blowing from the water. From a cluster of orange trees a flock of doves
ascended, and Tonie stopped to listen to the beating of their wings and
follow their flight toward the water oaks whither he himself was moving.
He walked with a dragging, uncertain step through the yellow, fragrant
chamomile, his thoughts traveling before him. In his mind was always the
vivid picture of the girl as it had stamped itself there yesterday,
connected in some mystical way with that celestial music which had
thrilled him and was vibrating yet in his soul.
But she did not look the same to-day. She was returning from the beach
when Tonie first saw her, leaning upon the arm of one of the men who had
accompanied her yesterday. She was dressed differently—in a dainty blue
cotton gown. Her companion held a big white sunshade over them both.
They had exchanged hats and were laughing with great abandonment.
Two young men walked behind them and were trying to engage her
attention. She glanced at Tonie, who was leaning against a tree when the
group passed by; but of course she did not know him. She was speaking
English, a language which he hardly understood.
There were other young people gathered under the water oaks—girls who
were, many of them, more beautiful than Mlle. Duvigné; but for Tonie
they simply did not exist. His whole universe had suddenly become
converted into a glamorous background for the person of Mlle. Duvigné,
and the shadowy figures of men who were about her.
Tonie went to Mme. Lebrun and told her he would bring her oranges next
day from the Chênière. She was well pleased, and commissioned him to
bring her other things from the stores there, which she could not
procure at Grand Isle. She did not question his presence, knowing that
these summer days were idle ones for the Chênière fishermen. Nor did she
seem surprised when he told her that his boat was at the wharf, and
would be there every day at her service. She knew his frugal habits, and
supposed he wished to hire it, as others did. He intuitively felt that
this could be the only way.
And that is how it happened that Tonie spent so little of his time at
the Chênière Caminada that summer. Old Ma’me Antoine grumbled enough
about it. She herself had been twice in her life to Grand Isle and once
to Grand Terre, and each time had been more than glad to get back to the
Chênière. And why Tonie should want to spend his days, and even his
nights, away from home, was a thing she could not comprehend, especially
as he would have to be away the whole winter; and meantime there was
much work to be done at his own hearthside and in the company of his own
mother. She did not know that Tonie had much, much more to do at Grand
Isle than at the Chênière Caminada.
He had to see how Claire Duvigné sat upon the gallery in the big rocking
chair that she kept in motion by the impetus of her slender, slippered
foot; turning her head this way and that way to speak to the men who
were always near her. He had to follow her lithe motions at tennis or
croquet, that she often played with the children under the trees. Some
days he wanted to see how she spread her bare, white arms, and walked
out to meet the foam-*crested waves. Even here there were men with her.
And then at night, standing alone like a still shadow under the stars,
did he not have to listen to her voice when she talked and laughed and
sang? Did he not have to follow her slim figure whirling through the
dance, in the arms of men who must have loved her and wanted her as he
did. He did not dream that they could help it more than he could help
it. But the days when she stepped into his boat, the one with the red
lateen sail, and sat for hours within a few feet of him, were days that
he would have given up for nothing else that he could think of.
III.
There were always others in her company at such times, young people with
jests and laughter on their lips. Only once she was alone.
She had foolishly brought a book with her, thinking she would want to
read. But with the breath of the sea stinging her she could not read a
line. She looked precisely as she had looked the day he first saw her,
standing outside of the church at Chênière Caminada.
She laid the book down in her lap, and let her soft eyes sweep dreamily
along the line of the horizon where the sky and water met. Then she
looked straight at Tonie, and for the first time spoke directly to him.
She called him Tonie, as she had heard others do, and questioned him
about his boat and his work. He trembled, and answered her vaguely and
stupidly. She did not mind, but spoke to him anyhow, satisfied to talk
herself when she found that he could not or would not. She spoke French,
and talked about the Chênière Caminada, its people and its church. She
talked of the day she had played upon the organ there, and complained of
the instrument being woefully out of tune.
Tonie was perfectly at home in the familiar task of guiding his boat
before the wind that bellied its taut, red sail. He did not seem clumsy
and awkward as when he sat in church. The girl noticed that he appeared
as strong as an ox.
As she looked at him and surprised one of his shifting glances, a
glimmer of the truth began to dawn faintly upon her. She remembered how
she had encountered him daily in her path, with his earnest, devouring
eyes always seeking her out. She recalled—but there was no need to
recall anything. There are women whose perception of passion is very
keen; they are the women who most inspire it.
