San Antonio daily light. [volume] (San Antonio, Tex.) 1886-1907, 1892-03-05
LEGEND OF A BAYOU,

Three persons were on the veranda at
Rouquette place, the home of Placide Rou-
quette. The one in the hammock was
Placide himself. slender, picturesque
creole, whose face was still handsome de-
spite the slender scar that marked it diago-
nally across from the left brow to the right
side of the cnin. His hair and mustache
had been jet black, like his eyes, but now
a soft touch of white was blended with the
dusky curls.
'Lounginggon broad wooden settee fac
ing the Bayou Galere, the actor, Bently
Ray, stretched his shapely limbs and half
closed his dreamy gray eyes.
Mile Armentine Rouquette was the
third of the group, and a very beautiful
young woman she was, as she gently
swayed in an ample antique rocking chair
and played with the leaves of the novel in
her lap.
BY permission, the gentlemen were
smoking long, dark Mexican cigars. Vines
festooned the veranda, and some heavy
masses of foliage were thrust against the
roof by the outstretched gnarled arms of
a great live oak In the air wandering
sounds of leaf rustic, bird song and wave
ripple testified of the tropic summer at
hand.
Twilight was coming on, but the moon
would soon prevail, and the delicious,
dewy GOODNESS was suffused with the fra
GRANGE of many flowers.
Mile Rouquette had been reading aloud.
The story was romantic. with ghost fit
ting through it: A dead girl who came
back to haunt her recreant lover and to re-
feet q CHASTITY terror into every pleasure
that offered itself to him.
As the light failed the book was aban.
doned at point where the spectral maiden
seemed about to force her lover to commit
suicide.
"What nonsenser exclaimed Mile. Rou-
quette. "As il man ever could be af-
fected in such wsyp'
"What do you think Of iti" she asked,
turning to the actor. ut il neither prob
able nor dramatic, is iti"
"Your reading has dazzled my judg-
ment, or the story is very fine," he an
swered, with a certain observation-disclosures
in his tone and manner There seems to
be a story within the story. Don't you
feel the singular influence Of the strange,
the weird suggestions that exhale from it"
Placide Rouquette looked from Ray to
Mile. Armentine and laughed rather me-
chemically.
The young lady shrugged her fine shout
ders and made pretty little creole gesture
with her hands-a gesture half of indiffer'
ence, half of playful impotence.
A servant black as night came TO bring
her light wrap. She took the rather
gaudy silken thing and flung it carelessly
about her. Ray regarded her through his
cigar smoke with the eye of an artist, with
the imagination of u lover.
Some wild night, sister mine, you will
see somebody's ghost" remarked Placide,
putting forth a slender white hand and
touching her lightly in sort of sardonic
playfulness. "Your fisherman lover, he Of
the giant frame and buccaneer mustache,
will die of despair and send his spirit to
haunt you"
"HushI l will not permit such talk"
she quickly responded, with considerable
show of vexation. "You know there is
nothing of that. Why are you always
making such illusions? l do not relish
them, Placide; indeed do not"
The actor arose and lazily paced up and
down in the dusk, while the white moon
began to show througha rift in the foliage
of a live oak. The breeze had sunk to a
mere zephyr, odorous, spicy, touched with
Undesirable balm.
In those days plantation life in the low
country of the south was not what 1t now
is; it had lost nothing of its almost medi
Pval charm. The actor felt the subtle in
fuence with which he was surrounded.
Armentine Rouquette had captivated him
at New Orleans, and he had followed her
to her country home. Here he had, at the
urgent invitation of her brother, fingered
for fortnight of delicious, almost delirious
The ,,Ixury of hospitality that knew
No limit the i.estfulness of the old, richly
Furnished mansisn; the drives, the rides,
tbe sails the conversations, the dinners,
the siestas and, above all, the fascinating
beauty of Mile. Rouquette had enyeloped
and entranced him.
One thing, however, he had discovered:
Mile. Rouquette did not return his love,
but he remained near her, very calm and
apparently self possessed, after this blow
had fallen upon him He felt that ne
ought to have gone away Immediately,
that it was quite foolish in him to hnger'
but the spell of the old, dreamy, languor
ous south was upon him. He could not go.
The remark Just made by Placide had
touched the actor in tender spot de nae
seen the stalwart and romantic looking
vounp fisherman, and it was not in his ma
ture to hear him mentioned without
twinpe of bitter resentment. Ray was a
nortberner, but not all of the fiery blood is
in the south. Notwithstanding Mile. Ar