George Washington Cable

“ 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 noble, 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." ”

“ Whatever charms belong to the rural life of the Louisiana Delta were at their amplest on every side. Groves of live-oak, pecan, magnolia, and orange about large motherly dwellings of the Creole colonial type moved Aline to turn the conversation upon country life in Chester's State, and constrain him to tell of his own past and kindred. So time and the river's great windings slipped by with the De l'Isles undisappointed, and early in the afternoon the company lunched in the two cars, under a homestead grove. ”

“ King Christian had lately proclaimed a gradual emancipation of all slaves in his West Indian colonies. A squad of soldiers had marched through the streets, halting at corners and beating a drum--"beating the protocol," as it was termed--and reading the royal edict. After twelve years all slaves were to go free; their owners were to be paid for them; and meantime every infant of a slave was to be free at birth.
I suppose no one knows better than the practical statesman how disastrous measures are apt to be when designed for the gradual righting of a public evil. ”

“ Chester turned sharply again to the shelves and stood rigid. From an inner room, its glass door opened by Ovide's silver-spectacled wife, came the little black cupid and his charge. Ah, once more what perfection in how many points! As she returned to Ovide an old magazine, at last he heard her voice--singularly deep and serene. She thanked the bookman for his loan and, with the child, went out.
It disturbed the Southern youth to unbosom himself to a black man, but he saw no decent alternative: "Landry, I had not the faintest idea that that young lady was nearer than Castanado's shop!" ”

“ We'll trade in slaves.'"
Chester laughed. "I begin to see," he said, and by a sidelong glance bade Aline note the rapt attention of Cupid. Her answering smile was so confidential that his heart leaped.
"I'll tell you by and by about that also," she murmured, and then resumed: "While grandpère was yet a boy his father had begun that, that slave-buying. On that auction-block he would often see a slave about to be sold much below value, or whose value might easily be increased by training to some trade. You see?--blacksmith, lady's maid, cook, hair-dresser, engine-driver, butler?" ”

“ No one was so unlucky. "But!" cried Mme. Alexandre, "why not to my parlor?" "Because!" said Mme. Castanado, to Chester's vivid enlightenment, "every week-day, all day, you have mademoiselle with you." ”

“ The elect they informed under the voice, as one might betray a bird's nest. It was but a step from the crumbling Hotel St. Louis, and but another or so from the spires of St. Louis Cathedral.
In it, at a round table, the joy-riders had passed the evening of their holiday. As the cathedral clock struck nine they rose to part. At the board Chester had sat next the same joy-mate allowed him all day in the car. But with how reduced a share of her attention! Half of his own he had had to give, at his other elbow, to her aunt Yvonne; half of Aline's had gone to Dubroca. ”

“ Chester, have you gone in partnership with Mr. Castanado--'Masques et Costumes'? Or would it not be maybe better honor to me--and yourself--to speak----"
"Straight out? Yes, of course. Aline, I've been racking my brain--I still am--and my heart--to divine what it is that separates us. I had come to believe you loved me. I can't quite stifle the conviction yet. I believe that in refusing me you're consciously refusing that which seems to you yourself a worthy source of supreme happiness if it did not threaten the happiness of others dearer than your own."
"Of my aunts, you think?" ”

“ At close of the next day, a Sabbath, my uncle and aunt called all their servants around the front steps of the house and with tears more bitter than any of Sidney's or mine, told them that by the folly of others, far away, they had lost their whole fortune at one stroke and must part with everything, and with them, by sale. Their dark hearers wept with them, and Silas, Hester, and Sidney, after the rest had gone back to the quarters, offered the master and mistress, through many a quaintly misquoted scripture, the consolations of faith. ”

“ We were at the foot of some veranda steps that faced the north, and as she and Mingo were about to settle down at my feet I said if they would follow me to the top of the flight I would tell this marvel: what the learned believed those eternal lamps to be; why some were out of view three-fourths of the night, others only half, others not a quarter; how a very few never sank out of sight at all except for daylight or clouds, and yet went round and round with all the others; and why I called those the clock of heaven ”

“ 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 institution!" 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. ”

