Property (Vintage Contemporaries) (24 page)

“Then we have nothing more to discuss,” he said, leaning forward upon his cane.

“There are laws against harboring a fugitive, Mr. Roget,” I said, “as I’m sure you know. Assisting Sarah in any way is strictly unlawful. The fines are heavy. Once she has been returned to me, it is my intention to prosecute anyone who can be proved to have aided her in her flight. I don’t think of her as having run away, you see, I think of her as having been stolen. She would never take such a risk had she not been encouraged by someone who has no respect for the law, who is so morally derelict that he fails to comprehend the difference between purchase and blackmail.”

Mr. Roget stood up, frowning mightily. As I spoke, he drew his head back, as if to dodge the thrust of my argument. “It is a mystery to me,” I continued, “how you could find the nerve to come here and offer to pay me for what you have stolen. You seem to think I care for nothing but money. I am going to considerable expense to recover what is mine, by right and by law, and recover her I will.”

“Good day, Mrs. Gaudet,” he said, making for the door. I got up from the chair to watch him go. There was the usual bite of pain in my shoulder as my arm stretched down at my side. I didn’t expect him to stop, but he did, turning in the doorway to deliver an interesting bit of information. “You will never find her,” he said. “She is no longer your property nor anyone else’s, and you will never see her again.”

“IT ALMOST SOUND as if he means she’s dead,” my uncle said. “Or else in Canada.” He was stuffing papers into a leather portmanteau.

My aunt picked at a knot in her embroidery. “Or England,” she suggested.

“Where is Mr. Leggett?” I asked.

“He should be in New York by now. His last report was surprisingly confident. He had what he called ‘a solid lead.’ I won’t tell you how long it took me to figure out the spelling of that one.”

“So he thinks she has not left the country,” I said.

“I think not,” my uncle said. “And I trust Leggett on matters of this kind. Roget’s remark may well have been braggadocio. He meant that she would leave the country if you refused his offer. But it could take him weeks to arrange a passage for her.”

“He wouldn’t send her out of the country and then make his offer,” my aunt agreed. “What would be the point?”

“Two thousand dollars,” my uncle observed, not for the first time. “Walter included.”

“I was sorely tempted,” I said.

“How could you accept?” my aunt said. “He was holding you up for ransom.”

“Not exactly,” my uncle said. “But it would set a dangerous precedent.” He closed the case and addressed a demibow to my aunt and me. “Ladies,” he said. “I must leave you.”

My aunt followed him to the door, then rang for the maid. “Will you have something?” she said. “Some cake and coffee?”

“Just coffee,” I said, touching my waist. “Delphine’s cooking is making me fat. She says she can’t cook for one person.”

“It’s best to give little dinners twice a week and live off what is left for the other days.”

“I don’t seem to know anyone anymore,” I said.

“Well, you are in mourning. It’s to be expected that you don’t circulate. But when you come out, I’m sure you will receive invitations to various parties, and then you will have obligations to your hosts.”

“You are always optimistic,” I said. “You’re more like Father than Mother.”

“Your mother had trials to bear,” she said. “As you have.”

The coffee arrived. I thought over this remark as my aunt poured out a cup and passed it to me. Was I like Mother? And then it struck me that I had actually turned into my mother. My husband was dead, I lived in her house, I was getting fat, and my hope for the future was that soon I would be giving little dinners for people who pitied me. “At least she had the memory of a happy marriage,” I said. “I don’t even have that.”

“No marriage is perfect,” my aunt said. “Your parents’ was no more so than any other.”

I thought of Father’s diary, of the “failing” he confessed to, which was so important to Mother that she had kept the record of it until she died. “Mother was not easy to please,” I said.

My aunt sipped her coffee. She didn’t like to hear me speak against Mother. “She was very gay when she was young,” she said. “ ‘High-spirited’ our father used to say, until she made up her mind to marry your father, and then Father called her ‘mule-headed.’ She was madly in love with him, enough to make the best of it when she had to go live in a shabby little house with no neighbors but Irish and American upstarts. When you were born, she was overjoyed; you were so like him, so blond and healthy. You were a beautiful child. Even my father came round and invited you all to stay at Christmas. After the two baby boys came, one right after the other, and your father was actually turning a profit on the farm and adding to the house, your mother felt vindicated in her choice. She had two or three happy years. Then the boys both died within days of each other. You probably don’t remember that; it was a terrible epidemic. You were barely six.”

“I remember the funeral,” I said. “At least, I remember that it rained and Father wept.”

“He was devastated, of course,” my aunt said. “What father would not be? But he allowed his grief to affect his reason.”

This puzzled me, as I remembered my father as the most rational of men. “In what way?” I asked.

