Complete Works of Kate Chopin

by Kate Chopin

  “It wasn’t your fault,” she said with condescension. “If it hadn’t been that it would have been something else. I don’t know what’s going to happen; boarding school I’m afraid.”

  A small figure came gliding around the corner of the house. It was Xenophore, blue jeans, legs, hat and all. He came quietly and seated himself on a step at some little distance.

  “What do you want?” she asked in French.

  “Nothing.”

  They both laughed at the youngster. Far from being offended he smiled and peered slyly up from under his hat.

  “Mr. Gus sen’ word howdy,” piped Xenophore a little later apropos of nothing, breaking right into the conversation.

  “W’ere you saw Mr. Gus?” asked Charlie, falling into the ‘Cadian speech as she sometimes did when talking to the Bichous.

  “He pass yonder by de house on ‘is ho’se. He say ‘How you come on, Xenophore; w’en you see Miss Charlie?’ I say, ‘I see Miss Charlie to s’mornin’,’ an’ he say ‘Tell Miss Charlie howdy fo’ me.’”

  Then Xenophore arose and turning mechanically, glided noiselessly around the corner of the house.

  It was dusk and the moon was already shining in the river and breaking with a pale glow through the magnolia leaves when the girls came home from their dancing lesson. It was nearing the supper hour so they did not linger, and Charlie went with them into the house, bent upon making a bit of toilet for the evening. She was secretly in hopes that Amanda would lend her a dress. Julia’s gowns were quite too young-ladified; they touched the ground, often with a graceful sweep. One of Amanda’s would have done nicely. But Amanda looked sidewise from her long, narrow, dark eyes when Charlie approached her with the request and blankly refused. Irene grew excited and indignant.

  “Don’t ask her, Charlie; why do you ask her? She thinks her clothes are made of diamonds and pearls, too good for Queen Victoria! What about my pink gingham if I ripped out the tucks?”

  “Oh! it’s no use,” wailed Charlie. “There isn’t time to rip anything and I could never get into it.”

  They were in Amanda’s room, Irene and Charlie seated on a box lounge and Amanda decorating herself before the mirror. She had laid her own evening toilet on the bed and carefully locked closet, wardrobe and bureau drawers. She always kept things locked and had an ostentatious way of carrying her highly polished keys that were on a ring. Charlie gazed at her sister’s reflected image with a sort of despair but with no trace of malice.

  “If there’s a thing I hate, it’s to have people sit and stare when I’m dressing,” remarked Amanda. The two girls got up and went out and Amanda locked the door behind them.

  “Why not wear your Sunday dress, Charlie?” offered Irene as they walked down the long hall, arm in arm.

  “You know what Julia said about its being so short and the sleeves so old fashioned and she wouldn’t be seen at church with me if I wore it again. So I gave it to Aurendele the other day.”

  But it was Julia who came to the rescue. She fastened and pinned and tucked up one of her own gowns on Charlie and the effect, if not completely happy, could not have been called a distinct failure.

  No one remarked upon the metamorphosis when she appeared thus arrayed at table. Miss Melvern and Madame Philomel were far too polite to seem to notice. The twins only beamed their approval and astonishment. Fidelia gasped and stared, closed her lips tight and sought Miss Melvern’s glance for direction. Blossom alone expressed herself in a smothered explosion in the door way, and went outside and clung to a post for support.

  To Mr. Laborde there was something poignant in the sight of his beloved daughter in this unfamiliar garb. It seemed a dismal part of the unhappy situation which had given him such heartache to solve — for he had solved it. He avoided looking at Charlie and wore an expression which reminded them all of the time he heard of his brother’s death in Old Mexico.

  Mr. Laborde had that evening reached a conclusion which was communicated to Charlie directly after supper when the others strolled out upon the veranda and she went with him to his study. She was to go to New Orleans and enter a private school noted for its excellent discipline. Two weeks at Aunt Clementine’s would enable her to be fitted out as became her age, sex and condition in life. Julia was to go to the city with her, to see that she was properly equipped and later her father would join her and accompany her to the Young Ladies’ Seminary.

