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Title: Wild is the River
Author: Bromfield, Louis (1896-1956)
Date of first publication: 1941
Edition used as base for this ebook:
   London: Cassell and Company, 1942
Date first posted: 1 January 2021
Date last updated: 1 January 2021
Project Gutenberg Canada ebook #1666

This ebook was produced by
Al Haines, Chuck Greif, Mark Akrigg
& the Online Distributed Proofreading Canada Team
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PUBLISHER'S NOTE

Italics in the original printed edition are indicated _thus_.

Obvious typographical errors have been silently corrected.

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WILD IS THE RIVER

by Louis Bromfield




Once he turned the corner out of Dauphine Street, the noise of the
rioting faded until at last there was only dark silence broken faintly
by a distant pistol shot or the scream of a brawling harlot. The street
through which he walked, close against the house walls in the shadow,
was like a passage through a city of the dead, with every shutter and
door tightly barred and here and there a thin glowing sliver of light
where some resentful, respectable Crole still remaining in the ravished
city, sat watching and listening, plotting perhaps against the invaders.
The echo of his footsteps ricocheted back and forth from one wall to
another--click-clack, click-clack. He was a tall, big man and the steel
on the heels of his army boots made a sharp clear sound like a pistol
shot each time they struck the stone pavement.

He walked unsteadily for he had had too much champagne at La Lionne's
establishment before the fight began and now the "hants" were after him
again, those "hants" which only surrounded and attacked him when the
malaria, picked up in the swamps of Virginia, returned or he became
tired and bored and a little drunk.

He had started the fight at La Lionne's out of boredom and once it
gained the proportions of a riot he had slipped away out of the back
door into Royal Street. And now the "hants" pursued him, coming out of
old churches and town halls and still white houses all over New England
to torment him--"hants" from which he would never escape because they
were in his blood.

The moon, rising hot above the bayous beyond the city came suddenly
above the roofs of the houses and painted the empty silent street in
black and silver. The heels still went click-clack, click-clack on the
stone banquettes. A cat slithered quickly from one side of the street to
the other, black in the clear metallic light. Then suddenly even the
distant isolated screams and shots were no longer heard and he was in
the remote section of the quarter, near to home.

"Home!" He did not speak the word but the sound of it echoed in his
brain. Home was a long way off. Boston would be full of slushy early
April snow now, the whale-oil lights shining yellow on the Common and
the Public Gardens, the snow in Beacon Hill streets brown with the
droppings of the fat horses which drew the carriages of Mr. Adams and
Mr. Saltonstall and Mr. Lowell.

That was a remote and quite a distant picture. It was nearly two years
now since he had seen it. It was a long way off, farther even than the
hundreds of miles which separated the cold, middle-class, half-English
City from this street where he walked in the moonlight.

Here the houses crowded close to the muddy pavements, the windows
shuttered and barred beneath the high galleries of grill-work overhead.
That distant, clean air cooled by the melting snow was a long way from
this warm mugginess, scented with the smell of wistaria and thick
fertile stench of Delta mud.

Tipsily he thought, "I must pull myself together." Something had
happened since he marched away from the Common as a volunteer. He hadn't
thought about it until to-night when in the quarrel which started the
riot La Lionne had slapped him and said, in her broken English, "Why
can't you drink champagne like a gentleman? You're the kind of Yankee
who shouldn't drink at all."

He hadn't had time at the moment to think what she meant; he had been
too eager to vanish as the quarrel spread out of the mirrored ballroom
into the passage and at last into the street outside.

After he had knocked down two men--the strangers who had insulted
him--he went out by the back door into the alley. He liked a fight but
it wouldn't do for an officer who held the profitable post of Collector
of Revenue of the Port of New Orleans to be shot or arrested in the most
expensive brothel of the town. There had been other scandals, but even a
favourite of a General in Command of a conquered and ruined city could
be involved in a scandal too many. There wasn't much law in New Orleans,
but there was such a thing as becoming ridiculous.

He raised his hand and touched his cheek gently. It was bruised all
right. To-morrow it would be swollen and dark blue. The stranger had got
in one good blow before he fell, his head striking one of La Lionne's
gilt chairs. As he touched his cheek, the memory of the fight returned
to him briefly and at the same time his heart beat more quickly and he
was sorry he had run away instead of staying to the end. The blood
rushed through his veins and the muscles of his arms and across his
abdomen tightened. His whole body tingled. It was a quick sudden
sensation, almost like the thing he experienced in the arms of La
Lionne. He liked fighting, as a ram or a young bull liked fighting. He
even liked the slight pain of the bruise as he touched it with his hand.

But the sensation passed quickly and he was aware in a hazy fashion that
he had reached the blind alley where he must turn in to reach the side
door of the big house. For a moment he felt again a shadow of the
indignation which had seized him when Old Seraphine told him that she
could not give him a key to the main entrance of the big house. She had
said there was no key because the old Baroness de Lche had taken all
the keys when she fled to the plantation at St. Claire--all but those to
the side entrance on the impasse. That, he was sure was a lie, but from
the look in her broad mulatto face, he knew that nothing would make
Seraphine yield. A Yankee entering by the big door was something she
could not tolerate.

The impasse was in the shadow and while the balconies above were bathed
in moonlight, the cobblestones were in blackness. Stumbling, he felt his
way along the wall until he reached a small door.

Here he halted and leaned against the building, pushed back the long
skirts of his regimental tunic and drew a great key from his pocket. It
slipped smoothly into the key-hole and turned in the well-oiled lock.
War or no war, occupation or no occupation, victory or defeat, the great
de Lche house was kept in order.

As he pushed open the door and stepped out of the darkness into the open
gallery inside, the whiteness of the moonlight blinded him for a moment.
There was a thick scent of jasmine and wistaria in the warm air--that
peculiar voluptuous smell which troubled him when he wakened in the
night, even when he had come only a little while before from La Lionne.
Then the moon blindness passed and he saw the familiar details of the
big garden and courtyard with the galleries running round the four
sides, the clumps of bamboos, the fragile palms and the big jars and
pots with camellias and mimosa and dwarf acacias. At the same time he
heard the cool sound of the little fountain and beyond it the faint
tinkling music of a piano.

For a moment he stopped in the shadow of the gallery, listening. Then,
thrusting the key back into his pocket, he said, half-aloud, "Damn that
music!" And at the same time across a patch of moonlight he saw the
figure of Old Seraphine coming toward him. She was very fat and she
walked rather like a duck. He heard her soft voice, "You all right,
Major?"

He answered her, "I'm all right, Seraphine, thanks."

He walked perfectly steadily he knew. His voice was all right. But it
did not matter. Seraphine would know he had been drinking. She knew
everything. These French Quarter negresses were different from the ones
in Virginia and the Carolinas... maybe because they were an odd mixture
of jungle and voodoo and French and Spanish civilization. They were
shrewder and more witch-like.

His head was a little clearer now. He heard her saying, "That young
Captain Wicks is here. Ah let him go up to your room!"

"Damn it!" he thought, but to the old black woman he said, "That's all
right, Seraphine. Good night." He slipped a gold piece into her black
hand. "I've forgotten about that for a long time." Then he slipped past
her toward the stairs. "Damn it!" he thought again, "Why did David turn
up to-night?" Why had David waited all this time until after midnight to
see him?

       *       *       *       *       *

In the sitting-room on the second floor of the house overlooking the
garden Lieutenant David Wicks had been waiting for more than an hour.
For a long time he sat studying the room in order to pass the time, and
so, although he had been there many times before, it was the first time
he had ever really seen it. For he was young, not yet twenty-one, and
had not yet learned how much one can discover from houses of their
owners, of their history, indeed of whole civilizations. And because
there was so little that was sensuous in his training and background he
would probably never, until he died, notice such things as beauty of
line or of stuffs or of colours. He had come to notice this room now
only out of boredom, in order to pass the time. And he did not feel it,
for all its beauty, a sympathetic room, partly because everything in it
was so different from the rooms and houses he had known all his life,
and partly because its beauty made him feel disturbed and uneasy. The
lovely line of the arm-chairs were too delicate and frivolous, the
brightness of the light walnut and pear wood seemed giddy after the
solid bourgeois heaviness of the mahogany and rosewood he had always
known. And the great round carpet with its voluptuous design of faded
swans and roses had no air of solidity and worth. He was sensitive--he
had written poems at Harvard as a freshman--but it was a sensibility
without sensuousness, and so he distrusted this feminine graceful room
as he might distrust a woman who wore scent or too much lace, with her
bodice cut too low. Even Tom's sword thrown carelessly across one of the
delicate carved chairs, the belt falling to the faded rose and grey
carpet, failed to give the room a touch of safe masculinity. It seemed
only to make it worse--as if somehow the sword were mating with the
chair before his very eyes.

And then presently someone began to play a piano and sing in a room on
the opposite side of the garden. Although music did not stir him very
profoundly he knew about it because Aunt Tam was a blue-stocking and had
tried to pound music into the heads of Agnes and himself. Aunt Tam had
been to Paris where her uncle had been Ambassador, and she knew the
French and Italian operas. And so as he listened, it dawned upon him
after a while that the unseen woman on the opposite side of the garden
was singing an aria of Mozart from an opera called _Il Re Pastore_. When
Aunt Tam was younger and he was a small boy, Aunt Tam had tried to sing
it, badly, but well enough for it to have become fixed in his unmusical
memory through countless banal repetitions in the drawing-room on
Pinckney Street. It was the difficult cadenza which fixed the thing in
his memory... the cadenza with which Aunt Tam had struggled and met
defeat. Now, sung by the voice of this unseen woman, it was liquid and
glittering as quicksilver.

The memories roused by the cadenza made him feel homesick and roused
again the dormant gnawing desire to escape from this disturbing, unreal
city. Back in Boston he would be safe once more. In Boston there were so
few temptations. Everything moved in its own groove. Everything was
planned, arranged in advance. The air was either bitterly cold or
feverishly hot. In New England there was no warm scent of jasmine and
acacias but only the clean smell of maples and pines. In Boston his mind
never seemed to run away with him into realms which could frighten him.
In Boston his very body was different. Down here it had become something
alien to his mind and spirit. It had become a kind of enemy with which
he was always wrestling like Jacob with the Angel. In Boston there was
no liquid, silver sound like the voice on the opposite side of the
garden singing the aria from _Il Re Pastore_, a sound which conjured up
improper thoughts and visions. He hated this place. People at home would
think him lucky to be living safely on the fat of the land with the army
of occupation, but he knew he would rather be fighting in the front line
in Virginia or Tennessee. There, with all the mud and vermin, he would
feel cleaner than here in this strange foreign city.

He wished that Tom would return so that he could deliver his message and
return to the hotel. He was glad that he didn't have to live in this
house with all its luxury and voluptuous femininity. A bed, a
wash-stand, a bureau in the hotel were better. The life there was
raucous and noisy but at least it held no temptations for him. The
painted noisy women who frequented the hotel bar never tempted him. They
only offended his sense of the fastidious. His room was just a room,
plain, ugly, a hotel room--but safe. Not like this room in which he sat.

At last to pass the time and keep his mind from wandering into
treacherous paths, he took the worn pack of cards from among the mess of
papers on Tom's desk and sat himself down by the light of two candles in
silver holders to play bezique, playing like a man with two natures,
against himself. He played with a curious cold detachment in which there
was no heart. It was thus Tom Bedloe found him when he came in from the
gallery.

Tom stood for a moment in the doorway, balancing himself a little, his
strong legs spread apart, because he was a little tipsy and because the
sight of his fiance's brother, even though he had been prepared for it,
filled him with displeasure. He didn't feel like talking to David now;
the boy seemed strangely out of place in this room with its elegant
French furniture and the faint scent of wistaria in the hot air. There
was something about the boy, something about the pale face, the blond
hair worn long in the military fashion of the moment, which seemed at
once anmic and feminine and reproachful. It wasn't that David said
anything or even, in his sly way, looked disapproving; it was merely
that his presence and the extraordinary likeness to his twin sister was
disturbing. He had that pale beauty which in a girl was lovely but in a
young man was, to Tom, at once annoying and faintly evil. He did not
like David; he could not think why he had asked for David as his aide
except that his sister Agnes had wanted it, and the last time Tom saw
Agnes he had been in a mood to agree to whatever she desired. It had got
him nothing, not even so much as a kiss with a little warmth in it, from
that mouth which was so like David's pretty mouth. No, the sight of
David annoyed him, as if it were a reproach--especially now when he had
come straight from a brawl in the establishment of La Lionne. What he
really hated, he thought at the sight of David, was the boy's
fastidiousness and purity. And those were the very things which roused
his passions even at the memory of David's sister, Agnes.

All these things went through his brain hazily as he stood in the
doorway, as well as another thought which had become more clear of
late--that although he was himself a New Englander, he was, with his
wild appetites and his recklessness, a black sheep and an outcast. He
was a swarthy pirate born unaccountably into a world of respectable
merchants.

David, standing there across the room from him, _was_ New England. David
and his sister Agnes _were_ New England. They were Boston. He himself
was New Bedford. No, he wasn't even that. He was just a black sheep. He
thought, "To hell with it!" And then turning himself from surliness to
charm, he said, "Hello, David. What can I do for you?"

The two men were only a few years apart in age, but Tom's tone was
patronizing and that of a man immensely older.

David said, "It's some clearance papers from the Custom's Office. The
_Orion's_ new captain wants to sail in the morning and can't until you
sign the papers."

Tom unbuttoned his coat and sat on the chair behind a table covered with
papers. "Has he paid his fees?"

"Yes," said David. "I have it here."

"In cash?"

"Yes--in cash." He took from the inside pocket of his coat two Federal
bank notes. Tom looked at them and thrust them not into a drawer of the
table but into his own pocket. "Give me the papers," he said.

He signed them quickly, aware that David's blue eyes were on him. He
looked up quickly, half-hoping to catch a look of suspicion and
accusation in the boy's eyes, but in the candle-light the pale blue eyes
were perfectly expressionless. "There," he said, handing over the
papers. "Was there anything else?" He saw that David was looking at the
raw bruised spot on his cheek-bone where that damned cheap
carpet-bagger had got in one blow before the fight really began.

David, blushing unaccountably, turned quickly away and said, "I had a
letter from Agnes."

"Good," said Tom. "Is everyone well?"

"Yes. She gave me a message for you."

"What?"

"She said she hadn't heard from you for nearly two months. She said she
understood how busy you must be. She didn't mind for herself but that
Aunt Tam and the others were always looking at her and pitying her."

"To hell with them," said Tom. "They think a Tom Bedloe isn't good
enough for an Agnes Wicks--and all of them getting rich out of selling
burlap blankets to the Union Army for wool and shoes with paper soles.
To hell with them!"

In the soft light David flushed. Although he was aware that his father,
his whole family had been insulted, he said nothing. In the silence the
dim sound of the square piano and the woman's voice singing on the
opposite side of the big garden filled the room, taking possession of
them both. David awkwardly said, "Have you seen her yet?"

"No."

"She has a pretty voice. She's a widow, I hear."

"A widow?"

"Yes. Her husband died last year. That's why she's here from Paris--to
look after the estate."

"She must have courage to come to New Orleans in the midst of a war.
Where did you hear all of this?"

"Madame Delaplaine told me. She runs the hotel."

"Do you like it better than being quartered in a house?"

"Yes. In a way it's quieter. You don't feel hostility all about you. I
get more work done." The pale sensitive face seemed to grow narrower.

"And write more poetry?" Tom smiled suddenly, a dark, almost fatherly
smile which changed the whole expression of the unhappy handsome face.
He was sorry suddenly for having been rude to the boy. And for a moment
there came into his grey eyes a look of affection born of the boy's
sudden swift resemblance to his twin sister.

"Yes," said David shyly.

"I'm glad. The war will be over some day. Then you can go back to
Harvard and write poetry about snowstorms and spring and be happy. As
for myself I think I'll stay in the Army and go out West... as far from
New England as I can go." He stood up and came round the desk to where
the boy was standing. Putting his arm about David's shoulders, he said,
"That's all for to-night, Davy. Go along home and get some sleep, and
don't worry about anything. I'll write to Agnes to-night... I promise...
so Aunt Tam and the other old cats won't be able to pity her."

"Thanks," said David. "You know how they are."

"I certainly do--a nest of old cats--that whole lot of your relatives."
He let his arm fall from the boy's shoulder and said, "Whenever you want
to go out and see the high life, let me know. I'll show you everything.
It's something you oughtn't to miss, Dave... New Orleans in war-time
occupied by an army. It's a wide open town. You never saw the like. You
ought to find yourself some fun."

The boy looked away from him and said, "All right, Tom. If I ever feel
like that. Good night." Shyly he held out his hand. The older man took
it. Then the boy went away, out of the door and along the moonlit
gallery above the garden, wrapped in an aura of loneliness.

       *       *       *       *       *

When he had gone, Tom stood for a moment thoughtfully watching the
doorway through which the boy had disappeared. The hot mist of the
bayous was fading and in the doorway the sky showed a deep blue
sprinkled with stars. The boy irritated him now less than he puzzled
him. What did he want--David? What was before him? What did anyone want?
What did he himself want... power, wealth, admiration? He didn't know
unless it was that he wanted everything--everything you could wrest from
this God-damned unhappy world. What was the use of worrying about it?
What the hell? For a second he was suddenly envious of David, of David's
tranquillity and peace of mind. Then the old uncontrollable vitality
took possession of him again and suddenly he kicked over one of the
frail chairs and began taking off his clothes, throwing them carelessly
on the sofa until he was naked save for a pair of under-drawers. He had
a powerful body, young and strong and hard for all the wildness of the
life he led. His curly black hair he wore cropped short against the
fashion of the army.

Stripped of his clothes he felt freer. The heat of the night no longer
seemed to stifle him. He could breathe now. His limbs felt free and his
head seemed more clear. He thought, "This is a hell-hole! If it's like
this in April what must it be like in midsummer?"

Then for a moment the heat, the heavy dampness, seemed to blend in an
odd fashion with the sound of the music coming from the far wing of the
great house. He stood listening, his round curly stubborn head cocked a
little on one side. It was pleasant music, gay with a gaiety he had
never encountered in other music. Vaguely he remembered the song, as one
of many sung by La Lionne when she performed for him alone in her own
apartment above the bar and gambling-rooms. It was a song from an
operetta which she said was the rage of Paris--something called _La
Grande Duchesse_. But it sounded different now. The woman singing it
sang with a pure, clear voice, executing the trills and roulades simply
and elegantly. It sounded quite different from the way La Lionne sang it
in her husky champagne music-hall voice. The singing he heard now was,
he became dimly aware, art.

But the sound only annoyed him, stirring the blood in his veins,
upsetting him. He wished she would stop singing and go back to France
whence she came, this damned widow who was too proud even to let herself
be seen by a damned Yankee.

Then he remembered his promise to write to Agnes and after pouring a
glass of brandy, seated himself at the table to write. He had not
thought of Agnes for days but the sight of David had stirred again the
knowledge that she was desirable and the kind of woman one wanted for a
wife. La Lionne might be fun, and the tantalizing, unseen woman on the
far side of the garden might be romantic, but Agnes was the sort of
woman one married.

For a long time he hesitated, tipsily considering how to begin, and then
remembered that there was only one fashion, the fashion he had always
used since the moment of their engagement when for a day or two he had
believed that life would be impossible without possession of her blonde
loveliness. He did not feel that way now but the fact remained that he
was still her fianc. When the war was over he would decide one way or
another. It was impossible in any case to think of marrying during the
war. And he did not trust himself. Although he did not feel her
indispensable to his happiness at the moment, he knew that at sight of
her the old passion might stir again with violent life. He would write
now and the thing would be done. In any case restlessness and the heat
would not let him sleep. The fight and the bruise had in some strange
way roused his desire.

So, after a gulp of brandy, he wrote firmly:

_My darling:_

_I am a dog for not having written before now, but in the confusion of
the occupation and in the disorders following the arrival of your uncle,
the general, I have been working day and night._

Here he paused a moment, thinking, and then with decision wrote, _The
General has come to count on me more and more and lately he has turned
over to me the collection of all port revenues. This has added a vast
amount of work._

Again he paused, trying to think what to say. A pen in his hand was as
clumsy a weapon as a club. He could never make it say what he meant it
to say, even when he was afire with passion and sincerity, and now, when
he sat down to write a letter which must sound loving when there was not
much love in his heart, he found it doubly difficult.

He poured himself a drink of brandy and listened for a time to the sound
of the voice from the opposite side of the garden. Damn it! How could he
write to Agnes with that sound in his ears.

But after a time he took another drink, looked at the paper and read the
last lines--"_This has added a vast amount of work_...." Then he grinned
and thought, "and a lot of money in my pocket." But you could not write
that. You couldn't quite put it on paper, even if Agnes's relations were
getting rich out of graft and fraudulent army contracts in Boston. They
were mealy-mouthed hypocrites. They had not the courage to loot frankly
and openly like General Wicks and his staff.

So he wrote, _David is very well and so am I. David is, I think, getting
used to the roughness of army life. New Orleans right now is a good
test. It is the most lawless, wildest damned city in the Union. But I
rather like it._

It was going better now. He was beginning to let himself go, perhaps
because he liked New Orleans just as it was. He liked living in it. He
liked talking about it.

He wrote, _I don't know when I'll have leave--not for a long time, I
should think, with all the troubles we're having in reorganizing the
city and stamping out lawlessness. You would think New Orleans wasn't a
part of the United States, if you judged by the pride and
stiff-neckedness of the inhabitants. Why, some of them can't even speak
English. We have a job on our hands, Agnes. There's even a secret
organization bent on assassinating Union officers and officials. It's
not as safe as some people would have you believe._

_Well, that's all the news I can think of. I hope you are well and not
too worried about me. I thrive on this kind of life. Give my friendly
regards to the members of the family. I am always your devoted fianc.
Thomas._

For a moment he sat back in the chair regarding the letter thoughtfully.
Letter-writing was always a great effort, and writing now in the damp
heat with his brain numbed by La Lionne's champagne was doubly
exhausting. After a moment he took up the pen again and very carefully
he wrote, _P.S.--I miss you very much. X X X X._

His instinct about women had dictated the last line. Taking up the wax
which Madame de Lche had left in his room as if he were a guest and not
an unwanted rough soldier billeted upon her against her will, he sealed
the letter. Then he discovered that he was smiling, over what he did not
quite know, unless it was with satisfaction that life was so good, so
exciting, so filled with sensual delight and that the letter was after
all a pretty smart letter. He was aware then that the music on the
opposite side of the garden had ceased, and for a long rime he sat quite
still, listening, even straining his ears, in the hope that it would
begin again. While he sat there he forgot Agnes altogether and thought
only of Madame de Lche, wondering what she was like, and why her pride
prevented her even from showing herself, why she had come back from
Paris in the midst of war. Old black Seraphine had told him boldly in
her mumbo-jumbo English that her mistress dared not show herself in the
streets so long as there were carpet-baggers and free slaves and damned
Yankees about. That must be because she was beautiful. An old or an ugly
woman would be safe enough, even on the disorderly streets of New
Orleans.

What would she be like--a woman who had lived half her life in Paris? He
knew what La Lionne was like but you couldn't judge from La Lionne. She
was eternal, a woman of her own special class and profession. La Lionne
was not a lady. La Lionne was not even a beauty; it was other qualities
which made her a success. But this woman who would not see him... who
lived always hidden away like a harem woman on the other side of the
garden....

The music and singing did not begin again, and presently with the
champagne and brandy in his veins he began again to grow restless. He
knew then that he was not going to sleep, that it would be another of
those nights when, tormented by heat and mosquitoes, he would turn and
toss and groan, thinking of La Lionne and the delights of her
establishment, and of all the other women he had known and the wine he
had drunk and the roistering he had done. For a wild moment he thought,
"Damn her and her pride! I'll break in and see her! I'll kick open the
door!" But he knew that he wasn't drunk enough for that.

Then the thought occurred to him that although he had never seen her,
she had probably seen him many times, watching through the slits of the
shutters as he came in and out. The thought brought a little tingle of
pleasure down his spine. Even now she might be watching him as he sat
there, half naked, in the heat--the shutters open to welcome the faint
stirring of the tepid scented air.

Then suddenly the lights went out in the rooms on the opposite side of
the garden and save for the light in his own room the old house was
dark. A parrot chortled wickedly in the gallery across the garden. "An
evil bird," he thought, remembering the cascades of Crole French with
which it mocked him each time he entered or left the house by daylight.
And he knew then there was no peace in his soul nor any sleep in his
body that night. The woman across the moonlit garden was in his blood,
and there was, he knew, only one way of getting her out of it. He would
have to return to La Lionne and have more champagne and patch up their
quarrel.

And so, loathing himself and his restlessness, he put on all his clothes
again, this time taking up the belt and sword from the chair and
buckling it about his narrow waist. Then quickly he put out the lights
leaving only the flame of the whale oil lamp on the carved escritoire.

In the gallery he stopped for a moment listening to the tinkle of water
in the little fountain in the centre. He wanted more champagne badly. In
the heat he was sweating and his head ached. The part of the house
opposite still remained silent and dark. For a moment he thought, "What
if I crossed over now and broke into her rooms?" There was nothing to
stop him. As an aide of the General he was safe. Weren't they all here
to pilfer the Rebels of New Orleans? Gold and women... everything. It
was their right. Hadn't the General issued an order telling his men to
treat loyal Secessionist women like women of the street? But again he
knew that he was not drunk enough. No, there was only one thing--to go
back to La Lionne. Then his thoughts were checked by the faint sound of
a bell tinkling in the part of the house across the garden.

He listened but the bell did not tinkle again and uncertainly he
descended the creaking wooden stairway from the upper gallery. Past the
pots of camellias he made his way in the shadow as far as the side
entrance into the cul-de-sac. At almost the same moment, he discovered
the waddling figure of Seraphine coming towards him. The old negress
made a sudden inarticulate sound of surprise, a pig-like grunt with the
old shade of contempt in it.

She said, in her queer English, "Ah thought you was in bed, Captain. Ah
seen your light go out."

"I couldn't sleep."

The old woman hesitated while he searched his pockets for the key to the
gate. Then she said, "You'd better go back to your bed, Captain. It
ain't a night to be roamin' about. Ef'en you go out you might get into
trouble."

"I can take care of myself, Seraphine."

Then she did a surprising thing. She stepped in front of him and put her
own key in the lock, saying, "It ain't safe for you to open that gate
jest now."

The gate swung back and as he thanked Seraphine and stepped forward to
go out, he discovered that the gateway was not empty. Through it stepped
a man. He must have seen Tom's figure silhouetted against the moonlight
of the garden for he stopped short, and then recovering himself, he
stepped quickly, with no sign of greeting, through the doorway and into
the shadow of the gallery behind Seraphine. He was gone quickly, like a
ghost, leaving behind only the impression of a waxen face beneath a
broad-brimmed black hat, a slight limp and an empty sleeve.

The apparition startled Tom and left him for a moment as if paralysed,
looking down the gallery where the figure melted away into the
blackness. It was the voice of Seraphine which roused him. She simply
said, "Bien?" softly, as if she had included him in the secret of
herself and Madame de Lche, as if she also said, "Well, are you going
to hold your tongue?" He felt a moment of tipsy embarrassment and then
said, "Good night, Seraphine," and went through the gateway leaving her
to close it behind him.

In the street he hurried, why, he did not know exactly, except that he
wanted to be with La Lionne, quickly, to drink her champagne and forget
the senseless, idiotic torment roused by the shadowy idea of a woman he
had never seen. But there were other things too which hastened the tread
of his feet, an odd feeling of jealousy and a desire to escape the
torment, but most of all, fear--a fear compounded suddenly of many
elements.

The impasse was narrow and dark as a vault and when he reached the
street and turned towards the Place d'Armes the way was scarcely wider
and no lighter save for the intersections where a patch of moonlight
splattered between the narrow shuttered houses. This city of which he
had just written to Agnes with such enthusiasm, had become suddenly a
dark, hostile and menacing place. Behind these closed shutters there
were people, old men and women, people in middle life, even children and
slaves freed now, but finding no joy in their imposed freedom, who hated
him. Worse than that, they had a contempt for him. He had known it all
along; he had felt it day after day, each time as he passed one of them
in the streets; but his animal vitality had helped him to ignore the
insolence and pride of their glances which said, "You are no better than
a burglar--looting the city like a common ruffian. You are a common
Yankee--an uncivilized brute!"

Those glances, those airs, had not mattered before. Secure in his own
health and arrogance, he had not thought of them. And now suddenly in
the silence of the dark streets where his own footsteps echoed back and
forth from wall to wall, the eyes returned to haunt him, the eyes of
women and men and children and black women, their heads enveloped in
brilliant coloured _tignons_. They were there in the darkness, eyes
without faces, glaring at him as if they were illuminated by an
unearthly phosphorescence, and in the forefront were the eyes of a
shadowy woman he had never even seen.

All because, a little drunk with champagne, he had listened to the
singing of a woman he had never seen, met an old black woman in the
shadows and seen a waxen-faced phantom slip through the gateway into
the house of Madame de Lche. Who was he... that phantom? A lover, no
doubt, of that woman he had never seen.

Not even the presence of the Army and the carpet-baggers from the North
could change the cold hostility of this city. The dreadful heat was
hostile, as was the heavy scent of flowers that came from the balconies
and over garden walls, and the oaks with their trailing garlands of grey
funereal moss. There was in it none of that spare, clean, sterility of
Connecticut and New England, none of that steely quality which in the
end had bred the anmia of David and the crystal purity of Agnes. As he
hurried through the dark, stifling street he was thirsty suddenly for
that spare purity. He wanted passionately to see again the white
restraint of the New Bedford Meeting House and see snow on the Boston
Common. All this heat and voluptuousness and fertility became a sudden
nightmare, a conspiracy to corrupt and strangle him.

He thought, "I must have been drinking too much lately. I'm beginning to
imagine and see things." For the contemptuous eyes were there again
staring at him through the darkness--eyes which were eloquent, saying,
"You are a damned crude Yankee, a shopkeeper, a ruffian, a thief."

And then with a sudden leap of the heart he saw, as he turned a corner,
a glow of light from the part of the city bordering Canal Street and
heard what he thought was the sound of ribald singing, but almost at
once he discovered that the music he heard was that of the frogs in the
ditches and marshes in the low-lying land along the river. "Frogs," he
thought, "singing in the cemeteries where the dead were buried above
ground lest the corpses become water-logged."

A hundred yards more and the street was no longer black. The eyes were
gone, their phosphorescence dimmed by the lights of the gambling-rooms
and saloons and brothels. The sound of his own footsteps no longer
pursued him. He thought, "A hundred steps more and I will have
champagne. That will pull me together."

A hundred steps more and he turned in at a wide door into a big room
lined with mirrors and gilding. At the far end stood a bar backed by
mirrors which reflected hundreds and hundreds of bottles of every colour
and shape, bottles which glowed like jewels--the emerald of _crme de
menthe_, the topaz of _chartreuse_, the clean diamond clarity of gin.
Around the walls were gilt tables and chairs where sat a wild and
strange assortment of men and women. Some of the men were in uniform,
others in flashy clothes. Some had removed their coats and sat in shirt
sleeves opposite women dressed in ball gowns, most of them mulattos and
octoroon girls who made three brilliant blondes and a girl with auburn
hair seem to have no colour in them. On the floor two couples waltzed to
the music of Offenbach, listlessly, badly, for the two men were too
drunk to preserve either rhythm or balance. The music came from a band
of coloured musicians seated in the gallery above the bar. The room
smelled of stale tobacco smoke, sweat and spilled wine, but over the
scene hung two great chandeliers of crystal, brilliant, sparkling, the
pendants revolving slowly as the weight of the dancers stirred faintly
the frame of the old building, anchored in the mud upon which the whole
city was built. It was an expensive and elegant place, the establishment
of La Lionne. Only men with pockets bulging with money could afford it.
In the whole room there was not one citizen of New Orleans. There were
only Union soldiers and carpet-baggers.

For a moment Tom stopped in the doorway surveying the room. The men with
whom he had had the fight were not there. Only the shattered mirror
opposite the bar remained as evidence of the riot which had happened
there three hours earlier. He was sorry the men had gone; the sight of
the lights and women and champagne stirred his blood again. He would
have liked to have finished the fight. For a moment he would have
preferred a fight to La Lionne herself.

Then a girl called Cllic came up and spoke to him, leaving a man in a
fierce check suit who, completely drunk, sat snoring, his head on the
table buried in his arms. She slipped one soft arm about Tom's waist and
said, "Bon soir, M'sieur Tom. Buy me a dreenk?" He only freed himself
and asked, "Where is La Lionne?"

"She has gone to bed," the girl answered. "Buy me a dreenk! La Lionne is
veree tired."

"I came to see La Lionne."

Then he crossed the room, ignoring the tipsy greeting of three or four
of the men and all of the girls. The men greeted him because he was
important. He was the General's aide and favourite. The girls greeted
him because they knew that he was becoming richer every day. It was nice
to have a rich client, but nicer still to have one who was young and
stalwart and handsome and accepted by anyone as experienced as La
Lionne. In each head was the same thought, "Perhaps one day he will grow
tired of La Lionne and then he might turn to me!" His entrance into the
ballroom was like the entrance of a stallion into a herd of mares.

       *       *       *       *       *

In the boudoir of her flat above the ballroom, La Lionne sat before an
enormous gilt-framed mirror shaking the gold powder out of her hair. It
was a trick she had learned long ago. Hortense Schneider used it and
Cora Pearl and Miss Howard, the darling of the French Emperor. She shook
out the dust on an old copy of the _Picayune_ spread on the
dressing-table in front of her. Of course it wasn't real gold dust.
Maybe Hortense Schneider and Cora Pearl used real gold dust as people
said, but not La Lionne. Nevertheless, the stuff was expensive and there
wasn't any sense in throwing it away when it could be used over and over
again.

They had called her La Lionne long ago in Paris when she was no more
than sixteen. It was Duc de Morny who had given her the name at her
"coming out" party. She didn't remember any longer who brought the
Duc--twenty years was a long time, especially if you had led a life as
varied and exciting as that of La Lionne. The bastard brother of the
Emperor, twirling his moustache, had looked at her and said, "Mais c'est
une jeune Lionne--une belle, trs belle, jeune lionne," and the name had
stuck.

It suited her, with her broad slavic cheek-bones, her tawny hair and her
sinuous body. Now with her corsets off, the body was little heavier than
it had been then. There were a few fine lines about the corners of the
nose and eyes, but otherwise she did not look much older. Looking at her
reflection in the mirror she thought, "I look harder... _plus dr_...
but after all to-night I am tired." The thought depressed her. Throwing
the tawny hair back over her bare shoulders she began removing the
rouge.

She could, she thought, have gone the way of Cora and Hortense and had
the same sort of career. She could have had her carriage and her horses
to drive up the Champs Elyses and out to Auteuil. She could have had
her own palace and jewels, but that was not what she wanted. Perhaps
even at sixteen she had always been too independent, living like a man,
choosing her lovers instead of being chosen by them. Never had she known
the disgust and boredom of having a lover who was old and fat. No, she
had always chosen. That was why now, at thirty-seven, she had a lover
ten years younger than herself, a handsome, accomplished lover who was
devoted and so far as she knew, faithful... faithful she thought
proudly--because there was no younger woman so attractive or amusing or
accomplished.

And she was as rich as Hortense or Cora with all their jewels and horses
and chateaux because she had been a clever business woman. _Quelle femme
d'affaires!_ She had earned her own money; it had not come to her from
lovers as gifts. All the houses she owned along the Boulevard
Poissonnire she had bought with money she had made and saved out of the
establishments in Lyons, Paris and Marseilles, and never had she made so
much money as in New Orleans. Just before the war, with cotton booming,
the money had rolled in. Then, for two years, times had been bad, and
she would have gone back to Paris save for the money she had invested in
an establishment which she could not sell. And now again with the coming
of the Yankees, times were good again, better than they had ever been
before the Yankees, looting the city, had pockets stuffed with money. As
clients she preferred the _New Orleanais_. They weren't so crude and
they made the girls far happier than those men who took off their coats
and spat on the polished floor and made love like rabbits. But business
was business. They brought in money, rolls and rolls of it.

In another year or two she would go back to Paris for good. She'd buy
the house in the Square Chausse d'Antin... the most elegant and
celebrated house in the world, the gayest and gaudiest in the style of
Louis Quinze. And then she'd buy a house in the country in Prigord and
live there most of the time and rest and rest and rest and become
respectable and respected and go to early Mass on Sunday, walking across
the Square under the neatly trimmed linden trees, up the little flight
of steps into the chapel where the cur would be waiting to say, "Bon
jour, Madame Duchsne." That was her mother's name. Her father's name
was Poldinski, so her mother had told her. But you couldn't call
yourself Madame Poldinski and live quietly in a small town in Prigord.
"Madame Duchsne" sounded respectable and very French.

Leaning back in the plush and gilt chair she forgot about the rouge and
sat staring in front of her, but she did not see the reflection of a
reddish-blonde handsome woman; she knew the green and grey village and
heard the sound of the bells ringing for Sunday Mass. And there was La
Lionne only she was Madame Duchsne now, sober, sedate, dressed in
black, giving money to good works and resting, resting, resting.

And then through the music of the phantom church bells came the sound of
other music, the music from the ballroom downstairs, the can-can music
out of "Orphe en Enfer." Slowly it crept upon her consciousness,
drawing her back, away from the image of the quiet little village into
another world of Paris--of mirrors and gilt and gas light and plush--the
silly, tragic, theatrical world of Napoleon III and Morny. That was the
world of Hortense. "Orphe" was her great success--"Orphe" and "La
Belle Helne." And suddenly she was filled with nostalgia and
loneliness. To-night, just now, she would have liked to have been in
Paris, and gone for ever from this strange, hot city, with its perfumes
and evil smells, its cholera and yellow fever and magnolias and azaleas.

The music had changed suddenly. The melody of Offenbach was finished and
in its place was the sound of a banjo and black big 'Ector's voice
singing, "With a banjo on my knee." That sound brought La Lionne back to
the image of herself in the mirror. The paleness of the face frightened
her. She thought, "It's this _sacr_ heat!" At the same time the picture
of the plague of four years ago returned to her--the heat and the
croaking of the great frogs, the flaming barrels of pitch lining the
streets at the edge of the banquettes, lighting up the charnel wagons
that carried off the dead; the silence in the streets, the terror in
each house where one by one the inmates dropped, turned livid and died
in convulsions and filth. The image of the green, evil memories blotted
out even her own image in the mirror.

"As soon as I can find a buyer," she thought, "I'll leave this accursed
town and go back to Paris."

She was afraid and tired and alone.

From downstairs came again the wild gay music of the can-can and for a
second the sound distracted her, changing the image in the mirror to the
drunken gaiety which she knew so well since the Yankees and
carpet-baggers had come to town. She saw it all--the yellow plush and
gilt and mirrors, the girls tired by now and bored by the drunken
roughness of the clients, kicking and swishing their skirts
contemptuously. Her thoughts fastened suddenly upon Cllie. Cllie was a
wonderful dancer and a beautiful girl. When she herself went back to
Paris she would take Cllie with her. The girl would have a great career
there where her delicate _caf au lait_ beauty would not go
unappreciated as it did here in the Caf Imperial.

She sighed, wishing for the old days, when only gentlemen visited the
establishment and she took pleasure in sitting at her own table until
the dawn came up across Lake Pontchartrain and turned the vast muddy
Mississippi the colour of rose.

Then her reverie was broken by a double knock at the door and, startled,
she called out, "Who's there?"

A voice answered "Tom"--a voice of peculiar timbre, deep but clear and
arrogant, a voice which by its mere sound relighted the fires of her
stupendous animal spirits. The quarrel and the fight earlier in the
evening had wearied her, and when she had seen him leave after knocking
down two drunken carpet-baggers in succession, she had felt for one
brief second that she was dying. Her heart had stopped beating and she
had gone suddenly faint in the fear that he had gone out of the door
never to return. She fancied the picture of herself as a woman of
character who lived like a man, but lately she had been troubled by the
doubt that she was no different from any other woman, that time and fate
had caught up with her. She was no better than any other woman of her
age with a _maquereau_ years younger than herself. It did not matter
that he was an officer in the American Army. He had all the makings of a
_maquereau_--vain, spoiled, egotistical, selfish and beautiful, with a
kind of animal beauty which always made her feel faint like any common
_grue_ at the sight of her pimp.

And so the shrewd, handsome, hard-headed, tired woman--no longer young,
frightened of so many things, of the plague, of New Orleans, of the
Devil, of poverty, of death--came alive again and the image in the great
gilt-framed mirror suddenly took on colour and was young. Her heart
cried out, "Entrez, mon bien aim. Prenez moi! Prenez mon corps! Prenez
mon coeur! Prenez tout! C'est  toi!" But her head and her pride
prevented her. Her head said, "He is a Yankee--a barbarian. He does not
even understand French." She heard herself saying in a curious cold
voice that was strange to her, "What is it you want?"

The voice from beyond the door said, "I want you. Let me in, Flice."
And then the sound of the knob turning and of a muscular shoulder thrown
against it. The door was locked as it always was, for downstairs there
was often men, rough and drunken, who preferred La Lionne to any of her
girls and sometimes tried to force themselves upon her.

Then heart and desire slew reason and she said, "Wait! In a moment."

And with her heart beating she quickly rouged her lips and cheeks and
gathered her hair, tawny now and free from golden dust, fastening it
with one heavy golden comb. The newspaper containing the dust she
whisked away into a drawer of the dressing-table. Then she went to the
door and unlocking it, turned the handle.

He came in quickly and putting his arms about her, buried his face in
her white shoulder. He held her thus for a long time, and when at last
he freed her, he said, "Tell Ernestine to bring champagne."

"You've had enough!" She did not like him drunk. He became quarrelsome
and difficult. With her Frenchwoman's instinct and taste she disliked
mixing drink and love-making.

He only said, "Damn it! I feel gay!" He pulled the bell-rope himself and
far away in the house a bell jangled. The noisy music of the can-can had
stopped downstairs. Its sudden absence made the hot night suddenly
still--so still that you could again hear the croaking of the frogs in
the marshes along the river.

He unbuckled his belt and threw it and his sword across a chair. Then he
unbuttoned his tunic and threw it over one of the gilt chairs. The shirt
he wore was of white lawn--a shirt, she thought suddenly for no reason
at all, that was part of the loot of the ravaged city. They said the
Yankees had stolen not only all the money they could lay their hands on,
but silver spoons and forks and even women's clothes as well. They
called the General himself "Silver Spoon." For a second she felt a flash
of contempt but that passed quickly in her passion for her lover. It was
thus she liked him, for the shirt revealed the beauty of his body, that
body more perfect than any she had ever seen, which obsessed her and
humbled her pride and made her like any common woman, a mere female like
any other. And because the thought humiliated her pride, she stifled it
and gave herself over to her passion.

She noticed the bruise on his cheek and took up a bottle of one of her
own scented creams to dress it, but he would have none of it. The
disagreement over the champagne had irritated him.

Even when the champagne came, borne in by Ernestine--a big, very black
negress, so powerful that she sometimes threw out drunks and noisy men,
single-handed--his mood did not improve. She tried to behave as if there
was nothing troubling him. She asked where he had gone after the
fight--why he had returned, a thing he had never done before once he had
gone away.

"I couldn't sleep. The damned heat and the mosquitoes."

And all the while she talked, saying trivial, idiotic things like any of
the girls downstairs, she kept thinking, now that she had put away her
pride, how much she loved him--the high colour, the broad shoulders, the
flat narrow waist, the stubborn nose, the sulky sensual mouth, the
arrogant, clear blue eyes, the cropped, curly dark head. "He is like a
bad little boy," she thought. A charming bad spoiled little boy in whom
there was something splendid and noble which one day might emerge, a
nobility touched by the splendour of an animal. Then she heard him
speaking, saying something which had lain, she thought shrewdly out of
her long experience, all the time behind the sulkiness.

He was saying, "What is Madame de Lche like?"

She shrugged her shoulders and drew the peignoir closer about her as if
she were withdrawing from him a little. "Which Madame de Lche?" she
asked, although she knew quite well. "There are two. The old Baroness
and the daughter-in-law... the one they call the young Baroness."

"The widow," he said abruptly. "The young Baroness."

"I have not seen her."

"You must have heard of her."

"I have heard it said she was beautiful." And almost at once she was
sorry she had spoken thus. "But very possibly it is because she dazzles
the provincial Crole families. She is Parisian."

"Oh, Parisian!" he said, but from the timbre of his voice she could not
tell what he meant. The music had begun again downstairs, a waltz now.

"Of course," she said, "I should hardly meet her. We don't move
precisely in the same worlds. Have you not seen her?"

"She hasn't shown so much as the tip of her slipper."

"They are a proud family."

"Damn their pride... come here. Sit on my knee."

She came over, obedient as a child, yet feeling ridiculous in her
pride. She was jealous and angry, jealous absurdly in a blinding flash,
of a woman neither of them had ever seen.

He felt her body stiffen and said, "What's the matter? Don't you love me
any more?"

"Of course I do."

She kissed him and called him "chre" and behaved as she had always
done, but there was a difference. Desire--the desire for which she had
always felt contempt--fought with her pride, for she knew that while she
sat there with his arms about her, he was thinking not of her at all but
of the other woman he had not seen... that Baroness de Lche. "The
young Baroness" they called her. Out of her long experience with men,
she divined that he had come back to-night not out of love for herself
but because he could not sleep. She knew this kind of man, although she
had never met a man so arrogant, so passionately willed, so challenged
by obstacles. He was not in love with the Baroness de Lche. How could
he be when he had never seen her? He was in love with the idea of
her--that she was contemptuous of him and would not see him, that he
considered himself irresistible. He had come back to her with Madame de
Lche on his mind. He was using her as a makeshift mistress.

She wanted to say, "Go away! Never come back here again! I never want to
see you!" But at the same time the touch of his hand, even the sight of
the head covered with curling black hair that was so wiry and seemed
alive with vitality, rendered her will quite powerless. She could only
say, weakly, like any silly woman, "Don't think of her. It will do you
no good. The de Lche family are all proud as devils. She wouldn't spit
on a Yankee." She wanted to say, "How could you think that a woman from
the Paris of the Empire would bother with a ruffian from Boston. How
could all that is Parisian and Catholic and civilization itself mix with
the son of New England shopkeepers?" But she held her tongue, for she
knew that although he himself blackguarded Boston and everyone in it,
he'd never permit others to deride it.

But somehow he must have divined what she was thinking, for he said, as
if talking to himself, "To hell with her pride. To hell with contempt!
Let's not speak of her. Let's forget her!" Then he seized her and kissed
her with all that wild fury which lay at the very roots of her shameful
subjection. It was, she knew, with her ancient instinct, the fury of a
baffled, divided, unhappy man who sought to lose himself in love-making
as he sought to lose himself in drinking. Even while he kissed her, she
thought, "Some day he will destroy himself unless he finds peace." And
she found a sort of perverted macabre delight in yielding to him, in
trying to help him to forget whatever it was that tormented him.

They drank another bottle of champagne, and La Lionne, the business
woman, the proud and independent _femme du monde_, became a weak and
silly creature like any cheap sentimental girl in the arcades of the
Palais Royal. But for this she would at that moment have exchanged all
her jewels, all the houses on the Boulevard Poissonnire, even the
chance of that long, long rest in the little town in Prigord as Madame
Duchsne. Once she threw back her head and in an odd strangled whisper
called upon God to save her.

Downstairs there was another fight. Ernestine, the great black woman,
with voodoo curses, threw a drunken carpet-bagger into the middle of
Royal Street. The band stopped playing at last and Cllie and the other
girls found their way, with aching feet, up the high stairway to their
beds. And at length he lay, peaceful and asleep while she sat watching,
thinking that he looked like a small boy, a naughty small boy whom
everyone was always certain to spoil.

Outside the sky turned rosy above the bayous, and the frogs ceased their
croaking, and presently she heard the bells of St. Louis's squat spire
ringing for early Mass. Rising, she dressed quickly and throwing a shawl
of black lace over her head, went down the stairs and through the
ballroom smelling of stale wine and cigar-smoke, past the overturned
chairs and the shattered mirror and out into the empty, silent streets.

She was going to Mass to pray for her soul, to be delivered from the
spell the devil had cast upon her, to pray for her freedom and to escape
from the slavery of her body. In the doorway of the old church she came
face to face with a woman younger than herself, a woman of curious
beauty whose violet eyes and black hair shone through the lace of the
shawl which she wore over her face. The woman returned her glance
quickly and then cast down her eyes, but in that second there was an odd
flash of understanding between them. La Lionne thought even that the
younger woman smiled as if to reassure her, a smile even of friendship,
almost of sisterhood. La Lionne waited to allow her to pass in the door
first, and then with a feeling of sickness, thought, "That must be she.
That must be the young Baroness." And before she entered the church she
profaned the portal by murmuring a prayer, "Oh, God, Oh, Mary, grant
that he never sees her!" For she _knew_. She was afraid of what she had
seen because out of her long experience she knew what it was.

       *       *       *       *       *

In the house in Pinckney Street, Aunt Tam and Agnes were ready to leave.
The chilly spring sun of April in Boston came through the big white
framed windows casting little lozenges of violet-coloured light on the
heavy mahogany, the thick, durable carpets and the chaste white rail of
the tall, curving stairway. Minnie and Bridget, the cook and
chambermaid, were there. Minnie twisting and untwisting her apron, and
Bridget crying silently and commending little Agnes and Aunt Tam to the
care of all the saints she could think of. Sure, Miss Agnes and Aunt Tam
would have need of their attendance, going off like this among niggers
and foreigners and rebels.

And in the foreground stood Ethan Wicks, solid, phlegmatic, bearded,
reassuring, a tower of strength in the presence of so many hysterical
females. Living always in a house filled with women, he was perpetually
forced into the role of "keeping a steady keel." And so he had an air of
studied calm and outward indifference which sometimes was far from the
true state of his inward feelings. There were even times when, forced to
act as a counterweight to screams and tears and sobs, he found himself
making decisions against his own inclinations and judgments simply in
order to create an impression of calm and order and common sense. He was
aware now, as Agnes and Tam were ready to leave, that he had allowed
them to go simply because all the others in the family, nearly all
females, had wailed and called the whole idea of the trip nonsensical
and dangerous. In his heart he was troubled, but he knew that now it was
too late to change his mind and forbid them to leave. In the first
place, it would have given the women an opportunity to patronize him and
say that, of course, they had been right all along; and it would have
given the impression of weakness, a thing which he had learned long ago
could never be risked by a man who governed the finances and ruled the
major decisions of eleven women relations. His daughter Agnes and his
spinster sister-in-law Tam would have to sail on this quixotic voyage.
Even if they were captured by Confederate privateers or were ravished by
the strange wild people of Cuba, or were shipwrecked in the Mexican
Gulf--even if they themselves wanted to turn back, he would still have
to stick by his decision.

Once, long ago, when David was born, he had hoped that a son, another
man in the family, would take some of the burden from his shoulders; but
years ago he had given up that hope, for David wasn't much better than
the women. He was a poet. Imagine a solid Boston merchant like Ethan
Wicks having a poet for a son!

For the Wickses weren't artistic or intellectual like the Adamses and
the Lowells. They had always been a solid Whig shopkeeping family, in
which a poet was no less than a calamity.

Looking at Aunt Tam, a good many people thought she would have the
common sense and level head of a man. Aunt Tam looked like a horse, and
had ideas about the enfranchisement of women and was a friend of
Margaret Fuller and Bronson Alcott, but inside, her brother knew, she
was the most sentimental and hysterical of the lot. Whether her exterior
and her advanced opinions had thwarted her in the role of doting wife
and mother, or whether her spinsterhood had given rise to her advanced
opinions, he could never quite make up his mind.

He had his hat in his hand and a woollen shawl over his shoulders, for
despite the deceptive brightness of the chill sun, dirty snow still lay
unmelted in the shadows of the Pinckney Street houses.

Terry, the coachman, drove them to the station down the long slope of
Beacon Street. On the doorsteps and the sidewalks neighbours recognized
Terry and went inside to talk in hushed voices about the madness of
Ethan Wicks allowing his daughter and sister to go away in war-time to a
captured Confederate city. It wasn't, they said, as if you could count
on Aunt Tam in a pinch; she was giddier than little Agnes herself.

It was a small town, Boston, more like a village than a city, where
everybody knew the affairs of everyone else. Two or three women, wiser
or perhaps more fleshly than any woman in Boston was supposed to be,
shook their heads and expressed doubt that it was either Agnes's
affection for her twin brother or the invitation of her uncle, General
Wicks, that drew her and Aunt Tam to New Orleans. More likely, they
thought and said, it was the attraction of the dark and seductive
figure of Tom Bedloe, a ne'er-do-well, an adventurer, a rogue if ever
there was one, but a man who stirred shaming thoughts in the bosoms of
many a respectable woman. He had but to enter a drawing-room to disturb
the whole atmosphere, to heighten the colour of a normal woman and
brighten her eyes. But marry him.... No. They couldn't understand Ethan
Wicks allowing his pure young daughter to be engaged to marry such a
rake. They would sooner see their own daughters in the grave.

And so as the fat horses of Ethan Wicks drew them down Beacon Street
towards the station, the curtains of front windows in house after house
were whisked aside while middle-aged wives, old maids and even young
spinsters watched the carriage carrying poor little Agnes Wicks towards
a horrible but seductive doom.

And in the cabriolet little Agnes sat beside Aunt Tam, holding muff and
reticule in her lap, facing her father, watching his broad sombre dull
face. In her heart she was a little frightened, not so much by the
adventure which lay before her, as by the knowledge that for the first
time in her life she was leaving the protection of the heavy man
opposite her, the man who had made every decision for her since she was
born, who sheltered her and provided the solid comfortable house in
Pinckney Street and the old house surrounded by orchards at Dedham.
Between these two establishments her whole life had passed, secure and
solid and uneventful, save for the death of a kitten, or the tempestuous
visits of Tom Bedloe.

Watching her father, her thoughts kept straying in an unmaidenly fashion
to Thomas, for although when she was alone in her bed at night she
thought of him as Tom and even "dear" Tom she had never in her life
called him anything but Mr. Bedloe or Major Bedloe, and once or twice
Thomas.

The women behind the curtains on Beacon Street had been quite right; it
was not Uncle James Wicks who drew her to New Orleans, or even her
brother David; it was Tom Bedloe. It had been Tom Bedloe from the very
beginning, from the moment he had stepped through the doorway of Eliza
Trent's drawing-room and she had noticed the curly head, the blue eyes,
the high colour, and the wide tormented sensual mouth. Something had
happened to her in that moment and it had gone on happening ever since,
without relief, without change, relentlessly. And presently it had
changed her whole character. From a simple, nave child, she had turned
secretive and even crafty. She had plotted, more by instinct then by
reason, to meet him accidentally, to lead her father into the trap of
asking him to supper on Sunday evenings. For the first time in her dull,
quiet life, she had experienced excitement.

Brought up protected and sheltered by her father and Aunt Tam, she knew
nothing whatever of life. She had not even the faintest suspicion of
what it was in her that made her plot and connive to see Tom Bedloe. She
merely knew that she had to do it. She supposed that she was in love,
although the violence of her feeling was far more intense than any
emotions she had found described in the few decorous novels she had
read. Her own feeling was like a delightful illness which caused fever
and even delirium and dreams of the wildest and most exciting nature.

She knew, by intimations and whispers and by her own woman's instinct,
that Thomas was "wicked," but that made it all the more exciting. She
was not even quite sure of just what wickedness he was guilty. But she
liked the idea because it was exciting, and always in the back of her
small Boston mind there was a thought, "Perhaps I can change him.
Perhaps I can tame his wildness and make him a good and virtuous
husband." Knowing nothing whatever of life, this seemed to her in the
long watches of the night a comparatively simple thing to do.

When she did not hear from him for weeks at a time, she grew troubled
and quiet and even ill. If he were killed, she told herself, she would
never marry anyone but give her own life to good works. She would wear
black for the rest of her life--becoming black of course--with a little
veil falling from the back of her bonnet. But it was not the prospect of
his death that troubled her so much as the idea he might have found some
other girl he liked better than herself and that he had forgotten her.
So she wrote to him, three times each week, letters which outwardly were
dove-like and innocent and simple, but in reality were masterpieces of
craft, reminding him by instinct of the things which had led him into
asking for her hand... such things as her innocence, her freshness and
her youth. How or why she did this, she had no idea, but once Aunt Tam,
who included reincarnation in her all-encompassing passion for new and
faddish doctrines, had said, "Agnes, my dear, you are what is called a
very old soul. You know so much more than you could possibly have
learned in your present brief span upon this earth." It was her solid
father who had replied, saying, "I don't know about all that rubbish,
Tam, but there are times when it seems to me Agnes is very near to being
a minx."

And so when her aunt, the General's wife, had written suggesting that
she and Aunt Tam might like to visit New Orleans now that David and Tom
were both there, Agnes had been very quiet at the supper-table, like a
mouse, behaving as if the idea were too preposterous even to discuss. It
was Aunt Tam who had received the suggestion with enthusiasm. Aunt Tam
who had lived in Paris and was a friend of advanced creatures like
Margaret Fuller and Louisa May Alcott and Harriet Beecher Stowe and had
travelled a great deal, even making a trip through Sicily on a donkey.
Aunt Tam thought it a wonderful idea, with no perils at all. She treated
it as if the trip were no more than going from Boston to Dedham. She did
not even allow Agnes's father to interpose an objection. And when at
last Aunt Tam paused for breath, and he asked Agnes what she thought of
the idea, she said, meek as a lamb, "It would be nice if we could visit
Aunt Louisa and we could make a comfortable home for David. He wasn't
made for a soldier's life and he's very homesick," with not one word of
Tom, although all the time his dark, delightful and troubling image was
there in the back of her heart and mind. Her heart beat like a
trip-hammer and her brain raced with ideas of drawing him back to her.

So for three weeks they had toyed with the idea, Aunt Tam full of
enthusiasm, Agnes always quiet as a lamb, docile and submissive, until
presently the idea no longer seemed preposterous, even to her father,
but as simple and usual as the annual migration to the place at Dedham.
Then quite suddenly without his knowing exactly how it happened, he
found that Agnes was treating the thing as already settled. She was
getting ready her wardrobe and had the trunks down from the big attic,
and when Ethan Wicks expressed surprise, Agnes cried a little and said
that of course she thought it was all settled, and Aunt Tam attacked
him, saying that he couldn't change his mind now and disappoint them
both, and as the two women began to manoeuvre the decision into the
proportions of a scene, Ethan Wicks gave in and pretended before all the
women folks in the family that it had always been his idea, and that a
change would do both of them good and that New Orleans must now be a
very interesting place. Under the guardianship of General Wicks they
would both be as safe as they were in Pinckney Street.

It was Agnes's idea that their arrival should be a surprise to poor
homesick David, and of course to Tom as well, because otherwise Tom
might give it away to David.

And so now here they were in the cabriolet driving to take the train to
New York to embark, two lone women, upon what could be an exciting
adventure, and Agnes, sitting meek as a mouse, was praying that her
father might not change his mind at the last minute and was saying to
herself, "I _will_ have him. No one else shall have him, even if I have
to go to New Orleans and get yellow fever to keep him."

The cabriolet stopped suddenly and her father opened the door and they
walked into the station and there was the train and in fifteen minutes
she was leaning out of the window as it moved off, waving her lawn
handkerchief bordered with lace out of the window to her father, with
just the right number of tears in her eyes to make the departure moving.

       *       *       *       *       *

In New Orleans Uncle James Wicks ruled like a Persian Satrap. Ethan
Wicks knew his brother well enough, for they were only three years apart
in age and had played together in the old orchard at Dedham and gone
swimming in the icy waters of Maine beaches where Jim had bullied every
boy smaller than himself and assumed a God-like attitude of
unimpeachable tightness upon every subject under the sun. When Jim
returned from West Point to visit at Dedham, his arrogance and
self-assurance was so vast that their father had been moved to remark,
"Jim is as absolute as God, only God is sometimes wrong."

The General who now ruled the conquered city of New Orleans was the same
insufferable male, older and more hardened, whom Ethan had known as a
boy--a man, stumpy and vulgar in build with the chest of a pouter
pigeon, who ruled like a Hun chieftain over the civilized Louisiana
city. Beside him on the Satrap's throne sat his wife, Louisa, a woman
who made virtue a profession, converted thrift into avarice, and
regarded comfortable living as sinful and wicked. For the two of them
the whole of the United States, both north and south, was a shiftless
and corrupt community save only that corner known as New England, and
even New England was a sullied place in comparison to Aunt Louisa's
native state of Maine.

In the splendour of the most beautiful house in New Orleans the pair
ruled over the stricken, once rich city, like a New England justice of
peace and a school-marm. And Uncle Jim was also a martinet and a
militarist, whose little army world he would have made a model for the
whole of civilization. They were peasants in a palace--frost-bitten,
penurious New Englanders in the midst of a Latin City set down in a
splendorous, half-tropical climate. Ethan Wicks, though a dull man, was
no fool. He did not like his brother James, and he was even less fond of
James's wife, Louisa, but of one thing he was certain--that so long as
James and Louisa ruled New Orleans with an iron fist as if it were a New
England village, his daughter, little Agnes, was safe.

For all their iron-handed virtue, James and Louisa had at least two
weaknesses. One was money, and to get money, almost anything short of
murder was justifiable under the New England belief in "smartness." A
man might be a pillar of sexual righteousness in his community, he might
claim God as his brother, but this did not prevent him from being
"smart." Being "smart" was not only excusable; it was a virtue. Men like
Bronson Alcott, who could not feed and shelter his own family, were
fools, but men like Ethan Wicks, who sold shoddy blankets and
paper-soled shoes to the Union Government for its soldiers, were "smart"
and admired. And General James Wicks was "smart." He and his wife Louisa
lived as frugally as peasants; they had no desire for wealth for of the
beauty or graciousness of life it could bring them; they wanted it to
hide in socks or beneath mattresses or to bury near the privy at the end
of the garden. And for a "smart" man, New Orleans, rich and prostrate
and helpless, her wharves filled with sugar and war-time cotton, her
banks filled with money, her great houses with silver and rich
furniture, was a chance for plunder seldom tossed at the feet of a
"smart" New Englander. After one good look at the situation, Uncle James
sent for two or three business men friends from the North and the
sanctimonious gang went to work. And at the same time they set to work
to rescue the souls of the New Orleans rebels from their whoring and
wine-drinking, their duelling and their frivolity.

The other weakness the General and Aunt Louisa had was Tom Bedloe. From
the moment they had seen him in Ethan Wicks's house at Dedham, he had
captured their imaginations. In an odd way he had had upon them
something the same effect he had had upon little Agnes. He was like
themselves, a New Englander, but he was a black sheep. He had a kind of
wild beauty and a warmth and a vigour which neither of them and very few
other New Englanders had ever known. His mere presence brought something
into their lives which had not been there before. That he was wicked,
Aunt Louisa knew as well as did little Agnes, and she knew what his
"wickedness" was, that he could not resist women, but in some strange
way she did not mind his "wickedness" so long as she was not brought
face to face with it. What she did not openly recognize did not trouble
her, and there were times when, in secret, she found it pleasant and
titillating to speculate upon the rascal Tom's amorous life.

And so General Wicks had made him a Major and his aide, partly because
he found Tom's amoral point of view convenient. When the General did
something "smart" there was neither suspicion nor accusation in Tom
Bedloe's eyes. There was, perhaps, a humorous twinkle, but no more than
that, and a humorous twinkle you could ignore, pretending not to have
noticed it. So much did Uncle James and Aunt Louisa like Tom that they
relinquished to him one of the plums in the plunder of New Orleans.
General Wicks made his aide the Collector of Port Revenue, with a hint
that there was a great chance for "smart" business. So Tom, with a
twinkle in his clear blue eyes, took over the post, provided as
favourite of the Tetrarch and Tetrarchess with a rich and beautiful
promise. In three months he had already done very well for himself.

       *       *       *       *       *

It was late afternoon when he wakened in the red-and-gold bedroom in the
establishment of La Lionne. Downstairs, the bar and the ballroom were
already crowded and the music had begun. For a moment, on wakening, he
did not know where he was nor how he had come there. His head ached and
he felt sulky. When Ernestine answered his angry ring, he asked the
great negress where La Lionne was and received the answer that she was
downstairs acting as hostess. Then Ernestine brought him a gin drink
with which to start the day.

"What day is it?" he asked her.

"Sunday," said the big black woman, "but it's nearly over." He reflected
upon the difference between Sunday in New Orleans and Sunday in Boston,
where there was no gaiety and few people even appeared in the streets.

Instead of going away Ernestine stood watching him, her great ebony arms
bared to the elbow, on her hips. Her figure was feminine with enormous
buttocks and great breasts, but her strength was masculine. As he drank
he closed his eyes to ease his aching head and when at last he opened
them Ernestine was still there, at the foot of the bed, a kind of
magnificent ebony Nemesis in her brilliant _tignon_. She was as vigorous
and barbaric as the room was decadent and over-elegant.

Looking over the rim of the tall glass, Tom thought, "Maybe she's going
to throw me out." The passionately interested stare of the woman annoyed
him. He emptied the glass and then said, "Do you want anything,
Ernestine?"

She took her hands off her hips and leaned on the high footboard of the
ebony and mother-of-pearl bed. She was a free negress from Natchez, with
an adventurous nature, who had been to Atlanta and Charleston, and even
as far north as Nashville. La Lionne treated her as a confidante. In a
small way she ruled the Caf Imperial, the lieutenant in command after
La Lionne.

"What do you Yankees want here in New Orleans?" she asked.

It was a question he found suddenly difficult to answer. Dully he
searched his brain for a reason but none came, or at least only a weak
one. "It's war-time," he said. "We captured the city. We've got to hold
it."

"It ain't any place for you," she said. "If you Yankees stay long enough
you'll be done up proper--women and drink and the climate. You Yankees
ain't tough enough for New Orleans."

That was an odd thing to say to a New Englander--that a New Englander
wasn't tough enough for a soft, decadent city like New Orleans. But this
morning his aching head gave him a faint intimation of what she meant.
Before he could think of an answer, she said, "And there's things goin'
on."

"What sort of things, Ernestine?"

"Plots and things." She rolled her eyes. "I like you, Major Tom. I
wouldn't like to see you get hurt, or mebbe killed. Why don't you git
out of here while the gittin' is good?"

Weakly he answered, "I've got a job."

"And there's Madame. She likes you a mighty lot. She had a mind to go
away to Atlanta when the Yankees came, but after she laid her pretty
eyes on you, Major Tom, she gave up the idea." For a second she was
silent and then she said, "It ain't good for a young fella to be mixed
up with a woman like Madame. No, sir, it ain't good. It ain't healthy."
Then quickly she added, "Only doan you ever tell her ah said so."

"I won't," said Tom.

Ernestine stood up straight thrusting out her great bosom with an air of
finality. "Ah like you, Major Tom. Ef'n you was to take my advice you'd
head yourself right away from this town afore the sickness gets you or
mebbe a bullet in the back."

"Thanks, Ernestine."

"You doan want a cup of black coffee or nuthin' more, do you?"

"Nothing more," said Tom.

Then she went out leaving him to consider what she had said. Her speech
had been like the croaking of the frogs along the levee and that smell
of warm, wet, sickeningly fertile mud which sometimes drifted over the
city when the hot wind blew from the gulf, filling him with a curious
nervous indefinable sense of depression and doom. Plots and things,
assassination, voodoo gatherings, the quiet extinction of Louisianians
who had been friendly or even moderately polite to General James Wicks
and his pilfering Army. With a sickening feeling at the pit of his
stomach he remembered the hangings of rebels who had raised General
Wicks's ill humour... strong, healthy young men one minute, loving life
and women perhaps as much as he loved them--the next minute simply
jerking, dying, fighting bodies at the end of a rope.

Maybe Ernestine was right. Maybe he ought to go away. Dully he fell to
regarding the room.

It was lush, over-elegant, with heavy curtains of red brocade hanging
voluptuously from beneath heavy gold baldequins, with chairs and a
_chaise longue_ of mother-of-pearl and ebony brought all the way from
Paris. Now as he drank, he regarded the room in all its details with
disgust.

He thought, "A trollope's bedroom, if ever there was one!" And again he
felt a sudden longing for the chilly austerity of his own childhood
bedroom in New Bedford.

In the mood of satiation he did not think even now of the young widow in
the old house where he was quartered. She belonged to another part of
him, the Tom Bedloe who was like a young bull for ever looking for new
adventures. And that Tom Bedloe had disappeared now or was at least
dormant, lost in remorse and a cloud of good intentions.

With a bad taste in his mouth, an aching head and the sickening smell of
La Lionne's scent in his nostrils, he dressed, putting on the soiled
ruffled shirt which once had adorned some duelling New Orleans dandy.
There was a streak of the dandy in himself, he knew--the kind of
dandiness that came of vitality and health, which drove the cockerel in
the morning to seek the top of the dung heap to shake his brilliant
feathers and greet the sun. He dressed quickly, filled with a desire to
escape the hot, vulgar room and the heavy scent of La Lionne. He did not
want to see her.

Outside the sun was setting and the faint croaking of the frogs had
begun, and as he buckled his sword, thunder broke the suffocating
stillness of the room with a sudden roar. It was a kind of thunder he
had never heard before, dull and muffled by the misty heat. He thought,
"I will go home and change and go to the General's for supper." They
always had a welcome for him, even on short notice. He knew he was the
favourite of General Wicks and "Aunt" Louisa and unscrupulously he
played on the knowledge. "Aunt" Louisa was always trying to save him
from the gutter. He suspected that if he had been ill-favoured and
pimply instead of good-looking, her zeal would not be half so great.
Now, feeling hot and soiled, he welcomed the thought of a spare New
England Sunday evening supper. He had had enough of _bisque d'crevisse_
and blood-heating gumbos. He would change and dine early and respectably
at the General's and then go home and write a letter to Agnes--not a
laboured indifferent dull letter like the one he had written last night,
but a tender loving letter worthy of her purity and goodness, worthy of
that childlike sweetness which made him love her when he thought of her.
Agnes could save him. It seemed that he himself had not the strength. He
was sick of scent and champagne and sultry love-making.

The first great warm drops of rain had begun to fall as he came out of
the back door of the Caf Imperial. They splattered about his feet on
the banquettes where his weight on the badly laid flagging forced
through the crevasses the mud upon which the whole city was built. The
sickening faint smell of a hundred and fifty years of offal and death
swallowed up and dissolved in mud, drifted through the falling rain and
mixed with the faint warm scent of the wistaria on the grilled
balconies. As he walked, he hurried, partly to escape the oncoming storm
and partly out of impatience to have a bath and wash away the scent of
La Lionne which was as unbearable to him as the smell of the mud. The
thunder pursued him, muffling the rising chorus of frogs as the warm
rain fell faster and faster. But before he had gone a dozen blocks, the
shower became a downpour.

It was like no rain he had ever seen. The water fell in thick warm
sheets. In it there was nothing cool and refreshing. A faint, muggy mist
arose from the crude flagging of the banquettes. Water from the roofs
overflowed the shallow gutters and poured down on his head and
shoulders. One expected rain to be cool and refreshing but here in these
narrow streets it was like a downpour in hell, serving only to increase
discomfort and misery. The dirty water flowed in the gutters and rose
half-way to the tops of his army boots. He did not attempt to seek
shelter, for in his tired dulled mind was the thought that somehow all
this water would serve to cleanse him.

At the impasse which led to the courtyard door of the de Lche house the
whale-oil light was extinguished, and in the darkness he stumbled
through the rain over the cobblestones, fumbling for a long time when he
arrived at the door to fit the great key into the lock. Inside the
gallery it was dry save for the mist that drifted in from the garden as
the downpour beat upon the flowers and plants. As he climbed the
stairway he discovered that there was a light in his sitting-room and he
thought, "It must be David come back again," and he felt a sudden tinge
of annoyance.

But as he entered the open doorway he saw that it was not David at all
but a woman. Standing she was, with her back towards him, a slim,
straight, elegant back rising from the folds of a great crinoline skirt
of yellow banded with ribbon. The light from the candles beyond gave her
a dim but radiant aura of light. The noise of the rain drowned the sound
of his footsteps and without turning she continued what she was doing.
Beside her stood a fresh bouquet of flowers, camellias and some kind of
lily mixed together, but it was not the flowers that occupied her hands
but the pile of papers which lay on his desk. He divined then suddenly
that this was the young Baroness and that she was searching for
something among his personal belongings.

He started to speak and then, his mind suddenly awake and alert, he was
silent and turning, he went back into the gallery where unbuckling his
sword, he allowed it to drop to the floor. The clatter rose above the
sound of the rain and when he again appeared in the doorway she had
turned towards him away from the papers and was busy arranging the
bouquet of lilies and camellias. She did not turn towards the door,
although he was certain that she knew he was standing there. It was an
excellent performance she gave, apparently absorbed in the arranging of
the flowers as if she were completely alone. For a second he stood there
watching her, all his weariness and boredom gone, his heart pounding
again beneath the soaked blue broadcloth of his tunic.

