Grandemont Charles was a little Creole gentleman, aged thirty-four,
with a bald spot on the top of his head and the manners of a prince.
By day he was a clerk in a cotton broker's office in one of those
cold, rancid mountains of oozy brick, down near the levee in New
Orleans. By night, in his three-story-high _chambre garnier_ in the
old French Quarter he was again the last male descendant of the
Charles family, that noble house that had lorded it in France, and
had pushed its way smiling, rapiered, and courtly into Louisiana's
early and brilliant days. Of late years the Charleses had subsided
into the more republican but scarcely less royally carried
magnificence and ease of plantation life along the Mississippi.
Perhaps Grandemont was even Marquis de Brassé. There was that title
in the family. But a Marquis on seventy-five dollars per month!
_Vraiment!_ Still, it has been done on less.
Grandemont had saved out of his salary the sum of six hundred
dollars. Enough, you would say, for any man to marry on. So, after
a silence of two years on that subject, he reopened that most
hazardous question to Mlle. Adèle Fauquier, riding down to Meade
d'Or, her father's plantation. Her answer was the same that it had
been any time during the last ten years: "First find my brother,
Monsieur Charles."
This time he had stood before her, perhaps discouraged by a love
so long and hopeless, being dependent upon a contingency so
unreasonable, and demanded to be told in simple words whether she
loved him or no.
Adèle looked at him steadily out of her gray eyes that betrayed no
secrets and answered, a little more softly:
"Grandemont, you have no right to ask that question unless you can
do what I ask of you. Either bring back brother Victor to us or the
proof that he died."
Somehow, though five times thus rejected, his heart was not so heavy
when he left. She had not denied that she loved. Upon what shallow
waters can the bark of passion remain afloat! Or, shall we play
the doctrinaire, and hint that at thirty-four the tides of life
are calmer and cognizant of many sources instead of but one--as at
four-and-twenty?
Victor Fauquier would never be found. In those early days of his
disappearance there was money to the Charles name, and Grandemont
had spent the dollars as if they were picayunes in trying to find
the lost youth. Even then he had had small hope of success, for the
Mississippi gives up a victim from its oily tangles only at the whim
of its malign will.
A thousand times had Grandemont conned in his mind the scene of
Victor's disappearance. And, at each time that Adèle had set her
stubborn but pitiful alternative against his suit, still clearer it
repeated itself in his brain.
The boy had been the family favourite; daring, winning, reckless.
His unwise fancy had been captured by a girl on the plantation--the
daughter of an overseer. Victor's family was in ignorance of the
intrigue, as far as it had gone. To save them the inevitable
pain that his course promised, Grandemont strove to prevent it.
Omnipotent money smoothed the way. The overseer and his daughter
left, between a sunset and dawn, for an undesignated bourne.
Grandemont was confident that this stroke would bring the boy
to reason. He rode over to Meade d'Or to talk with him. The two
strolled out of the house and grounds, crossed the road, and,
mounting the levee, walked its broad path while they conversed.
A thunder-cloud was hanging, imminent, above, but, as yet, no
rain fell. At Grandemont's disclosure of his interference in the
clandestine romance, Victor attacked him, in a wild and sudden fury.
Grandemont, though of slight frame, possessed muscles of iron. He
caught the wrists amid a shower of blows descending upon him, bent
the lad backward and stretched him upon the levee path. In a little
while the gust of passion was spent, and he was allowed to rise.
Calm now, but a powder mine where he had been but a whiff of the
tantrums, Victor extended his hand toward the dwelling house of
Meade d'Or.
"You and they," he cried, "have conspired to destroy my happiness.
None of you shall ever look upon my face again."
Turning, he ran swiftly down the levee, disappearing in the
darkness. Grandemont followed as well as he could, calling to
him, but in vain. For longer than an hour he pursued the search.
Descending the side of the levee, he penetrated the rank density of
weeds and willows that undergrew the trees until the river's edge,
shouting Victor's name. There was never an answer, though once he
thought he heard a bubbling scream from the dun waters sliding past.
Then the storm broke, and he returned to the house drenched and
dejected.
