V ;.
HOLMES BOOK CO.
333 S, Main St,
Los Angeles
/
BALCONY STORIES
B A LCO N Y Sf 6 Rf S
BY
GRACE KING
AUTHOR OF " TALES OF A TIME AND PLACE
NEW YORK
THE CENTURY CO.
1893
Copyright, 1892, 1893, by
THE CENTURY Co.
THE Of. VINNE PRESS.
TO MY MOTHER
WHOSE BALCONY STORIES WERE THE DELIGHT
OF MY CHILDHOOD, THESE FEEBLE IMITATIONS
ARE GRATEFULLY AND LOVINGLY DEDICATED
CONTENTS
PAGE
THE BALCONY i
A DRAMA OF THREE f . . 5
LA GRANDE DEMOISELLE 21
MIMI S MARRIAGE 37
THE MIRACLE CHAPEL 55
THE STORY OF A DAY 67
ANNE MARIE AND JEANNE MARIE 89
A CRIPPLED HOPE 103
"ONE OF Us" 125
THE LITTLE CONVENT GIRL 141
GRANDMOTHER S GRANDMOTHER 163
THE OLD LADY S RESTORATION 175
A DELICATE AFFAIR 191
PUPASSE . 221
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
" WALKING AWAY WITH A SHRUG OF THE SHOUL
DERS" Frontispiece
" WHERE is THAT IDIOT, THAT DOLT, THAT SLUG
GARD, THAT SNAIL, WITH MY MAIL?" .... n
CHAMPIGNY . 33
"I WEPT, I WEPT, I WEPT" 51
"HER HEART DROVE HER TO THE WINDOW" . 81
" ALL THAT DAY WAS DESPONDENCY, DEJECTION " 85
"THIS TIME WE HAVE CAUGHT IT!" 97
" THE QUIET, DIM-LIGHTED ROOM OF A CONVA
LESCENT" 107
"LITTLE MAMMY" 109
" To POSE IN ABJECT PATIENCE AND AWKWARDNESS " 1 29
THE SISTERS BID HER GOOD-BY 145
WATCHING A LANDING 150
"TURNED TO HER DOMESTIC DUTIES" 169
THE ROOM IN THE OLD GALLERY 185
THE FIRST COMMUNION 239
BALCONY STORIES
THE BALCONY
r I A HERE is much of life passed on the bal-
J- cony in a country where the summer
unrolls in six moon-lengths, and where the
nights have to come with a double endow
ment of vastness and splendor to compensate
for the tedious, sun-parched days.
And in that country the women love to sit
and talk together of summer nights, on bal
conies, in their vague, loose, white garments,
men are not balcony sitters, with their sleep
ing children within easy hearing, the stars
breaking the cool darkness, or the moon
making a show of light oh, such a discreet
show of light ! through the vines. And the
children inside, waking to go from one sleep
,3 BALCONY STORIES
into another, hear the low, soft mother-voices
on the balcony, talking about this person and
that, old times, old friends, old experiences ;
and it seems to them, hovering a moment in
wakefulness, that there is no end of the world
or time, or of the mother-knowledge ; but, il
limitable as it is, the mother-voices and the
mother-love and protection fill it all, with
their mother s hand in theirs, children are not
afraid even of God, and they drift into slum
ber again, their little dreams taking all kinds
of pretty reflections from the great unknown
horizon outside, as their fragile soap-bubbles
take on reflections from the sun and clouds.
Experiences, reminiscences, episodes, picked
up as only women know how to pick them up
from other women s lives, or other women s
destinies, as they prefer to call them, and told
as only women know how to relate them ;
what God has done or is doing with some
other woman whom they have known that
is what interests women once embarked on
their own lives, the embarkation takes place
THE BALCONY 3
at marriage, or after the marriageable time,
or, rather, that is what interests the women
who sit of summer nights on balconies. For
in those long-moon countries life is open and
accessible, and romances seem to be furnished
real and gratis, in order to save, in a languor-
breeding climate, the ennui of reading and
writing books. Each woman has a different
way of picking up and relating her stories, as
each one selects different pieces, and has a
personal way of playing them on the piano.
Each story is different, or appears so to her ;
each has some unique and peculiar pathos in
it. And so she dramatizes and inflects it, try
ing to make the point visible to her apparent
also to her hearers. Sometimes the pathos
and interest to the hearers lie only in this
that the relater has observed it, and gathered
it, and finds it worth telling. For do we not
gather what we have not, and is not our own
lacking our one motive ? It may be so, for it
often appears so.
And if a child inside be wakeful and preco-
4 BALCONY STORIES
cious, it is not dreams alone that take on re
flections from the balcony outside : through
the half-open shutters the still, quiet eyes look
across the dim forms on the balcony to the star-
spangled or the moon-brightened heavens be
yond ; while memory makes stores for the
future, and germs are sown, out of which the
slow, clambering vine of thought issues, one
day, to decorate or hide, as it may be, the
structures or ruins of life.
A DRAMA OF THREE
A DRAMA OF THREE
IT was a regular dramatic performance
every first of the month in the little cot
tage of the old General and Madame B .
It began with the waking up of the General
by his wife, standing at the bedside with a cup
of black coffee.
"He! Ah! Oh, Honorine ! Yes ; the first
of the month, and affairs affairs to be trans
acted."
On those mornings when affairs were to be
transacted there was not much leisure for the
household ; and it was Honorine who consti
tuted the household. Not the old dressing-
gown and slippers, the old, old trousers, and
the antediluvian neck-foulard of other days !
Far from it. It was a case of warm water
(with even a fling of cologne in it), of the
trimming of beard and mustache by Honorine,
and the black broadcloth suit, and the brown
satin stock, and that je ne sais qiwi de degage
8 BALCONY STORIES
which no one could possess or assume like the
old General. Whether he possessed or as
sumed it is an uncertainty which hung over
the fine manners of all the gentlemen of his
day, who were kept through their youth in
Paris to cultivate bon ton and an education.
It was also something of a gala-day for
Madame la Generale too, as it must be a
gala-day for all old wives to see their hus
bands pranked in the manners and graces
that had conquered their maidenhood, and
exhaling once more that ambrosial fragrance
which once so well incensed their compelling
presence.
Ah, to the end a woman loves to celebrate
her conquest ! It is the last touch of misfor
tune with her to lose in the old, the ugly, and
the commonplace her youthful lord and mas
ter. If one could look under the gray hairs
and wrinkles with which time thatches old
women, one would be surprised to see the
flutterings, the quiverings, the thrills, the
emotions, the coals of the heart-fires which
death alone extinguishes, when he commands
the tenant to vacate.
Honorine s hands chilled with the ice of
sixteen as she approached scissors to the
A DRAMA OF THREE 9
white mustache and beard. When her fin
ger-tips brushed those lips, still well formed
and roseate, she felt it, strange to say, on her
lips. When she asperged the warm water
with cologne, it was her secret delight and
greatest effort of economy to buy this co
logne, she always had one little moment of
what she called faintness that faintness
which had veiled her eyes, and chained her
hands, and stilled her throbbing bosom, when
as a bride she came from the church with him.
It was then she noticed the faint fragrance of
the cologne bath. Her lips would open as
they did then, and she would stand for a mo
ment and think thoughts to which, it must
be confessed, she looked forward from month
to month. What a man he had been ! In
truth he belonged to a period that would ac
cept nothing less from Nature than physical
beauty ; and Nature is ever subservient to
the period. If it is to-day all small men,
and to-morrow gnomes and dwarfs, we may
know that the period is demanding them from
Nature.
When the General had completed let it
be called no less than the ceremony of
his toilet, he took his chocolate and his
io BALCONY STORIES
pain de Paris. Honorine could not imagine
him breakfasting on anything but pain de
Paris. Then he sat himself in his large arm
chair before his escritoire, and began trans
acting his affairs with the usual
"But where is that idiot, that dolt, that
sluggard, that snail, with my mail ? "
Honorine, busy in the breakfast-room :
" In a moment, husband. In a moment."
" But he should be here now. It is the
first of the month, it is nine o clock, I am
ready ; he should be here."
"It is not yet nine o clock, husband."
" Not yet nine ! Not yet nine ! Am I
not up? Am I not dressed? Have I not
breakfasted before nine ? "
" That is so, husband. That is so."
Honorine s voice, prompt in cheerful ac
quiescence, came from the next room, where
she was washing his cup, saucer, and spoon.
"It is getting worse and worse every day.
I tell you, Honorine, Pompey must be dis
charged. He is worthless. He is trifling.
Discharge him ! Discharge him ! Do not
have him about ! Chase him out of the
yard ! Chase him as soon as he makes his
appearance! Do you hear, Honorine?"
A DRAMA OF THREE 13
" You must have a little patience, hus
band."
It was perhaps the only reproach one could
make to Madame Honorine, that she never
learned by experience.
"Patience! Patience! Patience is the
invention of dullards and sluggards. In a
well-regulated world there should be no need
of such a thing as patience. Patience should
be punished as a crime, or at least as a
breach of the peace. Wherever patience
is found police investigation should be made
as for smallpox. Patience ! Patience ! I
never heard the word I assure you, I
never heard the word in Paris. What do
you think would be said there to the mes
senger who craved patience of you ? Oh,
they know too well in Paris a rataplan
from the walking-stick on his back, that
would be the answer ; and a, * My good
fellow, we are not hiring professors of pa
tience, but legs.
" But, husband, you must remember we do
not hire Pompey. He only does it to oblige
us, out of his kindness."
" Oblige us ! Oblige me ! Kindness ! A
negro oblige me ! Kind to me ! That is it ;
14 BALCONY STORIES
that is it. That is the way to talk under the
new regime. It is favor, and oblige, and edu
cation, and monsieur, and madame, now. What
child s play to call this a country a govern
ment ! I would not be surprised " jumping
to his next position on this ever-recurring first
of the month theme " I would not be sur
prised if Pompey has failed to find the letter
in the box. How do I know that the mail
has not been tampered with ? From day to
day I expect to hear it. What is to prevent ?
Who is to interpose ? The honesty of the of
ficials? Honesty of the officials that is good!
What a farce honesty of officials ! That is
evidently what has happened. The thought
has not occurred to me in vain. Pompey has
gone. He has not found the letter, and
well ; that is the end."
But the General had still another theory to
account for the delay in the appearance of his
mail which he always posed abruptly after the
exhaustion of the arraignment of the post-
office.
"And why not Journel ? " Journal was their
landlord, a fellow of means, but no extraction,
and a favorite aversion of the old gentleman s.
"Journel himself? You think he is above it,
A DRAMA OF THREE 15
he? You think Journel would not do such a
thing? Ha! your simplicity, Honorine your
simplicity is incredible. It is miraculous. I
tell you, I have known the Journels, from
father to son, for yes, for seventy- five years.
Was not his grandfather the overseer on my
father s plantation ? I was not five years old
when I began to know the Journels. And
this fellow, I know him better than he knows
himself. I know him as well as God knows
him. I have made up my mind. I have made
it up carefully that the first time that letter
fails on the first of the month I shall have
Journel arrested as a thief. I shall land him
in the penitentiary. What ! You think I shall
submit to have my mail tampered with by a
Journel? Their contents appropriated ? What!
You think there was no coincidence in Jour-
nel s offering me his post-office box just the
month just the month, before those letters
began to arrive ? You think he did not have
some inkling of them ? Mark my words,
Honorine, he did by some of his subterra
nean methods. And all these five years he
has been arranging his plans that is all.
He was arranging theft, which no doubt has
been consummated to-day. Oh, I have re-
16 BALCONY STORIES
gretted it I assure you I have regretted it,
that I did not promptly reject his proposition,
that, in fact, I ever had anything to do with
the fellow."
It was almost invariably, so regularly do
events run in this world, it was almost in
variably that the negro messenger made his
appearance at this point. For five years the
General had perhaps not been interrupted as
many times, either above or below the last
sentence. The mail, or rather the letter, was
opened, and the usual amount three ten-
dollar bills was carefully extracted and
counted. And as if he scented the bills, even
as the General said he did, within ten minutes
after their delivery, Journel made his appear
ance to collect the rent.
It could only have been in Paris, among
that old retired nobility, who counted their
names back, as they expressed it, " au de $a
du deluge," that could have been acquired the
proper manner of treating a " roturier " land
lord : to measure him with the eyes from
head to foot; to hand the rent the ten-dol
lar bill with the tips of the fingers; to
scorn a look at the humbly tendered receipt ;
to say: "The cistern needs repairing, the
A DRAMA OF THREE 17
roof leaks ; I must warn you that unless such
notifications meet with more prompt attention
than in the past, you must look for another
tenant," etc., in the monotonous tone of su
premacy, and in the French, not of Journel s
dictionary, nor of the dictionary of any such
as he, but in the French of Racine and Cor-
neille ; in the French of the above suggested
circle, which inclosed the General s memory,
if it had not inclosed as he never tired of
recounting his star-like personality.
A sheet of paper always infolded the bank
notes. It always bore, in fine but sexless
tracery, " From one who owes you much."
There, that was it, that sentence, which,
like a locomotive, bore the General and his
wife far on these firsts of the month to two
opposite points of the horizon, in fact, one
from the other " From one who owes you
much."
The old gentleman would toss the paper
aside with the bill receipt. In the man to
whom the bright New Orleans itself almost
owed its brightness, it was a paltry act to
search and pick for a debtor. Friends had
betrayed and deserted him ; relatives had for
gotten him ; merchants had failed with his
i8 BALCONY STORIES
money ; bank presidents had stooped to de
ceive him ; for he was an old man, and had
about run the gamut of human disappoint
ments a gamut that had begun with a C
major of trust, hope, happiness, and money.
His political party had thrown him aside.
Neither for ambassador, plenipotentiary, sen
ator, congressman, not even for a clerkship,
could he be nominated by it. Certes !
" From one who owed him much." He had
fitted the cap to a new head, the first of
every month, for five years, and still the list
was not exhausted. Indeed, it would have
been hard for the General to look anywhere
and not see some one whose obligations to
him far exceeded this thirty dollars a month.
Could he avoid being happy with such eyes ?
But poor Madame Honorine ! She who
always gathered up the receipts, and the
" From one who owes you much " ; who
could at an instant s warning produce the
particular ones for any month of the past
half-decade. She kept them filed, not only
in her armoire, but the scrawled papers
skewered, as it were, somewhere else
where women from time immemorial have
skewered such unsigned papers. She was
A DRAMA OF THREE 19
not original in her thoughts no more, for
the matter of that, than the General was.
Tapped at any time on the first of the month,
when she would pause in her drudgery to
reimpale her heart by a sight of the writ
ten characters on the scrap of paper, her
thoughts would have been found flowing
thus, " One can give everything, and yet
be sure of nothing."
When Madame Honorine said " every
thing," she did not, as women in such cases
often do, exaggerate. When she married
the General, she in reality gave the youth
of sixteen, the beauty (ah, do not trust the
denial of those wrinkles, the thin hair, the
faded eyes !) of an angel, the dot of an
heiress. Alas ! It was too little at the
time. Had she in her own person united all
the youth, all the beauty, all the wealth,
sprinkled parsimoniously so far and wide
over all the women in this land, would she
at that time have clone aught else with this
than immolate it on the burning pyre of the
General s affection? "And yet be sure of
nothing."
It is not necessary, perhaps, to explain that
last clause. It is very little consolation for
20 BALCONY STORIES
wives that their husbands have forgotten,
when some one else remembers. Some one
else ! Ah ! there could be so many some
one elses in the General s life, for in truth
he had been irresistible to excess. But this
was one particular some one else who had
been faithful for five years. Which one ?
When Madame Honorine solves that enig
ma she has made up her mind how to act.
As for Journel, it amused him more and
more. He would go away from the little
cottage rubbing his hands with pleasure (he
never saw Madame Honorine, by the way,
only the General). He would have given
far more than thirty dollars a month for this
drama; for he was not only rich, but a great
farceur.
LA GRANDE DEMOISELLE
LA GRANDE DEMOISELLE
THAT was what she was called by every
body as soon as she was seen or de
scribed. Her name, besides baptismal titles,
was Idalie Sainte Foy Mortemart des Islets.
When she came into society, in the brilliant
little world of New Orleans, it was the event
of the season, and after she came in, what
ever she did became also events. Whether
she went, or did not go ; what she said, or
did not say ; what she wore, and did not
wear all these became important matters
of discussion, quoted as much or more than
what the president said, or the governor
thought. And in those days, the days of
59, New Orleans was not, a^ it is now, a
one-heiress place, but it may be said that
one could find heiresses then as one finds
type-writing girls now.
Mademoiselle Idalie received her birth, and
what education she had, on her parents
23
24 BALCONY STORIES
plantation, the famed old Reine Sainte Foy
place, and it is no secret that, like the an
cient kings of France, her birth exceeded her
education.
It was a plantation, the Reine Sainte Foy,
the richness and luxury of which are really
well described in those perfervid pictures of
tropical life, at one time the passion of phil
anthropic imaginations, excited and exciting
over the horrors of slavery. Although these
pictures were then often accused of being pur
posely exaggerated, they seem now to fall short
of, instead of surpassing, the truth. Stately
walls, acres of roses, miles of oranges, unmea
sured fields of cane, colossal sugar-house
they were all there, and all the rest of it, with
the slaves, slaves, slaves everywhere, whole
villages of negro cabins. And there were
also, most noticeable to the natural, as well
as to the visionary, eye there were the ease,
idleness, extravagance, self-indulgence, pomp,
pride, arrogance, in short the whole enumera
tion, the moral sine qua non, as some people
considered it, of the wealthy slaveholder of
aristocratic descent and tastes.
What Mademoiselle Idalie cared to learn
she studied, what she did not she ignored ;
LA GRANDE DEMOISELLE 25
and she followed the same simple rule untram-
meled in her eating, drinking, dressing, and
comportment generally ; and whatever disci
pline may have been exercised on the place,
either in fact or fiction, most assuredly none
of it, even so much as in a threat, ever at
tainted her sacred person. When she was
just turned sixteen, Mademoiselle Idalie made
up her mind to go into society. Whether she
was beautiful or not, it is hard to say. It is
almost impossible to appreciate properly the
beauty of the rich, the very rich. The unfet
tered development, the limitless choice of ac
cessories, the confidence, the self-esteem, the
sureness of expression, the simplicity of pur
pose, the ease of execution all these produce
a certain effect of beauty behind which one
really cannot get to measure length of nose,
or brilliancy of eye. This much can be said :
there was nothing in her that positively con
tradicted any assumption of beauty on her
part, or credit of it on the part of others. She
was very tall and very thin with small head,
long neck, black eyes, and abundant straight
black hair, for which her hair-dresser de
served more praise than she, good teeth, of
course, and a mouth that, even in prayer,
26 BALCONY STORIES
talked nothing but commands ; that is about
all she had en fait d ornements, as the mo
distes say. It may be added that she walked
as if the Reine Sainte Foy plantation extended
over the whole earth, and the soil of it were
too vile for her tread. Of course she did not
buy her toilets in New Orleans. Everything
was ordered from Paris, and came as regu
larly through the custom-house as the modes
and robes to the milliners. She was furnished
by a certain house there, just as one of a royal
family would be at the present day. As this
had lasted from her layette up to her sixteenth
year, it may be imagined what took place
when she determined to make her debut.
Then it was literally, not metaphorically, carte
blanche, at least so it got to the ears of society.
She took a sheet of note-paper, wrote the date
at the top, added, " I make my debut in No
vember," signed her name at the extreme end
of the sheet, addressed it to her dressmaker
in Paris, and sent it.
It was said that in her dresses the very
handsomest silks were used for linings, and
that real lace was used where others put imi
tation, around the bottoms of the skirts, for
instance, and silk ribbons of the best qual-
LA GRANDE DEMOISELLE 27
ity served the purposes of ordinary tapes ;
and sometimes the buttons were of real gold
and silver, sometimes set with precious stones.
Not that she ordered these particulars, but
the dressmakers, when given carte blanche by
those who do not condescend to details, so
soon exhaust the outside limits of garments
that perforce they take to plastering them in
side with gold, so to speak, and, when the
bill goes in, they depend upon the furnishings
to carry out a certain amount of the contract
in justifying the price. And it was said that
these costly dresses, after being worn once or
twice, were cast aside, thrown upon the floor,
given to the negroes anything to get them
out of sight. Not an inch of the real lace,
not one of the jeweled buttons, not a scrap
of ribbon, was ripped off to save. And it was
said that if she wanted to romp with her dogs
in all her finery, she did it ; she was known
to have ridden horseback, one moonlight
night, all around the plantation in a white
silk dinner-dress flounced with Alengon. And
at night, when she came from the balls, tired,
tired to death as only balls can render one,
she would throw herself down upon her bed
in her tulle skirts, on top, or not, of the
28 BALCONY STORIES
exquisite flowers, she did not care, and
make her maid undress her in that position ;
often having her bodices cut off her, because
she was too tired to turn over and have them
unlaced.
That she was admired, raved about, loved
even, goes without saying. After the first
month she held the refusal of half the beaux
of New Orleans. Men did absurd, undigni
fied, preposterous things for her ; and she ?
Love ? Marry ? The idea never occurred to
her. She treated the most exquisite of her
pretenders no better than she treated her
Paris gowns, for the matter of that. She
could not even bring herself to listen to a
proposal patiently ; whistling to her dogs, in
the middle of the most ardent protestations,
or jumping up and walking away with a shrug
of the shoulders, and a " Bah !"
Well ! Every one knows what happened
after 59. There is no need to repeat. The
history of one is the history of all. But there
was this difference for there is every shade
of difference in misfortune, as there is every
shade of resemblance in happiness. Morte-
mart des Islets went off to fight. That was
natural ; his family had been doing that, he
LA GRANDE DEMOISELLE 29
thought, or said, ever since Charlemagne.
Just as naturally he was killed in the first
engagement. They, his family, were always
among the first killed ; so much so that it
began to be considered assassination to fight
a duel with any of them. All that was in the
ordinary course of events. One difference in
their misfortunes lay in that after the city
was captured, their plantation, so near, con
venient, and rich in all kinds of provisions,
was selected to receive a contingent of troops
a colored company. If it had been a col
ored company raised in Louisiana it might
have been different ; and these negroes mixed
with the negroes in the neighborhood, and
negroes are no better than whites, for the
proportion of good and bad among them,
and the officers were always off duty when
they should have been on, and on when they
should have been off.
