At the batten door of her high, tight garden-fence Mlle. Yvonne, we repeat, let in Mme. De l'Isle and Mrs. Chester.

"Mother of--ah-h-h!" Her rapture was mated to such courteous restraint that dinginess and dishevelment were easily overlooked. "And 'ow marvellouz that is, that you 'appen to come juz' when he--and us--we're getting that news of the manu'----"

"What! accepted?"

"Oh, _that_ we di'n' hear _yet_! We only hear he's hear' something, but we're sure tha'z the only something he can hear!" She had begun to close the gate, but Mrs. Chester lingered in it.

"That fine large house and garden across the way," she said, "are they a Creole type?"

"Yes, bez' kind--for in the city. They got very few like that in the _vieux carre_, but up yonder in that beautiful garden diztric' of the _nouveau quartier_ are many, where we'll perchanze go to live some day pritty soon. That old 'ouse we're inhabiting here, tha'z--like us, ha, ha!--a pritty antique. Tha'z mo' suit' for a _relique_ than to live in, especially for Tantine--ha, ha!--tha'z auntie, yet tha'z what we call our niece. Aline--juz' in _plaisanterie_!--biccause she take' so much mo' care of us than us of her."

Mrs. Chester had stopped to look around her. "Whenever you move," she said, "you'll have to leave this delightful little garden behind; it won't fit out of these quaint surroundings."

"Ah! We won't want that any mo'!"

They pressed on. "That 'ouse acrozz street," said Mme. De l'Isle, "I notiz there the usual sign."

"Ah, yes, yes! 'For Sale or Rent'; tha'z what always predominate' in that poor _vieux carre_. But here is my sizter. Corinne, Mrs.

Chezter, the mother of Mr. Chezter--as you see by the _image_ of him in the face! I can have the boldnezz to say that, madame, biccause never in my life I di'n' see a young man so 'andsome like yo' son!"

The mother blushed--a lifelong failing. "At home," she said, "he's called his father's double."

"Is that possible? But tha'z the way with people. Some people they find Aline the _image_ of Corinne, and some of me. Yet Corinne and me--look!"

The four went in--to the usual entertainment: the solid plank walls, the fine absence of lath and plaster, Aline's "li'l' robe of baptism,"

and the bridegroom and bride who had gone a lifetime without a change of linen. They pa.s.sed out into the rear garden and told wonderful stories of those gifted little darlings the goldfish. Hector, unfortunately absent, had a mouth-organ, to whose strains the fishes would listen so motionless that you could see they were spellbound.

Yvonne ran back into the house to get it, but for some cause returned with nerves so shaken that the fishes would do nothing but run wildly to and fro. Still, that was just as startling proof of their amazing whatever-it-was!

Seats were not taken in the bower. The declining sun filled it. Mrs.

Chester moved fondly from one flower-bed to another, and while the sisters eagerly filled her hands with their choicest bloom Yvonne privately got a disturbed glance to Corinne that drew the four indoors again. There the outside quaintness tempted Mrs. Chester at once to a front window, with Mlle. Yvonne at her side.

The front garden was not as the visitor had seen it shortly before while entering. She turned silently away, while mademoiselle, as though surprised, cried to her sister and Mme. De l'Isle: "Ah! Aline she's arrive'! Mrs. Chezter, 'ow tha'z fortunate for us all!"

So with the other three Mrs. Chester looked out again. Half-way up the walk stood Aline. Her back was to the house. Cupid was just inside the gate, and between them, closely confronting her, was a third figure--Geoffry Chester. The indoor company could see his face, but not its mood, so dazzling was the low sun behind him; but certainly it was not gay. Her hand lay in his through some parting speech, but fell from it as both returned toward the gate. Which Cupid opened--sad irony--for Chester, and while the child locked him out Aline came forward wrapped in sunlight.

By steps, as she came, her beauty of form, face, and soul grew on Mrs.

Chester's sight, and when, in the house, with her sunset halo quenched and her presence more perfectly humanized, her smile and voice crowned the revelation, it happened as Geoffry had said it would; the mother's heart went out to her in fond and complete acceptance.

To the four women taking seats with her the laying of a graceful hat off her dark hair was the dissolving of one lovely picture into another unmarred by the fact that a letter which she held in her fingers was the publishers' latest word to Chester. But now, as her own silent gaze fell on it held in her lap in both hands, so did theirs, till her fingers shook and she bit her lip. Then--"Never mind to read it, chere," Mme. De l'Isle said, "juz' tell us. We are prepare' for the worz'. They want to poz'pone the pewblication, or they don't want to pay in advanz'?"

