Strange True Stories of Louisiana Part 22

"She is 'colored.'"

"Impossible!"

"I tell you, yes!"

"Why, I thought her as pure German as her name."

"No, the mixture is there; though the only trace of it is on her lips. Her mother--she is dead now--was a beautiful quadroon. A German sea-captain loved her. The law stood between them. He opened a vein in his arm, forced in some of her blood, went to court, swore he had African blood, got his license, and married her. Marguerite is engaged to be married to a white man, a gentleman who does not know this. It was like life and death, so to speak, for her not to let those men turn her out of here."

The teacher turned away, pondering.

The eviction did not, at that time, hold good. The political struggle went on, fierce and bitter. The "Radical" government was doomed, but not dead.

A few weeks after the scene just described the evicted girls were reinstated. A long term of suspense followed. The new year became the old and went out. Twice this happened. In 1877 there were two governors and two governments in Louisiana. In sight from the belvedere of the "haunted house," eight squares away up Royal street, in the State House, the _de facto_ government was shut up under close military siege by the _de jure_ government, and the Girls' High School in Madame Lalaurie's old house, continuing faithfully their daily sessions, knew with as little certainty to which of the two they belonged as though New Orleans had been some Italian city of the fifteenth century. But to guess the White League, was not far from right, and in April the Radical government expired.

A Democratic school-board came in. June brought Commencement day, and some of the same girls who had been evicted in 1874 were graduated by the new Board in 1877. During the summer the schools and school-laws were overhauled, and in September or October the high school was removed to another place, where each pupil suspected of mixed blood was examined officially behind closed doors and only those who could prove white or _Indian_ ancestry were allowed to stay. A "colored" high school was opened in Madame Lalaurie's house with a few pupils. It lasted one session, maybe two, and then perished.

In 1882 the "haunted house" had become a Conservatory of Music. Chamber concerts were frequent in Madame Lalaurie's old dining-hall. On a certain sweet evening in the spring of that year there sat among those who had gathered to hear the haunted place filled with a deluge of sweet sounds one who had been a teacher there when the house had been, as some one--Conservative or Radical, who can tell which?--said on the spot, "for the second time purged of its iniquities." The scene was "much changed,"

says the auditor; but the ghosts were all there, walking on the waves of harmony. And thickest and fastest they trooped in and out when a pa.s.sionate song thrilled the air with the promise that

"Some day--some day Eyes clearer grown the truth may see."

ATTALIE BROUILLARD.

1855.

I.

FURNISHED ROOMS.

The strange true stories we have thus far told have all been matter of public or of private record. Pages of history and travel, law reports, doc.u.ments of court, the testimony of eye-witnesses, old ma.n.u.scripts and letters, have insured to them the full force and charm of their reality.

But now we must have it clearly and mutually understood that here is one the verity of which is vouched for stoutly, but only by tradition. It is very much as if we had nearly finished a strong, solid stone house and would now ask permission of our underwriters to add to it at the rear a small frame lean-to.

It is a mere bit of lawyers' table-talk, a piece of after-dinner property.

It originally belonged, they say, to Judge Collins of New Orleans, as I believe we have already mentioned; his by right of personal knowledge. I might have got it straight from him had I heard of it but a few years sooner. His small, iron-gray head, dark, keen eyes, and nervous face and form are in my mind's eye now, as I saw him one day on the bench interrupting a lawyer at the bar and telling him in ten words what the lawyer was trying to tell in two hundred and fifty.

That the judge's right to this story was that of discovery, not of invention, is well attested; and if he or any one else allowed fict.i.tious embellishments to gather upon it by oft telling of it in merry hours, the story had certainly lost all such superfluities the day it came to me, as completely as if some one had stolen its clothes while it was in swimming.

The best I can say is that it came unmutilated, and that I have done only what any humane person would have done--given it drapery enough to cover its nakedness.

To speak yet plainer, I do not, even now, put aside, abridge, or alter a single _fact_; only, at most, restore one or two to s.p.a.ces that indicate just what has dropped out. If a dentist may lawfully supply the place of a lost tooth, or an old beau comb his hair skillfully over a bald spot, then am I guiltless. I make the tale not less, and only just a trifle more, true; not more, but only a trifle less, strange. And this is it:

In 1855 this Attalie Brouillard--so called, mark you, for present convenience only--lived in the French quarter of New Orleans; I think they say in Bienville street, but that is no matter; somewhere in the _vieux carre_ of Bienville's original town. She was a worthy woman; youngish, honest, rather handsome, with a little money--just a little; of attractive dress, with good manners, too; alone in the world, and--a quadroon. She kept furnished rooms to rent--as a matter of course; what would she do?

Hence she was not so utterly alone in the world as she might have been.

She even did what Stevenson says is so good, but not so easy, to do, "to keep a few friends, but these without capitulation." For instance there was Camille Ducour. That was not his name; but as we have called the woman A.B., let the man be represented as C.D.

He, too, was a quadroon; an f.m.c.[30] His personal appearance has not been described to us, but he must have had one. Fancy a small figure, thin, let us say, narrow-chested, round-shouldered, his complexion a dull clay color spattered with large red freckles, his eyes small, gray, and close together, his hair not long or bushy, but dense, crinkled, and hesitating between a dull yellow and a hot red; his clothes his own and his linen last week's.

