Chapter 13

The whole coterie felt a glad thrill. "Ah, madame," Beloiseau exclaimed, "you are co'rec'! But, any'ow, in a caze where the two faith' _are_ con-_tra_-ry 'tis not for you Protestant' to be diztres' ab-out! You, you don' care so much ab-out those myzterie' of bil-ief as about those rule' of conduc'. Almoze, I may say, you run those _rule_' of conduc' into the groun'--and tha'z right! And bis-ide', you 'ave in everything--politic', law, trade, society--so much the upper han'--in the bes' senze--ah, of co'se in the bes' senze!--that the chil'ren of such a case they are pretty sure goin' to be Protestant!"

Mrs. Chester, having her choice, to say either that marriages across differences of faith had peculiar risks, or that Geoffry's uncle, the "Angel of the Lord," had married, happily, a Catholic, chose neither, let the subject be changed, and was able to assure the company that the missive on Geoffry's desk was no bulky manuscript, but a neat thin letter under one two-cent stamp.

"Accept'!" they cried, "that beautiful true story of 'The 'Oly Crozz' is accept'! Mesdemoiselles they have strug the oil!"

Mme. Castanado had a further conviction:

"'Tis the name of it done that! They coul'n' rif-use that name!--and even notwithstanding that those publisher' they are maybe Protestant!"

The good nights were very happy. The last were said five squares away, at the hotel, to which the De l'Isles brought her back afoot. "And to-morrow evening, four o'clock," madame said, "I'll come and we'll go make li'l' visite at those Chapdelaine'."

Mrs. Chester had but just removed her hat when again the telephone; from the hotel office--"Your son is here. Yes, shall we send him up?"

XLVII

With hands under their gray sleeves two white-bonneted _religieuses_ turned into Bourbon Street and rang the Chapdelaines' street bell.

Mlle. Yvonne flutteringly let them into the garden, Mlle. Corinne into the house. The conversation was in English, for, though Sister Constance was French, Sister St. Anne, young, fair, and the chief speaker, was Irish. They came from Sister Superior Veronique, they said, to see further about mesdemoiselles entering, eh----

Smilingly mesdemoiselles fluttered more than ever. "Ah, yes, yes! Well, you know, sinze we talk ab-out that with the archbishop we've talk' ab-out it with our niece al-_so_, and we think she's got to get marrie' befo' we can do that, biccause to live al-lone that way she's too young. But we 'ave the 'ope she's goin' to marry, and then----!"

"Have you made a will?"

"Will! Ah, we di'n' never think of that! Tha'z a marvellouz we di'n' never think of that--when we are the two-third' owner' of that lovely proprity there! And we think tha'z always improving in cozt, that place, biccause so antique an' so pittoresque. And if Aline she marrie' and we, we join that asylum doubtlezz Aline she'll be rij-oice' to combine with us to leave that lovely proprity ad the lazt to the church! Biccause, you know, to take that to heaven with us, tha'z impossible, and the church tha'z the nearez' we can come." Odd as the moment seemed for them, tears rolled down their smiling faces.

"But"--they dried their eyes--"there's another thing also bisside'. We are, all three, the authorezz' of a story that we are prettie sure tha'z accept' by the publisher'; an' of co'ze if tha'z accept'--and if those publisher' they don' swin'le us, like so oftten--we don't need to be orphan' never any mo', and we'll maybe move up-town and juz' keep that proprity here for a souvenir of our in-fancy. But that be two-three days yet biffo' we can be sure ab-oud that. Maybe ad the laz' we'll 'ave to join the asylum, but tha'z our hope, to move up town into the _quartier nouveau_ and that beautiful 'garden diztric'.' But we'll always _con_-tinue to love the old 'ouse here. 'Tis a very genuine ancient _relique_, that 'ouse. You see those wall'? Solid plank of two inch' and from Kentucky!" They went through the whole story--the house, the relics of their childhood--"Go you, Yvonne, fedge them!"

The meek _religieuses_ did their best to be both interested and sincere, but somehow found diplomacy to escape the "li'l' lake" and its goldfish, and even took the piety of the cat with a dampening absence of mind. Their departure was almost hurried. There was nothing to do on either side, the four agreed, but to wait the turn of events.

The two gray robes and white bonnets had but just got away when the bell rang again and Mlle. Yvonne let in Mme. De l'Isle and Mrs. Chester.

