Chapter VII: Part 7

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.

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Odalie Misses Mass

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Odalie Misses Mass

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.’”

“Das so, honey; des like you says,” chuckled Aunt Pinky. “But you don’ riclic dat time you cotch Pinky cryin’ down in de holler behine de gin; an’ you say you gwine give me ‘twenty’ ef I don’ tell you w’at I cryin’ ’bout?”

“I rec’lec’ like it happen’d to-day, Aunt Pinky. You been cryin’ because you want to marry Hiram, ole Mr. Benitou’s servant.”

“Das true like you says, Miss Paulette; an’ you goes home an’ cries and kiars on an’ won’ eat, an’ breaks dishes, an’ pesters yo’ gran’pap ’tell he bleedge to buy Hi’um f’om de Benitous.”

“Don’t talk, Aunt Pink! I can see all that jus’ as plain!” responded Odalie sympathetically, yet in truth she took but a languid interest in these reminiscences which she had listened to so often before.

She leaned her flushed cheek against Aunt Pinky’s knee.

The air was rippling now, and hot and caressing. There was the hum of bumble bees outside; and busy mud-daubers kept flying in and out through the door. Some chickens had penetrated to the very threshold in their aimless roamings, and the little pig was approaching more cautiously. Sleep was fast overtaking the child, but she could still hear through her drowsiness the familiar tones of Aunt Pinky’s voice.

“But Hi’um, he done gone; he nuva come back; an’ Yallah Tom nuva come back; an’ ole Marster an’ de chillun—all gone—nuva come back. Nobody nuva come back to Pinky ’cep you, my honey. You ain’ gwine ’way f’om Pinky no mo’, is you, Miss Paulette?”

“Don’ fret, Aunt Pinky—I’m goin’—to stay with—you.”

“No pussun nuva come back ’cep’ you.”

Odalie was fast asleep. Aunt Pinky was asleep with her head leaning back on her chair and her fingers thrust into the mass of tangled brown hair that swept across her lap. The chickens and little pig walked fearlessly in and out. The sunlight crept close up to the cabin door and stole away again.

Odalie awoke with a start. Her mother was standing over her arousing her from sleep. She sprang up and rubbed her eyes. “Oh, I been asleep!” she exclaimed. The cart was standing in the road waiting. “An’ Aunt Pinky, she’s asleep, too.”

“Yes, chérie, Aunt Pinky is asleep,” replied her mother, leading Odalie away. But she spoke low and trod softly as gentle-souled women do, in the presence of the dead.

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Cavanelle

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Cavanelle

I was always sure of hearing something pleasant from Cavanelle across the counter. If he was not mistaking me for the freshest and prettiest girl in New Orleans, he was reserving for me some bit of silk, or lace, or ribbon of a nuance marvelously suited to my complexion, my eyes or my hair! What an innocent, delightful humbug Cavanelle was! How well I knew it and how little I cared! For when he had sold me the confection or bit of dry-goods in question, he always began to talk to me of his sister Mathilde, and then I knew that Cavanelle was an angel.

I had known him long enough to know why he worked so faithfully, so energetically and without rest—it was because Mathilde had a voice. It was because of her voice that his coats were worn till they were out of fashion and almost out at elbows. But for a sister whose voice needed only a little training to rival that of the nightingale, one might do such things without incurring reproach.

“You will believe, madame, that I did not know you las’ night at the opera? I remark’ to Mathilde, ‘tiens! Mademoiselle Montreville,’ an’ I only rec’nize my mistake when I finally adjust my opera glass.... I guarantee you will be satisfied, madame. In a year from now you will come an’ thank me for having secu’ you that bargain in a poult-desoie.... Yes, yes; as you say, Tolville was in voice. But,” with a shrug of the narrow shoulders and a smile of commiseration that wrinkled the lean olive cheeks beneath the thin beard, “but to hear that cavatina render’ as I have heard it render’ by Mathilde, is another affair! A quality, madame, that moves, that penetrates. Perhaps not yet enough volume, but that will accomplish itself with time, when she will become more robus’ in health. It is my intention to sen’ her for the summer to Gran’ Isle; that good air an’ surf bathing will work miracles. An artiste, voyez vous, it is not to be treated like a human being of every day; it needs des petits soins; perfec’ res’ of body an’ mind; good red wine an’ plenty ... oh yes, madame, the stage; that is our intention; but never with my consent in light opera. Patience is what I counsel to Mathilde. A little more stren’th; a little dev’lopment of the chest to give that soupçon of compass which is lacking, an’ gran’ opera is what I aspire for my sister.”

