Waring's Peril Part 4

"Oh, Monsieur Wareeng," exclaimed the lady in undertone, "the man has been drinking, I am sure. He has been so rude in his language."

Waring waited for no more words. Looking quickly about him, he saw a plank lying on the levee slope. This he seized, thrust one end across the muddy hole until it rested in the cab, stepped lightly across, took the child in his arms, bore her to the embankment and set her down, then sprang back for her young mother, who, trembling slightly, rose and took his outstretched hand just as another lash fell on the horse's back and another lurch followed. Waring caught at the cab-rail with one hand, threw the other arm about her slender waist, and, fairly lifting little Madame over the wheel, sprang with her to the sh.o.r.e, and in an instant more had carried her, speechless and somewhat agitated, to the top of the levee.

"Now," said he, "let me drive you and Nin Nin wherever you were going.

Is it to market or church?"

"_Mais non_--to _bonne maman's_, of whom it is the _fete_," cried the eager little one, despite her mother's stern orders of silence. "Look!"

she exclaimed, showing her dainty little legs and feet in creamy silken hose and kid.

It was "bonne maman," explained Madame, who had ordered the cab from town for them, never dreaming of the condition of the river road or suspecting that of the driver.

"So much the happier for me," laughed Waring.--"Take the front seat, Jeffers.--Now, Nin Nin, _ma fleurette_, up with you!" And the delighted child was lifted to her perch in the stylish trap she had so often admired. "Now, madame," he continued, extending his hand.

But Madame hung back, hesitant and blushing.

"Oh, Monsieur Wareeng, I cannot, I must not. Is it not that some one shall extricate the cab?"

"No one from this party, at least," laughed Waring, mischievously making the most of her idiomatic query. "Your driver is more _cochon_ than _cocher_, and if he drowns in that mud 'twill only serve him right. Like your famous compatriot, he'll have a chance to say, 'I will drown, and no one shall help me,' for all I care. The brute! _Allons!_ I will drive you to _bonne maman's_ of whom it is the _fete_. Bless that baby daughter! And Madame d'Hervilly shall bless Nin Nin's _tout devoue_ Sam."

And Madame Lascelles found further remonstrance useless. She was lifted into the seat, by which time the driver, drunken and truculent, had waded after them.

"Who's to pay for this?" was his surly question.

"You, I fancy, as soon as your employer learns of your driving into that hole," was Waring's cool reply.

"Well, by G.o.d, I want five dollars for my fare and trouble, and I want it right off." And, whip in hand, the burly, mud-covered fellow came lurching up the bank. Across the boggy street beyond the white picket fence the green blinds of a chamber window in an old-fashioned Southern house were thrown open, and two feminine faces peered forth, interested spectators of the scene.

"Here, my man!" said Waring, in low tone, "you have earned no five dollars, and you know it. Get your cab out, come to Madame d'Hervilly's, where you were called, and whatever is your due will be paid you; but no more of this swearing or threatening,--not another word of it."

"I want my money, I say, and I mean to have it. I'm not talking to you; I'm talking to the lady that hired me."

"But I have not the money. It is for my mother--Madame d'Hervilly--to pay. You will come there."

"I want it now, I say. I've got to hire teams to get my cab out. I got stalled here carrying you and your child, and I mean to have my pay right now, or I'll know the reason why. Your swell friend's got the money. It's none of my business how you pay him."

But that ended the colloquy. Waring's fist landed with resounding whack under the cabman's jaw, and sent him rolling down into the mud below. He was up, floundering and furious, in less than a minute, cursing horribly and groping in the pocket of his overcoat.

"It's a pistol, lieutenant. Look out!" cried Jeffers.

There was a flash, a sharp report, a stifled cry from the cab, a scream of terror from the child. But Waring had leaped lightly aside, and before the half-drunken brute could c.o.c.k his weapon for a second shot he was felled like a log, and the pistol wrested from his hand and hurled across the levee. Another blow crashed full in his face as he strove to find his feet, and this time his muddled senses warned him it were best to lie still.

Two minutes more, when he lifted his battered head and strove to stanch the blood streaming from his nostrils, he saw the team driving briskly away up the crest of the levee; and, overcome by maudlin contemplation of his foeman's triumph and his own wretched plight, the cabman sat him down and wept aloud.

