Chapter 10

"Ah-h-h! that's a cruel joke, and false! That true Cupid, he's an assassin; while that child, he's faultless?"

The speaker really said "fauklezz," and it was a joy to Chester to hear her at last fall unwittingly into a Creole accent. "Well, anyhow," he led on, "the four lived together; and if I guess right your mother became, to all this joy-ride company, as much their heroine as your father was their hero."

"'Tis true!"

"But your father's coming back from France--it couldn't save the business?"

"Alas, no! Even together, he and mamma--and you know what a strong businezz partner a French wife can be--they could not save it. Both of them were, I think, more artist than merchant, and when all that kind of businezz began to be divorce' from art and married to machinery"--the narrator made a sad gesture.

"_Kultur_ against culture, was it? and your father not the sort to change masters."

"True again. But tha'z not all; hardly was it half. One thing beside was the miz-conduct of an agent, the man who lately"--a silent smile.

"What?--sold your aunts that manuscript?"

"Yes. But he didn' count the most. Oh, the whole businezz, except papa's, became, as we say--give me the word!"

"Americanized?"

"No, papa he always refused to call it that. Mr. Chester, he used to say that those two marvellouz blessings, machinery, democracy, they are in one thing too much alike; they are, at first--say it, you."

"Vulgarizing?"

"Yes. I suppose that has to be--at the first, h'm? And with the buying world every day more and more in love with machine work--and seeming itself to become machine work, while at the same time Americanized, papa was like a river town"--another gesture--"left by the river!"

"Yet he never went into bankruptcy? You can point with pride to that, mademoiselle."

"Ah, Mr. Chester, pride! Once I pointed, and papa--'My daughter, there are many ways to go bankrupt worse than in money, and to have gone bankrupt in none of them--' there he stopped; he was too noble for pride. No, the businezz, juz' year after year it starved to death. In the early days _grandpére_ had two big stores, back to back; whole-sale, Chartres Street; retail, Royal, where now all that is left of it is the shop of Mme. Alexandre. Both her husband and she were with papa in the retail store, until it diminish' that he couldn' keep them, and--in the time of President Roosevelt--some New York men they bought him out. Because a new head of the custom-house, old Creole friend of papa, without solicitation except maybe of M. Beloiseau and those, appointed him superintendent of customs warehouses, you know? where they keep all kind of imported goods, so they needn't pay the tariff till they take them out to sell them in the store? h'm?"

"Yes. And he kept that place--how long?"

"Always, till he passed, he and mamma; mamma first, he two years avter. Ad the last he said to me--we chanced to be talking in Englizh--'I've lived the quiet life. If I must go I can go quietly.'

"'And still,' I said, 'if your life had been as stormy as _grandpére's_ you'd have been always for the right, and ad the last content, I think.'

"'Yes,' he said, 'I believe I never ran away from a storm, while ad the same time I never ran avter one.' And then he said something I wrote down the same night in the fear I might sometime partly forget it."

"Have you it with you, now, here?" She showed a bit of paper, holding it low for him to read as she retained it:

On the side of the right all the storms of life--all the storms of the world--are for the perfection of the quiet life--the active-quiet life--to build it stronger, wider, finer, higher, than is possible for the stormy life to be. Whether for each man or for the nations, the stormy life is but the means; the active-quiet life, without decay of character in man or nation but with growth forever--that is the end.

The pair exchanged a look. "Thank you," murmured Chester, and presently added: "So you were left with your two aunts. Then what?"

"I'll tell you. But"---the Creole accent faded out--"we must not disappoint the De l'Isles, nor those others, we must----"

"I see; we must notice where we're going and give and take our share of the joy."

"We mustn't be as if reading the morning paper, h'm? I think 'tis for you they've come this way instead of going on those smooth shell-roads between the city and the lake."

The two cars had come up through old "Carrollton," where the Mississippi, sweeping down from Nine-Mile Point, had been gnawing inland for something like a century, in spite of all man's engineering could pile against it, and now were out on the levee road and half round the bend above.

