Feast of All Saints (95 page)

Dolly was dressed and beautifully dressed, in her favorite black velvet, placing the white camellias, with her own careful hands, in her hair. She had laced Marie, put two silver rings on Marie’s fingers, and chosen the sprigged lavender silk dress at first, only to put this aside. “Royal blue,” she said, “you must wear a strong color, a passionate color.” Royal blue silk, the hem scalloped and studded with clusters of pearls. Bits of green ribbon flared from the clusters as if they were tiny leaves. Dolly pulled the small puffed sleeves down low from Marie’s shoulders and turned Marie to the mirror so that she might approve. A deep cleft showed the fullness of Marie’s breasts.

And when Dolly went off to the parlor of the big house for her
de rigueur
appearance—never very long—she left Marie alone in the blazing room. And then Marie went out quietly to walk under the stars.

It was a delicious coldness, the winter air. The bare limbs of the crepe myrtles glistened white under the moon while all about the ivy, still wet from the earlier rain, shivered on the high brick walls. It
wound its way along the banisters of the big house, hanging down in drifts over the entrance of the carriageway, where it swayed lightly in the breeze as it scraped the ground. A man had come out on the porch above and seeing Marie below tipped his hat. She had watched him pass along the shuttered doors of the long rear wing that ran like an arm against one side of the darkened court; she knew his eyes were fixed on her, she could see the trace of a smile beneath his mustache. Again he tipped his hat before he disappeared into one of those long narrow rooms.

The music was fast. It seemed, even where she stood among the bare trees and the glimmering lanterns, she could hear the reverberations of the dancers on the boards. Horses clopped on the distant cobblestone street and the stars were dim behind the ghostly shapes of the drifting clouds. She wished now she had brought her glass with her. It would have been nice to feel the warmth of the wine. But she walked round and round, enjoying the sound of her heels on the flags, knowing she might go into the house tonight, that she might bring herself to do it, even though she had been so frightened the first time.

This was a new life, a new life, she said this to herself over and over. She had no history, no existence beyond this place. She would not even say the name Richard in her mind, she would not even picture him. All that was gone now, along with its miseries and its betrayals, its half-understood ecstasy, its love, this was a new life and—her mind went blank!

She wished suddenly that Dolly was with her.

If Dolly were with her, just for a few moments, then maybe, just maybe she could go into the parlor again. But at this moment, it seemed quite impossible that she had gone, on her own, the night before. What vague excitement had led her there, unannounced, as Dolly was waltzing wildly in a flurry of velvet with an old white man, his hair silver, his gestures graceful but self-satirical as he attempted to appear spry. The room had been a flicker of shadowy faces, dim candles, and ripping music. Women smiled at her from the dark edges of the carpet and men bowed their heads. She had slipped away to the corner of the dining room from which she might survey all unseen, but then that old man, having kissed Dolly’s hand, had come toward her and she had felt herself stiffen as he sat by her side. There was something tender, doting, in his manner, but then she heard his breathing, too rapid beneath those enormous white whiskers, and there was the insistent pressure of his hand. She had felt panic then,
what am I doing here, Marie Ste. Marie in this room!
She didn’t remember rushing out, she didn’t remember crossing the yard.

But when Dolly had come to her, she had said, “Time is not important, you are safe with me here, but you will do it someday. You
will do it because it’s there waiting for you, and there will come that moment when you are bored and unhappy here, when you are restless, and you yourself want to leave this room.” And Marie, strangely reassured, had fallen asleep in Dolly’s arms.

Was she bored tonight? Was she restless? Was that why Marie had been so eager to dress, to wander out here alone in the yard? No, it was something else, something which Dolly had not yet begun to understand. Because Dolly didn’t know that no one had ever loved Marie as Dolly loved her, nor how extraordinary was the warmth of that bed, the two of them together, those soft maternal touches, that candor, that delicacy, that trust. And revealing to Marie purely and so honestly the secrets of a woman’s body, the passions to which all women were subject, be they sheltered or experienced, innocent or skilled, Dolly had led her farther and farther away from the voices of the past which had only deceived, distorted, betrayed. Marie wanted to please Dolly more than she had ever wanted to please anyone, and it was for this that she had come out tonight, for this reason that she wanted to go into the parlor again.

