by Edna Ferber
“There he is!” hissed Kaka, rearing her lean black head like a snake ready to strike. “There he is, that great badaud, leaning there.”
Clio was intently examining a head of cauliflower. She hated cauliflower and never ate it. “Who, Kaka dear?” she now asked absent-mindedly. “H’m?” with an air of dreamy preoccupation which would have deceived no one, least of all the astute Kakaracou. “What a lovely choufleur.’“
“Who, Kaka dear, who, Kaka dear!” Wickedly the Negress mimicked her in a kind of poisonous baby-talk. “You and your cauliflower head there, you’re two of a kind.”
Clio decided that the time had now come for dignity. In her role of Madame la Comtesse she now drew herself up and looked down her nose at Kaka. The effect of this was somewhat spoiled by the fact that Kaka glared balefully back, completely uncowed. “We will now go to the Cathedral. Kaka, you will accompany me. Cupide, you will go home with your basket, quickly, then return and wait outside the church. Vite!”
At the Market curb stood an open victoria for hire, its shabby cushions a faded green, its two sorry nags hanging listless heads. The black charioteer was as decrepit as his equipage. “We’ll ride,” Clio announced, grandly. “I’m tired. It’s hot. I’m hungry.”
The black man bowed, his smile a brilliant gash that made sunshine in the sable face. His gesture of invitation toward the sagging carriage made of it a state coach, of its occupants royalty. “Yas’m, yas’m. Jes’ the evening for ride out to the lake, yas’m.”
“Evening! Why, it’s hardly noon!”
“Yas’m, yas’m. Puffic evening for ride out to the lake.”
She set one foot in its gray kid shoe on the carriage step.
“Ma’am,” said a soft, rather drawling voice behind her, “Ma’am, I hate to see anybody as plumb beautiful as you ride in a moth-eaten old basket like this, let alone those two nags to pull it. If you’ll honor me, Ma’am, by using my carriage, I’m driving a pair of long-tailed bays to a clarence, I brought them all the way from Texas, and they’re beauties and thoroughbreds, just like—well, that sounds terrible, I didn’t mean to compare you, Ma’am, with—I meant if you’d just allow me—”
Standing there on the carriage step she had turned in amazement to find her face almost on a level with his as he stood at the curb. The blue eyes were blazing down upon her. He had taken off the great white sombrero. The Texas wind and sun that had bronzed the cheeks to startlingly near her own had burned the chestnut hair to a lively red-gold. For one terrible moment the two swayed together as though drawn by some magnetic force; then she drew back, and as she did so she realized with great definiteness that she wanted to feel his ruddy sun-warmed cheek against hers. She said, “Sir!” like any milk-and-water miss, turned away from him in majestic disapproval and seated herself in the carriage, whose cushion springs, playing her false, let her down in a rather undignified heap. His left hand still held the coffee cup. Unrebuffed, he strode toward the stall to set this down, and at that moment the outraged Kakaracou gave the signal to Cupide. That imp set down his laden basket. The Texan’s back was toward him, a broad target. With the force and precision of a goat Cupide ran straight at him, head lowered, and butted him from behind. The coffee cup went flying, spattering the café au lait trousers with a deeper tone. Another man would have fallen, but the Texan’s muscles were steel, his balance perfect. He pitched forward, stumbled, bent almost double, but he did not fall, he miraculously recovered himself. The white hat had fallen from his hand, it rolled like a hoop into a little pile of decayed vegetables at the curb. Across the open square, skipping along toward the Vieux Carré, you saw the figure of the dwarf almost obscured by the heavy basket.
A gasp had gone up from the market, and a snicker—but a small and smothered snicker. The flying blue coattails had revealed the silver-studded belt as being not purely ornamental. A businesslike holster hung suspended on either hip.
Kaka had whisked into the carriage, the coachman had whipped up the listiess nags, they were off to the accompaniment of squeaking springs and clattering hoofs and the high shrill cackle of Kaka’s rare laughter.
Clio Dulaine’s eyes were blazing; her fists were clenched; she craned to stare back at the tall blue-coated figure that had recovered the hat and now, standing at the Market curb, was brushing its sullied whiteness with one coat sleeve even while he gazed at the swaying vehicle bouncing over the cobblestones toward the Cathedral.
