"Yes?" inquired Mme. Castanado. "Well?"
"Ah, surely!" cried several, "Tha'z not all?"
Mme. De l'Isle appealed to her husband: "Even two, three hun'red mile',
that din'n' bring the line of Canada, I think."
"No, but, I suppose, of the Ohio."
"And that undergroun' railway!" said Scipion.
"Yes," Mme. Alexandre agreed, "but that story remain' unfinizh' whiles
that uncle of Mr. Chezter couldn' return at his home."
"Not even his State," ventured mademoiselle.
"But he did," Chester said; "he came back."
M. Dubroca spoke up: "Oh, 'tis easy to insert that, at the
en'--foot-note."
"And Hardy?" asked Beloiseau, "him and yo' uncle, they di'n' shoot either
the other?"
"I believe they did, each the other. I never quite understood the hints
I got of it, till now. I know that six months in bed with a back full of
_somebody's_ buckshot saved my uncle's life."
"From lynching! That also muz' be insert'!"
Chester thought not. "No, centre the interest in the runaway family, as
in mademoiselle's 'Clock in the Sky.'" And so all agreed.
A second time he walked home with mademoiselle, under the same lenient
escort as before. One thus occupied, by moonlight, can moralize as he
cannot with any larger number. "It's hard enough at best," he said, "for
us, in our pride of race, to sympathize--seriously--in the joys, the
hopes, the sufferings of souls under dark skins yet as human as ours if
not as white."
"Yes, 'tis true. Only one man, Mr. Chester, I ever knew, myself, who did
that."
"Your father?"
"Yes, my dear father."
"Will you not some day tell me his story?"
"Mr. Castanado will tell you it. Any of those will tell you."
"I can't question them about you, and besides----"
"Well, here is my gate. 'And besides--' what?"
"Besides, why can't you tell me?"
"Ah, I'll do that--'some day,' as you say."
The gate-key went into the lock.
"But, mademoiselle, our 'Clock in the Sky'--our 'Angel of the
Lord'--shan't we join them?"
"Ah, they are already one, but you have yet to hear that _first_
manuscript, and that is so very separate--as you will see."
"Isn't it also a story of dark skins?"
"Ah, but barely at all of souls under them; those souls we find it so
hard to remember."
"_Chère fille_"--M. De l'Isle had come up, with Mme. Alexandre--"the
three will go _gran'ly_ together! Not I al-lone perceive that, but
Scipion also--Castanado--Dubroca. Mr. Chester, my dear sir, the
pewblication of that book going to be heard roun' the worl'! Tha'z going
produse an epoch, that book; yet same time--a bes'-seller!"
Mademoiselle beamed. "Does Mr. Chester think 'twill be that? A
best-seller?"
Chester couldn't prophesy that of any book. "They say not even a
publisher can tell."
"Hah!" monsieur cried, "those cunning pewblisher'! they pref-er _not_ to
tell."
"Some poetry," Chester continued, urged by mademoiselle's eyes, "doesn't
pay the poets over a few thousand a year--per volume; while some novels
pay their authors--well--fortunes."
"That they go," madame broke in, "and buy some _palaces in Italie_! And
tha'z but the biginning; you have not count' the dramatization--hundreds
the week! and those movie'--the same! and those tranzlation'!"
"Well, I think we will be satisfied, Mr. Chester, with the tenth of that,
eh?"
Chester's reply was drowned in monsieur's: "No, my child! But
nine-tenth' _maybe_, yes! No-no-no! if those pewblisher' find out you
are satisfi' by one-tenth, one-tenth is all you'll ever see!"
"Ah," said mademoiselle to madame, "even the one-tenth I mustn't tell to
my aunts. They wouldn't sleep to-night. And myself--'publication,
dramatization, movies, translation'--I believe I'll lie awake till
daylight, making that into a song--a hymn!"
A wonderful sight she was, pausing in the open gate, with the little
high-fenced garden at her back, a street-lamp lighting her face. Chester
harked back to that first manuscript. It "ought not to wait another
week," he declared.
"No," monsieur said, "and since we all have read that egcept only you."
Chester looked to mademoiselle: "Then I suppose I might read it with the
Castanados alone."
"No," madame put in, "you see, you can't riturn at Castanado's
immediately to-morrow or next day. That next day, tha'z Sunday, but you
don't know if madame goin' to have the stren'th for that fati-gue. Yet
same time you can't wait forever! And bisside', yo' Aunt Corinne, Aunt
Yvonne--Mr. Chezter he's never have that lugsury to meet them, and that
will be a very choice o'casion for Mr. Chezter to do that, if----"
"If he'll take the pains," the niece broke in, "to call Sunday afternoon.
Then I'll have the manuscript back from Mr. Castanado and we'll read it
to my Aunt Corinne and my Aunt Yvonne, all four together in the garden."
"Yes, yet not in this li'l' garden in the front, but in the large, far
back from the house, in the h-arbor of 'oneysuckle and by the side of the
li'l' lake, eh?" So prompted madame.
"Assuredly," said the smiling girl; "not in the front, where is no room
for a place to sit down!"
Chester's acceptance was eager. Then once more the batten gate closed
and the key grated between him and Aline--marvellous, marvellous Aline
Chapdelaine.