Monsieur Motte/Chapter 2

by Grace Elizabeth King

II.

On the Plantation.

The autumn was struggling for recognition, and was making an impression upon all but the mid-day hours. In the mornings, the air came cool and crisp, full of incentives to work. In the evenings, the soft languor and dreamy inertness of summer had been driven away by a wide-awake activity, with good resolutions and plans of future energy to be discussed inside closed doors and windows into late hours of the night. The roses in the garden bloomed pale and listless after their exhausting summer season, shivering perfumelessly in the practical October breezes. The trees were in the full glory of their rich green foliage. The cane in the fields stood in thick, solid maturity, with long, green, pendent leaves curling over and over in bewildering luxuriance. The sunset clouds, bursting with light and color, gilded the tops of the boundary woods and illumined like a halo the familiar features of plantation life. The Mississippi River, reflecting and rivalling the sky above, rolled, an iridescent current, between its yellow mud banks cut into grotesque silhouettes by crevasses and steamboat landings as it dimpled in eddies over shallows, boiled and swirled in hollow whirlpools over depths, or rushed with inflexible, relentless rapidity, following the channel in its angular course from point to point.

The day's work had come to an end. The plantation bell rang out its dismissal and benediction. The blacksmith laid down the half-sharpened cane-knife and began covering up the fire. From mysterious openings on all sides of the sugar-house workmen issued with tools in their hands. The stable doors were thrown open, and the hostlers, old crooked-legged negroes, hurried about with food for the mules. The cows tinkled their impatient bells outside the milking-lot, while the frantic calves bounded and bleated inside. From the two long rows of whitewashed cabins in the quarters the smoke began to rise. The drowsy young women, sitting with their babies on the cabin steps, shifted their positions, and raised their apathetic eyes from the eager faces pressing against their bosoms to the heavens above for ocular confirmation of the bell, and turned their ears toward the road from the fields. The exempt old women, the house dragons, wrinkled, withered. decrepit, deformed, with all but life used out of them, hobbled around in a fictitious bustle, picking up chips, filling buckets of water at the cistern, or stood with their hands pressed against their bent backs to send blood-curdling threats and promises after the children.

Along the smooth yellow road through the field came the "gang," with their mules and wagons, ploughs and hoes. In advance walked the women, swaying themselves from side to side with characteristic abandon, lighting their rude pipes, hailing the truce to toil with loud volubility. Against the luminous evening sky their black profiles came out with startling distinctness, showing features just sharpening into regularity from cartilaginous formlessness, the gleam of white teeth, and the gaudy colors of the cotton kerchiefs knotted across their brows. Their bodies, as though vaguely recalling ancestral nudity amid tropical forests, seemed to defy concealment, throwing out bold curves and showing lines of savage grace through the scant folds of their loose-fitting garments. Sylvan secrets seemed still to hang around them. In their soft sad eyes, not yet cleared and brightened by sophistication, spoke the untamed desires of wild, free Nature; while fitfully in the opaque depths shone bright gleams of a struggling intelligence, pathetic appeals as from an imprisoned spirit protesting against foul Circean enchantment. The men followed, aggressively masculine, heavy-limbed, slow of movement on their hampered, shod feet; wearing their clothes like harness; with unhandsome, chaotic faces, small eyes, and concealed natures. They watched the women with jealous interest, excluding them from their hilarity, and responding grudgingly and depreciatingly to their frank overtures. The water-carriers, half-grown boys and girls, idled at a distance, balancing their empty pails on their bare heads,—quick and light on their feet, graceful, alert, intuitive, exuberant with life and animal spirits, they were happy in the thoughtless, unconscious enjoyment of the short moment that yet separated them from their hot, dull, heavy, dangerous maturity.

The anticipations of cheer and rest, the subtile satisfaction of honestly tired bodies; the flattering commendations of their own skill from the finely cultivated stand of cane on each side of them; the past expiations of ploughing, ditching, weeding, hoeing; the freezing rains; the scorching suns; but, above all, the approach of the grinding season, the "roulaison," with its frolics, excitements, and good pay,—all tended to elate their spirits; and their voices, in joke, song, laugh, and retort, sped down the road before them to the quarters, and evoked responsive barks and shouts from the dogs and children there.

It was the busy time of the year, and the anxious time too,—the roulaison. It was the period to which the rest of the year led up, the chronological terminus of calculation and cultivation, when the fields with their accumulated interest of labor and capital were delivered over for judgment to the sugar-house. Always dominating the place, the material importance of the sugar-house became tyrannical, oppressive, as cane-cutting approached. It reared itself—an ugly, square, red-brick structure—menacingly before the fields; it dwarfed the "big house" into insignificance, and, with its vast shed, divided by the cane-carrier, its chimneys, furnaces, boiler, bagasse-heaps, its mountainous wood-pile and barricade of new hogsheads, it shut out the view of the river from the quarters, and consigned the latter to a species of seclusion. What its verdict would be, was now the one item of interest to all, from the oldest graybeard to the youngest thinker on "Bel Angely" plantation. What the sugar-house decided, fixed the good or bad character of the past year, and approved or disproved the executive ability of the plantation manager. It is a close contest between man and Nature, and the always increasing science of the one is more than counterbalanced by the capricious obstinacy of the other. The old men and women, heirlooms of departed experiences, found themselves growing in importance with autumn, and their rusty memories became oracles to furnish data for prognostication. There were the "big freeze" and the "early freeze" and the "late freeze" years. There were years when the cane sprouted in the mats, when the second-year stubble could not be told from first-year, and the first-year stubble filled up like plant cane. Then there were all the years marked by a water-line of rises, overflows, and crevasses. There was one memory that contained a year in which the Mississippi froze all over, and several that perpetuated the falling of the stars; but however persistently such a recurrence was periodically suggested, Nature had been pleased to withhold a repetition. The autocratic sugar-house itself was not beyond damaging recollections: it might have been a natural product, or a season, for the number of hitches and breaks with which it managed to vary its runs, and the success with which it eluded its yearly examiners and tinkers. Then, there was the sacharometer to disparage the splendid growth of the cane, the polariscope to contradict the sacharometer, and, finally, the commission merchant to give the lie to Nature and man; with high charges and low prices to enjoin all hopes, reverse all calculations, and not only damn the past but confound the future. No roulaison ever came exactly like a preceding one, and no season ever duplicated its calamities; but never had roulaison come with such guarantee of success, to be met with so unforseen a mishap as the illness of Monsieur Félix,—ill in bed of sciatica!

In the great ledger commenced by the first sugar-making Angely, down to day before yesterday, never had such an item been recorded. It was like the illness of a commander just before battle. And such a commander as Monsieur Félix was!—not trusting the sun to shine or the cane to grow in his absence; his ever-watchful eye and unwearied sagacity pervading the plantation from limit to limit; so omniscient and self-reliant that if there were one place on the perverse globe that could dispense with supernal jurisdiction, one place that could be safely trusted to earthly viceregency, that place was Bel Angely plantation, Parish of St. Charles. He had had his bed pulled close to the window, and any hour of the day, from dawn to dark, his bright red face, with its fierce gray mustache, could be seen looking out, and his excited voice heard screaming, scolding, expostulating, and threatening, until even the pet chickens and ducks deserted their favorite feeding-place, and the little, crawling black children, with their skirts tied up under their arms, learned to imitate their elders, and crept nimbly under the gallery or dodged behind the out-houses to avoid him. If the door of his bedchamber were inadvertently left open but a second, little gusts of passion would escape down the hall, blasting like tiny siroccos the healthful calm and good-humor outside. Mademoiselle Aurore herself, with all her natural and cultivated conscientiousness, had to feign deafness in order to secure necessary leisure for housekeeping directions.

