A SPORTING PROPOSITION
Louis de Launay, once known as "Louisiana" and later, as a general of
cavalry, but now a broken man suffering from soul and mind sickness,
was too far gone to give a thought to his condition. Thwarted ambition
and gnawing disappointment had merely been the last straw which had
broken him. His real trouble was that strange neurosis of mind and
body which has attacked so many that served in the war. Jangled
nerves, fibers drawn for years to too high a tension, had sagged and
grown flabby under the sudden relaxation for which they were not
prepared.
His case was worse than others as his career was unique. Where others
had met the war's shocks for four years, he had striven titanically
for nearly a score, his efforts, beginning with the terrible five-year
service in the _Légion des Etrangers_, culminating in ever-mounting
strain to his last achievement and then--sudden, stark failure! He
was, as he had said, burned out, although he was barely thirty-nine
years old. He was a man still young in body but with mind and nerves
like overstrained rubber from which all resilience has gone.
His uniform was gone. Careless of dress or ornamentation, he had sunk
into roughly fitting civilian garb of which he took no care. Of all
his decorations he clung only to the little red rosette of the Legion
of Honor. Half drunk, he lolled at a table in a second-class café. He
was in possession of his faculties; indeed, he seldom lost them, but
he was dully indifferent to most of what went on around him. Before
him was stacked a respectable pile of the saucers that marked his
indebtedness for liquor.
When the cheerful murmur of his neighbors suddenly died away, he
looked around, half resentfully, to note the entrance of a woman.
"What is it?" he asked, irritably, of a French soldier near him.
The Frenchman was smiling and answered without taking his eyes from
the woman, who was now moving down the room toward them.
"Morgan _la fée_," he answered, briefly.
"Morgan--what the deuce are you talking about?"
"It is Morgan _la fée_," reiterated the soldier, simply, as though no
other explanation were necessary.
De Launay stared at him and then shifted his uncertain gaze to the
figure approaching him. He was able to focus her more clearly as she
stopped to reply to the proprietor of the place, who had hastened to
meet her with every mark of respect. Men at the tables she passed
smiled at her and murmured respectful greetings, to which she replied
with little nods of the head. Evidently she was a figure of some note
in the life of the place, although it also seemed that as much
surprise at her coming was felt as gratification.
She presented rather an extraordinary appearance. Her costume was the
familiar one of a French Red Cross nurse, with the jaunty,
close-fitting cap and wimple in white hiding her hair except for a few
strands. Her figure was slender, lithe and graceful, and such of her
features as were visible were delicate and shapely; her mouth,
especially, being ripe and inviting.
But over her eyes and the upper part of her face stretched a strip of
veiling that effectually concealed them. The mask gave her an air of
mystery which challenged curiosity.
De Launay vaguely recalled occasional mention of a young woman
favorably known in the hospitals as Morgan _la fée_. He also was
familiar with the old French legend of Morgan and the Vale of Avalon,
where Ogier, the Paladin of Charlemagne, lived in perpetual felicity
with the Queen of the Fairies, forgetful of earth and its problems
except at such times as France in peril might need his services, when
he returned to succor her. He surmised that this was the nurse of whom
he had heard, setting her down as probably some attractive,
sympathetic girl whom the soldiers, sentimental and wounded, endowed
with imaginary virtues. He was not sentimental and, beholding her in
this café, although evidently held in respect, he was inclined to be
skeptical regarding her virtue.
The young woman seemed to have an object and it was surprising to him.
She exchanged a brief word with the maître, declined a proffered seat
at a table, and turned to come directly to that at which De Launay was
seated. He had hardly time to overcome his stupid surprise and rise
before she was standing before him. Awkwardly enough, he bowed and
waited.
Her glance took in the table, sweeping over the stacked saucers, but,
behind the veil, her expression remained an enigma.
She spoke in a voice that was sweet, with a clear, bell-like note.
"Le Général de Launay, is it not? I have been seeking monsieur."
"Colonel, if mademoiselle pleases," he answered. Then suspicion crept
into his dulled brain. "Mademoiselle seeks me? Pardon, but I am hardly
a likely object----"
She interrupted him with an impatient wave of a well-kept hand.
