V
At the supper-table on the following evening I became convinced of something which I had felt coming for two or three days, wondering the while whether Sidney did not feel the same thing. When we rose aunt drew me aside and with caressing touches on my brow and temples said she was sorry to be so slow in bringing me into social contact with the young people of the neighboring plantations, but that uncle, on his arrival at home, had found a letter whose information had kept him, and her as well, busy every waking hour since. "And this evening," she continued, "we can't even sit down with you around the parlor lamp. Can you amuse yourself alone, dear, or with Sidney, while your uncle and I go over some pressing matters together?"
Surely I could. "Auntie, was the information--bad news?"
"It wasn't good, my dear; I may tell you about it to-morrow."
"Hadn't I better go back to father at once?"
"Oh, my child, not for our sake; if you're not too lonesome we'd rather keep you. Let me see; has Mingo ever danced for you? Why, tell Sidney to make Mingo come dance for you."
Mingo came; his leaps, turns, postures, steps, and outcries were a most laughable wonder, and I should have begged for more than I did, but I saw that it was a part of Sidney's religion to disapprove the dance.
"Sidney," I said, "did you ever hear of the great clock in the sky? Yes, there's one there; it's made all of stars." We were at the foot of some veranda steps that faced the north, and as she and Mingo were about to settle down at my feet I said if they would follow me to the top of the flight I would tell this marvel: what the learned believed those eternal lamps to be; why some were out of view three-fourths of the night, others only half, others not a quarter; how a very few never sank out of sight at all except for daylight or clouds, and yet went round and round with all the others; and why I called those the clock of heaven; which gained, each night, four minutes, and only four, on the time we kept by the sun.
"Pra-aise Gawd!" murmured Sidney. "Miss Maud, please hol' on tell Mingo run' fetch daddy an' mammy; dey don't want dat sto'y f'om me secon' haynded!" Mingo darted off and we waited. "Miss Maud, what de white folks mean by de nawth stah? Is dey sich a stah as de nawth stah?"
I tried to explain that since all this seeming movement of the stars around us was but our own daily and yearly turning, there would necessarily be two opposite points on our earth which would never move at all, and that any star directly in line with those two points would seem as still as they.
"Like de p'int o' de spin'le on de spinnin'-wheel, Miss Maud? Oh, yass, I b'lieve I un'stand dat; I un'stan' it some."
I showed her the north star, and told her how to find it; and then I took from my watch-guard a tiny compass and let her see how it forever picked out from among all the stars of heaven that one small light, and held quiveringly to it. She hung over it with ecstatic sighs. "Do it see de stah, Miss Maud, like de wise men o' de Eas' see de stah o' Jesus?"
I tried to make plain the law it was obeying.
"And do it p'int dah dess de same in de broad day, an' all day long?--Pra-aise Gawd! And do it p'int dah in de rain, an' in de stawmy win' a-fulfillin' of his word, when de ain't a single stah admissible in de ske-eye?--De Lawd's na-ame be pra-aise'!" Her father, mother, and brother were all looking at it with her, now, and she glanced from one to another with long heavings of rapture.
"Miss Maud," said Silas, in a subdued voice, "dat little trick mus' 'a' cos' you a mint o' money."
"Silas," put in Hester, "you know dass not a pullite question!" But she was ravening for its answer, and I said I had bought it for twenty-five cents. They laughed with delight. Yet, when I told Sidney she might have it, her thanks were but two words, which her lips seemed to drop unconsciously while she gazed on the trinket.
They all sat down on the steps nearest below me, and presently, beginning where I had begun with Sidney, I went on to point out the polar constellations and to relate the age-worn story of Cepheus and Cassiopeia, Andromeda and the divine Perseus.
"Lawd, my Lawd !" whispered the mother, "was dey--was dey colo'd?"
I said two of them were king and queen of Ethiopia, and a third was their daughter.
"Chain' to de rock, an' yit sa-ave at las'!" exclaimed Sidney.
While her husband and children still gazed at the royal stars, Hester spoke softly to me again. "Miss Maud, dass a tryin' sawt o' sto'y to tell to a bunch o' po' niggehs; did you dess make dat up--fo' us?"
"Why, Hester," I said, "that was an old, old story before this country was ever known to white folks, or black," and the eyes of all four were on me as the daughter asked: "Ain't it in de Bi-ible?"
As all but Sidney bade me good night, I heard her say; "I don' care, I b'lieb dat be'n in de Bible an' git drap out by mista-ake!"
In my room she grew queerly playful, and continued so until she had drawn off my shoes and stockings. But then abruptly, she took my feet in her slim black hands, and with eyes lifted tenderly to mine, said: "How bu'ful 'pon de mountain is dem wha' funnish good tidin's!" She leaned her forehead on my insteps: "Us bleeged to paht some day, Miss Maud."
I made a poor effort to lift her, but she would not be displaced. "Cayn't no two people count fo' sho' on stayin' togetheh al'ays in dis va-ain worl'," and all at once I found my face in my hands and the salt drops searching through my fingers; Sidney was kissing my feet and wetting them with her tears.
