Azélie crossed the yard with slow, hesitating steps. She wore a pink sunbonnet and a faded calico dress that had been made the summer before, and was now too small for her in every way. She carried a large tin pail on her arm. When within a few yards of the house she stopped under a chinaberry-tree, quite still, except for the occasional slow turning of her head from side to side.
Mr. Mathurin, from his upon the upper gallery, laughed when he saw her; for he knew she would stay there, motionless, till some one noticed and questioned her.
The planter was just home from the city, and was therefore in an excellent humor, as he always was, on getting back to what he called le grand air, the space and stillness of the country, and the of the fields. He was in shirtsleeves, walking around the gallery 230that encircled the big square white house. Beneath was a brick-paved upon which the lower rooms opened. At wide were large pillars that supported the upper gallery.
In one corner of the lower house was the store, which was in no sense a store for the general public, but maintained only to supply the needs of Mr. Mathurin’s “hands.”
“Eh bien! what do you want, Azélie?” the planter finally called out to the girl in French. She advanced a few paces, and, pushing back her sunbonnet, looked up at him with a gentle, inoffensive face—“to which you would give the good God without confession,” he once described it.
“Bon jou’, M’si’ Mathurin,” she replied; and continued in English: “I come git a li’le piece o’ meat. We out o’ meat home.”
“Well, well, the meat is n’ going to walk to you, my chile: it has n’ got feet. Go fine Mr. ’Polyte. He’s yonda mending his buggy unda the shed.” She turned away with an alert little step, and went in search of Mr. ’Polyte.
231“That’s you again!” the young man exclaimed, with a pretended air of , when he saw her. He straightened himself, and looked down at her and her pail with a comprehending glance. The sweat was in shining on his brown, good-looking face. He was in his shirt-sleeves, and the legs of his trousers were thrust into the tops of his fine, high-heeled boots. He wore his straw hat very much on one side, and had an air that was altogether fanfaron. He reached to a back pocket for the store key, which was as large as the pistol that he sometimes carried in the same place. She followed him across the thick, tufted grass of the yard with quick, short steps that strove to keep pace with his longer, swinging ones.
When he had unlocked and opened the heavy door of the store, there escaped from the close room the strong, odor of the and provisions massed within. Azélie seemed to like the odor, and, lifting her head, snuffed the air as people sometimes do upon entering a filled with flowers.
232A broad ray of light streamed in through the open door, illumining the interior. The double wooden of the windows were all closed, and secured on the inside by iron hooks.
“Well, w’at you want, Azélie?” asked ’Polyte, going behind the counter with an air of hurry and importance. “I ain’t got time to fool. Make has’e; say w’at you want.”
Her reply was the same that she had made to Mr. Mathurin.
“I come git a li’le piece o’ meat. We plumb out o’ meat home.”
He seemed .
“Bonté! w’at you all do with meat yonda? You don’t reflec’ you about to eat up yo’ crop befo’ it’s good out o’ the groun’, you all. I like to know w’y yo’ pa don’t go he’p with the killin’ once aw’ile, an’ git some fresh meat fo’ a change.”
She answered in an unshaded, unmodulated voice that was , like a child’s: “Popa he do go he’p wid the killin’; but he say he can’t work ’less he got salt meat. He got plenty to feed—him. He’s got to hire he’p wid his crop, an’ he’s boun’ to feed ’em; 233they won’t year no diffe’nt. An’ he’s got gra’ma to feed, an’ Sauterelle, an’ me—”
“An’ all the lazy-bone ’Cadians in the country that know w’ere they goin’ to fine the coffee-pot always in the corna of the fire,” ’Polyte.
With an iron hook he lifted a small piece of salt meat from the pork barrel, weighed it, and placed it in her pail. Then she wanted a little coffee. He gave it to her reluctantly. He was still more to let her have sugar; and when she asked for lard, he refused flatly.
She had taken off her sunbonnet, and was fanning herself with it, as she leaned with her elbows upon the counter, and let her eyes travel lingeringly along the well-lined shelves. ’Polyte stood staring into her face with a sense of that her presence, her manner, always stirred up in him.
