Brandon of the Engineers Part 14

CHAPTER X

LA MIGNONNE

A cool sea breeze blew through the half-opened lattice, and a ray of sunshine quivered upon the ocher-colored wall, when d.i.c.k awoke from a refreshing sleep. He felt helplessly weak, and his side, which was covered by a stiff bandage, hurt him when he moved, but his head was clear at last and he languidly looked about. The room was s.p.a.cious, but rather bare. There was no carpet, but a rug made a blotch of cool green on the smooth, dark floor. Two or three religious pictures hung upon the wall and he noted how the soft blue of the virgin's dress harmonized with the yellow background. An arch at one end was covered by a leather curtain like those in old Spanish churches, but it had been partly drawn back to let the air circulate. Outside the hooked-back lattice he saw the rails of a balcony, and across the narrow patio a purple creeper spread about a dazzling white wall.

All this was vaguely familiar, because it was some days since d.i.c.k had recovered partial consciousness, though he had been too feeble to notice his surroundings much or find out where he was. Now he studied the room with languid interest as he tried to remember what had led to his being brought there. The scanty furniture was dark and old; and he knew the wrinkled, brown-faced woman in black who sat by the window with a dark shawl wound round her head. She had a place in his confused memories; as had another woman with a curious lifeless face and an unusual dress, who had once or twice lifted him and done something to his bandages. Still, it was not of her d.i.c.k was thinking. There had been somebody else, brighter and fresher than either, who sat beside him when he lay in fevered pain and sometimes stole in and vanished after a pitiful glance.

A bunch of flowers stood upon the table; and their scent mingled with the faint smell of decay that hung about the room. Lying still, d.i.c.k heard the leather curtain rustle softly in the draught, m.u.f.fled sounds of traffic, and the drowsy murmur of the surf. Its rhythmic beat was soothing and he thought he could smell the sea. By and by he made an abrupt move that hurt him as a voice floated into the room. It was singularly clear and sweet, and he thought he knew it, as he seemed to know the song, but could not catch the words and the singing stopped.

Then light footsteps pa.s.sed the arch and there was silence again.

"Who's that?" he asked with an energy he had not been capable of until then.

"_La mignonne_," said the old woman with a smile that showed her thick, red lips and firm white teeth.

"And who's Mignonne?"

"_La, la!_" said the woman soothingly. "_C'est ma mignonne._ But you jess go to sleep again."

"How can I go to sleep when I'm not sleepy and you won't tell me what I want to know?" d.i.c.k grumbled, but the woman raised her hand and began to sing an old plantation song.

"I'm not a child," he protested weakly. "But that's rather nice."

Closing his eyes, he tried to think. His nurse was not a Spanish mulatto, as her dark dress suggested. It was more likely that she came from Louisiana, where the old French stock had not died out; but d.i.c.k felt puzzled. She had spoken, obviously with affection, of _ma mignonne_; but he was sure the singer was no child of hers. There was no Creole accent in that clear voice, and the steps he heard were light. The feet that had pa.s.sed his door were small and arched; not flat like a negro's. He had seen feet of the former kind slip on an iron staircase and brush, in pretty satin shoes, across a lawn on which the moonlight fell. Besides, a girl whose skin was fair and whose movements were strangely graceful had flitted about his room. While he puzzled over this he went to sleep and on waking saw with a start of pleasure Jake sitting near his bed. His nurse had gone.

"Hullo!" he said. "I'm glad you've come. There are a lot of things I want to know."

"The trouble is I've been ordered not to tell you much. It's a comfort to see you looking brighter."

"I feel pretty well. But can you tell me where I am and how I got there?"

"Certainly. We'll take the last question first. Somebody tore off a shutter and we carried you on it. I guess you know you got a dago's knife between your ribs."

"I seem to remember something like that," said d.i.c.k; who added with awkward grat.i.tude: "I believe the brutes would have killed me if you hadn't been there."

"It was a pretty near thing. Does it strike you as curious that while you made yourself responsible for me I had to take care of you?"

"You did so, anyhow," d.i.c.k remarked with feeling. "But go on."

"Somebody brought a Spanish doctor, who said you couldn't be moved much and must be taken into the nearest house, so we brought you here."

"Where is 'here'? That's what I want to know?"

