The Red City Part 2

"And, _maman_," said her son, "the streets are called for trees and the lanes for berries." Disappointed at two inns of the better cla.s.s, there being no vacant rooms, they crossed High Street; the son amused at the market stands for fruit, fish, and "garden truck, too," the clerk said, with blacks crying, "Calamus! sweet calamus!" and "Pepper pot, smoking hot!" or "Hominy! samp! grits! hominy!" Then, of a sudden, as they paused on the farther corner, madam cried out, "_Mon Dieu!_" and her son a half-suppressed "_Sacre!_" A heavy landau coming down Second Street b.u.mped heavily into a deep rut and there was a liberal splash of muddy water across madam's dark gown and the young man's clothes. In an instant the owner of the landau had alighted, hat in hand, a middle-aged man in velvet coat and knee-breeches.

"Madam, I beg a thousand pardons."

"My mother does not speak English, sir. These things happen. It is they who made the street who should apologize. It is of small moment."

"I thank you for so complete an excuse, sir. You surely cannot be French. Permit me,"--and he turned to the woman, "_mille pardons_," and went on in fairly fluent French to say how much he regretted, and would not madam accept his landau and drive home? She thanked him, but declined the offer in a voice which had a charm for all who heard it. He bowed low, not urging his offer, and said, "I am Mr. William Bingham. I trust to have the pleasure of meeting madam again and, too, this young gentleman, whose neat excuse for me would betray him if his perfect French did not. Can I further serve you?"

"No, sir," said De Courval, "except to tell me what inn near by might suit us. We are but just now landed. My guide seems in doubt. I should like one close at hand. My mother is, I fear, very tired."

"I think,"--and he turned to the clerk,--"yes, St. Tammany would serve.

It is clean and well kept and near by." He was about to add, "Use my name," but, concluding not to do so, added: "It is at the corner of Chancery Lane. This young man will know." Then, with a further word of courtesy, he drove away, while madam stood for a moment sadly contemplating the additions to her toilet.

Mr. Bingham, senator for Pennsylvania, reflected with mild curiosity on the two people he had annoyed, and then murmured: "I was stupid. That is where the Federal Club meets and the English go. They will never take those poor French with their baggage in a barrow."

He had at least the outward manners of a day when there was leisure to be courteous, and, feeling pleased with himself, soon forgot the people he had unluckily inconvenienced. De Courval went on, ruefully glancing at his clothes, and far from dreaming that he was some day to be indebted to the gentleman they had left.

The little party, thus directed, turned into Mulberry Street, or, as men called it, Arch, and, with his mother, De Courval entered a cleanly front room under the sign of St. Tammany. There was a barred tap in one corner, maids in cap and ap.r.o.n moving about, many men seated at tables, with long pipes called churchwardens, drinking ale or port wine. Some looked up, and De Courval heard a man say, "More French beggars." He flushed, bit his lip, and turned to a portly man in a white jacket, who was, as it seemed, the landlord. The mother shrank from the rude looks and said a few words in French.

The host turned sharply as she spoke, and De Courval asked if he could have two rooms. The landlord had none.

"Then may my mother sit down while I inquire without?"

A man rose and offered his chair as he said civilly: "Oeller's Tavern might suit you. It is the French house--a hotel, they call it. You will get no welcome here."

"Thank you," said De Courval, hearing comments on their muddy garments and the d.a.m.ned French. He would have had a dozen quarrels on his hands had he been alone. His mother had declined the seat, and as he followed her out, he lingered on the step to speak to his guide. They were at once forgotten, but he heard behind him sc.r.a.ps of talk, the freely used oaths of the day, curses of the demagogue Jefferson and the man Was.h.i.+ngton, who was neither for one party nor for the other. He listened with amazement and restrained anger.

He had fallen in with a group of middle-cla.s.s men, Federalists in name, clamorous for war with Jacobin France, and angry at their nominal leader, who stood like a rock against the double storm of opinion which was eager for him to side with our old ally France or to conciliate England. It was long before De Courval understood the strife of parties, felt most in the cities, or knew that back of the mischievous diversity of opinion in and out of the cabinet was our one safeguard--the belief of the people in a single man and in his absolute good sense and integrity. Young De Courval could not have known that the thoughtless violence of party cla.s.sed all French together, and as yet did not realize that the _emigre_ was generally the most deadly foe of the present rule in France.

Looking anxiously at his mother, they set out again up Mulberry Street, past the meeting-house of Friends and the simple grave of the great Franklin, the man too troubled, and the mother too anxious, to heed or question when they moved by the burial-ground where Royalist and Whig lay in the peace of death and where, at the other corner, Wetherill with the free Quakers built the home of a short-lived creed.

