Chapter 7

"Paint in your sketch? Let me try. Maybe only because you tell the story, but maybe rather because it's so easy to see in you a reincarnation of your _grand'mére_--a Creole incarnation of that young 'Maud'--what I see plainest is she. I see her here, two thousand miles from home, with but three or four friends among a quarter of a million enemies. I see her on the day the city fell, looking up and down Royal Street from a balcony of the hotel, while from the great dome a few steps behind her the Union fleet could be seen, rounding the first two river bends below the harbor, engaging a last few Confederate guns at the old battle-ground, and coming on, with the Stars and Stripes at every peak. I see her----"

"She was beautiful, you know--_grand'mére_."

"Yes, I see her so, looking down from that balcony, awestruck, not fearstruck, on the people who in agonies of rage and terror fled the city by pairs and families, or in armed squads and unarmed mobs swept through the streets and up and down the levee, burning, breaking, and plundering."

"But that was the worst anybody did, you know."

"Oh, yes. We never knew till to-day's war came how humane that war was. It wasn't a war in which beauty, age, and infancy were hideous perils."

"Ah, never mind about that to-day. But about _grandpère_ and _grand'mère_ go on. Let me see how much you can imagine correctly, h'm?"

"Please, mademoiselle, no. Time has made you--through your father's eyes--they say you have them--an eye-witness. So next you see your _grandpère_ getting back at last, by ship--go on."

"Yes, I see that, in a harbor whose miles of wharfs without ships cried to him: 'our occupation and your fortune are gone!' Also I see him again in the streets--Royal, Chartres, Canal, Carondelet--where old friends pass him with a stare. I see him and _grand'mère_ married at last, in a church nearly empty and even the priest unfriendly."

"Had he no new friends, Unionists?"

"Not yet, at the wedding. There he said: 'Old friends or none.' And that was right, don't you think? Later 'twas different. You see, in the navy, both of the rivers and the sea, as likewise the army, _grand'mère_ had uncles and cousins; and when the hotel was made a military hospital she was there every day. And naturally those cousins, whether from hospital or no, would call and even bring friends. Well, of course, _grandpère_ was, at the least, courteous! And then there was his word of honor, to Mr. Lincoln, as also his own desire, to bring the State back into the Union."

"Of course. Don't hurry, please."

"Was I hurrying? Pardon, but I'm afraid they'll be calling us again." The pair rose, but stood. "Well, when a kind of government was made of that part of the State held by the Union, and the military governor wanted both _grandpère_ and his father to take some public offices, his father made excuse of his age and of a malady--taken from that hospital--which soon occasioned him to die."

"I've seen his tomb, in St. Louis cemetery, with its epitaph of barely two words--'Adieu, Chapdelaine.' Who supplied that? Old friends, after all?"

"A few old, a few new, and one the governor."

"Did the governor propose the words?"

"No. If I tell you you won't tell? Ovide. But _grandpère_ he took the office. And so that put him yet more distant from old friends except just two or three who believed the same as he did."

"And our Royal Street coterie, of course."

"Ah, not those you see now; but their parents, yes. They were faithful; though sometimes, some of them, sympathizing differently. Well, and so there was _grandpère_ working to repair a _piece_ of the State, when at last the war finished and the reconstruction of the whole State commenced. He and Ovide were both of that State convention they mobbed in the 'July riot.' Some men were killed in that riot. _Grandpère_ was wounded, also Ovide. Those were awful times to _grand'mère_, those years of the reconstruction. _Grandpère_ he--" The girl glanced backward, then turned again, smiling. The four chaperons were going indoors without them.

"Yes," Chester said, "your _grandpère_ I can imagine----"

"Well, go ahead; imagine, to me."

"No. No, except just enough to see him with no choice of party allegiance but between a rabble up to the elbows in robbery and an old régime red-handed with the rabble's blood."

"Ah, so papa told me, after _grandpère_ was long gone, and me on his knee asking questions. 'Reconstruction, my dear child--' once he answered me, ''twas like trying to drive, on the right road, a frantic horse in a rotten harness, and with the reins under his tail!' Ah, I wish you could have known him, Mr. Chester--my father!"

"I know his daughter."

"Well, I suppose--I suppose we must go in."

"With the story almost finished?"