  She fingered the lace ruffle on Julia’s sleeve as she looked down and listened to her father’s admonitions.

  “I’m sorry to give you all this worry, dad,” she said, “but I’m not going to make any more promises; it’s a farce, the way I’ve persistently broken them. I hope I shan’t give you any more trouble.” He took her in his arms, and kissed her fervently. Charlie was exceedingly astonished to discover that the arrangement planned by her father was not so distasteful as it would have seemed a while ago. It was not at all distasteful and she secretly marvelled.

  When she and her father rejoined the others on the veranda they found that a visitor had arrived, Mr. Gus Bradley, the son of a neighboring planter and an intimate friend of the family. He had been painfully disconcerted at finding a stranger when he had expected to meet only familiar faces and the effect was not happy. Mr. Gus was so shy that it had never yet been discovered whom his visits at Les Palmiers were intended for. It was, however, generally believed that he favored Charlie on account of the messages which he so often sent her through Xenophore and others. He had given her a fine dog and a riding whip. But he had also made the twins a present of a gentle Shetland pony, and he had sent Amanda his photograph! He was a big fellow and awkward only from shyness and when in company, for in the saddle or out in the road or the fields he had a fine, free carriage. His hair was light and fine and his face smooth and looked as if it belonged to a far earlier period of society and had no connection with the fevered and modern present day.

  The moon sent a great flood of light in upon the group — the only shadows were cast by the big round pillars and the fantastic quivering vines. Amanda sat by herself, tip toeing in a hammock and picking a tune on the mandolin. Madame Philomel was telling the twins a marvelous story in French about Croque Mitaine. Fidelia was drinking in words of wisdom at Miss Melvern’s feet. It was Irene who was entertaining Mr. Gus and endeavoring to account to him in veiled whispers for young Walton’s presence on the scene. She might have spoken as loud as she liked for the young gentleman in question was entirely absorbed in Julia’s conversation and had ears for nothing else.

  “I’m not going to stay,” said Mr. Gus, almost apologetically. “I only rode over for a minute. I wanted to see your sister Charlie. I had something important to tell her.”

  “She’ll be out pretty soon; she’s inside talking to father.”

  When Charlie came out she went and seated herself beside Irene on the long bench that stood by the railing. Mr. Gus was near by in a camp chair. He was so flustered at seeing Charlie in frills and furbelows that he could scarcely articulate.

  “I didn’t know you,” he blurted.

  “Oh, well, I have to begin some time.”

  Irene got up and left them alone, remembering Mr. Gus’s admission of an important communication for Charlie’s ears alone.

  “I haven’t long to stay,” he began. “I heard about Tim’s shoulder and brought you a recipe for gall. It’s the finest thing ever was. You’ll find all the ingredients in your father’s workshop, and you’d better mix it yourself; don’t trust any one else. If you’d like, I’ll put it up myself and bring it around tomorrow.”

  Irene off in the distance was positively agitated. She firmly believed Charlie was receiving her first proposal.

  “Thank you, Mr. Gus, but it’s no use,” said Charlie. “Some one else is going to look after Tim from now on; I’m going away.”

  “Going away!”

  “Yes, going to the Seminary in the city. Dad thinks it’s best; I suppose it is.”

  He found abso
lutely nothing to say, but his mobile face took on a crestfallen look that the moonlight made pathetic; and Irene from her corner of observation, concluded that he had been rejected as she knew he would.

  “I’ll send dear old Pitts back. You keep him for me. I reckon they wouldn’t let me have him in the Seminary.”

  “I’ll come for him tomorrow,” responded Mr. Gus with dreary eagerness. “When do you go?”

  “In a day or two. The sooner the better as long as there’s no getting out of it.”

  Two days later Charlie left the plantation accompanied by her sister Julia, young Walton and Madame Philomel. They boarded the little sputtering stern-wheeler about nine in the morning. It seemed as if the whole plantation, blacks and whites, had turned out to bid her bon voyage. The sisters were in tears. Even Amanda seemed moved and Irene was frankly hysterical. Miss Melvern was under a big sunshade with Fidelia, and the twins held their father’s hands. All the Bichous had come; Aurendele in Charlie’s “Sunday dress,” Xenophore, round eyed, serious, unable to cry, unable to laugh, apprehending calamity. Mr. Gus galloped up with a huge bouquet of flowers, striving to appear as if it were wholly by accident.

