The Story of Babette, a little Creole girl, etc

Front matter

I THE STORY OF BABETTE A LITTLE CREOLE GIRL [See page 182.] •"HOW SWEETLY SHE WOULD FIT IN-JUST SO-BETWEEN THE TWO, ARTHE AND FELICIE:' Frontispiece. THE STORY OF BABETTE A LITTLE CREOLE GIRL BY RUTH McENERY STUART AUTHOR OF ' : CARLOTTA-'s INTENDED, AND OTHER TALES" ETC. ILLUSTRATED LONDON OSGOOD, McILVAINE & COMPANY 45, Albemarle Street, W. "affectsonatels Knscrf&e"o TO THE LITTLE GIRLS OF NEW ORLEANS BY THEIR FRIEND THE AUTHOR ILLUSTRATIONS •'•HOW SWEETLY SHE WOULD FIT IN— JUST SO— BE- TWEEN THE TWO, ARTHE AND FELICIE I'" . . . Frontispiece "THE LE CHARMANT FAMILY WATCHING THE MARDI-GRAS PROCESSION " Facing page 2 "■BABETTE IS LOST!'" •• " a. "DID ANY ONE NOTICE A TALL FIGURE WRAPPED IN A HEAVY GRAY SHAWL?" " " 36 '•THERE WAS NOT ONE OF THE LOT WHO DID NOT COUNT THE OLD WOMAN A FAMOUS FORTUNE- TELLER" " " 54 " HER LITTLE COMPANIONS, WHOSE PEDIGREE OF BEAUTY WAS AS LONG AS HER OWN " . . . .

" ■ 6- •• ONLY A HARD PALE FACE BETRAYED THE DEEP ANXIETY OF HER HEART" " " 72 "TANTE ANGELE" " " 94 BABETTE AND " LITTLE MARIE" " "102 ••NOUTE MADE DOLL-HOUSES FOR BABETTE" ... " "120 "A WONDERLAND BETTER THAN A FAIRY'S WOOD" " " 134 ■•BUT FOR MAMZELLE THEY SAY SHE WOULD NOT BE HERE NOW" " "146 •"BUT I AM NOT MADAME BONDURANTE'S NIECE 166 "THIS ILLUMINATING EEAM FELL FOR A MOMENT UPON BABETTE'S FACE 4' " "200 THE STORY OF BABETTE

Chapter I

It was Mardi-Gras night in New Orleans. Canal Street, as far as the eye could reach in either direction — out towards the river or back in the direction of the swamp lands — was a surging mass of people. The deep balconies, the galeries of the old French town, overhanging the banquettes on either side the way, were crowded beyond their strength, and many would have fallen but for the temporary support of heavy tim bers put in for the occasion. Above the heads of the crowds little street urchins, newsboys, beggars, gamins — white, black, yellow, brown, and all the shades be tween — sat perched like chattering sparrows on every available projection of lamp-post or tree, many even clinging about the tops of street-cars. Others, mounting the granite i pedestal of Henry Clay's statue at the cor ner, steadied themselves by embracing the statesman's legs; while one or two of the more adventurous had even scaled his lofty figure and sat astride his broad bronze shoulders.

The occasional turning of the great elec tric searchlight in the Pickwick Club building revealed a rippling sea of happy smiling faces along the line of galeries opposite, all wearing, no matter what their race or condition, the holiday expression which showed them in touch with the carnival spirit. On a special balcony, diagonally opposite the searchlight, somewhat nearer the river, so placed that they were often within range of the revolving beam, occupying all but two of the first dozen chairs, sat the good old creole family of the good old Creole name of ; let us call it Le Charmant. The Mamati, bonne Maman, and a round half-dozen of the last generation of little Le Charmants were there — an interesting row, each one a picture — and all as much alike as any row of black-eyed peas — while in the last chair towards Royal Street sat a stately old gray -haired black woman — An gele.

