He had left his very new law office, just around in Bienville Street, and had come but a few steps down Royal, when, at the next corner below, she turned into Royal, toward him, out of Conti, coming from Bourbon.
The same nine-year-old negro boy was at her side, as spotless in broad white collar and blue jacket as on the morning before, and carrying the same droll1 air of consecration2, awe3, and responsibility. The young man envied him.
Yesterday, for the first time, at that same corner, he had encountered this fair stranger and her urchin4 escort, abruptly5, as they were making the same turn they now repeated, and all in a flash had wondered who might be this lovely apparition6. Of such patrician7 beauty, such elegance8 of form and bearing, such witchery of simple attire9, and such un-Italian yet Latin type, in this antique Creole, modernly Italianized quarter--who and what, so early in the day, down here among the shops, where so meagre a remnant of the old high life clung on in these balconied upper stories--who, what, whence, whither, and wherefore?
In that flash of time she had passed, and the very liveliness of his interest, combined with the urchin's consecrated10 awe--not to mention his own mortifying11 remembrance of one or two other-day lapses12 from the austerities of the old street--restrained him from a backward glance until he could cross the way as if to enter the great, white, lately completed court-house. Then both she and her satellite had vanished.
He turned again, but not to enter the building. His watch read but half past eight, and his first errand of the day, unless seeing her had been his first, was to go one square farther on, for a look at the wreckers tearing down the old Hotel St. Louis. As he turned, a man neat of dress and well beyond middle age made him a suave13 gesture.
"Sir, if you please. You are, I think, Mr. Chester, notary14 public and attorney at law?"
"That is my name and trade, sir." Evidently Mr. Geoffry Chester was also an American, a Southerner.
"Pardon," said his detainer, "I have only my business card." He tendered it: "Marcel Castanado, Masques et Costumes, No. 312, rue15 Royale, entre Bienville et Conti."
"I diz-ire your advice," he continued, "on a very small matter neither notarial16, neither of the law. Yet I must pay you for that, if you can make your charge as--as small as the matter."
The young lawyer's own matters were at a juncture17 where a fee was a godsend, yet he replied:
"If your matter is not of the law I can make you no charge."
The costumer shrugged18: "Pardon, in that case I must seek elsewhere." He would have moved on, but Chester asked:
"What kind of advice do you want if not legal?"
"Literary."
The young man smiled: "Why, I'm not literary."
"I think yes. You know Ovide Landry? Black man? Secon'-han' books, Chartres Street, just yonder?"
"Yes, very pleasantly, for I love old books."
"Yes, and old buildings, and their histories. I know. You are now going down, as I have just been, to see again the construction of that old dome19 they are dim-olishing yonder, of the once state-house, previously20 Hotel St. Louis. I know. Twice a day you pass my shop. I am compelled to see, what Ovide also has told me, that, like me and my wife, you have a passion for the poétique and the pittoresque!"
"Yes," Chester laughed, "but that's my limit. I've never written a line for print----"
"This writing is done, since fifty years."
"I've never passed literary judgment21 on a written page and don't suppose I ever shall."
"The judgment is passed. The value of the article is pronounced great--by an expert amateur."
"SHE?" the youth silently asked himself. He spoke22: "Why, then what advice do you still want--how to find a publisher?"
"No, any publisher will jump at that. But how to so nig-otiate that he shall not be the lion and we the lamb!"
Chester smiled again: "Why, if that's the point--" he mused23. The hope came again that this unusual shopman and his wish had something to do with her.
"If that's the advice you want," he resumed, "I think we might construe24 it as legal, though worth at the most a mere25 notarial fee."
"And contingent26 on--?" the costumer prompted.
"Contingent, yes, on the author's success."
"Sir! I am not the author of a manuscript fifty years old!"
"Well, then, on the holder's success. You can agree to that, can't you?"
"'Tis agreed. You are my counsel. When will you see the manuscript?"
"Whenever you choose to leave it with me."
The costumer's smile was firm: "Sir, I cannot permit that to pass from my hand."
"Oh! then have a copy typed for me."
The Creole soliloquized: "That would be expensive." Then to Chester: "Sir, I will tell you; to-night come at our parlor27, over the shop. I will read you that!" "Shall we be alone?" asked Chester, hoping his client would say no.
"Only excepting my"--a tender brightness--"my wife!" Then a shade of regret: "We are without children, me and my wife."
His wife. H'mm! She? That amazing one who had vanished within a few yards of his bazaar28 of "masques et costumes"? Though to Chester New Orleans was still new, and though fat law-books and a slim purse kept him much to himself, he was aware that, while some Creoles grew rich, many of them, women, once rich, were being driven even to stand behind counters. Yet no such plight29 could he imagine of that bewildering young--young luminary30 who, this second time, so out of time, had gleamed on him from mystery's cloud. His earlier hope came a third time: "Excepting only your wife, you say? Why not also your amateur expert?"
"I am sorry, but"--the Latin shrug--"that is--that is not possible."
"Have I ever seen your wife? She's not a tallish, slender young-----?"
"No, my wife is neither. She's never in the street or shop. She has no longer the cap-acity. She's become so extraordinarily31 un-slender that the only way she can come down-stair' is backward. You'll see. Well,"--he waved--"till then--ah, a word: my close bargaining--I must explain you that--in confidence. 'Tis because my wife and me we are anxious to get every picayune we can get for the owners--of that manuscript."
Chester thought to be shrewd: "Oh! is she hard up? the owner?"
"The owners are three," Castanado calmly said, "and two dip-end on the earnings32 of a third." He bowed himself away.
A few hours later Chester received from him a note begging indefinite postponement33 of the evening appointment. Mme. Castanado had fever and probably la grippe.
