"There's a train every half-hour," Chester said.
"Yes, but the day-laborer must be home early."
On the train--"Well," the youth urged, "your _grand'mère_ stayed in the
old home, I hope, with the three children--and Sidney?"
"Only till she could sell it. But that was nearly three years, and
they were hard, those three. But at last, by the help of that Royal
Street coterie--who were good friends, Mr. Chester, when friends were
scarce--she sold both house and furniture--what was by that time
remaining--and bought that place where we are now living."
"Was there no life-insurance?"
"A little. We have the yearly interest on it still. 'Tis very small,
yet a great help--to my aunts. I tell that only to say that papa would
never touch it when he and my aunts--and afterward mamma--were in very
narrow places."
Chester perceived another reason for the telling of it; the niece
wanted to escape the credit of being the sole support of her aunts.
She read his thought but ignored it.
"Papa was very old for his age," she continued. "You may see that by
his being in the battle with _grandpère_ at thirteen years. And
because of that precocity he got much training of the mind--and
spirit--from _grandpère_ that usually is got much later. I think that
is what my aunts mean when they tell you papa's life was dramatic. It
_was_ so, yet not in the manner they mean, the manner of _grandpère's_
life; you understand?"
"You mean it was not melodramatic?"
"Ah! the word I wanted! Mr. Chester, when we get over being children,
those of us who do, why do we try so hard to live without melodrama?"
"Oh, mademoiselle, you know well enough. You know that's what
melodrama does, itself? What is it, in essence, but a struggle to rise
out of itself into a higher drama, of the spirit----?"
"A divine comedy! Yes. Well, that is what my father's life seems to
me."
"With tragic elements in it, of course?"
"Oh! How could it be high comedy without? But except that one battle
the tragedy was not--eh--crude, like _grandpère's_; was not physical.
Once he said to me: 'There are things in life, in the refined life,
very quiet things, that are much more tragic than bloodshed or death or
the defying of death.'"
"In the refined life," Chester said musingly.
"Yes! and he _was_ refined, yet never weak. 'Strength,' he said,
'valor, truth, they are the foundations; better be dead than without
them. Yet one can have them, in crude form, and still better be dead.
The noble, the humane, the chaste, the beautiful, 'tis with them we
build the superstructure, the temple, of life--Mr. Chester, if you knew
French I could tell you that better."
"I doubt it. Go on, please, time's a-flying."
"Well, you see how tragic was that life! Papa saw it and said: 'It
shall not be tragic alone. I will build on it a comedy higher, finer,
than tragedy. That's what life is for; mine, yours, the world's,' he
said to me. Mr. Chester, you can imagine how a daughter would love a
father like that, and also how mamma loved him--for years--before they
could marry."
"Your mother was a Creole, I suppose?"
"No, mamma was French. After _grand'mère_ had followed
_grandpère_--above--papa, looking up some of the once employees of T.
Chapdelaine & Son, to raise the old concern back to life, arranged with
them that while they should reinstitute it here he would go live in
France, close to the producers of the finest goods possible. You see?
And he did that many years with a kind of success; but smaller and
smaller, because little by little the taste for those refinements was
passing, while those department stores and all that kind of thing--you
understand--h'm?"
The train stopped in Rampart Street, and when one aunt, with madame,
and one with monsieur, had followed the junior pair out of the
snarlings and hootings of Canal Street's automobiles and to the quiet
sidewalks of the old quarter----
"Well?" said Chester, slowing down, and----
"Well," said Aline, "about mamma: ah, 'tis wonderful how they were
suited to each other, those two. Almost from the first of his living
there, in France, they were acquainted and much together. She was of a
fine ancestry, but without fortune; everything lost in the German war,
eighteen seventy. They were close neighbor to a convent very famous
for its wonderful work of the needle and of the bobbin. 'Twas there
she received her education. And she and papa could have married any
time if he could promise to stay always there, in France. But the
business couldn't assure that; and so, for years and years, you see?"
"Yes, I see."
"But then, all at once, almost in a day, mamma, she found herself an
orphan, with no inheritance but poor relations and they with already
too many orphans in their care. For, as my aunts say, joking, that
seems to run in our family, to become orphans.
"They are very fond of joking, my aunts. And so, because to those
French relations America seemed a cure for all troubles, they allowed
papa to marry mamma and bring her here to live, where I was born, and
where they lived many, many years so happily, because so bravely----"
"And in such refinement--of spirit?"
"Ah, yes, yes. And where we are yet inhabiting, as you perceive, my
aunts and me, and--as you see yonder this moment waiting us in the
gate--Hector and Marie Madeleine!"
Alone with the De l'Isles in Royal Street Chester asked, "And the
business--Chapdelaine & Son?"
"Ah, sinz' long time liquidate'! All tha'z rim-aining is Mme.
Alexandre. Mr. Chezter, y' ought to put that! That ought to go in the
book," said monsieur.
"If we could only avoid a disjointed effect."
"Dizjoin'--my dear sir! They are going to read thad book _biccause_
the dizjointed--by curio-zity. You'll see! That Am-erican pewblic
they have a passion, an _insanitie_, for the dizjointed!"