Complete Works of Kate Chopin

by Kate Chopin

  She had gathered the reins into one hand, and with the other free arm she encircled Miss Malthers’ shoulders.

  When the girl looked up into her face, with murmured thanks, Fedora bent down and pressed a long, penetrating kiss upon her mouth.

  Malthers’ sister appeared astonished, and not too well pleased. Fedora, with seemingly unruffled composure, gathered the reins, and for the rest of the way stared steadily ahead of her between the horses’ ears.

  VAGABONDS

  Valcour was waiting. A negro who had come to the store for rations told me that he was down below around the bend and wanted to see me. It never would have entered my mind to put myself the least bit out of the way for the sake of a rendezvous with Valcour; he might have waited till the crack of doom. But it was the hour for my afternoon walk and I did not mind stopping on the way, to see what the vagabond wanted with me.

  The weather was a little warm for April, and of course it had been raining. But with the shabby skirt which I wore and the clumsy old boots, the wet and the mud distressed me not at all; beside, I walked along the grassy edge of the road. The river was low and sluggish between its steep embankments that were like slimy pit-falls. Valcour was sitting on the fallen trunk of a tree near the water, waiting.

  I saw at a glance that he was sober; though his whole appearance gave evidence of his having been drunk at no very remote period. His clothes, his battered hat, his skin, his straggling beard which he never shaved, were all of one color — the color of clay. He made but the faintest offer to rise at my approach; and I saved him the complete effort by seating myself at once beside him on the log. I was glad that he showed no disposition to shake hands, for his hands were far from clean; and moreover he might have discovered the dollar bill which I had slipped into my glove in case of emergencies. He greeted me with his usual:

  “How you come on, cousin?”

  There exists a tradition outside the family that Valcour is a relation of ours. I am the only one, somehow, who does not strenuously deny the charge.

  “Me, I’m well enough, Valcour.”

  I long ago discovered that there is no need of wasting fine language on Valcour. Such effort could only evince a pride and affectation from which I am happily free.

  “W’at you mean,” I continued, “by sending me word you want to see me. You don’ think fo’ an instant I’d come down here o’ purpose to see an object like you.”

  Valcour laughed. He is the only soul who discovers any intention of humor in my utterances. He refuses to take me seriously.

  “An’ w’at you doing with yo’self these days?” I asked.

  “Oh, me, I been jobbin’ roun’ some, up the coas’. But I yeard ‘bout a chance down in Alexandria if I c’n make out to git down there.”

  “Of course not a picayune in sight,” I grumbled. “An’ I tell you, I ain’t much better off myself. Look at those shoes” — holding my feet out for his inspection— “an’ this dress; an’ take a look at those cabins an’ fences — ready to fall to pieces.”

  “I ent no mine to ask you fo’ money, cousin,” he cheerfully assured me.

  “All the same, I bet you a’ plumb broke,” I insisted. With some little difficulty — for his grasp was unsteady — he drew from his trousers pocket a few small coins which he held out before me. I was glad to see them and thrust the dollar bill further into my glove.

  “Just about the price of a quart, Valcour,” I calculated. “I reckon it’s no use warning a vaurien like you agains’ whiskey; it’s boun’ to be the end of you some o’ these days.”

  “It make’ a man crazy, that w’iskey,” he admitted. “Wouldn’ been fo’ that w’iskey, I neva would got in that peck o’ trouble yonda on Bayou Derbonne. Me, I don’ rec’lec’ a thing till I fine myse’f layin’ on doctor Jureau’s gall’ry.”

  “That was a nice mess,” I told him, “getting yo’self filled plumb full of buckshot fo’ trying to kiss another man’s wife. You must a’ been pretty drunk anyway, to want to kiss Joe Poussin’s wife.”

  Valcour, again mistaking cynicism for humor, almost rolled off the log in his hilarious appreciation of the insinuation. His laugh was contagious and I could not help joining him. “Hein, Valcour?” I persisted, “a man mus’ be pretty drunk, or mighty hard pushed, va!”

