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The Goodness of St. Rocque and Other Stories by Alice Dunbar
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The Goodness of St. Rocque and Other Stories
by Alice Dunbar
October, 1996 [Etext #689]
The Goodness of St. Rocque and Other Stories by Alice Dunbar
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Note: I have closed contractions, e.g. "was n't" has become
"wasn't"
I have also made the following changes to the text:
PAGE LINE ORIGINAL CHANGED TO
43 13 accordeon accordion
56 22 work But work. But
78 14 chere chere
122 12 "Bravo! "Bravo!"
170 17 tumultously tumultuously
216 5 be,' be,"
THE GOODNESS OF ST. ROCQUE AND OTHER STORIES
By ALICE DUNBAR
To
My best Comrade
My Husband
CONTENTS
THE GOODNESS OF SAINT ROCQUE
TONY'S WIFE
THE FISHERMAN OF PASS CHRISTIAN
M'SIEU FORTIER'S VIOLIN
BY THE BAYOU ST. JOHN
WHEN THE BAYOU OVERFLOWS
MR. BAPTISTE
A CARNIVAL JANGLE
LITTLE MISS SOPHIE
SISTER JOSEPHA
THE PRALINE WOMAN
ODALIE
LA JUANITA
TITEE
THE GOODNESS OF SAINT ROCQUE
Manuela was tall and slender and graceful, and once you knew her
the lithe form could never be mistaken. She walked with the easy
spring that comes from a perfectly arched foot. To-day she swept
swiftly down Marais Street, casting a quick glance here and there
from under her heavy veil as if she feared she was being
followed. If you had peered under the veil, you would have seen
that Manuela's dark eyes were swollen and discoloured about the
lids, as though they had known a sleepless, tearful night.
There had been a picnic the day before, and as merry a crowd of
giddy, chattering Creole girls and boys as ever you could see
boarded the ramshackle dummy-train that puffed its way wheezily
out wide Elysian Fields Street, around the lily-covered bayous,
to Milneburg-on-the-Lake. Now, a picnic at Milneburg is a thing
to be remembered for ever. One charters a rickety-looking,
weather-beaten dancing-pavilion, built over the water, and after
storing the children--for your true Creole never leaves the small
folks at home--and the baskets and mothers downstairs, the young
folks go up-stairs and dance to the tune of the best band you
ever heard. For what can equal the music of a violin, a guitar,
a cornet, and a bass viol to trip the quadrille to at a
picnic?
Then one can fish in the lake and go bathing under the prim
bath-houses, so severely separated sexually, and go rowing on the
lake in a trim boat, followed by the shrill warnings of anxious
mamans. And in the evening one comes home, hat crowned with cool
gray Spanish moss, hands burdened with fantastic latanier baskets
woven by the brown bayou boys, hand in hand with your dearest
one, tired but happy.
At this particular picnic, however, there had been bitterness of
spirit. Theophile was Manuela's own especial property, and
Theophile had proven false. He had not danced a single waltz or
quadrille with Manuela, but had deserted her for Claralie, blonde
and petite. It was Claralie whom Theophile had rowed out on the
lake; it was Claralie whom Theophile had gallantly led to dinner;
it was Claralie's hat that he wreathed with Spanish moss, and
Claralie whom he escorted home after the jolly singing ride in
town on the little dummy-train.
Not that Manuela lacked partners or admirers. Dear no! she was
too graceful and beautiful for that. There had been more than
enough for her. But Manuela loved Theophile, you see, and no one
could take his place. Still, she had tossed her head and let her
silvery laughter ring out in the dance, as though she were the
happiest of mortals, and had tripped home with Henri, leaning on
his arm, and looking up into his eyes as though she adored him.
This morning she showed the traces of a sleepless night and an
aching heart as she walked down Marais Street. Across wide St.
Rocque Avenue she hastened. "Two blocks to the river and one
below--" she repeated to herself breathlessly. Then she stood on
the corner gazing about her, until with a final summoning of a
desperate courage she dived through a small wicket gate into a
garden of weed-choked flowers.
There was a hoarse, rusty little bell on the gate that gave
querulous tongue as she pushed it open. The house that sat back
in the yard was little and old and weather-beaten. Its one-story
frame had once been painted, but that was a memory remote and
traditional. A straggling morning-glory strove to conceal its
time-ravaged face. The little walk of broken bits of brick was
reddened carefully, and the one little step was scrupulously
yellow-washed, which denoted that the occupants were cleanly as
well as religious.
Manuela's timid knock was answered by a harsh "Entrez."
It was a small sombre room within, with a bare yellow-washed
floor and ragged curtains at the little window. In a corner was
a diminutive altar draped with threadbare lace. The red glow of
the taper lighted a cheap print of St. Joseph and a brazen
crucifix. The human element in the room was furnished by a
little, wizened yellow woman, who, black-robed, turbaned, and
stern, sat before an uncertain table whereon were greasy cards.
Manuela paused, her eyes blinking at the semi-obscurity within.
The Wizened One called in croaking tones:
"An' fo' w'y you come here? Assiez-la, ma'amzelle."
Timidly Manuela sat at the table facing the owner of the voice.
"I want," she began faintly; but the Mistress of the Cards
understood: she had had much experience. The cards were shuffled
in her long grimy talons and stacked before Manuela.
"Now you cut dem in t'ree part, so--un, deux, trois, bien! You
mek' you' weesh wid all you' heart, bien! Yaas, I see, I see!"
Breathlessly did Manuela learn that her lover was true, but "dat
light gal, yaas, she mek' nouvena in St. Rocque fo' hees love."
"I give you one lil' charm, yaas," said the Wizened One when the
seance was over, and Manuela, all white and nervous, leaned back
in the rickety chair. "I give you one lil' charm fo' to ween him
back, yaas. You wear h'it 'roun' you' wais', an' he come back.
Den you mek prayer at St. Rocque an' burn can'le. Den you come
back an' tell me, yaas. Cinquante sous, ma'amzelle. Merci.
Good luck go wid you."
Readjusting her veil, Manuela passed out the little wicket gate,
treading on air. Again the sun shone, and the breath of the
swamps came as healthful sea-breeze unto her nostrils. She
fairly flew in the direction of St. Rocque.
There were quite a number of persons entering the white gates of
the cemetery, for this was Friday, when all those who wish good
luck pray to the saint, and wash their steps promptly at twelve
o'clock with a wondrous mixture to guard the house. Manuela
bought a candle from the keeper of the little lodge at the
entrance, and pausing one instant by the great sun-dial to see if
the heavens and the hour were propitious, glided into the tiny
chapel, dim and stifling with heavy air from myriad wish-candles
blazing on the wide table before the altar-rail. She said her
prayer and lighting her candle placed it with the others.
Mon Dieu! how brightly the sun seemed to shine now, she thought,
pausing at the door on her way out. Her small finger-tips, still
bedewed with holy water, rested caressingly on a gamin's head.
The ivy which enfolds the quaint chapel never seemed so green;
the shrines which serve as the Way of the Cross never seemed so
artistic; the baby graves, even, seemed cheerful.
Theophile called Sunday. Manuela's heart leaped. He had been
spending his Sundays with Claralie. His stay was short and he
was plainly bored. But Manuela knelt to thank the good St.
Rocque that night, and fondled the charm about her slim waist.
There came a box of bonbons during the week, with a decorative
card all roses and fringe, from Theophile; but being a Creole,
and therefore superstitiously careful, and having been reared by
a wise and experienced maman to mistrust the gifts of a recreant
lover, Manuela quietly thrust bonbons, box, and card into the
kitchen fire, and the Friday following placed the second candle
of her nouvena in St. Rocque.
Those of Manuela's friends who had watched with indignation
Theophile gallantly leading Claralie home from High Mass on
Sundays, gasped with astonishment when the next Sunday, with his
usual bow, the young man offered Manuela his arm as the
worshippers filed out in step to the organ's march. Claralie
tossed her head as she crossed herself with holy water, and the
pink in her cheeks was brighter than usual.
Manuela smiled a bright good-morning when she met Claralie in St.
Rocque the next Friday. The little blonde blushed furiously, and
Manuela rushed post-haste to the Wizened One to confer upon this
new issue.
"H'it ees good," said the dame, shaking her turbaned head. "She
ees 'fraid, she will work, mais you' charm, h'it weel beat her."
And Manuela departed with radiant eyes.
Theophile was not at Mass Sunday morning, and murderous glances
flashed from Claralie to Manuela before the tinkling of the
Host-Bell. Nor did Theophile call at either house. Two hearts
beat furiously at the sound of every passing footstep, and two
minds wondered if the other were enjoying the beloved one's
smiles. Two pair of eyes, however, blue and black, smiled on
others, and their owners laughed and seemed none the less happy.
For your Creole girls are proud, and would die rather than let
the world see their sorrows.
Monday evening Theophile, the missing, showed his rather sheepish
countenance in Manuela's parlour, and explained that he, with
some chosen spirits, had gone for a trip--"over the Lake."
"I did not ask you where you were yesterday," replied the girl,
saucily.
Theophile shrugged his shoulders and changed the conversation.
The next week there was a birthday fete in honour of Louise,
Theophile's young sister. Everyone was bidden, and no one
thought of refusing, for Louise was young, and this would be her
first party. So, though the night was hot, the dancing went on
as merrily as light young feet could make it go. Claralie
fluffed her dainty white skirts, and cast mischievous sparkles in
the direction of Theophile, who with the maman and Louise was
bravely trying not to look self-conscious. Manuela, tall and
calm and proud-looking, in a cool, pale yellow gown was
apparently enjoying herself without paying the slightest
attention to her young host.
"Have I the pleasure of this dance?" he asked her finally, in a
lull of the music.
She bowed assent, and as if moved by a common impulse they
strolled out of the dancing-room into the cool, quaint garden,
where jessamines gave out an overpowering perfume, and a caged
mocking-bird complained melodiously to the full moon in the sky.
It must have been an engrossing tete-a-tete, for the call to
supper had sounded twice before they heard and hurried into the
house. The march had formed with Louise radiantly leading on the
arm of papa. Claralie tripped by with Leon. Of course, nothing
remained for Theophile and Manuela to do but to bring up the
rear, for which they received much good-natured chaffing.
But when the party reached the dining-room, Theophile proudly led
his partner to the head of the table, at the right hand of maman,
and smiled benignly about at the delighted assemblage. Now you
know, when a Creole young man places a girl at his mother's right
hand at his own table, there is but one conclusion to be deduced
therefrom.
If you had asked Manuela, after the wedding was over, how it
happened, she would have said nothing, but looked wise.
If you had asked Claralie, she would have laughed and said she
always preferred Leon.
If you had asked Theophile, he would have wondered that you
thought he had ever meant more than to tease Manuela.
If you had asked the Wizened One, she would have offered you a
charm.
But St. Rocque knows, for he is a good saint, and if you believe
in him and are true and good, and make your nouvenas with a clean
heart, he will grant your wish.
TONY'S WIFE
"Gimme fi' cents worth o' candy, please." It was the little Jew
girl who spoke, and Tony's wife roused herself from her knitting
to rise and count out the multi-hued candy which should go in
exchange for the dingy nickel grasped in warm, damp fingers.
Three long sticks, carefully wrapped in crispest brown paper, and
a half dozen or more of pink candy fish for lagniappe, and the
little Jew girl sped away in blissful contentment. Tony's wife
resumed her knitting with a stifled sigh until the next customer
should come.
A low growl caused her to look up apprehensively. Tony himself
stood beetle-browed and huge in the small doorway.
"Get up from there," he muttered, "and open two dozen oysters
right away; the Eliots want 'em." His English was unaccented.
It was long since he had seen Italy.
She moved meekly behind the counter, and began work on the thick
shells. Tony stretched his long neck up the street.
"Mr. Tony, mama wants some charcoal." The very small voice at
his feet must have pleased him, for his black brows relaxed into
a smile, and he poked the little one's chin with a hard, dirty
finger, as he emptied the ridiculously small bucket of charcoal
into the child's bucket, and gave a banana for lagniappe.
The crackling of shells went on behind, and a stifled sob arose
as a bit of sharp edge cut into the thin, worn fingers that
clasped the knife.
"Hurry up there, will you?" growled the black brows; "the Eliots
are sending for the oysters."
She deftly strained and counted them, and, after wiping her
fingers, resumed her seat, and took up the endless crochet work,
with her usual stifled sigh.
Tony and his wife had always been in this same little queer old
shop on Prytania Street, at least to the memory of the oldest
inhabitant in the neighbourhood. When or how they came, or how
they stayed, no one knew; it was enough that they were there,
like a sort of ancestral fixture to the street. The
neighbourhood was fine enough to look down upon these two
tumble-down shops at the corner, kept by Tony and Mrs. Murphy,
the grocer. It was a semi-fashionable locality, far up-town,
away from the old-time French quarter. It was the sort of
neighbourhood where millionaires live before their fortunes are
made and fashionable, high-priced private schools flourish, where
the small cottages are occupied by aspiring school-teachers and
choir-singers. Such was this locality, and you must admit that
it was indeed a condescension to tolerate Tony and Mrs. Murphy.
He was a great, black-bearded, hoarse-voiced, six-foot specimen
of Italian humanity, who looked in his little shop and on the
prosaic pavement of Prytania Street somewhat as Hercules might
seem in a modern drawing-room. You instinctively thought of wild
mountain-passes, and the gleaming dirks of bandit contadini in
looking at him. What his last name was, no one knew. Someone
had maintained once that he had been christened Antonio
Malatesta, but that was unauthentic, and as little to be believed
as that other wild theory that her name was Mary.
She was meek, pale, little, ugly, and German. Altogether part of
his arms and legs would have very decently made another larger
than she. Her hair was pale and drawn in sleek, thin tightness
away from a pinched, pitiful face, whose dull cold eyes hurt you,
because you knew they were trying to mirror sorrow, and could not
because of their expressionless quality. No matter what the
weather or what her other toilet, she always wore a thin little
shawl of dingy brick-dust hue about her shoulders. No matter
what the occasion or what the day, she always carried her
knitting with her, and seldom ceased the incessant twist, twist
of the shining steel among the white cotton meshes. She might
put down the needles and lace into the spool-box long enough to
open oysters, or wrap up fruit and candy, or count out wood and
coal into infinitesimal portions, or do her housework; but the
knitting was snatched with avidity at the first spare moment, and
the worn, white, blue-marked fingers, half enclosed in kid-glove
stalls for protection, would writhe and twist in and out again.
Little girls just learning to crochet borrowed their patterns
from Tony's wife, and it was considered quite a mark of
advancement to have her inspect a bit of lace done by eager,
chubby fingers. The ladies in larger houses, whose husbands
would be millionaires some day, bought her lace, and gave it to
their servants for Christmas presents.
As for Tony, when she was slow in opening his oysters or in
cooking his red beans and spaghetti, he roared at her, and
prefixed picturesque adjectives to her lace, which made her hide
it under her apron with a fearsome look in her dull eyes.
He hated her in a lusty, roaring fashion, as a healthy beefy boy
hates a sick cat and torments it to madness. When she displeased
him, he beat her, and knocked her frail form on the floor. The
children could tell when this had happened. Her eyes would be
red, and there would be blue marks on her face and neck. "Poor
Mrs. Tony," they would say, and nestle close to her. Tony did
not roar at her for petting them, perhaps, because they spent
money on the multi-hued candy in glass jars on the shelves.
Her mother appeared upon the scene once, and stayed a short time;
but Tony got drunk one day and beat her because she ate too much,
and she disappeared soon after. Whence she came and where she
departed, no one could tell, not even Mrs. Murphy, the Pauline
Pry and Gazette of the block.
Tony had gout, and suffered for many days in roaring
helplessness, the while his foot, bound and swathed in many folds
of red flannel, lay on the chair before him. In proportion as
his gout increased and he bawled from pure physical discomfort,
she became light-hearted, and moved about the shop with real,
brisk cheeriness. He could not hit her then without such pain
that after one or two trials he gave up in disgust.
So the dull years had passed, and life had gone on pretty much
the same for Tony and the German wife and the shop. The children
came on Sunday evenings to buy the stick candy, and on week-days
for coal and wood. The servants came to buy oysters for the
larger houses, and to gossip over the counter about their
employers. The little dry woman knitted, and the big man moved
lazily in and out in his red flannel shirt, exchanged politics
with the tailor next door through the window, or lounged into
Mrs. Murphy's bar and drank fiercely. Some of the children grew
up and moved away, and other little girls came to buy candy and
eat pink lagniappe fishes, and the shop still thrived.
