He said with relief, “Old Wharton is so greedy, I thought he would want a bag full of gold!”
“No, there’s more money in railroads. However, his daughter, the lovely Elmira, is soon to enter society, and a thousand dollars toward the cost of her ball and ballgown would help to seal the bargain.”
That was how things were done in Louisiana. But why do I say were? And why do I imply that things were done differently in General Grant’s Washington, or Boss Tweed’s New York? Yet some differences between North and South did exist: as was proved by a Mardi Gras ball I gave early in March, 1870, and the crisis that followed, making and unmaking so many lives.
Although my house now stands deep within the city, in those times it stood upon the Uptown fringes of settlement. I designed it myself, a place of stained glass and gables and towers and spires, all painted garishly as an Amazon frog, in a deliberate affront to the classical taste of the age I grew up in.
Within, gaslight glittered upon glass and silver, upon long tables piled with steaming food, upon champagne that flowed in sparkling rivers. The noisy throng was a patchwork of colours and a Babel of languages – a muster-roll of all who were corrupt, entertaining, and important in our world. How different from this dismal twentieth century, when white and black are hardly permitted to breathe the same air!
I took pleasure in inviting men of all races and factions, and women of all professions, including the oldest. I hoped they might amuse me by striking a few sparks from one another – little dreaming upon what tinder those sparks would fall.
At the time I was still a bachelor; Rose was doing the honours as hostess, and Royal asked her to dance. My dismay was great when I saw Brigadier Hobbs staring at them: they were a handsome couple, carven as it were of teakwood and ivory. But in Hobbs’s scarred face burned the eyes of a crouching wolf.
I can hear the music now – a waltz called (I think) Southern Roses – and the stiff rustling of the women’s gowns like the rush of wind through dry autumnal trees, and the scrape of dancing feet. When the guests were leaving, an hour or two before dawn, Royal pounced upon me. He was in a strange mood, exalted and more than a little drunk.
“Didn’t I tell you that reconciliation would come? May our connection grow ever closer!” he exclaimed, almost crushing my one remaining hand.
“May it be so!” I replied, striving to retrieve my fingers intact.
“’Tis very late, Nick – or rather, very early – but I have a proposal to make. Could we speak privately for a moment?”
The word “proposal” passed me by entirely. I bowed him into my den – into this very room, where as a crippled old man I sit in a wheeled chair, writing. And here he rather grandly announced, in terms even then old-fashioned, that he desired to form “an honourable union” with Rose.
’Twas the worst shock I’d had in years. Rapid visions flashed across my brain of how Brigadier Hobbs and his friends would react, should a member of their society allow such a marriage to take place.
“Brother,” I said, swallowing my feelings with difficulty, “I’m honoured by your confidence. Of course, I must commune with my cousin. I fear that your proposal might place her in great peril.”
“She is resolved to face it with me.”
“That sentiment does her honour. But speak to her I must.”
“Of course,” said he, bowing like a dancing-master. “I shall return in – shall we say a week? – for your answer.”
No sooner had he left than I confronted Rose, who met me with a face both scared and determined. I dragged her into the den and shut the door to exclude the servants, who were busy gathering up the fragments of the feast.
“How dare you connive at this lunacy?” I demanded, grinding my teeth.
“I dare, because it is time for me to be born!” she declared. “Here I am, twenty-six years old – almost too old to marry. And what have I ever been but an orphan, a poor relation, a seamstress to the Yankee army, and a housekeeper to you? I have never had a life! And I am resolved to have one now, ere it is too late!”
“This affair must have a long background!” I raged. “Yet you never confided in me, though I stole and killed for you.”
“You stole and killed because you are a thief and a murderer!” she replied. “Royal is worth twenty of you. Did you know that long ago when we were children, he would risk a whipping to sneak upstairs and bring me flowers? That he would sit on the floor and tell me about his adventures, whilst you never talked to me at all, except to say good morning and good-bye?”
“What!” I thundered, “has it been going on that long?”
