the absence of the Dresden china figure from the corner of the
mantel-piece, where it had stood for years. Aside from the intrinsic
value of the piece, there were some very sad and tender memories
associated with it. A baby’s lips that were now forever still had loved
once to kiss the painted “pitty ’ady”; and the baby arms had often held
it in a close and smothered embrace.
Madame Valtour gave a rapid, startled glance around the room, to see
perchance if it had been misplaced; but she failed to discover it.
Viny, the house-maid, when summoned, remembered having carefully dusted
it that morning, and was rather indignantly positive that she had not
broken the thing to bits and secreted the pieces.
“Who has been in the room during my absence?” questioned Madame Valtour,
with asperity. Viny abandoned herself to a moment’s reflection.
“Pa-Jeff comed in yere wid de mail—” If she had said St. Peter came in
with the mail, the fact would have had as little bearing on the case
from Madame Valtour’s point of view.
Pa-Jeff’s uprightness and honesty were so long and firmly established as
to have become proverbial on the plantation. He had not served the
family faithfully since boyhood and been all through the war with “old
Marse Valtour” to descend at his time of life to tampering with
household bric-a-brac.
“Has any one else been here?” Madame Valtour naturally inquired.
“On’y Agapie w’at brung you some Creole aiggs. I tole ’er to sot ’em
down in de hall. I don’ know she comed in de settin’-room o’ not.”
Yes, there they were; eight, fresh “Creole eggs” reposing on the muslin
in the sewing basket. Viny herself had been seated on the gallery
brushing her mistress’ gowns during the hours of that lady’s absence,
and could think of no one else having penetrated to the sitting-room.
Madame Valtour did not entertain the thought that Agapie had stolen the
relic. Her worst fear was, that the girl, finding herself alone in the
room, had handled the frail bit of porcelain and inadvertently broken
it.
Agapie came often to the house to play with the children and amuse
them—she loved nothing better. Indeed, no other spot known to her on
earth so closely embodied her confused idea of paradise, as this home
with its atmosphere of love, comfort and good cheer. She was, herself, a
cheery bit of humanity, overflowing with kind impulses and animal
spirits.
Madame Valtour recalled the fact that Agapie had often admired this
Dresden figure (but what had she not admired!); and she remembered
having heard the girl’s assurance that if ever she became possessed of
“fo’ bits” to spend as she liked, she would have some one buy her just
such a china doll in town or in the city.
Before night, the fact that the Dresden lady had strayed from her proud
eminence on the sitting-room mantel, became, through Viny’s indiscreet
babbling, pretty well known on the place.
The following morning Madame Valtour crossed the field and went over to
the Bedauts’ cabin. The cabins on the plantation were not grouped; but
each stood isolated upon the section of land which its occupants
cultivated. Pa-Jeff’s cabin was the only one near enough to the Bedauts
to admit of neighborly intercourse.
Seraphine Bedaut was sitting on her small gallery, stringing red
peppers, when Madame Valtour approached.
“I’m so distressed, Madame Bedaut,” began the planter’s wife, abruptly.
But the ’Cadian woman arose politely and interrupted, offering her
visitor a chair.
“Come in, set down, Ma’me Valtour.”
“No, no; it’s only for a moment. You know, Madame Bedaut, yesterday when
I returned from making a visit, I found that an ornament was missing
from my sitting-room mantel-piece. It’s a thing I prize very, very
much—” with sudden tears filling her eyes—“and I would not willingly
part with it for many times its value.” Seraphine Bedaut was listening,
with her mouth partly open, looking, in truth, stupidly puzzled.
“No one entered the room during my absence,” continued Madame Valtour,
“but Agapie.” Seraphine’s mouth snapped like a steel trap and her black
eyes gleamed with a flash of anger.
“You wan’ say Agapie stole some’in’ in yo’ house!” she cried out in a
shrill voice, tremulous from passion.