But these calls were in mid-afternoon. The evening previous--"Show Mr. Chester to three-thirty-three," the hotel clerk had said, and presently Mrs. Chester was all but perishing in the arms of her son.

"Geoffry! Geoffry! you needn't be ferocious!"

They took seats facing each other, low seats that touched; but when they joined hands a second time he dropped to his knees, asking many questions already answered in her regular and frequent letters. News is so different by word of mouth when the mouth's the sweetest, sacredest ever kissed. "And how's father?"

As if he didn't know to the last detail!

All at once--"Why didn't you say you were coming?" he savagely demanded.

"No matter," his mother replied, "I'm glad I didn't, things have happened so pleasantly. I've seen your whole Royal Street coterie, except, of course----"

"Yes, of course."

The mother told her evening's experience.

"And you like my friends?"

"Why, Geoffry, you're right to love them. But, now, how came you back so soon from St. What's-his-name?"

"Opposing counsel compromised the case without trial. Mother, it's the greatest professional victory I've ever won."

"Oh, how fine! Geoffry, how are you getting on, professionally, anyhow?"

"Better than my best hope, dear; far better. I've shot right up!"

"Then why do you look so weary and care-worn?"

"I don't. I'm older, that's all, dear."

"Oh! Prospering and care-free, and yet you'd drop everything and go to France, to war."

"No, dearie, no. I'm sorry I wrote you what I did, but I only said I felt like it. I don't now. I envied those Royal Street boys, who could do that with a splendid conscience. I--I can't. I can't go killing men, even murderers, for a remote personal reason. I must wait till my own country calls and my patriotism is pure patriotism. That's higher honor--to _her_, isn't it?"

"It is to you; I'm not bothering about her."

"You will when you see her, first sight. To-morrow afternoon, you say. Wish I could be there when your eyes first light on her! Mother, dearie, isn't it as much she as I you've come to see?"

"Well, if it is, what then?"

"I'm glad. But I draw the line at seeing. _Help_, you understand, I don't want--I won't have!"

"Why, Geoffry, I----!"

"Oh, I say it because there isn't one of that kind-hearted coterie who hasn't wanted to put in something in my favor. I forbid! A dozen to one--I won't allow it! No, nor any two to one, not even we two. Win or lose, I go it alone. 'Twould be fatal to do otherwise if I would. You'll see that the minute you see her."

"Why, Geoffry! What a heat!"

"Oh, I'll be the only one burned. Good night. I can't see you to-morrow before evening. Shall we dine here?"

"Yes. Oh, Geoffry--that New York letter! Manuscript accepted?"

A shade crossed the son's brow. "Don't you think I ought to tell her first?"

"Her first," the mother--the _mother_--repeated after him. "Maybe so; I don't care." They kissed. "Good night."

"Good night . . . good night . . . good night, dear, darling mother. Good night!"

XLVIII

At the batten door of her high, tight garden-fence Mlle. Yvonne, we repeat, let in Mme. De l'Isle and Mrs. Chester.

"Mother of--ah-h-h!" Her rapture was mated to such courteous restraint that dinginess and dishevelment were easily overlooked. "And 'ow marvellouz that is, that you 'appen to come juz' when he--and us--we're getting that news of the manu'----"

"What! accepted?"

"Oh, _that_ we di'n' hear _yet_! We only hear he's hear' something, but we're sure tha'z the only something he can hear!" She had begun to close the gate, but Mrs. Chester lingered in it.

"That fine large house and garden across the way," she said, "are they a Creole type?"

"Yes, bez' kind--for in the city. They got very few like that in the _vieux carré_, but up yonder in that beautiful garden diztric' of the _nouveau quartier_ are many, where we'll perchanze go to live some day pritty soon. That old 'ouse we're inhabiting here, tha'z--like us, ha, ha!--a pritty antique. Tha'z mo' suit' for a _relique_ than to live in, especially for Tantine--ha, ha!--tha'z auntie, yet tha'z what we call our niece. Aline--juz' in _plaisanterie_!--biccause she take' so much mo' care of us than us of her."

Mrs. Chester had stopped to look around her. "Whenever you move," she said, "you'll have to leave this delightful little garden behind; it won't fit out of these quaint surroundings."

"Ah! We won't want that any mo'!"

They pressed on. "That 'ouse acrozz street," said Mme. De l'Isle, "I notiz there the usual sign."

