JEAN-AH POQUELIN.
In the first decade of the present century, when the newly establishedAmerican Government was the most hateful thing in Louisiana--when theCreoles were still kicking at such vile innovations as the trial byjury, American dances, anti-smuggling laws, and the printing of theGovernor's proclamation in English--when the Anglo-American flood thatwas presently to burst in a crevasse of immigration upon the delta hadthus far been felt only as slippery seepage which made the Creoletremble for his footing--there stood, a short distance above what is nowCanal Street, and considerably back from the line of villas whichfringed the river-bank on Tchoupitoulas Road, an old colonialplantation-house half in ruin.
It stood aloof from civilization, the tracts that had once been itsindigo fields given over to their first noxious wildness, and grown upinto one of the horridest marshes within a circuit of fifty miles.
The house was of heavy cypress, lifted up on pillars, grim, solid, andspiritless, its massive build a strong reminder of days still earlier,when every man had been his own peace officer and the insurrection ofthe blacks a daily contingency. Its dark, weatherbeaten roof and sideswere hoisted up above the jungly plain in a distracted way, like agigantic ammunition-wagon stuck in the mud and abandoned by someretreating army. Around it was a dense growth of low water willows, withhalf a hundred sorts of thorny or fetid bushes, savage strangers aliketo the "language of flowers" and to the botanist's Greek. They were hungwith countless strands of discolored and prickly smilax, and theimpassable mud below bristled with _chevaux de frise_ of the dwarfpalmetto. Two lone forest-trees, dead cypresses, stood in the centre ofthe marsh, dotted with roosting vultures. The shallow strips of waterwere hid by myriads of aquatic plants, under whose coarse and spiritlessflowers, could one have seen it, was a harbor of reptiles, great andsmall, to make one shudder to the end of his days.
The house was on a slightly raised spot, the levee of a draining canal.The waters of this canal did not run; they crawled, and were full ofbig, ravening fish and alligators, that held it against all comers.
Such was the home of old Jean Marie Poquelin, once an opulent indigoplanter, standing high in the esteem of his small, proud circle ofexclusively male acquaintances in the old city; now a hermit, alikeshunned by and shunning all who had ever known him. "The last of hisline," said the gossips. His father lies under the floor of the St.Louis Cathedral, with the wife of his youth on one side, and the wife ofhis old age on the other. Old Jean visits the spot daily. Hishalf-brother--alas! there was a mystery; no one knew what had become ofthe gentle, young half brother, more than thirty years his junior, whomonce he seemed so fondly to love, but who, seven years ago, haddisappeared suddenly, once for all, and left no clew of his fate.
They had seemed to live so happily in each other's love. No father,mother, wife to either, no kindred upon earth. The elder a bold, frank,impetuous, chivalric adventurer; the younger a gentle, studious,book-loving recluse; they lived upon the ancestral estate like matedbirds, one always on the wing, the other always in the nest.
There was no trait in Jean Marie Poquelin, said the old gossips, forwhich he was so well known among his few friends as his apparentfondness for his "little brother." "Jacques said this," and "Jacquessaid that;" he "would leave this or that, or any thing to Jacques," for"Jacques was a scholar," and "Jacques was good," or "wise," or "just,"or "far-sighted," as the nature of the case required; and "he should askJacques as soon as he got home," since Jacques was never elsewhere to beseen.
It was between the roving character of the one brother, and thebookishness of the other, that the estate fell into decay. Jean Marie,generous gentleman, gambled the slaves away one by one, until none wasleft, man or woman, but one old African mute.
The indigo-fields and vats of Louisiana had been generally abandoned asunremunerative. Certain enterprising men had substituted the culture ofsugar; but while the recluse was too apathetic to take so active acourse, the other saw larger, and, at time, equally respectable profits,first in smuggling, and later in the African slave-trade. What harmcould he see in it? The whole people said it was vitally necessary, andto minister to a vital public necessity,--good enough, certainly, and sohe laid up many a doubloon, that made him none the worse in the publicregard.
One day old Jean Marie was about to start upon a voyage that was to belonger, much longer, than any that he had yet made. Jacques had beggedhim hard for many days not to go, but he laughed him off, and finallysaid, kissing him:
"_Adieu, 'tit frere_."
"No," said Jacques, "I shall go with you."
They left the old hulk of a house in the sole care of the African mute,and went away to the Guinea coast together.
Two years after, old Poquelin came home without his vessel. He must havearrived at his house by night. No one saw him come. No one saw "hislittle brother;" rumor whispered that he, too, had returned, but he hadnever been seen again.
A dark suspicion fell upon the old slave-trader. No matter that the fewkept the many reminded of the tenderness that had ever marked hisbearing to the missing man. The many shook their heads. "You know he hasa quick and fearful temper;" and "why does he cover his loss withmystery?" "Grief would out with the truth."
