At Fault (2 page)

She laid her hand and arm,—bare to the elbow—across his work, and
said, looking at him reproachfully:—

"Is this the way you keep a promise?"

"A promise?" he questioned, smiling awkwardly and looking furtively at
the white arm, then very earnestly at the ink-stand beyond.

"Yes. Didn't you promise to do no work after five o'clock?"

"But this is merely pastime," he said, touching the paper, yet leaving
it undisturbed beneath the fair weight that was pressing it down. "My
work is finished: you must have met Henry with the letters."

"No, I suppose he went through the woods; we came on the hand-car. Oh,
dear! It's an ungrateful task, this one of reform," and she leaned
back, fanning leisurely, whilst he proceeded to throw the contents of
his desk into hopeless disorder by pretended efforts at arrangement.

"My husband used sometimes to say, and no doubt with reason," she
continued, "that in my eagerness for the rest of mankind to do right,
I was often in danger of losing sight of such necessity for myself."

"Oh, there could be no fear of that," said Hosmer with a short laugh.
There was no further pretext for continued occupation with his pens
and pencils and rulers, so he turned towards Thérèse, rested an arm on
the desk, pulled absently at his black moustache, and crossing his
knee, gazed with deep concern at the toe of his boot, and set of his
trouser about the ankle.

"You are not what my friend Homeyer would call an individualist," he
ventured, "since you don't grant a man the right to follow the
promptings of his character."

"No, I'm no individualist, if to be one is to permit men to fall into
hurtful habits without offering protest against it. I'm losing faith
in that friend Homeyer, who I strongly suspect is a mythical apology
for your own short-comings."

"Indeed he's no myth; but a friend who is fond of going into such
things and allows me the benefit of his deeper perceptions."

"You having no time, well understood. But if his influence has had the
merit of drawing your thoughts from business once in a while we won't
quarrel with it."

"Mrs. Lafirme," said Hosmer, seeming moved to pursue the subject, and
addressing the spray of white blossoms that adorned Thérèse's black
hat, "you admit, I suppose, that in urging your views upon me, you
have in mind the advancement of my happiness?"

"Well understood."

"Then why wish to substitute some other form of enjoyment for the one
which I find in following my inclinations?"

"Because there is an unsuspected selfishness in your inclinations that
works harm to yourself and to those around you. I want you to know,"
she continued warmly, "the good things of life that cheer and warm,
that are always at hand."

"Do you think the happiness of Melicent or—or others could be
materially lessened by my fondness for money getting?" he asked dryly,
with a faint elevation of eyebrow.

"Yes, in proportion as it deprives them of a charm which any man's
society loses, when pursuing one object in life, he grows insensible
to every other. But I'll not scold any more. I've made myself
troublesome enough for one day. You haven't asked about Melicent. It's
true," she laughed, "I haven't given you much chance. She's out on the
lake with Grégoire."

"Ah?"

"Yes, in the pirogue. A dangerous little craft, I'm afraid; but she
tells me she can swim. I suppose it's all right."

"Oh, Melicent will look after herself."

Hosmer had great faith in his sister Melicent's ability to look after
herself; and it must be granted that the young lady fully justified
his belief in her.

"She enjoys her visit more than I thought she would," he said.

"Melicent's a dear girl," replied Thérèse cordially, "and a wise one
too in guarding herself against a somber influence that I know," with
a meaning glance at Hosmer, who was preparing to close his desk.

She suddenly perceived the picture of a handsome boy, far back in one
of the pigeon-holes, and with the familiarity born of country
intercourse, she looked intently at it, remarking upon the boy's
beauty.

"A child whom I loved very much," said Hosmer. "He's dead," and he
closed the desk, turning the key in the lock with a sharp click which
seemed to add—"and buried."

Thérèse then approached the open door, leaned her back against its
casing, and turned her pretty profile towards Hosmer, who, it need not
be supposed, was averse to looking at it—only to being caught in the
act.

