Short Fiction Kate Chopin (best e reader for android .txt) 📖

by a pathetic joy that would not admit of speech. He was going back again to the home where he was born, after a banishment of ten long years.

He would hear again the water beat against the green levee-bank with a sound that was not quite like any other that he could remember. He would sit within the sweet and solemn shadow of the deep and overhanging roof; and roam through the wild, rich solitude of the old garden, where he had played his pranks of boyhood and dreamed his dreams of youth. He would listen to his mother’s voice calling him, “mon fils,” as it had always done before that day he had had to choose between mother and wife. No; he could not speak.

But his wife chatted much and pleasantly⁠—in a French, however, that must have been trying to old madame to listen to.

“I am so sorry, ma mère,” she said, “that our little one does not speak French. It is not my fault, I assure you,” and she flushed and hesitated a little. “It⁠—it was Henri who would not permit it.”

“That is nothing,” replied madame, amiably, drawing the child close to her. “Her grandmother will teach her French; and she will teach her grandmother English. You see, I have no prejudices. I am not like my son. Henri was always a stubborn boy. Heaven only knows how he came by such a character!”

Azélie

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 elevation upon the upper gallery, laughed when he saw her; for he knew she would stay there, motionless, till someone 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 scent of the fields. He was in shirtsleeves, walking around the gallery that encircled the big square white house. Beneath was a brick-paved portico upon which the lower rooms opened. At wide intervals were large whitewashed 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 plumb 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.

“That’s you again!” the young man exclaimed, with a pretended air of annoyance, when he saw her. He straightened himself, and looked down at her and her pail with a comprehending glance. The sweat was standing in shining beads on his brown, good-looking face. He was in his shirtsleeves, 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, pungent odor of the varied wares and provisions massed within. Azélie seemed to like the odor, and, lifting her head, snuffed the air as people sometimes do upon entering a conservatory filled with fragrant flowers.

A broad ray of light streamed in through the open door, illumining the dingy interior. The double wooden shutters 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 precisely the same that she had made to Mr. Mathurin.

“I come g’t a li’le piece o’ meat. We plumb out o’ meat home.”

He seemed exasperated.

“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 penetrating, 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; they 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 coffeepot always in the corna of the fire,” grumbled ’Polyte.

With an iron hook he lifted a small piece of salt meat from the pork