One night the dwelling caught fire. There
was an immediate rush to save the ladies
Oh, there was no hesitation about that ! They
were seized in their beds, and carried out in
the very arms of their enemies ; carried away
off to the sugar-house, and deposited there.
No danger of their doing anything but keep
30 BALCONY. STORIES
very quiet and still in their chemises de nuit,
and their one sheet apiece, which was about
all that was saved from the conflagration
that is, for them. But it must be remembered
that this is all hearsay. When one has not
been present, one knows nothing of one s
own knowledge ; one can only repeat. It
has been repeated, however, that although
the house was burned to the ground, and
everything in it destroyed, wherever, for a
year afterward, a man of that company or
of that neighborhood was found, there could
have been found also, without search-warrant,
property that had belonged to the Des Islets.
That is the story ; and it is believed or not,
exactly according to prejudice.
How the ladies ever got out of the sugar-
house, history does not relate ; nor what they
did. It was not a time for sociability, either
personal or epistolary. At one offensive word
your letter, and you, very likely, examined ;
and Ship Island for a hotel, with soldiers for
hostesses ! Madame Des Islets died very soon
after the accident of rage, they say; and
that was about all the public knew.
Indeed, at that time the society of New
Orleans had other things to think about than
LA GRANDE DEMOISELLE 31
the fate of the Des Islets. As for la grande
demoiselle, she had prepared for her own ob
livion in the hearts of her female friends. And
the gentlemen, her preux chevaliers, they
were burning with other passions than those
which had driven them to her knees, encoun
tering a little more serious response than
"bans" and shrugs. And, after all, a woman
seems the quickest thing forgotten when once
the important affairs of life come to men for
consideration.
It might have been ten years according
to some calculations, or ten eternities, the
heart and the almanac never agree about
time, but one morning old Champigny
(they used to call him Champignon) was
walking along his levee front, calculating
how soon the water would come over, and
drown him out, as the Louisianians say. It
was before a seven -o clock breakfast, cold,
wet, rainy, and discouraging. The road was
knee-deep in mud, and so broken up with
hauling, that it was like walking upon waves
to get over it. A shower poured down. Old
Champigny was hurrying in when he saw a
figure approaching. He had to stop to look
at it, for it was worth while. The head was
32 BALCONY STORIES
hidden by a green barege veil, which the
showers had plentifully besprinkled with
dew; a tall, thin figure. Figure! No; not
even could it be called a figure : straight up
and down, like a finger or a post ; high-
shouldered, and a step a step like a plow
man s. No umbrella; no nothing more, in
fact. It does not sound so peculiar as when
first related something must be forgotten.
The feet oh, yes, the feet they were like
waffle-irons, or frying-pans, or anything of
that shape.
Old Champigny did not care for women
he never had; they simply did not exist for
him in the order of nature. He had been
married once, it is true, about a half century
before ; but that was not reckoned against
the existence of his prejudice, because he
was celibataire to his finger-tips, as any one
could see a mile away. But that woman
intrigue "d him.
He had no servant to inquire from. He
performed all of his own domestic work in
the wretched little cabin that replaced his
old home. For Champigny also belonged to
the great majority of the nouveaux pauvres.
He went out into the rice-field, where were
LA GRANDE DEMOISELLE
33
one or two hands that worked on shares with
him, and he asked them. They knew imme
diately ; there is nothing connected with the
parish that a field-hand does not know at
once. She was the teacher of the colored
CHAMPIGNY.
public school some three or four miles away.
"Ah," thought Champigny, some Northern
lady on a mission." He watched to see her
return in the evening, which she did, of
course ; in a blinding rain. Imagine the
34 BALCONY STORIES
green barege veil then ; for it remained al
ways down over her face.
Old Champigny could not get over it that
he had never seen her before. But he must
have seen her, and, with his abstraction and
old age, not have noticed her, for he found
out from the negroes that she had been
teaching four or five years there. And he
found out also how, is not important that
she was Idalie Sainte Foy Mortemart des
Islets. La grande demoiselle! He had
never known her in the old days, owing to
his uncomplimentary attitude toward women,
but he knew of her, of course, and of her
family. It should have been said that his
plantation was about fifty miles higher up
the river, and on the opposite bank to Reine
Sainte Foy. It seemed terrible. The old
gentleman had had reverses of his own,
which would bear the telling, but nothing
was more shocking to him than this that
Idalie Sainte Foy Mortemart des Islets
should be teaching a public colored school
for it makes one blush to name it seven
dollars and a half a month. For seven dol
lars and a half a month to teach a set of
well ! He found out where she lived, a little
LA GRANDE DEMOISELLE 35
cabin not so much worse than his own, for
that matter in the corner of a field; no
companion, no servant, nothing but food and
shelter. Her clothes have been described.
Only the good God himself knows what
passed in Champigny s mind on the subject.
We know only the results. He went and
married la grande demoiselle. How? Only
the good God knows that too. Every first
of the month, when he goes to the city to
buy provisions, he takes her with him in
fact, he takes her everywhere with him.
Passengers on the railroad know them
well, and they always have a chance to see
her face. When she passes her old planta
tion la grande demoiselle always lifts her veil
for one instant the inevitable green barege
veil. What a face ! Thin, long, sallow, pet
rified ! And the neck ! If she would only tie
something around the neck ! And her plain,
coarse cottonade gown ! The negro women
about her were better dressed than she.
Poor old Champignon ! It was not an act
of charity to himself, no doubt cross and dis
agreeable, besides being ugly. And as for
love, gratitude !
MI MI S MARRIAGE
MI MI S MARRIAGE
HT^HI S is how she told about it, sitting in
.I her little room, her bridal chamber,
not larger, really not larger than sufficed for
the bed there, the armoire here, the bureau
opposite, and the washstand behind the door,
the corners all touching. But a nice set of
furniture, quite comme il faut, handsome, in
fact, as a bride of good family should have.
And she was dressed very prettily, too, in her
long white negligee, with plenty of lace and
ruffles and blue ribbons, such as only the
Creole girls can make, and brides, alas ! wear,
the pretty honeymoon costume that sug
gests, that suggests well ! to proceed. "The
poor little cat ! " as one could not help calling
her, so mignonne, so blonde, with the pretty
black eyes, and the rosebud of a mouth,
whenever she closed it, a perfect kiss.
" But you know, Louise," she said, begin
ning quite seriously at the beginning, " papa
40 BALCONY STORIES
would never have consented, never, never
poor papa ! Indeed, I should never have
asked him ; it would only have been one hu
miliation more for him, poor papa ! So it
was well he was dead, if it was God s will for
it to be. Of course I had my dreams, like
everybody. I was so blonde, so blonde, and
so small ; it seemed like a law I should marry
a brim, a tall, handsome brun> with a mus
tache and a fine barytone voice. That was
how I always arranged it, and you will
laugh but a large, large house, and num
bers of servants, and a good cook, but a su
perlatively good cuisine, and wine and all
that, and long, trailing silk dresses, and the
ater every night, and voyages to Europe, and
well, everything God had to give, in fact.
You know, I get that from papa, wanting
everything God has to give ! Poor papa !
It seemed to me I was to meet him at any
time, my handsome brun. I used to look for
him positively on my way to school, and back
home again, and whenever I would think of
him I would try and walk so prettily, and
look so pretty ! Mon Dicii / I was not ten
years old yet ! And afterward it was only for
that that I went into society. What should
MIMFS MARRIAGE 41
girls go into society for otherwise but to meet
their brun or their blond ? Do you think it
is amusing, to economize and economize, and
sew and sew, just to go to a party to dance ?
No ! I assure you, I went into society only
for that; and I do not believe what girls say
they go into society only for that too.
" You know at school how we used to tirer
la bonne aventure^ Well, every time he was
not brun, riche, avenant, Jules, or Raoul, or
Guy, I simply would not accept it, but would
go on drawing until I obtained what I wanted.
As I tell you, I thought it was my destiny.
And when I would try with a flower to see if
he loved me, // maime, un pen, beaucoup,
passionement, pas dii tout, if it were pas du
tout, I would always throw the flower away,
and begin tearing off the leaves from another
one immediately. Passionement was what I
wanted, and I always got it in the end.
" But papa, poor papa, he never knew any
thing of that, of course. He would get furi-
1 La bonne aventure is or was generally a very much battered
foolscap copy-book, which contained a list of all possible elements
of future (school-girl) happiness. Each item answered a question,
and had a number affixed to it. To draw one s fortune consisted in
asking question after question, and guessing a number, a companion
volunteering to read the answers. To avoid cheating, the books
were revised from time to time, and the numbers changed.
BALCONY STORIES
ous when any one would come to see me. and
sometimes, when he would take me in society,
if I danced with a nobody, as he called
no matter whom I danced with, he would
come up and take me away with such an air
such an air ! It would seem that papa
thought himself better than everybody in the
MIMPS MARRIAGE 43
world. But it went worse and worse with
papa, not only in the affairs of the world, but
in health. Always thinner and thinner, al
ways a cough ; in fact, you know, I am a lit
tle feeble-chested myself, from papa. And
Clementine ! Clementine with her children
just think, Louise, eight ! I thank God my
mama had only me, if papa s second wife had
to have so many. And so naughty ! I assure
you, they were all devils ; and no correction,
no punishment, no education but you know
Clementine ! I tell you, sometimes on ac
count of those children I used to think my
self in ell [making the Creole s attempt and
failure to pronounce the h], and Clementine
had no pride about them. If they had shoes,
well ; if they had not shoes, well also.
" But Clementine ! I would expostulate,
I would pray
" f But do not be a fool, Mimi, she would
say. Am I God? Can I do miracles? Or
must I humiliate your papa?
" That was true. Poor papa ! It would
have humiliated papa. When he had money
he gave ; only it was a pity he had no money.
As for what he observed, he thought it was
Clementine s negligence. For, it is true,
44 BALCONY STORIES
Clementine had no order, no industry, in the
best of fortune as in the worst. But to do
her justice, it was not her fault this time,
only she let him believe it, to save his pride ;
and Clementine, you know, has a genius for
stories. I assure you, Louise, I was despe
rate. I prayed to God to help me, to advise
me. I could not teach I had no education;
I could not go into a shop that would
be dishonoring papa and enfin, I was too
pretty. And proclaim to the world, Clem
entine would cry, that your papa does not
make money for his family. That was true.
The world is so malicious. You know, Lou
ise, sometimes it seems to me the world is
glad to hear that a man cannot support his
family; it compliments those who can. As
if papa had not intelligence, and honor, and
honesty ! But they do not count now as in
old times, before the war.
"And so, when I thought of that, I laughed
and talked and played the thoughtless like
Clementine, and made bills. We made bills
we had to for everything; we could do
that, you know, on our old name and family.
But it is too long ! I am sure it is too long
and tiresome ! What egotism on my part !
MIMI S MARRIAGE 45
Come, we will take a glass of anisette, and
talk of something else your trip, your
family. No? no? You are only asking me
out of politeness ! You are so aitnable, so
kind. Well, if you are not ennuyee in
fact, I want to tell you. It was too long to
write, and I detest a pen. To me there is
no instrument of torture like a pen.
" Well, the lady next door, she was an
American, and common, very common, ac
cording to papa. In comparison to us she
had no family whatever. Our little children
were forbidden even to associate with her lit
tle children. I thought that was ridiculous
not that I am a democrat, but I thought it
ridiculous. But the children cared; they were
so disobedient and they were always next
door, and they always had something nice to
eat over there. I sometimes thought Clem
entine used to encourage their disobedience,
just for the good things they got to eat over
there. But papa was always making fun of
them; you know what a sharp tongue he had.
The gentleman was a clerk ; and, according
to papa, the only true gentlemen in the world
had family and a profession. We did not dare
allow ourselves to think it, but Clementine
46 BALCONY STORIES
and I knew that they, in fact, were in more
comfortable circumstances than we.
" The lady, who also had a great number
of children, sent one day, with all the discre
tion and delicacy possible, and asked me if I
would be so kind as to guess what, Louise !
But only guess! But you never could! Well,
to darn some of her children s stockings for
her. It was God who inspired her, I am
sure, on account of my praying so much to
him. You will be shocked, Louise, when I
tell you. It sounds like a sin, but I was not
in despair when papa died. It was a grief,
yes, it seized the heart, but it was not despair.
Men ought not to be subjected to the humili
ation of life; they are not like women, you
know. We are made to stand things ; they
have their pride, their orgueil^ as we say in
French, and that is the point of honor with
some men. And Clementine and I, we could
not have concealed it much longer. In fact,
the truth was crying out everywhere, in the
children, in the house, in our own persons,
in our faces. The darning did not provide a
superfluity, I guarantee you !
" Poor papa ! He caught cold. He was
condemned from the first. And so all his
MIMI S MARRIAGE 47
fine qualities died ; for he had fine qualities
they were too fine for this age, that was all.
Yes ; it was a kindness of God to take him
before he found out. If it was to be, it was
better. Just so with Clementine as with me.
After the funeral crack ! everything went
to pieces. We were at the four corners for
the necessaries of life, and the bills came in
my dear, the bills that came in ! What mem
ories ! what memories ! Clementine and I ex
claimed ; there were some bills that we had
completely forgotten about. The lady next
door sent her brother over when papa died.
He sat up all night, that night, and he as
sisted us in all our arrangements. And he
came in afterward, every evening. If papa
had been there, there would have been a fine
scene over it ; he would have had to take the
door, very likely. But now there was no one
to make objections. And so when, as I say,
we were at the four corners for the necessa
ries of life, he asked Clementine s permission
to ask me to marry him.
" I give you my word, Louise, I had for
gotten there was such a thing as marriage in
the world for me ! I had forgotten it as com
pletely as the chronology of the Merovingian
48 BALCONY STORIES
dynasty, alas! with all the other school things
forgotten. And I do not believe Clementine
remembered there was such a possibility in
the world for me. Mon Dieu ! when a girl
is poor she may have all the beauty in the
world not that I had beauty, only a little
prettiness. But you should have seen Clem
entine ! She screamed for joy when she told
me. Oh, there was but one answer accord
ing to her, and according to everybody she
could consult, in her haste. They all said it
was a dispensation of Providence in my favor.
He was young, he was strong ; he did not
make a fortune, it was true, but he made a
good living. And what an assistance to have
a man in the family ! an assistance for Clem
entine and the children. But the principal
thing, after all, was, he wanted to marry me.
Nobody had ever wanted that before, my
dear !
" Quick, quick, it was all arranged. All
my friends did something for me. One made
my peignoirs for me, one this, one that ma
foi! I did not recognize myself. One made
all the toilet of the bureau, another of the
bed, and we all sewed on the wedding-dress
together. And you should have seen Clem-
MIMFS MARRIAGE 49
entine, going out in all her great mourning,
looking for a house, looking for a servant !
But the wedding was private on account of
poor papa. But you know, Loulou, I had
never time to think, except about Clementine
and the children, and when I thought of all
those poor little children, poor papa s chil
dren, I said Quick, quick, like the rest.
" It was the next day, the morning after
the wedding, I had time to think. I was
sitting here, just as you see me now, in my
pretty new negligee. I had been looking at
all the pretty presents I have shown you, and
my trousseau, and my furniture, it is not
bad, as you see, my dress, my veil, my
ring, and I do not know I do not know
but, all of a sudden, from everywhere
came the thought of my brun, my handsome
brun with the mustache, and the bonne aven-
ture, riche, avenant, the Jules, Raoul, Guy,
and the flower leaves, and * il m aime, un peu>
beaucoup, pas du tout passionnement, and
the way I expected to meet him walking
to and from school, walking as if I were
dancing the steps, and oh, my plans, my
plans, my plans, silk dresses, theater, voy
ages to Europe, and poor papa, so fine, so
50 BALCONY STORIES
tall, so aristocratic. I cannot tell you how
it all came; it seized my heart, and, mon
Dieu ! I cried out, and I wept, I wept, I
wept. How I wept ! It pains me here now
to remember it. Hours, hours it lasted, un
til I had no tears in my body, and I had to
weep without them, with sobs and moans.
But this, I have always observed, is the time
for reflection after the tears are all out.
And I am sure God himself gave me my
thoughts. Poor little Mimi ! I thought,
fi done! You are going to make a fool of
yourself now when it is all over, because
why ? It is God who manages the world,
and not you. You pray to God to help you
in your despair, and he has helped you. He
has sent you a good, kind husband who
adores you ; who asks only to be a brother
to your sisters and brothers, and son to
Clementine ; who has given you more than
you ever possessed in your life but because
he did not come out of the bonne aventure
and who gets a husband out of the bonne
aventuref and would your brun have come
to you in your misfortune ? I am sure God
inspired those thoughts in me.
"I tell you, I rose from that bed natu-
MIMI S MARRIAGE 53
rally I had thrown myself upon it. Quick I
washed my face, I brushed my hair, and, you
see these bows of ribbons, look, here are
the marks of the tears, I turned them. He y
Loulou, it occurs to me, that if you examined
the blue bows on a bride s negligee, you
might always find tears on the other side ;
for do they not all have to marry whom God
sends ? and am I the only one who had
dreams? It is the end of dreams, marriage;
and that is the good thing about it. God
lets us dream to keep us quiet, but he knows
when to wake us up, I tell you. The blue
bows knew ! And now, you see, I prefer my
husband to my brun; in fact, Loulou, I adore
him, and I am furiously jealous about him.
And he is so good to Clementine and the
poor little children ; and see his photograph
a blond, and not good-looking, and small !
" But poor papa ! If he had been alive, I
am sure he never would have agreed with
God about my marriage."
THE MIRACLE CHAPEL
THE MIRACLE CHAPEL
T^VERY heart has a miracle to pray for.
_L/ Every life holds that which only a mira
cle can cure. To prove that there have never
been, that there can never be, miracles does
not alter the matter. So long as there is
something hoped for, that does not come in
the legitimate channel of possible events,
so long as something does come not to be
hoped or expected in the legitimate channel
of possible events, just so long will the mira
cle be prayed for.
The rich and the prosperous, it would
seem, do not depend upon God so much, do
not need miracles, as the poor do. They do
not have to pray for the extra crust when
starvation hovers near; for the softening of
an obdurate landlord s heart ; for strength in
temptation, light in darkness, salvation from
vice ; for a friend in friendlessness ; for that
miracle of miracles, an opportunity to strug-
57
58 BALCONY STORIES
gling ambition ; for the ending of a dark
night, the breaking of day; and, oh! for God s
own miracle to the bedside-watchers the
change for the better, when death is there
and the apothecary s skill too far, far away.
The poor, the miserable, the unhappy, they
can show their miracles by the score ; that is
why God is called the poor man s friend. He
does not mind, so they say, going in the face
of logic and reason to relieve them ; for often
the kind and charitable are sadly hampered
by the fetters of logic and reason, which
hold them, as it were, away from their own
benevolence.
But the rich have their miracles, no doubt,
even in that beautiful empyrean of moneyed
ease in which the poor place them. Their
money cannot buy all they enjoy, and God
knows how much of their sorrow it assuages.
As it is, one hears now and then of accidents
among them, conversions to better thoughts,
warding off of danger, rescue of life ; and
heirs are sometimes born, and husbands pro
vided, and fortunes saved, in such surprising
ways, that even the rich, feeling their limi
tations in spite of their money, must ascribe
it privately if not publicly to other potencies
THE MIRACLE CHAPEL 59
than their own. These cathedral tours de
force, however, do not, if the truth be told,
convince like the miracles of the obscure lit
tle chapel.
There is always a more and a most obscure
little miracle chapel, and as faith seems ever
to lead unhesitatingly to the latter one, there
is ever rising out of humility and obscurity,
as in response to a demand, some new shrine,
to replace the wear and tear and loss of other
shrines by prosperity. For, alas ! it is hard
even for a chapel to remain obscure and
humble in the face of prosperity and popu
larity. And how to prevent such popularity
and prosperity ? As soon as the noise of a
real miracle in it gets abroad, every one is
for hurrying thither at once with their needs
and their prayers, their candles and their pic
ayunes ; and the little miracle chapel, per
haps despite itself, becomes with mushroom
growth a church, and the church a cathedral,
from whose resplendent altars the cheap,
humble ex-voto tablets, the modest begin
nings of its ecclesiastical fortunes, are before
long banished to dimly lighted lateral shrines.
The miracle chapel in question lay at the
end of a very confusing but still intelligible
60 BALCONY STORIES
route. It is not in truth a chapel at all, but
a consecrated chamber in a very small, very
lowly cottage, which stands, or one might
appropriately, if not with absolute novelty,
say which kneels, in the center of a large
garden, a garden primeval in rusticity and
size, its limits being defined by no lesser
boundaries than the four intersecting streets
outside, and its culture showing only the care
less, shiftless culture of nature. The streets
outside were miracles themselves in that, with
their liquid contents, they were streets and not
bayous. However, they protected their island
chapel almost as well as a six-foot moat could
have done. There was a small paved space on
the sidewalk that served to the pedestrian as
an indication of the spot in the tall, long, broad
fence where a gate might be sought. It was
a small gate with a strong latch. It required
a strong hand to open it. At the sound of
the click it made, the little street ragamuffin,
who stood near, peeping through the fence,
looked up. He had worked quite a hole be
tween the boards with his fingers. Such an
anxious expression passed over his face that
even a casual passer-by could not help reliev
ing it by a question any question:
THE MIRACLE CHAPEL 61
" Is this the miracle chapel, little boy?"
" Yes, ma am ; yes." Then his expression
changed to one of eagerness, yet hardly less
anxious.
" Here. Take this "
He did not hold out his hand, the coin had
to seek it. At its touch he refused to take it.
" I ain t begging."
"What are you looking at so through the
fence?" He was all sadness now.
"Just looking."
"Is there anything to see inside?"
He did not answer. The interrogation
was repeated.
"I can t see nothing. I m blind," putting
his eyes again to the hole, first one, then the
other.
"Come, won t you tell me how this came
to be a miracle chapel?"
