Part Trois

final installment of the short story

Part Trois

Tante Alice lived another two years leaving this world at the age of 101 and all of her worldly possessions to Elise as all three of her boys had been killed in the late war leaving as far as could be determined no heirs.

This turn of events left Elise quite wealthy. “A lady of means” as the saying went. Soon most of the eligible men, both widowers and bachelors were “camping in her dooryard.” She still had a few childbearing years left which made her that much more attractive.

But Elise would have none of it for almost two years she had been fending off suitors and shortly after Tante Alice died, she decided to take a trip to New Orleans.

In November 1880, Elise went to Alexandria to catch the train for New Orleans. When she arrived at the station, the train she wanted to board was almost filled to capacity. The two passenger cars seemed to be overflowing with vacationers and people going to New Orleans or points along the way for business or pleasure. The hubbub, and people rushing hither and yon was both exciting and maddening as it made the way difficult for those who were trying to board the last train to leave for New Orleans until the next morning

Five minutes before the train was scheduled to depart the conductor appeared on the steps of the leading passenger car. He looked drawn and pale as a ghost his rummy black pupils like burning coals in his sunken eye sockets.

“There is room for another passenger,” His voice sounded hollow, spectral, he tried to smile but it appeared to be more of grimace. Elise was hurrying forward when her way was blocked by none other than Tante Alice! She smiled at Elise and beckoned her to the side. Responding without a second thought Elise joined her aunt. As soon as she had stepped aside and out of the boarding line the man behind her tipped, his hat and hurried forward to get the last seat available.

Elise followed her to a less crowded area of the station wondering what it was that was so important that she had to miss the last train to New Orleans.

It was then she realized whom it was that had caused her to quit the line.

Aunt Alice grinned at her and said “ There will be another train tomorrow Elise, This one will only get to Donaldsonville-----” When Elise started to say something Aunt Alice smiled at her and was gone before she could get a word out.

With evening closing in and Elise not relishing the thought of returning to Marksville by night coach she decided to seek a room at a nearby boarding house. The closest one was three blocks from the station. Seeing that twilight was just settling in and believing that she could walk the three blocks to the boarding house before full dark saving cab fare Elise started out, leaving her luggage in the station house “safe” room for the night. After arriving at the boarding house and paying for her room, she inquired of the clerk if there was an eating establishment nearby. The clerk replied in the affirmative and gave her directions to the restaurant, which was a block from the boarding house and around the corner to the right.

As she walked to the restaurant, the wind picked up causing Elise to wrap her shawl more tightly around her. The trees boarding the street rattled their limbs and sent a shower of leaves running up the road.

After her supper of buttered bread and tea Elise was returning to the boarding house this time heading into the wind instead of being pushed along by it. She had her head down and watching where she stepped only glancing up every now and then to see how much further she had to go. Once when she glanced up she thought she saw a man coming toward her, his face hidden by the cloud shadows that drifted across the moon’s white pocked face. As he drew closer, a break appeared in the clouds and she recognized the conductor of the train that her Aunt Alice had kept her from boarding. His face was pale, bloodless in the light of the full November moon and his eyes shone with a fierce greenish light. He wore no hat and his hair, what there was of it, trailed in long gray strands behind him like a tattered flag in the wind. Just before he reached her, he grinned showing decaying teeth, he reached out to take hold of her arm---- The next thing she knew she was standing before the entrance of the boarding house in a daze, breathing in short gasps trying to catch her breath. a person, their back toward Elise was re-boarding the cab after having walked with her to the door of the house. She assumed it was a woman, because she thought she heard the soft rustle of taffeta as the person settled onto the bench of the cab.

She had no way of knowing whom her benefactor was not having seen the him/her clearly. There had been someone else in the cab also, an adolescent girl on the cusp of womanhood, who kept to herself in the shadows. Elise did not remember climbing into the cab for the short ride to boarding house. But she did remember to thank her rescuer and the girl. The girl said nothing, giving no sign that she had heard Elise’s thank you.

The other person, her savior, nodded briefly and Elise thought that she saw the ghost of a smile on the person’s lips. The older person resembled her mother, or so she thought.