One day Tony was ill, more than the mummied foot of gout, or the
wheeze of asthma; he must keep his bed and send for the doctor.
She clutched his arm when he came, and pulled him into the tiny
room.
"Is it--is it anything much, doctor?" she gasped.
AEsculapius shook his head as wisely as the occasion would
permit. She followed him out of the room into the shop.
"Do you--will he get well, doctor?"
AEsculapius buttoned up his frock coat, smoothed his shining hat,
cleared his throat, then replied oracularly,
"Madam, he is completely burned out inside. Empty as a shell,
madam, empty as a shell. He cannot live, for he has nothing to
live on."
As the cobblestones rattled under the doctor's equipage rolling
leisurely up Prytania Street, Tony's wife sat in her chair and
laughed,--laughed with a hearty joyousness that lifted the film
from the dull eyes and disclosed a sparkle beneath.
The drear days went by, and Tony lay like a veritable Samson
shorn of his strength, for his voice was sunken to a hoarse,
sibilant whisper, and his black eyes gazed fiercely from the
shock of hair and beard about a white face. Life went on pretty
much as before in the shop; the children paused to ask how Mr.
Tony was, and even hushed the jingles on their bell hoops as they
passed the door. Red-headed Jimmie, Mrs. Murphy's nephew, did
the hard jobs, such as splitting wood and lifting coal from the
bin; and in the intervals between tending the fallen giant and
waiting on the customers, Tony's wife sat in her accustomed
chair, knitting fiercely, with an inscrutable smile about her
purple compressed mouth.
Then John came, introducing himself, serpent-wise, into the Eden
of her bosom.
John was Tony's brother, huge and bluff too, but fair and blond,
with the beauty of Northern Italy. With the same lack of race
pride which Tony had displayed in selecting his German spouse,
John had taken unto himself Betty, a daughter of Erin,
aggressive, powerful, and cross-eyed. He turned up now, having
heard of this illness, and assumed an air of remarkable authority
at once.
A hunted look stole into the dull eyes, and after John had
departed with blustering directions as to Tony's welfare, she
crept to his bedside timidly.
"Tony," she said,--"Tony, you are very sick."
An inarticulate growl was the only response.
"Tony, you ought to see the priest; you mustn't go any longer
without taking the sacrament."
The growl deepened into words.
"Don't want any priest; you 're always after some snivelling old
woman's fuss. You and Mrs. Murphy go on with your church; it
won't make YOU any better."
She shivered under this parting shot, and crept back into the
shop. Still the priest came next day.
She followed him in to the bedside and knelt timidly.
"Tony," she whispered, "here's Father Leblanc."
Tony was too languid to curse out loud; he only expressed his
hate in a toss of the black beard and shaggy mane.
"Tony," she said nervously, "won't you do it now? It won't take
long, and it will be better for you when you go--Oh, Tony,
don't--don't laugh. Please, Tony, here's the priest."
But the Titan roared aloud: "No; get out. Think I'm a-going to
give you a chance to grab my money now? Let me die and go to hell
in peace."
Father Leblanc knelt meekly and prayed, and the woman's weak
pleadings continued,--
"Tony, I've been true and good and faithful to you. Don't die
and leave me no better than before. Tony, I do want to be a good
woman once, a real-for-true married woman. Tony, here's the
priest; say yes." And she wrung her ringless hands.
"You want my money," said Tony, slowly, "and you sha'n't have it,
not a cent; John shall have it."
Father Leblanc shrank away like a fading spectre. He came next
day and next day, only to see re-enacted the same piteous
scene,--the woman pleading to be made a wife ere death hushed
Tony's blasphemies, the man chuckling in pain-racked glee at the
prospect of her bereaved misery. Not all the prayers of Father
Leblanc nor the wailings of Mrs. Murphy could alter the
determination of the will beneath the shock of hair; he gloated
in his physical weakness at the tenacious grasp on his mentality.
"Tony," she wailed on the last day, her voice rising to a shriek
in its eagerness, "tell them I'm your wife; it'll be the same.
Only say it, Tony, before you die!"
He raised his head, and turned stiff eyes and gibbering mouth on
her; then, with one chill finger pointing at John, fell back
dully and heavily.
They buried him with many honours by the Society of Italia's
Sons. John took possession of the shop when they returned home,
and found the money hidden in the chimney corner.
As for Tony's wife, since she was not his wife after all, they
sent her forth in the world penniless, her worn fingers clutching
her bundle of clothes in nervous agitation, as though they
regretted the time lost from knitting.
THE FISHERMAN OF PASS CHRISTIAN
The swift breezes on the beach at Pass Christian meet and
conflict as though each strove for the mastery of the air. The
land-breeze blows down through the pines, resinous, fragrant,
cold, bringing breath-like memories of dim, dark woods shaded by
myriad pine-needles. The breeze from the Gulf is warm and soft
and languorous, blowing up from the south with its suggestion of
tropical warmth and passion. It is strong and masterful, and
tossed Annette's hair and whipped her skirts about her in bold
disregard for the proprieties.
Arm in arm with Philip, she was strolling slowly down the great
pier which extends from the Mexican Gulf Hotel into the waters of
the Sound. There was no moon to-night, but the sky glittered and
scintillated with myriad stars, brighter than you can ever see
farther North, and the great waves that the Gulf breeze tossed up
in restless profusion gleamed with the white fire of
phosphorescent flame. The wet sands on the beach glowed white
fire; the posts of the pier where the waves had leapt and left a
laughing kiss, the sides of the little boats and fish-cars
tugging at their ropes, alike showed white and flaming, as though
the sea and all it touched were afire.
Annette and Philip paused midway the pier to watch two fishermen
casting their nets. With heads bared to the breeze, they stood
in clear silhouette against the white background of sea.
"See how he uses his teeth," almost whispered Annette.
Drawing himself up to his full height, with one end of the huge
seine between his teeth, and the cord in his left hand, the
taller fisherman of the two paused a half instant, his right arm
extended, grasping the folds of the net. There was a swishing
rush through the air, and it settled with a sort of sob as it cut
the waters and struck a million sparkles of fire from the waves.
Then, with backs bending under the strain, the two men swung on
the cord, drawing in the net, laden with glittering restless
fish, which were unceremoniously dumped on the boards to be put
into the fish-car awaiting them.
Philip laughingly picked up a soft, gleaming jelly-fish, and
threatened to put it on Annette's neck. She screamed, ran,
slipped on the wet boards, and in another instant would have
fallen over into the water below. The tall fisherman caught her
in his arms and set her on her feet.
"Mademoiselle must be very careful," he said in the softest and
most correct French. "The tide is in and the water very rough.
It would be very difficult to swim out there to-night."
Annette murmured confused thanks, which were supplemented by
Philip's hearty tones. She was silent until they reached the
pavilion at the end of the pier. The semi-darkness was
unrelieved by lantern or light. The strong wind wafted the
strains from a couple of mandolins, a guitar, and a tenor voice
stationed in one corner to sundry engrossed couples in sundry
other corners. Philip found an untenanted nook and they
ensconced themselves therein.
"Do you know there's something mysterious about that fisherman?"
said Annette, during a lull in the wind.
"Because he did not let you go over?" inquired Philip.
"No; he spoke correctly, and with the accent that goes only with
an excellent education."
Philip shrugged his shoulders. "That's nothing remarkable. If
you stay about Pass Christian for any length of time, you'll find
more things than perfect French and courtly grace among fishermen
to surprise you. These are a wonderful people who live across
the Lake."
Annette was lolling in the hammock under the big catalpa-tree
some days later, when the gate opened, and Natalie's big
sun-bonnet appeared. Natalie herself was discovered blushing in
its dainty depths. She was only a little Creole seaside girl,
you must know, and very shy of the city demoiselles. Natalie's
patois was quite as different from Annette's French as it was
from the postmaster's English.
"Mees Annette," she began, peony-hued all over at her own
boldness, "we will have one lil' hay-ride this night, and a
fish-fry at the end. Will you come?"
Annette sprang to her feet in delight. "Will I come? Certainly.
How delightful! You are so good to ask me. What shall--what
time--" But Natalie's pink bonnet had fled precipitately down
the shaded walk. Annette laughed joyously as Philip lounged down
the gallery.
"I frightened the child away," she told him.
You've never been for a hay-ride and fish-fry on the shores of
the Mississippi Sound, have you? When the summer boarders and
the Northern visitors undertake to give one, it is a
comparatively staid affair, where due regard is had for one's
wearing apparel, and where there are servants to do the hardest
work. Then it isn't enjoyable at all. But when the natives, the
boys and girls who live there, make up their minds to have fun,
you may depend upon its being just the best kind.
This time there were twenty boys and girls, a mamma or so,
several papas, and a grizzled fisherman to restrain the ardor of
the amateurs. The cart was vast and solid, and two comfortable,
sleepy-looking mules constituted the drawing power. There were
also tin horns, some guitars, an accordion, and a quartet of much
praised voices. The hay in the bottom of the wagon was freely
mixed with pine needles, whose prickiness through your hose was
amply compensated for by its delicious fragrance.
After a triumphantly noisy passage down the beach one comes to
the stretch of heavy sand that lies between Pass Christian proper
and Henderson's Point. This is a hard pull for the mules, and
the more ambitious riders get out and walk. Then, after a final
strain through the shifting sands, bravo! the shell road is
reached, and one goes cheering through the pine-trees to
Henderson's Point.
If ever you go to Pass Christian, you must have a fish-fry at
Henderson's Point. It is the pine-thicketed, white-beached
peninsula jutting out from the land, with one side caressed by
the waters of the Sound and the other purred over by the blue
waves of the Bay of St. Louis. Here is the beginning of the
great three-mile trestle bridge to the town of Bay St. Louis, and
to-night from the beach could be seen the lights of the villas
glittering across the Bay like myriads of unsleeping eyes.
Here upon a firm stretch of white sand camped the merry-makers.
Soon a great fire of driftwood and pine cones tossed its flames
defiantly at a radiant moon in the sky, and the fishers were
casting their nets in the sea. The more daring of the girls
waded bare-legged in the water, holding pine-torches, spearing
flounders and peering for soft-shell crabs.
Annette had wandered farther in the shallow water than the rest.
Suddenly she stumbled against a stone, the torch dropped and
spluttered at her feet. With a little helpless cry she looked at
the stretch of unfamiliar beach and water to find herself all
alone.
"Pardon me, mademoiselle," said a voice at her elbow; "you are in
distress?"
It was her fisherman, and with a scarce conscious sigh of relief,
Annette put her hand into the outstretched one at her side.
"I was looking for soft shells," she explained, "and lost the
crowd, and now my torch is out."
"Where is the crowd?" There was some amusement in the tone, and
Annette glanced up quickly, prepared to be thoroughly indignant
at this fisherman who dared make fun at her; but there was such a
kindly look about his mouth that she was reassured and said
meekly,--
"At Henderson's Point."
"You have wandered a half-mile away," he mused, "and have nothing
to show for your pains but very wet skirts. If mademoiselle will
permit me, I will take her to her friends, but allow me to
suggest that mademoiselle will leave the water and walk on the
sands."
"But I am barefoot," wailed Annette, "and I am afraid of the
fiddlers."
Fiddler crabs, you know, aren't pleasant things to be dangling
around one's bare feet, and they are more numerous than sand
fleas down at Henderson's Point.
"True," assented the fisherman; "then we shall have to wade
back."
The fishing was over when they rounded the point and came in
sight of the cheery bonfire with its Rembrandt-like group, and
the air was savoury with the smell of frying fish and crabs. The
fisherman was not to be tempted by appeals to stay, but smilingly
disappeared down the sands, the red glare of his torch making a
glowing track in the water.
"Ah, Mees Annette," whispered Natalie, between mouthfuls of a
rich croaker, "you have found a beau in the water."
"And the fisherman of the Pass, too," laughed her cousin Ida.
Annette tossed her head, for Philip had growled audibly.
"Do you know, Philip," cried Annette a few days after, rudely
shaking him from his siesta on the gallery,-- "do you know that I
have found my fisherman's hut?"
"Hum," was the only response.
"Yes, and it's the quaintest, most delightful spot imaginable.
Philip, do come with me and see it."
"Hum."
"Oh, Philip, you are so lazy; do come with me."
"Yes, but, my dear Annette," protested Philip, "this is a warm
day, and I am tired."
Still, his curiosity being aroused, he went grumbling. It was
not a very long drive, back from the beach across the railroad
and through the pine forest to the bank of a dark, slow-flowing
bayou. The fisherman's hut was small, two-roomed, whitewashed,
pine-boarded, with the traditional mud chimney acting as a sort
of support to one of its uneven sides. Within was a weird
assortment of curios from every uncivilized part of the globe.
Also were there fishing-tackle and guns in reckless profusion.
The fisherman, in the kitchen of the mud-chimney, was
sardonically waging war with a basket of little bayou crabs.
"Entrez, mademoiselle et monsieur," he said pleasantly, grabbing
a vicious crab by its flippers, and smiling at its wild attempts
to bite. "You see I am busy, but make yourself at home."
"Well, how on earth--" began Philip.
"Sh--sh--" whispered Annette. "I was driving out in the woods
this morning, and stumbled on the hut. He asked me in, but I came
right over after you."
The fisherman, having succeeded in getting the last crab in the
kettle of boiling water, came forward smiling and began to
explain the curios.
"Then you have not always lived at Pass Christian," said Philip.
"Mais non, monsieur, I am spending a summer here."
"And he spends his winters, doubtless, selling fish in the French
market," spitefully soliloquised Philip.
The fisherman was looking unutterable things into Annette's eyes,
and, it seemed to Philip, taking an unconscionably long time
explaining the use of an East Indian stiletto.
"Oh, wouldn't it be delightful!" came from Annette at last.
"What?" asked Philip.
"Why, Monsieur LeConte says he'll take six of us out in his
catboat tomorrow for a fishing-trip on the Gulf."
"Hum," drily.
"And I'll get Natalie and her cousins."
"Yes," still more drily.
Annette chattered on, entirely oblivious of the strainedness of
the men's adieux, and still chattered as they drove through the
pines.
"I did not know that you were going to take fishermen and
marchands into the bosom of your social set when you came here,"
growled Philip, at last.
"But, Cousin Phil, can't you see he is a gentleman? The fact
that he makes no excuses or protestations is a proof."
"You are a fool," was the polite response.
Still, at six o'clock next morning, there was a little crowd of
seven upon the pier, laughing and chatting at the little
"Virginie" dipping her bows in the water and flapping her sails
in the brisk wind. Natalie's pink bonnet blushed in the early
sunshine, and Natalie's mamma, comely and portly, did chaperonage
duty. It was not long before the sails gave swell into the
breeze and the little boat scurried to the Sound. Past the
lighthouse on its gawky iron stalls, she flew, and now rounded
the white sands of Cat Island.
"Bravo, the Gulf!" sang a voice on the lookout. The little boat
dipped, halted an instant, then rushed fast into the blue Gulf
waters.
"We will anchor here," said the host, "have luncheon, and fish."
Philip could not exactly understand why the fisherman should sit
so close to Annette and whisper so much into her ears. He chafed
at her acting the part of hostess, and was possessed of a
murderous desire to throw the pink sun-bonnet and its owner into
the sea, when Natalie whispered audibly to one of her cousins
that "Mees Annette act nice wit' her lovare."
The sun was banking up flaming pillars of rose and gold in the
west when the little "Virginie" rounded Cat Island on her way
home, and the quick Southern twilight was fast dying into
darkness when she was tied up to the pier and the merry-makers
sprang off with baskets of fish. Annette had distinguished
herself by catching one small shark, and had immediately ceased
to fish and devoted her attention to her fisherman and his line.
Philip had angled fiercely, landing trout, croakers, sheepshead,
snappers in bewildering luck. He had broken each hopeless
captive's neck savagely, as though they were personal enemies.
He did not look happy as they landed, though paeans of praise
were being sung in his honour.
As the days passed on, "the fisherman of the Pass" began to dance
attendance on Annette. What had seemed a joke became serious.
Aunt Nina, urged by Philip, remonstrated, and even the mamma of
the pink sunbonnet began to look grave. It was all very well for
a city demoiselle to talk with a fisherman and accept favours at
his hands, provided that the city demoiselle understood that a
vast and bridgeless gulf stretched between her and the fisherman.
But when the demoiselle forgot the gulf and the fisherman refused
to recognise it, why, it was time to take matters in hand.
To all of Aunt Nina's remonstrances, Philip's growlings, and the
averted glances of her companions, Annette was deaf. "You are
narrow-minded," she said laughingly. "I am interested in
Monsieur LeConte simply as a study. He is entertaining; he talks
well of his travels, and as for refusing to recognise the
difference between us, why, he never dreamed of such a thing."
