Mountain Junction

** Chapter 14 **

Day’s End

 

In the late spring, nights in the California Mountains are still cold.  Julie pulled the quilt around her again, and looked at André with warm eyes.  Watching her, he suddenly felt the chill as well, and moving the blanket up to Stella's chin, he walked over to the fireplace and started to place a log on the black grate.

 

"Look in the fireplace first.  Maybe something fell into it."

 

Marveling again at how they thought so much alike, André scanned the fireplace.  There was nothing there, and he placed the log on the grate.  Stuffing the area under it with fresh kindling, he soon had a small fire going, warm enough to take the chill out of the room, but not hot enough to make it stifling.  Knowing that Anna would still be awake, he buzzed the dumbwaiter and sent it down the chute without the bucket.  A few minutes later, a tray with all that was needed for tea slid up the pulleys, and he fixed them both cups.  Handing Julie a cup, he sat down on the padded seat, and looked at her over the rim.

 

"The house in the portrait is Chateau Faucon.  We lived there until we moved to New York when I was nine.  Adele was seven."  He took a sip from his cup.  "Chateau Faucon was a wonderful place to grow up.  Adele and I would hide from Mamon in the woods behind the gardens, and stay there for hours.  I would pretend to be Napoleon; she would pretend to be Robin Hood.  I would tease her about being an English thief, and often told her she had to be Maid Marion, because she was a girl.  She would tell me that she wanted to have fun.  That meant being a boy."

 

Julie smiled at that, she had often bemoaned the curse of being a girl to her sister Janeen, who never understood why Julie wanted to pursue manly things like learning and running a business.  Janeen had always loved dressing up and flirting; she still did.  Julie had hated dressing up with a passion.  She felt a kinship with the young French woman in the portrait.  Puzzled, she asked André why they had left France.

 

André sighed.  "My father made some bad investments during the war here.  He lost most of his fortune, and we took what we had left and came to New York during the summer of 1869.  We lived in apartments in the French section of the city, and we all hated it.  I spent most of my time protecting Adele from the boys who did not like her bullying ways, or trying to make Mamon feel less sad about the life we had left behind.  She would look at the few things we brought with us from the Chateau, and cry.  I hated that, and so did Adele.  She would often tell Mamon to get out and see the city and all it had to offer.  They fought continually over everything, from Mamon's refusing to leave the apartment, to Adele's dresses.  I always tried to stop the fights, but never could."

 

Stella stirred again.  Her eyes were unfocused, but open.  Julie moved to the teapot, and refilled her cup.  Taking it back to Stella, she managed to get some of the warm liquid through her lips.  As she did that, André put a fresh cloth on her forehead, and smiled down at her, hoping she was not in too much pain.  "Let's try more broth."  Julie nodded, and managed to get a few spoonfuls into Stella before she fell asleep again.

 

"How long did you live in the city?" Julie asked, as she used one of the cloths to wipe Stella's lips gently.

 

"Not long.  Father was many things, but a tenement dweller was not one of them.  He hated it as much as Mamon, and managed to make money working for a shipping company.  In time, he invested enough of his salary into the company to get us out of the flats, and into a modest house.  He began to rebuild his fortune, and although we never managed to live the way we did in France, we did well enough that I could go to a good school, and Mamon was invited to society functions.  She was happier then, although she still longed for the gardens and parlor of Chateau Faucon.  By the time I was 19 we were invited to all the right parties, and Mamon started to look at Adele with greater care."

 

"Adele at 17 was beautiful.  She had a mass of straight black hair that framed a pair of sapphire blue eyes.  All my friends looked at her, but she ignored them all.  You see, age never softened Adele's spirit.  She had le fort vulonté as a young women that she had as a child.  She never let my mother put her on display the way she did me.  Mamon would make sure every belle feme in her circle of friends crossed my path.  I usually handled it by speaking in mostly French, confusing them."  He smiled as he remembered the girls at those endless calls stomping off in irritation.  He grinned at Julie.  "I still do that."

 

Julie was changing the bandage of Stella's hand, but she had to smile.  "So I have heard."

