The doctor came that night, and took out of my back a piece of
flattened lead. It had gone under the flesh, quite half round my
body, next to the ribs, without doing worse than to rake the bone
here and there and weaken me with a loss of blood. I woke awhile
before he came. The baroness and the fat butler were sitting
beside me. She was a big, stout woman of some forty years, with
dark hair and gray eyes, and teeth of remarkable whiteness and
symmetry. That evening, I remember, she was in full dress.
"My poor boy!" said she, in English and in a sympathetic tone, as
she bent over me.
Indeed, my own mother could not have been kinder than that good
woman. She was one that had a heart and a hand for the sick-room.
I told her how I had been hurt and of my ride. She heard me
through with a glow in her eyes.
"What a story!" said she. "What a daredevil! I do not see how it
has been possible for you to live."
She spoke to me always in English of quaint wording and quainter
accent. She seemed not to know that I could speak French.
An impressive French tutor--a fine old fellow, obsequious and
bald-headed--sat by me all night to give me medicine. In the
morning I felt as if I had a new heart in me, and was planning to
mount my horse. I thought I ought to go on about my business, but
I fear I thought more of the young ladies and the possibility of my
seeing them again. The baroness came in after I had a bite to eat.
I told her I felt able to ride,
"You are not able, my child. You cannot ride the horse now," said
she, feeling my brow; "maybe not for a ver' long time. I have a
large house, plenty servant, plenty food. Parbleu! be content. We
shall take good care of you. If there is one message to go to your
chief, you know I shall send it."
I wrote a brief report of my adventure with the British, locating
the scene as carefully as might be, and she sent it by mounted
messenger to "the Burg."
"The young ladies they wish to see you," said the baroness. "They
are kind-hearted; they would like to do what they can. But I tell
them no; they will make you to be very tired."
"On the contrary, it will rest me. Let them come," I said.
"But I warn you," said she, lifting her finger as she left the
room, "do not fall in love. They are full of mischief. They do
not study. They do not care. You know they make much fun all day."
The young ladies came in presently. They wore gray gowns admirably
fitted to their fine figures. They brought big bouquets and set
them, with a handsome courtesy, on the table beside me. They took
chairs and sat solemn-faced, without a word, as if it were a Quaker
meeting they had come to. I never saw better models of sympathetic
propriety. I was about to speak. One of them shook her head, a
finger on her lips.
"Do not say one word," she said solemnly in English. "It will make
you ver' sick."
It was the first effort of either of them to address me in English.
As I soon knew, the warning had exhausted her vocabulary. The
baroness went below in a moment. Then the one who had spoken came
over and sat near me, smiling.
"She does not know you can speak French," said she, whispering and
addressing me in her native tongue, as the other tiptoed to the
door. "On your life, do not let her know. She will never permit
us to see you. She will keep us under lock and key. She knows we
cannot speak English, so she thinks we cannot talk with you. It is
a great lark. Are you better?"
What was I to do under orders from such authority? As they bade
me, I hope you will say, for that is what I did. I had no easy
conscience about it, I must own. Day after day I took my part in
the little comedy. They came in Quaker-faced if the baroness were
at hand, never speaking, except to her, until she had gone.
Then--well, such animation, such wit, such bright eyes, such
brilliancy, I have never seen or heard.
My wound was healing. War and stern duty were as things of the far
past. The grand passion had hold of me. I tried to fight it down,
to shake it off, but somehow it had the claws of a tiger. There
was an odd thing about it all: I could not for the life of me tell
which of the two charming girls I loved the better. It may seem
incredible; I could not understand it myself. They looked alike,
and yet they were quite different. Louison was a year older and of
stouter build. She had more animation also, and always a quicker
and perhaps a brighter answer. The other had a face more serious,
albeit no less beautiful, and a slower tongue. She had little to
say, but her silence had much in it to admire, and, indeed, to
remember. They appealed to different men in me with equal force, I
did not then know why. A perplexing problem it was, and I had to
think and suffer much before I saw the end of it, and really came
to know what love is and what it is not.
[Illustration: "I could not for the life of me tell which of the
two charming girls I loved the better."]