Suddenly a peremptory summons home from Annette's father put an
end to the fears of Philip. Annette pouted, but papa must be
obeyed. She blamed Philip and Aunt Nina for telling tales, but
Aunt Nina was uncommunicative, and Philip too obviously cheerful
to derive much satisfaction from.
That night she walked with the fisherman hand in hand on the
sands. The wind from the pines bore the scarcely recognisable,
subtle freshness of early autumn, and the waters had a hint of
dying summer in their sob on the beach.
"You will remember," said the fisherman, "that I have told you
nothing about myself."
"Yes," murmured Annette.
"And you will keep your promises to me?"
"Yes."
"Let me hear you repeat them again."
"I promise you that I will not forget you. I promise you that I
will never speak of you to anyone until I see you again. I
promise that I will then clasp your hand wherever you may be."
"And mademoiselle will not be discouraged, but will continue her
studies?"
"Yes."
It was all very romantic, by the waves of the Sound, under a
harvest moon, that seemed all sympathy for these two, despite the
fact that it was probably looking down upon hundreds of other
equally romantic couples. Annette went to bed with glowing
cheeks, and a heart whose pulsations would have caused a
physician to prescribe unlimited digitalis.
It was still hot in New Orleans when she returned home, and it
seemed hard to go immediately to work. But if one is going to be
an opera-singer some day and capture the world with one's voice,
there is nothing to do but to study, study, sing, practise, even
though one's throat be parched, one's head a great ache, and
one's heart a nest of discouragement and sadness at what seems
the uselessness of it all. Annette had now a new incentive to
work; the fisherman had once praised her voice when she hummed a
barcarole on the sands, and he had insisted that there was power
in its rich notes. Though the fisherman had showed no cause why
he should be accepted as a musical critic, Annette had somehow
respected his judgment and been accordingly elated.
It was the night of the opening of the opera. There was the
usual crush, the glitter and confusing radiance of the brilliant
audience. Annette, with papa, Aunt Nina, and Philip, was late
reaching her box. The curtain was up, and "La Juive" was pouring
forth defiance at her angry persecutors. Annette listened
breathlessly. In fancy, she too was ringing her voice out to an
applauding house. Her head unconsciously beat time to the music,
and one hand half held her cloak from her bare shoulders.
Then Eleazar appeared, and the house rose at the end of his song.
Encores it gave, and bravos and cheers. He bowed calmly, swept
his eyes over the tiers until they found Annette, where they
rested in a half-smile of recognition.
"Philip," gasped Annette, nervously raising her glasses, "my
fisherman!"
"Yes, an opera-singer is better than a marchand," drawled Philip.
The curtain fell on the first act. The house was won by the new
tenor; it called and recalled him before the curtain. Clearly he
had sung his way into the hearts of his audience at once.
"Papa, Aunt Nina," said Annette, "you must come behind the scenes
with me. I want you to meet him. He is delightful. You must
come."
Philip was bending ostentatiously over the girl in the next box.
Papa and Aunt Nina consented to be dragged behind the scenes.
Annette was well known, for, in hopes of some day being an
occupant of one of the dressing-rooms, she had made friends with
everyone connected with the opera.
Eleazar received them, still wearing his brown garb and
patriarchal beard.
"How you deceived me!" she laughed, when the greetings and
introductions were over.
"I came to America early," he smiled back at her, "and thought
I'd try a little incognito at the Pass. I was not well, you see.
It has been of great benefit to me."
"I kept my promise," she said in a lower tone.
"Thank you; that also has helped me."
Annette's teacher began to note a wonderful improvement in his
pupil's voice. Never did a girl study so hard or practise so
faithfully. It was truly wonderful. Now and then Annette would
say to papa as if to reassure herself,--
"And when Monsieur Cherbart says I am ready to go to Paris, I may
go, papa?"
And papa would say a "Certainly" that would send her back to the
piano with renewed ardour.
As for Monsieur LeConte, he was the idol of New Orleans. Seldom
had there been a tenor who had sung himself so completely into
the very hearts of a populace. When he was billed, the opera
displayed "Standing Room" signs, no matter what the other
attractions in the city might be. Sometimes Monsieur LeConte
delighted small audiences in Annette's parlour, when the hostess
was in a perfect flutter of happiness. Not often, you know, for
the leading tenor was in great demand at the homes of society
queens.
"Do you know," said Annette, petulantly, one evening, "I wish for
the old days at Pass Christian."
"So do I," he answered tenderly; "will you repeat them with me
next summer?"
"If I only could!" she gasped.
Still she might have been happy, had it not been for Madame
Dubeau,--Madame Dubeau, the flute-voiced leading soprano, who
wore the single dainty curl on her forehead, and thrilled her
audiences oftentimes more completely than the fisherman. Madame
Dubeau was La Juive to his Eleazar, Leonore to his Manfred, Elsa
to his Lohengrin, Aida to his Rhadames, Marguerite to his Faust;
in brief, Madame Dubeau was his opposite. She caressed him as
Mignon, pleaded with him as Michaela, died for him in "Les
Huguenots," broke her heart for love of him in "La Favorite."
How could he help but love her, Annette asked herself, how could
he? Madame Dubeau was beautiful and gifted and charming.
Once she whispered her fears to him when there was the meagrest
bit of an opportunity. He laughed. "You don't understand,
little one," he said tenderly; "the relations of professional
people to each other are peculiar. After you go to Paris, you
will know."
Still, New Orleans had built up its romance, and gossiped
accordingly.
"Have you heard the news?" whispered Lola to Annette, leaning
from her box at the opera one night. The curtain had just gone
up on "Herodias," and for some reason or other, the audience
applauded with more warmth than usual. There was a noticeable
number of good-humoured, benignant smiles on the faces of the
applauders.
"No," answered Annette, breathlessly,--"no, indeed, Lola; I am
going to Paris next week. I am so delighted I can't stop to
think."
"Yes, that is excellent," said Lola, "but all New Orleans is
smiling at the romance. Monsieur LeConte and Madame Dubeau were
quietly married last night, but it leaked out this afternoon.
See all the applause she's receiving!"
Annette leaned back in her chair, very white and still. Her box
was empty after the first act, and a quiet little tired voice
that was almost too faint to be heard in the carriage on the way
home, said--
"Papa, I don't think I care to go to Paris, after all."
M'SIEU FORTIER'S VIOLIN
Slowly, one by one, the lights in the French Opera go out, until
there is but a single glimmer of pale yellow flickering in the
great dark space, a few moments ago all a-glitter with jewels and
the radiance of womanhood and a-clash with music. Darkness now,
and silence, and a great haunted hush over all, save for the
distant cheery voice of a stage hand humming a bar of the opera.
The glimmer of gas makes a halo about the bowed white head of a
little old man putting his violin carefully away in its case with
aged, trembling, nervous fingers. Old M'sieu Fortier was the
last one out every night.
Outside the air was murky, foggy. Gas and electricity were but
faint splotches of light on the thick curtain of fog and mist.
Around the opera was a mighty bustle of carriages and drivers and
footmen, with a car gaining headway in the street now and then, a
howling of names and numbers, the laughter and small talk of
cloaked society stepping slowly to its carriages, and the more
bourgeoisie vocalisation of the foot passengers who streamed
along and hummed little bits of music. The fog's denseness was
confusing, too, and at one moment it seemed that the little
narrow street would become inextricably choked and remain so
until some mighty engine would blow the crowd into atoms. It had
been a crowded night. From around Toulouse Street, where led the
entrance to the troisiemes, from the grand stairway, from the
entrance to the quatriemes, the human stream poured into the
street, nearly all with a song on their lips.
M'sieu Fortier stood at the corner, blinking at the beautiful
ladies in their carriages. He exchanged a hearty salutation with
the saloon-keeper at the corner, then, tenderly carrying his
violin case, he trudged down Bourbon Street, a little old, bent,
withered figure, with shoulders shrugged up to keep warm, as
though the faded brown overcoat were not thick enough.
Down on Bayou Road, not so far from Claiborne Street, was a
house, little and old and queer, but quite large enough to hold
M'sieu Fortier, a wrinkled dame, and a white cat. He was home
but little, for on nearly every day there were rehearsals; then
on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday nights, and twice Sundays
there were performances, so Ma'am Jeanne and the white cat kept
house almost always alone. Then, when M'sieu Fortier was at home,
why, it was practice, practice all the day, and smoke, snore,
sleep at night. Altogether it was not very exhilarating.
M'sieu Fortier had played first violin in the orchestra ever
since--well, no one remembered his not playing there. Sometimes
there would come breaks in the seasons, and for a year the great
building would be dark and silent. Then M'sieu Fortier would do
jobs of playing here and there, one night for this ball, another
night for that soiree dansante, and in the day, work at his
trade,--that of a cigar-maker. But now for seven years there had
been no break in the season, and the little old violinist was
happy. There is nothing sweeter than a regular job and good
music to play, music into which one can put some soul, some
expression, and which one must study to understand. Dance music,
of the frivolous, frothy kind deemed essential to soirees, is
trivial, easy, uninteresting.
So M'sieu Fortier, Ma'am Jeanne, and the white cat lived a
peaceful, uneventful existence out on Bayou Road. When the opera
season was over in February, M'sieu went back to cigar-making,
and the white cat purred none the less contentedly.
It had been a benefit to-night for the leading tenor, and he had
chosen "Roland a Ronceveaux," a favourite this season, for his
farewell. And, mon Dieu, mused the little M'sieu, but how his
voice had rung out bell-like, piercing above the chorus of the
first act! Encore after encore was given, and the bravos of the
troisiemes were enough to stir the most sluggish of pulses.
"Superbes Pyrenees
Qui dressez dans le ciel,
Vos cimes couronnees
D'un hiver eternelle,
Pour nous livrer passage
Ouvrez vos larges flancs,
Faites faire l'orage,
Voici, venir les Francs!"
M'sieu quickened his pace down Bourbon Street as he sang the
chorus to himself in a thin old voice, and then, before he could
see in the thick fog, he had run into two young men.
"I--I--beg your pardon,--messieurs," he stammered.
"Most certainly," was the careless response; then the speaker,
taking a second glance at the object of the rencontre, cried
joyfully:
"Oh, M'sieu Fortier, is it you? Why, you are so happy, singing
your love sonnet to your lady's eyebrow, that you didn't see a
thing but the moon, did you? And who is the fair one who should
clog your senses so?"
There was a deprecating shrug from the little man.
"Ma foi, but monsieur must know fo' sho', dat I am too old for
love songs!"
"I know nothing save that I want that violin of yours. When is
it to be mine, M'sieu Fortier?"
"Nevare, nevare!" exclaimed M'sieu, gripping on as tightly to the
case as if he feared it might be wrenched from him. "Me a
lovere, and to sell mon violon! Ah, so ver' foolish!"
"Martel," said the first speaker to his companion as they moved
on up town, "I wish you knew that little Frenchman. He's a
unique specimen. He has the most exquisite violin I've seen in
years; beautiful and mellow as a genuine Cremona, and he can make
the music leap, sing, laugh, sob, skip, wail, anything you like
from under his bow when he wishes. It's something wonderful. We
are good friends. Picked him up in my French-town rambles. I've
been trying to buy that instrument since--"
"To throw it aside a week later?" lazily inquired Martel. "You
are like the rest of these nineteenth-century vandals, you can
see nothing picturesque that you do not wish to deface for a
souvenir; you cannot even let simple happiness alone, but must
needs destroy it in a vain attempt to make it your own or parade
it as an advertisement."
As for M'sieu Fortier, he went right on with his song and turned
into Bayou Road, his shoulders still shrugged high as though he
were cold, and into the quaint little house, where Ma'am Jeanne
and the white cat, who always waited up for him at nights, were
both nodding over the fire.
It was not long after this that the opera closed, and M'sieu went
back to his old out-of-season job. But somehow he did not do as
well this spring and summer as always. There is a certain amount
of cunning and finesse required to roll a cigar just so, that
M'sieu seemed to be losing, whether from age or deterioration it
was hard to tell. Nevertheless, there was just about half as
much money coming in as formerly, and the quaint little pucker
between M'sieu's eyebrows which served for a frown came oftener
and stayed longer than ever before.
"Minesse," he said one day to the white cat,--he told all his
troubles to her; it was of no use to talk to Ma'am Jeanne, she
was too deaf to understand,--"Minesse, we are gettin' po'. You'
pere git h'old, an' hees han's dey go no mo' rapidement, an' dere
be no mo' soirees dese day. Minesse, eef la saison don' hurry
up, we shall eat ver' lil' meat."
And Minesse curled her tail and purred.
Before the summer had fairly begun, strange rumours began to
float about in musical circles. M. Mauge would no longer manage
the opera, but it would be turned into the hands of Americans, a
syndicate. Bah! These English-speaking people could do nothing
unless there was a trust, a syndicate, a company immense and
dishonest. It was going to be a guarantee business, with a
strictly financial basis. But worse than all this, the new
manager, who was now in France, would not only procure the
artists, but a new orchestra, a new leader. M'sieu Fortier grew
apprehensive at this, for he knew what the loss of his place
would mean to him.
September and October came, and the papers were filled with
accounts of the new artists from France and of the new orchestra
leader too. He was described as a most talented, progressive,
energetic young man. M'sieu Fortier's heart sank at the word
"progressive." He was anything but that. The New Orleans Creole
blood flowed too sluggishly in his old veins.
November came; the opera reopened. M'sieu Fortier was not
re-engaged.
"Minesse," he said with a catch in his voice that strongly
resembled a sob, "Minesse, we mus' go hongry sometime. Ah, mon
pauvre violon! Ah, mon Dieu, dey put us h'out, an' dey will not
have us. Nev' min', we will sing anyhow." And drawing his bow
across the strings, he sang in his thin, quavering voice, "Salut
demeure, chaste et pure."
It is strange what a peculiar power of fascination former haunts
have for the human mind. The criminal, after he has fled from
justice, steals back and skulks about the scene of his crime; the
employee thrown from work hangs about the place of his former
industry; the schoolboy, truant or expelled, peeps in at the
school-gate and taunts the good boys within. M'sieu Fortier was
no exception. Night after night of the performances he climbed
the stairs of the opera and sat, an attentive listener to the
orchestra, with one ear inclined to the stage, and a quizzical
expression on his wrinkled face. Then he would go home, and pat
Minesse, and fondle the violin.
"Ah, Minesse, dose new player! Not one bit can dey play. Such
tones, Minesse, such tones! All the time portemento, oh, so ver'
bad! Ah, mon chere violon, we can play." And he would play and
sing a romance, and smile tenderly to himself.
At first it used to be into the deuxiemes that M'sieu Fortier
went, into the front seats. But soon they were too expensive,
and after all, one could hear just as well in the fourth row as
in the first. After a while even the rear row of the deuxiemes
was too costly, and the little musician wended his way with the
plebeians around on Toulouse Street, and climbed the long,
tedious flight of stairs into the troisiemes. It makes no
difference to be one row higher. It was more to the liking,
after all. One felt more at home up here among the people. If
one was thirsty, one could drink a glass of wine or beer being
passed about by the libretto boys, and the music sounded just as
well.
But it happened one night that M'sieu could not even afford to
climb the Toulouse Street stairs. To be sure, there was yet
another gallery, the quatriemes, where the peanut boys went for a
dime, but M'sieu could not get down to that yet. So he stayed
outside until all the beautiful women in their warm wraps, a
bright-hued chattering throng, came down the grand staircase to
their carriages.
It was on one of these nights that Courcey and Martel found him
shivering at the corner.
"Hello, M'sieu Fortier," cried Courcey, "are you ready to let me
have that violin yet?"
"For shame!" interrupted Martel.
"Fifty dollars, you know," continued Courcey, taking no heed of
his friend's interpolation.
M'sieu Fortier made a courtly bow. "Eef Monsieur will call at my
'ouse on de morrow, he may have mon violon," he said huskily;
then turned abruptly on his heel, and went down Bourbon Street,
his shoulders drawn high as though he were cold.
When Courcey and Martel entered the gate of the little house on
Bayou Road the next day, there floated out to their ears a
wordless song thrilling from the violin, a song that told more
than speech or tears or gestures could have done of the utter
sorrow and desolation of the little old man. They walked softly
up the short red brick walk and tapped at the door. Within,
M'sieu Fortier was caressing the violin, with silent tears
streaming down his wrinkled gray face.