“He is a strong, wise man with a brilliant future. Have you forgotten that he killed that beastly Monsieur Felix to save me?”
It quite maddened me to hear that when I killed I was a murderer, but when Royal did the same he was a paladin.
“Royal shot the Overseer for his own revenge – you were incidental. You have always been incidental, Rose, a mere burden for others to carry, dead weight upon the road of life.”
“Cochon!” she cried, and slapped me so hard my head rang. Then, weeping, she flung open the door and fled upstairs to her bedroom.
I closed the door again, took a dusty bottle from the tantalus and poured a triple brandy. I had swallowed about half, when a movement in the corner of my eye caused me to turn.
I can see the room as it was then – indeed, as it still is, save for the electric lights: the heavy red draperies; the dark crouching furniture; the small iron safe; the broad burled walnut desk; and the wavering shadows cast over everything by a gasolier’s twelve flickering bluish points of flame. Against a wall covered with expensive French paper, something moved – a black shadow cast by nothing tangible.
“Well,” I demanded, “what the devil shall I do?”
A very apt way of speaking, all things considered. And in that instant I knew – knew how to handle the situation – as if I had spent years and years planning every detail.
I finished the drink, climbed the stairs and went to Rose’s room, where she lay sobbing upon the bed. Sitting down beside her, I spoke in the quiet, calm voice of a man who has regained his sanity after an emotional storm.
I reminded her that we were linked by blood, that we had been children together, that we had shared many perils and helped each other to survive terrible times. I lamented that we had both said things we should not have said. I said that she ought to have prepared me for Royal’s proposal, which had come as a great shock.
“I ask only that you take a little time to be sure, my dear. I have but recently cleared the taxes from Papa’s old land near Red River, and must take a brief trip there to get a new survey made. If, when I return, you are still resolved to marry Royal, you shall find me a champion of your right to choose him, and his to choose you. And you shall have a dowry proportioned to my wealth and your deserts.”
We wept together; I begged forgiveness a thousand times. She called me her dearest friend, her other self, the best and most understanding of men. I have never known why women believe the things men tell them – or vice versa.
In my bedroom I smoked a last segar, smiling without mirth as I saw with clear, unimpeded vision how the demon had saved and shaped my whole life to this very end. “Damn it all to hell,” I exclaimed, “je m’en fiche! I don’t care!”
But in that I lied. I cared, but knew that I could no longer change my course, which was fixed for all time. And perhaps beyond time as well.
Next morning, without the slightest warning, after days of quiet, all the arrangements meant to secure Lerner’s comfort broke down at once.
He woke from opulent dreams, as rich as those recorded in De Quincey’s Confessions of an English Opium-Eater. Dreams of caravans pacing across deserts where the light was blindingly intense; of chiming camel-bells and wailing flutes; of dark-eyed houris glancing through silken veils that covered swaying howdahs; of Mameluke guards with crooked swords and prancing horses; of lavish pavilions
where dancing girls twirled on rose carpets to the twanging of dulcimers.
And, yes, Monsieur Felix had been there, smiling his razor-thin smile and rubbing his hands like a master of ceremonies whose every gesture seems to say, “What wonders our performers will show you tonight!”
Then Lerner woke, tasting ashes as usual, and saw Cleo’s scared face and chignon peeping around the bedroom door like a polka-dotted messenger of doom. He didn’t even have time to ask what had gone wrong when she blurted out, “Oh, Mr Nick, Morse he been arrested, him!” And burst into tears.
The rest of the morning was spent unravelling what had happened the preceding night. It wasn’t easy. Two years back, with great reluctance Lerner had allowed a telephone to be installed in his house. But Morse had done all the calling, and when the old man wheeled himself into the hall to use it, he discovered that the box had been placed too high on the wall for him to reach.
So his questions had to be passed through Cleo – who was hysterical – and after he sent her away, through the cook, a sullen woman with the improbable name of Euphrosyne, an import from South Carolina with a Gullah accent as dark and impenetrable as a flagstone. The information from the other end of the line (first from Lerner’s lawyer, later from a police captain named Hennessy) had to come back by the same cross-African pathway.
