and choice of time and place in saying it were not of the best.
Athénaïse, upon the first day of her arrival, had announced that she
came to stay, having no intention of returning under Cazeau’s roof. The
announcement had scattered consternation, as she knew it would. She had
been implored, scolded, entreated, stormed at, until she felt herself
like a dragging sail that all the winds of heaven had beaten upon. Why
in the name of God had she married Cazeau? Her father had lashed her
with the question a dozen times. Why indeed? It was difficult now for
her to understand why, unless because she supposed it was customary for
girls to marry when the right opportunity came. Cazeau, she knew, would
make life more comfortable for her; and again, she had liked him, and
had even been rather flustered when he pressed her hands and kissed
them, and kissed her lips and cheeks and eyes, when she accepted him.
Montéclin himself had taken her aside to talk the thing over. The turn
of affairs was delighting him.
“Come, now, ’Thénaïse, you mus’ explain to me all about it, so we can
settle on a good cause, an’ secu’ a separation fo’ you. Has he been
mistreating an’ abusing you, the sacré cochon?” They were alone together
in her room, whither she had taken refuge from the angry domestic
elements.
“You please to reserve yo’ disgusting expressions, Montéclin. No, he has
not abused me in any way that I can think.”
“Does he drink? Come ’Thénaïse, think well over it. Does he ever get
drunk?”
“Drunk! Oh, mercy, no,—Cazeau never gets drunk.”
“I see; it’s jus’ simply you feel like me; you hate him.”
“No, I don’t hate him,” she returned reflectively; adding with a sudden
impulse, “It’s jus’ being married that I detes’ an’ despise. I hate
being Mrs. Cazeau, an’ would want to be Athénaïse Miché again. I can’t
stan’ to live with a man; to have him always there; his coats an’
pantaloons hanging in my room; his ugly bare feet—washing them in my
tub, befo’ my very eyes, ugh!” She shuddered with recollections, and
resumed, with a sigh that was almost a sob: “Mon Dieu, mon Dieu! Sister
Marie Angélique knew w’at she was saying; she knew me better than myse’f
w’en she said God had sent me a vocation an’ I was turning deaf ears.
W’en I think of a blessed life in the convent, at peace! Oh, w’at was I
dreaming of!” and then the tears came.
Montéclin felt disconcerted and greatly disappointed at having obtained
evidence that would carry no weight with a court of justice. The day had
not come when a young woman might ask the court’s permission to return
to her mamma on the sweeping ground of a constitutional disinclination
for marriage. But if there was no way of untying this Gordian knot of
marriage, there was surely a way of cutting it.
“Well, ’Thénaïse, I’m mighty durn sorry yo got no better groun’s ’an
w’at you say. But you can count on me to stan’ by you w’atever you do.
God knows I don’ blame you fo’ not wantin’ to live with Cazeau.”
And now there was Cazeau himself, with the red spots flaming in his
swarthy cheeks, looking and feeling as if he wanted to thrash Montéclin
into some semblance of decency. He arose abruptly, and approaching the
room which he had seen his wife enter, thrust open the door after a
hasty preliminary knock. Athénaïse, who was standing erect at a far
window, turned at his entrance.
She appeared neither angry nor frightened, but thoroughly unhappy, with
an appeal in her soft dark eyes and a tremor on her lips that seemed to
him expressions of unjust reproach, that wounded and maddened him at
once. But whatever he might feel, Cazeau knew only one way to act toward
a woman.
“Athénaïse, you are not ready?” he asked in his quiet tones. “It’s
getting late; we havn’ any time to lose.”
She knew that Montéclin had spoken out, and she had hoped for a wordy
interview, a stormy scene, in which she might have held her own as she
had held it for the past three days against her family, with Montéclin’s
aid. But she had no weapon with which to combat subtlety. Her husband’s
looks, his tones, his mere presence, brought to her a sudden sense of
hopelessness, an instinctive realization of the futility of rebellion
against a social and sacred institution.
Cazeau said nothing further, but stood waiting in the doorway. Madame
Miché had walked to the far end of the gallery, and pretended to be
occupied with having a chicken driven from her parterre. Montéclin stood
by, exasperated, fuming, ready to burst out.
