by John Brunner
The black page had spotted him and was advancing smartly. Relieved at the distraction, he fumbled a quarter from his pocket and, standing up, made as though to offer it.
And checked, just before the boy’s white-gloved hand could close on it.
Anxious, the page said, “Suh, dey a man at de fron’ desk askin’ fo’—”
“You want this?” Curtly, rolling the coin between finger and thumb.
The boy dropped his eyes. He said, “I get mah pay, suh. I don’t got no right to—”
“It’s yours anyhow! On one condition! Next time you page me, remember it’s not Mister Woodley—it’s Captain Woodley!”
He tossed the coin at the boy and stalked away.
In the moment before Barber returned from reproving the bell captain, Drew saw a fair man in his twenties, overdressed, with a long jaw and protuberant eyes, appear in response to the page’s summons, and hesitate on realizing that by the front desk stood two men he recognized, one a mere clerk—and of mixed blood into the bargain—and the other an unknown whom he had come close to whipping a few hours ago. Visibly he was torn three ways, suspecting, as it were, a challenge to a duel, the serving of a process, and the yet worse prospect of being doubly ignored.
It was a sight to be relished, and Drew made the most of it. He turned his leave-taking into a ceremony and marched out making the greatest possible racket with his staff. Best of all, he recollected before he was over the threshold a quotation apt for Langston Barber, who had given him so improbably warm a welcome.
“A man,” he told the air, “may smile! And smile, and be a villain!”
The rightness of the phrase restored his spirits. Perhaps, he reasoned, the disappointment he had felt might be due to the novelty of freedom. Perhaps a slave, told without warning he was no longer owned, might find himself at a similar loss?
But the crucial truth was that when he returned to St. Louis he would be able to confront Susannah and her children and tell them their lives were no longer clouded by a legacy of disgrace. He wanted desperately to be forgiven for his apparent selfishness during the locust-eaten years of wartime, when sometimes even she had reproached him for giving no more than the house they sheltered in and the food his money daily brought to table. But surely, when all the facts were laid before her, she’d relent!
Suddenly he realized he was hungry. Before reaching his agents’ office he stepped into an oyster bar and enjoyed a gravy-dripping po’-boy and, by way of celebration, a beer or two.
Or three, or maybe half a dozen.
At twenty-eight a disappointed man, ex-prodigy Gaston d’Aurade defied superstition and peered through a chink in the stage curtain at the audience assembling for this afternoon’s performance in the Grand Philharmonic Hall.
Which was not grand in the least. Its décor had been shamelessly copied from the French Opera House, which was one of the showplaces of New Orleans, but everything had been scratched and scuffed and spoiled by careless customers. And as to philharmonic—why, the Muses must be weeping on Olympus!
At any rate, that was Gaston’s opinion.
Not that he was in the habit of voicing it. He had few friends and no intimates this side of the Atlantic. Five years earlier he had been beside himself with excitement at the invitation extended to him by his mother’s second cousin, who had built the Hotel Limousin:
“What we need to enliven the patrons of our ballroom is someone like your Gaston, who was sent to the Conservatoire on a scholarship, was he not? With his collaboration, I feel certain we could draw a capacity crowd, not only because he played so well, but because of his talent as a composer.”
That talent had not made so great an impression on the professors of the Conservatoire. Consequently his parents were disillusioned; they were dropping hints about the law, or the church, or commerce. Directing a ballroom orchestra, besides, had not been what he originally envisaged. His tastes tended more toward the symphony ensemble with twenty first and a dozen second violins. At least, though, he defiantly declared, he would be making a living at music if he emigrated to America!
Where (but he did not mention this point aloud) the competition would be less intense. His visions were of an artistic desert. Eighty years after the foundation of their country, with so much aid from France, what had Americans produced by way of music? A handful of pretty songs suitable for refined drawing rooms; the barbarities of Gottschalk; and the nigger minstrel show!
