The Triflers Part 12

"Perhaps it will help monsieur to be quiet if he knows his fiancee is in the next room."

Momentarily this announcement appeared to have directly the opposite effect.

"My what?" gasped Monte.

"Monsieur's fiancee. With her maid, she is occupying the next apartment in order to be near monsieur. If you are very quiet to-night, it is possible that to-morrow the doctor will permit you to see her."

"Was that she who came in and whispered to you?"

"Yes, monsieur."

Monte remained quiet after that--but he was not sleeping. He was thinking.

In the first place, this was enough to make him recall all that had happened. This led him to speculate on all that might be about to happen--how much he could not at that moment even imagine. Neither line of thought was conducive to sleep.

Marjory was in the next room, awake, and at the sound of his voice had come in. In the dark, even with this great night city of Paris asleep around him, she had come near enough so that he heard the rustle of her skirt and her whispering voice. That was unusual--most unusual--and rather satisfactory. If worse came to worse and he reached a point where it was necessary for him to talk to some one, he could get her in here again in spite of this nurse woman. He had only to call her name.

Not that he really had any intention in the world of doing it. The idea rather embarra.s.sed him. He would not know what to say to a young lady at this hour of the night--even Marjory. But there she was--some one from home, some one he knew and who knew him. It was like having Edhart within reach.

In this last week he had sometimes awakened as he was now awake, and the silence had oppressed him. Ordinarily there was nothing morbid about Monte, but Edhart's death and the big empty s.p.a.ce that was left all about Nice, the silence where once he had been so sure of hearing Edhart's voice, the ghostly reminders of Edhart in those who clicked about in Edhart's bones without his flesh--all these things had given Monte's thoughts an occasional novel trend.

Once or twice he had gone as far as to picture himself as upon the point of death here in this foreign city. It was a very sad, a melancholy thing to speak about. He might call until he was hoa.r.s.e, and no one would answer except possibly the night clerk or a gendarme.

And they would look upon him only as something of a nuisance. It is really pathetic--the depths of misery into which a healthy man may, in such a mood, plunge himself.

All around him the dark, silent city, asleep save for the night clerks, the gendarmes, the evildoers, and the merrymakers. And these last would only leer at him. If he did not join them, then it was his fault if he lay dying alone.

"Is she in there now?" Monte called to the nurse in the dark.

"Certainly, monsieur. But I thought you were sleeping."

No, he was not sleeping; but he did not mind now the pain in his shoulder. She had announced herself as his fiancee. Well, technically, she was. He had asked her to marry him, and she had accepted. At the time he had not seen much farther ahead than the next few minutes; and even then had not foreseen what was to happen in those few minutes. The proposal had given him his right to talk to Hamilton, and her acceptance--well, it had given Marjory her right to be here.

Curious thing about that code of rights and wrongs! Society was a stickler for form. If either he or Marjory had neglected the preliminaries, then he might have lain here alone for a week, with society shaking its Puritan head. This nurse woman might have come, but she did not count; and, besides, he had to get shot before even she would be allowed.

Now it was all right. It was all right and proper for her, all right and proper for him, all right and proper for society. Not only that, but it was so utterly normal that society would have frowned if she had not hurried to his side in such an emergency. It forced her here, w.i.l.l.y-nilly. Perhaps that was the only reason she was here.

Still, he did not like to think that. She was too true blue to quit a friend. It would be more like her to come anyway. He remembered how she had stood by that old aunt to the end. She would be standing by her to-day were she alive. Even Chic, who fulfilled his own obligations to the last word, had sometimes urged her to lead her own life, and she had only smiled. There was man stuff in her.

It showed when she announced to these people her engagement. He did not believe she did that either because it was necessary or proper.

She did it because it was the literal truth, and she was not ashamed of the literal truth in anything.

"Is Mademoiselle Stockton sitting up--there in the next room?"

"I do not know," answered the nurse.

"Do you mind finding out for me?"

"If monsieur will promise to sleep after that."

"How can a man promise to sleep?"

Even under normal conditions, that was a foolish thing to promise. But when a man was experiencing brand-new sensations--the sensations of being engaged--it was quite impossible to make such a promise.

"Monsieur can at least promise not to talk."

"I will do that," agreed Monte.

She came back and reported that mademoiselle was sitting up, and begged to present her regards and express the hope that he was resting comfortably.

"Please to tell her I am, and that I hope she will now go to bed," he answered.

Nurse Duval did that, and returned.

"What did she say?" inquired Monte.

"But, monsieur--"

She had no intention of spending the rest of the night as a messenger between those two rooms.

"Very well," submitted Monte. "But you might tell me what she said."

"She said she was not sleepy," answered the nurse.

"I'm glad she's awake," said Monte.

Just because he was awake. In a sense, it gave them this city for themselves. It was as if this immediately became their city. That was not good arithmetic. a.s.suming that the city contained a population of three millions,--he did not have his Baedeker at hand,--then clearly he could consider only one three millionth part of the city as his. With her awake in the next room, that made only two of them, so that taken collectively they had a right to claim only two three-millionths parts as belonging to them. Yet that was not the way it worked out. As far as he was concerned, the other two millions nine hundred and ninety-nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-eight did not exist.

There was nothing sentimental about this conclusion. He did not think of it as it affected her--merely as it affected him. It gave him rather a comfortable, completed feeling, as if he now had within himself the means for peacefully enjoying life, wherever he might be, even at thirty-two. Under the influence of this soothing thought, he fell asleep again.

After the doctors were through with Monte the next morning, they decided, after a consultation, that there was no apparent reason why, during the day, Miss Stockton, if she desired, should not serve as his nurse while Miss Duval went home to sleep.

"My a.s.sistant will come in at least twice," said Dr. Marcellin.

"Besides, you have the const.i.tution of a prize-fighter. It might well be possible to place a bullet through the heart of such a man without greatly discommoding him."

He spoke as if with some resentment.

After they had gone out, Marjory came in. She hesitated at the door a moment, perhaps to make sure that he was awake; perhaps to make sure that she herself was awake. Monte, from the bed, could see her better than she could see him. He thought she looked whiter than usual, but she was very beautiful.

There was something about her that distinguished her from other women--from this nurse woman, for example, who was the only other woman with whom it was possible to compare her in a like situation. With one hand resting on the door, her chin well up, she looked more than ever like Her Royal Highness Something or Other. She was dressed in something white and light and fluffy, like the gowns he used to see on Cla.s.s Day. Around her white throat there was a narrow band of black velvet.

"Good-morning, Marjory," he called.

She came at once to his side, walking graciously, as a princess might walk.

"I did n't know if you were awake," she said.

It was one thing to have her here in the dark, and another to have her here in broad daylight. The sun was streaming in at the windows now, and outside the birds were chattering.

"Did you rest well last night?" she inquired.