“No; oh no! I’m sure Agapie is an honest girl and we all love her; but
you know how children are. It was a small Dresden figure. She may have
handled and broken the thing and perhaps is afraid to say so. She may
have thoughtlessly misplaced it; oh, I don’t know what! I want to ask if
she saw it.”
“Come in; you got to come in, Ma’me Valtour,” stubbornly insisted
Seraphine, leading the way into the cabin. “I sen’ ’er to de house
yistiddy wid some Creole aiggs,” she went on in her rasping voice, “like
I all time do, because you all say you can’t eat dem sto’ aiggs no mo’.
Yere de basket w’at I sen’ ’em in,” reaching for an Indian basket which
hung against the wall—and which was partly filled with cotton seed.
“Oh, never mind,” interrupted Madame Valtour, now thoroughly distressed
at witnessing the woman’s agitation.
“Ah, bien non. I got to show you, Agapie en’t no mo’ thief ’an yo’ own
child’en is.” She led the way into the adjoining room of the hut.
“Yere all her things w’at she ’muse herse’f wid,” continued Seraphine,
pointing to a soapbox which stood on the floor just beneath the open
window. The box was filled with an indescribable assortment of odds and
ends, mostly doll-rags. A catechism and a blue-*backed speller poked
dog-eared corners from out of the confusion; for the Valtour children
were making heroic and patient efforts toward Agapie’s training.
Seraphine cast herself upon her knees before the box and dived her thin
brown hands among its contents. “I wan’ show you; I goin’ show you,” she
kept repeating excitedly. Madame Valtour was standing beside her.
Suddenly the woman drew forth from among the rags, the Dresden lady, as
dapper, sound, and smiling as ever. Seraphine’s hand shook so violently
that she was in danger of letting the image fall to the floor. Madame
Valtour reached out and took it very quietly from her. Then Seraphine
rose tremblingly to her feet and broke into a sob that was pitiful to
hear.
Agapie was approaching the cabin. She was a chubby girl of twelve. She
walked with bare, callous feet over the rough ground and bare-headed
under the hot sun. Her thick, short, black hair covered her head like a
mane. She had been dancing along the path, but slackened her pace upon
catching sight of the two women who had returned to the gallery. But
when she perceived that her mother was crying she darted impetuously
forward. In an instant she had her arms around her mother’s neck,
clinging so tenaciously in her youthful strength as to make the frail
woman totter.
Agapie had seen the Dresden figure in Madame Valtour’s possession and at
once guessed the whole accusation.
“It en’t so! I tell you, maman, it en’t so! I neva touch’ it. Stop
cryin’; stop cryin’!” and she began to cry most piteously herself.
“But Agapie, we fine it in yo’ box,” moaned Seraphine through her sobs.
“Then somebody put it there. Can’t you see somebody put it there? ’Ten’t
so, I tell you.”
The scene was extremely painful to Madame Valtour. Whatever she might
tell these two later, for the time she felt herself powerless to say
anything befitting, and she walked away. But she turned to remark, with
a hardness of expression and intention which she seldom displayed: “No
one will know of this through me. But, Agapie, you must not come into my
house again; on account of the children; I could not allow it.”
As she walked away she could hear Agapie comforting her mother with
renewed protestations of innocence.
Pa-Jeff began to fail visibly that year. No wonder, considering his
great age, which he computed to be about one hundred. It was, in fact,
some ten years less than that, but a good old age all the same. It was
seldom that he got out into the field; and then, never to do any heavy
work—only a little light hoeing. There were days when the “misery”
doubled him up and nailed him down to his chair so that he could not set
foot beyond the door of his cabin. He would sit there courting the
sunshine and blinking, as he gazed across the fields with the patience
of the savage.
The Bedauts seemed to know almost instinctively when Pa-Jeff was sick.
Agapie would shade her eyes and look searchingly towards the old man’s
cabin.
