Part 69 (2/2)
”And in return, what do you expect?”
Calembours shrugged his shoulders and grinned.
”_Vive l'Anglais!_” he cried, ”they can make a good bull's-eye can the John Bulls. You see this _bourse_? Bah! how wrinkled are its sides, how flattened under hard pressure of poverty! _Mon Dieu!_ did not the jade, Madame Hesslein, take the bread out of my mouth in the amplitude of her revenge? Very well. You who offer me the hand of friends.h.i.+p in return for that leetle favor, and also for the other not leetle favor of sending your Marguerite to save your life, shall take her fingers in yours, kiss them, and say: ”Have you forgotten the small souvenir which you promised to my friend, the chevalier?” _Ma Mignonette_, now is the time to remember it. And she will remember it--my word upon it, she will, and will also urge upon you to let her souvenir me with a leetle more of her pin-money. And with the proceeds of your joint munificence I shall float again on the ascending tide of fortune, in my tight little bark, in spite of the _grande_ she devil who has ruined me.”
”Ah, your funds have run low, and you are here to replenish them?”
”By gar! that is so, _mon ami_.”
The two men eyed each other; St Udo with raised eyebrows and slightly scornful amus.e.m.e.nt; the ex-tailor of Szegedin with an ingratiating impudence which showed that monsieur knew his man very well.
”I have told you often that you are a greedy dog,” said the colonel; ”but I have no wish to see you under the feet of your favourite G.o.ddess, though I had much rather you had left your services to speak for themselves to our pockets. How much did Miss Walsingham agree to give you? Davenport, it seems to me, mentioned something of this to me.”
”Only one thousand of your pounds, _cher ami_, only one thousand; she was going to insist upon doubling it, but I implored her: 'Admirable lady, press no more upon me. At that time I little dreamed the days were coming when necessity should compel me to accept.”
”You shall have fifteen hundred to give you a start. I think you will manage upon that, you are such a man of resource.” Said the colonel, admiringly, who had heard Davenport's grumbling account of the money arrangement with the chevalier, and remembered it very well.
Whereupon monsieur got up, flung his arms around St. Udo, gave him a French embrace, vowed he was a lord, and then coolly announced himself the _attache_ of the little party, he rushed off to hunt up his quondam antagonist, Davenport, and discuss the management of affairs, with much impudent triumph, over that worthy gentleman for his former suspicions of the honor of a French chevalier.
The white moonbeams poured brilliant as diamond lights into the porch of the old church of Key West.
The spicy odor of the citron trees and of the orange groves filled each pa.s.sing breath; the boom of the far-off surf against the reefs made endless sounding, like the dull roar of a conch-sh.e.l.l at the ear.
The robed figure of a clergyman stood in the low-browed church doorway, and his hands gently chafed each other as he gazed down the white road after a quiet cortege, which was gliding slowly toward the town.
Into the flickering shades of a branching palm-tree out to the vivid moonbeams, bright as day, quietly moving farther and farther from the man who had bound them together, for a peaceful or a turbulent life.
And the good pastor, softly chafing his hands, and thinking of the bride's soft, holy face, and of the bridegroom's beauty, which had reminded him of Antinous, grave, yet not severe, breathes a blessing upon these strangers, who this night will leave forever behind them his fairy isle.
”May their wedded life be as serene and smooth as these shades are light, and these bursts of moonlight translucent. May the sky ever be clear for them--the sea of life ever be unruffled, as yonder crystal channel, to which they are hastening.”
Then he, also, leaves the glistening temple behind him, and goes his way among the down-dropping shrubs and spicy blossoms to his home among the bananas.
Standing on the deck of the steamer, which was to convey him to his long-forsaken home, with his arm around the Venus-like figure of his wife, and his eyes upon the swiftly vanis.h.i.+ng roof of the isle, St. Udo Brand, who had spoken but little since repeating the vows which had made his darling by his side his own, now found speech, and half playfully apostrophized the dreamlike scene before him thus:
”Farewell ye coral isles, wherein I found my Pearl and happiness.
Blessed be your coraline foundations, your lazy inhabitants, and your fever-breeding climate. You have been to me a world of pa.s.sion, of hope, of purity. Oh, my Lost Good, who has been sent to me in mercy”--his playful accents changed to the gravity of deep emotion, as he drew yet closer to him his ”Perdita”--”I turn to you henceforth to be what you would wish me, and to study your secret of how to live. I have been wandering on the burning sands, and pressing forever onward to reach a glittering lake of the desert, which, ever rippling and vanis.h.i.+ng, beckoned me farther from the cool, calm shades of rest. Now I come, a wearied pilgrim to your pure heart, my wife, for you have opened it to let a weary, dusty wanderer in. Your purity, my simple Margaret, reminds me of the immaculate heights of snow-capped Gaurisankar--serene, majestic, while I, a lava-crusted, thunderous, calcined volcano, lashed by the fires of many pa.s.sions, come to cool my fevered blood by your chill radiance.”
”Hush, St. Udo! If you knew how intensely happy I am with my destiny----”
She paused, for her glad eyes were filling fast, her fond tones faltering.
”Oh, my soft-souled Perdita! my simple darling!”
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