At close of the next day, a Sabbath, my uncle and aunt called all their servants around the front steps of the house and with tears more bitter than any of Sidney's or mine, told them that by the folly of others, far away, they had lost their whole fortune at one stroke and must part with everything, and with them, by sale. Their dark hearers wept with them, and Silas, Hester, and Sidney, after the rest had gone back to the quarters, offered the master and mistress, through many a quaintly misquoted scripture, the consolations of faith.
"I wish we had set you free, Silas," said uncle, "you and yours, when we could have done it. Your mistress and I are going to town to-morrow solely to get somebody to buy you, all four, together."
"Mawse Ben," cried the slave, with strange earnestness, "don't you do dat! Don't you was'e no time dat a-way! You go see what you can sa-ave fo' you-all an' yone!"
"For the creditors, you mean, Silas," said my aunt; "that's done."
Hester had a question. "Do it all go to de credito's anyhow, Miss 'Liza, no matteh how much us bring?" and when aunt said yes, Sidney murmured to her mother, "I tol' you dat." I wondered when she had told her.
Uncle and aunt tried hard to find one buyer for the four, but failed; nobody who wanted the other three had any use for Mingo. It was after nightfall when they came dragging home. "Now don't you fret one bit 'bout dat, Mawse Ben," exclaimed Sidney, with a happy heroism in her eyes that I remembered afterward. "'De Lawd is perwide!'"
"Strange," said my aunt to uncle and me aside, smiling in pity, "how slight an impression disaster makes on their minds!" and that too I remembered afterward.
As soon as we were alone in my chamber, Sidney and I, she asked me to tell her again of the clock in the sky, and at the end of her service and of my recital she drew me to my window and showed me how promptly she could point out the pole-star at the centre of the clock's vast dial, although at our right a big moon was leaving the tree tops and flooding the sky with its light. Toward this she turned, and lifting an arm with the reverence of a priestess said, in impassioned monotone:
"'De moon shine full at His comman'
An' all de stahs obey.'"
She kissed my hand as she added good-by. "Why, Sidney!" I laughed, "you mean good night, don't you?"
She bent low, tittered softly, and then, with a swift return to her beautiful straightness, said: "But still, Miss Maud, who eveh know when dey say good night dat it ain't good-by?" She fondled my hand between her two as she backed away, kissed it fervently again, and was gone.
When I awoke my aunt stood in broad though sunless daylight at the bedside, with the waking cup of coffee which it was Sidney's wont to bring. I started from the pillow. "Oh! what--who--wh'--where's Sidney? Why--how long has it been raining?"
"It began at break of day," she replied, adding pensively, "thank God."
"Oh! were we in such bad need of rain?"
"They were--precisely when it came. Rain never came straighter from heaven."
"They?"--I stared.
"Yes; Silas and Hester--and Sidney--and Mingo. They must have started soon after moonrise, and had the whole bright night, with its black shadows, for going."
"For going where, auntie; going where?"
"Then the rain came in God's own hour," she continued, as if wholly to herself, "and washed out their trail."
I sprang from the bed. "Aunt 'Liza!"
"Yes, Maud, they've run away, and if only they may get away. God be praised!"
Of course, I cried like an infant. I threw myself upon her bosom. "Oh, auntie, auntie, I'm afraid it's my fault! But when I tell you how far I was from meaning it----"
"Don't tell me a word, my child; I wish it were my fault; I'd like to be in your shoes. And, I don't care how right slavery is, I'll never own a darky again!"
One day some two months after, at home again with father. Just as I was leaving the house on some errand, Sidney--ragged, wet, and bedraggled as a lost dog--sprang into my arms. When I had got her reclothed and fed I eagerly heard her story. Three of the four had come safely through; poor Mingo had failed; if I ever tell of him it must be at some other time. In the course of her tale I asked about the compass.
"Dat little trick?" she said fondly. "Oh, yass'm, it wah de salvation o' de Lawd 'pon cloudy nights; but time an' ag'in us had to sepa'ate, 'llowin' fo' to rejine togetheh on de bank o' de nex' creek, an' which, de Lawd a-he'pin' of us, h-it al'ays come to pass; an' so, afteh all, Miss Maud, de one thing what stan' us de bes' frien' night 'pon night, next to Gawd hisse'f, dat wah his clock in de ske-eye."
VI
"Landry," Chester said next day, bringing back the magazine barely half an hour after the book-shop had reopened, "that's a true story!"
"Ah, something inside tells you?"
"No need! You remember this, near the end? 'Poor Mingo had failed [to escape]; if I ever tell of him it must be at another time.' Landry, it's so absurd that I hardly have the face to say it; I've got--ha-ha-ha!--I've got a manuscript! and it fills that gap!" The speaker whipped out the "Memorandum"; "Here's the story, by my own uncle, of how the three got over the border and how Mingo failed. I'd totally forgotten I had it. I disliked its beginning far more than I did 'Maud's' yesterday. For I hate masks and costumes as much as Mr. Castanado loves them; and a practical joke--which is what the story begins with, in costume, though it soon leaves it behind--nauseates me. Comical situation it makes for me, this 'Memorandum,' doesn't it--turning up this way?"
