XIX
The sunbeams of a tedious Sabbath began noticeably to slant.
For two days, night, morning, noon, and afternoon, Geoffry Chester had silently speculated on what he was to see, hear, and otherwise experience when, as early as he might in keeping with the Chapdelaine dignity and his, he should pull the tiny brass bell-knob on their tall gate-post.
Chapdelaine! Impressive, patrician title. Impressive too those baptismal names; implying a refinement invincible in the vale of adversity. Killing time up one street and down another--Rampart, Ursuline, Burgundy--he pictured personalities to fit them: for Corinne a presence stately in advanced years and preserved beauty; for Yvonne a fragile form suggestive of mother-o'-pearl, of antique lace. Knowledge of Aline justified such inferences--within bounds. With other charms she had all these, and must have got them from ancestral sources as truly Mlle. Corinne's and Mlle. Yvonne's as hers.
"Oh, of course," he pondered, "there are contrary possibilities. They may easily fall short, far short, of her, in outer graces, and show their kinship only in a reflection of her inner fineness. They may be no more surprising than those dear old De l'Isles, or the Prieurs, or than Mrs. Thorndyke-Smith. So let it be! Aline----"
"Aline-Aline!" alarmingly echoed his heart.
"Aline is enough." Enough? Alas, too much! He felt himself far too forthpushing in--he would not confess more--a solicitude for her which he could not stifle; an inextinguishable wish to disentangle her from the officious care of those by whom she was surrounded--encumbered. "I've no right to this state of mind," he thought; "none." He reached the gate. He rang.
A footfall of daintiest lightness came running! ["Aline-Aline!"] So might Allegro have tripped it. The key rasped round, ["Aline-Aline!"] the portal drew in, and he found himself getting his first front view of Cupid, the small black satellite.
A pleasing object. Smaller than ever. White-collared as ever, starched and brushed to the sheen of a new penny and ugly of face as a gargoyle--ugly as his goddess was beautiful. Not merely negroidal, in lips, nose, ears, and tight black wool divided on the absolute equator; not racially but uniquely ugly--till he smiled--and spoke. He smiled and spoke with a joy of soul, a transparency of innocence, a rapture of love, that made his ugliness positively endearing even apart from the entranced recognition they radiated.
"Ladies at home? Yassuh," he said, with an ecstasy as if he announced the world's war suddenly over, all oceans safe, all peoples free. He led the way up the cramped white-shell walk with a ceremonial precision that gave the caller time to notice the garden. It was hardly an empire. It lay on either side in two right-angled figures, each, say, of sixty by fourteen feet, every foot repeating florally the smile of the child. The rigid beds were curbed with brick water-painted as red as Cupid's gums. The three fences were green with vines, and here and there against them bloomed tall evergreen shrubs. At one upper corner of the main path was a camellia and at the other a crape-myrtle, symbols respectively, to the visitor, of Aunt Corinne and Aunt Yvonne. The brick doorstep smiled as red as the garden borders, and as he reached the open door Aline, with her two aunts at her back, received him.
"Mr. Chester--Mlle. Chapdelaine. Mr. Chester--my Aunt Yvonne." Never had the niece seemed quite so fair--in face, dress, figure, or mental poise. She wore that rose whose petals are deep red in their outer circle and pass from middle pink to central white and deepen in tints with each day's age. If that rose could have been a girl, mind, soul, and all, a Creole girl, there would have been two on one stem.
And there, on either side of her sat the aunts: the elder much too lean, the younger much too dishevelled, and both as sun-tanned as harvesters, betraying their poverty in flimsy, faded gowns which the dismayed youth named to himself not draperies but hangings. Yet they were sweet-mannered, fluent, gay, cordial, and unreserved, though fluttering, twittering, and ultra-feminine.
The room was like the pair. "Doubtlezz Aline she's told you ab-out that 'ouse. No? Ah, chère! is that possible? 'Tis an ancient relique, that 'ouse. At the present they don't build any mo' like that 'ouse is build'! You see those wall', those floor'? Every wall they are not of lath an' plazter, like to-day; they are of solid plank' of a thicknezz of two-inch'--and from Kentucky!"
The guest recognized the second-hand lumber of broken-up flatboats.
"Tha'z a genuine antique, that 'ouse! Sometime' we think we ought to egspose that 'ouse, to those tourist', admission ten cent'." [A gay laugh.]
