Long after midnight Chester had not returned to his room. He could not
tolerate the confinement even of the narrow streets round about it.
Far out Esplanade Avenue, uncompanioned, he was walking mile after mile
beside a belt line of trolley-cars, or more than one, while at home, in
Bourbon Street, Cupid slept.
But now the child awoke, startled. Four small feet were on one of his
arms, and Marie Madeleine was purring, at the top of her purr, in his
ear. Drowsily he crowded her away. Purring on, she slowly walked
across his stomach and dropped to the floor. But soon she leaped up
again to that sensitive region and purred into his nose, not at all as
if to claim attention, but as though lost in thought. When he pushed
her aside she dropped again to the floor, with such a quadruple thump
that he looked after her, and as she loitered across his view with tail
as straight up as Cleopatra's Needle, he observed just beyond her a
condition of affairs that appalled him.
Cold from his small fingers and toes to his ample heart, he rose, stole
into the next room, and stood by the bed where lay Mlles. Corinne and
Yvonne as they had lain every night since their earliest childhood.
"Ah! oh! h'nn!" Mlle. Corinne sprang to an elbow, nervously
whispering: "What is it?"
"My back do'," he murmured, "stan'in' opem."
"Oh, little boy, no, it cannot be! I bolt' it laz' evening when you
was praying. You know?"
"Yass'm, but it opem now; Marie Madeleine dess gone out thu it."
Mlle. Yvonne sprang up dishevelled beside her dishevelled sister: "_Mon
dieu_! where is Aline?"
Colder than ever in hands and feet, the wee grandson of the intrepid
Sidney responded: "Stay still tell I go see."
"Yes!" whispered Mlle. Corinne, slipping to the floor and tenderly
pushing him, "go! safest for everybody! And if you see a burglar _don'
threaten him_!"
"No'm, I won't."
"No, but juz' run quick out the back door and fron' gate and holla
'fire'! Go!"
At the crack of the door she listened after him while her sister
crowded close, whispering: "Ah, _pauvre_ Aline, always wise! Like us,
silent! And tha'z after all the bravezt!"
In a moment Cupid was back, less frozen yet trembling: "She am' dah.
Seem' like 'tis her leave de do' opem."
"Her clothes--they are gone?"
"No'm, all dah 'cep' de cloak she tuck on de machine. Reckon she out
in de honey-sucker bower whah _dey_ sot together Sunday evenin'.
Reckon Marie Madeleine gone dah. I'll go see."
"Ah, fearlezz boy, yes! Make quick!"
This time both women pushed, single file, all the way to the garden
door. There they strained their sight down the path, beyond him, but
the bower was quite dark. "Corinne, _chére_, ought not one of us to
go, yo'seff?--to spare her feelings--from that li'l' negro? You don'
think one of us ought to go, yo'seff?"
"No, to sen' him, that is to spare those feel'--listen! . . . Ah,
Yvonne, _grâce au ciel_, she's there!"