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Stories, Drama, Poems, Essays
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THAT AFTERNOON Aimée and Madeleine shared a serving of coffee and various sweet things with the uncle and nephew. An immediate sympathy made them converse almost as intimate friends. The two gentlemen had much to say about their ancestors on the island, their own previous lives, the Colonel as soldier and Nicholas as seaman, and their taking up the commercial line, following their forebears, in ’63, without however becoming ship-owners. Aimée, on her side, entertained them with anecdotes about her grandfather, the second Baron de Fapignac, who had lost a leg fighting the British at the Battle of Blenheim, but not without making the enemy pay dearly for that destroyed limb. “Our antipathy for the English has roots, you see!” she exclaimed. And later, at an appropriate moment: “Does not your heart beat to take up arms again, but this time in the interest of Liberty?” However, the Colonel only replied “Oh, yes,” with the voice of a man giving assent to a vague, remotely interesting philosophical proposition. Still, it was a beginning.
The Colonel, as promised, made arrangements for the ladies to meet with other good families of Nantucket. This was not hard to do. A Marquise walking about town silked in pink and blue, and alongside her a lovely girl with touches of yellow and green, aroused enormous interest high and low on the island. The Quaker women stared, some muttering about whores and Babylon, others sighing forgiveness. Their husbands averted their eyes, or pretended to. The Presbyterian ladies, on their side, would not admit that they were surprised and outmatched in elegance; the Marquise, as far as they were concerned, was one of their own, though, of course, a Papist.
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