Mr. Worthington did not stop with the story of Saint Monica. He lost himself in those details of asceticism, martyrdom, superhuman possibilities which man is capable of attaining under peculiar conditions of life—something he had not yet “gone into.”
The voices at the card table would certainly have disturbed a man with less power of mind concentration. For Mrs. Worthington in this familiar employment was herself again—con fuoco. Here was Mr. Duplan in high spirits; his wife putting forth little gushes of bird-like exaltation as the fascinations of the game revealed themselves to her. Even Hosmer and Thérèse were drawn for the moment from their usual preoccupation. Fanny alone was the ghost of the feast. Her features never relaxed from their settled gloom. She played at hap-hazard, listlessly throwing down the cards or letting them fall from her hands, vaguely asking what were trumps at inopportune moments; showing that inattentiveness so exasperating to an eager player and which oftener than once drew a sharp rebuke from Belle Worthington.
“Don’t you wish we could play,” said Ninette to her companion from her comfortable perch beside the fire, and looking longingly towards the card table.
“Oh, no,” replied Lucilla briefly, gazing into the fire, with hands folded in her lap. Thin hands, showing up very white against the dull colored “convent uniform” that hung in plain, severe folds about her and reached to her very ankles.
“Oh, don’t you? I play often at home when company comes. And I play cribbage andvingt-et-unwith papa and win lots of money from him.”
“That’s wrong.”
“No, it isn’t; papa wouldn’t do it if it was wrong,” she answered decidedly. “Do you go to the convent?” she asked, looking critically at Lucilla and drawing a little nearer, so as to be confidential. “Tell me about it,” she continued, when the other had replied affirmatively. “Is it very dreadful? you know they’re going to send me soon.”
“Oh, it’s the best place in the world,” corrected Lucilla as eagerly as she could.
“Well, mamma says she was just as happy as could be there, but you see that’s so awfully long ago. It must have changed since then.”
“The convent never changes: it’s always the same. You first go to chapel to mass early in the morning.”
“Ugh!” shuddered Ninette.
“Then you have studies,” continued Lucilla. “Then breakfast, then recreation, then classes, and there’s meditation.”
“Oh, well,” interrupted Ninette, “I believe anything most would suit you, and mamma when she was little; but if I don’t like it—see here, if I tell you something will you promise never, never, to tell?”
“Is it any thing wrong?”
“Oh, no, not very; it isn’t a real mortal sin. Will you promise?”
“Yes,” agreed Lucilla; curiosity getting something the better of her pious scruples.
“Cross your heart?”
Lucilla crossed her heart carefully, though a little reluctantly.
“Hope you may die?”
“Oh!” exclaimed the little convent girl aghast.
“Oh, pshaw,” laughed Ninette, “never mind. But that’s what Polly always says when she wants me to believe her: ‘hope I may die, Miss Ninette.’ Well, this is it: I’ve been saving up money for the longest time, oh ever so long. I’ve got eighteen dollars and sixty cents, and when they send me to the convent, if I don’t like it, I’m going to run away.” This last and startling revelation was told in a tragic whisper in Lucilla’s ear, for Betsy was standing before them with a tray of chocolate and coffee that she was passing around.
“I yeard you,” proclaimed Betsy with mischievous inscrutable countenance.
“You didn’t,” said Ninette defiantly, and taking a cup of coffee.
“Yas, I did, I yeard you,” walking away.
“See here, Betsy,” cried Ninette recalling the girl, “you’re not going to tell, are you?”
“Dun know ef I isn’t gwine tell. Dun know ef I isn’t gwine tell Miss Duplan dis yere ver’ minute.”
“Oh Betsy,” entreated Ninette, “I’ll give you this dress if you don’t. I don’t want it any more.”
Betsy’s eyes glowed, but she looked down unconcernedly at the pretty gown.
“Don’t spec it fit me. An’ you know Miss T’rèse ain’t gwine let me go flyin’ roun’ wid my laigs stickin’ out dat away.”
“I’ll let the ruffle down, Betsy,” eagerly proposed Ninette.
“Betsy!” called Thérèse a little impatiently.
“Yas, ’um—I ben waitin’ fu’ de cups.”
Lucilla had made many an aspiration—many an “act” the while. This whole evening of revelry, and now this last act of wicked conspiracy seemed to have tainted her soul with a breath of sin which she would not feel wholly freed from, till she had cleansed her spirit in the waters of absolution.
The party broke up at a late hour, though the Duplans had a long distance to go, and, moreover, had to cross the high and turbid river to reach their carriage which had been left on the opposite bank, owing to the difficulty of the crossing.
Mr. Duplan took occasion of a moment aside to whisper to Hosmer with the air of a connoisseur, “fine woman that Mrs. Worthington of yours.”
Hosmer laughed at the jesting implication, whilst disclaiming it, and Fanny looked moodily at them both, jealously wondering at the cause of their good humor.
Mrs. Duplan, under the influence of a charming evening passed in such agreeable and distinguished company, was full of amiable bustle in leaving and had many pleasant parting words to say to each, in her pretty broken English.
“Oh, yes, ma’am,” said Mrs. Worthington to that lady, who had taken admiring notice of the beautiful silver “Holy Angels” medal that hung from Lucilla’s neck and rested against the dark gown. “Lucilla takes after Mr. Worthington as far as religion goes—kind of different though, for I must say it ain’t often he darkens the doors of a church.”
Mrs. Worthington always spoke of her husband present as of a husband absent. A peculiarity which he patiently endured, having no talent for repartee, that he had at one time thought of cultivating. But that time was long past.
The Duplans were the first to leave. Then Thérèse stood for a while on the veranda in the chill night air watching the others disappear across the lawn. Mr. and Mrs. Worthington and Lucilla had all shaken hands with her in saying good night. Fanny followed suit limply and grudgingly. Hosmer buttoned his coat impatiently and only lifted his hat to Thérèse as he helped his wife down the stairs.
Poor Fanny! she had already taken exception at that hand pressure which was to come and for which she watched, and now her whole small being was in a jealous turmoil—because there had been none.[Back to Table of Contents]
Thérèse felt that the room was growing oppressive. She had been sitting all morning alone before the fire, passing in review a great heap of household linen that lay piled beside her on the floor, alternating this occupation with occasional careful and tender offices bestowed upon a wee lamb that had been brought to her some hours before, and that now lay wounded and half lifeless upon a pile of coffee sacks before the blaze.
A fire was hardly needed, except to dispel the dampness that had even made its insistent way indoors, covering walls and furniture with a clammy film. Outside, the moisture was dripping from the glistening magnolia leaves and from the pointed polished leaves of the live-oaks, and the sun that had come out with intense suddenness was drawing it steaming from the shingled roof-tops.
