Mignon

Chapter 13

So he did, the next morning, a Mr. Dumont, connected with the Louisiana Bank, but I wouldn’t let him in and talked through a crack in the door, telling him come some other time. That was because by then my face looked like liver — purple, blue, black, and yellow all at the same time — as well as being swollen twice its size. So I wasn’t seeing anyone, even waiters bringing my food. I had them leave it outside the door, then pulled the tray in after they’d gone. So I put Mr. Dumont off, and wasn’t any too sure, I admit, I wanted to see him at all. But at night I’d go downstairs, and without going through the lobby, slip out the back way, up Gravier to Carondelet, over to Canal, then down to Royal and on to the Landry flat. I’d skulk around outside, trying to see Mignon, torturing myself by spying on what she was doing. I found out all right. One night, as I stood in the shadows across the street, a cab drove up, and out of it popped Burke. Then he handed her down, and told the cabman to wait. She was laughing gaily, and the two of them went in. How long he stayed I don’t know, whether alone with her I don’t know. I slunk back to the hotel and in by Gravier again, like some cur hit with a whip. But next night I was out there as usual, seeing nothing.

In four or five days, call it a week after Mardi Gras, here came Marie, tapping on the door, saying she had to see me. I let her in, and she asked if Emil could “excuse him,” as “he feels very bad, and wants to be friends with you.” I said I’d accept his apologies through her, and she called in French through the crack.

“Bon,” she said. “He is gone — and feels better now.” She held my face to the light, and made little whistling noises. But when she sat down I asked her: “Yes? What do you want, Marie, that you ‘had’ to see me?”

“You might say you are glad I am here.”

“I might — if I was sure I am.”

“La-la. La-la.”

Actually I wasn’t, as those nights had warned me my success in the root-out operation had fallen short of what I’d assumed it was, and that all my bitter decisions weren’t so final as they might have been. Still, there was no doubt in my mind that they ought to be final at any rate, so I gave her a little pat. That wasn’t difficult; she looked most fetching in a little blue silk dress, red straw hat, red shoes, red gloves, and red shawl, obviously put on to please me. I said: “All right, I’m glad.”

“Guillaume, I have spent some dark nights.”

“With me, it’s been just the opposite — the bright days are what I minded, the way they lit up my face. By night I looked better.”

She went to a wall mirror, touched her chin with one finger. It had a black-and-blue spot on it where my fist had clipped her, though a dab of rice powder hid it. She said: “I too have a face, but at night one communes with the heart.”

“If I bruised that I didn’t mean to.”

“... Donc, you have not seen her.”

“Oh? You’ve been keeping track?”

“Keeping track, Guillaume, is easy for me in my business — I send Emil, he speaks with some night maid, he pays a bock, he learns what I wish to know... She sees Burke — much, every night.”

“It’s a free country, Marie.”

“Perhaps you have not lied.”

“Let’s not start that up again. I lied.”

“... Alors, alors. You lied.”

“But, my reasons were not unfriendly — to you, I’m talking about — and if you still feel friendly to me, then—”

I went over and lifted her face to kiss it, having by that time arrived once more in my mind at the inescapable conclusion that she meant salvation to me. But she pulled away abruptly, and I backed off, sitting down on the sofa. I said: “I’m sorry, Marie — I keep forgetting this face, and how unappetizing it must be.”

She took off her hat, shawl, and gloves, and tossed them on the table. Then she came over, knelt on the sofa beside me, took my face in both hands, and covered it with soft, quick kisses. She said: “The face could not unappetize me! I... I... I... loave your face.”

“Red-white-and-blue and all? And yellow?”

“And green.”

She kissed a spot under one eye.

“Hold still!” I said. “I want some kisses, too!”

“Non, non, non!” she whispered, holding me off at arm’s length. “Your kisses, petit, must wait. They must! It devolves!”

“Devolves? On what?”

“Many things — my heart, for example. And one must know — if one has business partner — in which case les affaires must prevail — or if one has something more — in which case—”

“An affair might be in order?”

“Petit, it cannot be!”

“My mistake, it was just an idea.”

“After these dark nights I have had—”

“It devolves that we know where we’re at?”

“It is what brings me today, petit.”

“All right, but how?”

“... You received some invitation to the bal?”

“Bal? What ball?”

“That the General gives next week?”

“Oh — this Washington’s Birthday thing? To commemorate the election he’s holding that day? Yes — some kind of bid came in. Apparently I got put on the list by a friend before he decided my name was mud. It’s around here some place. Why?”

“Alors. You ask me why?”

“You’d like to go? Is that it?”