"Ah, mon Dieu! les hommes! les hommes!" was all she could exclaim to her own and the interrogatories of others. She knew by experience that weather contingencies and constitutional irregularities were always to be visited on the females of the house. She did not repine at things she was inured to, or rebel against a manifest design of Providence; but that wretched Gabi! The abbreviation named an important division in the cares and responsibilities of her life,—a half-Indian, half-negro waif whom she had hopefully taken in charge, a rightful heir of the combined laziness of two races, and trustee of the mischief of all.

No wonder she was nearly distracted and completely unable, as heretofore, to extract good omens from patent misfortunes. Her life had been counted by roulaisons, as some women's are by Springs, and she felt as if this one were going to put her, with the cane in the fields, between the great revolving grinders of the mill. There was always enough to be done,—enough impatience and vexation to contend with naturally. If Gabi could only have acquitted himself properly! If Félix could only have gotten ill at some other time! If she could only be allowed to take the sciatica as a physical instead of a mental burden! She had done everything, as a sister and a Christian, to relieve the tension of affairs. She had placed herself at the disposition of every functionary on the place,—sugar-maker, cooper, engineer, blacksmith,—and was at the beck and call of every "hand" coming for food, medicine, advice, or instruction. She had entered into negotiations with every saint in the calendar amenable to representations on the subject of sugar or sciatica. Her room fairly blazed with temporary shrines, and candles which her own little personal requisitions had kept for years in a state of perpetual incandescence; by a coup-d'état she had transferred them all from her own account to that of the plantation and her brother. She was in constant communication with the parish priest, although he was a rough, vulgar Gascon whom she detested. In fact, she had expended vows and promises so recklessly, that were but half her prayers granted, she could look forward to none but a future of religious insolvency if not bankruptcy. But Gabi! that was an entirely superfluous complication.

As usual she had been too zealous. To save the labor of a man, at so critical a time, and to extort tardy appreciation of her protégé, she had taken it upon herself to send him for the mail. She had often wished to send him before, his trustworthiness being a matter of dispute between her and her brother; but Félix had always peremptorily refused. He was prejudiced against Gabi, and there was no arguing away his prejudices; but his illness afforded a timely opportunity of destroying them. Hélas!

She stood by the door of the chamber, in which not one but a dozen sciaticas appeared to be unleashed, holding in her hands the mail-bag: not the one she had given Gabi with so many careful instructions in the gray light of the morning,—that one had been dropped and dropped in the dust and mud of the road and ditches; and finally, when Gabi had concluded to take his rest unbroken in the shade of a tree instead of in fractional naps on the mule's back, the swine had come along, and with ruthless tusks had reduced the contents to a shapeless mass. She had extracted one crumpled, soiled, foul letter from the débris, and put it in the new, clean, alternate bag,—one letter! when at this season Félix was corresponding with every other man in New Orleans! And Gabi had made such a good first communion last spring, and never, never missed church! The mule, too, had wandered away, Saint Anthony alone knew where; Gabi was in her cabinet now, hiding from Edmond, who was searching for him with a whip. She could keep it from Félix until he got well; but then, of course, she must tell him.

When she came out of the room a half-hour later she was enveloped in a bitter condemnation of postmistresses and neglectful correspondents, and pursued by a last rush of important commissions.

"Send Edmond to me. Tell Joe to get ready to take the next boat to the city. I thought you were going to hunt up that roll of wire in the store-room. Hasn't old Sîmon sent yet? Don't forget to copy Smith's estimate. Go to the sugar-house—no; I shall tell Duval myself to go to the devil with his charges. Don't forget about the lamp-wicks and the towels for the sugar-house, and—oh, yes, tell Stasie to fetch me some ink; it is very strange that the inkstand is never filled unless I see about it myself—and Aurore!"

"Yes, Féfé."

"The key of the medicine chest!"

"Misère! Misère!" She held her hands to her head, trying to sort them out. She made a motion toward the sugar-house, but changed it to the direction of the store-room. She remembered the medicine-chest key, and felt for the key-basket on her arm. It was not there. She wondered where it could be, and started toward her chamber in search of it, when she caught a glimpse of Madame Lareveillère on the gallery. Then the reproach came to her that she had not yet wished her friend good-evening.

"Bon-soir, Eugénie."

"Bon-soir, Aurore."

"Ma chère, I feel like a pagan, leaving you so much alone; but Féfé,—you cannot imagine what he is! What makes men such devils when they are sick? If Féfé would only be sensible and have a physician and get well; but no, he and Stasie think they can cure anything. Physician! he would as soon see a priest, and priests are his bêtes-noires. How can an intelligent man be so prejudiced? But it is the way he was educated; that comes of sending boys to France to be educated; that is the teaching of Messieurs Voltaire and Rousseau. Oh, I compliment them!"

Her irony was mordant. She came out of the doorway and seated herself upon the top step of the staircase that wound its way to the basement underneath. "And Gabi! ah, that is too much! Fancy, Eugénie, after all the trouble I took to explain to him this morning, he brings the mail-bag devoured by hogs,—all the letters a disgusting mass. Only one could I extricate entire for Féfé. I don't speak of your letters—"

"Oh, you know very well I never get letters from any one but Madame Joubert; always the same school news. The swine are welcome."

"I wish Féfé were so reasonable. He will be furious, both about the letters and the mule. And he will say—you know what reason he will give for it all—religion; too much Mass. He will say he expected it before, and I shall never hear the end of it. Now, we,—because Gabi was pious, and really, Eugénie, at times in church I have watched him, he had moments of genuine fervor,—we would say that his religion was a reason why he should bring the mail well and be a good servant; but not Féfé, he is so prejudiced. It prevents everything."

Mademoiselle Aurore sighed and looked down the avenue to the river, her thoughts sadly enumerating the calculations and hopes blighted by Gabi's recalcitrance. Her thin, regular features and sallow complexion showed the exhaustive harassment of the past two days.

She and Madame Lareveillère had been to school together, were amies de cœur and toute dévouées on every class-book, from the abécédaire up to the "Histoire de France," and their confidences had followed the uninterrupted growth of their hearts from dolls to sentiments. There was a period when their hearts had been as bare to each other as their faces; but that was long, long ago. Time, age, or self-consciousness had since draped and obscured them one from the other. The abundant stream of their confessions was being reduced to a clear, cool surface-rill of generalities. One could only guess at the changes that must have taken place in the other, or try to compute them by covert observation, furtive soundings, and silent criticism. Habit now continued the links that bound them, and prolonged the intimacy inaugurated by impulse. They were together this summer after a longer period of separation than usual.

Madame sighed with Mademoiselle Aurore, but her sympathetic look was accompanied with the private reflection: "Heavens! what a difference a man makes in a woman's looks,—that is, of course, a man who is not a brother,—poor Aurore!" At school, Aurore's relations with her sex had been as close as possible; she was la plus femme des femmes. Now, economical Nature seemed stealthily recalling one by one charms which had proved a useless, unprofitable investment; flattening her chest, straightening her curves, prosaicising her eyes, diluting her voice; in short, despoiling the handmaiden of Saint Catherine almost beyond the recognition of her dearest friend. The little heart that once bounded so frankly forward toward orange blossoms was being led by religion now away from mirrors, adornments, fripperies, and follies of the flesh, away from Madame Lareveillère, away from herself, down an austere path rugged with artificial vicissitudes, where a crucifix and Golgotha replaced the rose-winged visions of youth, and hope offered the extinction in place of the gratification of desire.