There was not much said on either side. Courcey came away with
the instrument, leaving the money behind, while Martel grumbled
at the essentially sordid, mercenary spirit of the world. M'sieu
Fortier turned back into the room, after bowing his visitors out
with old-time French courtliness, and turning to the sleepy white
cat, said with a dry sob:
"Minesse, dere's only me an' you now."
About six days later, Courcey's morning dreams were disturbed by
the announcement of a visitor. Hastily doing a toilet, he
descended the stairs to find M'sieu Fortier nervously pacing the
hall floor.
"I come fo' bring back you' money, yaas. I cannot sleep, I
cannot eat, I only cry, and t'ink, and weesh fo' mon violon; and
Minesse, an' de ol' woman too, dey mope an' look bad too, all for
mon violon. I try fo' to use dat money, but eet burn an' sting
lak blood money. I feel lak' I done sol' my child. I cannot go
at l'opera no mo', I t'ink of mon violon. I starve befo' I live
widout. My heart, he is broke, I die for mon violon."
Courcey left the room and returned with the instrument.
"M'sieu Fortier," he said, bowing low, as he handed the case to
the little man, "take your violin; it was a whim with me, a
passion with you. And as for the money, why, keep that too; it
was worth a hundred dollars to have possessed such an instrument
even for six days."
BY THE BAYOU ST. JOHN
The Bayou St. John slowly makes its dark-hued way through reeds
and rushes, high banks and flat slopes, until it casts itself
into the turbulent bosom of Lake Pontchartrain. It is dark, like
the passionate women of Egypt; placid, like their broad brows;
deep, silent, like their souls. Within its bosom are hidden
romances and stories, such as were sung by minstrels of old.
From the source to the mouth is not far distant, visibly
speaking, but in the life of the bayou a hundred heart-miles
could scarce measure it. Just where it winds about the northwest
of the city are some of its most beautiful bits, orange groves on
one side, and quaint old Spanish gardens on the other. Who cares
that the bridges are modern, and that here and there pert
boat-houses rear their prim heads? It is the bayou, even though
it be invaded with the ruthless vandalism of the improving idea,
and can a boat-house kill the beauty of a moss-grown centurion of
an oak with a history as old as the city? Can an iron bridge
with tarantula piers detract from the song of a mocking-bird in a
fragrant orange grove? We know that farther out, past the
Confederate Soldiers' Home,--that rose-embowered, rambling place
of gray-coated, white-haired old men with broken hearts for a
lost cause,--it flows, unimpeded by the faintest conception of
man, and we love it all the more that, like the Priestess of
Isis, it is calm-browed, even in indignity.
To its banks at the end of Moss Street, one day there came a man
and a maiden. They were both tall and lithe and slender, with
the agility of youth and fire. He was the final concentration of
the essence of Spanish passion filtered into an American frame;
she, a repressed Southern exotic, trying to fit itself into the
niches of a modern civilisation. Truly, a fitting couple to seek
the bayou banks.
They climbed the levee that stretched a feeble check to waters
that seldom rise, and on the other side of the embankment, at the
brink of the river, she sat on a log, and impatiently pulled off
the little cap she wore. The skies were gray, heavy, overcast,
with an occasional wind-rift in the clouds that only revealed new
depths of grayness behind; the tideless waters murmured a faint
ripple against the logs and jutting beams of the breakwater, and
were answered by the crescendo wail of the dried reeds on the
other bank,--reeds that rustled and moaned among themselves for
the golden days of summer sunshine.
He stood up, his dark form a slender silhouette against the sky;
she looked upward from her log, and their eyes met with an
exquisite shock of recognising understanding; dark eyes into dark
eyes, Iberian fire into Iberian fire, soul unto soul: it was
enough. He sat down and took her into his arms, and in the eerie
murmur of the storm coming they talked of the future.
"And then I hope to go to Italy or France. It is only there,
beneath those far Southern skies, that I could ever hope to
attain to anything that the soul within me says I can. I have
wasted so much time in the mere struggle for bread, while the
powers of a higher calling have clamoured for recognition and
expression. I will go some day and redeem myself."
She was silent a moment, watching with half-closed lids a
dejected-looking hunter on the other bank, and a lean dog who
trailed through the reeds behind him with drooping tail. Then
she asked:
"And I--what will become of me?"
"You, Athanasia? There is a great future before you, little
woman, and I and my love can only mar it. Try to forget me and
go your way. I am only the epitome of unhappiness and
ill-success."
But she laughed and would have none of it.
Will you ever forget that day, Athanasia? How the little gamins,
Creole throughout, came half shyly near the log, fishing, and
exchanging furtive whispers and half-concealed glances at the
silent couple. Their angling was rewarded only by a little black
water-moccasin that wriggled and forked its venomous red tongue
in an attempt to exercise its death-dealing prerogative. This
Athanasia insisted must go back into its native black waters, and
paid the price the boys asked that it might enjoy its freedom.
The gamins laughed and chattered in their soft patois; the Don
smiled tenderly upon Athanasia, and she durst not look at the
reeds as she talked, lest their crescendo sadness yield a
foreboding. Just then a wee girl appeared, clad in a multi-hued
garment, evidently a sister to the small fishermen. Her keen
black eyes set in a dusky face glanced sharply and suspiciously
at the group as she clambered over the wet embankment, and it
seemed the drizzling mist grew colder, the sobbing wind more
pronounced in its prophetic wail. Athanasia rose suddenly. "Let
us go," she said; "the eternal feminine has spoiled it all."
The bayou flows as calmly, as darkly, as full of hidden passions
as ever. On a night years after, the moon was shining upon it
with a silvery tenderness that seemed brighter, more caressingly
lingering than anywhere within the old city. Behind, there rose
the spires and towers; before, only the reeds, green now, and
soft in their rustlings and whisperings for the future. False
reeds! They tell themselves of their happiness to be, and it all
ends in dry stalks and drizzling skies. The mocking-bird in the
fragrant orange grove sends out his night song, and blends it
with the cricket's chirp, as the blossoms of orange and magnolia
mingle their perfume with the earthy smell of a summer rain just
blown over. Perfect in its stillness, absolute in its beauty,
tenderly healing in its suggestion of peace, the night in its
clear-lighted, cloudless sweetness enfolds Athanasia, as she
stands on the levee and gazes down at the old log, now almost
hidden in the luxuriant grass.
"It was the eternal feminine that spoiled our dream that day as
it spoiled the after life, was it not?"
But the Bayou St. John did not answer. It merely gathered into
its silent bosom another broken-hearted romance, and flowed
dispassionately on its way.
WHEN THE BAYOU OVERFLOWS
When the sun goes down behind the great oaks along the Bayou
Teche near Franklin, it throws red needles of light into the dark
woods, and leaves a great glow on the still bayou. Ma'am Mouton
paused at her gate and cast a contemplative look at the red sky.
"Hit will rain to-morrow, sho'. I mus' git in my t'ings."
Ma'am Mouton's remark must have been addressed to herself or to
the lean dog, for no one else was visible. She moved briskly
about the yard, taking things from the line, when Louisette's
voice called cheerily:
"Ah, Ma'am Mouton, can I help?"
Louisette was petite and plump and black-haired. Louisette's
eyes danced, and her lips were red and tempting. Ma'am Mouton's
face relaxed as the small brown hands relieved hers of their
burden.
"Sylves', has he come yet?" asked the red mouth.
"Mais non, ma chere," said Ma'am Mouton, sadly, "I can' tell fo'
w'y he no come home soon dese day. Ah me, I feel lak' somet'ing
goin' happen. He so strange."
Even as she spoke a quick nervous step was heard crunching up the
brick walk. Sylves' paused an instant without the kitchen door,
his face turned to the setting sun. He was tall and slim and
agile; a true 'cajan.
"Bon jour, Louisette," he laughed. "Eh, maman!"
"Ah, my son, you are ver' late."
Sylves' frowned, but said nothing. It was a silent supper that
followed. Louisette was sad, Ma'am Mouton sighed now and then,
Sylves' was constrained.
"Maman," he said at length, "I am goin' away."
Ma'am Mouton dropped her fork and stared at him with unseeing
eyes; then, as she comprehended his remark, she put her hand out
to him with a pitiful gesture.
"Sylves'!" cried Louisette, springing to her feet.
"Maman, don't, don't!" he said weakly; then gathering strength
from the silence, he burst forth:
"Yaas, I 'm goin' away to work. I 'm tired of dis, jus' dig,
dig, work in de fiel', nothin' to see but de cloud, de tree, de
bayou. I don't lak' New Orleans; it too near here, dere no mo'
money dere. I go up fo' Mardi Gras, an' de same people, de same
strit'. I'm goin' to Chicago!"
"Sylves'!" screamed both women at once.
Chicago! That vast, far-off city that seemed in another world.
Chicago! A name to conjure with for wickedness.
"W'y, yaas," continued Sylves', "lots of boys I know dere. Henri
an' Joseph Lascaud an' Arthur, dey write me what money dey mek'
in cigar. I can mek' a livin' too. I can mek' fine cigar. See
how I do in New Orleans in de winter."
"Oh, Sylves'," wailed Louisette, "den you'll forget me!"
"Non, non, ma chere," he answered tenderly. "I will come back
when the bayou overflows again, an' maman an' Louisette will have
fine present."
Ma'am Mouton had bowed her head on her hands, and was rocking to
and fro in an agony of dry-eyed misery.
Sylves' went to her side and knelt. "Maman," he said softly,
"maman, you mus' not cry. All de boys go 'way, an' I will come
back reech, an' you won't have fo' to work no mo'."
But Ma'am Mouton was inconsolable.
It was even as Sylves' had said. In the summer-time the boys of
the Bayou Teche would work in the field or in the town of
Franklin, hack-driving and doing odd jobs. When winter came,
there was a general exodus to New Orleans, a hundred miles away,
where work was to be had as cigar-makers. There is money, plenty
of it, in cigar-making, if one can get in the right place. Of
late, however, there had been a general slackness of the trade.
Last winter oftentimes Sylves' had walked the streets out of
work. Many were the Creole boys who had gone to Chicago to earn
a living, for the cigar-making trade flourishes there
wonderfully. Friends of Sylves' had gone, and written home
glowing accounts of the money to be had almost for the asking.
When one's blood leaps for new scenes, new adventures, and one
needs money, what is the use of frittering away time alternately
between the Bayou Teche and New Orleans? Sylves' had brooded all
summer, and now that September had come, he was determined to go.
Louisette, the orphan, the girl-lover, whom everyone in Franklin
knew would some day be Ma'am Mouton's daughter-in-law, wept and
pleaded in vain. Sylves' kissed her quivering lips.
"Ma chere," he would say, "t'ink, I will bring you one fine
diamon' ring, nex' spring, when de bayou overflows again."
Louisette would fain be content with this promise. As for Ma'am
Mouton, she seemed to have grown ages older. Her Sylves' was
going from her; Sylves', whose trips to New Orleans had been a
yearly source of heart-break, was going far away for months to
that mistily wicked city, a thousand miles away.
October came, and Sylves' had gone. Ma'am Mouton had kept up
bravely until the last, when with one final cry she extended her
arms to the pitiless train bearing him northward. Then she and
Louisette went home drearily, the one leaning upon the other.
Ah, that was a great day when the first letter came from Chicago!
Louisette came running in breathlessly from the post-office, and
together they read it again and again. Chicago was such a
wonderful city, said Sylves'. Why, it was always like New
Orleans at Mardi Gras with the people. He had seen Joseph
Lascaud, and he had a place to work promised him. He was well,
but he wanted, oh, so much, to see maman and Louisette. But
then, he could wait.
Was ever such a wonderful letter? Louisette sat for an hour
afterwards building gorgeous air-castles, while Ma'am Mouton
fingered the paper and murmured prayers to the Virgin for
Sylves'. When the bayou overflowed again? That would be in
April. Then Louisette caught herself looking critically at her
slender brown fingers, and blushed furiously, though Ma'am Mouton
could not see her in the gathering twilight.
Next week there was another letter, even more wonderful than the
first. Sylves' had found work. He was making cigars, and was
earning two dollars a day. Such wages! Ma'am Mouton and
Louisette began to plan pretty things for the brown cottage on
the Teche.
That was a pleasant winter, after all. True, there was no
Sylves', but then he was always in New Orleans for a few months
any way. There were his letters, full of wondrous tales of the
great queer city, where cars went by ropes underground, and where
there was no Mardi Gras and the people did not mind Lent. Now
and then there would be a present, a keepsake for Louisette, and
some money for maman. They would plan improvements for the
cottage, and Louisette began to do sewing and dainty crochet,
which she would hide with a blush if anyone hinted at a
trousseau.
It was March now, and Spring-time. The bayou began to sweep down
between its banks less sluggishly than before; it was rising, and
soon would spread over its tiny levees. The doors could be left
open now, though the trees were not yet green; but then down here
the trees do not swell and bud slowly and tease you for weeks
with promises of greenness. Dear no, they simply look
mysterious, and their twigs shake against each other and tell
secrets of the leaves that will soon be born. Then one morning
you awake, and lo, it is a green world! The boughs have suddenly
clothed themselves all in a wondrous garment, and you feel the
blood run riot in your veins out of pure sympathy.
One day in March, it was warm and sweet. Underfoot were violets,
and wee white star flowers peering through the baby-grass. The
sky was blue, with flecks of white clouds reflecting themselves
in the brown bayou. Louisette tripped up the red brick walk with
the Chicago letter in her hand, and paused a minute at the door
to look upon the leaping waters, her eyes dancing.
"I know the bayou must be ready to overflow," went the letter in
the carefully phrased French that the brothers taught at the
parochial school, "and I am glad, for I want to see the dear
maman and my Louisette. I am not so well, and Monsieur le
docteur says it is well for me to go to the South again."
Monsieur le docteur! Sylves' not well! The thought struck a
chill to the hearts of Ma'am Mouton and Louisette, but not for
long. Of course, Sylves' was not well, he needed some of maman's
tisanes. Then he was homesick; it was to be expected.
At last the great day came, Sylves' would be home. The brown
waters of the bayou had spread until they were seemingly trying
to rival the Mississippi in width. The little house was scrubbed
and cleaned until it shone again. Louisette had looked her
dainty little dress over and over to be sure that there was not a
flaw to be found wherein Sylves' could compare her unfavourably
to the stylish Chicago girls.
The train rumbled in on the platform, and two pair of eyes opened
wide for the first glimpse of Sylves'. The porter, all
officiousness and brass buttons, bustled up to Ma'am Mouton.
"This is Mrs. Mouton?" he inquired deferentially.
Ma'am Mouton nodded, her heart sinking. "Where is Sylves'?"
"He is here, madam."
There appeared Joseph Lascaud, then some men bearing Something.
Louisette put her hands up to her eyes to hide the sight, but
Ma'am Mouton was rigid.
"It was too cold for him," Joseph was saying to almost deaf ears,
"and he took the consumption. He thought he could get well when
he come home. He talk all the way down about the bayou, and
about you and Louisette. Just three hours ago he had a bad
hemorrhage, and he died from weakness. Just three hours ago. He
said he wanted to get home and give Louisette her diamond ring,
when the bayou overflowed."
MR. BAPTISTE
He might have had another name; we never knew. Some one had
christened him Mr. Baptiste long ago in the dim past, and it
sufficed. No one had ever been known who had the temerity to ask
him for another cognomen, for though he was a mild-mannered
little man, he had an uncomfortable way of shutting up
oyster-wise and looking disagreeable when approached concerning
his personal history.
He was small: most Creole men are small when they are old. It is
strange, but a fact. It must be that age withers them sooner and
more effectually than those of un-Latinised extraction. Mr.
Baptiste was, furthermore, very much wrinkled and lame. Like the
Son of Man, he had nowhere to lay his head, save when some kindly
family made room for him in a garret or a barn. He subsisted by
doing odd jobs, white-washing, cleaning yards, doing errands, and
the like.
The little old man was a frequenter of the levee. Never a day
passed that his quaint little figure was not seen moving up and
down about the ships. Chiefly did he haunt the Texas and Pacific
warehouses and the landing-place of the Morgan-line steamships.
This seemed like madness, for these spots are almost the busiest
on the levee, and the rough seamen and 'longshoremen have least
time to be bothered with small weak folks. Still there was
method in the madness of Mr. Baptiste. The Morgan steamships, as
every one knows, ply between New Orleans and Central and South
American ports, doing the major part of the fruit trade; and many
were the baskets of forgotten fruit that Mr. Baptiste took away
with him unmolested. Sometimes, you know, bananas and mangoes
and oranges and citrons will half spoil, particularly if it has
been a bad voyage over the stormy Gulf, and the officers of the
ships will give away stacks of fruit, too good to go into the
river, too bad to sell to the fruit-dealers.
