Of course this is a bias on my part. A bias. I presented it to her, and she sneered. “It’s like the old argument from the witch judges,” she said, “that women are more susceptible to the Devil’s blandishments because they are more stupid. Shame on you, Julien. Maybe the simple fact is I am more capable of love than you are.”
We argued about this all of our lives. All of our lives.
I once suggested in rapid debate that most women were morally flawed and could be led to anything. She quietly pointed out to me that she felt a deep honor-bound responsibility to Lasher, which I, the pragmatist and diplomat, did not feel. I was the one morally flawed, she said. And perhaps she was right.
Whatever the case, I always felt an abhorrence for the thing. And she didn’t feel it.
“When you are gone someday,” she said, “there will be only I and that thing. It will be my love, my solace, my witness. I do not really care what it is or whence it comes. I do not care what I am or whence I come. The idea that I can think of myself in those terms is an illusion.”
She was then fifteen, tall, black-haired, very sturdy of build and very pretty in a dark strong way which some men would not have found appealing. Her manner was quiet, and highly persuasive. All admired her, and anyone not afraid of her unflinching gaze and mannish poise usually was smitten by her.
I was impressed, of course. All the more because after saying such a thing, she could smile and do this trick which never failed to delight me: to take the thick braid of her black hair and untangle it so that the whole veil spilled over her shoulders in sharp little waves, and then shake it out and laugh, as if transforming herself at once in that gesture from my intellectual companion to a budding woman.
But understand, I was the only male ever to have power with Lasher. And I still maintain that I had a male’s immunity to the thing’s blandishments. And mark, I’ve been frank with you about my male amours. I am not prejudiced against that love that dares not say its name, and so forth. Love to me…is love. In my heart of hearts I loathed the creature! I loathed its reckless mistakes! I loathed its sense of humor.
Alors. Sharing my ambition in every regard, Mary Beth became familiar with our business dealings from early childhood. By the time she was twelve she had participated with me in decisions which so diversified and extended our fortune that an unstoppable money-making machine had been created from the Mayfair capital.
We were as active in Boston and New York and London as in the South. Money was in place where it could only make more money, and that money automatically made more money, and so forth and so on, and so it has been really since those days.
Mary Beth was a genius at it. And she learnt to use the spirit very skillfully, as her spy, her informant, her observer, her idiot savant adviser. It was quite startling to watch her at work with the being.
Meantime we had made the First Street house ours. My brother, Rémy, was quiet, retiring, his children sweet and good-natured. My boys were off at school. My poor daughter Jeannette, feebleminded as Katherine had been, died young. That is another tale-all that. My sweet Jeannette, my beloved wife, Suzette. I cannot tell it.
After the death of those two, which came much later on, and the death of my mother, Marguerite, Mary Beth and I were quite isolated from all the world in our shared knowledge and passion, and our relentless pursuit of pleasure. But this isolation had already begun.
We were also mad for the modern world. We journeyed to New York frequently merely to be in the thriving capital. We adored the railroads; we kept abreast of new inventions; indeed we invested in progress, per se. We had a passion for change, while many in our family and in our home had nothing of the sort. Rather they clung to a sleepy, glamorous Old World past, receding behind closed shutters. Not so with us.
We had…as they say in your time…we had our hands into everything.
And let me note that until we went to Europe in the year 1887, Mary Beth had maintained her status as a Virgin Warrior, so to speak, never allowing any man in any sort of way to really touch her. That is, she had fun in a thousand ways, but she ran no risk of mothering a witch until such a time as she could pick the father. That is why she preferred the boy disguise when we went cavorting on the town. And beautiful dark-eyed boy that she was, she never let anyone too close to her.
Finally the time came when we could break away for a long European trip, a Grand Tour, an exercise of our wealth on a large scale, a marvelous and long-overdue education. Overdue for me, that is, and perhaps even for her. If I have one regret it is that I did not travel more in life; and that I did not encourage others in my family to travel. But that is of small import now.
The spirit was very loath for us to go; over and over he warned against the dangers of wandering; he told us we possessed Paradise where we were. But we would not be deterred; Mary Beth was desperate to see the world, and the spirit would keep her happy; and within an hour of our departure it was clear that he was journeying with us.
Throughout our tour, he could be summoned with a silent wish, and frequently when I saw Mary Beth at a distance I saw him beside her.
In the city of Rome, he went into me for many hours, but the effort exhausted him. Indeed it seemed to madden him. He begged to go home, that we cross the sea, that we return to the house he so loved. He said that he detested this place; indeed he could not endure it. I told him we had to take this trip, that it was folly to think the Mayfairs would never journey afar, and to be quiet, there was nothing to be done for it.
When we journeyed north of Rome towards Florence, he became disconsolate, and turbulent, and actually left us. Mary Beth was afraid. She could not summon him, no matter what she did.
“So we are on our own in the mortal world,” I said with a shrug. “What can happen to us?”
She was leery and sad, and wandered the streets of Siena and Assisi by herself, scarce speaking to me. She missed the daemon. She said that we had caused it pain.
I was indifferent.
But oh, to my regret! When we reached Venice, and lodged in a gorgeous palazzo on the Grand Canal, the monster came to me. It was one of his most vicious and contrived and strong gestures.
I had left at home in New Orleans my beloved secretary and young quadroon lover Victor Gregoire, who was running my office for me in my absence as no one else could have ever done, I supposed.
When I reached Venice, I expected the usual communications from Victor to be waiting for me-some letters, contracts to be notarized, signed, that sort of thing. But mainly I anticipated his written assurance that all was well in New Orleans.
What greeted me was this: as I sat at my desk, above the canal, in a great vast drearily painted room in the Italian style, hung with velvet and very damp, with a cold marble floor, in walked Victor. Or so it seemed. For I knew in an instant this was not my Victor but someone who made himself look identical to him. He stood before me, smiling almost coyly-the young man I knew with pale golden skin, blue eyes, black hair, and a tall powerful body dressed to perfection. And then vanished.
Of course it had been the monster pretending to be Victor; making this vision to torment me. But why? I knew. I laid my head down on the desk and wept. Within an hour Mary Beth came in with the news from America. Victor had been killed two weeks ago in an accident. He had stepped off the curb at Prytania and Philip and been run down, right outside the apothecary. Two days later he had died, calling for me.