Madeleine's Ghost (41 page)

Most of the guests had arrived the preceding Saturday, and the house was full. Esteban was an unforeseen addition to the company. Frost covered the ground in the morning, and it was too cold to sleep on the galleries or in a tent in the yard. At the last minute Zetie found a place for him beneath the eaves at the back of the second gallery, which is reserved for the house slaves, an irony that did not escape me later. But Esteban did not complain. That evening in the drawing room before dinner, he approached and introduced himself, bowing over my hand in the best European fashion. He thanked me for my hospitality and complimented me on the expansive view of the river from the small window of his room. “It's a pity,” he said, “that such a vista is wasted on slaves.” I was charmed.

His hand was soft, but not without muscle, as one would imagine the
hand of a violinist or a fencing master. He was about my own age, quite dark, his skin a deep olive tone. His side whiskers were long and thick, and they framed his face in a wonderful manner, like those I had seen in engravings of Chateaubriand in one of Papa's books. His hair seemed a single black curl, and his eyes were a princely opalescent green. He was beautiful. Later this physical beauty struck me as inferior to his intellectual accomplishments. For he spoke five languages, played the guitar and mandolin, sang beautifully, and could discuss Molière and mathematics as easily as the latest advances in the refining of cane sugar.

Women fell in love with him instantly. Men were suspicious of him, because the contrast was not in their favor. You will agree with me that many of the young men of today are shallow, interested only in horses and gambling and conventional love affairs. It is a commonplace to say that modern love is little more than the exchange of two whims and the contact of two epidermises. Not so with Esteban. He possessed depth of soul and an undeniable ardor for the things in which he believed. He was New Orleans born, of a family originally from St.-Domingue, but had been educated in Madrid and Paris. It was obvious to all present that here we had a fine example of a well-bred gentleman, though no one could say if they had heard of his family in society.

Albane herself, so far reticent and tongue-tied around the young men whom she found pleasing, engaged Esteban in conversation almost immediately and contrived a way to sit beside him during that first night at dinner. He had a certain manner that put even plain women at their ease. He talked and joked prettily; his witticisms were pointed but not too sharp. Albane blushed at almost everything he said and seemed overcome with emotion at his presence. But this dinner was torment for me. I was seized by a strange giddy sensation, and whenever I looked in the direction of Albane and Esteban talking together, I felt a peculiar squeezing to the pit of my stomach, so that I could hardly swallow a mouthful.

I excused myself early from the company, leaving Albane and Esteban singing a duet at the piano, and retired to my room. There I studied the vague letter written on Esteban's behalf by my husband.

“This is to introduce Don Esteban Ramón de Vasconcellos,” he wrote,
“the son of a friend of my youth from St.-Domingue. Señor de Vasconcellos has great education and is related to one of the oldest families in Spain, but alas, his is only a modest fortune. I commend him to you as a suitable match for your ward, Albane, and ask you to see that they are often together.—Don André de la Roca.”

Without my knowing why, the idea of marriage between the pair revolted me. This beautiful and courtly young man wasted on Albane, who was such a wan and nauseating creature! I threw myself down upon my bed and wept bitterly. Then, in the morning, I awoke to the sound of laughter from the gallery, and when I looked at my face in the mirror, I knew that I was in love with Esteban. It was like falling prey to a terrible disease. At first I could hardly breathe. Then I unloosed my corset and was sick in my water basin. My heart—untouched since the death of my mother, a woman whom I did not even remember—now filled itself with fury and fire.

Still, my sense of honor and family pride made me determined to resist these new, painful emotions. Over the following days I complied with my husband's wishes and saw that Esteban and Albane were constantly together. I suffered. My suffering was sublime, the only thing that made my empty life bearable. Then, by the end of the third week of his stay with us, Albane sought me out to acquaint me of the obvious. She was deeply in love with Esteban, and she put it rather blasphemously.

“I love the man more than I love God or my own salvation,” she said. “He has returned my affection eagerly, if not yet with the matching enthusiasm that will come as we are more and more together. And lacking only your permission, dear cousin, we hope to marry in the spring.”

I paused at this revelation as if considering it carefully. The girl positively quivered in terror at the thought of a rejection. When I gave my consent, she threw her arms around my neck and embraced me with great feeling.

“You have been so kind to me,” she said. “You have at last become the sister I never had,” and she covered my cheeks and my hands with kisses and both laughed and wept from joy. But each kiss, each tear hardened my
heart against her. Why should this miserable orphaned girl, who had already stolen my father from me, now steal the only man I would ever love!

The prospect of her happiness, unearned as it was, seemed more terrible than death itself. I confess to this cruelty and this selfishness and can only excuse myself by saying that love had been too long denied my heart, which now fell prey to a passionate and sinful jealousy.