When Thérèse, finally aware of the closeness of the room, opened the door and went out on the veranda, she saw a man, a stranger, riding towards the house and she stood to await his approach. He belonged to what is rather indiscriminately known in that section of the State as the “piney-woods” genus. A rawboned fellow, lank and long of leg; as ungroomed with his scraggy yellow hair and beard as the scrubby little Texas pony which he rode. His big soft felt hat had done unreasonable service as a head-piece; and the “store clothes” that hung upon his lean person could never in their remotest freshness have masqueraded under the character of “all wool.” He was in transit, as the bulging saddle-bags that hung across his horse indicated, as well as the rough brown blanket strapped behind him to the animal’s back. He rode up close to the rail of the veranda near which Thérèse stood, and nodded to her without offering to raise or touch his hat. She was prepared for the drawl with which he addressed her, and even guessed at what his first words would be.
“You’re Mrs. Laferm I ’low?”
Thérèse acknowledged her identity with a bow.
“My name’s Jimson; Rufe Jimson,” he went on, settling himself on the pony and folding his long knotty hands over the hickory switch that he carried in guise of whip.
“Do you wish to speak to me? won’t you dismount?” Thérèse asked.
“I hed my dinner down to the store,” he said taking her proposal as an invitation to dine, and turning to expectorate a mouth full of tobacco juice before continuing. “Capital sardines them air,” passing his hand over his mouth and beard in unctuous remembrance of the oily dainties.
“I’m just from Cornstalk, Texas, on mu way to Grant. An’ them roads as I’ve traversed isn’t what I’d call the best in a fair and square talk.”
His manner bore not the slightest mark of deference. He spoke to Thérèse as he might have spoken to one of her black servants, or as he would have addressed a princess of royal blood if fate had ever brought him into such unlikely contact, so clearly was the sense of human equality native to him.
Thérèse knew her animal, and waited patiently for his business to unfold itself.
“I reckon thar hain’t no ford hereabouts?” he asked, looking at her with a certain challenge.
“Oh, no; its even difficult crossing in the flat,” she answered.
“Wall, I hed calc’lated continooing on this near side. Reckon I could make it?” challenging her again to an answer.
“There’s no road on this side,” she said, turning away to fasten more securely the escaped branches of a rose-bush that twined about a column near which she stood.
Whether there were a road on this side or on the other side, or no road at all, appeared to be matter of equal indifference to Mr. Jimson, so far as his manner showed. He continued imperturbably “I ’lowed to stop here on a little matter o’ business. ’Tis some out o’ mu way; more’n I’d calc’lated. You couldn’t tell the ixact distance from here to Colfax, could you?”
Thérèse rather impatiently gave him the desired information, and begged that he would disclose his business with her.
“Wall,” he said, “onpleasant news ’ll keep most times tell you’re ready fur it. Thet’s my way o’ lookin’ at it.”
“Unpleasant news for me?” she inquired, startled from her indifference and listlessness.
“Rather onpleasant ez I take it. I hain’t a makin’ no misstatement to persume thet Grégor Sanchun was your nephew?”
“Yes, yes,” responded Thérèse, now thoroughly alarmed, and approaching as close to Mr. Rufe Jimson as the dividing rail would permit, “What of him, please?”
He turned again to discharge an accumulation of tobacco juice into a thick border of violets, and resumed.
“You see a hot-blooded young feller, ez wouldn’t take no more ’an give no odds, stranger or no stranger in the town, he couldn’t ixpect civil treatment; leastways not from Colonel Bill Klayton. Ez I said to Tozier—”
“Please tell me as quickly as possible what has happened,” demanded Thérèse with trembling eagerness; steadying herself with both hands on the railing before her.
“You see it all riz out o’ a little altercation ’twixt him and Colonel Klayton in the colonel’s store. Some says he’d ben drinkin’; others denies it. Howsomever they did hev words risin’ out o’ the colonel addressing your nephew under the title o’ ‘Frenchy’; which most takes ez a insufficient cause for rilin’.”
“He’s dead?” gasped Thérèse, looking at the dispassionate Texan with horrified eyes.
“Wall, yes,” an admission which he seemed not yet willing to leave unqualified; for he went on “It don’t do to alluz speak out open an’ above boards, leastways not thar in Cornstalk. But I’ll ’low to you, it’s my opinion the colonel acted hasty. It’s true ’nough, the young feller hed drawed, but ez I said to Tozier, thet’s no reason to persume it was his intention to use his gun.”
So Grégoire was dead. She understood it all now. The manner of his death was plain to her as if she had seen it, out there in some disorderly settlement. Killed by the hand of a stranger with whom perhaps the taking of a man’s life counted as little as it had once counted with his victim. This flood of sudden and painful intelligence staggered her, and leaning against the column she covered her eyes with both hands, for a while forgetting the presence of the man who had brought the sad tidings.
But he had never ceased his monotonous unwinding. “Thar hain’t no manner o’ doubt, marm,” he was saying, “thet he did hev the sympathy o’ the intire community—ez far ez they was free to express it—barrin’ a few. Fur he was a likely young chap, that warn’t no two opinions o’ that. Free with his money—alluz ready to set up fur a friend. Here’s a bit o’ writin’ thet’ll larn you more o’ the pertic’lars,” drawing a letter from his pocket, “writ by the Catholic priest, by name of O’Dowd. He ’lowed you mought want proyer meetin’s and sich.”
“Masses,” corrected Thérèse, holding out her hand for the letter. With the other hand she was wiping away the tears that had gathered thick in her eyes.
“Thar’s a couple more little tricks thet he sont,” continued Rufe Jimson, apparently dislocating his joints to reach the depths of his trouser pocket, from which he drew a battered pocket book wrapped around with an infinity of string. From the grimy folds of this receptacle he took a small paper parcel which he placed in her hand. It was partly unfastened, and as she opened it fully, the pent-up tears came blindingly—for before her lay a few curling rings of soft brown hair, and a pair of scapulars, one of which was pierced by a tell-tale bullet hole.
“Won’t you dismount?” she presently asked again, this time a little more kindly.
“No, marm,” said the Texan, jerking his hitherto patient pony by the bridle till it performed feats of which an impartial observer could scarcely have suspected it.
“Don’t reckon I could make Colfax before dark, do you?”
“Hardly,” she said, turning away, “I’m much obliged to you, Mr. Jimson, for having taken this trouble—if the flat is on the other side, you need only call for it.”
“Wall, good day, marm—I wish you luck,” he added, with a touch of gallantry which her tears and sweet feminine presence had inspired. Then turning, he loped his horse rapidly forward, leaning well back in the saddle and his elbows sawing the air.[Back to Table of Contents]
It was talked about and wept about at Place-du-Bois, that Grégoire should be dead. It seemed to them all so unbelievable. Yet, whatever hesitancy they had in accepting the fact of his death, was perforce removed by the convincing proof of Father O’Dowd’s letter.