To press her policy, "See!" exclaimed Aline, as a light swell of the ground brought to view a dazzling sweep of the river, close beyond the levee's crown and almost on a level with the eye. They were in a region of wide, highly kept sugar-plantations. Whatever charms belong to the rural life of the Louisiana Delta were at their amplest on every side. Groves of live-oak, pecan, magnolia, and orange about large motherly dwellings of the Creole colonial type moved Aline to turn the conversation upon country life in Chester's State, and constrain him to tell of his own past and kindred. So time and the river's great windings slipped by with the De l'Isles undisappointed, and early in the afternoon the company lunched in the two cars, under a homestead grove. Its master and mistress, old friends of all but Chester, came running, followed by maids with gifts of milk and honey. They climbed in among the company; shared, lightly, their bread and wine; heard with momentary interest the latest news of the great war; spoke English and French in alternating clauses; inquired after the coterie's four young heroes at the French front, but only by stealth and out of Aline's hearing; and cried to Cupid, "'Ello, 'Ector! _comment ça va-t-il_? And 'ow she is, yonder at 'ome, that Marie Madeleine?"

Cupid smiled to his ears, but it was the absentee's two mistresses who answered for her, volubly, tenderly: "We was going to bring her, but juz' at the lazt she discide' she di'n' want to come. You know, tha'z beautiful, sometime', her capriciouznezz!"

Indoors, outdoors, the visitors spent an hour seeing the place and hearing its history all the way back to early colonial days. Then, in the two cars once more, with seats much changed about, yet with Aline and Chester still paired, though at the rear of the forward car, they glided cityward. At Carrollton they turned toward the New Canal, and at West End took the lake shore eastward--but what matter their way? Joy was with ten of them, and bliss with two--three, counting Cupid--and it was only by dutiful effort that the blissful ones kept themselves aware of the world about them while Aline's story ran gently on. It had run for some time when a query from Chester evoked the reply:

"No, 'twas easier to bear, I think, because I had _not_ more time and less work."

"What was your work, mademoiselle? what is it now? Incidentally you keep books, but mainly you do--what?"

"Mainly--I'll tell you. Papa, you know, he was, like _grandpère_, a true connoisseur of all those things that belong to the arts of beautiful living. Like _grandpère_ he had that perception by three ways--occupation, education, talent. And he had it so abboundingly because he had also _the art_--of that beautiful life, h'm?"

"The art beyond the arts," suggested the listener; "their underlying philosophy."

The narrator glowed. Then, grave again, she said: "Mr. Chezter, I'll tell you something. To you 'twill seem very small, but to me 'tis large. It muz' have been because of both together, those arts and that art, that, although papa he was always of a strong enthusiasm and strong indignation, yet never in my life did I hear him--egcept in play--speak an exaggeration. 'Sieur Beloiseau he will tell you that--while ad the same time papa he never rebuke' that in anybody else--egcept, of course--his daughter."

"But I ask about you, your work."

"Ah! and I'm telling you. Mamma she had the same connoisseur talent as papa, and even amongs' that people where she was raise', and under the shadow, as you would say, of that convent so famouz for all those weavings, laces, tapestries, embro'deries, she was thought to be wonderful with the needle."

Chester interrupted elatedly: "I see what you're coming to. You, yourself, were born needle in hand--the embroidery-needle."

"Well, ad the least I can't rimember when I learned it. 'Twas always as if I couldn' live without it. But it was not the needle alone, nor embro'deries alone, nor alone the critical eye. Papa he had, pardly from _grand-père_, pardly brought from France, a separate librarie abbout all those arts, and I think before I was five years I knew every picture in those books, and before ten every page. And always papa and mamma they were teaching me from those books--they couldn' he'p it! I was very naughty aboud that. I would bring them the books and if they didn' teach me I would weep. I think I wasn' ever so naughty aboud anything else. But in the en', with the businezz always diclining, that turn' out fortunate. By and by mamma she persuade' papa to let her take a part in the pursuanze of the businezz. But she did that all out of sight of the public----"

"Had you never a brother or sister?"

"Yes, long ago. We'll not speak of that. A sizter, two brothers; but--scarlet-fever----"

The story did not pause, yet while it pressed on, its hearers musing lingered behind. Why were the long lost ones not to be spoken of? For fear of betraying some blame of the childlike aunts for the scarlet-fever? The unworthy thought was put aside and the hearer's attention readjusted.

"Even mamma," the girl was saying, "she didn' escape that contagion, and by reason of that she was compelled to let papa put me in her place in the businezz; and after getting well she never was the same and I rittained the place till a year avter, when she pas' away, and I have it yet."

