by Frank Yerby
“A little pigmentation!” Etienne snorted. “Why, there is all the difference in the world between the blacks and us! I tell you, Paul. . . .”
Aupre raised a hand.
“Here is the boat,” he said quietly. “You have the rest of the summer to shout about that topic; but now we’d best be getting ashore.”
Inch came back with the valises, and the four of them went down a ladder into the boat.
“The purser will send the trunks ashore directly, maître,” Inch said.
“See that you have some of the men on hand to receive them,” Etienne growled. Inch nodded wordlessly.
As they stepped out upon the quay, Aupre bade them an abrupt farewell, and disappeared into one of the streets leading away from the river.
“Odd,” Paul said. “Is he always so brusque, ‘Tienne?”
Etienne shrugged.
“How should I know?” he said. “You’ve known him as long as I have.”
“No one will meet us?” Paul asked.
“No. I gave no exact date for our coming, Besides, ‘twill be vastly more amusing to surprise them. Inch! Go!”
Inch nodded silently and moved off. Paul watched him a minute, then turned again toward the river where the six vessels lay in a line. The quay on which they stood was high as the levee top, so that they could see the ships, which, except for their rigging, were out of sight of a city lying generally below the actual water level of the river. Even as they watched there was a sudden flurry of action aboard the Northampton: a group of men came boiling over the sides and into a small boat. Then they were rowing like mad toward the quay upon which Paul and Etienne stood.
“What the deuce?” Paul said, turning to Etienne.
“I don’t know,” Etienne said. “I’ve never seen any native of Louisiana display that much energy before. However, we’ll soon find out.”
They continued to watch the small boat driving through the morning swells until it drew alongside the quay. At once the men in the boat began to swarm up the pilings that supported the quay, like so many monkeys. They looked darkly at Paul and Etienne and went on past them, muttering to themselves. As the last man passed, Etienne took hold of his arm.
“I say,” he began. “What’s the trouble out there? You men seem to be fleeing the devil himself.”
“Wish it ‘twere ole Satan, mister; but it be far worse than that. It be yellow jack!”
“Yellow jack?” Paul Dumaine echoed blankly.
“Yellow fever,” Etienne explained. He turned to the seaman. “Are you sure?” he asked.
“Sure I’m sure. There be clots of black vomit in the sick bays. The hull damn ship stinks of it. We be the shore crew, mister. ‘Tis our job to tidy up them ships out there. An’ I tell you, sir; there ain’t a ship amongst em free o’ the taint. You take the Sin there—her captain and several crewmen died and was buried at sea. An’ the Camboden Castle lost seven men at Kingston, Jamaica an’ both of em was inward bound when this thing happened. We didn’t know about the Northampton, but we’re learning fast. Them others come in on the same tow with the sick ones, and I’d lay you my shirt that they be tainted too!”
“Hadn’t you better report this to the city authorities?” Paul suggested.
“The city authorities!” the crewman snorted. “Helluva lot a good that’d do!”
Paul looked at Etienne,
“He’s right,” Etienne said. “They wouldn’t lift a finger. They never have. Father has been trying for twenty years to get them to do something about the sewage, and you can see for yourself . . .”
Paul glanced downward at the streets leading into the quay. They were littered with filth, dead animals, human excreta, and waste food and vegetables. The stench was formidable.
“Tell me, ‘Tienne,” Paul said. “When one’s dear old grandmère dies in New Orleans, does one also toss her into the gutters with the rest of the debris?”
“I wouldn’t swear that we don’t. But here’s my learned Negro with the carriage. Shall we stop off at the St. Louis for a bite? ‘Tis a hellishly long drive out to Harrow.”
“No—I have no appetite. I find New Orleans too exciting.” On the drive out to Harrow, Paul Dumaine was all eyes. His father had told him much about the Louisiana countryside; but he was totally unprepared for the reality. The great oaks trailing their streamers of moss, the bell-trunked cypress, sitting in the brackish swamps, the handlike fronds of palmetto, the spines of the yucca, the greenish black waters of the bayou, the endless fields rolling up out of sight over the edge of the horizon, covered with the green cotton plant, the low lands hidden by miles of cane, and the magnificent planters’ houses—all these were a source of endless wonder to him.
