by John Brunner
“Married? Who to?”
“Why, Arthur, of course. When he asks me.”
“But—!” Joel was half out of his chair with dismay. “But how well do you know him?”
“Oh, hardly at all! But he’s handsome, and amusing, and—”
“That’s not enough to found a marriage on!”
Unintentionally Joel had raised his voice; seeing people all around turning their heads, he leaned closer to Louisette, laying his hand on her arm.
“Loose, you can’t be serious!”
“What else am I to do? I can’t stand my parents any more—I mean that! I thought, even this morning, that you’d turned against me, that you’d refused to come to my ball. But now I believe they never sent your invitation, or Uncle Howard’s either. And it’s all because he lost so much money, isn’t it?”
“If it is, then as of today I can safely say that Auberon is taking after his father,” Joel muttered. And was instantly horrified to hear himself utter the words… then relieved to see her nod agreement.
“Yes, I was amazed at the way he snubbed you!”
“On the other hand,” Joel said, beginning to smart under the impact of her threat to marry a stranger, “you were less than adoring, yourself!”
“Running off for this steamer ride, you mean? Oh, that’s different, I swear. I’ve been trying to do things Mama wouldn’t like for ages now. Do you know where Arthur first took notice of me? At the Grand Philharmonic Hall with Anna Parks! The trouble we’ve been to, hiding that from Mama and Papa, who’d have conniptions if they heard!”
“Do you mean he picked you up?” Joel grated.
“Oh, goodness, no! But he remembered when we were finally introduced, and really it’s become quite a storybook courtship. I think he thinks I haven’t realized what he’s about, but I promise I caught on very early, and the more I think about becoming Mrs. Gattry, the more I like it. If only I liked it because of what he is”—growing abruptly bitter—“and not because I want to get away from Papa and Mama!”
“But what for?”
She made to stamp her foot. “Because they treat me more like an investment than a human being! My value has gone down because I didn’t make Queen of the Mardi Gras. If I had, I’d have been married off already to someone they chose, not I. But they’re still planning to sell me to the highest bidder.”
“Then how come—?”
“How come I’m here with Arthur? As far as I can make out, they’re hoping that in his company I’ll run across a suitor more to their taste! Joel, the way they’ve treated you and Uncle Howard is just typical! They’re such hypocrites!”
Overwhelmed by her vehemence, Joel forbore to reply. After a pause she resumed in calmer tones.
“That’s why I’m here instead of oohing and aahing over Obe’s adventures. Though frankly I’m not sure I wanted to spend today with Obe anyhow.”
“But he’s your brother, and after so long away—”
She brushed his interruption aside. “Did he write you from Europe?”
“Yes, several times.”
“What about?”
“Oh, this and that.” Joel felt his cheeks grow hot. He had never been able to lie to Louisette as a child; as an adult it seemed even harder. But he did his best. “Much like what he wrote you, I guess.”
“I don’t believe it. His letters were chiefly interesting because of what they didn’t say. Let me guess.” She fixed him with her clear blue gaze. “Did he boast about what he was really doing when he was supposed to be imbibing culture?”
In passing, Joel reflected that it was as well he now stood no chance of marrying his cousin. If she displayed such insight into masculine wiles, she would be unbearable as a wife.
Finding no way to evade her question, he gave in. “Yes, you could put it that way.”
“I thought so! I don’t want to ask what he chose to keep secret from me. I hope it’s the sort of thing you wouldn’t talk to me about. You’re right: Auberon is taking after Papa. Do you know what I found out the other day?”
She bent confidentially close.
“All my life he and Mama have been telling me to behave myself, act like a lady, be ‘moral’ and ‘decent’ and the rest. But for years Papa kept a mistress in the Quarter, a colored woman, and Mama knew and married him in spite of it!”
“And the woman’s name was Var,” Joel sighed, “and she had a house at the north end of Bienville, and she was carried off by a fever during the war, and do you have any more revelations for me today?”
For a long moment she simply stared at him, her mouth working to form words that would not emerge. At last she seized her parasol and reticule and rose to her feet. When he also stood up she rounded on him in fury.
