Alphonsina--only living property of Aurora and Clotilde--was called upon to light a fire in the little parlor. Elsewhere, although the day was declining, few persons felt such a need; but in No. 19 rue Bienville there were two chilling influences combined requiring an artificial offset. One was the ground under the floor, which was only three inches distant, and permanently saturated with water; the other was despair.
Before this fire the two ladies sat down together like watchers, in that silence and vacuity of mind which come after an exhaustive struggle ending in the recognition of the inevitable; a torpor of thought, a stupefaction of feeling, a purely negative state of joylessness sequent to the positive state of anguish. They were now both hungry, but in want of some present friend acquainted with the motions of mental distress who could guess this fact and press them to eat. By their eyes it was plain they had been weeping much; by the subdued tone, too, of their short and infrequent speeches.
Alphonsina, having made the fire, went out with a bundle. It was Aurora's last good dress. She was going to try to sell it.
"It ought not to be so hard," began Clotilde, in a quiet manner of contemplating some one else's difficulty, but paused with the saying uncompleted, and sighed under her breath.
"But itisso hard," responded Aurora.
"No, it ought not to be so hard--"
"How, not so hard?"
"It is not so hard to live," said Clotilde; "but it is hard to be ladies. You understand--" she knit her fingers, dropped them into her lap and turned her eyes toward Aurora, who responded with the same motions, adding the crossing of her silk-stockinged ankles before the fire.
"No," said Aurora, with a scintillation of irrepressible mischief in her eyes.
"After all," pursued Clotilde, "what troubles us is not how to make a living, but how to get a living without making it."
"Ah! that would be magnificent!" said Aurora, and then added, more soberly; "but we are compelled to make a living."
"No."
"No-o? Ah! what do you mean with your 'no'?"
"I mean it is just the contrary; we are compelled not to make a living. Look at me: I can cook, but I must not cook; I am skillful with the needle, but I must not take in sewing; I could keep accounts; I could nurse the sick; but I must not. I could be a confectioner, a milliner, a dressmaker, a vest-maker, a cleaner of gloves and laces, a dyer, a bird-seller, a mattress-maker, an upholsterer, a dancing-teacher, a florist--"
"Oh!" softly exclaimed Aurora, in English, "you could be--you know w'ad?--an egcellen' drug-cl'--ah, ha, ha!"
"Now--"
But the threatened irruption was averted by a look of tender apology from Aurora, in reply to one of martyrdom from Clotilde.
"My angel daughter," said Aurora, "if society has decreed that ladies must be ladies, then that is our first duty; our second is to live. Do you not see why it is that this practical world does not permit ladies to make a living? Because if they could, none of them would ever consent to be married. Ha! women talk about marrying for love; but society is too sharp to trust them, yet! It makes itnecessaryto marry. I will tell you the honest truth; some days when I get very, very hungry, and we have nothing but rice--all because we are ladies without male protectors--I think society could drive even me to marriage!--for your sake, though, darling; of course, only for your sake!"
"Never!" replied Clotilde; "for my sake, never; for your own sake if you choose. I should not care. I should be glad to see you do so if it would make you happy; but never for my sake and never for hunger's sake; but for love's sake, yes; and God bless thee, pretty maman."
"Clotilde, dear," said the unconscionable widow, "let me assure you, once for all,--starvation is preferable. I mean for me, you understand, simply for me; that is my feeling on the subject."
Clotilde turned her saddened eyes with a steady scrutiny upon her deceiver, who gazed upward in apparently unconscious reverie, and sighed softly as she laid her head upon the high chair-back and stretched out her feet.
"I wish Alphonsina would come back," she said. "Ah!" she added, hearing a footfall on the step outside the street door, "there she is."
She arose and drew the bolt. Unseen to her, the person whose footsteps she had heard stood upon the doorstep with a hand lifted to knock, but pausing to "makeup his mind." He heard the bolt shoot back, recognized the nature of the mistake, and, feeling that here again he was robbed of volition, rapped.
"That is not Alphonsina!"
The two ladies looked at each other and turned pale.
"But you must open it," whispered Clotilde, half rising.
Aurora opened the door, and changed from white to crimson. Clotilde rose up quickly. The gentleman lifted his hat.
"Madame Nancanou."
"M. Grandissime?"
"Oui, Madame."
For once, Aurora was in an uncontrollable flutter. She stammered, lost her breath, and even spoke worse French than she needed to have done.
