by John Brunner
Their expressions making it plain that this was not at all the way they had expected things to pan out, the clerks and pilots followed him away, and after a final oath aimed at Drew, Woodley did the same.
This time it really looked as though the situation were going off the boil.
But one thing remained to be attended to.
Swiftly Barber caught up with Joel and Auberon—damn these European-educated sprigs who thought their families’ money had turned them into lords!—and accosted the former.
“Mr. Siskin! I respect the Intelligencer very much, for I’ve known Abner Graves ten years or more, but…”
Joel gave a fixed grin, and he broke off. There was something bare-boned about the reporter’s look.
“You want this kept out of print,” he said. “You want to offer a fat price to keep me quiet. Well, damn it, I’m not for sale. I’ve been bought already, and I’m not too proud to admit it. There isn’t a journalist in the city who can say he’s never taken money under the table, or if he does he’s lying. But not me—now! I need this!”
All in a tone not much louder than a whisper, but of burning intensity. Barber hastily shifted his ground.
Contriving to look aggrieved, he said, “How could this be kept secret after so many people saw it happen? The best I can hope for is to beat a few rumors before they start. Ain’t that so?”
Taken aback, Joel nodded.
“Then we understand each other,” Barber smiled. “Write what you like, for as they say the only bad publicity is no publicity, but many of the best-known sporting men of the city are among my customers. I wouldn’t wish them to be misled into making pointless bets just because Captain Woodley has a loud mouth.”
The request seemed wholly reasonable. Joel wavered and gave in. Smug in the conviction of success, Barber turned to Auberon.
“Mr. Moyne, disappointed though you may be to lose your chance of wagering on the Nonpareil…”
His voice died as Auberon shook his head.
“Oh, they’ll race in God’s good time,” he said with an air of horribly convincing authority. “But it will not be against you that I lay odds, sir, having seen what I have tonight. Now let me seize this overdue opportunity and renew acquaintance with my cousin. Joel, it was thanks to your advice that I took to coming here. Yet I’ve never seen you here before, have I? Won’t you be my guest the rest of the evening, to make up lost time? Are you already acquainted with Dr. Denis Cherouen?”
Ignored, furious, Barber strode away.
“Fernand!”
He looked at Dorcas fondly. For a while during the clash between Drew and Gordon he had been afraid that—like women he had seen aboard boats in trouble—she would lose her head.
On the contrary: when he had been on the point of eruption she had shown more good sense than he.
But what was she trying to tell him? Half-hidden by the drawstring mouth of her reticule, something glinting… Abruptly he recognized the heavy brass tag attached to a room key.
“Captain Drew forgot it!” she whispered exultantly. “He’s gone! We can use it instead!”
“Dorcas darling! But—”
“But what?” She set her jaw at a mutinous angle.
A deep breath. “Well, if anybody were to—”
“I think,” she interrupted, “you’re seeing ha’nts! Who’s to suffer? I told you, Fibby will lie for me!”
Terribly torn, he poised irresolute.
Then, miraculously, he was rescued by the headwaiter inquiring whether the cost of their meal was to be put on Captain Drew’s account. In a flash he saw the solution.
Affecting casualness, he took the key from Dorcas.
“No, only bill the captain for what he had. But since he changed his mind about staying, he ceded his room to us. Here’s the number; charge our dinners to it and I’ll settle the whole score in the morning.”
Within minutes Barber learned of the unauthorized arrangement. His first inclination was to send Jones to see Fernand and his woman off the premises, for he was in a foul temper by now. He always liked to feel in control. Coming on top of what had so nearly been a stabbing, Auberon’s snub—about which he dared do nothing, for the young man spent lavishly every time he came here—had been the last straw. Part of his fury had found outlet in tongue-lashing that crazy temporary waiter, who was now back on the street; later, he looked forward to telling Monsieur d’Aurade what he thought of a bandleader who couldn’t be relied on to distract the crowd with nice loud music when trouble loomed. But for the moment he was working with an excess head of steam.
