Atalanta in the South/Chapter 10
CHAPTER X.
Robert Feuardent had not seen his friend Philip as he walked in the garden with the woman they both loved, and yet his mind was full of him that morning. After leaving Margaret, he took his way to Jackson Square, looking up as he passed at the windows of his friend's room to see if there were any sign of his return. All was as usual. The flowers bloomed serenely under the shadow of the eaves, and through the open window he caught the sparkle of the tiny fountain playing in the aviary. Presently the sash was raised, and the flowers were watered by a careful hand. Philip had returned. Instead of seeking out his old friend, as in other days he would have done, Robert turned hastily away and crossed the square. The door of the cathedral stood ajar, and he saw the priest at the altar celebrating the Mass. He entered the sanctuary and murmured the prayer which had not crossed his lips for many months. It was a prayer of words only; and presently he arose and left the church with the burden he had brought with him still upon his conscience. At the porch he stopped to touch the holy water; but as he would have dipped his hand in the vessel, it was struck aside, and a voice whispered in his ear words at which his arm dropped by his side, and without a glance at the veiled woman who had challenged his right to the sacred water, he hurried from the church. He had been grievously at fault, and the sin upon which he had shut his eyes was to-day held up before him by an accusing conscience which had slept, alas! until he found himself confronted with the man whom he had wronged. His friend Philip Rondelet had been suspected of a crime of which he knew him to be innocent,—a crime of which Rondelet might never have heard had it not been for himself. For on that night when the young physician had been summoned to the deathbed of Fernand Thoron, his own name had been the guaranty of good faith which had secured Philip's attendance. How had he kept that good faith? Philip had not only been suspected of having killed Thoron by the sceptical gossips of the club-houses, but even by the woman he loved; and Robert, knowing this, had been silent, and had striven to win her love for himself while his friend was absent. A grievous sin, indeed; and yet he knew in his heart that had not Philip come back that day, he would have persisted in it. What would happen now? He did not know, he did not care, except for the thought that he might appear a craven in Margaret's eyes. Philip had been too noble to speak, and he had been base enough to hold his peace! Fool that he had been, and worse than fool! So he raved and cursed his folly, and for days together shut himself in his own house and saw no one.
Robert Feuardent was of pure Creole descent. His grandfather, who had come to Louisiana when a child, had married a Frenchwoman, and his father had taken to wife an Andalusian girl. It was from his mother that Robert inherited his beauty; and there was much in his nature that recalled that parent, whom he could barely remember. His father had been a rich man before the war, and unlike the majority of his fellow-citizens, had retained a part of his fortune after peace had been established. He had, to be sure, declared himself an enemy of the United States Government, and thus given up all his property in the State of Louisiana to confiscation, and he had received a small document, duly signed by the city marshal, attesting this act of—what shall we call it, devotion, or folly? A little of both, perhaps. To be sure, the only alternative was the oath of allegiance to a government he had given four years of his life and a large portion of his fortune to overthrow. It was a hard alternative, surely, in that time of bitterness and agony, happily passed now, and almost forgotten,—and who shall say that of the two conditions he did not choose the least humiliating? An estate in Spain, which he inherited from his wife, made Mr. Feuardent seem still a rich man among those whose all had been invested in a property suddenly declared to be no longer Merchandise, but Man. Robert's father was only lately dead, and from him the young man had inherited a house in the older quarter of the city and an income large enough to allow him to be idle when he chose. He was known to be in some way interested in the sugar business; and though the interest was a languid one, it kept him linked with the affairs of the community in which he dwelt. The young Creole was a person of little education, but of high breeding. For such training as he had received he was indebted to a Jesuit college, in which he had learned and forgotten the things which one may learn in such an institution. He was an authority, however, on certain subjects to which he had given much time and thought; No one could guide you to such good fishing-ground on the edges of Pontchartrain, or in the bend of a quiet bayou, as he could. He was the best shot among the sportsmen of the place, and was indefatigable in hunting. He could handle his light sail-boat on the squally, treacherous waters of the lake with that instinctive skill of the natural sailor which can never be acquired. He rode and swam as he danced and sang, because it was in his nature to do so perfectly and without effort. It had been his habit from his early youth to pass several months of each year in a region still inhabited by the remnants of an Indian tribe. At first he had been placed under the care of a missionary priest during these long absences from the city; but later he had built himself a wigwam near the camp of the friendly red-men, and had lived their life, hunted and fished with them, smoked his pipe in their company, and listened to their traditions and stories. In his turn he told them of the city and the wonderful things it held. He was known among the tribe as the white brother, and was loved and revered by them as a true and loyal friend. In his trouble his mind turned as it had so often done to his forest friends; but though he longed for the peace and rest of the woods, he could not leave New Orleans.