A feeling of complacency took possession of her with this conviction.
There was some softness and sympathy mingled with it. She would have
liked to lean over and pat his big, brown hand, and tell him she felt
sorry and would have helped it if she could. With this belief he ceased
to be an object of complete indifference in her eyes. She had thought,
awhile before, of having him turn about and take her back home. But now
it was really piquant to pose for an hour longer before a man—even a
rough fisherman—to whom she felt herself to be an object of silent and
consuming devotion. She could think of nothing more interesting to do on
shore.
She was incapable of conceiving the full force and extent of his
infatuation. She did not dream that under the rude, calm exterior before
her a man’s heart was beating clamorously, and his reason yielding to
the savage instinct of his blood.
“I hear the Angelus ringing at Chênière, Tonie,” she said. “I didn’t
know it was so late; let us go back to the island.” There had been a
long silence which her musical voice interrupted.
Tonie could now faintly hear the Angelus bell himself. A vision of the
church came with it, the odor of incense and the sound of the organ. The
girl before him was again that celestial being whom our Lady of Lourdes
had once offered to his immortal vision.
It was growing dusk when they landed at the pier, and frogs had begun to
croak among the reeds in the pools. There were two of Mlle. Duvigné’s
usual attendants anxiously awaiting her return. But she chose to let
Tonie assist her out of the boat. The touch of her hand fired his blood
again.
She said to him very low and half-laughing, “I have no money tonight,
Tonie; take this instead,” pressing into his palm a delicate silver
chain, which she had worn twined about her bare wrist. It was purely a
spirit of coquetry that prompted the action, and a touch of the
sentimentality which most women possess. She had read in some romance of
a young girl doing something like that.
As she walked away between her two attendants she fancied Tonie pressing
the chain to his lips. But he was standing quite still, and held it
buried in his tightly-closed hand; wanting to hold as long as he might
the warmth of the body that still penetrated the bauble when she thrust
it into his hand.
He watched her retreating figure like a blotch against the fading sky.
He was stirred by a terrible, an overmastering regret, that he had not
clasped her in his arms when they were out there alone, and sprung with
her into the sea. It was what he had vaguely meant to do when the sound
of the Angelus had weakened and palsied his resolution. Now she was
going from him, fading away into the mist with those figures on either
side of her, leaving him alone. He resolved, within himself that if ever
again she were out there on the sea at his mercy, she would have to
perish in his arms. He would go far, far out where the sound of no bell
could reach him. There was some comfort for him in the thought.
But as it happened, Mlle. Duvigné never went out alone in the boat with
Tonie again.
IV.
It was one morning in January. Tonie had been collecting a bill from one
of the fishmongers at the French Market, in New Orleans, and had turned
his steps toward St. Philip street. The day was chilly; a keen wind was
blowing. Tonie mechanically buttoned his rough, warm coat and crossed
over into the sun.
There was perhaps not a more wretched-hearted being in the whole
district, that morning, than he. For months the woman he so hopelessly
loved had been lost to his sight. But all the more she dwelt in his
thoughts, preying upon his mental and bodily forces until his unhappy
condition became apparent to all who knew him. Before leaving his home
for the winter fishing grounds he had opened his whole heart to his
mother, and told her of the trouble that was killing him. She hardly
expected that he would ever come back to her when he went away. She
feared that he would not, for he had spoken wildly of the rest and peace
that could only come to him with death.
That morning when Tonie had crossed St. Philip street he found himself
accosted by Madame Lebrun and her mother. He had not noticed them
approaching, and, moreover, their figures in winter garb appeared
unfamiliar to him. He had never seen them elsewhere than at Grand Isle
and the Chênière during the summer. They were glad to meet him, and
shook his hand cordially. He stood as usual a little helplessly before
them. A pulse in his throat was beating and almost choking him, so
poignant were the recollections which their presence stirred up.
They were staying in the city this winter, they told him. They wanted to
hear the opera as often as possible, and the island was really too
dreary with everyone gone. Madame Lebrun had left her son there to keep
order and superintend repairs, and so on.
“You are both well?” stammered Tonie.
“In perfect health, my dear Tonie,” Madame Lebrun replied. She was
wondering at his haggard eyes and thin, gaunt cheeks; but possessed too
much tact to mention them.