  “You right,” he returned between attacks of mirth, “a man got to be hard push’, sho’, that want’ to kiss Joe Poussin’s wife; ‘less he been blin’ drunk like me.”

  At the end of a half hour (how could I have stood the vagabond so long!) I reminded Valcour that the way to Alexandria lay across the river; and I expressed a hope that the walking was fair.

  I had asked him how he fared, what he ate and where, and how he slept. There was his gun beside him — for a wonder he had never sold it for drink — and were the woods not filled with feathered and antlered game? And sometimes there was a chicken roosting low, and always there was a black wench ready to cook it. As for sleeping — in the winter time, better not have asked him. Grand Dieu! that was hard. But with the summer coming on, why, a man could sleep anywhere that the mosquitoes would let him.

  I called him names; but all the same I could not help thinking that it must be good to prowl sometimes; to get close to the black night and lose oneself in its silence and mystery.

  He waited for the flat that had been crossing and recrossing a little distance away, and when it touched the bank he said good-by — as he had greeted me — stolidly and indifferently. He went slipping and slumping down the slimy embankment, ankle deep in mud.

  I stayed for pure idleness watching the flat cross the river. Valcour made no offer to help the ferryman with an oar; but rested his arms indolently on the rail of the boat and stared into the muddy stream.

  I turned to continue my walk. I was glad the vagabond did not want money. But for the life of me I don’t know what he wanted, or why he wanted to see me.

  MADAME MARTEL’S CHRISTMAS EVE

  Madame Martel was alone in the house. Even the servants upon one pretext and another had deserted her. She did not care; nothing mattered.

  She was a slender, blond woman, dressed in deep mourning. As she sat looking into the fire, holding in her hand an old letter that she had been reading, the naturally sorrowful expression of her face was sharpened by acute and vivid memories. The tears kept welling up to her eyes and she kept wiping them away with a fine, black-bordered cambric handkerchief. Occasionally she would turn to the table beside her and picking up an old ambrotype that lay there amid the pile of letters, she would gaze and gaze with misty eyes upon the picture; choking back the sobs; seeming to hold them in with the black-bordered handkerchief that she pressed to her mouth.

  The room in which she sat was cheerful, with its open wood-fire and its fine old-fashioned furniture that betokened taste as well as comfort and wealth. Over the mantel-piece hung the pleasing, handsome portrait of a man in his early prime.

  But Madame Martel was alone. Not only the servants were absent but even her children were away. Instead of coming home for Christmas, Gustave had accepted the invitation of a college friend to spend the holidays in Assumption.

  He had learned by experience that his mother preferred to be alone at this season and he respected her wishes. Adélaïde, his older sister, had of course gone to Iberville to be with her uncle Achille’s family, where there was no end of merrymaking all the year round. And even little Lulu was glad to get away for a few days from the depressing atmosphere which settled upon their home at the approach of Christmas.

  Madame Martel was one of those women — not rare among Creoles — who make a luxury of grief. Most people thought it peculiarly touching that she had never abandoned mourning for her husband, who had been dead six years, and that she never intended to lay it aside.

  More than one woman had secretly resolved, in the event of a like bereavement, to model her own widowhood upon just such lines. And there were men who felt that death would lose half its sting if, in dying
they might bear away with them the assurance of being mourned so faithfully, so persistently as Madame Martel mourned her departed husband.

  It was especially at the season of Christmas that she indulged to the utmost in her poignant memories and abandoned herself to a very intoxication of grief. For her husband had possessed a sunny, cheerful temperament — the children resembled him — and it had often seemed to her that he had chiefly welcomed in Christmas the pretext to give rein to his own boyish exuberance of spirit. A thousand recollections crowded upon her. She could see his beaming face; she could hear the clear ring of his laughter, joining the little ones in their glee as every fresh delight of the day unfolded itself.

