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

On the train--"Well," the youth urged, "your _grand'mere_ 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 _grandpere_ at thirteen years. And because of that precocity he got much training of the mind--and spirit--from _grandpere_ 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 _grandpere'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 _grandpere'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 n.o.ble, 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'mere_ had followed _grandpere_--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 reinst.i.tute 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 pa.s.sing, 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 Ca.n.a.l 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 a.s.sure 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 pa.s.sion, 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 carre_.

The fortunes of "the book" seemed becalmed.

It was Sat.u.r.day 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 ma.n.u.script 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 ma.n.u.scrip'."