Madame Raymonde-Arnault leaned her head against the back of her garden
chair, and watched the young people furtively from beneath her
half-closed eyelids. "He is about to speak," she murmured under her
breath; "she, at least, will be happy!" and her heart fluttered
violently, as if it had been her own thin bloodless hand which Richard
Keith was holding in his; her dark sunken eyes, instead of Félice's
brown ones, which drooped beneath his tender gaze.
Marcelite, the old _bonne_, who stood erect and stately behind her
mistress, permitted herself also to regard them for a moment with
something like a smile relaxing her sombre yellow face; then she too
turned her turbaned head discreetly in another direction.
The plantation house at La Glorieuse is built in a shining loop of Bayou
L'Eperon. A level grassy lawn, shaded by enormous live-oaks, stretches
across from the broad stone steps to the sodded levee, where a flotilla
of small boats, drawn up among the flags and lily-pads, rise and fall
with the lapping waves. On the left of the house the white cabins of the
quarter show their low roofs above the shrubbery; to the right the
plantations of cane, following the inward curve of the bayou, sweep
southward field after field, their billowy blue-green reaches blending
far in the rear with the indistinct purple haze of the swamp. The great
square house, raised high on massive stone pillars, dates back to the
first quarter of the century; its sloping roof is set with rows of
dormer-windows, the big red double chimneys rising oddly from their
midst; wide galleries with fluted columns enclose it on three sides;
from the fourth is projected a long narrow wing, two stories in height,
which stands somewhat apart from the main building, but is connected
with it by a roofed and latticed passageway. The lower rooms of this
wing open upon small porticos, with balustrades of wrought ironwork
rarely fanciful and delicate. From these you may step into the rose
garden--a tangled pleasaunce which rambles away through alleys of
wild-peach and magnolia to an orange grove, whose trees are gnarled and
knotted with the growth of half a century.
The early shadows were cool and dewy there that morning; the breath of
damask-roses was sweet on the air; brown, gold-dusted butterflies were
hovering over the sweet-pease abloom in sunny corners; birds shot up now
and then from the leafy aisles, singing, into the clear blue sky above;
the chorus of the negroes at work among the young cane floated in,
mellow and resonant, from the fields. The old mistress of La Glorieuse
saw it all behind her drooped eyelids. Was it not April too, that
long-gone unforgotten morning? And were not the bees busy in the hearts
of the roses, and the birds singing, when Richard Keith, the first of
the name who came to La Glorieuse, held her hand in his, and whispered
his love-story yonder, by the ragged thicket of crêpe-myrtle? Ah,
Félice, my child, thou art young, but I too have had my sixteen years;
and yellow as are the curls on the head bent over thine, those of the
first Richard were more golden still. And the second Richard, he who--
Marcelite's hand fell heavily on her mistress's shoulder. Madame
Arnault opened her eyes and sat up, grasping the arms of her chair. A
harsh grating sound had fallen suddenly into the stillness, and the
shutters of one of the upper windows of the wing which overlooked the
garden were swinging slowly outward. A ripple of laughter, musical and
mocking, rang clearly on the air; at the same moment a woman appeared,
framed like a portrait in the narrow casement. She crossed her arms on
the iron window-bar, and gazed silently down on the startled group
below. She was strangely beautiful and young, though an air of soft and
subtle maturity pervaded her graceful figure. A glory of yellow hair
encircled her pale oval face, and waved away in fluffy masses to her
waist; her full lips were scarlet; her eyes, beneath their straight dark
brows, were gray, with emerald shadows in their luminous depths. Her
low-cut gown, of some thin, yellowish-white material, exposed her
exquisitely rounded throat and perfect neck; long, flowing sleeves of
spidery lace fell away from her shapely arms, leaving them bare to the
shoulder; loose strings of pearls were wound around her small wrists,
and about her throat was clasped a strand of blood-red coral, from
which hung to the hollow of her bosom a single translucent drop of
amber. A smile at once daring and derisive parted her lips; an elusive
light came and went in her eyes.
Keith had started impatiently from his seat at the unwelcome
interruption. He stood regarding the intruder with mute, half-frowning
inquiry.
Félice turned a bewildered face to her grandmother. "Who is it, mère?"
she whispered. "Did--did you give her leave?"
Madame Arnault had sunk back in her chair. Her hands trembled
convulsively still, and the lace on her bosom rose and fell with the
hurried beating of her heart. But she spoke in her ordinary measured,
almost formal tones, as she put out a hand and drew the girl to her
side. "I do not know, my child. Perhaps Suzette Beauvais has come over
with her guests from Grandchamp. I thought I heard but now the sound of
boats on the bayou. Suzette is ever ready with her pranks. Or perhaps--"
She stopped abruptly. The stranger was drawing the batten blinds
together. Her ivory-white arms gleamed in the sun. For a moment they
could see her face shining like a star against the dusky glooms within;
then the bolt was shot sharply to its place.
Old Marcelite drew a long breath of relief as she disappeared. A
smothered ejaculation had escaped her lips, under the girl's intent
gaze; an ashen gray had overspread her dark face. "Mam'selle Suzette,
she been an' dress up one o' her young ladies jes fer er trick," she
said, slowly, wiping the great drops of perspiration from her wrinkled
forehead.
"Suzette?" echoed Félice, incredulously. "She would never dare! Who
_can_ it be?"
"It is easy enough to find out," laughed Keith. "Let us go and see for
ourselves who is masquerading in my quarters."
He drew her with him as he spoke along the winding violet-bordered walks
which led to the house. She looked anxiously back over her shoulder at
her grandmother. Madame Arnault half arose, and made an imperious
gesture of dissent; but Marcelite forced her gently into her seat, and
leaning forward, whispered a few words rapidly in her ear.
"Thou art right, Marcelite," she acquiesced, with a heavy sigh. "'Tis
better so."
