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Skye Cameron

Page 25

by Phyllis A. Whitney


  It was necessary for Uncle Robert to reach for the back of a chair to support himself, so apoplectic was his anger.

  “There has been enough of such slander!” he shouted, his voice cracking on a high note. “There is only one way to deal with one like yourself. It is a way which belongs to the more honorable past, but it is a way of which gentlemen still avail themselves on occasion. My seconds will call on you, monsieur.”

  Justin got lazily to his feet. “This is not the first time I’ve been challenged to a duel since I came to New Orleans.” He flung a brief glance at Courtney, who stood rigidly beside me, his face white as paper. “Never do you Creoles lose your romantic notions. I’ve no intention of fighting you or anyone else. In your own case, I would not fight a man whose hands tremble so that he could not take fair aim with a pistol. Were you my own age, I might give you a good thrashing. But that satisfaction can’t be mine under the circumstances. You will hear from me again, however. Now, if you will excuse me, I have business here in town. Courtney, you will kindly tell my mother I do not expect to be home tonight.”

  Justin bowed with mock courtesy to my uncle and threw Courtney a look of pity. Then he bowed gravely to me and went out of the room. My heart was thudding in my ears and for the moment I was too frightened to move. My uncle was not one to take insult without action.

  Uncle Robert steadied himself with an effort, leaning both hands upon the chair back. When he could speak again he turned to the white and silent Courtney.

  “My boy, you will of course act as my second, if this fellow can be forced to fight. It will give me great pleasure to kill him.”

  Courtney spoke between tight lips. “Justin will not fight you,” he said. “And I will not be your second. But I will be glad to pick up the challenge my brother has refused. I will be happy to meet you at the Oaks at sunrise tomorrow, m’sieu. You have deceived us all too long.”

  Uncle Robert stared at him dumbfounded. Moving a little blindly, Courtney went toward the door. Just before he reached it he saw his mother’s picture on the wall—the portrait of Aurore LeMaitre as she had been long ago. He turned abruptly back to my uncle.

  “I have always wondered—why do you keep that picture of my mother on your wall?”

  With an effort Uncle Robert regained his self-control. “I keep it there to remind me of something I wish never to forget—the faithfulness of your mother. It is to remind me that she must pay for her miserable treatment of me. Indeed, m’sieu, I shall be most happy to meet her son on the field of honor.”

  Courtney bowed stiffly and went out of the room. My uncle seemed to have forgotten me. He walked to the table where the velvet-lined case lay and opened it. Almost tenderly, he took out the two pistols which lay within and regarded them proudly. The feel of them in his hands must have reassured him, for something of the blazing color went out of his face. He raised one pistol and sighted along the barrel. As Justin had said, his hand was not steady. He put the pistol down and saw me then, sitting in my chair across the room.

  “I would rather kill the other one,” he said. “But the young one will do. I am sorry to deprive you of your bridegroom, my dear, but this will be necessary.”

  I recovered the power of movement and fled from the room. Uncle Robert had miscalculated his opponent. The game had taken a new turn and I was desperately frightened. As I ran past the dining-room door, Delphine stepped out of the dim and shuttered room.

  “There’s going to be a duel!” I cried. “Someone will be killed. Delphine, we’ve got to stop it!”

  “We will not stop it,” Delphine said calmly. “It is M’sieu Courtney who will die.”

  “You—you know what has happened?” I gasped.

  “But certainly,” she admitted without hesitation. “I have much interest in this meeting today. And the voices were loud enough for me to hear, mam’zelle. But have no fear for your uncle. M’sieu Robert has never been defeated in a duel. Only once was he ever so much as wounded.”

  It was not my uncle for whom I feared, but I could see that the only way to get Delphine’s help was to shake her confidence in Uncle Robert as an expert shot.

  “You may have heard,” I said, “but you didn’t see him. He has turned into an old man whose hands tremble. He is in no condition to face a man as young as Courtney. It is Uncle Robert who will be killed.”