Ovide replied meditatively: "To lend it, even to me, would seem as though you sought----"
"It would put me in a false light! I don't like false lights."
"It would mask and costume you."
"Why, not so badly as if I were really in society; as, you know, I'm not! The only place where any man, but especially a society man, can properly seek a girl's society is in society. The more he's worthy to meet her, the more hopelessly--I needn't say hopelessly, but completely--he's cut off from meeting her any other way. Isn't that a gay situation? Ha-ha-ha!"
"You would probably move much in society, even Creole society, without meeting mademoiselle; she has less time for it than you."
"Is that so?"
Cupid, the evening before, had carried a flat, square parcel like a shop's account-books to be written up under the home lamp. Staring at Landry, Chester rather dropped the words than spoke them: "Think of it! The awful pity! For the like of her! Of her! Why, how on earth--? No, don't tell! I know what I'd think of any other man following in her wake and asking questions while hard fortune writes her history. A girl like her, Landry, has no business with a history!"
"Mr. Chester."
"Yes?"
"Has that 'Memorandum' never been printed? I can find out for you, in Poole's Index."
"Do it! It's good enough, and it's named as if to be printed. See? 'The Angel of----'"
"Then why not have Mr. Castanado, while selecting a publisher for mademoiselle's manuscript, select for both?"
Chester shone: "Why--why, happy thought! I'll consider that, indeed I will! Well, good mor'----"
"Mr. Chester."
"Well?"
"Why did you want that new book yesterday?"
"I've met that nice old man the book calls 'the judge,' and he's coaxed me to break my rules and dine with him, at his home uptown, to-night."
"I'm glad. Madame, his wife, was my young mistress when I was a slave. I wish her granddaughter and his grandson--they also are married--were not over in the war--Red Cross. You'd like them--and they would like you."
"Do they know mademoiselle?"
"Indeed, yes! They are the best of her very few friends. But--the Atlantic rolls between."
Chester went out. In the rear door Ovide's wife appeared, knitting. "Any close-ter?" she asked over her silver-bowed spectacles.
"Some," he said, taking down Poole's Index.
She came to his side and they placidly conversed. As she began to leave him, "No," she said, "we kin wish, but we mustn' meddle. All any of us want' or got any rights to want is to see 'em on speakin' terms. F'om dat on, hands off. Leave de rest to de fitness o' things, de everlast'n' fitness o' things!"
VII
At the Castanados', the second evening after, Chester was welcomed into a specially pretty living-room. But he found three other visitors. Madame, seated on a sort of sofa for one, made no effort to rise. Her face, for all its breadth, was sweet in repose and sweeter when she spoke or smiled. Her hands were comparatively small and the play of her vast arms was graceful as she said to a slim, tallish, comely woman with an abundance of soft, well-arranged hair:
"Seraphine, allow me to pres-ent Mr. Chezter."
She explained that this Mme. Alexandre was her "neighbor of the next door," and Chester remembered her sign: "Laces and Embroideries."
"Scipion," said Castanado to a short, swarthy, broad-bearded man, "I have the honor to make you acquaint' with my friend Mr. Chezter."
Chester pressed the enveloping hand of "S. Beloiseau, Artisan in Ornamental Iron-work."
"Also, Mr. Chezter, Mr. Rene Ducatel; but with him you are already acquaint', I think, eh?"
Chester shook hands with a small, dapper, early-gray, superdignified man, recalling his sign: "Antiques in Furniture, Glass, Bronze, Plate, China, and Jewelry." M. Ducatel seemed to be already taking leave. His "anceztral 'ome," he said, was far up-town; he had dropped in solely to borrow--showing it--the Courrier des Etats-Unis.
That journal, Castanado remarked to Chester as at a corner table he poured him a glass of cordial, brought the war, the trenches, the poilu and the boche closer than any other they knew. Beloiseau and Mme. Alexandre, he softly explained, had come in quite unlooked-for to discuss the great strife and might depart at any moment. Then the reading!
But Chester himself interested those two and they stayed. When he said that Beloiseau's sidewalk samples had often made him covet some excuse for going in and seeing both the stock and the craftsman, "That was excuse ab-undant!" was the prompt response, and Castanado put in:
"Scipion he'd rather, always, a non-buying connoisseur than a buying Philistine."
"Come any day! any hour!" said Beloiseau.
Presently all five were talking of the surviving poetry of both artistic and historic Royal Street. "Twenty year' ag-o," said the ironworker, "looking down-street from my shop, there was not a building in sight without a romantic story. My God! for example, that Hotel St. Louis!"
Chester--"had heard one or two of its episodes only the evening before, at that up-town dinner, from a fine old down-town Creole, a fellow guest, with whom he was to dine the next week."
"Aha-a-a! precizely ac-rozz the street from Mme. Alexandre!" said the hostess. "M'sieu' et Madame De l'Isle! Now I detec' that!"