"Ah, yes, yes! 'For Sale or Rent'; tha'z what always predominate' in that poor _vieux carré_. But here is my sizter. Corinne, Mrs. Chezter, the mother of Mr. Chezter--as you see by the _image_ of him in the face! I can have the boldnezz to say that, madame, biccause never in my life I di'n' see a young man so 'andsome like yo' son!"

The mother blushed--a lifelong failing. "At home," she said, "he's called his father's double."

"Is that possible? But tha'z the way with people. Some people they find Aline the _image_ of Corinne, and some of me. Yet Corinne and me--look!"

The four went in--to the usual entertainment: the solid plank walls, the fine absence of lath and plaster, Aline's "li'l' robe of baptism," and the bridegroom and bride who had gone a lifetime without a change of linen. They passed out into the rear garden and told wonderful stories of those gifted little darlings the goldfish. Hector, unfortunately absent, had a mouth-organ, to whose strains the fishes would listen so motionless that you could see they were spellbound. Yvonne ran back into the house to get it, but for some cause returned with nerves so shaken that the fishes would do nothing but run wildly to and fro. Still, that was just as startling proof of their amazing whatever-it-was!

Seats were not taken in the bower. The declining sun filled it. Mrs. Chester moved fondly from one flower-bed to another, and while the sisters eagerly filled her hands with their choicest bloom Yvonne privately got a disturbed glance to Corinne that drew the four indoors again. There the outside quaintness tempted Mrs. Chester at once to a front window, with Mlle. Yvonne at her side.

The front garden was not as the visitor had seen it shortly before while entering. She turned silently away, while mademoiselle, as though surprised, cried to her sister and Mme. De l'Isle: "Ah! Aline she's arrive'! Mrs. Chezter, 'ow tha'z fortunate for us all!"

So with the other three Mrs. Chester looked out again. Half-way up the walk stood Aline. Her back was to the house. Cupid was just inside the gate, and between them, closely confronting her, was a third figure--Geoffry Chester. The indoor company could see his face, but not its mood, so dazzling was the low sun behind him; but certainly it was not gay. Her hand lay in his through some parting speech, but fell from it as both returned toward the gate. Which Cupid opened--sad irony--for Chester, and while the child locked him out Aline came forward wrapped in sunlight.

By steps, as she came, her beauty of form, face, and soul grew on Mrs. Chester's sight, and when, in the house, with her sunset halo quenched and her presence more perfectly humanized, her smile and voice crowned the revelation, it happened as Geoffry had said it would; the mother's heart went out to her in fond and complete acceptance.

To the four women taking seats with her the laying of a graceful hat off her dark hair was the dissolving of one lovely picture into another unmarred by the fact that a letter which she held in her fingers was the publishers' latest word to Chester. But now, as her own silent gaze fell on it held in her lap in both hands, so did theirs, till her fingers shook and she bit her lip. Then--"Never mind to read it, chère," Mme. De l'Isle said, "juz' tell us. We are prepare' for the worz'. They want to poz'pone the pewblication, or they don't want to pay in advanz'?"

Aline lifted so bright a smile through her tears that every heart grew lighter. "They don't want it at all," she said. "They have sent it back!"

"Oh-h-h! Impossible!" exclaimed the two sisters, their eyes filling. "The clerk he's put the wrong letter--letter for another party!"

Aline smiled again. "No; Mr. Chester, he has the manuscript. Ah, you poor"--again she smiled, biting her lip and wiping her tears. Then she turned, looked steadfastly into Mrs. Chester's face, and suddenly handed her the missive. "Read it out."

Mrs. Chester did so. As history, it said, the paper's interest was too merely encyclopaedic for magazine use, while as romance it was too much a story of peoples, not persons; romantic yet not romance. As to book form the same drawbacks held, besides the fact that there was not enough of it, not one-fifth enough, for even a small book.

When the reader would have handed the letter back it was agreed instead that she should give it to her son. "What does he purpose to do?" she inquired. "This is the judgment of but one publisher, and there are----"

"In the North," Mme. De l'Isle broke in, "they got mo' than a dozen pewblisher'!"

"Whiles one," the sisters pleaded, "tha'z all we require!"

"I know that," said Aline to the four. "'Twas of that we were speaking at the gate. But"--to Mrs. Chester--"that judgment of the one publisher is become our judgment also. So this evening he will bring you the manuscript, and in two or three days, when we come to see you, my two aunt' and me--I, you can give it me."