He is said to have been a shrewd fellow; had picked up much practical knowledge of the law, especially of notarial business, and drove a smart trade giving private advice on points of law to people of his caste. From many a trap had he saved his poor clients of an hour. Out of many a danger of their own making had he safely drawn them, all unseen by, though not unknown to, the legitimate guild of judges, lawyers, and notaries out of whose professional garbage barrel he enjoyed a sort of stray dog's privilege of feeding.

His meetings with Attalie Brouillard were almost always on the street and by accident. Yet such meetings were invariably turned into pleasant visits in the middle of the sidewalk, after the time-honored Southern fas.h.i.+on.

Hopes, ailments, the hardness of the times, the health of each one's "folks," and the condition of their own souls, could not be told all in a breath. He never failed, when he could detain her no longer, to bid her feel free to call on him whenever she found herself in dire need of a wise friend's counsel. There was always in his words the hint that, though he never had quite enough cash for one, he never failed of knowledge and wisdom enough for two. And the gentle Attalie believed both clauses of his avowal.

Attalie had another friend, a white man.

FOOTNOTES: [30] Free man of color.

II.

JOHN BULL.

This other friend was a big, burly Englishman, forty-something years old, but looking older; a big pink cabbage-rose of a man who had for many years been Attalie's princ.i.p.al lodger. He, too, was alone in the world.

And yet neither was he so utterly alone as he might have been. For he was a cotton buyer. In 1855 there was no business like the cotton business.

Everything else was subservient to that. The cotton buyer's part, in particular, was a "pretty business." The cotton _factor_ was hara.s.singly responsible to a whole swarm of planter patrons, of whose feelings he had to be all the more careful when they were in his debt. The cotton _broker_ could be bullied by his buyer. But the _buyer_ was answerable only to some big commercial house away off in Havre or Hamburg or Liverpool, that had to leave all but a few of the largest and most vital matters to his discretion. Commendations and criticisms alike had to come by mail across the Atlantic.

Now, if a cotton buyer of this sort happened to be a bachelor, with no taste for society, was any one likely to care what he subst.i.tuted, out of business hours, for the conventional relations of domestic life? No one answers. Cotton buyers of that sort were apt to have very comfortable furnished rooms in the old French quarter. This one in Attalie's house had the two main rooms on the first floor above the street.

Honestly, for all our winking and t.i.ttering, we know nothing whatever against this person's private character except the sad fact that he was a man and a bachelor. At forty-odd, it is fair to suppose, one who knows the world well enough to be the trusted agent of others, thousands of miles across the ocean, has bid farewell to all mere innocence and has made choice between virtue and vice. But we have no proof whatever that Attalie's cotton buyer had not solemnly chosen virtue and stuck to his choice as an Englishman can.

All we know as to this, really, is that for many years here he had roomed, and that, moved by some sentiment, we know not certainly what, he had again and again a.s.sured Attalie that she should never want while he had anything, and that in his will, whenever he should make it, she would find herself his sole legatee. On neither side of the water, said he, had he any one to whom the law obliged him to leave his property nor, indeed, any large wealth; only a little money in bank--a very indefinite statement. In 1855 the will was still unwritten.

There is little room to doubt that this state of affairs did much interest Camille Ducour--at a distance. The Englishman may have known him by sight.

The kind of acquaintance he might have had with the quadroon was not likely to vary much from an acquaintance with some unknown neighbor's cat on which he mildly hoped to bestow a pitcher of water if ever he caught him under his window.

Camille mentioned the Englishman approvingly to three other friends of Attalie, when, with what they thought was adroitness, they turned conversation upon her pecuniary welfare. They were Jean d'Eau, a slumberous butcher; Richard Reau, an embarra.s.sed baker; and one ---- Ecswyzee, an illiterate but prosperous candlestick-maker. These names may sound inexact, but _can you prove_ that these were not their names and occupations? We shall proceed.

These three simple souls were bound to Attalie by the strong yet tender bonds of debit and credit. She was not distressingly but only interestingly "behind" on their well-greased books, where Camille's account, too, was longer on the left-hand side. When they alluded inquiringly to her bill, he mentioned the Englishman vaguely and a.s.sured them it was "good paper to hold," once or twice growing so extravagant as to add that his (Camille's) own was hardly better!

The tradesmen replied that they hadn't a shadow of doubt. In fact, they said, their mention, of the matter was mere jest, etc.

III.

Ducour's Meditations.

There were a few points in this case upon which Camille wished he could bring to bear those purely intellectual--not magical--powers of divination which he modestly told his clients were the secret of all his sagacious advice. He wished he could determine conclusively and exactly what was the mutual relation of Attalie and her lodger. Out of the minutest corner of one eye he had watched her for years.

A quadroon woman's lot was a hard one; any true woman would say that, even while approving the laws and popular notions of necessity that made that lot what it was. The law, popular sentiment, public policy, always looked at Attalie's sort with their right eye shut. And according to all the demands of the other eye Camille knew that Attalie was honest, faithful.

But was that all; or did she stand above and beyond the demands of law and popular sentiment? In a word, to whom was she honest, faithful; to the Englishman merely, or actually to herself? If to herself actually, then in case of his early death, for Camille had got a notion of that, and had got it from Attalie, who had got it from the Englishman,--what then? Would she get his money, or any of it? No, not if Camille knew men--especially white men. For a quadroon woman to be true to herself and to her G.o.d was not the kind of thing that white men--if he knew them--rewarded. But if the case was not of that sort, and the relation was what he _hoped_ it was, and according to his ideas of higher law it had a right to be, why, then, she might reasonably hope for a good fat slice--if there should turn out, after all, to be any fat to slice.