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

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 loath 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 aggravation 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 indifference toward 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 flask 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 license.”

“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 daybook, 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 spool of thread; he rolled one up, together with two sticks of peppermint candy, and placed it in her pail. When she asked for a bottle of coal-oil, he grudgingly consented, but assured her it would be useless to cudgel her brain further, for he would positively 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 clatter with the tin funnels, she herself withdrew from the counter against which she had been leaning.

After they quitted the store, ’Polyte, with a perplexed 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 trot. ’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 plantation house, and only its pointed roof could be discerned like a speck 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 shrug. “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 someone 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 quite 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 repose himself after the fatigues of the day.

He lay long in the hammock that evening, thinking over the day’s happenings and the morrow’s work, half dozing, half dreaming, and wholly possessed by the charm of the night, the warm, sweeping air that blew through the long corridor, and the almost unbroken stillness that enveloped him.

At times his random 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 muzzle against ’Polyte’s cheek. He caressed 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 afterward that he murmured again: “I wish to God she’d go ’way f’om yere!”

The 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 scattered 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 was almost completely blocked by wares piled up on the other side. The faint noise that