Atalanta in the South/Chapter 8
CHAPTER VIII.
It was cooler outside than in Mrs. Harden's music-room. Rondelet made his way to Canal Street, which was full of life and motion. The sidewalks, the corners, the doorways and windows of the houses were crowded with people, the steps and railing of the Clay monument black with masses of humanity. From the first stories of the more important buildings temporary balconies had been thrown out; these were crowded with gayly dressed spectators. Below one of them Philip stopped, and, lost in shadow, stood watching the gay group above him. Fans fluttered, ribbons waved, eyes and jewels sparkled, and the breeze, perfumed as it passed over the garden of fair women, wafted to his ears the mingled sound of light laughter, of jest, of repartee, of whispered protestations, and of answering sighs. Above in the balcony the men and women of the world were taking their pleasure luxuriously; below in the street the world of men and women were taking theirs, not the least part of which was the spectacle of the rich toilets and lovely faces of the ladies above them. Wit, laughter, gayety, a series of gorgeous pageants, an impassioned pursuit of pleasure, are what a stranger sees at Carnival time in the city by the river; and should one tell him of the broken fortunes, the life-failures, the apathetic despair and depression which lie beneath this brave mask of jollity, he might well be pardoned for doubting the assertion of the hidden wound, and preferring to believe in the merry mask and in the testimony of his own senses. What is more heroic than a smile that masks a pain? And so, bravely hoping for better times, and striving to bring them about, New Orleans in her poverty, as once in the palmy days of prosperity, holds high revel at this season of pleasure, and hospitably opens her gates to friend and to stranger.
It is a frank and cordial hospitality, that of the New Orleanists, and one that is not limited to the rich class alone. There seems little of that false pride which shuts the door of the poorer houses because carpets are worn or larders bare. I have been received in a certain shabby little house, with sadly worn furniture and absolutely lacking in bric-à-brac, where the gracious cordiality of my hosts and the atmosphere of good breeding and friendliness of the assembled company would have graced a prince's dwelling. It is not disgraceful, nay, it is not even unfashionable, to be poor in Louisiana.
The sound of approaching music now fell upon Philip's ear, and a pair of mounted officers galloped through the street crying, "Make room for Comus and his merry crew!" A stir of excitement quickens the fluttering of fans and feathers, and the world's people press forward in their anxiety to catch the first glimpse of the great procession. The boys who have been wrestling for money tossed from the tribunes, scramble up the supports, the lamp-posts, the gutters, whereever a foot-hold may be had, and the crowd surges with suppressed excitement. A band of music precedes the pageant. It is the same band that a few days before passed through this street to the strains of a funeral march accentuated by muffled drums. Dusky torch-bearers walk on either side of the vast floats, drawn by richly caparisoned horses, led by ebony grooms. On the cars scenes from the mythology of a great Oriental nation are represented. Here we have the Mongolian Olympus, with its gods and goddesses in superb array, reclining in luxurious attitudes before a superb banquet. A war-scene comes next, spirited and artistic in its grouping. An ice-hell where frosted devils sit among snow and icicles precedes the more familiar hell of fire, where the hoofed and horned demons prod one another with appropriate weapons. The difficult poses are maintained with a grace and spirit which do infinite credit to the actors as the cars jolt along over the rough pavement. A youthful goddess, who might be the spirit of the dawn, casts flowers to the ladies in the balcony, and a red rose falls into Margaret's lap. She bows and smiles, and the youth behind the skilfully painted mask throws a kiss after the rose, while the people in the street laugh and applaud.
"Who can it be?" she asks of the man who stands behind her.
But even if he knows, Robert Feuardent denies all knowledge of the masker. These merry gentlemen, keep their identity a secret from the world. The element of mystery adds indeed to the interest of the whole glittering, fantastic parade as it sweeps down Canal Street and through some of the humbler thoroughfares of the town. Not only for the amusement of their peers do these men of the world masquerade in so brilliant a fashion, but for the people, high and low. The procession has passed, and Philip Rondelet follows the wake of the sinuous line of light to its final destination, the Opera-House in the old French quarter. As he reaches the entrance, a carriage stops, and Mrs. Harden, followed by her husband, alights from it.