None could remember but sweetness and kindness of him. Even Nathan, who had been one day felled to earth by a crowbar in Grégoire’s hand, had come himself to look at that deed as not altogether blamable in light of the provocation that had called it forth.
Fanny remembered those bouquets which had been daily offered to her forlornness at her arrival; and the conversations in which they had understood each other so well. The conviction that he was gone away beyond the possibility of knowing him further, moved her to tears. Hosmer, too, was grieved and shocked, without being able to view the event in the light of a calamity.
No one was left unmoved by the tidings which brought a lowering cloud even upon the brow of Aunt Belindy, to rest there the whole day. Deep were the mutterings she hurled at a fate that could have been so short-sighted as to remove from earth so bright an ornament as Grégoire. Her grief further spent much of itself upon the inoffensive Betsy, who, for some inscrutable reason was for twenty-four hours debarred entrance to the kitchen.
Thérèse seated at her desk, devoted a morning to the writing of letters, acquainting various members of the family with the unhappy intelligence. She wrote first to Madame Santien, living now her lazy life in Paris, with eyes closed to the duties that lay before her and heart choked up with an egoism that withered even the mother instincts. It was very difficult to withhold the reproach which she felt inclined to deal her; hard to refrain from upbraiding a selfishness which for a life-time had appeared to Thérèse as criminal.
It was a matter less nice, less difficult, to write to the brothers—one up on the Red River plantation living as best he could; the other idling on the New Orleans streets. But it was after all a short and simple story to tell. There was no lingering illness to describe; no moment even of consciousness in which harrowing last words were to be gathered and recorded. Only a hot senseless quarrel to be told about; the speeding of a bullet with very sure aim, and—quick death.
Of course, masses must be said. Father O’Dowd was properly instructed. Père Antoine in Centerville was addressed on the subject. The Bishop of Natchitoches, respectfully asked to perform this last sad office for the departed soul. And the good old priest and friend at the New Orleans Cathedral, was informed of her desires. Not that Thérèse held very strongly to this saying of masses for the dead; but it had been a custom holding for generations in the family and which she was not disposed to abandon now, even if she had thought of it.
The last letter was sent to Melicent. Thérèse made it purposely short and pointed, with a bare statement of facts—a dry, unemotional telling, that sounded heartless when she read it over; but she let it go.
Melicent was standing in her small, quaint sitting-room, her back to the fire, and her hands clasped behind her. How handsome was this Melicent! Pouting now, and with eyes half covered by the dark shaded lids, as they gazed moodily out at the wild snowflakes that were hurrying like crazy things against the warm window pane and meeting their end there. A loose tea-gown clung in long folds about her. A dull colored thing, save for the two broad bands of sapphire plush hanging straight before, from throat to toe. Melicent was plainly dejected; not troubled, nor sad, only dejected, and very much bored; a condition that had made her yawn several times while she looked at the falling snow.
She was philosophizing a little. Wondering if the world this morning were really the unpleasant place that it appeared, or if these conditions of unpleasantness lay not rather within her own mental vision; a train of thought that might be supposed to have furnished her some degree of entertainment had she continued in its pursuit. But she chose rather to dwell on her causes of unhappiness, and thus convince herself that that unhappiness was indeed outside of her and around her and not by any possibility to be avoided or circumvented. There lay now a letter in her desk from David, filled with admonitions if not reproof which she felt to be not entirely unjust, on the disagreeable subject of Expenses. Looking around the pretty room she conceded to herself that here had been temptations which she could not reasonably have been expected to withstand. The temptation to lodge herself in this charming little flat; furnish it after her own liking; and install that delightful little old poverty-stricken English woman as keeper of Proprieties, with her irresistible white starched caps and her altogether delightful way of inquiring daily after that “poor, dear, kind Mr. Hosmer.” It had all cost a little more than she had foreseen. But the worst of it, the very worst of it was, that she had already begun to ask herself if, for instance, it were not very irritating to see every day, that same branching palm, posing by the window, in that same yellow jardinière. If those draperies that confronted her were not becoming positively offensive in the monotony of their solemn folds. If the cuteness and quaintness of the poverty-stricken little English woman were not after all a source of entertainment that she would willingly forego on occasion. The answer to these questions was a sigh that ended in another yawn.
Then Melicent threw herself into a low easy chair by the table, took up her visiting book, and bending lazily with her arms resting on her knees, began to turn over its pages. The names which she saw there recalled to her mind an entertainment at which she had assisted on the previous afternoon. A progressive euchre party; and the remembrance of what she had there endured now filled her soul with horror.
She thought of those hundred cackling women—of course women are never cackling, it was Melicent’s exaggerated way of expressing herself—packed into those small overheated rooms, around those twenty-five little tables; and how by no chance had she once found herself with a congenial set. And how that Mrs. Van Wycke had cheated! It was plain to Melicent that she had taken advantage of having fat Miss Bloomdale for a partner, who went to euchre parties only to show her hands and rings. And little Mrs. Brinke playing against her. Little Mrs. Brinke! A woman who only the other day had read an original paper entitled: “An Hour with Hegel” before her philosophy class; who had published that dry mystical affair “Light on the Inscrutable in Dante.” How could such a one by any possibility be supposed to observe the disgusting action of Mrs. Van Wycke in throwing off on her partner’s trump and swooping down on the last trick with her right bower? Melicent would have thought it beneath her to more than look her contempt as Mrs. Van Wycke rose with a triumphant laugh to take her place at a higher table, dragging the plastic Bloomdale with her. But she did mutter to herself now, “nasty thief.”
“Johannah,” Melicent called to her maid who sat sewing in the next room.
“Yes, Miss.”
“You know Mrs. Van Wycke?”
“Mrs. Van Wycke, Miss? the lady with the pinted nose that I caught a-feeling of the curtains?”
“Yes, when she calls again I’m not at home. Do you understand? not at home.”
“Yes, Miss.”
It was gratifying enough to have thus summarily disposed of Mrs. Van Wycke; but it was a source of entertainment which was soon ended. Melicent continued to turn over the pages of her visiting book during which employment she came to the conclusion that these people whom she frequented were all very tiresome. All, all of them, except Miss Drake who had been absent in Europe for the past six months. Perhaps Mrs. Manning too, who was so seldom at home when Melicent called. Who when at home, usually rushed down with her bonnet on, breathless with “I can only spare you a moment, dear. It’s very sweet of you to come.” She was always just going to the “Home” where things had got into such a muddle whilst she was away for a week. Or it was that “Hospital” meeting where she thought certain members were secretly conniving at her removal from the presidency which she had held for so many years. She was always reading minutes at assemblages which Melicent knew nothing about; or introducing distinguished guests to Guild room meetings. Altogether Melicent saw very little of Mrs. Manning.