“If you are ashamed of some demi-mondaine—” She got up, her face twisting, and started pulling on her gloves.

“Will you stop talking like that?”

I reached out, grabbed her arm and yanked it, pulling her back to her place on the sofa. I said: “How can you say such a thing?”

“You hesitate, pourtant?”

“I certainly do — in the first place, I don’t dance very well, and in the second place, I don’t get the connection — what it proves, that’s all.”

“It is not that someone may turn me away?”

“How, turn you away?”

“From the door?”

“If so, he won’t live until dawn.”

Suddenly she folded me in her arms, pressed her mouth to mine, whispered: “One little kiss you may have!.. For this, one little kiss I must have!”

“Is that how we go about proving it? With pistols for two? In — where’s the dueling ground here?”

“No, petit, I forbid! You might hang, and this would be too much. But I love this spirit, that might kill someone for me.”

“All right, but get to the point.”

“She will be there, petit.”

“... Who?”

“Mignon. With Burke.”

“I see. I see. I see.”

“Already ice fills your heart, petit?”

“No — I see what you mean, that’s all.”

“You may renege, if you wish.”

“Not at all. I think we’d better go.”

“This confrontation shall tell me.”

“To say nothing of me.”

So we did go. It was held in the French Opera House, a big theater in the Quarter, and everyone was there, not only the Union officers and their ladies, but New Orleans society too, especially the ones cozening up to the North — of whom there were more than you’d think. I went in full evening regalia, which Marie rented for me at a costume place on Poydras, around the corner from Lavadeau’s: clawhammer suit, puff-bosom shirt, cape, and silk hat. But from the way she was got up, no question could arise that she would be turned away. She looked like the Duchess of El Dorado in a white ermine cloak, scarlet satin gown, cut so low she was bare halfway to her navel, gold shoes, gold purse, and gold fillet on her hair. In addition, she wore diamonds wherever you looked — at her neck in a pendant, on her wrists in bracelets, and on her fingers with various rings. She glittered like an igloo in the midnight sun; I was proud of her in a way, yet I wanted to laugh. She caught my look, and instead of being angry, started to laugh too. “Alors?” she said, as our cab pulled away from the gambling house. “Am I grande dame now?”

“So grand I feel like a pigmy.”

“I hope I am creditable.”

What was causing my stomach to twitch wasn’t concern at her being thrown out, but who would be waiting for us once we were let in. For some time, though I searched the place with my eye, taking in flags, bunting, smilax, and the band up on the stage, I didn’t see her. We got into the receiving line and I had a bad moment when we came to Dan Dorsey, who was presenting the guests. He was in dress uniform, with epaulets, braid, sword, knots, and white gloves, and when he saw Marie his face turned to stone. But he didn’t hesitate, and sang out loud and clear: “Mr. William Cresap, Miss Marie Tremaine!” The General’s lady, I imagine, had never heard of Marie; she smiled graciously and offered her hand. Marie, after dropping a graceful, comic little continental curtsey, took it. I took it. We shook hands with the General, passed on, and that was that. “Voilà, I am in!” said Marie, pleased as a child.

“The honor is theirs,” I assured her.

We stood around and I kept on looking. The band struck up the Grand March, and after we had sashayed around there came a long intermission while programs were filled out. All kinds of people wanted to dance with Marie, but she kept saying: “Lancers and quadrilles only — I care not for polkas and galops.” That touched me, as it really meant she knew I couldn’t dance round dances, and was willing to pretend she preferred to sit them out. So I marked them all X on her card, but accepted quite a few couples to make up sets for the square dances. And then, in the middle of it, I saw by the change in her face, from little French dancing partner to cold, calculating gambler, that Mignon had entered the room. I turned, and she was just crossing to the receiving stand on Burke’s arm, Mr. Landry on the other side. She had on a black dress, whether left over from her palmier days or lent her by Lavadeau’s I didn’t know and don’t know now. Over her shoulders was a mantilla, with a pattern of small gold spangles, and I remember a twinge of relief that her big, beautiful bulges wouldn’t be seen by everyone. When the three of them had been received, Mr. Landry went skipping off and then reappeared in a box near the stage, where Mignon and Burke went to keep him company, though they stayed out on the floor. “Alors,” whispered Marie. “I must speak; it devolves, let us go.”

Her grip on my arm meant business, and for my part I steeled myself, feeling I might just as well get it over with. “Mignon,” called Marie brightly as she rustled over the floor, “bon jour, bon chance, salut.”

“Marie,” said Mignon, “comment ça va?”

She said it very coldly, staring down at Marie’s bare shoulders, and then Burke took notice of us. “Why,” he said, “if it isn’t the sneak thieves themselves — the girl who enticed me gippo to her bed, the sly minx — and the boy—”

“Burke,” I said, “retract.”

