II

During the meal Mme. Daquin and her father talked animatedly of the new life of the Daquins, for which the two of them were so largely responsible. But the thoughts which ran through the heads of Jean Daquin and Mimi dealt with the past and especially with the rapid changes which a few weeks had wrought. Though neither of them knew precisely what the other was thinking, their minds were going over the events which had taken place since that morning which had been the beginning of the new order of things. Had some person possessing the powers of wizardry, an adept in the process of thought amalgamation, been present and woven a picture made of the fragments which filled Jean’s and Mimi’s minds, the product of his labours would have resulted somewhat after this fashion.⁠ ⁠…

It was a sunny morning in New Orleans several weeks past. Jean Daquin tapped gently on the door. No answer came. Again he tapped⁠—tapped⁠—tapped. Again there was silence. Carefully he pushed open the heavy door, which groaned dismally on its ancient hinges. From within there came the rhythmic inhaling of breath of a sound sleeper. Jean tiptoed to the deep casemented window and drew aside the heavy curtains of dusty wine-coloured velvet.

Warm, intoxicating Louisiana sunshine tumbled into the room as though a giant hand had loosed a celestial sluice-gate. With the yellow flood poured the sensuous blend of odours⁠—of wild honeysuckle, of Cherokee rose in full bloom, of hyacinth, of oleander. Jean stood at the window, his arms raised clutching the draperies, and took deep draughts of the air heady as old wine. The trees and flowers sparkled in the sunshine, covered with glittering beads of water from the recently ended shower.

His tiny garden enclosed with the crumbling brick wall had never seemed so beautiful. He picked out one by one the flowers he had planted and tended⁠—the oleander-bush by the house, which, a generation before, had quartered the slave house servants. It was in bloom now, the ground beneath it covered over with salver-shaped white petals. There near it was the bed of pansies⁠—Bernard Dieux, sleeping the long sleep in old St. Louis cemetery this year and a half had given him the cuttings. Over to the left was the Cherokee rose in whose shade he had spent many happy hours, reading a part of the time, more often just sitting and dreaming. Many a day he had sat there or in the cool quietness of the decaying servant house, two-storied, of brick laid between heavy posts, briqueté entre poteaux. Its walls were slowly crumbling these late years and its bricks were covered with greenish mould but the old house was sturdily standing up, despite its years, against all the furies of rain and sun that beat upon it. There Jean had sat in the rickety chair and sucked into his nostrils the faint fragrance of his orange-trees that grew just inside and along the old wall. He loved to rest his eyes grown weary with the printed page on their blackish green foliage that provided so perfect a background for their tiny fruit⁠—little globules of deep yellow gold. But he loved these best when they were shedding their flowers⁠—“a steam of rich distilled perfumes,” Bernard, who was given to quotation of poetry, used to say of the orange-trees.

“Jean! Why don’t you come down?” a strident, querulous voice from below stirred him. Jean hastily quitted the window and shuffled over to the huge and elaborately carved bed.

“Mimi! Mimi! Wake up! Your mother’s in an awful humour this morning! Get up quickly before she comes and gets us both!”

The sleeper stirred, turned over and recommenced her steady breathing. The rays of the sunlight touched her hair as her head rolled to one side. In the shadow it had seemed brown. Before Jean’s eyes it underwent a miraculous transformation as the tiny rays of light picked out the coppery brilliance that here was auburn, and there shaded off into a deeper reddish colour. It was like spun gold dipped in flaming cochineal. The curls in tangled disarray framed the oval, cream-coloured face. Half full lips were slightly parted, even teeth gleaming from the red frame. Mimi lay stretched on the bed, the bedclothes pushed towards its foot, her slender body covered only with the thin nightdress. Small soft breasts rose and fell gently, the promise of approaching womanhood revealed in the curves of her rapidly maturing body.

Jean looked at his daughter, his eyes half filled with joy at her warm beauty, half with troubled anxiety. He had seen too much of life to be unaware of what his child’s delicate and fragile beauty might bring to her. At times he had almost wished she were less attractive⁠—when he walked with her along the streets he watched with envious, jealous eyes the glances Mimi, though not yet fourteen, drew instinctively from the men, young and old. He was proud of her, of course⁠—many girls of eighteen or nineteen were not half so well formed. Yet, he feared for her and, more often than not, his apprehension swept over and wiped out his joy in her comeliness.

“Holy Mother, keep me alive⁠—not for life alone, sweet as it is for me, but that I may be with her to guide her steps and protect her!” he often prayed as Mimi knelt beside him at mass, innocent of the anxiety bordering on agony which filled the breast of her father.

