by Kate Chopin
“Neva mine, Wash; keep still; don’t you try to talk,” entreated Chouchoute.
“You ain’t mad, Marse Chouchoute?”
The lad could only answer with a hand pressure.
“Dar warn’t a minute, so I gits top o’ Spunky — I neva seed nuttin’ cl’ar de road like dat. I come ‘long side — de train — an’ fling de sack. I seed ‘im kotch it, and I don’ know nuttin’ mo’ ‘cep’ mis’ry, tell I see you — a-comin’ frough de do’. Mebby Ma’ame Verchette know some’pin,” he murmured faintly, “w’at gwine make my — head quit tu’nin’ ‘round dat away. I boun’ to git well, ‘ca’se who — gwine — watch Marse — Chouchoute?”
A VISIT TO AVOYELLES
Every one who came up from Avoyelles had the same story to tell of Mentine. Cher Maître! but she was changed. And there were babies, more than she could well manage; as good as four already. Jules was not kind except to himself. They seldom went to church, and never anywhere upon a visit. They lived as poorly as pine-woods people. Doudouce had heard the story often, the last time no later than that morning.
“Ho-a!” he shouted to his mule plumb in the middle of the cotton row. He had staggered along behind the plow since early morning, and of a sudden he felt he had had enough of it. He mounted the mule and rode away to the stable, leaving the plow with its polished blade thrust deep in the red Cane River soil. His head felt like a windmill with the recollections and sudden intentions that had crowded it and were whirling through his brain since he had heard the last story about Mentine.
He knew well enough Mentine would have married him seven years ago had not Jules Trodon come up from Avoyelles and captivated her with his handsome eyes and pleasant speech. Doudouce was resigned then, for he held Mentine’s happiness above his own. But now she was suffering in a hopeless, common, exasperating way for the small comforts of life. People had told him so. And somehow, to-day, he could not stand the knowledge passively. He felt he must see those things they spoke of with his own eyes. He must strive to help her and her children if it were possible.
Doudouce could not sleep that night. He lay with wakeful eyes watching the moonlight creep across the bare floor of his room; listening to sounds that seemed unfamiliar and weird down among the rushes along the bayou. But towards morning he saw Mentine as he had seen her last in her white wedding gown and veil. She looked at him with appealing eyes and held out her arms for protection, — for rescue, it seemed to him. That dream determined him. The following day Doudouce started for Avoyelles.
Jules Trodon’s home lay a mile or two from Marksville. It consisted of three rooms strung in a row and opening upon a narrow gallery. The whole wore an aspect of poverty and dilapidation that summer day, towards noon, when Doudouce approached it. His presence outside the gate aroused the frantic barking of dogs that dashed down the steps as if to attack him. Two little brown barefooted children, a boy and girl, stood upon the gallery staring stupidly at him. “Call off you’ dogs,” he requested; but they only continued to stare.
“Down, Pluto! down, Achille!” cried the shrill voice of a woman who emerged from the house, holding upon her arm a delicate baby of a year or two. There was only an instant of unrecognition.
“Mais Doudouce, that ent you, comment! Well, if any one would tole me this mornin’! Git a chair, ‘Tit Jules. That’s Mista Doudouce, f’om ‘way yonda Natchitoches w’ere yo’ maman use’ to live. Mais, you ent change’; you’ lookin’ well, Doudouce.”
He shook hands in a slow, undemonstrative way, and seated himself clumsily upon the hide-bottomed chair, laying his broad-rimmed felt hat upon the floor beside him. He was very uncomfortable in the cloth Sunday coat which he wore.
“I had business that call’ me to Marksville,” he began, “an’ I say to myse’f, ‘Tiens, you can’t pass by without tell’ ‘em all howdy.’ “
“Par exemple! w’at Jules would said to that! Mais, you’ lookin’ well; you ent change’, Doudouce.”
“An’ you’ lookin’ well, Mentine. Jis’ the same Mentine.” He regretted that he lacked talent to make the lie bolder.
