by Kate Chopin
“I shall mount my horse and go see what work has been done,” said Offdean, rising. An unusual pallor had overspread his face, and his mouth was drawn with suppressed pain. “I must turn my fool’s errand to some practical good,” he added, with a sad attempt at playfulness; and with no further word he walked quickly away.
She listened to his going. Then all the wretchedness of the past months, together with the sharp distress of the moment, voiced itself in a sob: “O God—O my God, he’p me!”
But she could not stay out there in the broad day for any chance comer to look upon her uncovered sorrow.
Placide heard her rise and go to her room. When he had heard the key turn in the lock, he got up, and with quiet deliberation prepared to go out. He drew on his boots, then his coat. He took his pistol from the dressing-bureau, where he had placed it a while before, and after examining its chambers carefully, thrust it into his pocket. He had certain work to do with the weapon before night. But for Euphrasie’s presence he might have accomplished it very surely a moment ago, when the hound—as he called him—stood outside his window. He did not wish her to know anything of his movements, and he left his room as quietly as possible, and mounted his horse, as Offdean had done.
“La Chatte,” called Placide to the old woman, who stood in her yard at the washtub, “w’ich way did that man go?”
“W’at man dat? I is n’ studyin’ ’bout no mans; I got ’nough to do wid dis heah washin’. ’Fo’ God, I don’ know w’at man you ’s talkin’ ’bout”—
“La Chatte, w’ich way did that man go? Quick, now!” with the deliberate tone and glance that had always quelled her.
“Ef you ’s talkin’ ’bout dat Noo Orleans man, I could ’a’ tole you dat. He done tuck de road to de cocoa-patch,” plunging her black arms into the tub with unnecessary energy and disturbance.
“That ’s enough. I know now he ’s gone into the woods. You always was a liar, La Chatte.”
“Dat his own lookout, de smoove-tongue’ raskil,” soliloquized the woman a moment later. “I done said he did n’ have no call to come heah, caperin’ roun’ Miss ’Phrasie.”
Placide was possessed by only one thought, which was a want as well,—to put an end to this man who had come between him and his love. It was the same brute passion that drives the beast to slay when he sees the object of his own desire laid hold of by another.
He had heard Euphrasie tell the man she did not love him, but what of that? Had he not heard her sobs, and guessed what her distress was? It needed no very flexible mind to guess as much, when a hundred signs besides, unheeded before, came surging to his memory. Jealousy held him, and rage and despair.
Offdean, as he rode along under the trees in apathetic despondency, heard some one approaching him on horseback, and turned aside to make room in the narrow pathway.
It was not a moment for punctilious scruples, and Placide had not been hindered by such from sending a bullet into the back of his rival. The only thing that stayed him was that Offdean must know why he had to die.
“Mr. Offdean,” Placide said, reining his horse with one hand, while he held his pistol openly in the other, “I was in my room ’w’ile ago, and yeared w’at you said to Euphrasie. I would ’a’ killed you then if she had n’ been ’longside o’ you. I could ’a’ killed you jus’ now w’en I come up behine you.”
“Well, why did n’t you?” asked Offdean, meanwhile gathering his faculties to think how he had best deal with this madman.
“Because I wanted you to know who done it, an’ w’at he done it for.”
“Mr. Santien, I suppose to a person in your frame of mind it will make no difference to know that I ’m unarmed. But if you make any attempt upon my life, I shall certainly defend myself as best I can.”
“Defen’ yo’se’f, then.”
“You must be mad,” said Offdean, quickly, and looking straight into Placide’s eyes, “to want to soil your happiness with murder. I thought a creole knew better than that how to love a woman.”
“By ——! are you goin’ to learn me how to love a woman?”
“No, Placide,” said Offdean eagerly, as they rode slowly along; “your own honor is going to tell you that. The way to love a woman is to think first of her happiness. If you love Euphrasie, you must go to her clean. I love her myself enough to want you to do that. I shall leave this place to-morrow; you will never see me again if I can help it. Is n’t that enough for you? I ’m going to turn here and leave you. Shoot me in the back if you like; but I know you won’t.” And Offdean held out his hand.