Surely his refined skills would automatically make an impact on so bleak a musical scene!
Except they didn’t.
Convinced he was headed for fame and fortune, he had engineered a change in his name while crossing the Atlantic. Daurade in French designated a humble fish. As early as fourteen he had dreamed of a lost apostrophe that would transform it by the honorific de, and thereby create an ancient dukedom: Aurade! According to what he read, the so-called “democratic” Americans were just as vulnerable to hints of old nobility as his compatriots under the Second Empire. Steeling himself for argument, he had explained to the customs inspector that there had been a minor error, doubtless due to jealousy on the part of some plebeian bureaucrat… and found his well-rehearsed story wasted on a man used to transcribing unspeakable names from Sicily and Armenia and the Lord knew where. Indeed he had said outright, “Makes no odds how you spell it, long as you always spell it the same!”
Likewise his name-change had done nothing to draw dancers to the Hotel Limousin when printed on countless posters to advertise its luxurious appointments. No more had his physical appearance, of which he was almost as proud as of his musical gift. More than one portrait artist had desired the privilege of fixing his features on canvas… back in France. The “artist” assigned to capture his likeness for publicity in New Orleans worked with glass plates and foul chemicals, and a sitting amounted to agonizing minutes rather than leisured hours.
What a land this was for rush and hurry, and how little substance underlay the surface! It was like its money—the paper that had financed the late war and was now to be redeemed, so rumor went, at a cent on the dollar if you were lucky. Before the bankruptcy of the Limousin both he and its owner had been naive enough to take anything that bore a dollar sign. Half of the bills he had accepted were now fit for nothing but—well, blowing your nose.
Ultimately he had been cast ashore here, like a survivor from a steamer wreck. On first hearing its name he had assumed this hall to be a serious establishment dedicated to the great composers. In fact it was a vaudeville theatre, where the audience came less to listen than to marvel at scene changes made by steam machinery. The band under his direction was generally composed of incompetents, and as for the shows themselves, he could barely endure to watch them once; the tenth or twentieth time was torment. Yet people parted with good money to watch these clumsy tumblers, these cork-blackened coon singers, these crude melodramas interrupted halfway through so that some shrill soprano or booming bass could intone a sentimental ballad…
It was time to start the overture. Turning away, he wondered whether fortune would ever smile on him again.
“Oh, I do so hope this is a good show!” sighed Louisette Moyne as she and her friend Anna Parks crossed the foyer of the Grand Philharmonic Hall. The plan had been for them to enjoy a picnic by Lake Pontchartrain; thanks to the rain they had canceled the project in favor of the French Opera House, only to find there were no tickets left. This place was a raffish second best, and neither of their mothers would approve their being here.
“Do I take it,” said Anna perceptively, “that today went wrong even before we called off the picnic?”
“Oh, we spent ages and ages at Marocain’s ordering a watch for Papa. Mama can’t keep her mind made up two minutes together!”
“She seems to have kept it made up for twenty years.”
“You know what I mean! But—oh!”—clasping her hands as they followed an usher to their seats—“I must tell you! I saw someone at Marocain’s who is appare
ntly notorious!”
“How thrilling,” Anna said with a noticeable lack of emphasis.
“Almost too thrilling!” Louisette insisted. “When he marched in demanding twelve thousand dollars to put in a horrible old bag he’d brought, I thought he must be a robber! At all events he didn’t get what he came for.”
“Was he thrown out?”
“No, no! But you must have noticed that a full bag makes a person carrying it walk differently from an empty one? It always annoys me at the theatre when they don’t put a rock in the property baggage to make it convincing.”
“How observant you are!”—with gentle mockery. “But you haven’t told me who this notorious person was.”
“Oh! The steamboater, Captain Drew!”
