At Fault (6 page)

Thérèse had remained perfectly silent; rigid at times, listening to
Hosmer often with closed eyes.

He waited for her to speak, but she said nothing for a while till
finally: "Your—your wife is still quite young—do her parents live
with her?"

"Oh no, she has none. I suppose she lives alone."

"And those habits; you don't know if she continues them?"

"I dare say she does. I know nothing of her, except that she receipts
for the amount paid her each month."

The look of painful thought deepened on Thérèse's face but her
questions having been answered, she again became silent.

Hosmer's eyes were imploring her for a look, but she would not answer
them.

"Haven't you a word to say to me?" he entreated.

"No, I have nothing to say, except what would give you pain."

"I can bear anything from you," he replied, at a loss to guess her
meaning.

"The kindest thing I can say, Mr. Hosmer, is, that I hope you have
acted blindly. I hate to believe that the man I care for, would
deliberately act the part of a cruel egotist."

"I don't understand you."

"I have learned one thing through your story, which appears very plain
to me," she replied. "You married a woman of weak character. You
furnished her with every means to increase that weakness, and shut her
out absolutely from your life and yourself from hers. You left her
then as practically without moral support as you have certainly done
now, in deserting her. It was the act of a coward." Thérèse spoke the
last words with intensity.

"Do you think that a man owes nothing to himself?" Hosmer asked, in
resistance to her accusation.

"Yes. A man owes to his manhood, to face the consequences of his own
actions."

Hosmer had remained seated. He did not even with glance follow Thérèse
who had arisen and was moving restlessly about the room. He had so
long seen himself as a martyr; his mind had become so habituated to
the picture, that he could not of a sudden look at a different one,
believing that it could be the true one. Nor was he eager to accept a
view of the situation that would place him in his own eyes in a
contemptible light. He tried to think that Thérèse must be wrong; but
even admitting a doubt of her being right, her words carried an
element of truth that he was not able to shut out from his conscience.
He felt her to be a woman with moral perceptions keener than his own
and his love, which in the past twenty-four hours had grown to
overwhelm him, moved him now to a blind submission.

"What would you have me do, Mrs. Lafirme?"

"I would have you do what is right," she said eagerly, approaching
him.

"O, don't present me any questions of right and wrong; can't you see
that I'm blind?" he said, self accusingly. "What ever I do, must be
because you want it; because I love you."

She was standing beside him and he took her hand.

"To do a thing out of love for you, would be the only comfort and
strength left me."

"Don't say that," she entreated. "Love isn't everything in life; there
is something higher."

"God in heaven, there shouldn't be!" he exclaimed, passionately
pressing her hand to his forehead, his cheek, his lips.

"Oh, don't make it harder for me," Thérèse said softly, attempting to
withdraw her hand.

It was her first sign of weakness, and he seized on it for his
advantage. He arose quickly—unhesitatingly—and took her in his arms.

For a moment that was very brief, there was danger that the task of
renunciation would not only be made harder, but impossible, for both;
for it was in utter blindness to everything but love for each other,
that their lips met.

The great plantation bell was clanging out the hour of noon; the hour
for sweet and restful enjoyment; but to Hosmer, the sound was like the
voice of a derisive demon, mocking his anguish of spirit, as he
mounted his horse, and rode back to the mill.

Melicent knew that there were exchanges of confidence going on between
her brother and Mrs. Lafirme, from which she was excluded. She had
noted certain lengthy conferences held in remote corners of the
verandas. The two had deliberately withdrawn one moonlight evening to
pace to and fro the length of gravel walk that stretched from door
front to lane; and Melicent had fancied that they rather lingered when
under the deep shadow of the two great live-oaks that overarched the
gate. But that of course was fancy; a young girl's weakness to think
the world must go as she would want it to.