She moved a little uneasily, and felt upon her shoulder for a pin with which to fasten the front of her old gown where it lacked a button. She had kept the baby in her lap. Doudouce was wondering miserably if he would have known her outside her home. He would have known her sweet, cheerful brown eyes, that were not changed; but her figure, that had looked so trim in the wedding gown, was sadly misshapen. She was brown, with skin like parchment, and piteously thin. There were lines, some deep as if old age had cut them, about the eyes and mouth.
“An’ how you lef’ ‘em all, yonda?” she asked, in a high voice that had grown shrill from screaming at children and dogs.
“They all well. It’s mighty li’le sickness in the country this yea’. But they been lookin’ fo’ you up yonda, straight along, Mentine.”
“Don’t talk, Doudouce, it’s no chance; with that po’ wo’ out piece o’ lan’ w’at Jules got. He say, anotha yea’ like that, he ‘s goin’ sell out, him.”
The children were clutching her on either side, their persistent gaze always fastened upon Doudouce. He tried without avail to make friends with them. Then Jules came home from the field, riding the mule with which he had worked, and which he fastened outside the gate.
“Yere’s Doudouce f’om Natchitoches, Jules,” called out Mentine, “he stop’ to tell us howdy, en passant.” The husband mounted to the gallery and the two men shook hands; Doudouce listlessly, as he had done with Mentine; Jules with some bluster and show of cordiality.
“Well, you’ a lucky man, you,” he exclaimed with his swagger air, “able to broad like that, encore! You could n’t do that if you had half a dozen mouth’ to feed, allez!”
“Non, j’te garantis!” agreed Mentine, with a loud laugh. Doudouce winced, as he had done the instant before at Jules’s heartless implication. This husband of Mentine surely had not changed during the seven years, except to grow broader, stronger, handsomer. But Doudouce did not tell him so.
After the mid-day dinner of boiled salt pork, corn bread and molasses, there was nothing for Doudouce but to take his leave when Jules did.
At the gate, the little boy was discovered in dangerous proximity to the mule’s heels, and was properly screamed at and rebuked.
“I reckon he likes hosses,” Doudouce remarked. “He take’ afta you, Mentine. I got a li’le pony yonda home,” he said, addressing the child, “w’at ent no use to me. I ‘m goin’ sen’ ‘im down to you. He’s a good, tough li’le mustang. You jis’ can let ‘im eat grass an’ feed ‘im a han’ful o’ co’n, once a w’ile. An’ he’s gentle, yes. You an’ yo’ ma can ride ‘im to church, Sundays. Hein! you want?”
“W’at you say, Jules?” demanded the father. “W’at you say?” echoed Mentine, who was balancing the baby across the gate. “ ‘Tit sauvage, va!”
Doudouce shook hands all around, even with the baby, and walked off in the opposite direction to Jules, who had mounted the mule. He was bewildered. He stumbled over the rough ground because of tears that were blinding him, and that he had held in check for the past hour.
He had loved Mentine long ago, when she was young and attractive, and he found that he loved her still. He had tried to put all disturbing thought of her away, on that wedding-day, and he supposed he had succeeded. But he loved her now as he never had. Because she was no longer beautiful, he loved her. Because the delicate bloom of her existence had been rudely brushed away; because she was in a manner fallen; because she was Mentine, he loved her; fiercely, as a mother loves an afflicted child. He would have liked to thrust that man aside, and gather up her and her children, and hold them and keep them as long as life lasted.
After a moment or two Doudouce looked back at Mentine, standing at the gate with her baby. But her face was turned away from him. She was gazing after her husband, who went in the direction of the field.
A WIZARD FROM GETTYSBURG
It was one
afternoon in April, not long ago, only the other day, and the shadows had already begun to lengthen.
Bertrand Delmandé, a fine, bright-looking boy of fourteen years, — fifteen, perhaps, — was mounted, and riding along a pleasant country road, upon a little Creole pony, such as boys in Louisiana usually ride when they have nothing better at hand. He had hunted, and carried his gun before him.
It is unpleasant to state that Bertrand was not so depressed as he should have been, in view of recent events that had come about. Within the past week he had been recalled from the college of Grand Coteau to his home, the Bon-Accueil plantation.
