VI The Old Man’s Last Cent
Well, she did marry him, and she did not regret it—nor did he.
To me it is a wonder that she did not. For he had done the threatened newspapering so well that already upon their arrival at the steamer all the passengers were lined up to await them. And the smile they got there followed them to Europe, and into the most remote corners of the globe where they penetrated to escape it. It became at last a smile of contempt. And he began to understand that it was for him alone and that the world had exempted his wife from it.
“I’m glad for that,” he told her. “If I am to go about the world a cad and a fool, to be laughed at—I am glad that you are—”
“To be pitied as your victim?” laughed his happy wife. “No. I don’t want anything that is not yours, and you shall have nothing that is not mine.”
If they escaped it for a day, they never did for two. Always the servants were in line where they arrived, with the expectation of them in their banal faces. But always she was excepted.
“I wish I could rise with you,” sighed Ravant, whimsically. “I hate to be separated from you. But they won’t have me, and they won’t do without you. I suppose my claws still show somewhere.”
“Whither I go, you shall go,” his wife threatened. “I am too happy—that is what the world sees. What care I—for anything but joy and you!”
She kissed Ravant.
But presently her “beauty” and her “magnetism” began to be paragraphic with him in the newspapers—of which he said he was glad, and was not.
“Beloved,” he told her, “it is a pity you married me.”
“Why?—beloved also.”
“Because you might have had any one of the effete noblemen of Europe, and escaped newspapering.”
“But I would only have been satisfied with a crowned head.”
“I suppose even that is possible to the ‘prevalent goddess’”—he was reading from a newspaper.
“I have it!” laughed his wife, touching the plate which covered his wound.
And then, I am almost sorry to say, yet not quite, that a little mist came into the eyes of the Ravant who had once been a brute, and he remembered all those hospital days.
“How splendid you have become,” he said.
“Thanks to you,” she whispered in his arms, where still he was the savage Ravant and always would be.
“But all I am you have made of me!”
“But, too, all I am you have made of me!” she laughed.
“One thing I take credit for,” he joyed with her, “smiles do become your face.”
“And thought and care yours. The lines of which we once spoke—are gone! From both our faces! Is not that wonderful?”
“Wonderful,” he agreed.
Suddenly she was serious.
“I think we belong together. I thank God always that we met. You were what I needed—the man God meant to complete me. Before you came I was worse than you were before I came. Thank God we met—no matter how!”
“Not forgetting to thank the loaded gun! For a long time I have been sorry for the old man. It has not seemed long—but there are indications that the last cent has been reached. I would pay him back if I could!”
“You never, never could!” laughed his wife.
“But how much do you suppose we have spent?”
“Don’t know! Don’t know,” she chanted. “That is the beauty of it. We don’t have to! No accounts to keep! Money carefully ahead of us at each stopping place! It is like a slot machine! You put in a nickel and get a thousand dollars!”
“It’s wonderful how well he has done it. Hasn’t kicked or funked once! Well, when I get back to America I mean to hunt him up and get down on my knees and God bless him!” laughed Ravant.
“We’ll go together!” said his wife.
“Yes! And confess all! I’ll show him you! He’ll forgive us then and won’t regret—”
“His poverty!” laughed Ravant’s happy wife.
“Yes. Hang it! That’s the horror of it. Once I thought it would be the joy of it! And how he must have writhed under the newspapering! Such a sensitive chap as he is! It has been torture to even me. But I deserve that punishment.”
“You do!” cooed his wife.
“Let us go home,” said Ravant, “and live in a little house—alone!”
“Done!” cried his wife.
“We’ll change our names and the newspapers will not be able to find us!”
“Done!”
“But—there wasn’t any money here, you know” (it was Rouen).
“Perhaps in a day or two.”
So, at Rouen, they waited for the money to take them home to a new happiness.