Part 34 (1/2)
Now began a series of unexpected visitations.
A milk-blue sky was turning white, the sickly white of a fish's underbelly, and Miriam was calculating how long it would be before the storm broke, when she saw a carriage turn into the lane. Four fine horses pulled it; a coachman rode high-and alone in the back seat sat a woman in a yellow dress so glossy that even at that distance it could be recognized as satin.
The carriage rolled nearer, the black wheels, bright as jet, coming to a smart stop at the foot of the verandah. The coachman jumped down and helped the woman to alight.
The woman was Queen.
In her manner, this time, there was neither deference nor avoidance. Her eyes, no longer lowering and flickering away as they once had, swept frankly over Miriam's country bonnet and cotton dress, faded from many was.h.i.+ngs.
”You remember me,” she said. It was not a question, but a declaration.
”I do.”
”I came as soon as I heard what happened .... He was a good man.” The curve of the chin, lifted above three strands of marvelous pearls, was vaguely defiant.
It was hardly worth coming all this way to tell me that, Miriam thought, feeling a hot rise of anger. And do you think I am going to argue with you about it? But she merely nodded to indicate that she had heard.
”I brought you some things. I thought-I knew you would be needing things.”
The trampled corn, the broken railing of the piazza from which Eugene had fallen, and the fences on which repairs had barely begun, stood in mute evidence of that need.
”His-your-children will be needing things, I thought.”
To be the recipient of this woman's largesse! I should like to tell her to take her charity elsewhere, Miriam told herself. But Angelique's bright dresses had caught the fancy of the marauders, who had stripped her room of everything she owned.
”The boxes are in the carriage. Shall I have my man take them into the house?”
The floor and half of the back seat were covered with parcels, nicely tied. So long since the last time one had known that voluptuous antic.i.p.ation in the presence of a well-wrapped gift! Greed widened Miriam's eyes. She felt them stretching open.
”He may put them in the front hall,” she said. ”It's most kind of you ....”
The woman watched her servant and Miriam watched the woman. Her eardrops were diamonds. Gold bracelets, heavy and sinuous, twined around her wrists, and her fingers were covered with rings. The Queen of Sheba must have glittered so.
This obvious increase in wealth, this new manner of a.s.surance and reversal of their relative positions, cut Miriam sharply, while at the same time she understood quite clearly that the cutting edges were her own resentment, injured pride, and envy.
When the last of the packages had been stacked in the hall, Queen started back to the carriage. An impulse toward ordinary decency shot through Miriam's foggy distraction. The humid air was stifling, and the woman had made a long journey for the benefit of Eugene's children.
”Come in and rest for a moment. I have nothing to offer you except rest in a cool place.”
Fortunately, she thought wryly, this was the time of the afternoon nap, so there would be no one about-especially not Emma-to be amazed at the sight of the lady of the house entertaining a free woman of color in the parlor.
Queen's quick eyes were taking in the damage, the empty s.p.a.ces where obviously furniture had stood, the shattered mirror, and the portrait with the ruinous diagonal rip.
”I don't understand why they had to do all this,” she said. ”They have left you nothing.”
”Yes, between them and Beast Butler, we have almost nothing,” Miriam said angrily.
”Yet he did do some good.”
”Butler did good?” Miriam was scornful.
”Oh, yes, he brought in food when the city was starving, and fixed prices. And he set men to cleaning the dirty streets. You know we've had no yellow fever this past summer.”
”That's little enough to have given back to the city when he has got so rich from the city.”
Queen smiled. ”Yes, many have got rich by it. His brother has made a fortune. I know people quite close to him, and I know it's true.”
I am quite sure you do, Miriam said to herself.
In the distant west thunder muttered briefly, signaling, to her relief, its own pa.s.sing away, for she could scarcely have allowed the woman to start home in the thick of a storm. Then a silence filled the room. It ticked in the ears and grew more disconcerting with each moment, until at last Queen began to speak.
”I wanted to tell him that I was sorry I-left him when the city was taken.” Into the depths of her round, hooded eyes, so newly, confidently, bold, there now came a sorrowing remorse. ”It's too late .... People do things they're not proud of afterward. But circ.u.mstances ...” The soft, rus.h.i.+ng voice, suggestive of love-words and laughter, stopped and the hands were flung out, palms upward, as if to say: Surely you will understand how it was.
Luxury, gaiety, and going over to the winners, that's how it was. Still there was a certain dignity in the plain confession.
”I'm sorry he didn't live to hear you tell him that,” Miriam said, remembering that flicker of a smile as Eugene lay dying on the ground.
”There's something else .... It's about my son. He's a sculptor, did you know? He has won a prize in Rome. I would have liked to tell him about that, too. He would have been proud.”
No. He would not have cared that much. And she remembered the lion on Eugene's chest of drawers. Yes, he would be-he had been-touched with understandable compa.s.sion, but his heart and his pride had been the son who carried his name in the city. My son, she thought; that's the reason he married me.
But that was a thing one did not speak, and so the pair of them fell back into silence. There was, after all, no reason why they should have any more to say to one another. And yet, in a curious way they were bound to an unwanted, unspoken intimacy by their linkage to the dead Eugene.
What if I had loved him, too? Miriam asked herself, finding no answer.
We are all tied in a chain whose overlapping links are meshed into a tangled convoluted net without an end or a beginning: she to me and I to Eugene; I to Andre and he to Marie Claire and she- The satin skirt whispered on the floor as Queen stood up to leave. With a sudden gesture of pity and shame-who am I, what am I, to judge?-Miriam put out her hand, only to feel in return a quick pressure and to see a small spill of tears, as quickly wiped away.
When the carriage was out of sight, she went back into the house and called f.a.n.n.y to unpack the boxes.
The next unusual visitor, some weeks later, was a fas.h.i.+onable gentleman with fas.h.i.+onable whiskers and a faintly British accent.
”My name is Isachar Zacharie, Dr. Isachar Zacharie.”
He carried a basket of oranges and, as they immediately learned, a letter from David. His manner had a courtly formality combined with friendliness.
”Then, you know my son professionally?” inquired Ferdinand.
”No, I only met him once, in New York. He, naturally, is in the Medical Corps, while I am a chiropodist. Also, if I may say so, a friend of President Lincoln's.”
Emma's lips pressed shut in distaste, and Rosa's corsets creaked as she straightened her back in total rejection of this information.
”As a matter of fact, I am in New Orleans on a mission from the President.”