A Fool There Was | Page 4

A
baby, eh?" He laughed, aloud. The broken peals came back to him from
the sodden, smoke-stained rafters. "Strange that I should have come
to-day.... A baby!" He laughed again, modulatedly. And then, with an
air of sympathetic commiseration he said to the gray-haired old woman
with the eyes of fire:
"Too bad that your daughter is not married--since she, I presume, is the
mother! ... And the happy father?--he is--?" He stopped, waiting,
smilingly.
The fierce, blazing eyes were set full upon his own. She said, in the
patois that was of her and hers:
"You ask that? ... You?"
He answered, evenly.
"Yes. I ask that. Even I."
Quickly, with the agility of the brute, she thrust toward him the little,
puling thing that lay upon her lap.
"Look, then," she said, in deep, grating tones.
He leaned forward, crossing his hands behind him, and looked. The
crop, held in his right hand, tapped lightly against his booted left leg.

The woman waited. At length he stood erect. He shook his head and
smiled.
"Babies are all alike," he remarked, easily. "Red, dirty, unformed, no
hair.... This is a little redder, a little more dirty, a little more unformed;
it has a little less hair.... Beyond that, quoi?"
The shrunken lips of the old woman set tightly; the eyes flared.
"You dare--!" she began. And then: "It is your mouth--your chin. The
nose is yours. The eyes they shall be hers." She nodded her head in the
direction of the dying mother upon the bed. "And perhaps, some day--"
She did not finish. She settled the baby back again upon her knees and
sat, waiting.
The man, still smiling, gazed up the woman on the bed.
"Dead?" he queried, with a lift of the brows.
She did not answer. He bent over the prostrate form; then again stood
erect. He shrugged his shoulders.
He turned again to the shrivelled woman on the chair.
"You have named it?" he asked. "You have named--our child?"
Still she did not answer.
"It were not improper," he continued, smilingly, half-musingly, "for a
father to venture a suggestion anent a name.... Eh bien, then. I should
wish that the baby be known as" he stopped for a moment, thinking, the
while lightly tapping booted leg with the tip of his crop. "I should
suggest," he repeated, "calling her Rien. It is an appropriate name, Rien.
It is not a bad name; in fact, it is rather a pretty name.... Rien.... Rien....
Rien...." He repeated it several times. "Yes, it seems to me that that is
an excellent name.... We will, then, consider her name Rien." He
laughed once more.
"Because of certain reasons," he went on, "I'm afraid that my paternal

duties must cease with the naming of our child."
He turned to the dying woman upon the bed.
"Bon voyage, mam'selle--eh, pardon, madame," he said. He lifted his
hat, bowing. To the old woman he turned.
"To you--" he began; she interrupted.
"Her eyes, they will be her mother's," she mumbled, sullenly.
"Which will be well," he smiled. "Her mother had beautiful eyes--
wonderful eyes."
"More wonderful than you knew," muttered the old woman. "Had you
come a day sooner--"
Still he smiled.
"But I didn't," he replied; and then nodding toward the whimpering
thing that the woman held:
"You should guard it well. There is of the best blood of France in its
veins." His lips curled, whimsically. "'Tis strange, that, n'es-ce pas? In
that small piece of carrion which you hold there upon your knees runs
the blood of three kings." Again he laughed, musically. He turned.
He had not seen her stoop. The long-bladed knife struck him in the arm,
piercing flesh and vein and sinew, sticking there. Slowly he plucked it
forth, and turned to her, still smiling.
"You are old, madame. Do not apologize; it was not your fault."
He took the knife delicately by the tip and with a little flip sent it
spinning through the air and over the edge of the cliff. And he was
gone.
The woman, shrivelled, gray-haired, sinking back in her chair, sat silent.
The puling thing upon her knees whimpered. The dying woman upon

the rude bed of rope and rush moaned. And that was all.

[Illustration]
CHAPTER THREE.
TWO BOYS AND A GIRL.
To the budding mind of young Jack Schuyler, life was a very pleasant
affair. It began each morning at six thirty; and from then on until eight
at night, there was something to fill each moment. He didn't care for
school, particularly; still, it wasn't difficult enough to cause much
discomfort. The natal pains of study were not by any means unbearable
inasmuch as he was quick to see and to understand; and furthermore, he
was possessed of