"well, they married, your father and mother, over there where her people are fighting the germans right now, and came and lived in bourbon street with your aunts, eh?"
"yes, or rather my aunts with them, they were of so much more strong natures than my aunts--more strong and large while just as sweet, and that's saying much, you know."
"i see it is."
"mr. chester, what you see, i think, is that my aunts are perhaps the two most--well--unworldly women you ever knew."
"true. in that quality they're childlike."
"yes, and because they are so childlike in--above all--the freedom of their speech, what i want to say of them, just this one time, is the more to their honor: that in my whole life i've never heard them speak one word against anybody."
"not even cupid?"
"ah-h-h! that's a cruel joke, and false! that true cupid, he's an assassin; while that child, he's faultless?"
the speaker really said "fauklezz," and it was a joy to chester to hear her at last fall unwittingly into a creole accent. "well, anyhow," he led on, "the four lived together; and if i guess right your mother became, to all this joy-ride company, as much their heroine as your father was their hero."
"'tis true!"
"but your father's coming back from france--it couldn't save the business?"
"alas, no! even together, he and mamma--and you know what a strong businezz partner a french wife can be--they could not save it. both of them were, i think, more artist than merchant, and when all that kind of businezz began to be divorce' from art and married to machinery"--the narrator made a sad gesture.
"kultur against culture, was it? and your father not the sort to change masters."
"true again. but tha'z not all; hardly was it half. one thing beside was the miz-conduct of an agent, the man who lately"--a silent smile.
"what?--sold your aunts that manuscript?"
"yes. but he didn' count the most. oh, the whole businezz, except papa's, became, as we say--give me the word!"
"americanized?"
"no, papa he always refused to call it that. mr. chester, he used to say that those two marvellouz blessings, machinery, democracy, they are in one thing too much alike; they are, at first--say it, you."
"vulgarizing?"
"yes. i suppose that has to be--at the first, h'm? and with the buying world every day more and more in love with machine work--and seeming itself to become machine work, while at the same time americanized, papa was like a river town"--another gesture--"left by the river!"
"yet he never went into bankruptcy? you can point with pride to that, mademoiselle."
"ah, mr. chester, pride! once i pointed, and papa--'my daughter, there are many ways to go bankrupt worse than in money, and to have gone bankrupt in none of them--' there he stopped; he was too noble for pride. no, the businezz, juz' year after year it starved to death. in the early days grandpére had two big stores, back to back; whole-sale, chartres street; retail, royal, where now all that is left of it is the shop of mme. alexandre. both her husband and she were with papa in the retail store, until it diminish' that he couldn' keep them, and--in the time of president roosevelt--some new york men they bought him out. because a new head of the custom-house, old creole friend of papa, without solicitation except maybe of m. beloiseau and those, appointed him superintendent of customs warehouses, you know? where they keep all kind of imported goods, so they needn't pay the tariff till they take them out to sell them in the store? h'm?"
"yes. and he kept that place--how long?"
"always, till he passed, he and mamma; mamma first, he two years avter. ad the last he said to me--we chanced to be talking in englizh--'i've lived the quiet life. if i must go i can go quietly.'
"'and still,' i said, 'if your life had been as stormy as grandpére's you'd have been always for the right, and ad the last content, i think.'
"'yes,' he said, 'i believe i never ran away from a storm, while ad the same time i never ran avter one.' and then he said something i wrote down the same night in the fear i might sometime partly forget it."
"have you it with you, now, here?" she showed a bit of paper, holding it low for him to read as she retained it:
on the side of the right all the storms of life--all the storms of the world--are for the perfection of the quiet life--the active-quiet life--to build it stronger, wider, finer, higher, than is possible for the stormy life to be. whether for each man or for the nations, the stormy life is but the means; the active-quiet life, without decay of character in man or nation but with growth forever--that is the end.
the pair exchanged a look. "thank you," murmured chester, and presently added: "so you were left with your two aunts. then what?"