Wincing as he discovered how loudly his chair was going to creak throughout this afternoon’s performance, Arthur Gattry took a surreptitious swig of whiskey from the silver flask he always carried, glancing around in search of acquaintances and pretty girls. Then he had to conceal it hastily as his companions took their places: his sister Violet, and her husband Morton Farmiloe, who dealt in sugar, molasses and tobacco now that slaves were no longer to be bought and sold, and disapproved of the fast life of a sporting man like Arthur.
At random, thinking to ingratiate himself, he said, “You know Marocain the jeweler and banker?”
“Of course. I have funds out at interest with him,” said Farmiloe. “Why?”
“A repulsive man came into his shop this morning while I was helping Hugo to select a ring. Frankly we thought he was demanding money with menaces, and I was all set to pitch him back on the street when it turned out he was this Captain Drew who’s making a fortune out of repatriating prisoners of war.”
“He must be raking it in by easier means than theft!” said Violet. “What gave you such an idea, anyway?”
Arthur explained. Partway through, he stiffened in his seat, staring at two girls—one fair, one dark, both attractive—gossiping in the front stalls. Surely the blonde…?
But the light was poor and he could not be certain.
Hurriedly, because the overture was drawing to a close, he concluded, “But Marocain can’t have given Drew what he was after. I swear he left without a penny of it!”
Violet failed to repress a giggle.
“You find that funny?” Arthur demanded. “Why?”
“Not you, not you!”—veiling her amusement with a lacy fan. “The conductor! He just gave you such a murderous look for talking while the music’s going on!”
“Ssh!” said several people within earshot. The curtain had begun to rise.
But Arthur paid more attention to the girls, and his flask, than what was happening on stage.
The offices of T. Caudle & Co., shipping agents, were businesslike to the pitch of austerity, particularly compared with Marocain’s: a long dark wooden counter marred by the knives of errand-boys who had carved their initials or whittled its edge; china inkwells chipped and cracked; gaslights without benefit of globes…
At the moment Drew walked in, Mr. Theobald Caudle himself was putting his head around the plain deal door of the room where he held confidential discussions.
“Captain Drew!” he exclaimed. “Where in heaven’s name have you been?”
Drew blinked incomprehension.
“We’ve been searching the city high and low—thought you must have been taken ill or… Never mind! This way, please, and hurry!”
Present already in Caudle’s bureau were three other men: two plainly dressed, each carrying a thick memorandum book and a sheaf of pencils, and a third in army major’s uniform.
“Major Arbrey!” Caudle said breathlessly as he resumed his chair beside a desk that had seen better days. “And Mr. Sweet and Mr. Vanaday, who are—”
“Government inspectors of steamboats,” Vanaday said in a rumbling voice. “I don’t believe we ever met before, Captain, and I’m sorry we should meet now under such circumstances.”
For Drew the world seemed to be grinding to a halt. He said, putting his boldest face on matters, “What d’you mean?”
“You,” the major declared, “have executed a fraudulent contract!”
“When he signed up,” Sweet put in, “Captain Drew may not have known about the defects which—”
“Defects?” Drew barked.
“Very well,” Vanaday muttered. “If that’s the way you prefer it… Captain Drew, it is my duty to bring to your attention this list of defects in the steamboat Atchafalaya which render her unfit for navigation.”
He held out a document which Drew numbly disregarded.
Tossing it on the desk corner nearest him, Vanaday said, “This doesn’t have to be served like a regular process. You can’t refuse it. Man!”—with sudden force. “What possessed you to sign up for a government contract with a boat in that state? It’s a miracle she didn’t go the way of the Sultana!”
Drew jerked forward on his chair. “What about the Sultana?”
“You didn’t hear?” Amazement spread over Sweet’s face. “Surely at the Guild parlor—”
“Haven’t been there yet,” Drew cut in gruffly.
The others exchanged glances. “We presumed that was where we’d find you,” Caudle said at length. “One of my clerks has been waiting there half the day. Had you followed the normal professional routine, I assure you the Sultana’s fate would not be news.”
“There are other agents in this city!” Drew flared.
