Family Legacy

Family Legacy

    Darlene was sitting at the large desk in the front study of the châteaux making the latest entry into her online journal. This was the only place she could tell about her experiences being a distant relative of the Gibbon family, and having inherited her uncle 3xGreat grandfather formidable château. She still wasn’t sure of her placement in the family tree, and before her Second cousin contacted her from Quebec City, Canada, to inform her that he, bring the last direct survivor of the family, was not interested in coming to America to occupy the château he’d inherited upon his father’s death a month earlier. Until that time, Darlene had not so much as heard her French ancestry, beyond her father telling her that a French relative was nearly killed during the French Revolution.

    How could she begin to tell her friends this tory? They would think she was crazy. Perhaps in some ways she was, but not about this. It all started shortly after she moved into this grand mansion in the Louisiana Bayou. The property had been in the Gibbon family, owned by a series direct descendants, grandparents, parents, aunts, uncles, cousins etc. since the death of the Patriarch in 1844. “Nobody, descendant or not, in recent history has lived in this mansion for longer than six months at a time. You are the last person, who may have distant familial ties to Château Gibbon. It has been unoccupied for nearly ten years now.” The realtor had told Darlene when she’d given her the grand tour six months ago.

    One month ago after the renovations were complete Darlene moved into the chateau. The mansion had been part of her particular branch of the tree since the late fifties, and Darlene’s since her father brought her here the first time when she was sixteen years old, she’d fallen in love with it, and yet each time he’d brought a prospective buyer out to see the property, the deal fell through. Darlene couldn’t understand what possessed the people to walk away from such a beautiful château, and yet she could her second cousin’s reticence to leave his home in Canada and come to this sick nation to live.

She wrote:

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    Six beautiful Wisteria trees complete with thick Bayou rope-like vines, marked the flagstone walkway in front courtyard, and two more trees were on either side of the great porch, providing a perfect escape route as the thick vines withstood the weight of a full grown man, but after only six months each buyer had vacated the house. Dad finally died, and Darlene promised him on his death bed that she would one day own this beautiful property. However, unlikely the event, she did own the château

      Weeks after she’d taken up residence in the château, Darlene began hearing voices from the third floor. She’d left those renovations until last, as she would be the only occupant of the grand château, and she had no immediate plans to take a housemate any time soon.  At first she ignored the voices believing they would just go away when they discovered she was not going to leave the house, but if anything the episodes became more frequent, and louder and then then a month ago they moved down the Front salon, and every night at precisely midnight someone would play the piano.

      This misbehavior now began before ten o’clock lasted until close one in the morning. Sometimes it seemed the hosts were having a party, completely with musical entertainment and dancing.  There were perhaps eight or ten individuals were present during those times but recently, the same two individuals were the only people talking. After a while the conversations began. Darlene now understood well why none of the buyers stayed no more than six months. She was unable to sleep for the low hum of voices coming from the salon downstairs. Call it curiosity, an inquiring mind, or just plain nosey, but she had to know.  Anyone else would have ignored the voices and gone to sleep, but not Darlene.

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    Last night she donned her vintage white velour robe, cinching the belt tightly around her waist, she stepped into her matching slipper-pumps, took a deep breath and left the room. She closed the door quietly behind her and started walking ignorant of the sound until the voices stooped abruptly. She hadn’t been walking on the wide blue carpet runner that ran the length of the second floor corridor and down the Grand spiral staircase.

    The heels of her slippers had clicked loudly against the marble floor, as the malachite heels on her slippers echoed throughout the corridor, she tiptoed quickly onto to the carpet and waited. She must've stepped onto the runner in the nick of time, because the conversation began again, albeit, in lower tones.
      She tiptoed slowly to the landing and listened closely to the conversation.

She assumed that a man was talking about his wife. Forgetting they were ghosts, and judging by the lateness of the hour, Darlene decided the woman was actually the man’s mistress. Both of them laughed lightly now, and their glasses a clicked together in agreement to some unspoken joke. There was silence for about ten minutes or so. 

    Presently the man get up and walked across the room, the noise made by the heels of his boots was muffled by the Persian Wool carpet, but they could still be heard. He removed the screen in front of the fireplace and stoked the fire into life again, and then walked to the piano, which Darlene had purchased for the room. Presently he began to play. It was lovely composition that brought tears to her eyes. When he finished the song he walk back to the sofa.

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    “Well, my Dear, it is getting quite late and I must go to the office early in the morning. We will talk of this again tomorrow night. Please, Millie, think about what I said. Marie will not mind if you moved into the city to with us.”

    “Really Jean, I do not believe such a move would be wise. I mean, with your children and all, there would be no place for and old woman in your townhouse in the Quarter.”

    “Millie, you sound like Grandfather before he died, and he was seventy years old. You are only thirty-one years old.” Jean opened the door to the salon, stepped out into the foyer, and held out his hand to Millie. She grasped it and came out of the room.

    She was a slender, lovely woman, scratch that, she was an uncommonly beautiful woman. Her long black hair was worn atop her head, and diamonds on the pearl handles of the large combs inserted into the her black hair on either side and in the back, glittered in the dim light provided by a French style lamp sitting on an oak decorator table on either side of oak double doors at the entrance the château. She was wearing a flowing gold muslin gown and black slippers.

      Millie’s winning loveliness, which was uncommon in nineteenth century America as most of the women were either, hard-working Scottish and Irish settlers, or in many cases British Royalists who still believed they were too good to be Americans. Yes, they were not only living in America during the nineteenth century, but they, or at least their descendants were still living down south today, and they still believed they were too good to be Americans.