“Jean! Must I come up for you?” came again the voice from below, anger sharpening its usual petulance.

“Mimi! Get up, chérie! At once, or we’ll both be raked over the coals!” Jean pleaded.

Mimi stirred again, opened her eyes, sat up and smiled.

“Here’s your coffee⁠—I’m afraid it’s cold but drink it quickly and slip on your clothes. Your mother’s all out of sorts this morning and we’ll both catch it if you keep breakfast waiting much longer.”

“Let her fuss, papa. It’s too pretty a morning to bother with maman. She’ll quarrel anyhow,” smiled Mimi as she took the cup of black coffee and stirred it slowly. “Ugh⁠—it’s all cold⁠—I don’t want it!” she grimaced as she pushed the cup away. “You go down, papa, and I’ll be ready in a few minutes.”

Jean took the cup but made no motion of leaving. “Mimi, we’re going to move away from New Orleans⁠—”

“Move away? Where? Why? Leave this old house?” the questions tumbled out of her mouth, her eyes now wide-awake with surprise.

“It’s your mother⁠—she’s had her way at last⁠—we’re going to move to a more ‘progressive’ town where folks get ahead faster⁠—” His words, despite conscious effort to sound matter-of-fact, were tinged with a bit of irony, with a fragment of bitterness and pain. “Your mother⁠—”

“Stop calling her my mother!” Mimi half angrily de manded, all the cheerfulness gone from her voice and face. “She’s only a stepmother!”

“All right! All right!” Jean hastily agreed. “I can’t tell you all of it now⁠—but I can’t stand this nagging any longer. I’ve got to have peace even if I have to go to the North Pole to get it⁠—”

“Why do you yield so easily to her? Why don’t you tell her right out you won’t go and she must stop fussing at you all the time? If I were you I certainly wouldn’t let her run all over me!” Mimi declared as she slipped out of the bed and began to dress.

“Mimi!” Jean chided; the hurt her words caused were evident in his voice.

“Forgive me, papa. I wouldn’t hurt you for anything.” Mimi caught him as he started to the door, tray in hand, and kissed him warmly. Even as he forgave her, he was troubled at the moist softness of her lips.

“After breakfast we’ll go for a walk down to the Basin. I’ll tell you all about it then and a lot of other things I’ve been planning to tell you for a long time. Don’t be long now!” he cautioned as he left the room.

Mimi smiled as she heard his carpet slippers pat-pat-patting down the hall. Poor, gentle, lovable old Jean. He would never learn the combination to the intricately devised safe called Life, Mimi thought for the thousandth time. Fumbling in his aimless way, living in a world of his own filled with ghostly figures of silken clad ladies and velvet garmented gentlemen⁠—Mandevilles, Marignys, de Pontalbas and Gayarres⁠—he would never understand nor master bustle and hurry and pep of the newer years.

She did not consciously think these things as she dressed hurriedly, yet Mimi sensed that Jean was living in a day that had passed and would never return. Though her stepmother irritated her almost to frenzy, Mimi was aware of the fact that Mme. Daquin was better armed for present-day life than either Jean or herself. She who was Mary Robertson of Chicago, American for many generations, was unencumbered with the hoary traditions which kept Jean with his pride of Creole ancestry content with his dreams, caring little whether his house was better furnished than those of his neighbours and friends, worrying not at all and wholly free from envy if his bank balance was more or less than the man’s next door.

Mimi often wondered what course their lives might have taken had her mother lived. And even as she wondered she knew the answer⁠—Jean and her mother and she would have lived on and on and on in the old house on Dumaine Street until Jean and Margot had died and Mimi had married some Creole whose ideas about life had dovetailed with those of the Daquin family. Growing poorer and poorer year by year, the sleepy cycle of uneventful days would have continued, as untouched by the outside world as the bayous that bordered the rushing, ever changing Mississippi.

Into these quiet backwaters Mary Robertson had swept. Her coming had been like the digging of a channel that linked the sluggish bayou with the pellmell hurtling stream nearby. Mimi’s mother died when she was nine. His beloved Margot gone, Jean had floundered about, terrified by loneliness, panic-stricken when he found himself the sole keeper and guardian and nurse of a perturbingly active child of nine. He felt as though some malevolent power had inveigled him into a boat, rowed him far from shore and then deftly removed the bottom of the craft. He felt himself splashing, treading water, frantically feeling for solid earth beneath his feet and finding none.

