Complete Works of Kate Chopin

by Kate Chopin

  “I’ve been climbing a high mountain, dad.” He was used to her flights of speech when they were alone.

  “And what did you see from the top, little girl?” he questioned with a smile.

  “I saw the new moon. But here are your letters, dad.” She drew a low chair and sat close, close to his bed.

  “Isn’t Gus coming up?” he asked. Mr. Gus came each morning to offer his services in reading or answering letters.

  “I’m jealous of Mr. Gus,” she said. “I know as much as he, more perhaps when it comes to writing letters. I know as much about the plantation as you do, dad; you know I do. And from now on I’m going to be — to be your right hand — your poor right hand,” she almost sobbed sinking her face in the pillow. The arm that was left to him he folded around her and pressed his lips to her brow.

  “Look, Dad,” she exclaimed, cheerfully recovering herself and plunging her hand in her pocket. “What do you think of this for a wedding present for Julia?” She held the open blue velvet case before his eyes.

  “You rave! nonsense. I thought you prized it more than any of your possessions; more than Tim even.”

  “I do. That’s why I give it. There’d be no value in giving a thing I didn’t prize,” she said inconsequentially.

  While she was writing out the card of presentation at the table, Mr. Gus came in and Charlie joined him at the bed side.

  “This little woman has an idea she can run the plantation, Gus, till I get on my feet,” said Mr. Laborde more cheerfully than he had spoken since his accident. “What do you think about it?”

  Mr. Gus turned a fine pink under his burned skin.

  “If she says so, I don’t doubt it,” he agreed, “and I’m always ready to lend a hand; you know that. I’m going towards the mill now, and if Charlie cares — I see her horse saddled out there,” peering from the window as if the sight of the horse saddled, awaiting its rider, was something he had not perceived before.

  “Here are your letters, dad. One of the girls will come up and get them ready for you and when I come back I’ll answer them. I’ll save Mr. Gus that much.”

  From his window Mr. Laborde watched the two mount their horses under the live oak tree.

  Aunt Maryllis was standing in the kitchen door holding a small tin cup.

  “Miss Charlie,” she called out, “heah dis heah grease you mix’ up fo’ yo’ han’s; w’at I gwine do wid it?”

  “Throw it away, Aunt Maryllis,” cried Charlie over her shoulder.

  The old woman sniffed at the cup. It smelled good. She thrust the tip of a knotty black finger into the creamy white mixture and rubbed it on her hand. Then she deliberately hid the tin in a piece of newspaper and set it away on the chimney shelf.

  There is no telling what would have become of Les Palmiers that summer if it had not been for Charlie and Mr. Gus. It was precisely a year since Charlie had been hustled away to the boarding school in a state of semi-disgrace. Now, with all the dignity and grace which the term implied, she was mistress of Les Palmiers.

  Julia was married and away on her wedding journey prior to making her home in the city. Amanda was qualifying in Paris under the tutelage of Aunt Clementine to enter the lists as a fine lady of fashion. The others were back in the class room with Miss Melvern in her old place. Mr. Laborde had recuperated slowly from the terrible shock to his nervous system six months before; and though he was getting about, he spent much time reclining in the long lounge in the upper hall.

  It was a moonlight night and very quiet. He could sometimes faintly hear the lap of the great river, and he caught the low hum of voices below. It was Mr. Gus and Charlie conversing in the lower veranda. Mr. Gus was stripping a long, thin branch of its thorns and leaves and tangling his speech into incoherence.

  “There’s no hurry. I just mentioned it, Charlie, because I — couldn’t help it.”

  “No, there’s no hurry,” agreed Charlie leaning back against a pillar and gazing up at the sky. “I couldn’t dream of leaving Dad without a right arm.”

  “Of course not; I couldn’t expect it. But then couldn’t he have two right arms!”

  “And then the twins. I’ve come to be a sort of mother to them rather than a sister; and you see I’d have to wait till they grew up.”

  “Yes, I suppose so. About how old are the twins now?”

