The Grandissimes

by George Washington Cable

  CHAPTER XXVII

  THE FETE DE GRANDPERE

  Sojourners in New Orleans who take their afternoon drive down Esplanadestreet will notice, across on the right, between it and that sorrystreak once fondly known as Champs Elysees, two or three large, oldhouses, rising above the general surroundings and displayingarchitectural features which identify them with an irrevocable past--apast when the faithful and true Creole could, without fear ofcontradiction, express his religious belief that the antipathy he feltfor the Americain invader was an inborn horror laid lengthwise in hisante-natal bones by a discriminating and appreciative Providence. Thereis, for instance, or was until lately, one house which some hundred andfifteen years ago was the suburban residence of the old sea-captaingovernor, Kerlerec. It stands up among the oranges as silent and gray asa pelican, and, so far as we know, has never had one cypress plank addedor subtracted since its master was called to France and thrown into theBastile. Another has two dormer windows looking out westward, and, whenthe setting sun strikes the panes, reminds one of a man with spectaclesstanding up in an audience, searching for a friend who is not there andwill never come back. These houses are the last remaining--if, indeed,they were not pulled down yesterday--of a group that once marked fromafar the direction of the old highway between the city's walls and thesuburb St. Jean. Here clustered the earlier aristocracy of the colony;all that pretty crew of counts, chevaliers, marquises, colonels, dons,etc., who loved their kings, and especially their kings' moneys, with an_abandon_ which affected the accuracy of nearly all their accounts.

  Among these stood the great mother-mansion of the Grandissimes. Do notlook for it now; it is quite gone. The round, white-plastered brickpillars which held the house fifteen feet up from the reeking ground androse on loftily to sustain the great overspreading roof, or clustered inthe cool, paved basement; the lofty halls, with their multitudinousglitter of gilded brass and twinkle of sweet-smelling wax-candles; theimmense encircling veranda, where twenty Creole girls might walkabreast; the great front stairs, descending from the veranda to thegarden, with a lofty palm on either side, on whose broad steps fortyGrandissimes could gather on a birthday afternoon; and the belvidere,whence you could see the cathedral, the Ursulines', the governor'smansion, and the river, far away, shining between the villas ofTchoupitoulas Coast--all have disappeared as entirely beyond recall asthe flowers that bloomed in the gardens on the day of this _fete degrandpere_.

  Odd to say, it was not the grandpere's birthday that had passed. Forweeks the happy children of the many Grandissime branches--theMandarins, the St. Blancards, the Brahmins--had been standing withtheir uplifted arms apart, awaiting the signal to clap hands and jump,and still, from week to week, the appointed day had been made to fallback, and fall back before--what think you?--an inability tounderstand Honore.

  It was a sad paradox in the history of this majestic old house that herbest child gave her the most annoyance; but it had long been so. Even inHonore's early youth, a scant two years after she had watched him, overthe tops of her green myrtles and white and crimson oleanders, go away,a lad of fifteen, supposing he would of course come back a Grandissimeof the Grandissimes--an inflexible of the inflexibles--he was found"inciting" (so the stately dames and officials who graced her frontveranda called it) a Grandissime-De Grapion reconciliation by means oftransatlantic letters, and reducing the flames of the old feud,rekindled by the Fusilier-Nancanou duel, to a little foul smoke. Themain difficulty seemed to be that Honore could not be satisfied with aclean conscience as to his own deeds and the peace and fellowships ofsingle households; his longing was, and had ever been--he had inheritedit from his father--to see one unbroken and harmonious Grandissimefamily gathering yearly under this venerated roof without reproachbefore all persons, classes, and races with whom they had ever had todo. It was not hard for the old mansion to forgive him once or twice;but she had had to do it often. It seems no over-stretch of fancy tosay she sometimes gazed down upon his erring ways with a look of patientsadness in her large and beautiful windows.

  And how had that forbearance been rewarded? Take one short instance:when, seven years before this present _fete de grandpere_, he came backfrom Europe, and she (this old home which we cannot help but personify),though in trouble then--a trouble that sent up the old feud flamesagain--opened her halls to rejoice in him with the joy of all hergathered families, he presently said such strange things in favor ofindiscriminate human freedom that for very shame's sake she hushed themup, in the fond hope that he would outgrow such heresies. But he? On topof all the rest, he declined a military commission and engaged incommerce--"shopkeeping, _parbleu!_"

  However, therein was developed a grain of consolation. Honore became--ashe chose to call it--more prudent. With much tact, Agricola was amiablycrowded off the dictator's chair, to become, instead, a sort ofseneschal. For a time the family peace was perfect, and Honore, by atouch here to-day and a word there to-morrow, was ever lifting the name,and all who bore it, a little and a little higher; when suddenly, as inhis father's day--that dear Numa who knew how to sacrifice his verysoul, as a sort of Iphigenia for the propitiation of the family gods--asin Numa's day came the cession to Spain, so now fell this other cession,like an unexpected tornado, threatening the wreck of her children'sslave-schooners and the prostration alike of their slave-made crops andtheir Spanish liberties; and just in the fateful moment where Numa wouldhave stood by her, Honore had let go. Ah, it was bitter!

