All Bedlam Courses Past (part fifty-eight)

All Bedlam Courses Past

Chapter Three

An Object in Motion

(part fifty-eight) 

Gilbert, in a rush, said it was not a year past, the fall in the street, the doctor diagnosing apoplexy for a first cause. M. Sarrazin had paid this doctor, and the cost of the burial.

“That was his kindness, you see. Your father did leave a legacy… He had written a will.”

“Oh, that,” Honoré said.

“Madame has a paper for you to sign. She has placed the money in Bertrand’s name.”

Tapping, just then. Honoré found the noise suspicious of Clotilde, who shared this room, and could push in as she pleased. Instead, her aunt pushed in, making way for the tray and kettle, and for Clotilde, bending at the knees with her burden. It was a sort of playacting his wife could not be cured of. She apologized when she was nervous, she abased herself when she plotted…she was the poorest of plotters, the most transparent of transgressors. These movements mimed her begging his indulgence.

Paquette, and Mme Paquette, Honoré believed, had much to answer for.

Exerting her old command of her niece, Madame patted the foot of the bed. Clotilde laid the tray, and was steered by the apron-ties to the door. “Go to your children! I can mix this up. Honoré, do you have only the one packet? And only the boiling water? Do you take a lump of sugar?”

The eucalyptus went into a strainer, the strainer went into the cup; the cup became a breathing aid when the lid was attached. When it had cooled to be drinkable, he would satisfy his audience and gulp it down.

“Gilbert.”

“Yes, madame. He knows you have brought the paper.”

Honoré hunched, inhaling, the napkin that allowed him to hold the cup warming his hands, while Gilbert reported his taking of the news.

Madame touched him on the shoulder. “Seven thousand francs.”

He raised his eyes.

“Yes, exactly that. I would say so if it were some other number. No, of course your father had made his will just that way, whatever above the seven thousand to go to the Sisters of Charity at Liège. You were to inherit what he had set aside for you. And…I think you’re comfortable here?”

He shook his head. He nodded his head. “Madame, however… But I will sign for Bertrand. My father would have wished it.”

The money to Liège was for the smallpox, those things done in care towards Honoré’s sister and her husband, a twenty-years’ past obligation. He could see his father this way, keeping hold on the money, in case…

But dispatching it with pride, as a final word.

“I have my house to sell. I had not made up my mind, leaving Paris, whether I would go back. Now I begin to think I will marry again, and that will be the best answer. Your cousin hasn’t mentioned M. Sartain?”

64

Bedlam

All Bedlam Courses Past (part fifty-nine)

(2023, Stephanie Foster)