"Monsieur need not be afraid. It is true that I have been seeking him,
but my motive is harmless. If Monsieur Doolittle, the banker, has told
me the truth----"
De Launay's suspicions grew rapidly. "If Doolittle has been talking,
I can tell you right now, mademoiselle, that it is useless. What you
desire I am not disposed to grant."
Mademoiselle caught the meaning of the intonation rather than any in
the words. Her inviting mouth curled scornfully. Her answer was still
bell-like but it was also metallic and commanding.
"Sit down!" she said, curtly.
De Launay, who, for many years had been more used to giving orders
than receiving them, at least in that manner, sat down. He could not
have explained why he did. He did not try to. She sat down opposite
him and he looked helplessly for a waiter, feeling the need of
stimulation.
"You have doubtless had enough to drink," said the girl, and De Launay
meekly turned back to her. "You wonder, perhaps, why I am here," she
went on. "I have said that Monsieur Doolittle has told me that you are
an American, that you contemplate returning to your own country----"
"Mademoiselle forgets or does not know," interrupted De Launay, "that
I am not American for nearly twenty years."
"I know all that," was the impatient reply. She hurried on. "I know
_monsieur le général's_ history since he was a légionnaire. But it is
of your present plans I wish to speak, not of your past. Is it not
true that you intend to return to America?"
"I'd thought of it," he admitted, "but, since they have adopted
prohibition----" He shrugged his shoulders and looked with raised
eyebrows at the stack of saucers bearing damning witness to his
habits.
She stopped him with an equally expressive gesture, implying distaste
for him and his habits or any discussion of them.
"But Monsieur Doolittle has also told me that monsieur is reckless,
that he has the temperament of the gamester, that he is bored; in a
word, that he would, as the Americans say, 'take a chance.' Is he
wrong in that, also?"
"No," said De Launay, "but there is a choice among the chances which
might be presented to me. I have no interest in the hazards incidental
to----"
Then, for the life of him, he could not finish the sentence. He
halfway believed the woman to be merely a _demimondaine_ who had heard
that he might be a profitable customer for venal love, but, facing
that blank mask above the red lips and firm chin, sensing the frozen
anger that lay behind it, he felt his convictions melting in something
like panic and shame.
"Monsieur was about to say?" The voice was soft, dangerously soft.
"Whatever it was, I shall not say it," he muttered. "I beg
mademoiselle's pardon." He was relieved to see the lips curve in
laughter and he recovered his own self-possession at once, though he
had definitely dismissed his suspicion.
"I am, then a gambler," he prompted her. "I will take risks and I am
bored. Well, what is the answer?"
Mademoiselle's hands were on the table and she now was twisting the
slender fingers together in apparent embarrassment.
"It is a strange thing I have to propose, perhaps. But it is a hazard
game that monsieur may be interested in playing, an adventure that he
may find relaxing. And, as monsieur is poor, the chance that it may be
profitable will, no doubt, be worthy of consideration."
De Launay had to revise his ideas again. "You say that Doolittle gave
you your information?" She agreed with a nod of the head.
"Just what did he tell you?"
Mademoiselle briefly related how Doolittle, coming from his interview
with De Launay to hear her own plea for help, had laughed at her crazy
idea, had said that it was impossible to aid her, and had finally, in
exasperation at both of them, told her that the only way she could
accomplish her designs was by the help of another fool like herself,
and that De Launay was the only one he knew who could qualify for that
description. He--De Launay--was reckless enough, gambler enough, ass
enough, to do the thing necessary to aid her, but no one else was.
"And what," said De Launay, "is this thing that one must do to help
you?" It seemed evident that Doolittle, while he had told something,
had not told all.
She hesitated and finally blurted it out at once while De Launay saw
the flush creep down under the mask to the cheeks and chin below it.
"It is to marry me," she said.
Then, observing his stupefaction and the return of doubt to his mind,
she hurried on. "Not to marry me in seriousness," she said. "Merely a
marriage of a temporary nature--one that the American courts will end
as soon as the need is over. I must get to America, monsieur, and I
cannot go alone. Nor can I get a passport and passage unaided. If one
tries, one is told that the boats are jammed with returning troops and
diplomats, and that it is out of the question to secure passage for
months even though one would pay liberally for it.
