Part 32 (1/2)

”Ignoramus!” growled the old man.

”I did not spell it,” cried Raoul, and attempted to seize the paper. But Sylvestre throwing his hand behind him, a lady s.n.a.t.c.hed the paper, two or three cried ”Give it to Agricola!” and a pretty boy, whom the laughter and excitement had lured from the garden, scampered up the steps and handed it to the old man.

”Honore!” cried Raoul, ”it must not be read. It is one of your private matters.”

But Raoul's insinuation that anybody would entrust him with a private matter brought another laugh.

Honore nodded to his uncle to read it out, and those who could not understand English, as well as those who could, listened. It was a paper Sylvestre had picked out of a waste-basket on the day of Aurore's visit to the counting-room. Agricola read:

”What is that layde want in thare with Honore?”

”Honore is goin giv her bac that proprety--that is Aurore De Grapion what Agricola kill the husband.”

That was the whole writing, but Agricola never finished. He was reading aloud--”that is Aurore De Grap--”

At that moment he dropped the paper and blackened with wrath; a sharp flash of astonishment ran through the company; an instant of silence followed and Agricola's thundering voice rolled down upon Sylvestre in a succession of terrible imprecations.

It was painful to see the young man's face as, speechless, he received this abuse. He stood pale and frightened, with a smile playing about his mouth, half of distress and half of defiance, that said as plain as a smile could say, ”Uncle Agricola, you will have to pay for this mistake.”

As the old man ceased, Sylvestre turned and cast a look downward to Valentine Grandissime, then walked up the steps, and pa.s.sing with a courteous bow through the group that surrounded Agricola, went into the house. Valentine looked at the zenith, then at his shoe-buckles, tossed his cigar quietly into the gra.s.s and pa.s.sed around a corner of the house to meet Sylvestre in the rear.

Honore had already nodded to his uncle to come aside with him, and Agricola had done so. The rest of the company, save a few male figures down in the garden, after some feeble efforts to keep up their spirits on the veranda, remarked the growing coolness or the waning daylight, and singly or in pairs withdrew. It was not long before Raoul, who had come up upon the veranda, was left alone. He seemed to wait for something, as, leaning over the rail while the stars came out, he sang to himself, in a soft undertone, a s.n.a.t.c.h of a Creole song:

”La pluie--la pluie tombait, c.r.a.paud criait, Moustique chantait--”

The moon shone so brightly that the children in the garden did not break off their hide-and-seek, and now and then Raoul suspended the murmur of his song, absorbed in the fate of some little elf gliding from one black shadow to crouch in another. He was himself in the deep shade of a magnolia, over whose outer boughs the moonlight was trickling, as if the whole tree had been dipped in quicksilver.

In the broad walk running down to the garden gate some six or seven dark forms sat in chairs, not too far away for the light of their cigars to be occasionally seen and their voices to reach his ear; but he did not listen. In a little while there came a light footstep, and a soft, mock-startled ”Who is that?” and one of that same sparkling group of girls that had lately hung upon Honore came so close to Raoul, in her attempt to discern his lineaments, that their lips accidentally met.

They had but a moment of hand-in-hand converse before they were hustled forth by a feminine scouting party and thrust along into one of the great rooms of the house, where the youth and beauty of the Grandissimes were gathered in an expansive semicircle around a languis.h.i.+ng fire, waiting to hear a story, or a song, or both, or half a dozen of each, from that master of narrative and melody, Raoul Innerarity.

”But mark,” they cried unitedly, ”you have got to wind up with the story of Bras-Coupe!”

”A song! A song!”

”_Une chanson Creole! Une chanson des negres!_”

”Sing 'ye tole dance la doung y doung doung!'” cried a black-eyed girl.

Raoul explained that it had too many objectionable phrases.

”Oh, just hum the objectionable phrases and go right on.”

But instead he sang them this:

”_La premier' fois mo te 'oir li, Li te pose au bord so lit; Mo di', Bouzon, bel n'amourese!

L'aut' fois li te si' so la saise Comme vie Madam dans so fauteil, Quand li vive cote soleil.

So gies ye te plis noir pa.s.se la nouitte, So de la lev' plis doux pa.s.se la quitte!