“I don’ see Pa-Jeff this mo’nin’,” or “Pa-Jeff en’t open his winda,” or
“I didn’ see no smoke yet yonda to Pa-Jeff’s.” And in a little while the
girl would be over there with a pail of soup or coffee, or whatever
there was at hand which she thought the old negro might fancy. She had
lost all the color out of her cheeks and was pining like a sick bird.
She often sat on the steps of the gallery and talked with the old man
while she waited for him to finish his soup from her tin pail.
“I tell you, Pa-Jeff, its neva been no thief in the Bedaut family. My pa
say he couldn’ hole up his head if he think I been a thief, me. An’
maman say it would make her sick in bed, she don’ know she could ever
git up. Sosthène tell me the chil’en been cryin’ fo’ me up yonda. Li’le
Lulu cry so hard M’sieur Valtour want sen’ afta me, an’ Ma’me Valtour
say no.”
And with this, Agapie flung herself at length upon the gallery with her
face buried in her arms, and began to cry so hysterically as seriously
to alarm Pa-Jeff. It was well he had finished his soup, for he could not
have eaten another mouthful.
“Hole up yo’ head, chile. God save us! W’at you kiarrin’ on dat away?”
he exclaimed in great distress. “You gwine to take a fit? Hole up yo’
head.”
Agapie rose slowly to her feet, and drying her eyes upon the sleeve of
her “josie,” reached out for the tin bucket. Pa-Jeff handed it to her,
but without relinquishing his hold upon it.
“War hit you w’at tuck it?” he questioned in a whisper. “I isn’ gwine
tell; you knows I isn’ gwine tell.” She only shook her head, attempting
to draw the pail forcibly away from the old man.
“Le’ me go, Pa-Jeff. W’at you doin’! Gi’ me my bucket!”
He kept his old blinking eyes fastened for a while questioningly upon
her disturbed and tear-stained face. Then he let her go and she turned
and ran swiftly away towards her home.
He sat very still watching her disappear; only his furrowed old face
twitched convulsively, moved by an unaccustomed train of reasoning that
was at work in him.
“She w’ite, I is black,” he muttered calculatingly. “She young, I is
ole; sho I is ole. She good to Pa-Jeff like I her own kin an’ color.”
This line of thought seemed to possess him to the exclusion of every
other. Late in the night he was still muttering.
“Sho I is ole. She good to Pa-Jeff, yas.”
A few days later, when Pa-Jeff happened to be feeling comparatively
well, he presented himself at the house just as the family had assembled
at their early dinner. Looking up suddenly, Monsieur Valtour was
astonished to see him standing there in the room near the open door. He
leaned upon his cane and his grizzled head was bowed upon his breast.
There was general satisfaction expressed at seeing Pa-Jeff on his legs
once more.
“Why, old man, I’m glad to see you out again,” exclaimed the planter,
cordially, pouring a glass of wine, which he instructed Viny to hand to
the old fellow. Pa-Jeff accepted the glass and set it solemnly down upon
a small table near by.
“Marse Albert,” he said, “I is come heah to-day fo’ to make a statement
of de rights an’ de wrongs w’at is done hang heavy on my soul dis heah
long time. Arter you heahs me an’ de missus heahs me an’ de chillun an’
ev’-body, den ef you says: ‘Pa-Jeff you kin tech yo’ lips to dat glass
o’ wine,’ all well an’ right.’”
His manner was impressive and caused the family to exchange surprised
and troubled glances. Foreseeing that his recital might be long, a chair
was offered to him, but he declined it.
“One day,” he began, “w’en I ben hoein’ de madam’s flower bed close to
de fence, Sosthéne he ride up, he say: ‘Heah, Pa-Jeff, heah de mail.’ I
takes de mail f’on ’im an’ I calls out to Viny w’at settin’ on de
gallery: ‘Heah Marse Albert’s mail, gal; come git it.’
