"Know we've always been crazy about each other, too; in grammar
school, high school and college, don't you?"
"Yes," I agreed.
"All right. We've been engaged ever since our freshman year at Beaver.
Ned just had his frat pin long enough to pin it on my shoulder-strap
at the first freshman dance. Everything was set for us to stand up in
the chancel and say 'I do' this June; then Ned's company sent him to
New Orleans last December." She paused, drew deeply at her cigarette,
crushed its fire out in an ash-tray, and set a fresh one glowing.
"That started it. While he was down there it seemed that he got
playful. Mixed up with some glamorous Creole gal." Once more she
lapsed into silence and I could see the heartbreak showing through the
armor of her flippant manner.
"You mean he fell in love----"
"I certainly do _not_! If he had, I'd have handed back his ring and
said 'Bless you, me children', even if I had to bite my heart in two
to do it; but this is no case of a new love crowding out the old. Ned
still loves me; never stopped loving me. That's what makes it all seem
crazy as a hashish-eater's dream. He was on the loose in New Orleans,
doing the town with a crowd of local boys, and prob'bly had too many
Ramos fizzes. Then he barged into this Creole dame's place, and----"
she broke off with a gallant effort at a smile. "I guess young fellows
aren't so different nowadays than they were when you were growing up,
sir. Only today we don't believe in sprinkling perfume in the family
cesspool. Ned cheated, that's the bald truth of it; he didn't stop
loving me, and he hasn't stopped now, but I wasn't there and that
other girl was, and there were no conventions to be recognized. Now
he's fairly melting with remorse, says he's not worthy of me--wants to
break off our engagement, while he spends a lifetime doing penance for
a moment's folly."
"But good heavens," I expostulated, "if you're willing to forgive----"
"You're telling me!" she answered bitterly. "We've been over it a
hundred times. This isn't 1892; even nice girls know the facts of life
today, and while I'm no more anxious than the next one to put through
a deal in shopworn goods, I still love Ned, and I don't intend to let
a single indiscretion rob us of our happiness. I----" the hard
exterior veneer of modernism melted from her like an autumn ice-glaze
melting in the warm October sun, and the tears coursed down her
cheeks, cutting little valleys in her carefully-applied make-up. "He's
my man, Doctor," she sobbed bitterly. "I've loved him since we made
mud-pies together; I'm hungry, thirsty for him. He's everything to me,
and if he follows out this fool renunciation he seems set on, it'll
kill me!"
De Grandin tweaked a waxed mustache-end thoughtfully. "You exemplify
the practicality of woman, _Mademoiselle_; I applaud your sound, hard
common sense," he told her. "Bring this silly young romantic foolish
one to me. I will tell him----"
"But he won't come," I interrupted. "I know these hard-minded young
asses. When a lad is set on being stubborn----"
"Will you go to work on him if I can get him here?" interjected Nella.
"Of a certitude, _Mademoiselle_."
"You won't think me forward or unmaidenly?"
"This is a medical consultation, _Mademoiselle_."
"All right; be in the office this time tomorrow night. I'll have my
wandering boy friend here if I have to bring him in an ambulance."
* * * * *
Her performance matched her promise almost too closely for our
comfort. We had just finished dinner next night when the frenzied
shriek of tortured brakes, followed by a crash and the tinkling
spatter of smashed glass, sounded in the street before the house, and
in a moment feet dragged heavily across the porch. We were at the door
before the bell could buzz, and in the disk of brightness sent down by
the porch light saw Nella bent half double, stumbling forward with a
man's arm draped across her shoulders. His feet scuffed blindly on the
boards, as though they had forgot the trick of walking, or as if all
strength had left his knees. His head hung forward, lolling drunkenly;
a spate of blood ran down his face and smeared his collar.
"Good Lord!" I gasped. "What----"
"Get him in the surgery--quick!" the girl commanded in a whisper. "I'm
afraid I rather overdid it."
Examination showed the cut across Ned's forehead was more bloody than
extensive, while the scalp-wound which plowed backward from his
hairline needed but a few quick stitches.
Nella whispered to us as we worked. "I got him to go riding with me in
my runabout. Just as we got here I let out a scream and swung the
wheel hard over to the right. I was braced for it, but Ned was
unprepared, and went right through the windshield when I ran the car
into the curb. Lord, I thought I'd killed him when I saw the
blood--you do think he'll come through all right, don't you, Doctor?"
"No thanks to you if he does, you little ninny!" I retorted angrily.
"You might have cut his jugular with your confounded foolishness.
If----"
"_S-s-sh_, he's coming out of it!" she warned. "Start talking to him
like a Dutch uncle; I'll be waiting in the study if you want me," and
with a tattoo of high heels she left us with our patient.