"Mamzelle, Monsieur Félix asks if you have forgotten the key of the medicine chest?"

"Ah! la, la!" The suspended avalanche of neglected commissions fell upon her.

"Mamzelle, Monsieur Félix asks—"

"I hear, Stasie, I hear."

She put her hand mechanically to her arm for the key-basket. "Ah, yes, my key-basket,—I have left it somewhere; but where can I have left it?"

"It is impossible, Mamzelle, to hear one word you are saying."

"I was only talking to myself, Stasie."

"Plait-il?"

"Nothing, Stasie, nothing."

She screamed this beyond doubt of misunderstanding, and went into the hall audibly wondering as to the whereabouts of her key-basket. It was perhaps from accommodating her voice to Stasie's increasing deafness, and her patience to the increasing obstinacy of this crabbed, peevish heritage, that both had become so attenuated in Mademoiselle Aurore.

The master's house—the big house, as it was metaphorically called—stood aloof in fastidious isolation from, but in watchful proximity withal of, the money-making sugar-house and plebeian quarters. It was not,—to the people on the plantation at least, and few others ever came nearer to it than the road in front,—it was not, nor ever had been, simply a massive brick cottage, with tall round pillars, a tiled basement, a pointed, projecting roof, and deep, shady galleries. It was not this nor any other technically defined edifice, any more than the altar is a carpenter's contrivance to believers, or Louis XIV. was a man of small stature to his courtiers. It was never intended to be an ordinary, common dwelling-place for ordinary, common people, and time had respected the original purpose.

Changes had come into the world, and even crept into the parish of St. Charles; but a rigid quarantine had kept all but the inevitable revolutions of Nature and reform from the house and its inmates, and had preserved in unbroken transmission the atmosphere and spirit of an age which supplied adventurous noblemen with principalities in a new world, and equipped them with a princely largesse of power from an old one. As far as bricks and mortar and hand-sawed cypress boards and hand-made nails could do it, they expressed here caste, wealth, power, pride, government, religion. Whatever the record of other similar houses may be, this one had maintained its responsibilities and sustained its traditions with a spirit that Versailles might not have blushed to own and imitate. The garden, with its carefully planned star and crescent shaped beds, had paths which a century ago connected them into a milky way of loveliness and sweetness,—encouraging and inspiring walks for lovers; but now a riotous growth of roses had tangled them into such a wilderness that the original gardener would have needed divine guidance through his own work, and lovers—had there been any now—would have been restricted to the broad avenue leading from house to river without deviations or obscurities for either feet or hearts. It was hedged all around with wild orange, except in front, where the river was allowed a glance at the gallery. What once had been a grateful shade had increased to a damp gloom. The magnolias and oaks had so abused their privilege of growing, that they leaned their branches against the very roof itself, and veiled with their moss the little Gothic windows and the observatory into complete inutility, frightening away even the vivacious tendencies of October from the front of the somnolent, superannuated homestead. Here it was always seventeenth century and retrospection and regrets; but on the other side of the house, where the trees had been cut and the sun shone, the breeze was welcome to frolic and sing; there it was always nineteenth century with the latest change of date, for there were Monsieur Félix's bedchamber and office.

There was a beautiful vista through the orange-trees to the river, and there were ever-varying heights of rose and gold and lilac overhead,—a mocking-bird sang in the shadows of the neglected garden. Eugénie Lareveillère, balancing herself backward and forward in the rocking-chair by the rosetted tip of her slipper, saw nothing, heard nothing but herself. Her muslin dress rose and fell light as the clouds above her; she held her chin in her hand and pursued the thoughts interrupted by Aurore,—thoughts which, since Monsieur Félix's illness, had been allowed to gain more and more complete possession of her, until it seemed that all Nature had become a cheval-glass to reflect her; and not to reflect merely the dainty piquante outward figure with vexing reminders of the mutations of time and the mutability of woman, but her intérieur also,—the disordered interior of one of the undecided sex in the throes of a decision. It is true she had come to the country for reflection, but she had managed to elude it successfully until within the last two days. In a week she would return to the city,—if the summer could only have been prolonged indefinitely! The old allée at the school came entrancingly before her, where she and Aurore—the pretty, poor little blonde and the pretty, rich little brunette—used to promenade arm in arm in the twilight, interchanging the deep mysteries and experiences of their sixteen-year-old hearts. The confidences ceased as soon as there was really something to confide. Madame longed for just one such twilight moment; but the only allée was the broad one to the river, and—they were not sixteen, and Aurore could think of nothing but her religion, Gabi, and sugar-making.

"If I only had a friend, an adviser; ah! a woman ought never to be without one,—two in fact."

The evening was getting cool; she tied her handkerchief around her throat, and moved her chair closer to the wall.

"If it were only a question of duty; There was nothing a woman could not do for duty, or religion; that made marriage so much more reasonable, so much less ridiculous, enfin; but love!" A rosy reflection from the clouds fell all over her face, and she undid the handkerchief.

She could see her friends smile delicately, and raise their shoulders ever so slightly, and hear the "ho! ho! ho!" of some irrepressible commère.

"Love! what! she believes in it still? Elle en veut, encore! what innocence, hein?"

"But is a woman's heart a thermometer to be regulated according to outside appearances?" she asked herself, indignantly. "Ah! if pauvre maman were here!"

The tears came in her eyes, as they always did at the remembrance of the pale, abraded face and shrinking, poor, genteel figure of her mother. Many an "All Saints" had passed since she had placed her first chrysanthemum bouquet and black bead souvenir before poor maman's tomb in the old St. Louis Cemetery.

"If she were here, she would decide for me!"

Eugénie had not been required to say even a word to her fiancé Lareveillère. He had seen her at the exhibition of her school. She played the harp and wore sleeves to fall back off her arms, and her golden curls were all that hid her neck. She had the dress still; poor maman made it, and trimmed it with the lace from her own wedding dress. Poor maman was only afraid that the fiancé might change his mind; pas de chance!

And he whose companionship had been so thorough an education in men and matrimony,—he had his bouquet and souvenir also on "All Saints," and a Mass besides, just the same as if—

"Whatever marriage is, it is least of all what a school-girl thinks."

There was something else buried in the same tomb, too,—seventeen years old, fresh and innocent, shrouded in a bridal veil. "Ah! if the young only knew more, or the old less." These thoughts always came to her with such peculiar emphasis that the tears which usually rose over "poor maman" fell over herself.

"The first time you go into it blind; the second, ha! with microscopes over the eyes!"

The old deaf Stasie came from under the gallery and walked out in front with her conch shell to blow the summons to supper. She was stiff with rheumatism, and the wavering melancholy notes fell on the air like a Memento mori. With characteristic obstinacy she held to the office intrusted to her when she was elastic and graceful; when her wrinkled skin was bright smooth gold; when her lips were full and red, and her teeth white and firm as the shell they clasped. That was before the trees were allowed to overshadow the garden, and the moss to hang in such mournful folds; when the roses were kept in subjection; when the occupants of the tombs under the clump of cypresses out there, her masters and mistresses, hurried in from fields, levee, and garden at her clear resonant calls,—calls which easily vaulted the broad stream and fell in musical cadence on the opposite bank.

Marie Modeste caught the sound on the levee, and started as if she were still at school and still punishable.

"Aïe, Marcélite! the horn! I shall be late again for supper."

