by Anne Rice
“But Tante, there’s still time,” Marie said. “It’s not till three o’clock and…” Marie stopped. She was so hot now she was dizzy. She sat back abruptly causing the small Queen Anne chair to creak. She put her hands to her face. The weight of the chignon on the back of her head was painful and it seemed even her clothes were heavy, pulling her down with them. “Tante, I must write to her this minute, tell her that we’ll be there, Jeanetta could take the letter now.”
“Now just be patient, chère, just be patient,” Louisa took the letter from Colette’s hand.
“Lost indeed,” Colette said. “Your Maman received that invitation, didn’t she?”
Marie stared from one to the other of them. She started to speak and then stopped. Bending forward from the waist, she looked away from them down the long passage from the parlor door. The shutters were open at the end of the passage and the light forced her to close her eyes.
“It doesn’t matter, does it?” she whispered, turning back to them. She was in pain.
“So what did she say!” Colette demanded.
Marie shook her head. Her shrug was subtle, not a consummate gesture. “She doesn’t recall receiving it,” she said, her voice faltering, weakening. She didn’t want to speak of this, or even think of it. It wasn’t important to her. “Ah…” she took a deep breath, “Monsieur Philippe received the letter this morning…Maman says…she cannot go.”
“Hmmmmp, well that’s understandable enough with Monsieur Philippe there,” Colette conceded, “but not to answer that invitation, I bet she threw that invitation away.”
“Doesn’t matter, we’ll just have to write to her and explain that we can’t go now.” Louisa said.
Marie was on her feet again. Red blotches appeared in her white cheeks. “Can’t go? But we must go. She’s expecting us, you said that Sunday…Sunday…” she looked at Colette. Her voice was unsteady, hoarse from her running, but her eyes were imploring and rather strong. “Tante, don’t you see?” she said. “She’s invited us, all of us, formally to coffee…”
“Why, ma chère, of course I see,” Louisa interrupted. “And so does your Tante Colette, but it’s twelve-thirty-five by the clock and we can’t…”
Marie put her hands to her temples as if she were hearing a discordant sound.
“Now you listen to me, Marie,” Colette said quite simply. “This is just a little bit of a mess, here with your mother unable to go, and the invitation not properly answered, things like this have to be attended to in the proper time…” she stopped. “Well,” she said suddenly, and looked from her sister to her niece.
“The point is,” Louisa said, opening the journal again and lifting her monocle, “this is a certain sort of invitation, I mean, considering the visits you’ve had from young Richard…”
“But that’s just it,” Marie said softly. “That’s exactly it.”
“And it’s just not proper that we rush into something like this, not with people who are so, well, formal, like the Lermontants…”
“Now you have to understand,” Colette interrupted gravely, “when you let a boy visit you like that so often, walk with you to Mass every single Sunday and you don’t pay even the slightest mind to anyone else…”
“But I understand!” Marie was gasping. “I knew that sooner or later she might ask us, I was…I was hoping…” She pressed her knuckles to her lips.
Both the aunts remained silent for a moment. They were looking at her, and a slight frown marred Colette’s rather smooth forehead. She had her head just a little to one side. It was an air of skepticism and then drawing herself up she began again, “Now you just can’t do something like this without thinking it over…”
“You’re not saying you won’t go!”
It was two o’clock before it ended. Marie sat numbly in her chair. For a long time she had said nothing, the early arguments had been easy to counter, that she must not be hasty, that there were so many fine boys, and Augustin Dumanoir was a planter’s son, and she was so young, yes, again and again, she was so young. But some time or other in the room matters had changed. It was a tone of voice perhaps, something impatient in Colette’s tone. Marie did not even know then but she had commenced to shake all over as she heard that voice altering, the words becoming slower, weighted with the necessity for truth. Marie had run her hands into her hair, palms pressed to her forehead. She did not believe it! But it was always Colette who would finally come to the point.