You could see Mr. Baptiste trudging up the street with his quaint
one-sided walk, bearing his dilapidated basket on one shoulder, a
nondescript head-cover pulled over his eyes, whistling cheerily.
Then he would slip in at the back door of one of his clients with
a brisk,--
"Ah, bonjour, madame. Now here ees jus' a lil' bit fruit, some
bananas. Perhaps madame would cook some for Mr. Baptiste?"
And madame, who understood and knew his ways, would fry him some
of the bananas, and set it before him, a tempting dish, with a
bit of madame's bread and meat and coffee thrown in for
lagniappe; and Mr. Baptiste would depart, filled and contented,
leaving the load of fruit behind as madame's pay. Thus did he
eat, and his clients were many, and never too tired or too cross
to cook his meals and get their pay in baskets of fruit.
One day he slipped in at Madame Garcia's kitchen door with such a
woe-begone air, and slid a small sack of nearly ripe plantains on
the table with such a misery-laden sigh, that madame, who was fat
and excitable, threw up both hands and cried out:
"Mon Dieu, Mistare Baptiste, fo' w'y you look lak dat? What ees
de mattare?"
For answer, Mr. Baptiste shook his head gloomily and sighed
again. Madame Garcia moved heavily about the kitchen, putting the
plantains in a cool spot and punctuating her foot-steps with
sundry "Mon Dieux" and "Miseres."
"Dose cotton!" ejaculated Mr. Baptiste, at last.
"Ah, mon Dieu!" groaned Madame Garcia, rolling her eyes
heavenwards.
"Hit will drive de fruit away!" he continued.
"Misere!" said Madame Garcia
"Hit will."
"Oui, out," said Madame Garcia. She had carefully inspected the
plantains, and seeing that they were good and wholesome, was
inclined to agree with anything Mr. Baptiste said.
He grew excited. "Yaas, dose cotton-yardmans, dose
'longsho'mans, dey go out on one strik'. Dey t'row down dey tool
an' say dey work no mo' wid niggers. Les veseaux, dey lay in de
river, no work, no cargo, yaas. Den de fruit ship, dey can' mak'
lan', de mans, dey t'reaten an' say t'ings. Dey mak' big fight,
yaas. Dere no mo' work on de levee, lak dat. Ever'body jus'
walk roun' an' say cuss word, yaas!"
"Oh, mon Dieu, mon Dieu!" groaned Madame Garcia, rocking her
guinea-blue-clad self to and fro.
Mr. Baptiste picked up his nondescript head-cover and walked out
through the brick-reddened alley, talking excitedly to himself.
Madame Garcia called after him to know if he did not want his
luncheon, but he shook his head and passed on.
Down on the levee it was even as Mr. Baptiste had said. The
'long-shoremen, the cotton-yardmen, and the stevedores had gone
out on a strike. The levee lay hot and unsheltered under the
glare of a noonday sun. The turgid Mississippi scarce seemed to
flow, but gave forth a brazen gleam from its yellow bosom. Great
vessels lay against the wharf, silent and unpopulated. Excited
groups of men clustered here and there among bales of
uncompressed cotton, lying about in disorderly profusion.
Cargoes of molasses and sugar gave out a sticky sweet smell, and
now and then the fierce rays of the sun would kindle tiny blazes
in the cotton and splinter-mixed dust underfoot.
Mr. Baptiste wandered in and out among the groups of men,
exchanging a friendly salutation here and there. He looked the
picture of woe-begone misery.
"Hello, Mr. Baptiste," cried a big, brawny Irishman, "sure an'
you look, as if you was about to be hanged."
"Ah, mon Dieu," said Mr. Baptiste, "dose fruit ship be ruined fo'
dees strik'."
"Damn the fruit!" cheerily replied the Irishman, artistically
disposing of a mouthful of tobacco juice. "It ain't the fruit we
care about, it's the cotton."
"Hear! hear!" cried a dozen lusty comrades.
Mr. Baptiste shook his head and moved sorrowfully away.
"Hey, by howly St. Patrick, here's that little fruit-eater!"
called the centre of another group of strikers perched on
cotton-bales.
"Hello! Where--" began a second; but the leader suddenly held up
his hand for silence, and the men listened eagerly.
It might not have been a sound, for the levee lay quiet and the
mules on the cotton-drays dozed languidly, their ears pitched at
varying acute angles. But the practiced ears of the men heard a
familiar sound stealing up over the heated stillness.
"Oh--ho--ho--humph--humph--humph--ho--ho--ho--oh--o --o--humph!"
Then the faint rattle of chains, and the steady thump of a
machine pounding.
If ever you go on the levee you'll know that sound, the rhythmic
song of the stevedores heaving cotton-bales, and the steady
thump, thump, of the machine compressing them within the hold of
the ship.
Finnegan, the leader, who had held up his hand for silence,
uttered an oath.
"Scabs! Men, come on!"
There was no need for a further invitation. The men rose in
sullen wrath and went down the levee, the crowd gathering in
numbers as it passed along. Mr. Baptiste followed in its wake,
now and then sighing a mournful protest which was lost in the
roar of the men.
"Scabs!" Finnegan had said; and the word was passed along, until
it seemed that the half of the second District knew and had risen
to investigate.
"Oh--ho--ho--humph--humph--humph--oh--ho--ho--oh--o--o--humph!"
The rhythmic chorus sounded nearer, and the cause manifested
itself when the curve of the levee above the French Market was
passed. There rose a White Star steamer, insolently settling
itself to the water as each consignment of cotton bales was
compressed into her hold.
"Niggers!" roared Finnegan wrathily.
"Niggers! niggers! Kill 'em, scabs!" chorused the crowd.
With muscles standing out like cables through their blue cotton
shirts, and sweat rolling from glossy black skins, the Negro
stevedores were at work steadily labouring at the cotton, with
the rhythmic song swinging its cadence in the hot air. The roar
of the crowd caused the men to look up with momentary
apprehension, but at the over-seer's reassuring word they bent
back to work.
Finnegan was a Titan. With livid face and bursting veins he ran
into the street facing the French Market, and uprooted a huge
block of paving stone. Staggering under its weight, he rushed
back to the ship, and with one mighty effort hurled it into the
hold.
The delicate poles of the costly machine tottered in the air,
then fell forward with a crash as the whole iron framework in the
hold collapsed.
"Damn ye," shouted Finnegan, "now yez can pack yer cotton!"
The crowd's cheers at this changed to howls, as the Negroes,
infuriated at their loss, for those costly machines belong to the
labourers and not to the ship-owners, turned upon the mob and
began to throw brickbats, pieces of iron, chunks of wood,
anything that came to hand. It was pandemonium turned loose over
a turgid stream, with a malarial sun to heat the passions to
fever point.
Mr. Baptiste had taken refuge behind a bread-stall on the outside
of the market. He had taken off his cap, and was weakly cheering
the Negroes on.
"Bravo!" cheered Mr. Baptiste.
"Will yez look at that damned fruit-eatin' Frinchman!" howled
McMahon. "Cheerin' the niggers, are you?" and he let fly a
brickbat in the direction of the bread-stall.
"Oh, mon Dieu, mon Dieu!" wailed the bread-woman.
Mr. Baptiste lay very still, with a great ugly gash in his
wrinkled brown temple. Fishmen and vegetable marchands gathered
around him in a quick, sympathetic mass. The individual, the
concrete bit of helpless humanity, had more interest for them
than the vast, vague fighting mob beyond.
The noon-hour pealed from the brazen throats of many bells, and
the numerous hoarse whistles of the steam-boats called the
unheeded luncheon-time to the levee workers. The war waged
furiously, and groans of the wounded mingled with curses and
roars from the combatants.
"Killed instantly," said the surgeon, carefully lifting Mr.
Baptiste into the ambulance.
Tramp, tramp, tramp, sounded the militia steadily marching down
Decatur Street.
"Whist! do yez hear!" shouted Finnegan; and the conflict had
ceased ere the yellow river could reflect the sun from the
polished bayonets.
You remember, of course, how long the strike lasted, and how many
battles were fought and lives lost before the final adjustment of
affairs. It was a fearsome war, and many forgot afterwards whose
was the first life lost in the struggle,--poor little Mr.
Baptiste's, whose body lay at the Morgue unclaimed for days
before it was finally dropped unnamed into Potter's Field.
A CARNIVAL JANGLE
There is a merry jangle of bells in the air, an all-pervading
sense of jester's noise, and the flaunting vividness of royal
colours. The streets swarm with humanity,--humanity in all
shapes, manners, forms, laughing, pushing, jostling, crowding, a
mass of men and women and children, as varied and assorted in
their several individual peculiarities as ever a crowd that
gathered in one locality since the days of Babel.
It is Carnival in New Orleans; a brilliant Tuesday in February,
when the very air gives forth an ozone intensely exhilarating,
making one long to cut capers. The buildings are a blazing mass
of royal purple and golden yellow, national flags, bunting, and
decorations that laugh in the glint of the Midas sun. The
streets are a crush of jesters and maskers, Jim Crows and clowns,
ballet girls and Mephistos, Indians and monkeys; of wild and
sudden flashes of music, of glittering pageants and comic ones,
of befeathered and belled horses; a dream of colour and melody
and fantasy gone wild in an effervescent bubble of beauty that
shifts and changes and passes kaleidoscope-like before the
bewildered eye.
A bevy of bright-eyed girls and boys of that uncertain age that
hovers between childhood and maturity, were moving down Canal
Street when there was a sudden jostle with another crowd meeting
them. For a minute there was a deafening clamour of shouts and
laughter, cracking of the whips, which all maskers carry, a
jingle and clatter of carnival bells, and the masked and unmasked
extricated themselves and moved from each other's paths. But in
the confusion a tall Prince of Darkness had whispered to one of
the girls in the unmasked crowd: "You'd better come with us, Flo;
you're wasting time in that tame gang. Slip off, they'll
never miss you; we'll get you a rig, and show you what life is."
And so it happened, when a half-hour passed, and the bright-eyed
bevy missed Flo and couldn't find her, wisely giving up the
search at last, she, the quietest and most bashful of the lot,
was being initiated into the mysteries of "what life is."
Down Bourbon Street and on Toulouse and St. Peter Streets there
are quaint little old-world places where one may be disguised
effectually for a tiny consideration. Thither, guided by the
shapely Mephisto and guarded by the team of jockeys and ballet
girls, tripped Flo. Into one of the lowest-ceiled, dingiest, and
most ancient-looking of these shops they stepped.
"A disguise for the demoiselle," announced Mephisto to the woman
who met them. She was small and wizened and old, with yellow,
flabby jaws, a neck like the throat of an alligator, and
straight, white hair that stood from her head uncannily stiff.
"But the demoiselle wishes to appear a boy, un petit garcon?" she
inquired, gazing eagerly at Flo's long, slender frame. Her voice
was old and thin, like the high quavering of an imperfect
tuning-fork, and her eyes were sharp as talons in their grasping
glance.
"Mademoiselle does not wish such a costume," gruffly responded
Mephisto.
"Ma foi, there is no other," said the ancient, shrugging her
shoulders. "But one is left now; mademoiselle would make a fine
troubadour."
"Flo," said Mephisto, "it's a dare-devil scheme, try it; no one
will ever know it but us, and we'll die before we tell. Besides,
we must; it's late, and you couldn't find your crowd."
And that was why you might have seen a Mephisto and a slender
troubadour of lovely form, with mandolin flung across his
shoulder, followed by a bevy of jockeys and ballet girls,
laughing and singing as they swept down Rampart Street.
When the flash and glare and brilliancy of Canal Street have
palled upon the tired eye, when it is yet too soon to go home to
such a prosaic thing as dinner, and one still wishes for novelty,
then it is wise to go into the lower districts. There is fantasy
and fancy and grotesqueness run wild in the costuming and the
behaviour of the maskers. Such dances and whoops and leaps as
these hideous Indians and devils do indulge in; such wild
curvetings and long walks! In the open squares, where whole
groups do congregate, it is wonderfully amusing. Then, too,
there is a ball in every available hall, a delirious ball, where
one may dance all day for ten cents; dance and grow mad for joy,
and never know who were your companions, and be yourself unknown.
And in the exhilaration of the day, one walks miles and miles,
and dances and skips, and the fatigue is never felt.
In Washington Square, away down where Royal Street empties its
stream of children great and small into the broad channel of
Elysian Fields Avenue, there was a perfect Indian pow-wow. With
a little imagination one might have willed away the vision of the
surrounding houses, and fancied one's self again in the forest,
where the natives were holding a sacred riot. The square was
filled with spectators, masked and un-masked. It was amusing to
watch these mimic Red-men, they seemed so fierce and earnest.
Suddenly one chief touched another on the elbow. "See that
Mephisto and troubadour over there?" he whispered huskily.
"Yes; who are they?"
"I don't know the devil," responded the other, quietly, "but I'd
know that other form anywhere. It's Leon, see? I know those
white hands like a woman's and that restless head. Ha!"
"But there may be a mistake."
"No. I'd know that one anywhere; I feel it is he. I'll pay him
now. Ah, sweetheart, you've waited long, but you shall feast
now!" He was caressing something long and lithe and glittering
beneath his blanket.
In a masked dance it is easy to give a death-blow between the
shoulders. Two crowds meet and laugh and shout and mingle almost
inextricably, and if a shriek of pain should arise, it is not
noticed in the din, and when they part, if one should stagger and
fall bleeding to the ground, can any one tell who has given the
blow? There is nothing but an unknown stiletto on the ground,
the crowd has dispersed, and masks tell no tales anyway. There
is murder, but by whom? for what? Quien sabe?
And that is how it happened on Carnival night, in the last mad
moments of Rex's reign, a broken-hearted mother sat gazing
wide-eyed and mute at a horrible something that lay across the
bed. Outside the long sweet march music of many bands floated in
as if in mockery, and the flash of rockets and Bengal lights
illumined the dead, white face of the girl troubadour.
LITTLE MISS SOPHIE
When Miss Sophie knew consciousness again, the long, faint,
swelling notes of the organ were dying away in distant echoes
through the great arches of the silent church, and she was alone,
crouching in a little, forsaken black heap at the altar of the
Virgin. The twinkling tapers shone pityingly upon her, the
beneficent smile of the white-robed Madonna seemed to whisper
comfort. A long gust of chill air swept up the aisles, and Miss
Sophie shivered not from cold, but from nervousness.
But darkness was falling, and soon the lights would be lowered,
and the great massive doors would be closed; so, gathering her
thin little cape about her frail shoulders, Miss Sophie hurried
out, and along the brilliant noisy streets home.
It was a wretched, lonely little room, where the cracks let the
boisterous wind whistle through, and the smoky, grimy walls
looked cheerless and unhomelike. A miserable little room in a
miserable little cottage in one of the squalid streets of the
Third District that nature and the city fathers seemed to have
forgotten.
As bare and comfortless as the room was Miss Sophie's life. She
rented these four walls from an unkempt little Creole woman,
whose progeny seemed like the promised offspring of Abraham. She
scarcely kept the flickering life in her pale little body by the
unceasing toil of a pair of bony hands, stitching, stitching,
ceaselessly, wearingly, on the bands and pockets of trousers. It
was her bread, this monotonous, unending work; and though whole
days and nights constant labour brought but the most meagre
recompense, it was her only hope of life.
She sat before the little charcoal brazier and warmed her
transparent, needle-pricked fingers, thinking meanwhile of the
strange events of the day. She had been up town to carry the
great, black bundle of coarse pants and vests to the factory and
to receive her small pittance, and on the way home stopped in at
the Jesuit Church to say her little prayer at the altar of the
calm white Virgin. There had been a wondrous burst of music from
the great organ as she knelt there, an overpowering perfume of
many flowers, the glittering dazzle of many lights, and the
dainty frou-frou made by the silken skirts of wedding guests. So
Miss Sophie stayed to the wedding; for what feminine heart, be it
ever so old and seared, does not delight in one? And why should
not a poor little Creole old maid be interested too?
Then the wedding party had filed in solemnly, to the rolling,
swelling tones of the organ. Important-looking groomsmen;
dainty, fluffy, white-robed maids; stately, satin-robed,
illusion-veiled bride, and happy groom. She leaned forward to
catch a better glimpse of their faces. "Ah!"--
Those near the Virgin's altar who heard a faint sigh and rustle
on the steps glanced curiously as they saw a slight black-robed
figure clutch the railing and lean her head against it. Miss
Sophie had fainted.
"I must have been hungry," she mused over the charcoal fire in
her little room, "I must have been hungry;" and she smiled a wan
smile, and busied herself getting her evening meal of coffee and
bread and ham.