Shortly I was near the end of this delightful season of illness. I
had been out of bed a week. The baroness had read to me every day,
and had been so kind that I felt a great shame for my part in our
deception. Every afternoon she was off in a boat or in her
caleche, and had promised to take me with her as soon as I was able
to go.
"You know," said she, "I am going to make you to stay here a full
month. I have the consent of the general."
I had begun to move about a little and enjoy the splendor of that
forest home. There were, indeed, many rare and priceless things in
it that came out of her chateau in France. She had some curious
old clocks, tokens of ancestral taste and friendship. There was
one her grandfather had got from the land of Louis XIV.--_Le Grand
Monarque_, of whom my mother had begun to tell me as soon as I
could hear with understanding. Another came from the bedchamber of
Philip II of Spain--a grand high clock that had tolled the hours in
that great hall beyond my door. A little thing, in a case of
carved ivory, that ticked on a table near my bed, Moliere had given
to one of her ancestors, and there were many others of equal
interest.
Her walls were adorned with art treasures of the value of which I
had little appreciation those days. But I remember there were
canvases of Correggio and Rembrandt and Sir Joshua Reynolds. She
was, indeed, a woman of fine taste, who had brought her best to
America; for no one had a doubt, in the time of which I am writing,
that the settlement of the Compagnie de New York would grow into a
great colony, with towns and cities and fine roadways, and the full
complement of high living. She had built the Hermitage,--that was
the name of the mansion,--fine and splendid as it was, for a mere
temporary shelter pending the arrival of those better days.
She had a curious fad, this hermit baroness of the big woods. She
loved nature and was a naturalist of no poor attainments. Wasps
and hornets were the special study of this remarkable woman. There
were at least a score of their nests on her front portico--big and
little, and some of them oddly shaped. She hunted them in wood and
field. When she found a nest she had it moved carefully after
nightfall, under a bit of netting, and fastened somewhere about the
gables. Around the Hermitage there were many withered boughs and
briers holding cones of wrought fibre, each a citadel of these
uniformed soldiers of the air and the poisoned arrow. They were
assembled in colonies of yellow, white, blue, and black wasps, and
white-faced hornets. She had no fear of them, and, indeed, no one
of the household was ever stung to my knowledge. I have seen her
stand in front of her door and feed them out of a saucer. There
were special favorites that would light upon her palm, overrunning
its pink hollow and gorging at the honey-drop.
"They will never sting," she would say, "if one does not declare
the war. To strike, to make any quick motion, it gives them anger.
Then, mon cher ami! it is terrible. They cause you to burn, to
ache, to make a great noise, and even to lie down upon the ground.
If people come to see me, if I get a new servant, I say: 'Make to
them no attention, and they will not harm you.'"
In the house I have seen her catch one by the wings on a window
and, holding it carefully ask me to watch her captive--sometimes a
a great daredevil hornet, lion-maned--as he lay stabbing with his
poison-dagger.
"Now," said she, "he is angry; he will remember. If I release him
he will sting me when I come near him again. So I do not permit
him to live--I kill him."
Then she would impale him and invite me to look at him with the
microscope.
One day the baroness went away to town with the young ladies. I
was quite alone with the servants. Father Joulin of the chateau
came over and sat awhile with me, and told me how he had escaped
the Parisian mob, a night in the Reign of Terror. Late in the
afternoon I walked awhile in the grove with him. When he left I
went slowly down the trail over which I had ridden. My strength
was coming fast. I felt like an idle man, shirking the saddle,
when I should be serving my country. I must to my horse and make
an end to dallying. With thoughts like these for company, I went
farther than I intended. Returning over the bushy trail I came
suddenly upon--Louison! She was neatly gowned in pink and white.
"Le diable!" said she. "You surprise me. I thought you went
another way."
"Or you would not have taken this one," I said.
"Of course not," said she. "One does not wish to find men if she
is hunting for--for--" she hesitated a moment, blushing--"mon Dieu!
for bears," she added.
I thought then, as her beautiful eyes looked up at me smiling, that
she was incomparable, that I loved her above all others--I felt
sure of it.
