Crescent City (27 page)

“That will be better,” David said. “Never mind the carriage, it’ll take too long. Let us carry him.”

They laid him on a sofa and bathed his eyes.

“More water,” David said. “Pour it on, spill it on. More.

“Let me,” the woman insisted. “I see how it’s done.” Her hands moved tenderly. The water spilled out of the basin onto the garish pink brocade pillow. She wept as Eugene moaned, wiping his eyes on her embroidered sleeve.

“Oh, my dear, my dearest. Oh, my dear.”

Over her head the glances traveled from David to Gabriel.

The woman appealed to David. “You’re a doctor? Is there nothing else to be done?”

“For the moment just keep flooding the eyes until the burning stops. Then we’ll see. You’re tired,” he said pityingly. “Let me do it.”

Almost fiercely she thrust him away. “No, no, I will.”

The fancy little room had by now filled with the curious; pale brown ladies and their black servants hovered against the walls. A light-brown boy with a scared expression stood silently at the head of the couch.

“Mama, what happened?” he asked.

“Darling, he’s been hurt. Some terrible person has hurt him.”

This, David thought, this is the reason for my sister’s misery. This must be what it is all about.

“Where’ve you been?” he asked Ferdinand, who had gone out for a minute and now came back, panting.

“I gave a fellow on the street twenty-five cents to fetch Miriam, fifty cents if he ran.”

“You what? You sent for Miriam?”

“Well, naturally I did. What’s wrong?”

“You don’t understand where we are.”

“Do you mind telling me what you’re talking about?”

“Look over there and you’ll know.”

Still kneeling, the young woman had taken Eugene’s hand between both of hers. As though they were alone in the room, she kissed his palm, laying it against her cheek, cradling the hand under the heavy sway of her hair.

Comprehension came to Ferdinand. He said quickly, “I’ll head her off. I’ll stand outside and make some excuse that we’re bringing him right home.”

It was too late. Miriam had already come in.

“There’s been an accident,” David said at once. “We carried him in here, it was the nearest house.”

“I know, the boy told me.” She walked to the sofa, where the woman got up from her knees and made a place. She touched her husband’s cheek.

“Eugene, I’m here. It’s Miriam.”

He did not speak. For a long minute she stood looking down at him.

What she might be concealing during that minute no one could tell; her immobile face showed nothing. Only the quick rise and fall of her breathing told her brother anything at all; the physician saw that she was agitated, as surely anyone would be, but David could only wonder at the complicated secrets of the human heart. And his own heart ached for her, standing there so young and alone in her simple dress and her dignity, bearing God only knew what sorrow within. Perversely, too, his heart ached for the dark voluptuous woman so agonized by her grief and unashamed of it.

Presently Miriam turned to the other woman. “Thank you for sheltering my husband,” she said quietly. “Will someone please arrange for a litter or carriage to bring him home? It isn’t far.”

At the door she drew David aside. “How bad is it, David? Tell me the truth.”

David considered and decided. Yes, she would meet this savage truth. Apparently she had already met some other truths. So he answered bluntly.

“He will almost certainly be blind.”

Friends, servants, and doctors moved in and out, up and down the stairs, carrying gifts and trays of food, whispering their commiseration and their curiosity. For some days Eugene lay against pillows on his bed. Then he was moved to a chair at the window from which, with a critical eye, he had used to look down to see whether the flower beds were being properly tended.

One by one the members of the household peered into the room, the servants overwhelmed with horror, Emma for once struck speechless, and Ferdinand sickened by his sense of responsibility for the disaster.

The children came. During the worst first days they had been kept away. Now it was time to acquaint them with the change in their father.

“It was an accident,” Miriam said gently. “Somebody threw some bad stuff by mistake.” Eugene had insisted that, at six, they were too young to know that the world contained human beings evil enough to destroy another human being’s eyes.

“They will find it all out in time,” he had said.

He took one of them on each knee.

“It was an accident,” he repeated.

The children, not understanding, were simply curious.

Angelique laid a finger on the scorched cheek below Eugene’s glasses.

“Does it hurt?”

“Not anymore.”

