by Kate Chopin
Amanda and Irene came down from the plantation with their father expressly to see her. The girls who caught a glimpse of them did not hesitate to pronounce Mr. Laborde the handsomest man they had ever set eyes upon; Amanda a most striking and fascinating personality. But of Irene they held their estimate in reserve, as the poor girl had seemed demented, laughing in the midst of tears, weeping to an accompaniment of laughter.
Once Miss Melvern made her appearance with Fidelia. It was a great pleasure to introduce the governess to the faculty and the methods, while Fidelia trod heavily and seriously at her side, crimson under the scrutiny of so many strange eyes.
Last came Madame Philomel one morning with the twins and whom beside but Aurendele and Xenophore! She wore a beautiful new bonnet, a sprigged challie dress with a black mantilla and kid gloves. The young ladies who were growing more and more interested in Charlie’s family with every fresh installment, to quote them literally, lost their minds over the twins who were like two chubby rosy-cheeked angels in spotless white.
“It’s positively paralyzing!”
“How do you tell them apart?”
“I must have a sketch of them.”
“How do they know themselves, which is which?”
“Oh! we know them of course,” said Charlie with laudable pride, “but strangers can tell by their difference of manner: Pauline is timid and Paula dreadfully mischievous. Would you believe it? She fooled dad one day by hanging her head and picking her fingers when he asked her an embarrassing question. There was no trouble at this juncture in discovering which was which.”
Aurendele, still wearing Charlie’s “Sunday dress” which was getting sadly small for her and a sailor hat of Irene’s, was alert, but overawed and unable to remember the multitude of things she had stored up in her brain to communicate to Charlie. And as for Xenophore, he felt there had been a convulsion of nature and he was powerless to place the responsibility. To be sitting there in “store clothes,” brogans, twirling in his hands a little felt hat no bigger than a plate, Miss Charlie in hair ribbons and dressed like a girl! He was speechless. It was only toward the close of the visit that he uttered his first word.
“Mr. Gus sen’ word ‘howdy.’”
“W’en you saw Mr. Gus?” asked Charlie laughing.
“He pass by the house an’ he say, ‘How you come on, Xenophore! w’at you all year f’om Miss Charlie?’ I tell ‘im I’m goin’ to the city to see you an’ he say, ‘Tell Miss Charlie howdy fo’ me.’”
But when her father came alone one morning quite early — he had remained over night in the city that he might be early — and carried her off with him for the day, her delight knew no bounds. He did not tell her in so many words how hungry he was for her, but he showed it in a hundred ways. He was like a school boy on a holiday; it was like a conspiracy; there was a flavor of secrecy about it too. They did not go near Aunt Clementine’s. They saw no one they knew except Young Walton who was busy over accounts in the commission office where Mr. Laborde stopped to supply himself with money enough to pay his way. The young fellow turned crimson with unexpected pleasure when he saw them. He was eager to know if any other members of the family were in the city. He showed a disposition to be excused from the office and to join them, a suggestion which Mr. Laborde did not favor, which rather alarmed him and hurried his departure. Moreover he could see that Charlie did not like the young man, and he could not blame her for that, all things considered! She gave her whole attention to her gloves and the clasp of her parasol while there.
It was well they provided themselves with money. Charlie needed every thing she could think of and what she forgot her father remembered. He carried her jacket and assisted her over the crossings like an experienced cavalier. He helped her to select a new sailor hat and saw that she put it on straight. Not approving of her hat pin he bought her another, besides handkerchiefs, a fan, stick pins, presents for the girls and the favorite teachers, books of poetry, and the latest novels. The maid at the Seminary was kept busy all afternoon carrying in bundles.
They went to the lake to eat breakfast; a second breakfast to be sure, but such exceedingly young persons could not be expected to restrict themselves to the conventional order in the matter of refreshment. It was a great delight to be abroad: the air was soft and moist and the warm sun of early March brought out the scent of the earth and of distant gardens and the weedy smell from the still pools.
