The Exiles

by Gilbert, Morris

  Walking back to the house, Chantel felt a disappointment. She had grown accustomed to her talks with Yves. He was teaching her about art, and she felt that she was growing in a way. She also knew in her heart that she was falling in love with him, and it was a wonderful feeling. She had had so little contact with men and none at all with anyone like Yves.

  When she walked inside, she found Neville in the study.

  “Is he gone?”

  “Yes. He just left.”

  Neville put down the pen and flexed his fingers. “I can’t say I’m sorry. I think he’s been monopolizing you.” He laughed suddenly and said, “And that’s what I came down to do.”

  “What would you like to do, Neville?”

  “Well, today, anything you like. Tomorrow I have an engagement.”

  “An engagement? But tomorrow’s Sunday.”

  “I know. I’ve been asked to preach at a church close by. The Methodist church with the tall spire on it.”

  Chantel stared at him. “How did that happen?”

  “The pastor there is a good friend of mine. When he comes to New Orleans, we usually meet. He’s a fine man, but he had to be out of the pulpit tomorrow so he asked me to fill in for him.”

  Chantel knew that Neville spoke at churches sometimes, but she had forgotten. “I wish I could hear you, but we’re not allowed to go to other churches.”

  “I can’t understand that.” Neville shrugged. “I’d feel perfectly free to go to a Catholic church if you invited me.”

  “You never told me that.”

  “Well, I’m telling you now. After all, we’re all Christians no matter what the sign says out in front of the church.”

  Chantel flushed. She knew that her own priest would never permit her to go to a Protestant church, and she changed the subject abruptly.

  They had a good day riding over the plantation. Chantel kept a close eye on Neville, waiting for him to hold her hand or try to kiss her, but he just wanted to know about sugar production and new methods and storage barns. He talked about enlargements to the house, and she was vaguely disappointed.

  I told Yves there was nothing to his crazy idea. Neville would never be interested in me. He knew me too well when I was nothing but a child.

  That night Chantel tossed and turned restlessly. Slowly an idea began to take shape within her mind. She had always had this sort of imagination, where an idea would come much like a single grain of corn and then begin to grow and swell until finally it was a full-fledged scheme. At first the thought seemed ridiculous, but as she lay there listening to the symphony of frogs, it came together so perfectly that finally she said aloud, “I’ll do it!” A mixture of fear and excitement came to her, and she nodded firmly. “Yes, I’ll do it!”

  The service had evidently already started as Chantel moved up the steps of the small white church with the steeple. She could hear the singing of the people, and for just one moment she took counsel of her fears.

  I must be crazy! It will never work—someone is sure to recognize me.

  Still, she stood there wearing the black satin dress with the black hat and the veil that covered her face almost down to the chin. The idea of disguising herself and coming to hear Neville preach had seemed wild and fantastical at first, but as she stood there she determined not to listen to her fears. She had no idea what to expect inside the doors. Still, she could not see any wrong in it. Neville’s admission that he would be glad to go to her church came to her, and she thought, If he can come to my church, I can go to his!

  Lifting her head, she stepped forward, and as she moved toward the door, a man wearing a white linen suit nodded pleasantly to her. “Good morning, ma’am. We’re glad to have you visiting with us.” He hesitated, then said, “I’m sorry about your loss.”

  Chantel murmured, “Thank you.” He opened the door, and she stepped inside. Another man came toward her at once and said, “There’s a seat halfway to the front, ma’am. You can hear everything from there.”

  “Thank you.” Chantel followed him down the aisle and sat down. She was aware that people were looking at her, and she kept her head down. Only when she was seated did she look around.

  The church was not large, but the ceilings were high. She was fascinated by the stained glass windows that portrayed what she supposed were biblical scenes. The pews were made of some sort of hardwood, polished to a high sheen, and the floors were hard pine glistening clean.

  The people who sat in the pews were singing out of books, and she had never heard the song before. A book was lying on the bench, and a man handed it to her and said, “It’s page twenty-nine, ma’am.”

  Turning to the page, she began to follow along. The words struck her in a way she could not explain:

  Alas! and did my Savior bleed

  And did my Sovereign die

  Would He devote that sacred head

  For such a worm as I?

  Was it for crimes that I have done

  He groaned upon the tree?

  Amazing pity! grace unknown!

  And love beyond degree!

  Well might the sun in darkness hide,

  And shut his glories in,

  When Christ the mighty Maker died

  For man, the creature’s sin.

  But drops of grief can ne’er repay

  The debt of love I owe:

  Here, Lord, I give myself away

  ’Tis all that I can do.

  The words did something to Chantel. She had never heard a hymn like this, and she began to think of Jesus in a way that she had never thought before.

  The congregation sang several more songs, and then an offering was taken. Finally the choir sang a special song, and by this time Chantel was very uncomfortable. She could not explain why. Just being in a church other than her own seemed wrong—and yet there was joy and excitement on the faces of the worshippers.

  She was also struck by the informality of the service. Her own service in the Catholic church, of course, was highly formal, choreographed almost with the precision of a minuet. Very rarely was her heart touched in such a service. But here, somehow, the spirit of God was very real.