  She drew herself away from the hand I reached toward her and left me there in the hallway. I could only look after her tall figure, moving hurriedly toward the stairs in the wake of my uncle.

  There was nothing to do but go to my own room and try to gather some understanding of the things I had heard and seen. I sat there rocking in the breathless stillness of that yellow afternoon, and no more than twenty minutes passed before Delphine came to my door.

  When I called to her to enter I was shocked by her appearance. Almost always she seemed cool and remote and controlled. She might condemn the actions of others, but she did it without emotional involvement, as if from some Olympian height. Now her golden skin looked a little gray and her lips trembled when she tried to speak.

  “It is as you say, Mam’zelle Skye. M’sieu Robert is an old and shaken man. It is to be hoped that by dawn tomorrow he may recover himself. He has been greatly enraged by that American canaille. Yet he is a man of experience in the duel.”

  In a few moments she would talk herself back into a state of confidence in Robert Tourneau.

  “We must take no chances, Delphine,” I said. “Somehow this duel must be stopped. If the police knew—”

  She looked at me in horror. “Would you bring the disgrace of arrest upon this house?”

  I knew then I would get no help from her. Whatever had to be done, I must do myself. Justin did not know that Courtney had picked up the glove he had left in the ring. Surely Justin would stop Courtney when he knew what had happened. If, as he said, he was not going home to the Garden District tonight, then there was a chance that I might find him at the lodging he kept in town and let him know what had happened.

  Once Courtney had pointed out to me the place where his brother had taken rooms. I would go there and try to see him. There was no other way. I walked out of the house boldly that afternoon, and I think not even Delphine could have stopped me, even if she had tried.

  The rooms were on Dumaine Street—what in New Orleans were known as chambres garnies, furnished rooms for gentlemen only. The passage to the courtyard stood open, but as I hurried through, Justin’s landlady—no Creole, but one of the outsiders who had lately moved into the Quarter—came to meet me. She looked like the sort who would deal firmly with any situation of which she disapproved and she asked me my business curtly. No lady could properly visit a gentleman’s rooms, and she meant to have no nonsense in her respectable place.

  But I was as determined as she, and I played the Creole grande dame haughtily. It was a matter of the greatest importance, I assured her. If the gentleman were not home at present, I would wait. And down I sat on a bench in the courtyard. If she wanted to remove me, she would have to use force. Apparently she thought better of the matter and went off, muttering to herself.

  This was no tidy, well-cared-for court like that at the Tourneau house. The tropical growth had fairly burst its bounds, thriving in unkempt profusion among weeds and long-untrimmed shrubbery. I think I studied every inch of it that afternoon as the shadows grew long and I waited for Justin. I stared at the dry fountain, graced by a one-armed nymph; I noted that the bricks of the passageway were green with that mould that grows instantly in any damp shady spot in New Orleans. Apparently no marchand de brique came here weekly to sell the brick powder which kept courtyard and passageway at the Tourneaus’ so brightly free from the slippery green.

  And all the time, while I tried to occupy my mind with trivialities, I could see Courtney lying stretched beneath an oak tree in the park, his life snuffed out needlessly, foolishly.

  When it was nearly suppertime Madame returned and stared at me with di
sapproval. “When he don’t show up by this time, miss, he won’t likely show up till a whole lot later. No use you wearing out that bench and yourself with waiting. My other gentlemen will be coming along soon and it won’t look right—you sitting there.”

  I knew then that my mission was futile. He wouldn’t come until late tonight, when he returned only to sleep in these rooms. But if I could not see him myself, I could at least leave him word of what had happened.

  “If you will loan me pen and paper,” I said, “I will write Mr. Law a message.”

  She brought them to me, happy to be rid of me at last, and I wrote a note, beseeching Justin to stop Courtney from keeping his rendezvous at dawn the following morning. Then I sealed the envelope and told the landlady that it was a matter of life or death to get the message into Justin Law’s hands. Her promise seemed sincere enough and there was nothing else to do but go home and hope that it would finally reach him.