There he explained the boy's absence sufficiently, he thought, not
speaking of the tangle that had led to it, for he hoped that Victor
would return as soon as his anger had cooled. Afterward, when the
threat was made good and they saw his face no more, he found it
difficult to alter his explanations of that night, and there clung a
certain mystery to the boy's reasons for vanishing as well as to the
manner of it.
It was on that night that Grandemont first perceived a new and
singular expression in Adèle's eyes whenever she looked at him. And
through the years following that expression was always there. He
could not read it, for it was born of a thought she would never
otherwise reveal.
Perhaps, if he had known that Adèle had stood at the gate on that
unlucky night, where she had followed, lingering, to await the
return of her brother and lover, wondering why they had chosen so
tempestuous an hour and so black a spot to hold converse--if he had
known that a sudden flash of lightning had revealed to her sight
that short, sharp struggle as Victor was sinking under his hands,
he might have explained everything, and she--
I know what she would have done. But one thing is clear--there was
something besides her brother's disappearance between Grandemont's
pleadings for her hand and Adèle's "yes." Ten years had passed, and
what she had seen during the space of that lightning flash remained
an indelible picture. She had loved her brother, but was she holding
out for the solution of that mystery or for the "Truth"? Women have
been known to reverence it, even as an abstract principle. It is
said there have been a few who, in the matter of their affections,
have considered a life to be a small thing as compared with a lie.
That I do not know. But, I wonder, had Grandemont cast himself at
her feet crying that his hand had sent Victor to the bottom of that
inscrutable river, and that he could no longer sully his love with a
lie, I wonder if--I wonder what she would have done!
But, Grandemont Charles, Arcadian little gentleman, never guessed
the meaning of that look in Adèle's eyes; and from this last
bootless payment of his devoirs he rode away as rich as ever in
honour and love, but poor in hope.
That was in September. It was during the first winter month that
Grandemont conceived his idea of the _renaissance_. Since Adèle
would never be his, and wealth without her were useless trumpery,
why need he add to that hoard of slowly harvested dollars? Why
should he even retain that hoard?
Hundreds were the cigarettes he consumed over his claret, sitting at
the little polished tables in the Royal street cafés while thinking
over his plan. By and by he had it perfect. It would cost, beyond
doubt, all the money he had, but--_le jeu vaut la chandelle_--for
some hours he would be once more a Charles of Charleroi. Once again
should the nineteenth of January, that most significant day in the
fortunes of the house of Charles, be fittingly observed. On that
date the French king had seated a Charles by his side at table;
on that date Armand Charles, Marquis de Brassé, landed, like a
brilliant meteor, in New Orleans; it was the date of his mother's
wedding; of Grandemont's birth. Since Grandemont could remember
until the breaking up of the family that anniversary had been the
synonym for feasting, hospitality, and proud commemoration.
Charleroi was the old family plantation, lying some twenty miles
down the river. Years ago the estate had been sold to discharge the
debts of its too-bountiful owners. Once again it had changed hands,
and now the must and mildew of litigation had settled upon it.
A question of heirship was in the courts, and the dwelling house
of Charleroi, unless the tales told of ghostly powdered and
laced Charleses haunting its unechoing chambers were true, stood
uninhabited.
Grandemont found the solicitor in chancery who held the keys
pending the decision. He proved to be an old friend of the family.
Grandemont explained briefly that he desired to rent the house for
two or three days. He wanted to give a dinner at his old home to a
few friends. That was all.
"Take it for a week--a month, if you will," said the solicitor;
"but do not speak to me of rental." With a sigh he concluded: "The
dinners I have eaten under that roof, _mon fils_!"
There came to many of the old, established dealers in furniture,
china, silverware, decorations and household fittings at their
stores on Canal, Chartres, St. Charles, and Royal Streets, a
quiet young man with a little bald spot on the top of his head,
distinguished manners, and the eye of a _connoisseur_, who explained
what he wanted. To hire the complete and elegant equipment of a
dining-room, hall, reception-room, and cloak-rooms. The goods were
to be packed and sent, by boat, to the Charleroi landing, and would
be returned within three or four days. All damage or loss to be
promptly paid for.
Many of those old merchants knew Grandemont by sight, and the
Charleses of old by association. Some of them were of Creole stock
and felt a thrill of responsive sympathy with the magnificently
indiscreet design of this impoverished clerk who would revive
but for a moment the ancient flame of glory with the fuel of his
savings.
