Chapter 3

"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."

XII

Here Robelia came again, conducting "Luke" and "Rebecca." Luke's garments were amusingly, heroically patched, yet both seniors were thoroughly attractive; not handsome, but reflecting the highest, gentlest rectitude. One of their children had inherited all that was best from both parents, beautifully exalting it; the other all that was poorest in earlier ancestors. They were evolution and reversion personified.

The father was frank yet deferential. Our parley was brief. His only pomp lay in his manner of calling me madam. I felt myself a queen. Handing him a note to the stable-keeper, "You can read," I said, "can't you? Or your son can?"

"No, madam, I regrets to say we's minus dat."

I hid my pleasure. "Well, at the stable, if they seem to think this note is from a man, or that the coach is owned by a man----"

"Keep silent," put in Euonymus, "an' see de counsel o' de Lawd ovehcome."

Luke went. I pencilled another note. It requested my landlady to give Euonymus a hat, boots, and suit from my armoire and speed him back all she could. (To avoid her queries.)