She was quite sure of having heard Mrs. Lafirme say "I will help you."
Could it be that David had fallen into financial straights and wanted
assistance from Thérèse? No, that was improbable and furthermore,
distasteful, so Melicent would not burden herself with the suspicion.
It was far more agreeable to believe that affairs were shaping
themselves according to her wishes regarding her brother and her
friend. Yet her mystification was in no wise made clearer, when David
left them to go to St. Louis.

Melicent was not ready or willing to leave with him. She had not had
her "visit out" as she informed him, when he proposed it to her. To
remain in the cottage during his absence was out of the question, so
she removed herself and all her pretty belongings over to the house,
taking possession of one of the many spare rooms. The act of removal
furnished her much entertainment of a mild sort, into which, however,
she successfully infused something of her own intensity by making the
occasion one to bring a large detachment of the plantation force into
her capricious service.

Melicent was going out, and she stood before her mirror to make sure
that she looked properly. She was black from head to foot. From the
great ostrich plume that nodded over her wide-brimmed hat, to the
pointed toe of the patent leather boot that peeped from under her
gown—a filmy gauzy thing setting loosely to her slender shapely
figure. She laughed at the somberness of her reflection, which she at
once set about relieving with a great bunch of geraniums—big and
scarlet and long-stemmed, that she thrust slantwise through her belt.

Melicent, always charming, was very pretty when she laughed. She
thought so herself and laughed a second time into the depths of her
dark handsome eyes. One corner of the large mouth turned saucily
upward, and the lips holding their own crimson and all that the cheeks
were lacking, parted only a little over the gleaming whiteness of her
teeth. As she looked at herself critically, she thought that a few
more pounds of flesh would have well become her. It had been only the
other day that her slimness was altogether to her liking; but at
present she was in love with plumpness as typified in Mrs. Lafirme.
However, on the whole, she was not ill pleased with her appearance,
and gathering up her gloves and parasol, she quitted the room.

It was "broad day," one of the requirements which Grégoire had named
as essential for taking Melicent to visit old McFarlane's grave. But
the sun was not "shining mighty bright," the second condition, and
whose absence they were willing enough to overlook, seeing that the
month was September.

They had climbed quite to the top of the hill, and stood on the very
brink of the deep toilsome railroad cut all fringed with matted grass
and young pines, that had but lately sprung there. Up and down the
track, as far as they could see on either side the steel rails
glittered on into gradual dimness. There were patches of the field
before them, white with bursting cotton which scores of negroes, men,
women and children were dexterously picking and thrusting into great
bags that hung from their shoulders and dragged beside them on the
ground; no machine having yet been found to surpass the sufficiency of
five human fingers for wrenching the cotton from its tenacious hold.
Elsewhere, there were squads "pulling fodder" from the dry corn
stalks; hot and distasteful work enough. In the nearest field, where
the cotton was young and green, with no show of ripening, the overseer
rode slowly between the rows, sprinkling plentifully the dry powder of
paris green from two muslin bags attached to the ends of a short pole
that lay before him across the saddle.

Grégoire's presence would be needed later in the day, when the cotton
was hauled to gin to be weighed; when the mules were brought to
stable, to see them properly fed and cared for, and the gearing all
put in place. In the meanwhile he was deliciously idle with Melicent.

They retreated into the woods, soon losing sight of everything but the
trees that surrounded them and the underbrush, that was scant and
scattered over the turf which the height of the trees permitted to
grow green and luxuriant.

There, on the far slope of the hill they found McFarlane's grave,
which they knew to be such only by the battered and weather-worn cross
of wood, that lurched disreputably to one side—there being no hand in
all the world that cared enough to make it straight—and from which
all lettering had long since been washed away. This cross was all that
marked the abiding place of that mist-like form, so often seen at dark
to stalk down the hill with threatening stride, or of moonlight nights
to cross the lake in a pirogue, whose substance though visible was
nought; with sound of dipping oars that made no ripple on the lake's
smooth surface. On stormy nights, some more gifted with spiritual
insight than their neighbors, and with hearing better sharpened to
delicate intonations of the supernatural, had not only seen the mist
figure mounted and flying across the hills, but had heard the panting
of the blood-hounds, as the invisible pack swept by in hot pursuit of
the slave so long ago at rest.