"Be pl--pleased, sir--to enter. Clotilde, my daughter--Monsieur Grandissime. P-please be seated, sir. Monsieur Grandissime,"--she dropped into a chair with an air of vivacity pitiful to behold,--"I suppose you have come for the rent." She blushed even more violently than before, and her hand stole upward upon her heart to stay its violent beating. "Clotilde, dear, I should be glad if you would put the fire before the screen; it is so much too warm." She pushed her chair back and shaded her face with her hand. "I think the warmer is growing weather outside, is it--is it not?"
The struggles of a wounded bird could not have been more piteous. Monsieur Grandissime sought to speak. Clotilde, too, nerved by the sight of her mother's embarrassment, came to her support, and she and the visitor spoke in one breath.
"Maman, if Monsieur--pardon--"
"Madame Nancanou, the--pardon, Mademoiselle--"
"I have presumed to call upon you," resumed M. Grandissime, addressing himself now to both ladies at once, "to see if I may enlist you in a purely benevolent undertaking in the interest of one who has been unfortunate--a common acquaintance--"
"Common acquaint--" interrupted Aurora, with a hostile lighting of her eyes.
"I believe so--Professor Frowenfeld." M. Grandissme saw Clotilde start, and in her turn falsely accuse the fire by shading her face: but it was no time to stop. "Ladies," he continued, "please allow me, for the sake of the good it may effect, to speak plainly and to the point."
The ladies expressed acquiescence by settling themselves to hear.
"Professor Frowenfeld had the extraordinary misfortune this morning to incur the suspicion of having entered a house for the purpose of--at least, for a bad design--"
"He is innocent!" came from Clotilde, against her intention; Aurora covertly put out a hand, and Clotilde clutched it nervously.
"As, for example, robbery," said the self-recovered Aurora, ignoring Clotilde's look of protestation.
"Call it so," responded M. Grandissime. "Have you heard at whose house this was?"
"No, sir."
"It was at the house of Palmyre Philosophe."
"Palmyre Philosophe!" exclaimed Aurora, in low astonishment. Clotilde let slip, in a tone of indignant incredulity, a soft "Ah!" Aurora turned, and with some hope that M. Grandissime would not understand, ventured to say in Spanish, quietly:
"Come, come, this will never do."
And Clotilde replied in the same tongue:
"I know it, but he is innocent."
"Let us understand each other," said their visitor. "There is not the faintest idea in the mind of one of us that Professor Frowenfeld is guilty of even an intention of wrong; otherwise I should not be here. He is a man simply incapable of anything ignoble."
Clotilde was silent. Aurora answered promptly, with the air of one not to be excelled in generosity:
"Certainly, he is very incapabl'."
"Still," resumed the visitor, turning especially to Clotilde, "the known facts are these, according to his own statement: he was in the house of Palmyre on some legitimate business which, unhappily, he considers himself on some account bound not to disclose, and by some mistake of Palmyre's old Congo woman, was set upon by her and wounded, barely escaping with a whole skull into the street, an object of public scandal. Laying aside the consideration of his feelings, his reputation is at stake and likely to be ruined unless the affair can be explained clearly and satisfactorily, and at once, by his friends."
"And you undertake--" began Aurora.
"Madame Nancanou," said Honoré Grandissime, leaning toward her earnestly, "you know--I must beg leave to appeal to your candor and confidence--you know everything concerning Palmyre that I know. You know me, and who I am; you know it is not for me to undertake to confer with Palmyre. I know, too, her old affection for you; she lives but a little way down this street upon which you live; there is still daylight enough at your disposal; if you will, you can go to see her, and get from her a full and complete exoneration of this young man. She cannot come to you; she is not fit to leave her room."
"Cannot leave her room?"
"I am, possibly, violating confidence in this disclosure, but it is unavoidable--you have to know: she is not fully recovered from a pistol-shot wound received between two and three weeks ago."
"Pistol-shot wound!"
Both ladies started forward with open lips and exclamations of amazement.
"Received from a third person--not myself and not Professor Frowenfeld--in a desperate attempt made by her to avenge the wrongs which she has suffered, as you, Madam, as well as I, are aware, at the hands of--"
Aurora rose up with a majestic motion for the speaker to desist.
"If it is to mention the person of whom your allusion reminds me, that you have honored us with a call this evening, Monsieur--"
Her eyes were flashing as he had seen them flash in front of the Place d'Armes.
