CHAPTER XIII
A CALL FROM THE RENT-SPECTRE
It is nearly noon of a balmy morning late in February. Aurore Nancanouand her daughter have only this moment ceased sewing, in the small frontroom of No. 19 rue Bienville. Number 19 is the right-hand half of asingle-story, low-roofed tenement, washed with yellow ochre, which itshares generously with whoever leans against it. It sits as fast on theground as a toad. There is a kitchen belonging to it somewhere among theweeds in the back yard, and besides this room where the ladies are,there is, directly behind it, a sleeping apartment. Somewhere back ofthis there is a little nook where in pleasant weather they eat. Theircook and housemaid is the plain person who attends them on the street.Her bedchamber is the kitchen and her bed the floor. The house's onlyother protector is a hound, the aim of whose life is to get thrust outof the ladies' apartments every fifteen minutes.
Yet if you hastily picture to yourself a forlorn-looking establishment,you will be moving straight away from the fact. Neatness, order,excellence, are prevalent qualities in all the details of the mainhouse's inward garniture. The furniture is old-fashioned, rich, French,imported. The carpets, if not new, are not cheap, either. Bits ofcrystal and silver, visible here and there, are as bright as they areantiquated; and one or two portraits, and the picture of Our Lady ofMany Sorrows, are passably good productions. The brass work, of whichthere is much, is brilliantly burnished, and the front room is brightand cheery.
At the street door of this room somebody has just knocked. Aurore hasrisen from her seat. The other still sits on a low chair with her handsand sewing dropped into her lap, looking up steadfastly into hermother's face with a mingled expression of fondness and dismayedexpectation. Aurore hesitates beside her chair, desirous of resuming herseat, even lifts her sewing from it; but tarries a moment, her alertsuspense showing in her eyes. Her daughter still looks up into them. Itis not strange that the dwellers round about dispute as to which is thefairer, nor that in the six months during which the two have occupiedNumber 19 the neighbors have reached no conclusion on this subject. Ifsome young enthusiast compares the daughter--in her eighteenth year--toa bursting blush rosebud full of promise, some older one immediatelyretorts that the other--in her thirty-fifth--is the red, red,full-blown, faultless joy of the garden. If one says the maiden has thedew of youth,--"But!" cry two or three mothers in a breath, "that otherone, child, will never grow old. With her it will always be morning.That woman is going to last forever; ha-a-a-a!--even longer!"
There was one direction in which the widow evidently had the advantage;you could see from the street or the opposite windows that she was awise householder. On the day they moved into Number 19 she had been seento enter in advance of all her other movables, carrying into the emptyhouse a new broom, a looking-glass, and a silver coin. Every morningsince, a little watching would have discovered her at the hour ofsunrise sprinkling water from her side casement, and her oppositeneighbors often had occasion to notice that, sitting at her sewing bythe front window, she never pricked her finger but she quickly ran it upbehind her ear, and then went on with her work. Would anybody but JosephFrowenfeld ever have lived in and moved away from the two-story bricknext them on the right and not have known of the existence of sucha marvel?
"Ha!" they said, "she knows how to keep off bad luck, that Madameyonder. And the younger one seems not to like it. Girls think themselvesso smart these days."
Ah, there was the knock again, right there on the street-door, as loudas if it had been given with a joint of sugar-cane!
The daughter's hand, which had just resumed the needle, stood still inmid-course with the white thread half-drawn. Aurore tiptoed slowly overthe carpeted floor. There came a shuffling sound, and the corner of afolded white paper commenced appearing and disappearing under the door.She mounted a chair and peeped through that odd little _jalousie_ whichformerly was in almost all New Orleans street-doors; but the missive hadmeantime found its way across the sill, and she saw only theunpicturesque back of a departing errand-boy. But that was well. She hada pride, to maintain which--and a poverty, to conceal which--she felt tobe necessary to her self-respect; and this made her of necessity atrifle unsocial in her own castle. Do you suppose she was going to puton the face of having been born or married to this degraded conditionof things?
Who knows?--the knock might have been from 'Sieur Frowenfel'--ha, ha! Hemight be just silly enough to call so early; or it might have been fromthat _polisson_ of a Grandissime,--which one didn't matter, they wereall detestable,--coming to collect the rent. That was her original fear;or, worse still, it might have been, had it been softer, the knock ofsome possible lady visitor. She had no intention of admitting anyfeminine eyes to detect this carefully covered up indigence. Besides, itwas Monday. There is no sense in trifling with bad luck. The receptionof Monday callers is a source of misfortune never known to fail, save inrare cases when good luck has already been secured by smearing thefront walk or the banquette with Venetian red.
