Part 29

The expression on her face, more than anything she had said, convinced him that she knew all. He stammered under the new alarm that her despairing tone suggested. "Yes!--I was owing some bills--the collector was waiting here for the money, and I took something from the packet. But I was going to make it up by next mail--I swear it."

"How much have you taken?"

"Only a trifle. I--"

"How much?"

"A hundred dollars!"

She dragged the money she had brought from Laurel Run from her pocket, and, counting out the sum, replaced it in the open package. He ran quickly to get the sealing wax, but she motioned him away as she dropped the package back into the mail bag.

"No; as long as the money is found in the bag the package may have been broken _accidentally_. Now burst open one or two of those other packages a little--so;" she took out a packet of letters and bruised their official wrappings under her little foot until the tape fastening was loosened. "Now give me something heavy." She caught up a brass two-pound weight, and in the same feverish but collected haste wrapped it in paper, sealed it, stamped it, and, addressing it in a large printed hand to herself at Laurel Hill, dropped it in the bag. Then she closed it and locked it; he would have assisted her, but she again waved him away. "Send for the expressman, and keep yourself out of the way for a moment," she said curtly.

An attitude of weak admiration and foolish passion had taken the place of his former tremulous fear. He obeyed excitedly, but without a word. Mrs. Baker wiped her moist forehead and parched lips, and shook out her skirt. Well might the young expressman start at the unexpected revelation of those sparkling eyes and that demurely smiling mouth at the little window.

"Mrs. Baker!"

She put her finger quickly to her lips, and threw a world of unutterable and enigmatical meaning into her mischievous face.

"There's a big San Francisco swell takin' my place at Laurel to-night, Charley."

"Yes, ma'am."

"And it's a pity that the Omnibus Waybag happened to get such a shaking up and banging round already, coming here."

"Eh?"

"I say," continued Mrs. Baker, with great gravity and dancing eyes, "that it would be just awful if that keerful city clerk found things kinder mixed up inside when he comes to open it. I wouldn't give him trouble for the world, Charley."

"No, ma'am, it ain't like you."

"So you'll be particularly careful on _my_ account."

"Mrs. Baker," said Charley, with infinite gravity, "if that bag _should tumble off a dozen times_ between this and Laurel Hill, I'll hop down and pick it up myself."

"Thank you! shake!"

They shook hands gravely across the window ledge.

"And you ain't goin' down with us, Mrs. Baker?"

"Of course not; it wouldn't do--for _I ain't here_--don't you see?"

"Of course!"

She handed him the bag through the door. He took it carefully, but in spite of his great precaution fell over it twice on his way to the road, where from certain exclamations and shouts it seemed that a like miserable mischance attended its elevation to the boot. Then Mrs. Baker came back into the office, and, as the wheels rolled away, threw herself into a chair, and inconsistently gave way for the first time to an outburst of tears. Then her hand was grasped suddenly, and she found Green on his knees before her. She started to her feet.

"Don't move," he said, with weak hysteric passion, "but listen to me, for God's sake! I am ruined, I know, even though you have just saved me from detection and disgrace. I have been mad!--a fool, to do what I have done, I know, but you do not know all--you do not know why I did it--you can not think of the temptation that has driven me to it. Listen, Mrs. Baker. I have been striving to get money, honestly, dishonestly--anyway, to look well in _your_ eyes--to make myself worthy of you--to make myself rich, and to be able to offer you a home and take you away from Laurel Run. It was all for _you_--it was all for love of _you_, Betsy, my darling. Listen to me!"

In the fury, outraged sensibility, indignation, and infinite disgust that filled her little body at that moment, she should have been large, imperious, goddess-like, and commanding. But God is at times ironical with suffering womanhood. She could only writhe her hand from his grasp with childish contortions; she could only glare at him with eyes that were prettily and piquantly brilliant; she could only slap at his detaining hand with a plump and velvety palm, and when she found her voice it was high falsetto. And all she could say was: "Leave me be, looney, or I'll scream!"

He rose, with a weak, confused laugh, half of miserable affectation and half of real anger and shame.

"What did you come riding over here for, then? What did you take all this risk for? Why did you rush over here to share my disgrace--for _you_ are as much mixed up with this now as _I_ am--if you didn't calculate to share _everything else_ with me? What did you come here for, then, if not for _me_?"