"We'll, maybe finish inside--or--some day."

XXIV

T. CHAPDELAINE & SON

The seniors were found at a table for four.

Mme. De l'Isle explained: "But! with only four to sit down there, how was it possib' to h-ask for a tab'e for six? That wou'n' be logical!"

When the waiter offered to add a smaller table and make one snug board for six--"No," she said; "for feet and hands that be all right; but for the _mind_, ah! You see, Mr. Chezter, M. De l'Isle he's also precizely in the mi'l' of a moze overwhelming story of his own------"

"Hiztorical!" the aunts broke in. "Well-known! abbout old house! in the _vieux carré_!"

"And," madame insisted, "'twould ruin that story, to us, to commenze to hear it over, while same time 'twould ruin it to you to commenze to hear it in the mi'l'. And beside', Aline, you are doubtlezz yet in the mi'l' of your own story and--waiter! make there at that firz' window a tab'e for two, and" [to the pair] "we'll run both storie' ad the same time--if not three!"

"Like that circ'"--the aunts fell into tears of laughter. They touched each other with finger-tips, cried, "Like that circuz of Barnum!" and repeated to the De l'Isles and then to Aline, "Like that circuz of Barnum an' Bailey!"

At the table for two, as the gumbo was uncovered and Chester asked how it was made, "Ah!" said Aline, "for a veritable gumbo what you want most is enthusiasm. The enthusiasm of both my aunts would not be too much. And to tell how 'tis made you'd need no less, that would be a story by itself, third ring of the circus."

"Then tell me, further, of '_grandpère_'"

"And grand'mère? Yes, I must, as I learned about them on papa's knee. Mamma never saw them; they had been years gone when papa first knew her. But Sidney I knew, when she was old and had seen all those dreadful times; and, though she often would not tell me the story, she would tell me what to ask papa; you see? You would have liked to talk with Sidney about old buildings. Mr. Chester, I think it is not that in New Orleans we are so picturesque, but that all the rest of our country--in the cities--is so starved for the picturesque. Sidney would have told you that story monsieur is telling now as well as all the strange history of that old Hotel St. Louis. First, after the war it was changed back from a hospital to a hotel. I think 'twas then they called it Hotel Royal. Anyhow 'twas again very fine. Grandpère and grand'mère were often in that salon where he had first--as they say--spoken. Because, for one thing, there they met people of the outside world without the local prejudices, you know?"

"At that time bitter and vindictive?"

"Oh, ferocious! And there they met also people of the most--dignity."

"Above the average of the other hotels?"

"Well, not so--so brisk."

"Not so American?"

"Ah, you know. Well, maybe that's one reason the St. Charles, for example, continued, while the Royal did not. Anyhow the Royal--grandpère had the life habit of it and 'twas just across the street. Daily they ate there; a real economy."

"But they kept the old home."

"Yes. 'Twas furnished the same but not 'run' the same. 'Twas very difficult to keep it, even with all three stories of the servants' wing shut up, you know?--like"--a glance indicated the De l'Isles.

"But you say Hotel Royal was soon closed."

"Yes, and then, in the worst of those days, it became the capitol. There, in the most elegant hotel for the most elegant planters of the South--anyhow Southwest--sat their slaves, with white men even more abhorred, and made the laws. In that old dome, second story, they put a floor across, and there sat the Senate! Just over that auction-block where grandpère had bought Mingo."

"Where was he--Mingo?"

"Dead--of drink. Grandpère was in that government! Long time he was senator. Mr. Chester, _for that_ papa was proud of him, and I am proud."

The listener was proud of her pride. "I know," he said, "from my own people, that in such an attitude--as your grandfather's--there was honor a plenty for any honorable man. Ovide tells me the negroes never wanted negro supremacy. I wonder if that's so. They were often, he says, madly foolish and corrupt; yet their fundamental lawmaking was mostly good. I know the State's constitution was; it was ahead of the times."

Aline made a quick gesture: "And any of the old masters who agreed to that could help lead!"

"Mademoiselle, how could they agree to it? Some did, I know, but that's the wonder. Those that could not--who can blame them?"

