WHERE SOME CREOLE MONEY GOES
And yet the family committee that ordered the inscription, the mason who
cut it in the marble--himself a sort of half-Grandissime,
half-nobody--and even the fair women who each eve of All-Saints came,
attended by flower-laden slave girls, to lay coronals upon the old man's
tomb, felt, feebly at first, and more and more distinctly as years went
by, that Forever was a trifle long for one to confine one's patriotic
affection to a small fraction of a great country.
* * * * *
"And you say your family decline to accept the assistance of the police
in their endeavors to bring the killer of your uncle to justice?" asked
some _Américain_ or other of 'Polyte Grandissime.
"'Sir, mie fam'lie do not want to fetch him to justice!--neither
Palmyre! We are goin' to fetch the justice to them! And sir, when we
cannot do that, sir, by ourselves, sir,--no, sir! no police!"
So Clemence was the only victim of the family wrath; for the other two
were never taken; and it helps our good feeling for the Grandissimes to
know that in later times, under the gentler influences of a higher
civilization, their old Spanish-colonial ferocity was gradually absorbed
by the growth of better traits. To-day almost all the savagery that can
justly be charged against Louisiana must--strange to say--be laid at
the door of the _Américain_. The Creole character has been diluted and
sweetened.
One morning early in September, some two weeks after the death of
Agricola, the same brig which something less than a year before had
brought the Frowenfelds to New Orleans crossed, outward bound, the sharp
line dividing the sometimes tawny waters of Mobile Bay from the deep
blue Gulf, and bent her way toward Europe.
She had two passengers; a tall, dark, wasted yet handsome man of
thirty-seven or thirty-eight years of age, and a woman seemingly some
three years younger, of beautiful though severe countenance; "very
elegant-looking people and evidently rich," so the brig-master described
them,--"had much the look of some of the Mississippi River 'Lower Coast'
aristocracy." Their appearance was the more interesting for a look of
mental distress evident on the face of each. Brother and sister they
called themselves; but, if so, she was the most severely reserved and
distant sister the master of the vessel had ever seen.
They landed, if the account comes down to us right, at Bordeaux. The
captain, a fellow of the peeping sort, found pastime in keeping them in
sight after they had passed out of his care ashore. They went to
different hotels!
The vessel was detained some weeks in this harbor, and her master
continued to enjoy himself in the way in which he had begun. He saw his
late passengers meet often, in a certain quiet path under the trees of
the Quinconce. Their conversations were low; in the patois they used
they could have afforded to speak louder; their faces were always grave
and almost always troubled. The interviews seemed to give neither of
them any pleasure. The monsieur grew thinner than ever, and
sadly feeble.
"He wants to charter her," the seaman concluded, "but she doesn't like
his rates."
One day, the last that he saw them together, they seemed to be, each in
a way different from the other, under a great strain. He was haggard,
woebegone, nervous; she high-strung, resolute,--with "eyes that shone
like lamps," as said the observer.
"She's a-sendin' him 'way to lew-ard," thought he. Finally the Monsieur
handed her--or rather placed upon the seat near which she stood, what
she would not receive--a folded and sealed document, seized her hand,
kissed it and hurried away. She sank down upon the seat, weak and pale,
and rose to go, leaving the document behind. The mariner picked it up;
it was directed to _M. Honoré Grandissime, Nouvelle Orléans, États Unis,
Amérique_. She turned suddenly, as if remembering, or possibly
reconsidering, and received it from him.
"It looked like a last will and testament," the seaman used to say, in
telling the story.
The next morning, being at the water's edge and seeing a number of
persons gathering about something not far away, he sauntered down toward
it to see how small a thing was required to draw a crowd of these
Frenchmen. It was the drowned body of the f.m.c.
Did the brig-master never see the woman again? He always waited for this
question to be asked him, in order to state the more impressively that
he did. His brig became a regular Bordeaux packet, and he saw the Madame
twice or thrice, apparently living at great ease, but solitary, in the
rue--. He was free to relate that he tried to scrape acquaintance with
her, but failed ignominiously.
The rents of Number 19 rue Bienville and of numerous other places,
including the new drug-store in the rue Royale, were collected regularly
by H. Grandissime, successor to Grandissime Frères. Rumor said, and
tradition repeats, that neither for the advancement of a friendless
people, nor even for the repair of the properties' wear and tear, did
one dollar of it ever remain in New Orleans; but that once a year
Honoré, "as instructed," remitted to Madame--say Madame Inconnue--of
Bordeaux, the equivalent, in francs, of fifty thousand dollars. It is
averred he did this without interruption for twenty years. "Let us see:
fifty times twenty--one million dollars. That is only a _part_ of the
_pecuniary_ loss which this sort of thing costs Louisiana."
But we have wandered.