"But," said the charitable few, "look in his face; see that expressionof true humanity." The many did look in his face, and, as he looked intheirs, he read the silent question: "Where is thy brother Abel?" Thefew were silenced, his former friends died off, and the name of JeanMarie Poquelin became a symbol of witchery, devilish crime, and hideousnursery fictions.
The man and his house were alike shunned. The snipe and duck huntersforsook the marsh, and the wood-cutters abandoned the canal. Sometimesthe hardier boys who ventured out there snake-shooting heard a slowthumping of oar-locks on the canal. They would look at each other for amoment half in consternation, half in glee, then rush from their sportin wanton haste to assail with their gibes the unoffending, withered oldman who, in rusty attire, sat in the stern of a skiff, rowed homeward byhis white-headed African mute.
"O Jean-ah Poquelin! O Jean-ah! Jean-ah Poquelin!"
It was not necessary to utter more than that. No hint of wickedness,deformity, or any physical or moral demerit; merely the name and tone ofmockery: "Oh, Jean-ah Poquelin!" and while they tumbled one over anotherin their needless haste to fly, he would rise carefully from his seat,while the aged mute, with downcast face, went on rowing, and rolling uphis brown fist and extending it toward the urchins, would pour forthsuch an unholy broadside of French imprecation and invective as wouldall but craze them with delight.
Among both blacks and whites the house was the object of a thousandsuperstitions. Every midnight they affirmed, the _feu follet_ came outof the marsh and ran in and out of the rooms, flashing from window towindow. The story of some lads, whose words in ordinary statements wereworthless, was generally credited, that the night they camped in thewoods, rather than pass the place after dark, they saw, about sunset,every window blood-red, and on each of the four chimneys an owl sitting,which turned his head three times round, and moaned and laughed with ahuman voice. There was a bottomless well, everybody professed to know,beneath the sill of the big front door under the rotten veranda; whoeverset his foot upon that threshold disappeared forever in the depth below.
What wonder the marsh grew as wild as Africa! Take all the Faubourg Ste.Marie, and half the ancient city, you would not find one gracelessdare-devil reckless enough to pass within a hundred yards of the houseafter nightfall.
* * * * *
The alien races pouring into old New Orleans began to find the fewstreets named for the Bourbon princes too strait for them. The wheel offortune, beginning to whirl, threw them off beyond the ancientcorporation lines, and sowed civilization and even trade upon the landsof the Graviers and Girods. Fields became roads, roads streets.Everywhere the leveller was peering through his glass, rodsmen werewhacking their way through willow-brakes and rose-hedges, and thesweating Irishmen toss
ed the blue clay up with their long-handledshovels.
"Ha! that is all very well," quoth the Jean-Baptistes, fueling thereproach of an enterprise that asked neither co-operation nor advice ofthem, "but wait till they come yonder to Jean Poquelin's marsh; ha! ha!ha!" The supposed predicament so delighted them, that they put on a mockterror and whirled about in an assumed stampede, then caught theirclasped hands between their knees in excess of mirth, and laughed tillthe tears ran; for whether the street-makers mired in the marsh, orcontrived to cut through old "Jean-ah's" property, either event would bejoyful. Meantime a line of tiny rods, with bits of white paper in theirsplit tops, gradually extended its way straight through the hauntedground, and across the canal diagonally.
"We shall fill that ditch," said the men in mud-boots, and brushed closealong the chained and padlocked gate of the haunted mansion. Ah, Jean-ahPoquelin, those were not Creole boys, to be stampeded with a little hardswearing.
He went to the Governor. That official scanned the odd figure with noslight interest. Jean Poquelin was of short, broad frame, with a bronzedleonine face. His brow was ample and deeply furrowed. His eye, large andblack, was bold and open like that of a war-horse, and his jaws shuttogether with the firmness of iron. He was dressed in a suit ofAttakapas cottonade, and his shirt unbuttoned and thrown back from thethroat and bosom, sailor-wise, showed a herculean breast; hard andgrizzled. There was no fierceness or defiance in his look, no harshungentleness, no symptom of his unlawful life or violent temper; butrather a peaceful and peaceable fearlessness. Across the whole face, notmarked in one or another feature, but as it were laid softly upon thecountenance like an almost imperceptible veil, was the imprint of somegreat grief. A careless eye might easily overlook it, but, once seen,there it hung--faint, but unmistakable.
The Governor bowed.
"_Parlez-vous francais_?" asked the figure.
"I would rather talk English, if you can do so," said the Governor.
"My name, Jean Poquelin."
"How can I serve you, Mr. Poquelin?"
"My 'ouse is yond'; _dans le marais la-bas_."
The Governor bowed.
"Dat _marais_ billong to me."
"Yes, sir."
"To me; Jean Poquelin; I hown 'im meself."
"Well, sir?"
"He don't billong to you; I get him from me father."
"That is perfectly true, Mr. Poquelin, as far as I am aware."
