The witching hour - By Anne Rice Page 0,206

France.

“Do not speak of his death,” declared the eldest, the crippled Antoine. To which the others sneered.

“And how is he today?” asked the doctor, belching as he did so. “I fear to inquire if he is any better or worse.”

“What can be expected?” asked one of the female cousins, who had once been beautiful and was still pleasing to look at, handsome one might say. “If he speaks a word today, I shall be surprised.”

“And why shouldn’t he speak?” asked Antoine. “His mind is as it always was.”

“Aye,” said Charlotte, “he rules with a steady hand.”

There ensued a great verbal brawl, with everyone talking at once, and one of the feeble old ladies demanding to be told what was going on.

Finally the other old woman, a crone if ever there was one, who had nibbled at her plate all the while with the fixed attention of a busy insect, suddenly raised her head and cried to the drunken brothers, “You are neither of you fit to run this plantation,” to which the drunken brothers replied with boisterous laughter, though the two younger females regarded this with much seriousness, their eyes passing over Charlotte fearfully and then sweeping gently the near paralyzed and useless husband, whose hands lay like dead birds beside his plate.

Then the old woman, apparently approving of the response to her words, issued another pronouncement. “It is Charlotte who rules here!” and this produced even more fearful looks from the women, and more laughter and sneering from the drunken brothers, and a winsome smile from the crippled Antoine.

Then the poor fellow became most agitated, so that he in fact began to tremble, but Charlotte hastily spoke of pleasant things. Once again I was questioned about my journey, about life in Amsterdam, and the present state of things in Europe, which related to the importation of coffee and indigo, and told that I should become very weary of life in the plantations, for nobody did anything but eat and drink and seek pleasure, and so forth and so on, until suddenly Charlotte broke off gently and gave the order to the black slave, Reginald, that he should go and fetch the old man and bring him down.

“He has been talking to me all day,” she said quietly to the others, with a vague look of triumph.

“Indeed, a miracle!” declared the drunken André, who now ate in slovenly fashion without the aid of a knife or fork.

The old doctor narrowed his eyes as he regarded Charlotte, quite indifferent to the food he had slopped down his lace ruff, or the wine spilling from the glass which he held in his uncertain hand. That he should drop it was a distinct possibility. The young slave boy behind him looked on anxiously.

“What do you mean spoken to you all day?” asked the doctor. “He was stuporous when last I saw him.”

“He changes hourly,” said one of the cousins.

“He’ll never die!” roared the old woman, who was again nibbling.

Then into the room came Reginald, holding a tall gray-haired and much emaciated man, with one thin arm flung about the slave’s shoulder, and head hanging, though his bright eyes fixed all of us one by one.

Into the chair at the foot of the table he was put, a mere skeleton, and as he could not sit upright, bound to it with sashes of silk. Then the slave Reginald, who seemed a very artist at all this, lifted the man’s chin as he could not hold up his head on his own.

At once the female cousins began to chatter at him, that it was good to see him so well. But they were amazed at him, and so was the doctor, and then as the old man began to speak so was I.

One hand lifted off the table with a floppy, jerky movement and then came crashing down. At the same moment his mouth opened, though his face remained so smooth that only the lower jaw dropped, and out came his hollow and toneless words.

“I am nowhere near death and will not hear of it!” And again, the limp hand rose in a spasm and came down with a bang.

Charlotte was studying this all the while with narrow and glittering eyes. Indeed for the first time I perceived her concentration, and how every particle of her attention was directed to the man’s face and his one flopping hand.

“Mon Dieu, Antoine,” cried the doctor, “you cannot blame us for worrying.”

“My mind is as it ever was!”