human
Where are we going?
gpt
You and I, Chester said,
human
Yes. Ah, yes; so that while of the inside I cannot tell half, of the outside there is almost nothing to tell.
gpt
All the same, tell it. Were not he and these Royal Street men boys together?
human
Yes, though with M. De l'Isle the oldest, and though papa was away from them many years, over there in France. Yes, they were all his friends, as their fathers had been of _grandpère_. And they'll all tell you the same thing; that he was their hero, while at the same time that his story is destitute of the theatrical. Just he himself, he and mamma--they are the whole story.
gpt
A sea without a wave?
human
Ah, no; yet without a storm. And, Mr. Chester, I think a sea without a storm can be just as deep as with, h'm?
gpt
Well, they married, your father and mother, over there where her people are fighting the Germans right now, and came and lived in Bourbon Street with your aunts, eh?
human
Yes, or rather my aunts with them, they were of so much more strong natures than my aunts--more strong and large while just as sweet, and that's saying much, you know.
gpt
I see it is.
human
Mr. Chester, what you see, I think, is that my aunts are perhaps the two most--well--unworldly women you ever knew.
gpt
True. In that quality they're childlike.
human
Yes, and because they are so childlike in--above all--the freedom of their speech, what I want to say of them, just this one time, is the more to their honor: that in my _whole_ life I've never heard them speak one word against anybody.
gpt
Not even Cupid?
human
Ah-h-h! that's a cruel joke, and false! That true Cupid, he's an assassin; while that child, he's faultless?
gpt
and it was a joy to Chester to hear her at last fall unwittingly into a Creole accent.
human
Well, anyhow, he led on,
gpt
But your father's coming back from France--it couldn't save the business?
human
Alas, no! Even together, he and mamma--and you know what a strong businezz partner a French wife can be--they could not save it. Both of them were, I think, more artist than merchant, and when all that kind of businezz began to be divorce' from art and married to machinery
gpt
True again. But tha'z not all; hardly was it half. One thing beside was the miz-conduct of an agent, the man who lately
human
What?--sold your aunts that manuscript?
gpt
Yes. But he didn' count the most. Oh, the whole businezz, except papa's, became, as we say--give me the word!
human
Americanized?
gpt
No, papa he always refused to call it that. Mr. Chester, he used to say that those two marvellouz blessings, machinery, democracy, they are in one thing too much alike; they are, at first--say it, you.
human
Vulgarizing?
gpt
Yes. I suppose that has to be--at the first, h'm? And with the buying world every day more and more in love with machine work--and seeming itself to become machine work, while at the same time Americanized, papa was like a river town --another gesture--
human
Yet he never went into bankruptcy? You can point with pride to that, mademoiselle.
gpt
Ah, Mr. Chester, pride! Once I pointed, and papa--'My daughter, there are many ways to go bankrupt worse than in money, and to have gone bankrupt in none of them--' there he stopped; he was too noble for pride. No, the businezz, juz' year after year it starved to death. In the early days _grandpére_ had two big stores, back to back; whole-sale, Chartres Street; retail, Royal, where now all that is left of it is the shop of Mme. Alexandre. Both her husband and she were with papa in the retail store, until it diminish' that he couldn' keep them, and--in the time of President Roosevelt--some New York men they bought him out. Because a new head of the custom-house, old Creole friend of papa, without solicitation except maybe of M. Beloiseau and those, appointed him superintendent of customs warehouses, you know? where they keep all kind of imported goods, so they needn't pay the tariff till they take them out to sell them in the store? h'm?
human
Yes. And he kept that place--how long?