An Embarrassment of Riches (14 page)

“What does it mean?” Uncle stopped to inquire.

“It says, ‘Work will make you free,'” I explained.

“What a noble sentiment,” he observed and we followed the Negroes inside.

We debouched through the gate up a gravel path through an intricate garden of geometrically arranged rose beds in the formal French style, along which great tubs of orange trees were placed like sentinels. I noticed Uncle's eyes widen as we hurried through it to the palace door.

Once inside, we were conducted by M. LeBoeuf and a ragtag of Indians through a labyrinth of corridors painted in periwinkle blue and cream trim, then up a stairway to another hall, and finally to a veritable jewelbox of an apartment, as fine as any rooms in the best houses of Philadelphia or New York—nay, comparable to the great abodes of Europe. The first chamber was a sitting parlor, walls of the same blue and cream, with furniture so magnificent that the stuff of our American workshops would have compared as mere packing crates. Beautiful paintings in the manner of Watteau and Fragonard adorned the walls—playful maidens upon swings, et cetera. Gilt girandoles decorated with cut-crystal lusters held lighted candles atop the polished side tables. A Chinese carpet of rose and mint-green floral motifs ensplendored the floor.

“I am dreaming,” I mumbled in wonder.

“I hope you find these rooms satisfactory,” LeBoeuf said in what he could not have failed to realize was a stupendous understatement. “Come, gentlemen….”

We followed him about the suite whilst our host gestured at the accommodations: two bedrooms, one decorated with green satin wallpaper set amid burnished mahogany panels; the other furbished in sunny tones of yellow, with wallpaper depicting an Arcadian pastoral opposite the canopied bed. A bolt of lightning illuminated it brightly for a moment.

“The choice is yours, gentlemen,” LeBoeuf told us.

“I like the yellow,” I answered at once.

“Sammy…” Uncle reproved me.

LeBoeuf was already ten steps ahead of us. Between the two bedrooms was a dressing chamber worthy of an Old World sovereign, containing a painted tin bathing tub, shaving stands, and floor-to-ceiling-length mirrors. I barely recognized the scrofulous vagabond in grimy linens and two weeks' growth of fuzzy beard that was my own sorry image in the glass. Uncle winced at the sight of himself.

“I am so happy to have visitors from ... the world,” our host said, pressing together his long-fingered hands as though in prayer, “but in such a hurry were we to escape the storm, I have failed to learn your names.”

We supplied them.

LeBoeuf gasped as though struck a blow, reaching for his jabot with one hand while steadying himself against the arm of a ball-and-claw-footed chair with the other.

“William Walker, did you say?” he addressed Uncle with the profoundest reverence. “
The
William Walker? Of Philadelphia, America?”

“Thine humble servant,” Uncle informed him.

“I am—how you say—overblown! The great herbalist himself! Father of New World botany! Correspondent of Olaf Lagerlöf and the best scientific minds of Europe?”

“A mere putterer and potterer,” Uncle replied bashfully.

“What a stroke of fortune!” LeBoeuf continued. “I cannot suppose that you noticed the modest plantings…?”

“On the contrary, sir, I observed them with the greatest interest. Thy garden is elegantly made.”

“You make me blush,” LeBoeuf said, smiling boyishly, and trying to hide that smile behind his lace sleeve. “I am the merest amateur. But enough of this chatter, gentlemen, for you are wet and uncomfortable.”

He clapped his hands. A train of Indian servants filed into the bathing chamber with steaming pots of water and emptied them into the tub. One of them stropped a razor and mixed up a foamy bowl of lather. The floor seemed to shift slightly under me, and a deep groan as of creaking timbers resounded through the apartment. Another bolt of lightning flickered in the windows, playing across the beautiful furnishings, the inscrutable faces of the Indians, and the beaming visage of LeBoeuf.

“She lists somewhat in heavy weather,” he apologized. “But do not fear. Chateau Félicité has ridden out many a storm, and much worse too.”