"Ah! 'tis no longer a question of blame but of judgment. So papa used to say. Anyhow grandpère agreed, accepted, led; until at the last, one day, that White League--you've heard of them, how they armed and drilled and rose against that reconstruction police in a battle on the steamboat landing? Grandpère was in that. He commanded part of the reconstruction forces. And papa was there, though only thirteen. Grandpère was bayonet-wounded. They carried him away bleeding. Only at the State-house a surgeon met them, and there, under that dome, just as papa brought grand'mère and Sidney, he died." Mademoiselle ceased.

Chester waited, but she glanced to the other table. Monsieur had ended his recital. Madame and the aunts chatted merrily. Smilingly the niece's eyes came back.

"Don't stop," said Chester. "What followed--for 'Maud'--Sidney--your boy father--your little-girl aunts? Did the clock in the sky call them North again?"

"No." The speaker rose. "I'll tell you on the train; I hear it coming."

XXV

"There's a train every half-hour," Chester said.

"Yes, but the day-laborer must be home early."

On the train--"Well," the youth urged, "your _grand'mère_ stayed in the old home, I hope, with the three children--and Sidney?"

"Only till she could sell it. But that was nearly three years, and they were hard, those three. But at last, by the help of that Royal Street coterie--who were good friends, Mr. Chester, when friends were scarce--she sold both house and furniture--what was by that time remaining--and bought that place where we are now living."

"Was there no life-insurance?"

"A little. We have the yearly interest on it still. 'Tis very small, yet a great help--to my aunts. I tell that only to say that papa would never touch it when he and my aunts--and afterward mamma--were in very narrow places."

Chester perceived another reason for the telling of it; the niece wanted to escape the credit of being the sole support of her aunts. She read his thought but ignored it.

"Papa was very old for his age," she continued. "You may see that by his being in the battle with _grandpère_ at thirteen years. And because of that precocity he got much training of the mind--and spirit--from _grandpère_ that usually is got much later. I think that is what my aunts mean when they tell you papa's life was dramatic. It _was_ so, yet not in the manner they mean, the manner of _grandpère's_ life; you understand?"

"You mean it was not melodramatic?"

"Ah! the word I wanted! Mr. Chester, when we get over being children, those of us who do, why do we try so hard to live without melodrama?"

"Oh, mademoiselle, you know well enough. You know that's what melodrama does, itself? What is it, in essence, but a struggle to rise out of itself into a higher drama, of the spirit----?"

"A divine comedy! Yes. Well, that is what my father's life seems to me."

"With tragic elements in it, of course?"

"Oh! How could it be high comedy without? But except that one battle the tragedy was not--eh--crude, like _grandpère's_; was not physical. Once he said to me: 'There are things in life, in the refined life, very quiet things, that are much more tragic than bloodshed or death or the defying of death.'"

"In the refined life," Chester said musingly.

"Yes! and he _was_ refined, yet never weak. 'Strength,' he said, 'valor, truth, they are the foundations; better be dead than without them. Yet one can have them, in crude form, and still better be dead. The noble, the humane, the chaste, the beautiful, 'tis with them we build the superstructure, the temple, of life--Mr. Chester, if you knew French I could tell you that better."

"I doubt it. Go on, please, time's a-flying."

"Well, you see how tragic was that life! Papa saw it and said: 'It shall not be tragic alone. I will build on it a comedy higher, finer, than tragedy. That's what life is for; mine, yours, the world's,' he said to me. Mr. Chester, you can imagine how a daughter would love a father like that, and also how mamma loved him--for years--before they could marry."

"Your mother was a Creole, I suppose?"

"No, mamma was French. After _grand'mère_ had followed _grandpère_--above--papa, looking up some of the once employees of T. Chapdelaine & Son, to raise the old concern back to life, arranged with them that while they should reinstitute it here he would go live in France, close to the producers of the finest goods possible. You see? And he did that many years with a kind of success; but smaller and smaller, because little by little the taste for those refinements was passing, while those department stores and all that kind of thing--you understand--h'm?"