Little Eugene asked whether he could see with the glasses off?

“No, son,” the father answered steadily.

Such courage! thought Miriam. He will not even allow his voice to waver, for his children’s sake.

“Well, can you see with the glasses on?”

“No, son. I can’t see at all.”

Angelique put her hand up. “Can’t you see my fingers?”

This was too much, even for a brave man, to have to bear. And Miriam interrupted, turning away from the light so that they would not see her wet eyes and blurt,
Why are you crying, Mama?

“Your father will be going downstairs tomorrow or the next day. The doctor said so. And you two will keep him company, have breakfast on the verandah or in the garden, wouldn’t that be nice? You could pick some flowers for him. You’d like camellias, wouldn’t you, Eugene?” She chattered; the light, lying words rippled from her tongue. “You two can be such a great help until your father gets better.”

“Then you’ll be all better soon,” Angelique said.

“Well, never
all
better,” Eugene told her. Truth, he and Miriam had decided, but a gradual and easy truth; don’t frighten them. “I’ll be walking around again soon,” he added. “I’ll get along fine, you’ll see I will.”

Some weeks later David and Miriam stood in the quiet garden.

“And so the professor has given the final word,” Miriam said bleakly.

“No improvement, as I told you from the beginning.”

The fountain trilled, making a sound too sprightly, David thought, for a house as burdened as this one. He put his hand on his sister’s shoulder.

“What is it? Tell me. It’s not only Eugene, though that’s bad enough, God knows. It’s not good to keep everything in, Miriam. One needs to talk to someone. Do you want to talk to me about—about the woman?”

“I don’t need to talk about her. I’ve known about her for a long time, as you may have guessed.”

Mystery within mystery, the Chinese box within a box, within a box, within—

“What, then?”

“Oh, many things. Mostly I think of Eugene. How terrible never to see! Not even his children’s faces. And I think of poor Papa. His life’s been turned upside down. He’ll never forgive himself because that man, that devil, whoever he was, meant the punishment for him.”

“It wasn’t Papa’s fault.”

“No, but he feels guilty, all the same. I feel guilt, too, you know. Eugene has been so good to Papa and I don’t love Eugene, you understand that, we are nothing to each other—yet it’s because of my father that he is blind!”

David sighed. In the sunlight the fountain splashed so prettily, with its graceful cascades so polished and smooth. The whole pastel city, polished and perfumed, was rotting underneath.

Miriam was looking at the ground. Her head drooped sadly.

He thought he knew what she was thinking. “You’re thinking that now you will never get away. That’s true, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” she answered, in a voice so low that he could barely hear her. “It was never realistic, anyway. I should have known that.”

Still, there is something else, he persisted to himself. She has not told me all. He did not know how he
knew, yet he knew. But if it was not the woman Queen, what was it, then?

He tried one more time. “You don’t want to tell me anything else?”

“There isn’t anything else.”

“Well,” he said, giving up, “well, I’ve calls to make. A gangrenous foot. I’d better go.”

Miriam saw him first. Eugene had gone that morning for the daily drive with Maxim or Chanute that, after a season or two, had become his routine. Where he went, she had no need to ask. So it surprised her now to see him there on a bench in the square, with his blind eyes turned up toward the streaming light and a cluster of pigeons around his feet. Puzzled, she looked about for the carriage or a servant, but neither was in sight; something warned her then to go on past and leave Eugene alone.

Angelique cried, “Look! There’s Father! What’s he doing here by himself?”

“Leave him! He wants …” she began, but the children had gone running to their father.

Eugene was not there by himself. A few feet behind him stood a tall boy holding a sketch pad on a board; when, gracefully, with a motion almost feminine, he threw a handful of corn to the birds, Miriam knew at once who he was. That grim scene flashed again; the cramped, gaudy room, Eugene writhing on a couch, the woman passionately weeping, the scared boy hovering .…

She had no choice now but to face the moment

“The doctors want me to exercise,” Eugene was saying, “so Pierre took me for a walk.”

His name was Pierre. She wondered what he used for a last name.

Young Eugene said stoutly, “I could take you, Father. Why didn’t you ask me?”