But it was "broad day," and here was nothing sinister to cause
Melicent the least little thrill of awe. No owl, no bat, no ill-omened
creature hovering near; only a mocking bird high up in the branches of
a tall pine tree, gushing forth his shrill staccatoes as blithely as
though he sang paeans to a translated soul in paradise.

"Poor old McFarlane," said Melicent, "I'll pay a little tribute to his
memory; I dare say his spirit has listened to nothing but abuse of
himself there in the other world, since it left his body here on the
hill;" and she took one of the long-stemmed blood-red flowers and laid
it beside the toppling cross.

"I reckon he's in a place w'ere flowers don't git much waterin', if
they got any there."

"Shame to talk so cruelly; I don't believe in such places."

"You don't believe in hell?" he asked in blank surprise.

"Certainly not. I'm a Unitarian."

"Well, that's new to me," was his only comment.

"Do you believe in spirits, Grégoire? I don't—in day time."

"Neva mine 'bout spirits," he answered, taking her arm and leading her
off, "let's git away f'om yere."

They soon found a smooth and gentle slope where Melicent sat herself
comfortably down, her back against the broad support of a tree trunk,
and Grégoire lay prone upon the ground with—his head in Melicent's
lap.

When Melicent first met Grégoire, his peculiarities of speech, so
unfamiliar to her, seemed to remove him at once from the possibility
of her consideration. She was not then awake to certain fine
psychological differences distinguishing man from man; precluding the
possibility of naming and classifying him in the moral as one might in
the animal kingdom. But short-comings of language, which finally
seemed not to detract from a definite inheritance of good breeding,
touched his personality as a physical deformation might, adding to it
certainly no charm, yet from its pathological aspect not without a
species of fascination, for a certain order of misregulated mind.

She bore with him, and then she liked him. Finally, whilst indulging
in a little introspection; making a diagnosis of various symptoms,
indicative by no means of a deep-seated malady, she decided that she
was in love with Grégoire. But the admission embraced the
understanding with herself, that nothing could come of it. She
accepted it as a phase of that relentless fate which in pessimistic
moments she was inclined to believe pursued her.

It could not be thought of, that she should marry a man whose
eccentricity of speech would certainly not adapt itself to the
requirements of polite society.

He had kissed her one day. Whatever there was about the kiss—possibly
an over exuberance—it was not to her liking, and she forbade that he
ever repeat it, under pain of losing her affection. Indeed, on the few
occasions when Melicent had been engaged, kissing had been excluded as
superfluous to the relationship, except in the case of the young
lieutenant out at Fort Leavenworth who read Tennyson to her, as an
angel might be supposed to read, and who in moments of rapturous
self-forgetfulness, was permitted to kiss her under the ear: a
proceeding not positively distasteful to Melicent, except in so much
as it tickled her.

Grégoire's hair was soft, not so dark as her own, and possessed an
inclination to curl about her slender fingers.

"Grégoire," she said, "you told me once that the Santien boys were a
hard lot; what did you mean by that?"

"Oh no," he answered, laughing good-humoredly up into her eyes, "you
did'n year me right. W'at I said was that we had a hard name in the
country. I don' see w'y eitha, excep' we all'ays done putty much like
we wanted. But my! a man can live like a saint yere at Place-du-Bois,
they ain't no temptations o' no kine."

"There's little merit in your right doing, if you have no temptations
to withstand," delivering the time worn aphorism with the air and tone
of a pretty sage, giving utterance to an inspired truth.

Melicent felt that she did not fully know Grégoire; that he had always
been more or less under restraint with her, and she was troubled by
something other than curiosity to get at the truth concerning him. One
day when she was arranging a vase of flowers at a table on the back
porch, Aunt Belindy, who was scouring knives at the same table, had
followed Grégoire with her glance, when he walked away after
exchanging a few words with Melicent.