Oh la nature! la belle nature! Marie had written compositions on it, and learned poetry about it; but that was before she and Racine and Corneille had seen it. This was all different,—these sunsets and moon-risings, these clouds and stars and fields, the river, the trees, the flowers, the animals, the poultry, the men and women in the quarters, with their primeval domesticity, the slow movements, the sudden developments, the mysteries, the revelations, the veils withdrawn, one after another, like the mists from the river, until the great stream of life lay bare before her awed gaze. How much of the world lay outside the walls of St. Denis, unmentioned in geography or history! How much of God outside the Catechism! What was a school life of fourteen years in comparison with a plantation life of three months! Her imagination had not prepared her for it; there was no end to thinking about it; every moment a new thought shone out in a blank space like the stars in the sky, and still her mind was not full.

She hurried through the quarters, nodding to the women, speaking to the children, looking for glimpses of the procession from the fields, pursued by the persistent, vivid, recurring feeling of having been there and done it all before,—the feeling which had thrilled her again and again on the plantation, but never at school. From the first day it had been natural for her to talk to the negroes, go into their little cabins, seek and respond to their confidences. They accepted her too, spontaneously, as if she had been their own Mamzelle by fact and title.

Not so with Marcélite. Between her and her people there was no good feeling; instead, the distrust of a class toward a superior member of it, and the disdain of an ascending member toward an inferior class. The men ignored her; the women followed her with resentful eyes, and whetted their tongues when she passed, taking good care that their remarks should fall short of retort, but not of hearing.

The brick-dust on the bare floor crackled under Marie's feet as she hastily entered the dining-room in the basement, almost expecting to hear the customary, "Twenty-five lines by heart, Mademoiselle."

Madame and Mademoiselle Aurore were at the table; Stasie was bringing in the large glasses of cold boiled milk, with the heavy cream wrinkling on top. A candelabra of two candles illuminated the table, while its fellow dispelled the gloom of the tall mantel-piece, and enabled Mademoiselle Aurore's guests and the portrait of her father to see each other dimly. There were very few living operations in the old house that did not go on in the presence of some pictured Angely. They hung in every room against the pale-green walls variegated by damp and mould,—a diminishing line, nourished by constant intermarriage, until Mademoiselle Aurore and Monsieur Félix looked like their first Louisiana progenitors seen through the small end of an opera-glass. Mademoiselle Aurore was talking excitedly. "Ma chère! you will scarcely believe it; I can hardly recover from the surprise myself. Talk of changes; that's a change. Fefé will actually have to send to the city this roulaison for Italians, Italians!"—she pronounced the name with every facial expression of disgust,—"Italians to take off the crops; if poor papa could see that!" She looked with filial reverence at the beardless youth in the gilt frame. Her papa had been painted when at school in France, and died too soon to leave a more parental representation of himself. "But, Stasie, give Mademoiselle Marie some fricassée, fricassée! fricassée! That is what competition does,—negroes running from place to place to get five cents more pay; and it all comes from that old Sîmon and Mr. Smith. What more can you expect? They do not care; they have no sentiment. A plantation is a sugar factory to them, that is all. The idea that such canaille should be allowed to profit by the ruin of our old families, and buy up the finest places in Louisiana! Oh, they can afford to offer more to negroes than others, and force us to hire Italians! Old Sîmon: Stasie can tell you who old Sîmon is; you ought to hear Stasie talk about him. She remembers the day well when he used to go up and down the coast with a pack on his back, crying Rabais, and selling things to the negroes; it is only right that he should pay them well now,—he made them pay enough, vas! and now he owns La Trinité. And Mr. Smith, tiens! Eugénie, you remember Nathalie Cortez at school; you know when she graduated! Well, her daughter has just been married to this Mr. Smith. Don't repeat it as coming from me, you know, but," she lowered her voice, "his father was a negro trader,—a negro trader, my dear! absolutely a man Nathalie would not have permitted to sit at the table with her. Stasie knows; you ask Stasie. That's what poverty does." Her face was red and her eyes gleamed with excitement.

"I cannot hear a word you say, Mamzelle," said Stasie, in despair. "If you would only speak a little more distinctly, instead of getting excited."

"The pain-perdu! pain-perdu!" screamed Mademoiselle Aurore, eagerly profiting by the opportunity. "And Féfé, he exasperates me so! Whatever old Sîmon or Mr. Smith gets, Féfé thinks he must buy too,—vacuum-pans, condensers, steam-trains, bagasse-burners, a perfect 'galimatias' of machinery. As if gentlemen needed all that; and as if they had not been making sugar long enough in Louisiana without it! For my part, I like the old open kettles, and I prefer the sugar, too, though it was not so white,—and Stasie, she prefers it too. In poor papa's time it was all so different; but Félix has his own ideas. He loves everything modern and new; he is all for the practical. The house and garden might just as well be in Texas, for all he cares about them; and then, after all, if old Sîmon or Mr. Smith makes sugar a little whiter than ours, or sells it a little bit higher, oh, then it is Good Friday the rest of the winter! But, 'Mon cher,' I tell him, 'think who they are.'"

"Monsieur Félix asks Mamzelle to come there just one moment," said Edmond, Stasie's brother, putting his head inside the door.

"Oh, I know what it is,—it is that estimate I forgot to copy. Sans excuses, chérie; you see how it is."

Before Monsieur Félix's illness it was very gay after supper, sitting on the gallery watching the shooting-stars above the river, talking about old times avant la guerre, or playing dominos in the hall for bon-bons; but now it was sadness itself. Madame and Marie went up the winding steps to the gallery to await Mademoiselle Aurore and her never-ceasing theme of plantation crises. The moon had risen, and changed the landscape from the showy splendor of sunset to a weird etherealization. The rose-vines, which had crept over from the garden to garland and wreathe the brick pillars, threw fantastic, flitting shadows on the gallery floor, and checkered their faces. The broad path to the river was silver, the tall gate-posts were whitened into marble monuments, the river was a boundless sea of golden ripples. The faint sounds of animated life in the quarters made the loneliness and silence inside the wild-orange hedge more intense. Madame sank in her rocking-chair for another séance with herself:—

"Marie was young, Marie could have ideals, Marie could yet dream in the moonlight, unchidden by life and experience."

She looked at the slight, childish figure, seated on the balustrade, leaning her head far back in her arms, looking up, beyond the moss, the trees, and the clouds, to follow the moon making and unmaking phantasmagorial cities, lakes, and mountains in the world above her,—lost in an ecstasy of self-forgetfulness, drifting away from earth and mortality, soaring higher and higher on the wings of a pure, fresh imagination, until the glorious orb itself is reached, and the silver rays make her one of themselves.

She envied morbidly the pure spirituality which yet enveloped the young girl, her unspotted cleanliness of simplicity, her virgin ignorance of the quantities in the problem of life, her incapacity for calculation. There were surprises yet in store for her, there was still an unknown before her. Whatever misfortune had done to her, could do to her, her seventeen years had been protected and were flawless in their innocence.

"I was once like Marie, and she will one day be like me. Why must women be always looking for the unattainable,—why cannot we be contented? Enfin,—one cannot always be seventeen and wear white dresses; but if it is the will of God, why must we have these feelings, these moments, for example? She will know it all, she will crave to know it, and then, like me, she will crave acquittance of the knowledge and the refreshment of ignorance again. It is always with us women the fight between the heart and the soul. The happy ones are born without the one or the other."

As through the intervening shadows of the trees she could see the dazzling river, so beyond her present doubts and hesitations a transcendental prospect offered itself; but sarcastic society and frigid friends came between to be propitiated by sophistical reasonings and prosaic excuses. Aurore particularly,—if Aurore were only sympathetic as she used to be! But to a woman who scorned one honeymoon, what reasons would justify two?