If one were given to pity, the first thought that would rush to
one's lips at sight of Miss Sophie would have been, "Poor little
woman!" She had come among the bareness and sordidness of this
neighbourhood five years ago, robed in crape, and crying with
great sobs that seemed to shake the vitality out of her.
Perfectly silent, too, she was about her former life; but for all
that, Michel, the quartee grocer at the corner, and Madame
Laurent, who kept the rabbe shop opposite, had fixed it all up
between them, of her sad history and past glories. Not that they
knew; but then Michel must invent something when the neighbours
came to him as their fountain-head of wisdom.
One morning little Miss Sophie opened wide her dingy windows to
catch the early freshness of the autumn wind as it whistled
through the yellow-leafed trees. It was one of those calm,
blue-misted, balmy, November days that New Orleans can have when
all the rest of the country is fur-wrapped. Miss Sophie pulled
her machine to the window, where the sweet, damp wind could whisk
among her black locks.
Whirr, whirr, went the machine, ticking fast and lightly over the
belts of the rough jeans pants. Whirr, whirr, yes, and Miss
Sophie was actually humming a tune! She felt strangely light
to-day.
"Ma foi," muttered Michel, strolling across the street to where
Madame Laurent sat sewing behind the counter on blue and
brown-checked aprons, "but the little ma'amselle sings. Perhaps
she recollects."
"Perhaps," muttered the rabbe woman.
But little Miss Sophie felt restless. A strange impulse seemed
drawing her up town, and the machine seemed to run slow, slow,
before it would stitch all of the endless number of jeans belts.
Her fingers trembled with nervous haste as she pinned up the
unwieldy black bundle of finished work, and her feet fairly
tripped over each other in their eagerness to get to Claiborne
Street, where she could board the up-town car. There was a
feverish desire to go somewhere, a sense of elation, a foolish
happiness that brought a faint echo of colour into her pinched
cheeks. She wondered why.
No one noticed her in the car. Passengers on the Claiborne line
are too much accustomed to frail little black-robed women with
big, black bundles; it is one of the city's most pitiful sights.
She leaned her head out of the window to catch a glimpse of the
oleanders on Bayou Road, when her attention was caught by a
conversation in the car.
"Yes, it's too bad for Neale, and lately married too," said the
elder man. "I can't see what he is to do."
Neale! She pricked up her ears. That was the name of the groom
in the Jesuit Church.
"How did it happen?" languidly inquired the younger. He was a
stranger, evidently; a stranger with a high regard for the
faultlessness of male attire.
"Well, the firm failed first; he didn't mind that much, he was so
sure of his uncle's inheritance repairing his lost fortunes; but
suddenly this difficulty of identification springs up, and he is
literally on the verge of ruin."
"Won't some of you fellows who've known him all your lives do to
identify him?"
"Gracious man, we've tried; but the absurd old will expressly
stipulates that he shall be known only by a certain quaint Roman
ring, and unless he has it, no identification, no fortune. He
has given the ring away, and that settles it."
"Well, you 're all chumps. Why doesn't he get the ring from the
owner?"
"Easily said; but--it seems that Neale had some little Creole
love-affair some years ago, and gave this ring to his dusky-eyed
fiancee. You know how Neale is with his love-affairs, went off
and forgot the girl in a month. It seems, however, she took it
to heart,--so much so that he's ashamed to try to find her or the
ring."
Miss Sophie heard no more as she gazed out into the dusty grass.
There were tears in her eyes, hot blinding ones that wouldn't
drop for pride, but stayed and scalded. She knew the story, with
all its embellishment of heartaches. She knew the ring, too.
She remembered the day she had kissed and wept and fondled it,
until it seemed her heart must burst under its load of grief
before she took it to the pawn-broker's that another might be
eased before the end came,--that other her father. The little
"Creole love affair" of Neale's had not always been poor and old
and jaded-looking; but reverses must come, even Neale knew that,
so the ring was at the Mont de Piete. Still he must have it, it
was his; it would save him from disgrace and suffering and from
bringing the white-gowned bride into sorrow. He must have it;
but how?
There it was still at the pawn-broker's; no one would have such
an odd jewel, and the ticket was home in the bureau drawer.
Well, he must have it; she might starve in the attempt. Such a
thing as going to him and telling him that he might redeem it was
an impossibility. That good, straight-backed, stiff-necked
Creole blood would have risen in all its strength and choked her.
No; as a present had the quaint Roman circlet been placed upon
her finger, as a present should it be returned.
The bumping car rode slowly, and the hot thoughts beat heavily in
her poor little head. He must have the ring; but how--the
ring--the Roman ring--the white-robed bride starving--she was
going mad--ah yes--the church.
There it was, right in the busiest, most bustling part of the
town, its fresco and bronze and iron quaintly suggestive of
mediaeval times. Within, all was cool and dim and restful, with
the faintest whiff of lingering incense rising and pervading the
gray arches. Yes, the Virgin would know and have pity; the
sweet, white-robed Virgin at the pretty flower-decked altar, or
the one away up in the niche, far above the golden dome where the
Host was. Titiche, the busybody of the house, noticed that Miss
Sophie's bundle was larger than usual that afternoon. "Ah, poor
woman!" sighed Titiche's mother, "she would be rich for
Christmas."
The bundle grew larger each day, and Miss Sophie grew smaller.
The damp, cold rain and mist closed the white-curtained window,
but always there behind the sewing-machine drooped and bobbed the
little black-robed figure. Whirr, whirr went the wheels, and the
coarse jeans pants piled in great heaps at her side. The
Claiborne Street car saw her oftener than before, and the sweet
white Virgin in the flowered niche above the gold-domed altar
smiled at the little supplicant almost every day.
"Ma foi," said the slatternly landlady to Madame Laurent and
Michel one day, "I no see how she live! Eat? Nothin', nothin',
almos', and las' night when it was so cold and foggy, eh? I hav'
to mek him build fire. She mos' freeze."
Whereupon the rumour spread that Miss Sophie was starving herself
to death to get some luckless relative out of jail for Christmas;
a rumour which enveloped her scraggy little figure with a kind of
halo to the neighbours when she appeared on the streets.
November had merged into December, and the little pile of coins
was yet far from the sum needed. Dear God! how the money did
have to go! The rent and the groceries and the coal, though, to
be sure, she used a precious bit of that. Would all the work and
saving and skimping do good? Maybe, yes, maybe by Christmas.
Christmas Eve on Royal Street is no place for a weakling, for the
shouts and carousels of the roisterers will strike fear into the
bravest ones. Yet amid the cries and yells, the deafening blow
of horns and tin whistles, and the really dangerous fusillade of
fireworks, a little figure hurried along, one hand clutching
tightly the battered hat that the rude merry-makers had torn off,
the other grasping under the thin black cape a worn little
pocketbook.
Into the Mont de Piete she ran breathless, eager. The ticket?
Here, worn, crumpled. The ring? It was not gone? No, thank
Heaven! It was a joy well worth her toil, she thought, to have
it again.
Had Titiche not been shooting crackers on the banquette instead
of peering into the crack, as was his wont, his big, round black
eyes would have grown saucer-wide to see little Miss Sophie kiss
and fondle a ring, an ugly clumsy band of gold.
"Ah, dear ring," she murmured, "once you were his, and you shall
be his again. You shall be on his finger, and perhaps touch his
heart. Dear ring, ma chere petite de ma coeur, cherie de ma
coeur. Je t'aime, je t'aime, oui, oui. You are his; you were
mine once too. To-night, just one night, I'll keep
you--then--to-morrow, you shall go where you can save him."
The loud whistles and horns of the little ones rose on the balmy
air next morning. No one would doubt it was Christmas Day, even
if doors and windows were open wide to let in cool air. Why,
there was Christmas even in the very look of the mules on the
poky cars; there was Christmas noise in the streets, and
Christmas toys and Christmas odours, savoury ones that made the
nose wrinkle approvingly, issuing from the kitchen. Michel and
Madame Laurent smiled greetings across the street at each other,
and the salutation from a passer-by recalled the many-progenied
landlady to herself.
"Miss Sophie, well, po' soul, not ver' much Chris'mas for her.
Mais, I'll jus' call him in fo' to spen' the day with me. Eet'll
cheer her a bit."
It was so clean and orderly within the poor little room. Not a
speck of dust or a litter of any kind on the quaint little
old-time high bureau, unless you might except a sheet of paper
lying loose with something written on it. Titiche had evidently
inherited his prying propensities, for the landlady turned it
over and read,--
LOUIS,--Here is the ring. I return it to you. I heard you
needed it. I hope it comes not too late. SOPHIE.
"The ring, where?" muttered the landlady. There it was, clasped
between her fingers on her bosom,--a bosom white and cold, under
a cold happy face. Christmas had indeed dawned for Miss Sophie.
SISTER JOSEPHA
Sister Josepha told her beads mechanically, her fingers numb with
the accustomed exercise. The little organ creaked a dismal "O
Salutaris," and she still knelt on the floor, her white-bonneted
head nodding suspiciously. The Mother Superior gave a sharp
glance at the tired figure; then, as a sudden lurch forward
brought the little sister back to consciousness, Mother's eyes
relaxed into a genuine smile.
The bell tolled the end of vespers, and the sombre-robed nuns
filed out of the chapel to go about their evening duties. Little
Sister Josepha's work was to attend to the household lamps, but
there must have been as much oil spilled upon the table to-night
as was put in the vessels. The small brown hands trembled so
that most of the wicks were trimmed with points at one corner
which caused them to smoke that night.
"Oh, cher Seigneur," she sighed, giving an impatient polish to a
refractory chimney, "it is wicked and sinful, I know, but I am so
tired. I can't be happy and sing any more. It doesn't seem
right for le bon Dieu to have me all cooped up here with nothing
to see but stray visitors, and always the same old work, teaching
those mean little girls to sew, and washing and filling the same
old lamps. Pah!" And she polished the chimney with a sudden
vigorous jerk which threatened destruction.
They were rebellious prayers that the red mouth murmured that
night, and a restless figure that tossed on the hard dormitory
bed. Sister Dominica called from her couch to know if Sister
Josepha were ill.
"No," was the somewhat short response; then a muttered, "Why
can't they let me alone for a minute? That pale-eyed Sister
Dominica never sleeps; that's why she is so ugly."
About fifteen years before this night some one had brought to the
orphan asylum connected with this convent, du Sacre Coeur, a
round, dimpled bit of three-year-old humanity, who regarded the
world from a pair of gravely twinkling black eyes, and only took
a chubby thumb out of a rosy mouth long enough to answer in
monosyllabic French. It was a child without an identity; there
was but one name that any one seemed to know, and that, too, was
vague,--Camille.
She grew up with the rest of the waifs; scraps of French and
American civilization thrown together to develop a seemingly
inconsistent miniature world. Mademoiselle Camille was a queen
among them, a pretty little tyrant who ruled the children and
dominated the more timid sisters in charge.
One day an awakening came. When she was fifteen, and almost
fully ripened into a glorious tropical beauty of the type that
matures early, some visitors to the convent were fascinated by
her and asked the Mother Superior to give the girl into their
keeping.
Camille fled like a frightened fawn into the yard, and was only
unearthed with some difficulty from behind a group of palms.
Sulky and pouting, she was led into the parlour, picking at her
blue pinafore like a spoiled infant.
"The lady and gentleman wish you to go home with them, Camille,"
said the Mother Superior, in the language of the convent. Her
voice was kind and gentle apparently; but the child, accustomed
to its various inflections, detected a steely ring behind its
softness, like the proverbial iron hand in the velvet glove.
"You must understand, madame," continued Mother, in stilted
English, "that we never force children from us. We are ever glad
to place them in comfortable--how you say that?--quarters
--maisons--homes--bien! But we will not make them
go if they do not wish."
Camille stole a glance at her would-be guardians, and decided
instantly, impulsively, finally. The woman suited her; but the
man! It was doubtless intuition of the quick, vivacious sort
which belonged to her blood that served her. Untutored in
worldly knowledge, she could not divine the meaning of the
pronounced leers and admiration of her physical charms which
gleamed in the man's face, but she knew it made her feel creepy,
and stoutly refused to go. Next day Camille was summoned from a
task to the Mother Superior's parlour. The other girls gazed
with envy upon her as she dashed down the courtyard with
impetuous movement. Camille, they decided crossly, received too
much notice. It was Camille this, Camille that; she was pretty,
it was to be expected. Even Father Ray lingered longer in his
blessing when his hands pressed her silky black hair.
As she entered the parlour, a strange chill swept over the girl.
The room was not an unaccustomed one, for she had swept it many
times, but to-day the stiff black chairs, the dismal crucifixes,
the gleaming whiteness of the walls, even the cheap lithograph of
the Madonna which Camille had always regarded as a perfect
specimen of art, seemed cold and mean.
"Camille, ma chere," said Mother, "I am extremely displeased with
you. Why did you not wish to go with Monsieur and Madame Lafaye
yesterday?"
The girl uncrossed her hands from her bosom, and spread them out
in a deprecating gesture.
"Mais, ma mere, I was afraid."
Mother's face grew stern. "No foolishness now," she exclaimed.
"It is not foolishness, ma mere; I could not help it, but that
man looked at me so funny, I felt all cold chills down my back.
Oh, dear Mother, I love the convent and the sisters so, I just
want to stay and be a sister too, may I?"
And thus it was that Camille took the white veil at sixteen
years. Now that the period of novitiate was over, it was just
beginning to dawn upon her that she had made a mistake.
"Maybe it would have been better had I gone with the
funny-looking lady and gentleman," she mused bitterly one night.
"Oh, Seigneur, I 'm so tired and impatient; it's so dull here,
and, dear God, I'm so young."
There was no help for it. One must arise in the morning, and
help in the refectory with the stupid Sister Francesca, and go
about one's duties with a prayerful mien, and not even let a sigh
escape when one's head ached with the eternal telling of beads.
A great fete day was coming, and an atmosphere of preparation and
mild excitement pervaded the brown walls of the convent like a
delicate aroma. The old Cathedral around the corner had stood a
hundred years, and all the city was rising to do honour to its
age and time-softened beauty. There would be a service, oh, but
such a one! with two Cardinals, and Archbishops and Bishops, and
all the accompanying glitter of soldiers and orchestras. The
little sisters of the Convent du Sacre Coeur clasped their hands
in anticipation of the holy joy. Sister Josepha curled her lip,
she was so tired of churchly pleasures.
The day came, a gold and blue spring day, when the air hung heavy
with the scent of roses and magnolias, and the sunbeams fairly
laughed as they kissed the houses. The old Cathedral stood gray
and solemn, and the flowers in Jackson Square smiled cheery
birthday greetings across the way. The crowd around the door
surged and pressed and pushed in its eagerness to get within.
Ribbons stretched across the banquette were of no avail to
repress it, and important ushers with cardinal colours could do
little more.
The Sacred Heart sisters filed slowly in at the side door,
creating a momentary flutter as they paced reverently to their
seats, guarding the blue-bonneted orphans. Sister Josepha,
determined to see as much of the world as she could, kept her big
black eyes opened wide, as the church rapidly filled with the
fashionably dressed, perfumed, rustling, and self-conscious
throng.
Her heart beat quickly. The rebellious thoughts that will arise
in the most philosophical of us surged in her small heavily
gowned bosom. For her were the gray things, the neutral tinted
skies, the ugly garb, the coarse meats; for them the rainbow, the
ethereal airiness of earthly joys, the bonbons and glaces of the
world. Sister Josepha did not know that the rainbow is elusive,
and its colours but the illumination of tears; she had never been
told that earthly ethereality is necessarily ephemeral, nor that
bonbons and glaces, whether of the palate or of the soul,
nauseate and pall upon the taste. Dear God, forgive her, for she
bent with contrite tears over her worn rosary, and glanced no
more at the worldly glitter of femininity.
The sunbeams streamed through the high windows in purple and
crimson lights upon a veritable fugue of colour. Within the
seats, crush upon crush of spring millinery; within the aisles
erect lines of gold-braided, gold-buttoned military. Upon the
altar, broad sweeps of golden robes, great dashes of crimson
skirts, mitres and gleaming crosses, the soft neutral hue of rich
lace vestments; the tender heads of childhood in picturesque
attire; the proud, golden magnificence of the domed altar with
its weighting mass of lilies and wide-eyed roses, and the long
candles that sparkled their yellow star points above the reverent
throng within the altar rails.
