The Plot (13 page)

CHAPTER TEN

“How is Miss Wilcoxen?” Louis asked.

William Reas kept glancing behind him into the dim house, although Louis could see no one there. “Miss Alex fine, suh.”

“Then would you please ask her if I could see her for a few minutes?”

“Miss Alex resting, suh.”

“Can't you cut out the ‘suh'? Try, won't you. Look, William Reas” (
Mr
. William Reas? Mr.
Reas
?), “man to man, I must see her. Please ask, even if she needs rest now.”

“I go for see, suh.” William Reas was no more a man than any male who is completely dominated by his mother. Louis' approach merely frightened him. His voice trembled. “I go right for see, suh.”

The footsteps through the foyer, down the hall, told Louis that permission to see Alex was being requested, not of Alex herself—for surely her bedroom would be upstairs—but from the old woman, who would most likely be huddled at the back of the house there on the ground floor. Louis heard William Reas come back into the foyer and go upstairs. When he returned he said formally that Miss Alex would be down in a minute. Maum Cloe, it seemed, was going to permit Louis to see Alex, but not in milady's boudoir. Maybe she was smart, Louis thought, until, seeing Alex' white face glimmering at the head of the stairs, he remembered Ethel.

Alex, coming down the famous curved stairway, her small hand clutching the much photographed handrail, her full white negligee skirt drifting across the delicate lace pattern of the rail, made by the same artist who forged the plantation gates, stopped and looked down at Louis with her blue look. “You wanted to see me?” She took a deep breath and continued down slowly, gathering her full long skirt beautifully.

“Oh, Alex—when I held you—the way you screamed——But you're all right! You're all right!”

Her voice was very cold. “Yes, thank you, and thank you for getting me to Maum Cloe. It was very good of you. Now what is it, please?”

“What is it?” His voice shook with her coldness, as if it had literally plunged him into icy waters.

“William Reas said you wanted to see me.”

As if he were the Fuller Brush man. “If that's the way it's going to be——Yes, I wanted to see you.”

“Shall we go into the oval room? You've never been around the house, have you? It is very beautiful, even with everything covered with dust sheets.”

He was aware that she was rejecting his love, offering him instead this impersonal, hostess touch. He pulled himself together. “I can say what I have to right here.” Now her mouth quivered at his tone, but now he would not look at her mouth. He forced his hands to stay clasped, staring down at the black and white marble blocks of the foyer floor. “What I want to say is very simple. Please leave this place, please go away.” He turned on his heel and walked off, something from his childhood, something superstitious and ridiculous, telling him that he must walk on the white squares only, to save Alex, to protect her.

She stamped her foot. “Wait a minute! Why should I go away?” Her weakness made her tremble. “I must sit down.” There was a chair at the foot of the stairs.

“Don't ask questions. Just go.”

“Mine not to reason why, mine just to do and die? Why do you look so funny? Your asking me to leave makes it unanimous. Why do
you
want me to go?”

“I didn't say I wanted you to go, I said you should go.”

“Ethel told me Jamey wants to get rid of me, Maum Cloe tried to force me to go with the doctor when he left——”

Louis cleared his throat. “Maum—hasn't she any other name? It's a ridiculous name, Maum Cloe!”

“Maum means mother. She's been like my mother, you know.”

“Don't talk like a professional Southerner; she's been your servant.”

“No, you don't understand Maum Cloe. It's a purely personal relationship with her; she tries to run my whole life. She thinks she knows just what's best for me.”

“Well, maybe she does know. Maybe she
can
see things we can't.” Alex' feet were resting on a black square, Louis noticed. He had the most ridiculous impulse to lift them off. “For God's sake, go!”

But she remembered Ethel, remembered the beautiful robe, the suit; a wave of nausea made her swallow hard. “I won't go. I can see things, too. I'm not psychic, but I'm not blind. Anymore.” She stamped her foot on the black square. “I can see there's something funny going on.”

“Let it go on without you.”

“Why? Why?”

“Because it is dangerous for you here. Ethel—Ethel hates you.”

