LOVE, ANGER, AND MISUNDERSTANDING.
The city bells had sounded for noon when the sleeper opened her eyes.
While she slept, Claude had arrived again at his father's cottage from
the scene of the crevasse, and reported to Tarbox the decision of
himself and the engineer, that the gap would not be closed for months
to come. While he told it, they sat down with St. Pierre to breakfast.
Claude, who had had no chance even to seek sleep, ate like a starved
horse. Tarbox watched him closely, with hidden and growing amusement.
Presently their eyes fastened on each other steadily. Tarbox broke the
silence.
"_You_ don't care how the crevasse turns out. I've asked you a
question now twice, and you don't even hear."
"Why you don't ass ag'in?" responded the younger man, reaching over to
the meat-dish and rubbing his bread in the last of the gravy. Some
small care called St. Pierre away from the board. Tarbox leaned
forward on his elbows, and, not knowing he quoted, said softly,--
"There's something up. What is it?"
"Op?" asked Claude, in his full voice, frowning. "Op where?--w'at,
_w'at_ is?"
"Ah, yes!" said Tarbox, with affected sadness. "Yes, that's it; I
thought so.
'Oh-hon for somebody, oh hey for somebody.'"
Claude stopped with a morsel half-way to his mouth, glared at him
several seconds, and then resumed his eating; not like a horse now,
but like a bad dog gnawing an old bone. He glanced again angrily at
the embodiment of irreverence opposite. Mr. Tarbox smiled. Claude let
slip, not intending it, an audible growl, with his eyes in the plate.
Mr. Tarbox's smile increased to a noiseless laugh, and grew and grew
until it took hopeless possession of him. His nerves relaxed, he
trembled, the table trembled with him, his eyes filled with tears, his
brows lifted laboriously, he covered his lips with one hand, and his
abdomen shrank until it pained him. And Claude knew, and showed he
knew it all; that was what made it impossible to stop. At length, with
tottering knees, Mr. Tarbox rose and started silently for the door. He
knew Claude's eyes were following. He heard him rise to his feet. He
felt as though he would have given a thousand dollars if his legs
would but last him through the doorway. But to crown all, St. Pierre
met him just on the threshold, breaking, with unintelligent sympathy,
into a broad, simple smile. Tarbox laid one hand upon the door for
support, and at that moment there was a hurtling sound; something
whizzed by Tarbox's ear, and the meat-dish crashed against the
door-post, and flew into a hundred pieces.
The book-agent ran like a deer for a hundred yards and fell grovelling
upon the turf, the laugh still griping him with the energy of a
panther's jaws, while Claude, who, in blind pursuit, had come
threshing into his father's arms, pulled his hat over his eyes and
strode away towards the skiff ferry. As Mr. Tarbox returned towards
the cottage, St. Pierre met him, looking very grave, if not
displeased. The swamper spoke first.
"Dass mighty good for you I was yondah to stop dat boy. He would 'a'
half-kill' you."
"He'd have served me ex-actly right," said the other, and laughed
again. St. Pierre shook his head, as though this confession were poor
satisfaction, and said,--
"Dass not safe--make a 'Cajun mad. He dawn't git mad easy, but when he
_git_ mad it bre'k out all ove' him, yass. He goin' feel bad all day
now; I see tear' in his eye when he walk off."
"I'm sorry," said Tarbox sincerely, and presently added, "Now, while
you look up a picked gang of timber-men, I'll see if I can charter a
little stern-wheel steamer, get that written permission from Madame
Beausoleil to cut trees on her land, and so forth, and so forth.
You'll hardly see me before bedtime again."