The yellow dress suited her with her white skin and black hair. She was,
he thought, all his passion for women driving him on, perhaps in her
middle twenties, and dressed as if for a party, in a gown cut low to
show the throat and breast, a throat that was ivory and lustrous now in
the light of the candle. He could not see the colour of her eyes for as
she looked down at the flowers they were hidden by the long dark lashes,
but the curve of her lips caught his attention, full and voluptuous and
rouged in the Parisian fashion. Her mouth was large and the nose
delicately cut but a little too arched at the bridge. He had, he
thought, seen more beautiful women, but the very perfection of their
beauty had made them seem cold. There was a glow about this woman, a
physical glow that was like the aura of light cast about her by the
candle. And there was a style about the clothing and the way she held
herself that gave promise of pride and spirit.

Then, his mouth curling a bit at the corners, he said, "Good evening."

Again she gave an excellent performance, even to the start of surprise,
as if he had frightened her. She looked up at him and he saw that her
eyes were dark though not brown or black. The yellow dress suited them
too. She said, "Good evening. I hope you'll forgive me. I brought you
some flowers."

He had expected her to speak with an accent, or perhaps that she would
speak no English at all. The English was perfect. It was the way English
people spoke English.

"It's very kind of you," he said. "A man living alone has no time to
think of such things. I'm Thomas Bedloe."

"Yes," she said. "I've seen you. I've watched you go out in the morning.
I'm Madame de Lche--Madame liane de Lche--the one they call the young
Baroness."

In spite of the dignity and the fine show of manners, he was aware by
the faint glint in her eyes that inside she was laughing at the comedy
they had just played.

"Won't you sit down and have a glass of port?" he asked.

But she refused. "Thank you very much, but my grandmother would be very
angry if she knew I was here alone in your rooms. She is the one they
call the old Baroness."

"You would be quite safe."

She smiled, a slow, curious insinuating smile, full of mockery. It was
at the same time a bold and wicked smile full of knowledge and
experience. "Unfortunately, it is not safety which matters in my world
so much as appearances. You see, you have never called. Officially I
still do not know you."

"If I called would it help put things right?"

"Perhaps."

He was aware as they spoke that she was studying him, that she was
noting everything about him--his head, the way he held the sword, the
shoulders, the cut of his tunic. It was the kind of look he expected
from women like La Lionne, an appraising almost bawdy look, and yet it
was different, perhaps because of her dignity and pride. He was thankful
she could not see the pilfered shirt with its frills all soiled and
crumpled from the debauchery of the night before.

"I thought none of you would receive a Yankee."

"We have been waiting for you to call. It's very dull, being shut up
always in this house--never being able to go on the street without being
insulted by Yankees."

He knew she was lying and that she had asked him to call only because he
had trapped her pilfering his papers and a little because she found him
an attractive man. There was a boldness and self-possession about her
that fascinated him. She conceded nothing. She stood her ground with
brazen assurance.

"I apologize and hope you will believe that all Yankees are not alike."
He heard his own voice and it had a curious, artificial sound like the
very words he spoke, as if somehow he had been forced into the role of
actor.

"It may be," she answered, smiling a little.

"When may I call?"

"To-night, if you like. After we have dined."

"When do you dine?"

"We should be dining now. There is the bell." As she spoke dimly through
the rain came the familiar sound of the silver bell which Old Seraphine
rang to summon the family from the more distant parts of the big house.
"I shall have to go. And you shouldn't be standing there in those
soaking clothes with the sickness about."

"There is no fever in New Orleans," he said. "General Wicks has cleaned
up the town and quarantined all incoming ships."

She smiled again, "Your General Wicks may believe he is God but there
are things he cannot control. The fever is here. The nuns have three
cases now in St. Louis. It has come in from the land side, from up the
river."

She turned then and coming round the corner of the desk she passed him.
"If you'll forgive me, I'll go before Grandmother discovers where I have
been."

"You speak excellent English," he said. "I was afraid when I saw you
that I shouldn't be able to speak to you."

"My mother was Irish and I was brought up by an English governess. It
was my first language."

She went out into the gallery, and for a moment he stood watching her as
she went along the long passage to the far side of the house. As the
shadows and the falling rain blurred and hid her figure, he felt a
sudden pang that was like a faint sickness. It surprised him, for out of
all his experience, he had never before known quite that sensation.

When she had gone he went to the desk and picking up the papers there,
he went through them carefully trying to discover what it was she had
been seeking. There were many things she might have discovered, evidence
of dishonesty and intrigue and cheating, but he doubted that a woman's
mind, much less the mind of so seductive and feminine a woman, could
have discovered just where the secrets lay in all the disorderly heap of
invoices and sailing papers and quarantine orders. There was nothing,
not even the faintest hint of what it was that drew her into his room.
Perhaps it was only a woman's curiosity, to pry into his life, discover
and read his private correspondence.

Then as he undressed and bathed, he wondered whether she had been in his
room before to-night, going through his belongings, discovering bits and
pieces which she put together like a picture puzzle to make the whole
that was himself and his disorderly life. And he remembered that two or
three times when he had come in at odd hours, the silver bell had rung
as he came into the door of the lower gallery, as if someone had been on
guard to warn of his return. It might have been the old negress,
Seraphine. At the sound of the bell, Madame de Lche could have
disappeared into the far portion of the big house before he reached the
upper gallery.

The idea of going to the General's house for dinner was quite gone from
his mind now, along with all the weariness and the good intentions. Now
that he had seen the young Baroness at last he was in no mood for a New
England dinner.

Intuition and experience told him that this woman was unlike any he had
ever encountered. In that first glance he had been aware of a kind of
challenge to combat, as if it were a man who stood there opposite him.

When he had dressed he walked impatiently up and down the gallery
outside, watching the windows through the flooding rain for the moment
when the candles were lighted in the long salon upstairs. And as he
walked his thoughts went this way and that to many things. He thought of
himself, quietly, almost humorously, as if he were quite outside this
energetic, violent body that was always upsetting all his plans, all his
good intentions and driving him into trouble and danger and folly and
dishonesty. It was his body's restlessness and hunger for excitement
which had driven him to run off on a whaler as a boy. It had driven him
into the Army. Its recklessness and bravery, its animal delight in
violence and danger, had brought him success and even in a small way,
fame. It was his body, his good looks and high spirits which had made
him the favourite of General Wicks and his smug, plump wife. They loved
him because he was beautiful, not because he was good or trustworthy or
honourable. They loved him not even because he was a humorous scamp, a
perfectly frank and unashamed scoundrel, but simply because his physical
presence titillated their sense of life--a ray of brilliant light in
the dull monotony of their own narrow existence. He did not love either
of them in return. He only felt contempt for them.

Then he thought of Big Ernestine's warning to get out of this strange
heathen city that was such a strange mixture of mud and gallantry, of
perfumes and stenches, of flowers and disease. It might be stronger than
himself; it might, as Big Ernestine said, be his ruin. Suddenly he
remembered the figure of the man with the empty sleeve and the white
face beneath the broad black hat who had passed him in the shadow of the
doorway, and it occurred to him that perhaps he was one of those of whom
Big Ernestine had spoken--the ones who might put a bullet into your
back, the ones who had already left a score of bullying negroes and
cheap crooked carpet-baggers dead, with a cross cut on their brows, in
dark alleys and narrow silent streets. And he thought, too, of the young
Baroness's remark that the sickness had returned, the dread yellow fever
which carried off hundreds to a filthy disgusting death. He dreaded
death as a young animal might dread it, if an animal could have
foreknowledge of death, because there was so much in life that was
sensual and exciting. But he dreaded death itself, which he had faced a
hundred times, far less than the prospect of a sickness which reduced
man to the level of a brute turning him into a vomiting, defecating,
helpless animal who turned black and began to decay before he was dead.
The fever was a horrible disease, and the thought of it creeping into
the city out of the swamps and bayous or sneaking up the wide muddy
river on some filthy foreign boat, brought a shiver of horror and a
sudden desire to run away, to flee to the north into a world that was
clean and cold like the first snow of December in New England. In the
damp heat, he shivered suddenly, thinking, "Perhaps it would be better
if I went back and married Agnes and became a good citizen." And then
looking across the drowned garden he saw that the candles in the long
salon were lighted. They had finished dinner and she would be waiting
for him.

       *       *       *       *       *

There was a very old woman in one corner of the room, thin and immensely
wrinkled and wearing a black lace shawl over her head and a great number
of diamonds that glittered in the soft lights of the candles which
burned in sconces dripping with crystal. The young Baroness sat at the
square ebony piano placed close by the tall shuttered windows and
beyond her he saw the man who had passed him in the shadow of the
doorway. The man was dressed all in black with a stock furbished with a
cascade of white lace, no whiter than the intense, delicately chiselled
face above it. Like the very old woman he had glittering black eyes. The
room had a curious decayed quality of rose and pale blue, silver and
crystal--a curiously feminine room with an enormous mantelpiece of pale
pink marble below a heavily carved and gilded mirror. Old Seraphine was
there in a frock of white and cherry-coloured stripes with _tignon_ of
poison green and candy pink.

As he stepped into the doorway he saw it all clearly as a picture,
perhaps because it was all so foreign, perhaps because it was the first
time he had been received by a New Orleans family. The General and Mrs.
Wicks had appropriated a famous and beautiful house, but the General put
his horses into the slaves' quarters and Aunt Louisa had immediately
destroyed the whole character of the place by arranging the house to
suit her spare Maine taste. There was a glow about this room which
warmed everything in him that was sensual.

At sight of him, the young Baroness rose from the piano and crossed the
room and the young man with the white romantic face stood up.

"You are very punctual," she said.

"I watched the lights." But he knew that she was mocking him and that
she was aware all the time of his impatience.

"This is Grand'mre," she said, presenting him to the old woman. "It's
unfortunate, but she speaks only Spanish and French and a little
Italian."

The old woman leaned a little forward in her chair, holding out her hand
to be kissed with a gesture so imperious that to his own astonishment he
found himself kissing it. The old woman said nothing but only gave him a
sudden brilliant glance from the intense black eyes, a glance of
appraisal that was almost a physical manifestation as if she had touched
him.

The pale young man held out his hand and the young Baroness said, "This
is my cousin, Baron de Lche."

The cousin's eyes were the eyes of the old woman, black and brilliant,
but without the life and the burned-out passion behind them. They were
cold eyes, the eyes of a fanatic with something of madness in them.

He said, politely but coldly, "I hope you are comfortable in our house."

"Very comfortable, thank you. A man could not well be more
comfortable--even with fresh flowers in his room put there by your
charming cousin."

The man glanced quickly at the young Baroness, a cold opaque glance, yet
full of questioning. The colour came into her face and Tom thought, "I
scored there."

He had a curious sensation of being upon quicksand, feeling his way inch
by inch lest suddenly he disappear into a quagmire of hostile mystery.
He was aware of the resentment in the old woman and the young man, a
resentment which came from the injured pride of the conquered. And he
knew, too, that behind the two pairs of black eyes there lay a savage
contempt for himself as a Yankee, a barbarian, an uncivilized yokel. It
was a feeling so strong that he experienced a sensation of acute
awkwardness and discomfort, as if the sleeves of his jacket were too
short and his boots soiled with mud and his waistcoat covered with
spots. Without thinking, he glanced quickly at his image in the huge
mirror and what he saw reassured him. He was more a male than the
waxen-faced Baron with the empty sleeve. Suddenly he suspected that that
was why the man had given him a glance of such profound hatred. The
young Baroness had that quality of arousing rivalry between men, not
because of her beauty which was peculiar and in the judgment of some
people, dubious, but by something, some arrogant female quality which
lay just beneath the surface. He knew that his revelation about the
flowers had displeased her, but only for a moment. Then, with the
wickedness that sometimes looked out of the blue eyes, he divined that
she enjoyed the feeling of jealousy it had roused in her cousin.

The cousin said, "The Baroness is unconventional--sometimes to the point
of folly. I suppose it is her Irish blood. My family resented my
cousin's marriage."

The young Baroness laughed. "Yes, there was not enough money. I had no
_dot_. My husband was in love with me. But I've learned about money.
I've become very clever about it... more clever even than the Lche
family."

Suddenly the old woman in the corner said, "Qu'est ce qu'elle dit?"

The Baron translated quickly and the old lady said, "Honteux! Sans
gne!" and rattled a small diamond-studded contraption she carried. It
was made of black enamel and onyx with a dozen small boxes studded with
diamonds attached to a gold chain. The sound was like the rattling of
bones.

A tiny dog of a breed Tom Bedloe had never seen before came into the
room and went directly to the old Baroness, leaping into her lap and
making the collection of articles she wore at her waist clatter again
like old bones. Then, all in one moment it turned, raised its nose in
the air and sniffing, detected the stranger in the room. Searching with
its rheumy eyes it found Tom Bedloe and leaping down again ran screaming
and yapping at him. It was the young Baroness who came to his rescue.
Placing herself between the dog and her visitor, she kicked it with a
sudden swift viciousness. The tip of her tiny slipper struck the animal
in its belly and it set up an hysterical screaming.

The old woman, who until now, had been sitting rather like a waxwork in
Mr. Barnum's Exhibition, suddenly was galvanized into a fury of life.
Screaming a flood of French and Spanish at her granddaughter-in-law, she
rose and picked up the horrible little animal and gathering it to her
thin old breast, changed her tone abruptly and covered it with a torrent
of endearments.

The Baron said, "You should be ashamed of yourself!" And the young
Baroness said in French, "I apologize, Grand'mre. It was only that he
was annoying our guest. I did not mean to kick so hard."

Bedloe could not understand what she was saying, but he was aware that
the look in her dark eyes belied the tone of her voice, which was silky
and conciliatory. The eyes were filled with sudden hate--the same
concentrated hatred that had gone into the kick at the offensive,
yapping dog.

To Bedloe she said, "You must forgive our bad manners among ourselves.
It is a passionate family. I am quite gentle by nature but I have become
savage in self-defence."

He found himself in an odd situation, as if he were not in the room at
all, save when the young woman addressed him. It was not only that the
three of them appeared to hate each other and were shameless in their
hatred but that he could understand only half of what they were saying.
Whenever he spoke, some simple phrase, stiff and polite, it had a hard
artificial sound. It took a great deal to make him feel uncomfortable
but he was miserable now, wishing he had not come at all. For a moment
the strange girl no longer seemed attractive to him. He thought, "What
am I doing here? Why did I come? They all hate me, perhaps the girl more
than the other two?"

But almost at once he knew again why he had come. The girl, he saw now,
was not as beautiful as he had thought her; she was, in fact, not
beautiful at all. It was not that which had attracted him now but
something inside her, some fire. He was aware again of the sense of
challenge. He was aware, too, that the eyes of the cousin followed every
move, every gesture, and he thought suddenly, "He is in love with her,
in spite of the hatred between them." It was all subtle and
uncomfortable, complicated and sinister, like nothing he had ever before
experienced. He heard himself saying, nervously, "You sing beautifully,
Madame. I've listened to you night after night."

The Baron answered before she could speak, "I'm sure the Baroness was
aware of that."

Quite calmly she answered, "I was aware of it, Amede. Twice through the
shutters I saw him standing in the gallery listening. I do sing well and
I have a good voice too. I'm pleased and flattered when anyone finds my
singing pleasing."

The old woman again asked, "Qu'est ce qu'elle dit?" and when the Baron
had translated, she repeated again, "Honteux! Sans gne!"

Bedloe said, "Perhaps you will sing for me now?"

"With pleasure." She rose and went to the piano and at the same time the
old woman, picking up the dog under one arm and the rattling collection
of diamond-studded objects in the other, rose and said gravely, "Bon
soir, Monsieur" to Bedloe and went out of the room. He rose at her
imperious departure and stood looking after her. She seemed not to walk
at all but float, as if she had at some time in her life trained for the
ballet.

"Grand'mre," said the young Baroness, smiling, "cannot support my
singing. I think she hates music."

As the old woman went from the room she left the door open behind her.
He could see her black figure moving down a long corridor lighted by
candles, glittering yet soft-coloured like the room in which he stood.
As if to claim his attention from the handsome old woman, the girl
struck up a stirring roulade of notes against the sound of the hot rain.
As he turned she began to sing the aria from _Il Re Pastore_ which
David Wicks had heard as he waited on the other side of the garden for
Bedloe.

Tom knew little about music, only that which pleased him sensually, and
he was pleased now, not only by the sight of the young Baroness at the
piano but by the lovely architecture of the aria she sang so
effortlessly, yet with such grace and art. She sang in Italian so that
he understood no word of what she was singing, yet it produced upon him
an extraordinary effect. In a little while all the uneasiness, the sense
of discord, even of hatred, in the room seemed to vanish. The faint
weariness returned to him and the sound of the music was as if the girl
stood beside him stroking his aching head softly. It was incredible that
the girl in the yellow dress singing so tranquilly could be the same who
a little while earlier had kicked so savagely the old woman's horrible
little dog.

When she had finished the last delicate cadenza, limpid and soothing as
the note of a silver bell, he opened his eyes and saw first of all the
young man with the white face and empty sleeve. He was watching her. He
had forgotten the hated visitor.

Then she sang again and again, "Voi che sapete" from _Figaro_ and an
aria from Gluck's _Orfeo_. Outside the rain ceased and a sudden gust of
wind rising from the distant gulf blew out three candles in the sconces,
leaving the figure of the girl herself in the shadow. An extraordinary
sleepiness came over Bedloe, in which, sitting with his eyes closed he
saw her quite plainly, the gentle curve of her throat and the blue-black
of her hair and the dark blue-violet eyes and the mouth that was
enticing but somehow ugly because there was evil in it. Yet its very
ugliness was fascinating. The image was fixed there in his mind for
ever. Dimly, out of his experience, he thought, "I shall always remember
her thus."

Then the music came to an end and he opened his eyes and she stood up,
very straight with that curious air of pride. At the same moment the
door opened and Old Seraphine came in followed by a very old negro in
rough country clothes with a face like an ape and a poll covered with
white wool. He seemed excited and pushed past Seraphine.

He made a curious kind of shuffling curtsy and then began to talk wildly
in the _patois_ of his parish. Once or twice the young Baroness answered
him and once the cousin spoke. Then suddenly she said something to him
very sharply and Seraphine, taking him by the arm, led him forcibly
away. He turned once and began again to speak rapidly but the Baroness
silenced him with a cry, "Tais-toi, Thophile. Je te parlerai demain."

Then smiling she turned to Bedloe and said, "He is frightened because
the fever has broken out at Bel Manoir. That's one of our plantations.
It's quite near... frighteningly near, on the other side of the river."

The extraordinary sleepiness, born partly of physical exhaustion and
partly of the hypnotic effect of the music, refused to leave Bedloe.
Mechanically he said, "I'm sorry. I'll tell the General. He'll stop them
coming into the City from that side."

The cousin answered, "That will do no good. It spreads like magic. It
flies through the air. It is worse in wet times like this."

Then abruptly Bedloe said, "Good night," still in the power of a curious
dazed feeling as if he were sleep-walking. As he crossed through the
gallery above the drenched garden, he heard the bell at the door opening
into the impasse tinkling faintly and as he turned the corner he saw, in
the fitful light of a moon half obscured by flying clouds, the figures
of two men moving along the lower gallery.

He fell asleep almost at once and slept, dreamlessly unaware of the damp
heat, until the burning sun was high above the steaming city. When he
wakened he lay for a long time trying to remember what had happened the
night before. It returned to him in fragments, with a feeling of
unreality, as if the whole uncomfortable experience had been no more
than a dream.

       *       *       *       *       *

The _San Cristobal_ bound from Havana for New Orleans reached the mouth
of the Mississippi nearly three weeks after sailing from Havana. She was
a dirty ship, Spanish-owned, out of Valencia laden with tobacco, hemp,
tin pots, olives and leather for New Orleans to trade for cotton which
she would carry to Liverpool, now that the warehouses of the great city
had fallen into Yankee hands and the money for the cotton would no
longer go to the Confederate Treasury but into the pockets of the men
who occupied New Orleans.

For ten days she had battled hurricane head winds round the end of
Florida and for five days with her pumps working day and night, salt
water had swept her decks, covering hatches and pouring into holds,
wetting her cargo so that from below deck there rose an overpowering
stench of rotting hides and soaked tobacco and rancid olive oil. For
five days the Captain had prayed thrice daily to preserve the _San
Cristobal_ from destruction and to rescue her crew from the imminent
prospect of hell. He was a lean, sallow man and a profoundly religious
rascal who had in his day commanded slave-ships, participated in a
murder or two, and been involved in privateering expeditions which
bordered closely upon piracy. He was a man who found little in life or
in the human race to astonish him, but on this voyage he had encountered
something new and astonishing in his whole experience, and that was the
presence on board his ship, in one of the two dirty cabins which
sometimes carried passengers, of two ladies from Boston, one very young
and virginal and pretty and the other an amazing female, the like of
which he had never encountered even among the dragon duennas of his own
country.

They had come alongside his ship as she lay in the shadow of Morro
Castle, coming alongside in a leaky harbour boat rowed by a gigantic and
very black negro in ragged shirt and trousers, who spoke a strange
mixture of Spanish, French and English. In this curious babel of tongues
he made known to the Captain what it was they wanted. The young girl and
the horse-faced woman were, he said, American ladies from the port of
Boston. They had come as far as Cristobal de la Habana as passengers on
an American Army transport bound for New Orleans. The ship had been
driven off her course by a hurricane and, leaking badly, had put in at
Havana. It would be at least a month before she could sail and the
American ladies were in haste to arrive at their port of destination.
Would the Captain of the _San Cristobal_ take them as passengers? They
were important people, related to the General in Command of New Orleans.

From the rail of his dirty ship the Captain had watched the two women
while the giant negro shouted up his message from the leaky boat,
debating whether or not he wanted two women to complicate a voyage with
an unruly cut-throat crew. The girl was certainly young and very pretty,
and blonde, which made her more dangerous but also more desirable. The
horse-faced woman who accompanied her certainly had a formidable
appearance; but in his Spanish heart the Captain knew that in Spain
duennas had been known to have been outwitted before now. In fact
Spanish legend and literature (of which, it must be said, the Captain
knew next to nothing) was full of stories in which lovers got round ugly
old women.

The news that the two ladies were related to important personages
alarmed him, but the alarm was nullified almost immediately by the
shouted information that they were also ladies of wealth and would pay
well for the privilege of passage in the dirty old _San Cristobal_. So
the Captain, being an avaricious as well as a lecherous fellow, invited
them aboard and showed them a large and rather elaborate cabin
ornamented with black carved oak, which had been built long ago to carry
the owner of the ship when he travelled from Valencia to the West Indies
on business.

It was a rather gloomy room with a single small window high above the
built-in beds and it smelled of rancid olive oil and pitch. The Captain
watched the two women while they inspected it, wondering that two women
of wealth and distinguished position should have any desire to travel on
such a boat as the _San Cristobal_. The only Anglo-Saxon women he knew
were the women of the ports and certainly they were hard and capable of
taking care of their own interests. But these, obviously, were not
ladies of the port. Some very urgent reason, he concluded, must have
driven them even to consider such a boat.

At last, grumbling, he named a price which was three times the ordinary
passage from Havana to New Orleans, and after a minute's consultation
was informed by the big negro that the ladies accepted. Then, for a
moment, the idea of kidnapping or robbery swept like the shadow of a
cloud over the hard brain of the Captain.

They informed him that their names were Miss Agnes Wicks and Miss
Abigail Jones, and when the Captain could make nothing of this in the
jargon of the big negro, they wrote down the names for him on a bit of
paper the horse-faced woman took out of her reticule. Then the big negro
informed the Captain that the ladies would like to come aboard after
dark the night before sailing.

After paying him fifty American dollars they withdrew, leaving the
Captain to bite the gold pieces and ruminate whether he had been wise to
accept them as passengers. Whatever happened, their presence on the boat
for ten days or a fortnight could only mean trouble. The girl was too
pretty and too young. And it was odd that they wished to come aboard at
night.

When the leaky boat drew up to the stone quay, Aunt Tam gave the big
negro a coin and after saying "To-morrow night, Csar, at nine o'clock,"
they left him and entered a _calche_ drawn by a team of bony,
flea-bitten mules and drove off by a roundabout way to the Grand Hotel
de Salamanca.

It was a small and very dirty hotel built round a shabby patio furnished
with plush and tired palms, overrun by cockroaches and made musical at
night by hordes of flying insects, but it was the _Grand Htel-de-luxe_
of Havana. They could, it was true, have stayed aboard the troopship
_Allegheny_, which lay anchored in the bay. It would have been cleaner
and the food would have been plain, clean, army food instead of course
after course of tomatoes and veal cooked in oil; but aboard the
_Allegheny_ Aunt Tam would have been denied the freedom without which
she found life insufferable.

The Commander of the _Allegheny_ was an acquaintance of General Wicks, a
sturdy man of the sea who believed that woman's whole duty was to remain
at home, care for the children and await her sea-faring husband's return
to breed, and so he showed no great approval for Aunt Tam's emancipated
ideas. At first he had forbidden her to live ashore, but when the
routine of the whole boat was upset by her constant demands to be set
ashore or be called for day after day, the Commander, worn down,
conceded that perhaps, if he were ever to accomplish the re-conditioning
of his vessel, it would be better for her and her niece to move ashore,
not, however, without strings attached to them. He had no liking and a
great deal of mistrust for all Latin people, and so the idea of two
Boston ladies living unprotected in a corrupt city like Havana was
intolerable to him. To Aunt Tam's great disgust he posted sentinels in
shifts outside the door of the cockroach-infested room occupied by
herself and her niece. Thus it was impossible for either of them to move
without the knowledge of the solicitous, female-protecting Commander.

But Aunt Tam was not to be defeated in her role of pioneer tourist.
Accompanied by Agnes she set forth each morning to absorb the colour and
picturesqueness of this squalid foreign city. Although at times Agnes
felt misgivings, neither stenches nor filth nor disease, nor muggy heat
nor parasites dampened the ardour of Aunt Tam. These things became
translated in her eager transcendentalism into colour and
picturesqueness of beauty. Mr. Emerson or Mr. Alcott would not have
noticed them, and Margaret Fuller would have found them, even the
cockroaches, filled with sociological interest. Besides, the enthusiasm
and vitality of Aunt Tam were boundless. Her trip on a donkey through
bandit-infested Sicily had made her an object of interest in Beacon Hill
drawing-rooms for many years. How much longer would these tales of
adventure in a barbarous country like Cuba make her interesting before
they lost their lustre. She had no intellect like Margaret Fuller or Mr.
Emerson, but she was a rabid and excellent reporter and a passionate
tourist.

And with it all she was a friendly person to whom people were simply
people without regard to race, creed or colour. A palace had no greater
interest for her than a thatched hut with a fire burning in the middle
of the earthen floor. Each muddled conversation with their occupants and
several lines of "interesting" notes were entered in a notebook labelled
"My Journal" which she carried with her in her reticule, even to bed in
case inspiration overtook her in the small hours of the night. Nor was a
difference in tongues any hindrance. She was remarkably gifted as a
pantomimist, so gifted that on occasions she and Agnes found themselves
surrounded by crowds of natives who watched her with the same interest
and fascination they experienced at a performance of a travelling puppet
show. And her quick, superficial mind had a way of picking up key-words
in any tongue with remarkable rapidity. These she strung together like
beads on a string without the faintest concern or need for grammar and
syntax. French was the only tongue for which she had any pretensions and
that she spoke badly with a flat English-Boston accent which transformed
it from a beautiful and elegant tongue into something that sounded
rather like the clatter of wagon wheels on the cobblestones of Beacon
Street.

So, dragging Agnes with her, she penetrated with her simplicity and
innocence, the hovels of poor _mestizos_ and the grilled aristocratic
patios of Spanish Crole families. Because she was a strong Abolitionist
she took special interest in the negro quarter. Here she found freed men
and escaped slaves, and talking to them she filled a whole notebook with
jottings to relate to Mr. Alcott and Mr. Garrison and Harriet Beecher
Stowe, when she was once more in Boston. Here it was that she came upon
Csar, the great negro who rowed them out to the _San Cristobal_.

She found him in the market talking to a pretty quadroon seated among
piles of melons and radishes, garlic and brilliant red-hot peppers. She
opened conversation with the quadroon by asking the price of the peppers
and buying a whole string which she stuffed, wrapped in a plantain leaf,
into her voracious reticule. Then in her curious Spanish she managed to
chat for a time with the quadroon girl, who now and then emitted shouts
of laughter at Aunt Tam's queer turn of phrase--shouts which were
drowned in the louder laughter of the great black negro.

In her friendliness Aunt Tam was likely to tell personal details of her
life to any stranger, and so now she managed to convey to the quadroon
girl the fact that she and her niece were on their way to New Orleans.
In this information the big negro showed a great interest.

"La Louisiane," he said in a homesick voice and a queer jargon that
surpassed even Aunt Tam's extraordinary speech. "Mon dit ngres free all
time now in Louisiane."

Aunt Tam, in English, explained that every negro was free now that
General Wicks, whom she was going to visit, was in command of New
Orleans. Then quite simply the big negro said, "Csar va avec," and left
his quadroon girl and accompanied Aunt Tam and Agnes back to the Grand
Htel de Salamanca.

In the morning when they made an early sortie from the hotel he was
waiting outside, his white teeth exposed in a grin, his black skin
showing through the rents in his torn yellow shirt. From then on he
accompanied them each day wherever they went. There was no being rid of
him and in a way he was a convenience, for with him at their side
carrying all the articles purchased by Aunt Tam as souvenirs, they were
no longer annoyed by pert and bawdy remarks concerning the blonde
prettiness of Agnes. After the second day, Aunt Tam took to giving him a
coin or two in the evenings when he left them to the mercy of the
cockroaches at the grilled doorway of the hotel. He went off to spend it
all in a brawling night with the quadroon girl. He was satisfied. He had
never been so rich before. And so without any plan of any kind he became
a kind of body servant to Aunt Tam and her niece.

But Agnes was growing impatient. For the first few days she had found
the exploration of Havana in the wake of Aunt Tam amusing and novel, but
after a time the food, the lumpy bed, the welts which she discovered on
her fair skin each morning, began to outweigh the glamour and
excitement of foreign travel. And in the bottom of her heart, like a
little worm gnawing, was always her impatience to get to New Orleans to
find Tom Bedloe and rescue him, to save him for herself. It was
remarkable how the thought of him disturbed her, haunting her nights,
popping suddenly into her little brain at the sight of some Crole dandy
whose swagger or darkness brought the image of him suddenly to mind. She
felt haunted and driven, but the haunting was a delirious sensation,
partly pleasure, partly agony and apprehension, and as the obsession
grew, Havana and the Grand Htel de Salamanca and the insects and smells
and food became more and more unendurable.

But for her impatience Aunt Tam would perhaps have stayed on and on in
Havana, extending the range of her tours accompanied by the great black
Csar farther and farther into jungly country districts haunted by
bandits and other lawless characters. It was only the protests of Agnes
and the growing paleness of her cheeks that led the indefatigable virgin
at last to approach the Commander of the _Allegheny_ upon the subject of
their consequent departure. They went to noon-day dinner on the
transport _Allegheny_, rowed out by Csar who had a friend who owned the
ricketty, leaking boat, and learned that the ship would be forced to
remain for at least another three weeks, since sufficient supplies of
oakum, tar, etc., needed for the repairs seemed very nearly unattainable
in the slip-shod corrupt Spanish port.

This news Agnes, holding her peace, received with a pang, thinking, "I
shall die. I shall contract a fever and die if I am forced to remain
three weeks more in this filthy port." Even Aunt Tam found the delay
excessive, and rather as a feeler, put forward the idea of taking
passage on some civilian ship.

The suggestion only brought an explosion from her friend, the Commander,
"Impossible, Madame!" he said, "There are no civilized packet boats
sailing from here to New Orleans... no packet boats upon which a decent
woman could trust herself. The idea is out of the question."

The reply made Agnes's heart sink. This might go on and on for ever,
until Tom forgot her very existence in the company of the belles of New
Orleans. Her knowledge of New Orleans life was slight, only what she had
picked up during an education spent at a fashionable and expensive but
superficial school in Boston, and her conception of New Orleans was of
a languorous city, flower-laden and scented, entirely populated by
exquisite and seductive young women of Crole origin and immoral French
education. And so the prospect of three more weeks' delay, not to count
the possible fortnight for the voyage itself, filled her with despair.
She began to cry and Aunt Tam said, "There! There! My dear! We must be
philosophical! It will turn out for the best! There is still so much to
be seen in Cuba."

But in her heart Aunt Tam was not philosophical at all. She was crafty.
She had dealt with strong men like the Commander before. Her father had
been a "strong" man and her brother Ethan Wicks was one. "Strong" men
were only to be overcome by deceit and craft as long as women, deprived
of political rights, were treated as half-wits.

So Aunt Tam smiled at the Commander of the _Allegheny_, sighed and was
outwardly philosophical, but in her heart she had a plan. That night
when she returned to the Grand Htel de Salamanca she held a jargon
conversation with Csar and in the morning he returned with the news
that a ship called the _San Cristobal_ would be sailing for New Orleans
in two days' time. That afternoon they visited the ship and arranged
passage with the dubious Spanish Captain.

But escape was not easy, for there was always the sentry outside their
door who would inform the Commander if he saw them leaving with their
baggage. But now Aunt Tam had begun to relish the plot and to enjoy all
the sensations of a conspirator making an escape, and Agnes, at the
prospect of flight from the dirty hotel, had colour in her cheeks once
more and a light in her blue eyes. So between them they arranged with
the mustachioed and swarthy proprietress to have the baggage lowered
during the day into the courtyard at the back of the hotel, and at
eleven o'clock the night before the ship sailed the two women themselves
climbed down a ladder to the courtyard where Csar and a mangy _calche_
awaited them. In the hot darkness the big negro rowed them out to the
_San Cristobal_ and when they climbed up the ladder over the side he
cast adrift the leaky old boat with a kick of the foot and followed
them.

On the deck when Aunt Tam sought to give him a gold piece and dismiss
him, he only grinned and shook his head saying, "Csar go la Louisiane
avec."

At the Grand Htel de Salamanca a new sentry came on duty at eight
o'clock in the morning outside the door of the room occupied by Miss
Abigail Wicks and her niece. For eight hours he remained there without
seeing any trace of the two ladies, and when he was relieved in the late
afternoon he reported that the ladies must have gone out early in the
morning as he had not seen them during the whole day. It was only at
nine in the evening that the second sentry became alarmed and pushed
open the door to find the note left by Aunt Tam. By the time it had been
delivered to the Commander of the _Allegheny_, the _San Cristobal_ was
well on her way towards New Orleans, and nothing was left for the
Commander to do but to curse in phosphorescent language all women with
advanced ideas who would not trust their lives to strong men.

       *       *       *       *       *

On the morning after sailing Aunt Tam, trying to open the door of her
cabin, found the door blocked and for one brief exciting moment she
believed that they were to be imprisoned and held for ransom. Then with
another shove she managed to push the door open an inch or two and
discovered that the obstacle obstructing it was only the massive figure
of Csar. He had slept the night on a hempen mat, a murderous-looking
knife in his belt.

Standing up, he grinned at her and said, "Csar sleep here. Mauvais
hombres all around."

For a moment she thought, "What a story to tell them in Boston." And for
another moment she wished that her brother and the Commander could see
her. After a frightful breakfast of some bread and coffee and eggs
cooked in oil which she and Agnes ate in their cabin, she set to work at
her journal, writing page after page in headlong over-coloured prose
which sometimes gave scant consideration for grammar. She failed to
notice that Agnes had gone out to take the air on the deck, until the
door was suddenly flung open and Agnes came in, her checks bright red,
her blue eyes flashing, less frightened than angry.

"It's intolerable, Aunt Tam. I can't walk on the deck."

She told her story breathlessly. Twice she had made the circuit of the
main deck and each time when she passed any of the crew they made rude
noises and obscene gestures.

"What sort of gestures?" asked Aunt Tam, with an innocent almost
scientific interest.

"I don't know what they meant and I couldn't possibly show you, but I
know they were meant to be insulting."

"You must be quite sure," said Aunt Tam, "before I speak to the
Captain."

At this Agnes's face grew even more red. "The Captain?" she said. "Much
help he'll be! After it happened, I stayed at his end of the ship in
front of his cabin. He came out to walk with me, and he _pinched_ me!"
Here she burst into tears, crying out, "Oh, Aunt Tam, I wish we had
never left Boston. I wish we hadn't run away from Havana. How do we know
they're going to New Orleans at all? They're probably taking us to a
pirate island to murder us!"

She was frightened now, perhaps for the first time in all her brief and
sheltered life, not nearly so much by the thought of being carried off
and murdered as by the gestures made by the men on the deck which she
did not even understand. There was a terrifying, shocking, mysterious
ugliness about their leering faces and the look in their eyes, something
which in an odd way was related to the whispered, shadowy ugliness that
came into the faces of some people when they whispered of Tom's
"wickedness." She was tired and depressed and hungry and a little
seasick and for a long time she lay with her head in Aunt Tam's lap,
sobbing while the older woman tried to comfort her.

When she had recovered a little Aunt Tam said again, "What did they do?
Show me so that I can complain properly to the Captain."

Then Agnes, sitting up, made quite innocently, and shyly, an obscene
gesture as old as time itself.

"I'm sure I don't know what that means," said Aunt Tam, "but it does
look reprehensible. I'll speak to the Captain at once. You had best lock
the cabin door while I am away."

Then she left Agnes and went out on the deck. The ship had begun to roll
a little and the eggs cooked in oil, which she had eaten more as an
experience than as a pleasure, were not resting well. But her mind was
scarcely less troubled than her stomach. It was the puzzling gesture
which disturbed her, principally because she did not understand it. If
she had known its meaning she would doubtless have dismissed it at once
under the head of experience, but in her innocence it became mysterious
and sinister and even corrupting. For herself it did not matter but for
Agnes it was different. For the first time it occurred to her vaguely
that perhaps the whole trip had been the sheerest folly.

It would have been bad enough even if the transport had gone directly to
New Orleans. She thought, "Perhaps running away like this on a strange
ship, and a Spanish ship at that, _was_ unwise!" She would ask the
Captain to put them down at the next port, only there was no port on the
way.

As she walked unsteadily up and down she was aware that the crew, at
their tasks, were watching her and she tried ignoring them, but this was
impossible for every few paces she could not help seeing one or two
murderous faces out of the corner of her eye. They were, she admitted,
decidedly worse appearing than any men she had ever encountered
before--unshaven, ragged, filthy and depraved, not at all like the nice
sailor-boys on the _Allegheny_. Even during her donkey-trip through
Sicily she had never seen anything like them. They went about their
tasks, holy-stoning the decks made greasy by the long dissipated stay at
Cristobal de la Habana, repairing ragged sails and splicing ropes in the
rigging, but each time she passed near them, they looked up and grinned,
showing yellow teeth with great gaps between them.

She had no illusions about her appearance. She had, indeed, long ago
became reconciled to her plainness--so that she did not believe they
grinned at her for reasons of seduction. She kept repeating to herself
what she would say to the Captain, trying at the same time to control
her stomach by that inner force of will which she had discussed with Mr.
Emerson on several occasions.

Then suddenly she heard loud bawdy laughter and forgetting her intention
to ignore the tormentors of Agnes she turned and saw that a fat bearded
man, obviously the clown of the crew, was making the dreadful gesture at
herself.

Flouncing and bridling with fury and indignation, she went quickly to
the cabin of the yellow-faced Captain, thinking at the same time that
she must go quickly and get the interview over with before she became
actively sick.

In her haste she did not trouble to knock but pushed open the door to
find the startled Captain bending over a greasy chart. Pressed by the
emergency she began to talk at once, partly in English and partly in bad
French, neither of which the Captain understood. In her voice and manner
was all the fury of outraged womanhood aggravated by the uncertainty of
her stomach.

The evil Captain, understanding not a word, divined from her manner and
out of his own shopworn conscience the reason for her indignation. He
merely stared at her, his face quite blank and stupid, and Aunt Tam,
aware suddenly that her speech was conveying nothing to him, fell
instinctively into her principal resource when confronted by a foreign
tongue. She resorted to pantomime, ogling him to his astonishment,
rolling her eyes and repeating, "Comme a! Comme a!" but the crisis
came when, carried away by her own pantomime eloquence, Aunt Tam, the
friend of Margaret Fuller and Mr. Emerson, made the gesture!

For a second the blank expression on the evil face of the Captain
changed to one of astonishment and even alarm, and then before it had
time to wrinkle with laughter, the astonishing woman was gone out of the
door to be sick.

       *       *       *       *       *

In an odd fashion the strange interview was more effective than if the
Captain had understood every word that Aunt Tam shouted at him. When he
had finished laughing, he told his mate what the plain, middle-aged
dragon from Boston had done, and the mate told the boatswain who passed
it on to the crew, so that by evening the story was known, even to the
scrofulous cabin-boy. And when the two women came out of their cabin in
the evening to take the air, the men they encountered on the deck
grinned, but there was no bawdy laughter and the awful gesture was not
repeated. In some strange way, Aunt Tam, perhaps by the very
grotesqueness of her simplicity and innocence, had managed to shame
them.

The next day nothing at all happened save that the _San Cristobal_ began
to pitch and roll in a choppy sea. Whether the two ladies could have
continued the rest of the voyage without annoyance no one could say, for
on the third day the wild fury of the hurricane coming out of the Gulf
of Mexico burst upon the ship, ripping half her sails to shreds,
carrying away spars and half the foremast. Hour after hour for six days
the ship was carried now east, now west, now north, now south at the
mercy of God; and God was merciful for neither the crew nor the
superstitious Captain, both paralysed by terror, did much beyond praying
and working the pumps to save the ship.

In their cabin, Aunt Tam and little Agnes stayed for six days, living
upon chocolate and the biscuit and water which black Csar managed
somehow to bring them in the moments when he was not helping to work
the pumps. At first both women were terrified, and then after a few
hours, the misery and discomfort of the pitching ship dulled the edge of
their fears. They did not, like the Catholic crew, spend their hours
wailing and calling upon God and the Virgin Mary. Instead both Agnes and
Aunt Tam fell to considering God and the hereafter seriously for the
first time in their lives. Until now, God and the after-life had been no
more to the older woman than subjects for rather superficial,
intellectual discussion in Boston and Concord drawing-rooms; and Agnes
had never considered either subject at all, merely accepting the
conventional Episcopalian concepts stamped upon her by an evasive
father.

In the darkness, for it was nearly as dark by day as by night, the two
women lay lashed into their beds, alone yet united for the first time in
an odd fashion, considering the past and speculating upon the future in
case they escaped. Once or twice when the fury of the hurricane seemed
to abate a little, Aunt Tam attempted to rise and set down her
reflections in her journal, but after a scrawled illegible line or two,
she abandoned the idea and simply lay still, her eyes closed, retching
and clinging to her bed. And after a time both of them fell into a
condition of dullness and coma in which night and day no longer existed,
and even the chocolate and the stale water no longer had any interest.
Twice Agnes passed into unconsciousness and out again, lost mercifully
for a time in the delusion that she was at home safe in the drawing-room
of the Pinckney Street house with melting snow under the windows. Then
came a time when she forgot even Tom and the reason for having come on
the voyage, she began to pray only that she might once again see Boston
and her father. All the boldness, all the assurance born of her very
innocence, was gone.

Then one morning the hurricane was gone as quickly as it had come and
the _San Cristobal_, rocking gently on the swell which followed, limped
over a sunlit sea of brilliant blue, worked by a crew shaken, enfeebled
and full of repentance. The repentance would have worn away as
repentance does, but for the fact that the second day after the
hurricane died away, two bodies sewn in torn sailcloth, with rusty iron
at their feet, were slipped over the side into the Gulf. Aunt Tam and
Agnes came on deck at the very moment the Captain and three members of
the crew stood by the rail, caps in hand, until the plank on which the
first body lay was tilted and it slid into the water. When the Captain
saw them, an expression of alarm, almost of horror came into his dismal
face and turning, he walked quickly away from them towards the
forecastle.

It was a curious look, so sinister that it alarmed even Aunt Tam. All
that day and the next they had no sight of the Captain, but whenever one
of the crew passed near them he did a curious thing. Each man held up
his hand, forefinger and little finger extended, and spat towards them
seven times between the fingers, his face at the same moment contorted
by a look of fear and hatred.

It was black Csar who brought the explanation. He came in after dark to
their cabin, his face grey in the candle-light. Closing the door behind
him, the whites of his eyes showing, he said, "Mauvaises nouvelles, the
black sickness is in the bateau. Two men dead yesterday. Three more
to-day."

The expression "black sickness" puzzled Aunt Tam. When she questioned
Csar he crossed himself and went into an excited and unintelligible
jargon accompanied by a horrible pantomime in which his powerful back
arched and his head jerked until the whites of his eyeballs showed. It
was only after a long time that Aunt Tam was able to make out what he
was trying to tell them. It was that five of the crew had already died
of cholera.

But that was not all. The crew, it seemed, believed that the two women
were witches--_sorcires_--and that it was their presence that had
brought the hurricane and the cholera. Their virtue was safe enough now,
Csar told them; there was not a man on board the ship who would touch
them, save to throw them overboard into the blue waters of the Gulf.
Below deck there had been plotting and only the sudden revolting death
of two more of the men had diverted them from ridding themselves of the
two ladies from Boston. Now it would no longer be safe for them to leave
their cabin.

"Csar stay ddans," explained the big negro, touching his knife.
"Arrive Mississippi soon."

For a moment Aunt Tam recoiled, thinking that she preferred death to the
violation of her modesty created by the presence of the great negro
inside their cabin. She thought, "This is impossible. It cannot be
happening in the middle of the nineteenth century."

In the end it was the thought of Agnes that made her yield. Agnes was
in her care; it was herself, Aunt Tam, she admitted with a sense of
guilt, who had tricked Ethan into letting them come on the trip, she
herself who had conceived the idea of running away from the Grand Htel
de Salamanca upon a voyage which, with the fear of death upon her, she
saw now was madness. Somehow, by some means, she must bring Agnes safe
to land. After that nothing would matter. Nothing would ever matter
again. Never again would she go about looking for excitement to make
herself interesting.

And so she yielded and Csar slept _inside_ the bolted door with his
knife beside him. Agnes cried again and, at last, mercifully fell
asleep, but Aunt Tam remained awake, starting up each time she heard
footsteps outside the door. Once, several men came outside the door and
stood there for a long time, now whispering among themselves, now
silent, listening. They tried the door and finding it bolted, they went
away again.

During the day she slept a little and tried to cheer Agnes who was white
and weak from seasickness and lack of food. The second night she stayed
awake all the night and about four in the morning, the freshness went
out of the air and a damp muggy heat seemed to pour in through the open
window. The clean smell of salt air went away and in its place there was
a damp smell of rotting vegetation and mud. The boat no longer rocked at
all and when daylight came and she looked out of the window, they were
no longer in the open blue sea. The water was mud-coloured and as far as
the eye could see there was nothing but yellow water and a flat expanse
of mangrove swamp, a prairie of deep emerald green surrounded by dirty
water.

Shaking Csar awake, she called to Agnes, saying, "There's land outside.
We're safe!"

When they went outside on the deck there was not a man in sight. The
ragged, half-furled sail dropped in the hot damp air and the red and
yellow flag hung like a damp rag. As far as they could see there was no
other ship nor on the land any sign of habitation or of life of any
sort. The big negro went to the forecastle and shouted, but there was no
answer and going inside he found it empty. His voice echoed back from
the empty sinking hold. There, too, there was no living thing save the
rats.

At last the three of them went to the cabin of the Captain and pushing
open the door they found him there, his head resting on the dirty
chest. A bottle stood beside him and the air reeked of stale cheap
brandy.

Shaking him awake, Csar held him upright, and there occurred between
them a mad conversation complicated by the drunkenness of the Captain
and the jargon of the big negro. At last when Csar had extracted what
information he could--enough to discover the full desperation of their
situation, he let go of the Captain's shoulder and the man fell back
again to the table, his unshaven face against the dirty chart, drunk
with boredom and evil and brandy. Then Csar explained.

The crew had all left the ship. There was no way of working it farther.
Even if the cholera-infected ship could be worked, it would not be
allowed to pass the twin forts, Jackson and St. Philip. That was the
orders from New Orleans from General Wicks himself.

"But General Wicks is my brother. We are going to him," Aunt Tam said in
her bad French, and then understood at once the stupidity of her remark.
There was no way of seeing General Wicks, no way of sending him word.
Besides, she wanted only to leave the stinking, horrible ship, now. Once
free of it, she felt that everything would be all right.

Agnes did not cry. She sat down suddenly because of weakness and the
heat, and when Aunt Tam said, "Don't be frightened, my dear; we'll find
a way out," Agnes said bluntly, "I'm not frightened. I wasn't ever
really frightened. I was sick."

Again it was Csar who had the solution. He knew this country. It was
_his_ river. He knew every inch of it once he was out of the tangled
delta. If the American ladies would trust him, he would bring them
safely to his master's plantation and from there they could have a fine
carriage to drive in style into the city. It would not be an easy trip
and it might be a long one, but if they would trust him, everything
would be all right.

Aunt Tam considered the idea, but Agnes, suddenly practical,
interrupted. "I don't see what else there is to do," she said.
"Otherwise we might be here till doomsday."

She was feeling a little better now that the boat was still, and for the
first time she felt irritation at Aunt Tam, not because she had
suggested the flight on the _San Cristobal_--she herself was equally to
blame for that--but because Aunt Tam's reaction, her mind itself, seemed
so hopelessly romantic and divorced from all reality. "Anyway," she
added, "I've no desire to die of cholera."

So Csar managed to get a big dory over the side and with ropes managed
to lower their valises and two heavy tin trunks filled with finery for
New Orleans into the dory. With these stowed in the stern he helped the
two ladies to a place that was safe if not too comfortable, and casting
off, he swung the smaller boat away from the stinking _San Cristobal_
and close into the shore out of the sluggish current. The foul stench of
the ship faded away and presently in its place there was only the strong
fertile smell of the mud and the mangroves.

Csar began to sing as he rowed, a curious, deep-throated river song in
the language of his parish. Aunt Tam said to Agnes, "Sit on the bottom
of the boat, my dear. Put your head in my lap and try to sleep." Then
she raised her parasol, holding it so that it shielded her and the fair
head of the girl. She thought, "Well, we're out of that!" But almost at
once she was forced to rouse Agnes for the dory had begun to leak and
the muddy water was wetting the skirts of the tired girl.

Sleepily Agnes sat beside Aunt Tam and almost at once fell asleep again
with her head on the older woman's shoulder. Sitting very straight, Aunt
Tam held the parasol above them while Csar, still singing, pulled the
heavy oars, his black skin drenched in sweat. A great sand crane rose
heavily out of the mangrove swamp and an alligator slipped with a splash
into the muddy water. A curious ecstasy rose in Aunt Tam. She was
thinking again of Margaret Fuller and Mr. Alcott and what a story she
would have to tell them. It was very good to be alive. God had been very
good to her, giving her a life so full and rich with adventure.

       *       *       *       *       *

For nearly a week La Lionne neither saw Tom Bedloe nor had any message
from him, but she knew what he was doing and what had happened to him,
for there were many ways for news and gossip to travel in a city like
New Orleans, a city compounded strangely of negroes and French and
Spanish and all the riff-raff of a great port. The news came to her from
Big Ernestine.

Day after day the big negress had watched her mistress grow more
distracted and more irritable, neglecting her business, being rude to
customers and sharp with the girls. She had even slapped Cllie, her
favourite, because the girl had complained of being tired, and she had
gone early to bed again and again when the big gilt and mirrored
ballroom was still filled with customers. Each night the class of
customers grew worse--weasel-faced Yankees and raw-boned up-river men
and _mauvais Kaintucks_ who in the old days would never dare to come
beyond the confines of Tchou Pitoulas Street. There were fresh quarrels
and brawls each night. Twice the carpet-baggers had dared to bring in
negroes--one a very black man, the other a mulatto free man with an evil
reputation called Faro Sam.

All this Big Ernestine watched with distress and misgiving. A Bourbon at
heart, she saw the whole world in which she had always lived,
prosperously and enjoyably, falling into ruin before the Yankee
invasion. The Caf Imperial was becoming like the crib joints and the
low cafs along the levee. What use were the mirrors and chandeliers and
yellow plush in a world where there were no gentlemen? What good were
the excellent Burgundy and Bordeaux wines and the champagnes and
brandies for men who would as soon have swilled beer from a trough? She
grew weary of subduing obstreperous and drunken patrons and lost all her
zest in a good fight. And she began to consider what was to become of
her, where she was to go when the whole thing came to an end. She might
go north to Ohio or New England where, she heard, the negroes were
treated like kings, or she might go to Paris with Madame, or she might
buy herself a cabin out of her savings on some remote bayou and live
there like a queen among the other less fortunate negroes.

But the immediate present troubled her. One night there was certain to
be a real riot and a murder among the carpet-baggers and white trash and
then the Governor of the city would close the place and Madame would
have nothing in return for all the money spent on the crystal and
mirrors and plush that gave the place its tone. The thing to do was for
Madame to sell out and go away to Paris, perhaps even to New York where
there still were gentlemen--gentlemen who still had money and could
appreciate the quality of an establishment such as the Caf Imperial.

But what worried Big Ernestine most of all was the rapid degeneration of
Madame's character. It had begun, she knew, from the moment Major Tom
came in on that first night after the big riots and the hanging of young
Mumford, to sit sulkily alone in a far corner of the room. Madame had
gone forward to greet him as she would have gone to greet any new
client, but in a little while there was a difference Big Ernestine had
never noticed before in the hard veneer of her professional manner. On
the second night and the third he returned, and after that he was always
there sitting in the corner of the room at La Lionne's table and finally
in her own sitting-room upstairs. He was, Big Ernestine knew, not quite
a gentleman, at least not a New Orleans gentleman, but that did not
matter; with her woman's understanding she knew that the Yankee Major
had other qualities which made it quite unnecessary to be a gentleman.
Principal among them was the quality of excitement; he had only to come
into a room to cause things to happen.

It was the quality of excitement, Ernestine knew, which had undone her
mistress. From the moment he appeared, a curious change came over La
Lionne. She no longer paid the same meticulous attention to the affairs
and conduct of the place. It was as if somehow she had entered another
world, a kind of dream-world over and above the gaudy establishment
which had always been her pride. Most extraordinary of all, there were
nights when she forgot completely to go over the books and receipts.

And then at last when he stayed away, she became altogether distraught,
like a dazed half-mad person, like a _grue_ whose _maquereau_ had
deserted her. She lost all dignity and throwing herself on the great
mother-of-pearl and teakwood bed, she would lie weeping for hours at a
time. She had violent migraines and once for twenty-four hours she
stayed locked in her room refusing to eat or drink or come down to the
ballroom to keep the place in order.

So at last, Ernestine decided that something must be done. If it went on
like this, the business would go to pieces and the establishment sink to
the level of any waterfront caf. Tactfully, she suggested that Madame
should communicate with Major Tom, asking him to return, but this idea
La Lionne rejected with fierce and angry pride. Should La Lionne, who
had dominated every man she had ever known, suddenly throw herself at a
man's feet imploring him to return? No, she screamed, that was
impossible.

After two days, Ernestine again approached her with a new idea, an idea
to which La Lionne agreed at once. It contained a grain of hope, and at
the prospect of that hope, she brightened and sat up in her great bed.
There were difficulties, quite large difficulties, but Ernestine
thought she could get round them. To carry out the plan, they would have
to have hair and nail parings of both La Lionne and Major Tom. The first
part was, of course, simple enough, and Ernestine thought she could cope
with the second part. She was a friend of Old Seraphine, the de Lche
servant. They came from the same parish. Seraphine might steal the hair
and nail parings out of friendship or she might have to be bribed. And
they would have to have the services of Mama Tolanne, the withered old
mulatto witch, who lived in her own house by the levee and was honoured
and feared by half the town. That, too, would cost money. Mama Tolanne
could make a potion that would bring him back to her.

"Money!" La Lionne cried out, throwing herself about in her anguish,
"What is money to me? _Rien!_ What good is money when one is wretched
and has no wish to live?"

In all the talk, while Big Ernestine sat by the side of the bed holding
the white hand of La Lionne, she kept back two things; first her
knowledge that it was the young Baroness who had kept Major Tom from
coming to his mistress, and second the story that the young Baroness was
herself a witch and that she had practised voodoo in Martinique when she
had gone there as the bride of the Baron Louis. There were even
mutterings among the de Lche slaves that she had had something to do
with his decline and death by consumption.

When she had finished describing her plan La Lionne cried out, "Go! Go
at once to Seraphine!"

But the big negress said, "There is one thing more, Madame. Ef'n I was
you ah'd sell the concern. Things is going from bad to worse. Even
Cllie is beginning to carry on like a she-devil! And the customers is
gettin' worse and worse. And now there's fever comin' in from across the
river."

La Lionne, without turning, made an answer which came, muffled from the
depths of the pillows. "Find me a buyer. I'll sell it quick enough.
Who's to buy it?"

"Ah'll find you somebody, Madame. Ef'n I was you ah'd get back to Paris.
There ain't no future in New Orleans with Yankees all over it like flies
on a yeller dog."

       *       *       *       *       *

It was already ten o'clock in the evening when Ernestine left by the
same back door out of which Tom Bedloe had made his devastating escape.
She left the place with misgivings, aware that her mistress would refuse
to come downstairs even if a riot broke loose which destroyed every
mirror in the place. Before her lay two courses, one to go to the house
of the Baroness de Lche and the other to go direct to Mama Tolanne's
house. Seraphine might be at either place. If she was at Mama Tolanne's
she, Ernestine, could kill two birds with one stone; so after a moment's
reflection she set off in the direction of the river.

As she walked through street after street, now turning this way, now
that, the lights, the air of life and gaiety diminished and for a time
she went through a quarter beyond the Pont Alba Buildings where every
house was shuttered and only an occasional yellowish light threw a long
dim shadow beyond her on the narrow banquettes.

It was a long walk and the air was hot, and Big Ernestine was in no
haste. She had all night to accomplish what she had set out to do; if
trouble broke out at the establishment, the military would have to take
care of it. She was getting restless again and filled with ideas of
roaming. She might go to Paris or Mobile or Natchez or even Atlanta,
although she didn't care much for Atlanta or Atlanta society, either
white or coloured. According to Ernestine's Louisiana standards there
wasn't a gentleman or lady in Atlanta. For Ernestine was a snob; at La
Lionne's establishment she had been on intimate terms with most of the
fine gentlemen of New Orleans and the surrounding parishes.

As she walked she came presently out of the darkness of the proud Crole
houses and into the half-light of another world. Here there were fewer
lights than in the heart of the rich city and they were less brilliant,
yet it was a world teeming with life. Black men and women and children
sat on doorsteps of slatternly wooden houses, unpainted and falling into
decay, or walked the muddy roadway built upon old trash and garbage.
Twice she passed rows of brick houses with shuttered doors where girls
black and brown and yellow stood in the doorways, their half-nude bodies
silhouetted against the faint glow of the night-light behind them. They
screamed with laughter and made obscene jokes with the men who passed by
to inspect them. Some of the shuttered doors were closed with a faint
glow or only blackness showing between the louvres. Most of the men were
coloured men, but among them appeared occasional white men, foreign
sailors, swarthy and dirty, with gold rings in their ears from the
ships which had swarmed to New Orleans to carry away cotton and sugar
now that the blockade was lifted. There were tall, gangling,
coarse-jawed men in rough clothes, the _mauvais Kaintucks_ from up the
river. The croaking of the frogs in the swamps along the river hung in
the air, a wild accompaniment to the occasional music of a guitar or a
banjo, music as bright and as gay in all the filth and desolation as the
brilliant _tignons_ and skirts of the negro women.

Through the crowd, Big Ernestine made her way, aloof and proud, like a
great ship advancing through swarms of dirty bum-boats. Everyone in the
quarter knew her by sight, the famous Big Ernestine from the Caf
Imperial. Most of them at some time or other had had a glance at the
magnificence of the place beneath the shuttered, high swinging door
which opened on the street. As she passed, men on the street or girls
from the shuttered doorways called out sallies, some of them funny, all
of them obscene. And Ernestine answered them back in kind, bettering
them each time in her retort as a burst of loud laughter rose from the
crowd on the street.

At last she came to the edge of the quarter where the clustered,
swarming houses came to an end. Beyond, half in the black shadow of the
high moonlit levee, straggled a half-dozen houses no better than the
other miserable shacks save for one which stood apart, a small house
built like a doll's house, a copy in miniature of a great plantation
house. Along the front was a high, shallow portico not more than two
feet wide, with slender columns no more than three or four inches in
diameter. From the portico descended a double stairway. Across the front
fell the black shadow of three cypresses. The house was extraordinarily
tall and narrow and set above the soggy mud upon piles like stilts. It
had been painted white once but only flakes of the paint remained,
enough to cast a kind of phosphorescent reflection in the pool of black
water where the river had seeped through the levee.

The pavement ended a little way beyond the last house of the quarter and
from there on Big Ernestine had to pick her way through the mud and
reeds, avoiding puddles of stagnant water that stood in the narrow path.
In a little while she had reached the house and climbed the rickety
narrow stairway and was standing before the door of Mama Tolanne's
house. From somewhere inside came the sound of weird singing,
punctuated by the rhythm of a muffled drum.

She knocked once and then again and again but still there was no answer.
The croaking of the frogs seemed to grow louder with mockery. The
curious moaning sound punctuated by the nervous rhythm of the drum
continued. Slowly, when there was no answer, cold fear began to steal
over Big Ernestine. She began to remember the weird stories of Haiti and
Martinique in which the dead were summoned from the grave to serve old
women like Mama Tolanne.

Then abruptly the door was opened by a tall, thin, yellow negro who,
recognizing her, stood aside to admit her and then quickly closed the
door and bolted it.

Inside, the whole house consisted of a single large room with a great
fireplace at one end in which a fire had nearly burned itself out. Near
the fire stood two women and beside it squatted a thin, very black negro
with a long neck like a bird, beating a tom-tom. His eyes were opened
but the eyeballs were rolled back until only the whites were visible; at
each third augmented stroke, he jerked his head until the bones of his
neck cracked. On the floor lay a naked octoroon girl, her body rigid in
a trance. Over her bent the wrinkled ancient black figure of Mama
Tolanne herself. She was muttering and groaning and now and then with a
gesture of lightning quickness she would throw a pinch of some powder on
the coals which, flaming up, cast a flashing iridescent light over the
faces of those in the room and revealed the sheep's skulls and stuffed
alligators that hung on the walls. The room smelled of urine and burnt
flesh.

For a long time Big Ernestine stood silently watching the rigid figure
of the naked girl on the floor; then slowly, furtively, she raised her
eyes and regarded the figures of the two women. One she saw at once was
Old Seraphine; the other woman wore a long black cloak with a hood which
was pulled forward over her face. After a moment, Ernestine realized
with a start that the woman was not a negress; even in the shadow of her
hood, the face was very pale. She was young, too, and slender. Then she
saw that it was the young Baroness de Lche.

       *       *       *       *       *

She knew at once that she would have to put off the interview with
Seraphine, since obviously she had come with the young Baroness and
could not leave her long enough to go into the complicated and secret
details of Ernestine's mission. She would have to wait until the
ceremony was finished and then talk to Mama Tolanne herself.

It was over in a little while. The old witch threw a final pinch of
powder into the fire and gave a hair-raising scream. At the same moment
the drummer stopped his monotonous beating and sat upright, rolling back
the pupils of his eyes and staring about him as if he had suddenly come
from another world. The naked girl on the floor, stirred, moaned and sat
up, looking about her with the same expression of astonishment.
Ernestine observed that she was a very beautiful octoroon, not more than
thirteen or fourteen years old. Then Mama Tolanne straightened herself
with a sudden wheezing sigh that seemed to come from the tip of her
naked, claw-like toes. She wore a curious headdress of feathers and
periwinkle shells above a coal black Senegalese face immensely wrinkled,
with the skin hanging in folds. The skinny yellow negro threw some
shavings on the fire and as the flames leapt up, illuminating the room,
Old Seraphine gave Big Ernestine a curious look which said, "I cannot
speak to you now."

Then without a word, Seraphine gave the yellow negro a gold piece, the
young Baroness drew the hood of the cape across her face and the two
women went out of the door. When the yellow negro had closed and bolted
it Mama Tolanne did a curious thing; she turned towards the door and
raising one hand, the left forefinger and little finger erect, she spat
through it seven times as the men on the _San Cristobal_ had done when
Aunt Tam or Agnes appeared on deck. Then she addressed the yellow negro
who brought a bottle of rum and two cups and, inviting Big Ernestine
with a kind of weary elegance to seat herself in one of the dilapidated
chairs, she herself got into the crude bed at one side of the room,
propped herself up with a couple of enormous and greasy cushions and
settled down for a gossip. The octoroon girl made no move to put on any
clothing but stood, naked and unconcerned, near the fire drinking rum
from a rusty tin cup with the air of a wild and beautiful animal.

The old woman, between sips of rum, commented on the great heat, and the
fever that was stealing in on the city, asked after Big Ernestine's
health and then craftily inquired after the health of La Lionne.

Big Ernestine at first evaded the question. They spoke in a _patois_ of
their own, a kind of French, sprinkled with English and Spanish words
and corrupted on the part of Mama Tolanne by hazy distant memories of
Senegal. Propped up in the bed, her black eyes glittered in the dim
light. At last, after many false starts, Big Ernestine came to the
point.

La Lionne was but badly, she confided, shaking her head and going into
the symptoms.

"L'amour?" guessed Mama Tolanne.

"L'amour," echoed Ernestine, "for a Yankee."

Mama Tolanne put her head on one side and cackled, "For the same young
Yankee that the young Baroness is after. I know!"

This was somewhat of a revelation to Ernestine. Again she sparred for
time, but presently decided that the best thing to do was to come to the
point.

"Was that why she come here to-night?" asked Ernestine bluntly.

Yes, that was why, the old sorceress admitted. The young Baroness wanted
to fasten the Yankee "Tom" to herself.

This again threw Ernestine into doubts. If Mama Tolanne was putting
spells on Major Tom on behalf of the young Baroness, she could not at
the same time put spells on him to bring him back to La Lionne. But
after more gossip and talk of the weather, during which Big Ernestine
considered this point, she said, "I guess maybe I'd better be going. I
came for the same thing."

Mama Tolanne chuckled wickedly into her rum. "Don't tell me you're after
Major Tom too?"

No, explained Ernestine, it was for La Lionne. "I suppose," she said,
"you couldn't work a spell both ways." Mama Tolanne didn't answer her
directly. Again she chuckled wickedly and observed, "That Yankee must
have somethin' wonderful for two women to be after him like that... two
women like La Lionne and the young Baroness."

"He's excitin'," remarked Ernestine. Then, after a pause, she asked
bluntly, "What for, Mama Tolanne, did you spit after her?"

"You ain't got any right to ask such questions, Ernestine," the old
woman said.

"'Cause you're afraid of her," taunted Big Ernestine.

"Ah ain't afraid of no white woman. No white witch is powerful like a
black witch."

"Mebbe you doan like her?"

"Ah doan like her. It ain't healthy for no white woman to go meddlin'
around with black people's voodoo."

Ernestine let the subject drop again. They had another tin cup of rum.
Ernestine did not drink much and never while on duty at the Caf
Imperial, but now she wanted to get something out of Mama Tolanne. So
she had another cup. Presently she said, "Mebbe gold could undo a
voodoo."

"Mebbe it could," said Mama Tolanne.

"Mebbe a couple of bottles of Madame's best rum could help."

Mama Tolanne chuckled again. "It sure could."

So after that Ernestine went to work on her. She told Mama Tolanne the
whole story, and Mama Tolanne talked too, much more than was ethical for
a professional witch doctor. The rum warmed both their hearts and they
settled down to gossip. Mama Tolanne called out to the naked octoroon
girl, "Euphmie, you'd better git your clothes on and git yourself home
before that yellow boy gets you into trouble. Ah doan want your ma after
me!" The girl picked up a kind of bright yellow shift made of calico and
slipped it over her head. The yellow negro said something and the girl
slapped him. Then they both went out together, followed by the black
negro who had been beating the drum; and Mama Tolanne was free to talk.

Mama Tolanne said that the young Baroness had her mind set on Major Tom.
She was out to get him, and she had to be secret about it because if New
Orleans people found out about her running after a Yankee, it would be
the end of her, what with her own cousin wanting her too. She was a bad
woman, Mama Tolanne said, and all she thought about was gold. Seraphine
hinted that she had possession of all the de Lche property--the big
house, the plantation Bel Manoir and all the gold in the Planter's Bank.
That was why the old Baroness and the husband's cousin had to stick by
her, even though they hated her. Only now the Yankee General had
possession of everything--all the cotton and all the gold in the
Planter's Bank, and even the young Baroness couldn't touch any of it.

Ernestine, a little dizzy from so much rum, listened to everything the
old woman said. She saw that Mama Tolanne was talking too much under the
influence of the same rum. There might not be another chance like this.

Then the old sorceress said an odd thing: "Ah ain't seen this young
Major Tom but ah'm feelin' sorry for him."

"What for you feel sorry for him?" asked Ernestine. "Ain't he got all
the women a runnin' after him?"

"Ah doan know nothin' worse for a man than havin' a lot of women runnin'
after him. It ain't healthy havin' two women like La Lionne and the
young Baroness runnin' after you. It ain't healthy for no young man. Ah
wouldn't want to be in his boots." She shook her head and cackled, and
the feathers and periwinkle shells in her woolly hair waved and rattled.

Then, as the warmth of the rum stole over them and they began to sweat,
the two of them fell to talking about their own adventures and the men
they had known. Mama Tolanne could even remember a black boy back in
Africa before she was transported. And at last when they were quite
tipsy, Ernestine veered back again, a little unsteadily, to the point...
the business of fixing up a spell to bring Major Tom back to La Lionne.

Mama Tolanne finally agreed that for fifty gold Yankee dollars and two
bottles of rum, she could undo the spell she had barely finished casting
on the sought-after lover, and transfer its effect to favour Ernestine's
mistress. Then they had a night-cap of rum and Big Ernestine set out
unsteadily along the planks laid in the mud, back through Congo Square
towards the Caf Imperial. It was nearly dawn when she reached the back
door of the establishment. The lights were out in the ballroom and when
she listened outside the door of La Lionne's room she heard only the
sound of her mistress's regular breathing.

On the long way back she had come to a decision. She would tell Madame
nothing of the gossip she had heard from Mama Tolanne. She was afraid of
what La Lionne might do. A woman like that in love with a man ten years
younger might do anything.

       *       *       *       *       *

At the General's a party was under way, not a very gay party, for there
was a scarcity of women and the two women, who constituted the entire
female element were neither young nor very attractive. One was the
General's lady, Aunt Louisa, and the other the wife of the
Quartermaster-General, a crow-faced woman from Indiana. Between them
there was no love lost, for the General's lady looked upon the
Quartermaster-General's wife as a savage out of a log cabin, and the
Quartermaster-General's wife, Mrs. Theophilus Gilpin by name, looked
upon the General's wife as a Yankee harridan. Mrs. Gilpin would not have
been at the party but for the fact that she was the only other Yankee
woman in New Orleans, and she had been called in when every New Orleans
woman invited, even those who had showed a semblance of friendliness
towards the Union troops, refused. Even those who sought favour for the
sake of their property, and there were a few, dared not to appear at
General Wicks's since his order that New Orleans women who did not
salute the Union flag and fawn over Yankee soldiers were to be treated
as common prostitutes.

It was in fact a grisly party, without wine, with nothing stronger than
a weak lemonade punch concocted by the hand of the General's wife. The
guests were nearly all fellow-officers of the General, inferior in rank,
who, no matter how much they hated him, could not refuse his
invitations. There were all sorts and types, some regular Army men
feeling contempt for the few volunteer officers; these in turn feeling
hatred for the West Point men. The only men not in uniform were two
ill-favoured cousins of the General, who had been summoned to New
Orleans to take part in the general looting, and the poor Mayor of the
City, who had come in the hope that this act of diplomacy might help his
fellow-citizens to save their cotton, furniture and silver from the
plundering horde.

The Mayor was a thin, delicate little man, dark and sensitive and proud,
and the whole evening was for him filled with humiliation and agony, not
only because his pride was again and again trampled under foot but
because in his heart he felt only contempt for most of the men in the
two big drawing-rooms. He remembered them, these same rooms, as they had
been when the house was occupied by the MacTavish family--rooms which
had a glow about them of crystal and flowers and colour, when they
echoed to laughter and music, and there was champagne and planter's
punch at such a party, and pretty women instead of these two Northern
dragons who moved about among the officers with arrogance and vulgarity
because they were the only two females on a desert island. Somehow the
bleak touch of Aunt Louisa's hand had altered the rooms more even than
the barbarians now encumbering them. How it was done, the Mayor could
not divine, and in his weariness he did not even try. He only thought
from time to time what strange creatures these New Englanders were, so
bleak and tactless, all sharp corners, with no ease or elegance. How
could they ever have been citizens of the same country?