"THE LE CHARMANT FAMILY WATCHING THE MARDI ■ GRAS- PROCESSION" Page Her starched tignon of gay plaid, rising above her kindly face and standing alert in knot and frill, like ears pricked to listen, gave the impression that her office was that of watch-dog, and the rapid movement of her quick eye along the line, the alacrity with which she pressed back into her chair any one of the children who leaned too heavily forward on the railing, with her quick little bark of alarm "Assl toil Tu tom bez .'" confirmed the impression. The bark said, in " gumbo French," " Sit down, before you fall !" but its tone said other things. It said, " I love these children, and noth ing can happen to them while I am near." A well-dressed, prosperous, and happy-looking line they were as they sat, jabbering and jabbering, sometimes in French — but often er in broken English — their best, in polite respect to the Americans among whom they sat.

The great Mystick Krewe had already passed along the street and disappeared, but it would soon come again in another direction. And so the waiting crowd remained in tact, while animated discussions regarding the comparative merits of this with former pageants filled up the interval of waiting. The comments of the Le Charmant children were much like hundreds of others who exclaimed enthusiastically in the wake of the mystic wonder. " Well, me, I think it is the finest Mardi- Gras we ever had !" exclaimed Marie, a little maid of eight. " What you say, G'an ?" she added, as she leaned over the soft lap of her grandmother. (When 'Toinette — tall, dimpled, beautiful 'Toinette, the eldest, who sits next her moth er to-night — first began to talk, she had called her grandmother " G'an," her best effort to please an American nurse, and " G'an " she had been to all the little ones since.)

" Of co'se, 'tis very nice for now" granted the grandmother, in reply to Marie's question, " but not like those we had befo' the war, no !" " Oh — h — h !" protested 'Toinette, laughing mischievously. "G'an don't find nothing nice that don't come before the war. Any how," she added, roguishly, "I think me, I am nice, and I was not here before the war. For what you love Babette so much, G'an ? She was not here before the war." The grandmother smiled. " You all noth ing but poor trash ! * I don't love none of you !" she responded fondly, taking little Babette's dimpled face between her own fat palms. " G'an don't love Babette, no," she added. " Poor lill bdbde ! Mus' grow up an' be her own lill nigger ! Before the war, when God send gran'ma one lill b.bde, He always at the same time send one lill nigger to wait on him.

Ask Tante Angele ! She tell you !" The black woman laughed softly. " Yas, 'tis true." The tignon nodded. "Wait we come home, I tell you." " No, tell it now," Marie insists; and so the old woman begins : " Well ? You want I tell it now ? " Wen yo' oncle Adolphe come, in t'ree munt come my boy, Jean, an' den, w'en yo' aunt Natalie is bom, I got de nex' day my Sophie — Sophie, she stay wid yo' aunt Natalie in Paris now — an' den come yo' aunt Fifine an' my Rojæ — an' after _.osa I got Ma thilde, an' Mathilde she die, an' yo' gran'ma she got — lemme t'ink, how dat come — oh, yas, yo' gran'ma she got yo' aunt Marie, an' den yo' oncle Aristide — an' dat same very day yo' oncle Aristide is born come my two black tween, Louis an' Louise — an' den we ain't had no mo', w'ite nor black, for five year, an' den yo' maman is born, an' de nex' St. Joseph night my Cora, po' chile — Now Cora, she is gone, ole Angele have to start again, play nurse."

The old woman had gone over this same record a hundred times before, but she never wearied of the recital. " But," she continued, tightening her arm about the little one next her, " so long Tante Angele can hoi' out, all doze chillens got one nigger anyhow. But she make 'em min', yas ! Befo' de war I used to b'longs to you all w'ite folks, now you all b'longs to me. All doze no 'count lazy w'ite chillens b'longs to me. All but Babette ; we have to let gran' ma have dat las' li'll lagniappe be'be'e. Better han' me dat cake-bag, yas. Lemme hoi' it — or pass it at yo' maman, so. Too much dem cream pauf is bad, yas." During this long recital, although the two oldest children had perhaps paid small heed, four pairs of eager black eyes were never withdrawn from the speaker's face. To them Tante Angele was an oracle, capable of pro ducing anything at will, from a wonder-tale laden with shivers and starts to a lullaby so soft and sleepy that not a child of the six had ever heard the very end of it.

