The Strollers Part 49

"After he met Miss Carew."

"Met me!" exclaimed Constance, aroused from a maze of reflection.

"Near the cathedral! He walked and talked with you."

"That poor old man--"

"And then came here, acknowledged you as his daughter, and drew up the final doc.u.ment."

"That accounts for a call I had from him!" cried Barnes, telling the story of the marquis' visit. "Strange, I did not suspect something of the truth at the time," he concluded, "for his manner was certainly unusual."

A perplexed light shone in the girl's eyes; she clasped and unclasped her hands quickly, turning to the lawyer.

"Their quarrel was only a political difference?" she asked at length.

"Yes," said the other, slowly. "Saint-Prosper refused to support the fugitive king. Throughout the parliamentary government, the restoration under Louis XVIII, and the reign of King Charles X, the marquis had ever a devout faith in the divine right of monarchs. He annulled his marriage in England with your mother to marry the d.u.c.h.esse D'Argens, a relative of the royal princess. But Charles abdicated and the d.u.c.h.esse died. All this, however, is painful to you, Miss Carew?"

"Only such as relates to my mother," she replied in a clear tone. "I suppose I should feel grateful for this fortune, but I am afraid I do not. Please go on."

Culver leaned back in his chair, his glance bent upon a discolored statue of Psyche in the court-yard. "Had the marquis attended to his garden, like Candide, or your humble servant, and eschewed the company of kings he might have been as care-free as he was wretched.

His monarchs were knocked down like nine-pins. Louis XVIII was a man of straw; Charles X, a feather-top, and Louis Philippe, a toy ruler.

The marquis' domestic life was as unblest as his political career. The frail d.u.c.h.esse left him a progeny of scandals. These, the only offspring of the iniquitous dame, were piquantly dressed in the journals for public parade. Fancy, then, his delight in disinheriting his wife's relatives, and leaving you, his daughter, his fortune and his name!"

"His name?" she repeated, sadly. With averted face she watched the fountain in the garden. "If he had given it to my mother," she continued, "but now--I do not care for it. Her name is all I want."

Her voice trembled and she exclaimed pa.s.sionately: "I should rather Mr. Saint-Prosper would keep the property and I--my work! After denying my mother and deserting her, how can I accept anything from him?"

"Under the new will," said Culver, "the estate does not revert to Mr.

Saint-Prosper in any event. But you might divide it with him?" he added, suddenly.

"How could I do that?" she asked, without looking up.

"Marry him!" laughed the attorney.

But the jest met with scant response, his fair client remaining motionless as a statue, while Barnes gazed at her furtively. Culver's smile gradually faded; uncertain how to proceed, realizing his humor had somehow miscarried, he was not sorry when the manager arose, saying:

"Well, my dear, it is time we were at the theater."

"Won't you accept this nosegay from my garden, Miss Carew?" urged the lawyer in a propitiatory tone as they were leaving.

And the attorney not only accompanied them to the door, but down-stairs to the street, where he stood for a moment watching them drive down the thoroughfare. Then he slowly returned, breathing heavily--invidious contradiction of his youthful a.s.sumption!--and shaking his head, as he mounted to his room.

"Culver, you certainly put your foot in it that time!" he muttered.

"How she froze at my suggestion! Has there been some pa.s.sage of arms between them? Apparently! But here am I, pondering over romances with all this legal business staring me in the face!" His glance swept a chaos of declarations, bills, affidavits and claims. "Confound the musty old courthouse and the bustling Yankee lawyers who set such a disturbing pace! There is no longer gentlemanly leisure in New Orleans."

He seated himself with a sigh before a neglected brief. In the distance the towers of the cathedral could be seen, reminding the attorney of the adjacent halls of justice in the scraggy-looking square, with its turmoil, its beggars, and apple women in the lobbies; its ancient, offensive smell, its rickety stairs, its labyrinth of pa.s.sages and its Babel of tongues. Above him, however, the plaster bust of Justinian, out of those blank, sightless eyes, continued the contemplation of the garden as though turning from the complex jurisprudence of the ancients and moderns to the simple existence of b.u.t.terflies and flowers.

CHAPTER II

ONLY A SHADOW

There is an aphorism to the effect that one can not spend and have; also, a saying about the whirlwind, both of which in time came home to the land baron. For several generations the Mauville family, bearing one of the proudest names in Louisiana, had held marked prestige under Spanish and French rule, while extensive plantations indicated the commercial ascendency of the patroon's ancestors. The thrift of his forefathers, however, pa.s.sed lightly over Edward Mauville. Sent to Paris by his mother, a widow, who could deny him nothing, in the course of a few years he had squandered two plantations and several hundred negroes. Her death placed him in undisputed possession of the residue of the estate, when finding the exacting details of commerce irksome, in a moment of weakness, he was induced to dispose of some of his possessions to Yankee speculators who had come in with the flood of northern energy. Most of the money thus realized he placed in loose investments, while the remainder gradually disappeared in indulging his pleasures.

