It was often said that Polydore was the stupidest boy to be found “from the mouth of river to Natchitoches.” Hence it was an easy matter to persuade him, as and people sometimes tried to do, that he was an overworked and much abused individual.
It occurred one morning to Polydore to wonder what would happen if he did not get up. He hardly expected the world to stop turning on its ; but he did in a way believe that the of the whole would come to a standstill.
He had at the usual hour,—about daybreak,—and instead of getting up at once, as was his custom, he re-settled himself between the sheets. There he lay, peering out through the dormer window into the gray morning that was deliciously cool after the hot 128summer night, listening to familiar sounds that came from the barn-yard, the fields and woods beyond, the approach of day.
A little later there were other sounds, no less familiar or significant; the roll of the -wheels; the distant call of a negro’s voice; Aunt Siney’s step as she crossed the gallery, bearing to Mamzelle Adélaïde and old Monsieur José their early coffee.
Polydore had formed no plan and had thought only upon results. He lay in a half-slumber awaiting developments, and resigned to any turn which the affair might take. Still he was not quite ready with an answer when Jude came and thrust his head in at the door.
“Mista Polydore! O Mista Polydore! You ’sleep?”
“W’at you want?”
“Dan ’low he ain’ gwine wait yonda wid de wagon all day. Say does you inspect ’im to pack dat freight f’om de landing by hisse’f?”
“I reckon he got it to do, Jude. I ain’ going to get up, me.”
“You ain’ gwine git up?”
129“No; I’m sick. I’m going stay in bed. Go ’long and le’ me sleep.”
The next one to invade Polydore’s privacy was Mamzelle Adélaïde herself. It was no small effort for her to mount the steep, narrow stairway to Polydore’s room. She seldom to these regions under the roof. He could hear the stairs creak beneath her weight, and knew that she was panting at every step. Her presence seemed to crowd the small room; for she was and rather tall, and her flowing muslin wrapper swept from side to side as she walked.
Mamzelle Adélaïde had reached middle age, but her face was still fresh with its mignon features; and her brown eyes at the moment were round with and alarm.
“W’at’s that I hear, Polydore? They tell me you’re sick!” She went and stood beside the bed, lifting the mosquito bar that settled upon her head and fell about her like a veil.
Polydore’s eyes blinked, and he made no attempt to answer. She felt his wrist softly with the tips of her fingers, and rested her hand for a moment on his low forehead beneath the shock of black hair.
130“But you don’t seem to have any fever, Polydore!”
“No,” hesitatingly, feeling himself forced to make some reply. “It’s a kine of—a kine of pain, like you might say. It kitch me yere in the knee, and it goes ’long like you stickin’ a knife clean down in my heel. Aie! Oh, la-la!” expressions of pain from him by Mamzelle Adélaïde gently pushing aside the covering to examine the member.
“My patience! but that leg is , yes, Polydore.” The limb, in fact, seemed dropsical, but if Mamzelle Adélaïde had bethought her of comparing it with the other one, she would have found the two corresponding in their proportions to a nicety. Her kind face expressed the utmost concern, and she quitted Polydore feeling pained and ill at ease.
For one of the aims of Mamzelle Adélaïde’s existence was to do the right thing by this boy, whose mother, a ’Cadian hill woman, had begged her with dying breath to watch over the temporal and spiritual welfare of her son; above all, to see that he did not follow in the slothful footsteps of an over-indolent father.
131Polydore’s scheme worked so marvellously to his comfort and pleasure that he wondered at not having thought of it before. He ate with keen the breakfast which Jude brought to him on a tray. Even old Monsieur José was concerned, and made his way up to Polydore, bringing a number of picture-papers for his entertainment, a palm-leaf fan and a cow-bell, with which to summon Jude when necessary and which he placed within easy reach.
As Polydore lay on his back fanning , it seemed to him that he was enjoying a foretaste of paradise. Only once did he with . It was when he heard Aunt Siney, with lifted voice, recommending to “wrop the laig up in bacon fat; de oniest way to draw out de .”
The thought of a healthy leg swathed in bacon fat on a hot day in July was enough to a braver heart than Polydore’s. But the suggestion was evidently not adopted, for he heard no more of the bacon fat. In its stead he became acquainted with the not unpleasant sting of a liniment which 132Jude rubbed into the leg at during the day.
He kept the limb on a pillow, stiff and motionless, even when alone and unobserved. Toward evening he fancied that it really showed signs of inflammation, and he was quite sure it pained him.
It was a satisfaction to all to see Polydore appear down-stairs the following afternoon. He limped painfully, it is true, and clutched wildly at anything in his way that offered a support. His was clumsily ; and by less guileless souls than Mamzelle Adélaïde and her father would have surely been suspected. But these two only thought with deep concern of means to make him comfortable.
They seated him on the shady back gallery in an easy-chair, with his leg propped up before him.
“He inhe’its dat ,” proclaimed Aunt Siney, who the manner of an . “I see dat boy’s granpap, many times, all twis’ up wid rheumatism twell his head sot down on his body, hine side befo’. He got 133to keep outen de jew in de mo’nin’s, and he ’bleege to w’ar red flannen.”
Monsieur José, with flowing white locks enframing his face, leaned upon his cane and the boy with unflagging attention. Polydore was beginning to believe himself a object as a center of interest.
Mamzelle Adélaïde had but just returned from a long drive in the open buggy, from a mission which would have fallen to Polydore had he not been disabled by this unlooked-for illness. She had thoughtlessly driven across the country at an hour when the sun was hottest, and now she sat panting and fanning herself; her face, which she mopped with her handkerchief, was from the heat.
Mamzelle Adélaïde ate no supper that night, and went to bed early, with a compress of eau sédative bound tightly around her head. She thought it was a simple headache, and that she would be rid of it in the morning; but she was not better in the morning.
She kept her bed that day, and late in the afternoon Jude rode over to town for the doctor, and stopped on the way to tell Mamzelle 134Adélaïde’s married sister that she was quite ill, and would like to have her come down to the plantation for a day or two.
Polydore made round, serious eyes and forgot to limp. He wanted to go for the doctor in Jude’s stead; but Aunt Siney, assuming a brief authority, forced him to sit still by the kitchen door and talked further of bacon fat.
Old Monsieur José moved about uneasily and restlessly, in and out of his daughter’s room. He looked vacantly at Polydore now, as if the stout young boy in blue jeans and a calico shirt were a sort of a transparency.
A dawning anxiety, coupled to the of the past two days, deprived Polydore of his usual healthful night’s rest. The slightest noises awoke him. Once it was the married sister breaking ............