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

her shoulder she walked up the gentle slope; her brave, strong face turned to the rising sun. A Wizard from Gettysburg

It was one afternoon in April, not long ago, only the other day, and the shadows had already begun to lengthen.

Bertrand Delmandé, a fine, bright-looking boy of fourteen years⁠—fifteen, perhaps⁠—was mounted, and riding along a pleasant country road, upon a little Creole pony, such as boys in Louisiana usually ride when they have nothing better at hand. He had hunted, and carried his gun before him.

It is unpleasant to state that Bertrand was not so depressed as he should have been, in view of recent events that had come about. Within the past week he had been recalled from the college of Grand Coteau to his home, the Bon-Accueil plantation.

He had found his father and his grandmother depressed over money matters, awaiting certain legal developments that might result in his permanent withdrawal from school. That very day, directly after the early dinner, the two had driven to town, on this very business, to be absent till the late afternoon. Bertrand, then, had saddled Picayune and gone for a long jaunt, such as his heart delighted in.

He was returning now, and had approached the beginning of the great tangled Cherokee hedge that marked the boundary line of Bon-Accueil, and that twinkled with multiple white roses.

The pony started suddenly and violently at something there in the turn of the road, and just under the hedge. It looked like a bundle of rags at first. But it was a tramp, seated upon a broad, flat stone.

Bertrand had no maudlin consideration for tramps as a species; he had only that morning driven from the place one who was making himself unpleasant at the kitchen window.

But this tramp was old and feeble. His beard was long, and as white as new-ginned cotton, and when Bertrand saw him he was engaged in stanching a wound in his bare heel with a fistful of matted grass.

“What’s wrong, old man?” asked the boy, kindly.

The tramp looked up at him with a bewildered glance, but did not answer.

“Well,” thought Bertrand, “since it’s decided that I’m to be a physician some day, I can’t begin to practice too early.”

He dismounted, and examined the injured foot. It had an ugly gash. Bertrand acted mostly from impulse. Fortunately his impulses were not bad ones. So, nimbly, and as quickly as he could manage it, he had the old man astride Picayune, whilst he himself was leading the pony down the narrow lane.

The dark green hedge towered like a high and solid wall on one side. On the other was a broad, open field, where here and there appeared the flash and gleam of uplifted, polished hoes, that negroes were plying between the even rows of cotton and tender corn.

“This is the State of Louisiana,” uttered the tramp, quaveringly.

“Yes, this is Louisiana,” returned Bertrand cheerily.

“Yes, I know it is. I’ve been in all of them since Gettysburg. Sometimes it was too hot, and sometimes it was too cold; and with that bullet in my head⁠—you don’t remember? No, you don’t remember Gettysburg.”

“Well, no, not vividly,” laughed Bertrand.

“Is it a hospital? It isn’t a factory, is it?” the man questioned.

“Where we’re going? Why, no, it’s the Delmandé plantation⁠—Bon-Accueil. Here we are. Wait, I’ll open the gate.”

This singular group entered the yard from the rear, and not far from the house. A big black woman, who sat just without a cabin door, picking a pile of rusty-looking moss, called out at sight of them:⁠—

“W’at’s dat you’s bringin’ in dis yard, boy? top dat hoss?”

She received no reply. Bertrand, indeed, took no notice of her inquiry.

“Fu’ a boy w’at goes to school like you does⁠—whar’s yo’ sense?” she went on, with a fine show of indignation; then, muttering to herself, “Ma’ame Bertrand an’ Marse St. Ange ain’t gwine stan’ dat, I knows dey ain’t. Dah! ef he ain’t done sot ’im on de gall’ry, plumb down in his pa’s rockin’-cheer!”

Which the boy had done; seated the tramp in a pleasant corner of the veranda, while he went in search of bandages for his wound.

The servants showed high disapproval, the housemaid following Bertrand into his grandmother’s room, whither he had carried his investigations.

“W’at you tearin’ yo’ gra’ma’s closit to’ pieces dat away, boy?” she complained in her high soprano.

“I’m looking for bandages.”

“Den w’y you don’t ax fu’ ban’ges, an’ lef yo’ gra’ma’s closit ’lone? You want to listen to me; you gwine git shed o’ dat tramp settin’ dah naxt to de dinin’-room! W’en de silva be missin’, ’tain’ you w’at gwine git blame, it’s me.”

“The silver? Nonsense, ’Cindy; the man’s wounded, and can’t you see he’s out of his head?”

“No mo’ outen his head ’an I is. ’T ain’ me w’at want to tres’ [trust] ’im wid de sto’-room key, ef he is outen his head,” she concluded with a disdainful shrug.

But Bertrand’s protégé proved so unapproachable in his long-worn rags, that the boy concluded to leave him unmolested till his father’s return, and then ask permission to turn the forlorn creature into the bathhouse, and array him afterward in clean, fresh garments.

So there the old tramp sat in the veranda corner, stolidly content, when St. Ange Delmandé and his mother returned from town.

St. Ange was a dark, slender man of middle age, with a sensitive face, and a plentiful sprinkle of gray in his thick black hair; his mother, a portly woman, and an active one for her sixty-five years.

They were evidently in a despondent mood. Perhaps it was for the cheer of her sweet presence that they had brought with them from town a little girl, the child of Madame Delmandé’s only daughter, who was married, and lived there.

Madame Delmandé and her son were astonished to find so uninviting an intruder in possession. But a few earnest words from Bertrand reassured them, and partly reconciled them to the man’s presence; and it was with wholly indifferent though not unkindly glances that they passed