by John Brunner
Noticed that all the starers bar one reverted their attention to their food, the exception being the man in gray. But perhaps his interest could be explained by his semirecognition of Fernand, for he smiled and bowed as best he might when seated.
Vehm himself took Fernand’s order for coffee, a dish of fruit, dry toast and honey. Trial and error had made it clear that if he ate more in the morning he was apt to doze during his next watch.
Most of those present were taking a more substantial meal: Eulalie was demolishing with dainty ferocity an omelette that overspread her plate, while Barber was at work on fried eggs and grits. Cherouen, by contrast, had now called for an eye-opener, by the look of it a sazerac. Fernand reflected on what a couple of those might do to a doctor before he had to treat his first patient, and resolved not to fall ill during this trip.
And also to inquire again about Walt as soon as he got the chance.
After a too-long delay he was able to ask, “Maman, have you not seen Dorcas yet?”
Mouth full, contriving to remain gracious and lovely, she shook her head.
Fernand caught the eye of a hurrying waiter and formulated a rapid message. Shortly Vehm returned.
“Miss Archer has not yet appeared,” he announced. “Do you wish me to have a maid waken her?”
“No need,” said Eulalie, having disposed of her omelette. She lifted her coffee cup and drained it, wiped her lips with a huge stiff white napkin, and pushed back her chair. “I’ll go. If she is to be my son’s wife, it’s my duty to do what I can for her.”
There was a double-edged quality to the remark which made Fernand suddenly apprehensive.
“Of course!”
The exclamation came from the man in gray, leaning back after ingesting a brioche powdered with sugar.
“Monsieur!” he continued, addressing Fernand, who would rather have been left alone. Rising, he approached and offered his hand. “Are you not a customer of that disgraceful boîte my efforts could not rescue, where I am happy to say good-bye for ever—the Grand Philharmonic Hall?”
It was true that Fernand had visited the place. Unenthusiastically he took the proffered hand, and without waiting for further invitation the other sat down on one of the unoccupied chairs.
“I present myself! Gaston d’Aurade, musician and composer! Bound for St. Louis on a mission which combines grief and joy! I must be directing music at the funeral for the boy of Madame Grammont who is died.”
Fernand was anxiously staring after Eulalie, wondering when she would return and whether Dorcas would be with her. Gaston continued unheeding, his English improving as his confidence grew.
“But it is not, as you say, completely a bad wind, for my mission affords opportunity for a project I imagine since many years: a suite for orchestra to capture the essence of the Mississippi—a tone poem, I think it is said in English. The subject is a ripe one, do you agree? One might even transform the barbaric noise of the Negroes into an element, because they haunt the night as naturally as birds and—and alligators, and so forth.” A wave of his carefully manicured hand. “From a waiter I learn you are a pilot, yes? Please allow me to inquire you concerning typical phenomena that presents the river at the different seasons.”
A waiter arrived to top up Fernand’s coffee cup; seeing Gaston seated before an empty one, he automatically filled that, too, and the act was taken as authority to remain. Reaching for cream and sugar, making himself comfortable, Gaston added, “For example, I think to utilize noises of waterfalls, big winds, and breaking of ice. You have seen all these, no?”
Fernand ignored him. Where was Dorcas? Was something wrong? Had she been taken ill?
If so… if so, how did she view the fact? Had she been raised to a creed like his mother’s, which claimed that disease was due to magic influence, or did she accept modern theories of infection by bacteria? It was a shock to Fernand to realize how little he knew about his fiancée’s beliefs and fears. Even when she told him she was making a conversion, it had been in an offhand manner, as though disposing of this potential barrier to their marrying were trivial. On the sole occasion when the subject of Catholic doctrine had arisen between them, she had sidestepped the issue by mentioning how much more she liked the priests who called on Adèle Parbury than the ministers she had met at home. If her conversion had been heartfelt, should she not have ensured he was present when she was received into the Church?
