“Why not write him off twenty shares to propitiate the gods—gifts unto the needy, eh!—a thousand-fold—what?”
“Yes; it might be done, Belgard, if—”
But someone just then proposed the toast, “The Rose Tree Mine!” and the souls of these men waxed proud and merry, for they had seen the investor’s palm filled with gold, the maker of conquest. While Antoine was singing with his wife, they were holding revel within the sound of Bow Bells. And far into the night, through silent Cheapside, a rolling voice swelled through much laughter thus:
“Gai Ion la, gai le rosier,
Du joli mois de Mai.”
The next day there were heavy heads in London; but the next day, also, a man lay ill in the hut on the island of St. Jean.
Antoine had sung his last song. He had waked in the night with a start of pain, and by the time the sun was halting at noon above the Rose Tree Mine, he had begun a journey, the record of which no man has ever truly told, neither its beginning nor its end; because that which is of the spirit refuseth to be interpreted by the flesh. Some signs there be, but they are brief and shadowy; the awe of It is hidden in the mind of him that goeth out lonely unto God.
When the call goes forth, not wife nor child nor any other can hold the wayfarer back, though he may loiter for an instant on the brink. The poor medicaments which Angelique brings avail not; these soothing hands and healing tones, they pass through clouds of the middle place between heaven and earth to Antoine. It is only when the second midnight comes that, with conscious, but pensive and far-off, eyes, he says to her: “Angelique, my wife.”
For reply her lips pressed his cheek, and her fingers hungered for his neck. Then: “Is there pain now Antoine?”
“There is no pain, Angelique.”
He closed his eyes slowly; her lips framed an ave. “The mine,” he said, “the mine—until the spring.”