"My mother is unduly impatient, surely," replied Suzanne, with chilling politeness.
"May I ask, mademoiselle," he broke in, with an abruptness that was startling, "the name of the man with whom you were walking this afternoon?"
She looked at him with unaffected astonishment, and told him: "I hardly understan' yo' question. That gentleman is Mr. Hector Santien, of one of the firs' families of Natchitoches; a warm ole frien' an' far distant relative of mine."
"Oh, that's his name, is it, Hector Santien? Well, please don't walk on the New Orleans streets again with Mr. Hector Santien."
"Yo' remarks would be insulting if they were not so highly amusing, Mr. Laballière."
"I beg your pardon if I am insulting; and I have no desire to be amusing," and then Laballière lost his head. "You are at liberty to walk the streets with whom you please, of course," he blurted, with ill-suppressed passion, "but if I encounter Mr. Hector Santien in your company again, in public, I shall wring his neck, then and there, as I would a chicken; I shall break every bone in his body"—Suzanne had arisen.
"You have said enough, sir. I even desire no explanation of yo' words."
"I did n't intend to explain them," he retorted, stung by the insinuation.
"You will escuse me further," she requested icily, motioning to retire.
"Not till—oh, not till you have forgiven me," he cried impulsively, barring her exit; for repentance had come swiftly this time.
But she did not forgive him. "I can wait," she said. Then he stepped aside and she passed by him without a second glance.
She sent word to Hector the following day to come to her. And when he was there, in the late afternoon, they walked together to the end of the vine-sheltered gallery—where the air was redolent with the odor of spring blossoms.
"Hector," she began, after a while, "some one has told me I should not be seen upon the streets of New Orleans with you."
He was trimming a long rose-stem with his sharp penknife. He did not stop nor start, nor look embarrassed, nor anything of the sort.
"Indeed!" he said.
"But, you know," she went on, "if the saints came down from heaven to tell me there was a reason for it, I could n't believe them."
"You wouldn't believe them, ma petite Suzanne?" He was getting all the thorns off nicely, and stripping away the heavy lower leaves.
"I want you to look me in the face, Hector, and tell me if there is any reason."
He snapped the knife-blade and replaced the knife in his pocket; then he looked in her eyes, so unflinchingly, that she hoped and believed it presaged a confession of innocence that she would gladly have accepted. But he said indifferently: "Yes, there are reasons."
"Then I say there are not," she exclaimed excitedly; "you are amusing your-self—laughing at me, as you always do. There are no reasons that I will hear or believe. You will walk the streets with me, will you not, Hector?" she entreated, "and go to church with me on Sunday; and, and—oh, it's nonsense, nonsense for you to say things like that!"
He held the rose by its long, hardy stem, and swept it lightly and caressingly across her forehead, along her cheek, and over her pretty mouth and chin, as a lover might have done with his lips. He noticed how the red rose left a crimson stain behind it.
She had been standing, but now she sank upon the bench that was there, and buried her face in her palms. A slight convulsive movement of the muscles indicated a suppressed sob.
"Ah, Suzanne, Suzanne, you are not going to make yourself unhappy about a bon à rien like me. Come, look at me; tell me that you are not." He drew her hands down from her face; and held them a while, bidding her good-by. His own face wore the quizzical look it often did, as if he were laughing at her.
"That work at the store is telling on your nerves, mignonne. Promise me that you will go back to the country. That will be best."
"Oh, yes; I am going back home, Hector."
"That is right, little cousin," and he patted her hands kindly, and laid them both down gently into her lap.
He did not return; neither during the week nor the following Sunday. Then Suzanne told Maman Chavan she was going home. The girl was not too deeply in love with Hector: but imagination counts for something, and so does youth.
Laballière was on the train with her. She felt, somehow, that he would be. And yet she did not dream that he had watched and waited for her each morning since he parted from her.
He went to her without preliminary of manner or speech, and held out his hand; she extended her own unhesitatingly. She could not understand why, and she was a little too weary to strive to do so. It seemed as though the sheer force of his will would carry him to the goal of his wishes.
He did not weary her with attentions during the time they were together. He sat apart from her, conversing for the most time with friends and acquaintances who belonged in the sugar district through which they traveled in the early part of the day.
She wondered why he had ever left that section to go up into Natchitoches. Then she wondered if he did not mean to speak to her at all. As if he had read the thought, he went and sat down beside her.
He showed her, away off across the country, where his mother lived, and his brother Alcée, and his cousin Clarisse.
On Sunday morning, when Maman Chavan strove to sound the depth of Hector's feeling for Suzanne, he told her again:
"Women, my dear Maman Chavan, you know how it is with me in regard to women," and he refilled her glass from the bottle of sauterne.
"Farceur va!" and Maman Chavan laughed, and her fat shoulders quivered under the white volante she wore.
A day or two later, Hector was walking down Canal Street at four in the afternoon. He might have posed, as he was, for a fashion-plate. He looked not to the right nor to the left; not even at the women who passed by. Some of them turned to look at him.
When he approached the corner of Royal, a young man who stood there nudged his companion.
"You know who that is?" he said, indicating Hector.
"No; who?"
"Well, you are an innocent. Why, that's Deroustan, the most notorious gambler in New Orleans."
[1] A term still applied in Louisiana to mulattoes who were never in slavery, and whose families in most instances were themselves slave owners.
IN SABINE.
The sight of a human habitation, even if it was a rude log cabin with a mud chimney at one end, was a very gratifying one to Grégoire.
He had come out of Natchitoches parish, and had been riding a great part of the day through the big lonesome parish of Sabine. He was not following the regular Texas road, but, led by his erratic fancy, was pushing toward the Sabine River by circuitous paths through the rolling pine forests.
As he approached the cabin in the clearing, he discerned behind a palisade of pine saplings an old negro man chopping wood.
"Howdy, Uncle," called out the young fellow, reining his horse. The negro looked up in blank amazement at so unexpected an apparition, but he only answered: "How you do, suh," accompanying his speech by a series of polite nods.
"Who lives yere?"
"Hit's Mas' Bud Aiken w'at live' heah, suh."
"Well, if Mr. Bud Aiken c'n afford to hire a man to chop his wood, I reckon he won't grudge me a bite o' suppa