Skye Cameron

by Phyllis A. Whitney

  Courtney rose with alacrity and helped me up. We walked the length of the two parlors, past portraits of Creole ancestors who watched with varying degrees of approval from the walls. Courtney opened the shutters and we stepped onto a narrow gallery that reached the entire width of the building. The gallery was separated into sections by wood and ironwork guards which gave privacy to the individual houses that shared the stretch of gallery. Below us Chartres Street lay dim and quiet in the dusk. The busier traffic uptown seemed far away. Behind shuttered windows few lights were visible.

  I stepped to the gallery rail and leaned upon it, tracing the iron lacework with absent fingers. In the heart of the filigree the letter “T” had been woven into an oak leaf design.

  Courtney stood close beside me, yet not touching so much as my sleeve. He watched my fingers follow the iron tracery.

  “’T’ for Tourneau,” he said softly. “This house was built by the Tourneaus long ago. That design was made especially for it.”

  I looked out upon the Old Square of New Orleans—the Vieux Carré—and found it a foreign-seeming town, its houses far removed from the buildings of New England. Most of the structures about us were two or three stories high, with gently sloping roofs of slate, and the straight Spanish façade of the Creole house. In the dusk, all soft, light colors had vanished and everything was a shadowy gray.

  “‘T’ for Tourneau,” I repeated. “Sometimes I don’t know whether I can ever truly belong to my uncle’s family, or fit into the place he wants me to make for myself.”

  Courtney was silent and I had the feeling that thoughts I could not guess were going on behind the mask he wore tonight. I began to feel that I did not know him at all, that there might be more depth, more thoughtful sensitivity in him than I had dreamed.

  “I know what you mean,” he said at last. “I too have at times the sense of not belonging to the place in which I find myself. Or perhaps it is not this time to which I belong.”

  I glanced at him curiously and saw that in profile he bore a faint resemblance to Justin. But Justin’s nose and chin were stronger, more aggressive.

  “What time and place would you have chosen?” I asked.

  Courtney’s hands were graceful, long-fingered. He gestured affectionately toward the town about us. “I would always choose to live here, Skye. But I’d prefer the old days early in the century, when Creole life was at its best. How brilliant and gay New Orleans must have been then. That was the day of the aristocrats.”

  There was a lift to his voice now and I nodded in understanding. Yes, Courtney would have done well in the ancien régime before the democratic Americans came in and began a leveling of all classes. I could well imagine him in the company of other gay young men with wealth to spend and little to do with their time. No wonder there had been duels and dancing till dawn and love-making in more quarters than one. Courtney seated on a high stool in an office, with a green shade over his eyes, was an anachronism.

  He shrugged, made a sudden gesture of dismissal. “Alors! It is necessary that I find a place for myself in my own generation and time. The way has not yet opened.”

  I wondered what he thought of Uncle Robert’s current effort to open it, wondered if I dared speak. If I waited, when would there be another chance?

  “Has Uncle Robert mentioned his wishes to you?” I ventured.

  Courtney looked faintly shocked, so I suppose he considered such bold acknowledgment unmaidenly.

  “M’sieu Robert has mentioned them,” he admitted gravely. But he said nothing more, gave me no clue.

  Time was slipping away and I had a fear of being caught in its tide. My voice when I spoke was more tense than I intended, but I made no effort to halt my words once they had started.

  “Don’t listen to him, Courtney! We mustn’t be swayed into a course that might be disastrous. Surely there’s a pretty Creole girl whom you could love and marry for love. You mustn’t let Uncle Robert pick the wrong wife for you.”

  “I am, then, so abhorrent to you, mam’zelle?” Courtney asked quietly.

  “Of course not,” I told him. “I’ve never liked you better”—and that was true—“but we’re not for each other. No matter how well-intentioned his plans, I’ll never let Uncle Robert persuade me into a marriage I’m not ready for.”

  Courtney took my hands in his. “How concerned you are! All I ask is an opportunity to know you better, Skye, to have you know me better. There is nothing more your uncle wishes for the moment.”