"And why do you hunt bears?" I inquired.
"I do not know. I think it is because they are so--so beautiful,
so amiable!" she answered.
"And such good companions."
"Yes; they never embarrass you," she went on. "You never feel at
loss for a word."
"I fear you do not know bears."
"Dieu! better than men. Voila!" she exclaimed, touching me with
the end of her parasol. "You are not so terrible. I do not think
you would bite."
"No; I have never bitten anything but--but bread and doughnuts, or
something of that sort."
"Come, I desire to intimidate you. Won't you please be afraid of
me? Indeed, I can be very terrible. See! I have sharp teeth."
She turned with a playful growl, and parting her crimson lips,
showed them to me--white and shapely, and as even as if they had
been wrought of ivory. She knew they were beautiful, the vixen.
"You terrify me. I have a mind to run," I said, backing off,
"Please do not run," she answered quickly. "I should be afraid
that--that--"
She hesitated a moment, stirring the moss with one dainty foot.
"That you might not return," she added, smiling as she looked up at
me.
"Then--then perhaps it will do as well if I climb a tree."
"No, no; I wish to talk with you."
"Ma'm'selle, you honor me," I said.
"And dishonor myself, I presume, with so much boldness," she went
on. "It is only that I have something to say; and you know when a
woman has something to--to say--"
"It is a fool that does not listen if she be as fair as you," I put
in.
"You are--well, I shall not say what I think of you, for fear--for
fear of giving offence," said she, blushing as she spoke. "Do you
like the life of a soldier?"
"Very much, and especially when I am wounded, with such excellent
care and company."
"But your side--it was so horribly torn. I did feel very
sorry--indeed I did. You will go again to the war?"
"Unless--unless--Ah, yes, ma'm'selle, I shall go again to the war,"
I stammered, going to the brink of confession, only to back away
from it, as the blood came hot to my cheeks.
She broke a tiny bough and began stripping its leaves.
"Tell me, do you love the baroness?" she inquired as she whipped a
swaying bush of brier.
The question amazed me. I laughed nervously.
"I respect, I admire the good woman--she would make an excellent
mother," was my answer.
"Well spoken!" she said, clapping her hands. "I thought you were a
fool. I did not know whether you were to blame or--or the Creator."
"Or the baroness," I added, laughing.
"Well," said she, with a pretty shrug, "is there not a man for
every woman? The baroness she thinks she is irresistible. She has
money. She would like to buy you for a plaything--to marry you.
But I say beware. She is more terrible than the keeper of the
Bastile. And you--you are too young!"
"My dear girl," said I, in a voice of pleading, "it is terrible.
Save me! Save me, I pray you!"
"Pooh! I do not care!"--with a gesture of indifference, "I am
trying to save myself, that is all."
"From what?"
"Another relative. Parbleu! I have enough." She stamped her foot
impatiently as she spoke. "I should be very terrible to you. I
should say the meanest things. I should call you grandpapa and
give you a new cane every Christmas."
"And if you gave me also a smile, I should be content."
More than once I was near declaring myself that day, but I had a
mighty fear she was playing with me, and held my tongue. There was
an odd light in her eyes. I knew not, then, what it meant.
"You are easily satisfied," was her answer.
"I am to leave soon," I said. "May I not see you here to-morrow?"
"Alas! I do not think you can," was her answer.
"And why not?"
"Because it would not be proper," said she, smiling as she looked
up at me.
"Not proper! I should like to know why."
"It would make me break another engagement," she went on, laughing.
"I am to go with the baroness to meet the count if he comes--she
has commanded. The day after, in the morning, at ten o'clock, by
the cascade--will that do? Good! I must leave you now. I must
not return with you. Remember!" she commanded, pointing at me with
her tapered forefinger. "Remember--ten o'clock in the morning."
Then she took a bypath and went out of sight. I returned to the
mansion as deep in love as a man could be. I went to dinner with
the rest that evening. Louison came in after we were all seated.
"You are late, my dear," said the baroness.
"Yes; I went away walking and lost something, and was not able to
find it again."