"What did _I_ come here for?" said Mrs. Baker, with every drop of red blood gone from her cheek and trembling lip. "What--did--I--come here for? Well!--I came here for _John Baker's_ sake! John Baker, who stood between you and death at Burnt Ridge, as I stand between you and damnation at Laurel Run, Mr. Green! Yes, John Baker, lying under half of Burnt Ridge, but more to me this day than any living man crawling over it--in--in"--Oh, fatal climax!--"in a month o' Sundays! What did I come here for? I came here as John Baker's livin' wife to carry on dead John Baker's work. Yes, dirty work this time, maybe, Mr. Green! but his work, and for _him_ only--precious! That's what I came here for; that's what I _live_ for; that's what I'm waiting for--to be up to him and his work always! That's me--Betsy Baker!"

She walked up and down rapidly, tying her chip hat under her chin again. Then she stopped, and taking her chamois purse from her pocket, laid it sharply on the desk.

"Stanton Green, don't be a fool! Rise up out of this, and be a man again. Take enough out o' that bag to pay what you owe Gov'ment, send in your resignation, and keep the rest to start you in a honest life elsewhere. But light out o' Hickory Hill afore this time to-morrow."

She pulled her mantle from the wall and opened the door.

"You are going?" he said, bitterly.

"Yes." Either she could not hold seriousness long in her capricious little fancy, or, with feminine tact, she sought to make the parting less difficult for him, for she broke into a dazzling smile. "Yes, I'm goin' to run Blue Lightning agin Charley and that way-bag back to Laurel Run, and break the record."

It is said that she did! Perhaps owing to the fact that the grade of the return journey to Laurel Run was in her favor, and that she could avoid the long, circuitous ascent to the summit taken by the stage, or that, owing to the extraordinary difficulties in the carriage of the way-bag--which had to be twice rescued from under the wheels of the stage--she entered the Laurel Run post-office as the coach leaders came trotting up the hill. Mr. Home was already on the platform.

"You'll have to ballast your next way-bag, boss," said Charley, gravely, as it escaped his clutches once more in the dust of the road, "or you'll have to make a new contract with the company. We've lost ten minutes in five miles over that bucking thing."

Home did not reply, but quickly dragged his prize into the office, scarcely noticing Mrs. Baker, who stood beside him pale and breathless. As the bolt of the bag was drawn, revealing its chaotic interior, Mrs. Baker gave a little sigh. Home glanced quickly at her, emptied the bag upon the floor, and picked up the broken and half-filled money parcel. Then he collected the scattered coins and counted them. "It's all right, Mrs. Baker," he said gravely. "_He's_ safe this time!"

"I'm so glad!" said little Mrs. Baker, with a hypocritical gasp.

"So am I," returned Home, with increasing gravity, as he took the coin, "for, from all I have gathered this after-noon, it seems he was an old prisoner of Laurel Run, a friend of your husband's, and, I think, more fool than knave!" He was silent for a moment, clicking the coins against each other; then he said carelessly: "Did he get quite away, Mrs. Baker?"

"I'm sure I don't know what you're talking about," said Mrs. Baker, with a lofty air of dignity, but a somewhat debasing color. "I don't see why _I_ should know anything about it, or why he should go away at all."

"Well," said Mr. Home, laying his hand gently on the widow's shoulder, "well, you see, it might have occurred to his friends that the _coins were marked_! That is, no doubt, the reason why he would take their good advice and go. But, as I said before, Mrs. Baker, _you're_ all right, whatever happens--the Government stands by _you_!"

THE CAPTAIN'S VICES

BY FRANCOIS COPPEE

_Francois Edouard Joachim Coppée (born 1842), poet and story-writer; has happily characterized himself as "a man of refinement who enjoys simple people, an aristocrat who loves the masses." The son of a clerk in the War Department, and himself a citizen-soldier during the Franco-Prussian War, he has made a close study of military character, as appears in the present selection._

_Owing to his unusual sympathy with the trials, joys, and foibles of life among the middle and lower classes of Paris, Coppée has endeared himself to the general public as perhaps no other writer of this generation has succeeded in doing._

THE CAPTAIN'S VICES*

By FRANCOIS COPPEE

*Translated for Great Short Stories by Mrs. J. L. Meyer.

I

The name of the place where Captain Mercadier (thirty years in the service, twenty-two campaigns, and three wounds) settled when he was retired is of small importance. It was a place similar to all the little cities which strive to acquire, but do not acquire, a branch railway station. As there was no railway station there the natives had but one diversion: they all met on the Place de la Fontaine at the same hour every day to see the diligence roll in to the cracking of the long whip and the jingling of the little bells. The city numbered 3,000 inhabitants (ambitiously called by the statistics "souls"), and it fed its vanity on the fact that it was the county-seat. It possessed ramparts shaded by trees, a pretty river for fishing with the line, and a church of the charming epoch of the flamboyant Gothic, dishonored by a terrible "Stations of the Cross," sent down direct from Saint Sulpice.