"May I read it? I've been to Ovide's and read 'The Clock in the Sky.'"

"Yes? Well, if later we have the good, chance to find, in our _vieux carré_, we and our _cotérie_, and Ovide, some more stories, true romances, we'll maybe try again; but till then--ah, no."

Mrs. Chester touched the girl caressingly. "My dear, you will! Every house looks as if it could tell at least one, including that large house and garden just over the way."

"Ah," chanted Mlle. Yvonne, "how many time' Corinne and me, we want' to live there and furnizh, ourseff, that romanz'!"

The five rose. Mrs. Chester "would be delighted to have the three Chapdelaines call. I'm leaving the hotel, you know; I've taken a room next Geoffry's. But that's nearer you, is it not?"

"A li'l', yes," the sisters replied, but Aline's smiling silence said: "No, a little farther off."

The aunts thanked Mme. De l'Isle for bringing Mrs. Chester and kissed her cheeks. They walked beside her to the gate, led by Cupid with the key, and by Marie Madeleine crooking the end of her tail like a floor-walker's finger. Mrs. Chester and Aline came last. The sisters ventured out to the sidewalk to finish an apology for a significant fault in Marie Madeleine's figure, and Mrs. Chester and Aline found themselves alone.

"Au revoir," they said, clasping hands. Cupid, under a sudden inspiration, half-closed the gate, the pair stood an eloquent moment gazing eye to eye, and then----

What happened the mother told her son that evening as they sat alone on a moonlit veranda.

"Mother!"

"Yes," she said, "and on the lips."

XLIX

Beginning at dawn, an all-day rain rested the travel-wearied lady. But the night cleared and in the forenoon that followed she shopped--for things, she wrote her husband, not to be found elsewhere in the forty-eight States.

The afternoon she gave to two or three callers, notably to Mrs. Thorndyke-Smith, who was very pleasing every way, but in nothing more than in her praises of the Royal Street coterie. Next morning, in a hired car, she had Castanado and Mme. Dubroca, Beloiseau and Mme. Alexandre, not merely show but, as the ironworker said, pinching forefinger and thumb together in the air, "elucidate" to her, for hours, the _vieux carré_. The day's latter half brought Mlles. Corinne and Yvonne; but Aline--no.

"She was coming till the laz' moment," the pair said, "and then she's so bewzy she 'ave to sen' us word, by 'Ector, 'tis impossib' to come--till maybe later. Go h-on, juz' we two."

They sat and talked, and rose and talked, and--sweetly importuned--resumed seats and talked, of infant days and the old New Orleans they loved so well, unembarrassed by a maze of innocent anachronisms, and growingly sure that Aline would come.

When at sunset they took leave Mrs. Chester, to their delight, followed to the sidewalk, drifted on by a corner or two, and even turned up Rampart Street, though without saying that it was by Rampart Street her son daily came--walked--from his office. It had two paved ways for general traffic, with a broad space between, where once, the sisters explained, had been the rampart's moat but now ran the electric cars! "You know what that is, rampart? Tha'z in the 'Star-Spangle' Banner' ab-oud that. And this high wall where we're passing, tha'z the Carmelite convent, and--ah! ad the last! Aline! Aline!" Also there was Cupid.

The four encountered gayly. "Ah, not this time," Aline said. "I came only to meet my aunts; they had locked the gate! But I _will_ call, very soon."

They walked up to the next corner, the sisters confusingly instructing Mrs. Chester how to take a returning street-car. Leaving them, she had just got safely across from sidewalk to car-track when Cupid came pattering after, to bid her hail only the car marked "Esplanade Belt."

As he backed off--"Take care!" was the cry, but he sprang the wrong way and a hurrying jitney cast him yards distant, where he lay unconscious and bleeding. The packed street-car emptied.

"No, he's alive," said one who lifted him, to the two jitney passengers, who pushed into the throng. "Arm broke', yes, but he's hurt worst in the head."

There was an apothecary's shop in sight. They put him and the four ladies into the jitney and sent them there, and the world moved on.

At the shop he came to, and presently, in the jitney again, he was blissfully aware of Geoffry Chester on the swift running-board, questioning his mother and Aline by turns. He listened with all his might. Neither the child nor his mistress had seen or heard the questioner since the afternoon he was locked out of the garden.