But the old man was persistent, and knew how to offer Hennessy a bribe without actually using the word. So he learned that what the captain called “your pet nigger” was the talk of Storyville, where – it now appeared – he’d been a familiar figure for years, known for dispensing money (whose money?) with a free hand, and for his rough way with the women in the cribs and coloured brothels. A piano player called Professor Jelly Roll had already produced a “jass” composition in his honour, called “Mr Morse’s Blues”.
Lerner knew nothing of so-called jass music, except that it was said to be noisy. But as the story unfolded, he began to feel that Morse from his very conception had been headed for this reckoning. Apparently he began his evening with a few pipes of opium at some den near the docks that he’d discovered while procuring the drug for Lerner. Heading home, he entered a street-car while still befuddled and, finding it crowded, sat down on a bench meant for whites. The conductor and motorman ordered him to vacate it and stand behind a yellow sign that courteously stated THIS SECTION IS RESERVED FOR OUR COLOURED PATRONS ONLY. Morse refused, and courtesy perished as the two men hustled him off the car and flung him into a mud puddle.
Considerably dishevelled, Morse repaired to a saloon that served Negroes whiskey through a back window. He swallowed a few quick shots of courage and proceeded to a bawdy-house to seek further comfort. His choice of establishment was either deliberate arrogance or a grave mistake. The Madame, a fearsome mulattress who called herself Countess Willie V. Piazza, had built a fine business by providing handsome coloured women to a clientele of white men only. She took one look at Morse – mahogany-hued, smelling of drink and much the worse for wear – and refused him admittance. When he forced his way inside anyway, she summoned the police, and Morse topped off a busy night by assaulting not one but two brawny Irishmen.
With Hennessy’s assistance, Lerner’s lawyer found Morse in a cell of Parish Prison, where the police had been amusing themselves by playing drum-rolls on his ribs with their billyclubs. Bribes were necessary merely to preserve his life; when he was dragged before a magistrate, the lawyer had to guarantee his bail. Prison remained a distinct possibility, only (the lawyer warned) to be averted by still more bribes. When Morse at length was returned home by cab, Lerner not only had to pay the hackman, he had to hire a doctor to tend Morse at two dollars a visit. By evening of a day of upheaval, Morse was lying in his room upstairs, the doctor had cleaned his wounds and strapped his ribs, and Lerner was in a greater rage than was safe for an elderly man.
Damn him! he thought. Were he not a kinsman, I would let him sink or swim! Doesn’t he know what can happen to a man of colour in the grip of our police?
Well, of course he knew. It was just that Morse, Lerner’s pet from his birth, protected by the walls of this house, hadn’t thought it could happen to him.
Next morning – sleepless, ill-shaven, nerves ragged for lack of his drug, back pains lancing him like sparks of pure white fire – the old man returned ashen-tongued and red-eyed to his task, under a compulsion made somehow worse by the events of yesterday.
CHAPTER THE FIFTH
Wherein the Demon Proves the Real Winner
As a burning sun rose over the Father of Waters, I boarded a steam packet on the levee at Felicity Street. I had already visited a telegraph-office, and sent two local wires, one to Royal and one to Brigadier Hobbs.
Whilst the shore fell away, I stood gazing upon the broad churning wake of the stern-wheel, and the wide, ever-busy river beyond. I watched the crowded riverboats; the sleek steamers from overseas trailing plumes of ash from their smoke-stacks; the sailboats with little patched sails, and the scows with men hauling at the sweeps; the green hanks and the low, irregular levees; a party of church-goers clad in white gowns, being baptised in the shallows; and the floating and diving gulls that screamed in harsh voices.