He had found his father and his grand-mother depressed over money matters, awaiting certain legal developments that might result in his permanent withdrawal from school. That very day, directly after the early dinner, the two had driven to town, on this very business, to be absent till the late afternoon. Bertrand, then, had saddled Picayune and gone for a long jaunt, such as his heart delighted in.
He was returning now, and had approached the beginning of the great tangled Cherokee hedge that marked the boundary line of Bon-Accueil, and that twinkled with multiple white roses.
The pony started suddenly and violently at something there in the turn of the road, and just under the hedge. It looked like a bundle of rags at first. But it was a tramp, seated upon a broad, flat stone.
Bertrand had no maudlin consideration for tramps as a species; he had only that morning driven from the place one who was making himself unpleasant at the kitchen window.
But this tramp was old and feeble. His beard was long, and as white as new-ginned cotton, and when Bertrand saw him he was engaged in stanching a wound in his bare heel with a fistful of matted grass.
“What’s wrong, old man?” asked the boy, kindly.
The tramp looked up at him with a bewildered glance, but did not answer.
“Well,” thought Bertrand, “since it’s decided that I’m to be a physician some day, I can’t begin to practice too early.”
He dismounted, and examined the injured foot. It had an ugly gash. Bertrand acted mostly from impulse. Fortunately his impulses were not bad ones. So, nimbly, and as quickly as he could manage it, he had the old man astride Picayune, whilst he himself was leading the pony down the narrow lane.
The dark green hedge towered like a high and solid wall on one side. On the other was a broad, open field, where here and there appeared the flash and gleam of uplifted, polished hoes, that negroes were plying between the even rows of cotton and tender corn.
“This is the State of Louisiana,” uttered the tramp, quaveringly.
“Yes, this is Louisiana,” returned Bertrand cheerily.
“Yes, I know it is. I’ve been in all of them since Gettysburg. Sometimes it was too hot, and sometimes it was too cold; and with that bullet in my head — you don’t remember? No, you don’t remember Gettysburg.”
“Well, no, not vividly,” laughed Bertrand.
“Is it a hospital? It is n’t a factory, is it?” the man questioned.
“Where we’re going? Why, no, it’s the Delmandé” plantation — Bon-Accueil. Here we are. Wait, I ‘ll open the gate.”
This singular group entered the yard from the rear, and not far from the house. A big black woman, who sat just without a cabin door, picking a pile of rusty-looking moss, called out at sight of them: —
“W’at’s dat you’s bringin’ in dis yard, boy? top dat hoss?”
She received no reply. Bertrand, indeed, took no notice of her inquiry.
“Fu’ a boy w’at goes to school like you does — whar’s yo’ sense?” she went on, with a fine show of indignation; then, muttering to herself, “Ma’ame Bertrand an’ Marse St. Ange ain’t gwine stan’ dat, I knows dey ain’t. Dah! ef he ain’t done sot ‘im on de gall’ry, plumb down in his pa’s rockin’-cheer!”
Which the boy had done; seated the tramp in a pleasant corner of the veranda, while he went in search of bandages for his wound.
The servants showed high disapproval, the housemaid following Bertrand into his grandmother’s room, whither he had carried his investigations.
“W’at you tearin’ yo’ gra’ma’s closit to pieces dat away, boy?” she complained in her high soprano. “I’m looking for bandages.”
“Den w’y you don’t ax fu’ ban’ges, an’ lef yo’ gra’ma’s closit ‘lone? You want to listen to me; you gwine git shed o’ dat tramp settin’ dah naxt to de dinin’-room! W’en de silva be missin’, ‘tain’ you w’at gwine git blame, it’s me.”
“The silver? Nonsense, ‘Cindy; the man’s wounded, and can’t you see he’s out of his head?”
“No mo’ outen his head ‘an I is. ‘T ain’ me w’at want to tres’ [trust] ‘im wid de sto’-room key, ef he is outen his head,” she concluded with a disdainful shrug.
But Bertrand’s protégé proved so unapproachable in his long-worn rags, that the boy concluded to leave him unmolested till his father’s return, and then ask permission to turn the forlorn creature into the bathhouse, and array him afterward in clean, fresh garments.