Margot with quiet efficiency had guided him, consoled him, upheld him. With gentle self-effacement she had suggested solutions to the problems which arose in his little sick-and-accident insurance company, woefully lacking as it was in modern business methods, but which furnished sufficient revenue to satisfy their simple needs. So cleverly had she managed these hints, he never knew until after her death how she had planted the seed of these ideas in his head, watched them grow until they met the little crises which arose and then flattered his gentle and simple soul by telling him how cleverly he had solved the perplexities of the moment.

Jean had often told Mimi how Mary Robertson had come to New Orleans on a visit at Mardi Gras time two years after Margot had died and just when he had become most lonely and afraid. His grief had dulled his senses so completely that for more than a year after his wife had died Jean had lived in a state that bordered on coma. When he grieved most was at night and then he sought forgetfulness in wine. Night after night he sat down after dinner, a wicker-covered demijohn by the side of his chair. On the table in front of him rested two objects⁠—a faded photograph of Margot in her wedding gown and an ample-proportioned wineglass of mottled green.

Mimi used to steal into the room in her nightdress and crouch in the shadows back of the door and watch him, fascinated by his varying moods. One thing only was constant, as soon as his glass was emptied Jean reached down, hooked the first two fingers of his right hand in the handle of the gallon container. Steadying it with his thumb, he raised the demijohn up and over with a flip until its bowl rested on his biceps. Pouring his glass full, Jean lowered the jar to the floor again. The process was repeated at regular intervals. In time Jean’s head would sink lower and lower until it rested on the table, his arms his only pillow. Mimi would then cover his shoulders with the damask cover from the couch and creep back to her own bed.

Mary Robertson did not herself know why she had been attracted by Jean Daquin. She knew that, in part, she had been drawn by his gentle manner, so different from the blustering, raw, at times tiresome aggressiveness of her own Chicago. Even to herself she sternly denied that this had caused her interest in Jean to grow. Her father had used his earnings as a physician to speculate in real estate. Through shrewd and clever means he had accumulated considerable wealth in Chicago’s fast-growing Negro settlement on the south side, and this wealth had given him great political power among his people.

Mary Robertson had no recollection of a time when she did not hear from morning to night endless discussions of money and of politics. If her father was not talking of the sums he had made or expected to make from this piece of property or through that election, he usually was conjecturing as to the wisdom or folly of associating with this man or that one, of joining one fraternal order or the other one, of doing this thing or the other, all these speculations revolving around the one desideratum⁠—will it pay?

Jean Daquin, improvident, oblivious of material advantage or disadvantage of any act of his, had opened to her eyes a new world filled with romance, with colour, with beauty. This, combined with the stories told her of his grief over Margot, had appealed to her feminine love of the unstable, the exotic, the unusual. Unconsciously she associated with Jean the exciting revelry of Mardi Gras, and found herself in love with him.

Jean, floundering in the abyss of sorrow, was, in his more sober moments, beginning to develop a new fear when he met Mary Robertson⁠—an apprehension regarding Mimi.

“I’m a poor excuse for a father, chérie,” he told her a score of times a day despite her sincere protestations that he was the best father any girl ever had. “Here I am, drinking every night until I’m beastly drunk and forgetting Margot would want me to brace up for your sake. I’m no good at all⁠—you’d be better off if I were dead, too.”

Here he would pause for the denial of his words which Mimi never failed to furnish. He would listen comfortably while she pointed out his virtues as a paterfamilias⁠—and an hour later would be as unconvinced as ever. Mary determined she would capture Jean, distaste for her life in Chicago growing daily as she stayed on in New Orleans long after she had originally intended to leave. She was beguiled by the romance and languorous charm of the Creole quarter where she, for the first time, could forget the petty meanness and prejudice she felt as a Negro elsewhere in America. Mary Robertson swiftly but without Jean’s realizing it led him to propose to her.

To him, blundering along like a pilotless balloon, blown unresistingly this way or that by every passing breeze, she seemed the embodiment of all the virtues he himself lacked. Energetic, purposeful, dynamic, she supplied a driving force which smoothed out numerous little difficulties which to him had seemed insurmountable. Under her influence he walked with her in the evenings, methodically answering the soft “Good nights” which floated down to them from shadowed balconies or from doorways, instead of sitting at home drinking his usual half-gallon of double port. His mind clearer from alcohol, he brought some semblance of order to his insurance business, which had suffered greatly during his year of neglect.

He resisted sturdily and successfully her slightly less than tactful suggestions that more modern business methods be installed.

“No, Mary, I don’t want a big business⁠—then I’d be only a slave to it, just a creature run this way or that by the machine I’ve created. I get my living as things are⁠—and I’m satisfied.”

