The Purchase Price Part 15

"Ah! _Bon jour_, Mademoiselle!" he said, smiling and taking off his old fur cap. "You spik also my language, Mademoiselle?"

"_Mais oui_, Monsieur," rejoined Josephine; and addressed him further in a few sentences on trivial topics. Then, suddenly resolved, she stepped out of her own room, pa.s.sed softly down the stair, out through the wide central hall, and so, having encountered no one, joined the ancient man on the lawn. It chanced he had been at labor directly in front of one of the barred lower windows. He now left his spade and stepped apart, essaying now a little broken English.

"You seeng my song al_so_, Mademoiselle? You like the old song from Canadian village, aye? I seeng heem many tam, me."

"Who are you?" demanded Josephine.

"Me, I am Eleazar, the ol' trap' man. Summers, I work here for Monsieur Dunwodee. Verr' reech man, Monsieur Dunwodee. He say, 'Eleazar, you live here, all right.' When winter come I go back in the heel, trap ze fur-r, Madame, ze cat, ze h'ottaire, ze meenk, sometime ze c.o.o.n, also ze skonk. Pret' soon I'll go h'out for trap now, Mademoiselle."

"How long have you been here, Eleazar?" she asked.

"Many year, Mademoiselle. In these co'ntree perhaps twent'--thirt'

year, I'll don' know."

"Were you here when the lady lived here?" she demanded of him directly.

He frowned at this suddenly. "I'll not know what you mean, Mademoiselle."

"I mean the other lady, the wife of Mr. Dunwody."

"My faith! Monsieur Dunwody he'll live h'alone here, h'all tam."

She affected not to understand him. "How long since she was here, Eleazar?" she demanded.

"What for you'll talk like those to me? I'll not know nossing, Mademoiselle. I'll not even know who is Mademoiselle, or why she'll been here, me. I'll not know for say, whether 'Madame,'

whether 'Mademoiselle.' _Mais_ 'Mademoiselle'--_que je pense_."

She looked about her hastily. "I'm here against my wish, Eleazar.

I want to get away from here as soon as I can."

He drew away in sudden fright. "I'll not know nossing at all, me,"

he reiterated.

"Eleazar, you like money perhaps?"

"Of course, yes. _Tout le monde il aime l'argent_."

"Then listen, Eleazar. Some day we will walk, perhaps. How far is it to Cape Girardeau, where the French people live?"

"My son Hector he'll live there wance, on Cap' Girardeau. He'll make the tub, make the cask, make the bar_rel_. Cap' Girardeau, oh, perhaps two--t'ree day. Me, I walk heem once, maybe so feefty mile, maybe so seexty mile, in wan day, two-t'ree a little more tam, me. I was more younger then. But now my son he'll live on St. Genevieve, French place there, perhaps thirtee mile. Cap'

Girardeau, seventy-five mile. You'll want for go there?" he added cunningly.

"Sometime," she remarked calmly. Eleazar was shrewd in his own way. He strolled off to find his spade.

Before she could resume the conversation Josephine heard behind her in the hall a step, which already she recognized. Dunwody greeted her at the door, frowning as he saw her sudden shrinking back at sight of him.

"Good morning," he said. "You have, I hope, slept well. Have you and Eleazar here planned any way to escape as yet?" He smiled at her grimly. Eleazar had shuffled away.

"Not yet."

"You had not come along so far as details then;" smilingly.

"You intruded too soon."

"At least you are frank, then! You will never get away from here excepting on one condition."

She made no answer, but looked about her slowly. Her eyes rested upon a little inclosed place where some gray stones stood upright in the gra.s.s; the family burial place, not unusual in such proximity to the abode of the living, in that part of the country at the time.

"One might escape by going there!" she pointed.

"They are my own, who sleep there," he said simply but grimly. "I wish it might be your choice; but not now; not yet. We've a lot of living to do yet, both of us."

She caught no note of relenting in his voice. He looked large and strong, standing there at the entrance to his own home. At length he turned to her, sweeping out his arm once more in a gesture including the prospect which lay before them.

"If you could only find it in your heart," he exclaimed, "how much I could do for you, how much you could do for me. Look at all this. It's a home, but it's just a desert--a desert--the way it is now."

"Has it always been so?"

"As long as I can remember."

"So you desire to make all life a desert for me! It is very n.o.ble of you!"

Absorbed, he seemed not to hear her. "Suppose you had met me the way people usually meet--and you some time had allowed me to come and address you--could you have done that, do you reckon?" He turned to her, an intent frown on his face, unsmiling.

"That's a question which here at least is absurd," she replied.

"You spoke once of that other country, abroad,--" he broke off, shaking his head. "Who are you? I don't feel sure that I even know your name as yet."

"I am, as you have been told, Josephine, Countess St. Auban. I am French, Hungarian, American, what you like, but nothing to you. I came to this country in the interest of Louis Kossuth. For that reason I have been misunderstood. They think me more dangerous than I am, but it seems I am honored by the suspicions of Austria and America as well. I was a revolutionist yonder. I am already called an abolitionist here. Very well. The name makes little difference. The work itself--"

"Is that how you happened to be there on the boat?"

"I suppose so. I was a prisoner there. I was less than a chattel.

I was a piece of property, to be staked, to be won or lost at cards, to be kidnapped, hand-cuffed, handled like a slave, it seems. And you've the hardihood to stand here and ask me who I am!"

"I've only that sort of hardihood, Madam, which makes me ride straight. If I had observed the laws, I wouldn't have you here now, this morning."

"You'll not have me long. If I despise you as a man without chivalry, I still more do so because you've neither ambition nor any sense of morals."

"You go on to improve me. I thank you, Mademoiselle--Eleazar was right. I heard him. I like you as 'Mademoiselle.'"

"What difference?" she flared out. "We are opposed at all angles of the human compa.s.s. There is no common meeting ground between us. Let me go."

He looked at her full in the face, his own features softened, relenting for a time, as though her appeal had touched either his mental or his moral nature. Then slowly, as he saw the excellence of her, standing there, his face dropped back into its iron mold.

"You are a wonderful woman," he said, "wonderful. You set me on fire--and it's only eight o'clock in the morning. I could crush you--I could tear you to pieces. I never saw your like, nor ever shall. Let you go? Yes! When I'm willing to let my blood and soul go. Not till then. If I were out in that graveyard, with my bones apart, and your foot crossed my grave, I'd get up and come, and live again with you--live--again. I say, I could live again, do you hear me?"

She broke out into a torrent of hot speech. He did not seem to hear her. "The wrong of it," said he, "is that we should fight apart and not together. Do as you like for to-day. Be happy as you can. Let's live in the present, as we were, at least for to-day. But to-night--"

He turned swiftly, and left her, so that she found left unsaid certain questions as well as certain accusations she had stored for this first meeting.