I was curious to know Mathilde and to hear her sing; and thought it a great pity that a voice so marvelous as she doubtless possessed should not gain the notice that might prove the step toward the attainment of her ambition. It was such curiosity and a half-formed design or desire to interest myself in her career that prompted me to inform Cavanelle that I should greatly like to meet his sister; and I asked permission to call upon her the following Sunday afternoon.

Cavanelle was charmed. He otherwise would not have been Cavanelle. Over and over I was given the most minute directions for finding the house. The green car—or was it the yellow or blue one? I can no longer remember. But it was near Goodchildren street, and would I kindly walk this way and turn that way? At the corner was an ice dealer’s. In the middle of the block, their house—one-story; painted yellow; a knocker; a banana tree nodding over the side fence. But indeed, I need not look for the banana tree, the knocker, the number or anything, for if I but turn the corner in the neighborhood of five o’clock I would find him planted at the door awaiting me.

And there he was! Cavanelle himself; but seeming to me not himself; apart from the entourage with which I was accustomed to associate him. Every line of his mobile face, every gesture emphasized the welcome which his kind eyes expressed as he ushered me into the small parlor that opened upon the street.

“Oh, not that chair, madame! I entreat you. This one, by all means. Thousan’ times more comfortable.”

“Mathilde! Strange; my sister was here but an instant ago. Mathilde! Où es tu donc?” Stupid Cavanelle! He did not know when I had already guessed it—that Mathilde had retired to the adjoining room at my approach, and would appear after a sufficient delay to give an appropriate air of ceremony to our meeting.

And what a frail little piece of mortality she was when she did appear! At beholding her I could easily fancy that when she stepped outside of the yellow house, the zephyrs would lift her from her feet and, given a proper adjustment of the balloon sleeves, gently waft her in the direction of Goodchildren street, or wherever else she might want to go.

Hers was no physique for grand opera—certainly no stage presence; apparently so slender a hold upon life that the least tension might snap it. The voice which could hope to overcome these glaring disadvantages would have to be phenomenal.

Mathilde spoke English imperfectly, and with embarrassment, and was glad to lapse into French. Her speech was languid, unaffectedly so; and her manner was one of indolent repose; in this respect offering a striking contrast to that of her brother. Cavanelle seemed unable to rest. Hardly was I seated to his satisfaction than he darted from the room and soon returned followed by a limping old black woman bringing in a sirop d’orgeat and layer cake on a tray.

Mathilde’s face showed feeble annoyance at her brother’s want of savoir vivre in thus introducing the refreshments at so early a stage of my visit.

The servant was one of those cheap black women who abound in the French quarter, who speak Creole patois in preference to English, and who would rather work in a petit ménage in Goodchildren street for five dollars a month than for fifteen in the fourth district. Her presence, in some unaccountable manner, seemed to reveal to me much of the inner working of this small household. I pictured her early morning visit to the French market, where picayunes were doled out sparingly, and lagniappes gathered in with avidity.

I could see the neatly appointed dinner table; Cavanelle extolling his soup and bouillie in extravagant terms; Mathilde toying with her papabotte or chicken-wing, and pouring herself a demi-verre from her very own half-bottle of St. Julien; Pouponne, as they called her, mumbling and grumbling through habit, and serving them as faithfully as a dog through instinct. I wondered if they knew that Pouponne “played the lottery” with every spare “quarter” gathered from a judicious management of lagniappe. Perhaps they would not have cared, or have minded, either, that she as often consulted the Voudoo priestess around the corner as her father confessor.

