Complete Works of Kate Chopin

by Kate Chopin

  The scene was so unexpected to Buddie Bénoîte that it found him wholly unprepared. He could find no words. The wrath which he had always expected would blaze up at sight of a Parkins, was somehow dispelled by factors that he had not considered. The sight of his wife’s great emotion was a painful revelation. The realization that the tie which united those two clinging to each other out there was the same that bound his own to the cherished baby in his arms, was an overwhelming realization. His impulses were not slow. He hastened forward and held out his hand to his wife’s father.

  Sophronie had sunk into a chair. She was astounded at her mistake, and trying to comprehend it. She feared at first she had committed a crime. A moment later she began to believe she had brilliantly managed a difficult situation.

  “Her mother’s failing pretty smart,” went on Parkins, caressing Mrs. Buddie’s cheek but showing not half so much emotion now as Mr. Buddie who was frankly shedding tears. “She couldn’t stand the trip from Winn; but she felt the same as me; we’d got to see Millie; we couldn’t stand it no longer; neither could her brothers. The last words she says was, ‘Si Parkins you fetch my girl to me if you got to bring her across Bud Benoîte’s dead body; if we wait any longer it might be too late.’ “

  Mr. Buddie in his entire change of sentiment felt like placing a pistol in Mr. Parkins’ hand and requesting that gentleman to use him as a target. But he happily realized that there is a limit even to belated courtesy.

  Aunt Crissy was trying to make herself heard; she had hobbled around from the front of the house: “Marse Buddie, oh, Marse Buddie; de gen’-man f’om Noo O’leans is roun’ at de front gate.”

  And there he was, Mr. Sneckbauer, in a finely varnished buggy drawn by two bays that shone with health and good grooming; a young darky driving him; a tightly packed suit case strapped behind; himself, dapper, wide awake, affable.

  But Mr. Sneckbauer was not the guest of honor that night at Mr. Buddie’s table, notwithstanding the fresh and pleasing atmosphere which his presence brought with it.

  Sophronie was delighted to think the one cloud over the domestic paradise had been removed. She could not help regretting, however, that the gentleman from New Orleans and the gentleman from Winn had not reversed the order of their coming. What a charming day she might have spent in providing hospitality to so agreeable a personage! She avoided Aunt Crissy’s eye. There was a triumphant light in it which interpreted meant: “I know a gentleman when I see one.”

  “Yo’ father can drive you an’ the baby in his buggy,” said Mr. Buddie after supper with the air of arranging for a second barbecue. “I’ll take the other chil’ren with me in the light wagon.”

  His wife looked up with startled enquiry.

  “To Winn,” he replied; “we’ll start in the mornin’.”

  Sophronie wondered if she were again going to be left behind, and began to feel a little discouraged.

  CHARLIE

  Six of Mr. Laborde’s charming daughters had been assembled for the past half hour in the study room. The seventh, Charlotte, or Charlie as she was commonly called, had not yet made her appearance. The study was a very large corner room with openings leading out upon the broad upper gallery.

  Hundreds of birds were singing out in the autumn foliage. A little stern-wheeler was puffing and sputtering, making more commotion than a man-o’-war as she rounded the bend. The river was almost under the window — just on the other side of the high green levee.

  At one of the windows, seated before a low table covered with kindergarten paraphernalia were the twins, nearing six, Paula and Pauline, who were but a few weeks old when their mother died. They were round-faced youngsters with white pinafores and chubby hands. They peeped out at the little snorting stern-wheeler and whispered to each other about it. The eldest sister, Julia, a slender girl of nineteen, rapped upon her desk. She was diligently reading her English Literature. Her hands were as white as lilies and she wore a blue ring and a soft white gown. The other sisters were Charlotte, the absentee, just past her seventeenth birthday, Amanda, Irene and Fidelia; girls of sixteen, fourteen and ten who looked neat and trim in their ginghams; with shining hair plaited on either side and tied with large bows of ribbon.