"Choose what you want," they said to him. "Handle everything
carefully. See that the damage bill is kept low, and the charges for
the loan will not oppress you."
To the wine merchants next; and here a doleful slice was lopped from
the six hundred. It was an exquisite pleasure to Grandemont once
more to pick among the precious vintages. The champagne bins lured
him like the abodes of sirens, but these he was forced to pass. With
his six hundred he stood before them as a child with a penny stands
before a French doll. But he bought with taste and discretion of
other wines--Chablis, Moselle, Château d'Or, Hochheimer, and port of
right age and pedigree.
The matter of the cuisine gave him some studious hours until he
suddenly recollected André--André, their old _chef_--the most
sublime master of French Creole cookery in the Mississippi Valley.
Perhaps he was yet somewhere about the plantation. The solicitor had
told him that the place was still being cultivated, in accordance
with a compromise agreement between the litigants.
On the next Sunday after the thought Grandemont rode, horseback,
down to Charleroi. The big, square house with its two long ells
looked blank and cheerless with its closed shutters and doors.
The shrubbery in the yard was ragged and riotous. Fallen leaves from
the grove littered the walks and porches. Turning down the lane at
the side of the house, Grandemont rode on to the quarters of the
plantation hands. He found the workers just streaming back from
church, careless, happy, and bedecked in gay yellows, reds, and
blues.
Yes, André was still there; his wool a little grayer; his mouth as
wide; his laughter as ready as ever. Grandemont told him of his
plan, and the old _chef_ swayed with pride and delight. With a sigh
of relief, knowing that he need have no further concern until the
serving of that dinner was announced, he placed in André's hands
a liberal sum for the cost of it, giving _carte blanche_ for its
creation.
Among the blacks were also a number of the old house servants.
Absalom, the former major domo, and a half-dozen of the younger men,
once waiters and attachés of the kitchen, pantry, and other domestic
departments crowded around to greet "M'shi Grande." Absalom
guaranteed to marshal, of these, a corps of assistants that would
perform with credit the serving of the dinner.
After distributing a liberal largesse among the faithful, Grandemont
rode back to town well pleased. There were many other smaller
details to think of and provide for, but eventually the scheme
was complete, and now there remained only the issuance of the
invitations to his guests.
Along the river within the scope of a score of miles dwelt some
half-dozen families with whose princely hospitality that of the
Charleses had been contemporaneous. They were the proudest and most
august of the old régime. Their small circle had been a brilliant
one; their social relations close and warm; their houses full
of rare welcome and discriminating bounty. Those friends, said
Grandemont, should once more, if never again, sit at Charleroi on
a nineteenth of January to celebrate the festal day of his house.
Grandemont had his cards of invitation engraved. They were
expensive, but beautiful. In one particular their good taste might
have been disputed; but the Creole allowed himself that one feather
in the cap of his fugacious splendour. Might he not be allowed, for
the one day of the _renaissance_, to be "Grandemont du Puy Charles,
of Charleroi"? He sent the invitations out early in January so that
the guests might not fail to receive due notice.
At eight o'clock in the morning of the nineteenth, the lower coast
steamboat _River Belle_ gingerly approached the long unused landing
at Charleroi. The bridge was lowered, and a swarm of the plantation
hands streamed along the rotting pier, bearing ashore a strange
assortment of freight. Great shapeless bundles and bales and packets
swathed in cloth and bound with ropes; tubs and urns of palms,
evergreens, and tropical flowers; tables, mirrors, chairs, couches,
carpets, and pictures--all carefully bound and padded against the
dangers of transit.
Grandemont was among them, the busiest there. To the safe conveyance
of certain large hampers eloquent with printed cautions to delicate
handling he gave his superintendence, for they contained the fragile
china and glassware. The dropping of one of those hampers would have
cost him more than he could have saved in a year.
