one in which his feet had not walked for many days. It led him along the
river bank for a distance. The narrow stream, stirred by the restless
breeze, gleamed in the moonlight that was flooding the land.
As he went on and on, the scent of the new-plowed earth that had been
from the first keenly perceptible, began to intoxicate him. He wanted to
kneel and bury his face in it. He wanted to dig into it; turn it over.
He wanted to scatter the seed again as he had done long ago, and watch
the new, green life spring up as if at his bidding.
When he turned away from the river and had walked a piece down the lane
that divided Joe Duplan’s plantation from that bit of land that had once
been his, he wiped his eyes to drive away the mist that was making him
see things as they surely could not be.
He had wanted to plant a hedge that time before he went away, but he had
not done so. Yet there was the hedge before him, just as he had meant it
to be, and filling the night with fragrance. A broad, low gate divided
its length, and over this he leaned and looked before him in amazement.
There were no weeds as he had fancied; no trees except the scattered
live oaks that he remembered.
Could that row of hardy fig trees, old, squat and gnarled, be the twigs
that he himself had set one day into the ground? One raw December day
when there was a fine, cold mist falling. The chill of it breathed again
upon him; the memory was so real. The land did not look as if it ever
had been plowed for a field. It was a smooth, green meadow, with cattle
huddled upon the cool sward, or moving with slow, stately tread as they
nibbled the tender shoots.
There was the house unchanged, gleaming white in the moon, seeming to
invite him beneath its calm shelter. He wondered who dwelt within it
now. Whoever it was he would not have them find him, like a prowler,
there at the gate. But he would come again and again like this at
nighttime, to gaze and refresh his spirit.
A hand had been laid upon M’sieur Michel’s shoulder and some one called
his name. Startled, he turned to see who accosted him.
“Duplan!”
The two men who had not exchanged speech for so many years stood facing
each other for a long moment in silence.
“I knew you would come back some day, Michel. It was a long time to
wait, but you have come home at last.”
M’sieur Michel cowered instinctively and lifted his hands with
expressive deprecatory gesture. “No, no; it’s no place for me, Joe; no
place!”
“Isn’t a man’s home a place for him, Michel?” It seemed less a question
than an assertion, charged with gentle authority.
“Twenty-five years, Duplan; twenty-five years! It’s no use; it’s too
late.”
“You see, I have used it,” went on the planter, quietly, ignoring
M’sieur Michel’s protestations. “Those are my cattle grazing off there.
The house has served me many a time to lodge guests or workmen, for whom
I had no room at Les Chêniers. I have not exhausted the soil with any
crops. I had not the right to do that. Yet am I in your debt, Michel,
and ready to settle en bon ami.”
The planter had opened the gate and entered the inclosure, leading
M’sieur Michel with him. Together they walked toward the house.
Language did not come readily to either—one so unaccustomed to hold
intercourse with men; both so stirred with memories that would have
rendered any speech painful. When they had stayed long in a silence
which was eloquent of tenderness, Joe Duplan spoke:
“You know how I tried to see you, Michel, to speak with you, and you
never would.”
M’sieur Michel answered with but a gesture that seemed a supplication.
“Let the past all go, Michel. Begin your new life as if the twenty-five
years that are gone had been a long night, from which you have only
awakened. Come to me in the morning,” he added with quick resolution,
“for a horse and a plow.” He had taken the key of the house from his
pocket and placed it in M’sieur Michel’s hand.
“A horse?” M’sieur Michel repeated uncertainly; “a plow! Oh, it’s too
late, Duplan; too late.”
“It isn’t too late. The land has rested all these years, man; it’s
fresh, I tell you; and rich as gold. Your crop will be the finest in the
land.” He held out his hand and M’sieur Michel pressed it without a word
in reply, save a muttered “Mon ami.”
Then he stood there watching the planter disappear behind the high,
clipped hedge.
He held out his arms. He could not have told if it was toward the
retreating figure, or in welcome to an infinite peace that seemed to
descend upon him and envelop him.
All the land was radiant except the hill far off that was in black
shadow against the sky.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Polydore
Polydore
[Illustration]
It was often said that Polydore was the stupidest boy to be found “from
the mouth of Cane river plumb to Natchitoches.” Hence it was an easy
matter to persuade him, as meddlesome and mischievous people sometimes
tried to do, that he was an overworked and much abused individual.
