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

with dignity, “I can understand how the grandson of Théodule Peloté might be guilty of such mischievous pranks as this boy has confessed to. But I know that the grandson of Stéphanie Galopin could not be a thief.”

And he at once wrote out the check for twenty-five dollars, and handed it to the red-faced man with the tips of his fingers.

It seemed very good to Doctor John-Luis to have the boy sitting again at his fireside; and so natural, too. He seemed to be the incarnation of unspoken hopes; the realization of vague and fitful memories of the past.

When Mamouche kept on crying, Doctor John-Luis wiped away the tears with his own brown silk handkerchief.

“Mamouche,” he said, “I want you to stay here; to live here with me always. To learn how to work; to learn how to study; to grow up to be an honorable man. An honorable man, Mamouche, for I want you for my own child.”

His voice was pretty low and husky when he said that.

“I shall not take the key from the door tonight,” he continued. “If you do not choose to stay and be all this that I say, you may open the door and walk out. I shall use no force to keep you.”

“What is he doing. Marsh?” asked Doctor John-Luis the following morning, when he took the coffee that Marshall had brought to him in bed.

“Who dat, sah?”

“Why, the boy Mamouche, of course. What is he doing?”

Marshall laughed.

“He kneelin’ down dah on de flo’. He keep on sayin’, ‘Hail, Mary, full o’ grace, de Lord is wid dee. Hail, Mary, full o’ grace’⁠—t’ree, fo’ times, sah. I tell ’im, Wat you sayin’ yo’ prayer dat away, boy?’ He ’low dat w’at his gran’ma larn ’im, ter keep outen mischief. W’en de devil say, ‘Take dat gate offen de hinge; do dis; do dat,’ he gwine say t’ree Hail Mary, an’ de devil gwine tu’n tail an’ run.”

“Yes, yes,” laughed Doctor John-Luis. “That’s Stéphanie all over.”

“An’ I tell ’im: See heah, boy, you drap a couple o’ dem Hail Mary, an’ quit studyin’ ’bout de devil, an’ sot yo’se’f down ter wuk. Dat the oniest way to keep outen mischief.”

“What business is it of yours to interfere?” broke in Doctor John-Luis, irritably. “Let the boy do as his grandmother instructed him.”

“I ain’t desputin’, sah,” apologized Marshall.

“But you know. Marsh,” continued the doctor, recovering his usual amiability. “I think well be able to do something with the boy. I’m pretty sure of it. For, you see, he has his grandmother’s eyes; and his grandmother was a very intelligent woman; a clever woman, Marsh. Her one great mistake was when she married Théodule Peloté.”

Madame Célestin’s Divorce

Madame Célestin always wore a neat and snugly fitting calico wrapper when she went out in the morning to sweep her small gallery. Lawyer Paxton thought she looked very pretty in the gray one that was made with a graceful Watteau fold at the back: and with which she invariably wore a bow of pink ribbon at the throat. She was always sweeping her gallery when lawyer Paxton passed by in the morning on his way to his office in St. Denis Street.

Sometimes he stopped and leaned over the fence to say good morning at his ease; to criticise or admire her rosebushes; or, when he had time enough, to hear what she had to say. Madame Célestin usually had a good deal to say. She would gather up the train of her calico wrapper in one hand, and balancing the broom gracefully in the other, would go tripping down to where the lawyer leaned, as comfortably as he could, over her picket fence.

Of course she had talked to him of her troubles. Everyone knew Madame Célestin’s troubles.

“Really, madame,” he told her once, in his deliberate, calculating, lawyer-tone, “it’s more than human nature⁠—woman’s nature⁠—should be called upon to endure. Here you are, working your fingers off”⁠—she glanced down at two rosy fingertips that showed through the rents in her baggy doeskin gloves⁠—“taking in sewing; giving music lessons; doing God knows what in the way of manual labor to support yourself and those two little ones”⁠—Madame Célestin’s pretty face beamed with satisfaction at this enumeration of her trials.

“You right, Judge. Not a picayune, not one, not one, have I lay my eyes on in the pas’ fo’ months that I can say Célestin give it to me or sen’ it to me.”

“The scoundrel!” muttered lawyer Paxton in his beard.

“An’ pourtant,” she resumed, “they say he’s making money down roun’ Alexandria w’en he wants to work.”

“I dare say you haven’t seen him for months?” suggested the lawyer.

“It’s good six month’ since I see a sight of Célestin,” she admitted.

“That’s it, that’s what I say; he has practically deserted you; fails to support you. It wouldn’t surprise me a bit to learn that he has ill treated you.”

“Well, you know, Judge,” with an evasive cough, “a man that drinks⁠—w’at can you expec’? An’ if you would know the promises he has made me! Ah, if I had as many dolla’ as I had promise from Célestin, I would n’ have to work, je vous garantis.”

“And in my opinion, madame, you would be a foolish woman to endure it longer, when the divorce court is there to offer you redress.”

“You spoke about that befo’, Judge; I’m goin’ think about that divo’ce. I believe you right.”

Madame Célestin thought about the divorce and talked about it, too; and lawyer Paxton grew deeply interested in the theme.

“You know, about that divo’ce, Judge,” Madame Célestin was waiting for him that morning, “I been talking to my family an’ my frien’s, an’ it’s me that tells you, they all plumb agains’ that divo’ce.”

“Certainly, to be sure; that’s to be expected, madame, in this community of Creoles. I warned you that you would meet with opposition, and would have to face it and brave it.”

“Oh, don’t fear, I’m going to face it! Maman