The Maids of Paradise Part 61

Dawn was breaking when I awoke. Speed, partly dressed, lay beside me, sleeping heavily. I looked around at the pretty boudoir where I lay, at the silken curtains of the bed, at the clouds of cupids on the painted ceiling, flying through a haze of vermilion flecked with gold.

Raising one hand, I touched with tentative fingers my tightly bandaged head, then turned over on my side.

There were my torn clothes, filthy and smeared with sawdust, flung over a delicate, gilded chair; there sprawled my battered boots, soiling the polished, inlaid floor; a candle lay in a pool of hardened wax on a golden rococo table, and I saw where the smouldering wick had blistered the glazed top. And this was her room! Vandalism unspeakable! I turned on my snoring comrade.

"Idiot, get up!" I cried, hitting him feebly.

He was very angry when he found out why I had awakened him; perhaps the sight of my bandaged head restrained him from violence.

"Look here," he said, "I've been up all night, and you might as well know it. If you hit me again--" He hesitated, stared around, yawned, and rubbed his eyes.

"You're right," he said, "I must get up."

He stumbled to the floor, bathed, grumbling all the while, and then, to my surprise, walked over to a flat trunk which stood under the window and which I recognized as mine.

"I'll borrow some underwear," he remarked, viciously.

"What's my trunk doing here?" I demanded.

"Madame de Va.s.sart had them bring it."

"Had _who_ bring it?"

"Horan and McCadger--before they left."

"Before they left? Have they gone?"

"I forgot," he said, soberly; "you don't know what's been going on."

He began to dress, raising his head now and then to gaze out across the ocean towards Groix, where the cruiser once lay at anchor.

"Of course you don't know that the circus has gone," he remarked.

"Gone!" I echoed, astonished.

"Gone to Lorient."

He came and sat down on the edge of the gilded bedstead, b.u.t.toning his collar thoughtfully.

"Buckhurst is in town again with a raft of picturesque ruffians," he said. "They marched in last night, drums beating, colors unfurled--the red rag, you know--and the first thing they did was to order Byram to decamp."

He began to tie his cravat, with a meditative glance at the gilded mirror.

"I was here with you. Kelly Eyre came for me--Madame de Va.s.sart took my place to watch you--"

A sudden heart-beat choked me.

"--So I," he continued, "posted off to the tent, to find a rabble of communist soldiers stealing my balloon-car, ropes, bag, and all. I tell you I did what I could, but they said the balloon was contraband of war, and a military necessity; and they took it, the thieving whelps! Then I saw how matters were going to end, and I told the governor that he'd better go to Lorient as fast as he could travel before they stole the b.u.t.tons off his shirt.

"Scarlett, it was a weird sight. I never saw tents struck so quickly.

Kelly Eyre, Horan, and I harnessed up; Grigg stood guard over the props with a horse-pistol. The ladies worked like Trojans, loading the wagons; Byram raged up and down under the bayonets of those bandits, cursing them as only a man who never swears can curse, invoking the Stars and Stripes, metaphorically placing himself, his company, his money-box, and his camuel under the shadow of the broad eagle of the United States.

"Oh, those were gay times, Scarlett. And we frightened them, too, because n.o.body attempted to touch anything."

Speed laughed grimly, and began to pace the floor, casting sharp glances at me.

"Byram's people, elephant and all, struck the road a little after three o'clock this morning, in good order, not a tent-peg nor a frying-pan missing. They ought to be in Lorient by early afternoon."

"Gone!" I repeated, blankly.

"Gone. Curious how it hurt me to say good-bye. They're good people--good, kindly folk. I've grown to care for them in these few months ... I may go back to them ... some day ... if they want a balloonist ... or any kind of a thing."

"You stayed to take care of me?" I said.

"Partly.... You need care, especially when you don't need it." He began to laugh. "It's only when you're well that I worry."

I lay looking at him, striving to realize the change that had occurred in so brief a time--trying to understand the abrupt severing of ties and conditions to which, already, I had become accustomed--perhaps attached.

"They all sent their love to you," he said. "They knew you were out of danger--I told them there was no fracture, only a slight concussion. Byram came to look at you; he brought your back salary--all of it. I've got it."

"Byram came here?"

"Yes. He stood over there beside you, snivelling into his red bandanna. And Miss Crystal and Jacqueline stood here.... Jacqueline kissed you."

After a moment I said: "Has Jacqueline gone with them?"

"Yes."

There was another pause, longer this time.

"Of course," I said, "Byram knows that my usefulness as a lion-tamer is at an end."

"Of course," said Speed, simply.

I sighed.

"He wants you for the horses," added Speed. "But you can do better than that."

"I don't know,... perhaps."

"Besides, they sail to-day from Lorient. The governor made money yesterday--enough to start again. Poor Byram! He's frantic to get back to America; and, oh, Scarlett, how that good old man can swear!"

"Help me to sit up in bed," I said; "there--that's it! Just wedge those pillows behind my shoulders."

"All right?"

"Of course. I'm going to dress. Speed, did you say that little Jacqueline went with Byram?"