  I was not reassured. I did not want Courtney to play this waiting game. Once I had been willing to wait and see where he was concerned. But that was before my thoughts had settled so strongly upon Justin. Now I knew my love and there was nothing for Courtney to wait for.

  “I suppose Uncle Robert expects young love to take its course,” I said more tartly than I intended.

  “Why not?” said Courtney, laughing a little. He bent his head and kissed my hands. The grave stranger who had looked out of his eyes for a little while was hidden again.

  I drew my hands away and went indoors, looking, I suppose, as disturbed as I felt. Aunt Natalie glanced at me knowingly, seeing what she wanted to see—a shy young girl embarrassed by the attentions of an attractive man.

  “I—I’ve a headache,” I said to Courtney. “You’ll excuse me, please.”

  I did not wait to hear his murmured regrets, but went somewhat precipitously out of the room and ran along the gallery to my father’s door. It stood open and I looked in.

  My mother’s interview with Uncle Robert must have been a short one, for she was here, pacing rapidly up and down the small expanse, her bosom heaving with indignation. When I appeared she whirled upon me as if I were to blame. I gave my father an apologetic look for this emotional upheaval and stepped into the room.

  “The very idea!” Mama cried. “What can Robert be thinking of to desire such a marriage? This young man has not a sou to his name, Bruce. He owes everything to Robert. Oh, I can see the whole plan clearly enough. If Robert marries Skye to Courtney he will have us all under his thumb forever. And this is what he wants more than anything else—power, always power. He must forever be manipulating lives, moving us upon his chessboard!”

  While I might wish that Uncle Robert had not taken this course, I did not believe he had chosen it for any reason but what he considered my own good. My mother, as usual, was mistaking generosity for something ignoble and uncharacteristic of my uncle. But I knew she was too angry to argue with and I kept silent. Though I could not help thinking that her own motives were not above suspicion. She might well be nettled at having an admiring young man removed from her reach.

  From his bed my father held out a hand to Mama. “Don’t excite yourself so, my lass.”

  Now she whirled upon him. “Why shouldn’t I excite myself? Someone must think of our future. What hope is there for us unless Skye can make a good marriage and get us out of this house? I can’t live here forever! I can’t bear it!”

  She burst into tears and ran out of the room. I watched her go in miserable silence. Whatever happened, my father should not be subjected to such words, or such storms. I went to sit beside him and held his hand in mine. He lay with his eyes closed, but I felt his fingers clasp themselves about my own.

  “She behaves like a child!” I said. “You’d think to hear her that only her comfort matters, that your life and mine mean nothing at all.”

  “Hush, lassie,” my father said and looked at me with eyes in which pain lay deep. “Your mother feels herself caught in a trap. She is reacting like any small caged thing. And I, who would do anything for her, am helpless to raise her bars.”

  I could not help wondering again how much of her anger had to do with the loss of a young man who had shown her some attention, but I said no more.

  Papa’s clasp on my hand tightened. “Never must you marry without love, Skye lassie. You are strong enough to stand for what you believe in. Let no one tell you otherwise, my girl, or m
ove you against your own convictions of what is good for you.”

  I bent and put my cheek against his hand. It was good to have him talk to me like this. Without his care, I had begun to feel too much alone, too vulnerable.

  “What manner of man is this elder brother of whom your mother has told me?” he asked me. “The man who gave the party.”

  What manner of man was Justin Law? Since my father was ready to listen, I tried to tell him that night. I went back to my first meeting with Justin and retraced my steps. There were some things I left out, but it was satisfying to speak from my heart, and to put into words something of my confusion and the contrary way I so often felt toward Justin.

  Papa heard me through in sympathetic silence. He offered me no advice, uttered no warnings. But when at last I rose to go to my own room, he said gently that I must one day bring this man to see him.