The last article unloaded, the _River Belle_ backed off and
continued her course down stream. In less than an hour everything
had been conveyed to the house. And came then Absalom's task,
directing the placing of the furniture and wares. There was plenty
of help, for that day was always a holiday at Charleroi, and the
Negroes did not suffer the old traditions to lapse. Almost the
entire population of the quarters volunteered their aid. A score
of piccaninnies were sweeping at the leaves in the yard. In the
big kitchen at the rear André was lording it with his old-time
magnificence over his numerous sub-cooks and scullions. Shutters
were flung wide; dust spun in clouds; the house echoed to voices and
the tread of busy feet. The prince had come again, and Charleroi
woke from its long sleep.
The full moon, as she rose across the river that night and peeped
above the levee saw a sight that had long been missing from her
orbit. The old plantation house shed a soft and alluring radiance
from every window. Of its two-score rooms only four had been
refurnished--the larger reception chamber, the dining hall, and
two smaller rooms for the convenience of the expected guests. But
lighted wax candles were set in the windows of every room.
The dining-hall was the _chef d'oeuvre_. The long table, set with
twenty-five covers, sparkled like a winter landscape with its snowy
napery and china and the icy gleam of crystal. The chaste beauty of
the room had required small adornment. The polished floor burned
to a glowing ruby with the reflection of candle light. The rich
wainscoting reached half way to the ceiling. Along and above this
had been set the relieving lightness of a few water-colour sketches
of fruit and flower.
The reception chamber was fitted in a simple but elegant style.
Its arrangement suggested nothing of the fact that on the morrow
the room would again be cleared and abandoned to the dust and the
spider. The entrance hall was imposing with palms and ferns and the
light of an immense candelabrum.
At seven o'clock Grandemont, in evening dress, with pearls--a
family passion--in his spotless linen, emerged from somewhere. The
invitations had specified eight as the dining hour. He drew an
armchair upon the porch, and sat there, smoking cigarettes and half
dreaming.
The moon was an hour high. Fifty years back from the gate stood the
house, under its noble grove. The road ran in front, and then came
the grass-grown levee and the insatiate river beyond. Just above the
levee top a tiny red light was creeping down and a tiny green one
was creeping up. Then the passing steamers saluted, and the hoarse
din startled the drowsy silence of the melancholy lowlands. The
stillness returned, save for the little voices of the night--the
owl's recitative, the capriccio of the crickets, the concerto of
the frogs in the grass. The piccaninnies and the dawdlers from the
quarters had been dismissed to their confines, and the melée of
the day was reduced to an orderly and intelligent silence. The six
coloured waiters, in their white jackets, paced, cat-footed, about
the table, pretending to arrange where all was beyond betterment.
Absalom, in black and shining pumps posed, superior, here and there
where the lights set off his grandeur. And Grandemont rested in his
chair, waiting for his guests.
He must have drifted into a dream--and an extravagant one--for he
was master of Charleroi and Adèle was his wife. She was coming out
to him now; he could hear her steps; he could feel her hand upon his
shoulder--
"_Pardon moi, M'shi Grande_"--it was Absalom's hand touching him, it
was Absalom's voice, speaking the _patois_ of the blacks--"but it is
eight o'clock."
Eight o'clock. Grandemont sprang up. In the moonlight he could see
the row of hitching-posts outside the gate. Long ago the horses of
the guests should have stood there. They were vacant.
A chanted roar of indignation, a just, waxing bellow of affront and
dishonoured genius came from André's kitchen, filling the house with
rhythmic protest. The beautiful dinner, the pearl of a dinner, the
little excellent superb jewel of a dinner! But one moment more of
waiting and not even the thousand thunders of black pigs of the
quarter would touch it!
"They are a little late," said Grandemont, calmly. "They will come
soon. Tell André to hold back dinner. And ask him if, by some
chance, a bull from the pastures has broken, roaring, into the
house."
He seated himself again to his cigarettes. Though he had said it,
he scarcely believed Charleroi would entertain company that night.
For the first time in history the invitation of a Charles had been
ignored. So simple in courtesy and honour was Grandemont, and,
perhaps, so serenely confident in the prestige of his name, that the
most likely reasons for the vacant board did not occur to him.
Charleroi stood by a road travelled daily by people from those
plantations whither his invitations had gone. No doubt even on the
day before the sudden reanimation of the old house they had driven
past and observed the evidences of long desertion and decay. They
had looked at the corpse of Charleroi and then at Grandemont's
invitations, and, though the puzzle or tasteless hoax or whatever
the thing meant left them perplexed, they would not seek its
solution by the folly of a visit to that deserted house.