His eyes moved around in their rheum as he took in my grip on the stick, and he said: “I may have spoken in haste.”

“Apologize.”

“I regret me impulsive words.”

“Then fine. Hereafter speak when you’re spoken to.”

Marie’s hand on my arms gave a quick, grateful squeeze, and then she went on: “Mignon, I have business with you, we have an affaire — but first may I present my fiancé, M’sieu Guillaume Cresap?”

Mignon flinched as though hit with a whip, and started to answer in French. Then she remembered and said: “I congratulate you, truly. I didn’t know you were engaged.”

“I didn’t either,” I said, sounding silly.

Now if, on that, Mignon had burst out laughing and said: “Willie, let’s be going,” my story would be over. And if Marie had slapped me and left me, it would be over, too. But neither of them did, the two of them standing there, Mignon as though turned to marble, Marie as though turned to flame. It was Marie who said: “Alors? I excuse me, then. One may be mistaken, it seems.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t say that,” I told her.

“What would you say? Jouez, if you please?”

“... Count me in. My chip’s on the table.”

“I congratulate me.”

There was quite a long pause, with nobody saying anything, especially Burke. Then Mignon said: “And now may I present my fiancé, Mr. Frank Burke.”

“Enchantée,” said Marie.

Burke bowed. I tried to say something and couldn’t. Mignon went on: “Marie, what business have you with me? What affair can we possibly have?”

“Ah bon, you shall see.”

She dug in the little gold purse and came up with pieces of paper that had been folded, then rolled. She stretched them like shavings off a board, held them up to Mignon, and said: “See! Here I have some billets, signed by Raoul Fournet!”

“Signed by — whom?” whispered Mignon.

“Raoul, your husband, who died.”

“Let me see those notes!”

“Certainly — I have returned the money Raoul lost to me, but these billets I forgot. Here are two for four hundred, one for two hundred, one for six hundred — four in all, for total of sixteen hundred dollars. But, did you not know about them?”

“No, I knew nothing at all.”

“I am distressed if you are upset.”

“... File your claim is all I can tell you, Marie. The estate’s not settled yet — there’s quite a lot owing, beside this.”

“But a gambling debt claims not.”

“Then what do you want of me?”

“Nothing. I thought you might like to have.”

“In return for what, Marie?”

“Alors — you dance in my lancers, perhaps?”

“What lancers?”

“Here. Now. Tonight.”

“Takes more than two for a lancers.”

“Oui — you, I, your fiancé, my fiancé, friends.”

After a long time Mignon said: “I accept.”

Marie tore the notes in half and handed them over, and five minutes later we were all marching the lancers, Mignon like a ghost in the graceful way she moved, Marie more like a doll in that comic way she moved, as though spinning around on a music box. But there was no doubt in anyone’s mind as to who had bowed the head to whom.

At supper, Mr. Dumont joined us, a mousy little man with gray hair — the first time I’d actually seen him, though we had talked through my door. He gave a report on the hypothèques, which I took to mean mortgages, that Marie was going to assume to raise my twenty-five thousand dollars. They involved considerable talk, not only with him but also with other men who dropped by, most of it in French, with Marie jabbering it pretty coldly. But in the middle of it, Mr. Dumont whispered to me: “You’re getting a wonderful partner, Mr. Cresap. This woman can see a dollar farther and grab it quicker than anyone I know. Count yourself lucky, sir.” When the music started again she decided she wanted to leave; going home in the cab she told me: “M’sieu Dumont accepts you, Guillaume. He thinks you homme de bien, and ingénieur versé.”

“He said nice things about you.”

“Were you pleased with our evening, petit?”

“I was. Are you asking me in?”

“... Are we fiancé?”

“Of course! What makes you think we’re not?”

“The mot you said, to her.”

“That was a joke! You caught me by surprise!”

“On this subject one makes no joke.”

“Then — I take it back. Are you asking me in?”

She hesitated, snuggled close, and kissed me once or twice. Then: “I am tempted, this I confess, ah oui, so much. And yet — I trust you not, petit. Perhaps you still love her.” And then, as I protested that this was ridiculous, that all that was finished, over, and done with, she kissed me again and thought it over again. But once more she said: “Non! Guillaume, we are partners in business — this I promise, the money shall be advanced. We shall also be married, I hope, and at last you can make a grande dame of me. If then there shall be more — bon! I shall give you children of me, jolis babies with hair of gold, as ours. But this must wait — until of you I am sure.”

“I could make you sure tonight.”

“Later, later, petit.”