Later that same night I donned my most revealing dress, touched a little scent of verbena behind my ears and between my breasts, and went to Esteban.

I did not know what I would do until I saw him there smoking a last cigar on the gallery before the door to his new room on the second floor. Most of the other guests had departed just after Christmas. Only Esteban and a few others had consented to stay on for the New Year. He was a little shocked to see me there at such an hour and, as he was attired in his dressing gown and ready for bed, sought to excuse himself. But I put my hand on his arm and would not let him go. I asked him if he loved my ward, Albane. He smiled and shrugged, as if to say—She will do.

“An offer of marriage has been related to me through my ward,” I continued. “It is considered good form in these matters that such an offer be addressed to the guardian first. I am Albane's guardian, and I have heard nothing from you concerning your
intentions
.”

Esteban apologized; the whole thing was somewhat hastily done, he said. And he expressed his intentions to approach me with a proper proposal in the morning.

“Nevertheless, I am prepared to accept the offer now,” I said. “And if it is made, I will increase my ward's dowry with an additional contribution of ten thousand Yankee gold dollars.” Then I stepped back to see the expression on his handsome face in the dim moonlight.

If he was surprised, he did not show it. He nodded his thanks complacently, as though prepared for such an act of generosity. I waited a full
minute
without saying anything else. I heard the mournful splash of a side-wheeler down on the river, and the cry of loons from the bayou, and the
quick sound of my own breath. Then I took him by the arm again, and this time my hand was a claw.

“I had thought you a gentleman,” I hissed, “and supposed your affections too precious to be sold for so mean a sum as ten thousand dollars. In this matter you have shown yourself the lowest sort of opportunist, trading for gold on a poor girl's affections. But if you dare go through with the cheap transaction, monsieur, I shall with my own hands slit your throat on your wedding night.”

I did not give him time to react to my violent statement. I leaned up and pressed into him with my body and kissed him on the mouth with such longing and such passion that we went immediately into the bedroom and lay together on the bed. After we had committed ourselves once to each other, we closed the shutters against the night and stayed in the bed together as man and wife. During those dark hours Esteban repeated many times that act which until then beneath my husband's bulk had been without meaning or pleasure. Let it suffice to say that I loved Esteban with my heart and my body, and my love was returned.

At dawn, after again experiencing his love, I put Esteban's dressing gown over my nakedness and went down to Albane's room. She lay asleep, dreaming perhaps of the bliss of married life, a look of peace and contentment on her face such as I had not seen there before. I waited quietly by the side of her bed until she awoke with a start to my presence. When she was lucid, I told her that I had reconsidered my consent of the night before.

“As your guardian,” I said, “I must forbid a marriage with a man as penniless as Esteban de Vasconcellos. You had better accept one of the other willing, richer bachelors in this one's place.”

Poor Albane went very white at my words. She did not weep or make a sound. Then her eyes took in the disheveled state of my appearance, the man's dressing gown I wore. And she said in a small voice, “I know what you have done. You do this to me because I came to your house once as an orphan, alone in the world, and asked for love and your father gave it to me. You have never forgiven me for my need. Your soul is black. You will pay for your sins in the darkness of eternal night.” Then she turned away from me and pressed her face into the pillow.

I felt a momentary chill and thought of the gris-gris, but I left the room and made immediate arrangements to get away from Belle Azure with Esteban. I dismissed the remaining guests, with the excuse that I was going on a journey to look over some family property at St. Francisville. Esteban bade me good-bye in front of the house slaves, boarded the packet to New Orleans, but had himself put ashore just a few miles upriver. And that evening, at dusk, we met at Papa's old hunting lodge in the bayou, a crude rambling structure of cypress logs that overlooks the Prasères lagoon.

Secreted away from the outside world in the heart of the jungle with only the wild birds for company, we lived as man and wife for two months, engaging in conjugal union as many as six or seven times a day. He hunted and fished. I traded small bits of my jewelry with the Acadians at Coeur de France for cornmeal and molasses and eggs. We were like Adam and Eve before the fall, surrounded by the bounties of the garden and wed in the eyes of God—an idyll that would last until M. Levallier could dispose of a significant portion of my property, enough to allow us to take ship for Brazil and live comfortably there. But our arrangement was blind, clumsy. We should have fled immediately to some other country, money be damned. We knew in our hearts that disaster could strike at any time and were too enraptured with each other to care. Pride, conscience, caution—all of these were thrown aside for the sake of our primeval love.

The sky burned a clear blue the afternoon they came for us. I stood waist-deep in the lagoon, washing our clothes with a brick of lye soap like a good Acadian housewife. Esteban lay asleep in the hammock strung between two of the beams of the porch, one of Papa's books open over his stomach—Montesquieu's
Esprit des Lois.
I had kept my sweet lover awake half the night with my desires, as indeed I did every night, and he was indulging in a well-earned siesta.