"I beg you not to suspect me of meanness," he answered, gently, and with a remonstrative smile. "I have been trying all day, in a way unnecessary to explain, to be generous."
"I suppose you are incapabl'," said Aurora, following her double meaning with that combination of mischievous eyes and unsmiling face of which she was master. She resumed her seat, adding: "It is generous for you to admit that Palmyre has suffered wrongs."
"Itwouldbe," he replied, "to attempt to repair them, seeing that I am not responsible for them, but this I cannot claim yet to have done. I have asked of you, Madam, a generous act. I might ask another of you both jointly. It is to permit me to say without offence, that there is one man, at least, of the name of Grandissime who views with regret and mortification the yet deeper wrongs which you are even now suffering."
"Oh!" exclaimed Aurora, inwardly ready for fierce tears, but with no outward betrayal save a trifle too much grace and an over-bright smile, "Monsieur is much mistaken; we are quite comfortable and happy, wanting nothing, eh, Clotilde?--not even our rights, ha, ha!"
She rose and let Alphonsina in. The bundle was still in the negress's arms. She passed through the room and disappeared in the direction of the kitchen.
"Oh! no, sir, not at all," repeated Aurora, as she once more sat down.
"You ought to want your rights," said M. Grandissime. "You ought to have them."
"You think so?"
Aurora was really finding it hard to conceal her growing excitement, and turned, with a faint hope of relief, toward Clotilde.
Clotilde, looking only at their visitor, but feeling her mother's glance, with a tremulous and half-choked voice, said eagerly:
"Then why do you not give them to us?"
"Ah!" interposed Aurora, "we shall get them to-morrow, when the sheriff comes."
And, thereupon what did Clotilde do but sit bolt upright, with her hands in her lap, and let the tears roll, tear after tear, down her cheeks.
"Yes, Monsieur," said Aurora, smiling still, "those that you see are really tears. Ha, ha, ha! excuse me, I really have to laugh; for I just happened to remember our meeting at the masked ball last September. We had such a pleasant evening and were so much indebted to you for our enjoyment,--particularly myself,--little thinking, you know, that you were one of that great family which believes we ought to have our rights, you know. There are many people who ought to have their rights. There was Bras-Coupé; indeed, he got them--found them in the swamp. Maybe Clotilde and I shall find ours in the street. When we unmasked in the theatre, you know, I did not know you were my landlord, and you did not know that I could not pay a few picayunes of rent. But you must excuse those tears; Clotilde is generally a brave little woman, and would not be so rude as to weep before a stranger; but she is weak to-day--we are both weak to-day, from the fact that we have eaten nothing since early morning, although we have abundance of food--for want of appetite, you understand. You must sometimes be affected the same way, having the care of so much wealthof all sorts."
Honoré Grandissime had risen to his feet and was standing with one hand on the edge of the lofty mantel, his hat in the other dropped at his side and his eye fixed upon Aurora's beautiful face, whence her small nervous hand kept dashing aside the tears through which she defiantly talked and smiled. Clotilde sat with clenched hands buried in her lap, looking at Aurora and still weeping.
And M. Grandissime was saying to himself:
"If I do this thing now--if I do it here--I do it on an impulse; I do it under constraint of woman's tears; I do it because I love this woman; I do it to get out of a corner; I do it in weakness, not in strength; I do it without having made up my mind whether or not it is the best thing to do."
And then, without intention, with scarcely more consciousness of movement than belongs to the undermined tree which settles, roots and all, into the swollen stream, he turned and moved toward the door.
Clotilde rose.
"Monsieur Grandissime."
He stopped and looked back.
"We will see Palmyre at once, according to your request."
He turned his eyes toward Aurora.
"Yes," said she, and she buried her face in her handkerchief and sobbed aloud.
She heard his footstep again; it reached the door; the door opened--closed; she heard his footstep again; was he gone?
He was gone.
The two women threw themselves into each other's arms and wept. Presently Clotilde left the room. She came back in a moment from the rear apartment, with a bonnet and veil in her hands.
"No," said Aurora, rising quickly, "I must do it."
"There is no time to lose," said Clotilde. "It will soon be dark."
It was hardly a minute before Aurora was ready to start. A kiss, a sorrowful look of love exchanged, the veil dropped over the swollen eyes, and Aurora was gone.
A minute passed, hardly more, and--what was this?--the soft patter of Aurora's knuckles on the door.