"But tha'z only when Aline want' to compel us to buy some new dresses. And tha'z pritty appropriate, that antique 'ouse, for two sizter' themselve' pritty antique--ha, ha, ha!--as well as their anceztors."
"I fancy they're from 'way back," said Chester.
"We are granddaughter' of two émigrés of the Revolution. The other two they were decapitalize' on that gui'otine. Yet, still, ad the same time, we don't feel antique. We don't feel mo' than ten year'! And especially when we are showing those souvenir' of our in-fancy. And there is nothing we love like that."
"Aline, chère, doubtlezz Mr. Chezter will be very please' to see yo' li'l' dress of baptism! Long time befo', that was also for me, and my sizter. That has the lace and embro'derie of a hundred years aggo, that li'l' dress of baptism. Show him that! Oh, that is no trouble, that is a dil-ight! and if you are please' to enjoy that we'll show you our two doll', age' forty-three!--bride an' bri'groom. Go, you, Yvonne, fedge them."
The sister rose but lingered: "Mr. Chezter, you will egscuse if that bride an' groom don't look pritty fresh; biccause eighteen seventy-three they have not change' their clothingg!"
"Chérie," said Aline, "I think first we better read the manuscript, and then."
After a breath of hesitation--"Yes! read firs' and then. Alway' businezz biffo'!"
All went into the garden; not the part Chester had come through, but another only a trifle less pinched, at the back of the house. A few steps of straight path led them through its stiff ranks of larkspurs, carnations, and the like, to a bower of honeysuckle enclosing two rough wooden benches that faced each other across a six-by-nine goldfish pool. There they had hardly taken seats when Cupid reappeared bearing to the visitor, on a silver tray, the manuscript.
It was not opened and dived into with the fine flurry of the modern stage. Its recipient took time to praise the bower and pool, and the sisters laughed gratefully, clutched hands, and merrily called their niece "tantine." "You know, Mr. Chezter, 'tantine' tha'z 'auntie,' an' tha'z j'uz' a li'l' name of affegtion for her, biccause she takes so much mo' care of us than we of her; you see? But that bower an' that li'l' lake, my sizter an' me we construc' them both, that bower an' that li'l' lake."
Without blazoning it they would have him know they had not squandered "tantine's" hard earnings on architects and contractors.
"And we assure you that was not ladies' work. 'Twas not till weeks we achieve' that. That geniuz Aline! she was the arshetec'. And those goldfishes--like Aline--are self-su'porting! We dispose them at the apothecary, Dauphine and Toulouse Street--ha, ha, ha! Corinne, tha'z the egstent of commerce we ever been ab'e to make, eh?"
"And now," said Aline, "the story."
"Ah, yes," responded Mlle. Corinne, "at laz' the manuscrip'!" and Mlle. Yvonne echoed, with a queer guilt in her gayety:
"The manuscrip'! the myzteriouz manuscrip'!"
But there the gate bell sounded and she sprang to her feet. Cupid could answer it, but some one must be indoors to greet the caller.
"Yes, you, Yvonne," the elder sister said, and Aline added: "We'll not read till you return."
"Ah, yes, yes! Read without me!"
"No-no-no-no-no! We'll wait!"
"We'll wait, Yvonne." The sister went.
Chester smoothed out the pages, but then smilingly turned them face downward, and Aline said:
"First, Hector will tell us who's there."
Hector was Cupid. He came again, murmuring a name to Mlle. Corinne. She rose with hands clasped. "C'est M. et Mme. Rene Ducatel!"
"Well? Hector will give your excuses; you are imperatively engaged."
"Ah, chère, on Sunday evening! Tha'z an incredibility! Must you not let me go? You 'ave 'Ector."
"Ah-h! and we are here to read this momentous document to Hector?" The sparkle of amused command was enchanting to at least one besides Cupid.
Yet it did not win. "Chère, you make me tremble. Those Ducatel', they've come so far! How can we show them so li'l' civilization when they've come so far? An' me I'm convince', and Yvonne she's convince', that you an' Mr. Chezter you'll be ab'e to judge that manuscrip' better al-lone. Oh, yes! we are convince' of that, biccause, you know--I'm sorrie--we are prejudice' in its favor!"
Aline's lifted brows appealed to Chester. "Maybe hearing it," he half-heartedly said, "may correct your aunts' judgment."