“And—the young lady who used to go sailing—is she well?” he inquired
lamely.
“You mean Mlle. Favette? She was married just after leaving Grand Isle.”
“No; I mean the one you called Claire—Mamzelle Duvigné—is she well?”
Mother and daughter exclaimed together: “Impossible! You haven’t heard?
Why, Tonie,” madame continued, “Mlle. Duvigné died three weeks ago. But
that was something sad, I tell you!... Her family heartbroken.... Simply
from a cold caught by standing in thin slippers, waiting for her
carriage after the opera.... What a warning!”
The two were talking at once. Tonie kept looking from one to the other.
He did not know what they were saying, after madame had told him, “Elle
est morte.”
As in a dream he finally heard that they said good-by to him, and sent
their love to his mother.
He stood still in the middle of the banquette when they had left him,
watching them go toward the market. He could not stir. Something had
happened to him—he did not know what. He wondered if the news was
killing him.
Some women passed by, laughing coarsely. He noticed how they laughed and
tossed their heads. A mockingbird was singing in a cage which hung from
a window above his head. He had not heard it before.
Just beneath the window was the entrance to a barroom. Tonie turned and
plunged through its swinging doors. He asked the bartender for whisky.
The man thought he was already drunk, but pushed the bottle toward him
nevertheless. Tonie poured a great quantity of the fiery liquor into a
glass and swallowed it at a draught. The rest of the day he spent among
the fishermen and Barataria oystermen; and that night he slept soundly
and peacefully until morning.
He did not know why it was so; he could not understand. But from that
day he felt that he began to live again, to be once more a part of the
moving world about him. He would ask himself over and over again why it
was so, and stay bewildered before this truth that he could not answer
or explain, and which he began to accept as a holy mystery.
One day in early spring Tonie sat with his mother upon a piece of
drift-wood close to the sea.
He had returned that day to the Chênière Caminada. At first she thought
he was like his former self again, for all his old strength and courage
had returned. But she found that there was a new brightness in his face
which had not been there before. It made her think of the Holy Ghost
descending and bringing some kind of light to a man.
She knew that Mademoiselle Duvigné was dead, and all along had feared
that this knowledge would be the death of Tonie. When she saw him come
back to her like a new being, at once she dreaded that he did not know.
All day the doubt had been fretting her, and she could bear the
uncertainty no longer.
“You know, Tonie—that young lady whom you cared for—well, some one read
it to me in the papers—she died last winter.” She had tried to speak as
cautiously as she could.
“Yes, I know she is dead. I am glad.”
It was the first time he had said this in words, and it made his heart
beat quicker.
Ma’me Antoine shuddered and drew aside from him. To her it was somehow
like murder to say such a thing.
“What do you mean? Why are you glad?” she demanded, indignantly.
Tonie was sitting with his elbows on his knees. He wanted to answer his
mother, but it would take time; he would have to think. He looked out
across the water that glistened gem-like with the sun upon it, but there
was nothing there to open his thought. He looked down into his open palm
and began to pick at the callous flesh that was hard as a horse’s hoof.
Whilst he did this his ideas began to gather and take form.
“You see, while she lived I could never hope for anything,” he began,
slowly feeling his way. “Despair was the only thing for me. There were
always men about her. She walked and sang and danced with them. I knew
it all the time, even when I didn’t see her. But I saw her often enough.
I knew that some day one of them would please her and she would give
herself to him—she would marry him. That thought haunted me like an evil
spirit.”
Tonie passed his hand across his forehead as if to sweep away anything
of the horror that might have remained there.
“It kept me awake at night,” he went on. “But that was not so bad; the
worst torture was to sleep, for then I would dream that it was all true.
“Oh, I could see her married to one of them—his wife—coming year after
year to Grand Isle and bringing her little children with her! I can’t
tell you all that I saw—all that was driving me mad! But now”—and Tonie
clasped his hands together and smiled as he looked again across the
water—“she is where she belongs; there is no difference up there; the
curé has often told us there is no difference between men. It is with
the soul that we approach each other there. Then she will know who has
loved her best. That is why I am so contented. Who knows what may happen
up there?”
Ma’me Antoine could not answer. She only took her son’s big, rough hand
and pressed it against her.
