Atalanta in the South/Chapter 7
CHAPTER VII.
Rex comes to-day! King Carnival assumes the honors of his brief reign. Work, business, and such cares as may be laid aside at will, are prohibited by the royal and benign mandate. Eat and drink, such of you as have the wherewithal to feast, and be of good cheer, even if your banquet be but a few leaves of lettuce and a handful of golden oranges. Rex has come, and his sway is one of jollity and kindliness to all men. The sun smiles upon his coming, the earth is brave with her earliest spring-flowers, and the mighty river, tawny and swift, is ready to bear the monarch and his crew to the city on its banks. A fleet of ships lie rocking at their anchors. Yachts fluttering dainty pennants, black-hulled merchantmen, ocean-steamers, sloops, and river-boats, and a group of men-of-war, gayest of all in their holiday gear. A revenue-cutter heaves in sight far down the stream, and finally comes to anchor near the flagship. As the cable rattles down through the yellow water, the sparse, clean-rigged vessel suddenly blooms forth into gala attire. In an instant she is hung from stem to stern with streamers and ribbons, gay as the best of them. The cutter is just in time, for a signal-gun now booms forth its warning that the royal procession is about to start. Four and twenty mighty white river-steamers, the escort of the newly-proclaimed king, come slowly round the bend where the city lies in the cool embrace of the Mississippi. The royal vessel is ablaze with jewels and gay uniforms, and as she passes alongside the flagship a salvo of guns blazes out from the sides of the veteran vessel, a shrill pipe sounds, and up the shrouds flash the white-clad sailors to man the yards in honor of the king. High up where the mainmast tapers, stand two youths, with comely faces and locks which catch and keep the sunlight. Festive music fills the air, and hearty cheers echo from war-ship to royal pleasure-barge. The procession moves on, every craft paying its homage to the merry train. The thick gray smoke half shrouds the vessels, and save for the merry music, the friendly cheer for cheer, and the harmless barking of the war-dogs, who open their mouths to greet but not to bite, one might have fancied the great river pageant a sea-battle. General Stuart Ruysdale, standing beside the commander of the flagship, found it hard to realize that this firing and counter-firing was all play. His thought reverted to that old time still so fresh in the minds of those who acted in the great drama, and to reassure himself he repeated the date of the present year, "18—" "What a difference between then and now!"
"A difference indeed, sir," said a voice at his elbow.
He turned, and saw a gentleman who had just paid his respects to the commander of the ship. He was a gentleman; no one could doubt that for a moment, though his threadbare coat and dingy hat were of the fashion of many seasons ago. He was a tall man, with a keen face, iron-gray hair, and bright blue eyes; his bearing was brisk, and had that indefinable trace of the military which the old soldier never loses. His straight, spare figure, his square shoulders, his restless, eager face, showed that his fighting days did not end with Appomattox. He, like General Ruysdale, was a natural fighter, and life to him would never cease to be a battle, until the sound of the final roll-call. He was nearer to forty than to fifty years, but the deep lines in his face made him look an older man than he was in reality.
The Admiral introduced the two men: "General Ruysdale, Colonel Lagrange."
"A change indeed, sir," Colonel Lagrange continued, "as I just now heard you observe. Why, sir, the last time I saw this old ship, it was from the shore below here, when I tried for three days to blow her up. I came pretty near doing it, too, one night; but I can say to-day, sir, that I am glad I did not succeed. I remember how dark 't was that night,—dark as my pocket; and I was creeping out from the shore in an old dory with a torpedo of my own construction in tow, when a boat with a Federal officer crossed our bow. He challenged; I pulled for dear life. He fired; the boats became entangled, and the torpedo exploded. I was washed on shore and taken up for dead, with three fingers gone and two ribs broken. I never knew what became of the other boat or the Union officer."
"Perhaps I can tell you something of his fate." It was General Ruysdale who spoke.
"You, sir! What can you possibly know about the event?"
