Mignon

Chapter 14

So I had everything in my grasp, the capital I needed, the construction firm I wanted, a woman I thought the world of, and the days began sliding by. Dumont forged ahead, though the hypothèques took time: appraisals had to be made, titles searched, and easements squared of the properties she was plastering. They were five houses on Rampart Street that she didn’t want to sell but was willing to borrow on. And what hung things up worst was the easements — old grants, to places up the street, of carriage-entrance rights, something the bank didn’t like. It was just a question of buying them up, but people are pretty grasping, and the haggle went on for some time. In between, she and I went around — to restaurants, to church, to the theater, and I met quite a few of her friends. What pleased her most, I think, was the way they treated her at Mrs. Beauregard’s funeral, which was held one day in the rain. It was a damned impressive thing, and pathetic too because Beauregard wasn’t there — hadn’t even heard of the death, being off in the field commanding Reb armies in Virginia. We rode in a cab, but most of the people marched, a slow, sad procession of thousands trudging along, their heads bowed in the downpour. But at the foot of Canal Street, we stood around with the rest, while the body was carried on board the steamer to be taken upriver for burial. Many people spoke, and she whispered to me: “So you see? Perhaps I have friends.”

“Who ever thought you didn’t?”

“Alors, SHE was grande dame.”

Later the same day, we went to the inauguration of a man named Hahn as governor, the one elected on Washington’s Birthday. It was indeed quite a thing, with six thousand children singing the “Anvil Chorus” from Il Trovatore, one hundred anvils banging, and fifty cannon shooting, all in time to the music. But in the middle of it she said: “Shall we go, petit? I find it sottise, non?” So we drove to Christ Church to set the date of our wedding and make the various arrangements. She insisted on Dr. Bacon, the church’s regular rector, and would have none of the other one — the one the Union had named, nobody knew why. We discussed several dates, and decided on March 29, the Tuesday after Easter. She seemed pleased, and I took her home. By that time, though I wasn’t asked upstairs, she would bring me into the parlor, close the door, and forget herself a little. She brought me in there this day, but waiting for her was a man, an article named Murdock, with a blue chin, fat stomach, and New England way of talking. I was startled to learn he was bidding on the establishment, getting ready to buy her out. She quoted a hundred thousand dollars without batting an eye; he said seventy-five thousand with kind of a rasp on his voice. She said, very ugly: “Allez, allez, OUT — please do not waste of my time!”

“All right,” he said, “eighty.”

“Will you please go — now!”

He went, growling, and she said, very sweetly: “He will be back, I think.” And then: “Does it please you, petit, that I shall be joueuse no more?”

“I like you the way you are.”

“Merci, but — you would prefer femme sérieuse?”

“If you insist on asking, I would.”

“Alors, you shall have.”

So it all got better and better, the only trouble being I spent hours in cabs watching Lavadeau’s, and at night, going back to the hotel, always went by way of Royal so I could see Mignon’s windows. I saw her a number of times — occasionally by night coming home with Burke, more often by day going to work. Each time my heart would strangle me, the worst being when she’d have on that dress, the little black one I loved, which was getting so bedraggled now it made me want to cry. I would go back to the hotel then, walk around, beat on the wall with my fists, and curse. I’d tell myself cut it off, stop an insane game of self-torture, act as though I were bright. It would seem as though I would, that after a session like that I could return to my senses. And then the same night I’d be there, out in the dark again, staring as though demented, seeing what I could see.

And then one night I saw nothing: her windows were dark. The next night and the night after it was the same, and by day I didn’t see her go to Lavadeau’s. By then, it was coming on for the middle of March and all traffic had disappeared from the river, the boats having been commandeered to haul the invasion. It was the main topic of talk in the bars all over town, and in fact had already started, rumor had it, the Teche units having moved. If the dark windows meant she had moved too with her father and Burke for Alexandria, to be there for the cotton seizure, it was a blow, of course, but a kind of relief too, because it brought things to a head, affording the break I needed to put her out of my mind and get on with my life. And that, I think, is how it might have turned out if I hadn’t run into Lavadeau. Until then, though we’d nodded a few times, he’d paid no attention to me, and I had no reason to think he concerned himself about me. But one day on Gravier Street, as I was taking a walk, here he came carrying a box, and stopped as soon as he saw me. “Mr. Cresap,” he said, not even bothering to say hello, “I don’t know if I’m speaking to you or not. How could you let her do that?”