It was the first hour of the afternoon when Claude left his little
workroom and walked slowly down to, and across, Canal Street and into
Bourbon. He had spent the intervening hours seated at his work-table
with his face in his hands. He was in great bitterness. His late
transport of anger gave him no burdensome concern. Indeed, there was
consolation in the thought that he should, by and by, stand erect
before one who was so largely to blame, and make that full confession
and apology which he believed his old-time Grande Pointe schoolmaster
would have offered could Bonaventure ever have so shamefully forgotten
himself. Yet the chagrin of having at once so violently and so
impotently belittled himself added one sting more to his fate. He was
in despair. An escaped balloon, a burst bubble, could hardly have
seemed more utterly beyond his reach than now did Marguerite. And he
could not blame her. She was right, he said sternly to himself--right
to treat his portrait as something that reminded her of nothing,
whether it did so or not; to play on with undisturbed inspiration; to
lift never a glance to his window; and to go away without a word, a
look, a sign, to any one, when the least breath or motion would have
brought him instantly into her sacred presence. She was right. She was
not for him. There is a fitness of things, and there was no
fitness--he said--of him for her. And yet she must and would ever be
more to him than any one else. He would glory in going through life
unloved, while his soul lived in and on the phantom companionship of
that vision of delight which she was and should ever be. The midday
bells sounded softly here and there. He would walk.
As I say, he went slowly down the old rue Bourbon. He had no hunger;
he would pass by the Women's Exchange. There was nothing to stop there
for; was not Madame Beausoleil in Terrebonne, and Marguerite the guest
of that chattering woman in silk and laces? But when he reached the
Exchange doors he drifted in as silently and supinely as any drift-log
would float into the new crevasse.
The same cashier was still on duty. She lighted up joyously as he
entered, and, when he had hung his hat near the door, leaned forward
to address him; but with a faint pain in his face, and loathing in his
heart, he passed on and out into the veranda. The place was well
filled, and he had to look about to find a seat. The bare possibility
that _she_ might be there was overpowering. There was a total
suspension of every sort of emotion. He felt, as he took his chair and
essayed to glance casually around, as light and unreal as any one who
ever walked the tight-rope in a dream. The blood leaped in torrents
through his veins, and yet his movements, as he fumbled aimlessly with
his knife, fork, and glass, were slow and languid.
A slender young waitress came, rested her knuckles on the table, and
leaned on them, let her opposite arm hang limply along the sidewise
curve of her form, and bending a smile of angelic affection upon the
young Acadian, said in a confidential undertone:
"The cashier told me to tell you those ladies have come."
Claude rose quickly and stood looking upon the face before him,
speechless. It was to him exactly as if a man in uniform had laid a
hand upon his shoulder and said, "You're my prisoner." Then, still
gazing, and aware of others looking at him, he slowly sank again into
his seat.
"She just told me to tell you," said the damsel. "Yes, sir. Have you
ordered?"
"Humph?" He was still looking at her.
"I say, have you given your order?"
"Yass."
She paused awkwardly, for she knew he had not, and saw that he was
trying vainly to make her words mean something in his mind.
"Sha'n't I get you some coffee and rolls--same as day before
yesterday?"
"Yass." He did not know what she said. His heart had stopped beating;
now it began again at a gallop. He turned red. He could see the
handkerchief that was wadded into his outer breast-pocket jar in time
with the heavy thump, thump, thump beneath it. The waitress staid an
awful time. At last she came.
"I waited," she sweetly said, "to get _hot_ ones." He drew the
refreshments towards him mechanically. The mere smell of food made him
sick. It seemed impossible that he should eat it. She leaned over him
lovingly and asked, as if referring to the attitude, "Would you like
any thing more?--something sweet?" His flesh crawled. He bent over his
plate, shook his head, and stirred his coffee without having put any
thing into it.
She tripped away, and he drew a breath of momentary relief, leaned
back in his chair, and warily passed his eyes around to see if there
was anybody who was not looking at him and waiting for him to begin to
eat.
Ages afterward--to speak with Claude's feelings--he rose, took up his
check, and went to the desk. The cashier leaned forward and said with
soft blitheness:
"They're here. They're up-stairs now."
Claude answered never a word. He paid his check. As he waited for
change, he cast another glance over the various groups at the tables.
All were strangers. Then he went out. On the single sidewalk step he
halted, and red and blind with mortification, turned again into the
place; he had left his hat. With one magnificent effort at dignity and
unconcern he went to the rack, took down the hat, and as he lowered it
towards his head cast a last look down the room, and--there stood
Marguerite. She had entered just in time, it seemed to him, but just
too late, in fact, to see and understand the blunder. Oh, agony! They
bowed to each other with majestic faintness, and then each from each
was gone. The girl at the desk saw it and was dumb.