“I’ll whip him! I’ll take his uniform away from him. I’ll send him up North among the savages in New York State. I’ll never allow him to walk out with me again. I’ll lock him in the garçonnière on bread and water. I’ll—”
“Oh, so Madame la Comtesse enjoys to have loutish cowboys from Texas speak to her on the street. What next! Even your aunt Belle—”
“Shut up! Do you want to be slapped here in front of the Cathedral!”
Kaka took another tack. She began to whimper, her monkeyish face screwed into a wrinkled knot of woe. “I wish I had died when my Rita bébé died. I wish I could die now. I promised her I’d take care of you. It’s no use. Common. Common as dirt.” The carriage came to a halt before the church, Clio stepped out, her head held much too high for a Sunday penitent. “Wait here,” Kaka instructed the driver, her air of injured innocence exchanged for a brisk and businesslike manner, “and if that lout in the market asks you if we are inside say no, we left on foot. There’ll be pourboire for you if you do as I say.”
Within the cool dim cathedral Clio’s head was meekly bowed, her lips moved silently, she wiped away a tear as she prayed for the souls of the dead, for her lovely unfortunate mother, for her father, for her lusty aunt, but her eyes swam this way and that to see if, in the twilight gray of the aisles and pillars, she could discern a tall waiting figure. Out again into the blinding white sunshine of the Place d’Armes, the carriage was there, awaiting her; Cupide was there perched on the coachman’s box, the reins in his own tiny hands; the Sunday throngs were there, but no graceful lounging Texan, no clarence drawn by long-tailed bays.
“Oh!” The girl’s exclamation of disappointment was as involuntary as the sound of protest under pain. Kaka was jubilant. They had thrown him off. He had overheard the driver speaking of the lake. Plainly Clio was pouting.
“It’s too late for Begué’s, don’t you think, Kaka? And too hot. Let’s drive out to the lake, h’m? I’m not hungry. All that jambalaya.”
Cupide had wrought a startling change in the broken-down chariot. Evidently he had brought back with him from the house sundry oddments and elegancies with which to refurbish his lady’s carriage. A whisk broom had been vigorously plied, for the ancient cushions were dustless now and the floor cloth as well. Over the carriage seat he had thrown a wine-red silk shawl so that the gray faille should not be sullied further. He had rubbed the metal buckles of the rusty harness, he had foraged in the basement of thc garçonnière for his cherished equipment of Paris days and had brought out the check reins, which now held the nags’ heads high in a position of astonished protest. He himself, in his maroon livery, was perched on the driver’s seat, his little feet barely reaching the dashboard against which he braced himself. It was the Negro, dispossessed but admiring, who clambered down to assist the two into the transformed coach.
“Never see such a funny little maringouin! He climb up there he make them nags look like steppers. Look him now! Hi-yah!”
Sulkily Clio took her place on the wine-silk shawl against which her gray gown glowed the pinker. Kaka triumphantly took the little seat facing her, her back to the coachman’s seat. “Begué’s!” she commanded over her shoulder to Cupide.
“Fold your arms!” Cupide commanded of the chuckling Negro beside him on the box. “Sit up straight, you Congo! Eyes ahead!”
The man wagged his head in delighted wonder. “Just like you say, Quärtee. Look them horses step! My, my!”
Kaka, victorious, decided to follow up her advantage. “Madame la Comtesse looked very chic
talking to that dock laborer. Is it for that we crossed the ocean and returned to New Orleans to live!”
“I didn’t talk to him. He talked to me. He isn’t a dockhand. He’s a Texan, probably. Can I help it if—”
“Texan! Savages!”
“A clarence, he said. Thoroughbred bays. And serve you right if he has Cupide brought into court.”
“That one! Not for him, courtrooms. I know the look of them. He’s probably wanted in Texas himself, and skipped out with somebody’s carriage and pair.”