She was too wise to pursue the matter further but his adamant resistance did not prevent her from resolving, silently of course, to bide her time until she had the right and the power to have her way. Her intention was not consciously unkind nor meddlesome. He’s got a gold mine practically untouched, she thought, and I’ll convince him he can make ten times as much as he does. Jean, meanwhile, thought he had ended the discussion for all time.

Mimi, christened “Annette Angela Daquin” but thereafter known only as “Mimi,” was eleven when Mary Robertson entered Jean Daquin’s life. From the beginning Mimi had felt a barrier within herself arising against the overtures of friendship Mary Robertson made. There was no dislike which Mimi felt. Nor was there affection. Had Mimi analyzed her feelings towards this new and alien creature who had come, whirlwind-like, into their placid lives, she would have found indifference or perhaps passive acceptance of the newcomer as one of the vagaries of fate. This calm acceptance was in no small degree caused by Mimi’s realization that this new creature furnished a much needed stimulating influence on Jean. For Mimi was wise beyond her eleven years. So Mimi accepted her without audible protest even when Jean hinted Mary Robertson might come and take Margot’s place.⁠ ⁠…

So Jean and Mary were married first by Father André at the little Catholic church Jean had always attended, and then by the Rev. George W. Brown of the Ebenezer Baptist Church, to which denomination Mary belonged.

To the marriage there arose storms of protest from the relatives and friends of both Mary and Jean. He was alternately reviled and pitied for marrying an outsider, one who, though respectable and worthy, yet was not of Creole blood. “Le pauvre Jean,” they wailed, “grief and drink have weakened his understanding.” From Mary’s relatives, her father in particular, there came an outburst that overshadowed the protest of Jean’s friends as a tornado outsweeps the gentle breeze of a woman’s fan. Mr. Robertson rushed to New Orleans, stormed, denounced, ridiculed, pleaded, but in vain. Mary met his every mood in kind until, wise from his years of political training, he yielded, remained for the Protestant ceremony, refused to attend the Catholic one, and returned to Chicago, where he boasted to his friends of the “high Creole society” into which his Mary had married.

For a year they were happy. Mary was too clever to attempt revolutionary changes in her new milieu, even in the home where the to her slipshod methods of management irked her sorely. Towards Mimi she adopted a conciliatory policy, sensing the girl’s latent hostility to her who had taken, in physical ways at least, the place so long filled by the adored Margot.

Mary made few friends among the intimates of Jean and Mimi. They with gentle but unmistakable signs let her know that despite her marriage to Jean she yet was and would ever remain an outsider. Time and time again Jean and Mimi received invitations to dinner, to parties which did not include Mary. The mellow old families, militantly proud of their Creole and Negro ancestry, yielded not an inch to that which went on in the world outside. Deadlines there were which they never permitted crossing. One of these was family. Another was colour. Mary offended in both. She was an outsider. And her skin was deep brown, in sharp contrast to the ivory tint of Jean and Mimi.

For the first year of her marriage Mary was oblivious of these things. She was too intelligent not to notice them but they either amused her or were ignored by her as evidences of narrow-mindedness by those who too long had lived in a world apart. She loved gentle, irresponsible Jean with her whole heart, with a woman’s inconsistency, though he offended in almost every particular the canons of efficiency and progress which were a part of her very being.

She was content to spend her time at home, learning to cook dishes new to her and dear to Jean, green trout and perch from the bayous, oysters fresh from the reefs, pompano and snappers and red fish from the Gulf, new and exotic vegetables and fruits, gumbo, Jambalaya, and combinations of all sorts of ingredients, generously spiced and seasoned. She gloried in the quaint old house and its furnishings⁠—tenderly she cared for the old eighteenth-century piano of mahogany inlaid with brass, the Empire work table with ornately carved legs of St. Domingo mahogany that Jean’s great-grandfather had brought to Louisiana when he fled from the Insurrection of 1791 in San Domingo.

During the year of their marriage Jean had told her the story of the refugee a score of times. Time and again he related the tale of tempestuous days, of ruin facing the sugar-planters of the Delta, of commerce paralysed, of the cessation for twenty-five years of manufacture of marketable sugar. She had heard of the black Dominican refugees, of the Spaniards, Mendez and Solis, and their plants on the outskirts of New Orleans, one a distillery, the other a refinery for making syrup.

