“Oh! No! No!” he cried. “I want no such bride as that. You have described a friend, a comrade—yes, that’s it, a good comrade—like my little Bob here.” He glanced at Alagwa affectionately, but she had bowed her face, and he could not see it. “But I would not choose such a one for a bride,” he went on. “I would never marry such a comrade, brave and helpful though she might be. If I ever marry, I shall marry some sweet gentle lady who never saw the frontier, who knows nothing of war, who has tread no rougher measures than those of the minuet. I want a bride whom I can shield from the world, not a mannish creature who can protect me. I want—Good Lord! What’s the matter?”
Alagwa had sprung to her feet, gasping. For a moment she stood; then she turned and fled to the house. Fantine glared at Jack; her lips moved but no sound came from them. For once, the situation was beyond her. With a hopeless gesture she followed the girl. Rogers stood staring.
Jack caught at Cato’s shoulder and scrambled to his feet, his face was white. “What—what—what”—he babbled. “Good Lord! What——”
Half way to the hotel Fantine turned. She had remembered Jack’s condition. “Nom d’un nom!” she cried. “Sit you down, M. Jack. It is nothing, nothing. It—is the heat. Never have I seen its like. The boy is overwrought. I will calm him. Sit you down! Do you want to fall ill again?”
Jack sat down, not because Fantine’s words satisfied him, but because his strength was failing. He leaned against the tree, staring at the house into which Alagwa had disappeared.
At last he looked up at Rogers and Cato. “I don’t understand,” he muttered. “I’ve hurt Bob some way. But how? I wouldn’t hurt him for the world. How did I do it? How did I do it?” Heedless of the others’ bewildered answers he babbled on, wonderingly.
After a while he got up and went slowly to his room and lay down. An hour later, when Alagwa remorsefully sought him, he was sleeping heavily. Frightened lest this might mean a relapse, but not daring to awake him, the girl stole out of the room and joined the others at the table.
CHAPTER XVII
EXCEPT for Jack and his party the Maison Bondie was entirely bare of guests. The wagoners who made the place their home during their periodic visits to Fort Wayne had that very morning driven away to the south. Others would soon arrive, probably on the morrow, but until they came the Bondies were alone. Rogers had gone, presumably to the fort. Fantine had been busy comforting Alagwa, and when she remembered him he had disappeared.
Perhaps it was as well, for as Fantine and Alagwa and Peter’s Miami wife sat down to supper Peter came hurrying in, bringing news that destroyed the tastefulness even of Fantine’s cooking.