"How much distress he is saving himself and all of us," I caught myself murmuring, audibly, out among my fig-trees.
Finding two or three figs fully ripe, I strolled over the way to see him among his trees and maybe find chance for a little neighborly boasting. As our custom with each other was, I ignored the bell on his gate, drew the bolt, and, pa.s.sing in among Mrs. Fontenette"s invalid roses, must have moved, without intention, quite noiselessly from one to another, until I came around behind the house, where a strong old cloth-of-gold rose-vine half covered the latticed side of the cistern shed. In the doorway I stopped in silent amaze. A small looking-gla.s.s hanging against the wooden cistern showed me--although I was in much the stronger light--Monsieur Fontenette. He was just straightening up from an oil-stone he had been using, and the reflection of his face fell full on the gla.s.s. Once before, but once only, had I seen such agony of countenance--such fierce and awful looking in and out at the same time; that was on a man who was still trying to get the best of a fight in which he knew he was mortally shot.
Fontenette did not see me. I suppose the rose-vine screened me, and his glance did not rise quite to the mirror, but followed the soft thumbings with which he tried the two edges and point of as murderous a knife as ever I saw.
As softly as a shadow I drew out of sight, turned away, and went almost back to the gate before I let my footfall be heard, and called, "M"sieu"
Fontenette!"
He hallooed from the shed in a playful sham of being a mile or so away, and emerged from the lattice and vine with that accustomed light of equanimity on his features which made him always so thoroughly good- looking. He came hitching his waistband with both hands in that innocent Creole way that belongs to the lat.i.tude, and how I knew I cannot tell you, but I did know--I didn"t merely feel or think, but I knew!--_positively_-- that he had that hideous thing on his person.
Against what contingency I could only ask myself and wonder, but I instantly decided to get him away from home and keep him away until the picnickers had got back and scattered. So I proposed a walk, a diversion we had often enjoyed together.
"Yes?" he said, "to pazz the time whilse they don"t arrive? With the greates" of pleasu"e!"
I dare say we were both more preoccupied than we thought we were, for outside the gate we fairly ran into a lady--yes; a seamstress--the wife of the entomologist. My stars! She had seemed winning enough before, but now --what a rise in values! As we conversed it was all I could do to keep my eyes from saying: "A man with you for a wife belongs at home whenever he can be there!" But whether they spoke it or not, in some way, without word or glance, by simple radiations from the whole sweet woman, she revealed that to make that fact plain to him, to _her_, and to all of us, was what this new emphasis of charm was for.
She had come, she said--and scarcely on the lips of the loveliest Creole did I ever hear a more bewitching broken-English--she had come according to a half-promise made to Mrs. Fontenette to show her--"I tidn"t etsectly promised, I chust said I vill some time come----"
"And Mrs. Fontenette didn"t object," I playfully interrupted--
"No," said the unruffled speaker, "I chust said I vill come; yes; to show her a new vay to remoof, remoof? is sat English? So? A new vay to remoof old stains."
"A new way--" responded Fontenette, with an air of gravest interest in all matters of laundry.
"Yes," she repeated, as simply as a babe, "a new vay; and I sought I come now so to go home viss mine hussbandt." There, at last, she smiled, and to make the caressing pride of her closing tone still prettier, lifted her figured muslin out sidewise between thumb and forefinger of each hand with even more archaic grace than playfulness.
As the three of us crossed over and took seats on my veranda, we were joined by the neighbor whose garden-trees I have mentioned; the man of whom I have told you, how he failed to strike a bargain with old Manouvrier, the taxidermist. He was a Missourian, in the produce business, a thoroughly good fellow, but--well--oh--!
He came perspiring, flourishing a palm-leaf fan and a large handkerchief, to say I might keep all the shade his tall house and trees dropped on my side of the fence. And presently what does the simple fellow do but begin to chaff the three of us on the absence of our three partners!
