The Flower of the Chapdelaines | Page 2

expert amateur."
"SHE?" the youth silently asked himself. He spoke: "Why, then what

advice do you still want--how to find a publisher?"
"No, any publisher will jump at that. But how to so nig-otiate that he
shall not be the lion and we the lamb!"
Chester smiled again: "Why, if that's the point--" he mused. The hope
came again that this unusual shopman and his wish had something to
do with her.
"If that's the advice you want," he resumed, "I think we might construe
it as legal, though worth at the most a mere notarial fee."
"And contingent on--?" the costumer prompted.
"Contingent, yes, on the author's success."
"Sir! I am not the author of a manuscript fifty years old!"
"Well, then, on the holder's success. You can agree to that, can't you?"
"'Tis agreed. You are my counsel. When will you see the manuscript?"
"Whenever you choose to leave it with me."
The costumer's smile was firm: "Sir, I cannot permit that to pass from
my hand."
"Oh! then have a copy typed for me."
The Creole soliloquized: "That would be expensive." Then to Chester:
"Sir, I will tell you; to-night come at our parlor, over the shop. I will
read you that!"
"Shall we be alone?" asked Chester, hoping his client would say no.
"Only excepting my"--a tender brightness--"my wife!" Then a shade of
regret: "We are without children, me and my wife."
His wife. H'mm! _She_? That amazing one who had vanished within a
few yards of his bazaar of "masques et costumes"? Though to Chester
New Orleans was still new, and though fat law-books and a slim purse
kept him much to himself, he was aware that, while some Creoles grew
rich, many of them, women, once rich, were being driven even to stand
behind counters. Yet no such plight could he imagine of that
bewildering young--young luminary who, this second time, so out of
time, had gleamed on him from mystery's cloud. His earlier hope came
a third time: "Excepting only your wife, you say? Why not also your
amateur expert?"
"I am sorry, but"--the Latin shrug--"that is--that is not possible."
"Have I ever seen your wife? She's not a tallish, slender young-----?"
"No, my wife is neither. She's never in the street or shop. She has no
longer the cap-acity. She's become so extraordinarily _un_-slender that

the only way she can come down-stair' is backward. You'll see.
Well,"--he waved--"till then--ah, a word: my close bargaining--I must
explain you that--in confidence. 'Tis because my wife and me we are
anxious to get every picayune we can get for the owners--of that
manuscript."
Chester thought to be shrewd: "Oh! is she hard up? the owner?"
"The owners are three," Castanado calmly said, "and two dip-end on
the earnings of a third." He bowed himself away.
A few hours later Chester received from him a note begging indefinite
postponement of the evening appointment. Mme. Castanado had fever
and probably la grippe.

II
Early one day some two weeks after the foregoing incident the young
lawyer came out of his pension francaise, opposite his office, and stood
a moment in thought. In those two weeks he had not again seen Mr.
Castanado.
Once more it was scant half past eight. He looked across to the
windows of his office and of one bare third-story sleeping-room over it.
Eloquent windows! Their meanness reminded him anew how definitely
he had chosen not merely the simple but the solitary life. Yet now he
turned toward Royal Street. But at the third or fourth step he faced
about toward Chartres. The distance to the courthouse was the same
either way, and its entrances were alike on both streets.
Thought he as he went the Chartres Street way: "If I go one more time
by way of Royal I shall owe an abject apology, and yet to try to offer it
would only make the matter worse."
He went grimly, glad to pay this homage of avoidance which would
have been more to his credit paid a week or so earlier. His frequent
failure to pay it had won him, each time, a glimpse of her and an
itching fear that prying eyes were on him inside other balconied
windows besides those of the unslender Mme. Castanado.
Temptation is a sly witch. Down at Conti Street, on the court-house's
upper riverside corner, he paused to take in the charm of one of the
most picturesque groups of old buildings in the _vieux carré_. But there,
to gather in all the effect, one must turn, sooner or later, and include the
upper side of Conti Street from Chartres to Royal; and as Chester did

so, yonder, once more, coming from Bourbon and turning from Conti
into Royal, there she was again, the avoided one!
Her