The Exiles (23 page)

The congregation stood, but Chantel found that her legs were weak, so weak they would hardly hold her. She held the book in her hand, but she could not see it, for her eyes were bleared with tears. She saw people going forward, and when they reached the front, they knelt for prayer. Chantel desperately wanted to get away, and the instant the service was dismissed, she went to her buggy, got in, and drove off.

As she left the church behind, her heart was beating fast. She could not understand what had moved her so. She knew one thing—that she did not know Jesus the way that Neville spoke of. And this frightened her so badly she could hardly drive the team.

Chapter nineteen

Chantel had been so disturbed by her visit to the Methodist church that she did not sleep well. The next morning she got up before dawn, put on one of her oldest dresses, and went down early to breakfast. She was surprised to see Neville sitting in the kitchen, eating a biscuit and talking to Clarice.

“Well, good morning,” Neville said, turning to her. “You’re up early.”

“So are you. Why did you get up this early, Neville?”

“Oh, I like to get up before daylight and just get ready for the day.

I’ll prowl around the house at home. I call it the cobwebby hours of the morning.”

“You sit down, and I’ll cook you some eggs,” Clarice said. “Do you want bacon or ham or sausage?”

Chantel sat down, but she ate little. From time to time she glanced at Neville, who seemed at ease speaking to Clarice about a trip he had made to New York. She listened with interest as she moved about the kitchen doing her work.

As soon as Chantel had finished the meal, she said, “I’ve got to go over the plantation today. It’s time to matalay the cane.”

“Matalay? What’s that?”

“Come along, and I’ll show you.”

The two left the big house and went by the slave quarters. Neville knew very little about the actual work on a sugar plantation, and he was interested in every detail. They found Simon, the overseer, getting the workers ready to cut the cane.

Chantel explained, “They’re going to lay all this cane out on the ground and cover it with a layer of dirt. It will sprout pretty soon, and we’ll get next year’s seed cane to grow the new crop.”

Next the two moved toward the sugarhouse, a large, open structure consisting mainly of a roof with a huge chimney that was already sending billows of black smoke into the sky. When they moved inside, Neville was interested in the massive rollers powered by a steam engine. As the workers shoved the cane into the rollers, it forced the juice out into vats. These vats were then heated until the water content evaporated. What was left was unrefined sugar.

“We pack this sugar into wooden barrels to be shipped to market.”

“It’s a noisy place, isn’t it?” Neville said, shouting over the roar of the engines.

“Yes, and it’s dangerous, too. Someone’s always getting hurt from that steam—and broken rollers can injure the men who work on the machines.”

As the day wore on, they made several visits to different parts of the field and then would return to see what was going on in the sugarhouse. The noise of the machinery often reached deafening levels, and the operation gave off a sweetish odor that wafted over the entire plantation.

Chantel pointed out the dark patch in the bottom of the vats, left over from the raw brown sugar.

“That’s molasses,” she said. “You’ve had it on biscuits, I suppose.”

“Yes, but I didn’t really know where it came from.”

At noon all the workers stopped to eat lunches they had brought in small cloth bags. A water boy went around taking fresh water to them.

While they ate, Chantel and Neville sat under a large oak tree heavily laden with Spanish moss. She didn’t talk much, and Neville himself felt under a strain. As he studied her, he tried to sort out his feelings for Chantel. He knew he had a love for her, but what kind of a love? He could remember the first affection he had felt when she was only a child and lonely from the loss of her mother and her sister. Then, as she had grown up, he had helped her with her lessons, still with the affection of a grown man for a child.

But he knew something had changed. Even in her old dress she made a winsome sight as she sat there under the tree, her legs drawn up under her. There was still something childlike about her, an innocence that he found most appealing. But since the night he had kissed her and held her, he no longer thought of her as a child. Now as they sat there, he thought again of Yves Gaspard, and the thought worried him.

He tried to engage Chantel in conversation, and she responded, but he knew she was troubled. Finally he asked her, “What’s the matter? You seem a little out of sorts today.”

“Oh, nothing.”

“Come now, Chantel. I can tell when something’s wrong.”