The aunt shook her head in a babe's despair. "No, we've tri' that." Her smile was tearful. "Ah, chérie, you both muz' pardon. Laz' night we was both so af-raid about that, an' of a so affegtionate curio-zitie, that we was compel' to read that manuscrip' through! An' we are convince'--though tha'z not ab-out clocks, neither angels, neither lovers--yet same time tha'z a moz' marvellouz manuscrip'. Biccause, you know, tha'z a true story, that 'Holy Crozz.' Tha'z concerning an insurregtion of slave'--there in Santa Cruz. And 'a slave insurregtion,' tha'z what they ought to call it, yes!--to prom-ote the sale. Already laz' night Yvonne she say she's convince' that in those Northron citie', where they are since lately so fon' of that subjec', there be people by dozen'--will devour that story!"
She tripped off to the house.
"Hector," said Aline, "you may sit down."
Cupid slid into the vacated seat. Chester dropped the document into his pocket.
"For what?" the girl archly inquired.
"I want to take it to my quarters and judge it there. Why shouldn't I?"
"Yes, you may do that."
"And now tell me of your father, or his father--the one Beloiseau knew--Théophile Chapdelaine."
"Both were Théophile. He knew them both."
"Then tell me of both."
"Mr. Chester, 'twould be to talk of myself!"
"I won't take it so. Tell the story purely as theirs. It must be fine. They were set, in conscience, against the conscience of their day----"
"So is Mr. Chester."
"Never mind that, either. We're in a joint commercial enterprise; we want a few good stories that will hang on one stem. Our business is business; a primrose by the river's brim--nothing more! Although"--the speaker reddened----
The girl blushed. "Mr. Chester, take away the 'although' and I'll tell the story."
"I take it away. Although----"
XX
THE CHAPDELAINES
"A yellow primrose was to him----"
Yonder in the parlor with the Ducatels, ignorant of the poet's lines as they, the two aunts--those two consciously irremovable, unadjustable, incarnated interdictions to their niece's marriage--saw the primrose, the "business," as the pair in the bower thought they saw it themselves. Were not Aline and Chester immersed in that tale of servile insurrection so destitute of angels, guiding stars, and lovers? And was not Hector with them? And are not three as truly a crowd in French as in American?
"Well, to begin," Chester urged, "your grandfather, Théophile Chapdelaine, was born in this old quarter, in such a street. Royal?"
"Yes. Nearly opposite the ladies' entrance of that Hotel St. Louis now perishing."
"Except its dome. I hear there's a movement----
"Yes, to save that. I hope 'twill succeed. To me that old dome is a monument of those two men."
"But if it comes down the home remains, opposite, where both were born, were they not?"
"Yes. Yet I'd rather the dome. We Creoles, you know, are called very conservative."
"Yet no race is more radical than the French."
"True. And we Chapdelaines have always been radical. Grandpère was, though a slaveholder."
"Oh, none of my ancestors justified slavery, yet as planters they had to own negroes."
"But the Chapdelaines were not planters. They were agents of ships. Fifty times on one page in the old Picayune, or in L'Abeille--'For freight or passage apply to the master on board or to T. Chapdelaine & Son, agents.' Even then there were two Théophiles, and grandpapa was the son. They were wholesale agents also for French exporters of artistic china, porcelain, glass, bronze. Twice they furnished the hotel with everything of that kind; when it first opened, and when it changed hands. That's how they came to hold stock in it. Grandpapa, outdoor man of the firm, was every day in the rotunda, under that dome."
"Yes," Chester said, "it was a kind of Rialto, I know. They called it the 'Exchange,' as earlier they had called Maspero's."
"You love our small antiquities. So do I. Well, grandpapa did much business there, both of French goods and of ships; and because the hotel was the favorite of the sugar-planters its rotunda was one of the principal places for slave auctions."
"Yes, they were, I know, almost daily. The old slave-block is shown there yet, if genuine."
"Ah, genuine or not, what difference? From one that was there grandpère bought many slaves. He and his father speculated in them."
"Why! How strange! The son? your grandfather? the radical, who married--'Maud'?"
"Yes, the last slave he bought was for her."
"Why, why, why! He couldn't have met her be'--well--before the year of Lincoln's election."
"No, let me tell you. You remember 'Sidney'?"
"'Maud's' black maid? my uncle's Euonymus? Yes."
"Well, when she came to Maud, at Maud's home, in the North, she was still in agony about Mingo, who'd been recaptured. So Maud wrote South, to her aunt, who wrote back: 'Yes, he had been brought home, and at creditor's auction had been sold to a slave-trader to be resold here in New Orleans.' So then Sidney begged Maud, who by luck was coming here, to bring her here to find him."
