The Daredevil | Page 8

dance with me once to-night for
a joy. It will be our last on the ship before we land to-morrow. You
have never danced with me and to-morrow you are lost from me into
the wilds of that English Canada." And as I spoke I held out my arms to
him and began to hum the music of that remarkable Chin-Chin fox
dance that I had been dancing below with Mr. William Raines and
which the band had just begun to play again. Of course, I knew that I
must be very lovely in that young moonlight in one of the frocks that
Nannette had purchased from her very talented cousin, the _couturière_
on Rue Leopold, and I could see no reason why I should not make a
happiness for the great gentleman of France as well as the young boy
from Philadelphia and also the one from Saint Louis.
"You are a daredevil, Mademoiselle, to propose the dance to
powder-stained Armond Lasselles, but the joy of you is of a greatness
and I feel from it a healing in the night of my soul."
And he reached out in the moonlight and took me into his arms and
danced me along that deck with a grace that it would not be possible for
either the one from Philadelphia or the one from Saint Louis to imitate.
That nice but very ponderous lady from the State of Cincinnati who
regarded us from her steamer chair, enjoyed it as much as did I, and she
clapped her large hands as Monsieur le Capitaine swung me around
into the quietness beyond one of the tall chimneys for smoke from the
engine.
"This is good-bye, mon enfant, for I leave the ship at dawn with the tug,
so that I do avoid those reporters from newspapers and the contract

conspirators. I have advised Nannette that you go to the Ritz-Carlton to
await your Uncle if he be not upon the dock. I go to the grain fields of
Canada and then to the West of America.... I would that it could be au
revoir. Upon a day that shall come, beautiful lady, perhaps it will be
permitted to me to... _Non, vive la France! A lies vite, chérie _... go
while I--I--Vive la France!"
And tears came across my eyes as I did his bidding and left him--to
France. In my heart was a desire to cling to him in a great fear at being
alone to care for the good Nannette and the small Pierre, but I knew he
must travel fast and far on his quest and that for France I must let him
go without--a backward look. Would I find in the great land of America
such another gallant gentleman to care for the fate of the small Pierre
and Nannette and me? What did I know of this cruel Uncle? Nothing
but his hardness of heart. I dreaded the sight of him that I should find
upon the arrival of the ship at the dock, which would be an answer to
the letter I had sent to him to inform him of my coming, and I spent my
long night in hate of him.
With the arrival of the morning came more mines that exploded for me
under the waves of my life that had danced with so little concern
through the days upon the ship. A rain was falling and my friend of
France was gone from me at the beginning of day in a boat that is
called tug. Upon Nannette had fallen a rheumatism and the small Pierre
was in the midst of shivering chills when we at last were permitted by
the very unpleasant officer of America to go from the ship.
"Helas, it was all of the gold that he took from me for an entry into this
savage land where one piece of money is as five of that of France.
There remains but a few sous and a gold piece," sobbed Nannette as she
came from her interview with the immigration officer while I stood
beside Pierre, deposited by a deck steward on a pile of our steamer
blankets.
"Did it take all--all of the money to land, Nannette? Not all!" I cried as
I stretched out my hand to her. I did not know as I now do, that the
money would have been returned to Nannette had she waited with
patience and not made a hurry of returning to her nurslings.

"All, Mademoiselle," were the words with which she answered me, and
for some very long moments I stood dazed and struggled in the waves
of that adventure I had thought to be life.
"I beg your pardon, Marquise, but here is a letter the dock steward
failed to find you to