Feuardent had already been in love once, twice, perhaps a dozen times in his life, more or less, for his blood was very warm and full of sunshine; but he had never felt for any woman what he felt for the pale young Northern girl, with her quiet cool eyes, which had once or twice flashed such fire into his own. The buoyant exaltation which he had known in other affections was not his now; it was a love that brought infinite pain and distrust of himself. He who had always secretly felt a certain superiority over his fellows, masked by a real friendliness and good-will, was now keenly alive to all his own shortcomings. He had taken to reading books which he found it very difficult to understand, and fell to talking about those things which interested Margaret with a lamentable want of success. He haunted the shops where prints of the great European works of art were to be seen. He bought handbooks of art and cultivated the society of an old school-friend, an obscure artist little esteemed by him hitherto on account of his trifling profession and puny strength. All this to please a girl who called him a savage, and only cared to see him when he was in full health and spirits! They had failed him sadly of late, these irrepressible spirits, and the heavy arches of his brow were often lifted into a frown, while the eyes had grown darker and less full of light and joy than they had been before this grievous love had come to vex his heart. He was missed from his wonted haunts, and one evening a group of friends sought him out at his house. They would take no denial from his servant, and finally forced themselves into the room where he was sitting, despondent and alone. He greeted them, and asked moodily what their pleasure was. He was their pleasure, they answered, and a very black-looking pleasure he was too. Where had he kept himself? Was he ill? Had he lost money? Did he want to borrow it? Was he going into a fit of melancholia? Was he in love? Or was he purely and simply bilious?
"It 's a case of conscience," said one of the guests; "it has suddenly bloomed, late in life, and Robert is beginning to feel for the first time the pangs which have tormented my entire existence. Is n't that about the case, old man? I have heard him declare, fellows, a hundred times, that he did n't know what the word 'conscience' meant. If he did a wrong thing, he did it with his eyes open, and took the consequences, but never regretted it. He looks to me as if his conscience had struck in."
"No," said another, who was busying himself with opening the wine which had been brought in; "no, it is n't conscience, it 's too much reading. Why, look, this is a dictionary, and here is a book of poems,—De Musset, mon Dieu! and Shakspeare! Too much learning has made him mad. It was high time we came and tracked him to this unhealthy and unwonted lair of erudition. Glasses ready? it' s going to pop."
The last speaker was a young Parisian who had drifted to New Orleans that winter with a portmanteau of faultlessly fitting clothes, a choice selection of the last bons mots of the clubs, and the latest slang of the boulevards of Paris. Add to this a handsome but minute figure and face, a complexion snow white and rose red, the title of an old and honorable family, the manners of a prince of the blood, and you have Bouton de Rose, the great social success of the season. He was bright withal and well born, only it was best for him to be out of France for a year or two; and so New Orleans welcomed him with open arms, and repeated his stories, copied the cut of his hair, and tried to sharpen up its French and make it sound like his crisp Parisian dialect. In spite of the efforts of some of the most distinguished of the Creoles, the French of Louisiana has grown flat and broad; the delicate edge of the language has been blunted by the heavier Saxon tongue with which it is hourly brought in closer contact.
Glasses were filled, and the company drank to the restoration of Feuardent's health and spirits, Bouton de Rose making a speech, gracious and sparkling as the wine he raised to his lips. Robert, confused and shy, said a few words in response, and the conversation soon became general. The contagious merriment of the youthful company and the mellowing influence of the wine soon had its effect on the taciturn host, whose superb physique and inflammable spirits could not long resist the combined influence of good company and good cheer. Music was called for, and Feuardent lifted up his great voice, deep and true as a crystal chime, and sang quaint songs in the Creole dialect. Then he gave them an Indian war-dance and song, which were received with great applause, especially by Bouton de Rose, who promised to make a sensation with the war-dance in Paris when he should return thither. He had just received a letter from that city, and read them all the latest gossip about the new danseuse at the Palais Royal and the last amour of the bouffe actress who was at that time the idol of Paris; who paid for Madame A.'s diamonds, and why Mile. B.'s marriage was postponed; what the odds were in favor of the American at the Grand Prix; and last of all the latest proclamation of the Nationalists, and what the outlook was for the elections.
A political discussion ensued, under the cover of which Feuardent drew aside one of his guests, Archie Nelson, the artist who had once been his schoolfellow. The host evidently had some thing on his mind, the utterance of which embarrassed him, for he pulled at his mustache fiercely, and frowned down upon the painter, who waited, wondering what Robert could have to say to him.
"Archie," he said at last, dropping his voice to a whisper, "what do you know about Atalanta?"
"Atlanta? Why, it 's the capital of Georgia, man," answered the artist promptly. "Populalation — thousand, founded in — by —, chiefly important from the fact of its being a great railroad centre. It is also widely known from its introduction in a popular Yankee war-song,—
"'So we sang the chorus from Atlanta to the sea.'
