Manuela was tall and slender and graceful, and once you knew her the
lithe form could never be mistaken. She walked with the easy spring
that comes from a perfectly arched foot. To-day she swept swiftly down
Marais Street, casting a quick glance here and there from under her
heavy veil as if she feared she was being followed. If you had peered
under the veil, you would have seen that Manuela's dark eyes were
swollen and discoloured about the lids, as though they had known a
sleepless, tearful night. There had been a picnic the day before, and
as merry a crowd of giddy, chattering Creole girls and boys as ever you
could see boarded the ramshackle dummy-train that puffed its way
wheezily out wide Elysian Fields Street, around the lily-covered
bayous, to Milneburg-on-the-Lake. Now, a picnic at Milneburg is a
thing to be remembered for ever. One charters a rickety-looking,
weather-beaten dancing-pavilion, built over the water, and after
storing the children--for your true Creole never leaves the small folks
at home--and the baskets and mothers downstairs, the young folks go
up-stairs and dance to the tune of the best band you ever heard. For
what can equal the music of a violin, a guitar, a cornet, and a bass
viol to trip the quadrille to at a picnic?
Then one can fish in the lake and go bathing under the prim
bath-houses, so severely separated sexually, and go rowing on the lake
in a trim boat, followed by the shrill warnings of anxious mamans. And
in the evening one comes home, hat crowned with cool gray Spanish moss,
hands burdened with fantastic latanier baskets woven by the brown bayou
boys, hand in hand with your dearest one, tired but happy.
At this particular picnic, however, there had been bitterness of
spirit. Theophile was Manuela's own especial property, and Theophile
had proven false. He had not danced a single waltz or quadrille with
Manuela, but had deserted her for Claralie, blonde and petite. It was
Claralie whom Theophile had rowed out on the lake; it was Claralie whom
Theophile had gallantly led to dinner; it was Claralie's hat that he
wreathed with Spanish moss, and Claralie whom he escorted home after
the jolly singing ride in town on the little dummy-train.
Not that Manuela lacked partners or admirers. Dear no! she was too
graceful and beautiful for that. There had been more than enough for
her. But Manuela loved Theophile, you see, and no one could take his
place. Still, she had tossed her head and let her silvery laughter
ring out in the dance, as though she were the happiest of mortals, and
had tripped home with Henri, leaning on his arm, and looking up into
his eyes as though she adored him.
This morning she showed the traces of a sleepless night and an aching
heart as she walked down Marais Street. Across wide St. Rocque Avenue
she hastened. "Two blocks to the river and one below--" she repeated
to herself breathlessly. Then she stood on the corner gazing about
her, until with a final summoning of a desperate courage she dived
through a small wicket gate into a garden of weed-choked flowers.
There was a hoarse, rusty little bell on the gate that gave querulous
tongue as she pushed it open. The house that sat back in the yard was
little and old and weather-beaten. Its one-story frame had once been
painted, but that was a memory remote and traditional. A straggling
morning-glory strove to conceal its time-ravaged face. The little walk
of broken bits of brick was reddened carefully, and the one little step
was scrupulously yellow-washed, which denoted that the occupants were
cleanly as well as religious.