And to his succor presently there came ministering angels from across the muddy way, one with a brogue, the other in a bandanna, and between the two he was escorted across a dry path to the magnolia-fringed enclosure, comforted with soothing applications without and within, and encouraged to tell his tale of woe. That he should wind it up with vehement expression of his ability to thrash a thousand swells like the one who had abused him, and a piratical prophecy that he'd drink his heart's blood within the week, was due not so much to confidence in his own powers, perhaps, as to the strength of the whiskey with which he had been liberally supplied. Then the lady of the house addressed her Ethiop maid-of-all-work:

"Go you over to Anatole's now, 'Louette. Tell him if any of the byes are there I wahnt 'um. If Dawson is there, from the adjutant's office, I wahnt him quick. Tell him it's Mrs. Doyle, and never mind if he's been dhrinkin'; he shall have another dhrop here."

And at her beck there presently appeared three or four besotted-looking specimens in the coa.r.s.e undress uniform of the day, poor devils, absent without leave from their post below and hoping only to be able to beg or steal whiskey enough to stupefy them before the patrol should come and drag them away to the guard-house. Promise of liberal reward in shape of liquor was sufficient to induce three of their number to go out with the fuming cabman and help rescue his wretched brute and trap. The moment they were outside the gate she turned on the fourth, a pallid, sickly man, whose features were delicate, whose hands were white and slender, and whose whole appearance, despite gla.s.sy eyes and tremulous mouth and limbs, told the pathetic story of better days.

"You're off ag'in, are you? Sure I heerd so, and you're mad for a dhrink now. Can ye write, Dawson, or must I brace you up furrst?"

An imploring look, an unsteady gesture, alone answered.

"Here, thin, wait! It's absinthe ye need, my buck. Go you into that room now and wash yourself, and I'll bring it, and whin the others come back for their whiskey I'll tell 'um you've gone. You're to do what I say, now, and Doyle will see you t'rough; if not, it's back to that h.e.l.l in the guard-house you'll go, my word on it."

"Oh, for G.o.d's sake, Mrs. Doyle----" began the poor wretch, imploringly, but the woman shut him off.

"In there wid you! the others are coming." And, unbarring the front door, she presently admitted the trio returning to claim the fruits of their honest labor.

"Is he gone? Did he tell you what happened?"

"He's gone, yes," answered one: "he's gone to get square with the lieutenant and his c.o.c.kney dog-robber. He says they both jumped on him and kicked his face in when he was down and unarmed and helpless. Was he lyin'?"

"Oh, they bate him cruel. But did he tell you of the lady--who it was they took from him?"

"Why, sure, the wife of that old Frenchman, Lascelles, that lives below,--her the lieutenant's been sparkin' this three months."

"The very wan, mind ye!" replied the lady of the house, with significant emphasis and glance from her bleary eyes; "the very wan," she finished, with slow nodding accompaniment of the frowzy head. "And that's the kind of gintlemen that undertakes to hold up their heads over soldiers like Doyle. Here, byes, dhrink now, but be off ag'inst his coming. He'll be here any minute. Take this to comfort ye, but kape still about this till ye see me ag'in--or Doyle. Now run." And with scant ceremony the dreary party was hustled out through a paved court-yard to a gate-way opening on a side street. Houses were few and scattering so far below the heart of the city. The narrow strip of land between the great river and the swamp was cut up into walled enclosures, as a rule,--abandoned warehouses and cotton-presses, moss-grown one-storied frame structures, standing in the midst of desolate fields and decrepit fences. Only among the peaceful shades of the Ursuline convent and the warlike flanking towers at the barracks was there aught that spoke of anything but demoralization and decay. Back from the levee a block or two the double lines of strap-iron stretched over a wooden causeway between parallel wet ditches gave evidence of some kind of a railway, on which, at rare intervals, jogged a sleepy mule with a sleepier driver and a musty old rattle-trap of a car,--a car b.u.t.ting up against the animal's lazy hocks and rousing him occasionally to ringing and retaliatory kicks. Around the barracks the buildings were closer, mainly in the way of saloons; then came a mile-long northward stretch of track, with wet fields on either side, fringed along the river by solid structures and walled enclosures that told of days more prosperous than those which so closely followed the war. It was to one of these graceless drinking-shops and into the hands of a rascally "dago" known as Anatole that Mrs. Doyle commended her trio of allies, and being rid of them she turned back to her prisoner, their erstwhile companion. Absinthe wrought its work on his meek and pliant spirit, and the shaking hand was nerved to do the woman's work. At her dictation, with such corrections as his better education suggested, two letters were draughted, and with these in her hand she went aloft. In fifteen minutes she returned, placed one of these letters in an envelope already addressed to Monsieur Armand Lascelles, No.--Rue Royale, the other she handed to Dawson. It was addressed in neat and delicate feminine hand to Colonel Braxton, Jackson Barracks.