  "See what foreign education does!" cried a Mandarin de Grandissime ofthe Baton Rouge Coast. "I am sorry now"--derisively--"that I never sent_my_ boy to France, am I not? No! No-o-o! I would rather my son shouldnever know how to read, than that he should come back from Parisrepudiating the sentiments and prejudices of his own father. Iseducation better than family peace? Ah, bah! My son make friends withAmericains and tell me they--that call a negro 'monsieur'--are as goodas his father? But that is what we get for letting Honore become amerchant. Ha! the degradation! Shaking hands with men who do not believein the slave trade! Shake hands? Yes; associate--fraternize! withapothecaries and negrophiles. And now we are invited to meet at the_fete de grandpere_, in the house where he is really the chief--the_cacique!_"

  No! The family would not come together on the first appointment; no, noron the second; no, not if the grandpapa did express his wish; no, nor onthe third--nor on the fourth.

  "_Non, Messieurs_!" cried both youth and reckless age; and, sometimes,also, the stronger heads of the family, the men of means, of force andof influence, urged on from behind by their proud and beautiful wivesand daughters.

  Arms, generally, rather than heads, ruled there in those days.Sentiments (which are the real laws) took shape in accordance with thepoetry, rather than the reason, of things, and the community recognizedthe supreme domination of "the gentleman" in questions of right and of"the ladies" in matters of sentiment. Under such conditions strengthestablishes over weakness a showy protection which is the subtlest oftyrannies, yet which, in the very moment of extending its arm overwoman, confers upon her a power which a truer freedom would onlydiminish; constitutes her in a large degree an autocrat of publicsentiment and thus accepts her narrowest prejudices and most belatederrors as veriest need-be's of social life.

  The clans classified easily into three groups; there were those whoboiled, those who stewed, and those who merely steamed under a closecover. The men in the first two groups were, for the most part, thosewho were holding office under old Spanish commissions, and were dailyexpecting themselves to be displaced and Louisiana thereby ruined. Thesteaming ones were a goodly fraction of the family--the timid, theapathetic, the "conservative." The conservatives found ease better thanexactitude, the trouble of thinking great, the agony of decidingharrowing, and the alternative of smiling cynically and being liberal somuch easier--and the warm weather coming on with a rapidity-wearying tocontemplate.

  "The Yankee was an inferior animal."

  "Certainly."

  "But Honore had a right to h
is convictions."

  "Yes, that was so, too."

  "It looked very traitorous, however."

  "Yes, so it did."

  "Nevertheless, it might turn out that Honore was advancing the trueinterests of his people."

  "Very likely."

  "It would not do to accept office under the Yankee government."

  "Of course not."

  "Yet it would never do to let the Yankees get the offices, either."

  "That was true; nobody could deny that."

  "If Spain or France got the country back, they would certainly rememberand reward those who had held out faithfully."

  "Certainly! That was an old habit with France and Spain."

  "But if they did not get the country back--"

  "Yes, that is so; Honore is a very good fellow, and--"

  And, one after another, under the mild coolness of Honore's amiabledisregard, their indignation trickled back from steam to water, and theywent on drawing their stipends, some in Honore's counting-room, wherethey held positions, some from the provisional government, which had asyet made but few changes, and some, secretly, from the cunningCasa-Calvo; for, blow the wind east or blow the wind west, the affinityof the average Grandissime for a salary abideth forever.

  Then, at the right moment, Honore made a single happy stroke, and eventhe hot Grandissimes, they of the interior parishes and they ofAgricola's squadron, slaked and crumbled when he wrote each a lettersaying that the governor was about to send them appointments, and thatit would be well, if they wished to _evade_ them, to write the governorat once, surrendering their present commissions. Well! Evade? They wouldevade nothing! Do you think they would so belittle themselves as towrite to the usurper? They would submit to keep the positions first.