“What a place in which to paint!” he cried over and over again. “Father never should have left—never!”
Then they were rolling up the alley of oaks before Harrow, and the great white house gleamed softly in the early afternoon sun.
“Ma foi!” Paul said. “ ‘Tienne, why didn’t you tell me that in your own land you were a prince!”
Etienne looked at the house.
“This is Harrow,” he said softly; then after a moment, he said it again, as though savoring the word: “Harrow. . . .”
High above them on the upper gallery, Julie saw the carriage turning in from the bayou road. At once she started downstairs, running so fast that her skirts made a blur around the lacy pantalettes that encased her plump legs.
“Company, Papa!” she called. “Company!”
“Julie!” Aurore’s voice was genuinely annoyed. “How many times must I tell you it’s unladylike to scream at the top of your lungs?”
“But, Mother—there’s company! I saw the carriage—a hired one, from the city!”
“All right, all right,” Aurore said. “But don’t shout so. A hired carriage—who on earth . . . ?” Then taking her daughter’s arm, she walked down the stairs. As they reached the ground floor, Stephen emerged from his study and joined them. He threw his arm about Julie’s shoulder and the three of them went out upon the lower gallery.
Paul Dumaine got down first from the carriage, and Stephen fixed him with a kindly, quizzical glance. Then Etienne appeared and Julie let out a squeal of pure delight and bounded down the steps three at a time. Her parents were close behind her, and for a moment it looked as though Etienne would be smothered in feminine embraces. Stephen stood back and measured his son. Then, when Julie and Aurore had kissed him enough, Stephen took his hand.
“Ye’ve changed?” he said. “But ‘tis for the better, I think. And your friend is . . . ?”
“Father. This is Paul Dumaine, son of the Paul Dumaine who painted mother’s picture. He’s an artist, too, and a rattling good one, I tell you. Paul, this is my father, my sister, and my stepmother.”
Paul smiled and bowed grandly over Julie’s hand. Her face was covered with blushes and confusion. Aurore smiled gently at Paul.
“Welcome,” she said. “While you are here you must consider yourself a second son.”
“You are too kind,” Paul murmured.
“Come into the house,” Stephen said. “Ye’ve breakfasted?”
“No,” Etienne told him. “Paul here was too excited at our landscapes to eat. But as for me, I’m hungry enough to eat coush-coush caille!”
“Sounds horrible,” Paul laughed. “What is it?”
“Cornbread and clabber. The Cajuns eat it. But then they can eat anything. They’re almost as bad as the Negroes. Come on—don’t you want to see your father’s masterpiece?”
A moment later, Paul stood before the picture hanging in the great hall. He stood there a long time watching it, his eyes widening.
“Ma foi,” he whispered at last. “Could anyone have been as lovely as that?”
“Yes,” Aurore said softly. “My sister was every bit that beautiful.”
But Stephen shook his head, still a mass of curling foxfire above his snowy temples.
“No,” he sa
id. “Odalie was not so beautiful—as that. But your father thought she was. Odalie was never so beautiful as Aurore, here; but somehow, she made everyone—including myself—think her the loveliest lady on earth. I think it was she believed herself so. Faith is a wonderful thing.”
“If only,” Paul said to himself, “I could become half the painter my father was—just half . . .”
“You will,” Etienne declared. “But while you moon over that picture, I’m still starving.”
They went into the dining hall and sat around the great table of handcarved oak. Presently the Negroes appeared with two steaming breakfasts, and the two young men began to eat.
“Ye have a scar,” Stephen said. “Still following my bad example, son? With whom did ye fight?”
Etienne looked up at his father with a slow smile.
“That was in your behalf, Father,” he said. “Aupre D’Hippolyte wrote a play about you—a satire. ‘Twas all the rage. Aupre is from New Orleans—strange that I never knew him before. Anyway he is one of France’s leading playwrights. Every line that he pens is in much demand.”
“Ye fought him about this play?”