“Johannah, don’t you hear the bell?”
“Yes, Miss,” said Johannah, coming into the room and depositing a gown on which she had been working, on the back of a chair. “It’s that postman,” she said, as she fastened her needle to the bosom of her dress. “And such a one as he is, thinking that people must fly when he so much as touches the bell, and going off a writing of ‘no answer to bell,’ and me with my hand on the very door-knob.”
“I notice that always happens when I’m out, Johannah; he’s ringing again.”
It was Thérèse’s letter, and as Melicent turned it about and looked critically at the neatly written address, it was not without a hope that the reading of it might furnish her a moment’s diversion. She did not faint. The letter did not “fall from her nerveless clasp.” She rather held it very steadily. But she grew a shade paler and looked long into the fire. When she had read it three times she folded it slowly and carefully and locked it away in her desk.
“Johannah.”
“Yes, Miss.”
“Put that gown away; I shan’t need it.”
“Yes, Miss; and all the beautiful passmantry that you bought?”
“It makes no difference, I shan’t use it. What’s become of that black camel’s-hair that Mrs. Gauche spoiled so last winter?”
“It’s laid away, Miss, the same in the cedar chest as the day it came home from her hands and no more fit, that I’d be a shame meself and no claims to a dress-maker. And there’s many a lady that she never would have seen a cent, let alone making herself pay for the spiling of it.”
“Well, well, Johannah, never mind. Get it out, we’ll see what can be done with it. I’ve had some painful news, and I shall wear mourning for a long, long time.”
“Oh, Miss, it’s not Mr. David! nor yet one of those sweet relations in Utica? leastways not I hope that beautiful Miss Gertrude, with such hair as I never see for the goldness of it and not dyed, except me cousin that’s a nun, that her mother actually cried when it was cut off?”
“No, Johannah; only a very dear friend.”
There were a few social engagements to be cancelled; and regrets to be sent out, which she attended to immediately. Then she turned again to look long into the fire. That crime for which she had scorned him, was wiped out now by expiation. For a long time—how long she could not yet determine—she would wrap herself in garb of mourning and move about in sorrowing—giving evasive answer to the curious who questioned her. Now might she live again through those summer months with Grégoire—those golden afternoons in the pine woods—whose aroma even now came back to her. She might look again into his loving brown eyes; feel beneath her touch the softness of his curls. She recalled a day when he had said, “Neva to see you—my God!” and how he had trembled. She recalled—strangely enough and for the first time—that one kiss, and a little tremor brought the hot color to her cheek.
Was she in love with Grégoire now that he was dead? Perhaps. At all events, for the next month, Melicent would not be bored.[Back to Table of Contents]
Who of us has not known the presence of Misery? Perhaps as those fortunate ones whom he has but touched as he passed them by. It may be that we see but a promise of him as we look into the prophetic faces of children; into the eyes of those we love, and the awfulness of life’s possibilities presses into our souls. Do we fly him? hearing him gain upon us panting close at our heels, till we turn from the desperation of uncertainty to grapple with him? In close scuffle we may vanquish him. Fleeing, we may elude him. But what if he creep into the sanctuary of our lives, with his subtle omnipresence, that we do not see in all its horror till we are disarmed; thrusting the burden of his companionship upon us to the end! However we turn he is there. However we shrink he is there. However we come or go, or sleep or wake he is before us. Till the keen sense grows dull with apathy at looking on him, and he becomes like the familiar presence of sin.
Into such callousness had Hosmer fallen. He had ceased to bruise his soul in restless endeavor of resistance. When the awful presence bore too closely upon him, he would close his eyes and brave himself to endurance. Yet Fate might have dealt him worse things.
But a man’s misery is after all his own, to make of it what he will or what he can. And shall we be fools, wanting to lighten it with our platitudes?
My friend, your trouble I know weighs. That you should be driven by earthly needs to drag the pinioned spirit of your days through rut and mire. But think of the millions who are doing the like. Or is it your boy, that part of your own self and that other dearer self, who is walking in evil ways? Why, I know a man whose son was hanged the other day; hanged on the gibbet; think of it. If you be quivering while the surgeon cuts away that right arm, remember the poor devil in the hospital yesterday who had both his sawed off.
Oh, have done, with your mutilated men and your sons on gibbets! What are they to me? My hurt is greater than all, because it is my own. If it be only that day after day I must look with warm entreaty into eyes that are cold. Let it be but that peculiar trick of feature which I have come to hate, seen each morning across the breakfast table. That recurrent pin-prick: it hurts. The blow that lays the heart in twain: it kills. Let be mine which will; it is the one that counts.
If Misery kill a man, that ends it. But Misery seldom deals so summarily with his victims. And while they are spared to earth, we find them usually sustaining life after the accepted fashion.
Hosmer was seated at table, having finished his breakfast. He had also finished glancing over the contents of a small memorandum book, which he replaced in his pocket. He then looked at his wife sitting opposite him, but turned rather hastily to gaze with a certain entreaty into the big kind eyes of the great shaggy dog who stood—the shameless beggar—at his side.
“I knew there was something wrong,” he said abruptly, with his eyes still fixed on the dog, and his fingers thrust into the animal’s matted wool, “Where’s the mail this morning?”
“I don’t know if that stupid boy’s gone for it or not. I told him. You can’t depend on any one in a place like this.”
Fanny had scarcely touched the breakfast before her, and now pushed aside her cup still half filled with coffee.
“Why, how’s that? Sampson seems to do the right thing.”
“Yes, Sampson; but he ain’t here. That boy of Minervy’s been doing his work all morning.”
Minervy’s boy was even now making his appearance, carrying a good sized bundle of papers and letters, with which he walked boldly up to Hosmer, plainly impressed with the importance of this new rôle.
“Well, colonel; so you’ve taken Sampson’s place?” Hosmer observed, receiving the mail from the boy’s little black paws.
“My name’s Major, suh. Maje; dats my name. I ain’t tuck Sampson’s place: no, suh.”
“Oh, he’s having a day off—” Hosmer went on, smiling quizzingly at the dapper little darkey, and handing him a red apple from the dish of fruit standing in the center of the table. Maje received it with a very unmilitary bob of acknowledgment.
“He yonda home ’cross de riva, suh. He ben too late fu’ kotch de flat’s mornin’ An’ he holla an’ holla. He know dey warn’t gwine cross dat flat ’gin jis’ fu’ Sampson.”