"Have they no son?--or--or daughter?" he asked.
"Not any," Mme. Alexandre broke in with a significant sparkle; "juz' the two al-lone."
"They live over my shop," Beloiseau said. "You muz' know that double gate nex' adjoining me."
"Oh, that lovely piece of ironwork? I took that for a part of your establishment."
"I have only the uze of it with them. My grandpère he made those gate', for the father of Mme. De l'Isle, same year he made those great openwork gate' of Hotel St. Louis. You speak of episode'! One summer, renovating that hotel, they paint' those gate'--of iron openwork--in imitation--mon Dieu!--of marbl'! Ciel! the tragedy of that! Yes, they live over me; in the whole square, both side' the street, last remaining of the 'igh society."
When Mme. Alexandre finally rose to go, and had kissed the upturned brow of her hostess, she went by an inner door and rear balcony. And when Chester and Beloiseau began to take leave their host said to Chester:
"You dine with M. De l'Isle Tuesday. Well, if you'll come again here the next evening we'll attend to--that business."
"Wouldn't that be losing time? I can just as well come sooner."
"No," said madame, "better that Wednesday."
Chester was nettled, but he recovered when the ironworker walked with him around into Bienville Street and at his pension door lamented the pathetic decay of the useful arts and of artistic taste, since the advent of castings and machinery. The pair took such liking for each other's tenets of beauty, morals, art, and life that Chester walked back to the De l'Isle gates, and their parting at last was at the corner half-way between their two domiciles.
Meanwhile madame was saying to her spouse, "Aha! you see? The power of prayer! Ab-ove all, for the he'pless! By day the fo' corner' of my room, by night the fo' post' of my bed, are----"
"Yes, chérie, I know."
"Yes, they're to me for Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John! Since three days every time I heard the cathedral clock I've prayed to them; and now----!"
"Well, my angel? Now?"
"Well, now! He's dining there next Tuesday!"
"Truly. Yet even now we can only hope----"
"Ah, no! Me, I can also continue to supplicate! From now till Wednesday, every time that clock, I'll pray those four évangélistes! and Thursday you'll see--the power of prayer! Oh, 'tis like magique, that power of prayer!"
VIII
On Tuesday evening Chester, a country boy yet now and then, was first at the De l'Isles'.
Madame lauded him. "Punctualitie! tha'z the soul of pleasure!" She had begun to explain why her other guests included but one young lady, when here they came. First, the Prieurs, a still handsome Creole couple whom he never met again. Then that youthful-aged up-town pair, the Thorndyke-Smiths. And last--while Smith held Chester captive to tell him he knew his part of Dixie, having soldiered there in the Civil War--the one young lady, Mlle. Chapdelaine. As Chester turned toward her she turned away, but her back view was enough to startle him.
"Aline," the hostess began as she brought them face to face, but whatever she said more might as well have been a thunderbolt through the roof. For Aline Chapdelaine was SHE.
They went out together. What a stately dining-room! What carvings! What old china and lace on the board, under what soft, rich illumination! The Prieurs held the seats of honor. Chester was on the hostess's left. Mademoiselle sat between him and Mr. Smith. It would be pleasant to tell with what poise the youth and she dropped into conversation, each intensely mindful--intensely aware that the other was mindful--of that Conti Street corner, of Ovide's shop, and of "The Clock in the Sky," and both alike hungry to know how much each had been told about the other. Calmly they ignored all earlier encounter and entered into acquaintance on the common ground of the poetry of the narrow region of decay in which this lovely home lay hid "like a lost jewel."
"Ah, not quite lost yet," the girl protested.
"No," he conceded, "not while the poetry remains," and Smith, on her other hand, said:
"Not while this cluster of shops beneath us is kept by those who now keep them."
"My faith!" the hostess broke in, "to real souls 'tis they are the wonder--and the poésie--and the jewels! Ask Aline!"
"Ask me," Chester said, as if for mademoiselle's rescue; "I discovered them only last week."
"And then also," quietly said Aline, "ask me, for I did not discover them only last week."
M. Prieur joining in enabled Chester to murmur: "May I ask you something?"
"You need not. You would ask if I knew you had discovered them--M. Castanado and the rest."
"And you would answer?"
"That I knew they had discovered you."
"Discovered, you mean, my spiritual substance?"
"Yes, your spiritual substance. That's a capital expression, Mr. Chester, your 'spiritual substance.' I must add that to my English."
"Your English is wonderfully correct. May I ask something else?"
"I can answer without. Yes, I know where you're going to-morrow and for what; to read that old manuscript. Mr. Chester, that other story--of my grand'mére, 'Maud'; how did you like that?"
"It left me in love with your grand'mére."
"Notwithstanding she became what they used to call--you know the word."
"Yes, 'nigger-stealer.' How did you ever add that to your English?"
"My father was one. Right here in Royal Street. Hotel St. Louis. Else he might never have married my--that's too long to tell here."
"May I not hear it soon, at your home?"
"Assuredly. Sooner or later. My aunts they are born raconteurs."