The girls are pretty, and the business interests have been looking up lately. That 's all I know about the place. Do you think of settling there?"
"No, no; it has n't anything to do with the city," objected Robert; "it 's somebody in history, I fancy, some girl who ran races and always won them."
"Female pedestrian, eh? I begin to understand you. Don't happen to remember if she was a Roman lady, or a Sabine girl, or an Amazon?" asked the artist.
"No, but you ought to know," said Robert reproachfully. "I have seen her represented in a work of art," he continued. "She carried a bow and arrows, and was very fond of oranges."
"Well, what else? Is her drapery Roman, or Greek? Describe her dress,—or does n't she wear any?" queried Archie.
"Of course she does," responded Robert severely; "she has on a short skirt to the knee, gaiters,—buskins I believe they call them,—a loose vest, and a wreath of leaves on her head."
"Atalanta—you are sure she is historical?" asked the painter, rubbing his forehead as if to extract the required knowledge from his cranium by means of friction.
"No, no—no," confessed Robert, "I am not sure, but I have that impression. I thought you would know, Archie. What do you painter fellows know if you don't know about people in pictures? It 's your business to know."
The artist was nettled. In all matters of classic and historic lore he had posed with the simple-minded Robert as an authority, though why, as he afterward said to himself, he should be expected to be a peripatetic classical dictionary just because he painted landscapes for a living, was a mystery.
"What are you talking about?" asked one of the guests. "If Feuardent has been confiding the source of his woes to Archie Nelson, we will get the matter out of him if we have to shake it out by tossing him in a blanket,—won't we, fellows?"
"No, don't; it is n't necessary," cried the painter; "Feuardent 's been giving me an order."
"What subject?" inquired Bouton de Rose, a connoisseur in pictures and himself something of a painter.
"A nocturne in blue, a study of himself in water-colors as he looked when we came in to-night, to be presented to the Anti-Prohibition Society as an awful warning against teetotalism."
Cards were next proposed; and the play was growing serious when Bouton de Rose started from the table, threw down his cards, and refused to play any longer. For explanation he turned an empty pocket wrong side out; and throwing open the window, bade the company look out on the night they were wasting in each other's society. "To find oneself in the company of men on such a night is a crime against the fair sex," he said. The moonlight streamed into the room; and leaning from the window, Feuardent caught sight of a figure in the courtyard below. It vanished immediately, but not until he had recognized it as that of a woman—a tall woman and a young one, judging by the light step with which she sprang back into the shadow. Bouton de Rose suggested that they should take a stroll together, and the half-dozen companions took their way down toward the levee. The streets were still full of people, although it was very late. They found the levee alive with men unloading a vast cotton-steamer lying at the dock. The whole place was lit up by electric light, and the strong rays showed the dusky workmen as they rolled the heavy cotton bales ashore. Two by two, the men came pushing the great crates before them over the gang-plank to the levee, and darting back again for a new burden. The river, quiet and remorseless in its strength, flowed past steadily and swiftly. Woe to the man who should lose his footing on that slippery plank and fall into the tawny waters! No possible rescue for him, nothing but a long swooning agony as he would be swept like a straw down the current, and finally a horrible death by drowning when his little strength should have spent itself in struggling with the mighty waters. The fancy struck Feuardent that the senseless branch whirled along in the swift current at the mercy of the Mississippi might as easily be himself if by chance he should lose his footing and fall just there where the current was strongest. If he should slip and fall, or if some one should push him from behind—
"Come, mon brave!" cried Bouton de Rose, clapping him on the shoulder and drawing him back from the edge of the levee, "you are leaning perilously near that devil of a river. You look as if you were about to leap into the flood. Are you asleep, or bewitched? Upon my soul, it looks to me as if a voudou spell were on you; your eyes are starting out of your head! Has some witch willed that you should take a sudden passage to the Gulf viâ the river?"
Feuardent laughed uneasily, linked his arm in the young Parisian's, and after lighting a cigarette turned away from the levee. His voice was not heard in the chorus which the young men chanted as they took their way through the deserted business streets of the town, and when the youngest of the party proposed to serenade a lady of wide histrionic reputation then stopping in New Orleans, he begged to be excused on the plea of indisposition.
When he reached his room he poured out a full glass of wine and drank it at a draught. A chill had crept over him; lighting a fire, he sat beside the hearth, smoking, and staring into the flames with great unseeing eyes. When the morning light began to sift through the shutters, he extinguished the lamp and went to bed.
Then, and not till then, a shadow, which had not been distant from him a hundred feet that whole night, slipped from the courtyard of the house, and with the rising of the sun was gone.