"Mr. Castanado will tell you it. Any of those will tell you."

"I can't question them about you, and besides----"

"Well, here is my gate. 'And besides--' what?"

"Besides, why can't you tell me?"

"Ah, I'll do that--'some day,' as you say."

The gate-key went into the lock.

"But, mademoiselle, our 'Clock in the Sky'--our 'Angel of the Lord'--shan't we join them?"

"Ah, they are already one, but you have yet to hear that _first_ ma.n.u.script, and that is so very separate--as you will see."

"Isn't it also a story of dark skins?"

"Ah, but barely at all of souls under them; those souls we find it so hard to remember."

"_Chere fille_"--M. De l'Isle had come up, with Mme. Alexandre--"the three will go _gran'ly_ together! Not I al-lone perceive that, but Scipion also--Castanado--Dubroca. Mr. Chester, my dear sir, the pewblication of that book going to be heard roun' the worl'! Tha'z going produse an epoch, that book; yet same time--a bes'-seller!"

Mademoiselle beamed. "Does Mr. Chester think 'twill be that? A best-seller?"

Chester couldn't prophesy that of any book. "They say not even a publisher can tell."

"Hah!" monsieur cried, "those cunning pewblisher'! they pref-er _not_ to tell."

"Some poetry," Chester continued, urged by mademoiselle's eyes, "doesn't pay the poets over a few thousand a year--per volume; while some novels pay their authors--well--fortunes."

"That they go," madame broke in, "and buy some _palaces in Italie_! And tha'z but the biginning; you have not count' the dramatization--hundreds the week! and those movie'--the same! and those tranzlation'!"

"Well, I think we will be satisfied, Mr. Chester, with the tenth of that, eh?"

Chester's reply was drowned in monsieur's: "No, my child! But nine-tenth' _maybe_, yes! No-no-no! if those pewblisher' find out you are satisfi' by one-tenth, one-tenth is all you'll ever see!"

"Ah," said mademoiselle to madame, "even the one-tenth I mustn't tell to my aunts. They wouldn't sleep to-night. And myself--'publication, dramatization, movies, translation'--I believe I'll lie awake till daylight, making that into a song--a hymn!"

A wonderful sight she was, pausing in the open gate, with the little high-fenced garden at her back, a street-lamp lighting her face. Chester harked back to that first ma.n.u.script. It "ought not to wait another week," he declared.

"No," monsieur said, "and since we all have read that egcept only you."

Chester looked to mademoiselle: "Then I suppose I might read it with the Castanados alone."

"No," madame put in, "you see, you can't riturn at Castanado's immediately to-morrow or next day. That next day, tha'z Sunday, but you don't know if madame goin' to have the stren'th for that fati-gue. Yet same time you can't wait forever! And bisside', yo' Aunt Corinne, Aunt Yvonne--Mr. Chezter he's never have that lugsury to meet them, and that will be a very choice o'casion for Mr. Chezter to do that, if----"

"If he'll take the pains," the niece broke in, "to call Sunday afternoon.

Then I'll have the ma.n.u.script back from Mr. Castanado and we'll read it to my Aunt Corinne and my Aunt Yvonne, all four together in the garden."

"Yes, yet not in this li'l' garden in the front, but in the large, far back from the house, in the h-arbor of 'oneysuckle and by the side of the li'l' lake, eh?" So prompted madame.

"a.s.suredly," said the smiling girl; "not in the front, where is no room for a place to sit down!"

Chester's acceptance was eager. Then once more the batten gate closed and the key grated between him and Aline--marvellous, marvellous Aline Chapdelaine.

XIX

The sunbeams of a tedious Sabbath began noticeably to slant.

For two days, night, morning, noon, and afternoon, Geoffry Chester had silently speculated on what he was to see, hear, and otherwise experience when, as early as he might in keeping with the Chapdelaine dignity and his, he should pull the tiny bra.s.s bell-k.n.o.b on their tall gate-post.

