CHAPTER LIX
WHERE SOME CREOLE MONEY GOES
And yet the family committee that ordered the inscription, the mason whocut it in the marble--himself a sort of half-Grandissime,half-nobody--and even the fair women who each eve of All-Saints came,attended by flower-laden slave girls, to lay coronals upon the old man'stomb, felt, feebly at first, and more and more distinctly as years wentby, that Forever was a trifle long for one to confine one's patrioticaffection to a small fraction of a great country.
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"And you say your family decline to accept the assistance of the policein their endeavors to bring the killer of your uncle to justice?" askedsome _Americain_ or other of 'Polyte Grandissime.
"'Sir, mie fam'lie do not want to fetch him to justice!--neitherPalmyre! We are goin' to fetch the justice to them! And sir, when wecannot do that, sir, by ourselves, sir,--no, sir! no police!"
So Clemence was the only victim of the family wrath; for the other twowere never taken; and it helps our good feeling for the Grandissimes toknow that in later times, under the gentler influences of a highercivilization, their old Spanish-colonial ferocity was gradually absorbedby the growth of better traits. To-day almost all the savagery that canjustly be charged against Louisiana must--strange to say--be laid atthe door of the _Americain_. The Creole character has been diluted andsweetened.
One morning early in September, some two weeks after the death ofAgricola, the same brig which something less than a year before hadbrought the Frowenfelds to New Orleans crossed, outward bound, the sharpline dividing the sometimes tawny waters of Mobile Bay from the deepblue Gulf, and bent her way toward Europe.
She had two passengers; a tall, dark, wasted yet handsome man ofthirty-seven or thirty-eight years of age, and a woman seemingly somethree years younger, of beautiful though severe countenance; "veryelegant-looking people and evidently rich," so the brig-master describedthem,--"had much the look of some of the Mississippi River 'Lower Coast'aristocracy." Their appearance was the more interesting for a look ofmental distress evident on the face of each. Brother and sister theycalled themselves; but, if so, she was the most severely reserved anddistant sister the master of the vessel had ever seen.
They landed, if the account comes down to us right, at Bordeaux. Thecaptain, a fellow of the peeping sort, found pastime in keeping them insight after they had passed out of his care ashore. They went todifferent hotels!
The vessel was detained some weeks in this harbor, and her mastercontinued to enjoy himself in the way in which he had begun. He saw hislate passengers meet often, in a certain quiet path under the trees ofthe Quinconce. Their conversations were low; in the patois they usedthey could have afforded to speak louder; their faces were always graveand almost always troubled. The interviews seemed to give neither ofthem any pleasure. The monsieur grew thinner than ever, andsadly feeble.
"He wants to charter her," the seaman concluded, "but she doesn't likehis rates."
One day, the last that he saw them together, they seemed to be, each ina way different from the other, under a great strain. He was haggard,woebegone, nervous; she high-strung, resolute,--with "eyes that shonelike lamps," as said the observer.
"She's a-sendin' him 'way to lew-ard," thought he. Finally the Monsieurhanded her--or rather placed upon the seat near which she stood, whatshe would not receive--a folded and sealed document, seized her hand,kissed it and hurried away. She sank down upon the seat, weak and pale,and rose to go, leaving the document behind. The mariner picked it up;it was directed to _M. Honore Grandissime, Nouvelle Orleans, Etats Unis,Amerique_. She turned suddenly, as if remembering, or possiblyreconsidering, and received it from him.
"It looked like a last will and testament," the seaman used to say, intelling the story.
The next morning, being at the water's edge and seeing a number ofpersons gathering about something not far away, he sauntered down towardit to see how small a thing was required to draw a crowd of theseFrenchmen. It was the drowned body of the f.m.c.
Did the brig-master never see the woman again? He always waited for thisquestion to be asked him, in order to state the more impressively thathe did. His brig became a regular Bordeaux packet, and he saw the Madametwice or thrice, apparently living at great ease, but solitary, in therue--. He was free to relate that he tried to scrape acquaintance withher, but failed ignominiously.
The rents of Number 19 rue Bienville and of numerous other places,including the new drug-store in the rue Royale, were collected regularlyby H. Grandissime, successor to Grandissime Freres. Rumor said, andtradition repeats, that neither for the advancement of a friendlesspeople, nor even for the repair of the properties' wear and tear, didone dollar of it ever remain in New Orleans; but that once a yearHonore, "as instructed," remitted to Madame--say Madame Inconnue--ofBordeaux, the equivalent, in francs, of fifty thousand dollars. It isaverred he did this without interruption for twenty years. "Let us see:fifty times twenty--one million dollars. That is only a _part_ of the_pecuniary_ loss which this sort of thing costs Louisiana."
But we have wandered.