“Your Grace.”
“What’s dat?” said the Duke, with an unmistakable East-Side accent. Garland was staggered.
“I’ll grace you,” continued the sideburns aggressively. “I saw you was a swell and I’d a dropped you bad only I’m just out of jail myself. Now listen here. I’ll give you two seconds to get scarce. Go on, beat it.”
Garland beat it. Crestfallen and broken-hearted he walked away and set off for Mirabel’s. He would at least make a decent ending to a miserable quest. A half an hour later he rang the bell, his clothes hanging on him like a wet bathing suit.
Mirabel came to the door, cool and fascinating.
“Oh Doddy!” she exclaimed. “Thank you so much. Dukey,” and she held up a small white poodle which she had in her arms, “came back ten minutes after you left. He had just followed the mailman.”
Garland sat down on the step.
“But the Duke of Matterlane?”
“Oh,” said Mirabel, “he comes tomorrow. You must come right over and meet him.”
“I’m afraid I can’t,” said Garland, rising feebly. “Previous engagement.” He paused, smiled faintly and set off across the sultry moonlit pavement.
“Shadow Laurels.”
Nassau Literary Magazine (April 1915)
(The scene is the interior of a wine shop in Paris. The walls are lined on all sides by kegs, piled like logs. The ceiling is low and covered with cobwebs. The mid-afternoon sun filters dejectedly through the one-barred window at the back. Doors are on both sides; one, heavy and powerful, opens outside; the other, on the left, leads to some inner chamber. A large table stands in the middle of the room backed by smaller ones set around the walls. A ship’s lamp hangs above the main table .
As the curtain rises there is knocking at the outside door—rather impatient knocking—and almost immediately Pitou, the wine dealer, enters from the other room and shuffles toward the door. He is an old man with unkempt beard and dirty corduroys .)
Pitou—Coming, coming—Hold tight! (The knocking stops. Pitou unlatches the door and it swings open. A man in a top hat and opera cloak enters. Jacques Chandelle is perhaps thirty-seven, tall and well groomed. His eyes are clear and penetrating; his chin, clean-shaven, is sharp and decisive. His manner is that of a man accustomed only to success but ready and willing to work hard in any emergency. He speaks French with an odd accent as of one who knew the language well in early years but whose accent had grown toneless through long years away from France .)
Pitou—Good afternoon, Monsieur.
Chandelle—(looking about him curiously ) Are you perhaps Monsieur Pitou?
Pitou—Yes, Monsieur.
Chandelle—Ah! I was told that one would always find you in at this hour. (He takes off his overcoat and lays it carefully on a chair .) I was told also that you could help me.
Pitou—(puzzled ) I could help you?
Chandelle—(sitting down wearily on a wooden chair near the table ) Yes, I’m a—a stranger in the city—now. I’m trying to trace someone—someone who has been dead many years. I’ve been informed that you’re the oldest inhabitant (he smiles faintly ).
Pitou—(rather pleased ) Perhaps—and yet there are older than I, ah yes, older than I. (He sits down across the table from Chandelle .)
Chandelle—And so I came for you. (He bends earnestly over the table toward Pitou .) Monsieur Pitou, I am trying to trace my father.
Pitou—Yes.
Chandelle—He died in this district about twenty years ago.
Pitou—Monsieur’s father was murdered?
Chandelle—Good God, no! What makes you think that?
Pitou—I thought perhaps in this district twenty years ago, an aristocrat—
Chandelle—My father was no aristocrat. As I remember, his last position was that of waiter in some forgotten café. (Pitou glances at Chandelle’s clothes and looks mystified .) Here, I’ll explain. I left France twenty-eight years ago to go to the States with my uncle. We went over in an immigrant ship, if you know what that is.
Pitou—Yes: I know.
Chandelle—My parents remained in France. The last I remember of my father was that he was a little man with a black beard, terribly lazy—the only good I ever remember his doing was to teach me to read and write. Where he picked up that accomplishment I don’t know. Five years after we reached America we ran across some newly landed French from this part of the city, who said that both my parents were dead. Soon after that my uncle died and I was far too busy to worry over parents whom I had half forgotten anyway. (He pauses .) Well to cut it short I prospered and—
Pitou—(deferentially ) Monsieur is rich—’tis strange—’tis very strange.
Chandelle—Pitou, it probably appears strange to you that I should burst in on you now at this time of life, looking for traces of a father who went completely out of my life over twenty years ago.
Pitou—Oh—I understood you to say he was dead.
Chandelle—Yes, he’s dead, but (hesitates ) Pitou, I wonder if you can understand if I tell you why I am here.
Pitou—Yes, perhaps.
Chandelle—(very earnestly ) Monsieur Pitou, in America the men I see now, the women I know, all had fathers, fathers to be ashamed of, fathers to be proud of, fathers in gilt frames, and fathers in the family closet, Civil War fathers, and Ellis Island fathers. Some even had grandfathers.
Pitou—I had a grandfather. I remember.
Chandelle—(interrupting ) I want to see people who knew him, who had talked with him. I want to find out his intelligence, his life, his record. (impetuously ) I want to sense him—I want to know him—
Pitou—(interrupting ) What was his name?
Chandelle—Chandelle, Jean Chandelle.
Pitou—(quietly ) I knew him.
Chandelle—You knew him?
Pitou—He came here often to drink—that was long ago when this place was the rendezvous of half the district.
Chandelle—(excitedly ) Here? He used to come here? To this room? Good Lord, the very house he lived in was torn down ten years ago. In two days’ search you are the first soul I’ve found who knew him. Tell me of him—everything—be frank.
Pitou—Many come and go in forty years. (shakes his head ) There are many names and many faces—Jean Chandelle—ah, of course, Jean Chandelle. Yes, yes; the chief fact I can remember about your father was that he was a—a—
Chandelle—Yes.
Pitou—A terrible drunkard.
Chandelle—A drunkard—I expected as much. (He looks a trifle downcast, but makes a half-hearted attempt not to show it .)
Pitou—(rambling on through a sea of reminiscence ) I remember one Sunday night in July—hot night—baking—your father—let’s see—your father tried to knife Pierre Courru for drinking his mug of sherry.
Chandelle—Ah!
Pitou—And then—ah, yes, (excitedly standing up ) I see it again. Your, father is playing vingt-et-un and they say he is cheating so he breaks Clavine’s shin with a chair and throws a bottle at someone and Lafouquet sticks a knife into his lung. He never got over that. That was—was two years before he died.
Chandelle—So he cheated and was murdered. My God, I’ve crossed the ocean