"Oh! your aunts. Hem! Do you know? I had an uncle who once was your grandfather's sort of robber, though a Southerner born and bred."
"Yes, Ovide's wife told me. Will you permit me a question?"
"No," laughed Chester, "but I can answer it. Yes. Those four poor runaways to whom your sweet Maud showed the clock in the sky were the same four my uncle helped on--oh, you've not heard it, and it also is too long. I can lend you his 'Memorandum' if you'll have it."
She hesitated. "N-no," she said. "Ah, no! I couldn't bear that responsibility! Listen; Mr. Smith is going to tell a war story of the city."
But no, that gentleman's story was yet another too long for the moment even when the men were left to their cigars. Instead he and Chester made further acquaintance. When they returned to the ladies, "I want you to talk with my wife," said Mr. Smith, and Chester obeyed. Yet soon he was at mademoiselle's side again and she was saying in a dropped voice:
"To-morrow when you're at the Castanados' to read, so privately, would you be willing for Mme. De l'Isle to be there--just madame alone?"
Oh, but men are dull! "I'd be honored!" he said. "They can modify the privacy as they please." Oh, but men are dull! There he had to give place to M. Prieur and presently accepted some kind of social invitation, seeing no way out of it, from the Smiths. So ended the evening. Mlle. Chapdelaine was taken to her home, "close by," as she said, in the Prieurs' carriage.
"They are juz' arround in Bourbon Street, those Chapdelaines," said the De l'Isles to Chester, last to go. "Y'ought to see their li'l' flower-garden. Like those two aunt' that maintain it, 'tis unique. Y'ought to see that--and them."
"I have mademoiselle's permission," he replied.
"Ah, well, then!--ha, ha!" The pair exchanged a smile which seemed to the parting guest to say: "After all he's not so utterly deficient!"
IX
Again the Castanados' dainty parlor, more dainty than ever. No one there was in evening dress, though with its privacy "modified as the Castanados pleased," it had gathered a company of seven.
Chester, not yet come, would make an eighth. Madame was in her special chair. And here, besides her husband, were both M. and Mme. De l'Isle, Mme. Alexandre and Scipion Beloiseau. The seventh was M. Placide Dubroca, perfumer; a man of fifty or so, his black hair and mustache inclined to curl and his eyes spirited yet sympathetic. Just entered, he was telling how consumed with regret his wife was, to be kept away--by an old promise to an old friend to go with her to that wonderful movie, "Les Trois Mousquetaires," when Chester came in and almost at once a general debate on Mlle. Chapdelaine's manuscript was in full coruscation.
"In the firs' place," one said--though the best place he could seize was the seventeenth--"firs' place of all--competition! My frien's, we cannot hope to nig-otiate with that North in the old manner which we are proud, a few of us yet, to con-tinue in the rue Royale. Every publisher----" Mme. Castanado had a quotation that could not wait: "We got to be 'wise like snake' an' innocent like pigeon'!'"
"Precizely! Every publisher approach' mus' know he's bidding agains' every other! Maybe they are honess men, and if so they'll be rij-oice'!"
A non-listener was trying to squeeze in: "And sec'--and sec'--and secon' thing--if not firs'--is guarantee! They mus' pay so much profit in advance. Else it be better to publish without a publisher, and with advertisement' front and back! Tiffany, Royal Baking-Powder, Ivory Soap it Float'! Ten thousand dolla' the page that Ladies' 'Ome Journal get', and if we get even ten dolla' the page--I know a man what make that way three hundred dolla'!"
"He make that net or gross?" some one asked.
"Ah! I think, not counting his time sol-iciting those advertisement', he make it nearly net."
Chester made show of breaking in and three speakers at once begged him to proceed: "How much of a book," he asked Mme. Castanado, "will the manuscript make? How long is it?"
She looked falteringly to her husband: "'Tis about a foot long, nine inch' wide. Marcel, pazz that to monsieur."
The husband complied. Chester counted the lines of one of the pages. Madame watched him anxiously.
"Tha'z too wide?" she inquired.
"It isn't long enough to make a book. To do that would take--oh--seven times as much."
"Ah!" Madame's voice grew in sweetness as it rose: "So much the better! So much the more room for those advertisement'!--and picture'!"
"And portrait of mademoiselle!" said Mme. Alexandre, and Mme. De l'Isle smiled assent.
Yet a disappointed silence followed, presently broken by the perfumer: "All the same, what is the matter to make it a pamphlet?"
Beloiseau objected: "No, then you compete aggains' those magazine'. But if you permit one of those magazine' to buy it you get the advantage of all the picture' in the whole magazine."
"Ah!" several demurred, "and let that magazine swallow whole all those profit' of all those advertisement'!"
Chester spoke: "I have an idea--" But others had ideas and the floor besides.
Castanado lifted a hand: "Frien'--our counsel."
Counsel tried again: "I have a conviction that we should first offer this to a magazine--through--yes, of course, through some influential friend. If one doesn't want it another may----"
Chorus: "Ho! they will all want it! That was not written laz' night! 'Tis fivty year' old; they cannot rif-use that!"