The indigo crop a failure, their efforts to granulate sugar a failure, they were faced with ruin, complete and absolute. Then came Etienne de Boré and several black Dominicans, among them Jean’s great-grandfather. Days of anxious experimentation. Days of hope. Days of failure. The day of the final test. The exultant cry, “It granulates!” Prosperity beyond the wildest dream. Four⁠—five⁠—seven years. Five million pounds of sugar marketed in one year by de Boré. Always Jean ended the story: “And that was done, my dear, by my great-grandfather⁠—a Negro from San Domingo!” For the first year she succeeded in refraining from the comment that always came to her lips when she heard the story. It was: “And what about you, Jean Daquin, exhibiting some of your great-grandfather’s initiative?” And it was a long time before she could get used to pronouncing his name other than as “Gene Da-Kwinn.”

In time, however, Mme. Daquin tired even of the elaborately carved old four-posted mahogany beds, so high that one used a step to climb into them. Even the old silver, the garden, lost their fresh charm as she grew used to them. Like new toys they fascinated her for a while and, with her love for Jean, her mild affection for Mimi and her new duties, her mind was kept free from Jean’s backwardness and the continued coolness of Jean’s friends towards her. But when this newness wore off she began, at first gently and then with increasing vigour, to point out to him the opportunities for gain he was overlooking. At the same time she began to long for the progressiveness and bustle and eager hurrying of her own Chicago.

Jean at the beginning of her first mild reproaches sought gently to argue with her. He tried to convince her of the charm of the old ways, to prove to her that maximum happiness for them would come not with larger resources that created new anxieties but only in the easygoing undisturbed lethargy of his old life.

“What difference does it make if André or Raoul or Emile have finer carriages than we?⁠—have more money in the bank?⁠—does that mean they are happier than we? No⁠—no⁠—chère Marie! Happiness cannot be bought with dollars⁠—look at the Americans north of Canal Street and you’ll see I am right. They scramble and fight and scheme to gain a few dollars and when they have them what do they do? They fight and scramble and scheme for more!”

At the outset she let the discussion end there. But soon she began trying to point out that such a philosophy denoted only laziness⁠—even absurdity. Jean, in turn, met her growing irritation with silence accompanied by a satisfied smile such as a parent would bestow on a child’s foolish remarks. It seemed to say to her: “Silly woman, you are so much in error, it’s useless even to discuss the matter with you⁠—you couldn’t understand if you tried.”

Had Jean sought the manner which most surely would infuriate Mary, he could have found none so efficacious as this. Slowly at first, then with increasing vigour, she argued, pleaded with him, scorned or ridiculed his easygoing ways. She found him adamant and her irritation rapidly changed to excoriation. Morning, noon and night she nagged him. She wrote her father, who had invested heavily in an industrial insurance company operated by Negroes in Atlanta. His judgment vindicated, Mr. Robertson used his influence, and Jean received a flattering offer to associate himself with the Atlanta company. As a belated wedding present Mr. Robertson offered them a home in Atlanta, furnished and ready for immediate occupancy.

Then the real struggle began. Mary might not have succeeded even though easygoing Jean was becoming almost frantic at her eternal nagging. He yet loved her and she gave him no cause for divorce, even if such a way out of his dilemma had ever occurred to him, that would have been approved by the Catholic Church.

Two things began to make him weaken. The first of these and of slighter influence was that Mary’s darkness of skin prevented him from eating at the old restaurants, Antoine’s, Delatoire’s, Mme. Begue’s. He and Margot and Mimi had often gone there in the old days and without trouble though the proprietors and waiters and the regular patrons knew of his Negro blood. He and Mary had gone once or twice until slight but unmistakable hints had been given him that he was welcome but his wife⁠—“We are most sorry but our American guests, on whose continued patronage we are largely dependent, object to une femme de couleur.”

There were stormy, very stormy scenes. Jean, his white hair and waxed moustache and goatee bristling, his face an apoplectic crimson, refused to listen to the profuse apologies, strode, shoulders back, head high in the air, from the places, vowing “never again to darken your doors, sir!” This vow he kept and the old places knew him no more.

Of greater moment, even, were the changes in the Creole quarter. The old families were dying off, poverty was forcing others to sell their homes. One by one the old houses were razed by boisterous, unfeeling house-wreckers and in their places were going up cheap, viciously plain and garishly ornate apartment houses. One by one the old places disappeared. Graceful lines of sloping roofs were replaced by harshly severe brick or wooden eaves, leaded glass dim with years was ruthlessly removed for plain sashes turned out by thousands by unimaginative factory hands, newel posts of carved brass and delicate balustrades of ancient mahogany were thrown away and in their stead came cheap pine ones, all carved alike.

