Short Fiction - Kate Chopin (animal farm read .txt) 📗

Saint Phillippe who would not rather die than live subject to that country. But there is no reason to do either,” he added smiling. “In a week from now, Marianne, Saint Phillippe will be deserted.”

“You mean that the people will abandon their homes, and go to the new trading-post?”

“Yes, that is what I mean.”

“But I have heard⁠—I am sure I have heard, long ago, that King Louis made a gift of his Louisiana possessions to his cousin of Spain; that they jointly granted the East Illinois to England. So that leaves the West under the Spanish dominion, Jacques.”

“But Spain is not England,” he explained, a little disconcerted. “No Frenchman who respects himself will live subject to England,” he added fiercely. “All are of one mind⁠—to quit Saint Phillippe at once. All save one, Marianne.”

“And that one?”

“Your father.”

“My father! Ah, I might have known. What does he say?” she questioned eagerly.

“He says he is old; that he has dwelt here many years⁠—”

“That is true,” the girl mused. “I was born here in Saint Phillippe; so were you, Jacques.”

“He says,” continued the young man, “that he could not dispose of his mill and that he would not leave it.”

“His mill⁠—his mill! no!” exclaimed Marianne, rising abruptly, “it is not that. Would you know why my father will never leave Saint Phillippe?” approaching as she said this a rear window whose shutters were partly closed, and throwing them wide open. “Come here, Jacques. That is the reason,” pointing with her strong shapely arm to where a wooden cross marked the presence of a grave out under the wide-spreading branches of a maple.

They both stood for a while silently gazing across the grassy slope that reflected the last flickering gleams of the setting sun. Then Jacques muttered as if in answer to some unspoken thought:

“Yes, he loved her very dearly. Surely the better part of himself went with her. And you, Marianne?” he questioned gently.

“I, Jacques? Oh, it is only the old whose memories dwell in graves,” she replied a little wearily. “My life belongs to my father. I have but to follow his will; whatever that may be.”

Then Marianne left Jacques standing by the open window, and went into the adjoining room to divest herself of her hunting raiment. When she returned she was dressed in the garments that had been her mother’s once⁠—a short camlet skirt of sober hue; a green laced bodice whose scantiness was redeemed by a muslin kerchief laid in deep folds across the bosom; and upon her head was the white cap of the French working-woman.

Jacques had lighted the fire for her in the big stone chimney, and gone silently away.

It was indeed true. During that autumn of 1765, a handful of English, under command of Captain Sterling of the Highlanders, crossed the Alleghanies and were coming to take peaceful possession of their hitherto inaccessible lands in the Illinois.

To none did this seem a more hated intrusion than to the people of Saint Phillippe. After the excited meeting at Sans-Chagrin’s tavern, all went to work with feverish haste to abandon the village which had been the only home that many of them had ever known. Men, women, and children seemed suddenly possessed with demoniac strength to demolish. Doors, windows, and flooring; everything that could serve in building up the new was rifled from the old. For days there was gathering together and hauling away in rough carts constructed for the sole purpose. Cattle were called from the pasture lands and driven in herds to the northward.

When the last of these rebellious spirits was gone, Saint Phillippe stood like the skeleton of its former self; and Picoté Laronce with his daughter found themselves alone amid the desolate hearthstones.

“It will be a dreary life, my child, for you,” said the old man, gathering Marianne in a close embrace.

“It will not be dreary,” she assured him, disengaging herself to look into his eyes. “I shall have much work to do. We shall forget⁠—try to forget⁠—that the English are at our door. And some time when we are rich in peltries, we will go to visit our friends in that great town that they talk so much about. Do not ever think that I am sad, father, because we are alone.”

But the silence was very desolate. So was the sight of those abandoned homes, where smiling faces no longer looked from windows, and where the music of children’s laughter was heard no more.

Marianne worked and hunted and grew strong and stronger. The old man was more and more like a child to her. When she was not with him, he would sit for hours upon a rude seat under the maple-tree, with a placid look of content in his old, dim eyes.

One day when Captain Vaudry rode up from Fort Chartres, fine as could be in his gay uniform of a French officer, he found Picoté and Marianne sitting in the solitude hand in hand. He had heard how they had remained alone in Saint Phillippe, and he had come to know if it was true, and to persuade them, if he could, to return with him to France⁠—to La Rochelle, where Picoté had formerly lived. But he urged in vain. Picoté knew no home save that in which his wife had dwelt with him, and no resting-place on earth except where she lay. And Marianne said always the same thing⁠—that her father’s will was hers.

But when she came in from her hunt one evening and found him stretched in the eternal sleep out under the maple, at once she felt that she was alone, with no will to obey in the world but her own. Then her heart was as strong as oak and her nerves were like iron. Lovingly she carried him into the house. And when she had wept because he was dead, she lit two blessed candles and placed them at his head and she watched with him all through the still night.

At the break of day she