Six o'clock found Chester in Ovide's bookshop.
Had its shelves borne law-books, or had he not needed for law-books all
he dared spend, he might have known the surprisingly informed and refined
shopman better. Ovide had long been a celebrity. Lately a brief summary
of his career had appeared incidentally in a book, a book chiefly about
others, white people. "You can't write a Southern book and keep us out,"
Ovide himself explained.
Even as it was, Chester had allowed himself that odd freedom with Landry
which Southerners feel safe in under the plate armor of their race
distinctions. Receiving his map he asked, as he looked along a shelf or
two: "Have you that book that tells of you--as a slave? your master
letting you educate yourself; your once refusing your freedom, and your
being private secretary to two or three black lieutenant-governors?"
"I had a copy," Landry said, "but I've sold it. Where did you hear of
it? From Réné Ducatel, in his antique-shop, whose folks 'tis mostly
about?"
"Yes. An antique himself, in spirit, eh? Yet modern enough to praise
you highly."
"H'mm! but only for the virtues of a slave."
Chester smiled round from the shelves: "I noticed that! I'm afraid we
white folks, the world over, are prone to do that--with you-all."
"Yes, when you speak of us at all."
"Ducatel's opposite neighbor," Chester remarked, "is an antique even more
interesting."
"Ah, yes! Castanado is antique only in that art spirit which the tourist
trade is every day killing even in Royal Street."
"That's the worst decay in this whole decaying quarter," the young man
said.
"And in all this deluge of trade spirit," Ovide continued, "the best dry
land left of it--of that spirit of art--is----"
"Castanado's shop, I dare say."
"Castanado's and three others in that one square you pass every day
without discovering the fact. But that's natural; you are a busy lawyer."
"Not so very. What are the other three?"
"First, the shop of Seraphine Alexandre, embroideries; then of Scipion
Beloiseau, ornamental ironwork, opposite Mme. Seraphine and next below
Ducatel--Ducatel, alas, he don't count; and third, of Placide La Porte,
perfumeries, next to Beloiseau. That's all."
"Not the watchmaker on the square above?"
"Ah! distantly he's of them: and there _was_ old Manouvrier, taxidermist;
but he's gone--where the spirits of art and of worship are twin."
Chester turned sharply again to the shelves and stood rigid. From an
inner room, its glass door opened by Ovide's silver-spectacled wife, came
the little black cupid and his charge. Ah, once more what perfection in
how many points! As she returned to Ovide an old magazine, at last he
heard her voice--singularly deep and serene. She thanked the bookman for
his loan and, with the child, went out.
It disturbed the Southern youth to unbosom himself to a black man, but he
saw no decent alternative: "Landry, I had not the faintest idea that that
young lady was nearer than Castanado's shop!"
Ovide shook his head: "You seem yourself to forget that you are here by
business appointment. And what of it if you have seen her, or she seen
you, here--or anywhere?"
"Only this: that I've met her so often by pure--by chance, on that square
you speak of, I bound for the court-house, she for I can't divine
where--for I've never looked behind me!--that I've had to take another
street to show I'm a gentleman. This very morn'--oh!--and now! here!
How can I explain--or go unexplained?"
Ovide lifted a hand: "Will you leave that to my wife, so unlearned yet so
wise and good? For the young lady's own sake my wife, _without_
explaining, will see that you are not misjudged."
"Good! Right! Any explanation would simply belie itself. Yes, let her
do it! But, Landry----"
"Yes?"
"For heaven's sake don't let her make me out a goody-goody. I haven't
got this far into life without making moral mistakes, some of them huge.
But in this thing--I say it only to you--I'm making none. I'm neither a
marrying man, a villain, nor an ass."
Ovide smiled: "My wife can manage that. Maybe it's good you came here.
It may well be that the young lady herself would be glad if some one
explained her to you."
"Hoh! does an angel need an explanation?"
"I should say, in Royal Street, yes."
"Then for mercy's sake give it! right here! you! come!" The youth
laughed. "Mercy to me, I mean. But--wait! Tell me; couldn't Castanado
have given it, as easily as you?"
"You never gave Castanado this chance."
"How do you know that? Oh, never mind, go ahead--full speed."