They spoke in _nègre_, that mysterious patois which is so uncouth in
itself, so soft and caressing on the lips of women. Madame Arnault
signed to the girl to go on. She shivered a little, watching their
retreating figures. The old _bonne_ threw a light shawl about her
shoulders, and crouched affectionately at her feet. The murmur of their
voices as they talked long and earnestly together hardly reached beyond
the shadows of the wild-peach-tree beneath which they sat.
"How beautiful she was!" Félice said, musingly, as they approached the
latticed passageway.
"Well, yes," her companion returned, carelessly. "I confess I do not
greatly fancy that style of beauty myself." And he glanced significantly
down at her own flower-like face.
She flushed, and her brown eyes drooped, but a bright little smile
played about her sensitive mouth. "I cannot see," she declared, "how
Suzette could have dared to take her friends into the ballroom!"
"Why?" he asked, smiling at her vehemence.
She stopped short in her surprise. "Do you not know, then?" She sank her
voice to a whisper. "The ballroom has never been opened since the night
my mother died. I was but a baby then, though sometimes I imagine that
I remember it all. There was a grand ball there that night. La Glorieuse
was full of guests, and everybody from all the plantations around was
here. Mère has never told me how it was, nor Marcelite; but the other
servants used to talk to me about my beautiful young mother, and tell me
how she died suddenly in her ball dress, while the ball was going on. My
father had the whole wing closed at once, and no one was ever allowed to
enter it. I used to be afraid to play in its shadow, and if I did stray
anywhere near it, my father would always call me away. Her death must
have broken his heart. He rarely spoke; I never saw him smile; and his
eyes were so sad that I could weep now at remembering them. Then he too
died while I was still a little girl, and now I have no one in the world
but dear old mère." Her voice trembled a little, but she flushed, and
smiled again beneath his meaning look. "It was many years before even
the lower floor was reopened, and I am almost sure that yours is the
only room there which has ever been used."
They stepped, as she concluded, into the hall.
"I have never been in here before," she said, looking about her with
shy curiosity. A flood of sunlight poured through the wide arched window
at the foot of the stair. The door of the room nearest the entrance
stood open; the others, ranging along the narrow hall, were all closed.
"This is my room," he said, nodding towards the open door.
She turned her head quickly away, with an impulse of girlish modesty,
and ran lightly up the stair. He glanced downward as he followed, and
paused, surprised to see the flutter of white garments in a shaded
corner of his room. Looking more closely, he saw that it was a glimmer
of light from an open window on the dark polished floor.
The upper hall was filled with sombre shadows; the motionless air was
heavy with a musty, choking odor. In the dimness a few tattered hangings
were visible on the walls; a rope, with bits of crumbling evergreen
clinging to it, trailed from above one of the low windows. The panelled
double door of the ballroom was shut; no sound came from behind it.
"The girls have seen us coming," said Félice, picking her way daintily
across the dust-covered floor, "and they have hidden themselves inside."
Keith pushed open the heavy valves, which creaked noisily on their
rusty hinges. The gloom within was murkier still; the chill dampness,
with its smell of mildew and mould, was like that of a funeral vault.
The large, low-ceilinged room ran the entire length of the house. A
raised dais, whose faded carpet had half rotted away, occupied an alcove
at one end; upon it four or five wooden stools were placed; one of these
was overturned; on another a violin in its baggy green baize cover was
lying. Straight high-backed chairs were pushed against the walls on
either side; in front of an open fireplace with a low wooden mantel two
small cushioned divans were drawn up, with a claw-footed table between
them. A silver salver filled with tall glasses was set carelessly on one
edge of the table; a half-open fan of sandal-wood lay beside it; a man's
glove had fallen on the hearth just within the tarnished brass fender.
Cobwebs depended from the ceiling, and hung in loose threads from the
mantel; dust was upon everything, thick and motionless; a single ghostly
ray of light that filtered in through a crevice in one of the shutters
was weighted with gray lustreless motes. The room was empty and silent.
The visitors, who had come so stealthily, had as stealthily departed,
leaving no trace behind them.
"They have played us a pretty trick," said Keith, gayly. "They must have
fled as soon as they saw us start towards the house." He went over to
the window from which the girl had looked down into the rose garden, and
gave it a shake. The dust flew up in a suffocating cloud, and the spiked
nails which secured the upper sash rattled in their places.
"That is like Suzette Beauvais," Félice replied, absently. She was not
thinking of Suzette. She had forgotten even the stranger, whose
disdainful eyes, fixed upon herself, had moved her sweet nature to
something like a rebellious anger. Her thoughts were on the beautiful
young mother of alien race, whose name, for some reason, she was
forbidden to speak. She saw her glide, gracious and smiling, along the
smooth floor; she heard her voice above the call and response of the
violins; she breathed the perfume of her laces, backward-blown by the
swift motion of the dance!
She strayed dreamily about, touching with an almost reverent finger
first one worm-eaten object and then another, as if by so doing she
could make the imagined scene more real. Her eyes were downcast; the
blood beneath her rich dark skin came and went in brilliant flushes on
her cheeks; the bronze hair, piled in heavy coils on her small,
well-poised head, fell in loose rings on her low forehead and against
her white neck; her soft gray gown, following the harmonious lines of
her slender figure, seemed to envelop her like a twilight cloud.
"She is adorable," said Richard Keith to himself.
It was the first time that he had been really alone with her, though
this was the third week of his stay in the hospitable old mansion where
his father and his grandfather before him had been welcome guests. Now
that he came to think of it, in that bundle of yellow, time-worn letters
from Félix Arnault to Richard Keith, which he had found among his
father's papers, was one which described at length a ball in this very
ballroom. Was it in celebration of his marriage, or of his home-coming
after a tour abroad? Richard could not remember. But he idly recalled
portions of other letters, as he stood with his elbow on the mantel
watching Félix Arnault's daughter.
