The witching hour - By Anne Rice Page 0,294

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During this time, Carlotta moved back into the house so that she could be close to her mother and, indeed, sat with her through many a long night. When Mary Beth was in too much pain to read, she asked Carlotta to read to her, and family legend says that Carlotta read all of Wuthering Heights to her, and some of Jane Eyre.

Stella was also in constant attendance. She stopped her carousing altogether, and spent her time preparing meals for her mother—who was frequently too sick to eat anything—and consulting doctors all over the world, by letter and phone, about cures.

A perusal of the scant medical records that exist on Mary Beth indicate her cancer had metastasized before it was ever discovered. She did not suffer until the last three months and then she suffered a great deal.

Finally on the afternoon of September 11, 1925, Mary Beth lost consciousness. The attending priest noted that there was an enormous clap of thunder. “Rain began to pour.” Stella left the room, went down to the library, and began to call the Mayfairs all over Louisiana, and even the relatives in New York.

According to the priest, the servant witnesses, and numerous neighbors, the Mayfairs started to arrive at four o’clock and continued to arrive for the next twelve hours. Cars lined First Sheet all the way to St. Charles Avenue, and Chestnut Street from Jackson to Washington.

The “cloudburst” continued, slacking off for a few hours to a drizzle and then resuming as a regular rain. Indeed it was raining all over the Garden District, though it was not raining in any other part of the city; however, no one took particular notice of that fact.

On the other hand, the majority of the New Orleans Mayfairs came equipped with umbrellas and raincoats, as though they fully expected some sort of storm.

Servants scurried about serving coffee and contraband European wine to the cousins, who filled the parlors, the library, the hallway, the dining room, and even sat on the stairs.

At midnight the wind began to howl. The enormous sentinel oaks before the house began to thrash so wildly some feared the branches would break loose. Leaves came down as thick as rain.

Mary Beth’s bedroom was apparently crowded to overflowing with her children and her nieces and nephews, yet a respectful silence was maintained. Carlotta and Stella sat on the far side of her bed, away from the door, as the cousins came and went on tiptoe.

Daniel McIntyre was nowhere to be seen, and family legend holds that he had “passed out” earlier, and was in bed in Carlotta’s apartment over the stables outside.

By one o’clock, there were solemn-faced Mayfairs standing on the front galleries, and even in the wind and rain, under their unsteady umbrellas, on the front walk. Many friends of the family had come merely to hover under the oak trees, with newspapers over their heads and their collars turned up against the wind. Others remained in their cars double-parked along Chestnut and First.

At one thirty-five, the attending physician, Dr. Lyndon Hart, experienced some sort of disorientation. He confessed later to several of his colleagues that “something strange” happened in the room.

To Irwin Dandrich, he confided in 1929 the following account:

“I knew she was almost gone. I had stopped taking her pulse. It seemed so undignified, to get up over and over, only to nod to the others that she was still alive. And each time I made a move towards the bed, naturally the cousins noticed it, and you would hear the anxious whispers in the hall.

“So for the last hour or so I did nothing. I merely waited and watched. Only the immediate family was at the bedside, except for Cortland and his son Pierce. She lay there with her eyes half open, her head turned towards Stella and Carlotta. Carlotta was holding her hand She was breathing very irregularly. I had given her as much morphine as I dared.

“And then it happened. Perhaps I’d fallen asleep and was dreaming, but it seemed so real at the time—that a whole group of entirely different persons was there, an old woman, for example, whom I knew but didn’t know was bending over Mary Beth, and there was a very tall old gentleman in the room, who looked distinctly familiar. There were all sorts of persons, really. And then a young man, a pale young man who was very primly dressed in beautiful old-fashioned clothes, was bending over her. He kissed her lips,