"Well, she's an orphan, of a fine old family----"
"Obviously! Creole, of course, the family?"
"Yes, though always small in Louisiana. Creole except one New England
grandmother. But for that one she would not have been here just now."
"Humph! that's rather obscure but--go on."
"Her parents left her without a sou or a relation except two maiden aunts
as poor as she."
"Antiques?"
"Yes. She earns their living and her own."
"You don't care to say how?"
"She wouldn't like it. 'Twould be to say where."
"She seems able to dress exquisitely."
"Mr. Chester, a woman would see with what a small outlay that is done.
She has that gift for the needle which a poet has for the pen."
"Ho! that's _charmingly_ antique. But now tell me how having a Yankee
grandmother caused her to drop in here just now. Your logic's dim."
"You are soon to go to Castanado's to see that manuscript story, are you
not?"
"Oh, is it a story? Have you read it?"
"Yes, I've read it, 'tis short. They wanted my opinion. And 'tis a
story, though true."
"A story! Love story? very absorbing?"
"No, it is not of love--except love of liberty. Whether 'twill absorb
you or no I cannot say. Me it absorbed because it is the story of some
of my race, far from here and in the old days, trying, in the old vain
way, to gain their freedom."
"Has--has mademoiselle read it?"
"Certainly. It is her property; hers and her two aunts'. Those two,
they bought it lately, of a poor devil--drinking man--for a dollar. They
had once known his mother, from the West Indies."
"He wrote it, or his mother?"
"The mother, long ago. 'Tis not too well done. It absorbs mademoiselle
also, but that is because 'tis true. When I saw that effect I told her
of a story like it, yet different, and also seeming true, in this old
magazine. And when I began to tell it she said, 'It _is_ true! My
Vermont _grand'mère_ wrote that! It happened to her!'"
"How queer! And, Landry, I see the connection. Your magazine being one
of a set, you couldn't let her read it anywhere but here."
"I have to keep my own rules."
"Let me see it. . . . Oh, now, why not? What was the use of either of
us explaining if--if----?"
But Ovide smilingly restored the thing to its stack. "Now," he said,
"'tis Mr. Chester's logic that fails." Yet as he turned to a customer he
let Chester take it down.
"My job requires me," the youth said, "to study character. Let's see
what a _grand'mère_ of a '_tite-fille_, situated so and so, will do."
Ovide escorted his momentary customer to the sidewalk door. As he
returned, Chester, rolling map and magazine together, said:
"It's getting dark. No, don't make a light, it's your closing time and
I've a strict engagement. Here's a deposit for this magazine; a fifty.
It's all I have--oh, yes, take it, we'll trade back to-morrow. You must
keep your own rules and I must read this thing before I touch my bed."
"Even the first few lines absorb you?"
"No, far from it. Look here." Chester read out: "'_Now, Maud,' said my
uncle_--Oh, me! Landry, if the tale's true why that old story-book pose?"
"It may be that the writer preferred to tell it as fiction, and that only
something in me told me 'tis true. Something still tells me so."
"'_Now, Maud_,'" Chester smilingly thought to himself when, the evening's
later engagement being gratifyingly fulfilled, he sat down with the
story. "And so you were grand'mère to our Royal Street miracle. And you
had a Southern uncle! So had I! though yours was a planter, mine a
lawyer, and yours must have been fifty years the older. Well, '_Now,
Maud_,' for my absorption!"
It came. Though the tale was unamazing amazement came. The four chief
characters were no sooner set in motion than Chester dropped the pamphlet
to his knee, agape in recollection of a most droll fact a year or two
old, which now all at once and for the first time arrested his attention.
He also had a manuscript! That lawyer uncle of his, saying as he spared
him a few duplicate volumes from his law library, "Burn that if you don't
want it," had tossed him a fat document indorsed: "_Memorandum of an
Early Experience_." Later the nephew had glanced it over, but, like
"Maud's" story, its first few lines had annoyed his critical sense and he
had never read it carefully. The amazing point was that "_Now, Maud_"
and this "_Memorandum_" most incredibly--with a ridiculous nicety--fitted
each other.
He lifted the magazine again and, beginning at the beginning a third
time, read with a scrutiny of every line as though he studied a witness's
deposition. And this was what he read: