Dark Masquerade (15 page)

“Count yourself fortunate. You shared the good times with him. Felix and Bernard’s mother, Amelie, was—”

“Grand’mere. Please?” Bernard interrupted the tirade.

“Very well. But I will hear no more on this subject. Alma, you may go to the chapel with us or not, just as you please. I don’t believe you have been in some time.”

At this veiled insinuation of a lack of respect and piety, argument threatened to break out again. But Darcourt rose and threw down his napkin, announcing his intention of going riding. Staring anxiously after her son, Alma let the comment pass.

Though the suggestion had been made at the breakfast table, it was well after dinner before it was acted upon. First Grand’mere had decided she must supervise the spring cleaning of her room. Then she had insisted on carrying Joseph with her to the ceremony, but she had not allowed anyone to awaken him from his afternoon nap.

“He will never remember a thing about it,” Elizabeth had protested.

“Who can say what a baby will remember? Besides, he should be there. Felix was his father.”

Elizabeth could not deny that, and so she was silent.

The family chapel stood some distance from the house. It was off the drive, near the main entrance gates from the road. Elizabeth elected to walk and Darcourt offered to escort her, whereupon Celestine joined them. Bernard was not able to come with them. Just after dinner he had had an emergency message from the plantation next to Oak Shade and had gone away with the messenger. Darcourt thought that it was about some missing equipment: “The overseer in charge over there probably sold it and pocketed the money. Bernard will straighten it out. He had better, he promised Grand’mere that he would join us at the chapel as soon as he could.”

They walked three abreast, keeping to the drive to keep their feet dry. Before they were halfway down the drive, Grand’mere swept by in the carriage, Callie and Joseph inside with her and the liveried coachman on the seat.

Soon only the roof of the great house was visible behind them, shining in the westing sun. The curving of the drive, its slight downward grade, and the oaks, both those that lined the drive and those that stood sentinel on the lawn, hid it from them.

Except for an area just in front of the house, there had been no attempt to make a lawn. Beneath the tall oaks, the ground sloping to the road was free of tall weeds and scrub, but there was no formal grass. It was kept more in the nature of an English park. The leaves from the fall before were layered like brown sponge, and limbs blown down during the rains, some gray and rotting, some still with jaunty leaves waving bravely, were scattered under the spreading branches.

“Why did Alma decide not to come?” Celestine asked Darcourt as she clung to his arm. “Surely she didn’t pay any attention to what Grand’mere said. Your mother knows what she is like!”

“Mother said that the quarrel brought on one of her migraine heads. She is lying in a darkened room with cologne compresses on her temples. Grand’mere knew it would bring one on—that is why the old lady provoked her. She didn’t really want mother to come,” said Darcourt.

“Why should she feel that way?” Elizabeth asked, from where she strolled on his right.

“Mother holds that Grand’mere dislikes everyone who is not a true Delacroix. She is positive that the old lady would be rid of her if she could find a pretext. Everyone knows that she was responsible for the death of the first wife, Amelie.”

“That is not so.” Celestine came to the defense of her distant relations. “Amelie was delicate. She never recovered her health after the birth of her sons.”

“I won’t argue the point, except to say that Grand’mere never allowed Amelie to pamper herself. She has never been ill a day in her life and so she never believed Amelie when she said she was not well, just as she never quite believes in Mother’s headaches, and never allows the degree that she suffers from them.”

“It must be distressing to your mother,” Elizabeth commented.

“I wish I could take her away, so that she—and Theresa—would not have to endure the charity of the Delacroix.”

Elizabeth did not know what to say, but Celestine was at no loss. With the confidence of long intimacy she exclaimed, “You, Darcourt? The way money runs through your fingers? Even if you could conjure up a fortune it would be gone in a twelve month.”

He laughed, his good humor restored. “No doubt. And I have observed that people with fortunes are apt to acquire property, and people with property, like poor Bernard, spend a terrible amount of time and money trying to keep and increase it.”

Celestine agreed, a gleam in her eye. “You would become unbearably dull, I have no doubt.”

“I suppose then that the life of a fainéant—that is good-for-nothing to you, Ellen Marie—is for me. I would not want you to think me dull. So long as Bernard pays my debts and you continue to smile at me I see no reason for a fortune.”