Chantel wanted to ask him to tell her more about heaven and what he really felt about his religion. She knew that it was a very personal thing with him, that his whole heart was in it. She longed for such a feeling herself, but did not know how to ask. So she put him off, and the moment passed.

Evening came, and the slaves were down in their quarters. From their rocking chairs on the front porch, Neville and Chantel could hear the sound of their singing. They listened for a while to the mixture of their songs with that of the crickets and the frogs.

“I like it at night like this, sitting here and just listening to the singing,” Chantel said. She had bathed and changed clothes, and Neville smelled the fresh cleanness and the slight fragrance of lilacs that she always wore. She was looking out over the grounds, and her profile was turned to him. He admired the clean lines of her jaw and the firm roundness of her neck. Her hair was down, and he knew that she had washed it, for he could also smell the sweet freshness of the soap she had used.

Neville Harcourt was not a man of impulse. He had developed an analytical mind, a necessary piece of equipment for the practice of law. But there was another level to him, as there is to every man, which goes beyond reason and explanation. He had been trying to reason with himself about his feelings for Chantel Fontaine for days now, and had arrived nowhere. The more he tried to approach it as a fine point of law or a mathematical problem that could finally be solved, the more confused he became. Now as he sat beside her, Neville suddenly realized that he would never be able to figure out his feelings as he could analyze a case before a judge or a jury. He gave up on analysis. Instead, he reached out and touched Chantel’s arm. When she turned to him, her eyes were open wide with surprise. He knew that there was only one way. He had to speak what was in his heart.

“Chantel, I want to ask you something.”

Chantel knew he had been troubled, for he had said little, and she wanted to help if she could. “What is it, Neville? Is there something I can do?”

“Yes, I think there’s something you
must
do.”

Chantel put her hand over his as he clasped her forearm. “You’ve been so kind to me. Anything that I can, you know I would do.”

Neville Harcourt felt suddenly like a man on a high perch with a body of water down below, trying to make up his mind whether to dive or not. If he did not dive, he would be safe. If he did launch himself out, there would be no turning back. He might be badly hurt if he did not hit the water right.

Finally he said, “Chantel, I want you to think of me as a man—” He hesitated slightly and then said, “As a man you might marry.”

Chantel had not been expecting his request. She stared at him, conscious that her heart was beating faster. Her head swarmed as she thought of all the years that he had been so kind to her, but she knew her answer was going to hurt him. She had more admiration for this man than any she had ever known, except her own father, and now she understood for the first time what it meant to be a young, attractive woman who men would come to.

Finally Chantel moved her arm so that his hand fell away. “Why, Neville,” she stammered, “I—I’ve never thought of you that way. And I’m sure we’re more like brother and sister.”

“Perhaps so when you were a child, but you’re not a child now.”

Frantically Chantel tried to think of some way to ease the shock of the blow, and she grasped onto something that had been on the edge of her consciousness.

“I’m not in love with you, Neville, and I don’t think you’re really in love with me. But even if that were true, we could never marry.”

“Why not?”

“Because I’m a Catholic and you’re a Protestant. You know better than I how those two would mix.”

Neville, of course, had gone over and over this, and he had no ready answer for her. He said quietly, “I know that’s a problem, but if two people love each other, they will find a way to make things work.”

“Would you become a Catholic?”

“No,” Neville had to admit, “I never could.”

“Well, I’ve been a Catholic all my life. You can’t expect me to change either. This is too big a gap, Neville.” She said gently, “You’re such a fine man. You’ve been my best friend, and you’ve helped me in so many ways. But there are too many differences, and, really, I don’t love you. Not—not in that way, Neville.”

A numbness came over Neville, then he felt the pain of rejection. He tried to speak and could not for a time. Finally he turned to her and said, “I’m not taking this as the final answer.”

“Oh, but you must, Neville! You really must.”

And then out of his pain, Neville felt a sense of something very much like anger. It was not anger exactly, but more like fear, not for himself but for Chantel. He knew he had to speak, and he knew that what he said would not be well received. But he was not a man to shirk his duty.

