Mardi Gras Madness (Carnival of Love)

Chapter Eight

“There! Now I guess you see what I meant!” Hattie sniffed three times, audibly, and glared about the coach crowded with merrymakers bound for the New Orleans Mardi Gras.

“Shh,” Robert said desperately. “They’ll all hear you.”

“And little difference that makes to me,” Hattie commented with asperity. She sat a little more erect on the plush seat, and her nose wriggled furiously.

“But they’re all right,” Robert protested in an undertone. “They’re all just happy and having a good time.”

“Humph. Fiddlesticks! All right, indeed. The commonest sort of people. Laughing at silly jokes and chattering together like a pack of monkeys. I must say that I’m beginning to have more respect for that Darwin man after seeing and listening to this crowd.”

“I know,” Robert muttered resignedly. “You’ve been telling me that ever since we left home. I do wish we’d hurry and get to New Orleans.”

“Like as not you’ll wish you hadn’t gotten there so soon when we do arrive,” Hattie told him. “No manner of knowing what you’ll find Barbara doing if this is a sample of the sort who go to Mardi Gras.”

“Well, I think it’s nice the way all of them seem so friendly and happy,” Robert muttered defiantly.

“Nice? Humph!” Hattie sniffed again. “It’s not the sort I’d choose for company,” she commented acidly. “I just want to point out to you that I told you this was the sort of people who go to carnivals like this.”

“Well, you did choose them,” Robert said sulkily. “You didn’t have to come if you didn’t want to. I didn’t ask you to.”

“Didn’t have to come indeed!” Hattie bristled anew. “As though I don’t know my duty when it’s plain as the nose on my face.”

Robert made no answer. He turned to stare out the window, fiercely refraining from telling his Cousin Hattie that anything as plain as the nose on her face would be very plain indeed. His soul seemed to have died within him as he strove to repress his impatience at the snail-like pace of the train.

“And I’ve never been one to turn my back on my duty,” Hattie continued complacently. “If I do say it myself as shouldn’t. When you came in with that hangdog expression on your face this morning and admitted that you were utterly lost to all sense of self-respect and had decided to follow that gadabout girl to New Orleans, why I said to myself, I says: ‘Hattie. There’s your duty. No matter how distasteful it may be. You can’t desert your uncle’s son at a time like this. Your duty’s plain to be seen. You’ll simply have to lay your own feelings aside and do what’s your plain duty.’ That’s what I said to myself this morning,” she ended triumphantly.

“I know,” Robert muttered. “You’ve told me half a dozen times.”

“Simply that I want you to understand that it’s for your sake that I’m coming. Goodness knows what the ladies in the Aid Society will think of me for traipsing off to a sinful carnival like this. But that simply doesn’t matter, for I was never one to shirk my duty.”

Robert stared miserably out the window and tried not to listen to his Cousin Hattie’s shrill voice. His face was haggard, and it seemed to have new lines which had come since the day Barbara had thrown her ring at him and fled to the house.

He had not seen Barbara since that afternoon. He had tried to steel his heart against the overmastering love which cried out for her. He hadn’t slept more than a few hours during the days which had elapsed since that scene in her yard.

Hattie didn’t know that. She knew nothing of the long tramps he had taken each night after lying upon his bed and tossing in agony for hours, seeking nepenthe in sleep which would not come. She knew nothing of the fitfully tortured dreams which had walked with him each day as he sought to go about the work on the farm as though Babs did not matter.

Cousin Hattie had seen none of these things. She had sniffed and said, “Good riddance of bad rubbish.” Robert had tried to believe that. He had said it over and over to himself. But it simply was no use. Babs’ dear face was before him continually. He felt he would go mad with the agony of waiting to see her again. Then, Sunday night he heard that she had taken the train for New Orleans that day.

That news had done a queer thing to him. Somehow, it had served to sweep the bitterness from his heart. With the knowledge that she was gone, something had died. He had slept Sunday night. Only to dream of Barbara through the long hours. She had come to him in many guises in his dream. In fantastic costume, masked, laughing gleefully, one of a throng of carefree spirits laughing their way through the festival of Mardi Gras.

Monday morning he had abruptly decided that he must seek her in New Orleans. He had the Brinkleys’ address written on a sheet of paper, and he had wired a friend to find him a room and meet him at the station. The train was due to arrive at ten o’clock.

He moved restlessly and looked at his watch. Half an hour yet. Hattie’s voice came to him again. Barbara’s name impinged upon his ears and drew his attention:

“... what I say is that you’re a fool to come chasing after Barbara like this. She’s a minx, and she insulted me to my very face. Then, upping and running off all alone to the Lord knows what follies in this lustful madness of a foolish festival that they try to atone for by calling it religious. Religious indeed! Humph! Shameful show of sex and sin, I’d say.” She rolled the words on her tongue as though they were sweet morsels and she was loath to let them go.

“But what do you really know about it?” Robert asked her angrily. “That’s just your idea.”

“Well, I guess I know a thing or two.” Hattie sniffed haughtily. “Like I’ve been telling you, if this is a fair sample you can see what a whole cityful will be like.” Her glance swept the offensive spectacle of a coach crowded with artisans and laborers who had gleefully thrown off the cares of their workaday lives to disport themselves in the manner of children on an outing.

“I wish you’d quit griping,” Robert muttered under his breath. “It’s bad enough to have you along without having to listen to you all the time.”

“What’s that? What’s that you say, young man?”

“Oh, I just said I wish you’d wait till you can see for yourself before you condemn the whole festival,” Robert said aloud. “It’s not fair to judge before you know.”

“Humph! Well, I know about that young lady I’m judging,” Hattie said sternly. “It’s the evil call of the flesh that’s taken her from you. The voice of the tempter whispering in her ear of pleasures of lust and wickedness.”

“Now, that’s enough!” Robert turned toward her firmly. His eyes flashed angrily and his lips were tightly set. “Don’t say one more word against Babs,” he said savagely. “I love her. You don’t know what love is. She’s sweet and good and pure. I’ll simply get up and leave you and not come back if you persist in maligning her.” He turned back to the window and his shoulders were defiantly rigid.

“Well, I never,” Hattie began angrily; Her tongue flicked out to wet her lips. She glared at Robert’s back, and her lips moved but no words came out.

“I never in all my born days...” she began again.

Robert interrupted her without turning. “You didn’t have to come, and I didn’t ask you to come, and you pushed in anyway just as you’re always doing,” he said bitterly. “I think I’ve lived with you so long and listened to you so much that I’ve lost my youth. Babs was right. I’ve had the wrong slant on life. Youth is lovely and it’s worth fighting to hold onto it. I glory in her spunk for coming here in the face of all the opposition just to try and find what we’re missing in life. And if she’ll take me back and let me try to find my youth with her I’ll be the happiest man in Louisiana.”

Hattie shrank back in the seat with an expression of ludicrously blank amazement on her face. Her nose twitched and she attempted to sniff. But it was a very poor attempt. She was so bewildered by Robert’s outbreak that her sniffer failed her for the first time in her life.

The rest of the trip was made in utter silence between them. Robert was too unhappy to care how deeply he had hurt Hattie. And she was so taken aback by his sudden attack that she didn’t know how badly she was hurt.