“Sir?”
“He is saying ‘How are you?’” Warthrop informed me.
Gravois added, “And you say ‘Ça va bien’—‘I’m doing well.’ Or ‘Pas mal ’—‘Not bad.’ Or to show what a polite boy you are—‘Bien, et vous?’”
I struggled to form the last suggestion, and either the awkwardness of my attempt or the futility of the attempt itself amused him, for he chuckled and gave my shoulder a consoling, if slightly patronizing, pat.
“Pas de quoi, Monsieur Henry. La chose est sans remède. You are an American, after all.”
He turned back to Warthrop. “Have you heard the latest?” He was grinning wickedly. “Oh, it is terrible, mon ami. Scandalous!”
“If it involves scandal, I’m sure you will share it, Gravois,” replied the doctor.
“I have it upon good authority that our esteemed president intends to shock us at the conclusion of this congress.”
“Really?” Warthrop raised an eyebrow, feigning surprise. “In what way?”
“He intends to introduce the mythological into the lexicon!”
Gravois smiled smugly, anticipating, no doubt, Warthrop’s dismay at this “news.”
“Well,” said my master after a weighty pause. “We will have to do something about that, won’t we? Excuse me, Damien, but I haven’t eaten anything all day.”
We loaded our plates from a long buffet table groaning with food. Never before I had seen so much gathered in one place—smoked salmon and raw oysters, chicken gumbo and sweet pea puree, soft-shelled crab and broiled bluefish, stuffed shoulder of lamb and braised beef with noodles, broiled quail and blue-winged teal duck served in a sauce espagnole, mushrooms on toast and pigeon with peas, stuffed eggplant, stewed tomatoes, parsnip cakes sautéed in butter, hash brown potatoes baked in cream. . . . I wondered if the doctor, tipping back his head to slip the oyster into his mouth, was thinking like me of hickory bark and bitter wolf’s claw and the pungent taste of toothwort. One might think my recent intimacy with starvation might have made me appreciate this cornucopia all the more, but it produced the opposite effect. The display appalled and offended me. It made me angry. As I looked about the richly appointed ballroom—the enormous crystal chandelier from England, the rich velvet curtains from Italy, the priceless artwork from France—and looked at the women glittering in their finest jewels, the silk trains of their imported gowns skimming the floor as they danced in the arms of their well-dressed escorts—and saw the waiters in their morning suits gliding through it all with groaning trays held high—I felt slightly sick to my stomach. In a tree that raised its boughs high in the trackless wilderness, a man crucified himself, his belly engorged with ice—his eyeless sockets seeing more than I, and I more than these ignorant fools who drank and danced and chattered drunkenly about the latest cause célèbre. I could not put it into words; I was but a child then. What I felt, though, was this: Jonathan Hawk’s frozen entrails came closer to the ultimate reality than this beautiful spectacle.
A familiar voice shook me from my melancholic reverie. I looked up and stared with slightly opened mouth into the most luminous eyes I have ever seen.
“William James Henry, imagine finding you here among all these old fuddy-duddies!” Muriel Chanler exclaimed, flashing a smile briefer than a wink toward the doctor. “Hello, Pellinore.” Then to me: “What’s the matter, aren’t you hungry?”
I looked down at my untouched plate. “I guess not, ma’am.”
“Then you must do me the honor of this dance—unless your card is full?”
The band had taken up a waltz. I turned a desperate eye to the doctor, who seemed to have discovered some riveting aspect of his crab.
“Mrs. Chanler, I don’t know how to dance . . . ,” I began.
“Neither does any other male here, I’m sorry to say. You’ll be in excellent company, Will. They can dissect a Monstrum horribalis but they can’t master the two-step!”
She seized my sweaty hand and, without pausing for a reply, said, “May I, Pellinore?”
She pulled me to the floor, whereupon I immediately stepped on her toe.
“Put your right hand here,” she said, gently placing it upon the small of her back. “And hold out your left like this. Now, to lead me, just a tiny pressure with your right—No need to crush my spine or shove me around like a rusty-wheeled cart. . . . Oh, you are a natural, Will. Are you sure you’ve never danced before?”
I assured her I had not. I did not look at her, but kept my head turned discreetly to one side, for my eyes were level with the bodice of her gown. I smelled her perfume; I moved in an atmosphere suffused in lilac.
My waltz with the lovely Muriel Chanler was clumsy—and infused with grace. Self-conscious—and self-effacing. All eyes were upon us; we danced in perfect solitude. As she gently turned me—I cannot in honesty claim I did much leading—I caught glimpses of the doctor through the shifting bodies, standing where we’d left him by the buffet table, watching us . . . or her, rather. I do not think he was watching me.
Never before had I desired that a moment end as much as I desired that it go on. She extended her hand, curtsied, and thanked me for the dance. I turned away abruptly, anxious to return to the familiar orbit of one who was not quite so heavenly. She stopped me.
“A proper gentleman escorts his partner from the floor, Master Henry,” she informed me, smiling. “Otherwise she is set adrift to effect a most embarrassing exit. Lift your arm, elbow bent, like this.”
She laid her hand upon my raised forearm, and we paraded from the floor. I tell myself now it was my imagination—the slight favoring of her right foot as we negotiated our way back to the table.
“Will Henry, you do not look well,” the doctor observed. “Are you going to be sick?”
“He is naturally graceful, Pellinore,” Muriel said. “You should be proud.”
“Why would I be proud of that?”
“Aren’t you his surrogate father now?”
“I am nothing of the sort.”
“Then I feel sorry for him.”
“You shouldn’t. I understand from a highly respected expert in the field that his atca’k flies like the hawk.” He smiled tightly and abruptly changed the subject. “Where is your husband?”