"Brave Sidney. Brave Euonymus."
"Yes--although--her Southern mistress--I know not how legally--had sent to her her free-paper. That made it safer, I suppose, eh?"
"Yes. But--who told you all this so exactly--your grand'mère herself, or your grandpère?"
"Ah--she, no. I never saw her. And grandpère--no, he was killed before I was born."
"What?"
"Yes, all that I'll come to. This I'm telling now is from my own papa. He had it from grandpère. Grand'mère and Sidney came with friends, a gentleman and his wife, by ship from New York."
"And all put up at Hotel St. Louis?"
"Yes. From there Maud and Sidney began their search. But now, first, about that speculating in slaves: those two Théophiles, first the father, then both, hated slavery. 'Twas by nature and in everything that they were radical. Their friends knew that, even when they only said, 'Oh, you are extreme!' or 'Those Chapdelaines are extremist.' In those years from about eighteen-forty to 'sixty----"
"When the slavery question was about to blaze----"
"Yes--they voted Whig. That was the most antislavery they could vote and stay here. But under the rose they said: 'All right! extremist, yet Whig; we'll be extreme Whig of a new kind. We'll trade in slaves.'"
Chester laughed. "I begin to see," he said, and by a sidelong glance bade Aline note the rapt attention of Cupid. Her answering smile was so confidential that his heart leaped.
"I'll tell you by and by about that also," she murmured, and then resumed: "While grandpère was yet a boy his father had begun that, that slave-buying. On that auction-block he would often see a slave about to be sold much below value, or whose value might easily be increased by training to some trade. You see?--blacksmith, lady's maid, cook, hair-dresser, engine-driver, butler?"
Chester darkened. "So he made the thing pay?"
"Seem to pay. Looking so simple, so ordinary, 'twas but a mask for something else."
"But in a thing looking so ordinary had he no competitors, to make profits difficult?"
"Ah, of a kind, yes; but the men who could do that best would not do it at all. They would not have been respected."
"But T. Chapdelaine & Son were respected."
"Yes, in spite of that. Their friends said: 'Let the extremists be extreme that way.'"
"The public mind was not yet quite in flames."
"No. But--guess who helped grandpère do that."
"Why, do I know him? Castanado."
The girl shook her head.
"Who? Beloiseau?"
"Ah, you! You can guess better."
"Ovide Lan'--no, Ovide was still a slave."
"Yet more free than most free negroes. 'Twas he. He was janitor to offices in the hotel, and always making acquaintance with the slaves of the slave-mart. And when he found one who was quite of the right kind--and Ovide he's a wise judge of men, you know--he would show him to grandpère, and at the auction, if the bidding was low, grandpère would buy him--or her."
"What was one of 'quite the right kind'? One willing to buy his own freedom?"
"Ah, also to do something more; you see?"
"Yes, I see," Chester laughed; "to help others run away, wasn't it?"
"Not precisely to run, but----"
"To stow away, on those ships, h'm?" There was rapture in crossing that h'm line of intimacy. "I see it all! Ha-ha, I see it all! Well! that brings us back to 'Maud,' doesn't it--h'm?"
"Yes. They met, she and grandpère, at a ball, in the hotel. But"--Aline smiled--"that was not their first. Their first was two or three mornings before, when he, passing in Royal Street, and she--with Sidney--looking at old buildings in Conti Street----"
"Mademoiselle! That happened to them?--there?"
"Yes, to them, there." With level gaze narrator and listener regarded each other. Then they glanced at Cupid. His eyes were shining on them.
"Who is our young friend, anyhow?" asked Chester.
"Ah, I suppose you have guessed. He is the grandson of Sidney."
XXI
"And another time, on the morning just before the ball," said Aline, returning to the story, "they had seen each other again. That was at the slave-auction. That night, before the ball was over, she and grandpère understood--knew, each, from the other, why the other was at that auction; and he had promised her to find Mingo.
"Well, after weeks, Ovide helping, all at once there was Mingo, in the gang, by the block, waiting his turn to go on it. Picture that! Any time I want to shut my eyes I can see it, and I think you can do the same, h'm?"
Blessed h'm; 'twas the flower--of the Chapdelaines--humming back to the bee. Said the bee, "We'll try it there together some day, h'm?" and Cupid mutely sparkled:
"Oh, by all means! the three of us!"
