Had its shelves borne law-books, or had he not needed for law-books all he dared spend, he might have known the surprisingly informed and refined shopman better. Ovide had long been a celebrity1. Lately a brief summary of his career had appeared incidentally in a book, a book chiefly about others, white people. "You can't write a Southern book and keep us out," Ovide himself explained.
Even as it was, Chester had allowed himself that odd freedom with Landry which Southerners feel safe in under the plate armor of their race distinctions. Receiving his map he asked, as he looked along a shelf or two: "Have you that book that tells of you--as a slave? your master letting you educate yourself; your once refusing your freedom, and your being private secretary to two or three black lieutenant-governors?"
"I had a copy," Landry said, "but I've sold it. Where did you hear of it? From Réné Ducatel, in his antique-shop, whose folks 'tis mostly about?"
"Yes. An antique himself, in spirit, eh? Yet modern enough to praise you highly."
"H'mm! but only for the virtues2 of a slave."
Chester smiled round from the shelves: "I noticed that! I'm afraid we white folks, the world over, are prone3 to do that--with you-all."
"Yes, when you speak of us at all."
"Ducatel's opposite neighbor," Chester remarked, "is an antique even more interesting."
"Ah, yes! Castanado is antique only in that art spirit which the tourist trade is every day killing4 even in Royal Street."
"That's the worst decay in this whole decaying quarter," the young man said.
"And in all this deluge5 of trade spirit," Ovide continued, "the best dry land left of it--of that spirit of art--is----"
"Castanado's shop, I dare say."
"Castanado's and three others in that one square you pass every day without discovering the fact. But that's natural; you are a busy lawyer."
"Not so very. What are the other three?"
"First, the shop of Seraphine Alexandre, embroideries7; then of Scipion Beloiseau, ornamental8 ironwork, opposite Mme. Seraphine and next below Ducatel--Ducatel, alas9, he don't count; and third, of Placide La Porte, perfumeries, next to Beloiseau. That's all."
"Not the watchmaker on the square above?"
"Ah! distantly he's of them: and there was old Manouvrier, taxidermist; but he's gone--where the spirits of art and of worship are twin." Chester turned sharply again to the shelves and stood rigid10. From an inner room, its glass door opened by Ovide's silver-spectacled wife, came the little black cupid and his charge. Ah, once more what perfection in how many points! As she returned to Ovide an old magazine, at last he heard her voice--singularly deep and serene11. She thanked the bookman for his loan and, with the child, went out.
It disturbed the Southern youth to unbosom himself to a black man, but he saw no decent alternative: "Landry, I had not the faintest idea that that young lady was nearer than Castanado's shop!"
Ovide shook his head: "You seem yourself to forget that you are here by business appointment. And what of it if you have seen her, or she seen you, here--or anywhere?"
"Only this: that I've met her so often by pure--by chance, on that square you speak of, I bound for the court-house, she for I can't divine where--for I've never looked behind me!--that I've had to take another street to show I'm a gentleman. This very morn'--oh!--and now! here! How can I explain--or go unexplained?"
Ovide lifted a hand: "Will you leave that to my wife, so unlearned yet so wise and good? For the young lady's own sake my wife, without explaining, will see that you are not misjudged."
"Good! Right! Any explanation would simply belie12 itself. Yes, let her do it! But, Landry----"
"Yes?"
"For heaven's sake don't let her make me out a goody-goody. I haven't got this far into life without making moral mistakes, some of them huge. But in this thing--I say it only to you--I'm making none. I'm neither a marrying man, a villain13, nor an ass6."
Ovide smiled: "My wife can manage that. Maybe it's good you came here. It may well be that the young lady herself would be glad if some one explained her to you."
"Hoh! does an angel need an explanation?"
"I should say, in Royal Street, yes."
"Then for mercy's sake give it! right here! you! come!" The youth laughed. "Mercy to me, I mean. But--wait! Tell me; couldn't Castanado have given it, as easily as you?"
"You never gave Castanado this chance."
"How do you know that? Oh, never mind, go ahead--full speed."
