Chapter 6

"We are granddaughter' of two _émigrés_ of the Revolution. The other two they were decapitalize' on that gui'otine. Yet, still, ad the same time, we don't _feel_ antique. We don't feel mo' than ten year'! And especially when we are showing those souvenir' of our in-_fancy_. And there is nothing we love like that."

"Aline, _chère_, doubtlezz Mr. Chezter will be very please' to see yo' li'l' dress of baptism! Long time befo', that was also for me, and my sizter. That has the lace and embro'derie of a hundred years aggo, that li'l' dress of baptism. Show him that! Oh, that is no trouble, that is a _dil_-ight! and if you are please' to enjoy that we'll show you our two doll', age' forty-three!--bride an' bri'groom. Go, _you_, Yvonne, fedge them."

The sister rose but lingered: "Mr. Chezter, you will egscuse if that bride an' groom don't look pritty fresh; biccause eighteen seventy-three they have not change' their clothingg!"

"_Chérie_," said Aline, "I think first we better read the manuscript, and _then_."

After a breath of hesitation--"Yes! read firs' and _then_. Alway' businezz biffo'!"

All went into the garden; not the part Chester had come through, but another only a trifle less pinched, at the back of the house. A few steps of straight path led them through its stiff ranks of larkspurs, carnations, and the like, to a bower of honeysuckle enclosing two rough wooden benches that faced each other across a six-by-nine goldfish pool. There they had hardly taken seats when Cupid reappeared bearing to the visitor, on a silver tray, the manuscript.

It was not opened and dived into with the fine flurry of the modern stage. Its recipient took time to praise the bower and pool, and the sisters laughed gratefully, clutched hands, and merrily called their niece "tantine." "You know, Mr. Chezter, 'tantine' tha'z 'auntie,' an' tha'z j'uz' a li'l' name of affegtion for her, biccause she takes so much mo' care of us than we of her; you see? But that bower an' that li'l' lake, my sizter an' me we construc' them both, that bower an' that li'l' lake."

Without blazoning it they would have him know they had not squandered "tantine's" hard earnings on architects and contractors.

"And we assure you that was not ladies' work. 'Twas not till weeks we achieve' that. That geniuz Aline! _she_ was the arshetec'. And those goldfishes--like Aline--are self-su'porting! We dispose them at the apothecary, Dauphine and Toulouse Street--ha, ha, ha! Corinne, tha'z the egstent of commerce we ever been ab'e to make, eh?"

"And now," said Aline, "the story."

"Ah, yes," responded Mlle. Corinne, "at laz' the manuscrip'!" and Mlle. Yvonne echoed, with a queer guilt in her gayety:

"The manuscrip'! the myzteriouz manuscrip'!"

But there the gate bell sounded and she sprang to her feet. Cupid could answer it, but some one must be indoors to greet the caller.

"Yes, you, Yvonne," the elder sister said, and Aline added: "We'll not read till you return."

"Ah, yes, yes! Read without me!"

"No-no-no-no-no! We'll wait!"

"We'll wait, Yvonne." The sister went.

Chester smoothed out the pages, but then smilingly turned them face downward, and Aline said:

"First, Hector will tell us who's there."

Hector was Cupid. He came again, murmuring a name to Mlle. Corinne. She rose with hands clasped. "C'est M. et Mme. Rene Ducatel!"

"Well? Hector will give your excuses; you are imperatively engaged."

"Ah, _chère_, on Sunday evening! Tha'z an incredibility! Must you not let me go? You 'ave 'Ector."

"Ah-h! and we are here to read this momentous document to Hector?" The sparkle of amused command was enchanting to at least one besides Cupid.

Yet it did not win. "Chère, you make me tremble. Those Ducatel', they've come so far! How can we show them so li'l' civilization when they've come so far? An' me I'm convince', and Yvonne she's convince', that you an' Mr. Chezter you'll be ab'e to judge that manuscrip' better al-lone. Oh, yes! we are convince' of that, biccause, you know--I'm _sorrie_--we are prejudice' in its favor!"

Aline's lifted brows appealed to Chester. "Maybe hearing it," he half-heartedly said, "may correct your aunts' judgment."