Always on Monday the public square was mottled with the great blue and red umbrellas of the market; and the country people came in in carts and berlins. But the rest of the week the village fell back with drowsy delight into the silence and the solitude which endeared it to the sober bourgeoise who made up its 3,000 "souls."

The streets were paved in little patterns, and through the closed windows of the ground floors could be seen bouquets made of the hair of the departed--or of some other hair--and wreaths of orange blossoms on cushions under glass shades. And through the half-glass doors of the gardens passers-by could see statuettes of Napoleon formed of clam-shells. Of course, the principal inn was named "_l'Ecu de France_." The town registrar was a poet; he rimed acrostics for the ladies of the best society of the place.

Captain Mercadier had chosen that particular village for the frivolous reason that it was his birthplace. In his boisterous youth he had mutilated the advertising signs and chipped splinters out of the porcelain bell-knobs. Despite these potent reasons, he had neither relations nor friends in the city, and his memories of his childhood held nothing but the indignant faces of the tradesmen, who showed him their clenched fists as they screamed and capered on their doorsills; the catechism, which menaced him with hell; a school where he was told that he should die upon the scaffold, and--last memory of all--his departure for the regiment, a departure hastened a trifle by the paternal malediction. For he was no saint, this captain! The record of his career was black with days passed in the guard-house (causes for punishment being absence from roll-call without leave, and orgies after taps). Time and time again he had been stripped of his chevrons (both as corporal and as sergeant), and it had been only by chance--thanks to the broad license of the campaign--that he had won his first epaulette. Stern and bold soldier, he had passed the greater part of his life in Algeria, having enlisted at the time when our men in the ranks wore the high kepi and white cross-belt and carried the heavy cartridge-box. He had had Lamoricière for commandant; the Duc de Nemours (who had been near him when he received his first wound) had decorated him; and while he was sergeant-major old Bugeaud had called him by his given name and pulled his ears. He had been a prisoner of Abd-el-Kadir; he bore the scars of a yataghan on his neck; carried one bullet in his shoulder and another in his leg; and, despite absinthe, duels, and gambling debts, and the almond-shaped black eyes of the Jewesses, he had forced victory at the point of the bayonet and the sabre, and so won his grade of Captain in the First Regiment of Cuirassiers. Captain Mercadier (thirty years of service, twenty-two campaigns, three wounds) had just been retired, and for the first time drawn his half-pay--not quite two hundred dollars, which, added to the fifty dollars accompanying his cross, placed him in the condition of honorable poverty reserved by the state for the men who have best served her.

The Captain's entrance in his native town was devoid of pomp. He arrived one morning in the imperial of the diligence, chewing the remains of an extinct cigar, and talking and laughing with the driver, to whom during the journey he had narrated the story of how he had passed the Iron Gates. His auditor had cut the narrative by oaths or by gross threats addressed to the straining mare upon the right, but Mercadier was indulgent, and he had told his history to its end.

When the diligence drew into the Place de la Fontaine he flung down an old valise covered by labels representing all the railroads that he had traveled when he changed garrison, and three minutes later the assembled citizens were stupefied by the spectacle of a man wearing the ribbon, standing at the zinc counter of the nearest wine-shop and drinking and cracking jokes with the driver. (The fact of his ribbon would have been exciting had there been nothing else!)

Mercadier, Captain of the First, installed himself, in soldier fashion, very summarily, in a house in the suburbs, where two captive cows were lowing, and where ducks and chickens waddled or strutted with uplifted claw, passing and repassing the open door of a wagon-house. Mercadier had seen a sign, "Furnished room to let," and, preceded by a lady as dragoon-like as himself, had mounted some stairs (guarded by a wooden railing and perfumed by the strong odors of a stable), and had entered a large room with a tiled floor, with walls gaily covered with paper representing (in bright blue on a white ground) Joseph Poniatowski, multiplied _ad infinitum_ and leaping courageously into the Elster. It is probable that there was some subtle power for seduction in this bizarre decoration; for, without an instant's hesitation, without forebodings as to the almost inevitable discomfort presaged by the hard straw chairs, the stiff, neglected black walnut furniture, or the narrow bed with curtains yellowed by their years, he closed the bargain, and in a quarter of an hour he had emptied his trunk, hung his clothes, set his boots in a corner, and decorated the blue walls with a "trophy" composed of three pipes, a sabre, and a brace of pistols. That done, he sallied forth, visited the grocery and the wine-shop across the way, bought a pound of candles and a bottle of rum, returned to his room, set his purchases on the mantel-shelf, and looked around him with the air of a man well pleased. Then, according to a habit acquired in barracks and in the field, he shaved without a mirror, brushed his coat, pulled his hat over his ears, and went out in search of a café.