“Let who do what?” I asked him.

“Mignon — go to Alexandria with Burke?”

“... Then she went, with him?”

“Oh, Papa went too — and that ape Pierre. They all went, Thursday morning, by ferry to Algiers, with two wagons to load on the cars for Brashear, and then on the steamer for Franklin, and then to drive the rest of the way. But Burke’s head man, and she’s riding his wagon with him. Mr. Cresap, why did you let her?”

“Who says I could have stopped her?”

“I do! She told me so!”

He caught my lapels then, and began to pour it out — about how she had come into the shop last week, and wept and wailed and made a show of herself; about how she hated Burke and didn’t want to go. She was doing it for her father, the stake he has in cotton, but even for him wouldn’t have gone if I had told her not to.

“She said that? To you, Mr. Lavadeau?”

“I swear she did, Mr. Cresap!”

“Did she say how she spit on me?”

“Oh, that — she knows now she did wrong, knows everything about why you did what you did; she made a mistake, she sees, and would be willing to start over, if only you’d come in to say you’d be willing too. If only she could be sure this other woman doesn’t mean anything to you. If—”

“Why couldn’t she come to me?”

“Sir, she did.”

“I’m sorry. She didn’t.”

But he smiled, and told how he’d brought her to me that very same afternoon, upstairs to my St. Charles suite: “She had her hand raised to knock, and then wouldn’t.”

“Why not, for instance?”

“For fear of who might be there.”

Up until then he’d been bitter, but now, having blown off steam, calmed down and stood there mumbling in French to himself. Then, to me, very friendly: “Well, it’s too late now.”

He left me, and kept on down Gravier to St. Charles and the shop. I kept on up Gravier to Carondelet, but not to resume my walk. I turned the corner, and stumped along as fast as I could, to headquarters.

“Dan, can I come in?”

“All right, but don’t abuse my welcome.”

“What welcome?”

I stood in front of his table, took off my hat, held it in my hand, and tried to think how to begin. He burst out: “Goddam it, quit bowing and scraping.”

“Just trying to show my respect.”

“I hate cringing. Sit down!”

He jumped up and grabbed a chair, shoving me down into it as though I were the ram in a bilge pump. I thanked him, then asked: “Dan, how have you been?”

“Rotten.”

“Why don’t you ask me how I’ve been?”

“I know how you’ve been. You’ve been fine.”

“Well — that would seem to cover that.”

“What do you want, Bill?”

“... Dan, has your headquarters boat left?”

“Left? For where?”

“The invasion. You said there’d be one.”

“It’s not even chartered yet.”

“Oh. I heard the movement had started, and—”

“It has started — but we haven’t, not this headquarters, yet. We’ve been electing a governor. And holding an inauguration. And a ball. Couple of balls. All kinds of various things, more important than taking the field. Why?”

“I want to be taken on board.”

“In what capacity?”

“As — trader. In cotton.”

“You? Are going to buy cotton, Bill?”

“That’s the idea, Dan. I haven’t told you all about what brought me to town.” I then sketched it out quick, the plan I’d made with Sandy and my need for twenty-five thousand dollars. I went on: “From all that I hear around, the quickest way to get money is to join this Red River thing — seems to be like picking the stuff off trees. If you can get on this boat.”

“And if you tell me no lies.”

“But — what lies have I been telling?”

“That you’re taking this trip to make money.”

“Well, what other reason could I have?”

“That girl. She left for Red River last week.”

“But listen: I need twenty-five thousand dollars.”

“I know you do, Bill — I know all about it.”

“Then where does the lie come in?”

“Bill, ever hear of a man named Dumont?”

“... The banker? I know him, yes.”

“He was in, asking about you — said Miss Tremaine, the lady you brought to the ball, was fixing to marry you, then sell her business out and back you in another with the money you needed. He was for it, if you were an honest man — but if you already have the twenty-five thousand promised it proves you’re lying, doesn’t it?”

“What did you say about me?”

“Nice stuff — he went away quite happy.”

“Could be I’d rather make that tin myself.”

“And could be you’d rather have Mrs. Fournet.”