The aunt shook her head in a babe's despair. "No, we've tri' that." Her smile was tearful. "Ah, _chérie_, you both muz' pardon. Laz' night we was both so af-raid about that, an' of a so affegtionate curio-zitie, that we was _compel_' to read that manuscrip' through! An' we are convince'--though tha'z not ab-out clocks, neither angels, neither lovers--yet same time tha'z a moz' marvellouz manuscrip'. Biccause, you know, tha'z a true story, that 'Holy Crozz.' Tha'z concerning an insurregtion of slave'--there in Santa Cruz. And 'a slave insurregtion,' tha'z what they ought to call it, yes!--to prom-ote the sale. Already laz' night Yvonne she say she's convince' that in those Northron citie', where they are since lately _so fon_' of that subjec', there be people by _dozen_'--will _devour_ that story!"

She tripped off to the house.

"Hector," said Aline, "you may sit down."

Cupid slid into the vacated seat. Chester dropped the document into his pocket.

"For what?" the girl archly inquired.

"I want to take it to my quarters and judge it there. Why shouldn't I?"

"Yes, you may do that."

"And now tell me of your father, or his father--the one Beloiseau knew--Théophile Chapdelaine."

"Both were Théophile. He knew them both."

"Then tell me of both."

"Mr. Chester, 'twould be to talk of myself!"

"I won't take it so. Tell the story purely as theirs. It must be fine. They were set, in conscience, against the conscience of their day----"

"So is Mr. Chester."

"Never mind that, either. We're in a joint commercial enterprise; we want a few good stories that will hang on one stem. Our business is business; a primrose by the river's brim--nothing more! Although"--the speaker reddened----

The girl blushed. "Mr. Chester, take away the 'although' and I'll tell the story."

"I take it away. Although----"

XX

THE CHAPDELAINES

"A yellow primrose was to him----"

Yonder in the parlor with the Ducatels, ignorant of the poet's lines as they, the two aunts--those two consciously irremovable, unadjustable, incarnated interdictions to their niece's marriage--saw the primrose, the "business," as the pair in the bower thought they saw it themselves. Were not Aline and Chester immersed in that tale of servile insurrection so destitute of angels, guiding stars, and lovers? And was not Hector with them? And are not three as truly a crowd in French as in American?

"Well, to begin," Chester urged, "your grandfather, Théophile Chapdelaine, was born in this old quarter, in such a street. Royal?"

"Yes. Nearly opposite the ladies' entrance of that Hotel St. Louis now perishing."

"Except its dome. I hear there's a movement----

"Yes, to save that. I hope 'twill succeed. To me that old dome is a monument of those two men."

"But if it comes down the home remains, opposite, where both were born, were they not?"

"Yes. Yet I'd rather the dome. We Creoles, you know, are called very conservative."

"Yet no race is more radical than the French."

"True. And we Chapdelaines have always been radical. _Grandpère_ was, though a slaveholder."

"Oh, none of _my_ ancestors justified slavery, yet as planters they had to own negroes."

"But the Chapdelaines were not planters. They were agents of ships. Fifty times on one page in the old _Picayune_, or in _L'Abeille_--'For freight or passage apply to the master on board or to T. Chapdelaine & Son, agents.' Even then there were two Théophiles, and grandpapa was the son. They were wholesale agents also for French exporters of artistic china, porcelain, glass, bronze. Twice they furnished the hotel with everything of that kind; when it first opened, and when it changed hands. That's how they came to hold stock in it. Grandpapa, outdoor man of the firm, was every day in the rotunda, under that dome."

"Yes," Chester said, "it was a kind of Rialto, I know. They called it the 'Exchange,' as earlier they had called Maspero's."

"You love our small antiquities. So do I. Well, grandpapa did much business there, both of French goods and of ships; and because the hotel was the favorite of the sugar-planters its rotunda was one of the principal places for slave auctions."

"Yes, they were, I know, almost daily. The old slave-block is shown there yet, if genuine."

"Ah, genuine or not, what difference? From one that _was_ there _grandpère_ bought many slaves. He and his father speculated in them."

"Why! How strange! The son? _your_ grandfather? the radical, who married--'Maud'?"

"Yes, the last slave he bought was for her."

"Why, why, why! He couldn't have met her be'--well--before the year of Lincoln's election."

"No, let me tell you. You remember 'Sidney'?"

"'Maud's' black maid? my uncle's Euonymus? Yes."

"Well, when she came to Maud, at Maud's home, in the North, she was still in agony about Mingo, who'd been recaptured. So Maud wrote South, to her aunt, who wrote back: 'Yes, he had been brought home, and at creditor's auction had been sold to a slave-trader to be resold here in New Orleans.' So then Sidney begged Maud, who by luck was coming here, to bring her here to find him."