Before the daughter could dart up and disengage herself from her workher mother had pounced upon the paper. She was standing and reading, herrich black lashes curtaining their downcast eyes, her infant waist andround, close-fitted, childish arms harmonizing prettily with her mockfrown of infantile perplexity, and her long, limp robe heightening thegrace of her posture, when the younger started from her seat with theair of determining not to be left at a disadvantage.
But what is that on the dark eyelash? With a sudden additional energythe daughter dashes the sewing and chair to right and left, bounds up,and in a moment has Aurore weeping in her embrace and has snatched thenote from her hand.
"_Ah! maman! Ah! ma chere mere_!"
The mother forced a laugh. She was not to be mothered by her daughter;so she made a dash at Clotilde's uplifted hand to recover the note,which was unavailing. Immediately there arose in colonial French theloveliest of contentions, the issue of which was that the pair sat downside by side, like two sisters over one love-letter, and undertook todecipher the paper. It read as follows:
"NEW ORLEANS, 20 Feb're, 1804.
"MADAME NANCANOU: I muss oblige to ass you for rent of that house whare you living, it is at number 19 Bienville street whare I do not received thos rent from you not since tree mons and I demand you this is mabe thirteen time. And I give to you notice of 19 das writen in Anglish as the new law requi. That witch the law make necessare only for 15 das, and when you not pay me those rent in 19 das till the tense of Marh I will rekes you to move out. That witch make me to be verry sorry. I have the honor to remain, Madam,
"Your humble servant, "H. Grandissime. "_per_ Z.F."
There was a short French postscript on the opposite page signed only byM. Zenon Francois, explaining that he, who had allowed them in the pastto address him as their landlord and by his name, was but the landlord'sagent; that the landlord was a far better-dressed man than he couldafford to be; that the writing opposite was a notice for them to quitthe premises they had rented (not leased), or pay up; that it gave thewriter great pain to send it, although it was but the necessary legalform and he only an irresponsible drawer of an inadequate salary, withthirteen children to support; and that he implored them to tear off andburn up this postscript immediately they had read it.
"Ah, the miserable!" was all the comment made upon it as the two ladiesaddressed their energies to the previous English. They had neversuspected him of being M. Grandissime.
Their eyes dragged slowly and ineffectually along the lines to thesignature.
"H. Grandissime! Loog ad 'im!" cried the widow, with a sudden shortlaugh, that brought the tears after it like a wind-gust in a rose-tree.She held the letter out before them as if she was lifting somethingalive by the back of the neck, and to intensify her scorn spoke in thehated tongue prescribed by the new courts. "Loog ad 'im! dad ridgegen'leman oo give so mudge money to de 'ozpill!"
"Bud, _maman_," said the daughter, laying her hand appe
asingly upon hermother's knee, "_ee_ do nod know 'ow we is poor."
"Ah!" retorted Aurore, "_par example! Non?_ Ee thingue we is ridge, eh?Ligue his oncle, eh? Ee thing so, too, eh?" She cast upon her daughterthe look of burning scorn intended for Agricola Fusilier. "You wan' totague the pard of dose Grandissime'?"
The daughter returned a look of agony.
"No," she said, "bud a man wad godd some 'ouses to rend, muz ee nodboun' to ged 'is rend?"
"Boun' to ged--ah! yez ee muz do 'is possible to ged 'is rend. Oh!certain_lee_. Ee is ridge, bud ee need a lill money, bad, bad. Fo'w'at?" The excited speaker rose to her feet under a sudden inspiration."_Tenez, Mademoiselle!_" She began to make great show of unfasteningher dress.
"_Mais, comment?_" demanded the suffering daughter.
"Yez!" continued Aurore, keeping up the demonstration, "you wand 'im to'ave 'is rend so bad! An' I godd honely my cloze; so you juz tague dizto you' fine gen'lemen, 'Sieur Honore Grandissime."
"Ah-h-h-h!" cried the martyr.
"An' you is righd," persisted the tormentor, still unfastening; but thedaughter's tears gushed forth, and the repentant tease threw herselfupon her knees, drew her child's head into her bosom and wept afresh.
Half an hour was passed in council; at the end of which they stoodbeneath their lofty mantelshelf, each with a foot on a brazen fire-dog,and no conclusion reached.
"Ah, my child!"--they had come to themselves now and were speaking intheir peculiar French--"if we had here in these hands but the tenth partof what your papa often played away in one night without once gettingangry! But we have not. Ah! but your father was a fine fellow; if hecould have lived for you to know him! So accomplished! Ha, ha, ha! I cannever avoid laughing, when I remember him teaching me to speak English;I used to enrage him so!"