"Oh, ma am," he turned his face from
the fence, and clasped his hands in excite
ment, "it was a poor widow woman who
come here with her baby that was a-dying,
and she prayed to the Virgin Mary, and the
Virgin Mary made the baby live "
He dropped his voice, the words falling
slower and slower. As he raised his face, one
62 BALCONY STORIES
could see then that he was blind, and the
accident that had happened to him, in ford
ing the street. What sightless eyes ! What
a wet, muddy little skeleton ! Ten ? No ;
hardly ten years of age.
"The widow woman she picked up her
baby, and she run down the walk here, and
out into the street screaming she was so
glad," putting his eyes to the peep-hole
again, "and the Virgin Mary come down
the walk after her, and come through the
gate, too ; and that was all she seed the
widow woman."
" Did you know the widow woman ? "
He shook his head.
"How do you know it?"
"That was what they told me. And they
told me, the birds all begun to sing at once,
and the flowers all lighted up like the sun
was shining on them. They seed her. And
she come down the walk, and through the
gate," his voice lowering again to a whisper.
Ay, how the birds must have sung, and the
flowers shone, to the widowed mother as she
ran, nay, leaped, down that rose-hedged walk,
with her restored baby clasped to her bosom !
" 77iey seed her," repeated the little fellow.
THE MIRACLE CHAPEL 63
" And that is why you stand here to see
her, too?"
His shoulder turned uneasily in the clasp
upon it.
"They seed her, and they ain t got no
eyes."
"Have you no mother?"
"Ain t never had no mother." A thought
struck him. "Would that count, ma am?
Would that count ? The little baby that was
dying yes, ma am, it had a mother; and
it s the mothers that come here constant
with their children; I sometimes hear em
dragging them in by the hand."
" How long have you been coming here ? "
" Ever since the first time I heard it,
ma am."
Street ragamuffins do not cry : it would be
better if they did so, when they are so young
and so blind; it would be easier for the spec
tator, the auditor.
"They seed her I might see her ef ef
I could see her once ef ef I could see
anything once." His voice faltered; but he
stiffened it instantly. " She might see me.
She can t pass through this gate without see
ing me; and and ef she seed me and
64 BALCONY STORIES
I did n t even see her oh, I m so tired of
being blind ! "
"Did you never go inside to pray?"
How embarrassing such a question is, even
to a child !
"No, ma am. Does that count, too? The
little baby did n t pray, the flowers did n t
go inside, nor the birds. And they say the
birds broke out singing all at once, and the
flowers shined, like the sun was shining on
em like the sun was shining in em," he
corrected himself. " The birds they can see,
and the flowers they can t see, and they seed
her." He shivered with the damp cold
and perhaps too with hunger.
"Where do you live?"
He would n t answer.
"What do you live on?"
He shook his head.
" Come with me." He could not resist
the grasp on his shoulder, and the firm di
recting of his bare, muddy feet through the
gate, up the walk, and into the chamber which
the Virgin found that day. He was turned to
the altar, and pressed down on his knees.
One should not look at the face of a blind
child praying to the Virgin for sight. Only
THE MIRACLE CHAPEL 65
the Virgin herself should see that and if
she once saw that little boy ! There were
hearts, feet, hands, and eyes enough hang
ing around to warrant hope at least, if not
faith ; the effigies of the human aches and
pains that had here found relief, if not sur
cease ; feet and hands beholden to no physi
cian for their exorcism of rheumatism ; eyes
and ears indebted to no oculist or aurist ;
and the hearts, they are always in ex
cess, and, to the most skeptical, there is
something sweetly comforting in the sight
of so many cured hearts, with their thanks
cut deep, as they should be, in the very
marble thereof. Where the bed must have
stood was the altar, rising by easy grada
tions, brave in ecclesiastical deckings, to the
plaster figure of her whom those yearning
hearts were seeing, whom those murmuring
lips were addressing. Hearts must be all
alike to her at such a distance, but the faces
to the looker-on were so different. The
eyes straining to look through all the expe
riences and troubles that their life has held
to plead, as only eyes can plead, to one who
can, if she will, perform their miracle for
them. And the mouths, the sensitive hu-
66 BALCONY STORIES
man mouths, each one distorted by the
tragedy against which it was praying.
Their miracles ! their miracles ! what trifles
to divinity ! Perhaps hardly more to human
ity! How far a simple looker-on could sup
ply them if so minded ! Perhaps a liberal
exercise of love and charity by not more
than half a dozen well-to-do people could
answer every prayer in the room ! But what
a miracle that would be, and how the Virgin s
heart would gladden thereat, and jubilate over
her restored heart-dying children, even as the
widowed mother did over her one dying babe !
And the little boy had stopped praying.
The futility of it perhaps his own impo
tence had overcome him. He was crying,
and past the shame of showing it crying
helplessly, hopelessly. Tears were rolling
out of his sightless eyes over his wordless
lips. He could not pray ; he could only cry.
What better, after all, can any of us do ? But
what a prayer to a woman to even the
plaster figure of a woman ! And the Virgin
did hear him ; for she had him taken without
loss of a moment to the hospital, and how
easy she made it for the physician to remove
the disability ! To her be the credit.
THE STORY OF A DAY
THE STORY OF A DAY
IT is really not much, the story; it is only
the arrangement of it, as we would say
of our dresses and our drawing-rooms.
It began with the dawn, of course; and the
skiff for our voyage, silvered with dew, wait
ing in the mist for us, as if it had floated
down in a cloud from heaven to the bayou.
When repeated, this sounds like poor poetry;
but that is the way one thinks at daydawn,
when the dew is yet, as it were, upon our
brains, and our ideas are still half dreams,
and our waking hearts, alas ! as innocent as
waking babies playing with their toes.
Our oars waked the waters of the bayou, as
motionless as a sleeping snake under its misty
covert to continue the poetical language
or thought. The ripples ran frightened and
shivering into the rooty thicknesses of the
sedge-grown banks, startling the little birds
bathing there into darting to the nearest,
5* 69
70 BALCONY STORIES
highest rush-top, where, without losing their
hold on their swaying, balancing perches,
they burst into all sorts of incoherent songs,
in their excitement to divert attention from
the near-hidden nests: bird mothers are so
much like women mothers !
It soon became day enough for the mist to
rise. The eyes that saw it ought to be able
to speak to tell fittingly about it.
Not all at once, nor all together, but a
thinning, a lifting, a breaking, a wearing
away; a little withdrawing here, a little with
drawing there ; and now a peep, and now
a peep ; a bride lifting her veil to her hus
band! Blue! White! Lilies! Blue lilies!
White lilies! Blue and white lilies! And
still blue and white lilies! And still! And
still! Wherever the veil lifted, still and always
the bride!
Not in clumps and bunches, not in spots
and patches, not in banks, meadows, acres,
but in yes; for still it lifted beyond and be
yond and beyond; the eye could not touch
the limit of them, for the eye can touch only
the limit of vision; and the lilies filled the
whole sea-marsh, for that is the way spring
comes to the sea-marshes.
THE STORY OF A DAY 71
The sedge-roots might have been unsightly
along the water s edge, but there were morn
ing-glories, all colors, all shades oh, such
morning-glories as we of the city never see!
Our city morning-glories must dream of
them, as we dream of angels. Only God
could be so lavish! Dropping from the tall
spear-heads to the water, into the water,
under the water. And then, the reflection
of them, in all their colors, blue, white, pink,
purple, red, rose, violet !
To think of an obscure little Acadian bayou
waking to flow the first thing in the morning
not only through banks of new-blown morn
ing-glories, but sown also to its depths with
such reflections as must make it think itself
a bayou in heaven, instead of in Paroisse St.
Martin. Perhaps that is the reason the poor
poets think themselves poets, on account of
the beautiful things that are only reflected
into their minds from what is above? Be
sides the reflections, there were alligators in
the bayou, trying to slip away before we
could see them, and watching us with their
stupid, senile eyes, sometimes from under the
thickest, prettiest flowery bowers; and turtles
splashing into the water ahead of us ; and
72 BALCONY STORIES
fish (silver-sided perch), looking like reflec
tions themselves, floating through the flower
reflections, nibbling their breakfast.
Our bayou had been running through
swamp only a little more solid than itself; in
fact, there was no solidity but what came from
the roots of grasses. Now, the banks began
to get firmer, from real soil in them. We
could see cattle in the distance, up to their
necks in the lilies, their heads and sharp-
pointed horns coming up and going down in
the blue and white. Nothing makes cattle s
heads appear handsomer, with the sun just ris
ing far, far away on the other side of them. The
sea-marsh cattle turned loose to pasture in the
lush spring beauty turned loose in Elysium!
But the land was only partly land yet, and
the cattle still cattle to us. The rising sun
made revelations, as our bayou carried us
through a drove in their Elysium, or it might
have always been an Elysium to us. It was
not all pasturage, all enjoyment. The rising
and falling feeding head was entirely different,
as we could now see, from the rising and fall
ing agonized head of the bogged the buried
alive. It is well that the lilies grow taller
and thicker over the more treacherous places ;
THE STORY OF A DAY 73
but, misery ! misery ! not much of the process
was concealed from us, for the cattle have to
come to the bayou for water. Such a splendid
black head that had just yielded breath! The
wide-spreading ebony horns thrown back
among the morning-glories, the mouth open
from the last sigh, the glassy eyes staring
straight at the beautiful blue sky above,
where a ghostly moon still lingered, the velvet
neck ridged with veins and muscles, the body
already buried in black ooze. And such a
pretty red-and-white-spotted heifer, lying on
her side, opening and shutting her eyes,
breathing softly in meek resignation to her
horrible calamity ! And, again, another one
was plunging and battling in the act of real
izing her doom : a fierce, furious, red cow,
glaring and bellowing at the soft, yielding
inexorable abysm under her, the bustards set
tling afar off, and her own species browsing
securely just out of reach.
They understand that much, the sea-marsh
cattle, to keep out of reach of the dead com
batant. In the delirium of anguish, relief
cannot be distinguished from attack, and
rescue of the victim has been proved to mean
goring of the rescuer.
74 BALCONY STORIES
The bayou turned from it at last, from our
beautiful lily world about which our pleasant
thoughts had ceased to flow even in bad
poetry.
Our voyage was for information, which
might be obtained at a certain habitation ; if
not there, at a second one, or surely at a third
and most distant settlement.
The bayou narrowed into a canal, then wid
ened into a bayou again, and the low, level
swamp and prairie advanced into woodland
and forest. Oak-trees began, our beautiful
oak-trees ! Great branches bent down almost
to the water, quite even with high water,
covered with forests of oak, parasites, lichens,
and with vines that swept our heads as we
passed under them, drooping now and then
to trail in the water, a plaything for the fishes,
and a landing-place for amphibious insects.
The sun speckled the water with its flickering
patterns, showering us with light and heat.
We have no spring suns ; our sun, even in
December, is a summer one.
And so, with all its grace of curve and bend,
and so the description is longer than the
voyage we come to our first stopping-place.
To the side, in front of the well-kept fertile
THE STORY OF A DAY 75
fields, like a proud little showman, stood the
little house. Its pointed shingle roof covered
it like the top of a chafing-dish, reaching
down to the windows, which peeped out from
under it like little eyes.
A woman came out of the door to meet us.
She had had time during our graceful wind
ing approach to prepare for us. What an
irrevocable vow to old maidenhood ! At
least twenty-five, almost a possible grand
mother, according to Acadian computation,
and well in the grip of advancing years. She
was dressed in a stiff, dark red calico gown,
with a white apron. Her black hair, smooth
and glossy under a varnish of grease, was
plaited high in the back, and dropped regu
lar ringlets, six in all, over her forehead.
That was the epoch when her calamity came
to her, when the hair was worn in that
fashion. A woman seldom alters her coiffure
after a calamity of a certain nature happens
to her. The figure had taken a compact rigid
ity, an unfaltering inflexibility, all the world
away from the elasticity of matronhood; and
her eyes were clear and fixed like her figure,
neither falling, nor rising, nor puzzling under
other eyes. . Her lips, her hands, her slim
76 BALCONY STORIES
feet, were conspicuously single, too, in their
intent, neither reaching, nor feeling, nor run
ning for those other lips, hands, and feet
which should have doubled their single life.
That was Adorine Merionaux, otherwise
the most industrious Acadian and the best
cottonade-weaver in the parish. It had been
short, her story. A woman s love is still with
those people her story. She was thirteen
when she met him. That is the age for an
Acadian girl to meet him, because, you know,
the large families the thirteen, fourteen, fif
teen, twenty children take up the years; and
when one wishes to know one s great-great
grandchildren (which is the dream of the Aca
dian girl) one must not delay one s story.
She had one month to love him in, and in
one week they were to have the wedding.
The Acadians believe that marriage must
come au point, as cooks say their sauces
must be served. Standing on the bayou-
bank in front of the Merionaux, one could say
"Good day" with the eyes to the Zeverin
Theriots that was the name of the parents
of the young bridegroom. Looking under the
branches of the oaks, one could see across
the prairie, prairie and sea-marsh it was,
THE STORY OF A DAY 77
and clearly distinguish another little red-
washed house like the Merionaux, with a
painted roof hanging over the windows, and
a staircase going up outside to the garret.
With the sun shining in the proper direction,
one might distinguish more, and with love
shining like the sun in the eyes, one might
see, one might see a heart full.
It was only the eyes, however, which could
make such a quick voyage to the Zeverin
Theriots; a skiff had a long day s journey
to reach them. The bayou sauntered along
over the country like a negro on a Sunday s
pleasuring, trusting to God for time, and to
the devil for means.
Oh, nothing can travel quickly over a
bayou ! Ask any one who has waited on a I
bayou-bank for a physician or a life-and-
death message. Thought refuses to travel
and turn and double over it; thought, like the
eye, takes the shortest cut straight over
the sea-marsh; and in the spring of the year,
when the lilies are in bloom, thought could
not take a more heavenly way, even from
beloved to beloved.
It was the week before marriage, that
week when, more than one s whole life after-
78 BALCONY STORIES
ward, one s heart feels most longing most
well, in fact, it was the week before mar
riage. From Sunday to Sunday, that was
all the time to be passed. Adorine women
live through this week by the grace of God,
or perhaps they would be as unreasonable as
the men Adorine could look across the
prairie to the little red roof during the day,
and could think across it during the night,
and get up before day to look across again
longing, longing all the time. Of course
one must supply all this from one s own
imagination or experience.
But Adorine could sing, and she sang.
One might hear, in a favorable wind, a gun
shot, or the barking of a dog from one place
to the other, so that singing, as to effect, was
nothing more than the voicing of her looking
and thinking and longing.
When one loves, it is as if everything was
known of and seen by the other; not only all
that passes in the head and heart, which
would in all conscience be more than enough
to occupy the other, but the talking, the
dressing, the conduct. It was then that the
back hair was braided and the front curled
more and more beautifully every day, and
THE STORY OF A DAY 79
that the calico dresses became stiffer and
stiffen, and the white crochet lace collar
broader and lower in the neck. At thirteen
she was beautiful enough to startle one, they
say, but that was nothing; she spent time and
care upon these things, as if, like other
women, her fate seriously depended upon
them. There is no self-abnegation like that
of a woman in love.
It was her singing, however, which most
showed that other existence in her existence.
When she sang at her spinning-wheel or her
loom, or knelt battling clothes on the bank
of the bayou, her lips would kiss out the
words, and the tune would rise and fall and
tremble, as if Zepherin were just across there,
anywhere ; in fact, as if every blue and white
lily might hide an ear of him.
It was the time of the new moon, fortu
nately, when all sit up late in the country.
The family would stop in their talking about
the wedding to listen to her. She did not
know it herself, but it the singing was
getting louder and clearer, and, poor little
thing, it told everything. And after the
family went to bed they could still hear her,
sitting on the bank of the bayou, or up in her
8o BALCONY STORIES
window, singing and looking at the moon
traveling across the lily prairie for all its
beauty and brightness no more beautiful and
bright than a heart in love.
It was just past the middle of the week, a
Thursday night. The moon was so bright the
colors of the lilies could be seen, and the sing
ing, so sweet, so far-reaching it was the
essence of the longing of love. Then it was
that the miracle happened to her. Miracles
are always happening to the Acadians. She
could not sleep, she could not stay in bed.
Her heart drove her to the window, and kept
her there, and among the civilized it could
not take place, but here she could sing as she
pleased in the middle of the night ; it was no
body s affair, nobody s disturbance. " Saint
Ann! Saint Joseph! Saint Mary!" She heard
her song answered ! She held her heart, .she
bent forward, she sang again. Oh, the air
was full of music ! It was all music ! She fell
on her knees ; she listened, looking at the
moon ; and, with her face in her hands, look
ing at Zepherin. It was God s choir of angels,
she thought, and one with a voice like Zeph
erin! Whenever it died away she would sing
again, and again, and again
" HER HEART DROVE HER TO THE WINDOW."
THE STORY OF A DAY 83
But the sun came, and the sun is not cre
ated, like the moon, for lovers, and whatever
happened in the night, there was work to be
done in the clay. Adorine worked like one in
a trance, her face as radiant as the upturned
face of a saint. They did not know what it
was, or rather they thought it was love. Love
is so different out there, they make all kinds
of allowances for it. But, in truth, Adorine
was still hearing her celestial voices or voice.
If the cackling of the chickens, the whir of the
spinning-wheel, or the "bum bum" of the
loom effaced it a moment, she had only to go
to some still place, round her hand over her
ear, and give the line of a song, and it was
Zepherin Zepherin she heard.
She walked in a dream until night. When
the moon came up she was at the window,
and still it continued, so faint, so sweet, that
answer to her song. Echo never did anything
more exquisite, but she knew nothing of such
a heathen as Echo. Human nature became
exhausted. She fell asleep where she was, in
the window, and dreamed as only a bride can
dream of her groom. When she awoke,
" Adorine ! Adorine ! " the beautiful angel
voices called to her ; " Zepherin ! Zepherin ! "
84 BALCONY STORIES
she answered, as if she, too, were an angel,
signaling another angel in heaven. It was
too much. She wept, and that broke the
charm. She could hear nothing more after
that. All that day was despondency, dejec
tion, tear-bedewed eyes, and tremulous lips,
the commonplace reaction, as all know, of
love exaltation. Adorine s family, Acadian
peasants though they were, knew as much
about it as any one else, and all that any one
knows about it is that marriage is the cure-
all, and the only cure-all, for love.
And Zepherin ? A man could better de
scribe his side of that week ; for it, too, has
mostly to be described from imagination or
experience. What is inferred is that what
Adorine longed and thought and looked in
silence and resignation, according to woman s
way, he suffered equally, but in a man s way,
which is not one of silence or resignation, at
least when one is a man of eighteen, the last
interview, the near wedding, her beauty, his
love, her house in sight, the full moon, the
long, wakeful nights.
He took his pirogue; but the bayou played
with his impatience, maddened his passion,
bringing him so near, to meander with him
ALL THAT DAY WAS DESPONDENCY, DEJECTION.
\
THE STORY OF A DAY 87
again so far away. There was only a short
prairie between him and , a prairie thick
with lily-roots one could almost walk over
their heads, so close, and gleaming in the
moonlight. But this is all only inference.
The pirogue was found tethered to the
paddle stuck upright in the soft bank, and
Adorine s parents related the rest. Nothing
else was found until the summer drought had
bared the swamp.
There was a little girl in the house when
we arrived all else were in the field a
stupid, solemn, pretty child, the child of a
brother. How she kept away from Adorine,
and how much that testified !
It would have been too painful. The little
arms around her neck, the head nestling to
her bosom, sleepily pressing against it. And
the little one might ask to be sung to sleep.
Sung to sleep !
The little bed-chamber, with its high mat-
tressed bed, covered with the Acadian home
spun quilt, trimmed with netting fringe, its
bit of mirror over the bureau, the bottle of
perfumed grease to keep the locks black and
glossy, the prayer-beads and blessed palms
hanging on the wall, the low, black polished
88 BALCONY STORIES
spinning-wheel, the loom, the metier d A do-
rine famed throughout the parish, the ever
goodly store of cotton and yarn hanks swing
ing from the ceiling, and the little square,
open window which looked under the mossy
oak-branches to look over the prairie ; and
once again all blue and white lilies they
were all there, as Adorine was there ; but
there was more not there.
ANNE MARIE AND JEANNE MARIE
ANNE MARIE AND JEANNE MARIE
OLD Jeanne Marie leaned her hand against
the house, and the tears rolled down
her cheeks. She had not wept since she
buried her last child. With her it was one
trouble, one weeping, no more ; and her
wrinkled, hard, polished skin so far had
known only the tears that come after death.
The trouble in her heart now was almost
exactly like the trouble caused by death ;
although she knew it was not so bad as death,
yet, when she thought of this to console her
self, the tears rolled all the faster. She took
the end of the red cotton kerchief tied over
her head, and wiped them away ; for the fur
rows in her face did not merely run up and
down they ran in all directions, and carried
her tears all over her face at once. She could
understand death, but she could not under
stand this.
9 1
92 BALCONY STORIES
It came about in this way : Anne Marie and
she lived in the little red-washed cabin against
which she leaned ; had lived there alone with
each other for fifty years, ever since Jeanne
Marie s husband had died, and the three chil
dren after him, in the fever epidemic.
The little two-roomed cabin, the stable
where there used to be a cow, the patch of
ground planted with onions, had all been
bought and paid for by the husband ; for he
was a thrifty, hard-working Gascon, and had
he lived there would not have been one bet
ter off, or with a larger family, either in that
quarter or in any of the red-washed suburbs
with which Gascony has surrounded New
Orleans. His women, however, the wife
and sister-in-law, had done their share in
the work : a man s share apiece, for with the
Gascon women there is no discrimination o^
sex when it comes to work.
And they worked on just the same after he
died, tending the cow, digging, hoeing, plant
ing, watering. The day following the funeral,
by daylight Jeanne Marie was shouldering
around the yoke of milk-cans to his patrons,
while Anne Marie carried the vegetables to
market ; and so on for fifty years.