Nearing that garden now, questions and answers suddenly ceased; the child had spoken. Limp and motionless, with his head on Aline's bosom and his eyes closed, "Don't let," he brokenly said, "don't let _him_ go 'way."

To him the answer seemed so long coming that he began to repeat; then Aline said----

"No, dear, he shan't leave you."

The sisters had telephoned their own physician from the apothecary's shop, and soon, with Cupid on his cot, pushed close to a cool window looking into the rear garden, and the garden lighted by an unseen moon, Mrs. Chester, at the cot's side awaited the doctor's arrival. The restless sisters brought her a tray of rusks and butter and tea, though they would not, could not, taste anything themselves until they should know how gravely the small sufferer--for now he began to suffer--was hurt.

"Same time tha'z good to be induztriouz"--this was all said directly above the moaning child--"while tha'z bad, for the sick, to talk ad the bedside, and we can't stay with you and not talk, and we can't go in that front yard; that gate is let open so the doctor he needn' ring and that way excide the patient; and we can't go in the back garden"--they spread their hands and dropped them; the back garden was hopelessly pre-empted.

They went to a parlor window and sat looking and longing for the front gate to swing. They had posted on it in Corinne's minute writing: "No admittance excep on business. Open on account sickness. S. V. P. Don't wring the belle!!!"

Cupid lay very flat on his back, his face turned to the open window. He had ceased to moan. When Mrs. Chester stole to where, by leaning over, she could see his eyes they were closed. She hoped he slept, but sat down in uncertainty rather than risk waking him. In the moonlit garden Aline and Geoffry paced to and fro. To see them his mother would have to stand and lean over the cot, and neither good mothers nor good nurses do that. She kept her seat, anxiously hoping that the moonlight out there would remain soft enough to veil the worn look which daylight betrayed on her son's face whenever he fell into silence.

The talk of the pair was labored. Once they went clear to the bower and turned, without a word. Then Geoffry said: "I know a story I'd like to tell you, though how it would help us in our project--if we now have a project at all--I don't see."

"'Tis of the _vieux carré_, that story?"

"It's of the _vieux carré_ of the world's heart."

"I think I know it."

"May I not tell it?"

"Yes, you may tell it--although--yes, tell it."

"Well, there was once a beautiful girl, as beautiful in soul as in countenance, and worshipped by a few excellent friends, few only because of conditions in her life that almost wholly exiled her from society. Even so, she had suitors--good, gallant men; not of wealth, yet with good prospects and with gifts more essential. But other conditions seemed, to her, to forbid marriage."

"Yes," Aline interrupted. "Mr. Chester, have you gone in partnership with Mr. Castanado--'Masques et Costumes'? Or would it not be maybe better honor to me--and yourself--to speak----"

"Straight out? Yes, of course. Aline, I've been racking my brain--I still am--and my heart--to divine what it is that separates us. I had come to believe you loved me. I can't quite stifle the conviction yet. I believe that in refusing me you're consciously refusing that which seems to you yourself a worthy source of supreme happiness if it did not threaten the happiness of others dearer than your own."

"Of my aunts, you think?"

"Yes, your aunts."

"Mr. Chester, even if I had no aunts----"

"Yes, I see. That's my new discovery: you've already had my assurance that I'd study their happiness as I would yours, ours, mine; but you think I could never make your aunts and myself happy in the same atmosphere. You believe in me. You believe I have a future that must carry me--would carry us--into a world your aunts don't know and could never learn."

"'Tis true. And yet even if my aunts----"

"Had no existence--yes, I know. I know what you think would still remain. You can't hint it, for you think I would promptly promise the impossible, as lovers so easily do. Aline, I would not! 'Twouldn't be impossible. It shall not be. My mother is helping to prove that even to you, isn't she--without knowing it? I promise you as if it were in the marriage contract and we were here signing it, that if you will be my wife I never will, and you never shall, let go, or in any way relax, your hold--or mine--on the intimate friendship of the coterie in Royal Street. They are your inheritance from your father and his father, and I love you the more adoringly because you would sooner break your own heart than forfeit that legacy." He took one of her hands. "You are their 'Clock in the Sky'; you're their 'Angel of the Lord.' And so you shall be till death do you part." He took the other hand, held both.

Cupid turned his face from the window and audibly sobbed.

"Oh, child, what is it? Does it pain so?"

He shook his head.

"Doesn't it pain? Is it not pain at all? Why, then, what is it?"

"Joy," he whispered as the doctor came in.

L