Chapdelaine! Impressive, patrician t.i.tle. Impressive too those baptismal names; implying a refinement invincible in the vale of adversity. Killing time up one street and down another--Rampart, Ursuline, Burgundy--he pictured personalities to fit them: for Corinne a presence stately in advanced years and preserved beauty; for Yvonne a fragile form suggestive of mother-o'-pearl, of antique lace. Knowledge of Aline justified such inferences--within bounds. With other charms she had all these, and must have got them from ancestral sources as truly Mlle. Corinne's and Mlle. Yvonne's as hers.

"Oh, of course," he pondered, "there are contrary possibilities. They may easily fall short, far short, of her, in outer graces, and show their kinship only in a reflection of her inner fineness. They may be no more surprising than those dear old De l'Isles, or the Prieurs, or than Mrs.

Thornd.y.k.e-Smith. So let it be! Aline----"

"Aline-Aline!" alarmingly echoed his heart.

"Aline is enough." Enough? Alas, too much! He felt himself far too forthpushing in--he would not confess more--a solicitude for her which he could not stifle; an inextinguishable wish to disentangle her from the officious care of those by whom she was surrounded--enc.u.mbered. "I've no right to this state of mind," he thought; "none." He reached the gate.

He rang.

A footfall of daintiest lightness came running! ["Aline-Aline!"] So might Allegro have tripped it. The key rasped round, ["Aline-Aline!"]

the portal drew in, and he found himself getting his first front view of Cupid, the small black satellite.

A pleasing object. Smaller than ever. White-collared as ever, starched and brushed to the sheen of a new penny and ugly of face as a gargoyle--ugly as his G.o.ddess was beautiful. Not merely negroidal, in lips, nose, ears, and tight black wool divided on the absolute equator; not racially but uniquely ugly--till he smiled--and spoke. He smiled and spoke with a joy of soul, a transparency of innocence, a rapture of love, that made his ugliness positively endearing even apart from the entranced recognition they radiated.

"Ladies at home? Ya.s.suh," he said, with an ecstasy as if he announced the world's war suddenly over, all oceans safe, all peoples free. He led the way up the cramped white-sh.e.l.l walk with a ceremonial precision that gave the caller time to notice the garden. It was hardly an empire. It lay on either side in two right-angled figures, each, say, of sixty by fourteen feet, every foot repeating florally the smile of the child. The rigid beds were curbed with brick water-painted as red as Cupid's gums.

The three fences were green with vines, and here and there against them bloomed tall evergreen shrubs. At one upper corner of the main path was a camellia and at the other a c.r.a.pe-myrtle, symbols respectively, to the visitor, of Aunt Corinne and Aunt Yvonne. The brick doorstep smiled as red as the garden borders, and as he reached the open door Aline, with her two aunts at her back, received him.

"Mr. Chester--Mlle. Chapdelaine. Mr. Chester--my Aunt Yvonne." Never had the niece seemed quite so fair--in face, dress, figure, or mental poise. She wore that rose whose petals are deep red in their outer circle and pa.s.s from middle pink to central white and deepen in tints with each day's age. If that rose could have been a girl, mind, soul, and all, a Creole girl, there would have been two on one stem.

And there, on either side of her sat the aunts: the elder much too lean, the younger much too dishevelled, and both as sun-tanned as harvesters, betraying their poverty in flimsy, faded gowns which the dismayed youth named to himself not draperies but hangings. Yet they were sweet-mannered, fluent, gay, cordial, and unreserved, though fluttering, twittering, and ultra-feminine.

The room was like the pair. "Doubtlezz Aline she's told you ab-out that 'ouse. No? Ah, chere! is that possible? 'Tis an ancient relique, that 'ouse. At the present they don't build any mo' like that 'ouse is build'! You see those wall', those floor'? Every wall they are not of lath an' plazter, like to-day; they are of solid plank' of a thicknezz of two-inch'--and from Kentucky!"

The guest recognized the second-hand lumber of broken-up flatboats.

"Tha'z a genuine antique, that 'ouse! Sometime' we think we ought to egspose that 'ouse, to those tourist', admission ten cent'." [A gay laugh.]

"But tha'z only when Aline want' to compel us to buy some new dresses.

And tha'z pritty appropriate, that antique 'ouse, for two sizter'

themselve' pritty antique--ha, ha, ha!--as well as their anceztors."

"I fancy they're from 'way back," said Chester.

"We are granddaughter' of two _emigres_ 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."