“Ethel loves you, so she hates me! Oh, you're impossible! You're really the most impossible, the most conceited——” Her eyes were blazing, no longer blue, black. “Do you think you're absolutely irresistible? Do you think that every woman around is jealous of every other woman because of you?” She stood up, holding on to the back of the chair. “Well, I'm not in love with you. I won't be. You don't have to worry about me!” She turned and went back up the stairs, leaving Louis staring after her.

He stood there for a moment, shrugging. He couldn't say any more; all he could do now was watch, stand guard. He hunched his shoulders again; the gesture, although he didn't know it, came because his body felt bound, imprisoned, tied. He left the big house and walked slowly in the gathering cool to the little one.

His room was dark and cool. He felt hot and dirty. Because his own things were packed in his canvas bag, he pulled his clothes off and put on Jamey's pajamas. He washed his face and brushed his teeth, trying to get the black taste out of his mouth. Then he remembered and went quickly to the canvas bag and pulled back the zipper. The manuscript of the biography was, of course, gone. First he looked under the shoe rack in the closet, then he pulled open all the drawers of the desk in the forlorn hope that he had put it there. He looked into the wastebasket, crazily, to see if he had done what he should have done the minute he had made up his mind to leave, and torn it up. But he hadn't torn it up. He hadn't torn it up because it was good, because he couldn't tear it up. He sat down, seeing Ethel's face as it must have looked when she had sneaked into this room and found the manuscript waiting for her, neatly held together with a thick rubber band. Was that why she had poisoned Alex? So he would be out of the way, rushing Alex to the big house and Maum Cloe? So she would get the chance to grab it while he was worrying over Alex? He saw the triumph on Ethel's face then, and then he saw her face as it would look if he burst into her room now and demanded the manuscript, a blank, innocent face. “No, I didn't take it, Louis. Prove I took it, Louis.” He saw the blank, innocent (deadly) face quiescent while he pulled her room apart, looking for the manuscript. “No, it isn't here, Louis.” Of course it wouldn't be there. She had had plenty of time and a hundred thousand places to hide it. He groaned, wanting to kick himself, wanting as well to third-degree himself because—since he hadn't destroyed it—he had in a way asked for it. He had left it where Ethel could find it, and a hundred thousand legitimate excuses couldn't change that.

When there was a knock on the door, he was sure it was Ethel, but it was Alex. She was wearing a blue linen dress with a short bolero. Her eyes were enormously blue and shiny. She looked as if she had been crying, and her skin was very white except for two red splotches high up on her delicate cheeks. Louis said, “Now what? Aren't you supposed to be resting?”

“I'm all right. I couldn't rest. I want to apologize.”

“There's no need to apologize. Just go away.”

“You don't want me to go away.”

“I most certainly do. You better sit down if you're staying; you look as if you would keel over.”

“No. I mean——No, Louis. Louis, this isn't—I told myself this isn't a Victorian romance in an old book. This is 1951. I'm a modern girl. I'm not going to act like one of those silly heroines. Oh, Louis, I had to come. I had to find out for myself because I would never forgive myself if I just swallowed what I was told, like a little dope!”

She had swallowed poison. “You better sit down. You're shaking. You've been sick.”

“It's not because I was sick. I'm just so embarrassed.” Then she did sit down, her legs pressed together, her thin arms pressed close to her body. She seemed unable to continue, unable to do anything but stare at Louis with that blue look and the red spots in her white cheeks brighter than ever.

Louis thought that he couldn't take this much longer—if she sat there like that much longer, in his room, alone with him. He had kept out of her way, he had kept his eyes and his mind as far off her as possible, but sitting there … He said, “If there's something, Alex——”

“Yes, there's something, Louis. Oh, this is so hard——At least I was under the impression that there was something the first evening I came, right away. Then you wouldn't be with me. Until today, I thought you thought I was a snob, but now—I have to know. I have to
know
, Louis!”

“What? Look, what do you have to know?”