Though all the babies had been the grandmother's favorites in turn, Babette, doubly endeared to her as her own namesake and godchild, and, too, by a delicate babyhood from which she was just emerging, was the very apple of her eye. The blue silk cord and tassels which she wore about her chubby waist, in token of certain religious vows of consecration, were the work of the grandmother's loving fingers — "the last work for my old eyes and hands," she had said, as she laid the silver knitting needles away with her discarded jewels to keep for " 'Tite Babette." But into this last little love-task she had interwoven, with a feeling of pious devo tion, dainty copies of special prayers, invo cations to preferred saints in behalf of the tiny wearer, with her full name and date of vows assumed, printed on fine silk paper doubled so as to form the bodies of the or namental tassels, which were finally skilfully covered over and over with a dainty silken web of blue.

This was a secret which only the grandmother and the saints themselves were supposed to know, and when she had taken the beautiful finished work to the old French cathedral to have it blessed, according to custom, she felt that it carried assur ances of other blessings than even the holy father knew. As they sit in line on the crowded gallery to-night awaiting the return of the Mystick Krewe, Babette sits next her grandmother jabbering as fast as her lips can move, to the infinite delight and amusement of the entire family. It is the little girl's first view of the grand parade — the first night in all her young life, in fact, that eight o'clock has found her out of her little lace-canopied crib. It is nine now. She had begged to come — begged, with a little quiver playing all around the dimples in her cheeks while promising in quavering voice to stay awake.

And Tante Angele — Tante Angele, who was always on. the chil dren's side in everything — had plead for her, even volunteering to carry her all the way home in case she should go to sleep. And then the grandmother had decided the matter. " Never mind. She is comingwith nenaine. You look after your own sleepy-heads. I'll take care of my baby ; and if they don't look sharp, she'll talk over the snoring heads of Marie and Arthe, and maybe three nine o'clock babies. Clothilde, she make friends with the sand -man every night time the clock is on the nine strike — so look sharp !" It was a long time before the procession came again, and the grandmother's prophecy seemed likely to come true. Marie and Ar the had grown suspiciously quiet and still. and Clothilde, ten-year-old Clothilde, was actually nodding.

Only three times, though, the bobbing head went down before a fresh hum of voices lifted all sleepy heads as if with a sudden shock. Then there was a restless movement on all the galleries — a concerted bending forward of bodies and inquiring questions : " Which way?" "Where?" "Who says so?" "Oh, pshaw !" " Nothing but a crazy lot of smart ies trying to raise an excitement." But no ! A sudden hurrying and scurry ing, hither and thither, of the now loud-laughing and talking crowd afoot ; now two or three mounted police slowly, carefully clear ing the way; and now — a blase of light ! "Ah-h-h-h!" "Oh-h-h-h!" "Ah-h-h-h!" The exclamation passes like a great wave from one gallery to another, until its echoes are drowned by the stirring music of the band. The Krewe has come again. The first float passes; another, and yet another, and still they come, until — what is this ?

Bows, hand-kisses, a shower of candies — real French bonbons — from the merry maskers of a special car over the shoulders and into the laps of the little Le Charmants ! They were all wide enough awake now ! And here they come again ; and once more — drag/es, marsh-mallows, "kisses," crystallized figs, thrown backward this time, for the float has passed, and still they fall with true aim into the hats and over the faces of the now merrily laughing and waving group. Other candies were flying in other directions to other people, or to anybody ; but these came by evident intention to the little Creoles. Float followed float, and presently the pro cession was only a pillar of fire moving slowly out Canal Street, and soon even that was gone ; and Mardi-Gras, the mad festival, ex cepting to such as followed the maskers into theatre and ballroom, was over — over for an other year.