Amidst all this busy life, I felt a strange loneliness, as if for all my wealth and influence I was but a gypsy and a wanderer upon the earth. My earlier homicides had been easy enough, for I had slain men who meant nothing to me. Perhaps I was not yet entirely what my master had designed me to be, for the thought that I must now play the role of Cain lay upon my heart like a stone. Somehow, through many years of dark deeds I had preserved the memory of my time of innocence, in which Royal played so large a part. Even if the tale told in the Bible be true, which I doubt, a vengeful God merely cast Adam out of Eden: he did not demand that he go back and befoul the very fountains of his former Paradise with blood.
Hoping to shake off my melancholy, I started to take a brisk turn about the deck, but stopped when I saw a well-known figure sitting at the bow, still as a carven figurehead. So the Overseer was coming along to see his revenge accomplished. I was not surprised – after all, the patient devil had waited nine years for it.
At Red River Landing, a tolerable inn survived, and I engaged a room. The town was muddy and straggling as in times gone by, but it boasted two or three steamboats tied up and unloading, with black labourers not unlike the slaves of yesteryear – indeed, they were the slaves of yesteryear – chanting work songs as they trotted up and down the gangplanks, with heavy loads miraculously balanced on their heads.
In my room, I laid my pistol upon the usual marble-top table, beside the usual chipped washbasin and flowered pitcher. Then I lay down to rest upon an ill-smelling featherbed, drawing a dusty musketo-net about me. My thoughts were sombre, but I did not have long to indulge them. Came a knock on the door, and the innkeeper – a huge man with smaller eyes in a larger face than I ever saw before – handed me two telegrams, and stood waiting whilst I read. I put the telegrams under my stump and began to fish in my waistcoat pocket for a coin.
“I’m not wanting a tip,” he said in a low drawling grumble of a voice. “General Hobbs has contacted me. Where’d you lose the wing?”
“Shiloh. Better come into the room.” He nodded and followed me.
“I was there too,” he said. “I saw General Johnston killed. The minny-ball broke an artery in his leg; he turned white as cotton and bled to death in half a minute. Is this a matter of honour, or politics?”
“Both. You’ll find that I know how to be grateful.”
“I’m sure.” Despite omitting the “r”, he made two syllables out of sure. “You want the nigger to go slow, or fast?”
“Fast.”
“Night or day?”
“He’s no fool. He won’t go out at night. And you don’t want him killed here.”
“So it’s daytime, then, which means masks and an ambush.”
In whispers we completed our arrangements. After engaging his horse and buggy for the morrow, I
explained that I had grown up nearby.
“I’m from Arkansaw, myself,” he said. “You owned the nigger in the old days?”
“Yes.”
“Ah,” said he, sadly shaking his massive head. “They was happier then.” He left the room with a surprisingly silent tread, for so big a man.
Everything was in readiness. I dined without appetite, slept poorly, but was waiting at the dock with the landlord’s buggy when Royal strode ashore from the morning packet. As if impersonating himself, he was all strut and boldness, jaunty and dressed in flash attire – a claw-hammer coat and top hat – at which blacks and whites alike turned and stared. I hailed him, and he leaped into the buggy, which swayed under his weight, and gripped my hand.
“Nick,” he exclaimed, “Never did I think we would meet here again, and for such a reason!”
I said, “Since you’re a bird with two wings, perhaps you’ll drive?”
He took the reins and snapped them with the casual ease of a country-bred man. The horse shook its mane and the buggy rolled with a jingle of little bells along the old familiar road that led to the ruins of Mon Repos. The day was fine, the ground dry and the spring weather cool and bright, with fair-weather clouds above, and great shadows flitting soundlessly over woods and meadows.
As we drove, I plunged into recollection, chattering nervously in a manner most unusual for me. Royal (a great talker) responded in kind, and soon we were pointing and exclaiming as if we were boys again. My school had been reduced to a few scattered bricks, and ‘midst the ruins of the church I saw – fallen and rusting – the iron bell that once had tolled for the death of a world. We turned into a dim track, where tall grass brushed the underside of the carriage with the sound of rubbed velvet. Near the stark chimney that alone had survived the fall of Mon Repos, Royal tugged at the reins and we halted.
For a minute or so we sat silent. Then he said, “I was amazed at your telegram, Nick.”
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