"However," Chester persisted, "if they should--if all should--I'd advise----"
"Frien's," Castanado pleaded, "let us hear."
"I should advise that we gather together as many such old narratives as we can find, especially such as can be related to one another----"
"They need not be ril-ated!" cried Dubroca. "We are not ril-ated, and yet see! Ril-ated? where you are goin' to find them, ril-ated?"
"Royal Street!" Scipion retorted. "Royal Street is pave' with old narration'!"
"Already," said Castanado, "we chanze to have three or four. Mademoiselle has that story of her grand'mère, and Mr. Chezter he has--sir, you'll not care if I tell that?--Mr. Chezter has the sequal to that, and written by his uncle!"
"Yes," Chester put in, "but Ovide Landry finds it was printed years ago."
"Proof!" proclaimed Mme. Alexandre, "proof that 'tis good to print ag-ain! The people that read that before, they are mozely dead."
"At the same time," Chester responded, rising and addressing the chair, his hostess, "because that is a sequel to the grand'-mère's story, and because this--this West Indian episode--is not a sequel and has no sequel, and particularly because we ought to let mademoiselle be first to judge whether my uncle's memorandum is fit company for her two stories, I propose, I say, that before we read this West Indian thing we read my uncle's memorandum, and that we send and beg her to come and hear it with us. It's in my pocket."
Patter, patter, patter, went a dozen hands.
"Marcel," the hostess cried in French, "go!"
"I will go with you," Mme. Alexandra proposed, "she will never come without me."
"Tis but a step," said Mme. De l'Isle, "the three of us will go together." They went.
Those who waited talked on of their city's true stories. The vastest and most monstrous war in human history was smoking and roaring just across the Atlantic, and in it they had racial, national, personal interests; but for the moment they left all that aside. "One troub'," Dubroca said, "'tis that all those three stone'--and all I can rim-ember--even that story of M'sieu' Smith about the fall of the city--1862--they all got in them somewhere, alas! the nigger. The publique they are not any longer pretty easy to fascinate on that subjec'."
"Ho!" Beloiseau rejoined, "au contraire, he's an advantage! If only you keep him for the back-ground; biccause in the mind of every-body tha'z where he is, and that way he has the advantage to ril-ate those storie' together and----"
Mademoiselle came. Her arrival, reception, installation near the hostess and opposite Chester are good enough untold. If elsewhere in that wide city a like number ever settled down to listen to an untamed writer's manuscript in as sweet content with one another their story ought to be printed. "Well," Mme. Castanado chanted, "commence." And Chester read:
X
THE ANGEL OF THE LORD
When I was twenty-four I lived at the small capital of my native Southern State.
My parental home was three counties distant. My father, a slaveholding planter, was a noble gentleman, whom I loved as he loved me. But we could not endure each other's politics and I was trying to exist on my professional fees, in the law office of one of our ex-governors. I was kindly tolerated by everybody about me but had neglected social relations, being a black sheep on every hot question of the time--1860.
In the world's largest matters my Southern mother had the sanest judgment I ever knew, and it was from her I had absorbed my notions on slavery. It was at least as much in sympathy for the white man as for the black that she deprecated it, yet she pointed out to me how idle it was to fancy that any mere manumission of our slaves would cure us of a whole philosophy of wealth, society, and government as inbred as it was antiquated.
One evening my two fellow boarders--state-house clerks, good boys--so glaringly left me out of their plan for a whole day's fishing on the morrow, that I smarted. I was so short of money that I could not have supplied my own tackle, but no one knew that, and it stung me to be slighted by two chaps I liked so well. I determined to be revenged in some playful way that would make us better friends, and as I walked down-street next morning I hit out a scheme. They had been gone since daybreak and I was on my way to see a client who kept a livery-stable.
Now, in college, where I had intended to leave all silly tricks behind me, my most taking pranks had been played in female disguise; for at twenty-four I was as beardless as a child.
My errand to the stableman was to collect some part of my fee in a suit I had won for him. But I got not a cent, for as to cash his victory had been a barren one. However, a part of his booty was an old coach built when carriage people made long journeys in their own equipages. This he would "keep on sale for me free of charge," etc.
"Which means you'll never sell it," I said.
Oh, he could sell it if any man could!
I smiled. Could he lend me, I asked, for half a day or so, a good span of horses? He could.
"Then hitch up the coach and let me try it."
He bristled: "What are you going to find out by 'trying' it? What d'you 'llow it'll do? Blow up? Who'll drive it? I can't spare any one."
I was glad. Any man of his would know me, and my scheme called for a stranger to both me and the coach. I must find such a person.
"If I send a driver," I said, "you'll lend me the span, won't you?"
"Oh, yes."
But all at once I decided to do without the whole rig. I went back to my room and had an hour's enjoyment making myself up as a lady dressed for travel. For a woman I was of just a fine stature. In years I looked a refined forty. My hands were not too big for black lace mitts, my bosom was a success, and my feet, in thin morocco, were out of sight and nobody's business. A little oil and a burnt match darkened my eyebrows, my wig sat straight, under the weest of bonnets I wore a chignon, behind one ear a bunch of curls, and, unseen at one side of a modest bustle, my revolver. Though I say it myself, I managed my crinoline with grace.
