Regret
by Kate Chopin
MAMZELLE AURLIE possessed a good
strong figure, ruddy cheeks, hair that was changing from brown to gray, and a
determined eye. She wore a man's hat about the farm, and an old blue army
overcoat when it was cold, and sometimes top-boots.
Mamzelle Aurlie had never
thought of marrying. She had never been in love. At the age of twenty she had
received a proposal, which she had promptly declined, and at the age of fifty
she had not yet lived to regret it.
So she was quite alone in the
world, except for her dog Ponto, and the negroes who lived in her cabins and
worked her crops, and the fowls, a few cows, a couple of mules, her gun (with
which she shot chicken-hawks), and her religion.
One morning Mamzelle Aurlie
stood upon her gallery, contemplating, with arms akimbo, a small band of very
small children who, to all intents and purposes, might have fallen from the
clouds, so unexpected and bewildering was their coming, and so unwelcome. They
were the children of her nearest neighbor, Odile, who was not such a near
neighbor, after all.
The young woman had appeared but
five minutes before, accompanied by these four children. In her arms she
carried little Lodie; she dragged Ti Nomme by an unwilling hand; while Marcline
and Marclette followed with irresolute steps.
Her face was red and disfigured
from tears and excitement. She had been summoned to a neighboring parish by the
dangerous illness of her mother; her husband was away in Texas -- it seemed to
her a million miles away; and Valsin was waiting with the mule-cart to drive
her to the station.
"It's no question, Mamzelle
Aurlie; you jus' got to keep those youngsters fo' me tell I come back. Dieu
sait, I wouldn' botha you with 'em if it was any otha way to do! Make 'em mine
you, Mamzelle Aurlie; don' spare 'em. Me, there, I'm half crazy between the
chil'ren, an' Lon not home, an' maybe not even to fine po' maman alive
encore!" -- a harrowing possibility which drove Odile to take a final
hasty and convulsive leave of her disconsolate family.
She left them crowded into the
narrow strip of shade on the porch of the long, low house; the white sunlight
was beating in on the white old boards; some chickens were scratching in the grass
at the foot of the steps, and one had boldly mounted, and was stepping heavily,
solemnly, and aimlessly across the gallery. There was a pleasant odor of pinks
in the air, and the sound of negroes' laughter was coming across the flowering
cotton-field.
Mamzelle Aurlie stood
contemplating the children. She looked with a critical eye upon Marcline, who
had been left staggering beneath the weight of the chubby Lodie. She surveyed
with the same calculating air Marclette mingling her silent tears with the audible
grief and rebellion of Ti Nomme. During those few contemplative moments she was
collecting herself, determining upon a line of action which should be identical
with a line of duty. She began by feeding them.
If Mamzelle Aurlie's
responsibilities might have begun and ended there, they could easily have been
dismissed; for her larder was amply provided against an emergency of this
nature. But little children are not little pigs: they require and demand
attentions which were wholly unexpected by Mamzelle Aurlie, and which she was
ill prepared to give.
She was, indeed, very inapt in
her management of Odile's children during the first few days. How could she
know that Marclette always wept when spoken to in a loud and commanding tone of
voice? It was a peculiarity of Marclette's. She became acquainted with Ti
Nomme's passion for flowers only when he had plucked all the choicest gardenias
and pinks for the apparent purpose of critically studying their botanical
construction.
"'T ain't enough to tell
'im, Mamzelle Aurlie," Marcline instructed her; "you got to tie 'im
in a chair. It's w'at maman all time do w'en he's bad: she tie 'im in a
chair." The chair in which Mamzelle Aurlie tied Ti Nomme was roomy and
comfortable, and he seized the opportunity to take a nap in it, the afternoon
being warm.
At night, when she ordered them
one and all to bed as she would have shooed the chickens into the hen-house,
they stayed uncomprehending before her. What about the little white nightgowns
that had to be taken from the pillow-slip in which they were brought over, and
shaken by some strong hand till they snapped like ox-whips? What about the tub
of water which had to be brought and set in the middle of the floor, in which
the little tired, dusty, sun-browned feet had every one to be washed sweet and
clean? And it made Marcline and Marclette laugh merrily -- the idea that
Mamzelle Aurlie should for a moment have believed that Ti Nomme could fall
asleep without being told the story of Croque-mitaine or Loup-garou, or both;
or that lodie could fall asleep at all without being rocked and sung to.
"I tell you, Aunt
Ruby," Mamzelle Aurlie informed her cook in confidence; "me, I'd
rather manage a dozen plantation' than fo' chil'ren. It's terrassent! Bont!
don't talk to me about chil'ren!"
"T ain' ispected sich as
you would know airy thing 'bout 'em, Mamzelle Aurlie. I see dat plainly
yistiddy w'en I spy dat li'le chile playin' wid yo' baskit o' keys. You don'
know dat makes chillun grow up hard-headed, to play wid keys? Des like it make
'em teeth hard to look in a lookin'-glass. Them's the things you got to know in
the raisin' an' manigement o' chillun."
Mamzelle Aurlie certainly did
not pretend or aspire to such subtle and far-reaching knowledge on the subject
as Aunt Ruby possessed, who had "raised five an' buried six" in her
day. She was glad enough to learn a few little mother-tricks to serve the
moment's need.
Ti Nomme's sticky fingers
compelled her to unearth white aprons that she had not worn for years, and she
had to accustom herself to his moist kisses -- the expressions of an
affectionate and exuberant nature. She got down her sewing-basket, which she
seldom used, from the top shelf of the armoire, and placed it within the ready
and easy reach which torn slips and buttonless waists demanded. It took her
some days to become accustomed to the laughing, the crying, the chattering that
echoed through the house and around it all day long. And it was not the first
or the second night that she could sleep comfortably with little Lodie's hot,
plump body pressed close against her, and the little one's warm breath beating
her cheek like the fanning of a bird's wing.
But at the end of two weeks
Mamzelle Aurlie had grown quite used to these things, and she no longer
complained.
It was also at the end of two
weeks that Mamzelle Aurlie, one evening, looking away toward the crib where the
cattle were being fed, saw Valsin's blue cart turning the bend of the road.
Odile sat beside the mulatto, upright and alert. As they drew near, the young
woman's beaming face indicated that her home-coming was a happy one.
But this coming, unannounced and
unexpected, threw Mamzelle Aurlie into a flutter that was almost agitation. The
children had to be gathered. Where was Ti Nomme? Yonder in the shed, putting an
edge on his knife at the grindstone. And Marcline and Marclette? Cutting and
fashioning doll-rags in the corner of the gallery. As for Lodie, she was safe
enough in Mamzelle Aurlie's arms; and she had screamed with delight at sight of
the familiar blue cart which was bringing her mother back to her.
THE excitement was all over, and
they were gone. How still it was when they were gone! Mamzelle Aurlie stood
upon the gallery, looking and listening. She could no longer see the cart; the
red sunset and the blue-gray twilight had together flung a purple mist across
the fields and road that hid it from her view. She could no longer hear the
wheezing and creaking of its wheels. But she could still faintly hear the
shrill, glad voices of the children.
She turned into the house. There
was much work awaiting her, for the children had left a sad disorder behind
them; but she did not at once set about the task of righting it. Mamzelle
Aurlie seated herself beside the table. She gave one slow glance through the
room, into which the evening shadows were creeping and deepening around her
solitary figure. She let her head fall down upon her bended arm, and began to
cry. Oh, but she cried! Not softly, as women often do. She cried like a man,
with sobs that seemed to tear her very soul. She did not notice Ponto licking
her hand.
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