"Just here at the corner I saw Palmyre leaving her house and walking down the rue Royale. We must wait until morn--"
Again a footfall on the doorstep, and the door, which was standing ajar, was pushed slightly by the force of the masculine knock which followed.
"Allow me," said the voice of Honoré Grandissime, as Aurora bowed at the door. "I should have handed you this; good-day."
She received a missive. It was long, like an official document; it bore evidence of having been carried for some hours in a coat-pocket, and was folded in one of those old, troublesome ways in use before the days of envelopes. Aurora pulled it open.
"It is all figures; light a candle."
The candle was lighted by Clotilde and held over Aurora's shoulder; they saw a heading and footing more conspicuous than the rest of the writing.
The heading read:
"Aurora and Clotilde Nancanou, owners of Fausse RivièrePlantation, in account with Honoré Grandissime."
The footing read:
"Balance at credit, subject to order of Aurora and ClotildeNancanou, $105,000.00."
The date followed:
"March9, 1804."
and the signature:
"H. Grandissime."
A small piece of torn white paper slipped from the account to the floor. Clotilde's eye followed it, but Aurora, without acknowledgement of having seen it, covered it with her foot.
In the morning Aurora awoke first. She drew from under her pillow this slip of paper. She had not dared look at it until now. The writing on it had been roughly scratched down with a pencil. It read:
"Not for love of woman, but in the name of justice and thefear of God."
"And I was so cruel," she whispered.
Ah! Honoré Grandissime, she was kind to that little writing! She did not put it back under her pillow; shekept it warm, Honoré Grandissime, from that time forth.
On the same evening of which we have been telling, about the time that Aurora and Clotilde were dropping their last tear of joy over the document of restitution, a noticeable figure stood alone at the corner of the rue du Canal and the rue Chartres. He had reached there and paused, just as the brighter glare of the set sun was growing dim above the tops of the cypresses. After walking with some rapidity of step, he had stopped aimlessly, and laid his hand with an air of weariness upon a rotting China-tree that leaned over the ditch at the edge of the unpaved walk.
"Setting in cypress," he murmured. We need not concern ourselves as to his meaning.
One could think aloud there with impunity. In 1804, Canal street was the upper boundary of New Orleans. Beyond it, to southward, the open plain was dotted with country-houses, brick-kilns, clumps of live-oak and groves of pecan. At the hour mentioned the outlines of these objects were already darkening. At one or two points the sky was reflected from marshy ponds. Out to westward rose conspicuously the old house and willow-copse of Jean Poquelin. Down the empty street or road, which stretched with arrow-like straightness toward the northwest, the draining-canal that gave it its name tapered away between occasional overhanging willows and beside broken ranks of rotting palisades, its foul, crawling waters blushing, gilding and purpling under the swiftly waning light, and ending suddenly in the black shadow of the swamp. The observer of this dismal prospect leaned heavily on his arm, and cast his glance out along the beautified corruption of the canal. His eye seemed quickened to detect the smallest repellant details of the scene; every cypress stump that stood in, or overhung, the slimy water; every ruined indigo-vat or blasted tree, every broken thing, every bleached bone of ox or horse--and they were many--for roods around. As his eye passed them slowly over and swept back again around the dreary view, he sighed heavily and said: "Dissolution," and then again--"Dissolution! order of the day--"
A secret overhearer might have followed, by these occasional exclamatory utterances, the course of a devouring trouble prowling up and down through his thoughts, as one's eye tracks the shark by the occasional cutting of his fin above the water.
He spoke again:
"It is in such moods as this that fools drown themselves."
His speech was French. He straightened up, smote the tree softly with his palm, and breathed a long, deep sigh--such a sigh, if the very truth be told, as belongs by right to a lover. And yet his mind did not dwell on love.
He turned and left the place; but the trouble that was plowing hither and thither through the deep of his meditations went with him. As he turned into the rue Chartres it showed itself thus:
"Right; it is but right;" he shook his head slowly--"it is but right."
In the rue Douane he spoke again:
"Ah! Frowenfeld"--and smiled unpleasantly, with his head down.
And as he made yet another turn, and took his meditative way down the city's front, along the blacksmith's shops in the street afterward called Old Levee, he resumed, in English, and with a distinctness that made a staggering sailor halt and look after him:
"There are but two steps to civilization, the first easy, the second difficult; to construct--to reconstruct--ah! there it is! the tearing down! The tear'--"
He was still, but repeated the thought by a gesture of distress turned into a slow stroke of the forehead.