"And who filled M. Alexandre's place?"

"Oh, that? Tis fil' partly by Mme. Alexandre and partly by that diminishing of the businezz--till the largez' part of it is ripairing--of old laces, embro'deries, and so forth. Madame's shop is the chief place in the city for that. Of that we have all we can do. 'Tis a beautiful work.

"So tha'z all I have to tell, Mr. Chezter; and I've enjoyed to tell you that so you can see why we are so content and happy, my aunts and I--and Hector--and Marie Madeleine. H'm?"

"That's all you have to tell?"

"That is all."

"But not all there is to tell, even of the past, mademoiselle."

"Ah! and why not?"

"Oh, impossible!" Chester softly laughed and had almost repeated the word when the girl blushed; whereupon he did the same. For he seemed all at once to have spoiled the whole heavenly day, until she smilingly restored it by saying:

"Oh, yes! One thing I was forgetting. Just for the laugh I'll tell you that. You know, even in a life as quiet as mine, sometimes many things happening together, or even a few, will make you see bats instead of birds, eh?"

"I know, and mistake feelings for facts. I've done it often, in a moderate way."

"Yes? Me the same. But very badly, so that the sky seemed falling in, only once."

Chester thought that if the two aunts, just then telling the biography of their dolls, were his, his sky would have fallen in at least weekly. "Tell me of that once," he said, and, knowing not why, called to mind those four soldiers in France, to her, for some reason, unmentionable.

"Well, first I'll say that the archbishop he had been the true friend of papa, but now this time, this 'once' when my sky seemed falling, both mamma and papa they were already gone. I don't need to tell you what the trouble was about, because it never happened; it only threatened to happen. So when I saw there was only me to prevent it and to----"

"To hold the sky up?"

"Yes, seeing that, it seemed to me the best friend to go to was the archbishop.

"'Well, my old and dear friend's daughter,' he said, 'what is it?'

"'Most reverend father in God, 'tis my wish to become a nun.'

"'My child, that is a beautiful sentiment.'

"'But 'tis more; even more than my wish; 'tis my resolution. I must do that. 'Tis as if I heard that call from heaven to me, Aline Chapdelaine!'

"'Ah, but that's not only your name. Your mamma, up yonder, she's also Aline Chapdelaine.'

"'Yes, but I know that call is to me. Ah, your Grace, surely, surely, you will not forbid me?'

"'No, my daughter. Yet at the same time that is not a thing to be done suddenly, or in desperation. I'll appoint you a season for reflection and prayer, and after that if your resolution remains the same you shall become a nun.'

"'But, for the sake of others, will not that season be made short?'

"'For your own sake, my daughter, as well as for others, I'll make it the shortest possible. Let me see; I was going to say forty but I'll make it only thirty-nine.'

"'Ah, your Grace, but in thirty-nine days----'

"He stopped me: 'Not days, my child; years.' What he said after, 'tis no matter now; pretty soon I was kneeling and receiving his benediction."

"And the sky didn't fall?"

"No, but--I can't explain to you--'twas that very visit prevent' it falling."

XXXVIII

It was in keeping with the coterie's spiritual make-up that they should know a restaurant in the _vieux carré_, which "that pewblic" knew not, and whose best merits were not music and fresco, but serenity, hospitality, and cuisine---a haven not yet "Ammericanize'."

Where it was they never told a philistine. The elect they informed under the voice, as one might betray a bird's nest. It was but a step from the crumbling Hotel St. Louis, and but another or so from the spires of St. Louis Cathedral.

In it, at a round table, the joy-riders had passed the evening of their holiday. As the cathedral clock struck nine they rose to part. At the board Chester had sat next the same joy-mate allowed him all day in the car. But with how reduced a share of her attention! Half of his own he had had to give, at his other elbow, to her aunt Yvonne; half of Aline's had gone to Dubroca. The other half into half of his was but half a half and that had to be halved by a quarter coming from the two nearest across the table, one of whom was Mlle. Corinne, whose queries always required thought.

"Mr. Chezter," she said, when the purchase of an evening paper had made the great over-seas strife the general theme, "can you egsplain me why they don' stop that war, when 'tis calculate' to projuce so much hard feeling?"