"You want to make strit pass yond'?"
"I do not know, sir; it is quite probable; but the city will indemnifyyou for any loss you may suffer--you will get paid, you understand."
"Strit can't pass dare."
"You will have to see the municipal authorities about that, Mr.Poquelin."
A bitter smile came upon the old man's face:
"_Pardon, Monsieur_, you is not _le Gouverneur_?"
"Yes."
"_Mais_, yes. You har _le Gouverneur_--yes. Veh-well. I come to you. Itell you, strit can't pass at me 'ouse."
"But you will have to see"--
"I come to you. You is _le Gouverneur_. I know not the new laws. I ham aFr-r-rench-a-man! Fr-rench-a-man have something _aller au contraire_--hecome at his _Gouverneur_. I come at you. If me not had been bought fromme king like _bossals_ in the hold time, ze king gof--Francewould-a-show _Monsieur le Gouverneur_ to take care his men to make stritin right places. _Mais_, I know; we billong to _Monsieur le President_.I want you do somesin for me, eh?"
"What is it?" asked the patient Governor.
"I want you tell _Monsieur le President_,strit--can't--pass--at--me--'ouse."
"Have a chair, Mr. Poquelin;" but the old man did not stir. The Governortook a quill and wrote a line to a city official, introducing Mr.Poquelin, and asking for him every possible courtesy. He handed it tohim, instructing him where to present it.
"Mr. Poquelin," he said with a conciliatory smile, "tell me, is it yourhouse that our Creole citizens tell such odd stories about?"
The old man glared sternly upon the speaker, and with immovable featuressaid:
"You don't see me trade some Guinea nigga'?"
"Oh, no."
"You don't see me make some smuggling"
"No, sir; not at all."
"But, I am Jean Marie Poquelin. I mine me hown bizniss. Dat all right?Adieu."
He put his hat on and withdrew. By and by he stood, letter in hand,before the person to whom it was addressed. This person employed aninterpreter.
"He says," said the interpreter to the officer, "he come to make you thefair warning how you muz not make the street pas' at his 'ouse."
The officer remarked that "such impudence was refreshing;" but theexperienced interpreter translated freely.
"He says: 'Why you don't want?'" said the interpreter.
The old slave-trader answered at some length.
"He says," said the interpreter, again turning to the officer, "themarass is a too unhealth' for peopl' to live."
"But we expect to drain his old marsh; it's not going to be a marsh."
"_Il dit_"--The interpreter explained in French.
The old man answered tersely.
"He says the canal is a private," said the interpreter.
"Oh! _that_ old ditch; that's to be filled up. Tell the old man we'regoing to fix him up nicely."
Translation being duly made, the man in power was amused to see athunder-cloud gathering on the old man's face.
"Tell him," he added, "by the time we finish, there'll not be a ghostleft in his shanty."
The interpreter began to translate, but--
"_J' comprends, J' comprends_," said the old man, with an impatientgesture, and burst forth, pouring curses upon the United States, thePresident, the Territory of Orleans, Congress, the Governor and all hissubordinates, striding out of the apartment as he cursed, while theobject of his maledictions roared with merriment and rammed the floorwith his foot.
"Why, it will make his old place worth ten dollars to one," said theofficial to the interpreter.
"'Tis not for de worse of de property," said the interpreter.
"I should guess not," said the other, whittling his chair,--"seems to meas if some of these old Creoles would liever live in a crawfish holethan to have a neighbor"
"You know what make old Jean Poquelin make like that? I will tell you.You know"--
The interpreter was rolling a cigarette, and paused to light his tinder;then, as the smoke poured in a thick double stream from his nostrils, hesaid, in a solemn whisper:
"He is a witch."
"Ho, ho, ho!" laughed the other.
"You don't believe it? What you want to bet?" cried the interpreter,jerking himself half up and thrusting out one arm while he bared it ofits coat-sleeve with the hand of the other. "What you want to bet?"
"How do you know?" asked the official.
"Dass what I goin' to tell you. You know, one evening I was shootingsome _grosbec_. I killed three, but I had trouble to fine them, it wasbecoming so dark. When I have them I start' to come home; then I got topas' at Jean Poquelin's house."
"Ho, ho, ho!" laughed the other, throwing his leg over the arm of hischair.
"Wait," said the interpreter. "I come along slow, not making somenoises; still, still"--
"And scared," said the smiling one.
"_Mais_, wait. I get all pas' the 'ouse. 'Ah!' I say; 'all right!' ThenI see two thing' before! Hah! I get as cold and humide, and shake like aleaf. You think it was nothing? There I see, so plain as can be (thoughit was making nearly dark), I see Jean--Marie--Po-que-lin walkin' rightin front, and right there beside of him was something like a man--butnot a man--white like paint!--I dropp' on the grass from scared--theypass'; so sure as I live 'twas the ghos' of Jacques Poquelin, hisbrother!"