  But the next move was Honore's making the whole town aware of hisapostasy. The great mansion, with the old grandpere sitting out infront, shivered. As we have seen, he had ridden through the Placed'Armes with the arch-usurper himself. Yet, after all, a Grandissimewould be a Grandissime still; whatever he did he did openly. And wasn'tthat glorious--never to be ashamed of anything, no matter how bad? Itwas not everyone who could ride with the governor.

  And blood was so much thicker than vinegar that the family, that wouldnot meet either in January or February, met in the first week of March,every constituent one of them.

  The feast has been eaten. The garden now is joyous with children andthe veranda resplendent with ladies. From among the latter the eyequickly selects one. She is perceptibly taller than the others; she sitsin their midst near the great hall entrance; and as you look at herthere is no claim of ancestry the Grandissimes can make which you wouldnot allow. Her hair, once black, now lifted up into a glisteningsnow-drift, augments the majesty of a still beautiful face, while herfull stature and stately bearing suggest the finer parts of Agricola,her brother. It is Madame Grandissime, the mother of Honore.

  One who sits at her left, and is very small, is a favorite cousin. Onher right is her daughter, the widowed senora of Jose Martinez; she haswonderful black hair and a white brow as wonderful. The commandingcarriage of the mother is tempered in her to a gentle dignity and calm,contrasting pointedly with the animated manners of the courtly matronsamong whom she sits, and whose continuous conversation takes thisdirection or that, at the pleasure of Madame Grandissime.

  But if you can command your powers of attention, despite those childrenwho are shouting Creole French and sliding down the rails of the frontstair, turn the eye to the laughing squadron of beautiful girls, whichevery few minutes, at an end of the veranda, appears, wheels anddisappears, and you note, as it were by flashes, the characteristics offace and figure that mark the Louisianaises in the perfection of thenew-blown flower. You see that blondes are not impossible; there,indeed, are two sisters who might be undistinguishable twins but thatone has blue eyes and golden hair. You note the exquisite pencilling oftheir eyebrows, here and there some heavier and more velvety, where aless vivacious expression betrays a share of Spanish blood. AsGrandissimes, you mark their tendency to exceed the medium Creolestature, an appearance heightened by the fashion of their robes. Thereis scarcely a rose in all their cheeks, and a full red-ripeness of thelips would hardly be in keeping; but there is plenty of life in theireyes, which glance out between the curtains of their long lashes with amerry dancing that keeps time to the prattle of tongues. You are notable to get a straight look into them, and if you could you would seeonly your own image cast back in pitiful miniature; but you turn awayand feel, as you fortify yourself with an inward smile, that they knowyou, you man, through and through, like a little song. And in turning,your sight is glad to rest again on the face of Honore's mother. Yousee, this time, that she _is_ his mother, by a charm you had overlooked,a candid, serene and lovable smile. It is the wonder of those who seethat smile that she can ever be harsh.

  The playful, mock-martial tread of the delicate Creole feet is all atonce swallowed up by the sound of many heavier steps in the hall, andthe fathers, grandfathers, sons, brothers, uncles and nephews of thegreat family come out, not a man of them that cannot, with a littlecare, keep on his feet. Their descendants of the present day sip fromshallower glasses and with less marked results.

  The matrons, rising, offer the chief seat to the first comer, thegreat-grandsire--the oldest living Grandissime--Alcibiade, a shaken butunfallen monument of early colonial days, a browned and corrugatedsouvenir of De Vaudreuil's pomps, of O'Reilly's iron rule, of Galvez'brilliant wars--a man who had seen Bienville and Zephyr Grandissime.With what splendor of manner Madame Fusilier de Grandissime offers, andhe accepts, the place of honor! Before he sits down he pauses a momentto hear out the companion on whose arm he had been leaning. ButTheophile, a dark, graceful youth of eighteen, though he is recountingsomething with all the oblivious ardor of his kind, becomes instantlysilent, bows with grave deference to the ladies, hands the agedforefather gracefully to his seat, and turning, recommences the recitalbefore one who hears all with the same perfect courtesy--his belovedcousin Honore.

  Meanwhile, the gentlemen throng out. Gallant crew! These are they whohave been pausing proudly week after week in an endeavor (?) tounderstand the opaque motives of Numa's son.