ANNE MARIE AND JEANNE MARIE 93
They were old women now, seventy-five
years old, and, as they expressed it, they
had always been twins. In twins there is al
ways one lucky and one unlucky one : Jeanne
Marie was the lucky one, Anne Marie the
unlucky one. So much so, that it was even
she who had to catch the rheumatism, and to
lie now bedridden, months at a time, while
Jeanne Marie was as active in her sabots as
she had ever been.
In spite of the age of both, and the infir
mity of one, every Saturday night there was
some little thing to put under the brick in the
hearth, for taxes and license, and the never-
to-be-forgotten funeral provision. In the hus
band s time gold pieces used to go in, but they
had all gone to pay for the four funerals and
the quadrupled doctor s bill. The women
laid in silver pieces ; the coins, however, grew
smaller and smaller, and represented more
and more not so much the gain from onions
as the saving from food.
It had been explained to them how they
might, all at once, make a year s gain in the
lottery ; and it had become their custom
always, at the end of every month, to put
aside one silver coin apiece, to buy a lottery
94 BALCONY STORIES
ticket with one ticket each, not for the
great, but for the twenty-five-cent, prizes.
Anne Marie would buy hers round about the
market ; Jeanne Marie would stop anywhere
along her milk course and buy hers, and they
would go together in the afternoon to stand
with the little crowd watching the placard
upon which the winning numbers were to be
written. And when they were written, it was
curious, Jeanne Marie s numbers would come
out twice as often as Anne Marie s. Not that
she ever won anything, for she was not lucky
enough to have them come out in the order to
win ; they only came out here and there,
singly : but it was sufficient to make old
Anne Marie cross and ugly for a day or two,
and injure the sale of the onion-basket. When
she became bedridden, Jeanne Marie bought
the ticket for both, on the numbers, however,
that Anne Marie gave her; and Anne Marie
had to lie in bed and wait, while Jeanne Marie
went out to watch the placard.
One evening, watching it, Jeanne Marie
saw the ticket-agent write out the numbers as
they came on her ticket, in such a way that
they drew a prize forty dollars.
ANNE MARIE AND JEANNE MARIE 95
When the old woman saw it she felt such
a happiness ; just as she used to feel in the old
times right after the birth of a baby. She
thought of that instantly. Without saying a
word to any one, she clattered over the ban
quette as fast as she could in her sabots, to
tell the good news to Anne Marie. But she
did not go so fast as not to have time to dis
pose of her forty dollars over and over again.
Forty dollars! That was a great deal of
money. She had often in her mind, when
she was expecting a prize, spent twenty
dollars ; for she had never thought it could
be more than that. But forty dollars ! A new
gown apiece, and black silk kerchiefs to tie
over their heads instead of red cotton, and
the little cabin new red-washed, and soup in
the pot, and a garlic sausage, and a bottle of
good, costly liniment for Anne Marie s legs ;
and still a pile of gold to go under the hearth-
brick a pile of gold that would have made
the eyes of the defunct husband glisten.
She pushed open the picket-gate, and came
into the room where her sister lay in bed.
" Eh, Anne Marie, my girl," she called in
her thick, pebbly voice, apparently made pur-
96 BALCONY STORIES
posely to suit her rough Gascon accent ; " this
time we have caught it ! "
"Whose ticket?" asked Anne Marie, in
stantly.
In a flash all Anne Marie s ill luck ran
through Jeanne Marie s mind ; how her prom
ised husband had proved unfaithful, and
Jeanne Marie s faithful ; and how, ever since,
even to the coming out of her lottery num
bers, even to the selling of vegetables, even
to the catching of the rheumatism, she had
been the loser. But above all, as she looked
at Anne Marie in the bed, all the misery came
over Jeanne Marie of her sister s not bein^r
J o
able, in all her poor old seventy-five years
of life, to remember the pressure of the
arms of a husband about her waist, nor the
mouth of a child on her breast.
As soon as Anne Marie had asked her ques
tion, Jeanne Marie answered it.
" But your ticket, Coton-Mai! " 1
"Where? Give it here! Give it here!"
The old woman, who had not been able to
move her back for weeks, sat bolt upright in
bed, and stretched out her great bony fingers,
1 Coton-Ma i is an innocent oath invented by the good, pious priest
as a substitute for one more harmful.
ANNE MARIE AND JEANNE MARIE 99
with the long nails as hard and black as
rake- prongs from groveling in the earth.
Jeanne Marie poured the money out of her
cotton handkerchief into them.
Anne Marie counted it, looked at it ;
looked at it, counted it ; and if she had not
been so old, so infirm, so toothless, the smile
that passed over her face would have made it
beautiful.
Jeanne Marie had to leave her to draw
water from the well to water the plants, and
to get her vegetables ready for next morning.
She felt even happier now than if she had just
had a child, happier even than if her husband
had just returned to her.
111 luck ! Coton-Mai! Ill luck ! There s
a way to turn ill luck ! " And her smile also
should have beautified her face, wrinkled and
ugly though it was.
She did not think any more of the spend
ing of the money, only of the pleasure Anne
Marie would take in spending it.
The water was low in the well, and there
had been a long drought. There are not
many old women of seventy-five who could
have watered so much ground as abundantly
as she did ; but whenever she thought of
loo BALCONY STORIES
the forty dollars and Anne Marie s smile
she would give the thirsting" plant an extra
bucketful.
The twilight was gaining. She paused.
" Colon-Mat/ " she exclaimed aloud. "But
I must see the old woman smile again over
her good luck."
Although it was " my girl " face to face, it
was always "the old woman" behind each
other s back.
There was a knot-hole in the plank walls
of the house. In spite of Anne Marie s rheu
matism they would never stop it up, needing
it, they said, for light and air. Jeanne Marie
slipped her feet out of her sabots and crept
easily toward it, smiling, and saying " Colon-
Mat f " to herself all the way. She put her
eye to the hole. Anne Marie was not in the
bed, she who had not left her bed for two
months ! Jeanne Marie looked through the
dim light of the room until she found her.
Anne Marie, in her short petticoat and
nightsack, with bare legs and feet, was on
her knees in the corner, pulling up a plank,
hiding peasants know hiding when they see
it hiding her money away away away
from whom? muttering to herself and shak-
ANNE MARIE AND JEANNE MARJE 101
ing her old grayhaired head. Hiding her
money away from Jeanne Marie !
And this was why Jeanne Marie leaned
her head against the side of the house and
wept. It seemed to her that she had never
known her twin sister at all.
A CRIPPLED HOPE
A CRIPPLED HOPE
YOU must picture to yourself the quiet,
dim-lighted room of a convalescent ; out
side, the dreary, bleak days of winter in a
sparsely settled, distant country parish ; in
side, a slow, smoldering log-fire, a curtained
bed, the infant sleeping well enough, the
mother wakeful, restless, thought-driven, as
a mother must be, unfortunately, nowadays,
particularly in that parish, where cotton
worms and overflows have acquired such a
monopoly of one s future.
God is always pretty near a sick woman s
couch ; but nearer even than God seems the
sick-nurse at least in that part of the coun
try, under those circumstances. It is so good
to look through the dimness and uncertainty,
moral and physical, and to meet those little
black, steadfast, all-seeing eyes ; to feel those
smooth, soft, all-soothing hands ; to hear,
across one s sleep, that three-footed step
105
io6 BALCONY STORIES
the flat-soled left foot, the tiptoe right, and the
padded end of the broomstick ; and when one
is so wakeful and restless and thought-driven,
to have another s story given one. God, de
pend upon it, grows stories and lives as he
does herbs, each with a mission of balm to
some woe.
She said she had, and in truth she had,
no other name than "little Mammy"; and
that was the name of her nature. Pure
African, but bronze rather than pure black,
and full-sized only in width, her growth having
been hampered as to height by an injury to
her hip, which had lamed her, pulling her fig
ure awry, and burdening her with a protuber
ance of the joint. Her mother caused it by
dropping her when a baby, and concealing it,
for fear of punishment, until the dislocation
became irremediable. All the animosity of
which little Mammy was capable centered
upon this unknown but never-to-be-forgotten
mother of hers ; out of this hatred had grown
her love that is, her destiny, a woman s
love being her destiny. Little Mammy s love
was for children.
The birth and infancy (the one as accidental
as the other, one would infer) took place in
A CRIPPLED HOPE
107
it sounds like the Arabian Nights" now!
took place in the great room, caravansary,
stable, behind a negro-trader s auction-mart,
where human beings underwent literally the
"THE QUIET, DIM-LIGHTED ROOM OF A CONVALESCENT."
daily buying and selling of which the world
now complains in a figure of speech a great,
square, dusty chamber where, sitting cross-
legged, leaning against the wall, or lying on
foul blanket pallets on the floor, the bargains
loS BALCONY STORIES
of to-day made their brief sojourn, awaiting
transformation into the profits of the morrow.
The place can be pointed out now, is often
pointed out ; but no emotion arises at sight of
it. It is so plain, so matter-of-fact an edifice
that emotion only comes afterward in thinking
about it, and then in the reflection that such
an edifice could be, then as now, plain and
matter-of-fact.
For the slave-trader there was no capital
so valuable as the physical soundness of his
stock ; the moral was easily enough forged
or counterfeited. Little Mammy s good-for-
nothing mother was sold as readily as a vote,
in the parlance of to-day ; but no one would
pay for a crippled baby. The mother herself
would not have taken her as a gift, had it
been in the nature of a negro-trader to give
away anything. Some doctoring was done,
so little Mammy heard traditionally, some
effort made to get her marketable. There
were attempts to pair her off as a twin sister
of various correspondencies in age, size, and
color, and to palm her off, as a substitute, at
migratory, bereaved, overfull breasts. No
thing equaled a negro-trader s will and power
for fraud, except the hereditary distrust and
A CRIPPLED HOPE
109
watchfulness which it bred and maintained.
And so, in the even balance between the two
categories, the little cripple remained a fixture
in the stream of life that passed through that
" LITTLE MAMMY."
back room, in the fluxes and refluxes of buy
ing and selling ; not valueless, however
rely upon a negro-trader for discovering val
ues as substitutes, as panaceas. She earned
her nourishment, and Providence did not let
I io BALCONY STORIES
it kill the little animal before the emancipation
of weaning arrived.
How much circumstances evoked, how
much instinct responded, belongs to the se
crets which nature seems to intend keeping.
As a baby she had eyes, attention, solely for
other babies. One cannot say while she was
still crawling, for she could only crawl years
after she should have been walking, but, be
fore even precocious walking-time, tradition
or the old gray-haired negro janitor relates,
she would creep from baby to baby to play
with it, put it to sleep, pat it, rub its stomach
(a negro baby, you know, is all stomach, and
generally aching stomach at that). And be
fore she had a lap, she managed to force one
for some ailing nursling. It was then that
they began to call her "little Mammy." In
the transitory population of the " pen " no one
stayed long enough to give her another name ;
and no one ever stayed short enough to give
her another one.
Her first recollection of herself was that
she could not walk she was past crawling;
she cradled herself along, as she called sit
ting down flat, and working herself about
with her hands and her one strong leg.
A CRIPPLED HOPE HI
Babbling babies walked all around her,
many walking before they babbled, and
still she did not walk, imitate them as she
might and did. She would sit and "study"
about it, make another trial, fall ; sit and
study some more, make another trial, fall
again. Negroes, who believe that they must
give a reason for everything even if they
have to invent one, were convinced that it
was all this studying upon her lameness that %
gave her such a large head.
And now she began secretly turning up
the clothes of every negro child that came
into that pen, and examining its legs, and
still more secretly examining her own,
stretched out before her on the ground.
How long it took she does not remember;
in fact, she could not have known, for she
had no way of measuring time except by her
thoughts and feelings. But in her own way
and time the due process of deliberation was
fulfilled, and the quotient made clear that,
bowed or not, all children s legs were of
equal length except her own, and all were
alike, not one full, strong, hard, the other
soft, flabby, wrinkled, growing out of a knot
at the hip. A whole psychological period
112 BALCONY STORIES
apparently lay between that conclusion and
a broom-handle walking-stick; but the
broomstick came, as it was bound to come,
thank heaven! from that premise, and what
with stretching one limb to make it longer,
and doubling up the other to make it shorter,
she invented that form of locomotion which
is still carrying her through life, and with
no more exaggerated leg-crookedness than
many careless negroes born with straight
limbs display. This must have been when
she was about eight or nine. Hobbling onv
a broomstick, with, no doubt, the same weird,
wizened face as now, an innate sense of the
fitness of things must have suggested the
kerchief tied around her big head, and the
burlaps rag of an apron in front of her linsey-
woolsey rag of a gown, and the bit of broken
pipe-stem in the corner of her mouth, where
the pipe should have been, and where it was
in after years. That is the way she recol
lected herself, and that is the way one recalls
her now, with a few modifications.
The others came and went, but she was
always there. It was n t long before she be
came "little Mammy" to the grown folks
too ; and the newest inmates soon learned to
A CRIPPLED HOPE 113
cry : " Where s little Mammy ? " " Oh, little
Mammy ! little Mammy ! Such a misery in
my head [or my back, or my stomach] !
Can t you help me, little Mammy ? " It was
curious what a quick eye she had for symp
toms and ailments, and what a quick ear for
suffering, and how apt she was at picking up,
remembering, and inventing remedies. It
never occurred to her not to crouch at the
head or the foot of a sick pallet, day and
night through. As for the nights, she said
she dared not close her eyes of nights. The
room they were in was so vast, and some
times the negroes lay so thick on the floor,
rolled in their blankets (you know, even in
the summer they sleep under blankets), all
snoring so loudly, she would never have
heard a groan or a whimper any more than
they did, if she had slept, too. And negro
mothers are so careless and such heavy
sleepers. All night she would creep at
regular intervals to the different pallets, and
draw the little babies from under, or away
from, the heavy, inert impending mother
forms. There is no telling how many she thus
saved from being overlaid and smothered, or,
what was worse, maimed and crippled,
U4 BALCONY STORIES
Whenever a physician came in, as he was
sometimes called, to look at a valuable invest
ment or to furbish up some piece of damaged
goods, she always managed to get near to
hear the directions ; and she generally was
the one to apply them also, for negroes al
ways would steal medicines most scurvily
one from the other. And when death at
times would slip into the pen, despite the tra
der s utmost alertness and precautions, as
death often "had to do," little Mammy said,
when the time of some of them came to
die, and when the rest of the negroes, with
African greed of eye for the horrible, would
press around the lowly couch where the
agonizing form of a slave lay writhing out
of life, she would always to the last give
medicines, and wipe the cold forehead, and
soothe the clutching, fearsome hands, hop
ing to the end, and trying to inspire the
hope that his or her "time" had not come
yet; for, as she said, "Our time does n t
come just as often as it does come."
And in those sad last offices, which some
how have always been under reproach as a
kind of shame, no matter how young she
was, she was always too old to have the
A CRIPPLED HOPE 115
childish avoidance of them. On the con
trary, to her a corpse was only a kind of
baby, and she always strove, she said, to
make one, like the other, easy and com
fortable.
And in other emergencies she divined the
mysteries of the flesh, as other precocities
divine the mysteries of painting and music,
and so become child wonders.
Others came and went. She alone re
mained there. Babies of her babyhood
the toddlers she, a toddler, had nursed
were having babies themselves now; the mid
dle-aged had had time to grow old and die.
Every week new families were coming into
the great back chamber; every week they
passed out: babies, boys, girls, buxom wen
ches, stalwart youths, and the middle-aged
the grave, serious ones whom misfortune
had driven from their old masters, and the
ill-reputed ones, the trickish, thievish, lazy,
whom the cunning of the negro-trader alone
could keep in circulation. All were market
able, all were bought and sold, all passed in
one door and out the other all except her,
little Mammy. As with her lameness, it took
time for her to recognize, to understand, the
n6 BALCONY STORIES
fact. She could study over her lameness, she
could in the dull course of time think out the
broomstick way of palliation. It would have
been almost better, under the circumstances,
for God to have kept the truth from her; only
God keeps so little of the truth from us
women. It is his system.
Poor little thing ! It was not now that her
master could not sell her, but he would not !
Out of her own intelligence she had forged
her chains; the lameness was a hobble merely
in comparison. She had become too valuable
to the negro-trader by her services among his
crew, and offers only solidified his determina
tion not to sell her. Visiting physicians, after
short acquaintance with her capacities, would
offer what were called fancy prices for her.
Planters who heard of her through their pur
chases would come to the city purposely to
secure, at any cost, so inestimable an adjunct
to their plantations. Even ladies refined,
delicate ladies sometimes came to the pen
personally to back money with influence. In
vain. Little Mammy was worth more to the
negro-trader, simply as a kind of insurance
against accidents, than any sum, however
glittering the figure, and he was no ignorant
A CRIPPLED HOPE 117
expert in human wares. She can tell it ; no
one else can for her. Remember that at
times she had seen the streets outside. Re
member that she could hear of the outside
world daily from the passing chattels of the
plantations, farms, families ; the green fields,
Sunday woods, running streams ; the camp-
meetings, corn-shuckings, cotton-pickings, su-
gar-grindings ; the baptisms, marriages, fu
nerals, prayer-meetings; the holidays and holy
days. Remember that, whether for liberty or
whether for love, passion effloresces in the
human being no matter when, where, or
how with every spring s return. Remem
ber that she was, even in middle age, young
and vigorous. But no ; do not remember
anything. There is no need to heighten the
coloring.
It would be tedious to relate, although it
was not tedious to hear her relate it, the des
perations and hopes of her life then. Hardly
a day passed that she did not see, looking for
purchases (rummaging among goods on a
counter for bargains), some master whom she
could have loved, some mistress whom she
could have adored. Always her favorite mis
tresses were there tall, delicate matrons,
8*
ii8 BALCONY STORIES
who came themselves, with great fatigue, to
select kindly-faced women for nurses ; lan
guid-looking ladies with smooth hair stand
ing out in wide bandeaux from their heads,
and lace shawls dropping from their sloping
shoulders, silk dresses carelessly held up in
thumb and finger from embroidered petticoats
that were spread out like tents over huge
hoops which covered whole groups of swarm
ing piccaninnies on the dirty floor; ladies, pale
from illnesses that she might have nursed,
and over-burdened with children whom she
might have reared ! And not a lady of that
kind saw her face but wanted her, yearned
for her, pleaded for her, coming back secretly
to slip silver, and sometimes gold, pieces into
her hand, patting her turbaned head, calling
her little Mammy" too, instantly, by inspira
tion, and making the negro-trader give them,
with all sorts of assurances, the refusal of her.
She had no need for the whispered "Buy me,
master!" "Buy me, mistress!" "You 11 see
how I can work, master!" "You 11 never be
sorry, mistress!" of the others. The negro-
trader like hangmen, negro-traders are fit
ted by nature for their profession it came
into his head he had no heart, not even
A CRIPPLED HOPE 119
a negro- trader s heart that it would be more
judicious to seclude her during these shop
ping visits, so to speak. She could not have
had any hopes then at all; it must have been
all desperations.
That auction-block, that executioner s block,
about which so much has been written Ja
cob s ladder, in his dream, was nothing to
what that block appeared nightly in her
dreams to her; and the climbers up and down
well, perhaps Jacob s angels were his
hopes, too.
At times she determined to depreciate her
usefulness, mar her value, by renouncing her
heart, denying her purpose. For days she
would tie her kerchief over her ears and eyes,
and crouch in a corner, strangling her im
pulses. She even malingered, refused food, be
came dumb. And she might have succeeded
in making herself salable through incipient
lunacy, if through no other way, had she been
able to maintain her role long enough. But
some woman or baby always was falling into
some emergency of pain and illness.
How it might have ended one does not like
to think. Fortunately, one does not need to
think.
120 BALCONY STORIES
There came a night. She sat alone in the
vast, dark caravansary alone for the first
time in her life. Empty rags and blankets lay
strewn over the floor, no snoring, no tossing
in them more. A sacrificial sale that day had
cleared the counters. Alarm-bells rang in the
streets, but she did not know them for alarm-
bells ; alarm brooded in the dim space around
her, but she did not even recognize that. Her
protracted tension of heart had made her fear-
blind to all but one peradventure.
Once or twice she forgot herself, and
limped over to some heap to relieve an ima
ginary struggling babe or moaning sleeper.
Morning came. She had dozed. She looked
to see the rag-heaps stir ; they lay as still as
corpses. The alarm-bells had ceased. She
looked to see a new gang enter the far door.
She listened for the gathering buzzing of
voices in the next room, around the auction -
block. She waited for the trader. She
waited for the janitor. At nightfall a file of
soldiers entered. They drove her forth,
ordering her in the voice, in the tone, of the
negro-trader. That was the only familiar
thing in the chaos of incomprehensibility
about her. She hobbled through the auction-
A CRIPPLED HOPE 121
room. Posters, advertisements, papers, lay
on the floor, and in the torch-light glared
from the wall. Her Jacob s ladder, her step
ping-stone to her hopes, lay overturned in
a corner.
You divine it. The negro-trader s trade
was abolished, and he had vanished in the din
and smoke of a war which he had not been
entirely guiltless of producing, leaving little
Mammy locked up behind him. Had he for
gotten her? One cannot even hope so. She
hobbled out into the street, leaning on her
nine-year-old broomstick (she had grown
only slightly beyond it ; could still use it by
bending over it), her head tied in a rag ker
chief, a rag for a gown, a rag for an apron.
Free, she was free ! But she had not hoped
for freedom. The plantation, the household,
the delicate ladies, the teeming children,
broomsticks they were in comparison to free
dom, but, that was what she had asked,
what she had prayed for. God, she said, had
let her drop, just as her mother had done.
More than ever she grieved, as she crept
down the street, that she had never mounted
the auctioneer s block. An ownerless free
negro ! She knew no one whose duty it was
122 BALCONY STORIES
to help her ; no one knew her to help her.
In the whole world (it was all she had asked)
there was no white child to call her mammy,
no white lady or gentleman (it was the ex
tent of her dreams) beholden to her as to a
nurse. And all her innumerable black bene
ficiaries ! Even the janitor, whom she had
tended as the others, had deserted her like
his white prototype.
She tried to find a place for herself, but she
had no indorsers, no recommenders. She
dared not mention the name of the negro-
trader; it banished her not only from the
households of the whites, but from those of
the genteel of her own color. And every
where soldiers sentineled the streets sol
diers whose tone and accent reminded her
of the negro-trader.