The soft baritone of the Cardinal intoned a single phrase in the
suspended silence. The censer took up the note in its delicate
clink clink, as it swung to and fro in the hands of a fair-haired
child. Then the organ, pausing an instant in a deep, mellow,
long-drawn note, burst suddenly into a magnificent strain, and
the choir sang forth, "Kyrie Eleison, Christe Eleison." One
voice, flute-like, piercing, sweet, rang high over the rest.
Sister Josepha heard and trembled, as she buried her face in her
hands, and let her tears fall, like other beads, through her
rosary.
It was when the final word of the service had been intoned, the
last peal of the exit march had died away, that she looked up
meekly, to encounter a pair of youthful brown eyes gazing
pityingly upon her. That was all she remembered for a moment,
that the eyes were youthful and handsome and tender. Later, she
saw that they were placed in a rather beautiful boyish face,
surmounted by waves of brown hair, curling and soft, and that the
head was set on a pair of shoulders decked in military uniform.
Then the brown eyes marched away with the rest of the rear guard,
and the white-bonneted sisters filed out the side door, through
the narrow court, back into the brown convent.
That night Sister Josepha tossed more than usual on her hard bed,
and clasped her fingers often in prayer to quell the wickedness
in her heart. Turn where she would, pray as she might, there was
ever a pair of tender, pitying brown eyes, haunting her
persistently. The squeaky organ at vespers intoned the clank of
military accoutrements to her ears, the white bonnets of the
sisters about her faded into mists of curling brown hair.
Briefly, Sister Josepha was in love.
The days went on pretty much as before, save for the one little
heart that beat rebelliously now and then, though it tried so
hard to be submissive. There was the morning work in the
refectory, the stupid little girls to teach sewing, and the
insatiable lamps that were so greedy for oil. And always the
tender, boyish brown eyes, that looked so sorrowfully at the
fragile, beautiful little sister, haunting, following, pleading.
Perchance, had Sister Josepha been in the world, the eyes would
have been an incident. But in this home of self-repression and
retrospection, it was a life-story. The eyes had gone their way,
doubtless forgetting the little sister they pitied; but the
little sister?
The days glided into weeks, the weeks into months. Thoughts of
escape had come to Sister Josepha, to flee into the world, to
merge in the great city where recognition was impossible, and,
working her way like the rest of humanity, perchance encounter
the eyes again.
It was all planned and ready. She would wait until some morning
when the little band of black-robed sisters wended their way to
mass at the Cathedral. When it was time to file out the
side-door into the courtway, she would linger at prayers, then
slip out another door, and unseen glide up Chartres Street to
Canal, and once there, mingle in the throng that filled the wide
thoroughfare. Beyond this first plan she could think no further.
Penniless, garbed, and shaven though she would be, other
difficulties never presented themselves to her. She would rely
on the mercies of the world to help her escape from this
torturing life of inertia. It seemed easy now that the first
step of decision had been taken.
The Saturday night before the final day had come, and she lay
feverishly nervous in her narrow little bed, wondering with
wide-eyed fear at the morrow. Pale-eyed Sister Dominica and
Sister Francesca were whispering together in the dark silence,
and Sister Josepha's ears pricked up as she heard her name.
"She is not well, poor child," said Francesca. "I fear the life
is too confining."
"It is best for her," was the reply. "You know, sister, how hard
it would be for her in the world, with no name but Camille, no
friends, and her beauty; and then--"
Sister Josepha heard no more, for her heart beating tumultuously
in her bosom drowned the rest. Like the rush of the bitter salt
tide over a drowning man clinging to a spar, came the complete
submerging of her hopes of another life. No name but Camille,
that was true; no nationality, for she could never tell from whom
or whence she came; no friends, and a beauty that not even an
ungainly bonnet and shaven head could hide. In a flash she
realised the deception of the life she would lead, and the cruel
self-torture of wonder at her own identity. Already, as if in
anticipation of the world's questionings, she was asking herself,
"Who am I? What am I?"
The next morning the sisters du Sacre Coeur filed into the
Cathedral at High Mass, and bent devout knees at the general
confession. "Confiteor Deo omnipotenti," murmured the priest;
and tremblingly one little sister followed the words, "Je
confesse a Dieu, tout puissant--que j'ai beaucoup peche par
pensees--c'est ma faute--c'est ma faute--c'est ma tres grande
faute."
The organ pealed forth as mass ended, the throng slowly filed
out, and the sisters paced through the courtway back into the
brown convent walls. One paused at the entrance, and gazed with
swift longing eyes in the direction of narrow, squalid Chartres
Street, then, with a gulping sob, followed the rest, and vanished
behind the heavy door.
THE PRALINE WOMAN
The praline woman sits by the side of the Archbishop's quaint
little old chapel on Royal Street, and slowly waves her latanier
fan over the pink and brown wares.
"Pralines, pralines. Ah, ma'amzelle, you buy? S'il vous plait,
ma'amzelle, ces pralines, dey be fine, ver' fresh.
"Mais non, maman, you are not sure?
"Sho', chile, ma bebe, ma petite, she put dese up hissef. He's
hans' so small, ma'amzelle, lak you's, mais brune. She put dese
up dis morn'. You tak' none? No husban' fo' you den!
"Ah, ma petite, you tak'? Cinq sous, bebe, may le bon Dieu keep
you good!
"Mais oui, madame, I know you etranger. You don' look lak dese
New Orleans peop'. You lak' dose Yankee dat come down 'fo' de
war."
Ding-dong, ding-dong, ding-dong, chimes the Cathedral bell across
Jack- son Square, and the praline woman crosses herself.
"Hail, Mary, full of grace--
"Pralines, madame? You buy lak' dat? Dix sous, madame, an' one
lil' piece fo' lagniappe fo' madame's lil' bebe. Ah, c'est bon!
"Pralines, pralines, so fresh, so fine! M'sieu would lak' some
fo' he's lil' gal' at home? Mais non, what's dat you say? She's
daid! Ah, m'sieu, 'tis my lil' gal what died long year ago.
Misere, misere!
"Here come dat lazy Indien squaw. What she good fo', anyhow? She
jes' sit lak dat in de French Market an' sell her file, an'
sleep, sleep, sleep, lak' so in he's blanket. Hey, dere, you,
Tonita, how goes you' beezness?
"Pralines, pralines! Holy Father, you give me dat blessin' sho'?
Tak' one, I know you lak dat w'ite one. It tas' good, I know,
bien.
"Pralines, madame? I lak' you' face. What fo' you wear black?
You' lil' boy daid? You tak' one, jes' see how it tas'. I had
one lil' boy once, he jes' grow 'twell he's big lak' dis, den one
day he tak' sick an' die. Oh, madame, it mos' brek my po' heart.
I burn candle in St. Rocque, I say my beads, I sprinkle holy
water roun' he's bed; he jes' lay so, he's eyes turn up, he say
'Maman, maman,' den he die! Madame, you tak' one. Non, non, no
l'argent, you tak' one fo' my lil' boy's sake.
"Pralines, pralines, m'sieu? Who mak' dese? My lil' gal,
Didele, of co'se. Non, non, I don't mak' no mo'. Po' Tante
Marie get too ol'. Didele? She's one lil' gal I 'dopt. I see
her one day in de strit. He walk so; hit col' she shiver, an' I
say, 'Where you gone, lil' gal?' and he can' tell. He jes' crip
close to me, an' cry so! Den I tak' her home wid me, and she say
he's name Didele. You see dey wa'nt nobody dere. My lil' gal,
she's daid of de yellow fever; my lil' boy, he's daid, po' Tante
Marie all alone. Didele, she grow fine, she keep house an' mek'
pralines. Den, when night come, she sit wid he's guitar an'
sing,
"'Tu l'aime ces trois jours,
Tu l'aime ces trois jours,
Ma coeur a toi,
Ma coeur a toi,
Tu l'aime ces trois jours!'
"Ah, he's fine gal, is Didele!
"Pralines, pralines! Dat lil' cloud, h'it look lak' rain, I hope
no.
"Here come dat lazy I'ishman down de strit. I don't lak'
I'ishman, me, non, dey so funny. One day one I'ishman, he say to
me, 'Auntie, what fo' you talk so?' and I jes' say back, 'What
fo' you say "Faith an' be jabers"?' Non, I don' lak I'ishman,
me!
"Here come de rain! Now I got fo' to go. Didele, she be wait
fo' me. Down h'it come! H'it fall in de Meesseesip, an' fill
up--up--so, clean to de levee, den we have big crivasse, an' po'
Tante Marie float away. Bon jour, madame, you come again?
Pralines! Pralines!"
ODALIE
Now and then Carnival time comes at the time of the good Saint
Valentine, and then sometimes it comes as late as the warm days
in March, when spring is indeed upon us, and the greenness of the
grass outvies the green in the royal standards.
Days and days before the Carnival proper, New Orleans begins to
take on a festive appearance. Here and there the royal flags
with their glowing greens and violets and yellows appear, and
then, as if by magic, the streets and buildings flame and burst
like poppies out of bud, into a glorious refulgence of colour
that steeps the senses into a languorous acceptance of warmth and
beauty.
On Mardi Gras day, as you know, it is a town gone mad with folly.
A huge masked ball emptied into the streets at daylight; a
meeting of all nations on common ground, a pot-pourri of every
conceivable human ingredient, but faintly describes it all.
There are music and flowers, cries and laughter and song and
joyousness, and never an aching heart to show its sorrow or dim
the happiness of the streets. A wondrous thing, this Carnival!
But the old cronies down in Frenchtown, who know everything, and
can recite you many a story, tell of one sad heart on Mardi Gras
years ago. It was a woman's, of course; for "Il est toujours les
femmes qui sont malheureuses," says an old proverb, and perhaps
it is right. This woman--a child, she would be called elsewhere,
save in this land of tropical growth and precocity--lost her
heart to one who never knew, a very common story, by the way, but
one which would have been quite distasteful to the haughty judge,
her father, had he known.
Odalie was beautiful. Odalie was haughty too, but gracious
enough to those who pleased her dainty fancy. In the old French
house on Royal Street, with its quaint windows and Spanish
courtyard green and cool, and made musical by the plashing of the
fountain and the trill of caged birds, lived Odalie in
convent-like seclusion. Monsieur le Juge was determined no hawk
should break through the cage and steal his dove; and so, though
there was no mother, a stern duenna aunt kept faithful watch.
Alas for the precautions of la Tante! Bright eyes that search for
other bright eyes in which lurks the spirit of youth and mischief
are ever on the look-out, even in church. Dutifully was Odalie
marched to the Cathedral every Sunday to mass, and Tante Louise,
nodding devoutly over her beads, could not see the blushes and
glances full of meaning, a whole code of signals as it were, that
passed between Odalie and Pierre, the impecunious young clerk in
the courtroom.
Odalie loved, perhaps, because there was not much else to do.
When one is shut up in a great French house with a grim sleepy
tante and no companions of one's own age, life becomes a dull
thing, and one is ready for any new sensation, particularly if in
the veins there bounds the tempestuous Spanish-French blood that
Monsieur le Juge boasted of. So Odalie hugged the image of her
Pierre during the week days, and played tremulous little
love-songs to it in the twilight when la Tante dozed over her
devotion book, and on Sundays at mass there were glances and
blushes, and mayhap, at some especially remembered time, the
touch of finger-tips at the holy-water font, while la Tante
dropped her last genuflexion.
Then came the Carnival time, and one little heart beat faster, as
the gray house on Royal Street hung out its many-hued flags, and
draped its grim front with glowing colours. It was to be a time
of joy and relaxation, when every one could go abroad, and in the
crowds one could speak to whom one chose. Unconscious plans
formulated, and the petite Odalie was quite happy as the time
drew near.
"Only think, Tante Louise," she would cry, "what a happy time it
is to be!"
But Tante Louise only grumbled, as was her wont.
It was Mardi Gras day at last, and early through her window
Odalie could hear the jingle of folly bells on the maskers'
costumes, the tinkle of music, and the echoing strains of songs.
Up to her ears there floated the laughter of the older maskers,
and the screams of the little children frightened at their own
images under the mask and domino. What a hurry to be out and in
the motley merry throng, to be pacing Royal Street to Canal
Street, where was life and the world!
They were tired eyes with which Odalie looked at the gay pageant
at last, tired with watching throng after throng of maskers, of
the unmasked, of peering into the cartsful of singing minstrels,
into carriages of revellers, hoping for a glimpse of Pierre the
devout. The allegorical carts rumbling by with their important
red-clothed horses were beginning to lose charm, the disguises
showed tawdry, even the gay-hued flags fluttered sadly to Odalie.
Mardi Gras was a tiresome day, after all, she sighed, and Tante
Louise agreed with her for once.
Six o'clock had come, the hour when all masks must be removed.
The long red rays of the setting sun glinted athwart the
many-hued costumes of the revellers trooping unmasked homeward to
rest for the night's last mad frolic.
Down Toulouse Street there came the merriest throng of all.
Young men and women in dainty, fairy-like garb, dancers, and
dresses of the picturesque Empire, a butterfly or two and a dame
here and there with powdered hair and graces of olden time.
Singing with unmasked faces, they danced toward Tante Louise and
Odalie. She stood with eyes lustrous and tear-heavy, for there
in the front was Pierre, Pierre the faithless, his arms about the
slender waist of a butterfly, whose tinselled powdered hair
floated across the lace ruffles of his Empire coat.
"Pierre!" cried Odalie, softly. No one heard, for it was a mere
faint breath and fell unheeded. Instead the laughing throng
pelted her with flowers and candy and went their way, and even
Pierre did not see.
You see, when one is shut up in the grim walls of a Royal Street
house, with no one but a Tante Louise and a grim judge, how is
one to learn that in this world there are faithless ones who may
glance tenderly into one's eyes at mass and pass the holy water
on caressing fingers without being madly in love? There was no
one to tell Odalie, so she sat at home in the dull first days of
Lent, and nursed her dear dead love, and mourned as women have
done from time immemorial over the faithlessness of man. And
when one day she asked that she might go back to the Ursulines'
convent where her childish days were spent, only to go this time
as a nun, Monsieur le Juge and Tante Louise thought it quite the
proper and convenient thing to do; for how were they to know the
secret of that Mardi Gras day?
LA JUANITA
If you never lived in Mandeville, you cannot appreciate the
thrill of wholesome, satisfied joy which sweeps over its
inhabitants every evening at five o'clock. It is the hour for
the arrival of the "New Camelia," the happening of the day. As
early as four o'clock the trailing smoke across the horizon of
the treacherous Lake Pontchartrain appears, and Mandeville knows
then that the hour for its siesta has passed, and that it must
array itself in its coolest and fluffiest garments, and go down
to the pier to meet this sole connection between itself and the
outside world; the little, puffy, side-wheel steamer that comes
daily from New Orleans and brings the mail and the news.
On this particular day there was an air of suppressed excitement
about the little knot of people which gathered on the pier. To
be sure, there were no outward signs to show that anything
unusual had occurred. The small folks danced with the same glee
over the worn boards, and peered down with daring excitement into
the perilous depths of the water below. The sun, fast sinking in
a gorgeous glow behind the pines of the Tchefuncta region far
away, danced his mischievous rays in much the same manner that he
did every other day. But there was a something in the air, a
something not tangible, but mysterious, subtle. You could catch
an indescribable whiff of it in your inner senses, by the
half-eager, furtive glances that the small crowd cast at La
Juanita.
"Gar, gar, le bateau!" said one dark-tressed mother to the
wide-eyed baby. "Et, oui," she added, in an undertone to her
companion. "Voila, La Juanita!"
La Juanita, you must know, was the pride of Mandeville, the
adored, the admired of all, with her petite, half-Spanish,
half-French beauty. Whether rocking in the shade of the
Cherokee-rose-covered gallery of Grandpere Colomes' big house,
her fair face bonnet-shaded, her dainty hands gloved to keep the
sun from too close an acquaintance, or splashing the spray from
the bow of her little pirogue, or fluffing her skirts about her
tiny feet on the pier, she was the pet and ward of Mandeville, as
it were, La Juanita Alvarez, since Madame Alvarez was a widow,
and Grandpere Colomes was strict and stern.
And now La Juanita had set her small foot down with a passionate
stamp before Grandpere Colomes' very face, and tossed her black
curls about her wilful head, and said she would go to the pier
this evening to meet her Mercer. All Mandeville knew this, and
cast its furtive glances alternately at La Juanita with two big
pink spots in her cheeks, and at the entrance to the pier,
expecting Grandpere Colomes and a scene.
The sun cast red glows and violet shadows over the pier, and the
pines murmured a soft little vesper hymn among themselves up on
the beach, as the "New Camelia" swung herself in, crabby,
sidewise, like a fat old gentleman going into a small door.