It occurred one morning to Polydore to wonder what would happen if he
did not get up. He hardly expected the world to stop turning on its
axis; but he did in a way believe that the machinery of the whole
plantation would come to a standstill.
He had awakened at the usual hour,—about daybreak,—and instead of
getting up at once, as was his custom, he re-settled himself between the
sheets. There he lay, peering out through the dormer window into the
gray morning that was deliciously cool after the hot summer night,
listening to familiar sounds that came from the barn-yard, the fields
and woods beyond, heralding the approach of day.
A little later there were other sounds, no less familiar or significant;
the roll of the wagon-wheels; the distant call of a negro’s voice; Aunt
Siney’s shuffling step as she crossed the gallery, bearing to Mamzelle
Adélaïde and old Monsieur José their early coffee.
Polydore had formed no plan and had thought only vaguely upon results.
He lay in a half-slumber awaiting developments, and philosophically
resigned to any turn which the affair might take. Still he was not quite
ready with an answer when Jude came and thrust his head in at the door.
“Mista Polydore! O Mista Polydore! You ’sleep?”
“W’at you want?”
“Dan ’low he ain’ gwine wait yonda wid de wagon all day. Say does you
inspect ’im to pack dat freight f’om de landing by hisse’f?”
“I reckon he got it to do, Jude. I ain’ going to get up, me.”
“You ain’ gwine git up?”
“No; I’m sick. I’m going stay in bed. Go ’long and le’ me sleep.”
The next one to invade Polydore’s privacy was Mamzelle Adélaïde herself.
It was no small effort for her to mount the steep, narrow stairway to
Polydore’s room. She seldom penetrated to these regions under the roof.
He could hear the stairs creak beneath her weight, and knew that she was
panting at every step. Her presence seemed to crowd the small room; for
she was stout and rather tall, and her flowing muslin wrapper swept
majestically from side to side as she walked.
Mamzelle Adélaïde had reached middle age, but her face was still fresh
with its mignon features; and her brown eyes at the moment were round
with astonishment and alarm.
“W’at’s that I hear, Polydore? They tell me you’re sick!” She went and
stood beside the bed, lifting the mosquito bar that settled upon her
head and fell about her like a veil.
Polydore’s eyes blinked, and he made no attempt to answer. She felt his
wrist softly with the tips of her fingers, and rested her hand for a
moment on his low forehead beneath the shock of black hair.
“But you don’t seem to have any fever, Polydore!”
“No,” hesitatingly, feeling himself forced to make some reply. “It’s a
kine of—a kine of pain, like you might say. It kitch me yere in the
knee, and it goes ’long like you stickin’ a knife clean down in my heel.
Aie! Oh, la-la!” expressions of pain wrung from him by Mamzelle Adélaïde
gently pushing aside the covering to examine the afflicted member.
“My patience! but that leg is swollen, yes, Polydore.” The limb, in
fact, seemed dropsical, but if Mamzelle Adélaïde had bethought her of
comparing it with the other one, she would have found the two
corresponding in their proportions to a nicety. Her kind face expressed
the utmost concern, and she quitted Polydore feeling pained and ill at
ease.
For one of the aims of Mamzelle Adélaïde’s existence was to do the right
thing by this boy, whose mother, a ’Cadian hill woman, had begged her
with dying breath to watch over the temporal and spiritual welfare of
her son; above all, to see that he did not follow in the slothful
footsteps of an over-indolent father.
Polydore’s scheme worked so marvellously to his comfort and pleasure
that he wondered at not having thought of it before. He ate with keen
relish the breakfast which Jude brought to him on a tray. Even old
Monsieur José was concerned, and made his way up to Polydore, bringing a
number of picture-papers for his entertainment, a palm-leaf fan and a
cow-bell, with which to summon Jude when necessary and which he placed
within easy reach.
As Polydore lay on his back fanning luxuriously, it seemed to him that
he was enjoying a foretaste of paradise. Only once did he shudder with
apprehension. It was when he heard Aunt Siney, with lifted voice,
recommending to “wrop the laig up in bacon fat; de oniest way to draw
out de misery.”
The thought of a healthy leg swathed in bacon fat on a hot day in July
was enough to intimidate a braver heart than Polydore’s. But the
suggestion was evidently not adopted, for he heard no more of the bacon
fat. In its stead he became acquainted with the not unpleasant sting of
a soothing liniment which Jude rubbed into the leg at intervals during
the day.
