Master of the Crossroads - Madison Smartt Bell [326]
“No,” Isabelle said. “I cannot. If I did so, even God would turn His face from me.”
“I had not known you were so devout.”
“No,” she said. “But I too have my limits.”
“Ah,” said Maillart, rubbing his temples. “In that case, I don’t quite see . . .” He was still looking at the opposite wall. “Does Flaville know?”
“I don’t mean to tell him,” she said. “It would make trouble.”
“You’ve made your share of that, in any case.” Maillart smoothed his mustache with his thumb. “Well, perhaps you’re right.”
“Oh,” Isabelle wailed softly. “This time I am truly lost.”
“Wait,” said Maillart. “Don’t despair. I’ll get you out of it.”
“Will you?”
“Yes,” he said, though his mind had locked. But there was a way, some way. He could feel it, if he could not yet see it. “Yes, I will.”
“Oh, my true friend, I knew only you would save me.” Isabelle drove her small body against his again, and with the greatest abandon ever—as he felt how wholly she abandoned herself to him, his male vigor returned full force. But he shifted from her, even as she began to croon over his return.
“No,” he said.
“But I want it!”
“No, we mustn’t—”
“Oh, do I disgust you so?”
“Not in the slightest, my dear—the evidence to the contrary is in your hand.” So saying Maillart disengaged himself cautiously from her hot grasp. “Only, as things are now, we mustn’t chance spoiling our friendship.”
The heat had begun to slacken a little by the time he left her. The captain walked down to the harbor front, to freshen himself in the sea breeze. Porters were laboring up the gangway of a cargo ship, bowed double under great sacks of sugar or coffee. A harbor pilot Maillart knew slightly hailed him from the bow of the ship. The captain responded with a nod and a flick of his hand and walked on, fidgeting unconsciously with the points of his mustache. When he had reached the Customs House he turned away from the water and began walking back into the town.
Bold as he’d been to say he’d solve her problem, no solution had come to him so far. Maillart was unaccustomed to worry, but he did worry now. He knew there must be some path out of the difficulty, but the route was far from evident to him. In a state of abstraction, unaware of anything around him, he walked all the way up the sloping streets to the casernes, where he found Doctor Hébert waiting for him. At that, it occurred to him that the doctor was probably the only white person in the colony to whom it would be safe to confide his quandary.
Maillart had a jug of rum in his quarters, and the doctor sat on the edge of a cot, sipping thoughtfully from a chipped glass, while the captain told as much of the story as he knew.
“Well, that is serious,” he muttered, at the end. “Well, what to do . . . There are certain herbs, I have been told, though I have not tested their use myself . . .”
“She wouldn’t,” the captain said. “That is, she won’t.”
“Ah well, I don’t much like the thought of it either.” The doctor hugged his knees and squinted through the open door. The light in the yard of the casernes was turning an ominous purple-streaked color, and the thunder rose from behind Morne du Cap.
“But where does that leave her?” the doctor said. “She must put herself out of the way somehow, so no one is there at the time of the birth . . . Who else knows about it, did you say?”
“I’d wager no one but myself,” the captain told him, and, thinking of the afternoon’s aborted dalliance, “I can testify, it doesn’t yet show.”
“So much the better,” the doctor said. “Hmmmm . . . You know, Nanon is in the same state.”
“Félicitations,” said Maillart. But at the doctor’s expression he bethought himself that this child too might have a somewhat irregular paternity.
“Yes,” said the doctor. “I had meant to bring her down to Ennery, as soon as it was possible to go with her myself. But that wouldn’t do for our Isabelle—she and my sister are great friends, but this would try their friendship sorely. Besides, there are too many visitors at Habitations Thibodet.”
He stood up and padded to the doorway and peered for a moment up at the sky.