"I shall not tell her,—that I am determined; she shall not find it out, until—I would rather confide in Marcélite."

The hairdresser, in her silk apron and white kerchief, passed on tiptoe, not to disturb her, holding her stiff calico dress to keep it from rattling; she went to Marie.

"Bébé!" she whispered.

The girl took no notice of her.

"Bébé!"

"Paix, Marcélite, paix." She barely moved her lips; it was so delicate, so exquisite, a breath would destroy it,—her moon-dream.

"You will catch cold."

"Ah, Marcélite!" she said entreatingly, "why could you not have left me one moment more? Now—" She sighed, and turned her eyes upward once again.

Marcélite advanced to the edge of the balustrade and looked up too, to see what attraction the commonplace moon was offering. She knew that when the moon was on the increase it was a good time to cut the ends of the hair, and some persons could read the bon aventure in the moonlight, and the Voudous—she made the sign of the cross whenever she thought of them, although her experience had proved it a very insufficient protection against their charms. She asked herself, eying Marie from under her heavy lids, why her bébé looked so thin and pale. She was smaller and lighter even than when at school; after three months in the country, too! and her eyes with the same hollow black shadows,—why did not those shadows go, now that studying was all done and life was so pleasant? A fierce impatience and rebellion surged in her as usual when confronted by what she could not understand or prevent. Other girls were women in appearance at Marie's age; why did she not shed her childhood also? Why did not her arms round and her shoulders soften? Why could not some of her own exuberant flesh and blood be given to her bébé? She did not want it; she would like to tear it off and fling it away, if her bébé were to be always so chétive, so triste. One sickness—

"Bébé," she whispered, her voice trembling at the thought; "you will catch cold, or fever, the air is so bad at this season."

"There, I hope you are satisfied now!" Marie said irritably, jumping down, and grumbling to herself, "If Marcélite would only let her alone! The moonlight was so beautiful, and at school they never enjoyed the moonlight except in contraband. In a week she would be back at school. Why could not Marcélite let her forget that; it was so seldom she could forget it! Marcélite never thought about it, nor Madame either, but she—" she had rehearsed it so often, the whole scene came before her in a flash.

"Tiens, voilà Marie Modeste, back again at school! mais, chère, is le vieux going to make you stay another year? Quelle injustice!" She would shrug her shoulders, and say in an indifferent way, just as if it were a matter of course, "Ah! you know, it is a romance,—all a romance of Marcélite's. My papa, he was killed during the war, my mamma, she died when I was a baby, and Marcélite—just fancy, chère, that good Marcélite—worked for me night and day, to send me to school; she it was who gave me everything."

She shrugged her shoulders, straightened her head, and her lips moved rapidly, just as if she were at school, only the tightness came right across her chest, always just at this point, and she had to swallow very rapidly to keep the tears from coming to her eyes; for the important thing was not to cry, not to let them suspect. Oh, she had learned at school not to cry; even Madame Joubert, when she used to stand her in the corner with the foolscap on, for making faults in her dictation, could not make her cry when she was a little girl,—and she was a woman now. Did Marcélite think she was afraid of the fever? If it would only come and kill her before next week, it would be better, far better. What had she to—"

"I shall go to bed; come, Marcélite." It was better, anyway, to be in the bed, in the dark, all by herself. She stopped to kiss Madame good-night,—Madame in her pretty toilette, with her rings and laces and ribbons. Ah! God was good to Madame; she did not have such things to think about. "Why, after all, did He select precisely her to orphan, and make her credulous simply to be deceived? Who was to be furthered or bettered by the experiment upon her? Could the same Providence create a Marie Modeste and a Madame Lareveillère?"

"Bonne-nuit, ma mignonne; going to Mass again to-morrow morning?"

For Mademoiselle Aurore had drawn Marie into the active routine of her religious exercises. Masses, confessions, communions, retreats, penances, novenas, fastings; they had discouraged the kindly efforts of Nature in behalf of her physical improvement, but her mind reflected the benefit of the discipline by a satisfactory state of quiescence. There were moments of transcendental serenity accorded to her when suffering appeared the only proper joy, and martyrdom the only proper vocation of women; but after a long walk, or a visit to the quarters, and talking to the women there, or the moonlight, as at present, they vanished,—these moments; and the lives of the saints she yearned to imitate,—her heart rejected them; and their being exposed to the jeering multitude, or thrown to beasts,—what was that to going back to St. Denis? She was at the pitiable age when sensitiveness is a disease, before moral courage has had time to develop. "You are happy, ma fille?" Madame drew the face again to her lips; she loved to hear it confirmed.

"I, Madame? happy!"

"But, of course, Marie is going to Mass with me to-morrow."

Mademoiselle Aurore answered the question she had heard in the hall. The moon poured its effulgence on her pious, enthusiastic face as, an hour afterward, from her seat on the staircase, she was still eloquently extolling to her friend the celestial peace vouchsafed to those women and only to those women, who, renouncing with fortitude the pleasures of sex and youth, forsake the world and consecrate themselves to the perfect vocation of perpetual virginity and prayer, thus preparing their souls for those beatitudes in a future life reserved solely for the pure and undefiled.

"Madame is as bad as Marcélite," thought Marie in her chamber; "but what can they suppose I am thinking of all the time?" She had only monosyllables for the kindly services and inquiries of the nurse.

"Is anything the matter with you, bébé?"

"Nothing, Marcélite."

"You are sure you feel well?"

"Oh yes, I feel well."

"Let me get you a glass of sirup and water."

"No, thank you, Marcélite."

"Did you hear about that little rascal Gabi?"

"Yes."

"Edmond should give him a good whipping; the idea of Mademoiselle Aurore hiding him in her room! She spoils him until he is perfectly good for nothing." But, as usual, it seemed impossible to awake an interest in Marie.

Was it to be always that way? Would she never open her heart to Marcélite? What could she be thinking of all the time,—was it hatred and contempt of her nurse? Then let her say it. Better the loud-mouthed fury and passion of her own people down there in the quarters, than this apathetic white silence. Oh for one moment of equality and confidence!

"You like it here on the plantation, bébé?"

"You think perhaps I prefer boarding-school?"

"Ah, but wait till you see the grinding! That is the grand time of the year on a plantation! Some night, soon, a frost will come; in the gray daylight it will look like flour sprinkled all over the cane; then, when it gets lighter, it looks like silver; when the sun gets on it, it is diamonds, diamonds scattered everywhere. Then you hear the cane-knives, cling! clang! cling! clang! and the cane falling, fron! fron! fron! fron! One cut at the top, one cut at the roots, over it goes! Each hand takes a row; I tell you the women are not behind the men then! I have seen them keep up, step by step, twenty rows at a time! A field soon gets flat and bare at that rate; then the carts coming and going, dumping their loads in the shed, the sugar-mill with all steam up; and the cane-carrier,—you will hear them sing at the cane-carrier! You never heard singing like that, all day, all night."

Did Marie hear or not?

"That will be fine, eh, bébé?"

She only shook her head.

"The river ran in front of the old plantation, just as it does here," Marcélite continued courageously. "And the orange-trees went in long rows to the levee. The flower-garden was here, the fields over there, and the quarters on this side," indicating the localities by gesture. "But it was finer, grander. Ah, the Motte plantation was celebrated, I tell you, all up and down the coast. The quarters were like a street in the city, the sugar-house looked as big as the custom-house. The largest boats on the river would stop at our levee for the sugar and molasses. The dwelling-house was twice the size of this, and the furniture, four, five, ten times handsomer. The armoires were filled with laces and silks and feathers left by the mamans, grandmamans, the aunts and cousins who were dead and gone. There were pictures all over the walls, like here, only Mottes and Viels; and this," pointing to a framed escutcheon, "was on everything,—silver, china, glass—" A thousand daily contacts had revivified what had sunk into indistinctness in her memory. She could have talked all night and not have exhausted her enumeration. "And the books! tiens! There was one book I will never forget; it was full of pictures about—"

"Good-night, ma bonne; I am afraid Madame may need you."