Twice during the torture of the interminable evening, the gentle Mayor
had moments that were mildly pleasurable, once when David Wicks
approached him with politeness and asked questions about the history of
the old city. The boy was agreeable to look at with his longish blond
hair, clear complexion and blue eyes. He had good manners and a
sensitive intelligence, something of which the Mayor had found no trace
in his contact with the other military men. They had talked for a little
while in a corner until the wife of the Quartermaster-General had rudely
snatched the boy away.

The other moment had come when Tom Bedloe talked to him. This time it
was not the sensitive intelligence which touched him but a sort of
animal warmth and friendliness and a curious kind of understanding. He
seemed different from the others, a kind of buccaneer, who had no
interest in the petty prides and triumphs. He was cheery and there was
no condescension in him, and in an odd way you felt his contempt for the
others in the room, not for their barbarity but for their meanness,
because there was something ordinary and limited about them, something
cautious and commonplace which denied living or sought always to draw
profit out of pleasure.

The Mayor found himself smiling, unaware that part of the cordiality in
the young man arose from a perverse pleasure in showing the others that
he respected the Mayor and preferred his company to theirs. But whatever
the reason for the warmth, the few minutes spent in the young man's
company, relieved a little the dull misery and humiliation of the
evening.

In their conversation, the young man said presently that he was
quartered in the house of the de Lche family and quite bluntly that he
found them a strange family.

For a moment the little Mayor seemed frightened. Then he said, "Yes,
they are a strange family. They have spent a good deal of time in Paris.
I used to know the old Baroness when she still went about... a very
strange character. Once she took twelve slaves with her to Paris simply
for a ball." He smiled gently in reminiscence of the story. "The night
of the ball she placed them, six on each side of the great stairs, each
holding a lighted torch. They were the finest young negroes from the
plantation and they were quite naked. It created a sensation. When the
protests of her guests came to her she only said, in her deep voice,
'Mais ils ne sont que des btes. Pourquoi habiller un taureau?' (But
they are only animals. Nonsense to put clothes on a bull!)" The little
Mayor chuckled a little. "Yes, the old Baroness was a card!" Then he
sighed a little. "And very beautiful once... like the Empress." Then
quite suddenly he asked, "Have you seen the young Baroness?"

"Yes."

"I hear she, too, is beautiful."

Bedloe said quite simply, "I have seen more beautiful women but never
one quite like her."

"They say she is mixed Irish and French blood. It is not a good cross.
No up-river cattle breeder would ever make such a cross except to
produce a curiosity."

"She is a remarkable woman."

"Her husband was her cousin," said the Mayor. "They had to have a
dispensation for the marriage. After that no one in New Orleans would
receive them."

Then the General's wife broke up the conversation and took Tom Bedloe
away with her to have a gumbo. It was an outlandish dish, she said, much
too highly seasoned, but the negress whom she had for cook could not
learn to do simple cooking, no matter how hard the General's wife tried
to train her.

It was while they stood by the buffet that a soldier appeared in the
hall outside saying he had a message. The General's wife, standing
opposite the arched doorway, saw him, a thin white-faced man, with a
look of terror in his eyes and a dark splotch of blood on his tunic.
Although he had asked only for the General, she divined disaster and
with short, quick firm steps she left Tom Bedloe standing alone and
walked into the hall. What was the General's business was hers. After
all, her friends at home said hers was the better head of the two. In a
crisis, the General could not make a proper decision. More often than
not it was Aunt Louisa who in fact stood at the head of the Army of
Occupation. At this moment she smelled a crisis.

Tom Bedloe watched her, thinking what a horrible woman she was, fat,
solid and hard, but using her femininity unscrupulously to faint or
scream hysterically when her will was crossed. He had no pity for the
General. In his way he was no better. He could not hear what the
white-faced soldier was telling them, but he saw the General's lady
suddenly grow scarlet with anger and begin to berate both the General
and the helpless soldier. Her plump red face seemed to swell and her
body to quiver with rage. Lazily, still grinning, he walked towards the
little group.

As he came nearer, he heard the General's wife saying, "It is an
outrage! Every able-bodied man in the city ought to be hung." She
turned suddenly to the General. "If you had any backbone, that's
what you'd do... whip all of them as if they were niggers and then
hang them!"

He heard no more for he suddenly thought of the Mayor, and turning away
walked to where the gentle little man was trying to show amusement at a
dirty story being told by a red-faced blubbery Colonel.

Quietly Bedloe said, "You had better come with me. There is trouble."

"But I couldn't without saying good night to my hostess."

Tom laughed. "Leave that to me. I can manage her." Then his face grew
serious and he said, "Believe me, sir, I am telling you the truth. Come
with me. I'll be responsible. Come, I'll show you the way." The thought
of having the little man humiliated any further was unendurable to him.
Some trouble, some violence had occurred and the Mayor would be held
responsible. Gently he took the little man by the arm and led him away.

"I know the house," said the Mayor. "I've known it since I was a little
boy. You see, the MacTavishes were my friends."

"I'll go with you," said Tom, and like a hen mothering a chick he led
the Mayor down the long, wide stairway beneath the great chandelier of
crystal and out into the magnolia-scented darkness. As they passed out
of doors, there came to them the whickering of horses quartered in the
lower floor of the house.

The house was on the garden side of the city and, unlike the old
quarter, the gardens here lay about the outside of the house instead of
being on the interior surrounded by the house itself. From beyond the
cast-iron fence came the scent of crpe myrtle, magnolia and the first
tuberoses, thick, sickening in the hot dampness of the night.

As they walked, the Mayor said: "It is a most unfortunate position,
being the Mayor of a conquered city. The enemy does not like you for
opposing him and your own people hate you because they think you do not
do all you can to help them. You have been very kind to me to-night."

Tom laughed in the thick darkness. "I couldn't see you being bullied by
the General's wife."

In a little while they came nearer to the dim glow of Canal Street which
divided the old city from the new. As they approached Tom said: "I'll
leave you here, sir. I understand. It would not be well for you to be
seen walking in the streets in a friendly way with a Union officer."

The little Mayor started to protest politely, but Tom Bedloe knew that
in his heart his companion was relieved. In the darkness the Mayor bade
him good night and again thanked him. Then he went off bravely, very
straight and slender, as Tom, smiling, stood looking after him. It would
be bad enough for the little man to be seen with a Union officer, how
much worse for him to be seen with a Union officer who was also the
Collector of the Port, and robbing all his fellow-citizens.

As he walked away towards Canal Street, he was troubled by the innocence
and gentleness of the little man who day after day, night after night,
strove to keep peace in his city, protect his people and preserve his
dignity as well as theirs. The man made him ashamed of his roguery. He
sighed and kicked a piece of stone broken from the banquette. Well, when
he was through with this job, he'd clear out and marry Agnes Wicks and
go into the West and lead a different, decent life.

Then he crossed Canal Street, picking his way through the mud that oozed
up through the ancient cobblestones, and as he reached the other side he
noticed suddenly that, without thinking, he had crossed at Royal Street
and was quite near to La Lionne's establishment, so near that he could
hear the music of the negro band playing in the room with the mirrors
and yellow plush. For the shadow of a second he was tempted to turn in
and see what was going on, but immediately he knew that if he went
inside he would see La Lionne, and although he had heard no word from
her since the night he crept out of the back door into the flooding
rain, his instinct told him that he would encounter scenes, hysteria,
screams. Perhaps even he would be forced to remain, something he had no
desire to do.

And so he passed the door and continued on his way along Royal Street
towards the quarter dominated by the de Lche house whither without
thinking he had been bound since the moment he took the arm of the
little Mayor and led him down the stairs. He was returning "home" early,
in the hope of seeing the young Baroness before she retired to bed.

Since that first bewildering evening in the drawing-room on the other
side of the drenched courtyard, he had seen her twice. Once in the early
morning when, unable to sleep because of the heat, he had dressed early
to go to the port office. As he came out of the room she was playing
with a tortoiseshell cat in the garden beyond the singing fountain. She,
too, could not sleep for the heat and she had come into the garden clad
only in a nightdress with a _peignoir_ thrown over it. It was a
nightdress the like of which he had never seen before; even La Lionne
had nothing like it. It was of some shimmery thin material, gauze-like,
gathered just beneath the breasts and ornamented with scarlet ribbons.
Now and then as she played with the cat, the pale green _peignoir_ fell
open.

For a second as he watched, he felt that he should turn away, but the
temptation was too great and he hid himself, smiling, behind the
wistaria that climbed up the iron-grill work.

For a long time he watched her, thinking again how it was that a woman
who was not beautiful should still be so fascinating. It was perhaps her
body which now he saw, without shame, for the first time unhidden by
great crinolines. Whenever she moved, it was with the same supple grace
of the cat. He remembered now that even in the first evening when he had
come upon her clad in the yellow ball dress, she had possessed the same
grace of movement. Even the clumsy dress had not hampered her.

She threw a ball for the cat and each time the cat captured the ball and
grew bored with it she followed him along the path and threw it again.
Hidden in the gallery, Tom was aware that it was impossible to move down
the stairs and out of the door without her knowing that he had been
watching her. There was no other course but to go back into his own
room, and it seemed to him a silly thing to abandon so pleasurable a
spectacle. It did not matter so long as she remained in ignorance of his
spying.

At last, wearied of the game, she threw herself down on a kind of
outdoor sofa in the lower gallery, where she lay back, the _peignoir_
open, one hand trailing over the side to stroke the arched back of the
cat. It was a lovely picture, like the aphrodisiac drawings which some
member of the Lche family had left hanging in his bedroom, drawings
signed by Fragonard.

Then suddenly the silver bell rang, and he heard the voice of Old
Seraphine calling, "Baroness, yo coffee is fresh and hot." At the sound
of the old negress's voice she rose lazily, gathered the _peignoir_
about her, and went into the house, the gold mules she wore on her feet
clattering across the stones of the gallery. As she entered the wide
doorway she looked back over her shoulder towards the garden and
laughed, and for the first time it occurred to him that she had known he
was there all the time behind the wistaria-covered pilaster, and he felt
the blood rising into his face. In some obscure way she had made a fool
of him.

Then he had seen her again for a moment one evening when, just before he
was going out for the night to gamble at a house in Chartres Street, she
came again to his door. This time she did not come inside, but only
stood on the threshold, saying, "I came to see if you were comfortable."

He grinned, "Perfectly, thank you." And he looked at her boldly with his
eyes smiling, as if to tell her that he had watched her in the garden
and that he knew she had been aware of it. The look in her own eyes was
a perfect answer.

She said, "I had hoped you would come calling again."

He could not say that he had not come because he had found the first
evening bewildering and unpleasant. He only said, "I have been very
busy. Now the port has opened again there is a terrible amount of work."
And then he felt a little silly, knowing that they were both standing,
there making idiotic formal speeches which had nothing to do with what
was in their minds and hearts. He thought, "She is a bold one," and
said, "I would like to call again another night if I may have the
permission."

"Certainly, my friend. This time I will try at least to keep Grand'mre
out of the way. She is sour because she is no longer young. You must
forgive her. She was a great beauty once. It is misery for beauties when
they fade."

Suddenly he said, "Won't you come in and sit down? I have nothing to
offer you but some port."

She smiled again, "No, thank you. To-night is not the proper time. Old
Seraphine will be ringing me to dinner. If there is anything you need,
you must call on us."

Then she had gone away, leaving him bewildered again and feeling like
an awkward yokel. She was a lady and yet she behaved like a trollop, or
perhaps it was only that ladies behaved like that in Paris. He had never
met any woman like her, with grand airs, and yet inviting and bold all
at the same time.

What she had done was to fix her image in his mind so that the memory of
La Lionne scarcely existed any longer for him. A dozen times during the
day, he would find himself, sometimes during his work, sometimes in the
middle of a conversation, sometimes over a drink, suddenly lost in a
kind of fog from which only her image emerged, now in the yellow ball
gown, now in the nightdress, now in the black gown with a fichu she wore
as she stood in the doorway. He no longer remembered Agnes at all save
when David's pale face and blue eyes brought her to mind for an instant.

And so to-night, instead of going on from caf to caf, from gambling
house to gambling house, he was returning home to bed early, on the
chance that he might have a glimpse of her or, better still, that by
some miracle he would find her alone or in such circumstances that he
could break down somehow that half-mocking air of grandeur which
separated them as man and woman. He did not even know her Christian
name; he might never even have heard it. He only knew her as the
Baroness de Lche or the young Baroness. "To-morrow," he thought, as he
walked through the dark streets, "I must ask Seraphine."

The moon came up later now and as he turned into the dark impasse which
led to the courtyard entrance, he had to feel his way along the wall
until he reached the door. The great key slipped into the lock at the
first try and, grinning in the darkness, he thought, "That is a good
omen. It means the way is easy."

The garden inside was in darkness save for a patch of light which came
from the open French door of the drawing-room on the upper gallery.
Again he smiled, for this, too, was a good omen. Perhaps she was there,
alone.

Quietly he climbed the stairway and walked along the gallery to the open
doorway. He had stepped into the light before the people in the
drawing-room heard him. He had even stood there for a second or two
before they became aware of his presence. There were three men in the
room, the dark cousin and two strangers, both young. One of them was
seated in a chair and beside him stood Old Seraphine holding a basin
beneath his arm which had been bared to the elbow. The young Baroness
bent over him, bathing the arm from which came a thin trickle of blood.
The water in the basin held by Old Seraphine was red with blood.

It was the young Baroness who noticed him first, although she stood with
her back to him. As if she _felt_ his presence she turned and said,
quite calmly, "Good evening. Won't you come in?"

The others turned quickly. Old Seraphine screamed and very nearly
dropped the basin.

Quite calmly the young Baroness said, "We have had an accident... if
you can call a duel an accident. My friend here has been wounded in the
arm." Then very grandly, she introduced the two strangers, "My neighbour
Monsieur MacTavish and my friend Monsieur Delaphaine."

Tom Bedloe bowed and said, "I should be glad to be of help if there is
anything I can do."

The two strangers and the cousin only stared at him in a hostile fashion
without speaking and the young Baroness moved a little nearer. She said
in a low voice, "If you want to be of help you will go away. Duels are
forbidden by law. My friends would prefer it."

So there was nothing for him but to go away. When he had bowed and gone,
the doors were closed quickly behind him, shutting out all the light
save for what filtered through the openings in the shutters.

He scarcely slept at all that night and twice he rose and partly dressed
to go to the Caf Imperial and find La Lionne, but each time he went
back to bed deflated because the image of La Lionne no longer brought
any feeling of excitement.

In the morning when, over his coffee in a caf in Chartres Street, he
read the _Delta_, the only paper permitted to be published by the
General, he found a bit of news which made all the disconnected
incidents of the night before suddenly fit together like the pieces of a
picture puzzle.

He read, "_A dastardly murder was committed last night near the corner
of Bourbon and Toulouse Streets opposite the opera house, when Mr.
Lucius M. Willock, a northern merchant in New Orleans to buy cotton, was
shot to death by two unknown assailants believed to be members of a
traitorous gang known as The Defenders. With him was Colonel Marcus B.
Danton, of the staff of the General in Command of New Orleans, who
received a bullet in the right shoulder. The cowardly assailants made
their escape into the darkness, leaving the dead and wounded gentlemen
lying on the banquettes. One of the assassins is believed to have been
shot in the arm by the orderly accompanying Colonel Danton who bravely
drew his carbine and fired...._"

The rest of the article was a denunciation of New Orleans and her
citizens, filled with threats of hangings and shootings, all bearing
evidence of the vituperative violence of the General's wife.

Tom Bedloe put down his paper and grinned. The death of Lucius M.
Willock could only be regarded as a benefit not only to the city of New
Orleans but to the human race. He knew him as a tall, lean, weasel-faced
thief who had come to the prostrate city to batten upon its misery,
buying up even furniture and women's clothes, coddling "bad niggers,"
wriggling his way into politics for the greater plundering that was to
come once the freed negroes ran the State. And even the wound of Colonel
Marcus B. Danton--the pompous devil--did not alarm him. It might take
some of the starch out of his shirt-front.

Now he understood the scene in the hall at the General's party and the
curious tableau in the old de Lche house. For a little time he sat
pondering the story and then suddenly there came, in a flash of
inspiration, an idea of how it might be turned to his own advantage. He
had found a way, perhaps, to break down that puzzling wall which
separated him from the young Baroness.

Calling for a pen and a piece of paper, he wrote, "I saw nothing last
night. I understand nothing. Do not be alarmed." He did not sign it but
he addressed it to the Baroness Louis de Lche and calling a boy, gave
him a coin to deliver it. Then he walked out into the broiling sun to go
to his office. After all, the omens of last night might be good after
all.

       *       *       *       *       *

On that first day of their strange journey up from the Gulf through the
Delta country, black Csar rowed all day through the heat against the
sluggish current of the great river, keeping always inshore near the
fringe of mangroves which thrust their bare gnarled knees into the
shifting treacherous mud. Here the current was less strong but the heat
was more stifling, for the low-lying vegetation cut off the faint breeze
that stirred the thick green leaves. The heavy dory made the going
difficult and now and then the keel caught in the mud of a hidden bar
and there was nothing to do but let the current of the river turn the
boat and carry it back into deep water. Every hour or two the big black
man would fasten the boat to the overhanging vegetation and rest, his
great shoulders heaving with the effort, the sweat pouring down his
broad ebony face.

Opposite him Aunt Tam sat very straight holding the parasol over the
sleeping Agnes to save her milk-white skin from the ravages of the sun.
The girl slept with the dead sleep of the very young, only stirring
faintly once or twice when the boat eased, with a faint jolt off a mud
bar. The older woman was tired, but she was wiry and tough and the
excitement of the adventure kept her awake; and there was the life in
and about the mangrove swamp which they skirted--the alligators, the
great turtles, the glittering clouds of aigrettes, the crows, the gulls,
the water snakes--a teeming life that seemed to inhabit and infest all
the vegetation which covered the fertile alluvial mud. In a way she was
thankful for the abandonment of the _San Cristobal_; aboard a big ship
they would have been forced to keep to the middle of the river where the
current ran swift and strong, far from the shore. They would have seen
nothing of this fascinating life at close hand.

And as she sat opposite the great black man she kept thinking about him,
wondering at his devotion, speculating upon what went on inside his
heart and mind. He was like a great friendly dog, simple and
good-natured. Sometimes, after he had rested for a time, he would sing
until the heat and the exertion forced him to stop and give all his
strength to the simple business of pulling the heavy dory upstream.
Occasionally they exchanged a few words, Aunt Tam speaking her tram-car
French and Csar his jargon of three languages. Even on that first
morning a new relationship between them began to come into being--a kind
of friendship founded upon a sudden sense of recognition between two
utterly simple and kindly people. Sometimes they did not speak at all
but when their eyes met as Csar leaned back on the oars, the plain
horse face of Aunt Tam would soften into a smile and Csar, responding,
would show his perfect double row of shining white teeth. What they were
saying to each other--the gaunt spinster from Boston and the great
negro--was quite simple. They were saying, "What a wonderful and
beautiful world this is, so filled with things which make you feel happy
inside... things like the glistening beauty of the white aigrettes, and
the lovely suspended timeless grace of a great sand crane rising in
flight, and the comic ugliness of the alligators, and the deep rich
green of the mango leaves and the fertile smell of the life sustaining
mud carried down from the great plains and wooded hills of far-off Iowa
and Illinois and Ohio and Kentucky and Tennessee."

Aunt Tam had really never had time in all her life to think about what
people were like inside, or about the wonders of being _inside_ of
Nature and Creation itself. Always she had been too busy with ideas ever
to touch and penetrate the beautiful simplicity of reality. Always in
the world in which she lived, she had, breathlessly, been struggling to
keep up with the brilliant minds of Mr. Emerson and Margaret Fuller,
trying to create and hold a place for herself in a world far removed
from realities which concerned itself with the exterior of _things_ and
the interior of abstractions. And in the end she had fallen into a
breathless confusion in which her catalogues of exterior things kept in
her journal was the only order.

The first signs of what was happening to her she neither recognized nor
understood. She only knew that since the moment she had followed Agnes
down the ladder from the window of the Grand Htel de Salamanca, a vague
but powerful new element had come into her existence. From the moment
she left the deceived and tiresome Commander of the _Allegheny_ behind
her in the harbour of San Cristobal de la Habana, she had felt her soul
and spirit growing. The sense of beauty she had experienced even in the
midst of the hardship and terror of the hurricane; there had been in the
pounding sea and the howling wind and the darkness a kind or
magnificence in which she herself had participated in some strange
fashion. And so in her heart she had never really been frightened
because she was all the while on the _inside_, a part of the whole
spectacle. If she died, she was a part of it, and she would go on and on
just the same, because in some puzzling fashion she had left behind her
all the _exteriorness_ of the life in Boston, all the endless talk and
writing, all her own brother's dreadful material sense of property and
possessions. In her heart she was still puzzled, but the new excitement
prevailed. It was as if she could feel herself growing.

Sometimes Csar would grin and in his jargon say, "Look at old man
turtle a-carryin' house right on his own back, steppin' down into the
water, pullin' in his head and toes if old man alligator gits after'n
him. Dey ain't no alligator wants to chew up Mr. Turtle's shell and
digest it," or "De aigrette is de bird of Hebben. When de gates of
Hebben opens up Monsieur and Madame Aigrette is goin' to be de first
birds a-flyin' in." And he called the great cranes "Granpa Crane!"
affectionately, as if the wise birds were in some way related to him.
And Aunt Tam would smile back at him and try to remember all he said and
told her, so that she could write it down in her journal when they
stopped for the night.

It was funny! It seemed to her that she had always felt the same
affection for animals and birds that black Csar showed, only she had
never showed it or been allowed to show it. In her world they had always
been more interested in the colour of the feathers of a bird, or its
Latin name or the history of its migration or the number of eggs it
laid; they had never any feeling of the bird itself. And the discovery
made her feel warm and happy inside. It even made her feel differently
about the girl who lay asleep beside her, her blonde head on her
shoulder. It was as if until now her niece had been an _object_,
something detached and apart from her, a very conventional object of
which she had been very fond. But this was different, this new feeling.
It seemed to illuminate Agnes and black Csar and all the world about
her, even the ugly alligators and turtles.

       *       *       *       *       *

About noon she saw a ship slipping down the river. It lay well out in
the middle of the river, its sails hanging limp, being carried down by
the current. When she told Csar of her discovery, he stopped rowing,
turned quickly to regard the ship and then deftly drew the dory close in
to the mangroves, so close beneath the branches that it was very nearly
hidden.

When she asked why he had done this, he explained that these were
war-times and that one could not tell who was an enemy and who a friend.
And while he was in Cuba he had heard that the river and the inlets and
bayous were infested with every sort of scoundrel--deserters, escaped
war prisoners, men who had broken jail during the siege; and there were
always the native bad characters, the Sabines who were part Negro and
part Indian, escaped slaves, and desperadoes of all sorts. You couldn't
know in these times who was aboard a ship like that or what they were up
to.

When he saw her expression turn to alarm as she listened, he grinned and
added, "Doan you worry, Miss Tam. You just stick by Csar. This is ma
country, this river country. Csar knows every bayou and _raccourci_.
Ah'll git you safe into New Orleans."

In half an hour the schooner drifted so far downstream that it was lost
in the mist of heat over the water, and Csar, taking up the oars, set
the dory upstream once more. About three o'clock in the afternoon, Aunt
Tam sighted another boat, this time a steam vessel with a plume of black
smoke which drifted before it, and again Csar executed the manoeuvre of
hiding under the mangroves. As the boat steamed past them Aunt Tam
thought from its flatness and the great height of its paddle-wheels, it
must be a gun-boat, although she could not make out whether it flew the
Union or the Confederate flag. It was a long way off across the muddy
immensity of the river and the flag hung limp.

If it had been a Union gun-boat they would have been safe, but she could
not know for sure, and in any case she was beginning to doubt whether
she wanted to be rescued just yet.

About sunset a faint breeze came up the river from the Gulf, and
presently Csar drew the dory close into the branches and standing up on
the highest part of the boat he studied both banks of the river for a
long time. Then he loosened the boat again and, turning it, set out
across the river.

The current carried them slowly downstream but Csar, it seemed; had
calculated on this, and as he reached the other shore he allowed the
boat to drift close to the mangroves until it had slipped down river for
about a hundred yards. Then with a couple of powerful strokes of the
oars he thrust the bow through an opening scarcely wide enough for the
boat to slip through and they were suddenly in a hidden lagoon where the
still water was clearer than the water of the Mississippi and reflected
the reeds and the mangroves like an oval mirror.

As they entered the lagoon Csar grinned at Aunt Tam as if to let her
know how clever he had been. Then he said, "We camp here all night--a
little farther on big island."

The boat headed for a narrow opening at the far end of the lagoon and as
they passed through this they came into a new world.

There were no longer any mangroves but only grotesque, gnarled trees
that stood up to their knees in black water. They rose to a great height
and shut out the fading twilight less by the thickness of their
green-black foliage than by the long garlands of moss that hung like
great strands of greying hair from their topmost branches. As the boat
slid into this dim, still, enchanted world, the aigrettes perched in the
tree-tops set up a great screeching and, flying high into the air,
caught the rays of the dying sun on their white plumage and bent them
downwards into the grey wet forest and the still water so that the whole
place seemed suddenly illuminated.

It was at this moment that Agnes stirred and waking, opened her eyes.
For a little time she lay half-dazed by sleep, her head still on the
shoulder of Aunt Tam. Then slowly the wild, alarming cries of the birds
and the white of their reflected images in the dark water roused her and
she thought, still befogged with sleep, "I have died and this is the
world of the dead." Even when she saw the black face and grinning white
teeth of Csar before her and felt the touch of Aunt Tam's hand, the
illusion still remained. Perhaps they, too, had drowned in the
hurricane.

Then Aunt Tam asked, "Are you all right, my dear?" And with an effort
she answered, "I'm all right. Where are we?"

Then Aunt Tam explained and Csar put in a word or two.

The girl was hungry, hungrier than she had ever been before in all her
secure and well-ordered life. Hazily she thought, "It must be awful for
people who really don't have enough to eat." She did not feel like
talking. She only wanted to stretch herself like a waking kitten and
watch the tall black cypresses and the dark water slipping past. The
aigrettes had circled about and were now sitting again in the tops of
the trees.

Then the dory came again into a small round lagoon with a kind of island
on the far side. Here there was solid earth and out of it growing, great
low-branched live oaks so thick that beneath them there was no
vegetation but only dried brown leaves.

Csar, grinning, said, "We stay here to-night."

       *       *       *       *       *

Once the chest Csar had brought was put ashore on the island, he
vanished tactfully into the reeds that grew at the far end, leaving the
two Boston ladies to attend to their toilettes and make themselves as
comfortable as possible. Aunt Tam retired to a thicket on one side of
the open grove and Agnes to another similarly placed, and after a little
time each emerged.

In the peculiar circumstances in which they found themselves, so unlike
anything they had imagined even in the wildest flights of Aunt Tam's
fanciful mind, there seemed remarkably little to talk about. One or the
other might have said, "How extraordinary that only six weeks ago we
should have been sitting safely beside the comfortable fire in Pinckney
Street," but that seemed a remark so obvious that neither of them made
it.

They did remark to each other upon the unearthly beauty of the spot and
upon the cloud of white aigrettes which, apparently overcome by
curiosity, had now abandoned the tall cypresses for the upper limbs of
the spreading wild oaks just above their heads. The birds kept uttering
wild cries and shifting their positions so that the tops of the trees
were in a perpetual state of agitation.

Then Aunt Tam seated herself on the chest and opening her reticule took
out a pair of scissors and lifting her skirt began cutting the threads
which fastened the fashionable crinoline frame into her voluminous
skirt.

"It is of no use," she observed. "It's only a fad in any case and a
great nuisance getting in and out of the boat."

As she ripped her way to the higher reaches of the skirt, she said,
"Now, my dear, you'll have to help. I can't reach any higher and I can't
reach the back."

So Agnes lifted the skirt and after a moment's snipping, the crinoline
frame fell about Aunt Tam's ankles and she stepped free of it with a
shake of her skirt, saying, "There! That's better. They're all nonsense
anyway!"

Then in turn she freed Agnes from her contraption, and standing off to
regard her, she said, "You're much prettier without it, dear. Now we can
climb about as we like."

At the same moment Aunt Tam noticed the reeds moving as if some animal
were advancing towards them, and after a moment a whole section of the
reeds appeared to detach itself and come in their direction. It was
Csar returning. He carried on his broad back a whole bundle of reeds to
make a thatched shelter for the night.

Deftly he went to work, grinning. In a few minutes he had erected a
frame and covered it with reeds, making a dry rather pleasant dog house.
Then he went away again and returned in a little while with more reeds
for their beds. Agnes went down to the edge of the bayou to wash her
hands and face, but Aunt Tam watched, and after a while she was seized
with an overwhelming desire to participate in the pioneer work. So Csar
set her to gathering wood for the fires that were to keep off the
millions of mosquitoes which had already begun to buzz in clouds in the
blue twilight.

Csar, it appeared, had thought of everything. Once the shelter was made
and the fires started, he opened the chest and brought out hard biscuits
and salt and pepper, an iron kettle and some salt pork. Then he
disappeared again. Aunt Tam and Agnes seated themselves on piles of
reeds inside a ring of small fires and listened to the night sounds that
had begun at dusk to arise from out of the great swamp--the splash of
alligators, the hoarse croaking of great bull frogs, the occasional cry
of a bird. It was a lost and lovely world and they both felt
extraordinarily peaceful and happy. Aunt Tam was very tired and all the
excitement was beginning to wear off a little.

Presently she said to Agnes, "What are you thinking about?"

"I'm thinking about Tom and David and Papa and what they'll think when
they discover we're lost."

"It's nothing to worry about. We'll be in New Orleans before the news
could reach your father, and Tom and David don't even know we're
coming."

"But Uncle James and Aunt Louisa will, and they'll tell the others."

There was a silence with the night sounds breaking the stillness. Then
Aunt Tam asked abruptly, "Are you really in love with Tom Bedloe, my
dear?"

For a moment Agnes was silent, bewildered by the suddenness of a
question which very likely Aunt Tam would never have had the boldness to
ask back in the house in Pinckney Street. The girl tried to examine
herself, but getting back no answer, she said, "I don't know, Aunt Tam.
I don't know what love really is."

"I'm sure I couldn't tell you," said Aunt Tam, "but I thought you might
know."

Again after a little silence, Agnes said, "I only know that I want to
see him more than anything in the world, and that when he's near me I
feel different... all excited and happy and a little crazy so that I'm
ashamed of myself afterward. I feel as if I'd do anything in the world
to keep him and be near him."

"Well," said Aunt Tam, "that sounds like what love is supposed to be. I
only asked because I wanted you to be sure. He makes me feel excited
too, especially when he jokes with me, but I wouldn't call it love."

They got no further with their discussion, for out of the shadows,
beyond the drifting wall of smoke, Csar appeared looming up like some
giant out of the swamp. He carried the iron kettle and it was filled
with oysters.

First he filled the pot with water from the bayou and put it over the
fire and then squatting on his haunches, he opened the oysters and cut
the salt pork into small cubes. Then with his great knife he chopped the
herbs he had gathered into fine pieces and emptied the lot into the pot.
After it had boiled for a time he added salt and pepper and a few onions
he had brought out of the chest and then at the last the sailors'
biscuit which he broke into fine pieces and poured into the stew. The
smell that came from the boiling pot was stronger now even than that of
the smoke from the fires or the damp peaty smell of the swamp itself. It
was quite dark before Csar, with the air of a great chef, produced two
great iron spoons from the chest and said, grinning, "Mangez! Good
mangez!"

But Aunt Tam said, "What about you, Csar?"

"Csar mangez after."

She attempted to argue but it all came to nothing. The great negro would
eat what was left.

Then as Aunt Tam and Agnes ate, sitting on bundles of reeds, the moon
came up behind the tall cypresses hung with Spanish moss on the far side
of the lagoon and overhead the aigrettes, stirred into wakefulness as if
by a false dawn, chortled and shook their glistening white feathers, and
Aunt Tam forgetting, despite her hunger, to eat, sat for a long time
enchanted by the beauty of the night and the sounds of the bayou,
thinking again how fortunate she was to be alive in so lovely a world.

And even Agnes, nearly desperate with the hunger of a healthy young
woman, was aware of the strange soft loveliness that had the qualities
in it of mystery and eternity. Towards the end of the excellent and
savoury meal, she sat, staying for a time with the great iron spoon
poised, looking out of the lagoon, dreaming, barely conscious of
reality.

The strange adventure started in far-off Havana was beginning to have an
effect upon her as well as Aunt Tam. In this moment she was happy, in a
way she had never before been happy, with a kind of ecstasy that
blotted out everything that she had left behind her, all the neat little
life, the protection of her sober father, the imbecilities of her
private school, the thin arid quality of Boston itself which was like
October air in stony New England. In the stillness as the moon rose
steadily above the black cypresses, it seemed to her that she could feel
her soul expanding. The soft air faintly stirred by a breeze from the
Gulf caressed her cheeks.

Quietly, without disturbing her, as if she understood the turmoil which
had begun inside the heart of the girl, Aunt Tam pushed the iron pot
towards Csar. Quickly he finished what was left in the pot and then,
leaning back against the chest, he began to sing in a deep voice which
took on a new beauty in the voluptuousness of the setting. He sang in
his own _patois_:

    _Malle couri dan deser_
    _Malle marche dan savane_
    _Malle marche su piquan dor_
    _Malle oui a yu de moin._

The voice rang high and clear in the stillness of the night. Although
Aunt Tam understood very little of the _patois_ French she knew enough
to divine that what Csar was singing was a song of homesickness, for
the plantation and the country from which he had run away. There was
verse after verse each time bringing a refrain.

    _Sange moin dans l'abilateur ce la la?_
    _Mo gagnain soutchien la Louisane_
    _Malle oir a ya de moin!_

On her pallet of reeds Agnes understood nothing of the song. She had
slipped down now into a lying position, her head resting on the crook of
one elbow, looking out across the water. The dreaminess still enveloped
her, and through it she was dimly aware of Csar's music, as if it came
from a great distance. Now and then a thought took form, lazy,
voluptuous thoughts, strange to her. She wondered what it was like to be
a man, what Tom was really like inside himself, behind the good looks
and the easy, half-cynical manner. And presently she found herself
thinking of the gesture made by the sailors as she passed them on the
deck of the _San Cristobal_, and what it meant. They were strange
thoughts in the mind of a young virgin from Pinckney Street.

Then the singing ceased suddenly as Csar rose to put more wood and damp
leaves on the smudge fires. As he bent over the dim flames he said,
"To-morrow we eat better. Demain we come into Csar's pays.... Csar's
country."

They slept well, even Agnes who had slept all the day. Outside the
thatched shelter, Csar lay on a pile of reeds under the open sky.

In the morning they set out again on their journey but they did not
return to the great muddy river. Csar took them farther and farther
into the vast swamp. When Aunt Tam asked when they would arrive in New
Orleans he explained that they were not going to New Orleans at all. New
Orleans was a _mauvais_ town now, filled with Yankee soldiers and
bandits from up North. He had heard about it from sailors in Havana. It
was not a safe place to take the ladies. He would take them first to his
own country, to the plantation that was his home. Then if it was safe he
would conduct them to New Orleans.

When Agnes heard the news, she began to cry. Aunt Tam tried to comfort
her but experienced very little success, perhaps because she herself did
not mind if they never reached New Orleans. Sitting there holding the
parasol over Agnes, she was happy. She would have so many things to
write in her journal when they camped again for the night.

Csar, now rowing, now poling the boat, took them through forests of
cypresses and great meadowlands of reeds, following the serpentine
course of the bayou, now and then taking to a raccourci so narrow that
he had to get ashore and push or pull the clumsy dory through the beds
of mauve water-hyacinths that were like blankets of pale orchids set in
emerald green. And presently Agnes forgot her disappointment and became
lost again in a kind of waking dream in which strange thoughts and
coloured fancies passed through her brain like shadows in a magic
lantern show.

       *       *       *       *       *

In New Orleans the news of the fate of the _San Cristobal_ was brought
up the river by a Philadelphia schooner. The Captain reported that a
Spanish ship had been found drifting in the Gulf. Apparently she had
dragged her anchor and at last broken the cable which held it. On board
the ship there was no one but the Captain dead in his cabin of what
appeared to be cholera. The ship's papers showed that she was bound
from Havana to New Orleans with a mixed cargo. The Philadelphia
schooner, _Betsy Ann_ by name and commanded by Captain Philander Pike,
had towed the boat inshore and anchored her there. No member of the crew
was willing to stay aboard her.

In a little while, the news of the ghost ship spread everywhere in the
city, along the wharves and then through the French market and into the
cafs, where with each repetition the tale grew in fantasy until it was
reported that the ship was manned only by a crew of skeletons and that
when she was first sighted, at night, she was ablaze with light. Around
Congo Square it was even told among the negroes that the ship herself
was only the ghost of an old Spanish slave-ship which had gone down with
everyone on board during the great hurricane of 1809.

About noon the news reached David Wicks, sitting in the port authority's
office in place of Tom Bedloe who had not come in at all that day. All
morning David had waited for him, uncertain in his timid, dreamy way of
what decisions to make in the cases which had come up before him. Once
or twice he had considered sending a black boy round to Tom's billet to
inquire after him, but each time, after hesitation, he had decided that
Tom had had a bad night at the Caf Imperial and would turn up before it
was time to lunch.

But in the end the hour of lunch had come without any sign or message
from Tom and he went out into the hot streets, vaguely alarmed but
unable to decide upon any course of action. In any case he could not
afford to be late to lunch.

He was having noon-day dinner at the General's house and it was not an
engagement to which he looked forward with pleasure. The bullying manner
of the General always made him uncomfortable and the General's wife
terrified him.

The dinner was not good. Even David who had small concern for food was
aware of its indifference. It was a kind of New England boiled dinner,
prepared with contempt by a black Louisiana cook in the kitchen
adjoining the horses downstairs and it was sloppily served by a
middle-aged soldier in uniform, thus saving the expense of an extra
servant. Nor was there any conversation worthy of the name, but only a
series of tirades denouncing everything in the State of Louisiana,
delivered by the General as if he were addressing an assembly hall
filled with people. The only interruption came from the General's wife,
whose pouter-pigeon bosom rose and fell with pleasure at the General's
denunciations. Now and then when he paused for breath Aunt Louisa
managed to put in a word, urging him to fresh outbursts. Meanwhile David
sat there dreamily, trying to eat the bad food, half-listening to the
long account of fresh outrages committed by the citizens of New Orleans
against the innocent, well-meaning Union troops and the benevolent
carpet-baggers, and wishing vaguely that heaven and nature had not
allied him to Uncle James and Aunt Louisa.

And then just as the baked apple was brought in, an orderly appeared
with two messages for the General. Opening them he read them both
through, his face growing slowly more and more purple with indignation.
When he had finished, he turned to the orderly and said, "Tell Colonel
Moss he is to send out a battalion at once and round up every one of
them. Shut them up and keep them shut up."

The man saluted and went out and when he had gone the General slapped
the papers on the table and said, "Damned foreigners!" and asked the
soldier who served them to bring him a glass of baking soda dissolved in
water.

"It's a damned shame! What chance has a man's digestion... always being
disturbed even at meal times."

He tossed the messages across the table for his wife and David to read.

The first was simply a report of the finding of the _San Cristobal_ with
its Captain dead in his cabin. The second was more grave. A messenger
had come up from down river to report that three sailors, Spanish by
origin, and members of the crew of the _San Cristobal_, had been
captured. A detachment of Union soldiers had come upon them on a marshy
island near Pilotstown. They were starving and ill and half-devoured by
mosquitoes. At first the detachment had believed them to be escaped
Confederate prisoners, but when, at last, a man was found who could
speak Spanish, they learned that they were deserting sailors who had
left the _San Cristobal_ because of the cholera aboard. Thirty-seven of
them in all had left the ship and were now scattered among the islands
in the Delta, all of them possibly carrying the horrible disease with
them. It was bad enough already with yellow fever gaining daily in the
city and the adjoining parishes; the presence of cholera would only
increase the panic that was beginning to spread through New Orleans.

But at the end of the message there was a line or two the significance
of which the General in his agitation had overlooked. It was his wife
who caught their meaning. She put down the paper suddenly and going a
shade paler, she said, "James, did you read the last of this?"

"Yes, of course I read it. I read all my dispatches thoroughly."

For a moment she hesitated and then turning towards David she said,
"Would you mind, David, going into the parlour for your coffee? I'll
send it in to you. There's something I must discuss privately with the
General."

So David, relieved at the prospect of peace in the drawing-room, went
away and when he had gone, Aunt Louisa said, "James, you didn't read all
of it! You didn't read about the two women."

"I read about the two women. Croles probably... rebel strumpets!
Trash!"

The General's wife picked up the dispatch. Her hand was shaking now. She
read, "The escaped sailors spoke of two American ladies, accompanied by
a giant negro, who had been passengers aboard the _San Cristobal_. They
said the ladies were left on board. The ship was empty when discovered
and we have been unable to find any trace of them. The fugitives
described them as a middle-aged woman and a young girl."

The General regarded his wife and bluntly said, "Well!"

"Well nothing," said his wife. "It sounds to me as if it was Tam and
Agnes."

At that the General showed faint signs of agitation. "It couldn't be,"
he said. "They were safe with Captain Hazlitt on the _Allegheny_. I know
Hazlitt. He's not the sort of man to permit such a thing. Tam and Agnes
aboard a dirty Spanish freight boat. It's impossible!"

His wife was silent for a moment. "I don't know," she said. "I hope
you're right. I'd agree with you but for Tam with all her crazy
ideas.... You've got to do something about it. Ethan would never forgive
us if anything happened to Agnes. She's a silly young girl who knows
nothing about the world... and Tam is no better."

The General gravely drank his baking soda pausing only to belch. Then
he said, "It would be very unfortunate... very unfortunate indeed."

He had scarcely finished speaking when the answer came in the form of
the Captain of the U.S. gunboat _Tallahassee_. He was a tall thin man
with a sallow face. When he had saluted, he said, "I am afraid I have
bad news for you, sir."

His boat had come, he said, straight from Havana and he brought a
message which concerned members of the General's family--by name, Miss
Abigail and Miss Agnes Wicks. They were aboard the _San Cristobal_. He
already knew the fate of the ship. He had a letter from Captain Hazlitt
of the _Allegheny_, but Captain Hazlitt could not have known what had
happened to the _San Cristobal_.

At this point the General's wife, who was experiencing strangely mixed
emotions, partly excitement over the story and partly a feeling of
faintness over its implications, sent the orderly to fetch her a glass
of port.

Silently, indignantly, as if all the inhabitants of the terrestrial
globe were joined in one vast conspiracy to torment him and aggravate
his dyspepsia, the General tore open the letter and read. When he had
finished, he said, "You were right. It's that damned Tam."

"Where are they?" cried the General's wife. "What has become of them?"
Her voice trembled with hysteria. She was, it was clear, on the verge of
one of her "attacks." "Answer me," she cried, "don't sit there like a
fool!"

At this, the General said in a loud voice, "How am I to know? How is
Hazlitt to know in Havana? Good God! Woman! Show some sense!"

The General's wife gave a faint scream and said, "General Wicks! I won't
be spoken to like that!" And the Commander of the _Tallahassee_, fearing
a dramatic scene, made a respectful but uneasy exit, leaving word where
he could be found, if needed.

When he had gone the General rose pompously and said, "All this, Louisa,
was your idea--the idea of having Tam and Agnes come here, and the idea
of surprising David and Tom Bedloe. I shouldn't like to face either Tom
or David with the news. That is your job, Mrs. Wicks. You thought up
this romantic nonsense. I am off to the St. Charles Hotel to do what I
can to find out what has become of that fool Tam and poor little
Agnes."

And before she could attack him or scream, or faint, he was gone.

For a moment she contemplated running after him, forcing him to come
back and help her break the news to David, innocently drinking his
coffee in the other room. But she remembered that after all it had been
her idea to bring them here and to bring them secretly. The General had
been against it from the beginning, believing that a solid business man
like Ethan Wicks would never accept so wild a plan. There was no romance
in the General--no one knew that better than his wife. Indeed the whole
plan, like her tantrums and vapours, grew out of starved romanticism,
out of being married to a man who regarded the marital act merely as a
rather unpleasant necessity, like physicking once a week.

All without knowing it she had planned a romantic meeting for Agnes and
Tom Bedloe as a vicarious pleasure. In the long hours in which there was
little to occupy her--for she had no female companionship save the
hostile black cook and the crow-faced and even more hostile wife of the
Quartermaster--she had remained for long periods engaged in reveries in
which hazily she imagined herself to be Agnes Wicks and her lover to be
Tom Bedloe. It was, when she thought of it, a very silly diversion, but
because she enjoyed it she tried not to think how silly it was. For in
spite of the fact that she came from Maine and was "smart" and a
penurious housekeeper, the pathetic fact remained that God had made her
flesh in the mould of a female, and females at a certain period of their
lives, when very often their attractions had already faded, were subject
to an exaggerated romanticism. Although it had never occurred to her,
simply because she refused to allow it to occur to her, the fact was
that she herself was a little in love with Tom Bedloe, not only because
he was good-looking and young, but because he was everything the General
was not, and because he was a symbol of all she had missed in life, all
that it was now too late ever to experience. In her less excited moments
she herself saw that the whole idea of Aunt Tam's and Agnes's visit was
folly, but for the remainder of the time, it seemed to her not only
perfectly logical but romantic and exciting.

The anger caused by the unchivalrous, the rebellious behaviour of the
General brought on hot flushes again, and before she went in to relate
the news to David, she took two of the large pills advised by the
Quartermaster-General's wife as efficacious in such circumstances.

She was glad that it was David and not Tom Bedloe whom she was to face.
David was a poet and a milksop, and Agnes was only his sister. It would
be different with Tom. She shuddered, not without pleasure, at the
thought of what he would say to her, at the thought of the curse-words
he would use. She would tell David first and David, in the natural
course of events, would tell Tom.

So, pulling herself together, she opened the heavy doors of the
MacTavish drawing-room which always awed her a little by its size and
elegance, and went in to tell David.

       *       *       *       *       *

He seemed to take the news calmly enough, in his dreamy way, as if he
did not understand the full seriousness of it. He listened and when she
had finished, he only sat still without speaking at all, as if turning
the thing over in his mind. And now the calmness which she had hoped for
at the beginning of the interview, only irritated her. There was no
drama whatever in the scene. It was all flat. So after a moment she
said, "I hope you appreciate what it means. They may be dead... both of
them, of cholera... a loathsome disease. Or they may be held prisoners
by the drunken crew. They may be suffering worse than death. Even if
they have escaped, the prospect is a terrible one. All that swamp
country is overrun by renegade negroes and escaped war prisoners and
convicts. What chance have two gently bred women in a vast swamp filled
with alligators and snakes in human form?"

Even this catalogue of horrors seemed not to move the boy. He sat
staring at her with his large blue eyes, and she thought,
contemptuously, "He ought to have been a girl! Agnes is the boy of the
twins." The General's wife under other circumstances might have
developed strong tastes in men.

Then he rose and said, "It is very serious. I think it was a very
foolish idea in the beginning. I'll find Tom. He'll know what to do."

"The General," she said, "will of course do everything possible, even to
sending out a whole regiment if necessary."

But he was already out of the room, leaving her with a baffled feeling
that this callow, feminine young poet believed her as big a fool as did
the blustering General. As he went out it dawned upon her that his
silence was not the silence of indifference but of contempt.

       *       *       *       *       *

He hadn't said anything to the General's wife because he could think of
nothing to say. An odd thing had happened to him while he sat there
listening to her. While she told her story, justifying herself always,
there rose inside him an odd tumult of contempt and hatred, and when she
began her wretched and sadistic catalogue of the things which might have
happened to his sister Agnes and poor old Aunt Tam, there crystallized
out of the tumult of his emotions a grain of pure distilled hatred for
the dumpy, middle-aged, frustrated woman, not hatred for her because of
the misfortune she had brought into the midst of his family, but hatred
for all the things she was and stood for, all the things which he hated
in his own background and in New England. It was as if he understood for
the first time all the things which crippled his own existence and
stifled whatever talent he had, so that he always wrote restrained and
sentimental verses about snowstorms and graveyards, instead of writing
of the odd turbulent things he sometimes felt deep inside him. As he
went out of the room he thought, "I will never see Aunt Louisa again, no
matter what happens. She is a horrible, monstrous woman."

He was young, not yet twenty-one, and for his years he was young, having
lived always under the shadow of a powerful, protecting, dull man, Ethan
Wicks. He had lived always in books and in fantasy, and so for a little
time the horrible implications of his sister Agnes's possible fate had
no reality for him. His own love for her, that special curious love of
one twin for the other, had caused him pain so great that sometimes at
night his pillow was damp with his own tears. No, nothing must happen to
Agnes! Nothing could happen to Agnes! Things such as Aunt Louisa had
just recounted did not happen to people like his own family, living
respectably and quietly in Boston, secure in the knowledge that they had
only to step outside the door to have a reassuring glimpse of the
Common, or perhaps even of Mr. Emerson or some member of the Lowell
family. There was something sensational and indecent about the whole
thing, an indecency which had somehow to do with Aunt Louisa and
possibly even with Tom Bedloe.

The element of Tom was always in the background, menacing and riotous
and bewildering. In the beginning he had hated Tom because Agnes was
always talking and thinking of him, and then presently he had become
used to him, especially after Tom brought him to New Orleans and Agnes
was no longer at hand to watch him with abnormally bright eyes and pink
cheeks. He had got used to Tom but he never understood him. He had never
even hinted at Tom's philanderings in his letters home, partly because
it would only make trouble and unhappiness, and partly because he was
not quite certain of how dangerous and significant the philanderings
were. In his vague, bookish way he was both ignorant and innocent, more
like Agnes herself than a soldier. He knew vaguely about the violence
and untidiness of the lives of most of the common soldiers, but his own
fastidiousness drove him away from any close knowledge of the details of
their lives. What puzzled him was that Tom, who was such a nice fellow
and a gentleman when he chose to be, appeared to lead much the same sort
of goatish and disorderly existence, on a more expensive and elegant
scale to be sure, but otherwise not very different.

Yet Tom was at the same time, secretly and curiously, also a hero to
him, partly because to David, Byron was not only a great and romantic
poet but a great hero, and Tom, with his wildness and lady-killing, was
like Byron. It was very odd to feel inside you that you, too, were like
Byron, and still be unable to do anything about it, always to be chained
by doubts and fears and paralysed at the merest contact with women,
always driven back to books and dreaming instead of action. The reason,
he divined, vaguely in the midst of his rage and hatred for the
General's wife, had something to do with Aunt Louisa, with all her kind
of people and her kind of life--a life that was mean and small and
thin-blooded with no colour or excitement. Sometimes he thought that if
only he could overcome or destroy these subtle chains which held him
prisoner, if just once he could accept the invitation to life which Tom
had now and then held out to him, he might be a great poet writing
passionately as Byron and Shelley wrote, instead of writing pretty small
things about snowstorms and graveyards.

How to escape, he did not know.

What he did know was that in such a crisis as he now found himself, Tom
was the person who would know what to do--not the General or the
General's wife or anyone in all New Orleans, either Yankee or Rebel--but
Tom, because Tom would act. Tom would go to the rescue of Agnes, as
knights went in other days. He would find her. He would save her. It was
Tom he must find.

So he hired an old fiacre drawn by a broken-down mule, as good a vehicle
as was to be found in all the city, and set out for the port office. Tom
was not there and he ordered the driver to go direct to the de Lche
house.

Outside the door he stood on the step, his head and his heart still on
the borders of hysteria from the confusion of his emotions. He pulled
the bell again and again, listening to the distant jangle at the far end
of the closed garden and at last the door was opened by an old negro
whom he had never seen before.

Quickly the old man told him that Monsieur Tom was not there. He had not
been there since meal-time the evening before. Nor were any of the
family there. The old Baroness had gone into the country to stay with a
cousin, taking Old Seraphine with her. The young Baroness had gone to
the plantation Bel Manoir.

In Tom's room he found nothing which gave him any hint of what had
happened. It was exactly as Tom had left it, as if he had walked out
meaning to return in a little while. The papers on the desk were in the
same disorder, the bed unslept in. For half an hour, he went through the
papers trying to discover some clue to his whereabouts but there was
none. There were two letters from Agnes, written long before she left
Boston, and a great many official documents which to David meant
nothing. That was all.

He went to the doorway and stood for a time looking out over the gallery
into the garden, considering what he should do. Only one thing, he knew,
remained and that was to go to La Lionne's establishment. Tom might be
there. The tumult in his heart had abated a little, but the sense of
rebellion remained. He was filled with an odd reckless fury, feeling a
wild desire to live as Tom lived, wildly seizing every pleasure that
came his way.

Until now he had never gone to the Caf Imperial, even at Tom's
half-mocking invitation to take him there and "break him in." There had
always been dread in his heart. Now the dread suddenly was gone, lost in
his fury at the General's wife and his fear of what had happened to
Agnes. Poor little Agnes!

       *       *       *       *       *

It was three in the afternoon with the muggy heat creeping in through
doors and windows, when Big Ernestine came into La Lionne's room with
her black coffee to draw back the red brocade curtains and let in a thin
hot line of daylight.

La Lionne was in better spirits of late; the change had come over her
since Mama Tolanne began working her spell. She had hope again. She
resumed her efforts at elaborate make-up to conceal the ravages of
twenty-two years of hard living. She had even given up thinking of
selling the Caf Imperial. She lived for the moment on the blind hope of
a woman turned romantic at the approach of middle-age, a wild hope,
based upon folly and desire and so all the more desperate.

This afternoon Big Ernestine had come in grinning. She said, "Mama
Tolanne's spell has begun to work. There is a young man downstairs to
see you. He is a friend of Major Tom."

At that La Lionne first asked for her mirror and then as Ernestine put
the coffee on the table beside her, she said, "What kind of a young
man?" And Big Ernestine described him. Very young, she said he was, with
blond hair and blue eyes. She chuckled, "Un vierge, sans doute! He looks
frightened of the place."

At once La Lionne knew who it was because Major Tom had told her about
David, describing his shyness and his blond good looks and his fear of
the rowdy life of the Caf Imperial. At the same moment a plot formed
itself in the head of the French woman, not a very new plot certainly
for a woman in her business but one which sometimes worked. She said to
Ernestine, "Send him up to me in ten minutes and tell Cllie to get up
and dress herself and come here as quickly as she can."

In the ten minutes La Lionne rose from the bed and made up her face and
dusted her hair with the imitation gold powder, put on a _peignoir_
trimmed with lace and got back into the ebony and mother-of-pearl bed.
She had done none of this in order to lure the boy for herself. She had
no illusions. She knew that anyone as experienced as herself would only
terrify him and that to a boy so young she would seem an old woman. She
meant merely to make his call as attractive and charming as possible.
The rest she would leave to Cllie who was younger even than the boy
himself, younger at least in years.

       *       *       *       *       *

He came in shyly and at her invitation he sat on a chair on the far side
of the room. For a moment he looked about him with a bewildered air, and
La Lionne watching him thought, "What a charming boy! He looks like an
angel!" and gave a faint and sentimental sigh. Then she went into her
role--that of a _femme du monde_, gracious, charming, simple and
inordinately respectable. Only her voice betrayed her, the
champagne-husky voice, which long ago, out of many brawls, had taken on
a coarsened quality like the voices of street women.

He told her almost at once what he had come for--but he told her nothing
of the whole story, that he was trying to find Tom because his sister,
Tom's fiance, was either lost or dead or held a prisoner. This was not
the place to mention the name of one's sister. As he talked he seemed to
relax a little as if he found the place less terrifying than he had
expected and La Lionne herself not very different from what European
ladies must be. In Boston, of course, "ladies" were quite different, but
even he understood that the world was larger than Boston. He found her
accent fascinating and surely there was nothing sordid or rough about
the voluptuously decorated room.

She told him that she herself had not seen Major Tom for more than a
fortnight, and she was distressed that he had disappeared. At the same
time she pulled the bell-rope beside the bed and almost immediately the
door opened and Ernestine came in. She had not far to come for she had
been standing all the while just outside the door, listening.

"Bring some iced champagne," said La Lionne, "unless (and she turned to
David) you would prefer something made of gin or rum."

For a second, only a second, he hesitated. He had never in all his life
drunk anything, but now he was rebellious. The hatred of the General's
wife and the thought of Byron was still driving him into emotional
recklessness. He heard himself saying, "Champagne, thank you."

While they waited, La Lionne made worldly conversation, about his life,
how he liked New Orleans, what career he meant to take up after the war,
but all the time, behind the wild hope that somehow through Mama
Tolanne's charms and friendship with this boy, she might get Tom back,
there hid a terror, perhaps that Tom was kidnapped and prisoner, or even
dead. She thought of Les Dfenseurs with their record of assassinations
of carpet-baggers and Union soldiers. Her Tom was a good mark for them,
involved as he was with the General and all the corruption over cotton
and shipping. But she said nothing of this. It could come later on.

Then the door opened and Ernestine came in, closely followed by the girl
Cllie in a crimson ball gown, dressed for the evening's entertainment.
She was a slender girl, not yet eighteen, with a skin of satin washed
with pale gold and great black eyes fringed with long lashes. As she
moved she had the quality of a lily about her. It was not for nothing
that she was the favourite of La Lionne and that La Lionne meant to take
her to Paris. The girl had pride and intelligence and wits. Some of the
best blood of Louisiana flowed in her veins. And she had a trick of
smiling, a wide, honest, charming smile, at the same time casting down
her eyes as if suddenly stricken with shyness. In Paris she could have
what she wanted; she was too good for New Orleans, even in the old days
when gentlemen still came to the Caf Imperial, much too good for the
cheap, disorganized city it had become, when one no longer saw a
gentleman or a _connoisseur_.

La Lionne, from the bed, presented David Wicks to Mademoiselle Cllie
Legrand. "She is a great friend of mine and of Major Tom. I thought you
would like to meet her."

David bowed gravely, a little shy and a little timid, but much less shy
than the girl herself appeared. Her downcast eyes and the faint smile
gave him courage; they even made him feel bold.

Big Ernestine poured the champagne with a glass for La Lionne propped up
in bed, and they all drank to the health of Major Tom and the hope of
finding him very shortly. La Lionne took over the conversation boldly,
telling David that she meant to take Cllie with her to Paris where
Cllie would study to be a singer and actress; and for a time while they
drank champagne, she talked of Paris, and for the first time there was a
nostalgic fire and beauty in what she said.

For a little time she made the great and beautiful city come alive for
the two young people who had never seen it. For them she made live all
the life and light and colour of the boulevards, the immense ordered
spaces of the Place de la Concorde, the splendour of the Louvre and the
Tuileries. She told them about the balls she had gone to as a young girl
and the famous men she had known well--the composers, the painters, the
Princes and Dukes, the singers and actresses.

"Ah," she sighed, slipping back into French, "c'est une belle existence
qu'on mne  Paris... une si belle existence. Comme je voudrais avoir
la jeunesse et la beaut de Cllie." And in her broken English, "Life is
so beautiful when one is young. One ought never to deny it. Pleasure,
love and beauty do not last for long."

She had barely finished the speech when there was a soft knock at the
door and Big Ernestine came in to say that it was necessary to see
Madame for a moment. La Lionne got out of the bed, drawing the
_peignoir_ modestly about her, slipped her feet into pink mules and went
to the door. In the doorway she turned for a second and said, "The place
is yours, mes enfants. I will not disturb you."

As she closed the door behind her the tears came into her eyes. They
were no longer tears of self-pity. She had intoxicated herself with talk
and homesickness. She wasn't thinking now of Major Tom or herself, but
of the two young people--_si jeunes, si beaux, si simples_, with all
life and love before them.

And inside the room she had achieved a miracle, leaving behind her a boy
who was no longer timid and shy, because in her nostalgic description of
Paris there was a poetry which his own poet's nature recognized, a
poetry which stimulated the faint halting desire he had experienced at
the first glimpse of Cllie in the doorway. Yes, life was something to
be enjoyed, not denied and tormented as the General's horrible wife had
treated it, as all his world had treated it. It should be gay and
friendly and beautiful and a little wild.

The champagne, too, was doing its work.

The girl looked at him, her great black eyes shining. "Vous tes beau,"
she said, and like a child speaking, "Vous tes gentil."

With his schoolboy French accent he answered, "Vous aussi,
Mademoiselle... vous tes trs... trs belle."

"Merci." She poured him more champagne and as she gave him his glass
their fingers touched for a moment.

"La Lionne est une brave femme," she said. "Elle a toujours t trs
gentille pour moi."

"Oui... elle est trs gnreuse."

Then she asked him if he had been before to the Caf Imperial and he
told her that he went out very little. Most of the time he stayed at
home writing and thinking.

"Un pote?" said the girl. "Un philosophe?"

He smiled and told her that he only hoped one day to be a poet, a
philosopher. For a little while longer they went on talking, politely,
correctly, like two well brought up Boston young people on a sofa in a
Beacon Street house, but presently the girl said:

"Vous ne connaissez pas l'amour?"

He blushed, and said in his bad French, "Non. Vous savez que dans mon
pays les choses sont diffrents."

"Quelle dommage." A dreamy look came into her eyes. "L'amour est si
beau." Then she touched his sleeve gently, "Je puis vous servir comme
institutrice. a me fera du plaisir." She spoke as if she were saying
politely and innocently, "If you like, I can give you lessons in
French."

He took her hand and kissed it, partly because that was what Lord Byron
would have done and partly because she was so understanding and so
charming.

"Je le veux... Cllie."

"Bon... David." She laughed and kissed him, not on the lips but on the
cheek. "Tu es gentil."

It was true that Cllie had great talents, that she would go far in
Paris. La Lionne was quite right, for Cllie adapted her style to the
subject.

And so David stayed.

It was nearly six when he left the Caf Imperial. He was no nearer to
finding Tom and he still did not know what had become of Agnes and Aunt
Tam. But it was an afternoon which he remembered for the rest of his
brief life, gratefully, for it changed everything. From that afternoon
of his life, he was free. He had been freed in the strangest fashion by
three women--the dragon Aunt Louisa, La Lionne and the child Cllie. The
stars moving in their heaven had brought them together at exactly the
right moment in exactly the proper fashion.

He walked through the noisy crowd in the bar of the Caf Imperial and
out of the door, his chest thrust out a little, his head back, a little
the way Tom Bedloe walked, as if he owned all the world with all the
beauty and pleasure there was to be found in it.

       *       *       *       *       *

The King himself had given the first de Lche the rich acres of the
doomed plantation of Bel Manoir. When the great house was built, near
the end of the eighteenth century, and filled with silver and furniture
and fine linen, the great river had been a mile from its great painted
mahogany doors. Big French houses had to have avenues and so the first
de Lche had planted an _alle_ of live oaks from the house to the
landing-stage on the bank of the river. Each spring, when the
flood-waters swept down from the north carrying with them the rich earth
of the wilderness, they had cut farther and farther into the banks,
moving closer each year to the great house itself. Each year in March
the landing-stage was swept away and each year when it was replaced, it
was anchored nearer to the house. The descendants of the first de Lche
measured the advance of the mighty river by the number of oak trees it
devoured each season from the long rows of the _alle_. Some years it
devoured two or three. In one great flood year it had devoured eleven.
Each year it carried away more acres of rich plantation land. Each year
it came nearer to the great house. Before the young Baroness reached the
age of the old Baroness the river would devour the house itself with all
its gardens and dependencies. Where once Bel Manoir had stood there
would be only the turgid waters of the Mississippi.

It was a true French-Spanish house, unlike the great Georgian houses
built by the Americans who had come in after the Louisiana Purchase,
built in a style that had grown out of the very soil, not a style
imported from another world and another civilization, and so it seemed
more than the other great houses in the neighbourhood to belong there,
set solidly on the rich earth in the midst of marshes and bayous,
cypresses and live oaks all hung with silver-grey moss.

The walls were of pink brick brought down from Natchez that time and
dampness and heat had turned to a silvery rose colour. A wide veranda
ran all the way round the house at the second floor, suspended between
the house itself and the thirty-two white columns which supported the
great sloping roof of pinkish tiles. On the side facing the river there
was a wide double staircase, in the shape of a horseshoe, with
wrought-iron balustrades of extraordinary lightness and beauty of design
made by the mulatto blacksmiths in the great forge near the slave
quarters. Because of the dampness, there were no living-rooms on the
first floor but only kitchens and vast storerooms which in the great
days of the plantation had been filled with rich foods, enough to feed
an army. On the second floor were a dining-room, a ballroom and a great
_salon_ and a small library, and above these were the bedrooms opening
on to a great hall.

When the old Baroness had come to Bel Manoir as a bride straight from
Spain, the house was new and the centre of life for all the parish. In
those days the plantation was like a town with people coming and going
constantly in carriages and on horseback for visits that lasted weeks.
Rarely was a single bedroom of the house without a cousin or a friend.
The slave quarters--a whole village of cypress log-cabins beneath the
low-spreading live oaks--were filled with happy negroes who themselves
entertained relatives and friends from all the countryside and New
Orleans itself.

And then, when the old Baroness was only twenty-seven, her husband died
of the yellow fever in the great house and a curious thing happened to
his widow. She had loved him in her cold and passionate Spanish fashion,
and after his death she came to hate Bel Manoir and the swamps and the
bayous and the deathly grey moss, and spent less and less time there.
For months at a time the big house was empty, save for the house
servants and Eugnie the octoroon housekeeper. The Baroness stayed in
Paris or Madrid or Seville and sometimes she spent long visits at the
family estates in Martinique. She had never really learned to speak
English and she never felt comfortable with the Americans who had come
in from other parts of the South to take up plantations in the
neighbourhood of Bel Manoir. They seemed to her strange, sometimes
barbaric people, too simple and direct and healthy for her Spanish
taste.

The house appeared to return the hostility of the Baroness, for when her
only child, a son, was twenty-five, he was thrown from a horse and
killed at the very foot of the great curving staircase. After that she
never again visited the plantation, but her grandson, child of the son
killed on the doorstep, returned to Bel Manoir with his bride, the young
Baroness, and died there of consumption before he had been married a
year.

The old Baroness in her bitterness blamed the house and the young
Baroness. The girl was a distant cousin and poor, and her mother was an
Irishwoman who had been an artist's model in Paris, and the grandson,
known as the young Baron, had married her in spite of every intrigue and
influence against it. The bitter, icy old Spanish woman knew in her
heart that he had died of too much love and that the young Baroness had
killed him without even bearing him a child. The old woman hated her
grand-daughter-in-law most of all because Bel Manoir and all the
property in New Orleans and Martinique now belonged to the girl, not
only as the widow of the owner but because she herself was a de Lche.
After the young Baroness the only heir was the old woman's nephew, the
one-armed young man with the white face whom Tom Bedloe had met in the
big house in New Orleans... a youth whom the old woman hated as much as
she hated the young Baroness because, although he too was tubercular, he
had survived her own son, and because he, like her son, was also the
victim of the young Baroness, a miserable, bitter victim who in his
decadent way found pleasure in his own misery.

And so Bel Manoir had become a place which none of them ever visited.
The great house stood empty year after year and the garden ran wild, the
camellia trees scraggly and unpruned, the azaleas overrunning the flower
border like jungle plants. In the damp, hot climate, houses went to
pieces very quickly if they were not tended with love and care, and rot
and mildew quickly worked havoc with Bel Manoir. Tiles slipped from the
roof and were not replaced. Spindles in the balustrade of the big
veranda rotted and fell unnoticed, to the ground. Dampness warped and
shattered the beauty of the marquetry floor brought long ago from
France, and the grass and weeds grew high and deep in the long _alle_
which led from the house down to the hungry menacing river.

The neighbours said the young Baroness cared nothing for the place save
for the money it brought in. She never came near it but she hired an
overseer from the North to manage the slaves and operate the place. He
lived in a house of his own between the great house and the slave
quarters--a leathery-faced, lantern-jawed Yankee from Pennsylvania,
Elias Sharp by name, who kept great dogs in his house and slept with the
doors and windows locked and barred. In the day-time he rode on a big
grey mule surrounded by dogs which at his order would have torn to
pieces anyone who threatened him.

He was a hard man, living alone save for two mulatto house servants who
were also his mistresses. The gentry of the neighbouring plantations
never saw him; even the storekeepers and overseers passed him by without
any sign of recognition when they encountered him on the muddy roads;
for Elias Sharp had the most evil of reputations. From the moment he
came to the plantation, the old easy life of the Bel Manoir slaves was
gone. They worked long hours. They were whipped even for so slight a
thing as a rebellious look. And among the slaves of neighbouring
plantations there were stories of evil punishments, of mutilations and
obscene tortures, conceived only in the brain of a madman and a sadist.
In the slave quarters of the great houses of the parish, mothers
frightened naughty black children by saying, "Eff'n you don't behave yo'
self, Elias Sharp'll git you."

Among the slaves there was only one rebel--a great black negro called
Csar. This Csar was a prodigious fellow, a goat in love, a great
singer and the father of half the children in the quarter, and for him
Elias Sharp had a special hatred because Csar was what the
ill-favoured, sour Sharp would himself have liked to be. And Csar was
shrewd, too, like a goat, fomenting trouble and singing rebellious songs
in the parish dialect which Elias Sharp could not understand. And
although Sharp tried every plan of catching him in some rebellion, he
never quite succeeded until he at last ordered Csar's wife, Emilienne,
to leave the slave quarters and come to the overseer's house as cook.
That same night Csar waited outside the house until Elias Sharp went to
the privy. There Csar trapped him and beat him until one of the mulatto
girls, hearing Sharp's cries, released the dogs and Csar escaped into
the bayou where the dogs refused to follow him. But that was what Sharp
wanted. Now he could have Csar arrested and hanged. The sheriff of the
parish, no matter how much he detested the evil overseer, could not
refuse to arrest a slave who had tried to kill a white man, his master.

But Csar was already gone, down the river to New Orleans and on to
Cuba.

With their leader gone, the slaves at Bel Manoir grew discouraged and
the cruelties of Elias Sharp redoubled. For the poor black people there
remained only the consolation of song and out of their misery were born
a hundred new songs, melancholy and beautiful, which sounded at night
across the bayous from the fires of the slave quarters.

But no de Lche came near the Bel Manoir after the young Baron died. The
war broke out between the North and South and the Yankees captured New
Orleans, and the young Baroness returned from Martinique, but she never
came near Bel Manoir. And then one evening about sunset there arrived
at the plantation a man named Abraham Hunter.

       *       *       *       *       *

He was a squat man with bowed legs, a squint and a bald head, and he
came from Connecticut where he had been bankrupt three times. With him
came ten Yankee soldiers.

While the slaves gathered about the soldiers, Abraham Hunter knocked at
the door of Elias Sharp's house. The overseer came out, surrounded by
his dogs, and Abraham Hunter told the overseer that if he did not keep
his dogs in order he would command the soldiers to shoot them on the
spot.

Then he proceeded to make a long speech in which he told Elias Sharp
that he had come to dispossess him. Reports of his cruelty had reached
the military governor of New Orleans who had issued orders that the
overseer Elias Sharp should be sent away. The plantation, with its
stored cotton and cane, its mules and horses, and the great decaying
house were now the property of himself, Abraham Hunter. They had been
bestowed upon him by the military governor. And at last the squat little
man launched into a peroration of fearful hypocrisy. Turning to the
slaves he told them that they were now free and their own masters. He
would pay them for moving the cotton to the river pier for shipping to
New Orleans. No more would they suffer the cruelty and persecution of
their overseer. They were a noble people wronged in the past. From now
on, liberated by the great people of the North, they were the equal of
all whites. They would be able to vote and send negro men to the
legislature.

"Raise up your heads!" cried Abraham Hunter, "you are now free men!"

Two or three of the slaves who understood English translated for the
others. They listened, their big mouths hanging open in astonishment.
Dazed, they kept silence for a time, while the Pennsylvania overseer and
the Connecticut carpet-bagger glared at each other. One of the dogs
leapt at a soldier. There was the quick report of a carbine and the dog,
shuddering a little, was dead. The sun dropped below the flat horizon
and suddenly it was night, with only the faint glow of the oil light
from the overseer's house lighting the black faces of the startled
slaves.

Elias Sharp said nothing. Then suddenly he spat a stream of tobacco
juice on the ground, turned and went into the house, closing and bolting
the door behind him.

The closing of the door appeared to release the choked emotions of the
negroes. They began suddenly to shout and sing, to dance and to bellow
like cattle along the levee, and as the carpet-bagger moved off to take
possession of the great house, they followed behind him, still singing
and shouting, and rolling on the ground. They followed him all the way
to the house and up the horseshoe staircase, streaming through the dark
halls while the old housekeeper with a lamp led her new master from room
to room showing him the warped and mildewed splendours of Bel Manoir.

