Lair of Dreams

Henry got a sick feeling in his stomach as he remembered being summoned to the parlor, their butler, Joseph, closing the doors behind Henry. It was the only time his father’s calm had ever threatened to become something else, something violent.

“Do you recognize this?” his father asked, holding up the offending love letter. “What is this filth?”

Henry’s fear robbed him of any answer.

“Has this”—his father’s mouth struggled to form the word—“boy… compromised you in some way?”

Louis had made him laugh. Louis had kissed him. Loved him. There had been no compromise in any of that.

“Have you thought that he might blackmail our family, tarnish our good name, in pursuit of money?” his father continued. “Do you assume it is only homely heiresses who may fall prey to fortune hunters?”

Henry wanted to tell his father that Louis was kind and good, romantic and gentle. What they shared was real. But telling his father such a thing was impossible. His disapproval was so powerful it paralyzed Henry, strangled him in shame.

He’d never felt like more of a coward.

“You will not be returning to Exeter,” his father announced.

“I won’t?” Even in his fear, new hope surged in Henry. He could stay here. With Louis.

“If you are unconcerned with protecting your family’s reputation, I shall be forced to do it for you. I’ve made some calls. At nine o’clock tomorrow morning, there is a train bound for Charleston and the Citadel. You will be on that train. Perhaps they can make a man of you where I have failed. You will never speak to this boy again.”

As Henry watched, his father tore up the beautiful letter and set the pieces ablaze with a match, tossing them into the fireplace, where they flared and curled into ash.

Henry had been banished to his room, where he found that his suitcase was already packed for him. Military school. If things had been bad at Exeter, the Citadel would be worse. Henry would never survive that. He could save himself, make up a lie: “I had nothing to do with that boy! It’s all a misunderstanding!” Then he could do as his father commanded, give up everything he loved, Louis and music, and go back to Exeter, become a lawyer, then a judge. He could marry the right girl and have a Henry Bartholomew DuBois V and see the same people at the same society balls and dinners, all the while knowing that he was still a disappointment to his father, that this would never be forgotten, only denied. Or he could strike out on his own, be his own man. Wasn’t that what his father was always telling him to be?

There was a gathering that night of his father’s business associates. Henry listened to them downstairs, chuckling with their port and cigars. If that was what “being a man” was, he wanted no part of it. With his father and the servants occupied, Henry knew it was time. He stuffed what he could into a knapsack, climbed out his bedroom window, and shimmied down the tree, sneaking through the cemetery. Henry froze when he came upon his mother sitting with her rosary before a statue of Saint Michael. For a long moment, his mother regarded him, her eyes moving from Henry to his knapsack, then back to his face as if she were trying to memorize it.

“Fly, fly, sweet bird,” she whispered and turned back to her saints, letting her son slip away from the prison of Bonne Chance.

Henry had sneaked down to the Quarter, to Louis’s attic garret, but he wasn’t there. He tried Celeste’s next. Louis wasn’t there, either.

“I heard him say he might play on the Elysian,” Alphonse said.

But by the time Henry made it to the docks, the Elysian was well upriver. Henry was near tears. He thought about waiting for Louis to get back, but he had no idea how long that would be, and Henry couldn’t afford to wait. His father would be out looking for him. Once he got safely settled in his new life, he’d get word to Louis somehow.

Luck had been on Henry’s side. A steamer was just about to head up the Mississippi, so Henry talked himself on board, promising to play piano in exchange for a ride to St. Louis. In St. Louis, he posted a letter to Louis care of Celeste’s, along with the address for the Western Union office there. No telegram came. None came in Memphis, Richmond, or New York, either. Henry thought about the day they’d buried Gaspard. Louis had extracted a promise from Henry that he wouldn’t leave. And what had Henry done but run away? Did Louis hate him for leaving like that, without saying good-bye? Did he think Henry a coward? If only he could find Louis, he could explain what had happened.

Henry didn’t give up. He wrote to a few journeymen musicians from the Elysian. Only one answered, a cornet player named Jimmy. He said he’d heard from the cousin of a friend that Louis might’ve left New Orleans and found work with a territory band, but he couldn’t remember the name of the outfit. Henry groaned when he heard that—territory bands traveled all over the country. Louis could be anywhere.