  The feeling of an impending storm was still in the air when we sat down to supper that night. Uncle Robert was absent from the meal. Aunt Natalie said he had a most terrible headache and could not eat. Plainly she had no inkling of what had happened. Often, she told us, when there was this oppressive sense of a storm stirring out on the Gulf, he felt like this. It was to be hoped the storm would not come inland.

  With Uncle Robert absent, Aunt Natalie and Mama, innocent of my knowledge, indulged in the usual light gossip. Only Isabelle and I sat silent. Inwardly I fumed with impatience for the meal to be done with. It was difficult to sit there and dissemble. As far as I was concerned, I hoped a good-sized hurricane would break over New Orleans. A storm might stop the duel as nothing else could. Any sort of delay might furnish the way to stop it permanently. Nothing tempted my appetite that night, and I sighed with relief when the long meal was over and I could hurry away.

  At nine o’clock in the evening, Delphine came looking for me. The night was sultry and still, and I had left my windows open, but she spoke so softly that even I could hardly hear her words.

  “Where did you go this afternoon, mam’zelle?”

  I told her without hesitation and for once she did not quote Creole convention and shake her head over my behavior.

  “It is useless, mam’zelle. M’sieu Robert will not be stopped.”

  “It’s Courtney I’m thinking of!” I cried. “He’s the one who must be stopped.”

  “If M’sieu Justin goes to the Oaks tomorrow morning to stop his brother, he will perhaps choose to fight himself,” she said thoughtfully.

  This had never occurred to me. “Oh, no! He wouldn’t do that. He has said he would not fight a duel.”

  Delphine went on, as if to herself. “I believe this would be more dangerous to your uncle than facing the boy. Let us pray, mam’zelle, that M’sieu Justin will find some means to stop this evil thing without any fighting at all. I myself shall go to the Oaks in the morning.”

  “You will go?”

  “Pourquoi non? Why should I not? This, mam’zelle, is not the first time women of my race have gone at dawn to the Dueling Oaks in the park. Men have died in the arms of such women in the ancien régime.”

  I shuddered. “Don’t talk like that. No one is going to die tomorrow. I can’t believe they will fight a duel. It’s too ridiculous.”

  “The graves in the cemeteries do not laugh, mam’zelle,” Delphine said. She turned gravely toward the door, but before she could pull it open, I made a decision.

  “Delphine—I’m going with you!”

  She looked at me as she had that day when I’d wandered unknowingly into Gallatin Street. “Ladies of good family do not behave in such fashion, mam’zelle. It is impossible.”

  I slipped between her and the door. “Forget that I’m supposed to be a Creole lady who can’t do this, and can’t do that. I’m a Yankee, and you know what you think of them! As a Yankee I shall go with you in the morning. If you don’t take me, I shall tell everyone, summon the police—”

  Delphine looked as though she might strike me, but she could not release herself from the disciplines of long training. “Like your maman, you must always have your way. But I shall not call you in the morning. If you are ready when I am ready, it makes no difference to me what you do. I take no responsibility for your behavior. Nor do I answer for what your uncle will do if he sees you there.”

  She went out and closed the door quietly behind her.

  I sat down in the little rocker and swayed gently back and forth. My thoughts were in a turmoil, but I knew I would go with Delphine if I had to sit up all night to manage it.

  What I intended to do at the Dueling Oaks tomorrow was not clear, but something, surely, would offer itself.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  All that night I dozed and woke and dozed again. Often I heard the sound of the Cathedral bell tolling the hour. Night still shrouded the courtyard when I arose and dressed. I was fully wide awake and alert to every sound.

  There were no stars to be seen out my windows, but the storm, if it was to strike New Orleans, had not broken. The courtyard was hidden by mist, thick as custard and motionless. I heard Jasper when he went out to bring the carriage for Uncle Robert. And though he moved softly, I heard my uncle too when he came downstairs. The sound of horses reached me clearly from the street and when I was sure he had gone, I sped lightly past my father’s room.