"My orders are not to let you talk. We've changed our positions now; you've got to listen. For all that, you ought to be thankful you're not in the Santa Brigida hospital, which was too far away. It's three hundred years old and smells older. Felt as if you could bake bricks in it, and no air gets in."

"But what were you doing at the hospital?"

"I went to see a fellow who told me he'd been fired out of our camp. He came up just after the dago knifed you, and knocked out the man I was grappling with, but got an ugly stab from one of the gang. We didn't find this out until we had disposed of you. However, he's nearly all right and they'll let him out soon."

"Ah!" said d.i.c.k. "That must be Payne, the storekeeper. But, you see, I fired him. Why did he interfere?"

"I don't know. He said something about your being a white man and it was three to one."

d.i.c.k pondered this and then his thoughts resumed their former groove.

"Who's the mulatto woman in black?"

"She's called Lucille. A nice old thing, and seems to have looked after you well. When I came in she was singing you to sleep. Voice all gone, of course, but I'd like to write down the song. It sounded like the genuine article."

"What do you mean by the 'genuine article'?"

"Well, I think it was one of the plantation lullabies they used to sing before the war; not the imitation trash fourth-rate composers turned out in floods some years ago. That, of course, has no meaning, but the other expressed the spirit of the race. Words quaint c.o.o.n-English with a touch of real feeling; air something after the style of a camp-meeting hymn, and yet somehow African. In fact, it's unique music, but it's good."

"Hadn't I another nurse?" d.i.c.k asked.

Jake laughed. "I ought to have remembered that you're not musical. There was a nursing sister of some religious order."

"I don't mean a nun," d.i.c.k persisted. "A girl came in now and then."

"It's quite possible. Some of them are sympathetic and some are curious.

No doubt, you were an interesting patient; anyhow, you gave the Spanish doctor plenty trouble. He was rather anxious for a time; the fever you had before the dago stabbed you complicated things." Jake paused and looked at his watch. "Now I've got to quit. I had orders not to stay long, but I'll come back soon to see how you're getting on."

d.i.c.k let him go and lay still, thinking drowsily. Jake had apparently not meant to answer his questions. He wanted to know where he was and had not been told. It looked as if his comrade had been warned not to enlighten him; but there was no reason for this. Above all, he wanted to know who was the girl with the sweet voice and light step. Jake, who had admitted that she might have been in his room, had, no doubt, seen her, and d.i.c.k could not understand why he should refuse to speak of her. While he puzzled about it he went to sleep again.

It was dark when he awoke, and perhaps he was feverish or his brain was weakened by illness, for it reproduced past scenes that were mysteriously connected with the present. He was in a strange house in Santa Brigida, for he remarked the shadowy creeper on the wall and a pool of moonlight on the dark floor of his room. Yet the cornfields in an English valley, through which he drove his motor bicycle, seemed more real, and he could see the rows of stocked sheaves stretch back from the hedgerows he sped past. Something sinister and threatening awaited him at the end of the journey, but he could not tell what it was. Then the cornfields vanished and he was crossing a quiet, walled garden with a girl at his side. He remembered how the moonlight shone through the branches of a tree and fell in silver, splashes on her white dress. Her face was in the shadow, but he knew it well.

After a time he felt thirsty, and moving his head looked feebly about the room. A slender, white figure sat near the wall, and he started, because this must be the girl he had heard singing.

"I wonder if you could get me something to drink?" he said.

The girl rose and he watched her intently as she came towards him with a gla.s.s. When she entered the moonlight his heart gave a sudden throb.

"Clare, Miss Kenwardine!" he said, and awkwardly raised himself on his arm.

"Yes," she said, "I am Clare Kenwardine. But drink this; then I'll put the pillows straight and you must keep still."

d.i.c.k drained the gla.s.s and lay down again, for he was weaker than he thought.

"Thanks! Don't go back into the dark. You have been here all the time? I mean, since I came."

"As you were seldom quite conscious until this morning, how did you know?"

"I didn't know, in a way, and yet I did. There was somebody about who made me think of England, and then, you see, I heard you sing."

"Still," she said, smiling, "I don't quite understand."

"Don't you?" said d.i.c.k, who felt he must make things plain. "Well, you stole in and out and sat here sometimes when Lucille was tired. I didn't exactly notice you--perhaps I was too ill--but I felt you were there, and that was comforting."