For though Dolly spoke of time and patience, Dolly really wanted this: that Marie be alive and happy, that Marie be born again with Dolly’s freedom and Dolly’s curiously guarded heart.

Yes, Marie was here for Dolly. But she could not do it suddenly. She could not move toward the big house. Not just now.

She bowed her head, and made a silent little promenade about the fountain until out of the corner of her eye she saw in the carriageway, behind those drifts of ivy, the unmistakable figure of a tall man.

She turned away at once. She walked quickly towards the quarters. For one second she thought she imagined the boots thudding fast across the courtyard, but then she realized the man was after her, he had even come up behind her on the stairs. She ought to shout for Dolly’s maid, Sanitte, she ought to shout for Dolly. But perhaps she was being foolish, and this was some regular visitor on business of his own. She rushed along the gallery, her cheeks burning, and just as she reached the door of her sanctuary, she felt his hand on her bare arm.

“Marie!” he whispered.

She gasped, shutting her eyes. “Let me go!” she said.

“Marie, it’s me, Richard, please!” He stepped in front of her.

“Richard, go away from here,” she whispered. “I’ll scream if you don’t go away, I’ll scream now.” She reached past him pushing open the bedroom doors. He followed her, letting them bang shut behind him, and when he saw where he was…the cluttered dresser, the huge unmade bed, he was obviously at a loss.

It seemed a hundred years since she had laid eyes on him. In all this time, she had not allowed herself even once to visualize him, and
there he was, the majestic height, the dark hair curling over the heavy collar of his winter cape, his large brown eyes, tinged with sadness, surveying this garishly lighted room. He looked at the lamps atop the armoire, he looked at the lamps beside the settee, and as Marie settled in front of the dresser on the long padded bench, he looked at her. And then away.

“Why did you come?” she asked bitterly. “You cannot even look at me, so why did you come?”

His heavy lids lifted slowly and she could see the confusion in his face. But she did not know what he saw in hers. “Greatly changed,” Christophe had told him. The words were pathetically inadequate, for sitting there with her long hair undone down her back, her bosom and arms bare in the glare of these lamps, she was as always perfectly beautiful. But the veil of serenity was gone from her eyes. Some new fire radiated from within. It was as if the young girl he’d known had been an unstamped coin, and here was the woman, eyes ablaze with some new passion infecting all of her features, and all of her manner, even to her posture on the bench, her elbow on the dresser, and head turned toward him almost arrogantly, her finger to her cheek. And all about her were the sumptuous trappings of Dolly’s world, so like he had seen them in the big house the first time he had entered it when Dolly’s little girl was dead.

“Richard,” she said. “Go!”

“I had to see for myself,” he said, meeting her gaze though it took all his strength not to pull himself away. “I had to know that it’s your decision to stay here, I had to hear it from you.” His face convulsed. Some awful sadness had come over him, looking at her.

“There’s got to be someplace else for you,” he stammered, “there are other places. Marcel has the cottage, you could go home…”

But this was nonsense. Her live in that cottage now? With people stopping as they passed to try to get a glimpse of her from the gate? There would be the whispering and turning of heads every time she set her foot out the door. And what else? The inevitable familiarities from the rough men of the neighborhood who believed her tarnished and fair game? Why had he spoken such nonsense to her, what had he meant to say? That surely there was some answer, some way?

“Your aunt, Marie, in the country, the Cane River,” he whispered desperately, shocked, as he gazed at her, by the incandescence of her wide black eyes.

“And what makes you think that she would have me, Richard? My mother and my aunts have disowned me and my mother and my aunt Louisa have gone to
Sans Souci
. I would die first before I’d live with them, and I assure you, they would never consent to live with me…”

“The nuns, then, Marie, the nuns…”

“Why, Richard, to make it easier for you?”