  Each girl occupied a separate desk. There was a broad table at one end of the room before which Miss Melvern the governess seated herself when she entered. She was tall, with a refined though determined expression. The “Grandfather’s Clock” pointed to a quarter of nine as she came in. Her pupils continued to work in silence while she busied herself in arranging the contents of the table.

  The little stern-wheeler had passed out of sight though not out of hearing. But again the attention of the twins was engaged with something outside and again their curly heads met across the table.

  “Paula,” called Miss Melvern, “I don’t think it is quite nice to whisper in that way and interrupt your sisters at their work. What are you two looking at out of the window?”

  “Looking at Charlie,” spoke Paula quite bravely while Pauline glanced down timidly and picked her fingers. At the mention of Charlie, Miss Melvern’s face assumed a severe expression and she cautioned the little girls to confine their attention to the task before them.

  The sight of Charlie galloping along the green levee summit on a big black horse, as if pursued by demons, was surely enough to distract the attention of any one from any thing.

  Presently there was a clatter of hoofs upon the ground below, the voice of a girl pitched rather high was heard and the apologetic, complaining whine of a young negro.

  “I didn’ have no time, Miss Charlie. It’s hones’, I never had no time. I tole Marse Laborde you gwine git mad an’ fuss. You c’n ax Aleck.”

  “Get mad and fuss! Didn’t have time! Look at that horse’s back — look at it. I’ll give you time and something else in the bargain. Just let me catch Tim’s back looking like that again, sir.”

  The twins were plainly agitated, and kept looking alternately at Miss Melvern’s imperturbable face and at the door through which they expected their sister to enter.

  A quick footstep sounded along the corridor, the door was thrown hurriedly open, and in came Charlie. She looked right up at the clock, uttered an exclamation of disgust, jerked off her little cloth cap and started toward her desk. She was robust and pretty well grown for her age. Her hair was cut short and was so damp with perspiration that it clung to her head and looked almost black. Her face was red and overheated at the moment. She wore a costume of her own devising, something between bloomers and a divided skirt which she called her “trouserlets.” Canvas leggings, dusty boots and a single spur completed her costume.

  “Charlotte!” called Miss Melvern arresting the girl. Charlie stood still and faced the governess. She felt in both side pockets of her trouserlets for a handkerchief which she finally abstracted from a hip pocket. It was not a very white or fresh looking handkerchief; nevertheless she wiped her face with it.

  “If you remember,” said Miss Melvern, “the last time you came in late to study — which was only the day before yesterday — I told you that if it occurred again I should have to speak to your father. It’s getting to be an almost every day affair, and I cannot consent to have your sisters repeatedly interrupted in this way. Take your books and go elsewhere to study until I can see your father.” Charlie was gazing dejectedly at the polished floor and continuing to mop her face with the soiled handkerchief. She started to blurt out an apology, checked herself and crossing over to her desk provided herself with a few books and some scraps of paper.

  “I’d rather you wouldn’t speak to father this once,” she appealed, but Miss Melvern only motioned with her head toward the door and the girl went out; not sullenly, but lugubriously. The twins looked at each other with serious eyes while Irene frowned savagely behind the pages of her geography.

  It was not many moments before a young black girl came and thrust her head in at the door, rolling two great eyes which she had under very poor
control.

  “Miss Charlie ‘low, please sen’ her pencil w’at she lef behine; an’ if Miss Julia wants to give her some dem smove sheets o’ paper; an’ she be obleege if Miss Irene len’ her de fountain pen, des dis once.”

  Irene darted forward, but subsided at a glance from Miss Melvern. That lady handed the black emissary a pencil and tablet from the table.

  Before very long she was back again interrupting the exercises to lay a bulky wad before the governess. It was an elaborate description of the unavoidable adventures which had retarded Charlie’s appearance in the study room.

  “That will do, Blossom,” said Miss Melvern severely, motioning the girl to be gone.

  “She wants me to wait fo’ an’ answer,” responded Blossom settling herself comfortably against the door jamb.