Oeller's Tavern--because of its French guests called a hotel--was on Chestnut Street, west of Fifth, facing the State House. A civil French servant asked them into a large room on the right of what was known as a double house. It was neat and clean, and the floor was sanded. Presently appeared Maxim Oeller. Yes, he had rooms. He hoped the citizen would like them, and the citizeness. De Courval was not altogether amused. He had spoken English, saying, however, that he was of France, and the landlord had used the patois of Alsace. The mother was worn out, and said wearily: "I can go no farther. It will do. It must do, until we can find a permanent lodging and one less costly."

Mr. Oeller was civil and madam well pleased. For supper in her room, on extra payment, were fair rolls and an omelet. De Courval got the mud off his clothes and at six went down-stairs for his supper.

At table, when he came in, were some twenty people, all men. Only two or three were of French birth and the young man, who could not conceive of Jacobin clubs out of France, sat down and began to eat with keen relish a well-cooked supper.

By and by his neighbors spoke to him. Had he just come over the seas, as the landlord had reported? What was doing in France? He replied, of course, in his very pure English. News in London had come of Mirabeau's death. Much interested, they plied him at once with questions. And the king had tried to leave Paris, and there had been mobs in the provinces, bloodshed, and an attack on Vincennes--which was not quite true. Here were Americans who talked like the Jacobins he had left at home. Their violence surprised him. Would he like to come to-morrow to the Jacobin Club? The king was to be dealt with. Between amus.e.m.e.nt and indignation the grave young vicomte felt as though he were among madmen. One man asked if the decree of death to all _emigres_ had been carried out.

"No," he laughed; "not while they were wise enough to stay away."

Another informed him that Was.h.i.+ngton and Hamilton were on the way to create a monarchy. "Yes, Citizen, you are in a land of t.i.tles--Your Excellency, Their Honors of the supreme court in gowns--scarlet gowns."

His discreet silence excited them. "Who are you for? Speak out!"

"I am a stranger here, with as yet no opinions."

"A neutral, by Jove!" shouted one.

At last the young man lost patience and said: "I am not, gentlemen, a Jacobin. I am of that n.o.blesse which of their own will gave up their t.i.tles. I am--or was--the Vicomte de Courval."

There was an uproar. "We are citizens, we would have you to know. d.a.m.n your t.i.tles! We are citizens, not gentlemen."

"That is my opinion," said De Courval, rising. Men hooted at him and shook fists in his face. "Take care!" he cried, backing away from the table. In the midst of it came the landlord. "He is a royalist," they cried; "he must go or we go."

The landlord hurried him out of the room. "Monsieur," he said--"Citizen, these are fools, but I have my living to think of. You must go. I am sorry, very sorry."

"I cannot go now," said De Courval. "I shall do so to-morrow at my leisure." It was so agreed. He talked quietly a while with his mother, saying nothing of this new trouble, and then, still hot with anger, he went to his room, astonished at his reception, and anxious that his mother should find a more peaceful home.

He slept the sleep of the healthy young, rose at early dawn, and was able to get milk and bread and thus to escape breakfast with the citizen-boarders, not yet arisen. Before he went out, he glanced at the book of guests. He had written Vicomte de Courval, with his mother's name beneath it, La Vicomtesse de Courval, without a thought on so casual a matter, and now, flus.h.i.+ng, he read "Citizen" above his t.i.tle with an erasure of de and Vicomte. Over his mother's t.i.tle was written the last affectation of the Jacobins, "Citizeness" Courval. It was so absurd that, the moment's anger pa.s.sing into mirth, he went out into the air, laughing and exclaiming: "_Mais qu'ils sont betes! Quelle enfantillage!_ What childishness!" The servant, a man of middle age, who was sweeping the steps, said in French, "What a fine day, monsieur."

"_Bon jour, Citizen_," returned De Courval, laughing. The man laughed also, and said, "_Canailles, Monsieur_," with a significant gesture of contempt. "_Bon jour, Monsieur le Vicomte_," and then, hearing steps within, resumed his task with: "But one must live. My stomach has the opinions of my appet.i.te." For a moment he watched the serious face and well-knit figure of the vicomte as he turned westward, and then went into the house, remarking, "_Qu'il est beau_"--"What a handsome fellow!"

De Courval pa.s.sed on. Independence Hall interested him for a moment.