  Finally she saw Neville stand and come to take his place behind the pulpit. He had a Bible in his hand and looked out over the congregation calmly. There was an ease and assurance about him, and he told the congregation that he was glad to be there and worship with them.

  Then he said, “I can speak of nothing other this morning than Jesus and His amazing power to take us all to be in heaven with Him. Turn in your Bible to the twenty-third chapter of Luke to the story of the death of our Lord Jesus. We will read from the Scripture beginning with the thirty-ninth verse:

  And one of the malefactors which were hanged railed on him, saying, If thou be Christ, save thyself and us.

  But the other answering rebuked him, saying, Dost not thou fear God, seeing thou art in the same condemnation?

  And we indeed justly; for we receive the due reward of our deeds: but this man hath done nothing amiss.

  And he said unto Jesus, Lord, remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom.

  And Jesus said unto him, Verily I say unto thee, To day shalt thou be with me in paradise.

  Chantel had read this story more than once since Neville had shown it to her so long ago. It never failed to move her. She followed the sermon closely, forgetting her fears and her nervousness.

  Neville was a fine speaker. She had known that he must be, since lawyers had to plead cases in court, but somehow preaching brought out a new dimension that she had not seen in him before. The last part of his sermon was clear. “I will remark in closing that this poor, dying thief went directly to be with Jesus. There was no intermediate state. Despite what some may believe, there was no purgatory. There was no more suffering for sins, for Jesus had suffered for sins.”

  Despite Sister Martha’s best efforts, Chantel had resisted the idea of her mother and her sister and lately her father going from this life to a place
where they would be tormented for an indeterminate time. Now Neville had reassured her again, saying that the instant one died, that moment they were in the arms of the Lord Jesus—all pain gone, no more tears, no more sorrow.

  Neville stepped out of the pulpit and held his Bible high, extending his other hand toward the congregation. Chantel found herself trembling as she listened to his words. “What did Jesus mean when he said, ‘It is finished’? Why, He meant that He has finished your salvation. Look to Him and be saved. That is all you must do. He is the only salvation. This morning just one look, just one cry, ‘Be merciful to me,’ and forever your place in heaven is reserved. As we stand and sing, I’m going to ask you to come forward this morning if you want Christ to wash away all your sins and make your place forever reserved in heaven.”

  The congregation stood, but Chantel found that her legs were weak, so weak they would hardly hold her. She held the book in her hand, but she could not see it, for her eyes were bleared with tears. She saw people going forward, and when they reached the front, they knelt for prayer. Chantel desperately wanted to get away, and the instant the service was dismissed, she went to her buggy, got in, and drove off.

  As she left the church behind, her heart was beating fast. She could not understand what had moved her so. She knew one thing—that she did not know Jesus the way that Neville spoke of. And this frightened her so badly she could hardly drive the team.

  Chapter nineteen

  Chantel had been so disturbed by her visit to the Methodist church that she did not sleep well. The next morning she got up before dawn, put on one of her oldest dresses, and went down early to breakfast. She was surprised to see Neville sitting in the kitchen, eating a biscuit and talking to Clarice.

  “Well, good morning,” Neville said, turning to her. “You’re up early.”

  “So are you. Why did you get up this early, Neville?”

  “Oh, I like to get up before daylight and just get ready for the day.

  I’ll prowl around the house at home. I call it the cobwebby hours of the morning.”

  “You sit down, and I’ll cook you some eggs,” Clarice said. “Do you want bacon or ham or sausage?”

  Chantel sat down, but she ate little. From time to time she glanced at Neville, who seemed at ease speaking to Clarice about a trip he had made to New York. She listened with interest as she moved about the kitchen doing her work.

  As soon as Chantel had finished the meal, she said, “I’ve got to go over the plantation today. It’s time to matalay the cane.”

  “Matalay? What’s that?”

  “Come along, and I’ll show you.”

  The two left the big house and went by the slave quarters. Neville knew very little about the actual work on a sugar plantation, and he was interested in every detail. They found Simon, the overseer, getting the workers ready to cut the cane.

  Chantel explained, “They’re going to lay all this cane out on the ground and cover it with a layer of dirt. It will sprout pretty soon, and we’ll get next year’s seed cane to grow the new crop.”

  Next the two moved toward the sugarhouse, a large, open structure consisting mainly of a roof with a huge chimney that was already sending billows of black smoke into the sky. When they moved inside, Neville was interested in the massive rollers powered by a steam engine. As the workers shoved the cane into the rollers, it forced the juice out into vats. These vats were then heated until the water content evaporated. What was left was unrefined sugar.

  “We pack this sugar into wooden barrels to be shipped to market.”

  “It’s a noisy place, isn’t it?” Neville said, shouting over the roar of the engines.

  “Yes, and it’s dangerous, too. Someone’s always getting hurt from that steam—and broken rollers can injure the men who work on the machines.”

  As the day wore on, they made several visits to different parts of the field and then would return to see what was going on in the sugarhouse. The noise of the machinery often reached deafening levels, and the operation gave off a sweetish odor that wafted over the entire plantation.

