The witching hour - By Anne Rice Page 0,291

before this time.

The truly remarkable thing about this story is that the nurse said the baby could make the man appear. One wonders if Stella had any control over the situation. And what would have been Mary Beth’s thoughts on the subject? Again, we shall never know. Poor Bertha Marie Becker faced it entirely alone, or so the record appears to show.

In spite of the tragedy the party did not return home. Cortland wrote a “sad letter” about the whole affair to his wife and sons, and explained that they had hired a “lovely Italian woman” who took better care of Antha than Bertha, poor child, had ever managed to do.

This Italian woman, who was in her thirties at the time, was named Maria Magdalene Gabrielli, and she returned with the family and was Antha’s nurse until the girl was nine years old.

If she ever saw Lasher we don’t know anything about it. She lived at First Street until she died, and never spoke to anyone outside the family as far as we know. Family legend holds she was highly educated, could read and write both English and French as well as Italian, and had “a scandal in her past.”

Cortland finally left the party in 1923, when the trio had arrived in New York, and there Stella and Lionel, along with Antha and her nurse, remained in Greenwich Village, where Stella took up with numerous intellectuals and artists, and even did some painting of her own, which she always called “quite atrocious” and some writing, “hideous.” and some sculpture, “absolute trash.” At last she settled down to simply enjoying the company of truly creative individuals.

Every source of gossip in New York avers that Stella was extremely generous. She gave huge “handouts” to various painters and poets. She bought one penniless friend a typewriter and another an easel, and for one old gentleman poet she even bought a car.

During this time Lionel resumed his studies, reading constitutional law with one of the New York Mayfairs (a descendant of Clay Mayfair, who had joined descendants of Lestan Mayfair in a New York firm). Lionel also spent considerable time in the museums of New York City, and he frequently dragged Stella to the opera, which had begun to bore her, and to the symphony, which she liked only a little better, and to the ballet, which she did genuinely enjoy.

Family legend among the New York Mayfairs (available to us only now, as no one would talk at the time) depicts Lionel and Stella as absolutely devil-may-care and charming, people of tireless energy who entertained continuously, and often woke up other members of the family with early morning knocks on the door.

Two photographs taken in New York show Stella and Lionel as a happy, smiling duo. Lionel was all his life a slender man, and as indicated he inherited Judge McIntyre’s remarkable green eyes and strawberry blond hair. He did not in any way resemble Stella and it was remarked more than once by those who knew them that sometimes newcomers into the crowd were shocked to discover that Lionel and Stella were brother and sister; they had presumed them to be something else.

If Stella had any particular lover, we know nothing of it. In fact, Stella’s name was never coupled with that of anyone else (up till this point) except Lionel, though Stella was believed to be absolutely careless with her favors where young men were concerned. We have accounts of two different young artists falling passionately in love with her, but Stella “refused to be tied down.”

What we know of Lionel reinforces over and over again that he was quiet and somewhat withdrawn. He seems to have delighted in watching Stella dance, and laugh, and carry on with her friends. He enjoyed dancing with her himself, which he did all the time and rather well; but he was definitely in Stella’s shadow. He seemed to get his vitality from Stella. And when Stella wasn’t around, he was “like an empty mirror.” You hardly knew he was there.

There are several rumors that he was writing a novel while they were in New York, and that he was quite vulnerable with regard to the matter, and that an older novelist destroyed his confidence by telling him his pages were “pure rot.”

But from most sources, we hear only that Lionel enjoyed the arts, that he was a contented human being, and that as long as no one came between him and Stella he was “just