“I don’ want to shake han’s with you,” said Placide sulkily. “Go ’way f’om me.”
He stayed motionless watching Offdean ride away. He looked at the pistol in his hand, and replaced it slowly in his pocket; then he removed the broad felt hat which he wore, and wiped away the moisture that had gathered upon his forehead.
Offdean’s words had touched some chord within him and made it vibrant; but they made him hate the man no less.
“The way to love a woman is to think firs’ of her happiness,” he muttered reflectively. “He thought a creole knew how to love. Does he reckon he ’s goin’ to learn a creole how to love?”
His face was white and set with despair now. The rage had all left it as he rode deeper on into the wood.
IX
OFFDEAN ROSE EARLY, wishing to take the morning train to the city. But he was not before Euphrasie, whom he found in the large hall arranging the breakfast-table. Old Pierre was there too, walking slowly about with hands folded behind him, and with bowed head.
A restraint hung upon all of them, and the girl turned to her father and asked him if Placide were up, seemingly for want of something to say. The old man fell heavily into a chair, and gazed upon her in the deepest distress.
“Oh, my po’ li’le Euphrasie! my po’ li’le chile! Mr. Offde’n, you ain’t no stranger.”
“Bon Dieu! Papa!” cried the girl sharply, seized with a vague terror. She quitted her occupation at the table, and stood in nervous apprehension of what might follow.
“I yaired people say Placide was one no-’count creole. I nevair want to believe dat, me. Now I know dat ’s true. Mr. Offde’n, you ain’t no stranger, you.”
Offdean was gazing upon the old man in amazement.
“In de night,” Pierre continued, “I yaired some noise on de winder. I go open, an’ dere Placide, standin’ wid his big boot’ on, an’ his w’ip w’at he knocked wid on de winder, an’ his hoss all saddle’. Oh, my po’ li’le chile! He say, ‘Pierre, I yaired say Mr. Luke William’ want his house pent down in Orville. I reckon I go git de job befo’ somebody else teck it.’ I say, ‘You come straight back, Placide?’ He say, ‘Don’ look fer me.’ An’ w’en I ax ’im w’at I goin’ tell to my li’le chile, he say, ‘Tell Euphrasie Placide know better ’an anybody livin’ w’at goin’ make her happy.’ An’ he start ’way; den he come back an’ say, ‘Tell dat man’—I don’ know who he was talk’ ’bout—‘tell ’im he ain’t goin’ learn nuttin’ to a creole.’ Mon Dieu! Mon Dieu! I don’ know w’at all dat mean.”
He was holding the half-fainting Euphrasie in his arms, and stroking her hair.
“I always yaired say he was one no-’count creole. I nevair want to believe dat.”
“Don’t—don’t say that again, papa,” she whisperingly entreated, speaking in French. “Placide has saved me!”
“He has save’ you f’om w’at, Euphrasie?” asked her father, in dazed astonishment.
“From sin,” she replied to him under her breath.
“I don’ know w’at all dat mean,” the old man muttered, bewildered, as he arose and walked out on the gallery.
Offdean had taken coffee in his room, and would not wait for breakfast. When he went to bid Euphrasie good-by, she sat beside the table with her head bowed upon her arm.
He took her hand and said good-by to her, but she did not look up.
“Euphrasie,” he asked e
agerly, “I may come back? Say that I may—after a while.”
She gave him no answer, and he leaned down and pressed his cheek caressingly and entreatingly against her soft thick hair.
“May I, Euphrasie?” he begged. “So long as you do not tell me no, I shall come back, dearest one.”
She still made him no reply, but she did not tell him no.
So he kissed her hand and her cheek,—what he could touch of it, that peeped out from her folded arm,—and went away.
An hour later, when Offdean passed through Natchitoches, the old town was already ringing with the startling news that Placide had been dismissed by his fiancée, and the wedding was off, information which the young creole was taking the trouble to scatter broadcast as he went.
* * *
1 Pronounced Nack-e-tosh.
IN AND OUT OF OLD NATCHITOCHES
PRECISELY AT EIGHT O’CLOCK every morning except Saturdays and Sundays, Mademoiselle Suzanne St. Denys Godolph would cross the railroad trestle that spanned Bayou Boispourri. She might have crossed in the flat which Mr. Alphonse Laballière kept for his own convenience; but the method was slow and unreliable; so, every morning at eight, Mademoiselle St. Denys Godolph crossed the trestle.