"Brave Sidney. Brave Euonymus."

"Yes--although--her Southern mistress--I know not how legally--had sent to her her free-paper. That made it safer, I suppose, eh?"

"Yes. But--who told you all this so exactly--your _grand'mère_ herself, or your _grandpère_?"

"Ah--she, no. I never saw her. And _grandpère_--no, he was killed before I was born."

"_What_?"

"Yes, all that I'll come to. This I'm telling now is from my own papa. He had it from _grandpère_. _Grand'mère_ and Sidney came with friends, a gentleman and his wife, by ship from New York."

"And all put up at Hotel St. Louis?"

"Yes. From there Maud and Sidney began their search. But now, first, about that speculating in slaves: those two Théophiles, first the father, then both, hated slavery. 'Twas by nature and in everything that they were radical. Their friends knew that, even when they only said, 'Oh, you are extreme!' or 'Those Chapdelaines are extremist.' In those years from about eighteen-forty to 'sixty----"

"When the slavery question was about to blaze----"

"Yes--they voted Whig. That was the most antislavery they could vote and stay here. But under the rose they said: 'All right! extremist, yet Whig; we'll be extreme Whig of a new kind. We'll trade in slaves.'"

Chester laughed. "I begin to see," he said, and by a sidelong glance bade Aline note the rapt attention of Cupid. Her answering smile was so confidential that his heart leaped.

"I'll tell you by and by about that also," she murmured, and then resumed: "While _grandpère_ was yet a boy his father had begun that, that slave-buying. On that auction-block he would often see a slave about to be sold much below value, or whose value might easily be increased by training to some trade. You see?--blacksmith, lady's maid, cook, hair-dresser, engine-driver, butler?"

Chester darkened. "So he made the thing pay?"

"_Seem_ to pay. Looking so simple, so ordinary, 'twas but a mask for something else."

"But in a thing looking so ordinary had he no competitors, to make profits difficult?"

"Ah, of a kind, yes; but the men who could do that best would not do it at all. They would not have been respected."

"But T. Chapdelaine & Son were respected."

"Yes, _in spite_ of that. Their friends said: 'Let the extremists be extreme that way.'"

"The public mind was not yet quite in flames."

"No. But--guess who helped _grandpère_ do that."

"Why, do I know him? Castanado."

The girl shook her head.

"Who? Beloiseau?"

"Ah, you! You can guess better."

"Ovide Lan'--no, Ovide was still a slave."

"Yet more free than most free negroes. 'Twas he. He was janitor to offices in the hotel, and always making acquaintance with the slaves of the slave-mart. And when he found one who was quite of the right kind--and Ovide he's a wise judge of men, you know--he would show him to _grandpère_, and at the auction, if the bidding was low, _grandpère_ would buy him--or her."

"What was one of 'quite the right kind'? One willing to buy his own freedom?"

"Ah, also to do something more; you see?"

"Yes, I see," Chester laughed; "to help others run away, wasn't it?"

"Not precisely to run, but----"

"To stow away, on those ships, h'm?" There was rapture in crossing that _h'm_ line of intimacy. "I see it all! Ha-ha, I see it all! Well! that brings us back to 'Maud,' doesn't it--h'm?"

"Yes. They met, she and grandpère, at a ball, in the hotel. But"--Aline smiled--"that was not their first. Their first was two or three mornings before, when he, passing in Royal Street, and she--with Sidney--looking at old buildings in Conti Street----"

"Mademoiselle! That happened to _them_?--_there_?"

"Yes, to _them_, _there_." With level gaze narrator and listener regarded each other. Then they glanced at Cupid. His eyes were shining on them.

"Who is our young friend, anyhow?" asked Chester.

"Ah, I suppose you have guessed. He is the grandson of Sidney."

XXI

"And another time, on the morning just before the ball," said Aline, returning to the story, "they had seen each other again. That was at the slave-auction. That night, before the ball was over, she and _grandpère_ understood--knew, each, from the other, why the other was at that auction; and he had promised her to find Mingo.

"Well, after weeks, Ovide helping, all at once there was Mingo, in the gang, by the block, waiting his turn to go on it. Picture that! Any time I want to shut my eyes I can see it, and I think you can do the same, h'm?"

Blessed _h'm_; 'twas the flower--of the Chapdelaines--humming back to the bee. Said the bee, "We'll try it there together some day, h'm?" and Cupid mutely sparkled:

"Oh, by all means! the three of us!"