"_Your son and my daughter_," the phrase which had made him smile when
he read it yonder in his Maryland home, brought now a warm glow to his
heart. The half-spoken avowal, the question that had trembled on his
lips a few moments ago in the rose garden, stirred impetuously within
him.
Félice stepped down from the dais where she had been standing, and came
swiftly across the room, as if his unspoken thought had called her to
him. A tender rapture possessed him to see her thus drawing towards him;
he longed to stretch out his arms and fold her to his breast. He moved,
and his hand came in contact with a small object on the mantel. He
picked it up. It was a ring, a band of dull worn gold, with a confused
tracery graven upon it. He merely glanced at it, slipping it
mechanically on his finger. His eyes were full upon hers, which were
suffused and shining.
"Did you speak?" she asked, timidly. She had stopped abruptly, and was
looking at him with a hesitating, half-bewildered expression.
"No," he replied. His mood had changed. He walked again to the window
and examined the clumsy bolt. "Strange!" he muttered. "I have never seen
a face like hers," he sighed, dreamily.
"She was very beautiful," Félice returned, quietly. "I think we must be
going," she added. "Mère will be growing impatient." The flush had died
out of her cheek, her arms hung listlessly at her side. She shuddered as
she gave a last look around the desolate room. "They were dancing here
when my mother died," she said to herself.
He preceded her slowly down the stair. The remembrance of the woman
began vaguely to stir his senses. He had hardly remarked her then,
absorbed as he had been in another idea. Now she seemed to swim
voluptuously before his vision; her tantalizing laugh rang in his ears;
her pale perfumed hair was blown across his face; he felt its filmy
strands upon his lips and eyelids. "Do you think," he asked, turning
eagerly on the bottom step, "that they could have gone into any of these
rooms?"
She shrank unaccountably from him. "Oh no," she cried. "They are in the
rose garden with mère, or they have gone around to the lawn. Come"; and
she hurried out before him.
Madame Arnault looked at them sharply as they came up to where she was
sitting. "No one!" she echoed, in response to Keith's report. "Then they
really have gone back?"
"Madame knows dat we is hear de boats pass up de bayou whilse m'sieu an'
mam'selle was inside," interposed Marcelite, stooping to pick up her
mistress's cane.
"I would not have thought Suzette so--so indiscreet," said Félice. There
was a note of weariness in her voice.
Madame Arnault looked anxiously at her and then at Keith. The young man
was staring abstractedly at the window, striving to recall the vision
that had appeared there, and he felt, rather than saw, his hostess start
and change color when her eyes fell upon the ring he was wearing. He
lifted his hand covertly, and turned the trinket around in the light,
but he tried in vain to decipher the irregular characters traced upon
it.
"Let us go in," said the old madame. "Félice, my child, thou art
fatigued."
Now when in all her life before was Félice ever fatigued? Félice, whose
strong young arms could send a pirogue flying up the bayou for miles;
Félice, who was ever ready for a tramp along the rose-hedged lanes to
the swamp lakes when the water-lilies were in bloom; to the sugar-house
in grinding-time, down the levee road to St. Joseph's, the little brown
ivy-grown church, whose solitary spire arose slim and straight above
the encircling trees.
Marcelite gave an arm to her mistress, though, in truth, she seemed to
walk a little unsteadily herself. Félice followed with Keith, who was
silent and self-absorbed.
The day passed slowly, a constraint had somehow fallen upon the little
household. Madame Arnault's fine high-bred old face wore its customary
look of calm repose, but her eyes now and then sought her guest with an
expression which he could not have fathomed if he had observed it. But
he saw nothing. A mocking red mouth; a throat made for the kisses of
love; white arms strung with pearls--these were ever before him,
shutting away even the pure sweet face of Félice Arnault.
"Why did I not look at her more closely when I had the opportunity, fool
that I was?" he asked himself, savagely, again and again, revolving in
his mind a dozen pretexts for going at once to the Beauvais plantation,
a mile or so up the bayou. But he felt an inexplicable shyness at the
thought of putting any of these plans into action, and so allowed the
day to drift by. He arose gladly when the hour for retiring came--that
hour which he had hitherto postponed by every means in his power. He
kissed, as usual, the hand of his hostess, and held that of Félice in
his for a moment; but he did not feel its trembling, or see the timid
trouble in her soft eyes.
His room in the silent and deserted wing was full of fantastic shadows.
He threw himself on a chair beside a window without lighting his lamp.
The rose garden outside was steeped in moonlight; the magnolia bells
gleamed waxen-white against their glossy green leaves; the vines on the
tall trellises threw a soft network of dancing shadows on the
white-shelled walks below; the night air stealing about was loaded with
the perfume of roses and sweet-olive; a mocking-bird sang in an
orange-tree, his mate responding sleepily from her nest in the old
summer-house.
"To-morrow," he murmured, half aloud, "I will go to Grandchamp and give
her the ring she left in the old ballroom."
He looked at it glowing dully in the moonlight; suddenly he lifted his
head, listening. Did a door grind somewhere near on its hinges? He got
up cautiously and looked out. It was not fancy. She was standing full in
view on the small balcony of the room next his own. Her white robes
waved to and fro in the breeze; the pearls on her arms glistened. Her
face, framed in the pale gold of her hair, was turned towards him; a
smile curved her lips; her mysterious eyes seemed to be searching his
through the shadow. He drew back, confused and trembling, and when, a
second later, he looked again, she was gone.