“No, but Bernard does not pay my debts—yet, and so money, and a lot of it, is still of interest to me.”

“Is it? With your dowry?” A serious note had crept into Darcourt’s voice.

Celestine nodded. “It certainly is. I have expensive tastes, as you well know.”

“Oh, yes, I know. That is our trouble, bless your mercenary little soul, we know each other too well.”

“Really, Darcourt!”

“Don’t be coy, chère. We have no secrets from Ellen Marie, not since I mistook her for you in the dark a few nights ago.” He grinned at Elizabeth across the top of Celestine’s head, but from the corner of her eyes Celestine shot her a glance of pure dislike.

“Oh? And what happened?”

“Nothing that a girl with two men in her pocket need be jealous of,” Darcourt answered.

This was not the first time Celestine had shown her dislike. Though there had been no open disagreement between them, the other girl never missed an opportunity to make Elizabeth feel that she was a usurper.

The thought had not occurred to her earlier, but after that exchange of intimate observations she found herself feeling like a gooseberry, an unwanted third, and she let the other two gain on her gradually until she walked behind them alone. Darcourt looked back once, his eyebrows raised in mock question. Then his teeth flashed white against the dark gold of his mustache as she shook her head and motioned for them to go on.

That Darcourt was in love with the beautiful Creole girl appeared obvious. That Celestine, whatever she might feel for Darcourt, was interested more in Bernard’s wealth seemed equally plain Elizabeth liked Darcourt. His shortcomings, so readily admitted that they seemed unimportant, were forgotten when he smiled or laughed. At times she felt that he used gaiety to cover his unhappiness, but it was only a passing thought that did not last under the sunny indifference of his shrug.

Some effort had been made to gravel the small path from the drive to the chapel gleaming palely through the trees, but it had been wasted. The path was overgrown, and the gravel sunken into the soft, fertile earth. Weed rosettes supporting last year’s dead brown stalks encroached on the path, and vines waved their new green shoots in the middle of the gravel, searching blindly for something to which to cling.

The coachman waited with the carriage where the path left the drive, but Grand’mere and Callie, carrying Joseph, had gone on. They stood impatiently beneath the cedar tree that stood with its feathery black shadow falling across the face of the small white chapel.

“Well! It’s about time,” Grand’mere greeted them. “You certainly dawdled along.”

Digging one bony hand into her black string reticule, she took from it a large heavy key which she handed to Darcourt.

“I am certain I heard laughter, too. In my day one did not find an occasion such as this a time for levity. A widow was inconsolable, her grief unrestrained, her heart buried in the grave. She did not disport herself like an unmarried girl! A widow wore black until she remarried or died. My only son, Gaspard, has been dead a mere three years and already his wife speaks of going into purple, not that it matters since she is seldom out of her wrapper. Silly idiot, as if purple would be more becoming to her than black. And my grandson’s widow running about the house in her dressing gown and giggling on the very anniversary of her husband’s death like a debutante at her first night at the opera!” She continued to grumble in this vein as Darcourt fitted the key into the lock and pulled open the thick bronze doors.

Like the house and the small pavilion beside the bayou, the chapel was built along classic Greek lines, with a flat roof, a low entablature, and columns on three sides. It was, in fact, a miniature of the great house. It was built of brick, plastered over to protect it from the dampness, and painted white. A low iron fence, also painted white, enclosed a tiny, brick-floored terrace and the three shallow steps that led to the doors. On each of the two heavy bronze doors, a wreath flanked by two inverted torches stood out in relief. Beside the doors stood large Grecian urns embraced by winged cherubs whose sightless eyes were fixed in an expression of melancholy.

The air inside the chapel was heavy with the smell of mildewed cloth and musty, faded flowers. Cobwebs in gray swaths were gathered in the corners of the high slits of windows, obscuring the already dim light that fell through the purple stained glass. Dust and grit grated beneath their feet on the dull white marble floor.

The walls fronting the burial vaults, as well as the ceiling, the small altar at the back, and even the reredos behind it, were all of the same white marble. Against its purity the white of the altar cloth was almost invisible, but the gold of the crucifix, vases, and candlesticks shone with a disturbing brightness.

