CHAPTER 26
Effie carried Lula’s words with her the rest of that day and through the next. They sat with her on the steamboat as they chugged back to New Orleans a day early. Tom said it was because he’d made it round to all the settlements and towns and best get back to update the big bugs on the goings-on here. But Effie knew they’d left on account of her. She’d not managed a smile, not even a fake one, since returning from the old Saulnier plantation.
Only one of you’s here.
Just because he’d not made it to the Union line with her didn’t mean Jonesy was dead. They’d gotten separated was all. By that time of the War, the Yanks held much of southern Louisiana. Maybe he ended up at a different camp. Or stowed away on a boat and made it downriver to New Orleans.
She would search the War records. The enlistment rolls, pension applications, contraband camp filings. Adeline or Samson would know how to get such documents. His name was bound to turn up.
Tom offered to walk her home when their steamer docked at the levee, but Effie declined with a flat no. It struck her only after they departed she ought to have added thank you. Instead of heading up Poydras toward Mrs. Neale’s, she took Canal, then Royal Street into the Quarter. The streets were still crowded, despite summer’s quickening, thick with the smell of hot pepper and roses.
She started toward Adeline’s house, but then realized it was Sunday, the day of Mr. Chauvet’s fête. Samson would be there too. Not an hour had passed in St. James that her thoughts didn’t circle back to him. She found him in the fields, laboring as she had done all those years ago. She found him in the lengthening shadows of the slave cabins, where he too must have hidden from the sweltering heat and sun. She heard the echo of his voice in the sharecroppers’ woeful tales.
But with her wind-snarled hair and travel-rumpled dress, Effie was hardly fit to call at Mr. Chauvet’s. Her feet slowed, and she thought to turn around. Best return to the boardinghouse and wash the St. James mud from between her toes, the stench of river and burning cattails from her skin, and set about polishing her buttons to quiet her mind.
But what of this pressure, threatening like the noxious effluviums of the dead, to bust her from within? Three days gone and only a spattering of new memories to show for it. Nothing that connected her to kin. Only Jonesy. Who’d not been seen or heard from since they’d run away into the swamps.
Had Lula been right? Had Effie been nothing more than a stray to him? Like a wart on a frog. Had she been the reason the patrollers found them?
Effie kept walking, farther into the Quarter. Her arms ached from carrying her travel bag, but she did not slow. Adeline had mentioned St. Phillip Street when speaking of Mr. Chauvet, and she headed there in hopes of finding his house.
She wouldn’t trespass beyond the foyer or tarry long. Wouldn’t ruin the fête with her dour mood and drab attire. She and Adeline could speak in the carriageway, the kitchen, out on the street. Effie didn’t care. She only needed Adeline to tell her Jonesy wasn’t dead. To reassure her they would find his name on some ledger or roll, even as they’d failed to do with her kin.
Then Adeline would fetch Samson for her and he’d walk her home. How foolish she’d been to dither over his proposal. Would that she were already his wife and needn’t part with him on Mrs. Neale’s steps and pass night’s hours alone.
The afternoon sunlight was waning when she reached St. Phillip Street. Several stately townhouses lined the road. She asked a flower peddler if she knew which residence belonged to a Monsieur Chauvet. The girl, a dark-skinned Creole with dirt-stained palms, shrugged and shook her head.
“He’s hosting a party. You might have seen a line of carriages earlier.”
The girl pointed to a wide, three-story home down the way. Effie bought a gardenia bloom from the girl for her trouble and threaded the stem through one of the buttonholes of her jacket. A small improvement to her tired appearance. And certainly to the smell of burning coal and river weed and mud that clung to the fibers of her dress.
Two homes the size of Mrs. Neale’s could fit within the residence the peddler had directed her to. White molding crowned the brick facade with a wrought-iron balcony stretching the width of the second-story. More molding and a fanlight window capped the front door.
Voices sounded from within. Laughter. Clanking glasses and the strings of a mandolin. Effie hesitated, wishing herself across town in the quiet of her small room, but desperate to see Adeline and Samson.