Hosmer had commenced to open his letters. Fanny with her elbows on the table, asked the boy—with a certain uneasiness in her voice—“Ain’t he coming at all to-day? Don’t he know all the work he’s got to do? His mother ought to make him.”
“Don’t reckon. Dat away Sampson: he git mad he stay mad,” with which assurance Maje vanished through the rear door, towards the region of the kitchen, to seek more substantial condiments than the apple which he still clutched firmly.
One of the letters was for Fanny, which her husband handed her. When he had finished reading his own, he seemed disposed to linger, for he took from the fruit dish the mate to the red apple he had given Maje, and commenced to peel it with his clasp knife.
“What has our friend Belle Worthington to say for herself?” he inquired good humoredly. “How does she get on with those Creoles down there?”
“You know as well as I do, Belle Worthington ain’t going to mix with Creoles. She can’t talk French if she wanted to. She says Muddy-Graw don’t begin to compare with the Veiled Prophets. It’s just what I thought—with their ‘Muddy-Graw,’ ” Fanny added, contemptuously.
“Coming from such high authority, we’ll consider that verdict a final clincher,” Hosmer laughed a little provokingly.
Fanny was looking again through the several sheets of Belle Worthington’s letter. “She says if I’ll agree to go back with her, she’ll pass this way again.”
“Well, why don’t you? A little change wouldn’t hurt.”
“ ’Tain’t because I want to stay here, Lord knows. A God-forsaken place like this. I guess you’d be glad enough,” she added, with voice shaking a little at her own boldness.
He closed his knife, placed it in his pocket, and looked at his wife, completely puzzled.
The power of speech had come to her, for she went on, in an unnatural tone, however, and fumbling nervously with the dishes before her. “I’m fool enough about some things, but I ain’t quite such a fool as that.”
“What are you talking about, Fanny?”
“That woman wouldn’t ask anything better than for me to go to St. Louis.”
Hosmer was utterly amazed. He leaned his arms on the table, clasping his hands together and looked at his wife.
“That woman? Belle Worthington? Whatdoyou mean, any way?”
“I don’t mean Belle Worthington,” she said excitedly, with two deep red spots in her cheeks. “I’m talking about Mrs. Laferm.”
He thrust his hand into his pockets and leaned back in his chair. No amazement now, but very pale, and with terrible concentration of glance.
“Well, then, don’t talk about Mrs. Lafirme,” he said very slowly, not taking his eyes from her face.
“I will talk about her, too. She ain’t worth talking about,” she blurted incoherently. “It’s time for somebody to talk about a woman passing herself off for a saint, and trying to take other women’s husbands—”
“Shut up!” cried Hosmer maddened with sudden fury, and rising violently from his chair.
“I won’t shut up,” Fanny cried excitedly back at him; rising also. “And what’s more I won’t stay here and have you making love under my very eyes to a woman that’s no better than she ought to be.”
She meant to say more, but Hosmer grasped her arm with such a grasp, that had it been her throat she would never have spoken more. The other hand went to his pocket, with fingers clutching the clasp knife there.
“By heaven—I’ll—kill you!” every word weighted with murder, panted close in her terrified face. What she would have uttered died upon her pale lips, when her frightened eyes beheld the usually calm face of her husband distorted by a passion of which she had not dreamed.
“David,” she faltered, “let go my arm.”
Her voice broke the spell that held him, and brought him again to his senses. His fingers slowly relaxed their tense hold. A sigh that was something between a moan and a gasp came with his deliverance and shook him. All the horror now was in his own face as he seized his hat and hurried speechless away.
Fanny remained for a little while dazed. Hers was not the fine nature that would stay cruelly stunned after such a scene. Her immediate terror being past, the strongest resultant emotion was one of self-satisfaction at having spoken out her mind.
But there was a stronger feeling yet, moving and possessing her; crowding out every other. A pressing want that only Sampson’s coming would relieve, and which bade fair to drive her to any extremity if it were not appeased.[Back to Table of Contents]
Hosmer passed the day with a great pain at his heart. His hasty and violent passion of the morning had added another weight for his spirit to drag about, and which he could not cast off. No feeling of resentment remained with him; only wonder at his wife’s misshapen knowledge and keen self-rebuke of his own momentary forgetfulness. Even knowing Fanny as he did, he could not rid himself of the haunting dread of having wounded her nature cruelly. He felt much as a man who in a moment of anger inflicts an irreparable hurt upon some small, weak, irresponsible creature, and must bear regret for his madness. The only reparation that lay within his power—true, one that seemed inadequate—was an open and manly apology and confession of wrong. He would feel better when it was made. He would perhaps find relief in discovering that the wound he had inflicted was not so deep—so dangerous as he feared.
With such end in view he came home early in the afternoon. His wife was not there. The house was deserted. Even the servants had disappeared. It took but a moment for him to search the various rooms and find them one after the other, unoccupied. He went out on the porch and looked around. The raw air chilled him. The wind was blowing violently, bringing dashes of rain along with it from massed clouds that hung leaden between sky and earth. Could she have gone over to the house? It was unlikely, for he knew her to have avoided Mrs. Lafirme of late, with a persistence that had puzzled him to seek its cause, which had only fully revealed itself in the morning Yet, where else could she be? An undefined terror was laying hold of him. His sensitive nature, in exaggerating its own heartlessness, was blindly overestimating the delicacy of hers. To what may he not have driven her? What hitherto untouched chord may he not have started into painful quivering? Was it for him to gauge the endurance of a woman’s spirit? Fanny was not now the wife whom he hated; his own act of the morning had changed her into the human being, the weak creature whom he had wronged.
In quitting the house she must have gone unprepared for the inclement weather, for there hung her heavy wrap in its accustomed place, with her umbrella beside it. He seized both and buttoning his own great coat about him, hurried away and over to Mrs. Lafirme’s. He found that lady in the sitting-room.
“Isn’t Fanny here?” he asked abruptly, with no word of greeting.
“No,” she answered looking up at him, and seeing the evident uneasiness in his face. “Isn’t she at home? Is anything wrong?”
“Oh, everything is wrong,” he returned desperately, “But the immediate wrong is that she has disappeared—I must find her.”
Thérèse arose at once and called to Betsy who was occupied on the front veranda.
“Yas, um,” the girl answered to her mistress’ enquiry. “I seed ma’am Hosma goin’ to’ads de riva good hour ’go. She mus’ crost w’en Nathan tuck dat load ova. I yain’t seed ’er comin’ back yit.”
Hosmer left the house hastily, hardly reassured by Betsy’s information. Thérèse’s glance—speculating and uneasy—followed his hurrying figure till it disappeared from sight.
