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Then he drew forth a soiled piece of writing paper, a small stub of a pencil, and seemed to be engrossed in a deep calculation, as he scratched down some strange hieroglyphics and lines, as if they marked out his course in the future.
“Asphy,” said he, dreamily, the better to assume utter unconsciousness of the fact that the child was asleep on its bed. “Asphy, honey, you ain’t never yer anybody seh how fur ’tis ter Texas, has you? De boss ’low it’s er long way off frum Atlanta, but I reckon I kin git deh—de train starts at twelve ter-night.”
Caroline was so excited that her trembling hands made the dishes in the cupboard rattle as she was putting away the supper, which he had refused to touch, although she had kept it waiting for his arrival. She took a seat in the doorway and turned her dusky face out toward the night in order that he might not see her tear-dimmed eyes.
At the table he sat over his coin chessmen and figures until the far-away strokes of a clock-bell rang the hour of ten out to them from the heart of the sleeping city. As if to answer the bell came a rasping, labored cough from slumbering Asphalt, a disconnected jargon murmured as from a breast of pain, half subdued by sleep.
Two pairs of eyes were raised suddenly; one from the coin-strewn table, the other from the long rows of lights which mark out a street on the blackness far away, between long lines of tall buildings. Two hearts quickened their beatings simultaneously. Two minds were focused on one idea.
The mother rose quickly and with a cat-like tread went to the child and bent over him. Abraham all at once had eyes for aught besides his gains. His mouth relaxed from its drawn sternness and fell open as he watched Caroline’s anxious posture at the bed. He went to her side.
They looked like a pair of ebony statues. The light of the lamp and candle seemed to be struggling to produce shadows of the couple on the wall, but the rays of one lessened the power of the other, so that four dim contortions in shade took the place of two. The mother’s hand was on the brow of the sleeper; her breath was held in suspense.
“Ca’line,” more in a rasping gasp was the name pronounced than in Abraham’s usual tones; “Ca’line, dat child has got ’is feet wet somewhar’. Dis typhoid fever is all roun’ dis settlement en pow’ful bad wid chillun. You look atter him honey; I gwine fur er doctor. I’ll be back ez soon ez I kin git yer.” He left his money on the table, without giving it a thought or glance, and darted hurriedly from the room.
Day after day the troubled pair watched over their sick child, hoping and praying for its life to be spared to them.
“Ef it had en’ er been fur dis yer divo’ce we hat up ’twix us, Ca’line, it wouldn’t er come, I know,” said Abraham, in sackcloth and ashes one night. “It’s mighty bad ter tamper wid whut de Lo’d have done jined tergerr, en all ’bout His Own Son, too; better not hat no chu’ches en dat. Sister done gwine sen’ me my things back.”
Caroline was husky of voice when she replied, dampening a towel to cool Asphalt’s hot brow: “Abrum, I’m willin’, en only too willin’ ter go wid you in yo’ chu’ch. I don’t know no diffunce ’twix de two; I des hat my min’ sot on foolish showin’ off. En if God will only spar dis one child, I’ll never open my mouf ergin. Who knows but er gwine in der water wid wet clothes might er been my regular death? Mebby dis spell er Asphy’s is er warnin’ ergin it.”
Slowly Asphalt passed the dread climax, and began to grow better, and to-day Crippletown does not contain a more happy couple than Abraham and Caroline.
(Annie Reeve Aldrich: For Short Stories.)
It is deep winter. A fierce storm shakes the windows in their casement. Melting flakes were in his beard when he entered.
Within is no light save from the fire; a dull, steady glow that bathes the room in soft rose. There are lordly furnishings; about the floor great cushions; skins of the leopard and lion.
There is a screen.
My God, do not let me look behind that screen!
Hush! Where was I? Yes, on the furs before the fire, my head, with loosened hair, pillowed on the rug at his feet.
It was pleasant to listen to the raging of the wind.
He had come to tell me of his approaching marriage—a marriage of love, he said, and laughed.
It was then all the room seemed to burst into a firelight of blood; all the sounds of hell rang in my ears; and my wrist had the sudden strength of ten men to drive the blade in his breast. His great muscles and firm flesh gave momentary resistance to the point, and then, what joy to feel them yield, and the steel slip deftly in!
The wet crimson poured over my fingers into the creases of the palms he had kissed, and the dimples he had counted.
He rolled, so much clay, onto the white furs, and see, I have drawn the screen in front of him ... for he is still laughing ... the happy bridegroom.
I wish the bride might see that smile!