He ordered a fire to be built in the great bedroom where the old
Baroness had come as a bride, and chose the finest sheets to be warmed
and wine to be brought from the cellar. And slyly he watched the crowd
which followed him, noticing the young girls and especially the
light-coloured ones. At last he selected one called Anastasie, a timid,
doe-like girl of fifteen, for his companion. It was all easy and safe,
for he was in the ring that was bent upon punishing the Secessionists.
Together they could loot plantation after plantation. They could take
what they liked. Thus was Connecticut liberating Louisiana.

Before Abraham Hunter bedded for the night, the light of the great
bonfires from the slave quarters illuminated the whole of the great
bedroom, and the sound of wild singing and the beating of tom-toms
echoed through the big house. Down among the cabins a half-mile from the
house, there were orgies in progress, born of sudden release from years
of bitter cruelty and suppression.

When Elias Sharp, the overseer, went in the house and bolted the door
after him, he discovered that it was empty. He went from room to room
looking for the two mulatto girls, calling out their names and swearing.
The dogs followed at his heels sniffing, their tails between their legs.
In the bedroom he found the cupboard doors open and empty. In the
kitchen there were no signs of any preparations for supper. Then he
understood. They had simply gone away. Somehow they had learned of the
coming of Abraham Hunter and known that the reign of Elias Sharp was
finished.

The sight of the empty, untouched kitchen filled him with a vague alarm
and something like fear. In his hardness and selfsufficiency he had
never thought before of being lonely or alone. He had never thought of
being afraid or of flight. Now, standing there, in the empty, dimly
lighted house, he was alone, and for the first time the idea of
retribution occurred to him. That damned Yankee interloper would be of
no help. All he wanted was to get possession of the cotton, sell it and
clear out for fresh thieveries.

Through the window he saw the rising fires in the slave quarters and
heard the sound of the tom-toms and the wild cries and the jungle
singing. That damned Yankee had told them that they were free... free!
The word echoed in his mind. Already they were like wild animals turned
suddenly out of a cage. They might do anything. They might... he tried
to turn his thoughts away from what they might do, but it was no good.
Even when he tried to think of other things, the visions of what they
might do, horrible visions, kept turning before his eyes.

And then suddenly a curious shivering sensation crept along his spine.
It was like the hair rising on the back of a dog and he knew that he was
being watched by eyes he could not see.

Quickly he put out the light so that the whole house was in darkness and
still, so still and empty that he could hear the breathing of the great
dogs even above the shouts and screams and drums from the slave
quarters.

He thought, feeling suddenly cold, "I could make a break for it to the
big house. They'd have to protect me."

But would they? By now the carpet-bagger and his soldiers were probably
all drunk or wandering about in the overgrown garden watching the fires
and the dancing. All the carpet-bagger wanted was to be rid of him. He
remembered senselessly the long record of cruelties he had perpetrated,
finding even now in his fear, a sinister satisfaction in them that was
like looking at a naked young girl. He was a hard man who had never
given or asked for mercy, and now he knew there was no use in asking any
from the blacks he had whipped and tortured for so many years. And
again, even in the darkness, the feeling of being watched returned and
the hair along his spine rose like the hair on the backs of the growling
dogs.

He thought, "I might get away into the swamp. I could find a pirogue
there and make my way to New Orleans." And then the afterthought, "If I
can get as far as from here to the edge of the bayou... if it was dark
I could do it. I might have a chance." But it was not dark. The great
fires from the slave quarters illuminated the whole landscape. Anyone
could see you making a break for the swamp. And he was certain now that
he was being watched.

Half to himself, he said, "I'll send out the dogs. That will draw the
fire if they are watching the cabin."

He had no feeling for animals. He fed them with his own hand to keep
them attached to him. The death of the dog outside the cabin had caused
him no regret. He would not need them any longer. The only thing that
mattered was escape. He must get away and he would be safe alone in the
swamp. The dogs would only serve to betray him.

So cautiously he opened the door a little way and two of the remaining
three dogs rushed out barking. That side of the house was on the far
side from the fires in the slave quarters with a rectangle of black
shadow. As soon as the dogs emerged into the band of firelight a dozen
rifles were fired and they fell kicking, without a sound. A bullet
struck the doorstep beside him as he closed and bolted the door. So that
was it. Either the Yankee soldiers had given the negroes their carbines
or they were drunk in the big house and the negroes had taken them.

He moved a table against the door and waited, for what he did not quite
know.

The shouting and singing outside had now changed to a kind of rhythmic
wail, guided by the beat of tom-toms, a wail straight out of Africa,
led, he knew, by Tombo, a great skinny black man only a few years
removed from the jungles of Senegal. It was always Tombo who led them,
even some of the mulattoes and octoroons with white blood and great
grandparents born in slavery, back to the jungle. Tombo had been whipped
and branded for it, but nothing had stopped him. When he was seized with
an attack of nostalgic misery, the big bony negro would sit over his
drum and begin to pound and wail, while one by one the others gathered
round him from all points of the slave quarters, moaning and wailing in
unison. Tombo had them again. Tombo could make them do as he chose. Now
in the blackness of the room he saw Tombo's face, contorted, his eyes
rolled back until only the whites were visible, spittle drooling from
his lips, as he beat his drum and wailed and jerked his head until the
bones of the neck cracked.

"Escape," he thought, "I must get away to the swamp."

Kneeling, he put his ear to the door and heard the sound of breathing on
the opposite side of the panel. Quickly he took his revolver and fired
through the door and then listened again. This time he heard no
breathing but only the sound of "Bon Dieu! Sauvez moi!" and two low
groans in quick succession.

"That'll put the fear of God in their black hearts," he thought, and
then almost at once he knew he had made his case more hopeless. They had
no fear in their hearts now. Nothing could put fear into them. That
damned carpet-bagger had told them they were free and could do as they
pleased.

He was sweating now. He did not feel hot, but the drops ran down his
face and he could smell his own sweat. He began to curse, himself, the
slaves, the carpet-bagger, his own mother for having brought him into
the world. And then above the smell of his own fear-sweat, his thin
flaring nostrils caught the stench of smoke. He sniffed again to make
certain he had made no mistake, and then he knew they were firing the
house. Outside the glare was heightened, showing bright through the
cracks in the shutters. Then he understood the sound of rustling and
scratching; they had piled brush and dried reeds close against the house
on all sides and set fire to it. He could hear the crackling of the
flames and in a second, it seemed, they were licking at the bolted
shutters.

Turning towards the kitchen he knocked over a chair in the darkness. The
last dog began suddenly to howl and blindly he kicked at it. Stumbling
he found the water pail at last, but when he lifted it he found there
was little water in it. The sluts hadn't even bothered to fill it before
running away. Hysterically he flung it against the smoking shutter, but
the fire was all about him now, on every side of the house, licking at
the shutters and even creeping through the cracks about the door.

Cursing, he took up his pistol, thinking, "I'll run for it and shoot as
many of the swine on the way as I can hit." There wasn't much time. The
room was suddenly hot like the inside of an oven. Pulling away the
scorched table and releasing the bolt, he swung back the door and leapt
through the flames.

As he ran he headed for the cane-brake, thinking that once there he
could find his way to the swamp. Half-way across the open space he heard
rifle shots, but the bullets did not hit him. The last of the dogs
somersaulted and dying, tripped him, and as he scrambled to his feet a
gun butt struck him forward again on his face.

They had shot at the dog. They had not meant to kill him; they wanted
him alive.

       *       *       *       *       *

Consciousness came back to him as the beating of the blood in his head
took on the rhythm of the thumping tom-tom. It was pain that awakened
him, a fierce bright stab of pain across the muscles of his abdomen, and
as he wakened the smell of burning flesh was in his nostrils. Out of the
haze that enveloped his consciousness he knew suddenly that the flesh
was his own flesh.

He was surrounded by faces, some black, some grey, some yellow, peeking
and peering at him in the wild fire-light. They were all faces he
knew--the faces of the men and women, the boys and girls, he had starved
and whipped and branded since he had come to Bel Manoir. There was a
strong smell of rum in the warm damp air and above the tom-toms there
rose the sound of wild singing. The faces were wild like the faces of
beasts, so frightening that he closed his eyes again as the stabbing
flash of pain accompanied by the smell of burning flesh smote him again.

They had stripped him naked to lay him on a table outside the door of
the forge like a hog at butchering time. Inside the forge they kept the
irons at a white heat over burning charcoal. They were branding the name
"Bel Manoir" across his abdomen as if he were a steer. As consciousness
came and went in waves he felt a fresh stab of pain and knew with a cold
horror that they had gelded him. Then a hand scratched full across his
face, the long nails tearing out the flesh and with it pieces of his
coarse beard, and opening his eyes in agony, he saw the two mulatto
girls he had kept as prisoners in his house. They were bending over him,
tearing his flesh away in long strips.

He tried to call out, to make the carpet-bagger and his soldiers hear
him, but the sound died in his throat. Above the din of the drums and
the singing they could not have heard him.

At last when they had finished the branding, they lifted him and
turning him over on his face began to lash him with the same bull whips
he had used on the backs of the powerful black men who now wielded them.
He bit through his lips. The pain flashed before his eyes in patches of
light like the Northern Lights he had watched as a boy in Pennsylvania.
He prayed to die, but he was tough, with that same toughness that had
made him an animal through all his life. He cursed it now, wishing he
was weak as a woman.

The whips sang and fell in the wild light and between the flashes of
pain he felt the warm wetness of his own blood in the small of his back
and across his thighs. Then mercifully the sounds blurred and the
firelight turned to blackness.

For a long time they went on beating the unconscious body and at last
when they lifted up the head and it fell back again with a thump against
the planks, they raised him, trussed like a pig, and with four negroes
carrying the mutilated still living body the mob set out towards the
cane brake. A great procession followed--old men and women, young girls
and children, carrying burning faggots to light the way, screaming and
yelling to the sound of the tom-toms.

Trampling the young green cane, they went towards the swamp by the very
path which Elias Sharp had planned to use in his escape. After half a
mile the procession came to the end of the field and entering the high
reeds, broke a fresh path to where the black cypresses hung with grey
moss caught the wild light of the torches. When they reached the edge of
the water they laid the body of Elias Sharp, white and pink like a
freshly butchered hog, on the damp fertile mud and two of the negroes
set to work driving two great stakes into the earth. As they worked
there appeared here and there on the surface of the black water small
bright pin points of light, always in pairs, sometimes in clusters of
six or eight or ten. They were eyes and the eyes caught the light of the
torches and turned it back.

Then the two big negroes fastened Elias Sharp by head and by feet to the
heavy stakes. One of them bent over him, touched the chest and grinning,
cried out triumphantly, "He libbin' yet!" Then the ringleaders, yelling
and driving the screaming crowd before them, moved up the bank into the
reeds once more. As the torches moved away the pin-points of light
closed in upon the spot where the blood from the overseer's beaten,
tormented body dribbled across the mud into the black water. Then as
the torch-light faded away among the reeds and the hanging moss, the
alligators crawled out of the muddy bayou, following the trail of blood
to where the body of the overseer lay tied to the stakes. There was a
sound of grunting and tearing in the darkness. No one would ever find
any trace of Elias Sharp.

       *       *       *       *       *

In the big house lights shone from all the windows, for life,
tempestuous, violent, had come back suddenly to its shuttered
loneliness. Lamps that had not been lighted for twenty years were
brought out, their wicks trimmed and lighted. In the second floor
ballroom the half-burned candles in the great chandeliers were lighted
again and to the music of banjos and violins and drums a kind of
witches' ball was in progress with field hands and mulatto girls and
Union soldiers dancing, without pattern or reason in a wild orgy of rum
and music. The negroes came and went from the ball to the slave quarters
to watch the slow death of Elias Sharp, bringing back reports on the
progress of his torture. Frail gilt chairs were turned over and
shattered, panes of old glass cracked and tumbled on the marquetry floor
polished by the dancing bare feet of the negroes and gouged by the
hob-nailed boots of the soldiers.

At one end of the ballroom Abraham Hunter, the liberator, too fat and
too flat-footed to enjoy dancing, sat enthroned in a great gilt chair
surrounded by girls who came and went, now dancing wild steps with negro
bucks for his amusement, now drinking rum by the side of the
carpet-bagger. The girl Anastasie chosen as his consort, dressed now in
an ancient ball gown of the old Baroness, fell into a drunken sleep with
her head on his knee.

In the midst of all the wild singing and dancing, a negro would bellow
suddenly, "Libres! Nous sommes libres!" Free! Freedom! The shouting set
the crystal pendants on the chandelier to tinkling.

From his throne, his bald head shining in the light of the candles,
Abraham Hunter raised his glass of rum to shout, "Free! That's right!
You're all free now!"

Towards morning, after the alligators had dragged Elias Sharp from his
stakes under the black water of the swamp and the embers of the
overseer's cabin had turned to ashes, Tombo came from the slave quarters
to the ballroom with his drum and there, under the wild rhythm beat out
by his bony black hands, the dancing ceased to be dancing and turned to
a wild orgy, punctuated still by wild cries of "Libres! Nous sommes
libres!" and "Elias Sharp est mort!"

The great house, with its wild garden doomed by the great river, was
alive again, not with the life of the de Lche family but with the
primitive life of the jungle. Fallen on the polished floor, Abraham
Hunter, the liberator, lay at last flat on his face snoring, dead drunk.

And along the muddy roads in the rising dawn hobbled a handful of old
slaves who remembered the days of the old Baroness. They were fleeing to
near-by plantations to the shelter of the cabins of good niggers. Among
them was an old negro called Pierre who rode on a big black mule. He was
headed for New Orleans. He travelled all the night, halted twice by
picket lines, and arrived only the next night to burst into the
drawing-room of the de Lche house and throw himself down before the
young Baroness while she and the old Baroness and M'sieur Amede were
receiving Major Tom Bedloe.

       *       *       *       *       *

For a long time after they shut him into the cabin Tom Bedloe sat on the
bunk, his head between his hands, trying to pull himself together so
that he could think clearly and shrewdly. It was difficult, for in
addition to the dull feeling in his head, there was a dog howling
outside the window and a faint distant sound of beating drums, like the
drums he had heard once or twice in Congo Square.

At first he could not remember how long it had been since he left New
Orleans, nor had he the slightest idea where he was. Three or four times
he went over his skull carefully, feeling it gently with his fingertips
to make certain it had not been broken by the terrific blow that came
out of the darkness, out of nowhere, as he followed his black guide.

On thinking it over he was certain now that the negro had led him astray
deliberately, that all the time he had been in the pay of the men who
had caught him and shut him up here in this dark cabin with the howling
dog outside. He had been a fool, just picking up any negro who said he
knew the way to Bel Manoir. Clearly they had planted this negro as a
trap and he had swallowed the bait like any stupid catfish. He
remembered a saying among the common soldiers--a saying as old as
time--that there was something which had no conscience. Well, it hadn't
any common sense either. It was that something that was always getting
him into trouble, and he never seemed to learn anything from experience.
But he didn't care very much; he was glad after all that he had that
something. It made him better than most men. He grinned and the movement
of the muscles in his face set the blood throbbing again in his bruised
head.

It wasn't anything to grin about. They had him shut up here in this
cabin. He didn't know what it was they wanted or why they had captured
him, but it was clear that they wanted something or they would have
killed him outright on any dark street corner in New Orleans, the way
they had killed the carpet-bagger in front of the French Opera House.

But who was it that wanted him?

He lay back on the straw of the bunk and then sat up again because the
straw was stinking damp and because the blood, rushing to his head, made
him dizzy once more. The dog outside kept on howling.

He remembered suddenly Big Ernestine standing at the foot of the bed in
La Lionne's big room with the red curtains and gold baldequins, "Ef'n
you Yankees stay long enough you'll be done up proper... women and
drink and the climate." Well, he felt pretty done up right now, but he
knew that to-morrow he would be himself again. To-morrow or even
to-night he'd think up a way to escape. And in the meanwhile the General
and David would have missed him and sent troops to search for him.

But almost at once he remembered that wherever his cabin was, it was a
long way from New Orleans, farther perhaps than any troops short of a
regiment dared to venture. After all, the Union Army only held New
Orleans and a small circle of territory. The rest of the country was
overrun with guerillas, escaped prisoners and remnants of the
Confederate Army. He knew he was a long way from New Orleans, because
with the negro leading him, he had travelled all one day and well into
the night. He fell to thinking again of his guide, a thin-faced negro
with features stamped by some high-bred French or Spanish ancestor. Down
here in Louisiana the negroes weren't what he had expected. They
weren't at all like the negroes in Mrs. Stowe's book. A lot of them
didn't seem to want freedom; they wouldn't even leave their masters.
Only the bad ones seemed to take advantage of their freedom, swaggering
about under the General's protection, consorting with Northern
carpet-baggers. It was all very puzzling, the way these Louisiana people
themselves were puzzling.

He was aware presently that the sound of the drums had died away, but
the dog kept on howling and presently a grey light showed him the
openings that passed for windows in the cabin. As the light rose, he saw
that the cabin consisted of one room about fifteen feet square made of
cypress logs chinked with mud and Spanish moss. There was no glass in
the windows. They were so small that a heavy man could not have forced
his body through them. His own slim tough body could have made it, but
the windows were half closed by heavy cypress planks nailed across them.
The floor was of beaten clay, sticky with dampness. Water stood in one
corner of the room. "It must be," he thought, "in swampy land," like the
wide stretches they had crossed yesterday in the afternoon.

In the grey rising light he saw that his blue uniform was covered with
mud and he thought, "That's from rolling in the mud after they knocked
me off the horse." Of what happened after that he could remember
nothing.

He thrust a hand into his pocket and brought out a piece of pale blue
paper. The sight of it gave him a feeling of reassurance--that he was
not mad or dreaming. Opening it, he read the message, written in rather
fine neat writing like the writing of a man of character and
determination, not at all like the hand-writing of any woman he had ever
seen.

_I am going away to the plantation where there is trouble. That is why
you will not see me again. Good luck and a long life.--liane de Lche._

It was a brief enough message, easy to remember, but instead of throwing
it away, he put it, folded carefully, back in his pocket.

No, all that part was true--about the message and the sudden necessity
of following her. Now, sitting on the bunk filled with damp straw, with
an aching head, the whole thing seemed ridiculous folly--to leave in the
middle of the night to follow a woman he scarcely knew into the swamps
and bayous of a strange and hostile country.

He was not a man given to reflections or analysis; action was his role.
But now he considered why he had come on a journey which ended here in
this moss-chinked cabin. This morning it seemed to him that the man, all
eagerness and impatience who set out on the journey, was another person
having no relation to the self who now sat in the damp cabin. That
stranger had followed a woman because he had been under a compulsion; he
could not have done otherwise. And he had gone because of a challenge
which he had divined from the moment she turned away from the vase of
camellias and smiled at him. He had to follow her, aware in some part of
him that if he did not follow this adventure to the end, he would go to
his grave, regretful, incomplete and baffled. Beside this adventure all
the countless others he had known seemed cheap and easy and unexciting.
It was all very odd and unlikely that it should be happening to him.

When he felt a little better he rose and made a circuit of the cabin.
That he was a prisoner did not disturb him; on the contrary it was a
challenge which filled him with a sudden sense of exhilaration. He was
not well enough to escape yet, but to-morrow the sense of dizziness and
faintness would be gone and then he would show his captors, whoever they
were, what it was they had caught.

The door was bolted on the outside and the planks across the windows
were heavy and spiked firmly into the logs. Even his wiry strength would
not be sufficient to loosen them. There was in the cabin nothing but the
flimsy bunk without a piece of wood in it heavy enough or sound enough
to use as a battering ram. In any case there must be guards about
somewhere.

Through the crevices between the planks he studied the landscape
outside, seeking some clue to his whereabouts. Close at hand on one side
there was a cane-brake and beyond that clumps of cypresses hung with
grey moss. They emerged now like ghosts out of the mists rising from the
damp ground. On the opposite side he could see another cabin, damp and
moss-grown, like the one in which he was imprisoned save that one side
had been scorched by fire--fire which had destroyed a building that once
had stood quite near it. The fire must have happened recently for the
white ashes still lay undisturbed about the half-wrecked brick chimney.
In the distance, so veiled by the mist that it appeared like a mirage,
he could make out the faded pink roof of a great house rising from among
clusters of live oaks. Except for the howling of the dog there was no
sound or sight of life in the whole landscape.

       *       *       *       *       *

About the time the sun had cleared away the last of the mist, he heard
the sound of footsteps and then the creak of hinges as the heavy door
swung open and a negro came in. He limped from a deformity of the foot
and carried a tray on which there was a silver coffee-pot and a
silver-covered dish, a cup, saucer and spoon and a long cigar of the
kind which came from Cuba. The man had a scar across one eye which
showed blue against this black skin. He looked at Tom Bedloe with a
single side-long glance and put the tray down on the bunk. Then he made
a sign to him that he was to eat, thrusting the ends of his fingers into
his mouth and grinning.

Tom Bedloe said, "Who are you?" but in reply the negro only grinned in
idiotic fashion. In a louder voice Tom Bedloe said, "Where am I?" but
again the only answer was a grin and a gesture indicating that he was to
eat, and then Tom Bedloe understood that he was not an idiot but deaf
and dumb.

The negro then made a series of complicated pantomimic gestures
accompanied by incoherent sounds, neither of which conveyed anything,
and as Tom lifted the silver cover of the dish, he limped out of the
cabin, closing and bolting the door behind him.

Tom was recovered enough now to be hungry and the smell of the food and
the coffee excited him as all physical sensations had a way of doing.
Beneath the silver lid there was fried fish adorned with a sprig of
parsley and two hot buttered muffins.

"Elegant food," he thought grinning, "for a prisoner."

When he had finished the meal, he poured out the last of the coffee and
lighted the cigar. It was then for the first time that he noticed the
crest and monogram. The silver was soft and so old and worn that the
design was scarcely any longer decipherable, but after studying it for
some time, comparing the coffee-pot and the covered dish, he made a
curious discovery--that the crest and monogram were the same as those on
the bit of paper on which the young Baroness (liane was her name, he
thought, a pretty name) had written the note. Taking the paper from his
pocket, a comparison made the design on the silver emerge clear and
unmistakeable.

He gave a low whistle and then grinned, because suddenly he understood a
great deal. He had been a bigger fool than he thought. This cabin must
be at Bel Manoir and the silver must have come from the plantation
house, and the whole thing had been a trap. She had left the note,
believing, even knowing, that he would follow her to the plantation. On
the way his assailants, whoever they were, could capture him easily.
Very likely she had not gone to Bel Manoir at all but only with the old
Baroness as far as the lake. It may have been that she had never even
left the house in New Orleans.

The idea of the plot did not anger him. He understood now a little that
sense of challenge he had experienced each time he encountered her. All
the time she had had for him, very likely, little more than a feeling of
mockery and contempt. She must have known a great deal, to have been
very sure of herself to _know_ that he would follow her. But he saw
almost at once that she was, after all, like no other woman he had ever
known. It was no simple thing, this difference, but very profound,
coming out of a life, a background, a civilization that was strange to
him.

And yet... there was one other element, which in his experience, he
could not regret, even now in his humility at having been duped in the
most ancient of games. That element was the expression in her eyes when
she looked at him, the look of an experienced woman who found him
desirable. That was a look that belonged to women of experience, no
matter what their colour, race or nationality. It was the look of a
whore who enjoys her profession, at sight of a stranger who attracts
her. La Lionne had looked at him in the same fashion, but without
mockery, for La Lionne was a direct and uncomplicated woman. The look
was that of what the world called a "bad woman"--a woman who lived like
a man.

His head felt clearer now and he lay back on the damp straw, smoking the
cigar, to consider the revelations. The deaf and dumb negro came and
took away the tray, but Tom Bedloe scarcely noticed him this time,
especially since all communication with him seemed impossible.

When he was alone again, he was aware that his desire for the young
Baroness had not abated; on the contrary she was an obsession, for his
feeling was complicated now by a desire to revenge himself for having
been made a fool. When he escaped, if they did not kill him first, he
would follow her until there was no longer any question of which was the
master. She had asked for the contest; she had challenged him from the
moment he caught her in his room, going through his papers.

       *       *       *       *       *

Nothing happened after that for a long time. Twice he got up and made a
round of the windows, peering through the crevices between the planks
and as the mist cleared he discovered that not far away--perhaps five
hundred yards--there was a cluster of cabins, some made of cypress logs,
some of sawn wood, some partly brick nestling among a grove of immense
live oaks. It was a whole village, but deserted. No smoke rose from the
chimneys, and although he watched for a long time he discovered no sign
of life save for an old cat and two chickens. Outside the dog had long
since ceased howling and he divined that the man who had been with the
dog on guard had gone away too.

It was all very odd, being shut in this cabin in the midst of this dead
deserted landscape. There was something evil about it and the sense of
evil passed over his body quickly like a wave, causing the skin to rise
with a thin, prickling sensation.

"That is all nonsense and rot," he told himself quickly, "and now is the
time to get away."

So he went to work, trying the planks over again only to discover no way
of moving them. They were heavy cypress and nailed with great spikes. He
thought of the roof but it was beyond his reach, even when he stood on
the bunk, and was made of heavy cypress planks. As he examined it, he
thought, "This has been used as a prison before now. It is not just an
ordinary cabin." And for the first time it occurred to him what the
stains on the wall might be--those dark-brown stains discolouring the
logs and the cracked plaster which closed the chinks between the logs.
The walls were splattered here and there save in one spot where at the
height of a man's shoulders the plaster had been drenched not once but
perhaps many times. At the realization of what the stains were, the same
prickling wave of alarm went through him. It was like the rising of the
hair along the back of a dog entering an empty room where he _smelled_
danger. He understood now why the dog with the man on watch had howled
so persistently. It was said that dogs howled in the presence of death.

"All this," he thought, "is not nice. All this is very unpleasant."

Then he tried the heavy door and even hurled himself against it. He was
a powerful man but weight made no more impression against the strength
of the solid door than the hurling against it of a pebble.

"Others have tried it before me," he thought, considering the stains on
the wall. "Others stronger and heavier." Cypress was wood which never
decayed.

The futile attack on the door left him dizzy and faint. He lay down
again on the damp straw and almost at once lost consciousness.

       *       *       *       *       *

He was wakened by someone shaking his shoulder. It was dark again now
and as he wakened he saw a man in riding clothes standing over him and
beside him the deaf and dumb negro holding a lantern. The man was young
like himself, and blond and well built. His clothes were well made and
expensive.

As Tom Bedloe sat up he said, "I am sorry to disturb you but there is
urgent business."

Tom looked at him for a moment. "Where am I? Why am I kept here? Who are
you?"

The man answered him without smiling. It was a handsome face, what you
would call a "clean" face with a square-cut jaw, a firm chin and eyes
that were blue even in the dim light of the lantern. It was not an evil
face but one in which there was determination and an inflexibility that
was almost as frightening as evil.

"I am not here to answer who I am or where you are. I am only here to
tell you why you are here."

As he listened now and through the speech that followed, Tom Bedloe
knew, without thinking it out, that this fellow defeated him. There
would be no way of getting round him as he frequently got round people
when he was in a bad spot--by grinning and using the good looks and
charm God had given him. It had worked always with women and often with
men. This time it would not work.

There was something familiar about the man--nothing more direct and
complete than the memory of the striking face of a passerby on the
street. It was as if he had seen him before in some other life.

The rather rich, deep voice went on speaking, "You are here as a
hostage. I have written to your friend, the General in Command of New
Orleans, that if he does not cease his persecution and make certain
concessions you and two or three others we have taken will be shot."

"What are the concessions?"

"They are simple enough. He is to release the good citizens of New
Orleans he had imprisoned in Fort St. Philip. Most of them are elderly
men who are guilty of no more than of calling him a thief and a
murderer, and in that they are only truthful. And he is to return to the
rightful owners the gold he has taken from the Planters' Bank and the
property he has confiscated. He and his carpet-bagger friends are to
stop stealing and selling our cotton, our cane, our horses."

"And who are the others you have taken?" asked Tom.

"That, my friend, is none of your business. Your business is to write to
the General to say that you are a prisoner and threatened with death.
You are to ask him to grant the concessions and save your life." Tom did
not answer him and he said, "You are young. You love women. It is worth
doing."

"No, I won't do it, and to hell with you."

He looked up again at the face and noted its inflexibility. It was not
the face of a fanatic or a madman. It was a suffering face. An avenging
angel, he thought, must have a clean, stern blond face like that.

"You have about twelve hours in which to make up your mind. If the
General refuses we shall shoot you here in this room." He sighed, "Don't
expect us to be soft. We have killed. We shall go on killing, in cold
blood like this, or by assassination in the streets of New Orleans
because we are forced to do it, because we cannot fight openly. We
should prefer it that way but we no longer have any choice. A Yankee,
the kind of Yankee there is in New Orleans at the moment, is less to us
than a bad nigger ready to be hanged." Again he sighed, then passed the
back of his hand against the high white forehead and added, "You had
best think it over. We mean to do as we say. We have plenty of reason
for vengeance." To the negro, he signed, "Leave one of the lanterns and
put the food on the bed." And again to Tom Bedloe, "I am sorry we
cannot make you more comfortable but the circumstances are special. They
keep my father's brother below water-level at Fort St. George. He is an
old man and ill."

Then he turned away and the negro with the lantern followed him, and as
he turned, something in the clean profile, sharp like a cameo but
vigorous, gave Tom Bedloe the clue. He saw the face now exactly as he
had seen it on the night he came back from the General's party, with the
soft light from the candles behind it, bending over to look at the wound
which the young Baroness was dressing while Old Seraphine held the
basin. This was the one called MacTavish. This was the one who owned the
house the General had taken, to quarter his horses in.

He was hungry again and there was no way of knowing the hour, for his
watch had stopped at two o'clock, very likely the hour he was knocked
off the horse. There was on the platter cornbread and fried oysters and
coffee. It was all well cooked and still hot, but this time the silver
coffee-pot and the covered dish were not there. In its place was some
sort of cheap yellow crockery. At first he thought nothing of the
change, and then a curious thought occurred to him. Perhaps she had
managed to send the silver the first time as a sign, a signal to let him
know where he was and that she was somewhere near. For a little time the
thought excited him, but the memory of young MacTavish's face blurred
the pleasure from it.

There was no doubt of it. He was in a tight spot. He knew what lay
behind the flinty look in the blue eyes of MacTavish--the murder of
young Mumford, the insults to the wives and fiances and sweethearts of
New Orleans, the presence everywhere of the thieving carpet-baggers and
the "bad niggers," the thievery, hypocrisy, the New England "smartness"
of General Wicks and his wife. There was plenty of reason for that look.
There was plenty of reason for MacTavish to shoot him in cold blood
without another thought.

He finished the meal to the last crumb and lighted the cigar. Then he
put out the lantern. There was no need for light and the darkness
relieved the feeling he had that he was being watched by someone through
the crevices between the planks.

For a long time he sat with his head between his hands thinking of many
curious unrelated things--the look of his room as a small boy in New
Bedford, the story that he was always a bad boy because his grandmother
had been a Frenchwoman, of his first experience with "love" and its
ugliness, of women he had known, of the General's wife and her curious
obsession for him as if he were her son, only more than that, and of the
singular depravity of New Englanders which was born of the brain rather
than the body and seemed to him green in colour.

It did not occur to him that he would be shot. He did not doubt that at
the end of twelve hours MacTavish and his gang--Les Dfenseurs--would
shoot him if he were still here. But between now and then many things
could happen. He would not be here. He had no feeling of death. Death
was something which could not happen to him. And presently he heard a
footstep outside and the breathing of the dog as he sniffed at the crack
under the door.

He called out to the man outside the door but got no answer, and then it
occurred to him that possibly the guardian, even if he were not the deaf
and dumb negro, very likely spoke only French.

He lay down again, bored and restless. Now that the ache in his head was
gone, he felt the old necessity for physical action which always drove
him, and presently he sat up. At the same time he heard a faint and
distant roar. As he listened, the faint roar began presently to
disintegrate into bits of sound--shouts and screams and the barking of
dogs. Outside the door the hound whimpered and began to howl again. Then
he was aware of a faint quavering glow of rosy light on the spattered
wall opposite. Standing on the bunk he looked out between the planks.

The night was clear now with an immense full red moon rising behind the
moss-hung cypresses. Far away on the edge of a distant cane-brake there
were lights moving above the damp earth like will-o'-the-wisps above a
marsh. They moved backward and forward and presently he discovered that
the lights were torches carried by a mob. Before them ran barking and
howling a great troop of mongrel dogs.

Then from one of the slave's cabins a flame broke through the roof and
leapt towards the sky; then another and another, and as the fire spread
from cabin to cabin and the fierce heat increased, flames and sparks and
fragments of burning cane thatch and bits of burning cypress wood were
carried high into the air. As they rose the faint wind from the Gulf
carried them towards the cabin where he peered between the planks. With
each surge of the flames they came nearer and nearer falling on the
damp ground where they burned out, some of them lodging in the dry moss
of the trees which flamed up so that the live oaks were filled with
small lights like trees decorated for a fte.

Suddenly he thought, "They'll set the roof of the cabin on fire and I'll
be roasted alive." Turning to the door he shouted and kicked at it,
calling out to the man who stood on guard outside. But no answer came
from the other side of the heavy door. The man and the dog had gone
away. He threw himself again at the heavy door but it held, solid as the
logs of the cabin walls.

Again it was not death he feared but the manner of death--to die
horribly without a fight. He had never prayed and he could not pray now
but only curse as he fought the door. It was no use attacking the planks
at the windows; they were too high up and there was no way of finding
purchase for his strength.

Outside the sparks and bits of burning wood fell now like a shower of
flaming rain. The whole of the slave quarters was aflame and the fire
rose high in the air. The sound of the wild approaching flames drowned
even the yells of the mob. The only sound that came was the sinister
rhythm of a great drum.

Still cursing, he stopped battering at the door to regain breath and
strength, and as he stood there drenched in sweat, he heard suddenly
above the roar of the fire and the drum a faint crackling sound above
his head, and at the same time he experienced an extraordinary sense of
evil--the evil of the past with which the very walls of the cabin were
saturated, the evil of the hot damp swamps and the whole lush landscape,
the evil of the hanging grey moss and that distant house with its roof
rising in the waxing moonlight above the jungle of camellias and
chinaberry trees. It was an evil place drenched and permeated with evil.

Wildly he thought, "The fire may burn a hole in the roof and I can climb
out that way." And he began to tear apart the flimsy rotten bunk,
planning to make of it a ladder to climb the blood-stained walls. The
sound of the drum beat into his brain now, even above the crackling
sound overhead. And then suddenly from behind him he heard a voice
saying, "Come with me! Come quickly!" and he saw her standing in the
doorway, her figure lighted by the flames from the burning roof.

After the first day Aunt Tam and Agnes and black Csar no longer
travelled by daylight. In the morning when the two women awakened they
found a pot of coffee on a freshly built fire, but Csar was gone, and
for a moment Agnes felt a sudden panic lest he had deserted them,
leaving them to die there forgotten and lost like Manon Lescaut in the
desert of Louisiana. But Aunt Tam was more optimistic. "He's gone
scouting for food," she said. "He'll be back. Let us make an exploring
trip."

And so with her niece, both of them freed now of their fashionable
crinolines, she made a tour of the island where they had spent the
night. It was not a long tour, for the island was small and they were
for ever coming to the edge of solid earth where it gave way to reeds
and mangroves and palmettos and tall black cypresses. But the activity
made them feel better.

They had been wakened at dawn by the clamour of the aigrettes when an
osprey swooped down over the live oaks, at the moment when the sun,
rising over the swamps, painted the wheeling and plummeting birds a pale
pink. The air was still cool but already touched with the rich smell of
growing vegetation.

To Aunt Tam it was like wakening in paradise. In her elderly bosom, her
heart beat with a joy she had never before experienced. Her dress was
rumpled and stained with sea-water and primeval mud. Her straight hair,
usually crimped into tight waves with a small cluster of curls on each
side of the horse face, hung lank and stringy in the damp air. Dipping
water from the bayou into the kettle out of which they had eaten their
supper the night before, she managed a crude toilette, and all the while
her heart kept singing and one wicked thought kept turning over in her
mind. It was that no one would find or rescue them for a long time, that
she could go on living in this wild and beautiful world. But of this she
said nothing to Agnes.

Something was happening to the girl, but what it was she could not quite
make out. Before they left Havana, she had always been simple and frank,
like a child, but in the last few days she had changed. It was nothing
Aunt Tam could put her finger on. If she had not known the girl so well
she would perhaps have failed to notice the difference. Because it was
very subtle, a kind of withdrawal of the spirit, betrayed by the look in
the eyes and the strange remarks and observations she occasionally made.
As they walked over the island, with Aunt Tam discovering and pointing
out the strange plants and birds, Agnes was curiously silent instead of
running after her aunt uttering small child-like cries of delight as she
did when they went for a walk on the farm at Dedham.

When they had made a complete tour of the tiny island, Aunt Tam took out
her journal and wrote a meticulous and uninspired description of what
had happened to them and what they had seen since they drew away from
the side of the rotting plague-stricken _San Cristobal_. She wrote for a
long time, ten pages in all.

It was Agnes who saw black Csar returning across the lagoon. He was in
a tiny boat that looked like a floating log, his great muscular body
naked from the waist up. Delicately, skilfully, he handled the fragile
craft. He belonged here in the beauty of this scene, like the aigrettes.
As she watched him coming across the dark water, she felt a sudden pang,
as if her spirit were growing. It was like the physical pangs she had as
a small girl, which her father had told her were "growing pains." It was
as if the whole world opened up before her, a new world she had never
before entered.

Then Csar grounded the frail craft and grinning, came ashore and told
his story.

       *       *       *       *       *

He had gone off just before sunrise on a scouting trip leaving the heavy
dory behind, hidden among the reeds. Alone through the morning mist he
had made his way, now swimming, now wading, between the low islands,
until he came to an abandoned settlement of Sabines--a special race of
crawfishermen and shrimpers and hunters who were part Indian and part
Negro. Most of the houses in the settlement had been burned, but among
the ruins he had found the pirogue in which he returned now.

On his way back he had come through a raccourci scarcely wide enough for
the pirogue to pass, into the wide bayou he had been searching for, and
there in a hut he came upon two Sabine women who had run away into the
swamp at sight of him. But in the hut he had discovered an old man,
paralysed and unable to flee and too old to be terrified by the prospect
of death.

There in the hut he had learned from the old man what it was he wanted
to know, and what he learned was worse than he had expected. All this
part of the Delta was overrun by bands of thieves and cut-throats. Among
them were "bad niggers," deserters, escaped prisoners, bad "Cajuns" and
Sabines, convicts and even a few Indians. They lived off the settlements
and the smaller plantations, pilfering and burning.

There was, as the old man told him painfully, no law of any kind now the
Yankees had come. The old man had never seen the _Yanquis_. He had
merely heard of them, robbers and bandits from up the river who infested
the city of New Orleans. He had heard, he said, that all slaves were now
free and that there was trouble everywhere and many of them had turned
to murder and thievery, working with stray _Yanquis_. The river, he
said, was more unsafe than the swamp. There were big _Yanqui_ boats but
also there were pirates and convicts.

Then Csar bargained with the old man for a sack full of corn and one of
rice and one of dried shrimps and went away.

And now, said Csar, they could no longer travel by day. They would rest
and sleep during the daytime and travel at night. He knew his way so
long as they did not take too many raccourcis. It would be better that
way, because at night it would be cooler. In a day or two they would be
in familiar country where they would eat well.

Then quite simply he went to work preparing lunch, leaving the two women
alone on the crest of the island where the live oaks grew thickest.

Again Aunt Tam asked, "You aren't afraid?"

The girl thought for a moment. "No, I'm not afraid. Papa will be worried
and David... and Tom."

She was not telling the truth, because she had never thought whether her
father or David would be worried. It was only Tom of whom she thought,
and even in this she had lied, because she could not be certain that he
would be worried when he discovered what had happened to them. Sitting
there miles from him, it seemed to her that she was beginning to know
him for the first time.

Why this was so she could not explain to herself, much less to Aunt Tam,
and so she did not talk of it at all. She was in the midst of an
experience, half-mystical and half-physical, to which many elements
contributed and so confused her. There was the beauty of the aigrettes
and the terror and sickness of the hurricane, the curious animal beauty
of the great black negro who had saved them, and that mysterious gesture
made by the sailors, a gesture at once puzzling, exciting and
terrifying. There was the smell of fertility from the damp earth and the
beauty of the sun rising above the vast swamps to burn away the mists.
All these had somehow made Tom real for the first time.

Until now he had been a kind of romantic figure cut out of paper, like
the heroes in the few novels she had been allowed to read, and all the
quality of the feeling between them had been romantic and literary.
Sitting there on the island while Aunt Tam took out her journal and
began to write down the things she had forgotten, the girl blushed,
partly out of shame for the new and alarming thoughts which had come
into her head of late.

She wanted to see him. She wanted by some miracle to fly through the sky
and be at his side. She wanted... and she blushed more furiously... to
touch him, his hands, his rough curly hair, his throat. She wanted to
see his straight back and watch the slight swagger with which he walked,
and hear again the curious deep soft voice that seemed to wrap itself
round you, warming you. A slight shiver ran through her body, as if it
too, like her perception, were growing.

Then looking with a quick sudden glance at Aunt Tam to remark whether
she had noticed anything, she thought, "I should be ashamed."

One of the girls at the school--a bad girl--had told the rest of them
what it was like to let a man make love to you. Afterwards there had
been some mystery and they had sent the girl away from the school and
her parents had taken her to Europe and people said the family had left
Boston for ever because the girl was a "bad girl." "Maybe I am like
that," she thought. But she was not ashamed. She was happy. She wanted
suddenly to sing and dance and run through the dappled shadows beneath
the live oaks, but that, of course, she could not do. Aunt Tam would
think her crazy.

All that day they hid among the trees and at dusk as the colour faded
out of the West and the rim of the moon showed through the cypresses on
the opposite side of the lagoon, black Csar helped them aboard the dory
and thrust it out from among the reeds.

Sometimes rowing, sometimes poling, the great negro drove the clumsy
boat out of the lagoon into the bayou. Silently it slipped over the
black water, so silently that they could hear the rustling and chortling
of birds disturbed in the rushes, and after a little while the girl
fell asleep, her head against the flat breast of the old maid.

For a long time Aunt Tam stayed awake watching the movement of the
negro's body as he thrust the boat on its way. In the golden light of
the rising moon there was rhythm and music in all his movements like the
rhythm of the music Aunt Tam had always yearned for and been denied, the
music of Mozart which she sang so badly, the beauty of fulfilment as a
woman which with her had never gone much deeper than a chaste admiration
for Mr. Emerson and Mr. Alcott, and jottings, romantic and florid, in
the book she carried in her reticule.

Now the touch of the girl's head against her breast became poignant and
unbearable, as if in some way the girl were a part of her, as if through
the girl she might somehow touch, even distantly, all the things which
for her had been for ever beyond reach.

"Agnes must have passion in her life and excitement and glory and fire."
And immediately she was ashamed, thinking, "You are an old fool, Abigail
Jones! A romantic old fool!"

Then she fell to watching black Csar again as his shoulders rose and
fell with the powerful thrusts of the pole. Presently he began to sing
in a low voice so that the sound would not reach the banks, the
nostalgic song he had sang on the river.

    _Mo gagnain soutchien la Louisiane malle oir a ya de moin..._

The voice hung suspended in the stillness above the water. Aunt Tam
dozed and fell asleep. In a little while Csar climbed down and with
elaborate care placed his ragged jacket across the knees of the two
women, tucking it under their feet gently so as not to waken them. They
were his charges. _Le bon Dieu_ had sent them to him, and he loved the
old lady the way he loved his children at Bel Manoir and his mules and
the pet raccoon. She was a good and simple woman.

All through the night he poled and rowed and at sunrise Aunt Tam stirred
and wakened. They were in a wide expanse of water, clotted with water
hyacinths, the whole surface pale blue and mauve as far as the eye could
see.

       *       *       *       *       *

From the moment David walked out of the room without a word to the
General's wife, she began to plot--against no one in particular but
against all the world of New Orleans and the South which in a few short
months she had come to hate with all the bitterness of an unhappy woman.
Somehow in her troubled mind everyone had turned against her, even the
husband for whom she had felt no affection for twenty years.

As the boy turned from her she felt a sudden fierce hatred and contempt
for him, for his gentleness, his ambition, even for his virginity which
she divined by a fierce female instinct. How dared he be insolent to
her, sitting there quietly as if she were a fool when everyone knew that
she was the one who had made the General's career?

As the door closed downstairs, tears of rage came into her eyes. She
would punish them all. She would have more citizens arrested and thrown
into the fortress prison. Aunt Tam was a fool and now Tom had
disappeared and the General acted as if the whole disaster were her
doing.

As she left the room she called over the long curving staircase,
"Private Higgins! Private Higgins!" in a voice so loud and furious that
it set the crystals of the great MacTavish chandelier above her head to
tinkling.

The dreary soldier on duty came running up the stairs. She said, "Go and
ask Mrs. Gilpin to come here."

She hated the Quartermaster's wife as much as Mrs. Theophilus Gilpin
hated her, but in all New Orleans she was the only woman with whom she
held any communication, and the only thing both hated more than each
other was New Orleans and Louisiana and all Secessionists, not so much
because they were rebels or slave-holders as because they had an easy
life and great houses and ease and beauty. Mrs. Wicks and Mrs. Gilpin,
whose own lives were singularly barren of all softness and beauty,
looked upon all these things not only as symptoms but absolute evidence
of lush immorality.

Mrs. Theophilus Gilpin arrived, puffing and blowing despite her wiry,
crow-like figure, because she had hurried all the way knowing that the
General's wife would not have sent for her except for some important and
exciting reason; and she was in no good temper because on the way three
different women, two of them obviously loose in character but one
unmistakeably a lady, had lifted their skirts and crossed to the
opposite side of the street as they had seen her approaching. For this
she could have had them all arrested under the General's latest decree
and thrown into prison as prostitutes, but there was no soldier in
sight and she had been forced to ignore the insults.

The orderly took her straight to the small drawing-room where the
General's wife sat to do her mending. Once inside she closed the door
behind her and said, "Well!"

"Sit down, Melanctha," said the General's wife. "There is a long string
of fresh outrages!"

Mrs. Gilpin sat down, flattered by the fact that the General's wife had
addressed her by her Christian name, and unbuttoned her jacket and with
an air of going to work said, "I have just been insulted three times on
my way here."

Then for two hours their sterile, pinched spirits gossiped and plotted
against the gaiety, the colour, the life of the stricken city. Despite
the oppression, despite the bitter decrees of the General, the city
still showed too much spirit.

"They act as if they hadn't been licked!" said Melanctha Gilpin.

"They never _were_ Americans!" said Aunt Louisa. "They were always
foreigners and immoral. It's the French in them."

At last, after many diversions, they arrived at the means of punishment
and revenge. New Orleans must be purged of its wickedness. The woman
from Maine and the woman from Indiana would make it a clean city where
people would be moral because the law compelled them to be so. They
would see that every bar and brothel and gaming-house was closed.

"I'm sure the General will be of our opinion," said Aunt Louisa.

"I'm certain he will," said Melanctha Gilpin, "and the Quartermaster
too."

"We shall begin with a place called the Caf Imperial," said the
General's wife. "It's a stink in the nostrils--a pit of Sodom and
Gomorrah."

"I've heard of it," replied Mrs. Gilpin, her nostrils expanding with
pleasure.

"The General himself is in no good mood."

About dusk Mrs. Gilpin, buttoning up her jacket and setting her bonnet
at an angle which expressed both determination and an indestructible
virtue, bade the General's wife adieu and set out for home, feeling
washed free of sin and bathed in the blood of the Lamb. When she had
gone Aunt Louisa sat down to await the General and hear what progress
had been made in the search for Aunt Tam and Agnes.

He came in late, rather purple in the face and perspiring from the
unhealthy heat of the city he hated. Everything, it appeared, had gone
wrong. Tom Bedloe had disappeared. David, in search of him, had vanished
for the whole afternoon. He had summoned the Commander of the Fifteenth
Regiment to send him out with a search party and found the Commander was
in bed, delirious with malaria. Two enlisted men were reported dead of
cholera. At St. Louis Hospital the nurses reported that yellow fever was
spreading in the district about Congo Square.

"And what about Aunt Tam and Agnes?" asked his wife. "Have you done
nothing about them?"

"Of course I've done something about them. Two battalions have been sent
down the river to search the Delta country."

"Melanctha Gilpin was insulted on the street again this afternoon."

For a moment a ghost of humour showed in the General's puffy eyes. "It
must have taken a pretty desperate man to pick on Melanctha Gilpin."

"Don't be vulgar, General. And it wasn't a man. It was three different
women."

"Why didn't she have them arrested?"

"As usual," retorted his wife, "there was not a soldier in sight. Very
likely they were all whoring and gambling."

"Those are not words for a New England lady to use."

"It's the truth. When I think of the well-brought-up New England
soldiers who are being debauched by this town, it makes my blood boil."

To this the General made no reply. He had considered again and again
closing down the dives of New Orleans, but each time had met objection
from his own officers. He wanted to eat his supper in peace. After a
little time he did say, scornfully, "Well-brought-up New England boys,
indeed! Mostly ruffians and hired substitutes!"

They had reached the pudding, still indignant with each other and with
the world, when the dejected orderly, who served them at table, handed
him a message. The General tore it open while his wife, tortured by
curiosity, watched his face. When he had finished reading, he said
"Damn!" in a terrific voice.

"Well! What is it?" asked his wife. "Do you want me to faint from
curiosity?"

"That's enough," he said, slapping the paper on the mahogany table.
"I'll close every place in town down to the poorest coffee-house."

"What's happened?" cried his wife. "For God's sake, don't act as if I
were a fool!"

He pushed the paper across the table to her. Like a starving dog
snatching a bone, she took it up and read.

The dispatch was brief. It merely stated that there had been a riot and
shooting affray in a place called the Caf Imperial. Two men, a Union
officer and a merchant from Salem, Massachusetts, had been killed, and
four other men wounded. The place had been wrecked.

But that was not all. It seemed that all the trials of the day had only
mounted towards the climax which was to occur as they left the table.
The depressed orderly delivered another message. It was written on blue
paper and clearly not an Army dispatch. The General said, as he tore it
open, "More threats, I suppose."

This time his wife was standing beside him instead of being at the
opposite end of the great mahogany table, and this time she did not have
to wait for the satisfaction of a curiosity which was a kind of disease,
like kleptomania. Seizing one corner of the paper, she read with him
line for line the disturbing message.

It was brief enough, considering its character. It stated simply that
Major Thomas Bedloe, Captain Andrew Benson and Captain Elias Burden were
being held prisoners in undisclosed places of confinement and that their
lives would be forfeit, ruthlessly and without compassion, unless the
General in command of New Orleans saw fit to meet the demands of their
captors. These demands were simple. The General must rescind the order
reducing all New Orleans women to the status of prostitutes. The General
must return to its rightful owners the gold seized from the Planters'
Bank and other private banks. The General must exercise his power in
stopping the theft and sale of cotton, sugar, horses, mules and other
commodities belonging to citizens of Louisiana by carpet-baggers and
northern merchants including relatives of the General and the General's
wife. At the end, the document again warned the General that he must
act within seventy-two hours, or the lives of his officers would be
forfeited. It was signed simply "Les Dfenseurs."

       *       *       *       *       *

The General did not read the document to the end before he shouted to
the orderly to seize and arrest the man who had delivered the paper. By
the time he had finished reading it, the orderly returned to say that
the bearer had vanished.

"What did he look like?" asked the General.

But the orderly was a dull fellow and not very observant. He did not
know what he looked like except that he was a boy, not more, he thought,
than fourteen or fifteen years old.

"Even their spawn is evil!" cried the General, and then to the orderly,
"Get out, doughhead!"

His face was quite purple now, and for a moment he could not speak. He
had had too much to bear in one day, and he knew that at any moment his
wife would begin again to denounce him as a fool.

But she was strangely quiet. She looked at him for a long time waiting
for him to recover and at last she said with astonishing calm, "What are
you going to do about it?"

"I don't know yet. Give me time to think. Go and bring me some whisky!"

Like a dove she went away, not even protesting against the whisky, which
she allowed in the house only for medicinal purposes. The General
thought, "Women are demented creatures," and felt suddenly empty and
defeated and old and tired. He had expected a row. He would have
welcomed an argument that would have permitted him to swear and call her
a fool. It would have helped to restore his spirits and annihilate the
growing weariness and sense of defeat and impotence. These damned
Louisianans would not admit it when they were licked. He had tried
everything. You trampled them down in one place and they rose in
another. If they had behaved themselves in the beginning, if they had
accepted their defeat and treated him with proper respect, they could
have gone on selling their cotton and sugar like any sensible "smart"
business men would have done. But they were full of high-falutin ideas
about honour and glory and dignity. He interrupted his pacing up and
down the room, thinking, "Well, if a man cares so much about honour and
glory and dignity he'd better give up the idea of making money." If a
man was "smart" in business, he forgot these things.

But the return of his wife made him realize that he had solved none of
the problems which were tormenting him, and the sight of her coming in
with a dove-like but sly and conniving expression brought on one of
those rare flashes of doubt, a terrifying, soul-shattering doubt, that
he was too small a man for his job, that he and Louisa together had
somehow made a desperate failure, not only of New Orleans but of their
whole existence together. This woman carrying the whisky to him, was
suddenly a monster to whom he had been married for over thirty years
without ever seeing her as she was. In that illuminating flash she
appeared wrong in this beautiful room with the scent of the garden
coming in at the open windows, she appeared ugly and hateful and mean.
She did not belong here in New Orleans. He should never have permitted
her to come. She had always been responsible for his worst actions, his
worst decisions. She always managed to goad him into a fury and then
taking advantage of his anger, to turn it in the direction she chose. As
she handed him the whisky, he felt for her a wild surge of murderous
hatred.

"What do you mean to do, General?" she asked.

He swallowed the whisky and was silent for a moment, reflecting that
when she addressed him as "General" she was always the most dangerous.

"I don't know," he said, "I must go to headquarters and talk to the
others."

"A fine lot they are," she said bitterly. "If you had listened to them,
we'd all have been run out of New Orleans long ago."

He began pacing up and down again and as he walked she watched him, her
small, cold blue eyes bright with contempt. Presently in a terrifying
voice, she said, "I've thought of the only thing to do. Put the Mayor
and about ten other leading citizens in jail and announce in the _Daily
Delta_ that if any harm comes to Tom and the other two, you'll hang all
of them right off the way you hanged that Mumford boy for tearing down
the flag."

The mention of the Mumford boy made him wince as it always did. He would
go on shuddering at the name of Mumford until he died.

"That way," she said bluntly, "you won't have to give up the gold or
stop selling cotton. That's the only way."

She was beginning again to "work on" him, and she was quite calm and
cold, and that frightened him.

But there was one thing he did not know and that was that for once it
was not avarice that moved her. It was, of all impossible things, love.
For in the moment she had gone out of the room the shock of the
threatening message had made her see what until this moment she had not
even considered--the fact that she, at forty-eight, was in love with Tom
Bedloe who was twenty years younger than herself. They must not harm
Torn Bedloe no matter what happened, not even if it meant an end to the
plundering of a rich and helpless city. In the excitement she
experienced suddenly, even her avarice withered and died. The hot
flushes returned, and she became hysterical. In the dining-room she had
leaned against the table thinking wildly. "I must pull myself together.
I must keep my head now--more than ever before in my life."

So, she had taken one of Mrs. Gilpin's giant pills and pulled herself
together, and suddenly she saw quite clearly what was to be done.
Hostages, of course! Hostages always gave you an advantage! It did not
matter if they shot the entire population of New Orleans. Tom must not
be harmed. For Tom had become precious to her. He was wicked. He was
everything that was disreputable. The idea that she could love him was
ridiculous; that he should even think of her in such a fashion was
preposterous. But it did not matter. He was everything she had ever
known, everything the General was not and never could be. He was son and
lover rolled into one.

The wild freedom of that moment passed quickly and she was suddenly calm
again and cold. But in that wicked moment she had experienced ecstasy
for the only time in her life. For the only time in her life she was a
woman. Then quickly it passed. She took up the whisky and with a firm
step started towards the MacTavish drawing-room, her heart black with
hate against the General who had robbed her of everything... everything.

As she opened the drawing-room door a strange thought rushed through her
tormented brain. "I should never have come here to this accursed city. I
should never have left Bangor."

       *       *       *       *       *

When Tom Bedloe turned and saw her standing in the doorway, his terror,
the fire, the threats of death all vanished. His instinct, well-trained,
said, "It's all right now. I've won!"

She did not give him time to speak. She only said, "Follow me. And run!"

Together they ran through the ashes of the burned overseer's house to
the tangle of trees which surrounded the big house. The light from the
burning cabins illuminated the whole stretch of rough ground and he had
a sudden momentary feeling of nakedness and panic and fear, of which he
did not know. It was like the fear of a small child running down a dark
passage pursued by someone, something, he cannot see.

As they reached the shelter of the trees, she stopped running and
standing very still, she said, "Be very quiet now." Then for a moment
she stood listening, straining to hear the small sounds beneath the
curtain of screaming and shouting and drum-beating that came from the
burning cabins. He could hear nothing at all save a very faint rustling
of leaves in the hot breeze from the Gulf.

Then once more she said, "Follow me," and led him past the _garonnire_
at one end of the big house into a small door set in the pink brick
wall. Opening it she went inside and in the darkness she said, "You had
better take my hand. I know my way. If you knocked over anything they
might hear you."

He took her hand and the touch of it filled him with indescribable
excitement. It was soft and warm but firm and surprisingly strong. She
led him up a narrow dark staircase and then on to a large landing
illuminated faintly by the glare of the distant fires. Then up the wide
staircase and at last into a room with a sloping roof and a single
window facing the slave quarters.

Here she closed the door and as she attempted to free her hand, he
suddenly seized her and tried to kiss her. For a moment, in the
half-light from the fire, she resisted fiercely with a strength that
astonished him and then suddenly she yielded, pressing her body fiercely
against his with a kind of savagery. The whole of the great house seemed
to sway beneath him and the light of the burning cabins suddenly to fill
the whole room. The kiss she gave him was the kiss of a passionate woman
of experience, a kiss that would have terrified a weaker man by its
implications.

Then she freed herself and in the dim light he saw her press the back of
her hand against her mouth as if to destroy the meaning of what had
happened, and she said in a curious tight voice, "Well, that has been
done."

He did not know what she meant and to have asked would have changed the
whole mood of their relationship. He did not much care, for he had
achieved what he meant to do; he had broken down the curious puzzling
wall that had made it all so difficult and impossible since the
beginning. For it was not as if he had kissed her forcibly against her
will, although it began that way. She had kissed him too, with more than
willingness, with abandon, with a quick savage depravity. He was aware
that for the moment at least he had dominated her utterly, completely.

Now she was free again. She said in her old manner, "I expect you to
stay here. If you tried hard enough you could very likely escape. But I
think it would do you little good. You'd be shot by the first man, black
or white, who saw you. The others will think you have escaped. You are
no longer their possession. You are mine."

"They must have seen us coming here."

"I don't think there is anyone in the house. MacTavish has gone to see
if he can get help. The others are hiding in the cane-brake watching the
mob. The house is not easy to defend. It's too big and surrounded by
trees. They mean to shoot them wholesale if they start across the open
ground towards the house."

"I suppose none of them cared whether I was cooked alive."

"Only MacTavish, and he is gone. The others are bitter."

There was a little silence and then quite boldly she said, "I have need
of you."

"Was that why you left the message for me?"

But he did not trap her. She said, "I only left the message because it
was good manners."

"You didn't think I would follow you?"

"I didn't think anything at all. Why should I think such a thing?"

He knew that again he could not press the point if he was to keep his
advantage. They were still, despite the sudden embrace, too strange to
each other. It was as if a part of them were already intimate, another
part remote and distant and even hostile. The sense of the old challenge
was there, exciting him, constricting his throat.

She said, "I will lock the door and keep the key... just to make
certain you do not walk out... and to keep the others from coming in. I
shall say that I have taken the key to keep the others from coming into
my room."

"It is your room?"

"No. My own room was wrecked. They were all here. The same mob that is
burning the cabins." Her voice hardened, the same voice he had heard
singing across the courtyard. "They will not come here again... at
least not without losing a good many of them. I am going away now. I
shall be back."

She opened the door. "I am sorry there is no light. It is too
dangerous."

He grinned, and said boldly, "What makes you think I shall not try to
escape?"

He could not see whether or not she was smiling, but in her voice there
was a suspicion of mirth. "If you go away," she said, "then you will not
be the man I think you are and I should be a fool."

"I shouldn't want to make you a fool."

Apparently she received this remark with contempt as banal and nave and
cheap, for she said nothing more, but only went out closing the door
behind her. Almost immediately he heard the key turning in the lock.

He sat down on the bed thinking. "She is right. I won't go away. I won't
go away until this thing is finished."

He knew again, more surely than before, that he could not go until this
thing between them was settled, because if it was not settled the sense
of its incompleteness would haunt him for the rest of his life. The
thought of death no longer troubled him because this thing was more
profound, more urgent than any fear of death could possibly be. On death
he was willing to gamble.

Outside the flames of the burning cabins had begun to die down a little,
although the beating of the tom-toms and wild cries and shouts still
continued. Then suddenly there was a burst of gunfire--a dozen reports
clustered together and then three or four isolated shots.

       *       *       *       *       *

Three or four miles to the south, Hector MacTavish made his way on a
mule along a muddy road, keeping always in the shadow of the trees. He
did not like mules, but in the whole countryside not a horse remained.
All the good horses had been taken long ago for the Confederate cavalry
and the old and poor ones which remained had been stolen and shipped
down the river to New Orleans to be sold for what they would bring by
the Northerners who had come in the wake of the Union Army.

As he rode the bony grey mule along the shadowed road, the thought of
his own horses gave him a sick feeling at the pit of his stomach, for he
was a man who owned horses not for show or for betting but because he
loved them with a tenderness almost like that which he had bestowed on
the two or three women who had been lucky enough to attract him. Each
horse for him possessed its own character and personality.

There was Aldebran, the black stallion. He was a warrior who, when he
moved, brought up pictures of banners and armour and music. And Kitty,
the little bay mare, who was skittish and melodramatic and made up
stories like a precocious child. There was no dullness when you rode
her, for she invented things to shy at. An inert log became a dragon,
the hanging Spanish moss overhead became garlands of snakes, a flying
bit of paper became to Kitty something to turn her whole sleek body to
shivering. And Regina, the black broodmare, who was so gentle and
maternal, bringing up one foal after another with no trouble to anyone,
always gentle, nuzzling at your neck for sugar. As he rode, he smiled at
the memory of her, almost feeling the soft muzzle against his cheek.

They were gone now, for ever, with all the others. Aldebran, the black
stallion, went with General Beauregard himself, and that at least was an
honourable career, and little Kitty had gone with the Louisiana cavalry.
But what had become of Regina and her soft muzzle he did not know, for
she had been stolen by the Yankees, and what Yankee knew how to treat a
horse decently? At the thought of her a lump came into his throat.

He hated these men who had come into New Orleans, not because they had
been ruthless but because they were both dishonest and dishonourable,
and because in his heart his was the contempt of the man who lives on
his own land for the men who keeps shops, a contempt as old as time
itself. It was bearable to be conquered by a decent and honourable foe
but not by a contemptible one like that Yankee general who lived now
with his wife in the great house of the MacTavishes.

He had other more personal reasons for hating that New England army
which plundered New Orleans. There was his sister, Jeannie, who had
spent a whole night in jail, treated and tried like a prostitute because
she had refused to salute the Yankee flag, and his uncle Henry, an old
man enfeebled and ill, held in the forts as a hostage. It was odd, but
the thought of poor old Regina and the memory of her soft nose against
his cheek hurt him most. He would never know again that warm special
feeling about his heart when she came across the paddock towards him,
whinnying. He would never again have her look up at him, with a new-born
foal by her side, as if to say, "Isn't he a beauty?"

Half-aloud and bitterly he said, "Damn them all!" And shook his head as
if to make himself forget the bitterness.

It was gall, too, to ride like this, like a hunted animal, along the
roads he knew as far back as he could remember. This was his own country
and now he had to ride by night and hide by day to save his life.

And he was bitter, too, against certain of his own people, like Amede
and liane de Lche. He was riding now in the shadow along this moonlit
road partly because of their wickedness and because of that evil,
degenerate Elias Sharp, their overseer. They had never cared for their
land or their slaves as they should have done, loving them and
cherishing them. They had only squeezed from their land all the money
they could to spend in New Orleans and Paris. Because they were evil,
their slaves, goaded by that loathsome Yankee who had come to steal
their cotton, had turned on them and on Elias Sharp.

He knew the horrible end of Elias Sharp, every detail of the whipping
and the torture, even to the death in the mud, dragged from the stakes
by the alligators; but try as he would, he could feel no pity for the
man. A dozen times he had ridden over to Bel Manoir to admonish or curse
the overseer and advise him to mend his ways. Out of the whole parish he
was the only one who had taken that trouble. And it had done no good to
speak to the de Lche family. The old Baroness had only told him coldly
that even though Sharp was a Yankee, he was a good overseer; the
revenues of the place had never been so good as during his regime. No,
Elias Sharp had asked for the end the "bad niggers" gave him.

And the de Lche family had suffered too, almost as if there were such
a thing as a God and retribution. Every male in the direct line for
three generations had died before he was twenty-five, so that Bel Manoir
and all their riches were left in the care of women. And now to plague
them there was the bad liane de Lche, not an outsider but one of their
own family, who had married her own cousin. Not only was her position
faintly incestuous, she had caused nothing but trouble for them since
she returned from Paris as a girl of fourteen. It was as if the curse of
the whole family was somehow crystallized in her dominating character.
She was like a man as the old Baroness was like a man. The men of the
family who still existed were like women, spiteful and vengeful and weak
and vacillating--Amede, with his one arm and his tuberculor pallor, the
worst of them all.

He should never have tried to save them by bringing his own men to Bel
Manoir to drive the carpet-bagger out of the great house and to protect
it from the revolting slaves. He should not be riding now to find men,
white or black, in the parish who would join them. The honest men who
were not away fighting were all in hiding. The good niggers had all gone
away in terror at the uprising. Only the bad niggers of the parish were
left to join those in revolt at Bel Manoir.

He knew he would find no one. He had known it before he left. He had
volunteered to go for help because this was his parish and he knew every
lane and bayou and raccourci and because he had wanted to get away for a
little time from the great house. Even this melancholy ride was better
than the strange evil atmosphere of the half-ruined place. And more than
anything, he had wanted to be free for a little while from the presence
of the young Baroness.

But even here on the bony grey mule miles away he was not free of her.
She was there beside him annoying him as she had done since he saw her
for the first time among the still well-tended gardens of Bel Manoir,
arrogant even then and vulgar as any octoroon's bastard offspring, but
far more clever and ruthless. The little girl with the oval face and the
ivory pallor had not been a child at all but a kind of monstrosity, full
of precocious knowledge and wit and grossness. They said her mother was
an Irish whore and one could believe it. What other sort of mother could
have produced such a child? After the first month his sisters had been
forbidden to go to Bel Manoir or to invite her to Rosevale. And now she
was back again alone, with twenty men, fighting beside them to save Bel
Manoir and her cotton and sugar cane.

The idea of making love to her had never occurred to Hector MacTavish;
he could not support bold, dominating, arrogant women. In the very idea
he found something unnatural and a little terrifying, yet there was
something about her that fascinated him. Each time he saw her, the idea
of her took possession of him. He would find himself thinking of her in
unguarded moments as he was thinking of her now while he rode along the
lonely moonlit road, resenting her boldness and shamelessness, her
superior and contemptuous airs, as if she were more clever than any of
them.

He thought, "To hell with her!" and kicked the grey mule on his bony
ribs. At the same time he turned to look behind him and saw that the
whole of the sky to the north was aglow, and he thought, "They have set
fire to Bel Manoir. Well, let it burn!" and continued on his melancholy
journey, falling after a while into a kind of dream, thinking again of
his horses and especially of old Regina and her soft muzzle. All night
he rode and in all the lush and fertile country he saw no man, black or
white.

       *       *       *       *       *

The reflected light from the fires had almost died away when Tom Bedloe,
still awake, lying on the great bed under the eaves, heard the key
turning in the lock. He sat up, thinking, "Perhaps they have come to
shoot me." But all the time he hoped that it was the young Baroness
returning. Since she left the room he had thought of nothing else,
seeing her clearly in his mind, allowing his imagination to lead him
deeper and deeper into a kind of green morass of sensuality. She had
been right; he would not go away. He could not go so long as she was at
Bel Manoir.

The door opened and she came in, closing it behind her and turning the
key. She was dressed all in black, her face as white as the collar at
her throat. She was carrying a carbine and almost at once he heard her
saying, "Are you still here?"

He rose from the bed. "Yes."

"I knew you would be." She placed the carbine against a chair. "We
killed a lot of the black devils. They won't bother us again to-night."

In her voice there was a quality of excitement, a curious unnatural
excitement. As she came out of the shadows she said, "Help me! Save me!"
She seemed about to fall and he put out his arms to save her. As he
caught her, she appeared to faint and then after a moment her body grew
taut and she seized him, kissing his rough, unshaven face and his throat
wildly, crying out, "I killed them myself. They're lying out there in
the moonlight. They're dead!" She laughed and said again, "They're dead!
They're dead!"

For a moment the insane quality of her passion confused and embarrassed
him.

All that which followed was full of fire and fury and evil, and when it
was finished, she lay for a time very still, scarcely breathing, so that
for a moment he was alarmed, thinking she was dead. But in a little
while she opened her eyes and stood up and said abruptly, "Good night, I
will bring your food in the morning."

He started to speak but said nothing, for her voice was cold suddenly
and full of self-possession as if he were no more to her than a
prisoner. It was the cold dispassionate voice of the jailkeeper.

"I advise you to keep away from the windows by daylight. They will not
come up to this floor, but they may see you at the window."

Then quickly she picked up the carbine and went out closing the door and
locking it again. For the first time it occurred to him that she walked
and spoke more like a man than a woman.

It was nearly dawn before he fell asleep, for the experience left him
bewildered and, in a strange way, chastened. He had believed himself a
man of many adventures and of experience, but never had he encountered
anything like this passion which was like a white flame which seared but
left no scar. And he was aware that he had never possessed her at all.
It was as if he were the woman, as if he had been slowly and
deliberately seduced, used and immediately forgotten. And there was in
it all a sinister and frightening element... the way she had cried out
about death and the men she had helped to kill, as if in some way their
death had roused in her a shameful and uncontrollable passion.

The burning sun was high above the half-wrecked house when he was
awakened by the opening of the door and saw her coming in with a tray
and food. At sight of her he experienced a singular embarrassment, as if
she were two women and he did not know which one of them had come in the
door.

Looking at him she said, smiling, "Good morning. I hope you slept well."

"Very well. Thanks."

He was aware again of the old air of mockery which he found so
confusing. There was nothing in her manner to give even a hint of
recognition of what had happened the night before. This woman carrying
the tray was the one who had made him miserably uncomfortable that night
in the _salon_ of the house in New Orleans. Yet there was a difference;
it was as if she assumed an understanding between them, as if somehow
they were different from all other people on the earth, stronger, more
certain of what they wanted. He had an odd feeling that they had known
each other always, that they had been together thus, since the beginning
of time.

She said, "Hector MacTavish has come back."

"What does that mean?"

"Nothing... only he reports that every plantation for miles around is
deserted. And the niggers have all gone away into the swamp. The
carpet-baggers have gone down the river. Two of the men we killed last
night were Yankee soldiers. The rest have gone with the carpet-baggers."

"Does that mean that you are safe here now?"

"MacTavish doesn't know. They may come back."

She poured the coffee for him and as she did so he noticed that on the
tray was the same ancient worn silver that had come to him on that first
morning in the cabin prison. He said, "There is something I want to
know."

"Yes, what is it?"

"Was it you who sent the silver coffee-pot that first morning to let me
know where I was?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

She did not answer him in words. A smile spread slowly over the
curiously attractive but unbeautiful face.

The coffee was excellent, strong and very black. She said, "I made it
myself... the way we make it in Martinique. The coffee in Louisiana is
too often like dishwater."

He scarcely heard the speech for he was trying to discover exactly what
she meant by the curious slow smile. He knew now that she was not in
love with him, any more than he was in love with her. This was
something more than love and something less, with the inevitable and
impersonal quality of the attraction of iron for a magnet.

Like an excellent housewife she began putting the room in order. He
watched her for a long time as he drank the coffee. She went about her
task, picking up a chair overturned in the violence of the night before,
drawing the curtains across the windows the better to conceal his
presence. She behaved as if he were not there at all.

"Who is this Hector MacTavish?" he asked.

Without interrupting her housewifely tasks she said, "A neighbour. I've
known him since he was a small boy. I once frightened him by being too
impetuous. We were both about seventeen." She laughed. "He was a virgin.
He has never liked me since."

"I didn't mean exactly that." He had the feeling that it was now his
turn to mock her. He knew that she understood his mockery but she
betrayed the understanding by no sign.