"Bébé, it was your home! Why don't you listen? Why don't you believe me? Do you think I would lie to you about that?" She had not the courage to say the words, though they sprang not only to her mouth but to her eyes; her very hands tried to gesticulate the appeal. No! As if she were a dog, or a lying negro caught stealing, she crept away.

Why should it be different with Madame? She had only been her paid servant, yet she was not ashamed before her, she could talk to her. And why should Madame believe her unquestioningly; yes, and give her confidences too?

"Madame, she will die! It will kill her! I knew it! I knew it that night! It will choke her heart to death. Ah, the Mottes are proud! You never saw people like them! She loves me no more! I see that,—she hates me! She believes not a word I say! My God! My God!"

Never a word of her sacrifices, her generosities, only the remorse of an impotent servant over disgrace and failure in a committed trust.

"She does not eat, she does not sleep, she lies there at night, thinking, thinking, thinking. I know; I sit outside her door and listen to her. She sighs and sometimes she cries; she calls on the Virgin. The Virgin!" with sudden jealousy. "As if the Virgin would do more for her than I! As if the Virgin could love her more,—as if God could love her more than I! She never calls for Marcélite, not once! Not once! It is better for me to kill myself, to throw myself in the river! Going to Mass! going to confession! going to communion! Mademoiselle Aurore will persuade her into a convent, will make a nun of her,—a nun!" her strong physical nature shuddering at the thought of asceticism. "There is to be, then, no future, no home, no husband, no children for her,—no pleasure?"

And so it was Marie Modeste, not Eugénie Lareveillère, who occupied Madame's mind the rest of the night.

"And I promised to be a mother to her!" She would not have been a woman if self-accusation had not come to salt the wounds caused by the sufferings of others.

The slight excitement of breakfast had worn away, the next day, which so far was bringing forth ameliorating modifications of the conditions of its predecessor. Monsieur Félix's sciatica was on the wane,—both his confidence in himself and Mademoiselle Aurore's trust in the saints being justified. A slight frost in the morning, the first of the season, encouraged her and cheered her brother; it sweetened the cane and acknowledged her prayers. Slight frosts now on the magnificent stand in the field, and Bel Angely would surpass any former record. The normal, monotonous uniformity was settling over the house, hiding the traces of the late disruption of its harmony. There was still the sound of footfalls passing up and down the back steps to and from Monsieur Félix's room; but if the door chanced to be left open now, only the calmest voice in the most business-like tones could be distinguished, giving needful commands and directions. Mademoiselle Aurore's time was no longer fractured by importunate calls.

The friends sat in their rocking-chairs in the broad hall, dimmed to a comfortable compromise between the contesting claims of their eyes and complexions. A round mosaic table, with brass claw feet, held their work-baskets. Mademoiselle Aurore was adding highly ornamental golden leaves to red paper roses, to be twisted, according to ecclesiastical convention, into flat pyramidal displays for the parish church,—a commencement in the liquidation of her indebtedness. Notwithstanding her confidence in her own rectitude of purpose, and her intimate negotiations with the Church, she would have felt more serenity this morning had she not sent Gabi for the mail yesterday, or had she frankly told Monsieur Félix all about it. He was improving so fast, she would have to tell him to-day; by to-morrow he would find it all out by himself. Thank Heaven! the mule at least had come home during the night.

"Oh, chère amie!" she was saying, "I get very much discouraged with life, I assure you; it takes a great deal of religion to enable us women to support it. It is so full of contradictions,—useless contradictions. I sometimes wish that there were no more hopes given us. They are no better than toy balloons; they dance before us very beautifully for a time, then crac! they burst, and we are left plantées there until we get another one. I do not complain, it is against my religion; but if you knew how many hopes I have seen go to pieces that way! Mon Dieu! I am tired of getting new ones. Ah, you are fortunate, your life is so simple, so clear, so smooth. Now, there's Gabi, I should not have sent him; ah! I see that clearly this morning. But I have raised that child ever since he was a baby. He was picked up in the sugar-house and brought to me. I have no idea even who his mother is. Well, I thought I would take him and make a reasonable human being of him. Féfé and Stasie were against it, of course; they have never liked him. I wanted to push him; I thought I would give him the opportunity. Well, perhaps Féfé is right, after all. And he learned his Catechism so well, and made such a good first communion! Last spring, you know what I did? I got all the children of the proper age in the quarters, I taught them the Catechism myself, and I made them all make their first communion; there was a cane-cart full. Féfé and Stasie were against that too, but I was firm. Ah, it is so elevating to work like that! Féfé, he said they were rascals already, and that I would only make hypocrites of them. Hypocrites! I ask you, Eugénie, if religion makes hypocrites? But that is Monsieur Voltaire again. I will never hear the last of this from Stasie, and next spring Féfé will only be more determined; I know Féfé."

Madame shook her head responsively. Marie's surprised, pained interrogation, Mademoiselle Aurore's discourse, Marcélite's voluble despair, had procured for her a sleepless, penitential night. She was disposed this morning for any pessimistic generalities on women, but answered not so much Mademoiselle Aurore as her own self:—

"Yes, our lives are surprise-boxes to us women; we never know what is going to come out of them: our own plans, our own ideas count for nothing. Look at our schoolmates: not one turned out as she expected. Those who had a vocation to religious lives, who would be nothing but nuns, they were the first ones married and having children christened. Those who were ready to fall in love with every new tenor at the opera, they became dévotes. Those who cared only for money fell in love with poor men; and those who made their lives a poem, with love for the hero, they,—they married for money. When we are old and passées, we get what would have made our youth divine. Men are the serious occupation, women are the playthings, of fate."

"Ah, yes, men are more fortunate." Mademoiselle Aurore eagerly availed herself of the fissure in which to insert her peculiar complaint. "There is something sure, something stable in a man's life. Look at Féfé. I do not say he has not had griefs, disappointments, misfortunes even, in his life, but they did not change it, only interrupted it a minute; with me, those things take away my life itself." Her voice quivered, and the emotion in her face made her look something as she did at sixteen. She took a long breath and resumed: "It is like this: either Féfé would not have sent Gabi for the mail, or Gabi would have brought it properly, or he would have informed the whole world about it, me first of all, coûte que coûte. He would not have managed the truth on account of my prejudices, he would have had no hopes attached to it; now with me—" She was going to open her heart a little lower down to Madame, and reveal those hopes so paltry as to be involved in Gabi's good conduct, so grand as to influence a terrestrial and celestial future. Mondaine as, to her disappointment, she had found Eugénie to be, she could well remember the angelic devotion of the little wife to that old roué Lareveillère. How patiently she had labored with him after the stroke of paralysis confined him night and day to his house; teaching him the graces of repentance, leading him to the altar he had deserted, persuading him to the sacraments he had mocked, forcing him—actually forcing him—to give to charity a goodly portion of that inheritance she had so hardly earned. Whatever small prospect of heaven the old French merchant now enjoyed, he owed it to Eugénie, and no one else. Aurore was determined to drive Messieurs Voltaire and Rousseau from the heart of Monsieur Félix. Eugénie could not but sympathize and encourage her.