At this critical stage in his fortunes--or misfortunes--the patroon's legacy had seemed timely, and his trip to the North followed. But from a swarm of creditors, to a nest of anti-renters, was out of the frying-pan into the fire, hastening his return to the Crescent City, where he was soon forced to make an a.s.signment of the remaining property. A score of hungry lawyers hovered around the sinking estate, greedily jealous lest some one of their number should batten too gluttonously at this general collation. It was the one topic of interest in the musty, dusty courthouse until the end appeared with the following announcement in the local papers:

"_Annonce! Vente importante de Negres!_ Mauville estate in bankruptcy!"

And thereafter were specified the different lots of negroes to be sold.

Coincident with these disasters came news from the North regarding his supposedly immense interests in New York State. A const.i.tutional convention had abolished all feudal tenures and freed the fields from baronial burdens. At a breath--like a house of cards--the northern heritage was swept away and about all that remained of the princ.i.p.ality was the worthless ancient deed itself, representing one of the largest colonial grants.

But even the sale of the negroes and his other merchandise and property failed to satisfy his clamorous creditors or to pay his gambling debts. Those obligations at cards it was necessary to meet, so he moved out of his bachelor apartments, turned over his expensive furnishings and bric-a-brac to the gamblers and snapped his fingers at the over-anxious constables and lawyers.

As time went by evidence of his reverses insidiously crept into his personal appearance. He who had been the leader now clung to the tail-ends of style, and it was a novel sensation when one day he noticed a friend scrutinizing his garments much in the same critical manner that he had himself erstwhile affected. This glance rested casually on the hat; strayed carelessly to the waistcoat; wandered absently to the trousers, down one leg and up the other; superciliously jumped over the waistcoat and paused the infinitesimal part of a second on the necktie. Mauville learned in that moment how the eye may wither and humble, without giving any ostensible reason for offense. The att.i.tude of this mincing fribble, as he danced twittingly away, was the first intimation Mauville had received that he would soon be relegated to the ranks of gay adventurers thronging the city. He who had watched his estates vanish with an unruffled countenance now became disconcerted over the width of his trousers and the shape of his hat.

His new home was in the house of an aged quadroon who had been a servant in his family many years ago--how long no one seemed to remember!--and who had been his nurse before she had received her freedom. She enjoyed the distinction of being feared in the neighborhood; her fetishes had a power no other witch's possessed, and many of the negroes would have done anything to have possessed these infallible charms, save crossing her threshold to get them. Mauville, when he found fortune slipping away from him and ruin staring him in the face, had been glad to transfer his abode to this unhallowed place; going into hiding, as it were, until the storm should blow by, when he expected to emerge, confident as ever.

But inaction soon chafed his restless nature, and drove him forth in spite of himself from the streets in that quarter of the town where the roofs of various-colored houses formed strange geometrical figures and the windows were bright with flaring head-dresses, beneath which looked out curious visages of ebony. Returning one day from such a peregrination, he determined to end a routine of existence so humiliating to his pride.

Pausing before a doorway, the land baron looked this way and that, and seeing only the rotating eyes of a pickaninny fastened upon him, hurried through the entrance. Hanging upon the walls were red and green pods and bunches of dried herbs of unquestionable virtue belonging to the old crone's pharmacopoeia. Mauville slowly ascended the dark stairs and reached his retreat, a small apartment, with furniture of cane-work and floor covered with sea-gra.s.s; the ceiling low and the windows narrow, opening upon a miniature balcony that offered s.p.a.ce for one and no more.

"Is dat yo', honey?" said an adoring voice on the landing.

"Yes, auntie," replied the land baron, as an old crone emerged from an ill-lighted recess and stood before him.

Now the light from the doorway fell upon her, and surely five score years were written on her curiously wrinkled face--five score, or more, for even the negroes did not profess to know how old she was.

Her bent figure, watery eyes and high shrill voice bore additional testimony to her age.

"Yo's home earlier dan usual, dearie?" she resumed. "But yo' supper's all ready. Sit down here."

"I'm not hungry, auntie," he returned.

"Not hungry, honey?" she cried, laughing shrilly. "Yo' wait!" And she disappeared into an adjoining room, soon to emerge with a steaming platter, which she set on the snow-white cover of the little table.

Removing the lid from the dish, she hobbled back a few steps to regard her guest with triumphant expectation. "Dat make yo' eat."

"What a cook you are, mammy!" he said, lightly. "You would give a longing tooth to satiety."

"De debil blow de fire," she answered, chuckling.

"Then the devil is a _chef de cuisine_. This sauce is bewitching."

"Yo' like it?" Delighted.

"Tis a spell in itself. Confess, mammy, Old Nick mixed it?"

"No, he only blow de fire," she reiterated, with a grin.