"I want to look in at the mill before work closes," she said; and not
waiting for an answer she went on to ask—moved by some association of
ideas:—

"How is Joçint doing?"

"Always unruly, the foreman tells me. I don't believe we shall be able
to keep him."

Hosmer then spoke a few words through the telephone which connected
with the agent's desk at the station, put on his great slouch hat, and
thrusting keys and hands into his pocket, joined Thérèse in the
door-way.

Quitting the office and making a sharp turn to the left, they came in
direct sight of the great mill. She quickly made her way past the huge
piles of sawed timber, not waiting for her companion, who loitered at
each step of the way, with observant watchfulness. Then mounting the
steep stairs that led to the upper portions of the mill, she went at
once to her favorite spot, quite on the edge of the open platform that
overhung the dam. Here she watched with fascinated delight the great
logs hauled dripping from the water, following each till it had
changed to the clean symmetry of sawed planks. The unending work made
her giddy. For no one was there a moment of rest, and she could well
understand the open revolt of the surly Joçint; for he rode the day
long on that narrow car, back and forth, back and forth, with his
heart in the pine hills and knowing that his little Creole pony was
roaming the woods in vicious idleness and his rifle gathering an
unsightly rust on the cabin wall at home.

The boy gave but ugly acknowledgment to Thérèse's amiable nod; for he
thought she was one upon whom partly rested the fault of this
intrusive Industry which had come to fire the souls of indolent
fathers with a greedy ambition for gain, at the sore expense of
revolting youth.

"You got to set mighty still in this pirogue," said Grégoire, as with
a long oar-stroke he pulled out into mid stream.

"Yes, I know," answered Melicent complacently, arranging herself
opposite him in the long narrow boat: all sense of danger which the
situation might arouse being dulled by the attractiveness of a new
experience.

Her resemblance to Hosmer ended with height and slenderness of figure,
olive tinted skin, and eyes and hair which were of that dark brown
often miscalled black; but unlike his, her face was awake with an
eagerness to know and test the novelty and depth of unaccustomed
sensation. She had thus far lived an unstable existence, free from the
weight of responsibilities, with a notion lying somewhere deep in her
consciousness that the world must one day be taken seriously; but that
contingency was yet too far away to disturb the harmony of her days.

She had eagerly responded to her brother's suggestion of spending a
summer with him in Louisiana. Hitherto, having passed her summers
North, West, or East as alternating caprice prompted, she was ready at
a word to fit her humor to the novelty of a season at the South. She
enjoyed in advance the startling effect which her announced intention
produced upon her intimate circle at home; thinking that her whim
deserved the distinction of eccentricity with which they chose to
invest it. But Melicent was chiefly moved by the prospect of an
uninterrupted sojourn with her brother, whom she loved blindly, and to
whom she attributed qualities of mind and heart which she thought the
world had discovered to use against him.

"You got to set mighty still in this pirogue."

"Yes, I know; you told me so before," and she laughed.

"W'at are you laughin' at?" asked Grégoire with amused but uncertain
expectancy.

"Laughing at you, Grégoire; how can I help it?" laughing again.

"Betta wait tell I do somethin' funny, I reckon. Ain't this a putty
sight?" he added, referring to the dense canopy of an overarching
tree, beneath which they were gliding, and whose extreme branches
dipped quite into the slow moving water.

The scene had not attracted Melicent. For she had been engaged in
observing her companion rather closely; his personality holding her
with a certain imaginative interest.

The young man whom she so closely scrutinized was slightly undersized,
but of close and brawny build. His hands were not so refinedly white
as those of certain office bred young men of her acquaintance, yet
they were not coarsened by undue toil: it being somewhat an axiom with
him to do nothing that an available "nigger" might do for him.

