Balcony Stories | Page 7

saw a figure approaching. He had

to stop to look at it, for it was worth while. The head was hidden by a
green barege veil, which the showers had plentifully besprinkled with
dew; a tall, thin figure. Figure! No; not even could it be called a figure:
straight up and down, like a finger or a post; high-shouldered, and a
step--a step like a plow-man's. No umbrella; no--nothing more, in fact.
It does not sound so peculiar as when first related--something must be
forgotten. The feet--oh, yes, the feet--they were like waffle-irons, or
frying-pans, or anything of that shape.
Old Champigny did not care for women--he never had; they simply did
not exist for him in the order of nature. He had been married once, it is
true, about a half century before; but that was not reckoned against the
existence of his prejudice, because he was _célibataire_ to his
finger-tips, as any one could see a mile away. But that woman
_intrigué'd_ him.
He had no servant to inquire from. He performed all of his own
domestic work in the wretched little cabin that replaced his old home.
For Champigny also belonged to the great majority of the nouveaux
pauvres. He went out into the rice-field, where were one or two hands
that worked on shares with him, and he asked them. They knew
immediately; there is nothing connected with the parish that a
field-hand does not know at once. She was the teacher of the colored
public school some three or four miles away. "Ah," thought Champigny,
"some Northern lady on a mission." He watched to see her return in the
evening, which she did, of course; in a blinding rain. Imagine the green
barege veil then; for it remained always down over her face.
[Illustration: CHAMPIGNY.]
Old Champigny could not get over it that he had never seen her before.
But he must have seen her, and, with his abstraction and old age, not
have noticed her, for he found out from the negroes that she had been
teaching four or five years there. And he found out also--how, is not
important--that she was Idalie Sainte Foy Mortemart des Islets. La
grande demoiselle! He had never known her in the old days, owing to
his uncomplimentary attitude toward women, but he knew of her, of
course, and of her family. It should have been said that his plantation

was about fifty miles higher up the river, and on the opposite bank to
Reine Sainte Foy. It seemed terrible. The old gentleman had had
reverses of his own, which would bear the telling, but nothing was
more shocking to him than this--that Idalie Sainte Foy Mortemart des
Islets should be teaching a public colored school for--it makes one
blush to name it--seven dollars and a half a month. For seven dollars
and a half a month to teach a set of--well! He found out where she lived,
a little cabin--not so much worse than his own, for that matter--in the
corner of a field; no companion, no servant, nothing but food and
shelter. Her clothes have been described.
Only the good God himself knows what passed in Champigny's mind
on the subject. We know only the results. He went and married la
grande demoiselle. How? Only the good God knows that too. Every
first of the month, when he goes to the city to buy provisions, he takes
her with him--in fact, he takes her everywhere with him.
Passengers on the railroad know them well, and they always have a
chance to see her face. When she passes her old plantation la grande
demoiselle always lifts her veil for one instant--the inevitable green
barege veil. What a face! Thin, long, sallow, petrified! And the neck! If
she would only tie something around the neck! And her plain, coarse
cottonade gown! The negro women about her were better dressed than
she.
Poor old Champignon! It was not an act of charity to himself, no doubt
cross and disagreeable, besides being ugly. And as for love, gratitude!

MIMI'S MARRIAGE
This how she told about it, sitting in her little room,--her bridal
chamber,--not larger, really not larger than sufficed for the bed there,
the armoire here, the bureau opposite, and the washstand behind the
door, the corners all touching. But a nice set of furniture, quite comme
il faut,--handsome, in fact,--as a bride of good family should have. And
she was dressed very prettily, too, in her long white _negligée_, with

plenty of lace and ruffles and blue ribbons,--such as only the Creole
girls can make, and brides, alas! wear,--the pretty honeymoon costume
that suggests, that suggests--well! to proceed. "The poor little cat!" as
one could not help calling her, so mignonne, so blond, with the pretty
black eyes, and the rosebud