"Well, she's an orphan14, of a fine old family----"
"Obviously! Creole, of course, the family?"
"Yes, though always small in Louisiana. Creole except one New England grandmother. But for that one she would not have been here just now."
"Humph! that's rather obscure but--go on."
"Her parents left her without a sou or a relation except two maiden15 aunts as poor as she."
"Antiques?"
"Yes. She earns their living and her own."
"You don't care to say how?"
"She wouldn't like it. 'Twould be to say where."
"She seems able to dress exquisitely16."
"Mr. Chester, a woman would see with what a small outlay17 that is done. She has that gift for the needle which a poet has for the pen."
"Ho! that's charmingly antique. But now tell me how having a Yankee grandmother caused her to drop in here just now. Your logic18's dim."
"You are soon to go to Castanado's to see that manuscript story, are you not?"
"Oh, is it a story? Have you read it?"
"Yes, I've read it, 'tis short. They wanted my opinion. And 'tis a story, though true."
"A story! Love story? very absorbing?"
"No, it is not of love--except love of liberty. Whether 'twill absorb you or no I cannot say. Me it absorbed because it is the story of some of my race, far from here and in the old days, trying, in the old vain way, to gain their freedom."
"Has--has mademoiselle read it?"
"Certainly. It is her property; hers and her two aunts'. Those two, they bought it lately, of a poor devil--drinking man--for a dollar. They had once known his mother, from the West Indies."
"He wrote it, or his mother?"
"The mother, long ago. 'Tis not too well done. It absorbs mademoiselle also, but that is because 'tis true. When I saw that effect I told her of a story like it, yet different, and also seeming true, in this old magazine. And when I began to tell it she said, 'It is true! My Vermont grand'mère wrote that! It happened to her!'"
"How queer! And, Landry, I see the connection. Your magazine being one of a set, you couldn't let her read it anywhere but here."
"I have to keep my own rules."
"Let me see it. . . . Oh, now, why not? What was the use of either of us explaining if--if----?"
But Ovide smilingly restored the thing to its stack. "Now," he said, "'tis Mr. Chester's logic that fails." Yet as he turned to a customer he let Chester take it down.
"My job requires me," the youth said, "to study character. Let's see what a grand'mère of a 'tite-fille, situated19 so and so, will do."
Ovide escorted his momentary20 customer to the sidewalk door. As he returned, Chester, rolling map and magazine together, said:
"It's getting dark. No, don't make a light, it's your closing time and I've a strict engagement. Here's a deposit for this magazine; a fifty. It's all I have--oh, yes, take it, we'll trade back to-morrow. You must keep your own rules and I must read this thing before I touch my bed."
"Even the first few lines absorb you?"
"No, far from it. Look here." Chester read out: "'Now, Maud,' said my uncle--Oh, me! Landry, if the tale's true why that old story-book pose?"
"It may be that the writer preferred to tell it as fiction, and that only something in me told me 'tis true. Something still tells me so."
"'Now, Maud,'" Chester smilingly thought to himself when, the evening's later engagement being gratifyingly fulfilled, he sat down with the story. "And so you were grand'mère to our Royal Street miracle. And you had a Southern uncle! So had I! though yours was a planter, mine a lawyer, and yours must have been fifty years the older. Well, 'Now, Maud,' for my absorption!"
It came. Though the tale was unamazing amazement21 came. The four chief characters were no sooner set in motion than Chester dropped the pamphlet to his knee, agape in recollection of a most droll22 fact a year or two old, which now all at once and for the first time arrested his attention. He also had a manuscript! That lawyer uncle of his, saying as he spared him a few duplicate volumes from his law library, "Burn that if you don't want it," had tossed him a fat document indorsed: "Memorandum23 of an Early Experience." Later the nephew had glanced it over, but, like "Maud's" story, its first few lines had annoyed his critical sense and he had never read it carefully. The amazing point was that "Now, Maud" and this "Memorandum" most incredibly--with a ridiculous nicety--fitted each other.
He lifted the magazine again and, beginning at the beginning a third time, read with a scrutiny24 of every line as though he studied a witness's deposition25. And this was what he read:
