Louisiana Lou. A Western Story. Winter William West

having the evil eye. In a kinder land it gave her gentler graces.

      “Are you satisfied, monsieur?” asked Solange, with a sneer. As he nodded, soberly, she dropped the veil and restored her cap. The people in the café had looked on with respectful and yet eager curiosity, a murmur of affectionate comment running about the tables.

      “I’m quite satisfied,” he repeated again, as he tossed a note on the table to satisfy his account. Solange’s mouth curled scornfully as she noted again the stack of saucers indicating his habits. “I’m going to marry Morgan la fée, the Queen of Avalon, and I’m going to enlist in her service to do her bidding, even to unlicensed butchery where necessary. Mademoiselle, lead on!”

      Solange led on, but her head was high and her face expressed an extreme disdain for the mercenary who had signed on with her.

      CHAPTER V

      A MARRIAGE OF CONVENIENCE

      De Launay expressed himself as quite willing to look after most of the details of the affair, and Solange, although capable, being more or less ignorant, was willing to leave them to him, although with some misgiving. The sight of that stack of saucers in the café of the Pink Kitten remained to haunt her with distaste for the whole adventure. She distrusted De Launay, recalling some of the more lurid tales she had heard of his exploits. In spite of everything, he had been a légionnaire, and légionnaires could hardly be purified even in the fires of war. Before he arrived at her apartment to go with her to the mairie of that arrondissement, she was to suffer further misgiving. Ahead of him arrived a gorgeous bouquet of lilies of the valley and orange blossoms, and they were not artificial flowers, either. When he arrived, looking much more respectable than she had expected, his mustache even twisted jauntily and his clothes pressed to neatness, she met him with accusation.

      “Is it monsieur that I have to thank for – these?” she indicated the flowers with expressive and disdainful hands. De Launay stared at them vacantly as he stood in the door.

      “I suppose it must have been,” he said, meekly. “I am forgetful, mademoiselle. You must make allowances for a broken soldier if my – vagaries – occasionally offend you.”

      “It is in bad taste, to say the least, to bedeck the bride in such a ceremony,” she said cuttingly. “If I must hire a husband, he need not, at least, forget decency and make me conspicuous. Remember that.”

      “The flowers,” said De Launay, “are as if they had never been. I dismiss them from the earth. With another drink or two I will cease to recall that such things as flowers exist. Mademoiselle will command me!”

      Solange tossed the offending blossoms on the floor and walked out ahead of him. He followed at her side but a step behind, and she stalked with face turned forward out to the street and toward the mairie. Yet, in spite of all precautions some wind of her intentions must have got about, for more than one old woman or wounded soldier spoke to her and uttered a blessing and good wishes as she walked along. To all of them she returned greetings in kind, thanking them soberly, but with a lip that trembled. De Launay, rolling behind, was the recipient of curious and doubtful glances, as the man who was taking their Morgan la fée from them. Yet here and there a soldier recognized him and came to a stiff salute, and when this was the case a murmur informing others ran about, and all doubt seemed to die, the greetings growing more cheerful and the blessings being addressed to both of them. This annoyed Solange more than the flowers had done.

      “Is it that I am honored by having this mercenary drunkard for a husband?” she said to herself. “Mon Dieu! One would think so!”

      Yet she could find nothing really offensive in his attitude to the affair, unless that he was almost too respectful. She suspected that he had been drinking and that his air was due to the exaggeration induced by liquor – or else, and that was worse – he was deliberately, with drunken humor, making a burlesque of his very deference.

      The signing of the contract and the ceremony before the maire were successfully completed and De Launay turned to her with a deep bow. The maire, puzzled at the utterly emotionless quality of this wedding, congratulated them formally, and Solange acknowledged it with stiff thanks and a smile as stiff and mirthless. But it was to De Launay that the official showed the deepest respect, and that angered her again.

      Her pride was restored somewhat after they had left the mairie and were on their way back to her rooms. A squat, swarthy individual, in the dingy uniform of the French marines, doffed his cap and stepped up to them, speaking to Solange in French, tinged with a broad Breton accent.

      “And is it true, Morgan la fée,” he asked, ducking his head, “that this man has been married to you?”

      “Why, yes, it is true, Brebon,” she answered, kindly. The man looked searchingly into her face, observing the coldness of it.

      “If it is by your will, mademoiselle,” he answered, “it is well. But,” and he swung his lowering head on its bull neck toward De Launay, “if this man who has taken you should ever make you regret, you shall let me know, Morgan la fée! If he causes you a single tear, I shall make sausage meat out of him with a knife!”

      Solange shook her head in protest, but just behind her she heard a low laugh from De Launay.

      “But, mon brave,” said he, “you would find this one a tough swine to carve!”

      The Breton stared at him like a sullen and dangerous bull and moved away, saying no more. But Solange felt cheered. There were some who regarded her ahead of this soldier of fortune whom she had hired to masquerade as her husband.

      She had little to cheer her in the next few days before she took the train for Le Havre. In the neighborhood where her marriage had become known, the fact that De Launay had left her at her door and came to see her only occasionally and then stayed but a moment was a fruitful subject of comment. What sort of a marriage was this! Suspicion began, gradually, to take the place of confidence in her. The women that had been her worshiping friends now spoke behind her back, hinting at some scandal. Nasty tales began to circulate as feminine jealousy got the upper hand. In the presence of soldiers these tongues were silent, but there were other males in the quarter who were not soldiers. Big, beefy Achille Marot, who kept the butcher shop on the corner had never been one, except in the reserve, where he had done some police duty behind the front. And Marot was a bully, foul of mind and foul of mouth. The whispers of the women were meat and drink to him. Solange had seen fit to resent in a practical manner some of his freedoms. Her poilu friends had nearly wrecked his shop for him on that occasion. But now she was married – this was said with a suggestive raise of the shoulders and eyebrows – and the poilus were not so much in evidence.