Only one of the marble vaults was etched with lettering. It read: Jean Marc Gaspard Delacroix, né le 23 Novembre 1794, décédé le 24 Juin 1834

Beside it a brightly new bronze plaque had been fixed to the wall. The holes drilled for its placement had caused much of the grit underfoot. A shock ran over Elizabeth as she saw that the inscription was in English. She wondered if all those months ago Bernard had looked toward the possibility that Felix’s wife might someday see it and appreciate the gesture. He could not have known that Ellen would be familiar with their language, her French-Creole mother’s tongue. She found herself hoping that it was so in spite of the fact that Ellen would never see it.

In memory of Felix Gustave Joseph Delacroix, born 10 January 1809, died 17 March 1837, Goliad, Texas A man of valour. The inscription was simple, and yet it brought back to Elizabeth the memory of Felix as he had looked, darkly handsome, leaning down from his horse to tell Ellen goodbye. There had been a smile on his lips, but his eyes had been touched with understanding for the pain of being left behind.

Despite everything that had happened, Felix had been good for Ellen. They had loved each other; that was worth a great deal, and he had made her happy for a while. In the normal course of events, they would have lived out full lives together, and fifty years from now they would both be lying behind that cold marble front—but no, you could not say that. In the normal course of events they would never have met. As it was, they both lay in the warm soil of Texas.

Without realizing it she felt tears welling up behind her eyes. Grand’mere glanced at her from the corner of her shrewd old eyes and cleared her throat.

Before she could speak one of the heavy bronze doors swung inward with a small squeak of the hinges as Darcourt brushed against it.

Gasping, Celestine jumped. “I never fail,” she exclaimed as they turned to look at her, “to imagine how terrible it would be to be shut up in here. I have a perfect horror of it!”

For once Grand’mere seemed to have exhausted her caustic observations. Celestine’s nervous comment brought no answering retort. Instead Grand’mere turned fretful. “No one has been here for ages,” she said. “It is Alma’s duty to care for the chapel, but she has no taste for it. It is her fault that the cemetery and chapel are so far from the house. So inconvenient. She would have had it on the other side of the bayou if it had been left up to her. She’s afraid of the dead, and of dying, or I miss my guess—you needn’t stare at me, Darcourt. You know what she is like. I expect she even fears the ghosts of our Negro servants buried under their white wooden markers behind this chapel!

“I’m getting too old for this, too stiff in my joints. Who will care for the dead when I am gone? Just look at this floor and the dead flowers. A disgrace! I am so glad none of my friends are here to see it. I would die of embarrassment.”

“This here is a graveyard house?” Callie asked, her voice high as she broke an awed silence.

“Most assuredly,” Grand’mere replied.

“You—you bake your dead people in them ovens, like bread?”

Celestine tittered and Grand’mere stared at her so that the girl put her slim, well-manicured hand over her mouth.

“No, no, of course not!” answered Grand’mere. “They are not ovens at all, you silly creature, though I can see, now that you bring it to my attention, that the squares marked in the wall have somewhat the look of ovens. In this part of Louisiana we must bury our dear departed loved ones above the ground. You cannot dig a grave. We are below the sea level, is that not it, Darcourt? And the water is so near the top of the ground that at the depth of two or three feet the grave begins to fill with water.”

“That’s right,” Darcourt agreed, with a wicked grin. “In the old days, the coffins floated out of the ground and fell apart, exposing the decaying bones of the corpse so that the dogs and wild animals could get at them.”

“There is no need to be ghoulish,” Grand’mere rapped, and taking pity on the wide-eyed nurse, sent her back to the carriage for the pail of water, cloths, brush broom and flowers for the altar.

“What Darcourt says is true, however,” she went on to Elizabeth. “Everyone remarks on our peculiar burial customs, but they are dictated by necessity. Not everyone has their own private chapel, of course. In New Orleans they are building a wall of vaults six foot wide around the cemeteries. They look even more like ovens than this, I’m afraid. A most unfortunate, but not inaccurate, comparison. In the rural areas the vaults are made of bricks, or among the very poor and the slaves, the graves are piled with rocks, if they can find them. Ballast from the Northern ships is much in demand for that purpose.”