The Strollers Part 58

Susan laughed. "But how do you happen to be here? I thought you were dead. No; only wounded? How fortunate! Of course you came with the others. I should hardly know you. I declare you're as thin as a lath and gaunt as a ghost. You look older, too. Remorse, I suppose, for killing so many poor Mexicans!"

"And you"--surveying her face, which had the freshness of morn--"look younger!"

"Of course!" Adjusting some fancied disorder of hair or bonnet.

"Marriage is a fountain of youth for"--with a sigh--"old maids. Susan Duran, spinster! Horrible! Do you blame me?"

"For getting married? Not at all. Who is the fortunate man?" asked Saint-Prosper.

"A minister; an orthodox minister; a most orthodox minister!"

"No?" His countenance expressed his sense of the incongruity of the union. Susan one of the elect; the meek and lowly yokemate of--"How did it happen?" he said.

"In a perverse moment, I--went to church," answered Susan. "There, I met him--I mean, I saw him--no, I mean, I heard him! It was enough.

All the women were in love with him. How could I help it?"

"He must have been very persuasive."

"Persuasive! He scolded us every minute. Dress and the devil!

I"--casting down her eyes--"interested him from the first. He--he married me to reform me."

"Ah," commented the soldier, gazing doubtfully upon Susan's smart gown, which, with elaborate art, followed the contours of her figure.

"But, of course, one must keep up appearances, you know," she continued. "What's the use of being a minister's wife if you aren't popular with the congregation? At least," she added, "with part of them!" And Susan tapped the pavement with a well-shod boot and showed her white teeth. "If you weren't popular, you couldn't fill the seats--I mean pews," she added, evasively. "But you must come and see me--us, I should say."

"Unfortunately, I am leaving to-morrow."

"To-morrow!" repeated Susan, reflectively. The pupils of her eyes contracted, something they did whenever she was thinking deeply, and her gaze pa.s.sed quickly over his face, striving to read his impa.s.sive features. "So soon? When the carnival is on! That is too bad, to stay only one day, and not call on any of your old friends! Constance, I am sure, would be delighted to see you."

Many women would have looked away under the circ.u.mstances, but Susan's eyes were innocently fixed upon his. Half the pleasure of the a.s.surance was in the accompanying glance and the friendly smile that went with it.

But a quiet question, "Miss Carew is living here?" was all the satisfaction she received.

"Yes. Have you not heard? She has a lovely home and an embarra.s.sment of riches. Sweet embarra.s.sment! Health and wealth! What more could one ask? Although I forgot, she was taken ill shortly after you left."

"Ill," he said, starting.

"Quite! But soon recovered!" And Susan launched into a narration of the events that had taken place while he was in Mexico, to which he listened with the composure of a man who, having had his share of the vagaries of fate, is not to be taken aback by new surprises, however singular or tragic. Susan expected an expression of regret--by look or word--over the loss of the marquis' fortune, but either he simulated indifference or pa.s.sed the matter by with philosophical fort.i.tude.

"Poor Barnes!" was his sole comment.

"Yes; it was very lonely for Constance at first," rattled on Susan.

"But I fancy she will find a woman's solace for that ailment," she added meaningly.

"Marriage?" he asked soberly.

"Well, the engagement is not yet announced," said Susan, hesitatingly.

"But you know how things get around? And the count has been so attentive! You remember him surely--the Count de Propriac? But I must be off. I have an appointment with my husband and am already half an hour late."

"Don't let me detain you longer, then, I beg."

"Oh, I don't mind. He's so delightfully jealous when I fail to appear on the stroke of the clock! Always imagines I am in some misch--but I mustn't tell tales out of school! So glad to have met you! Come and see me--do!"

And Susan with friendly hand-clasp and lingering look, tore herself away, the carnival lightness in her feet and the carnival laughter in her eyes.

"He is in love with her still," she thought, "or he wouldn't have acted so indifferent!" Her mind reverted to a cold little message she had received from Constance. "And to think he was innocent after all!"

she continued, mentally reviewing the contents of the letter in which Constance had related the conversation with the lawyer. "I don't believe he'll call on her now, though, after--Well, why shouldn't I have told him what every one is talking about? Why not, indeed?"

A toss of the head dismissed the matter and any doubts pertaining thereto, while her thoughts flew from past to present, as a fortress on a car, its occupants armed with pellets of festival conflict, drove by amid peals of laughter. Absorbed in this scene of merriment, Susan forgot her haste, and kept her apostolic half waiting at the rendezvous with the patience of a Jacob tarrying for a Rachel. But when she did finally appear, with hat not perfectly poised, her hair in a pretty disarray, she looked so waywardly charming, he forgave her on the spot, and the lamb led the stern shepherd with a crook from Eve's apple tree.

"As thin as a lath and gaunt as a ghost!" repeated Saint-Prosper, as the fair penitent vanished in a whirl of gaiety. "Susan always was frank."

