Suddenly, from the heart of the magnolia, came a ripple of liquid
notes, a delirium of melody, wilder than the passion of the
nightingale, more intoxicating than the sweetness of the night--the
mocking-bird calling to its mate.
"Ah, comme c'est coquet!--comme c'est doux!"--murmured the girl who
stood by the gateway of the perfumed garden, holding up her mouth to be
kissed with the simple confidence of a child.
"Not so sweet to me as your voice," he murmured, with lips close to her
lips, and eyes looking into the liquid jet that shone through the silk
of her black lashes.
The little Creole laughed a gentle little laugh of pleasure. "Have you
birds like that in the West?" she asked.
"In cages," he said. "But very few. I have seen five hundred dollars
paid for a fine singer. I wish you were a little mocking-bird!"
"Why?"
"Because I could take you along with me to-morrow."
"And sell me for five hundred dol--?" (A kiss smothered the mischievous
question.)
"For shame!"
[Illustration: _Jutting Balconies in the Creole City_]
"Won't you remember this night when you hear them sing in the
cages?--poor little prisoners!"
"But we have none where I am now going. It is all wild out there; rough
wooden houses and rough men!--no pets--not even a cat!"
"Then what would you do with a little bird in such a place? They would
all laugh at you--would n't they?"
"No; I don't think so. Rough men love little pets."
"Little pets!"
"Like you, yes--too well!"
"Too well?"
"I did not mean to say that."
"But you did say it."
"I do not know what I say when I am looking into your eyes."
"Flatterer!"
The music and perfume of those hours came back to him in fragments
of dreams all through the long voyage;--in slumber broken by the
intervals of rapid travel on river and rail; the crash of loading under
the nickering yellow of pine-fires; the steam song of boats chanting
welcome or warning; voices of mate and roustabout; the roar of railroad
depots; the rumble of baggage in air heavy with the oily breath of
perspiring locomotives; the demands of conductors; the announcement of
stations;--and at last the heavy jolting of the Western stage over
rugged roads where the soil had a faint pink flush, and great coarse
yellow flowers were growing.
So the days and weeks and months passed on; and the far Western
village, with its single glaring street of white sand, blazed under the
summer sun. At intervals came the United States mail-courier, booted
and spurred and armed to the teeth, bearing with him always one small
satiny note, stamped with the postmark of New Orleans, and faintly
perfumed as by the ghost of a magnolia.
"Smells like a woman--that," the bronzed rider sometimes growled out as
he delivered the delicate missive with an unusually pleasant flash in
his great falcon eyes--eyes made fiercely keen by watching the horizon
cut by the fantastic outline of Indian graves, the spiral flight of
savage smoke far off which signals danger, and the spiral flight of
vultures which signals death.
One day he came without a letter for the engineer--"She's forgotten you
this week, Cap," he said in answer to the interrogating look, and rode
away through the belt of woods, redolent of resinous gums and down the
winding ways to the plain, where the eyeless buffalo skulls glimmered
under the sun. Thus he came and thus departed through the rosiness of
many a Western sunset, and brought no smile to the expectant face:
"She's forgotten you again, Cap."
And one tepid night (the 24th of August, 18--), from the spicy shadows
of the woods there rang out a bird-voice with strange exotic tones:
"Sweet, sweet, sweet!"--then cascades of dashing silver melody!--then
long, liquid, passionate calls!--then a deep, rich ripple of caressing
mellow notes, as of love languor oppressed that seeks to laugh. Men
rose and went out under the moon to listen. There was something at once
terribly and tenderly familiar to at least One in those sounds.
"What in Christ's name is that?" whispered a miner, as the melody
quivered far up the white street.
"It is a mocking-bird," answered another who had lived in lands of
palmetto and palm.
And as the engineer listened, there seemed to float to him the
flower-odors of a sunnier land;--the Western hills faded as clouds fade
out of the sky; and before him lay once more the fair streets of a far
city, glimmering with the Mexican silver of Southern moonlight;--again
he saw the rigging of masts making cobweb lines across the faces
of stars and white steamers sleeping in ranks along the river's
crescent-curve, and cottages vine-garlanded or banana-shadowed, and
woods in their dreamy drapery of Spanish moss.
"Got something for you this time," said the United States mail-carrier,
riding in weeks later with his bronzed face made lurid by the sanguine
glow of sunset. He did not say "Cap" this time; neither did he smile.
The envelope was larger than usual. The handwriting was the handwriting
of a man. It contained only these words:
DEAR--, Hortense is dead. It happened very suddenly on the
night of the 24th. Come home at once.