  That night I went to bed feeling more at peace than I had for some time. Now at least I need not hold all my strange turmoil secretly in my heart. There was relief in being able to speak the name of my love aloud, even though I could not fully confess my feelings for him, even to my father.

  During the hot July days that followed, my mother was contrite and very sweet to me. And because she grieved over her outburst in Papa’s room and regretted it, I tried to forgive her. When she asked me one afternoon to come for a walk with her, I went willingly enough.

  We were both glad to get out for a little while. Mama flung off her weight of despair, as she always managed to do when escape was possible, and as we walked along Chartres Street, she told me gaily of the good times she had known as a girl in this Creole city.

  There had been great wealth among the Creoles before the war, and she had danced at magnificent balls, gone visiting in sumptuous plantation houses, made trips across Lake Pontchartrain in the summertime. Particularly she remembered an elaborate ball the year of her coming out.

  “It was given in the lobby of the French Opera House itself,” she told me. “Ah, but it is dull here now, compared with those gay times.”

  “Yet you married Papa and left New Orleans,” I reminded her.

  She put a hand on my arm to draw me against a wall, lest I be spattered by an arc of mud thrown by wagon wheels. The elation had left her when she spoke again.

  “Your father was—different. Not like the young men of my acquaintance. I believed that he would love me forever.” An unusual candor was in her voice. “It is necessary for me to be loved,” she said.

  I felt closer to her than I had since before that day when I’d found her in the orchard with Tom Gilman. Gently I slipped a hand through her arm in sympathy.

  “He hasn’t stopped loving you,” I said. “It is forever.”

  Her dark eyes brimmed with tears and she turned away from me. “No! He has forgotten that he ever loved me. Now he is in love only with death.”

  Chilling words, to which I could find no answer.

  After that we walked for a while in silence past the pale pink and cream and gray-green houses, often with their plaster cracking, their shingles loose, a gentle air of decay upon them. There was evidence of crumbling everywhere, evidence of a need for loving hands to repair and rebuild. Still, the very weathering of colors in this tropical climate gave a patina of beauty that was more appealing perhaps than that of fresh, clean paint.

  As we neared Jackson Square and crossed the little flagstone bridge laid across a gutter, my mother gestured. “Look—here is the Cathedral. Let me show you where Creole gentlemen used to fight duels.”

  We turned down St. Anthony’s Alley toward Royal Street and she showed me the garden behind the Cathedral, almost hidden from the street by tall evergreens.

  “They could leave a ball quietly with smiles on their lips as if nothing was wrong,” she said. “And in a quarter of an hour they’d be here with their seconds, darting at each other with those evil colichemards. Many a young man met his death in St. Anthony’s garden.”

  I could almost see them there in the dawnlight, or by bright moonlight perhaps, with steel flashing and ringing.

  “Do you think Uncle Robert ever fought a duel here?” I asked.

  “That one! He was deadly with a rapier, and a sure shot with the pistol when dueling moved out to the parks. I had great fear that he would challenge my Bruce when he wanted to marry me and take me North. To the Creole, all who are not of our blood are of the gens du commun and not to be accepted by a Creole woman in marriage.”

  “What happened?” I urged. “Why did Uncle Robert let you marry Papa?”

  “There were two reasons,” Mama said with an effort to keep her tone light. “Your father always had a reasonable way with those who were ruled by their emotions. I think Robert suspected that Bruce might not accept a challenge. And there is great disgrace incurred by both parties in that case. Only of course Bruce was going North. He wouldn’t have cared.”

  The Code Duello, as I was beginning to learn, must have been a complicated affair.

  “What was the second reason?” I asked.

  Mama made no further effort to keep her tone light. She answered levelly as we retraced our steps to Chartres Street. “My brother hated me. He was glad to see me go.”

  I doubted her then. Always she had been prejudiced against Uncle Robert, unfair in her judgment of him. I suspected that if she had incurred any disapproval on his part, it had probably been her own fault.

