, the smile vanished. She stood there a moment, swaying a little as she looked at him; then, very quietly, she said:
“Come in, monsieur.”
“Desiree,” Stephen began.
“Yes?”
“ ‘Tis a hard thing I must say to ye now—the hardest almost that I have ever said . . .”
“Then don’t say it! There is still much happiness. . . .”
“No, Desiree—no.”
The girl drew herself up proudly. The sunlight came in the window and tangled in her tawny hair.
“I know what you would say, Monsieur my lover,” she said softly. “Your wife is dead. And before she died she was grieved by this thing between us. So, in honor, you cannot continue with me longer. That is it, is it not?”
“Aye,” Stephen said grimly. “That is it.”
“Very well. Against this I can do nothing. There is nothing, perhaps, that anyone could do. But there is this that I must say. . . .” She looked at him, a long, slow look, her eyes very wide and bright with trembling tears.
“Say what ye will,” Stephen told her.
“When you go through that door, I shall die a little. And every day that you are gone from me I shall die a little more until I am all dead. And then I shall be happy, but never again until then.”
“The house is yours,” Stephen said. “And everything in it. I have arranged a settlement upon ye to be paid ye monthly as long as ye shall live . . . Is there anything more that ye want?”
Desiree smiled wryly.
“Only that which I cannot have,” she whispered. “Now it is better that you go quickly while I can still bear it. Adieu, and may the good God grant you every happiness.”
Stephen took a step toward her; then he stopped and, turning swiftly, walked through the opened door. Desiree stood there holding her breath, listening to the sound of his footsteps going and the creak of leather as he mounted Prince Michael.
“He did not kiss me,” she whispered. Outside in the street there was the sound of the horse’s hoofs moving off through the silence. Desiree stood very still listening, then a sudden wave of weakness and nausea struck her and she went down upon her knees upon the floor.
I couldn’t tell him, she thought; there was already too much of anguish in his eyes. And now he is gone from me and I feel no pain. Why? By now I should be dying of it. Perhaps it is because my senses are so numbed that I can feel nothing and afterwards I shall wake up screaming. I don’t know. God knows I don’t know.
She knelt there, staring at the floor. Then feeling the ache in her knees she got up and crossed to the window.
It shall have red hair,” she whispered, “this my son, and eyes like blue ice and a smile that is never quite a whole smile, but always has mockery in it. And I shall watch over him and cherish him and watch him grow more like him who has gone from me each day. And he shall be my life—my whole life.” She turned away from the window and walked back into the darkened room.
XX
UP AT Harrow, a stillness lay like a weight upon the whole land. There was no wind in the branches of the oaks and the water went by the limbs of the willows so slowly that there was no whispering as it passed. The fields stretched out over the rim of the world and the Negroes moved over the acres like figures in a dream landscape. The work went on: the purple and striped cane was laid end to end in the black earth and from their joints the new plants sprouted. It came up and grew tall in the fields and the slaves worked in and out among it. Then there was harvest, and the cane knives were brought out and the stalks fell before their bright flashes, but the Negroes did not sing as they worked.
Stephen sat upon Prince Michael, watching the harvest. The wooden wagons creaked through the fields, bearing the cane away to the sugar house, from whose tall stack the black smoke once more poured. The crushers were again in action, and the thick juice ran down bubbly and sweet into the vats below. And Etienne and Little Inch ran from vat to vat, dipping strings of pecans into the boiling cane juice and greedily eating this homemade confection.
Stephen moved over his lands and through the refinery, watching it all, taking in the details with unconscious attention. But his eyes were far away, in those distances from which no one ever returns, and his words grew fewer.
It was upon such a day that Aurore Arceneaux came riding up to Harrow in her small carriage, all her belongings packed in valises upon the top. Stephen rode alongside the carriage and greeted her gravely.
“I’ve come to stay,” she said simply. “Harrow needs a woman’s hand, and ‘tis no good that the boy goes motherless. You don’t mind, do you, Stephen? ‘Tis lonely out at Bellefont. Here I might be able to help.”
“No,” Stephen said. “I don’t mind. But ye’re still a young and lovely woman. There are those who might think ill of this.”
“Let them,” Aurore said. “If there are any sinful ideas left in an old spinster of thirty-one years, ‘tis time we had them out, don’t you think?”
“Aye,” Stephen smiled, with almost a twinkle in his bleak eyes. “Perhaps I shall add ye to the legion of women I am supposed to have kept. But come up to the house. I’ll have Caleen prepare quarters for ye.”
Going into the great hall, Aurore’s eyes noticed the tiny evidences of slackening discipline: dust upon the lower rungs of the furniture; the rugs neither beaten nor swept; a lack of freshness in the livery of the servants. These things must end, she decided at once. Harrow must still be the greatest house in Louisiana.
When Caleen showed her to her rooms, Aurore turned to her.
“Get Suzette and the other women, Tante,” she said firmly. “We shall have a house-cleaning here.”
In a few hours the great house shone like new: the cut-glass glistened and the silver sparkled. Fresh embroidered chair covers appeared; tablecloths glowed whitely in the gentle light. Aurore went in search of Etienne, and found the boy, dirty and unkempt, playing cards with Little Inch back of the stables.
“Come with me, ‘Tienne,” she said gently. “And you too, Inch.”
Wonderingly, the boys followed her into the house. She led them upstairs to the little bathing chamber. Then Inch was sent for water and, under Aurore’s direction, scrubbed his young master vigorously. Afterwards, the little black boy was sent away to bathe himself, and Aurore busied herself trimming ‘Tienne’s great black mane of hair. Then, brushed and combed and dressed in new, fresh clothing, he stood before her for inspection.
“Ah, now you look the gentleman!” she said. “Please go and bring me your books, ‘Tienne.”
The boy scampered away, adoration glowing in his pale blue eyes. When he returned, Aurore had him read to her. His education, she discovered, was sadly lacking. So, gently, she began to instruct him. She read him the stories dear to the heart of a boy: tales of the heroes of old France and the new, deeds of chivalry and heroism. Many of the stories stressed the idea of noblesse oblige so precious to the aristocratic South. A gentleman, Etienne learned, had many more and much greater responsibilities than an ordinary mortal. His blue eyes were grave as they gazed upon his lovely young aunt. Perhaps it would be better after all to follow the much more attractive pursuit of gambling upon the river packets as his father had done instead of attempting to sustain the role of a gentleman planter. Still, as Stephen Fox’s son, he was already beginning to be admired, respected, and sought after; even Stephen Le Blanc looked up to him as a personage and the Le Blancs were people of no mean importance. This, ‘Tienne liked—definitely. There was a certain pleasure in lording it over Inch, but this was not to be compared with the exquisite joy of receiving homage from whites as well. No, Etienne decided with grave precocity, there was no escaping his destiny.