III.

IT WAS ONE O'CLOCK before Marcel came down, and rushing into the cottage, he stared amazed at the bra.s.s clock on the sideboard, whispering, before Marcel came down, and rushing into the cottage, he stared amazed at the bra.s.s clock on the sideboard, whispering, "Mon Dieu "Mon Dieu, I slept like the dead. And the truth is, I've been reborn. I've been reborn!" He snapped his fingers and turned to Marie. "And you look lovely this afternoon." He approached her with brisk steps. "It's been too long since I told you that you were lovely, that I derive the sweetest constant constant pleasure from your loveliness. Am I too old for us to kiss, no, we'll never be too old to kiss, will we, you and I?" and reaching down so that he lifted her by her shoulders, he kissed her on one cheek and then the other and let her drop. He laughed. "What's the matter with you?" he asked, suddenly becoming serious. "You're crying?" pleasure from your loveliness. Am I too old for us to kiss, no, we'll never be too old to kiss, will we, you and I?" and reaching down so that he lifted her by her shoulders, he kissed her on one cheek and then the other and let her drop. He laughed. "What's the matter with you?" he asked, suddenly becoming serious. "You're crying?"

"No," she shook her head, turning away. But again she looked up at him as if he were mad.

"Oh, my head is splitting," he said in another quick shift, "and I'm starving, where's Lisette, I'm starving."

"Where's Lisette, I'm starving," came Lisette's echo in disgust from the back room. "As if I didn't hear you get out of bed, it's a wonder you don't go right through the floor." Her face was puffy from napping. But she had a tray in hand and was setting his silver and napkin at the head of the table. The steam from the soup rose in her face. "You better want your dinner, too, don't tell me you want breakfast."

"Of course I don't want breakfast, dinner's fine, and I'm sorry that I wouldn't answer you last night, Lisette, sometimes I don't think I appreciate you as I should-"

She laughed loudly. "Eat that before it gets cold."

"I was in despair last night," Marcel went on, approaching the chair. He glanced at the soup. "In utter despair. But I'm no longer in despair, and I'm sorry."

"In despair," despair," she repeated, her hand on her hip. "You were she repeated, her hand on her hip. "You were in despair," in despair," she said again. "And now you're not she said again. "And now you're not in despair in despair, Michie?"

"No, absolutely not. As a matter of fact, I feel wonderful! Except for my head, my head's splitting, you know that white wine that's in the water barrel, the bottle I put there, get it, please, my head's coming off. But what is this, one place? Am I dining alone, where's Maman? Marie, are you ill?"

Lisette's eyebrows went up in mock astonishment, and Marie from the settee regarded him with round eyes, her mouth open.

"You look dreadful," he said to Marie, "what is it?"

"Well now, Michie," said Lisette swaggering again toward the table, her eyes darting quickly to the front door and back to Marcel. "There's two ways of explaining it, this dining alone. First off, your sister and your mother have been just a little too upset to want any dinner???? Hmmmm? What with you doing so well these days in school???? And staying out all night? But then I hustled to fix your soup the best I could as soon as I heard your foot hit the floor because I knew, no matter how grave the crime, there is always got to be that final meal for the condemned man. Now eat up, Michie, before that platform drops from under your feet."

Marcel burst out laughing. "Lisette, this is no meal for a condemned man!" he said. And seating himself quickly he drew his napkin from the silver ring. "Now please get that wine, this is a celebration, and my head's throbbing."

Lisette was staring at the door. A shadow loomed on the path.

"Wine, Michie?" she murmured, and backed slowly toward the bedroom.

"Wine, wine!" he said. "Hurry!"

"WINE!"

Marie put her face in her hands.

Marcel rose at once, his eyes fixed on Cecile as she entered the room, but nothing changed in the brightness of his expression. His lips narrowed with a smile.

"You are asking for wine!" Cecile screamed again. The door banged shut behind her.

"I was asking for you, too, Maman," he said softly. "I have some news for you, but what's the matter?"

"WHAT'S THE MATTER!" She ripped off her lace gloves, the seams splitting, and flung them impotently in the direction of the far wall.

"Oh, I know I've worried you," he said in a small voice. "I know I've been dreadful." He stopped, biting his lip so that he looked like a small boy. "But Maman, it's going to be different now, you must believe me, all that's past, and I have some good news for you, wonderful news!" He began to pace the flowered carpet suddenly as if he were lost in thought, his hands rubbing together, his face the picture of acute concentration. But then turning to her again, he smiled. "I won't worry you again, I promise you. Please, come have dinner now..."

