All Bedlam Courses Past (part forty-eight)

All Bedlam Courses Past

Chapter Two

Avarice Creeping On

(part forty-eight)

“Cartesia?”

“Facer, isn’t it?”

Regina signaled with her fan, abrupt under their whispering chins. “That hotel, Luce. That’s what they’ve done to her.”

They gazed. Theban pillars of the Cloughman dynasty framed a broad awning, the lobby floor now burdened above by Second Empire mansards; the shingle nonetheless advertising (in bamboo-ish characters): The Nile.

“I hope you all saw the picture, my Alexandrine, there next to Moult. And you remember the Ramseys from the boat.”

“The sphynx carvings,” Manfred said.

The Ramseys had sat either side of the library entrance, met round the bend from the Myra’s wharf. Myra herself had not joined this morning’s jaunt. Gilbert, too, had gone early to the station, wanting time (spoken with an air of The One Who Works), to copy his notes into longhand.

Their carriage plodded behind a milk wagon, down a back street lined with trees-of-paradise. “Voila!” Mrs. Buckley patted elder Bertrand’s knee. “La maison de mon père.”

Martyrdom flickering in her glance, Mme Sartain sighed over this addition to the program. The Demrose house was brick, flat-fronted, white-shuttered, ordinary. Regina mentioned a restaurant. Élucide saw Manfred’s lips part, and cut him short.

“We had better make no plans. We can’t miss the noon train.”

But it wouldn’t take any time, it turned out, just to look at the fort…

“Well, you can see it right up there. That’s where the Yankees were holding us down, here in Nashville.”

“I still own all that,” she added, to Élucide.

“Alarica. Your father’s house. The lot on 1st…?”

“Oh, dozens of little things. Is there ever a good time to sell land? They always say, wait for the market. And all Moult’s fool newspapers.”

“Oh…that’s curious.” The import worked itself forward. “Not the Beacon, ours? You did mention something like that, didn’t you, Regina?”

She almost thought Mrs. Buckley had done, though it was hard to recall. The Christian name had come with fluency, and this was a lucky chance.

53

Bedlam

All Bedlam Courses Past (part forty-nine)

(2023, Stephanie Foster)