The flower ignored them both. "There was the auctioneer," she said; "there were the slaves, there the crowd of bidders; between them the block, above them the beautiful dome. Very soon Mingo was on the block, and the first bid was from Sidney. She was the only one in a hurry except Mingo. He was trying to see her, but she was hiding from him behind _grandpère_; yet not from the auctioneer. The auctioneer stopped.

"'Who authorized you to bid here?' he asked her.

"'Nobody, sir; I's free.' She held up her paper.

"_Grandpère_ nodded to the auctioneer.

"'Will Mr. Chapdelaine please read it out?'

"He read it out, signature and all.

"'Anybody know any one of that name?' the auctioneer asked, and _grand'mère_ said:

"'That's my aunt. This free girl is my maid."

"'Oh, bidding for you?' he said; and grand'mere said no, the girl was bidding on her own account, with her own money.

"'What kind of money? We can't take shinplasters.' For 'twas then 'sixty-one--year of secession, you know.

"'Gold!' Sidney called out, and held it up in a black stocking, so high that every one laughed."

"Not Mingo, I fancy."

"Ah, no, nor the keeper of the gang."

"--Wonder how Mingo was behaving."

"He? he was shaking and weeping, and begging this and that of the man who held and threatened him, to keep him quiet. So then the auctioneer began to call Sidney's bid. You know how that would be: 'Gentlemen, I'm offered five hundred dollars. Cinq cent piastres, messieurs! Only five hundred for this likely boy worth all of nine! Who'll say six? Going at five hundred, what do I hear?' But he heard nothing till--'third and last call!' Then the owner of the gang nodded and the auctioneer called out, 'six hundred!"'

"And did Sidney raise it?"

"No, she wept aloud. 'Oh, my brotheh!' she cried, 'Lawd save my po' brotheh! I's los' him ag'in! I done bid my las' dollah at de fust call!'"

"And Mingo knew her voice, spied her out?"

"Yes, and holloed, 'Sidney! sisteh!' till _grand-mère_ wept too and a man called out, 'No one bid that six hundred!' But _grandpère_ said: 'I bid six-fifty and will tell all about this _unlikely_ boy if his owner bids again.'

"So Mingo was sold to _grandpère_. 'And now,' _grandpère_ whispered to _grand-mère_ and her friends, 'go pack trunks for the ship as fast as you can.'"

"And they parted like that? But of course not!"

"No, only expected to. In the Gulf, at the mouth of the river, a Confederate privateer"--the narrator's voice faded out. She began to rise. Her aunts were returning.

XXII

Mademoiselle, we say, began to rise. Chester stood. Also Cupid. The aunts drew near, speaking with infantile lightness:

"Finizh' already that reading? You muz' have gallop'! Well, and what is Mr. Chezter's conclusion on that momentouz manuscrip'?"

The niece hurried to answer first: "Ah! we must not ask that so immediately. Mr. Chester concludes 'tis better for all that he study that an evening or two in his seclusion."

"And! you did not read it through together?"

"No, there was no advantage to----"

"Oh! advantage! An' you stop' in the mi'l of that momentouz souvenir of the pas'! Tha'z astonizhing that _anybody_ could do that, an' leas' of all" [confronting Chester] "the daughter of a papa an' gran'papa with such a drama-tique bio-graphie! Mr. Chezter, to pazz the time Aline ought to 'ave tell you that bio-graphie, yes!--of our marvellouz brother an' papa. Ah, you should some day egstort _that_ story from our too li'l' communicative girl."

"Why not to-day, for the book?"

"Oh, no-no-no-no-o! We di'n' mean that!" The sisters laughed excessively. "A young lady to put her own papa into a book--ah! im-pos-si-ble!"

They laughed on. "Even my sizter an' me, we have never let anybody egstort that, an' we don't know if Aline ever be persuade'----"

"Yes, some day I'll tell Mr. Chezter--whatever he doesn't know already."

"Ha-ha! we can be sure tha'z not much, Aline. And, Corinne, if he's _heard_ this or that, tha'z the more reason to tell him co'rec'ly. Only, my soul! not to put in the book, no!"

"Ah, no! Though as between frien', yes. And, moreover, to Mr. Chezter, yes, biccause tha'z so much abbout that Hotel St. Louis and he is so appreciative to old building'. Ah, we've notice' that incident! Tha'z the cause that we egs'ibit you our house--as a relique of the pas'--Yvonne! we are forgetting!--those souvenir' of our in-fancy--to show them! Come--all!"