"Pooh!" said the listener.
"I'll put my han' in the fire," said the interpreter.
"But did you never think," asked the other, "that that might be JackPoquelin, as you call him, alive and well, and for some cause hid awayby
his brother?"
"But there har' no cause!" said the other, and the entrance of thirdparties changed the subject.
Some months passed and the street was opened. A canal was first dugthrough the marsh, the small one which passed so close to JeanPoquelin's house was filled, and the street, or rather a sunny road,just touched a corner of the old mansion's dooryard. The morass ran dry.Its venomous denizens slipped away through the bulrushes; the cattleroaming freely upon its hardened surface trampled the superabundantundergrowth. The bellowing frogs croaked to westward. Lilies and theflower-de-luce sprang up in the place of reeds; smilax and poison-oakgave way to the purple-plumed iron-weed and pink spiderwort; thebindweeds ran everywhere blooming as they ran, and on one of the deadcypresses a giant creeper hung its green burden of foliage and liftedits scarlet trumpets. Sparrows and red-birds flitted through the bushes,and dewberries grew ripe beneath. Over all these came a sweet, dry smellof salubrity which the place had not known since the sediments of theMississippi first lifted it from the sea.
But its owner did not build. Over the willow-brakes, and down the vistaof the open street, bright new houses, some singly, some by ranks, wereprying in upon the old man's privacy. They even settled down toward hissouthern side. First a wood-cutter's hut or two, then a marketgardener's shanty, then a painted cottage, and all at once the faubourghad flanked and half surrounded him and his dried-up marsh.
Ah! then the common people began to hate him. "The old tyrant!" "Youdon't mean an old _tyrant_?" "Well, then, why don't he build when thepublic need demands it? What does he live in that unneighborly way for?""The old pirate!" "The old kidnapper!" How easily even the most ultraLouisianians put on the imported virtues of the North when they could bebrought to bear against the hermit. "There he goes, with the boys afterhim! Ah! ha! ha! Jean-ah Poquelin! Ah! Jean-ah! Aha! aha! Jean-ah Marie!Jean-ah Poquelin! The old villain!" How merrily the swarming Americainsecho the spirit of persecution! "The old fraud," they say--"pretends tolive in a haunted house, does he? We'll tar and feather him some day.Guess we can fix him."
He cannot be rowed home along the old canal now; he walks. He has brokensadly of late, and the street urchins are ever at his heels. It is likethe days when they cried: "Go up, thou bald-head," and the old man nowand then turns and delivers ineffectual curses.
To the Creoles--to the incoming lower class of superstitious Germans,Irish, Sicilians, and others--he became an omen and embodiment of publicand private ill-fortune. Upon him all the vagaries of theirsuperstitions gathered and grew. If a house caught fire, it was imputedto his machinations. Did a woman go off in a fit, he had bewitched her.Did a child stray off for an hour, the mother shivered with theapprehension that Jean Poquelin had offered him to strange gods. Thehouse was the subject of every bad boy's invention who loved to contriveghostly lies. "As long as that house stands we shall have bad luck. Doyou not see our pease and beans dying, our cabbages and lettuce going toseed and our gardens turning to dust, while every day you can see itraining in the woods? The rain will never pass old Poquelin's house. Hekeeps a fetich. He has conjured the whole Faubourg St. Marie. And why,the old wretch? Simply because our playful and innocent children callafter him as he passes."
A "Building and Improvement Company," which had not yet got its charter,"but was going to," and which had not, indeed, any tangible capital yet,but "was going to have some," joined the "Jean-ah Poquelin" war. Thehaunted property would be such a capital site for a market-house! Theysent a deputation to the old mansion to ask its occupant to sell. Thedeputation never got beyond the chained gate and a very barren interviewwith the African mute. The President of the Board was then empowered(for he had studied French in Pennsylvania and was considered qualified)to call and persuade M. Poquelin to subscribe to the company's stock;but--
"Fact is, gentlemen," he said at the next meeting, "it would take us atleast twelve months to make Mr. Pokaleen understand the rather originalfeatures of our system, and he wouldn't subscribe when we'd done;besides, the only way to see him is to stop him on the street."
There was a great laugh from the Board; they couldn't help it. "Bettermeet a bear robbed of her whelps," said one.
"You're mistaken as to that," said the President. "I did meet him, andstopped him, and found him quite polite. But I could get no satisfactionfrom him; the fellow wouldn't talk in French, and when I spoke inEnglish he hoisted his old shoulders up, and gave the same answer toevery thing I said."
"And that was--?" asked one or two, impatient of the pause.
"That it 'don't worse w'ile?'"