"i'll tell you. but"---the creole accent faded out--"we must not disappoint the de l'isles, nor those others, we must----"
"i see; we must notice where we're going and give and take our share of the joy."
"we mustn't be as if reading the morning paper, h'm? i think 'tis for you they've come this way instead of going on those smooth shell-roads between the city and the lake." the two cars had come up through old "carrollton," where the mississippi, sweeping down from nine-mile point, had been gnawing inland for something like a century, in spite of all man's engineering could pile against it, and now were out on the levee road and half round the bend above.
to press her policy, "see!" exclaimed aline, as a light swell of the ground brought to view a dazzling sweep of the river, close beyond the levee's crown and almost on a level with the eye. they were in a region of wide, highly kept sugar-plantations. whatever charms belong to the rural life of the louisiana delta were at their amplest on every side. groves of live-oak, pecan, magnolia, and orange about large motherly dwellings of the creole colonial type moved aline to turn the conversation upon country life in chester's state, and constrain him to tell of his own past and kindred. so time and the river's great windings slipped by with the de l'isles undisappointed, and early in the afternoon the company lunched in the two cars, under a homestead grove. its master and mistress, old friends of all but chester, came running, followed by maids with gifts of milk and honey. they climbed in among the company; shared, lightly, their bread and wine; heard with momentary interest the latest news of the great war; spoke english and french in alternating clauses; inquired after the coterie's four young heroes at the french front, but only by stealth and out of aline's hearing; and cried to cupid, "'ello, 'ector! comment ça va-t-il? and 'ow she is, yonder at 'ome, that marie madeleine?"
cupid smiled to his ears, but it was the absentee's two mistresses who answered for her, volubly, tenderly: "we was going to bring her, but juz' at the lazt she discide' she di'n' want to come. you know, tha'z beautiful, sometime', her capriciouznezz!"
indoors, outdoors, the visitors spent an hour seeing the place and hearing its history all the way back to early colonial days. then, in the two cars once more, with seats much changed about, yet with aline and chester still paired, though at the rear of the forward car, they glided cityward. at carrollton they turned toward the new canal, and at west end took the lake shore eastward--but what matter their way? joy was with ten of them, and bliss with two--three, counting cupid--and it was only by dutiful effort that the blissful ones kept themselves aware of the world about them while aline's story ran gently on. it had run for some time when a query from chester evoked the reply:
"no, 'twas easier to bear, i think, because i had not more time and less work."
"what was your work, mademoiselle? what is it now? incidentally you keep books, but mainly you do--what?"
"mainly--i'll tell you. papa, you know, he was, like grandpère, a true connoisseur of all those things that belong to the arts of beautiful living. like grandpère he had that perception by three ways--occupation, education, talent. and he had it so abboundingly because he had also the art--of that beautiful life, h'm?"
"the art beyond the arts," suggested the listener; "their underlying philosophy."
the narrator glowed. then, grave again, she said: "mr. chezter, i'll tell you something. to you 'twill seem very small, but to me 'tis large. it muz' have been because of both together, those arts and that art, that, although papa he was always of a strong enthusiasm and strong indignation, yet never in my life did i hear him--egcept in play--speak an exaggeration. 'sieur beloiseau he will tell you that--while ad the same time papa he never rebuke' that in anybody else--egcept, of course--his daughter."
"but i ask about you, your work."
"ah! and i'm telling you. mamma she had the same connoisseur talent as papa, and even amongs' that people where she was raise', and under the shadow, as you would say, of that convent so famouz for all those weavings, laces, tapestries, embro'deries, she was thought to be wonderful with the needle."
chester interrupted elatedly: "i see what you're coming to. you, yourself, were born needle in hand--the embroidery-needle."