  Charlie was completely overcome. She would not go up to the cabin but stayed dejectedly seated on a cotton bale, alternately wiping her eyes and waving her handkerhcief until it was too limp to flutter.

  IV

  The change, or rather the revolution in Charlie’s character at this period was so violent and pronounced that for a while it rendered Julia helpless. The trouble which Julia had anticipated was entirely of an opposite nature from the one which confronted her and it took her some time to realize the situation and ajust herself to it. As it happened, the combined efforts of both Aunt Clementine and Julia were insufficient to keep Charlie within bounds; to give her a proper appreciation of values after the feminine instinct had been aroused in her.

  The diamond ring she had always with her. It was her mother’s engagement ring. Hitherto she had worn it for the tender associations which made her love the bauble. Now she began to look upon it as an adornment. She possessed a round gold locket containing her mother’s and father’s pictures. This she suspended from her neck by a long thin gold chain. Such family jewels as had by inheritance descended to her, seemed to the young thing insufficient to proclaim the gentle quality of sex. She would have cajoled her father into extravagances. She wanted lace and embroideries upon her garments; and she longed to bedeck herself with ribbons and passementeries which the shops displayed in such tempting array.

  Her short cropped hair was a sore grievance to Charlie when she viewed herself in the mirror and she resorted to the disfiguring curling irons with results which were, to say the least, appalling to Julia who came in one afternoon and discovered her entertaining young Walton with her head looking like a prize chrysanthemum.

  “I can’t understand her, Aunt,” Julia confided to her Aunt Clementine with tears in her blue eyes. “It’s bad enough as it is, but just imagine what a spectacle she would make of herself if we permitted it. I’m afraid she’s a little out of her senses. I’d almost rather think that than to believe she could develop such vulgar instincts.”

  Aunt Clementine would do no more than shrug her shoulders and look placidly and blamelessly perplexed. She was quite sure that Charlie did not take after any member of her side of the family; so the blame of heredity, if any, had naturally to be traced to other sides of the family.

  Through mild and firm coercion Charlie was brought to understand that such excessive ornamentation as she favored would not for a moment be tolerated by the disciplinarians at the Seminary. When finally that young person was admitted to the refined precincts — save for the diamond ring and the locket, in the matter of which she had taken a stubborn stand — no fault could have been found with her appearance which was in every way consistent with that of the well mannered girl of seventeen.

  She had spent a delightful fortnight. Aunt Clementine who was at once a lady of fashion and a person of gentle refinement had provided entertainment such as Charlie had not yet encountered outside of novels of high life: her Aunt Clementine’s ménage having not before been to her liking.

  They drove, they visited and received calls, dined and went to the opera. There was much shopping, perambulating and trying on of gowns and hats. There was a perpetual flutter, and indescribable excitement awaiting her at every turn. Young Walton was persistent in his attentions to the sisters, but as there were other and many claims upon Julia it was oftener Charlie who entertained him, walked abroad with him and even accompanied him on one occasion to Church.

  The first moment that Charlie found herself alone in the privacy of her own room at the Seminary, she devoted that moment to unburdening her soul. She sat beside the window and looked out a while. There was not much inspiration to be gathered from the big red brick building opposite. But her inspiration was not dependent upon anything extraneous; it was bubbling up inside of her and generating an energy that found a vent in its natural channel.

  Equipped with a very fine pen point and the filmiest sheet of filmy writing paper, Charlie wrote some lines of poetry in the smallest possible cramped hand. She did not hesitate or bite her pen or frown, seeking for words and rhymes. She had made it all up beforehand and its rhythm kept time with the beating of her heart. Poor little thing! Let her alone. It would be cruel to tell the whole story. When the lines were written she folded the sheet over and over and over, making it as flat and thin as possible. Then with her hat pin she picked out the little glass frame that contained her mother’s picture in the locket, and laying the scrap of poetry in the cover, replaced the picture.

