beginning again, please."
Pauline was crying without a sound. Her body was a wooden doll's in her overlacy pink gown; and her hands fumbled, groped, struck note after note awry. In the door way, her mother's face remained in shadow, the strong, white, black-laced hands moveless where they rested among the folds of her dress.
"From the beginning again, please."
It was nothing January would have put anyone through, even in private, much less before a music-master and a colored man to boot. For a white girl the humiliation would have been excruciating. In her chair Louise Marie made neither sound nor movement, her hands locked around the lemonade she had sent for, as if she believed that by keeping very still she could avoid some terrible fate. Somewhere outside January thought he heard a steamboat whistle. But he would no more have spoken than he would have spoken to a madman with a knife.
At last Pauline broke down completely. She sat at the keyboard, fighting the dry, racking sobs with all that was in her and shuddering like a beaten racehorse. From the doorway that exquisite golden contralto said, "I see we're only wasting Monsieur Janvier's time, Pauline. You may go to your room."
Pauline flinched and caught her breath as if struck, then fought herself to stillness again. She rose like an automaton, not even daring to wipe the tears from her face and the snot trickling from her nose, and made her way to the door. Petticoats rustled as her mother stepped aside to let her pass, a thin harsh sound like flakes of steel. A good Creole daughter, Pauline curtsied to her mother, then vanished into the bake-oven shadows of the hall.
Louise Marie's eyes flickered, showing white all around the rim. Does she think after thirty minutes of that, her mother's going to put her through it, too?
"You may go to your room as well, Louise Marie."
"Yes, Mother." The words came out like paper scraping as it is crushed. She rose quickly and without the ostentatious demonstrations of pain and bravery-the bitten lower lip, the tiny gasps, the hand on the hip-so characteristic of her every move. She still limped, and badly, but not nearly to the usual extent; she had almost reached the door when her mother said in that same whipcut voice,
"Is this a sty or a garbage bin, Louise Marie, that you leave your dirty crockery all over the house?"
The young woman turned quickly back and collected her lemonade glass.
"I'm very sorry, Monsieur Janvier," said Madame Lalaurie, as Louise Marie's halting rustle of petticoats retreated down the hall. No anger inflected her voice, and no contrition. Only pleasant calm, as if reducing her children to tears of terror and exhaustion were a daily commonplace. It occurred to him suddenly to wonder what being "sent to one's room" entailed. "I assure you, both girls will be able to demonstrate the proper proficiency at Tuesday's lesson. Of course, Bastien will compensate you for the extra time today."
She melted into the gloom of the hallway with barely a whisper of silk. At no time during the previous forty minutes had January seen her face.
"M'sieu Janvier?"
He turned to find Bastien at his elbow, urbanely gesturing him out.
On the docks there were still two wagonloads of brandy to unload. Passengers loitered grumpily along the railing of the upper decks; on the lower, uneven gaggles of slaves and poor and keelboat Kaintucks jockeyed for places in the shade.
At the steamboat offices January sent in his card and asked for the lading lists for Wednesday, September 18: the Missourian and the Vermillion had docked in the morning, if the clerk recalled aright, the New Brunswick had been in by afternoon for certain, the Walter Scott and the Silver Moon sometime between four and eight o'clock, he thought. But, he said, he might be wrong.
During the lesson, January had left his grip in the charge of a woman at a silk shop a few houses down Rue Royale from the Lalauries, and now he changed clothes in a sheltered corner of the Philadelphia's deck. Once out of the formal disguise of black coat and linen shirt, he wandered over to the engine room, watching a mixed crew of black and Irish stevedores carrying barrels and packages aboard and stowing them on deck.
"You made it," remarked the engineer, coming out beside him in time.
"And I feel like a prize fool for hurrying." January grinned, and the stout, heavily muscled little man grinned back up at him.
"Oh,