Part XII

She slept but a few hours. They were troubled and feverish

hours, disturbed with dreams that were intangible, that eluded her,

leaving only an impression upon her half-awakened senses of

something unattainable. She was up and dressed in the cool of the

early morning. The air was invigorating and steadied somewhat her

faculties. However, she was not seeking refreshment or help from

any source, either external or from within. She was blindly

following whatever impulse moved her, as if she had placed herself

in alien hands for direction, and freed her soul of responsibility.

Most of the people at that early hour were still in bed and

asleep. A few, who intended to go over to the Cheniere for

mass, were moving about. The lovers, who had laid their plans the

night before, were already strolling toward the wharf. The lady in

black, with her Sunday prayer-book, velvet and gold-clasped,

and her Sunday silver beads, was following them at no great distance.

Old Monsieur Farival was up, and was more than half inclined to do

anything that suggested itself. He put on his big straw hat,

and taking his umbrella from the stand in the hall, followed

the lady in black, never overtaking her.

The little negro girl who worked Madame Lebrun's sewing-machine

was sweeping the galleries with long, absent-minded strokes

of the broom. Edna sent her up into the house to awaken Robert.

"Tell him I am going to the Cheniere. The boat is ready;

tell him to hurry."

He had soon joined her. She had never sent for him before.

She had never asked for him. She had never seemed to want him

before. She did not appear conscious that she had done anything

unusual in commanding his presence. He was apparently equally

unconscious of anything extraordinary in the situation. But his

face was suffused with a quiet glow when he met her.

They went together back to the kitchen to drink coffee. There

was no time to wait for any nicety of service. They stood outside

the window and the cook passed them their coffee and a roll, which

they drank and ate from the window-sill. Edna said it tasted good.

She had not thought of coffee nor of anything. He told her he had

often noticed that she lacked forethought.

"Wasn't it enough to think of going to the Cheniere and

waking you up?" she laughed. "Do I have to think of

everything?—as Leonce says when he's in a bad humor.

I don't blame him; he'd never be in a bad humor if it weren't for me."

They took a short cut across the sands. At a distance they

could see the curious procession moving toward the wharf—the

lovers, shoulder to shoulder, creeping; the lady in black, gaining

steadily upon them; old Monsieur Farival, losing ground inch by

inch, and a young barefooted Spanish girl, with a red kerchief on

her head and a basket on her arm, bringing up the rear.

Robert knew the girl, and he talked to her a little in the boat.

No one present understood what they said. Her name was Mariequita.

She had a round, sly, piquant face and pretty black eyes.

Her hands were small, and she kept them folded over the

handle of her basket. Her feet were broad and coarse.

She did not strive to hide them. Edna looked at her feet,

and noticed the sand and slime between her brown toes.

Beaudelet grumbled because Mariequita was there, taking up so

much room. In reality he was annoyed at having old Monsieur Farival,

who considered himself the better sailor of the two. But he

he would not quarrel with so old a man as Monsieur Farival, so he

quarreled with Mariequita. The girl was deprecatory at one moment,

appealing to Robert. She was saucy the next, moving her head up

and down, making "eyes" at Robert and making "mouths" at Beaudelet.

The lovers were all alone. They saw nothing, they heard

nothing. The lady in black was counting her beads for the third

time. Old Monsieur Farival talked incessantly of what he knew

about handling a boat, and of what Beaudelet did not know on the

same subject.

Edna liked it all. She looked Mariequita up and down, from

her ugly brown toes to her pretty black eyes, and

back again.

"Why does she look at me like that?" inquired the girl of Robert.

"Maybe she thinks you are pretty. Shall I ask her?"

"No. Is she your sweetheart?"

"She's a married lady, and has two children."

"Oh! well! Francisco ran away with Sylvano's wife, who had

four children. They took all his money and one of the children and

stole his boat."

"Shut up!"

"Does she understand?"

"Oh, hush!"

"Are those two married over there—leaning on each other?"

"Of course not," laughed Robert.

"Of course not," echoed Mariequita, with a serious,

confirmatory bob of the head.

The sun was high up and beginning to bite. The swift breeze

seemed to Edna to bury the sting of it into the pores of her face

and hands. Robert held his umbrella over her. As they went

cutting sidewise through the water, the sails bellied taut, with

the wind filling and overflowing them. Old Monsieur Farival

laughed sardonically at something as he looked at the sails, and

Beaudelet swore at the old man under his breath.

Sailing across the bay to the Cheniere Caminada, Edna felt

as if she were being borne away from some anchorage which had held

her fast, whose chains had been loosening—had snapped the night

before when the mystic spirit was abroad, leaving her free to drift

whithersoever she chose to set her sails. Robert spoke to her

incessantly; he no longer noticed Mariequita. The girl had shrimps

in her bamboo basket. They were covered with Spanish moss. She

beat the moss down impatiently, and muttered to herself sullenly.

"Let us go to Grande Terre to-morrow?" said Robert in a low

voice.

"What shall we do there?"

"Climb up the hill to the old fort and look at the little

wriggling gold snakes, and watch the lizards sun themselves."

She gazed away toward Grande Terre and thought she would like

to be alone there with Robert, in the sun, listening to the ocean's

roar and watching the slimy lizards writhe in and out among the

ruins of the old fort.

"And the next day or the next we can sail to the Bayou

Brulow," he went on.

"What shall we do there?"

"Anything—cast bait for fish."

"No; we'll go back to Grande Terre. Let the fish alone."

"We'll go wherever you like," he said. "I'll have Tonie come

over and help me patch and trim my boat. We shall not need Beaudelet

nor any one. Are you afraid of the pirogue?"

"Oh, no."

"Then I'll take you some night in the pirogue when the moon

shines. Maybe your Gulf spirit will whisper to you in which of

these islands the treasures are hidden—direct you to the very

spot, perhaps."

"And in a day we should be rich!" she laughed. "I'd give it

all to you, the pirate gold and every bit of treasure we could dig

up. I think you would know how to spend it. Pirate gold isn't a

thing to be hoarded or utilized. It is something to squander and

throw to the four winds, for the fun of seeing the golden specks

fly."

"We'd share it, and scatter it together," he said. His face

flushed.

They all went together up to the quaint little Gothic church

of Our Lady of Lourdes, gleaming all brown and yellow with paint in

the sun's glare.

Only Beaudelet remained behind, tinkering at his boat, and

Mariequita walked away with her basket of shrimps, casting a look

of childish ill humor and reproach at Robert from the corner of her

eye.