Mr. Tarbox was really a very brave man. For, had he not been, how could he have ventured, something after the middle of that afternoon, in his best attire, up into Claude’s workroom? He came to apologize. But Claude was not there.
He waited, but the young man did not return. The air was hot and still. Mr. Tarbox looked at his watch—it was a quarter of five. He rose and descended to the street, looked up and down it, and then moved briskly down to, and across, Canal Street and into Bourbon. He had an appointment.
Claude had not gone back to his loft at all. He was wandering up and down the streets. About four he was in Bienville Street, where the pleasure-trains run through it on their way out to Spanish Fort, a beautiful pleasure-ground some six miles away from the city’s centre, on the margin of Lake Pontchartrain. He was listlessly crossing the way as a train came along, and it was easy for the habit of the aforetime brakeman to move him. As the last platform passed the crossing, he reached out mechanically and swung aboard.
Spanish Fort is at the mouth of Bayou St. John. A draw-bridge spans the bayou. On the farther, the eastern, side, Claude stood leaning against a pile, looking off far beyond West End to where the sun was setting in the swamps about Lake Maurepas. There—there—not seen save by memory’s eye, yet there not the less, was Bayou des Acadiens. Ah me! there was Grande Pointe.
“O Bonaventure! Do I owe you”—Claude’s thought was in the old Acadian tongue—“Do I owe you malice for this? No, no, no! Better this than less.” And then he recalled a writing-book copy that Bonaventure had set for him, of the schoolmaster’s own devising: Better Great Sorrow than Small Delight. His throat tightened and his eyes swam.
A pretty schooner, with green hull and new sails, came down the bayou. As he turned to gaze on her, the bridge, just beyond his feet, began to swing open. He stepped upon it and moved towards its centre, his eyes still on the beautiful silent advance of the vessel. With a number of persons who had gathered from both ends of the bridge, he paused and leaned over the rail as the schooner, with her crew looking up into the faces of the throng, glided close by. A female form came beside him, looking down with the rest and shedding upon the air the soft sweetness of perfumed robes. A masculine voice, just beyond, said:
“A thing of beauty is a joy forever.”
Claude started and looked up, and behold, Marguerite on the arm of Tarbox!
His movement drew their glance, and the next instant Mr. Tarbox, beaming apology and pouring out glad greetings, had him by the hand. Burning, choking, stammering, Claude heard and answered, he knew not how, the voice of the queen of all her kind. Another pair pressed forward to add their salutations. They were Zoséphine and the surveyor.
Because the facilities for entertaining a male visitor were slender at the Women’s Exchange, because there was hope of more and cooler air at the lake-side, because Spanish Fort was a pretty and romantic spot and not so apt to be thronged as West End, and because Marguerite, as she described it, was tired of houses and streets, and also because he had something to say to Zoséphine, Mr. Tarbox had brought the pretty mother and daughter out here. The engineer had met the three by chance only a few minutes before, and now as the bridge closed again he passed Zoséphine over to Claude, walked only a little way with them down a path among the shrubbery, and then lifted his hat and withdrew.