“…parties are good for a young girl, they give a young girl poise, why, there’s nothing wrong with your receiving all the boys, as long as all the boys are invited, as long as…” And so on it went, until deeper and closer it came to the heart of the matter as the clock ticked, as the tiny golden hand moved from one to two.
Silence in the room except for the ticking. Colette was scratching at a note at the desk.
Louisa was trying to soften it, make it all seem rather matter-of-fact, “You see, even if you were to marry a colored boy, I mean if you were to make up your mind that that was what you wanted for yourself, and Michie Philippe was willing and your Maman was willing and…well, you see Augustin Dumanoir is a planter’s son, chère, a planter’s son, with land that goes on farther back from the river than the eye can see, and I’m not saying that Richard Lermontant won’t make some nice girl a fine husband, why if you want to know the perfect truth, chere, I have always liked Richard Lermontant just about the best.”
Colette put down the pen. She rose from the desk.
“Now I have taken care of this,” she said gravely. “You musn’t worry about things. I have known these old families all my life, I’ve known them on the Cane River and I’ve known them here. Madame Suzette will understand. Now do you want to take this down to Jeannetta, or shall I take it on down myself?”
“I’ll take it,” Louisa said rising. Marie had not moved. She was staring at the note. And she did not know it, but the drawn and grave expression of her face sobered and frightened her aunts. Louisa made a patient gesture of “let her be” and Colette made a little shake of the head.
“Chère, someday when you’re older, and that will come awfully soon,” Colette said, “you will thank me for this. I don’t expect you to believe that, but I know it’s a fact.”
“Give me the note,” Louisa said quickly.
But Marie reached out her hand.
“I’ll take it,” she said softly. And she rose from the chair.
“Well, then, now that’s better,” Tante Colette embraced her, kissed her on both cheeks.
“We’re not saying you can’t still see that boy…long as you see him with all the others…” Louisa had commenced again as Marie went out the door.
She was in the back of the shop for a full five minutes before Jeannetta down on her knees to pin up a hem for a white lady rose quickly to her beckoning finger.
“Is my new green muslin ready?” Marie whispered.
“Oh, yes, Mamzelle,” the girl answered. The other seamstresses looked after her a bit resentfully, as she took Marie into the small dressing room opposite, “See, perfect, Mamzelle!”
Marie’s eyes moved coldly over the ruffles. “Then help me dress quickly.” she said. She had already crumpled the note into a ball.
She had never been in the house. She had passed it a hundred times, it seemed, and never crossed that threshold and at times she had lain awake at night knowing her brother was there.
Her world was made up of flats and cottages, finely furnished always, but nothing of the grandeur of this immense façade rising three stories above the Rue St. Louis, a broad fan light above its paneled door. She did not stop to look at it now, to look up at the high attic windows, or the lace curtains that fluttered a bit carelessly from an upper room. Because if she did stop, she would be afraid.
And since she had left the shop, all fear had been obliterated in her by an anger so perfect in its clarity that it had impelled her on without pause for the slightest question of her course. Now
she lifted her hand to pull the bell. Far off it rang, and clearer yet was the sound of a clock, an immense clock, ringing the hour of three. Her eyes fixed on the granite step before her. She refused to think a moment ahead. And when Placide, the old valet, opened the door for her, she did not know what words she murmured to him except that they were polite. A great stairway rose before her, winding its way up beyond a landing where a high window looked upon a lace of leaf and sky. And her eyes turned slowly, steadily, to follow the old man’s back as he led her into a large room. Madame Suzette was there, she knew it before she lifted her eyes. Very slowly, timelessly it seemed, the room impressed itself on her. The low table before the marble fireplace set with cake, the china cups, and the lone woman rising to her feet, the pale creamy brown skin of her folded hands against her blue dress. And there was that face, serene, not beautiful perhaps, but pleasing with its large dark eyes, the long and generous Caucasian mouth, the gray streaks in the deep chestnut hair. There was anger in the eyes, just the touch of outrage, as they shifted uneasily to the figure of Marie in the door. The lips didn’t move. The expression shifted subtly from one of anger to patience and then a deliberate and wary smile.