Explaining as best he could without previous research, Chester had turned again to Mlle. Yvonne to let her finish telling--inspire'd by an incoming course of the menu--of those happy childhood days when she and her sister and the unfortunate gentleman from whom they had bought Aline's manuscript went crayfishing in Elysian Fields street canal, always taking the dolls along, "so not to leave them lonesome"; how the dolls had visibly enjoyed the capture of each crayfish; and how she and Corinne and the dolls would delight in the same sport to-day, but, alas! "that can-al was fil' op! and tha'z another thing calculate' to projuce hard feeling."

Through such riddles and reminiscences and his replies thereto persistently ran Chester's uneasy question to himself: Why had Aline told him that story of unnamable trouble which had goaded her to seek the cloister? Why if not to warn him away from a sentiment which was growing in him like a balloon and straining his heart-strings to hold it to its proper moorings?

Now the two cars let out their passengers at the De l'Isle gates and at the door of the Castanados. Madame of the latter name, with her spouse heaving under one arm and Chester under the other, while Mme. Alexandre pushed behind, was lifted to her parlor. Returning to the street, Chester found the motors gone, MM. De l'Isle and Beloiseau gone with them, and only the two Dubrocas, the three Chapdelaines, and Cupid awaiting him.

And now, with Cupid leading, and sleeping as he led, and with a Dubroca beside each aunt, and Aline and Chester following, this remnant of the company approached the Conti Street corner, on the way to the Chapdelaine home. At the turn----

"Mademoiselle," Chester asked in a desperation too much like hers before the arch-bishop, "do you notice that, as the old hymn says, we are treading where the saints have trod? _Your_ saints?"

"My--ah, yes, 'tis true. 'Tis here _grand'mère_----

"Turned that corner in her life where your _grandpère_ first saw her. Al'--Aline."

"Mr. Chester?"

"I want this corner, from the day I first saw you turn it, to be all that to you and me. Shall it not?"

She said nothing. Priceless moments glided by, each a dancing ghost. Just there ahead in the dark was Bourbon Street, and a short way down among its huddled shadows were her board fence and batten gate. It was senseless to have taken this chance on so poor a margin of time, but what's done's done! "Oh, Aline Chapdelaine, say it shall be! Say it, Aline, say it!"

"Mr. Chester, it is impossible! Impossible!"

"It is not! It's the only right thing! It shall be, Aline, it shall be!"

"No, Mr. Chester, 'tis impossible. You must not ask me why, but 'tis impossible!"

"It isn't! Aline, and I ask no why. I see the trouble. It's your aunts. Why, I'll take them with you, _of course_! I'll take them into my care and love as you have them in yours, and keep them there while they and I live. I can do it, I've got the wherewithal! Things have happened to me fast since I first saw you turn that corner behind us. I've inherited property, and only yesterday I was taken into one of the best law firms in the city. I'll prove all that to you and your aunts to-morrow. Aline, unspeakable treasure, you shall not live the buried-alive life in which you are trying to believe yourself rightly placed and happy, my saint! My--adored--_saint_!"

"Yes, I must. What you ask is impossible."

XXXIX

Long after midnight Chester had not returned to his room. He could not tolerate the confinement even of the narrow streets round about it.

Far out Esplanade Avenue, uncompanioned, he was walking mile after mile beside a belt line of trolley-cars, or more than one, while at home, in Bourbon Street, Cupid slept.

But now the child awoke, startled. Four small feet were on one of his arms, and Marie Madeleine was purring, at the top of her purr, in his ear. Drowsily he crowded her away. Purring on, she slowly walked across his stomach and dropped to the floor. But soon she leaped up again to that sensitive region and purred into his nose, not at all as if to claim attention, but as though lost in thought. When he pushed her aside she dropped again to the floor, with such a quadruple thump that he looked after her, and as she loitered across his view with tail as straight up as Cleopatra's Needle, he observed just beyond her a condition of affairs that appalled him.

Cold from his small fingers and toes to his ample heart, he rose, stole into the next room, and stood by the bed where lay Mlles. Corinne and Yvonne as they had lain every night since their earliest childhood.

"Ah! oh! h'nn!" Mlle. Corinne sprang to an elbow, nervously whispering: "What is it?"

"My back do'," he murmured, "stan'in' opem."

"Oh, little boy, no, it cannot be! I bolt' it laz' evening when you was praying. You know?"