She said, "He is the leader of the lot. 'Silver Spoon' Wicks is living
in his family house in New Orleans. MacTavish is what you would call an
estimable Southern gentleman." With the last sentence her voice was
coloured by an extraordinary contempt and bitterness, betraying two
things--her own scorn of respectability and the likelihood that
"estimable Southern gentlemen" did not approve of her. "He has," she
added, "what is called a Presbyterian conscience."

"So that's it!"

"Yes. That's it."

She had finished her tasks by now and stood waiting.

"Does no one know that I am here?"

"No. They all believe you have escaped. MacTavish gave them hell when he
came back."

"You could do me a great favour."

"What?"

"Bring me a razor and soap and hot water." He rubbed his stubbly chin.
"I must be pretty nasty looking like this."

"I like you that way. A beard makes a man seem more a man. But if it
pleases you...."

"It will please me."

"Very well."

Then she picked up the tray and went out, and when she had gone he went
to the window to look out across the rough open space between the great
house and the slave quarters. Where the slave cabins had been there were
only piles of ashes and charred beams. The cabin where he had been
imprisoned, with its evil memories of Elias Sharp the overseer, was only
a heap of ashes. He grinned, thinking that if she had not come to save
him he would now be nothing more than a heap of white carbonized bones,
scattered among the ashes.

On the grass between the slave quarters and the house there were great
dark splotches of blood. Someone had carried away the bodies; in the
heat they would become an unpleasant sight within a few hours. Beyond
the quarters the fat lush landscape extended for miles until it became
lost in a faint blue haze of heat. Suddenly he felt tired and relaxed,
and again he experienced a quick flash of desire for the clearness of
the New England air, the sight of pine trees and scrubby pastures and
stone walls, grey and sharply outlined in the clarity of the atmosphere.
All that was far away. He had a sudden sense of being lost, of having
wandered a long way, of having been driven on and on by something beyond
his power of control.

The sound of a knock at the door brought him sharply back to reality. He
was about to speak when he thought quickly. "It cannot be she. She does
not knock." And he made no sound. The knock was repeated once and again
and then a man's voice, which had a familiar timbre, said, "Open up or
I'll fire through the door."

Stealthily he moved along the wall so that he might place himself beside
the door out of range. The voice, now more familiar, said again, "Open
up! Open up!" and then in quick succession two shots were fired. The
bullets splintered the panels of the door and buried themselves in the
bed opposite.

For a moment there was silence and then the voice said, "I will return."

Listening he heard the sound of retreating footsteps but, fearing
trickery, he still remained pressed against the wall beside the door. He
was still there when he heard the sound of the key turning and thought,
"Well, there's nothing to be done now. They've got me this time."

But when the door opened, only the young Baroness came in. She was
carrying a pitcher of hot water and shaving implements. She had an
absurd settled air of domesticity, and smiled at the sight of him with
his body pressed cautiously against the wall. She put down the shaving
things and said, "It was my cousin Amede who shot at you. He must have
followed me up the stairs this morning."

Grinning, he said, "He didn't come anywhere near me."

"He won't do it again," she said.

"I hope not. I wouldn't have got off so easy if I'd happened to be on
the bed."

"He was my first lover when I was seventeen. He lost his arm in a duel
over me. He killed a man who called me a Crole whore."

She spoke perfectly calmly, almost flatly, so that he felt a desire,
partly born of hysteria, to laugh.

"And what is going to happen now?"

"Nothing... until they hear from New Orleans."

"And then what?"

"Perhaps they will shoot you. Perhaps they will let you go. It depends
on 'Silver Spoon's' reply."

"Yes?"

"Yes."

He laughed. "In any case, I'll be shaved and clean for the funeral."

He laughed because he knew now there was no danger of his being shot. He
knew it from the tone of her voice and the look in her eyes and because
in a swift moment of intuition, he saw that she was very like himself.
She would not let them shoot him so long as she had reasons for wanting
to keep him alive.

       *       *       *       *       *

At a little before sundown, one of the band, a boy of eighteen named
Callendon, brought back the answer from New Orleans. The General had not
troubled to answer them directly. He had answered them in the columns of
the _Delta_. The newspaper announced the arrest of eight leading
citizens, most of them men over fifty who had stayed in New Orleans to
safeguard as far as possible the interests of their fellow-citizens.
Each one of them had many relatives and many friends even among Les
Dfenseurs. A cousin of Hector MacTavish was among them.

Following the announcement of their arrest and imprisonment there was a
statement from the General in Command of the City of New Orleans. It was
brief, stating merely that the prisoners had been taken as hostages in
reprisal for certain acts of a band of renegade outlaws known as "Les
Dfenseurs," who had seized three officers of the Union Army. If any of
them came to harm, the General announced, the hostages would be
summarily shot.

In the parlour at Bel Manoir the little band gathered while Hector
MacTavish read the announcement. As he read the line the square jaw grew
hard and the colour went out of his sunburned face. When he had
finished, he put the copy of the _Delta_ on the table beside him and
said, quietly, "Well, it seems that we must find some other plan."

Young Chauvin Boisclair, a dark impetuous boy, cried out, "We'll take
the forts and free the prisoners."

"With what?" asked Hector MacTavish. "How? With fifteen or twenty men?"

"There must be some way," said the Lafosse boy. "We could think up some
way."

Then Amede de Lche spoke. There was a wild look in his black eyes. The
quality of the white in his face had changed from waxen to chalk. With
his one thin white hand he was twisting the buttons on his jacket. He
said, "There's only one thing to do... shoot the prisoner anyway!"

MacTavish did not answer him, but the young Baroness said, "You tried
that once, Cousin. You had best not try it again."

MacTavish heard her but he said nothing. The clear blue eyes, saw
everything and sometimes a great deal which to other eyes was not
visible. Then he said to young Boisclair, "Come with me. I want to make
sure the cane-brake is empty."

He saw that the young Baroness was watching him. The corners of her
mouth trembled a little with the shadow of a smile. In the eyes was the
light of mockery--a mockery of many things, of her cousin Amede, of
that scene long ago when her boldness had disgusted Hector MacTavish, a
mockery of all the men in the room, as if she said, "I am stronger and
more clever than any of you."

He gave no sign of recognizing the mockery. He simply turned away and,
taking the Boisclair boy with him, went out of the door. The broad
shoulders drooped a little, but there was no other sign of weariness or
discouragement.

When he had gone she took up the copy of the _Delta_ from the table and
went out. As she passed Amede de Lche she said, "Remember what I told
you, Cousin. You had best not try it again." There was something vicious
in the colour of her voice as she spoke the word cousin.

Then she left the room, taking with her the newspaper up the stairs to
the room where Tom Bedloe was kept a prisoner. When she had closed and
locked the door behind her, she showed him the message of "Silver Spoon"
Wicks.

"We've been checkmated," she said. "You're free now. There's no point in
keeping you. You'd only be a nuisance."

Quickly he read the blustering statement. Then he grinned and said, "I
don't know whether I want to be free. I rather like being a prisoner."

She shrugged her shoulders. "The decision is entirely up to you. I
shouldn't think it was very safe. Anyone might take a pot shot at you
just for luck."

"What are you meaning to do?"

"I don't know. It depends on what MacTavish plans."

For a moment he considered this, knowing perfectly well that he meant to
follow her wherever she went, not only because of the compulsion upon
him but because there was still the necessity to subdue her, to
establish his own position as the dominant one. It was a sense of
incompleteness more than anything that tormented him. Then he said,
"What's this MacTavish like?"

She looked at him quickly as if she hoped to find that he was jealous.
Then she said, "He is quite a fellow. He's the kind of man other men
look up to... especially younger men."

He watched her with a curious look and asked, "What will he do?"

"I don't know."

"He's fighting a losing fight."

"Why do you say that?"

"His material is no good. It's full of rottenness."

Again she shrugged her shoulders. Then she gave him the key. "There,"
she said, "you can do as you choose. Only I would not go walking about
and I should keep my door locked. I think my cousin is insane.
Consumption produces very queer effects. I don't think that even
MacTavish can control him."

"And what am I to eat?"

"I will bring you your meals until I go away."

She had told him what he wanted to know--that what happened the night
before was not to be merely an isolated experience.

Then she went away and when she had gone he sat for a time thinking of
her, puzzled and excited again. But after a time he remembered the
newspaper and taking it up, fell to reading it in an effort to discover
what had happened in New Orleans since the night he left so unexpectedly
to follow her to Bel Manoir.

There were the usual items regarding transfers and appointments and the
arrival of ships. An account of the arrest and trial of two New Orleans
ladies as "prostitutes" because one of them had displayed a small
Confederate flag on the lapel of her jacket and the other had hummed
"Dixie" as she passed a Union officer. Another Yankee officer had been
wantonly attacked and beaten by rebel dastards. It was all Yankee news,
for it was the only newspaper General Wicks permitted in the stricken
city and it was no more than an organ of the General himself and his
satellites.

Slowly he turned the page and there he found an item of singular
interest. It read simply, "_Following the disorders at the Caf Imperial
on Thursday night when the place was wrecked and two officers of the
loyal army badly hurt, the Commander of the Army of Occupation has
ordered the closing of all cafs, restaurants and establishments of
dubious reputation until further notice. Madame Duchsne, also known as
'La Lionne,' has disappeared and the military police have been unable to
execute the warrant for her arrest. It is believed that she may have
fled the city aboard a French vessel which sailed yesterday for
Bordeaux._"

He put down the paper and lit one of the cheroots the young Baroness had
brought him.

So La Lionne had disappeared! He experienced a swift feeling of regret,
partly because he was fond of her and admired her character and
independence, partly because there was always in the back of his
consciousness the knowledge that when this other thing was finished,
when it was complete, he could go back to her. She was that sort of
woman. It occurred to him that he had scarcely thought of her since the
night when, returning from the General's party, he had resisted the
temptation to enter the Caf Imperial and had gone on to his billet to
discover the young Baroness dressing the arm of the wounded Dfenseur.
It occurred to him that everything had become immensely complicated,
that in this sultry, half-tropical country, the slightest thing might
lead to changes and passions and incredible complications. Here
everything--even daily life--had a kind of theatrical, melancholy,
overwrought quality. It was not at all like New England, or even
Virginia or New York. Here there was too much romance; it was laid on
thick like the plaster from a mason's trowel. Everything was romance and
love and duels and assassinations, carried on always in an atmosphere in
which the smell of fertile mud and disease and the scent of jasmine were
equally mixed. And he had again the sense of having been carried away
like a swimmer caught in a rip-tide, beyond his depth.

What was happening to him had its fantastic side. What had begun by
being merely another conquest had become melodramatic and mysterious and
complicated in a wild setting in the swamps with fire and torture and
death just outside the windows of a great ruined house. Beside this any
other love affair he had ever had, even the one with La Lionne, was
pallid and tame. It all seemed foolish and dangerous and yet the very
folly and danger gave it a savour and a satisfaction which made every
other experience he had ever known seem narrow and commonplace.

He knocked the ashes from his cigar and taking off his shirt in the
rising heat he continued his reading, thinking, "Perhaps it is better
that she has gone back to France. She might have become troublesome."

Out of boredom he read everything, even the notices of sales of
household goods and legal announcements of petty lawsuits, and so his
mind had become quite dull again when he turned to the final page and
discovered the most astonishing piece of news that he could possibly
have conjured up even in the wildest flights of his imagination.

It was given a great deal of importance, with the lead in large chunky
black type.

     STORY OF MYSTERIOUS SHIP CLEARED UP. IDENTITY
     OF TWO LOST LADIES ESTABLISHED--THEY ARE NIECE
               AND SISTER OF GENERAL WICKS

Casually he began to read and almost immediately the cheroot fell from
his mouth and he swore aloud.

It couldn't possibly be true--what he was reading--that Aunt Tam and
Agnes were in Louisiana. David hadn't known it, or Aunt Louisa. It
couldn't be true. They were both safe in the house in Pinckney Street
sitting before the fire in the long drawing-room, embroidering and
gossiping with the other female relatives. Somebody must be crazy!

Then he read on about the "mystery ship" and the cholera and the flight
into the bayous and swamps and finally the news that General Wicks had
sent four battalions of soldiers to search the swamps and rescue them.

Twice he read the story through and still he could not believe what he
was reading. He rose and began walking up and down the room, filled with
a desire for action but not knowing what form it was to take. He would
escape and go to New Orleans, but almost at once the idea seemed absurd.
Even if he succeeded in escaping he would have to make his way back to
the city on foot, and he did not even know whether Agnes was alive. It
was very probable that both she and Aunt Tam were dead of cholera or by
violence somewhere in the muddy fertile reaches of the Delta. How could
two gently bred women of the North survive in all this wildness and
violence?

Into his mind came a sudden picture of Aunt Tam and poor little Agnes,
dying there in the wilderness. He saw Agnes very clearly, blonde and
young and child-like, helpless and alone with Aunt Tam who was only a
fool. The tears came into his eyes, genuine tears at the moment, born of
genuine masculine pity for the girl's helplessness. He began to curse
again, saying over and over, "God damn the fools! God damn the damned
fools!" He did not mean Agnes and poor old Aunt Tam but those who had
permitted the journey and encouraged it. And he thought, "It was that
old cow, Aunt Louisa. She sent for them because no woman in New Orleans
would speak to her." That must be the only reason--that the General's
wife had been lonely, that she had wanted for support the presence of
stalwart and virtuous New England women like herself.

Then as he grew calmer, he sat down again and lit another cheroot, with
the newspaper propped before him. With the first excitement gone out of
him, he saw that there was very little he could do beyond trying to
return to New Orleans as quickly as possible. And if he returned
there--what? Either he would find that Agnes and Aunt Tam were dead or
that they had been rescued. If they were dead, they were dead, but if
they were alive there would be complications. He wanted to marry Agnes;
she was exactly suitable, and he was, in spite of everything,
sufficiently in love with her, but this other thing was not yet
finished, and Agnes, backed by Aunt Louisa and Aunt Tam, might not be
the gentle lamb she had always been.

"That damned Aunt Louisa," he thought. "That damned, bumptious woman."
She was always meddling, always directing. For the first time he saw
clearly how much trouble she had caused; he saw that she and not the
General had really been the ruler of New Orleans, imposing her nasty
smallness upon the pattern of the stricken city. He had never thought of
her one way or another until now when her muddling directly affected his
existence. He had laughed at her, humoured her, even now and then
smacked her backside--a liberty she would have allowed no other person
on earth, not even her husband--because the friendship of the General
and herself was important to him. Through that he had led a free life,
with no disciplinary annoyances; through good relations with the satrap
from Massachusetts and his wife, he had achieved promotion and grown
rich in a few months. If he had been in the General's house in New
Orleans instead of being shut up here a prisoner in a ruined plantation
house, he would have told her off for her muddling. Damn the old cow!

As evening came the heat abated a little and the grim ruins of the slave
quarters took on a kind of beauty in the violet light. In the shadows of
the room he forgot Agnes and Aunt Tam and the General's wife and fell to
waiting. Only one thing was any longer of importance--that she should
return. By the time it was quite dark he was trembling as if from a
chill and at last when he heard footsteps outside he hurried to the door
and flung it open.

She was standing there, the curious, provocative face lighted by the
candle on the tray she carried. She was smiling at him, and he noticed
almost at once that the tray was set for two people with a bottle of
wine and a bottle of ancient brandy.

He said, "I was afraid you weren't coming." And for a moment in the
smile and the light in her eyes there was the gleam of that devastating
intimacy which he had never encountered in his relations with any other
woman. It was a kind of understanding that placed the two of them on
some high plane high above all other people in the world in a kind of
sulphurous glory, the devastating bond between two purely sensual
people who had no sense of sin and knew no shame.

As she put the tray on a small mahogany table, he closed the door and
locked it quickly, shutting them in from all the world outside.

       *       *       *       *       *

A little after ten o'clock Hector MacTavish set out upon his patrol,
riding the big grey mule. Keeping always to the shadows, his nerves
alert for any sound, he turned towards the road leading to his own
plantation meaning to cross the bayou by the ferry at Pont--Mousson.
There would be no one there to operate the boat, but with luck he would
find it on the Bel Manoir side and with his own great strength he could
manage to propel it to the other side. The ferry would save him more
than three miles of heavy roads.

As the mule jolted along, MacTavish thought of many things--of his own
house, pilfered and deserted, of his horses, of what was to come.
Although he was an immensely strong and active young man, he was, like
most leaders, given to grave and sometimes despondent periods of
reflection, and gravity had settled upon him now like a mantle of grey.

Many things induced the mood--the checkmating of their plan by "Silver
Spoon" Wicks, the rumours that with the rising heat the fever was
spreading again, this time bringing with it black cholera. But most of
all it was the small scene which had happened so quickly between the
young Baroness and Amede when she said to him, "You tried that once,
Cousin. You had best not try it again."

MacTavish was a simple man for all his intelligence, and what he had
seen in the eyes of the last two surviving members of the de Lche
family, as they looked at each other, was something that frightened him
and brought a faint chill of horror, partly because what he saw there he
could not understand through his own thoughts or experience. He was not
a prig and he loved women, but in that glance between the two cousins
there were intimations of dark and complicated things that made him feel
soiled and uncomfortable, emotions which he himself was incapable of
feeling. And then the sudden awareness of what was happening between
liane de Lche and the Yankee prisoner in the room on the upper floor
filled him with a sense of distaste in which there was more than a
shade of anger. It seemed to him that not only was she immoral but
disloyal, an altogether reprehensible woman whose ways he could not
fathom.

It was not that he was jealous of the Union officer, nor even envious,
but that the woman herself raised doubts in his mind as to the virtues
of decency, that she raised intimations of sensual mysteries and
delights which he did not wish to explore but which tormented his
imagination.

Half aloud he said, "Damn the woman!" The mule hearing his voice,
supposed that he was being urged on his way and sank back into a slow,
ungainly walk.

Then for a time he put her out of his mind and fell to brooding over
what lay ahead when this bitter war was finished, if it ever was
finished. In his heart he could not see victory for either side. He
believed in the Confederacy, he had fought for it, not for the
preservation of slavery alone; the issue was much more complicated and
profound than that. To him it was a war between the landowners of the
South and the factory owners of the North, between one system and
another, between two kinds of civilization. He had never believed that
slavery was inevitable or good, and he did not believe that it was a
system which could be thrown out overnight without violence and tragedy
and confusion for slave and master alike. He did not believe that
negroes were meant by God to be slaves--that was an argument of the
tricky politician or the pious hypocrites; he did not believe it because
he knew his own slaves and loved them as he loved his horses, which was
with a high and noble love which he gave to few white men or women.

He believed in Secession because he did not see how the great landowner
and the great rich industrialist elements could survive in partnership;
their interests were too profoundly opposed. One or the other must go
down in ruin and he knew that any economic battle in which the bankers
took part must go against the landowner.

What discouraged him most was the character of his own people. As a rich
planter and the youngest congressman from the South he knew them--in
Alabama, in Georgia, in South Carolina; and sometimes in his heart he
despaired of them for their decadence, their grace, their charm, their
ineffectiveness. It seemed to him, riding the mule through the scented
darkness, that the Louisianans were the worst of all with their quadroon
mistresses, their laziness and extravagance, their overripe emphasis on
romance and gallantry. It was not from such stock that one recruited the
strong men and the able women who would be needed if they were to
survive.

To his tough Scottish blood there seemed to be a curse upon the whole
state of Louisiana, as if the dark blend of French and Spanish blood and
the fertile beauty of the country carried in themselves the seeds of
ruin and decadence. Since the beginning the history of the State had
been one of violence and corruption. In its future and present he could
discover only the same elements. It was as if liane de Lche and her
cousin stood in a strange fashion as symbols of the evil that corrupted
everything it touched, the evils of decadence and cruelty, of greed and
indifference, which ate like gangrene at this very country where he was
born and which he loved so much.

When he thought of the little band he had brought together to fight a
vain guerrilla war against the pilfering shopkeeping Yankees, his heart
grew heavy. They were brave enough and dashing enough--young Chauvin
Boisclair and his cousin Faucon and Javolle DeMouy and all the others,
even poor dying Amede de Lche, but they had no character and they were
spoiled and as badly educated and ignorant as his own slaves. They lived
for drinking and women and horses. They were romantic and pretty, but
for what lay ahead, the building up of all this ruined province, men of
stronger faith and fibre were needed, men with even a dash of that
toughness and materialism of the Yankee prisoner who was at this moment
entertaining liane de Lche. For the defiance, the toughness, the
recklessness of that fellow he had a certain respect.

He had passed the burned _garonnire_ of the Boisclair plantation and
was descending the muddy lane that led down to the ferry when he heard
faintly the sound of a man's voice singing softly. It came across the
water of the bayou and as the song took form in the still night he
recognized it as an old slave song he had heard all his life.

    _Malle couri dan deser_
    _Malle marche dan savane_
    _Malle marche su piquan dor_
    _Malle oui a yu de moin._

Swinging down from the mule he tied the beast to a tree and slithered
down the bank to the edge of the water. Here, hidden among the tall
reeds by the landing, he waited, watching. The boat was an ordinary
skiff with three persons in it. One, a big man, was poling it through
the clotted water hyacinths. In the dim light of the rising moon he
could make out the figures of two other persons but not their sex. The
voice continued singing--a deep, rich voice full of homesickness. The
memory of the song it was singing and the quality of the voice itself
brought sudden tears into the eyes of Hector MacTavish. The man was
singing a nostalgic song about a "La Louisiane" which had never been and
perhaps would never be.

Then he became aware that the man in the skiff was bringing it in shore
to the ferry landing. It came nearer and nearer, and with the effort of
thrusting the boat through the hyacinths, the boatman stopped singing.
In silence, with one mighty thrust of his powerful shoulders, the man
pushed the boat through the reeds into the soft mud at the ferry
landing. Then Hector MacTavish saw that he was black and at the same
time something familiar in the easy thrust of the great shoulders made
him know that the man was big Csar from Bel Manoir who had run away
after nearly killing Elias Sharp.

At the same moment the two figures seated in the rear of the skiff stood
up and Hector MacTavish saw that they were women and white or very
light-coloured octoroons.

Drawing his pistol he stepped out of the reeds and said, "Good evening,
Csar!"

At the same time Csar quickly drew the long knife he carried in his
belt and turned towards him, ready to attack.

MacTavish said quietly, in French, "You know me, Csar. What are you
doing here?"

In the moonlight the big negro's teeth shone white in a wide grin as he
put away the knife.

"Ah's comin' home," he said, "and ah'm fetchin' two white ladies. Mis'
Jones and young Mis' Wicks. Ah fetched 'em all the way from Cuba."

MacTavish, having put away his pistol, bowed to the two women, noticing
that one was old and ugly and one very young and very pretty with a skin
which in the moonlight was white as milk. Standing there in the mud, he
welcomed them to his own country, thinking glumly that it was an odd
place and time to offer hospitality to strangers.

Then he explained who he was, while big Csar kept saying, "M'sieu
MacTavish fine man." And "M'sieu MacTavish friend of all black people,"
and "There ain't no reason to be afraid of M'sieu MacTavish."

MacTavish said, "You had better come with me. The country is not safe
now. There's no place safe to go but to Bel Manoir. I can't offer you a
carriage. There isn't a horse within miles."

Then Csar asked in French if it was true that all negroes were now free
and if it was safe for him to go back to Bel Manoir, and MacTavish told
him what had happened there and about the savage murder of Elias Sharp,
and Csar, rolling his eyes, asked, "Ma wife and chillun? What is become
of 'em?" And MacTavish said they had gone away, probably to New Orleans
with the other good negroes.

Then the older of the two women made an astonishing statement. She said,
rather primly and with importance, "We are on our way to New Orleans to
visit General Wicks. It is very kind of you to look out for us."

For a moment MacTavish did not answer her. The statement seemed
astonishing, even impossible. It was as if God had delivered fresh
hostages into the hands of the Dfenseurs. But his mind worked quickly
and almost at once he saw the futility of any plan of using them.
"Silver Spoon" still held the relatives and friends in the forts.

He said, "It is a pleasure to do what I can for you ladies--even though
you are relatives of General Wicks. I will see that you arrive safely in
New Orleans, Madame."

Then rather stiffly he said, "It's a good four miles to Bel Manoir. I
cannot offer you a carriage but I have a very serviceable old mule. He
will carry the two of you."

The older woman said, "That is very kind of you, but we do not mind
walking. We have been through a great deal and feel rather hardened."

But he insisted. Bringing the old mule out of the bushes, he bade Csar
lift up the two women. Aunt Tam got up in front with Agnes behind her,
holding firmly to her waist. The strangeness of the situation, and the
awareness that they were on opposite sides in a bitter struggle, left
them all silent. Only big Csar seemed unaware of the sense of strain.
He kept on muttering in a strange mixture of English, Spanish and
_patois_ French that M'sieu MacTavish was a fine gentleman and that they
had nothing to fear.

Then they set out, Csar leading the old mule with Hector MacTavish
walking beside him, his pistol drawn in case they encountered anything
troublesome. Now and then in the French of the parish he asked Csar
questions, edging out of the negro the whole story of the fantastic
flight. Once he smiled, saying to Csar, "You are a remarkable fellow."
And Csar said, "They are kind, good ladies. The old one is a very good
lady. The young one is only a baby chick still with the down on her."

       *       *       *       *       *

On the back of the mule Aunt Tam and Agnes rode in silence. Agnes was
tired and felt sleepy but Aunt Tam remained alert, partly because she
was not certain of her balance and partly because she kept straining her
ears in an effort to understand what the two men were saying, but even
when she heard a word or two it meant nothing to her for she could not
understand anything of the _patois_ in which they conversed.

She was having one of her elevated moments when her spirit soared. The
adventure, which she feared was nearing an end, had opened into a whole
new chapter. At first she had been terrified at the spectacle of a
stranger with drawn pistol emerging from the rushes. For a moment or two
she had visions of violence and rape and ransom and perhaps even murder,
but the fear went out of her when the stranger began to talk. He spoke
like a gentleman and he had the manners of a gentleman, but it was not
this which stifled her fears. She knew there were plenty of men with
good manners who could be villains at heart. It was first of all the
sound of his voice and then the sight of his face as he lifted his hat
with the moonlight falling full upon him. The voice had a peculiar warm
timbre; it was the voice of a wise and strong man, and the face was a
remarkably pleasant face, strong and simple and handsome and young, a
straightforward face which her instinct told her was the face of a man
to be trusted. She had an odd feeling that she had known him before, and
she liked the way he spoke to Csar who was her friend. Almost at once
she had whispered to Agnes, "He's all right. There's no need to be
afraid."

In an indignant whisper she had received the reply, "I'm not afraid."

And now here she was, a prisoner of the enemy, riding on a grey mule
through wild abandoned country infested with escaped convicts and
renegade soldiers and murderous escaped slaves. The adventure had not
yet come to an end; she wasn't yet forced to sit evening after evening
quietly talking with Louisa and the General about Cousin-this and
Cousin-that and what was going to happen to old Uncle Edward's property.

The prospect of visiting Louisa had grown daily more distasteful. She
had never cared much for Louisa, now that she thought about it--but
until lately she had never known the reasons. Now, riding in the
moonlight of deep Louisiana she understood; it was because Louisa had no
largeness of spirit, no "expansion." Everything about her was controlled
to the bursting point, like a too tightly laced fat woman. Louisa always
took a small, mean view of everything, mocking the spiritual flights of
men like Mr. Emerson and Bronson Alcott. Now, far away from Boston and
New England, it seemed to Aunt Tam that there were only two kinds of
people in that bleak northern country--either they were like Louisa and
her own brother, materialistic, "smart" and small-minded, or _spiritual_
men like Mr. Emerson and great reformers like William Lloyd Garrison and
Margaret Fuller. Nobody in New England seemed simply to relax and be
merry and enjoy themselves.

Thinking about Louisa and the General she wondered now whether she could
tolerate a visit to them. So much had happened since she last saw them;
she felt quite a different person _inside_ as if she had been growing,
expanding, warming. It must, she thought primly, be the sort of feeling
that a healthy pregnant woman experienced, the sort of _triumphantly_
pregnant woman who could be so annoying, as if what had happened to her
had never happened before to any other woman.

Suddenly her thoughts were interrupted by her awareness that the mule
had stopped. Ahead of them in the moonlight on the muddy road, two men
were advancing towards them. They themselves were in the shadow of a
great live oak. Mr. MacTavish was standing with his pistol drawn. For a
little while he stood silently, tense and still. Then suddenly he
relaxed, dropped the pistol into the holster and called out, "Chauvin!
lie!"

The two men on the moonlit road stopped and Mr. MacTavish called out
again, "C'est moi, 'Ector!" and went out into the middle of the road
where the three stood talking for a time. Then the two men turned back
and Mr. MacTavish came to where Aunt Tam and Agnes were waiting under
the tree. Aunt Tam noticed how tall he was and how straight, and how he
walked as if he were accustomed always to be on the back of a horse.

He talked again with big Csar and then, instead of going ahead along
the road, big Csar turned the mule, and Mr. MacTavish with his pistol
drawn again led them into the underbrush.

For nearly an hour they moved through scrub and swamp and presently they
emerged into a cane-brake and here Mr. MacTavish took the lead,
advancing with his pistol drawn, fifty feet ahead of them. To Aunt Tam
and Agnes, tired with the jolting of the old mule, the journey through
the brake seemed interminable. The bruised cane gave off a sickening
sugary smell in the hot damp air. It stood higher than the back of the
mule.

At last they came to an open space of many acres beyond which a dark
clump of enormous trees with the roof of a house rising above it showed
black and grey in the silver light. On the edge of the brake Mr.
MacTavish stopped and whistled, making a sound like the night birds Aunt
Tam and Agnes had heard again and again on the long journey through the
swamps. From the clump of trees on the opposite side the whistle was
answered. As if to make certain there was no mistake, Mr. MacTavish
repeated the call and again it was answered. Then he led them across the
open space and through a gate in the pink brick wall into a big garden,
black with shadows and overgrown with flowering shrubs.

       *       *       *       *       *

On the great landing on the second floor there was a light which
illuminated faintly the staircase up which the little party followed
Hector MacTavish. As they reached the landing itself with its shattered
mirrors and wrecked furniture, big Csar gave a cry and in French said,
"God have mercy on us, M'sieu MacTavish. What have they done?"

MacTavish did not answer him. He had discovered at the end of the
landing the figure of Amede de Lche. The small wiry body was half
hidden in the shadows of a great arm-chair. The single light, a
hurricane lantern, stood on the rosewood table beside him. Near it was
a bottle of brandy. Amede was huddled in the chair, a glass in his
hand, a pistol across his knee. He was very drunk and the brandy in the
glass he held stained the grey trousers. At sight of him MacTavish
divined what was happening. He had been drinking to drive his courage to
the striking point where he had the will to climb the stairs and kill
his cousin laine and the Yankee. He thought, "We came back none too
soon."

Quickly he walked over to Amede and took the pistol off his knees.
"What are you doing?" he asked. "Why aren't you on guard duty?"

Amede de Lche lifted his head unsteadily, the face as white as paper
in the dim light. His lips moved but no sound came out of them.
MacTavish knew then there was no danger--the man was too drunk to move.
Although no sound came from the lips, the black eyes, so black they
seemed to have no pupils, were eloquent. There was in them a look of
utter despair and misery. It was as if in the sodden body, the spirit
somehow remained sober and clear. The face, so deadly white in the light
of the hurricane lamp, was, MacTavish thought afterwards, like the face
of a man looking up from hell, the face of a man hopelessly damned. The
look in the eyes was that of a man who wanted revenge, a man in torture
of jealousy and hatred who was paralysed by fear.

MacTavish thought quickly, "It's that damned harlot! He's afraid of her.
He's afraid to kill her." And suddenly he wished that he had not arrived
so soon. Wickedly he thought, "It would have been better if he had
killed her and himself." The damned Yankee did not matter; he was white
trash. No one would have missed him save perhaps a woman or two he left
behind.

MacTavish took the glass from his hand and said, "You'd better let me
take you to bed, Amede."

But Amede de Lche did not answer him and suddenly he began to cough
violently, the paroxysms shaking the thin body in waves of violence.
MacTavish, filled with quick pity, leaned over and put his arm about the
shoulders in an effort to stop the awful coughing, and then the
hmorrhage came. The blood poured out of his mouth and over the torn
Aubusson carpet. For two or three minutes the horror endured and then
Amede de Lche collapsed and lost consciousness.

As MacTavish bent over him, he was aware of the presence at his side of
the great gaunt woman he had found at the ferry landing. She said, "We
must get him into bed and put heat at his feet. I'll help you."

MacTavish picked up the unconscious man. Against his own great strength
the poor thin body of Amede de Lche had no more than the weight of a
child. He said to the horse-faced woman beside him, "Come with me...
and tell the girl to wait here. She ought not to see such things."

Then he led the way, cursing under his breath and thinking, "It's that
damned harlot! She cost him his arm and his happiness and now she has
killed him!" And as he crossed the great hall, carrying Amede de Lche,
he kept seeing her, with her voluptuous figure and mocking black eyes in
which there was too much evil, wisdom and provocation.

But the girl did not stay behind. When they went into the wrecked
library next to the hall, she was there. When the older woman tried to
send her away, she said, "No, I can be of help. I mean to stay." And
looking at her, Hector MacTavish saw her clearly for the first time by
the light of the hurricane lantern black Csar held above the body of
the stricken man.

It was a child's face with scarcely a hint of maturity in it and yet
there was firmness and character. The lips quivered a little and
MacTavish thought, "She is afraid because she has never before seen
death but she is brave and will not go away." Something in the face,
perhaps its youngness and courage, brought an odd lump in his throat.
She was beautiful, too, in the dim light, even in the soiled dress with
her hair all awry.

They laid Amede de Lche on a sofa and Csar returned in a little while
with stone jugs filled with hot water and a basin and some torn sheets
of fine linen brought long ago from France as part of the old Baroness's
bridal trousseau. Then Hector MacTavish and Aunt Tam sent Agnes out of
the room and they undressed Amede de Lche and bathed the poor thin
body and put the jugs of hot water across his heart and at his feet.

When MacTavish had felt the feeble pulse he said, "I must go now. I
shall be back at daylight. You will be all right with Csar. He can find
things to make you comfortable."

But Aunt Tam said they would watch at the side of the sick man and
nothing could change her determination.

Very politely Mr. MacTavish said, "I would not go but for the sake of
your safety. I am sorry we cannot make you more comfortable. It wasn't
always like this at Bel Manoir." Then he smiled, a curious smile, easy
and simple and friendly, as if he had known them both for a long while.
"I hope you will not think this is Louisiana hospitality."

       *       *       *       *       *

What he did not tell them before he left was the message given him by
the two young men they had met on the road... that yellow fever had
broken out in the camp of the revolting slaves and renegade soldiers in
the swamp and that in terror they had begun to scatter again over the
countryside. Three of them had been shot pilfering the ruins of the
MacTavish plantation.

In the darkness he climbed the old mule and set out again down the
highway lined with great oak trees which led to the edge of the menacing
river. Then he turned south on the muddy lane which ran now along the
top of the levee.

The news of the dispersal of the renegades disturbed him. Since the
night they had been driven off, leaving eleven men and a woman dead on
the open space between the house and the slave quarters, they had kept
together on an island in the depths of the swamps. It was easy to watch
them there; dispersed they might attack at any time in the night in
small groups. But he had a feeling that they would not come again to
trouble Bel Manoir. There were still plenty of defenceless plantation
houses and stores for them to loot. They had, he knew, only chosen to
attack Bel Manoir because of Elias Sharp and their hatred of the whole
de Lche family and because once, long ago, the splendour of the house
with its plate and crystal chandeliers and French furniture had been
famous. Certainly they would not come to attack the house in the rising
dawn with no darkness to protect them.

And he was riding now to fetch the priest for Amede de Lche, because a
priest was necessary for Amede to get to heaven. As he rode through the
rising dawn he reflected on these Catholic neighbours and friends of
his, full of wonder for a thing he could not himself comprehend--that
they should lead whoring wicked lives with sudden periods of repentance
and devotion, that Amede de Lche should believe it necessary to have a
priest at his side when he died in order to speed him into paradise. It
was a strange belief, comforting perhaps, but in his mind full of
weakness and lacking in responsibility, convenient perhaps for men like
Amede and the other Croles but not for himself. There had never been
any formal religion in his life, for his grandfather, educated in
France, had been a worshipper of Voltaire and Voltaire's love of
humanity, and after him there was no church, either Protestant or
Catholic, in the MacTavish family, a thing which had always been a
scandal in the parish and caused the MacTavishes for three generations
always to marry outside of Louisiana.

And here he was, a MacTavish riding to fetch the priest, Father
Desmoulins, who, despite everything, was his friend--a tall, thin,
rosy-cheeked man with blue eyes and a clear and reasonable brain, who
looked like an eighteenth-century miniature of a French
statesman-prince-of-the-church. Father Desmoulins forgave him things his
neighbours would not because Father Desmoulins was, in his way, a great
man who had spent most of his life among the Indians and the Negroes and
the Sabines of the Delta, believing they were as much children of God as
the men and women who lived in the great rich houses of New Orleans and
the plantations. Father Desmoulins was one of the great things that had
come down from the riotous corrupt past of the province.

The band at Bel Manoir had had no news of him since before the burning
and looting began, but MacTavish knew that very likely he would find the
old man at his little house at Beaupr.

He had, too, a second reason for the journey. He hoped to find a boat in
which he might send the two women he had found by the ferry landing down
the river to New Orleans. In a boat the journey would be much easier and
simpler. He wanted to be rid of them, why he could not say except that
deep within him the instinct to send them away was strong. There were
times when the fey quality of his Scottish blood was more acute than the
quick intuition of the volatile Croles. There was something wrong about
the presence of the two New England women in the decaying doomed house
of Bel Manoir. They did not belong there and no good could come of their
presence.

He was tired. He had not felt the weariness until the moment he rode
away from the great house down the avenue, and the weariness brought
with it a loneliness of spirit which was rare with him and made him feel
uneasy and discouraged. As he rode, the scene of Amede de Lche's
collapse kept returning to him, taking on the proportions of symbolism.
It was as if Amede stood for other great families like his own who had
gone the way of decadence and waste and futility, families which had
come long ago out of the confused, dark beginnings of the province and
had long since lost their vigour.

The MacTavishes were not like that. The MacTavishes, coming in after the
Louisiana Purchase, were newcomers, vulgar and recent in origin, but
vigorous. The thought occurred to him as it had occurred many times
before, that there was a curse upon this country which he loved. It had
produced again in cycle after cycle so much beauty and richness
entangled always with corruption and decay, as if the very heat and
fertility of the place carried with it a miasma of destruction. It was a
country where there existed only the very rich and the very poor, where
there had been much beauty and luxury and splendour, but always just
beneath it much poverty and squalor. It was a country in which only the
Negro ever seemed to be adaptable and comfortable. It was a negro's
country, like the fantastic worlds you sometimes saw portrayed at the
Opera.

And as he rode a curious thought came to him--that neither he nor any of
his family had ever been at home here, because there was something in
their blood that could never reconcile itself to the soft and easy life,
to the heat, to the extravagant perfumes, to the rich, spiced foods.

In a moment of revelation he saw that all his life he had been
contemptuous of men like Amede de Lche and Chauvin Boisclair and his
neighbours, for their laziness and gaiety, for their duels and drinking
and lush romanticism. At times all these things had in turn tempted him
and he had yielded to the temptations, out-drinking, out-racing,
out-loving all the others because the animal in him was more vigorous;
but in none of it had he ever found more than a momentary sensual
satisfaction, and afterwards he had suffered disgust and disillusionment
because the very core of their romantic debauchery was false, like the
brown centre of an apple which appeared bright and pretty on the
surface. Their sensuality was not that of animal vigour like the brute
sensuality of the Yankee prisoner nor the vigorous sensuality of an
experienced woman like liane de Lche whose harlot mother had somehow
redeemed the taint of her de Lche blood, but the wan sensuality of
laziness and boredom--the same laziness and boredom from which their
slaves and their plantations suffered. There was something soft and
effeminate in it all that distressed him, not because of any finicky
disapproval but because it was wasteful and sterile.

"The truth," he thought, smiling unconsciously in the rising grey light,
"is that I am a Scotsman and by their standards a vulgar man."

At heart he was a reformer, a builder, a colonizer, a creator. He wanted
always to change things, to alter them for the better. This life had
always been too easy, too luxurious, lacking in hardships. It was like
the hot nights when sometimes, unable to sleep, he had lain awake
thinking of cold fogs and ice and snow to ease the sense of suffocation
that tormented him.

Life for a young man should be a finer, sounder thing than mistresses
and wine and rich food and slave servants. There should be in it, if it
was to have any savour or satisfaction, struggle and the sense of
building. A young man should love his wife and breed children, not alone
for the delights of sensuality, but because he needed strong sons and
daughters to work upon the structure begun by his own imagination and
ambition.

The sense of building, of creation--the hunger for it was strong in his
brain, his great chest, his loins, and now the whole structure which had
come to him from his father--the plantation, the great house and the
slave labour upon which it was all founded, so precariously--was in
ruins. It might be rebuilt--there would be a task! But, riding through
the darkness, he doubted that it would even be worth rebuilding in this
accursed beautiful country. What good was there in breeding strong sons
to see them and their sons slowly corrupted by the very earth itself.

       *       *       *       *       *

He found no boat nor did he see a living soul on all the long journey,
save an old negress who looked at him in terror and vanished in the
mists rising out of the swamp.

At last when he had ridden for nearly two hours, the blunt spire of the
little church of St. Jean Baptiste appeared out of the rosy mist of dawn
and as he came near to it, he saw that from the chimney of the house
alongside at the edge of the bayou smoke was rising. There was something
homely in the sight of the smoke which touched him and filled his heart
with warmth for the priest who, despite everything, had remained in his
parish among what was left of his people.

At the little fence of unpainted cypress pickets he swung down from the
mule, even his horse-accustomed legs stiff with so much riding. At the
little portico beneath the chinaberry tree he knocked on the
green-painted door and it was opened almost at once by Father Desmoulins
himself, his face rosy and smiling despite the earliness of the hour.
Behind him, pouring his _caf au lait_, stood the old negress Climne
who was his only servant. At sight of MacTavish her black face opened
half its width in a toothless grin of welcome. In all the parish she
loved MacTavish next to Pre Desmoulins. She prayed to the Virgin every
day of the year that he might be converted so that in the next world
when she opened the door of her cottage there, he would be standing
outside. For he had always been good to her people.

The old priest said, "Bon jour, mon fils," and MacTavish said, "Bon
jour, Pre," and they shook hands, the handclasp lingering a little
longer than that of men who know not the richness of their kind of
friendship.

"You are in time for coffee," said the priest.

"I cannot stay," said MacTavish. "I've come to fetch you. Amede de
Lche is dying."

"Dieu bnisse!" rumbled the old negress, crossing herself. "Le pauvre
mince gar'!"

He quickly drank a bowl of _caf au lait_ and then the priest climbed up
behind him on the tough grey mule and they set out for Bel Manoir. As
the mist melted away beneath the rising sun, the heat, damp and
enervating, began to settle down over the muddy river and the flat
country below the levee.

       *       *       *       *       *

Amede de Lche, the last male member of his family, died a little after
dawn on a torn sofa in the ruined house at Bel Manoir with two strange
women from Boston watching, one an Episcopalian, one a Unitarian, at his
side. He died quietly; one moment he was there and the next he had left
the emaciated white body and it lay white and still and empty against
the torn purple plush. That Father Desmoulins was not there beside him
did not matter much to the peace of his mind, for he slipped without
consciousness into death.

It was Agnes who noticed that he was dead. It was the first time she had
ever seen death, but some instinct, old as time, told her that the last
faint sigh was the sign of death. She had been watching while Aunt Tam
dozed, now and then wakening for a moment's bewilderment when she
looked about her. Aunt Tam was asleep when the boy died.

For a long time Agnes sat watching the body, not seeing it, but beyond
it into regions where her thoughts had never before entered. She wept
not for the loss of this young man whom she had never known, but because
he was young and therefore there was tragedy in his death, a kind of
universal tragedy touched by a sense of waste. Death brushed close to
her, too, because the dead youth seemed not much older than her brother
David whom she loved. Her tears were in a strange mystical fashion for
all the world, for the tragedy of this ruined strange house in which she
sat and for the deaths which had happened here and in all her country
North and South. In a moment or two before she roused Aunt Tam a
tremendous thing happened to her. Whatever there remained in her of
childishness after the hardships and perils and adventures of the last
month, whatever remained of the child who had left Boston with Aunt Tam,
died for ever at the sight of the tired white young face of this
stranger. She became aware of things--experiences and even
adventures--which had never happened to her in this life. It was as if a
kind of wisdom had come down to her from heaven, as if this sight of
death were in some way the culmination of all that had begun with the
obscene gesture made by the degraded crew of the _San Cristobal_.

Rousing herself from the trance which had seemed to paralyse her, she
shook Aunt Tam gently and when the older woman had wakened, she said,
"He is dead, Aunt Tam."

For a moment Aunt Tam was silent and then as if only half understanding
where she was and what had happened, she said, "It's God's mercy! The
poor little thing!" Why she said this she did not know. Quickly, as if
embarrassed, she said, "I will stay with him. You go and find Csar or
Mr. MacTavish."

But Agnes did not go at once. She rose and, going to a huge gilt-framed
mirror that hung on the opposite side of the room, she stood for a
moment regarding herself with a peculiar concentration as if she were
looking at a stranger. Then quickly, as if embarrassed, she began to
rearrange her hair and when she had finished she turned to Aunt Tam and
after looking at her for a little time, she said, "What is to happen to
us, Aunt Tam?"

"I wouldn't worry, child. God seems to take care of us. We shall get to
New Orleans in God's good time."

"I don't mean that."

"What do you mean?"

"I don't know. Only everything seems so changed, as if something had
happened to me or the world. It isn't the same any more."

Aunt Tam looked away from her and pretended to fiddle with the hurricane
lamp. "Don't begin to talk in that high-falutin way, like Mr. Emerson.
In any case it's not the time for it. Go and find Csar or Mr.
MacTavish. He will have to be laid out and there doesn't seem to be any
regular person to do it here."

So Agnes, still bewildered, went out and when she had gone, Aunt Tam
went to the mirror in her turn and looked at herself. The reflection of
the horse-face seemed strange to her, and as she looked into her own
honest eyes, she understood a little of what Agnes meant when she said,
"What is to become of us?" for never again could they go back to that
small, protected life of the house in Pinckney Street where everything
seemed to be without blood or splendour or richness. It was queer that
she understood only now that it had always been like that, all those
years of her youth and even in Paris where somehow her family had
managed to keep themselves for ever immersed in the same atmosphere of
remoteness and sterility. It was bitter to her that she had discovered
these things now, so late in life.

As she stood half-enchanted by the strange look in the reflection of her
eyes, she became aware in a dreamy way of the presence in the mirror of
a strange figure. It was that of a woman--a young woman--dressed all in
black. For a second it seemed to her that the face was that of the young
man who lay dead here in the room with her, but almost at once she saw
that it was a different face, very like that of the dead man, but
stronger, more vigorous, more determined. The woman was watching her.
She did not know how long she had been looking at her own reflection nor
how long the woman had been standing there. She felt a sudden
embarrassment and annoyance as if she had been standing there naked. As
she turned away from the mirror the woman said, "Is he dead?"

"Yes. He died only a little while ago."

"He is my cousin," said the woman.

She had a warm, rather deep and moving voice, but she spoke flatly
without emotion.

"I am sorry," said Aunt Tam.

"You need not be sorry," said the woman. "There is nothing you could
have done. There was never any hope for him... from the beginning. He
was always a foolish boy. He believed in love."

To this extraordinary statement Aunt Tam was unable to find any answer.
Before she could recover herself, the woman asked, "Who are you? How did
you come to this God-forsaken place?"

To Aunt Tam it seemed odd and lacking in respect for the dead to
continue such a conversation callously in the presence of a corpse. So
she said, "My name is Abigail Jones. I come from Boston. Colonel
MacTavish found me and my niece on the bayou last night." She did not
know why she said "Colonel" save that the nice young man seemed to have
an air of authority. Rather tartly, she asked, "May I ask who you are,
Madame?"

The woman said, "I am the Baroness liane de Lche. This is my house."

"I hope you will forgive our being here," said Aunt Tam. "I was brought
here. It was not a matter of choice."

The stiffness, the awkwardness of the first encounter had changed now
into something else. The quality was intensified, crystallized into
something very near to hostility as if in some way the principles of
good and of evil confronted each other. Aunt Tam was rather like an
alarmed cat with its back arched, its hair bristling. She found this
woman "disgusting," but what troubled her most was the feeling of hatred
she experienced. She was a simple, good-natured woman to whom hatred was
a disturbing and uncomfortable emotion. For the first time in her life
she understood what hatred was. The quality of mockery in the woman
seemed to pervade her whole being, even to the black of her dress.

The young Baroness said, "I'm sorry that you arrived at such an
unfortunate time with death and ruin in the house." And then when Aunt
Tam said nothing in reply. "It was very good of you to sit up with my
cousin."

"Anyone would have done it." As Aunt Tam spoke, it struck her for the
first time how odd it was that in such circumstances Mr. MacTavish had
not roused the owner of the house, even more odd that this woman should
not have appeared at all and when she did appear that she should behave
in this strange inhuman fashion.

But at that moment Mr. MacTavish and black Csar appeared in the
doorway. With them was a priest, a pleasant-looking man whom Aunt Tam
liked at once. She stood now by the side of the dead man, as if to
shield him from the presence of the woman. She saw that MacTavish
understood that death was in the room. But he seemed not to notice
death. He was looking at the young Baroness. His blue eyes had turned to
cold bits of marble and the square jaw had turned to iron. For a moment
he and the woman stared at each other. Then MacTavish said, in a voice
of ice, "What are you doing here?"

The woman smiled, "It is my house. Amede was my cousin."

MacTavish started to speak and then appeared to choke. He swallowed, and
finding words at last, said, "You are not to stay here! You are to
go--do you understand?--back where you came from! And you are to stay
there!"

"I shall do as I please, Hector MacTavish!"

He moved over to her and took her arm. "This is once when you will not
do as you please. If you do not go I shall make you go by force. All
this is obscene."

"Let go of my arm."

He moved away from her and said, "I beg your pardon... but I still mean
what I said."

Then she smiled at him and went out. As she left big Csar turned and
raising the first and little fingers of his great black hand, spat seven
times between them in the direction of the door.

In French MacTavish said to him, "You are right, Csar. She is a witch."

Then to Aunt Tam he said, "You had better go, Ma'am. This is work for
men. Csar and I can do it."

But Aunt Tam would not go away. Out of all that had happened while she
stood listening, she could make out nothing whatever. It all seemed a
hodge-podge of melodrama and mystery, but her instinct told her that it
all had to do with the dead man on the purple plush love-seat. Her
instinct bade her pity him and pity him she did. He was like a poor and
miserable orphan who had never known a woman's tenderness. Why she
_knew_ this, she could not say. It was perhaps only more of Mr.
Emerson's nonsense.

Firmly she said, "No, I will stay and help. I am an old woman to whom
modesty is of no concern. This is a woman's work."

MacTavish thinking how strange it was that so homely a face could
suddenly seem beautiful, turned to Csar and said, "You go and find
planks and make a box. We are going to New Orleans to-night and must
finish this business."

It seemed to him now, more than ever, that he must get the young girl
out of this doomed and evil house.

Throughout the strange scene the old priest had said nothing at all. He
only stood by the doorway, his kindly blue eyes filled with compassion
and understanding.

       *       *       *       *       *

As if to clear her head, to find her way, Agnes, when she left the room,
walked out into the open gallery at the top of the curving staircase.
But the air brought no relief as New England air would have done; it was
warm and damp and heavy with the smell of the flowering shrubs from the
garden below. She was frightened, why or by what she did not know, but
despite the fact that a hot sun had risen above the line of the opposite
shore of the river, she felt that there was no sun but only a kind of
misty darkness enveloping the whole landscape. Scarcely knowing what she
was doing, she descended slowly the long staircase, leaning on the
wrought-iron balustrade for support. When she reached the garden she set
out slowly along a neglected pathway in which the weeds and grass grew
between the moss-covered flags.

It was very different from the bright summer garden at Dedham with its
banks of bright clean delphiniums and dahlias. The flowers here seemed
heavy gross flowers like the thick-scented waxen petals of the magnolia
blossoms which lay in a drift of creamy white across the path. She
experienced a vague and curious desire to see crisp, bright-coloured
flowers and blond people and she thought suddenly how odd it was that
since she and Aunt Tam had left the army transport in Havana they had
seen only negroes or swarthy people--all save Mr. MacTavish. She saw his
face very clearly now with the honest eyes that were the colour of clean
blue water. There seemed to be a cleanness about his face for which she
was hungry as she was hungry for the crisp air of New England.

Moving along the path she came at the end of the garden axis before
three statues half-concealed in niches of a ragged, unkempt hedge of
magnolias. The statues were stained by fungus and partly overgrown by
moss--the figure of Venus and Priapus and Dionysius. Half-dreaming she
stood inspecting them, thinking at the same time that there was
something strangely indecent about the nude figures, something which
became associated vaguely with the puzzling gesture of the sailors on
the _San Cristobal_. Once the sight of such marble figures would have
shocked and frightened her but now they roused in her no more emotion
than a casual interest in their physiological peculiarities, for they
revealed to her things which her prudish education had left rather hazy.

She was thinking how wild and beautiful and romantic this garden was,
all overgrown and flowering with a lushness that was almost stifling,
when the sound of a footstep on the path caused her to turn and she saw
coming towards her a woman, not much older than herself, dressed all in
black. She was smiling, a warm and friendly smile it was, full of
welcome and friendliness. At sight of her, Agnes felt confused and
blushed as if she were an unwelcome intruder.

But the woman, still smiling, said, "Good morning. I only discovered you
were here. I am the Baroness liane de Lche."

"My name is Agnes Wicks," said Agnes. "I came here with Mr. MacTavish."

"I've just heard the story from your Aunt. Have you had breakfast?"

"No," said Agnes, thinking it was very odd that the Baroness should
behave in so cordial a way with a man lying dead in the house.

"I can't offer you much. It isn't as if we were living here. Come, we'll
go along to the kitchen. Do you like the garden?"

"I think it is very beautiful."

"It was lovely once... a long time ago."

Back towards the house, the young Baroness led Agnes through another
_alle_ roofed with rotten lattices covered with the purple drooping
garlands of wistaria. As they reached the house, she turned between the
arms of the horseshoe-shaped staircase to a central opening where the
great doors, standing open, hung sagging on their hinges. Inside, the
walls of the wide passage were damp and moss-grown. At the end they came
to a huge kitchen with a fireplace large enough to roast a whole ox.
Over a small fire built in one corner of it bent an old negro, lame and
with a scarred face. At the sound of their footsteps he rose and bowed
and gave the Baroness a curious vacant smile.

The Baroness said quickly, "His name is Aristide. He was born deaf and
dumb." Then she made signs of drinking, and the old man opened a
cupboard and brought out bowls of heavy crockery and lifted from the
fire a great tin pot of coffee.

"We have no milk. They have driven off all the cows."

"I don't mind," said Agnes politely. "I like it black."

"And there is only molasses to sweeten it, and only army biscuit to eat
with it. You see we have been in a state of siege." The accent seemed
strange to Agnes. It was precise yet beautiful. The woman spoke as if
the words she uttered were fragile and delicate, each one a bit of
crystal which might be shattered by too rough a touch. And now and then
as light creates in crystal a gleam of colour, there was a faint echo of
a foreign accent. The English she spoke sounded nothing like the flat
colourless English of Beacon Hill. Listening to her, it occurred to
Agnes that English could be a lovely and musical tongue.

The woman fascinated her. There was a grace about the body that was
animal, slow and flowing, like the easy grace of a cat. And she used her
hands, which were beautiful, delicately, like a cat. Watching her made
Agnes feel awkward and blunt and very young. And she had a worldliness
that was new to Agnes and therefore dazzling. Sitting there at the crude
table in the vast damp kitchen with cobwebs hanging in the corners, she
managed to invest their frugal breakfast and the crude furniture and the
very room with a kind of elegance. And she did not ask stupid questions
nor allow any shy and aching pauses. It was as if she were aware that
the girl opposite her was young and frightened. She enveloped her in
friendliness and warmth, telling her about Bel Manoir and the burning of
the cabins and the attack on the place.

Only once did she seem to change and that was when she told of fighting
by the side of the men and of herself killing three men. Then for a
moment the violet eyes seemed to change their colour. Her hands clasped
the edge of the table in her excitement until the veins which showed
through the white skin stood out like cords drawn tense.

The Baroness said suddenly, "When I return to New Orleans you must call
upon me."

"Is it nice there?" asked Agnes politely. "Is it a pretty town?"

The Baroness smiled again. "It is a strange town--not like any other
I've ever seen. It's both pretty and ugly. Its prettiness is very pretty
and its ugliness is vile."

"Do you think I'll care for it?"

"That I couldn't answer."

She pushed back her chair and stood up. "I should think you might need
some sleep."

"It's all right," said Agnes. "I'm used to going without."

The woman did not answer this remark but only said, "Come with me. I'll
make you as comfortable as possible."

       *       *       *       *       *

The bedroom was enormous, with a high canopied bed set in the middle of
the room and a small step-ladder beside it to aid the sleeper to climb
in. The mattress lay bare on the cording and the Baroness said, "I
apologize. There is no bed linen. It was all stolen and taken to New
Orleans."

"Who stole it?"

"The Yankee who came here to claim the cotton and free the slaves."

The Baroness smoothed the pillows and said, "I'll leave you now. Sleep
all you can. MacTavish will probably want to send you on your way
to-night."

When the woman had gone Agnes took off her outer clothing, climbed the
step-ladder and lay down on the high bed, but she did not fall asleep at
once. The heat, already pouring in at the great windows, was stifling
and she could not sleep for studying the room. She had never seen a room
like it. Despite its wrecked condition, there remained a kind of sultry
splendour about the mouldy green painted walls, the great baldequins of
gold above the windows and torn curtains of crimson plush. Her own
bedroom at home seemed tiny in comparison, and chaste and clean and
cool. Here even the furniture seemed enormous, as if it were a room
belonging to a giantess.

And she pondered for a long time about the strange woman who had been so
kind to her. She was like the room, like the house, like the whole
fantastic journey through swamps and bayous with Aunt Tam and black
Csar. She had never seen anything like her. "She is one of those women
I have read about," thought Agnes, "who has only to put on a frock and a
bonnet to make it appear fashionable."

But what had impressed her most about the woman was the elegance which
had a quality of unreality. The dress she wore was of some cotton stuff
dyed black, with a simple white collar, a dress even soiled and torn,
yet the woman had invested it with elegance. It came about, thought
Agnes, trying drowsily to discover the secret, from the way she walked,
moving smoothly and erectly, and from the carriage of the head on the
long curve of her neck, and from the awareness she gave you of the
perfection of the body which the shabby frock concealed, as if its
beauty and splendour were something which nothing could hide. And she
had an ease and a graciousness which Agnes had never before encountered,
a way of making the wicked decaying house seem a sound and beautiful
place.

She thought, "How wonderful it would be to be like that, to be so
certain of oneself that one would never be shy or afraid." Women like
this one must have some secret that none of the women she had ever known
possessed.

It was very odd, too, and difficult to believe that this woman was, like
herself, an American, that she too must have had grandparents and
great-grandparents like Grandfather Wicks and Great-Grandfather Jones.
"But then," reflected Agnes, "it is no more strange than that this
peculiar house and the peculiar country through which we have been
travelling for so long are also in America. Maybe people should travel
and mix more. Maybe there would not have been this dreadful war if
Americans had known each other better."

"That's it," she thought, brushing away the buzzing flies which kept
returning to annoy her. "That's it. When we get to New Orleans we shall
go about and get to know people. Aunt Tam will like that. It will just
suit her. Aunt Louisa must know _some_ people there."

But even if Aunt Louisa knew nobody, there were always ways of meeting
people. Even in Havana Aunt Tam had found a way.

And probably Tom and David would have friends there. Even if there was a
war, people who lived in the same town would have to speak to each
other. David might not be very good at knowing people because he was so
shy, but surely Tom would know people--nobody could call _him_ shy. And
everybody always liked him.

Then in the heat she began thinking about Tom, in this new way she had
come to think of him--as something warm and precious. They could
perhaps be married at once, as soon as she arrived. Aunt Tam would
approve of that; she would think it adventurous and romantic. It would
make her father furious and all the aunts and cousins at home, but that
did not matter. They seemed very remote now, like creatures in another
world, sprinkling the carpets with pepper and formaldehyde in Pinckney
Street to keep out the moths for the summer, and opening the windows and
taking off the dust covers at the house at Dedham. Half-asleep now, she
did not give a snap of her fingers for all of them, and in the
illumination which came to her, lying there between wakefulness and
sleep, she became aware of a dreadful thing--she did not love her
father, she had never loved him. This bearded heavy mountain of
authority and protection was a humbug. Even when she thought that she
might never see him again it did not trouble her.

"Perhaps I'm really like Aunt Tam," she thought. "They all think Aunt
Tam is queer and crazy because they're so mean and narrow and limited.
They just don't understand her."

There was something magnificent and adventurous and indestructible about
Aunt Tam, about the way she was friendly with everyone and never had any
trouble with people. Even though she was plain and eccentric, everyone
liked her at once. In a funny way there was something in Aunt Tam that
was like the Baroness--the way she swept aside all the things that
troubled most people--the shyness, the suspicions, smallness and
"tightness" of people like Aunt Louisa. Aunt Tam and the strange
Baroness didn't seem to have these things that wrapped you round and
tied you into an inert and stupid bundle. And Tom was like that in his
way too--sweeping everything aside which usually separated people from
each other. It was funny that three people as different as Aunt Tam and
the Baroness and Tom should be alike, even in the smallest way.

The discovery excited her and dreamily she thought, "Maybe I am going to
be like that too when I've really grown up into a person." And as she
fell asleep she experienced the queer sensation of being a fledgling
bird who was growing wings which one day would enable her to soar above
the world of ordinary people.

It was Tom she dreamed of, dozing and waking now and then as the flies
settled on her bare arms. It was Tom she wanted more than anything in
the world. She wanted to be married to him, to have him here beside
her. The dreams would have horrified "dear Papa" and the kinsfolk in
Pinckney Street. Once or twice during the long journey through the
nocturnal swamps, there had been moments of dreadful doubts when she
suspected that all those nice people in Boston sometimes had "wicked"
thoughts too and hid them away, choosing always to live in a false and
constricted world that began to seem to her to be the apotheosis of
dullness. She began to understand about the "wicked" girl who had been
expelled from Miss Dignum's boarding-school.

But to Aunt Tam, coming into the room after Amede de Lche had been
bathed and dressed and put into the crude coffin made by Csar out of
boards from the kitchen table, Agnes, asleep on the huge bed, seemed
small and frail and innocent and childlike. For once Aunt Tam felt
tired, so tired that she even put off writing in her journal the
extraordinary experiences of the past few hours. It would need an hour's
writing at least to put down all her impressions of the extraordinary
things her sensibilities had recorded in this frightening house.

Without troubling to remove her outer clothes she climbed the little
step-ladder and lay down to sleep beside Agnes in this strange world
which seemed to doze through the hot days and only come to life after
the sun had gone down and night had come.

Mr. MacTavish had advised her to get some sleep because they would set
out at nightfall on the last lap of their journey to New Orleans. She
would do anything Mr. MacTavish asked her to do. She would trust herself
and Agnes to his care. In the last two hours she had discovered a great
deal about him. There was no nonsense about him, and he had been gentle
and tender as a woman in all the sad business of preparing the dead boy
for the grave. The kind, sad look in the blue eyes she would remember as
long as she lived.

       *       *       *       *       *

Downstairs, MacTavish and Father Desmoulins laid Amede de Lche in his
coffin and MacTavish drew the curtains across the window and went away
leaving the priest to light the candles he had brought to place at the
head and feet of the dead man and kneel to pray beside him.

The old man prayed, but the sonorous Latin words were so familiar to him
that after a little time his mind wandered away from them and occupied
itself with other thoughts while his lips went on moving. But it did
not matter for it was not his lips that prayed but his heart, while his
mind wandered into more worldly paths. It was the form which would have
brought peace to the heart of Amede de Lche and all the millions of
others of the poor, fallible human race.

Father Desmoulins was old enough to be detached and aloof as if he
himself were already dead. It was this that had saved him now when all
the province he loved was torn and destroyed, when all those, black and
white and brown, among whom he had worked for so long were ruined and
embittered and dying. He had stayed behind in his parish house by the
little church of St. Jean Baptiste at Beaupr because he knew that those
who needed him would come there to find him, out of hiding in the swamps
and forests, as Hector MacTavish, an infidel, had come. He had no fear
of death or violence. He was ready to die if death came to him but he
had no enemies. And they _had_ come to him out of the swamps and
forests, negroes and mulattos and white people, in the middle of the
night or in the first light of the hot Louisiana dawn, to knock at his
door for confession or the last sacraments. He would stay there until
death at last removed him.

And so as his lips moved automatically, repeating the prayers for the
soul of the poor sinful Amede de Lche destroyed by the passions of his
body, the goodness in him understood much and achieved forgiveness with
God. For it is certain that God understood and found a friend in Father
Desmoulins. God saw them all in that ruined house through his priest and
understood and forgave them--Chauvin Boisclair and great black Csar who
was a splendid animal like one of MacTavish's lost stallions, and Hector
MacTavish who was troubled because two nights ago he had killed three
ignorant niggers driven half mad by rum and the monotonous beating of
Tombo's drums. And poor deaf-and-dumb Aristide hidden away in the
kitchen who was innocent as the birds in the garden were innocent, and
the Yankee in the room on the third floor whom God had made beautiful
and desirable to all women and endowed with a vitality that gave him no
peace, and the two strange women from the North, out of another world,
who were the most difficult of all for Father Desmoulins to understand,
and even liane de Lche, doomed like her poor cousin lying in the crude
box before him.

She was, he thought, as his lips moved mechanically in the prayers for
the dead, one of those whom the ancient prophets would have described as
possessed of a devil, a Jezebel. For she was brilliant and gifted with
life and intelligence and even beauty far beyond most women, yet they
were gifts which she had always turned towards evil and destruction as
long as he had known her, since she first came into the parish as a
child. He had known everything about her and he had known
everything--sometimes dark and evil and corrupt things--about all those
in the parish who came to him for confession. By now there remained
little concerning the weakness and folly and evil of mankind to astonish
him, but the demon that possessed liane de Lche was something he had
rarely encountered. He had known her wickedness since the beginning. He
had known the whole story of her and poor dead Amede. He knew even of
her curious, intense love for Hector MacTavish and her attempted
seduction of him. At confession, he had heard mirth in her voice as she
confessed her sin. And he knew how the curious idealism of MacTavish had
defeated her in the midst of a world in which morality of that kind was
so often of small importance. Her very boldness and wickedness had
defeated her, yet she had never admitted defeat. She had come back again
from Paris and Martinique, all the way to Bel Manoir to be near
MacTavish, to fight by his side using a gun like a man.

There were times, thought Father Desmoulins, when it was as if God
placed one's own hell inside one at birth. It was like that with liane
de Lche, daughter of a harlot raised in the wickedness of Paris, for
God had made her love the one man whom she could never reach. In her
wicked heart He had made her love him because he was a good and
honourable and serious man. God had given her many gifts but among them
He had given her a blackness of heart that revolted Hector MacTavish who
was a strong man. And her defeat, instead of chastening her wickedness,
only drove her on and on to greater and greater depths of folly until
one day in an evil and sordid end she would die without ever having
lived, because Hector MacTavish had never loved her.

On, it was a dark and complex thing--this short span of existence, and
hard and bitter for many of God's children. He was not like so many of
the heretic preachers, hard and stupid and denouncing, abusing and
condemning the weakness of their brothers. In the heart of Father
Desmoulins there was the pity of God, and so as his lips moved in the
prayer for the soul of Amede de Lche his heart prayed for the soul of
the dead man's tormented cousin. Amede de Lche was at last at peace,
but the hell of the passionate and defeated woman upstairs went on and
on. It would go on until at last, weary and lost, the grave would bring
her the only peace she would ever know.

       *       *       *       *       *

When MacTavish left the room where Amede de Lche lay dead, he went to
the room which he shared with Chauvin Boisclair during the few hours of
daylight when it was possible to snatch a few hours of sleep. Chauvin
had not returned and the room was empty, drowsing in the heat with the
insects singing in the bands of coppery sunlight.

He wanted most of all to shave and bathe, for he had a curious vague
desire to wash himself clean of this house, of the wild garden, of the
death and corruption that seemed to infest the whole place. He had taken
off his jacket and poured the tepid water from the cracked pitcher in
the bowl when there came a knock at the door.

He continued rolling up the sleeves of his shirt as he called, "Come
in," and the door opened to admit the young Baroness. She smiled,
apparently untouched by his violence earlier in the morning.

"What is it you want?" he asked.

"I came to tell you that I am going back to New Orleans."

"It think it's better that way. There's no use staying on here. It's
only a matter of time until the Yankees will march in and hold both
banks of the river."

She seated herself on one of the carved rosewood chairs. "That is an odd
way for a Secessionist to talk."

He took the tiny piece of soap and began to wash his hands as if the
urgency had become uncontrollable. "There is no use in deceiving
ourselves. We can't even hold this band together, let alone a good
disciplined fighting army." Bitterness came into his voice, "We all
ought to be dressed in shining armour riding white horses. It's every
man for himself. Every man must be a knight, a hero, himself rescuing
the whole of poor demoralized Louisiana. That's not good enough to fight
an army made up of tough and disciplined shopkeepers. Chivalry is dead,
liane. It is dead of futility and corruption in the province of
Louisiana."

She had taken up a bit of the torn curtain and was unravelling it,
looking away from him. Her long white fingers worked with the nervous
speed of shuttles. When she spoke she said a strange thing, "Do you
suppose I ever liked all that romantic rubbish?"

"You always seem to flourish in the midst of it."

She looked up quickly and then back at the bit of torn curtain, with the
quickness of a passing shadow, and her face took on an expression of
torment. She said, "What are you going to do with the Yankee?"

He glanced at her with astonishment, wondering if she believed he was
deceived by the casual way in which she referred to him as "the Yankee."

"Do with him as you wish."

"He is not my prisoner," she answered without looking up. He allowed
silence to speak for him eloquently, and she said, "Oh, I know what you
think, Hector MacTavish. It is not true. I am not in love with him...
not that much." And she measured an infinitesimal bit of the tip of her
little finger. "Not at all. He is a fool, a coxcomb. He fancies himself
irresistible."

"Does it make it better that you are not in love with him?"

There was a curious sense of tormenting intimacy between them, curiously
like the intimacy between lovers who need speak very little since their
thoughts are already known to each other. It was a bitter intimacy,
perverse and baffled, as if fate had meant them to be lovers but had put
some curse upon them. She did not answer him, and when he had finished
washing his hands and drying them, he turned towards her and said
abruptly, "What is it you want?"

"Nothing. I only came to tell you I am going away. Everything here has
been ruined or stolen. What happens now can't matter very much."

He began walking up and down, impatient for her to be gone, but she had
one more thing to tell him. She said, "I have discovered something."

"What?"

"That girl you brought here is the fiance of the Yankee. She came to
Louisiana to see him."

He stopped his pacing and looked at her sharply, but she was still
absorbed in unravelling the bit of torn brocade. He could not see her
eyes.

"How do you know that?"

"The Yankee told me. He read in the _Delta_ about them being lost."

For a moment MacTavish thought over what she had said. Then he asked,
"Does he know they are here?"

"No."

"Then you had better not tell him, under the circumstances."

"I hadn't meant to."

He looked at her sharply again. "You understand," he said, "you are not
to tell him."

She did not answer him and he said, "I think the quicker he clears out
of here the better. If anything happens to him... if anyone happens to
take a pot shot at him, it might be bad for the others in New Orleans."

"I think when I go, he will leave too."

She looked up at him as if to see the effect of the remark, but there
was no effect. He was looking out of the window, wishing that she would
go away because the sight of her here in the bedroom with him was
disturbing, and because he wanted to get some rest. It was odd that she
should always put strange thoughts into his head, thoughts that excited
him but made him at the same time alarmed and cautious. He was thinking,
"No good ever comes of making love to a witch."

She had stopped unravelling the piece of brocade. Her hands were
trembling so that she could no longer control them. She managed to ask,
"What time are you burying Amede?"

"After the sun goes down and it cools off. You had better not come."

"Why not?"

"It would be indecent."

She shrugged her fine shoulders and gave a laugh that was more like a
cough. "You have an odd way of looking at things.

"Yes, I have. And now, liane, if you'll go away, I'll get some sleep. I
haven't had much for the last three days."

She stood up. Her whole body was trembling now. She said, "How am I to
get back to New Orleans?"

"You can go with the two women if you like. We shall be leaving as soon
as the sun goes down. Father Desmoulins knows where there is a boat.
Csar can bring it back. Does that suit you?"

"As well as anything does."