  “Nearly seven. But we’ll talk of all that some other time. Didn’t you hear Dad cough? That’s a sly way he has of attracting my attention. He doesn’t like to call me outright.” Mr. Gus was beating the switch upon the gravel.

  “There’s something I wanted to ask you.”

  “I know. You want to ask me not to call you ‘Mr.’ Gus any more.”

  “How did you know?”

  “I am a clairvoyant. And besides you want to ask me if I like you pretty well.”

  “You are a clairvoyant!”

  “It seems to me I’ve always liked you better than any one, and that I’ll keep on liking you more and more. So there! Good night.” She ran lightly away into the house and left him in an ecstasy in the moonlight.

  “Is that you, Charlie?” asked her father at the sound of her light footfall. She came and took his hand, leaning fondly over him as he lay in the soft, dim light.

  “Did you want anything, Dad?”

  “I only wanted to know if you were there.”

  THE WHITE EAGLE

  It was not an eagle of flesh and feathers but a cast-iron bird poised with extended wings and wearing an expression which, in a human being, would have passed for wisdom. He stood conspicuously upon the lawn of an old homestead. In the spring, if any white paint went the rounds, he came in for his share of it, otherwise he had to be content with a coat of whitewash such as the sheds and fences were treated to.

  But he was always proud; in the summer standing spotless on the green with a background of climbing roses; when the leaves fell softly and he began to show unsightly spots here and there; when the snow wrapped him like a shroud, or the rain beat upon him and the wind struck at him with wild fury — he was always proud.

  A small child could sit in the shadow of his wings. There was one who often did on sunny days while her soul drank the unconscious impressions of childhood. Later she grew sensible of her devotion for the white eagle and she often caressed his venerable head or stroked his wings in passing on the lawn.

  But people die and children squabble over estates, large or small. This estate was not large, but the family was, and it seemed but a pittance that fell to the share of each. The girl secured her portion and the white eagle beside; no one else wanted it. She moved her belongings up the street into a pleasant room of a neighbor who rented lodgings. The eagle was set down in the back yard under an apple tree, and for a while he succeeded in keeping the birds away. But they grew accustomed to his brooding presence and often alighted on his outspread wings after their mischievous onslaughts upon the apples. Indeed he seemed to be of no earthly use except to have sheltered the unconscious summer dreams of a small child.

  People wondered at the young woman’s persistence in carting him about with her when she moved from place to place. Her want of perspicacity might have explained this eccentricity. It explained many other things, chiefly the misfortune which overtook her of losing her small share of the small estate. But that is such an ordinary human experience, it seems useless to mention it; and, besides, the white eagle had nothing to do with it.

  There was finally no place for him save in a corner of her narrow room, that was otherwise crowded with a bed, a chair or two, a table and a sewing machine, that always stood by the window. Oftentimes when she sewed at the machine, or else from her bed before she arose in the early dawn, she fancied the white eagle blinked at her from his sombre corner on the floor, an effect produced by remnants of white paint that still stuck in his deep eye sockets.

  The years went by, slowly, swiftly, haltingly as they marked off the uneven progress of her life. No mate came to seek her out. Her hair beg
an to grizzle. Her skin got dry and waxlike upon her face and hands. Her chest grew shrunken from eternal bending over the sewing machine and lack of pure, fresh air. The white eagle was always there in the gloomy corner. He helped her to remember; or, better, he never permitted her to forget. Sometimes little children in the house penetrated to her room, and amused themselves with him. Once they made a Christmas spectacle of him with a cocked hat and bits of tawdry tinsel suspended from his wings.

  When the woman — no longer young — grew sick and had a fierce fever, she uttered a shriek in the night which brought a straggler inquiring at her bedside. The eagle had blinked and blinked, had left his corner and come and perched upon her, pecking at her bosom. That was the last she knew of her white eagle in this life. She died, and a close relative, with some sentiment and possessing the means of transportation, came from a distance and laid her out suitably and buried her decently in the old cemetery on the side of the hill. It was far up on the very crest, overlooking a vast plain that reached out to the horizon.