“But Viny she answer, pert-like—des like Viny: ‘You is got two laigs,
Pa-Jeff, des well as me.’ I ain’t no ban’ fo’ disputin’ wid gals, so I
brace up an’ I come ’long to de house an’ goes on in dat settin’-room
dah, naix’ to de dinin’-room. I lays dat mail down on Marse Albert’s
table; den I looks roun’.
“Ev’thing do look putty, sho! De lace cu’tains was a-flappin’ an’ de
flowers was a-smellin’ sweet, an’ de pictures a-settin’ back on de wall.
I keep on lookin’ roun’. To reckly my eye hit fall on de li’le gal w’at
al’ays sets on de een’ o’ de mantel-shelf. She do look mighty sassy dat
day, wid ’er toe a-stickin’ out, des so; an’ holdin’ her skirt des dat
away; an’ lookin’ at me wid her head twis’.
“I laff out. Viny mus’ heahed me. I say, ‘g’long ’way f’om dah, gal.’
She keep on smilin’. I reaches out my han’. Den Satan an’ de good
Sperrit, dey begins to wrastle in me. De Sperrit say: ‘You ole
fool-nigga, you; mine w’at you about.’ Satan keep on shovin’ my han’—des
so—keep on shovin’. Satan he mighty powerful dat day, an’ he win de
fight. I kiar dat li’le trick home in my pocket.”
Pa-Jeff lowered his head for a moment in bitter confusion. His hearers
were moved with distressful astonishment. They would have had him stop
the recital right there, but Pa-Jeff resumed, with an effort:
“Come dat night I heah tell how dat li’le trick, we’th heap money; how
madam, she cryin’ ’cause her li’le blessed lamb was use’ to play wid
dat, an’ kiar-on ov’ it. Den I git scared. I say, ‘w’at I gwine do?’ An’
up jump Satan an’ de Sperrit a-wrastlin’ again.
“De Sperrit say: ‘Kiar hit back whar it come f’om, Pa-Jeff.’ Satan ’low:
‘Fling it in de bayeh, you ole fool.’ De Sperrit say: ‘You won’t fling
dat in de bayeh, whar de madam kain’t neva sot eyes on hit no mo’?’ Den
Satan he kine give in; he ’low he plumb sick o’ disputin’ so long; tell
me go hide it some ’eres whar dey nachelly gwine fine it. Satan he win
dat fight.
“Des w’en de day g’ine break, I creeps out an’ goes ’long de fiel’ road.
I pass by Ma’me Bedaut’s house. I riclic how dey says li’le Bedaut gal
ben in de sittin’-room, too, day befo’. De winda war open. Ev’body
sleep-in’. I tres’ in my head, des like a dog w’at shame hisse’f. I sees
dat box o’ rags befo’ my eyes; an’ I drops dat li’le imp’dence ’mongst
dem rags.
“Mebby yo’ all t’ink Satan an’ de Sperrit lef’ me ’lone, arter dat?”
continued Pa-Jeff, straightening himself from the relaxed position in
which his members seemed to have settled.
“No, suh; dey ben desputin’ straight ’long. Las’ night dey come nigh
onto en’in’ me up. De Sperrit cay: ‘Come ’long, I gittin’ tired dis
heah, you g’long up yonda an’ tell de truf an’ shame de devil.’ Satan
’low: ‘Stay whar you is; you heah me!’ Dey clutches me. Dey twis’es an’
twines me. Dey dashes me down an’ jerks me up. But de Sperrit he win dat
fight in de en’, an’ heah I is, mist’ess, master, chillun’; heah I is.”
Years later Pa-Jeff was still telling the story of his temptation and
fall. The negroes especially seemed never to tire of hearing him relate
it. He enlarged greatly upon the theme as he went, adding new and
dramatic features which gave fresh interest to its every telling.
Agapie grew up to deserve the confidence and favors of the family. She
redoubled her acts of kindness toward Pa-Jeff; but somehow she could not
look into his face again.