Her sufferings, whether imaginary or real,
were sufficiently acute to drive her into the
only form of escape which once had been pos
sible to friendless negroes. She became a
runaway. With a bundle tied to the end of a
stick over her shoulder, just as the old prints
represent it, she fled from her homelessness
and loneliness, from her ignoble past, and the
heart-disappointing termination of it. Follow
ing a railroad track, journeying afoot, sleep-
A CRIPPLED HOPE 123
ing by the roadside, she lived on until she
came to the one familiar landmark in life to
her a sick woman, but a white one. And
so, progressing from patient to patient (it was
a time when sick white women studded the
country like mile-posts), she arrived at a little
town, a kind of a refuge for soldiers wives and
widows. She never traveled further. She
could not. Always, as in the pen, some
emergency of pain and illness held her.
That is all. She is still there. The poor,
poor women of that stricken region say that
little Mammy was the only alleviation God
left them after Sheridan passed through ; and
the richer ones say very much the same
thing
But one should hear her tell it herself, as
has been said, on a cold, gloomy winter day
in the country, the fire glimmering on the
hearth; the overworked husband in the fields;
the baby quiet at last ; the mother uneasy,
restless, thought-driven ; the soft black hand
rubbing backward and forward, rubbing out
aches and frets and nervousness.
The eyelids droop ; the firelight plays fan
tasies on the bed- curtains ; the ear drops
words, sentences ; one gets confused one
sleeps one dreams.
ONE OF US"
-ONE OF US"
AT the first glance one might have been
inclined to doubt; but at the second
anybody would have recognized her that
is, with a little mental rehabilitation : the
bright little rouge spots in the hollow of her
cheek, the eyebrows well accentuated with
paint, the thin lips rose-tinted, and the dull,
straight hair frizzed and curled and twisted
and turned by that consummate rascal and
artist, the official beautifier and rectifier of
stage humanity, Robert, the opera coiffeur.
Who in the world knows better than he
the gulf between the real and the ideal,
the limitations between the natural and the
romantic ?
Yes, one could see her, in that time-
honored thin silk dress of hers stiffened into
brocade by buckram underneath ; the high,
low-necked waist, hiding any evidences of
breast, if there were such evidences to hide,
127
128 BALCONY STORIES
and bringing the long neck into such faulty
prominence ; and the sleeves, crisp puffs of
tulle divided by bands of red velvet, through
which the poor lean arm runs like a wire,
stringing them together like beads. Yes, it
was she, the whilom dugazon of the opera
troupe. Not that she ever was a diigazon,
but that was what her voice once aspired
to be : a dugazon manquee would better
describe her.
What a ghost ! But they always appeared
like mere evaporations of real women. For
what woman of flesh and blood can seriously
maintain through life the role of sham at
tendant on sham sensations, and play public
celebrant of other women s loves and lovers,
singing, or rather saying, nothing more en
livening than: "Oh, madame ! " and "Ah,
madame ! " and " Qitelle ivressc!" or " Qzielle
horreiir!" or, in recitative, detailing what
ever dreary platitudes and inanities the li
brettist and Heaven connive to put upon
the tongues of confidantes and attendants ?
Looking at her how it came over one!
The music, the lights, the scene ; the fat so
prano confiding to her the fact of the "amour
extreme " she bears for the tenor, to which
n
TO POSE IN ABJECT PATIENCE AND AWKWARDNESS,"
"ONE OF US" 131
she, the dugazon^ does not even try to listen;
her eyes wandering listlessly over the au
dience. The calorous secret out, and in her
possession, how she stumbles over her train
to the back of the stage, there to pose in
abject patience and awkwardness, while the
gallant barytone, touching his sword, and
flinging his cape over his shoulder, defies the
world and the tenor, who is just recovering
from his " ut de poitrine " behind the scenes.
She was talking to me all the time, apolo
gizing for the intrusion, explaining her mis
sion, which involved a short story of her life,
as women s intrusions and missions usually
do. But my thoughts, also as usual, dis
tracted me from listening, as so often they
have distracted me from following what was
perhaps more profitable.
The composer, of course, wastes no music
upon her ; flinging to her only an occasional
recitative in two notes, but always ending in
a reef of a scale, trill, or roulade, for her
to wreck her voice on before the audience.
The chef d orchestre, if he is charitable,
starts her off with a contribution from his
own lusty lungs, and then she oh, her voice
is always thinner and more osseous than her
132 BALCONY STORIES
arms, and her smile no more graceful than
her train !
As well think of the simulated trees, water
falls, and chateaux leaving the stage, as the
dugazon ! One always imagines them sing
ing on into dimness, dustiness, unsteadiness,
and uselessness, until, like any other piece
of stage property, they are at last put
aside and simply left there at the end of
some season there seems to be a super
stition against selling or burning useless and
dilapidated stage property. As it came to
me, the idea was not an impossibility. The
last representation of the season is over.
She, tired beyond judgment haply, beyond
feeling by her tireless role, sinks upon her
chair to rest. in her dressing-room; sinks,
further, to sleep. She has no maid. The
troupe, hurrying away to France on the
special train waiting not half a dozen blocks
away, forget her the insignificant are so
easily forgotten ! The porter, more tired,
perhaps, than any one of the beautiful ideal
world about him, and savoring already in
advance the good onion-flavored grillade
awaiting him at home, locks up everything
fast and tight ; the tighter and faster for the
"ONE OF US" 133
good fortnight s vacation he has promised
himself.
No doubt if the old opera-house were ever
cleaned out, just such a heap of stiff, wire-
strung bones would be found, in some such
hole as the dugazoris dressing-room, desic
cating away in its last costume perhaps in
that very costume of Inez ; and if one were
venturesome enough to pass Allhallowe en
there, the spirit of those bones might be seen
availing itself of the privilege of unasperged
corpses to roam. Not singing, not talking
it is an anachronism to say that ghosts talk :
their medium of communication must be pure
thought ; and one should be able to see their
thoughts working, just as one sees the work
ing of the digestive organs in the clear vis
cera of transparent animalculae. The hard
thing of it is that ghosts are chained to the
same scenes that chained their bodies, and
when they sleep-walk, so to speak, it must
be through phases of former existence.
What a nightmare for them to go over once
again the lived and done, the suffered and
finished ! What a comfort to wake up and
find one s self dead, well dead !
I could have continued and put the whole
9*
134 BALCONY STORIES
opera troupe in "costume de ghost," but I
think it was the woman s eyes that drew me
back to her face and her story. She had a
sensible face, now that I observed her natu
rally, as it were ; and her. hands, how I have
agonized over those hands on the stage !
all knuckles and exaggerated veins, clutch
ing her dress as she sang, or, petrified,
outstretched to Leonards " Pourquoi ces
larmes?" her hands were the hands of an
honest, hard-working woman who buckrams
her own skirts, and at need could scrub her
own floor. Her face (my description follow
ing my wandering glance) her face was
careworn, almost to desuetude ; not dissipa
tion-worn, as, alas ! the faces of the more
gifted ladies of opera troupes too often are.
There was no fattening in it of pastry, truf
fles, and bonbons ; upon it none of the tracery
left by nightly champagne tides and ripples ;
and consequently her figure, under her plain
dress, had not that for display which the
world has conventioned to call charms.
Where a window-cord would hardly have
sufficed to girdle Leonore, a necklace would
have served her. She had not beauty
enough to fear the flattering dangers of
"ONE OF US" 135
masculine snares and temptations, or there
may have been other reasons, but as a
wife there was something about her that
guaranteed it she would have blossomed
love and children as a fig-tree does figs.
In truth, she was just talking about chil
dren. The first part of her story had passed:
her birthplace, education, situation ; and now
she was saying :
" I have always had the temptation, but
I have always resisted it. Now," with a
blush at her excuse, "it may be your spring
weather, your birds, your flowers, your sky
and your children in the streets. The longing
came over me yesterday : I thought of it on
the stage, I thought of it afterward it was
better than sleeping; and this morning"
her eyes moistened, she breathed excitedly
"I was determined. I gave up, I made
inquiry, I was sent to you. Would it be
possible? Would there be any place" ("any
role," she said first) "in any of your asylums,
in any of your charitable institutions, for me ?
I would ask nothing but my clothes and food,
and very little of that ; the recompense would
be the children the little girl children,"
with a smile can you imagine the smile of
136 BALCONY STORIES
a woman dreaming of children that might
be ? " Think ! Never to have held a child in
my arms more than a moment, never to have
felt a child s arms about my neck ! Never to
have known a child ! Born on a stage, my
mother born on a stage ! " Ah, there were
tragic possibilities in that voice and move
ment ! "Pardon, madam. You see how I
repeat. And you must be very wearied
hearing about me. But I could be their
nurse and their servant. I would bathe and
dress them, play with them, teach them their
prayers ; and when they are sick they would
see no difference. They would not know but
what their mother was there ! "
Oh, she had her program all prepared ;
one could see that.
" And I would sing to them no! no!"
with a quick gesture, "nothing from the
stage ; little songs and lullabys I have picked
up traveling around, and," hesitating, "little
things I have composed myself little things
that I thought children would like to hear
some day." What did she not unconsciously
throw into those last words? "I dream of
it," she pursued, talking with as little regard
to me as on the stage she sang to the
4 <ONE OF US" 137
prima donna. " Their little arms, their
little faces, their little lips ! And in an
asylum there would be so many of them !
When they cried and were in trouble I
would take them in my lap, and I would
say to them, with all sorts of tenderness "
She had arranged that in her program,
too all the minutiae of what she would
say to them in their distress. But women
are that way. When once they begin
to love, their hearts are magnifying-lenses
for them to feel through. "And my heart
hungers to commence right here, now, at
once ! It seems to me I cannot wait. Ah,
madam, no more stage, no more opera ! "
speaking quickly, feverishly. "As I said, it
may be your beautiful spring, your flowers,
your birds, and your numbers of children. I
have always loved that place most where
there are most children ; and you have more
children here than I ever saw anywhere.
Children are so beautiful ! It is strange, is
it not, when you consider my life and my
rearing ? "
Her life, her rearing, how interesting they
must have been ! What a pity I had not
listened more attentively !
138 BALCONY STORIES
" They say you have much to do with
asylums here."
Evidently, when roles do not exist in life
for certain characters, God has to create
them. And thus He had to create a role in an
asylum for my friend, for so she became from
the instant she spoke of children as she did.
It was the poorest and neediest of asylums;
and the poor little orphaned wretches but
it is better not to speak of them. How can
God ever expect to rear children without
their mothers !
But the role I craved to create for my
friend was far different some good, honest
bourgeois interior, where lips are coarse and
cheeks are ruddy, and where life is composed
of real scenes, set to the real music of life, the
homely successes and failures, and loves and
hates, and embraces and tears, that fill out
the orchestra of the heart ; where romance
and poetry abound au nature I ; and where
yes, where children grow as thick as nature
permits : the domestic interior of the opera
porter, for instance, or the clockmaker over
the way. But what a loss the orphan-asylum
would have suffered, and the dreary lacking
there would have been in the lives of the
"ONE OF US" 139
children ! For there must have been moments
in the lives of the children in that asylum
when they felt, awake, as they felt in their
sleep when they dreamed their mothers were
about them.
THE LITTLE CONVENT GIRL
THE LITTLE CONVENT GIRL
SHE was coming down on the boat from
Cincinnati, the little convent girl. Two
sisters had brought her aboard. They
gave her in charge of the captain, got her a
state-room, saw that the new little trunk was
put into it, hung the new little satchel up on
the wall, showed her how to bolt the door
at night, shook hands with her for good-by
(good-bys have really no significance for
sisters), and left her there. After a while
the bells all rang, and the boat, in the
awkward elephantine fashion of boats, got
into midstream. The chambermaid found
her sitting on the chair in the state-room
where the sisters had left her, and showed
her how to sit on a chair in the saloon. And
there she sat until the captain came and
hunted her up for supper. She could not do
anything of herself; she had to be initiated
into everything by some one else.
143
H4 BALCONY STORIES
She was known on the boat only as "the
little convent girl." Her name, of course,
was registered in the clerk s office, but on a
steamboat no one thinks of consulting the
clerk s ledger. It is always the little widow,
the fat madam, the tall colonel, the parson,
etc. The captain, who pronounced by the
letter, always called her the little convent
girl. She was the beau-ideal of the little,
convent girl. She never raised her eyes
except when spoken to. Of course she
never spoke first, even to the chambermaid,
and when she did speak it was in the wee,
shy, furtive voice one might imagine a just-
budding violet to have ; and she walked with
such soft, easy, carefully calculated steps that
one naturally felt the penalties that must
have secured them penalties dictated by a
black code of deportment.
She was dressed in deep mourning. Her
black straw hat was trimmed with stiff new
crape, and her stiff new bombazine dress had
crape collar and cuffs. She wore her hair in
two long plaits fastened around her head
tight and fast. Her hair had a strong incli
nation to curl, but that had been taken out of
.it as austerely as the noise out of her footfalls.
THE SISTERS BID HER GOOD-BY.
THE LITTLE CONVENT GIRL 14?
Her hair was as black as her dress ; her
eyes, when one saw them, seemed blacker
than either, on account of the bluishness of
the white surrounding the pupil. Her eye
lashes were almost as thick as the black veil
which the sisters had fastened around her hat
with an extra pin the very last thing before
leaving. She had a round little face, and a
tiny pointed chin ; her mouth was slightly
protuberant from the teeth, over which she
tried to keep her lips well shut, the effort
giving them a pathetic little forced expres
sion. Her complexion was sallow, a pale
sallow, the complexion of a brunette bleached
in darkened rooms. The only color about
her was a blue taffeta ribbon from which
a large silver medal of the Virgin hung over
the place where a breastpin should have been.
She was so little, so little, although she was
eighteen, as the sisters told the captain ;
otherwise they would not have permitted her
to travel all the way to New Orleans alone.
Unless the captain or the clerk remem
bered to fetch her out in front, she would sit
all day in the cabin, in the same place,
crocheting lace, her spool of thread and box
of patterns in her lap, on the handkerchief
148 BALCONY STORIES
spread to save her new dress. Never leaning
back oh, no ! always straight and stiff, as if
the conventual back board were there within
call. She would eat only convent fare at
first, notwithstanding the importunities of the
waiters, and the jocularities of the captain,
and particularly of the clerk. Every one
knows the fund of humor possessed by a
steamboat clerk, and what a field for display
the table at meal-times affords. On Friday
she fasted rigidly, and she never began to
eat, or finished, without a little Latin move
ment of the lips and a sign of the cross.
And always at six o clock of the evening she
remembered the angelus, although there was
no church bell to remind her of it.
She was in mourning for her father, the
sisters told the captain, and she was going to
New Orleans to her mother. She had not
seen her mother since she was an infant, on
account of some disagreement between the
parents, in consequence of which the father
had brought her to Cincinnati, and placed
her in the convent. There she had been for
twelve years, only going to her father for
vacations and holidays. So long as the fa
ther lived he would never let the child have
THE LITTLE CONVENT GIRL 149
any communication with her mother. Now
that he was dead all that was changed, and
the first thing that the girl herself wanted to
do was to go to her mother.
The mother superior had arranged it all
with the mother of the girl, who was to come
personally to the boat in New Orleans, and
receive her child from the captain, presenting
a letter from the mother superior, a facsimile
of which the sisters gave the captain.
It is a long voyage from Cincinnati to
New Orleans, the rivers doing their best
to make it interminable, embroidering them
selves ad libitum all over the country.
Every five miles, and sometimes oftener, the
boat would stop to put off or take on freight,
if not both. The little convent girl, sitting
in the cabin, had her terrible frights at first
from the hideous noises attendant on these
landings the whistles, the ringings of the
bells, the running to and fro, the shouting.
Every time she thought it was shipwreck,
death, judgment, purgatory ; and her sins !
her sins ! She would drop her crochet, and
clutch her prayer-beads from her pocket, and
relax the constraint over her lips, which
would go to rattling off prayers with the ve-
10*
150
BALCONY STORIES
locity of a relaxed windlass. That was at
first, before the captain took to fetching her
out in front to see the boat make a landing.
WATCHING A LANDING.
Then she got to liking it so much that she
would stay all day just where the captain put
her, going inside only for her meals. She
THE LITTLE CONVENT GIRL 151
forgot herself at times so much that she
would draw her chair a little closer to the
railing, and put up her veil, actually, to see
better. No one ever usurped her place,
quite in front, or intruded upon her either
with word or look ; for every one learned to
know her shyness, and began to feel a per
sonal interest in her, and all wanted the
little convent girl to see everything that
she possibly could.
And it was worth seeing the balancing
and chasseeing and waltzing of the cumber
some old boat to make a landing. It seemed
to be always attended with the difficulty and
the improbability of a new enterprise ; and
the relief when it did sidle up anywhere
within rope s-throw of the spot aimed at !
And the roustabout throwing the rope from
the perilous end of the dangling gang-plank !
And the dangling roustabouts hanging like
drops of water from it dropping sometimes
twenty feet to the land, and not infrequently
into the river itself. And then what a roll
ing of barrels, and shouldering of sacks, and
singing of Jim Crow songs, and pacing of
Jim Crow steps ; and black skins glistening
through torn shirts, and white teeth gleaming
152 BALCONY STORIES
through red lips, and laughing, and talking
and bewildering ! entrancing ! Surely the
little convent girl in her convent walls never
dreamed of so much unpunished noise and
movement in the world !
The first time she heard the mate it must
have been like the first time woman ever
heard man curse and swear, she turned
pale, and ran quickly, quickly into the saloon,
and came out again? No, indeed! not with
all the soul she had to save, and all the other
sins on her conscience. She shook her head
resolutely, and was not seen in her chair
on deck again until the captain not only re
assured her, but guaranteed his reassurance.
And after that, whenever the boat was about
to make a landing, the mate would first
glance up to the guards, and if the little con
vent girl was sitting there he would change
his invective to sarcasm, and politely request
the colored gentlemen not to hurry them
selves on no account whatever; to take
their time about shoving out the plank ; to
send the rope ashore -by post-office write
him when it got there ; begging them not
to strain their backs ; calling them mister,
colonel, major, general, prince, and your royal
THE LITTLE CONVENT GIRL 153
highness, which was vastly amusing. At
night, however, or when the little convent
girl was not there, language flowed in its
natural curve, the mate swearing like a
pagan to make up for lost time.
The captain forgot himself one day : it was
when the boat ran aground in the most un
expected manner and place, and he went to
work to express his opinion, as only steamboat
captains can, of the pilot, mate, engineer, crew,
boat, river, country, and the world in general,
ringing the bell, first to back, then to head,
shouting himself hoarser than his own whistle
when he chanced to see the little black
figure hurrying through the chaos on the
deck ; and the captain stuck as fast aground
in midstream as the boat had done.
In the evening the little convent girl would
be taken on the upper deck, and going up
the steep stairs there was such confusion, to
keep the black skirts well over the stiff white
petticoats ; and, coming clown, such blushing
when suspicion would cross the unprepared
face that a rim of white stocking might be
visible ; and the thin feet, laced so tightly in
the glossy new leather boots, would cling to
each successive step as if they could never,
154 BALCONY STORIES
never make another venture ; and then one
boot would (there is but that word) hesitate
out, and feel and feel around, and have such a
pause of helpless agony as if indeed the next
step must have been wilfully removed, or was
nowhere to be found on the wide, wide earth.
It was a miracle that the pilot ever got
her up into the pilot-house ; but pilots have
a lonely time, and do not hesitate even at
miracles when there is a chance for company.
He would place a box for her to climb to the
tall bench behind the wheel, and he would
arrange the cushions, and open a window
here to let in air, and shut one there to cut
off a draft, as if there could be no tenderer
consideration in life for him than her comfort.
And he would talk of the river to her, explain
the chart, pointing out eddies, whirlpools,
shoals, depths, new beds, old beds, cut-offs,
caving banks, and making banks, as ex
quisitely and respectfully as if she had been
the River Commission.
It was his opinion that there was as great
a river as the Mississippi flowing directly
under it an underself of a river, as much a
counterpart of the other as the second story
of a house is of the first ; in fact, he said they
THE LITTLE CONVENT GIRL 155
were navigating through the upper story.
Whirlpools were holes in the floor of the
upper river, so to speak ; eddies were rifts
and cracks. And deep under the earth,
hurrying toward the subterranean stream,
were other streams, small and great, but all
deep, hurrying to and from that great mother-
stream underneath, just as the small and great
overground streams hurry to and from their
mother Mississippi. It was almost more than
the little convent girl could take in : at least
such was the expression of her eyes; for they
opened as all eyes have to open at pilot
stories. And he knew as much of astronomy
as he did of hydrology, could call the stars
by name, and define the shapes of the con
stellations ; and she, who had studied astron
omy at the convent, was charmed to find
that what she had learned was all true. It
was in the pilot-house, one night, that she
forgot herself for the first time in her life, and
stayed up until after nine o clock. Although
she appeared almost intoxicated at the wild
pleasure, she was immediately overwhelmed
at the wickedness of it, and observed much
more rigidity of conduct thereafter. The
engineer, the boiler-men, the firemen, the
156 BALCONY STORIES
stokers, they all knew when the little convent
girl was up in the pilot-house : the speaking-
tube became so mild and gentle.
With all the delays of river and boat, how
ever, there is an end to the journey from Cin
cinnati to New Orleans. The latter city,
which at one time to the impatient seemed
at the terminus of the never, began, all of a
sudden, one day to make its nearingness felt ;
and from that period every other interest
paled before the interest in the immanence
of arrival into port, and the whole boat was
seized with a panic of preparation, the little
convent girl with the others. Although so
immaculate was she in person and effects that
she might have been struck with a landing,
as some good people might be struck with
death, at any moment without fear of results,
her trunk was packed and repacked, her
satchel arranged and rearranged, and, the last
day, her hair was brushed and plaited and
smoothed over and over again until the very
last glimmer of a curl disappeared. Her dress
was whisked, as if for microscopic inspection ;
her face was washed ; and her finger-nails
were scrubbed with the hard convent nail
brush, until the disciplined little tips ached
THE LITTLE CONVENT GIRL i$7
with a pristine soreness. And still there were
hours to wait, and still the boat added up
delays. But she arrived at last, after all, with
not more than the usual and expected differ
ence between the actual and the advertised
time of arrival.