“Oh, Kaka, let’s not quarrel. I was going to have such a lovely day. I looked forward to it.” The morning was sunny; she was young; a clarence drawn by long-tailed bays and driven by a huge Texan in a white sombrero could not long remain hidden on the streets of New Orleans; instinct warned her that danger lay ahead, common sense told her that Kakaracou was right.
They turned into Decatur Street and drew up at Madame Begué’s with quite a flourish.
“Let him wait,” Clio commanded, loftily.
“No such thing. Sitting here, doing nothing, while we pay him for it. I’ll pay him off now. If he wants to wait until we come out that’s his business. You, Cupide!”
Cupide had heard. He tossed the shabby reins into the hands of their owner, and, agile as a monkey, scrambled out on the heaving back of one of the astonished horses, retrieved his check reins (at which the horses’ heads, released, immediately slumped forward as though weighted with lead), leaped down and handed Clio out in his best Paris manner. The check reins he tucked away under his coat; he sprang to open the restaurant door, and the strange little procession of three climbed the narrow stair and entered as Rita Dulaine had entered so often twenty years before, with the woman to attend her like a duenna, the dwarf to stand behind her chair as though she were Elizabethan royalty.
IV
New Orleans of the late ‘80’s had itself been sufficiently bizarre to have found nothing fantastic in the sight of the beautiful placée followed by her strange retinue. But the New Orleans of Clio’s day, breakfasting solidly in its favorite restaurant, looked up from its plate to remain staring, its fork halfway to its mouth.
The three stood a moment in the doorway, their eyes blinking a little in the sudden change from the white glare of the midday streets to the cool half-light of the restaurant. In that instant Monsieur Begué himself stood before them in his towering stiffly starched chef’s cap, his solid round belly burgeoning ahead of him. He bowed, he clasped his plump hands.
“Madame! But no. For a moment I thought you were—but of course it isn’t possible—”
“I have heard my mother speak of you so often, Monsieur Begué. They say I resemble her. I am Comtesse de—uh—Trenaunay de Chanfret. But this is America, and my home now. Just Madame de Chanfret, please.”
She was having a splendid time. She relished the little stir that her entrance had made; it was pleasant to be ushered by Hippolyte Begué himself to a choice table and to have him hovering over her chair as he presented for her inspection the menu handwritten in lively blue ink. Having entered with enormously dramatic effect, she now pretended to be a mixture of royalty incognito and modest young miss wide-eyed with wonder. She had seated herself with eyes cast down, she had handed her parasol to Cupide, her gloves to Kaka, she had pressed her hands to her hot cheeks in pretty confusion, she had thrown an appealing glance up at the attendant Begué.
“I want everything that you are famous for, Monsieur. You and Madame Begué.” She cast an admiring glance at the plump black-garbed figure reigning behind the vast cashier’s desk at the rear. “All the delicious things Mama used to describe to me in Paris.”
“She spoke of my food! In Paris!” He was immensely flattered. He snapped his fingers for Léon, the headwaiter, he himself flicked open her napkin and presented it to her with a flourish. Then the three heads came close—the restaurateur, the waiter, the audacious girl—intent on the serious business of selecting a Sunday morning breakfast from among the famous list of viands at Begué’s. Madame Begué’s renowned crayfish bisque? Not a dish for even Sunday New Orleans breakfast. Pompano? Begué’s celebrated calf’s liver à la bourgeoise? Filet de truite, Poulet chanteclair? With an omelette soufflée to follow? Grillades? Pain perdu?
Clio, speaking her flawless Parisian French to the two attendant men, ordered delicately and fastidiously. Hippolyte Begué himself waddled off to the kitchen to prepare the dishes with his own magic hands.
Clio Dulaine now leaned back in her chair and breathed a gusty sigh of relief and satisfaction. She looked about her with the lively curiosity of a small girl and the air of leisurely contemplation befitting her recently assumed title and station. She was attempting to produce the effect of being a woman of the world, a connoisseur of food, a femme fatale of mystery and experience. Curiously enough, with her lovely face made up as Aunt Belle had taught her, her rich attire, her bizarre attendants, her high, clear voice speaking the colloquial French of the Paris she had just left, she actually achieved the Protean role.
