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Back to Dora.
Of course Dora didn't know Roger was dead. There was no waythat she could know, unless梡erhaps桼oger had appeared to her.
But I hadn't gathered from Roger that such was even possible.
Appearing to me had apparently consumed all his energy. Indeed, Ithought he had been far too protective of Dora to have haunted herin any practical or deliberate way.
But what did I know about ghosts? Except for a few highlymechanical and indifferent apparitions, I'd never spoken to a ghost untilI'd spoken to Roger.
And now I would carry with me forever the indelible impressionof his love for Dora, and his peculiar mixture of conscience andsupreme self-confidence. In retrospect, even his visit seemed to me toexhibit extraordinary self-assurance. That he could haunt, that wasnot beyond probability since the world is filled with impressive andcredible ghost stories. But that he could detain me in conversation?
that he could make me his confidant梩hat had indeed involved anenormous and almost dazzling pride,I walked uptown in human fashion, breathing the river air, andglad to be back with my black-barked oaks, and the sprawling, dimlylighted houses of New Orleans, the intrusions everywhere of grassand vine and flower; home.
Too soon, I reached the old brick convent building on NapoleonAvenue where Dora was lodged. Napoleon Avenue itself is a ratherbeautiful street even for New Orleans; it has an extraordinarily widemedian where once streetcars used to run. Now there are generousshade trees planted on it, just as there were all around the conventthat faced it.
It was the leafy depth of Victorian uptown.
I drew close to the building slowly, eager to imprint its details onmy mind. How I'd changed since last I'd spied on Dora.
Second Empire was the style of the convent, due to a mansardroof which covered the central portion of the building and its longwings. Old sjates had, here and there, fallen away from the slopingmansard, which was concave on the central part and quite unusual onaccount of that fact. The brickwork itself, die rounded archedwindows, the four corner towers of the building, the two-storeyplantation-house porch on the front of the central building梬ith its whitecolumns and black iron railings梐ll of this was vaguely New OrleansItalianate, and gracefully proportioned. Old copper gutters clung tothe base of the roofs. There were no shutters, but surely there hadonce been.
The windows were numerous, high, rounded at the tops on thesecond and third stories, trimmed in faded white.
A great sparse garden covered the front of the building as itlooked out over the avenue, and of course I knew of the immensecourtyard inside. The entire city block was dominated by this littleuniverse in which nuns and orphans, young girls of all ages, had oncedwelt. Great oaks sprawled over the sidewalks. A row of truly ancientcrape myrtles lined the side street to the south.
Walking round the building, I surveyed the high stained-glasswindows of the two-storey chapel, noted the flickering of a lightinside, as though the Blessed Sacrament were present梐 fact that Idoubted梐nd then coming to the rear I went over the wall.
The building did have some locked doors, but not very many. Itwas wrapped in silence, and in the mild but nevertheless real winterof New Orleans, it was chillier within than without.
I entered the lower corridor cautiously, and at once found myselfloving the proportions of the place, the loftiness and the breadth ofthe corridors, the intense smell of the recently bared brick walls, andthe good wood scent of the bare yellow pine floors. It was rough, allthis, the kind of rough which is fashionable among artists in big citieswho live in old warehouses, or call their immense apartments lofts.
But this was no warehouse. This had been a habitation andsomething of a hallowed one. I could feel it at once. I walked slowly downthe long corridor towards the northeast stairs. Above to my rightlived Dora in the northeast tower, so to speak, of the building, andher living quarters did not begin until the third floor.
I sensed no one in the building. No scent nor sound of Dora. Iheard the rats, the insects, something a little larger than a rat,possibly a raccoon feeding away somewhere up in an attic, and then I feltfor die elementals, as David called them梩hose things which I preferto call spirits, or poltergeists.
I stood still, eyes closed. I listened. It seemed the silence gave backdim emanations of personalities, but they were far too weak and toomingled to touch my heart or spark a thought in me. Yes, ghostshere, and here ... but I sensed no spiritual turbulence, no unresolvedtragedy or hanging injustice. On the contrary, there seemed a spiritualstillness and firmness.
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