River. I been kine espectin’ hair sence yistiday–hair an’ Placide,” casting an unconscious glance down the long plantation road. “But Mme. Duplan she nevair want to let Euphrasie go. You know it’s hair raise’ Euphrasie sence hair po’ ma die’, Mr. Offde’n. She teck dat li’le chile, an’ raise it, sem lack she raisin’ Ninette. But it’s mo’ ’an a year now Euphrasie say dat’s all fool nonsense to leave me livin’ ’lone lack dat, wid nuttin’ ’cep’ dem nigger’–an’ Placide once a w’ile. An’ she came yair bossin’! My goodness!” The old man chuckled. “Dat’s hair been writin’ all dem letter’ to Hardin’–Offde’n. If it would been me myse’f–”
III.
Placide seemed to have had a foreboding of ill from the start when he found that Euphrasie began to interest herself in the condition of the plantation. This ill feeling voiced itself partly when he told her it was none of her lookout if the place went to the dogs. “It’s good enough for Joe Duplan to run things en grand seigneur, Euphrasie; that’s w’at’s spoiled you.”
Placide might have done much single-handed to keep the old place in better trim, if he had wished. For there was no one more clever than he to do a hand’s turn at any and every thing. He could mend a saddle or bridle while he stood whistling a tune. If a wagon required a brace or a bolt, it was nothing for him to step into a shop and turn out one as deftly as the most skilled blacksmith. Any one seeing him at work with plane and rule and chisel would have declared him a born carpenter. And as for mixing paints, and giving a fine and lasting coat to the side of a house or barn, he had not his equal in the country.
This last talent he exercised little in his native parish. It was in a neighboring one, where he spent the greater part of his time, that his fame as a painter was established. There, in the village of Orville, he owned a little shell of a house, and during odd times it was Placide’s great delight to tinker at this small home, inventing daily new beauties and conveniences to add to it. Lately it had become a precious possession to him, for in the spring he was to bring Euphrasie there as his wife.
Maybe it was because of his talent, and his indifference in turning it to good, that he was often called “a no-account Creole” by thriftier souls than himself. But no-account Creole or not, painter, carpenter, blacksmith, and whatever else he might be at times, he was a Santien always, with the best blood in the country running in his veins. And many thought his choice had fallen in very low places when he engaged himself to marry little Euphrasie, the daughter of old Pierre Manton and a problematic mother a good deal less than nobody.
Placide might have married almost any one, too; for it was the easiest thing in the world for a girl to fall in love with him–sometimes the hardest thing in the world not to, he was such a splendid fellow, such a careless, happy, handsome fellow. And he did not seem to mind in the least that young men who had grown up with him were lawyers now, and planters, and members of Shakspere clubs in town. No one ever expected anything quite so humdrum as that of the Santien boys. As youngsters all three had been the despair of the country schoolmaster; then of the private tutor who had come to shackle them, and had failed in his design. And the state of mutiny and revolt that they had brought about at the college of Grand Coteau when their father, in a moment of weak concession to prejudice, had sent them there, is a thing yet remembered in Natchitoches.
And now Placide was going to marry Euphrasie. He could not recall the time when he had not loved her. Somehow he felt that it began the day when he was six years old, and Pierre, his father’s overseer, had called him from play to come and make her acquaintance. He was permitted to hold her in his arms a moment, and it was with silent awe that he did so. She was the first white-faced baby he remembered having seen, and he straightway believed she had been sent to him as a birthday gift to be his little playmate and friend. If he loved her, there was no great wonder: every one did, from the time she took her first dainty step, which was a brave one, too.
She was the gentlest little lady ever born in old Natchitoches parish, and the happiest and merriest. She never cried or whimpered for a hurt. Placide never did, why should she? When she wept, it was when she did what was wrong, or when he did; for that was to be a coward, she felt. When she was ten, and her mother was dead, Mme. Duplan, the Lady Bountiful of the parish, had driven across from her plantation, Les Chéniers, to old Pierre’s very door, and there had gathered up this precious little maid, and carried her away, to do with as she would.
And she did with the child much as she herself had been done by. Euphrasie went to the convent soon, and was taught all gentle things, the pretty arts of manner and speech that the ladies of the “Sacred Heart” can teach so well. When she quitted them, she left a trail of love behind her; she always did.
Placide continued to see her at intervals, and to love her always. One day he told her so; he could not help it. She stood under one of the big oaks at Les Chéniers. It was mid-