VI
I held my breath in dismay! The more I strove to change the subject the more our fat wag, fancying he was teasing me to the delight of the others, harped on the one string, until with pure apprehension of what Fontenette might presently do or say, my blood ran hot and cold. But Monsieur showed neither amus.e.m.e.nt nor annoyance, only a perfectly gracious endurance. Yet how could I know what instant his forbearance might give way, or what serpent"s eggs the joker"s inanities might in the next day or hour turn out to be, laid in the hot heart of the Creole gentleman? Then it was that this slender little German seamstress-wife shone forth like the first star of the breathless twilight.
Seamstress? no; she had left the seamstress totally behind her. You might have thought the finest tactics of the drawing-room--not of to-day, but of the times when gentlemen wore swords and dirks--had been at her finger-ends all her life. She took our good neighbor"s giddy pleasantries as deep truths lightly put, and answered them in such graceful, mild earnest, and with such a modest, yet fetching, quaintness, that we were all preached to more effectively than we could have been by seven priests from one pulpit.
Or, at any rate, that was my feeling; every note she uttered was melodiously kind, but every sentence was an arrow sent home.
"You make me," she said, "you make me sink of se aunt of my musser, vhat she said to my musser vhen my musser iss getting married. "Senda," she said, "vonce in a vhile"--is sat right, "vonce in a vhile?"--so?--"vonce in a vhile your Rudolph going to see a voman he better had married san you. Sen he going to fall a little vay--maybe a good vay--in love viss her; and sen if Rudolph iss a scoundtrel, or if you iss a fool, sare be trouble. But if Rudolph don"t be a scoundtrel and you don"t be a fool he vill pretty soon straight" up himself and say, One man can"t ever"sing have, and mine Senda she is enough!"... Sat vas my Aunt Senda."
"Your mother was named for her?"
"Yes, my musser, and me; I am name" Senda, se same. She vas se Countess von (Something)--sat aunt of my musser. She vas a fine voman."
"Still," said our joker, "you know she was only about half right in that advice."
"No," she replied, putting on a drowsy tone, "I don"t know; and I sink you don"t know eeser."
"I reckon I do," he insisted. "We"re all made of inflammable stuff. Any _man_ knows that. We couldn"t, any of us, pull through life decently if we didn"t let each other be each other"s keeper; could we, Fontenette?"
No sound from Fontenette. "Hmm!" hummed the little woman, in such soft derision that only he and I heard it; and after a moment she said, "Yes, it is so. But, you know who is se only good keeper? Sat is love."
"And jealousy," suggested Bulk; "the blindfold boy and the green-eyed monster."
"Se creen-eyedt--no, I sink not. Chalousie have destroyed--is sat correct?--yes? Chalousie have destroyed a sowsand-sowsand times so much happiness as it ever saved--ah! see se lightening! I sink sat is se displeasu"e of heaven to my so bad English. Ah? see it again? vell, I vill stop."
"You ought to be in a better world than this," laughed our fat neighbor.
"No," she chanted, "I ra.s.ser sis one. I sink mine hussbandt never be satisfied viss a vorld not full of vorms and bugs; and I am glad to stay alvays viss mine hussbandt."
"And I reckon he thinks you"re big enough world for him, just yourself, doesn"t he?"
"No." She seemed to speak more than half to herself. "A man--see se lightening!--a man who can be satisfied viss a vorld no bigger as I can by mineself gif him--mine Kott! I vould not haf such a man! See se lightening! but I sink sare vill be no storm; sare is no sunder viss se ligh"--Ah! sare are se trhuants!" We rose to meet them. First came the children, vaunting their fatigue, then a black maid or two, with twice their share of baskets, and then our three spouses; the Baron came last and was mute. The two ladies called cheery, weary good-byes to another contingent, that pa.s.sed on by the gate, and hail and farewell to our fat neighbor as he went home. Then they yielded their small burdens to us, climbed the veranda stairs and entered the house.