“This place … is a wonder of the world!” I blurted.

“We like it,” LeBoeuf said, then sighed. “Well, I am glad that it pleases you, messieurs. Dinner is at eight. I know your journey has been long and arduous. Bathe and rest. We shall talk later. Oh, how happy I am!”

And with that, our host M. LeBoeuf departed for some other compartment of his incredible floating palace, leaving us to the Indians with their gleaming razors.

At precisely seven forty-five, according to the giltwood clock on the mantle, I was roused from a nap by an Indian servant. Laid out for me was a spanking clean suit of apple-green silk smallclothes and matching frock coat, all in the prewar style and therefore quaint. I met Uncle in our common parlor, and how elegant he looked in a similar silken outfit, only of embossed cerulean blue.

“Why, we look like a pair of ambassadors at a royal court,” I twitted him, so delighted was I, but Uncle made a face.

“'Tis foppish,” he said. “I prefer the quieter colors, thy buffs, grays, and umbers.”

“You look splendid,” said I, passing him a salver of salted pecans that had been left for us on a table.

“Ben Franklin liked to fop about the French court in the old days,” he recalled, with a look of fond nostalgia in his eyes.

An Indian materialized as from thin air, startling both of us. He indicated that we should follow him, and we did so, through that labyrinth of corridors to another part of the palace, whence we arrived at two massive cherrywood doors, which he flung open by their brass handles. Within was a glittering dining room with walls of rose-pink satin, sconced candles burning in gilt fixtures, and a pair of crystal chandeliers.

At a long table napped in embroidered linen and set with crystal and silver and a beautiful blue porcelain service were our host and three others. LeBoeuf stood behind the seat at the head of the table. To his right was that selfsame Indian officer who had led the flotilla of dugouts that had captured us. He was now dressed in a clean linen shirt—no frock or waistcoat—and though unpainted still looked very much the savage, with his bristling roach of hair and its dangling feathers. Across the table from him, that is, to LeBoeuf's left hand, was a young man of about my own age. He was not prepossessing—a plump, outsized, poor-complected, dull-eyed boy with a body like unto an huge pear, and an head so small and pointed in comparison that it looked like a filbert. His mouth hung slightly agape.

Far more appealing was the lady across the table from him—that is, next to the Indian. She was dressed in a diaphanous gown, a fashionable Grecian, gauzy thing, the neckline of which revealed a deep cleft of her rising and falling bosom. It was so sheer, in fact, as to admit the shadows of those roseate circlets to which, like targets, a youth's eyes are helplessly drawn. Her long neck was creamy white, dotted here and there with little velvety moles. Her rich auburn hair was coiffed simply, in the classical mode, pinned up at the back, but with invitingly loose wisps curling about her temples as though she was just roused from a slumber. Her eyes, long-lashed and dark as onyx, reflected the dancing light of the candelabra. It was devilishly hard to calculate her age. She wore an expression of wit and intelligence that evinced experience in the world, yet her beauty alone might have tamed an howling wilderness.

“Ah,” LeBoeuf exclaimed upon our entrance, “our guests arrive!” And he stepped forward to greet us. “Of course, you have already met my trusted aide-de-camp, Yago,” he said, as the Indian nodded crisply our way. “Here is proof positive that the aborigine of North America can be raised to the level of a gentleman,” he flattered his adjutant. One could detect a very complex and interdependent relation between the two.

The beautiful woman coughed daintily.

“May I present my beloved wife,” LeBoeuf continued. She stepped forward to offer her hand. Flustered, I bent to kiss it in the European manner, but it was deftly withdrawn just before my lips made contact. My knees knocked. Had I made a gaffe?

“Enchanté,”
she said in the husky voice of a female at the apex of maturity.

“Madame,” Uncle said with a bow.

My stomach growled so loudly that all present must have heard it.

“The two of you are famished, no doubt,” LeBoeuf said and clapped his hands. “O, yes, permit me to introduce my ward, Lou-Lou,” he gestured at the pear-shaped young man to his left. “In English now, my boy.”

