CHAPTER IX.
The rumor had come to Margaret Ruysdale's ears at last, and she believed it. She could hardly have failed to believe it; the chain of circumstantial evidence, to which she could add some links from her own observation, was so strong and so damning. The summons which called Philip Rondelet from Mrs. Harden's dinner-table on the night which people still believed to have preceded the duel, the strange message that a lady was waiting for him in the carriage, his appearance the next day with his wounded arm in a sling, his melancholy, and the apathetic moods she had first known in him, which had now given place to a more hopeful and elastic frame of mind: these things all pointed conclusively to the fact at which people hinted,—that Fernand Thoron had fallen by the hand of Philip Rondelet. It was a great shock to Margaret; and for several days she shut herself from the world and refused to see any one. Then, as hers was one of those natures which instinctively turn to work for their consolation, she betook herself to her modelling with an impassioned energy. She had neglected her bas-relief, and had been living more in other people and less in herself than ever before. The men and women by whom she found herself surrounded were dangerous rivals to her profession. In her Northern home there were no idle people; and if she had wished to loiter over the life-path, she would perforce have done so alone. Here she found friends, quick-sympathied and warm-hearted, who had understood her in a week as the old home-friends had never understood her in a lifetime. She was conscious that the difference lay not wholly in the people, but somewhat also in herself. These simpler, warmer-blooded folks, with their pride, their prejudices, their quick anger, their quicker remorse, their deadly feuds and emotional friendships, melted her New England reserve as the April sun thaws the lingering frost from the arbutus-roots in the dim Maine woods. But now the horror at a crime which to her was not lightened by any sanction of custom, threw her back upon herself and her work. Those who spoke about the duel called it "a most unfortunate accident," "a fatal result which, happily, did not often attend such an affair of honor." Men standing in high positions were pointed out to her as having crossed swords beneath the great oaks of the duelling-ground in times gone by. Such affairs were growing rare now, and many people felt differently about them; but they had their use, no doubt, and society could not be protected without them. Margaret pleaded illness, and for a fortnight saw no visitors and devoted herself to her Atalanta.
What had she felt for Philip Rondelet, she asked herself a hundred times, ere this great horror of him had settled upon her? And then she tried to put him from her mind, and for a time succeeded. With an instinctive knowledge of what was best for herself,—a knowledge all healthy minded people have in time of trouble,—she kept her thoughts and fingers actively employed. When she was not in the studio she was reading to her father, teaching General Jackson, or making fantastic decorations for the quaint little dwelling which thenceforth never quite lost the impress of her fancy. The Atalanta came on famously. It was a composition of a certain merit and of some originality. She had chosen the moment when Milanion, growing weary in the race and hearing the garments of the Arcadian virgin rustling close behind him, turns and throws down the first golden apple. Atalanta pauses, curious, irresolute, and the group of huntsmen and maidens look on, amused spectators of the struggle between the wily suitor and the light-heeled girl. The figure of the latter was now complete, and there only remained that of Milanion to finish. Robert Feuardent had posed for this figure, and Margaret was loath to finish it from any less perfect model than the handsome Creole. She had not seen him since the great ball, when he appeared early one morning at her studio door. He had brought her an orange-branch, and came and stood silently leaning against the door-post, waiting till she should see him.
He wore the dress in which he posed for her,—a loose blue flannel shirt rolled away from the neck, close-fitting nether garments, and buskins. He must have come at a swift pace, for his breath was short and his face and eyes were glowing with exercise. Over his shoulder he carried the branch of oranges. He stood in a flood of sunshine, which was colder than the light in his deep golden-brown eyes, and he laughed with the glad, free laughter of a savage child when Margaret turned and saw him, and started at the sight. He had never seemed to her so handsome or so winning as now, when he broke through the quiet gray of her work-a-day life as a sunbeam breaks through a dark cloud. A bowl of milk was standing near her; and taking it silently, she placed it in his hands and stood looking up at him while he drained the vessel at a draught. She was a graceful little figure in her straight blue apron, very quiet and demure beside the tropical splendor of the young man who had come to pose for her Milanion. When he had quenched his thirst she welcomed him gravely; and taking the orange-branch from him, fastened it against the wall.