  None of her belongings, save perhaps the sewing machine, were of a character to arouse family interest. No one knew what to do with the white eagle. The suggestion that it be thrown into the ash-bin was not favorably received by the sentimental relative, who happened to remember a small, barefooted child seated in the summer grass within the shadow of its outstretched wings.

  So the white eagle was carted for the last time up the hill to the old cemetery and placed like a tombstone at the head of her grave. He has stood there for years. Sometimes little children in spring throw wreaths of clover-blossoms over him. The blossoms dry and rot and fall to pieces in time. The grave has sunk unkept to the level. The grass grows high above it in the summer time. With the sinking grave the white eagle has dipped forward as if about to take his flight. But he never does. He gazes across the vast plain with an expression which in a human being would pass for wisdom.

  THE WOOD-CHOPPERS

  Enough rain had fallen all day — and was still falling — to dampen the most sanguine spirits. The little frame schoolhouse beside the bayou sat in water like Noah’s ark. The pelting rain upon the shingle roof and the raucous quacking of ducks outside seriously interfered with the routine of the work.

  Léontine concluded that the cause of education would be in no way imperiled if she dismissed, a little earlier than usual, the four small boys who were her only pupils that day. All the little girls had stayed at home.

  From the doorway she watched the barefooted youngsters go splashing homeward, with their jean trousers rolled high above the knees. Then she herself, with bent head, seeming to charge the elements with her big cotton umbrella, turned toward home.

  She was well-equipped against an ordinary rain, so far as mackintosh and rubber shoes went, but best of all, she carried a stout heart. She tried to think only of the snug fireside toward which she was making her laborious way ankle-deep in mud and running water.

  Her home was nearly half a mile away; a poor little bit of a Southern house, standing pretty close to the road that skirted the river. A few cabins were far in the distance, set down in a level field that bristled with gaunt, denuded cotton-stalks.

  Léontine let herself in at the gate. She found the cow waiting there, and let her in, too, after making sure that the calf was secure. Then she mounted the few wobbly steps to the gallery, where she removed her dripping mackintosh and the rubber shoes that had been next to no protection at all.

  Léontine’s look of anticipation, as she opened the house door and hurried in, was suddenly turned to dismay when she saw her mother at the fireplace scraping together a few red ashes between the andirons, while Mandy, a very small black girl, was kneeling on the hearth with an apronful of wet chips.

  “Why, mother!” the girl cried in French. “What are you doing without a fire on a day like this? Do you want to catch your death of cold?”

  Her white-haired mother, feeble-looking and much bent, turned with a quaver that was like an apologetic appeal.

  “There is no wood cut, my child; none, none, none,” and she continued to scrape the embers with the tongs.

  “No wood cut!” echoed Léontine, forgetting her soaking and bedraggled condition. “Where’s Peter? Didn’t Peter come?”

  “No Peter all day. I sent Mandy through the rain to hunt him up. His wife says he is working over at Aaron’s store, hauling freight. She says he told François to come, but François has not come; no one has come.”

  “I see François,” piped up Mandy. “François ‘low he ain’t ‘bleege to do somethin’ des because Unc’ Peter say so.”

  Léontine hesitated a moment, and then slipped on her mackintosh again. Right through the driving rain the girl went to the wood-pile.

  “Léontine! Léontine, come back! Are you crazy? You are losing your mind! Oh dear! dear!” cried the mother, wringing her poor, delicate hands.

  “Go in and shut the door, mother! Shut the door!” The door was shut, and Léontine proceeded to get the ax, which was under the shelter of the back gallery — a stout, sharp ax.

  She had sometimes chopped kindling and bits of light wood, and she did not believe that this would be much harder. It certainly looked like child’s play when Peter wielded the ax.

