The small public garden, named for an old redout on the lake shore at
the mouth of Bayou St. John was filled with a yellow sunset as Chester
and Aline moved after the aunts and the De l'Isles from the train into
a shell walk whose artificial lights at that moment flashed on.
"So far from that," he was saying, "a story may easily be improved,
clarified, beautified, by--what shall I say?--by filtering down through
a second and third generation of the right tellers and hearers."
"Ah, yes! the right, yes! But----"
"And for me you're supremely the right one."
Instantly he rued his speech. Some delicate mechanism seemed to stop.
Had he broken it? As one might lay a rare watch to his ear he waited,
listening, while they stood looking off to where water, sky, and sun
met; and presently, to his immeasurable relief, she responded:
"_Grandpère_ was not at that time such a very young man, yet he still
lived with his father. So when _grand'mère_ and her two friends--with
Sidney and Mingo--returned from the privateer to the hotel they were
opposite neighbors to the Chapdelaines and almost without another
friend, in a city--among a people--on fire with war. Then, pretty
soon--" the fair narrator stopped and significantly smiled.
Chester twinkled. "Um-h'm," he said, "your _grandpère's_ heart became
another city on fire."
"Yes, and 'twas in that old hotel--with the war storm coming, like
to-day only everything much more close and terrible, business dead,
soldiers every day going to Virginia--you must make Mr. Thorndyke-Smith
tell you about that--'twas in that old hotel, at a great free-gift
lottery and bazaar, lasting a week, for aid of soldiers' families, and
in a balcony of the grand salon, that _grandpère_--" the narrator
ceased and smiled again.
"Proposed," Chester murmured.
The girl nodded. They sank to a bench, the world behind them, the
stars above. "_Grand'mére_, she couldn't say yes till he'd first go to
her home, almost at the Canadian line, and ask her family. She, she
couldn't go; she couldn't leave Sidney and Mingo and neither could she
take them. So by railroad at last he got there. But her family took
so long to consent that he got back only the next year and through the
fall of the city. Only by ship could he come, and not till he had
begged President Lincoln himself and promised him to work with his
might to return Louisiana to the Union. Well, of course, he and his
father had voted against secession, weeping; yet now this was a pledge
terrible to keep, and the more because, you see? what to do, and when
and how to do it----"
"Were left to his own judgment and tact?"
"Oh, and honor! But anyhow he came. Doubtless, bringing the written
permission of the family, he was happy. Yet to what bitternesses--can
we say bitternesses in English?"
"Indeed we can," said Chester.
"To what bitternesses _grandpére_ had to return!"
"Aline!" Mme. De l'Isle called; "à table!"
"Yes, madame. Tell me--you, Mr. Chester--to your vision, how all that
must have been."
"Paint in your sketch? Let me try. Maybe only because you tell the
story, but maybe rather because it's so easy to see in you a
reincarnation of your _grand'mére_--a Creole incarnation of that young
'Maud'--what I see plainest is she. I see her here, two thousand miles
from home, with but three or four friends among a quarter of a million
enemies. I see her on the day the city fell, looking up and down Royal
Street from a balcony of the hotel, while from the great dome a few
steps behind her the Union fleet could be seen, rounding the first two
river bends below the harbor, engaging a last few Confederate guns at
the old battle-ground, and coming on, with the Stars and Stripes at
every peak. I see her----"
"She was beautiful, you know--_grand'mére_."
"Yes, I see her so, looking down from that balcony, awestruck, not
fearstruck, on the people who in agonies of rage and terror fled the
city by pairs and families, or in armed squads and unarmed mobs swept
through the streets and up and down the levee, burning, breaking, and
plundering."
"But that was the worst anybody did, you know."
"Oh, yes. We never knew till to-day's war came how humane that war
was. It wasn't a war in which beauty, age, and infancy were hideous
perils."
"Ah, never mind about that to-day. But about _grandpère_ and
_grand'mère_ go on. Let me see how much you can imagine correctly,
h'm?"
"Please, mademoiselle, no. Time has made you--through your father's
eyes--they say you have them--an eye-witness. So next you see your
_grandpère_ getting back at last, by ship--go on."
"Yes, I see that, in a harbor whose miles of wharfs without ships cried
to him: 'our occupation and your fortune are gone!' Also I see him
again in the streets--Royal, Chartres, Canal, Carondelet--where old
friends pass him with a stare. I see him and _grand'mère_ married at
last, in a church nearly empty and even the priest unfriendly."
"Had he no new friends, Unionists?"
"Not yet, at the wedding. There he said: 'Old friends or none.' And
that was right, don't you think? Later 'twas different. You see, in
the navy, both of the rivers and the sea, as likewise the army,
_grand'mère_ had uncles and cousins; and when the hotel was made a
military hospital she was there every day. And naturally those
cousins, whether from hospital or no, would call and even bring
friends. Well, of course, _grandpère_ was, at the least, courteous!
And then there was his word of honor, to Mr. Lincoln, as also his own
desire, to bring the State back into the Union."
"Of course. Don't hurry, please."
"Was I hurrying? Pardon, but I'm afraid they'll be calling us again."
The pair rose, but stood. "Well, when a kind of government was made of
that part of the State held by the Union, and the military governor
wanted both _grandpère_ and his father to take some public offices, his
father made excuse of his age and of a malady--taken from that
hospital--which soon occasioned him to die."
"I've seen his tomb, in St. Louis cemetery, with its epitaph of barely
two words--'Adieu, Chapdelaine.' Who supplied that? Old friends,
after all?"
"A few old, a few new, and one the governor."
"Did the governor propose the words?"
"No. If I tell you you won't tell? Ovide. But _grandpère_ he took
the office. And so that put him yet more distant from old friends
except just two or three who believed the same as he did."
"And our Royal Street coterie, of course."
"Ah, not those you see now; but their parents, yes. They were
faithful; though sometimes, some of them, sympathizing differently.
Well, and so there was _grandpère_ working to repair a _piece_ of the
State, when at last the war finished and the reconstruction of the
whole State commenced. He and Ovide were both of that State convention
they mobbed in the 'July riot.' Some men were killed in that riot.
_Grandpère_ was wounded, also Ovide. Those were awful times to
_grand'mère_, those years of the reconstruction. _Grandpère_ he--"
The girl glanced backward, then turned again, smiling. The four
chaperons were going indoors without them.
"Yes," Chester said, "your _grandpère_ I can imagine----"
"Well, go ahead; imagine, to me."
"No. No, except just enough to see him with no choice of party
allegiance but between a rabble up to the elbows in robbery and an old
régime red-handed with the rabble's blood."
"Ah, so papa told me, after _grandpère_ was long gone, and me on his
knee asking questions. 'Reconstruction, my dear child--' once he
answered me, ''twas like trying to drive, on the right road, a frantic
horse in a rotten harness, and with the reins under his tail!' Ah, I
wish you could have known him, Mr. Chester--my father!"
"I know his daughter."
"Well, I suppose--I suppose we must go in."
"With the story almost finished?"
"We'll, maybe finish inside--or--some day."