Nonetheless he canceled his initial impulse. Half the rooms in the Limousin would tonight be occupied by unmarried couples; no question of morality entered in. Yet—control…
The day might come when the fact that a rising young pilot had slept with his girl before marrying her might prove useful. It felt like leverage.
“Let ‘em get on with it,” he muttered. “But make sure nothing’s omitted from their bill!”
Shoulders hunched and pockets empty, Caesar limped homeward. It had begun to rain. Of all the ways to end up on Mardi Gras—!
But he was lucky to be here. He might have been in jail. He and his friends had been having a little harmless fun—a few drinks and a bite of food, some music, a dance or two with girls who had wandered past and accepted a shouted invitation—and some meddling prune-faced church-loving old bitch had sent for the Metropolitans.
Who had been only too glad to break up the party, seize the unconsumed liquor, and arrest the guests who were too drunk to escape. What made it hardest to bear was the fact that some of the police were as black as he was.
So that was the end of the money he’d spent, money he could have put toward his machinery repair shop.
But everybody knew the bosses from the governor down were corrupt, taking bribes and blandly denying it; likewise, the Emancipation, which had been hailed as the dawn of a new age, was proving to be the same old story told in a different accent.
One day soon, therefore—
A gust laden with raindrops made him huddle against the nearest building. For the first time since turning into the street, he took stock of his surroundings. Opposite where he had halted, flaring gas lamps illuminated the façade of the Hotel Limousin. Reluctant to face the rain, a group of well-dressed men—and one extraordinarily dressed—were pushing the youngest of their number into a cab. The door slammed and it trundled off, its place shortly taken by a carriage whose wet, tired driver scarcely even looked down as his passengers climbed on board.
Then there was an interruption. Caesar watched passively, as though a show had been put on especially for him in the theatre of the world.
Gathering around him what shreds of his dignity remained, Manuel emerged dejectedly from the rear of the Limousin.
If that maricón of a Frenchman hadn’t—!
But he had.
Plotting futile revenge, he checked as he rounded the corner of the building. There, getting into a carriage, unmistakable in his kilt, was the rich Scotsman. Perhaps he might understand the motive that had driven Manuel to react in the way he had. Maybe Scotland was a little like Mexico, if its people used knives.
Wind-buffeted, holding his hat on, he marched over. “Meestair Gordon?” he called.
Eyes half-closed against the rain, Gordon glanced around.
“You are not to think,” Manuel declared in his best English, “it was of anything personal I brought my knife against yours!”
“What did he say?” Gordon growled at Woodley.
“It’s the crazy waiter,” Woodley muttered. “Ignore him.”
“I am not waiter!” Manuel cried. “I am musician—damn good musician! But I understan’ also knife, and want say I admiring Scotchman who can use knifes!”
Gordon finally consented to pay Manuel his full attention.
“Oh, you!” he said. “You were set to gralloch me for no good reason! If it hadn’t been for that bandleader—”
“He is no musician!” shouted Manuel. “He is fraud—fake—phony, compare’ to me! How many instrument he play? One, two maybe? I play all, all!”
“What do you want me to do about it?” Gordon snapped.
Woodley gave a harsh chuckle. “Send him to Knight’s,” he proposed. “That band they had waiting for us on the wharf was no great shakes. Maybe someone like this is what they need—a bit of hot sauce to spice ‘em up!”
Standing close by, both Trumbull and McNab smiled at the idea, and the former called, “He’s right, Mr. Gordon! Never did hear such a poor apology for music as today!”
“Oh, do what the hell you like,” Gordon grunted, and sank into the cushions of the carriage.
“Okay,” Woodley said, turning to Manuel. “Now in the morning you go to Mr. Oliver Knight’s office on Magazine. Tell him Captain Woodley wants you to join the band on the Nonpareil. Say it was lousy this morning and we’re relying on you to put it right. Got all that?”