"Nella! Is she all right?" Ned cried as he half roused from the
surgery table. "We had an accident----"
"But certainly, _Monsieur_," de Grandin soothed. "You were driving
past our house when a child ran out before your car and _Mademoiselle_
was forced to swerve aside to keep from hitting it. You were cut about
the face, but she escaped all injury. Here"--he raised a glass of
brandy to the patient's lips--"drink this. Ah, so. That is better,
_n'est-ce-pas_?"
For a moment he regarded Ned in silence, then, abruptly: "You are
distrait, _Monsieur_. When we brought you in we were forced to give
you a small whiff of ether while we patched your cuts, and in your
delirium you said----"
The color which had come into Ned's cheeks as the fiery cognac warmed
his veins drained out again, leaving him as ghastly as a corpse. "Did
Nella hear me?" he asked hoarsely. "Did I blab----"
"Compose yourself, _Monsieur_," de Grandin bade. "She heard nothing,
but it would be well if we heard more. I think I understand your
difficulty. I am a physician and a Frenchman and no prude. This
renunciation which you make is but the noble gesture. You have been
unfortunate, and now you fear. Have courage; no infection is so bad
there is no remedy----"
Ned's laugh was hard and brittle as the tinkle of a breaking glass. "I
only wish it were the thing you think," he interrupted. "I'd have you
give me salvarsan and see what happened; but there isn't any treatment
I can take for this. I'm not delirious, and I'm not crazy, gentlemen;
I know just what I'm saying. Insane as it may sound, I'm pledged to
the dead, and there isn't any way to bail me out."
"_Eh_, what is it you say?" de Grandin's small blue eyes were gleaming
with the light of battle as he caught the occult implication in Ned's
declaration. "Pledged to the dead? _Comment cela?_"
* * * * *
Ned raised himself unsteadily and balanced on the table edge.
"It happened in New Orleans last winter," he answered. "I'd finished
up my business and was on the loose, and thought I'd walk alone
through the _Vieux Carre_--the old French Quarter. I'd had dinner at
Antoine's and stopped around at the Old Absinthe House for a few
drinks, then strolled down to the French Market for a cup of chicory
coffee and some doughnuts. Finally I walked down Royal Street to look
at Madame Lalaurie's old mansion; that's the famous haunted house, you
know. I wanted to see if I could find a ghost. Good Lord, I _wanted_
to!
"The moon was full that night, but the house was still as old Saint
Denis Cemetery, so after peering through the iron grilles that shut
the courtyard from the street for half an hour or so, I started back
toward Canal Street.
"I'd almost reached Bienville Street when just as I passed one of
those funny two-storied iron-grilled balconies so many of the old
houses have I heard something drop on the sidewalk at my feet. It was
a japonica, one of those rose-like flowers they grow in the courtyard
gardens down there. When I looked up, a girl was laughing at me from
the second story of the balcony. '_Mon fleuron, monsieur, s'il vous
plait_,' she called, stretching down a white arm for the bloom.
[Illustration: DR. TROWBRIDGE.]
"The moonlight hung about her like a veil of silver tissue, and I
could see her plainly as though it had been noon. Most New Orleans
girls are dark. She was fair, her hair was very fine and silky and
about the color of a frosted chestnut-burr. She wore it in a long bob
with curls around her face and neck, and I knew without being told
that those ringlets weren't put in with a hot iron. Her face was pale,
colorless and fine-textured as a magnolia petal, but her lips were
brilliant crimson. There was something reminiscent of those ladies you
see pictured in Directoire prints about her; small, regular features,
straight, white, high-waisted gown tied with a wide girdle underneath
her bosom, low, round-cut neck and tiny, ball-puff sleeves that left
her lovely arms uncovered to the shoulder. She was like Rose
Beauharnais or Madame de Fontenay, except for her fair hair, and her
eyes. Her eyes were like an Eastern slave's, languishing and
passionate, even when she laughed. And she was laughing then, with a
throaty, almost caressing laugh as I tossed the flower up to her and
she leant across the iron railing, snatching at it futilely as it fell
just short of reach.
"'_C'est sans profit_,' she laughed at last. 'Your skill is too small
or my arm too short, _m'sieur_. Bring it up to me.'
"'You mean for me to come up there?' I asked.
"'But certainly. I have teeth, but will not bite you--maybe.'
"The street door to the house was open; I pushed it back, groped my
way along a narrow hall and climbed a flight of winding stairs. She
was waiting for me on the balcony, lovelier, close up, if that were
possible, than when I'd seen her from the sidewalk. Her gown was China
silk, so sheer and clinging that the shadow of her charming figure
showed against its rippling folds like a lovely silhouette; the sash
which bound it was a six-foot length of rainbow ribbon tied
coquettishly beneath her shoulders and trailing in fringed ends almost
to her dress-hem at the back; her feet were stockingless and shod with
sandals fastened with cross-straps of purple grosgrain laced about the
ankles. Save for the small gold rings that scintillated in her ears,
she wore no ornaments of any kind.