 

Andre stretched and got up to fill his cup again. "Adele would go to the parties, and purposely aggravate the sons of my mother’s friends.  She would talk about the things she liked; the breaking of Seizemain and other horses we owned, or she would comment on the politics of the day, making sure that she took the side of whatever party was the opposite of whoever she was talking too."  He laughed.  "I never should have given her my schoolbooks when I was done with them, but she had a thirst for learning that my mother refused to acknowledge. I loved Adele's quick mind, so I gave her my books, and taught her things I learned."  A dark shadow crossed his face.  "I wish she could have gone to school with me. I think she would have turned out like you."  He said simply.

 

"Towards the end of her first season, a family from France had come to stay at a home of one of Mamon's friends.  They had a son two years older than I was.  Jean Medisons was everything Mamon loved:  handsome, rich and French.  I never liked him, and thought Adele would treat him just like everyone else Mamon dragged her in front of. I was wrong.  Jean had a spirit that Adele was instantly drawn too.  He hated society parties, hated being on display and he loved to throw everyone he came in contact with into confusion.  He loved money, however, and I suspected that he feigned most of his disdain in an effort to woo Adele.  In fact, I often told my sister that Medisons was a fortune chasseur of the first order.  It didn't matter; it was too late.  She loved him, and refused to listen."

 

"I even tried to talk to Mamon, but she wouldn't listen either.  He told her that he had heard that Chateau Faucon was up for sale again, and promised to look into buying it.  His family stood behind his lies, and we all stood there one Saturday morning and watched my beautiful, smiling sister give herself to him and leave for France the next day.  Mamon was as happy as Adele.  I missed my sister even before she was gone."

 

Julie had moved from the side of Stella and was sitting next to André on the padded seat before the fire.  She watched him silently, as the pain over the loss of his sister to a fortune hunter washed over his face.  She wanted to take his hand but instead took his teacup, and refilled it.  Handing it back to him, she waited for him to continue.

 

"Adele and I wrote letters constantly.  It was not long before I noticed that the tone of her writing had changed.  They were happy for about six months, but then things started entering her letters.  As I had suspected, the family was counting on her yearly stipend to help their fortune.  It seems Mamon had promised them more then my father could afford, and when the true amount came out, Adele was no longer their favored pet.  That portrait is testimony to that.  Jean had it commissioned in order to show my mother that she would never see Chateau Faucon with Adele as her mistress.  The look on my sister’s face says it all; the one person innocent of all the lies suffered the most."

 

"She didn't suffer silently.  My family received a letter saying that she was leaving her husband, and coming back to New York.  My mother was livid, and refused to allow her to come home to live.  My father was never any good at fighting Mamon, so I was the only one left for her.  I was still to young to be of much help.  I was working at my father's shipping company, and although I had my own salary, it was not very much.  I was saving everything I had to move as far away from my parents as possible.  I loved Adele, however, so I quit working for my father and began working for a banker in the city.  I was on the bottom rung, but I was a quick learner, and it did allow me a chance to invest in bigger projects.  But life in the city was more money then I had anticipated.  I didn't care, of course; all I cared about was having my sister back with me.  But Adele did not like me holding the burden.  She insisted on trying to take care of herself.  One afternoon, when I came home from the bank, she was simply gone."

 

André's face showed the pain that Julie knew was coming.  She saw him reliving the helplessness of trying to eradicate him from a family he saw as the betrayer of his sister, and tying to help her at the same time.  She saw that he was struggling, and she got up and went back to ministering to Stella.  André concentrated on the stoking the fire, and spit out the rest of his story.

 

"She could not find work.  She could not take care of herself.  She finally took the only avenue left to women who are at the end of options to survive.  She sold herself.  That lifestyle took its toll on her very quickly.  She was thin, and the spark that had made her such a force left her beautiful eyes.  She eventually refused to see me or accept my meager attempts at helping her.  One day, a girl who worked the streets with her, who told me she was sick, approached me.  I went to her hovel of an apartment, and saw how wasted she was.  I sat on the edge of her bed, just like we have been doing here, tried to make her well, and watched her die.  Had she been in a place like this, at least she would have been fed and healthy."  He put his face in his hands.