"How good of you to wait for us!" she cried vivaciously; "give me your arm. Dari, have you my fan and cloak?"
The wide stairway was lined with flowers and orange-branches heavy with fruit and blossoms. Soft many-hued lights diffused their glamour over the throng of people flooding the Opera-House; to-night its dingy paint, its faded finery of twenty years ago, are forgotten. The music is as stirring, the company as numerous, the spirits as light, the women as beautiful, as ever they were in the old days of prosperity, when the Opera-House was bright and fresh as paint and paper, tinsel and brocade, could make it. To the eyes which are not dazzled by the sight of so much youth and beauty and jollity, the broken stucco of the mouldings and the faded, musty cushions of the chairs may be visible. These eyes (which ought by good rights to be at home, closed in sober sleep, and not prying into the mould beneath the rose) see other things. They see that the frocks of the fair girls are fashioned of simple fabrics, many of them bearing unmistakable marks of home production; they see that the jewels on the necks of the matrons are of no great price; they see that many a dress-coat is shiny in the seams. But to Margaret Ruysdale none of these petty details are evident. She is only aware that she is in a sea of color and light. From the loge where she sits beside Mrs. Harden, her eyes wander over the floor where a wonderful congregation of devils and warriors, dragons, fishes, monsters, knights, and a score of other creatures of the Carnival are dancing a motley quadrille.
There is a sudden silence, then a murmur of welcome and admiration runs through the crowd. Rex with his fair girl-queen has arrived. The royal pair make their way across the stage to the loge, where seats are prepared for them. The Queen smiles and bows graciously to the people, whose loyal love and admiration she cannot fail to perceive. She is assuredly the fairest queen that sits upon a throne to-day in all this big round world. The jewels that sparkle amidst her soft blond curls lose by the contrast; the rich satin robe that shrinks back from her shoulder looks but a poor fabric beside her creamy skin. Her large blue eyes are full of sunshine, her delicate, transparent face is suffused with blushes. She is a creature of delight; not only a carnival queen, but a queen in the hearts of her friends, a fairy in her father's house. Her caressing, childish manner, to which the most confirmed woman-hater yields, is not laid aside with her every-day dress; she is to-night a queen of hearts as before, and the list of her conquests will be swelled on the morrow by more than one new victim. So innocently does this fair one win the hearts of men that I doubt if any man was ever brutal enough to upbraid her for taking what seems to have been hers by a divine right which it needs no Grotius or Puffendorf to maintain.
Margaret is so absorbed in watching the entrance of Rex and Regina that she fails to hear a knock on the door of the loge. Philip answers it, and the door is thrown open, revealing a gentleman clad in silver and green scales, carrying over one arm a long spiral tail. He offers the other arm to Margaret, and she is made to under stand by signs that her presence is desired on the floor. The horrible, grinning countenance of this demon of the deep is belied by his gentle voice as he begs the young lady to accept a bracelet, which he clasps upon her arm, in memory of Comus. It is a light, delicate affair of no great value, but to the New England girl its acceptance seemed impossible.
"My dear young lady," said the mask, speaking always in French, "remember that you are not in Massachusetts, but in Louisiana; and believe me, I am quite old enough to be your grandfather."
"He may have been a truthful demon," Margaret always said, "but he did not dance like a grandfather."
It was all very gay and very brilliant; but the scene jarred on the nerves of Philip Rondelet, who, busy with thoughts unsuited to such an assemblage, soon slipped away unnoticed and took his way home to Jackson Square. The old cathedral, the court-houses, the bronze figure of Jackson on his impossible war-horse were better company to him than that which he had just left. The Pontalba buildings were without sign of life. He lit a match and made his way to his eyry in the roof. As he reached the top floor he thought he saw a figure lying before his door. Bending down, he found it that of a man apparently asleep. Rondelet shook the sleeper and demanded his business. The man opened his eyes, stared about him, and rose slowly to his feet. He was a rough-looking fellow, and Rondelet touched his revolver to see if it was in order.
"What do you want with me?" he asked for a second time. The man nodded; and after fumbling in his pockets, produced a note from the breast of his shirt, which he handed to the Doctor.
"Wait here, and I will see if there is any answer," said Philip.