She taught public school in a picturesque little white frame structure that stood upon Mr. Laballière’s land, and hung upon the very brink of the bayou.
Laballière himself was comparatively a new-comer in the parish. It was barely six months since he decided one day to leave the sugar and rice to his brother Alcée, who had a talent for their cultivation, and to try his hand at cotton-planting. That was why he was up in Natchitoches parish on a piece of rich, high, Cane River land, knocking into shape a tumbled-down plantation that he had bought for next to nothing.
He had often during his perambulations observed the trim, graceful figure stepping cautiously over the ties, and had sometimes shivered for its safety. He always exchanged a greeting with the girl, and once threw a plank over a muddy pool for her to step upon. He caught but glimpses of her features, for she wore an enormous sunbonnet to shield her complexion, that seemed marvelously fair; while loosely-fitting leather gloves protected her hands. He knew she was the school-teacher, and also that she was the daughter of that very pig-headed old Madame St. Denys Godolph who was hoarding her barren acres across the bayou as a miser hoards gold. Starving over them, some people said. But that was nonsense; nobody starves on a Louisiana plantation, unless it be with suicidal intent.
These things he knew, but he did not know why Mademoiselle St. Denys Godolph always answered his salutation with an air of chilling hauteur that would easily have paralyzed a less sanguine man.
The reason was that Suzanne, like every one else, had heard the stories that were going the rounds about him. People said he was entirely too much at home with the free mulattoes.1 It seems a dreadful thing to say, and it would be a shocking thing to think of a Laballière; but it was n’t true.
When Laballière took possession of his land, he found the plantation-house occupied by one Giestin and his swarming family. It was past reckoning how long the free mulatto and his people had been there. The house was a six-room, long, shambling affair, shrinking together from decrepitude. There was not an entire pane of glass in the structure; and the Turkey-red curtains flapped in and out of the broken apertures. But there is no need to dwell upon details; it was wholly unfit to serve as a civilized human habitation; and Alphonse Laballière would no sooner have disturbed its contented occupants than he would have scattered a family of partridges nesting in a corner of his field. He established himself with a few belongings in the best cabin he could find on the place, and, without further ado, proceeded to supervise the building of house, of gin, of this, that, and the other, and to look into the hundred details that go to set a neglected plantation in good working order. He took his meals at the free mulatto’s, quite apart from the family, of course; and they attended, not too skillfully, to his few domestic wants.
Some loafer whom he had snubbed remarked one day in town that Laballière had more use for a free mulatto than he had for a white man. It was a sort of catching thing to say, and suggestive, and was repeated with the inevitable embellishments.
One morning when Laballière sat eating his solitary breakfast, and being waited upon by the queenly Madame Giestin and a brace of her weazened boys, Giestin himself came into the room. He was about half the size of his wife, puny and timid. He stood beside the table, twirling his felt hat aimlessly and balancing himself insecurely on his high-pointed boot-heels.
“Mr. Laballière,” he said, “I reckon I tell you; it ’s betta you git shed o’ me en’ my fambly. Jis like you want, yas.”
“What in the name of common sense are you talking about?” asked Laballière, looking up abstractedly from his New Orleans paper. Giestin wriggled uncomfortably.
“It ’s heap o’ story goin’ roun’ ’bout you, if you want b’lieve me.” And he snickered and looked at his wife, who thrust the end of her shawl into her mouth and walked from the room with a tread like the Empress Eugenie’s, in that elegant woman’s palmiest days.
“Stories!” echoed Laballière, his face the picture of astonishment. “Who—where—what stories?”
“Yon’a in town en’ all about. It ’s heap o’ tale goin’ roun’, yas. They say how come you mighty fon’ o’ mulatta. You done shoshiate wid de mulatta down yon’a on de suga plantation, tell you can’t res’ lessen it ’s mulatta roun’ you.”