My thoughts had followed Pouponne’s limping figure from the room, and it was with an effort I returned to Cavanelle twirling the piano stool this way and that way. Mathilde was languidly turning over musical scores, and the two warmly discussing the merits of a selection which she had evidently decided upon.

The girl seated herself at the piano. Her hands were thin and anæmic, and she touched the keys without firmness or delicacy. When she had played a few introductory bars, she began to sing. Heaven only knows what she sang; it made no difference then, nor can it make any now.

The day was a warm one, but that did not prevent a creepy chilliness seizing hold of me. The feeling was generated by disappointment, anger, dismay and various other disagreeable sensations which I cannot find names for. Had I been intentionally deceived and misled? Was this some impertinent pleasantry on the part of Cavanelle? Or rather had not the girl’s voice undergone some hideous transformation since her brother had listened to it? I dreaded to look at him, fearing to see horror and astonishment depicted on his face. When I did look, his expression was earnestly attentive and beamed approval of the strains to which he measured time by a slow, satisfied motion of the hand.

The voice was thin to attenuation, I fear it was not even true. Perhaps my disappointment exaggerated its simple deficiencies into monstrous defects. But it was an unsympathetic voice that never could have been a blessing to possess or to listen to.

I cannot recall what I said at parting—doubtless conventional things which were not true. Cavanelle politely escorted me to the car, and there I left him with a hand-clasp which from my side was tender with sympathy and pity.

“Poor Cavanelle! poor Cavanelle!” The words kept beating time in my brain to the jingle of the car bells and the regular ring of the mules’ hoofs upon the cobble stones. One moment I resolved to have a talk with him in which I would endeavor to open his eyes to the folly of thus casting his hopes and the substance of his labor to the winds. The next instant I had decided that chance would possibly attend to Cavanelle’s affair less clumsily than I could. “But all the same,” I wondered, “is Cavanelle a fool? is he a lunatic? is he under a hypnotic spell?” And then—strange that I did not think of it before—I realized that Cavanelle loved Mathilde intensely, and we all know that love is blind, but a god just the same.

Two years passed before I saw Cavanelle again. I had been absent that length of time from the city. In the meanwhile Mathilde had died. She and her little voice—the apotheosis of insignificance—were no more. It was perhaps a year after my visit to her that I read an account of her death in a New Orleans paper. Then came a momentary pang of commiseration for my good Cavanelle. Chance had surely acted here the part of a skillful though merciless surgeon; no temporizing, no half measures. A deep, sharp thrust of the scalpel; a moment of agonizing pain; then rest, rest; convalescence; health; happiness! Yes, Mathilde had been dead a year and I was prepared for great changes in Cavanelle.

He had lived like a hampered child who does not recognize the restrictions hedging it about, and lives a life of pathetic contentment in the midst of them. But now all that was altered. He was, doubtless, regaling himself with the half-bottles of St. Julien, which were never before for him; with, perhaps, an occasional petit souper at Moreau’s, and there was no telling what little pleasures beside.

Cavanelle would certainly have bought himself a suit of clothes or two of modern fit and finish. I would find him with a brightened eye, a fuller cheek, as became a man of his years; perchance, even, a waxed moustache! So did my imagination run rampant with me.

And after all, the hand which I clasped across the counter was that of the self-same Cavanelle I had left. It was no fuller, no firmer. There were even some additional lines visible through the thin, brown beard.

“Ah, my poor Cavanelle! you have suffered a grievous loss since we parted.” I saw in his face that he remembered the circumstances of our last meeting, so there was no use in avoiding the subject. I had rightly conjectured that the wound had been a cruel one, but in a year such wounds heal with a healthy soul.

He could have talked for hours of Mathilde’s unhappy taking-off, and if the subject had possessed for me the same touching fascination which it held for him, doubtless, we would have done so, but—

“And how is it now, mon ami? Are you living in the same place? running your little ménage as before, my poor Cavanelle?”