    They could have gone back to England in the eighteenth century, as far as Darlene was concerned. The English had nearly destroyed America long before the War for Independence was fought. Today, Anything England possessed was someone else’s yesterday, but that was another subject altogether.

      Jean was tall and dark with wide shoulders and long legs clad in dark blue pinstriped pants. Although they dragged the top of his wing-tips, they still looked very uncomfortable. He removed a long blue waistcoat from the coat tree in the east corner of the foryer near the door, slipped his arms through the tight sleeves and shrugged into it, pulling a sturdy cane from the umbrella canister standing next to the other door, he grasped the brim of tall hat with one hand, carefully lifting it from the lamp table; he set atop his head. He touched his lips to Millie’s in a quick peck, opened the door, and stepped outside into the cold night air. “Think about what I said, Mil,” he closed the door behind him.

    Presently, the horses clopped away down the cobblestone path in the courtyard, and Jean's carriage rumbled through the open gate as it creaked open, and clanged against the steel post upon closing. Millie turned, lit dim sconces on the east wall of the grand stair case, and ascended the plush blue carpeted stairs. Darlene stepped back into the shadows so she would not be seen.

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    “You can come out now, my Dear,” Millie said, as she neared the second floor landing. "I know you are there.”

    Darlene stepped tentatively out of her hiding place into the light at the top of the stairs. “How did you know I was here?” she asked in an unsteady steady voice, as her stomach started churning.

    “Oh, my Dear, I have known of your presence at the top of these stairs since that first night nearly, one month ago.”

    Darlene looked at her. “How could Jean ask his mistress to move into his house, and live him , his wife, and family?” she blurted out.

    “Oh, my, blunt, aren’t we?” Millie said, “”Blunt is good, but you have quite misunderstood. Jean is my brother, you see. Millie intoned. “Why don’t we both go downstairs into the salon? And I will explain a few things to you.”

    Darlene slowly followed Millie down the wide staircase and into the front salon. Millie closed the door, Darlene sat down on the sofa, and Millie busied herself at the bar. “You Americains have such archaic notions about ghosts, and those who lived centuries ago.

    The French are not quite as brazen as our cousins across the pond, as the queen is so fond of saying. In France ghosts are a common occurrence in these older chateaux. They are considered guardians of antiquity.”

    “But . . . the realtor told me, and I know for a fact that in the past ten years each of the families who have occupied this château stayed for only six months. Karen said ghosts were dangerous,” Darlene replied, “and I should not antagonize you.”

    Millie proferred a glass to Darlene and then sat down in the upholstered, swivel-based Queen Anne rocking chair sitting across from the sofa in front of the large French window. “Ah, yes, Karen, she would of course know; gossip is always such a credible source of truth,” she said, ironically, “but Jean and I are not dangerous, my Dear,” she took a sip of wine, and set her glass  the small side table beside her chair.

    “It is the fear that is dangerous; in the end fear drove each family to leave this house, and selfishness too, of couse. I would only have remained here until I was convinced they would not compromise the integrity of Château Gibbon with their renovations. Some of them would have destroyed this château!” she said gravely. Once convinced, I would have returned to France; and yet they were not willing to share even one small suite on the third floor, which many of them never occupied.”

    “As you have said, Madame, Americains are so archaic in their beliefs,”  Darlene said, “but in defense of Americains, it is about religion.”

    “Oh, yes, I know all about religion,” Millie waved her hand in the air as though she were a queen indicating her boredom with the topic of conversation, “to be honest, religious interpretation—fear of anything not false, or different—is not unique to Amerique alone. France was just as guilty of this sin as America, of course. Intolerance was the chief cause of the Revolution.” She said. Millie smiled and her beauty radiated. “Let me tell you some of the history of this chateau,” she said.

    “To begin with, my great grandfather Jean-Philippe, Gibbon, who would be, at least, three times your great grandfather, if you, of course, a direct descendent, was the patriarch of  Château Gibbon. He escaped from Paris just moments ahead of the Revolutionary Guard in 1793. He was Louis XVI closest confident, and Louis,  knowing what it would become of Jean-Philippe Gibbon—should  he be caught in the king’s presence or in proximity to him—reached into his own private coffers and gave my Great grandfather the money to sail with his family to Amerique.

    “A year after he arrived Grandfather paid dearly to have the White Stone, marble, and other natural materials imported to New Orleans for the construction of this château. He contracted a noted French architect in the city to draw up the plans, and hired another Frenchman and his crew to build the château in 1802.

    “2xGreat grandfather died in 1849 and 2xGreat grandmother took his body back to France for burial, per his instructions. She died in France a short time later.

    Jean-Phillip Gibbon II died in 1922, shortly after he returned from the Great War. He had, of course, been poisoned by the gas, and he was unable to produce children, so when he died there was only my father, my mother, me, and Jean, whose given name was, of course Jean-Philippe. Grandmother died two years later.

  “Jean married an Americanized Frenchman, and I married a first generation Frenchman. After Pierre’s father died, Pierre took me to France. My two children never saw America After my children were married, I returned to Amerique to live in this château. Father died in 1963 in the jungle war, and mother died two years later.”

    “What about the conversation I heard earlier, between you and Jean?” Darlene asked.

    “After my husband died of cancer in 1962, I came back to America to live and just after Mama died two years later, I returned to France. I was telling Jean that I was returning to France, and I died there in 2000. Jean died in 2002, my sister-in-law Marie, died in 2007, my niece and nephew, both in their eighties, are living in France. But that conversation seemed somehow appropriate to the moment, as I will be going returning to France soon. Château Gibbon will be totally in your very capable hands.”

    “I wish I had known you when you were alive,” Darlene said.

    “If that were so, my Dear; you and I would hardly be having this conversation, now would we?” She grinned.