She moaned, shaking her head. “It's so hard. I
have
to know! Why do you think I was so mean to you at the big house just now? Maum Cloe said you were no good. Maum Cloe hinted at all kinds of things, but I didn't pay attention, but—then when Ethel——”

“When Ethel what?” What else has Ethel done?

“When Ethel told me——All I had to go on was my—my instinct about you—and when she told me——And you wanted me to leave. Why are you staying around here? Why do you let Jamey keep you?”

“Keep me?
Keep
me?”

Her eyes were full of tears; she had to swallow before she could make her voice heard. She stepped to him and grasped the lapel of his robe, shaking it. “What do you call that?” She pointed to the closet. “What do you call that beautiful suit there? The suit in there, the one you haven't worn while I was here, what do you call that?”

“And you believe that I'm kept? You believe that I——”

“That's a most beautiful robe,” she said; “it's almost as beautiful as one of Jamey's!”

“How dare you?” he shouted, the phrase coming out full, operatic, corny. He pulled her hand off the lapel and then clapped his hands on her shoulder. “How dare you!” He felt the cupped and rounded shoulders under his palm, warm, soft. “From the moment we saw each other there has been this—between us, undeniable—and you dare! You felt it,” he said, pressing harder on her shoulders. “You feel it, I know you feel it!”

“But you stayed away from me——”

“Because I stayed away from you; because I let you alone? You could have used your head. You could have realized that there could be ten reasons why I would have to keep my hands off you, keep myself away from you, not tell you I loved you, but you believed Ethel!”

“Louis,” she whispered. “Louis——” Her eyes half closed and her head fell forward. “But you let Jamey give you those things. You stayed here and let him be silly about you.”

“So you dared to think——I'll show you who's a—I'll show you who——”

When she could talk, because she was so shaken, because she had never before felt this way, because she was frightened by her own rich response to his kisses rather than of his passion, she said, “Kissing me doesn't prove anything! Kissing me doesn't mean anything!”

He released her and gave her a push. “Get out of here! Get the hell out of here!” There was a carafe of bourbon on the tray in the library; Louis took it and brought it back to his room, not bothering with a glass, with Jamey's little ceremonials, with Jamey's one-drink limit. He raised the bottle and gulped, raised, tilted the bottle, gulped. He was not accustomed to drinking so much or so fast. He was quite tight when almost an hour later he put the carafe down, stood up, and ripped off his pajamas. He dressed in his pants and knitted shirt and then knocked on Ethel's door.

She sounded rather frightened when she asked him what he wanted, then, seeing him drunk, she relaxed. “Yes, Louis?”

“That date you were going on tonight?”

“With Budder Green; yes? What about it?”

“Has he got a sister? You know: has he got a sister?” He was swaying slightly and his speech wasn't clear.

Ethel smiled. “As a matter of fact, he has a sister, a very pretty sister.”

He said, “What are we waiting for? What are we waiting for?” He headed for the front door. “Come on.”

“In a minute, Louis; I'll meet you in a minute, Louis.” Peering into his room, she saw something on the floor; snapping on the light so that the room was suffused with it, she picked up the silk pajamas. He had torn them down the middle, the trousers were in pieces, the jacket was in shreds. Ethel held the pajamas to her cheek while she considered, then, kissing them, she dropped them on the floor again and went out to join Louis.

“This is the place, Louis. Come on in.”

Louis examined the interior of the dingy bar. “Miss Alex Wilcoxen wouldn't be seen dead here, but we're not Wilcoxens, are we?”

“Hold on to me. No wonder you're unsteady. You haven't stopped drinking all the way in.” Jamey's carafe of bourbon was empty now. Louis set it down at the side of the café door. “Hold on! If you fall down these steps——Oh, there they are. Look, at that table there, Louis. Louis, isn't she pretty? I think Libbie Mae is much prettier than Alex, when you come right down to it.”

Louis doubled up with laughter so that he almost did fall down the steps. “When you come right down to it—right
down
to it—right
down
——”

“Louis! Stop; they'll hear you. Louis, this is Budder Green and Libbie Mae Green. Hi, Budder. Libbie Mae, meet Louis Daignot. He's staying with us at the plantation.”