  The room had grown oppressive; for it was really not cold out of doors — hardly cold enough for the fire that was burning there on the hearth. Madame Martel arose and went and poured herself a glass of water. Her throat was parched and her head was beginning to ache. The pitcher was heavy and her thin hand shook a little as she poured the water. She went into her sleeping-room for a fresh, dry handkerchief, and she cooled her face, which was hot and inflamed, with a few puffs of poudre de riz.

  She was nervous and unstrung. She had been dwelling so persistently on the thought of her husband that she felt as if he must be there in the house. She felt as if the years had rolled backward and given her again her own. If she were to go into the playroom, surely she would find the Christmas-tree there, all ablaze, as it was that last Christmas that he was with them. He would be there holding little Lulu in his arms. She could almost hear the ring of voices and the patter of little feet.

  Madame Martel, suffocating with memories, threw a light shawl over her shoulders and stepped out upon the gallery, leaving the door ajar. There was a faint moonlight that seemed rather a misty effulgence enveloping the whole landscape. Through the tangle of her garden she could see the lights of the village a little distance away. And there were sounds that reached her: there was music somewhere; and occasional shouts of merriment and laughter; and some one was lustily blowing a horn not far away.

  She walked slowly and with a measured tramp, up and down. She lingered a while at the south end of the gallery where there were roses hanging still untouched by the frost, and she stayed there looking before her into the shadowy depths that seemed to picture the gloom of her own existence. Her acute grief of a while before had passed, but a terrible loneliness had settled upon her spirit.

  Her husband was forever gone, and now the children even seemed to be slipping out of her life, cut off by want of sympathy. Perhaps it was in the nature of things; she did not know; it was very hard to bear; and her heart suddenly turned savage and hungry within her for human companionship — for some expression of human love.

  Little Lulu was not far away: on the other side of the village, about a half mile or so. She was staying there with old and intimate friends of her mother, in a big, hospitable house where there were lots of young people and much good cheer in store for the holidays.

  With the thought of Lulu’s nearness the desire came to Madame Martel to see the child, to have the little one with her again at home. She would go herself on the instant and fetch Lulu back. She wondered how she could ever have suffered the child to leave her.

  Acting at once upon the impulse that moved her, Madame Martel hastily descended the stairs and walked hurriedly down the path that led between two lines of tall Magnolias to the outer road.

  There was quite a bit of desolate road to traverse, but she did not fear. She knew every soul for miles around and was sure of not being molested.

  The moon had grown brighter. It was not so misty now and she could see plainly ahead of her and all about her. There was the end of the plank walk a rod or so away. Here was the wedge of a cotton field to pass, still covered with its gaunt, dry stalks to which ragged shreds of cotton clung here and there. Off against the woods a mile away, a railroad train was approaching. She could not hear it yet; she could only see the swiftly moving line of lights against the dark background of forest.

  Madame Martel had drawn her black shawl up over her head and she looked like a slim nun moving along through the moonlight. A few stragglers on their way to the station made room for her; and the jest and laughter died on their lips as she passed by. People respected her as a sort of mystery; as something above them, and to be taken very seriously.

  Old Uncle Wisdom made a profound bow as he stumbled down from the plank walk to give her the right of way. His wife was with him and he dragged his granddaughter, Tildy, by a willing hand. They were on their way to the station to meet Tildy’s “maw” who was coming to spend Christmas with them in the shanty yonder on the rim of the bayou.

  Through the open door of a cabin that she passed came the scraping notes of a fiddle, and people were dancing within. The sounds were distressing to her sensitive, musical ear and she hurried by. A big wagon load of people swung into the country road, out for a moonlight drive. In the village proper there was much flitting about; people greeting each other or bidding good-bye in door-ways and on steps and galleries. The very air seemed charged with a cheerful excitement.

  When Madame Martel reached the big house at the far end of town, she made her way at once to the front door and entered, after a faint knock that never could have been heard amid the hubbub that reigned within.

  There she stood within the entrance of the big hall that was thronged with people. Lights were hanging from the huge rafters; the whitewashed walls were decorated with cedar branches and mistletoe. Some one was playing a lively air upon the piano, to which no one was paying any attention except two young Convent girls who were waltzing together with much difficulty in one corner.