My aunt took another morsel of cake and chewed it thoughtfully. When she had swallowed, she dabbed her lips with the napkin, her eyes fixed upon me solicitously. “He became obsessed with the negroes. Your mother said it was because he’d not grown up with any. He wrote treatise after treatise on the management of the negro, and he tried to have them published. The
Planter
did take one, but it was by way of a joke, to elicit letters, which your uncle said was quite successful; they got a bundle. He was always talking about what was wrong with the big plantations and how if his system were applied it would be heaven on earth. And of course he was always being disappointed when his own people ran away, or got drunk and sassed him, or pretended to be sick, or fought among themselves. Then he’d make some adjustment to his system, which was basically the same one we all use, the carrot and the stick, but he thought . . . well, it’s hard to say what he thought. He seemed to think somehow he was going to make the negroes believe he was God and his farm was Eden, and they’d all be happy and grateful, which, you know, they never are. I remember one night he was going on about the negroes and your uncle became so impatient with him he said, ‘Percy, they didn’t have negroes in Paradise. That’s why it was Paradise. They didn’t need them.’ ” My aunt laughed at this recollection, which I didn’t find particularly amusing.

“All the planters are obsessed with the negroes,” I said. “Unless they’re like Joel and don’t think about them at all.”

“That may be,” my aunt agreed. “But your mother came to feel your father cared more about the negroes than he did about his family.”

I shrugged. “Father was always attentive to her,” I said.

My aunt studied me a moment, perplexed by my indifference. “There was something more,” she said hesitantly, though I knew she had every intention of telling me.

“Yes?” I said.

“I think it may be best if you know,” she said. “It will help you to understand your mother.”

“Then tell me,” I said.

“Your father decided to have no more children,” she said.

I considered this statement. It struck me as rather more sensible than not. As I made no response, my aunt offered a revision to assist my understanding.

“It might be better to say that he lost all desire for more children.”

“He couldn’t bear to lose them,” I offered in his defense.

“Yes, that was his reasoning, or so he said. But your mother was still a young woman. She wanted children, as what woman does not, but more than that, she wanted her husband. He was loving, kind, dutiful, affectionate to her in every way, but no matter how she pleaded—” my aunt paused here, searching for a delicate way to describe an ugly scene and allowing me a moment to imagine my mother’s entreaties—“in their marriage bed, he turned away.”

I sipped my coffee, thinking over this revelation. If this was Father’s “failing,” for which he could not be forgiven, it didn’t seem so momentous to me, especially in comparison to my own marriage. I felt perfectly dry-eyed at the thought of Mother weeping to her sister because her husband turned away from her in bed.

“It seems to me it might have been as much her fault as his,” I said.

My aunt gave me a sad look. “If you had children of your own, you might understand,” she said.

I’ve heard this before and it never fails to irritate me, but all I said was, “I don’t think so.”

“It has left you with a cold heart,” my aunt insisted.

This stung me. “If I’d had a husband who didn’t outrage all decency every day of his life,” I said, “I might feel sympathy for a wife who cannot content herself with an upright man.”

My aunt fairly gasped at this retort, allowing the piece of cake she was about to lift to her lips to slip back onto the plate. She cast a nervous sidelong glance, as if someone had just stood up behind her chair. “We mustn’t speak ill of the dead,” she said.

THE NEXT MORNING Joel sent flowers with a card requesting a visit in the afternoon. My conversation with my aunt had left me in a prickly state. I had slept poorly, eaten almost nothing, and my head ached. It was so warm I had Rose open the windows, close the shutters, and sweep out the grate. The room had a bare, unlived-in air that suited me. I knew Joel would tell me of his engagement, relying on my courtesy to spare him any sensation of discomfort. I was not in the mood to be gracious. My patience is at an end, I thought, as Delphine slouched through the room to answer the bell. “Stand up straight!” I snapped. She jumped as if she had been struck.

Joel came in smiling, dropping his hat familiarly on the desk and turning to me with his hands open, as if presenting an excellent gift. His coat was a new one, fashionably cut, and he gave off a pleasant scent of cologne, pomade, and fresh linen. My appearance was evidently sobering. His smile vanished, replaced by an expression of exaggerated concern. “But you are still unwell,” he said. “Your aunt told me your indisposition was only passing.”

“I am well enough,” I said. “This is just how I look now.”

“No,” he protested, sitting beside me on the settee. “You are too pale.”

“I don’t sleep,” I said.

“Have you consulted a physician?”

“I have sleeping drops,” I said. “But I don’t like to take them because they make me feel dead. Unfortunately, not sleeping has much the same effect.”

Joel looked about the room, noting, I thought, the absence of refreshments on offer. It was too gloomy for him; I was not a gay hostess. What was he to do? “Perhaps you would like to stroll to the Café des Artistes? A glass of champagne might revive you.”

I smiled. “I don’t think so.”

“Very well,” he said. He sat back farther on the seat and folded his hands in his lap like a boy bracing for unpleasant medicine. He wanted to get it over with, go back outside and play. I decided to release him from his torment.

“Aunt Lelia has told me of your engagement to Miss McKenzie,” I said. “Please accept my congratulations.”

“I thought she might have.” He sighed. “I fear your aunt doesn’t approve of my choice.”

“She’ll relent,” I assured him. “Just move to the Carré, and raise your children in the Church.”