  She selected the slimmest stick she could conveniently pull into place and arrange for action, and pretty soon she was hard at work. She knew just as well as if she were looking into the house that her mother was weeping, and that Mandy was standing with folded hands, gazing upon the doleful spectacle.

  “Pim! pam!” began the ax. “Bing! bang!” it resounded, and Léontine, with swinging arms, was presently in a fine glow.

  If every blow had counted, she would soon have had a neat stack of firewood at hand; but the trouble was that the strokes, in the most unaccountable manner, never fell twice in the same spot.

  Many another girl, in a like predicament, might have felt discouraged; not Léontine. The knack of wood-chopping was something she believed she might acquire in time, and there was a beginning to everything.

  A buggy drawn by two stout mules came slowly splashing along the road. It stopped opposite to where she was so lustily at work. A head peered over the protecting curtain, and a masterful voice called out:

  “Hey, there, girl! What are you up to? Are the men Indians in this parish, that they let the women chop wood?”

  Léontine looked up, and seeing that the man was a total stranger, she would have reddened if she could have become any redder than she was. Turning, she went on wielding the ax without replying.

  “Stop that chopping and go along into the house out of the rain! You ought to be ashamed of yourself!”

  As there was no use in trying to turn red, Léontine turned purple and went on chopping.

  The man alighted from his buggy without another word, came in at the gate, and was soon standing beside her at the wood-pile. He wore a long, thick overcoat and a black slouch hat, and looked to Léontine like a bearded tyrant.

  “This won’t do,” he said, quietly and firmly taking the ax out of her hand. “What are you doing this for? Isn’t there any black fellow around these diggings to chop your wood?”

  Léontine was what they sometimes, in that region, call “spunky.” She tried to look dignified and offended, but, with mortification, realized that the atmospheric conditions somewhat thwarted her design.

  “You are a stranger, sir,” she began.

  “No, I’m not. I live six miles below here, just moved, and I’m there to stay.”

  “Peter cuts wood for us,” she explained, somewhat mollified. “He didn’t come to-day, and I found my mother without a fire and suffering with cold when I returned from school a while ago. Will you kindly let me continue my work? I have no time to waste in conversation.”

  “Trot along in, trot along in, mademoiselle, and get into some dry clothes,” was the man’s only reply.

  Realizing the futility of standing out in the rain arguing, not to say quarrelin
g, with an eccentric, perhaps insane, stranger, Léontine left him and went into the house. She found her mother and Mandy, agitated by the liveliest curiosity, peering through the window.

  “I don’t know him,” she answered to her mother’s question. “I don’t know what he intends to do,” in further reply. “Maybe murder us all; you’d better lock the door.” And she went into the adjoining bedroom to divest herself of the saturated garments that felt like leaden weights upon her.

  “Dey look like Mr. Slocum’s mules an’ buggy,” ventured Mandy, whose attention was divided between the man and his equipage.

  “You’re right, Mandy. It must be the young man that bought the Slocum place and everything on it.”

  Léontine soon heard the ax fairly singing out at the wood-pile. Then a sepulchral whisper reached her from Mandy through the keyhole:

  “Miss L’ontine, he’s choppin’ wood!”

  “Well, let him chop; who cares?”

  A while later, when her toilet was almost completed, Mandy’s stealthy voice was again projected into the room:

  “Miss L’ontine, he done got a big pile chop’. He kiarin’ it on de gal’ry.”

  Léontine hardly knew how to cope with the situation. She wished that her mother were possessed of more strength of character. But she knew just as well as anything that her mother would be polite to him, without the least assertion of offended dignity.

  As Léontine emerged from her room blooming, all freshly attired in a neat, dark skirt and white shirt-waist, the stranger appeared in the doorway leading from the back gallery.

  “Pardon me, ladies,” he said, with an easy inclination. “My name’s Willet. I live six miles below here — Slocum place. Just want to be neighborly. I’ll give you you lots of chances of returning the compliment. Have you people got any kindling, any light wood around here that could start a fire?” His eyes had been attracted to the gaping, empty fireplace.