Athénaïse went and reached for her riding skirt that hung against the
wall. She was rather tall, with a figure which, though not robust,
seemed perfect in its fine proportions. “La fille de son père,” she was
often called, which was a great compliment to Miché. Her brown hair was
brushed all fluffily back from her temples and low forehead, and about
her features and expression lurked a softness, a prettiness, a dewiness,
that were perhaps too childlike, that savored of immaturity.
She slipped the riding-skirt, which was of black alpaca, over her head,
and with impatient fingers hooked it at the waist over her pink
linen-lawn. Then she fastened on her white sunbonnet and reached for her
gloves on the mantelpiece.
“If you don’ wan’ to go, you know w’at you got to do, ’Thénaïse,” fumed
Montéclin. “You don’ set yo’ feet back on Cane River, by God, unless you
want to,—not w’ile I’m alive.”
Cazeau looked at him as if he were a monkey whose antics fell short of
being amusing.
Athénaïse still made no reply, said not a word. She walked rapidly past
her husband, past her brother; bidding good-bye to no one, not even to
her mother. She descended the stairs, and without assistance from any
one mounted the pony, which Cazeau had ordered to be saddled upon his
arrival. In this way she obtained a fair start of her husband, whose
departure was far more leisurely, and for the greater part of the way
she managed to keep an appreciable gap between them. She rode almost
madly at first, with the wind inflating her skirt balloon-like about her
knees, and her sunbonnet falling back between her shoulders.
At no time did Cazeau make an effort to overtake her until traversing an
old fallow meadow that was level and hard as a table. The sight of a
great solitary oak-tree, with its seemingly immutable outlines, that had
been a landmark for ages—or was it the odor of elderberry stealing up
from the gully to the south? or what was it that brought vividly back to
Cazeau, by some association of ideas, a scene of many years ago? He had
passed that old live-oak hundreds of times, but it was only now that the
memory of one day came back to him. He was a very small boy that day,
seated before his father on horseback. They were proceeding slowly, and
Black Gabe was moving on before them at a little dog-trot. Black Gabe
had run away, and had been discovered back in the Gotrain swamp. They
had halted beneath this big oak to enable the negro to take breath; for
Cazeau’s father was a kind and considerate master, and every one had
agreed at the time that Black Gabe was a fool, a great idiot indeed, for
wanting to run away from him.
The whole impression was for some reason hideous, and to dispel it
Cazeau spurred his horse to a swift gallop. Overtaking his wife, he rode
the remainder of the way at her side in silence.
It was late when they reached home. Félicité was standing on the grassy
edge of the road, in the moonlight, waiting for them.
Cazeau once more ate his supper alone; for Athénaïse went to her room,
and there she was crying again.
III.
Athénaïse was not one to accept the inevitable with patient resignation,
a talent born in the souls of many women; neither was she the one to
accept it with philosophical resignation, like her husband. Her
sensibilities were alive and keen and responsive. She met the
pleasurable things of life with frank, open appreciation, and against
distasteful conditions she rebelled. Dissimulation was as foreign to her
nature as guile to the breast of a babe, and her rebellious outbreaks,
by no means rare, had hitherto been quite open and aboveboard. People
often said that Athénaïse would know her own mind some day, which was
equivalent to saying that she was at present unacquainted with it. If
she ever came to such knowledge, it would be by no intellectual
research, by no subtle analyses or tracing the motives of actions to
their source. It would come to her as the song to the bird, the perfume
and color to the flower.
Her parents had hoped—not without reason and justice—that marriage would
bring the poise, the desirable pose, so glaringly lacking in Athénaïse’s
character. Marriage they knew to be a wonderful and powerful agent in
the development and formation of a woman’s character; they had seen its
effect too often to doubt it.
“And if this marriage does nothing else,” exclaimed Miché in an outburst
of sudden exasperation, “it will rid us of Athénaïse; for I am at the
end of my patience with her! You have never had the firmness to manage
her,”—he was speaking to his wife,—“I have not had the time, the
leisure, to devote to her training; and what good we might have
accomplished, that maudit Montéclin—Well, Cazeau is the one! It takes
just such a steady hand to guide a disposition like Athénaïse’s, a
master hand, a strong will that compels obedience.”