"You have brought me the golden apples of the Hesperides. I am not ready to model them yet; they will keep longer than the spirits which make you so fit a subject for my Milanion to-day. It is long since you have been here. Do not tell me of the time or the trouble which has come between; it is enough you understand that you can serve me only when you are as you are to-day."
His face was a trifle graver after she had said these words; but he took the familiar attitude, and his identity was soon lost to Margaret as she became absorbed in her work. She wrought long and steadily. The General came and sat beside her, watching the quick skilful moulding of the clay in her hands,—work he would have given all his worldly possessions to be able to do. And later came Mrs. Harden, whom Margaret had not seen since the night of the ball. The excursion to the Rondelet plantation had been postponed indefinitely, and Margaret had managed to avoid Mrs. Harden, as well as other friends. The little woman seemed annoyed at finding Feuardent, and after a short visit took her leave, remarking that Margaret had a very disagreeable way of being a sort of standing reproach to all idle, harmless people like herself.
So the morning passed; and when they had all lunched together, Feuardent proposed that they should make an expedition to Lake Pontchartrain, dine there, and come home by moonlight. Margaret objected a little, but was easily persuaded; and once in the cars and on the way, gave herself up to the enjoyment of the scenery through which they passed. The road took them through a thick cypress-swamp, where the water stood in pools under the heavy growth of palmettoes and marsh-flowers. The death-moss, running riot everywhere, enwrapped the skeletons of the trees it had lived upon and stifled. Soon this dreary place was left behind, and they emerged upon a broad and pleasant plain, where a narrow bayou twisted its tortuous course through a country without sign of habitation save where a negro cabin, surrounded by a tiny patch of cultivated ground, broke the level stretch of green. Few pleasure-boats were seen upon the bayou, but a number of small craft, laden with fish and vegetables, made their way toward the city. When the light wind failed to fill the sails, a black-browed dago would leap ashore, and, lashing himself to the tow-rope, would trudge along the bank, singing as he went in a language strange as those rude dialects of Italy from one of which it is derived. A small boat filled with oranges floats by, its guardian, a red-haired mulatto boy, sound asleep, his head resting upon his cargo of fruit. Far off, the white-shell carriage-road follows the winding of the bayou, and between the two thoroughfares lie stretches of swampy land splendid with the royal flowers of France. Nowhere in the world does the flower-de-luce bloom as it does on the plains about New Orleans,—splendid dark purple masses of it here, and again rows of pure white lilies, with sometimes a blood-red flower, and more often one of pale lavender. The land looks like the royal carpet of the throne of France, with its thick-sprinkled fleur-de-lis, below which, as beneath that splendid tapestry, lurk many a quagmire and pitfall for the unwary who would strive to grasp at the 'imperial flowers. And now the bayou widens and comes to an end, for they have followed it to the lake into which it flows. On the borders of Pontchartrain are many cool retreats, where in the pleasant spring weather, and later in the burning summer-tide, people come from the city and breathe the fresh lake-air, plunge into the cool waters, or ride over the waves in the stanch sailing-craft. Here one may dine pleasantly (and well, if one is an habitué) on wide galleries or gardens looking out into the sunset-land beyond the lake. In the gardens are a few very tame wild beasts, and a pelican too well provided with fish and promiscuous victuals to be ever put to the painful extremity in which it is depicted on all the official insignia of Louisiana. Here are alligators, immeasurably old and hideous, which have to be fiercely prodded with long poles, provided for this emergency, to induce them to feed on pieces of raw meat which the unwary visitor pays for.