And Madame,—at the quiver of her friend's voice, the softening of her face, the old allée and the twilight came before her, and she felt that she might perhaps venture—

"Ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta!" A tiny staccato rap, light as the pecking of a bird. The ladies raised their heads simultaneously with a nervous start. It had a preternatural sound, so sudden, just at that moment. There it was again!

"But, Eugénie, what can that be?" Aurore looked accusingly at the row of kinsmen and kinswomen gleaming on the wall in their heavy gilt frames.

Eugénie held her hand against her heart. "How it frightened me! It must be some one knocking."

"Some one knocking at the front door? Impossible!"

"Some one, perhaps, to see Monsieur Félix."

"Félix? But his visitors all know they have to go around to the other gallery. There it is again!"

"Maybe it is some one who does not know."

"I will call Stasie."

"But let us see who it is."

"Not for the world! It might be something horrible out there."

She dropped her flowers and commenced a shrill, "Stasie! Stasie!" from the very table, continuing it to the back gallery and out into the yard to some inaudible distance. Madame had disappeared when they returned together.

"Go, ma bonne Stasie. It must be some one to see Monsieur Félix; conduct him around to the other side of the house."

The door was carefully unbolted, and Stasie, with all imaginable precautions against sudden assault, put her head out.

"But what are you doing, Stasie?" screamed Mademoiselle Aurore, as she saw the door steadily open. She had not time for the accustomed iteration, but was forced to escape unceremoniously into Madame Lareveillère's room to escape the view of the intruder. Madame was unbuttoning her peignoir.

"What do you think?" Aurore was excited, or she would not have been guilty of the filial impiety. "That sotte Stasie has actually opened the front door, and there is a stranger, at this moment, in the hall. But no; impossible!"—as she heard a stiff door being pushed open—"in the parlor! She has invited him into the parlor!"

"Mamzelle," said Stasie, coming into the room.

"Well, Stasie, I compliment you! Letting a stranger into the house this way!" Mademoiselle Aurore's voice was strident; the tone rather than the words penetrated to the ears so tightly bandaged by the faded bandanna.

"What do you mean by opening the house this way? Are you crazy?"

"He is a gentleman—a visitor." Then, as the full meaning of Mademoiselle Aurore's attack came to her, she raised her voice, querulously: "Comment donc? Would you have me shut the door in his face? Would you have me drive him away—a gentleman—when he comes on a visit?"

"What nonsense! A visitor!" She turned to her friend for a dispassionate opinion.

"What! You are undressing, Eugénie?"

"Only changing my peignoir, Aurore. The air seems a little cool to me."

"You must understand, Stasie, there is some mistake. If he does not come to see Monsieur Félix on business, he must be going to old Sïmon's or Mr. Smith's. Go and explain to him—although you should have told him on the gallery, not brought him into the house." She uttered the words emphatically, close to Stasie's ear, and pushed her gently out of the door. "If Stasie would only allow me to get a younger servant!" she exclaimed, when the door closed.

"There, Mamzelle, there; see for yourself!" the old woman returned, thrusting a visiting-card before her mistress's eyes as if she were as blind as she, Stasie, was deaf. "Ah, I told you so! Shut the door in his face! Put him out by the shoulders! Ah, that was not the etiquette of your grandmother, par exemple!"

Marcélite had come in by another door. She slipped behind Madame and whispered something in her ear.

"Mais qu'est-ce que c'est que çà?" Mademoiselle Aurore looked perfectly nonplussed. "I cannot understand it. Monsieur—"

"My négligé from Paris," whispered Madame to Marcélite, so that Mademoiselle Aurore could not notice it.

"Monsieur Armand Goupilleau. Goupilleau? Goupilleau? But I never heard of a Goupilleau. And you, Eugénie?"

"Monsieur Armand Goupilleau? Surely I know Monsieur Armand Goupilleau. He is a notary public in New Orleans—oh, but one of the most celebrated notaries there! He is a good, good friend of mine, an old friend. He advises me about all my affairs; and an institute like the St. Denis requires a great deal of advice, I can tell you. Do I know him? I should think so. He is like a father to me, in fact."

Marcélite dropped the négligé over her head. "Just tie this ribbon for me, ma bonne." Her thin, white fingers, with the long, pointed nails, could only wander aimlessly amid the bows and laces. But the hairdresser needed neither directions nor explanations. Her dark face glowed with intelligence; she seemed transformed by a sudden illumination; her deft, light fingers never worked so felicitously, pulling out lace, tying ribbon, putting in ear-rings, lifting up a puff here and pinning a curl there until the whole expression of the coiffure was reanimated, passing a powder-puff over the pale face, brushing out the eyebrows, rummaging through a sachet for the appropriate handkerchief.

"Is he married, Eugénie?"

"But no, Aurore.—What brutality!" she thought.

"Ah!" Aurore opened the door for them to go out.

"One moment, Madame," whispered Marcélite. She was kneeling on the floor with a pair of high-heeled bronze slippers in her hand.

"Ah, I knew it! Marcélite is more of a woman than Aurore."

The négligé hung in long, beautiful, diaphanous folds, and exhaled a delicate fragrance of vétyver, as Marcélite shut the door on both ladies.

Madame took the initiative, with effusion.

"Ah, mon ami! what a delightful surprise! Never could you come at a better time." She held both hands to him. "Let me present you to my friend, my best friend, my old schoolmate, my sister in fact, Mademoiselle Angely. Chère Aurore, this is my good friend Monsieur Goupilleau, of whom you have heard me speak so often. Now you will tell us what good fairy sent you to the parish of St. Charles."

"As I said in the note which yesterday Monsieur your brother received—" began the notary in courteous explanation.

"Ah, mon Dieu! That is the beginning—" exclaimed Mademoiselle Aurore. "Gabi! I must tell Félix immediately." She abruptly left the room, Monsieur Goupilleau bowing before her. Madame's vivacity fled with her; the social graces, which hung like a silken domino around her, seemed to vanish, leaving her as undisguised and embarrassed in her natural emotion as a peasant before the questioning, expectant eyes of the notary.

"And you also did not receive my letter yesterday?"

"No; as you hear, an accident—"

He took her indiscreet hand and guided her through the twilight of the large parlors to a sofa. It was a letter that had cost him an effort to write,—the wording of inexhaustible sentiment. He could never speak what he had transcribed alone in his quiet office, her image before him, musty official records around him, and a companionless life behind him. His heart, his eager, long-suppressed heart, drove the clean, sharp, steel notarial pen, and what had it not said? So, it was all lost by an accident! but it had contained one affair of business.

"Madame Joubert has made a proposition to purchase your interest in the St. Denis."

"Madame Joubert!" Madame Lareveillère repeated in supreme astonishment. Madame Joubert at the head of her brilliant aristocratic pension! Why, she had not a single qualification, nothing, except an education. The item of business brought reprieve, but also disappointment. Had she, then, been wrong in her intuitions, premature in her expectations?

"And Mademoiselle Motte?"

"Ah, Marie Modeste!" The sweet, novel, motherly look came into her eyes,—the one beautiful expression of which life had hitherto deprived them.

"Mon ami, how can I tell you! When I think of Marcélite I am ashamed of myself,—I who am white and have an education. Ah, I detest myself; but you see I was thinking so much of my own affairs."

A blush that must have been caused by her thoughts sprang from her heart and spread up to her face, and warmed even the tips of her chilled fingers.

"Aurore knew it, Aurore felt it to be a truth. And I promised to be a mother to her—"

"And I," said the notary, "a father."