  “That will do, Blossom,” with distinct emphasis, whereupon Blossom reluctantly took her leave. But before long she was back again, nothing daunted and solemnly placed in Miss Melvern’s unwilling hand a single folded sheet. Whereupon she retired with a slow dignity which convinced the twins that a telling and important strike had been accomplished by the absent Charlie. This time it was a poem — an original poem, and it began:

  “Relentless Fate, and thou, relentless Friend!”

  Its composition had cost Charlie much laborious breathing and some hard wrung drops from her perspiring brow. Charlie had a way, when strongly moved, of expressing herself in verse. She was greatly celebrated for two notable achievements in her life. One was the writing of a lengthy ode upon the occasion of her Grandmother’s seventieth birthday; but she was perhaps more distinguished for having once saved the levee during a time of perilous overflow when her father was away. It was a story in which an unloaded revolver played a part, demoralized negroes and earth-filled gunny sacks. It got into the papers and made a heroine of her for a week or two.

  On the other hand, it would be difficult to enumerate Charlie’s shortcomings. She never seemed to do anything that anyone except her father approved of. Yet she was popularly described as not having a mean bone in her body.

  Charlie was seated in a tilted chair, her heels on the rung, and in the intervals of composition her attention was greatly distracted by her surroundings. She sat outside on the brick or “false gallery” that formed a sort of long corridor at the back of the house. There was always a good deal going on out there. The kitchen was a little removed from the house. There was a huge live oak under whose spreading branches a few negro children were always playing — a few clucking chickens always scratching in the dust. People who rode in from the field always fastened their horses there. A young negro was under the tree, sharpening his axe at the grindstone while the big fat cook stood in the kitchen door abusing him in unmeasured terms. He was her own child, so she enjoyed the privilege of dealing with him as harshly as the law allowed.

  “W’at you did wid dat gode (gourd) you, Demins! You kiar water to de grine stone wid it! I tell you, boy, dey be kiarrin’ water in yo’ skull time I git tho’ wid you. Fetch dat gode back heah whar it b’longs. I gwine break eve’y bone in yo’ body, an’ I gwine tu’n you over to yo’ pa: he make jelly outen yo’ hide an taller.”

  The fat woman’s vituperations were interrupted by the shock of a well-aimed missile squarely striking her broad body.

  “If there are going to be any bones broken around here, I’ll take a hand in it and I’ll begin with you, Aunt Maryllis. What do you mean by making such a racket when you see me studying out here?”

  “I gwine tell yo’ pa, Miss Charlie. Dis time I gwine tell ‘im sho’. Marse Laborde ain’ gwine let you keep on cripplin’ his han’s scand’lous like you does. You, Demins! run ‘long to de cabin, honey, an’ fetch yo’ mammy de spirits o’ camphire.” She turned back in the kitchen bent almost double, holding her hand sprawled over her ponderous side.

  It was indeed very trying to Charlie to be thus interrupted in her second stanza as she was vainly striving after a suitable rhyme for “persecution.” And again there was Aurendele, the ‘Cadian girl, stalking across the yard with a brace of chickens to sell. She had them tied together at the legs with a strip of cotton cloth and they hung from her hand head downward motionless.

  “He! what do you want? Aurendele!” Charlie called out. The girl piped shrilly back from the depths of a gingham sunbonnet.

  “I lookin’ fo’ Ma’me Philomel, see if she want buy couple fine pullets. They fine, yes,” she reiterated holding them out for Charlie’s inspection. “We raise ‘em from that Plymouth Rock. They ain’t no Creole chicken, them, they good breed, you c’n see fo’ yo’se’f.”

  “Plymouth fiddlesticks! You’d better hold on to them and try to sell them to the circus as curiosities: ‘The feathered skeletons.’ Here, Demins! turn these martyrs loose. Give them water and corn and rub some oil on their legs . . .

  “No, Aurendele, I was only joking. I don’t know how you can part with those Plymouth Rocks; you’ll feel the separation and it’ll go hard with your mother and the children. What do you want for them?”

  Aurendele only wanted a little coffee and flour, a piece of fine soap, some blue ribbon such as her sister Odelia had bought at the store and a yard of “cross-bars” for a sunbonnet for Nannouche.