“Leave me alone! You—you beast! I never want to speak to you again!”
Amazing. The wharf was clear of cargo and it was barely five o’clock. Caesar exhaled with violent relief. It had been a long week, but tomorrow was payday.
When the white man he deputized for would turn up, more or less sober, to collect wages he had not earned. He would of course keep his promise to share on the basis agreed. In the dead cold eyes of the black man he had hired, he had read without words the consequence of trying to cheat.
But it was not, Caesar thought as he cleaned what must be cleaned about the steam crane and locked with padlocks what must be locked—it was not a proper way for man to live with his fellow man.
Distantly he could hear whistles and guns. The upriver steamers were pulling out. He could see in his mind’s eye the people on the levee waving their kerchiefs while twenty boats jockeyed for a favorable position. Sometimes when, as today, all the cargo he had to deliver was safely stowed, he had energy left to walk that way and watch the free show.
But right now he could not rid his memory of how he had come within inches of braining a white man. Touching his charm, he shivered. Soon, the sooner the better, he must get a safer job. But so far work had not been found even for all the discharged soldiers and returned prisoners of war. The odds against him were colossal.
Maybe not impossible, though. After all, this morning he had been recognized by a white man. And not the way a slave owner would have done it, which was no different from how he told his horses or his hounds, but person to person, by someone who talked of making his experience—his, Caesar’s!—into a newspaper article.
For a second he thought of tracing the reporter and begging him to write the piece. Perhaps that, if nothing else, might lead him to his wife and children.
But he was too cynical now to dream as he had once done. Tandy must long ago have found another man. Probably she had other children. Certainly if he met his own again, they would not remember him as their father.
As he limped back to his lodgings, he wondered whether he would ever be able to start a new life with the same security as folks had relied on in plantation days. Was it preferable—the fearful notion crossed his mind—to have a good master and the assurance of a full belly and a sound roof?
Just so long as you could guarantee your master was good! And none but the Lord could ensure that. So in the upshot things were better this way, spite of all…
Leaning on the Plott’s after rail, struggling to discipline his mutinous thoughts, Joel grew aware of a wave of excitement passing along the deck. A crowd of people headed for the bow. Copying them, he found that the steamer was about to meet her sisters setting out in the long-distance trades. Most were small, a couple were of medium tonnage, and only one was of the premier class.
But that one was the Atchafalaya.
Sounding an occasional blast on her whistle, she advanced through the lesser craft like a buffalo striding among a herd of calves. Vast arcs of spray leaped up behind her wheels; her wake made boats and barges rock clear to either bank. Her decks were a mass of people waving to those aboard less luxurious vessels.
If only, Joel thought, if only I could buy passage on a boat like her and travel until I fou
nd a spot to suit my fancy, forget the ties which hold me here and start a new life—
A hand fell on his shoulder. Startled, he found Gordon at his side. “What boat is that?” he demanded. “Can you make her out? My damned boy has wandered off and I don’t know what he’s done with my field glasses.”
Joel told him. He looked briefly blank; on the name being repeated, light dawned.
“Ah! Yon’s a steamer I read about lately in a newspaper. But I took her name to be Atcher-fer-layer. Wait! Did I not also see it in a poem by your Mr. Longfellow?”
Impressed, Joel nodded. “Evangeline,” he said. “And he stressed it wrongly, never having visited the Cajun country.”
“Let me hear you say it again!”
With exaggerated care Joel pronounced, “A-chuffer-liar.”
Gordon echoed him, and continued, “Is there some special reason for everyone to gaup at her? I grant she’s a handsome spectacle, but…”
“She’s generally considered the finest steamer on the Mississippi.”
“Is she truly so impressive? How long is she?”
“About two hundred eighty-five feet.”
“And broad?”
“Forty-eight.”
“And how much cargo can she carry?”
“Over fourteen hundred tons.”
“I take it that would be when the river is at its deepest?”
“No, sir. At most times of year. She only draws one and a half fathoms fully loaded.”