"Would a mother forget her child, a young girl, for her own affairs?" It was a chaplet of self-reproach, the penitential accumulation of a wakeful, feverish night, exaggerated, incoherent. "But I thought she was happy; she is so young, you know."

She raised her eyes to his. The swine, not she, had received his letter, but his eyes contained it all, and were repeating it over and over again to the hair, the head, the face, the figure beside him,—those wonderful, eloquent eyes of a recluse poet; and she read it all, and could not feign misunderstanding. His timid, hesitating words were entirely superfluous so long as she looked at him; but her own eyes—it was safer to turn them on the piano. The diamonds gleamed on her excited fingers. Last night, when she could not sleep, she had composed it all—she always prepared her pretty speeches and notes beforehand for possible emergencies. It was to be a consent,—oh, yes, there had never been any doubt about that,—but a consent based on the exalted motives of duty and self-sacrifice, and a common obligation toward Marie Modeste; a consent expressive of all that she did not feel; one worthy of Mademoiselle Aurore, and unobjectionable to the most fastidious wit of a sarcastic society. Her fluent tongue recited the chef-d'œuvre as if her friends had all been there to listen, were stationed behind the heavy curtains to hear. Only the notary himself had been forgotten; he alone should not have been present. The light died away from his face, and a grave misapprehension clouded his eyes.

"I shall go now and announce it to Aurore myself, and Monsieur Félix. Oh, yes, there is no need to conceal it a moment from the world; and you can explain it to Marie Modeste. I shall send her to you immediately."

It was as if she were speaking to her professor of mathematics. His letter might have made it all different! He had offered the love of his lifetime, he had asked for love. Was she to give him duty, self-sacrifice?—And the tête-à-tête was coming to an end!

She stood a moment to steady herself on her high heels; the room was as private as a grave, as secret as her own heart at midnight; it was mysterious and still. She looked all around at the portraits on the wall,—portraits, not mirrors,—and, as it were a dream, she forgot all that she had been remembering for three months; forgot it all completely, deliciously. She turned to the sofa, but the notary had risen too; he had been standing at her side pleading, reproachful.

"Mon ami." The lace sleeves fell back from the arms she held to him, all her heart trembled in her voice and looked through the tears in her eyes. "Mon ami, it is not so; do not believe it: it is not duty, Armand."

There was no one to see them or hear them. The birds outside were singing and the sun shinning, the fresh new breezes rustling the trees, the cane sweetening, the roses resting in the shade; the negroes were working in the field, the women nursing and tending in the quarters; Marie Modeste was listening to curious prophecies from Marcélite; Mademoiselle Aurore was explaining to Monsieur Félir; Stasie was grumbling; Gabi was submitting to his delayed punishment from Edmond. The world had forgotten them; it was rolling on without them, or rather it had rolled back for them. She was seventeen, dreaming in the allée, under the oleanders, of love and a first lover. He was twenty-five, rhyming sonnets in the moonlight, à l'inconnue. And the rapture that came to them then in a vision enfolded them now as they exchanged their first embrace.

"Of course, Eugénie, you know your own affairs best," said Mademoiselle Aurore. They were again on the gallery, the sunset again on the river. "As for me—" she shrugged her shoulders, leaving the rest of the sentence (in truth abortive in her own mind) to the imagination of Madame Lareveillère. A prolonged pause threatened the extinction of the subject of conversation. Mademoiselle Aurore resumed in a cool tone of voice and polite reserve of manner better calculated to extract embarrassing answers than information from the friend who sat helpless at her mercy. The tone and manner were a personal accomplishment, apparently not incompatible with her advanced degree of religiosity.

"Has he money,—your Monsieur, your fiancé?"

One never gets past blushing, it seems, at such terms, however perfectly the tongue can simulate coldness.

"He is not a beggar, nor a millionaire: he has a certain income from his profession."

"And you are independent, Lareveillère left you so well provided for! He is a notary public, you said?"

"Yes, a notary public."

Their rocking-chairs rocked farther and farther apart, making intercommunication an effort. But there was no one on the gallery or about, and at a certain age mystery is presumed absurd, at least by Mademoiselle Aurore, as Madame Lareveillère acutely felt.

"And he lives on Royal Street?"

"Near St. Louis."

"Will you go there when—after the ceremony?"

"Yes, we will live in Royal Street."

"I beg your pardon! I am indiscreet."

"Not at all; it is no secret."

"I suppose your arrangements have been made some time."

"I assure you only since to-day."

"And when—the wedding? I implore you, do not answer unless you wish!"

"In November."

"November! So soon! But that is true, why waste time?"

"We only thought of that poor child Marie Modeste. You see, her home will be with us, naturally. There is so much to do, so many affairs to regulate, Madame Joubert taking the Institute—" Madame strove to make it ordinary, commonplace, quite a business arrangement; but whatever she said sounded apologetic to humiliation, and her eyes felt the obscurity of tears when they saw a thin smile on Mademoiselle Aurore's lips.

"It is hard for me to understand,—one like me, who never has been married at all; "the maiden lady raised her hands, the fingers extended as if from the touch of something unpleasant. "But I should think the presence of a young girl, enfin!—But you are never embarrassed, you! Only during the first few days of the—what is called (there is no other name for it, it is so ridiculous!) the honeymoon, she might be a little surprised, shocked even, not having seen anything of the conjugal state. I must confess for myself, there is a crudity—"

"No wonder,—no wonder," thought Madame, "she never got married." In truth, her thoughts were very busy about her friend all the time, and may be credited with a gallant assault against an attachment which had so far proved impregnable to time.

"It is not that, Aurore, but," forcing herself resolutely to speak, "if you would let me leave her with you for a few days. If you would take care of her until we are arranged in the city. Monsieur Goupilleau advises it, and I—I know nothing better to propose. It is a favor I ask for her, for myself. I shall never forget it; indeed, it will lay me under the greatest obligations. Poor young girl! You understand it will be painful for her to go back to the school again."

"Eugénie! How can you doubt it? How can you ask?" When it came to a question of hospitality or friendship, Mademoiselle Aurore yielded to no one. "I was going to propose it myself! Did you think I would ever allow, ever consent to any other arrangement? The idea! It is the only thing natural, the only thing proper! I shall keep her here, and take her myself to the city when you are ready for her. As if I could not love a young girl as well as you or Marcélite! Poor child, that is one of our war-claims! As for Marcélite, I can't tell you what I think of her conduct. It is heroic; it is sublime! Oh, she will never want a friend as long as I live, or Félix either! And Ninie," calling her by her old, school, pet name, abruptly changing the subject, leaving her chair, too, to get nearer her friend, "there is something you must not deny me,—indeed I have a right to insist upon it; I am sure you will not wound me by a refusal. I thought of it instantly; I have planned it all out; I have even announced it to Félix and Stasie." The thin little woman had gone back, back, in her life, far away from the present; where was she going to stop, in the sweet loveliness of her caressing manner and words? She was so delicate, so genuine!

"Chérie, you must remain here too, you must be married from Bel Angely,—from the home of your oldest, best friends, with your old sister Aurore to wait on you, to love you to the last—"

"Aurore! my angel! my treasure! Titite,"—that was her little name. "It was my secret wish, my supreme desire! Ah, what a heart! What a friend!"

It was worth so much difference, so many differences,—the reconciliation; the crossing over from such a separation in their natures to meet again as they had started in life, heart open to heart, tongue garrulous to tongue, all revealed, understood, nothing concealed,—absolutely nothing. For there was a generous rivalry in loyal self-surrender and confession until Stasie again blew the horn for supper; and the feeble echoes returning quickly to the gallery, like aged birds after a short flight, put an end to the interview.