  When Delphine let herself out the gate into the thick yellow murk I went with her. Delphine had made her own arrangements. A shabby carriage awaited us a square away from the house down a cross street. I wore a heavy veil over my hat, but Delphine had not troubled to disguise her identity.

  Lamps at the corners shimmered in the gloom, but shed little radiance. Above us the iron lace of the galleries shone black and wet when light from the carriage lamps touched it. As we turned onto the wide Esplanade and jogged northwest toward the park, the mist began to drift into stringy wisps and I saw faint gray dawn in the sky behind us over the river.

  “What are we to do when we get there?” I asked Delphine anxiously.

  “We may only watch, mam’zelle,” she told me. “There is an old house among the Oaks, very dilapidated, but it will serve to shield us from view.”

  I shivered and sat back in the carriage, wondering if we would be in time.

  We had left the old Creole part of the city and I knew that this had once been a country road leading to the Allard plantation. But the plantation was now part of City Park and houses encroached along the road. When we crossed Bayou St. John the buildings disappeared. We had reached the appointed place.

  The carriage stopped and Delphine got out, instructed the driver to wait for us here. Then we moved together into the misty-gray shadows of live oak trees. The black trunks were vast in circumference and branched thickly overhead. Spanish moss dripped from every tree, and a strand of it touched my hand, dry and gray as withered skin. I followed Delphine beneath the trees with my heart thudding in my breast.

  She had chosen an approach that would not be used by the men and we were able to walk unseen toward the old house that huddled in tottering ruin among the trees. The roof looked as if it might come down upon our heads, but Delphine moved with confidence.

  “Often the wounded and dying were brought here after a duel,” she whispered as she led me toward a paneless window where we could look out upon the scene, well shielded in shadow.

  Dawnlight, murky though it was, now slanted between the great live oaks, lighting the scene clearly enough. There seemed to be seven or eight men moving about on the grassy expanse between the trees, and it looked as if an excited argument was going on. Beside the principals, there would of course be seconds and doctors. The group seemed to center around a figure which lay still upon the ground and I grasped Delphine’s arm.

  “They’ve fought already! Look—someone has been wounded!”

  “Be calm, mam’zelle,” Delphine said, but for once her own voice trembled. “I believe it is M’sieu Courtney on the ground.”
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br />   I saw Justin then in the hazy group. So he had come! But perhaps too late. “Do you think that Courtney—” I began.

  “Wait, mam’zelle. I do not think they fight as yet. See—see what is happening!”

  My uncle was removing his coat, and I saw that Justin also removed his. Delphine whispered in anguish close to my ear.

  “It is the barbarian who will fight M’sieu Robert, mam’zelle! It is as I feared. The brother has put M’sieu Courtney out of the fight.”

  Justin had of course come here to stop Courtney from fighting, and perhaps the only way he could manage that was to knock Courtney down. Now it was clear that he intended the thing Delphine had prophesied—to take his brother’s place in the duel.

  The mists were lifting, whisked away by a wind that set the long strands of gray moss swaying as if with a life of their own. I could see the participants more clearly now. The seconds were advising Justin and my uncle. One of the doctors still knelt beside the prone figure of Courtney, but he rose quickly to watch what was happening. The distance was measured in paces and Delphine’s lips moved as she counted silently.

  “Ten paces,” she said. “A man with a steady hand cannot miss.”

  Justin’s hand would be steady. If he chose he could kill my uncle, unless he himself were killed first.

  “Will they fire more than once?” I whispered.

  Delphine shrugged. “Who knows? Sometimes honor is satisfied at first blood. Sometimes it is a fight to the death. It will be arranged. M’sieu Robert has preference for an exchange of three shots.”

  Three shots—three chances to kill or be killed!

 

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