Ma’ame Pélagie, when she saw that her sister slept, arose noiselessly
and stepped outside upon the low-roofed narrow gallery. She did not
linger there, but with a step that was hurried and agitated, she
crossed the distance that divided her cabin from the ruin.
The night was not a dark one, for the sky was clear and the moon
resplendent. But light or dark would have made no difference to Ma’ame
Pélagie. It was not the first time she had stolen away to the ruin at
night-time, when the whole plantation slept; but she never before had
been there with a heart so nearly broken. She was going there for the
last time to dream her dreams; to see the visions that hitherto had
crowded her days and nights, and to bid them farewell.
There was the first of them, awaiting her upon the very portal; a
robust old white-haired man, chiding her for returning home so late.
There are guests to be entertained. Does she not know it? Guests from
the city and from the near plantations. Yes, she knows it is late. She
had been abroad with Félix, and they did not notice how the time was
speeding. Félix is there; he will explain it all. He is there beside
her, but she does not want to hear what he will tell her father.
Ma’ame Pélagie had sunk upon the bench where she and her sister so
often came to sit. Turning, she gazed in through the gaping chasm of
the window at her side. The interior of the ruin is ablaze. Not with
the moonlight, for that is faint beside the other one—the sparkle from
the crystal candelabra, which negroes, moving noiselessly and
respectfully about, are lighting, one after the other. How the gleam of
them reflects and glances from the polished marble pillars!
The room holds a number of guests. There is old Monsieur Lucien
Santien, leaning against one of the pillars, and laughing at something
which Monsieur Lafirme is telling him, till his fat shoulders shake.
His son Jules is with him—Jules, who wants to marry her. She laughs.
She wonders if Félix has told her father yet. There is young Jérôme
Lafirme playing at checkers upon the sofa with Léandre. Little Pauline
stands annoying them and disturbing the game. Léandre reproves her. She
begins to cry, and old black Clementine, her nurse, who is not far off,
limps across the room to pick her up and carry her away. How sensitive
the little one is! But she trots about and takes care of herself better
than she did a year or two ago, when she fell upon the stone hall floor
and raised a great “bo-bo” on her forehead. Pélagie was hurt and angry
enough about it; and she ordered rugs and buffalo robes to be brought
and laid thick upon the tiles, till the little one’s steps were surer.
“Il ne faut pas faire mal à Pauline.” She was saying it aloud—“faire
mal a Pauline.”
But she gazes beyond the salon, back into the big dining hall, where
the white crèpe myrtle grows. Ha! how low that bat has circled. It has
struck Ma’ame Pélagie full on the breast. She does not know it. She is
beyond there in the dining hall, where her father sits with a group of
friends over their wine. As usual they are talking politics. How
tiresome! She has heard them say “la guerre” oftener than once. La
guerre. Bah! She and Félix have something pleasanter to talk about, out
under the oaks, or back in the shadow of the oleanders.
But they were right! The sound of a cannon, shot at Sumter, has rolled
across the Southern States, and its echo is heard along the whole
stretch of Côte Joyeuse.
Yet Pélagie does not believe it. Not till La Ricaneuse stands before
her with bare, black arms akimbo, uttering a volley of vile abuse and
of brazen impudence. Pélagie wants to kill her. But yet she will not
believe. Not till Félix comes to her in the chamber above the dining
hall—there where that trumpet vine hangs—comes to say good-by to her.
The hurt which the big brass buttons of his new gray uniform pressed
into the tender flesh of her bosom has never left it. She sits upon the
sofa, and he beside her, both speechless with pain. That room would not
have been altered. Even the sofa would have been there in the same
spot, and Ma’ame Pélagie had meant all along, for thirty years, all
along, to lie there upon it some day when the time came to die.
But there is no time to weep, with the enemy at the door. The door has
been no barrier. They are clattering through the halls now, drinking
the wines, shattering the crystal and glass, slashing the portraits.
One of them stands before her and tells her to leave the house. She
slaps his face. How the stigma stands out red as blood upon his
blanched cheek!
Now there is a roar of fire and the flames are bearing down upon her
motionless figure. She wants to show them how a daughter of Louisiana
can perish before her conquerors. But little Pauline clings to her
knees in an agony of terror. Little Pauline must be saved.
“Il ne faut pas faire mal à Pauline.” Again she is saying it
aloud—“faire mal à Pauline.”
The night was nearly spent; Ma’ame Pélagie had glided from the bench
upon which she had rested, and for hours lay prone upon the stone
flagging, motionless. When she dragged herself to her feet it was to
walk like one in a dream. About the great, solemn pillars, one after
the other, she reached her arms, and pressed her cheek and her lips
upon the senseless brick.
“Adieu, adieu!” whispered Ma’ame Pélagie.
There was no longer the moon to guide her steps across the familiar
pathway to the cabin. The brightest light in the sky was Venus, that
swung low in the east. The bats had ceased to beat their wings about
the ruin. Even the mocking-bird that had warbled for hours in the old
mulberry-tree had sung himself asleep. That darkest hour before the day
was mantling the earth. Ma’ame Pélagie hurried through the wet,
clinging grass, beating aside the heavy moss that swept across her
face, walking on toward the cabin—toward Pauline. Not once did she look
back upon the ruin that brooded like a huge monster—a black spot in the
darkness that enveloped it.