athénaïse did not return the following day, even though her husband sent her word to do so by her brother, montéclin, who passed on his way to the village early in the morning.
44on the third day cazeau saddled his horse and went himself in search of her. she had sent no word, no message, explaining her absence, and he felt that he had good cause to be offended. it was rather awkward to have to leave his work, even though late in the afternoon,—cazeau had always so much to do; but among the many urgent calls upon him, the task of bringing his wife back to a sense of her duty seemed to him for the moment paramount.
the michés, athénaïse’s parents, lived on the old gotrain place. it did not belong to them; they were “running” it for a merchant in alexandria. the house was far too big for their use. one of the lower rooms served for the storing of wood and tools; the person “occupying” the place before miché having pulled up the flooring in despair of being able to patch it. upstairs, the rooms were so large, so bare, that they offered a constant temptation to lovers of the dance, whose importunities madame miché was accustomed to meet with amiable indulgence. a dance at miché’s and a plate of madame miché’s gumbo filé at midnight were pleasures not to be neglected or 45despised, unless by such serious souls as cazeau.
long before cazeau reached the house his approach had been observed, for there was nothing to obstruct the view of the outer road; vegetation was not yet abundantly advanced, and there was but a patchy, straggling stand of cotton and corn in miché’s field.
madame miché, who had been seated on the gallery in a rocking-chair, stood up to greet him as he drew near. she was short and fat, and wore a black skirt and loose muslin sack fastened at the throat with a hair brooch. her own hair, brown and glossy, showed but a few threads of silver. her round pink face was cheery, and her eyes were bright and good humored. but she was plainly perturbed and ill at ease as cazeau advanced.
montéclin, who was there too, was not ill at ease, and made no attempt to disguise the dislike with which his brother-in-law inspired him. he was a slim, wiry fellow of twenty-five, short of stature like his mother, and resembling her in feature. he was in shirtsleeves, half leaning, half sitting, on the insecure 46railing of the gallery, and fanning himself with his broad-rimmed felt hat.
“cochon!” he muttered under his breath as cazeau mounted the stairs,—“sacré cochon!”
“cochon” had sufficiently characterized the man who had once on a time declined to lend montéclin money. but when this same man had had the presumption to propose marriage to his well-beloved sister, athénaïse, and the honor to be accepted by her, montéclin felt that a qualifying epithet was needed fully to express his estimate of cazeau.
miché and his oldest son were absent. they both esteemed cazeau highly, and talked much of his qualities of head and heart, and thought much of his excellent standing with city merchants.
athénaïse had shut herself up in her room. cazeau had seen her rise and enter the house at perceiving him. he was a good deal mystified, but no one could have guessed it when he shook hands with madame miché. he had only nodded to montéclin, with a muttered “comment ça va?”
47“tiens! something tole me you were coming to-day!” exclaimed madame miché, with a little blustering appearance of being cordial and at ease, as she offered cazeau a chair.
he ventured a short laugh as he seated himself.
“you know, nothing would do,” she went on, with much gesture of her small, plump hands, “nothing would do but athénaïse mus’ stay las’ night fo’ a li’le dance. the boys wouldn’ year to their sister leaving.”
cazeau shrugged his shoulders significantly, telling as plainly as words that he knew nothing about it.
“comment. montéclin didn’ tell you we were going to keep athénaïse?” montéclin had evidently told nothing.
“an’ how about the night befo’,” questioned cazeau, “an’ las’ night? it isn’t possible you dance every night out yere on the bon dieu!”
madame miché laughed, with amiable appreciation of the sarcasm; and turning to her son, “montéclin, my boy, go tell yo’ sister that monsieur cazeau is yere.”
montéclin did not stir except to shift his position and settle himself more securely on the railing.
48“did you year me, montéclin?”
“oh yes, i yeard you plain enough,” responded her son, “but you know as well as me it’s no use to tell ’thénaïse anything. you been talkin’ to her yo’se’f since monday; an’ pa’s preached himse’f hoa’se on the subject; an’ you even had uncle achille down yere yesterday to reason with her. wen ’thénaïse said she wasn’ goin’ to set her foot back in cazeau’s house, she meant it.”
this speech, which montéclin delivered with thorough unconcern, threw his mother into a condition of painful but dumb embarrassment. it brought two fiery red spots to cazeau’s cheeks, and for the space of a moment he looked wicked.
what montéclin had spoken was quite true, though his taste in the manner and choice of time and place in saying it were not of the best. athénaïse, upon the first day of her arrival, had announced that she came to stay, having no intention of returning under cazeau’s roof. the announcement had scattered consternation, as she knew it would. she had been implored, scolded, entreated, stormed at, until she felt herself like a dragging sail that all the 49winds of heaven had beaten upon. why in the name of god had she married cazeau? her father had lashed her with the question a dozen times. why indeed? it was difficult now for her to understand why, unless because she supposed it was customary for girls to marry when the right opportunity came. cazeau, she knew, would make life more comfortable for her; and again, she had liked him, and had even been rather flustered when he pressed her hands and kissed them, and kissed her lips and cheeks and eyes, when she accepted him.
montéclin himself had taken her aside to talk the thing over. the turn of affairs was delighting him.
“come, now, ’thénaïse, you mus’ explain to me all about it, so we can settle on a good cause, an’ secu’ a separation fo’ you. has he been mistreating an’ abusing you, the sacré cochon?” they were alone together in her room, whither she had taken refuge from the angry domestic elements.
