"I suppose you've been gadding all around the town ever since the Revellers opened the season?" he inquired.
"Hardly," said Fell with his shy air. "I'm growing a bit stiff with age, as Eliza said when she crossed the ice. I don't gad much."
"You intend to mask for the Maillards'?" Ansley cast his eye over the gray business attire of the little man.
"I never mask." Jachin Fell shook his head. "I'll get a domino and go as I am. Excuse me—I'll order a domino now, and also provide a few more El Reys for the evening. Back in a moment."
Doctor Ansley, who was himself a non-resident member of the club and socially prominent when he could grant himself leisure for society, followed the slight figure of the other man with speculative eyes. Well as he knew Jachin Fell, he invariably found the man a source of puzzled speculation.
During many years Jachin Fell had been a member of the most exclusive New Orleans clubs. He was even received in the inner circles of Creole society, which in itself was evidence supreme as to his position. At this particular club he was famed as a wizard master of chess. He never entered a tournament, yet he consistently defeated the champions in private matches—defeated them with a bewildering ease, a shy and apologetic ease, an ease which left the beholders incredulous and aghast.
With all this, Jachin Fell was very much of a mystery, even among his closest friends. Very little was known of him; he was inconspicuous to a degree, and it was usually assumed that he was something of a recluse, the result of a thwarted love affair in his youth. He was a lawyer, and certainly maintained offices in the Maison Blanche building, but he never appeared in the courts and no case of his pleading was known.
It was said that he lived in the rebuilt casa of some old Spanish grandee in the Vieux Carre, and that this residence of his was a veritable treasure-trove of historic and beautiful things. This was mere rumour, adding a spice of romance to the general mystery. Ansley knew him as well as did most men, and Ansley knew of a few who could boast of having been a guest in Jachin Fell's home. There was a mother, an invalid of whom Fell sometimes spoke and to whom he appeared to devote himself. The family, an old one in the city, promised to die out with Jachin Fell.
Ansley puffed at his cigar and considered these things. Outside, in the New Orleans streets, was rocketing the mad mirth of carnival. The week preceding Mardi Gras was at its close. Since the beginning of the new year the festival had been celebrated in a steadily climaxing series of balls and entertainments, largely by the older families who kept to the old customs, and to a smaller extent by society at large. Now the final week was at hand, or rather the final three days—the period of the great balls, the period when tourists were flooding into town; for tourists, the whole time of Mardi Gras was comprised within these three days. Despite agonized predictions, prohibition had not adversely affected Mardi Gras or the gaiety of its celebration.
Now, as ever, was Mardi Gras symbolized by masques. In New Orleans the masquerade was not the pale and pitiful frolic of colder climes, where the occasion is but one for display of jewels and costumes, and where actual concealment of identity is a farce. Here in New Orleans were jewels and costumes in a profusion of splendour; but here was preserved the underlying idea of the masque itself—that in concealment of identity lay the life of the thing! Masquers swept the streets gaily; if harlequin husband flirted with domino wife—why, so much the merrier! There was little harm in the Latin masque, and great mirth.