It was all very edifying. Like Juan, Manuel spat out his cigarette when it had burned too short. But, unlike Juan, he made no dying speech. He felt that he was still too hoarse to be effective. Instead, at the command, "Aim!" he burst out laughing, as if in derision of the well-known lack of markmanship which prevailed among the Spaniards.
He was nearly torn in two.
Those who lifted him into his coffin noticed that the expression upon his face was one of blank astonishment, as if the beyond had contained an immeasurable surprise for him.
His mother took a certain comfort from the manner of his dying, but it was the memory of her other boy that really enabled her to live out her life without going mad.
"MA'AM?"
In most affairs, except those which related to his matrimonial ventures, Marcus Antonius Saterlee was a patient man. On three occasions "an ardent temperament and the heart of a dove," as he himself had expressed it, had corralled a wife in worship and tenderness within his house. The first had been the love of his childhood; the wooing of the second had lasted but six weeks; that of the third but three. He rejoiced in the fact that he had been a good husband to three good women. He lamented that all were dead. Now and then he squirmed his bull head around on his bull body, and glanced across the aisle at the showy woman who was daintily picking a chicken wing. He himself was not toying with beefsteak, boiled eggs, mashed potatoes, cauliflower, lima, and string beans. He was eating them. Each time he looked at the lady he muttered something to his heart of a dove:
"Flighty. Too slight. Stuck on herself. Pin-head," etc.
With his food Saterlee was not patient. He dispensed with mastication. Neither was he patient of other people's matrimonial ventures. And, in particular, that contemplated and threatened by his son and heir was moving him across three hundred miles of inundated country as fast as a train could carry him. His son had written:
"DEAREST DAD—I've found Dorothy again. She's at Carcasonne. They thought her lungs were bad, but they aren't. We're going to be married a week from to-day—next Friday—at nine A.M. This marriage is going to take place, Daddy dear. You can't prevent it. I write this so's to be on the square. I'm inviting you to the wedding. I'll be hurt if you don't show up. What if Dorothy's mother is an actress and has been divorced twice? You've been a marrying man yourself, Dad. Dorothy is all darling from head to foot. But I love you, too, Daddy, and if you can't see it my way, why, God bless and keep you just the same."