The next day would be Sunday, and Webster planned an early morning visit to the old French market, around which still lingers much of the picturesque charm and colourful romance of a day that is done—that echo of yesterday, as it were, which has left upon New Orleans an individuality as distinct as that which the olden, golden, godless days have left upon San Francisco.
He rose before six o'clock, therefore; found a taxi, with the driver sound asleep inside, at the curb in front of the hotel; gave the latter his instructions, and climbed in.
It being Sunday morning New Orleans slept late. Save for the few early morning worshippers hurrying to mass—mostly servants in a hurry to return to their kitchens and cook breakfast—the streets were deserted. The languorous air of dawn was redolent of the perfume of orange, rose, and sweet olive; from the four comers of the old town the mellow chimes of the Catholic church bells pealed their sweet, insistent call to the faithful; an atmosphere of subtle peace and sanctity pervaded the silent streets and awoke in John Stuart Webster's heart a vague nostalgia.
Perhaps it was because so much of his life had been spent in lonely mountain or desert camps, or perhaps it was because this taxi ride through the pleasant southern dawn was so typical of the swift passing of the youth which had gone from him before he had had an opportunity to taste, even moderately, of its joys and allurements. He sighed—a little regretful sigh.
“That's you, Johnny Webster,” he told himself, “breezing along through life like a tin-canned dog; f passing the sweet and the beautiful and battling with the harsh and unlovely; here to-day and gone to-morrow, a poor harried devil with your trunk on your back, a slave to the call of gold; restless, in a great hurry to get there and an equal hurry to leave for the new diggings, and all the time Life passes you by and you don't grab so much as a tail feather! On such a morn as this Eve entered the Garden of Eden, while I, consummate idiot, shut myself up in a taxi to watch a bill of expense run up on the clock, while sniffing myrrh and incense through this confounded window. I'll get out and walk!”
He was opposite Jackson Square and the cloying sweetness of palmetto, palm, and fig burdened the air. Above the rumble of the taxi he could hear the distant babel of voices in the French market across the square, so he halted the taxicab, alighted, and handed the driver a bill.
“I want to explore this square,” he said. He had recognized it by the heroic statue of General Jackson peeping through the trees. “I'll walk through the square Up the market, and you may proceed to the market and meet me there. Later we will return to the hotel.”
The chauffeur nodded, and Webster, every fibre of his alert, healthy body once more tingling with the sheer joy of living, entered the square, found a path that wound its way through the shrubbery, and came out at length in the main pathway, close to the Jackson memorial statue.
A Creole girl—starry-eyed, beautiful, rich with the glorious colouring of her race—passed him bound for the cathedral across the square, as Webster thought, for she carried a large prayer book on her arm. To Webster she seemed to fit perfectly into her surroundings, to lend to them the last, final touch of beauty, the apotheosis of peace, and again the nostalgic fever submerged the quiet joy with which he had approached his journey through the square. His glance followed the girl down the walk.
Presently she halted. A young man rose from a bench where evidently he had been waiting for her, and bowed low, his hat clasped to his breast, as only a Frenchman or a Spanish grandee can bow. Webster saw the Creole girl turn to him with a little gesture of pleasure. She extended her hand and the young man kissed it with old-fashioned courtesy.