The Strollers Part 57

Saint-Prosper thrust his hand within the coat, shuddering at the contact with the ebbing life's blood, and drew forth a leather bag which he placed in the other's trembling fingers. With an effort, breathing laboriously, and staring hard, as though striving to penetrate a gathering film, the wounded man finally managed to display the contents of the bag, emptying them in his palm, where they glinted and gleamed in the sun's rays. Sapphires, of delicate blue; emeralds with vitreous l.u.s.ter; opals of brilliant iridescence--but, above all, a ruby of perfect color and extraordinary size, cut _en cabachon_, and exhibiting a marvelous star of many rays; the ruby of Abd-el-Kader!

With a venal expression of delight, the gunner regarded the contents of the bag, feeling the gems one by one. "The rarest stone--from the Sagyin hills, Ernest!" he whispered, as his trembling fingers played with the ruby.

But even as he fondled it, a great pain crossed his breast; he gripped his shoulder tight with his free hand, clutching the precious stones hard in his clenched fist. Thus he remained, how long the other never knew, panting, growing paler, as the veins that carried life to his heart were being slowly emptied.

His head dropped. "How dark!" he murmured. "Like a _m'chacha_ where the has.h.i.+sh-smokers dream!"

The younger brother thought his energy was spent when he looked up sharply.

"The lamp's out, you Devil Jew!" he cried. "The pipe, too--sp.a.w.n of h.e.l.l!"

And he dropped back like stone, the gems falling from his hand, which twitched spasmodically on the ground and then was still. Saint-Prosper bent over him, but the heart, famished for nourishment, had ceased to beat; the restless, wayward soul had fled from its tabernacle of dust.

Save for the stain on his breast and the fixedness of his eyes, he might have been sleeping.

Mechanically the soldier gathered the sapphires, emeralds and other gems--flas.h.i.+ng testimony of that thankless past--and, leaning against the wall, gazed afar to the snow-capped volcanoes. Even as he looked, the vapors arose from the solfataras of the "smoking mountain" and a vast shower of cinders and stones was thrown into the air. Unnoticed pa.s.sed the eruption before the gaze of Saint-Prosper, whose mind in a torpor swept dully back to youth's roseate season, recalling the homage of the younger for the elder brother, a wors.h.i.+p as natural as pagan adoration of the sun. From the sanguine fore-time to the dead present lay a bridge of darkness. With honor within grasp, deliberately he had sought dishonor, little recking of shame and murder, and childishly husbanding green, red and blue pebbles!

Weighing the stones in his hand now, Ernest Saint-Prosper looked at them long and bitterly. For these the honor and pride of an old family had been sold. For these he himself had endured the reflected disgrace; isolation from comrades.h.i.+p; distrust which had blighted his military career at the outset. How different had been the reality from his expectations; the buoyant hopes of youth; the fond antic.i.p.ation of glory, succeeded by stigma and stain! And, as the miserable, perplexing panorama of these later years pictured itself in his brain he threw, with a sudden gesture, the gems far from him, over the wall, out toward the valley!

Like dancing beams of color, they flashed a moment in mid air; then mingled their hues with the rainbow tints of a falling stream. Lost to sight, they sank in the crystal waters which leaped with a caressing murmur toward the table-land; only the tiny spectrum, vivid reminder of their color, still waved and wavered from rock to rock above a pellucid pool.

"I beg your pardon, Colonel," said a voice at his elbow, breaking in upon his reflections; "are you wounded?"

With drawn features, the officer turned.

"No; I am not wounded."

"The general directs you to take this message to the commanding general," continued the little aide. "I believe I may congratulate you, sir, for you will have the honor of bearing the news of the victory." He handed Saint-Prosper a sealed message. "It's been a glorious day, sir, but"--gazing carelessly around him--"has cost many a brave life!"

"Yes, many a life!" answered the other, placing the message in his breast and steadfastly regarding for the last time the figure beneath the gun.

"We ought to be in the City of Mexico in a day or two, sir," resumed the aide. "Won't it be jolly though, after forced marches and all that sort of thing! Fandangos; tambourines; cymbals! And the pulque! What creatures of the moment we are, sir!" he added, with sudden thoughtfulness. "'Twill be, after all, like dancing over the graves of our dear comrades!"

CHAPTER VIII

A FAIR PENITENT

The reception to General Zachary Taylor, on his return from Mexico, and the inauguration of the carnival combined to the observance of a dual festival day in the Crescent City. Up the river, past the rice fields, disturbing the ducks and pelicans, ploughed the noisy craft bearing "Old Rough and Ready" to the open port of the merry-making town. When near the barracks, the welcoming cannon boomed, and the affrighted darkies on the remote plantations shook with dire forebodings of a Mexican invasion.

The boat rounded at the Place d'Armes, where, beneath a triumphal arch, General Taylor received the crown and chaplet of the people--popular applause--and a salvo of eloquence from the mayor. With flying colors and nourish of trumpets, a procession of civic and military bodies was then formed, the parade finally halting at the St. Charles, where the fatted calf had been killed and the succulent ox roasted. Sounding a retreat, the veteran commander fell back upon a private parlor to recuperate his forces in antic.i.p.ation of the forthcoming banquet.

From this stronghold, where, however, not all of the enemy--his friends--could be excluded, there escaped an officer, with: "I'll look around town a little, General."

"Look around!" said the commander at the door. "I should think we had looked around! Well, don't fall foul of too many juleps."

