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DENOUEMENT

He might have deserved to be a better corpse. Surely his hand would have painted dainty red rivulets and not the cardinal spray of blood and brains that had vomited from the holed cadaver. Slender fingers that did oft delight to play on pink and pliant feminine flesh, are now cold and still and lifeless grey. Not glorious painted angels, nor the white swan with Leda, nor his quiet, small Madonna reflect back from open eyes, now dried, and there, just above the stinging burn of black powder, floats the last lingering wisp of Hungarian cologne.

Charles and Samuel lifted up the thing onto a drop-cloth sleigh and then they wordless slid the corpse away. Alone, Adele surveyed the crimson residue of a lost life, before pulling up the mop from her bucket and getting to work on the mess..

 

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
TRANSITIONS


 

Jacqueline Ferland's mournful dress sleeves were sympathetic contrast to the pale, thin wrists and hands that wrung the wrinkled leather covering of a certain grey notebook. She sat bolt upright and found no distraction in the hurtling landscape beyond the compartment window panes. Ambrose owned the window seat and she was happy to surrender it to her husband. That old man could keep his mind in the billowed clouds all the way home, and he could sit wordlessly enraptured for all she wanted to hear his nonsense today. . Her motherly gaze was fixed upon the face of her daughter opposite: young, beautiful, and still so childish - still so ignorant of life and of death. Her cheeks remained rosed. The girl had watched the tragic, brutal death of someone that she had thought to love, and it had not moved her. That much was good, but it was also unseemly and cold. Some degree of drama should have been affected, for otherwise she would be named fickle and unsympathetic. He might have deserved a better mourner. Oh, Madeleine had wept and wailed with perfectly inappropriate distraction. Her shoulders had even trembled. Such an actress. She deserved a stage and an audience. The only tossed flowers though were onto the grave of the handsome painter, and Madeleine had done that; the dramatic. And look what her drama had brought her to now? Sitting there in her bright pink Sunday dress alongside Ghislaine and the monster Charles, bound for nothing more than wandering the streets of Paris alone. She would be starting over, and she would be beneath Jacqueline's notice - beneath her status, class and care. She had better not come begging at the Ferland home, and if she does, Ambrose would do well to keep his wallet cinched up tight. Women such as she were deserving of no charity. She had made her choice. Let her live with it, and die with it. There was no red in the cheeks of Madeleine, but that paint had put it there. Even her shame was buried beneath layers of deceit.

The poorly padded seat of green across from Madeleine was empty today and that train churned on and on and away from Amance - away from everything, but the steel track strove in a direct line on toward everything else and every tomorrow ever. He had left her no choice, really. He had murdered beauty, for the sake of words and ugly ideas. He had allowed cruelty to persuade him to do ... to do the unspeakable. How could she forgive such a man? He would not touch her again. He would never again see her or hear from her. Oh, she would never ask him for anything. Nothing, not ever, nor Gaston neither. She was through with such men. They were soulless and only hated and desired. They gave nothing. Boniface gave. Boniface Roy gave the world beauty and perfect, wonderful colours where the imagination could be set free to play and grow. In his paintings, one's soul could go to take delight. The painted sketch from the riverbank, that was hers now. It was all she could get, besides his toillete. The fragrances and comb, the razor and lotions of Boniface were in her bags, tucked in beneath her own cosmetics and perfumes. Roland should have made a scene. He should have tried to stop her - to keep her. He didn't. He had Gaston muttering in his ear, telling him to be strong and that she was just being melodramatic. A man was dead. A good man. That was not melodrama. Murder for honour was melodrama. He certainly did not kill for her. He killed for himself. He killed for Gaston Hector, and Madame Ferland. If he had just listened to her, none of this would have happened.

And now Roland and Gaston and the cold, under-earth corpse of Boniface remained behind. Two lovers burying a third in the garden, next to the olive trees, where they had all said such cruel things about his beautiful Madonna. No criticism was leveled at the funeral, and no praise. No words. There was nothing to say – nothing that could change anything, not even to the police. There was nothing to say. They would all just go away. None of them would ever forget, but there was nothing to say.

