beginning at dawn, an all-day rain rested the travel-wearied lady. but the night cleared and in the forenoon that followed she shopped--for things, she wrote her husband, not to be found elsewhere in the forty-eight states.
the afternoon she gave to two or three callers, notably to mrs. thorndyke-smith, who was very pleasing every way, but in nothing more than in her praises of the royal street coterie. next morning, in a hired car, she had castanado and mme. dubroca, beloiseau and mme. alexandre, not merely show but, as the ironworker said, pinching forefinger and thumb together in the air, "elucidate" to her, for hours, the vieux carré. the day's latter half brought mlles. corinne and yvonne; but aline--no.
"she was coming till the laz' moment," the pair said, "and then she's so bewzy she 'ave to sen' us word, by 'ector, 'tis impossib' to come--till maybe later. go h-on, juz' we two."
they sat and talked, and rose and talked, and--sweetly importuned--resumed seats and talked, of infant days and the old new orleans they loved so well, unembarrassed by a maze of innocent anachronisms, and growingly sure that aline would come.
when at sunset they took leave mrs. chester, to their delight, followed to the sidewalk, drifted on by a corner or two, and even turned up rampart street, though without saying that it was by rampart street her son daily came--walked--from his office. it had two paved ways for general traffic, with a broad space between, where once, the sisters explained, had been the rampart's moat but now ran the electric cars! "you know what that is, rampart? tha'z in the 'star-spangle' banner' ab-oud that. and this high wall where we're passing, tha'z the carmelite convent, and--ah! ad the last! aline! aline!" also there was cupid.
the four encountered gayly. "ah, not this time," aline said. "i came only to meet my aunts; they had locked the gate! but i will call, very soon."
they walked up to the next corner, the sisters confusingly instructing mrs. chester how to take a returning street-car. leaving them, she had just got safely across from sidewalk to car-track when cupid came pattering after, to bid her hail only the car marked "esplanade belt."
as he backed off--"take care!" was the cry, but he sprang the wrong way and a hurrying jitney cast him yards distant, where he lay unconscious and bleeding. the packed street-car emptied.
"no, he's alive," said one who lifted him, to the two jitney passengers, who pushed into the throng. "arm broke', yes, but he's hurt worst in the head."
there was an apothecary's shop in sight. they put him and the four ladies into the jitney and sent them there, and the world moved on.
at the shop he came to, and presently, in the jitney again, he was blissfully aware of geoffry chester on the swift running-board, questioning his mother and aline by turns. he listened with all his might. neither the child nor his mistress had seen or heard the questioner since the afternoon he was locked out of the garden.
nearing that garden now, questions and answers suddenly ceased; the child had spoken. limp and motionless, with his head on aline's bosom and his eyes closed, "don't let," he brokenly said, "don't let him go 'way."
to him the answer seemed so long coming that he began to repeat; then aline said----
"no, dear, he shan't leave you."
the sisters had telephoned their own physician from the apothecary's shop, and soon, with cupid on his cot, pushed close to a cool window looking into the rear garden, and the garden lighted by an unseen moon, mrs. chester, at the cot's side awaited the doctor's arrival. the restless sisters brought her a tray of rusks and butter and tea, though they would not, could not, taste anything themselves until they should know how gravely the small sufferer--for now he began to suffer--was hurt.
"same time tha'z good to be induztriouz"--this was all said directly above the moaning child--"while tha'z bad, for the sick, to talk ad the bedside, and we can't stay with you and not talk, and we can't go in that front yard; that gate is let open so the doctor he needn' ring and that way excide the patient; and we can't go in the back garden"--they spread their hands and dropped them; the back garden was hopelessly pre-empted.
they went to a parlor window and sat looking and longing for the front gate to swing. they had posted on it in corinne's minute writing: "no admittance excep on business. open on account sickness. s. v. p. don't wring the belle!!!"
cupid lay very flat on his back, his face turned to the open window. he had ceased to moan. when mrs. chester stole to where, by leaning over, she could see his eyes they were closed. she hoped he slept, but sat down in uncertainty rather than risk waking him. in the moonlit garden aline and geoffry paced to and fro. to see them his mother would have to stand and lean over the cot, and neither good mothers nor good nurses do that. she kept her seat, anxiously hoping that the moonlight out there would remain soft enough to veil the worn look which daylight betrayed on her son's face whenever he fell into silence.
the talk of the pair was labored. once they went clear to the bower and turned, without a word. then geoffry said: "i know a story i'd like to tell you, though how it would help us in our project--if we now have a project at all--i don't see."
"'tis of the vieux carré, that story?"
"it's of the vieux carré of the world's heart."
"i think i know it."
"may i not tell it?"
"yes, you may tell it--although--yes, tell it."
"well, there was once a beautiful girl, as beautiful in soul as in countenance, and worshipped by a few excellent friends, few only because of conditions in her life that almost wholly exiled her from society. even so, she had suitors--good, gallant men; not of wealth, yet with good prospects and with gifts more essential. but other conditions seemed, to her, to forbid marriage."
"yes," aline interrupted. "mr. chester, have you gone in partnership with mr. castanado--'masques et costumes'? or would it not be maybe better honor to me--and yourself--to speak----"
"straight out? yes, of course. aline, i've been racking my brain--i still am--and my heart--to divine what it is that separates us. i had come to believe you loved me. i can't quite stifle the conviction yet. i believe that in refusing me you're consciously refusing that which seems to you yourself a worthy source of supreme happiness if it did not threaten the happiness of others dearer than your own."
"of my aunts, you think?"
"yes, your aunts."
"mr. chester, even if i had no aunts----"
"yes, i see. that's my new discovery: you've already had my assurance that i'd study their happiness as i would yours, ours, mine; but you think i could never make your aunts and myself happy in the same atmosphere. you believe in me. you believe i have a future that must carry me--would carry us--into a world your aunts don't know and could never learn."
"'tis true. and yet even if my aunts----"
"had no existence--yes, i know. i know what you think would still remain. you can't hint it, for you think i would promptly promise the impossible, as lovers so easily do. aline, i would not! 'twouldn't be impossible. it shall not be. my mother is helping to prove that even to you, isn't she--without knowing it? i promise you as if it were in the marriage contract and we were here signing it, that if you will be my wife i never will, and you never shall, let go, or in any way relax, your hold--or mine--on the intimate friendship of the coterie in royal street. they are your inheritance from your father and his father, and i love you the more adoringly because you would sooner break your own heart than forfeit that legacy." he took one of her hands. "you are their 'clock in the sky'; you're their 'angel of the lord.' and so you shall be till death do you part." he took the other hand, held both.
cupid turned his face from the window and audibly sobbed.
"oh, child, what is it? does it pain so?"
he shook his head.
"doesn't it pain? is it not pain at all? why, then, what is it?"
"joy," he whispered as the doctor came in.
