This other friend was a big, burly Englishman, forty-something years old,
but looking older; a big pink cabbage-rose of a man who had for many years
been Attalie's principal lodger. He, too, was alone in the world.
And yet neither was he so utterly alone as he might have been. For he was
a cotton buyer. In 1855 there was no business like the cotton business.
Everything else was subservient to that. The cotton buyer's part, in
particular, was a "pretty business." The cotton _factor_ was harassingly
responsible to a whole swarm of planter patrons, of whose feelings he had
to be all the more careful when they were in his debt. The cotton _broker_
could be bullied by his buyer. But the _buyer_ was answerable only to some
big commercial house away off in Havre or Hamburg or Liverpool, that had
to leave all but a few of the largest and most vital matters to his
discretion. Commendations and criticisms alike had to come by mail across
the Atlantic.
Now, if a cotton buyer of this sort happened to be a bachelor, with no
taste for society, was any one likely to care what he substituted, out of
business hours, for the conventional relations of domestic life? No one
answers. Cotton buyers of that sort were apt to have very comfortable
furnished rooms in the old French quarter. This one in Attalie's house had
the two main rooms on the first floor above the street.
Honestly, for all our winking and tittering, we know nothing whatever
against this person's private character except the sad fact that he was a
man and a bachelor. At forty-odd, it is fair to suppose, one who knows the
world well enough to be the trusted agent of others, thousands of miles
across the ocean, has bid farewell to all mere innocence and has made
choice between virtue and vice. But we have no proof whatever that
Attalie's cotton buyer had not solemnly chosen virtue and stuck to his
choice as an Englishman can.
All we know as to this, really, is that for many years here he had roomed,
and that, moved by some sentiment, we know not certainly what, he had
again and again assured Attalie that she should never want while he had
anything, and that in his will, whenever he should make it, she would find
herself his sole legatee. On neither side of the water, said he, had he
any one to whom the law obliged him to leave his property nor, indeed, any
large wealth; only a little money in bank--a very indefinite statement. In
1855 the will was still unwritten.
There is little room to doubt that this state of affairs did much interest
Camille Ducour--at a distance. The Englishman may have known him by sight.
The kind of acquaintance he might have had with the quadroon was not
likely to vary much from an acquaintance with some unknown neighbor's cat
on which he mildly hoped to bestow a pitcher of water if ever he caught
him under his window.
Camille mentioned the Englishman approvingly to three other friends of
Attalie, when, with what they thought was adroitness, they turned
conversation upon her pecuniary welfare. They were Jean d'Eau, a
slumberous butcher; Richard Reau, an embarrassed baker; and one ----
Ecswyzee, an illiterate but prosperous candlestick-maker. These names may
sound inexact, but _can you prove_ that these were not their names and
occupations? We shall proceed.
These three simple souls were bound to Attalie by the strong yet tender
bonds of debit and credit. She was not distressingly but only
interestingly "behind" on their well-greased books, where Camille's
account, too, was longer on the left-hand side. When they alluded
inquiringly to her bill, he mentioned the Englishman vaguely and assured
them it was "good paper to hold," once or twice growing so extravagant as
to add that his (Camille's) own was hardly better!
The tradesmen replied that they hadn't a shadow of doubt. In fact, they
said, their mention, of the matter was mere jest, etc.