Charles rose swiftly to his feet, and stumbled, so clutched for shaking walls to steady his stance. Ambrose threw up hands to ward against collision, in time. The toppling giant's face, where it refused the thick beard of dark browns, glistened a ghostly green and his eyes rolled with abandon, but he somehow kept afoot. Ghislaine half-lifted a hand toward the artist as he stumbled on and into the compartment door. He fumbled with it until Madeleine unlet the latch and cleared the air for his urgent exit. His movements, when he fell from wall to wall in that narrow hall, might have made the rail car rock from side to side, and off he went until lost to view, though only Ghislaine watched him go with anything more than curiosity.

"Could you imagine?" asked Madeleine. These were the first words spoken in the past hour.

"Horror," answered Jacqueline.

For her answer, Ghislaine abruptly stood with defiant shoulders set. "He needs someone." She looked thin and drawn out, dressed as she was in one of her mother's ebon costumes of grief, but her chin was raised and her dark brows lowered.

"Sit down Ghislaine," Jacqueline said. Madeleine did not choose sides in this battle, but Ambrose swung his sparkling eyes from the summer blue skies to watch his daughter and his wife.

"I will not. He needs me." Ghislaine turned on the ball of her little boot and after a stride was pulling open the door.

Jacqueline now stood, or started to. Two hands of Ambrose clasped about her wrist arrested her entirely. He was a silent jailor and Jacqueline turned her effrontery from her departing daughter to her husband. "Release me," she hissed, but he neither unbound his wife nor unleashed his tongue. He stared into the mirrors of Jacqueline's eyes and did not flinch.

"Unhand me now," was the refrain, but it was too late and Ghislaine was gone. Ambrose kept his hold for that moment longer until he felt the wrist of his wife slacken, and then he took his hands away.

Through it all, Madeleine remained silent in her pink and did not smirk.

Jacqueline sucked in her cheeks. "What are you doing? What will she do?"

The answer from Ambrose was steady and solemn, "She will care for him. Find happiness in that, my dear," but she could not. Jacqueline turned from Ambrose and sought to find some solace or support to land her gaze upon, but she could not.

Ghislaine jostled east through the westbound train, skirting her way past travellers that nearly filled the windowed corridor. Plains swept on by at alarming speeds and Ghislaine did pause to catch hold of the wall from time to time, but she had sight of the back of Charles and would not lose him. She was certain that she knew where he was bound. He would stop soon.

There, in the fresh air between the cars, Charles Montaigne slunk down into the corner and curled himself up so small. The roar and rush of steel wheels pushing the massive iron train could not be blocked by hands at his ears, but the machine could be muffled and the rushing air was relief against the stink of steam and coal. Here he could hope to hide from the noise of locomotion, and the weight of it... the black hot ironmongery of this modern world. Between tight cheek and brow, Charles crushed his eyes closed.

Braced against the metal railing, with her black skirts whipping wild amid the wind, Ghislaine stood watching the huddled Charles. It was not pity that moved her to kneel before Montaigne, to extend a hand until he opened his eyes, and then carefully, decisively ease her fingers to touch his tight-bent kneecap.

"Are you all right?" The howling air rushed her words away, but Charles gave a nod. Ghislaine did not pause then, but gathered up the material of her skirts and squirmed her thin body in to find space beside Montaigne. She pulled in her knees for warmth and then grinned at him. Past the pallor of his shivering flesh, Charles smiled simply back.

"I'm glad it wasn't you," said Ghislaine.

His first reflex was to wonder what she meant, but he knew, but it was too clear so he wanted to find some sort of paradox to throw it against. The thundering wheels and pistons of his mind began to work to deeper analyze her few words. He remembered Boniface in all his aspects: his cleverness, his cruelty, and his happiness. He was reminded vividly of the pistol of Roland pointed at his own heart. There was time to think of Madeleine and that woman's dignity and bearing. It had all been a masquerade. What did she want? What did Ghislaine want? What did she mean? Was she trying to seduce him? What sort of happiness might he have if he accepted that invitation? It was too much. It could never last. There was too much between them: years and ages. He could only ruin her. He was too flawed, too broken a man to handle something so fragile... so beautiful. It was too perfect and it would ruin everything. It had to be cut out, he knew, and then he saw past it all to the round wonder of her eyes. He saw the azure glow of her wind stung cheeks and the white of her smile-revealed teeth and there was nothing more to think about.

"I'm glad too. I want to kiss you."

"Do."



 

FIN