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And now," added Calderon, with a self-mocking sneer, "comes the era which the poets have not chronicled; for fraud, and hypocrisy, and vice, know no poets!" The quick step of Fonseca interrupted the courtier's reverie. He turned, knit his brow, and sighed heavily, as if nerving himself to some effort; but his brow was smooth, and his aspect cheerful, ere Fonseca reached his side.
Well, do you know, Alexis Hutch, who has poured the poison? It is she or I. And as it is not I, it is she. And since it is she, well, I am going to die!" "You love her, then?" inquired Pere Alexis. "No," replied Rouletabille, with a self-mocking smile. "No, I don't love her.
"Thanks, Phil," said Patches quietly. "What for?" "Why, for including me in your class. I consider it a compliment, and" he added, with a touch of his old self-mocking humor "I think I know what I am saying better, perhaps, than the he-ghost knows what he talks about." "It may be that you do," returned Phil wearily, "but you can see where it all puts me.
And Phil, if he had spoken, might have said, "I felt when I met you first that there was a man around somewhere. I know you are curious to see what you would do if put to the test. I am curious, too. I'll give you a chance." Aloud he reminded the stranger pointedly, "I said we might use you if you could ride." Patches smiled his self-mocking smile, evidently appreciating his predicament.
"I do not blame you," he returned, with that self-mocking smile, as though he were laughing at himself. "I told you I could always be depended upon to make a fool of myself. You see I am doing it now. I don't mind telling you this much that I am here for the same reason that you went to visit Mrs. Baldwin this afternoon." "For the good of your soul?" she asked gently.
Then that old self-mocking smile was on his lips. He was laughing at his hurt making sport of himself and his cruel predicament. But to Helen there was that in his smile which wrung her woman heart. "Oh, Larry," she said gently. "Forgive me; I am so sorry; I " He put out his hand with a gesture of protest, and his voice was calm and courteous. "I beg your pardon, Helen.
"Oh, never mind your name, if you have forgotten it," said the Dean dryly. The stranger's roaming eyes fell upon Phil's old chaps, that in every wrinkle and scar and rip and tear gave such eloquent testimony as to the wearer's life, and that curious, self-mocking smile touched his lips.
Patches sat for some time considering the situation. And now and then his lips curled in that old, self-mocking smile; realizing that he was caught in the trap of circumstance, he found a curious humor in his predicament. Again it was July.
Angry as he was, he became suddenly dominated by something that was more potent than his rage. "Stop!" he cried sharply, and with such ringing force that Phil involuntarily obeyed. "I can't fight you this way, Phil," he said; and the other, wondering, saw that whimsical, self-mocking smile on his lips. "You know as well as I do that you are no match for me barehanded.
How miraculously beautiful must be that system which makes wine out of the scorching tears of guilt; and from the suffocating suspense, the agonized fear, the compelled and self-mocking bravery, the awful sentence, the despairing death-pang of one man, furnishes the smirking expectation of fees, the jovial meeting, and the mercenary holiday to another!
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