"Monsieur Honoré Grandissime," said a voice just ahead.
"Eh, bien?"
At the mouth of an alley, in the dim light of the streep lamp, stood the dark figure of Honoré Grandissime, f.m.c., holding up the loosely hanging form of a small man, the whole front of whose clothing was saturated with blood.
"Why, Charlie Keene! Let him down again, quickly--quickly; do not hold him so!"
"Hands off," came in a ghastly whisper from the shape.
"Oh, Chahlie, my boy--"
"Go and finish your courtship," whispered the doctor.
"Oh Charlie, I have just made it forever impossible!"
"Then help me back to my bed; I don't care to die in the street."
"That is all," said the fairer Honoré, outside Doctor Keene's sick-room about ten o'clock at night. He was speaking to the black son of Clemence, who had been serving as errand-boy for some hours. He spoke in a low tone just without the half-open door, folding again a paper which the lad had lately borne to the apothecary of the rue Royale, and had now brought back with Joseph's answer written under Honoré's inquiry.
"That is all," said the other Honoré, standing partly behind the first, as the eyes of his little menial turned upon him that deprecatory glance of inquiry so common to slave children. The lad went a little way down the corridor, curled up upon the floor against the wall, and was soon asleep. The fairer Honoré handed the darker the slip of paper; it was received and returned in silence. The question was:
"Can you state anything positive concerning the duel?"
And the reply:
"Positively there will be none. Sylvestre my sworn friend forlife."
The half-brothers sat down under a dim hanging lamp in the corridor, and except that every now and then one or the other stepped noiselessly to the door to look in upon the sleeping sick man, or in the opposite direction to moderate by a push with the foot the snoring of Clemence's "boy," they sat the whole night through in whispered counsel.
The one, at the request of the other, explained how he had come to be with the little doctor in such extremity.
It seems that Clemence, seeing and understanding the doctor's imprudence, had sallied out with the resolve to set some person on his track. We have said that she went in search of her master. Him she met, and though she could not really count him one of the doctor's friends, yet, rightly believing in his humanity, she told him the matter. He set off in what was for him a quick pace in search of the rash invalid, was misdirected by a too confident child and had given up the hope of finding him, when a faint sound of distress just at hand drew him into an alley, where, close down against a wall, with his face to the earth, lay Doctor Keene. The f.m.c. had just raised him and borne him out of the alley when Honoré came up.
"And you say that, when you would have inquired for him at Frowenfeld's, you saw Palmyre there, standing and talking with Frowenfeld? Tell me more exactly."
And the other, with that grave and gentle economy of words which made his speech so unique, recounted what we amplify:
Palmyre had needed no pleading to induce her to exonerate Joseph. The doctors were present at Frowenfeld's in more than usual number. There was unusualness, too, in their manner and their talk. They were not entirely free from the excitement of the day, and as they talked--with an air of superiority, of Creole inflammability, and with some contempt--concerning Camille Brahmin's and Charlie Mandarin's efforts to precipitate a war, they were yet visibly in a state of expectation. Frowenfeld, they softly said, had in his odd way been indiscreet among these inflammables at Maspero's just when he could least afford to be so, and there was no telling what they might take the notion to do to him before bedtime. All that over and above the independent, unexplained scandal of the early morning. So Joseph and his friends this evening, like Aurora and Clotilde in the morning, were, as we nowadays say of buyers and sellers, "apart," when suddenly and unannounced, Palmyre presented herself among them. When the f.m.c. saw her, she had already handed Joseph his hat and with much sober grace was apologizing for her slave's mistake. All evidence of her being wounded was concealed. The extraordinary excitement of the morning had not hurt her, and she seemed in perfect health. The doctors sat or stood around and gave rapt attention to her patois, one or two translating it for Joseph, and he blushing to the hair, but standing erect and receiving it at second hand with silent bows. The f.m.c. had gazed on her for a moment, and then forced himself away. He was among the few who had not heard the morning scandal, and he did not comprehend the evening scene. He now asked Honoré concerning it, and quietly showed great relief when it was explained.
Then Honoré, breaking a silence, called the attention of the f.m.c. to the fact that the latter had two tenants at Number 19 rue Bienville. Honoré became the narrator now and told all, finally stating that the die was cast--restitution made.
And then the darker Honoré made a proposition to the other, which, it is little to say, was startling. They discussed it for hours.