There was extra blowing and extra ringing,
shouting, commanding, rushing up the gang
way and rushing down the gangway. The
clerks, sitting behind tables on the first deck,
were plied, in the twinkling of an eye, with
estimates, receipts, charges, countercharges,
claims, reclaims, demands, questions, accusa
tions, threats, all at topmost voices. None but
steamboat clerks could have stood it. And
there were throngs composed of individuals
every one of whom wanted to see the captain
first and at once : and those who could not get
to him shouted over the heads of the others ;
and as usual he lost his temper and politeness,
and began to do what he termed " hustle."
" Captain ! Captain ! " a voice called him to
where a hand plucked his sleeve, and a letter
was thrust toward him. The cross, and the
name of the convent." He recognized the en-
o
velop of the mother superior. He read the
duplicate of the letter given by the sisters.
158 BALCONY STORIES
He looked at the woman the mother
casually, then again and again.
The little convent girl saw him coming,
leading some one toward her. She rose. The
captain took her hand first, before the other
greeting, " Good-by, my clear," he said. He
tried to add something else, but seemed un
determined what. " Be a good little girl "
It was evidently all he could think of. Nod
ding to the woman behind him, he turned on
his heel, and left.
One of the deck-hands was sent to fetch
her trunk. He walked out behind them,
through the cabin, and the crowd on deck,
down the stairs, and out over the gangway.
The little convent girl and her mother went
with hands tightly clasped. She did not turn
her eyes to the right or left, or once (what
all passengers do) look backward at the boat
which, however slowly, had carried her surely
over dangers that she wot not of. All looked
at her as she passed. All wanted to say good-
by to the little convent girl, to see the mother
who had been deprived of her so long. Some
expressed surprise in a whistle; some in other
ways. All exclaimed audibly, or to them
selves, " Colored ! "
THE LITTLE CONVENT GIRL 159
IT takes about a month to make the round
trip from New Orleans to Cincinnati and back,
counting five days stoppage in New Orleans.
It was a month to a day when the steamboat
came puffing and blowing up to the wharf
again, like a stout dowager after too long a
walk ; and the same scene of confusion was
enacted, as it had been enacted twelve times
a year, at almost the same wharf for twenty
years ; and the same calm, a death calmness by
contrast, followed as usual the next morning.
The decks were quiet and clean; one cargo
had just been delivered, part of another stood
ready on the levee to be shipped. The cap
tain was there waiting for his business to
begin, the clerk was in his office getting his
books ready, the voice of the mate could be
heard below, mustering the old crew out and
a new crew in ; for if steamboat crews have
a single principle, and there are those who
deny them any, it is never to ship twice in
succession on the same boat. It was too
early yet for any but roustabouts, marketers,
and church-goers; so early that even the
river was still partly mist-covered ; only in
places could the swift, dark current be seen
rolling swiftly along.
160 BALCONY STORIES
" Captain ! " A hand plucked at his elbow,
as if not confident that the mere calling would
secure attention. The captain turned. The
mother of the little convent girl stood there,
and she held the little convent girl by the
hand. " I have brought her to see you," the
woman said. " You were so kind and she
is so quiet, so still, all the time, I thought it
would do her a pleasure."
She spoke with an accent, and with embar
rassment; otherwise one would have said that
she was bold and assured enough.
" She don t go nowhere, she don t do no
thing but make her crochet and her prayers,
so I thought I would bring her for a little visit
of How d ye do to you."
There was, perhaps, some inflection in the
woman s voice that might have made known,
or at least awakened, the suspicion of some
latent hope or intention, had the captain s ear
been fine enough to detect it. There might
have been something in the little convent
girl s face, had his eye been more sensitive
a trifle paler, maybe, the lips a little tighter
drawn, the blue ribbon a shade faded. He
may have noticed that, but And the visit
of " How cl ye do" came to an end.
THE LITTLE CONVENT GIRL 161
They walked down the stairway, the woman
in front, the little convent girl her hand re
leased to shake hands with the captain
following, across the bared deck, out to the
gangway, over to the middle of it. No one
was looking, no one saw more than a flutter
of white petticoats, a show of white stockings,
as the little convent girl went under the water.
The roustabout dived, as the roustabouts
always do, after the drowning, even at the
risk of their good-for-nothing lives. The
mate himself jumped overboard; but she had
gone down in a whirlpool. Perhaps, as the
pilot had told her whirlpools always did, it
may have carried her through to the under
ground river, to that vast, hidden, dark Mis
sissippi that flows beneath the one we see ;
for her body was never found.
GRANDMOTHER S GRANDMOTHER
GRANDMOTHER S GRANDMOTHER
A"> the grandmother related it fresh from
the primeval sources that feed a grand
mother s memory, it happened thus :
In the early days of the settlement of
Georgia ah, how green and rustic appears
to us now the world in the early days of the
settlement of Georgia ! Sometimes to women,
listening to the stories of their grandmothers,
it seems better to have lived then than now
her grandmother was at that time a young
wife. It was the day of arduous, if not of
long, courtship before marriage, when every
wedding celebrated the close of an original
romance ; and when young couples, for bridal
trips, went out to settle new States, riding
on a pillion generally, with their trousseaux
following as best they could on sumpter
mules ; to hear the grandmother describe it
made one long to be a bride of those days.
ii* 165
1 66 BALCONY STORIES
The young husband had the enumeration
of qualities that went to the making of a man
of that period, and if the qualities were in the
proportion of ten physical to one intellectual,
it does not follow that the grandmother s
grandfather was not a man of parts. For, to
obtain the hand of his bride, an only child
and an heiress, he had to give test of his
mettle by ignoring his fortune, studying law,
and getting his license before marriage, and
binding himself to live the first year after
ward on the proceeds of his practice; a device
of the time thought to be a wholesome cor
rective of the corrupting influence of over-
wealth in young domesticities.
Although he had already chosen the sea
for his profession, and was a midshipman at
the time, with more of a reputation for living
than for learning, such was he, and such, it
may be said, was the incentive genius of his
choice, that almost before his resignation as
midshipman was accepted, his license as a
lawyer was signed. As for practice, it was
currently remarked at his wedding, at the
sight of him flying down the room in the reel
with his bride for partner, that his tongue
was as nimble as his heels, and that if he only
GRANDMOTHER S GRANDMOTHER 167
turned his attention to criminal practice, there
was no man in the country who would make
a better prosecuting attorney for the State.
And with him for prosecuting attorney, it
was warranted that sirrahs the highwaymen
would not continue to hold Georgia judge -
and-jury justice in quite such contemptible
estimation, and that the gallows would not be
left so long bereft of their legitimate swing
ings. As for fees, it was predicted that
the young fellow as he stood, or rather
"chasse d," could snap his fingers at both his
and his bride s trustees.
He did turn his attention to criminal law,
was made prosecuting attorney for the State
in his county, and, before his six months had
passed, was convincing the hitherto high and
mighty, lordly, independent knights of the
road that other counties in Georgia furnished
more secure pasturage for them.
It was a beautiful spring morning. The
young wife bade him a hearty good-by, and
stood in the doorway watching him, gay and
debonair, riding off, on his stout black
charger Beetle, in the direction of the town
in which court was to be held that week.
She herself feeling as full of ambition and
1 68 BALCONY STORIES
work as if she also were prosecuting attorney,
with a perennial spring of eloquence bubbling
in her brain, turned to her domestic duties,
and, without going into the detail of them, it
suffices to say that, according to the grand
mother s estimation, one morning s list of
duties for a healthy young bride of that
period would shame the week s work of a
syndicate of them to-day. Finding herself
nearing the limit of diminution of several
household necessities, and the spring sug
gesting the beginning of new ones, she made
up her mind to profit by her husband s
absence and the fair weather to make a trad
ing visit to the neighboring town next day.
So, early in a morning as beautiful as the
preceding one, mounted on her own stanch
mare Maid Marion, she ambled down the
green over-hung forest-road, in the vista of
which she had watched her husband disappear
the day before ; thinking about what she had
to buy, and thinking, no doubt, much more,
as brides will, of the absent lord and master
as brides of those days loved to consider
and denominate their husbands.
Coming into the little town, the freshly
painted, swinging sign-board of the new tav-
"TURNED TO HER DOMESTIC DUTIES.
GRANDMOTHER S GRANDMOTHER 171
ern, The Honest Georgian," as usual was
the thing to catch her eye; but the instant
after what should she see but Black Beetle
hitched to the rack under the tree that shad
owed the hostelry !
It was not decorous; but she was young,
and the day of her first separation from her
husband had been so long ; and was he not
also, against the firmest of resolutions and
plans, hastening back to her, the separation
being too long for him also ?
Slipping her foot from the stirrup, she
jumped to the ground, and ran into the tavern.
There he stood calling hastily for a drink ;
and her heart more than her eyes took in his,
to her, consecrated signalment the riding-
boots, short -clothes, blue coat, cocked hat,
ruffles. She crept up behind to surprise him,
her face, with its delight and smiles, beyond
her control. She crept, until she saw his
watch-fob dangling against the counter, and
then her heart made a call. He turned. He
was not her husband ! Another man was in
her husband s clothes, a man with a villainous
countenance ! With a scream she gave the
alarm. The stranger turned, dropped his
drink, bounded to the door and out, leaped to
172 BALCONY STORIES
the back of Beetle, gave rein and spur, and
the black horse made good his reputation.
In a second all was hue-and-cry and pursuit.
While men and horses made, for all they were
worth, down the road after Beetle, she on
Maid Marion galloped for her life in the oppo
site direction, the direction of the court town
whither her husband had journeyed. The
mare s hide made acquaintance with the whip
that day if never before, for not even the will
ing Maid Marion could keep pace with the
apprehensions on her back.
Scouring with her eyes the highway ahead
of her, shooting hawk s glances into the forest
on each side of her, the wife rode through
the distance all, all day, praying that the day
might be long enough, might equal the dis
tance. The sun set, and night began to fall ;
but she and Maid Marion were none the less
fresh, except in the heart.
The moon rose straight before them down
the road, lighting it and them through the
threatened obscurity. And so they came to
trarhpled earth and torn grass, and so she un
covered concealed footsteps, and so, creeping
on her hands and knees, she followed traces
of blood, through thicket and glade, into the
GRANDMOTHER S GRANDMOTHER 173
deep forest, to a hastily piled hillock of
earth, gravel, and leaves. Burrowing with her
hands, she came to it, the naked body of her
young husband, cold and stiff, foully murdered.
Maid Marion approached at her call. She
wrapped him in her cloak, and a young
wife of those times alone would do it put
him in the saddle before her : the good mare
Maid Marion alone knows the rest. In the
early gray dawn, from one highway there rode
into the town the baffled pursuers, from the
other the grandmother s grandmother, clasp
ing the corpse of her husband with arms as
stiff as his own ; loving him, so the grand
mother used to say, with a love which, if
ever love could do so, would have effected a
resurrection.
THE OLD LADY S RESTORATION
THE OLD LADY S RESTORATION
THE news came out in the papers that
the old lady had been restored to her
fortune. She had been deprived of it so
long ago that the real manner of her dispos
session had become lost, or at least hidden
under the many versions that had been in
vented to replace lapses of memory, or to
remedy the unpicturesqueness of the original
truth. The face of truth, like the face of
many a good woman, is liable to the accident
of ugliness, and the desire to embellish one
as well as the other need not necessarily
proceed from anything more harmful than
an overweighted love of the beautiful.
If the old lady had not been restored to
her fortune, her personalia would have re
mained in the oblivion which, as one might
say, had accumulated upon everything be
longing to her. But after that newspaper
paragraph, there was such a flowering of
iy8 BALCONY STORIES
memory around her name as would have
done credit to a whole cemetery on All
Saints. It took three generations to do
justice to the old lady, for so long and so
slow had been her descent into poverty that
a grandmother was needed to remember her
setting out upon the road to it.
She set out as most people do, well pro
vided with money, diamonds, pretty clothing,
handsome residence, equipage, opera-box,
beaus (for she was a widow), and so many,
many friends that she could never indulge
in a small party she always had to give
a grand ball to accommodate them. She
made quite an occasion of her first reverse,
some litigation decided against her, and
said it came from the court s having only
one ear, and that preempted by the other
party.
She always said whatever she thought, re
gardless of the consequences, because she
averred truth was so much more interesting
than falsehood. Nothing annoyed her more
in society than to have to listen to the com
positions women make as a substitute for
the original truth. It was as if, when she
went to the theater to hear Shakspere and
THE OLD LADY S RESTORATION 179
Moliere, the actors should try to impose upon
the audience by reciting lines of their own.
Truth was the wit of life and the wit of
books. She traveled her road from affluence
so leisurely that nothing escaped her eyes
or her feelings, and she signaled unhesitat
ingly every stage in it.
" My clear, do you know there is really
such a thing as existence without a carriage
and horses?" "I assure you it is perfectly
new to me to find that an opera-box is not
a necessity. It is a luxury. In theory one
can really never tell the distinction between
luxuries and necessities." How absurd!
At one time I thought hair was given us
only to furnish a profession to hair-dressers ;
just as we wear artificial flowers to support
the flower-makers." "Upon my word, it
is not uninteresting. There is always some
haute nouveaute in economy. The ways of
depriving one s self are infinite. There is
wine, now." "Not own your residence!
As soon not own your tomb as your resi
dence ! My mama used to scream that in
my ears. According to her, it was not
comme il faut to board or live in a rented
house. How little she knew ! "
i8o BALCONY STORIES
When her friends, learning her increasing
difficulties, which they did from the best au
thority (herself), complimented her, as they
were forced to do, upon her still handsome
appearance, pretty laces, feathers, jewelry,
silks, " Fat," she would answer "fat. I am
living off my fat, as bears do in winter. In
truth, I remind myself of an animal in more
ways than one."
And so every one had something to con
tribute to the conversation about her bits
which, they said, affection and admiration
had kept alive in their memory.
Each city has its own roads to certain ends,
its ways of Calvary, so to speak. In New
Orleans the victim seems ever to walk down
Royal street and up Chartres, or vice versa.
One would infer so, at least, from the display
in the shops and windows of those thorough
fares. Old furniture, cut glass, pictures,
books, jewelry, lace, china the fleece (some
times the flesh still sticking to it) left on the
brambles by the driven herd. If there should
some day be a trump of resurrection for de
funct fortunes, those shops would be emptied
in the same twinkling of the eye allowed to
tombs for their rendition of property.
THE OLD LADY S RESTORATION 181
The old lady must have made that prome
nade many, many times, to judge by the sam
ples of her "fat or fleece" displayed in the
windows. She took to hobbling, as if from
tired or sore feet.
" It is nothing," in answer to an inquiry.
" Made-to-order feet learning to walk in
ready-made shoes : that is all. One s feet,
after all, are the most unintelligent part of
one s body." Tea was her abomination, cof
fee her adoration; but she explained: "Tea,
you know, is so detestable that the very
worst is hardly worse than the very best ;
while coffee is so perfect that the smallest
shade of impurity is not to be tolerated. The
truly economical, I observe, always drink tea."
"At one time I thought if all the luxuries of
the world were exposed to me, and but one
choice allowed, I should select gloves. Be
lieve me, there is no superfluity in the world
so easily dispensed with."
As may be supposed, her path led her
farther and farther away from her old friends.
Even her intimates became scarce ; so much
so, that these observations, which, of course,
could be made only to intimates, became
fewer and fewer, unfortunately, for her cir-
182 BALCONY STORIES
cumstances were becoming such that the
remarks became increasingly valuable. The
last thing related of her was apropos of
friends.
" My friends ! My dear, I Cannot tell you
just so, on the spur of the moment, but with
a little reflection and calculation I could tell
you, to a picayune, the rent of every friend
in the market. You can lease, rent, or hire
them, like horses, carriages, opera-boxes, ser
vants, by year, month, day, or hour ; and the
tariff is just as fixed.
" Christians ! Christians are the most dis
creet people in the world. If you should ask
me what Christianity has most promoted in
the world, I should answer without hesitation,
discretion. Of course, when I say the world
I mean society, and when I say Christianity I
mean our interpretation of it. If only duns
could be pastors, and pastors duns ! But of
course you do not know what duns are ; they
are the guardian angels of the creditor, the
pursuing fiends of the debtor."
After that, the old lady made her disap
pearance under the waves of that sea into the
depths of which it is very improbable that a
single friend ever attempted to pursue her.
THE OLD LADY S RESTORATION 183
And there she remained until the news came
that she was restored to fortune.
A week passed, two weeks ; no sight or
sound of her. It was during this period that
her old friends were so occupied resuscitating
their old friendships for her when all her
antique sayings and doings became current
ball-room and dinner-table gossip that she
arose from her obscurity like Cinderella from
her ashes, to be decked with every gift that
fairy minds could suggest. Those who had
known her intimately made no effort to con
ceal their importance. Those who did not
know her personally put forward claims of
inherited friendship, and those who did not
know her traditionally or otherwise the
nouveaux riches and parvenus, who alone
feel the moneyed value of such social connec
tions began making their resolutions to
capture her as soon as she came in sight of
society.
The old residence was to be rebought, and
refurnished from France ; the avant scene at
the opera had been engaged ; the old cook
was to be hired back from the club at a fabu
lous price ; the old balls and the old dinners
were to gladden the city so said they who
184 BALCONY STORIES
seemed to know. Nothing was to be spared,
nothing stinted at her age, with no child or
relative, and life running short for pleasure.
Diamonds, laces, velvets, champagne, Chateau
Yquem " Grand Dieu Seigneur!" the old
Creole servants exclaimed, raising their hands
at the enumeration of it.
Where the news came from nobody knew,
but everything was certified and accepted as
facts, although, as between women, the grain
of salt should have been used. Impatience
waxed, until nearly every day some one
would ring the bell of the old residence, to
ask when the mistress was going to move in.
And such affectionate messages ! And people
would not, simply could not, be satisfied with
the incomprehensible answers. And then it
leaked out. The old lady was simply waiting
for everything to arrive furniture, toilets,
carriage, etc. to make a grand entree into
her old sphere ; to come riding on a throne,
as it were. And still the time passed, and
she did not come. Finally two of the clever-
heads penetrated the enigma : mauvaise
honte, shyness so long out of the world, so
old ; perhaps not sure of her welcome. So
they determined to seek her out.
THE OLD LADY S RESTORATION 187
"We will go to her, like children to a
grandmother, etc. The others have no
delicacy of sentiment, etc. And she will
thus learn who really remember, really
love her, etc."
Provided with congratulatory bouquets,
they set forth. It is very hard to find a
dweller on the very sea-bottom of poverty.
Perhaps that is why the effort is so seldom
made. One has to ask at grocers shops,
groggeries, market-stalls, Chinese restau
rants ; interview corner cobblers, ragpickers,
gutter children. But nothing is impossible to
the determined. The two ladies overcame
all obstacles, and needled their way along,
where under other circumstances they would
not have glanced, would have thought it
improper to glance.
They were directed through an old, old
house, out on an old, old gallery, to a room
at the very extreme end.
" Poor thing! Evidently she has not heard
the good news yet. We will be the first to
communicate it," they whispered, standing
before the dilapidated, withered-looking door.
Before knocking, they listened, as it is the
very wisdom of discretion to do. There was
1 88 BALCONY STORIES
life inside, a little kind of voice, like some one
trying to hum a song with a very cracked old
throat.
The ladies opened the door. "Ah, my
friend!"
" Ah, my friend!"
" Restored ! "
" Restored ! "
" At last ! "
" At last ! "
" Just the same ! "
" Exactly the same ! "
It was which one would get to her first
with bouquet and kiss, competition almost
crowding friendship.
" The good news ! "
" The good news ! "
o
" We could not stay ! "
"We had to come ! "
" It has arrived at last ! "
" At last it has arrived ! "
The old lady was very much older, but still
the same.
" You will again have a chance ! "
" Restored to your friends ! "
" The world ! "
" Your luxuries ! "
THE OLD LADY S RESTORATION 189
" Your comforts ! "
" Comforts ! Luxuries ! " At last the old
lady had an opportunity to slip in a word.
" And friends ! You say right."
There was a pause a pause which held
not a small measure of embarrassment. But
the two visitors, although they were women
of the world, and so dreaded an embarrass
ment more than they did sin, had prepared
themselves even to stand this.
The old lady standing there she was very
much thinner, very much bent, but still the
same appeared to be looking not at them,
but at their enumeration.
" Comfort ! " She opened a pot bubbling
on the fire. "Bouillon! A good five-cent
bouillon. Luxury ! " She picked up some
thing from a chair, a handful of new cotton
chemises. " Luxury ! " She turned back her
bedspread: new cotton sheets. "Did you
ever lie in your bed at night and dream of
sheets ? Comfort ! Luxury ! I should say so !
And friends ! My dear, look ! " Opening her
door, pointing to an opposite gallery, to the
yard, her own gallery ; to the washing, iron
ing, sewing women, the cobbling, chair-
making, carpentering men ; to the screaming,
190 BALCONY STORIES
laughing, crying, quarreling, swarming chil
dren. " Friends ! All friends friends for
fifteen years. Ah, yes, indeed ! We are all
glad elated in fact. As you say. I am
restored."
The visitors simply reported that they had
found the old lady, and that she was imbecile;
mind completely gone under stress of pov
erty and old age. Their opinion was that
she should be interdicted.
A DELICATE AFFAIR
A DELICATE AFFAIR
BUT what does this extraordinary display
of light mean?" ejaculated my aunt, the
moment she entered the parlor from the din
ing-room. " It looks like the kingdom of
heaven in here! Jules! Jules!" she called,
(< come and put out some of the light ! "
Jules was at the front door letting in the
usual Wednesday-evening visitor, but now he
came running in immediately with his own
invention in the way of a gas-stick, a piece
of broom-handle notched at the end, and
began turning one tap after the other, until
the room was reduced to complete darkness.
"But what do you mean now, Jules?"
screamed the old lady again.
" Pardon, madame," answered Jules, with
dignity ; " it is an accident. I thought there
was one still lighted."
