FullReads

He borrowed pen, ink, and paper, and in the clean solitude of his fresh chintz bedroom, indited the following letter:–

DEAR MISS FONTONELLES,–Please excuse me for having skeert you. I hadn’t any call to do it, I never reckoned to do it–it was all jest my derned luck; I only reckoned to tell you I was lost–in them blamed woods–don’t you remember?–“lost”–PERDOO!–and then you up and fainted! I wouldn’t have come into your garden, only, you see, I’d just skeered by accident two of your helps, reg’lar softies, and I wanted to explain. I reckon they allowed I was that man that that picture in the hall was painted after. I reckon they took ME for him–see? But he ain’t MY style, nohow, and I never saw the picture at all until after I’d toted you, when you fainted, up to your house, or I’d have made my kalkilations and acted according. I’d have laid low in the woods, and got away without skeerin’ you. You see what I mean? It was mighty mean of me, I suppose, to have tetched you at all, without saying, “Excuse me, miss,” and toted you out of the garden and up the steps into your own parlor without asking your leave. But the whole thing tumbled so suddent. And it didn’t seem the square thing for me to lite out and leave you lying there on the grass. That’s why! I’m sorry I skeert that old preacher, but he came upon me in the picture hall so suddent, that it was a mighty close call, I tell you, to get off without a shindy. Please forgive me, Miss Fontonelles. When you get this, I shall be going back home to America, but you might write to me at Denver City, saying you’re all right. I liked your style; I liked your grit in standing up to me in the garden until you had your say, when you thought I was the Lord knows what–though I never understood a word you got off–not knowing French. But it’s all the same now. Say! I’ve got your rose!

Yours very respectfully,

RICHARD FOUNTAINS.

Dick folded the epistle and put it in his pocket. He would post it himself on the morning before he left. When he came downstairs he found his indefatigable host awaiting him, with the report of the veterinary blacksmith. There was nothing seriously wrong with the mustang, but it would be unfit to travel for several days. The landlord repeated his former offer. Dick, whose money was pretty well exhausted, was fain to accept, reflecting that SHE had never seen the mustang and would not recognize it. But he drew the line at the sombrero, to which his host had taken a great fancy. He had worn it before HER!

Later in the evening Dick was sitting on the low veranda of the cafe, overlooking the white road. A round white table was beside him, his feet were on the railing, but his eyes were resting beyond on the high, mouldy iron gates of the mysterious park. What he was thinking of did not matter, but he was a little impatient at the sudden appearance of his host–whom he had evaded during the afternoon–at his side. The man’s manner was full of bursting loquacity and mysterious levity.

Truly, it was a good hour when Dick had arrived at Fontonelles,–“just in time.” He could see now what a world of imbeciles was France. What stupid ignorance ruled, what low cunning and low tact could achieve,–in effect, what jugglers and mountebanks, hypocritical priests and licentious and lying noblesse went to make up existing society. Ah, there had been a fine excitement, a regular coup d’theatre at Fontonelles,–the chateau yonder; here at the village, where the news was brought by frightened grooms and silly women! He had been in the thick of it all the afternoon! He had examined it,–interrogated them like a juge d’instruction,–winnowed it, sifted it. And what was it all? An attempt by these wretched priests and noblesse to revive in the nineteenth century–the age of electricity and Pullman cars–a miserable mediaeval legend of an apparition, a miracle! Yes; one is asked to believe that at the chateau yonder was seen last night three times the apparition of Armand de Fontonelles!