Cecile was petrified. Marie was speechless.

He waited, his expression open, looking from one to the other of them.

"Have dinner!" Cecile gasped, her hands rising to cover her ears. "Have dinner!" she screamed. And suddenly stomping her feet in rapid staccato she let out one low shriek after another until finally she clenched her teeth and burst into tears. Lisette at the dining-room door, turned and ran.

For a moment Marcel did nothing. He bit his lip again, turning it slightly inward, and then he folded his arms. He walked solemnly to his place at the table and turned to face Cecile. "Tell me, Maman," he said with the voice of reason, "what must I do, what explanation can I give you, what a.s.surances, how can I prove to you that I love you and I'll never distress you again?"

"AAAAAAHHHH!" she screamed. "You are expelled from school, expelled from school, and you say this to me! You stay out till dawn and come home drunk and you say this to me!"

He appeared to meditate on this, as if it were all new and unexpected, and then with a resolution that Marie had not seen in him in months, he approached his mother and took her firmly by the arms, saying in a commanding voice, "Of course you're angry with me, and of course you're worried. Come sit down, please!"

For a moment it seemed she might. But then she drew back, her hands in tight fists as she let out her breath in a long moan, "Ooohh, you have gone too far, Monsieur, you have done just too well this time!" she cried. "Don't you play the little gentleman with me! You will not take one meal in this house, you will not sit at that table! You will go to your room, at once, that's what you will do. And you will stay there! Until Monsieur Philippe arrives here, whether that is a week from now, or a month! I don't care what it is, this heart will not soften!" She choked. "I have sent for him, Monsieur, I've sent for Monsieur Philippe and he's coming, he's coming to deal with you at last. This very morning I wrote to him, and told him everything!"

She stood poised as if she might continue. She was on tiptoe, her fists pressed into the flowing folds of muslin that flared from her waist, the tears luminous on her cheeks. The room was utterly silent. And Marcel with his hands on the back of the chair was staring at her. His face had lost its vigor. It was dark suddenly, the eyes widened gradually and the mouth was perfectly still.

"You did that?" he asked simply.

She let out a small cry, then stopped, gazing at him. She raised her finger to her lips.

"You wrote to Monsieur Philippe?"

A whimper escaped her. Her lower lip trembled violently. "Yes!" she blurted at last, "Yes, I did that," she nodded, lifting her chin, "I wrote to him, and told him everything!"

He remained as before, hands clasped on the back of the chair, regarding her. His face had changed to the coldest consternation, and in his expression were all those small, near imperceptible changes that meant mounting anger. Marie had never seen such an expression on his face, it was as frightening as his former gaiety.

"Yes," Cecile repeated, her body shaking violently with a choked sob, "I did it. I sent your sister this morning to the office of the notary."

Marcel looked at Marie. She sat still, her hands folded in her lap, the tears coursing down her cheeks. She looked away from him and the moment lengthened and the silence was broken only by a sudden soft cry from Cecile.

At last Marcel spoke in a cold voice.

"You should not have done that, Maman."

Cecile shuddered, gasped, her hand pressed against her mouth. "I'm at my wits' end with you," she wailed. It sounded suddenly like a plea.

"You shouldn't have done it!" he said wearily, angrily.

"Roaming the streets at all hours..." she sobbed, "drinking in taverns, expelled from school."

He shook his head as though disappointed, disapproving and immovable. She rushed forward leaning over the table between them, "What was I to do then, tell me!" she begged.

"Punish me, yes, anything that you wanted," he said with vague indifference, the voice slightly bitter. "You should never have written to Monsieur Philippe."

"He's your father..." she began.

"Aaahh, Maman!" he said in disgust, turning his head. "Really!" His lips were twisted. His eyes moved over the ceiling as if he were praying for patience.

There was a great relief in Marie, a pleasurable emotion she had not expected to feel when he said this. She watched Cecile waver, saw the fear in Cecile's eyes. Sinking down into the chair, Cecile laid her face against her arms on the table and cried softly, almost brokenheartedly, while Marcel taking his place as before, his hands in his lap, stared forward, his eyebrows slightly raised as if in deep thought.

