Читать книгу Life & Other Passing Moments - Victor J. Banis - Страница 11

ANNE’S WEDDING NIGHT

Author’s Note: This is France between the revolutions. Anne has been jilted by her lover and, to save her family from financial ruin, married to the wealthy Baron de Brussac, whom she despises. It is her wedding night.

It was not likely that Anne would remain morose for very long.

She was young and high-spirited, used to laughing a great deal and enjoying life. Moreover, it was a warm summer night and a ball was in progress; this was the native land, in a manner of speaking, of her soul, and she trod it with the expertise of one born to the realm.

She danced with her papa and after him with a gentleman as old as him who regarded her with the frankest lust in his eyes.

And she danced with the soldier who had kissed her hand.

His name was Guy, and he came from Provence. When he smiled, he smiled with the languor and indolence of the hot southern coast, as Italian as it was French. He told her she was as beautiful as the banks of flowers that bloomed above the sea there. She laughed delightedly and sipped the champagne he brought her when the dance was ended.

Already she was enjoying the party more; after all, what had changed? She was married, that was all. And she was rich. She did not have much grasp of money matters and so had only the vaguest idea of how rich she was, but she was sure her new husband’s wealth was vast.

If she wanted, she could have balls such as this every week—even every day. Of course, they would not be wedding balls, but this was Paris; one needed no excuse to throw a party.

With her husband’s wealth and her own beauty and charm, she would become the most famous hostess in Paris. Perhaps she would have a salon, like Mademoiselle Rivière. People—men—would vie with one another for invitations, and she would lead them in glittering conversation; She did not know exactly what was talked about at such salons, but she had never been at a loss for words. She would have the most famous, the most interesting people—and, of course, the handsomest men.

She suddenly imagined Émile standing at the door of her home (they would need something grander than this townhouse, something more suited to the entertainments she had in mind), pleading for entrance. At last she would let him come in. He would be without Louise, of course. Should she let him dance with her or not? Perhaps she would let him suffer while she flirted with all the handsome men flocking around her, courting her, courting her favor.

Her husband was conspicuously absent from these fancies.

She sipped more champagne. She danced with the minister of fine arts. She danced with a young man who said he had been to America.

And she danced with the young soldier again.

The third time she danced with him, he held her very close and whispered in her ear, “Aren’t you warm from all this dancing?”

“A little.”

“Let’s go outside for a breath of air.”

“I....”

“No one will notice. Look, here we are.”

She saw that while they danced he had steered her deftly to the doors that opened onto the terrace at the side of the house, away from the gawking crowd in front. Now, taking her hesitation for assent, he led her out onto the darkened terrace.

She would have objected, but the fresh air did feel so good. She had not realized how warm and flushed she was from the champagne, the dancing. She felt giddy and breathless. Was this what it felt like to be tipsy?

“Why are you so sad?” he asked.

“Does it show?”

“Yes—to me, at least.”

She did not answer. She had stopped in the rectangle of light that fell through the open door, but he led her toward the deeper shadows under the chestnut tree.

“I was thinking of running away,” she said. Actually she had not thought of it at all until the words had seemed to slip from her lips, but now she considered the possibility. What would they say if she just kept on her way, out the postern gate, through the darkened streets to—to where?

“Perhaps your marriage will not be so bad,” he said.

“Perhaps, perhaps. I’m sick of perhaps,” she said. “If only one could know....” She was talking nonsense and knew it. She couldn’t think why her head was so muddled.

“That’s always the question, isn’t it—whether to trade a known present, however unpleasant, for an unknown future.”

But for her it was too late, the trade had already been made. The future was unknown and the past was lost to her.

“Anne,” he murmured. They had reached the deep shadows under the tree, and he turned her toward him. She had a sense of déjà-vu, of having been here before. The warm, scented darkness; the handsome young man. He stood half in shadow, half in moonlight, so that she could see the shiny buttons of his uniform but not his face. He was so tall, so broad-shouldered...she hadn’t meant to kiss him.

“Émile....”

If he noticed that she called him by another’s name, or cared, he gave no sign. He gathered her into his arms, his lips fastening hungrily upon her trembling ones.