But I clung to my story, and when he interrupted to know how I could make any tin, knowing nothing about cotton at all, I said: “What’s to know, Dan? I go on your boat as a trader, I pile off at Alexandria along with the other traders, I buy stock off a Reb, which I still have money to do, I write up my receipt, listing bales by mark, number, and weight, I present it to the Q.M. officer making the seizure for him to sign. The rest is up to the lawyers. Is any of that beyond my comprehension?”

“Bill, I’ve told you that cotton is hooded.”

“Hoodooed? This is not Hallowe’en.”

“I’m not talking about Hallowe’en, or anything superstitious. All right, call it attaindered. But I’m telling you, it’ll ruin whoever touches it, including you, including Burke, including Landry, including Mrs. Fournet — who’s a damned pretty girl mixed up in a damned ugly business. Bill, we’re trying — the Union is trying, this Army is trying — to buy a piece of this war to pay for our invasion by taking traders along, by letting them put out tin for the cotton the Rebs have in storage. I’m telling you, it can’t be done! There’s one piece of land that’s never yet been up for sale, and that’s the half-acre you need to plant a flagpole on. That you have to take! It’s a people’s maidenhead — it won’t give in by itself, and its price is blood. It’s what we’re forgetting, but we’ll pay the price, that price, or I’m badly mistaken. Oh, our motives are good — why the hell wouldn’t they be, what motive’s not better than war? The idea, Washington thinks, is to kill three birds with one stone: Block the Reb government from shipping the cotton abroad and buying guns with it, give some individual Rebs a lick at the sugar pot and win them back to their allegiance, get the Northern mills some stock to make shirts with for our soldiers. All right, but the only time I ever let go at three birds on a limb, I broke the dining-room window, cut my grandfather’s head, and landed a rock in my mother’s soup. But this will be worse: it’s treason. Why? It takes two to make a sale, and in a war that means dealing with the enemy. The Reb army, if they let that cotton lay, if they fail to burn it when they evacuate Alexandria, have already heard the word as it’s been passed up the line. And we, if we pass the wink to the owners, those Rebs licking up sugar as we make the confiscation — we’re dealing with the enemy too. But, you say, not much — just a little bit. But I say, remember that maidenhead: there’s no such thing as one that’s been slightly took. And there’s going to be trouble, I promise you... Do you understand now why I say that cotton is hooded? Do I have to say more?”

“I thought you were my friend, Dan.”

“I’m talking as your friend.”

“You don’t sound much like it.”

“I’ll prove it. My orders are to pass you.”

“Pass me? You mean to go on that boat?”

“Yes, that’s what I mean.”

“Well, why don’t you?”

“Bill, do you know what impressed Mr. Dumont? Not your Annapolis life — which I didn’t know too much about, if I have to tell you the truth. But what you did right here, that brought him out of his chair.”

“For Landry, are you talking about?”

“That’s right — and it impressed us, too.”

“Who is us?”

“This whole headquarters. They hated it, of course, but they respected you for it. And they feared you, as the one man who could and unfortunately might, blow this whole ship out of water. So the word came to me, pass this man in if he wants.”

“Well? If I’m supposed to be rewarded—”

“I didn’t say rewarded.”

“Well what’s the point of it, then?”

“As a way of shutting you up.”

I saw at last what he was driving at, and some time went by without either of us speaking. Then he said: “Bill, I’ve hacked at you, and — fact of the matter — you made me sore. Just the same, I knew an honest man was in town. Now, though, if you make a grab for that cotton, I have to let you on the boat — but I won’t feel the same. Bill, don’t make me change!”

After a long time I said: “I want on.”

“So be it.”

I took Marie everywhere — to dinner, to church the following Sunday, to drive in the park with the smell of spring in the air. I helped address the wedding announcements, as soon as they came from the engraver. When my pass for the boat came to the hotel one day, I told myself it meant nothing, that I had no intention of using it, that I’d just been blowing off steam. But the following Monday night we went to see Richard III at the St. Charles Theatre. The actor was John Wilkes Booth. He’s from Maryland too, and maybe he’s kind to dogs, and drops coins in the blind man’s cup. But in that play he has death in his eyes, and watching him I knew I meant to go, and knew what I meant to do. I had death in my heart — that was the real answer. Whose death I didn’t yet know, but the following day, March 22, 1864, for the second time I ran out on a woman who loved me.