Tarnished Gold

'Okay, Mama.'

She descended the stairs and was gone. I closed my eyes and tried to sleep, and for a little while I did fall into a deep repose, but suddenly my eyes popped open. My heart had started to drum as if it knew something I didn't. I lay there staring up into the darkness waiting for it to slow down. When it didn't, I sat up and then went to the window.

There he was, outlined in the moonlight, staring up at the house, waiting . . . Pierre. My ghost would not go away.

I threw on my dress and hurried down, closing the screen door softly behind me. He was waiting on our dock.

'Gabrielle,' he said as I approached. 'I was afraid to come to your house to ask for you.'

'I'm glad you didn't,' I said, stopping a foot or so away from him.

'Why? Why did you write that letter?'

'I had to,' I said as harshly as my lips would permit me to speak to him. He stepped toward me. 'Mama knows,' I added, and he froze for a moment. 'She threatened to go to New Orleans and knock on your door if she had to,' I added.

As the moon peeked over the shoulder of a passing cloud, the light caught his face and revealed a pained expression.

'What is it your mother thinks of me?' he asked softly. 'What has she told you?'

'You are rich, Pierre. You can go anywhere, do anything, see anyone you want.'

'Oui,” he said. 'That's true, Gabrielle, but I didn't go anywhere else; I didn't do anything else, and I haven't seen anyone else but you. You were right in your letter. Our love, my love for you, is a double-edged sword, and when you said you couldn't see me again, I felt its sharpness in my heart. Do you know what it's been like being here, looking up at your window at night?'

'Pierre . . .'

'And during the day.'

'During the day?'

'Yes. I've watched you from a distance, seen you walking, seen you working, talking to people, but I was afraid to approach you in daylight. Remember the exquisite torment of being beside each other and not touching? It wasn't exquisite this time; it was just torment.

'You think I have other lovers, don't you? You think because I am rich, I can go anywhere and have affair after affair and then one day pick up and leave, breaking someone's heart without caring?'

I was ashamed to say yes, but I had thought it. He nodded and turned away for a moment.

'Other men I know, wealthy, married men, fit that description. I would not deny it, but you are the first woman I have kissed passionately since I married Daphne. You must believe me.'

'Didn't you love her?'

'I . . . thought so. She's a very beautiful woman and she comes from a family as distinguished as mine, although not as wealthy. Ours was more of an arranged marriage. We were thought to be the perfect couple, but things happen, things change. I'm a very lonely man these days, Gabrielle, and despite what your mother might fear for you and even what you might think at this moment, I am not one to go wandering and philandering. I do not give myself liberally.

'But when my eyes feasted on you, when I first saw you, I felt something so deep and so sincere in my heart, I could not deny it; I will not deny it. I swear I'm not here to take advantage of you and then leave you in the lurch. I will never do anything to harm you or make you unhappy. Somehow, I want to be able to take care of you.

'I can't believe,' he continued, raising his voice and his clenched hands in the air, 'that this love is not meant to be. What a horrible trick Nature has played on us then. To bring me here, to permit me to see you and you to see me. To permit us to kiss and hold each other and pledge our feelings to each other, and then to rip us apart mercilessly like this . . . no. No!' he cried. 'I won't permit it to happen. Tell me what I must do to be with you and I will do it.'

'I can't ask you to do anything, Pierre. It's enough that you and I have been together while you are married, but I believed you when you said our love is so good and pure, it makes it all right. I wanted to believe you.'

'Don't stop believing that, Gabrielle. It's true. It's as true as the morning light and the evening stars.' He stepped closer to me. 'How can you deny that?'

'I don't deny it,' I said softly.

'Good. Love me then, Gabrielle; love me as purely as I love you and throw caution and unhappiness to the wind.'

'Pierre,' I said, whispering. He put his hands on my shoulders. I couldn't drive him away; I didn't have the strength. God forgive me, I thought, but I love him more than I love what's logical or right or what's sensible. He kissed me and I kissed him back.

Instantly his arms were around me. He lifted me to him and held me.

'I thought I might kill myself,' he whispered in my ear between kisses. 'I thought I might throw myself into your swamp and let your snakes or alligators feast on my depressed body. It seemed a fit place to die.'

'No, Pierre. Don't think of such a terrible thing.'

'I won't as long as you will hold me and be with me and love me,' he said. I promised I would and we kissed again. Then we stepped into his canoe. I lay back and watched him push off and pole us into the darkness.

The swamp seemed to come alive. It was as if all sound, all life, had been put on hold while we spoke, and now that we were quiet, Nature spoke. She spoke through the owl that hooted from the branch of the pecan tree onshore, the cicadas that raised their voices to drone their nightly symphony, the frogs that croaked at us every