He kept the limb propped on a pillow, stiff and motionless, even when
alone and unobserved. Toward evening he fancied that it really showed
signs of inflammation, and he was quite sure it pained him.
It was a satisfaction to all to see Polydore appear down-stairs the
following afternoon. He limped painfully, it is true, and clutched
wildly at anything in his way that offered a momentary support. His
acting was clumsily overdrawn; and by less guileless souls than Mamzelle
Adélaïde and her father would have surely been suspected. But these two
only thought with deep concern of means to make him comfortable.
They seated him on the shady back gallery in an easy-chair, with his leg
propped up before him.
“He inhe’its dat rheumatism,” proclaimed Aunt Siney, who affected the
manner of an oracle. “I see dat boy’s granpap, many times, all twis’ up
wid rheumatism twell his head sot down on his body, hine side befo’. He
got to keep outen de jew in de mo’nin’s, and he ’bleege to w’ar red
flannen.”
Monsieur José, with flowing white locks enframing his aged face, leaned
upon his cane and contemplated the boy with unflagging attention.
Polydore was beginning to believe himself a worthy object as a center of
interest.
Mamzelle Adélaïde had but just returned from a long drive in the open
buggy, from a mission which would have fallen to Polydore had he not
been disabled by this unlooked-for illness. She had thoughtlessly driven
across the country at an hour when the sun was hottest, and now she sat
panting and fanning herself; her face, which she mopped incessantly with
her handkerchief, was inflamed from the heat.
Mamzelle Adélaïde ate no supper that night, and went to bed early, with
a compress of _eau sédative_ bound tightly around her head. She thought
it was a simple headache, and that she would be rid of it in the
morning; but she was not better in the morning.
She kept her bed that day, and late in the afternoon Jude rode over to
town for the doctor, and stopped on the way to tell Mamzelle Adélaïde’s
married sister that she was quite ill, and would like to have her come
down to the plantation for a day or two.
Polydore made round, serious eyes and forgot to limp. He wanted to go
for the doctor in Jude’s stead; but Aunt Siney, assuming a brief
authority, forced him to sit still by the kitchen door and talked
further of bacon fat.
Old Monsieur José moved about uneasily and restlessly, in and out of his
daughter’s room. He looked vacantly at Polydore now, as if the stout
young boy in blue jeans and a calico shirt were a sort of a
transparency.
A dawning anxiety, coupled to the inertia of the past two days, deprived
Polydore of his usual healthful night’s rest. The slightest noises awoke
him. Once it was the married sister breaking ice down on the gallery.
One of the hands had been sent with the cart for ice late in the
afternoon; and Polydore himself had wrapped the huge chunk in an old
blanket and set it outside of Mamzelle Adélaïde’s door.
Troubled and wakeful, he arose from bed and went and stood by the open
window. There was a round moon in the sky, shedding its pale glamor over
all the country; and the live-oak branches, stirred by the restless
breeze, flung quivering, grotesque shadows slanting across the old roof.
A mocking-bird had been singing for hours near Polydore’s window, and
farther away there were frogs croaking. He could see as through a
silvery gauze the level stretch of the cotton-field, ripe and white; a
gleam of water beyond,—that was the bend of the river,—and farther yet,
the gentle rise of the pine hill.
There was a cabin up there on the hill that Polydore remembered well.
Negroes were living in it now, but it had been his home once. Life had
been pinched and wretched enough up there with the little chap. The
bright days had been the days when his godmother, Mamzelle Adélaïde,
would come driving her old white horse over the pine needles and
crackling fallen twigs of the deserted hill-road. Her presence was
connected with the earliest recollections of whatever he had known of
comfort and well-being.
And one day when death had taken his mother from him, Mamzelle Adélaïde
had brought him home to live with her always. Now she was sick down
there in her room; very sick, for the doctor had said so, and the
married sister had put on her longest face.
Polydore did not think of these things in any connected or very
intelligent way. They were only impressions that penetrated him and made
his heart swell, and the tears well up to his eyes. He wiped his eyes on
the sleeve of his night-gown. The mosquitoes were stinging him and
raising great welts on his brown legs. He went and crept back under the
mosquito-bar, and soon he was asleep and dreaming that his _nénaine_ was
dead and he left alone in the cabin upon the pine hill.
In the morning, after the doctor had seen Mamzelle Adélaïde, he went and
turned his horse into the lot and prepared to stay with his patient
until he could feel it would be prudent to leave her.