“Yes, Father.”
“Hmmmm—D’Hippolyte—so ‘tis De now. He has assumed the aristocratic particle. A fair lad with a girlish face and chestnut hair, ‘Tienne?”
“Yes—you knew him?”
“Of course. But I must say ye’ve become quite democratic, ‘Tienne—crossing swords with mulattoes.”
“Mulattoes!”
“Aye—but then he’s probably a quadroon or an octoroon—I don’t know how to draw those nice distinctions in blood lines like a native Louisianian. All I do know is that Aupre Hippolyte has a touch of the tarbrush about him. Ye should have studied his nails.”
But Etienne was already on his feet, calling:
“Inch! Inch! Where the deuce is that black scoundrel!”
Inch, at the moment, was down in the kitchen, talking earnestly with old Caleen.
“It was wonderful, mother,” he said. “There the people care not if a man is black. They liked me—I went to school, though ‘Tienne tried to stop me, and I learned many things.”
“Good,” Tante Caleen beamed. “You’re smart, yes. You talk comme un blanc. Now when the time come, you be ready, you! You know how to fight, yes!”
“Mother,” Inch laughed. “You’re a fraud. You’ve been talking about freedom and fighting since I was a baby, yet you’ve done all you could to aid and abet the Foxes.”
“I can’t fight, me. Don’t have the weapons. But you got em, you. Got em in your head where no patterollers kin find em. When the time come you be ready. I don’t hate maître and young rnaItresse—they good people, them. They treat the Negroes good, yes. I don’t hate nobody, me. But it ain’t right, Inch, baby, it ain’t right. Maître, maîtresse, they don’t know that, them. We got to learn ‘em, us.”
“I see,” Inch said. “ ‘Tis a good thought, mother. Man does not live by bread alone. There’s pride in him, fierce pride—a certain dignity. You can’t allow those things to be destroyed. If you do—you don’t have a man any longer—you’ve got a thing. I can’t belong to ‘Tienne like his horse! I’m made in the image of almighty God and there is Godhood in me—there is; I won’t be reduced to the level of a beast—clothed and sheltered and fed and driven to work by the lash! I’ll die first, mother! Perhaps as the old maître is fond of saying, I’d starve if I were free; but, by God, I’d starve willingly, gladly, as my own man. To me this patient paternalistic kindness of maître and maîtresse is more cruel than any amount of whippings could be. I’m a child, they assume, mentally I will always be a child until I am dead of old age! I must be guided, directed, shown how and what to do— even my books must be selected for me for fear of my reading the wrong things—why, I might even get insurrectionary ideas! But I admit of inferiority to no one of any race! And one day, mother, these pale ones will dance to our tune . . .”
“Inch!” Etienne’s voice came floating through the corridor. “Where the devil are you!”
Inch stood very still, his clenched, uplifted fist arrested in midair. Slowly he let it fall.
“Coming, maître,” he said, and his voice held a break in it, like a sob.
Outside in the hall, Etienne paced back and forth, his dark face clouded with anger.
“Inch,” he said. “You will ride into the city for me. Find out where Aupre has gone. I’d suggest that you search through Rampart Street, and all the rest of the quadroon quarter. When you’ve found him, report to me at once.”
“What shall I say to him, maître, once I’ve found him?”
“Nothing! Don’t even let him see you. Just seek out his hiding place and let me know.” He turned away muttering to himself. “The pompous, lying, yellow hound!”
“So,” Inch murmured under his breath. “You’ve found out, my good master. I could have told you this months ago—if I had any desire to tell you anything. ‘Tis a thing one senses—this kinship of the blood.”
He drew on his coat and his gloves and walked out of the house to the stables. It was useless to remind Etienne that he had not eaten. Oh, well, there were places in New Orleans where even a black might find food. Then, too, the chance to display his European finery before the mulatto wenches in the market place was not to be despised. His voice held a note of blase confidence as he ordered a horse saddled. And the way the groom stared at this black who dressed and talked and acted like a planter’s son was a good thing to be savored in the memory on the long ride to New Orleans.