He entered the room, secured the door, and by the light of the embers on the hearth perused the letter, written in a woman's hand. He read the words carefully, burned the letter, and then, after examining his revolver, left the house in company with the stranger, who was to serve as his guide. They had not far to go. The man stopped before a house in one of the darkest, narrowest streets of the old French quarter. It was a high building of the Spanish time, with light iron balconies at each story, and heavy grated shutters such as the Spaniards love to guard their homes withal.
A woman was standing on the highest of the galleries. She greeted them silently and disappeared. They entered the wide door, and after traversing a long dark passage and crossing a courtyard filled with the heavy perfume of the sweet-olive and the orange-tree, they ascended an open stairway on the outside of the wall which led to an inner balcony. The window was open, and they entered a large bare room where the woman who had signalled them from above stood waiting. For the first time Rondelet saw the face of his guide, and knew it for the face he had seen bending over the grindstone in the little shop. The woman was she who had soothed Therese and begged her to be calm. He understood now to what patient he had been summoned. He heard his name called in a loud, fretful voice from an inner room. The woman pushed him toward an open door, and in a moment he was beside the sick bed. It was Therese. She lay with her splendid hair heaped about, and her bare, beautiful arms twisted above her head. He touched her burning wrist, looked into her feverish eyes, and questioned the woman who stood beside the girl. She was the mother of Therese, and the fellow who had summoned him was her brother and the girl's uncle. Therese had been ill for a week, and had sometimes been out of her mind. That evening she had asked them to send for Rondelet, and had written the few words which her uncle had given him. Therese seemed conscious of his presence, but since calling his name had given him no sign of recognition. Rondelet, whose knowledge of drugs was not confined to those included in the orthodox materia medica, drew from his breast a small phial; and pouring a few drops into a glass of water, held it to the girl's lips. She drank the potion eagerly; and its effects were soon to be traced in her quieter breathing, the relaxing of her hands, and the failing of the fever-flush from her face. The mother, with that fondness for all medicines characteristic of her race, asked the name of the potion.
"It is one that you cannot buy," said Philip. "I learned to prepare it from a wise man of the East, thousands of miles from here."
The room was large and high, and was furnished with some taste. The appointments of the dressing-table, the fineness of the bed-linen, together with some rare ornaments, were strangely out of keeping with the appearance of the poorly dressed man and woman. On the wall above the bed hung a crucifix of exquisite workmanship. The figure of the Christ, carved from a single piece of ivory, was yellow with age. The ebony cross showed a crack on one of its arms. It may have been the jewel of an antiquarian's collection filched from a church, for such folk dare to steal even such sacred things; it may have been the consolation of some sinful sufferer who in the dignity and grace of the dead face found hope and comfort, or it may have ministered to the support of some martyr doomed to die under the torment of the Inquisition of the Holy Catholic Church; it may have belonged to some cloistered nun, dead to this world and living in that hope of the next which flickers but is not quite extinguished, like the light of a taper in a strong wind. Whoever had fashioned it, whoever had owned it, the crucifix was a gem. To Philip Rondelet, a connoisseur in these matters, it had a strange fascination. As he sat beside the sleeping girl, his eyes fixed on the carved image, it seemed to glow with a warm, mellow light from its dark frame; the bowed head, with its crown of thorns, seemed to lift itself, and the eyes, unclosing, to gaze mournfully into his own. Had Philip belonged to the Church which believes in miracles wrought in the nineteenth century as well as those witnessed in the first, he might have thought that one had been vouchsafed for his own especial benefit. As it was, he shook himself and murmured, "I must have been asleep."
Soon after this, Therese awoke. She recognized Philip, and motioned to the woman to leave the room. When they were alone she said, "I have sent for you because I feared that I might lose my reason and tell things which I may not speak about. You understand me. Do you think that I shall die?"
"No, Therese, you will not die."
She was silent, and her hand sought some object beneath the pillow.
"I do not want to live, and yet I am afraid to die. I cannot die till I have kept my word."
She grasped the thing that was hidden behind her head, and then asked, "Have you seen Jean since?"
"Jean?"
"Yes, Jean Thoron, his brother."
"No."
"Is it true that people say you killed him?"