A servant in a crisp, tailored suit answered when she knocked. He eyed her like she were a fishmonger trying to sell last week’s catch, and bid her wait—not within the chandelier-lit hallway, but on the steps—while he gave Mr. Chauvet her name.
Effie smoothed the flyaway hairs about her temples and adjusted the gardenia at her breast. Through the half-opened door, she could see into the parlor, where several guests lingered by an unlit fireplace carved of dark green marble. Others sat on velvet-upholstered chairs and at a small, polished-oak tea table.
The servant returned, and with him Mr. Chauvet.
“Mademoiselle Jones, such a pleasure to see you again.” He didn’t scowl over her dress and frazzled hair the way his servant had, but took her arm and ushered her in. “But you’re meant to be in St. James, n’est-ce pas?”
He nodded to her travel bag and his servant reached to take it, but Effie waved him off. “I don’t mean to stay. My apologies for intruding at all. Our trip ended early and I’d hoped to speak with Adeline a moment.”
Mr. Chauvet held fast her arm, despite surely noticing the dust rubbing off onto his sleeve. “She’ll be delighted to see you. She’s always her best self around you. But you must come in, at least for a moment, and have some champagne and hors d’oeuvres.”
Reluctantly, Effie laid her bag beside the lacquered hall table and strode with him into the parlor. Looks of curiosity and surprise flickered over the faces of his guests. A frown, a knit brow, a puckered mouth. But none let their smiles lapse for long.
“I hope it wasn’t some misfortune that cut short your trip,” Mr. Chauvet said, handing her a flute of champagne from a passing tray. “You look rather upset.”
“No, only tired.”
They passed from one room of the double parlor to the next. Silky red drapery festooned the windows, and plush carpet cushioned her step. The stark contrast to the modest cabins in St. James, where flannel rags covered the windows and spiders crawled through gaps in the unfinished floorboards, made Effie dizzy.
The champagne didn’t help. Nor her dizziness nor this unshakable feeling of guilt.
“Adeline was here but a moment ago.” He looked around the room and through the French doors into the sunlit loggia. “Perhaps out back in the gardens.”
A waiter passed bearing a silver tray with clam fritters and tiny beefsteak pies. Mr. Chauvet grabbed a fritter and Effie did likewise to be polite. She tasted parsley and nutmeg and the slightest sweetness of cream. The rich food churned in her empty stomach.
“Your friend Mr. Greene is here too,” Mr. Chauvet said, leading her toward the garden. “Having some political set-to with Monsieur Rousseve in the study, I believe. It was providence making his acquaintance at the cemetery, if one might say such a thing without being indelicate—”
The clank of shattering stoneware from somewhere within the bowels of the house stopped them in the loggia. A toppled vase in the parlor, perhaps. The urn in the hallway.
“Soirées,” he said, shaking his head.
“You don’t enjoy them?”
“Sincèrement, I’d just as soon a quiet afternoon in my study.” He let go her arm. “Excuse me just a moment, mademoiselle.”
Effie liked him all the better for his answer. If Adeline must marry for name and money, Mr. Chauvet was a worthy choice. Kind and frank as he’d been, Effie itched to be gone from this place as soon as she’d seen Adeline.
She wandered through the garden. Save for staff bustling to and fro from the kitchen, the courtyard was empty. She wound her way back through the loggia and parlor, leaving her half-drunk glass of champagne among several empty flutes on the marble-topped tea table. A waiter passed with more food, but though the aroma wafting from his tray made her stomach rumble, she’d settle for cold ham from Mrs. Neale’s larder.
Across the wide center hall was the study. Bookshelves lined the walls. A fat, polished desk with legs curved like S’s sat to one side. Cigar smoke curled through the air. Several men lounged within, but no Samson. He and Mr. Rousseve must have taken their discussion elsewhere.
At the far end of the center hall curved a staircase. Effie hesitated, then ascended the steps. The noise of the party diminished as she climbed, the music and the banter, the footfalls and clatter. She walked down another hallway to a door leading to the front balcony. Light, colored pink from the sunset, spilled in through the flanking windows.