"But monsieur still has prestige--influence--in spite of that." Her
nod indicated the stack of saucers. "He is still the general of
France, and he is also an American. It is undoubtedly true that he
will have no difficulty in securing passage, nor will it be denied him
to take his wife with him. Therefore it is that I suggest the marriage
to monsieur. It was Monsieur Doolittle that gave me the idea."
De Launay was swept with a desire to laugh. "What on earth did he tell
you?" he asked.
"That the only way I could go was to go as the wife of an American
soldier," said mademoiselle. "He added that he knew of none I could
marry--unless, he said, I tried Monsieur de Launay. You, he informed
me, had just told him that the only marriage you would consider would
be one entered into in the spirit of the gambler. Now, that is the
kind of marriage I have to offer."
De Launay laughed, recalling his unfortunate words with the banker to
the effect that the only reason he'd ever marry would be as a result
of a bet. Mademoiselle's ascendency was vanishing rapidly. Her naïve
assumption swept away the last vestiges of his awe.
"Why do you wear that veil?" he asked abruptly.
She raised her hand to it doubtfully. "Why?" she echoed.
"If I am to marry you, is it to be sight unseen?"
"It is merely because--it is because there is something that causes
comment and makes it embarrassing to me. It is nothing--nothing
repulsive, monsieur," she was pleading, now. "At least, I think not.
But it makes the soldiers call me----"
"Morgan _la fée_?"
"Yes. Then you must know?" There was relief in her words.
"No. I have merely wondered why they called you that."
"It is on account of my eyes. They are--queer, perhaps. And my hair,
which I also hide under the cap. The poor soldiers ascribe all sorts
of--of virtues to them. Magic qualities, which, of course, is silly.
And others--are not so kind."
In De Launay's mind was running a verse from William Morris' "Earthly
Paradise." He quoted it, in English:
"The fairest of all creatures did she seem;
So fresh and delicate you well might deem
That scarce for eighteen summers had she blessed
The happy, longing earth; yet, for the rest
Within her glorious eyes such wisdom dwelt
A child before her had the wise man felt."
"Is that it?" he murmured to himself. To his surprise, for he had not
thought that she spoke English, she answered him.
"It is not. It is my eyes; yes, but they are not to be described so
flatteringly." Yet she was smiling and the blush had spread again to
cheeks and chin, flushing them delightfully. "It is a superstition of
these ignorant poilus. And of others, also. In fact, there are some
who are afraid."
"Well," said De Launay, "I have never had the reputation of being
either ignorant or afraid. Also--there is Ogier?"
"What?"
"Who plays the rôle of the Danish Paladin?"
Mademoiselle blushed again. "He is not in the story this time," she
said.
"I hardly qualify, you would say. Perhaps not. But there is more.
Where is Avalon and what other names have you? You remember
"Know thou, that thou art come to Avalon,
That is both thine and mine; and as for me,
Morgan le Fay men call me commonly
Within the world, but fairer names than this
I have----
"What are they?"
"I am Solange d'Albret, monsieur. I am from the Basses Pyrenees. A
Basque, if you please. If my name is distinguished, I am not. On the
contrary, I am very poor, having but enough to finance this trip to
America and the search that is to follow."
"And Avalon--where is that? Where is the place that you go to in
America?"
She opened a small hand bag and took from it a notebook which she
consulted.
"America is a big place. It is not likely that you would know it, or
the man that I must look for. Here it is. The place is called 'Twin
Forks,' and it is near the town of Sulphur Falls, in the State of
Idaho. The man is Monsieur Isaac Brandon."
In the silence, she looked up, alarmed to see De Launay, who was
clutching the edge of the table and staring at her as though she had
struck him.
"Why, what is the matter?" she cried.
De Launay laughed out loud. "Twin Forks! Ike Brandon! Mademoiselle,
what do you seek in Twin Forks and from old Ike Brandon?"
Mademoiselle, puzzled and alarmed, answered slowly.
"I seek a mine that my father found--a gold mine that will make us
rich. And I seek also the name of the man that shot my father down
like a dog. I wish to kill that man!"