Gordon blinked rapidly. “If this is another of your Yankee tall stories—” he began.
“Sir, it isn’t politic to address anybody in the South as a Yankee!”
Gordon hesitated. Producing a large white handkerchief, he mopped his forehead. “Aye, I’d overlooked that. From the far side of an ocean, any nation appears all of a piece, ye ken. My slip was on all fours with your countrymen’s error in calling me English. But you’ll forgive me?”
“I took no offense,” Joel said. “But there are a million who might.”
“I’ll remember that.” Gordon tucked the handkerchief back in his pocket. “I wish yon boy of mine were half as well informed as you, anyway. Doubtless you can tell me even more about the Atchafalaya? Her working pressure, for example?”
“A hundred and ten pounds,” Joel answered promptly.
“That strikes me as low for such a large vessel. What’s the diameter of her cylinders? What’s the stroke?”
“Forty inches,” Joel said. “Ten feet.”
“Does she have two cylinders—engines, as you say over here—disposed in the usual fashion, one either side?”
“That’s correct. And if you’ll pardon my saying so, it’s my turn to call you well informed. You didn’t learn all you know by visiting the Plott’s engineroom this morning!”
Gordon smiled, proffering a cigar case stocked with aromatic Havanas.
“As well as being knowledgeable, you’re perceptive. You have penetrated my mask. I already referred to my lowly origins, but— Well, let’s see if your intuition can take you further. What was I twenty years ago?”
Joel’s heart raced. To spend a while in the financier’s company had been his ambition for today; to be welcomed into his confidence was the most amazing lagniappe.
“You were acquainted with steam engines early in life,” he hazarded.
Gordon crowed with laughter. “Right you are! I left school at twelve and entered the service of the North British Railway, and all my fortune has been founded on just those iron roads which I now compare with steamboats to their detriment. Sincerely, I assure you! I’m a restless man, Mr. Siskin, but now and then I’m forced into contemplation. Lately, on doctor’s orders, I’ve been obliged to spend some weeks in idleness at the resort where I recruited young Rust—unlicked cub that he is, but I’ll see him right in the long run. Where was I? Oh, yes!
“Chance brought to my hands, while I was there, a magazine which included an article by the celebrated Mr. Twain, and at once I was convinced that, of all modes of travel on this continent, the riverboat offered most scope. And, truly, if the finest steamer of the day is working to so low a pressure as a hundred and ten pounds, there must be ample room for improvement!”
Privately Joel wondered whether Gordon had considered hot-air balloons, which would better match his effusive talk, but honesty forced him to concede the point.
“You’re not alone in that view, sir. I know one man who believes he could build a steamer to run out the Atchafalaya, and he wants his boat to operate at far higher pressure, a hundred and fifty at least.”
“You interest me strangely,” Gordon said. “Who is this person? Is there any chance that I might meet him?”
Mouse-quiet despite her bulk, Fibby stole along the rear landing of the Parbury house toward Dorcas’s room, a mere compartment partitioned off above the kitchen. She carried a bowl of soup, a spoon, and a candle to dispel the darkness.
At the door she whispered, “Dorcas honey, is you okay?”
Hearing no answer, she peered in. Eyes swollen with crying, Dorcas was raising herself from the bed. She contrived a smile and Fibby entered quickly.
“Drink some of dishyear broth, yo’ soon feel better,” she urged. “An’ don’ you take on so! Miz’ Parb’ry, she always ac’ dis way when Mars’ Jim wuz alive—shout at him one minute, fo’get it all de nex’. She don’ mean de ha’f wh’at she say!”
Accepting the soup, Dorcas countered, “But I meant what I said! I did exactly what she told me, and Dr. Cherouen said he couldn’t come because he already had too many patients. So she called me a liar and a traitor and—and a scarlet woman! Didn’t she? You heard her! She shouted loud enough for the whole street to hear!”
Her own voice had risen unconsciously. Realizing of a sudden how late it was, she reverted to a more normal tone.