For the first time since arriving, Effie relaxed enough to draw breath into the bottom lobes of her lungs. Gardenia perfumed the inhale, heavy and fragrant, though the edges of the petals had already begun to brown.
She’d passed several rooms on her way to the windows, all quiet and closed. Adeline wasn’t up here, but Effie lingered a moment more in the rosy light to bolster her nerves for another pass through the parlor before giving up and going home.
Then, from one of the rooms, Effie heard laughter, soft and tremulous, a timid intrusion into the silence. She followed the sound to a door, not fully closed as she’d thought at first pass, but cracked a hairsbreadth open. More laughter. Familiar now that she was up close. Adeline’s.
Effie raised her hand to knock, but another sound, a voice, deep and rich, stayed her knuckles.
“That’s all you do? Strike these keys and the corresponding letter is printed on a piece of paper?”
Effie flattened herself against the door and peered through the crack. This room looked similar to the study below. More bookcases, another desk, but this one smaller and more modestly appointed. Mr. Chauvet’s private office, perhaps? Adeline and Samson stood side by side gazing at a contraption on the desk. It reminded Effie of a sewing machine, with painted paneling and boxy shape, but a roller sat atop. Samson leaned over and pressed a button, one of many seated at the near end of the machine. A clicking sound and movement atop the roller.
“Bully! That’s something,” Samson said. “How does it work?”
Adeline shrugged, her expression half as animated as Samson’s. “Je ne sais pas.”
He took a step closer, turning from the machine to face her. “What’s it called again?”
“Typing machine, typewriter, something like that.”
“Have you tried it?” He moved behind her then, so close her bustle flattened against his legs, and guided her arm toward the machine.
Adeline gave another weak laugh. “Really, monsieur, I’m sure I can manage on my own.” But she didn’t wriggle away.
Together, they struck another key. The sound made Effie start.
Adeline turned and batted his chest. “A crackling fire is more impressive.”
He moved nearer still. “It might not be the most impressive thing in the room, but it’s close.”
“Oh?” Adeline fluttered her lashes and bit her bottom lip.
Effie’s brain struggled to process the disparate evidence presented her. Samson and Adeline disliked the other. Both had made a point of telling her so. He met none of her criteria for a suitable beau. And she hadn’t the slightest care for politics and progress—the very things he lived for. But they were standing so close, the pupils of their eyes wide and hungry.
Samson planted his hands on the desktop, caging Adeline between his arms.
Downstairs, the mandolin player started up a new tune. Someone joined on the piano. Effie’s knees seemed to have lost all cartilage and wobbled bone upon bone. No amount of rationalizing could change what lay before her.
Samson leaned in and brushed his lips along Adeline’s jaw.
“Mr. Greene, please.” She hit his chest again, but this time with even less force than before. “Think of Effie.”
The sound of her name stopped Effie’s heart mid-squeeze.
But not Samson. His lips moved from her jaw to her mouth. For several slurred-together seconds, Adeline stood like a porcelain doll within his embrace, unmoving and rigid. Her eyes strained toward the ceiling and squeezed shut as if she shared in Effie’s pain. Then a sigh. Resignation? Desire? Her lips livened and she kissed him back. Effie turned away.
The lush hallway carpet silenced her footfalls. She walked slowly at first, each step a labor. But by the time Effie reached the stairs her feet couldn’t move fast enough. She had to get away. Away from the sound of their lips meeting and breath quickening. Away from the sight of their bodies pressed one against the other. Away from that feeling of having been gutted like the bodies of old and filled with sawdust.
At the bottom of the stairs, she nearly collided with Mr. Chauvet.
“Mademoiselle Jones, are you quite well?”
“I . . . I have to go.”
“But I haven’t yet found Adeline for you. I know she’s—”
“Upstairs.” Effie swallowed the taste of nutmeg and bile. She grabbed her travel bag from the floor and started toward the door. Before leaving, she turned, squared her shoulders, and looked Mr. Chauvet dead in the eyes. “Upstairs kissing Mr. Greene.”