"So just a condition," said the merchant, raising his whisper so much that the rentier laid a hand in his elbow,--"such mere justice," he said, more softly, "ought to be an easy condition. God knows"--he lifted his glance reverently--"my very right to exist comes after yours. You are the elder."
The solemn man offered no disclaimer.
What could the proposition be which involved so grave an issue, and to which M. Grandissime's final answer was "I will do it"?
It was that Honoré f.m.c. should become a member of the mercantile house of H. Grandissime, enlisting in its capital all his wealth. And the one condition was that the new style should beGrandissime Brothers.
Ask the average resident of New Orleans if his town is on an island, and he will tell you no. He will also wonder how any one could have got that notion,--so completely has Orleans Island, whose name at the beginning of the present century was in everybody's mouth, been forgotten. It was once a question of national policy, a point of difference between Republican and Federalist, whether the United States ought to buy this little strip of semi-submerged land, or whether it would not be more righteous to steal it. The Kentuckians kept the question at a red heat by threatening to become an empire by themselves if one course or the other was not taken; but when the First Consul offered to sell all Louisiana, our commissioners were quite robbed of breath. They had approached to ask a hair from the elephant's tail, and were offered the elephant.
For Orleans Island--island it certainly was until General Jackson closed Bayou Manchac--is a narrow, irregular, flat tract of forest, swamp, city, prairie and sea-marsh, lying east and west, with the Mississippi, trending southeastward, for its southern boundary, and for its northern, a parallel and contiguous chain of alternate lakes and bayous, opening into the river through Bayou Manchac, and into the Gulf through the passes of the Malheureuse Islands. On the narrowest part of it stands New Orleans. Turning and looking back over the rear of the town, one may easily see from her steeples Lake Pontchartrain glistening away to the northern horizon, and in his fancy extend the picture to right and left till Pontchartrain is linked in the west by Pass Manchac to Lake Maurepas, and in the east by the Rigolets and Chef Menteur to Lake Borgne.
An oddity of the Mississippi Delta is the habit the little streams have of running away from the big ones. The river makes its own bed and its own banks, and continuing season after season, through ages of alternate overflow and subsidence, to elevate those banks, creates a ridge which thus becomes a natural elevated aqueduct. Other slightly elevated ridges mark the present or former courses of minor outlets, by which the waters of the Mississippi have found the sea. Between these ridges lie the cypress swamps, through whose profound shades the clear, dark, deep bayous creep noiselessly away into the tall grasses of the shaking prairies. The original New Orleans was built on the Mississippi ridge, with one of these forest-and-water-covered basins stretching back behind her to westward and northward, closed in by Metairie Ridge and Lake Pontchartrain. Local engineers preserve the tradition that the Bayou Sauvage once had its rise, so to speak, in Toulouse street. Though depleted by the city's present drainage system and most likely poisoned by it as well, its waters still move seaward in a course almost due easterly, and empty into Chef Menteur, one of the watery threads of a tangled skein of "passes" between the lakes and the open Gulf. Three-quarters of a century ago this Bayou Sauvage (or Gentilly--corruption of Chantilly) was a navigable stream of wild and sombre beauty.
On a certain morning in August, 1804, and consequently some five months after the events last mentioned, there emerged from the darkness of Bayou Sauvage into the prairie-bordered waters of Chef Menteur, while the morning star was still luminous in the sky above and in the water below, and only the practised eye could detect the first glimmer of day, a small, stanch, single-masted, broad and very light-draught boat, whose innocent character, primarily indicated in its coat of many colors,--the hull being yellow below the water line and white above, with tasteful stripings of blue and red,--was further accentuated by the peaceful name ofPique-en-terre(the Sandpiper).
She seemed, too, as she entered the Chef Menteur, as if she would have liked to turn southward; but the wind did not permit this, and in a moment more the water was rippling after her swift rudder, as she glided away in the direction of Pointe Aux Herbes. But when she had left behind her the mouth of the passage, she changed her course and, leaving the Pointe on her left, bore down toward Petites Coquilles, obviously bent upon passing through the Rigolets.
We know not how to describe the joyousness of the effect when at length one leaves behind him the shadow and gloom of the swamp, and there bursts upon his sight the widespread, flower-decked, bird-haunted prairies of Lake Catharine. The inside and outside of a prison scarcely furnish a greater contrast; and on this fair August morning the contrast was at its strongest. The day broke across a glad expanse of cool and fragrant green, silver-laced with a network of crisp salt pools and passes, lakes, bayous and lagoons, that gave a good smell, the inspiring odor of interclasped sea and shore, and both beautified and perfumed the happy earth, laid bare to the rising sun. Waving marshes of wild oats, drooping like sated youth from too much pleasure; watery acres hid under crisp-growing greenth starred with pond-lilies and rippled by water-fowl; broad stretches of high grass, with thousands of ecstatic wings palpitating above them; hundreds of thousands of white and pink mallows clapping their hands in voiceless rapture, and that amazon queen of the wild flowers, the morning-glory, stretching her myriad lines, lifting up the trumpet and waving her colors, white, azure and pink, with lacings of spider's web, heavy with pearls and diamonds--the gifts of the summer night. The crew of thePique-en-terresaw all these and felt them; for, whatever they may have been or failed to be, they were men whose heartstrings responded to the touches of nature. One alone of their company, and he the one who should have felt them most, showed insensibility, sighed laughingly and then laughed sighingly, in the face of his fellows and of all this beauty, and profanely confessed that his heart's desire was to get back to his wife. He had been absent from her now for nine hours!
But the sun is getting high; Petites Coquilles has been passed and left astern, the eastern end of Las Conchas is on the after-larboard-quarter, the briny waters of Lake Borgne flash far and wide their dazzling white and blue, and, as the little boat issues from the deep channel of the Rigolets, the white-armed waves catch her and toss her like a merry babe. A triumph for the helmsman--he it is who sighs, at intervals of tiresome frequency, for his wife. He had, from the very starting-place in the upper waters of Bayou Sauvage, declared in favor of the Rigolets as--wind and tide considered--the most practicable of all the passes. Now that they were out, he forgot for a moment the self-amusing plaint of conjugal separation to flaunt his triumph. Would any one hereafter dispute with him on the subject of Louisiana sea-coast navigation? He knew every pass and piece of water like A, B, C, and could tell, faster, much faster than he could repeat the multiplication table (upon which he was a little slow and doubtful), the amount of water in each at ebb tide--Pass Jean or Petit Pass, Unknown Pass, Petit Rigolet, Chef Menteur,--
Out on the far southern horizon, in the Gulf--the Gulf of Mexico--there appears a speck of white. It is known to those on board thePique-en-terre, the moment it is descried, as the canvas of a large schooner. The opinion, first expressed by the youthful husband, who still reclines with the tiller held firmly under his arm, and then by another member of the company who sits on the centreboard-well, is unanimously adopted, that she is making for the Rigolets, will pass Petites Coquilles by eleven o'clock, and will tie up at the little port of St. Jean, on the bayou of the same name, before sundown, if the wind holds anywise as it is.
On the other hand, the master of the distant schooner shuts his glass, and says to the single passenger whom he has aboard that the little sail just visible toward the Rigolets is a sloop with a half-deck, well filled with men, in all probability a pleasure party bound to the Chandeleurs on a fishing and gunning excursion, and passes into comments on the superior skill of landsmen over seamen in the handling of small sailing craft.
By and by the two vessels near each other. They approach within hailing distance, and are announcing each to each their identity, when the young man at the tiller jerks himself to a squatting posture, and, from under a broad-brimmed and slouched straw hat, cries to the schooner's one passenger:
"Hello, Challie Keene."
And the passenger more quietly answers back:
"Hello, Raoul, is that you?"
M. Innerarity replied, with a profane parenthesis, that it was he.
"You kin hask Sylvestre!" he concluded.
The doctor's eye passed around a semicircle of some eight men, the most of whom were quite young, but one or two of whom were gray, sitting with their arms thrown out upon the wash-board, in the dark négligé of amateur fishermen and with that exultant look of expectant deviltry in their handsome faces which characterizes the Creole with his collar off.
The mettlesome little doctor felt the odds against him in the exchange of greetings.
"Ola, Dawctah!"
"Hé, Doctah,que-ce qui t'après fé?"
"Ho, ho, compère Noyo!"
"Comment va, Docta?"
A light peppering of profanity accompanied each salute.
The doctor put on defensively a smile of superiority to the juniors and of courtesy to the others, and responsively spoke their names:
"'Polyte--Sylvestre--Achille--Émile--ah! Agamemnon."
The Doctor and Agamemnon raised their hats.
As Agamemnon was about to speak, a general expostulatory outcry drowned his voice. ThePique-en-terrewas going about close abreast of the schooner, and angry questions and orders were flying at Raoul's head like a volley of eggs.
"Messieurs," said Raoul, partially rising but still stooping over the tiller, and taking his hat off his bright curls with mock courtesy, "I am going back to New Orleans. I would not givethatfor all the fish in the sea; I want to see my wife. I am going back to New Orleans to see my wife--and to congratulate the city upon your absence." Incredulity, expostulation, reproach, taunt, malediction--he smiled unmoved upon them all.
"Messieurs, Imustgo and see my wife."
Amid redoubled outcries he gave the helm to Camille Brahmin, and fighting his way with his pretty feet against half-real efforts to throw him overboard, clambered forward to the mast, whence a moment later, with the help of the schooner-master's hand, he reached the deck of the larger vessel. ThePique-en-terreturned, and with a little flutter spread her smooth wing and skimmed away.
"Doctah Keene, look yeh!" M. Innerarity held up a hand whose third finger wore the conventional ring of the Creole bridegroom. "W'at you got to say to dat?"
The little doctor felt a faintness run through his veins, and a thrill of anger follow it. The poor man could not imagine a love affair that did not include Clotilde Nancanou.
"Whom have you married?"
"De pritties' gal in de citty."
The questioner controlled himself.
"M-hum," he responded, with a contraction of the eyes.
Raoul waited an instant for some kindlier comment, and finding the hope vain, suddenly assumed a look of delighted admiration.
"Hi, yi, yi! Doctah, 'ow you har lookingue fine."
The true look of the doctor was that he had not much longer to live. A smile of bitter humor passed over his face, and he looked for a near seat, saying:
"How's Frowenfeld?"
Raoul struck an ecstatic attitude and stretched forth his hand as if the doctor could not fail to grasp it. The invalid's heart sank like lead.
"Frowenfeld has got her," he thought.
"Well?" said he with a frown of impatience and restraint; and Raoul cried:
"I sole my pigshoe!"
The doctor could not help but laugh.
"Shades of the masters!"
"No; 'Louizyanna rif-using to hantre de h-Union.'"
The doctor stood corrected.
The two walked across the deck, following the shadow of the swinging sail. The doctor lay down in a low-swung hammock, and Raoul sat upon the deckà la Turque.
"Come, come, Raoul, tell me, what is the news?"
"News? Oh, I donno. You 'eard concernin' the dool?"
"You don't mean to say--"
"Yesseh!"
"Agricola and Sylvestre?"
"W'at de dev'! No! Burr an' 'Ammiltong; in Noo-Juzzy-las-June. Collonnel Burr, 'e--"
"Oh, fudge! yes. How is Frowenfeld?"
"'E's well. Guess 'ow much I sole my pigshoe."
"Well, how much?"
"Two 'ondred fifty." He laid himself out at length, his elbow on the deck, his head in his hand. "I believe I'm sorry I sole 'er."
"I don't wonder. How's Honoré? Tell me what has happened. Remember, I've been away five months."
"No; I am verrie glad dat I sole 'er. What? Ha! I should think so! If it have not had been fo' dat I would not be married to-day. You think I would get married on dat sal'rie w'at Proffis-or Frowenfel' was payin' me? Twenty-five dolla' de mont'? Docta Keene, no gen'leman h-ought to git married if 'e 'ave not anny'ow fifty dolla' de mont'! If I wasn' a h-artiz I wouldn' git married; I gie you my word!"
"Yes," said the little doctor, "you are right. Now tell me the news."
"Well, dat Cong-ress gone an' make--"
"Raoul, stop. I know that Congress has divided the province into two territories; I know you Creoles think all your liberties are lost; I know the people are in a great stew because they are not allowed to elect their own officers and legislatures, and that in Opelousas and Attakapas they are as wild as their cattle about it--"
"We 'ad two big mitting' about it," interrupted Raoul; "my bro'r-in-law speak at both of them!"
"Who?"
"Chahlie Mandarin."
"Glad to hear it," said Doctor Keene,--which was the truth. "Besides that, I know Laussat has gone to Martinique; that the Américains have a newspaper, and that cotton is two-bits a pound. Now what I want to know is, how are my friends? What has Honoré done? What has Frowenfeld done? And Palmyre,--and Agricole? They hustled me away from here as if I had been caught trying to cut my throat. Tell me everything."
And Raoul sank the artist and bridegroom in the historian, and told him.