The flower ignored them both. "There was the auctioneer," she said; "there were the slaves, there the crowd of bidders; between them the block, above them the beautiful dome. Very soon Mingo was on the block, and the first bid was from Sidney. She was the only one in a hurry except Mingo. He was trying to see her, but she was hiding from him behind grandpère; yet not from the auctioneer. The auctioneer stopped.
"'Who authorized you to bid here?' he asked her.
"'Nobody, sir; I's free.' She held up her paper.
"Grandpère nodded to the auctioneer.
"'Will Mr. Chapdelaine please read it out?'
"He read it out, signature and all.
"'Anybody know any one of that name?' the auctioneer asked, and grand'mère said:
"'That's my aunt. This free girl is my maid."
"'Oh, bidding for you?' he said; and grand'mere said no, the girl was bidding on her own account, with her own money.
"'What kind of money? We can't take shinplasters.' For 'twas then 'sixty-one--year of secession, you know.
"'Gold!' Sidney called out, and held it up in a black stocking, so high that every one laughed."
"Not Mingo, I fancy."
"Ah, no, nor the keeper of the gang."
"--Wonder how Mingo was behaving."
"He? he was shaking and weeping, and begging this and that of the man who held and threatened him, to keep him quiet. So then the auctioneer began to call Sidney's bid. You know how that would be: 'Gentlemen, I'm offered five hundred dollars. Cinq cent piastres, messieurs! Only five hundred for this likely boy worth all of nine! Who'll say six? Going at five hundred, what do I hear?' But he heard nothing till--'third and last call!' Then the owner of the gang nodded and the auctioneer called out, 'six hundred!"'
"And did Sidney raise it?"
"No, she wept aloud. 'Oh, my brotheh!' she cried, 'Lawd save my po' brotheh! I's los' him ag'in! I done bid my las' dollah at de fust call!'"
"And Mingo knew her voice, spied her out?"
"Yes, and holloed, 'Sidney! sisteh!' till grand-mère wept too and a man called out, 'No one bid that six hundred!' But grandpère said: 'I bid six-fifty and will tell all about this unlikely boy if his owner bids again.'
"So Mingo was sold to grandpère. 'And now,' grandpère whispered to grand-mère and her friends, 'go pack trunks for the ship as fast as you can.'"
"And they parted like that? But of course not!"
"No, only expected to. In the Gulf, at the mouth of the river, a Confederate privateer"--the narrator's voice faded out. She began to rise. Her aunts were returning.
XXII
Mademoiselle, we say, began to rise. Chester stood. Also Cupid. The aunts drew near, speaking with infantile lightness:
"Finizh' already that reading? You muz' have gallop'! Well, and what is Mr. Chezter's conclusion on that momentouz manuscrip'?"
The niece hurried to answer first: "Ah! we must not ask that so immediately. Mr. Chester concludes 'tis better for all that he study that an evening or two in his seclusion."
"And! you did not read it through together?"
"No, there was no advantage to----"
"Oh! advantage! An' you stop' in the mi'l of that momentouz souvenir of the pas'! Tha'z astonizhing that anybody could do that, an' leas' of all" [confronting Chester] "the daughter of a papa an' gran'papa with such a drama-tique bio-graphie! Mr. Chezter, to pazz the time Aline ought to 'ave tell you that bio-graphie, yes!--of our marvellouz brother an' papa. Ah, you should some day egstort that story from our too li'l' communicative girl."
"Why not to-day, for the book?"
"Oh, no-no-no-no-o! We di'n' mean that!" The sisters laughed excessively. "A young lady to put her own papa into a book--ah! im-pos-si-ble!"
They laughed on. "Even my sizter an' me, we have never let anybody egstort that, an' we don't know if Aline ever be persuade'----"
"Yes, some day I'll tell Mr. Chezter--whatever he doesn't know already."
"Ha-ha! we can be sure tha'z not much, Aline. And, Corinne, if he's heard this or that, tha'z the more reason to tell him co'rec'ly. Only, my soul! not to put in the book, no!"
"Ah, no! Though as between frien', yes. And, moreover, to Mr. Chezter, yes, biccause tha'z so much abbout that Hotel St. Louis and he is so appreciative to old building'. Ah, we've notice' that incident! Tha'z the cause that we egs'ibit you our house--as a relique of the pas'--Yvonne! we are forgetting!--those souvenir' of our in-fancy--to show them! Come--all!"
Half-way to the house--"Ah, ha-ha! another subjec' of interess! See, Mr. Chezter; see coming! Marie Madeleine! She's mis' both her beloved miztress' from the house and become anxious, our beautiful cat! We name' her Marie Madeleine because her great piety! You know, tha'z the sacred truth, that she never catch' a mice on Sunday."