"On the night of the nineteenth of April, 1862—that was the date of your adventure, was it not?—an officer in command of the troops on board this ship volunteered to make a reconnoissance of the line of obstructions which, you remember, was stretched across the river from bank to bank to bar the channel nearly opposite Fort Jackson. It was a well-constructed defence of heavy ships' chains, supported and buoyed by hulks, rafts, logs, and half a dozen large schooners. Farragut's fleet, you will remember, moved up to a point just below Forts Jackson and Philip on the sixteenth of April; and for six days and nights the bombardment was kept up, the corvettes and gun-boats taking part by turns in running up, delivering their fire, and dropping down with the current out of range again. The forts replied vigorously. Our object was to force a passage through the floating obstructions, and the officer I have spoken of was returning from his examination of the work already done. He had avoided with some difficulty the fire-rafts which, you will remember, were sent down every night to destroy our ships, and was very close to the vessel, when he saw a boat stealing out from the shore in the same direction. He thought her action suspicious, and gave orders to pursue her. He soon caught up with the crazy old craft, which carried only one man, and challenged her, ordering the man to surrender. He refused, and bent to his oars. The officer fired his revolver, the man returned the fire; then there was a flash, a crash, an explosion, and the officer knew nothing more till he came to himself the next morning in the sick bay below there. The torpedo intended to blow up the man-of-war had exploded prematurely. His boat had been blown to splinters, and he himself thrown into the water, from which he was rescued by two of his men, who supported him till relief came from the ship, where a close look-out on his movements had been kept So the ship was saved, and the only loss sustained was that of the right arm of the officer."
"And his name was?"
"Stuart Ruysdale, at your service," replied the General, with a salute.
The two men, maimed by the same catastrophe all those years ago, stood looking into each other's faces gravely. To them the river pageant was a shadow; the reality was in the scene they had been living over, in the empty sleeve and worn face of the Northener and the maimed hand and broken fortunes of the Southron.
"It was a terrible mistake," said Lagrange, breaking the painful silence.
"Ay, it was a grievous error. It is those statesmen who involved the whole nation in that bloody brawl, to satisfy their own selfish ambitions, that I hold guilty for all we suffered," returned the General.
"And if you hold them so, what must we, who were broken and beggared by their accursed ambition, think of them?" the Colonel murmured under his breath.
"I have thought from what I have seen since I have been in the South that the heart of the people could not have been in the scheme of the rebellion. How is this?"
"It was not until the war had fairly begun; and then, once in for it, we fought for all we were worth. I was seventeen years old when I enlisted. I did not know—I doubt if a man in our company knew—what we were going to fight for. 'States' rights' was the battle-cry in those earliest days. My father opposed the secession of Louisiana in the Senate until the last; and then when his State went, right or wrong, he went with her and took his two sons along with him. Well, well, sir, those times are best forgotten; but it's strange—isn't it?—that you and I, blown up by the same gunpowder under the lee of this old ship, should meet aboard of her all these years afterward. She 's a solid old hulk yet, and has been done over with new fittings half-a-dozen times since the day she got that rattling fire in her sides. You and I have not fared quite so well, eh? By Jove, General, it sounds like a romance. Shall we go below and take something to freshen up our memories?"
They left the deck, the gay company, the cheering sailors, the booming guns, and found their way to the ward-room below.
"I drink your health, sir," said the General, lifting his glass.
"Yours, sir. Let us drink together to the greatest government the world has ever known, the government that I tried, but tried in vain, to upset. May it endure forever!"
"Amen."
It was a solemn toast these two grave elder men were drinking,—a pledge that opened a friendship which was of value to both through the remainder of their lives. A few minutes later, when Margaret, accompanied by Rondelet, came in search of her father, she found him in the company of a very shabby gentleman with a kind face and cheery voice. The two veterans had a map between them, and seemed scarcely pleased at the interruption.