Laballière had a distressingly quick temper. His fist, which was a strong one, came down upon the wobbling table with a crash that sent half of Madame Giestin’s crockery bouncing and crashing to the floor. He swore an oath that sent Madame Giestin and her father and grandmother, who were all listening in the next room, into suppressed convulsions of mirth.
“Oh, ho! so I ’m not to associate with whom I please in Natchitoches parish. We ’ll see about that. Draw up your chair, Giestin. Call your wife and your grandmother and the rest of the tribe, and we ’ll breakfast together. By thunder! if I want to hobnob with mulattoes, or negroes or Choctaw Indians or South Sea savages, whose business is it but my own?”
“I don’ know, me. It ’s jis like I tell you, Mr. Laballière,” and Giestin selected a huge key from an assortment that hung against the wall, and left the room.
A half hour later, Laballière had not yet recovered his senses. He appeared suddenly at the door of the schoolhouse, holding by the shoulder one of Giestin’s boys. Mademoiselle St. Denys Godolph stood at the opposite extremity of the room. Her sun-bonnet hung upon the wall, now, so Laballière could have seen how charming she was, had he not at the moment been blinded by stupidity. Her blue eyes that were fringed with dark lashes reflected astonishment at seeing him there. Her hair was dark like her lashes, and waved softly about her smooth, white forehead.
“Mademoiselle,” began Laballière at once, “I have taken the liberty of bringing a new pupil to you.”
Mademoiselle St. Denys Godolph paled suddenly and her voice was unsteady when she replied:—
“You are too considerate, Monsieur. Will you be so kine to give me the name of the scholar whom you desire to int’oduce into this school?” She knew it as well as he.
“What ’s your name, youngster? Out with it!” cried Laballière, striving to shake the little free mulatto into speech; but he stayed as dumb as a mummy.
“His name is André Giestin. You know him. He is the son”—
“Then, Monsieur,” she interrupted, “permit me to remine you that you have made a se’ious mistake. This is not a school conducted fo’ the education of the colored population. You will have to go elsew’ere with yo’ protégé.”
“I shall leave my protégé right here, Mademoiselle, and I trust you ’ll give him the same kind attention you seem to accord to the others;” saying which Laballière bowed himself out of her presence. The little Giestin, left to his own devices, took only the time to give a quick, wary glance
round the room, and the next instant he bounded through the open door, as the nimblest of four-footed creatures might have done.
Mademoiselle St. Denys Godolph conducted school during the hours that remained, with a deliberate calmness that would have seemed ominous to her pupils, had they been better versed in the ways of young women. When the hour for dismissal came, she rapped upon the table to demand attention.
“Chil’ren,” she began, assuming a resigned and dignified mien, “you all have been witness to-day of the insult that has been offered to yo’ teacher by the person upon whose lan’ this schoolhouse stan’s. I have nothing further to say on that subjec’. I only shall add that to-morrow yo’ teacher shall sen’ the key of this schoolhouse, together with her resignation, to the gentlemen who compose the school-boa’d.” There followed visible disturbance among the young people.
“I ketch that li’le m’latta, I make ’im see sight’, yas,” screamed one.
“Nothing of the kine, Mathurin, you mus’ take no such step, if only out of consideration fo’ my wishes. The person who has offered the affront I consider beneath my notice. André, on the other han’, is a chile of good impulse, an’ by no means to blame. As you all perceive, he has shown mo’ taste and judgment than those above him, f’om whom we might have espected good breeding, at least.”
She kissed them all, the little boys and the little girls, and had a kind word for each. “Et toi, mon petit Numa, j’espère qu’un autre”—She could not finish the sentence, for little Numa, her favorite, to whom she had never been able to impart the first word of English, was blubbering at a turn of affairs which he had only miserably guessed at.
She locked the schoolhouse door and walked away towards the bridge. By the time she reached it, the little ’Cadians had already disappeared like rabbits, down the road and through and over the fences.
Mademoiselle St. Denys Godolph did not cross the trestle the following day, nor the next nor the next. Laballière watched for her; for his big heart was already sore and filled with shame. But more, it stung him with remorse to realize that he had been the stupid instrument in taking the bread, as it were, from the mouth of Mademoiselle St. Denys Godolph.