  In the middle of the veranda pauses a tall, muscular man of fifty, withthe usual smooth face and an iron-gray queue. That is Colonel AgamemnonBrahmin de Grandissime, purveyor to the family's military pride,conservator of its military glory, and, after Honore, the most admiredof the name. Achille Grandissime, he who took Agricola away fromFrowenfeld's shop in the carriage, essays to engage Agamemnon inconversation, and the colonel, with a glance at his kinsman's netherlimbs and another at his own, and with that placid facility with whichthe graver sort of Creoles take up the trivial topics of the lighter,grapples the subject of boots. A tall, bronzed, slender young man, whoprefixes to Grandissime the maternal St. Blancard, asks where his wifeis, is answered from a distance, throws her a kiss and sits down on astep, with Jean Baptiste de Grandissime, a piratical-lookingblack-beard, above him, and Alphonse Mandarin, an olive-skinned boy,below. Valentine Grandissime, of Tchoupitoulas, goes quite down to thebottom of the steps and leans against the balustrade. He is a large,broad-shouldered, well-built man, and, as he stands smoking a cigar,with his black-stockinged legs crossed, he glances at the sky with theeye of a hunter--or, it may be, of a sailor.

  "Valentine will not marry," says one of two ladies who lean over therail of the veranda above. "I wonder why."

  The other fixes on her a meaning look, and she twitches her shouldersand pouts, seeing she has asked a foolish question, the answer to whichwould only put Valentine in a numerous class and do him no credit.

  Such were the choice spirits of the family. Agricola had retired. Raoulwas there; his pretty auburn head might have been seen about half-way upthe steps, close to one well sprinkled with premature gray.

  "No such thing!" exclaimed his companion.

  (The conversation was entirely in Creole French.)

 
; "I give you my sacred word of honor!" cried Raoul.

  "That Honore is having all his business carried on in English?" askedthe incredulous Sylvestre. (Such was his name.)

  "I swear--" replied Raoul, resorting to his favorite pledge--"on a stackof Bibles that high!"

  "Ah-h-h-h, pf-f-f-f-f!"

  This polite expression of unbelief was further emphasized by a spasmodicflirt of one hand, with the thumb pointed outward.

  "Ask him! ask him!" cried Raoul.

  "Honore!" called Sylvestre, rising up. Two or three persons passed thecall around the corner of the veranda.

  Honore came with a chain of six girls on either arm. By the time hearrived, there was a Babel of discussion.

  "Raoul says you have ordered all your books and accounts to be writtenin English," said Sylvestre.

  "Well?"

  "It is not true, is it?"

  "Yes."

  The entire veranda of ladies raised one long-drawn, deprecatory "Ah!"except Honore's mother. She turned upon him a look of silent but intenseand indignant disappointment.

  "Honore!" cried Sylvestre, desirous of repairing his defeat, "Honore!"

  But Honore was receiving the clamorous abuse of the two half dozens ofgirls.

  "Honore!" cried Sylvestre again, holding up a torn scrap ofwriting-paper which bore the marks of the counting-room floor and of aboot-heel, "how do you spell 'la-dee?'"

  There was a moment's hush to hear the answer.

  "Ask Valentine," said Honore.

  Everybody laughed aloud. That taciturn man's only retort was to surveythe company above him with an unmoved countenance, and to push the ashesslowly from his cigar with his little finger. M. Valentine Grandissime,of Tchoupitoulas, could not read.

  "Show it to Agricola," cried two or three, as that great man came outupon the veranda, heavy-eyed, and with tumbled hair.

  Sylvestre, spying Agricola's head beyond the ladies, put the question.

  "How is it spelled on that paper?" retorted the king of beasts.

  "L-a-y--"

  "Ignoramus!" growled the old man.

  "I did not spell it," cried Raoul, and attempted to seize the paper. ButSylvestre throwing his hand behind him, a lady snatched the paper, twoor three cried "Give it to Agricola!" and a pretty boy, whom thelaughter and excitement had lured from the garden, scampered up thesteps and handed it to the old man.

  "Honore!" cried Raoul, "it must not be read. It is one of your privatematters."

  But Raoul's insinuation that anybody would entrust him with a privatematter brought another laugh.

  Honore nodded to his uncle to read it out, and those who could notunderstand English, as well as those who could, listened. It was a paperSylvestre had picked out of a waste-basket on the day of Aurore's visitto the counting-room. Agricola read:

  "What is that layde want in thare with Honore?" "Honore is goin giv her bac that proprety--that is Aurore De Grapion what Agricola kill the husband."

  That was the whole writing, but Agricola never finished. He was readingaloud--"that is Aurore De Grap--"

  At that moment he dropped the paper and blackened with wrath; a sharpflash of astonishment ran through the company; an instant of silencefollowed and Agricola's thundering voice rolled down upon Sylvestre in asuccession of terrible imprecations.

  It was painful to see the young man's face as, speechless, he receivedthis abuse. He stood pale and frightened, with a smile playing about hismouth, half of distress and half of defiance, that said as plain as asmile could say, "Uncle Agricola, you will have to pay forthis mistake."