"Is it not time for us to go home, papa?" suggested Margaret.
"My child, I have waited four mortal hours for you. Cannot you wait as many minutes for me?" replied her father.
"The earthworks were two miles below this point, you say," he continued.
"Do you know the Colonel? He is an old friend of mine," said Rondelet. "Let us sit here while they fight their old battles over again."
At this moment Mrs. Darius Harden entered the ward-room. She was a pretty woman, with a pair of bright blue eyes and a mouth that always laughed. It had been said of her that she never went to funerals, because, try as she would, she could not compose her features to a fitting expression of melancholy. She had once said to Margaret, "With such an impossible turned-up nose, my dear, and such a fat pair of cheeks, how can I look anything but supremely jolly? Sweet seriousness is n't my line, and I know too much to try it on." Mrs. Harden bowed to the General, shook hands cordially with Colonel Lagrange, and joined Margaret.
"My dear, what a lovely gown!" exclaimed the little woman, seating herself and spreading out her own skirts complacently.
"It 's very nice of you to admire it when you have got such a pretty new dress of your own, Mrs. Harden."
"Such soft, lovely, China-ry stuff as you always manage to find! Did you ever see such a girl, Mr. Rondelet? So queer, you know, without meaning to be. I hate original people who pose for it,—if you know what I mean by that sort of thing. Margaret does n't; she believes she 's like everybody else. Don't you, deary?"
"No one else can agree with her in that belief, can they, Mrs. Harden?" said Philip.
"She 's such a mink,—not the animal, you know, but mink, singular of minx. Sly as a little fox. She pretends to work so hard, and then gets all the handsomest men in town to pose for her, and makes them fall in love with her. Now don't protest, Margaret; I 'm sure I don't blame you. I 'd do it myself if I could make such pretty things with mud and water and those queer little sticks. So all the women would, though they do talk about your going to the fête with Robert Feuardent without any chaperone."
Philip moved uneasily in his chair. What was Mrs. Darius Harden going to say next? he asked himself.
"They say yours is her last scalp, Philippe le bel. How is it? Does it still decorate your highly respected head, or does this Atalanta wear it at her belt? I hope not; keep it firmly on your pate. I 've long had designs on it myself. Do you know that she really is the original Atalanta?"
"I cannot believe her so hard of heart, Mrs. Harden."
"Oh, can't you, just? Well, you'd better. A flint is tender beside her. I know a secret of hers too. Would n't you like to know it? Come, what will you give me to tell you? Now don't say a kiss, like the children, but offer me a good fat bribe, and I will tell you who poses for that lovely girl in her—you know what I mean—her statue—sculpture—that thing she is making out of gray mud."
"The name of the mysterious model? Name your own bribe. Shall it be that excursion to the plantation?"
"I should say so, my brothers. Now for the secret. You must know—"
"Mrs. Harden, you promised; it would not be fair," interrupted Margaret earnestly, a delicious color stealing into her face.
"My dear, if he had said anything else; but we all have our price, and for years I have been pining to see the old Rondelet plantation. You shall go too. It 's a dream of a place, and we don't have to start very early in the morning. Train at eight, you know, then steamer up the river, and then—"
"But you have n't told me yet," interrupted Philip, "who the mysterious beauty is. I have a wager about her with Feuardent. We have both been searching the town to find her."
"Well, I have seen her just as she looks in the thing, with a little skirt to the knees, the vest, the bow and quivers and buskins, and very little beside. I came to the studio early one morning, and would n't be denied. I rattled the door, bit, kicked, scratched, banged, whanged, and raised particular Ned, till Margaret agreed to let me in—"
"On condition that you should promise never to tell about anything that you saw," interrupted Margaret
"I know I am a base, a perjured liar; but then I can't help it, I was born so. The studio door was opened at last; and when I got in, there was Atalanta, tools in hand, blushing all over, just as she is now, to her very toes and elbows, if we could only see them, and there were two big mirrors, between which she stood and worked and posed, and worked again. Did you ever hear of any one so vain? She had put her own little self from top to toe in the—the thing; and you were all stupid idiots not to know it."