One of the Board said: "Mr. President, this market-house project, as Itake it, is not altogether a selfish one; the community is to bebenefited by it. We may feel that we are working in the public interest[the Board smiled knowingly], if we employ all possible means to oustthis old nuisance from among us. You may know that at the time thestreet was cut through, this old Poquelann did all he could to preventit. It was owing to a certain connection which I had with that affairthat I heard a ghost story [smiles, followed by a sudden dignifiedcheck]--ghost story, which, of course, I am not going to relate; but I_may_ say that my profound conviction, arising from a prolonged study ofthat story, is, that this old villain, John Poquelann, has his brotherlocked up in that old house. Now, if this is so, and we can fix it onhim, I merely _suggest_ that we can make the matter highly useful. Idon't know," he added, beginning to sit down, "but that it is an actionwe owe to the community--hem!"
"How do you propose to handle the subject?" asked the President.
"I was thinking," said the speaker, "that, as a Board of Directors, itwould be unadvisable for us to authorize any action involving trespass;but if you, for instance, Mr. President, should, as it were, for merecuriosity, _request_ some one, as, for instance, our excellentSecretary, simply as a personal favor, to look into the matter--this ismerely a suggestion."
The Secretary smiled sufficiently to be understood that, while hecertainly did not consider such preposterous service a part of hisduties as secretary, he might, notwithstanding, accede to thePresident's request; and the Board adjourned.
Little White, as the Secretary was called, was a mild, kind-heartedlittle man, who, nevertheless, had no fear of any thing, unless it wasthe fear of being unkind.
"I tell you frankly," he privately said to the President, "I go intothis purely for reasons of my own."
The next day, a little after nightfall, one might have descried thislittle man slipping along the rear fence of the Poquelin place,preparatory to vaulting over into the rank, grass-grown yard, andbearing himself altogether more after the manner of a collector of rarechickens than according to the usage of secretaries.
The picture presented to his eye was not calculated to enliven his mind.The old mansion stood out against the western sky, black and silent. Onelong, lurid pencil-stroke along a sky of slate was all that was left ofdaylight. No sign of life was apparent; no light at any window, unlessit might have been on the side of the house hidden from view. No owlswere on the chimneys, no dogs were in the yard.
He entered the place, and ventured up behind a small cabin which stoodapart from the house. Through one of its many crannies he easilydetected the African mute crouched before a flickering pine-knot, hishead on his knees, fast asleep.
He concluded to enter the mansion, and, with that view, stood andscanned it. The broad rear steps of the veranda would not serve him; hemight meet some one midway. He was measuring, with his eye, theproportions of one of the pillars which supported it, and estimating thepracticability of climbing it, when he heard a footstep. Some onedragged a chair out toward the railing, then seemed to change his mindand began to pace the veranda, his footfalls resounding on the dryboards with singular loudness. Little White drew a step backward, gotthe figure between himself and the sky, and at once recognized theshort, broad-shouldered form of old Jean Poquelin.
He sat down upon a billet of wood, and, to escape the stings of awhining cloud of mosquitoes, shrouded his face
and neck in hishandkerchief, leaving his eyes uncovered.
He had sat there but a moment when he noticed a strange, sickening odor,faint, as if coming from a distance, but loathsome and horrid.
Whence could it come? Not from the cabin; not from the marsh, for it wasas dry as powder. It was not in the air; it seemed to come from theground.
Rising up, he noticed, for the first time, a few steps before him anarrow footpath leading toward the house. He glanced down it--ha! rightthere was some one coming--ghostly white!
Quick as thought, and as noiselessly, he lay down at full length againstthe cabin. It was bold strategy, and yet, there was no denying it,little White felt that he was frightened. "It is not a ghost," he saidto himself. "I _know_ it cannot be a ghost;" but the perspiration burstout at every pore, and the air seemed to thicken with heat. "It is aliving man," he said in his thoughts. "I hear his footstep, and I hearold Poquelin's footsteps, too, separately, over on the veranda. I am notdiscovered; the thing has passed; there is that odor again; what a smellof death! Is it coming back? Yes. It stops at the door of the cabin. Isit peering in at the sleeping mute? It moves away. It is in the pathagain. Now it is gone." He shuddered. "Now, if I dare venture, themystery is solved." He rose cautiously, close against the cabin, andpeered along the path.
The figure of a man, a presence if not a body--but whether clad in somewhite stuff or naked the darkness would not allow him to determine--hadturned, and now, with a seeming painful gait, moved slowly from him."Great Heaven! can it be that the dead do walk?" He withdrew again thehands which had gone to his eyes. The dreadful object passed between twopillars and under the house. He listened. There was a faint sound as offeet upon a staircase; then all was still except the measured tread ofJean Poquelin walking on the veranda, and the heavy respirations of themute slumbering in the cabin.