There were some who believed in the Church’s power but were not obedient to it…
He slid his hand into the side pocket of his coat, groping for the crucifix, which he had not wanted to leave in the pilothouse, and wondered whether instead of Dorcas taking instruction he should himself have converted to the starker practices of some Protestant sect. The lonely nighttime reaches of the river did not make him feel closer to God, only further away from humanity.
But it was impossible to think deep and pivotal thoughts with the race under way and the intersecting crisis of his mother and his beloved about to focus on him, and this strange garrulous man who was so contemptuous of Negro song and so proud of being hired for a funeral, like a professional mourner, putting questions that sounded as though at any other time they might be fascinating.
Effortfully he contrived a few answers and made them more or less polite.
At the very moment when Eulalie reappeared, her expression grave, inspiration struck Fernand and he saw how to rid himself of Gaston. Interrupting the next of that seemingly interminable sequence of questions, he said, “Ah! Suddenly I recall where we saw each other. Not at the Philharmonic Hall—at the Limousin, last Mardi Gras. And now, if you’ll forgive me, my mother and I have personal matters to discuss.”
Memory of his disastrous public collapse overwhelmed Gaston. Worse yet, as he looked at Eulalie, he obviously reheard his patronizing comment about the “barbaric noise of the Negroes.” Scrambling awkwardly to his feet, he hurried away. Later he was seen at a table on the leeward side of the deck, much occupied with manuscript paper, pen and ink, and remained there until the sun declined and the mosquitoes became too troublesome to be borne.
“What of Dorcas?” Fernand demanded of his mother as she resumed her chair.
She took a roundabout route to her answer, avoiding his gaze.
“You know her very well?” she parried. And after a pause to ponder on her choice of words: “You know her intimately?”
Fernand automatically glanced around for fear of being overheard, but nobody was paying them the least attention; the party at the common table was breaking up at word of an oncoming steamer—Fernand’s pilot instincts informed him she would most likely be the Cariboo, on her regular run down from Vicksburg—while Cherouen and Barber were desultorily chatting.
Of course! He ought to have thought about that long ago! In a sense, last night at least, he had…
His mother regarded him with a wan smile. “Your father,” she murmured, “was a—a manly person. In that, as in many other things, you plainly take after him. However, since marriage is possible, I counsel you to arrange it as soon as may be.” She gave a light silvery chuckle. “I never imagined I’d look forward to becoming a grandmother! Nonetheless I confess it would be a comfort to my old age to see my only son securely established in a fine home with a lovely bride to take care of him. She is lovely, you know. I say so in all honesty. I hope her spirit matches her appearance.”
“I too!” said Fernand fervently, his mind racing. But he was at a loss for words.
Eulalie had laid aside her reticule. Retrieving it, she rose, as regal in her much-worn dress as any queen.
“She has promised to join you in a minute,” she said. “I feel you will have lots to talk about. When you want me, I shall be taking a turn around the boat. I have one or two things to attend to.”
Rising, he stammered, “What sort of things?”
“Oh!”—in the lowest possible voice above a whisper—“I know you don’t believe in my powers, but they are real, and you
are in very present danger.”
“Mother! For years you’ve been warning how lightning may strike from a summer sky, an oncoming boat might run against us, a boiler pipe might burst! And here I am!”
At the back of his mind was what he had half forgotten because she had been so courteous to Dorcas: her outburst concerning her enemies’ charge that she would sacrifice him… What crazy nonsense!
Yet, as he looked at her calm face, he could almost sympathize with her in the hell she had created unintentionally for herself.
“Never mind,” she said composedly. “Just keep the crucifix by you at all times. But remember, I’m not speaking of natural, accidental dangers, but of deliberate ones. Due perhaps to so much money having been wagered on the Nonpareil.”
Upon which she walked away, forward along the cabin, through the area traditionally reserved for single men. Amboy made to check her, but then realized that since almost everybody had gone on deck to watch the other steamer, it was not worth making a fuss. Indeed, as she passed, Barber half rose and sketched a bow, which she acknowledged with a broad smile. Another moment and she had left by the forward door, tilting her hat against the bright sun and the breeze.