"It is extraordinary; for now you have told me, I remember the Atalanta is the image of Miss Ruysdale. But remember that the face is turned away," rejoined Philip, wondering how he could have failed to recognize the lithe strong figure and averted head before him in the fleeting Atalanta of the bas-relief.
"And now that I have betrayed my friend for you, let us arrange the particulars of my bribe. When shall we go? and can I ever persuade my dear Margaret to forgive this outrage to our friendship and share the fruits of my crime?"
Miss Ruysdale did not laugh; a breach of confidence, even in so small a matter, seemed to her too serious a thing to jest about. She was of that rather small class of people to whom there is no satisfaction in betraying a secret or giving a new and startling piece of information. Nine people out of ten will stifle their conscience and break faith with themselves for the pleasure of electrifying an audience with some unsuspected announcement. This trait is not altogether an unamiable one, as it springs from a certain gregarious instinct, curiosity and the ministering to it being the outgrowth or abuse of human sympathy.
Margaret twisted a slender thread of gold on her arm, and looked at Rondelet, appealing to his delicate tact to conjure the chill of constraint which had crept over the trio. Margaret was perhaps a little lacking in the great quality which is sometimes unwisely yclept a virtue. Rondelet possessed it to a remarkable degree, and the young sculptor had grown to look to him for the solution of all the knotty questions of social life which inevitably present themselves to a stranger in all societies. Though he had lived so little of his life in New Orleans, he knew all its traditions and prejudices, and instinctively divined the differing elements which composed it and the best way of treating them. Mrs. Darius Harden was one of the most prominent figures of the circle in which she moved. She had given the following account of herself to Margaret: "My father was a Virginian, my mother a New Yorker. I was born in San Francisco, raised in Kentucky, schooled in Paris, presented to society in London, courted in St. Petersburg, where Darius Harden followed me, married in Rome, and settled in New Orleans, where I have lived five years, and which I alternately love and curse with equal enthusiasm. For six months in the year I would rather be a cat in Paris than a princess in Louisiana; for the other six months I believe that New Orleans is the only winter city in the world fit for human beings to live in."
She had the broadness and the superficiality of those world-citizens who, butterfly-like, suck the honey from every flower in the world's garden, while they shirk the wholesome responsibility of weeding and digging in the patch where their own particular seed happens to have been planted. Her female friends asserted confidently that she had no heart. Most of the men of her acquaintance accepted the theory, and liked her none the less for believing it. Her genuine good nature, her hearty comradeship, and her comely person sufficed to make her an exceedingly agreeable woman; and what right has the world to ask more of its women or its men? Once that world (which means you and me, reader, as well as our sisters-in-law and fathers' wives) is convinced that one of its people has a heart, it does not rest till it has endowed that heart with some base or hope less passion, for which we must either despise or pity it. Mrs. Darius Harden did well, perhaps, not to wear her possible heart upon her sleeve; and as long as Darius Harden believed in its existence, it mattered little what other people thought about it. Philip Rondelet shared Darius Harden's belief. Her servants and her dogs would have given their testimony in favor of it, had they been asked.
"Why should we not go to-morrow?" queried Mrs. Harden.
"Why, indeed, if Miss Ruysdale is free."
"Well, Margaret?"
"Thank you, it will not be possible. I am afraid papa will be in despair at my neglected work."
"Now look here, Margaret; you shant be counted out. I know it 's because you are mad with me. Now don't be dignified, it 's no use. I can bamboozle your father into going—in two twos and a fourteen. General Ruysdale!"
"Yes, Mrs. Harden?" The General looked up from his map.
"I am very anxious to persuade you to join an expedition up the river to-morrow. I want to show you how beautiful the country is there." This with a sudden bewildering smile, a flash of infantine blue eyes, and teeth small and even as the kernels on an ear of young corn.