That choice section of New Orleans which was engaged in the rite of Sunday breakfast at Madame Begué’s stared, whispered, engaged in facial gymnastics that ranged all the way from looking down their noses to raising their eyebrows.
Well they might. Behind the newcomer’s chair stood Cupide, a figure cut from a pantomime. He brushed away a fly. He summoned a waiter with the Gallic “P-s-s-s-s-t!” He handed his mistress a little black silk fan. He glared pugnaciously about him. He stood with his tiny arms folded across his chest, a bodyguard out of a nightmare. His face was on a level with the table top as he stood. Each new dish, on presentation, he viewed with a look of critical contempt, standing slightly on tiptoe the better to see it as he did so.
From time to time Clio handed him a bit of crisp buttered crust with a tidbit on it—a bit of rich meat or a corner of French toast crowned with a ruby of jelly, as one would toss a bite to a pampered dog.
Breakfasting New Orleans snorted or snickered, outraged.
“Not bad,” Clio commented graciously from time to time, addressing Kaka or the world at large. “The food here is really good— but really good.”
Kakaracou sat at table an attendant, aloof from food and being offered none. Certainly Begué’s clients would have departed in a body had she eaten one bite. Her lean straight back was erect, disdaining to relax against Begué’s comfortable chair. The eyes beneath the heavy hoodlike lids noted everything about the table, about the room; she marked each person who entered at the doorway that led up the stair from the hot noonday glare of Decatur Street. For the most part her hands remained folded quietly in her neat lap, the while her eyes slid this way and that and the darting movement of her head set her earrings to swinging and glinting. Occasionally the purple-black hand, skinny and agile, darted forth like a benevolent spider to place nearer for her mistress’s convenience a sugar bowl, a spoon, a dish. She viewed the food with the hard clear gaze of the expert.
“Red wine enough in that sauce, you think? . . . The pain perdu could be a shade browner.”
The delicate and lovely girl slowly demolished her substantial breakfast with proper appreciation. She might have been a lifelong habituée dawdling thus over her Sunday morning meal. The room watched her boldly or covertly. Monsieur Begué hovered paternally. The waiters approved her and her entourage. Here was someone dramatic and to their fancy; someone who, young though she was, knew food. Titled, too. From France. There was about these serving men nothing of the appearance of the gaunt and flat-footed of their tribe. They were fruity old boys with mustaches and side whiskers. In moments of leisure they sat in a corner near Madame Begué’s high desk reading L’Abeille and engaging in the argumentative talk of their fraternity. Nothing meager about these servitors. They, like Madame and Monsieur Begué, were solid with red wine and gumbo soup and the rich food for which the city was famous. Their customers were clients; each meal was a problem to be weighed, discussed. They advised, gravely. Th
ey were quick to see that the lovely stranger knew the importance of good eating.
From time to time Léon reported in a sibilant whisper, “A Comtesse, that little one . . . The little monkey is old, his face is marked with wrinkles when you see him close . . . She orders like a true Creole. Grits, she said, one must always have with breakfast at Begué’s.”
The talk between mistress and maid was not at all the sort of conversation ordinarily found in this relation. It resembled the confidences exchanged between friends of long standing or even conspirators who have nothing to conceal from one another. And conspirators they were. As guest after guest entered the dim coolness of the restaurant Kaka commented on them succinctly and wittily. The girl munched and nodded. Now and then she laid down her knife and fork to laugh her indolent deep-throated laugh.
The women who entered now, decorously escorted by the men of their family, were, for the most part, dressed in quiet, rich black, like Parisian women; the men wore Sunday attire of Prince Albeit coat or sack suits with dark ties. Sallow, reserved, rather forbidding, they conducted themselves like royalty incognito, aware of their own exalted state but pretending unconsciousness of it.
“Chacalata,” Kakaracou said, witheringly. It was a local New Orleans term, culled from heaven knows where, to describe the inner circle of New Orleans aristocracy, clannish, self-satisfied, resenting change or innovation.
“The same dresses they wore when we left for France fifteen or more years ago. They’re so puffed with their own pride they think they don’t have to dress fashionably. They’d come out in their gabrielles, those chacalata women, if they thought it decent.”