They were almost alone at the lake end save for the habitual fishermen and sportsmen, the restaurateurs and lazy looking gargons. Their small table was out where the capricious breeze beat about them, and they sat looking across the glistening water, watching the slow sails and feeling like a couple of bees in clover.
Charlie drew off a glove, looked at her hand and silently held it out for her father’s inspection, right under his eyes.
“What do you think of that, dad?” she asked finally. He gazed at the hand and rubbed his cheek, meditatively, as he would have pulled his moustache if he had had one.
“Just take a good look at it. Notice anything?” He took her hand, scrutinizing the ring.
“No stones missing, are there?”
“I don’t mean the ring, but the hand,” turning her palm uppermost. “Feel that. You know what it used to be. Ever feel anything softer than that?”
He held the hand fondly in both of his, but she withdrew it, holding it at arm’s length.
“Now, dad, I want your candid opinion; don’t say anything you don’t believe; but do you think it’s as white as — Julia’s, for instance?”
He narrowed his eyes, surveying the little hand that gleamed in the sun, like a connoisseur sizing up a picture.
“I don’t want to be hasty,” he said quizzically. “I’m not too sure that I remember, and I shouldn’t like to do Julia’s hand an injustice, but my opinion is that yours is whiter.”
She threw an arm around his neck and hugged him, to the astonishment of a lame oysterman and a little Brazilian monkey that squealed in his cage with amusement.
“It’s all right, Charlie dear, but you know you mustn’t think too much about the hands and all that. Take care of the head, too, and the temper.”
“Don’t fret, dad,” tapping her forehead under the rim of the ‘sailor,’ “the head’s coming right up to the front: history, literature, ologies, everything but dates and figures; getting right in here; consumed with ambition. And the girls didn’t think I’d ever learn to dance until I gave them a double shuffle and a Coonpine! Now I’m giving lessons. Never mind! some of these days they’ll be asking your permission to make me queen of the Carnival. And as for temper! Why, it’s ridiculous, dad. I’m beginning to — to bleat!”
Well, it was a day full to the brim. In the afternoon they heard a wonderful pianist play. It gave Charlie a feeling of exaltation, a new insight; the music somehow filled her soul with its power.
It was nearly dark when she embraced her father and bade him good bye. For weeks the memory of that day lasted.
It was in the full flush of April that a telegram came summoning Charlie home at once. Terror seized her like some tangible thing. She feared some one was dead.
Her father had been injured, they told her. Not fatally, but he wanted her.
V
It was one of those terrible catastrophes which seem so impossible, so uncalled for when they come home to us, that stupefy with grief and regret; an accident at the sugar mill; a bit of perilous repairing in which he chose to assume the risk rather than expose others to danger. It was hard to say what had happened to him. He was alive; that was all, but torn, maimed and unconscious. The surgeon, who was coming as fast as steam and the iron wheels could bring him, would tell them more of it. The surgeon was on the train with Charlie and so was the professional nurse. They seemed to her like monsters; because he read a newspaper and conversed with the conductor about crops and the weather; and the other, demure in her grey dress and close bonnet, displayed an interest in a group
of children who were traveling with their mother.
Charlie could not speak. Her brain was confused with horror and her thoughts were beyond control. Every thing had lost significance but her grief and nothing was real but her despair. Emotion stupefied her when she thought that he would not be there at the station waiting for her with outstretched arms and beaming visage; that she would perhaps never see him again as he had been that day at the lake, robust and beautiful, clasping her with loving arms when he said good bye in the soft twilight. She became keenly conscious of the rhythm of the iron wheels that seemed to mock her and keep time to the throbbing in her head and bosom.
There was a hush upon the whole plantation. Silent embraces; serious faces and tearful eyes greeted her. It seemed inexpressibly hard that she should be kept from him while the surgeon and the nurse were hurried to his side. A physician was already there, and so was Mr. Gus.