“you please to reserve yo’ disgusting expressions, montéclin. no, he has not abused me in any way that i can think.”
50“does he drink? come ’thénaïse, think well over it. does he ever get drunk?”
“drunk! oh, mercy, no,—cazeau never gets drunk.”
“i see; it’s jus’ simply you feel like me; you hate him.”
“no, i don’t hate him,” she returned reflectively; adding with a sudden impulse, “it’s jus’ being married that i detes’ an’ despise. i hate being mrs. cazeau, an’ would want to be athénaïse miché again. i can’t stan’ to live with a man; to have him always there; his coats an’ pantaloons hanging in my room; his ugly bare feet—washing them in my tub, befo’ my very eyes, ugh!” she shuddered with recollections, and resumed, with a sigh that was almost a sob: “mon dieu, mon dieu! sister marie angélique knew w’at she was saying; she knew me better than myse’f w’en she said god had sent me a vocation an’ i was turning deaf ears. w’en i think of a blessed life in the convent, at peace! oh, w’at was i dreaming of!” and then the tears came.
montéclin felt disconcerted and greatly disappointed at having obtained evidence that would carry no weight with a court of justice. 51the day had not come when a young woman might ask the court’s permission to return to her mamma on the sweeping ground of a constitutional disinclination for marriage. but if there was no way of untying this gordian knot of marriage, there was surely a way of cutting it.
“well, ’thénaïse, i’m mighty durn sorry yo got no better groun’s ’an w’at you say. but you can count on me to stan’ by you w’atever you do. god knows i don’ blame you fo’ not wantin’ to live with cazeau.”
and now there was cazeau himself, with the red spots flaming in his swarthy cheeks, looking and feeling as if he wanted to thrash montéclin into some semblance of decency. he arose abruptly, and approaching the room which he had seen his wife enter, thrust open the door after a hasty preliminary knock. athénaïse, who was standing erect at a far window, turned at his entrance.
she appeared neither angry nor frightened, but thoroughly unhappy, with an appeal in her soft dark eyes and a tremor on her lips that seemed to him expressions of unjust reproach, that wounded and maddened him at once. but 52whatever he might feel, cazeau knew only one way to act toward a woman.
“athénaïse, you are not ready?” he asked in his quiet tones. “it’s getting late; we havn’ any time to lose.”
she knew that montéclin had spoken out, and she had hoped for a wordy interview, a stormy scene, in which she might have held her own as she had held it for the past three days against her family, with montéclin’s aid. but she had no weapon with which to combat subtlety. her husband’s looks, his tones, his mere presence, brought to her a sudden sense of hopelessness, an instinctive realization of the futility of rebellion against a social and sacred institution.
cazeau said nothing further, but stood waiting in the doorway. madame miché had walked to the far end of the gallery, and pretended to be occupied with having a chicken driven from her parterre. montéclin stood by, exasperated, fuming, ready to burst out.
athénaïse went and reached for her riding skirt that hung against the wall. she was rather tall, with a figure which, though not robust, seemed perfect in its fine proportions. 53“la fille de son père,” she was often called, which was a great compliment to miché. her brown hair was brushed all fluffily back from her temples and low forehead, and about her features and expression lurked a softness, a prettiness, a dewiness, that were perhaps too childlike, that savored of immaturity.
she slipped the riding-skirt, which was of black alpaca, over her head, and with impatient fingers hooked it at the waist over her pink linen-lawn. then she fastened on her white sunbonnet and reached for her gloves on the mantelpiece.
“if you don’ wan’ to go, you know w’at you got to do, ’thénaïse,” fumed montéclin. “you don’ set yo’ feet back on cane river, by god, unless you want to,—not w’ile i’m alive.”
cazeau looked at him as if he were a monkey whose antics fell short of being amusing.
athénaïse still made no reply, said not a word. she walked rapidly past her husband, past her brother; bidding good-bye to no one, not even to her mother. she descended the stairs, and without assistance from any one mounted the pony, which cazeau had ordered to be saddled upon his arrival. in this way 54she obtained a fair start of her husband, whose departure was far more leisurely, and for the greater part of the way she managed to keep an appreciable gap between them. she rode almost madly at first, with the wind inflating her skirt balloon-like about her knees, and her sunbonnet falling back between her shoulders.
at no time did cazeau make an effort to overtake her until traversing an old fallow meadow that was level and hard as a table. the sight of a great solitary oak-tree, with its seemingly immutable outlines, that had been a landmark for ages—or was it the odor of elderberry stealing up from the gully to the south? or what was it that brought vividly back to cazeau, by some association of ideas, a scene of many years ago? he had passed that old live-oak hundreds of times, but it was only now that the memory of one day came back to him. he was a very small boy that day, seated before his father on horseback. they were proceeding slowly, and black gabe was moving on before them at a little dog-trot. black gabe had run away, and had been discovered back in the gotrain swamp. they had halted beneath this big oak 55to enable the negro to take breath; for cazeau’s father was a kind and considerate master, and every one had agreed at the time that black gabe was a fool, a great idiot indeed, for wanting to run away from him.
the whole impression was for some reason hideous, and to dispel it cazeau spurred his horse to a swift gallop. overtaking his wife, he rode the remainder of the way at her side in silence.
it was late when they reached home. félicité was standing on the grassy edge of the road, in the moonlight, waiting for them.
cazeau once more ate his supper alone; for athénaïse went to her room, and there she was crying again.