Many people went by him, going to their work, although it was early. He saw the wretched paving, the few houses high on banks of earth beyond Sixth Street, and then, as he walked westward on Chestnut Street, pastures, cows, country, and the fine forest to the north known as the Governor's Wood. At last, a mile farther, he came upon the bank of a river flowing slowly by. What it was he did not know. On the farther sh.o.r.e were farms and all about him a thinner forest. It was as yet early, and, glad of the lonely freshness, he stood still a little while among the trees, saw bees go by on early business bent, and heard in the edge of the wood the love song of a master singer, the cat-bird. Nature had taken him in hand. He was already happier when, with shock of joy he realized what she offered. No one was in sight. He undressed in the edge of the wood and stood a while in the open on the graveled strand, the tide at full of flood. The morning breeze stirred lightly the pale-green leaves of spring with shy caress, so that little flashes of warm light from the level sun-shafts coming through the thin leaf.a.ge of May flecked his white skin. He looked up, threw out his arms with the naked man's instinctive happiness in the moment's sense of freedom from all form of bondage, ran down the beach, and with a shout of pure barbarian delight plunged into the river. For an hour he was only a young animal alone with nature--diving, swimming, splas.h.i.+ng the water, singing bits of love-songs or laughing in pure childlike enjoyment of the use of easy strength. At last he turned on his back and floated luxuriously. He pushed back his curly hair, swept the water from his eyes, and saw with a cry of pleasure that which is seen only from the level of the watery plain. On the far sh.o.r.e, a red gravel bank, taking the sun, was reflected a plain of gold on the river's breadth. The quickened wind rolled the water into little concave mirrors which, dancing on the gold surface, gathered the clear azure above him in cups of intense indigo blue. It was new and freshly wonderful. What a sweet world! How good to be alive!

When ash.o.r.e he stood in a flood of suns.h.i.+ne, wringing the water from body and limbs and hair, and at last running up and down the beach until he was dry and could dress. Then, hat in hand, he walked away, feeling the wholesome languor of the practised swimmer and gaily singing a song of home:

"Quand tout renait a l'esperance, Et que l'hiver fuit loin de nous, Sous le beau ciel de notre France, Quand le soleil revient plus doux; Quand la nature est reverdie, Quand l'hirondelle est de retour, J'aime a revoir ma Normandie, C'est le pays qui m'a donne le jour!"

The cares and doubts and worries of yesterday were gone--washed out of him, as it were, in nature's baptismal regeneration of mind and body.

All that he himself recognized was a glad sense of the return of competence and of some self-a.s.surance of capacity to face the new world of men and things.

He wandered into the wood and said good morning to two men who, as they told him, were "falling a tree." He gathered flowers, white violets, the star flower, offered tobacco for their pipes, which they accepted, and asked them what flower was this. "We call them Quaker ladies." He went away wondering what poet had so named them. In the town he bought two rolls and ate them as he walked, like the great Benjamin. About nine o'clock, returning to the hotel, he threw the flowers in his mother's lap as he kissed her. He saw to her breakfast, chatted hopefully, and when, about noon, she insisted on going with him to seek for lodgings, he was pleased at her revived strength. The landlord regretted that they must leave, and gave addresses near by. Unluckily, none suited their wants or their sense of need for rigid economy; and, moreover, the vicomtesse was more difficult to please than the young man thought quite reasonable. They were pausing, perplexed, near the southwest corner of Chestnut and Fifth streets when, having pa.s.sed two gentlemen standing at the door of a brick building known as the Philosophical Society, De Courval said, "I will go back and ask where to apply for information."

He had been struck with the unusual height of one of the speakers, and with the animation of his face as he spoke, and had caught as he went by a phrase or two; for the stouter man spoke in a loud, strident voice, as if at a town meeting. "I hope, Citizen, you liked the last 'Gazette.'

It is time to give men their true labels. Adams is a monarchist and Hamilton is an aristocrat."

The taller man, a long, lean figure, returned in a more refined voice: "Yes, yes; it is, I fear, only too true. I hope, Citizen, to live to see the end of the t.i.tles they love, even Mr.; for who is the master of a freeman?"

"How droll is that, _maman!_" said De Courval, half catching this singular interchange of sentiment.

"Why, Rene? What is droll?"

"Oh, nothing." He turned back, and addressing the taller man said: "Pardon me, sir, but we are strangers in search of some reasonable lodging-house. May I ask where we could go to find some one to direct us?"

The gentleman appealed to took off his hat, bowing to the woman, and then, answering the son, said, "My friend, Citizen Freneau, may know."

The citizen had small interest in the matter. The taller man, suddenly struck by the woman's grave and moveless face and the patient dignity of her bearing, began to take an interest in this stranded couple, considering them with his clear hazel eyes. As he stood uncovered, he said: "Tell them, Freneau! Your paper must have notices--advertis.e.m.e.nts.

Where shall they inquire?"

Freneau did not know, but quick to note his companion's interest, said presently: "Oh, yes, they might learn at the library. They keep there a list of lodging-houses."

"That will do," said the lean man. Madame, understanding that they were to be helped by this somber-looking gentleman, said, "_Je vous remercie, messieurs_."

"My mother thanks you, sir."

Then there was of a sudden cordiality. Most of the few French known to Freneau were Republicans and shared his extreme opinions. The greater emigration from the islands and of the beggared n.o.bles was not as yet what it was to become.

"You are French?" said Freneau.

"Yes, we are French."

"I was myself about to go to the library," said the taller man, and, being a courteous gentleman gone mad with "gallic fever," added in imperfect French, "If madame will permit me; it is near by, and I shall have the honor to show the way."