All Bedlam Courses Past (part thirty-one)

All Bedlam Courses Past

Chapter Two

Avarice Creeping On

(part thirty-one)

Madame Sartain had written, replying to Clotilde, as voiced by Élucide—her letter arriving that September 5^th:

We see how it is in the divine plan, that all things are laid in place before we know the lack of them. Bertrand is old enough now, at six years, to weather a sea voyage. The child must be delivered to his mother and father. And the instrument God sends to accomplish this necessity has appeared. I have wanted only the mutual friend who can place my name before Mr. Ebrach. My poor niece has so little of practicality, I believe she cannot furnish so many particulars of travel, as how one finds trains in America, etc., and my nephew’s illness makes him difficult for her.

To say the least. Élucide, instrument or not, could see mission in the stitching up of stray threads.

“I’m at a loss to take in all these connections. What sort of people are the Everards?”

“Hush.”

Up the bottomland bank, of dark earth and sparse grass, Ebrach’s secretary trailed, eyes down, cautious of his spats and polish, hand vaguely thrust for a lady’s taking. Old Richard looked asleep, but she’d been caught by him before, she and Shad.

The answer was, not the sort a Ryan-Neville cultivates.

But Manfred cultivated no one on purely social terms. “I don’t think Ebrach’s keen on it at all, my taking off. Likes me at his bidding. You know I’ve got that Buckley in Nashville. It would be excellent in so many ways…having, I mean, such respectable business to be assisting with, the escorting of an elderly… What do they call themselves?”

“Creole? Or do you mean, Louisianan?”

“To a family reunion. You don’t know what to say to old people. But I find they like hearing about other old people. Your father…”

She laughed a heartless laugh. “Misjudges you? Manfred, you can write him for an appointment, and plead your case. You can pilfer Mr. Kempf’s stationery here and now. Papa will ask himself, who do I know at the bughouse?”

Shad’s private chuckle joined Manfred’s…and a third, which above disdain for her father and Mr. Kempf, conveyed a mild prudery—at the joke he’d eavesdropped on.

She sat on Manfred’s suitcoat, beside Old Richard.

“Fancy that. Here’s a man I’d have met by rights forty years ago. I was young forty years ago, Miss Gremot. So much water under the bridge…but put a figure on it, and it seems too short a time. I was fond of my brother.”

His chin trembled, a lapse. “Will you let me read the letter?”

She watched him read twice, kept her toe from marking time, and her face a picture of patience.

36

Bedlam

All Bedlam Courses Past (part thirty-two)

(2023, Stephanie Foster)