He turned and moved slowly away in the direction of Water Street, where she lived; and she, taking up her basket, shuffled .across the market-place towards Cheapside, muttering to herself the while:
“I come mighty nigh gittin` dah too late, foolin` `long wid dese pies. Sellin` him `ca`se he don` wuk! Umph! If all de men in dis town dat don` wuk wuz to be tuk up en sole, d` wouldn` be `nough money in de town to buy `em. Don` I see `em settin` roun` dese taverns f`om mohnin` ! till night?”
She snorted out her indignation and disgust, and sitting down on the sidewalk, under a Lombardy poplar, uncovered her wares and kept the flies away with a locust bough, not discovering in her alternating good and ill humor, that half of them had been filched by her old tormentors.
This was the memorable scene enacted in Lexington on that memorable day of the year 1833 a day that passed so briskly. For whoever met and spoke together asked the one question: Will the cholera come to Lexington? And the answer always gave a nervous haste to business a keener thrill to pleasure.
Picture Gallery
It was of the cholera that the negro woman heard two sweet passing ladies speak as she spread her wares on the sidewalk. They were on their way to a little picture-gallery just opened opposite M. Giron`s ballroom, and in one breath she heard them discussing their toilets for the evening and in the next several portraits by Jouett.
So the day passed, the night came on, and M. Xaupi gave his brilliant ball. Poor old Xaupi poor little Frenchman! whirled as a gamin of Paris through the mazes of the Revolution, and lately come all the way to Lexington to teach the people how to dance. Hop about blithely on thy dry legs, basking this night in the waxen radiance of manners and melodies and graces! Where will be thy tunes and airs to-morrow! Ay, smile and prompt away! On and on! Swing corners, ladies and gentlemen! Form the basket! Hands all round!
While the bows were still darting across the strings, out of the low, red east there shot a long, tremulous bow of light up towards the zenith. And then, could human sight have beheld the invisible, it might have seen hovering over the town, over the ballroom, over M. Xaupi, the awful presence of the plague.
But knowing nothing of this, the heated revelers went merrily home in the chill air of the red and saffron dawn. And knowing nothing of it also, a man awakened on the door-step of a house opposite the ballroom, where he had long since fallen asleep. His limbs were cramped and a shiver ran through his frame. Staggering to his feet, he made his way down to the house of Free Charlotte, mounted to his room by means of a stairway opening on the street, threw off his outer garments, kicked off his shoes, and taking a bottle from a closet pressed it several times to his lips with long outward breaths of satisfaction. Then, casting his great white bulk upon the bed, in a minute more he had sunk into a heavy sleep the usual drunken sleep of old King Solomon.
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