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Ardie remained in Paris only long enough to settle Romelle and Annie. He left a day after Bart returned from seeing the Empress Eugénie, saying he dared not leave the business interests of Duncan Cargo to others for an extended period of time. "Irene supervises, of course, but shipping requires a man's touch."
The Centenary was about to climax with the approach of Bastille Day on the fourteenth of July. The holiday commemorated the storming of the infamous Bastille prison, the official "first shot" of the French Revolution. Millions of people from all over the world were visiting Paris to see the thrilling Eiffel Tower. The city had never been more exhilarating than it was that summer of 1889.
The International Exposition Committee invited Annie to sing in concert at a special performance in the huge hall of the Trocadéro Palace. She had become a personage much beloved by the Parisian public. The house in the Place Dauphine had been inundated by messages of condolence when her involvement in the Johnstown tragedy became generally known.
Initially, she refused the invitation, but Bart insisted. "Annie, we have no memorial to Beth. I do not believe she could want anything more than to be remembered in the music you give to the world. I beg you to do this for her. I beg you to sing in her memory."
She relented. "But I don't know what to sing for her, Little Bart."
He smiled and kissed her on the cheek. "You'll pray over it the way you always do. I never knew anybody to get better, clearer answers to prayer. What's your secret?"
She thought for a moment.
"I suppose if I have a secret," she said, "it's what I've read in the Book of Isaiah: '...before they call, I will answer.' In other words, God knows my need before I do, so the solution is already at hand, or on the way. My only prayer, then, is to keep my spiritual vision clear in order to recognize what God intends for me. Do you remember when we were looking for Captain Duncan's house in Baltimore? I sat down on a bench to make that very prayer. When I opened my eyes, what did I see?"
Bart searched back through twenty-seven years.
"You saw Miz Nelle and Ardie standing across the street in front of the Captain's house, inviting us to come in," he recalled. "Ah! I understand what you mean!"
They were sitting in the third-floor parlor. The new brass elevator cage opened directly into the large room. At that moment the cage rose into sight with Adrienne at the controls. She brought with her a stranger.
A man of mature years, imposingly built, and smartly dressed, he might have been Parisian but for the color of his skin. It was moderately dark. He looked familiar to both Annie and Bart, but neither could place him.
Adrienne spoke first. "This gentleman has come to see Mam'selle Rainbow."
The visitor offered a courtly bow. Bart rose and shook his hand.
"Ah, yes," the man smiled, "American-style! The French speak of this custom as le shake-hand ."
Turning to Annie, he began, "let me introduce myself. I am Pierre Bontay. I arrived this morning from my home on the West Indian island of Martinique."
Annie peered at him oddly.
"Bontay? From Martinique?" she queried. "Do I know you, sir?"
He smiled pleasantly. "No, Mam'selle, we have never met."
Bart extended his hand. "I am Doctor Barton Creel, Mam'selle Rainbow's son."
Pierre looked startled, but Bart gave no explanation.
"Please, sit down," suggested Annie. "How may I help you, M'sieur Bontay?"
He sat on the edge of his chair in a formal posture. "Mam'selle, I am a musician, a violinist. When I came to Paris in 1885 to conduct a master class at the School of Music, I was privileged to hear you sing in front of the Basilica of the Sacré Coeur. The beauty of your voice has never faded from me. I still hear you singing in my mind."
His tones in English were flavored with the French Creole lilt of Martinique.
"I confess also that I am a composer, albeit of modest talent," he continued. "I have written several pieces for the violin. I am here now to arrange a European concert tour. Previously, I have performed mostly in South America. I shall be playing some of my own music. My point in visiting you, Mam'selle, is that I have composed a simple song which I should like to present to you. As I have told you, your voice has stayed with me for the past four years. Always when I hear you singing, it is this song - my song - that you sing. I see that you have a very fine piano. I ask for the privilege of playing for you."
"Please do," Annie replied.
He went to the piano and began to play softly. His tune had the soulful metre of a spiritual. As he played, he hummed in a deep baritone which boasted a timbre as rich as his music. Gradually, he drifted into lyrics which spoke of a child lost to its mother, but guided through the world by her unseen, silent rays of love.
Both Annie and Bart sat transfixed. Pierre's voice was so beautiful that she wondered at his identifying himself as a violinist. Its quality gave her pause, as though she had heard him sing before.
When Pierre had finished, he swiveled around on the elegantly fringed piano stool, his nimble fingers coming to rest on his knees. He looked at his audience expectantly.
So overcome by the experience of hearing him sing, Annie barely managed to acknowledge his performance with a nod. Bart accomplished little more than she. It was not Adrienne's nature to be effusive, but at least she smiled.
Pierre could not hide a flash of disappointment, which brought Annie into focus right away.
"Please forgive our silence," she begged. "I must tell you that while you were coming up in the elevator, we were discussing my need for a new song to sing at the Trocadéro Palace. You have brought it to me, sir. It is as touching a song as I have ever heard. It must have come from the soul."
He smiled gratefully. "It did, Mam'selle. I even call it, L'âme d'une mère , 'A Mother's Soul,' but it never began to take shape in finite form until I heard you sing at Sacré Coeur. It was your magic, Ma'am, that made of my dream a song."
Bart rose from his chair and walked to the window. He parted the curtains to look down at the Place Dauphine, remembering how Dash's words had prevented him from leaping to his death.
