Feast of All Saints (62 page)

“You know, Rudolphe,” she said, looking up at him suddenly with a little smile. “I never meant really to cause Christophe so much harm.
I never meant really to cause him so much trouble, nor to bring trouble to you.”

“It’s past, Madame,” he said almost sharply. And he reached to pick up the case.

But she came across the carpet then and taking his arm in one hand, pushed gently at his right hand with the other until he let the case go. “Rudolphe,” she said. “Tell that to Christophe for me.”

For a brief moment he merely looked into her eyes. And then without thinking, he whispered to her, heartfelt, “Dolly, why! Why this house, why all of this! Wasn’t there some other way?”

At first, she merely shook her head, the smile lengthening, brightening on her face. And then leaning against him, her hand on his shoulder, she said, “You know sometimes I think that if Christophe had been, well…if Christophe had been the marrying kind, maybe it would have all been different, maybe it would have been different indeed. But that’s foolish isn’t it, Rudolphe? To imagine that now?”

“Too easy, I think, Dolly,” he said softly. He could not imagine her content with any man, let alone a man of color, it was absurd. In fact, the image of some sordid and miserable marriage between her and Christophe sickened him. But it was difficult to think of this clearly when he looked at her now. Her high forehead was as smooth and free of care as that of a child.

“Do you really believe in life after death?” she asked him. He was startled by the question, but answered immediately,

“Yes.”

“That the dead are somewhere…else?”

“Of course.”

“That Lisa is somewhere…and that I’ll see her again?” Her eyes were moist as she looked up.

“Definitely,” he replied.

“And that my mother is somewhere…and she knows what I do?”

Ah, so that was it. He studied her, trying vainly to think of something comforting to say. He had no such trouble when dealing with the mourners at funerals and wakes. And he wondered that this ability, so often polished, should fail him now. Perhaps it was her expression. Her eyes were wide, musing, and there was nothing of the sentimental about her.

“Imagine,” she said softly, staring forward, “what Maman would have thought had I married Christophe! Her precious Dolly with a man of…”

He turned away. His face was suddenly throbbing. It was an insult that she should speak thus to him and he wouldn’t endure it. He had
the case of wrenches in his right hand at once and nothing would keep him here now.

But she drew close to him right at the door, one arm sliding urgently about his waist. She was looking down, her head all but brushing his chest.

“I have to go, Madame,” he said. A fast, light music came from the big house, and an indifferent murmur from the yard below.

“It doesn’t much matter, does it?” she sighed. “Marrying him or not, does it? After all, Maman’s turning in her grave.”

“Life is for the living,
ma chère,”
he said suddenly, not conscious that he had closed his hand on her small shoulder and was pressing it tightly. “What the dead think of us in God’s time and wisdom is just fiction in our minds. Life is for the living, for us now. Close up this house for your own sake. That power is yours anytime.”

He stepped onto the porch. Her arms dropped to her sides.

She smiled as she looked up at him, her hair so full it made a dark shadow behind her to her waist.

“Rudolphe, none of that concerns me,” she said simply. “I’ve made my choice and I rather like it. And maybe, just maybe, it’s the only real choice I’ve ever made.”

“Dolly, Dolly,” he shook his head.

But she was not sad, nor spiteful. There had been a conviction in those appalling words. She folded her arms and leaned against the frame of the door, obscuring for the moment the light behind her. “You know it is such a sublime feeling to do as one pleases for once, to own one’s own person, one’s own soul.”

“How can you say this?” he protested.

“I don’t go into that house over there, Rudolphe, I haven’t been in it for months,” she smiled. “I can do what I want, Rudolphe, what I like. And I’ll tell you something. If I weren’t so devoted to Madame Suzette, I’d beg you to stay for a while…here…with me. No one would take the slightest notice of that now, no one would care. Just you and me here alone. But then perhaps I underestimate Madame Suzette. She was always an understanding woman. Maybe she’d forgive, that is, if she ever found out…”

For an instant, he merely stared at her, his eyes wide. And then softly, he said,
“Adieu
, Madame,” and was gone.