“So you’ve come, after all,” the voice was courtesy.
“Madame, my aunts and my mother regret…” Marie started. “Madame, my aunts and my mother regret that they cannot come. I have…I have come alone.”
The eyes were wide with wonder, the figure contained as if it would not make some hasty move. And then all at once it seemed, soundlessly and gracefully, the figure came toward her, the hands out slowly to take her by the shoulders, “Why, ma chère,” she said softly, hesitating, “I’m so glad, then, that you could come.”
It was never awkward which seemed a wonder afterwards. Madame Suzette had commenced at once to talk. Not once had she mentioned the aunts or Cecile, there were no questions, in fact, and it seemed rather that she could carry the afternoon’s conversation with only the sparest of monosyllabic answers on her own. She had talked softly of the weather at first as people do, moving gently into all the proper little subjects, did Marie sew, and wasn’t it a lovely dress? Had she left school altogether after her First Communion, well, perhaps that was just as well.
It seemed at some perfect interval they had risen, and begun to move about the house. It was easier then, easy to ask about the crystal on the sideboard, the dining table which had come from France. And the garden was so beautiful that Marie at once smiled. They had wandered up the stairs finally, talking softly of Jean Jacques who had made the small table in the upper hall.
“And this, ma chère, is my son’s room.” Madame Suzette threw open the double doors. Marie had felt such a strange pleasure to see it, to think suddenly, incoherently, yes, Richard’s place. For one instant, she had been startled by the sight of the small Daguerreotype of herself by the bed. “You see,” Madame Suzette had laughed lightly lifting it, “you are very much admired.”
Her own bedroom was to the back of the house, and lovely perhaps, Marie was not sure. For no sooner had they entered it than Madame Suzette had taken her into a small adjacent room. This had been the nursery once, but it was the room where she worked now. Her voice had become grave then, simpler. She had begun to explain about the Benevolent Society and the work that they did. Some two dozen women they were from the old families and some new, she made a little shrug, but united for one purpose, one and all. And that was to see no colored child went hungry, no colored child went without shoes. Even the poorest young girls were to have pretty dresses for their First Communion and if there was a single elderly woman of this parish alone somewhere neglected in a room they must know about it at once. She didn’t say these things with pride. She said them with absorption. She had been sewing on the Communion dresses already for next year. Her hands lifted the sheer netting which would be made into veils. Marie was looking at her now more intently, certainly more directly than before. Because Madame Suzette was no longer meeting her gaze and forcing it away from her without realizing it, and Marie could see her as if she were close and quite far at the same time. They had the responsibility now for some seventeen orphans, she was saying softly with the faintest touch of concern, and she wasn’t sure they were all so well cared for, two in particular were very little to be working so hard in the homes where they were kept. “It’s so important that they learn a means of livelihood,” she was explaining, and then suddenly lost in her thoughts, she let a silence fall in the room.
Marie saw her perfectly against the shelves of folded white cloth, baskets, balls of yarn, her tall and rounded form dully reflected in the immaculate floor. Sunlight poured through the thinly veiled windows, and she said almost to herself, “There is never an end to it really, it will take all that you can give.”
Somewhere in the house a small clock chimed. And then came the grandfather clock below. Madame Suzette was staring at Marie, her eyes vague and wondering and utterly kind. Marie knew that Madame Suzette had moved toward her but it was so silent and swift, she realized only that Madame Suzette’s lips had brushed her cheek. And suddenly Marie was trembling, lifting her hands to her eyes. No, this was unthinkable, this just couldn’t happen to her now, not after all the day’s struggles could she weaken at this moment and lose control.
But she was shaking violently, she couldn’t even be silent, she could not, would not lift her eyes. She knew Madame Suzette was guiding her out of that small workroom and across the bedroom floor. Through her tears she saw the flowers of the carpet and their curling leaves that seemed to flow outward as if the room could not end.