He had never heard such a voice from her, such a rapid and searing tone, quicker than his thoughts. Her voice had always been so tentative, so soft. He could not endure this much longer. He had not cried since he was twelve years old. But he was on the edge of it now.

And he turned his back. It was simply more than he could bear.

“Nuns, aunts…the country…” she said in that same quick voice. “Did you come here to let me know yourself that my life is finished in your eyes? That I am dead to you, so you wish that I would entomb myself? You’re grieving for me, Richard, as if I had already passed from this earth, and indeed it would be easier for you, and for Marcel, were I to bury myself alive. Well, I have no such intention. You’ve done your duty, Richard. Go home.”

He couldn’t answer her now. He couldn’t move. He stood there struggling against his tears as a much older man might who did not know how to give vent to tears at all.

“You know,” she said softly behind him, “I have known love only twice in my life. Once with you…and then again here in this room. I never thought I’d find it here, I was crazy when I came here, but I found it nevertheless. And I have come to an appalling conclusion, Richard, that this love, this powerful sweet love, is something that others know in varied ways all their lives. They know it from mother and father and sisters and brothers, they feel it even from friends. My brother has basked in it ever since he was born. But I’ve never really known it except for those few moments when I was with you. And now I have it here with Dolly, day-to-day love, and affection, and care. Well, I’m through with the world of cruel and unfeeling women, their virtue or discretion does not impress me. I am not leaving here. You have it from me now, in my own words. So spare me your grief, take it away.”

He was grieving for her, it was true. He was grieving for her and for himself, He was grieving for the Marie that had been and the Richard who had loved her, both of whom were now lost. But as he stood there staring at the wall before him, he was wishing desperately that the world were a place he could shape to his own choosing, that he could make his father and mother such that they would have to accept her were he to bring her home, and he could make himself such that he could stand up to them and to everyone around them and say she is going to be my wife. He wished that he could make himself the man who could take her out of here, and stand them off, all of them, no matter what were their proscriptions and their declarations.

But suppose he was that man and they were such malleable creatures that that great fortress of respectability, the Lermontant house, could be stormed? Could he do it? Could he love her again? Want to
touch her? The very thought of it filled him with violent confusion, a violent revulsion for what had happened to her, and a longing for her at the same time so that he felt he was literally coming apart. Love her, he loved her more than ever, but it was over, finished, and he could not save her. Another man, another time in history, another family, perhaps…

He turned to face her. His eyes were fixed on her, and then gazing past her and beyond her so that he didn’t see her at all. Rather he saw the frightening fire that emanated from her like the heat deep within a dark sealed stove, and he was not conscious of her rising or of her coming toward him. All the mingled sensations of a vast and endless funeral rite invaded his mind, with that awful sense of finality, the sheer futility of weeping, or making one’s hand into a fist in the face of God.

Then clearly, completely, she came into view. She was standing in front of him. The arrogant posture had broken away because it had only been a guise and she was moving toward him as if some supernatural force moved her limbs.

He could not know what she was thinking; he couldn’t know the terror that gripped her at the thought of touching any human being except Dolly, the fear in which she lived, slipping night after night in and out of nightmare, as those fragmented sensations from that long night of rape and cruelty came back to her unbidden, on their own. He couldn’t know that she was thinking wildly, desperately, of how much she loved him, and that if she could just cross this space that separated them, if she could just touch him and feel his arms again, then maybe she could love again, live again, maybe even get out of this crazy world where she had become a child clinging to Dolly Rose.

“Richard,” she whispered suddenly. “It’s Marie. It’s the same Marie! Nothing’s changed in me, Richard,” she said. “Don’t you understand? They did this to me! I did not do it to myself. I am the same in my heart, and I love you…”

He stood rigid, his eyes closed. He could feel her hands on his arms, and feel her soft bosom pressed to his chest. But he couldn’t move, he couldn’t feel. And then suddenly, he held her. He almost crushed her against him. His lips pressed her eyelids, her cheek, her mouth. He was trembling violently as he lifted her off the ground and kissed her over and over again, and there came that old shock, that powerful vibrant shock radiating from her body through his so that he could see and feel nothing around him except Marie, Marie in his arms.