It was very late that night before he finally went home. Bubbles had been overjoyed to receive the wrenches. He had salvaged a ruined piano from a recent fire in the neighborhood and was in the process of restoring it in Christophe’s kitchen shed. Now with the wrenches and other tools in his case, he would complete this task and his gratitude knew no bounds. He cut such an elegant figure these days, quite accustomed
now to the fine clothes Christophe continued to give him, that he would soon be earning money for himself and for Christophe of which Christophe was sorely in need. The Mercier house after so many years of blatant neglect was a constant liability as well as a priceless asset; its ongoing repairs took every penny that Christophe made.

Christophe himself had not disappointed Rudolphe, and after accepting Dolly’s expressions of good will with a gentlemanly nod, he had poured the wine and offered a sympathetic ear. He concurred with Rudolphe on political matters as he always did, but he himself seemed unmoved by the current state of affairs except for one point: it was so hard now to set a slave free. And Christophe wanted to set Bubbles free. Bubbles would have to be thirty years of age and self-sufficient unless a petition was filed and an exception granted, and this was becoming harder to accomplish all the time. Louisiana was afraid of her free Negro population and did not wish to see it increased. Meantime free blacks and people of color poured into New Orleans from all over the South seeking the anonymity and tolerance that the city had to offer. The legislature sought again and again to control this, to limit it, to prevent it. Their contempt for their colored population was abundantly clear.

But in all this Christophe was alert but calm, sympathetic but removed. And Rudolphe as he had hoped, felt better for having seen him and spoken to him, for having unburdened his soul. It had occurred to him just before leaving that Christophe’s attitudes represented an alternative of which Rudolphe in the past had not been so keenly aware. Christophe knew exactly what was happening to his people, and he cared very much about it, but he was not personally diminished by it in any way. He saw his task as the education of his students and he felt he might strive to do that to perfection regardless of the injustices of this time and place.

And this time and place seemed far more bearable to Rudolphe as he finally went home. If a man could perceive that deeply, neither excusing nor ignoring it, and still have peace of mind, well, that was a worthwhile thing. Wisdom was the only word for it that Rudolphe knew.

And wisdom was on his mind to some extent when coming up the stairs that night, he passed his son’s room.

The door was open to catch the cooling draughts of the house and a weary Richard was squinting by the light of the lamp over his books. He wore a dressing gown, open at the throat to show a bit of the dark hair on his chest, and as usual appeared to Rudolphe, when seen in a sudden unexpected glance, as a much older and somewhat impressive man.

Rudolphe paused. He attempted to put the imposing figure into perspective, this was his son, his youngest, a boy of seventeen.

“Mon Père,”
Richard murmured politely, rising from the desk. Rudolphe, disliking to look up to Richard, motioned for him to sit down. He came into the bedroom as Richard obeyed and made a small stiff survey of it with a furrowed brow.

This was always his manner in Richard’s presence as it was his manner with his nephews, his employees, his slaves. Its effect was simply to produce a state of tension in others; this man of authority might find something here short of perfection and everyone knew that he would settle for nothing but perfection, he was all but impossible to please.

Richard felt that tension. His eyes moved furtively about the room after his father, and he saw with a sharp twinge that he had left his soiled boots on the hearth. Had he summoned Placide…But his father was not taking note of the boots, nor the somewhat frivolous novel on the bedside table, but instead had fixed his attention on the Daguerreotype of Marie.

The anxiety in Richard made a knot inside him. He had verses to translate before retiring, and now this.

But it was with an unusual countenance that Rudolphe turned to him finally as he clasped his hands behind his back.
“Les Sirènes,”
Rudolphe murmured almost absently, and Richard inclining forward, asked,

“Mon Père?”

But suddenly the slight alteration in his father’s face confused Richard. And he had a vague and painful memory of having seen such an alteration once before.

“You don’t follow my advice, do you,
mon fils?”
The voice was gentle, quite unlike the blustering father of whom Richard lived in glum fear. Out of habit, as old as himself, Richard struggled to find the right diplomatic tone, the perfect placating phrase. But his father approached him, which was seldom his custom, and placed his hand on Richard’s arm. Richard stared up at him in utter bewilderment.