"Now, Dawson, ye can't see her this day, and she don't want ye till you can come over here sober. Off wid ye now to barracks. They're all out at inspection yet, and will be for an hour. Lay this wid the colonel's mail on his desk, and thin go you to your own. Come to me this afthernoon for more dhrink if ye can tell me what he said and did when he read it. No! no more liquor now. That'll brace ye till dinnertime, and more would make ye dhrunk."

Miserably he plodded away down the levee, while she, his ruler, throwing on a huge, dirty white sun-bonnet, followed presently in his tracks, and "shadowed" him until she saw him safely reach the portals of the barracks after one or two fruitless scouts into wayside bars in hope of finding some one to treat or trust him to a drink. Then, retracing her steps a few blocks, she rang sharply at the lattice gate opening into a cool and shaded enclosure, beyond which could be seen the white-pillared veranda of a long, low, Southern homestead. A grinning negro boy answered the summons.

"It's you, is it, Alphonse? Is your mistress at home?"

"No; gone town,--_chez Madame d'Hervilly_."

"Madame Devillease, is it? Very well; you skip to town wid that note and get it in your master's hands before the cathedral clock strikes twelve, or ye'll suffer. There's a car in t'ree minutes."

And then, well content with her morning's work, the consort of the senior first lieutenant of Light Battery "X" (a dame whose credentials were too clouded to admit of her reception or recognition within the limits of a regular garrison, where, indeed, to do him justice, Mr.

Doyle never wished to see her, or, for that matter, anywhere else) betook herself to the magnolia-shaded cottage where she dwelt beyond the pale of military interference, and some hours later sent 'Louette to say to Doyle she wanted him, and Doyle obeyed. In his relief at finding the colonel had probably forgotten the peccadillo for which he expected punishment, in blissful possession of Mr. Waring's sitting-room and supplies now that Waring was absent, the big Irishman was preparing to spend the time in drinking his junior's health and whiskey and discoursing upon the enormity of his misconduct with all comers, when Ananias entered and informed him there was a lady below who wished to see him,--"lady" being the euphemism of the lately enfranchised for the females of their race. It was 'Louette with the mandate from her mistress, a mandate he dared not disregard.

"Say I'll be along in a minute," was his reply, but he sighed and swore heavily, as he slowly reascended the stair. "Give me another dhrink, s.m.u.t," he ordered Ananias, disregarding Ferry's suggestion, "Better drink no more till after dark." Then, swallowing his potion, he went lurching down the steps without another word. Ferry and Pierce stepped to the gallery and gazed silently after him as he veered around to the gate leading to the old war-hospital enclosure where the battery was quartered. Already his walk was perceptibly unsteady.

"Keeps his head pretty well, even after his legs are gone," said Ferry.

"Knows too much to go by the sally-port. He's sneaking out through the back gate."

"Why, what does he go out there for, when he has the run of Waring's sideboard?"

"Oh, didn't you hear? Mrs. Doyle sent for him."

"That's it, is it? Sometimes I wonder which one of those two will kill the other."

"Oh, he wouldn't dare. That fellow is an abject coward in the dark. He believes in ghosts, spooks, banshees, and wraiths,--everything uncanny,--and she'd haunt him if he laid his hands on her. There's only one thing that he'd be more afraid of than Bridget Doyle living, and that would be Bridget Doyle dead."

"Why can't he get rid of her? What hold has she on him? This thing's an infernal scandal as it stands. She's only been here a month or so, and everybody in garrison knows all about her, and these doughboys don't make any bones about chaffing us on our lady friends."

"Well, everybody supposed he had got rid of her years ago. He shook her when he was made first sergeant, just before the war. Why, I've heard some of the old stagers say there wasn't a finer-looking soldier in all the regiment than Jim Doyle when he married that specimen at Brownsville. Doyle, too, supposed she was dead until after he got his commission, then she reappeared and laid claim to him. It would have been an easy enough matter five years ago to prove she had forfeited all rights, but now he can't. Then she's got some confounded hold on him, I don't know what, but it's killing the poor beggar. Good thing for the regiment, though: so let it go."