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Updated: June 9, 2025
A little way down the path stood Teppich and Chantel, each with his back turned and his hands clasped, like a pair of sulky Napoleons, one fat, one slender. The wooden pretense of their attitude set Rudolph, for an instant, to laughing silently and bitterly.
This trembling, miserable heap, flung into the arms of the dark-eyed girl, was Mrs. Forrester. "Go on," said the girl, calmly. She had drawn the woman down beside her on the rattan couch, and clasping her like a child, nodded toward the piano. "Go on, as if the doctor hadn't hadn't stopped." Heywood was first to obey. "Come, Chantel, chantez! Here's your song."
As the three ladies passed the foot of the table, Rudolph saw Mrs. Forrester make an angry signal. And presently, like a prisoner going to his judge, Chantel slipped out of the room. He was not missed; for already the streaming candle-flames stood wreathed in blue layers, nor was it long before the captain, mounting his chair, held a full glass aloft.
"Lowdah?" called Chantel; and the shoulders moved, the line shifted, as the boatman answered. Chantel pitched the bundle over the lantern, and leapt on board. Rudolph came slowly, carrying in his arms the woman, who lay quiet and limp, clasping him in a kind of drowsy oblivion.
"I regret this more than anybody," he declared, pausing, and picking his words. "We were at practice, and my friend had the misfortune to be run through the arm." Chantel flung out his hands, in a motion at once furious and impudent. "Zut! What a farce! Will you tell me, please, since your friend has disabled himself" Heywood wheeled upon him, scornfully.
Light and quick as a leopard, Chantel was on foot, erect, and even while his chair crashed on the floor, had whipped out a handkerchief. "You are right, Mr. Heywood," he said, stanching his lips, in icy composure. His eyes held an odd gleam of satisfaction. "You are right. We are not like ourselves, at present. I will better ask Mr. Sturgeon to see your friend to-morrow morning.
Among all the revelers, one face alone showed melancholy. Chantel, at the foot of the table, sat unregarded by all save Rudolph, who now and then caught from him a look filled with gloom and suspicion. It was beside Rudolph that Mrs. Forrester laughed and chattered, calling all eyes toward her, and yet finding private intervals in which to dart a sidelong shaft at her neighbor.
O.W. Gentlemen, for a timid man, our friend does not scamp his reports. Thorough, rather? Little O.W. is O.K." Chantel, still humming, had moved toward the door. All at once he halted, and stared from the landward window. Cymbals clashed somewhere below. "What's this?" he cried sharply. The noise drew nearer, more brazen, and with it a clatter of hoofs. "Here come swordsmen!"
Instantly, all saw the weaker blade fly wide, the stronger swerve, to dart in victorious, and then saw Doctor Chantel staggering backward, struck full in the face by something round and heavy. The brown missile skipped along the garden path. Another struck a bottle-end, and burst into milk-white fragments, like a bomb. A third, rebounding from Teppich's girdle, left him bent and gasping.
The good bishop of Bernex, with less wit than Francis of Sales, resembled him in many particulars, and Madam de Warrens, whom he loved to call his daughter, and who was like Madam de Chantel in several respects, might have increased the resemblance by retiring like her from the world, had she not been disgusted with the idle trifling of a convent.
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