III
Harold was a brilliant fellow, impulsive and extravagant as he was handsome and loving, and he had no sooner taken possession of his Eden than he began to plan, by means of a system of engineering, to open it up by a canal which should "span the brake and tap the bayou," so that boats of size and circumstance might enter. Here he would have a launch and a barge, and the great world of culture, of wit, of pleasure, and of affluence should come in splendor "to watch a hermit herm," or, as he as often put it, "to help a hummit hum."
A great house-party was quickly arranged—a party of gay friends, engineers chiefly, bidden for a freely declared purpose—a party which is still cherished in the annals of local social history as a typical example of affluent ante-bellum hospitality, and is even yet personally recalled by a few old men who sit and seem to wait, mostly, in shabby clothing incongruously ill fitting their gilded reminiscence, at certain dozing business resorts in old New Orleans.
Most of these venerables still live in their shabby ancestral homes, although it may be their women take boarders or their best rooms are let for business purposes—cleared of their cumbersome furnishings of mahogany and rosewood by the rising waters of misfortune which have gradually carried them into the "antique-shops" of the vicinity.
A place of honor on the tax-lists and a waiting palace of white marble in the cemetery—these querulous witnesses to distinction and of permanency are in some cases the sole survivors of the many changes incident upon a reconstruction.
To these gentle reminiscers the "Brake Island house-party of Harold Le Duc" is even yet the Procrustean bed against which they measure all the ostentatious pageantry of a new and despised social order.
For the possible preservation of a bit of local color—gone out in the changed light of a new dispensation—behold a hasty sketch of this long-ago playtime. The invitations which were sent out, naming a single date only, with the flattering implication that the visit so urgently desired might never come to an end,—one of the easy fashions of the old régime,—promptly brought a dozen men, with as many women, wives and sweethearts, to the "big house" beyond the swamp.
This Southern home, which was broadly typical of its class, simple enough in its architecture in that its available space, barring the watch-tower in the center of its roof, was all upon a single floor and its material the indigenous woods of the forest, yet suffered no diminution in being called the "big house"—a name which has been made to serve many a lesser structure for purposes of distinction.
Set high upon brick pillars,—there are no cellars possible in the Mississippi valley country,—its low, spreading form graced the easy eminence upon which it stood, dominating its wide demesne with a quiet dignity superior to that of many a statelier home.