He sat far into the night, his brain whirling, his blood on fire. Who
was she, and what was the mystery hidden in this isolated old plantation
house? His thoughts reverted to the scene in the rose garden, and he
went over and over all its details. He remembered Madame Arnault's
agitation when the window opened and the girl appeared; her evident
discomfiture--of which at the time he had taken no heed, but which came
back to him vividly enough now--at his proposal to visit the ballroom;
her startled recognition of the ring on his finger; her slurring
suggestion of visitors from Grandchamp; the look of terror on
Marcelite's face. What did it all mean? Félice, he was sure, knew
nothing. But here, in an unused portion of the house, which even the
members of the family had never visited, a young and beautiful girl was
shut up a prisoner, condemned perhaps to a life-long captivity.
"Good God!" He leaped to his feet at the thought. He would go and
thunder at Madame Arnault's door, and demand an explanation. But no; not
yet. He calmed himself with an effort. By too great haste he might
injure her. "Insane?" He laughed aloud at the idea of madness in
connection with that exquisite creature.
It dawned upon him, as he paced restlessly back and forth, that although
his father had been here more than once in his youth and manhood, he had
never heard him speak of La Glorieuse nor of Félix Arnault, whose
letters he had read after his father's death a few months ago--those old
letters whose affectionate warmth indeed had determined him, in the
first desolation of his loss, to seek the family which seemed to have
been so bound to his own. Morose and taciturn as his father had been,
surely he would sometimes have spoken of his old friend if--Worn out at
last with conjecture; beaten back, bruised and breathless, from an
enigma which he could not solve; exhausted by listening with strained
attention for some movement in the next room, he threw himself on his
bed, dressed as he was, and fell into a heavy sleep, which lasted far
into the forenoon of the next day.
When he came out (walking like one in a dream), he found a gay party
assembled on the lawn in front of the house. Suzette Beauvais and her
guests, a bevy of girls, had come from Grandchamp. They had been joined,
as they rowed down the bayou, by the young people from the plantation
houses on the way. Half a dozen boats, their long paddles laid across
the seats, were added to the home fleet at the landing. Their stalwart
black rowers were basking in the sun on the levee, or lounging about the
quarter. At the moment of his appearance, Suzette herself was
indignantly disclaiming any complicity in the jest of the day before.
"Myself, I was making o'ange-flower conserve," she declared; "an' anyhow
I wouldn't go in that ballroom unless madame send me."
"But who was it, then?" insisted Félice.
Mademoiselle Beauvais spread out her fat little hands and lifted her
shoulders. "_Mo pas connais_," she laughed, dropping into patois.
Madame Arnault here interposed. It was but the foolish conceit of some
teasing neighbor, she said, and not worth further discussion. Keith's
blood boiled in his veins at this calm dismissal of the subject, but he
gave no sign. He saw her glance warily at himself from time to time.
"I will sift the matter to the bottom," he thought, "and I will force
her to confess the truth, whatever it may be, before the world."
The noisy chatter and meaningless laughter around him jarred upon his
nerves; he longed to be alone with his thoughts; and presently, pleading
a headache--indeed his temples throbbed almost to bursting, and his eyes
were hot and dry--he quitted the lawn, seeing but not noting until long
afterwards, when they smote his memory like a two-edged knife, the pain
in Félice's uplifted eyes, and the little sorrowful quiver of her mouth.
He strolled around the corner of the house to his apartment. The blinds
of the arched window were drawn, and a hazy twilight was diffused about
the hall, though it was mid-afternoon outside. As he entered, closing
the door behind him, the woman at that moment uppermost in his thoughts
came down the dusky silence from the further end of the hall. She turned
her inscrutable eyes upon him in passing, and flitted noiselessly and
with languid grace up the stairway, the faint swish of her gown
vanishing with her. He hesitated a moment, overpowered by conflicting
emotion; then he sprang recklessly after her.
He pushed open the ballroom door, reaching his arms out blindly before
him. Once more the great dust-covered room was empty. He strained his
eyes helplessly into the obscurity. A chill reaction passed over him; he
felt himself on the verge of a swoon. He did not this time even try to
discover the secret door or exit by which she had disappeared; he
looked, with a hopeless sense of discouragement, at the barred windows,
and turned to leave the room. As he did so, he saw a handkerchief lying
on the threshold of the door. He picked it up eagerly, and pressed it to
his lips. A peculiar delicate perfume which thrilled his senses lurked
in its gossamer folds. As he was about thrusting it into his
breast-pocket, he noticed in one corner a small blood-stain fresh and
wet. He had then bitten his lip in his excitement.
"I need no further proof," he said aloud, and his own voice startled
him, echoing down the long hall. "She is beyond all question a prisoner
in this detached building, which has mysterious exits and entrances.
She has been forced to promise that she will not go outside of its
walls, or she is afraid to do so. I will bring home this monstrous
crime. I will release this lovely young woman who dares not speak, yet
so plainly appeals to me." Already he saw in fancy her starlike eyes
raised to his in mute gratitude, her white hand laid confidingly on his
arm.
The party of visitors remained at La Glorieuse overnight. The negro
fiddlers came in, and there was dancing in the old-fashioned double
parlors and on the moonlit galleries. Félice was unnaturally gay. Keith
looked on gloomily, taking no part in the amusement.
"_Il est bien bête_, your yellow-haired Marylander," whispered Suzette
Beauvais to her friend.