The Le Charmant father, we have noticed, was not visible to-night. Like many fathers, husbands, brothers, and beaux, he was suddenly " called off on business " on Mardi-Gras evening. If they are called to render loyal servite to Comus, is not this the "business" of the occasion ? Who says they tell stories? Of course, no one knows who compose the Mystick Krewe. This is half its mystic charm. One may suspect things as much as he chooses, and even feel personally satisfied that certain facts are true ; but that is not knowing. The little Le Charmants looked very wise and mysterious this evening, when their maman said, as they sat waiting for the crowd to disperse : " Well, me, I am sat isfied !" " And I know for what you are satisfied !" exclaimed "soinette, chuckling and winking slyly. "And me, too, I know !" added another ; and, in a stage whisper, " You regognize some body /" Then all the children gathered closer about the mother — there was plenty of standing room now — begging her to tell which one was " popa."

" I t'ink, me, he was one of doze apple," suggested Tante Angele, aside to Marie; " biccause it was one apple what t'row doze bonbons /" " Mais, one grenade " (pomegranate) " threw more bonbons than the apple," said wise 'Toinette; "and, besides, I am sho' — sho' 'twas not the grenade, because popa is mo' littler than that grenade'' "You are all wrong!" The mother was assorting bonbons in the palm of her left hand, and passing to each her favorite candy — " You are all wrong ! 'Twas not one of those who threw bonbons. You don't catch your father so easily. He thought he could fool me. Mais, I know him ! Here, pass those gum-drops to Angele, Marie." "T'ank you, ma'am. You see dem mardi gras dey know po' ole Tante Angele ain't got no teet', an' dey put in some sof gum drop for her." The old woman chuckled lightly as she slipped one of the yielding con fections between her own lips, and, reaching along the line, distributed the other three in like manner to the three little ones.

"You know, always," the mother was con tinuing to explain, " when your popa finds something very droll, he always make so!" She rubbed her palms together and shook her shoulders — " II fait toujours comme ca." The children all recognized the imitation. " Well, when those oranges and grenades and apples threw bonbons, I saw one fat lemon r-rub his hands like that, and shake himself comme qa." Another representation of the movement. "Ah-h-h! He thought he was able to fool me. Mais, I know him /" Even the grandmother and Tante Angele joined delightedly in the children's glee over the discovery. The procession had represented " The Five Senses," and it was from the fruit-laden float following in Ceres' train that the show er of candies had come. The sense of taste had been elaborately illustrated by a great profusion of such things as delight the palate.

While from one float animated mushrooms, asparagus, and common vegetables without number bowed and waved to admiring mul titudes, another was alive with reeling bot tles, staggering demijohns and glasses, while on a third were gleeful figs, waddling water melons, frisking cantelopes, and a rollicking lot of oranges, lemons, and smaller fruits. It had been a gorgeous pageant, but it was gone. And now for getting home. The Le Charmants had ridden up to Canal Street in the street car. The family carriage would not hold all. The car came nearly to the door. It was so much more jolly to go out into the crowd. To get from the balcony to the car now, however, was no small mat ter. The gallery back of them was quite deserted when they finally turned, a miniature pro cession in themselves, to take their chances with the rabble.

The mother takes the lead, and as she hes itates a moment in the street door below, the corner light falling upon her reveals a face of remarkable beauty. She is so pretty — so bright and happy and young — and as fresh and blooming as the two lovely daughters, who take an arm on either side while they start out three abreast. So they lead the way, all three calling out in a breath to the others to keep together — and, funnily enough, by a common impulse they all say it in French. Why not? The most rigorous politeness would not require one to conform to the speech of passers-by. The language is catching, and in a twinkling the entire column are chattering like so many magpies, excepting that the soft voices and liquid syllables of the musical tongue would put all talking birds of the earth to shame.

" We ought to have waited longer," the grandmother says, as the mother, slipping on a bit of banana-peel, embraces her neighbors promiscuously a moment, and then, recov ering herself, starts on laughing. The crowd seems really to be growing more dense again as the galleries pour their masses out front doors to supplant car and carriage loads going in all directions. Tante Angele has special charge of little Arthe, whom she holds tightly aloft while she whispers marvel tales into her ear to keep her awake, or to engage her in laughing at the drowsy gait of the two next older, who she declares to be walking in their sleep, and who, indeed, in their constant denials of all sleepiness, are barely saved from stumbling. The grandmother insisted on keeping Ba bette's hand. And so they go on. Good-humor is the rule of the American crowd, and the air of the Southern carnival is seldom torn by a harsh word.