"I didn't know what to do," Cecile pleaded, "I didn't know...I can't always know what to do, can I? It's too much, too much..." and on and on, the cries too m.u.f.fled to be articulate. Finally she raised her head and said helplessly, "He'll come...he'll talk to you...he'll advise you!"

Marcel's face was cold. He studied her as if he did not know her. And then he uttered a dry laugh.

"O mon Dieu," mon Dieu," she covered her mouth, crying again, trembling again. "What...what do you think he'll do, then?" she covered her mouth, crying again, trembling again. "What...what do you think he'll do, then?"

"I'm sure I don't know," Marcel said. "You know him far better than I do, Maman, to be sure."

She put her head down as before, her shoulders rising and falling with her sobs. It had a desperate sound, as if she had only just begun to understand what she had done.

"Ah, but don't go on," he said suddenly, and reaching out, found her hand beneath her dark hair and clasped it. "When he comes, I shall have to explain to him why I was expelled, and that it is actually quite all right."

"What?" she lifted her head. "Yes, you can explain?" she asked pathetically. "You can explain, yes. Perhaps it was all a misunderstanding, you were such a good student..."

"Yes, yes," he said gently, patting her fingers.

She reached for his napkin and put it quickly to her nose. "I didn't know what to do!" she shook her head. "You can explain! Tell him it was all some sort of mistake, that you'll behave now."

He smiled, the same bright smile that Marie had seen when he first entered the cottage.

"I was so frightened..." Cecile cried.

"I know, I understand," he said. "But don't you worry about it anymore, Maman, you let me worry about it, all right?"

She sighed, immensely relieved, her fingers clutching at his wrist, shaking his hand, pulling it near to her. "You'll be the gentleman with him, Marcel, you'll explain."

"That's right," he said. "And you see, it's all happened for the best. There's to be a new school, a far better school than Monsieur De Latte's. Christophe Mercier's come home, it's his school, and I've already been accepted into it."

She brightened at once, but was obviously confused at the same time. "But how, what?"

"I was with him last night, Maman, you know who he is, he's famous. Monsieur Philippe knows who he is, all about him."

"Aah, yes," she sighed, remembering. "And he's accepted you, he knows about the other?"

"Of course, I told him," Marcel said calmly. "Now if you don't mind Maman, I'm starving?"

"Oh, but of course," she burst out, "Lisette! Where is that girl, anyway, didn't she hear you tell her to bring the wine? Marie, go at once and tell her to bring Marcel's wine, tell her to set this table!"

But Marie for the moment was too astonished to move. It was not merely that his old manner had returned, that blithe ability to hold everyone in the palm of his hand. There was a new conviction, a new calm. Even as he lapsed into some private world now, his eyes remote and blind, he still patted his mother's hand gently, and as Marie finally rose, he looked up to her.

"Well, you're having dinner with us, are you not?"

It was after the meal, when the table was cleared and Marie was standing alone in her room looking mutely at the little altar, that she again saw the shadow of worry in his face.

"What did the note say? Now don't cry Marie, you never cry. Just tell me what it said."

"I had to take it," she said. "I didn't know what to do."

"Of course you had to," he said. He kissed her again. "But was it so bad as all that?"

He listened patiently as she explained, nodded, and then said: "I'll take care of it, but you must promise me one thing."

"Anything," she answered.

"That you won't worry, and you won't think again about having to take it, and that you'll leave it all to me."

He was all right again, he was himself again, as he had been a year before, when the old cabinetmaker was still alive, and when they had still been children. Of course she could not conceivably guess that in one day he had slept with a beautiful woman, leapt the wall of a cemetery in the dead of night, and toasted in a wild waterfront cabaret with a famous Parisian writer. She only knew as he walked away from her and across the yard to his room that he resembled more than ever a man.

She turned and opened the drawer at the bottom of her armoire. There lay the corset Tante Colette had brought and the small-waisted dress of blue ruffles with its tiny white satin bows. She drew these out with careful hands as though they might break and spread them on the bed.

There was no hallway in the cottage, there is never a hallway in such houses in New Orleans, one room opening onto another, so that Lisette, going by with the last cleanup from the dinner table had to pa.s.s through the room.

"Wait, I need you," Marie said and gestured to the corset. "To lace..."

She slipped behind the flowered screen beside her bed. This was a party dress, really, but it would take her as far as the dress shop. And it was late afternoon now, besides, who was to know why she wore it?

