Argosy and Railroad Man's Magazine — page 55: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

. WHOSE Nita heaved a heavy sigh; put her hands up to her eyes as if to shut out something, then asked suddenly: “Do you believe in warnings?” “No, and surely you don’t!” “The De Charleus have always known when a great tragedy has hung over them,” she replied gravely. ‘‘ They have always been warned of its approach, yet they have never been able to avert it.” “Then what is the good of the warn- ing?” “T don’t know. Perhaps there is a way if one could only find it. If one only could!” There was a far-away look in her eyesy “ The curse—if it could be lift- ed—if it only could! But it can’t! No, not so long as there is a De Charleu liy- ing.” There was a long pause. I waited for her to speak, but her eyes simply drifted back out of space to her own limp hands, and I was forgotten. “Not so long as there is one!” she re- peated. “Are there many?” I asked softly. “He is the only one.” The absence that looked out of her eyes now trailed into her voice. Though she answered my question, she was plainly talking to her- self. : “ Your husband?” “Yes, And there is an old prophecy that says: ‘The man shall pay his debt to the woman, and the house of De Charleu shall fall by the hand of a woman—a wo- man who is a De Charleu, but not of the blood.’ I am the first, not of the De Char- leu blood to see the fantom hands; and they have appeared to me only in the cof- fee grounds. Mammy saw them three years after I was married.” In a flash of horror I understood her tragic contemplation of her hands. Also I recalled De Charleu’s story of the legend, and the menace in his voice. “But you say it was Mammy who saw them?” I suggested when I Could trust my- self to speak. “True!” A new and staggering thought seemed to hold her for a moment. “ But no; they are always in my cup.” She got up suddenly. Some one was HANDS? 397 moving below. “It is Amédée. I must go. Good night, dear. If.I should die to- night,” she whispered as she kissed me, “ I have had one little minute of happiness! And it is worth whatever comes after—in ~ this world or the next.” When she had gone I sat pondering over the hideous situation of this woman, her evident fear of her fate and of herself; and the gruesome fact that De Charleu knew, and seemed to foster the horrid notion, which I was now convinced he did not even believe; else he would not have dared use it to torture her, as he undoubtedly did. Also I wondered over the curious nature of the passionate creole who would pay here and hereafter for one moment of love and happiness, yet is such a slave to race tra- ditions that a young girl may be disposed of in marriage by her family; and divorce, for any cause whatsoever, is unknown. I was in a state of cold terror; unable to go to sleep—waiting for—the development of Nita’s words, perhaps. When the morn- ing dawned, and nothing had happened, I, was inclined to be vexed at myself. The morbid atmosphere was fastening its sub- tle fangs of suggestion on my twentieth- century mind! Il. THE carnival spirit still hovered over us when the eve of the Lenten season arrived. On the morrow the gay city must put on sackcloth and ashes, and do penance for the sins of-the past year—and especially those of the past fortnight. Nita did not appear at breakfast. My host spoke lightly of her absence. “She begs you will excuse her this morn- ing,” he said. ,“‘ She is quite worn out—too much festivity,” he laughed. ‘I am to be your guide to-day. She will join us this afternoon at the old Absinthe House, at one time the headquarters of the famous pirate, Lafitte. You must not miss it. And there is the Cabildo, where the transfer was made of a land that was an empire in itself.” I pleaded a headache, and would not go with him. Somehow I had come to loathe his white-toothed smile, his glowing black eyes, and soft, drawling voice. Besides, Commicooolks.conn