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

John-Luis continued to inspect the boy through his glasses.

“Marsh, bring him something to eat,” he commanded, tentatively.

Marshall hesitated, and challenged the child with a speculating look.

“Is you w’ite o’ is you black?” he asked. “Dat w’at I wants ter know ’fo’ I kiar’ victuals to yo in de settin’-room.”

“I’m w’ite, me,” the boy responded, promptly.

“I ain’t disputin’; go ahead. All right fer dem w’at wants ter take yo’ wud fer it.” Doctor John-Luis coughed behind his band and said nothing.

Marshall brought a platter of cold food to the boy, who rested the dish upon his knees and ate from it with keen appetite.

“Where do you come from?” asked Doctor John-Luis, when his caller stopped for breath. Mamouche turned a pair of big, soft, dark eyes upon his questioner.

“I come frum Cloutierville this mo’nin’. I been try to git to the twenty-fo’-mile ferry w’en de rain ketch me.”

“What were you going to do at the twenty-four-mile ferry?”

The boy gazed absently into the fire. “I don’ know w’at I was goin’ to do yonda to the twenty-fo’-mile ferry,” he said.

“Then you must be a tramp, to be wandering aimlessly about the country in that way!” exclaimed the doctor.

“No; I don’ b’lieve I’m a tramp, me.” Mamouche was wriggling his toes with enjoyment of the warmth and palatable food.

“Well, what’s your name?” continued Doctor John-Luis.

“My name it’s Mamouche.”

“ ‘Mamouche.’ Fiddlesticks! That’s no name.”

The boy looked as if he reretted the fact, while not being able to help it.

“But my pa, his name it was Mathurin Peloté,” he offered in some palliation.

“Peloté! Peloté!” mused Doctor John-Luis. “Any kin to Théodule Peloté who lived formerly in Avoyelles parish?”

“W’y, yas!” laughed Mamouche. “Théodule Peloté, it was my gran’pa.”

“Your grandfather? Well, upon my word!” He looked again, critically, at the youngster’s rags. “Then Stéphanie Galopin must have been your grandmother!”

“Yas,” responded Mamouche, complacently; “that who was my gran’ma. She die two year ago down by Alexandria.”

“Marsh,” called Doctor John-Luis, turning in his chair, “bring him a mug of milk and another piece of pie!”

When Mamouche had eaten all the good things that were set before him, he found that one side of him was quite dry, and he transferred himself over to the other corner of the fire so as to turn to the blaze the side which was still wet.

The action seemed to amuse Doctor John-Luis, whose old head began to fill with recollections.

“That reminds me of Théodule,” he laughed. “Ah, he was a great fellow, your father, Théodule!”

“My gran’pa,” corrected Mamouche.

“Yes, yes, your grandfather. He was handsome; I tell you, he was good-looking. And the way he could dance and play the fiddle and sing! Let me see, how did that song go that he used to sing when we went out serenading: ‘A ta⁠—à ta⁠—’

‘A ta fenêtre
Daignes paraître⁠—tra la la la!’ ”

Doctor John-Luis’s voice, even in his youth, could not have been agreeable; and now it bore no resemblance to any sound that Mamouche had ever heard issue from a human throat. The boy kicked his heels and rolled sideward on his chair with enjoyment. Doctor John-Luis laughed even more heartily, finished the stanza, and sang another one through.

“That’s what turned the girls’ heads, I tell you, my boy,” said he, when he had recovered his breath; “that fiddling and dancing and tra la la.”

During the next hour the old man lived again through his youth; through any number of alluring experiences with his friend Théodule, that merry fellow who had never done a steady week’s work in his life; and Stéphanie, the pretty Acadian girl, whom he had never wholly understood, even to this day.

It was quite late when Doctor John-Luis climbed the stairs that led from the sitting-room up to his bedchamber. As he went, followed by the ever attentive Marshall, he was singing:

“A ta fenêtre
Daignes paraître,”

but very low, so as not to awaken Mamouche, whom he left sleeping upon a bed that Marshall at his order had prepared for the boy beside the sitting-room fire.

At a very early hour next morning Marshall appeared at his master’s bedside with the accustomed morning coffee.

“What is he doing?” asked Doctor John-Luis, as he sugared and stirred the tiny cup of black coffee.

“Who dat, sah?”

“Why, the boy, Mamouche. What is he doing?”

“He gone, sah. He done gone.”

“Gone!”

“Yas, sah. He roll his bed up in de corner; he onlock de do’; he gone. But de silver an’ ev’thing dah; he ain’t kiar’ nuttin’ off.”

“Marshall,” snapped Doctor John-Luis, ill-humoredly, “there are times when you don’t seem to have sense and penetration enough to talk about! I think I’ll take another nap” he grumbled, as he turned his back upon Marshall. “Wake me at seven.”

It was no ordinary thing for Doctor John-Luis to be in a bad humor, and perhaps it is not strictly true to say that he was now. He was only in a little less amiable mood than usual when he pulled on his high rubber boots and went splashing out in the wet to see what his people were doing.

He might have owned a large plantation had he wished to own one, for a long life of persistent, intelligent work had left him with a comfortable fortune in his old age; but he preferred the farm on which he lived contentedly and raised an abundance to meet his modest wants.

He went down to the orchard, where a couple of men were busying themselves in setting out a line of young fruit-trees.

“Tut, tut, tut!” They were doing it all wrong; the line was not straight; the holes were not deep. It was strange that he had to come down there and discover such things with his old eyes!

He poked his head into the kitchen to complain to Prudence about the ducks that she had not seasoned properly the day before, and to hope that the accident would never occur again.

He tramped over to where a carpenter was working on a gate; securing it⁠—as he