He went early to his room, but he watched in vain for some sign from his
beautiful neighbor. He grew sick with apprehension. Had Madame
Arnault--But no; she would not dare. "I will wait one more day," he
finally decided; "and then--"
The next morning, after a late breakfast, some one proposed impromptu
charades and tableaux. Madame Arnault good-naturedly sent for the keys
to the tall presses built into the walls, which contained the
accumulated trash and treasure of several generations. Mounted on a
stepladder, Robert Beauvais explored the recesses, and threw down to the
laughing crowd embroidered shawls and scarfs yellow with age, soft
muslins of antique pattern, stiff big-flowered brocades, scraps of gauze
ribbon, gossamer laces. On one topmost shelf he came upon a small wooden
box inlaid with mother-of-pearl. Félice reached up for it, and, moved by
some undefined impulse, Richard came and stood by her side while she
opened it. A perfume which he recognized arose from it as she lifted a
fold of tissue-paper. Some strings of Oriental pearls of extraordinary
size, and perfect in shape and color, were coiled underneath, with a
coral necklace, whose pendant of amber had broken off and rolled into a
corner. With them--he hardly restrained an exclamation, and his hand
involuntarily sought his breast-pocket at sight of the handkerchief with
a drop of fresh blood in one corner! Félice trembled without knowing
why. Madame Arnault, who had just entered the room, took the box from
her quietly, and closed the lid with a snap. The girl, accustomed to
implicit obedience, asked no questions; the others, engaged in turning
over the old-time finery, had paid no attention.
"Does she think to disarm me by such puerile tricks?" he thought,
turning a look of angry warning on the old madame; and in the steady
gaze which she fixed on him he read a haughty defiance.
He forced himself to enter into the sports of the day, and he walked
down to the boat-landing a little before sunset to see the guests
depart. As the line of boats swept away, the black rowers dipping their
oars lightly in the placid waves, he turned with a sense of release,
leaving Madame Arnault and Félice still at the landing, and went down
the levee road towards St. Joseph's. The field gang, whose red, blue,
and brown blouses splotched the squares of cane with color, was
preparing to quit work; loud laughter and noisy jests rang out on the
air; high-wheeled plantation wagons creaked along the lanes; negro
children, with dip-nets and fishing-poles over their shoulders, ran
homeward along the levee, the dogs at their heels barking joyously; a
schooner, with white sail outspread, was stealing like a fairy bark
around a distant bend of the bayou; the silvery waters were turning to
gold under a sunset sky.
It was twilight when he struck across the plantation, and came around by
the edge of the swamp to the clump of trees in a corner of the home
field which he had often remarked from his window. As he approached, he
saw a woman come out of the dense shadow, as if intending to meet him,
and then draw back again. His heart throbbed painfully, but he walked
steadily forward. It was only Félice. _Only Félice!_ She was sitting on
a flat tombstone. The little spot was the Raymonde-Arnault family
burying-ground. There were many marble headstones and shafts, and two
broad low tombs side by side and a little apart from the others. A
tangle of rose-briers covered the sunken graves, a rank growth of grass
choked the narrow paths, the little gate interlaced and overhung with
honeysuckle sagged away from its posts, the fence itself had lost a
picket here and there, and weeds flaunted boldly in the gaps. The girl
looked wan and ghostly in the lonely dusk.
"This is my father's grave, and my mother is here," she said, abruptly,
as he came up and stood beside her. Her head was drooped upon her
breast, and he saw that she had been weeping. "See," she went on,
drawing her finger along the mildewed lettering: "'Félix Marie-Joseph
Arnault ... âgé de trente-quatre ans' ... 'Hélène Pallacier, épouse de
Félix Arnault ... décédée à l'âge de dix-neuf ans.' Nineteen years old,"
she repeated, slowly. "My mother was one year younger than I am when she
died--my beautiful mother!"
Her voice sounded like a far-away murmur in his ears. He looked at her,
vaguely conscious that she was suffering. But he did not speak, and
after a little she got up and went away. Her dress, which brushed him in
passing, was wet with dew. He watched her slight figure, moving like a
spirit along the lane, until a turn in the hedge hid her from sight.
Then he turned again towards the swamp, and resumed his restless walk.
Some hours later he crossed the rose garden. The moon was under a cloud;
the trunks of the crêpe-myrtles were like pale spectres in the uncertain
light. The night wind blew in chill and moist from the swamp. The house
was dark and quiet, but he heard the blind of an upper window turned
stealthily as he stepped into the latticed arcade.
"The old madame is watching me--and her," he said to himself.
His agitation had now become supreme. The faint familiar perfume that
stole about his room filled him with a kind of frenzy. Was this the
chivalric devotion of which he had so boasted? this the desire to
protect a young and defenceless woman? He no longer dared question
himself. He seemed to feel her warm breath against his cheeks. He threw
up his arms with a gesture of despair. A sigh stirred the deathlike
stillness. At last! She was there, just within his doorway; the pale
glimmer of the veiled moon fell upon her. Her trailing laces wrapped her
about like a silver mist; her arms were folded across her bosom; her
eyes--he dared not interpret the meaning which he read in those
wonderful eyes. She turned slowly and went down the hall. He followed
her, reeling like a drunkard. His feet seemed clogged, the blood ran
thick in his veins, a strange roaring was in his ears. His hot eyes
strained after her as she vanished, just beyond his touch, into the room
next his own. He threw himself against the closed door in a transport of
rage. It yielded suddenly, as if opened from within. A full blaze of
light struck his eyes, blinding him for an instant; then he saw her. A
huge four-posted bed with silken hangings occupied a recess in the room.
Across its foot a low couch was drawn. She had thrown herself there. Her
head was pillowed on crimson gold-embroidered cushions; her diaphanous
draperies, billowing foamlike over her, half concealed, half revealed
her lovely form; her hair waved away from her brows, and spread like a
shower of gold over the cushions. One bare arm hung to the floor;
something jewel-like gleamed in the half-closed hand; the other lay
across her forehead, and from beneath it her eyes were fixed upon him.
He sprang forward with a cry....