Half-way to the house--"Ah, ha-ha! another subjec' of interess! See, Mr. Chezter; see coming! Marie Madeleine! She's mis' both her beloved miztress' from the house and become anxious, our beautiful cat! We name' her Marie Madeleine because her great piety! You know, tha'z the sacred truth, that she never catch' a mice on Sunday."

"Ah, neither the whole of Lent!"

In the parlor--"I really think," Chester said, "I must ask you to let me take another time for the souvenirs. I'm so eager to save this manuscript any further delay--" He said good-by.

Yet he did not hurry to his lodgings. He had had an experience too great, too rapt, to be rehearsed in his heart inside any small, mean room. All the open air and rapid transit he could get were not too much, till at lamplight he might sit down somewhere and hold himself to the manuscript.

Meantime the Chapdelaines had been but a moment alone when more visitors rang--a pair! Their feet could be seen under the gate--two male, two female--that is not a land where women have men's feet. Flattering, fluttering adventure--five callers in one afternoon! "Aline, we are becoming a public institution!" The aunts sprang here, there, and into collision; Cupid sped down the walk; Marie Madeleine stood in the door.

And who were these but the dear De l'Isles!

"No," they would not come inside. "But, Corinne, Yvonne, Aline, run, toss on hats for a trip to Spanish Fort."

One charm of that trip is that the fare is but, five cents, and the crab gumbo no dearer than in town. "Come! No-no-no, not one, but the three of you. In pure compassion on us! For, as sometimes in heaven among cherubim, we are _ennuyés_ of each other!"

The small half-hourly electric train in Rampart Street had barely started lakeward into Canal, with the De l'Isle-Chapdelaine five aboard and the sun about to set, when Geoffry Chester entered--and stopped before monsieur, stiff with embarrassment. Nevertheless that made them a glad six, and, as each seat was for two, the two with life before them took one.

XXIII

The small public garden, named for an old redout on the lake shore at the mouth of Bayou St. John was filled with a yellow sunset as Chester and Aline moved after the aunts and the De l'Isles from the train into a shell walk whose artificial lights at that moment flashed on.

"So far from that," he was saying, "a story may easily be improved, clarified, beautified, by--what shall I say?--by filtering down through a second and third generation of the right tellers and hearers."

"Ah, yes! the right, yes! But----"

"And for me you're supremely the right one."

Instantly he rued his speech. Some delicate mechanism seemed to stop. Had he broken it? As one might lay a rare watch to his ear he waited, listening, while they stood looking off to where water, sky, and sun met; and presently, to his immeasurable relief, she responded:

"_Grandpère_ was not at that time such a very young man, yet he still lived with his father. So when _grand'mère_ and her two friends--with Sidney and Mingo--returned from the privateer to the hotel they were opposite neighbors to the Chapdelaines and almost without another friend, in a city--among a people--on fire with war. Then, pretty soon--" the fair narrator stopped and significantly smiled.

Chester twinkled. "Um-h'm," he said, "your _grandpère's_ heart became another city on fire."

"Yes, and 'twas in that old hotel--with the war storm coming, like to-day only everything much more close and terrible, business dead, soldiers every day going to Virginia--you must make Mr. Thorndyke-Smith tell you about that--'twas in that old hotel, at a great free-gift lottery and bazaar, lasting a week, for aid of soldiers' families, and in a balcony of the grand salon, that _grandpère_--" the narrator ceased and smiled again.

"Proposed," Chester murmured.

The girl nodded. They sank to a bench, the world behind them, the stars above. "_Grand'mére_, she couldn't say yes till he'd first go to her home, almost at the Canadian line, and ask her family. She, she couldn't go; she couldn't leave Sidney and Mingo and neither could she take them. So by railroad at last he got there. But her family took so long to consent that he got back only the next year and through the fall of the city. Only by ship could he come, and not till he had begged President Lincoln himself and promised him to work with his might to return Louisiana to the Union. Well, of course, he and his father had voted against secession, weeping; yet now this was a pledge terrible to keep, and the more because, you see? what to do, and when and how to do it----"

"Were left to his own judgment and tact?"

"Oh, and honor! But anyhow he came. Doubtless, bringing the written permission of the family, he was happy. Yet to what bitternesses--can we say bitternesses in English?"

"Indeed we can," said Chester.

"To what bitternesses _grandpére_ had to return!"

"Aline!" Mme. De l'Isle called; "à table!"

"Yes, madame. Tell me--you, Mr. Chester--to your vision, how all that must have been."