The daughter brought the conversation back to the subject of discussion.There were nineteen days yet allowed them. God knows--by the expirationof that time they might be able to pay. With the two music scholars whomshe then had and three more whom she had some hope to get, she made boldto say they could pay the rent.
"Ah, Clotilde, my child," exclaimed Aurore, with sudden brightness, "youdon't need a mask and costume to resemble your great-grandmother, thecasket-girl!" Aurore felt sure, on her part, that with the oneembroidery scholar then under her tutelage, and the three others who haddeclined to take lessons, they could easily pay the rent--and how kindit was of Monsieur, the aged father of that one embroidery scholar, toprocure those invitations to the ball! The dear old man! He said he mustsee one more ball before he should die.
Aurore looked so pretty in the reverie into which she fell that herdaughter was content to admire her silently.
"Clotilde," said the mother, presently looking up, "do you remember theevening you treated me so ill?"
The daughter smiled at the preposterous charge.
"I did not treat you ill."
"Yes, don't you know--the evening you made me lose my purse?"
"Certainly, I know!" The daughter took her foot from the andiron; hereyes lighted up aggressively. "For losing your purse blame yourself. Forthe way you found it again--which was far worse--thank Palmyre. If youhad not asked her to find it and shared the gold with her we could havereturned with it to 'Sieur Frowenfel'; but now we are ashamed to let himsee us. I do not doubt he filled the purse."
"He? He never knew it was empty. It was Nobody who filled it. Palmyresays that Papa Lebat--"
"Ha!" exclaimed Clotilde at this superstitious mention.
The mother tossed her head and turned her back, swallowing theunendurable bitterness of being rebuked by her daughter. But the cloudhung over but a moment.
"Clotilde," she said, a minute after, turning with a look of sun-brightresolve, "I am going to see him."
"To see whom?" asked the other, looking back from the window, whithershe had gone to recover from a reactionary trembling.
"To whom, my child? Why--"
"You do not expect mercy from Honore Grandissime? You would not ask it?"
"No. There is no mercy in the Grandissime blood; but cannot I demandjustice? Ha! it is justice that I shall demand!"
"And you will really go and see him?"
"You will see, Mademoiselle," replied Aurore, dropping a broom withwhich she had begun to sweep up some spilled buttons.
"And I with you?"
"No! To a counting-room? To the presence of the chief of that detestablerace? No!"
"But you don't know where his office is."
"Anybody can tell me."
Preparation began at once. By and by--
"Clotilde."
Clotilde was stooping behind her mother, with a ribbon between her lips,arranging a flounce.
"M-m-m."
"You must not watch me go out of sight; do you hear? ... But it _is_dangerous. I knew of a gentleman who watched his wife go out of hissight and she never came back!"
"Hold still!" said Clotilde.
"But when my hand itches," retorted Aurore in a high key, "haven't I gotto put it instantly into my pocket if I want the money to come there?Well, then!"
The daughter proposed to go to the kitchen and tell Alphonsina to put onher shoes.
"My child," cried Aurore, "you are crazy! Do you want Alphonsina to beseized for the rent?"
"But you cannot go alone--and on foot!"
"I must go alone; and--can you lend me your carriage? Ah, you have none?Certainly I must go alone and on foot if I am to say I cannot pay therent. It is no indiscretion of mine. If anything happens to me it is M.Grandissime who is responsible."
Now she is ready for the adventurous errand. She darts to the mirror.The high-water marks are gone from her eyes. She wheels half around andlooks over her shoulder. The flaring bonnet and loose ribbons gave her amore girlish look than ever.
"Now which is the older, little old woman?" she chirrups, and smites herdaughter's cheek softly with her palm.
"And you are not afraid to go alone?"
"No; but remember! look at that dog!"
The brute sinks apologetically to the floor. Clotilde opens the streetdoor, hands Aurore the note, Aurore lays a frantic kiss upon her lips,pressing it on tight so as to get it again when she comes back,and--while Clotilde calls the cook to gather up the buttons and takeaway the broom, and while the cook, to make one trip of it, gathers thehound into her bosom and carries broom and dog out together--Auroresallies forth, leaving Clotilde to resume her sewing and await thecoming of a guitar scholar.
"It will keep her fully an hour," thought the girl, far from imaginingthat Aurore had set about a little private business which she proposedto herself to accomplish before she even started in the direction of M.Grandissime's counting-rooms.