The train stopped in Rampart Street, and when one aunt, with madame, and one with monsieur, had followed the junior pair out of the snarlings and hootings of Canal Street's automobiles and to the quiet sidewalks of the old quarter----

"Well?" said Chester, slowing down, and----

"Well," said Aline, "about mamma: ah, 'tis wonderful how they were suited to each other, those two. Almost from the first of his living there, in France, they were acquainted and much together. She was of a fine ancestry, but without fortune; everything lost in the German war, eighteen seventy. They were close neighbor to a convent very famous for its wonderful work of the needle and of the bobbin. 'Twas there she received her education. And she and papa could have married any time if he could promise to stay always there, in France. But the business couldn't assure that; and so, for years and years, you see?"

"Yes, I see."

"But then, all at once, almost in a day, mamma, she found herself an orphan, with no inheritance but poor relations and they with already too many orphans in their care. For, as my aunts say, joking, that seems to run in our family, to become orphans.

"They are very fond of joking, my aunts. And so, because to those French relations America seemed a cure for all troubles, they allowed papa to marry mamma and bring her here to live, where I was born, and where they lived many, many years so happily, because so bravely----"

"And in such refinement--of spirit?"

"Ah, yes, yes. And where we are yet inhabiting, as you perceive, my aunts and me, and--as you see yonder this moment waiting us in the gate--Hector and Marie Madeleine!"

Alone with the De l'Isles in Royal Street Chester asked, "And the business--Chapdelaine & Son?"

"Ah, sinz' long time liquidate'! All tha'z rim-aining is Mme. Alexandre. Mr. Chezter, y' ought to put that! That ought to go in the book," said monsieur.

"If we could only avoid a disjointed effect."

"Dizjoin'--my dear sir! They are going to read thad book _biccause_ the dizjointed--by curio-zity. You'll see! That Am-erican pewblic they have a passion, an _insanitie_, for the dizjointed!"

XXVI

The week so blissfully begun in the Chapdelaines' garden and at Spanish Fort was near its end.

The _Courier des Etats-Unis_ had told the Royal Street coterie of mighty doings far away in Italy, of misdoings in Galicia, and of horrors on the Atlantic fouler than all its deeps can ever cleanse; but nothing was yet reported to have "tranzpired" in the _vieux carré_. The fortunes of "the book" seemed becalmed.

It was Saturday evening. The streets had just been lighted. Mlles. Corinne and Yvonne, dingy even by starlight, were in one of them--Conti. Now they turned into Royal, and after them turned Chester and Aline. Presently the four entered the parlor of the Castanados. Their coming made its group eleven, and all being seated Castanado rose.

After the proper compliments--"They were called," he said, "to receive----"

"And discuss," Chester put in.

"To receive and discuss the judgment of their----"

"The suggestions," Chester amended.

"The judgment and suggestion' of their counsel, how tha'z best to publish the literary treasure they've foun' and which has egspand' from one story to three or four. Biccause the one which was firzt acquire' is laztly turn' out to be the only one of a su'possible incompat'--eh--in-com-pat-a-bil-ity--to the others." His bow yielded the floor to Chester. "Remain seated, if you please," he said.

"In spite of my wish to save this manuscript all avoidable delay," Chester began, "I've kept it a week. I like it--much. I think that in quieter times, with the reading world in a more contemplative mood, any publisher would be glad to print it. At the same time it seems to me to have faults of construction that ought to come out of it before it goes to a possibly unsympathetic publisher. Yet after--was Mme. Alexandre about----?"

"Juz' to say tha'z maybe better those fault' are there. If the publisher be not _sympathetique_ we want him to rif-use that manuscrip'."

"Yes!" several responded. "Yes! He can't have it! Tha'z the en' of _that_ publisher."

"Well, at any rate," Chester said, "after using up this whole week trying, fruitlessly, to edit those faults out of it, here it is unaltered. I still feel them, but I have to confess that to feel them is one thing and to find them is quite another. Maybe they're only in me."

"Tha'z the only plase they are," said Dubroca, with kind gravity. "I had the same feeling--till a dream, which reveal' to me that the feeling was my fault. The manuscrip' is perfec'."

"Messieurs," Mme. Castanado broke in, "please to hear Mlle. Aline." And Aline spoke:

"Perfect or no, I think that's what we don't require to conclude. But if that manuscript will join well with those other two--or three, or four, if we find so many--or if it will rather disjoint them--'tis that we must decide; is it not, M. De l'Isle?"