The crossing was an affair of extreme difficulty, and which Nathan was reluctant to undertake until he should have gathered a “load” that would justify him in making it. In his estimation, Hosmer did not meet such requirement, even taken in company with the solitary individual who had been sitting on his horse with Egyptian patience for long unheeded moments, the rain beating down upon his back, while he waited the ferryman’s pleasure. But Nathan’s determination was not proof against the substantial inducements which Hosmer held out to him; and soon they were launched, all hands assisting in the toilsome passage.
The water, in rising to an unaccustomed height, had taken on an added and tremendous swiftness. The red turbid stream was eddying and bulging and hurrying with terrific swiftness between its shallow banks, striking with an immensity of power against the projection of land on which stood Marie Louise’s cabin, and rebounding in great circling waves that spread and lost themselves in the seething turmoil. The cable used in crossing the unwieldly flat had long been submerged and the posts which held it wrenched from their fastenings. The three men, each with his long heavy oar in hand began to pull up stream, using a force that brought the swelling veins like iron tracings upon their foreheads where the sweat had gathered as if the day were midsummer. They made their toilsome way by slow inches, that finally landed them breathless and exhausted on the opposite side.
What could have been the inducement to call Fanny out on such a day and such a venture? The answer came only too readily from Hosmer’s reproaching conscience. And now, where to seek her? There was nothing to guide him; to indicate the course she might have taken. The rain was falling heavily and in gusts and through it he looked about at the small cabins standing dreary in their dismantled fields. Marie Louise’s was the nearest at hand and towards it he directed his steps.
The big good-natured negress had seen his approach from the window, for she opened the door to him before he had time to knock, and entering he saw Fanny seated before the fire holding a pair of very wet smoking feet to dry. His first sensation was one of relief at finding her safe and housed. His next, one of uncertainty as to the kind and degree of resentment which he felt confident must now show itself. But this last was soon dispelled, for turning, she greeted him with a laugh. He would have rather a blow. That laugh said so many things—too many things. True, it removed the dread which had been haunting him all day, but it shattered what seemed to have been now his last illusion regarding this woman. That unsounded chord which he feared he had touched was after all but one in harmony with the rest of her common nature. He saw too at a glance that her dominant passion had been leading and now controlled her. And by one of those rapid trains of thought in which odd and detached fancies, facts, impressions and observations form themselves into an orderly sequence leading to a final conviction—all was made plain to him that before had puzzled him. She need not have told him her reason for crossing the river, he knew it. He dismissed at once the attitude with which he had thought to approach her. Here was no forgiveness to be asked of dulled senses. No bending in expiation of faults committed. He was here as master.
“Fanny, what does this mean?” he asked in cold anger; with no heat now, no passion.
“Yaas, me tell madame, she goin’ fur ketch cole si she don’ mine out. Dat not fur play dat kine wedder, no. Teck chair, M’sieur; dry you’se’f leet beet. Me mek you one cup coffee.”
Hosmer declined the good Marie Louise’s kind proffer of coffee, but he seated himself and waited for Fanny to speak.
“You know if you want a thing done in this place, you’ve got to do it yourself. I’ve heard you say it myself, time and time again about those people at the mill,” she said.
“Could it have been so urgent as to call you out on a day like this, and with such a perilous crossing? Couldn’t you have found some one else to come for you?”
“Who? I’d like to know. Just tell me who? It’s nothing to you if we’re without servants, but I’m not going to stand it. I ain’t going to let Sampsonact like that without knowing what he means,” said Fanny sharply.
“Dat Sampson, he one leet dev’,” proffered Marie Louise, with laudable design of shifting blame upon the easy shoulders of Sampson, in event of the domestic jar which she anticipated. “No use try do nuttin’ ’id Sampson, M’sieur.”
“I had to know something, one way or the other,” Fanny said in a tone which carried apology, rather by courtesy than by what she considered due.
Hosmer walked to the window where he looked out upon the dreary, desolate scene, little calculated to cheer him. The river was just below; and from this window he could gaze down upon the rushing current as it swept around the bend further up and came striking against this projection with a force all its own. The rain was falling still; steadily, blindingly, with wild clatter against the shingled roof so close above their heads. It coursed in little swift rivulets down the furrows of the almost perpendicular banks. It mingled in a demon dance with the dull, red water. There was something inviting to Hosmer in the scene. He wanted to be outside there making a part of it. He wanted to feel that rain and wind beating upon him. Within, it was stifling, maddening; with his wife’s presence there, charging the room with an atmosphere of hate that was possessing him and beginning to course through his veins as it had never done before.
“Do you want to go home?” he asked bluntly, turning half around.
“You must be crazy,” she replied, with a slow, upward glance out the window, then down at her feet that were still poised on the low stool that Marie Louise had placed for her.
“You’d better come.” He could not have said what moved him, unless it were recklessness and defiance.
“I guess you’re dreaming, or something, David. You go on home if you want. Nobody asked you to come after me any way. I’m able to take care of myself, I guess. Ain’t you going to take the umbrella?” she added, seeing him start for the door empty handed.
“Oh, it doesn’t matter about the rain,” he answered without a look back as he went out and slammed the door after him.
“M’sieur look lak he not please,” said Marie Louise, with plain regret at the turn of affairs. “You see he no lak you go out in dat kine wedder, me know dat.”
“Oh, bother,” was Fanny’s careless reply. “This suits me well enough; I don’t care how long it lasts.”
She was in Marie Louise’s big rocker, balancing comfortably back and forth with a swing that had become automatic. She felt “good,” as she would have termed it herself; her visit to Sampson’s hut having not been without results tending to that condition. The warmth of the room was very agreeable in contrast to the bleakness of out-doors. She felt free and moved to exercise a looseness of tongue with the amiable old negress which was not common with her. The occurrences of the morning were gradually withdrawing themselves into a distant perspective that left her in the attitude of a spectator rather than that of an actor. And she laughed and talked with Marie Louise, and rocked, and rocked herself on into drowsiness.
Hosmer had no intention of returning home without his wife. He only wanted to be out under the sky; he wanted to breathe, to use his muscles again. He would go and help cross the flat if need be; an occupation that promised him relief in physical effort. He joined Nathan, whom he found standing under a big live-oak, disputing with an old colored woman who wanted to cross to get back to her family before supper time.
“You didn’ have no call to come ova in de fus’ place,” he was saying to her, “you womens is alluz runnin’ back’ards and for’ards like skeard rabbit in de co’n fiel’.”
“I don’ stan’ no sich talk is dat f’om you. Ef you kiant tin’ to yo’ business o’ totin’ folks w’en dey wants, you betta quit. You done cheat Mose out o’ de job, anyways; we all knows dat.”
“Mine out, woman, you gwine git hu’t. Jis’ le’me see Mose han’le dat ’ar flat onct: Jis’ le’me. He lan’ you down to de Mouf ’fo’ you knows it.”
