Feast of All Saints Read Online Free Page B

if it’s true…I have to know now.”
    “This is all my fault,” Richard murmured.
    “Go back.” Marcel started off again. And again Richard clutched his arm.
    “She won’t know, Marcel…and if she does what makes you think she’ll tell you! She’s not in her right mind!” he whispered, and glancing at her, dropped his eyes politely as if she were a cripple.
    Her hair was in streams now like that of an immigrant, and she wandered through the crowd letting her feet find her path so that people all but stumbled over her as she crooned to the cat. Richard’s thin, large-boned frame stiffened as he shifted his weight. The boy in him wanted to cry.
    “You won’t turn to stone, looking at her!” Marcel whispered. And astonished, Richard saw a vicious spark in Marcel’s eyes, and heard a driving impatience in his voice.
    “This is craziness,” Richard muttered, and almost turned to go. Then he said. “If you don’t come back with me now…you’ll be sent home from school for good.”
    “For good?” Marcel reeled half off the curb. “Well then, good!” And he started across the street to her.
    Richard was speechless. He stared beyond the row of crawling carts that worked against the crowds from the market, and as Marcel approached Christophe’s mother, Richard went after him.
    “Well, then give me back the clipping!” he said, his voice thick. “You know perfectly well it’s Antoine’s, I want it.”
    At once Marcel rummaged in his pockets and drew out a crumpled bit of newspaper with neatly trimmed edges. He tried desperately to smooth it in the palm of his hand. “I didn’t mean to steal it,” he said. “I was excited…I meant to put it back on your desk…”
    Richard’s face was dark with anger. He glanced from second to second at the figure of Juliet, and then at the ground.
    “I would have brought it to you before supper,” Marcel insisted. “You have to believe that.”
    “It’s not even mine, it’s Antoine’s, and you stuffed it in your pocket and ran out.”
    “If you don’t believe me,” Marcel insisted, “you wound me in my heart.”
    “I know perfectly well where your heart is,” Richard murmured, with a glance at the
mea culpa
fist Marcel touched to his breast. “And you’re in for a lot more than pangs there, I’ll tell you. You’re going to be expelled!”
    Marcel didn’t even seem to understand.
    “And suppose it’s true,” Richard went on, “suppose Christophe is coming back here…What kind of a recommendation is it—to be bounced out of Monsieur De Latte’s school on your ear?”
    Richard folded the clipping, but not without reading it quickly again. It seemed a flimsy piece of evidence to push Marcel to ruin. But, how splendid it had seemed that morning, when Antoine, Richard’s cousin, cutting open the letter from Paris, had given it to Richard at the table. Christophe coming back at last. They had always dreamed of it, hoped for it, told themselves the day would come when he would learn of his mother’s madness and if nothing else had done the trick, his love for her would bring him home. But there was so much more to it than that. One was left no room for fantasy, for speculation. It was spelled out plainly that Christophe Mercier planned no simple visit, but a real return. He was coming home to “found a school for the members of his race.”
    By evening all the community of the
gens de couleur
would be aflame with it, this news which had sent Richard flying toward Monsieur De Latte’s classroom to share it with Marcel. And now this turn had been taken, this bolting by Marcel through the open doorway with Monsieur De Latte shouting for order and cracking his stick on the lectern.
    It seemed sour now, painful. A cloud hung over Richard that made the very streets dreary, like soot on the bricks.
    But he looked up suddenly and was mortified. Juliet not a yard away was staring at them both. He felt his cheek flame. And Marcel was moving suddenly