Louisiana Lou Part 7

"I understand that. You need have no fear. I was a gentleman once and still retain some of the instincts. Then I am employed to go with you on this search? And the remuneration?"

"I will pay the expenses. I can do no more than that. And if the mine is found, you shall have a full share in it. That would be a third."

"If I am to have a full share it would seem only fair that I contribute at least my own expenses. I should prefer to do so. While my pay has not been large, it has been more than an unmarried soldier needs to spend and I have saved some of it."

"Then," said mademoiselle in a tired voice, "you have decided that you will go?"

De Launay ordered and tossed off another drink and Solange shuddered.

His voice was thickening and his eyes showed the effects of the liquor, although he retained full possession of his faculties.

"A sporting proposition!" he said with a chuckle. "It's all of that and more. But still, I'm curious about one thing. This Morgan _la fee_ business. If I am to wed a fairy I'll at least know why they call her one. I'll take on no witches sight unseen."

Solange shrank a little. "I do not understand," she said, faltering.

Her expectations had been somewhat dashed.

De Launay spun a coin into the air and leaned forward as it clashed on the marble top of the table.

"Heads I go, tails I don't!" he said, and clapped his hand over it as he looked at mademoiselle. "And if I go, I'll see why they call you Morgan _la fee_!"

"Because of my coloring," said mademoiselle, wearily. "I have told you."

"But I have not seen. Shall I lift my hand, mademoiselle, with that understanding?"

Solange stared at him through the veil and he looked back at her mockingly. Angry and depressed at the same time, she nodded slowly, but her stake was large and she could not refrain from bending forward with a little intake of the breath as he slowly lifted his hand from the coin. Then she sighed deeply. It was heads.

"Mademoiselle," he said with a bow, "I win! You will lift your veil?"

Solange nodded. To her it seemed that _she_ had won. Then, with no sign of anxiety or embarra.s.sment she bent her head slightly, slipped the coif back from her hair with one hand and lifted the veil with the other, sweeping them both away from her head with that characteristic toss that women employ on such occasions. Then she raised her face and looked full at him.

He stared critically, and remained staring, but not critically. He had seen a good many women in his time, and many of them had been handsome. Some had been very beautiful. None of them had ever had much of an effect upon him. Even now he did not stop to determine in his mind whether this woman was beautiful as others had been. Her beauty, in fact, was not what affected him, although she was more than pretty, and her features were as perfect as an artist's dream.

As she had said, it was her coloring that was extraordinary. He had seen sharp contrasts in his time, women with black hair and light-blue or gray eyes, women with blond hair and brown eyes, but he had never seen one with that ma.s.s of almost colorless, almost transparent hair, scintillant where the light fell upon it, black in shadow where the rolls of it cut off the light, nor had he seen such hair in such sharp contrast with eyes that were large and black as night and as deep as pools. The thing would have been uncanny and disturbing if it had not been that her skin was as fair as her hair, white and delicate. As it was, the whole impression was startlingly vivid and yet, after the first shock, singularly fascinating. The strange mixture of extreme blondness and deep coloration seemed to fit a nature that was both fiery and deep.

De Launay reflected that one might well call her a fairy. In many primitive places that combination would have won her the name of having the evil eye. In a kinder land it gave her gentler graces.

"Are you satisfied, monsieur?" asked Solange, with a sneer. As he nodded, soberly, she dropped the veil and restored her cap. The people in the cafe had looked on with respectful and yet eager curiosity, a murmur of affectionate comment running about the tables.

"I'm quite satisfied," he repeated again, as he tossed a note on the table to satisfy his account. Solange's mouth curled scornfully as she noted again the stack of saucers indicating his habits. "I'm going to marry Morgan _la fee_, the Queen of Avalon, and I'm going to enlist in her service to do her bidding, even to unlicensed butchery where necessary. Mademoiselle, lead on!"

Solange led on, but her head was high and her face expressed an extreme disdain for the mercenary who had signed on with her.

CHAPTER V

A MARRIAGE OF CONVENIENCE

De Launay expressed himself as quite willing to look after most of the details of the affair, and Solange, although capable, being more or less ignorant, was willing to leave them to him, although with some misgiving. The sight of that stack of saucers in the cafe of the Pink Kitten remained to haunt her with distaste for the whole adventure.

She distrusted De Launay, recalling some of the more lurid tales she had heard of his exploits. In spite of everything, he had been a legionnaire, and legionnaires could hardly be purified even in the fires of war. Before he arrived at her apartment to go with her to the _mairie_ of that _arrondiss.e.m.e.nt_, she was to suffer further misgiving. Ahead of him arrived a gorgeous bouquet of lilies of the valley and orange blossoms, and they were not artificial flowers, either. When he arrived, looking much more respectable than she had expected, his mustache even twisted jauntily and his clothes pressed to neatness, she met him with accusation.

"Is it monsieur that I have to thank for--these?" she indicated the flowers with expressive and disdainful hands. De Launay stared at them vacantly as he stood in the door.

"I suppose it must have been," he said, meekly. "I am forgetful, mademoiselle. You must make allowances for a broken soldier if my--vagaries--occasionally offend you."

"It is in bad taste, to say the least, to bedeck the bride in such a ceremony," she said cuttingly. "If I must hire a husband, he need not, at least, forget decency and make me conspicuous. Remember that."