"Ah, neither the whole of Lent!"
In the parlor--"I really think," Chester said, "I must ask you to let me take another time for the souvenirs. I'm so eager to save this manuscript any further delay--" He said good-by.
Yet he did not hurry to his lodgings. He had had an experience too great, too rapt, to be rehearsed in his heart inside any small, mean room. All the open air and rapid transit he could get were not too much, till at lamplight he might sit down somewhere and hold himself to the manuscript.
Meantime the Chapdelaines had been but a moment alone when more visitors rang--a pair! Their feet could be seen under the gate--two male, two female--that is not a land where women have men's feet. Flattering, fluttering adventure--five callers in one afternoon! "Aline, we are becoming a public institution!" The aunts sprang here, there, and into collision; Cupid sped down the walk; Marie Madeleine stood in the door.
And who were these but the dear De l'Isles!
"No," they would not come inside. "But, Corinne, Yvonne, Aline, run, toss on hats for a trip to Spanish Fort."
One charm of that trip is that the fare is but, five cents, and the crab gumbo no dearer than in town. "Come! No-no-no, not one, but the three of you. In pure compassion on us! For, as sometimes in heaven among cherubim, we are ennuyés of each other!"
The small half-hourly electric train in Rampart Street had barely started lakeward into Canal, with the De l'Isle-Chapdelaine five aboard and the sun about to set, when Geoffry Chester entered--and stopped before monsieur, stiff with embarrassment. Nevertheless that made them a glad six, and, as each seat was for two, the two with life before them took one.
XXIII
The small public garden, named for an old redout on the lake shore at the mouth of Bayou St. John was filled with a yellow sunset as Chester and Aline moved after the aunts and the De l'Isles from the train into a shell walk whose artificial lights at that moment flashed on.
"So far from that," he was saying, "a story may easily be improved, clarified, beautified, by--what shall I say?--by filtering down through a second and third generation of the right tellers and hearers."
"Ah, yes! the right, yes! But----"
"And for me you're supremely the right one."
Instantly he rued his speech. Some delicate mechanism seemed to stop. Had he broken it? As one might lay a rare watch to his ear he waited, listening, while they stood looking off to where water, sky, and sun met; and presently, to his immeasurable relief, she responded:
"Grandpère was not at that time such a very young man, yet he still lived with his father. So when grand'mère and her two friends--with Sidney and Mingo--returned from the privateer to the hotel they were opposite neighbors to the Chapdelaines and almost without another friend, in a city--among a people--on fire with war. Then, pretty soon--" the fair narrator stopped and significantly smiled.
Chester twinkled. "Um-h'm," he said, "your grandpère's heart became another city on fire."
"Yes, and 'twas in that old hotel--with the war storm coming, like to-day only everything much more close and terrible, business dead, soldiers every day going to Virginia--you must make Mr. Thorndyke-Smith tell you about that--'twas in that old hotel, at a great free-gift lottery and bazaar, lasting a week, for aid of soldiers' families, and in a balcony of the grand salon, that grandpère--" the narrator ceased and smiled again.
"Proposed," Chester murmured.
The girl nodded. They sank to a bench, the world behind them, the stars above. "Grand'mére, she couldn't say yes till he'd first go to her home, almost at the Canadian line, and ask her family. She, she couldn't go; she couldn't leave Sidney and Mingo and neither could she take them. So by railroad at last he got there. But her family took so long to consent that he got back only the next year and through the fall of the city. Only by ship could he come, and not till he had begged President Lincoln himself and promised him to work with his might to return Louisiana to the Union. Well, of course, he and his father had voted against secession, weeping; yet now this was a pledge terrible to keep, and the more because, you see? what to do, and when and how to do it----"
"Were left to his own judgment and tact?"
"Oh, and honor! But anyhow he came. Doubtless, bringing the written permission of the family, he was happy. Yet to what bitternesses--can we say bitternesses in English?"
"Indeed we can," said Chester.
"To what bitternesses grandpére had to return!"
"Aline!" Mme. De l'Isle called; "à table!"
"Yes, madame. Tell me--you, Mr. Chester--to your vision, how all that must have been."
