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Attalie had another friend, a white man. This other friend was a big, burly Englishman, forty-something years old, but looking older; a big pink cabbage-rose of a man who had for many years been Attalie's principal lodger. He, too, was alone in the world. And yet neither was he so utterly alone as he might have been. For he was a cotton buyer.
At forty-odd, it is fair to suppose, one who knows the world well enough to be the trusted agent of others, thousands of miles across the ocean, has bid farewell to all mere innocence and has made choice between virtue and vice. But we have no proof whatever that Attalie's cotton buyer had not solemnly chosen virtue and stuck to his choice as an Englishman can.
All in a tremor one day a messenger, Attalie's black slave girl, came to Camille to say that her mistress was in trouble! in distress! in deeper distress than he could possibly imagine, and in instant need of that wise counsel which Camille Ducour had so frequently offered to give.
One night our meetings were invariably at night he said to me, 'Camille, my dear friend, if I should go all of a sudden some day before I write that will, you know what to do. Those were his exact words: 'Camille, my dear friend, you know what to do." All this was said to the back of Attalie's head and neck; but now the speaker touched her with one finger: "Madame, are your lodgers all up town?"
There was first the carriage with the priest and the acolytes; then the hearse; then a carriage in which sat the cotton buyer's clerk, he had had but one, his broker, and two men of that singular sort that make it a point to go to everybody's funeral; then a carriage occupied by Attalie's other lodgers, and then, in a carriage bringing up the rear, were Camille Ducour and Madame Brouillard.
The law, popular sentiment, public policy, always looked at Attalie's sort with their right eye shut. And according to all the demands of the other eye Camille knew that Attalie was honest, faithful. But was that all; or did she stand above and beyond the demands of law and popular sentiment? In a word, to whom was she honest, faithful; to the Englishman merely, or actually to herself?
And then with all his poor strength he lifted the bulk, still limp, in his arms, and with only two or three halts in the toilsome journey, to dash the streaming sweat from his brows and to better his hold so that the heels should not drag on the steps, carried it up to Attalie's small room and laid it, decently composed, on her bed.
Attalie's offers to explain were murmurously waved away by his wrinkled hand, and the four men followed her into the bedchamber. The black maid-of-all-work also entered. The room was heavily darkened. There was a rich aroma of fine brandy on its air. The Englishman's little desk had been drawn up near the bedside. Two candles were on it, unlighted, in small, old silver candlesticks.
This one in Attalie's house had the two main rooms on the first floor above the street. Honestly, for all our winking and tittering, we know nothing whatever against this person's private character except the sad fact that he was a man and a bachelor.
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