“Fernand!”
He swung around. Here at last was Dorcas, looking ravishing despite a trace of redness about the eyes. He wanted to crush her to him, for what his mother had said had transformed his world on the instant. Now he must think of himself as Fernand Lamenthe, founder of a legitimate line of descendants! He wanted to embrace not only her but all the new lives that would spring from her womb.
He dared not, however; he must be content to kiss her passionlessly on the cheek, supervise delivery of hot chocolate and rolls and butter. He burned to put the central question, but had no chance until she had eaten and drunk and the waiters were too busy clearing away used crockery to pay any heed.
Then he asked her.
Her face turned to stone, her mouth sucked in, lipless, as to suppress an unbearable admission. From that he knew the answer anyhow. He caught her hand and said, choosing his words with utmost care, “I want to hear you say yes! Because I want you for the mother of my children! Because I love you!”
Her eyes brimmed with tears.
“Oh, Fernand! I’m so frightened! I have nobody but you in all the world. And I don’t know whether even you are to be trusted— No, let me finish! You’ve no idea how hard I prayed, all through the night, to be allowed to trust somebody at long last.”
That was so close an echo of his own feelings, Fernand could only insist, “But I do love you! And we’ll get married as soon as we return to New Orleans!”
Her fingers tightened on his. “I so much want it to be true!”
“It is!” he declared. And, to his horror, felt himself overcome by a gigantic yawn. He frantically tried to apologize, but still with tears wet on her cheeks she broke into laughter, and all their unspoken thoughts—of the past, of Parbury, of Eulalie—blew away as with infinite relief he found he was able to join in.
Coffee and cocktail combined at last to quiet the pounding in Cherouen’s head, despite setbacks due to Barber’s unaffected appetite. It being Friday, his breakfast was meatless, but it was nonetheless substantial. A bowl of cornmeal mush swimming in molasses and cream gave way to a mound of grits topped with two fried eggs. Butter dripped from accompanying piles of toast. Cherouen did his best not to look, but even awareness of it made him queasy.
Finally he was enough recovered to start talking, and by and by he turned to the subject of Josephine, in which his companion and host displayed a polite interest.
“Eating arsenic!” he exclaimed. “I’d heard that crazy so-called ‘fashionable’ women were doing that in New York last year, but I never imagined she’d be such a fool. She ought to know, after working with me so long, that all that stuff is poison—pure poison! Calomel and antimony, sulphur and blue vitriol: all nonsense! At best they may have a palliative effect, but to restore true health you must vitalize the system as a whole… which in her case is impossible, of course.”
Barber looked a polite question.
“Her system’s tainted,” Cherouen amplified. “It’s the African blood. Must be. Nothing else could make her act so foolish except her wish to hide the outward signs.”
Barber, with the greatest delicacy in the world, murmured, “And this applies also to the fashionable ladies of New York?”
Without waiting for an answer, he inclined to Eulalie as she passed, then changed the subject.
“Shall we go and view the other boat?”
“I didn’t know she was in sight!”
“Ah, you mean the Nonpareil. I was referring to the southbound steamer we’re about to cross. But it would be interesting to know how far we are ahead of our rival. Cuffy, send to inquire of Captain Drew.”
To Cherouen he added dryly, “I imagine we are not alone in wishing to be told.”
He snapped open his watch, and concluded, “What’s more, before noon we shall witness the amazing arrangements our captain makes for coaling on the run. We shall be at Natchez in unprecedented time.”
“And at St. Louis too,” Cherouen muttered.
“So we all hope. Come along.”
Since the Atchafalaya steamed triumphantly past, a miasma of ill temper had permeated the Nonpareil like river fog. Inevitably it was densest where the work was hardest, in the boiler room and engineroom.
And so far as Caesar was concerned, it ultimately concentrated on himself. Already he had made two grave mistakes.