“Oh, yes, madame, except that my Aunt Félicie is making her home with me now. You have heard me speak of my aunt—No? You never have heard me speak of my Aunt Félicie Cavanelle of Terrebonne! That, madame, is a noble woman who has suffer’ the mos’ cruel affliction, and deprivation, since the war.—No, madame, not in good health, unfortunately, by any means. It is why I esteem that a blessed privilege to give her declining years those little comforts, ces petits soins, that is a woman’s right to expec’ from men.”

I knew what “des petits soins” meant with Cavanelle; doctors’ visits, little jaunts across the lake, friandises of every description showered upon “Aunt Félicie,” and he himself relegated to the soup and bouillie which typified his prosaic existence.

I was unreasonably exasperated with the man for awhile, and would not even permit myself to notice the beauty in texture and design of the mousseline de laine which he had spread across the counter in tempting folds. I was forced to restrain a brutal desire to say something stinging and cruel to him for his fatuity.

However, before I had regained the street, the conviction that Cavanelle was a hopeless fool seemed to reconcile me to the situation and also afforded me some diversion.

But even this estimate of my poor Cavanelle was destined not to last. By the time I had seated myself in the Prytania street car and passed up my nickel, I was convinced that Cavanelle was an angel.

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Tante Cat’rinette

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Tante Cat’rinette

It happened just as every one had predicted. Tante Cat’rinette was beside herself with rage and indignation when she learned that the town authorities had for some reason condemned her house and intended to demolish it.

“Dat house w’at Vieumaite gi’ me his own se’f, out his own mout’, w’en he gi’ me my freedom! All wrote down en règle befo’ de cote! Bon dieu Seigneur, w’at dey talkin’ ’bout!”

Tante Cat’rinette stood in the doorway of her home, resting a gaunt black hand against the jamb. In the other hand she held her corn-cob pipe. She was a tall, large-boned woman of a pronounced Congo type. The house in question had been substantial enough in its time. It contained four rooms: the lower two of brick, the upper ones of adobe. A dilapidated gallery projected from the upper story and slanted over the narrow banquette, to the peril of passers-by.

“I don’t think I ever heard why the property was given to you in the first place, Tante Cat’rinette,” observed Lawyer Paxton, who had stopped in passing, as so many others did, to talk the matter over with the old negress. The affair was attracting some attention in town, and its development was being watched with a good deal of interest. Tante Cat’rinette asked nothing better than to satisfy the lawyer’s curiosity.

“Vieumaite all time say. Cat’rinette wort’ gole to ’im; de way I make dem nigga’ walk chalk. But,” she continued, with recovered seriousness, “w’en I nuss ’is li’le gal w’at all de doctor’ ’low it ’s goin’ die, an’ I make it well, me, den Vieumaite, he can’t do ’nough, him. He name’ dat li’le gal Cat’rine fo’ me. Das Miss Kitty w’at marry Miché Raymond yon’ by Gran’ Eco’. Den he gi’ me my freedom; he got plenty slave’, him; one don’ count in his pocket. An’ he gi’ me dat house w’at I’m stan’in’ in de do’; he got plenty house’ an’ lan’, him. Now dey want pay me t’ousan’ dolla’, w’at I don’ axen’ fo’, an’ tu’n me out dat house! I waitin’ fo’ ’em, Miché Paxtone,” and a wicked gleam shot into the woman’s small, dusky eyes. “I got my axe grine fine. Fus’ man w’at touch Cat’rinette fo’ tu’n her out dat house, he git ’is head bus’ like I bus’ a gode.”

“Dat’s nice day, ainty, Miché Paxtone? Fine wedda fo’ dry my close.” Upon the gallery above hung an array of shirts, which gleamed white in the sunshine, and flapped in the rippling breeze.

The spectacle of Tante Cat’rinette defying the authorities was one which offered much diversion to the children of the neighborhood. They played numberless pranks at her expense; daily serving upon her fictitious notices purporting to be to the last degree official. One youngster, in a moment of inspiration, composed a couplet, which they recited, sang, shouted at all hours, beneath her windows.