And so to night, when suddenly a loud voice shouted " Move back !" and the tall form of a policeman loomed up before them, the surging crowd, gasping first as with a single breath, and shrinking backward involuntarily upon itself, became in a twinkling a scene of panic. Some one — a woman — had fallen across the curbing, and others were stumbling over her. Farther back a dozen or more, jammed against a show-case, were terror-stricken at the combined dangers of broken glass and threatened suffocation. A little woman, holding in her arms a year old baby, threw it, in her fright, to a tall man several feet away, and he held it safely aloft while the youngster, apparently taking the whole thing as a joke, roared with laughter. After the first rush upward from Dauphine Street, increasing the peril, the curious suddenly took fright.

An opening now appeared at the corner. The victim of the accident, happily more frightened than hurt, went off limping and laughing. The tall man with the baby, seeing over the heads about him that the accident had not been serious, called now playfully for some one to claim his charge. The little mother, unable to hold her own in the crush, had been pressed some distance back, and it was perhaps a full minute before she could make herself heard. The spirit of fun was in the air. The tall man was as full of it as the rest, and seeing that the mother had not instantly come for ward, he forthwith began a mock auction. "Who wants to buy a baby? How much am I offered for a baby? How much for the baby, clothes and rattle thrown in? What am I offered? Ah-h-h!" — seeing the moth er's two slender hands raised some distance away — " how much, ma'am ?

A thousand thanks, you say? Ah, well — Sold!" This, as the youngster, who begins to whimper at sight of his mother, is restored to her grate ful arms. But in this din and confusion what has be come of our merry Creoles? Were they standing with the others around the tall man, laughing at the baby auction? Surely they were not over in the show-window jam, or — look! Perhaps they are yonder, scarce twenty feet away, where people are running and some one is calling for water. Yes, we have found them. The grandmother, overcome from the press ure and lack of breathing-space, has fainted. She lies unconscious in old Tante Angele's arms. The children are frightened and crying. Their mother, chafing the old lady's hands, begs the people to move back, while a stranger, with well-meant brutality, deluges the sufferer with cold water.

The faint is not very serious. It does not last long. After a few moments, moments of much distress and confusion they are, she is able, with the aid of a kind stranger who has bribed a hack -driver from the door of the theatre near, to enter a carriage and start home. The mother follows, taking the eldest two of the daughters with her (the grandmother might be taken ill again, and she would need them), and hurriedly giving the driver her address and calling to Tante Angele to " bring the children home," she closes the carriage door, and they are gone. Poor old Tante Angele ! It seemed a simple thing to " bring the children home," and yet, suddenly relieved of the terrible strain which no one had realized, she gazed about her as one dazed. The shawl about her old shoulders was wet and cold, and she shivered.

Perceiving it, little Marie took off her own wrap and would have placed it around the old woman, but it was quickly replaced and securely pinned. But the incident seemed to revive her consciousness of the situation, for she exclaimed, in French : " Come, come ! All of you ! Come Louis, Marie, Arthe, Babette ! Where is Babette — ou est 'tite Babette?" The little one was, indeed, nowhere to be seen. It had all been so sudden — the rush, the grandmother's fall, the panic. " Tell me — dites moi ! — where is Babette ? Ou ma be'bCef" she continued to cry again and again, staggering visibly as she peered in all directions for the missing child. No one remembered seeing her since she had been toddling at her grandmother's side. No matter what might happen afterwards, for the moment she was lost. For the length of a block or more in all directions the way was clear now.

The old woman stood fixed a moment, then, crossing herself, while with moving lips she held her face heavenward, she threw up her arms and fell with a heavy thud upon the pavement.