Turning back, he said: "Your song will help to heal many wounds. My daughter recently lost her mother. I lost my own mother when I was five. Mam'selle Rainbow, as you must have guessed, is not really my mother, except in her generous heart. Your song has given me a deep sense of peace with regard to my real mother and my wife. I thank you, sir."
Pierre nodded and sighed. "That, too, is what the song has done for me. I do not feel that I am its creator. I am, rather, one who has heard it from some higher source and written it down. May I explain why it has consoled me?"
"It would be a pleasure to hear," Bart replied.
Pierre began: "I was separated from my mother shortly after birth. I do not know whether she is alive or dead. I am not originally from Martinique, you see. I was taken there from Louisiana by a French sailor when I was eight years old."
Annie gazed at him with interest.
"His ship had docked in New Orleans," he continued, "and he went ashore for an evening stroll. I was a slave on a plantation outside the city. My master often brought me into town to attend his expensive horse while he caroused. When he had finished with his pleasure, it was his custom to beat me unmercifully before returning home. This ensured I would say nothing of what I had seen. He would have killed me if I had! The bully, believe it or not, was terrified of his wife!"
A glimmer of tears sparkled in Annie's eyes.
Pierre went on with his story. "My master was thrashing me with a whip. The sailor saw it happening and came to my aid. My master turned on him with the whip and lashed him across the face. The sailor flew into a rage, attacked my master, and struck him to the ground. My master's head split open like a gourd. He was dead!"
Caught up in his tale, Annie loosened her grip on the arms of her chair and smacked a fist sharply into her palm with a grunt. Her eyes were full of fire.
"The sailor, a decent Frenchman and a white man, at that, panicked when he realized what he had done," said Pierre. "He ran away. I followed, begging him to stop. 'Sauvez-moi!' I cried. 'Save me! They will kill me for this!' He stopped. I was weeping. He took me in his arms."
Tears were streaming down Annie's face.
"I told him how I had been torn from my mother's breast by my master, how she had been sold away, how he had thrown me to the hogs in his anger with her, and how the other slave women had saved me from being eaten alive," related Pierre. "They kept me hidden for weeks, then mixed me among the many other children around the place. My master had already forgotten, I suppose, for he was always busy with new crimes against his slaves."
Annie nodded. "Yes, yes," she murmured, "yes!"
"The sailor took pity on me," Pierre went on, "and stowed me away on his ship. He delivered me into the hands of a black woman he knew in Martinique, our first port of call. Her kindness made it possible for me to enter the world and become what I am. But it is the woman who gave me birth, it is she to whom I owe it all. The other slave women told me everything about her. She was beautiful. She sang like an angel. It was she who gave me life, who passed on to me whatever talents I may have. I have prayed every day in the intervening years for God to bring her back to me that I may cherish her and give her the greatest gift that I can give - four beautiful grandchildren who speak of her as though she were alive."
He paused to remove a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his tear-filled eyes.
"'Oh, Papa' they say to me, 'perhaps you will find Grandmama someday, and bring her home.' It does no good to remind them that a great war has been fought in America since then, that their grandmother may well be dead. They are nearly grown now, and still they insist that she has stayed alive, if only to know them. My oldest daughter is her namesake, and that makes her very proud. She says that when she has a daughter, she will name her Annie, too, so that Grandmama Annie will live forever in Martinique!"
Bart opened his mouth to speak, but a look from Annie silenced him before he could begin.
Annie turned her full gaze to Pierre.
"Your surname is 'Bontay'?" she asked. "That was your white master's name?"
Surprised, Pierre nodded. "How would you know that, Mam'selle?"
"It was the custom," she replied, "for slaves to take their owner's family name. We had no names of our own for the most part, but those the white man gave us."
Astonished, Pierre queried, "You have been a slave? I know very little about you, only that you sang at Sacré Coeur and are very famous. I had but to mention Mam'selle Rainbow, and I was told where I could find you."
"My true name is not Mam'selle Rainbow. I was once a slave named Annie on the plantation of Jeremiah Jereboam Bontay. I gave birth to a son on the sixth of August 1840."
Thunderstruck, Pierre gasped.
"Our slave quarter was not genteel, as I am sure you recall," she said. "Such things were daily fare, certainly when we were subject to the animal passions of a devil like Jeremiah Bontay. Forgive me if I speak of that now, but it is important not only to know who we are, but why we are what we are. I ask you, Pierre Bontay, are you my son?"
Trembling, he nodded, unable to speak.
Bart and Adrienne trembled as well, neither daring to say a word.
Annie heaved a great sigh of relief. "Indeed, you are my son. I should have known when you walked in. You have my face. You saw something, too, didn't you, Bart?"
"Yes, Ma'am," Bart quietly agreed.
"I, too, Mam'selle," Adrienne added. "I also heard an echo of your voice in his."
"As did I," contributed Bart.
Annie rose from her chair. "You are many parts of me, Pierre, and no part of the devilish Jeremiah Bontay. It was the wrath of God struck him dead, not your sailor's fists! That sailor was an angel sent to guide you in the steps that would lead you back to me."
She turned to her son, her face aglow.
"'This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased,'" she quoted from the Gospels as she put forth her arms, unable any longer to hold back her tears. "Surely a miracle has come to pass!"
Pierre went to her and clasped her hands.
"Only God could have known the need we have for each other," he said. "Only God could have brought us together in this mysterious way. Mother, you are the answer to all the prayers I have ever prayed."
He embraced her.
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