“Where is she? What’s she doing? And is the captain still abroad?”
At the back of her mind: vague threats of telling Parbury about the orders his wife had given her.
“She done sat quiet in de parlor dis hour or more,” Fibby said. “Befo’ dat she groan’ a long whiles, and den she pray some—”
“I know what she wasn’t praying for,” Dorcas interrupted. “To be forgiven for bearing false witness against me!”
“Now hesh yo’ mout’!” Fibby said, appalled.
“Why?” Dorcas snapped. “Tomorrow she’ll call for a priest and tell him her side of the story, and he’ll give her permission to slander me all over again!”
“Dey say misery love company,” Fibby muttered. “But it jes’ natcherly ain’ true.” And she turned ponderously toward the door.
“No, wait!” Dorcas cried, almost upsetting the soup. “Please come back! It doesn’t matter if the captain has come home or not. She can’t make him do anything to me, can she? She won’t dare say she sent me to Dr. Cherouen, so… Fibby, what’s wrong?”
The round black face had grown solemn in the light of the guttering candle.
“Dey was a ge’man call to see you. ‘Bout six o’clock. Leastways I’d a-call’ him a ge’man. A fine high-yaller man wea’in’ a silk hat an’ carryin’ a cane.”
Very slowly, as though afraid the trembling of her hands would betray her, Dorcas set the bowl on her bedside table.
“And he asked after me?”
“He sho’ did! Came an’ rang de bell an’ I went answer an’ he ast fo’ you.” Fibby paused impressively.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Well, honey, it wen’ dis way. I as’ him ter wait, an’ Miz’ Parb’ry call out an’ as’ who dere, and I sez jes’ same’s I sez ter you, ‘Dey a ge’man come see Miss Dorcas.’ An’ Miz’ Parb’ry she say, ‘Ain’ no ge’man come callin’ on no servant!’”
With a shrug she concluded, “So I jes’ ‘bleeged ter show him back out de do’.”
There was a pause. Then, mechanically, Dorcas retrieved the soup and plied the spoon until it was all gone. Watching anxiously, F
ibby at last ventured, “Wuz you ‘spectin’ somebody?”
“No.” Eyes downcast, Dorcas handed back the empty bowl. “Thank you, Fibby. That was good.”
“But it wa’n’t no kinda meal. Wan’ I sh’d bring—?”
“That was plenty.” Dorcas rose, unbuttoning her dress. “I should take your good advice and believe that Mrs. Parbury will have forgotten all she said in the morning. Good night, and thanks again.”
Still doubtful, Fibby departed. The door closed on a very different Dorcas: one who no longer gave a damn whether her employer’s wife ended her days widowed, crippled, and servantless.
Who after a sleepless night decided it was no more than the bitch deserved.
“Siskin! Where the devil have you been?”
It had taken some while for Abner Graves, editor and publisher of the Intelligencer, to realize that his missing reporter had returned, for the pressroom was in darkness relieved only by kerosene lamps. Under its low ceiling resounded the slide-and-thump of the steam press. It was terribly hot, and the air stank of oil and tobacco smoke.
Joel tilted back his hat and removed from his mouth a large cigar, about half burned. “With the man who gave me this,” he answered.
“You’re drunk!” Graves barked, advancing on him.
“I guess maybe a trifle tipsy,” Joel conceded. “But it’s all in a good cause. I have news for you, Mr. Graves. Solid news. There’s going to be another Nonpareil.”
“You call that news? Everybody knows about Captain Parbury and his fantasies! I told you to get an interview with Hamish Gordon. I’m not interested in second-hand river-column boiler-plate!”
“So who do you think is going to pay for the new boat?”
There was a dead pause. At length Graves said, “Stop the press.” And when the noise had died down: “Siskin, if this is a prank you’ll never work for any paper in the city again.”
Joel’s cigar had gone out. Leaning to relight it at the chimney of the nearest lamp, he said, “I’ve been with Gordon since eleven this morning. I was his guest at lunch and dinner. Played cards with him and lost six dollars that I want reimbursed.