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 ma.n.u.script 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 rehea.r.s.ed 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 ma.n.u.script.

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 inst.i.tution!" 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 compa.s.sion on us! For, as sometimes in heaven among cherubim, we are _ennuyes_ of each other!"

The small half-hourly electric train in Rampart Street had barely started lakeward into Ca.n.a.l, with the De l'Isle-Chapdelaine five aboard and the sun about to set, when Geoffry Chester entered--and stopped before monsieur, stiff with embarra.s.sment. 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 sh.o.r.e 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 sh.e.l.l 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:

"_Grandpere_ was not at that time such a very young man, yet he still lived with his father. So when _grand'mere_ 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 _grandpere'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. Thornd.y.k.e-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 _grandpere_--" 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'mere_, 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 _grandpere_ had to return!"

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

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

"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'mere_--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'mere_."

"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 _grandpere_ and _grand'mere_ 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 _grandpere_ 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, Ca.n.a.l, Carondelet--where old friends pa.s.s him with a stare. I see him and _grand'mere_ 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'mere_ 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, _grandpere_ 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 _grandpere_ 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."