The moon was now above the grove, and the yard was pied with deep
shadows save where they lightened in the tender glow of outpouring
candle light. A crisp breeze from the river hinted at the
possibility of frost when the night should have become older. The
grass at one side of the steps was specked with the white stubs of
Grandemont's cigarettes. The cotton-broker's clerk sat in his chair
with the smoke spiralling above him. I doubt that he once thought of
the little fortune he had so impotently squandered. Perhaps it was
compensation enough for him to sit thus at Charleroi for a few
retrieved hours. Idly his mind wandered in and out many fanciful
paths of memory. He smiled to himself as a paraphrased line of
Scripture strayed into his mind: "A certain _poor_ man made a
feast."
He heard the sound of Absalom coughing a note of summons. Grandemont
stirred. This time he had not been asleep--only drowsing.
"Nine o'clock, _M'shi Grande_," said Absalom in the uninflected
voice of a good servant who states a fact unqualified by personal
opinion.
Grandemont rose to his feet. In their time all the Charleses had
been proven, and they were gallant losers.
"Serve dinner," he said calmly. And then he checked Absalom's
movement to obey, for something clicked the gate latch and was
coming down the walk toward the house. Something that shuffled its
feet and muttered to itself as it came. It stopped in the current of
light at the foot of the steps and spake, in the universal whine of
the gadding mendicant.
"Kind sir, could you spare a poor, hungry man, out of luck, a little
to eat? And to sleep in the corner of a shed? For"--the thing
concluded, irrelevantly--"I can sleep now. There are no mountains
to dance reels in the night; and the copper kettles are all scoured
bright. The iron band is still around my ankle, and a link, if it is
your desire I should be chained."
It set a foot upon the step and drew up the rags that hung upon the
limb. Above the distorted shoe, caked with the dust of a hundred
leagues, they saw the link and the iron band. The clothes of the
tramp were wreaked to piebald tatters by sun and rain and wear. A
mat of brown, tangled hair and beard covered his head and face, out
of which his eyes stared distractedly. Grandemont noticed that he
carried in one hand a white, square card.
"What is that?" he asked.
"I picked it up, sir, at the side of the road." The vagabond handed
the card to Grandemont. "Just a little to eat, sir. A little parched
corn, a _tartilla_, or a handful of beans. Goat's meat I cannot eat.
When I cut their throats they cry like children."
Grandemont held up the card. It was one of his own invitations to
dinner. No doubt some one had cast it away from a passing carriage
after comparing it with the tenantless house of Charleroi.
"From the hedges and highways bid them come," he said to himself,
softly smiling. And then to Absalom: "Send Louis to me."
Louis, once his own body-servant, came promptly, in his white
jacket.
"This gentleman," said Grandemont, "will dine with me. Furnish him
with bath and clothes. In twenty minutes have him ready and dinner
served."
Louis approached the disreputable guest with the suavity due to a
visitor to Charleroi, and spirited him away to inner regions.
Promptly, in twenty minutes, Absalom announced dinner, and, a moment
later, the guest was ushered into the dining hall where Grandemont
waited, standing, at the head of the table. The attentions of Louis
had transformed the stranger into something resembling the polite
animal. Clean linen and an old evening suit that had been sent down
from town to clothe a waiter had worked a miracle with his exterior.
Brush and comb had partially subdued the wild disorder of his hair.
Now he might have passed for no more extravagant a thing than one of
those _poseurs_ in art and music who affect such oddity of guise.
The man's countenance and demeanour, as he approached the table,
exhibited nothing of the awkwardness or confusion to be expected
from his Arabian Nights change. He allowed Absalom to seat him at
Grandemont's right hand with the manner of one thus accustomed to
be waited upon.
"It grieves me," said Grandemont, "to be obliged to exchange names
with a guest. My own name is Charles."
"In the mountains," said the wayfarer, "they call me Gringo. Along
the roads they call me Jack."
"I prefer the latter," said Grandemont. "A glass of wine with you,
Mr. Jack."
Course after course was served by the supernumerous waiters.
Grandemont, inspired by the results of André's exquisite skill in
cookery and his own in the selection of wines became the model host,
talkative, witty, and genial. The guest was fitful in conversation.
