"Ya.s.s'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 rect.i.tude. 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.)

Rebecca gazed anxiously after this second messenger. Robelia, near by, munched blackberries.

"Rebecca, did you ever think what you'd do if both your children were in equal danger?"

"Why, ya.s.s'm, I is studie' dat, dis ve'y day, ef de trufe got to be tol'."

Thought I: "If anything else has to be told, Robelia'll be my only helper." I asked Rebecca which one she would try to save first.

"Why, mist'ess, I could tell dat a heap sight betteh when de time come.

De Lawd mowt move me to do most fo' de one what least fitt'n' to"--she choked--"to die. An' yit ag'in dat mowt depen' on de circ.u.mstances o'

de time bein'."

"Well, it mustn't, Rebecca, it mustn't!"

"Y'--ya.s.s'm--no'm'm! Mustn' it?"

"No, in any case you must do as I tell you."

"Oh, o' co'se! ya.s.s'm!"

"So promise, now, that in any pinch you'll try first to save your son."

"Ya.s.s'm." A pang of duplicity showed in her uplifted glance, yet she murmured again: "Ya.s.s'm, I promise you dat." Nevertheless, I had my doubts.

A hum of voices told us my two anglers were approaching, and with Rebecca's quieting hand on the pusillanimous Robelia we drew into hiding and saw them cross the corner of a clearing and vanish again downstream. Then, hearing the coach, we went to meet it.

Both messengers were on the box. Euonymus pa.s.sed me my bundle of stuff. The coach turned round. Bidding Euonymus stay on the box I had Rebecca and Robelia take the front seat inside. Following in I remarked: "Good boy, that of yours, Luke."

Luke bowed so reverently that I saw Euonymus's belief in me was not his alone. "We thaynk de Lawd," Luke replied, "fo' boy an' gal alike; de good Lawd sawnt 'em bofe."

"Yet extra thanks for the son wouldn't hurt."

Robelia buried a sob of laughter in the nearest cushion, and as we rolled away gaped at me with a face on which a dozen flies danced and played tag. And so we went----.

Chester ceased reading and stood up. For Mlle. Chapdelaine was rising.

All the men rose.

"And so, also," she said, "I too must go."

"Oh, but the story is juz' big-inning," Mme. Alexandra protested, and Mme. De l'Isle said:

"I'm sure 'twill turn out magnificent, yes!"

Mademoiselle declared the tale fascinating. She "would be enchanted to stay," but her aunts _must_ be considered, etc.; and when Chester confessed the reading would require another session anyhow Mmes. De l'Isle and Alexandre arose, and M. Castanado asked aloud if there was any of the company who could not return a week from that evening.

No one was so unlucky. "But!" cried Mme. Alexandre, "why not to my parlor?"

"Because!" said Mme. Castanado, to Chester's vivid enlightenment, "every week-day, all day, you have mademoiselle with you."

"With me, ah, no! me forever down in my shop, and mademoiselle incessantly upstair'!"

Mme. Castanado prevailed. That same room, one week later.

Scipion and Dubroca escorted Mme. De l'Isle across to her beautiful gates, and Chester, not in dream but in fact, with M. De l'Isle and Mme. Alexandre following well in the rear, walked with mademoiselle to the high fence and green batten wicket of her olive-scented garden in the rue Bourbon. So walking, and urged by him, she began to tell of matters in her father's life, the old Hotel St. Louis life before hers began--matters that gave to "The Clock in the Sky" and "The Angel of the Lord" a personal interest beyond all academic values.

"We'll finish about that another time," she said, and with "another time" singing in his heart like a taut wire he verily enjoyed the rasping of the wicket's big lock as he turned away.

The week wore round. Except M. De l'Isle, kept away by a meeting of the Athenee Louisianais, all were regathered; one thing alone delayed the reading. Each of the three women had separately asked her father confessor how far one might justly--well--lie--to those seeking the truth only for cruel and wicked ends. But as no two had received the same answer, and as Chester's uncle was gone to his reward--or penalty--the question was early tabled. "Well," Mme. Castanado said: "'And so we went--' in the coach. Go on, read."

XIII

And so we went, not through the town but around it.

My attendants were heavy with sleep. Seating Rebecca next me I called Euonymus into the coach and let mother, son, and daughter slumber at ease.

To the few persons we met I paraded my bonnet and curls. Some, in Southern fashion, I questioned. I was a widow who had sold her plantation in order to go and live with a widowed brother. Euonymus too I showed off, who, waking at every halt, presented a face that seemed any boy's rather than a runaway's. So natural to these Africans was the supernatural that I could be one of the men who plucked Lot from Sodom and yet a becurled widow.

When at noon, at a farmhouse, we had fed horses and dined, I at the planter's board, my "slaves" under the house-grove trees, Euonymus took the lines, and for five hours Luke slept inside. Then they changed places again, and Euonymus and I, face to face, watched the long hot day wane, and pa.s.s through gorgeous changes into twilight. Often I saw questions in the young eyes that watched me so reverently, but I dared not encourage them; dared not be a talkative angel. Also my brain had its questions. How was I to get out of the most perilous trap into which a sane man--if sane I was--ever thrust himself? There was no sign that we were being pursued, but it was a harrowing puzzle how, without drawing suspicion upon the runaways, to get them once more separated from me and the coach while I should vanish as a lady and reappear as a gentleman.

"Euonymus, boy, if I should by and by dress as a man could you put these woman things on, over what you're wearing, and be a lady in my place?"

"Why, eh, y'--ya.s.s'm. Oh, ya.s.s'm, ef you say so, my--mistress; howsomever, you know what de good book say' 'bout de Ethiopium."

"Can't change--yes, I know; but this would be only for an hour or two and in the dark."