She did not go away and he could not make out what she was waiting for.
After a little time, he said, "Why don't you go back to Paris, liane?
Louisiana is no place for you." In his voice there was a sudden
unexpected softness of which she seemed immediately aware. The trembling
ceased and she looked at him directly for the first time. "There's
nothing here for you any more than there is for me. Both of us belong to
different worlds. Europe is your world... not this half-barbaric
place."

"And you?" she asked.

"I'm going to the West."

The softness went out of her and in a hard voice she said, "I shan't
leave New Orleans until I get back the gold which belongs to me and all
the property they've stolen. Money means a great deal to me. Money is
power and I can't live without power."

"What makes you think you'll ever get it back?"

"You will see."

She went away then, abruptly, leaving him alone, but he did not sleep
for a long time, perhaps because he was too exhausted to sleep, perhaps
because the visit had disturbed him too profoundly.

At sundown Csar came in to waken him. He wakened slowly out of a dead
sleep, dazed at first at the sight of the wrecked bedroom in which he
found himself. As he dressed, Csar told him that the two Boston ladies
were awake now and wished to go to the burial.

When the little party collected--Aunt Tam and Agnes, Father Desmoulins
and MacTavish, Csar and deaf-and-dumb Aristide--they set out for the de
Lche burial-ground, the four men carrying the rude wooden coffin in
which lay Amede de Lche. It weighed very little for the boards were
dry and old and the body inside was little heavier than that of a child.
The journey was not long. Less than half a mile from the great house
stood the low knoll of consecrated ground with its tiny chapel falling
into decay with a leaking roof and moss-grown walls.

Long ago the first de Lche had chosen the knoll for a burial-ground
because it lay above the level of all the swampy landscape and he had
hoped that he and his children would have a resting-place that was dry.
But there was water everywhere, even when one dug deeper than three feet
on the little knoll covered with live oaks, and so all the dead de
Lches had been buried in the end above ground in brick tombs faced with
slabs of carved marble or limestone. The tombs had been placed here and
there at random among the trunks of the great trees, and some of them
through neglect had begun to fall apart in the dampness. They were of
all sizes according to the age and sex of the corpses they contained.
Always those of the men had been the more imposing and expensive as if
the men of the family had in death sought to fix their importance in a
family where for generation after generation the women had been the more
powerful. From some of them the carved slabs of the tombs had fallen
away exposing the faded pink brickwork of the inner tomb.

But for Amede de Lche, the last of the family, there was no such tomb
for a resting-place but only a hole dug in the ground already
half-filled with tepid yellow water. There had been no brick mason or
any workman to solder a leaden coffin over the frail body.

Very gently the four men lowered the clumsy box, so gently that the
yellow water covered it without so much as a ripple. Then they knelt
together, black and white, Catholic and Protestant and Agnostic, while
Father Desmoulins repeated the service of the dead. And as his lips
repeated the sonorous sounds, MacTavish thought, "Back to the earth he
has gone, not to a tomb but to the earth, the fertile soaked soil which
bred and corrupted him." He was glad that liane had not come to kneel
there with them. These were good people, even old deaf-and-dumb
Aristide. With her there it would have been very different. There would
have been ugliness and uneasiness with her perverse presence in their
midst.

When they rose from beside the grave it was nearly dark and the
aigrettes, crying in the dusk, were settling themselves for the night in
the cypresses of the near-by swamps.

As they moved across the uneven ground on their way home MacTavish
walked beside Agnes, so near to her that at moments in the darkness
their hands brushed for a moment, and twice he took her hand to cross
small ditches where the water drained away towards the bayou. The touch
of his hand gave her a small _frisson_ of pleasure, why she could not
quite make out except that he seemed very strong and simple. In her mind
the pleasure seemed to spring from the look of the square jaw and chin
and the kind blue eyes. She was aware that she did not feel at all as
people should feel returning from a burial. There was a kind of singing
in her heart and a curious sense of freedom.

       *       *       *       *       *

While they were gone at the burial-ground, liane de Lche was in Tom
Bedloe's room. She had come there to tell him that she was going away,
that she had found a way back to the city. He listened to her sitting
sleepily on the edge of the bed, satiated and for the first time a
little bored.

She said, "And so I am saying good-bye. You are free now to go where you
like. They are leaving here. You will have the house to yourself." In
her voice there was a fine edge of arrogance and mockery. She was like a
man dismissing a mistress of whom he had had enough. But it was less
what she said than the peculiar quality of her voice and the look in her
eyes that suddenly annoyed him.

He said, "Oh no. You don't do that."

"And why not?"

"Because what we have begun isn't finished yet."

She did not answer him directly. She said quite coldly, "I am sailing
for Martinique and then to France. I've finished with this accursed
country."

"What if I went with you?" He had not the faintest idea of any such
madness. With her assumption and domination, the sense of satiety faded
away, its place taken by the old challenge.

"You wouldn't be such a fool."

There was about their conversation a curious quality, almost inhuman. It
was the conversation of two sensualists disillusioned and without
warmth.

He said, "You will not soon find another man like me."

She laughed, "There are plenty of men better than you."

He laughed and said, "This is a silly conversation considering...."

"Considering what?"

"How we felt about one another." He did not wait for her to answer. "You
can't deny that. There are certain things in which a woman cannot
deceive a man."

But again she escaped his domination, "Women sometimes have great
curiosity... which may be satisfied very quickly."

"I shall see you in New Orleans."

"Perhaps... I shall leave by the first boat bound for Havana or
Martinique."

"Why are you going?"

"Because what I have come for has failed and there is no longer any use
in staying in a hateful city."

"What was it you came for?"

"To protect the property that was mine. It has been stolen by you damned
Yankees. I wanted to recover it but there seems to be no way."

He was thoughtful for a moment. Then he regarded her slyly, "I might be
of use."

"How?"

He came a little nearer to her. "Will you trust me? Will you let me
try?"

The hardness, the sense of antagonism seemed to melt away.

"If you like. I see no reason why you should."

"Because I am more sentimental, more romantic than you. I would like to
do you a service."

"I have no wish to be paid."

"I didn't mean it in that way."

"I apologize for being ungracious."

He took her hand. "Why are you like that? Why is there no warmth in
you?"

She looked at him in astonishment, "No warmth in _me_!"

"No warmth."

She sighed, "But I _have_ warmth."

Quietly he put his arm about her. He tried to kiss her but she drew away
from him. "No," she said, "not now... in New Orleans, perhaps. Not now.
I don't want to begin all over again. I can't! Not here again! Oh, God
save me!"

The desperation in her voice, the real anguish of her cry stopped him.
Freeing her he stepped away a little, looking at her almost with
distaste. She recovered her self-possession quickly and said in a flat
voice, "I must go now. They want to be off as soon as it's dark. How are
you going to reach New Orleans?"

"I could go with you."

"That's no good. Any of them but MacTavish might take a shot at you just
for luck. You can't trust them. MacTavish is a man but the others you
can't trust."

"Do you really care very much how I get to New Orleans?" It would have
been a silly speech, almost the speech of a coquettish woman but for the
bitterness in the voice and the intensity of the look in the eyes. It
was the first time he had ever been bitter. Bitterness was not a part of
his exuberant nature.

"Of course I care," she said. "You have only to go to the river and
follow it until you come to the city. And travel by night. It is not
difficult if you use your head and keep moving. If you want to eat, stop
at Father Desmoulins'. It's the first village inside the levee. It's
called Beaupr. I'll tell him to expect you. Don't leave here for a
couple of hours after they're all gone. They're going away for good.
I'll never see this accursed place again. I wish I had never seen it. I
wish they had never brought me here from Paris. Wait till they're well
out of the way and then follow the avenue to the river and turn left and
keep straight on until you reach the city."

"In New Orleans then?"

"In New Orleans...."

Then she went away. It was quite dark now and the waning moon had not
yet appeared. As he stood in the doorway her figure in the black dress
faded into the darkness before she reached the top of the great
staircase. The feeling of boredom and satiety was gone now. He was awake
and a healthy animal once more, hungry and filled with a faint sense of
excitement at the prospect of returning to New Orleans and his luxurious
quarters. From downstairs in the darkness he heard a faint sound of
voices and for a moment it seemed to him that one voice, flat and a
little strident and unmistakeable which might have been the voice of a
woman or of an effeminate man, sounded a little like Agnes's Aunt Tam.
He went as far as the well of the staircase to hear more clearly, but by
the time he reached it the sound of the voices had ceased and he
returned to the room, thinking that his imagination had played him
tricks. It was beyond the imagination--the idea of Aunt Tam turning up
in a place like ruined Bel Manoir. It would be as if the poles had come
together.

But the sound of the voices brought back the thought of Agnes. What was
he to do with her in New Orleans? What had become of her? Perhaps she
was dead. He hoped not. The wild experience of the past few hours had
for a time extinguished the very thought of her. But now she seemed
desirable again, if only for the reason that she was so different from
this woman who had just now melted away into darkness. One day he would
marry her and make her a good husband, but that time had not yet come.
This other thing had yet to be finished.

       *       *       *       *       *

When the moon came up its light fell upon an odd bedraggled procession
moving in the shadow of the levee. At the head, following MacTavish,
came the old mule carrying two women led by Csar, Miss Abigail Jones
and the Baroness liane de Lche. On foot behind came Miss Agnes Wicks,
Father Desmoulins in his black soutane, black, small, gnarled Aristide
and finally young Chauvin Boisclair carrying a carbine. Now and then a
word was spoken in a low voice but most of the time the party moved in
silence, squashing through the puddles of dark mud where the water from
the river had seeped through the levee. Every half-hour the procession
halted while one of the women dismounted to exchange places with the one
following on foot. Because of her age they had urged Aunt Tam to keep
her seat the whole of the journey but this she had refused, first on the
ground that she was quite as strong as the others and secondly because
she considered a place on the back of the grey mule a doubtful
privilege.

"I shouldn't," she said, "be able to walk for twenty-four hours
afterwards if one of you didn't take turns with me."

They talked little, partly because of the danger from the escaped slaves
and renegades dispersed by the fever, and partly from sadness. MacTavish
was sad because he was leaving the parish where he was born and which he
loved, perhaps never to return. Aunt Tam was sad because the adventure
was nearly finished and because she was leaving two new friends of whose
rare quality and goodness her sound heart was convinced. It seemed to
her cruel and idiotic that you should find friends like Mr. MacTavish
and Father Desmoulins only to lose them again, perhaps for ever, because
there was a war and people fighting and hating and killing each other.
As she sat perched on the bony back of the grey mule, she thought that
some day she would write an essay on the subject. The world, she
thought, planning the essay, ought to be delivered over to an
aristocracy of good people like MacTavish and Mr. Alcott and Father
Desmoulins. In them there was neither greed nor guile, nor the wishing
of ill to anyone. If the world could be ruled by such men, there would
be no wars, no fighting and no trouble. She had a mind for a moment to
include Mr. Lincoln, but people said so many different things about him
that one couldn't be certain. She would have to see him herself to form
a judgment. Her heart she could trust far more than gossip or the cheap
viciousness of the newspapers. It was, she knew, the greedy people, the
dishonest people who made the troubles and the wars... people, she
thought ruefully, like her brother Ethan sitting smugly at home in
Pinckney Street always putting his business ahead of
everything--decency, morality or kindliness. No, you could see what
people were by their faces. The goodness shone out of them as it shone
out of the faces of men like MacTavish and Father Desmoulins and even
poor black Csar. Mr. MacTavish's goodness had an aggressive quality; he
would fight for it. And the priest's goodness was gentle and
understanding. And Csar was like a great, faithful, beautiful dog.

She was still composing her essay when Mr. MacTavish halted the mule and
said that it was Miss Agnes's turn to ride. So Aunt Tam got down to
trudge along in the mud beside Father Desmoulins, and MacTavish, cupping
his strong hands, bade Miss Agnes step on them while he lifted her up.

Once she was aboard the mule sitting in front of the Baroness who put
her arms about her waist to steady her, he said, "I reckon you'll be
glad to arrive in New Orleans and have a good soft bed again."

"Yes Mr. MacTavish, I will be."

"You're a mighty brave girl and a strong one."

"Thank you, sir."

Then he took his place again at the head of the procession and as they
moved off Agnes settled herself and turned to ask politely if the
Baroness was comfortable. She got no answer and when she turned she saw
in the moonlight that the woman's face was wet with tears. Embarrassed,
she did not repeat her question, thinking, "The poor creature is crying
at the thought of her ruined house, of going away and leaving it to all
those wicked people."

The sadness of Father Desmoulins was for all the parish and all the
world, for the killing and destruction, for all the cross-currents of
passion and feeling he felt about him in the little party of lost
refugees. He was tired and, being old and wise, rather enjoyed his
sadness and the prospect of reaching his own bed, and the attentions
given him by his old servant. All the others, save for the nice,
horse-faced old virgin from Boston, were young, and while the young,
unworn and unarmoured by wisdom, suffered more bitterly from tragedy and
disappointment, they had in its place the strength to support and endure
these things. It was out of the fires of their resistance that their
characters were born. The weak grew weaker and the strong calmer and
more enduring.

Behind him young Chauvin Boisclair swung along, happy in his
carelessness and the optimism of youth. He did not know where he would
lay his head to-morrow but it did not matter to him so long as Hector
MacTavish was there to decide for him. It might be that they would set
out for Virginia to join the Confederate Army or that they would stay on
here leading the guerrilla life of the Dfenseurs. Once or twice his
full red lips pursed as he began to whistle, only to be reproved into
silence by a word from MacTavish.

In the whole party only he and the young girl on the mule were really
happy, he because he was young and being alive on a fine moonlit night
like this was a wonderful thing. His desire to whistle was born of the
impulse that made the mocking-bird sing in the chinaberry tree. And
Agnes was happy because she believed that in a little while she would be
seeing her Tom. Somehow in the long journey he had come to life. He was
no longer a kind of romantic figure out of the only sort of novel she
was permitted to read. The Tom she was travelling to meet was of flesh
and blood. Bumping along on the mule with the arms of the Baroness
encircling her waist, she trembled suddenly at the thought that by
to-morrow she might be held thus in Tom's arms.

       *       *       *       *       *

It was nearly ten o'clock before, coming round a bend of the levee road,
they came suddenly upon the tiny hamlet of Beaupr and the squat spire
of Father Desmoulins's church.

The old black woman was awake waiting for the return of the priest, but
she had not expected the others and there was a great scurrying about to
make coffee and heat up cakes for them. While she worked, aided clumsily
by Aunt Tam, MacTavish said to Agnes that he wished to speak to her
alone. They had only to step through the doorway. Once outside, he said,
"There is something I wanted to tell you. It's about your fianc. He
won't be in New Orleans when you return. Perhaps he will return in a day
or two."

Even as he spoke he could not think why he had troubled to tell her
this except that he felt sorry for her because she seemed to him so
childlike and trustful. He knew that he was being silly and sentimental
and was meddling in things that did not concern him, but he could not
help himself. His instinct told him that she had need of protection, not
so much against violence, as against liane and the Yankee. Slowly he
had come to the conclusion that these two were a pair--suited to each
other. Neither of them should be permitted to hurt others. The Yankee,
he believed, was very like some of his more worthless neighbours, except
that there was no decadence about the Yankee. It was his vigour that
made him dangerous.

Quietly he told Agnes the story of Tom Bedloe's capture and imprisonment
as a hostage, only he was careful to lie a little, dressing up the story
to make it seem that he was being held prisoner in some remote part of
the delta.

"He is free now, and I know that he is safe. He has only to make his way
to New Orleans. He is not stupid. He ought to arrive there safely in a
day or two. I did not mean to cause you worry but I thought you should
know, because when you arrive in the city he won't be there and no one
but you will have any idea where he is."

"It is very good of you," she said. "I understand." Then it occurred to
her how strange it was that he should know about her and Tom and she
asked, "How did you know he was my fianc?"

He had thought of this so he said quickly, "I heard it from your Aunt."
It was a lie but they would be leaving in a little while and it might
never be discovered.

Then he said, "There's one thing more I should like to ask of you. It
may sound silly, but I must ask it. It would be a great favour to me."

"What? If it is anything I can do I shall be glad to do it. You have
been very good to my Aunt and me."

In the shadow of the little portico he blushed, "I should like to have
something of yours to remember you by."

She laughed. "But I haven't anything to give you. I haven't anything
left but what I'm wearing."

He was silent for an awkward moment. Then he said, "Don't trouble. I
understand. I thank you just the same. I think we had better go inside
now."

He was aware suddenly of liane standing just inside the doorway and
again he was overcome by the feeling that this girl should be protected
from her. But Agnes laid her hand gently on his arm and said, "Wait! I
could give you a button from my frock, if you had something to cut it
off with."

He knew now that liane was watching and listening, so he said quickly,
"No, I have no knife. It's not important. We shall meet again no doubt."

He turned towards the door leaving her no choice but to go with him. She
wanted to stop him but there seemed no way. She wanted to explain to him
that she had not meant to hurt his feelings.

But there was no time. The old black woman was serving coffee and
Chauvin Boisclair was saying that they should be on their way if they
were to get to New Orleans under cover of darkness.

And then Aristide discovered the fire. He had been in the woodshed to
fetch more wood and he returned in a high state of agitation,
gesticulating and making incoherent noises. Seizing MacTavish by the arm
he pulled him to the doorway and pointed towards the west.

In that direction the whole sky was aglow, throwing the branches of the
live oaks along the levee into black relief. It was MacTavish who
understood.

He said, forgetting the ladies, "The damned swine have done it! It's Bel
Manoir that's burning!"

No murmur followed the announcement but only a silence as all of them
came out of the house to stand watching the light in the western sky. It
was the young Baroness who broke the silence. In a low voice she said,
"The Yankee. What's happening to him?"

MacTavish said, "He's got away. He's no fool!" He was not answering the
young Baroness. His words were meant for the girl, Agnes, in case she
had overheard and discovered his lie.

       *       *       *       *       *

The light of daybreak lay across the oily waters of the river when the
boat bumped against the granite wharf near the French market. There were
many other boats there already--small barges and skiffs and bum-boats
manned by Negroes and Indians and Sabines who had come out of the swamps
and bayous bringing their vegetables and fruits and fish and shrimps to
the market. They were shouting and quarrelling among themselves, so not
much notice was taken of the bedraggled party which Csar brought
ashore. Only at the end of the quay did anyone notice them. A Yankee
sentry stopped them but he was drunk and the young Baroness wheedled
their way past him. In the French market they waited while Csar went to
find a conveyance. He knew the city. He knew the MacTavish house which
General Wicks had taken over.

Miraculously he returned in a little while with two bedraggled
barouches. The Baroness and Aristide set out in one of them. Aunt Tam,
Agnes and Csar went in the other. As they turned into the narrow
streets of the old quarter, they saw for the first time the barrels of
pitch placed here and there on the banquettes. They had been burning all
the night and from some of them fire and smoke still emerged.

It was Csar who said, "It's de fever. It's bad in New Orleans. They're
burnin' to clear up de night air."

       *       *       *       *       *

Things had not been going well for General Wicks and his wife. It was as
if their own characters were, in the Greek fashion, bringing about their
ruin. The pompous little man with the pouter-pigeon figure and a squint,
a lack of all scruples, who had always been accustomed to shouting and
bullying his way towards achievement, found himself baffled and defeated
at every turn in this strange half-tropical city. It had a velvety
softness about it, a drowsiness that was as deceptive as that of a
sated, sleeping tiger which with one lazy blow of its paw can maul and
lacerate. He did not understand the ways of the people. They had no
respect for him and gave him ludicrous and libellous names such as
"Squint Eye," "Pot Belly," and "Silver Spoon" and "Molasses Eater." The
epithets were repeated to him by his own officers, sanctimoniously but
with a secret satisfaction, since few of them liked him any better than
the citizens of New Orleans liked him. And they came to him in a series
of abusive and anonymous letters which his wife Louisa always read
avidly with a curious satisfaction, partly masochistic and partly
because, discovering in them names she herself had frequently longed to
call the General, a secret part of her soul was satisfied.

She had followed him everywhere, through every campaign he had
conducted. She had seen all his failures, one after another, and she
knew even now that there was no victory for him in the occupation of the
city. The work had been done by the fleet of Farragut. After the forts
had been forced and the city deserted, nothing remained but for the
General to make a pompous landing from one of Farragut's ships to occupy
the city.

And now his failure to placate or bring any sort of order without
brutality and violence had done a dreadful thing to her. For the first
time, perhaps because of the peculiar and irritating qualities of the
New Orleans people, perhaps because of the climate and the remarkably
upsetting changes in her own physiology, the disillusionment she had
been thrusting beneath the surface of her consciousness for half a
lifetime, began to seethe and boil and force its way to the surface. In
awful moments of clarity, in the solitude of her exile's existence, she
found herself composing speeches which one day she meant to fling at her
husband. She would imagine the whole scene. Sometimes in the vividness
of her fancy, she would throw herself about in her chair or begin to
walk up and down the room in agitation, saying aloud, "General, you are
a fake and a humbug! You have bought or bullied your way everywhere! You
have been a demagogue in politics and a blunderer in the long military
adventure! You are a swindler and a martinet! I have known it all along
but I have never dared to say it even to myself!"

And now she _was_ saying it to herself.

In calmer moments her disillusionment was even more unbearable. She knew
the General as no one else knew him. She had seen his paunchy body in
red flannel underwear and so she knew what lay beneath all the gold lace
with which he covered his pompous front when he paraded in public. She
had observed in her own violent fashion that there was an odd likeness
in men between their bodies and their characters, and the sight of the
General, bleary-eyed and grey-faced, his thick round calves protruding
from beneath his nightshirt, became intolerable to her and there were
nights when she left the vast bed she shared with him for a room of her
own, saying that she suffered from _migraines_ and could only sleep in
solitude.

Everything he attempted seemed to her always to end in disaster. He had
been a failure in the Army. He was a humbug in politics. He had sought
to bring order to the occupied city and had produced only rioting and
chaos and rebellion. He had succeeded only in making money and in being
"smart" and for this success she was coming slowly to have little
esteem. Making money, she knew from observation and experience, required
no great talent nor very great brains. When she went over the list of
rich men she knew back in New England, her respect for this achievement
fell even lower.

She even blamed him for the tragic disappearance of Aunt Tam and Agnes
and the failure to find them, and for the disappearance of Tom Bedloe,
the one person who had made the lonely, barren life in New Orleans
supportable. It was the loss of Tom that she resented more than any of
the countless disappointments. The sight of him always cheered her. His
low jokes made her laugh. His healthy vulgarity was the only outlet of a
vulgar spirit which respectability had always kept rightly corseted.

Being a respectable middle-aged American wife with a certain background,
it rarely occurred to her that many of the General's blunders and
mistakes had come about from her own brow-bearing and bad advice. There
were, at times, doubts in her mind, but these she managed quickly to
stifle by a cloud of excuses, largely religious in origin.

Things seemed to grow worse rather than better with each day. The
insolence of the people, the anonymous letters, the defiance increased.
The General had ordered the town to be cleaned up and quarantines
established, making the citizens of New Orleans pay for the expenses,
but the yellow fever and cholera crept in just the same out of the
swampy parishes all about the city. And worst of all there were distant
rumblings of discontent with the General coming all the way from
Washington. The General had already received three "insolent" letters
from the Secretary of War, advising him to soften his tactics and try
methods more humane and wise and conciliatory. There were even
whisperings among his own officers that his removal was only a matter of
time.

In all this Aunt Louisa fancied she discerned the hand of Mr. Lincoln,
an upstart from the wilderness of Illinois, his own blood drawn from the
Rebel South. Mr. Lincoln, she thought, was a fool. He would not support
the New England business-men who favoured slavery, nor would he back men
like the General who wanted to crush and exterminate all rebels. Mr.
Lincoln had none of the qualities of what she and the General referred
to as "New England gentlemen" and "people of substance." She could not
bring herself to contemplate the humiliation of the General's removal
for incompetency. The satisfaction of their enemies here in this foreign
city would be something she would not contemplate.

And so, although until now she had been more ferocious than the General
himself, she began to see advantages in a policy of conciliation. They
had won over a handful of Confederates to co-operation, although in
every case the question of money-making was involved. With a little
compromising they might win over others and stifle the dissatisfaction
in Washington, for a little while in any case, long enough for the
General and his family and the officers to finish their deals in cotton
and sugar and dispose of the property they had acquired by dubious
methods.

It was not only the internal troubles that made the General's wife
irritable. There seemed to be no end to the petty annoyances which
disrupted each day. There was the incident of the letters.

It had begun the day after the General issued his orders closing all
cafs and ballrooms in New Orleans. She had found the first letter in
her work-basket when she opened it to set about mending some of the
General's undergarments. It lay on top of the materials--a blue
envelope, large and square and foreign-looking, an envelope in which a
great deal of expensive paper had been wasted. The scent of patchouli
came from the envelope, violating the chasteness of a work-basket which
was the property of a respectable New England woman. It was addressed in
a flowing emotional hand--"_Madame la Gnrale_." Although Aunt Louisa
knew no French and considered it a depraved language adapted principally
to intrigue and immorality, she divined that it was meant for herself.

Aware with a rush of blood to her head that this was perhaps another
abusive letter, she lifted it out as if it were a bit of ordure, but a
curiosity, which amounted almost to a mania, would not permit her to
leave it unread. With shaking hands (for rage was already taking
possession of her) she tore it open and read what was written in the
same large handwriting which covered most of the envelope.

She read: _Madame la Gnrale--You are a hypocrite and a harlot. You are
an evil witch. It is shameful that you should love a man young like Tom
Bedloe--a fat old woman like you. He hates you and laughs at you.
Madame, we have put a curse on you. You will suffer pains in head and
belly where we are sticking pins. You and your husband may close and
steal my establishment. You may try to arrest me. You may steal
everything in New Orleans but in the end you will gain nothing. You had
better leave the city before you die._

It was signed simply _La Lionne_.

Shaking with rage and indignation she read the letter through twice and
then started tearing it up, but when she had torn it twice across, she
checked herself, thinking shrewdly that it was foolish to destroy what
might be a clue to discovering the whereabouts of the writer. In this
brief second she stood there holding the torn letter in her hand, the
woman who wrote became a symbol of the evil city itself, a monument upon
which to fix her hatred. La Lionne! The proprietress of a brothel! A
scarlet woman! A procuress! Daring to write this to the wife of the
General in command of the city. She knew about Tom and the Caf Imperial
and the knowledge made the latter all the more bitter. So this woman,
this vile woman had discussed her with Tom, and they had laughed at her!

The servant climbed the stairs wearily to face a woman who was purple
with rage, whose voice shook when she spoke.

"Who have you let into the house?"

The poor man, who was not very bright, answered, "No one, Mrs. General.
No one but the General himself."

"You lie to me! Someone brought a letter here."

"I didn't see anybody, Mrs. General, I didn't." His blank face turned
grey with fear. "I ain't seen anybody in the front hall but the General
himself."

It was clear even to the General's wife that the man was too stupid to
plot or lie. Otherwise she would have had him sent away, back to the
labour detachment. He was probably drunk or asleep when the letter was
delivered, or it had been left there by someone inside the house.

With the letter still in her hand she swept down two flights of stairs
to the basement. Here in the dark kitchen the cook and the young mulatto
who came in by the day to clean had to face her rage.

"It was in my work-basket," she kept screaming. "How could anyone put it
into my work-basket without anybody seeing it?"

But neither of them knew anything. She sent away the mulatto girl saying
she was lucky not to be arrested. She discharged the cook and then,
aware that it was difficult to find any sort of cook who would work for
the General, she changed the order and went upstairs again.

When the General returned in the evening she said, "You must find her
and arrest her. It's outrageous. Have we no dignity in our position
which cannot be violated?"

"It appears not," said the General, and after a moment, "We have been
trying to find the woman. We have had a warrant out for her arrest for
forty-eight hours."

"Well, you'd better find her. This can't go on."

But the General did not show much interest. He looked sallow and tired
and consumed a great amount of baking soda to make him belch
comfortably. He had had a bad day filled with more trouble than usual
and ending with the arrival of one of those irritating letters from
Secretary Seward advising him all the way from Washington how to govern
a rebellious city filled with stinking Secessionists. His own government
was now making an uproar about the gold belonging to the Planters' Bank
which he had seized illegally from the Belgian Consulate. The French
Consulate and the English Consulate had complained of him as well,
charging him with being high-handed and dishonest.

And now to have to face his wife in so violent a mood seemed too much to
endure even for a man of his small sensibilities. There were times when
he wished that she would threaten him with returning to Boston so that
he might send her, but her threats never went that far. She had never
left the General for a day in any one of his disastrous campaigns and
she did not mean to leave him at this late date when all the world
seemed to have turned against him.

Silently the General reflected that all luck seemed to have abandoned
him.

It was a miserable night they spent in the vast MacTavish house,
irritated, hating each other, unable to sleep. The General worried and
afraid, his bully's heart weakening in the face of trouble, the
General's wife angry, snorting from time to time into her pillow. The
heat was terrible--damp and heavy with not the ghost of a breeze from
the hot Gulf.

In the middle of the night she fell victim to a terrible _migraine_ and
felt shooting pains in her abdomen and nothing could keep her from
thinking of the passage in the letter about the pins they were sticking
into her. But worse than the pain or the thought of the pins was one
awful passage engraved upon her consciousness like Calais on the heart
of Bloody Mary.

_It is shameful that you should love a man young like Tom Bedloe... a
fat old woman like you. He hates you and laughs at you._

In the darkness she could see the sentences as if they were written in
letters of fire in the big sprawling handwriting.

It was not true that she loved Tom Bedloe. Was that what people were
saying in New Orleans? Had he gone about saying things? She would make
him pay if he had. She would have him stripped of his job and his rank.
She would have him arrested for stealing from the Port Office. She would
show him! In love with him! A whippersnapper like that! A coxcomb! A
lady-killer! A libertine!

But all the time in the back of her mind was the delicious consciousness
of that curious moment of ecstasy she had experienced in the dining-room
when she had gone to fetch the whisky for the General.

       *       *       *       *       *

The annoyance did not come to an end with the incident of the
work-basket. Two days later the new orderly brought her another blue
square envelope addressed in the same sprawling handwriting. At sight of
it she flew into another rage (which brought on a violent _migraine_)
and she upbraided the orderly for accepting it.

Who had brought the note? Why hadn't he arrested the bearer on sight?
Didn't he know his duty? What kind of a lunkhead was he? Turning her
back upon him she went out, slamming the door, to face the awful
temptation of the letter. Alone, she paced the room, struggling with the
desire to read it. Her common sense told her to burn it at once, but her
curiosity, the curiosity which at times reduced her to the level of a
monster, would not permit her. In the end to stifle the torment she tore
it open.

This time it was brief. It read:

_Madame--How are your pains? Worse and Worse. They will get worser. We
are sticking fiery pins into your belly and head. You will never see Tom
Bedloe again. You had better get gone off New Orleans and leave honest
people alone. La Lionne._

That night when the General returned, he found her in bed. He had a
lonely supper but, for the first time for days, a peaceful one. He even
found no need of baking soda to make him belch properly. It was long
after midnight when fearfully he joined her in the great bed.

When the tirade had worn itself out, she asked, "Where is Tom Bedloe?"

The General didn't know. No one knew.

"It is shameful," she said, "that the whole Union Army hasn't been able
to rescue him."

A third letter she found on her bed in the middle of the afternoon.

This time she determined to discharge the cook but when she descended to
the kitchen she found that the cook already had her few belongings tied
up in an old sheet and was leaving. At first the woman would tell her
nothing. It was only when she stood in the doorway and refused to let
her pass that she said the house had a doom on it. A _poupon_ had been
found in the doorway. It was directed against someone in the house. The
someone was certain to die. There was no saving that someone.

Nothing could make the woman stay.

After that it seemed to be easier. The letters appeared mysteriously on
the doorstep, in the kitchen, even in the storeroom where the horses
were stabled. And each day the General's wife had new attacks of pain in
the head and abdomen. The General issued special orders for the
apprehension of La Lionne, and privately, although it caused him pain
very nearly as great as that suffered by his wife, he offered special
rewards out of his pocket not only for the capture of the Lioness but
for the discovery and rescue of Tom Bedloe. In the confusion and
agitation Aunt Tam and Agnes were very nearly forgotten.

       *       *       *       *       *

La Lionne was safe enough. She was hidden away in the house of Cllie's
mother in a crooked street not far from Congo Square. It was a pleasant
house, small but with a nice walled garden which gave it privacy, the
gift of Cllie's white father to her quadroon mother when he married and
broke off their liaison. He had been a generous lover and left Cllie's
mother ten thousand dollars in French bonds as well as the house, and so
in that dim half-world of pale golden women and girls, the woman known
by the name of Joslie Drlincourt was a person of importance who had
married a free negro named Legrand with a fruit and vegetable business.
They had placed Cllie with La Lionne when she reached the age of
sixteen because they were ambitious for her and wished her to have
opportunities and training which her mother had never known.

La Lionne had been good to her, teaching her to speak French properly,
not the garbled French of her mother's people but the pure French of
Paris. La Lionne had taught her grand manners and supervised her taste
in clothes and seen to it that the girl met only the most distinguished
young men. The plan had always been that when La Lionne sold the Caf
Imperial, Cllie was to go with her to Paris, to a brilliant life beside
which even the world centring about the Quadroon Balls was nothing.

And it had gone well, as planned, until the fall of the city. From then
on the Caf Imperial had become a different place, vulgar and cheap and
disorderly, and to protect Cllie, La Lionne had kept her apart from the
other girls, giving her special protection. Because Cllie herself was
young and accomplished and prettier than the other girls, the task of
protecting her had grown more and more difficult until that afternoon
when a shy Bostonian had come to the Caf seeking news of his missing
friend. From that moment until the disastrous evening which ended with
the closing of the establishment, the problem of Cllie was solved. She
had a protector who was a gentleman. The sudden inspiration of La Lionne
was successful beyond her wildest hopes.

So, on the night of the rioting when the Caf was demolished and two men
were killed amid the smashed mirrors of the bar-room, La Lionne and
Cllie, accompanied and protected by Big Ernestine, made their escape by
the back door into Bourbon Street and, hurrying along the muddy
banquettes, went directly to the house of Joslie Drlincourt. There she
remained, hidden, in a bedroom on the second floor.

The Lioness who hid away in the little room of Joslie Drlincourt's
house was a different woman from the Lioness whom Joslie knew when she
first took her daughter Cllie into the gilt and red plush bedroom above
the Caf Imperial. She still kept the proudness of her carriage--that
fierce erectness which was at the same time supple and provocative--as
she walked after nightfall up and down, up and down, like a lioness, in
Joslie's small garden. But the glow was gone. All the fierce vitality,
which gave her a kind of incandescent glow and made her seem a woman far
younger than her years, was no longer there. The loud, rather coarse but
immensely human laugh was no longer heard.

In the beginning Joslie, who was a woman of no illusions and vast
experience, had believed that the change in her came through
disappointment and anger at the destruction of her fortune. The Caf
Imperial had been a rich property--none knew better than Joslie how to
appraise property--and now it was worth nothing, the interior wrecked
and ruined, the clientele which had made it so distinguished a
rendezvous, dispersed, ruined or dead. What might have been sold for
seventy-five thousand in gold dollars, no longer had any value at all.
And such a disaster was, thought Joslie, enough to ruin the health and
change the disposition of any woman, even if there had not been added to
it the fact that La Lionne, once so rich and even so powerful in the
affairs of the city, was now being hunted like a criminal.

It was only after days of watching her and of gossiping with Cllie and
Big Ernestine that Joslie began to discover the truth. La Lionne fasted
and stayed in bed all day weeping, she went stealthily to early Mass,
she muttered to herself, she went with Big Ernestine to visit Mama
Tolanne after nightfall, not because her business had been ruined, but
because of a man.

It took a long time for Joslie to feel the discovery credible. She was,
after all, herself a woman of experience but she had never felt any such
violence of emotion for any man as that displayed by La Lionne. There
were, she knew, girls who sometimes became the slaves of their
_maquereaux_, but La Lionne was not a stupid girl. She was a clever
woman, good at business, with strength of character, who had fought her
way through life like a man. She was no young girl to swoon and become
the victim of the first good-looking fellow who came along.

So for days, while Joslie cooked and marketed and kept her husband's
account books and received and helped entertain her daughter's young
Yankee admirer, she brooded over the strange behaviour of her guest, and
as she brooded, a complex sense of envy came to be born. La Lionne must
have experienced something which it was too late for her now ever to
experience. She determined that when La Lionne had calmed down a bit,
she would question her intimately to discover the secret of the man's
fascination. It would be a good talk between experienced women. She
looked forward to it.

There were other things which troubled Joslie since the ruin of the
Caf Imperial. It was true that the house was filled with comings and
goings and that there were always extra mouths at every meal, but this
she would not have minded because she liked people and excitement. What
disturbed her most was the presence and personality of Cllie's young
admirer. He was like no young man she had ever seen. That he had reached
the age of twenty and was still a virgin when he discovered Cllie
seemed to her unbelievable and faintly scandalous. In New Orleans a
Crole boy in a similar situation would have been regarded as peculiar
as if he were deformed or half-witted. Very likely, if there could be
such a boy, his family would be forced to send him out of the community
as something shameful.

Over her housework she reflected upon what the world must be like out of
which he had come. A dull world, she thought, a peculiar and unhealthy
world which kept its young men in such unnatural suppression and
ignorance. No good could come of it, except monsters like the ogre who
ruled New Orleans. The more she reflected upon the situation the more
shocked she became. It was like not teaching a child to read and write
and prepare it for earning its living.

But she found, too, a kind of vicarious pleasure in the idyllic and
childlike quality of the romance between David Wicks and her daughter
Cllie. This quality was something which she herself, in all her
experience, had never known. They were, she thought, like a pair of
mourning doves, slim and young and pretty. She found them charming to
watch, on the love-seat in the _salon_, or as they walked up and down
the little garden together, their arms about each other's waists, or at
the gate of the garden, when at last he chose to leave.

In less sentimental moments Joslie was, it is true, troubled by
somewhat maternal doubts concerning the future of her only child. She
had thought it all out. It was unlikely or impossible that the young
Yankee would remain in New Orleans and undertake the support of Cllie
and her security for the future, and from what she had heard it did not
seem possible that he would take her back to Boston and set up an
establishment for her there. What was most troublesome of all was the
awful discovery that Cllie was in love, and in love in a strange and
unnatural fashion--romantically and sentimentally. Being in love and in
that peculiar fashion had made her stubborn and irritable and superior.
With the boy she was gentle as a dove, but with her mother she displayed
stubbornness and even contempt.

When Joslie attempted to explain her situation to her in realistic
terms, the girl only said that her mother could not understand things
like this because she had never been in love. When her mother tried to
explain that women in her peculiar position could not live for ever upon
swooning and mooning but had their futures to think of, the girl simply
slammed the door and left her.

"What about Paris?" her mother asked her. "What about the stage and the
career La Lionne has promised you?" The girl only said scornfully,
"Paris! Career! Look at La Lionne herself, growing thin and haggard and
old all because of love. Why doesn't she go back to Paris? There's
nothing here to hold her any longer but that Yankee, and more than
likely he's dead. She's had lots of experience and she's no better than
I am. Where is _her_ common sense?"

To this of course Joslie had no answer or rather only a poor one--that
La Lionne's love sprang from sensuality and therefore was more bitter
and savage than the sentimental love between her daughter and the boyish
Yankee. She attempted to explain, almost in physiological terms, which
Cllie resented and would not hear because it seemed to spoil her own
dream.

And so Love, for which Joslie had always lived and still lived, began
to become a bore and a nuisance in her own settled respectable home. Her
husband Joe was no help. He was simple and uncomplicated and direct and
satisfactory as a lover, but he was, Joslie told herself, black and
savage and did not understand romance as she had always known it until
she married and settled down. She began to wish that La Lionne would
take herself back to Paris, and that the young Yankee would return to
Boston where men apparently remained virgins until they married.

       *       *       *       *       *

As for David, he allowed his golden hair to grow even longer until now
it fell below his ears. His life, once so orderly, spent between the
Port Office and writing poetry about graveyards and snowstorms in his
hotel bedroom, became disorderly and Bohemian. The strange household of
Joslie with its amorality, its laughter, its comings and goings of
Joslie's octoroon friends, with La Lionne hiding in her bedroom,
moaning and groaning with baffled love, and Cllie always waiting for
him with her innocently experienced caresses, became a kind of paradise.
It was not only that he had discovered a life violently opposed to
anything in Pinckney Street and Dedham, it was also that he felt that he
was now leading the life of a poet. He drank and sang and made love to
Cllie and hated Boston and succeeded in tangling the accounts of the
Port Office far beyond the point of confusion in which Tom Bedloe had
deliberately and carefully left them.

He knew all the time of the presence of La Lionne in the house. He knew
of the rewards offered for her apprehension. He knew presently even of
the voodoo tricks being played on Aunt Louisa by Big Ernestine and La
Lionne during their secret nightly visits to Mama Tolanne. He even came
to know through Cllie of the letters which found their way into the
house of the General's wife.

He would not in any case have betrayed La Lionne. He was too grateful to
her for the extraordinary change she had made in his life, for the
freedom she had given him. But there were reasons even more profound for
protecting her. She was revenging him upon Aunt Louisa, and so upon all
the things for which Aunt Louisa stood, the things which might have
deformed his whole life--all the meanness, the tightness, the aridness
which, he believed, were death to a poet.

And all the while this was what mattered most to him--that he should be
a great Byronic poet, singing of love and death in the heroic manner.
All the abandon, the good nature, the sensuality of Joslie's household
was only a part of the experience he must have, the trimmings and
background of the heroic role he was to play, the stage trappings before
which he was to strut.

There were even times in this new existence when the fate of Aunt Tam
and his sister Agnes faded into insignificance. The curious feeling of
an intense affection for his twin sister, born of his long dependence
upon her as the stronger of the two, disappeared. Agnes and Aunt Tam
would turn up some day, as Aunt Tam, the indestructible, had always had
a way of doing. Life would go on, only he would be different.

He began to grow chesty and lose some of the boyishness and to swagger
and to drink and swear. Sometimes, it was true, it required a certain
effort, but it became easier each time he indulged himself, just as,
once the first shy, halting step had been taken with Cllie, love had
become a simple and natural function. He had never been popular with his
fellow-officers who had always thought him a milksop protected by old
"Silver Spoon" and Tom Bedloe. Now they thought him a dude and a
popinjay.

And then one night, returning from Joslie's and feeling bold and wild,
he opened the portfolio where he carefully preserved his poems about
snowstorms and graveyards, tore them up and threw them out of the
window. And almost at once he began a great epic poem which he called
"Don Juan and Oriana." Cllie of course was Oriana, a simple, lovely
child dwelling in a forest of magnolia and chinaberry trees among the
savage Indians.

He wrote far into the morning, verse after verse, describing the trees
and flowers and jungles of the background and the beauty of Oriana who
had been carried off as a child among the savages and by her sweetness
and beauty had come to rule over them. Oriana was regarded as a goddess
whose virginity was a sacred thing.

It was already daylight when he wrote "Canto II" on a blank sheet of
paper making it ready to receive the story of Don Juan arriving from the
North. Then he undressed and tired, but happy and at peace, fell asleep.

At a little after nine he was awakened by a pounding on the door and
opened it to admit Aunt Louisa's orderly who told him that Aunt Tam and
Agnes had been found and were even at thus moment having breakfast at
the General's house. The strange part of the story was that they had
been rescued not by the troops sent out by General Wicks, but by a band
of rebel guerrillas who delivered them to the General.

       *       *       *       *       *

The breakfast was the first happy experience for weeks in the life of
the General's wife.

The General always kept Spartan hours, not because he liked them but
because it eased a little his feeling of being a mere politician turned
soldier, and so they were both seated at the table having a huge and
indigestible breakfast of ham, eggs, pancakes, hot breads and coffee
when the orderly came running up the stairs to say that Miss Abigail
Jones and Miss Agnes Wicks were in the hall below.

There she and the General found them, rather bedraggled, hatless and in
torn clothing, talking to a huge and very black negro. Aunt Tam was
telling the negro to go and find his wife and children and return when
he had seen them. Aunt Louisa saw her give him a gold piece as she ran
down the stairs crying, "Tammy! Agnes!"

In the anxious days after their disappearance she had lived many times
through the scene of the reunion. She had pictured Aunt Tam and Agnes,
faint from weakness and hunger, bursting into tears at sight of her,
perhaps even fainting away on the spot. But nothing like that happened.
They both seemed, despite their gypsy appearance, to be well and strong
and in good spirits. They returned the overwrought kisses and embraces
of Aunt Louisa firmly but without hysteria, and when she cried, "You
poor dear things, you must be weak and ill!" Aunt Tam only answered her
in a matter-of-fact way, saying, "No, we are both very well and very
hungry."

Then the General's wife noticed that although Aunt Tam appeared to have
lost very nearly everything else, she still had her reticule with the
journal in it.

They went upstairs to breakfast and while Aunt Tam and Agnes ate like
two river roustabouts, the talk flew. The General's wife, almost
hysterical with curiosity, wanted to know everything at once--why they
had left the safety of the transport, why they had left the deserted
ship and plunged into the delta swamps, why they had not come straight
up the river to the safety of the Union Army. The questions poured out
of her, one question after another, giving the General no time to speak
or Aunt Tam or Agnes to answer her questions properly. She took the tone
of a practised, sensible woman dealing with a pair of
half-wits--something which at the moment irritated neither Aunt Tam nor
Agnes who were far more interested in the ham and hot cakes.

"You must have suffered terribly, you poor dears!"

But Aunt Tam only answered, "Not very much. We didn't eat very well and
we had a little trouble with mosquitoes."

"And losing all your clothes... the lovely new clothes you bought for
the visit."

"They aren't lost," said Agnes, with what seemed to the General's wife a
kind of tartness. "They're hidden in the swamp."

"Csar is going back to fetch them," said Aunt Tam.

"Who is Csar?" asked the General.

Aunt Tam explained and Louisa made a clucking sound of alarm while the
General, rather like a fat duck, shook his head to emphasize his words,
"I shouldn't trust a nigger like that," he said. "You can't trust any of
them nowadays... you can't trust anybody in this God-forsaken place."

Now Aunt Tam had always believed the General to be a pompous fool but
never more profoundly than in this moment. She was aware that he had
always thought her a fool too, but she saw there was no use arguing with
people like him. Their skulls, in her opinion, were filled with a
mixture of sawdust tinctured with self-importance. While she listened to
Louisa's cackling and watched the General's face grow redder and redder
as he stuffed himself with food, she felt a sudden sense of
extraordinary superiority tempered by pity. In the past, throughout all
her life, they had, like all the rest of the family, patronized her,
speaking of her as "poor Abigail" or "poor Tam" as if she were slightly
half-witted. She _knew_ now that this wasn't true. She _knew_ that the
rest of them were poor-spirited and material and narrow and limited
people who would go to their grave without ever knowing the glories that
would come of merely being alive. She meant to save Agnes from them,
although she could not at the moment anticipate how it was to be done.

Abruptly she replied to the General, "I would trust Csar anywhere with
anything," in so firm and decisive a voice that the General only grunted
with an air of saying "You will see!"

The reference to the trunk troubled Agnes only through vanity. She had
brought all the frocks now moulding in the damp of the swamps, to make
herself pretty for Tom, and now they might be all lost or ruined. It was
luck, after all, she thought, that Tom was not here in New Orleans to
see her bedraggled and untidy, looking her worst.

In the midst of these thoughts, she asked, "And David... how is David?"

At the mention of the name an extraordinary change came over Aunt
Louisa's pudgy countenance. All the lines, relaxed and happy only a
moment before, reappeared. The eyelids drooped, the lips were pursed.
She appeared about to burst into tears. She sighed so deeply, so
ferociously that the high-corseted bosom seemed about to pop the row of
tiny buttons on the front of her dress.

"I don't really know, my dear. I haven't seen him for a long time. He
hasn't been near the house. But from what I hear, David has changed. He
has altered so much that it's possible you won't know him."

"Changed?" asked Aunt Tam. "How?"

Aunt Louisa's expression altered again, this time from deep sorrow
bordering on tears, to suavity and superiority and to an expression
which implied, "There are things I know which I couldn't repeat." It was
exactly the expression of a little girl in a corner saying, "I've got a
secret! I've got a secret!"

Aloud she said, "Well, I don't know how to explain it. He's become wild.
He's got...."

Here the General interrupted her. "Louisa!" he said fiercely, "I think
your explanation has gone far enough." To Aunt Tam and Agnes he said,
"He's wild. He drinks."

But it was Agnes who forced the issue, with a suddenness and boldness
that was like the explosion of a bomb.

"If you mean that he's running around with women, I'm glad."

The General said, "Agnes!" And Aunt Louisa said, "I don't think you
understand what you're saying, my child."

"Yes, I think she does," put in Aunt Tam. She made the remark viciously,
almost with hostility.

"There's one thing you must understand, Aunt Louisa," continued Agnes,
"I am not a child. And I do understand what I'm talking about."

"It's not very lady-like at your age, Agnes."

Aunt Tam interrupted, "Lady-like!" she said with a snort. "Pish. Tosh!"

"What I want to know, Aunt Louisa," persisted Agnes, "is when are we
going to see him?"

"I've sent him a message," said the General's wife. "I hope he will care
enough to take some notice of it. He's taken no notice of the others
I've sent him. I haven't seen him since..." The face drooped and grew
immeasurably sad again. "I'm afraid I have other bad news for you. It's
about Tom."

But Agnes only replied brightly, "I know all about Tom."

"How," asked Aunt Louisa in a tone of irritation, "could you know
anything about Tom?"

"Because Mr. MacTavish told me. Tom's free. He'll be back in New Orleans
in a day or two."

"What MacTavish?" thundered the General.

"Colonel _Hector_ MacTavish--the same one I told you about, who sent us
here," said Aunt Tam, again conferring rank upon her friend, this time
partly from a vague desire to irritate the General who was annoying her
by his grunts of disapproval and superiority. "He was very kind to us."

"Fiddlesticks!" said the General. "You sound like a rebel talking."

His wife interrupted him impatiently, "What did he tell you about Tom?
Is he all right? Is he safe?"

"He's all right. He's got away. Mr. MacTavish knew all about it."

The face of the General's wife had now undergone another startling
change. In her eagerness it had become quite red. She said, "It's a
relief to hear that. We were afraid for a long time that something had
happened to him... that he might have been...."

The General was chuckling, "I never really worried about Tom," he said.
"He'll always take care of himself. There's a fellow who could get
himself out of any scrape. You're going to have your hands full, Agnes,
when you marry him."

He took the napkin from under his chin, stood up and pulled his coat
down tight over his pot-belly. "You girls will have to forgive me, but I
must go to headquarters. We've plenty of trouble down there, but I'm
fixing them. Leave it to me and we'll have order and decency in this
town, or someone will have to pay for it."

Aunt Tam wanted suddenly to say "Pish! Tosh!" again but she held her
tongue.

The General said, "I'll see you to-night," and went off. The three
women, each one of them in her way aware of something strained and
peculiar in the atmosphere, did not speak until the sound of the
General's thumping descent of the stairs had died away.

Then Aunt Tam said, "This is a very nice house, Louisa. You've done very
well for yourself."

"It's not a convenient house," said Aunt Louisa. "It's too big and
everything is inconvenient. It's like all these southern houses... all
for show and no matter how much dirt gathers in the corners. I like a
smaller house that you can keep neat and clean."

"I understand," said Agnes, "that it is Mr. MacTavish's house."

"Mr. MacTavish's house, my eyes," said Aunt Louisa. "Everything in the
city of New Orleans belongs to the Union Army. You'd think from the way
these people carry on that we hadn't beaten them." She sighed, "Oh,
you've no idea what the General and I have been through. Only a man of
his character and strength could have stood it."

Aunt Tam was aware that they were about to be treated to one of Louisa's
long tirades on the subject of her martyrdom, and she was right. There
was nothing to stop her now, not even the fact that she had not yet
heard in detail the more horrific part of the adventures of Aunt Tam and
Agnes, the terrifying voyage on the _Cristobal_ and the hurricane. She
went into detail concerning the unruliness of the Louisianans, their
persecution of the General and herself, and all their own
self-sacrificing attempts to bring order out of chaos and morality out
of immorality. Upon this subject she dwelt for quite a long time,
finally ending with the story of the abusive letters in blue envelopes
which kept turning up mysteriously, and the story of La Lionne who could
not be found, omitting, however, to mention Tom's familiarity with the
Caf Imperial.

She might have gone on for the rest of the morning but for the fact that
she was interrupted by the sound of footsteps coming up the stairs,
three treads at a time. From the impetuousness of the arrival the three
women at once thought, "It must be Tom," but almost at once and to their
astonishment David appeared in the doorway.

At sight of him Agnes knew at once how much he had altered. It was
natural that the fair-haired, delicate boy of Pinckney Street and
Cambridge should have changed, but this was more than change. This was a
new David. It was not only that he was heavier and looked healthier but
he swaggered into the room almost as Tom would have done.

Aunt Tam thought, "He went away a fledgling and he has turned into a
man."

The David who left them in Boston to join the Army of the Potomac would
have come into the room blushing and shy, waiting for Agnes to give him
his cue, as he had always done since he was a little boy. This young
buck came in with assurance, crossed directly to Agnes and lifting his
sister out of her chair and on to her feet, hugged and kissed her.

"I knew you'd turn up," he said. "I wasn't even very worried." Then he
hugged her again and turning to Aunt Tam hugged her until she lost her
breath and giggled, "Davy! Davy!"

The General's wife, who had not left her chair, said, "Well, David," to
which he only replied, "Hello, Aunt Louisa." And seating himself he
turned to Agnes saying, "Now tell me all about it. What happened to you?
How did you ever come to be on a dirty dago boat?" But before she had a
chance to speak he leaned over and taking her by both shoulders, looked
at her and said, "But you're different. You look different. You aren't a
little girl any longer."

"You aren't exactly the same either, Davy."

"I'm writing poetry now... lots of it... real poetry. I'll write a
poem about you and Aunt Tam and your strange adventures." He laughed,
"What'll they think of all this back in Pinckney Street? Can you see
Pa's face when he hears about us. This is a great city, Agnes. You'll
love it. It's not like anything you've ever seen before."

"I guessed that," said Agnes.

"Well, well!" he said, looking her over carefully once more. "You're
looking very handsome. You always were a pretty little girl but you look
handsome now. You're a great beauty. You've got a face... a real
beautiful face."

The General's wife interrupted them, "Perhaps we had better go into the
parlour."

"Wherever you like," said Aunt Tam, brushing the crumbs off her knees.
She was aware more than ever of the atmosphere of dissension and strain
and was glad that the General had gone off to headquarters. David had
certainly changed. If running after women had cured his namby-pamby
manner, she was, like Agnes, glad he was running after women. He
certainly no longer seemed like the girl of the family. She chuckled
inwardly. He had certainly escaped with a vengeance the thwarted
dreariness of Pinckney Street. She couldn't help chuckling inwardly at
the prospect of her brother's reunion with his son. Ethan would be
shocked as he had been shocked by Tom Bedloe's easy-going ways. But she
wished David wouldn't wear his wavy blond hair so long, like a woman who
liked to brag that she could sit on her hair. It _was_ beautiful hair
but that was no excuse for making yourself look like a naughty archangel
in the uniform of a Yankee officer.

On the way through the great hall, Agnes said, "This is a wonderful
house." To which Aunt Louisa replied sharply, "It is too big. Everything
is too big. It's vulgar."

"I don't think it's vulgar at all. It's beautiful."

To Agnes it seemed that here in these great high-ceilinged rooms there
was space, space in which to breathe and expand. And all the time, all
through the morning she was defending Mr. MacTavish. Once or twice she
had nearly lost her temper and insulted Aunt Louisa. Every time the
General's wife abused the people of New Orleans, it seemed to her that
she was slandering Mr. MacTavish personally. The people of Louisiana
couldn't be as bad as Aunt Louisa said. Ever since the night before when
Mr. MacTavish asked her for a souvenir, she had been troubled. She had,
she felt, hurt his feelings in all innocence and she had never been able
to explain to him that she _really_ had nothing to give him. She had
been rude to him without meaning to be, after all his kindness to them.
There had been no time to explain. She wished now that she had torn off
one of the buttons with her own fingers and given it to him. He was so
nice and so gentle and yet so strong.

The trouble remained with her all the way down the river in the boat,
all the way in the barouche from the river to Aunt Louisa's house. It
had returned, rankling, to spoil her pleasure in the breakfast and in
seeing David again. She kept seeing the curious look of pain and anger
in his face, dimly lighted by the lamp in the doorway of Father
Desmoulin's little house. "Maybe," she thought, "it will haunt me
always. I must see him again some time, some place, to explain."

But they were in the parlour now, a big room in pale grey and gold with
a vast chandelier of crystal. Aunt Tam was standing by a round table
covered by a purple plush cloth with a wide gold fringe. She was looking
intently at something on the table. Then she turned and said, "Louisa,
this looks like one of those blue envelopes."

The General's wife stiffened and her face again turned an alarming shade
of red. She snatched it off the table and said, "Excuse me. I must go
downstairs."

She went out, closing the door violently behind her, and when she had
gone the others looked at each other for a moment without speaking.
David was grinning.

"Why are you laughing?" asked Aunt Tam.

"I'm laughing at Aunt Louisa."

"You shouldn't," said Aunt Tam. "There's something the matter with the
poor woman."

"There always has been," said David.

Agnes said, "I think she's horrible. I never knew how horrible they
could both be. We can't stay here, Aunt Tam. We can't!"

"There's nothing else we can do," said Aunt Tam. "We came here to visit
her."

David was grinning again. "You see what she's like. You see why I
haven't come near here lately."

"She wasn't always like that," said Aunt Tam. "Something has happened to
her."

"In her heart she was always like that," said David. Then quite suddenly
he said, "When the war's over I'm not going back to Boston."

Agnes looked at him suddenly and then meekly said, "But what about Pa?
He meant you to take over his business."

"I don't want his business. I'm never going back to Boston again if I
can help it."

It was Aunt Tam who, a little shocked, spoke now.

"What do you mean, David? Not many boys have such opportunities as your
father offers you."

"I'll do something... anything, but I'm not going to lead the life Pa
has led... back and forth between his factory and Pinckney Street. It's
like being in jail." To Agnes he said, "And what are you going to do?"

"I'm going to marry Tom."

"If you marry Tom you'll not be going back to Boston."

Then Agnes said, "I think that's why I'm marrying him. I think that's
the reason I've always been in love with him. He's exciting. With Tom
you'd never know what was happening next."

"That can become very tiresome after a time," said Aunt Tam.

For a moment she had experienced alarm at the change in the two
children. Perhaps they were going too far. She remembered what a
Frenchman had said to her in Paris once, "Some of the worst people I
know in Paris are Americans from your New England. There seems to be no
depths they are unwilling to plumb." That was it. The pendulum sometimes
swung too far the other way, bringing ruin.

"I want to get out of here," repeated Agnes stubbornly. "It was awful at
breakfast. I'd rather still be eating what Csar dug up for us. I am
going to call on the Baroness as soon as I can buy some decent clothes."

"What Baroness?" asked David.

"Her name is de Lche. She came with us to New Orleans."

David did not answer at once. He did not know what were Tom's relations
with the Baroness de Lche, but he had suspicions. He found himself
saying suddenly, "You mustn't go there."

"Why not? She was very kind to us."

"She's a rebel. The General wouldn't allow it." It was a weak,
implausible answer but the only one he could summon.

"I'm not an army private. The General cannot tell me where I can go and
where I can't."

Now David saw suddenly that he had taken the worse course. If he did not
tell her that Tom was quartered in the de Lche house, she would be
suspicious at once. He had a sudden sense of being very young and nave
and helpless and not quite the man of the world he fancied himself to
be. So he said, "Tom knows her. He's billeted in her house. The family
is very proud, it seems. They've had nothing to do with Tom." And again
he felt himself getting beyond his depth.

The opposition only seemed to strengthen Agnes's determination to call
upon the young Baroness--opposition and the memory of breakfast which
still impressed her. She said, "I didn't come all the way here to live
in Boston. I want to know what this place is like."

To that argument Aunt Tam could find no answer. Her common sense told
her that if she was to permit the General and Louisa to direct her
existence they would eat New England boiled dinners and darn and mend
and gossip and there would be nothing whatever to write in the journal.
And David, with his secret, his miraculous release, could not well
oppose his sister's impatience with much conviction. It was as if all of
them were confused and at cross-purposes. Now that the first excitement
of meeting had waned a little, a kind of exhaustion settled over them.

Agnes said, "I've got to have some clothes, I can't go out looking like
this."

"Louisa must have a dressmaker," said Aunt Tam, "and I suppose the shops
are still open."

"They're open," said David, "but there's not much in them."

Then Aunt Louisa reappeared, less red in the face, but still with an air
of smouldering indignation. She was, thought Aunt Tam, like a volcano
which from time to time erupted, giving off flame and clouds of smoke.
She always had been like that.

"Well," she said, "have you got everything settled? Because your visit
may be a short one. The General may be recalled to Washington soon. It
seems that they need him there."

Aunt Tam didn't say anything but she did look at Agnes and saw that the
girl's face wore a deeply sultry expression. In her own mind a plan had
been forming... a wild, fantastic plan like the one of boarding the
_Cristobal_ at Havana. She distrusted herself, knowing that once she
conceived a romantic plan there was no stopping her. It was as if she
became for a time quite a different person, a stranger whom she could
not recognize in more sober moments. Drunkenness, she thought, must be a
little like these wild flights of fantasy which sometimes seized her.

Now she held her tongue. Certainly with Louisa ready to explode, it was
not the moment to propose anything radical. They were all sitting about
the room, rather stiffly, their senses dulled by the rising heat that
had crept through the windows and beneath the door, when the orderly
appeared saying that there was a negro with a trunk at the door. It was,
he said, to be delivered to Miss Agnes Wicks. There was a letter, too,
sent by hand.

The General's wife said, "Don't let him bring the trunk inside. There
might be a bomb in it."

Agnes took the letter and opened it. It was brief and written in a
small, rather neat orthography, more like that of a man than of a woman.
It read:


     _Dear Friend--Knowing that you had no clothes at all I have sent my
     boy, Erastus, with a small trunk and four frocks which you may find
     of use until you can have some made. What you can buy in the shops
     is not worth much. I have a good_ couturire _who will come to the
     house. She is Madame Clemene Dagereau. You can find her through
     the concierge of the Hotel St. Charles. I don't fancy that the
     clothes of the General's wife would be much good to you. You and I
     are somewhat the same size. I am looking forward to receiving you
     here. I fancy a de Lche would not be very welcome at the General's
     house. Good luck to you and your aunt. She is a splendid
     woman.--Sincerely, liane de Lche._


Agnes looked up from the letter and said, "You needn't be afraid. They
are clothes for me, sent by the Baroness de Lche."

"Who?" asked Aunt Louisa, as if she could not believe what she was
hearing.

"Madame de Lche," repeated Agnes.

"What an impertinence. You cannot accept them." To the orderly she said,
"Tell the nigger boy to take them away."

Then a queer thing happened to Aunt Tam. Before Agnes could speak, she
said to the bewildered orderly, "Wait!" And to the General's wife, she
said, "Louisa, you had best get one thing clear. You are not ordering
Agnes and me around. We are quite able to take care of ourselves. I
found that out on the way from Havana. Either those dresses come into
the house or Agnes and I go out of the door."

The colour rushed again to the face of Aunt Louisa. "Have you lost your
mind, Abigail?" she said. "Do you know who this woman is?"

"I know her very well," said Aunt Tam (which was not altogether true
even though she had ridden for miles on a mule, her waist encircled by
the arms of Madame de Lche). "She has been very kind to us and there is
no reason to be rude and discourteous."

"But the woman has a bad reputation. She is a rebel. She's mixed up with
all the men who are making trouble for the General."

Aunt Tam stood her ground, "Louisa, is the trunk to be brought in?"

For a second it appeared that the volcano was on the verge of eruption.
Louisa's face grew purple. She swallowed and then said to the orderly,
"Very well, tell the boy to take the trunk up to the green bedroom."

When the orderly had gone away she said to Aunt Tam, "You have put me in
a shameful position, as if I could not dress my own kinfolk and had to
ask favours of a rebel."

Aunt Tam, quieter now, said, "I'm sorry, Louisa, but I think you're
being ridiculous. I do not see how either Agnes or myself could appear
in public in your clothing. And there's no use slapping kindness in the
face, there's little enough of it in the world."

Coldly the General's wife said, "I'll go and see about the rooms. Will
you want to share a room or have separate ones? It is a big house."

Agnes answered her, "We want to share a room, Aunt Louisa." She had a
vague feeling that if once she allowed herself to be separated from Aunt
Tam, Aunt Louisa would force her back, back into the world out of which
she had only but now escaped.

"You'll probably want to talk a little longer to David," said Aunt
Louisa. "I'll go and see about the room."

When she had gone, David said, "You see what she's like. I think she's
going crazy. That's why I didn't come here any more.

"I think she ought to go back to Boston," said Aunt Tam. "She seems very
nervous... almost deranged. She ought never to have come here."

David was grinning. "Maybe none of us should have come here."

"I'm going after her," said Aunt Tam. "I'm going to apologize for losing
my temper."

When she had gone from the room, David kissed Agnes again and for a
moment he seemed like the old David, rather gentle and quiet.

He said, "Agnes, are you really in love with Tom?"

"Yes, I am. I wasn't sure before, but I am now."

"Are you determined to marry him?"

"That's why I came here. I didn't tell anybody that was the reason. If I
had, Pa wouldn't have let me come."

David didn't answer her and she said, "Why do you ask me that? Why do
you look so serious?"

He looked out of the window. "I don't think you'll be happy with Tom."

"Why?"

"He's not for somebody like you. He's for somebody like the de Lche
woman."

"Do you mean because he's been wild?"

"Yes." He frowned like a little boy. "But I don't think you know what
'being wild' means, Agnes."

Quickly she answered, "Oh yes, I do. I didn't, but I know now. I don't
mind his being wild. I don't want to marry a milksop, David." She
blushed suddenly, furiously, for the memory of the obscene gesture was
in her mind. "I think I'd like a wicked man for a husband... wicked and
experienced."

For a moment David did not know whether, in his new role, to laugh or,
in his old one, to cry. He was only certain of one thing, that this was
an extraordinary conversation which a little while ago would have been
impossible.

He said, "I don't think you know what you are talking about."

"I do if you mean that Tom runs after women. That's not altogether his
fault because he's like that and it makes women run after him. I've seen
them even back in Boston--some of the most respectable and prudish ones.
Even I have run after him, that's the real reason I came here. I was
running after him. I'm not what you think I am, David. I never was, only
I had to pretend to be something else because everybody always said I
was and made me be somebody else. I wasn't like that. Sometimes lately I
think I'm bad. I know I must be what they call a 'bad girl' in Boston,
like Sophia who was sent away from school. I know why now. It was
because she was having a baby. I sometimes almost wish I'd been sent
away like her. Anyway I'm not going back."

The wind completely taken out of his sails, he couldn't find any answer.
In some vague fashion he failed to understand, she had outdone him again
as she had always outdone him at croquet or hop-scotch or argument or
anything else. She had forced him back again into the position of
inferiority and timidity. And there was something indecent in such a
speech.

She said in a firm voice, "I think I must be bad and I'm very glad of
it."

He was aware now of a vague injury to his dignity and sense of
importance. Byron and Don Juan had been affronted and rendered innocent
by the boldness of Agnes's speech. In order to restore his self-respect,
in order to make himself believe the role which he had been playing, to
re-establish his sense of dominance, it was necessary to strike a bold,
decisive blow.

Almost without knowing what he was saying, he blurted, "I have a
mistress. Her name is Cllie."

Now it was Agnes's turn to be overwhelmed. "Running after women" was a
vague term she had overheard older women sometimes using. It was vague
and general and mysterious and dashing, but to be confronted in cold
blood with fact garnished by detail was quite another thing. She had not
been until that moment even quite certain of the exact implication of
the word "mistress." But she was certain now. David's manner, the
spirited swagger, which accompanied the declaration, made it perfectly
clear. And she was shocked.

She said simply, "Oh, David!" and the very tone of her voice and the
bright colour of her face told him that his dominance had been
re-established. Byron and Don Juan were vindicated.

"Don't tell Aunt Tam," she said.

"I hadn't meant to. I hadn't meant to tell you. It isn't exactly the
kind of thing a fellow tells his sister."

She smiled and the blush died away. "I'm glad you did, David," Then she
covered her face with her hands, "I don't know what's come over me
lately. Sometimes I'm scared."

"Don't worry. Sometimes I'm scared too."

"Do you feel like I do... that sometimes you're just carried away by a
wave of something you don't understand?"

"Yes," said David. "That's the way I felt at first but it's beginning to
go away."

"Do you think it will go away with me?"

"I don't know. Maybe girls are different."

She still kept her face covered. "Oh, David, I don't want to be like the
women back home. I don't want to be like Aunt Louisa or even like poor
Aunt Tam. If Aunt Tam had got away when she was young it would have been
different. I want to be like Madame de Lche."

The statement alarmed him. He said, "I don't know what she's like. I
never saw her."

"I want to be a great lady. I don't want to be just a stupid, common
housewife."

And then Aunt Tam put an end to the conversation by returning suddenly.
She said, "We have a very nice room, Agnes. It was Mr. MacTavish's
sister's room." The speech brought no response and she was aware at once
that she had interrupted a serious conversation not meant for her ears.

Agnes was thinking suddenly of Mr. MacTavish and the button, and wishing
that he was here with them. Then she could explain about the button. But
she also wished he was here because she felt lost and bewildered, like
a bather unable to swim who has ventured beyond his depth. Mr. MacTavish
was wise and sensible and experienced. Suddenly she felt a wild impulse
to burst into tears. She managed to restrain herself, although she had
to bite her lip hard in order to accomplish it.

       *       *       *       *       *

In the bedroom on the top floor, waiting for nightfall, Tom had fallen
asleep after the young Baroness left him. Like all violent and sensual
people, he slept easily, dozing and waking as effortlessly as a dog
lying in the sun. When he wakened he lay for a long time stretching and
turning lazily. There was no reason for haste and he enjoyed this moment
just between sleep and consciousness.

Indolently he thought, "It is quite dark. She has gone by now. I shall
have to find her again in New Orleans."

Not being given to reflection, it did not occur to him that she was
becoming an obsession, that his mind and body were occupied with her not
only while she was with him but when she was absent as well. No other
woman he had ever known had ever affected him thus. Yet, with the
instinct of an animal, he knew that he was not in love with her. Even by
his rabbit-like standards, love implied tenderness and respect and
something like awe, and in his feeling for the young Baroness there were
none of these things. He had for her, in spite of his healthy
self-indulgence, no particular respect or awe. There was only a sense of
_malaise_, which at moments became a torment, and a sense of conflict.

Lying there, half awake, it seemed to him that his feeling for her was
like the feeling a man might have if he could, like Narcissus, be in
love with himself. It was her egotism, her savagery, the brazen
sensuality which held him and, most of all, a vague feeling that there
still remained depth after depth which he had not yet explored, which he
had not been permitted to explore. He thought, "She is a wicked bitch!"
But in the darkness he smiled in enjoyment of her wickedness, or at the
memory of her experienced caresses.

Then he thought, "To hell with her! I've got to get out of here." And
sitting up on the edge of the bed, he pulled on his boots. Then he stood
up and put on the jacket of his uniform, wishing vaguely that he had
some other clothing that would be less conspicuous until he reached New
Orleans and the safety of the occupied zone round the capital city. At
about the same time he smelled the smoke which had begun to filter up
the well of the staircase and under the door of his room.

The smell was a smell of danger and at once he was alert. Opening the
door he stepped on to the landing and heard the sound of voices. Going
over to the stair railing he listened, and from downstairs he could hear
what they were saying without understanding it, for the voices spoke in
the _patois_ of the country. And then leaning farther over the well, he
saw the heads of many negroes and of one or two white men. Two of the
negroes carried torches. He heard one of the white men say, "We'll clean
out the Goddamned place and burn it!" And by the accent he knew that the
man was from the North, probably a deserter. They were bent on
plundering the last scrap left at Bel Manoir before setting fire to it.

Quickly he thought again, "I must get out of here."

He was aware that the lawless gang pouring through the rooms below would
have small respect for his uniform of officer in the Union Army. The
deserters might try to kill him just to get him out of the way. Then he
remembered the dark narrow staircase up which the young Baroness had
brought him on the way from the burning cabin to the room. Going to the
end of the great landing he opened a door and there leading downward was
the narrow staircase.

On the black descent he met no one. In the kitchen he made his way
towards the dim moonlight which shone through the doorway leading into
the garden. The garden, with its thick tangle of bushes, was the obvious
way of escape. Waiting in the doorway until the noise and shouting
overhead seemed to increase in violence, he ran quickly through the
curve of the great horseshoe-shaped staircase into the shelter of the
camellias and the wistaria-covered arbour.

Then, hiding in the shrubbery, he watched the mob inside tearing down
what remained of the curtains, smashing the windows and the mirrors by
the light of the torches. While he watched a flame crept out of one of
the windows and swept up the wall of the house, then another and
another, and he thought, "I must run now. They will be coming out."

