Short Fiction by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Tags: Louisiana -- Social life and customs -- Fiction, American, Short stories
Publisher: Standard Ebooks
Published: 2019-06-05T22:06:53+00:00

A Lady of Bayou St. John

The days and the nights were very lonely for Madame Delisle. Gus­tave, her hus­band, was away yon­der in Vir­ginia some­where, with Beau­re­gard, and she was here in the old house on Bayou St. John, alone with her slaves.

Madame was very beau­ti­ful. So beau­ti­ful, that she found much di­ver­sion in sit­ting for hours be­fore the mir­ror, con­tem­plat­ing her own love­li­ness; ad­mir­ing the bril­liancy of her golden hair, the sweet lan­guor of her blue eyes, the grace­ful con­tours of her fig­ure, and the peach-like bloom of her flesh. She was very young. So young that she romped with the dogs, teased the par­rot, and could not fall asleep at night un­less old black Manna-Loulou sat be­side her bed and told her sto­ries.

In short, she was a child, not able to re­al­ize the sig­nif­i­cance of the tragedy whose un­fold­ing kept the civ­i­lized world in sus­pense. It was only the im­me­di­ate ef­fect of the aw­ful drama that moved her: the gloom that, spread­ing on all sides, pen­e­trated her own ex­is­tence and de­prived it of joy­ous­ness.

Sépin­court found her look­ing very lonely and dis­con­so­late one day when he stopped to talk with her. She was pale, and her blue eyes were dim with un­wept tears. He was a French­man who lived near by. He shrugged his shoul­ders over this strife be­tween broth­ers, this quar­rel which was none of his; and he re­sented it chiefly upon the ground that it made life un­com­fort­able; yet he was young enough to have had quicker and hot­ter blood in his veins.

When he left Madame Delisle that day, her eyes were no longer dim, and a some­thing of the drea­ri­ness that weighted her had been lifted away. That mys­te­ri­ous, that treach­er­ous bond called sym­pa­thy, had re­vealed them to each other.

He came to her very of­ten that sum­mer, clad al­ways in cool, white duck, with a flower in his but­ton­hole. His pleas­ant brown eyes sought hers with warm, friendly glances that com­forted her as a ca­ress might com­fort a dis­con­so­late child. She took to watch­ing for his slim fig­ure, a lit­tle bent, walk­ing lazily up the av­enue be­tween the dou­ble line of mag­no­lias.

They would sit some­times dur­ing whole af­ter­noons in the vine-shel­tered cor­ner of the gallery, sip­ping the black cof­fee that Manna-Loulou brought to them at in­ter­vals; and talk­ing, talk­ing in­ces­santly dur­ing the first days when they were un­con­sciously un­fold­ing them­selves to each other. Then a time came—it came very quickly—when they seemed to have noth­ing more to say to one an­other.

He brought her news of the war; and they talked about it list­lessly, be­tween long in­ter­vals of si­lence, of which nei­ther took ac­count. An oc­ca­sional let­ter came by round­about ways from Gus­tave—guarded and sad­den­ing in its tone. They would read it and sigh over it to­gether.

Once they stood be­fore his por­trait that hung in the draw­ing-room and that looked out at them with kind, in­dul­gent eyes. Madame wiped the pic­ture with her gos­samer hand­ker­chief and im­pul­sively pressed a ten­der kiss upon the painted can­vas. For months

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