But he wasn’t Émile, and this wasn’t the same; this was foolish at best. She put her hands flat against his chest, meaning to end the kiss, to insist that they return to the ball inside. In a flash of insight rare for her, she saw how badly she was behaving and was ashamed of her actions.

She felt the young soldier suddenly stiffen. He took a step back from her, so abruptly that she swayed off balance and had to put her hand on his arm.

“Please,” she said, before she realized that he was not looking at her at all, but beyond her. His face was pale, the laughter gone from his eyes.

“Yes, please indeed, Monsieur.”

It was her husband’s voice, icy cold. She turned to find he had followed them onto the terrace. He regarded them both with a look of barely contained fury.

“Monsieur le Baron....” The guardsman attempted to speak but Jean ignored him and, turning his back, went to the door opening onto the ball. Anne felt a strange surprise to see that it was still going on exactly as it had been.

“Philippe!” Jean barked his majordomo’s name. Several of the guests looked curiously in his direction, but he ignored them.

“Philippe!”

The majordomo appeared, hurrying through the crowd.

“Have the carriage brought around at once,” Jean ordered.

The servant looked confused.

“At once,” Jean repeated. He turned back to his wife and the soldier.

“As for you,” he addressed Guy, “you will leave my house immediately, before I have you whipped like a dog and thrown into the streets.”

The guardsman was twenty years young and nearly a head taller; ordinarily the young man would have challenged such a remark, but something about the look in the other man’s eyes and the tone of his voice gave him pause.

He clicked his heels smartly and bowed. “Monsieur, my apologies,” he said. He strode briskly away, disappearing inside without so much as a backward glance at Anne. She might have been, she thought, some fille de joie that he had picked up off the streets.

She was left alone in the moonlight with her enraged husband. Shock and fear had cleared her head of any befuddlement, and she stared wide-eyed back at him as he turned his attention to her.

“My dear,” he said, speaking with frigid contempt, “did you really think I would allow you to give to someone else what I paid so dearly for?”

She managed the courage to say, “How dare you!” but he was not interested in her remarks or her indignation. He seized her wrist in a grip so harsh it sent a jolt of pain up her arm.

“Come with me,” he said.

“Let go of me, I won’t.”

But she did, because she had no choice. He fairly dragged her back into the ball and through it, past the startled faces of their wedding guests. He looked neither right nor left, nor did he so much as pause, even when her mother came running up white-faced.

“What’s wrong?” Mama cried, but they rushed right on by her.

“Where are you taking me?” Anne demanded; he made no answer.

A lackey rushed to open the front door, and for a moment Anne thought he meant to have her whipped and thrown into the street as he had threatened to do with the soldier.

The carriage came clattering into the courtyard, the driver hastily trying to button his coat as he came. It stopped, and before the footman could hurry down to open the door, Jean had dragged her to it and, throwing the door open, shoved her forcibly inside.

He’s mad, she thought, terrified. She looked desperately at the crowd that had followed them to the door, but although they all watched in astonishment, no one moved to intervene. This was her husband, after all, dragging her about like a piece of baggage. Husbands did what they would with their wives; it was the order of things. And it sometimes made for delicious gossip.

Jean spoke to the driver—she was in too much of a state to even try to hear what he said—and then he, too, climbed into the carriage, slamming the door, and a moment later it lumbered off, clattering across the stones of the courtyard. The gates were opened; the crowd outside parted before them. The wedding guests gaped after them, some of them bewildered, others plainly amused. Tiens, they would not soon forget this wedding ball.

For Anne, it was too much to bear—the humiliation, being dragged away in the middle of the ball and carried off to God alone knew where, still dressed in her wedding gown. She began to cry, sobbing noisily into her hands. Once he moved on the seat beside her, and she threw herself into the far corner of the carriage.

“Don’t touch me,” she cried, but apparently he had no interest in touching her; he was only making himself more comfortable.

She became increasingly angry as they went along. She was cool without a wrap of any kind. She had no idea how long they would be out because she had no idea where they were going and disdained to ask. They drove through the darkened streets of Paris, only occasionally passing another carriage or some foot traffic. She could hear shouts in the distance from time to time. Once she thought she saw a pale glow in the sky and wondered if it could already be dawn, but she dismissed the idea at once; she knew it could be no more than midnight.