"The flowers," said De Launay, "are as if they had never been. I dismiss them from the earth. With another drink or two I will cease to recall that such things as flowers exist. Mademoiselle will command me!"

Solange tossed the offending blossoms on the floor and walked out ahead of him. He followed at her side but a step behind, and she stalked with face turned forward out to the street and toward the _mairie_. Yet, in spite of all precautions some wind of her intentions must have got about, for more than one old woman or wounded soldier spoke to her and uttered a blessing and good wishes as she walked along. To all of them she returned greetings in kind, thanking them soberly, but with a lip that trembled. De Launay, rolling behind, was the recipient of curious and doubtful glances, as the man who was taking their Morgan _la fee_ from them. Yet here and there a soldier recognized him and came to a stiff salute, and when this was the case a murmur informing others ran about, and all doubt seemed to die, the greetings growing more cheerful and the blessings being addressed to both of them. This annoyed Solange more than the flowers had done.

"Is it that I am honored by having this mercenary drunkard for a husband?" she said to herself. "_Mon Dieu!_ One would think so!"

Yet she could find nothing really offensive in his att.i.tude to the affair, unless that he was almost too respectful. She suspected that he had been drinking and that his air was due to the exaggeration induced by liquor--or else, and that was worse--he was deliberately, with drunken humor, making a burlesque of his very deference.

The signing of the contract and the ceremony before the _maire_ were successfully completed and De Launay turned to her with a deep bow.

The _maire_, puzzled at the utterly emotionless quality of this wedding, congratulated them formally, and Solange acknowledged it with stiff thanks and a smile as stiff and mirthless. But it was to De Launay that the official showed the deepest respect, and that angered her again.

Her pride was restored somewhat after they had left the _mairie_ and were on their way back to her rooms. A squat, swarthy individual, in the dingy uniform of the French marines, doffed his cap and stepped up to them, speaking to Solange in French, tinged with a broad Breton accent.

"And is it true, Morgan _la fee_," he asked, ducking his head, "that this man has been married to you?"

"Why, yes, it is true, Brebon," she answered, kindly. The man looked searchingly into her face, observing the coldness of it.

"If it is by your will, mademoiselle," he answered, "it is well. But,"

and he swung his lowering head on its bull neck toward De Launay, "if this man who has taken you should ever make you regret, you shall let me know, Morgan _la fee_! If he causes you a single tear, I shall make sausage meat out of him with a knife!"

Solange shook her head in protest, but just behind her she heard a low laugh from De Launay.

"But, _mon brave_," said he, "you would find this one a tough swine to carve!"

The Breton stared at him like a sullen and dangerous bull and moved away, saying no more. But Solange felt cheered. There were some who regarded her ahead of this soldier of fortune whom she had hired to masquerade as her husband.

She had little to cheer her in the next few days before she took the train for Le Havre. In the neighborhood where her marriage had become known, the fact that De Launay had left her at her door and came to see her only occasionally and then stayed but a moment was a fruitful subject of comment. What sort of a marriage was this! Suspicion began, gradually, to take the place of confidence in her. The women that had been her wors.h.i.+ping friends now spoke behind her back, hinting at some scandal. Nasty tales began to circulate as feminine jealousy got the upper hand. In the presence of soldiers these tongues were silent, but there were other males in the quarter who were not soldiers. Big, beefy Achille Marot, who kept the butcher shop on the corner had never been one, except in the reserve, where he had done some police duty behind the front. And Marot was a bully, foul of mind and foul of mouth. The whispers of the women were meat and drink to him. Solange had seen fit to resent in a practical manner some of his freedoms. Her poilu friends had nearly wrecked his shop for him on that occasion.

But now she was married--this was said with a suggestive raise of the shoulders and eyebrows--and the poilus were not so much in evidence.

"Ah! what have I always said to you about this one!" Marot remarked as Solange pa.s.sed his shop on her way to her rooms one day. He was looking out at her and smirking at Madame Ricot, the neighborhood gossip and scold. "Is this what one calls a marriage? Rather is it that such a marriage indicates that a marriage was necessary--and arranged conveniently, is it not? For observe that this broken adventurer who, as I know, was kicked out of the army in disgrace, is not a real husband at all, as every one may see. It is reasonable to suppose, therefore, that the affair has been arranged to hide something, is it not?"

A hand that was like steel closed on the beefy neck of the butcher and a calm voice behind him spoke in his ear.

"Now here is a word for you, my friend, from De Launay, the legionnaire, and you will do well to remember it! A tongue that is evil will win you an evil end and words that are not true will result in your throat being cut before you know it. Realize that, Marot, my friend, and say again that De Launay was kicked out of the army!"

"Death of a dog!" sputtered the butcher, twisting in the iron grasp on his neck. "I will slit thy belly----"

"Thou wilt do nothing but root in the mud as is thy nature," said De Launay and kicked him vigorously into the gutter where he did, indeed, plow the filth with his nose. Madame Ricot uttered a shrill shriek for the police, and Solange, who had been unconscious of it all, turned about to see De Launay standing on the sidewalk brus.h.i.+ng his hands while the butcher rolled in the mud. At this moment a gendarme came running up.

"Take that carrion and lock him up!" said De Launay, calmly. "I accuse him of public indecency, spreading scandal and criminal slander. He has said that I, the General de Launay, was kicked out of the army for unmentioned crimes. I will prefer charges against him in the morning."