The face was colorless but for the red, curved line of the lips. Her eyes were dark, wide, innocent, questioning eyes, and her black hair was plastered smooth back from the forehead and temples. There was no trace of any intention of coquetry in her manner. He resented this as a token of 234toward his sex, and thought it inexcusable.
“Well, Azélie, if it’s anything you don’t see, ask fo’ it,” he suggested, with what he flattered himself was humor. But there was no responsive humor in Azélie’s composition. She seriously drew a small from her pocket.
“Popa say, if you want to let him have a li’le dram, ’count o’ his pains that’s ’bout to cripple him.”
“Yo’ pa knows as well as I do we don’t sell w’isky. Mr. Mathurin don’t carry no .”
“I know. He say if you want to give ’im a li’le dram, he’s willin’ to do some work fo’ you.”
“No! Once fo’ all, no!” And ’Polyte reached for the day-book, in which to enter the articles he had given to her.
But Azélie’s needs were not yet satisfied. She wanted tobacco; he would not give it to her. A of thread; he rolled one up, together with two sticks of candy, and placed it in her pail. When she asked for a bottle of coal-oil, he consented, but assured her it would be useless to 235cudgel her brain further, for he would let her have nothing more. He disappeared toward the coal-oil tank, which was hidden from view behind the piled-up boxes on the counter. When she heard him searching for an empty quart bottle, and making a with the tin , she herself withdrew from the counter against which she had been leaning.
After they quitted the store, ’Polyte, with a expression upon his face, leaned for a moment against one of the whitewashed pillars, watching the girl cross the yard. She had folded her sunbonnet into a pad, which she placed beneath the heavy pail that she balanced upon her head. She walked upright, with a slow, careful tread. Two of the yard dogs that had stood a moment before upon the threshold of the store door, quivering and wagging their tails, were following her now, with a little businesslike . ’Polyte called them back.
The cabin which the girl occupied with her father, her grandmother, and her little brother Sauterelle, was removed some distance from the house, and only its roof 236could be discerned like a far away across the field of cotton, which was all in bloom. Her figure soon disappeared from view, and ’Polyte emerged from the shelter of the gallery, and started again toward his interrupted task. He turned to say to the planter, who was keeping up his measured tramp above:
“Mr. Mathurin, ain’t it ’mos’ time to stop givin’ credit to Arsène Pauché. Look like that crop o’ his ain’t goin’ to start to pay his account. I don’t see, me, anyway, how you come to take that triflin’ Li’le river gang on the place.”
“I know it was a mistake, ’Polyte, but que voulez-vous?” the planter returned, with a good-natured . “Now they are yere, we can’t let them starve, my frien’. Push them to work all you can. Hole back all supplies that are not necessary, an’ nex’ year we will let some one else enjoy the privilege of feeding them,” he ended, with a laugh.
“I wish they was all back on Li’le river,” ’Polyte muttered under his breath as he turned and walked slowly away.
Directly back of the store was the young man’s sleeping-room. He had made himself 237quite comfortable there in his corner. He had screened his windows and doors; planted Madeira vines, which now formed a thick green curtain between the two pillars that faced his room; and had swung a hammock out there, in which he liked well to himself after the of the day.
He lay long in the hammock that evening, thinking over the day’s happenings and the morrow’s work, half , half dreaming, and wholly by the charm of the night, the warm, air that blew through the long corridor, and the almost unbroken stillness that him.
At times his thoughts formed themselves into an almost inaudible speech: “I wish she would go ’way f’om yere.”
One of the dogs came and thrust his cool, moist against ’Polyte’s cheek. He the fellow’s shaggy head. “I don’t know w’at’s the matta with her,” he sighed; “I don’ b’lieve she’s got good sense.”
It was a long time that he murmured again: “I wish to God she’d go ’way f’om yere!”
238The edge of the moon crept up—a keen, curved blade of light above the dark line of the cotton-field. ’Polyte roused himself when he saw it. “I didn’ know it was so late,” he said to himself—or to his dog. He entered his room at once, and was soon in bed, sleeping soundly.
It was some hours later that ’Polyte was roused from his sleep by—he did not know what; his senses were too and confused to determine at once. There was at first no sound; then so faint a one that he wondered how he could have heard it. A door of his room communicated with the store, but this door was never used, and ............