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

barred the doors and windows, and mounting her fleet Indian pony, away she galloped to the fort, five miles below, to seek the aid she needed.

Captain Vaudry, and others as well, made all haste to Saint Phillippe when they learned this sad thing that had befallen Marianne. Word was sent to the good curé of Kaskaskia, and he came too, with prayer and benediction. Jacques was in Kaskaskia when the tidings of Picoté’s death reached there, and with all the speed at his command he hurried to Marianne to help her in her need.

So Marianne was not alone. Good and staunch friends were about her. When Picoté had been laid to rest⁠—under the maple⁠—and the last blessing had been spoken, the good curé turned to Marianne and said:

“My daughter, you will return with me to Kaskaskia. Your father had many friends in that village, and there is not a door but will open to receive you. It would be unseemly, now he is gone, to live alone in Saint Phillippe.”

“I thank you, my father,” she answered, “but I must pass this night alone, and in thought. If I decide to go to my good friends in Kaskaskia, I shall ride into town early, upon my pony.”

Jacques, too, spoke to her, with gentle persuasion: “You know, Marianne, what I want to say, and what my heart is full of. It is not I alone but my father and mother as well to whom you are dear, and who long to have you with us⁠—one of us. Over there in the new village of Saint Louis a new life has begun for all of us. Let me beg that you will not refuse to share it till you have at least tried⁠—”

She held up her hand in token that she had heard enough and turned resolutely from him. “Leave me, my friend,” she said, “leave me alone. Follow the curé, there where he goes. If I so determine, you shall hear from me, if not, then think no longer of Marianne.”

So another silent night fell upon Saint Phillippe, with Marianne alone in her home. Not even the dead with her now. She did not know that under the shelter of a neighboring porch Captain Vaudry lay like a sentinel wrapped in his mantle.

Near the outer road, but within the inclosure of Marianne’s home, was “the great tree of Saint Phillippe” under which a rude table and benches stood. Here Picoté and his daughter had often taken their humble meals, shared with any passerby that chose to join them.

Seated there in the early morning was Captain Vaudry when Marianne stepped from her door, in her jerkin of buckskin and her gun across her shoulder.

“What are you doing here, Captain Vaudry?” she asked with startled displeasure when she saw him there.

“I have waited, Marianne. You cannot turn me from you as lightly as you have the others.” And then with warm entreaty in his voice he talked to her of France:

“Ah, Marianne, you do not know what life is, here in this wild America. Let the curé of Kaskaskia say the words that will make you my wife, and I will take you to a land, child, where men barter with gold, and not with hides and peltries. Where you shall wear jewels and silks and walk upon soft and velvet carpets. Where life can be a round of pleasure. I do not say these things to tempt you; but to let you know that existence holds joys you do not dream of⁠—that may be yours if you will.”

“Enough, Capt. Alexis Vaudry! I have sometimes thought I should like to know what it is that men call luxury; and sometimes have felt that I should like to live in sweet and gentle intercourse with men and women. Yet these have been but fleeting wishes. I have passed the night in meditation and my choice is made.”

“I love you, Marianne.” He sat with hands clasped upon the table, and his handsome enraptured eyes gazing up into her face, as she stood before him. But she went on unheedingly:

“I could not live here in Saint Phillippe or there in Kaskaskia. The English shall never be masters of Marianne. Over the river it is no better. The Spaniards may any day they choose give a rude awakening to those stolid beings who are living on in a half-slumber of content⁠—”

“I love you; oh, I love you, Marianne!”

“Do you not know, Captain Vaudry,” she said with savage resistance, “I have breathed the free air of forest and stream, till it is in my blood now. I was not born to be the mother of slaves.”

“Oh, how can you think of slaves and motherhood! Look into my eyes, Marianne, and think of love.”

“I will not look into your eyes, Captain Vaudry,” she murmured, letting the quivering lids fall upon her own, “with your talk and your looks of love⁠—of love! You have looked it before, and you have spoken it before till the strength would go from my limbs and leave me feeble as a little child, till my heart would beat like that of one who has been stricken. Go away, with your velvet and your jewels and your love. Go away to your France and to your treacherous kings; they are not for me.”

“What do you mean, Marianne?” demanded the young man, grown pale with apprehension. “You deny allegiance to England and Spain; you spurn France with contempt; what is left for you?”

“Freedom is left for me!” exclaimed the girl, seizing her gun that she lifted upon her shoulder. “Marianne goes to the Cherokees! You cannot stay me; you need not try to. Hardships may await me, but let it be death rather than bondage.”

While Vaudry sat dumb with pain and motionless with astonishment; while Jacques was hoping for a message; while the good curé was looking eagerly from his doorstep for signs of the girl’s approach, Marianne had turned her back upon all of them.

With gun across