The Strollers Part 9

"On my word, but she looks handsome!" muttered the patroon. "Might sit for a Gainsborough or a Reynolds! What dignity! What coldness! All except the eyes! How they can lighten! But there's that adventurer with her," as the figure of the soldier crossed the yard to the property wagon. "No getting rid of him until the last moment!" And he opened the shutters wider, listening and watching more closely.

"Are you going to ride in the property wagon?" he heard Saint-Prosper ask.

"Yes; when I have a part to study I sometimes retire to the stage throne," she answered lightly. "I suppose you will ride your horse?"

Of his reply the listener caught only the words, "wind-break" and "lame." He observed the soldier a.s.sist her to the throne, and then, to Mauville's surprise, spring into the wagon himself.

"Why, the fellow is going with them!" exclaimed the land baron. "Or, at any rate, he is going with her. What can it mean?" And hurriedly quitting his post, his toilet now being complete, he hastened to the door and quickly made his way down-stairs.

During the past week his own addresses had miscarried and his gallantry had been love's labor lost. At first he had fancied he was making progress, but soon acknowledged to himself he had underestimated the enterprise. Play had succeeded play--he could not have told what part favored her most! Ophelia sighed and died; Susan danced on her grave between acts, according to the program, and turned tears into smiles; the farewell night had come and gone--and yet Constance had made no sign of compliance to reward the patient wooer. Now, at the sight of these preparations for departure, and the presence of the stalwart stranger in the property wagon, he experienced a sudden sensation of pique, almost akin to jealousy.

Stepping from the tavern, it was with an effort he suppressed his chagrin and vexation and a.s.sumed that air of nonchalance which became him well. Smilingly he bade Susan and the other occupants of the chariot farewell, shook Barnes by the hand, and turned to the property wagon.

"The noise of your departure awakened me," he said to the young girl.

"So I have come to claim my compensation--the pleasure of seeing you--"

"Depart!" she laughed quickly.

Momentarily disconcerted, he turned to the soldier. "You ride early."

"As you see," returned the other, immovably.

"A habit contracted in the army, no doubt!" retorted Mauville, recovering his easy self-possession. "Well, a b.u.mping trunk is as efficacious as a bugle call! But _au revoir_, Miss Carew; for we may meet again. The world is broad--yet its highways are narrow! There is no need wis.h.i.+ng you a pleasant journey."

His glance rested on Saint-Prosper for a moment, but told nothing beyond the slight touch of irony in his words and then s.h.i.+fting to the young girl, it lingered upon each detail of costume and outline of feature. Before she could reply, Barnes cracked his whip, the horses sprang forward, and the stable boy, a confused tangle of legs and arms, was shot as from a catapult among the sweet-williams. The abrupt departure of the chariot was the cue for the property wagon, which followed with some labor and jolting, like a convoy struggling in the wake of a pretentious s.h.i.+p. From the door Mauville watched it until it reached a toll-gate, pa.s.sed beneath the portcullis and disappeared into the broad province of the wilderness.

CHAPTER VII

SOJOURNING IN ARCADIA

Calm and still was the morning; the wandering air just stirred the pendulous branches of the elms and maples, and, in the clear atmosphere, the russet hills were sharply outlined. As they swung out into the road, with Hans, the musician, at the reins, the young girl removed her bonnet and leaned back in the chair of state, where kings had fretted and queens had lolled.

The throne, imposing on the stage, now appeared but a flimsy article of furniture, with frayed and torn upholstering, and carving which had long since lost its gilded magnificence. Seated amid the jumble of theatrical appliances and accoutrements--scenery, rolled up rug-fas.h.i.+on, property trunks, stage clock, lamps and draperies--she accepted the situation gracefully, even finding nothing strange in the presence of the soldier. New faces had come and gone in the company before, and, when Barnes had complacently informed her Saint-Prosper would journey with the players to New Orleans in a semi-business capacity, the arrangement appeared conformable to precedent. The manager's satisfaction augured well for the importance of the semi-business role a.s.sumed by the stranger, and Barnes' friendliness was perhaps in some degree unconsciously reflected in her manner; an att.i.tude the soldier's own reserve, or taciturnity, had not tended to dispel. So, his being in the property wagon seemed no more singular than Hans' occupancy of the front seat, or if Adonis, Hawkes, or Susan had been there with her. She was accustomed to free and easy comrades.h.i.+p; indeed, knew no other life, and it was only a.s.siduous attentions, like those of the land baron's, that startled and disquieted her.

