Of Negro troops under Andrew Jackson in the famous battle of New Orleans, of the ability and courage of that Major Jean Daquin, San Domingan, quadroon whose Negro blood historians later forgot, he told her proudly. But it was sadly that he pictured the barriers, the Black Codes, the rising tide of hatred and bitterness that began to rise against the coloured Creoles and Americans. To Jean in his gentleness and love of peace these stories of dark days during and after the Civil War were horrible and painful but in his honesty he told of them while Mimi’s breath came quickly as he unfolded the scenes like sharply etched prints before her wondering eyes.
“It’s afternoon—Mary will be furious,” Jean at last exclaimed, almost with dismay.
They hurried to the gates and home.
“All this is behind you, Mimi,” Jean ended as they neared the house. “Remember it—take comfort in it when you’re depressed.—You’re a beautiful child—you’ll be a more beautiful woman,” he added. “You’ve warm blood in your veins—the warmth of old, old wine. Here you’d be safe but away from New Orleans I don’t know—I don’t know. I hope all will be well with us.”
III
Under the efficient management of Mme. Daquin, it was not long before they became adjusted physically to their new surroundings in Atlanta.
“I wish you’d stop calling me ‘Madam Daquin,’ ” she querulously demanded one day of Mimi. “I don’t want people here being reminded constantly we’re outsiders or think we’re trying to put on airs. Call me ‘Mrs. Daquin’ or ‘mamma,’ or, if you insist on being high-toned, call me ‘mother.’ ”
Mimi vigorously protested, to herself and Jean, against either of the latter terms and compromised on “Mrs. Daquin.”
Soon after their arrival they received formal calls. These came usually in the afternoon and were more or less elaborate ceremonials. Mrs. Hunter, willowy spouse of the president of the Lincoln Mutual Life Insurance Company, came with her husband the Sunday after they reached Atlanta. She was cordial—very cordial. Mimi wondered why Mrs. Hunter felt it necessary to implant a slightly moist kiss upon her lips, though she permitted herself to be fondled by the effusive one without audible or visible protest. She submitted and that was all.
“What a darling little girl you have, Mrs. Daquin!” she exclaimed. “And what’s her name?” On being told she went on: “Mimi? How very cute. Just like a stage name or opera.”
“That’s where it does come from. La Bohème. Do you know the opera?” Mimi assured her.
“No, I can’t say I do—no, I don’t believe I know that one,” Mrs. Hunter, somewhat embarrassed, answered. She did not feel altogether sure that Mimi wasn’t trying either to poke fun at her or test her learning.
“My real name’s Annette Angela Daquin—but no one ever calls me that. They only call me Mimi,” innocently replied Mimi.
Yet not sure of herself, Mrs. Hunter felt it necessary that she justify herself before this queer infant.
“We don’t get much chance here to see good plays or hear such music as comes this way. The only play I’ve seen was Ben Hur and Mr. Hunter has never forgiven me for climbing up the back stairs to the peanut gallery at the Grand Opera House where the coloured people sit. That was grand, though, and almost worth the quarrel I had with Mr. Hunter about going.”
And Mrs. Hunter beamed at her husband in a benign fashion. Her duty done in commenting on Mimi’s cuteness and beauty, Mrs. Hunter turned her attention to Mrs. Daquin and subjects near to housewifely hearts. They wondered if there would be a late spring—“it’s been years since it’s been so cool in April as it is now,” affirmed Mrs. Hunter—they talked of the rising price of cloth and food and shoes—the art of cookery—“you must teach me some of those spicy dishes they tell me you have in New Orleans”—of local social life in Atlanta and how it compared with that in Louisiana.
Mimi listened alternately to the two and to the more restrained conversation of Jean and Mr. Hunter. The latter speculated, somewhat idly, as to the probable chances of Japan’s defeating Russia, Mr. Hunter told Jean of business prospects in the fall if cotton sold well. Her attention was caught, momentarily, by Mr. Hunter, who was deploring the general shiftlessness of the younger people in general and his own son in particular.
“I’ve always maintained that hard work’s what boys and girls need. When I was a youngster my daddy put me in the fields at six o’clock in the morning and I stayed there until six or seven o’clock at night. But these young ones coming along nowadays have got funny ideas. Take my own boy, for example. He’s pretty nearly seventeen and for the life of me, I can’t make him out. Always talking about doing something big but never knows from one day to the other what line he’s going to do big things in. I tell Molly,” he confided, leaning closer to Jean and lowering his voice, “it’s all her fault. She coddles him too much—”
“Now, William, you aren’t going into that here,” chided his wife, who had overheard him. “Carl’s nothing but a child as yet and he and Mildred