["That was pritty co'rect," the costumer remarked. "Humph!" said Chester. The three mesdames exchanged glances, and the reading went on.]
XI
Leaving a note on her door to tell our landlady that business would keep me away an indefinite time, I got out at the front gate unobserved, and with a sweet dignity that charmed me with myself walked away under a bewitching parasol, well veiled.
I knew where to find my two sportsmen. A few hundred paces put the town and an open field at my back; a few more down a bushy lane brought me where a dense wood overhung both sides of the narrow way, and the damp air was full of the smell of penny-royal and of creek sands. From here I proposed to saunter down through the woods to the creek, locate my fishermen, and draw them my way by cries of distress.
On their reaching my side my story, told through my veil and between meanings and clingings, was to be that while on a journey in my own coach, a part of its running-gear having broken, I had sent it on to be mended; that through love of trees and wild flowers I had ventured to stay alone meantime among them, and that a snake had bitten me on the ankle. I should describe a harmless one but insist I was poisoned, and yet refuse to show the wound or be borne back to the road, or to let either man stay with me alone while the other went for a doctor, or to drink their whiskey for a cure. On getting back to the road--with the two fellows for crutches--I should send both to town for my coach, keeping with me their tackle and fish. Then I should get myself and my spoils back to our dwelling as best I could and--await the issue. If this poor performance had so come off--but see what occurred instead!
I had shut my parasol and moved into hiding behind some wild vines to mop my face, when near by on the farther side of the way came slyly into view a negro and negress. They were in haste to cross the road yet quite as wishful to cross unseen. One, in home-spun gown and sunbonnet, was ungainly, shoeless, bird-heeled, fan-toed, ragged, and would have been painfully ugly but for a grotesqueness almost winsome.
"She's a field-hand," was my thought.
The other, in very clean shirt, trousers, and shoes, looking ten years younger and hardly full-grown, was shapely and handsome. "That boy," thought I, "is a house-servant. The two don't belong in the same harness. And yet I'd bet a new hat they're runaways."
Now they gathered courage to come over. With a childish parade of unconcern and with all their glances up and down the road, they came, and were within seven steps of me before they knew I was near. I shall never forget the ludicrous horror that flashed white and black from the eyes in that sun-bonnet, nor the snort with which its owner, like a frightened heifer, crashed off a dozen yards into the brush and as suddenly stopped.
"Good morning, boy," I said to the other, who had gulped with consternation, yet stood still.
"Good mawnin', mist'ess."
The feminine title came luckily. I had forgotten my disguise, so disarmed was I by the refined dignity of the dark speaker's mellow voice and graceful modesty. After all, my prejudices were Southern. I had rarely seen negroes, at worship, work, or play, without an inward groan for some way--righteous way--by which our land might be clean rid of them. But here, in my silly disguise, confronting this unmixed young African so manifestly superior to millions of our human swarm white or black, my unsympathetic generalizations were clear put to shame. The customary challenge, "Who' d'you belong to?" failed on my lips, and while those soft eyes passed over me from bonnet to mitts I gave my head as winsome a tilt as I could and inquired: "What is your name?"
"Me?"
"Yes, you; what is it?"
"I'm name', eh, Euonymus; yass'm."
"Oh, boy, where'd your mother get that name?"
"Why, mist'ess, ain't dat a Bible name?"
"Oh, yes," I said, remembering Onesimus. With my parasol I indicated the other figure, sunbonneted, motionless, gazing on us through the brush.
"Has she a Bible name too?"
"Yass'm; Robelia."
Robelia brought chin and shoulder together and sniggered. "Euonymus," I asked, "have you seen two young gentlemen, fishing, anywhere near here?"
"Yass'm, dey out 'pon a san'bar 'bout two hund'ed yards up de creek." The black finger that pointed was as clean as mine.
"You and this woman," thought I again, "are dodging those men." With a smile as of curiosity I looked my slim informant over once more. I had never seen slavery so flattered yet so condemned.
All at once I said in my heart: "You, my lad, I'll help to escape!" But when I looked again at the absurd Robelia I saw I must help both alike.
"Euonymus, did you ever drive a lady's coach?"
"Me? No'm, I never drove no lady's coach."
"Well, boy, I'm travelling--in my own outfit."
"Yass'm."
"But I hire a new driver and span at each town and send the others back."
"Yass'm," said Euonymus. Robelia came nearer.
"My coach is now at a livery-stable in town, and I want a driver and a lady's maid."
"Yass'm."
"I'd prefer free colored people. They could come with me as far as they pleased, and I shouldn't be responsible for their return."
"Yass'm," said Euonymus, edging away from Robelia's nudge.
"Now, Euonymus, I judge by your being out here in the woods this time of day, idle, that you're both free, you and your sister, h'm?"
"Ro'--Robelia an' me? Eh, ye'--yass'm, as you may say, in a manneh, yass'm."
