The Flower of the Chapdelaines
Page 18
"Of my aunts, you think?"
"Yes, your aunts."
"Mr. Chester, even if I had no aunts----"
"Yes, I see. That's my new discovery: you've already had my assurancethat I'd study their happiness as I would yours, ours, mine; but youthink I could never make your aunts and myself happy in the sameatmosphere. You believe in me. You believe I have a future that mustcarry me--would carry us--into a world your aunts don't know and couldnever learn."
"'Tis true. And yet even if my aunts----"
"Had no existence--yes, I know. I know what you think would stillremain. You can't hint it, for you think I would promptly promise theimpossible, as lovers so easily do. Aline, I would not! 'Twouldn't beimpossible. It shall not be. My mother is helping to prove that evento you, isn't she--without knowing it? I promise you as if it were inthe marriage contract and we were here signing it, that if you will bemy wife I never will, and you never shall, let go, or in any way relax,your hold--or mine--on the intimate friendship of the coterie in RoyalStreet. They are your inheritance from your father and his father, andI love you the more adoringly because you would sooner break your ownheart than forfeit that legacy." He took one of her hands. "You aretheir 'Clock in the Sky'; you're their 'Angel of the Lord.' And so youshall be till death do you part." He took the other hand, held both.
Cupid turned his face from the window and audibly sobbed.
"Oh, child, what is it? Does it pain so?"
He shook his head.
"Doesn't it pain? Is it not pain at all? Why, then, what is it?"
"Joy," he whispered as the doctor came in.
L
The child's hurts were not so grave, after all.
"He may sit up to-morrow," the doctor said. The fractured arm was putinto a splint and sling, and a collar-bone had to be wrapped in place;but the absorbent cotton bandaged on his head was only for contusions.
"Corinne!" Mlle. Yvonne gasped, "contusion"! Ah, doctor, I 'ope tha'zsomething you can't 'ave but once!"
"You can't in fatal cases. Mrs.--eh--those scissors, please? Thankyou."
"Well, Aline, praise be to heaven, any'ow his skull, from ear to ear'tis solid! Ah, I mean, of co'se, roun' the h-outside. Inside 'tishollow. But outside it has not a crack! eh, doctor?"
"Except the sutures he was born with. Now, my little man----"
"Ah, ah, Corinne! Born with shuture'! and we never suzpeg' that!"
"Ah, but, Yvonne, if he's had those sinz' that long they cann' be sovery fatal, no!"
Partly for the little boy's sake three days were let pass before Alinemade her announcement. There was but one place for it--the Castanados'parlor. All the coterie were there--the De l'Isles, even Ovide--butler_pro tem_.
"You will have refreshments," he said, with happiest equanimity; "Iwill serve them"; and the whole race problem vanished. Melanie too waspresent, with an announcement of her own which won ecstatic kisses,many of them tear-moistened but all of them glad. As for Mme.Alexandre and Beloiseau, they announced nothing, but every one knew,and said so in the smiling fervency of their hand-grasps.
All of which made the evening too hopelessly old-fashioned to be dwelton, though one point cannot be overlooked. It was the lastproclamation of the joyous hour, and was Chester's. He had bought--onwonderfully easy terms--_vieux carre_ terms--the large house andgrounds opposite the Chapdelaine cottage, and there the aunts were todwell with the young pair.
"Permanently?"
"Ah, only whiles we live!"
The coterie adjourned.
Already the sisters had begun to move in. Mrs. Chester helped them"marvellouzly." Also Aline. Also Cupid--that was now his only name.The cat really couldn't; she was too preoccupied. The sisters touchedMrs. Chester's arm and drew a curtain.
"Look! . . . Eight! Ah, thou unfaithful, if we had ever think you aregoing to so forget yo'seff like that, we woul'n' never name you MarieMadeleine! And still ad the same time you know, Mrs. Chezter, we aresure she's trying to tell us, right now, that this going to be the laz'time!"
"And me," Yvonne added, "I feel sure any'ow that, as the poet say--I'mprittie sure 'tis the poet say that--she's mo' sin' ag-ainz' thansinning."
At length one evening so many relics of the Chapdelaine infancy hadbeen gathered in the new home that the sisters went over there to passthe night, and took puss and her offspring along. But not a wink dideither of them sleep the night through, and the first living creaturethey espied the next morning was Marie Madeleine, with a kitten in herteeth, moving back.
"Aline," they sobbed as soon as they could find her, "we are sorry,sorry, sorry, to make you such unhappinezz like that, and so soon;continue, you and Geoffry, to live in that new 'ouse; but whiles welive any plaze but heaven we got to live in that home of our in-fancy."