“Tante Cat’rinette, she go in town;
Wen she come back, her house pull’ down.”

So ran the production. She heard it many times during the day, but, far from offending her, she accepted it as a warning,—a prediction, as it were,—and she took heed not to offer to fate the conditions for its fulfillment. She no longer quitted her house even for a moment, so great was her fear and so firm her belief that the town authorities were lying in wait to possess themselves of it. She would not cross the street to visit a neighbor. She waylaid passers-by and pressed them into service to do her errands and small shopping. She grew distrustful and suspicious, ever on the alert to scent a plot in the most innocent endeavor to induce her to leave the house.

One morning, as Tante Cat’rinette was hanging out her latest batch of washing, Eusèbe, a “free mulatto” from Red River, stopped his pony beneath her gallery.

“Hé, Tante Cat’rinette!” he called up to her.

She turned to the railing just as she was, in her bare arms and neck that gleamed ebony-like against the unbleached cotton of her chemise. A coarse skirt was fastened about her waist, and a string of many-colored beads knotted around her throat. She held her smoking pipe between her yellow teeth.

“How you all come on, Miché Eusèbe?” she questioned, pleasantly.

“We all middlin’, Tante Cat’rinette. But Miss Kitty, she putty bad off out yon’a. I see Mista Raymond dis mo’nin’ w’en I pass by his house; he say look like de feva don’ wan’ to quit ’er. She been axen’ fo’ you all t’rough de night. He ’low he reckon I betta tell you. Nice wedda we got fo’ plantin’, Tante Cat’rinette.”

“Nice wedda fo’ lies, Miché Eusèbe,” and she spat contemptuously down upon the banquette. She turned away without noticing the man further, and proceeded to hang one of Lawyer Paxton’s fine linen shirts upon the line.

“She been axen’ fo’ you all t’rough de night.”

Somehow Tante Cat’rinette could not get that refrain out of her head. She would not willingly believe that Eusèbe had spoken the truth, but— “She been axen fo’ you all t’rough de night—all t’rough de night.” The words kept ringing in her ears, as she came and went about her daily tasks. But by degrees she dismissed Eusèbe and his message from her mind. It was Miss Kitty’s voice that she could hear in fancy following her, calling out through the night, “W’ere Tante Cat’rinette? W’y Tante Cat’rinette don’ come? W’y she don’ come—w’y she don’ come?”

All day the woman muttered and mumbled to herself in her Creole patois; invoking council of “Vieumaite,” as she always did in her troubles. Tante Cat’rinette’s religion was peculiarly her own; she turned to heaven with her grievances, it is true, but she felt that there was no one in Paradise with whom she was quite so well acquainted as with “Vieumaite.”

Late in the afternoon she went and stood on her doorstep, and looked uneasily and anxiously out upon the almost deserted street. When a little girl came walking by,—a sweet child with a frank and innocent face, upon whose word she knew she could rely,—Tante Cat’rinette invited her to enter.

“Come yere see Tante Cat’rinette, Lolo. It’s long time you en’t come see Tante Cat’rine; you gittin’ proud.” She made the little one sit down, and offered her a couple of cookies, which the child accepted with pretty avidity.

“You putty good li’le gal, you, Lolo. You keep on go confession all de time?”

“Oh, yes. I’m goin’ make my firs’ communion firs’ of May, Tante Cat’rinette.” A dog-eared catechism was sticking out of Lolo’s apron pocket.

“Das right; be good li’le gal. Mine yo’ maman ev’t’ing she say; an’ neva tell no story. It’s nuttin’ bad in dis worl’ like tellin’ lies. You know Eusèbe?”

“Eusèbe?”

“Yas; dat li’le ole Red River free m’latto. Uh, uh! dat one man w’at kin tell lies, yas! He come tell me Miss Kitty down sick yon’a. You ev’ yeard such big story like dat, Lolo?”