As she stood in the alcove she took a final look at the disappearing cab, with a shock she recognized the face of the girl looking at her from the rear window of the vehicle It was Margret!

Early the next morning Elise, along with most of the citizens of Alexandria learned that the train “The City of New Orleans” had derailed just outside of Donaldsonville killing fifty-two passengers and sending a number of others to hospitals in Baton Rouge.

“This is not an auspicious time to be traveling on holiday,” Elise thought to herself, “I believe I had best go home.”

She left Alexandria within the hour in a rented buggy heading back to Marksville. The trip back was uneventful the weather was bright and sunny but a cold wind was at her back helping her along. she arrived at the house on Rue Savage three hours after departing Alexandria.

All went well for the remainder of November and the better part of December. The sugar cane had been harvested and prepared for market. The speculators had paid top dollar for the crop. Robert and Elise had money in the bank---- Yes despite the personal tragedies suffered over the past year and a quarter. The owner and operators of Belle Vert were doing well.

Eduard, Elise’s brother had been in Europe with his family for the past two years conducting business and enjoying an extended vacation. However, he wrote he would be home for Christmas or the New-Year.

Which was welcome news as no one absolutely no one could throw a party like Oncle Eduard.

He knew of the Yellow Fever outbreak, learned of it through Ruther’s News service and he had received the sad news of Margret’s death along with that of his Tante Marie by telegraph.

He had wired back his condolences but replied that he could not just yet take ship for home as his business had yet to be concluded.

In reality, he would not have been able to get back to Louisiana in time for the funeral and all knew that.

At the beginning of December 1880, Robert received news that Madeleine had died at the facility in Jackson. The people there offered to bury her on the grounds and erect a proper headstone.

Robert and Elise refused and arranged for her body to be shipped home by rail.

He immediately wired his brother-in-law of Madeleine’s death and requested that he and his family board the next ship for home. “Things,” he said in the telegram, “ were coming unglued at Belle Vert and he was needed home yesterday.”

Robert had never been privy to the comings and goings of the various ghosts. If anyone of those privileged to have contact with them had said something to him about them, he would have shrugged it off as nonsense. After all, he had been through a horrible war saw men literally blown apart or die in slow agony. One death stood out vividly in his mind a death he would never forget.

A solider, he did not know the man, had snatched the colors from the dying hands of the previous flag bearer and was charging straight toward the Confederate lines waving the Stars and Stripes and yelling at the top of his voice.

A minie ball struck the man in the mouth followed by a fuselage of bullets that struck his body in numerous places and kept striking him. The flagpole had become stuck in the ground and the man’s hand was still holding on to it. The bullets kept striking his torso keeping him erect. Even though the solider was his enemy Robert could not help the tears that fell from his eyes as he watched in horror for what seemed an eternity.

“Please God,” Robert prayed aloud “let him fall, let him fall.” But the bullets kept striking the now dead body, it could not fall. Finally, the firing from the Confederate line diminished allowing the almost unrecognizable body to fall to earth.

That picture stayed with Robert haunting his dreams for a long time after the war had ended. “Ghosts? Pah! He would have thought, what foolishness!

It took the better part of a week for Madeleine’s body to arrive at Alexandria and then more time to prepare for the crypt for proper burial of her remains.

Therefore, for the time being the casket had been placed in the large parlor or main sitting room.

. A wake was held and people from as far away as Baton Rouge attended. Robert’s cousin from New Orleans, Rene now Father Rene Le Carrie was asked to officiate at the funeral Mass to be held the day of the burial.

Eduard arrived home by steam packet and private coach in the early morning hours the day of the funeral; having steamed across the Atlantic on a steam-powered sail-driven frigate and boarding the steam packet for the trip up the Mississippi to the Atchafalaya and thence to Pointe Coupee and the private coach awaiting them at Simmsport.

Saturday the eighteenth arrived gloomy and wet matching the spirits of the mourners, for Madeleine had been well loved by family and friends.

Madeleine was buried as were most of the deceased with a portrait of her in life embedded into a sheet of lead and covered with a pane of thick glass.