Yet she need not have feared. Long before the end came, poor old
Pa-Jeff, confused, bewildered, believed the story himself as firmly as
those who had heard him tell it over and over for so many years.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Nég Créol
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Nég Créol
[Illustration]
At the remote period of his birth he had been named César François
Xavier, but no one ever thought of calling him anything but Chicot, or
Nég, or Maringouin. Down at the French market, where he worked among the
fishmongers, they called him Chicot, when they were not calling him
names that are written less freely than they are spoken. But one felt
privileged to call him almost anything, he was so black, lean, lame, and
shriveled. He wore a head-kerchief, and whatever other rags the
fishermen and their wives chose to bestow upon him. Throughout one whole
winter he wore a woman’s discarded jacket with puffed sleeves.
Among some startling beliefs entertained by Chicot was one that “Michié
St. Pierre et Michié St. Paul” had created him. Of “Michié bon Dieu” he
held his own private opinion, and not a too flattering one at that. This
fantastic notion concerning the origin of his being he owed to the early
teaching of his young master, a lax believer, and a great _farceur_ in
his day. Chicot had once been thrashed by a robust young Irish priest
for expressing his religious views, and at another time knifed by a
Sicilian. So he had come to hold his peace upon that subject.
Upon another theme he talked freely and harped continuously. For years
he had tried to convince his associates that his master had left a
progeny, rich, cultured, powerful, and numerous beyond belief. This
prosperous race of beings inhabited the most imposing mansions in the
city of New Orleans. Men of note and position, whose names were familiar
to the public, he swore were grandchildren, great-grandchildren, or,
less frequently, distant relatives of his master, long deceased, Ladies
who came to the market in carriages, or whose elegance of attire
attracted the attention and admiration of the fishwomen, were all _des
’tites cousines_ to his former master, Jean Boisduré. He never looked
for recognition from any of these superior beings, but delighted to
discourse by the hour upon their dignity and pride of birth and wealth.
Chicot always carried an old gunny-sack, and into this went his
earnings. He cleaned stalls at the market, scaled fish, and did many odd
offices for the itinerant merchants, who usually paid in trade for his
service. Occasionally he saw the color of silver and got his clutch upon
a coin, but he accepted anything, and seldom made terms. He was glad to
get a handkerchief from the Hebrew, and grateful if the Choctaws would
trade him a bottle of _filé_ it. The butcher flung him a soup bone, and
the fishmonger a few crabs or a paper bag of shrimps. It was the big
_mulatresse_, _vendeuse de café_, who cared for his inner man.
Once Chicot was accused by a shoe-vender of attempting to steal a pair
of ladies’ shoes. He declared he was only examining them. The clamor
raised in the market was terrific. Young Dagoes assembled and squealed
like rats; a couple of Gascon butchers bellowed like bulls. Matteo’s
wife shook her fist in the accuser’s face and called him
incomprehensible names. The Choctaw women, where they squatted, turned
their slow eyes in the direction of the fray, taking no further notice;
while a policeman jerked Chicot around by the puffed sleeve and
brandished a club. It was a narrow escape.
Nobody knew where Chicot lived. A man—even a nég créol—who lives among
the reeds and willows of Bayou St. John, in a deserted chicken-coop
constructed chiefly of tarred paper, is not going to boast of his
habitation or to invite attention to his domestic appointments. When,
after market hours, he vanished in the direction of St. Philip street,
limping, seemingly bent under the weight of his gunny-bag, it was like
the disappearance from the stage of some petty actor whom the audience
does not follow in imagination beyond the wings, or think of till his
return in another scene.
There was one to whom Chicot’s coming or going meant more than this. In
_la maison grise_ they called her La Chouette, for no earthly reason
unless that she perched high under the roof of the old rookery and
scolded in shrill sudden outbursts. Forty or fifty years before, when
for a little while she acted minor parts with a company of French
players (an escapade that had brought her grandmother to the grave), she
was known as Mademoiselle de Montallaine. Seventy-five years before she
had been christened Aglaé Boisduré.