"Margaret is so disagreeable," continued the wily persecutor. "She says that she cannot spare you,—you, who sacrifice so much for her pleasure. It is strange, is it not, that she can not give up one day for yours?"
"What an ingenious statement of the case," murmured Margaret.
"O woman! marvellous mixture of dove and serpent, how is a poor helpless, clumsy man to resist you?" whispered Rondelet.
"I really am not aware," began the General, looking severely at Margaret, "that my daughter has any authority to refuse invitations in my name. You may count on me to-morrow, my dear madam, as on all other occasions when I may have the good fortune to enjoy the society of so charming a lady as yourself."
"Now you have caught it, my dear little groutiness. Serves you just right," whispered the dove and serpent, pinching Margaret's arm under pretence of arranging her dress. "Get along with you, do, till I persuade the pater that it 's absolutely necessary that you should go too."
Margaret sighed, blushed, laughed, kissed Mrs. Harden's round red cheek, and followed Rondelet up the companion-way to the deck.
"I wish I had her spirits," she said as she leaned over the taffrail and watched the swift current sweeping onward toward its grave in the great Gulf.
"She wishes she had your talents."
"But she speaks four languages; plays the piano, guitar, banjo, and violin; writes a good letter; and sings in all the languages she understands, and several that she does not . . . These accomplishments are certainly valued in this community above any possible natural gifts."
"It does not become you, to whom the gods have been so generous, to satirize your less fortunate sisters."
"They have n't been generous. I have worked, and worked, and worked,—that 's all. I don't understand playing at art. A young girl whom I met yesterday told me she was 'very fond of painting in water-colors; it was such an agreeable pastime.' Pastime! Shades of Fortuny, pastime indeed!"
"It is true that our girls have too many accomplishments, and are little trained to serious work and thought; but that will come in good time, if it is for the best that it should. I like to see you at your work, you are so splendidly in earnest. I always come away from you feeling full of a new strength. You have been a living gospel of work to me, Atalanta. How the name suits you,—Atalanta from the North. You are fit to outrun all competitors in the life-race."
He looked at her and sighed. The old legend of Arcadian Atalanta floated through his mind. She had been conquered at last. Was he doomed to die in the race for the favor of this Atalanta? Or would Aphrodite help him, as she had aided Milanion of old? His sad face, with its beautiful, tender mouth and eyes, grew firm and strong, as an unspoken determination was made, and Margaret moved uneasily a little farther away from the would-be Milanion, whose gray-blue eyes spoke such unspeakable things. She had been a help to him, with her sober, conscientious work, her simple, earnest endeavor to fill the destiny chosen for her. "She does not know," thought Philip, "that such a career to a woman can only be a consolation. Women should only work when they cannot love. She knows nothing of love, and till she loves can know nothing of life."
"Have I really helped you?" queried Margaret, all the chivalry of her nature thrilling at this admission of her strength and his dependence. To a chivalrous woman—and it seems to-day that chivalry has fled from the world, save when it lingers in some woman's breast—the dependence of a man is a very dear and sacred thing. It is in this chivalrous spirit that many a noble woman sacrifices her life and heart to some selfish weakling, who appreciates the offering as little as he does her who makes it. More often, I believe, does the powerful woman-nature supply, all unguessed, the lacking force of a good but weak man, who with this borrowed strength stands firm and upright in his place, unconscious, as is the rest of the world, of the power that keeps him there. That every woman must find her master is less true than that every woman should find her mate.