The child looked a little bewildered, but she answered promptly, “’Taint no story, Tante Cat’rinette. I yeard papa sayin’, dinner time, Mr. Raymond sen’ fo’ Dr. Chalon. An’ Dr. Chalon says he ain’t got time to go yonda. An’ papa says it’s because Dr. Chalon on’y want to go w’ere it’s rich people; an’ he’s ’fraid Mista Raymond ain’ goin’ pay ’im.”

Tante Cat’rinette admired the little girl’s pretty gingham dress, and asked her who had ironed it. She stroked her brown curls, and talked of all manner of things quite foreign to the subject of Eusèbe and his wicked propensity for telling lies.

She was not restless as she had been during the early part of the day, and she no longer mumbled and muttered as she had been doing over her work.

At night she lighted her coal-oil lamp, and placed it near a window where its light could be seen from the street through the half-closed shutters. Then she sat herself down, erect and motionless, in a chair.

When it was near upon midnight, Tante Cat’rinette arose, and looked cautiously, very cautiously, out of the door. Her house lay in the line of deep shadow that extended along the street. The other side was bathed in the pale light of the declining moon. The night was agreeably mild, profoundly still, but pregnant with the subtle quivering life of early spring. The earth seemed asleep and breathing,—a scent-laden breath that blew in soft puffs against Tante Cat’rinette’s face as she emerged from the house. She closed and locked her door noiselessly; then she crept slowly away, treading softly, stealthily as a cat, in the deep shadow.

There were but few people abroad at that hour. Once she ran upon a gay party of ladies and gentlemen who had been spending the evening over cards and anisette. They did not notice Tante Cat’rinette almost effacing herself against the black wall of the cathedral. She breathed freely and ventured from her retreat only when they had disappeared from view. Once a man saw her quite plainly, as she darted across a narrow strip of moonlight. But Tante Cat’rinette need not have gasped with fright as she did. He was too drunk to know if she were a thing of flesh, or only one of the fantastic, maddening shadows that the moon was casting across his path to bewilder him. When she reached the outskirts of the town, and had to cross the broad piece of open country which stretched out toward the pine wood, an almost paralyzing terror came over her. But she crouched low, and hurried through the marsh and weeds, avoiding the open road. She could have been mistaken for one of the beasts browsing there where she passed.

But once in the Grand Ecore road that lay through the pine wood, she felt secure and free to move as she pleased. Tante Cat’rinette straightened herself, stiffened herself in fact, and unconsciously assuming the attitude of the professional sprinter, she sped rapidly beneath the Gothic interlacing branches of the pines. She talked constantly to herself as she went, and to the animate and inanimate objects around her. But her speech, far from intelligent, was hardly intelligible.

She addressed herself to the moon, which she apostrophized as an impertinent busybody spying upon her actions. She pictured all manner of troublesome animals, snakes, rabbits, frogs, pursuing her, but she defied them to catch Cat’rinette, who was hurrying toward Miss Kitty. “Pa capab trapé Cat’rinette, vouzot; mo pé couri vite coté Miss Kitty.” She called up to a mocking-bird warbling upon a lofty limb of a pine tree, asking why it cried out so, and threatening to secure it and put it into a cage. “Ca to pé crié comme ça, ti céléra? Arete, mo trapé zozos la, mo mété li dan ain bon lacage.” Indeed, Tante Cat’rinette seemed on very familiar terms with the night, with the forest, and with all the flying, creeping, crawling things that inhabit it. At the speed with which she traveled she soon had covered the few miles of wooded road, and before long had reached her destination.

The sleeping-room of Miss Kitty opened upon the long outside gallery, as did all the rooms of the unpretentious frame house which was her home. The place could hardly be called a plantation; it was too small for that. Nevertheless Raymond was trying to plant; trying to teach school between times, in the end room; and sometimes, when he found himself in a tight place, trying to clerk for Mr. Jacobs over in Campte, across Red River.