 

Julie quietly changed the dressings on some of the wounds, keeping her eyes on the sleeping Stella.  Poor Adele, she thought to herself.  She had lost everything for a false love, and had turned her back on the real love André had offered, in order to prove she could take care of herself.  She looked at Stella, and thought of Cindy, Angel and the other girls in the house.  To him, they were all Adele; fed, healthy and while not living the charmed life, were at least safe, until now.  There was so much more about the remarkable man kneeling on the hearth she wanted to know.  He was so much more then the proprietor of sin he was made out to be.

 

As he stood and straightened his shirt, he moved to the vanity table and stepped on a piece of glass on the rug that Cindy had missed.  Looking at the rug and its small blood smears, he rolled it up silently and put it outside the door of the room.  At that moment, he heard the clock downstairs chime 5 o'clock.  Walking to the landing, he watched the early morning on the mountain.  The inky black had been replaced with a deep blue hue as the stars began to disappear.  Lost in thought, he never heard the footsteps coming up the stairs, nor did he hear Julie explaining to the Doctor the condition of the patient.  He was surprised when he felt a hand slip into his, and he looked down at a face that was not looking at him or the window, but at Adele.

 

"I wish I could have known her," she said to the portrait.

 

"She would have liked you," he said to the window.

 

They walked silently down the stairs.  Leaving her sitting on the round settee, he walked into the kitchen and saw Anna was up again, making breakfasts for the people who remained at the house.

 

"Do you have the list yet?" he asked.

 

"Yes, it is ready for Stewart, the minute he walks in the door.  You look exhausted André."  She added quietly, "Go home."

 

"Make sure Hawke follows him around when he gets here."

 

"He's already here,” Anna said.  “He is in the back store room, seeing if the window is broken."

 

"Who ever did this left through the front door,” André said, “and was ignored.  And I want him found!"  He started to shoot more instructions at her, when she interrupted him.

 

"Go home André.  You told me all this last night."

 

André knew he had.  He just hated feeling so helpless.  He turned from Anna and went back to the foyer.  Julie was already standing, waiting for him.  He handed her into the phaeton, and started off toward her farm.  Within minutes, he felt her sag against his arm, sound asleep.  By the time they got to her blue and white farmhouse, the sun was already rising over the mountain.  Instead of waking her, he carried her softly into her parlor, and set her gently on her overstuffed sofa.  Laying a quilt from the back of the sofa across her, he looked at her for a moment.

 

"Merci, Cheri," he said as he stroked her cheek gently.  She never stirred.

 

Closing the door behind him, he walked to the phaeton.  From the corral, he heard a neigh and saw Delilah, pawing at the dirt and shaking her head.  Smiling, he walked over to her and stroked her nose.  "One day, my girl," he said to the horse, "you will chase Seizmain again."  Delilah snorted and turned her back on him, swishing her tail.  André chuckled.  "So like your mistress!"

 

Once back in town, André made two stops.  The first was to the Saloon, to tell Morgan about Stella, knowing that Julie had not been able to deliver on her promise.  The second was to the constable’s office, where he told Stewart of the list, and other information that had been gathered by Hawke and Anna.  He again offered to help in anyway he could, but was not surprised when Stewart refused.  Deep in thought over what to do next, he never noticed David Carmack and Money watching him from the large picture window of the barbershop.  He entered his office, checked to see that he had a clear morning, and dragged up the stairs to the small room above his office that he used to talk privately to some of his more clandestine contacts.  Once there, he finally gave in to his fatigue, and lay full length on the leather couch.  Within seconds, he was asleep.

 

 

 

Chapter 1 ... André
Chapter 2 ... Julie
Chapter 3 ... Clyde
Chapter 4 ... The Welcoming Party
Chapter 5 ... Sunrise
Chapter 6 ... Tabletop
Chapter 7 ... The Race
Chapter 8 ... Missed Lunch
Chapter 9 ... Something To Chew On
Chapter 10 .. Back to Business
Chapter 11 .. House Work
Chapter 12 .. Idyllicus Interruptus
Chapter 13 .. House Repair
*Chapter 14 .. Day’s End
Chapter 15 .. TBA
Chapter 16 .. TBA
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