During the hour or more that followed, Charlie sat alone on the upper gallery. Madame Philomel with Julia and Amanda were indoors praying upon their knees. The others were speechless with anxiety. Charlie alone was quiet and dull. It had rained and there was a delicious freshness in the air, the birds were mad with joy among the dripping leaves that glistened with the filtering rays of the setting sun. She sat and stared at the water still pouring from a tin spout.
The twins came and leaned their heads against her. She took Pauline into her lap and fastened the child’s shoestring that had come untied. She stared at them both with absent-minded eyes. Then Irene came and led them away. The water had stopped flowing from the spout and Charlie fixed her eyes upon the peacock that moved with low trailing plumage over the wet grass.
There was a sweet, sickening odor stealing from the house, more penetrating than the scent of the rain-washed flowers. She groaned as the fumes of the anesthetic reached her. She leaned her elbows upon the rail and with her head clasped in her hands, stared down at the gravel before the steps.
Someone came out upon the porch and stood beside her; it was Mr. Gus, all his shyness submerged for the moment in quick sympathy.
“Poor old Charlie,” he said softly and took her hand.
“Is he dead, Mr. Gus? have they killed him?” she asked dully.
“He isn’t dead. He won’t die if he can help it.”
“What have they done to him?”
“Never mind now, Charlie; just thank God that he is left to us.”
A deep prayer of thankfulness went up from every heart. The crushing pressure was lifted, and they rejoiced that it was to be life rather than death — life at any price.
With the changed conditions that so soon make themselves familiar, a new character was stamped upon the family life at Les Palmiers. There was a quiet and unconscious readjustment. The center of responsibility shifted and sought as it were to find lodgment for a time in every individual breast. The family took turns in watching at the bedside after the quiet woman in grey had gone. Then it was that even Demins showed fine mettle in those days. Money might have paid his services, it could never balance his devotion.
Charlie forgot that she was young and that the sun was shining out of doors and the voices of the woods and fields awaited her. But between sick-watches she took again to the task of beautifying her outward and inward being. She sought after becoming arrangements of her hair; over the kitchen fire she mixed ointments for the whitening of her skin; and while committing to memory tasks that filled her sisters with admiration, she polished her pointed nails till they rivalled the pearly rose of the conch-shells which Mme. Philomel kept upon either side of her hearth.
It was getting pretty warm and systematic work in the class room had been abandoned. Miss Melvern went away on her annual home visit and Aunt Clementine came up to the plantation to condole and to read the riot-act.
Her brother was sufficiently recovered to be scolded, to listen to the truth as Aunt Clementine defined her plain talk. It was high time he gave over thinking he might keep his daughters always like a bouquet of flowers, in a bunch, as it were, on the family hearth. He was not quite equal to the task of disagreeing with her. She had plans for separating these blossoms so that they might disseminate their sweetness even across the seas. Julia and Amanda should accompany her abroad in the Autumn. A winter in Paris and Rome, not to mention Florence, would accomplish more for them than years in the class room. Aunt Clementine saw great possibilities of a fine lady in Amanda. The girl presented more crude, promising material than Julia even. A year at the Seminary for Irene, and Charlie —
“Please leave me out of your calculations, Aunt,” said Charlie with a flash of her old rebellious nature. “Dad’ll have something to say when he’s able to bother about it, and in the meantime I propose to take care of myself and the youngsters and of Dad, and this meeting’s got to end right here. When he is strong enough to talk back, Aunt Clementine, you may come and have it out with him.” Aunt Clementine had always considered the girl coarse and she surveyed the girl with compassion.
“Charlie, remember to whom you are speaking,” said Julia with gentle rebuke. But they all filed out of the sick room, Amanda with a calm exultation in her face — and left Charlie to smoothe the pillow and quiet the nerves of the convalescent.
Julia seemed to be always more than ready to accept an invitation from her aunt. Life in the country began apparently to weary her, and, without too much urging she accompanied Aunt Clementine back to the city.