Manuel was standing with mouth ajar, overwhelmed. This was infinitely more than he had expected. But before he could speak, Woodley had fished a coin from his pocket.
“I guess you didn’t get your pay from the hotel because of what happened. Here’s carfare, and for tomorrow.”
He scrambled into the carriage and slammed the door.
The departure of the carriage broke the spell that had been holding Caesar immobile. With squelching shoes he trudged onward. Another half-mile and he would be home.
Not that he any longer wanted to think of it as such—nor this city. Maybe he should scrap his idea of mending machinery. Maybe he should raise enough to buy a plough and a mule and a plot of land and find someone enough like Tandy not to make him dream forever of a dead past…
At all events he did not want to spend another Mardi Gras in New Orleans. As of today he would be primed for any chance to get away.
In darkness amid tumbled bedclothes, Fernand spoke close enough to Dorcas’s skin for her to feel the waft of breath. “With my body I thee worship…”
Sighing with contentment, she combed her fingers through his hair.
“There was a time when I was ready to hate Mr. Barber on hearsay,” he said at length. “I guess I’ve learned a lot about the world since then. I guess I’ve grown up.”
“Sometimes…” Her voice trailed away. He prompted her.
“Oh, nothing really. I was going to say: sometimes I wish I hadn’t grown up. So often I feel sad. Cold inside. As though from now on and for ever I shall see the bad side of everything before I see the good one. As though one day I may stop believing there is a good one.”
“Does that go for me too?” he teased.
“No!” She grasped his right hand tightly. “No, and so long as I can cling to that I guess I’ll be okay.”
“That’ll be as long as you want,” he said fervently.
“Promise?”
“Yes, I promise.”
“Then we’re married,” she said. Her tone was of delighted surprise. “And the Lord’s our witness. Love me again!”
Sometimes on a broad stretch of the Mississippi, with the river bank-full and the air calm and the surface marred by scarcely a ripple—certainly nothing brash enough to call a wave—there is a change perceptible before it grows visible.
Abruptly it is as though the water slopes: flowing downhill, rather than downstream, toward you. And it may not be in the direction proper to gravity.
There are clouds approaching; however, they have not by a long way reached this spot. Nor, so far, is there a gust of the wind that reason says must be bearing them along.
This lasts a little while, and then, like a pattern of birdshot, a lash of raindrops strikes the water. The change has happened: there are clouds overhead, there is wind, and the air that was warm, is cool. Reflections that lay comfortably intact have broken up. A myriad separate splashes launch interlocking ripple rings. The water is shattered until a new integrity emerges: the form and pattern that we call a storm.
Accepting another drink, vastly relieved to find that under his veneer of European sophistication his cousin Auberon was still his cousin, Joel said, “But why are you determined to bet on a race that Drew and Barber swear can never happen?”
The magic word race had rippled out from the moment of its utterance. By this time, and it was not yet midnight, the countless tongues of rumor were transforming Auberon’s spur-of-the-moment proposition into news. Raising their voices to compete with the band then abruptly dropping to a whisper for fear someone not yet party to the secret might overhear, people right in this room were treating the idea as solid fact.
“Old man, I’ve sworn it shall,” Auberon murmured, smiling sleepily as though the matter were no longer of much interest to him. But that was one of his recent mannerisms, and Joel had not taken a fancy to any of them. He persisted.
“So how are you going to make sure it does?”
“I’m not,” Auberon sighed. “I’m leaving it to them”—with a nod towards the gossipers.
Joel sat bolt upright. “Damn it, man! Do you or do you not want me to feed this load of horse apples to the Intelligencer?”
“Indigestible,” said Cherouen from his chair next to Auberon. He had spoken scarcely a word for some time, and clearly was very drunk indeed. Joel found the situation infuriating. His first chance to pump the doctor whose fame was more than citywide now, and the man was incapable of doing more than bend his elbow!
Working in journalism had strained his charitable instincts. However, by dint of vast effort he persuaded himself that Cherouen’s condition might be a reaction against the strain of his practice. Thrusting all that to one side of his mind, he resumed pestering Auberon.