Margaret had grown to regard Philip as very dependent upon her, and unconsciously her manner to him had become one of affectionate protection. She had almost lost sight of the quality in him which once had prompted her to say, "There is the stuff of which martyrs are made in Philip Rondelet." And yet, if she had known all the struggles of his daily life, she would not have let the idea slip so easily from her mind. The profession to which Rondelet had been trained was extremely distasteful to him, though he was endowed with unusual ability for it. His father, a well-known surgeon, was conscious of this shrinking from the unsightly details of medical life on the part of his son, and yet was convinced that the rare skill in operation, and the quick, sound judgment in diagnosis which he showed, outweighed his natural aversion to all contact with disease. More from a certain indolent dislike of opposing his father's will than from anything else, Philip had embraced the profession of medicine; but since the death of that parent, and his return to his native city, he had given up his practice.
From the time he had first met the Ruysdales a great change had come over his quiet, aimless life. The outer room of his little suite had been fitted up, poorly but decently, as an office, and below the window where the flowers grew, a new sign had appeared, bearing the name of Dr. Philip Rondelet in gilt letters. He had procured some hospital work, and was beginning to have a little practice, principally among a class of people whose reward mainly took the shape of thanks and blessings. One woman, whose child he had brought through a painful illness, told him she should pray for him daily. He accepted the prayers, but thought of the colored minister's exhortation about "acts of praise," as distinguished from words.
The pleasant duty of escorting Miss Ruysdale and Mrs. Harden to their respective homes that afternoon fell to the young physician. He accepted Mrs. Harden's invitation to dinner. When they arrived, they found that Mr. Darius Harden was at home. He usually was at home when he was not at his office. The husband of Mrs. Harden was as different from that lady in every respect as the most ardent advocate of the law of opposites could have desired. Mrs. Harden was fair, plump, practical, and jolly; Mr. Harden was dark, thin, meditative, and romantically inclined. She was loquacity personified; he rarely spoke, save in answer to a question. She was brusque, frank, and communicative; he was a walking handbook of deportment, and mysteriously secretive. She appeared to say everything that came into her head, and was withal as deep as a well; he weighed his words as if they had been precious stones, and was the most transparent of men. She took life, her husband, men, women, eternity, and the present moment, as a series of jokes; he took his wife, his business, his pleasures, his politics, his gout, his dinner, and the welfare of his immortal soul with the same literal seriousness.
Mrs. Harden never spoke with gravity to her husband; Mr. Harden never jested with his wife. Unobservant people were apt to commiserate one or other of this strongly contrasted pair; but among their intimates their household was quoted as an exceptionally happy one. It was a fashion of Mrs. Harden's—one of those bad fashions which she had picked up in Europe—to speak of her husband as if he were a necessary evil, to be endured on all social occasions. In reality, no party of pleasure was complete to her without the presence of that grave and handsome man.
Dinner was announced; and as Mrs. Harden passed from the drawing-room she said in an undertone to Philip: "I suppose Darius will have to be of the party to-morrow. In this country, you know, no respectable woman can stir four steps without her lord and master—sit here, please, Mr. Rondelet, on my right." She busied herself in helping the soup. There was a pause, first broken by the-hostess: "Darius Harden, my husband—"
"Sara Harden, my wife."
"I have been a good and faithful helpmate to you all these years?"
"To the best of my belief and knowledge, you have."
"Then what good or just cause can you show for not accompanying me to the Rondelet plantation to-morrow?"
Mr. Harden paused, balanced his soup-spoon meditatively, as if weighing the matter, swallowed his consommé, and said sententiously: "My dear, I am very sorry, but to-morrow I am obliged to attend to some affairs of a very pressing nature."
"Now, Dari, don't try to bluff me. What is it? There will be no more business till after Mardi Gras."
Mr. Harden coughed behind his napkin and glanced obliquely at Rondelet.
"Now, you old gaberlunzie man, you might as well tell me first as last."
"Indeed, my dear," with an intense look, "there is nothing of any possible interest to you in my engagement to-morrow; it is quite professional, I assure you."
"Gaffer Harden, you 're not telling the truth, and you know you 're not; and what 's more, you know I know you 're not."