And now, when they had hoped for so much, here was Athénaïse, with
gathered and fierce vehemence, beside which her former outbursts
appeared mild, declaring that she would not, and she would not, and she
would not continue to enact the rôle of wife to Cazeau. If she had had a
reason! as Madame Miché lamented; but it could not be discovered that
she had any sane one. He had never scolded, or called names, or deprived
her of comforts, or been guilty of any of the many reprehensible acts
commonly attributed to objectionable husbands. He did not slight nor
neglect her. Indeed, Cazeau’s chief offense seemed to be that he loved
her, and Athénaïse was not the woman to be loved against her will. She
called marriage a trap set for the feet of unwary and unsuspecting
girls, and in round, unmeasured terms reproached her mother with
treachery and deceit.
“I told you Cazeau was the man,” chuckled Miché, when his wife had
related the scene that had accompanied and influenced Athénaïse’s
departure.
Athénaïse again hoped, in the morning, that Cazeau would scold or make
some sort of a scene, but he apparently did not dream of it. It was
exasperating that he should take her acquiescence so for granted. It is
true he had been up and over the fields and across the river and back
long before she was out of bed, and he may have been thinking of
something else, which was no excuse, which was even in some sense an
aggravation. But he did say to her at breakfast, “That brother of yo’s,
that Montéclin, is unbearable.”
“Montéclin? Par exemple!”
Athénaïse, seated opposite to her husband, was attired in a white
morning wrapper. She wore a somewhat abused, long face, it is true,—an
expression of countenance familiar to some husbands,—but the expression
was not sufficiently pronounced to mar the charm of her youthful
freshness. She had little heart to eat, only playing with the food
before her, and she felt a pang of resentment at her husband’s healthy
appetite.
“Yes, Montéclin,” he reasserted. “He’s developed into a firs’-class
nuisance; an’ you better tell him, Athénaïse,—unless you want me to tell
him,—to confine his energies after this to matters that concern him. I
have no use fo’ him or fo’ his interference in w’at regards you an’ me
alone.”
This was said with unusual asperity. It was the little breach that
Athénaïse had been watching for, and she charged rapidly: “It’s strange,
if you detes’ Montéclin so heartily, that you would desire to marry his
sister.” She knew it was a silly thing to say, and was not surprised
when he told her so. It gave her a little foothold for further attack,
however. “I don’t see, anyhow, w’at reason you had to marry me, w’en
there were so many others,” she complained, as if accusing him of
persecution and injury. “There was Marianne running after you fo’ the
las’ five years till it was disgraceful; an’ any one of the Dortrand
girls would have been glad to marry you. But no, nothing would do; you
mus’ come out on the rigolet fo’ me.” Her complaint was pathetic, and at
the same time so amusing that Cazeau was forced to smile.
“I can’t see w’at the Dortrand girls or Marianne have to do with it,” he
rejoined; adding, with no trace of amusement, “I married you because I
loved you; because you were the woman I wanted to marry, an’ the only
one. I reckon I tole you that befo’. I thought—of co’se I was a fool fo’
taking things fo’ granted—but I did think that I might make you happy in
making things easier an’ mo’ comfortable fo’ you. I expected—I was even
that big a fool—I believed that yo’ coming yere to me would be like the
sun shining out of the clouds, an’ that our days would be like w’at the
story-books promise after the wedding. I was mistaken. But I can’t
imagine w’at induced you to marry me. W’atever it was, I reckon you
foun’ out you made a mistake, too. I don’ see anything to do but make
the best of a bad bargain, an’ shake han’s over it.” He had arisen from
the table, and, approaching, held out his hand to her. What he had said
was commonplace enough, but it was significant, coming from Cazeau, who
was not often so unreserved in expressing himself.
Athénaïse ignored the hand held out to her. She was resting her chin in
her palm, and kept her eyes fixed moodily upon the table. He rested his
hand, that she would not touch, upon her head for an instant, and walked
away out of the room.
She heard him giving orders to workmen who had been waiting for him out
on the gallery, and she heard him mount his horse and ride away. A
hundred things would distract him and engage his attention during the
day. She felt that he had perhaps put her and her grievance from his
thoughts when he crossed the threshold; whilst she—
Old Félicité was standing there holding a shining tin pail, asking for
flour and lard and eggs from the storeroom, and meal for the chicks.
Athénaïse seized the bunch of keys which hung from her belt and flung
them at Félicité’s feet.
“Tiens! tu vas les garder comme tu as jadis fait. Je ne veux plus de ce
train là, moi!”
The old woman stooped and picked up the keys from the floor. It was
really all one to her that her mistress returned them to her keeping,
and refused to take further account of the ménage.
IV.