" An accident ! An accident ! Do you
think I hire you to perform accidents for me ?
13 193
194 BALCONY STORIES
You are just through telling me that it was
accident made you give me both soup and
gumbo for dinner to-day."
" But accidents can always happen, ma-
dame," persisted Jules, adhering to his posi
tion.
The chandelier, a design of originality in its
day, gave light by what purported to be wax
candles standing each in a circlet of pendent
crystals. The usual smile of ecstatic admi
ration spread over Jules s features as he
touched the match to the simulated wicks,
and lighted into life the rainbows in the prisms
underneath. It was a smile that did not heigh
ten the intelligence of his features, revealing
as it did the toothless condition of his gums.
"What will madame have for her dinner
to-morrow," looking benignantly at his mis
tress, and still standing under his aureole.
" Do I ever give orders for one dinner,
with the other one still on my lips ? "
"I only asked madame; there is no harm
in asking." He walked away, his long stiff
white apron rattling like a petticoat about
him. Catching sight of the visitor still stand
ing at the threshold : " Oh, madame, here is
Mr. Horace. Shall I let him in ? "
A DELICATE AFFAIR 195
" Idiot ! Every Wednesday you ask me
that question, and every Wednesday I answer
the same way. Don t you think I could tell
you when not to let him in without your
asking ? "
" Oh, well, madame, one never knows; it
is always safe to ask."
The appearance of the gentleman started a
fresh subject of excitement.
" Jules ! Jules ! You have left that front
door unlocked again ! "
" Excuse me," said Mr. Horace; "Jules did
not leave the front door unlocked. It was
locked when I rang, and he locked it again
most carefully after letting me in. I have
been standing outside all the while the gas
was being extinguished and relighted."
" Ah, very well, then. And what is the
news?" She sank into her arm-chair, pulled
her little card-table closer, and began shuf
fling the cards upon it for her game of
solitaire. " I never hear any news, you
know. She [nodding toward me] goes out,
but she never learns anything. She is as
stupid to-night as an empty bottle."
After a few passes her hands, which were
slightly tremulous, regained some of their
196 BALCONY STORIES
wonted steadiness and brilliancy of move
ment, and the cards dropped rapidly on the
table. Mr. Horace, as he had got into the
habit of doing, watched her mechanically,
rather absent-mindedly retailing what he
imagined would interest her, from his week s
observation and hearsay. And madame s
little world revolved, complete for her, in
time, place, and personality.
It was an old-fashioned square room with
long ceiling, and broad, low windows heavily
curtained with stiff silk brocade, faded by
time into mellowness. The tall white-painted
mantel carried its obligation of ornaments
well : a gilt clock which under a glass case
related some brilliant poetical idyl, and told
the hours only in an insignificant aside, ac
cording to the delicate politeness of bygone
French taste ; flanked by duplicate continua
tions of the same idyl in companion cande
labra, also under glass ; Sevres, or imitation
Sevres vases, and a crowd of smaller objects
to which age and rarity were slowly con
tributing an artistic value. An oval mirror
behind threw replicas of them into another
mirror, receiving in exchange the reflected
portrait of madame in her youth, and in the
A DELICATE AFFAIR 197
partial nudity in which innocence was limned
in madame s youth. There were besides
mirrors on the other three, walls of the room,
all hung with such careful intent for the ex
ercise of their vocation that the apartment,
in spots, extended indefinitely ; the brilliant
chandelier was thereby quadrupled, and the
furniture and ornaments multiplied every
where and most unexpectedly into twins and
triplets, producing such sociabilities among
them, and forcing such correspondences be
tween inanimate objects with such hospitable
insistence, that the effect was full of gaiety
and life, although the interchange in reality
was the mere repetition of one original, a
kind of phonographic echo.
The portrait of monsieur, madame s hand
some young husband, hung out of the circle
of radiance, in the isolation that, wherever
they hang, always seems to surround the
portraits of the dead.
Old as the parlors appeared, madame ante
dated them by the sixteen years she had
lived before her marriage, which had been
the occasion of their furnishment. She had
traveled a considerable distance over the
sands of time since the epoch commemorated
198 BALCONY STORIES
by the portrait. Indeed, it would require
almost documentary evidence to prove that
she, who now was arriving at eighty, was the
same Atalanta that had started out so buoy
antly at sixteen.
Instead of a cap, she wore black lace over
her head, pinned with gold brooches. Her
white hair curled naturally over a low fore
head. Her complexion showed care and
powder. Her eyes were still bright, not
with the effete intelligence of old age, but
with actual potency. She wore a loose black
sack flowered in purple, and over that a
black lace mantle, fastened with more gold
brooches.
She played her game of solitaire rapidly,
impatiently, and always won; for she never
hesitated to cheat to get out of a tight place,
or into a favorable one, cheating with the
quickness of a flash, and forgetting it the
moment afterward.
Mr. Horace was as old as she, but he
looked much younger, although his dress and
appearance betrayed no evidence of an ef
fort in that direction. Whenever his friend
cheated, he would invariably call her attention
to it ; and as usual she would shrug her
A DELICATE AFFAIR 199
shoulders, and say, "Bah! lose a game for a
card!" and pursue the conversation.
He happened to mention mushrooms
fresh mushrooms. She threw down her cards
before the words were out of his mouth, and
began to call, "Jules! Jules!" Mr. Horace
pulled the bell-cord, but madame was too
excitable for that means of communication.
She ran into the antechamber, and put her
head over the banisters, calling, "Jules!
Jules!" louder and louder. She might have
heard Jules s slippered feet running from the
street into the corridor and up- stairs, had she
not been so deaf. He appeared at the door.
"But where have you been? Here I have
been raising the house a half-hour, calling
you. You have been in the street. I am
sure you have been in the street."
" Madame is very much mistaken," an
swered Jules, with resentful dignity. He had
taken off his white apron of waiter, and was
disreputable in all the shabbiness of his attire
as cook. "When madame forbids me to go
into the street, I do not go into the street. I
was in the kitchen; I had fallen asleep.
What does madame desire?" smiling benevo
lently.
200 BALCONY STORIES
4 * What is this I hear? Fresh mushrooms
in the market!"
"Eh, madame?"
" Fresh mushrooms in the market, and you
have not brought me any!"
"Madame, there are fresh mushrooms
everywhere in the market," waving his hand
to show their universality.
"Everybody is eating them "
"Old Pomponnette," Jules continued, "only
this morning offered me a plate, piled up
high, for ten cents."
"Idiot! Why did you not buy them?"
"If madame had said so; but madame did
not say so. Madame said, Soup, Jules;
carrots, rice," counting on his fingers.
"And the gumbo?"
"I have explained that that was an acci
dent. Madame said Soup," enumerating
his menu again; "madame never once said
mushrooms."
"But how could I know there were mush
rooms in the market? Do I go to market?"
"That is it !" and Jules smiled at the ques
tion thus settled.
" If you had told me there were mushrooms
in the market " pursued madame, persisting
in treating Jules as a reasonable being.
A DELICATE AFFAIR 201
"Why did not madame ask me? If
madame had asked me, surely I would have
told madame. Yesterday Caesar brought
them to the door a whole bucketful for
twenty-five cents. I had to shut the door in
his face to get rid of him," triumphantly.
"And you brought me yesterday those
detestable peas!"
"Ah," shrugging his shoulders, "madame
told me to buy what I saw. I saw peas. I
bought them."
"Well, understand now, once for all: when
ever you see mushrooms, no matter what I
ordered, you buy them. Do you hear?"
" No, madame. Surely I cannot buy mush
rooms unless madame orders them. Madame s
disposition is too quick."
"But I do order them. Stupid! I do order
them. I tell you to buy them every day."
"And if there are none in the market
every day?"
"Go away! Get out of my sight! I do not
want to see you. Ah, it is unendurable! I
must I must get rid of him!" This last was
not a threat, as Jules knew only too well. It
was merely a habitual exclamation.
During the colloquy Mr. Horace, leaning
back in his arm-chair, raised his eyes, and
202 BALCONY STORIES
caught the reflected portrait of madam e in
the mirror before him the reflection so
much softer and prettier, so much more
ethereal, than the original painting. Indeed,
seen in the mirror, that way, the portrait was
as refreshing as the most charming memory.
He pointed to it when madame, with consid
erable loss of temper, regained her seat.
" It is as beautiful as the past," he ex
plained most unnaturally, for he and his
friend had a horror of looking at the long,
long past, which could not fail to remind
them of what no one cares to contemplate
out of church. Making an effort toward
some determination which a subtle observer
might have noticed weighing upon him all
the evening, he added : " And, apropos of
the past "
" Hein? " interrogated the old lady, impa
tiently, still under the influence of her irasci
bility about the mushrooms.
He moved his chair closer, and bent for
ward, as if his communication were to be
confidential.
"Ah, bah! Speak louder!" she cried.
" One would suppose you had some secret to
tell. What secrets can there be at our age?"
A DELICATE AFFAIR 203
She took up her cards and began to play.
There could be no one who bothered herself
less about the forms of politeness.
" Yes, yes," answered Mr. Horace, throw
ing himself back into his chair; " what sec
rets can there be at our age ? "
The remark seemed a pregnant one to
him ; he gave himself up to it. One must
evidently be the age of one s thoughts. Mr.
Horace s thoughts revealed him the old man
he was. The lines in his face deepened into
wrinkles ; his white mustache could not pre
tend to conceal his mouth, worsened by the
loss of a tooth or two ; and the long, thin
hand that propped his head was crossed with
blue, distended veins. "At the last judg
ment" it was a favorite quotation with him
" the book of our conscience will be read
aloud before the whole company."
But the old lady, deep in her game, paid
no more heed to his quotation than to him.
He made a gesture toward her portrait.
"When that was painted, Josephine "
Madame threw a glance after the gesture.
The time was so long ago, the mythology of
Greece hardly more distant ! At eighty
the golden age of youth must indeed appear
204 BALCONY STORIES
an evanescent myth. Madame s ideas seemed
to take that direction.
" Ah, at that time we were all nymphs,
and you all demigods."
"Demigods and nymphs, yes; but there
was one among us who was a god with
you all."
The allusion a frequent one with Mr.
Horace was to madame s husband, who in
his day, it is said, had indeed played the god
in the little Arcadia of society. She shrugged
her shoulders. The truth is so little of a
compliment. The old gentleman sighed in
an abstracted way, and madame, although
apparently absorbed in her game, lent her
ear. It is safe to say that a woman is
never too old to hear a sigh wafted in her
direction.
"Josephine, do you remember in your
memory "
She pretended not to hear. Remember?
Who ever heard of her forgetting ? But she
was not the woman to say, at a moment s
notice, what she remembered or what she
forgot.
"A woman s memory! When I think of
a woman s memory in fact, I do not like to
A DELICATE AFFAIR 205
think of a woman s memory. One can in
trude in imagination into many places ; but a
woman s memory "
Mr. Horace seemed to lose his thread. It
had been said of him in his youth that he
wrote poetry and it was said against him.
It was evidently such lapses as these that
had given rise to the accusation. And as
there was no one less impatient under sentf-
ment or poetry than madame, her feet began
to agitate themselves as if Jules were perora
ting some of his culinary inanities before her.
" And a man s memory ! " totally misunder
standing him. "It is not there that I either
would penetrate, my friend. A man "
When madame began to talk about men
she was prompted by imagination just as
much as was Mr. Horace when he talked
about women. But what a difference in their
sentiments ! And yet he had received so
little, and she so much, from the subjects of
their inspiration. But that seems to be the
way in life or in imagination.
" That you should" he paused with the
curious shyness of the old before the word
" love " " that you two should marry
seemed natural, inevitable, at the time."
206 BALCONY STORIES
Tradition records exactly the same com
ment by society at the time on the marriage
in question. Society is ever fatalistic in its
comments.
"But the natural the inevitable do we
not sometimes, I wonder, perform them as
Jules does his accidents ? "
"Ah, do not talk about that idiot! An
idiot born and bred ! I won t have him about
me ! He is a monstrosity ! I tell his grand
mother that every day when she comes to
comb me. What a farce what a ridiculous
farce comfortable existence has become with
us ! Fresh mushrooms in market, and bring
me carrots ! "
The old gentleman, partly from long
knowledge of her habit, or from an equally
persistent bend of his own, quietly held on*
to his idea.
" One cannot tell. It seems so at the
time. We like to think it so ; it makes it
easier. And yet, looking back on our future
as we once looked forward to it "
" Eh ! but who wants to look back on it,
my friend ? Who in the world wants to look
back on it ? " One could not doubt madame s
energy of opinion on that question to hear
A DELICATE AFFAIR 207
her voice. " We have done our future, we
have performed it, if you will. Our future !
It is like the dinners we have eaten ; of
course we cannot remember the good with
out becoming exasperated over the bad :
but " shrugging her shoulders " since
we cannot beat the cooks, we must submit
to fate," forcing a queen that she needed at
the critical point of her game.
" At sixteen and twenty-one it is hard to
realize that one is arranging one s life to last
until sixty, seventy, forever," correcting him
self as he thought of his friend, the dead hus
band. If madame had ever possessed the art
of self-control, it was many a long day since
she had exercised it ; now she frankly began
to show ennui.
When I look back to that time," Mr.
Horace leaned back in his chair and half
closed his eyes, perhaps to avoid the expres
sion of her face, " I see nothing but lights
and flowers, I hear nothing but music and
laughter; and all lights and flowers and
music and laughter seem to meet in this
o
room, where we met so often to arrange our
inevitabilities." The word appeared to at
tract him. Josephine," with a sudden
208 BALCONY STORIES
change of voice and manner, "Josephine,
how beautiful you were ! "
The old lady nodded her head without
looking from her cards.
"They used to say," with sad conviction of
the truth of his testimony "the men used to
say that your beauty was irresistible. None
ever withstood you. None ever could."
That, after all, was Mr. Horace s great
charm with madame ; he was so faithful to
the illusions of his youth. As he looked now
at her, one could almost feel the irresistibility
of which he spoke.
"It was only their excuse, perhaps; we
could not tell at the time ; we cannot tell
even now when we think about it. They
said then, talking as men talk over such
things, that you were the only one who could
remain yourself under the circumstances ;
you were the only one who could know, who
could will, under the circumstances. It was
their theory ; men can have only theories
about such things." His voice dropped, and
he seemed to drop too, into some abysm of
thought.
Madame looked into the mirror, where she
could see the face of the one who alone could
A DELICATE AFFAIR 209
retain her presence of mind under the cir
cumstances suggested by Mr. Horace. She
could also have seen, had she wished it,
among the reflected bric-a-brac of the man
tel, the corner of the frame that held the
picture of her husband, but peradventure,
classing it with the past which held so many
unavenged bad dinners, she never thought to
link it even by a look with her emotions of
the present. Indeed, it had been said of her
that in past, present, and future there had
ever been but the one picture to interest her
eyes the one she was looking at now.
This, however, was the remark of the uni
nitiated, for the true passion of a beautiful
woman is never so much for her beauty as
for its booty ; as the passion of a gamester is
for his game, not for his luck.
" How beautiful she was ! "
It was apparently down in the depths of
his abysm that he found the connection be
tween this phrase and his last, and it was
evidently to himself he said it. Madame,
however, heard and understood too ; in fact,
traced back to a certain period, her thoughts
and Mr. Horace s must have been fed by
pretty much the same subjects. But she had
210 BALCONY STORIES
so carefully barricaded certain issues in her
memory as almost to obstruct their flow into
her life ; if she were a cook, one would say
that it was her bad dinners which she was
trying to keep out of remembrance.
"You there, he there, she there, I there."
He pointed to the places on the carpet, under
the chandelier ; he could have touched them
with a walking-stick, and the recollection
seemed just as close.
" She was, in truth, what we men called
her then ; it was her eyes that first suggested
it Myosotis, the little blue flower, the for
get-me-not. It suited her better than her
own name. We always called her that
among ourselves. How beautiful she was ! "
o
He leaned his head on his hand and looked
where he had seen her last so long, such
an eternity, ago.
It must be explained for the benefit of
those who do not live in the little world where
an allusion is all that is necessary to put one
in full possession of any drama, domestic or
social, that Mr. Horace was speaking of the
wedding-night of madame, when the bridal
party stood as he described under the chan
delier ; the bride and groom, with each one s
A DELICATE AFFAIR 211
best friend. It may be said that it was the
last night or time that madame had a best
friend of her own sex. Social gossip, with
characteristic kindness, had furnished reasons
to suit all tastes, why madame had ceased
that night to have a best friend of her own
sex. If gossip had not done so, society would
still be left to its imagination for information,
for madame never tolerated the smallest ap
peal to her for enlightenment. What the
general taste seemed most to relish as a ver
sion was that madame in her marriage had
triumphed, not conquered; and that the night
of her wedding she had realized the fact, and,
to be frank, had realized it ever since. In short,
madame had played then to gain at love, as
she played now to gain at solitaire ; and
hearts were no more than cards to her and,
" Bah ! Lose a game for a card!" must have
been always her motto. It is hard to explain
it delicately enough, for these are the most
delicate affairs in life ; but the image of Myo-
sotis had passed through monsieur s heart,
and Myosotis does mean " forget me not."
And madame well knew that to love monsieur
once was to love him always, in spite of jeal
ousy, doubt, distrust, nay, unhappiness (for to
212 BALCONY STORIES
love him meant all this and more). He was
that kind of man, they said, whom women
could love even against conscience. Ma
dame never forgave that moment. Her
friend, at least, she could put aside out of her
intercourse ; unfortunately, we cannot put
people out of our lives. God alone can do
that, and so far he had interfered in the mat
ter only by removing monsieur. It was
known to notoriety that since her wedding
madame had abandoned, destroyed, all know
ledge of her friend. And the friend ? She
had disappeared as much as is possible for
one in her position and with her duties.
"What there is in blue eyes, light hair, and
a fragile form to impress one, I cannot tell ;
but for us men it seems to me it is blue-eyed,
light-haired, and fragile- formed women that
are the hardest to forget."
" The less easy to forget," corrected
madame ; but he paid no attention to the
remark.
"They are the women that attach them
selves in one s memory. If necessary to
keep from being forgotten, they come back
into one s dreams. And as life rolls on, one
wonders about them, Is she happy? Is
A DELICATE AFFAIR 213
she miserable ? Goes life well or ill with
her?"
Madame played her cards slowly, one
would say, for her, prosaically.
" And there is always a pang when, as one
is so wondering, the response comes, that
is, the certainty in one s heart responds,
She is miserable, and life goes ill with
her. Then, if ever, men envy the power
of God."
Madame threw over the game she was in,
and began a new one.
"Such women should not be unhappy;
they are too fragile, too sensitive, too trust
ing. I could never understand the infliction
of misery upon them. I could send death to
them, but not not misfortune."
Madame, forgetting again to cheat in time,
and losing her game, began impatiently to
shuffle her cards for a new deal.
" And yet, do you know, Josephine, those
women are the unhappy ones of life. They
seem predestined to it, as others" looking
at madame s full-charmed portrait "are
predestined to triumph and victory. They"
unconscious, in his abstraction, of the per
sonal nature of his simile "never know
214 BALCONY STORIES
how to handle their cards, and they always
play a losing game."
" Ha ! " came from madame, startled into
an irate ejaculation.
"It is their love always that is sacrificed,
their hearts always that are bruised. One
might say that God himself favors the black-
haired ones ! "
As his voice sank lower and lower, the
room seemed to become stiller and stiller.
A passing vehicle in the street, however, now
and then drew a shiver of sound from the
pendent prisms of the chandelier.
" She was so slight, so fragile, and always
in white, with blue in her hair to match her
eyes and God knows what in her heart,
all the time. And yet they stand it, they
bear it, they do not die, they live along with
the strongest, the happiest, the most fortu
nate of us," bitterly; "and" raising his eyes
to his old friend, who thereupon immediately
began to fumble her cards "whenever in
the street I see a poor, bent, broken woman s
figure, I know, without verifying it any more
by a glance, that it is the wreck of a fair
woman s figure ; whenever I hear of a bent,
broken existence, I know, without asking
A DELICATE AFFAIR 215
any more, that it is the wreck of a fair
woman s life."
Poor Mr. Horace spoke with the unrea
son of a superstitious bigot.
" I have often thought, since, in large
assemblies, particularly in weddings, Joseph
ine, of what was going on in the women s
hearts there, and I have felt sorry for them ;
and when I think of God s knowing what
is in their hearts, I have felt sorry for the
men. And I often think now, Josephine,
I think oftener and oftener of it, that if the
resurrection trumpet of our childhood should
sound some day, no matter when, out there,
over the old St. Louis cemetery, and we
should all have to rise from our long rest
of oblivion, what would be the first thing
we should do ? And though there were a
God and a heaven awaiting us, by that
same God, Josephine, I believe that our
first thought in awakening would be the
last in dying, confession, and that our
first rush would be to the feet of one an
other for forgiveness. For there are some
offenses that must outlast the longest ob
livion, and a forgiveness that will be more
necessary than God s own. Then our hearts
216 BALCONY STORIES
will be bared to one another ; for if, as
you say, there are no secrets at our age,
there can still be less cause for them after
death."
His voice ended in the faintest whisper.
The table crashed over, and the cards flew
wide-spread on the floor. Before we could
recover, madame was in the antechamber,
screaming for Jules.
One would have said that, from her face,
the old lady had witnessed the resurrection
described by Mr. Horace, the rush of the
spirits with their burdens of remorse, the one
to the feet of the other ; and she must have
seen herself and her husband, with a una
nimity of purpose never apparent in their
short married life, rising from their common
tomb and hastening to that other tomb at the
end of the alley, and falling at the feet of the
one to whom in life he had been recreant in
love, she in friendship.
Of course Jules answered through the
wrong door, rushing in with his gas-stick, and
turning off the gas. In a moment we were
involved in darkness and dispute.
" But what does he mean ? What does the
idiot mean? He " It was impossible for
A DELICATE AFFAIR 217
her to find a word to do justice to him and to
her exasperation at the same time.
"Pardon, madame; it is not I. It is the
cathedral bell; it is ringing nine o clock."
