All Bedlam Courses Past (part sixty-seven)

All Bedlam Courses Past

Chapter Three

An Object in Motion

(part sixty-seven) 

“What has this young man said to you?”

“But I don’t know. Émile…I suppose he is not old…”

“Clotilde. Will you repeat to me, as your memory allows, all that Honoré Gremot has said to you?”

“Oh, nothing! He was cross with me for running after him. I knew he was cross…”

She trailed here. It seemed she was a disappointment to her confessor. Had she left the house alone, had she been to the hills where the cottage stood, that was broken into by the soldier?

No, there were so many chores, she was to watch the little ones…and her father…

No…

“Your father kept you under his eye, very much?”

“Oh!”

Weeping, then. Clotilde at length peeled the sticking hair from her cheeks, feeling she must find a way to beg La Roche’s help. She drew her shawl aside. “Why am I like this? It hurts and I hate it! Is there no prayer I can say? Or, if you ask will they have me, the sisters…”

He hadn’t thought she had a vocation, no…and that was a serious thing, one did not run from one’s troubles into the cloister. She was not ill, he assured her. This, this business was another matter…

“But Émile said that we were married. It wouldn’t make any difference. It was horrible…he said I wasn’t meant to like it. Even then…”

The even then was for Honoré. Coming to more present times, where in her aunt’s house she had learned that babies do not grow from thoughts.

“Who,” she asked, “is Mrs. Buckley? Élucide says it’s all right, that you will write your thanks, and she will address the envelope.”

“A patron of Ebrach,” he decided. Never mind his cousin’s habit of deciding.

“Oh, good. Honoré, if we make an envelope, I don’t know how much… Is fifty dollars an amount of money in America? And give it to Mrs. Koker?”

“Why, Clotilde, are you saying this?”

“For her. For Anne. If she comes, she will knock at the door…”

“No. Why should you suppose Anne needs money?”

“Well, does she?” The words came soft.

“My love. Anne Lugard knows more than you. Her story is not yours. No, she won’t. Not for that sort of thing.”

They sat, and the notes of the cello reached their coda, low, the curtain closing, low and done.

“Think,” he said. “If there had been a child with Jacques, she would have had his money from Madame Rose. But with Maier…? No. With Jerome…so much more no.”

72

Bedlam

All Bedlam Courses Past (part sixty-eight)

(2023, Stephanie Foster)