At first he could remember nothing. The windows were open; the heavy
curtains which shaded them moved lazily in the breeze; a shaft of
sunlight that came in between them fell upon the polished surface of the
marble mantel. He examined with languid curiosity some trifles that
stood there--a pair of Dresden figures, a blue Sèvres vase of graceful
shape, a bronze clock with gilded rose-wreathed Cupids; and then raised
his eyes to the two portraits which hung above. One of these was
familiar enough--the dark melancholy face of Félix Arnault, whose
portrait by different hands and at different periods of his life hung
in nearly every room of La Glorieuse. The blood surged into his face and
receded again at sight of the other. Oh, so strangely like! The yellow
hair, the slumberous eyes, the full throat clasped about with a single
strand of coral. Yes, it was she! He lifted himself on his elbow. He was
in bed. Surely this was the room into which she had drawn him with her
eyes. Did he sink on the threshold, all his senses swooning into
delicious faith? Or had he, indeed, in that last moment thrown himself
on his knees by her couch? He could not remember, and he sank back with
a sigh.
Instantly Madame Arnault was bending over him. Her cool hands were on
his forehead. "_Dieu merci!_" she exclaimed, "thou art thyself once
more, _mon fils_."
He seized her hand imperiously. "Tell me, madame," he demanded--"tell
me, for the love of God! What is she? Who is she? Why have you shut her
away in this deserted place? Why--"
She was looking down at him with an expression half of pity, half of
pain.
"Forgive me," he faltered, involuntarily, all his darker suspicions
somehow vanishing; "but--oh, tell me!"
"Calm thyself, Richard," she said, soothingly, seating herself on the
side of the bed, and stroking his hand gently. Too agitated to speak, he
continued to gaze at her with imploring eyes. "Yes, yes, I will relate
the whole story," she added, hastily, for he was panting and struggling
for speech. "I heard you fall last night," she continued, relapsing for
greater ease into French; "for I was full of anxiety about you, and I
lingered long at my window watching for you. I came at once with
Marcelite, and found you lying insensible across the threshold of this
room. We lifted you to the bed, and bled you after the old fashion, and
then I gave you a tisane of my own making, which threw you into a quiet
sleep. I have watched beside you until your waking. Now you are but a
little weak from fasting and excitement, and when you have rested and
eaten--"
"No," he pleaded; "now, at once!"
"Very well," she said, simply. She was silent a moment, as if arranging
her thoughts. "Your grandfather, a Richard Keith like yourself," she
began, "was a college-mate and friend of my brother, Henri Raymonde, and
accompanied him to La Glorieuse during one of their vacations. I was
already betrothed to Monsieur Arnault, but I--No matter! I never saw
Richard Keith afterwards. But years later he sent your father, who also
bore his name, to visit me here. My son, Félix, was but a year or so
younger than his boy, and the two lads became at once warm friends. They
went abroad, and pursued their studies side by side, like brothers. They
came home together, and when Richard's father died, Félix spent nearly a
year with him on his Maryland plantation. They exchanged, when apart,
almost daily letters. Richard's marriage, which occurred soon after they
left college, strengthened rather than weakened this extraordinary bond
between them. Then came on the war. They were in the same command, and
hardly lost sight of each other during their four years of service.
"When the war was ended, your father went back to his estates. Félix
turned his face homeward, but drifted by some strange chance down to
Florida, where he met _her_"--she glanced at the portrait over the
mantel. "Hélène Pallacier was Greek by descent, her family having been
among those brought over some time during the last century as colonists
to Florida from the Greek islands. He married her, barely delaying his
marriage long enough to write me that he was bringing home a bride. She
was young, hardly more than a child, indeed, and marvellously
beautiful"--Keith moved impatiently; he found these family details
tedious and uninteresting--"a radiant soulless creature, whose only law
was her own selfish enjoyment, and whose coming brought pain and
bitterness to La Glorieuse. These were her rooms. She chose them because
of the rose garden, for she had a sensuous and passionate love of
nature. She used to lie for hours on the grass there, with her arms
flung over her head, gazing dreamily on the fluttering leaves above her.
The pearls--which she always wore--some coral ornaments, and a handful
of amber beads were her only dower, but her caprices were the insolent
and extravagant caprices of a queen. Félix, who adored her, gratified
them at whatever expense; and I think at first she had a careless sort
of regard for him. But she hated the little Félice, whose coming gave
her the first pang of physical pain she had ever known. She never
offered the child a caress. She sometimes looked at her with a
suppressed rage which filled me with terror and anxiety.
"When Félice was a little more than a year old, your father came to La
Glorieuse to pay us a long-promised visit. His wife had died some
months before, and you, a child of six or seven years, were left in
charge of relatives in Maryland. Richard was in the full vigor of
manhood, broad-shouldered, tall, blue-eyed, and blond-haired, like his
father and like you. From the moment of their first meeting Hélène
exerted all the power of her fascination to draw him to her. Never had
she been so whimsical, so imperious, so bewitching! Loyal to his friend,
faithful to his own high sense of honor, he struggled against a growing
weakness, and finally fled. I will never forget the night he went away.
A ball had been planned by Félix in honor of his friend. The ballroom
was decorated under his own supervision. The house was filled with
guests from adjoining parishes; everybody, young and old, came from the
plantations around. Hélène was dazzling that night. The light of triumph
in her cheeks; her eyes shone with a softness which I had never seen in
them before. I watched her walking up and down the room with Richard, or
floating with him in the dance. They were like a pair of radiant godlike
visitants from another world. My heart ached for them in spite of my
indignation and apprehension; for light whispers were beginning to
circulate, and I saw more than one meaning smile directed at them.
Félix, who was truth itself, was gayly unconscious.