His mind seemed to be sustaining a succession of waves of dementia
followed by intervals of comparative lucidity. There was the glassy
brightness of recent fever in his eyes. A long course of it must
have been the cause of his emaciation and weakness, his distracted
mind, and the dull pallor that showed even through the tan of wind
and sun.
"Charles," he said to Grandemont--for thus he seemed to interpret
his name--"you never saw the mountains dance, did you?"
"No, Mr. Jack," answered Grandemont, gravely, "the spectacle has
been denied me. But, I assure you, I can understand it must be a
diverting sight. The big ones, you know, white with snow on the
tops, waltzing--_décolleté_, we may say."
"You first scour the kettles," said Mr. Jack, leaning toward him
excitedly, "to cook the beans in the morning, and you lie down on a
blanket and keep quite still. Then they come out and dance for you.
You would go out and dance with them but you are chained every night
to the centre pole of the hut. You believe the mountains dance,
don't you, Charlie?"
"I contradict no traveller's tales," said Grandemont, with a smile.
Mr. Jack laughed loudly. He dropped his voice to a confidential
whisper.
"You are a fool to believe it," he went on. "They don't really
dance. It's the fever in your head. It's the hard work and the
bad water that does it. You are sick for weeks and there is no
medicine. The fever comes on every evening, and then you are as
strong as two men. One night the _compania_ are lying drunk with
_mescal_. They have brought back sacks of silver dollars from a
ride, and they drink to celebrate. In the night you file the chain
in two and go down the mountain. You walk for miles--hundreds of
them. By and by the mountains are all gone, and you come to the
prairies. They do not dance at night; they are merciful, and you
sleep. Then you come to the river, and it says things to you. You
follow it down, down, but you can't find what you are looking for."
Mr. Jack leaned back in his chair, and his eyes slowly closed. The
food and wine had steeped him in a deep calm. The tense strain had
been smoothed from his face. The languor of repletion was claiming
him. Drowsily he spoke again.
"It's bad manners--I know--to go to sleep--at table--but--that
was--such a good dinner--Grande, old fellow."
_Grande!_ The owner of the name started and set down his glass.
How should this wretched tatterdemalion whom he had invited,
Caliph-like, to sit at his feet know his name?
Not at first, but soon, little by little, the suspicion, wild and
unreasonable as it was, stole into his brain. He drew out his watch
with hands that almost balked him by their trembling, and opened the
back case. There was a picture there--a photograph fixed to the
inner side.
Rising, Grandemont shook Mr. Jack by the shoulder. The weary guest
opened his eyes. Grandemont held the watch.
"Look at this picture, Mr. Jack. Have you ever--"
"_My sister Adèle!_"
The vagrant's voice rang loud and sudden through the room. He
started to his feet, but Grandemont's arms were about him, and
Grandemont was calling him "Victor!--Victor Fauquier! _Merci, merci,
mon Dieu!_"
Too far overcome by sleep and fatigue was the lost one to talk that
night. Days afterward, when the tropic _calentura_ had cooled in
his veins, the disordered fragments he had spoken were completed in
shape and sequence. He told the story of his angry flight, of toils
and calamities on sea and shore, of his ebbing and flowing fortune
in southern lands, and of his latest peril when, held a captive, he
served menially in a stronghold of bandits in the Sonora Mountains
of Mexico. And of the fever that seized him there and his escape and
delirium, during which he strayed, perhaps led by some marvellous
instinct, back to the river on whose bank he had been born. And of
the proud and stubborn thing in his blood that had kept him silent
through all those years, clouding the honour of one, though he knew
it not, and keeping apart two loving hearts. "What a thing is love!"
you may say. And if I grant it, you shall say, with me: "What a
thing is pride!"
On a couch in the reception chamber Victor lay, with a dawning
understanding in his heavy eyes and peace in his softened
countenance. Absalom was preparing a lounge for the transient
master of Charleroi, who, to-morrow, would be again the clerk of a
cotton-broker, but also--
"To-morrow," Grandemont was saying, as he stood by the couch of his
guest, speaking the words with his face shining as must have shone
the face of Elijah's charioteer when he announced the glories of
that heavenly journey--"To-morrow I will take you to Her."