“Some people,” the latter said at last, yielding ungracefully, “cannot resist a challenge. Cato Woodley’s one. You saw how he rose to the bait!”
“But for all he’s nominally master of the Nonpareil,” Joel objected, “Gordon put up the money for her. Is he going to risk his investment—?”
“His?” Auberon cut in. “You ought to ask my father about that. Aren’t you still on terms to call him Uncle Andrew?”
“Since…” Joel began. And hesitated, rephrasing what he was about to say. “Since the war”—there, that was much more neutral and far safer!—“as you know, we’ve drifted apart. And I’ve never wanted to exploit family contacts for professional advantage.”
“Which, I guess, is why you’ll never make your fortune. Well, I’ll cut across a bend for you. Father made inquiries and found out that the money for the new boat was raised by the Marocain brothers.”
“Oh, everybody knows that!”
“But does ‘everybody’ know how much?”
Particularly during the winter those employed in menial tasks at places like the Limousin found solace from boredom in gambling on whatever came handy.
By now the image of a race between two great steamers was taking on credible form among the porters and stable-boys. There was much time to kill in their kind of work.
Already people who had never seen either vessel were prepared to take sides: the older and nearer to being worn out, versus the newer—flashier, less well proven. Abstracts grew into concretes as easily as clouds turn into rain.
Very slowly Joel said, “I see. Well, then—how much?”
Auberon formed the words with relish. “Seventy percent.”
“Seventy!”
“So I’m told. And do you know who holds the balance?”
“Ah… well, I guess Woodley has a piece?”
“His old wreck fetched scrap value,” said Auberon with disdain. “He holds about ten per cent, and borrowed most of that. Hell of a note for a master to own a tenth of his boat, ain’t it? But I notice you didn’t say Gordon first.”
“I took it his portion was included in the seventy percent,” Joel said, startled. “Isn’t it?”
“So far I have no proof,” Auberon murmured. “But the story goes, he holds no more
than Woodley.”
“You mean the Marocains advanced that much against the pledge of someone who could only raise a tenth of the cash himself and knew nothing about steamboating?” Joel shook his head in wonderment. “Old Edouard must be spinning in his grave!”
“You miss the point. Even the Marocains couldn’t be that foolish.”
“But they did advance… Oh!”
“That’s right. On the word of somebody who does know steamboating. Has done all his life.”
“But a blind man, down on his luck? It seems crazy either way.”
“There’s alleged to be a very particular reason.”
“What?”
“Not a what. A who. Drew’s protégé.”
Joel sat rock-still for a moment. At last he said, “Can they really hate him that much?”
“You do know who he is, then? For a while I suspected you might not.”
“Oh, it made a few paras—steamboat master with Northern sympathies insults the South by taking on the first colored steersman, that kind of thing. So we looked into the guy’s background and he turned out to be Ed Marocain’s nephew. But he was squeezed out of what should have been his share of the family business, and his mother lives in a run-down house she can’t afford to maintain, and the brothers won’t help her. Isn’t that enough of a revenge?”
“Seemingly not. I suspect because they’re afraid he’s going to do better than they are. Make more money, acquire more status in spite of his color. They want to spike his guns.”
“I know where I’ve seen that girl before,” Cherouen said unexpectedly. His diction, despite his drunkenness, was perfect.
“What girl?” Auberon demanded.
“The girl sitting with Drew and his pal. It was your mention of Parbury that brought it back.”
Auberon and Joel exchanged glances. The former said, “Very interesting! Because we never actually mentioned that party’s name.”
“Didn’t you?” But that was irrelevant to Cherouen. He continued, “She was sent to my house once. Works for Mrs. Parbury. Wanted me to treat her rheumatism. I don’t mean hers, but her mistresh’sh—damn.” On that tricky obstacle of a word his control let him down. He took another sip from the glass he was cradling in both hands.