The little Secretary was about to retreat; but as he looked once moretoward the haunted Louse a dim light appeared in the crack of a closedwindow, and presently old Jean Poquelin came, dragging his chair, andsat down close against the shining cranny. He spoke in a low, tendertone in the French tongue, making some inquiry. An answer came fromwithin. Was it the voice of a human? So unnatural was it--so hollow, sodiscordant, so unearthly--that the stealthy listener shuddered againfrom head to foot, and when something stirred in some bushes nearby--though it may have been nothing more than a rat--and came scuttlingthrough the grass, the little Secretary actually turned and fled. As heleft the enclosure he moved with bolder leisure through the bushes; yetnow and then he spoke aloud: "Oh, oh! I see, I understand!" and shut hiseyes in his hands.
How strange that henceforth little White was the champion of JeanPoquelin! In season and out of season--wherever a word was utteredagainst him--the Secretary, with a quiet, aggressive force thatinstantly arrested gossip, demanded upon what authority the statement orconjecture was made; but as he did not condescend to explain his ownremarkable attitude, it was not long before the disrelish and suspicionwhich had followed Jean Poquelin so many years fell also upon him.
It was only the next evening but one after his adventure that he madehimself a source of sullen amazement to one hundred and fifty boys, byordering them to desist from their wanton hallooing. Old Jean Poquelin,standing and shaking his cane, rolling out his long-drawn maledictions,paused and stared, then gave the Secretary a courteous bow and startedon. The boys, save one, from pure astonishment, ceased but a ruffianlylittle Irish lad, more daring than any had yet been, threw a bighurtling clod, that struck old Poquelin between the shoulders and burstlike a shell. The enraged old man wheeled with uplifted staff to givechase to the scampering vagabond; and--he may have tripped, or he maynot, but he fell full length. Little White hastened to help him up, buthe waved him off with a fierce imprecation and staggering to his feetresumed his way homeward. His lips were reddened with blood.
Little White was on his way to the meeting of the Board. He would havegiven all he dared spend to have staid away, for he felt both too fierceand too tremulous to brook the criticisms that were likely to be made.
"I can't help it, gentlemen; I can't help you to make a case against theold man, and I'm not going to."
"We did not expect this disappointment, Mr. White."
"I can't help that, sir. No, sir; you had better not appoint any moreinvestigations. Somebody'll investigate himself into trouble. No, sir;it isn't a threat, it is only my advice, but I warn you that whoevertakes the task in hand will rue it to his dying day--which may behastened, too."
The President expressed himself "surprised."
"I don't care a rush," answered little White, wildly and foolishly. "Idon't care a rush if you are, sir. No, my nerves are not disordered; myhead's as clear as a bell. No, I'm _not_ excited." A Director remarkedthat the Secretary looked as though he had waked from a nightmare.
"Well, sir, if you want to know the fact, I have; and if you choose tocultivate old Poquelin's society you can have one, too."
"White," called a facetious member, but White did not notice. "White,"he called again.
"What?" demanded White, with a scowl.
"Did you see the ghost?"
"Yes, sir; I did," cried White, hitting the table, and handing thePresident a paper which brought the Board to other business.
The story got among the gossips that somebody (they were afraid to saylittle White) had been to the Poquelin mansion by night and beheldsomething appalling. The rumor was but a shadow of the truth, magnifiedand distorted as is the manner of shadows. He had seen skeletonswalking, and had barely escaped the clutches of one by making the signof the cross.
Some madcap boys with an appetite for the horrible plucked up courage toventure through the dried marsh by the cattle-path, and come before thehouse at a spectral hour when the air was full of bats. Something whichthey but half saw--half a sight was enough--sent them tearing backthrough the willow-brakes and acacia bushes to their homes, where theyfairly dropped down, and cried:
"Was it white?" "No--yes--nearly so--we can't tell--but we saw it." Andone could hardly doubt, to look at their ashen faces, that they had,whatever it was.
"If that old rascal lived in the country we come from," said certainAmericains, "he'd have been tarred and feathered before now, wouldn'the, Sanders?"
"Well, now he just would."
"And we'd have rid him on a rail, wouldn't we?"
"That's what I allow."
"Tell you what you _could_ do." They were talking to some rollickingCreoles who had assumed an absolute necessity for doing _something_."What is it you call this thing where an old man marries a young girl,and you come out with horns and"--
"_Charivari_?" asked the Creoles.
"Yes, that's it. Why don't you shivaree him?" Felicitous suggestion.
Little White, with his wife beside him, was sitting on their doorstepson the sidewalk, as Creole custom had taught them, looking toward thesunset. They had moved into the lately-opened street. The view was notattractive on the score of beauty. The houses were small and scattered,and across the flat commons, spite of the lofty tangle of weeds andbushes, and spite of the thickets of acacia, they needs must see thedismal old Poquelin mansion, tilted awry and shutting out the decliningsun. The moon, white and slender, was hanging the tip of its horn overone of the chimneys.
"And you say," said the Secretary, "the old black man has been going byhere alone? Patty, suppose old Poquelin should be concocting somemischief; he don't lack provocation; the way that clod hit him the otherday was enough to have killed him. Why, Patty, he dropped as quick as_that_! No wonder you haven't seen him. I wonder if they haven't heardsomething about him up at the drug-store. Suppose I go and see."