So there the old tramp sat in the veranda corner, stolidly content, when St. Ange Delmandé and his mother returned from town.
St. Ange was a dark, slender man of middle age, with a sensitive face, and a plentiful sprinkle of gray in his thick black hair; his mother, a portly woman, and an active one for her sixty-five years.
They were evidently in a despondent mood. Perhaps it was for the cheer of her sweet presence that they had brought with them from town a little girl, the child of Madame Delmandé’s only daughter, who was married, and lived there.
Madame Delmandé and her son were astonished to find so uninviting an intruder in possession. But a few earnest words from Bertrand reassured them, and partly reconciled them to the man’s presence; and it was with wholly indifferent though not unkindly glances that they passed him by when they entered. On any large plantation there are always nooks and corners where, for a night or more, even such a man as this tramp may be tolerated and given shelter.
When Bertrand went to bed that night, he lay long awake thinking of the man, and of what he had heard from his lips in the hushed starlight. The boy had heard of the awfulness of Gettysburg, till it was like something he could feel and quiver at.
On that field of battle this man had received a new and tragic birth. For all his existence that went before was a blank to him. There, in the black desolation of war, he was born again, without friends or kindred; without even a name he could know was his own. Then he had gone forth a wanderer; living more than half the time in hospitals; toiling when he could, starving when he had to.
Strangely enough, he had addressed Bertrand as “St. Ange,” not once, but every time he had spoken to him. The boy wondered at this. Was it because he had heard Madame Delmandé address her son by that name, and fancied it?
So this nameless wanderer had drifted far down to the plantation of Bon-Accueil, and at last had found a human hand stretched out to him in kindness.
When the family assembled at breakfast on the following morning, the tramp was already settled in the chair, and in the corner which Bertrand’s indulgence had made familiar to him.
If he had turned partly around, he would have faced the flower garden, with its graveled walks and trim parterres, where a tangle of color and perfume were holding high revelry this April morning; but he liked better to gaze into the back yard, where there was always movement: men and women coming and going, bearing implements of work; little negroes in scanty garments, darting here and there, and kicking up the dust in their exuberance.
Madame Delmandé could just catch a glimpse of him through the long window that opened to the floor, and near which he sat.
Mr. Delmandé had spoken to the man pleasantly; but he and his mother were wholly absorbed by their trouble, and talked constantly of that, while Bertrand went back and forth ministering to the old man’s wants. The boy knew that the servants would have done the offic
e with ill grace, and he chose to be cup-bearer himself to the unfortunate creature for whose presence he alone was responsible.
Once, when Bertrand went out to him with a second cup of coffee, steaming and fragrant, the old man whispered: —
“What are they saying in there?” pointing over his shoulder to the dining-room.
“Oh, money troubles that will force us to economize for a while,” answered the boy. “What father and mè-mére feel worst about is that I shall have to leave college now.”
“No, no! St. Ange must go to school. The war’s over, the war’s over! St. Ange and Florentine must go to school.”
“But if there’s no money,” the boy insisted, smiling like one who humors the vagaries of a child.
“Money! money!” murmured the tramp. “The war’s over — money! money!”
His sleepy gaze had swept across the yard into the thick of the orchard beyond, and rested there.
Suddenly he pushed aside the light table that had been set before him, and rose, clutching Bertrand’s arm.
“St. Ange, you must go to school!” he whispered. “The war’s over,” looking furtively around. “Come. Don’t let them hear you. Don’t let the negroes see us. Get a spade — the little spade that Buck Williams was digging his cistern with.”
Still clutching the boy, he dragged him down the steps as he said this, and traversed the yard with long, limping strides, himself leading the way.
From under a shed where such things were to be found, Bertrand selected a spade, since the tramp’s whim demanded that he should, and together they entered the orchard.
The grass was thick and tufted here, and wet with the morning dew. In long lines, forming pleasant avenues between, were peach-trees growing, and pear and apple and plum. Close against the fence was the pomegranate hedge, with its waxen blossoms, brick-red. Far down in the centre of the orchard stood a huge pecan-tree, twice the size of any other that was there, seeming to rule like an old-time king.