On being turned out, by Whitworth but on Steeples’s order, before his four hours’ rest were over, he had muttered, “Is this the freedom I was fighting for?”
That was bad enough, since it earned him a clout on the head, which he dared not repay. But worse was to follow. While he was still rubbing his eyes, he sensed something amiss in the web of piping that fed the engines, and stood stock-still to analyze it, perhaps as his ancestors might have done in dense forest, judging the path of some unseen predator. And then, without waiting for instructions, he had gone and put it right: a union on a high-pressure steam line that vibration was gradually shaking loose. All it called for was a heave on a wrench, and the like must certainly be done a score of times during the voyage. But his not asking permission angered Steeples and earned him many curses before his stint was over.
Caesar had realized something must be wrong with the Nonpareil the moment he recognized Eb Williams being carried off her, drunk. But now it came vividly into focus. Throughout his childhood he had been aware there were good and bad slaveowners. During the war he had seen how there were good and bad officers in the field. Now he was discovering there were good and bad commanders on the river.
He was a little surprised. He had been briefly able to gaze out over the Mississippi before weariness felled him, and had felt a shiver run down his spine at its majesty, its impersonal power, against which even the greatest engines might not prevail. How could bad men endure the pressure of such an implacable opponent?
Perhaps the answer was that in the long run they did not. But the long run, as ever, had not arrived.
What galled him above all was that he knew he had more feeling for the machinery than Steeples: maybe not as much as the chief engineers, Corkran and Roy—whom he had seen reacting as he felt they should, freezing and cocking their heads as a suspect noise broke the even rhythm of the pistons, then dismissing it wordlessly as negligible—but the skill to isolate and rectify a fault before it caused any harm. Had he not proved it? Yet the cascade of resentment at loss of the lead was washing over him, and beyond him the powerless laborers who fed the furnaces.
This human failing was a fault as bad as any a machine could show.
Still farther behind? How? Why? Waves of black suspicion welled out, above all from Parbury—who, thanks to his blindness, was forever distrustful and now felt he had suffered the betrayal to end betrayals—while Woodley prowled from stem to stern, seeking any ca
use for complaint, as though a dirty towel or a badly coiled rope could affect the steamer’s speed. Gordon, who cared nothing for the Nonpareil but much for what he had bet on her, merely snapped and growled, usually at Matthew, who was least likely to snap back.
Sober counsels were attempted, to little avail. McNab truthfully observed that the Atchafalaya’s claim to so great a lead was based on cries from people along the bank, without a watch among them. If any had a clock at home, it was not to be believed: since when were cheap country clocks accurate? Also Hogan and Trumbull, red-eyed already, were at pains to point out that when dawn broke the Atchafalaya was in easier water, but there were shoals and reefs ahead. And over four days, was half an hour all that significant?
All of which arguments had a certain force. Yet they did not prevent ill feeling from building up. Parbury barked at Woodley as though he could somehow have refused to stop at Baton Rouge. Gordon treated Joel as though, by his family connection with Arthur and Louisette, he could have done something to delay the crisis. And, naturally, all minds reverted to Josephine and her confused warning about disaster. The fact that both she and Auberon had retracted their claim did little to dispel anxiety.
So far there was no sign of Auberon. He must be still asleep.
Joel worried about him. Now his first dispatch was safely on its way, and a while remained before he need prepare one to send ashore at Natchez, so he had time to think about that stain on his cousin’s handkerchief. If it portended what one might assume…
But in that case, why had Auberon never mentioned it? Since Mardi Gras they had become friends again, albeit not as close as in childhood; so one might have expected—
“Meestair Shishkin!”
Joel started and swung around. Advancing on him was Manuel, moustachios bristling and hand outstretched. With a sinking heart Joel remembered how he had pledged himself to interview him.
Yet it was not, surely, too great a chore? Anybody could talk to the officers and crew; the bandmaster enjoyed a unique position and might furnish scandalous copy of the kind that sold newspapers best.