Young Walton had been up to Les Palmiers on a visit of sympathy and had had a conversation alone with Mr. Laborde which had been to the last degree satisfactory. Charlie wore her pink organdie and her grandmother’s pearls during his visit and puffed her hair.
It was a week or so after Julia’s departure for the city that the remaining sisters were all assembled on the false gallery one forenoon awaiting the return of Demins with the mail. Twice a day it was Demins’ duty to fetch and carry the family mail from and to the station. Amanda’s familiarity with keys seemed to entitle her to the office of locking and unlocking the canvas bag and it was she who distributed the mail.
There was a letter from Julia for each one of the sisters, under separate cover; even the twins got one between them. A proceeding so unfamiliar on the part of the undemonstrative Julia caused more than a flutter of wonder and comment. Envelopes were torn open, exclamations followed: rejoicing, dismay, elation, consternation! Engaged! Julia engaged! and the sky still in its place overhead and not crumbling about their ears!
Charlie alone said nothing at first, then in a voice hideous with anger:
“She’s a deceitful hypocrite, she’s no sister of mine, I hate her!” She turned and went into the house leaving Julia’s letter lying upon the bricks. Pauline began to utter little choking sobs at once. Fidelia grew red with indecision and dismay.
“She can’t bear him,” said Irene with shame-faced apology.
“Charlie’s a goose,” remarked Amanda picking up the letter and folding it back into its envelope, “let’s go and hear what father has to say.”
A little later Charlie in her trouserlets, boots and leggings, mounted black Tim and galloped madly away, no one knew where.
“Look like ol’ Nick took hol’ o’ Miss Charlie again,” commented Aunt Maryllis leaning from the kitchen window.
“She mad ‘cause Miss Julia g’in git ma’rid to de young man w’at she shot,” said Blossom. “I yeard ‘em. Miss Irene ‘low Miss Charlie for hate dat man like pizen.”
At the sound of Tim’s pounding hoofs upon the road, Xenophore darted from the cabin door. And at sight of Charlie rushing past in the old familiar guise of a whirlwind, the youngster threw himself flat down and rolled in the dust with glee, even though he knew his mother would whip the dust from his jeans without the trouble of removing them from his small person.
No one ever knew where Charlie ate her dinner that day. She did not quite kill Tim but it took days of care to set him on his accustomed legs again. She did not join the family at the evening
meal and remained apart in her own room, refusing admittance to those who sought to reach her.
In her mad ride Charlie had thrown off the savage impulse which had betrayed itself in such bitter denunciation of her sister. Shame and regret had followed and now she was steeped in humiliation such as she had never felt before. She did not feel worthy to approach her father or her sisters. The girlish infatuation which had blinded her was swept away in the torrents of a deeper emotion, and left her a woman.
It was trivial, perhaps, for her to take the little poem from the back of her mother’s miniature and holding it on the point of a hat pin, consume it in the flame of a match.
During the stillness of the night when she could not sleep, she crept out of bed and lit her lamp, shading it so that its glimmer could not be detected from without.
Removing the precious diamond ring from her finger she began to polish and brighten it till the glittering stones were scintillant in their dazzling whiteness. The task over, she put the ring in a little blue velvet cover which she took from her bureau drawer and laid it upon the pin cushion. Then Charlie went back to bed and slept till the sun was high in the heavens.
She had little to say at breakfast the next morning and there was no one who felt privileged to question her. With the others she gathered on the false gallery to wait for the mail as she had done the day before. When her letters were handed to her she also took her father’s mail and turned to go with it.
“Girls,” she said bravely, half turning. “I want to tell you I am ashamed of what I said yesterday. I hope you’ll forget it. I mean to try to make you forget it.” That was all. She went on up to her father.
He was stretched upon a cot near the window, like a pale shadow of himself.
“Where have you been all this time, Charlie?” he asked, with reproachful eyes. She stood over his cot couch for a moment silent.