Sometime before they had finished, Cecile came to the door.

"Now you forget everything you ever knew about breathing," Lisette had said as she jerked the strings. But Marie, fascinated by the snug contour enclosing her, found the pressure had its allure.

As the dress dropped down like froth over her arms and settled in layers about her waist, she saw a woman in the mirror, and let out a gasp. Her body softened, grew smaller, and she was privy to a subtle but t.i.tillating strength.

Cecile, staring coldly from the edge of the parlor, spoke not one word as she watched her daughter, with Lisette behind her, leave the house.

IV.

IT WAS ALMOST DARK when Richard finally left the undertaker's shop that evening to attend to the wake of Dolly Rose's little girl. All day he had been busy with the mourners or the burying of the dead, had gulped meals in the back room, changed his linen five times in deference to the July heat, and was tired to the marrow of his bones. A late afternoon rain had inundated the cemeteries so that one burial for the parish had to be made in a veritable pool of muddy water; and the bodies of the yellow fever victims were beginning to pile up at the gates, giving off a stench sufficient to sicken the oldest citizen who had seen it summer after summer. Of course there had been worse years, years when the entire city seemed a charnel house. This summer was nothing extraordinary at all. when Richard finally left the undertaker's shop that evening to attend to the wake of Dolly Rose's little girl. All day he had been busy with the mourners or the burying of the dead, had gulped meals in the back room, changed his linen five times in deference to the July heat, and was tired to the marrow of his bones. A late afternoon rain had inundated the cemeteries so that one burial for the parish had to be made in a veritable pool of muddy water; and the bodies of the yellow fever victims were beginning to pile up at the gates, giving off a stench sufficient to sicken the oldest citizen who had seen it summer after summer. Of course there had been worse years, years when the entire city seemed a charnel house. This summer was nothing extraordinary at all.

But in spite of all this, Richard had thought of Marcel all day, and tormented by the spectacle of Marie's tears in the street, he feared the worst for him. Now he knew it might be very late before he had any chance to pa.s.s the cottage, and he had little hope of finding a lighted window even in the garconniere garconniere.

Also the matter of this wake had him on edge. He was not used yet to going alone, but Antoine and his father were both busy with other families. And this was the wake of a little girl.

Four years ago in the spring his little sister had died, and he could remember all of that illness vividly, including some details which he had never confided to anyone and which time had not dimmed in the slightest.

The Lermontant house was a new one, built entirely according to the wishes of his parents, and in the back courtyard was laid out a long somewhat formal garden in rectangular patches and flagstone walks. There were vegetables to the far end near the kitchen and the cistern, but everything else was flowers, and when the camellias and hibiscus were in bloom, the children loved to play there, darting through the tunnels of abundant foliage, hiding in the narrow s.p.a.ce between the cistern and the back walls, or making secret caves amid a border of chinaberry trees whose lower branches were worn bare and shiny from the children's hands and knees.

Richard often took his book out into the shade of the overhanging gallery so that he could watch them, his mother showering him with grateful kisses, and he rather liked the sound of their play. He was patient, could hold a squirming nephew or niece easily in one arm for a moment while he finished his sentence, then tend to the scratched knee or say it was nothing, and go right on reading without losing the sense.

But he could remember with a vividness that seemed a curse the first afternoon his little sister, Francoise, had come to him and told him that she was too tired to play. She was not yet four years old then, a quick-witted little girl who liked to roughhouse with the boys, though she had about her always a certain near prim femininity that came naturally from her long loose black curls, thick eyelashes, and also the starched lace that her mother labored over even for backyard play.

On this afternoon she had come trailing alone from the back of the yard, her hands dangling at her sides, and leaning close to his chest had said with that rather adult phrase that she was "just too tired." It was not something a child said; it was something the parents told the child when they saw it was cranky and overwrought, and Richard would remember all his life the shadow falling over his heart when he heard her say these words. He had lifted her face and seen the flesh was dark and seemingly tender beneath her eyes, and there was something listless and vague in the eyes themselves.

It was not an isolated moment. She had complained a little now and then for days, fallen asleep on the parlor couch, and whereas in the past she was always up with Grandpere at the first light, they had had to wake her each morning. She complained that her arms ached, and as he led her now from the courtyard she did not even want him to touch her shoulder because it hurt.