"Paint in your sketch? Let me try. Maybe only because you tell the story, but maybe rather because it's so easy to see in you a reincarnation of your grand'mére--a Creole incarnation of that young 'Maud'--what I see plainest is she. I see her here, two thousand miles from home, with but three or four friends among a quarter of a million enemies. I see her on the day the city fell, looking up and down Royal Street from a balcony of the hotel, while from the great dome a few steps behind her the Union fleet could be seen, rounding the first two river bends below the harbor, engaging a last few Confederate guns at the old battle-ground, and coming on, with the Stars and Stripes at every peak. I see her----"
"She was beautiful, you know--grand'mére."
"Yes, I see her so, looking down from that balcony, awestruck, not fearstruck, on the people who in agonies of rage and terror fled the city by pairs and families, or in armed squads and unarmed mobs swept through the streets and up and down the levee, burning, breaking, and plundering."
"But that was the worst anybody did, you know."
"Oh, yes. We never knew till to-day's war came how humane that war was. It wasn't a war in which beauty, age, and infancy were hideous perils."
"Ah, never mind about that to-day. But about grandpère and grand'mère go on. Let me see how much you can imagine correctly, h'm?"
"Please, mademoiselle, no. Time has made you--through your father's eyes--they say you have them--an eye-witness. So next you see your grandpère getting back at last, by ship--go on."
"Yes, I see that, in a harbor whose miles of wharfs without ships cried to him: 'our occupation and your fortune are gone!' Also I see him again in the streets--Royal, Chartres, Canal, Carondelet--where old friends pass him with a stare. I see him and grand'mère married at last, in a church nearly empty and even the priest unfriendly."
"Had he no new friends, Unionists?"
"Not yet, at the wedding. There he said: 'Old friends or none.' And that was right, don't you think? Later 'twas different. You see, in the navy, both of the rivers and the sea, as likewise the army, grand'mère had uncles and cousins; and when the hotel was made a military hospital she was there every day. And naturally those cousins, whether from hospital or no, would call and even bring friends. Well, of course, grandpère was, at the least, courteous! And then there was his word of honor, to Mr. Lincoln, as also his own desire, to bring the State back into the Union."
"Of course. Don't hurry, please."
"Was I hurrying? Pardon, but I'm afraid they'll be calling us again." The pair rose, but stood. "Well, when a kind of government was made of that part of the State held by the Union, and the military governor wanted both grandpère and his father to take some public offices, his father made excuse of his age and of a malady--taken from that hospital--which soon occasioned him to die."
"I've seen his tomb, in St. Louis cemetery, with its epitaph of barely two words--'Adieu, Chapdelaine.' Who supplied that? Old friends, after all?"
"A few old, a few new, and one the governor."
"Did the governor propose the words?"
"No. If I tell you you won't tell? Ovide. But grandpère he took the office. And so that put him yet more distant from old friends except just two or three who believed the same as he did."
"And our Royal Street coterie, of course."
"Ah, not those you see now; but their parents, yes. They were faithful; though sometimes, some of them, sympathizing differently. Well, and so there was grandpère working to repair a piece of the State, when at last the war finished and the reconstruction of the whole State commenced. He and Ovide were both of that State convention they mobbed in the 'July riot.' Some men were killed in that riot. Grandpère was wounded, also Ovide. Those were awful times to grand'mère, those years of the reconstruction. Grandpère he--" The girl glanced backward, then turned again, smiling. The four chaperons were going indoors without them.
"Yes," Chester said, "your grandpère I can imagine----"
"Well, go ahead; imagine, to me."
"No. No, except just enough to see him with no choice of party allegiance but between a rabble up to the elbows in robbery and an old régime red-handed with the rabble's blood."
"Ah, so papa told me, after grandpère was long gone, and me on his knee asking questions. 'Reconstruction, my dear child--' once he answered me, ''twas like trying to drive, on the right road, a frantic horse in a rotten harness, and with the reins under his tail!' Ah, I wish you could have known him, Mr. Chester--my father!"
"I know his daughter."
"Well, I suppose--I suppose we must go in."
"With the story almost finished?"
"We'll, maybe finish inside--or--some day."
XXIV
T. CHAPDELAINE & SON
The seniors were found at a table for four.
Mme. De l'Isle explained: "But! with only four to sit down there, how was it possib' to h-ask for a tab'e for six? That wou'n' be logical!"
When the waiter offered to add a smaller table and make one snug board for six--"No," she said; "for feet and hands that be all right; but for the mind, ah! You see, Mr. Chezter, M. De l'Isle he's also precizely in the mi'l' of a moze overwhelming story of his own------"
"Hiztorical!" the aunts broke in. "Well-known! abbout old house! in the vieux carré!"