Tante Cat’rinette mounted the creaking steps, crossed the gallery, and entered Miss Kitty’s room as though she were returning to it after a few moments’ absence. There was a lamp burning dimly upon the high mantelpiece. Raymond had evidently not been to bed; he was in shirt sleeves, rocking the baby’s cradle. It was the same mahogany cradle which had held Miss Kitty thirty-five years before, when Tante Cat’rinette had rocked it. The cradle had been bought then to match the bed,—that big, beautiful bed on which Miss Kitty lay now in a restless half slumber. There was a fine French clock on the mantel, still telling the hours as it had told them years ago. But there were no carpets or rugs on the floors. There was no servant in the house.

Raymond uttered an exclamation of amazement when he saw Tante Cat’rinette enter.

“How you do, Miché Raymond?” she said, quietly. “I yeard Miss Kitty been sick; Eusèbe tell me dat dis mo’nin’.”

She moved toward the bed as lightly as though shod with velvet, and seated herself there. Miss Kitty’s hand lay outside the coverlid; a shapely hand, which her few days of illness and rest had not yet softened. The negress laid her own black hand upon it. At the touch Miss Kitty instinctively turned her palm upward.

“It’s Tante Cat’rinette!” she exclaimed, with a note of satisfaction in her feeble voice. “W’en did you come, Tante Cat’rinette? They all said you wouldn’ come.”

“I’m goin’ come ev’y night, cher coeur, ev’y night tell you be well. Tante Cat’rinette can’t come daytime no mo’.”

“Raymond tole me about it. They doin’ you mighty mean in town, Tante Cat’rinette.”

“Nev’ mine, ti chou. I know how take care dat w’at Vieumaite gi’ me. You go sleep now. Cat’rinette goin’ set yere an’ mine you. She goin’ make you well like she all time do. We don’ wan’ no céléra doctor. We drive ’em out wid a stick, dey come roun’ yere.”

Miss Kitty was soon sleeping more restfully than she had done since her illness began. Raymond had finally succeeded in quieting the baby, and he tiptoed into the adjoining room, where the other children lay, to snatch a few hours of much-needed rest for himself. Cat’rinette sat faithfully beside her charge, administering at intervals to the sick woman’s wants.

But the thought of regaining her home before daybreak, and of the urgent necessity for doing so, did not leave Tante Cat’rinette’s mind for an instant.

In the profound darkness, the deep stillness of the night that comes before dawn, she was walking again through the woods, on her way back to town.

The mocking-birds were asleep, and so were the frogs and the snakes; and the moon was gone, and so was the breeze. She walked now in utter silence but for the heavy guttural breathing that accompanied her rapid footsteps. She walked with a desperate determination along the road, every foot of which was familiar to her.

When she at last emerged from the woods, the earth about her was faintly, very faintly, beginning to reveal itself in the tremulous, gray, uncertain light of approaching day. She staggered and plunged onward with beating pulses quickened by fear.

A sudden turn, and Tante Cat’rinette stood facing the river. She stopped abruptly, as if at command of some unseen power that forced her. For an instant she pressed a black hand against her tired, burning eyes, and stared fixedly ahead of her.

Tante Cat’rinette had always believed that Paradise was up there overhead where the sun and stars and moon are, and that “Vieumaite” inhabited that region of splendor. She never for a moment doubted this. It would be difficult, perhaps unsatisfying, to explain why Tante Cat’rinette, on that particular morning, when a vision of the rising day broke suddenly upon her, should have believed that she stood in face of a heavenly revelation. But why not, after all? Since she talked so familiarly herself to the unseen, why should it not respond to her when the time came?

Across the narrow, quivering line of water, the delicate budding branches of young trees were limned black against the gold, orange,—what word is there to tell the color of that morning sky! And steeped in the splendor of it hung one pale star; there was not another in the whole heaven.

Tante Cat’rinette stood with her eyes fixed intently upon that star, which held her like a hypnotic spell. She stammered breathlessly:

“Mo pé couté, Vieumaite. Cat’rinette pé couté.” (I am listening, Vieumaite. Cat’rinette hears you.)

She stayed there motionless upon the brink of the river till the star melted into the brightness of the day and became part of it.