But the sight of the burning house held a fascination and instead of
going away he retreated down the path into the hedged enclosure where
Agnes had found herself earlier in the day. Here from the shadow of a
ragged camellia he watched the fire climb from window to window of the
doomed house. It was like an animal, leaping now here now there,
devouring what it touched.

The mob had fled now out into the cleared space between the great house
and the burned slave quarters. Some still carried burning faggots,
although by now the flames from the burning building illuminated the
whole countryside. Above the savage crackling of the flames he heard now
and then the wild drunken shouting. One of the negroes had a
drum--perhaps the same drum he had heard from the windows of the
sinister cabin where he had been imprisoned. He kept beating it wildly
in a rhythm that seemed in a strange fashion to synchronize with the
clamour made by the roaring flames.

They had spread now the whole length of the faade and downward into the
big ballroom. With a crash a part of the roof fell and through the
opening the flames rushed upward carrying high into the air showers of
sparks and bits of burning wood which fell among the mob and about the
drummer. Through an opening in the shrubbery he could see the drummer
now, black and half-naked, standing over his great drum, swaying with
the rhythm which the fire seemed to define for him.

And watching the fire, he felt no sadness, no bitterness such as a man
like MacTavish with his affection for animals and trees and houses and
tradition would have felt, but only a simple kind of primitive ecstasy
in the wild spectacle of destruction. He should have run away but he
could not go until he had seen the whole great pile, with all its
decaying beauty and its implications utterly foreign to him, crash into
a shapeless heap of crackling, naked beams. There was a direct evil
splendour in the spectacle like the evil splendour of that first night
he had spent with the young Baroness in the room where the flames now
devoured the bed, the chairs, every object to which he had become
attached in a curious fashion through their association with her and
what had happened in the room.

While he watched, he came perhaps near to seeing himself for the first
time. In the ecstatic satisfaction which the contemplation of the
spectacle brought his spirit, a satisfaction curiously like that which
she of all women he had ever known had been able to bring to his body,
he divined clearly many things, among them a kind of doom that hung over
himself and her. Whether they met the doom together or whether he never
saw her again and they met it separately, divided, there was
nevertheless, no escape from it. It was as if a curse and an
overwhelming gift had been placed upon them at birth, as if both of them
were propelled, willingly and with perverse delight, towards destruction
by a force stronger than either of them, as if they possessed a kind of
special and vicious splendour which, fascinating others, men and women
alike, by the very aura of sensuality, at the same time set them apart
from those who had never felt and could not understand that dark,
throbbing splendour. And as if in punishment for what they knew and for
the incandescent evil of their knowledge, there lay before them a
terrible and violent end.

The rhythm of the drum was in his veins now, beating in his very blood.
The fire reared in a great column of flame a hundred feet above the flat
soaked earth. He stood, watching it, forgetful of the danger of
discovery, his feet apart, his body braced forward, his back arched
above the buttocks like that of an amorous stallion.

Then suddenly with a wild sound of crashing timber the whole great house
collapsed in an inferno of flame and flying sparks. The fire, in a last
spasm of destruction, leapt high above the scorched live oaks, and then
subsided, slowly in rhythmic waves of diminishing violence. For a moment
the sound of the drum was annihilated by the crash and when it was heard
again it was no longer in his veins. He stood relaxed, silent and
curiously sad.

Then after a little time, he became aware slowly of a sensation of being
watched by someone or something which he could not see. He felt it at
the back of his neck, an odd tickling sensation which gradually spread
through his whole body as he slipped deeper into the shadow of the
camellia thicket. Turning, crouched protectively like an animal, he
looked behind him and there in the moonlight among the shadows cast by
the flames of the burning ruin, he discovered three figures. A prickly
sensation ran over the surface of his body and the hair of his head
stood up like the hair on the back of a suspicious dog. It was a fear, a
sense of alarm, he had never before experienced. It was not like the
fear he had felt in battle or even at the moment when he had believed he
was about to be burned alive in the cabin-prison. Such fear only
stimulated him into physical action, into fighting. This was different.
The fear, lacking a definite object against which action might launch
itself, paralysed him. It was a fear of these figures which, although
they seemed to be half-naked white men, were, his strong animal instinct
told him, neither human nor tangible. The fear was of something in the
_place_, in the atmosphere, in nature itself.

It all happened quickly--the first terror, its passing into a sensation
of cold, the calculated control in which his heart seemed no longer to
beat, and the final action motivated by his own physical courage which
commanded him to discover and annihilate the reason for fear. Stepping
out of the shadows he moved towards the figures and when he had crossed
the small circular open space and reached the pool of water which
reflected the glow of the sky, he stopped suddenly and burst into
laughter. It was laughter coloured by an hysterical quality, but
laughter none the less, at himself, at the grotesqueness of the whole
scene.

The three figures watching him were of stone, of white marble, patchily
covered by lichen, rendered phosphorescent by the play of moonlight
shadow and the reflected flames of the burning house. Moving nearer he
discovered that the central figure was that of a woman of beautiful
proportions, in form very like the young Baroness herself. On either
side of her was a male figure, each of them grotesque, one of them
obscene.

The central figure, he divined, must be Venus but the other two had only
for him the significance of the grotesque. One of them was so comically
remarkable that he laughed again. In the wildness of his youth mythology
had scarcely touched his conscience. Venus was apparent. Dionysius and
Priapus were beyond him; but the juxtaposition of the beautiful female
figure placed between them he understood with an instinct uncomplicated
by legend or mythology. In the moonlight he was able to discover the
aged and corrupt face of the monstrous Priapus figure. It, too, seemed
to be laughing--a frozen, savage, ironical laugh--laughing back at him.

Suddenly he thrust his body forward and with all his strength pushed the
evil figure. It was firmly fastened to its heavy granite base. Again and
again he pushed, straining and sweating, until at length the rusted bolt
that held it in place broke from its socket and the statue fell forward.
Falling, it turned and rolled on its back, lying face upward, the face
still grinning obscenely in the moonlight. Then swiftly he kicked the
face with his heavy boots. The cynical joke of that first de Lche who
had placed the Venus between two lecherous grotesques had stabbed home
at last by the light of the burning house into the consciousness of a
man he had never even seen, who was not born when the Frenchman died.

The violence of his attack on the statue suddenly exhausted him and,
standing there in the moonlight bathed in sweat, with the sound of the
tom-tom in his ears, he felt a fool, the butt of some evil joke
perpetrated by something or someone he had never known save through the
awareness of his nerves.

The statue lay there, prostrate but still grinning, intact and
triumphant.

Then he was aware that the sound of the drumming had ceased and there
was only the crackling sound of the fire, greatly diminished as it
burned itself out.

All around him nothing remained but desolation. Bel Manoir was finished.
Nothing ever again could recreate it as it had been. For the first time
a feeling of desolation filled his consciousness. He hated the place,
with its beauty and cruelty, with its disease and splendour. He hated
her. He wanted to be free of it, quickly, never to see it again. He was
filled with quick rage and hatred and disgust, against whom or what he
did not know.

Fleeing from the shadow of one great live oak to another, he made his
way down the long _alle_ towards the menacing river which ate its way
towards the ruined plantation, its muddy waters nibbling at the thick
levee, swallowing up the minute cascades of damp earth that slipped away
in the moonlight as the river swept on its way to the hot Gulf.

       *       *       *       *       *

It was nearly dawn when Climne, the old servant of Father Desmoulins,
opened the door to find the Yankee officer outside. At sight of him in
the yellow glow from the lamp she carried the old woman screamed; not
only did the uniform frighten her but the face of the man and the look
in his eyes. She did not like Yankees; the only ones with whom she had
ever had experience were the renegades and deserters and thieves who had
come into the country since the fall of New Orleans. Father Desmoulins,
by gentleness, by reasonableness, had been able to manage them. And he
possessed, beyond his own priest's clothing and a few books and tables
and chairs, nothing to steal. Yet they had been threatening and
unpleasant and the memories of them now made this visitor a menace.

Father Desmoulins, already at his prayers, heard her scream and came to
the door just as she was closing it.

He recognized the Yankee at once as the one liane de Lche had told him
would appear, and in his gentle worldliness he thought, "He is the sort
she would choose. He is much more for her than Hector MacTavish."

"I am Major Thomas Bedloe," said the Yankee.

"I was expecting you," said the priest. "Come in and we'll have
breakfast."

He was aware of the edge of hostility in the voice of the visitor and
wondered whether it was hostility for his Church, for himself, or for
the fact that he was a Crole and a Southerner. He bade the old servant
bring the breakfast and showed his visitor where he might wash, and in a
little while they sat down together in a small room with a big window
overlooking the one street of the deserted and looted village.

Conversation between them was not easy. Father Desmoulins spoke English
well but it was difficult for him, and the visitor came out of a world
of which he knew very little, no more than he had read in books or had
repeated to him by planters who had made astonished visitors to New
England. And in the blue eyes of the younger man he detected sullenness
and dissatisfaction. Watching him, he thought, "Perhaps it was not
hostility I felt in him, but only unhappiness and doubt." And then in a
sudden flash of intuition the old man saw how similar the mood of the
young man was to that of liane herself at those moments when, not
mocking, she seemed impatient and furious and baffled.

They talked of the uprisings and the anarchy which had spread everywhere
in the parish, of Bel Manoir and its utter annihilation.

"We saw the fire from here last night," said the priest, "lighting all
the sky. We knew it was Bel Manoir."

The destruction saddened the old man, yet it was, he knew, inevitable.
It was not like the wanton destruction of a plantation which was the
property of a God-fearing family who were good citizens. The de Lche
family had been worldly and vain and greedy since the very beginning. He
did not look upon the destruction as a result of the vengeance of God,
but as the only logical end of a long record of evil arising from the
heartlessness and wickedness of a family. Nothing, he believed, could
have prevented the destruction and death of that family. It was
inevitable as the rising of the sun.

He was aware of the same sort of ruthlessness and vanity in the dark
good-looking face of the young man opposite him. There was in his
countenance the same pride and recklessness he had seen in the faces of
one de Lche after another. Lucifer, he thought, leading the rebellious
angels must have had the same look in the eyes and the carriage of the
head. He did not attempt to discount the power or the attraction of the
Lucifers; that was what made them dangerous and destructive to others.
He had no doubts that Lucifer himself was handsome, attractive and
reckless. Only through wisdom and experience were you able to protect
yourself from them. The odd thing was that, like Lucifer, his
counterparts on this earth with all the vitality, the beauty, the animal
attraction with which God had endowed them, were doomed to disaster. It
was as if their own gifts, their own violence destroyed them. Sometimes,
he thought, they were aware of intimations of doom; it was that which
turned their wilful brilliant spirits dark and malicious and evil.

The priest aloud said, "Climne can prepare you more eggs if you like.
There is not much else to be had but we have our own hens. They have not
yet stolen them." And as he spoke his heart was saying, "God have mercy
upon these dark angels."

       *       *       *       *       *

Across the table from him Tom Bedloe watched the priest, listening with
only half his mind to the banal and formal speeches of the old man. He
was tired and he was sullen and the memory of what had happened in the
garden of Bel Manoir during the burning of the house kept troubling him.
It would not be shaken off. It remained there inside him like an obscure
dull pain that would not be stopped either by will or by medicine. It
was always there in the back of his mind, returning at the very moment
when he believed it annihilated, when he felt for a moment his old
healthy animal self. It had troubled him during the long solitary hours
when he had walked along the river alone in the moonlight.

The experience in the garden was to him like a moment of insanity, as if
for a little time his own brain had betrayed him, altering his whole
body and spirit, so that he had become, at the moment he found himself
kicking the prostrate statue, a kind of maniac whose actions his proper
self could neither fathom nor control. That the days and nights of
dissipation had weakened and depressed him, he accepted coldly as a
physical fact; he was only troubled because the knowledge opened in his
unphilosophical mind a small crevasse through which appeared the
darkness of terrifying doubt. It would be like this to grow old... only
it would go on and on--this sensation of lifelessness, of dullness, this
strange sensation of wandering in emptiness. The sensation had no
significance for him; it was only a feeling of profound _malaise_, like
that of an animal that is ill. That it was the first intimation of the
agony which becomes the horror of ageing and impotent sensualists, did
not occur to him. In his sullenness he only knew that he felt badly.

The presence of the man opposite him troubled him as a speech of
reproval might trouble him. He was uncomfortable because he had never
before spoken so much as a word to a Catholic priest. In his mind,
priests were connivers and hypocrites, and it troubled him now that this
man appeared to be neither. It troubled him even more that he seemed to
resemble someone he had known or seen at some time, and it troubled him
even more when he discovered that the old priest was very like Mr.
Emerson, not only in physical appearance (though the priest was much
older) but because his voice and his wise gentle manner were like Mr.
Emerson's. Long ago he had dismissed Mr. Emerson and those other friends
of Aunt Tam's whom he saw sometimes in the house at Dedham, as clever
and somewhat tiresome creatures who were above or at least apart from
himself and all that interested him in life. In his heart there always
lurked the uneasy contempt of the man of action for the intellectual and
the reformer, and now here was Mr. Emerson again, dressed as a priest
seated opposite him in this tiny house in a Louisiana parish. His
presence was like a reproach, from which there is no escape. The priest
implied Mr. Emerson and the reproach implied Agnes, and Agnes had never
appeared so cool, so clean, so shining as in this moment when he felt
tired, soiled and bewildered. Yet his body, strong and assertive from
years of indulgence, kept crying out, "You will go back to her. You will
go back to her. You will see her to-morrow again," and the anguished cry
of the body was not for Agnes. And the image was not that of Agnes, who
seemed presently only something vague and white and shining and
vaporous, but of the young Baroness whom he saw with agonizing yet
voluptuous clarity, like a pain from which one derives an obscure
pleasure.

He scarcely heard what the priest was saying and he remembered none of
it. He was aware presently of the priest saying, "Climne has prepared
a bed for you. It wouldn't be safe to attempt going farther by daylight.
You had better rest here until nightfall."

In the priest's own small, tidy bedroom Hector MacTavish was already
asleep when Tom Bedloe came to the door. After the others had
disappeared down the river with black Csar, he had gone out into the
darkness to walk the levee. Overhead were only the stars and the rising
moon and beside him the great river laden with the mud of all those
northern States--Ohio and Indiana and Minnesota and Iowa and
Kentucky--out of which his own country, this damp fertile Louisiana, in
the passage of ons of time had been created.

He was troubled about many things--the welfare of his mother and sisters
whose whereabouts he did not even know, the destruction of his own
plantation, and the gradual breaking up of the small effective band of
which he was, by virtue of being what he was, the leader. They had begun
to drift away and disappear, whither he did not know, although,
understanding each one of them intimately, he was able to divine that
some of them had gone northward and eastward to join the Confederate
Armies, some of them east to Mobile and Atlanta and some of them back to
New Orleans to hide away in that dim and languorous half-world of which
Joslie and her daughter Cllie were a part.

And the memory of his horses was always there, like a dim pain that
would not be destroyed; and now there was added another dim pain which
grew out of the incident in the doorway with the Yankee girl when he had
asked her for something to remember her by. The request had come out of
him almost without his knowing it, a silly sentimental request more
worthy of the professional romanticism of Chauvin Boisclair than of
himself. But although he flushed now in the darkness at the memory of
it, he was aware that it had come from something deep inside him which
had reacted to the freshness and purity and the clear blue eyes of the
girl, something that had to do with her courage and sympathy and
intelligence as well. From the moment when she had stepped ashore at the
ferry landing and he had seen her face in the bright moonlight, she had
made no effort to seduce him with her femininity. She had about her a
frankness, an honesty, a spirit that was like that of a boy. There had
been none of the archness, the coquetry, the effort at seduction which
the girls he had always known--even his Scottish Protestant
sisters--would have practised almost at once. There was nothing silly
about her. She was rather like the clear cool air of early morning on
the bayous before the burning sun had come up over the horizon. And he
had admired the way she behaved in all the unhappy business of Amede's
death, trudging across the muddy fields to the graveyard to dissipate
the bitter loneliness of the burial. And he had divined in her a
stubbornness and strength, like the stubbornness and strength of the
remarkable horse-faced aunt who helped to prepare Amede for the
grave--qualities which those first women who came to this country must
have had before they turned luxurious and decadent and frivolous.

It did not occur to him that he had fallen in love, or that the presence
in the same house of liane de Lche, with her sensuality and
shamelessness, had made the girl seem to him a paragon of all the
virtues. He was not in love. The feeling that led him to ask for a
trivial souvenir was something at once more and less than love. His
heart had led him to ask for a handkerchief, a button, an earring,
anything that, in moments of despair and darkness, would bring back to
him the illusion of her peculiar freshness and charm.

And then liane had spoiled the whole thing by appearing in the doorway,
vibrant with suspicion and jealousy and malice, before the innocent,
simple moment between them was completed. Because he was afraid of
liane less for himself than for the girl, he had quickly and rudely led
the girl back into the house. And after that there had been no
opportunity for them to be alone again, even for a second, and she had
gone away thinking him, no doubt, both a clumsy boor and a fool. His
vanity suffered too. Chauvin Boisclair with his full red lips and empty
head and swan-like sensuality would have done better.

He thought, "I am no good at such things. It is not my line. I had
better leave that sort of thing to the professional lady-killers." For
Chauvin or the others the speech would have been a piece of gallantry,
as glib as the tirades of a medicine man.

What troubled him was the knowledge that the whole thing had happened
simply and sincerely, but must have had the effect of a cheap speech
out of a romantic play. That was how he left her, thinking of him,
falsely, as just another professionally romantic Southerner. It was
idiotic, he knew, to be disturbed over so silly a trifle, yet the
knowledge of the idiocy did nothing to relieve the dull, aching sense of
incompleteness. "Somehow," he thought, "I must see her again if only to
explain that I am not the damned fool I seemed to be."

Then, as he walked above the muddy river, his thoughts wandered back
again to troubles more profound--mostly concerning what the future was
to bring. In his heart he knew that the cause of the Confederacy was
lost; it had been lost since the beginning, but that troubled him less
than the knowledge of his own weakness of spirit that he could not
believe in the cause, as those around him, his friends, even his
sisters, believed recklessly, carelessly and gallantly, without weighing
all those elements which went into the contest--the eternal weakness of
the landed proprietor confronted by bankers, the feebleness and
instability of a system founded upon a slavery which he himself had
accepted but never approved.

Walking along the levee in the moonlight he tried desperately to believe
in the cause itself and its eventual triumph, but belief would not come;
the whole structure was too decayed and unsound. He fought now, he
organized a band, he would go on fighting, not for secession which his
heart told him was a calamity, but _against_ the cut-throats, the
blackguards, the thieves who swarmed into Louisiana with the Union Army
and in its wake. These he would have fought anywhere, at any time,
ruthlessly, even with cruelty, because in his heart he despised them as
he despised the whole de Lche connection because they preyed upon and
spoiled a world so lovely as this half-drowned, wild Louisiana.

He had turned now, feeling tired and lost, and was walking back towards
the village of Beaupr when he saw a figure coming towards him. He knew
by the walk, by the carefree swing, that it was young Chauvin Boisclair,
coming to discover what had happened to him. The boy was like a faithful
dog, a bodyguard serving him out of some almost mystical devotion. It
was odd that such a child of nature should be so faithful. A person
would have said that the pleasure-loving Chauvin would have been the
first of the band to drift away, yet here he was, almost the last of the
band to remain. He felt a sudden pang of envy for the boy; it must, he
thought, be wonderful to be so carefree, never worrying even about where
you were to sleep or whom you were to sleep with. For Chauvin the world
was a lovely place in which there was only pleasure.

       *       *       *       *       *

All that morning until the sun rose high and the heat steamed up from
the swamps, Father Desmoulins worked in his little garden. It was small
and neat, each bed outlined with small hedges of boxwood with a
chinaberry tree in one corner to shade the more delicate seedlings. In
it he grew many strange and exotic plants sent him from Martinique and
the Guianas, Mexico and Cuba and the depths of the vast Brazilian
forests. There were herbs too from which he brewed simple remedies for
the people of his parish and rows of seedlings and cuttings, all neatly
labelled, which were a part of his experiments in pollenization. He knew
each plant and its exact state of well-being. When they were ill, he
suffered as if their illness were his own. When they thrived, when a
cross-pollenization proved successful, his whole spirit flowered like
the plant itself. In this garden, surrounded by a low wall high enough
to keep out the half-wild pigs but low enough to permit him to talk to
his neighbours and the passers-by on the muddy street, he was happy, as
if the low inadequate wall shut out all the stupidities, the vanities,
the evil of the great world beyond.

This morning as he worked he was troubled by thinking of the three young
men sleeping in his house. In his fancy they were a little like three
sons he had never had. He liked their youth and their vigour and their
difference. He would have been proud of them as sons--three strapping
young fellows, none of them perfect and all of them fallible and human.
Chauvin Boisclair he had christened, and Hector MacTavish he had known
since childhood--the one person in the whole parish whose mind was
worthy of his own, who could talk of the philosophies or politics or
botany. Poor Hector was always troubled by doubts. The third young
man--the Yankee--he had known only since this morning, but he loved him
too, with a love troubled by pity. Chauvin Boisclair did not trouble
him. He was simple and as near to nature as one of the plants the old
man cultivated. Life for Chauvin would always be pleasant and easy, like
that of the amorous tom-cat that rubbed against the skirts of old
maids.

But the old man really loved Hector MacTavish. He was the stuff from
which heroes were made, not stupid heroes acting out of animal courage
or stupidity in a single reckless act, but heroes who made for the
progress of the human race. In his tormented fashion Hector was a good
man.

As Father Desmoulins hoed and pruned, his fancy grew a little unruly and
he fell to speculating upon whether if he had his life to live over he
would not have chosen a different course. There were moments when even
the serene peace which lighted up his pink face and created about him an
aura of goodness, was troubled by worldly and at times even fleshly
doubts. There were moments when he regretted not having been, like St.
Augustine, a wild libertine who repented. He had never really had
anything serious to repent, since the day he went down the long _alle_
of his father's _manoir_ near Bourges to become a priest.

Now, under the hot sun, he allowed his imagination to play a game. He
imagined that God had come to him as the Devil had come to Faust and
said, "Father Desmoulins, you may be young again and enter the body of
one of the three young men now asleep in your cottage. It is for you to
choose which one of them you will be." And Father Desmoulins, wickedly,
fancied himself as answering God by saying, "I would choose to be the
Yankee."

Almost at once the old man was aware of his wickedness, but it did not
change his desire to know what it would be like to be a turbulent,
fallen archangel.

       *       *       *       *       *

In the city, the heat and the presence of the Union Army and the fever
and the cholera seemed to destroy what little there remained of order
and decency. There were riotings and assassinations. Along the
waterfront and around Congo Square a dozen secret gambling-dens and
brothels came into being for every one suppressed by the order of the
General. It was no longer safe for an honest citizen to appear in the
streets after dark and unsafe for an honest woman to go unescorted in
daylight. Now that the river was open all the way from Pennsylvania to
the Gulf, each day brought new thieves and swindlers and cheap
politicians to plunder the rapidly waning riches of the romantic city.

It was to this turbulent place that Tom Bedloe returned, landing below
the Government wharves and making his way on foot through the district
about Congo Square back to the house he had left to follow the young
Baroness. Walking along streets lined by barrels of blazing pitch, it
seemed to him that years had passed since he quit the city on the
adventure that had proved so fantastic. It was an adventure still
incomplete, for neither warfare nor violence nor all that had happened
in the room nor the burning of Bel Manoir had ended it. There was only
one end as there had been since the beginning, and until that end was
achieved there would be no peace for him. He was no nearer to it now
than he had been on the night he set out for Bel Manoir. He knew her no
better than he had known her in the old house built about the courtyard,
filled with wistaria and bamboo and camellia trees. It was no longer a
woman whom he pursued but an obsession.

And so he hurried along the streets, losing his way once or twice in
haste and dark turnings. It was as if she were always there, just a
little way before him, now visible, now dissolved in the misty heat
which hung over the city. Twice on the way he encountered the dead wagon
making its rounds to collect the corpses of the poor who had died during
the day of the fever. They carried out the bodies wrapped in sheets, to
lay them side by side on the great mule-drawn cart.

Away from the centre of the city there were fewer barrels of blazing
pitch and by the time he reached the narrow blind alley which led to the
side door of the de Lche house, the streets were black in the shadows
cast by the hot dying moon. The sweat ran from his body and he trembled
so that he fumbled in taking the key from his pocket and it fell,
striking the stone of the banquette, with a hollow ringing sound which
echoed back and forth between the houses of the impasse.

It was only when he picked up the key and was fitting it in the lock
that he discovered the black ribbon on the door. It hung there in a
great bow-knot of satiny stuff, repulsive to the touch like the cold
back of a snake. For a moment he was puzzled and then suddenly he
understood. There was death in the house.

With the key half-turned in the lock he stood quite still, trying to
absorb the shock of the discovery and recover himself. There were only
two people in the house who could have died--liane and the old
Baroness. They would not put crpe on the door for a dead slave. He felt
a sudden sickness at the pit of his stomach and a curious devastating
sense of dryness and desolation. His knees trembled and his thighs went
suddenly limp. It was as if his body no longer belonged to him but had
become something detached, part, ill.

Quickly he thought, "She cannot be the one! It must be the old woman!"

Controlling himself, he turned the key in the lock and stepped into the
gallery. Beyond lay the courtyard with its flowery shrubs in pots and
the singing fountain filigreed with shadows. But the house itself was
dark. It was not until he stepped into the courtyard that he discovered
a light in one room on the second floor, gleaming dully through the
shutters.

For a long time he stood watching the window, as if paralysed and
incapable of action. In all his life he had never known suffering and
now he was aware of an agony, that seemed to penetrate into every part
of his body, not an agony of mind, but of the body itself, as if all its
functions had been suddenly arrested. It was difficult even to breathe.
It was like the agony of a confined drunkard for the alcohol denied to
him.

Yet his mind remained still and clear, almost cold, without grief or
anxiety. It functioned apart, betrayed by the intensity of his body's
desire. It was indecent to break in upon the solitude of the house, but
it was impossible to go on in ignorance. In order to live it was
necessary to know whether she was dead or alive.

Quietly, his body still moving as if it no longer belonged to his mind,
he went along the gallery to the stairs, past the parrot chortling in
the darkness, up the stairs and along the gallery to the soft yellow
light that spilled through the shutters. There was suddenly no longer
either excitement or apprehension in his mind or body, but only a dull
sense of compulsion resented fiercely by some remote part of him. He
thought, "To hell with her! I will never see her again!" But his body
carried him forward along the moonlit gallery.

Outside the shutters he halted, staring up at the light, his arms
hanging to his side, aware of the indecency of what he was doing. Then,
before he could move, the shutters opened quietly and she stood there in
the doorway, her body dark against the light of the candles behind her.
Inside the room the old Baroness lay upon an enormous canopied bed. By
the light of the candles at her head and feet, the cold sharp profile of
the old woman was like a cameo cut against the black background of the
soutane of the priest who stood praying with his back towards the door,
before a small altar adorned by a Spanish Virgin dressed in lace and
bedecked with small diamonds and emeralds like the marvellous doll of a
rich, spoiled child.

The young Baroness said, "I heard your footsteps. The old woman is
dead." Then as she divined out of long experience what it was he wanted,
she said, "You cannot come in. I must sit by her through the night."

She leaned suddenly against the doorway like one of the women from the
_cabanes_ near Congo Square, her arms folded across her breasts, her
head thrown back a little. In a tilt of the head and the slight sagging
of the hips beneath the white _peignoir_, there was a vulgarity, a
coarseness, a taunt of power, as ancient as time itself. Her whole body
invited what her words perversely denied.

A wild, inexplicable anger seized him. He wanted madly to strike her in
the face, to kick her, to call her every filthy name he knew. It swept
over him like a gigantic wave submerging a weary swimmer. Then it was
gone and he heard himself saying in a voice that sounded strange to him,
"How did she die?

"She died of rage over the death of Amede. She said I had killed him.
She cursed me. And then she fell down dead. She was an evil old woman...
my grandmother... full of cold, cruel evil like all Spanish. She hated
me but I won in the end. They all hated me because I was the child
of a whore. But I won in the end. I outlived them all and now everything
is mine!"

Against the droning sound of the voice of the priest praying before the
gaudy Virgin, her voice was tense and fine and triumphant like the sound
made by a taut thin wire when plucked. He was aware of a sickening
feeling of indecency, yet the unashamed frankness of her hatred gave her
a primitive force like that of an animal. For a second he came very near
to divining what it was that created the fierceness of his desire; it
was something direct, primitive and overwhelming.

"You had better go now. I will see you to-morrow."

Without giving him any choice, she straightened her body and, reaching
out, closed one of the shuttered doors. Then she said, "If you are to
help me with my affairs you had better act at once. I hear the General
and his wife are to be sent away. Good night."

Then she closed the other door, shutting herself away from him, in with
the priest and the dead woman, leaving him alone in the shadows,
feeling baffled and lost, with the memory of the priest, the glittering
Madonna, the old dead woman and the young Baroness. Again he had the
feeling of struggling beyond his depth with something too complex, too
decadent for his experience or understanding.

He was exhausted now, more tired than he had ever been in all his life,
as if the structure of all that had happened since he came by chance to
live in this beautiful house had collapsed about him. It was a deep
physical exhaustion like that of a man who has walked for days, without
sleeping, through a desert. The muscles of his arms and legs ached. Yet
it was not the weariness which brought sleep, least of all in the hot,
scented darkness.

As he crossed the gallery to his own quarters, the sudden thought came
to him that he should leave this place, this house, and never return to
it, never see her again, but he knew at once that this was impossible,
that he had to go through the whole thing to the end; it was something
over which he no longer had any control.

Then he noticed that someone had lighted a lamp in his own rooms and
when he came to the open door he saw that Old Seraphine was inside
drawing the curtains. She turned towards him and said in her curious,
thick accented English, "Bon soir, mon Major. I heard you come in."

He thanked her and then noticed that she was staring at him. He returned
the stare angrily and the old woman said to him in a conciliatory way,
"You look tired, mon Major. You look sick."

"I'm all right, Seraphine."

"Should I bring you hot water for a bath?"

"Not to-night." He wanted her to go away. He wanted to be free of the
staring, inquiring, wise, black eyes.

But she remained fussing with the curtains and taking a long time to
turn the cover of the big bed. He stood watching her as if that would
make her hasten with the task. When she had finished she gave the bed a
pat and said suddenly, "I know where La Lionne is."

"Yes." His voice betrayed no anxiety or interest.

"She is hiding in the house of Cllie's mother, Joslie."

"That's all finished," he said.

She took a blue envelope out of the folds of her skirt and said, "She
gave me this to give you when you came back."

"Thank you... and good night."

But still she did not go. "The young Lieutenant was here. He left a
letter for you on your desk."

"Good night."

In the doorway she stopped again. His nerves cried out with the desire
for her to go and leave him in peace. She said, grinning "He is Cllie's
lover."

"He is what?"

She repeated what she had said, and he answered, "Yes! Yes!" and almost
pushing her through the doorway, closed the shutters behind her.

The news startled him, because it seemed so fantastic and implausible.
For a moment he forgot the blue envelope in his hand. Then he thought,
"The old witch has made it all up. David with a mistress!" There was
something almost unnatural in the idea and he thought shrewdly, "It's La
Lionne's doing," and tore open the envelope.

The letter consisted of many pages all covered with La Lionne's
emotionalized writing. After the first sentence he knew what the rest of
it would be--an appeal to him, an hysterical account of her loneliness
and suffering, a demand that he return to her. He read only a little way
and tossed the letter on the table. He had had letters like this before
from other women, always pitched in the same key and written in the same
vein of martyrdom. He felt nothing for her now. It was all over and
finished. Whatever pleasure he had had with her was an old story, stale
and dead.

He picked up the other letter. It was brief:

_Dear Tom--I came to find you and went away again. Agnes and Aunt Tam
are safe and are at Aunt Louisa's. I am at the office during the day.
Agnes knows that you are expected back. Good luck. David._

He found himself smiling over the letter because it was so unlike David.
It was cocky and nonchalant instead of being detached and slightly
pompous. Certainly something had happened to David. Perhaps Seraphine
was right. Once he would have sat in the room for hours waiting, and now
he had obviously written this note in haste and hurried off. The smile
broadened a little and half aloud, he said, "Good luck, David." Cllie
was very pretty and gentle as a doe.

Then he picked up the letter of La Lionne again, looked at it for a
second, laid it on top of the other and carefully tore the two neatly
into small bits and threw them into the basket beside the desk. Before
he tried to sleep he went to the shutters and opening them, stood for a
moment looking across the courtyard at the lighted windows on the
opposite side of the house where the young Baroness was sitting with the
priest, the glittering Virgin and the dead woman. He had seen the old
Baroness but once in life but he would remember her always, with the
narrow bony temples, the black eyes, the arched nose and the cruel
mouth. He could see again the chain to which were attached the black
enamelled boxes studded with diamonds that rattled together like bones.
He could hear the hard voice, brittle with hate, saying to the young
Baroness, "Honteuse!..."

As he closed the shutters he frowned, thinking that to-morrow he would
have to go back into that other life of Agnes and Aunt Tam and the
General and his wife, of the Port Office--that flavourless humdrum life
which suddenly seemed dreary and intolerable. To-morrow he would have to
tolerate Aunt Louisa again. Worse than that he would have to flatter her
almost as if her fat squat body were feminine and desirable. Only
through her could he work upon the General to release the gold in the
Planters' Bank that belonged to the young Baroness.

Long after he had gone to bed and lay awake, listening with his nerves
to the creaking sound of the ancient house and thinking of the young
Baroness as she stood in the candlelight, leaning against the edge of
the door in the white _peignoir_, he heard from the street outside the
crash of iron against cobblestones as the wagon, going about to collect
the dead, passed in the moonlight. He heard the voice of the driver
calling out, "Char de morts! Char de morts! Apportez vos morts!"

       *       *       *       *       *

Agnes saw him as she was hurrying down the stairs to speak to black
Csar. He was talking to the orderly in the hall and the sudden,
unexpected sight of him caused her heart to miss a beat or two, not so
much from delight as from the understanding that here he was at last,
face to face with her before she had a chance to prepare herself for the
meeting. In an odd way she did not want to see him, suddenly like this,
without any preparation, without the opportunity of building up the part
she was to play. Because during the months which had passed since she
last saw him in the drawing-room in Pinckney Street she had been living
in a fanciful world of her own imagination, and in that world he had
become a new kind of person, endowed with qualities which he did not, in
reality, possess. He had become almost a lover she had dreamed of, or
invented, and in her heart she was troubled by the instinctive knowledge
of the shock that lay before her. For a second she experienced a wild
feeling that she did not want to see him at all.

Then he saw her and smiled and came to meet her at the foot of the great
staircase, and she was aware suddenly not of delight at seeing him but
of a faint sense of disappointment because he was not as radiant and
wonderful as he had seemed during those long still nights while black
Csar poled and paddled them through the bayous.

His blue uniform was bright and clean and new, yet she had an impression
of shabbiness that was utterly inexplicable. It seemed to her that there
was something faded about him, like a once bright picture that has been
exposed too long to brilliant sunlight. He put his arms about her and
kissed her, but she was aware only of disappointment, because during the
hours of day-dreaming she had imagined this as a moment when she would
grow faint with ecstasy. And now she did not grow faint. What she
expected to happen did not happen and she thought quickly, "In time it
will be as I expected it to be. It's just the shock of seeing him
suddenly like this."

He held her at arms' length and said, "Well, here you are all safe and
sound. You were a bad girl to run off like that in Havana." And she was
aware that his voice was different, not only from the voice she had
created for him in her romantic imagining, but from the swaggering,
rather too loud confident voice she remembered in the drawing-room in
Pinckney Street. It, too, seemed to have faded. It seemed almost
commonplace, like the voice of any young man.

She said, rather primly, "Come upstairs. Aunt Tam will want to see you."
Then looking at him anxiously, "You're all right? You're not ill or
anything?"

"No, I'm not ill."

He followed her up the stairs into the small sitting-room with the table
covered with purple plush, and there in the full hot light of the window
she looked at him again, sharply and quickly, and saw that it was not
her fancy that endowed him with the curious quality of dimness. He
seemed thinner, as if the bones of the temples had somehow contracted,
and his eyes were not the same. It was as if they were dimmed. And there
were tired lines almost of bitterness about the sensuous mouth. She felt
suddenly that she must go out of the room and find time to adjust
herself to something she did not yet understand, and so she said, "I'll
go and tell Aunt Tam."

"Couldn't you wait? Couldn't we be alone for a minute?"

For a moment something of the thing she remembered, or imagined, came
into his voice, a spark of that fire which she had expected to consume
her, that fire which somehow was associated with what had happened on
the _San Cristobal_ and with the nostalgic songs of black Csar. But it
was not enough. She had to get out of the room. If she did not escape at
once something dreadful would happen.

"We'll have time enough presently," she said and left him.

When she had gone he looked about the room, seeing nothing because he
too was a little bewildered. At sight of her he had not felt the sudden
air of excitement in his veins that always before had caused him to
stand very straight, balancing himself on spread legs, and changed the
very quality of his voice. She was prettier than he remembered her--or
more beautiful. Certainly she was desirable. She would make a perfect
wife, but perhaps a perfect wife was not what he wanted or needed. For a
fleeting moment the thought of following the young Baroness returned to
his mind. Perhaps that was where he belonged, in that other dark world,
streaked with colour and mystery and cruelty and excitement. He tried to
discipline his thoughts, to think reasonably as he had once been able to
do even in the most emotional circumstances; but nothing happened.
Inside his brain was only confusion and indecision and a very clear
picture of the young Baroness leaning against the lintel of the door in
the white _peignoir_. He began to swear and he was still swearing when
the door opened and Aunt Tam, tall, thin and horse-faced, and the
General's wife, dumpy, high-bosomed and short, came in with Agnes behind
them. He thought, "Now, I'm for it," and braced himself for the
encounter.

He loved women but he hated them in troops, and now the two older women
fell upon him with motherly cries, in a burst of intimacy which excelled
the bounds of any relationship that had ever existed between him and
them. He had a sense of being claimed, kidnapped and imprisoned against
his will. The face of the General's wife grew flushed with pleasure.
Both women uttered little meaningless birdlike cries of excitement while
Agnes stood by, watching. And then the torrent of talk began.

They wanted to know what had happened to him and how he escaped. They
questioned him about his health and what precautions he was taking to
escape the awful fever. Under the deluge of middle-aged female
sentimentality he grew sullen, and thrust out his lower lip like a small
boy. It was then that Agnes found him for the first time something like
the Tom she had hoped to find.

But the excitement reached a peak of hysteria when he said he had been
held captive in a house called Bel Manoir. In that excitement even Agnes
herself participated.

       *       *       *       *       *

When it was all over and the two older women had retired to leave the
lovers alone, Agnes sat primly, looking at him across the table with the
purple plush cover. Then she said, "Well?"

"I never knew you were there. I swear it. I was a prisoner."

"The young Baroness knew it. It's odd that she never told you."

"Maybe she didn't know we knew each other."

"I told her about coming to New Orleans to see you. I even told her your
name. She never even told me you were living in her house in New
Orleans."

He shrugged his shoulders, feeling resentful, for Agnes suddenly seemed
to him now only a younger version of the two women who had just left the
room. Women! Women! Women! He wanted very little from them and they were
all hounding him. He was aware, too, of a resentment and a confused
suspicion in relation to the young Baroness. He had a confused feeling
of having been betrayed by all of them. Perhaps that was all you could
expect of women in groups--that they should cling together.

"Tom," she said abruptly, "you needn't marry me... if you don't want
to."

"I want to marry you. You're the only woman I ever thought of
marrying.... And that's the truth."

"If you like the young Baroness better than me, marry her. I don't
mind." She wanted to cry suddenly, not so much because her heart was
broken at the picture of herself, young, deceived and martyred.

"That's got nothing to do with it. I wouldn't dream of marrying her. And
certainly she wouldn't dream of marrying me."

Innocently she said, "I don't understand."

"I hope you don't."

"You can go away any time you like, Tom. I'm not a prude, but I don't
think I can see you while you're living with her."

He looked suddenly at her, puzzled. Something had certainly happened to
her since he last saw her. This was no child talking to him.

"You don't know what you're talking about."

"Oh yes, I do."

"Well, you shouldn't know."

"And why not?" she cried with sudden passion. "Am I to sit around like
an idiot? Women aren't what they used to be. I don't mind being betrayed
nearly so much as being treated as if I were a fool."

"You've been talking too much with Aunt Tam. Those ideas are all right
for an old horse like her. They're not for a pretty young girl."

"It's you who are talking like a fool!"

He began to feel angry because she was unmanageable. She was not
behaving at all like a gentle, innocent young girl who would make an
ideal wife.

He said brusquely, "You're not to call on the Baroness. You're not to
see her. You certainly act foolish."

"I'm wearing one of her frocks at this moment.

"You're... what?"

She looked suddenly triumphant as if she had somehow outwitted and
defeated him, as if she and the young Baroness were joined in a
conspiracy against him. She repeated, "I'm wearing one of her frocks at
this moment."

He tried to recover himself and said weakly, "You look very well in it."

"At this moment I don't care how I look." She crossed her feet and sat
up a little more stiffly, "Tom, I'm not a child. I know about you. I
thought I loved you. I think I still do. I certainly don't want to marry
you now." She bit her lip as if to prevent herself from crying. "I
wouldn't marry you now.... I don't think I'll ever marry anybody."

Now for the first time since he saw her, the old feeling returned,
perhaps because the speech was like that of a child talking grownup
language. For an instant he was aware of standing at a division in a
path, of being forced to make a decision. The paths led in quite
different directions--one towards the bejewelled Madonna, the priest,
the hatred, the voluptuousness, the excitement, the viciousness,
everything that was in the strange world out of which the young Baroness
seemed to emerge, standing in the doorway, her arms folded across her
breasts, defiantly, like a whore in the doorway of a _cabane_. The other
led towards women like Aunt Tam and Aunt Louisa, knitting in the
drawing-room in Pinckney Street, and dull heavy men like Agnes's father,
and thrift and meagreness and New England boiled dinners.

In that moment of insight he chose neither path. He decided to sit by
the road and wait until someone or something, unknown, nameless,
shapeless, came along to make the decision for him. It was the course of
a superstitious gambler. He wanted Agnes when he had finished with the
other one, when he had possessed and subdued her, when the thing between
them was finished. So, as gamblers will sometimes do, he lied with
calculation. He said, "How could there be anything between me and the
Baroness... anything more than a flirtation? She comes out of a world I
know nothing about."

He stood up and began walking up and down. She watched him, admiring, in
spite of her anger and resentment, his curious animal beauty--the broad
shoulders, the narrow waist, the face that was not beautiful but more
than that with its high cheek-bones and sensuous mouth and surprising
blue eyes and hard jaw. And she thought, "He's not like any other man
I've ever seen, but don't let that deceive you, you little fool! If ever
you are to marry him, if ever you are to find him possible, you must
subdue him first. It is you who must rule." But all the time she was
aware of a dim, fierce desire to let him take her, here and now, in this
room, to do with her as he chose, now and for ever. A distant small
voice kept saying, "Perhaps that is better than all the rest--the
security, the peace, the order, the domesticity to which all my life has
been directed." But the other voice kept saying, "Don't be a fool! You
can have him on your own terms--terms of decency and respectability."
But the answer came back, "Would you want him tame and dull? Without his
peculiar magnificence what would he be... only a dull fellow." And she
thought, "I will wait and see. I cannot decide now."

And then she was aware that he was speaking as he walked up and down,
echoing her decision. He was saying, "I'm going away now and I'm coming
back when you're calmer. This is no time to decide. We're both excited.
There are a lot of things to decide. This isn't any place for you. You
ought to go back to Boston."

She interrupted him, "Boston... I'm never going back to Boston! I've
had enough of Boston!"

He halted suddenly, looking at her with an expression of bewilderment in
his blue eyes, as if he was astonished by the collapse of his own
cocksure calculations.

"You must be crazy!" he said.

"I may be, but I'm not going back to Boston, ever."

"And if your family says there's no money?"

"It doesn't matter. Aunt Tam has money. She'll share it with me. She
doesn't care anything about money except for travelling."

"Well, I'll be damned!"

She stood up and said, "I think you're right. I think you'd better go
now until both of us have calmly made up our minds what we're to do.
Only don't think I'm a silly schoolgirl you can do with as you please.
I'm not. I never was. I always knew what I was doing. But I never knew
that I knew until just lately. I'm going now. Come back to-morrow when
we're both not angry."

He came towards her. "Will you declare a truce and kiss me?" He grinned
at her in a fashion that made her heart leap. It was a grin that seemed
to dominate and take possession of her. She wanted to kiss him, wildly,
passionately, as she had imagined it on those dark nights in the bayous.
Now she knew was the moment. But she turned from it. She heard herself
saying, "No, I won't kiss you. Sometimes you're as coquettish and
unscrupulous as a woman."

The speech had a chilling effect. "I'm what?"

"You act like a trollop."

Then she turned and went out of the door, and when she had gone he said
again, "Well, I'll be damned!" and began to laugh. He sat down laughing
helplessly, and when the laughter had passed he was aware of a kind of
challenge that touched his vanity, for in his heart it was difficult
for him to believe that any woman could ever think of him with contempt.

       *       *       *       *       *

He found the General's wife was alone in the small sitting-room. She was
darning and at sight of him she put down her work and said, "Come in,
Tom. We can have a good talk."

In what she said there was no special significance, but in the tone of
her voice and the manner in which she settled back into the chair there
was an air of possession and intimacy that annoyed him. It was as if she
had said, "Now that we're free of those two tiresome, foolish women we
can settle down and enjoy ourselves." For a moment he experienced a
desire to flee and then, remembering what he had come for, he went over
and patted her broad back with an air of affection.

"Well, Aunt Louisa, it looks like you had your hands full with Agnes and
Aunt Tam."

She reached up and touched his hand. "I can't imagine what's come over
them. Tam was always a little queer but now her head is filled with all
kinds of crazy ideas. As if the General and I hadn't enough troubles
already. Sit down here beside me. The house hasn't been the same since
you went away." He sat down and she went right on, "You never told me
why you did go away."

Glibly he said, "I was on my way to the end of the lake to do some
business and I was kidnapped. I didn't go away. I was kidnapped."

She gave him a look of doubt and then uttered an obscene chuckle,
shaking her finger at him as she spoke, "I can guess what kind of
business."

He laughed because he knew she wanted him to laugh and said, "You know
everything, don't you, Aunt Louisa?"

The excitement, mounting inside her, began to show in spots of red on
her plump cheeks. "Was she pretty?"

"Yes, very pretty."

"Tell me all about it. You never told me about any of your girls." She
leaned forward, resting her plump elbows on the upholstered arms of the
chair, "Go along now, you naughty boy. Tell me."

"There isn't very much to tell. It wasn't very satisfactory."

"Why?"

He laughed, "That would be telling a lot of things. Maybe some you
wouldn't understand."

"Come now. I understand more than you think. After all, I've been
married for more than thirty years."

The words echoed in his head, "Married for thirty years" to the General!
He wanted to laugh at the _navet_ of the statement--as if that had
taught her anything. That was it! She knew nothing at all. She was
trying desperately, with excitement, to find out what she did not know,
what she turned over and over again in her imagination. He saw her now
as she really was--a vulgar, full-blooded woman whose whole life had
been cramped and stifled by restraint and prudery and hypocrisy. That
was why she liked it when he smacked her backside in a friendly way. He
understood it all now, and as he understood it, he thought, "That's it!
I'll tell her. I'll give her a good time and then she'll get the General
to do what I want for the young Baroness. That's how I can bribe her."

So he laughed and said, "All right. I'll tell you. But you asked for it.
Don't be shocked and don't complain at what you get."

She was leaning towards him, the pupils of her eyes contracted as if she
were near-sighted and peering into space at something which would not
quite come into focus. She gave the impression of straining desperately
towards some object just beyond her reach. He could hear the quickened
pace of her breathing and was at once revolted and vengeful.

He did not hurry. Leaning back in his chair he told her of having fallen
in love with a voice, with a woman he had never seen, taking great care
to lead her away from the suspicion that the woman was the young
Baroness. She lived, he said, in a house on the opposite side of the
street. He invented a story of having spoken to her on the street, but
from that point onward he recounted the story much as it occurred save
that the consummation was placed in a great house on the edge of Lake
Pontchartrain instead of at ill-fated Bel Manoir. And as he talked, the
fire and obsession of his own passion crept into the tale. His eyes
sparkled and the colour came into his face as he went from step to step
in the tale of the pursuit; and opposite him the dumpy, middle-aged
woman grew more and more excited, until her face was quite purple and
the veins stood out on the backs of her podgy, short-fingered hands. He
noticed them, really for the first time, and thought how odd it was
that this reputable New England woman should have the hands of a whore.

In telling the story he found a double satisfaction--that of spiteful
pleasure in exciting the woman to the verge of apoplexy and the sensual,
decadent pleasure of remembering all the dark details of the
love-making. He found the memory of it, recounted to such an audience,
almost as exciting as the experience itself.

Now and then, straining towards him and breathing with difficulty, she
would say in a whisper as if not to interrupt him, "So, it was like
that! Like that! Go on! Go on!" Goaded by the effect he was achieving
and by the pleasure he himself found in the story, he told her things he
would not have told another man, astonished that they did not revolt or
upset her. He became aware as he talked of the great heat that came in
through the windows, and thought with some remote part of his mind,
"Creatures in hell would look like Aunt Louisa at this moment."
Tormented, baffled, unsatisfied. She should never have come to a country
like this Louisiana. It was no place for a New Englander.

But he came presently to the end and said, "That's all!"

In a faint voice she said, "So, it was like that?"

"Yes, it was like that."

She leaned back in the upholstered chair, relaxing and closing her eyes.
For a moment he thought that perhaps she had had a stroke of apoplexy
and was dying, but almost at once he saw that she was breathing easily,
like a child asleep. He sat watching her, thinking, "I must have done a
good job to have knocked out the old girl."

Then she opened her eyes and staring before her, away from him, she said
in a low voice, "So it is like that! Nobody ever told me. The old fool!
The awkward old fool." She looked at him in a curious penetrating
fashion and almost with dignity she said, "Thank you, Tom."

Now, he thought, is the time, and aloud he said, "There is a great
favour you could do for me, Aunt Louisa."

For a second the shadow of suspicion crossed her small bright eyes.
"What?" she asked. "I'll do anything I can, Tom." But she answered him
absently, as if her mind, her senses, her vision were still absorbed by
the thing he had told her.

"It's not really for me. It's for the Baroness de Lche... where I am
quartered."

Quickly she asked, "She's not the woman, is she?"

Shrewdly, without change of expression, he said, "Of course not. It's
only that she saved my life and I feel under obligation to her."

Then he told her again, this time in detail, of being locked in the
burning cabin and how the young Baroness, risking her life, had crossed
the moonlit open space and unbolted the door. He made the story sound
romantic and when he had finished, he went on to explain how the
Baroness had come from Martinique to save her property. First the cousin
Amede died and then the grandmother and now she was the last of her
family, alone, young and bewildered. The General could help her by
releasing the property and the gold belonging to her which he had seized
on behalf of the Government. He had but to sign an order and it would be
returned to her. He, himself, he pointed out again, owed her a great
debt.

When he had finished she looked at him shrewdly and asked, "You are sure
she is not the one?"

"No. She is not the one."

She shook her head, "I'll try," she said. "But the General is
overwhelmed with troubles and he's very stubborn. I'll promise to try
but I can't promise to succeed." Then as if she dismissed the subject as
closed, she said, "And Agnes? Does she know about your gallivantings?"

"She knows."

"What is she going to do?"

"I don't know. I don't think she does."

Aunt Louisa chuckled. "She's no suckling dove. I always thought she was,
but she isn't." She took up her darning again. "I think she might turn
into almost anything." She drew in her breath. "I think she might even
turn out to be bad.... I'd think twice before marrying her, even if
she'll have you. You might live to regret it. She wouldn't be the first
bad one in the Wicks family. Her father had an aunt..." She started
rocking again, making a clucking sound as he rose to leave.

       *       *       *       *       *

The night which followed was for the General one of the worst in a long
and varied experience. There was little sleep for him because the wife,
lying beside him, would not permit him to sleep until she had won from
him what she demanded. He fought against her request to release the
gold belonging to the Baroness de Lche, why, he himself did not quite
know, except that he was tired and worried and when he was like that he
turned stubborn. Until long after midnight she harangued him. When he
attempted to sleep, she poked his solid back. She argued and even tried
blackmail, saying that if he did not do the favour for Tom, there were
plenty of incriminating circumstances she could, in revenge, reveal. And
at last when sleep seemed to the General a more precious thing than all
the gold in the Planters' Bank--sleep and peace--he said, "Very well,
I'll do it. But you must never speak of it to anyone."

Even after he had given the promise he did not at once fall asleep, for
he turned heavily after a little time, and asked, "Why do you want me to
do this so much, Louisa, for a woman I've never even seen and you do not
even know?"

"Because it will please Tom. She saved his life."

But that, she knew dimly, was not altogether the truth. It was all
confused in her muddled brain--the hatred of the dull, heavy man at her
side who had denied her all romance, all passion, all beauty, and her
fondness for Tom. But most of all she had a vague sense of being herself
the woman Tom had described to her. And in her woman's heart she had
divined, despite all his denials, that the woman was the Baroness de
Lche. She was tired and growing old and disappointed and unhappy, and
the whole experience was for her like a brilliant flash of light in the
darkness she felt closing about her.

       *       *       *       *       *

They did not bury the old Baroness at Bel Manoir between the
lichen-grown tombs of her husband and her son. They found a place for
her in the vaults of the old St. Louis Cemetery, a fate which would have
shocked her arrogance and pride. At Bel Manoir nothing remained now save
the graveyard on the knoll under the live oaks.

And in the house in New Orleans the young Baroness began making
preparations for her departure. Negroes came carrying cypress planks on
their backs and the courtyard echoed with hammering that went on all
through the day. On the night of the funeral the young Baroness did not
return. In his room across the courtyard, Tom Bedloe waited, smoking
cigar after cigar, going into the long, open gallery now and then to
pace up and down in the damp heat, until when the waiting at last
became unendurable, he went downstairs and across the courtyard to the
slave quarters to find old Seraphine.

But she too was absent. The only person in all the great house was the
white-haired old negro he had seen in the drawing-room on that night
long ago before he had gone to Bel Manoir. The old man sat dozing in a
corner of the vast kitchen beneath row upon row of brightly burnished
copper kettles. The old man he discovered knew nothing. They had gone
away--the young Baroness and Seraphine--in the carriage after the
funeral. The old man did not know where. He did not know when they would
return. He knew nothing at all.

So he left the old man to fall asleep again and went into the garden to
walk up and down among the flowers and potted shrubs, trying to plan out
what he meant to do, for he was aware of an intolerable confusion inside
his head. It was clear to him that she meant to leave for Martinique
despite anything he could do, and the sound of the hammering indicated
that she was taking with her everything which could be moved. Perhaps
she was going away for ever, never to return. She hated Louisiana. She
had, it seemed to him, no friend in all the city or the State. Once
during the night she had told him that the country suffocated her, that
she could not breathe for the narrowness and provinciality of the
people, that she hated the very smell of the place, the curious mixture
compounded of the smell of mud and flowers.

He had planned to go to her to-night. All through the day, trying to
bring some order to the confusion of dirty papers in the Port Office, he
had accomplished nothing because his mind was here all the time in this
house. He kept seeing her, now in the white dress, now all in black with
the touch of white at the throat, now as he'd seen her for the first
time in the yellow ball-gown, going through the papers on his desk. He
knew now why she had been there. The knowledge grew out of experience,
out of his very knowledge of her. She had been there spying on him,
searching his papers in the hope that she might find some scrap, some
fragment which she might use against him to recover the gold in the
Planters' Bank. She was courageous and unscrupulous. And then suddenly
it occurred to him that even then she might have been working with that
band called Les Dfenseurs. He had seen them here in the house on that
night he had come back and crossed to the other gallery in the hope of
seeing her again.

Again and again he stopped, fancying he heard from the house some small
sound that indicated her return, but each time the sounds he fancied
that he heard turned out to be only his imagination, save once when the
wagon collecting the dead passed in the street outside. With each turn
round the garden path the agony grew more intense until at last he
became aware that his whole body was trembling and that he no longer had
any control over it. Then for the first time, a little after the
death-wagon had passed, there came to him, perhaps for the only time in
all his life, a moment of utter objectivity. He was standing somewhere
in the gallery above looking down, seeing his own body pacing up and
down the gravel paths of the big courtyard. He saw himself quite clearly
and thought, "That man is a fool! No woman on earth is worth that much
suffering... certainly not this she-dog... this..." His mind was
flooded suddenly with obscenity, with all the evil words he had ever
known.

Then the moment passed and the trembling ceased and he felt somehow
purified and almost calm.

"To hell with her!" he thought. "To hell with her!"

He left the garden, opened the door and went out. He did not know where
he was going but presently he found himself in the district between
Congo Square and the river. He was hatless. A negro boy was plucking at
his sleeve, saying, "Yaller girl, M'sieu. Nice yaller gal, M'sieu?"

"All right," he said. "Where?"

But it was no good. He only got very drunk on cheap rum and came back to
his room a little before dawn, more wretched than he had been on leaving
the garden.

It was long after noon when he awakened, dimly conscious again of the
sound of hammering in a distant part of the house, and that the heat was
suffocating and his naked body was bathed in sweat. Lying there on the
border between sleep and consciousness he was aware that someone was
moving about in the next room. He could hear the faint sound of
footsteps and the occasional tinkle of glass against metal. In a kind of
fog, he thought, "That would be Seraphine putting the room in order."
Half-awake, with his eyes closed he could see her fat figure, the
bright-coloured tignon covering her head, the neat apron over the full
skirt. She belonged there among the soft colours of the room, among the
scent of flowers that rose from the courtyard in the noon-day heat. And
dreamily it occurred to him that this was where he belonged, where he
had always belonged, not in the white, neat world of New Bedford where
he was born, with its clean white houses and bright-green grass in
summer, its clean white snow in winter. This was where he belonged; here
he would stay, always, for ever. He was like a wanderer returning home
to a country where he had never been.

Then slowly the whole of the night before returned to him--the waiting
and anxiety, the dreadful beat of baffled, thwarted desire in his veins,
and the blind, half-realized excursion into that dark, sordid,
half-savage, sensual world beyond Congo Square. What happened after he
left the house was not clear to him; it returned now like the memories
of a man ill with fever, emerging in isolated fragments out of the fog
of delirium--the memory of a low, hot, smoke-filled room with naked
yellow girls dancing, of a ring of faces white and black, watching--the
faces of roustabouts and negroes and evil, vulture-faced Yankees, the
memory of drink after drink of rum, of the music of banjos and drums, of
a faro game. And none of these things had softened the misery not only
of his desire, but of his doubts, for in that moment of sultry,
half-conscious clairvoyance it seemed to him that in some unfathomed
way, she had become remote, that she had escaped him entirely, that he
had never possessed her for a moment, but only her body, a shell without
any significance beyond the borders of the sensual.

Waking, he called to Seraphine, believing he could discover from her
where she was now and what she meant to do. The old fat woman appeared
in the doorway, asking if he wanted his coffee.

He did not answer her but asked, "Where is the Baroness?

"She is on the other side of the house, goin' through all the old
trunks."

"Where were you and the Baroness last night?"

"We went to a meetin'."

"Meeting?"

"Yes, M'sieu, a meetin' on the other side of the lake."

"What kind of a meeting?"

"A magic meetin'."

So that was it. "What kind of people were there?"

"Black people. Mama Tolanne was there."

"Who's Mama Tolanne?"

"Mama Tolanne is a..." She hesitated for a moment and then used the
French word, "_Sorcire_."

He had a sudden feeling of seeing beyond the walls of the room, beyond
all the tormenting mystery which had kept her shut off from him even in
moments of the deepest physical intimacy. Sitting up in the bed, he
said, "Come here, Seraphine."

She looked at him for a moment, suspicious and hesitating. Then she came
one step nearer the bed. He was aware that he was near to something that
was of the greatest importance to him, some knowledge that would either
free him or give him the power over her that would make life possible
once more, a life of healthy, robust, satisfaction in which the morning
brought pleasure and not misery upon waking. He was near to something
that would destroy the whole evil spell that held him paralysed and
miserable.

Quickly he seized the wrist of the old black woman. A look of terror
came into her face. He said, "Don't yell, or I'll kill you! I may kill
you anyway!"

He was aware that he was acting in a ridiculous fashion. He felt an
uncontrollable desire to laugh at himself, at the sudden terror of the
old black woman, yet behind the stifled laughter there was a sense of
terrible urgency, as if he were a dying man who could only be saved by
the secret the old woman kept.

"Tell me. Why did she go there?"

The old woman did not answer him, but only rolled her eyes about showing
the yellowish whites. Again he said, "Tell me... tell me, or I'll take
my sword and cut you into bits, you black devil! into tiny bits like
chopped meat!" He twisted the old woman's wrist, harder than he meant to
twist it. The stifled desire to laugh gave his face a maniacal
expression.

The old woman said, "Ah'll tell you effin' you'll let me go, Major."

"I'll let you go after you've told me. Tell me! Why did she go there?"

The old woman answered him in an almost inaudible voice, "Ah'll spoil
the voodoo effin' I tell you."

Again he twisted her wrist. "I'll get my sword."

"She went to voodoo her man... to make him love her."

"What man?" he asked. "What man?"

"A man she wasted her whole life a'lovin'."

"What man?"

The old woman sighed deeply, "M'sieu MacTavish," she said.

He felt sick and lay back, releasing Seraphine's wrist. "MacTavish," he
repeated. That was the man who had come to the cabin, the man who was
leader of the Dfenseurs, the man on whose head there was a price. He
began to understand everything. The fragments began to fit together.
That was why she had gone to Bel Manoir--to be with him. That was why
she had lured him to follow... to do MacTavish a service or to use
himself to make MacTavish jealous. That was why she had saved him from
the cabin to lead him to that room on the third floor of the half-ruined
plantation house.

The old woman had not gone away. He heard her saying, "You won't tell
her, will you, mon Major? Effin' you told her, she'd tie me up and beat
me like she beat Thomasine and old Michel. She near to killed Thomasine.
Thomasine ain't been right in her head ever since. It ain't only she
beat her. She did other things... awful things. You won't tell her,
will you, Major?"

Dully he answered her, "I won't tell her."

The old woman seemed to relax. Like an old gossip, as if suddenly she
was released to tell the whole story, she said, "It's always been like
that. She's a one-man woman. She's always been like that after him and
he won't have none of her. Doan tell her, mon Major! She might beat me
to death for spoilin' the voodoo!"

He wasn't looking at her now. He was thinking, and through his thoughts
he heard the sound of the bell at the street door ringing. It went on
ringing and ringing, but the old negress only stood there staring at
him, as if he were dying or mad. At last he said, "Go and open that
door, Seraphine."

She went away then and in a little time returned, bringing a letter. It
was from the General's office and the sight of it brought back suddenly
the extraordinary scene in the sitting-room with the General's wife.

The old black woman waited, still staring at him as he tore open the
envelope. He knew what was inside. It was simple enough--simply the
information that if Mrs. liane de Lche would call at the General's
offices, room 219, she would receive the gold held in her name among
the deposits of the Planters' Bank to the amount of thirty-eight
thousand seven hundred and eighty-four dollars in specie.

The General's wife had done her work well.

He thought, "And that too. She wanted the money too and I was the only
one who could get it for her. That was why she led me on in the
beginning. When she couldn't find any way to blackmail me she used her
own body." He saw it all now and understood many things, most of all the
source of his _malaise_ and dissatisfaction. He had never possessed her
at all but only her body, which, like the whore she was, she looked upon
as no more than an instrument which might be used by her to gain what
she most desired, not love or even sensual satisfaction but the money in
the Planters' Bank.

He gave the note to Seraphine, "Take that to Madame de Lche."

She took the letter but still remained standing there, a curious
expression of awe on her face.

"What is it you want, Seraphine?"

She swallowed twice and then asked, "You ain't in love with her, mon
Major?"

"No... no... I don't think so. Now go and take her that letter."

The old woman started to speak and then checked herself and without
another word went away, but after she went away, he kept seeing her eyes
and the look of horror in them, a horror that must have had to do with
the torture inflicted upon the girl Thomasine. He felt something of the
same horror, only there was shame mingled with it. He thought, "Now I
know how a prostitute must feel." It was thus that she had treated
him--as a procurer might use a prostitute--to satisfy his desires and
earn money for him.

But he thought almost at once. "Perhaps it isn't true. Perhaps it is
only something that black old witch had spitefully invented."

He had heard stories of that sort, of the strange power of slaves to
corrupt and distort the lives of their masters. He remembered vaguely a
story of a black woman who had imprisoned her mistress and her
mistress's children and beaten and starved them. They had hanged the
black woman in the square by the river. He tried to remember the black
woman's name, searching his memory anxiously as if the knowledge would
somehow make him feel less an idiot and a fool, but the name would not
come to him.

Presently he dressed and set out for the Port Office to find David.
David had connections now with that dim half-world which knew
everything. From Cllie or her mother, from one of the octoroons who
frequented Cllie's house he might discover the truth.

But David was not there. He had gone away a little before noon, saying
that he felt dizzy and had a fever.

Aunt Tam always slept like a horse and so for two nights she did not
hear Agnes crying herself to sleep. The older woman had no suspicion of
the girl's unhappiness, since Agnes told her nothing of what had
happened in the drawing-room between herself and Tom. Once or twice
during the day Agnes had thought of telling Aunt Tam everything but in
the end she said nothing, thinking, "What could Aunt Tam know of what I
feel? How could she understand?" Aunt Tam who had never been loved by
any man nor thought of any man in the way she had thought of Tom during
those long dark nights when, they had drifted over the black waters with
the curious, wet, heavy fragrance of the water hyacinths always in the
air. Aunt Tam could know nothing of things like that. She would be
sympathetic but foolish, and it was not sympathy Agnes wanted. Sympathy
would only have made her weep; she wanted someone to tell her what to
do.

For she did not know; she was unable even to understand her own
complicated feelings--that she hated Tom and at the same time loved him,
that her vanity and faith were hurt, that she flushed at the thought of
the Baroness and the deception at Bel Manoir of which she had been made
a victim. There were moments when that hurt most of all--that she had
been made a dupe, that perhaps when Tom and that woman were together,
they laughed at her innocence. The hurt to her pride was perhaps the
worst of all--she had fancied herself wise and grown up and she had
appeared nave and silly.

No, going to Aunt Tam was out of the question, and going to Aunt Louisa
was as bad. What could Aunt Louisa, with her respectability, married to
a yokel like the General, understand of the tempestuous, dark emotion
she felt for Tom when he was not there. Aunt Louisa would only mock at
her and tell her she was a wicked girl, a child, who did not know what
love was.

She had never seen her mother and until now, as she lay beside Aunt Tam
in the damp heat, she had never thought that a mother might be useful as
someone to go to at times like this. Sometimes she had wondered what her
mother was like, and now, thinking of her father, bearded, sober,
devoted to routine and respectability, she wondered whether her mother,
if she had been alive, would have been any greater help than Aunt
Louisa. Her father, it seemed to her, could never have inspired any
woman to a great love. He was not like Tom.

On the second night when she had cried until she thought she could have
no more tears left, it came to her suddenly what she could do. It was a
wild plan but it pleased her perhaps because it helped to cure the pain
of her hurt pride.

She would show them both that she was not a child and that they had not
made a fool of her. Alone in the darkness she worked out a plan in
detail. To-morrow, now that she had a frock to wear, she would pack up
the clothes the Baroness sent her and return them and tell the Baroness
that she had released Tom from his engagement and that the Baroness
might have him. Then she would put him out of her heart, out of her
mind, for ever. Very likely she would never marry, but that would not
matter. Aunt Tam seemed happy enough.

She began imagining the interview with the Baroness, making up what she
would say to her, with dignity and coldness. She was still making up
cold, proud speeches when drowsiness overcame her and she slipped off
into unconsciousness.

But in the morning everything seemed different. Some of her courage was
gone and in its place there was a small voice which kept saying "Why
should you give him up when you love him? He is a rogue but you will
never meet another man like him." To which another voice replied, "But
he is no good. He is hopeless. He is a liar and a Don Juan."

All day through the heat she wandered about the house and garden
tormented by indecision, avoiding Aunt Tam and Aunt Louisa. During the
meagre lunch, the two women tormented her. Aunt Tam with the kindliest
motives, Aunt Louisa with the envious motives of a woman who had never
known what love was like and now would never know because it was too
late.

Aunt Tam told her that she looked peaked and needed a tonic, that she
was afraid she had been living on her nerves and that only now were the
hardships of the hurricane and the wanderings in the Delta beginning to
show their effect.

Aunt Louisa asked sly questions about Tom and why he had not come back
after that first visit. "It's a very queer way for a fianc to behave. I
know that Tom is wild and strange but I would have thought he'd want to
see all he could of you after you'd been separated for so long.... After
you've come all the way to New Orleans, after all you've been through."

Bravely she had answered, "I told him not to come. He's so busy with
everything at the office. He works till late at night. When he's caught
up with his work, he's coming to see me. It'll only be a day or two."

She bit her lip to keep from crying and tried to eat but could not
swallow the food. So Aunt Louisa asked, "What is it, dear? Doesn't it
suit you? Would you like something else? Has something happened to your
appetite?"

It was like that all through the lunch, with Aunt Louisa waiting,
watching, for every small chance to question her, to pry beneath the
surface of her misery. Bravely she managed to sit out the lunch and to
make a dignified escape to her room where she cried some more and at
length fell asleep again like a child.

When she wakened the heat had abated a little and she thought, "In a
little while it will be cool enough to drive through the streets," and,
hurrying, she dressed and carefully packed the frocks the Baroness had
sent her and then went downstairs to send Csar to fetch a barouche.

The great negro had found his family. They were living near Congo Square
with a cousin of Madame Csar, enjoying the sights and excitement and
splendour of city life, and Csar had returned now to sit all day in the
kitchen of the General's house, waiting to serve the two ladies he had
adopted long ago in San Cristobal de la Habana.

When she told him what it was she wanted, he said, in his queer
language, "But it ain't safe, Mademoiselle, for any lady to drive
through the streets. It ain't safe with the Yankee soldiers and all them
men down from the North. Ah ken go with you, but a black man ain't no
protection."

She insisted and in the end, shaking his head, he went away to fetch a
carriage, promising he would tell no one of his errand. In a little
while she saw him returning from the direction of the city. The
carriage was shabby and the upholstery torn and ragged. It was drawn by
a single bony mule and driven by a thin old negro who looked rather like
a stork on the driver's seat.

She was dressed, waiting for him, wearing a bonnet and a thick veil and
carrying a parasol as black Csar told her to do, and at sight of the
dilapidated carriage she took up the heavy valise containing the
Baroness's frocks and hurried out of her room towards the stairs. She
had kept the excursion a secret, knowing that Aunt Louisa and even Aunt
Tam would oppose her doing anything so mad. But she should have known
Aunt Louisa too well to believe that it was possible to escape without
her knowing it.

As she reached the head of the staircase, she heard the voice of the
General's wife, "Where on earth are you going, dear, disguised as a
street woman?"

At the sound of the voice she wanted to cry. She said determinedly to
herself, "Now I'm in for it. I'm not a child any more. I'm grown up."
And turning to face the woman she said, "I'm going to call on the
Baroness and return her clothes."

"You can't do that. You can send the clothes. You needn't go with them.
It's quite impossible." She placed herself between the girl and the top
of the stairs, a formidable, squat figure. "You're in my care. I'm
responsible for what happens to you."

For a moment Agnes was silent, wavering in her determination. Then she
felt a sudden wave of contempt for this woman, for her mean life, and
that gave her determination. She said, "Aunt Louisa, I'm going. Nothing
can stop me. This valise is very heavy. Will you please get out of my
way?"

A crafty look came into the eyes of the older woman. "There are other
reasons why I can't permit you to go... reasons you wouldn't
understand."

"Oh yes, I would. If it's about Tom, I know all about that. That's why
I'm going to see her."

"You must be crazy. Ladies don't do things like that."

Agnes laughed, aware suddenly that she had the advantage. She had taken
the wind out of Aunt Louisa's sails. "Who ever said I was a lady? That's
the last thing I want to be--a narrow-minded, half-witted Boston lady!"

"You ought to be ashamed of yourself... talking like that and going to
call on a loose woman."

Still Aunt Louisa did not move and again Agnes asked, "Will you please
get out of my way?"

"Your father will punish you when he hears of this."

"Will you let me pass?"

"No."

Agnes acted quickly. Swinging the valise, she managed to strike the
General's wife full in the stomach, knocking her aside. Without stopping
to see whether she was hurt, the girl hurried down the stairs. As she
went out the door, past the startled orderly, she heard the wild screams
from the floor above. She had to get away quickly before the screams
awakened Aunt Tam.

