The Grandissimes | Page 3

thrill the breast, voices are throwing off disguise, and beauty's coy ear is bending with a venturesome docility; here love is baffled, there deceived, yonder takes prisoners and here surrenders. The very air seems to breathe, to sigh, to laugh, while the musicians, with disheveled locks, streaming brows and furious bows, strike, draw, drive, scatter from the anguished violins a never-ending rout of screaming harmonies. But the Monk and the Huguenotte are not on the floor. They are sitting where they have been left by their two companions, in one of the boxes of the theater, looking out upon the unwearied whirl and flash of gauze and light and color.
"Oh, chérie, chérie!" murmured the little lady in the Monk's disguise to her quieter companion, and speaking in the soft dialect of old Louisiana, "now you get a good idea of heaven!"
The Fille à la Cassette replied with a sudden turn of her masked face and a murmur of surprise and protest against this impiety. A low, merry laugh came out of the Monk's cowl, and the Huguenotte let her form sink a little in her chair with a gentle sigh.
"Ah, for shame, tired!" softly laughed the other; then suddenly, with her eyes fixed across the room, she seized her companion's hand and pressed it tightly. "Do you not see it?" she whispered eagerly, "just by the door--the casque with the heron feathers. Ah, Clotilde, I cannot believe he is one of those Grandissimes!"
"Well," replied the Huguenotte, "Doctor Keene says he is not."
Doctor Charlie Keene, speaking from under the disguise of the Indian Queen, had indeed so said; but the Recording Angel, whom we understand to be particular about those things, had immediately made a memorandum of it to the debit of Doctor Keene's account.
"If I had believed that it was he," continued the whisperer, "I would have turned about and left him in the midst of the contra-dance!"
Behind them sat unmasked a well-aged pair, "bredouillé," as they used to say of the wall-flowers, with that look of blissful repose which marks the married and established Creole. The lady in monk's attire turned about in her chair and leaned back to laugh with these. The passing maskers looked that way, with a certain instinct that there was beauty under those two costumes. As they did so, they saw the _Fille à la Cassette_ join in this over-shoulder conversation. A moment later, they saw the old gentleman protector and the Fille à la Cassette rising to the dance. And when presently the distant passers took a final backward glance, that same Lieutenant of Dragoons had returned and he and the little Monk were once more upon the floor, waiting for the music.
"But your late companion?" said the voice in the cowl.
"My Indian Queen?" asked the Creole Epaminondas.
"Say, rather, your Medicine-Man," archly replied the Monk.
"In these times," responded the Cavalier, "a medicine-man cannot dance long without professional interruption, even when he dances for a charitable object. He has been called to two relapsed patients." The music struck up; the speaker addressed himself to the dance; but the lady did not respond.
"Do dragoons ever moralize?" she asked.
"They do more," replied her partner; "sometimes, when beauty's enjoyment of the ball is drawing toward its twilight, they catch its pleasant melancholy, and confess; will the good father sit in the confessional?"
The pair turned slowly about and moved toward the box from which they had come, the lady remaining silent; but just as they were entering she half withdrew her arm from his, and, confronting him with a rich sparkle of the eyes within the immobile mask of the monk, said:
"Why should the conscience of one poor little monk carry all the frivolity of this ball? I have a right to dance, if I wish. I give you my word, Monsieur Dragoon, I dance only for the benefit of the sick and the destitute. It is you men--you dragoons and others--who will not help them without a compensation in this sort of nonsense. Why should we shrive you when you ought to burn?"
"Then lead us to the altar," said the Dragoon.
"Pardon, sir," she retorted, her words entangled with a musical, open-hearted laugh, "I am not going in that direction." She cast her glance around the ball-room. "As you say, it is the twilight of the ball; I am looking for the evening star,--that is, my little Huguenotte."
"Then you are well mated."
"How?"
"For you are Aurora."
The lady gave a displeased start.
"Sir!"
"Pardon," said the Cavalier, "if by accident I have hit upon your real name--"
She laughed again--a laugh which was as exultantly joyous as it was high-bred.
"Ah, my name? Oh no, indeed!" (More work for the Recording Angel.)
She turned to her protectress.
"Madame, I know you think we should be going home."
The senior lady replied in amiable speech, but with sleepy