When Tante Cat’rinette entered Miss Kitty’s room for the second time, the aspect of things had changed somewhat. Miss Kitty was with much difficulty holding the baby while Raymond mixed a saucer of food for the little one. Their oldest daughter, a child of twelve, had come into the room with an apronful of chips from the woodpile, and was striving to start a fire on the hearth, to make the morning coffee. The room seemed bare and almost squalid in the daylight.

“Well, yere Tante Cat’rinette come back,” she said, quietly announcing herself.

They could not well understand why she was back; but it was good to have her there, and they did not question.

She took the baby from its mother, and, seating herself, began to feed it from the saucer which Raymond placed beside her on a chair.

“Yas,” she said, “Cat’rinette goin’ stay; dis time she en’t nev’ goin’ ’way no mo’.”

Husband and wife looked at each other with surprised, questioning eyes.

“Miché Raymond,” remarked the woman, turning her head up to him with a certain comical shrewdness in her glance, “if somebody want len’ you t’ousan’ dolla’, w’at you goin’ say? Even if it’s ole nigga ’oman?”

The man’s face flushed with sudden emotion. “I would say that person was our bes’ frien’, Tante Cat’rinette. An’,” he added, with a smile, “I would give her a mortgage on the place, of co’se, to secu’ her f’om loss.”

“Das right,” agreed the woman practically. “Den Cat’rinette goin’ len’ you t’ousan’ dolla’. Dat w’at Vieumaite give her, dat b’long to her; don’ b’long to nobody else. An’ we go yon’a to town, Miché Raymond, you an’ me. You care me befo’ Miché Paxtone. I want ’im fo’ put down in writin’ befo’ de cote dat w’at Cat’rinette got, it fo’ Miss Kitty w’en I be dead.”

Miss Kitty was crying softly in the depths of her pillow.

“I en’t got no head fo’ all dat, me,” laughed Tante Cat’rinette, good humoredly, as she held a spoonful of pap up to the baby’s eager lips. “It’s Vieumaite tell me all dat clair an’ plain dis mo’nin’, w’en I comin’ ’long de Gran’ Eco’ road.”

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A Respectable Woman

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A Respectable Woman

Mrs. Baroda was a little provoked to learn that her husband expected his friend, Gouvernail, up to spend a week or two on the plantation.

They had entertained a good deal during the winter; much of the time had also been passed in New Orleans in various forms of mild dissipation. She was looking forward to a period of unbroken rest, now, and undisturbed tête-a-tête with her husband, when he informed her that Gouvernail was coming up to stay a week or two.

This was a man she had heard much of but never seen. He had been her husband’s college friend; was now a journalist, and in no sense a society man or “a man about town,” which were, perhaps, some of the reasons she had never met him. But she had unconsciously formed an image of him in her mind. She pictured him tall, slim, cynical; with eye-glasses, and his hands in his pockets; and she did not like him. Gouvernail was slim enough, but he wasn’t very tall nor very cynical; neither did he wear eye-glasses nor carry his hands in his pockets. And she rather liked him when he first presented himself.

But why she liked him she could not explain satisfactorily to herself when she partly attempted to do so. She could discover in him none of those brilliant and promising traits which Gaston, her husband, had often assured her that he possessed. On the contrary, he sat rather mute and receptive before her chatty eagerness to make him feel at home and in face of Gaston’s frank and wordy hospitality. His manner was as courteous toward her as the most exacting woman could require; but he made no direct appeal to her approval or even esteem.

Once settled at the plantation he seemed to like to sit upon the wide portico in the shade of one of the big Corinthian pillars, smoking his cigar lazily and listening attentively to Gaston’s experience as a sugar planter.

“This is what I call living,” he would utter with deep satisfaction, as the air that swept across the sugar field caressed him with its warm and scented velvety touch. It pleased him also to get on familiar terms with the big dogs that came about him, rubbing themselves sociably against his legs. He did not care to fish, and displayed no eagerness to go out and kill grosbecs when Gaston proposed doing so.