  Chantel pointed out the dark patch in the bottom of the vats, left over from the raw brown sugar.

  “That’s molasses,” she said. “You’ve had it on biscuits, I suppose.”

  “Yes, but I didn’t really know where it came from.”

  At noon all the workers stopped to eat lunches they had brought in small cloth bags. A water boy went around taking fresh water to them.

  While they ate, Chantel and Neville sat under a large oak tree heavily laden with Spanish moss. She didn’t talk much, and Neville himself felt under a strain. As he studied her, he tried to sort out his feelings for Chantel. He knew he had a love for her, but what kind of a love? He could remember the first affection he had felt when she was only a child and lonely from the loss of her mother and her sister. Then, as she had grown up, he had helped her with her lessons, still with the affection of a grown man for a child.

  But he knew something had changed. Even in her old dress she made a winsome sight as she sat there under the tree, her legs drawn up under her. There was still something childlike about her, an innocence that he found most appealing. But since the night he had kissed her and held her, he no longer thought of her as a child. Now as they sat there, he thought again of Yves Gaspard, and the thought worried him.

  He tried to engage Chantel in conversation, and she responded, but he knew she was troubled. Finally he asked her, “What’s the matter? You seem a little out of sorts today.”

  “Oh, nothing.”

  “Come now, Chantel. I can tell when something’s wrong.”

  Chantel wanted to ask him to tell her more about heaven and what he really felt about his religion. She knew that it was a very personal thing with him, that his whole heart was in it. She longed for such a feeling herself, but did not know how to ask. So she put him off, and the moment passed.

  Evening came, and the slaves were down in their quarters. From their rocking chairs on the front porch, Neville and Chantel could hear the sound of their singing. They listened for a while to the mixture of their songs with that of the crickets and the frogs.

  “I like it at night like this, sitting here and just listening to the singing,” Chantel said. She had bathed and changed clothes, and Neville smelled the fresh cleanness and the slight fragrance of lilacs that she always wore. She was looking out over the grounds, and her profile was turned to him. He admired the clean lines of her jaw and the firm roundness of her neck. Her hair was down, and he knew that she had washed it, for he could also smell the sweet freshness of the soap she had used.

  Neville Harcourt was not a man of impulse. He had developed an analytical mind, a necessary piece of equipment for the practice of law. But there was another level to him, as there is to every man, which goes beyond reason and explanation. He had been trying to reason with himself about his feelings for Chantel Fontaine for days now, and had arrived nowhere. The more he tried to approach it as a fine point of law or a mathematical problem that could finally be solved, the more confused he became. Now as he sat beside her, Neville suddenly realized that he would never be able to figure out his feelings as he could analyze a case before a judge or a jury. He gave up on analysis. Instead, he reached out and touched Chantel’s arm. When she turned to him, her eyes were open wide with surprise. He knew that there was only one way. He had to speak what was in his heart.

  “Chantel, I want to ask you something.”

  Chantel knew he had been troubled, for he had said little, and she wanted to help if she could. “What is it, Neville? Is there something I can do?”

  “Yes, I think there’s something you must do.”

  Chantel put her hand over his as he clasped her forearm. “You’ve been so kind to me. Anything that I can, you know I would do.”

  Neville Harcourt felt suddenly like a man on a high perch with a body of water down below, trying to make up his mind whether to dive or not. If he did not dive,
he would be safe. If he did launch himself out, there would be no turning back. He might be badly hurt if he did not hit the water right.

  Finally he said, “Chantel, I want you to think of me as a man—” He hesitated slightly and then said, “As a man you might marry.”

  Chantel had not been expecting his request. She stared at him, conscious that her heart was beating faster. Her head swarmed as she thought of all the years that he had been so kind to her, but she knew her answer was going to hurt him. She had more admiration for this man than any she had ever known, except her own father, and now she understood for the first time what it meant to be a young, attractive woman who men would come to.

  Finally Chantel moved her arm so that his hand fell away. “Why, Neville,” she stammered, “I—I’ve never thought of you that way. And I’m sure we’re more like brother and sister.”

  “Perhaps so when you were a child, but you’re not a child now.”

  Frantically Chantel tried to think of some way to ease the shock of the blow, and she grasped onto something that had been on the edge of her consciousness.

  “I’m not in love with you, Neville, and I don’t think you’re really in love with me. But even if that were true, we could never marry.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I’m a Catholic and you’re a Protestant. You know better than I how those two would mix.”

  Neville, of course, had gone over and over this, and he had no ready answer for her. He said quietly, “I know that’s a problem, but if two people love each other, they will find a way to make things work.”

  “Would you become a Catholic?”

  “No,” Neville had to admit, “I never could.”

  “Well, I’ve been a Catholic all my life. You can’t expect me to change either. This is too big a gap, Neville.” She said gently, “You’re such a fine man. You’ve been my best friend, and you’ve helped me in so many ways. But there are too many differences, and, really, I don’t love you. Not—not in that way, Neville.”

  A numbness came over Neville, then he felt the pain of rejection. He tried to speak and could not for a time. Finally he turned to her and said, “I’m not taking this as the final answer.”