"There are better stories for a little deeper search," Chester said.
"Ah, she said that too! "And not," she said, "because the _vieux carre_ is unlike, but so like the rest of the world.""
Thus they spoke, happily--even a bit recklessly--conscious that they were themselves a beautiful story without the flash of a sword or the cloud of a misdeed in range of their sight, and not because the _vieux carre_ was unlike, but so like the rest of the world.
"Where are we going?" Aline inquired, and tried to look forward around Mme. Castanado.
"You and I," Chester said, "are going back to your father"s story. You said, the other day, his life was quiet, richer within than without."
"Yes. Ah, yes; so that while of the inside I cannot tell half, of the outside there is almost nothing to tell."
"All the same, tell it. Were not he and these Royal Street men boys together?"
"Yes, though with M. De l"Isle the oldest, and though papa was away from them many years, over there in France. Yes, they were all his friends, as their fathers had been of _grandpere_. And they"ll all tell you the same thing; that he was their hero, while at the same time that his story is dest.i.tute of the theatrical. Just he himself, he and mamma--they are the whole story."
"A sea without a wave?"
"Ah, no; yet without a storm. And, Mr. Chester, I think a sea without a storm can be just as deep as with, h"m?"
x.x.xVII
"Well, they married, your father and mother, over there where her people are fighting the Germans right now, and came and lived in Bourbon Street with your aunts, eh?"
"Yes, or rather my aunts with them, they were of so much more strong natures than my aunts--more strong and large while just as sweet, and that"s saying much, you know."
"I see it is."
"Mr. Chester, what you see, I think, is that my aunts are perhaps the two most--well--unworldly women you ever knew."
"True. In that quality they"re childlike."
"Yes, and because they are so childlike in--above all--the freedom of their speech, what I want to say of them, just this one time, is the more to their honor: that in my _whole_ life I"ve never heard them speak one word against anybody."
"Not even Cupid?"
"Ah-h-h! that"s a cruel joke, and false! That true Cupid, he"s an a.s.sa.s.sin; while that child, he"s faultless?"
The speaker really said "fauklezz," and it was a joy to Chester to hear her at last fall unwittingly into a Creole accent. "Well, anyhow," he led on, "the four lived together; and if I guess right your mother became, to all this joy-ride company, as much their heroine as your father was their hero."
""Tis true!"
"But your father"s coming back from France--it couldn"t save the business?"
"Alas, no! Even together, he and mamma--and you know what a strong businezz partner a French wife can be--they could not save it. Both of them were, I think, more artist than merchant, and when all that kind of businezz began to be divorce" from art and married to machinery"--the narrator made a sad gesture.
"_Kultur_ against culture, was it? and your father not the sort to change masters."
"True again. But tha"z not all; hardly was it half. One thing beside was the miz-conduct of an agent, the man who lately"--a silent smile.
"What?--sold your aunts that ma.n.u.script?"
"Yes. But he didn" count the most. Oh, the whole businezz, except papa"s, became, as we say--give me the word!"
"Americanized?"
"No, papa he always refused to call it that. Mr. Chester, he used to say that those two marvellouz blessings, machinery, democracy, they are in one thing too much alike; they are, at first--say it, you."
"Vulgarizing?"
"Yes. I suppose that has to be--at the first, h"m? And with the buying world every day more and more in love with machine work--and seeming itself to become machine work, while at the same time Americanized, papa was like a river town"--another gesture--"left by the river!"
"Yet he never went into bankruptcy? You can point with pride to that, mademoiselle."
"Ah, Mr. Chester, pride! Once I pointed, and papa--"My daughter, there are many ways to go bankrupt worse than in money, and to have gone bankrupt in none of them--" there he stopped; he was too n.o.ble for pride. No, the businezz, juz" year after year it starved to death. In the early days _grandpere_ had two big stores, back to back; whole-sale, Chartres Street; retail, Royal, where now all that is left of it is the shop of Mme. Alexandre. Both her husband and she were with papa in the retail store, until it diminish" that he couldn" keep them, and--in the time of President Roosevelt--some New York men they bought him out. Because a new head of the custom-house, old Creole friend of papa, without solicitation except maybe of M. Beloiseau and those, appointed him superintendent of customs warehouses, you know?
where they keep all kind of imported goods, so they needn"t pay the tariff till they take them out to sell them in the store? h"m?"
"Yes. And he kept that place--how long?"
"Always, till he pa.s.sed, he and mamma; mamma first, he two years avter.
Ad the last he said to me--we chanced to be talking in Englizh--"I"ve lived the quiet life. If I must go I can go quietly."
""And still," I said, "if your life had been as stormy as _grandpere"s_ you"d have been always for the right, and ad the last content, I think."
""Yes," he said, "I believe I never ran away from a storm, while ad the same time I never ran avter one." And then he said something I wrote down the same night in the fear I might sometime partly forget it."
"Have you it with you, now, here?" She showed a bit of paper, holding it low for him to read as she retained it:
On the side of the right all the storms of life--all the storms of the world--are for the perfection of the quiet life--the active-quiet life--to build it stronger, wider, finer, higher, than is possible for the stormy life to be. 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."
"We mustn"t be as if reading the morning paper, h"m? I think "tis for you they"ve come this way instead of going on those smooth sh.e.l.l-roads between the city and the lake."
The two cars had come up through old "Carrollton," where the Mississippi, sweeping down from Nine-Mile Point, had been gnawing inland for something like a century, in spite of all man"s engineering could pile against it, and now were out on the levee road and half round the bend above.
To press her policy, "See!" exclaimed Aline, as a light swell of the ground brought to view a dazzling sweep of the river, close beyond the levee"s crown and almost on a level with the eye. They were in a region of wide, highly kept sugar-plantations. 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. Its master and mistress, old friends of all but Chester, came running, followed by maids with gifts of milk and honey. They climbed in among the company; shared, lightly, their bread and wine; heard with momentary interest the latest news of the great war; spoke English and French in alternating clauses; inquired after the coterie"s four young heroes at the French front, but only by stealth and out of Aline"s hearing; and cried to Cupid, ""Ello, "Ector! _comment ca va-t-il_?
And "ow she is, yonder at "ome, that Marie Madeleine?"
Cupid smiled to his ears, but it was the absentee"s two mistresses who answered for her, volubly, tenderly: "We was going to bring her, but juz" at the lazt she discide" she di"n" want to come. You know, tha"z beautiful, sometime", her capriciouznezz!"