“I must say this to you, Chantel. Yves Gaspard is not the man for you.”

Instantly Chantel stood up. “I wouldn’t think you’d do that, Neville—attack a man when he’s not here.”

“I would say exactly the same thing if he were standing right beside you.” Neville stood up and caught her by the shoulder. “You don’t really love him. I know you don’t.”

“You don’t know anything of the sort. Let me go!” Chantel turned and left the porch, walking almost blindly. Tears had come to her eyes, for she knew that she had lost something this night.
Why did he have to say such a thing? Now we can never truly be friends again.

A hundred thoughts raced through her mind, and she ran to her room and threw herself across the bed.

Back on the porch Neville simply stood, bitterness and hurt contending within him.

Chapter twenty

Chantel listened and took in the paintings arranged on the wall of the large room. She had come to the exhibition at Yves’s invitation.

“You must come!” he had urged her as soon as she returned to New Orleans. “I may even sell some paintings, and it doesn’t hurt to have an attractive woman standing there looking at them. It’ll draw men as honey draws flies.”

Chantel had been glad for the distraction. She had been ill at ease ever since Neville had asked her to marry him. He left early the next morning, and for two weeks she had gone about the work of the plantation, trying to bury herself in the activities of restoring the house. But work had not been able to accomplish very much. She could not help going over the scene again and again in her mind. She was naturally tenderhearted and knew that she had given him a severe blow, but there was nothing she could do about it.

She returned to New Orleans to the town house, and at once Yves had welcomed her back and drawn her into the busy world of life in the city. Now she stood at the exhibit listening to him talk about his paintings. Yves wore a colorful costume, which he was able to carry off. He had cream-colored trousers, glistening black boots, and a white shirt with an emerald green neckerchief knotted around his neck. His dark hair glistened and his white teeth flashed as he spoke.

“This fellow here, his name is Martin. He is not a good painter, but he is a good salesman. I wish that I were.”

“I’m sure you’ll be able to sell some paintings. They’re so good. Especially those of the bayou at Fontaine.”

Yves nodded. “I hope you’re right. I would like—” Yves did not finish what he was going to say, and the expression that crossed his face caused Chantel to turn to see what had attracted his attention. She saw a petite but well-shaped woman in a striking blue dress that fitted her form admirably. She was smiling as she approached.

“Dominique,” said Yves, “I’m surprised to see you.”

“It’s good to see you, Yves.”

“May I present Mademoiselle Chantel Fontaine? Chantel, this is Madame Dominique Sagan.”

“I’m glad to meet you,” Chantel said, nodding. The woman was striking. There was a boldness about her looks, and she exuded an aura of sensuality that even an inexperienced young woman like Chantel could feel.

“I came looking for you,” Dominique said.

“I hope you will buy all my paintings,” Yves replied, his eyes fixed on the woman. Suddenly he was aware that Chantel was studying him carefully. “Dominique and I are very old friends,” he said.

“Yes, we are. Before I was married, we were very close friends indeed.”

The words were innocent enough, but something in the woman’s tone caught at Chantel. She listened as the two spoke, and knew she was being left out of the conversation. Then Yves was interrupted by a man who came up and said, “Gaspard, I’d like to talk about buying one of your paintings.”

“Certainement!”
Yves said instantly. As he turned to follow the man, he said, “I’ll be back as soon as I gouge this fellow for all he’s worth.”

As soon as Yves was gone, Dominique Sagan turned her attention on the younger woman. “You have known Yves for a long time?”

“No, not very long.” For some reason Chantel did not want to speak of Yves with this woman.

“Poor Yves, he will never be successful.”

“Why do you say that?” Chantel said, hurt by the remark.

“Oh, Yves has talent—but he lacks determination. I’m sure you’ve noticed it if you’ve known him for long.”

Until that moment Chantel had never admitted this, nor would she allow herself to think of it. But suddenly she recognized that Yves was not a hard worker. He talked about painting a great deal. Indeed, nothing pleased him more than talking about it, but day after day had passed without his touching his brushes at all. He worked spasmodically, sometimes for almost a whole day without stopping. Then he would leave his work and not go back for many days.