"Towards midnight I heard far up the bayou the shrill whistle of the
little packet which passed up and down then, as now, twice a week; and
presently she swung up to our landing. Richard was standing with Hélène
by the fireplace. They had been talking for some time in low earnest
tones. A sudden look of determination came into his eyes. I saw him draw
from his finger a ring which she had one day playfully bade him wear,
and offer it to her. His face was white and strained; hers wore a look
which I could not fathom. He quitted her side abruptly, and walked
rapidly across the room, threading his way among the dancers, and
disappeared in the press about the door. A few moments later a note was
handed me. I heard the boat steam away from the landing as I read it. It
was a hurried line from Richard. He said that he had been called away on
urgent business, and he begged me to make his adieux to Madame Arnault
and Félix. Félix was worried and perplexed by the sudden departure of
his guest. Hélène said not a word, but very soon I saw her slipping down
the stair, and I knew that she had gone to her room. Her absence was
not remarked, for the ball was at its height. It was almost daylight
when the last dance was concluded, and the guests who were staying in
the house had retired to their rooms.
"Félix, having seen to the comfort of all, went at last to join his
wife. He burst into my room a second later almost crazed with horror and
grief. I followed him to this room. She was lying on a couch at the foot
of the bed. One arm was thrown across her forehead, the other hung to
the floor, and in her hand she held a tiny silver bottle with a jewelled
stopper. A handkerchief, with a single drop of blood upon it, was lying
on her bosom. A faint curious odor exhaled from her lips and hung about
the room, but the poison had left no other trace.
"No one save ourselves and Marcelite ever knew the truth. She had danced
too much at the ball that night, and she had died suddenly of
heart-disease. We buried her out yonder in the old Raymonde-Arnault
burying-ground. I do not know what the letter contained which Félix
wrote to Richard. He never uttered his name afterwards. The ballroom,
the whole wing, in truth, was at once closed. Everything was left
exactly as it was on that fatal night. A few years ago, the house being
unexpectedly full, I opened the room in which you have been staying, and
it has been used from time to time as a guest-room since. My son lived
some years, prematurely old, heart-broken, and desolate. He died with
her name on his lips."
Madame Arnault stopped.
A suffocating sensation was creeping over her listener. Only in the past
few moments had the signification of the story begun to dawn upon him.
"Do you mean," he gasped, "that the girl whom I--that she is--was--"
"Hélène, the dead wife of Félix Arnault," she replied, gravely. "Her
restless spirit has walked here before. I have sometimes heard her
tantalizing laugh echo through the house, but no one had ever seen her
until you came--so like the Richard Keith she loved!"
"When I read your letter," she went on, after a short silence, "which
told me that you wished to come to those friends to whom your father had
been so dear, all the past arose before me, and I felt that I ought to
forbid your coming. But I remembered how Félix and Richard had loved
each other before she came between them. I thought of the other Richard
Keith whom I--I loved once; and I dreamed of a union at last between the
families. I hoped, Richard, that you and Félice--"
But Richard was no longer listening. He wished to believe the whole
fantastic story an invention of the keen-eyed old madame herself. Yet
something within him confessed to its truth. A tumultuous storm of
baffled desire, of impotent anger, swept over him. The ring he wore
burned into his flesh. But he had no thought of removing it--the ring
which had once belonged to the beautiful golden-haired woman who had
come back from the grave to woo him to her!
He turned his face away and groaned.
Her eyes hardened. She rose stiffly. "I will send a servant with your
breakfast," she said, with her hand on the door. "The down boat will
pass La Glorieuse this afternoon. You will perhaps wish to take
advantage of it."
He started. He had not thought of going--of leaving her--_her_! He
looked at the portrait on the wall and laughed bitterly.
Madame Arnault accompanied him with ceremonious politeness to the front
steps that afternoon.
"Mademoiselle Félice?" he murmured, inquiringly, glancing back at the
windows of the sitting-room.
"Mademoiselle Arnault is occupied," she coldly returned. "I will convey
to her your farewell."
He looked back as the boat chugged away. Peaceful shadows enwrapped the
house and overspread the lawn. A single window in the wing gleamed like
a balefire in the rays of the setting sun.
The years that followed were years of restless wandering for Richard
Keith. He visited his estate but rarely. He went abroad and returned,
hardly having set foot to land; he buried himself in the fastnesses of
the Rockies; he made a long, aimless sea-voyage. Her image accompanied
him everywhere. Between him and all he saw hovered her faultless face;
her red mouth smiled at him; her white arms enticed him. His own face
became worn and his step listless. He grew silent and gloomy. "He is
madder than the old colonel, his father, was," his friends said,
shrugging their shoulders.
One day, more than three years after his visit to La Glorieuse, he found
himself on a deserted part of the Florida seacoast. It was late in
November, but the sky was soft and the air warm and balmy. He bared his
head as he paced moodily to and fro on the silent beach. The waves
rolled languidly to his feet and receded, leaving scattered half-wreaths
of opalescent foam on the snowy sands. The wind that fanned his face was
filled with the spicy odors of the sea. Seized by a capricious impulse,
he threw off his clothes and dashed into the surf. The undulating
billows closed around him; a singular lassitude passed into his limbs as
he swam; he felt himself slowly sinking, as if drawn downward by an
invisible hand. He opened his eyes. The waves lapped musically above his
head; a tawny glory was all about him, a luminous expanse in which he
saw strangely formed creatures moving, darting, rising, falling,
coiling, uncoiling.
"You was jes on de eedge er drowndin', Mars Dick," said Wiley, his black
body-servant, spreading his own clothes on the porch of the little
fishing-hut to dry. "In de name o' Gawd whar mek you wanter go in
swimmin' dis time o' de yea', anyhow? Ef I hadn' er splunge in an' fotch
you out, dey'd er been mo'nin' yander at de plantation, sho!"
His master laughed lazily. "You are right, Wiley," he said; "and you are
going to smoke the best tobacco in Maryland as long as you live." He
felt buoyant. Youth and elasticity seemed to have come back to him at a
bound. He stretched himself on the rough bench, and watched the blue
rings of smoke curl lightly away from his cigar. Gradually he was aware
of a pair of wistful eyes shining down on him. His heart leaped. They
were the eyes of Félice Arnault! "My God, have I been mad!" he muttered.
