Claude and his father left the next day,—Saturday. Only the author of the A. of U. I. knew whither they were gone. As they were going he said very privately to Claude:
“I’ll be with you day after to-morrow. You can’t be ready for me before then, and you and your father can take Sunday to look around, and kind o’ see the city. But don’t go into the down-town part; you’ll not like it; nothing but narrow streets and old buildings with histories to ’em, and gardens hid away inside of ’em, and damp archways, and pagan-looking females who can’t talk English, peeping out over balconies that offer to drop down on you, and then don’t keep their word; every thing old-timey, and Frenchy, and Spanishy; unprogressive—you wouldn’t like it. Go up-town. That’s American. It’s new and fresh. There you’ll find beautiful mansions, mostly frame, it’s true, but made to look like stone, you know. There you’ll see wealth! There you’ll get the broad daylight—
‘The merry, merry sunshine, that makes the heart so gay.’
See? Yes, and Monday we’ll meet at Jones’s, 17 Tchoupitoulas Street; all right; I’ll be on hand. But to-day and to-morrow—‘Alabama’—‘here I rest.’ I feel constrained”—he laid his hand upon his heart, closed one eye, and whispered—“to stay. I would fain spend the sabbath in sweet Vermilionville. You get my idea?”
The sabbath afternoon, beyond the town, where Mr. Tarbox strolled, was lovelier than can be told. Yet he was troubled. Zoséphine had not thus far given him a moment alone. I suppose, when a hundred generations more have succeeded us on the earth, lovers will still be blind to the fact that women do not do things our way. How can they? That would be capitulation at once, and even we should find the whole business as stupid as shooting barnyard fowls.
Zoséphine had walked out earlier than Tarbox. He had seen her go, but dared not follow. He read “thou shalt not” as plain as print on her back as she walked quietly away; that same little peremptory back that once in her father’s calèche used to hold itself stiff when ’Thanase rode up behind. The occasional townsman that lifted his slouch hat in deep deference to her silent bow, did not read unusual care on her fair brow; yet she, too, was troubled.
Marguerite! she was the trouble. Zoséphine knew her child could never come back to these old surroundings and be content. The mother was not willing she should. She looked at a photograph that her daughter had lately sent her. What a change from the child that had left her! It was like the change from a leaf to a flower. There was but one thing to do: follow her. So Zoséphine had resolved to sell the inn. She was gone, now, to talk with the old ex-governor about finding a purchaser. Her route was not by the avenue of oaks, but around by a northern and then eastern circuit. She knew Mr. Tarbox must have seen her go; had a genuine fear that he would guess whither she was bound, and yet, deeper down in her heart than woman ever lets soliloquy go, was willing he should. For she had another trouble. We shall come to that presently.
Her suitor walked in the avenue of oaks.
“She’s gone,” he reckoned to himself, “to consult the governor about something, and she’ll come back this way.” He loitered out across fields, but not too far off or out of sight; and by and by there she came, with just the slightest haste in her walk. She received him with kindly reserve, and they went more slowly, together.
She told where she had been, and that the governor approved a decision she had made.