Smiling somewhat bitterly, he paused long enough to light a cigar, but it went out in his fingers as he strolled mechanically toward the wharves, through the gardens of a familiar square, where the wheezing of the distant steamers and the echoes of the cathedral clock marked the hours of pleasure or pain to-day as it had tolled them off yesterday. Beyond the pale of the orange trees with their golden wealth, the drays were rumbling in the streets and there were the same signs of busy traffic--for the carnival had not yet become a legal holiday--that he had observed when the strollers had reached the city and made their way to the St. Charles. He saw her anew, pale and thoughtful, leaning on the rail of the steamer looking toward the city, where events, undreamed of, were to follow thick and fast. He saw her, a slender figure, earnest, self-possessed, enter the city gates, unheralded, unknown. He saw her as he had known her in the wilderness--not as fancy might now depict her, the daughter of a marquis--a strolling player, and as such he loved best to think of her.

Arising out of his physical weakness and the period of inaction following the treaty of peace, he experienced a sudden homesickness for his native land; a desire to re-visit familiar scenes, to breathe the sweet air of the country, where his boyhood had been pa.s.sed, to listen to the thunder of the boulevards, to watch the endless, sad-joyful processions.

Not far distant from the blossoming, redolent square was the office of the Trans-Atlantic Steamship Company, where a clerk, with a spray of jessamine in his coat, bent cordially toward Saint-Prosper as the latter entered, and, approaching the desk, inquired:

"The Dauphin is advertised to sail to-morrow for France?"

"Yes, sir; at twelve o'clock noon."

"Book me for a berth. Ernest Saint-Prosper," he added, in answer to the other's questioning look.

"Very good, sir. Would you like some labels for your baggage? Where shall we send for it? The St. Charles? Very well, sir. Are you going to the tableaux to-night?" he continued, with hospitable interest in one whom he rightly conceived a stranger in the city. "They say it will be the fashionable event. Good-day." As the prospective pa.s.senger paid for and received his ticket. "A pleasant voyage! The Dauphin is a new ship and should cross in three weeks--barring bad weather! Don't forget the tableaux. Everybody will be there."

The soldier did not reply; his heart had given a sudden throb at the clerk's last words. Automatically he placed his ticket in his pocket, and randomly answered the employee's further inquiries for instructions. He was not thinking of the Dauphin or her new engines, the forerunner of the modern quadruple-expansion arrangement, but through his brain rang the a.s.surance: "Everybody will be there." And all the way up the street, it repeated itself again and again.

CHAPTER IX

"COMUS' MISTICK WITCHERIES"

That elusive, nocturnal company, "The Mistick Krewe of Comus," had appeared--"Comus, deep skilled in all his mother's witcheries"--and the dwellers in Phantasmagoria were joyfully numerous. More plentiful than at a modern spectacular performance, reveled G.o.ds, demons and fairies, while the children resembled a flight of masquerading b.u.t.terflies. The ball at the theater, the Roman Veglioni, succeeded elaborate tableaux, the "Tartarus," of the ancients, and "Paradise Lost," of Milton, in which the "Krewe"

impersonated Pluto and Proserpine, the fates, harpies and other characters of the representation. In gallery, dress-circle and parquet, the theater was crowded, the spectacle, one of dazzling toilets, many of them from the ateliers of the Parisian modistes; a wonderful evolution of Proserpine's toga and the mortal robes of the immortal Fates. Picture followed picture: The expulsion from Paradise; the conference of the Gorgons, and the court of pandemonium, where gluttony, drunkenness, avarice and vanity were skilfully set forth in uncompromising colors.

Availing themselves of the open-house of the unknown "Krewe," a composite host that vanished on the stroke of twelve, many of "Old Rough and Ready's" retinue mingled with the gathering, their uniforms, well-worn, even shabby, unlike the spick and span regimentals from the _costumier_. With bronzed faces and the indubitable air of campaigns endured, they were the objects of lively interest to the fair maskers, nor were themselves indifferent to the complaisance of their entertainers. Hands, burned by the sun, looked blacker that night, against the white gowns of waists they clasped; bearded faces more grim visaged in contrast with delicate complexions; embroidery and brocade whirled around with faded uniforms; and dancing aigrettes waved above frayed epaulets and shoulder straps.

"Loog at 'im!" murmured a _fille a la ca.s.sette_, regarding one of these officers who, however, held aloof from the festivities; a well-built young man, but thin and worn, as though he, like his uniform, had seen service. "If he would only carry my trunk!" she laughed, relapsing into French and alluding to the small chest she bore under her arm.

"Or my little white lamb!" gaily added her companion, a shepherdess.

And they tripped by with sidelong looks and obvious challenge which the quarry of these sprightly huntresses of men either chose to disregard or was unconscious of, as he deliberately surveyed his surroundings with more curiosity than pleasure and absently listened to a mountebank from "The Belle's Strategem."

"Who'll buy my nostrums?" cried the buffoon.