  Under the old arches of the Cabildo, which had once been the Spanish government house, vendors were showing their wares and Mama, her mood changing again, stopped in delight near an old Negro woman who was cooking some sort of concoction in a pan. The woman, noting her interest, called to her at once.

  “Hot calas, madame! Toutes chaudes! Belles calas, toutes chaudes, madame!”

  “Rice cakes in the New Orleans fashion,” Mama said. “Of course we must have some!”

  Pennies and calas changed hands and we bit into the thin delicious fritters as we went on. Mama seemed as gay as Caro now, and nearly as young.

  At St. Peter Street we crossed to the upper Pontalba building. Remembering my meeting with Mrs. Pollock and the boy Lanny, I noted the place where they lived with a special interest. Then too, I remembered what Justin had said about Micaela de Pontalba—the red-haired baroness who had built these apartments. The structure stretched the entire width of the Square, as did its twin on the other side. Wide galleries overhung the banquettes for the full length of the second and third floors, with handsome cast-iron work at both levels.

  “Do you see the entwined ‘AP’ in the iron grillwork?” Mama asked. “The monogram stands of course for Almonaster and Pontalba.”

  The street level had been arranged for shops, but here and there a door stood blank and empty. Some sections of these fine Creole apartments were falling into neglect and disrepair.

  When we reached the corner we turned back through Jackson Square, skirting once more the statue of the General on his horse. But today no blond giant of a man was to be seen in the vicinity and my heart ached a little with longing. How was I ever to win my love if I could never see him?

  Then, as we approached the Chartres Street entrance to the Square, I heard my name called entreatingly and turned to see Mrs. Pollock’s young charge dashing across the grass toward us.

  “Mam’zelle!” Lanny called. “If you please, wait for me!”

  FIFTEEN

  This looked like another runaway, I thought, as Lanny hurried toward us. But I was already committed in my heart in his favor. He was a winsome, manly little boy, with charming manners that set him off in contrast to Mrs. Pollock.

  He came to a breathless halt before us, bowed to me and glanced shyly at my mother. Today he wore a slightly outgrown gray suit, with tight, short breeches, long blue stockings and high boots. His little bowler hat had a dent in it, but it had been neatly brushed, and there was a certain elegance in the black bow tied at his round stiff collar. Again I was struck by the Creole look of the b
oy. Already he was dandy enough to snatch up his hat, even when running away.

  “I’d like to present you to my mother,” I told him, while he caught his breath. “But I’m afraid I don’t know your last name.”

  “My name is Fontaine,” he said. “Lanny Fontaine.”

  I completed the introduction while Mama watched in amused surprise.

  “You’ve run away from Mrs. Pollock again, haven’t you?” I asked him directly.

  He made no attempt to dissemble. “They locked me into the apartment and left me there alone. But there is a window which I am able to open. It is possible to walk along the gallery and get out through vacant rooms. From the gallery I saw you here in the Square. I may walk with you for a while, mam’zelle? You will not send me back at once? No one will know, since no one is home.”

  I couldn’t resist him, and besides I was indignant at the thought of adults shutting a little boy up in that place and then going off to leave him alone and locked in.

  “Of course you may come with us,” I said and signaled my mother with a look to ask no questions until we were alone.

  Mama, however, had already taken to Lanny Fontaine and she too disliked the thought that he had been shut in and left alone. Always she had a soft place in her heart for children. Sometimes I’ve thought that she might have been a different woman if she could have had a large family of her own.

  “You did not bring the little girl, Caro, to see me,” Lanny said reproachfully as we left the Square.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “It was not possible. But she must be home from school by now. Perhaps you could come to our house and visit her for a little while. Then someone will take you home later and explain to Mrs. Pollock if she has returned.”

  Lanny was delighted and there was a skip to his walk as he moved along between us. I felt sure that only his notion of what a gentleman’s conduct should be when out with ladies, kept him from turning a cartwheel or two in glee. He was further delighted when Mama suggested that we return home along Royal Street, where we could have the fun of looking into shop windows as we passed.