"'_Mon fleur, m'sieur_,' she ordered haughtily, stretching out her
hand; then her eyes lighted with sudden laughter and she turned her
back to me, bending her head forward. 'But no, it fell into your
hands; it is that you must put in its place again,' she ordered,
pointing to a curl where she wished the flower set. 'Come, _m'sieur_,
I wait upon you.'
"On the settee by the wall a guitar lay. She picked it up and ran her
slim, pale fingers twice across the strings, sounding a soft,
melancholy chord. When she began to sing, her words were slurred and
languorous, and I had trouble understanding them; for the song was
ancient when Bienville turned the first spadeful of earth that marked
the ramparts of New Orleans:
_O knights of gay Toulouse
And sweet Beaucaire,
Greet me my own true love
And speak him fair_....
"Her voice had the throaty, velvety quality one hears in people of the
Southern countries, and the words of the song seemed fairly to yearn
with the sadness and passionate longing of the love-bereft. But she
smiled as she put by her instrument, a curious smile, which heightened
the mystery of her face, and her wide eyes seemed suddenly half
questing, half drowsy, as she asked, 'Would you ride off upon your
grim, pale horse and leave poor little Julie d'Ayen famishing for
love, _m'sieur_?'
"'Ride off from you?' I answered gallantly. 'How can you ask?' A verse
from Burns came to me:
_Then fare thee well, my bonny lass,
And fare thee well awhile,
And I will come to thee again
An it were ten thousand mile._
"There was something avid in the look she gave me. Something more than
mere gratified vanity shone in her eyes as she turned her face up to
me in the moonlight. 'You mean it?' she demanded in a quivering,
breathless voice.
"'Of course,' I bantered. 'How could you doubt it?'
"'Then swear it--seal the oath with blood!'
"Her eyes were almost closed, and her lips were lightly parted as she
leant toward me. I could see the thin, white line of tiny, gleaming
teeth behind the lush red of her lips; the tip of a pink tongue swept
across her mouth, leaving it warmer, moister, redder than before; in
her throat a small pulse throbbed palpitatingly. Her lips were smooth
and soft as the flower-petals in her hair, but as they crushed on mine
they seemed to creep about them as though endowed with a volition of
their own. I could feel them gliding almost stealthily, searching
greedily, it seemed, until they covered my entire mouth. Then came a
sudden searing burn of pain which passed as quickly as it flashed
across my lips, and she seemed inhaling deeply, desperately, as though
to pump the last faint gasp of breath up from my lungs. A humming
sounded in my ears; everything went dark around me as if I had been
plunged in some abysmal flood; a spell of dreamy lassitude was
stealing over me when she pushed me from her so abruptly that I
staggered back against the iron railing of the gallery.
* * * * *
"I gasped and fought for breath like a winded swimmer coming from the
water, but the half-recaptured breath seemed suddenly to catch itself
unbidden in my throat, and a tingling chill went rippling up my spine.
The girl had dropped down to her knees, staring at the door which let
into the house, and as I looked I saw a shadow writhe across the
little pool of moonlight which lay upon the sill. Three feet or so in
length it was, thick through as a man's wrist, the faint light shining
dully on its scaly armor and disclosing the forked lightning of its
darting tongue. It was a cottonmouth--a water moccasin--deadly as a
rattlesnake, but more dangerous, for it sounds no warning before
striking, and can strike when only half coiled. How it came there on
the second-story gallery of a house so far from any swampland I had no
means of knowing, but there it lay, bent in the design of a double S,
its wedge-shaped head swaying on up-reared neck a scant six inches
from the girl's soft bosom, its forked tongue darting deathly menace.
Half paralyzed with fear and loathing, I stood there in a perfect
ecstasy of horror, not daring to move hand or foot lest I aggravate
the reptile into striking. But my terror changed to stark amazement as
my senses slowly registered the scene. The girl was talking to the
snake and--it listened as a person might have done!
"'_Non, non, grand'tante; halte la!_' she whispered. '_Cela est a
moi--il est devoue!_'
"The serpent seemed to pause uncertainly, grudgingly, as though but
half convinced, then shook its head from side to side, much as an aged
person might when only half persuaded by a youngster's argument.
Finally, silently as a shadow, it slithered back again into the
darkness of the house.
"Julie bounded to her feet and put her hands upon my shoulders.
"'You mus' go, my friend,' she whispered fiercely. 'Quickly, ere she
comes again. It was not easy to convince her; she is old and very
doubting. O, I am afraid--afraid!'