Her face contracted with a sudden pain as she said these words, and tears started to her eyes.
"Yes, Therese; it is whispered, I believe."
"You have not been openly accused?"
"Not as yet."
"You will not be; they have been bribed. But this rumored accusation is the more damnable because it cannot be disproved."
"Yes, that is true; but you must not talk of these things to-night."
She went on without heeding him: "I must tell you all about it. Listen to me, I shall go mad if I keep it shut up here any longer. My heart is bursting; my brain is seething with it."
She tossed restlessly to the other side of the bed, and as she did so the object beneath her pillow slipped to the floor. Rondelet picked it up. It was a dagger of peculiar design. The handle, carved from a solid piece of rock crystal, was studded with rubies and emeralds in an intricate design; the blade, double-edged and keen, was stained with a taint of blood. The woman missed it and held out her hand.
"It is a dangerous weapon for you to handle so recklessly."
"Give it to me. It was found on him when he was killed. This stain was made by his blood; but it shall be washed out. I have sworn!"
She kissed the spot and hid the dagger in her bosom. Rondelet rose to take his leave; but she laid her hand upon his arm and besought him not to leave her till she had told him what he must know. It is often better to yield than to resist the freaks of women, of sick women above all; and so it was that Philip Rondelet listened to the story of Therese. It was told with a passionate eloquence by the fever-stricken girl lying in her splendid beauty among the pillows, and the tale was interrupted by bursts of tears and paroxysms of exhausting anger. To Philip it seemed as if scene after scene of a drama was being enacted before his eyes as he listened to the torrent of words which poured from her lips. She told him of the life she first remembered in Spain, where her childhood had been passed in a quiet convent, with only the sweet-faced nuns for company and a score of children of her own age. Here she grew to womanhood, and here she saw for the first time the man who had made her life a reality and no longer a pleasant day-dream. She had first seen him through the grated window of the convent reception-room as he stood talking to his sister, her playmate and warmest friend. She had known nothing of her home and nothing of her family, except her father, who had placed her at the convent, and to whom she wrote letters at stated intervals under the direction of the Superior. Of her friend's brother, Fernand Thoron, she had often heard, and soon she heard more and more of him; for she had been seen through the grate even as she had seen through it, and in the presents and letters which found their way to Fernand's sister there was always a gift or a word for her playmate, Therese. She had met him at last, for convent grates and watchful nuns cannot baffle lovers' wits, and he had told her that he loved her, and that when she left the convent she should be his wife. Then there came a happy time of blissful, golden cloud-building, in which all the glorious world seemed to the lovers to be made but for their pleasure and their love. All too short this happy time,—soon to give place to dread reality. A letter from her lover told her that she must think of him no more, that he could never see her again. Soon after this came the news of her father's death and instructions calling her to the home which she had never known as hers. The mystery which had hung about her all her life, and which Fernand Thoron had unravelled, was then explained. She was no child of princely blood, no heir to a disputed title; nothing but the bastard daughter of an American planter and of a human chattel whom he had called his slave. Chance or a remorseless fate threw her again in the way of Fernand Thoron; and in that second meeting the love which had been strong and pure enough to nerve the man into fleeing from the maiden who could never be his wife had grown weak and earthly, and they had yielded to its bliss and to its sin. While their love was still new and strong, before the chill of the broken law had blended agony with joy, a shadow had crossed their path. A man had striven to put them apart, and in that strife Fernand Thoron had yielded up his young life. Murder, Therese called it,—foul, unnatural murder; and under the shadow of that awful crime Philip Rondelet stood to-day. He should be exonerated; he who had cared for Fernand in his last hours should not be suspected of having caused his death while his murderer lived free and unchallenged.
What was that man to her or Fernand that he should have interfered between them? Philip asked.
"Nothing to either of them," she answered hotly; "nothing but an accursed enemy."
"What was his motive in separating them?" he asked.
Her answer was incomprehensible to Philip; it was a very storm of words, spoken rapidly in Spanish,—a language with which he had little familiarity.
"What was the man's name?" Philip asked in a low, grave voice.
Therese, putting her burning lips to his ear, whispered a name which he had heard once before that evening, the name of a man who called himself his friend.