"Yass'm, but it opem now; Marie Madeleine dess gone out thu it."

Mlle. Yvonne sprang up dishevelled beside her dishevelled sister: "_Mon dieu_! where is Aline?"

Colder than ever in hands and feet, the wee grandson of the intrepid Sidney responded: "Stay still tell I go see."

"Yes!" whispered Mlle. Corinne, slipping to the floor and tenderly pushing him, "go! safest for everybody! And if you see a burglar _don' threaten him_!"

"No'm, I won't."

"No, but juz' run quick out the back door and fron' gate and holla 'fire'! Go!"

At the crack of the door she listened after him while her sister crowded close, whispering: "Ah, _pauvre_ Aline, always wise! Like us, silent! And tha'z after all the bravezt!"

In a moment Cupid was back, less frozen yet trembling: "She am' dah. Seem' like 'tis her leave de do' opem."

"Her clothes--they are gone?"

"No'm, all dah 'cep' de cloak she tuck on de machine. Reckon she out in de honey-sucker bower whah _dey_ sot together Sunday evenin'. Reckon Marie Madeleine gone dah. I'll go see."

"Ah, fearlezz boy, yes! Make quick!"

This time both women pushed, single file, all the way to the garden door. There they strained their sight down the path, beyond him, but the bower was quite dark. "Corinne, _chére_, ought not one of us to go, yo'seff?--to spare her feelings--from that li'l' negro? You don' think one of us ought to go, yo'seff?"

"No, to sen' him, that is to spare those feel'--listen! . . . Ah, Yvonne, _grâce au ciel_, she's there!"

They frankly wept. "Thangg the good God!"

"Yvonne, _chère_, you know, we are the cause of this. 'Tis biccause juz'--you and me. And she's gone yonder juz' for one thing; to be as far from her _misérie_ as she can."

"Yes, _chère_, I billieve that. I think even, she muz' not see us when she's riturning." No footfall sounded, but the cat came in, tail up, purring. Back in their chamber, with wet cheeks on its unlatched door, the sisters listened.

"I know what we muz' do, Yvonne, as soon as to-morrow. Tha'z strange I never saw that biffo'!"

Cupid came and was let in. "She was al-lone, of co'se?" the pair asked from the edge of their bed.

"Oh, yass'm, o' co'se; in a manneh, yass'm."

"_Mon dieu_! li'l boy. In a manner? But how in a manner? Al-lone is al-lone! What she was doing?"

"Is I got to tell dat?"

"Ah, '_tit garçon_! Have you not got to tell it?"

"Well, she 'uz--she 'uz prayin'."

"And tha'z the manner she was not al-lone?"

"Yas'm, dass all." The little fellow dropped to his knees, clutched a knee of either questioner, and wept and sobbed.

XL

M. Beloiseau reached across his workbench and hung up his hammer and tongs. The varied notes of two or three remote steam-whistles told him that the hour, of the day after the holiday, was five.

He glanced behind him, through his shop to the street door, where some one paused awaiting his welcome. He thought of Chester but it was Landry, with an old broad book under his elbow.

"Ah, come in, Ovide."

As he laid aside his apron he handed the visitor the piece of metal he had been making beautiful, and waved him to the drawing whose lines it was taking.

"But those whistles," the bookman said, "they stop the handworkman too."

"Yes. In the days of my father, the days of handwork, they meant only steamboat', coming, going; but now swarm' of men and women, boys, and girl', coming, going, living by machinery the machine-made life."

"'Sieur Beloiseau," Landry good-naturedly, said, "you're too just to condemn a gift of the good God for the misuse men make of it."

Scipion glared and smiled at the same time: "Then let that gift of the good God be not so hideouzly misuse'."

But Ovide amiably persisted: "Without machinery--plenty of it--I should not have this book for you, nor I, nor you, ever have been born."

Chester, entering, found Beloiseau looking eagerly into the volume. "All the same, Landry," the newcomer said, "you're no more a machine product than Mr. Beloiseau himself."

The bookman smiled his thanks while he followed the craftsman's scrutiny of the pages. "'Tis what you want?" he asked, and Chester saw that it was full of designs of ironwork, French and Spanish.

Scipion beamed: "Ah, you've foun' me that at the lazt, and just when I'm wanting it furiouzly."