There is a dark stream crawling through the fur, meandering and choosing its crooked way like a little brook in the summer grasses, and it creeps on and on lazily toward the polished hearth. It will run on until the flames drink it ... and when it reaches them I must get some snow at the window and wash my hands ... but just now I can think of nothing but how long it will be by the tick of the carved clock against the wall before it reaches its goal ... of nothing but that, and how, when the fire sinks and crumbles to ashes the waiting shadows will steal from the corners where they hide and gather closer around me ... and I shall have to sit motionless until the dawn, lest by chance I should set my foot in that black little brook ... it is quiet ... but those shadows are only waiting ... waiting in the corners!
(Edmond Spencer: Parisian Police Archives.)
M. Scipion Desruelles kept a small shop in the Rue de Seine, Paris. He had a wife, but no children.
He was a small tradesman, and his wife a large, coarse-looking woman, quite capable of taking care of shop and Scipion.
Scipion’s past life had been singularly uneventful.
One single circumstance had ruffled it, and that he used often to relate to his gossips, in proof that a hero was spoiled in the making when Scipion became a shopkeeper.
One night, ten years before the time of his introduction to the reader, Scipion had gone to the theatre, and after the performance had taken Madame to a restaurant and treated her to a little supper. Returning home, after he was in bed Scipion heard a noise in the shop. He armed himself with a bootjack, went down, and, with the assistance of the hastily summoned police, captured a burglar.
The man, who said he was an Italian, named Vedova, disclaimed earnestly all felonious intentions, but could give no good account of himself. Scipion prosecuted him vigorously, and he was convicted and sent to Brest.
Two years later Scipion met Vedova in a café and had him arrested as an escaped convict.
In the early part of 1852 Scipion received official notification from Martinique that a bachelor cousin of his on the island, whose name was Pache, was dead and had left him heir to all his property which was large, and included a valuable sugar plantation. Desruelles was further informed by the notary at St. Jean, that it would be necessary for him to come out in person and administer on the estate in order to save himself great loss and inconvenience and many delays.
The bourgeois of Paris is not a traveling character, but neither is he willing to lose money if he can help it. Scipion bought himself a trunk, committed the little boutique in the Rue de Seine to Madame’s charge—she was quite as competent to take care of it as he—made a deed of all his property in Paris to Madame as a preventive of accidents, and then bidding her the most tender adieu, sailed for Martinique, via Bourdeaux, in a brig which took out a cargo of claret and oil for the French islands and New Orleans.
When Desruelles reached Martinique and went to St. Jean, he was simply struck dumb to find his cousin alive and well, and all the notarial papers he had received forgeries!
There was nothing for him to do but go back again.
The brig was to sail in a day for New Orleans, and Scipion determined to go thither in her, take the cars to New York and the steamer thence to Havre, in order to get home again as speedily as possible. He was burning to send the police in search of the rascals who had hoaxed him and made him spend his money and suffer sea-sickness in a wild-goose chase. He was armed with all the preliminary depositions and statements necessary to open the case, duplicates of which were to be forwarded by the authorities from Martinique.
Arrived in New Orleans, Scipion determined to spend a day or two in the city before taking the cars for New York. He put up at a boarding house in the French quarter, and devoted himself to sight-seeing with great assiduity.
While at breakfast the second morning after his arrival he was warmly greeted by a stranger, who took his hand and said: “I am truly delighted to see you, Monsieur Quentineau! When did you arrive?”
Scipion gently informed the man that he was not Quentineau, but Scipion Desruelles.
The stranger with great violence said that the dodge wouldn’t go down there! Next thing he’d want to repudiate that bill of $725 he owed Marais & Hughes.
Scipion said he had only been in the city a day, had never seen the stranger before, nor knew he who or what Marais & Hughes were—consequently could not possibly owe them or anybody else anything.
An hour later Scipion was arrested on a warrant taken out by Marais & Hughes, liquor dealers in Canal street, against Pierre Quentineau, an absconding debtor.
Scipion Desruelles, alias Quentineau, was cast into prison. He found a lawyer, and with great difficulty, and at the cost of half his money, proved that he was not Quentineau, but Scipion Desruelles, a passenger aboard the brig Braganza, of Bordeaux. But for the captain he would have been convicted, for several witnesses swore that he was Quentineau.
As soon as Scipion was released he went to the levee and embarked on a steamer for Memphis, intending to make his way thence by rail to New York.
At Memphis he was misdirected, enticed into a low groggery under the bluffs and robbed of every cent he had left. Scipion found his way to the mayor of the city, who promised to write to the French Consul at New Orleans about it and to send the police in search of the thieves.
Scipion meantime wrote to Paris to Madame for a remittance, and went about in search of a situation. A cotton broker gave him some correspondence with Louisiana Creole planters to look after, and he was thus enabled to earn enough to eat. But no answer nor remittance came from Madame, and our poor exile could not make money enough to take him home. At last he wrote to his
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