I sat at the head of the table and made a great show of polishing off gumbo, roast chicken, and a boeufdaube or some other foolishness, just so they would leave me alone. Richard helped me dress and I went down all the way to the first floor for supper with my family. I told her that it had been a grand occasion, and then I retired to the attic, certain that I would never leave it again. That morning when we arrived home, I kissed my Stella. "I am worried about that girl!" I declared. And he could not be there to help! Julien knew all pleasure, adventure and triumph were over! Julien was going to be placed in the tomb like everyone else. The world shrank and revolved around Julien. Dying! And I was as self-centered about it as anyone else. I was dying! As I sat in the crampacked parlor of Lulu White's house, listening to the ragtime piano, I thought, I am dying. Stella drank glass after glass of champagne and danced on her tiptoes. Stella loved it! This was living, cried Stella, this was life. "Did she tell you the poem?" I said to Carlotta. "Stella and Lionel, we'll go, the three of us, an escapade, you can believe it.All of you go. "All right, make the car ready, and all of you get out," I said. "Ah, now, darling, don't fuss, please," she said. And very slowly, taking her time, she recited each verse as I remembered it. It was to Storyville, to the houses of my favorite ladies, that we went.Ĭarlotta nodded. There was no God and Devil at Riverbend when I was born. "But I never knew for sure that he was the Devil. Richard, my devoted one, kept his eyes on me, and then Stella said-Stella said that we should all go driving, since I was up again, and all right. Mary Beth spoke of practical things with her drunken husband, Daniel Mclntyre, poor old soul, now so sick he was a slovenly ruin of the fine man he'd once been. What if somehow I could come back? What if somehow I could stay earthbound as this thing has done? I lay in the dark night after night, thinking. "Well, you're the one who taught us, Father," said Cortland with a little twinkle in his eye.
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