“Let me tell you, Nathan,” said Hosmer, looking at his watch, “say you wait a quarter of an hour and if no one else comes, we’ll cross Aunt Agnes anyway.”
“Dat ’nudda t’ing ef you wants to go back, suh.”
Aunt Agnes was grumbling now at Hosmer’s proposal that promised to keep her another quarter of an hour from her expectant family, when a big lumbering creaking wagon drove up, with its load of baled cotton all covered with tarpaulins.
“Dah!” exclaimed Nathan at sight of the wagon, “ef I’d ’a listened to yo’ jawin’—what?”
“Ef you’d listen to me, you’d ’tin’ to yo’ business betta ’an you does,” replied Aunt Agnes, raising a very battered umbrella over her grotesquely apparelled figure, as she stepped from under the shelter of the tree to take her place in the flat.
But she still met with obstacles, for the wagon must needs go first. When it had rolled heavily into place with much loud and needless swearing on the part of the driver who, being a white man, considered Hosmer’s presence no hindrance, they let go the chain, and once again pulled out. The crossing was even more difficult now, owing to the extra weight of the wagon.
“I guess you earn your money, Nathan,” said Hosmer bending and quivering with the efforts he put forth.
“Yas, suh, I does; an’ dis job’s wuf mo’ ’an I gits fu’ it.”
“All de same you done lef’ off wurking crap sence you start it,” mumbled Aunt Agnes.
“You gwine git hu’t, woman; I done tole you dat; don’ wan’ listen,” returned Nathan with halting breath.
“Who gwine hu’t me?”
Whether from tardy gallantry or from pre-occupation with his arduous work, Nathan offered no reply to this challenge, and his silence left Aunt Agnes in possession of the field.
They were in full mid-stream. Hosmer and the teamster were in the fore end of the boat; Nathan in the rear, and Aunt Agnes standing in the center between the wagon and the protecting railing, against which she leaned her clasped hands that still upheld the semblance of umbrella.
The ill-mated horses stood motionless, letting fall their dejected heads with apathetic droop. The rain was dripping from their glistening coats, and making a great patter as it fell upon the tarpaulins covering the cotton bales.
Suddenly came an exclamation: “Gret God!” from Aunt Agnes, so genuine in its amazement and dismay, that the three men with one accord looked quickly up at her, then at the point on which her terrified gaze was fixed. Almost on the instant of the woman’s cry, was heard a shrill, piercing, feminine scream.
What they saw was the section of land on which stood Marie Louise’s cabin, undermined—broken away from the main body and gradually gliding into the water. It must have sunk with a first abrupt wrench, for the brick chimney was shaken from its foundation, the smoke issuing in dense clouds from its shattered sides, the house toppling and the roof caving. For a moment Hosmer lost his senses. He could but look, as if at some awful apparition that must soon pass from sight and leave him again in possession of his reason. The leaning house was half submerged when Fanny appeared at the door, like a figure in a dream; seeming a natural part of the awfulness of it. He only gazed on. The two negroes uttered loud lamentations.
“Pull with the current!” cried the teamster, first to regain his presence of mind. It had needed but this, to awaken Hosmer to the situation.
“Leave off,” he cried at Nathan, who was wringing his hands. “Take hold that oar or I’ll throw you overboard.” The trembling ashen negro obeyed on the instant.
“Hold fast—for God’s sake—hold fast!” he shouted to Fanny, who was clinging with swaying figure to the door post. Of Marie Louise there was no sign.
The caved bank now remained fixed; but Hosmer knew that at any instant it was liable to disappear before his riveted gaze.
How heavy the flat was! And the horses had caught the contagion of terror and were plunging madly.
“Whip those horses and their load into the river,” called Hosmer, “we’ve got to lighten at any price.”
“Them horses an’ cotton’s worth money,” interposed the alarmed teamster.
“Force them into the river, I say; I’ll pay you twice their value.”
“You ’low to pay fur the cotton, too?”
“Into the river with them or I’ll brain you!” he cried, maddened at the weight and delay that were holding them back.
The frightened animals seemed to ask nothing more than to plunge into the troubled water; dragging their load with them.
They were speeding rapidly towards the scene of catastrophe; but to Hosmer they crawled—the moments were hours. “Hold on! hold fast!” he called again and again to his wife. But even as he cried out, the detached section of earth swayed, lurched to one side—plunged to the other, and the whole mass was submerged—leaving the water above it in wild agitation.
A cry of horror went up from the spectators—all but Hosmer. He cast aside his oar—threw off his coat and hat; worked an instant without avail at his wet clinging boots, and with a leap was in the water, swimming towards the spot where the cabin had gone down. The current bore him on without much effort of his own. The flat was close up with him; but he could think of it no longer as a means of rescue. Detached pieces of timber from the ruined house were beginning to rise to the surface. Then something floating softly on the water: a woman’s dress, but too far for him to reach it.
When Fanny appeared again, Hosmer was close beside her. His left arm was quickly thrown about her. She was insensible, and he remembered that it was best so, for had she been in possession of her reason, she might have struggled and impeded his movements. He held her fast—close to him and turned to regain the shore. Another horrified shriek went up from the occupants of the flat-boat not far away, and Hosmer knew no more—for a great plunging beam struck him full upon the forehead.
When consciousness came back to him, he found that he lay extended in the flat, which was fastened to the shore. The confused sound of many voices mingled with a ringing din that filled his ears. A warm stream was trickling down over his cheek. Another body lay beside him. Now they were lifting him. Thérèse’s face was somewhere—very near, he saw it dimly and that it was white—and he fell again into insensibility.[Back to Table of Contents]
The air was filled with the spring and all its promises. Full with the sound of it, the smell of it, the deliciousness of it. Such sweet air; soft and strong, like the touch of a brave woman’s hand. The air of an early March day in New Orleans. It was folly to shut it out from nook or cranny. Worse than folly the lady thought who was making futile endeavors to open the car window near which she sat. Her face had grown pink with the effort. She had bit firmly into her red nether lip, making it all the redder; and then sat down from the unaccomplished feat to look ruefully at the smirched finger tips of her Parisian gloves. This flavor of Paris was well about her; in the folds of her graceful wrap that set to her fine shoulders. It was plainly a part of the little black velvet toque that rested on her blonde hair. Even the umbrella and one small valise which she had just laid on the seat opposite her, had Paris written plain upon them.
These were impressions which the little grey-garbed conventional figure, some seats removed, had been noting since the striking lady had entered the car. Points likely to have escaped a man, who—unless a minutely observant one,—would only have seen that she was handsome and worthy of an admiration that he might easily fancy rising to devotion.