Chapter II

When presently Tante Angele groaned and tried to raise herself, her first words showed the grief that came with returning consciousness. "Ah, pove piti /" (poor little one), she moaned. "Et li si joli ! On Us" (And she so pretty ! Where is she ?) "Ah, mo lasse /" (I am tired), she added, wearily, as with a difficult effort she rose to her feet. One glance at the weeping children seemed to restore her to full strength, however, and, turning to the strangers who had gathered about her, she besought them to find her be'bde. For a long time the little terror-stricken group lingered at the street-corner, hoping against hope that Babette would suddenly reappear quite near them, or that they would discern her little figure, lost only for the moment, among straggling passers-by. Occasionally a policeman would stop only to assure them " There was no occasion for alarm.

It was foolish to cry and grieve ; children were lost every day — and found. Much better for the old woman to take the others home than to stand in her wet clothes and take her death of cold." But to all such suggestions Tante Angele would turn a deaf ear. To go and leave her " chere bebe"e — maybe in a gutter, or all mash under a cart-wheel" — that she would never do. It was nearing midnight now. The clocks had struck ten long before the accident, and more than an hour had passed since. Finally the old woman moved to go, and, followed by a crowd of sobbing children, she led the way, moaning softly as she went, a few steps beyond the next corner. Hesitating here a moment, as if she had not courage to go on, she threw herself down upon the front steps of old Christ Church, and wept unrestrained, swaying her body to and fro in her great sorrow.

Here her wails attracted the passers on foot, who hesitated, asked a few questions, were " sorry," " hadn't seen anything of her," and passed on. *■ > Carriages rolled by, a brilliant line, bringing their rustling burdens — ladies in dia monds, silks, and laces — to the grand Mystick Krewe ball in the old Varieties Theatre next door. Little Arthe had gone to sleep on Marie's lap. The others by turns wept and entreated the old woman to go home, but for once in her life she seemed oblivious to their present discomfort. The stone steps where they lay were wet and cold, and these tenderly-reared children unused to late hours and exposure. All thought of the present, however, was swal lowed up in the sorrow that was wringing her faithful old heart. Presently little Arthe coughed in her sleep — a metallic, croupy sound.

Rallying in stantly, Tante Angele, hastily lifting the sleeping burden in her arms, and saying only " Allons !" (let us go), started towards the Rampart car. Her old hands trembled so violently that it was with much difficulty that she finally secured the car-fare, closely tied in a corner of her kerchief. During the long ride home she sat silent — a pitiful wreck of the placid, trig, dignified figure who sat on the gallery only a few hours ago. Her tignon, saturated with water, lay limp and flabby. The watch dog's ears had fallen. When at last they left the car she stag gered visibly, but waiting and carefully help ing each one out and sending them ahead, she followed with her heavy burden. The front gate stood open, and the family were anxious and excited when the group entered. The father had come home some minutes before, and, not finding them, had hurried back to make, inquiry.

He had not yet re turned. A shout of delight greeted the wan derers as they entered the hall-door, Tante Angele still staggering pitifully behind. Laying the sleeping child down upon the hall lounge, she sank beside her upon the floor, while a chorus of children's voices made the tragic announcement : " Babette est perdu !" " Babette— perdu !" "Babette is lost!" lost!" The mother, naturally turning to Angele for explanation, rushed forward with an ago nized scream ; but when she reached the lounge, she started stricken with a new terror. Reclining as she had fallen upon the floor, her arm still under the head of the sleeping child, her own head fallen back until it rested on the same pillow, poor old Tante Angele was at rest. For the first time in her long service of half a century she had been told to " bring the children home," and she had not been able to obey.

She was too old to rea son about it — to hope with an almost certain ty that the little one would be found — to re alize that she was blameless. The mother, in an agony of fear, raised the dark arm, trying to rouse her, but there was something in the noble old face that said it was too late. Tante Angele could not look in her face and say, " Your child is lost." She was at rest, without sickness or pain or knowledge of parting — simply at rest. So, tenderly and painlessly, does the All- Father sometimes take old and tired people out of weariness and trouble when life be comes too sad and hard to bear. And we say they are " dead." A faint gleam of day was shining across the river when Colonel Le Charmant drove, for the third time, to the door of the police court opposite Jackson Square to inquire for tidings of his lost child.