“What makes you think they’ll take your business after this?” demanded Arbrey. “Even if you have a boat to do business with!”
“I do have a boat, damn you! Spend a couple of thousand on her, and she’ll…”
But his words tailed away. All of them knew that, in the condition the Atchafalaya had now reached, money for repairs would be wasted.
“Well, what about the Sultana, anyhow?” Drew snapped, as though desperately seeking to elude his predicament. “I saw her on a long whistle just a couple of days ago, out of Vicksburg for St. Louis as I recall, in the same trade as me except she was carrying prisoners from a Confederate camp. She—”
“She made it to just beyond Memphis,” cut in Vanaday. “She was licensed to carry three hundred and seventy-six people, and the captain took on board above two thousand. And she blew up. They say she rained dead bodies on either bank.”
After that, silence obtained for a while. At last Drew managed to grind out, “Are you going to take away my license?”
“Can’t,” said Sweet succinctly. “Won’t neither. Any man could run a wreck like yours in record time from Cairo to New Orleans just has to be a lightning pilot. But if you wish to be a master again, sir, it got to be aboard a sounder boat.”
Night had fallen when Drew returned to the levee with slumped shoulders and dragging feet. He paused for a while and stared at the silhouette of the doomed Atchafalaya. To be so repaid for all his efforts! It was monstrously unjust!
And then, of a sudden:
“Suh, ain’t you Cap’n Drew?”
Coming out of darkness, the words made him raise his staff in alarm. Then a light was struck and dispelled the murk enough for him to identify those waylaying him: Fernand and Cuffy.
“Thank heaven we found you!” Fernand exclaimed.
“Think I’ve been in hiding?” Drew countered sourly. “Let me by.”
“But we have a message for you—an important message!”
“To blazes with it and you! I said let me by!”
“This is important, sir!”
“And even if it is, why should I listen?” Drew planted his staff firmly on the ground and clasped both hands around it, glaring. “I can guess who it’s from. I know this nigra—saw him earlier today. And you! Not just at Marocain’s but at the Limousin too, paging a son of a bitch who’d tried to run me down with his buggy!”
“I went to the Limousin, Captain,” said Fernand in a tight voice, “not because I take special pleasure in the company of Mr.
Woodley, but because my uncle so directed me. I came here to relay Mr. Barber’s message for the same reason. As soon as he heard about your boat being condemned—”
“He learned that so quickly?” Drew interrupted. “Well, it figures. For evil news rides post while good news baits!”
“Today’s news may not be wholly evil for you, sir. That’s the point. Mr. Barber has sent a carriage. Will you go with Cuffy?”
“Oh, hell,” Drew said wearily. “Maybe he wants to help me find a job. It’s certain I don’t have one now. ‘Othello’s occupation’s gone!’ And so”—realizing with a start—“is my bag… but never mind. I guess one of those folk you were talking about, so poor even an old bag is precious— Boy, I reckon I’m drunk. Am I?”
“Well, to be blunt, sir, I would not care to be aboard a boat you were taking round Plum Point in your present condition. If you’ll excuse me.”
“Hah? What?” Blinking ferociously. “Have you put in river time?”
“As a passenger, that’s all. But I surely would like—” Fernand broke off. “Well, sir? What about Mr. Barber?”
“I hoped I’d never hear that name again,” Drew sighed. “But I don’t have any choice, do I?”
Dining with his brother officers, Major Hugo Spring said, “Name of Drew mean anything to you—Hosea Drew?”
“Steamboat captain,” the man opposite said promptly. “Went north, but laid up his boat instead of putting it at our disposal. We could have found a use for it, believe me!”
“That’s the one. Well, he marched into Marocain’s today demanding twelve thousand dollars he’d left on deposit. Wanted it packed in an old carpetbag!”
That provoked mild interest. Another of his comrades said, “I have money with Marocain, too. What happened?”
“I saw him leave. And I swear his bag was no heavier than when he brought it in.”