"And," madame insisted, "'twould ruin that story, to us, to commenze to hear it over, while same time 'twould ruin it to you to commenze to hear it in the mi'l'. And beside', Aline, you are doubtlezz yet in the mi'l' of your own story and--waiter! make there at that firz' window a tab'e for two, and" [to the pair] "we'll run both storie' ad the same time--if not three!"
"Like that circ'"--the aunts fell into tears of laughter. They touched each other with finger-tips, cried, "Like that circuz of Barnum!" and repeated to the De l'Isles and then to Aline, "Like that circuz of Barnum an' Bailey!"
At the table for two, as the gumbo was uncovered and Chester asked how it was made, "Ah!" said Aline, "for a veritable gumbo what you want most is enthusiasm. The enthusiasm of both my aunts would not be too much. And to tell how 'tis made you'd need no less, that would be a story by itself, third ring of the circus."
"Then tell me, further, of 'grandpère'"
"And grand'mère? Yes, I must, as I learned about them on papa's knee. Mamma never saw them; they had been years gone when papa first knew her. But Sidney I knew, when she was old and had seen all those dreadful times; and, though she often would not tell me the story, she would tell me what to ask papa; you see? You would have liked to talk with Sidney about old buildings. Mr. Chester, I think it is not that in New Orleans we are so picturesque, but that all the rest of our country--in the cities--is so starved for the picturesque. Sidney would have told you that story monsieur is telling now as well as all the strange history of that old Hotel St. Louis. First, after the war it was changed back from a hospital to a hotel. I think 'twas then they called it Hotel Royal. Anyhow 'twas again very fine. Grandpère and grand'mère were often in that salon where he had first--as they say--spoken. Because, for one thing, there they met people of the outside world without the local prejudices, you know?"
"At that time bitter and vindictive?"
"Oh, ferocious! And there they met also people of the most--dignity."
"Above the average of the other hotels?"
"Well, not so--so brisk."
"Not so American?"
"Ah, you know. Well, maybe that's one reason the St. Charles, for example, continued, while the Royal did not. Anyhow the Royal--grandpère had the life habit of it and 'twas just across the street. Daily they ate there; a real economy."
"But they kept the old home."
"Yes. 'Twas furnished the same but not 'run' the same. 'Twas very difficult to keep it, even with all three stories of the servants' wing shut up, you know?--like"--a glance indicated the De l'Isles.
"But you say Hotel Royal was soon closed."
"Yes, and then, in the worst of those days, it became the capitol. There, in the most elegant hotel for the most elegant planters of the South--anyhow Southwest--sat their slaves, with white men even more abhorred, and made the laws. In that old dome, second story, they put a floor across, and there sat the Senate! Just over that auction-block where grandpère had bought Mingo."
"Where was he--Mingo?"
"Dead--of drink. Grandpère was in that government! Long time he was senator. Mr. Chester, for that papa was proud of him, and I am proud."
The listener was proud of her pride. "I know," he said, "from my own people, that in such an attitude--as your grandfather's--there was honor a plenty for any honorable man. Ovide tells me the negroes never wanted negro supremacy. I wonder if that's so. They were often, he says, madly foolish and corrupt; yet their fundamental lawmaking was mostly good. I know the State's constitution was; it was ahead of the times."
Aline made a quick gesture: "And any of the old masters who agreed to that could help lead!"
"Mademoiselle, how could they agree to it? Some did, I know, but that's the wonder. Those that could not--who can blame them?"
"Ah! 'tis no longer a question of blame but of judgment. So papa used to say. Anyhow grandpère agreed, accepted, led; until at the last, one day, that White League--you've heard of them, how they armed and drilled and rose against that reconstruction police in a battle on the steamboat landing? Grandpère was in that. He commanded part of the reconstruction forces. And papa was there, though only thirteen. Grandpère was bayonet-wounded. They carried him away bleeding. Only at the State-house a surgeon met them, and there, under that dome, just as papa brought grand'mère and Sidney, he died." Mademoiselle ceased.
Chester waited, but she glanced to the other table. Monsieur had ended his recital. Madame and the aunts chatted merrily. Smilingly the niece's eyes came back.
"Don't stop," said Chester. "What followed--for 'Maud'--Sidney--your boy father--your little-girl aunts? Did the clock in the sky call them North again?"
"No." The speaker rose. "I'll tell you on the train; I hear it coming."