From the day of Madeleine’s funeral things at Belle Vert began to deteriorate . At first it was hardly noticeable small objects either disappeared or were moved to another location. Then Margret’s bedroom door was found to be latched from the inside. Yet when one of the servants climbed through the bedroom window to get to the door it was found unlatched.

On moonlit nights the figure of a woman in her late thirties or early forties was seen wandering throughout the house first on the stairs, then the upper landing, then crossing the kitchen across the breezeway. Wandering over the grounds , at the tomb. She could be seen just about anywhere with the moonlight shining through her lighting her skeleton through transparent flesh.

She didn’t seem sad or happy just there as though she was searching for something or someone.

Robert saw her as well as others staying at Belle Vert . It was as though she wanted her presence known.

Things continued like that for months but only on moon lit nights if there was a storm or new moon or even heavy cloud cover things were quiet until the next time the moon shone.

The End of Time

Robert and Elise were married on Saturday June 11 1881 and moved to Elise’s house in Marksville leaving Belle Vert in care of a human caretaker and the various ghosts that now inhabited the plantation house. For the previous six months before the marriage, Robert who lived there alone except for house servants was visited almost constantly by mischievous sprits. A various times he saw Margret running about the house, or sitting on the porch in her favorite rocker talking and laughing with her mother and grandparents The phantoms of Tante Marie and others standing or sitting around holding quiet conversations when Margret or her mother and grand parents were elsewhere. It was as though when Madeleine was placed in the crypt the tomb became alive.

The house was kept in good repair. Robert and Elise worked there during the day with little interference from the “others” Except every once in while the ledgers were found with mysterious erasures or additions or a pencil would be broken, an inkwell overturned. It was as if a group of unruly children was running amuck when the office was closed for lunch or the evening.

On Christmas Eve 1881 Robert and Elise decided to spin the night at the plantation and have Christmas dinner there the next day.

They invited a few friends over for the day. Things were going perfectly the day was almost cold and a merry fire crackled in the huge hearth keeping the hosts and the guests warm and comfortable. Dinner was a success and the mulled wine and drinks served afterward put everyone in the holiday mood.

The party went on for hours. By the time it was time to go to evening Mass, Christmas that year being on a Sunday; the party goers were in a very jovial mood and all piled into a large wagon to go to the Christmas Mass.

No one had bothered to blank the fire in the dining room or the adjacent parlor. As most of the neighbors were also at the evening Mass The fire at Belle Vert was not discovered. The house itself, the main living area was nearly completely destroyed. The only thing that was barely touched by the fire was the adjoining kitchen area across the breezeway and the adjacent servant’s quarters. This was because while the owners and guests were at Mass a rainstorm had developed and drenched the southern part of Avoyelles parish effectively putting out fire.

It took more than six months to restore Belle Vert to its former state and this exhausted Robert to the point where his health was put into serious jeopardy.

Elise of course took care of him as best she could but he continued to weaken in strength and seemed to have lost the will to live. He lingered on until early October dying on the fourteenth just two days after his forty fifth birthday.

He was followed in death by Elise two months later on 16 December 1882.

She was buried in the family tomb next to her husband and the tomb was sealed shut.

Eduard the only surviving family member of the original family sold all of the family holdings to a corporation with the proviso that the home and grounds be kept up. He then moved to Texas where he lived out the remainder of his days in comfort.

No one ever lived in the house at Belle Vert again although it was and still is kept in good repair by the Sugar cane co-op that owns and raises cane on the property.

It is rumored however, that on nights of the waxing moon there are lights, music and laugher that can be seen and heard coming from Belle Vert and some nights, particularly when the full moon shines directly down on Belle Vert or it is a holiday there are ghostly lanterns hanging on the gallery and surrounding trees as a swarthy man with perfect teeth glides over the ground of the dooryard holding a pretty, petite red haired woman in his arms. As a man with a soldier’s bearing dances with a young strawberry blonde and two slightly older women watch from rocking chairs on the gallery tapping their feet in time with the music while awaiting their turn to dance.

Finis!