"She is your sister, is she not?"
"Yass'm," clapped in Robelia, with a happy grin, and Euonymus quietly added:
"Us full sisteh an' brotheh--in a manneh."
"Umh'm. Could you drive my coach, Euonymus?"
"What, me, mist'ess? Why, eh, o' co'se I kin drive some, but--" The soft, honest eyes, seeking Robelia's, betrayed a mental conflict. I guessed there were more than two runaways, and that Euonymus was debating whether for Robelia's sake to go with me and leave the others behind, or not.
"You kin drive de coach," blurted the one-ideaed Robelia. "You knows you kin."
"No, mi'ss, takin' all roads as dey come I ain't no ways fitt'n'; no'm."
"Well, daddy's fitt'n'!" said the sun-bonnet.
Euonymus flinched, yet smilingly said:
"Yass, da's so, but I ain't daddy, no mo'n you is."
"Well, us kin go fetch him--in th'ee shakes."
Euonymus flinched again, yet showed generalship. "Yass'm, us kin go ax daddy."
I smiled. "Let Robelia go and you stay here."
Robelia waited on tiptoe. "Go fetch him," murmured Euonymus, "an' make has'e."
"Wait! You're a good boy, Euonymus, ain't you?"
"I cayn't say dat, mi'ss; but I'm glad ef you thinks so."
"Y' is good!" said Robelia. "You knows you is!"
"Never mind," I said; "do you belong to--Zion?"
The dark face grew radiant. "Yass'm, I does!"
"Euonymus, how many more of you-all are there besides daddy and mammy?"
The surprise was cruel. The runaway's eyes let out a gleam of alarm and then, as I lighted with kindness, filled with rapt wonder at my miraculous knowledge: "Be'--be'--beside'--beside' d-daddy an' m-mammy? D'ain't no mo', m-mist'ess; no'm!"
"Yass'm," put in Robelia, "da's all; us fo'."
"Just you four. Euonymus, a bit ago I noticed on your sister's ankles some white mud."
"Yass'm." Another gleam of alarm and then a fine, awesome courage. Robelia stared in panic.
"The nearest white mud--marl--in the State, Robelia, is forty miles south of here."
"Is d'--dat so, mist'ess?"
"Yes, and so you also are travellers, Euonymus."
"Trav'--y'--yass'm, I--I reckon you mought call us trav'luz, in a manneh, yass'm."
"Well, my next town is thirty miles north of----"
"Nawth!" Euonymus broke in, thinking furiously.
"Now, if instead of hiring just your sister and her daddy I should----"
"Yass'm!"
"Suppose I should take all four of you along, as though you were my slaves----"
"De time bein'," Euonymus alertly slipped in.
"Certainly, that's all. How would that do?"
"Oh, mist'ess! kin you work dat miracle?"
"I can do it if it suits you."
"Lawd, it suit' us! Dey couldn't be noth'n' mo' rep'ehensible!"
Robelia vanished. Euonymus gazed into my eyes.
[Had my disguise failed?] "What is it, boy?"
"May I ax you a question, mi'ss?"
"You may ask if you won't tell."
"Oh, I won't tell! Is you a sho' enough 'oman?--Lawd, I knowd you wa'n't! No mo'n you is a man! I seen it f'om de beginnin'!"
"Why, boy, what do you imagine I am?"
"Oh, I don't 'magine, I knows! 'T'uz me prayed Gawd to sen' you. Y' ain't man, y' ain't 'oman! an' yit yo' bofe! Yo' de same what visit Ab'am, an' Lot, an' Dan'l, and de motheh de Lawd!"
"Stop! Stop! Never mind who I am; I've got to put you fifty miles from here before bedtime."
"Yes, my Lawd. Oh, yes, my Lawd!"
"Euonymus! you mustn't call me that!"
"Ain't dat what Ab'am called you?"
"I forget! but--call me mistress!--only!"
"Yass, suh--yass, mi'ss!"
"Good. Now, lad, I can take you alone, horseback, which'll be far swifter, safer, surer----"
A new alarm, a new exaltation--"Oh, no, my--mist'ess; no, no! you knows you on'y a-temptin' o' dy servant!"
"You wouldn't leave daddy and mammy?"
"Oh, daddy kin stick to mammy, an' her to he! but Robelia got neither faith nor gumption, an' let me never see de salvation o' de Lawd ef I cayn't stick by dat--by--by my po' Robelia!"
"But suppose, my boy, we should be mistaken for runaways and tracked and run down."
"Yass'm, o' co'se. Yass'm."
"Can you fight--for your sister?"
"Yass, my La'--yass'm, I kin an' I will. I's qualified my soul to' dat, suh; yass'm."
"Dogs?"
"Yass'm, dawgs. Notinstandin' de dawgs come pass me roun' about, in de name o' de Lawd will I lif up my han' an' will perwail."
"Have you only your hands?"
"Da's all David had, ag'in lion an' bah."
"True. Euonymus, I need a man's clothes."
"Yass'm, on a pinch dey mowt come handy."