It seemed now to Athénaïse that Montéclin was the only friend left to
her in the world. Her father and mother had turned from her in what
appeared to be her hour of need. Her friends laughed at her, and refused
to take seriously the hints which she threw out,—feeling her way to
discover if marriage were as distasteful to other women as to herself.
Montéclin alone understood her. He alone had always been ready to act
for her and with her, to comfort and solace her with his sympathy and
his support. Her only hope for rescue from her hateful surroundings lay
in Montéclin. Of herself she felt powerless to plan, to act, even to
conceive a way out of this pitfall into which the whole world seemed to
have conspired to thrust her.
She had a great desire to see her brother, and wrote asking him to come
to her. But it better suited Montéclin’s spirit of adventure to appoint
a meeting-place at the turn of the lane, where Athénaïse might appear to
be walking leisurely for health and recreation, and where he might seem
to be riding along, bent on some errand of business or pleasure.
There had been a shower, a sudden downpour, short as it was sudden, that
had laid the dust in the road. It had freshened the pointed leaves of
the live-oaks, and brightened up the big fields of cotton on either side
of the lane till they seemed carpeted with green, glittering gems.
Athénaïse walked along the grassy edge of the road, lifting her crisp
skirts with one hand, and with the other twirling a gay sunshade over
her bare head. The scent of the fields after the rain was delicious. She
inhaled long breaths of their freshness and perfume, that soothed and
quieted her for the moment. There were birds splashing and spluttering
in the pools, pluming themselves on the fence-*rails, and sending out
little sharp cries, twitters, and shrill rhapsodies of delight.
She saw Montéclin approaching from a great distance,—almost as far away
as the turn of the woods. But she could not feel sure it was he; it
appeared too tall for Montéclin, but that was because he was riding a
large horse. She waved her parasol to him; she was so glad to see him.
She had never been so glad to see Montéclin before; not even the day
when he had taken her out of the convent, against her parents’ wishes,
because she had expressed a desire to remain there no longer. He seemed
to her, as he drew near, the embodiment of kindness, of bravery, of
chivalry, even of wisdom; for she had never known Montéclin at a loss to
extricate himself from a disagreeable situation.
He dismounted, and, leading his horse by the bridle, started to walk
beside her, after he had kissed her affectionately and asked her what
she was crying about. She protested that she was not crying, for she was
laughing, though drying her eyes at the same time on her handkerchief,
rolled in a soft mop for the purpose.
She took Montéclin’s arm, and they strolled slowly down the lane; they
could not seat themselves for a comfortable chat, as they would have
liked, with the grass all sparkling and bristling wet.
Yes, she was quite as wretched as ever, she told him. The week which had
gone by since she saw him had in no wise lightened the burden of her
discontent. There had even been some additional provocations laid upon
her, and she told Montéclin all about them,—about the keys, for
instance, which in a fit of temper she had returned to Félicité’s
keeping; and she told how Cazeau had brought them back to her as if they
were something she had accidentally lost, and he had recovered; and how
he had said, in that aggravating tone of his, that it was not the custom
on Cane river for the negro servants to carry the keys, when there was a
mistress at the head of the household.
But Athénaïse could not tell Montéclin anything to increase the
disrespect which he already entertained for his brother-in-law; and it
was then he unfolded to her a plan which he had conceived and worked out
for her deliverance from this galling matrimonial yoke.
It was not a plan which met with instant favor, which she was at once
ready to accept, for it involved secrecy and dissimulation, hateful
alternatives, both of them. But she was filled with admiration for
Montéclin’s resources and wonderful talent for contrivance. She accepted
the plan; not with the immediate determination to act upon it, rather
with the intention to sleep and to dream upon it.
Three days later she wrote to Montéclin that she had abandoned herself
to his counsel. Displeasing as it might be to her sense of honesty, it
would yet be less trying than to live on with a soul full of bitterness
and revolt, as she had done for the past two months.
V.
When Cazeau awoke, one morning at his usual very early hour, it was to
find the place at his side vacant. This did not surprise him until he
discovered that Athénaïse was not in the adjoining room, where he had
often found her sleeping in the morning on the lounge. She had perhaps
gone out for an early stroll, he reflected, for her jacket and hat were
not on the rack where she had hung them the night before. But there were
other things absent,—a gown or two from the armoire; and there was a
great gap in the piles of lingerie on the shelf; and her traveling-bag
was missing, and so were her bits of jewelry from the toilet tray—and
Athénaïse was gone!
