Part 46 (2/2)
Maxim started the horses, a pair of tired nags sold cheaply by the occupying forces to save the trouble of transporting them. The carriage rattled. Stuffing bulged from the upholstery.
”They gave it hard wear,” Ferdinand lamented. ”I remember the day I bought it and the day Eugene saved it for me from my wreckage. So good of him! It was a handsome piece of equipment in its time. I always liked bright things, red wheels, good leather. Expensive things.” He laughed shortly and ruefully.
The shambling clip-clop of the horses was too loud in the too quiet streets.
”Oh, it will take a long time for this city to revive,” Ferdinand said.
”But it will, Papa. And in the meantime things could be worse for us. At least we have a house, which is more than a lot of others have.”
”True. A house. And your fine boy and girl. You know, I often imagine Angelique being married in the garden. Maybe to Rosa's Henry, what do you think? So the ancient stock will continue, the fine old Sephardic line go on?”
Strange comment from one who himself had not a trace of that fine bid Sephardic stock in his own ancestry! But that was Papa, in spite of all reverses and defeats, still seeking grandeur, or his version of it! She suppressed her amus.e.m.e.nt.
”Heavens, I don't know,” she said, and suddenly frowned, thinking, Marriage again, for Angelique barely sixteen! Oh, not that soon, not another mistake in the old style, not if I can help it!
”And I think of you, too, Miriam. You're a very young woman, too young to live alone. I suppose you're tired of hearing me say it. You know, for a while I thought there might be something between you and Perrin, if ever his wife should divorce him-there were some rumors of divorce, Emma always said. I'm rather relieved that there isn't.”
”I thought you liked him. You seemed to enjoy him.”
”Oh, enjoy, indeed! He has a way with him, good humor that's catching. But there was something about him that didn't suit you.”
Strange that he didn't see it when I married Eugene, she thought. She did not answer and her father, glancing sidelong, aware that some nerve had been touched, said no more.
Later that day Sisyphus, in the proper butler's garb that, old and frayed as it was, he insisted on wearing, was serving tea when a horse came trotting up the street and stopped at the curb. A man swung down, tied the reins to the hitching post, and came up the walk. Sisyphus almost dropped the cream pitcher.
”Why, that's got to be Mister Gabriel!” he cried. ”Why, surely it is!”
All rushed, overturning a chair, clattering down the steps and the walk. But Miriam was first, first to call his name, first to fling her arms around him.
”Gabriel-”
His left sleeve dangled. The arm was gone.
She was horrified. She stammered, ”Your arm ...”
”In the last battle. At Five Forks, before Richmond fell.”
”Your arm-” Her voice rose out of control.
”Don't, don't,” he admonished her gently. ”I'm alive and grateful.”
They crowded back into the house, Angelique and Eugene, Miriam and Ferdinand and Gabriel, with Sisyphus, as overcome by his emotion as all the others, in the rear.
”Come inside, here, sit down, let's have a look at you,” Ferdinand urged.
”Your arm ...” repeated Miriam.
Ferdinand attempted heartiness, entering a masculine conspiracy to slide over the subject and spare the delicate woman.
”Where have you been? We have been waiting for months.”
”I went north. About my arm-and other things.”
Miriam composed herself, forcing her eyes away from the terrible empty sleeve to Gabriel's face. Attentive and courteous, he listened to Ferdinand's excited babble. The reticence was still there; his had never been a mobile or expressive face; what was within him was held in and carefully released, not spilled away .... She thought she had never seen so beautiful and masculine a face. She thought she had never really seen it before now.
”Will you have some brandy or wine? We've a bottle or two. They didn't leave us much.” As always, Ferdinand was the anxious host.
”No, no, tea is fine, thank you.”
”When I think of the old hospitality ...” Ferdinand began, and asked then, ”You're home to stay, of course?”
”Yes. I took the oath and I have my pardon.”
For a moment n.o.body knew what more to say; Eugene and Angelique were obviously overawed by this hero of the war. Regardless of his altered judgment of the war Eugene would still revere a hero. His admiration shone.
Now his curiosity broke through. ”What does the pardon say?”
Gabriel smiled. ”It's very long. A lot of words.”
”President Johnson's amnesty proclamation?”
”No, that only pardons those who have partic.i.p.ated in what he calls the 'late rebellion,' as long as they were not high-ranking officers or didn't own taxable property worth twenty thousand dollars.” Gabriel smiled. ”Well, I surely haven't got property worth anything at all. But I was a high-ranking officer, so I had to apply for individual clemency.”
There was a silence while all reflected on these facts.
Ferdinand asked, ”He's not like Lincoln, is he, this Johnson?”
”No. I fear it won't go as well with us as it would have if Lincoln had lived.”
Eugene said, almost timidly, ”Lincoln was a just man.”
”True. He was the best friend we had in the North.”
”I never thought I'd hear you say a thing like that!” Ferdinand exclaimed.
”There are a lot of things I never thought I'd hear myself say.”
All these words swirled past Miriam's head. She only half heard them. Why, it's so simple! she was thinking. Why did I not know it before?
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