  Charlie directed the girl to Ma’me Philomel. “And you ought to know better,” she added, “than to stand here talking when you see I’m busy with my lessons.”

  “You please escuse me, Miss Charlie, I didn’ know you was busy. W’ere you say I c’n fine Ma’me Philomel?”

  And Charlie went back to the closing stanza which was something of an exhortation: “Let me not look again upon thy face While frowning mood, of joy usurps the place.”

  The poem being finished, signed and duly delivered by Blossom, the sister of Demins, Charlie felt that she had brought her intellectual labors to a fitting close.

  A moment before, a negro had wheeled into the yard on a hand-cart Charlie’s new bicycle. It had been deposited at the landing by the little stern-wheeler earlier in the morning, and to witness and superintend its debarkation had been the cause of Charlie’s tardiness in the class room. Now, with the assistance of Demins and Blossom the wheel was unpacked and adjusted under the live oak. It was a beauty, of very latest construction. Charlie had traded her old wheel with Uncle Ruben for an afflicted pony which she had great hope of saving and training for speed. The discarded bicycle was intended as a gift for Uncle Ruben’s bride. Since its presentation the bride had not been seen in public.

  Charlie mounted and gave an exhibition of her skill to a delighted audience of negroes, chickens and a few dogs. Then she decided that she would ride out in search of her father. It was not on her own account that she had entreated Miss Melvern’s silence, it was on his. She realized that she was a difficult and perhaps annoying problem for him, and did not relish the idea of adding to his perplexity.

  As Charlie wheeled past the kitchen she peeped furtively in at the window. Aunt Maryllis was kneading a lump of dough with one hand while the other was still clapped to her side. Charlie felt remorseful and wondered whether Aunt Maryllis would rather have fifty cents or a new bandana! But the gate was open, and away she went, down the long inviting level road that led to the sugar mill.

  II

  Miss Melvern in a moment of exasperation had once asked Charlie if she were wholly devoid of a moral sense. The expression was rather cruelly forceful, but the provocation had been unusually trying. And Charlie was so far devoid of the sense in question as not to be stung by the implication. She really felt that nothing made much difference so long as her father was happy. Her actions were reprehensible in her own eyes only so far as they interfered with his peace of mind. Therefore a great part of her time was employed in apologetic atonement and the framing of vast and unattainable resolutions.

  An easy solution would have been to send Charlie away to boarding school. But upon the point of separation from any of his daughters, Mr. Laborde had set his heart with stu
bborn determination. He had once vaguely entertained the expedient of a second marriage, but was quite willing to abandon the idea on the strength of a touching petition framed by Charlie and signed by the seven sisters — the twins setting down their marks with heavy emphasis. And then Charlie could ride and shoot and fish; she was untiring and fearless. In many ways she filled the place of that ideal son he had always hoped for and that had never come.

  He was standing at the mill holding the bridle of his horse and watching Charlie’s approach with complicated interest. He was preposterously young looking — slender, with a clean shaved face and deep set blue eyes like Charlie’s, and dark brown hair. The gray hairs on his temples might have been counted and often were, by the twins, perched on either arm of his chair.

  “Well, Dad, how do you like it? Isn’t it a beaut!” Charlie exclaimed as she flung herself off her wheel and wiped her steaming face with her bended arm. Mr. Laborde took a fresh linen handkerchief from his pocket and passed it over her face as if she had been a little child.

  “If I hadn’t been down at the landing this morning, goodness knows what they would have done with it. What do you suppose? That idiot of a Lulin swore it wasn’t aboard. If I hadn’t gone aboard myself and found it — well — that’s why I happened to be late again. Miss Melvern is going to speak to you.” A grieved and troubled look swept into his face, and was more stinging than if he had upbraided her. This way there was no excuse — no denial that she could make.

  “And what are you doing out here now? Why aren’t you in with the others at work?” he questioned.

  “She sent me away — she’s getting tired.” Charlie’s face was a picture of impotent regret as she looked down and uprooted a clump of grass with the toe of her clumsy boot. “I worked some, though, and then I just had to see about the wheel. I couldn’t have trusted Demins.”