"Do," said his wife.
She sat alone for half an hour, watching that sudden going out of theday peculiar to the latitude.
"That moon is ghost enough for one house," she said, as her husbandreturned. "It has gone right down the chimney."
"Patty," said little White, "the drug-clerk says the
boys are going toshivaree old Poquelin to-night. I'm going to try to stop it."
"Why, White," said his wife, "you'd better not. You'll get hurt."
"No, I'll not."
"Yes, you will."
"I'm going to sit out here until they come along. They're compelled topass right by here."
"Why, White, it may be midnight before they start; you're not going tosit out here till then."
"Yes, I am."
"Well, you're very foolish," said Mrs. White in an undertone, lookinganxious, and tapping one of the steps with her foot.
They sat a very long time talking over little family matters.
"What's that?" at last said Mrs. White.
"That's the nine-o'clock gun," said White, and they relapsed into along-sustained, drowsy silence.
"Patty, you'd better go in and go to bed," said he at last.
"I'm not sleepy."
"Well, you're very foolish," quietly remarked little White, and againsilence fell upon them.
"Patty, suppose I walk out to the old house and see if I can find outany thing."
"Suppose," said she, "you don't do any such--listen!"
Down the street arose a great hubbub. Dogs and boys were howling andbarking; men were laughing, shouting, groaning, and blowing horns,whooping, and clanking cow-bells, whinnying, and howling, and rattlingpots and pans.
"They are coming this way," said little White. "You had better go intothe house, Patty."
"So had you."
"No. I'm going to see if I can't stop them."
"Why, White!"
"I'll be back in a minute," said White, and went toward the noise.
In a few moments the little Secretary met the mob. The pen hesitates onthe word, for there is a respectable difference, measurable only on thescale of the half century, between a mob and a _charivari_. Little Whitelifted his ineffectual voice. He faced the head of the disorderlycolumn, and cast himself about as if he were made of wood and moved bythe jerk of a string. He rushed to one who seemed, from the size andclatter of his tin pan, to be a leader. "_Stop these fellows, Bienvenu,stop them just a minute, till I tell them something_." Bienvenu turnedand brandished his instruments of discord in an imploring way to thecrowd. They slackened their pace, two or three hushed their horns andjoined the prayer of little White and Bienvenu for silence. The thronghalted. The hush was delicious.
"Bienvenu," said little White, "don't shivaree old Poquelin to-night;he's"--
"My fwang," said the swaying Bienvenu, "who tail you I goin' tochahivahi somebody, eh? Yon sink bickause I make a little playfool wizzis tin pan zat I am _dhonk_?"
"Oh, no, Bienvenu, old fellow, you're all right. I was afraid you mightnot know that old Poquelin was sick, you know, but you're not goingthere, are you?"
"My fwang, I vay soy to tail you zat you ah dhonk as de dev'. I am_shem_ of you. I ham ze servan' of ze _publique_. Zese _citoyens_ goin'to wickwest Jean Poquelin to give to the Ursuline' two hondred fiftydolla'"--
"_He quoi_!" cried a listener, "_Cinq cent piastres, oui_!"
"_Oui_!" said Bienvenu, "and if he wiffuse we make him some lit'_musique_; ta-ra ta!" He hoisted a merry hand and foot, then frowning,added: "Old Poquelin got no bizniz dhink s'much w'isky."
"But, gentlemen," said little White, around whom a circle had gathered,"the old man is very sick."
"My faith!" cried a tiny Creole, "we did not make him to be sick. W'enwe have say we going make _le charivari_, do you want that we hall tella lie? My faith! 'sfools!"
"But you can shivaree somebody else," said desperate little White.
"_Oui_" cried Bienvenu, "_et chahivahi_ Jean-ah Poquelin tomo'w!"
"Let us go to Madame Schneider!" cried two or three, and amid huzzas andconfused cries, among which was heard a stentorian Celtic call fordrinks, the crowd again began to move.
"_Cent piastres pour l'hopital de charite_!"
"Hurrah!"
"One hongred dolla' for Charity Hospital!"
"Hurrah!"
"Whang!" went a tin pan, the crowd yelled, and Pandemonium gaped again.They were off at a right angle.
Nodding, Mrs. White looked at the mantle-clock.
"Well, if it isn't away after midnight."
The hideous noise down street was passing beyond earshot. She raised asash and listened. For a moment there was silence. Some one came to thedoor.
"Is that you, White?"
"Yes." He entered. "I succeeded, Patty."
"Did you?" said Patty, joyfully.
"Yes. They've gone down to shivaree the old Dutchwoman who married herstep-daughter's sweetheart. They say she has got to pay a hundreddollars to the hospital before they stop."
The couple retired, and Mrs. White slumbered. She was awakened by herhusband snapping the lid of his watch.