The new houses were filled by new people, as cheap and noisy and brazen as their homes. Tenants of six months thought themselves old residents and, compared to their neighbours, they were. But to Jean and his diminishing acquaintances of an older day, they were noisily vulgar aliens and barbarians. Strident, unpleasant voices rose in ever increasing numbers and volume so that no longer could one enjoy the stroll of an evening through the once quiet streets.

“It can’t be worse even in Atlanta,” said Jean to Mimi sorrowfully one day. “I can’t stand to see the changes any longer⁠—it’s too much like watching at the bedside of a dearly loved one who rapidly wastes away from a loathsome disease.”

Then did Mimi know they would someday soon leave New Orleans never to return. The prospect at times frightened her⁠—at times, with the venturesomeness of eager youth, she looked forward to new faces, new scenes, new experiences.⁠ ⁠…

“Good morning, Mme. Daquin,” was Mimi’s greeting to her stepmother as she entered the dining-room and slipped into her place at the table.

“Morning? It’s nearer afternoon,” acidulously replied Mme. Daquin. Jean winced and looked appealingly at Mimi.

“You’re as shiftless and slow as your father,” continued Mary. “You know we’ll be busy as can be with packing all this junk your father insists we take to Atlanta⁠—”

“Junk?” Mimi inquired with suspicious sweetness.

“That’s what I said and that’s what I mean. Junk! J‑u‑n‑k! I’m going to get rid of some of this worn-out fantastic stuff and get me some nice fresh oak. Mahogany’s too gloomy and funeral-like.”

“I suppose you’d like to throw away that bed you sleep in⁠—over two hundred years old and brought from France⁠—and get a nice, shiny brass one?”

“That’s exactly what I’m going to do⁠—”

“You’ll do nothing⁠—” burst out Mimi, but at a sign from Jean she stopped talking. The meal was finished in silence. Mary, her broad face, deep brown of colour and framed with black hair that curled attractively, set in unrelieved displeasure, grimly ate without speaking until Jean rose to leave the table.

“You’ll find on the table in the hall the telegram to Atlanta telling them you’ll be there ready for work on the first. Wait until I finish,” she demanded when Jean started to speak. “Today is the sixteenth⁠—that gives us less than two weeks in which to pack and move. Papa writes me he has sent his cheque for the house he’s giving us and it’s all ready for us to move into⁠—”

“But what about this house?” Jean broke in, panic in his voice at the unexpected imminence of quitting his beloved New Orleans forever.

“I’ve seen to that, too,” Mary answered methodically but, withal, a note in her voice of pride in her own farsightedness and efficiency. “Laroux, the real-estate man on Canal Street, telephoned me yesterday he’s found a buyer⁠—a company that plans to build an apartment house here⁠—and Laroux tells me he’ll be ready to close the deal by the end of the week.”

“Sell this house, papa!” broke in Mimi. “No⁠—no! We can’t let them tear our house down!”

“Yes, sell this house,” affirmed Mary before Jean could reply. “I can’t for the life of me see why you are so crazy about these draughty, moth-eaten old places. If I had the money I’d tear all of them down, build nice, modern places and make ten⁠—twenty times the money off of them.”

Before Jean could speak Mary swept conqueringly from the room. Mimi slipped her hand into Jean’s and squeezed it comfortingly, the pair of them too full for speech.

Ignoring the dreaded telegram, Jean and Mimi left the cool shadows of the house for the cheery brightness of sun-swept Dumaine Street. Oblivious of passersby, answering salutations and the greetings of friends methodically, they walked slowly through the streets, down the Esplanade, on and on until they found themselves at the gates of St. Louis cemetery. Yet in silence they wandered through the confused, close-packed vieux carré of the dead, past tombs piled one upon the other, their walls lined with row upon row of ghostly storehouses, “the ovens” like those of a baker-shop, each large enough only to hold a coffin. Crumbling bricks, covered with vines within which scampered in the dazzling, warming sunlight lizards of green or of gold. Here and there the Ci-git and the Ici Repos and the names, birth and death dates of those buried within had been eaten away by countless storms of rain and sunlight until none could tell who had been buried there.

“It’s just as well,” thought Jean. “If there are those, relative or friend, who yet remain alive, they know which tomb holds their friends. And if there are none left⁠—what difference does it make? Silly curiosity-seekers who ramble through a place like this as they would a penny arcade during Mardi Gras seeking new thrills⁠—what do their wishes count?”

Their reveries were unbroken until they heard a noise behind them. From beyond a pile of “ovens” a silver crucifix flashed in the sunlight, raised high above the tombs. Soon the cortége appeared, winding its slow way through the tortuous maze of irregularly built tombs, the “Chant for the Dead” rolling out on the still air in lugubrious and chilling melody, rising or dropping as the tombs opened or closed in about the procession. Here and there, where the turning of a passage was too narrow to permit the carrying of the casket at its usual height, Jean and Mimi saw it raised high on a level with the crucifix. They stood hand in hand until the chanting died down in the distance.