“What is love to you, Richard?” Rudolphe sighed. The voice was was sad. “Romance, women as pretty as spring flowers, the peal of bells?”

Rudolphe stopped. His eyes were wide, and he was not really conscious now of what he had just said. He was seeing the vestibule of the St. Louis Cathedral on the day of Giselle’s wedding, and it seemed all those sounds and scents mingled for him, along with some vagrant image of Narcisse’s perfect statue that put him in mind of love and love lost as much as his evening visit with Dolly Rose. He did not see that Richard was awestruck by this lapse of the decorum that forever
divided them, and he was awakened, as it were, when Richard began to speak.

“Mon Père
, it’s more than love, it’s something more splendid and more important than love ever was. I don’t have the gift to explain it,” came the slow, hesitant, and then carefully chosen words. “I never had your gift for explaining things and never will. But believe me, what you fear for me simply will not come to pass.” The tall figure was rising, unwinding from the chair, and looking down at Rudolphe now as if this were inevitable and Rudolphe glanced away disquieted and strangely raw. “It’s not only love we feel for each other, we know each other!” The voice was a whisper. “And there is…there is trust!”

“Now
, now there is trust!” Rudolphe whispered, shaking his head. He was losing control. He had not even wanted this conversation, he had so much on his mind from this fatiguing, and endless day. He glanced up at the wide black eyes that were gazing down on him; he wanted to say more. He wanted to reach across the years and years of sharp reprimands and brusque orders to say simply now, I love you, you are my son, my only son, you don’t know how much I love you, and if this girl wounds you I cannot bear it, if she wounds you, she wounds me.

But Richard had begun to speak.

“Mon Père,”
he said, the voice soft but urgent. “Is it so difficult for you to believe that she can love
me!
Is it so impossible for you to believe that she can respect
me!
I am not the son you wanted, I’ve always disappointed you, and I always will. But please believe me when I tell you that Marie sees in me the man you’ll never see.”

“Richard, no…” Rudolphe moaned. “No, no!” he shook his head. But the hand that he held out closed suddenly and dropped helplessly at his side. And before he could gather himself for this moment, before he could express the love that was so abundant and so accessible to him, Richard had begun to speak again.

“Mon Père
, I want to tell you something which I myself don’t understand. You see Marie with all the advantages, she’s beautiful, she’s courted by everyone, she can do whatever she wants. But I tell you there is some grave sadness in Marie, something dark and dreadful, and I sense it when I’m with her, I feel it as if it were a force lurking about her, seeking to do her harm. I don’t know why I feel it, but I do feel it, and I feel that when we are together I stand between her and that force. And she knows it, knows it without words as I know it, and there is trust in her for me that she feels for no one else. It’s not only that I love her or that I want her, it’s that in some way she’s already mine. Now is that spring flowers,
mon Père
, is that the peal of bells?”

When Rudolphe turned to look at him, Richard was staring off,
unsatisfied as if his words had failed. He did not realize that his father was scrutinizing him from a vantage point entirely new to them both. He did not sense his father’s amazement, he did not see the remarkable concentration in Rudolphe’s face.

But some profound instinct in Rudolphe recognized the truth of Richard’s words. Because Rudolphe, too, had sensed this inexplicable sadness in Marie Ste. Marie. He had even sensed that air of menace that seemed forever to encircle her like an aureole. But Rudolphe had mistaken the darkness at the core of knowing the girl for something that emanated from her, from within. He had not thought her the victim of it. Rather he mixed it completely with his fears for his son, his distrust of the girl’s enticing beauty, his scorn for
Les Sirènes
in all their varied forms.

“No, Richard,” he said softly. “It’s not spring flowers nor the peal of bells.”

“Mon Père!”
Richard glanced at him directly. It was not clear that he’d even heard. “Give your consent!” he said. “Let me ask for her now!”

Rudolphe’s face was passive, uncommonly calm. He regarded Richard for a long moment without anger or impatience, but when he spoke it was with conviction.