“Good night,” Lou-Lou said, an imbecilic smile lighting his bovine face. He remained at his place, however.

“Lou-Lou,” LeBoeuf frowned at his ward. “Remember your lesson. Come now: once again.”

“Good evening?” the young man ventured to correct himself.

“That's better,” LeBoeuf said. “He has so little opportunity to practice, you understand.”

“Of course,” Uncle said, as a troop of Choctaw waiters marched in bearing trays of steaming delectables and ewers of claret. We have blundered into heaven, I thought, as we took our seats at table.

The bill of fare was so sumptuous as to render one of Judge Ravenel's hearty, homespun suppers a mere feeding of hungry animals in comparison. To begin: a satiny, piquant sorrel soup; then quenelles of catfish finished in wine sauce; rolled, stuffed flank of buffalo smothered in morels; braised endive; pecan pudding and fresh oranges—grown in LeBoeuf's very courtyard.

“I am sorry that the circumstances of your conveyance here were shrouded in such mystery,” LeBoeuf told us, dandling a morsel of buffalo on his fork. “So deprived are we of cultivated society here that I cast my net to draw in all the fish who swim up the river. But such a catch as William Walker, the great botanist! It leaves me—how you say—
palpitant!
”

“You flatter me, sir,” Uncle replied. “Thine house is a marvel. Never in my wildest dreams would I have conjured such a magnificent thing in the watery heart of terra incognita.”

“Poof, it is a prettily painted box compared to your wondrous garden at Philadelphia, monsieur.”

“My reputation is grotesquely inflated, sir,” Uncle countered in unfeigned modesty.

“Not at all,” LeBoeuf persisted, “for I have seen your handiwork with my own eyes.”

“Hast thee visited my garden at Owl's Crossing?”

“Certainement,”
LeBoeuf said. “In '91, shortly after my arrival upon these shores of liberty.”

“What month—do you happen to recall?”

“July.”

“Ah, wild rose time! I was embarked upon my ramble in Labrador just then,” Uncle related.

“My heart was broken, monsieur, for your reputation in Europe is of the highest order and, as you shall see, botanicals are my passion.
Au fait
, you could not have arrived at a more propitious hour, for tonight in the conservatory blooms that rarest of flowers, the century plant.”

“Puya robusta!”
Uncle dropped his fork in astonishment.

“Yes, my American friend. Only once in one hundred years does it send forth its massive stalk and blossom.”

“I have heard tales of this curious species,” Uncle confessed, “but never seen one.”

“Till tonight,” LeBoeuf assured him. “In the forbidding jungles of Mexico, where it lives, the Indians like nothing better than to set the highly inflammable stalk on fire, like a guttering torch.”

Lou-Lou burst out laughing at the idea, brown sauce dribbling down his chin. A moment later, he started to gag. Madame looked on with concern. LeBoeuf patted his back.

“Etes-vous bien?”
he asked the boy dryly.

“Oui, merci,”
Lou-Lou said and resumed wolfing his meal.

“Why do the Indians set the blossom on fire?” I inquired.

LeBoeuf shrugged. “They too must think it is funny,” he said. “In any case, it is a rarity among rarities. This afternoon the bud was as big as my fist. Like the night-blooming cereus”—

“Hylocereus undatus,”
Uncle inserted.

—“it commences its florescence when all daylight has vanished. In approximately an hour, my friends and dear ones, the show will begin.”

“But, how did thee obtain such a treasure?” Uncle asked at the same instant that the champagne made its regal appearance.

“On the frontier,” LeBoeuf said with a gleam in his eyes, “resourcefulness is everything, no?” He raised his glass. “A toast: to our American guests!”

We quaffed the nobility of wines. More servants trooped into the room with our dessert.

“I am anxious to hear what brings the great William Walker thirty leagues up the Tennessee River,” our host essayed.

“A search for botanicals,” Uncle told him, maintaining his caution despite all the wine and flattery.