  As the old man ceased, Sylvestre turned and cast a look downward toValentine Grandissime, then walked up the steps, and passing with acourteous bow through the group that surrounded Agricola, went into thehouse. Valentine looked at the zenith, then at his shoe-buckles, tossedhis cigar quietly into the grass and passed around a corner of the houseto meet Sylvestre in the rear.

  Honore had already nodded to his uncle to come aside with him, andAgricola had done so. The rest of the company, save a few male figuresdown in the garden, after some feeble efforts to keep up their spiritson the veranda, remarked the growing coolness or the waning daylight,and singly or in pairs withdrew. It was not long before Raoul, who hadcome up upon the veranda, was left alone. He seemed to wait forsomething, as, leaning over the rail while the stars came out, he sangto himself, in a soft undertone, a snatch of a Creole song:

  "La pluie--la pluie tombait, Crapaud criait, Moustique chantait--"

  The moon shone so brightly that the children in the garden did not breakoff their hide-and-seek, and now and then Raoul suspended the murmur ofhis song, absorbed in the fate of some little elf gliding from one blackshadow to crouch in another. He was himself in the deep shade of amagnolia, over whose outer boughs the moonlight was trickling, as if thewhole tree had been dipped in quicksilver.

  In the broad walk running down to the garden gate some six or seven darkforms sat in chairs, not too far away for the light of their cigars tobe occasionally seen and their voices to reach his ear; but he did notlisten. In a little while there came a light footstep, and a soft,mock-startled "Who is that?" and one of that same sparkling group ofgirls that had lately hung upon Honore came so close to Raoul, in herattempt to discern his lineaments, that their lips accidentally met.They had but a moment of hand-in-hand converse before they were hustledforth by a feminine scouting party and thrust along into one of thegreat rooms of the house, where the youth and beauty of the Grandissimeswere gathered in an expansive semicircle around a languishing fire,waiting to hear a story, or a song, or both, or half a dozen of each,from that master of narrative and melody, Raoul Innerarity.

  "But mark," they cried unitedly, "you have got to wind up with the storyof Bras-Coupe!"

  "A song! A song!"

  "_Une chanson Creole! Une chanson des negres!_"

  "Sing 'ye tole dance la doung y doung doung!'" cried a black-eyed girl.

  Raoul explained that it had too many objectionable phrases.

  "Oh, just hum the objectionable phrases and go right on."

  But instead he sang them this:

  "_La premier' fois mo te 'oir li, Li te pose au bord so lit; Mo di', Bouzon, bel n'amourese! L'aut' fois li te si' so la saise Comme vie Madam dans so fauteil, Quand li vive cote soleil.

  So gies ye te plis noir passe la nouitte, So de la lev' plis doux passe la quitte! Tou' mo la vie, zamein mo oir Ein n' amourese zoli comme ca! Mo' blie manze--mo' blie boir'-- Mo' blie tout dipi c' temps-la-- Mo' blie parle--mo' blie dormi, Quand mo pense apres zami!_"

  "And you have heard Bras-Coupe sing that, yourself?"

  "Once upon a time," said Raoul, warming with his subject, "we werecoming down from Pointe Macarty in three pirogues. We had been threedays fishing and hunting in Lake Salvador. Bras-Coupe had one piroguewith six paddles--"

  "Oh, yes!" cried a youth named Baltazar; "sing that, Raoul!"

  And he sang that.

  "But oh, Raoul, sing that song the negroes sing when they go out in thebayous at night, stealing pigs and chickens!"

  "That boat song, do you mean, which they sing as a signal to those onshore?" He hummed.

  Music]

  "De zabs, de zabs, de counou ouaie ouaie, De zabs, de zabs, de counou ouaie ouaie, Counou ouaie ouaie ouaie ouaie, Counou ouaie ouaie ouaie ouaie, Counou ouaie ouaie ouaie, momza; Momza, momza, momza, momza, Roza, roza, roza-et--momza."

  This was followed by another and still another, until the hour began togrow late. And then they gathered closer around him and heard thepromised story. At the same hour Honore Grandissime, wrapping himself ina greatcoat and giving himself up to sad and somewhat bitterreflections, had wandered from the paternal house, and by and by fromthe grounds, not knowing why or whither, but after a time soliciting, atFrowenfeld's closing door, the favor of his company. He had been feelinga kind of suffocation
. This it was that made him seek and prize thepresence and hand-grasp of the inexperienced apothecary. He led him outto the edge of the river. Here they sat down, and with a laboriousattempt at a hard and jesting mood, Honore told the same dark story.