  As the young girls at the Seminary were all of gentle breeding they gave no pronounced exhibition of their astonishment at Charlie’s lack of accomplishments. She herself felt her shortcomings keenly and read their guarded wonder. With dogged determination she had made up her mind to transform herself from a hoyden to a fascinating young lady, if persistence and hard work could do it.

  As for hard work, there was enough of it! Hoeing, or chopping cane seemed child’s play compared with the excruciating intricacies which the piano offered her. She began to have some respect for Fidelia’s ponderous talent and even wondered at the twins. After some lessons in drawing, the instructor disinterestedly advised her to save her money. He was gloomy about it. The spirit of commercialism, he said, had not touched him to the crass extent of countenancing robbery. With some sinking of heart, Charlie let the drawing go, but when it came to dancing, she would yield not an inch. She practised the steps in the narrow confines of her room, and when opportunity favored her, she waltzed and two-stepped up and down the long corridors. Some of the girls took pity and gave her private instructions, for which she offered tempting inducements to their cupidity in the shape of chocolate bon-bons and stick-pins.

  She was immensely liked, though they had small respect for her abilities until one day it fell upon them with the startling bewilderment of lightning from a clear sky that Charlie was a poet. It happened in this wise: The fête of the foundress of the Seminary was to be celebrated and the young ladies were desired to write addresses in her honor, the worthiest of these addresses to be selected and delivered in the venerable lady’s presence upon the date in question.

  It was so much easier for Charlie to write twenty or fifty lines of verse than pages and pages of prose.

  When the announcement of the award was made in a most flattering little speech to the assembled classes by the lady directress, the girls were stupefied, and Charlie herself almost as well pleased as if she had been able to play a minuet upon the piano or go through the figures of a dance without blundering.

  “Did you ever!” “Well, I knew there was something in her!”

  “I told you she wasn’t as stupid as she looks!”

  “Why didn’t she say so!” were a few of the comments passed upon Charlie’s suddenly unearthed talent.

  A group besieged her in
her room that afternoon.

  “Out with them!” cried the spokesman, armed with a box of chocolate creams, “every last of them. Where do you keep them? Hand over the key of that desk. You’re a barefaced impostor, if you want to know it.”

  They seated themselves on chairs, stools, the lounge, the floor and the bed — as many as could crowd in a row, and awaited with the pleased expectancy of girls ready to extract entertainment from any situation that presents itself.

  Charlie had no thought of reluctance. She brought forth the mass of manuscript and delivered it over to the chocolate bearer who had a sonorous voice and a reputation as an elocutionist.

  One by one the poems were read, with fictitious fire, with melting pathos as the occasion called for, while silently the chocolates were passed around and around.

  Charlie rocked violently and tried to look indifferent. Her hair was long enough to tie back now with a bow of ribbon. On her forehead she wore a few little curls made with the curling irons, and as she glanced in the mirror while she rocked she wondered if her face would ever get beautiful and silky white. Charlie took no part in the athletic sports such as tennis and basket ball, though urged to do so. She was given over to putting some kind of greasy stuff on her hands at night and slept in a pair of her father’s old gloves.

  “Well,” commented the reader, laying down the leaves.

  “Moonlight on the Mississippi.”

  “This is the finest thing I ever read. I wish you’d give me this, I’d like to send it to mother. And all I’ve got to say for you is that you are a large sized goose. The idea of keeping such poetry as that cooped up here! Why don’t you go to work and publish those things in the Magazines, I’d like to know. I tell you, they’d jump at the — well! I like this! Empty! where are all those chocolates gone? The next time I go halves in a box of chocolates you people’ll know it!”

  It need not be supposed that Charlie saw nothing of her home folks during her stay at the Seminary. They came in squads and detachments. Julia must have been spending much time with her Aunt Clementine, for the two not infrequently drove around in Aunt Clementine’s victoria upon which occasions Charlie was very proud of her sister’s beauty and air of distinctintion which the other girls did not fail to observe and rave over.