And all these things Margaret saw and enjoyed a little: but it was not with her as it had been on the day of the fête; and Robert knew that this was so, and yet feared to ask the reason of the change. The General followed them about, and examined the ancient fort, whose remains are included in this pleasure-ground. Later, dinner was served, and there was music in the garden; but Margaret hardly heeded it for listening to a tale Robert Feuardent was telling her of the six tall slim trees which faced each other in a double row within a few yards of the place where they were sitting. These trees mark the graves of six young men of gentle degree who in the old time, when the fort was no pleasure-ground, but a grim war-station, fell to fencing with each other one day for lack of other pastime. The contest, begun in sport, waxed earnest, and finally angry; and when the sun that had seen the six companions in friendly intercourse sank to its grave, it looked upon six ghastly corpses lying on the spot now marked by as many memorial trees.
"Let us come away," cried Margaret, as Feuardent, in a low voice not untouched with awe, finished his narrative. "I will not stay in such an unhallowed place. Why did you bring me here? Why did you tell me this dreadful story? What have you or I to do with murder and death?"
"Who can escape contact with death?" answered Feuardent gloomily. "And why should you shrink from hearing such a story merely because you are a woman? Is it not for you women that these things are done? Strife comes with you wherever you go, and men who have been as brothers become murderers, in deed or in thought, for your sakes. You may not hear a rough word, you grow sick at the sight of blood; and yet the blackest crimes that the heart of man conceives of are committed through your influence, for your sake."
"Is it for women that these things are done, or for the selfish desires of men that are centred in them?" It was General Ruysdale who spoke.
"I cannot tell," said Margaret, "I think that I know nothing of men; and if they are as you describe them, I am glad that I do not."
"And why should you hold yourself aloof from sinful men because you, in your ignorance of evil, cannot understand the crimes into which they fall? If you should learn that your brother or your friend had committed the crime of Cain, which you assume to be an unpardonable one, would not that man still be your brother, your friend?"
"No; for he would no longer be the man I had loved, but a stranger."
"You would put him from your heart? You would deny him your love?"
"He would have killed it with the selfsame blow that sought his brother's life."
The words came slowly, and Feuardent saw that her hands griped each other painfully and that her face was very white and set; and then without looking at her he read her thoughts, half consciously, as he had done so many times since that day at the fête when they had danced that mad dance together; and when he knew what was in her mind, he started to his feet, stifling a groan that had risen to his lips, and left her without a word.
He came to her the next day, and the next, and every day; and as the weeks went by, and the Atalanta was almost complete, Margaret's laugh was heard again, though more rarely than before. Her voice had grown a trifle deeper and less like the cool babbling of running water than it had been when Philip Rondelet had first known her. Philip was not there to mark the change, for on the very day after his visit to Therese he had been summoned to his home in the country, where his sister lay desperately ill, and in the life-struggle through which he remained at her side he had no moment to return to New Orleans to seek the girl whose image filled his dreams by day as well as by night. He did not write to her, for the only thing he could have said he had not yet the right to say. Mrs. Harden had left New Orleans when Mardi Gras was past, and there was no one to speak about Rondelet to Margaret, who was putting him more and more from her mind as the days went by. Robert Feuardent, who had been his friend from childhood, never mentioned Philip's name to the young sculptor, and so things went on till the time of the roses was come.
The passage of the seasons in that fair southern land is marked by the blossoming of its flowers. The glory of the roses was over all the city. In the gardens of the great houses the queen of flowers bloomed sedate and perfect on trellis and tree; over the more modest dwellings the blossoms cast their wonderful beauty; and from the neglected garden patches about the hovels of the poorest denizens of the city, roses, red and white and yellow, bloomed in a wild luxuriance. Early in the mornings, before the dew was dry upon the flower petals, Margaret was wont to seek a garden where she was privileged to pluck roses till her thirst for them was satisfied and her arms became weary with the weight of the sweet burden; and here it was that Robert found her on the very day that Philip Rondelet came back to the city he had left two months before. Here he found her, and here they walked and talked together among the roses; and here Philip saw them as he passed on his way to Jackson Square, and at the sight of them turned white and faint, and leaned against the railing for a minute, and then went on his way wearily.