“Mimi, that’s how I feel today,” said Jean softly. “Leaving New Orleans, the old houses, the old friends⁠—it makes me feel as though it were I in that coffin⁠—”

“Papa, why don’t you put your foot down?” burst out Mimi; “tell Mme. Daquin you just won’t go⁠—let her go on back to Chicago if she doesn’t like it⁠—and you and I stay here and be happy?”

“It’s too late now, petite Mimi,” he answered. “My word’s been given⁠—they’re tearing down so many of the old houses⁠—my old friends are dying off, one by one⁠—”

“But you’re not old! You’re only fifty-two, yet you talk as though you were a hundred⁠—”

“Sometimes I feel a hundred⁠—a thousand. Oh, well, I’ve made my decision and I’ll stick to it. It wasn’t about that I wanted to talk with you. It’s related to it but⁠—but it isn’t easy to talk about⁠—” he broke off.

They walked slowly in silence as she waited for him to speak. An inexpressible tenderness filled her for this gentle old man⁠—he seemed very old to her today. The growing surliness and quarrelsomeness of her stepmother, the alien who would never fit into the scheme of things as she and Jean knew it, infuriated her for the pain it was causing her dear Jean. She felt within her a steadily growing bitterness against Mary and her petty shopkeeper attitude, her scorn for traditions so dear to Jean and herself. As she had dressed, the notion of leaving New Orleans (she had never been more than a few miles beyond the city’s limits) had appealed to her, offering as it did new experiences, new scenes, new people, naturally attractive to a girl of fourteen. Her mind had dwelt more on the favourable aspects of the change than on the severance of old and dear ties of tradition and friendship, of quitting familiar scenes, with all the instinctive optimism and disregard of consequences of youth.

But now she felt, on seeing Jean’s reluctance to go, as though she were in some subtle manner guilty of disloyalty to Jean. Suddenly contrite, her eyes filled with tears and she clung to Jean in passionate repudiation of her joy at leaving. She realized Jean was speaking⁠—had been talking to her for some minutes. “… And yet it ought not to be hard for me. Neither Margot nor I have ever consciously sought to keep from you the fact that the Negro blood in you set you aside, here in America, as one apart, though we have tried to shield you as much as we could from the embarrassments that blood can bring you.”

“Oh, is that all that was troubling you, papa Jean?” laughed Mimi.

“You can afford to laugh here in Creole New Orleans,” Jean cautioned. “But away from here it’s a different matter. Here in the place we know I want to tell you of some of the stock from which we Daquins come. It’s a record we’re proud of⁠—we’ve helped build this Louisiana of ours⁠—much of what we did’s been forgotten but it’s there, just the same. I’m telling you, for when you run up against hard situations later on in life and we all do⁠—the knowledge of what’s back of you will give you strength and courage.”

Mimi said nothing. Jean went on.

“We Daquins trace our history a long ways back⁠—back to the early days of the convent Louis XV founded here in 1727⁠—the Ursalines⁠—to teach the Negro and Indian girls. You know of beloved Madeline Hachard⁠—she who was a postulant in the Ursaline Convent in Rouen⁠—Rouen beloved of Flaubert and Maupassant. Her letters home tell of their perilous voyage to Louisiana in 1728, of shipwreck and shortages of food and water, of sickness and discomfort. Soon after Madeline Hachard⁠—who called herself ‘Hachard de St. Stanislas’ after she took the veil⁠—and the others opened the doors of their convent, there was need of wives for the young men of character and means. Girls of good family were sent to the colony⁠—les filles à la cassette they were called. From these matings sprang many of the great families of Louisiana⁠—and to one of them you and I owe our being. From her who nearly two hundred years ago took the long and perilous voyage there comes down to us a path⁠—at times clear and distinct⁠—at times faded and shadowy⁠—from that path innumerable branches shoot like the limbs of that ancient oak over there.”

Jean’s words had begun to weave a mysterious spell over Mimi. She looked at the tree to which Jean pointed⁠—vaguely disappointed that instead of its leaves she did not see families, faces with laughing eyes and alluring mysteriousness. Jean had never talked to her like this before⁠—she felt a thrilling pride that he spoke to her as to one of mature years and understanding.