“I am so sorry, so sorry…” she was whispering, “I am so sorry…” over and over again. It seemed warm words were spoken to her, sincere words that stroked her, but they stroked only the outside of her, and left the inside dark and tangled and miserable as the tears continued to flow.
And then a voice came, so low, she thought perhaps it was an illusion. A voice very deep and soft that said with the touch of a great warm hand on her wrist, “Marie!”
“It’s Richard, ma chère…” his mother said softly.
And stupidly, blindly, ignoring the proper and generous woman at her side, she reached out, clutched him and buried her face in his neck. She could feel the soft rumble of his voice against her, the world be damned.
“Marie, Marie,” he said almost as if speaking to a little child.
It had been half past four when she left, and the three of them, Richard, his mother, and she, had sat talking quietly as if nothing had happened, as if she had not, without explanation, commenced to cry. There had been fresh coffee, cake, and Richard arguing intimately with his mother that, indeed, if he were to take three spoons of sugar now he might as well throw his supper away. She had had time to collect herself, Madame Suzette holding her hand warmly, the sweet stream of conversation moving on.
At one point she had feared she must explain, how in that moment in the workroom when Madame Suzette was speaking of the orphans, she had felt a longing so immense and so desperate that her soul and her body had become one. But she couldn’t explain this because she did not understand it herself. The Benevolent Societies were nothing new to her, she had heard of them for years, her aunts gave fabric for their sewing, her mother now and then gave old clothes, but perhaps her view of such things had been ironical, distant and trivializing, she was unsure. But one conviction struggled for articulation inside of her even should it never come out: never in her life had she felt such respect, such trust for another woman as she had felt then for Madame Suzette; never had she known a woman could have substance, simplicity, and vigor which all her life she had associated entirely with men. And this it seemed amid the usual feminine trappings which for her had spelt vanity in the past, unendurable hours with the needle, making lace to grace the backs of chairs.
But they had expected nothing of her then, Richard and his mother, only that she sit quietly if indeed she wanted that, and raw as she was she would have know
n it had Madame Suzette’s soft and dignified concern for her been not so perfectly pure. She was glad she had come! She was almost happy sitting with them in that large front room.
At last she had risen to go. Madame Suzette’s embrace was tense, lingering as was her gaze when she looked into Marie’s eyes. She would send her maid, Yvette, to see Marie home.
Richard had come out on the steps with her, however, refusing to let go of her hand. “I’ll walk with you!” he said almost righteously.
“No!” she’d shaken her head at once. For one moment, Richard’s eyes met her eyes and nothing more was said. “I love you” was spelt there with the understanding that she could not let herself be alone with him and he could not let himself be alone with her. Even in the crowded streets they would have found some place to kiss, to touch. Turning her head, she was gone.
All the afternoon was beautiful to her. The sun was mellow even in the high windows of the townhouses where it turned to solid gold. And then the rain commenced, lightly suffusing all with a cooler, sweeter air. Flowers bent their necks along the garden walls, tiny blossoms broke and fell, shuddering in her path. She was walking fast as always, but uplifted and no longer angry, no longer afraid. It was as if all the gloom that she had ever known was remote from her. It belonged with her aunts and with her mother in some other world.
The Lermontant house with its soft scents and polished surfaces seemed to descend upon her, surrounding her like a fragrance wafted on the breeze. She could feel Madame Suzette’s arm about her shoulder, feel that hand which held hers to the very end. She could see Richard’s eyes.
And not remembering the little maid, Yvette, who followed her faithfully to her gate in the Rue Ste. Anne, she went in without looking back and shut the parlor door. She would not see her aunts today. She would not answer their questions, and Monsieur Philippe would be here, a great and pleasant force between her and her mother. She need not speak to anyone, actually, she would settle at her dresser, she would pull the pins from her hair. And maybe, just maybe, the time had come for her to talk to Marcel. Maybe, just maybe, she would mount the steps of the garçonnière later and knock at the door of his room. He would not betray her, he would never betray her, and maybe it was time, now, to tell him what she already knew, that she would marry Richard Lermontant.