Kate Chopin

“ Suzanne and Hector spoke but French to each other.
Hector did not tarry a moment longer than was needed to place his young friend and charge in the older woman’s care. He would not even stay to take a bite of supper with them. Maman Chavan watched him as he hurried down the steps and out into the gloom. Then she said to Suzanne: “That man is an angel, Mademoiselle, un ange du bon Dieu.”
“Women, my dear Maman Chavan, you know how it is with me in regard to women. ”

“ Mademoiselle St. Denys Godolph paled suddenly and her voice was unsteady when she replied:-
“You are too considerate, Monsieur. Will you be so kind as to give me the name of the scholar whom you desire to int’oduce into this school?” She knew it as well as he.
“What’s your name, youngster? Out with it!” cried Laballière, striving to shake the little free mulatto into speech; but he stayed dumb as a mummy.
“His name is André Giestin. You know him. He is the son”-
“Then, Monsieur,” she interrupted, “permit me to remine you that you have made a se’ious mistake. ”

“ Laballière had a distressingly quick temper. His fist, which was a strong one, came down upon the wobbling table with a crash that sent half of Madame Giestin’s crockery bouncing and crashing to the floor. He swore an oath that sent Madame Giestin and her father and grandmother, who were all listening in the next room, into suppressed convulsions of mirth.
“Oh, ho! so I’m not to associate with whom I please in Natchitoches parish. We’ll see about that. Draw up your chair, Giestin. Call your wife and your grandmother and the rest of the tribe, and we’ll breakfast together. By thunder! ”

“ 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. ”

“ Maman Chavan slipped a little silver medal toward her, accompanying the action with a pantomime that Suzanne readily understood. She, in turn, secretly and adroitly transferred the medal to Hector’s coat-pocket. He noticed the action plainly enough, but pretended not to.
“Natchitoches has n’t changed,” he commented. “The everlasting can-cans! when will they have done with them? This is n’t little Athénaïse Miché, getting married! Sapristi! but it makes one old! And old Papa Jean-Pierre only dead now? I thought he was out of purgatory five years ago. And who is this Laballière? ”

“ But that was nonsense; nobody starves on a Louisiana plantation, unless it be with suicidal intent.
These things he knew, but he did not know why Mademoiselle St. Denys Godolph always answered his salutation with an air of chilling hauteur that would easily have paralyzed a less sanguine man.
The reason was that Suzanne, like every one else, had heard the stories that were going the rounds about him. People said he was entirely too much at home with the free mulattoes. It seems a dreadful thing to say, and it would be a shocking thing to think of a Laballière ”

“ Jis like you want, yas.”
“What in the name of common sense are you talking about?” asked Laballière, looking up abstractedly from his New Orleans paper. Giestin wriggled uncomfortably.
“It’s heap o’ story goin’ roun’ ‘bout you, if you want b’lieve me.” And he snickered and looked at his wife, who thrust the end of her shawl into her mouth and walked from the room with a tread like the Empress Eugenie’s, in that elegant woman’s palmist days.
“Stories!” echoed Laballière, his face the picture of astonishment. “Who – where – what stories?” ”

“ The person who has offered the affront I consider beneath my notice. André, on the other han’, is a chile of good impulse, an’ by no means to blame. As you all perceive, he has shown mo’ taste and judgement than those above him, f’om whom we might have espected good breeding, at least. ”

“ I only shall add that to-morrow yo’ teacher shall sen’ the key of this schoolhouse, together with her resignation, to the gentlemen who compose the school-boa’d.” There followed visible disturbance among the young people. ”