At the Castanados', the second evening after, Chester was welcomed into
a specially pretty living-room. But he found three other visitors.
Madame, seated on a sort of sofa for one, made no effort to rise. Her
face, for all its breadth, was sweet in repose and sweeter when she
spoke or smiled. Her hands were comparatively small and the play of
her vast arms was graceful as she said to a slim, tallish, comely woman
with an abundance of soft, well-arranged hair:
"Seraphine, allow me to pres-ent Mr. Chezter."
She explained that this Mme. Alexandre was her "neighbor of the next
door," and Chester remembered her sign: "Laces and Embroideries."
"Scipion," said Castanado to a short, swarthy, broad-bearded man, "I
have the honor to make you acquaint' with my friend Mr. Chezter."
Chester pressed the enveloping hand of "S. Beloiseau, Artisan in
Ornamental Iron-work."
"Also, Mr. Chezter, Mr. Rene Ducatel; but with him you are already
acquaint', I think, eh?"
Chester shook hands with a small, dapper, early-gray, superdignified
man, recalling his sign: "Antiques in Furniture, Glass, Bronze, Plate,
China, and Jewelry." M. Ducatel seemed to be already taking leave.
His "anceztral 'ome," he said, was far up-town; he had dropped in
solely to borrow--showing it--the _Courrier des Etats-Unis_.
That journal, Castanado remarked to Chester as at a corner table he
poured him a glass of cordial, brought the war, the trenches, the poilu
and the boche closer than any other they knew. Beloiseau and Mme.
Alexandre, he softly explained, had come in quite unlooked-for to
discuss the great strife and might depart at any moment. Then the
reading!
But Chester himself interested those two and they stayed. When he said
that Beloiseau's sidewalk samples had often made him covet some excuse
for going in and seeing both the stock and the craftsman, "That was
excuse ab-undant!" was the prompt response, and Castanado put in:
"Scipion he'd rather, always, a non-buying connoisseur than a buying
Philistine."
"Come any day! any hour!" said Beloiseau.
Presently all five were talking of the surviving poetry of both
artistic and historic Royal Street. "Twenty year' ag-o," said the
ironworker, "looking down-street from my shop, there was not a building
in sight without a romantic story. My God! for example, that Hotel St.
Louis!"
Chester--"had heard one or two of its episodes only the evening before,
at that up-town dinner, from a fine old down-town Creole, a fellow
guest, with whom he was to dine the next week."
"Aha-a-a! precizely ac-rozz the street from Mme. Alexandre!" said the
hostess. "M'sieu' et Madame De l'Isle! Now I detec' that!"
"Have they no son?--or--or daughter?" he asked.
"Not any," Mme. Alexandre broke in with a significant sparkle; "juz'
the two al-lone."
"They live over my shop," Beloiseau said. "You muz' know that double
gate nex' adjoining me."
"Oh, that lovely piece of ironwork? I took that for a part of your
establishment."
"I have only the uze of it with them. My _grandpère_ he made those
gate', for the father of Mme. De l'Isle, same year he made those great
openwork gate' of Hotel St. Louis. You speak of episode'! One summer,
renovating that hotel, they paint' those gate'--of iron openwork--in
imitation--_mon Dieu_!--of marbl'! _Ciel_! the tragedy of _that_!
Yes, they live over me; in the whole square, both side' the street,
last remaining of the 'igh society."
When Mme. Alexandre finally rose to go, and had kissed the upturned
brow of her hostess, she went by an inner door and rear balcony. And
when Chester and Beloiseau began to take leave their host said to
Chester:
"You dine with M. De l'Isle Tuesday. Well, if you'll come again here
the next evening we'll attend to--that business."
"Wouldn't that be losing time? I can just as well come sooner."
"No," said madame, "better that Wednesday."
Chester was nettled, but he recovered when the ironworker walked with
him around into Bienville Street and at his _pension_ door lamented the
pathetic decay of the useful arts and of artistic taste, since the
advent of castings and machinery. The pair took such liking for each
other's tenets of beauty, morals, art, and life that Chester walked
back to the De l'Isle gates, and their parting at last was at the
corner half-way between their two domiciles.
Meanwhile madame was saying to her spouse, "Aha! you see? The power of
prayer! Ab-ove all, for the he'pless! By day the fo' corner' of my
room, by night the fo' post' of my bed, are----"
"Yes, _chérie_, I know."
"Yes, they're to me for Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John! Since three
days every time I heard the cathedral clock I've prayed to them; and
now----!"
"Well, my angel? Now?"
"Well, now! He's dining there next Tuesday!"
"Truly. Yet even now we can only hope----"
"Ah, no! Me, I can also continue to supplicate! From now till
Wednesday, every time that clock, I'll pray those four _évangélistes_!
and Thursday you'll see--the power of prayer! Oh, 'tis like _magique_,
that power of prayer!"