“ Whether for each man or for the nations, the stormy life is but the means; the active-quiet life, without decay of character in man or nation but with growth forever--that is the end.
The pair exchanged a look. "Thank you," murmured Chester, and presently added: "So you were left with your two aunts. Then what?"
"I'll tell you. But"---the Creole accent faded out--"we must not disappoint the De l'Isles, nor those others, we must----"
"I see; we must notice where we're going and give and take our share of the joy." ”

“ The next morning broke silently, and with the rising of the sun the plantation bell or the conch called the bondman and bondwoman into the cane-fields. Then, alike in broadest noon or deepest night, a spectral fear hovered wherever the master sat among his loved ones or rode from place to place. Not often did the hand of oppression fall upon any slave with illegal violence, or he or she turn to slaughter or poison the oppressor ”

“ Presently we issued from the woods, at the edge of wide fields surrounding a plantation-house and slave-quarters, and I hoped to find the trail broken again; but without a pause the chase turned along a line of fence as if to half encircle the plantation. The master of the hounds, in nervy yet placid words, explained that a runaway knew better than to cross open ground by night and set the house-dogs a-barking. ”

“ Oh, how superior to the ordinary American slap-dash of the matrimonial lottery! They felt that they themselves had taken the American way too much for granted. Maybe that was where they were unlike Mlle. Aline. But she was not there, to perceive these things, nor her aunts, to be seen and estimated. The evening's outcome could be but inconclusive, but it was a happy beginning.
Its most significant part was a brief talk following the mention of the Castanado soldier-boy's engagement. ”

“ 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. Thorndyke-Smith. So let it be! ”

“ Jack dashed in from the gate: "Oh, Miss Marcia, go look! dem a-comin'! Gin'ral Buddoe at dem head on he w'ite hoss."
We ran to the jalousies. In the street, coming southward toward the fort, were full two thousand blacks. They walked and ran, the women with their skirts tied up in fighting trim, and all armed with hatchets, hoes, cutlasses, and sugar-cane bills. The bills were fitted on stout pole handles, and all their weapons had been ground and polished until they glittered horridly in their black hands and above the gaudy Madras turbans or bare woolly heads and bloodshot eyes. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Meanwhile, with what patience doth God wait for man to learn his lessons! The Holy Cross still glitters on the bosom of its crystal sea, as it shone before the Carib danced on its snowy sands, and as it will still shine when some new Columbus, as yet unborn, brings to it the Christianity of a purer day than ours.
Chester shook the pages together on his knee.
"Oh-h-h!" cried Mlle. Corinne to Yvonne, to Aline, to Mlle. Castanado, "the en'! and--where is all that abbout that beautiful cat what was the proprity of Dora? Everything abbout that cat of Dora--scratch out! Ah, Mr. Chezter! ”

“ Though to Chester New Orleans was still new, and though fat law-books and a slim purse kept him much to himself, he was aware that, while some Creoles grew rich, many of them, women, once rich, were being driven even to stand behind counters. ”

“ As we neared the house I was told more of the father and mother; their sweet content, their piety, their diligence. "If we lived in town, where there's better chance to pick up small earnings," remarked uncle, "those two and Sidney would have bought their freedom by now, and Mingo's too. Silas has got nearly enough to buy his own, as it is."
Silas, my aunt explained, was a carpenter. "He hands your uncle so much a week; all he can make beyond that he's allowed to keep." ”

“ From Réné Ducatel, in his antique-shop, whose folks 'tis mostly about?"
"Yes. An antique himself, in spirit, eh? Yet modern enough to praise you highly."
"H'mm! but only for the virtues of a slave."
Chester smiled round from the shelves: "I noticed that! I'm afraid we white folks, the world over, are prone to do that--with you-all."
"Yes, when you speak of us at all."
"Ducatel's opposite neighbor," Chester remarked, "is an antique even more interesting."
"Ah, yes! Castanado is antique only in that art spirit which the tourist trade is every day killing even in Royal Street." ”

“ XLII MÉLANIE
"I suppose," Chester said, breaking another silence, "you and that mother, and your father, have sat in the flowery sunshine of this old plaza together----"
"A thousan' time'," the ironworker replied, mused a bit, and added: "My frien', you are a so patient listener as I never see. Biccause I know you are all that time waiting for a differen' story. And now--I shall tell you that?"
"Yes, however it hits me I've got to know it."
"Well, after that, a year and half, I am born. I grow up. I 'ave brother' and sizter'. ”