Slippy McGee | Page 5

still the
executor of my father's estate, the whole De Rancé fortune went down
with him. All of it. Even the old house went, the old house which had
sheltered so many of the name these two hundred years. If I could have
grieved for anything it would have been that. Nothing was left except
the modest private fortune long since secured to my mother by my
father's affection. It had been a bridal gift, intended to cover her
personal expenses, her charities, and her pretty whims. Now it was to
stand between her and want.
Stripped all but bare, and with one servant left of all our staff, we
turned our backs upon our old life, our old home, and faced the world
anew, in a strange place where nothing was familiar, and where I who
had begun so differently was destined to grow into what I have since
become--just an old priest, with but small reputation outside of his few
friends and poor working-folks. There! That is quite enough of _me_!
There was one pleasant feature of our new home that rejoiced me for
my mother's sake. From the very first she found neighbors who were
friendly and charming. Now my mother, when we came to Appleboro,
was still a beautiful woman, fair and rosy, with a profusion of blonde
cendre curls just beginning to whiten, a sweet and arch face, and eyes
of clearest hazel, valanced with jet. She had been perhaps the loveliest
and most beloved woman of that proud and select circle which is
composed of families descended from the old noblesse, the most
exclusive circle of New Orleans society. And, as she said, nothing
could change nor alter the fact that no matter what happened to us, we
were still De Rancés!
"Ah! And was it, then, a De Rancé who had the holy Mother of God

painted in a family picture, with a scroll issuing from her lips
addressing him as 'My Cousin'?" I asked, slyly.
"If it was, nobody in the world had a better right!" said she stoutly.
Thus the serene and unquestioning faith of their estimate of themselves
in the scheme of things, as evidenced by these Carolina folk around her,
caused Madame De Rancé neither surprise nor amusement. She
understood. She shared many of their prejudices, and she of all women
could appreciate a pride that was almost equal to her own. When they
initiated her into the inevitable and inescapable Carolina game of
Matching Grandfathers, she always had a Roland for their Oliver; and
as they generally came back with an Oliver to match her Roland, all the
players retired with equal honors and mutual respect. Every door in
Appleboro at once opened wide to Madame De Rancé. The difference
in religion was obviated by the similarity of Family.
Fortunately, too, the Church and Parish House were not in the mill
district itself, a place shoved aside, full of sordid hideousness, ribboned
with railroad tracks, squalid with boarding-houses never free from the
smell of bad cooking, sinister with pawnshops, miserable with
depressingly ugly rows of small houses where the hands herded, and all
of it darkened by the grim shadow of the great red brick mills
themselves. Instead, our Church sits on a tree-shaded corner in the old
town, and the roomy white-piazza'd Parish House is next door,
embowered in the pleasantest of all gardens.
That garden reconciled my mother to her exile, for I am afraid she had
regarded Appleboro with somewhat of the attitude of the castaway
sailor toward a desert island--a refuge after shipwreck, but a desert
island nevertheless, a place which cuts off one from one's world. And
when at first the poor, uncouth, sullen creatures who were a part of my
new charge, frightened and dismayed her, there was always the garden
to fly to for consolation. If she couldn't plant seeds of order and
cleanliness and morality and thrift in the sterile soil of poor folks'
minds, she could always plant seeds of color and beauty and fragrance
in her garden and be surer of the result. That garden was my delight,
too. I am sure no other equal space ever harbored so many birds and

bees and butterflies; and its scented dusks was the paradise of moths.
Great wonderful fellows clothed in kings' raiment, little chaps colored
like flowers and seashells and rainbows, there the airy cohorts of the
People of the Sky wheeled and danced and fluttered. Now my
grandfather and my father had been the friends of Audubon and of
Agassiz, and I myself had been the correspondent of Riley and Scudder
and Henry Edwards, for I love the People of the Sky more than all
created things. And when I watched them in my garden, I am sure it
was