Some women passed by, laughing coarsely. He noticed how they laughed and tossed their heads. A mockingbird was singing in a cage which hung from a window above his head. He had not heard it before.
Just beneath the window was the entrance to a barroom. Tonie turned and plunged through its swinging doors. He asked the bartender for whisky. The man thought he was already drunk, but pushed the bottle toward him nevertheless. Tonie poured a great quantity of the fiery liquor into a glass and swallowed it at a draught. The rest of the day he spent among the fishermen and Barataria oystermen; and that night he slept soundly and peacefully until morning.
He did not know why it was so; he could not understand. But from that day he felt that he began to live again, to be once more a part of the moving world about him. He would ask himself over and over again why it was so, and stay bewildered before this truth that he could not answer or explain, and which he began to accept as a holy mystery.
One day in early spring Tonie sat with his mother upon a piece of drift-wood close to the sea.
He had returned that day to the Chênière Caminada. At first she thought he was like his former self again, for all his old strength and courage had returned. But she found that there was a new brightness in his face which had not been there before. It made her think of the Holy Ghost descending and bringing some kind of light to a man.
She knew that Mademoiselle Duvigné was dead, and all along had feared that this knowledge would be the death of Tonie. When she saw him come back to her like a new being, at once she dreaded that he did not know. All day the doubt had been fretting her, and she could bear the uncertainty no longer.
“You know, Tonie—that young lady whom you cared for—well, some one read it to me in the papers—she died last winter.” She had tried to speak as cautiously as she could.
“Yes, I know she is dead. I am glad.”
It was the first time he had said this in words, and it made his heart beat quicker.
Ma’me Antoine shuddered and drew aside from him. To her it was somehow like murder to say such a thing.
“What do you mean? Why are you glad?” she demanded, indignantly.
Tonie was sitting with his elbows on his knees. He wanted to answer his mother, but it would take time; he would have to think. He looked out across the water that glistened gem-like with the sun upon it, but there was nothing there to open his thought. He looked down into his open palm and began to pick at the callous flesh that was hard as a horse’s hoof. Whilst he did this his ideas began to gather and take form.
“You see, while she lived I could never hope for anything,” he began, slowly feeling his way. “Despair was the only thing for me. There were always men about her. She walked and sang and danced with them. I knew it all the time, even when I didn’t see her. But I saw her often enough. I knew that some day one of them would please her and she would give herself to him—she would marry him. That thought haunted me like an evil spirit.”
Tonie passed his hand across his forehead as if to sweep away anything of the horror that might have remained there.
“It kept me awake at night,” he went on. “But that was not so bad; the worst torture was to sleep, for then I would dream that it was all true.
“Oh, I could see her married to one of them—his wife—coming year after year to Grand Isle and bringing her little children with her! I can’t tell you all that I saw—all that was driving me mad! But now”—and Tonie clasped his hands together and smiled as he looked again across the water—“she is where she belongs; there is no difference up there; the curé has often told us there is no difference between men. It is with the soul that we approach each other there. Then she will know who has loved her best. That is why I am so contented. Who knows what may happen up there?”
Ma’me Antoine could not answer. She only took her son’s big, rough hand and pressed it against her.
“And now, ma mère,” he exclaimed, cheerfully, rising, “I shall go light the fire for your bread; it is a long time since I have done anything for you,” and he stooped and pressed a warm kiss on her withered old cheek.
With misty eyes she watched him walk away in the direction of the big brick oven that stood open-mouthed under the lemon trees.
Odalie Misses Mass
ODALIE sprang down from the mulecart, 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 s
hrill 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.
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, madam
e. In a year from now you will come an’ thank me for having secu’ you that bargain in a poult-de-soie1 . . . . . 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,2 it is not to be treated like a human being of every day; it needs des petits soins;3 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 soupçon4 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.