“You’ve many relatives, Mimi, of whom you can justly be proud⁠—and some of whom the less said, the better. Like two great rivers from the same mother source, plunging, roaring, or gently purling they flow⁠—parallel much of the way, touching at others, then springing apart to seek their way through diverse lands. We of the so-called coloured branch⁠—many of our ancestry of the proud gens de coleur libre⁠—we too have had a large share in making Louisiana what it is today.”

“Tell me about some of them, Jean,” demanded Mimi eagerly. “Tell me of the ones of whom you’re proud⁠—tell me of those you’re not so proud of.”

The sun was high in the sky and beating down upon them with vigour before Jean had finished his story. Mimi was too absorbed to notice the heat or to note the passing of the hours. Jean, with the mellowness acquired only through an unhurried life, had great pride in his ability as a raconteur⁠—when he fancied he detected a waning interest on Mimi’s face as he delved into the more abstract historical part of his tale, he quickly injected anecdotes, dramatic episodes, colourful vignettes. When Mimi seemed wearied of too great stress on the part Negroes had played as soldiers or labourers or if she appeared surfeited with tales of too great virtue and exemplary constructiveness on the part of those who were her forebears, Jean would, almost shyly and imperceptibly, relate a tale of derring do by one who lived at Barataria with that great pirate and freebooter⁠—Jean Lafitte. Mimi felt a delicious tingle titillating her body as Jean told of that other Jean⁠—he of the swart skin, midnight-black hair and eyes, beard shaven clean from the front of his face. She was glad⁠—very glad one of her line had known this intrepid, carefree adventurer who, a marine Robin Hood, had plundered and smuggled and risked death a thousand times as though he were passing the time of day on the street corner.

She, too, was fascinated by Jean’s picture of the coming into being of the Creole.

“The white Louisianian will tell you the Creole is white with ancestry of French or Spanish or West Indian extraction. There may be some of that kind⁠—but I’m not sure⁠—but most Creoles are a little bit of everything and from that very mixture comes the delightful colourfulness which is their greatest charm. To them the cardinal sin is avarice or stinginess. Dalliance at love⁠—too great devotion to the cup⁠—poverty⁠—all these are minor faults to be forgiven and forgotten. We are not a nation of shopkeepers, thank God, even though you and I, Mimi, are about to desert to the enemy.”

Many other stories he told her there. He told of that Governor Perier who armed Negroes in 1729 and sent them to fight that fear-inspiring tribe of Indians, the Chonchas, with whom the black slaves were becoming too friendly, and how, with an ease that should have frightened Perier, these blacks wiped out the Indian enemy. Proudly Jean told how this example and others gave impetus to the later freeing of the slaves which had come largely through their own efforts⁠—the revolt of the slaves led by the Chickasaws and Banbaras and other stirring uprisings⁠—gentle, kindly Jean⁠—who would not have crushed an ant⁠—exultantly told of carnage, of slaughter, of death.

He took great pride in telling Mimi of Jeannot, stalwart slave offered freedom by Kerlerec if he would become the public executioner, a job no white man would take. Mimi lived again the agony of Jeannot, now dead some one hundred and fifty years, who in horror and anguish cried out: “What! Cut off the heads of people who have never done me any harm?” She could almost see him pleading, even weeping, to be allowed to remain in bondage rather than become the public killer. No escape possible, the governor was adamant, he rose and said: “Very well, wait a moment.” Mimi shuddered as Jean told of Jeannot leaving the room, running to his cabin, seizing a hatchet in his left hand, laying his right hand on a block and chopping it off. She rejoiced that he, on exhibiting the bloody stump, created such emotion he was given his freedom anyhow.

Of Negro troops under Andrew Jackson in the famous battle of New Orleans, of the ability and courage of that Major Jean Daquin, San Domingan, quadroon whose Negro blood historians later forgot, he told her proudly. But it was sadly that he pictured the barriers, the Black Codes, the rising tide of hatred and bitterness that began to rise against the coloured Creoles and Americans. To Jean in his gentleness and love of peace these stories of dark days during and after the Civil War were horrible and painful but in his honesty he told of them while Mimi’s breath came quickly as he unfolded the scenes like sharply etched prints before her wondering eyes.

“It’s afternoon⁠—Mary will be furious,” Jean at last exclaimed, almost with dismay.

They hurried to the gates and home.

“All this is behind you, Mimi,” Jean ended as they neared the house. “Remember it⁠—take comfort in it when you’re depressed.⁠—You’re a beautiful child⁠—you’ll be a more beautiful woman,” he added. “You’ve warm blood in your veins⁠—the warmth of old, old wine. Here you’d be safe but away from New Orleans I don’t know⁠—I don’t know. I hope all will be well with us.”