"Yes, and tha'z easy. That story is going to assimilate those other' to a perfegtion! For several reason'. Firz', like those other', 'tis not figtion; 'tis true. Second, like those, 'tis a personal egsperienze told by the person egsperienzing. Third, every one of those person' were known to some of us, an' we can certify that person that he or she was of the greatez' veracity! Fourth, the United States they've juz' lately purchaze' that island where that story tranzpire. And, fifthly, the three storie' they are joint'; not stiff', like board' of a floor, but loozly, like those link' of a chain. They are jointed in the subjec' of friddom! 'Tis true, only friddom of negro', yet still--friddom! An', _messieurs et mesdames_, that is now the precise moment when that whole worl' is _wile_ on that _topique_; friddom of citizen', friddom of nation', friddom of race', friddom of the sea'! And there is ferociouz demand for short storie' joint' on that _topique_, biccause now at the lazt that whole worl' is biccome furiouzly conscientiouz to get at the bottom of that _topique_; an' biccause those negro' are the lowez' race, they are there, of co'se, ad the bottom!"

"M. Beloiseau?" the chair--hostess--said; and Scipion, with languor in his voice but a burning fervor in his eye, responded:

"I think Mr. Chezter he's speaking with a too great modestie--or else _dip_-lomacie. Tha'z not good! If _fid_-elitie to art inspire me a conceitednezz as high"--his upthrown hand quivered at arm's length--"as the flagpole of Hotel St. Louis dome yonder, tha'z better than a modestie withoud that. That origin-al manuscrip' we don't want that ag-ain; we've all read that. But I think Mr. Chezter he's also maybe got that _riv_-ision in his pocket, an' we ought to hear, now, at ones, that _riv_-ision!"

Miles. Corinne and Yvonne led the applause, and presently Chester was reading:

XXVII

THE HOLY CROSS

This is a true story. Only that fact gives me the courage to tell it. It happened.

It occurred under my own eyes when they were far younger than now, on a beautiful island in the Caribbean, some twelve hundred miles southeastward from Florida, the largest of the Virgin group--the island of the Holy Cross. Its natives called it Aye-Aye. Columbus piously named it Santa Cruz and bore away a number of its people to Spain as slaves, to show them what Christians looked like in quantity and how they behaved to one another and to strangers. You can hear much about Santa Cruz from anybody in the rum-trade.

It has had many owners. As with the woman in the Sadducee's riddle, she of many husbands, seven political powers have had this mermaid as bride. Spain, the English, the Dutch, the Spaniards again, the French, the Knights of Malta, the French again, who sold her to the Guiana Company, who in 1734 passed her over to the Danes, from whom the English captured her in 1807 but restored her again at the close of Napoleon's wars. Thus, at last, Denmark prevailed as the ruling power; but English remained the speech of the people. The island is about twenty-three miles long by six wide. Its two towns are Christiansted on the north and Fredericksted on the south. Christiansted is the capital.

In 1848 I lived in Fredericksted, on Kongensgade, or King Street, with my aunts, Marion, Anna, and Marcia, and my grandmother--whom the servants called Mi'ss Paula--and was just old enough to begin taking care of my dignity. Whether I was Danish, British, or American I hardly knew. When grandmamma, whose husband had been of a family that had furnished a signer of our Declaration, told me stories of Bunker Hill and Yorktown I glowed with American patriotism. But when she turned to English stories, heroic or momentous, she would remind me that my father and mother were born on this island under British sway, and--"Once a Briton always a Briton." And yet again, my playmates would say:

"When _you_ were born the island was Danish; you are a subject of King Christian VIII."

Kongensgade, though narrow, was one of the main streets that ran the town's full length from northeast to southwest, and our home was a long, low cottage on the street's southern side, between it and the sea. Its grounds sloped upward from the street, widened out extensively at the rear, and then suddenly fell away in bluffs to the beach. It had been built for "Mi'ss Paula" as a bridal gift from her husband. But now, in her widowhood, his wealth was gone, and only refinement and inspiring traditions remained.

The sale or hire of her slaves might have kept her in comfort; but a clergyman, lately from England, convinced her that no Christian should hold a slave, and setting them free she accepted a life of self-help and of no little privation. She was his only convert. His zeal cooled early. Her ex-slaves, finding no _public_ freedom in custom or law, merely hired their labor unwisely and yearly grew more worthless.