Mr. Harden shook his head deprecatingly, and said in a soothing voice, "And so Mr. Rondelet and you have at last arranged your expedition. Dear me! I am exceedingly sorry that I—"
"Don't glare at me like a great grinning gargoyle, gaffer. You are a humbug, a regular ringtailed roarer of a humbug. Wild horses, prancing mules, fiery untamed donkeys would n't keep you from going, and you know it. We must take baskets and provisions and wine and things. You will see all about that. We can't drop down upon your dear old uncle, you know, Mr. Rondelet, without any warning, and expect him to bring a table already spread out of the meadow, like little Two Eyes."
"I will make all the arrangements, my dear. I only wish I could be of the party. Perhaps I may be able to arrange—I may even yet—Well, well—I will do my best."
"Gaffer?"
"My dear?"
"Drop it."
And he did.
"Do you know, Mr. Rondelet, that you have not dined here since that night when our dear Ruysdales dined with us for the first time?" said Mrs. Harden.
"Is it so long ago?" queried the guest.
"Yes. Don't you remember that you were called away before we had been fifteen minutes at the table? That was the first I had heard of your having resumed your practice or your title. My husband said at the time that it was always a thing to be remembered in inviting medical men to dine, that they are so apt to be sent for. I don't think you ever told us about the case."
"It was an urgent one, madam, as the messenger said."
"There was such an odd message: something about a lady waiting in the carriage," she continued, entirely ignoring her husband's warning looks. Philip bowed silently, and emptied his glass.
"My dear, it is very warm here. Let us adjourn to the library," said Darius Harden, breaking an awkward pause.
Mrs. Harden rose, and laying her hand on Philip's arm, left the room. At the threshold she gave one significant glance at her husband, who nodded intelligently, reseated himself, and lit his cigar.
Passing through the library, Mrs. Harden led the way to the music-room,—her own especial sanctum,—and seated herself on a low causeuse. "Sit here, opposite me, where I can see you." She spoke quite seriously, and despite her turned-up nose and blithe blue eyes she looked very grave.
"Philippe le bel," she said, addressing him gently, "Philippe, my good fellow, you are in need of a friend. There is no one in this city that you would trust as you trust me. Is it not so? And there is no one who has your interest more unselfishly at heart."
"Dear friend, it is true."
"Then tell me all about it."
"My lips are sealed, madam."
"Professional etiquette?"
He bowed.
"But if I knew it all?"
"That would make a difference."
"You know what they are saying about you?"
"Something of it."
"That you could tell more than any one else of the death of Fernand Thoron?"
Philip nodded slightly, and silently asked permission to light a cigarette.
"That there was an affair,"—Rondelet blew a cloud of white vapor from his lips and listened,—"in which your friends say you were but a second; other people—how curiously your eyes have dilated!—other people say that you, you killed him."
Philip inhaled a long breath of smoke, and asked, "And then?"
"And then—hints about some low woman of color. It was this that first made me know that it was a lie."
"And why?"
"Because, with such a double sin fresh upon your soul, you would not dare to love Margaret Ruysdale."
For the first time in that strange interview Rondelet changed color. Mrs. Harden continued: "I never do things by halves. Once convinced that you were innocent, I was determined to know who was guilty of the murder—killing, if you like the word better—of Fernand Thoron."
The cigarette was consumed; a heap of yellow ashes in a tray being all that was left of it. Rondelet lighted another with a hand that was not quite steady.
"I think I know who the man is. Will you tell me if I have guessed correctly?"
"I cannot."
"Cannot! why?"
"Cannot, because, before God, I am as ignorant of his name as I am innocent of his crime."
"Listen, then."
He bent forward, and she whispered two words in his ear. Rondelet started to his feet with an exclamation. "It cannot be!" he cried.
"It is," she answered firmly.
At this moment the door was thrown open, and some guests were ushered in,—holiday guests, masked and hooded monks and nuns of the Carnival. When Mrs. Harden turned from greeting them, Philip was no longer in the room.