VII
No battle, it is said, is ever fought, and I dare say no game--worth counting--is ever played, exactly as previously planned. One of our company had planned, very secretly, as he thought, a battle; another, almost openly, was already waging hers; while a third was playing a game-- though probably, I admit, fighting, inwardly, her poor weak battle also; and none of the three offered an exception to this rule. The first clear proof of it--which it still gives me a low sort of pleasure to recall--was my prompt discovery, as we gathered around the tea-board, to eat the picnic"s remains, that our Flora was out of humor with the Baron. It was plain that the whole day"s flood of small experiences had been to her pretty vanity a Tantalus"s cup. She was quick to tell, with an irritation, which she genuinely tried to conceal, and with scarcely an ounce of words to a ton of dead-sweet insinuation, what a social failure he had chosen to be. Evidently he had spent every golden hour of sweet spiritual opportunity--I speak from her point of view, or, at least, my notion of it--not in catching and communicating the charm of any scene or incident, nor in thrilling comparisons of sentiment with anyone, nor in any impartation of inspiring knowledge, nor in any mirthful exchange of compliments or gay glances over the salad and sandwiches; but in constantly poking and plodding through thicket and mire and solitarily peering and prying on the under sides of leaves and stems and up and down and all around the bark of every rough-trunked tree.
She made the picture amusing, none the less, and to no one more so than to the Baron"s wife, whose presence among us at the board was as fragrant, so to speak, as that of a violet among its leaves and sisters. "Ah! Gustaf,"
she said, with a cadenced gravity more taking than mirth, "sat iss a treat-ment n.o.body got a right to but me. But tell me, tell se company, vhat new sings have you found? I know you have not hunt" all se day and nussing new found."
But the Baron had found nothing new. He told us so with his mouth dripping and his nose in the trough--his plate I should say. You could hear him chew across the room. Suddenly, however, he ceased eating and began to pour forth an account of his day"s observation; in response to which M.
Fontenette, to my amused mystification, led us all in the interest with which we listened. The Baron forgot his food, and when reminded of it, pushed it away with a grunt and talked on and on, while we almost forgot our own.
As we rose to return to the veranda, the Creole still offered him an undivided attention, which the Baron rewarded with his continued discourse. As I gave Fontenette a light for his cigarette I held his eye for a moment with a brightness of face into which I put as significant approval as I dared; for I fancied the same unuttered word was brooding in both our hearts: "A new vay to remoof old stains."
Then he turned and gave all his attention once more to the entomologist, as they walked out upon the gallery together behind their wives. And the German woman courted the pretty New Englander as sweetly as the Creole courted her husband, and with twice the energy. She was a bubbling spring of information in the Baron"s science; she was a well of sweet philosophy on life and conduct, and at every turn of their conversation, always letting Mrs. Fontenette turn it, she showed her own to be the better mind and the better training.
When Mrs. Fontenette, before any one else, rose to go--maybe my dislike of her only made it seem so--but I believed she did it out of pure bafflement and chagrin.
Not so believed her husband. He responded gratefully; yet lingered, still listening to the entomologist, until she fondlingly chid him for forgetting that while he had been all day in his swivel-chair, she had pa.s.sed the hours in unusual fatigues!
She declined his arm in our garden walk, and positively forbade me to cut a rose for her--but with a grace almost maidenly. As I let them out, the heat-lightning gleamed again low in the west. A playfulness came into M.
Fontenette"s face and he murmured to me, "See se lightening."
"Yes," I replied, pressing his hand, "but I sink sare vill be no storm if sare iss no sunder."
Mrs. Fontenette gave a faint gasp of impatience and left us at a run, tripping fairily across the rough street at the only point visible to those on the veranda. Fontenette scowled unaware as he started to follow, and the next moment a short "aha!" escaped him. For, at her gate, to my unholy joy, she stumbled just enough to make the whole performance unspeakably ridiculous, and flirted into her cottage----
"In tears!" I offered to bet myself as I turned to rejoin my companions on the veranda, and wished with all my soul the goggled Baron could have seen it.