But I know that she
knew--my cousin, Elise. What word it was he left for her at the last she
has always kept in her own heart, mon Dieu, and what a wonderful thing he
had to fight for! You knew the child. But the woman--non? She was like an
angel. Her eyes, when you looked into them--hat can I say, m'sieu? They
made you forget. And I have seen her hair, unbound, black and glossy as
the velvet side of a sable, covering her to the hips. And two years ago I
saw Jacques Dupont's hands in that hair, and he was dragging her by it--"
Something snapped. It was a muscle in Reese Beaudin's arm. He had
stiffened like iron.
"And you let him do that!"
Joe Delesse shrugged his shoulders. It was a shrug of hopelessness, of
disgust.
"For the third time I interfered, and for the third time Jacques Dupont
beat me until I was nearer dead than alive. And since then I have made it
none of my business. It was, after all, the fault of the man who ran
away. You see, m'sieu, it was like this: Dupont was mad for her, and this
man who ran away--the Yellow-back--wanted her, and Elise loved the
Yellow-back. This Yellow-back was twenty-three or four, and he read
books, and played a fiddle and drew strange pictures--and was weak in the
heart when it came to a fight. But Elise loved him. She loved him for
those very things that made him a fool and a weakling, m'sieu, the books
and the fiddle and the pictures; and she stood up with the courage for
them both.
Pages:
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70