Aline lifted so bright a smile through her tears that every heart grew lighter. "They don't want it at all," she said. "They have sent it back!"

"Oh-h-h! Impossible!" exclaimed the two sisters, their eyes filling.

"The clerk he's put the wrong letter--letter for another party!"

Aline smiled again. "No; Mr. Chester, he has the ma.n.u.script. Ah, you poor"--again she smiled, biting her lip and wiping her tears. Then she turned, looked steadfastly into Mrs. Chester's face, and suddenly handed her the missive. "Read it out."

Mrs. Chester did so. As history, it said, the paper's interest was too merely encyclopaedic for magazine use, while as romance it was too much a story of peoples, not persons; romantic yet not romance. As to book form the same drawbacks held, besides the fact that there was not enough of it, not one-fifth enough, for even a small book.

When the reader would have handed the letter back it was agreed instead that she should give it to her son. "What does he purpose to do?" she inquired. "This is the judgment of but one publisher, and there are----"

"In the North," Mme. De l'Isle broke in, "they got mo' than a dozen pewblisher'!"

"Whiles one," the sisters pleaded, "tha'z all we require!"

"I know that," said Aline to the four. "'Twas of that we were speaking at the gate. But"--to Mrs. Chester--"that judgment of the one publisher is become our judgment also. So this evening he will bring you the ma.n.u.script, and in two or three days, when we come to see you, my two aunt' and me--I, you can give it me."

"May I read it? I've been to Ovide's and read 'The Clock in the Sky.'"

"Yes? Well, if later we have the good, chance to find, in our _vieux carre_, we and our _coterie_, and Ovide, some more stories, true romances, we'll maybe try again; but till then--ah, no."

Mrs. Chester touched the girl caressingly. "My dear, you will! Every house looks as if it could tell at least one, including that large house and garden just over the way."

"Ah," chanted Mlle. Yvonne, "how many time' Corinne and me, we want' to live there and furnizh, ourseff, that romanz'!"

The five rose. Mrs. Chester "would be delighted to have the three Chapdelaines call. I'm leaving the hotel, you know; I've taken a room next Geoffry's. But that's nearer you, is it not?"

"A li'l', yes," the sisters replied, but Aline's smiling silence said: "No, a little farther off."

The aunts thanked Mme. De l'Isle for bringing Mrs. Chester and kissed her cheeks. They walked beside her to the gate, led by Cupid with the key, and by Marie Madeleine crooking the end of her tail like a floor-walker's finger. Mrs. Chester and Aline came last. The sisters ventured out to the sidewalk to finish an apology for a significant fault in Marie Madeleine's figure, and Mrs. Chester and Aline found themselves alone.

"Au revoir," they said, clasping hands. Cupid, under a sudden inspiration, half-closed the gate, the pair stood an eloquent moment gazing eye to eye, and then----

What happened the mother told her son that evening as they sat alone on a moonlit veranda.

"Mother!"

"Yes," she said, "and on the lips."

XLIX

Beginning at dawn, an all-day rain rested the travel-wearied lady. But the night cleared and in the forenoon that followed she shopped--for things, she wrote her husband, not to be found elsewhere in the forty-eight States.

The afternoon she gave to two or three callers, notably to Mrs.

Thornd.y.k.e-Smith, who was very pleasing every way, but in nothing more than in her praises of the Royal Street coterie. Next morning, in a hired car, she had Castanado and Mme. Dubroca, Beloiseau and Mme.

Alexandre, not merely show but, as the ironworker said, pinching forefinger and thumb together in the air, "elucidate" to her, for hours, the _vieux carre_. The day's latter half brought Mlles. Corinne and Yvonne; but Aline--no.

"She was coming till the laz' moment," the pair said, "and then she's so bewzy she 'ave to sen' us word, by 'Ector, 'tis impossib' to come--till maybe later. Go h-on, juz' we two."

They sat and talked, and rose and talked, and--sweetly importuned--resumed seats and talked, of infant days and the old New Orleans they loved so well, unembarra.s.sed by a maze of innocent anachronisms, and growingly sure that Aline would come.

When at sunset they took leave Mrs. Chester, to their delight, followed to the sidewalk, drifted on by a corner or two, and even turned up Rampart Street, though without saying that it was by Rampart Street her son daily came--walked--from his office. It had two paved ways for general traffic, with a broad s.p.a.ce between, where once, the sisters explained, had been the rampart's moat but now ran the electric cars!

"You know what that is, rampart? Tha'z in the 'Star-Spangle' Banner'

ab-oud that. And this high wall where we're pa.s.sing, tha'z the Carmelite convent, and--ah! ad the last! Aline! Aline!" Also there was Cupid.