As comfortably as might be, she settled back in the capacious, threadbare throne, a slender figure in its depths--more adapted to accommodate a corpulent Henry VIII!--and smiled gaily, as the wagon, in avoiding one rut, ran into another and lurched somewhat violently.

Saint-Prosper, lodged on a neighboring trunk, quickly extended a steadying hand.

"You see how precarious thrones are!" he said.

"There isn't room for it to more than totter," she replied lightly, removing her bonnet and lazily swinging it from the arm of the chair.

"Then it's safer than real thrones," he answered, watching the swaying bonnet, or perhaps, contrasting the muscular, bronzed hand he had placed on the chair with the smooth, white one which held the blue ribbons; a small, though firm, hand to grapple with the minotaur, Life!

She slowly wound the ribbons around her fingers.

"Oh, you mean France," she said, and he looked away with sudden disquietude. "Poor monarchs! Their road is rougher than this one."

"Rougher truly!"

"You love France?" she asked suddenly, after studying, with secret, sidelong glances his reserved, impenetrable face.

His gaze returned to her--to the bonnet now resting in her lap--to the hand beside it.

"It is my native land," he replied.

"Then why did you leave it--in its trouble?" she asked impulsively.

"Why?" he repeated, regarding her keenly; but in a moment he added: "For several reasons. I returned from Africa, from serving under Bugeaud, to find the red flag waving in Paris; the king fled!"

"Oh," she said, quickly, "a king should--"

"What?" he asked, as she paused.

"I was going to say it was better to die like a king than--"

"Than live an outcast!" he concluded for her, a shadow on his brow.

She nodded. "At any rate, that is the way they always do in the plays," she added brightly. "But you were saying you found your real king fled?"

His heavy brows contracted, though he answered readily enough: "Yes, the king had fled. A kinsman in whose house I had been reared then bade me head a movement for the restoration of the royal fugitive. For what object? The regency was doomed. The king, a May-fly!"

"And so you refused?"

"We quarreled; he swore like a Gascon. His little puppet should yet sit in the chair where Louis XIV had lorded it! I, who owed my commission to his n.o.ble name, was a republican, a deserter! The best way out of the difficulty was out of the country. First it was England, then it was here. To-morrow--where?" he added, in a lower tone, half to himself.

"Where?" she repeated, lightly. "That is our case, too."

He looked at her with sudden interest. "Yours is an eventful life, Miss Carew."

"I have never known any other," she said, simply, adding after a pause: "My earliest recollections are a.s.sociated with my mother and the stage. As a child I watched her from the wings. I remember a grand voice and majestic presence. When the audience broke into applause, my heart throbbed with pride."

But as her thoughts reverted to times past, the touch of melancholy, invoked by the memory of her mother, was gradually dispelled, as fancy conjured other scenes, and a flickering smile hovered over the lips whose parting displaced that graver mood.

"Once or twice I played with her, too," she added. "I thought it nice to be one of the little princes in Richard III and wear white satin clothes. One night after the play an old gentleman took me on his knee and said: I had to come, my child, and see if the wicked old uncle hadn't really smothered you!' When he had gone, my mother told me he was Mr. Was.h.i.+ngton Irving. I thought him very kind, for he brought me a bag of bonbons from the coffee-room."

"It's the first time I ever heard of a great critic laden with sweetmeats!" said the soldier. "And were you not flattered by his honeyed regard?"

"Oh, yes; I devoured it and wanted more," she laughed.

Hans' flouris.h.i.+ng whip put an end to further conversation. "Der stage goach!" he said, turning a lumpish countenance upon them and pointing down the road.

Approaching at a lively gait was one of the coaches of the regular line, a vehicle of ancient type, hung on bands of leather and curtained with painted canvas, not unlike the typical French diligence, except for its absence of springs. The stage was spattered with mud from roof to wheel-tire, but as the mire was not fresh and the road fair, the presumption followed that custom and practice precluded the cleaning of the coach. The pa.s.sengers, among whom were several ladies, wearing coquettish bonnets with ribbons or beau-catchers attached, were too weary even to view with wonder the odd-looking theatrical caravan. Only the driver, a diminutive person with puckered face the color of dried apples, so venerable as to be known as Old Hundred, seemed as spry and cheery as when he started.

"Morning," he said, briskly, drawing in his horses. "Come back, have ye, with yer troupe? What's the neuws from Alban-y?"