Short Fiction, Kate Chopin [sci fi books to read txt] 📗

height to his undersized, middle-aged figure, as did the skullcap which rested securely back on his head. He saw only the young man at first, who rose at his approach.

“Well, Azenor,” he called cheerily in French, extending his hand. “How is this? I expected you all the week.”

“Yes, monsieur; but I knew well what you wanted with me, and I was finishing the doors for Gros-Léon’s new house;” saying which, he drew back, and indicated by a motion and look that someone was present who had a prior claim upon Père Antoine’s attention.

“Ah, Lalie!” the priest exclaimed, when he had mounted to the porch, and saw her there behind the vines. “Have you been waiting here since you confessed? Surely an hour ago!”

“Yes, monsieur.”

“You should rather have made some visits in the village, child.”

“I am not acquainted with anyone in the village,” she returned.

The priest, as he spoke, had drawn a chair, and seated himself beside her, with his hands comfortably clasping his knees. He wanted to know how things were out on the bayou.

“And how is the grandmother?” he asked. “As cross and crabbed as ever? And with that”⁠—he added reflectively⁠—“good for ten years yet! I said only yesterday to Butrand⁠—you know Butrand, he works on Le Blôt’s Bon-Dieu place⁠—‘And that Madame Zidore: how is it with her, Butrand? I believe God has forgotten her here on earth.’ ‘It isn’t that, your reverence,’ said Butrand, ‘but it’s neither God nor the Devil that wants her!’ ” And Père Antoine laughed with a jovial frankness that took all sting of ill-nature from his very pointed remarks.

Lalie did not reply when he spoke of her grandmother; she only pressed her lips firmly together, and picked nervously at the red bandana.

“I have come to ask, Monsieur Antoine,” she began, lower than she needed to speak⁠—for Azenor had withdrawn at once to the far end of the porch⁠—“to ask if you will give me a little scrap of paper⁠—a piece of writing for Monsieur Chartrand at the store over there. I want new shoes and stockings for Easter, and I have brought eggs to trade for them. He says he is willing, yes, if he was sure I would bring more every week till the shoes are paid for.”

With good-natured indifference, Père Antoine wrote the order that the girl desired. He was too familiar with distress to feel keenly for a girl who was able to buy Easter shoes and pay for them with eggs.

She went immediately away then, after shaking hands with the priest, and sending a quick glance of her pathetic eyes towards Azenor, who had turned when he heard her rise, and nodded when he caught the look. Through the vines he watched her cross the village street.

“How is it that you do not know Lalie, Azenor? You surely must have seen her pass your house often. It lies on her way to the Bon-Dieu.”

“No, I don’t know her; I have never seen her,” the young man replied, as he seated himself⁠—after the priest⁠—and kept his eyes absently fixed on the store across the road, where he had seen her enter.

“She is the granddaughter of that Madame Izidore”⁠—

“What! Ma’ame Zidore whom they drove off the island last winter?”

“Yes, yes. Well, you know, they say the old woman stole wood and things⁠—I don’t know how true it is⁠—and destroyed people’s property out of pure malice.”

“And she lives now on the Bon-Dieu?”

“Yes, on Le Blôt’s place, in a perfect wreck of a cabin. You see, she gets it for nothing; not a negro on the place but has refused to live in it.”

“Surely, it can’t be that old abandoned hovel near the swamp, that Michon occupied ages ago?”

“That is the one, the very one.”

“And the girl lives there with that old wretch?” the young man marveled.

“Old wretch to be sure, Azenor. But what can you expect from a woman who never crosses the threshold of God’s house⁠—who even tried to hinder the child doing so as well? But I went to her. I said: ‘See here, Madame Zidore,’⁠—you know it’s my way to handle such people without gloves⁠—‘you may damn your soul if you choose,’ I told her, ‘that is a privilege which we all have; but none of us has a right to imperil the salvation of another. I want to see Lalie at mass hereafter on Sundays, or you will hear from me;’ and I shook my stick under her nose. Since then the child has never missed a Sunday. But she is half starved, you can see that. You saw how shabby she is⁠—how broken her shoes are? She is at Chartrand’s now, trading for new ones with those eggs she brought, poor thing! There is no doubt of her being ill-treated. Butrand says he thinks Madame Zidore even beats the child. I don’t know how true it is, for no power can make her utter a word against her grandmother.”

Azenor, whose face was a kind and sensitive one, had paled with distress as the priest spoke; and now at these final words he quivered as though he felt the sting of a cruel blow upon his own flesh.

But no more was said of Lalie, for Père Antoine drew the young man’s attention to the carpenter-work which he wished to entrust to him. When they had talked the matter over in all its lengthy details, Azenor mounted his horse and rode away.

A moment’s gallop carried him outside the village. Then came a half-mile strip along the river to cover. Then the lane to enter, in which stood his dwelling midway, upon a low, pleasant knoll.

As Azenor turned into the lane, he saw the figure of Lalie far ahead of him. Somehow he had expected to find her there, and he watched her again, as he had done through Père Antoine’s vines. When she passed his house, he wondered if she would turn to look at it. But she did not. How could she know it was his? Upon reaching it