  There were old ladies and gentlemen all seeming to be talking at once. There was a young mother, loath to quit the scene, foolishly striving to put her baby to sleep in the midst of it. A few little darkies were leaning against the whitewashed wall, clinging each to an orange which some one had given them. But above all there was the laughter and voices of children; and just as Madame Martel appeared in the doorway, Lulu, with flaming cheeks and sparkling eyes, was twirling a plate in the middle of the room.

  “Tiens! Madame Martel!”

  If the cry had been “tiens! un revenant — a spirit from the other world!” it could not have had a more instantaneous, depressing effect upon the whole assembly. The piano ceased playing; the Convent girls stopped waltzing; the old people stopped talking and the young ones stopped laughing; only the plate in the middle of the floor seemed not to care and it went on whirling.

  But the surprise — the suspense were only momentary. People crowded around Madame Martel with expressions of satisfaction at seeing her and all wanted her to do something: to take off her shawl; to sit down; to look at the baby; to accept a bit of refreshment.

  “No, no!” in her gentle, deprecatory voice. She begged they would excuse her — she had only come — it was about Lulu. The child had not seemed entirely well in the morning when she left home. Madame Martel thought that she had better take her back; she hoped that Lulu would be willing to return with her.

  A perfect storm of protest! And Lulu the very picture of despair! The child had approached her mother and clung to her, imploring to be permitted to remain as if begging for very existence.

  “Of course your mama will let you stay, now that she sees you are well and amusing yourself,” asserted a comfortably fat old lady with a talent for arranging matters. “Your mama would never be so selfish!”

  “Selfish!” She had not thought of it as selfish; and she at once felt willing to endure any suffering rather than afflict others with her own selfish desires.

  Surely Lulu could remain if she wished to; and she gave the child a passionate embrace as she let her go. But she herself could not be induced to linger for a moment. She would not accept the offer of an escort home. She went as she had come — alone.

  Hardly had Madame Martel turned her back than she could hear that they were at it again. Th
e piano began playing and all the noises started up afresh.

  The simple and rather natural choice of the child to remain with her young companions, took somewhat the aspect of a tragedy to Madame Martel as she made her way homeward. It was not so much the fact itself as the significance of the fact. She felt as if she had driven love out of her life and she kept repeating to herself: “I have driven love away; I have driven it away.” And at the same time she seemed to feel a reproach from her dear, dead husband that she had looked for consolation and hoped for comfort aside from his cherished memory.

  She would go back home now to her old letters, to her thoughts, to her tears. How he and he alone had always understood her! It seemed as if he understood her now; as if he were with her now in spirit as she hurried through the night back to her desolate home.

  Madame Martel, upon quitting the sitting-room where she had been poring over her old letters, had lowered the light on the table. Now, as she mounted the front stairs, the room appeared to her to be brighter than the flare of the dying embers could have made it; and mechanically approaching the window that opened upon the gallery, she looked in.

  She did not scream, or cry out at what she saw. She only gave a gasp that seemed to wrench her whole body and she clutched blindly at the window jamb for support. She saw that the light under its tempered shade had been raised; the embers had fallen into a dull, glowing heap between the andirons. And there before the fire, in her own armchair, sat her husband. How well she knew him!

  She could not see his face, but his leg was stretched out toward the fire, his head was bent, and he sat motionless looking at something that he held in his hand.

  She closed her eyes; she knew that when she opened them the vision would be gone. With swift retrospection she remembered all the stories she had ever heard of optical illusions: all the tricks that an over-excited brain is apt to play upon one. She realized that she had been nervous, overwrought, and this was the revenge of her senses: disclosing to her this vision of her husband. How familiar to her was the poise of his head, the sweep of arm and set of his shoulder. And when she opened her eyes he would be no longer there; the chair would again be empty. She pressed her fingers for an instant hard upon her eyeballs, then looked again.