VI
I held my breath in dismay! The more I strove to change the subject the more our fat wag, fancying he was teasing me to the delight of the others, harped on the one string, until with pure apprehension of what Fontenette might presently do or say, my blood ran hot and cold. But Monsieur showed neither amusement nor annoyance, only a perfectly gracious endurance. Yet how could I know what instant his forbearance might give way, or what serpent's eggs the joker's inanities might in the next day or hour turn out to be, laid in the hot heart of the Creole gentleman? Then it was that this slender little German seamstress-wife shone forth like the first star of the breathless twilight.
Seamstress? no; she had left the seamstress totally behind her. You might have thought the finest tactics of the drawing-room—not of to-day, but of the times when gentlemen wore swords and dirks—had been at her finger-ends all her life. She took our good neighbor's giddy pleasantries as deep truths lightly put, and answered them in such graceful, mild earnest, and with such a modest, yet fetching, quaintness, that we were all preached to more effectively than we could have been by seven priests from one pulpit. Or, at any rate, that was my feeling; every note she uttered was melodiously kind, but every sentence was an arrow sent home.
"You make me," she said, "you make me sink of se aunt of my musser, vhat she said to my musser vhen my musser iss getting married. 'Senda,' she said, 'vonce in a vhile'—is sat right, 'vonce in a vhile?'—so?—'vonce in a vhile your Rudolph going to see a voman he better had married san you. Sen he going to fall a little vay—maybe a good vay—in love viss her; and sen if Rudolph iss a scoundtrel, or if you iss a fool, sare be trouble. But if Rudolph don't be a scoundtrel and you don't be a fool he vill pretty soon straight' up himself and say, One man can't ever'sing have, and mine Senda she is enough!'… Sat vas my Aunt Senda."
"Your mother was named for her?"
"Yes, my musser, and me; I am name' Senda, se same. She vas se Countess von (Something)—sat aunt of my musser. She vas a fine voman."
"Still," said our joker, "you know she was only about half right in that advice."
"No," she replied, putting on a drowsy tone, "I don't know; and I sink you don't know eeser."
"I reckon I do," he insisted. "We're all made of inflammable stuff. Any man knows that. We couldn't, any of us, pull through life decently if we didn't let each other be each other's keeper; could we, Fontenette?"
No sound from Fontenette. "Hmm!" hummed the little woman, in such soft derision that only he and I heard it; and after a moment she said, "Yes, it is so. But, you know who is se only good keeper? Sat is love."
"And jealousy," suggested Bulk; "the blindfold boy and the green-eyed monster."
"Se creen-eyedt—no, I sink not. Chalousie have destroyed—is sat correct?—yes? Chalousie have destroyed a sowsand-sowsand times so much happiness as it ever saved—ah! see se lightening! I sink sat is se displeasu'e of heaven to my so bad English. Ah? see it again? vell, I vill stop."
"You ought to be in a better world than this," laughed our fat neighbor.
"No," she chanted, "I rasser sis one. I sink mine hussbandt never be satisfied viss a vorld not full of vorms and bugs; and I am glad to stay alvays viss mine hussbandt."
"And I reckon he thinks you're big enough world for him, just yourself, doesn't he?"
"No." She seemed to speak more than half to herself. "A man—see se lightening!—a man who can be satisfied viss a vorld no bigger as I can by mineself gif him—mine Kott! I vould not haf such a man! See se lightening! but I sink sare vill be no storm; sare is no sunder viss se ligh'—Ah! sare are se trhuants!" We rose to meet them. First came the children, vaunting their fatigue, then a black maid or two, with twice their share of baskets, and then our three spouses; the Baron came last and was mute. The two ladies called cheery, weary good-byes to another contingent, that passed on by the gate, and hail and farewell to our fat neighbor as he went home. Then they yielded their small burdens to us, climbed the veranda stairs and entered the house.