BAD FOR CHARLIE KEENE
On the same evening of which we have been telling, about the time that
Aurora and Clotilde were dropping their last tear of joy over the
document of restitution, a noticeable figure stood alone at the corner
of the rue du Canal and the rue Chartres. He had reached there and
paused, just as the brighter glare of the set sun was growing dim above
the tops of the cypresses. After walking with some rapidity of step, he
had stopped aimlessly, and laid his hand with an air of weariness upon a
rotting China-tree that leaned over the ditch at the edge of the
unpaved walk.
"Setting in cypress," he murmured. We need not concern ourselves as to
his meaning.
One could think aloud there with impunity. In 1804, Canal street was
the upper boundary of New Orleans. Beyond it, to southward, the open
plain was dotted with country-houses, brick-kilns, clumps of live-oak
and groves of pecan. At the hour mentioned the outlines of these objects
were already darkening. At one or two points the sky was reflected from
marshy ponds. Out to westward rose conspicuously the old house and
willow-copse of Jean Poquelin. Down the empty street or road, which
stretched with arrow-like straightness toward the northwest, the
draining-canal that gave it its name tapered away between occasional
overhanging willows and beside broken ranks of rotting palisades, its
foul, crawling waters blushing, gilding and purpling under the swiftly
waning light, and ending suddenly in the black shadow of the swamp. The
observer of this dismal prospect leaned heavily on his arm, and cast his
glance out along the beautified corruption of the canal. His eye seemed
quickened to detect the smallest repellant details of the scene; every
cypress stump that stood in, or overhung, the slimy water; every ruined
indigo-vat or blasted tree, every broken thing, every bleached bone of
ox or horse--and they were many--for roods around. As his eye passed
them slowly over and swept back again around the dreary view, he sighed
heavily and said: "Dissolution," and then again--"Dissolution! order of
the day--"
A secret overhearer might have followed, by these occasional
exclamatory utterances, the course of a devouring trouble prowling up
and down through his thoughts, as one's eye tracks the shark by the
occasional cutting of his fin above the water.
He spoke again:
"It is in such moods as this that fools drown themselves."
His speech was French. He straightened up, smote the tree softly with
his palm, and breathed a long, deep sigh--such a sigh, if the very truth
be told, as belongs by right to a lover. And yet his mind did not
dwell on love.
He turned and left the place; but the trouble that was plowing hither
and thither through the deep of his meditations went with him. As he
turned into the rue Chartres it showed itself thus:
"Right; it is but right;" he shook his head slowly--"it is but right."
In the rue Douane he spoke again:
"Ah! Frowenfeld"--and smiled unpleasantly, with his head down.
And as he made yet another turn, and took his meditative way down the
city's front, along the blacksmith's shops in the street afterward
called Old Levee, he resumed, in English, and with a distinctness that
made a staggering sailor halt and look after him:
"There are but two steps to civilization, the first easy, the second
difficult; to construct--to reconstruct--ah! there it is! the tearing
down! The tear'--"
He was still, but repeated the thought by a gesture of distress turned
into a slow stroke of the forehead.
"Monsieur Honoré Grandissime," said a voice just ahead.
"_Eh, bien_?"
At the mouth of an alley, in the dim light of the streep lamp, stood the
dark figure of Honoré Grandissime, f.m.c., holding up the loosely
hanging form of a small man, the whole front of whose clothing was
saturated with blood.
"Why, Charlie Keene! Let him down again, quickly--quickly; do not hold
him so!"
"Hands off," came in a ghastly whisper from the shape.
"Oh, Chahlie, my boy--"
"Go and finish your courtship," whispered the doctor.
"Oh Charlie, I have just made it forever impossible!"
"Then help me back to my bed; I don't care to die in the street."