Upstairs Aurore glanced at Stephen reprovingly.
“You shouldn’t have told ‘Tienne that,” she said; “you’ve upset him terribly.”
“He’ll get over it,” Stephen laughed. “He needed bringing down a peg!”
Two nights later, five horsemen sat very quietly upon their mounts at an intersection of Rampart Street. Three of the horsemen were great, muscular field hands, bearing long staves in their black horny hands. The other two were Inch and Etienne Fox.
“He walks here, maître,” Inch said, “on his way back from the law offices. He should pass this way soon.”
Etienne said nothing.
Inch looked at his master. I thank you, ‘Tienne, he thought, for this show. If there is any one thing more despicable than a white it is one of these yellow ones. He would leave his race, this Aupre; he would marry his Frenchwoman and produce his nearly white children. And he would order me about as his own grand-sire was ordered. Yes, ‘twill be good to see him brought low!
Precisely at the same time as yesterday and the day before Aupre passed the corner. He walked slowly, with his head bent low, and his brow furrowed with thinking. Etienne stiffened in the saddle, nodding to his men. At once the big Negroes swarmed down from their nags, and Aupre looked up to find himself surrounded.
“What the deuce—” he began; but the biggest of the blacks struck him hard across the mouth with the stave. The slight quadroon went down in a crumpled heap in the mud.
“Help!” he screamed; “Help!” Then seeing Etienne who had reined in closer in order to get a better view: “Help me, ‘Tienne, for the love of God!”
Again Etienne nodded. The Negroes rained blows upon Aupre. The staves rose and fell in the dull light of the twelve lanterns swinging from the cross chains. And the slender figure twisted silently upon the ground.
Etienne raised a hand.
“Enough,” he said quietly. The Negroes remounted their horses and the little cavalcade rounded the corner out of sight.
Aupre lifted his bloody, broken face out of the stinking mud of the street. Then groaningly, inch by inch, he drew himself erect.
“I am a playwright,” he wept. “I belong to the Académie! My works are produced at the Comédie Française. I am a writer and an artist and a genius. A genius, I tell you, a genius!” He stood there swaying in the flickering light of the lanterns. Before him, the soft clop of the horse’s hooves died away into the
silence. And there was no other sound in the street but the rasping of his breath, the beating of his heart, and the racking sound of his sobs.
XXII
LATE in August of 1858, Stephen Fox, Etienne, and Paul Dumaine rode into New Orleans. It was raining, a hard, steady downpour, unbroken by any wind. The black clouds massed low over the bayou country and the lances of the rain slanted down at a sharp angle. Yet even this deluge, which had lasted now for more than a month, did not bring coolness. The heat was sticky and stifling.
“Ma foi,” Paul murmured. “What a climate!”
Etienne looked at his father. Stephen was clad in old, shabby clothing, but little better than the garments of a slave. The dress of the two young men was no better.
“Father,” Etienne complained. “You should put your foot down! This is a great foolishness! What’s more, it is a dangerous foolishness. Have you no authority in your own house? This charity might cost mother her life.”
“Aye,” Stephen said grimly. “So I’ve told her, but she would go. The people need her, she says. I fear I’ve grown soft of heart in my old age.”
From the direction of the city came a low, thunderous noise; a slow, deep-bellied booming, and clouds of inky smoke, blacker even than the rain clouds, billowed upward into the air.
“What on earth—” Paul began.
“Cannon,” Stephen told him. “And the clouds are smoke from barrels of burning pitch. They tried the same remedies twenty-one years ago—when ye nearly died of the plague, ‘Tienne. And in all that time, they’ve learned nothing. There is no more and no better sewage now than then, and the doctors are as abysmally ignorant! Why, Aurore and old Caleen are saving more people than any twenty of them. I hope ye have a strong stomach, Paul.”
“Why?”
“The sights ye will see would sicken a he-goat! The people are dying faster now than they did even in ‘thirty-two. They’ve stopped trying to bury them. They simply dump them on the ground of the cemeteries and leave them there to rot. Every house has its dead and dying. Ye can’t even burn the bodies because of this accursed rain.”