Close fitting, high-heeled boots of fine quality incased his feet, in
whose shapeliness he felt a pardonable pride; for a young man's
excellence was often measured in the circle which he had frequented,
by the possession of such a foot. A peculiar grace in the dance and a
talent for bold repartee were further characteristics which had made
Grégoire's departure keenly felt among certain belles of upper Red
River. His features were handsome, of sharp and refined cut; and his
eyes black and brilliant as eyes of an alert and intelligent animal
sometimes are. Melicent could not reconcile his voice to her liking;
it was too softly low and feminine, and carried a note of pleading or
pathos, unless he argued with his horse, his dog, or a "nigger," at
which times, though not unduly raised, it acquired a biting quality
that served the purpose of relieving him from further form of
insistence.

He pulled rapidly and in silence down the bayou, that was now so
entirely sheltered from the open light of the sky by the meeting
branches above, as to seem a dim leafy tunnel fashioned by man's
ingenuity. There were no perceptible banks, for the water spread out
on either side of them, further than they could follow its flashings
through the rank underbrush. The dull plash of some object falling
into the water, or the wild call of a lonely bird were the only sounds
that broke upon the stillness, beside the monotonous dipping of the
oars and the occasional low undertones of their own voices. When
Grégoire called the girl's attention to an object near by, she fancied
it was the protruding stump of a decaying tree; but reaching for his
revolver and taking quiet aim, he drove a ball into the black upturned
nozzle that sent it below the surface with an angry splash.

"Will he follow us?" she asked, mildly agitated.

"Oh no; he's glad 'nough to git out o' the way. You betta put down yo'
veil," he added a moment later.

Before she could ask a reason—for it was not her fashion to obey at
word of command—the air was filled with the doleful hum of a gray
swarm of mosquitoes, which attacked them fiercely.

"You didn't tell me the bayou was the refuge of such savage
creatures," she said, fastening her veil closely about face and neck,
but not before she had felt the sharpness of their angry sting.

"I reckoned you'd 'a knowed all about it: seems like you know
everything." After a short interval he added, "you betta take yo' veil
off."

She was amused at Grégoire's authoritative tone and she said to him
laughing, yet obeying his suggestion, which carried a note of command:
"you shall tell me always, why I should do things."

"All right," he replied; "because they ain't any mo' mosquitoes;
because I want you to see somethin' worth seein' afta while; and
because I like to look at you," which he was doing, with the innocent
boldness of a forward child. "Ain't that 'nough reasons?"

"More than enough," she replied shortly.

The rank and clustering vegetation had become denser as they went on,
forming an impenetrable tangle on either side, and pressing so closely
above that they often needed to lower their heads to avoid the blow of
some drooping branch. Then a sudden and unlooked for turn in the bayou
carried them out upon the far-spreading waters of the lake, with the
broad canopy of the open sky above them.

"Oh," cried Melicent, in surprise. Her exclamation was like a sigh of
relief which comes at the removal of some pressure from body or brain.

The wildness of the scene caught upon her erratic fancy, speeding it
for a quick moment into the realms of romance. She was an Indian
maiden of the far past, fleeing and seeking with her dusky lover some
wild and solitary retreat on the borders of this lake, which offered
them no seeming foot-hold save such as they would hew themselves with
axe or tomahawk. Here and there, a grim cypress lifted its head above
the water, and spread wide its moss covered arms inviting refuge to
the great black-winged buzzards that circled over and about it in
mid-air. Nameless voices—weird sounds that awake in a Southern forest
at twilight's approach,—were crying a sinister welcome to the
settling gloom.

"This is a place thet can make a man sad, I tell you," said Grégoire,
resting his oars, and wiping the moisture from his forehead. "I
wouldn't want to be yere alone, not fur any money."

"It is an awful place," replied Melicent with a little appreciative
shudder; adding "do you consider me a bodily protection?" and feebly
smiling into his face.

"Oh; I ain't 'fraid o' any thing I can see an on'erstan'. I can han'le
mos' any thing thet's got a body. But they do tell some mighty queer
tales 'bout this lake an' the pine hills yonda."

"Queer—how?"

"W'y, ole McFarlane's buried up there on the hill; an' they's folks
'round yere says he walks about o' nights; can't res' in his grave fur
the niggas he's killed."