The coach came to a halt. Glancing out, she saw some soldiers on horseback talking to the driver. Her husband got out of the carriage and went forward to talk to them himself. She leaned as far out the window as she dared, trying to get the gist of their conversation.

“...Another uprising,” she heard, and, “They’ve barricaded the streets...burning...fighting going on....”

One word, snatched from all the others, made her shudder and draw fearfully back into the carriage; she heard one of the soldiers say, “Revolution.”

Another revolution! It struck terror into her aristocratic heart. It had been forty years since the Great Revolution, but no one of her class had ever forgotten what happened. She had not been born then, of course, but she knew the stories. Her own grandfather on her mother’s side had taken that horrible ride to the guillotine, and one of her aunts had been slain by the mobs. Surely not even her madman of a husband would risk remaining out on a night such as this one.

The soldiers rode away. Looking out, she saw her husband talking earnestly to the driver. She heard him say, “We’ll take the rue Bercy,” as he turned and strode back to the carriage.

“Are we going home?” she asked when the carriage started up again. They were the first words she had spoken to him since ordering him not to touch her.

He did not answer, but when he turned to look at her, she cringed inwardly. The answer was written plain on his face. He hated her. He would not care if they were killed by the Parisian mobs.

“In the name of God,” she cried, “if you will not think of me, think of yourself, what good—”

She stopped short in mid-sentence. The carriage had been speeding along, but now as they rounded a corner it halted again. They had only to glance from the window to see why.

The street ahead was barricaded with wood, furniture, even an overturned buggy. Standing on either side of the barricade were peasants, armed with guns, pitchforks, axes, even rocks. A block or so beyond them a house was afire, its flames providing an eerie light that silhouetted the peasants and sent their shadows dancing crazily along the street.

Shouts went up as the men at the barricade saw the carriage. She heard someone shout, “You there, driver, bring the coach up here where we can have a look.”

Her husband leaned out the window and called to the driver, “Turn around.”

The carriage began to turn, the driver reining the horses forward, back, forward again, trying to work the vehicle around in the narrow space. The horses whinnied nervously, scenting the danger.

The men at the barricade shouted again when they saw what was happening, and several began to run toward the carriage. Anne’s window was turned toward them now and she watched in fascinated terror as they came closer, closer—she could see the sweat gleaming on their faces and she fancied she saw the maniacal light in their eyes.

One of the men raised a gun. “Stop, or we’ll shoot,” he yelled.

The carriage was around. The driver cracked the whip and the horses leapt forward, sending the carriage rocking and swaying wildly.

“Get back, you fool,” her husband said, yanking her roughly out of the way of the window.

A gun fired. Something struck the rear of the coach. Anne sat huddled in terror as they clattered pell-mell through the now-haunted streets. The coach tilted crazily back and forth, knocking her first this way and then that.

What if they overturned? What if those men caught them? She had horrible visions of herself dragged screaming through the streets, led to a waiting guillotine. She began to cry again.

“Oh, Mama, where is Mama?” she sobbed hysterically.

The carriage skittered around yet another corner, and again came to an abrupt stop. Two men blocked the way, one with a pitchfork in his hands, the other with a musket. The street was little more than an alley, too narrow for them to go around the men or to attempt to turn again.

They were trapped!

Anne whimpered helplessly into her hands, unable to prevent herself from watching wide-eyed as the two men approached. The one with the pitchfork remained in the center of the road in front of the horses, blocking the way. The other, with the musket, came to the carriage. He said something to the driver, then, barely pausing, came back to where they sat. His face suddenly appeared in the window. She saw that he was looking directly at her, his eyes feverish with excitement, his lips curved in an ugly snarl of a smile. He laughed, and it made her want to scream with terror.

She did not see the pistol appear in her husband’s hands, nor where it came from. He suddenly lifted it to the window and fired point-blank into the grinning face.

The face seemed to explode from within. Drops of blood and pieces of something else she did not want to name spattered inside the carriage, staining the leather upholstery and the white skirt of her wedding gown.

She slumped back into the corner with a sigh and fainted dead away.

(Excerpted from This Splendid Earth)