But the absurdity of going during the night, as if she had been a
prisoner, and he the keeper of a dungeon! So much secrecy and mystery,
to go sojourning out on the Bon Dieu? Well, the Michés might keep their
daughter after this. For the companionship of no woman on earth would he
again undergo the humiliating sensation of baseness that had overtaken
him in passing the old oak-tree in the fallow meadow.
But a terrible sense of loss overwhelmed Cazeau. It was not new or
sudden; he had felt it for weeks growing upon him, and it seemed to
culminate with Athénaïse’s flight from home. He knew that he could again
compel her return as he had done once before,—compel her to return to
the shelter of his roof, compel her cold and unwilling submission to his
love and passionate transports; but the loss of self-respect seemed to
him too dear a price to pay for a wife.
He could not comprehend why she had seemed to prefer him above others;
why she had attracted him with eyes, with voice, with a hundred womanly
ways, and finally distracted him with love which she seemed, in her
timid, maidenly fashion, to return. The great sense of loss came from
the realization of having missed a chance for happiness,—a chance that
would come his way again only through a miracle. He could not think of
himself loving any other woman, and could not think of Athénaïse
ever—even at some remote date—caring for him.
He wrote her a letter, in which he disclaimed any further intention of
forcing his commands upon her. He did not desire her presence ever again
in his home unless she came of her free will, uninfluenced by family or
friends; unless she could be the companion he had hoped for in marrying
her, and in some measure return affection and respect for the love which
he continued and would always continue to feel for her. This letter he
sent out to the rigolet by a messenger early in the day. But she was not
out on the rigolet, and had not been there.
The family turned instinctively to Montéclin, and almost literally fell
upon him for an explanation; he had been absent from home all night.
There was much mystification in his answers, and a plain desire to
mislead in his assurances of ignorance and innocence.
But with Cazeau there was no doubt or speculation when he accosted the
young fellow. “Montéclin, w’at have you done with Athénaïse?” he
questioned bluntly. They had met in the open road on horseback, just as
Cazeau ascended the river bank before his house.
“W’at have you done to Athénaïse?” returned Montéclin for answer.
“I don’t reckon you’ve considered yo’ conduct by any light of decency
an’ propriety in encouraging yo’ sister to such an action, but let me
tell you”—
“Voyons! you can let me alone with yo’ decency an’ morality an’
fiddlesticks. I know you mus’ ’a’ done Athénaïse pretty mean that she
can’t live with you; an’ fo’ my part, I’m mighty durn glad she had the
spirit to quit you.”
“I ain’t in the humor to take any notice of yo’ impertinence, Montéclin;
but let me remine you that Athénaïse is nothing but a chile in
character; besides that, she’s my wife, an’ I hole you responsible fo’
her safety an’ welfare. If any harm of any description happens to her,
I’ll strangle you, by God, like a rat, and fling you in Cane river, if I
have to hang fo’ it!” He had not lifted his voice. The only sign of
anger was a savage gleam in his eyes.
“I reckon you better keep yo’ big talk fo’ the women, Cazeau,” replied
Montéclin, riding away.
But he went doubly armed after that, and intimated that the precaution
was not needless, in view of the threats and menaces that were abroad
touching his personal safety.
VI.
Athénaïse reached her destination sound of skin and limb, but a good
deal flustered, a little frightened, and altogether excited and
interested by her unusual experiences.
Her destination was the house of Sylvie, on Dauphine Street, in New
Orleans,—a three-story gray brick, standing directly on the banquette,
with three broad stone steps leading to the deep front entrance. From
the second-story balcony swung a small sign, conveying to passers-by the
intelligence that within were “_chambres garnies_.”
It was one morning in the last week of April that Athénaïse presented
herself at the Dauphine Street house. Sylvie was expecting her, and
introduced her at once to her apartment, which was in the second story
of the back ell, and accessible by an open, outside gallery. There was a
yard below, paved with broad stone flagging; many fragrant flowering
shrubs and plants grew in a bed along the side of the opposite wall, and
others were distributed about in tubs and green boxes.
It was a plain but large enough room into which Athénaïse was ushered,
with matting on the floor, green shades and Nottingham-lace curtains at
the windows that looked out on the gallery, and furnished with a cheap
walnut suit. But everything looked exquisitely clean, and the whole
place smelled of cleanliness.