There was the clang of an important bell, the scream of a hoarse
little whistle, and Mandeville rushed to the gang-plank to
welcome the outside world. Juanita put her hand through a
waiting arm, and tripped away with her Mercer, big and blond and
brawny. "Un Americain, pah!" said the little mother of the black
eyes. And Mandeville sighed sadly, and shook its head, and was
sorry for Grandpere Colomes.
This was Saturday, and the big regatta would be Monday. Ah, that
regatta, such a one as Mandeville had never seen! There were to
be boats from Madisonville and Amite, from Lewisburg and
Covington, and even far-away Nott's Point. There was to be a
Class A and Class B and Class C, and the little French girls of
the town flaunted their ribbons down the one oak-shaded,
lake-kissed street, and dared anyone to say theirs were not the
favourite colours.
In Class A was entered, "La Juanita,' captain Mercer Grangeman,
colours pink and gold." Her name, her colours; what impudence!
Of course, not being a Mandevillian, you could not understand the
shame of Grandpere Colomes at this. Was it not bad enough for
his petite Juanita, his Spanish blossom, his hope of a family
that had held itself proudly aloof from "dose Americain" from
time immemorial, to have smiled upon this Mercer, this pale-eyed
youth? Was it not bad enough for her to demean herself by
walking upon the pier with him? But for a boat, his boat, "un
bateau Americain," to be named La Juanita! Oh, the shame of it!
Grandpere Colomes prayed a devout prayer to the Virgin that "La
Juanita" should be capsized.
Monday came, clear and blue and stifling. The waves of hot air
danced on the sands and adown the one street merrily. Glassily
calm lay the Pontchartrain, heavily still hung the atmosphere.
Madame Alvarez cast an inquiring glance toward the sky.
Grandpere Colomes chuckled. He had not lived on the shores of
the treacherous Lake Pontchartrain for nothing. He knew its
every mood, its petulances and passions; he knew this glassy
warmth and what it meant. Chuckling again and again, he stepped
to the gallery and looked out over the lake, and at the pier,
where lay the boats rocking and idly tugging at their moorings.
La Juanita in her rose-scented room tied the pink ribbons on her
dainty frock, and fastened cloth of gold roses at her lithe
waist.
It was said that just before the crack of the pistol La Juanita's
tiny hand lay in Mercer's, and that he bent his head, and
whispered softly, so that the surrounding crowd could not hear,--
"Juanita mine, if I win, you will?"
"Oui, mon Mercere, eef you win."
In another instant the white wings were off scudding before the
rising breeze, dipping their glossy boat-sides into the clear
water, straining their cordage in their tense efforts to reach
the stake boats. Mandeville indiscriminately distributed itself
on piers, large and small, bath-house tops, trees, and craft of
all kinds, from pirogue, dory, and pine-raft to pretentious
cat-boat and shell-schooner. Mandeville cheered and strained its
eyes after all the boats, but chiefly was its attention directed
to "La Juanita."
"Ah, voila, eet is ahead!"
"Mais non, c'est un autre!"
"La Juanita! La Juanita!"
"Regardez Grandpere Colomes!"
Old Colomes on the big pier with Madame Alvarez and his
granddaughter was intently straining his weather-beaten face in
the direction of Nott's Point, his back resolutely turned upon
the scudding white wings. A sudden chuckle of grim satisfaction
caused La Petite's head to toss petulantly.
But only for a minute, for Grandpere Colomes' chuckle was
followed by a shout of dismay from those whose glance had
followed his. You must know that it is around Nott's Point that
the storm king shows his wings first, for the little peninsula
guards the entrance which leads into the southeast waters of the
stormy Rigolets and the blustering Gulf. You would know, if you
lived in Mandeville, that when the pines on Nott's Point darken
and when the water shows white beyond like the teeth of a hungry
wolf, it is time to steer your boat into the mouth of some one of
the many calm bayous which flow silently throughout St. Tammany
parish into the lake. Small wonder that the cry of dismay went
up now, for Nott's Point was black, with a lurid light overhead,
and the roar of the grim southeast wind came ominously over the
water.
La Juanita clasped her hands and strained her eyes for her
namesake. The racers had rounded the second stake-boat, and the
course of the triangle headed them directly for the lurid cloud.
You should have seen Grandpere Colomes then. He danced up and
down the pier in a perfect frenzy. The thin pale lips of Madame
Alvarez moved in a silent prayer; La Juanita stood coldly silent.
And now you could see that the advance guard of the southeast
force had struck the little fleet. They dipped and scurried and
rocked, and you could see the sails being reefed hurriedly, and
almost hear the rigging creak and moan under the strain. Then
the wind came up the lake, and struck the town with a tumultuous
force. The waters rose and heaved in the long, sullen
ground-swell, which betokened serious trouble. There was a rush
of lake-craft to shelter. Heavy gray waves boomed against the
breakwaters and piers, dashing their brackish spray upon the
strained watchers; then with a shriek and a howl the storm burst
full, with blinding sheets of rain, and a great hurricane of Gulf
wind that threatened to blow the little town away.
La Juanita was proud. When Grandpere and Madame led her away in
the storm, though her face was white, and the rose mouth pressed
close, not a word did she say, and her eyes were as bright as
ever before. It was foolish to hope that the frail boats could
survive such a storm. There was not even the merest excuse for
shelter out in the waters, and when Lake Pontchartrain grows
angry, it devours without pity.
Your tropical storm is soon over, however, and in an hour the sun
struggled through a gray and misty sky, over which the wind was
sweeping great clouds. The rain-drops hung diamond-like on the
thick foliage, but the long ground-swell still boomed against the
breakwaters and showed white teeth, far to the south.
As chickens creep from under shelter after a rain, so the people
of Mandeville crept out again on the piers, on the bath-houses,
on the breakwater edge, and watched eagerly for the boats.
Slowly upon the horizon appeared white sails, and the little
craft swung into sight. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven,
eight, nine, counted Mandeville. Every one coming in! Bravo!
And a great cheer that swept the whole length of the town from
the post-office to Black Bayou went up. Bravo! Every boat was
coming in. But--was every man?
This was a sobering thought, and in the hush which followed it
you could hear the Q. and C. train thundering over the great
lake-bridge, miles away.
Well, they came into the pier at last, "La Juanita" in the lead;
and as Captain Mercer landed, he was surrounded by a voluble,
chattering, anxious throng that loaded him with questions in
patois, in broken English, and in French. He was no longer "un
Americain" now, he was a hero.
When the other eight boats came in, and Mandeville saw that no
one was lost, there was another ringing bravo, and more
chattering of questions.
We heard the truth finally. When the storm burst, Captain Mercer
suddenly promoted himself to an admiralship and assumed command
of his little fleet. He had led them through the teeth of the
gale to a small inlet on the coast between Bayou Lacombe and
Nott's Point, and there they had waited until the storm passed.
Loud were the praises of the other captains for Admiral Mercer,
profuse were the thanks of the sisters and sweethearts, as he was
carried triumphantly on the shoulders of the sailors adown the
wharf to the Maison Colomes.
The crispness had gone from Juanita's pink frock, and the cloth
of gold roses were wellnigh petalless, but the hand that she
slipped into his was warm and soft, and the eyes that were
upturned to Mercer's blue ones were shining with admiring tears.
And even Grandpere Colomes, as he brewed on the
Cherokee-rose-covered gallery, a fiery punch for the heroes, was
heard to admit that "some time dose Americain can mos' be lak one
Frenchman."
And we danced at the betrothal supper the next week.
TITEE
It was cold that day. The great sharp north-wind swept out
Elysian Fields Street in blasts that made men shiver, and bent
everything in their track. The skies hung lowering and gloomy;
the usually quiet street was more than deserted, it was dismal.
Titee leaned against one of the brown freight cars for protection
against the shrill norther, and warmed his little chapped hands
at a blaze of chips and dry grass. "Maybe it'll snow," he
muttered, casting a glance at the sky that would have done credit
to a practised seaman. "Then won't I have fun! Ugh, but the
wind blows!"
It was Saturday, or Titee would have been in school, the big
yellow school on Marigny Street, where he went every day when its
bell boomed nine o'clock, went with a run and a joyous whoop,
ostensibly to imbibe knowledge, really to make his teacher's life
a burden.
Idle, lazy, dirty, troublesome boy, she called him to herself, as
day by day wore on, and Titee improved not, but let his whole
class pass him on its way to a higher grade. A practical joke he
relished infinitely more than a practical problem, and a good
game at pin-sticking was far more entertaining than a language
lesson. Moreover, he was always hungry, and would eat in school
before the half-past ten recess, thereby losing much good
playtime for his voracious appetite.
But there was nothing in natural history that Titee did not know.
He could dissect a butterfly or a mosquito hawk, and describe
their parts as accurately as a spectacled student with a scalpel
and microscope could talk about a cadaver. The entire Third
District, with its swamps and canals and commons and railroad
sections, and its wondrous, crooked, tortuous streets, was an
open book to Titee. There was not a nook or corner that he did
not know or could not tell of. There was not a bit of gossip
among the gamins, little Creole and Spanish fellows, with dark
skins and lovely eyes, like spaniels, that Titee could not tell
of. He knew just exactly when it was time for crawfish to be
plentiful down in the Claiborne and Marigny canals; just when a
poor, breadless fellow might get a job in the big bone-yard and
fertilising factory, out on the railroad track; and as for the
levee, with its ships and schooners and sailors, how he could
revel in them! The wondrous ships, the pretty little schooners,
where the foreign-looking sailors lay on long moonlight nights,
singing to their guitars and telling great stories,--all these
things and more could Titee tell of. He had been down to the
Gulf, and out on its treacherous waters through the Eads jetties
on a fishing-smack with some jolly brown sailors, and could
interest the whole school-room in the talk-lessons, if he chose.
Titee shivered as the wind swept round the freight-cars. There
isn't much warmth in a bit of a jersey coat.
"Wish 'twas summer," he murmured, casting another sailor's glance
at the sky. "Don't believe I like snow; it's too wet and cold."
And with a last parting caress at the little fire he had builded
for a minute's warmth, he plunged his hands in his pockets, shut
his teeth, and started manfully on his mission out the railroad
track toward the swamps.
It was late when Titee came home, to such a home as it was, and
he had but illy performed his errand; so his mother beat him and
sent him to bed supperless. A sharp strap stings in cold
weather, and a long walk in the teeth of a biting wind creates a
keen appetite. But if Titee cried himself to sleep that night,
he was up bright and early next morning, had been to mass,
devoutly kneeling on the cold floor, blowing his fingers to keep
them warm, and was home almost before the rest of the family were
awake.
There was evidently some great matter of business on the young
man's mind, for he scarcely ate his breakfast, and left the table
soon, eagerly cramming the remainder of his meal in his pockets.
"Ma foi, but what now?" mused his mother, as she watched his
little form sturdily trudging the track in the face of the wind;
his head, with the rimless cap thrust close on the shock of black
hair, bent low; his hands thrust deep in the bulging pockets.
"A new live play-toy h'it may be," ventured the father; "he is
one funny chil."
The next day Titee was late for school. It was something
unusual, for he was always the first on hand to fix some plan of
mechanism to make the teacher miserable. She looked reprovingly
at him this morning, when he came in during arithmetic class, his
hair all wind-blown, his cheeks rosy from a hard fight with the
sharp blasts. But he made up for his tardiness by his extreme
goodness all day; just think, Titee did not even eat once before
noon, a something unparalleled in the entire previous history of
his school life.
When the lunch-hour came, and all the yard was a scene of feast
and fun, one of the boys found him standing by a post,
disconsolately watching a ham sandwich as it rapidly disappeared
down the throat of a sturdy, square-headed little fellow.
"Hello, Edgar," he said, "what you got fer lunch?"
"Nothin'," was the mournful reply.
"Ah, why don't you stop eatin' in school, fer a change? You
don't ever have nothin' to eat."
"I didn't eat to-day," said Titee, blazing up.
"You did!"
"I tell you I didn't!" and Titee's hard little fist planted a
punctuation mark on his comrade's eye.
A fight in the schoolyard! Poor Titee was in disgrace again.
Still, in spite of his battered appearance, a severe scolding
from the principal, lines to write, and a further punishment from
his mother, Titee scarcely remained for his dinner, but was off
down the railroad track with his pockets partly stuffed with the
remnants of the scanty meal.
And the next day Titee was tardy again, and lunchless too, and
the next, until the teacher, in despair, sent a nicely printed
note to his mother about him, which might have done some good,
had not Titee taken great pains to tear it up on the way home.
One day it rained, whole bucketsful of water, that poured in
torrents from a miserable, angry sky. Too wet a day for bits of
boys to be trudging to school, so Titee's mother thought; so she
kept him at home to watch the weather through the window,
fretting and fuming like a regular storm in miniature. As the
day wore on, and the rain did not abate, his mother kept a strong
watch upon him, for he tried many times to slip away.
Dinner came and went, and the gray soddenness of the skies
deepened into the blackness of coming night. Someone called
Titee to go to bed, and Titee was nowhere to be found.
Under the beds, in closets and corners, in such impossible places
as the soap-dish and water-pitcher even, they searched, but he
had gone as completely as if he had been spirited away. It was
of no use to call up the neighbors, he had never been near their
houses, they affirmed, so there was nothing to do but to go to
the railroad track where Titee had been seen so often trudging in
the shrill north-wind.
With lanterns and sticks, and his little yellow dog, the rescuing
party started down the track. The rain had ceased falling, but
the wind blew a gale, scurrying great gray clouds over a fierce
sky. It was not exactly dark, though in this part of the city
there is neither gas nor electricity, and on such a night as this
neither moon nor stars dared show their faces in so gray a sky;
but a sort of all-diffused luminosity was in the air, as though
the sea of atmosphere was charged with an ethereal
phosphorescence.
Search as they did, there were no signs of Titee. The soft earth
between the railroad ties crumbled between their feet without
showing any small tracks or footprints.
"Mais, we may as well return," said the big brother; "he is not
here."
"Oh, mon Dieu," urged the mother, "he is, he is; I know it."
So on they went, slipping on the wet earth, stumbling over the
loose rocks, until a sudden wild yelp from Tiger brought them to
a standstill. He had rushed ahead of them, and his voice could
be heard in the distance, howling piteously.
With a fresh impetus the little muddy party hurried forward.
Tiger's yelps could be heard plainer and plainer, mingled now
with a muffled, plaintive little wail.
After a while they found a pitiful little heap of sodden rags,
lying at the foot of a mound of earth and stones thrown upon the
side of the track. It was Titee with a broken leg, all wet and
miserable and moaning.
They picked him up tenderly, and started to carry him home. But
he cried and clung to the mother, and begged not to go.
"Ah, mon pauvre enfant, he has the fever!" wailed the mother.
"No, no, it's my old man. He's hungry," sobbed Titee, holding
out a little package. It was the remnants of his dinner, all wet
and rain-washed.
"What old man?" asked the big brother.
"My old man. Oh, please, please don't go home till I see him.
I'm not hurting much, I can go."
So, yielding to his whim, they carried him farther away, down the
sides of the track up to an embankment or levee by the sides of
the Marigny Canal. Then the big brother, suddenly stopping,
exclaimed:
"Why, here's a cave. Is it Robinson Crusoe?"
"It's my old man's cave," cried Titee. "Oh, please go in; maybe
he's dead."
There cannot be much ceremony in entering a cave. There is but
one thing to do,--walk in. This they did, and holding up the
lantern, beheld a weird sight. On a bed of straw and paper in
one corner lay a withered, wizened, white-bearded old man with
wide eyes staring at the unaccustomed light. In the other corner
was an equally dilapidated cow.
"It's my old man!" cried Titee, joyfully. "Oh, please, grandpa,
I couldn't get here to-day, it rained all mornin' an' when I ran
away, I fell down an' broke something, an', oh, grandpa, I'm all
tired an' hurty, an' I'm so 'fraid you're hungry."
So the secret of Titee's jaunts down the railroad was out. In
one of his trips around the swamp-land, he had discovered the old
man exhausted from cold and hunger in the fields. Together they
had found this cave, and Titee had gathered the straw and paper
that made the bed. Then a tramp cow, old and turned adrift, too,
had crept in and shared the damp dwelling. And thither Titee had
trudged twice a day, carrying his luncheon in the morning and his
dinner in the afternoon.
"There's a crown in heaven for that child," said the officer of
charity to whom the case was referred.
But as for Titee, when the leg was well, he went his way as before.
The end of The Project Gutenberg Etext of
The Goodness of St. Rocque and Other Stories by Alice Dunbar