Polydore tiptoed into her room and stood at the foot of the bed. Nobody
noticed now whether he limped or not. She was talking very loud, and he
could not believe at first that she could be as ill as they said, with
such strength of voice. But her tones were unnatural, and what she said
conveyed no meaning to his ears.
He understood, however, when she thought she was talking to his mother.
She was in a manner apologizing for his illness; and seemed to be
troubled with the idea that she had in a way been the indirect cause of
it by some oversight or neglect.
Polydore felt ashamed, and went outside and stood by himself near the
cistern till some one told him to go and attend to the doctor’s horse.
Then there was confusion in the household, when mornings and afternoons
seemed turned around; and meals, which were scarcely tasted, were served
at irregular and unseasonable hours. And there came one awful night,
when they did not know if Mamzelle Adélaïde would live or die.
Nobody slept. The doctor snatched moments of rest in the hammock. He and
the priest, who had been summoned, talked a little together with
professional callousness about the dry weather and the crops.
Old monsieur walked, walked, like a restless, caged animal. The married
sister came out on the gallery every now and then and leaned up against
the post and sobbed in her handkerchief. There were many negroes around,
sitting on the steps and standing in small groups in the yard.
Polydore crouched on the gallery. It had finally come to him to
comprehend the cause of his _nénaine’s_ sickness—that drive in the
sweltering afternoon, when he was shamming illness. No one there could
have comprehended the horror of himself, the terror that possessed him,
squatting there outside her door like a savage. If she died—but he could
not think of that. It was the point at which his reason was stunned and
seemed to swoon.
A week or two later Mamzelle Adélaïde was sitting outside for the first
time since her convalescence began. They had brought her own rocker
around to the side where she could get a sight and whiff of the
flower-garden and the blossom-laden rose-vine twining in and out of the
banisters. Her former plumpness had not yet returned, and she looked
much older, for the wrinkles were visible.
She was watching Polydore cross the yard. He had been putting up his
pony. He approached with his heavy, clumsy walk; his round, simple face
was hot and flushed from the ride. When he had mounted to the gallery he
went and leaned against the railing, facing Mamzelle Adélaïde, mopping
his face, his hands and neck with his handkerchief. Then he removed his
hat and began to fan himself with it.
“You seem to be perfec’ly cu’ed of yo’ rheumatism, Polydore. It doesn’
hurt you any mo’, my boy?” she questioned.
He stamped the foot and extended the leg violently, in proof of its
perfect soundness.
“You know w’ere I been, _nénaine_?” he said. “I been to confession.”
“That’s right. Now you mus’ rememba and not take a drink of water
to-morrow morning, as you did las’ time, and miss yo’ communion, my boy.
You are a good child, Polydore, to go like that to confession without
bein told.”
“No, I ain’ good,” he returned, doggedly. He began to twirl his hat on
one finger. “Père Cassimelle say he always yeard I was stupid, but he
never knew befo’ how bad I been.”
“Indeed!” muttered Mamzelle Adélaïde, not over well pleased with the
priest’s estimate of her protégé.
“He gave me a long penance,” continued Polydore. “The ‘Litany of the
Saint’ and the ‘Litany of the Blessed Virgin,’ and three ‘Our Father’
and three ‘Hail Mary’ to say ev’ry mo’ning fo’ a week. But he say’ that
ain’ enough.”
“My patience! W’at does he expec’ mo’ from you, I like to know?”
Polydore was now creasing and scanning his hat attentively.
“He say’ w’at I need, it’s to be wo’ out with the raw-hide. He say’ he
knows M’sieur José is too ole and feeble to give it to me like I
deserve; and if you want, he say’ he’s willing to give me a good tas’e
of the raw-hide himse’f.”
Mamzelle Adélaïde found it impossible to disguise her indignation:
“Père Cassimelle sho’ly fo’gets himse’f, Polydore. Don’t repeat to me
any further his inconsid’ate remarks.”
“He’s right, _nénaine_. Père Cassimelle is right.”
Since the night he crouched outside her door, Polydore had lived with
the weight of his unconfessed fault oppressing every moment of
existence. He had tried to rid himself of it in going to Father
Cassimelle; but that had only helped by indicating the way. He was
awkward and unaccustomed to express emotions with coherent speech. The
words would not come.
Suddenly he flung his hat to the ground, and falling on his knees, began
to sob, with his face pressed down in Mamzelle Adélaïde’s lap. She had
never seen him cry before, and in her weak condition it made her
tremble.