“You’re not old enough yet to lead me, son.”

“I’m almost as big as he is! How old are you?” young Eugene demanded of the other boy.

“Thirteen.” The, voice was almost a whisper, deferential, as were the backward steps taken to give space to the thrusting pair of seven-year-olds. Yet the eyes were curiously bold, moving in turn from the twins to Miriam.

He knows who we are, she thought. He remembers me, of course. But he must have been told everything even before that. How strange it is that they always know all about us, while we don’t even know they exist!

And she wondered what Eugene’s eyes would have said had they been able to meet hers during this discomfiting encounter.

“Come, children,” she urged brightly, “your father wants to rest. Come along home.”

But they protested. Angelique could be especially stubborn.

“Why must we? Father, you don’t want us to go home now, do you?”

“I think you should. Do what your mother tells you.”

Little Eugene stood on his toes to see the drawing board.

“What are you drawing?” he wanted to know.

“The pigeons.” And Pierre, lowering the board, faced it outward so that Miriam could see his work.

He had caught in simple charcoal, black against white, the myriad gradations of iridescent feathering. He had caught the heaving motion of the flock, the peck and rise, the flutter and strut. The little sketch had a startling beauty. Miriam felt a sudden softness
in herself. The way he stood there, so shy of speech, so painfully conscious of the situation, and still proud enough to want them to see his work!

“It’s lovely,” she said. And something, some sense of pity or fairness, compelled her to give this perception to her husband. “Pierre is talented, Eugene. Professional.”

He did not reply. His face was flushed.

“Where did you learn to do that?” asked Angelique.

“I have art lessons.”

“You can’t go to school,” the little girl said.

Miriam could only wince at the cruelty of the remark. For, at seven, what could a child know? Only enough to know that color was status, to know without being told who was one of the Others, who was a servant in his proper place, which did not include school.

“Blaise can draw,” said little Eugene. “Blaise belongs to my father and mother. Who do you belong to?”

“To Mr. Mendes,” Pierre replied. The statement was flat, conveying no more than the fact. For an instant his hand brushed Eugene’s shoulder, then was removed, as though he had quickly recalled the fitness of things.

Conceived, most probably, by accident, thought Miriam. And probably unwanted; at least, it was doubtful that Eugene had wanted this superfluous boy .… She felt oppressed, saddened, angry, and bewildered.

“I insist you come home now!” Her voice was so sharp that the children turned to her in surprise.

Abruptly Eugene stood up, seizing his cane.

“You will find Maxim at the carriage,” he directed Pierre. “Tell him that I have walked home.”

Miriam asked Eugene, “Are you sure you can walk
so far?” Her anxiety was affected, the question merely a thing of words to fill air and time as she guided him out of the square.

“It’s my sight that I’ve lost, not my legs.”

The children had once more run ahead. The incident in the square, which for them had been without significance, now lay behind them; they were having an argument over the ownership of a white cat that had recently strayed into the yard.

After a minute or two Eugene spoke again. “Go on. Say what you have to say. Get it over with.”

“I’d rather not.” Confusion was still in her. She wasn’t even sure how she felt, or ought to feel.

“Well, it happened this way. I quite thoughtlessly accepted the boy’s suggestion that we go for a walk.” He spoke sternly, covering his own embarrassment over a situation in which a gentleman should not have allowed himself to be caught. “Quite thoughtlessly … a public place … It will not happen again.”

No reply was needed. And Miriam concentrated her thoughts on her two, who were by now far ahead. It was lucky they weren’t both boys, or both girls. There would have been much more rivalry. This way they really got on quite well, considering how young they were. So she consoled herself for her other lacks with her satisfaction in her children.

At the same time the image of that other child floated through her head and steadied itself there; his narrow hands on the drawing board, his lowered lashes, and when he raised them, the unanswerable question in his eyes.

“So life goes on,” Emma said brightly, opening another invitation as she read her mail at the breakfast table. She had at last accepted her position in the Mendes household with remarkable grace. A valiant lady, Miriam reflected. It took real courage to learn the art of receiving when one had always been a dispenser of gifts.