The Flower of the Chapdelaines | Page 2

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 black cupid was at her side, tiny even for nine years. They disappeared conversing together. With his heart in his throat Chester turned away, resumed his walk, and passed into the marble halls where justice dreamt she dwelt. Up and down one of these, little traversed so early, he paced, with a question burning in his breast, which every new sigh of mortification fanned hotter: _Had she seen him_?--this time? those other times? And did those Castanados