His eyes sought his hand. The ring, from which he had never been parted,
was gone. It had been torn from his finger in his wrestle with the sea.
"Get my traps together at once, Wiley," he said. "We are going to La
Glorieuse."
"Now you _talkin'_, Mars Dick," assented Wiley, cheerfully.
It was night when he reached the city. First of all, he made inquiries
concerning the little packet. He was right; the _Assumption_ would leave
the next afternoon at five o'clock for Bayou L'Eperon. He went to the
same hotel at which he had stopped before when on his way to La
Glorieuse. The next morning, too joyous to sleep, he rose early, and
went out into the street. A gray uncertain dawn was just struggling into
the sky. A few people on their way to market or to early mass were
passing along the narrow banquettes; sleepy-eyed women were unbarring
the shutters of their tiny shops; high-wheeled milk-carts were rattling
over the granite pavements; in the vine-hung court-yards, visible here
and there through iron _grilles_, parrots were scolding on their
perches; children pattered up and down the long, arched corridors; the
prolonged cry of an early clothes-pole man echoed, like the note of a
winding horn, through the close alleys. Keith sauntered carelessly
along.
"In so many hours," he kept repeating to himself, "I shall be on my way
to La Glorieuse. The boat will swing into the home landing; the negroes
will swarm across the gang-plank, laughing and shouting; Madame Arnault
and Félice will come out on the gallery and look, shading their eyes
with their hands. Oh, I know quite well that the old madame will greet
me coldly at first. Her eyes are like steel when she is angry. But when
she knows that I am once more a sane man--And Félice, what if she--But
no! Félice is not the kind of woman who loves more than once; and she
did love me, God bless her! unworthy as I was."
A carriage, driven rapidly, passed him; his eyes followed it idly, until
it turned far away into a side street. He strayed on to the market,
where he seated himself on a high stool in _L'Appel du Matin_ coffee
stall. But a vague, teasing remembrance was beginning to stir in his
brain. The turbaned woman on the front seat of the carriage that had
rolled past him yonder, where had he seen that dark, grave, wrinkled
face, with the great hoops of gold against either cheek? _Marcelite!_ He
left the stall and retraced his steps, quickening his pace almost to a
run as he went. Félice herself, then, might be in the city. He hurried
to the street into which the carriage had turned, and glanced down
between the rows of white-eaved cottages with green doors and batten
shutters. It had stopped several squares away; there seemed to be a
number of people gathered about it. "I will at least satisfy myself," he
thought.
As he came up, a bell in a little cross-crowned tower began to ring
slowly. The carriage stood in front of a low red brick house, set
directly on the street; a silent crowd pressed about the entrance. There
was a hush within. He pushed his way along the banquette to the steps. A
young nun, in a brown serge robe, kept guard at the door. She wore a
wreath of white artificial roses above her long coarse veil. Something
in his face appealed to her, and she found a place for him in the
little convent chapel.
Madame Arnault, supported by Marcelite, was kneeling in front of the
altar, which blazed with candles. She had grown frightfully old and
frail. Her face was set, and her eyes were fixed with a rigid stare on
the priest who was saying mass. Marcelite's dark cheeks were streaming
with tears. The chapel, which wore a gala air with its lights and
flowers, was filled with people. On the left of the altar, a bishop, in
gorgeous robes, was sitting, attended by priests and acolytes; on the
right, the wooden panel behind an iron grating had been removed, and
beyond, in the nun's choir, the black-robed sisters of the order were
gathered. Heavy veils shrouded their faces and fell to their feet. They
held in their hands tall wax-candles, whose yellow flames burned
steadily in the semi-darkness. Five or six young girls knelt, motionless
as statues, in their midst. They also carried tapers, and their rapt
faces were turned towards the unseen altar within, of which the outer
one is but the visible token. Their eyelids were downcast. Their white
veils were thrown back from their calm foreheads, and floated like wings
from their shoulders.
He felt no surprise when he saw Félice among them. He seemed to have
foreknown always that he should find her thus on the edge of another and
mysterious world into which he could not follow her.
Her skin had lost a little of its warm rich tint; the soft rings of hair
were drawn away under her veil; her hands were thin, and as waxen as the
taper she held. An unearthly beauty glorified her pale face.
"Is it forever too late?" he asked himself in agony, covering his face
with his hands. When he looked again the white veil on her head had been
replaced by the sombre one of the order. "If I could but speak to her!"
he thought; "if she would but once lift her eyes to mine, she would come
to me even now!"
_Félice!_ Did the name break from his lips in a hoarse cry that echoed
through the hushed chapel, and silenced the voice of the priest? He
never knew. But a faint color swept into her cheeks. Her eyelids
trembled. In a flash the rose-garden at La Glorieuse was before him; he
saw the turquoise sky, and heard the mellow chorus of the field gang;
the smell of damask-roses was in the air; her little hand was in his
... he saw her coming swiftly towards him across the dusk of the old
ballroom; her limpid innocent eyes were smiling into his own ... she was
standing on the grassy lawn; the shadows of the leaves flickered over
her white gown....
At last the quivering eyelids were lifted. She turned her head slowly,
and looked steadily at him. He held his breath. A cart rumbled along the
cobble-stones outside; the puny wail of a child sounded across the
stillness; a handful of rose leaves from a vase at the foot of the altar
dropped on the hem of Madame Arnault's dress. It might have been the
gaze of an angel in a world where there is no marrying nor giving in
marriage, so pure was it, so passionless, so free of anything like
earthly desire.
As she turned her face again towards the altar the bell in the tower
above ceased tolling; a triumphant chorus leaped into the air, borne
aloft by joyous organ tones. The first rays of the morning sun streamed
in through the small windows. Then light penetrated into the nuns'
choir, and enveloped like a mantle of gold Sister Mary of the Cross, who
in the world had been Félicité Arnault.