With a laughing response, the young man pushed his way through the jostling crowd near the door, traversed the animated corridor, and soon found himself out on the busy street. Amid the variegated colors and motley throng, he walked, not, however, in King Carnival's gay domains, but in a city of recollections. The tavern he had just left was a.s.sociated with an unforgotten presence; the stores, the windows, the thoroughfares themselves were fraught with retrospective suggestion of the strollers.

Even now--and he came to an abrupt standstill--he was staring at the bill-board of the theater where she had played, the familiar entrance bedecked with bunting and festival inscriptions. Before its cla.s.sic portals appeared the black-letter announcement of an act by "Impecunious Jordan, Ethiopian artist, followed by a Tableau of General Scott's Capture of the City of Mexico." Mechanically he stepped within and approached the box office. From the little cupboard, a strange face looked forth; even the ticket vender of old had been swallowed up by the irony of fate, and, instead of the well-remembered blond mustache of the erstwhile seller of seats, a dark-bearded man, with sallow complexion, inquired:

"How many?"

"One," said Saint-Prosper, depositing a Mexican piece on the counter before the cubby-hole.

"We've taken in plenty of this kind of money to-day," remarked the man, holding up the coin. "I reckon you come to town with old Zach?"

"Yes." The soldier was about to turn away, when he changed his mind and observed: "You used to give legitimate drama here."

"That was some time ago," said the man in the box, reflectively. "The soldiers like vaudeville. Ever hear Impecunious Jordan?"

"I never did."

"Then you've got a treat," continued the vender. "He's the best in his line. Hope you'll enjoy it, sir," he concluded, with the courtesy displayed toward one and all of "Old Rough and Ready's" men that day.

"It's the best seat left in the house. You come a little late, you know." And as the other moved away:

"How different they look before and after! They went to Mexico fresh as daisies, and come back--those that do--dead beat, done up!"

[Ill.u.s.tration]

Pa.s.sing through the door, Saint-Prosper was ushered to his seat in a renovated auditorium; new curtain, re-decorated stalls, mirrors and gilt in profusion; the old restfulness gone, replaced by glitter and show. Amid changed conditions, the derangement of fixed external form and outline, the sight of a broad face in the orchestra and the aspect of a colossal form riveted his attention. This person was neither stouter nor thinner than before; he perspired neither more nor less; he was neither older nor younger--seemingly; he played on his instrument neither better nor worse. Youth might fade, honors take wing, the face of nature change, but Hans, Gargantuan Hans, appeared but a figure in an eternal present! Gazing at that substantial landmark, the soldier was carried back in thought over the long period of separation to a forest idyl; a face in the firelight; the song of the katydid; the drumming of the woodp.e.c.k.e.r. Dreams; vain dreams! They had a.s.sailed him before, but seldom so sharply as now in a place consecrated to the past.

"Look out for the dandies, Girls, beware; Look out for their blandishments, Dears, take care!

For they're always ready--remember this!-- To pilfer from maids an unwilling kiss.

Oh, me! Oh, my! There! There!" (_Imaginary slaps._)

sang and gesticulated a lady in abbreviated skirts and low-cut dress, winking and blinking in ironical shyness, and concluding with a flaunting of her gown, a toe pointed ceilingward, and a lively "breakdown." Then she vanished with a hop, skip and a bow, reappeared with a ravis.h.i.+ng smile and threw a generous a.s.sortment of kisses among the audience, and disappeared with another hop, skip and a bow, as Impecunious Jordan burst upon the spectators from the opposite side of the stage.

Even the sight of Hans, a finger-post pointing to ways long since traversed, could not reconcile the soldier to his surroundings; the humor of the burnt-cork artist seemed inappropriate to the place; his grotesque dancing inadmissible in that atmosphere once consecrated to the comedy of manners and the stately march of the cla.s.sic drama.

Where Hamlet had moralized, a loutish clown now beguiled the time with some tom-foolery, his wit so broad, his quips were cannon-b.a.l.l.s, and his audience, for the most part soldiers from Mexico, open-mouthed swallowed the entire bombardment. But Saint-Prosper, finding the performance dull, finally rose and went out, not waiting for the thrilling Tableaux of the Entrance into the City of Mexico of a hundred American troops (impersonated by young ladies in tropical attire) and the submission of Santa Anna's forces (more young ladies) by sinking gracefully to their bended knees.

Fun and frolic were now in full swing on the thoroughfares; Democritus, the rollicker, had commanded his subjects to drive dull care away and they obeyed the jovial lord of laughter. Animal spirits ran high; mischief beguiled the time; mummery romped and rioted.

Marshaled by disorder, armed with drollery and divers-hued banners, they marched to the Castle of Chaos, where the wise are fools, the old are young and topsy-turvy is the order of the day.

As Saint-Prosper stood watching the versicolored concourse swarm by, a sudden rush of bystanders to view Faith on a golden pedestal, looking more like Coquetry, propelled a dainty figure against the soldier.

Involuntarily he put out his arm which girded a slender waist; Faith drove simpering by; the crowd melted like a receding wave, and the lady extricated herself, breathless as one of the maids in Lorenzo de Medici's Songs of the Carnival.

"How awkward!" she murmured. "How--"

The sentence remained unfinished and an exclamation, "Mr. Saint-Prosper!"

punctuated a gleam of recognition.

"Miss Duran!" he exclaimed, equally surprised, for he had thought the strollers scattered to the four winds.

"Mrs. Service, if you please!" Demurely; at the same time extending her hand with a faint flush. "Yes; I am really and truly married! But it is so long since we met, I believe I--literally flew to your arms!"

"That was before you recognized me," he returned, in the same tone.