Then somehow he got it out; he told the whole story of his deceit. He
told it simply, in a way that bared his heart to her for the first time.
She said nothing; only held his hand close and stroked his hair. But she
felt as if a kind of miracle had happened. Hitherto her first thought in
caring for this boy had been a desire to fulfill his dead mother’s
wishes.
But now he seemed to belong to herself, and to be her very own. She knew
that a bond of love had been forged that would hold them together
always.
“I know I can’t he’p being stupid,” sighed Polydore, “but it’s no call
fo’ me to be bad.”
“Neva mine, Polydore; neva mine, my boy,” and she drew him close to her
and kissed him as mothers kiss.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Regret
Regret
[Illustration]
Mamzelle Aurélie possessed a good strong figure, ruddy cheeks, hair that
was changing from brown to gray, and a determined eye. She wore a man’s
hat about the farm, and an old blue army overcoat when it was cold, and
sometimes top-boots.
Mamzelle Aurélie had never thought of marrying. She had never been in
love. At the age of twenty she had received a proposal, which she had
promptly declined, and at the age of fifty she had not yet lived to
regret it.
So she was quite alone in the world, except for her dog Ponto, and the
negroes who lived in her cabins and worked her crops, and the fowls, a
few cows, a couple of mules, her gun (with which she shot
chicken-hawks), and her religion.
One morning Mamzelle Aurélie stood upon her gallery, contemplating, with
arms akimbo, a small band of very small children who, to all intents and
purposes, might have fallen from the clouds, so unexpected and
bewildering was their coming, and so unwelcome. They were the children
of her nearest neighbor, Odile, who was not such a near neighbor, after
all.
The young woman had appeared but five minutes before, accompanied by
these four children. In her arms she carried little Elodie; she dragged
Ti Nomme by an unwilling hand; while Marcéline and Marcélette followed
with irresolute steps.
Her face was red and disfigured from tears and excitement. She had been
summoned to a neighboring parish by the dangerous illness of her mother;
her husband was away in Texas—it seemed to her a million miles away; and
Valsin was waiting with the mule-cart to drive her to the station.
“It’s no question, Mamzelle Aurélie; you jus’ got to keep those
youngsters fo’ me tell I come back. Dieu sait, I would n’ botha you with
’em if it was any otha way to do! Make ’em mine you, Mamzelle Aurélie;
don’ spare ’em. Me, there, I’m half crazy between the chil’ren, an’ Léon
not home, an’ maybe not even to fine po’ maman alive encore!”—a
harrowing possibility which drove Odile to take a final hasty and
convulsive leave of her disconsolate family.
She left them crowded into the narrow strip of shade on the porch of the
long, low house; the white sunlight was beating in on the white old
boards; some chickens were scratching in the grass at the foot of the
steps, and one had boldly mounted, and was stepping heavily, solemnly,
and aimlessly across the gallery. There was a pleasant odor of pinks in
the air, and the sound of negroes’ laughter was coming across the
flowering cotton-field.
Mamzelle Aurélie stood contemplating the children. She looked with a
critical eye upon Marcéline, who had been left staggering beneath the
weight of the chubby Elodie. She surveyed with the same calculating air
Marcélette mingling her silent tears with the audible grief and
rebellion of Ti Nomme. During those few contemplative moments she was
collecting herself, determining upon a line of action which should be
identical with a line of duty. She began by feeding them.
If Mamzelle Aurélie’s responsibilities might have begun and ended there,
they could easily have been dismissed; for her larder was amply provided
against an emergency of this nature. But little children are not little
pigs; they require and demand attentions which were wholly unexpected by
Mamzelle Aurélie, and which she was ill prepared to give.
She was, indeed, very inapt in her management of Odile’s children during
the first few days. How could she know that Marcélette always wept when
spoken to in a loud and commanding tone of voice? It was a peculiarity
of Marcélette’s. She became acquainted with Ti Nomme’s passion for
flowers only when he had plucked all the choicest gardenias and pinks
for the apparent purpose of critically studying their botanical
construction.
“Tain’t enough to tell ’im, Mamzelle Aurélie,” Marcéline instructed her;
“you got to tie ’im in a chair. It’s w’at maman all time do w’en he’s
bad: she tie ’im in a chair.” The chair in which Mamzelle Aurélie tied
Ti Nomme was roomy and comfortable, and he seized the opportunity to
take a nap in it, the afternoon being warm.