No matter at what hour the old negro appeared at her threshold, Mamzelle
Aglaé always kept him waiting till she finished her prayers. She opened
the door for him and silently motioned him to a seat, returning to
prostrate herself upon her knees before a crucifix, and a shell filled
with holy water that stood on a small table; it represented in her
imagination an altar. Chicot knew that she did it to aggravate him; he
was convinced that she timed her devotions to begin when she heard his
footsteps on the stairs. He would sit with sullen eyes contemplating her
long, spare, poorly clad figure as she knelt and read from her book or
finished her prayers. Bitter was the religious warfare that had raged
for years between them, and Mamzelle Aglaé had grown, on her side, as
intolerant as Chicot. She had come to hold St. Peter and St. Paul in
such utter detestation that she had cut their pictures out of her
prayer-book.
Then Mamzelle Aglaé pretended not to care what Chicot had in his bag. He
drew forth a small hunk of beef and laid it in her basket that stood on
the bare floor. She looked from the corner of her eye, and went on
dusting the table. He brought out a handful of potatoes, some pieces of
sliced fish, a few herbs, a yard of calico, and a small pat of butter
wrapped in lettuce leaves. He was proud of the butter, and wanted her to
notice it. He held it out and asked her for something to put it on. She
handed him a saucer, and looked indifferent and resigned, with lifted
eyebrows.
“Pas d’ sucre, Nég?”
Chicot shook his head and scratched it, and looked like a black picture
of distress and mortification. No sugar! But tomorrow he would get a
pinch here and a pinch there, and would bring as much as a cupful.
Mamzelle Aglaé then sat down, and talked to Chicot uninterruptedly and
confidentially. She complained bitterly, and it was all about a pain
that lodged in her leg; that crept and acted like a live, stinging
serpent, twining about her waist and up her spine, and coiling round the
shoulder-blade. And then _les rheumatismes_ in her fingers! He could see
for himself how they were knotted. She could not bend them; she could
hold nothing in her hands, and had let a saucer fall that morning and
broken it in pieces. And if she were to tell him that she had slept a
wink through the night, she would be a liar, deserving of perdition. She
had sat at the window _la nuit blanche_, hearing the hours strike and
the market-wagons rumble. Chicot nodded, and kept up a running fire of
sympathetic comment and suggestive remedies for rheumatism and insomnia:
herbs, or _tisanes_, or _grigris_, or all three. As if he knew! There
was Purgatory Mary, a perambulating soul whose office in life was to
pray for the shades in purgatory,—she had brought Mamzelle Aglaé a
bottle of _eau de Lourdes_, but so little of it! She might have kept her
water of Lourdes, for all the good it did,—a drop! Not so much as would
cure a fly or a mosquito! Mamzelle Aglaé was going to show Purgatory
Mary the door when she came again, not only because of her avarice with
the Lourdes water, but, beside that, she brought in on her feet dirt
that could only be removed with a shovel after she left.
And Mamzelle Aglaé wanted to inform Chicot that there would be slaughter
and bloodshed in _la maison grise_ if the people below stairs did not
mend their ways. She was convinced that they lived for no other purpose
than to torture and molest her. The woman kept a bucket of dirty water
constantly on the landing with the hope of Mamzelle Aglaé falling over
it or into it. And she knew that the children were instructed to gather
in the hall and on the stairway, and scream and make a noise and jump up
and down like galloping horses, with the intention of driving her to
suicide. Chicot should notify the policeman on the beat, and have them
arrested, if possible, and thrust into the parish prison, where they
belonged.
Chicot would have been extremely alarmed if he had ever chanced to find
Mamzelle Aglaé in an uncomplaining mood. It never occurred to him that
she might be otherwise. He felt that she had a right to quarrel with
fate, if ever mortal had. Her poverty was a disgrace, and he hung his
head before it and felt ashamed.