I did not get back to New Orleans till late in the fall. In the office
they told me that Manouvrier had been in twice to see if I had returned,
and they had promised to send him word of my arrival. But I said no, and
went to see him.
I found new lines of care on his brow, but the old kindness was still in
his eye. We exchanged a few words of greeting and inquiry, and then there
came a pause, which I broke.
"Well, stuffing birds better than ever, I suppose."
"Naw," he looked around upon his work, "I dawn't think. I dunno if I stoff
him quite so good like biffo'." Another pause. Then, "I think I mek out
what I do wid doze money now."
"Indeed," said I, and noticed that his face was averted from his wife.
She lifted her eyes to his broad back with a quizzical smile, glanced at
me knowingly, and dropped them again upon her sewing, sighed:
"Ah-bah!" Then she suddenly glanced at me with a pretty laugh and added,
"Since all that time he dunno what he goin' to make with it. If he trade
with it I thing he don't stoff bird no mo', and I thing he lose it
bis-ide--ha, ha, ha!--and if he keep it all time lock in doze bank
I thing, he jiz well not have it." She laughed again.
But he quite ignored her and resumed, as if out of a revery, "Yass, at de
las' I mek dat out." And the wife interrupted him in a tone that was like
the content of a singing hen.
"I think it don't worth while to leave it to our chillun, en't it?"
"Ah!" said the husband, entirely to me, "daz de troub'! You see?--we
dawn't got some ba-bee'! Dat neveh arrive to her. God know' dass not de
fault of us."
"Yass," put in his partner, smiling to her needle, "the good God know'
that verrie well." And the pair exchanged a look of dove-like fondness.
"Yass," Manouvrier mused aloud once more, "I think I build my ole woman
one fine house."
"Ah! I don't want!"
"But yass! Foudre tonnerre! how I goin' spend her else? w'iskee? hosses?
women? what da dev'l! Naw, I build a fine 'ouse. You see! she want dat
house bad enough when she see her. Yass; fifty t'ousan' dollah faw house
and twenty-five t'ousan'"--he whisked his thumb at me and I said for him,
"Yes, twenty-five thousand at interest to keep up the establishment."
"Yass. Den if Pastropbon go first to dat boneyard--" And out went his
thumb again, while his hairy lip curled at the grim prospect of beating
Fate the second time, and as badly, in the cemetery, as the first time, in
the lottery.
He built the house--farther down town and much farther from the river.
Both husband and wife found a daily delight in watching its slow rise and
progress. In the room behind the shop he still plied his art and she her
needle as they had done all their married life, with never an inroad upon
their accustomed hours except the calls of the shop itself; but on every
golden morning of that luxurious summer-land, for a little while before
the carpenters and plasterers arrived and dragged off their coats, the
pair spent a few moments wandering through and about the building
together, she with her hen-like crooning, he with his unsmiling face.
Yet they never showed the faintest desire to see the end. The contractor
dawdled by the month. I never saw such dillydallying. They only abetted
it, and when once he brought an absurd and unasked-for excuse to the
taxidermist's shop, its proprietor said--first shutting the door between
them and the wife in the inner room:
"Tek yo' time. Mo' sloweh she grow, mo' longeh she stan'."
I doubt that either Manouvrier or his wife hinted to the other the true
reason for their apathy. But I guessed it, only too easily, and felt its
pang. It was that with the occupancy and care of the house must begin the
wife's absence from her old seat beside her husband at his work.
Another thing troubled me. I did persuade him to put fittings into his
cistern which fire-engines could use in case of emergency, but he would
not insure the building.
"Naw! Luck bring me dat--I let luck take care of her."
"Ah! yass," chimed the wife, "yet still I think mebbee the good God tell
luck where to bring her. I'm shoe he got fing-er in that pie."
"Ah-ha? Daz all right! If God want to burn his own fing-er----"
At length the house was finished and was beautiful within and without. It
was of two and a half stories, broad and with many rooms. Two spacious
halls crossed each other, and there were wide verandas front and back, and
a finished and latticed basement. The basement and the entire grounds,
except a few bright flower-borders, were flagged, as was also the
sidewalk, with the manufactured stone which in that nearly frostless
climate makes such a perfect and beautiful pavement, and on this fair
surface fell the large shadows of laburnum, myrtle, orange, oleander,
sweet-olive, mespelus, and banana, which the taxidermist had not spared
expense to transplant here in the leafy prime of their full growth.
Then almost as slowly the dwelling was furnished. In this the brother-in-
law's widow co-operated, and when it was completed Manouvrier suggested
her living in it a few days so that his wife might herself move in as
leisurely as she chose. And six months later, there, in the old back room
in St. Peter Street, the wife still sat sewing and now and then saying
small, wise, dispassionate things to temper the warmth of her partner's
more artistic emotions. Every fair day, about the hour of sunset, they
went to see the new house. It was plain they loved it; loved it only less
than their old life; but only the brother-in-law's widow lived in it.