This visit to the café was a settled habit.

The Captain had three vices, equally balanced, and he satisfied all their claims. His vices were: Tobacco, Absinthe, and Cards. The greater part of his life had passed in cafés, and had any one denied it, he might have drawn a map of the countries where he had lived, and placed in that map all the cafés, just as they had stood when he had visited them. He was never at his ease unless seated on the smooth velvet of a café bench, before a square of green cloth, on which, as he played his games, glasses and saucers accumulated; and his cigars were never just right unless he could strike his matches on the rough underside of the marble table.

And he had never failed, having hung his sabre and his kepi on a peg, to settle down into his chair, unbutton some of the buttons of his vest, to heave a sigh and to cry out: "There, that is better!"

So now, his first care was to choose his café; and, having gone round the city, not finding just what he wished for, he fixed his critical eyes upon the café Prosper (at the angle of the Place du Marché and the rue de la Paroisse). It was not his ideal of a café. The exterior offered several details smacking too much of the province--for instance, that waiter in the black apron; the little yew trees in boxes painted green; the tables covered with white oilcloth! But the Captain liked the interior, so he took his place there. Immediately after his entrance he was rejoiced by the sound of the call-bell, pressed by the fat hand of the stout, florid cashier (dress of summer lightness; a red ribbon in her well-oiled hair). He saluted her with the gallantry of an officer (retired). He noticed that she held her place with majesty sufficient to the occasion, and that she was flanked by quaint pyramids of billiard balls. The café was bright and clean, and evenly carpeted with yellow sand. He sauntered around the room, looked into the mirrors and at the pictures, in which musketeers and ladies in riding-dress sipped champagne in landscapes full of hollyhocks. He ordered drinks. Flies were dying in his wine; but he was a soldier, habituated to witness death. As a man he was indulgent, and he ignored the very visible tragedies with a stoicism grounded by long experience in wild countries, where insects bathe in wine with a familiarity strictly provincial. Eight days later he was one of the pillars of the Café Prosper. His punctual habits were known there; the waiters anticipated his wishes. Soon he ate his meals with the proprietors of the café.

The Captain was a precious recruit for the café's habitual clients (people who were bored to death by the terrible inertia of the province); to them his arrival was a windfall. Here was a man who had seen the world--past master of all the games! He told, gaily enough, about his wars and his love affairs. He was enchanted to find people who were ignorant of his history. It would take six months to tell them of his raids, his skirmishes, his outpost duty of a dark night, his battles, his hunts, the retreat from Constantine, the capture of Bou-Mazâ, the officers' receptions, with their illimitible number of punches "_au kirsch_." Ah! human weakness! he was not sorry to be a little of an oracle somewhere, at least; he from whom the subs, just delivered from Saint-Cyr, had fled to escape his stories.

As a general thing his auditors were the master of the café (a fat beer-sack, silent and stupid; always in short-sleeves, and remarkable for nothing but his painted pipes), the constable, a dogged gentleman dressed like an undertaker--he was despised because he carried off the sugar that he could not use in his mazagran--the registrar, the man who wrote acrostics, truly a very sweet-tempered man, and a man of very weak constitution, who sent answers to the riddles in the illustrated journals; and, last of all, the veterinary of the county, who, in his quality of atheist and democrat, permitted himself to contradict the Captain now and then. This practitioner was a man with bushy whiskers and eyeglasses. He presided when the Radical Committee met toward election time. When the parish priest took up a little collection among the devotees of his congregation (to the end that he might decorate his church with some horrible gilded plaster statue), the veterinary wrote a letter to the "Siècle" denouncing "the cupidity of the sons of Loyola."

One evening the Captain left his cards and went out to get cigars. He had just had an animated political discussion with the veterinary. As soon as he was out of hearing the veterinary muttered some tirades, in which could be distinguished such phrases as "Sabre trailer!" "Braggart!" "Let him keep to facts!" "Smash his face for him!" etc. While the veterinary was grumbling, the Captain came back, whistling a march and twisting his cane as he had twisted his sabre. The veterinary stopped as if struck by lightning; and the incident was closed.

But this was only an incident; on the whole, the little community of the Café Prosper had few discussions. The old residents yielded peaceably to the presidency of the stranger. Mercadier's martial head, the white beard trimmed after the fashion of the Bearnais, were imposing enough; and the little city, already so proud of many things, had one thing more to boast of--her most conspicuous representative:

┌──────────────────────────────────────┐ │ MERCADIER │ │ │ │ Captain of the First Cuirassiers │ │ Army of France (Retired) │ └──────────────────────────────────────┘

II