The Last Gentleman

Catherine de’ Medici?”
    â€œI too often get the two of them mixed up,” said the poor sweating engineer.
    â€œBut not the three,” said Rita.
    Why did she have to be cruel, though? The engineer sat between the two, transfixed by a not altogether unpleasant horribleness. He couldn’t understand either woman: why one should so dutifully put her head on the block and why the other should so readily chop it off. And yet, could he be wrong or did he fancy that Rita despite her hostility felt an attraction for Myra? There was a voluptuousness about these nightly executions.
    But tonight he wasn’t up to it and he left with Jamie. He was careful not to forget his book about General Kirby Smith’s surrender at Shreveport in 1865. He was tired of Lee’s sad fruitless victories and would as soon see the whole thing finished off for good.
    8 .
    The man walked up and down in the darkness of the water oaks, emerging now and then under the street light, which shed a weak yellow drizzle. The boy sat on the steps between the azaleas and watched. He always imagined he could see the individual quanta of light pulsing from the filament.
    When the man came opposite the boy, the two might exchange a word; then the man would go his way, turn under the light, and come back and speak again.
    â€œFather, you shouldn’t walk at night like this.”
    â€œWhy not, son?”
    â€œFather, they said they were going to kill you.”
    â€œThey’re not going to kill me, son.”
    The man walked. The youth listened to the music and the hum of the cottonseed-oil mill. A police car passed twice and stopped; the policeman talked briefly to the man under the street light. The man came back.
    â€œFather, I know that the police said those people had sworn to kill you and that you should stay in the house.”
    â€œThey’re not going to kill me, son.”
    â€œFather, I heard them on the phone. They said you loved niggers and helped the Jews and Catholics and betrayed your own people.”
    â€œI haven’t betrayed anyone, son. And I don’t have much use for any of them, Negroes, Jews, Catholics, or Protestants.”
    â€œThey said if you spoke last night, you would be a dead man.”
    â€œI spoke last night and I am not a dead man.”
    Through an open window behind the boy there came the music of the phonograph. When he looked up, he could see the Pleiades, which seemed to swarm in the thick air like lightning bugs.
    â€œWhy do you walk at night, Father?”
    â€œI like to hear the music outside.”
    â€œDo you want them to kill you, Father?”
    â€œWhy do you ask that?”
    â€œWhat is going to happen?”
    â€œI’m going to run them out of town, son, every last miserable son of a bitch.”
    â€œLet’s go around to the garden, Father. You can hear the music there.”
    â€œGo change the record, son. The needle is stuck in the groove.”
    â€œYes sir.”
    The engineer woke listening. Something had happened. There was not a sound, but the silence was not an ordinary silence. It was the silence of a time afterwards. It had been violated earlier. His heart beat a strong steady alarm. He opened his eyes. A square of moonlight lay across his knees.
    A shot had been fired. Had he dreamed it? Yes. But why was the night portentous? The silence reverberated with insult. There was something abroad.
    Nor had it come from Sutter’s room. He waited and listened twenty minutes without moving. Then he dressed and went outside into the moonlight.
    The golf links was as pale as lake water. To the south Juno’s temple hung low in the sky like a great fiery star. The shrubbery, now grown tall as trees, cast inky shadows which seemed to walk in the moonlight.
    For a long time he gazed at the temple. What was it? It alone was not refracted and transformed by the prism of dreams and memory. But now he remembered. It was fiery old Canopus, the great red star of the south which once a year reared up and hung low in the sky over the cottonfields and canebrakes.
    Turning at last, he walked quickly to the Trav-L-Aire, got his flashlight from the glove compartment, cut directly across the courtyard and entered the back door of the castle; through the dark pantry and into the front hall, where he rounded the newel abruptly and went up the stairs. To the second and then the third floor as if he knew exactly where he was, though he had