" But"
" Madame can hear it herself. Listen ! "
We could not see it, but we were conscious of
the benign, toothless smile spreading over
his face as the bell-tones fell in the room.
" But it is not the gas. I "
" Pardon, madame; but it is the gas. Ma
dame said, Jules, put out the gas every night
when the bell rin^s. Madame told me that
o
only last night. The bell rings : I put out
the gas."
"Will you be silent? Will you listen?"
"If madame wishes ; just as madame says."
But the old lady had turned to Mr. Horace.
" Horace, you have seen you know " and
it was a question now of overcoming emo
tion. "I I I a carriage, my friend, a
carriage."
"Madame " Jules interrupted his smile
to interrupt her.
She was walking around the room, picking
up a shawl here, a lace there ; for she was
always prepared against draughts.
218 BALCONY STORIES
"Madame " continued Jules, pursuing
her.
" A carriage."
" If madame would only listen, I was going
to say but madame is too quick in her dis
position the carriage has been waiting
since a long hour ago. Mr. Horace said to
have it there in a half hour."
It was then she saw for the first time that
it had all been prepared by Mr. Horace.
The rest was easy enough: getting into the
carriage, and finding the place of which Mr.
Horace had heard, as he said, only that
afternoon. In it, on her bed of illness, pov
erty, and suffering, lay the patient, wasted
form of the beautiful fair one whom men had
called in her youth Myosotis.
But she did not call her Myosotis.
" Mon Amour!" The old pet name, al
though it had to be fetched across more than
half a century of disuse, flashed like lightning
from madame s heart into the dim chamber.
"Ma Divine /" came in counter-flash from
the curtained bed.
In the old days women, or at least young
girls, could hazard such pet names one upon
the other. These think of it! dated from
A DELICATE AFFAIR 219
the first communion class, the dating period
of so much of friendship.
" My poor Amour !"
" My poor, poor Divine !"
The voices were together, close beside the
pillow.
"I I " began Divine.
"It could not have happened if God had
not wished it," interrupted poor Amour, with
the resignation that comes, alas! only with
the last drop of the bitter cup.
And that was about all. If Mr. Horace
had not slipped away, he might have noticed
the curious absence of monsieur s name, and
of his own name, in the murmuring that fol
lowed. It would have given him some more
ideas on the subject of woman.
At any rate, the good God must thank him
for having one affair the less to arrange when
the trumpet sounds out there over the old St.
Louis cemetery. And he was none too pre
mature; for the old St. Louis cemetery, as
was shortly enough proved, was a near reach
for all three of the old friends.
PUPASSE
PUPASSE
T^VERY day, every day, it was the same
LJ overture in Madame Joubert s room in
the Institut St. Denis; the strident:
"Mesdemoiselles; a vos places! Notre Pere
qui est dans le ciel Oui a fait ce bruit?"
"It s Pupasse, madame! It s Pupasse!"
The answer invariably was unanimous.
"But, Madame Joubert, I assure you,
Madame Joubert, I could not help it !
They know I could not help it!"
By this time the fresh new fool s cap made
from yesterday s "Bee" would have been
pinned on her head.
" Quelle injustice! Quelle injustice!"
This last apostrophe in a high, whining
nasal voice, always procured Pupasse s ele
vation on the tall three-legged stool in the
corner.
It was a theory of the little girls in the pri
mary class that Madame Joubert would be
223
224 BALCONY STORIES
much more lenient to their own little inevi
tabilities of bad conduct and lessons if Pu-
passe did not invariably comb her the wrong
way every morning after prayers, by dropping
something, or sniffling, or sneezing. There
fore, while they distractedly got together
books, slates, and copy-books, their infantile
eyes found time to dart deadly reproaches
toward the corner of penitence, and their lit
tle lips, still shaped from their first nourish
ment, pouted anything but sympathy for the
occupant of it.
Indeed, it would have been a most startling
unreality to have ever entered Madame Jou-
bert s room and not seen Pupasse in that cor
ner, on that stool, her tall figure shooting up
like a post, until her tall, pointed bonnet d dm
came within an inch or two of the ceiling. It
o
was her hoop-skirt that best testified to her
height. It was the period of those funnel-
shaped hoop-skirts that spread out with such
nice mathematical proportions, from the waist
down, that it seemed they must have ema
nated from the brains of astronomers, like the
orbits, and diameters, and other things belong
ing to the heavenly bodies. Pupasse could
not have come within three feet of the wall
PUPASSE 225
with her hoop-skirt distended. To have
forced matters was not to be thought of an
instant. So even in her greatest grief and
indignation, she had to pause before the
three-legged black stool, and gather up steel
after steel of her circumference in her hands
behind, until her calico skirt careened and
flattened; and so she could manage to accom
modate herself to the limited space of her
punishment, the circles drooping far over her
feet as she stood there, looking like the cos
tumed stick of a baby s rattle.
Her thinness continued into her face,
which, unfortunately, had nothing in the way
of toilet to assist it. Two little black eyes
fixed in the sides of a mere fence of a nose,
and a mouth with the shape and expression
of all mouths made to go over sharp-pointed
teeth planted very far apart ; the smallest
amount possible of fine, dry, black hair a
perfect rat-tail when it was plaited in one, as
almost all wore their hair. But sometimes
Pupasse took it into her head to plait it in two
braids, as none but the thick-haired ventured
to wear it. As the little girls said, it was a
petition to Heaven for " eau Quinquina."
When Marcelite, the hair-dresser, came at
15
226 BALCONY STORIES
her regular periods to visit the hair of the
boarders, she would make an effort with
Pupasse, plaiting her hundred hairs in a ten-
strand braid. The effect was a half yard of
black worsted galloon ; nothing more, or bet
ter. Had Pupasse possessed as many heads
as the hydra, she could have "coiffe d"
them all with fools caps during one morn
ing s recitations. She entirely monopolized
the " Daily Bee." Madame Joubert was
forced to borrow from " madame " the stale
weekly " Courrier des Etats-Unis" for the
rest of the room. From grammar, through
sacred history, arithmetic, geography, my
thology, down to dictation, Pupasse could pile
up an accumulation of penitences that would
have tasked the limits of the current day had
not recreation been wisely set as a term
which disbarred, by proscription, previous
offenses. But even after recreation, with that
day s lessons safely out, punished and expi
ated, Pupasse s doom seemed scarcely light
ened; there was still a whole criminal code of
conduct to infract. The only difference was
that instead of books, slates, or copy-books,
leathern medals, bearing various legends and
mottos, were hune 1 around her neck a tra-
PUPASSE 227
vestied decoration worse than the books for
humiliation.
The " abecedaires," their torment for the
clay over, thankful for any distraction from
the next day s lessons, and eager for any
relief from the intolerable ennui of goodness,
were thankful enough now for Pupasse.
They naturally watched her in preference to
Madame Joubert, holding their books and
slates quite cunningly to hide their faces.
Pupasse had not only the genius, but that
which sometimes fails genius, the means for
o
grimacing : little eyes, long nose, foolish
mouth, and pointed tongue. And she was
so amusing, when Madame Joubert s head
was turned, that the little girls, being young
and innocent, would forget themselves and
all burst out laughing. It sounded like a
flight of singing birds through the hot, close,
stupid little room; but not so to Madame
Joubert.
" Young ladies ! But what does this
mean ?"
And, terror-stricken, the innocents would
call out with one voice, "It s Pupasse, ma-
dame! It s Pupasse who made us laugh!"
There was nothing but fools caps to be
228 BALCONY STORIES
gained by prevaricating, and there was fre
quently nothing less gained by confession.
And oh, the wails and the sobs as the inno
cents would be stood up, one by one, in their
places ! Even the pigtails at the backs of
their little heads were convulsed with grief.
Oh, how they hated Pupasse then ! When
their bonnes came for them at three o clock,
washing their tear-stained faces at the cistern
before daring to take them through the
streets, how passionately they would cry
out, the tears breaking afresh into the wet
handkerchiefs :
"It s that Pupasse! It s that vilaine
Pupasse !"
To Pupasse herself would be meted out
that u peine forte et dure," that acme of hu
miliation and disgrace, so intensely horrible
that many a little girl in that room solemnly
averred and believed she would kill herself
before submitting to it. Pupasse s volumi
nous calico skirt would be gathered up by the
hem and tied up over her head ! Oh, the
horrible monstrosity on the stool in the corner
then ! There were no eyes in that room that
had any desire to look upon it. And the cries
and the " Quelle injustice!" that fell on the
PUPASSE 229
ears then from the hidden feelings had all the
weirdness of the unseen, but heard. And all
the other girls in the room, in fear and trem
bling, would begin to move their lips in a
perfect whirlwind of study, or write violently
on their slates, or begin at that very instant to
rule off their copy-books for the next day s
verb.
Pupasse her name was Marie Pupasse,
but no one thought of calling her anything
but Pupasse, with emphasis on the first sylla
ble and sibilance on the last had no parents,
only a grandmother, to describe whom, all
that is necessary to say is that she was as
short as Pupasse was tall, and that her face
resembled nothing so much as a little yellow
apple shriveling from decay. The old lady
came but once a week, to fetch Pupasse fresh
clothes, and a great brown paper bag of nice
things to eat. There was no boarder in the
school who received handsomer bags of cake
and fruit than Pupasse. And although, not
two hours before, a girl might have been fore
most in the shrill cry, " It is Pupasse who
made the noise ! It is Pupasse who made me
laugh!" there was nothing in that paper bag
reserved even from such a one. When the
230 BALCONY STORIES
girl herself with native delicacy would, under
the circumstances, judge it discreet to refuse,
Pupasse would plead, " Oh, but take it to
give me pleasure ! " And if still the refusal
continued, Pupasse would take her bag and
go into the summer-house in the corner of
the garden, and cry until the unforgiving one
would relent. But the first offering of the
bag was invariably to the stern dispenser of
fools caps and the unnamed humiliation of
the reversed skirt : Madame Joubert.
Pupasse was in the fifth class. The sixth
the abecedaires was the lowest in the
school. Green was the color of the fifth ;
white innocence of the abecedaires. Ex
hibition after exhibition, the same green sash
and green ribbons appeared on Pupasse s
white muslin, the white muslin getting longer
and longer every year, trying to keep up with
her phenomenal growth ; and always, from all
over the room, buzzed the audience s sup
pressed merriment at Pupasse s appearance
in the ranks of the little ones of nine and ten.
It was that very merriment that brought
about the greatest change in the Institut St.
Denis. The sitting order of the classes was
reversed. The first class the graduates
PUPASSE 231
went up to the top step of the estrade ; and
the little ones put on the lowest, behind the
pianos. The graduates grumbled that it was
not comme il faut to have young ladies of
their position stepping like camels up and
down those great steps ; and the little girls
said it was a shame to hide them behind the
pianos after their mamas had taken so much
pains to make them look pretty. But ma-
dame said going also to natural history for
her comparison that one must be a rhinoce
ros to continue the former routine.
Religion cannot be kept waiting forever on
the intelligence. It was always in the fourth
class that the first communion was made ;
that is, when the girls stayed one year in
each class. But Pupasse had spent three
years in the sixth class, and had already been
four in the fifth, and Madame Joubert felt
that longer delay would be disrespectful to
the good Lord. It was true that Pupasse
could not yet distinguish the ten command
ments from the seven capital sins, and still
would answer that Jeanne d Arc was the
foundress of the " Little Sisters of the Poor."
But, as Madame Joubert always said in the
little address she made to the catechism class
232 BALCONY STORIES
every year before handing it over to Father
Dolomier, Gocl judged from the heart, and
not from the mind.
Father Dolomier from his face he would
have been an able contestant of bonnets d dne
with Pupasse, if subjected to Madame Jou-
bert s discipline evidently had the same
method of judging as God, although the
catechism class said they could dance a
waltz on the end of his long nose without
his perceiving it.
There is always a little air of mystery
about the first communion : not that there is
any in reality, but the little ones assume it to
render themselves important. The going to
early mass, the holding their dog-eared cate
chisms as if they were relics, the instruction
from the priest, even if he were only old
Father Dolomier it all put such a little air
of devotion into their faces that it imposed
(as it did every year) upon their companions,
which was a vastly gratifying effect. No
matter how young and innocent she may be,
a woman s devotion always seems to have
two aims God and her own sex.
The week of retreat came. Oh, the week
of retreat ! That was the bonne bouche of it
PUPASSE 233
all, for themselves and for the others. It was
the same every year. By the time the week
of retreat arrived, interest and mystery had
been frothed to the point of indiscretion ; so
that the little girls would stand on tiptoe to
peep through the shutters at the postulants
inside, and even the larger girls, to whom
first communion was a thing of an infantile
past, would condescend to listen to their re
ports with ill-feignecl indifference.
As the day of the first communion neared,
the day of the general confession naturally
neared too, leading it. And then the little
girls, peeping through the shutters, and hold
ing their breath to see better, saw what they
beheld every year ; but it was always new
and awesome mysterious scribbling in cor
ners with lead-pencils on scraps of paper ;
consultations ; rewritings ; copyings ; the list
of their sins, of all the sins of their lives.
"Ma chere!" pigtails and sunbonnets
hiving outside would shudder. " Oh, Mon
Dieu ! To have to confess all but all your
sins ! As for me, it would kill me, sure ! "
And the frightful recoils of their con
sciences would make all instantly blanch and
cross themselves.
234 BALCONY STORIES
"And look at Pupasse s sins! Oh, but
they are long ! Ma chere, but look ! But
look, I ask you, at them ! "
The longest record was of course the most
complimentary and honorable to the posses
sor, as each girl naturally worked not only
for absolution but for fame.
Between catechisms and instructions Ma
dame Joubert would have " La Vie des
Saints" read aloud, to stimulate their piety and
to engage their thoughts ; for the thoughts
of first communicants are worse than flies for
buzzing around the forbidden. The lecture
must have been a great quickener of con
science ; for they would dare punishment and
cheat Madame Joubert, under her own eyes,
in order surreptitiously to add a new sin to
their list. Of course the one hour s recrea
tion could not afford time enough for obser
vation now, and the little girls were driven
to all sorts of excuses to get out of the class
room for one moment s peep through the
shutters ; at which whole swarms of them
would sometimes be caught and sent into
punishment.
Only two days more. Madame Joubert
put them through the rehearsal, a most im-
PUPASSE 235
portant part of the preparation, almost as
important as catechism how to enter the
church, how to hold the candle, how to ad
vance, how to kneel, retire everything, in
fact.
Only one day more, the quietest, most de
votional day of all. Pupasse lost her sins !
Of course every year the same accident
happened to some one. But it was a new
accident to Pupasse. And such a long list !
The commotion inside that retreat ! Pu-
passe s nasal whine, carrying her lament
without any mystery to the outside garden.
Such searching of pockets, rummaging of
corners, microscopic examination of the
floor ! Such crimination and recrimination,
protestation, asseveration, assurances, backed
by divine and saintly invocations ! Pupasse
accused companion after companion of filch
ing her sins, which each after each would
violently deny, producing each her own list
from her own pocket, proof to conviction of
innocence, and, we may say, of guilt also.
Pupasse declared they had filched it to
copy, because her list was the longest and
most complete. She could not go to confes
sion without her sins ; she could not go to
236 BALCONY STORIES
communion without confession. The tears
rolled down her long thin nose unchecked,
for she never could remember to use her
handkerchief until reminded by Madame
Joubert.
She had committed it to memory, as all the
others had done theirs ; but how was she to
know without the list if she had not forgotten
something? And to forget one thing in a gen
eral confession they knew was a mortal sin.
" I shall tell Madame Joubert! I shall tell
Madame Joubert ! "
"Ma chere ! " whispered the little ones
outside. " Oh, but look at them ! E lies font
les quatre cents coups ! " which is equivalent
to "cutting up like the mischief."
And with reason. As if such an influx
of the world upon them at this moment were
not sufficient of itself to damn them. But to
tell Madame Joubert! With all their dres
ses made and ready, wreaths, veils, candles,
prayer-books, picture-cards, mother-of-pearl
prayer-beads, and festival breakfasts with
admiring family and friends prepared. Tell
Madame Joubert ! She would simply cancel
it all. In a body they chorused:
But, Pupasse!"
PUPASSE 237
" Chere Pupasse ! "
" Voyons, Pupasse ! "
" I assure you, Pupasse ! "
" On the cross, Pupasse ! "
Ah, Pupasse ! "
" We implore you, Pupasse ! "
The only response tears, and " I shall tell
Madame Joubert."
Consultations, caucuses, individual appeals,
general outbursts. Pupasse stood in the cor
ner. Curiously, she always sought refuge in
the very sanctum of punishment, her face
hidden in her bended arms, her hoops stand
ing out behind, vouchsafing nothing but tears,
and the promise to tell Madame Joubert.
And three o clock approaching ! And Ma
dame Joubert imminent ! But Pupasse really
could not go to confession without her sins.
They all recognized that ; they were reason
able, as they assured her.
A crisis quickens the wits. They heard the
cathedral clock strike the quarter to three.
They whispered, suggested, argued bunched
in the farthest corner from Pupasse.
" Console yourself, Pupasse ! We will help
you, Pupasse ! Say no more about it ! We
will help you ! "
238 BALCONY STORIES
A delegate was sent to say that. She was
only four feet and a half high, and had to
stand on tiptoe to pluck the six-foot Pupasse s
dress to gain her attention.
And they did help her generously. A new
sheet of fool s-cap was procured, and torn in
two, lengthwise, and pinned in a long strip.
One by one, each little girl took it, and,
retiring as far as possible, would put her
hand into her pocket, and, extracting her list,
would copy it in full on the new paper. Then
she would fold it down, and give it to the
next one, until all had written.
" Here, Pupasse ; here are all our sins.
We give them to you ; you can have them."
Pupasse was radiant ; she was more than
delighted, and the more she read the better
pleased she was. Such a handsome long list,
and so many sins she had never thought of
never dreamed of! She set herself with zeal
to commit them to memory. But a hand on
the door Madame Joubert ! You never
could have told that those little girls had not
been sitting during the whole time, with their
hands clasped and eyes cast up to the ceiling,
or moving their lips as the prayer-beads
glided through their fingers. Their versatility
was really marvelous.
PUPASSE 241
Poor Pupasse ! God solved the dilemma
of her education, and madame s increasing
sensitiveness about her appearance in the
fifth class, by the death of the old grand
mother. She went home to the funeral, and
never returned or at least she returned, but
only for madame. There was a little scene
in the parlor : Pupasse, all dressed in black,
with her bag of primary books in her hand,
ready and eager to get back to her classes
and fools caps ; madame, hesitating between
her interests and her fear of ridicule ; Madame
Joubert, between her loyalty to school and
her conscience. Pupasse the only one free
and untrammeled, simple and direct.
That little school parlor had been the stage
for so many scenes ! Madame Joubert de
tested acting the comedy, as she called it.
There was nothing she punished with more
pleasure up in her room. And yet
" Pupasse, mafille, give me your grammar."
The old battered, primitive book was got
ten out of the bag, the string still tied between
the leaves for convenience in hanging around
the neck.
" Your last punishment: the rule for irreg
ular verbs. Commence ! "
16
242 BALCONY STORIES
" I know it, Madame Joubert ; I know it
perfectly, I assure you."
" Commence ! "
l< Irregular verbs but I assure you I
know it I know it by heart
" Commence, ma fille ! "
"Irregular verbs irregular verbs I know
it, Madame Joubert one moment " and
she shook her right hand, as girls do to get
inspiration, they say. " Irregular verbs
give me one word, Madame Joubert ; only
one word ! "
"That-
" Irregular verbs, that irregular verbs,
that "
" See here, Pupasse ; you do not know that
lesson any more than a cat does" Madame
Joubert s favorite comparison.
" Yes, I do, Madame Joubert ! Yes, I do ! "
" Silence ! "
14 But, Madame Joubert "
" Will you be silent ! "
"Yes, Madame Joubert; only "
"Pupasse, one more word and " Ma
dame Joubert was forgetting her comedy
" Listen, Pupasse, and obey ! You go home
and learn that lesson. When you know it,
PUPASSE 243
you can reenter your class. That is the
punishment I have thought of to correct
your want of attention.
That was the way Madame Joubert put
it "want of attention."
Pupasse looked at her at madame, a si
lent but potent spectator. To be sent from
home because she did not know the rule of
the irregular verbs! To be sent from home,
family, friends! for that was the way Pu
passe put it. She had been in that school
it may only be whispered fifteen years.
Madame Joubert knew it ; so did madame,
although they accounted for only four or five
years in each class. That school was her
home; Madame Joubert God help her!
her mother ; madame, her divinity ; fools
caps and turnecl-up skirts, her life. The old
grandmother she it was who had done
everything for her (a ci-devant rag-picker,
they say); she it was who was nothing to
her.
Madame must have felt something of it
besides the loss of the handsome salary for
years from the little old withered woman.
But conventionality is inexorable ; and the
St. Denis s ereat recommendation was its
244 BALCONY STORIES
conventionality. Madame Joubert must have
felt something of it, she must have felt
something of it, for why should she volun
teer ? Certainly madame could not have
imposed that upon her. It must have been
an inspiration of the moment, or a move
ment, a tress aillement, of the heart.
" Listen, Pupasse, my child. Go home,
study your lesson well. I shall come every
evening myself and hear it ; and as soon as
you know it, I shall fetch you back myself.
You know I always keep my word."
Keep her word ! That she did. Could the
inanimate past testify, what a fluttering of
fools caps in that parlor " Daily Bees," and
" Weekly Couriers," by the year-full !
What could Pupasse say or do ? It settled
the question, as Madame Joubert assured
madame, when the tall, thin black figure with
the bag of books disappeared through the
gate.
Madame Joubert was never known to
break her word ; that is all one knows about
her part of the bargain.
One clay, not three years ago, ringing a
bell to inquire for a servant, a familiar mur
muring fell upon the ear, and an old ab^ce-
PUPASSE 245
daire s eyes could not resist the temptation
to look through the shutters. There sat Pu-
passe ; there was her old grammar ; there
were both ringers stopping her ears as all
studious girls do, or used to do ; and there
sounded the old words composing the rule for
irregular verbs.
And you all remember how long it is since
we wore funnel-shaped hoop-skirts !
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