“And now, ma mère,” he exclaimed, cheerfully, rising, “I shall go light
the fire for your bread; it is a long time since I have done anything
for you,” and he stooped and pressed a warm kiss on her withered old
cheek.
With misty eyes she watched him walk away in the direction of the big
brick oven that stood open-mouthed under the lemon trees.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Odalie Misses Mass
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Odalie Misses Mass
[Illustration]
Odalie sprang down from the mule-cart, shook out her white skirts, and
firmly grasping her parasol, which was blue to correspond with her sash,
entered Aunt Pinky’s gate and proceeded towards the old woman’s cabin.
She was a thick-waisted young thing who walked with a firm tread and
carried her head with a determined poise. Her straight brown hair had
been rolled up over night in papillotes, and the artificial curls stood
out in clusters, stiff and uncompromising beneath the rim of her white
chip hat. Her mother, sister and brother remained seated in the cart
before the gate.
It was the fifteenth of August, the great feast of the Assumption, so
generally observed in the Catholic parishes of Louisiana. The Chotard
family were on their way to mass, and Odalie had insisted upon stopping
to “show herself” to her old friend and protegée, Aunt Pinky.
The helpless, shrivelled old negress sat in the depths of a large,
rudely-fashioned chair. A loosely hanging unbleached cotton gown
enveloped her mite of a figure. What was visible of her hair beneath the
bandana turban, looked like white sheep’s wool. She wore round,
silver-rimmed spectacles, which gave her an air of wisdom and
respectability, and she held in her hand the branch of a hickory
sapling, with which she kept mosquitoes and flies at bay, and even
chickens and pigs that sometimes penetrated the heart of her domain.
Odalie walked straight up to the old woman and kissed her on the cheek.
“Well, Aunt Pinky, yere I am,” she announced with evident
self-complacency, turning herself slowly and stiffly around like a
mechanical dummy. In one hand she held her prayer-book, fan and
handkerchief, in the other the blue parasol, still open; and on her
plump hands were blue cotton mitts. Aunt Pinky beamed and chuckled;
Odalie hardly expected her to be able to do more.
“Now you saw me,” the child continued. “I reckon you satisfied. I mus’
go; I ain’t got a minute to was’e.” But at the threshold she turned to
inquire, bluntly:
“W’ere’s Pug?”
“Pug,” replied Aunt Pinky, in her tremulous old-woman’s voice. “She’s
gone to chu’ch; done gone; she done gone,” nodding her head in seeming
approval of Pug’s action.
“To church!” echoed Odalie with a look of consternation settling in her
round eyes.
“She gone to chu’ch,” reiterated Aunt Pinky. “Say she kain’t miss chu’ch
on de fifteent’; de debble gwine pester her twell jedgment, she miss
chu’ch on de fifteent’.”
Odalie’s plump cheeks fairly quivered with indignation and she stamped
her foot. She looked up and down the long, dusty road that skirted the
river. Nothing was to be seen save the blue cart with its dejected
looking mule and patient occupants. She walked to the end of the gallery
and called out to a negro boy whose black bullet-head showed up in bold
relief against the white of the cotton patch:
“He, Baptiste! w’ere’s yo’ ma? Ask yo’ ma if she can’t come set with
Aunt Pinky.”
“Mammy, she gone to chu’ch,” screamed Baptiste in answer.
“Bonté! w’at’s taken you all darkies with yo’ ‘church’ to-day? You come
along yere Baptiste an’ set with Aunt Pinky. That Pug! I’m goin’ to make
yo’ ma wear her out fo’ that trick of hers—leavin’ Aunt Pinky like
that.”
But at the first intimation of what was wanted of him, Baptiste dipped
below the cotton like a fish beneath water, leaving no sight nor sound
of himself to answer Odalie’s repeated calls. Her mother and sister were
beginning to show signs of impatience.
“But, I can’t go,” she cried out to them. “It’s nobody to stay with Aunt
Pinky. I can’t leave Aunt Pinky like that, to fall out of her chair,
maybe, like she already fell out once.”
“You goin’ to miss mass on the fifteenth, you, Odalie! W’at you thinkin’
about?” came in shrill rebuke from her sister. But her mother offering
no objection, the boy lost not a moment in starting the mule forward at
a brisk trot. She watched them disappear in a cloud of dust; and turning
with a dejected, almost tearful countenance, re-entered the room.
