Eleven Possible Cases
Page 14
CHAPTER V.
Judge Favart de Caumartin and Hepworth Coleman were, by order of theJudge himself, taken to the Judge's mansion, where their wounds wereexamined by physicians and surgeons quickly summoned.
Mlle. Olympe de Caumartin found herself nursing two almost dyingpatients at the same time. Although she suspected that this was theresult of a duel between her father and the young stranger, she was nottold the secret of the affair until long afterward.
Strange to say, although the Judge was much the older man, and waswounded much nearer the heart, he recovered and was walking about in hishouse before Coleman had even taken a turn for the better. The firstthing he did was to order his daughter to cease her nursing of the youngman.
"It is not proper," he said, "for a young girl to be the nurse of a manwho is a stranger."
Mlle. Olympe blushed scarlet, and was so much confused that she couldnot find a word to say. It had been a great pleasure to her to wait uponColeman, who, though for the greater part of the time quite insensibleof her presence, seemed to respond better to her care than to thetreatment of the doctors. She had been having her sweet dream, was inlove with him, indeed, and the command of her father struck her like ablow.
Judge Favart de Caumartin suspected the truth about his daughter, andwas not slow in making up his mind in the matter. He gave strict ordersthat the hall between Coleman's rooms and the rest of the mansion shouldbe kept at all times locked and barred.
Love laughs at such precautions. Hepworth Coleman, during hisconvalescence, lay on his back and thought of nobody but Mlle. Olympe,and when at last he was able to get up he sent for her. It so chancedthat the Judge, having got well in a measure, was gone up to Natchez onbusiness.
Mlle. Olympe did not go to see the young man; but she wrote him a noteexplaining her father's wishes.
"But he has never forbidden you to come to see me when you are able towalk so far as to the library," she added very frankly, "and I see noreason why you should stay away."
When the Judge returned it was too late to interfere, as he soondiscovered, and he had to bow to the inevitable.
The mystery of the adventure with the masked men in that secret _salle_has never been further explained. Judge Favart de Caumartin would notconsent to his daughter's marriage until he had exacted a promise fromColeman that he would never divulge what he knew.
The truth was that Coleman knew very little. He tried to discover theblind alley into which the Judge had led him on that eventful evening,but there was no such alley to discover. The whereabouts of themysterious hall cannot be pointed out to-day, although from thatmemorable Tuesday in the spring of 1820 up to the Mardi-Gras of 1891,every anniversary of the Mystic Krewe has been duly celebrated by afantastic band that at a certain hour of the night parades the streetsof New Orleans. I do not refer to the regular carnival societies. Theseare but playful imitations of mystery. The genuine Krewe, as weirdly,strange and mysterious as ever, may be seen only on Royal Street, asmall band headed by a tall, slender, dark man, who wears an invisiblemask and a quaint black velvet cap. Where they come from nobody has everbeen able to discover. Who they are is not known even to the great Rex,the king of the Carnival.
Hepworth Coleman and Mlle. Olympe de Caumartin were married in due timeand lived on Royal Street all their lives. Every year on the evening ofMardi-Gras, they were called upon to give dinner to the Mystic Krewe,thirteen in number, who ate in silence with their masks on. The last ofthese dinners was in 1860. That year saw the twain, who for forty yearshad been happy together, laid in their tomb side by side.
Strangely enough there is no record whatever of Judge Favart deCaumartin's death; indeed, there is a tradition to the effect that he itis who still leads the Mystic Krewe.