Beside herself and the little grey-garbed figure was an interesting family group at the far end of the car. A husband, but doubly a father, surrounded and sat upon by a small band of offspring. A wife—presumably a mother—absorbed with the view of the outside world and the elaborate gold chain that hung around her neck.
The presence of a large valise, an overcoat, a cane and an umbrella disposed on another seat, bespoke a further occupant, likely to be at present in the smoking car.
The train pushed out from the depôt. The porter finally made tardy haste to the assistance of the lady who had been attempting to open the window, and when the fresh morning air came blowing in upon her Thérèse leaned back in her seat with a sigh of content.
There was a full day’s journey before her. She would not reach Place-du-Bois before dark, but she did not shrink from those hours that were to be passed alone. She rather welcomed the quiet of them after a visit to New Orleans full of pleasant disturbances. She was eager to be home again. She loved Place-du-Bois with a love that was real; that had grown deep since it was the one place in the world which she could connect with the presence of David Hosmer. She had often wondered—indeed was wondering now—if the memory of those happenings to which he belonged would ever grow strange and far away to her. It was a trick of memory with which she indulged herself on occasion, this one of retrospection. Beginning with that June day when she had sat in the hall and watched the course of a white sunshade over the tops of the bending corn.
Such idle thoughts they were with their mingling of bitter and sweet—leading nowhere. But she clung to them and held to them as if to a refuge which she might again and again return to.
The picture of that one terrible day of Fanny’s death, stood out in sharp prominent lines; a touch of the old agony always coming back as she remembered how she had believed Hosmer dead too—lying so pale and bleeding before her. Then the parting which had held not so much of sorrow as of awe and bewilderment in it: when sick, wounded and broken he had gone away at once with the dead body of his wife; when the two had clasped hands without words that dared be uttered.
But that was a year ago. And Thérèse thought many things might come about in a year. Anyhow, might not such length of time be hoped to rub the edge off a pain that was not by its nature lasting?
That time of acute trouble seemed to have thrown Hosmer back upon his old diffidence. The letter he wrote her after a painful illness which prostrated him on his arrival in St. Louis, was stiff and formal, as men’s letters are apt to be, though it had breathed an untold story of loyalty which she had felt at the time, and still cherished. Other letters—a few—had gone back and forth between them, till Hosmer had gone away to the sea-shore with Melicent, to recuperate, and June coming, Thérèse had sailed from New Orleans for Paris, whither she had passed six months.
Things had not gone well at Place-du-Bois during her absence, the impecunious old kinsman whom she had left in charge, having a decided preference for hunting theGros-Becand catching trout in the lake to supervising the methods of a troublesome body of blacks. So Thérèse had had much to engage her thoughts from the morbid channel into which those of a more idle woman might have drifted.
She went occasionally enough to the mill. There at least she was always sure to hear Hosmer’s name—and what a charm the sound of it had for her. And what a delight it was to her eyes when she caught sight of an envelope lying somewhere on desk or table of the office, addressed in his handwriting. That was a weakness which she could not pardon herself; but which staid with her, seeing that the same trifling cause never failed to awaken the same unmeasured delight. She had even trumped up an excuse one day for carrying off one of Hosmer’s business letters—indeed of the dryest in substance, and which, when half-way home, she had torn into the smallest bits and scattered to the winds, so overcome was she by a sense of her own absurdity.
Thérèse had undergone the ordeal of having her ticket scrutinized, commented upon and properly punched by the suave conductor. The little conventional figure had given over the contemplation of Parisian styles and betaken herself to the absorbing pages of a novel which she read through smoked glasses. The husband and father had peeled and distributed his second outlay of bananas amongst his family. It was at this moment that Thérèse, looking towards the door, saw Hosmer enter the car.
She must have felt his presence somewhere near; his being there and coming towards her was so much a part of her thoughts. She held out her hand to him and made place beside her, as if he had left her but a half hour before. All the astonishment was his. But he pressed her hand and took the seat she offered him.
“You knew I was on the train?” he asked.
“Oh, no, how should I?”
Then naturally followed question and answer.
Yes, he was going to Place-du-Bois.
No, the mill did not require his presence; it had been very well managed during his absence.
Yes, she had been to New Orleans. Had had a very agreeable visit. Beautiful weather for city dwellers. But such dryness. So disastrous to the planters.
Yes—quite likely there would be rain next month: there usually was in April. But indeed there was need of more than April showers for that stiff land—that strip along the bayou, if he remembered? Oh, he remembered quite well, but for all that he did not know what she was talking about. She did not know herself. Then they grew silent; not from any feeling of the absurdity of such speech between them, for each had but listened to the other’s voice. They became silently absorbed by the consciousness of each other’s nearness. She was looking at his hand that rested on his knee, and thinking it fuller than she remembered it before. She was aware of some change in him which she had not the opportunity to define; but this firmness and fullness of the hand was part of it. She looked up into his face then, to find the same change there, together with a new content. But what she noted beside was the dull scar on his forehead, coming out like a red letter when his eyes looked into her own. The sight of it was like a hurt. She had forgotten it might be there, telling its story of pain through the rest of his life.
“Thérèse,” Hosmer said finally, “won’t you look at me?”
She was looking from the window. She did not turn her head, but her hand went out and met his that was on the seat close beside her. He held it firmly; but soon with an impatient movement drew down the loose wristlet of her glove and clasped his fingers around her warm wrist.
“Thérèse,” he said again; but more unsteadily, “look at me.”
“Not here,” she answered him, “not now, I mean.” And presently she drew her hand away from him and held it for a moment pressed firmly over her eyes. Then she looked at him with brave loving glance.
“It’s been so long,” she said, with the suspicion of a sigh.
“Too long,” he returned, “I couldn’t have borne it but for you—the thought of you always present with me; helping me to take myself out of the past. That was why I waited—till I could come to you free. Have you an idea, I wonder, how you have been a promise, and can be the fulfillment of every good that life may give to a man?”
“No, I don’t know,” she said a little hopelessly, taking his hand again, “I have seen myself at fault in following what seemed the only right. I feel as if there were no way to turn for the truth. Old supports appear to be giving way beneath me. They were so secure before. It commenced, you remember—oh, you know when it must have begun. But do you think, David, that it’s right we should find our happiness out of that past of pain and sin and trouble?”
“Thérèse,” said Hosmer firmly, “the truth in its entirety isn’t given to man to know—such knowledge, no doubt, would be beyond human endurance. But we make a step towards it, when we learn that there is rottenness and evil in the world, masquerading as right and morality—when we learn to know the living spirit from the dead letter. I have not cared to stop in this struggle of life to question. You, perhaps, wouldn’t dare to alone. Together, dear one, we will work it out. Be sure there is a way—we may not find it in the end, but we will at least have tried.”[Back to Table of Contents]