The Flower of the Chapdelaines.

by George W. Cable.

I

Next morning he saw her again.

He had left his very new law office, just around in Bienville Street, and had come but a few steps down Royal, when, at the next corner below, she turned into Royal, toward him, out of Conti, coming from Bourbon.

The same nine-year-old negro boy was at her side, as spotless in broad white collar and blue jacket as on the morning before, and carrying the same droll air of consecration, awe, and responsibility. The young man envied him.

Yesterday, for the first time, at that same corner, he had encountered this fair stranger and her urchin escort, abruptly, as they were making the same turn they now repeated, and all in a flash had wondered who might be this lovely apparition. Of such patrician beauty, such elegance of form and bearing, such witchery of simple attire, and such un-Italian yet Latin type, in this antique Creole, modernly Italianized quarter--who and what, so early in the day, down here among the shops, where so meagre a remnant of the old high life clung on in these balconied upper stories--who, what, whence, whither, and wherefore?

In that flash of time she had pa.s.sed, and the very liveliness of his interest, combined with the urchin's consecrated awe--not to mention his own mortifying remembrance of one or two other-day lapses from the austerities of the old street--restrained him from a backward glance until he could cross the way as if to enter the great, white, lately completed court-house. Then both she and her satellite had vanished.

He turned again, but not to enter the building. His watch read but half past eight, and his first errand of the day, unless seeing her had been his first, was to go one square farther on, for a look at the wreckers tearing down the old Hotel St. Louis. As he turned, a man neat of dress and well beyond middle age made him a suave gesture.

"Sir, if you please. You are, I think, Mr. Chester, notary public and attorney at law?"

"That is my name and trade, sir." Evidently Mr. Geoffry Chester was also an American, a Southerner.

"Pardon," said his detainer, "I have only my business card." He tendered it: "Marcel Castanado, Masques et Costumes, No. 312, rue Royale, entre Bienville et Conti."

"I diz-ire your advice," he continued, "on a very small matter neither notarial, neither of the law. Yet I must pay you for that, if you can make your charge as--as small as the matter."

The young lawyer's own matters were at a juncture where a fee was a G.o.dsend, yet he replied:

"If your matter is not of the law I can make you no charge."

The costumer shrugged: "Pardon, in that case I must seek elsewhere."

He would have moved on, but Chester asked:

"What kind of advice do you want if not legal?"

"Literary."

The young man smiled: "Why, I'm not literary."

"I think yes. You know Ovide Landry? Black man? Secon'-han' books, Chartres Street, just yonder?"

"Yes, very pleasantly, for I love old books."

"Yes, and old buildings, and their histories. I know. You are now going down, as I have just been, to see again the construction of that old dome they are dim-olishing yonder, of the once state-house, previously Hotel St. Louis. I know. Twice a day you pa.s.s my shop. I am compelled to see, what Ovide also has told me, that, like me and my wife, you have a pa.s.sion for the _poetique_ and the _pittoresque_!"

"Yes," Chester laughed, "but that's my limit. I've never written a line for print----"

"This writing is done, since fifty years."

"I've never pa.s.sed literary judgment on a written page and don't suppose I ever shall."

"The judgment is pa.s.sed. The value of the article is p.r.o.nounced great--by an expert amateur."

"SHE?" the youth silently asked himself. He spoke: "Why, then what advice do you still want--how to find a publisher?"

"No, any publisher will jump at that. But how to so nig-otiate that he shall not be the lion and we the lamb!"

Chester smiled again: "Why, if that's the point--" he mused. The hope came again that this unusual shopman and his wish had something to do with _her_.

"If that's the advice you want," he resumed, "I think we might construe it as legal, though worth at the most a mere notarial fee."

"And contingent on--?" the costumer prompted.

"Contingent, yes, on the author's success."

"Sir! I am not the author of a ma.n.u.script fifty years old!"

"Well, then, on the holder's success. You can agree to that, can't you?"

"'Tis agreed. You are my counsel. When will you see the ma.n.u.script?"

"Whenever you choose to leave it with me."

The costumer's smile was firm: "Sir, I cannot permit that to pa.s.s from my hand."

"Oh! then have a copy typed for me."

The Creole soliloquized: "That would be expensive." Then to Chester: "Sir, I will tell you; to-night come at our parlor, over the shop. I will read you that!"

"Shall we be alone?" asked Chester, hoping his client would say no.

"Only excepting my"--a tender brightness--"my wife!" Then a shade of regret: "We are without children, me and my wife."

His wife. H'mm! _She_? That amazing one who had vanished within a few yards of his bazaar of "masques et costumes"? Though to Chester New Orleans was still new, and though fat law-books and a slim purse kept him much to himself, he was aware that, while some Creoles grew rich, many of them, women, once rich, were being driven even to stand behind counters. Yet no such plight could he imagine of that bewildering young--young luminary who, this second time, so out of time, had gleamed on him from mystery's cloud. His earlier hope came a third time: "Excepting only your wife, you say? Why not also your amateur expert?"

"I am sorry, but"--the Latin shrug--"that is--that is not possible."

"Have I ever seen your wife? She's not a tallish, slender young-----?"

"No, my wife is neither. She's never in the street or shop. She has no longer the cap-acity. She's become so extraordinarily _un_-slender that the only way she can come down-stair' is backward. You'll see.

Well,"--he waved--"till then--ah, a word: my close bargaining--I must explain you that--in confidence. 'Tis because my wife and me we are anxious to get every picayune we can get for the owners--of that ma.n.u.script."

Chester thought to be shrewd: "Oh! is _she_ hard up? the owner?"

"The owners are three," Castanado calmly said, "and two dip-end on the earnings of a third." He bowed himself away.

A few hours later Chester received from him a note begging indefinite postponement of the evening appointment. Mme. Castanado had fever and probably _la grippe_.