"She hid her face against my arm, and I could feel the throbbing of
her heart against me. Her hands stole upward to my cheeks and pressed
them between palms as cold as graveyard clay as she whispered, 'Look
at me, _mon beau_.' Her eyes were closed, her lips were slightly
parted, and beneath the arc of her long lashes I could see the glimmer
of fast-forming tears. '_Embrasse moi_', she commanded in a trembling
breath. 'Kiss me and go quickly, but _O mon cher_, do not forget poor
little foolish Julie d'Ayen who has put her trust in you. Come to me
again tomorrow night!'
"I was reeling as from vertigo as I walked back to the Greenwald, and
the bartender looked at me suspiciously when I ordered a sazarac.
They've a strict rule against serving drunken men at that hotel. The
liquor stung my lips like liquid flame, and I put the cocktail down
half finished. When I set the fan to going and switched the light on
in my room I looked into the mirror and saw two little beads of fresh,
bright blood upon my lips. 'Good Lord!' I murmured stupidly as I
brushed the blood away; 'she bit me!'
"It all seemed so incredible that if I had not seen the blood upon my
mouth I'd have thought I suffered from some lunatic hallucination, or
one too many frappes at the Absinthe House. Julie was as quaint and
out of time as a Directoire print, even in a city where time stands
still as it does in old New Orleans. Her costume, her half-shy
boldness, her--this was simply madness, nothing less!--her
conversation with that snake!
"What was it she had said? My French was none too good, and in the
circumstances it was hardly possible to pay attention to her words,
but if I'd understood her, she'd declared, 'He's mine; he has
dedicated himself to me!' And she'd addressed that crawling horror as
'_grand'tante_--great-aunt!'
"'Feller, you're as crazy as a cockroach!' I admonished my reflection
in the mirror. 'But I know what'll cure you. You're taking the first
train north tomorrow morning, and if I ever catch you in the _Vieux
Carre_ again, I'll----'
"A sibilating hiss, no louder than the noise made by steam escaping
from a kettle-spout, sounded close beside my foot. There on the rug,
coiled in readiness to strike, was a three-foot cottonmouth, head
swaying viciously from side to side, wicked eyes shining in the bright
light from the chandelier. I saw the muscles in the creature's
fore-part swell, and in a sort of horror-trance I watched its head
dart forward, but, miraculously, it stopped its stroke half-way, and
drew its head back, turning to glance menacingly at me first from one
eye, then the other. Somehow, it seemed to me, the thing was playing
with me as a cat might play a mouse, threatening, intimidating,
letting me know it was master of the situation and could kill me any
time it wished, but deliberately refraining from the death-stroke.
"With one leap I was in the middle of my bed, and when a squad of
bellboys came running in response to the frantic call for help I
telephoned, they found me crouched against the headboard, almost wild
with fear.
"They turned the room completely inside out, rolling back the rugs,
probing into chairs and sofa, emptying the bureau drawers, even taking
down the towels from the bathroom rack, but nowhere was there any sign
of the water moccasin that had terrified me. At the end of fifteen
minutes' search they accepted half a dollar each and went grinning
from the room. I knew it would be useless to appeal for help again,
for I heard one whisper to another as they paused outside my door: 'It
ain't right to let them Yankees loose in N'Orleans; they don't know
how to hold their licker.'
* * * * *
"I didn't take a train next morning. Somehow, I'd an idea--crazy as it
seemed--that my promise to myself and the sudden, inexplicable
appearance of the snake beside my foot were related in some way. Just
after luncheon I thought I'd put the theory to a test.
"'Well,' I said aloud, 'I guess I might as well start packing. Don't
want to let the sun go down and find me here----'
"My theory was right. I hadn't finished speaking when I heard the
warning hiss, and there, poised ready for the stroke, the snake was
coiled before the door. And it was no phantom, either, no figment of
an overwrought imagination. It lay upon a rug the hotel management had
placed before the door to take the wear of constant passage from the
carpet, and I could see the high pile of the rug crushed down beneath
its weight. It was flesh and scales--and fangs!--and it coiled and
threatened me in my twelfth-floor room in the bright sunlight of the
afternoon.
"Little chills of terror chased each other up my back, and I could
feel the short hairs on my neck grow stiff and scratch against my
collar, but I kept myself in hand. Pretending to ignore the loathsome
thing, I flung myself upon the bed.
"'Oh, well,' I said aloud, 'there really isn't any need of hurrying. I
promised Julie that I'd come to her tonight, and I mustn't disappoint
her." Half a minute later I roused myself upon my elbow and glanced
toward the door. The snake was gone.
"'Here's a letter for you, Mr. Minton,' said the desk clerk as I
paused to leave my key. The note was on gray paper edged with
silver-gilt, and very highly scented. The penmanship was tiny, stilted
and ill-formed, as though the author were unused to writing, but I
could make it out:
_Adore
Meet me in St. Denis Cemetery at sunset
A vous de coeur pour l'eternite_