"So far from that," he was saying, "a story may easily be improved, clarified, beautified, by--what shall I say?--by filtering down through a second and third generation of the right tellers1 and hearers."
"Ah, yes! the right, yes! But----"
"And for me you're supremely2 the right one."
Instantly he rued3 his speech. Some delicate mechanism4 seemed to stop. Had he broken it? As one might lay a rare watch to his ear he waited, listening, while they stood looking off to where water, sky, and sun met; and presently, to his immeasurable relief, she responded:
"Grandpère was not at that time such a very young man, yet he still lived with his father. So when grand'mère and her two friends--with Sidney and Mingo--returned from the privateer to the hotel they were opposite neighbors to the Chapdelaines and almost without another friend, in a city--among a people--on fire with war. Then, pretty soon--" the fair narrator stopped and significantly smiled.
Chester twinkled. "Um-h'm," he said, "your grandpère's heart became another city on fire."
"Yes, and 'twas in that old hotel--with the war storm coming, like to-day only everything much more close and terrible, business dead, soldiers every day going to Virginia--you must make Mr. Thorndyke-Smith tell you about that--'twas in that old hotel, at a great free-gift lottery5 and bazaar6, lasting7 a week, for aid of soldiers' families, and in a balcony of the grand salon8, that grandpère--" the narrator ceased and smiled again.
"Proposed," Chester murmured.
The girl nodded. They sank to a bench, the world behind them, the stars above. "Grand'mére, she couldn't say yes till he'd first go to her home, almost at the Canadian line, and ask her family. She, she couldn't go; she couldn't leave Sidney and Mingo and neither could she take them. So by railroad at last he got there. But her family took so long to consent that he got back only the next year and through the fall of the city. Only by ship could he come, and not till he had begged President Lincoln himself and promised him to work with his might to return Louisiana to the union. Well, of course, he and his father had voted against secession, weeping; yet now this was a pledge terrible to keep, and the more because, you see? what to do, and when and how to do it----"
"Were left to his own judgment9 and tact10?"
"Oh, and honor! But anyhow he came. Doubtless, bringing the written permission of the family, he was happy. Yet to what bitternesses--can we say bitternesses in English?"
"Indeed we can," said Chester.
"To what bitternesses grandpére had to return!"
"Aline!" Mme. De l'Isle called; "à table!"
"Yes, madame. Tell me--you, Mr. Chester--to your vision, how all that must have been."
"Paint in your sketch11? Let me try. Maybe only because you tell the story, but maybe rather because it's so easy to see in you a reincarnation of your grand'mére--a Creole incarnation of that young 'Maud'--what I see plainest is she. I see her here, two thousand miles from home, with but three or four friends among a quarter of a million enemies. I see her on the day the city fell, looking up and down Royal Street from a balcony of the hotel, while from the great dome12 a few steps behind her the union fleet could be seen, rounding the first two river bends below the harbor, engaging a last few Confederate guns at the old battle-ground, and coming on, with the Stars and Stripes at every peak. I see her----"
"She was beautiful, you know--grand'mére."
"Yes, I see her so, looking down from that balcony, awestruck, not fearstruck, on the people who in agonies of rage and terror fled the city by pairs and families, or in armed squads13 and unarmed mobs swept through the streets and up and down the levee, burning, breaking, and
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