Aunt Pinky seemed to accept her reappearance as a matter of course; and
even evinced no surprise at seeing her remove her hat and mitts, which
she laid carefully, almost religiously, on the bed, together with her
book, fan and handkerchief.
Then Odalie went and seated herself some distance from the old woman in
her own small, low rocking-chair. She rocked herself furiously, making a
great clatter with the rockers over the wide, uneven boards of the cabin
floor; and she looked out through the open door.
“Puggy, she done gone to chu’ch; done gone. Say de debble gwine pester
her twell jedgment—”
“You done tole me that, Aunt Pinky; neva mine; don’t le’s talk about
it.”
Aunt Pinky thus rebuked, settled back into silence and Odalie continued
to rock and stare out of the door.
Once she arose, and taking the hickory branch from Aunt Pinky’s
nerveless hand, made a bold and sudden charge upon a little pig that
seemed bent upon keeping her company. She pursued him with flying heels
and loud cries as far as the road. She came back flushed and breathless
and her curls hanging rather limp around her face; she began again to
rock herself and gaze silently out of the door.
“You gwine make yo’ fus’ c’mmunion?”
This seemingly sober inquiry on the part of Aunt Pinky at once shattered
Odalie’s ill-humor and dispelled every shadow of it. She leaned back and
laughed with wild abandonment.
“Mais w’at you thinkin’ about, Aunt Pinky? How you don’t remember I made
my firs’ communion las’ year, with this same dress w’at maman let out
the tuck,” holding up the altered skirt for Aunt Pinky’s inspection.
“An’ with this same petticoat w’at maman added this ruffle an’ crochet’
edge; excep’ I had a w’ite sash.”
These evidences proved beyond question convincing and seemed to satisfy
Aunt Pinky. Odalie rocked as furiously as ever, but she sang now, and
the swaying chair had worked its way nearer to the old woman.
“You gwine git mar’ied?”
“I declare, Aunt Pinky,” said Odalie, when she had ceased laughing and
was wiping her eyes, “I declare, sometime’ I think you gittin’ plumb
foolish. How you expec’ me to git married w’en I’m on’y thirteen?”
Evidently Aunt Pinky did not know why or how she expected anything so
preposterous; Odalie’s holiday attire that filled her with contemplative
rapture, had doubtless incited her to these vagaries.
The child now drew her chair quite close to the old woman’s knee after
she had gone out to the rear of the cabin to get herself some water and
had brought a drink to Aunt Pinky in the gourd dipper.
There was a strong, hot breeze blowing from the river, and it swept
fitfully and in gusts through the cabin, bringing with it the weedy
smell of cacti that grew thick on the bank, and occasionally a shower of
reddish dust from the road. Odalie for a while was greatly occupied in
keeping in place her filmy skirt, which every gust of wind swelled
balloon-like about her knees. Aunt Pinky’s little black, scrawny hand
had found its way among the droopy curls, and strayed often caressingly
to the child’s plump neck and shoulders.
“You riclics, honey, dat day yo’ granpappy say it wur pinchin’ times an’
he reckin he bleege to sell Yallah Tom an’ Susan an’ Pinky? Don’ know
how come he think ’bout Pinky, ’less caze he sees me playin’ an’
trapsin’ roun’ wid you alls, day in an’ out. I riclics yit how you tu’n
w’ite like milk an’ fling yo’ arms roun’ li’le black Pinky; an’ you
cries out you don’ wan’ no saddle-mar’; you don’ wan’ no silk dresses
and fing’ rings an’ sich; an’ don’ wan’ no idication; des wants Pinky.
An’ you cries an’ screams an’ kicks, an’ ’low you gwine kill fus’ pusson
w’at dar come an’ buy Pinky an’ kiars her off. You riclics dat, honey?”
Odalie had grown accustomed to these flights of fancy on the part of her
old friend; she liked to humor her as she chose to sometimes humor very
small children; so she was quite used to impersonating one dearly
beloved but impetuous, “Paulette,” who seemed to have held her place in
old Pinky’s heart and imagination through all the years of her suffering
life.
“I rec’lec’ like it was yesterday, Aunt Pinky. How I scream an’ kick an’
maman gave me some med’cine; an’ how you scream an’ kick an’ Susan took
you down to the quarters an’ give you ‘twenty.’”