"What time?" she asked.
"Half-past three. Patty, I haven't slept a wink. Those fellows are outyet. Don't you hear them?"
"Why, White, they're coming this way!"
"I know they are," said White, sliding out of bed and drawing on hisclothes, "and they're coming fast. You'd better go away from thatwindow, Patty. My! what a clatter!"
"Here they are," said Mrs. White, but her husband was gone. Two or threehundred men and boys pass the place at a rapid walk straight down thebroad, new street, toward the hated house of ghosts. The din wasterrific. She saw little White at the head of the rabble brandishing hisarms and trying in vain to make himself heard; but they only shook theirheads laughing and hooting the louder, and so passed, bearing him onbefore them.
Swiftly they pass out from among the houses, away from the dim oil lampsof the street, out into the broad starlit commons, and enter the willowyjungles of the haunted ground. Some hearts fail and their owners lagbehind and turn back, suddenly remembering how near morning it is. Butthe most part push on, tearing the air with their clamor.
Down ahead of them in the long, thicket-darkened way thereis--singularly enough--a faint, dancing light. It must be very near theold house; it is. It has stopped now. It is a lantern, and is under awell-known sapling which has grown up on the wayside since the canal wasfilled. Now it swings mysteriously to and fro. A goodly number of themore ghost-fearing give up the sport; but a full hundred move forward ata run, doubling their devilish howling and banging.
Yes; it is a lantern, and there are two persons under the tree. Thecrowd draws near--drops into a walk; one of the two is the old Africanmute; he lifts the lantern up so that it shines on the other; the crowdrecoils; there is a hush of all clangor, and all at once, with a cry ofmingled fright and horror from every throat, the whole throng rushesback, dropping every thing, sweeping past little White and hurrying on,never stopping until the jungle is left behind, and then to find thatnot one in ten has seen the cause of the stampede, and not one of thetenth is certain what it was.
There is one huge fellow among them who looks capable of any villany. Hefinds something to mount on, and, in the Creole _patois_, calls ageneral halt. Bienvenu sinks down, and, vainly trying to reclinegracefully, resigns the leadership. The herd gather round the speaker;he assures them that they have been outraged. Their right peaceably totraverse the public streets has been trampled upon. Shall suchencroachments be endured? It is now daybreak. Let them go now by theopen light of day and force a free passage of the public highway!
A scattering consent was the response, and the crowd, thinned now anddrowsy, straggled quietly down toward the old house. Some drifted ahead,others sauntered behind, but every one, as he again neared the tree,came to a stand-still. Little White sat upon a bank of turf on theopposite side of the way looking very stern and sad. To each new-comerhe put the same question:
"Did you come here to go to old Poquelin's?"
"Yes."
"He's dead." And if the shocked hearer started away he would say: "Don'tgo away."
"Why not?"
"I want you to go to the funeral presently."
If some Louisianian, too loyal to dear France or Spain to
understandEnglish, looked bewildered, some one would interpret for him; andpresently they went. Little White led the van, the crowd trooping afterhim down the middle of the way. The gate, that had never been seenbefore unchained, was open. Stern little White stopped a short distancefrom it; the rabble stopped behind him. Something was moving out fromunder the veranda. The many whisperers stretched upward to see. TheAfrican mute came very slowly toward the gate, leading by a cord in thenose a small brown bull, which was harnessed to a rude cart. On the flatbody of the cart, under a black cloth, were seen the outlines of a longbox.
"Hats off, gentlemen," said little White, as the box came in view, andthe crowd silently uncovered.
"Gentlemen," said little White, "here come the last remains of JeanMarie Poquelin, a better man, I'm afraid, with all his sins,--yes abetter--a kinder man to his blood--a man of more self-forgetfulgoodness--than all of you put together will ever dare to be."
There was a profound hush as the vehicle came creaking through the gate;but when it turned away from them toward the forest, those in frontstarted suddenly. There was a backward rush, then all stood still againstaring one way; for there, behind the bier, with eyes cast down andlabored step, walked the living remains--all that was left--of littleJacques Poquelin, the long-hidden brother--a leper, as white as snow.
Dumb with horror, the cringing crowd gazed upon the walking death. Theywatched, in silent awe, the slow _cortege_ creep down the long, straightroad and lessen on the view, until by and by it stopped where a wild,unfrequented path branched off into the undergrowth toward the rear ofthe ancient city.
"They are going to the _Terre aux Lepreux_," said one in the crowd. Therest watched them in silence.
The little bull was set free; the mute, with the strength of an ape,lifted the long box to his shoulder. For a moment more the mute and theleper stood in sight, while the former adjusted his heavy burden; then,without one backward glance upon the unkind human world, turning theirfaces toward the ridge in the depths of the swamp known as the Leper'sLand, they stepped into the jungle, disappeared, and were never seenagain.
Old Creole Days: A Story of Creole Life Page 19