Once in the barouche, she said, "Go! Go quickly!"

The old negro struck the bony mule across the rump and with a jolt which
threw the hat over the back of her head, they started off, Csar
muttering that he didn't like any of it.

The first portion of the journey through the garden part of the city was
decorous enough. With the veil drawn over her face and the parasol
carried low to hide her, she might have been any lady out for an evening
drive, if any New Orleans lady dared to drive out in the cool of the
evening. It was only when they approached Canal Street that the first
intimations of trouble came. From the sidewalk, two soldiers in the
uniform of the Union Army gave out loud whoops of delight at the sight
of the ramshackle carriage drawn by a bony mule, with two negroes on the
box and a slight woman heavily veiled in the back. Startled, she did not
believe at first that the cries were directed at her. It was only when
the two soldiers turned to follow the barouche and called out, "Hello
there, Mrs. Secesh!" that she felt terrified and sick.

From his seat above her, big Csar said, "Doan you take no notice, Miss
Agnes. There ain't nothin' ah can do. It'd only make it worse." But he
leaned forward and whacked the mule. The animal went into a jolting
mule's trot with the barouche rocking from side to side over the
cobblestones, leaping in and out of the mud-holes. Agnes pulled the
parasol lower over her face as if she could shut out the yells and
catcalls.

On the banquette the two soldiers ran alongside yelling, "Lift up that
parasol! Let's see your pretty face, Missis!" Attracted by the yells,
men on the street ahead of them turned to watch the careening barouche
drawn by a bony old mule coming towards them. Worst of all, they were
suddenly in the centre of the city with men everywhere--mostly Union
soldiers but among them the coarse, hard-faced, rodent-faced men who had
come in the wake of the army, criminals or near criminals, who watched
the scene, grinning with amusement or calling out jeers and shady
remarks.

Beneath the parasol Agnes's cheeks grew hot with anger and shame. She
had never dreamed that it could be like this. It was worse than the
mistily understood insults aboard the ship. In comparison to these lewd
and mocking cries the ancient gesture of obscenity made by the sailors
seemed primitive and wholesome. She felt like an animal with the pack in
full cry. She might have stood up and cried out, "I am a niece of
General Wicks. I will report you all." But she was aware that this would
only make her the more ridiculous and in her heart something made it
impossible for her to do this. She knew they thought her a New Orleans
woman and her pride and fury made her accept their belief. If this was
what honest women in New Orleans suffered, she would suffer it too. "The
General," she thought, "ought to be jailed for what he has done, turning
these depraved men loose like wild animals." Never again would she speak
to him. Never again would she set foot in his house. "His house!" she
thought indignantly. "The house he stole from Mr. MacTavish." When she
got back to Boston she'd tell them about their gallant Massachusetts
regiments. Riff-raff! Ruffians! Trash! That's what they were!

Now, all along the length of Royal Street, men, soldiers and
carpet-baggers lined the narrow banquettes, cheering the progress of the
broken-down barouche. At Toulouse Street the old negro, pulling in the
mule to turn the corner, lost his worn top hat. As the barouche turned,
Agnes became aware that a man had jumped into the carriage and was
sitting opposite her. Through the veil she saw his face, red, broad,
leering at her and grinning at the men on the sidewalk. He shouted,
"Look at the girl I got me!"

A sudden wave of fury seized her and releasing the catch on the parasol
she lowered it with incredible swiftness, and using it as a club she
began beating him over the head. His hat fell into the street and at the
same time he raised his arms to protect his face. Csar, leaning back
from his place on the driver's seat, gave the ruffian a push, which sent
him sprawling into the street. Then he whacked the mule again into a
final clumsy gallop, and Agnes, standing up in the swaying barouche,
heard herself screaming, "Long live Secession! Hurrah for the
Confederacy!"

Dimly, through the veil, as she was thrown back on the seat she saw the
faces along the banquette change from looks of derision to anger. The
mule was really galloping now. Two or three soldiers ran after her and
one man attempted to stop the mule and was knocked into the street. Then
suddenly the faces grew fewer, the barouche turned on two wheels into
another street which appeared to be almost empty. In the distance there
were two negresses in _tignons_ walking in the shadows of the setting
sun. The old negro pulled in the mule to a walk and, after a little way,
turned the animal into a blind alley.

Through her sobs, Agnes heard big Csar saying, "Here we is, Miss Agnes.
You didn't ought to have come."

With a great effort she managed to say, "I can't go in now, Csar. I
want to wait a little before you ring the bell." While the negro waited
she stopped sobbing and thought, "I'm come all this way. I can't come
again. I must go in! I must! I should be a weak fool to go away now."

From the box Csar kept murmuring, "Doan you mind, little Miss Agnes....
Doan you mind."

"Get down and ring the bell, Csar," she said, "I'm all right now."

She did not get down until the door was opened by Old Seraphine who
volunteered to go and see if her mistress could receive Miss Wicks. This
gave Agnes a little more time to recover her composure. Csar took down
the valise containing the frocks and in a little while Seraphine came
back and said the Baroness would be glad to receive her.

Sitting there in the barouche, she had been hoping the woman wouldn't
see her. Then she would have an excuse. She could have gone away even
now, leaving the frocks, but all that was New England in her forced her
to go through with what she had set out to do. Still trembling, she got
down and followed Seraphine through the heavy door into the courtyard.

The sight of the interior made her forget for a moment her anxiety. It
was the first time she had ever seen the inside of a French house. The
MacTavish house, where the General lived, wasn't a French house; it was
the new kind of house built by the planters who came in after the
Louisiana Purchase. There were houses like it all over the South, and
even big houses in New England that weren't very much different. This
was a new world, a foreign world. This was Spain and Southern France and
Italy, like the houses Aunt Tam had told her about--with its wide
galleries all around the walls, with a fountain in the centre and
flowering trees and vines everywhere. It smelled cool and damp with a
thin drift of flower scent. There was a foreign beauty about it very
different from the clean bright perennial borders at Dedham. The
courtyard enchanted her. She would have lingered, but the old negress
did not wait.

She led Agnes up wide shallow stairs to the second floor and along a
gallery with a wrought-iron balustrade entangled with wistaria, and
presently she opened a high shuttered door and told Agnes to sit down.
The Baroness, she said, would be there directly.

The room was as enchanting as the cool courtyard. It was a big
rectangular room in a kind of green twilight that came through the high
shuttered doors. At first, coming in from the waning sunlight, she was
blinded and could distinguish only the more massive pieces of furniture,
the piano and a great commode and the huge marble fireplace with the
gilt-framed mirror above it. Then as her eyes accustomed themselves to
the dimness, she perceived the peculiar quality of the room--its
richness, its baroque elegance, the shimmer of crystal here and there on
the walls and in the great chandelier in the centre of the room. To her
it seemed a suffocating kind of beauty, utterly foreign, very different
from the massive Georgian elegance of the MacTavish house.

She was still lost in half-grudging admiration for the beauty of the
room when she heard the sound of a creaking door behind her and turned.
The young Baroness was coming towards her. She was dressed all in black
with a shawl of Spanish lace thrown over her head. It hung low, shading
the brilliant eyes.

As Agnes rose, her heart all soft and terrified, the Baroness said, "It
was very good of you to come."

"I brought back the frocks. It was very good of you to send them."

It was all very formal now and confusing. The easy intimacy of the
flight from Bel Manoir was gone. It was almost as if this woman in black
were a stranger whom she had never seen before, as if they had not
ridden together along the moonlit river for miles on the back of the
old mule. For a little while they made "conversation," stilted and
awkward talk about the heat and the fever and the fall of Natchez. Then
suddenly the Baroness rose and going to the row of tall windows along
one side of the house, threw open the shutters one after another.

"It was very stupid of Seraphine not to open the shutters at this time
of day."

The sound of hammering came from another part of the house and as she
returned from the windows the Baroness said, "You must forgive the
noise, I am going away. They are at work packing things. You came just
in time. To-morrow they begin in this room."

Agnes's heart gave a leap. If she was going away, perhaps that would
settle everything. Then she wouldn't need to speak. But almost at once
she thought, "Perhaps he is going with her. Perhaps that is why I have
not seen him." With the shutters open she could see the part of the
house that lay on the opposite side of the garden. "Perhaps," she
thought, "that is where his rooms are." She tried quickly, behind the
talk, to imagine what they would be like with his clothes thrown about,
his table littered with papers. She knew it would be like that. He was
impatient and violent. The Baroness sat down in a chair near to her now
instead of far across the room. It seemed to make a difference in the
friendliness. As she looked at her, it struck her that the Baroness had
put on the lace shawl because she had been weeping; the lace just
covered her eyes and threw them into a shadow. It struck her as odd that
a woman like this could weep or even be unhappy.

Then almost without knowing it she heard herself saying, "I came for
another reason... about Major Bedloe."

"Yes," said the Baroness quietly.

"I know about Bel Manoir. I know all about everything." She paused for a
moment and was aware that the body of the other woman was poised, tense,
on the edge of her chair. Then with an immense effort she continued, "I
only wanted to say that you may have him. I shouldn't want to claim him
from anyone."

The young Baroness did not answer her at once. She smiled and then began
to laugh. It was a curious laugh, subdued yet somehow hysterical in
quality, as if she could not command her nerves. The laugh made Agnes
suddenly angry. "It's wicked to laugh," she said.

The Baroness managed to speak, "I hadn't meant it to be unkind. I don't
know what made me laugh. I only laughed perhaps because it seemed funny
that you should think I wanted him. I don't want him. You may have him."

The speech bewildered the girl, because it struck at the very roots of
everything upon which she had based her determination to come here to
this house. If people behaved as Tom and this woman had behaved, then
they were in love. Love was love. It was very simple. And now this woman
was laughing at it.

She could think of nothing to say and she felt intolerably young and
foolish. She had come here believing she was behaving like a grown
woman, and now again she merely seemed silly. Love was love. It was very
simple, not a thing to be mocked.

And the tone of the woman was neither feline nor hostile. She seemed
actually friendly. "I don't want him," she repeated. "I never wanted
him. He was useful to me... in a good many ways." She laughed again.
"You mustn't think he's the only man of his kind."

Agnes swallowed twice before she spoke. Then she said, weakly, "It's
very good of you. I didn't understand." She rose from her chair. "I'll
go now."

The Baroness had risen and was holding out her hand. Agnes took it,
scarcely knowing what she felt. The whole foreign room and garden
suddenly took on a nightmarish quality from which she had to escape
quickly before she began to cry again. And somewhere in the back of her
consciousness she was aware suddenly that she did not want him back. In
the turmoil of her emotions she could not explain the queer feeling. But
it was like not wanting back an old frock someone had tossed in your
direction, like not wanting to keep the frocks she had returned.

The sun had gone down and the old house and garden were filled with the
blue shadows of twilight, but there was still enough light for her to
see, when the young Baroness came near to her, that she had been right.
The Baroness had been weeping. Her eyes were swollen and red. And again
she was astonished.

The young Baroness pulled the bell-rope and Seraphine appeared to
conduct her to the door leading to the street. The sound of the
hammering in the house was no longer heard and in the lower gallery,
bordering the courtyard, it was quite dark. As she descended the stairs
the parrot began to screech.

Then as they neared the door, a tall man stepped out of the shadows and
gave the old negress an order in French and went away. It was MacTavish.
Agnes recognized the deep, kind voice.

It was true that the young Baroness had been weeping. She had wept from
the moment Hector MacTavish turned his back on her and left the room
until a little time before Old Seraphine came into her bedroom and said
there was a "mighty pretty young woman called Miss Wicks" come to call
on her.

He had appeared in the house a little after _djeuner_ and sent word by
Seraphine that he would like to speak to her mistress, and she had gone
to the _salon_ to find him standing there looking at a portrait of the
old Baroness, painted in Paris when she was a handsome woman in her
thirties. So absorbed was he that he did not hear her come in and it was
not until she was quite near to him and spoke that he noticed her.

She said, "The old Baroness was a beautiful woman." He turned then and
said, "I did not hear you come in." And then, "She was very beautiful
but there was nothing lovable about her even in that picture when she
was young. My mother always said that where her heart should have been
there was only a lump of ice."

She sat down and said, "What have you come here for, in broad daylight?"

"I came to get the papers which belonged to the band. You are going
away. They must be destroyed." He sighed, "Anyway, it's all finished."
And then, as if excusing himself, "I doubt that anyone could have held
them together. Louisianans are like that. They're all right perhaps
separately, but together they're not dependable."

He did not sit down but moved about as he talked, uneasily, trying not
to look at her, as if he was afraid of something. She asked, "What are
you going to do?"

"I don't know. Whatever happens I shall have to begin all over again. I
was in debt before the war. Prices were bad for too many years in
succession. And now with everything looted and burned..." His voice
trailed off in a discouraged fashion.

"I could help you."

He ignored the remark and said, "We had better go about our business,
liane."

The colour came into her face and she rose from her chair. "Everything
is in the old woman's safe," she said.

He followed her into the bedroom, with the altar beneath the bejewelled
Virgin and stood waiting while she drew back a piece of brilliant
Spanish embroidery that hung on the wall. From a pocket in her skirt she
took out a cluster of keys. She selected one and thrust it into the lock
of the heavy safe hidden in the wall. When she had opened the door she
brought out a packet of papers tied together with a bit of string and
handed them to him.

"Is that all of them?"

He unfastened the string and looked quickly through them. "That is all.
May I burn them in the fireplace? I won't be at peace till they're
burned."

"Of course."

She was watching him with a look of curious intensity. The black eyes
seemed to devour him as he bent down, pulled the papers apart and made a
little pile of them. The full red lips trembled as she leaned against
the great carved mahogany bed. Then he struck a sulphur match and the
two of them stood watching while the fire consumed the list of names,
the secrets of the little band of men who had terrorized the Union
troops and the Northern ruffians for so long. When nothing remained but
a heap of burned ashes, he turned and picked up his hat.

She said suddenly, "I said I could help you, Hector."

"I heard you."

"Do you know what I mean?" Fierce colour came suddenly to her face, as
if the humiliation to which her body forced her was unendurable.

"I know you must be a very rich woman, liane. You did not have all your
eggs in one basket. I know there is still Martinique and France... but
I could not borrow from you. It's not possible."

"I did not mean to lend you money."

His impulse was to say, "You would be the first de Lche who ever gave
anything." But that was something one could not say. Instead he said, "I
could not accept a gift."

He wanted to go away quickly but it was quite impossible, for she stood
between him and the doorway, squarely, as if she meant that whatever
there was between them must be settled now, once and for all, here in
the old woman's room. He was conscious of the glitter of the jewels on
the Virgin as the fading light filtering through the tall shutters
struck them into life, and suddenly he thought, "I do not belong in this
evil country. I have always been a stranger here."

She was saying, "Do you hate me, Hector?"

"No... certainly not." But he knew there were times when he did hate
her.

"I did not mean to lend you the money."

She seemed to choke and then, actually clasping her hands, she said,
very quickly as if she must get the humiliation over, "I would marry
you, Hector. I would be different; I love you. I have loved you always
since the first time I saw you come riding up the _alle_ at Bel Manoir.
I would change. I would be your slave. I would do whatever you told me
to do. I have always been a free woman. I have always lived like a man.
That is why I can talk like this now. I never believed in woman's
modesty. Why should a woman be modest and humble?" She began to weep but
spoke no less quickly, "I have been wicked sometimes, but before God
whatever I have done that was evil was because I loved you and because
you would never show me even the faintest affection. I am no fool. I
know what love and what desire may be. Do you think I could humble
myself like this in the dirt if I didn't love you? You must know what
that means to a woman like me? I will do whatever you wish. I will...."

She sat suddenly on the edge of the bed and buried her face in her
hands, her shoulders shaking. That no sound came from her made the scene
all the more unendurable.

He did not go to her. He still remained by the fireplace. After a moment
he said, "It was never meant to be, liane. It is too late now. Only
misery could come of such a thing. I'm going now." He waited for a
moment, but she had thrown herself face down on the bed where the old
woman had died and showed no sign of speaking. Then he said, "Good-bye
and good luck," and went out. He was trembling as if the humiliation was
as great for him as for her. To trample one's pride into the mud was a
horrible thing. The spectacle made him feel sick.

       *       *       *       *       *

So he had gone down the stairs to bid farewell to Seraphine and the old
man in the kitchen. He talked to them, scarcely knowing what he was
saying, and presently the bell had rung and Old Seraphine went to
answer it. He was forced then to wait, since he did not know who might
be at the door. She went away and returned and when she opened the door
a second time he saw through the iron grille work that the girl from
Boston had come in with her.

The sight of the girl did an extraordinary thing to him. The depression,
the shock arising from what had happened upstairs, left him almost at
once. As he watched her crossing the lower gallery and climbing the
stairs, he experienced an extraordinary sense of rightness, as if she
had been sent by God at that moment as a kind of sign.

He thought, "I will wait and speak to her. Then I can explain what
happened at Father Desmoulin's."

But while he waited he was troubled by her very presence in this house.
He was afraid for her, not that the young Baroness would in any way
corrupt her young integrity, but because of the malice of the older
woman. The girl, he reflected, should not be in this doomed place; she
should be clear and free of its very aura.

So he waited and when she reappeared with Seraphine he opened the door
of the kitchen and quickly crossed the gallery. It was almost dark; if
he had not known that she was in the house he might not have recognized
her in the shadows.

At the sound of his voice, she said, "Oh, it's Mr. MacTavish."

"Yes, I wanted to speak to you."

"You shouldn't be here in New Orleans with a reward out for your
capture."

He smiled slowly. "I come and go as I like. They aren't very clever."

"It frightens me to think of you here."

"You needn't worry. I'm going away for good very shortly."

There was a small awkward silence in which the air was pregnant with
unuttered thoughts and emotions. Then he said, "I wanted to speak to you
about what happened outside the priest's door. I was afraid you thought
me rude and a fool. I turned away and led you into the house because
someone was listening to us. Someone who should not have heard what
passed between us."

"I know," she said. At the same time she opened the reticule and took
out a small lace-bordered handkerchief. She gave it to him, saying,
"This time I have something to give you, I was afraid you thought me
mean or ungracious... but I really had nothing to give you."

"Thank you, Miss Agnes, I'm sincerely glad to have it." Then he laughed.
"I expect you think us silly and romantic here in the South."

"No, I think it's very nice." She sighed and said, "I must go now.
They'll think something has happened to me and the General might send
out a search party. That would make me seem very silly. I don't like to
be treated like an idiot child."

He said quickly, "You didn't come here alone, did you?"

"No. There was a coachman and Csar."

"You had no orderly with you?"

"No."

The alarm was evident in his voice, "But you shouldn't have done a thing
like that. Anything might have happened to you. You came in a carriage?"

She laughed, "I don't know what you'd call it. It's a rattletrap thing
Csar found." Then she was grave again, "They did follow us jeering and
hooting. One man got into the carriage."

"I will drive back with you."

"Oh no, you couldn't do that. Someone might recognize you. It isn't
safe."

He laughed again, "I've walked the length of Royal Street after dark
without anyone noticing me."

"I couldn't allow it, Mr. MacTavish. I'm not as unprotected as that. If
there was any real trouble I'd just say I'm the General's niece."

"There are too many men in New Orleans who wouldn't care whether you
were the General's niece. There are too many who would like to do harm
because you _are_ the General's niece." He laid one hand gently on her
arm. "You must listen to me. New Orleans grows worse and worse every
day--and now they know old 'Silver Spoon' is going to be recalled, they
don't any longer respect his authority. I am going with you, Miss Agnes.
You need not worry about me. I'm armed and I can put up a good fight."

She wanted to send him away and yet she wanted him to remain, but she
knew from his voice and manner that she had no choice in the matter.
That he should risk possible capture and certain death to protect her
brought a lump into her throat. But it was his gentleness and the sound
of his voice that moved her most. It was a voice that seemed to
surround, protect and caress her.

She said primly, "You have no right to put the responsibility for your
life on me, Mr. MacTavish. I assure you, I appreciate your kindness but
I should be much happier alone... no matter what happens to me." But
almost at once she was ashamed of the formality of her voice and speech.
It seemed awkward and ungracious.

Very quietly he answered, "I am going to drive with you. Anything can
happen in this city now. Come, it's dark enough now to be quite safe."

       *       *       *       *       *

MacTavish was the guide. Now and then he leaned forward to give the old
coachman directions, now to take this turning, now that one. The course
led away from the centre of the town where most of the soldiers and
carpet-baggers concentrated their activities. It led through shabby
streets thronged with negroes and half-castes and occasional poor white
families who had swarmed out of the ramshackle sheds and ruined houses
into the muddy streets when the sun disappeared and the air grew a
little cooler. The streets at intervals were lighted by great bonfires
of wood, much of it torn from the sides of the ruined houses. Here in
the poor part of the city no barrels of burning pitch were provided to
"purify" the air and burn out the miasma of the dread fever, and so the
inhabitants had made their own fires out of the very wood of the houses
which gave them dubious shelter. Now and then a great fire built in the
very centre of the filthy street forced the barouche to turn and make a
detour.

Sitting side by side in the carriage Agnes and MacTavish spoke very
little. Agnes was happy without quite knowing why--because of the
excitement and the curious wild beauty of the firelit journey. The faces
and the bright ragged clothes of the women and children were like
something out of another world, as unreal as an opera. The older people
on the banquettes and the muddy streets stared as the ramshackle
carriage passed and now and then a child cried out a shrill greeting.

Beside her MacTavish sat with the top-hat pulled well over his eyes,
absorbed in thoughts of a melancholy cast. The shame of the scene with
the young Baroness still hung over him like a vague cloud and the sight
of so much wretchedness and poverty depressed him as it always did. In
Louisiana there seemed only to be a few very rich people and hordes of
starving and half-starved whites and freed men. And now there would be
very few rich people left, save for those who had evilly made profit out
of the misfortunes of others.

He wanted to talk to the girl at his side, to explain many things about
his country which he knew must puzzle her, but the words would not come.
He felt shy as a schoolboy, and it seemed silly to talk seriously to a
girl from whom he would part in a little while and very likely never see
again.

He realized presently that she was laughing and, puzzled, he turned
towards her.

She said, "I was laughing at myself and how funny I must have looked
beating that man over the head with my parasol. He looked so surprised."
She laughed again and said, "But the funniest thing was that I was so
mad I stood up in the carriage and shouted 'Hurrah for Secession! Long
live the Confederacy!'"

He recognized the fine edge of nerves in her laughter. It wasn't simple,
whole-hearted laughter. There was something tragic about it. He was
aware that something must have happened during the visit to the young
Baroness.

He said, "I'm afraid neither of us are very good partisans. Maybe it's
because we see all around things."

She looked at him shyly, "Maybe that's it," she said, "but I guess there
aren't many like us."

"A person can be too reasonable," he said. "It makes for weakness and
bewilderment and indecision." Then after a moment he said almost as if
talking to himself, "It's funny, I've been ruined like hundreds of
others in Louisiana but I don't seem to care."

"Sometimes I wish I could get away from everything I've been, everything
I've been taught, and go into a new country where I could be myself--the
way I feel I am inside." She smiled, "I guess that sounds silly. It's
something I can't explain quite properly, the way I'd like to."

They were crossing Canal Street now at the far end away from the centre
of the city and he was aware that now, if ever, he must be alert. But
there were very few people about and none of them seemed to take any
notice of the old barouche. When he did not answer her at once, she
said, "You won't think me a fool, will you? It's only because I've
never had a chance to know anything that's important. I feel lately like
a chicken coming out of an egg."

He chuckled and said, "I don't think you're a fool. On the contrary I
admire you very much." And again she had the feeling that the warm voice
was enveloping, protecting, caressing her.

In the garden part of the city it was quiet and dark and the air was
heavy with the odour of blooming flowers. Now and then a figure passed
them, hurrying along against the wrought-iron fences. As if the
stillness and the beauty of the night had moved him irresistibly, big
Csar on the box began to sing, and as if the sound of the deep voice
eased the sense of shyness between them Agnes and MacTavish leaned back
against the dirty worn lace which covered the torn upholstery. It was as
if Csar by some aboriginal, clairvoyance had been inspired to sing.
Agnes could understand nothing of the _patois_ but MacTavish knew every
word of the song. He had heard it since he was a small child, an old
Bretonne song about a shepherd and shepherdess which had become
corrupted and changed by generations of slave-singing into something
lush and African. Csar sang softly in a low rumbling voice as a
mocking-bird moved by the soft languor of the night might sing.

Agnes, her mind lazily remembering all the excitement of the afternoon,
made a sudden strange discovery. She did not love Tom; she had never
loved him. Tom belonged to someone like the Baroness not to herself. She
heard again the Baroness's mocking, bitter laughter. "You can have him.
There are plenty of other men as good."

And then through the sound of Csar's deep-throated singing she heard
Aunt Tam's wild cry of "Agnes! Agnes!" And for a moment she was not
certain whether this too was only a part of the curious dream-like
drowsiness which had enveloped her. But she was aware that the barouche
had stopped and Csar was no longer singing and Aunt Tam's face was
close to hers. There was something frightening in the wild agitation of
the older woman, as if it presaged all the calamity that was to follow.
She had never seen Aunt Tam like this before.

She was saying, "David has the fever! We must go to him at once!"

David! The fever! The words and the curious panic in Aunt Tam's voice
terrified her, and for one moment she experienced again the feeling she
had had as a little girl for her twin brother, not that strange new
feeling she had had when she saw him in Aunt Louisa's drawing-room, but
the old feeling of wanting to protect him and shield him from everything
unpleasant which might hurt him.

Then Aunt Tam noticed MacTavish and the sight of him calmed her a
little. She said, "He isn't at the hotel. He's at a house somewhere in
the old part of the city. Here it is!" She held up a scrap of paper with
an address written on it.

MacTavish struck a sulphur match, looked at the address and said
quietly. "I know where it is. It's in a queer part of town. What is he
doing there?"

Agnes answered him, "I think he has a friend there. It doesn't matter
where it is."

"Csar knows," said MacTavish, and repeated the address to the black
man.

"We'll go straight there," said Agnes. MacTavish stepped down and helped
Aunt Tam into his place beside Agnes. He took the small seat opposite
them, and for a long time as the barouche jolted along they sat in
silence, as if the horrible news had struck them all dumb. In Agnes's
brain the same thoughts went round and round, "The fever! Nobody ever
gets well from the fever! Poor David!" And leaning forward she called
out to Csar, "Tell him to go faster."

But after a little time she heard Aunt Tam saying, "After you left, all
kinds of things happened. You shouldn't have hit Louisa in the stomach."

"It doesn't matter now where I hit her."

"She went to bed and called the General's doctor and said that the pain
was more than she could bear. She called you names and called the
Baroness even worse names. I can't see why she should hate the Baroness
so much. She said she was going to have her thrown into jail and all her
money and property taken from her. She said awful things about her and
Tom... and then the General came home with the news that Washington had
sent him his walking papers and she screamed and fainted and came to and
screamed and fainted all over again. And when the news came about David
she paid no attention whatever."

Agnes scarcely heard her. The tears had begun to roll quietly down her
cheeks. She tried to stop them, aware that MacTavish, opposite her, was
watching her in the darkness. People died quietly of the fever, almost
before anything could be done. "David! David!" she thought, "You mustn't
die! You mustn't die!" And for the first time she felt sorry for her
father alone in Boston and wondered how much he was able to feel either
sorrow or joy. So long as she had known him he had never shown any
emotion. She saw him now as a bearded man of granite in a top-hat with a
shawl over his shoulders, punctual, unromantic, interested only in his
business and factory. It was only now that she realized how little she
loved him, that she would not care much if she never saw him again. It
was really because of him that David was here, dying of the fever in New
Orleans. David, whom they were always trying to force into the dull
mould of a New England business man, had gone away with Tom, who jeered
at all that respectable world, to escape from it and from his father.
She saw now that there was something monstrous and inhuman about their
father, about the whole world in which she had spent her life until she
escaped with Aunt Tam.

Leaning forward again, she bade Csar hurry the old mule. The animal had
grown tired and could not be driven in his jolting trot.

Then she was aware of the light from a burning barrel of pitch on the
banquette and saw the face of MacTavish clearly. She said, "You
shouldn't be here. We're quite all right now. Someone will see you.
Please leave us. We'll be quite safe."

But again he refused to leave. "This is the worst part of the town. No
one will recognize me. They wouldn't believe I'd dare to come here."

For a little while, distracted, she continued trying to persuade him,
but it was no use.

He only said, "We'll be there in a little while."

Agnes thought again, "Poor David! You mustn't die! Oh God, dear God,
don't let him die!" She had the wild feeling of being in a nightmare. It
was all like the hurricane again, in which everything became confused
and wild and unreal. She thought, "None of this is really happening to
me. I have only dreamed it." She felt Aunt Tam's hand grasping hers,
pressing it. Quietly and suddenly she had a moment of curious
understanding--that Aunt Tam was only herself inside a plain rather
battered body. She could always count on Aunt Tam as she counted upon
herself, more than she counted upon herself. Whatever happened she must
never lose Aunt Tam.

       *       *       *       *       *

There was panic now in Joslie's house, and the good-natured,
golden-skinned friends no longer came and went, scarcely knocking on the
door or troubling to close it. Fever in the city had not terrified them,
for fever was always there in its season, sometimes striking here and
there at random, killing only a handful of people during the long hot
summer, sometimes sweeping over the whole city like a plague of the
Middle Ages; carrying off whole families in a few hours. When it was
like that people left the city. Everyone who could escape, rich and poor
alike, disappeared into the swamps or lost themselves among remote
plantations and villages. The fever had been there for generations.
Where it came from, no one knew. Some said it was brought in by slaves
from the Gold Coast of Africa, others that it had come from Martinique
and Cuba, and still others that trading vessels brought it from Rio and
the Guianas. There was no way of knowing how it spread or why it was
virulent in one season and light in the next. It was this mystery which
gave it a peculiar horror, worse even than the horror of cholera and
smallpox. Like black cholera it ran its course quickly; people sometimes
fell down in the street to die of it. It was always there, a part of
life itself among the Delta people.

And now it had struck at good-natured Joslie's house, and her daughter
Cllie's _cavalier_ lay dying, and the neighbours gathered in the garden
and in the street outside, waiting for news. They were, most of them,
women like Joslie herself, freed-women, light in colour with small
houses and a little money hidden away, and they had the interest of
women in the fate or the young Yankee officer. They stood outside in the
hot evening in little groups talking and relating their own experiences
with the fever and speculating upon his chances of recovery, for
sometimes, about one time out of five, a victim got well. They were, on
the whole, good-natured women, who wished Cllie well. Now that they
were middle-aged or old and settled, their romantic interest fastened
itself upon girls like Cllie with all life still before them. In a way,
through Cllie and girls like her, they could live again in the gay,
pleasant world of the Quadroon balls.

They had come, too, because they heard that the sister of Cllie's
_cavalier_ was coming to the house. This was something that had never
happened in their world in all their experience--that a sister of a
_cavalier_ should enter the house of the object of his affections, and
there was great dissension among them as to whether this was a proper
thing to do. Some thought "yes" when her brother was dying; others
thought that even death did not make "_bien elev_" such an indiscreet
action. And they had gathered, too, because none of them had ever seen a
Boston woman. Talking about her they thought she must be cold and stiff
and foreign and very different from Crole ladies.

And among other things they talked of La Lionne and the remarkable
change that had come over her--that she looked tired and old and hard
and that her loud coarse laugh was no longer heard. They knew that the
man who had bewitched her was back in New Orleans and they knew that he
had not seen her nor sent any answer to her letters. They knew that Mama
Tolanne's voodoo had not brought him back, and those who disliked Mama
Tolanne scoffed at her as an old fraud who took people's good money but
was able to do nothing for them. Some thought that La Lionne might die
of love and others that she might kill herself, but all of them thought
her a fool to be caught by a man younger than herself who would only
grow tired of her.

And they knew, too, through the grape-vine of rumour that had its roots
in the bosom of Old Seraphine that La Lionne's young man was infatuated
with the young Baroness. Some said that that would be sufficient
punishment for him, and others crossed themselves and spat through their
fingers at the very mention of her name.

Like birds, these golden-skinned women, no longer young, chattered and
gossiped about love because love had been the beginning and end of their
existence. Love had created for them a whole society, a whole world,
endowed with something very near to respectability. Inside the garden
and on the street outside the murmur of their voices rose and fell.

And there were other rumours about the Ogre's return to Washington and
the lawlessness and violence that was creeping through the city like a
winter fog. There were stories of assaults and robberies and murders
which grew with each retelling, stories of the utter ruin of this great
family and that one in which some of the women had protectors. Over them
all hung a grey fog of uncertainty and insecurity, as if they felt
about them, while they waited there in the garden for Cllie's
fair-haired young lover to die, the dissolution of a whole world in
which they had had a secure and protected place. They were accustomed to
the violence of duels, but this violence of which they were suddenly
aware was different, touched by brutality and terrifying lawlessness.
That there was no grace or romance in it alarmed them. The sound of
their soft, corrupt French filled all the garden as they talked about
what was to happen in their dying world.

The arrival of the barouche brought a fresh diversion. Boldly but with a
kind of deference they crowded about the gate to stare at the Boston
girl. But they saw little of her, for her face was covered by a black
veil, and so they fastened their attention upon the horse-faced woman
who accompanied her, a woman the like of which none of them had ever
seen before. But the real sensation was the discovery, as he turned
towards them, of M'sieu MacTavish. A rustle of whispering and indrawn
breath went through the crowd. M'sieu MacTavish coming openly to
Joslie's house where there was a reward for him, dead or alive, posted
all over New Orleans! Any man could get one thousand dollars merely by
shooting him down!

And the first murmur of astonishment was followed by a murmur of
admiration. These women, whose lives were based upon love, knew a man
when they saw one, and their admiration for the figure and face of
MacTavish was unbounded. And among them there were women who knew tales
of his prowess and they became the centres of small groups listening to
accounts of what they had heard or experienced.

He knew nearly all of them--as Boisclair's Eugnie or Dupont's Climne,
or Duplessis' Frdigonde or.... Now he lifted his hat as he passed
through them on his way into the house and said politely, "Bon soir,
Mesdames." As he passed, giggles and small cries of admiration rose from
among the women, as they chorused back, "Bon soir, M'sieu MacTavish!
Bonne chance!"

Then as he went into the house, another figure came out of the
door--that of a tall woman dressed all in black. She wore a veil over
her face and walked very straight, making her way through the gossiping
women like a tall ship through a cluster of market boats. She did not
speak to them. She did not appear to be aware of their presence. The
sight of her caused a pool of silence to spread through the little
crowd of excited women. One of them said, "It is La Lionne on her way to
Mama Tolanne's."

When she had gone, the murmuring and whispering and giggling died away
as if they no longer had any heart for gossip and jesting. And in a
little while they began to drift away to their own houses. It was as if
a plague had fallen upon them. What they saw was to them a worse
spectacle than death. They had witnessed the spectacle of a woman
touched by death because of love--a strong and beautiful woman turned
old and lost and alone and miserable. As she passed through them,
Boisclair's Eugnie whispered, "The smell of death is on her."

       *       *       *       *       *

The walls of the rooms inside Joslie's house were whitewashed like a
house in Martinique or Cuba and the heavy mahogany furniture was
upholstered in bright materials--yellow and green and red and
blue--clear, pure colours that gave the inside of the house the effect
of music, as if it were singing. When you looked at someone across the
room by the light of the oil lamps it was like looking at a
painting--against the white walls with all the bright colours about.
That was the way it affected Agnes when she entered the little salon.
She saw Joslie standing there in a dress of bright-green taffeta,
against the white wall, and she thought, "What a pretty woman... like a
painting!" Even through her terror she was aware of the beauty and the
cheerfulness, like a note of bright music in the darkness. She thought,
far in the back of her mind, "Some day, some place, I should like to
have a house like this."

And then MacTavish was saying, "This is Madame Joslie Legrand."

He knew Joslie very well and that made it all easier. His presence
seemed to change the quality of everything. There was no strain. Joslie
said, "You ought not to be here, M'sieu 'Ector... with all those
gossiping women outside."

She spoke English with a strong accent, and Agnes was aware that she was
speaking it because she had good manners and wanted to make her visitors
feel at home.

David, she said, was upstairs. Her daughter Cllie was with him. The
doctor had gone away. He meant to return in a little while. There was
nothing he could do. There was nothing anyone could do for the fever. It
had to run its course. Her husband Joe had gone to a voodoo doctor.
She, Joslie, didn't believe in voodoo but Joe did and in any case there
was no harm in trying everything.

Then she led him up a small staircase with a pretty wrought-iron rail.
Aunt Tam followed her immediately and then Agnes and then MacTavish.
Half-way up the stairs, MacTavish touched the hand of Agnes. As she
turned, he said in a low voice, "Joslie is a cousin of the young
Baroness. They had the same grandfather." Then they went on up the
stairs. She did not know why he had told her this, except perhaps to
make the whole scene easier and more natural. She saw at once that there
was a likeness between the Baroness and the octoroon in the bright-green
dress, something about the eyes and the way Joslie Legrand held her
head. For a moment before Joslie opened the door she had again a swift
sensation such as she had known in the swamps, of growing, ripening,
expanding.

Then she went through the door and saw David lying in an enormous
teakwood bed inlaid with mother-of-pearl and beside him Joslie's
daughter Cllie who was, she thought quickly, as the girl turned towards
the door, like a white camellia.

The girl had been weeping but even the tears had not marred her beauty.
She wore a dress of purple printed stuff, cut rather low so that nothing
obscured the beauty of the throat and the poise of the head that gave
her in turn a curious, proud likeness to the young Baroness. Only this
girl was younger and more beautiful, with none of the hardness that
sometimes altered the beauty of the older woman and made it seem common.

The impression came quickly to Agnes and at the same time she thought,
"Oh, I'm glad! I'm glad for David!"

It was as if there was a curious rightness and beauty not only about the
girl but about the house with its whitewashed walls and bright colours
and about the girl's mother with her soft, ripe beauty. This was a happy
place and these were happy people, with a kind of animal happiness that
was very close to the thing which had come to Agnes herself during the
long journey through the swamps. David had found here what he had been
searching for, blindly, what at home they had striven to keep from him
and from herself.

It was very strange that at this moment, with David dying, she could
feel a surge of happiness for him and for herself. Perhaps it was
because he had known in the few short years of his young life what most
people of his world never knew. She knew suddenly what it was that made
her fancy she loved Tom--because, without her understanding it, he had
offered her a way out. He was all the things which she and David had
never found in the stifled, narrow world of Pinckney Street.

The boy lay unconscious now, his face scarlet with the fever, his soft
fair poet's hair damp against the pillow of the great bed. As she
crossed the room, the girl beside the bed leaned forward and with a
handkerchief wiped away the dark trickle that ran from the corner of his
mouth. MacTavish, standing discreetly against the white wall, knew at
sight of the black hmorrhage that there was no hope.

The girl rose and said softly, "Sit here, Mademoiselle." But Agnes said.
"No, stay where you are, thank you. I'll sit on the bed."

She took David's hand, thinking how small it seemed and how delicate and
sensitive--a poet's hand, the hand of a man born to suffering and death.
The touch of it was like fire and she, too, knew then there was nothing
to be done, since with such a fever it was impossible for anyone to
live.

She said, "David!" softly and then repeated the name, "David! It's Agnes
come to see you."

After a moment the eyelids flickered a little and then opened, but the
eyes saw nothing. The pupils were contracted and sightless, "David!" she
repeated, "it's Agnes." Although the eyes saw nothing, the sound of her
voice reached some part of his brain for the lips moved and a faint
gasping sound came from them, "Aggie..." the lips said, "Aggie..." and
then "Cllie," and then there was only silence again and the sound of
breathing growing weaker and weaker. A dark trickle appeared again at
the corner of the mouth and the girl bent forward to wipe it away. And
then suddenly the breathing stopped and from the street came through the
hot, still, scented air the sound of wheels creaking and jolting over
the cobblestones and a long haunting cry, "Char de morts! Char de morts!
Apportez vos morts."

       *       *       *       *       *

La Lionne was not bound for Mama Tolanne's sinister doll's house beyond
Congo Square. At the corner of the street she turned in the opposite
direction towards the old part of the city. She walked rapidly, with
determination. She was bound for the de Lche house to kill Tom Bedloe.

Her mind was clear now as it had always been until that night when he
walked through the swinging doors of the Caf Imperial. For it was
finished now. It had been finished since the moment the morning before,
near dawn at the hour when the weak and the old die, when it had come to
her what she must do. As the misery was no longer tolerable, it had
ceased suddenly. In the grey light she thought, "It is all finished. I
am an old woman. There is nothing for me to do but go back to France and
die."

But there was something yet to be done. It was very clear to her
suddenly, so clear that she was astonished that the idea had not come to
her before now. It had not come to her, she knew then, because her body
and spirit had been so miserable and confused. Now she knew that there
was still vengeance to be exacted. There was still the misery, the
haggard eyes, the deep lines in her painted face to be paid for.

Now that the passion had burnt itself out in frustration, she was once
more what she had always been--a wise, hard, woman who in life kept her
accounts as accurately and as shrewdly as she kept them in the Caf
Imperial. In life as in business, things had to be paid for. She had
paid for her folly; she was an old woman. But Tom Bedloe had paid for
nothing. He had taken what he liked when he chose and gone away without
paying anything.

As she walked, rapidly, because she was driven by the passion to settle
the account and have it finished, she saw him very clearly for what he
was.

She had no illusions now. Even a fleeting memory of his prowess, of his
grin, of his laughter could not soften her now. She had seen others like
him in her long experience, men who by some animal power made wretched
abject slaves of women. Until he had come into her life she had never
believed in the power of such men over a shrewd woman like herself. She
had warned her own girls against them; she had driven such men from her
own establishment. She had looked upon them as fouler than rats feeding
from a cesspool. But none of that had made any difference. None of that
knowledge or experience had spared her the long hours of suffering when
she had not slept because she was ravaged by desire, nor the
humiliation of her pride and dignity and integrity caused by the
pleading letters and the visits to Mama Tolanne. None of her knowledge
had saved her from the humiliation of appearing a shameful and beaten
old woman before Joslie and all her chattering friends.

No, there was a long and bitter account to be settled, not only for
herself but for all other women, all those who had gone before as well
as those who were still to come, if she did not make the final entry and
close the book.

She knew what would happen afterwards. There would be a great sensation
and the newspapers and the gossiping women at Joslie's would call it a
_crime passionnel_, although there was no passion concerned in it now
but only a cold, bitter sense of justice. And afterwards she might be
caught or she might escape to France. She did not deceive herself. She
might be hanged for what she meant to do. But that was a gamble, and
belonged to the future, and she was concerned now with a fierce
concentration solely upon the immediate. No one, she thought grimly,
would be able to say that the crime was unpremeditated. No one could
honestly say that it was a crime of passion. She had thought it all out
carefully, even to the help from Old Seraphine. Afterwards it would not
be too difficult to escape, with the disorder in the city and the fever
and the quarrels between the police and the soldiers. There would be
plenty of people, plenty of women who would help her because they would
look upon the murderess of a Union officer as a heroine. She would be
like Charlotte Corday. And she would slip aboard one of the French ships
loading stolen cotton and be hidden away by the sailors and be safe. She
knew men, especially men like those who manned ships. They would help
her because all her life she had understood them and had helped them and
been their friend.

For nearly half an hour she hurried through the streets now silent and
empty, now filled with crowds gathered about the blazing barrels of
pitch. Now and then a voice cried out as she passed, but mostly the
people were silent as if they were aware by some instinct of the errand
of the black-clad woman, with the same instinct that had made Father
Desmoulins read the doom in the face of the young man sitting opposite
him at breakfast in his little house at St. Jean de Beaupr. As she
hurried she ceased presently to be any longer simply La Lionne, ruined
proprietress of the Caf Imperial. She became a kind of symbol--woman
seeking vengeance upon all men like Tom Bedloe.

And at last she came to the section where the rich Croles lived, and
came presently to the blind alley and to the door which opened into the
courtyard of the de Lche house. In the darkness she pushed the door
gently. It swung open easily on the carefully oiled hinges. It was not
locked. Old Seraphine had kept her word and left it ajar. Inside the
door, she kicked off her slippers and with her stockinged foot placed
them side by side where she would be certain to find them when she came
down again after the thing had been done.

       *       *       *       *       *

And now it was all over and Joslie had drawn the sheet across David's
face and for the first time the reality was clear to Agnes. She
understood now what it was that had always troubled her. It had happened
as it was meant to happen. She saw it now... that David had only been
loaned to life, that he had not been meant for this world, because there
was in him no toughness, no shell to protect him. All his dreaminess,
his gentleness, his sensitivity were a part of the whole thing. That was
why she had never in all her life, no matter how much she loved him,
been able somehow to touch him, save perhaps for that single moment in
the small drawing-room of the MacTavish house. It seemed now that she
had always known it would end like this. It was an end which seemed
right, an end which he himself might have chosen as an end to some
romantic poem--lying in Joslie's house, far away from the narrow
streets of Boston, with Cllie at his side. It was the way David always
saw life, not in terms of reality, but veiled and lifted to a romantic
plane beyond all the possibilities of reality. It was odd that she
should be the sensible one--the "boy" of the twins.

She did not weep. Strangely she felt no desire to weep. She had only a
sense of hazy uncertainty as if all that had happened since she struck
Aunt Louisa with the valise had been a dream. She did not even know how
she came presently to be in another room with Aunt Tam and MacTavish.
Joslie and Cllie had vanished and she heard MacTavish saying, in his
deep, clear voice. "Could I speak to Miss Agnes alone for a moment, Miss
Wicks?"

Aunt Tam went out silently and when she had gone, he looked at her
gravely and said, "I am sorry... so sorry." By instinct, without quite
knowing what she was doing she held out her hand towards him. He moved a
little nearer and took it in his big hand.

"I would like to do something... but there is nothing I can do. What
Joslie says is true. I must go now. A hundred people must know by now
that I am in this house. And I shall be no good to you hanging from the
end of a rope. I must go away so that I can go on being of use to you."

"You can't believe I thought you a coward?"

"No, I didn't think that. I only wanted to be certain that you
understood, because that means a great deal to me."

Now, suddenly, she wanted to cry, but the desire had nothing to do with
David lying dead on the huge bed in the other room. Then through the
flimsy wall of the room she heard the sound of Cllie's soft sobbing,
and she began to cry and knew that she was weeping not for David but
because of MacTavish.

"You mustn't mind," she said. "It's because I'm tired and frightened."

He pressed her hand gently and said, "Where are you going now?"

"I don't know."

"There isn't much time and I don't know where to find you. You're not
going back to Boston?"

"No."

"Even if the General goes?"

Almost passionately she said, "No. Certainly not with them."

Then Joslie came into the room. She, too, had been crying but she
appeared excited now. To MacTavish she said, "You must go now, quickly!
The soldiers are on their way. Someone has told them!"

He seemed to take no notice of Joslie's warning, "Where can I find
you?" he asked.

"I don't know. You must go now... quickly."

"You can send word to Father Desmoulins where you are.... Csar can take
the message."

"Go... please go."

He stood for a moment looking at her as if he meant to say something. In
the silence the sound of marching feet was heard and then a cry of
"Halt."

"Please go! Please go!" she said again.

He bent down and kissed her hand. Then he said, "I'll send someone to
help you."

Joslie pulled at him, "Come... you can go out by the garden door...
but quick."

Then he went away and she heard the nasal voice of a Massachusetts
soldier downstairs demanding entrance to the house.

       *       *       *       *       *

It was quite dark when Tom Bedloe returned to his rooms. He had not come
straight back from the Port Office. For nearly two hours he had walked
through distant parts of the city in streets that were strange to him
where he was certain he would encounter no one whom he knew. For nearly
two hours he struggled with himself in a battle more violent than that
between Jacob and the Angel, and when he returned at last he had made up
his mind. He knew now what he meant to do. He meant to follow the young
Baroness to Martinique, to France wherever she might choose to go. He
had money. He could take more from the Port Office. In the confusion and
disorder that had begun to settle over the unhappy city, no one would
notice his absence until the ship was well out to sea.

It meant that he could never return to America but that knowledge
troubled him very little. He had no family left and friends he could
replace wherever he found himself. People always came to him wanting to
be friends.

It meant that he would die and be reborn in another kind of world with
the young Baroness, the only flimsy bond between what had been and what
was to come. He knew that if he did not follow her, if the thing was
never completed, he would never again know any peace. Once or twice he
thought of Agnes and consoled himself thinking, "Only her pride will be
hurt. She will be lucky to escape me, for I could only have made her
miserable."

With Agnes went, too, all the hopes he had had of settling down, of
leading a decent life, of having sons of his own. All that, he knew, was
finished. The road he chose would be a very different one with
loneliness and perhaps ruin at the end, but it was, he knew now, a road
which he could not escape. He had been born to it. It was a road that
led to a life of magnificence and squalor, of ecstasy and despair, of
adventure and excitement. He was not good with words. He did not think
it out clearly. It was something he felt, emotionally and profoundly.
There was no other road for him.

Back in his own rooms, he rang the bell for Old Seraphine to bring him
water for a bath. He meant to dress carefully and cross the gallery and
go to her. They were alone now in the great house, save for Seraphine
and the old man in the kitchen.

The old black woman returned in a little while with the old man from the
kitchen carrying two pails of water. They both stared at him in an odd
fashion, as if he had changed in some way. Even when he bade them
brusquely to go and leave him, Old Seraphine remained for a moment in
the doorway, still staring.

When they were gone, he poured the cold water over him again and again,
enjoying the sensual pleasure of the cold against his hot skin. He brain
seemed clear now and free of confusion, and he gave himself up again to
the feeling of exaltation at being alive and male and young. And while
he bathed he heard again the music he had heard long ago before he had
ever seen her. She was playing the piano and singing again in her clear
perfect voice in the room on the opposite side of the courtyard. As he
dried himself he paused now and then to listen, wondering that the voice
of such a woman could be so pure and cold and perfect. It was as if the
voice belonged to another woman, different from the one he had known in
the ruined house at Bel Manoir.

He took the singing as an invitation, as a sign that she meant him to
come to her, and he began to dress quickly but carefully, choosing the
finest of the shirts he had bought at the auction of a seized
Confederate property... a shirt of transparent lawn, ruffled from the
throat to the waist, a dandy's shirt which covered but did not conceal
the body beneath it. He dressed with the care of a bridegroom going to
be married.

He saw La Lionne then as he stood before the mirror brushing his thick,
close-cropped black hair with the silver-backed brushes she had given
him. For a second he had a strange feeling that what he saw was only
something he had imagined. She was dressed all in black and the veil was
thrown back so that he saw her face. It was the face that alarmed him,
not only the look in the eyes but the haggard lines which showed through
the thick rouge. It was La Lionne, but an old, tired, battered woman...
not the Lionne he had known so well in the room with the red plush and
gilt, above the Caf Imperial.

She said nothing. She only stood there in the doorway, watching him. On
the opposite side of the courtyard, the voice of the young Baroness
still rose limpid and clear and perfect in the roulades of the aria from
_Il Re Pastore_.

As he turned from the mirror and looked at her, he knew why she had
come. He saw it in the hard green eyes. He thought, "I must act quickly
and outwit her."

He said, almost with bravado, "Come in, Flice, and sit down." (Sitting
she would be less dangerous. He wondered what weapon she carried--a
knife or a pistol. A knife would be the likelier weapon. If he could
keep her at a distance he could perhaps talk her into reason and induce
her to go.)

She said in her strangely accented English, "I wrote you but you nevair
answered me."

"I was away. I was a prisoner. You heard about that?" He spoke with an
exaggerated casualness as if somehow it would restore his old power over
her.

"Yes, I heard about that."

The sound of the voice was like the look in the hard eyes. He had a
sudden sense of being cornered. As long as she stood in the doorway he
could not leave the room. He thought, "I must rush at her and throw her
to the floor." But he did not act, perhaps because the action appeared
to him ridiculous and because a sudden excitement welled up in his
blood.

"It is all over, Flice," he said. "It was all over a long time ago."

Above the sound of her hoarse voice he could still hear the other clear
voice on the far side of the hot still courtyard.

"Yes," she repeated, with a sigh, "it's all over. I am going back to
France away from this _sacr_ place."

Then for the first time she moved. She stepped forward and he felt again
the impulse to throw himself at her, but again he seemed to be paralysed
and could not act. Then, very quietly, she raised her arm. The long cape
fell away and he saw that she held a revolver. He saw it very
clearly--that it was one of the new Army models, a Colt, and he wondered
where she had come by it.

"You're not going to do that, Flice," he said. "You're not going to be
foolish." And he knew that he did not want to die... not now with the
young Baroness inviting him by the sound of her voice on the far side of
the garden.

He started towards her but she did not wait for him. He saw the flash of
the pistol and fell, backward, as if he had been hit a violent blow on
the chest. At the same time he heard the voice on the other side of the
courtyard--pure, clear, passionless.

He said, "Oh, Flice... Flice!" and then a black fog closed over the
room, the face of La Lionne and the sound of the voice on the far side
of the courtyard.

For a moment she stood looking down at the body. It lay on its side, a
faint trickle of blood discolouring the fine lawn of the ruffled shirt,
and for a second she felt a sudden pang. He was young. He was strong. He
was beautiful. He had been her lover. There were things about him which
she would always remember even as an old woman. But the pang passed
quickly, and as if to stifle it, she fired twice more into the back of
the man who was already dead.

Then quickly, with the old walk that was like that of a lioness, she
turned and went out of the room and down the staircase to the spot by
the door where she had left her slippers. Quickly she thrust her feet
into them and went out, closing the door behind her. As the darkness of
the blind alley swallowed her up, she heard the sound of light footsteps
hurrying along the gallery above her head and then a single scream.

       *       *       *       *       *

For a long time the young Baroness stood looking down at the body. It
was the sound of Old Seraphine's frightened whimpering which roused her.
She looked at the old woman and said, "Who did it? Who did you let into
the house, you black devil?"

The old woman fell on her knees and covering her head with her arms, she
began to rock back and forth, moaning and making unintelligible sounds.
Again her mistress cried, in French, "Who did it? You know, you evil
witch!" But still the old woman only moaned.

Then the young Baroness took up the sword that lay on the chair by the
dressing-table. Taking it in both her hands she began beating the old
negress over the head, "You'll tell me or I'll flay you alive."

The moaning grew louder with each stroke of the blade and presently
throwing herself flat on her face, she cried out, "La Lionne! Fais pas
a. La Lionne! I didn't know she meant to kill him! La Lionne! Oh, la
saligaude! Oh! la bte!"

The young Baroness stopped beating her and threw down the sword. "Get
up!" she said, "and send the old man for the police!" As the old woman
scrambled painfully to her feet, there was the sound of a faint sigh in
the room, and the young Baroness, as if speaking to herself said, "Je
n'avais pas fini! Je n'avais pas fini!"

       *       *       *       *       *

A little after dawn Joslie came into the room where Aunt Tam and Agnes
had spent what was left of the night. She said that there was a
gentleman downstairs to see them. He was the uncle of Chauvin Boisclair,
she said, and M'sieu MacTavish had sent him.

They found him in Joslie's little salon, a small, delicately built old
gentleman, dressed very carefully in rather faded, elegant clothing. He
was gentle and kind and kept punctuating his speeches with slight
old-fashioned bows of deference. He talked very rapidly and with a faint
and musical accent.

He had come, he said, to help them with all the painful arrangements.
Mr. MacTavish had said they were alone in a strange city and would not
know what had to be done. It would be a great honour for him to help in
any way possible. He would stay with them, to serve them in any way he
could until they no longer needed him. He had brought a note from Mr.
MacTavish addressed to the young lady.

He gave it to Agnes and as she opened it to read, he asked Aunt Tam to
come into the hall with him. There he said very gravely, "I have bad
news for you," and told her that Tom Bedloe was dead.

For a moment the gaunt woman could not grasp the significance of what he
was saying, and when at last she understood and accepted the news, she
experienced a curious sense of relief that made her feel ashamed. Tom
was dead. It did not seem possible that anyone so alive could be dead.
But the kindly old gentleman said so. He had been murdered in the most
vulgar and shocking way by a woman who was the proprietor of a notorious
establishment.

"Thank God," she thought first of all, "she was not married to him."

Then gravely she excused herself from the presence of old Mr. Boisclair
and went down the staircase with the wrought-iron grille work into the
little garden where so many times La Lionne had paced up and down in the
lonely scented darkness.

There were many things the elderly spinster had to consider before she
could face her niece. It was not easy, she knew, thinking at the same
time how curious it was that she had found herself, respectable, stiff
and rather impregnable to all heartache, involved without her will in so
much passion and tragedy. She thought how fortunate it was that they
were not in Boston where Agnes could be pawed over by the women who
would have come in, whispering in corners, speaking their oily
condolences, secretly triumphant because in the end the girl had been
robbed of a man of whom they openly disapproved but secretly admired.
"Poor Agnes!" they would say, "how humiliating for her!" secretly
satisfied in their hearts because death had destroyed this romance
between a pretty young girl and a lover who was handsome and reckless
and "fast." Aunt Tam, in her innocent wisdom, knew many things, among
them the peculiar quality of envy that infected the hearts of women
married to respectable solid dull men for a young girl who had attracted
a reckless man like Tom Bedloe.

But Tom Bedloe was dead, and now the problem was when and where and how
to tell Agnes. As she walked up and down the dewy garden, one thing
became clear to her--that they could never return to the General's house
and face him and Louisa, certainly not the Louisa she had seen screaming
and moaning in baffled misery on the great canopied bed in Mr.
MacTavish's house. It was better that they did not see Louisa at all.
They could, for the time being, take a room in David's hotel. Certainly
she could not permit Agnes to be tortured by Louisa.

At last, her heart filled with sorrow for all young men like David and
Tom, who died too young to have acquired wisdom, she wearily climbed the
little staircase and pushed open the door of the room where Agnes and
old Mr. Boisclair were sitting on Joslie's bright-coloured chairs.

Agnes had been crying, and Mr. Boisclair sat opposite her, watching her
with the eye of an old gentleman bewildered by the sorrow of a pretty
young girl--an eye filled with kindliness and sympathy. But the odd
thing was that despite Agnes's tears, there was a curious aura of
happiness about the girl. It hung about her like a faint perfume. She
looked up as Aunt Tam came through the door and said, "We're going to
stay with Father Desmoulins, Aunt Tam. Mr. MacTavish has arranged it. I
couldn't go back to Boston or to Aunt Louisa's house."

       *       *       *       *       *

On the way to David's hotel no one molested them, although there were
rough men everywhere in the streets and there was a curious air of
restlessness and violence in the crowds gathered here and there about
the announcements plastered on the walls of shops and houses announcing
a change in the command of the stricken city. It may have been the air
of dignity and respectability about old Mr. Boisclair or the dragon
appearance of Aunt Tam which protected them. Throughout the journey Aunt
Tam worried over how she was to break the news to Agnes. It would be
easier than she feared. She knew that, the moment she saw Agnes's face
on coming into the bright room at Joslie's. She knew then what she
suspected on the night before when Mr. MacTavish had lingered with the
soldiers of the Massachusetts regiment at the door. She was aware that
the girl no longer loved Tom. Aunt Tam knew many things which did not
come out of her pitifully meagre experiences with romance, and now,
thinking it over, she doubted that Agnes had ever been in love with Tom
Bedloe. She had never looked at him as she had looked after MacTavish
when he left her to escape into the garden on the night before.

At the hotel, Mr. Boisclair said he would wait at the bar while they
went up to David's room.

They found the room neat and in order as he always kept it, but among
his papers they found none of his old-fashioned poems about graveyards
and snowstorms. They found only the manuscript of a long poem of which
two cantos were complete. It was called, "Don Juan and Oriana."

While Agnes sat looking through it, Aunt Tam thought, "Now the time has
come. If I do not tell her someone else will or she will see it in the
_Delta_." And very gently she said, "My dear, I have bad news about
Tom."

And then an odd thing happened. Agnes, glancing up at her with a curious
look of pain in her clear blue eyes, said swiftly, "I know. Something
has happened to him. He is dead."

"Who told you that?"

"No one," said Agnes.

"How did you know?"

"I don't know how I knew." And then after a little silence, "I think I
knew it when he left me that day at Aunt Louisa's."

She could not have explained to Aunt Tam if she had tried and it seemed
to her now that she had always known that she would never be Tom
Bedloe's wife because he was doomed. Once on the moonlit bayou it had
come to her, almost as if a voice had spoken, and again in the garden of
the de Lche house as it melted into the darkness of twilight, just
before Mr. MacTavish had spoken to her, and again as she rose from
beside David's bed when she knew that her brother was dead and would
never speak to her again. The sense of his destruction had been very
strong then but she put it out of her mind, telling herself that such
things were nonsense.

Now she said quietly, "How did it happen?" and Aunt Tam told her, trying
to disguise the sordidness and vulgarity of his death, but Agnes was not
deceived, although she said nothing at all, except after a little while,
"Poor Tom! Poor Tom!"

She herself knew then that she did not love him. Now she felt sorry for
him as she would feel sorry for a naughty child. She was very tired. It
was as if all her senses and perceptions were numbed. She never loved
Aunt Tam so much as in that moment. The older woman made no effort to
sympathize with her or to comfort her. She only said, "I am going out
now with Mr. Boisclair. You had better try to get some sleep while I'm
gone," and kissed her gently.

Then Aunt Tam left to find Mr. Boisclair and see to the business of the
burial. She had a double task now, for she made up her mind that she
would not leave Tom's burial to the disorganized Army authorities. She
would see that he had a dignified and a proper funeral, for now she
discovered that she, too, like all the others who had ever known him,
had loved him. It seemed to her as it had seemed to Father Desmoulins
that he had the brightness and beauty of a fallen archangel.

       *       *       *       *       *

Autumn came slowly, almost imperceptibly to the Parish of St. Jean de
Beaupr. The old priest busied himself about his garden during the hours
when parishioners did not talk with him of their troubles in the
confessional or in his tiny library. They were beginning to come back
now, a few of the grand people to live among the ruins of the great
plantation houses, the black and yellow people no longer either quite
free or slave, the wretchedly poor white people who lived in the village
along the river.

In all the parish there was no such thing as money and there was very
little to eat. The grand people learned to eat sowbelly from the
half-wild pigs which roamed the swamps, and catfish out of the rivers
and bayous, and even wild rabbit. Some of them lived again in simple
cabins as their forefathers had done long ago when the whole state was a
wilderness. And from all parts of the parish people of every station in
life came to Father Desmoulins with their troubles. He acted as judge in
disputes, as engineer and architect and schoolmaster and priest, and
gradually the whole life of the community came to centre about the small
parish house he shared with Old Climne and the two strange Yankee
women. Without him the whole story would have been a different one.
Father Desmoulins had immense, unfathomable reserves of patience and
understanding and wisdom.

Because he loved his fellow-men there was about him a quality of
agelessness. He was as young as the children who crawled about the
dooryards on all fours and as old as black Mammy Tita who said she was
many years over a hundred.

In the beginning he found it odd and a little uncomfortable to have two
strange women living in his house, but presently he grew used to their
presence and even looked forward to conversation with them when he
returned in the evening; and as the weeks passed he began to discover
even at his age fresh evidence of the goodness of the human spirit. It
was not as if the two women were of his race and kind and faith,
speaking the same language; they were Anglo-Saxon and believed in a
curious, passionless and unnatural creed known as Unitarianism. They
were everything which to him seemed curious and sterile.

He studied them, with that part of him which remained for ever the
scholar and the sceptic, as he studied the plants with which he laboured
in his small garden, and presently he made a remarkable discovery--that
these two women appeared to be growing and flourishing like well-tended
plants before his very eyes. The older one, whom God had chosen to make
so ugly, was like a half-withered plant that sprang into fresh and
vigorous life with a little care and watering. She was like a friend
sent from heaven to help him in the confusion and despair of the ruined
parish. She was up at daybreak and worked all day even through the noon
heat, going from house to house with a small bullet-headed black boy as
a guide, distributing food, helping in houses and cabins where there was
illness, even acting on occasions as midwife. She appeared to have an
inexhaustible store of energy and a body as tough as a swamp cypress,
and after it grew dark, she sat for hours writing in the thick bound
journal she kept in her bedroom.

Sometimes in her absence the old priest struggled with a fierce desire
to open the journal and read what she wrote in it with such passionate
and concentrated intensity. He believed that in its pages he would
discover clues to many things that puzzled him--why these two women
seemed so happy in this hard, spare life which was the best he could
offer them, why they were never homesick for their own country, why each
day seemed to be filled for them with new wonders and new satisfactions,
why there was in both of them a toughness, a resourcefulness, a frontier
quality which the women of Louisiana no longer seemed to possess.

It was the younger one, Miss Agnes, whom Father Desmoulins put in charge
of the little school he set up in his own salon. In it were the very
young children of the village and the neighbouring plantations, brought
together because the old man was unwilling even in the confusion and
hardships of the moment that they should grow up ignorant as were their
fathers and mothers.

Miss Agnes taught them their alphabet and she taught them to speak
English. Learning English was an idea of Father Desmoulins and at first
it was badly received, but he stuck to his purpose because, like Hector
MacTavish, he divined that the old Crole world was doomed. Before the
children, sitting on their benches in front of Miss Agnes, were
middle-aged, the French language, he knew, would no longer be heard in
Louisiana save among a few elegant people and in the remote lost parts
of the Delta. In a little while, as time went, this soft Crole world
which the old man loved, despite its violence and its decadence and
evil, would have vanished. That other world, harsh and vigorous and
practical and commonplace, pressing down from the North would have
engulfed it, imposing upon it the pattern of life of the Anglo-Saxon
shopkeeper.

But by that time he would be dead and buried in the little parish
cemetery, above ground where the muddy water rising in the fertile earth
could not reach him.

He watched the first signs of that transformation as Miss Agnes sat at
her table with the children in rows on benches before her. Sometimes
when he had a moment free from his heavy tasks, he came in and talked to
the children in their own _patois_, inventing childish jokes which made
them laugh and explaining to them what the girl, in her faltering
flat-accented French, had not been able to convey. Her methods were
simple. On the blackboard she would draw a picture of a cat and make
them repeat after her the words "chat" and "cat," or it might be a dog
or a chair or a table. They learned quickly and she was a good teacher,
patient and even kind, but with a surprising sense of authority that
gave her power over even the most mischievous of the children.

She was, the old man thought, an admirable young woman, pretty as she
was intelligent and endowed with a firm character, and from day to day
it seemed to him that she grew and ripened like a peach on one of his
own trees. He was aware that her destiny was not that of schoolmistress.
She was meant by God and nature to be a wife and the mother of many
children. She would make a good wife; she would, the old man thought
wistfully, be a wonderful woman for the man who won and kept her love.

He knew that man and the knowledge warmed his heart. He knew that while
the girl stayed here in his house, teaching school, she was only waiting
for a destiny as clearly marked, however different it may have been, as
that of the young Yankee who had died by passion and violence in New
Orleans. There were moments when Father Desmoulins, despite all his
training, wavered perilously near to a belief in predestination, not by
the will of God but by the character of man. It seemed to him that the
life of every man and woman was determined by something inside himself.
The combination of the inner being with the circumstance encountered
outside constituted Fate, and Fate, the old man knew, was a very old
word, infinitely older even than his church.

It was Fate that brought these two strange women out of their cold and
narrow world into this other soft and sensuous and faintly decadent
wilderness, and so changed the whole course of their lives. It was Fate
that had turned Hector MacTavish away from the young Baroness from the
very beginning; Fate, too, that destroyed the young Yankee by violence
as certainly as the seasons followed one another. It was Fate that
Louisiana should be defeated and plundered and in time changed beyond
all recognition. All these things were written. There was about them
something as inevitable as the rules of mathematics. The sum of A plus B
equals C. It was as simple as that. He knew because, in a curious
fashion, he had never had any life of his own; he had always lived
through and for his fellow-men.

And so he knew that Hector MacTavish would come back to claim his
schoolmistress and he felt no surprise one afternoon a little before
Christmas when he came home to find Hector in the little salon
surrounded by Miss Wicks and Miss Agnes and Old Climne, telling them
of the wonders of the new country he had found in the West.

       *       *       *       *       *

Agnes, too, had always known that he would return. She knew it from the
moment he left Joslie's little house to escape from the soldiers who
pounded on the door, from the moment when he took her hand and she knew
that she had never loved Tom at all save in the romantic imagination of
a schoolgirl brought up in a world of strange distorted values. There
were moments when she trembled with fright at the thought of what might
have happened to her if she and Aunt Tam had not run away from Havana on
the _San Cristobal_.

Over the cropped heads of the children she saw him come in, his tall,
strong body filling the whole of the small doorway. Without looking at
her he clapped his hands and cried in a loud voice in the _patois_ of
the parish, "School is dismissed! To-day will be a holiday!"

Snatching their hats and their ragged jackets, the children ran away
quickly. He stood watching them with a grin and when the last one had
scuttled through the doorway, he crossed the room and took her in his
arms and kissed her, without so much as saying "Good morning" or asking
her leave. Then he held her at arm's length and looked at her smiling
and said, "I've found the place. It's a wide green valley between
high mountains and not a settler in the place. It's all ours for the
taking... a whole bright new world."

Even though her happiness blinded and confused her, she was aware of a
difference in him. The old sadness was no longer there and in its place
there was a kind of radiance. She could only think, "This is how I knew
it would be." This was what she had dreamed of during those long moonlit
nights on the bayous. The odd thing was that she seemed to know him so
well, as if she had loved him always, as far back as she could remember,
even before she stepped ashore in the moonlight to find him waiting at
the ferry landing. Looking up at him she said, "You're very dark...
like an Indian."

"It's a wonderful country. Even the sunlight there is different.

"May I take Aunt Tam with us? I couldn't leave her... not now."

"Of course. I'm taking my mother and sisters. There'll be a lot of us."

She laughed and he went on, "And big Csar wants to go and all his
family and Chauvin Boisclair."

"We'll be a whole village."

"Yes, we'll be a whole village... a growing village." He laughed again
and kissed her again, and it was only then that it struck her that they
had never talked of marriage and that he had never proposed to her in a
proper fashion. It was as if they had known the story all so well that
there was no need.

       *       *       *       *       *

In New Orleans they did not hang La Lionne, for they never found any
trace of her. Like a lioness she went to earth somewhere in the swamps
or among the shabby, half-ruined houses of that world of harlots and
freed men and roustabouts near Congo Square. In the confusion and
lawlessness of the times the search was distracted and half-hearted, and
there were hundreds of people in the city and in the swamps outside who
would gladly have hidden the assassin of a Yankee officer, especially
one who was a favourite of "Silver Spoon" Wicks. In the city some said,
despite the evidence of the young Baroness and Old Seraphine, that La
Lionne had not done the shooting, that the officer was only another
victim of that band known as Les Dfenseurs. But the band seemed to have
vanished and its leader to have disappeared into thin air. For a long
time afterwards every one of the countless murders and assassinations
was blamed upon the band, but the truth was that the band had ceased to
exist on the day Hector MacTavish had burned the papers in the fireplace
of the room where the old Baroness died.

About six weeks after the murder a French packet-boat called the _Ville
de Dunkerque_, laden with cotton and sugar stolen from the plantations
and warehouses by the Yankees, sailed for Boulogne by way of Martinique.
Aboard it travelled the Baroness de Lche with three negro servants, an
old woman called Seraphine, a very old man and a young black girl with
dimmed wits and a perpetual look of terror called Thomasine. With the
Baroness went twenty-eight trunks and countless cases of cypress wood
filled with silver and pictures and carpets and mirrors, and five small
heavy kegs containing thirty-eight thousand dollars in gold specie,
mysteriously released from the gold stolen by the Yankees from the
Planters' Bank.

On the same ship, hidden away in the depth of the hold, there was
another woman whose presence was known only to the sailors who smuggled
her aboard and hid her. Until the ship reached Martinique she remained
in her hiding-place among the bales of cotton. At Martinique she went
ashore after nightfall and came aboard the ship the next day to book a
cabin not far from that of the Baroness de Lche, as Madame Flice
Mancheron, a resident of St. Pierre. She had a ravaged, bitter face that
once must have been beautiful, and she appeared to have plenty of money.

On the evening of the day the ship left Fort de France, the woman,
taking advantage of the calm weather and the balmy air, came on deck to
walk restlessly up and down. On her way she passed the Baroness de Lche
walking the deck on the arm of the Captain, and for a second the eyes of
the two women met. Then both of them looked away quickly and never again
throughout the voyage was there any sign of recognition between them.

When they had passed the Captain said to the Baroness, "Quelle femme
extraordinaire! Elle a le pas et l'air d'une vieille lionne!"

"Oui," replied the Baroness, "on l'appelle La Lionne  New Orleans."

The Captain stopped. "C'est elle, alors?"

"Oui, c'est elle."

But it was too late now. The ship was on her way to France and the
Captain was a Frenchman. To him a _crime passionnel_ was no crime.
Besides, with a Parisian so distinguished, so fascinating, so alluring
as the Baroness de Lche on his arm, he had no interest or curiosity
concerning ancient scandals.






[End of Wild is the River, by Louis Bromfield]