"well, ad the least i can't rimember when i learned it. 'twas always as if i couldn' live without it. but it was not the needle alone, nor embro'deries alone, nor alone the critical eye. papa he had, pardly from grand-père, pardly brought from france, a separate librarie abbout all those arts, and i think before i was five years i knew every picture in those books, and before ten every page. and always papa and mamma they were teaching me from those books--they couldn' he'p it! i was very naughty aboud that. i would bring them the books and if they didn' teach me i would weep. i think i wasn' ever so naughty aboud anything else. but in the en', with the businezz always diclining, that turn' out fortunate. by and by mamma she persuade' papa to let her take a part in the pursuanze of the businezz. but she did that all out of sight of the public----"
"had you never a brother or sister?"
"yes, long ago. we'll not speak of that. a sizter, two brothers; but--scarlet-fever----"
the story did not pause, yet while it pressed on, its hearers musing lingered behind. why were the long lost ones not to be spoken of? for fear of betraying some blame of the childlike aunts for the scarlet-fever? the unworthy thought was put aside and the hearer's attention readjusted.
"even mamma," the girl was saying, "she didn' escape that contagion, and by reason of that she was compelled to let papa put me in her place in the businezz; and after getting well she never was the same and i rittained the place till a year avter, when she pas' away, and i have it yet."
"and who filled m. alexandre's place?"
"oh, that? tis fil' partly by mme. alexandre and partly by that diminishing of the businezz--till the largez' part of it is ripairing--of old laces, embro'deries, and so forth. madame's shop is the chief place in the city for that. of that we have all we can do. 'tis a beautiful work.
"so tha'z all i have to tell, mr. chezter; and i've enjoyed to tell you that so you can see why we are so content and happy, my aunts and i--and hector--and marie madeleine. h'm?"
"that's all you have to tell?"
"that is all." "but not all there is to tell, even of the past, mademoiselle."
"ah! and why not?"
"oh, impossible!" chester softly laughed and had almost repeated the word when the girl blushed; whereupon he did the same. for he seemed all at once to have spoiled the whole heavenly day, until she smilingly restored it by saying:
"oh, yes! one thing i was forgetting. just for the laugh i'll tell you that. you know, even in a life as quiet as mine, sometimes many things happening together, or even a few, will make you see bats instead of birds, eh?"
"i know, and mistake feelings for facts. i've done it often, in a moderate way."
"yes? me the same. but very badly, so that the sky seemed falling in, only once."
chester thought that if the two aunts, just then telling the biography of their dolls, were his, his sky would have fallen in at least weekly. "tell me of that once," he said, and, knowing not why, called to mind those four soldiers in france, to her, for some reason, unmentionable.
"well, first i'll say that the archbishop he had been the true friend of papa, but now this time, this 'once' when my sky seemed falling, both mamma and papa they were already gone. i don't need to tell you what the trouble was about, because it never happened; it only threatened to happen. so when i saw there was only me to prevent it and to----"
"to hold the sky up?"
"yes, seeing that, it seemed to me the best friend to go to was the archbishop.
"'well, my old and dear friend's daughter,' he said, 'what is it?'
"'most reverend father in god, 'tis my wish to become a nun.'
"'my child, that is a beautiful sentiment.'
"'but 'tis more; even more than my wish; 'tis my resolution. i must do that. 'tis as if i heard that call from heaven to me, aline chapdelaine!'
"'ah, but that's not only your name. your mamma, up yonder, she's also aline chapdelaine.'
"'yes, but i know that call is to me. ah, your grace, surely, surely, you will not forbid me?'
"'no, my daughter. yet at the same time that is not a thing to be done suddenly, or in desperation. i'll appoint you a season for reflection and prayer, and after that if your resolution remains the same you shall become a nun.'
"'but, for the sake of others, will not that season be made short?'
"'for your own sake, my daughter, as well as for others, i'll make it the shortest possible. let me see; i was going to say forty but i'll make it only thirty-nine.'
"'ah, your grace, but in thirty-nine days----'
"he stopped me: 'not days, my child; years.' what he said after, 'tis no matter now; pretty soon i was kneeling and receiving his benediction."
"and the sky didn't fall?"
"no, but--i can't explain to you--'twas that very visit prevent' it falling."
