I spent the morning ordering my trousseau, which I’d thrown together willy-nilly, and sorting Virgil’s heap of clothes. Not since my eleventh year had I folded someone else’s linens. What a queer thrill I got, what a half-forbidden feeling, from arranging his sundries on the window-bench! He’d taken nothing with him but a jack-knife and a candle. His shape was still pressed hard into the bed. I took off my shift and my bloomers and laid myself down in it. I felt snug in his outline, like a mouse in its burrow. It was mid-day by then, and hot as blazes already. The old man creaked about upstairs. A chill came up suddenly through the heat, making me feel small and solitary—: then I remembered. I’d forgotten it for a while, as there’d been so much else to think of. But it came back to me just then, and blew the solitariness off like smoke.
I had a family in me.
I woke with a start, dry-tongued and foreign-feeling. A rapping sounded at the door. I opened it on Goodman Harvey.
He looked at me and gave a cry. Had he expected someone else? I wondered. I had yet to come all the way up out of sleep.
“Something terrible hath happened, mith,” he said, keeping his eyes screwed downwards.
“What?” I said.
“I’ll wait here, on your convenienth, mith,” he mumbled, clapping a hand over his eyes.
Then I understood, and gave a laugh. “Just a minute, Mr. Harvey,” I said, and went to fetch my shift. He was all but making the sign of the cross when I looked back at him. I laughed again. “Don’t be shy, Mr. Harvey! Won’t you step inside?”
“No, mith!” he said.
He was sorely in distress. His face was tight and blanched and the spot where a chin would be on anybody else was all aquiver. He stood shuffling his feet, moving without going anywhere, exactly the way Virgil used to do. “Mith Clementine,” he mumbled. “It painth me very much to tell you—”
Virgil!
I threw a shawl over my shift and rushed back to the door. “What is it, Mr. Harvey?” I cried. The chill was upon me again and I felt barer than before. I could all but see my breath. “What is it, sir?”
Harvey’s mouth worked for a moment to no effect at all. “It’th Virgil, mith!” he got out at last. “I’ll take you to him.”
The Eagle of History
THE END OF ME BEGAN THAT MORNING, Virgil says. After parting from Clementine, I booked passage on the E. P. Fairchild—owned and operated by one of our guilds — and landed at 37 the next day. Following me off the boat were sixteen cattle-fixers, two assembly-men from Natchez Township, fourteen mulattoes carrying sackfuls of silver rings, and a dealer in Arabian thorough-breds. None save the assembly-men were there to meet with the great Redeemer, but all came on Trade business—; there was no other business any longer. Local competition had either been eaten alive or given generous permission to emigrate to the United States.
I discovered Morelle, after a long and byzantine search, on the same crumbling pier that the run up to Memphis had started from. Kennedy loitered a few yards down the bank, chucking pebbles at the current. Morelle was staring down the river with a melancholy, abstracted look, the look of a man who’s misplaced something very dear. He seemed greatly changed to me. In the dull light off the water he looked frayed and defeated, nearer the Colonel’s age than my own. He gave no sign of seeing me. In my confusion I began to wonder if he was waiting for the arrival of the E. P. Fairchild.
“The Fairchild is tied up across the way, sir,” I said tentatively.
“Thank you, Kansas,” he said. “I’m not waiting on the E. P. Fairchild.”
“What are you waiting on, then?” I hesitated. “Parson?”
“Parson? Why do you ask?” Now he turned and looked at me. “Do you have need of religious counsel?”
I hushed at once, studying his face for signs of spite or mischief. He was looking at me squintingly, as though he found me hard to see. He seemed impatient to turn back to the river.
“What were you doing in New Orleans, Virgil?” he said after a time. “You and I were to have a conference.”
I stared at him a moment. “But you walked me to the landing yourself, sir! You seemed to have no further need of me. I waited the better part of a week—”
“But you were impatient,” he said. His voice was low and thoughtful. “Impatient to get to town.”
All at once I recollected Clementine. “Let’s have that conference now,” I said.
Morelle cocked his head at me. “You’ve never been anxious for a conference before, dear K.”
I cleared my throat. “I’ve had a vision, sir.”
He frowned up at me, cautiously, circumspectly—; then suddenly his look brightened and he clapped his hands. “Without the aid of the candle? We’re finally making progress, Kansas! Now, if you remember the shapes clearly, we can—”
“There were no shapes, sir—; there were only pictures. And I understood them perfectly. I’ve no need of your charts and mummeries any longer.”
Morelle’s face went slack for the briefest of instants—; but he recovered himself straight-away. “It’s wonderful what one can understand, dear K, with the help of a dram or two of port.” He scratched at his nose. “How’s our little general? Well oiled, I hope? Thoroughly brocaded?”
In spite of his care-free air I saw clearly that he was troubled. I decided to press my advantage. “I’m a different man since I came down from Memphis, sir. I believe in things that I’d have considered sheer madness this time last week.”
A change came over him as I said this. His untroubled manner was cast aside — all of it at once, as if it were a mummer’s cap — and his face began to redden. “If you’ve let that idiot Barker look into your eye, I promise you—”
“Barker left Memphis in a winding-sheet,” I said, cutting him short.
This news had an unprecedented effect on Morelle—: it robbed him, however fleetingly, of the faculty of speech. “Morris Phelps Barker,” he said finally, looking past me at the river. “Old Morris.”
“I want to tell you how it happened, sir,” I said, taking him by the arm. “Let’s go up and have our conference. Barker seemed to think my visions—”
“I don’t give a toss about your visions,” Morelle said peevishly, jerking his arm away. Kennedy let out a snort behind us.
My confidence drained away at once. “Please, sir — if you’ll but give me half an hour—”
Morelle shook his head emphatically. “I’m standing on this dock for a reason, Kansas. If you’ve in an itch to share your pensées fantastiqueswith me, you can do so here and now!”
My heart sank into my boots. “Out here?” I said in a whimper. “Where anyone can see?”
“Right here on the dock,” Morelle said irritably. “It’s private enough, isn’t it? You have no need of charts and mummeries any longer—; you told me so yourself!”
I could think of no reply to this. I stared down at the water for a time, then turned to go, abashed. But even as I did so, a new thought took hold of me—: it was private enough on the dock, save for Kennedy. In my eagerness to get Morelle alone I’d overlooked the fact that he was practically alone already.
“All right,” I said. “We’ll do it here. But send Kennedy off somewhere.” I lowered my voice. “My vision featured him in a position he might not care for.”